This week on the VFX Show, Mike Seymour and Matt Wallin use maths and psychohistory to wrap our heads around the visual effects in the Apple TV+, David Goyer series “Foundation” based on the books by Isaac Asimov.

The story chronicles the waning days of a future Galactic Empire, the mathematician Hari Seldon spends his life developing a theory of psychohistory, a new and effective mathematics of sociology. Using statistical laws of mass action, it can predict the future of large populations. Seldon foresees the imminent fall of the Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a Dark Age lasting 30,000 years before a second empire arises. Although the momentum of the Empire's fall is too great to stop, Seldon devises a plan by which "the onrushing mass of events must be deflected just a little" to eventually limit this interregnum to just one thousand years.

Listen for free on FX Guide.