#podtrope

[tryerofpods]

Pulled this one out of ye olde podvault for ya! I even relistened some today to refresh my memory. I'd say "the things we do for love", but it was like reuniting with an old friend. 🤗 Let's talk about The Bunker (@bunkerpodcast ) from @definitelyhumanproductions . The Bunker is a post-apocalypic, dark humor, buddy comedy podcast that came out in 2014. The year is 2414, David and David and Tom live together in a bunker and do a radio show, possibly the last radio show on Earth. The world is full of mutants, humans, odd creatures, sentient robots, mold Zombies... and everywhere is a dystopian waste land. There's a bit of a "found footage" story telling aspect, á la Within the Wires, as the guys play old recording from the before times. Some old ads, music, infotainment, and some "inside the actor's studio" style interviews with artists and an interview robot who...seems to be a bit glitchy, asking questions from insightful to trite and also...questions about humanity and killer robot vibes... It's hard to pinpoint how long ago the apocalypse was, because, well...the guys remember the before times, probably something to do with that ad from Happiness Inc, about pills that cure death... But when various people come by the bunker from a thieving murderous theater troupe, to...A HUMAN WOMAN, the last survivor of a tribe, who rests, and leaves on a mission of vengeance, well Tom loses it, he has to go out into the world! He needs to *live* not just exist! Aaaaaggghhhhh!! Can Tom survive in the outside? How will the show go on without him? Will David's sanity survive until the next delivery of biscuits for "tea and biscuits"?? 13, 1-2 hour episodes, there's enough of The Bunker to go around. So, if you like post-apocalypse meets Monty Python, Our Fair City, Active Radioactive Radio, or the whole comedy-apocalypse #podtrope, then The Bunker is for you!

[tryerofpods]

In honor of today's LONG awaited return for season two... Let's talk about Death by Dying @deathbydyingpod . Death by Dying is a supernatural, dark comedy, mystery fiction podcast following in the weird small town #podtrope of such illustrious pods as Welcome to Night Vale, Munchin, Minnesota, King Falls AM, Knight Falls, CA, The Lost Cat, etc. In the town of Crest Falls, ID where violent "accidental" deaths are commonplace, lost souls inhabit sentient bicycles, and disconcerting button eyed ravens harass and portend things at the citizenry, one lone man at a typewriter catelogs death. He's simply known as The Obituary Writer. As such, he becomes an unlikely Ms. Marple, looking into some of the "accidental" deaths and goings on about town, talking to the embodiment of death, you know, as you do. 6, 30-ish minute episodes in the season proper, but also a recorded live show, some between season stories, and two cross over episodes with SCP Archives ( @scp_pod ), it shouldn't take too long to get caught up in this unique dark comedy tale. So, if you like quirky main characters, strange small towns, and the supernatural, then Death by Dying is for you!

[tryerofpods]

Oh, @laurenshippen you and your amazing team at @atypicalartists keep knocking it out of the park. Let's talk about In Strange Woods. In Strange Woods is a Musical fiction podcast; a beautiful, tragic, coming of age tale about what we do with our grief, how we channel it, how it shapes us, and how it can fuel our determination, for good and for all. Set in the small town of White Tail, Minnesota (USA), and told in the "podcast/interviewer" #podtrope style, host, Brett Ryback (the actor/writer's actual name, Modern Family, LG15) narrates the events and interviews the people surrounding the accidental death of Jacob Wells and the resulting fallout. When Peregrine Wells' (Lily Mae Harrington, Single Drunk Female, The Rookie, Some Freaks) older brother, Jacob, dies from exposure in a freak snowstorm, she convinces the reclusive woodsmen who found the body, Peter Howland or "Howl" (Patrick Page, In The Heights, The Good Wife) into training her and some friends in survivalism. Peregrine is convinced if Jacob had any basic outdoor survival skills he would have made it safely back home. Having talked Howl into giving them lessons, Peregrine comes up with the idea of "The Final" an overnight outdoor test of their survival skills--spend a night in the woods with only the bare essentials of gear and find your way back to town via dead reckoning. But as the kids get closer to The Final, parents are divided about the idea, they question the safety, who Howl is and what his intentions are. Music by Matt Sav and Brett Ryback, and Lyrics by Jeff Luppino-Esposito, these catchy, haunting, and sometimes funny songs will echo in your head long after the podcast is over. And the amazing cast, Harrington's pure, earnestness, Page's low, Tom Waits gravel, Lauren Shippen's cameo with a voice like a Disney princess, and so many others I don't have room to mention. Luckily, they have the full cast album of the show available wherever you get your music. 5, 30-60 minute episodes, you could easily, theoretically, loop it a few times throughout your day. So, if you like well crafted musicals, coming of age stories, or all things Atypical Artists, then In Strange Woods is for you!

