Science Faction Podcast · Devon Craft and Steven Domingues and Benjamin Daniel Lawless

Trickle Down Electronics

·1 hr 9 min·5 clips

The hosts dissect a new sci-fi show about a hive mind, questioning if it improves on Star Trek's Borg.

This episode of the Science Faction Podcast features hosts Steven Dominguez, Devin Craft, and Benjamin Daniel Lawless. They open with a candid discussion about their podcast's purpose and audience engagement. Devin Craft expresses a humorous ambivalence about the show's reach, while Steven shares an anecdote about a listener who enjoyed their discussions on *Dune*. Steven reveals his new acquisition: a Camtono, a prop from *The Mandalorian* originally seen in *The Empire Strikes Back*. He uses it to carry miniatures for the *Shatterpoint* tabletop game. The hosts then discuss the new Apple TV+ series *Plural of Us*, created by the team behind *Breaking Bad*. They describe it as a sci-fi show exploring a world that has achieved peace through a hive mind, focusing on character dilemmas rather than the mystery of its origin. Devin highlights the show's thoughtful approach to hive-mind logistics and compares it to the Borg from *Star Trek*. The conversation briefly touches on other series like *The Big Door Prize* and *The IT Crowd*. Benjamin shares that he recently rewatched *Piece by Piece*, a documentary about Pharrell Williams animated entirely in LEGO. The main science segment focuses on an article from the Substack *Climate Drift* by Skander Garum. It details how solar power and mobile money are transforming energy access in sub-Saharan Africa, a concept termed "trickle-down electronics." The article notes solar panel costs have dropped 99.5% since 1980, with systems now available for around $120. Pay-as-you-go financing, enabled by platforms like Kenya's M-Pesa, allows farmers to purchase these systems with a $100 down payment. The piece claims this shift is replacing kerosene, improving health, and increasing crop yields from $600 to $14,000 an acre for some farmers. Steven presents a second article from *Science Daily* about a heat-resistant plant, *Tidestromia oblongifolia*, discovered in Death Valley. Professor Siung Yeon Soo Rhee and specialist Kareem Prado found this plant can triple its biomass in 10 days and photosynthesize optimally at 113°F (45°C). Its adaptations include reshaping chloroplasts and adjusting thousands of genes, offering potential insights for engineering heat-tolerant crops. A surprising claim is that this decentralized, market-driven solar adoption in Africa represents the most ambitious infrastructure project in history, bypassing traditional grid expansion. The hosts find it remarkable that technology has advanced so rapidly that regions can "skip" past developmental stages. They note the irony that this capitalist model appears to be uplifting communities there, contrasting it with their views of late-stage capitalism in America. The plant's ability to not just survive but thrive in extreme heat is presented as a significant biological discovery. The tone is conversational, humorous, and digressive, blending personal anecdotes with scientific news. The style is informal and opinionated, resembling a casual book club discussion about articles they've read. Listeners who enjoy laid-back, meandering conversations about sci-fi pop culture and optimistic science news will appreciate this episode. Those seeking a tightly structured, deeply analytical science podcast might find it too scattered.

As heard by us

A loose, joke-forward opening gives way to a more focused conversation about solar punk and Africa's future.

Science Faction starts in a loose, bantering register, with the hosts even joking about whether anyone cares about the show. From there it drifts into a Star Trek count-off and a correction about Tasha Yar and Ensign Ro before settling into solar punk and the idea of Africa…

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Why you'd press play

You want a science hangout that swerves from Star Trek trivia to a solar-punk future-in-Africa segment.

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