Imaginary Worlds

Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey is part of a long line of film adaptations, but Homer’s epic poem has quietly shaped another medium: role-playing games. The structure of The Odyssey is practically a blueprint for tabletop and video game RPGs from the ‘boss fights’ with fantasy creatures to the way Odysseus levels up through the tale. Professor Roger Travis explains how ancient bards engaged in a similar type of immersive storytelling as game masters today. Laura Jenkinson-Brown argues that Odysseus’s choices are like a dialogue tree in a choose-your-own-adventure book. That’s why she wrote one called “You Are Odysseus. Plus, John Haygood and Jonathan Drake tell me how they’ve created tabletop role-playing games that tap into Greek myths and reward players for embracing the values of the Homeric world.

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In honor of America's 250th anniversary, we're continuing our mini-series on iconic American toys and games that took on lives of their own. Strong National Museum of Play curators Michelle Parnett-Dwer and Mirek Stolee, along with game designer and author Tim Walsh, join me to unpack how Silly Putty, Twister, and Monopoly slipped between the complicated world of adults and the realm of childhood. HSE University professor Roman Abramov tells me how Soviet kids in the '80s built their own DIY versions of Monopoly behind the Iron Curtain. And I travel back to middle school to relive my role in a children's theater group that staged an original musical about Monopoly that was also a critique of capitalism.

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In honor of the 250th anniversary of the USA, we are doing a series of mini stories across two episodes that explore American toys and games. This week, we look at early childhood objects that became vehicles of the imagination. I talk with Michelle Parnett-Dwyer, senior curator at the Strong National Museum of Play, about how the origin of the Radio Flyer Wagon. Author Michael Kimmel tells me about his great-grand uncle who invented the teddy bear with a little help from the 26th president. I talk with Sara Broussard, director of the Houston Toy Museum, about the complicated history of Cabbage Patch Kids and my assistant producer Stephanie Billman recounts her obsession with the doll that adults were literally fighting over in the mid-1980s.

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Anime and manga are a global phenomenon, and their popularity continues to grow. Many of these stories are populated by supernatural beings called yōkai. Even though yōkai can be portrayed as ghosts, demons, or monsters, they're rarely purely good or evil. We trace the history of yōkai from ancient folklore to Studio Ghibli films and shows like Dan Da Dan. I talk with scholars Kaitlyn Ugoretz, Deborah Shamoon, and Michael Dylan Foster about why these supernatural beings have captured people's imaginations, how they became central to modern pop culture, and the role they play in Japan even in times of national emergency.

Deborah’s book, “Text and Image: Making Meaning in Manga and
Comics” is available in the Fall.

Kaitlyn’s YouTube channel is Eat Pray Anime.

Michael Dylan Foster wrote several books on yōkai

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Charles R. Saunders loved Tarzan as a kid, but he was also repulsed by the racism in those books since Charles was Black. So he created a counter narrative about a warrior named Imaro who lived in a fictionalized version of precolonial Africa. Charles had invented a new subgenre of sword and sorcery that he called sword and soul. His books were groundbreaking in the 1980s, but he was also way ahead of his time. I talk with Milton Davis, Sheree Renée Thomas and Troy Wiggins about a movement among Black fantasy writers today to reclaim Charles and his work. I also talk with journalist Jon Tattrie, who wrote a biography about Charles called To Leave a Warrior Behind.  

This episode is sponsored by IngramSpark. 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.

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