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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Socrates at the Cinema: great films, great ideas, great conversations.