Shows
Red HorizonsEpisode 10 – The Forest Strikes Back: Colonialism, Collapse, and the Politics of Survival in The Word for World is ForestUrsula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest begins with conquest and ends with a reckoning. Terran colonizers arrive on Athshe to strip its forests, enslaving its people in the name of progress. But when the Athsheans rise up, their fight is not just for survival but for the soul of a world that dreams.
In this episode, we dive into Le Guin’s sharpest critique of empire: how domination reshapes both the oppressed and the oppressor. We explore how colonialism, ecological destruction, and moral awakening intertwine in a story written at the height of t...
2025-10-2450 minRed HorizonsEpisode 9 – The Left Hand of Darkness: Gender, Loyalty, and Survival on the IceOn Gethen, winter never ends. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness imagines a world without fixed gender, where survival depends on loyalty and warmth shared across difference. But this isn’t just a story of ice and endurance. It’s a study of empire, misrecognition, and the walls we carry inside ourselves.
In this episode, we follow Genly Ai and Estraven across the Gobrin Ice, and ask what solidarity looks like when categories collapse. We trace the failures of the envoy, the ethics of loyalty that defies the state, and the radical challenge Le Gui...
2025-10-0336 minRed HorizonsEpisode 8 - The Wall and the World: Anarchism, Exile, and Revolutionary Time in The DispossessedThe Dispossessed is Ursula K. Le Guin’s great anarchist novel. A story about walls, worlds, and what it means to live without masters. In this episode of Red Horizons, we explore Le Guin’s vision of an anarchist society on Anarres, the contradictions of freedom and scarcity, and the shadow cast by Urras, a world of wealth and hierarchy just across the sky.
Through Shevek’s journey, we ask: what does it mean to build a world where solidarity replaces domination? And how do we fight to protect it when empire always presses at the gates?
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2025-09-1938 minRed HorizonsEpisode 7 - The Stars Are Right: Reactionary Realism and the Imperial Imagination of Niven & PournelleLarry Niven and Jerry Pournelle didn’t just write bestselling science fiction, they built survival fantasies for empire. The Mote in God’s Eye, Lucifer’s Hammer, and Footfall wrapped authoritarian order and militarized “realism” in the language of hard science fiction.
In this episode, Red Horizons uncovers how their collaborations transformed fiction into ideology: collapse as stress test, violence as salvation, and continuity of government as the only future worth defending. These weren’t just stories. They were manuals for empire, echoing through Pentagon war games, aerospace strategy, and the survivalist fantasies of billionaires.
🎧 Released Thursd...
2025-09-1238 minRed HorizonsThe Mars Trilogy Ep1-4: Remastered & CompiledI’ve gone back to the beginning. Episodes 1–3 of Red Horizons have been remastered to better match the audio quality of later episodes. No re-recordings — just hours of careful cleanup to polish some of those early rough edges.
To celebrate, I’m releasing a special compilation: all four Mars arc episodes, fully remastered, in one extended release. It’s the definitive version of our deep dive into Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy.
You can also find the individual remastered episodes (1, 2, and 3) in the feed if you want to revisit them separately.
New content retu...
2025-09-052h 29Red HorizonsEpisode 6 – The Logic of Control: Cold War Futures and the Rise of the ARMIn Larry Niven’s Known Space, freedom isn’t crushed by armies or tyrants — it’s quietly managed out of existence. At the center of this system is the ARM, the Amalgamated Regional Militia: a covert force that governs by suppressing risk, smoothing out instability, and keeping the future predictable.
This episode explores how the ARM reflects Cold War paranoia and the rise of technocratic control — from predictive policing to algorithmic governance. We’ll trace how probability becomes policy, how colonies are contained without ever being conquered, and how the dream of perfect stability always collapses into fragility.
2025-08-2941 minRed HorizonsEpisode 5 – Terraforming the Human: Labor, Identity, and the Body in RingworldLarry Niven’s Ringworld is one of science fiction’s grandest spectacles — a megastructure so vast it reshapes our sense of scale. But beneath its glittering surface lies a different kind of engineering: the redesign of humanity itself.
In this episode, Red Horizons dives into Niven’s vision of optimized bodies and sorted identities, where technocracy and eugenics masquerade as progress. We explore how Ringworld’s future imagines labor, gender, race, and disability through the cold lens of “fitness” — and how those same logics echo in our world today, from algorithmic bias to immigration policy.
2025-08-2242 minRed HorizonsEpisode 4 - Red Shadows: Blind Spots on the Martian FrontierIn this episode of Red Horizons, we return to the domes, deserts, and dreams of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy—but this time with a critical lens. We explore how its vision of revolution, ecology, and post-capitalist society still carries the fingerprints of the present: old hierarchies, quiet exclusions, and the limits of utopian design. Every work of praise deserves its critique, and even Mars must face its shadows.
2025-08-1541 minRed HorizonsEpisode 3 - Blue Mars: The Long Road to UtopiaWhat happens after the revolution? In the final installment of our Mars Trilogy arc, we explore how Blue Mars grapples with memory, mourning, ecological crisis, and the possibilities of radical democracy. Utopia isn’t a destination—it’s a process.
2025-08-0836 minRed HorizonsEpisode 2 - Green Mars: Revolution on the Red PlanetAs revolt simmers beneath the Martian soil, Green Mars reveals the long road to revolution—from hidden labor and cultural memory to full-scale insurgency and the uncertain aftermath. Drawing on thinkers like Silvia Federici, Cedric Robinson, Walter Rodney, and Amílcar Cabral, we explore how resistance is built, remembered, and remade.
2025-08-0135 minRed HorizonsEpisode 1 - Terraforming Capital: Red Mars and the Struggle for the FutureIn the first full episode of Red Horizons, we dive into Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars to explore how revolution begins—on Earth and on Mars. Through a leftist lens, we examine the social, political, and material conditions that lead to uprising on the Red Planet. From labor exploitation to ecological struggle, from the slow build of resistance to the explosive rupture of revolution, we trace the arc of collective action and ask: what does it take to ignite change?
Referencing thinkers like Silvia Federici, Cedric Robinson, Walter Rodney, and Amílcar Cabral, we unpack the layer...
2025-07-2536 minRed HorizonsEpisode 0: Before the DawnWelcome to Red Horizons, where science fiction meets revolutionary critique. In this prologue, host Steve McPhail sets the stage for a podcast that digs into the politics of power, ideology, and resistance in speculative worlds. Get a preview of Season 1’s deep dives—from Martian revolutions to libertarian fantasies—and meet the radical thinkers who’ll help us read sci-fi through a leftist lens.
2025-07-2303 min
Unscripted: A Nolapapa PodcastAmerican Veterans: From Canvases to BookshelvesSend us a textThis week we welcome two United States Veterans to the show. I’m truly amazed at how our own soldiers can harness their gifts after their world of war & peace- then, to share them with the entire world. First I welcome my pal Steve McPhail- aka Mcphizzle66 to the show. A past military vet and now rising TikTok’r and Artist! Bob Ross may have been mentioned a couple of times here. I LOVE BOB and if you do too then you’ll love Phizz!To watch him paint live almost every ni...
2023-04-281h 27