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Seldon Crisis – The Podcast

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Trailer introducing Seldon Crisis – The Podcast. Summary description of the intent of the podcast and a brief description of the first few episodes.
New Active Transcript (read while listening)!Script and voices by Joel McKinnonTheme Orchestration by Tom BarnesArt by Mike Topping – despotica.comBased on the novels of Foundation by Isaac Asimov.Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!
Script and voices by Joel McKinnonTheme Orchestration by Tom BarnesArt by Mike Topping – despotica.comBased on the novels of Foundation by Isaac Asimov.Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!
Script and voices by Joel McKinnonTheme Orchestration by Tom BarnesArt by Mike Topping – despotica.comBased on the novels of Foundation by Isaac Asimov.Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!Apple Podcast (please rate/review/subscribe)
Script and voices by Joel McKinnonTheme Orchestration by Tom BarnesArt by Mike Topping – despotica.comBased on the novels of Foundation by Isaac Asimov.Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!
Script and voices by Joel McKinnonTheme Orchestration by Tom BarnesArt by Mike Topping – despotica.comBased on the novels of Foundation by Isaac Asimov.Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!
Acknowledgements:Jeremy MacKinnon, Video Editing and Podcast Support (Linkedin | Twitter)Tom Barnes, Theme OrchestrationMike Topping, Graphics (Despotica)Inspiration:Trojan War the PodcastOdyssey the PodcastLiterature and History PodcastPlanet and Sky, the Deeper Story (my first audio-drama podcast)Tobias Cabrol - New Eyes review (Goodreads)Listener Resources:Foundation Era - Asimov Future Timeline (Youtube)William Woolard - Asimov Chronology ProjectInterview callouts:Isaac Asimov - Nightfall (Wikipedia)Isaac Asimov - The Last Question (Youtube)Eric Cline - 1177 B.C., Revised Edition (Amazon)David Deutsch - After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up (Youtube)Mike Flynn - In the Country of the Blind review (Goodreads)Transcript:[music intro with voiceover by Nathaniel Goldberg:“Philosophy and Science-fiction have this particular thing in common and that is that they’re both really good at thought experiments”“The Galactic Empire is falling… so here’s a thought experiment... civilization is falling, what do we do?”]Welcome to a very special episode of Seldon Crisis – The Podcast! We won’t be diving in to the first chapter of Foundation and Empire, The General quite yet, so I am sorry to disappoint you on that front. Instead, we have something of an entirely different order – an actual guest appearance by someone very familiar with Foundation and Asimov who has studied the core trilogy in depth and has some special insights to offer (without breaking our no spoiler rule). Before introducing our guest, however, I want to briefly thank some of the people who have made this podcast a success beyond my wildest dreams in only a few months.First, I want to thank someone in my own family who’s contributed more than anyone else, my own son Jeremy MacKinnon. When I started re-reading the Foundation series last summer I felt I had to share it with someone and was thrilled to find an accomplice in the joy of reading it in someone under my own roof. He started reading it before I’d even finished and read all seven volumes to my complete delight. He became a big fan of the idea of creating a podcast and lent his talents as a video editor in producing the video trailer for season 1 and designed and produced each of the mini-preview videos I’ve been posting on the Seldon Crisis video channel. He’s also been a great sounding board for podcast ideas and offers much needed constructive criticism of each episode. I hope to be able to leverage his creative talents throughout the series.Another wonderful collaborator has been a friend I’ve known since high school and a long time musical companion named Tom Barnes. I came up with a simple melody idea for the theme music and shared it with him last fall and he enthusiastically transformed it into the evocative and magical theme music that begins and ends each show along with variations to use to link the sections together. It wouldn’t have the same feel without his excellent work and I look forward to more from him in future seasons if I can maintain his interest in contributing his efforts. I am extremely grateful for all he’s done.A creative effort like this needs visual representation, and I knew I needed something special to honor the power of Isaac Asimov’s vision. Who better to create such a look than someone who had demonstrated success in the past? I reached out to the artist who had created book covers for all but one of the seven Foundation novels and all four novels in the Robots series, a guy named Mike Topping and asked him if he could create an original logo for the series. I asked him if he could incorporate a raven into the graphic to represent Hari Seldon and somehow imply the magic and mystery of the galactic empire and the Foundation all in one