Episode 20: Transmedia Storytelling | 7 April 2026

Stephen and Trent achieve escape velocity to soar beyond The Worldbuilding Workshop’s pages! In this episode, the dynamic duo digs into the distinct (but critical!) topic of transmedia storytelling, including:

• Similarities and differences between fictional and nonfictional storyworlds;

• Remediation as a means of reaching into the past and carrying familiarity into the future;

• Strategic application of diverse media to emphasize diverse themes across diverse slices of a world’s scope and sequence;

• Storytelling as a biological imperative for meaning-making and long-term survival;

• Capturing the human experience in language, visual arts, and sound;

• How religion, legends, and day-to-day stories cohere to form the continuum of our life-worlds;

• Using stories to communicate relativistic perceptions and combat solipsism;

• Applying Sam Ford’s definition of “storyworld” to contemporary transmedia storytelling;

• Development of transmedia stories for specific thematic purposes or no purpose at all;

• Why book-to-film and other adaptations are a kind of transmedia storytelling;

• “Same planet, different worlds” as a framework for interpreting perspective;

• How the Fallout transmedia storyworld teaches varied sociopolitical lessons through a complex metanarrative;

• The relationship between rules, laws, language, and storytelling;

• Algorithmic determinism, community atomization, and how the internet corroded the social contract;

• Camus' The Plague and how symbolism helps us grapple with complexity;

• Using transmedia stories to rescue black-pilled nihilists from antisocial “black hole” Communities of Practice;

• Worldbuilding as a mechanism for interrogating personal beliefs, enculturation, and capital-T “Truth”;

• Transmedia worldbuilding to navigate nihilism, solipsism, and epiphenomenalism (physicalism vs. qualia);

• Making decisions about how the world can and should work;

• Deferred meaning and the competing visions of Einstein and Derrida; and

• Empathizing with other humans across space and time.

Episode References:

• Lucas, G. (Director). (1977). Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope [Film]. Lucasfilm; 20th Century Fox.

• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1991). The Silmarillion. HarperCollins.

• Joy, L. & Nolan, J. (Executive Producers). (2024–present). Fallout [TV series]. Kilter Films; Amazon MGM Studios.

• Novik, N. (2006). Temeraire (or His Majesty's Dragon). Del Rey.

• Games Workshop. (2020). Warhammer 40,000 (9th ed.) [Tabletop game].

• Ford, S. E. (2007). As the World Turns in a convergence culture [Master's thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. MIT Comparative Media Studies. https://files01.core.ac.uk/download/pdf/4403908.pdf

• Gilroy, T. (Executive Producer). (2022–2025). Andor [TV series]. Lucasfilm; Walt Disney Pictures.

• King, S. (2003). The gunslinger (Revised ed.). Viking.

• Martin, G. R. R. (1996). A game of thrones. Bantam Books.

• Roddenberry, G., Berman, R., & Piller, M. (Executive Producers). (1987–1994). Star Trek: The Next Generation [TV series]. Paramount Domestic Television; Paramount Television.

• Homer. (1990). The Iliad (R. Fagles, Trans.). Penguin Books. (Original work published ca. 8th century B.C.E.).

• Homer. (1996). The odyssey (R. Fagles, Trans.). Penguin Books. (Original work published ca. 8th century B.C.E.).

• George, A. R. (Trans.). (2003). The epic of Gilgamesh (New ed.). Penguin Books. (Original work published ca. 2000 B.C.E.).

• Cervantes, M. de. (1992). Don Quixote (P. A. Motteaux, Trans.). Wordsworth Editions. (Original work published 1605-1615).

• Gilliam, T. (Director). (1988). The adventures of Baron Munchausen [Film]. Allied Filmmakers; Laura Film; Prominent Features.

• Bethesda Game Studios. (2008). Fallout 3 [Video game]. Bethesda Softworks.

• Camus, A. (1991). The plague. Vintage Books. (Original work published 1947).

• Woodard, C. (2012). American nations: A history of the eleven rival regional cultures of North America. Penguin Books.

• Brown, M. W. (1947). Goodnight moon (C. Hurd, Illus.). Harper & Brothers.

• Davies, R. T. & Moffat, S. (Executive Producers). (2005–present). Doctor Who [TV series]. BBC Studios.

• Game Freak. (1998). Pokémon red and blue [Video game]. Nintendo.

• Reeve, E. (2024). Black pill: How I witnessed the darkest corners of the internet come to life, poison society, and capture American politics. Atria Books.

• Cochran, A. (2022). Contrasting cases for the design of an esports coaching curriculum: A communities of practice perspective [Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut].

• Calvino, I. (1974). Invisible cities (W. Weaver, Trans.). Harcourt, Inc.

• Jackson, F. (1982). Epiphenomenal qualia. The Philosophical Quarterly, 32(127), 127–136. https://doi.org/10.2307/2960077

Episode 19: Interview with Bryan Alexander | 31 March 2026

Stephen and Trent interview their colleague, friend, and author of The Worldbuilding Workshop’s foreword, Dr. Bryan Alexander. The trio discusses:

• The poly-crisis engulfing higher education, the United States, and the broader world;

• How financial stress, declining enrollment, and political pressures have put universities in a “defensive crouch”;

• Why universities should encourage graduate students/future faculty to study contemporary pedagogy within their respective domains;

• Institutional constraints and their effects on “bottom-up” innovation;

• Generative AI as both a threat and a tool;

• Preventing devolution into a transactional cycle where instructors use AI to write questions that learners use AI to answer;

• Persistent resistance to gaming and playful learning in higher education, especially compared to K-12 environments;

• Applying Kaufman and Beghetto’s “4C Model of Creativity” to evaluate individual acts versus societal contributions;

• Differences between worldbuilding content versus concepts, including the use of fictional storyworlds as vehicles for deconstructing reality;

• The relationship between transmedia storytelling, ethical decision-making, and professional collaboration;

• Navigating the tension between metrics and process;

• Identifying ways to quantify qualitative data and qualify quantitative data;

• Treating critical reflection as an essential component of fostering empathy; and

• Worldbuilding as an act of care.

