We finish our discussion of Foundation and Earth with Part VII: Earth. That includes chapters 19 — “Radioactive?” 20 — “The Nearby World,” and 21 — “The Search Ends.”

“The Podcast Seems to be Crowded with Things I Dont Quite Understand.”

I haven’t bothered with spoiler alerts for a while. This time, though, if you haven’t finished the novel and don’t want to be spoilered, seriously, don’t look even at the video below.

And speaking of things we don’t quite understand, this is a musical intro to a non-musical episode. Because, c’mon, if we’re wrapping up Foundation and Earth, how can we fail to reference ⁠Man on the Moon⁠ by REM?

Here are some Foundation-specific alternative lyrics.

Golan started searching for the psychohistoric.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…

Fallom playing music making Alpha euphoric.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…

Bliss is along and that means Gaia is here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…

Janov got to Earth because he centered the sphere.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…

Now, Daneel, did you hear about this one?
Tell me, are you upgrading soon?
Danny, are you goofing on Seldon? Hey, baby, can you carry the boon?

If you believed they put a man in the moon, man in the moon,
If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve, Then nothing is cool!

Here’s the bonus verse promised in the episode description. This was our first draft but it’s centered in the teevee world and we wanted to concentrate on the novel.

Here’s a little clone who’s a front for power
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Demerzel dropped the orbital tower
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Dump the First Law instead here’s the zero
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Another little clone is guided to inferno
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Feel free to play along in the comments, it’s fun!

And a quick show note; in our next episode we’ll be talking about two short stories, “Cal” and “The Fun They Had.” Plus a special guest!

But right now, the Man in the Moon! Let’s Go!

Image Credits:

• Featured Image: The two figures on the lower left-hand side of the image were generated by Open Art Free at <OpenArt.ai>.

Here we go again! Let’s talk about Foundation and Earth, Part VI: Alpha!

“We Have Old Men in These Parts Who Love to Podcast of Ancient Days”

If you like…

complex calculations in a cross between archeology and astronavigation, agrarian societies that nonetheless have advanced weather control and bioengineering, and telekinetic performances on woodwind instruments then chapters 16, 17, and 18 are bananas!

Also, Trevize gets lucky and is it just me or is he getting too much stuff wrong for the man with the magic intuition?

Plus, some Foundation show news from the long, long ago back before the interregnum! And we open up the Stars End Mail Bag! Don’t miss this one! Let’s GO!

We’re back and we’re diving back into Foundation and Earth! This time we’re discussing chapters 13, 14, and 15 or, if you prefer, Part V: Melpomenia. This is all of Part V and nothing but Part V.

“Any Podcast Would Be in Serious Trouble if Its Social Structure Broke Down Completely”

In this section, we bid a not-so-fond farewell to Solaria as our little trio becomes a quartet with the addition of Fallom. We travel to the third and final Spacer world for which we have coordinates. What do we learn on Melpomenia? Does that help us in our quest to find Earth? And what’s bothering Trevize this time? Listen and find out!

Also Star Trek, non-Euclidean geometry and marsupials. You can’t miss that, right? Let’s go!!

conversation as we discuss Foundation and Earth chapters 10, 11, and 12 which is to say, the entirety of Part IV: Solaria.

“There Are Old Legends of Life After Podcasting.”

I began our description of ⁠S3E18⁠, with “You know what? Solaria is weird.”

And here we are again on Solaria. It’s been twelve millennia and in the meantime, they’ve really leaned into the weirdness. The Solarians have been busy genetically engineering themselves into the quintessential Spacers. They’ve gone so far as to grow their own Tesla coils inside their own brains so that they can wirelessly power their robots. And that isn’t all! But don’t take my word for it! Read “Robots,” “Underground,” and “To the Surface” and see for yourself! Then join us here for the episode!

On another note, our first episode dropped on 26 April 2021. Thus, this episode marks the third anniversary of our podcast! To mark the occasion, here are two mug shots of Joseph’s cat Lavender at age 4 weeks and 108 weeks. These were taken right around our first and third anniversaries.

Thanks to everybody who has come along for the ride!