From Asimov to Planetary Intelligence

Rebooting Seldon Crisis

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 feels a little like a lot of great content that almost nobody ever sees. Get used to hearing me ask you to subscribe to my Substack instead of just pointing you to the show notes.

I’ll be keeping it all free for now, and I promise there will always be plenty of free content, even if I eventually start producing some paid subscriber-only material.

To give a hint of what is to come, I’m planning an episode on the ideas of three prominent thought leaders who have inspired me lately.

Sara Imari Walker is a theoretical physicist who has some radical new ideas on the origin of life with very far-reaching implications. The theory she is developing along with biochemist Lee Cronin is called Assembly Theory, and I can’t wait to introduce readers to it.

You may remember me talking about a book and a lecture by astrobiologist David Grinspoon, Earth in Human Hands, that inspired me several years ago. The main idea is that humans have been inadvertently modifying this planet for thousands of years.

He has a recent paper, co-authored by Sara Walker, discussing the idea of planetary intelligence—a much-needed re-imagining of the Gaia hypothesis, which viewed planet Earth as a self-regulating living being.

Finally, Benjamin Bratton, a very tech-savvy philosopher and speculative theorist, has worked with Walker and Grinspoon on ideas about planetary computation that I find very exciting. Bratton might be the most mind-blowing of them all, and I have a lot of his ideas to share.

I would also like to have more conversations, with new guests who inspire me and with some of those I’ve spoken with before on the podcast. These are some of the most gratifying episodes for me personally, and I miss these interactions.

I want to thank everyone who has listened to Seldon Crisis in the past and is still interested in what I and some of my friends have to say. Thank you for having patience with me as I work on a format for the show that I can continue long into the future.