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 transcribedImagine walking into your living room, and alongside your couch is a prop from one of your favorite childhood movies. Sure, it was costly but this is...
Burlesque has merged with geek culture to form nerdlesque – where characters from familiar fantasy franchises strip down to pasties and g-strings. Ner...
In the conclusion of our mini-series on sidekicks, we look at how Harley Quinn began as a sidekick to a villain, and found her way to the heart of the...
In part two of our mini series on sidekicks, we look at two characters that have travelled in parallel since they came out of the same radio station i...
To kick off our mini-series on sidekicks, we look at the most iconic and long-standing sidekick in pop culture: Doctor Watson. For 130 years, Watson h...
Witness if you will a writer: Rod Serling. This is the story of a man with a vision -- a vision of what television could be if only men ceased to oper...
Ever since George Lucas cited Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” as the inspiration for Star Wars, Hollywood screenwriters...
50 years ago this month, Kurt Vonnegut introduced Billy Pilgrim and the aliens who gave him time traveling powers in his novel Slaughterhouse Five. Ma...
In the 1930s Margaret Brundage was the hottest pulp fiction magazine illustrator. She primarily painted covers for Weird Tales magazine, which publish...
Conan the Barbarian is generally thought of as a muscle-bound brute who fights his way through a made-up ancient world. But the character actually has...
In some video games, you can choose which character you want to play, and you can customize the look of those characters. For many transgender players...
One of the unique aspects of video games is that you can control the characters. But game developers are often torn between wanting to give the player...
Madeline Miller received critical acclaim for her novels The Song of Achilles and Circe – which reimagine The Iliad and The Odyssey told from the pers...
In a special stocking stuffer of an episode, Stephanie Billman and I discuss why A Christmas Carol set the template for SF stories to come -- from Bac...
We all grow up playing board games and card games, and now those games are growing up as well. I check out BostonFIG (festival of independent games),...
In my 2017 episode Winning the Larp, I looked at the history of larps (live action role plays) and how the larping experience is deeply personal for e...
Long ago, before we found out about new movies from tweets about teaser trailers that advertised full-length trailers – the first glimpse of a new mov...
Science fiction has not always been compatible with religion -- in fact many futuristic settings imagine no religion at all. But sci-fi and fantasy ha...
Forget Tinkerbell or those Victorian paintings of spritely pixies with wings. Traditional fairy folklore is much darker and weirder. Irish storyteller...
There has been a renaissance of audio drama podcasts over the last several years, so picking up where I left off in the previous episode, I bring the...