graphic and boy did he deliver! I’ve been thrilled to post his graphics dozens of times and never get tired of seeing it. Mike can be found online at despotica.com if you would like to engage his services.Lastly, I want to thank all of the listeners and dear supporters who have made it possible to continue this series. I love doing it and get a lot of joy from it, but especially love hearing from all of you out there who appreciate the effort. There’s one guy in particular I want to call out by name. I had the pleasure of virtually meeting this writer of vibrant and super futuristic science fiction named Tobias Cabral in the past year and read a couple of his works, including a gripping tale called New Eyes filled with nail-biting action sequences and featuring romance crossing the boundaries of cybernetic and biological lifeforms. You can find my review on Goodreads and I’ll add a link in the show notes. Tobias is a wonderful guy and - though I’ve never met him in person - he’s one I can call a true friend. He lent his enthusiastic backing of my intentions to make this podcast and I am very grateful for his support. Without further ado, let me introduce another friend and supporter of the show who I had the privilege of meeting online even before the first episode dropped. Let’s meet our distinguished guest for this episode.[musical break]Joel McKinnon: My guest today is Nathaniel Goldberg. Nathaniel is a professor of philosophy at a university in Virginia. Besides more traditional classes, he teaches a special-topics course on philosophy and science fiction, in which he has his students read Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy against the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s most famous work, The Republic. Welcome, Nathaniel!Nathaniel Goldberg: Thank you, Joel. It's a pleasure to meet you and to be here on your podcast? JM: Why don't you tell me a bit about yourself, including your introduction to Asimov? NG: Sure, it would also be my pleasure. So I first discovered Asimov when I was a teenager, I was visiting my grandmother in New York. I've got that little bit in common with the good doctor, we’re both New Yorkers, deep down.And she had in her bedroom, a book anthology collection. Golden age science fiction, short stories. I later learned it was my aunt's. She had done a science fiction class in college, and lo and behold, as I started reading through it, I came upon this short story called Nightfall by this author named Isaac Asimov.And it was years later. Years later when I was in high school my high school 10th grade English teacher happened to have sets of the Foundation trilogy. And I talked to him and he lent them to me. And the rest is galactic history. JM: So yeah, I'll tell you how I found it. I guess, you know, since you've listened to the podcast. As a teenager, I just discovered science fiction ‘cause my dad was into it and my dad had lots of science fiction on our bookshelves at home. So I read as much of that as I could. And I'm not sure what the first Asimov I read was - it wasn't Foundation. But when I found Foundation that changed my life. NG: Well, I remember when I was reading Nightfall, learning that as Asimov had written it, I think when he was 19 or so, he published it when he was 21.And at the time I was 13 or 14 and I thought, no worries. I've got years to be that successful because the golf from 13 to 19 is like eternal when you're a 13 year old. And then as I creep closer and closer in time, time started running short. I'm now in a spot where I teach college students who are roughly Asomov’s age when he wrote that story and I liked to needle them a little bit – like what have you done with your life? Have you written a world changing science fiction short story that's the segue to a world changing trilogy or haven't you? And you know, they look at me and think that I'm goofy, but they usually think that anyway. So some more Asimov in my background.JM: I'm really curious about your class and would love to hear you talk more about it. Because I would have loved to have taken that class when I was in college. So I'm really curious what the students, how they respond to it, to the syllabus. NG: Sure. So, uh, I guess to fill in a little bit beyond my, the Asimov part of my life, I wound up getting a PhD in philosophy, and then I ended up teaching at three different universities. I started in Maryland and then I was in Ohio and now I'm in Virginia, and where I currently am I was encouraged to do a special topics course. We all are asked occasionally to do something like this. So as you said in your kind intro, I'm doing one called Philosophy and Science Fiction. And the idea was each time I taught it, to pair a different work of philosophy with a different work of science fiction.But Joel, I've got to tell you, the first pairing of Asimov and Plato just stuck because it just works so well. JM: Hard to beat that one.NG: Yeah, for both reasons. And I don't want to say too much about it because the course relies on having read the whole trilogy and your listeners, including myself since I'm a listener too, have so far only got through