Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

Alienating the Audience

Dec 18, 2019

The central premise to The Matrix is that we're actually living in a computer simulation, as well as think piece episodes from Star Trek, Black Mirror, and even Rick & Morty. Jay Mutzafi, host of "The Last Turtle" philosophy podcast joins Heaton to talk about Simulation Theory, and it's scifi application.


Dec 12, 2019

How would Emperor Palpatine's Press Secretary describe the Galactic Empire? How would Grand Moff Tarkin spin the destruction of Alderaan? Jonathan Last of "The Bulwark" joins Heaton to describe why he believes the Empire was a good thing--an imperfect system, but on balance the best one for peace and order in the galaxy.


Dec 5, 2019

Robert Heinlein, author of "Stranger in a Strange Land," "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," "Starship Troopers," and dozens of other novels, is at the tippy top of science fiction's pantheon of writers. Andrew Mayne joins the show to discuss Heinlein and the themes which pervaded his corpus: competency, rugged...


Nov 26, 2019

Dr. Erin Macdonald is an astrophysicist and science fiction consultant who advises major Hollywood productions on what they're screwing up in scripts. She joins Heaton to discuss the physics pitfalls science fiction constantly blunders into, from artificial gravity to the proliferation of cleavage in species that don't...


Nov 20, 2019

What's Star Trek's take on Artificial Intelligence, and how do Aristotle's virtue ethics govern Data? Also if the holodeck can summon AI's, and they are indeed sentient, is it ethical to sleep with them? John Krikorian of "Trek Profiles" and Alexandra August of "The Disco Trek" come on for an awesome chat about AI in...