In this debut episode, co-hosts Shanté and Tav introduce the themes of the podcast — which will consider race and speculation in all their manifestations — and breakdown the career to date of Janelle Monáe, a music icon of afrofuturism.


All About Janelle

Hosts Shanté and Tavia discuss fantasy as genre being particularly relevant to Black folks—it includes and venerates oral traditions, myth, and folklore over or included alongside technology and hard science.


Black Fantasy

Hosts Shanté and Tav discuss HBO’s recently completed Watchmen series and how it broke boundaries in its reckoning with legacies of racism.


Watching Watchmen

Hosts Shanté and Tav welcome guest Jayna Brown (Media Studies, Pratt Institute) to discuss Octavia Butler’s Parable series and her forthcoming book, Black&nbsp;Utopias.

Recorded via videoconferencing during COVID-19 quarantine.

This episode's image contains original book cover artwork by John Jude Palencar.


Butler's Parable Series

Fantastic Blackness is a new monthly podcast by Tavia Nyong’o and Shanté Paradigm Smalls focused on Black Queer Trans art, politics, aesthetics, and news. Features interviews with artmakers, reviews of art shows, stage plays, books, film and television, and topical discussion.