the first book in the trilogy with you. But that was the connection and the motivation. JM: How did they react to this? We have to read this Asimov guy. I mean, I would think, like really? I get to read Asimov? Not sure how how students react to that now. NG: Asimov is somewhat dated. The trilogy, as you mentioned, was composed of short stories that were written, I guess, in the forties, at least initially. Is that right? Joel? Am I getting that chronology right?JM: Yeah, he wrote them in the mid to late forties, I believe. NG: And even though the trilogy was so influential and it's hard once you read it and not to recognize its influences, it does come across somewhat stilted sometimes to students, or at least they wouldn't have heard of him, but like you I'm really excited about the Apple TV dramatization or interpretation of the trilogy to get more people interested in it.JM: Yeah. But we also have our misgivings about what we might find, how they might treat the subject matter. NG: Well, we, we absolutely do. In fact, if I can share an anecdote between the two
If you'd like to support the show, please become a patron!Show notes:Stars End Podcast (@StarsEndPodcast on Twitter)
FoundationEra on Youtube
r/asimov on Reddit
r/TheFoundation on Reddit
Transcript:[Theme music]Welcome back dear friends, and I regret to inform you that this is not the first episode of season 2, but a mere postscript to season 1 and a quick preview of upcoming attractions. In looking back I want to say how much this has been a blast to do and I am just thrilled that there are people out there who find it worthwhile to listen. You encourage me to do my best to continue the story. Our next season will feature some amazing characters and some truly mind-blowing plot twists, but I’ll get to that in a bit. First a quick recap of the story thus far.In our first episode, The Psychohistorians, young PhD student Gaal Dornick left his home planet of Synnax and traveled to the capital of the empire, Trantor. He discovered his boss, Hari Seldon, waiting for him in his hotel room and was told the empire was due to collapse imminently, then got arrested along with him and stood trial for disturbing the peace. Seldon tricked the High Commissioner Linge Chen into sending him, Dornick, and 100,000 of his followers to the edge of the galaxy to a lonely and primitive planet named Terminus, where they were to catalog all of the knowledge of the human race into a grand Encyclopedia Galactica (or so they thought).In The Encyclopedists, we saw the fledgling colony of Terminus face its first “Seldon crisis” when the belligerent nearby system of Anacreon broke away from the Empire and threatened the Foundation with imminent annexation. The clever young Mayor of Terminus City used the Foundation’s technological advantage – chiefly the understanding of nuclear power – to convince Anacreon’s powerful neighbors to join in an alliance against them. This was the first occasion in which Hari Seldon’s recorded image appeared in The Vault, the specially designed chamber in which he would periodically provide updates on the Seldon Plan. To the horror of Lewis Pirenne and his Board of Trustees Seldon informed them that the ostensible reason for their project, the creation of the Encyclopedia, was a fraud. Their real purpose was simply to take over the galaxy.A generation later, in The Mayors we found Hardin firmly in power and facing an even more serious threat from Anacreon in the person of the wicked regent Wienis who intended to use his nephew Lepold’s coronation to launch a powerful attack upon Terminus, but again Hardin had the political skills to rise to the occasion. He had turned the knowledge of sophisticated technology and especially of nuclear science to form a false religion, and with the help of Foundation High Priest Poly Verisof, turned the tables on Wienis and brought him to a humiliating and rather messy end.Later, we took a quick side trip with smooth-talking salesman Limmar Ponyets in The Traders on a high-stakes rescue mission to the Kingdom of Askone, where the ethically-challenged protagonist used sophisticated high tech extortion to free his comrade and get the superstitious Askonians hooked on Foundation gadgetry.Still later, in The Merchant Princes, Hober Mallow dueled on the home front with the powerful politician Jorrain Sutt and on the distant planet of Korell with the tired but still greedy Commdor Asper and his well-connected but difficult wife, the Commdora Licia. He used a similar technical trick to catch the spy Jaim Twer and his faux priest Jord Parma in an act designed to undermine Mallow’s authority through character assassination. A side trip to visit an old man named Onum Barr on the unfortunate planet of Siwenna may have appeared almost incidental, but will have significant implications in our next chapter. Don’t worry – I’ll bring you up to speed when we get there.After all that whirlwind activity and so many strange names you might wonder what you really need to remember going forward. To be honest, it’s not much, and I’ll try to help with that too. For now, just keep a space for Hari Seldon, Salvor