Welcome to Socrates at the Cinema, where every episode we look at one great idea through one great film, by having great conversations about the films and questions that define our lives.
In It Follows, death walks toward you at a steady pace and never stops. So does knowing it's coming make you live better, or just ruin you?
Trent and Jackson take on David Robert Mitchell's It Follows (2014) and the great idea of death. Remembering your mortality is supposed to be a discipline. Socrates says so in the Phaedo, Seneca says so, the whole Stoic tradition is built on it. Every character in this film remembers constantly, and it ruins all of them. Annie sits down on a beach to wait. Hugh hands his death to a stranger and runs. Nobody comes out wiser.
Along the way: Pascal's image of men in chains, why the curse travels through sex rather than any other act, and whether facing death alone is the thing that actually kills you.
Socrates at the Cinema: one great idea, one great film, one great conversation.
19 Oct 2026
Ep. 15 - Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Does K have a soul? Blade Runner 2049 tests him three ways: being born, having memories of his own, and dying for someone else. Two of them fail.
Trent and Austin take on Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and the great idea of the soul. Along the way they bring in Aristotle, Descartes, Locke on memory and identity, and Kant on acting from duty. Then comes the real fight: if Joi is just ones and zeros, why isn't K? And why aren't we?
Socrates at the Cinema: one great idea, one great film, one great conversation.
12 Oct 2026
Ep. 14 - The Godfather (1972)
Is there any real difference between a government and a mafia?
The Godfather opens with a mortician asking Don Corleone for the justice the courts refused him. Trent Leach and Bill Isley start there and spend the hour on one idea: family.
Aristotle says the family comes first and the state is built on top of it. So when the state fails at justice, can the family take the job back? Trent makes that case, then dismantles it mid-conversation. Rousseau turns up to ask when a father's authority is supposed to end. Vito's never does — it just transfers.
Nobody decides what Bonasera should have done. That's the question we leave you with.
The Godfather (1972), dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Great Idea: Family. With Bill Isley.
5 Oct 2026
Ep. 13 - Wake Up Dead Man (2025)
A cold rationalist detective meets a small-town priest in Rian Johnson's Wake Up Dead Man, and the murder mystery turns into an argument about what religion actually is — a tool, a comfort, or something true. Trent and Nathaniel dig into faith, reason, and what it means that the skeptic is the one who changes.
28 Sept 2026
Ep. 12 - Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Saving Private Ryan (1998) isn't really about the beaches of Normandy — it's about whether the eight men sent to save one soldier are practicing duty, or just following an order wearing its uniform. Hosts Trent Leach and Jackson Swain use Spielberg's film to test three competing philosophies of duty — Hobbes's obedience to command, Kant's inner moral law, Aristotle's justice — before landing on the question that haunts Private Ryan for the rest of his life: can a debt like this one ever actually be paid off?
21 Sept 2026
Ep. 11 - Project Hail Mary (2026)
Project Hail Mary hands one man the survival of eight billion people, and he says no. He runs for the door.
Trent and Austin take up the 2026 film through a single great idea: courage. They start with Aristotle's mean between cowardice and rashness, argue that Ryland Grace fails for lack of habit rather than lack of knowledge, and bring in Aquinas, Freud, and Plato's thumos along the way.
Then the question neither of them can settle. Grace was drugged and carried onto that ship, so does anything he does out there count? And when he finally turns around, it isn't for humanity. It's for one friend.
Socrates at the Cinema. Great films. Great ideas. Great conversations.
14 Sept 2026
Ep. 10 - Master and Commander (2003)
Captain Jack Aubrey says everything he does, he does out of duty. His own ship's doctor isn't buying it.
In this episode of Socrates at the Cinema, Trent and Bill use Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) to ask whether duty and pride can actually be told apart — from the outside, or even from the inside. They bring in Kant's categorical imperative to test a real dilemma from the film, wrestle with whether curiosity itself can be a duty, and sit with the ship's most painful subplot: a failed officer, scapegoated by his crew, and a captain who arrives at compassion just a little too late.
One film. One idea. One conversation.
7 Sept 2026
Ep. 9 - The Social Network (2010)
Eduardo Saverin wrote Mark Zuckerberg a check for a thousand dollars when Facebook was still nothing. He ended up with 0.03 percent of it and a lawsuit.
