00b. Programming Note – Binti Transcript

Josh Woodward 0:00
Let’s pretend it’s the end, of this whole ugly story
We vanquished the foe and we triumphed in glory
There’s nothing but rainbows and blue skies ahead
Hallelujah, amen, it’s the end

Gregory Avery-Weir 0:19
Hello, everybody. This is Gregory Avery-Weir with a little programming note. We were expecting to put up an episode discussing Star Trek First Contact today. But there’s been a change of plans.

Gregory Avery-Weir 0:31
And at the moment, as I’m recording this, Melissa and Lucy are out of town at a conference. They’ll be back by the time this airs, but I’m currently the only one here at home to tell you what’s going on. So once we had the first episode recorded and edited, the Screen Actors Guild, SAG-AFTRA, clarified their positions on promotion of struck work.

Gregory Avery-Weir 0:56
So if you’re not following the news, right now, there’s a big writers and actors strike in Hollywood. They’re striking for various things that are very well deserved, and we very much support the strikes. Part of their guidelines are, if you’re a podcaster who’s doing, like, rewatch stuff, promotional stuff, that sort of thing we’re doing, of struck work, that they would prefer you not do that promotion during the strike.

Gregory Avery-Weir 1:23
And Star Trek is 100% covered by all this. All… most Star Trek properties, maybe all Star Trek properties are maybe both SAG and WGA. And in their guidelines, they specifically talk about how this current strike is in part about making sure that writers and actors get paid for their work on streaming platforms. The rules, the contracts, regarding how much compensation and what rights the creators have on streaming is very different than what it is for broadcast or for for theatrical films. And it’s really shitty for the writers and actors. And so we very much believe in supporting them and in not promoting this stuff until they reach a better contract.

Gregory Avery-Weir 2:09
So if we’re not going to talk about anything Star Trek on our Star Trek podcast, what are we going to do? So we are going to discuss another work that I think ties into our utopian concepts at Before the Future Came. So for September 5, this is will be our September episode, we’ll premiere with a discussion of the novella Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. It’s a real short book: it’s about 100 pages. And it’s about a young woman from the Himba people from southwestern Africa, who gets into some trouble on a passenger ship on the way to an intergalactic university.

Gregory Avery-Weir 2:46
It’s very much interfacing with ideas of: what does it mean to be from a culture on earth? What does it mean to join the galactic community? What are the problems that can still exist in a theoretical utopian future?

Gregory Avery-Weir 2:59
It should be really cool, and it should be relevant to the project we’re doing here on the show. So you don’t have to read the book beforehand. But if you want to, you can get either the novella Binti or the omnibus Binti: The Complete Trilogy at various places, wherever you want to get books. There are two sequels called Binti: Home and Binti: The Night Masquerade; those are included in the trilogy. They’re not what we’re reading, at least for this first episode. So don’t accidentally get one of those instead of the original, which is just called Binti, or you can get the trilogy which has them all.

Gregory Avery-Weir 3:31
So we’ll be doing that for September. We’ll see how things go. This strike could be continuing for months, so we may end up reading more books or something like that. Or it may be that our October episode will be our previously scheduled First Contact episode.

Gregory Avery-Weir 3:49
So hang on for another month while we kind of change gears in the face of this to show solidarity to the writers and actors. And we look forward to all three of us talking to you in about a month about Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. I’ll talk to you then.

Gregory Avery-Weir 4:07
Our music is “Let’s Pretend” by Josh Woodward, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. You can get in touch with us at beforethefuture.space or by writing onscreen@beforethefuture.space.

Josh Woodward 4:24
I’m sure we’ll all live happily ever after
Surrounded by butterflies, children and laughter
It’s a fairytale story, so let’s just pretend
Hallelujah, amen, it’s the end
Happily ever after, the end

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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