Turn off the lights, light an atmospheric candle, and listen as Fr. David Subu and host Cindy Collins Smith talk and read through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s spooky tale of a young Puritan’s journey into the heathen forest near Salem at night. Known as one of the great stories of 19th century American Romanticism, Young Goodman Brown is also surprisingly rich in its treatment of sin, demonic temptation, and prelest.

Allison Franklin-Jordan again joins host Cindy Collins Smith - this time to discuss sin, choice, and change in two works that illustrate vividly how one person’s actions can change the world for good or ill. Iroh’s and Zuko’s repentance in Avatar: the Last Airbender transforms the Fire Nation from following an ideology of conquest to following a path of redemption and peace, while the abusive father’s repentance in My Hero Academia cannot undo the hatred that consumes and destroys his son. This episode delves into the cascading effects that our actions have on others… and our own need to live lives of repentance and see the Image of God in our fellows.

Tokusatsu enthusiast Sarah Esker joins Godzilla enthusiast Cindy Collins Smith for a stomp through Japanese media, its cross-pollination with the West, and the themes that are likely to resonate with Christians. Buckle up because this conversation takes us from giant monsters and aliens to Spaghetti Westerns, Star Wars, and even the Catholic poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.

What happens when you put together a couple of Doctor Who aficionados to cover more than 60 years of epic (and sometimes not-so-epic) television? Tune in to find out as Fr. Demetrios Kehagias joins host Cindy Collins Smith for a joyride through the ups and downs of Doctor Who and a discussion of how the Doctor’s near-immortality parallels and differs from the life of Christ.

2025 Doxacon speakers Jake Reed and Jon James join host Cindy Collins Smith to talk about one of literature’s most enduring tropes - the Wasteland. From crippling famines to post-apocalyptic fallout, the Wasteland has led pagans to offer sacrifice and moderns to despair. But it can also lead us to seek God. Covering ground from Oedipus Rex and Grail legends to A Canticle for Leibowitz and Fallout, this episode challenges us to let God transform the wastelands in our own lives.

What can a seemingly fluffy animated feature reveal to its audience about guilt, confession, restoration, uncovering shame, and -yeah- fighting demons? In this episode, Sr. Allison Regina Gliot and Sr. Orianne Pietra Rene Dyck join host Cindy Collins Smith for an exuberant conversation covering these topics and more in the breakout streaming hit K-Pop Demon Hunters.

2025 Doxacon speaker Richard Strube joins host Cindy Collins Smith to illumine the moral conundrums, thematic innovations, deft and heavy-handed storytelling, and memorable appearances in a handful of favorite (and not-so-favorite) episodes from Star Trek’s The Original Series and The Next Generation. Sprinkled with anecdotes and analysis, the conversation takes us from the heights of The City on the Edge of Forever and Darmok to the lows of The Omega Glory and many points between.

2025 Doxacon Lay Keynote speaker M.R. Leonard joins host Cindy Collins Smith to discuss his first contact novel Pilgrims and some “must see / must watch” science fiction. Along the way, the conversation turns to influences on the novel, what would happen if Catholic (or Orthodox) aliens visited Earth, why secular-oriented gamers fell in love with an overtly Christian novel, and how we can baptize the culture through reclaiming the science fiction space.

Our Babylon 5 panel takes on the final batch of season 1 episodes, as Babylon 5 transitions from a monster-of-the-week show into a cohesive multi-season narrative. Factions heat up; conspiracies and betrayals unfold; characters retreat to the garden to contemplate their choices. And just as one of our principals is pricked by conscience, he is met by a terrible temptation.

