Honours module with a public podcast as lecture format

In the Netherlands, we have no tradition of fantasy stories, though we can learn a lot by escaping to and thinking about fantasy worlds. Indeed, fantasy could well be the key to a better society, and the flexible policymakers who have to make it. That is why IIS is launching the Honours module 'World Building for Storytellers & Changemakers' this week, whose lectures (unique in the Netherlands) is the matching public podcast 'Fantasy Worlds', in Dutch: 'Fantasiewerelden'. Podcast creator and author of the 'Handbook for the Young Rebel' Esther Crabbendam, together with speechwriter and rhetoric teacher Thomas van Neerbos, takes students as well as podcast listeners through the process of building a fantasy world, as we know it from Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Koning van Katoren. Van Neerbos: "All good stories take us away, but only fantasy stories have the magic to disconnect us from thinking about that oppressive 'real world'. Fantasy thus challenges us to ask the following question: what if? That question is the starting point for a new thought process: one of proposing new possibilities. And with that, we can eventually move forward in this world too." The craft and podcast stem from the idea that fantasy worlds have more to contribute than relaxation and entertainment.