The Laser Age cover art

The Laser Age

The Laser Age

By: Keith Phipps
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The Laser Age, a podcast about science fiction films from the second half of the 20th century hasted by Keith Phipps and brought to you by The Reveal. Each episode focuses on a sci-fi movie released between 1947 and 1999—from the Roswell incident through The Matrix—and features a deep dive into the film's history followed by a conversation with a special guest.



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Episodes
  • 'RoboCop' with Donna Bowman

    'RoboCop' with Donna Bowman
    Sep 15 2025

    RoboCop: Who is he? What is he? Scholar, pop culture writer, and longtime Paul Verhoeven fan Donna Bowman joins The Laser Age to discuss RoboCop, Verhoeven's ultraviolent 1987 sci-fi satire about a police officer's second life as a cyborg law enforcer. Did it offer a vision of things to come? Is it a vessel for Verhoeven's particular notions of what an American Jesus might look like? Why not both?


    And this marks the end of the first run of Laser Age episodes. We're going to take a short break before releasing a new batch of episodes. You might even call it a new season. You might even say this season will have a theme. We'll return soon to kick off a five-episode run focusing on films about giant animals from apes to lizards to rabbits. (Yes, rabbits.) If you want to watch ahead, we'll be starting things off with Them!, the quintessential 1950s giant bug movie. Look for it soon.

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    39 mins
  • 'eXistenZ' with Scott Tobias

    'eXistenZ' with Scott Tobias
    Sep 1 2025
    Throughout the 1990s, film after film explored the possibilities of the then-new concept of virtual reality. The trend reached a seeming peak in 1999, with the release of the semi-forgotten The Thirteenth Floor, the anything-but-forgotten The Matrix, and, like a shadow cousin to those big-budget studio efforts, eXistenZ. With his first film taken based on a wholly original idea since Videodrome, David Cronenberg put his own spin on the notion, one informed by Philip K. Dick, existential philosophy, and his own abiding obsessions with sex and the slippery nature of reality. Film critic Scott Tobias, a name doubtlessly familiar to readers of The Reveal, joins this episode to discuss the film.

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    27 mins
  • 'Night of the Comet' with Jen Chaney

    'Night of the Comet' with Jen Chaney
    Aug 11 2025
    Released in 1984, Thom Eberhardt's sci-fi comedy takes a (mostly) lighthearted look at the end of the world via the story of two teens who survive a visit from a deadly comet. Jen Chaney, critic and author As If!: An Oral History of Clueless, joins the podcast to discuss a decidedly '80s teenage wasteland.

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    25 mins
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