In a conversation ranging from City on the Edge of Forever and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to Agent of Byzantium and The Man in the High Castle, Dn. Nicholas Dujmovic joins host Cindy Collins Smith to revisit his talk from the 2015 Doxacon and discuss more recent developments in the Alternative History subgenre - raising questions like “What can we learn from Alternative History?” and more importantly “What can we as Christians gain from it?” Slides for the original 2015 talk (Copy and paste link into your browser): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fD6-lUq0kH5UGEZ7pGTHkQV9RuXmtBiS/edit?slide=id.p1#slide=id.p1

Doxacon’s 2025 Clergy Keynote Speaker joins host Cindy Collins Smith - and it’s Fr. Evan Cummings! Fr. Evan offers context for his upcoming talk on apocalypse in Magic: The Gathering before settling into a lengthier conversation on The Legend of Zelda’s Tears of the Kingdom (2023). Amid Hyrule’s restoration after the Great Calamity, a new apocalyptic event occurs - The Upheaval, when a mummified Ganondorf revives and unleashes new horrors on the devastated Kingdom. Tears of the Kingdom expands on the theme of sacrifice so prevalent in Breath of the Wild (2017), while also exploring themes of newness and hope, the duties of leadership, and the restorative power of sacred light.

Our Babylon 5 panel picks up the conversation from the first half, discussing humorous moments and product placement, repentance, forgiveness, and spiritual seeking. As we delve deeper into Mr. Morden’s question “What Do You Want?," we consider the motivations of this friendly yet sinister emissary and speculate on the identity of his associates.

Our Babylon 5 panel returns to tackle the middle batch of episodes from season 1 (Deathwalker to Eyes). Though this batch divides viewers, our panelists dive into the issues it raises about prejudice, mortality and immortality, medical ethics, the validity of belief, and the all-important question “What Do You Want?”

Paulist priest Fr. Evan Cummings returns as he and host Cindy Collins Smith delve into two of The Legend of Zelda’s most beloved entries: The Ocarina of Time (1998) and Breath of the Wild (2017). Though nearly two decades separate these masterpieces, both find hope amid a post-apocalyptic world, and in both our heroes sacrifice themselves - descending into types of death to save the Kingdom.

Rae Grabowski, Programming Co-Chair for Doxacon, joins host Cindy Collins Smith to discuss what makes Sam Vimes such an attractive character in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. While Pratchett satirizes and subverts the tropes of genres such as heroic fantasy, noir, and detective fiction, he also creates a protagonist whose growth in virtue over the course of eight novels transforms a corrupt City Watch into a force for good in his city and across the disc.

Maggie and Jos Johnson join host Cindy Collins Smith and our panel of re-watchers and 1st-watchers to tackle the first batch of episodes from Babylon 5 (Pilot through Episode 8). This tightly written sequence plants the seeds for themes on telepaths, alien cultures, xeno-archaeology, and religion that will become important as the series progresses. Watch along as we explore the twists, turns, and unexpected character development that typifies so much of Babylon 5.

Stitched together from separate sessions, this Frankenstein’s Monster of an episode brings back Richard Strube to continue the conversation with host Cindy Collins Smith as they tackle ways in which Lynch sees a world similar to the world Orthodoxy sees, culminating in The Return's magnificent mythological episode 8 ("Got a Light?"). Transcending the illusory world of Transcendental Meditation, Lynch interrogates a world of Moral Good and Moral Evil, situating himself firmly on the side of Moral Good.

Richard Strube joins host Cindy Collins Smith to pay a tangent-rich tribute to filmmaker David Lynch. Lynch is known for probing the darkness, but when we pull back the (red) curtain, we see that his work actually presents viewers with an enchanted world - one filled with angels and demons and protagonists genuinely seeking the light in a fallen world.

Fantasy novelist Dn. Nicholas Kotar joins Cindy Collins Smith to talk about the dangerous, playful, and mad figures of real life and fiction that challenge us and our leaders to “wake up” - even in oppressive societies. Having authored a Holy Fool himself, Dn. Nicholas offers insight into what the Holy Fool can bring to a story and why fiction may reach audiences that hagiography cannot. In addition to the Holy Fools of Russian literature and cinema, this episode briefly examines analogous characters from American television.

Long-time fan Sam Cook joins Warhammer 40K novice Cindy Collins Smith to discuss how the Imperium’s secular Crusade descends into a multi-faction religious war among giants. Why do humans - even augmented humans - still grasp for religious experience after angels and demons and supernatural phenomena have been explained away? Is the Emperor’s stated vision of a fully secular order possible?