---
layout:          post
title:           "MAG176.05 - MAG - Pod UK Horror Panel"
date:            2020-08-20 11:00:00 -0400
categories:      incomplete
tags:            []
voiced:          []
episode_title:   'MAG - Pod UK Horror Panel'
episode_number:  '176.05'
summary:         "Recorded live at PodUK 2020, Alexander J Newall, Gemma Amor (No Sleep Podcast, Calling Darkness) and David Ault (No Sleep Podcast, Shadows at the Door) moderated by Alasdair Stuart (Escape Artists Inc., The Magnus Archives) talk about the world of modern audio horror."
content_flags:   []
acast_url:       https://play.acast.com/s/themagnusarchives/maghorrorpanelatpoduk
formats:         
official:        false
unofficial:      http://www.youtube.com/
unofficial_name: YouTube CC
unfinished:      true
wiki_url:        
---

hi everyone alex here with a short bit
of context ahead of today's episode
this panel on audio in horror was
recorded live in late 2019 at the pod uk
festival
with raw audio kindly provided by pod uk
that's all for now
we hope you enjoy the episode
[Music]
good afternoon everybody and welcome to
the horror panel um this is lesser panel
more a cartographic expedition within
which
myself and my elite colleagues over here
will attempt to map for you some of the
more interesting
and innovative elements of modern
podcast audio horror
and the best possible thing we can do at
the top of every doomed expedition
is of course take the photo
you know the one where people get
crossed out is the polar bear see them
[Laughter]
see same wavelength um so what we're
going to start off with is introductions
and i'll
have all of us explain who we are and
what we do and what kind of shows we
work on
i'll start i'm alastair your moderator
for this evening uh i
co-own the escape artist podcast network
along with my partner margaret kenner we
produce four shows escape pod which does
science fiction
pseudopod which does horror cast of
wonders which does weigh a and podcast
that does fantasy i host pseudopod the
horror show
for a frankly horrifying amount of time
seriously i don't want to think about it
i think there's a i think i'm on the
bayer tapestry
recording episode 49 in addition to all
of that i also write about the
genre a fair amount and i've turned up
in several other voice acting capacities
most recently uh as peter lucas who is
the unsung hero of the magnus archives
and i'm on film i'm on film doing this
song percy
who's queen um who if everyone had
listened to nothing bad would have
happened
not that anything bad happens at the end
of the magna soccer season four
and speaking of the magnus archives alex
hi
um so i'm the ceo of rustic limited
which is a podcast
production company and podcast network
and we generate a large number of shows
the most relevant of which to
this panel is called magnus archives
which is
a horror series that pretends to be an
anthology but it's not
um and basically i think that's as
succinct as i can really get so i'll
hand over
hi i'm gemma i'm the ceo of nothing um
i uh write for i write for a number of
horror
podcasts i write for the no sleep
podcast um
i co-write and voice act in a horror
comedy show starring kate siegel called
calling darkness
i am also in a season two of shadows at
the door which
is mr alt is involved in and
various other scary spooky shows hiding
on the internet um
i'm also a writer i write books and
novels
and various other things so that's me
this is david
thank you very much yeah as james said i
am david
uh david old i am a voice actor in the
no sleep podcast
uh just 48 hours ago came back off tour
for the european tour so i don't quite
know what day it is or where i
am uh but i'm also the
co-host of shadows at the door with mr
mark nixon here
um and we do ghost stories mr james
style horror with
old uh stuff that has been adapted and
new stuff from writers like general
moore
um i'm also on the white vault and
various other things so uh yes
that's right i'm also byron and the
byron chronicles which has been going
since
2006. it's me i know
yes i was fresh out of university and
this american guy said would you like a
podcast
yes that's free oh yeah
[Laughter]
then they get you hooked
oh we're gonna be fine
they're all free so this is your
elite team of completely doomed
scientists who are going to walk up to
the big
squamous rugos blob of horror poke it
and see what happens
and the the first question i want to ask
everybody and i'm going to
start the other end and work back this
time is what brings you to john
to horan as a genre in particular
who i think i arrived at horror
via sci-fi probably one of the
reasons i got into voice acting all
those many many years ago
was doctor who um i was it was in the
the wilderness years between 1989 and
2005
where there was no doctor who on tv
it's a lot of things it was it was a
long long time um
and the bbc started doing audio dramas
of uh
with the old doctors and i i really
enjoyed those and i thought oh
are there any other people doing doctor
audio dramas
found some people online uh listen to
their work listen to others
and then i've always liked ghost stories
so yes i got involved with darker
projects then
uh pendant audio and basically it's sort
of gone from there but
it's a deep-seated love of ghost stories
and uh coming in via sci-fi um i
i think i came to horror probably via
fantasy first i'm a
my first in biding love is fantasy um i
grew up on a diet of robert jordan and
the wheel of time and
the point horror books as well when i
was a teenager and
i've just always been as a writer in
particular i'm drawn to
making up things because you don't have
to follow the rules so
which is why i will never write a
procedural crime drama because you have
to know stuff
and everything has to be based in an
element of truth and with horror you can
pretty much
invent your own landscape invent your
own world so
yeah that's me um i mostly came to
horror through convenience
that is the single most used
okay so um for me and horror
i i suppose i have most experience on
the sci-fi side as well actually
but in terms of horror as as a medium
it is one that's interested me because
i think it simultaneously people think
it's the easiest one to get into because
you know it's just like are the tropes
they're there you do you do the tropes
and you've done a horror
but at the same time it also leaves you
very little wiggle room between
good horror and hot garbage which i
quite
like that like operating in that space
but i have
recently been made aware that the things
i make that aren't horror
are still nightmare fuel and
which is news to me i wasn't aware
that's a thing now i know
and so as a result i can i can work with
that
um i i came to horror in a slightly
weird part one very similar to david's
in many ways
