Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.

For more information, please visit us at NYCCEPTICs.org.

Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

I'm your host, Massimo Pilucci, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Julia Galev.

Julia, what are we going to talk about today?

Our topic today, Massimo, is one I'm particularly excited about.

It's philosophy and science fiction, or philosophical science fiction, I suppose, if you prefer.

So we're going to talk about philosophical themes that run through some of science fiction books and movies or TV shows that we particularly like or that we particularly don't like.

And we'll talk about how science fiction

is, is, like, well positioned or well designed to explore philosophical questions and also

some of the ways that it might lead people astray when thinking about philosophical questions.

You know, it's interesting. I think that the panelists and interactions between science fiction and philosophy go actually really deep.

In fact, full disclosure here, I just thought last semester, of course, on science fiction and philosophy.

That's a topic because I love science fiction, not just philosophy. So I figure, hey, whatever.

There is quite a bit of interaction between the two.

There absolutely is.

But I wanted to mention also an article that I read very recently, and we'll post the link to it on I-09.

The title of the article is The Philosophical Roots of Science Fiction.

And what the author is arguing is that of science fiction. And what the author is arguing

is that actually science fiction is a form of or originated as a form of philosophizing. That is,

science fiction is about possible worlds. It's about essentially what philosophers call thought

experiments. And, you know, among the first recorded

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