You're listening to Imaginary Worlds.

I show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief.

I'm Eric Mollinsky.

And this is Stefan Ekman.

He's a professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

My family or part of my family come from Germany.

What was then, Southern East Germany?

When he was a kid, he'd visit his relatives in East Germany, which sounds so strange to

me.

As an American growing up in the Cold War, East Germany was like a forbidden realm behind

the Iron Curtain.

But Stefan didn't like going there because it was boring.

And then he became even more bored.

I ended up in an East German hospital with appendicitis.

I was 10.

I did not speak German.

And there was nothing for me to read, which was a major disaster.

But my mother had brought along Lord of the Rings, which she'd failed to read for the

empties time.

So that's what I read.

And that's how I really got into the whole fantasy thing.

And by getting into the whole fantasy thing, he doesn't mean dungeons and dragons.

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