Imaginary Worlds - Fantasy and Fascism Part II: When Democracy Fails

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

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 didn’t expect while major sci-fi fantasy franchises were reflecting those anxieties. Last time, I focused on how SFF worlds depicted fascism. This time, I wanted to look at the other half of the equation -- why people lose faith in democracy. I interviewed Trinity College Dublin professor David Kenny about his paper on the lessons we can learn from the collapse of the old Republic in Star Wars. I also talked with historian and podcaster Stefan Sasse, and teacher and writer Shawn Taylor about why the New Republic made the same mistakes, and all new ones. Plus, we look at what it takes to maintain democracy in the latest Star Trek shows, and X-Men ’97. Spoilers included. Today’s episode is brought to you by TodayTix, ShipStation and GreenChef. Go to TodayTix.com/imaginary and use promo code IMAGINARY to get $20 off your first TodayTix purchase. Go to shipstation.com and use the code IMAGINARY to sign up for your free 60-day trial. Go to greenchef.com/imaginary50 and use the code IMAGINARY50 to get 50% off, plus 20% off your next two months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. Four years ago, I put out an episode called Fantasy and Fascism. I looked at how different sci-fi fantasy worlds have portrayed fascism, from Star Wars to superhero dystopias like The Boys. This time, I wanted to look at why democracies fall. What did they do wrong? Often in a fantasy world, when a totalitarian regime takes over, it comes out of nowhere.

It's kind of like the animated movie Yellow Submarine, you know, the one with the Beatles. At the beginning, we see a peaceful paradise called Pepperland. And then the Blumenies attack. The people of Pepperland are completely defenseless. Sir! Sir! The Blumenies are coming! Not here, young Fred. They wouldn't dare. They would! They are! What are you going to do?

Finish the quartet. But how fascism takes over internally is a lot more complicated. There's a scene in the Star Wars prequel, Revenge of the Sith, where Palpatine is about to become emperor. He's the chancellor of the Senate at this point, and he calls for a vote to end the Republic and establish an empire. And he lies. He says the Jedi were traitors. He also engineered a fake war to give himself emergency powers. Natalie Portman's character, Senator Padme Amidala, says, So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause. When I did my last episode on fascism, I talked with Stefan Sasse.

He's a podcaster and he teaches history in Germany. I talked with Stefan Sasse. He's a podcaster and he teaches history in Germany. At the time, he said something which I've been thinking about for the last four years. Fascists often come to power because people want them there. They know what they stand for. And we talked about that scene four years ago, but I asked him to come back because I wanted him to tell me if he was in the Galactic Senate, if he were part of that thunderous applause, what would he be thinking? Stefan got right into character, speaking as this fictional politician. I am coming out of several years of a devastating civil war, which has been mismanaged by the government. So I'm not exactly trusting the democratic oversight. Because every time my boss, guy Palpatine said something, it worked out,

whereas whenever someone discussed anything, it did usually not. Then the reason for the whole conflict was too much talking, quite frankly. Like we had tax debates and we had tariff discussions. And then when they did the blockade of Naboo, what did the Republic do? They sent two Jedi to talk. They should have sent clone troopers, but oops, we didn't have clone troopers. And why? Because Palpatine wasn't in power. And don't even get me started on the whole, the Jedi were traitors. They were the symbol of the Republic. And now that the Jedi have fallen, the Republic is also tainted by association because the Jedi were upholding peace and order and all that stuff. And look how that turned out. And now we have a different source of power, a different source of legitimacy. It looks much sexier.

I don't think I've ever heard the emperor described as sexy. Or, well, maybe I guess I guess the empire is sexy. appeal that democracy usually lacks. And you always have it with the military in fascist regimes. It is young, fit men in tight-sitting uniforms. The uniforms usually look very good because they are designed to look good. So I could imagine that many people, of course, not me as a senator, because I am much too noble and rich for that stuff. But a lot of my constituents, obviously, for them, the military is now an excellent option. They get three hot meals a day with this great blue milk that they have. And they can see the galaxy on those cool triangular-formed chips. I feel like a lot of us are in the place of Padme Amidala, shaking our heads at these thunderous applause. And we're not alone. Over the last four years, some of the biggest sci-fi fantasy

franchises have been reflecting those concerns. And so I wanted to know, can these fantasy worlds give us insights into why people become disillusioned with democracy and how we can fight back. These days, the main thing that I'm fighting is the heat and humidity. I would love to hang out in the park this summer, but all I want to do is sit in a cool, dark theater where I can feel like I'm being transported to another world. Well, I can have that experience with Today Tix. Today Tix offers the best value on tickets to amazing things going on all around you. They've got tickets to shows on Broadway, in the West End, and in other cities across the country and around the world. You can book a show in advance or be spontaneous and check out what's

