Smaller posts for awhile! Finally not procrastinating and spending more time slaving away at the programming chisel, amateurishly trying to rip the form free from the marble block it's trapped in.
I am very, very picky about podcasts that I listen to. Partly this is because the main times that I consume podcasts affects what I'm listening to. For example:
Driving: Anything below but particularly: If Books Could Kill, Bad Books for Bad People, Radiolab, Behind the Bastards, Fear of a Black Dragon, Pretending to be People, Into the Megadungeon, Ologies, etc.
Hiking: Lore, Mayfair Watchers Society, Modes of Thought in Anterran Literature, the Magnus Archives, the Silt Verses, the White Vault, etc.
While falling asleep: Exploring Series, Acephale, Knifepoint Horror, the Wrong Station
My "falling asleep podcasts" are, barring the Exploring Series, exclusively horror themed and have been finely selected for three qualities.
1. Consistency of audio volume. If it maintains the same general volume over an episode then it's a keeper.
2. Paucity of advertisements. I don't know what happened recently, but more and more advertisements on podcasts have been maliciously raising their volume over the general volume of the episode it seems, which is annoying.
3. Unique Horror (Mostly). The three main contenders here, Acephale, Knifepoint Horror, and the Wrong Station generally offer stories that I have not heard before.
Best of the Best
In particular I have to shout out to Knifepoint Horror as the best horror podcast I have been listening to this year. I have listened to it for several years, but this year in particular I did a great deal of hiking and driving finally actively listened to the entire catalogue and on a re-listen I finally started to appreciate these tales. Soren Narnia, the author of the stories, the podcast creator, and the main voice in all but the earliest of episodes weaves a variety of tales that usually wind a nebulous wandering tale through horror and mystery. Each story is very minimal in audio effects and uses a singular narration, they're all by one person. There's no guarantee of getting closure on these tales, some of them end rather abruptly, some of them wind out over the hour or so, and some have satisfying resolutions, but each one still succeeds in that draw in of Soren's narration as he tells a strange story. I highly recommend the podcast and in particular here are my favorite episodes. You don't need to listen to anything in order*, so don't worry about that.
- Let No One Walk Beside Her: Absolutely unique in the podcast, there's nothing else like this horrific, fantastical tale of survival, winter, and magic
- Colony: A tale of years and a bright community's transformation, told by an outsider
- The Crack: Unsuspecting, a student joins a silent group meditation hike and experiences a terror of geography and humanity
- Twelve Tiny Cabins: A student finds a campground mysteriously and suddenly abandoned. Later, they interview a professor about the writer's retreat that had been abandoned and what they saw.
- Occupiers: A 19th century story about what stalks the streets of occupied Moscow.
- Digs: The narrated notes of someone moving into a strange apartment and what they experience there.
- A Convergence in Wintertime: Tales of treasure bring several different groups together at a critical moment in a deadly environment.
There's more but as I scrolled through my notes just now I started to realize I would end up listing most of the episodes in the catalogue! So, if you want some quiet, wandering narration and mystery then definitely check out Knifepoint Horror.
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