Pop culture has been full of Jekylls and Hydes: Bruce Banner and The Hulk, Norman Bates and Mother, Walter White and Heisenberg, The Nutty Professor and Buddy Love. They all echo the archetype that Robert Lous Stevenson established 140 years ago in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I explore at how these variations reflect different ideas about duality, depending on how “bad” the Hydes are and what the Jekylls choose to do about their alter egos. Lewis University professor Jamil Mustafa draws parallels between the original 1886 novel and modern stories like Twin Peaks, Fight Club, and Black Swan. Plus, I talk with Yannie ten Broeke, who teaches psychology at Touro University, about why the Jekyll and Hyde archetype reflects how little we understand our own minds.

This episode is sponsored by There Is No Antimemetics Division, the national bestselling science-fiction horror novel by qntm. Get your copy now wherever books and audiobooks are sold.

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John Watson is a former army doctor who became a true crime podcaster when he met a consulting detective named Sherlock Holmes. You can hear about the cases they’ve solved in the podcast Sherlock & Co. Sound familiar? Holmes and Watson may have been enshrined in pop culture for over 130 years. But their adventures feel fresh and relevant in the audio drama Sherlock & Co – which masquerades as a true crime podcast. I talked with the creators of the show, Joel Emery and Adam Jarrell, who set out to adapt and modernize the entire Sherlock Holmes canon written by Arthur Conan Doyle, except not in its original chronological order. We discuss the challenge of reimagining these characters in the 21st century (and not being the first to do so), and why the bromance between Holmes and Watson plays into timeless questions around masculinity and how guys express their emotions.

This episode is sponsored by IngramSpark. Get 15% off your first order of 15 more books at IngramSpark using the code IMAGINARY15.

To support the show, you can donate on Patreon where you get access to the ad-free version and our companion show Between Imaginary Worlds. You can also buy Imaginary Worlds merchandise at our online store.

My most recent Between imaginary Worlds episode, I interviewed the creator of the larp Acheron IV. You can sign up here to play the larp in Philadelphia over Memorial Day weekend.

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Imaginary Worlds has reached another milestone – 300 episodes! We already celebrated the 200th episode and the 10th anniversary of the show, but in those episodes, we mostly kept the spotlight off ourselves. This time around, my assistant producer Stephanie Billman and I reflect on how the podcast has impacted us. I often joke that the show feels like a train that I’m riding, and I’m laying down tracks as I go. Sometimes those tracks stretch far in the distance, but other times I can see the end of the line and wonder if this train is going to Wile E. Coyote off a cliff. But we have managed to make it this far thanks to a lot of imagination, willpower and chemistry.   This episode is sponsored by Mizzen + Main and Audible.

•  Our listeners get 20% off their first purchase at mizzenandmain.com using the promo code IMAGINARY20.   
• Listen to the audiobook of Project Hail Mary at Audible.com/hailmary.  

To support the show, you can donate on Patreon where you get access to the ad-free version and our companion show Between Imaginary Worlds. You can also buy Imaginary Worlds merchandise at our online store.

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When I interviewed Andy Weir in 2021 about his novel Project Hail Mary, he told me that the movie adaptation was already being planned starring Ryan Gosling. The big question was how would they bring the alien character of Rocky to life. Would they use CGI or practical effects? Now that the film is in theaters, we have the answer. While there is some use of digital effects, Rocky is mostly performed by the puppeteer James Ortiz. James has a deep background in theater but he had never worked on a film before, let alone a sci-fi blockbuster. I talked with James about the delicate balance of operating an incredibly sophisticated five-legged puppet while giving Rocky a distinct personality and building a rapport with Ryan Gosling, who relies heavily on improvisation.  

This episode is sponsored by IngramSpark and Audible.  

• Get 15% off your first order of 15 more books at IngramSpark using the code IMAGINARY15. This offer expires at the end of the year.
• Listen to the audiobook of Project Hail Mary at Audible.com/hailmary.

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Gene Roddenberry’s name is synonymous with Star Trek, but he relied on a team to bring his vision to life. Most of his writers were men with one exception, the trailblazing Dorothy Fontana. Professionally, she went by D.C. Fontana to counter the belief that women couldn’t write genres like war, Westerns or sci-fi. Fontana became story editor and wrote some of the most beloved episodes of The Original Series, became the de facto showrunner on The Animated Series, and helped launch The Next Generation. She excelled at building character relationships and alien species – especially Vulcans – and worked closely with Leonard Nimoy to develop Spock. I talk with writers and podcasters Jarrah Hodge, Ian Spelling, Brian Drew and Laurie Ulster about how Fontana quietly shaped a franchise and influenced generations of fans through Star Trek’s 60th anniversary.

Special thanks to The Writers Guild Foundation Archive for clips of D.C. Fontana from their series, The Writer Speaks.

This episode is sponsored by Mizzen + Main. Our listeners get 20% off their first purchase at mizzenandmain.com using the promo code IMAGINARY20.

