Imaginary Worlds

    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...

  • There's No Place Like Oz

  • Why The Future is (Doctor) Doom

  • Who Gets to Survive: The Final Girls of Horror

  • To Seek Out New Life

  • Introducing Between Imaginary Worlds

  • Escaping Prison with Role-Playing Games

  • 10th Anniversary Special Part 2

  • 10th Anniversary Special Part 1

  • Unlocking the Door Between Escape Rooms and Immersive Theater

  • Narrating Audiobooks From Other Worlds

  • Fantasy and Fascism Part II: When Democracy Fails

  • The Team Behind Hans Zimmer

  • Swept Away by Romantasy

  • Books Under Fire

  • The George Lucas Talk Show

  • How Nintendo Leveled Up

  • You Are Lone Wolf: A Father/Son Quest

  • African Sci-Fi Looks to a Future Climate

  • When All Is Said in Dune

  • Mother-in-Law of Oz

  • Bonus: Turtles and Toys Outtakes

  • Class of '84: Turtles, Transformers and Toys Takeover TV

  • Class of '84: When Cyber Was Punk

  • Bonus: Rise of The Villains Outtakes

  • Class of '84: Rise of The Villains

  • Making Blue Eye Samurai

  • Prologue to Ursula K. le Guin

  • @ChristmasCarol: A Holiday Tale

  • Doctor Who's Power of Regeneration

  • How One Piece Became King of the Backstories

  • Bonus: Norse Myths Outtakes

  • Seeing Ourselves in Norse Myths

  • Creating Hindu Fantasy Worlds

  • Haunted Housing Market

  • Making the Sounds of Make-Believe

  • The Nine Lives of Red Dwarf

  • Have You Watched....?

  • Ghosted by TV Shows

  • Extreme Makeover: Fairy Godmother Edition

  • How to Go to Infinity and Beyond

  • Welcome Our New A.I. Overlords

  • Warhammer - The Heavy Metal of Board Games

  • Why The Gothic Keeps Gaslighting Us

  • Haunted By Pepper's Ghost

  • Making The Muppets

  • Miyazaki Imagines an Environment

  • Entering Discworld. Population: Terry Pratchett.

  • The Blazing World

  • 100 Years of Weird Tales

  • Catching the Mind Virus

  • A Nation Dreams to Survive

  • The Human Touch

  • Magic of Nghi Vo

  • The Set Jet Crowds

  • Octavia Butler Revisited

  • Monsters in the Static

  • True Crime Fairy Tale

  • Indigenous Futurisms

  • Songs in the Key of SF

  • Generation VTube

  • Befriend The Reaper

  • Postcolonial Worlds

  • Mentors: Balance of The Force

  • Mentors: Dynamic Duos

  • Paper Girls on Bikes

  • Charting Strange New Worlds

  • Guys and Dolls

  • The Art of Piracy

  • 200 Imaginary Worlds

  • Mystery Science Theater Reopens

  • Snow Crashing Into The Metaverse

  • De-Aging Well

  • Neurodivergent Futures

  • Nosferatu Live

  • A Nation Dreams of Itself

  • Asian Futures Without Asians

  • Beforeigners

  • Headcanon Fodder

  • Politics of the Funnies Part 2

  • Politics of the Funnies Part 1

  • Multiverse Remix

  • Have Yourself a Scary Little Krampus

  • Art of the Brick

  • Re-Rolling Role Playing Games

  • Stage Fright

  • The Ecology of Dune

  • Office Space

  • Playing Blind

  • Cartoonish Gender

  • The Legend of Musashi

  • Giving Imaginary Advice

  • Harley Quinn (Special Edition)

  • Reporting on Capes, Cowls, Threats and Menaces

  • Living in a Simulation

  • Guilty Pleasures

  • Disco Elysium

  • Weir Science

  • The Zen of Sci-Fi

  • Becky Chambers Goes Wayfaring

  • Music From Saturn

  • Second Life Goes On

  • Tron: Welcome to the Machine

  • This Ain't No Fairy Tale

  • Embracing the Spooky Spooky

  • Betty Boop and the Hays Code

  • Camelot Forever

  • Making Up Creatures (Special Edition)

  • Monsters of 2020

  • Fan Films Go Pro

  • Fantasy in Translation

  • Adulting with Cowboy Bebop

  • Law & Order Superheroes

  • Fantasy and Fascism

  • Ahsoka Tano - A New Hope

  • Mission to Zyxx

  • Doug Jones: Shapeshifter

  • Dumbledore's Army (Updated)

  • Inverting Lovecraft

  • Once and Future Comic Con

  • Making Up Creatures

  • Larping in Place

  • Time Travel Therapy

  • The Curse of The Curse

  • Toy Stories

  • Solarpunk the Future

  • Fighting a Virtual Pandemic

  • Retcon-apalooza

  • Making The Good Places Better

  • Truth, Justice and The American Way

  • 2001: A Filmmaking Odyssey

  • Queen of Tarot

  • Fear of The Borg

  • In Defense of The Star Wars Holiday Special

  • Can Villains Be Good?

