Year One
- Playing God in Your Spare Time: Introducing Year 1 hosts Marshall Ryan Maresca, Rowenna Miller, and Alexandra Rowland, and asking the question: When it comes to worldbuilding, where do you even start?
- Terra Firma and the Firmament: Maps, solar systems, and geology
- As Narrated by David Attenborough: Flora and fauna
- Civilization and You, with guest Fonda Lee: Basics of civilization-creating
- People in a Petri Dish: Populations and demographics
- An Interlude with Spreadsheets, with guest Jenn Lyons: Organizing your worldbuilding
- Just Shake and Add Magic: Building systems of magic
- A Trip over the Tongue: Language, conlangs, and weird words
- Picking the Ties that Bind, with guest RJ Theodore: Family structures
- Death Becomes Us: Mortality, morbidity, and funeral customs
- Threads of Life: Fiber arts
- The Play's the Thing, with (then-)guest Cass Morris: Popular culture and entertainment
- And Now a Reading from the Sacred Text, with guest Tasha Suri: Religious and sacred practices
- Have Yourself a Merry Little Something: Holidays and festivities
2020 - Potpourri: Answering listener questions
- A Game of Anything but Thrones: Politics and government structures
- A Brief History of..., with guest S.A. Chakraborty: The long lens of history
- Monuments and Wonders: Wonders of the world, both natural and human-made
- Triskadekaphilia: A deep-dive into one of our invented cultures, the Thirteen Families
- When Two Wizards Love Each Other Very Much, with guest Cat Sebastian: Sex, desire, and relationships
- Medicine and the Concept of the Body, with guest Freya Marske: Medicine, health, and the body
- First We Eat, with (then-)guest Cass Morris: Food and mealtime
- We Are Gathered Together, with guest Tochi Onyebuchi: Ceremonies and rituals
- Dress for the Quest You Want, with guest Melissa Caruso: Clothing and accessories
- Rebel Scum and the Evil Empire, with guest Andrea Stewart: Empires, rebellions, and revolutions
- Take Pride in your Worldbuilding, with guest K.A. Doore: Crafting a queernorm culture
Year Two
- Potpourri 2: 2 Pot, 2 Pourri: Introducing new co-host Cass Morris and answering listener questions
- Framing the Concept: Physical art
- Cornerstones and Building Blocks: Crafting a city
- Fantasy Race and Avoiding Fantasy Racism, with guests K. Tempest Bradford, K.S. Villoso, and Sarah Guan: Interrogating questions of race and racism in fantasy worldbuilding
- Living by the Sword, with guest Michael R. Underwood: Armed combat and military cultures
- There's No Place Like Home, with guest Zoraida Córdova: Domestic spaces and homes
- Disability and Inclusion, with guest Elsa Sjunneson: Designing a fantasy world with disabilities in mind
- The Reluctant Worldbuilder, with guest Mike Chen: What to do when your instincts aren't to overcomplicate your writing life
- The Circle of Life: Youth, aging, and life cycles
- Toil and Trouble: Witches and their particular brand of magic
- Names Are Hard -- A Deep Dive into WFM's Shared World: Applying the considerations from several past episodes to our co-created world
- Writing the Dark Side, with guest Anna Stephens: Antagonists and evil characters
- Three-pourri: Another listener questions episode!
- The Sacred and the Profane, with guest K. B. Wagers: Etiquette, social contracts, sacralization, and cussing
2021 - Myths, Legends, and Other Lies of History, with guests Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms (M.A. Carrick): The stories your characters tell about themselves and their cultures
- Life, Worldbuilding, & Everything, with guest Stina Leicht: The craft of working your worldbuilding into your book
- Getting There is Half the Fun, with guest Kate Elliott: Transportation and vehicles
- Old MacDonald Had a Dragon: Domestic animals and furry companions
- Let's Be Diplomatic: Diplomacy and espionage
- Join in If You Know the Chorus, with guest C. L. Clark: Texts-within-texts
- The Timey-Wimey Episode: The concept, calculation, and charting of the passage of time
- That Belongs in a Museum, with guest Marina Lostetter: Artifacts, relics, and other things to dig up,
- An Immodest Proposal: Nudity, modesty, and everything in-between
- Playing in Someone Else's Sandbox, with guests Delilah Dawson, Tini Howard, David Mack, and Mike Chen: Writing and worldbuilding within established franchises
- Gender, Equality, & Gender Equality, with guest E.J. Beaton: The construction, deconstruction, and reimagination of gender
- Pot4ri: Another listener Q&A episode!