in that most of my entry point was
science fiction
coupled with the fact that i was from a
relatively young age
uh perpetrating an elaborate genetic con
um
i was about six that was about six foot
by the time i was 13
and my voice broke really early and
that was useful especially in a small
rural community
with a single screen cinema
and the nice old lady behind the counter
who at no appointment
you're 18 aren't you sunny yes and she
just
kind of assumed and so i i saw a frankly
ridiculous amount of movies i had no
business seeing at least five years
early
and it left marx in very much a good way
horror it horribly traumatizes you but
in a good way
this explains so much
oh and it's also partially paul daniel's
fault uh
those of you who don't know paul daniels
was kind of the the avatar
of tv stage magic in the uk for a really
long time and he is one half of a very
curious
binary experiment with horror that the
bbc carried out and which went very well
and as a result they were terrified and
never did it again um
was this whizbit yeah whisper
is is the thing of the demon realms
and not to be brought forth like youtube
and we're not sorry we're not sorry okay
um paul daniels famously won famously
did a halloween special in the very
early 1990s where he he finished with an
elaborate escape
which was supposed to be him getting out
of an iron maiden which is not him
having the band fired at him at high
velocity but rather
a very large spiky cupboard which shot
on him and apparently killed him
and they just didn't mention anything
about it for like two hours and of
course being terribly british my family
i watched this i went fairly certainly
we've just seen a man die
do you want a cup of tea and and this
this landed in a very similar kind of
period of time to ghost watch
ghost watch for those of you who haven't
seen it is terrifying terrifying
and it's terrifying in an insidious and
really evil way
it is presented as a terrible early 90s
live tv event
it's presented by the exact people you
think would present
a terrible early 1990s live tv event and
then about half an hour in
very slowly it starts to go to hell and
the final sequence which involves these
words in various
stages of combination tv studio flames
demonic voice talk show host
seed themselves into my brain so the
whole time i'm going along obviously i'm
a science fiction guy because i like
spaceships and nuns from hell
you know and pseudopod has finally let
me realize
that i was a horror guy wearing a spacey
and it's kind of where i am so i'm going
to jump around a little bit in in order
and
ask gemma my next question uh which is
what keeps you in horror i think the
license to be as imaginative as you can
you can do anything with horror and i
love that and and i was
talking to somebody um at the stand
earlier on today so my jam
is um people-based horror i write about
people first and foremost
and my main concern when i sit down and
write anything is
is how the character's feeling what
their main motivations how do they go
through their lives and why
and the decisions and the stories grow
up around the people
and sometimes the horror is almost
incidental it's something that happens
around them
but with horror you can just it's just
free license to let your imagination run
right
and i think that's what keeps me there
and i do dip into sci-fi and i do dip
into
the more kind of psychological thriller
side of things but i like
ghosts and ghoulies and monsters and
things that go bump in the night
because you can just let your
imagination go and
yeah that keeps me keeps me firmly
grounded absolutely well everything that
gemma just said
um but also i the thing with uh horror
and especially with ghost stories is
that they are
timeless they they don't have they can
be
absolutely present-day but they can be
so
yeah timeless which i don't need to
explain the word
um but that's but horror and especially
audio horror
uh i i love the all the audio medium
simply because it leaves all of the
details to your imagination
it is all there and you are painting
your own pictures and you can scare
yourself as much as you want to
with uh what you're listening to or if
it's on a book what you're
what you're um reading and so that
that's that's what i like
it it becomes a lot more personal to you
as
the as the the devourer of the horror
if you like that's that's my yeah yeah
for me i'm gonna give a sort of shorter
term
answer which is that
for reasons beyond my understanding but
i'm happy to to
know uh cosmic horror is currently
basically getting in vogue which is
phenomenally useful
but what that also means is
oh god alex has just had a br i had a
brain drop from like
10 years ago okay cool so we have
emergent culture we have dominant
culture and we have residual culture
as lovecraftian horror shifts from
emergent to dominant one is left
wondering what is emergent next
now what i'm getting at is
yeah i just channeled a 10-year younger
version of me who was a
pompous art i'm very intimidated
so what what is interesting to me is we
all know now what's currently
interesting what's kind of in vogue and
what's going there
but for horror we are due
something new and the same way that sort
of the the zombie trope came in
and then kind of faded and so on we are
now due one and a lot of the time what
is due next is defined by what leaves
public domain
because that is what allows uh sorry
what enters public domain because it
allows experimentation within the space
so it's like okay cool this thing's
become public domain it's fair game
and in podcasting what we are as an
industry is one
enormous playground where people get to
make things
that no one in their right mind would
ever option for anything else
right up until it's successful and go oh
yes we were definitely thinking about
that oh yes yes
but what that means is would you right
now we are due
a big new thing and i don't know what it
is for horror
combined with an industry that's still
able to just suddenly have ten thousand
people go i think it's this
nine thousand to be wrong and everyone
to still be having a good time and not
care you know like
that's why i'm here right now if you
know what i mean
i'm i'm in horror because i really like
jeff seeing with witness
especially cultural ones i firmly
believe horror is one of the most
fundamentally hopeful
genres of fiction there is and it's
hopeful i think in two very different
ways
there is the shade and freud element
which is well at least that's not
happening to me
yes
and there's also the survival element
and i mean i
this this is this is kind of an easy get
but
i i think an awful lot about cabin in
the woods and about the moral dilemma
that breaks down very starkly
in the final 15 minutes of that and
where various characters land