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code imaginary to get $20 off your first TodayTix purchase. That's promo code imaginary at TodayTix, T-I-X dot com slash imaginary. Todaytix dot com slash imaginary. We're going to keep our focus on Star Wars for a while because there's a lot to unpack. David Kenney teaches law at Trinity College in Dublin. In 2021, he wrote an academic paper looking at what we can learn from the fall of the old republic in Star Wars. He said lesson number one, overly strong governments often come from overly weak ones. There is a common belief that what we need to avoid most of all is an over-centralization of power. That's how we get dictators. That's how we get tyrants.

And that's true. But the question is, how did the dictators and tyrants come about? How do we get to the point where people look to a strong leader who becomes an overly strong leader to solve their problems? And I think it's often overlooked this fact that often weak states without a strong leader can't answer to the problems that their people have, and they turn to extreme solutions. They overstep the bounds of law or the constitution in order to solve the problems that face them. And this is something that's in the literature sometimes called the Publius Paradox after Alexander Hamilton's formulation of it. First of all, the Publius Paradox would have been a great title for a song in the Hamilton musical.

But the Publius Paradox is not a rap song. It was an argument that the real Hamilton made when the founding fathers were drafting the Constitution. They're debating how powerful the presidency should be. And so the paradox is that you created these restraints to try and avoid tyranny. You put limits on government power to try and make sure you didn't end up with a tyrant. But then you put in so many limits that people are like, why do we have this person? Why do we have this system of government? We need something that works. These restraints are causing problems, and it's time to cast them off. Whereas if the limits had just been a little bit more relaxed, you might have had a

functioning state that could have solved the problems to not get into that crisis point, to not have people turn away from government and lose faith. Sean Taylor is a writer and teacher in the Bay Area. I've had him on the show many times because he always has great insights. He thinks that the old republic was facing a problem that a lot of democratic coalitions have in the real world. What the old republic was facing a problem that a lot of democratic coalitions have in the real world. What the old republic really did was they help everybody on the surface, but no one gets it. It's equality, not equity, right? It's everybody gets the same. Everybody gets the same, but nobody's getting what they need. Is it sort of the idea that you're kind of giving everybody

lip service, but not actually, and maybe throwing a token of something, but not actually doing the hard work to really get things done? Because you have to build such a wide and untenable consensus? Yeah, it's like 95 miles wide and a half an inch deep, where it should be the other way, depending on what that individual culture or person society needs. By trying to please everybody, the Republic didn't please anybody. And so nobody came to their defense in the end. Lesson number two in David Kenney's analysis. Commitment to the law won't save us. When you watch the Star Wars prequels,

to an extent that you might find funny for science fiction action films, there's a lot of talk about the law. Not in any detail, but you know, is that legal? We need to sign a treaty. We need the Senate to ratify the treaty, right? And yet in the end, the law doesn't help the Republic from, you know, sliding into authoritarianism. And that's because people only talk about the law in a really surface way. And it's something that we see in the real world as well. Sometimes really authoritarian regimes that are repressing their people and departing from democracy will cover themselves in the law. They will wrap the law around them and say, we are the most committed to the rule of law.

We really care about all these procedures and legalities, but they don't mean it. They're using the law to mask what they're doing. They're using it as a tool to dismantle what really matters. You have to mean it and you have to keep your eyes on the purposes that the law is trying to serve. Lesson number three, confusion at the apex of power leads to chaos. He's talking about the Jedi. The Jedi are supposed to be the protectors of democracy, but they're not elected. Their legitimacy comes from the idea that they're impartial arbiters of justice.

