Imaginary Worlds

When I interviewed special effects artist Shannon Shea about The Terminator and other villains of ’84, we also discussed his experiences working on Terminator 2. He tells me about the many life-sized ...

7 Feb 202422min

This year marks the 40th anniversary of a lot of landmarks in pop culture, especially sci-fi and fantasy. So many franchises were born in 1984. Some came to define their genre or invent new genres. In...

31 Jan 202436min

I was blown away by the Netflix animated series Blue Eye Samurai. I’m not alone, it has 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the supervising director and producer of ...

17 Jan 202440min

In the 1960s, Ursula K. le Guin represented a changing of the guard in science fiction literature. She was part of a generation of novelists who questioned the colonist mindset which had influenced Am...

3 Jan 202448min

This week's episode is an original audio drama. In previous episodes, I’ve interviewed Captain Hook, vampires, colonists on the moon, and H.P. Lovecraft’s brain in a jar -- or at least actors playing ...

20 Des 202331min

In honor of Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary, I’ve rewritten my 2018 episode about Doctor Who with updates on how the series has evolved, and new insights I’ve had about Doctor Who since I made this epis...

6 Des 202338min

One Piece is one of the biggest franchises in the world. The manga and anime have broken records in sales and viewership. The live action adaptation on Netflix was a hit. And the series holds a specia...

22 Nov 202332min

My guests from the previous episode, Carolyne Larrington and Ada Palmer, had so many interesting things to say about Norse mythology and how much of it is still a mystery to us, I decided to compile s...

16 Nov 202326min