On this month’s episode of Future Tense Fiction, host Maddie Stone talks to Janelle Shane about her short story “The Skeleton Crew.” The House of A.I. is a next-level haunted house: In it, a suite of advanced A.I.s read visitors’ facial expressions to generate perfectly tailored scares. Or at least, that’s what the marketing materials want you to believe. It turns out, the house is actually operated by a group of underpaid gig workers, tasked with posing as spooky A.I.s as they guide visitors...

On this month’s episode of Future Tense Fiction, host Maddie Stone talks to Andrew Silverman about his short story “Furgen.” Tucker, the story’s canine protagonist, is the center of his owner Caro’s world. When Caro buys an A.I.-enabled dog trainer that promises to help both her and Tucker live their best lives, everything starts to fall into place—the A.I. takes care of Tucker when he’s sick, trains him to walk without a leash, and even helps Caro get a girlfriend. But as Tucker’s bond with...

On this month’s episode of Future Tense Fiction, host Maddie Stone talks to Matt Bell about his short story “Empathy Hour.” In the story’s climate-change-ravaged future, society’s wealthiest are whisked away to luxurious, self-contained cities. Once there, they entertain themselves with a carefully crafted reality show meant to assuage their guilt about the climate refugees they’ve left behind. But then, someone breaks into their airbrushed world, lifting the lid on what hides underneath...

On this month’s episode of Future Tense Fiction, host Maddie Stone talks to Justina Ireland about her short story “Collateral Damage.” The story follows a group of soldiers deployed alongside TED, the Army’s first self-aware combat drone. TED is relentlessly efficient, quickly outpacing its human counterparts—and leaving them worried for their jobs. But when a wrong call from the clunky robot puts soldiers’ lives at risk, they realize just how hard it is to program for battlefield...

On this month’s episode of Future Tense Fiction, host Maddie Stone talks to David Iserson about “This, but Again.” The story follows Marcus, who is forced to relive his life over and over again in a never-ending computer simulation. Thanks to a glitch, Marcus already knows everything that will happen—but he can change almost nothing. That is until he meets Sara, who helps him break from the simulation’s script. But that, as you might expect, is not without consequences.After the story,...

On this month’s episode of Future Tense Fiction, host Maddie Stone talks to Annalee Newitz about “When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis.” Annalee’s short story follows a disease-fighting robot—and its companions, both human and crow—on a quest to track an outbreak and develop a vaccine before it's too late. The story was published in December 2018, but now, three years after the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, it offers a look at how public health responses could better reflect the needs...

When you imagine how science and technology will reshape our future, does it excite you, or scare you, or both? Each month, the Future Tense Fiction podcast will introduce you to a short work of science fiction, one that will challenge, surprise and intrigue you. Then host Maddie Stone will talk with the author to explore how their own experiences with technology—from smart weapons, to electronic pets, to virtual reality—informed their writing and their vision. That’s every month on Future...

In this sixth and final episode of Lend Me Your Ears, host Isaac Butler talks to the Public Shakespeare Initiative’s Michael Sexton, Villanova professor John-Paul Spiro, Brooklyn College professor Roy Tsao, and theater critic Helen Shaw about the themes of populism, political authenticity, and the body in Shakespeare’s final tragedy, Coriolanus.The actors in this episode are Geordie Broadwater as Coriolanus, Sean Williams as Menenius, Daryl Lathon as Sicinius, David Rosenberg as Brutus, and...

Othello isn’t just a play about race, toxic masculinity, and the nature of identity—it’s a play that has influenced our own views on race throughout the centuries. But what did race mean in early 17th-century London? In this fifth episode of Lend Me Your Ears, host Isaac Butler talks to Queen Mary University of London professor Jerry Brotton, Barnard College professor Kim Hall, and Arizona State University associate dean Ayanna Thompson about the history surrounding Othello and what it means...

Five hundred years before #MeToo, Shakespeare wrote his darkest comedy, a story of religion, sexual coercion, and the nature of justice.In this fourth episode of Lend Me Your Ears, host Isaac Butler talks to theater critic Helen Shaw, Villanova University professor John Paul Spiro, and UCLA professor Claire McEachern about Measure for Measure, its troubling situations and conflicts, and why it’s still difficult to reckon with today.The actors in this episode are Geordie Broadwater as Duke...

If a nation can be thought of as a family, what happens when the family running the nation falls apart? At the exact moment that King James I wanted to unite England and Scotland, Shakespeare answered this question with his masterpiece of tyranny, madness, and betrayal: King Lear. In this third episode of Lend Me Your Ears, host Isaac Butler talks to theater critic Helen Shaw, Yale English professor David Kastan, and University of Roehampton professor Clare McManus about the themes of...

Richard II is God’s anointed representative on Earth, but by the end of the play that bears his name, he’s dead and his cousin sits on his throne. This is the story of how Shakespeare used English history to ask still-relevant questions about legitimacy, and about how a performance of Richard II played a role in the last aristocratic rebellion against the English crown.In this second episode of Lend Me Your Ears, host Isaac Butler talks to University of Richmond professor Kristin Bezio,...

Slate Plus members get a bonus episode of Lend Me Your Ears every month. Here, we offer a preview of the Julius Caesar extra, in which Isaac Butler, The Handmaid's Tale screenwriter Dorothy Fortenberry, and Vanity Fair film critic K. Austin Collins chat about the themes of elitism and the power of persuasion in the play.To listen to the full episode—plus receive benefits like ad-free Slate podcasts and discounts to Slate Live events—sign up for Slate Plus at slate.com/shakespeare.Lend Me Your...

Lend Me Your Ears is a six-part podcast miniseries exploring how Shakespeare’s works have shaped our modern views on politics. Each month, host Isaac Butler will dig into a different Shakespeare play to explore how Shakespeare was responding to his current events, and how they map onto our own.In this first episode, Lend Me Your Ears is looking at one of Shakespeare’s most accessible works: Julius Caesar. Why was the Bard so fascinated with the fall of the Roman Republic? Why do we tend to...