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.
267 episodes transcribedTime travel is one of my favorite genres, and it’s also my go-to daydream. But I’ve begun to wonder whether time travel fantasies are a psychologicall...
When things go wrong, it’s tempting to say something’s cursed as a joke. But when things go dreadfully wrong on horror movie sets, some fans have spec...
Many of us have imaginary friends when we’re young in the guise of a doll, stuffed animal or toy that give us a sense of comfort. Then we grow out of...
Cyberpunk was cool. Steampunk was hip. Get ready for Solarpunk. This new emerging genre of art and fiction imagines a future where DIY environmental s...
In 2005, the multiplayer online game World of Warcraft was taken over by a virus called Corrupted Blood, and the virtual pandemic in this fantasy worl...
We're craving an escape into our favorite fantasy worlds, but fans are complaining that all the "retconning" is ruining their suspension of disbelief....
The Good Place just ended after four critically acclaimed seasons, and it was one of several recent TV shows to imagine the afterlife as being far fro...
Tracing the history of the superhero genre can reveal a lot about how we understand our own history, and how history gets whitewashed. Shawn Taylor, J...
2001: A Space Odyssey is considered a masterpiece, and a game changer for sci-fi on film. But the movie had a tumultuous origin story, and it was init...
When it comes to tarot cards, there is an artistry to designing a world of emperors, fools, priestesses, hermits and other iconic figures. But few peo...
Patrick Stewart is reprising his role as Jean-Luc Picard in the new TV series “Picard,” where the writers have promised a very different storyline on...
As far as Star Wars fans are concerned, there is no greater hive of scum and villainy than the 1978 made-for-TV Star Wars Holiday Special. The musical...
What does it take for a villain to be redeemed? That’s not a theoretical question when that villain is Kylo Ren who may or may not be redeemed in Star...
Villains are having a moment. They’re getting their own movies, they’re inspiring hashtags that say they’re right. And they don’t want to take over th...
Ronald D. Moore is probably best known for rebooting Battlestar Galactica as a gritty political commentary in the early 2000s. His latest show For All...
Think of an alien abduction: humanoid creatures, medical experiments, lost memories brought back by hypnosis. But that narrative was largely unknown u...
Jason Suran wants you to know he can’t talk to the dead. Then he will convince you that he can. In Suran’s show, The Other Side, he recreates a theatr...
We all know Godzilla’s iconic roar, but the musician who scored Godzilla's rampages is not as well known. The composer Akira Ifukube’s collaboration w...
One of the most popular anime series just became widely available when Netflix started streaming Neon Genesis Evangelion. Evangelion is also infamous...
Walt Disney pioneered the art of hand drawn animation, but it was really his top animators, “The Nine Old Men,” who were responsible for developing th...
