Go back to 2013 to discuss Religion & Pop Culture (and #DoctorWho) with James F. McGrath! It's a big universe, and sometimes things get lost in time and space.

Science fiction and video games are more visible than ever as their popularity reaches record numbers. From classic arcade games to modern open-world sandbox simulators that require hundreds of hours to complete fully, science fiction is one of the most common gaming genres. This podcast explores the ways religion and science fiction appear together in these cultural products, asks how gamers see the value of this play, and how we seek belief in things that are 'out of this world' as a means to escape the present by sharing our hopes about the future.

What is an "Invented Religion"? Why should scholars take these religions seriously? What makes these “inventions” different from the revelations in other religions? What happens when an author does not want their story to become a religious text? You can also download this interview, and subscribe to receive our weekly podcast, on iTunes.

The majority of those who identified as a Jedi on the 2001 UK census were mounting a more-or-less satirical or playful act of non-compliance; nevertheless, a certain proportion of those were telling the truth. How does a religion constructed from the fictional Star Wars universe problematise how we conceptualise other religions, and the stories they involve?

In this interview, recorded at the SocRel 2017 conference in Leeds, Professor Adam Possamai discusses the rising popularity of ‘Hyper-Real religion’ – a category encompassing Jediism, Matrixism, and other movements taking influence from popular culture. Situating hyper-real religions within the contemporary context of digital capitalism,