We Chat with Wil Wheaton About His New Podcast, It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton

Wil Wheaton has been a fixture in the geek world for decades, from Stand By Me to playing Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation to a fictionalized version of himself in The Big Bang Theory. He’s narrated books like Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, The Martian by Andy Weir, and Starter Villain by John Scalzi, and he’s the author of The New York Times bestseller Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir.

Today, Wheaton announced a brand new weekly audiobook podcast called It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton, in which he narrates speculative fiction stories he loves from places like Lightspeed Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, Clarkesworld Magazine, and On Spec. The podcast launches on March 26, 2025, anywhere you get your podcasts.

We got a chance to chat with Wheaton about the inspiration behind it, what we’re going to experience, and getting the blessing of fellow Star Trek actor LeVar Burton.

Vital Thrills: Tell us all about “It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton”!

Wil Wheaton: So about 18 months ago, two years ago, one of my oldest friends, who I’ve known since we were in high school, texted me, super excited about it, and I was super excited about it, and I read the story, and I loved it, and I thought, I’m going to record this. I’m going to narrate this for my friend and give it to him just to have because I know he likes it when I do audiobooks.

I just thought, what a fun way to close this circle. Both of us are kind of living our dreams at the moment, and when I dragged out all of my equipment to do this really lo-fi, super… the audio equivalent of making photocopies in the teacher’s lounge when nobody’s looking to put up flyers for your punk show, this voice popped up in the back of my head and the voice was like, “Hey man, I think that maybe you could develop this little idea that you have into a podcast.”

And I was like, “Go on.” I just thought, hey, that actually does sound really fun. What if I did this thing where I used the privilege that I have as an audiobook narrator… I’m just one of those people that people like to listen to, and I get to do a lot of high-profile books and stuff. Well, what if I used the privilege that comes with that and the fact that people will pay attention?

And I shared it with emerging authors, and then I had this idea to develop this podcast that would eventually help us break new authors, because nobody gets anything done on their own. Everybody needs help, and there’s so much wonderful, great work in the world today.

I’m speaking exclusively about short fiction writing and speculative fiction writing, but in all forms of art and entertainment, there’s so much really, really good stuff, and it has such a hard time competing for attention with all the mediocre stuff that has billions of dollars of studios behind it.

So, while I’m very, very, very happy and grateful for the times I get to work for one of those studios, it’s also really fun and empowering to do a passion project, especially a passion project that is intended to give something to the artist’s community, give something to the writers and just help people — the way that people helped me when I was starting out.

Our first season is mostly established authors. We have a couple of multiple Hugo and Nebula finalists who have written incredible works because I just wanted to have something to show people in a few months, or however long it takes, so I could say to them, look, this is what I’m doing. This is what I want to do. Do you want to pitch us?

And that’s the ultimate goal. The thing that pushed that all from an idea into a thing that I worked on and the thing that is coming out was my love of LeVar Burton’s podcast, “LeVar Burton Reads.” When he was finishing his podcast, I was at a point where I had to decide: am I going to do this, or am I just going to record a thing for my friend? 

I asked LeVar what he thought, and I said, “This is what I’m thinking about doing, and this is how I’m thinking about doing it, and I just really want to make sure that I don’t step on your toes. You absolutely inspire it.”

And it was so awesome. We were at the Burbank airport waiting to get on an airplane to go to a convention together, and LeVar just lit up and he hugged me, and he was like, “I’m so excited for you. I love it. It’s such a great idea. I give you my blessing. If there’s anything I can do to help you, please ask.”

And I was just like, oh, this is what it must feel like to have one of your parents really love you and believe in you and really want to encourage you to do something special. I was like, oh, this is what that feels like. Just the incredible enthusiasm of, I love that you want to do this, and I love that it’s important to you and I want to help you however I can so that you can do the thing you’re dreaming about doing.

It was just so kind, and yet another thing I can point to when people say, “Is it true that all of you guys from Next Generation are like a family?” As a matter of fact, yes.

