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.
293 episodes transcribedIn the 1950s, the avant-garde music scene in New York and the movie studios of Los Angeles might have seemed like opposite ends of a cultural spectrum...
Movies that change cinema often come from outsiders – whether it’s Orson Welles making Citizen Kane or George Lucas making Star Wars a.k.a. Episode IV...
I’ve covered digital and practical effects in film and TV, but creating special effects for live theater is a whole other challenge. J&M Special Effec...
I didn't want the summer to end without joining in on the 50th anniversary celebrations of Jaws. I spent summers on Cape Cod as a kid, where I often h...
Coney Island still has the classic amusements you’d expect today like roller coasters, water slides, and carnival games. But over a century ago, it lo...
Creating a musical score for interactive video games is like trying to hit a moving target. Luckily, Hans Zimmer’s studio Bleeding Fingers has develop...
The production design of the film Fantastic Four: First Steps is an homage to the early ‘60s comics created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. While Kirby is...
When Arvind Ethan David was a student, he decided to adapt the Douglas Adams novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency into a play. Arvind didn’t...
The animated TV series Pantheon (streaming on Netflix) asks what if you could upload your mind to the Internet? Would still be human? Would we create...
Murderbot is a killing machine in the far future that would rather spend its time binging an intergalactic soap opera -- and shooting bad guys with la...
Next year marks the 60th anniversary of Dark Shadows. The gothic soap opera wasn’t originally intended to include a vampire, but when creator Dan Curt...
We all have that one thing we just can’t watch. For me, it’s body horror -- the kind of horror where grotesque and disturbing things happen to someone...
Last week, we heard about a new exhibit in New York called Syd Mead: Future Pastime. The exhibit closes on May 21st, and I know most listeners won't b...
The late Syd Mead was a visual futurist who was hired to imagine the worlds of Blade Runner, Tron, Aliens, Elysium and other sci-fi films. His work in...
The golden age of sci-fi was filled with utopian visions the future. These days, when sci-fi creators project ahead several decades, the world is look...
In honor of Women’s History Month we’re producing a two-part series about two artists who were visionaries and trailblazers. In part 2, we look at the...
In the previous episode, I talked with author Mallory O'Meara about Milicent Patrick, but there wasn't room to include this bonus material about Mallo...
In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re producing a two-part series about two visionary and trailblazing artists: Mary Blair and Milicent Patrick. Th...
This week’s episode comes from our Patreon podcast Between Imaginary Worlds. It’s a more casual chat show that appears between ad-free episodes of Ima...
In the 1950s, an article about the popularity of folk music among science fiction fans had a typo where “folk” was written as “filk.” From then on, fi...