  • My So Called Evil Plan

  • Under a Red Moon

  • From Outer Space

  • Talking to the Dead

  • Scoring Godzilla

  • Ends of Evangelion

  • Actors with Pencils

  • The Booj

  • Superheroes in the Ring

  • Dirk Maggs

  • The Undertaker

  • Hero Props vs. Fake Props

  • Nerdlesque

  • Sidekicks: Harley Quinn

  • Sidekicks: Tonto and Kato

  • Sidekicks: Watson

  • Rod Serling's Key of Imagination

  • The Hero's Journey Endgame

  • Slaughterhouse at Fifty

  • Tales of Margaret Brundage

  • The Man Behind the Sword

  • The Power of the Makeover Mage

  • Choose Your Own Adventure

  • Reimagining the Gods

  • A Visit by Three Ghosts

  • Board Games Go Indie

  • How I Won the Larp

  • Alternate Movie Posters

  • Faith in Fantasy

  • Don't Mess with the Fairies

  • Movies for the Mind

  • Theater for the Mind

  • Fantastical Feasts

  • D&D Revisited

  • Fanfiction (Special Edition)

  • Do You Speak Conlang?

  • Imaginary Deaths

  • Fahrenheit 451 Still Burns

  • Gathering the Magic

  • The First Three Lives of Catherine Webb

  • The Westworld Experience

  • Jack Kirby's Marvels

  • Living in Space

  • Visions of Philip K. Dick

  • Stuck in the Uncanny Valley

  • Remembering Ursula K. Le Guin

  • Behind the Daleks

  • Traveling in The TARDIS

  • Doctor Who?

  • Brain Chemistry

  • The Canon Revisited

  • Politics of The Expanse

  • Robot Collar Jobs

  • On The Front Lines of Fantasy

  • Fanfiction (Don't Judge)

  • The Haunted Mansion

  • Rappers with Arm Cannons

  • Worldbuilding With Music

  • Technobabble

  • Future Screens Are Mostly Blue

  • Scott Snyder

  • Evil Plans

  • The Book of Dune

  • World War EVE

  • Imagining the Internet

  • Do The Voice

  • The Real Twin Peaks

  • Designing Bojack's World

  • Healing Through Horror

  • New York 2140

  • Beyond the Iron Curtain

  • The Spirit of Will Eisner

  • 28 Days of Black Cosplay

  • Growing Up Avatar-American

  • Winning the Larp

  • Atari vs The Imagination Gap

  • Workin' on the Death Star

  • The Man In the High Castle

  • Dumbledore's Army

  • Caps Lock Harry

  • The Sorting Hat

  • Magical Thinking

  • Fantasy Maps

  • The Hobbits and The Hippies

  • Behind The Felt

  • Finding My Voice

  • The Legacy of Octavia Butler

  • Ghost in the Shell

  • Undertale

  • The Year Without a Summer

  • Then She Fell

  • The Robot Uprising

  • Humans: New & Improved

  • Economics of Thrones and Starships

  • Becoming Godzilla

  • When Cthulhu Calls

  • Why They Fight

  • Imagining Wonder Woman

  • Noble Effort

  • Dracula from Nebraska

  • Inside the Snow Globe

  • The Expanded Universe

  • Han Shot Solo

  • Slave Leia

  • Empire vs Rebels

  • 1977

  • Great Scott! It's The Future!

  • First Contact

  • The Truth Is Out There

  • Rolling the Twenty Sided Dice

  • Heroines

  • Fixing the Hobo Suit

  • Doppelgangers 2.0

  • Time Travelers of Renwick St.

  • The Greatest Cartoon Almost Made

  • Why Ron Moore Killed Captain Kirk

  • True Vampires of New Haven

  • Beware of CyberCity

  • Politics of Thrones

  • Zombie Therapy

  • The Mysterious James Tiptree

  • A Perfect World

  • Being Batman (For Now)

  • Sexy Robots

  • The Golem and The Jinni

  • Joss Whedon '07

  • Action Figureland

  • In Defense of Captain Hook

  • Saving The Girl

  • Salem Bewitched

  • King Denslow of Oz

  • The Canon

  • When Human Met Creature

  • Origin Stories

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