Year Three
- Worldbuilding 301: Revisiting the basics and talking about how to dig deeper and interrogate further!
- Cyberpunk Worldbuilding, with guest PJ Manney: Exploring technology and society in near-alternate-futures
- Epic GrimDarkPunk Romance: Narrative and aesthetic conventions of fantasy subgenres
- Word Building, with guest Sarah Beth Durst: The nitty-gritty of language -- word choice, cadence, conlangs -- and how it affects worldbuilding
- Ask a Necromancer, with guest Amanda Downum: Handling death -- spiritually, emotionally, economically, physically
- L'Etat, C'est... Quoi?, with guest C.L. Polk: Government and the shape of nations
- Oooh, Shiny! Crafting a World from Shiny Ideas: How much weight of worldbuilding will a narrative bear?
- Worldbuilding: The Never-Ending Story: Add-ons, retcons, and other midstream acts of worldbuilding
- Worldbuilding: The Search for Intelligent Life, with guest Martha Wells: Aliens, AI, and other non-human intelligence
- Otherworldly Worldbuilding, with guest Seanan McGuire: Building a multiverse
- It's a Grimdark World After All, with guest Anna Smith Spark: Conventions and misconceptions of the grimdark subgenre
- The Times, They Are A-Changin', with guest Fonda Lee: Cultural diaspora, temporal shifts, geopolitical cross-pollination, and other ways of showing societal change
- Money Makes The Worldbuilding Go ‘Round: Currency, finance, and wealth
- Deep History, with guests Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms (M.A. Carrick): Giving your world lore with deep roots
2022 - WorldCon Minisode: A retrospective and thank-you!
- Potpour-V: We answer listener questions!
- The Sexy Things People Don’t Want You To Think About, with guest Elsa Sjunneson: Obscenity and transgression
- Magical Ethics and Ethical Magics, with guest Kate Heartfield: Rules, regulations, and roguery of magical worldbuilding
- X Marks the Spot, with guest Peng Shepherd: Cartography and maps
- This is Cerulean, Right?, with )then-)guest Natania Barron: Fashion, politics, and power
- In-Line Worldbuilding, with guest Melissa Caruso: Worldbuilding within the process of writing, rewriting, and revising
- FMK Worldbuilding Edition: Making choices about what to include & what to leave out
- Worldbuilding beyond Borders: Citizenship, nationality, and group identification
- Farm to Table Fantasy, with guest Sarah Gailey: Food production and consumption
- Pull a Thread, Build a World, with guest Kritika H. Rao: Finding balance in your worldbuilding ideas
- Reimagining Relationships, with guest Foz Meadows: Questioning what love, family, and marriage can mean
Year Four
- Building Past the Horizon: Filling in beyond the borders of your central nations
- Festivus for the Rest Of Us: Festivals, celebrations, and local traditions
- That’s Just Good Policy, with guest Victor Manibo: Law, order, and enforcement
- From One-Note Worlds to Complete Space Operas, with guest Valerie Valdes: Crafting adventures in spaaaaaaaaaaace
82.5: Live from ArmadilloCon!: A bonus episode! - Using Our Vacation Time: Leisure, relaxation, and travel-for-pleasure
- Make or Break Worldbuilding Deep Dive: The MNG: Decisions about the tentpole concept of our co-created world
- Falling in Love Again... with Worldbuilding, with guest Sara Mueller: Reinvigorating interest in your world
- Live at WorldCon!: Questions from a live audience!
- Building up Hope, with guest Brandon Crilly: Climate fiction and solarpunk
- Hashtag Aesthetic, with guest Mary Robinette Kowal: Developing and defying aesthetic expectations
- Stealing the Best Parts of History, with guest Laura Anne Gilman: Incorporating research and inspiration from history
- The Editor's Take, with guest Brit Hvide: How an editor helps the craft of fitting worldbuilding into a book
- Making the Incredible Credible, with guest Charlaine Harris: Detail work and fitting pieces together
- Ringing in the New Year: Concepts of time and associated traditions
2023 - Queries and Quandaries: Answering questions and addressing conundrums from listeners
- Natural and Supernatural Disasters: Earthly and unearthly chaos
- Building and Bending Gender, with guest G.R. Macallister: Incorporating diverse ideas about gender into a world
- The Big Blue World, with guest Darcie Little Badger: Oceanic worldbuilding
- Perfect Pairing, with guest Suyi Davies Okungbowa: Intersectionality, levers of power, and the matrix of identity
- Mysterious Worlds, with guest Andrea Stewart: Lost civilizations, covert cabals, prowling cryptids, and other unexplained phenomena
- Connect the Dots: Applying matrices of identity, power, and privilege to our co-built world
- The Game is Afoot, with guests Cate Osborn, Andrew Nome, and Sharang Biswas: Worldbuilding in, for, and through tabletop role-playing games!
