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.
304 episodes transcribedWhen I interviewed Andy Weir in 2021 about his novel Project Hail Mary, he told me that the movie adaptation was already being planned starring Ryan G...
Gene Roddenberry’s name is synonymous with Star Trek, but he relied on a team to bring his vision to life. Most of his writers were men with one excep...
Imagine if Bruce Wayne had no money, if Superman grew up on Krypton and came to Earth with emotional scars, or if Wonder Woman had been raised in Hell...
Sinners got a historic 16 Academy Award nominations, which was remarkable for a film with vampires. But the film is also a rich exploration of race, r...
Scarlet Hollow is a successful indie video game – and that’s no small feat. It’s been a long journey, and the game is made almost entirely by two peop...
Darby McDevitt is a narrative director and writer at Ubisoft . He’s worked on multiple games in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, which spans time perio...
In my annual audio drama, I interview several folklore figures who are synonymous with the holiday season outside America -- but they’ve been overshad...
When I was growing up, Bigfoot appeared regularly on the covers of supermarket tabloids, so I assumed he was a joke. But I’ve discovered that he’s par...
As longtime listeners know, I worked in the animation industry before switching careers and going into broadcasting. Today’s episode features a trio o...
When director Guillermo del Toro asked Tamara Deverell to be the production designer on his film adaptation of Frankenstein, she had a good idea of wh...
In honor of the spooky season, we present two monstrous origin stories --Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. We know when these boo...
In 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...