Episode References:

• Alexander, B. (2026). Peak higher ed: How to survive the looming academic crisis. Johns Hopkins University Press.

• Shoulson, J. & Burkey, D. D. (Chairs). (2021, June). Future of Learning Committee final report. University of Connecticut, Office of the Provost. https://provost.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2165/2021/08/FoL-Final-Report-Final-June-2021-1.pdf

• Kaufman, J. C. & Beghetto, R. A. (2009). Beyond big and little: The four C model of creativity. Review of General Psychology, 13(1), 1-12.

• Slota, S. T. & Young, M. F. (2017). The inevitability of epic fail: Exploding the castle with situated learning. In Young, M. F. & Slota, S. T. (Eds.) Exploding the Castle: Rethinking How Video Games & Game Mechanics Can Shape the Future of Education. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

• Bradley, E. (Reporter). (1985, September 15). Dungeons & Dragons [TV series episode]. In D. Hewitt (Executive Producer), 60 Minutes. CBS News.

• Stern, S. H. (Director). (1982). Mazes and monsters [Film]. McDermott Productions; Procter & Gamble Productions.

• Ringenbach, C. (2018). Climate Fresk (V8.1) [Card game]. La Fresque du Climat.

• Leacock, M. (2008). Pandemic [Board game]. Z-Man Games.

• Leacock, M. & Menapace, M. (2023). Daybreak [Board game]. CMYK.

• Bogost, I., Ferrari, S., & Schweizer, B. (2010). Newsgames: Journalism at play. MIT Press.

• Schwartz, D. L. & Bransford, J. D. (1998). A time for telling. Cognition and Instruction, 16(4), 475–522. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532690xci1604_4

• Alighieri, D. (2004). Inferno (A. Mandelbaum, Trans.). Bantam Classics. (Original work published ca. 1307–1314).

• Asimov, I. (1966). Fantastic voyage. Houghton Mifflin.

• Gick, M. L. & Holyoak, K. J. (1980). Analogical problem solving. Cognitive Psychology, 12(3), 306–355. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(80)90013-4.

Episode 18: Epilogue - Notes From the End of the World | 24 March 2026

Stephen and Trent embrace their inner Waldorf and Statler to entertainingly grouse about higher education in The Worldbuilding Workshop’s epilogue, “Notes From the End of the World,” including:

• Six contentions about academia that explain why and how universities are failing;

• The toxic, cyclical relationship between universities and corporations;

• How to escape the profit-minded career preparation ouroboros;

• Orienting education toward creativity and open-ended problem solving rather than task performance;

• The problem(s) with treating educational and other social institutions like businesses;

• Common misconceptions about university funding, organization, and administration;

• Dueling visions of higher education and their consequences for socioculture, economics, and politics;

• Universities as community-building resources;

• Distributed, decentralized education and how decentralization affects the broader Community of Practice;

• Gatekeeping scholarship and why universities should value public communication;

• Providing professors and K12 educators with the resources needed to actually do their jobs;

• Striving to do public good versus wasting energy on intra/interuniversity competition;

• From The Landlord's Game to Squid Game, the misguided mission of educational capitalism;

• Adopting instructional strategies at the micro level to affect change at the macro level;

• Worldbuilding and playful learning as tools for reimagining K12 and higher education;

• Expanding prosocial, constructivist professional development instead of collapsing good ideas into sellable “turn-key” products;

• Cultivating a shared cultural focus on life-long learning; and

• Coming to see The Worldbuilding Workshop as an open-ended framework for experimentation with novel, interesting, and “out there” instructional strategies.

Episode References:

• Robinson, K. (2006, February). Do schools kill creativity? [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity

• Ainsworth-Land, G. T. & Jarman, B. (1992). Breakpoint and beyond: Mastering the future—today. Harper Business.

• Alexander, B. (2020). Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

• Slota, S. T. & Young, M. F. (2014, June). Project TECHNOLOGIA: A game-based approach to understanding situated intentionality. Paper presented at 2014 Games, Learning, and Society Conference, Madison, WI. https://youtu.be/XJSwLhB8Kpg?si=aWYmlewegS-Eo-qr

• Joyce, J. (1992). Ulysses. Modern Library. (Original work published 1922)

• Magie, E. J. (1904). The Landlord's Game [Board game]. Original patent (U.S. Patent No. 748,626), Washington D.C.

• Hwang, D.-h. (Creator, Writer, Executive Producer). (2021). Squid game [TV series]. Siren Pictures.

• Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt. (1992). The Jasper series as an example of anchored instruction: Theory, program description, and assessment data. Educational Psychologist, 27(3), 291–315.

