NOTE: This episode contains spoilers. If you haven’t seen the film yet, you might want to hit pause and come back when you’re ready.

This episode explores Interstellar, examining it through the complex scientific principles of Einstein’s relativity as well as the profound emotional humanism that underpins its narrative. Nolan’s expansive space epic masterfully bends the fabric of time and space, creating a mind-bending voyage across cosmic horizons. Yet, amidst the vastness of the universe, the story remains anchored by what truly matters—the enduring love we carry with us and the hope we send ahead into the unknown. In Interstellar, it becomes clear that what ultimately saves us isn’t raw force or technology but the depth of our feelings, connections, and hope that propel us forward.

If you’d like to read more about Vivian Sobchack’s approach to phenomenology, her landmark texts are:

• The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience (1992)

• Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (2004)

Both works dive deep into how film is not just a story we interpret but a lived, bodily experience we inhabit.

NOTE: This episode contains spoilers. If you haven’t seen the film yet, you might want to hit pause and come back when you’re ready.

In Logan’s Run, life is programmed to end at the age of thirty, a brutal societal norm that is unquestioned by its citizens. This episode explores the film from Michel Foucault’s perspective on biopolitics, examining how rituals surrounding death, a techno-theocratic government, and a society founded on artificially constructed belief systems serve as tools of silent control. The society manipulates perception, turning gentle light into an instrument of subdued authority. Obedience to these rules is mistaken for purpose, rebellion is deemed heresy, and death is transformed from tragedy into a ceremonial act, a dark celebration of societal order.

NOTE: This episode contains spoilers. If you haven’t seen the film yet, you might want to hit pause and come back when you’re ready.

This episode explores Blade Runner through Alison Landsberg’s theory of prosthetic memory.

In a future where memories are manufactured and identity is built from fiction,

the question isn’t whether your past is real—it’s whether it feels real enough to matter.

Because in Blade Runner, the soul may be synthetic,

but the sorrow is always genuine.

Learn more about prosthetic memory in Alison Landsberg’s Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture.