Lifting the Curtain on Theatrical Effects
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...
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Episodes
Latest first
The Shark That Ate Hollywood
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,...
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Dreaming of Coney Island's Dreamland
Coney Island still has the classic amusements you’d expect today like roller coasters, water slides, and carnival games. But over a century...
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8-Bit to Orchestras: Video Game Music Scores
Creating a musical score for interactive video games is like trying to hit a moving target. Luckily, Hans Zimmer’s studio Bleeding Fingers...
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How Jack Kirby Made His Mark on Marvel
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....
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to Douglas Adams
When Arvind Ethan David was a student, he decided to adapt the Douglas Adams novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency into a play....
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Imagining the Digital Afterlife
The animated TV series Pantheon (streaming on Netflix) asks what if you could upload your mind to the Internet? Would still be human? Would...
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Murderbot Is Ready for Its Close-Up (But Not Eye Contact)
Murderbot is a killing machine in the far future that would rather spend its time binging an intergalactic soap opera. Shooting bad guys...
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The Bright Legacy of Dark Shadows
Next year marks the 60th anniversary of Dark Shadows. The gothic soap opera wasn’t originally intended to include a vampire, but when...
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Body Horror Gets Under My Skin
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...
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Bonus: Syd Mead Full Gallery Tour
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...
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The Optimist Behind Blade Runner's Dystopia
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....
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Blueprints for Utopias
The golden age of sci-fi was filled with utopian visions the future. These days, when sci-fi creators project ahead several decades, the...
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Mary Blair: Coloring Outside the Lines at Disney
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...
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Bonus: Superstar Stuntwoman of Silent Cinema
In the previous episode, I talked with author Mallory O'Meara about Milicent Patrick, but there wasn't room to include this bonus material...
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Milicent Patrick: Disney Magic to Monster Mayhem
In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re producing a two-part series about two visionary and trailblazing artists: Mary Blair and Milicent...
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Pokémon and The Art of Dubbing Anime
This week’s episode comes from our Patreon podcast Between Imaginary Worlds. It’s a more casual chat show that appears between ad-free...
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Filk Fusion: Where Sci-Fi Meets Folk Music
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...
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Dance With The Devil Under Wall St.
The writer Jon Ronson and producers of the immersive theatrical experience Sleep No More have teamed up to make a vast new immersive show...
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Rewriting the Script on Audio Fiction
Lauren Shippen is one of my favorite creators of audio dramas. In 2015, she burst on the scene with The Bright Sessions, which was about...
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