Episode 17: Wrap-Up and Critical Reflection | 17 March 2026

Stephen and Trent debrief on the debriefing process in The Worldbuilding Workshop’s fifteenth chapter, “Wrap-Up and Critical Reflection,” including:

• A bookended critical reflection strategy (opening the worldbuilding activity with a discussion about target goals and closing with a debrief about whether and how those goals were fulfilled);

• Encouraging learners to critically reflect on both individual and group experiences;

• Why it’s worth writing down and discussing learner observations as a large group;

• Differences between instructor and learner interpretations of project success;

• Navigating the more traditional educator peak-and-valley workload vs. the steady-stream worldbuilding workload;

• ADDIE and the importance of flexible, iterative evaluation;

• Feedback delivery as piecing together a papier-mâché piñata;

• Blending standards-based assessment with other qualitative data;

• Avoiding the game of cheater whack-a-mole by developing cheat-proof qualitative assessments;

• How to implement peer evaluation methods throughout your worldbuilding project;

• Identifying and acknowledging your strongest project leaders (especially the quiet ones);

• Exchanging the “banking model” of teaching and learning for a more Socratic, conversational model;

• Overcoming imposter syndrome and defensiveness to be a better, more productive teacher;

• Connecting with and better understanding our learners’ individual life-worlds via critical reflection activities;

• Helping learners articulate their genuine thoughts rather than bullshit the instructor;

• Emphasizing integration and externalization over memorization and regurgitation (not WHAT but WHY and HOW);

• Benefits of maintaining personal thought journals while worldbuilding;

• The rarity of transfer in corporate training and professional development contexts;

• Empathizing with those who exist downstream of our decisions;

• The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment and how worldbuilding can help learners develop tolerance for delayed gratification; and

• Changing the educational system by dumping capitalist economic interests in favor of human-centric sociocultural and political goals.

Episode References:

• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row.

• Slota, S. T. (2014). Project TECHNOLOGIA: A game-based approach to understanding situated intentionality [Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut]. UConn OpenCommons. https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/dissertations/638/

• Mischel, W. & Ebbesen, E. B. (1970). Attention in delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 16 (2): 329–337. doi:10.1037/h0029815

• National Research Council. (2011). Learning science through computer games and simulations. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

[BONUS] Future Trends Forum: Worldbuilding Q&A | 5 March 2026

On Thursday, March 5, 2026, the Future Trends Forum returned to the topic of creative teaching.

Host Bryan Alexander spoke with two experts on the topic: Rochester Institute of Technology associate professor Trent Hergenrader and Dr. Stephen Slota, authors of the new book The Worldbuilding Workshop: Teaching Critical Thinking and Empathy Through World Modeling, Simulation, and Play (MIT Press).

In addition to addressing Bryan’s questions, Trent and Stephen responded to audience inquiries about pedagogical practices, artifacts, support structures, disciplines, and more.

https://forum.futureofeducation.us/

Episode 16: Role-Play | 10 March 2026

Stephen and Trent provide a professorial profile of performative play practice in their deconstruction of The Worldbuilding Workshop’s fourteenth chapter, “Role-Play,” including:

• Separating “role-play” from “simulation”;

• Inhabiting a character (first-person) vs. observing and analyzing a character (third-person);

• A brief history of role-play in education;

• Revisiting life-worlds and questioning what it means to “be in the same room”;

• Encouraging learners to role-play and reflect in a logically coherent way;

• Connecting in-character decision-making with real-world decision-making;

• “Bootstrapping” as an example of contextual complexity vs. overly simplistic reasoning;

• Thinking critically and empathetically about others’ perspectives;

• Attending to learners as complicated, changing people;

• The Ship of Theseus model for our moment-to-moment reconstitution of identity;

• Using role-play to interrogate stereotypes and essentialisms;

• Role-play for deconstructing complex systems in corporate environments;

• Voter ID legislation, drug testing for government benefits, and building a border wall as examples of reductive problem-solving;

• Good-faith vs. bad-faith argumentation;

• The “Do”s and “Do Not Do”s of educational role-play;

• Consent-driven role-play and why you probably shouldn’t position learners as oppressors/oppressed;

• The importance of debriefing role-play activities to break down power dynamics;

• Going meta on role-play, memory, and lived experience;

• How Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal taught commercial airline pilots about critical thinking and empathy via richly authentic, socially collaborative role-play;

• The critical difference between regurgitating rote information on an exam and demonstrating knowledge through performance;

• Using role-play to understand everything from sweeping historical events to an individual’s day-to-day decision-making; and

• Whether the arc of history truly bends toward justice (spoiler: possibly, but only if we bend it).

Episode References:

• Deterding, S. & Zagal, J. P. (Eds.). (2018). Role-playing game studies: Transmedia foundations. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315637532

• Morningstar, J. (2009). Fiasco [Tabletop game]. Bully Pulpit Games.

• Wizards of the Coast. (2014). Dungeons & dragons player’s handbook (5th ed.) [Tabletop game]. Wizards of the Coast.

• Härenstam, T. (2020). Vaesen: Nordic horror roleplaying [Tabletop game]. Free League Publishing.

• Howitt, G. & Taylor, C. (2020). Heart: The city beneath [Tabletop game]. Rowan, Rook & Decard.

• Harmon, D. (Executive Producer). (2013–present). Rick and Morty [TV series]. Harmonius Claptrap; Williams Street.

• Gilligan, V. (Creator). (2008–2013). Breaking bad [TV series]. Sony Pictures Television.

• Romero, B. (2009). Train [Board game]. Romero Games.

• Ferguson, A. (2017, May 26). Texas teachers give 'most likely to become a terrorist' award to 13-year-old. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/05/26/texas-teachers-give-most-likely-to-become-a-terrorist-award-to-13-year-old/

• Schönberg, C.-M. (1998). Les misérables [Musical score/Script]. Alain Boublil Music; Hal Leonard.

• Orwell, G. (1949). 1984. Secker & Warburg.

• Fielder, N. (Writer/Director). (2026). The rehearsal [TV series]. Distraction Inc.; HBO.

• White Wolf Entertainment. (2018). Vampire: The masquerade (5th ed.) [Tabletop game]. White Wolf Entertainment.

• Choi, B., Slota, S. T., Lai, B., & Young, M. F. (2015). Influence [Board game]. UConn Two Summers Master’s Program for Educational Technology.

