Imaginary Worlds

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 sections of their interviews in this bonus episode of outtakes.

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Thor and Loki have become pop culture icons thanks to Marvel. But the influence of Norse mythology on contemporary fantasy runs through Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and so much more. University of Chicago professor and author Ada Palmer explains how people misunderstood Norse mythology for centuries, and why it’s so hard to capture the mindset of the Vikings in pop culture. And I talk with University of Oxford professor Carolyne Larrington, author of The Norse Myths That Shape the Way We Think, about how a light Marvel movie and a grimdark fantasy film like The Northman each capture aspects of the mythology in their own ways.

Ada Palmer's a capella album is Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarök by Sassafrass.

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Kritika H. Rao, Shveta Thakrar, Roshani Chokshi, and Ram V are helping to create a new genre. They use elements of their Hindu backgrounds to write fantasy books primarily aimed at a Western marketplace. I talked with them about the challenge of drawing on a diverse religion of beliefs and gods that many Western readers and publishers might be unfamiliar with. Our panel discussion also turned out to be an opportunity for the authors to bond over their favorite deities, the Hindu comics they grew up reading, and the questions they’ve faced about who gets to tell their stories. 

Roshani Chokshi writes the middle-grade series, Aru Shah, and she’s the author of The Star-Touched Queen trilogy of YA novels.

Kritika H. Rao is the author of The Surviving Sky, which will be part of The Rages Trilogy.

Shveta Thakrar is the author of Star Daughter and The Dream Runners. 

Ram V is a comic book writer, and the author of the graphic novel, The Many Deaths of Laila Starr.

Today's episode is brought to you by HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/50imaginary and use code 50imaginary for 50% off plus free shipping.

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We all know the scenario. A nice young family moves into a new house. It’s haunted by an evil spirit. Mayhem ensues. These movies have been reliable box office hits for decades, but they might also be telling us something about the real anxieties of home ownership. I talk with Alexandra West, co-host of the podcast Faculty of Horror, and Dahlia Schweitzer, author of Haunted Homes, about how the history of the American suburbs made their mark on movies like The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist. George R. Olson, showrunner of the Syfy series SurrealEstate, discusses why the heroes of his show are ghost whispering real estate agents. And realtor Cindi Hagley explains how she became an expert in selling stigmatized properties with haunted pasts. 

Also check out the Faculty of Horror episode House Warning.

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John Roesch is a legend in the field of foley sound effects. He mastered the art of creating bespoke sound effects using props or just his body on films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Back to the Future, Frozen, Toy Story, The Matrix, The Dark Knight, Inception, and much of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And John was at the forefront of a revolution in foley sound effects starting with his work on classic Lucas and Spielberg films. We talk about the art of acting with props, the challenge of building upon sounds in an established universe like Star Wars, how they found the sound of Thor’s hammer, the grind of playing Batman’s body double in a video game, and the famous sci-fi film he wished he had worked on.

Today's episode is brought to you by HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/50imaginary and use the code 50imaginary for 50% off plus 15% off the next 2 months.

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35 years ago, Doug Naylor co-created a sitcom called Red Dwarf about the last human left alive in the far future. But the character is not alone. The rest of the crew aboard the ship Red Dwarf includes an annoying hologram, a very helpful android, a very unhelpful A.I. and a cat-person with a great sense of style. The show was considered a huge gamble back then. Sci-fi and comedy were not supposed to mix. But Red Dwarf was a hit – and Doug Naylor has continued to revive the show over and over due to popular demand. I talked with him about why this existential comedy works so well, and how it continues to inspire him to create “emotion bombs.”

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The writers’ and actors’ strikes have disrupted the pipeline of new shows and movies. We’re going to run out of new stuff to watch soon. Our listeners can help with that. They want you know about their favorite unsung gems of sci-fi and fantasy. Some of them were cult hits. Others underperformed at the box office or in the ratings. Maybe it’s time to give them a chance.

In this episode, we hear about The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Odyssey 5, Spaced, Erik the Viking, John Carter, Centaurworld and Wendell & Wild. Our guests also recommend The 13th Warrior, Jerimiah, Babylon 5, and the Syfy mini-series Alice.

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We’ve all had this experience. We get hooked on a show. We fall in love with the characters. We can’t stop thinking about them in between episodes. Then it gets cancelled or rushed to conclusion. When that happens to a show, it can feel like a relationship has abruptly ended – and a lot of them have ended in recent years. The streaming boom has gone bust. A lot of streaming services invested in sci-fi fantasy shows, hoping the for next Game of Thrones or Stranger Things. So, this wave of cancellations has hit SFF fans hard. We asked our listeners to tell us about the cancellations that broke their hearts in the recent or distant past, and how they’re trying to make sense of unresolved endings.

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Who wouldn’t want a fairy godmother to solve our problems with the flick of a magic wand? We know that’s not a healthy fantasy and yet, fairy godmothers aren’t going away. In fact, they’ve been proliferating in contemporary fantasy novels and reinterpretations of Cinderella. But they don’t look or act like you might expect. I talk with Butler University lecturer Jeana Jorgensen and PhD student Abigail Fine about the origin of fairy godmothers and why they’re ripe for reimagining. And I talk with author Gail Caron Levine about her groundbreaking novel Ella Enchanted, which broke the mold on fairy tales. Featuring readings from Aliza Pearl.

Jeana Jorgensen's latest book is Fairy Tales 101: An Accessible Introduction to Fairy Tales.

In this episode we discussed Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron and Kissing the Witch by Emma Donahue. Other contemporary novels with fairy godmother-type characters include Geekerella by Ashley Poston, Shadows on The Moon by Zoe Marriott, Ash by Malinda Lo, Ash & Bramble by Sarah Prineas, and Disenchanted: The Trials of Cinderella by Megan Morrison.

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These ships feel like old friends – The Enterprise, the Millennium Falcon, Battlestar Galactica, Serenity, The Rosinante. But would any of them actually work in space? I talk with NASA astrophysicist Jessie Christiansen, JPL planetary scientist Kevin Hand and Boeing engineer Eric Primm talk about how we would get to the stars, what those ships would actually look like, why the Millennium Falcon probably couldn’t have made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, and whether the X-Wing fighter should be a drone.

This week's episode is sponsored by Express VPN. We’re proud to be featured on Podurama this month.

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