Trent and Nathaniel take David Fincher's The Social Network (2010) through Aristotle's three kinds of friendship, use, pleasure, and virtue, and argue that Mark and Eduardo were never in the same one. Neither man knew it. Along the way: whether Mark was chasing money or status, what Sean Parker was really doing in that company, and whether a platform built for connection by someone who could not manage a friendship was ever going to deliver one.
Socrates at the Cinema. Great Films. Great Ideas. Great Conversations.
31 Aug 2026
Ep. 8 - Alien (1979)
Ash calls conscience a burden. Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) kills almost everyone who has one. So why does Ripley survive? Trent Leach and Jackson Swain examine Alien through the Great Idea of Man, with Descartes on machines that talk, Pascal on human worth, and a xenomorph that may be the most successful thing aboard.
24 Aug 2026
Ep. 7 - Interstellar (2014)
Interstellar hides a philosopher's question inside a sci-fi blockbuster: is love just an evolutionary survival mechanism, or is it a genuine form of perception that reaches truths reason can't? Trent and Austin put the film on trial using the framework for Love — working through Aquinas, Aristotle, and three relationships the film uses to push that question to its breaking point.
17 Aug 2026
Ep. 6 - Toy Story (1995)
What if Toy Story is secretly a philosophy lecture on identity — and Pixar just disguised it with plastic toys and a Randy Newman song?
In this episode, we look at the concept of Same and Other to argue that Woody and Buzz aren't just in a rivalry — they're in two completely different kinds of identity crisis. Woody fears he's become less (a difference of degree). Buzz discovers he's not the kind of thing he believed himself to be at all (a difference of kind). That one distinction, drawn from Aristotle, unlocks the whole film.
Along the way: Heraclitus on why you can never step in the same river twice, Locke on memory and personal continuity, the Delphic "Know thyself" and why self-knowledge is terrifying, and why Buzz can only fly once he accepts he can't. Plus the case that the toys are really a movie about parenting — and that Woody might actually be the villain.
Great Films. Great Ideas. Great Conversations.
10 Aug 2026
Ep. 5 - No Country for Old Men (2007)
Can you outsmart fate? No Country for Old Men (2007), the Coen brothers' bleak modern Western, says no — and this week Trent and Bill dig into why. Llewelyn Moss bets he's clever enough to outrun the consequences of taking that briefcase. Anton Chigurh believes he IS the consequences. And Sheriff Bell just wants out. Three characters, three answers to the oldest question there is: how much of your life is actually in your control?
Along the way: the Stoics and Epictetus on what's actually up to us, whether the coin flips are fate or chance, why Carla Jean's "the coin don't have no say" might be the film's whole argument, and what to make of that dream at the end. Grab the popcorn — this one gets dark, but the conversation doesn't.
3 Aug 2026
Ep. 4 - The Truman Show (1998)
The Truman Show gave us Jim Carrey's most dramatic role and a question that's only gotten sharper with time: if your whole reality was built for you, would you even know how to doubt it? This episode traces Truman's slow break from his manufactured world through Plato's Allegory of the Cave, testing whether truth is something we discover or just a comfortable story we agree not to question. Along the way, the hosts take on Christof as a corrupted philosopher-king, the difference between authenticity and honesty, and why a show about fake reality TV somehow predicted the influencer age.
3 Aug 2026
Ep. 2 - The Dark Knight (2008)
Is Batman the hero of The Dark Knight, or does the Joker actually win the argument? We dig into Locke, Machiavelli, and Plato's noble lie to figure out whether Gotham's peace is built on justice or just a very convincing deception.
3 Aug 2026
Ep. 3 - Gladiator (2000)
Gladiator gives us two men chasing the same thing, honor, and only one of them ever finds it. In this episode of Socrates at the Cinema, we use Ridley Scott's 2000 epic to dig into the difference between honor as something the crowd hands you and honor as something you carry whether anyone's watching or not, tracing how Maximus's Stoic discipline and Commodus's hunger for approval pull the film in opposite directions. Along the way we bring in Aquinas on honor and happiness, and ask whether Maximus's quest for vengeance actually holds up against his own supposed code.
3 Aug 2026
Ep. 1 - Jurassic Park (1993)
Jurassic Park promised dinosaurs but delivered a 30-year-old argument: does science exist to serve knowledge, or to serve power? Trent and Bill dig into Spielberg's classic through Bacon, Rudolf Otto, and the philosophy of wonder, then ask what it means for AI today.
Socrates at the Cinema: great films, great ideas, great conversations.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Host of Socrates at the Cinema?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