and that idea that kind of visceral
interaction
with ethics is something which i think
horror does
i wouldn't say no other type no other
genre does it because i know lots of
other people
in those genres and i know where i live
um
but i think horror engages with it in a
way that very few others do and i i
really respond to that
and i've in my dark days i've found
tremendous strength in horror stories
i think yeah to add to that i think for
me personally as well
i have been very open about mental
health
issues and my own experiences with them
and i feel like horror is a safe space
a safe space to explore that and i think
a lot of horror fans are drawn to the
genre for that reason they find actually
scary stories quite comforting
for their anxiety issues i know i do but
also you can
there is a lot of horror to be found in
the everyday and in your own struggles
and in your own story so i think that
also keeps me in the genre because i
write about those things those things
interest me and i explore my own issues
through the things that i write so yeah
i think you're
yeah i i want to pick up something which
alex mentioned which is the idea of
the thing that's coming um but two
reasons firstly because my favorite
definition of horror
is william friedkins one of her true
horror is seeing something
approach and secondly because i'm
curious
it ties very neatly to one of the things
i wanted to talk about which is
why do we think horror audience is
growing because it it is
uh i'd be happy to take a stand please
do um i take several
um i think certainly one element is
picking up on what gemma was just saying
which is that
horror is a very useful space
for you to literalize uh issues both of
the time and of a personal nature
and stab them repeatedly and by which i
mean
yeah it's really useful to have a space
where
allegory is not only encouraged but
accepted
and a bloody useful tool but what that
means is
shocker and in times of uncertainty
horror tends to do well and it's because
what you are doing
is at least what you can do this is not
the only answer by any means
is you can take the big questions you
know
are we all doomed maybe bit smaller um
you know like
um questions about economy questions
about mental health
genuinely anything that's really gnawing
at people
the thing that you wake up in the
morning and you have that thought again
and go
and then what it does is it allows you
to transcribe that onto a landscape
that has a a set of rules that you can
navigate
don't open the door if you open the door
you deserve it come on
um don't split up but my point is that
these are knowable rules which help you
codify this this weird scary idea that
you've got into something that you can
navigate because we all know how stories
work
so when a character is navigating that
space you're navigating it with them
and then the additional thing is it
makes them conquerable like um alice was
saying about survivable
is if your world is trying to kill your
characters and your world is an enough
is an allegory for whatever you want to
explore
if your character surviving that you're
taking that journey with them you're
surviving the thing you're afraid of
um i should stress that's not the be all
and end all of horror
in fact that's often not the way that i
personally engage with horror but i
think
sort of culturally speaking that
probably strikes a note with a decent
number of people
cool why are you people jumping
i'm just trying to think of a way of
phrasing it i i want to use the term
humanist
but i'm not sure that's the right
expression to me but it's it's
the idea that um you know we're all
human and there are certain things in
our lives
that drive us from from the day we're
born to the day that we cease to be
and they're quite basic things and i
think
and in times of hardship for example you
know been having a bit of a shitty time
in this country lately and
and people revert back to those humanist
principles
as things to sort of comfort themselves
with i
do if that makes does that make sense
i've got i'm gabbling i gabble
yeah it's yeah and it's it's about it's
about something that you can relate to
i think as a reader or a listener or a
watcher or a consumer of any kind of
media media and i think the popularity
increases
particularly in conjunction with things
like netflix streaming and and
looking for content and they want so
much content that we're now seeing much
more prevalence with horror on
things like tv and i think that that
goes hand in hand with podcasting and
everything else so
i feel like it's a a human driven thing
like we want to watch
and listen and consume things that
remind us of ourselves
is that which sci-fi perhaps you don't
it's it's grander isn't it the scale is
grander with sci-fi
it's almost the payoff between
pragmatism and realism
you said that much more efficiently
without you that took me ten minutes of
going around the houses and you got
there in like one second
and i think it also it also gives people
control
over um what is what is going on
in in the horror uh because
as we've been saying we've not been
having a fun time recently
anywhere in the world really um and
that can be very it can give a lot of
people a lot of anxiety about especially
where you you can't do anything about it
we're fed
[Music]
uh news with with a a theme tune which
is like a heartbeat and
we're conditioned to on to take in this
news
and and be filled with this
horror that is happening out there and
we can't do anything about it
we're given the option once every well
two years for the last four years
but once every five years to even have a
go at doing something
and that puts us in a really it's a bind
isn't it
it is it's it's horribly i kind of
helpless place
so having the opportunity either to to
write horror and externalize
or to watch it and go along with it but
also be able to stop it
yeah gives us that control over over
some aspect
of this emotional stimulus
absolutely absolutely um
yeah those are all amazingly great
answers i'm actually just letting all of
that sink in for
for a second all of this seems to be
building up to something which we've all
touched on which is the sense of there
is something coming
next in the field and i'm curious before
we get into the kind of nitty-gritty of
the logistics of voice acting and still
and kind of soliciting work and script
writing and
being an arch lich nemesis genius child
and all of that
um
what do we think is next for the field i
think you'll see more genre blending
i think so for example cosmic horror
folk horror
cosmic folk horror that kind of genre
crossover
that's the answer
coming soon from rusty quill
this is copyrighted now to me um but you
know like i think people are getting
much more adventurous and also