Hardin, and Hober Mallow in your memory banks. They will be referred to frequently as the legendary founding fathers of Foundation and as we march through the ages to come.While we get ready to start into the next great chapter of this epic in Season 2, the novel Foundation and Empire, I want to bring up something else that I haven’t discussed much yet, and that is the new and ambitious TV series based on Foundation to begin streaming on AppleTV+ starting on September 24th of this year. Interviews with the showrunner indicate they intend an ambitious 80 episodes! A lot of commentary in the online community has sprung up around some significant departures from the original storyline evident in the pre-release trailers, including three generations of rulers on Trantor named Brothers Dawn, Day, and Dusk (no Cleons), and a much larger role for Gaal Dornick. The latter has been cast as a female person of color, as is Salvor Hardin, who also seems to be lugging around a large weapon quite out of character for the Hardin we’ve come to know and love. In my opinion, the gender swaps and greater diversity is welcome, while some of the changes in basic plot may be a bit harder to swallow. Then again, this is the year 2021, and if it wants to succeed in capturing the imagination of today’s audience it probably needs to make some significant changes to grab the attention span of a far different audience than the one that was introduced to the original stories. I’m rooting for it to succeed and I hope it draws even more people to read the source material, and maybe even listen to this podcast!There’s getting to be a lot of buzz about the show, and this is bringing a lot of Asimov fans out of the woodwork online. I’ve already mentioned the r/asimov subthread on Reddit and a couple of others are dedicated more directly to Foundation and the upcoming TV series and I’ll link to these in the show notes. Another great place to stay caught up is my friend Luigi at his Youtube channel Foundation Era. He’s put together a string of videos analyzing the tea leaves from the limited material Apple has produced, as well as one on the Asimov Future Timeline I mentioned in episode 6. Luigi was kind enough to give Seldon Crisis a plug on his most recent video, which resulted in an enormous spike in downloads for this podcast, so thank you very much Luigi!There’s another new podcast that I just discovered I want to call out by the name of Star’s End. The three co-hosts; Dan, Jon, and Joseph, are a joy to listen to as they talk about the latest news on the TV show, discuss Asimov trivia, and introduce listeners to the original story in a way that I find really compliments my approach on this podcast. It’s like getting invited over to hang out with some Asimov geek friends just having a good time talking about their favorite topic. You can find it on all the major platforms like Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify and Anchor and they have a website at http://starsendpodcast.wordpress.com or you can find them at the twitter handle @StarsEndPodcast. Links in the show notes, of course.I expect more podcasts, youtube channels, and other platforms to spring up as the Apple show gets closer and really welcome the growth of this robust online community. The more the merrier!Some of you have asked how you can help to support my efforts to produce this podcast, so I’ve started a patreon page. For now it’s going to be really simple because I just thought of it, like this minute, and there are a lot of ways I might end up using it. The link will be in the show notes and I’ll provide more info when I develop it a bit more.So, what’s coming up? Only one of the most amazing and stimulating novels I’ve ever had the joy of reading. Foundation and Empire is the middle novel of the original trilogy, and some say the best. There are two chapters which I’m going to break up into five episodes. First up is The General, Part one of two, the three episodes of The Mule. In the first episode we’ll meet two descendants of characters from The Merchant Princes and a young general of the declining Empire determined to reverse their fortunes and stamp out the emerging and still tiny Foundation. The Mule will feature Asimov’s first compelling female character in the epic as well as one of the most compelling anti-heroes in all of fiction - not just science fiction.I’ve got some subtle and not so subtle surprises coming in this season - besides the colossal ones Asimov will bring in his elegant story construction. Stay tuned for a fabulous season 2 beginning in only two weeks. I can hardly wait to bring it from my humble studio to your waiting ears. Stay on this channel, subscribe if you haven’t yet, and you’ll be hearing soon from a new season of Seldon Crisis.[Theme music]
Credits:Script and voices by Joel McKinnonSound Design by Jeremy MacKinnonArt by Mike Topping – despotica.comMusic, "Hiraeth" by Scott Buckley – www.scottbuckley.com.auBased on the novels of Foundation by Isaac Asimov.Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!
While you wait for the conclusion to The General, please have a listen to my cosmic rock opera!