Episode 15: Simulations | 3 March 2026

Stephen and Trent (re)simulate the brainstorming and co-authorship process behind The Worldbuilding Workshop’s (spooOoOOoky) thirteenth chapter, “Simulations,” including:

• Differentiating between “simulations” and “games”;

• Kerbal Space Program as an exemplary simulation-game hybrid;

• How Democracy 3, SimCity, and Civilization encourage learners to tinker with real-world complex systems and visualize their effects;

• Simulations as a way to explore “what-if” scenarios via learner inquiry and critical thinking;

• Procedural rhetoric and evaluating the biases embedded in simulation design;

• First-person versus third-person perspectives and whether calling third-person distant “god-like” is a misnomer with respect to simulations;

• Understanding simulations as teaching how systems operate versus role-plays teaching how people operate;

• Knowledge-as-doing and the criticality of maintaining a one-to-one relationship between learning and simulation objectives;

• Separating evaluation of a system from individual people's performances *within* that system;

• Beyond Nuremberg: Courtroom 600 as an example inquiry-driven, museum-based virtual reality simulation;

• Balancing agency in simulations of well-defined historical events;

• Examining the rhetoric of decision-making trees to identify how individual actions can affect multiple parts of a complex system;

• “Bumper cars” (exerting agency within a constrained system) versus “rollercoasters” (being locked into a linear pathway from beginning to end);

• Simulations for teaching cause, effect, and nuanced reasoning;

• Benefits of the “choose-your-own-adventure” model;

• Going meta on the decision-making process to situate thinking in real-world problems;

• The Model United Nations program, GlobalEd research project, and Mars: An Ethical Expedition video game as tools for studying intersectional governmental, economic, social, and cultural structures;

• Avoiding the artificiality of traditional assessments via simulations of ill-defined problems;

• Transforming education from transactional career preparation into a vehicle for teaching critical thinking and empathy;

• Helping future teachers understand specific instructional technologies (giving them a fish) versus helping them understand foundational principles of technology integration (teaching them how to fish);

• Why reductive, essentialist thinking can’t and won’t solve “wicked problems”; and

• Demonstrating how “practomime” (Roger Travis’ term for “performative play practice”) shapes learner thinking and behavior.

Episode References:

• Maxis. (2000). The Sims [Video game]. Electronic Arts.

• MicroProse. (1991). Sid Meier’s Civilization [Video game]. MicroProse.

• Maxis. (1989). SimCity [Video game]. Brøderbund Software.

• Young, M. F. & Slota, S. T. (Eds.). (2017). Exploding the castle: Rethinking how video games & game mechanics can shape the future of education. Information Age Publishing.

• Squad. (2015). Kerbal Space Program [Video game]. Private Division.

• Positech Games. (2013). Democracy 3 [Video game]. PosiTech Games.

• Miyamoto, S. (1985). Super Mario Bros. [Video game]. Nintendo.

• Deterding, S. & Zagal, J. P. (Eds.). (2018). Role-playing game studies: Transmedia foundations. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315637532

• Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive games: The expressive power of videogames. MIT Press.

• Greenhouse Studios. (2020). Courtroom 600: A virtual reality encounter with evidence of the Holocaust [Virtual reality game]. University of Connecticut.

• Capcom. (2019). Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy [Video game]. Capcom.

• Streiner, S., Burkey, D. D., Young, M. F., Cimino, R. T., Pascal, J., Dahm, K. D. & Wagner, T. (2022–2026). Mars: An Ethical Expedition [Video game]. University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering/University of Connecticut.

• Brown, S. W., Lawless, K. A., & Boyer, M. A. (2013). Promoting positive academic dispositions using a web-based PBL environment: The GlobalEd 2 project. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 7(1), 67–90.

• Lichtman, G. (2014). #EdJourney: A roadmap to the future of education. Jossey-Bass.

• Levitt, S. D.& Dubner, S. J. (2005). Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything. William Morrow.

• Johnson, S. (1998). Who moved my cheese?: An amazing way to deal with change in your work and in your life. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

• Travis, R. (2010, November 18). A note on the word “practomime” [Blog post]. Play The Past. www.playthepast.org.

Episode 14: Cataloging People, Places, and Things | 24 February 2026

Stephen and Trent hop, skip, and jump through the creation of wiki entries for complex, coherent, and convincing worlds as described in The Worldbuilding Workshop’s twelfth chapter, “Cataloging People, Places, and Things,” including:

• Ensuring all aspects of a world add up to one hundred percent;

• Cataloging as a way to transition back and forth between group and individual inquiry/authorship;

• Entry-creation as a vehicle for studying niche interests;

• Categories as opportunities for self-insertion into a given storyworld;

• Understanding relationships between majorities and minorities;

• Tinkering with entries until they provide a richly authentic sense of scale and scope;

• Using historically-accurate characters (rather than real people) to get the gist of a world's substructural influence without committing to specific lived histories;

• People, Places, Things, Groups, and Events as interconnected, cross-sectional indicators of a world's structures and substructures;

• Focusing on people who exist in cross-sections between dominant poles;

• Character + Setting = Plot;

• Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, and the character-shaping power of a rich environmental context;

• Helping learners understand the world as experienced through someone else's eyes (or shoes);

• How the tabletop role-playing game The End of the World helps players deconstruct their own identities and project them onto an alternate reality;

• Character identity and how it interfaces with being in the right place at the right time;

• Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld, and simulation-based games as emergent narrative generators;

• Policing the line between historical accuracy and historical fan fiction;

• The personal nature of worldbuilding research and the criticality of learner agency for dissuading GenAI/LLM use;

• A Song of Ice and Fire, The War of Roses, and George R. R. Martin as a story gardener;

• Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and reinforcement of "main character syndrome";

• How and why Symbaroum highlights the (in)ability of individual characters to influence global events;

• Reconciling grand heroic adventures with more mundane hopes and dreams;

• Using spreadsheets to track bias toward or against certain character archetypes;

• Writing minorities back into history through research-driven social constructivism;

• Dismantling the just-world fallacy;

• How catalog entries help us evaluate intersectional privilege and oppression;

• Deconstructing oppression and engaging in empathy through the study of the Tuskegee Experiment, Henrietta Lacks, and the Tulsa Race Massacre; and

• Practicing the Golden Rule and attempting to make your corner of the world a little bit more pleasant for everyone.