unique ideas are kind of few and far
between now
in the field there's no such thing as a
unique idea everything's been done
before that's why we have tropes and
tropes are enjoyable for that reason
and we'll be getting to them yeah but uh
you can do uh having you take on an
old-fashioned trope and one of the ways
of doing that is by blending the genre
and i think that's when we'll go
i think we'll see a lot more crossover
between like i said those
kind of sub genres if that makes sense
i'm certainly thinking armageddon just
in general
just as general yeah and possibly also
in fiction and also yes
possibly um yeah i i
think that the with with films like
midsummer
and uh what was the other one
hereditary that's the one uh sort of
bringing back wicker man style id
yeah i'd go along with the folk horror
but i'm just thinking
what's in what's out there in the world
today how can that be reflected because
it was about 10 years ago that there was
that huge
swell of um like weather
films then suddenly everything was being
destroyed by
cold or wind or tornadoes or something
and there's just a huge swell at the
time and and
i'm just yeah as we look at the world
today i think probably
more personal horror
plague stories plague stories but
uh yeah i think personal slash folk
slash slash but everything cycles as
well yeah
cycle and you you'll have like david
said you'll have a spate of disaster
movies and then a spate of something
else
disaster i think we'll all just go
through the various cycles and then come
back to
slashes probably in about 10 years time
if you're talking movies
yeah there is there is one thing i've
seen a little bit of evidence for
and i think this would be fascinating
which is this might we might actually be
in the time period
where um lovecraft is successfully
contextualized
his corpse separated from its bones
those bones salted and buried in
multiple locations across the earth
western race again um
we are a couple of weeks out i think
from the release of a movie adaptation
of the color out of space
which is one of the genuinely very good
lovecraft stories
directed by richard stanley who directed
hardware which is a film which
feels like you have contracted a fever
while you're watching it
um and starring nicholas cage
[Music]
we we might be off to the races here my
friends uh
all all joking aside there are multiple
projects we seem to be approaching
lovecraft in a
in a very kind of clear ride or in gay
display wild eyed and hasn't slept for
two weeks
which are engaging with the very
negative elements of his past and his
beliefs
and finding something positive that they
can tear off those bits to get to and i
would
as one of those core frustrations of
this field i i often find is that it's
its tendency to feel the very strong
gravitational pull of lovecraft in
particular
and i i like new things i i like things
which have been created by people who
don't look like they could conceivably
be my brother
or the other uncle that we really don't
like to talk to i like old stuff as well
i just like new things a lot too and i
would be really interested i'm
very hopeful to see the field kind of go
in that direction i think that's a good
point as well to mention representation
in horror yes
um and horror diversifying through for
example women in horror
much more obvious movement now of women
writing horror
doing very well um and all sorts of
different diverse voices
latinx horror the full works and if you
hang out on twitter at all you'll see
various different hashtags
and things trending and i think that
will influence the genre as well hugely
as we move forward
and even better because there's always a
tendency with with um
foreign language material to assume it's
terribly worthy and it's not
it's all there are just as many greasy
cheeseburgers with foreign language
subtitles on them
as there aren't there's a netflix show
called diableros
which is literally supernatural just in
mexico
and is exactly as much fun as that
sounds so there's so much great stuff
out there and
one of the upsides of the late stage
capitalist consumer culture we are all
trapped in
is it's much easier to get to so yeah
if i may i know we want to move on but
you know me i can't show up
um i think with at the risk of sounding
like i'm trying to devalue horror i'm
not
that there is a reactionary element to
horror as well which is
one of the ways that you can
see the shape of things to come in terms
of horror is you look at the way
of the shape of yeah what's what's big
at the moment
and horror is going to deliberately try
and do something different to that or
underwhelm that or break it apart into
little bits
so take a look around you what what
you're seeing a lot of at the moment
what's that disney owns the world and
it's all superheroes as far as the eye
can see
my instincts say that as much as i would
love a brand new monster
it's not gonna happen that's not the way
it works but what we're realistically i
think you're gonna start
seeing is the more that we lean into
this
homogenized model of storytelling
where um people rejected stuff like the
dark universe you know the tom cruise
one where
basically they were cool we'll make
horror the way that we make all the
other stuff that we make and everyone
nope hate it
don't do that and i think that as a
result if you just take whatever's there
an inverter you're at least gonna start
getting the
shape of things i think which means that
i totally agree with you in that i think
you're gonna start seeing probably a
schism
if i'm honest where i think you're going
to see a lot of people still pushing for
the huge scale like
you know i sneezed in the world ended
explore um but also
that real nitty gritty grounded focused
one
and bringing in some of the the more
older styles like you said things coming
back into circle where it's like
it is a very tight family drama where
one of the characters was dead all along
or
whatever my point being that it's far
more focused rather than the huge
sprawling stuff which is
everywhere all the time i think less so
perhaps with podcasting though and with
audio drama you
you have much more uh diverse material
that tends to reach your ears before
things reach your eyes on the screen
that makes sense yeah definitely and
further to that i'm curious as to
what tropes in audio in audio horror
make the panel kind of sit up and pay
attention audio specifically
audio specifically well i mean from my
perspective
probably from david's we we are no sleep
people and we
we are big lovers of the creepypasta so
creepypasta trope
i guess is a trope explain that just in
case any of your audience don't um so
for anybody that doesn't know what
creepypastas are they're short
internet-based stories
um and the no-sleep podcast in
particular started by adapting