Planet and Sky, a cosmic love story - the rock opera by The Max Wyvern Band (full album on Bandcamp)
Planet and Sky, the deeper story - (musical audio-drama scifi exploration beyond the lyrics)
Planet and Sky website
Credits:Script and voices by Joel McKinnonTheme Orchestration by Tom BarnesSound Design by Jeremy MacKinnonArt by Mike Topping – despotica.comMusic, "The Encounter" by Scott Buckley – www.scottbuckley.com.auBased on the novels of Foundation by Isaac Asimov.Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!
Great Man Theory of History (Wikipedia)‘The smartest person in any room anywhere’: in defence of Elon Musk, by Douglas Coupland (Guardian)The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson (Amazon)Kim Stanley Robinson: a climate plan for a world in flames (Financial Times)Why Go to Space? To Save Humanity … and Our Earth, by Wilson da Silva (Medium)The Mars Society (Website)Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!
Resources for commentary on the TV show:Stars End podcastYouTubeFoundation Era YouTube channelQuinn's Ideas YouTube channelRedditr/asimovr/foundationtvDiscordGalactic Empire
Script by Joel McKinnonVoices by Amanda Kreitler and Joel McKinnonTheme Orchestration by Tom BarnesSound Design by Jeremy MacKinnonArt by Mike Topping – despotica.comMusic by Scott Buckley (Ambush, The Old Ones, Hiraeth, Hunted, The March of Midnight)Music by Brian Joseph Davis (Work for 20 DVD Players) Based on the novels of Foundation by Isaac Asimov.Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!Please visit Amanda on these podcasts!Severed FateDimension DoorAlso, please visit the Seldon Crisis YouTube channel for the video trailer, intro promos, and video versions of the podcast episodes.
AppleTV+ Official Foundation Podcast (Apple Podcasts)
Script by Joel McKinnonVoices by Amanda Kreitler and Joel McKinnonTheme Orchestration by Tom BarnesSound Design by Jeremy MacKinnonArt by Mike Topping – despotica.comMusic by Blear Moon – Learning from Kids Based on the novels of Foundation by Isaac Asimov.John W. Campbell (Wikipedia)Joseph Campbell (Wikipedia)Please listen to Amanda on these podcasts!Severed FateDimension DoorAlso, please visit the Seldon Crisis YouTube channel for the video trailer, intro promos, and video versions of the podcast episodes.Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!
Script by Joel McKinnonVoices by Amanda Kreitler and Joel McKinnonTheme Orchestration by Tom BarnesSound Design by Jeremy MacKinnonArt by Mike Topping – despotica.comBased on the novels of Foundation by Isaac Asimov.Isaac Asimov, Mystery Writer (Reddit)The Philosophy of Foundation with Nathaniel Goldberg (Seldon Crisis Episode 6)Stars End PodcastCora Buhlert BlogErasmo Acosta, K3+Tobias Cabral, New EyesPlease listen to Amanda on these podcasts!Severed FateDimension DoorAlso, please visit the Seldon Crisis YouTube channel for the video trailer, intro promos, and video versions of the podcast episodes.Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!
The Fates - the Destiny GoddessesClimate Action Now (app)Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!
Ed Seiler's canonical list of Asimov titles (the one Stephen claims to have all of in his library save for a few wall charts)David Kuhns' even larger list of Asimovia (including videotapes, computer and board games)Asimov Online (the ultimate Asimov site)Where is Everybody? (Stephen's TED talk on the Fermi Paradox)Where is Everybody? (Second Edition of Stephen's book on the Fermi Paradox)Other titles by Stephen Webb:All the Wonder that Would BeNew Light through Old WindowsEnd of the World with Josh Clark (podcast on Fermi Paradox and various existential risks)Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!
Script by Joel McKinnonVoices by Amanda Kreitler and Joel McKinnonTheme Orchestration by Tom BarnesSound Design by Jeremy MacKinnonArt by Mike Topping – despotica.comBased on the novels of Foundation by Isaac Asimov.Please listen to Amanda on these podcasts!Severed FateDimension DoorAlso, please visit the Seldon Crisis YouTube channel for the video trailer, intro promos, and video versions of the podcast episodes.Want to help me make these shows? Please consider becoming a patron!