They're unemotional by design. They're also similar to a religious order, and they have the power to act like a supreme court with laser swords. If you look at the Jedi, they start looking a lot like a judiciary. They perform like border dispute settlements and lots of sort of adjudications like that, as you say, backed up with swords and with very unclear procedures for appointing them or holding them accountable if they do the wrong things. That's the first strange thing about it. And the

second one is that, as you say, they're a religious order. If the Jedi are in charge and they're asserting one religious orthodoxy against everyone else, and this is backed up basically by the force of the state and the force of their laser swords, that's a really interesting religious position to take. And the Jedi are also very invested in preserving their own appearance. But that can lead to big problems as well. If actors in your system aren't properly overseen, if the lines of power aren't clear, then it can be really dangerous almost to have them in those positions. That brings me to The Acolyte, the newest

Star Wars show on Disney+. In all the years that I've been following Star Wars, this show has sparked one of the fiercest debates I have ever seen among the fans. People have argued it is the best version of Star Wars we've seen in a while, and the franchise should continue to go in this direction. Other people have argued it is the worst version of Star Wars ever, and proves the franchise has gone way off in the wrong direction. To talk about the show, I need to give away a few spoilers. The Acolyte takes place a century before the prequels. The Jedi are at the height of their power. But we can see that even in this time, members of the Senate are uncomfortable with how much power the Jedi have.

And that makes the Jedi worried. If it were to become public that a former Jedi killed one of our own. Our political enemies could use it against us. Discretion is important. Our justice swift, an example made. The main conflict is about an incident which happened on a distant planet. A small group of Jedi discovered a secret sect of witches practicing a powerful and unconventional version of the Force. We are concerned that you are training children. The Republic lost it. Rendok is not a part of the Republic. There are no children here.

As you can hear, things are tense and about to get worse. The Jedi make fatal mistakes on this planet, which will haunt them for years to come. The portrayal of the Jedi on the show is pretty negative, but we know they're going to fall. And I think the show is trying to examine why, a century later, the senators would believe this lie that the Jedi had staged a coup and applaud their demise. Sean Taylor has been thinking about that too. They're space cops, and I think their code is entirely too rigid. Their code doesn't allow for nuance. It allows for nuance for the individual practitioner, but it doesn't allow for nuance for the entire society they're, quote, meant to protect. Anytime someone has more power than someone else, whether it's

mystic, technological, military, otherwise, you have to question them. And I think that while we can debate the acolytes writing in some of the directorial choices, what I think is 100% valuable is this critical conversation about who the Jedi are, what they're about, what they do, and why if someone is outside of the Jedi who happens to have access to the Force, why are they so fiercely attempting

to control that particular entity? On this show, we also meet a Sith, who is your classic Star Wars villain with a red lightsaber and a scary mask. And this character accuses the Jedi of being intolerant of other ways of practicing the Force, as if their fight against the dark side proves that they're not really committed to pluralism. Stefan is sympathetic to this challenge the Jedi are facing. Where do you draw the line in what's acceptable to do or say in a free society? This is a classical problem. You cannot be tolerant to the intolerant.

This is absolutely true because what we know, at least of the Sith, you have a faction at least that is hell-bent on wiping you out and taking complete control. You cannot just treat this as a viewpoint among many. And they have a point when they're saying that the Jedi are, not that they're fascist, obviously, but that they are stifling this sort of thinking. The problem of the Jedi seems to be much more that they are stifling quite a lot of stuff. They are lacking pluralism within their own ranks. And I think there could be a very interesting

philosophical quantum in there because the Jedi are distancing themselves from the world as much as they can. But democracy means that you are involved with the world. These two things are entirely in conflict. The more we see of the Jedi in movies and TV, the worse they look. So I understand why some longtime Star Wars fans are upset. But David Kenney thinks the battle between good and evil in Star Wars

was never meant to be a battle of external forces. Actually, I think it's always been about the darkness in all of us. It's about how good and bad exists along this challenging spectrum. And when trying to be good, you can find yourself falling down into a place of being really lost in darkness. Everyone has the potential for either. And it's the choices we make and the forces we're exposed to that will shape us in these ways. In The Empire Strikes Back, Cloud City was a small outpost, not very self-sufficient. They

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We were back to rebels fighting stormtroopers. And I kept wondering, what happened? How do we go from the big party with the Ewoks to this? Several of the new Star Wars shows on Disney Plus have tried to answer that question. the new Star Wars shows on Disney Plus have tried to answer that question. The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka all take place in the years after Return of the Jedi. The second Death Star is destroyed. The Emperor is dead. Leia is off-screen helping to build a new government. Luke is digitally de-aged as he's trying to restart the Jedi Order. Luke is digitally de-aged as he's trying to restart the Jedi Order.

