Our Opinions Are Correct

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 Brave NoiseCat about the movement to explore the...

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 personalities and even humanoid bodies. Why do we...

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 director who's been working on virtual reality porn, to...

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 Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Middleman, Lost, The Dark...

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 escapist for some people, but not for others? And how dark...

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 workout routines (Arrow's salmon ladder!?), and...

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 genre. We talk Alyssa Cole, author of the Off the Grid...

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, we've got recommendations for over a dozen more...

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's about saving the world of making a cup of tea. So...

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 Beginning at the End, about how science fiction uses...