Imaginary Worlds sounds like what would happen if NPR went to ComicCon and decided that’s all they ever wanted to cover. Host Eric Molinsky spent over a decade working as a public radio reporter and producer, and he uses those skills to create thoughtful, sound-rich episodes about science fiction, fantasy, and other genres of speculative fiction. Every other week, he talks with comic book artists, game designers, novelists, screenwriters, filmmakers, and fans about how they craft their worlds, why we suspend our disbelief, and what happens if the spell is broken. Imaginary worlds may be set on distant planets or parallel dimensions, but they are crafted here on Earth, and they’re always about us and our lived experiences.
263 episodes transcribedRole-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder aren’t just played in game shops or living rooms. They’re also very popular in prisons – if...
In the second part of our retrospective on how Imaginary Worlds has covered sci-fi and fantasy since September 2014, we look at the world of gaming. I...
When I began my podcast in September 2014, I was mostly sticking with topics that I was familiar with like blockbuster movies and animation. I liked s...
I used to think escape rooms were gimmicky activities where everyone scrambled to solve puzzles while I stood around feeling useless. On the other han...
The field of audiobooks has exploded since the introduction of mp3 players, and it continues to expand. But it takes a unique set of skills to voice a...
In the years since my 2020 episode Fantasy and Fascism, I knew that I had to make a follow-up episode. The political landscape was changing in ways I...
Who really composed the scores of Dune, Interstellar, Blade Runner 2049, The Dark Knight, Man of Steel, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lion King? We...
The hottest trend in fantasy novels – in fact the hottest trend in publishing overall – is fantasy romance or romantasy. These stories take place in w...
Book banning is hitting libraries across America, and many of the titles being banned or challenged are fantasy books or graphic novels – especially L...
Did you know that in retirement, George Lucas decided to host a live talk show with his sidekick Watto? That’s the conceit of The George Lucas Talk Sh...
Over the past 40 years, Shigeru Miyamoto has been inventing the modern video game one pixel at a time. From Donkey Kong to Super Mario Bros to The Leg...
When Joe Dever died in 2016, he hadn’t written the last several books in his Lone Wolf series. The Lone Wolf books take place in a deeply rich fantasy...
When the writer Nnedi Okorafor coined the term Africanfuturism, she wanted to distinguish sci-fi written about Africa from Afrofuturism, which is focu...
Back in 2018, I interviewed language creator David J. Peterson about how he invented Dothraki for Game of Thrones and other fictional languages in fan...
The Wizard of Oz is deeply ingrained into our culture. While many people can practically recite the 1939 movie, the original source material isn’t as...
In the previous episode, I interviewed documentary filmmaker Isaac Elliot-Fisher about He-Man and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Isaac had so many grea...
In the final episode of our mini-series Class of '84, we look at two iconic franchises that launched in 1984: Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Tu...
In the second episode of our mini-series on groundbreaking works from 1984, we jack into the system and upload our minds into Neuromancer. William Gib...
When I interviewed special effects artist Shannon Shea about The Terminator and other villains of ’84, we also discussed his experiences working on Te...
This year marks the 40th anniversary of a lot of landmarks in pop culture, especially sci-fi and fantasy. So many franchises were born in 1984. Some c...
