58 | Seth MacFarlane on Using Science Fiction to Explore Humanity

58 | Seth MacFarlane on Using Science Fiction to Explore Humanity

Fiction shines a light on the human condition by putting people into imaginary situations and envisioning what might happen. Science fiction expands this technique by considering situations in the future, with advanced technology, or with utterly different social contexts. Seth MacFarlane's show The Orville is good old-fashioned space opera, but it's also a laboratory for exploring the intricacies of human behavior. There are interpersonal conflicts, sexual politics, alien perspectives, and grappling with the implications of technology. I talk with Seth about all these issues, and maybe a little bit about whether it's a good idea to block people on Twitter.

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Seth MacFarlane is a screenwriter, director, actor, producer, and singer. He is the creator of the animated TV shows Family Guy, American Dad!, and The Cleveland Show. He wrote, directed, and starred in the films Ted, Ted 2, and A Million Ways to Die in the West. He created and stars in the live-action episodic TV show The Orville (which will be moving from Fox to Hulu for its third season). He has recorded several albums as a jazz singer, and was the host of the Academy Awards in 2013. He is an executive producer for the reboot of Cosmos. His honors include several Primetime Emmy Awards, an Annie Award, a Webby Award, a Saturn Award, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


Episoder(419)

336 | Anil Ananthaswamy on the Mathematics of Neural Nets and AI

336 | Anil Ananthaswamy on the Mathematics of Neural Nets and AI

Machine learning using neural networks has led to a remarkable leap forward in artificial intelligence, and the technological and social ramifications have been discussed at great length. To understan...

24 Nov 20251h 14min

AMA | November 2025

AMA | November 2025

Welcome to the November 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Pa...

17 Nov 20253h 34min

335 | Andrew Jaffe on Models, Probability, and the Universe

335 | Andrew Jaffe on Models, Probability, and the Universe

Science has an incredibly impressive track record of uncovering nonintuitive ideas about the universe that turn out to be surprisingly accurate. It can be tempting to think of scientific discoveries a...

10 Nov 20251h 17min

334 | Daniel Whiteson on the Physics of and by Aliens

334 | Daniel Whiteson on the Physics of and by Aliens

The universe as revealed by physics is objective: it's out there, existing and behaving in ways that are completely independent of human thought. But the process by which we learn about the universe, ...

3 Nov 20251h 14min

333 | Gordon Pennycook on Unthinkingness, Conspiracies, and What to Do About Them

333 | Gordon Pennycook on Unthinkingness, Conspiracies, and What to Do About Them

Why are people wrong all the time, anyway? Is it because we human beings are too good at being irrational, using our biases and motivated reasoning to convince ourselves of something that isn't quite ...

27 Okt 20251h 10min

332 | Dmitri Tymoczko on the Mathematics Behind Music

332 | Dmitri Tymoczko on the Mathematics Behind Music

Music is math that you can dance to. The fact that certain notes sound good when played together, or in succession, is related to the mathematical properties of the frequencies to which they correspon...

20 Okt 20251h 21min

AMA | October 2025

AMA | October 2025

Welcome to the October 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Pat...

13 Okt 20253h 37min

331 | Solo: Fine-Tuning, God, and the Multiverse

331 | Solo: Fine-Tuning, God, and the Multiverse

Certain features of our universe seem unnatural to us. These include "constants of nature" such as the cosmological constant and the mass of the Higgs boson, as well as features of the initial conditi...

6 Okt 20251h 54min

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