Open World Chat

John and Jim are joined by RPG company Paizo (Pathfinder, Starfinder) staffer Jenny Jarzabski (a member of the United Paizo Workers union) and freelancer Joe Blomquist to discuss the recent successful organizing campaign at the company. We discuss their efforts, along with the burgeoning organizing campaign at Image comics -- and what future efforts to organize at more "geek" companies might look like.

Caitlin Rosberg joins Jim and John to discuss the Dune film and the sometimes uneasy handshake between movie adaptations and their source material with a few digressions along the way, of course (who should play Alia in the next Dune movie?).

George Marston of GamesRadar+ is here to explain Non-Fungible Tokens to you. We discuss their appeal, their limitations, and their implications to artists, the comics industry, and the very nature of the art marketplace - as well as some perhaps unexpected environmental impacts...

DC Fandome has passed. What sounds good? What looked good? What looked "meh," and what's the buzz around the Milestone Initiative, the new bisexual Superman, and more.

Writer and Independent Film Actor (Emanation, Broken Compass) Zena Marie Therrien, MSW,  on where Latinas stand in Hollywood's move toward diversity (in genre and non-genre films and TV alike). Zena shares her thoughts on roles, on the invisible nature of Latinas in the industry, how studios treat Latin culture and filmmakers, and more.

John and Special Guest Co-host Maryscott O'Connor break out of OWC's usual paradigm for an in-depth discussion with Author, Scholar, and Diplomat Peter Galbraith. From the perspective of his own involvement in the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, Peter shares his uniquely qualified analysis of what went wrong, and what an ethical foreign intervention should look like. (Yes, we were originally going to discuss the Prime Directive, but the universe had other ideas).

John and Liane talk with Nathan White, the District Archaeologist and Tribal Liaison, US Army Corps of Engineers, Huntington District. We discuss portrayals of archaeology and archeologists in genre film, how those portrayals perpetuate stereotypes and promote marginalization of indigenous peoples, and how the actual practice or archeology over the decades has itself been responsible for these and worse.

Steve Benen joins us to discuss his book The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics, living with a post-policy Republican Party, and blogging. We talk about Steve's early days as a blogger and podcaster, what's changed about our politics since the Trump presidency, why there is reason for optimism... and since this is OWC, we also talk some sci fi and comics.

Sean and Andrew join John and Liane for a deep dive into the art vs. artist debate, looking at H.P. Lovecraft and his life, but also discussing how Lovecraft's work has been re-imagined in work such as Lovecraft Country, We also expand the discussion to look at the contemporary art-vs-artist poster boy, Joss Whedon, Sean and Andrew also discuss some of the projects they're working on,before the whole things morphs into a conversation about RPGs (Call of Cthulhu, anyone?).

Liane and I have a conversation with Alexander Dunst, Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Paderborn in Germany. Alex is a PKD scholar and edited the book of essays The World According to Philip K. Dick.  PKD's  work has, of course, been adapted into several Hollywood films (for better and for worse). and our discussion of the impact and implications of his work brings us to topics such as Artificial intelligence, the stigma of mental illness -- and we get to say "libertarian anarcho pacifist," ... nd how cool is that? Here's the conversation...