This Planet Needs a Name
Imagine a handful of scientists and engineers setting out to terraform a planet - a world - for the frozen people they've got in tow. Just a few people, carefully chosen, who will live out their lives building something they'll never see.
That's us. We're building a future.
A science fiction audio drama suitable for our times.
This Planet Needs a Name
1.04 Nature's Social Union
In Episode Four, “Nature’s Social Union,” we finally have the meeting Zahava’s been talking about, to determine the fate of the unnamed planet. James and his slitherfluff friend watch Clinical Trials, many people go for walks in the rain, and we learn a whole lot about the mission. You know. The mission. Saving humanity.
Content Notes: this is a heavy one. As always, none of this is gratuitous or described in detail. (There’s more swearing than usual as well.)
- Interpersonal conflict: [10:55 - 16:22]
- Mention of genocide: [15:37 - 15:45]
- Panic attack, hyperventilation: [15:10 - 16:22]
- Mention of violence, murder, torture: [42:00 - 43:10]
The transcript is available. If the transcript link is broken please email needsanamepod@gmail.com and we’ll get it to you as soon as we can.
This is a collaborative, ensemble project. Many of the character decisions are made by the actors as part of the story and script development process. Please check out the links below for more of their work:
- Trevor Bean creates and voices Mandry
- Trace Callahan creates and voices Kolian
- Alexander Endymion Hernández Díaz creates and voices Cyrus
- Alexander Doddy creates and voices James
- Sawyer Greene creates and voices Quill
- Anjali Kunapaneni creates and voices Devi
- Dominic Mendez creates and voices Ángel
- Caroline Mincks creates and voices Zahava
- Evan Tess Murray creates all of them and voices Zei
- Nerys Howell currently voices Nessa the Doctor Detective
The poem at the end of this episode is “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns. It seemed extremely fitting. Alexander Doddy gave us his best Scots when he read it. You can find many excellent renditions, including translations, on youtube.
Our podcast art was created by Katy Schifferer. Check out her work!
Please, if you can, donate to the Lakota People’s Law Project at http://lakotalaw.org. And please also continue to support Black Lives Matter in whatever way you can.
Check out Hank Green's brand-new book, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor! There's more information at https://www.hankgreen.com/.
We tell a story about another world, but we're not giving up on this one.