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The penis isn't what you think it is.  We talk to Emily Willingham, author of Phallacy: Life Lessons From the Animal Penis, about what the incredible diversity of reproductive organs among non-human …

Stories about indigenous people in the Americas often focus on the past, as if there aren't hundreds of indigenous communities alive today. We talk to author Rebecca Roanhorse and journalist Julian B…

You can't really be a starship captain without falling in deep romantic, and possibly sexual romances with your ship. From Star Trek to A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, starship computers take on …

Virtual reality has been a mainstay of science fiction for a hundred years, but now it's finally a real technology. How does real VR change the stories we tell? Plus we talk to Fivestar, a porn direc…

When two characters have an intense conversation, it deepens a story the way nothing else can. Dialogue is key to worldbuilding, and in this episode we talk to illustrious TV writer and showrunner Ja…

We love escapism, and being able to escape into imaginary worlds is a super important survival strategy in the midst of oppression, pandemics, state-sponsored violence. But what if a story is escapis…

We're sick of the nerds vs. jocks trope in pop culture. In this episode we unpack how that trope came to be, and how to get beyond high school PE trauma. We talk about science fiction that fetishizes…

Romance and speculative fiction have always been closely connected, ever since the days of the pulps. But nowadays, some of the best science fiction and fantasy writing is happening in the romance ge…

In these tough times, we need great TV shows more than ever. We have lots of opinions about nine new series that are making us happy because they're smart, fun, and -- best of all -- colorful! Plus, …

Plots are one of the most important parts of storytelling. They carry our characters forward, and they force our heroes to make choices and to change along the way. Every story has a plot, whether it…

Pandemics are a recurring trope in science fiction, but this turns out to be surprisingly unhelpful when we're facing a contagion in reality. We talk to Mike Chen, author of the new pandemic novel A …

Everything is bloody terrifying right now, what with the pandemic and the would-be strongmen and the natural disasters. So it's easy to retreat into nihilistic storytelling, which revels in the destr…

We would need an eternity to discuss everything that was great and groundbreaking about "The Good Place," which just aired its series finale. We talk about how this weird afterlife comedy combined th…

Science fiction and fantasy are full of feasts, from the banquets in Game of Thrones to all those Klingon delicacies. Why is food so important in SF? To find out, we talked to Mary Anne Mohanraj, aut…

Science fiction and fantasy are full of stories about the power of knowing someone's true name, from the Doctor on Doctor Who to the wizards in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea. But why are names so impo…

The nonology is over. Baby Yoda ate the internet. Fans are screaming about everything. How did Star Wars go from a campy space opera to a trigger for political conflict? We talk to guests Annalise Op…

The phrase "Pulp Fiction" brings to mind Quentin Tarantino's movie of the same name. But real-life pulp fiction is much stranger, and more colorful, than you ever realized. We talk to pulp historian …

Scientific racism means using science to justify racist beliefs or ideas, and it has a long history. In this episode, we explore the origins of scientific racism, and how it's still affecting both ev…

Everybody obsesses about A.I., nanotech, space travel and robots. But the technologies nobody pays much attention to could have an equally significant impact on our world. Like artificial wombs, smar…

Speculative fiction writers talk endlessly about worldbuilding, which sounds like it ought to involve a near-infinite amount of drywall. What is worldbuilding? And why is it so important? Plus we tal…