A new podcast from the Learning Hack explores how science fiction made the modern world
The Tech Imaginarium, a new podcast series from John Helmer's successful Learning Hack stable launches Tuesday 26 May 2026 — marking the centenary of Amazing Stories, the magazine that founded modern science fiction.
A new podcast launching this Tuesday explores how science fiction — as a body of stories, ideas and provocations — shaped the technologies we live with today.
The Tech Imaginarium, hosted by L&D broadcaster John Helmer with co-host and subject expert Ezri Carlebach, takes its first season on a six-episode tour through the ideas, inventions and imaginings that turned speculative fiction into technological reality. From Isaac Asimov's laws of robotics to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; from Hugo Gernsback's pulp dreams to artificial intelligence — the series argues that science, technology and imagination are constantly feeding each other.
The opening episode, Amazing Stories is 100, marks the centenary of Amazing Stories, the magazine widely regarded as the founding publication of the modern science fiction genre. Launched by Hugo Gernsback in April 1926, it was the first periodical anywhere in the world devoted entirely to science fiction. Episode 1 also explores the cultural moment of the magazine's arrival — a world of new radio networks, of Einstein and Schrödinger remaking the laws of physics, and of Robert Goddard testing the rockets that would eventually take humanity into space, partly because he had been inspired as a teenager by H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds.
Subsequent episodes in season one cover Asimov's robot stories and Foundation sequence, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, lesser-known foundational writers of SF’s ‘new wave’, and predictions from science fiction that came true — as well as some that didn't.
Co-host Ezri Carlebach said: "From the launch of Amazing Stories, science fiction began to gain its reputation as 'the literature of ideas,' as Isaac Asimov called it. Its unique character is based on the 'what if' framing of its ideas, as well as its core themes — the development and use of technology, the future as the primary orientation of human thought, and the potential evolution of humanity, or in many cases, its potential destruction. That is why the centenary of Amazing Stories matters: its influence on the direction of real life in the hundred years since it appeared — what I call the Amazing Century."
John Helmer said: "Science fiction predicted most of what I've seen happen in learning technologies, a field I've worked in since 1999, and a lot else besides. As we grapple with the impact of a technology like AI on our lives, these stories give us ways to think about the huge benefits to mankind it promises – as well as the darker fears its creations inspire.'
The Tech Imaginarium is a six-episode first season, released weekly from 26 May 2026. Episodes appear in The Learning Hack podcast feed and at learninghackpodcast.com/tech-imaginarium.
Notes to editors
The Tech Imaginarium is the third podcast in the Learning Hack network, alongside The Learning Hack and Great Minds on Learning.
John Helmer is showrunner and host of The Tech Imaginarium. He is creator of The Learning Hack — one of the world's top 5% podcasts globally — and brings his celebrated podcasting style and pop-culture curiosity to bear on the biggest ideas in tech and science fiction.
Ezri Carlebach is co-host and subject expert. A writer, consultant and lifelong SF devotee, he is a former Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and founder of Space City Breakout, an L&D platform applying SF thinking to business innovation.
Music for The Tech Imaginarium is composed by Nick Dwyer and Flintet.
Founder-sponsor opportunities for season one are still available. Contact [email protected] for details.
Season 1 release schedule
· TI01 — Amazing Stories is 100 — Tuesday 26 May 2026
· TI02 — 5 Foundational SF Writers You've Never Heard Of — Tuesday 2 June 2026
· TI03 — Asimov: The Robot Laws — Tuesday 9 June 2026
· TI04 — Asimov: Foundation — Tuesday 16 June 2026
· TI05 — Frankenstein: Man Made Man — Tuesday 23 June 2026
· TI06 — Three Predictions from SF That Came True… and 3 That Didn't — Tuesday 30 June 2026