[tryerofpods]

Let's talk about @tanispodcast from Public Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale. Tanis has been giving us the *fictional* suspenseful creeps since 2015. And I have a love/hate relationship with it. 😅 Nic Silver is a radio producer at a faux NPR-type radio station in the Pacific Northwest of the US, when he comes across references to a word/thing/place(?) called Tanis. Tanis is a myth/idea that's been mentioned off and on since Egyptian times. So Nic starts with history and hires a top level hacker, MK, to help him research Tanis across the internet, though posts are few and far between and sometimes disappear quickly. As Nic goes deeper down the hole we begin to fear for his safety; dreams, strange feelings, lost time, the occult, locations in the forest, standing stones...if you follow Nic down this path, you will never be able to explain this without a crazy wall collage of scraps of paper and string. And that's part of what I love about it, complex plots, decent character development, suspense, myths, occultism, creepy history. It's a wild ride, and I'm down to listen to it. Right down to the keyboards meets odd sounds and reverb music lightly playing under the "segments". So what urks me. *Sigh* Well, in our modern world of misinformation and "fake news" crap, TANIS and its sister podcasts, The Black Tapes, Rabbits, and The Last Movie, (but TANIS especially), go out of their way to pretend that they're true stories. Interweaving and blurring history, mythology, current events, actual sites with fictional backstories; which would be fun, but that they claim Nic is actually experiencing all this. Going so far as to say they've changed names to protect the innocent, doing shows with a tip line with fans suggesting solutions to the mystery; and the website doesn't much clarify that the "reality" is fiction either. Maybe it's just my pet peeve, but this one thing really sticks in my craw--taking the "Serial-esque host falls into something beyond imagining" #podtrope to this degree. All that said, it will hook you in. If you like Limetown, Magnus Archives vibes, or what if Aaron Mahnke literally fell into the World of Lore, than this pod is for you.

[tryerofpods]

Believe it or not, there are at least half a hundred ways to have anxiety in any given day. Such as, which podcast should I post about? Should I post about this one from a while back? Is it silly to talk about something that was popular? OMG brain. This ain’t life or death, it’s sharing the love of podcasts, and if you get brain trauma tomorrow and just *need* to tell the world about how great Serial was through season 3, and how Sarah Koenig’s style is so ubiquitous it’s now a #podtrope then dammit, you do that! Who cares if people who don’t even know what a podcast is have heard of it. LOL. Anyhow.

So, a little later than intended, but let’s talk about Steal the Stars (@stealthestarspodcast) , a show from Tor Labs and @gideonmediaradio and @macmillanpodcasts.

Dak is a no-nonsense, ex-military woman, and she is the floor supervisor for a government contractor. A contractor that studies, and cares for, a very special object, an alien, Moss, and his ship. While Dak takes pride in her work, and how she runs the floor, there isn’t much else in her life, and she’s okay with that… Until, that is, a new hire shows up.

Co-workers are *not* meant to fraternize, and no one really leaves the company. What will Dak do for love? What won’t she leverage to attain her goals?

I loved Steal the Stars. The acting is just totally excellent. You “see” the story. The voices are awesome. And since it’s from the same writer as “Life After” and “The Message”, the story will definitely take you to the unexpected.

If you’d gobble up a government cover up, sci-fi, alien heist, love story, then Steal the Stars is for you.

#stealthestars #quillmarine #scifi #romance #aliens #torlabs #gideonmedia #macmillan #heist https://www.instagram.com/p/CQxmph9Djkj/?utm_medium=tumblr