Épisodes

  • From Asimov to Planetary Intelligence

    From Asimov to Planetary Intelligence
    Jan 7 2026
    When I started Seldon Crisis five years ago, my goal was simple: to share Isaac Asimov’s Foundation with others who loved it—or might come to. What I didn’t anticipate was how closely its themes would begin to mirror our own moment, as conversations about AI, planetary crisis, and systemic collapse moved from science fiction into daily headlines. After a long pause, I’m rebooting the podcast to explore those connections more directly, and more openly, than before.Back at the beginning of the podcast, the format combined a summary of the story with audio dramatization and commentary, and I was delighted to find that there was a small but eager audience that grew over time. Eventually I had listeners all over the world, and I met an amazing number of new friends, many of whom became guests on the show.I also interspersed a few essays and other solo episodes covering topics I was interested in, from commentary on the Apple TV series based on the same novels, to fan fiction, to thoughts on the future of humanity and AI as it exploded onto the scene with LLMs like ChatGPT and its rivals.I’d always wanted to cover the full seven novels in the original format, but it became very difficult to find the time and energy to throw myself into it again. Various life events became obstacles to doing so.Now it’s been a couple of years since the last story episode and almost a year since I’ve published any kind of episode at all, and I find that I miss being behind the mic. I also haven’t stopped thinking about the future, and I’ve been inspired by many new ideas I’ve encountered over the past few years that I would love to write and talk about.I decided I no longer want the dread of tackling story episodes to stop me from continuing to podcast, so I’m rebooting it with a new focus. I’ve made a couple of changes.First, the show has been re-titled Seldon Crisis: Beyond Foundation, and the show description has become From Asimov to AI, an exploration of the range of possibilities for life and intelligence in the near and distant future. I feel that this will allow a little more freedom in what I want to talk about.Foundation was, at its core, a speculation upon a possible distant human future told as a far-ranging historical epic. Its main protagonist, Hari Seldon, foresaw a dark future for humanity from his perch at the center of a galactic empire which his science informed him was doomed to undergo a terrible collapse.This collapse would inevitably throw the future into a long period of dreadful chaos, entailing many thousands of years of human misery. The whole story is about how humans might avoid the worst scenario and find their way to something better.When we think about some of the crises and dark patterns in our current, rapidly changing world—from dysfunctional politics and massive income inequality to climate change and existential risks like global pandemics, and now the belief of many that AI is coming to kill us all (or at least make us all unemployed idiots)—doesn’t the premise of Foundation resonate?I’ve pointed out these parallels on the show more than once, and how we need to find our own Hari Seldon, or become him in some way. I think that this great story is a wonderful stepping stone to a long series of speculations on our very real current situation, the potential for collapse, and what we can do to forestall it.The other big change I’ve made is to port the web presence of the podcast to Substack. It has a lot of advantages in managing content before and after publication as podcast episodes. It’s built for writing and can become another way to share the audio content as written text, both for people who might have hearing difficulties and for those who simply prefer reading to listening.I’ve also been able to solve another chronic headache: how to categorize the episodes. I can now put them in their natural categories of story, guest, and solo commentary pieces, so someone who just wants to follow the story has one place to consume the content in order.If you’re looking for intriguing discussions related to the story, you can find all of the conversations. And if you’re only interested in essays and solo commentary, you can find those all in one place as well.Another thing I’ve considered is that some episodes might be best presented only in written format, such as in cases where there are many images being referenced and an audio format would be inappropriate. Substack allows me that flexibility.The last, and possibly biggest advantage, is the community-building aspect of Substack. I already subscribe to numerous newsletters myself, across a wide range of topics, and it’s helpful to have content of my own to share with this community.I feel certain that Seldon Crisis listeners will also benefit from having a site that includes direct links to many of the content producers who have inspired my thinking on the show.The podcast show notes format always ...
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    9 min
  • Holiday Sampler: Some Favorite Scenes

    Holiday Sampler: Some Favorite Scenes
    Dec 24 2021

    A little holiday sampler collecting some of my favorite scenes from the series so far including; Seldon maneuvering Ling Chen into granting him exile, a bit of Lord Dorwin, Hardin vs Wienis on Anacreon, Ponyets vs the Grand Master of Askone, Mallow with Commdor Asper on Korell, Ducem Barr and Bel Riose discussing great man theory, Sgt Luc's fatal charge, a meeting with Magnifico, tea time with Dagobert, and the unexpected death of a psychologist on Trantor. Happy Holiday!

    Transcript: Web (Read/Listen) | PDF | MS Word

    Script by Joel McKinnon
    Voices by Amanda Kreitler and Joel McKinnon
    Theme Orchestration by Tom Barnes
    Sound Design by Jeremy MacKinnon
    Art by Mike Topping – despotica.com

    Based on the novels of Foundation by Isaac Asimov.

    Please listen to Amanda on these podcasts!
    Severed Fate
    Dimension Door

    Also, 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!



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.seldoncrisis.net
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    49 min
  • The Dead Hand and the Living Will

    The Dead Hand and the Living Will
    Sep 3 2021

    We go a little deeper on the theme of The General, the opposing forces of psychohistorical determinism vs the futile efforts of Bel Riose to exert his free will against it. Bringing this into our current universe, we talk about Thomas Carlisle's "Great Man" theory of history and some of the pushback against it. Your host then takes it into the personal realm with some reflections on a couple of modern candidates for "Great Man" status in reflecting on his past.

    Transcript: Web (Read/Listen) | PDF | MS Word

    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!



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.seldoncrisis.net
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    21 min
  • A Moment of Meta

    A Moment of Meta
    Aug 6 2021

    Brief comments in the interval between episodes, thoughts on the intended audience, and an explanation for shift to a more relaxed episode cadence.

    Transcript: Web (Read/Listen) | PDF | MS Word

    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




    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.seldoncrisis.net
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    5 min
  • Season 1 Recap and Season 2 Preview

    Season 1 Recap and Season 2 Preview
    Jul 9 2021
    In this short episode we summarize the major characters and events of Season 1 covering the first novel, Foundation, in Isaac Asimov's seven novel epic, and tease a few of the major events to be covered in Season 2 corresponding to the novel Foundation and Empire. Also, a brief mention of the Apple TV+ upcoming TV series and a few callouts to the Foundation online community.Transcript: Web (Read/Listen) | PDF | MS WordIf you'd like to support the show, please become a patron!Show notes:Stars End Podcast (@StarsEndPodcast on Twitter)FoundationEra on Youtuber/asimov on Redditr/TheFoundation on RedditTranscript:[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...
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    10 min
  • Introducing Seldon Crisis

    Introducing Seldon Crisis
    Apr 12 2021

    Trailer introducing Seldon Crisis – The Podcast. Summary description of the intent of the podcast and a brief description of the first few episodes.

    Transcript: Web (Read/Listen) | PDF | MS Word



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.seldoncrisis.net
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    4 min