And all three shows have addressed the same question. Why did the New Republic fail? First of all, the New Republic doesn't have much of a military. I learned from a Star Wars novel that was set during this time that the New Republic intentionally demilitarized so they wouldn't become another empire. For the record, Leia thought that was a bad idea, but she was ignored. So the New Republic is spread thin. Crime is rampant on the remote planets. Everyone has to fend for themselves. And the Mandalorian discovered

there are remnants of the empire trying to make a comeback. They work for the empire. What are they doing here? The Empire is gone, Mando. All that are left are mercenaries and warlords. But if it bothers you, just go back to the Corps and report them to the New Republic. That's a joke. The politicians running the New Republic are complacent. And they're skeptical when they're told there's a specific plot

by imperial officers who survived the fall of the empire, Grand Admiral Thrawn and Moff Gideon. Gideon was a warlord acting on his own. There's no proof of a greater conspiracy and thus no immediate threat to this republic. If Thrawn returns, that will change quickly. If? I don't know what frightens me more. The possibility of what might happen or your unwillingness to see it. If you're not steeped in Star Wars lore, Thrawn was a brilliant tactician. But Sean understands why the New Republic doesn't want to believe that they're in danger. We have a lot of, you know, political chicken littles, right?

The sky is falling, you know, or the, you know, or the Cassandras, everybody's going to say, and nobody's going to believe you. And I think that deep down inside, fundamentally, we don't want to believe that an intelligent horror can come rise up and come get us. It's like having to think about a Thrawn and you know Thrawn's story, you know how utterly masterful and brilliant that nobody wants to fight that again. So it's easy, I feel, for these characters to dismiss him because to think about that this person is coming back, they have to reflect that they did not do a good enough job of protecting the Republic,

that this person is allowed to come back, that means they failed utterly. The New Republic is also trying to figure out what to do with the thousands of people who are in the empire. They set up an amnesty program to reintegrate them. But once again, they're spread thin, there's not enough oversight, and they're too complacent. A scientist who worked with the Empire, who applies for the amnesty program, has to go through a brainwashing. Wait, this is a mind flayer. This is a 602 mitigator. It's a non-invasive experimental treatment

recently approved for rehabilitation. No, it's a mind flayer. It's a similar device, but we found at low voltages it can be used to help soothe select traumatic memories. As you can imagine, this does not go well. Stefan watched those scenes from The Mandalorian with a particular interest. I mean, this hits close to home because I'm German. So the question of what do we do with former Nazis is really an

important one. And we here in Germany, just for context, after World War II, the approach was more or less we integrate them back into society, no questions asked. There were some trials, but those were more or less mandated. I do not think that we would have done them, at least not in that number, if the Allies hadn't forced us. And what we did was really nothing at all. So if you ask me what would I recommend to the new republic, the empire was all-encompassing. Like, it is a gigantic-ass political structure. It has hundreds of planets. There is only one military.

So everyone who was ever in the military is imperial military. And everyone who was working in the administrative sector was imperial administration. But most people will not commit mass atrocities. They are just part of that institution. So those are usually not a problem. So you need to identify, let's call them the war criminals, and you need to bring them to justice. The question is only how many of them do you want to try? It is hurting our sense of justice. And we want to see these people punished,

especially if we were active in the rebellion or if we were victims of this system. But it is a practical impossibility. And so I would rather argue that trying to brainwash these people more or less indiscriminately is a really bad idea. But he cuts the New Republic a little bit of slack. Trying to make decisions by democratic consensus is messy. And a lot of fiction always has the downfall of the evil empire as the happy end. But what happens afterwards is the really hard part.

