Imaginary Worlds

03/06/2026

Ancient folklore characters populate contemporary anime and manga from Spirited Away to Dan Da Dan. We look at why these supernatural beings have captured people’s imaginations, and how they made the transition from premodern Japan to shows that kids watch on their devices today.

Anime and manga are a global phenomenon, and their popularity continues to grow. Many of these stories are populated by supernatural beings called yōkai. Even though yōkai can be portrayed as ghosts, demons, or monsters, they're rarely purely good or evil. We trace the history of yōkai from ancie...

20/05/2026

In the 1980s, Charles R. Saunders published a series of novels that featured Black characters in a mythical version of precolonial Africa. He had created a new subgenre of sword and sorcery that he called sword and soul. This week, we look at the satisfaction and heartbreak of being decades ahead of your time.

Charles R. Saunders loved Tarzan as a kid, but he was also repulsed by the racism in those books since Charles was Black. So, he created a counter narrative about a warrior named Imaro who lived in a fictionalized version of precolonial Africa. Charles had invented a new subgenre of sword and sorcer

06/05/2026

This week, we take a trip through pop culture to see how the archetype of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde keeps repeating with variations from Bruce Banner and The Hulk to Norman Bates and Mother to The Nutty Professor and Buddy Love.

Pop culture has been full of Jekylls and Hydes: Bruce Banner and The Hulk, Norman Bates and Mother, Walter White and Heisenberg, The Nutty Professor and Buddy Love. They all echo the archetype that Robert Lous Stevenson established 140 years ago in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I expl

22/04/2026

John Watson is a doctor and podcaster in London. His flatmate Sherlock Holmes is a consulting detective. You can hear about their adventures in the true crime podcast Sherlock & Co. Sound familiar? I talk with the show’s creators Joel Emery and Adam Jarrell about why a fake documentary audio drama is the perfect format to update Arthur Conan Doyle's stories.

John Watson is a former army doctor who became a true crime podcaster when he met a consulting detective named Sherlock Holmes. You can hear about the cases they’ve solved in the podcast Sherlock & Co . Sound familiar? Holmes and Watson may have been enshrined in pop culture for over 130 ye

15/04/2026

This is a brilliant concept. A photographer took pictures of cosplayers with their families around the world. It's the perfect visual metaphor for what it feels like to grow up as a SFF geek in a family that's normal by their cultural standards.

08/04/2026

Pop the champagne! Stephanie and I celebrate our 300th episode by looking back on how this journey has shaped us -- complete with 1980s sitcom-style flashbacks.

Imaginary Worlds has reached another milestone – 300 episodes! We already celebrated the 200th episode and the 10th anniversary of the show, but in those episodes, we mostly kept the spotlight off ourselves. This time around, my assistant producer Stephanie Billman and I reflect on how the podcast...

25/03/2026

This week, I talked with James Ortiz – the puppeteer of Rocky in Project Hail Mary. We discuss how he built his team of puppeteers or "Rocketeers," and why it was so challenging to control a five-legged puppet while doing improv with Ryan Gosling.

When I interviewed Andy Weir in 2021 about his novel Project Hail Mary, he told me that the movie adaptation was already being planned starring Ryan Gosling. The big question was how would they bring the alien character of Rocky to life. Would they use CGI or practical effects? Now that the film i

11/03/2026

In honor of the 60th Anniversary of Star Trek and Women’s History Month, we look at the voyages of D.C. Fontana – the trailblazing screenwriter who helped Star Trek go where television had never gone before.

Gene Roddenberry’s name is synonymous with Star Trek, but he relied on a team to bring his vision to life. Most of his writers were men with one exception, the trailblazing Dorothy Fontana. Professionally, she went by D.C. Fontana to counter the belief that women couldn’t write genres like war, ...

11/03/2026

The IW merch store is having a sale -- 27% off over the next few days! Get your Spring hats, t-shirts, shorts, and even socks with really cool designs. 👕👚🩳🧦🧢

Imaginary Worlds is a podcast about science fiction and other fantasy genres hosted by Eric Molinsky

25/02/2026

Many of the DC superheroes have been reinvented in a dark parallel world called the Absolute Universe, and the fans can't get enough of it. I talked with DC Comics editors Chris Conroy and Katie Kubert, and Absolute Wonder Woman writer Kelly Thompson about why the Absolute comics have resonated so strongly with fans and how this parallel world has thematic parallels with our own.

Imagine if Bruce Wayne had no money, if Superman grew up on Krypton and came to Earth with emotional scars, or if Wonder Woman had been raised in Hell. Welcome to the Absolute Universe – a dark parallel universe created by DC Comics in 2024. The idea of a parallel universe is not new to comic book...