The Philosophy of Foundation with Nathaniel Goldberg
To finish off Season 1 of Seldon Crisis and the completion of the first book in the original trilogy, Foundation, this special episode consists of an interview with Professor of Philosophy Nathaniel Goldberg. He will discuss his long running course, Philosophy and Science Fiction, in which he asks students to compare Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy with Plato's The Republic. Professor Goldberg talks about his passion and enthusiasm for Asimov's works, including the short stories Nightfall and The Last Question, how his students react to the challenge or analyzing these great works, and the lessons he has learned from them in their essays.
Transcript: Web (Read/Listen) | PDF | MS Word
Acknowledgements:
Jeremy MacKinnon, Video Editing and Podcast Support (Linkedin | Twitter)
Tom Barnes, Theme Orchestration
Mike Topping, Graphics (Despotica)
Inspiration:
Trojan War the Podcast
Odyssey the Podcast
Literature and History Podcast
Planet 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 Project
Interview 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 p...