Because to keep our system, to keep our republic, we need to constantly fight for it. We need to win every single fight. The fascists need to win only one. Leaving Star Wars but staying on the same streaming service, there was another show this year about emerging threats that were trying to hide

in a fog of misinformation until they were ready to strike. It was the animated series X-Men 97. X-Men 97 is a continuation of the X-Men animated series from the 1990s, but with more adult-oriented storylines. Again, I'm going to give away a few spoilers. The main storyline is about a powerful supervillain named Bastion who wants to enslave

all mutants. And at one point, he engineers a massacre of a population of mutants. And this is all going on while there's a power vacuum. Professor X, the leader of the X-Men, the mutant who wants to work with humans, he's gone for much of the season. The remaining X-Men are struggling, and they're frustrated that the U.S. government won't take more action. That's where Magneto steps in. But being Magneto, he takes unilateral action to protect his own kind, mutants, at the expense of everybody else on Earth.

The X-Men also take unilateral action to deal with Magneto and Bastion, and they keep saying, trust us, we're the good guys. But it is never easy for them to win the public's trust. Even some of the X-Men have doubts about Professor X's judgment. They defect and join Magneto, who is portrayed quite sympathetically on the show. Sean thinks Professor X is partially to blame. The message, trust us, we're the righteous place, but the X-Men are acting from an oppressed righteous place where they believe. And they believe that what they're doing is the right thing to do. Either they think of themselves as good or not, who is a living nuclear bomb or somehow more powerful than 98% of the people they come into contact with.

I don't know if they're qualified, but then they have to fight against the people who don't have their same ideals. show really well is people who believe that they're doing the right thing but only think of the consequences as it relates to their particular subset and i think they're less honest about it than magneto is really how so i think magneto is magneto's like never again never will i ever be the victim of anyone again in other words words, I think the X-Men are pretending. I mean, they're helping for sure, but there's a level of we're doing this so we can fit in, not so we can be okay. And I think there's a difference. One of my favorite things about summer is produce. When strawberries or eggplant comes back in season at the farmer's market, it is just as exciting to me as when one of my favorite TV shows comes back for a limited season.

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What are some solutions? When I talked with David Kenney, he proposed something which sounds like a contradiction in terms. It's called militant democracy. Which is we are tolerant and we are liberal and we are open, but not to anti-democratic sentiment. We have a limit to our tolerance, and it is when we see someone as having authoritarian or fascistic tendencies, we see it as impossible to tolerate that. And that seems contrary to the liberal openness and tolerance that democracy seems to suggest, particularly for conflicting political viewpoints. But ultimately, you can only care about one thing the most. And so do you care most about

being tolerant no matter what? Or do you care most about preserving the open democratic system that you think enables all the other goods if you have it? You have to put one on top, knowing that you might be doing it wrong. And that's just the human condition. You can't wait to be totally right, to be totally sure, because that time's not coming. Instead, you have to do your very best, be careful, be thoughtful, but ultimately act for what you care about. I started to wonder, is there a fantasy world that depicts a militant democracy? And then I realized, of course there is. It's a federation of planets run by a democracy of species.

There's no quasi-religious order like the Jedi. In fact, there's no religion and no money. Everybody has their needs met. This federation is backed up by an arsenal of spaceships that are heavily armed but come in peace. And in the same way that Disney has been filling their streaming service with new Star Wars shows, Paramount has been filling their streaming service with new Star Trek shows. What I found fascinating is that many of these new shows are exploring a dark corner of the Federation, a secret organization called Section 31. Federation, a secret organization called Section 31. Section 31 was first introduced in the 1990s Star Trek show, Deep Space Nine. Our official designation is Section 31. Never heard of it. We keep a low profile. Works out better that way for all concerned. And what does Section 31 do?

We search out and identify potentialive among the fans. Because the idea that the Federation would need a version of the CIA doesn't seem to fit Gene Roddenberry's vision of a utopian future. In fact, I recently read an article that was titled, Why Star Trek Needs to Forget Section 31. But that's not going to happen. The show's Discovery, Lower Decks, and Picard all had storylines with Section 31. And there's going to be a made-for-TV movie called Section 31, starring Michelle Yeoh. Her character on Discovery was a member of the organization. Covert ops, intelligence gathering, threat assessment.

