Alienating the Audience

"Demolition Man" is a cult classic, wherein Sylvester Stallone gets thawed out in the near future to stop Wesley Snipes from destroying Los Angeles. Society is bifurcated into infantilized virginal technocrats up top, and rat-eating, free-thinking punks beneath. Economist Steve Horwitz joins to discuss.

In "Clans of the Alphane Moon" by Philip K. Dick, a planet is colonized as an insane asylum, then abandoned, so that its inmates develop their own society and cultures. Tom Merritt, host of "Sword and Laser" joins to answer: what happens when pathologies become the basis of civilization, rather than its aberrations? You can check out "Clans of the Alphane Moon" as well as the other books and films discussed on the show by going to Mightyheaton.com/goodscifi 

"Mad Max: Fury Road" is the height of post-apocalyptic wasteland glam--everyone is really getting into skulls, cars, and neo-Viking lore. Not to mention it may be the greatest feminist film in science fiction.  Scott Johnson of Frogpants Studios joins to discuss!

Why is "The Mandalorian" so popular with Star Wars fans, yet the latest films are so divisive? Where does it veer from the traditional beats and themes of Star Wars, and where does it embrace that unique George Lucas flavor? Jack Helmuth and Nick Sperdute join to unpack everyone's favorite bounty hunter.

“The Stepford Wives” (1975) is a satirical horror film about spunky urban wives getting replaced by their husbands with submissive, ornamental robots. Chris and Cristi Moody come on to talk about the unease captured by the movie in a time of gender roles tumult, 1950s conformity, Second Wave Feminism, and parallels to “Get Out.”

Nick and Heaton visit Kashyyyk to work as mall santas for Life Day on the Wooki homeworld. "Silent Night" care of "How it Should have Ended" on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd79mpzBnJ4

Is the robot in "Ex Machina" a self-aware entity or just a stack of cold, complex algorithms which appear such? If we knew super intelligent A.I. could curse cancer (but also wanted to kill us) would we even attempt to build it? Ashland Viscosi and Jay Mutzafi rejoin to discuss. Topics covered: the Turing Test, "The Chinese Room" thought experiment, and "Mary in the Black and White Room."

Lord Martin Rees is a cosmologist, mathematician, and the Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom. When he's not busy running the Centre for The Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University, he's authoring books on science and astrophysics. He joins the show to discuss his latest work, "On the Future: Prospects for Humanity." Click here to see this and other books featured on the podcast!

We beat Hitler. Whew! But what if we hadn't? What if the Nazi regime had prevailed? Science fiction repeatedly approaches the topic, either to guess geopolitics or just to gawk at the horror of it. On today's episode Andrew Young and Josh Jennings join Heaton to talk about "The Man in the High Castle" by Philip K. Dick, "Fatherland" by Robert Harris, and "The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth.

Confronted by an alien probe which can only speak the language of an extinct species, Nick and Heaton must journey back in time to save Earth.