Our Opinions Are Correct
Explore the meaning of science fiction, and how it's relevant to real-life science and society. Your hosts are Annalee Newitz, a science journalist who writes science fiction, and Charlie Jane Anders, a science fiction writer who is obsessed with science. Every two weeks, we take deep dives into science fiction books, movies, television, and comics that will expand your mind -- and maybe change your life
- Update frequency
- every 13 days
- Average duration
- 45 minutes
- Episodes
- 204
- Years Active
- 2018 - 2025
Encore Episode: Silicon Valley vs. Science Fiction: ChatGPT
For our summer vacation, we're re-upping the first in our "Silicon Valley vs. Science Fiction" series from 2023, about how Silicon Valley appropriates and misinterprets science fiction. Silicon Valle…
Encore Episode: Obsessed with Battlestar Galactica
Charlie Jane and Annalee are on book tour(s), so we're re-upping one of our favorite episodes from 2023. At that time, we were celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the rebooted version of Battles…
Robots! Witches! Annalee and Charlie Jane talk about their new books
It's a double book birthday! Annalee has just released Automatic Noodle, a wonderfully cozy book about robots who've survived a devastating war and now just want to run a noodle restaurant. And in 12…
Murderbot and the Stories That Heal Us
It's scary out there — so thank goodness we're taking comfort in some wondrous books, TV shows, comics and movies. What makes a story comforting? And why is a dark horror story sometimes better comfo…
The Invisible Chain that Holds Us Together (w/ Alexis Madrigal)
We keep hearing about the supply chain lately... but what is it? And how do all these shipping containers moving around the world shape our lives? We talk to Alexis Madrigal, author of the brand new …
Cute Body Horror
We’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we’re talking to Cirocco Dunlap, the showrunner of The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy, easily one of our favorite shows right now…
Public Health Is a Utopian Vision (with Naseem Jamnia and Natasha O'Brown)
Public health is a vital part of keeping all of us safe — but what does it mean, and where did the concept come from? Special guest host Naseem Jamnia breaks it down for us, and tells us about some f…
Simulating Earth and Politicizing Science
It's the end of science as we know it in America. As the U.S. government dismantles science agencies and slashes budgets for health and environmental research, we talk about what it means to politici…
The Power of Protest (w/ andré carrington)
It's time to rise up. That's why we’re talking about the power of protest, in real life but also in fiction. Indeed, the act of writing science fiction can itself be a protest, and sometimes it’s jus…
Too Bad About the Internet (with Anil Dash)
Where did the Internet go wrong, and how do we fix it? To find out more, we talk to entrepreneur and activist Anil Dash about the alternate history of technology. But first, we talk about why Doctor …
Some really weird shit you didn't know about taxes
Why are taxes the secret weapon in so many science fiction and fantasy stories? And why the heck do archaeologists measure the complexity of ancient civilizations partly by looking at their taxation …
Severance and the New Hellscape (w/ Carl Zimmer)
Welcome to the new dystopian era. The series Severance, which just finished its second season, is perhaps the best-known of a fresh crop of dark, absurdist stories that tackle the horrors of high-tec…
Hip Hop x Cyberpunk (with clipping.)
Hip hop group clipping. has just released a brilliant new cyberpunk-inspired album, Dead Channel Sky, and we're talking to the members about how hip hop and cyberpunk have inspired each other from t…
"Interior Chinatown" Just Became a Very Weird TV Show (with Charles Yu)
In his award-winning novel Interior Chinatown, Charles Yu took a scalpel to television's tropes and stereotypes. Now he explains to us how he managed to turn that book into a brilliant, challenging T…
Forced Feminization and Cute Robots
We're catching you up on all the movies we've been watching recently, from The Substance to The Wild Robot, and a few themes emerged. One is that there are an awful lot of feminists who are mad about…
No, We Don't Live in a F---ing Simulation!
It's a fun thought experiment: what if the universe is a simulation, and nothing around us is real? But lately, some of the most powerful people in tech (and politics) have been saying they believe t…
Never Forget Where We Came From (with Tananarive Due and Nicola Griffith)
History is on our minds lately. In this episode, we talk to two incredible authors who recreate history in their work. Tananarive Due draws on her own family's experience in her award-winning novel T…
The Truth About Gigantic Objects in Space (with Sarah Parcak)
From Ringworld to Rama, space is full of mysterious giant objects created by ancient civilizations. Do these gorgeous macrostructures bring poetry to the prosaic genre of space opera? Or do we love t…
Encore Episode: Fascism and Book Bans (with Maggie Tokuda-Hall)
Here's one of our favorite episodes from 2024 — it's about the mass psychology of fascism, plus how to fight book bans. We talk to friend of the pod Maggie Tokuda-Hall from the wondrous organization …
Manufacturing loneliness
Are we getting toxic messages from speculative fiction about what it means to be alone? We're tackling troubling tropes and eviscerating myths about where loneliness comes from. Later in the episode,…