If you’ve spent the last few months missing Serial, I feel it’s my duty to point you toward the impeccable in-progress podcast The Black Tapes. It too has a curious journalist with a soothing voice (Alex Reagen) and a fascination for unresolved stories – in this case, stories […]
In the land of mysterious occurrences and motivations that is Welcome to Night Vale, few characters remain more inscrutable than Kevin. Each of his rare appearances raises as many questions as it answers, if not more, and when fans step into answer those questions their answers tend to […]
I’ve been thinking lately about the shelf life of “groundbreaking” characters: where their place in the narrative intersects with how well whatever “unusual” part of their makeup is portrayed, whether they were meant to give the underrepresented group someone to see themselves in or to give the normative […]
A few months ago I wrote a starter’s guide for those interested in the wonderful, portable world of podcasts. Today we revisit that fertile field, where dozens of shows live and die by the day, to bring you half a dozen more shows that are worth your time […]
There are regrettable times of day when I am required to disconnect myself from the internet and interact with human society for the purpose of maintaining things such as rent, social bonds, and the dog next to me (who is currently making unsubtle sad eyes about his unscratched […]
Things are not well in Night Vale, readers. But the town’s the same as it ever was – this year the unease is brewing in the audience. We’re reminded, not for the first time but perhaps not so openly, that our narrator is fallible and occasionally kind of […]
I’ve always been slightly perplexed by the mentality of hipsterism (hipsterness? Hipsterality?). Having had an investment in works of fiction with larger and smaller followings both, let me tell you that the charm of being one of only six people to have heard of something gets old fast: […]
Or: get your tinfoil hats, because this is a Wild Theorizing Essay. I’ve been thinking about Kevin, internet. About the Voice of Desert Bluffs and the Voice of Night Vale. Partly as a coping mechanism for recent plot events, and partly because no mysteries are so thoroughly and […]