Episode References:

• Larian Studios. (2023). Baldur's Gate 3 [Video game]. Larian Studios.

• Gilligan, V. (Creator). (2008–2013). Breaking bad [TV series]. Sony Pictures Television.

• Gaines, A., & Trani, M. (2014). The end of the world [Tabletop role-playing game]. Fantasy Flight Games.

• Bay 12 Games. (2022). Dwarf Fortress [Video game]. Kitfox Games.

• Ludeon Studios. (2018). RimWorld [Video game]. https://rimworldgame.com/

• Gibson, M. (Director). (1995). Braveheart [Film]. Paramount Pictures.

• Martin, G. R. R. (1996–2011). A Song of Ice and Fire (Vols. 1–5). HarperVoyager.

• Free League Publishing. (2015). Symbaroum [Tabletop role-playing game]. Free League Publishing.

• Pavlovitz, J. (2019, February 21). Everyone around you is grieving. Go easy. https://johnpavlovitz.com/2019/02/21/everyone-around-you-is-grieving-go-easy/

• Lindelof, D. (Executive Producer). (2019). Watchmen [TV series]. HBO; White Rabbit; Warner Bros. Television.

• Wolper, D. L. (Executive Producer). (1977). Roots [TV series]. ABC.

• Brown, D. (1970). Bury my heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian history of the American West. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

• Orwell, G. (1949). 1984. Secker & Warburg.

Episode 13: Constructing the World Narrative | 17 February 2026

Stephen and Trent meditate on metanarrative leads and apply their characteristically zen thinking to The Worldbuilding Workshop’s eleventh chapter, “Constructing the World Narrative,” including:

• Defining your metanarrative lead and the "story" of your world;

• Studying location-based Wikipedia pages to understand the organization and presentation of varied metanarrative leads;

• Focusing on salient details to avoid bloated writing;

• Embracing the notion that everything is political (but it isn't all partisan);

• Comparing substructural categories across the worlds of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Narcos, The Wire, and The Sopranos;

• How contrasting cases and recognition of invariance across storyworlds informs learner understanding and transfer;

• Tracing a character or individual's choices based on the intersectional social forces that most impact their life-world;

• Critical discernment versus uncritical media consumption;

• Art (and the humanities, broadly) as the gateway to critical thinking and empathy;

• Art imitating life versus art creating reality;

• The Western genre as a lens for understanding Americanism and critiquing history;

• Reading 1-star reviews to interrogate interpretations that are "all text, no subtext";

• Using qualifiers to add texture to oversimplified histories;

• Composing a metanarrative lead to situate ideas and behaviors in-context;

• Grappling with interactions between social forces and life-worlds to more accurately project ourselves forward and backward in time;

• Gutenberg, literacy rates, and Enlightenment values;

• The relationship between Chaos Theory and social forces as determinants of long-term consequences;

• The metanarrative lead as a vehicle to interpret reality from multiple perspectives;

• Leveraging your metanarrative lead to scaffold a one-to-one ratio between learning and activity objectives;

• Balancing quantity and quality to develop a succinct, meaningful, targeted metanarrative;

• Precision, concision, and why you should always use a thesaurus; and

• "Show, don't tell," "sheep-in-the-box," and "less is more" as helpful guidelines for communicating substructures and social forces without direct exposition.

Episode References:

• Gilligan, V. (Executive Producer). (2008–2013). Breaking Bad [TV series]. Sony Pictures Television.

• Gilligan, V. & Gould, P. (Executive Producers). (2015–2022). Better Call Saul [TV series]. High Bridge Productions; Crystal Diner Productions; Gran Via Productions; Sony Pictures Television.

• Newman, E., Brancato, C., Bernard, D., & Miro, J. (Executive Producers). (2015–2017). Narcos [TV series]. Netflix.

• Simon, D., Colesberry, R. F., & Kostroff Noble, N. (Executive Producers). (2002-2008). The Wire [TV series]. Blown Deadline Productions; HBO Entertainment.

• Chase, D., Grey, B., Green, R., Burgess, M., Landress, I. S., Winter, T., & Weiner, M. (1999–2007). The Sopranos [TV series]. Chase Films; Brad Grey Television; HBO Entertainment.

• Eastwood, C. (Director). (1992). Unforgiven [Film]. Warner Home Video.

• Zahler, S. C. (Director). (2015). Bone Tomahawk [Film]. Caliber Media Company; The Fyzz Facility.

• Saint-Exupéry, A. d. (1943). Le petit prince. Gallimard.

Episode 12: Wikipedia as a Model for Worldbuilding | 10 February 2026

Stephen and Trent sing Wikipedia’s praises (and dread the death of truth) in an impassioned discussion about The Worldbuilding Workshop’s tenth chapter, “Wikipedia as a Model for Worldbuilding,” including:

• Wikipedia as an open-source public good;

• Whether teachers should police learners' use of Wikipedia;

• Co-construction of reality and meaningful generalization;

• Commonality between Wikipedia page frameworks versus diversity of their contents;

• Contested history and the challenges of crowdsourcing truth;

• Treating imperfections in collaborative writing as opportunities for learners to “go meta”;

• Instructors as community experts who can facilitate reflection on “good” versus “bad” consensus building;

• Wikipedia's approach to maintaining article accuracy and diversity of opinion;

• Steven Pruitt (the most prolific Wikipedia contributor, editor, and administrator) as an exemplary Wikipedian;

• Neutral Point of View and egalitarian editing;