To support Imaginary Worlds, you can donate to the show on Patreon and receive bonus extras, or buy the cool merchandise at our online store!

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Imagine if Bruce Wayne had no money, if Superman grew up on Krypton and came to Earth with emotional scars, or if Wonder Woman had been raised in Hell. Welcome to the Absolute Universe – a dark parallel universe created by DC Comics in 2024. The idea of a parallel universe is not new to comic books, but what is surprising has been the success of the Absolute Universe. Some of the Absolute versions of superheroes have been outselling the comics that take place in DC’s mainline universe. I talk with Executive Editor Chris Conroy and Group Editor Katie Kubert about how they’ve overseen the team of artists and writers at DC crafting this dark universe with thematic parallels to our own world. And I talk with writer Kelly Thompson about how she came up with Absolute Wonder Woman and why the comic is resonating with so many fans.

This episode is sponsored by Surfshark. Go to https://surfshark.com/worlds or use the code WORLDS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

To support the show, you can donate on Patreon where you get access to the ad-free version and our companion show Between Imaginary Worlds. You can also buy Imaginary Worlds merchandise at our online store.

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Sinners got a historic 16 Academy Award nominations, which was remarkable for a film with vampires. But the film is also a rich exploration of race, religion, culture and music in 1930s Mississippi. Professor Yvonne Chireau played a key role behind the scenes. She’s a historian of the spiritual tradition of hoodoo. Since hoodoo and voodoo have long been reduced to horror tropes, she was brought on as a consultant. She also worked with actress Wunmi Mosaku, who earned an Academy Award nomination for playing the character Annie, a conjure practitioner in the story. I also talk with Professor Kinitra Brooks, who is writing a book on conjure women. She explains why Annie’s wisdom, bravery and romance felt validating for her – partly because Kinitra’s great-grandmother was a conjure woman.   

This episode is sponsored by Mizzen & Main. Get 20% off your first purchase at mizzenandmain.com with the promo code IMAGINARY20.

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Scarlet Hollow is a successful indie video game – and that’s no small feat. It’s been a long journey, and the game is made almost entirely by two people: Abby Howard and Tony Howard-Arias of Black Tabby Games. Along the way, they even took a break to make another hit game called Slay the Princess. I talk with Abby and Tony about how animating Abby’s drawings allowed them to build a game where the players have seemingly endless choices and romance options in a Southern Gothic town under threat from supernatural forces. After a three-year wait, chapter five of Scarlet Hollow is finally being released in February.  

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Darby McDevitt is a narrative director and writer at Ubisoft . He’s worked on multiple games in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, which spans time periods from Ancient Greece to Victorian England. But what does it mean to be a writer on a massive video game where your character is mostly running, climbing, jumping and fighting? The key to his work lies in historical research, but he is sometimes torn between what would actually happen and what pop culture has trained us to expect from different eras of history. We also discuss his new novel, The Halter, which imagines a future where virtual reality is so realistic and addictive that people abandon their real lives and have to be tracked down. This is the first episode in a multi-part series on video games.

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In my annual audio drama, I interview several folklore figures who are synonymous with the holiday season outside America -- but they’ve been overshadowed by the cultural juggernaut of Santa Claus. So they’re on a tour to reintroduce themselves. While I went into this press junket with the best of intensions, some of my interviews went off the rails. It turns out when a supernatural being has been around for centuries, their personal history can get complicated. Featuring André Refig, Vili-Oskari Körkkö, Begonya Ferrer, Teresa Mastrobuono, and Bill Lobley.

There will be no episode of Imaginary Worlds on December 31st. The show will return on January 14th. Happy Holidays, everyone!

This episode is sponsored by MiracleMade and Uncommon Goods

• Get 15% off your order at uncommongoods.com/imaginary.
• Go to TryMiracle.com/IMAGINARY to save over 40%, and when you use promo code IMAGINARY, you’ll get an extra 20% off plus a free 3-piece towel set.

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When I was growing up, Bigfoot appeared regularly on the covers of supermarket tabloids, so I assumed he was a joke. But I’ve discovered that he’s part of a larger and even stranger world of cryptids – creatures that people believe are real but haven’t been scientifically verified. Cryptids are having a cultural moment, and they’re a vital part of folklore. Native Alaskan storyteller James Dommek Jr. discusses his podcast Alaska Is The Center of The Universe and his audiobook Midnight Son. James has been collecting tribal stories about cryptids because he sees them as cultural treasures that need to be preserved. I also talk with J.W. Ocker, author of The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and Monsters, about why so many small towns in the U.S. are embracing their local cryptids as a last ditch effort to revitalize their economies. This episode is sponsored by MiracleMade and Uncommon Goods

•  Get 15% off your order at uncommongoods.com/imaginary.
•  Go to TryMiracle.com/IMAGINARY to save over 40%, and when you use promo code IMAGINARY, you’ll get an extra 20% off plus a free 3-piece towel set.

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