Fun times. What did any of those things have to do with you being on Spock's channel? I've been authorized to hunt down a stafffleet officer wanted for murder. Excuse me, multiple murders. Sean thinks the writers of these shows are teaching us an important lesson about militant democracies. What Roddenberry did was gave us this really beautiful utopian vision

of what the future could look like and our only real problems are other species. Whether it's lack of understanding or lack of whatever it is whereas section 31 is like well we have to fight the enemies internally externally to keep the vision of the federation alive because what deep space nine showed that there was a cost to utopia. Utopia doesn't happen. You have to build it. Whereas fascism, you don't have to build fascism. You just have to watch everything else fall away until you can emerge.

It's funny to hear you. You're talking kind of positively about Section 31, but then negatively of the Jedi as space cops. I mean, in some ways, I could imagine, imagine someone saying, isn't Section 31 worse than space cops? See, for me, I guess I'm just having a reaction to the almost religious mystical bent. Because with Section 31,

if you are clever enough through your own merit, you can be a member of Section 31. Whereas the Jedi have this interesting, mystical, were you chosen, do you have access, which makes them a little bit more elite. And they're both elite.

Let's not make any mistake about that. They're both elite. But for me, the Jedi seems a little more, they don't seem to be helping as much as shaping. Whereas Section 31, I think, are like actually taking out whatever hurt or harm that's happening in individual spots. But what about fantasy worlds closer to home, ones without lightsabers or starships? Sean recommends Octavia Butler's science fiction

novels Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. There was going to be a third book in the series, but Octavia Butler died before she could make very much progress on it. The books take place in a future where America has gone through a massive social collapse. People are trying to survive and rebuild the country, but fascism is very tempting for a lot of people. In fact, the parallels between our current politics and the storyline in the second book are so prophetic, it's eerie. Those two books show how democracy is easily foiled because the lack of attention to the environment, the lack of attention to things that may collapse. lack of attention to the environment, via lack of attention to things that may collapse. And it also shows how do you rebuild after the collapse of democracy. Here is Octavia Butler in 2005, reading from Parable of the Talents. She's quoting one of her characters.

She says, choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery. One of the things that Sean likes about these books is that they focus on rebuilding after democracy has fallen. The characters are mourning what's lost, but also moving on. Change is an inevitable part of who we are as people and societies. I think that's what's

something that Octavia Butler did so well. You can't let yourself get complacent enough and static enough to not move with the change. And that's what happened in the first book. We didn't move with the change and the entire America collapsed. But if you understand that and get your feelers out for those subtle changes, you are going to be able to move with them and being able to get ahead of the change. You're not going to be able to stop the change. Change is inevitable, but you're going to be able to ride that change

in such a way where you're not being caught on the back end of it. You're going to be able to help shape some of it so it's not landing on you like a heavy weight, but covering you like a jacket. I mean, I just think it's a really good time for us to have a science fiction mindset about our current time, understanding what it means to world build, collectively world build, like you wouldn't say Dungeons and Dragons or

whatever. I think so many people in the building of democracy feel or believe or nonprofits engineer that this work is very small and solo. And there's like 8,000 social justice fiefdoms trying to do it. But if we start understanding that we are a party, that we are collective, the power that we control, that we have individually and as a collective moving in the same direction, not in a line, but in a direction, I think that's the mindset we have to have. We have to understand that we can be in our Roddenberry moment right now if we choose to be. But we have to understand that our Roddenberry moment is going to come with some costs. And we have to be able to hold those costs.

And, you know, and on some Wolverine stuff, we've got to be able to take a punch in the chin and understand that the punch in the chin won't break us and that we can bounce back from it. Some days I feel overwhelmed by the news and the idea of taking a punch like Wolverine or reaching for our Roddenberry moment feels a little too aspirational for me. But wearing change like a jacket, I can do that. wearing change like a jacket, I can do that. I'm imagining this fantastical jacket made out of change. It's a special material which can weather any storm, no matter how ominous the weather looks. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to David Kenney, Stephen Sasse, and Sean Taylor. If you like the show, please give us a shout out on social media

or leave a review wherever you get your podcasts or tell a friend who you think would like the show. And if you like this episode, you should check out the other episode from 2020 or my 2016 episode about the TV series Man in the High Castle. The best way to support Imaginary Worlds is to donate on Patreon. At different levels, you get either free Imaginary Worlds stickers,

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