Seldon Crisis – The Podcast

Jun 25, 2021

The Philosophy of Foundation with Nathaniel Goldberg

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 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…

54 min