VT: I love that! The book market is so different now with everything online and self-publishing and all that, so a lot of stuff gets buried. This is such a cool way to get stuff out there. Did you have specific criteria in terms of what you were picking? Were there things that you’ve seen before?

Wil Wheaton: There were a couple of things that I’d seen before. I knew, for instance, that I loved Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, and Clarkesworld. I’ve been reading them for years, and when I was in the beginning, I went and looked for things… I was like, I’m going to do this entirely on my own.

And I went looking for new things. I went to all the writers’ markets. I went to all the very, very, very small publications. Most of ’em are online only in the double digits only. And I’m like, I’m going to find gems here. I know there are. And it turns out that I’m not good at that. It turns out that I don’t have that editorial skill.

So I went back to, okay, I love these magazines, and I love these editors. And as it turns out, a good friend of mine has a great relationship with Lynne and Michael Thomas, who are the editors of Uncanny, and she offered to make an introduction for me. I talked to them, and I told them what I wanted to do, and they were so excited. 

They were on board before I even finished, before I got to the part of the pitch where I was like, “So, do you want to work together?” They were like, “So what do you need from us?” I was like, “Holy crap. This is amazing.” Every step of the way.

A thing that’s been really cool is that every step of the way, every person that I have talked to, there’s only one person who didn’t get it. Everybody else has been so excited and so enthusiastic.

And before I even get to the part where I’m like, so this is what I want to do, and I start talking about the logistics of it, they’re like, okay, what do you want? What are you doing? Who do I need to talk to? They’re on board immediately and super, super excited about it. And it was no different with Lynne and Michael. 

And I said, look, for the first season is kind of a proof of concept. It’s sort of like a pilot season. I want to make sure that there’s an audience. I think there’s an audience, but I need to know that there’s an audience. So if we do one season, then it gives us some time to find out if that audience is there, which is another way of saying it gives us time to help the audience find it because that’s the challenge with so many options and so many things to look at.

It’s in the book market you just mentioned, the work we all have to do to both find the thing and then find the time for the thing is really hard. So I said, look, I just think that we should go for really great stories, stories that you love that are really well suited to being narrated. 

There are incredible works that just don’t work in narration because the way that something is laid out is so important to the storytelling. And I said, look, just go find speculative fiction stories. That seems to really be where my career has taken off. And when I narrate science fiction or near-future speculative fiction, the audience seems to like that.

Those are also stories that I very much love. I’ve been a speculative fiction nerd since I was a little kid, and I just looked for stories that I thought would support my strengths as a narrator but also that were just on their own, objectively wonderful works of fiction with strong characters and a clear narrative and a couple of surprises and great dialogue. 

VT: I know in the post you put up on Instagram, you mentioned that some authors hadn’t had their stories narrated before. Have you gotten a reaction from them?

Wil Wheaton: So, I sent audio when I was in the booth, and we finally got to my friend’s episode. I recorded about 90 seconds of myself, and I texted it to him, and I said, “You can show this to your family, but otherwise, please keep it to yourself.” A couple of minutes later, we got to a point in the text where I could take a break, and I looked down at my phone and saw that he had texted me when we were recording.

I picked it up and he said, “When you told me you were going to narrate this, I got so excited to hear you do, as it turns out, exactly the section you sent me, I really wanted to hear that come out of you. It’s so cool; it’s really great.” So that’s the only feedback that I’ve gotten.

These writers that said yes to us are so talented, and their stories are so good, that I felt weirdly intimidated and awkward. I didn’t want to be like, oh, I’m bothering them. I paid them for their stories. I really want to put them in front of a bigger audience. I want to do all this cool stuff that we’re all going to benefit from. But that part of me that is an awkward nerd was just like, they probably don’t want to hear. So I never did.

Hopefully, when it’s all done — I would love to eventually do an additional segment where I interview the authors, the way that I interview people on “Ready Room.” I think that would be really fun. I love that. I love the “Writing Excuses” podcast. I love listening to writers talk about writing, and I know I’m not the only one.