uh the subreddit so there's a subreddit
with a load of very short creepy stories
written by whoever wanted to upload one
and it grew from there so i think
um from my perspective i am very fond of
a creepypasta i'm fond of a campfire
story and i think that
is a trope that will never die um and
you can see it with the multitude of
youtube channels dedicated to it
hundreds of podcasts out there that all
do that kind of
let's tell a scary story around the
campfire it's a gleeful refusal to
contextualize
it's just here is a horrible thing
that's happened yeah the end
yep pretty much yeah
and it's usually first person as well so
i went to the store and somebody chopped
my head off the end and it's like
and that's that's actually really
enjoyable because you can relate to it
and it's very easy and quick to digest
and and you can have fun with it so i
think that's my

favorite that was was that the question
my favorite trait yeah there we go i got
that
on the flip side uh the long form
claustrophobic
atmospheric slow burn uh
ghost story that or horror that builds
up over time
uh which is definitely the jamesian
style of shadows at the door that we
enjoy but the white vault and things
like that
is is a very claustrophobic slow but
it's a bit like the thing but even
longer
so that that's that's one of the things
the long thing yes
[Laughter]
we're being filmed gemma
[Laughter]
so yes that's um
i was actually just about to say i'm
really glad you brought that up
[Laughter]
come again maybe later
um i'm getting hot here
it's been a long day there's actually a
new version of the thing
being is that really yeah another name
which means one of two things it will
either be the equivalent of a
three-minute guitar solo
which is what really good bluehouse
movies tend to be or it'll be the
equivalent of three minutes of lift
music guitar solo which is what the
other bloomhouse movies tend to be
um very skeptical okay okay uh so tropes
in audio that okay here's one that i
i personally like playing to type a
little bit which is on the sound design
side so let's go let's go into the audio
bit hard i really like
so i don't it's easy to say why i don't
like it then come back from there so
what i don't like
is grossly overproduced you know i went
up to the door
i stepped across the floor it's like
great but fabulous you found a foley kit
cool sorry me just
there are no specific culprits i have to
mine there but all i mean though
is that people who feel that you know it
tends to come with jump scares you know
you know open the door and there's a
monster back i like a good jump scare
see i don't especially with audio but i
like like
art force you know when you're okay i
don't what i don't like is you know
welcome to the black oh yeah
scare me like one of your french girls
but what i do like a lot is
when people put the effort in and make
something very calm
very measured very grounded and they
treat the audio
the same way that you treat the actual
horror content itself which is
the audio is perfectly normal in every
way apart from this one
little thing weird thing and as this
noise hypothetically yeah and as the
story progresses
that one weird thing grows more
prevalent much like the ghost in the
room you know the mr james thing
if you take the thing in the background
you slowly make the background
overwhelm the foreground that in sound i
love it where i listen to something and
go
that sounds kind of real and then i
forget that i'm listening to horror for
at least
15 minutes and then stuff gets weird and
i realized it was weird for the last 10
minutes
that's what i like i think but that's a
very me
it's a answer one um i i mean in
in terms of kind of horror tropes that
that excited me that any of you who were
in
your audience this morning know that any
story which involves letters
a undersea monster i'm dying happy
frankly um
in terms of stuff which uh audio drama
or her podcasts do very well
um honestly everything that people on
this panel produce
has something in it which i really
really respond to no sleep's
wonderful ability to not only commit to
creepy pastors and aesthetic as an
approach
and the way that they use that to filter
the lens of old-school
1950s ec horror comics you know where
again it's just that here's a horrible
thing can we stop it no
oh that was the shoe at 20 20.
that's your takeaway for this panel uh
the white vault which is genuinely one
of the best
slow burn horror stories i've ever
encountered where you get to the end of
the first season and go i'm terrified
five things have happened but i'm
terrified
it's an amazing show calling darkness
which
yeah we kind of take all of those tropes
and gleefully stuff them into every
single episode as many as we can get in
so that we can make fun of them you have
a self-aware narrator as well
we do have as a kid who grew up watching
danger mouse
self-aware narrators are are here for me
they're just so great
[Music]
did you never see the old school danger
i do it's just of all the choices
we don't have time to explain how danger
mouse is an archetypal piece of late
20th century horror
leave it with me uh also
emma james i mean i i know i was busting
an old dead white guys earlier
well lovecraft because lovecraft's
scream um but
emma yeah emma james is if you're gonna
if you're gonna do horror stories
do i mr james for ghost stories from do
ammo james for god's sake because he
wrote hundreds of them
and they're all great you know and those
those four shows and the one i do
because i also do a horror show
uh do a really really good job of kind
of
exploiting some of the really
interesting and positive elements of the
field and doing in fun and very
and varied ways and i mean i
if you don't if there are any of these
shows that you don't listen to and
you're remotely interested in the field
you really should
because you'll find something incredibly
different
to what you already encounter and some
of it you'll hate and some of it
will lead you down roads you never
thought you'd go down and you'll find
out much more about your tastes and i
love that stuff
as a journalist and as a podcaster it's
an endlessly positive experience for me
and that leads me on to one of my last
questions which is
i'm going to put my panel on the spot a
little spot a little bit here and ask
them to talk about one or two of the
shows they listen to
but not all of them and
why they like them and mr newell has
thinking finger which leads me to
believe he's imminent so
oh no don't mind me okay audio
specifically
ideally audio specifically and horror
specific wow uh
horror specific if possible if we could
stick to what if
if we could stick to audio drama it's
kind of the outer boundary that would be
great
oh and we're going to do questions