• Why tech oligarchs hate Wikipedia (spoiler: they can't control it);

• Making, changing, and shifting capital-T “Truth”;

• Negotiating meaning through nuance rather than "defeating" alternative points of view;

• "Strategic inefficiency" as a way to avoid rushed judgment and better understand the “real” world;

• Generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and John Searle's “Chinese Room” thought experiment;

• Why GenAI and LLMs cannot replace human-driven collaborative discussion about thoughts, ideas, and creative endeavors;

• Wikipedia as a starting point for manual research over LLMs as hallucinating curators;

• The ability of instructors to shape learner thinking and behavior via on-the-fly interaction, intentional complication, and reflection;

• GenAI and LLMs as “highways to mediocrity”;

• Public transparency of Wikipedia editing versus the “black box” of GenAI and LLM response construction;

• The messiness of authentic, human-driven collaborative writing as the primary goal of good teaching and learning;

• The criticality of decentralizing power and ensuring knowledge generation remains as small-d “democratic” as possible;

• Whether truth can survive in a world where algorithms drive human perception;

• The unreality of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the war on knowledge-generating institutions;

• Separating what we know, what we feel, and what we intend to do about it; and

• Consequences of corporate media consolidation, Steve Bannon's “flood the zone” mentality, and the transition away from journalistic contextualization to verbatim transcription of bad-faith arguments.

Episode References:

• Inskeep, S. (2012, October 3). Wikipedia Policies limit editing Haymarket bombing. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2012/10/03/162203092/wikipedia-politicizes-landmark-historical-event

• Giles, J. (2005). Internet encyclopaedias go head to head. Nature, 438(7070), 900–901. https://doi.org/10.1038/438900a

• Searle, J. (1980), “Minds, brains and programs.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3 (3): 417–457. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X00005756

• Klein, E. (Host). (2025, July 8). How the attention economy is devouring Gen Z — and the rest of us [Audio podcast episode featuring Kyla Scanlon]. In The Ezra Klein Show. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-kyla-scanlon.html

Episode 11: Class Preparations | 3 February 2026

Stephen playfully ponders Trent’s project planning pop-quiz as the pair probes Chapter 9 of The Worldbuilding Workshop, “Class Preparations,” including:

• Pre-class preparations and their relevance to community-building, lesson design, and assessment;

• Avoiding a "Peggy Hill"-style overly scripted plan;

• Budgeting time to properly introduce and implement world modeling and/or role-play;

• Mapping activities to your learning objectives;

• Modeling attitudes and behaviors such that learners will replicate those attitudes and behaviors throughout the course or project;

• Structured, "on-time" instruction versus unstructured, fluid facilitation;

• Aligning learning theory, pedagogical approach, evaluation methods, and technologies based on the needs and incentives of a particular audience;

• Adopting the "flipped classroom" model to introduce concepts, values, and activities *outside of* class so they can be collaboratively interrogated *during* class;

• Using discussion boards, digital announcements, and other communication tools to provide essential information before the course or workshop begins;

• The importance of saying "I don't know" when confronted with a question whose answer you don't know;

• Establishing the sociocultural norms of an instructional space;

• Inviting learners to co-develop a socially-agreed-upon syllabus;

• Balancing instructor discretion with learner goals for class and project structure;

• The Wright brothers as an analogy for getting course design "just right";

• Deciding whether to assign random characters or ask learners to create their own;

• The potential benefits of assigning randomized foundational characteristics but allowing learners to engage in inquiry-driven, problem-based critical thinking to explore an individual's growth and change over time;

• Case-based learning as a means of helping learners recognize variance and invariance between stories or environments;

• The "sandbox-on-rails" metaphor for one-to-one alignment of course and activity objectives;

• Reasons to incorporate historically-accurate representations of different people or communities rather than genuine historical figures;

• "FOMO" (fear of missing out) as a motivator for learners to complete readings before joining a role-play exercise;

• Contingency planning for absences, fire alarms, and other externalities;

• The story of Henrietta Lacks and why we constrain historical role-play;

• Reacting to "Reacting to the Past"; and

• Preferring the messiness of collaborative worldbuilding to contrived, "gamified" role-play.

Episode References:

• Boss, K. (Writer) & Kuhlman, A. (Director). (1999, October 31). Little Horrors of Shop (Season 4, Episode 4) [Television series episode]. In M. Judge & G. Daniels (Executive Producers), King of the Hill. 20th Century Fox.

• Lambert, R., Rilstone, A., & Wallis, J. (1994). Once upon a time: The storytelling card game [Card game]. Atlas Games.

• Bök, C. (2001). Eunoia. Coach House Books.

Episode 10: Examining Life-Worlds Through Demographics | 27 January 2026

In what Trent and Stephen have dubbed their “most (potentially) polarizing episode yet,” the two discuss Chapter 8 of The Worldbuilding Workshop, “Examining Life-Worlds Through Demographics,” including:

• Defining "life-worlds" and what they mean for worldbuilding and modeling;

• Worldbuilding and modeling as ideologically agnostic processes;

• Why role-play can never replace authentic lived experience;

• Navigating the relationship between privilege, empathy, and inviting others to understand your life-world;

• Using the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual to better understand quantitative/nominal data versus qualitative/narrative data;

• Capturing the reality of day-to-day life in language;

• Establishing scope and sequence, accounting for structures and substructures, and connecting the dots with demographics;

• Who is included when devising demographic categories, and why does it matter;

• Recognizing intersectional privilege versus intersectional discrimination;

• The importance of extending privilege to one-hundred percent of the population;

• Avoiding a deficit-driven model of individual ability;

• AppleTV's (2022) Severance and the foundational question: "Who are you?";

• Our individual sense of self and the performance of identity;

• "Going meta" to transfer worldbuilding-based learning into lived reality;

