Reimagining the Gods
Madeline Miller received critical acclaim for her novels The Song of Achilles and Circe – which reimagine The Iliad and The Odyssey told...
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Episodes
Latest first
A Visit by Three Ghosts
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...
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Board Games Go Indie
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...
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How I Won the Larp
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...
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Alternate Movie Posters
Long ago, before we found out about new movies from tweets about teaser trailers that advertised full-length trailers – the first glimpse...
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Faith in Fantasy
Science fiction has not always been compatible with religion -- in fact many futuristic settings imagine no religion at all. But sci-fi and...
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Don't Mess with the Fairies
Forget Tinkerbell or those Victorian paintings of spritely pixies with wings. Traditional fairy folklore is much darker and weirder. Irish...
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Movies for the Mind
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...
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Theater for the Mind
The "golden age of radio drama" may have been a stellar period for storytelling -- but the stories weren't all golden bright. Science...
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Fantastical Feasts
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...
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D&D Revisited
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...
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Fanfiction (Special Edition)
Last year, I interviewed Francesca Coppa for my episode Fanfiction (Don't Judge.) She's the author of the book "The Fanfiction Reader," and...
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Do You Speak Conlang?
Sci-fi fantasy worlds often use constructed languages (or conlangs for short) as a worldbuilding tool that can make us believe the...
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Imaginary Deaths
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...
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Fahrenheit 451 Still Burns
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...
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Gathering the Magic
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...
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The First Three Lives of Catherine Webb
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...
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The Westworld Experience
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...
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Jack Kirby's Marvels
Avengers: Infinity War brought together characters from across the Marvel universe, but many of them already shared a common bond -- their...
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Living in Space
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...
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