throughout the last 10 15 minutes if
anyone has it
i was a big black tapes fan before
anything else so
black tapes was a long form single story
and you can really and every episode had
a new layer
and a new scary element to it we won't
talk about the ending but
we will talk about the fact that they
re-released the last series
uh and renamed the last episode the
mid-season finale so there is hope
there's more of it yeah there's like six
more yeah are they out now
yeah they dropped it basically happy
days
um so i i mean i i've listened to so
many podcasts it's impossible for me to
talk about
all of them but um i'm a huge no-sleep
podcast fan actually like
i write for the show but i i was a fan
first and foremost and there's thousands
of hours of content that i
weighed through i listened to shadows at
the door um i listen to the white vault
i listen to magnus i listen to pseudopod
i listen to
pretty much all those names that you
know and love i also a non-horror one
which really influences me which i know
we're not supposed to talk about
is a little show by ian chilag called
everything is alive
which is a series of interviews with
inanimate objects
and the first episode is about a can of
coke called louie
and his main desire in life is to be
drunk he's been kept in the back of the
cupboard for 20 years or something
and it's the most existential stuff i
think
i've ever listened to and actually i
like to diversify
because i think horror should be
informed by different genres and stuff
as well
so that's me getting myself out of the
way
i think i have like 1.1
bear with me on this one follow me um so
for the one it's an easy one although it
feels like a try answer for a panel
which is
um pseudopod because
i was listening to pseudopods before i'd
ever made anything
um and pseudopod does
one thing specifically really
really well better than anyone which is
curation specifically
and what that means is if you're
interested in the field
you can just tune in and pick a random
smorgasbord of the pseudopod
stories and go that's interesting i've
not seen that i know that i know that oh
what's that
but my point is is that it is someone
going out there
and going you should see this you should
see this it's like having your own
dedicated personal librarian for the
genre
that's cool i liked that i also enjoy
making aleister awkward so i will
continue
um but it is what's useful is because of
the very nature of the the format that
anthology of shorter
fictions and the occasional slightly
longer it exposes you to far more
very quickly uh so if i'm being brutally
honest in a way he doesn't know
i learned horror from him and pseudopod
the point yeah the trick is to look this
way
and my my point one is going to be one
where i think people would be shocked to
notice of me i
found the very initial stages of welcome
to night vale very interesting
and i think as it progressed as any
project does when it progresses over a
certain length of time
it begins to um what's the word uh like
i'm trying to say it in a way that
doesn't sound horrible like
fossil light that's not all right thank
you yeah what it does is it goes
this works so that comes up again and
then that comes up again
but the longer that you run you run out
of options unless you grab two things
smash them together and hope that
something comes out but
very early night vale where it didn't
really know what it wanted to be yet
tried a far more interesting line for me
and it took some real hard turns so i
was like i'm happy i'm happy i'm happy
everything's terrible and it was just
like yeah whoa
especially genuinely like the first five
or so
genuinely i was like oh what are you
excellent and there was a british
version of that called gallo tree
welcome to
tree which is still going now but it's
it is the british version of night vale
it certainly started that way
uh i had to get my ipod out just to
look through my podcast list and the one
that i've i've sort of
zoned in on is called down below the
reservoir
which is a good choice it's beautiful
it is horror and poetry
smashed together with a gorgeous irish
brogue
so it's it is the most poetic
podcast that does horror
so that's that that would be my my
suggestion the caledonian gothic was
similar for
for the scots um but down below the
reservoir was would actually
would absolutely be my my choice um
just having looked through unseen hour
which is horror plus the goon show
which is fantastic um
yeah darkest night because darkest night
was brilliant
um yeah blah blah blah hidden
frequencies which is
uh kind of yeah uh that's oh what is it
yes it's mick but what what's the oh
it's yeah the hidden
tv versions like to highlight zones
twilight zone
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
excellent i i have a couple um
there are two produced by the same
company uh with this one named zoom doom
uh one is a show called mirrors
which is initially a ghost story and
it's a ghost story set in three
different time periods
with the 1960s 2080
and 2019 with three different women
being haunted by
the identical ghosts and the second
season does
one of the best jobs of unpacking and
exploring and rebuilding
a premise i've ever encountered it's
extraordinarily good
and zoom doom have this incredible
capability to take
a very simple premise and do
unbelievable stuff with it the other
show is a thing called the six
disappearances of ella mcrae
and it's about um a young woman on a
family holiday
and she steps they go out for a hike she
steps up onto a rock
and she dies or she disappears or
suddenly they're in a desert and she's
walked off
or she's abducted by someone or suddenly
they're in a new york street
and she's run over and killed and six
people witnessed her disappear
at the same time none of them can agree
on what happened
and it is the closest to a modern
version of picnic at hanging rock
i have ever encountered it has that
monolithic sense of something
completely supernatural and alien just
under the surface and i really respond
to that
there's also a show which i've been
frantically googling for the last five
minutes
and maddeningly that i can't remember
the name of i'll
i'll put it on on my twitter feed and
hashtag it with
the the hashtag so hopefully you folks
can find it which is um
a canadian series about a small town
with a local monster oh is that
blackwood i believe it might be yeah now
i listened to that that's
really very good um super production
quality oh god yeah and
again just unpacks itself so beautiful
yeah really very nice it's a tale of
local teenage journalists kind of
exploring the local monster
yes um and it's done brilliantly but i
don't actually think there's a second
series
i'm not sure i will dig in because i
might give you another one as well and
we'll we'll