• Race, nationality, and making sense of social constructs;

• Understanding individual differences as subjective, relative, and situated;

• The context-dependence of personal characteristics;

• Thinking like a lawyer versus thinking like a scientist (backward justification versus empirical investigation);

• Trans rights and why some aspects of individual identity aren't negotiable;

• Demographics, life-worlds, and taking action to diminish essentialism;

• American corporate and cultural prioritization of "efficiency" over human well-being;

• Administrative writing and whether to provide open-ended or narrowly constrained survey questions;

• Soliciting and incorporating community member feedback when designing for a particular community;

• Radical individualism versus conformity as opposing sociocultural, political, and economic worldviews;

• Foundational principles of universal design and inclusivity;

• Social media, government surveillance, and the negative downstream consequences of data aggregation;

• The value of flexible worldviews and the tendency of rigid perspectives to shatter; and

• Escaping political, economic, social, and cultural bubbles to understand other people as fellow humans with lives just as rich and complex as your own.

Episode References:

• Mearls, M., Crawford, J., Perkins, C., Sims, C., & Thompson, R. (2014). Monster manual (5th ed.). Wizards of the Coast.

• Barab, S. A., & Roth, W.-M. (2006). Curriculum-based ecosystems: Supporting knowing from an ecological perspective. Educational Researcher, 35(5), 3–13. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X035005003

• Erickson, D. (Executive Producer). (2022–present). Severance [TV series]. Red Hour Productions; Apple Studios.

Episode 09: Structures and Substructures | 20 January 2026

Trent and Stephen break down Chapter 7 of The Worldbuilding Workshop, “Structures and Substructures,” including:

• Origins and function of the structures and substructures employed throughout the collaborative worldbuilding process;

• Choosing whether to quantify or qualitatively describe the presence or absence of each structure and substructure in a given world;

• Definitions for the four structures and fourteen substructures, including Governance, Economics, Social Relations, and Cultural Influences;

• The decision to add or subtract substructures in a given worldbuilding project;

• Negotiating the meaning of each structure and substructure based on its relative presence or absence in a world;

• Identifying and explaining a society's values through the lens of its most prevalent substructural categories;

• The (2023) film The Creator as an example of storytelling via "show, don't tell";

• How individual people or characters perceive and react to a world's social forces (as dictated by its substructures);

• Star Trek as a roving "world" through which the audience can explore interactions between substructural categories;

• Structures and substructures as an investigatory framework rather than an objective characterization of reality;

• Sliding back-and-forth on a timeline to understand the world "before" and "after" structure-changing events;

• Understanding structures and substructures as human-made and human-enforced;

• The Expanse as a vehicle to deconstruct real-ish socioeconomic and sociopolitical forces;

• JK Rowling, George Lucas, and the risk of overcomplicating a world with unnecessary details nobody asked for;

• Examining The Lord of the Rings, The Witcher, and A Song of Ice and Fire to compare how historical social forces and constructs are understood through a modern lens;

• The evolution of civilization, globalization, and how ideas ripple across substructures;

• Avoiding simple thinking about complex problems; and

• Applying intersectional world modeling to understand privilege, critique antisocial perspectives, and directly address real-world political, economic, social, and cultural challenges.

Episode References:

• Edwards, G. (Director). (2023). The creator [Film]. 20th Century Studios; Regency Enterprises.

• Bluth, D. (Director), Freudberg, J., & Geiss, T. (Writers). (1986). An American tail [Film]. Amblin Entertainment; Universal Pictures.

• Roddenberry, G. (Creator). (1966–1969). Star trek [TV series]. Desilu Productions; Paramount Television.

• Fergus, M. & Ostby, H. (Creators). (2015–2022). The expanse [TV Series]. Alcon Entertainment; Alcon Television Group; Hivemind; Amazon Studios.

• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954). The fellowship of the ring. George Allen & Unwin.

• Sapkowski, A. (1990). Wiedźmin [The Witcher]. Reporter.

• Martin, G. R. R. (1996). A game of thrones. Bantam Books.

• Green, M. (Executive Producer). (2020). Lovecraft country [TV series]. Monkeypaw Productions; Bad Robot Productions; Warner Bros. Television.

Episode 08: Worlds in Space and Time | 13 January 2026

Trent and Stephen contemplate Chapter 6 of The Worldbuilding Workshop, “Worlds in Space and Time,” including:

• Star Wars, Tolkien's Middle-Earth, and Game of Thrones as exemplars for understanding breadth vs. depth;

• The "fuzzy boundaries" of worlds in space and time;

• Deciding what "matters" in a particular world;

• The Lord of the Rings as a model for deconstructing scope and sequence;

• Alice Walker's Everyday Use and Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead as vehicles to discuss sociocultural change on a timeline;

• How Colin Woodard's American Nations deconstructs the United States in terms of sociocultural differentiation across the nation's colonial and expansionist history;

• Attending to the full set of political, economic, social, and cultural dynamics when evaluating historical causality;

• Determining relevance and granularity through the world deconstruction process;

• Navigating information in the present versus other historical eras;

• The relationship between nuanced analysis and moral judgment;

• Consequences of global interconnectivity and the impact on societal decision-making; and

• The exchange of ideas, information, and resources through space and time.

Episode References:

• Walker, A. (1973, April). Everyday use. Harper's Magazine.

• Kingsolver, B. (2022). Demon Copperhead: A novel. Harper.

• Woodard, C. (2011). American nations: A history of the eleven rival regional cultures of North America. Viking.

• Fukuyama, F. (1992). The end of history and the last man. Free Press.

• Levitt, S. & Dubner, S. J. (2005). Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything. William Morrow.

• Graeber, D. & Wengrow, D. (2021). The dawn of everything: A new history of humanity. Allen Lane.

