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 transcribedLong 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...
The "golden age of radio drama" may have been a stellar period for storytelling -- but the stories weren't all golden bright. Science fiction and horr...
What is the role of food in worldbuilding? Characters usually have to eat to stay alive -- but food is also culture, and if you're creating a fantasy...
Stubborn Lippi a.k.a. Stubbs is a halfling, a bard, and a sorcerer. He's also the character I've been playing since I produced my 2015 episode "Rollin...
Last year, I interviewed Francesca Coppa for my episode Fanfiction (Don't Judge.) She's the author of the book "The Fanfiction Reader," and one of the...
Sci-fi fantasy worlds often use constructed languages (or conlangs for short) as a worldbuilding tool that can make us believe the characters come fro...
Have you ever mourned the loss of a fictional character? It can be tough to get over, and difficult to convince people not caught up in that fictional...
The writer Neil Gaiman first became entranced with Fahrenheit 451 as a kid, but he says the novel is the kind of masterpiece that seems like a differe...
At its core, Magic: The Gathering is a card game and your goal is to knock your opponent down to zero points. But Magic: The Gathering also has a deep...
You may know her as Claire North, author of the best-selling novel "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August." You might also know her as Kate Griffin,...
To promote season 2 of Westworld, HBO recreated the fictional Wild West town from the TV show just outside Austin at the SXSW festival, and they hired...
Avengers: Infinity War brought together characters from across the Marvel universe, but many of them already shared a common bond -- their creator Jac...
People have fantasized for ages about what it would be like to live in space -- whether it's living on the moon or Mars or on a space station. And if...
Philip K. Dick is best known for his fiction that have been adapted to movies and TV shows like Blade Runner, Minority Report and Man in the High Cast...
The holy grail for many animators is to create digital humans that can pass for the real thing -- in other words to cross the "uncanny valley." The pr...
Ursula K. Le Guin was a master storyteller who was best known for her "thought experiments" -- like what if there were a planet in which the inhabitan...
They may not look scary to you, but the monsters on Doctor Who have scared generations of children to the point where hiding "behind the sofa" has bec...