put on the feed um i would like to thank
my incredible panel
for being as exactly as erudite and
articulate and perceptive as i
knew they would be and we're going to
throw the floor open to questions if
for those of you who don't know this is
a throwable microphone it's really hard
and heavy it's squishy
and uh i i cover these things quite
openly
who would like to ask your question um i
don't do horror
like my family my family were genuinely
when i said oh i'm listening to the
magnus archives
my family went what's that and i said
it's a horror podcast and they all went
who are you and what have you done with
kyle so
what what do you think because because
i've spoken to other people as well and
they don't they they don't do they don't
touch like movies or tv that is horror
but they found that they've really
enjoyed things like magnus archives and
then pseudopoly
and other horror podcasts do you think
do you think that there's anything that
in particular brings people into
this specific way of of presenting
horror or uh the number of people
that have said that they fall asleep
listening to the no sleep podcast
is amazing even i fall asleep listening
to the no sleep podcast it can be very
chilly it's very good
exactly and and part of what you were
saying earlier alex about um
uh about the the audio production not
being
too um sort of smash or or
too jarring it's it's basically like
going back to
childhood and um and having a story
being read to you as
as you go to sleep but um yeah that it
was just
amusing that i think there's a lot to be
said for how much control you have as a
listener
and i think when you're watching a film
where you're in a movie a cinema
watching a movie
there are no trigger warnings there is
no respect for your particular personal
traumas or any of that you're either in
there or you're not
with with podcasting with audio drama
you can choose to engage on whatever
level you wish
and i think a lot of people are able to
access and consume horror
uh in audio format more comfortably
than they can in other mediums if that
makes sense
i think i also think the community the
audio community cares a lot more about
those sorts of things i know
when we we do calling darkness um we
we have a an intro that sort of states
that there are some certain themes it's
a comedy show but there are still themes
that you might not want to engage with
and i think as a listener you should
have as much control
as you you need so that you enjoy what
you're doing instead of
you know feeling unnecessarily unsettled
or
upset i think combined with that as well
is he's been brought up a few times
today which is the
podcasting is a medium is probably one
of the most intimate entertainment
products you can really engage with
because it's happening yeah um so as a
result
building what you just said what you
have is control of the situation so you
can bail
take a break or skip chunks and it'll be
fine combined with
the most one of the most immediate ways
to engage in the genre
and i think there's some interesting
stuff being done in vr in fairness which
hits the same boat where you can just go
nope i'll go back to it and it's still
immediate but i think podcasting does
that in a way that is
doesn't require an outlay of you know
four thousand pounds
um and i think it like a combination of
those factors certainly make it a lot
more accessible
yeah i'd like to build on all all the
other stuff the panelists have said
and that in as well the fact that
podcasting is
there's always a kind of very pleasingly
subversive element to listening to a
podcast
because it's both intimate and passive
you can be doing something else as well
and more than once with with certain
shows i've got to
not sure like this i'm going to take
headphones off and concentrate on the
washing up yeah
and it becomes a as everyone said the
control is very much in your hands
all the way through i really dig that
i think there's also an element because
it is uniquely visual in your own body
does your own mind provide its own
filter mechanism whereby
the visual uh build et cetera you get
shock horror study stability something
that's possibly a world and the
kind of thing that you you know it's
being imposed upon you rather than you
drawing it from within your own
experience and it brings its own
protections it
hits it gives you that level of
protection to
the point you love all right just at the
edge where you're
as uncomfortable as you want to be the
volume control is always in your hand
it's kind of great who's next
um you said earlier about horror being
kind of
uh getting involved with other genres do
you think in terms of audio drama
there's a chance that other
mediums within the genre will kind of
get involved like stuff like
um rpg podcasts and like improv do you
think there's a chance obviously there's
a lot of
uh horror elements in those especially
obstacle gaming
i guarantee i guarantee somebody is out
there making that
show right now who is or there's i am
aware
i'm aware of at least one podcasting is
so accessible
it really really is you need a room full
of friends or you can
be a loan operator you need a halfway
decent mic
access to bip software as a starting
point i'm not saying that those are the
things that you should stay with
throughout your podcasting career
but it's incredibly accessible it's a
lot easier to make a podcast than it is
to go off and write a book
trust me i know or to make a movie
you know in terms of initial outlay and
how you can teach yourself to do things
so
i guarantee yes there will be it's
because it's so much more accessible
it's so much easier to experiment with
those other
mediums and and yeah there's got to be
at least 10 of those out there now
though to play devil's advocate on the
flip side of the coin there is an aspect
to consider which is
i'm not a fan of horror okay cool so
that means that let's let's assume i am
not a
fan of horror you're not gonna listen to
this thing i am not a fan of gaming
therefore you're not gonna listen to
this thing
the danger that always comes with the
genre blend is the dream is
oh the fans of this will engage with the
fans of this great there is a dark side
to that which is that your horror fans
don't like gaming so they don't listen
and you gave me fans they don't like
horror so they don't listen
and then you're left with gary
and gary it's lovely you know the the
joy of podcasting is
not everyone has to like it if you want
to make a podcast for gary
then go knock it out that's how you want
gary willa gary
forever because you made the perfect
show as well
right nobody makes a podcast to make
money or be famous come on that's like
that's right
so you make it because you love it you
make it because it's a passion project
and that's why you should pretty much do