- All About the Zhuzh: Making choices about integrating magic into a world
- Side Dishes and Second Helpings, with guest Chana Porter: Food culture, scarcity, and abundance
- It Builds Character, with guest Kritika H. Rao: How worlds shape characters -- and how characters can shape worlds
- Riffing on the Real World, with guest Kat Howard: Flicking reality's dominos
Year Five
- We're Going on an Adventure!: Worldbuilding highs and lows, and launching a Kickstarter!
- Lighten Up: Making your World a Little Grin-Dark, with guest M. J. Kuhn: Finding the humor inherent in the world
- Livin' on a Prayer: Religion, Worldview, and the Individual
- The Myth, The Legend, The Cultural Impacts, with guest Ehigbor Okosun: The role of myth in culture and tradition
- Seer-iously: Religion, Prophecy, Politics and Tradition, with guest Aparna Verma: Religion as a motivating factor for characters & society
- In Your Leisure Time, with guest Matt Wallace: Hobbies and relaxation
- Let’s Pick a Fight, with guest S. L. Huang: Balancing realism & fantasy in martial matters
- Whirlwind Worldbuilding, with guest James L. Sutter: Quick-and-dirty worldbuilding methods
- Trust Your Instincts, with guest Seanan McGuire: Going with what feels right
- The St Crispin’s Day Special, with guest Anna Smith Spark: Language and leadership
- When Not Writing Is Writing, with guest Mur Lafferty: How life feeds worldbuilding
- Choosing, Presuming, and Decision Fatigue: For better or worse, it's all in your hands
- More Queries and Quandaries: A listener Q&A episode!
- Passing the Torch: An important announcement and a look to the future
2024 - Worldbuilding Philosophy and Practices: Getting to know new co-host Natania Barron!
- World Bibles and the Gospel According to Tolkien: Our favorite tools for tracking our worldbuilding
- Brave New Worlds, with guests Fonda Lee and Melissa Caruso: How to leave a well-established world to start a new one
- Now Kiss: Building Romance into Your Worlds, with guest Gwenda Bond: Building a world ripe for all your favorite romantic tropes
- Worldbuilding in Your Underpants, with guest John Hartness: A peek behind the publishing curtain
- Worldbuilding in Review, with guest Paul Weimer: From the reader's POV
- Monstrous Worldbuilding, with guest John Wiswell: Monsters and what they tell us about a society's fears and biases
- When Worldbuilding Gets Wild, with guest Premee Mohamed: Critters, creatures, and things that crawl
- Expanding Worlds: Applying recent topics to the world of the MNG
- The Carousel of Progress: Building history, historical ages and generational shifts
- Motorcycles and Magic, with guest Hana Lee: Incorporating technology into a magical world
- Large-Scale Worldbuilding for Character-Centric Worlds, with guest Rebecca Roanhorse: Character-centric scopes while still crafting an expansive world
Year Six - Projects!: Stuff we've been working on!
- Just a Small-Town Worldbuild, with guest Cherie Priest: Building insular communities
- The Devil in the Details, with guest M.J. Kuhn: Spreadsheets, templates, charts, and other organizational tools
- Print the Legend: Weaving Myth and History into One, with guest Nalo Hopkinson: Mythology, folklore, and history
- Philosophical Acts of Translation, with guest Ken Liu: The transmission of stories and ideas
- Live from WorldCon in Glasgow!: A Q&A with an amazing audience
- Smile and Be a Villain, with guest Chloe Gong: Villains to fit your world
- Crunchy Questions: Back to Basics: The Physical World
- 2 Crunchy, 2 Curious: Back to Basics: The World of People
- Practical Magic, with guest and former co-host Rowenna Miller: Back to Basics: Magic
- More Perfect Unions: Back to Basics: Government
- Law & Order (DUN DUN): Back to Basics: Laws
- Children of the Revolution: Back to Basics: Rebellions and Revolutions
Version: 20241125