So I think that would be such a wonderful little side project that is directly connected to this, and then I’ll find out how they like it. It’s going to be awkward if they’re like, I did not hear that character that way at all. I’m sorry. [laughs]

VT: I doubt that’s going to happen! [laughs] I know you do a lot of audiobook narration because I’ve listened to it! I’m so curious how you prep to do something like this… what are the specific things you do to try to get into this role?

Wil Wheaton: If I’ve never worked for that author, I make a point of reading the entire thing so that I’m sure that I understand their voice, and I feel very comfortable with the pace of the entire thing. If I know the author, when I’ve worked for the author before, I know their voice. I know their pace. I know the basic structure they tend to use.

I’ll read 50 pages or an hour, whichever comes first, just until I know it, until I understand it, and I have a good sense of what it’s about. And then I will kind of discover the second half of it as I go, which I find keeps my performance really fresh and very crisp, and it prevents me from getting deep in my head and second-guessing things and asking for additional takes.

I’m one of those performers who will just, I’ll just keep doing it. I’ll do it over and over and over again because one, that means I don’t have to risk it going in front of the audience. And two, it just keeps me in a place where I’m just like, I’m constantly doing it because there’s another way to do it, and that’s true, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s good for me or anybody else, or a good use of anybody’s time. 

VT: How many episodes are you starting with? Do you have a set amount for the season?

Wil Wheaton: We have seven episodes for this run. It’s my understanding from people who do the capital-B business stuff that we’ll know in three to four weeks. If we can get to work on doing more, we’ll have a sense — then we’ll know if there’s enough audience to make this self-sustaining. And I hope so. I hope that we do.

I’ve had such a good time doing this… I am in this really weird, almost liminal emotional space where all of the work is just kind of sitting over there, just outside of everyone’s view. It’s all done, but it’s just right over there in the shadows where none of us can see it, and we’re all kind of standing here in this big empty room where I’ve told you it’s all over there in those shadows. I don’t know if you’re going to find it. I don’t know what it looks like once you get there. What else should I do? 

Should I take each person there individually? Should I hold up one of those flags that you see at a theme park and meet them all there? Should I just go away? I’m in this place where I feel like I should be doing more, but there’s nothing I can do. So I hope that we find out that, yep, this has got its audience, and we go.

We get started right away. I go right back to the Thomases and ask for more stories, and we get to work on building our infrastructure for the eventual acceptance of submissions, and I get to go right back into the booth. That would be great. But right now, I have no freaking clue.

It’s just that weird moment of, gosh, every possible reality is right inside this box. I just can’t open it yet. I don’t get to open it. Someone else has to open it, and I don’t know if that person’s even going to come here and open it for me. 

VT: The podcast launches on March 26 — where can everybody find it?

Wil Wheaton: You can get it wherever you get podcasts. I’ve asked the team to make sure that it’s in all the usual places. So Apple Podcasts is probably the biggest, most centralized place for people to find it, but it’s also on Stitcher, Pocket Casts, Pandora, iHeart, and Spotify. I have a homepage for the podcast at WilWheaton.net/Podcast. And there’s a list there with links to all the different places that it’s online at the moment. 

We’ll be adding things if we can. Initially, we missed Pocket Casts; just an oversight. And it’s so funny that I mentioned to some people in my Discord that this is something I’ve been working on. Here’s the thing that I’ve been talking about for such a long time. I’ve been talking about this for two years, and I’m just excited for you to see it.

And the very first response is not, dude, that’s cool, or, hey, congratulations, or can’t wait. The first comment is, “Hey, it’s not on Pocket Casts.” [laughs] Of course, of course. I was like, “Of course. Okay. That’s hilarious. I’ll get on it.” And we put it there.

I know that there are old-school nerds like myself who want to be able to grab it straight off of a dedicated RSS feed. Now, I’ve always been able to do that. I do everything completely independently, and I get to make the rules, but because there’s “capital-B” business in this, I just don’t know if there’s something special I have to do to make that possible. But ideally, it’ll also be available. It’s just an RSS feed for people who want to grab it in their own way. 

I have always been, and I remain, a massive proponent of open-sourcing things and making sure that people actually have control over their media and experience and all this stuff. I’m deeply cognizant of that, and it’s something that I care about.