everything creative i think
and so if you want to make that super
niche thing then you know
somebody will make it and yeah yes is
the answer
if no one in this room is using the term
hat using the hashtag justiceforgary
[Laughter]
poor gary
um so the bbc have belatedly got into
horror
outcasts have you listened to the case
of child sex award and the whispering
darkness and if so
what did you think of them i i've
listened to
casey charles dexter ward and i really
liked it
um like i was saying earlier my my kind
of entry level with with lovecraft is
are you doing something strange with it
which would probably have pissed him off
and i i really liked its willingness to
completely engage with a very modern
storytelling framework and to with the
kind of weird and lumpy bits of the
story
so yeah my initial thing was oh it's
it's charles dick's award again
great and then i listened to it was very
pleasantly surprised so yeah i really
dug that
i i very much enjoyed it uh but i also
thought
we've been doing this for years
yeah i haven't and i think my i'm so
invested in indie podcasting and in um
yeah independent producers and genres
that i i i
consume so many podcasts that it's
difficult sometimes to
to go to the more commercially does that
make sense like
yeah i have to confess i also haven't
listened to it but
not for any reason beyond i didn't get
around to listening to it
and i'm quite disorganized in how i
spend my leisure time
so it's also worth pointing out alex
sleeps 15 minutes out of every 37 hours
but recently achieved a high score in
beat saber so my my work life balances
um with the growth of things like the
bbc murmurs podcasts where they're
seeking out independence do you think
there's a horror podcasting is
influencing beyond
the immediate genre or outside
podcasting or with the big publishers
yes alex
i don't know how to say that i think
what
some of the bigger players are starting
to notice
is that the interest is there and
if the interest is not catered to it
will cater to itself
and that's what's been happening and
gary really wanted that gaming horror
show gary made that show turns out
a lot of people wanted gary's show gary
does well
um i think that it's reached the point
now
where not just in horror but in other
mediums as well genre of fiction in
general i'd say is sort of hitting its
stride really
and certainly in terms of bouncing into
into larger
like production spaces um and i think
it's a case of let's let's all be
horrible cynical skeptical
bastards like me people like money
successful things are more likely to
make money as a result
you can expect that if the thing that
you like has become popular
large entities are going to start
getting more invested in it i should say
that i'm kind of separating out bbc a
little bit because it doesn't really
have the need
for money in the same way it kind of
survives on its own
but certainly on the um the private side
you're going to start seeing more of
like um
bad example it's not horrible you know
like wolverine the long night and all of
that kind of thing because
because they they know that yeah they
know the demand is there and you're
gonna start seeing bigger players
starting to just make more of the shows
that you would normally associate with
indies and especially in podcasting
and to some extent you've already seen
that with luminary yeah
um good example of a poor execution
absolutely yeah
yeah i agree i think i think if you're a
statistician and you're looking at
download figures
and you look at some of the biggest
shows out there and see that there are a
lot of them are in
the genre then it makes sense to cater
to that in your own audience
i don't again i i'm hesitant because i'm
not as
experienced with the kind of
the bbc side of audio um as i'd like to
be
but that's yeah i agree we are
two minutes off the end of our time
david did you have an answer i was just
gonna say yeah it seems like we are
uh in in a way the sort of
proof-of-concept stage
for these bigger companies to come in
and uh
and make their money off it um
so that was basically all i was going to
say
because you saw that was it remembered
limetown made the jump from podcasting
to
to the tv to facebook yes to facebook
but to sell one's soul for power richard
for wales but again it's proof of
concept
it works it gets taken up yeah exactly
it fails
and law as well yeah and law yes which
is done spectacularly
so i think we have about um
75 seconds left so ella if your question
is very short
i got to catch it how would you
characterize the relationship between
comedy and horror please
75 seconds okay
as a writer of a comedy horror show the
relationship is incredibly important
i think if you want to scare people
making them laugh
with five within five minute breath of
scaring them is really really important
you take them to the top and then you
smash them down
um i very much enjoy pointing
my pointing poking fun at tropes
and littering rude jokes with squishy
sound effects
it's very effective and i think it's an
incredibly important relationship
yeah that's my quick answer uh i think
they are two genres that both
rely on uh form format
structure and sort of theatrical grammar
as in you know set up a beat and so on
as a result they are simultaneously uh
compatible and incompatible in that
if those two formats are layered on top
of one another and synced up correctly
you will get something wonderful and
normally a very black comedy will go
oh really here however if you lay
they're not poorly and that theatrical
grammar doesn't
line up what you end up with is set up
set up beat beat beat set
beat and it's just like this is a
garbage mess um
and i think it's one of those things
where it's wonderful if it goes well but
you have to be very
um structurally like deft to make it
work
i just say it's all about timing that's
a way better way point
[Laughter]
and for me it's still a symbol crash if
the symbol is covered in blood
[Music]
why am i even here ladies and gentlemen
and everybody else i'm delighted to
inform you that not only have we
finished on time
but we have finished the end of one of
the absolute highlights of my day thank
you so much
to my remarkable panel of ridiculously
talented creatives
this is where you upload them please
audience who've given us some of the
best questions we've had all day and
alistair our fanta
fantabulous erudite host unlike myself
apparently
[Applause]
[Music]
this episode is distributed by rusty
quill and licensed under a creative
commons attribution non-commercial share
alike 4.0 international license
for more information visit
rustyquill.com tweet us at the rusty
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at rustyquill.com
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