After Things Podcast

The episode opens with Justin and Brian discussing a New York Times story about a SpaceX Starlink launch that experienced an upper-stage problem. They note that the first stage landed normally on a drone ship, but the second stage did not reach the intended altitude to deploy the satellites properly, and they mention SpaceX describing the event as a very rare glitch and a rapid unscheduled disassembly. The middle of the episode becomes a long speculative conversation about frontier life, space colonization, and genetic modification. They use William Shatner’s reaction to seeing Earth from space, Andrew Heaton’s Oklahoma land-rush family story, and examples like golden rice to argue that people would be slow to accept genetic editing unless harsh reality forced the issue over multiple generations. The latter half turns to AI music, with Justin describing a real-life anecdote involving Robert Rodriguez and Udio, then both hosts discussing AI music tools, their quality, and the lawsuits against Suno and Udio. Th