Episode 07: Gamefulness, Playfulness, and Fun | 5 January 2026

Trent and Stephen reveal The Worldbuilding Workshop’s secret cut chapter titled “Gamefulness, Playfulness, and Fun,” including:

• The co-writing process and rationale for which content was kept or cut;

• Defining “gamification,” “edutainment,” “serious games,” “instructional games,” and “playful learning”;

• How players, researchers, and educators compare and contrast different kinds of “games”;

• The relationship between playful learning and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of “flow”;

• The Gamefulness, Playfulness, and Fun (GPF) Scale and its potential applications;

• The Worldbuilding Card Deck and how its corresponding structures/substructures fit within the GPF model;

• “Fun” as a misleading design objective;

• Exemplars of gamefulness, playfulness, and fun (role-play, professional athletics, and “work”);

• Differentiation of simulations from role-play and other playful activities; and

• Why it matters that words actually mean things.

Episode References:

• Deterding, S. & Zagal, J. (2018). Role-playing game studies: A transmedia approach. Routledge.

• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper and Row.

• Young, M. F., Slota, S. T., Cutter, A., Jalette, G., Mullin, G., Lai, B., Simeoni, Z., Tran, M., & Yukhymenko, M. (2012). Our princess is in another castle: A review of trends in serious gaming for education. Review of Educational Research, 82(1), 61-89. doi: 10.3102/0034654312436980

Episode 06: Assessment | 30 December 2025

Trent and Stephen expand on The Worldbuilding Workshop’s fifth chapter, “Assessment,” including:

• The similarities and differences between alphanumeric and standards-based grading;

• Rubrics, portfolio artifacts, and how to differentiate between different kinds of student growth;

• Assessment methods that optimally fit the worldbuilding process;

• Systemic problems with quantitative assessment in K12 and higher education;

• The consequences of privileging quantitative over qualitative assessment;

• Project-based approaches to instruction and valuing process over product;

• Grade grubbing vs. learning for learning’s sake;

• How we collectively understand learner grades vs. student evaluations of teaching;

• And finding an assessment approach you can live with.

Episode References:

• Trasviña, J. (2025, May 27). Grading for equity coming to San Francisco high schools this fall. The Voice of San Francisco. https://thevoicesf.org/grading-for-equity-coming-to-san-francisco-high-schools-this-fall/

Episode 05: Collaboration and Community | 23 December 2025

Trent and Stephen dig into The Worldbuilding Workshop’s fourth chapter, “Collaboration and Community,” including:

• Similarities and differences between traditional classrooms and Communities of Practice;

• Why distributed, decentralized expertise is so valuable for both instructors and learners;

• How to foster a Community of Practice in a classroom environment;

• The relationship between constructivism, cognitive apprenticeship, and collaborative worldbuilding;

• The Clarion Workshop as a model Community of Practice;

• Navigating individual and community identities, beliefs, and assumptions;

• Social vs. biomedical definitions of disability and how they inform collaborative, inquiry-based learning;

• And the case for anti-disciplinary, cross-domain teaching and learning.

Episode References:

• Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.

• Cochran, A., Slota, S. T., & Young, M. F. (2024). League of Legends: The case for nested & braided Communities of Practice. In H. R. Gerber (Ed.), The literacies of the esports ecosystem (pp. 93-114). Gaming Ecologies and Pedagogies Series, Volume: 5. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004689770_005

• Hutchins, E. (1996). Cognition in the wild. The MIT Press.

Episode 04: Theory to Practice | 16 December 2025

Trent and Stephen tackle The Worldbuilding Workshop’s third chapter, “Theory to Practice,” including:

• How their personal K12 and university experiences influenced their perspectives on instructional design;

• Challenges associated with lecture-based instructional environments;

• How school is structured (or not) for 21st-century learners;

• Differentiation and alternative ways to organize education;

• Grade bands and tracking vs. skill- and performance-based classrooms;

• The broad misunderstanding of “learning styles”;

• And the empirically-demonstrated benefits of richly authentic, case-based instruction.

Episode References:

• Hayes, C. (2025). The sirens' call: How attention became the world's most endangered resource. Penguin Press.

[BONUS] Worldbuilding in Education: Game-Based Learning with Stephen Slota & Trent Hergenrader (Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast) | 9 December 2025

What if students saw themselves not just as learners, but as world builders, empowered to design, problem-solve, and imagine new possibilities through playful learning?

In this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast, hosts Dr. Cindy Burnett and Dr. Matthew Warwood dive into the dynamic potential of game-based learning and world-building with guests Stephen Slota and Trent Hergenrader. Together, they unpack how treating students as designers—rather than passive recipients of information—fosters creativity, critical thinking, and authentic engagement. Drawing from their experiences as educators and co-authors of The Worldbuilding Workshop, Stephen Slota and Trent Hergenrader share insights on leveraging narrative, choice, and playful contexts to deepen learning, regardless of technology access or subject area.

The conversation explores the difference between true game-based learning and surface-level gamification, emphasizing the power of agency, narrative, and exploring “messy,” real-world problems. Listeners will gain practical insights on aligning classroom activities with learning goals, infusing creativity, and adopting a facilitator mindset. Whether you’re game-curious or an experienced educator, this episode highlights how worldbuilding can transform classrooms—and help students make meaningful connections to their own lives.

https://fuelingcreativitypodcast.com/

Episode 03: Road to Contemporary Learning Theory | 9 December 2025

Trent and Stephen discuss The Worldbuilding Workshop’s second chapter, “Road to Contemporary Learning Theory,” including:

• How they think about philosophies of education, pedagogical design, and what it means to be a “good” teacher;

• How to treat learning theory as active and actionable rather than static and inert;

• Why and how to center students as the primary beneficiaries of pedagogical design;

• And what it means to align learning objectives with activity objectives at a one-to-one ratio.