Doxacast Remix

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 impor...

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 G...

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 C...

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...

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, Ly...

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 additi...

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?

Epic Scope. Shakespearean Tragedy. Depth of Character. Training in Virtue. Tune in as our “Gathering” of panelists offers an overview of one of television’s most consequential Space Operas: Babylon 5. Panelists Richard Strube, Sam Cook, and Amy Browning-Dill join host Cindy Collins Smith to deliver elevator pitches for the themes, legacy, and terrific acting that make Babylon 5 a must-see for scie...

Harry Potter fans Cindy Collins Smith and Allison Franklin-Jordan discuss reading the series with children and tackle some of the more provocative points from the original Doxacast episode “Harry Potter and the Harrowing of Hades.” Along the way, they cover favorite chapters and scenes, sin, self-sacrifice, abuse, redemption, and whether a certain Potions Master is really so irredeemable after all...

In this episode, Cindy Collins Smith and Paulist priest Fr. Evan Cummings talk about one of their favorite video game franchises - The Legend of Zelda, a series that typically lets players enter into an epic battle against evil. Cindy and Fr. Evan discuss the role of the player in linear and open world storytelling, subcreation, the attributes represented by our heroes (and their recurring foe), a...

From the tragedies to The Tempest, Shakespeare enthusiasts Cindy Collins Smith and Amy Browning-Dill examine Shakespeare’s use of the supernatural and how it often reveals the spiritual states of the Bard’s protagonists. Along the way, they discuss the religious controversies so present in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, humility and contrition, mindfulness of death, and repentance.

In this wide ranging conversation, Cindy Collins Smith and novelist Eleanor Bourg Nicholson delve into one of their favorite genres: the Gothic and its place in Eleanor’s latest novel Wake of Malice. Shoutouts to their favorite novels and movies abound, as do discussions of humor, eccentricity, unsanctioned and dangerous “pious” practices, spiritual warfare, and redemption in the Gothic.

In this episode, Cindy Collins Smith hands the mic over to author S.K. Ehra as they discuss historical antecedents to Game of Thrones, complex characters and intricate worldbuilding, immanence, transcendence, existential threats, accusations of nihilism, and who really is the hero. In many respects, the popularity of this saga can be attributed to Martin’s ability to blend a Medieval fantasy world...

In this thought-provoking discussion, Cindy Collins Smith talks with Doxacon co-founder Fr. David Subu about director Denis Villeneuve’s handling of Dune’s Messianic themes. Though the film does many things well, Dune 2’s religious critique lacks the seriousness of Herbert’s, changing the arcs and attitudes of several of the story’s central characters. Yet beyond the film, the Dune saga can inspir...

In this first episode of the reboot, host Cindy Collins Smith is joined by founding Doxacast host Daniel Silver to talk about the origins of the podcast and Baldur’s Gate 3 - 2023’s Game of the Year. Their conversation delves into free will and player choice in video role playing games, character redemption arcs, and the roles of fate, hope, and love as players battle or succumb to the dark forces...