Can the future of an entire civilisation be calculated like the behaviour of gas molecules? In the second of two episodes on Isaac Asimov, John Helmer and Ezri Carlebach turn from his robots to his other great franchise — the Foundation saga — and the seductive idea at its heart: psychohistory, a fictional science that claims to predict the fate of galactic empires. From a Gilbert and Sullivan libretto opened at random to Apple TV’s billion-dollar adaptation, this is a conversation about how one pulp idea grew into a cornerstone of science fiction and why its questions about prediction, determinism and power feel uncomfortably current.
In this episode:
- The origins of Foundation — Asimov, his editor John W. Campbell, and the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta that inspired a galactic empire
- The original trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation), Hari Seldon, psychohistory and the Mule
- How Asimov was pushed by Doubleday into the prequels and sequels — and how he retrofitted Foundation into his robot universe
- Two adaptations compared: the 1973 BBC Radio dramatization and Apple TV’s contemporary series
- The ideas behind the saga — Gibbon, Spengler, Toynbee, and the long-running argument over Marx and Hegel
- Prediction as power — from Carissa Véliz’s work to prediction markets and accelerationism
- Asimov the man: his later fame, his legacy, and his failings
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Next time: Frankenstein — Mary Shelley’s fever dream and the most enduring image in tech