Variance Episode 3: Algorithmic movies, AI Dogs, and the Afterlife (Miguel Novelo of Stanford) - 29 SEPT 2025
Our third episode is up - details below. I’m still working on posts about “Kids, Technology, and AI” and a cultural note on ASI and UIs (artificial super intelligence and uploaded intelligences). I’ve been talking to lots of parents about this and also preparing a talk on “10,000 Conways and Mirzakhanis” for the 2nd Progress Conference in Berkeley about progress on AMP School (a program to train motivated, genius kids).
Our Mission:
Variance is a podcast dedicated to spotlighting the vanguard of young talent—creators and thinkers who are excelling at the frontiers of their fields, from science, engineering, and AI to art, architecture, design, literature, and entrepreneurship. Our mission is to share the stories, variant insights, and journeys of these young innovators to inspire and expose listeners to truly original thinking.
The goal is to go beyond résumés and achievements. We’re curating conversations with guests who are not just brilliant, but also have a high degree of intellectual variance—people you might call quirky, weird, or non-conventional, who are just plain fun to talk to because they see the world from a unique angle.
In our episodes, we’ll dive deep into the heart of their creativity. What motivated them to act, think, and see differently? Where did they get the inspiration to make novel things? We will intentionally avoid ephemeral news and instead focus on the deeper philosophies, mental models, and creative processes that will make these conversations feel fresh and insightful a decade, or even 50 years, from now.
This is a personal passion project, not a new career. Our focus will be on quality over quantity, with 6 to 8 high-quality episodes published a year.
Our Third Episode: Algorithmic movies, AI Dogs, and the Afterlife (Miguel Novelo of Stanford)
How valuable are inanimate material objects, and can we have relationships with them - from computers to art? Why do we have dogs in our lives, which our laws treat as objects, when dogs have no say in the "relationship"? Will our new synthetic beings, our AI and robotic mind children, be more like our pets, or will we be their pets?
Join Miguel Novelo, an artist, researcher, and community organizer currently working on algorithmic movies on geological change, game engine storytelling based on dogs-human-technology afterlife, technoshamanisms, technology displacement, and technophobias. He is currently an independent artist and Lecturer at Stanford's Art and Art History Department and San Jose State University.
Show Notes:
Miguel's Personal Website
Interactive Installation: "Ｃｈｕｐａｆｌｏｒ： Ｗｈｉｓｔｌｉｎｇ； Ｄｏｇ Ｓｐｉｒｉｔ， Ａｑｕｉ" (2023)
Sonic Sculpture: Judgment Pelicano: Impact (2022)
Experimental Films: Super 8 and 16mm (2020s?)
Jake and I invite you to listen to our podcast, leave feedback and a star rating, and subscribe on your preferred platform. I'm incredibly excited to build this platform for young voices and share their journeys with you. If you like these first few episodes, please leave a star rating. If you didn’t like it, want something different, have a variant young guest we should talk to, or just want to troll us, drop us a note!
Website: variancepod.com
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Hope you enjoy the conversation.
Arun & Jake
arun@variancepod.com
jake@variancepod.com