ars PARADOXICA is the Time Travel Podcast You Didn’t Know You Wanted

As someone who was read Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles as bedtime stories growing up, I love a good science fiction to lose myself in. I’ve always been especially fond of time travel stories–some of my earliest memories were reading “A Sound of Thunder”– but I’ve also always been picky about them. It’s always felt like if the story had interesting writing and characters, it lost everything that made the time travel interesting. On the opposite end, there were stories that cared so much about the logistics of time travel, they forgot to put as much care into their characters or plot. I kept watching and reading, slowly getting less and less enthused about the time travel trope.

Then, I discovered ars PARADOXICA, a Whisperforge audio drama, and I finally had the time travel story I didn’t know I’d always wanted.

ars PARADOXICA follows Sally Grissom, a modern-day physicist who accidentally figures out time travel–sending her back to the year 1943. Initially, this makes for some lighthearted jokes and some cutting social commentary, as one would expect: Grissom is one of the most brilliant minds in a modern era with so much more technology and information available, but she’s still treated as a second-class citizen (and not any kind of reputable scientist) due to her gender. Add in a mysterious time-traveling bullet, the nation’s political climate in the era, and some gorgeous sound design, and you’ve got me hooked as it is. ars PARADOXICA doesn’t rest on its laurels when it so easily could, though. Instead, each episode winds up adding a new exiting, riveting, evocative layer to the narrative.

When I think of what to compare ars PARADOXICA to, I think of TV dramas like Westworld, Game of Thrones, or Mr. Robot: the kind of shows you can sit back and enjoy, but the kind you can spend hours theorizing about, too. The time travel mechanics are absolutely meticulous, tracked episode to episode by the podcast’s full writing crew (Daniel Manning, Mischa Stanton, Eli Barraza, Julian Mundy, Danielle Shemaiah, and Tau Zaman, as well as guest writers for special episodes), a staff of brilliant minds working together more seamlessly than most of those aforementioned TV shows. As the podcast progresses, it adds more intertwined plotting in the form of government conspiracies, dubious experiments using time travel. Handled by a different team, the different plot lines might feel convoluted or bog down the momentum. Instead, each thread feels integral to the understanding of ars PARADOXICA as a whole while raising the stakes. Add in the cipher message at the end of each episode and you’ve got a podcast Showtime and HBO should be taking some notes on.

ars PARADOXICA isn’t just high-stakes drama episode after episode, though. Most episodes are peppered with solid jokes, especially early on. As the plot becomes more dire, levity is added through bonus episodes like “ODAR & You!”, an in-universe training video for new recruits of the ominous agency Sally finds herself working for, or “Curses,” a guest episode written by the minds behind audio drama Greater Boston, in which Sally teaches her straight-laced, polite friends how to properly and emphatically swear up a storm. While Sally is explicitly aromantic and asexual (still a rarity in most media), meaning she has no interest in romantic love or lust, ars PARADOXICA has moving love stories as well as ruminations on friendships and found families. It’s a podcast that could have felt cynical and gritty, but always skews hopeful and humanistic instead. ars PARADOXICA is a story about “people searching for meaning in a universe that aggressively lacks one” and “the way power corrupts,” but it always reminds the listener it’s also about “the deeply human desire to fix our mistakes.”

And while most works might put all of their energy into maintaining a riveting plot, ars PARADOXICA never forgets that the soul of the story is its characters. Played by Kristin DeMercurio, protagonist Sally Grissom is funny and sharp, but she’s also deeply flawed and often tunnel-visioned about her work and her understanding of the universe. Grissom usually has one foot on the side of loneliness, one foot on the side of adamant solidarity, and she doesn’t seem to understand that you can’t balance on a tightrope when neither foot is on the rope in the first place. She’s deeply relatable, especially when her scientific expertise does her no good in interpersonal or inner conflict.

The supporting cast is similarly multi-dimensional, always growing and evolving alongside the plot. Katie Speed as Esther Roberts is dynamic, easily moving between sweetly emotional and bone-chillingly decisive. Robin Gabrielli as Anthony Partridge has all the necessary swagger of a charismatic genius in the ’40s while also delivering heartbreaking performances and some of the podcast’s best comedic moments. Arjun Gupta (who you might recognize from Syfy’s The Magicians) plays Nikhil Sharma, a more minor character whose complexity and subtlety often steals an entire episode.

ars PARADOXICA is currently at the tail end of its third and final season. At over 30 episodes and 18 hours of listening time, it’s a podcast that must be started from the beginning but can be savored over several weeks or binged over just a few days. Either way, it’s a story than can be–and should be–relistened to several times. You’ll want to repeat episodes not just to make sure you’re picking up on every detail the writers include, but also because ars PARADOXICA is a gorgeous story you’ll find yourself wanting to return to time and time again, wishing you had your own Timepiece just so make the story last a little longer.