Voter Selection Episodes
Originals
Escape Pod 1003: Billionaire’s Tears
July 24, 2025, 4937 words, Author: Vanessa Ricci-Thode Narrator: Valerie Valdes
Duration: 34:45
5:43-6:08: It was kinda hard to ignore when the plague first started. It was all anyone talked about. A plague killing off all the billionaires? Right on! Gates was the first to go, Musk and Bezos not far behind. At first everyone thought it was poisonings or something.
But then Taylor Swift got to the screaming, gave all her money to her fan club as one last thank you before she died, and then immediately recovered.
Escape Pod 985: The Interdimensional Rift at the Lucky Sunrise Bingo Palace
March 20, 2025, 4146 words, Author: Ryan Cole, Narrator: Elie Hirschman
Duration: 29:06
5:37-6:05: Can you believe it? she’d say to me and Mom over dinner, while the brisket and kugel sizzled noisily in the oven. Dorothea won again. For the third time this month. No matter that she’s been dead in our world for six years.
Sorry, Bubbee, we’d say in an attempt to calm her down. But nothing ever helps. Not better luck next time or you can’t win them all or I’m sure the rifts will stop, it’s only a matter of time.
Escape Pod 993: That Thing With Bob and the Crop Circles
May 15, 2025, 3794 words, Author: T. Kingfisher, Narrator: Kevin M. Hayes
Duration: 30:13
7:13-7:55: You remember Bob, of course—Marlene’s boy, not the Reverend. I couldn’t exactly say that Bob was a friend of mine, especially since I relieved him of an ill-gotten narwhal he was keeping in his aboveground swimming pool, but we stay pleasant (if distinctly chilly on Bob’s part) because he’s Marlene’s boy, although Marlene herself has often expressed the opinion that she took a few too many herbal supplements during pregnancy. I asked her once if she meant marijuana and she said no, she never touched the stuff, but she had gone through a dark patch in her life when she was hooked on goldenseal and brewer’s yeast, so take that as you will.
Escape Pod 1019: Baron Quits The Payloaders
November 13, 2025, 6427 words, Author: Renan Bernardo, Narrator: Ben Gideon
Duration: 49:57
2:20-2:57: This story starts with a gig. Half a million people from all corners of the galaxy, hands in the air, heads banging to our vibrant noise. You probably saw the venue on some feed already. It’s the Amplitude, our spaceship, stage #3, the one with an enormous radiation-shielding dome over our heads. Right now, the glass glistens with Marzanna’s tannish and gaseous massiveness outside.
This is also how the story ends for me. How I want it to end. With a blast and nothing more.
Reprints
Escape Pod 979: Steadyboi After the Apocalypse
February 6, 2025, 2850 words, Author: Merc Fenn Wolfmoor, Narrator: Joe Moran
Duration: 32:32
4:40-5:05: …people think you’re violent. So you grind your slow, plodding way deeper into the wastes. You can’t help going through towns: your core programming guidance system overrules any detours. You were made to confront people, even if you don’t want to cause harm.
You’re a huge, heavy, metal monster. And since there aren’t any wars, you’re obsolete.
Escape Pod 1009: The Combat Pilot’s Dictionary
September 4, 2025, 2975 words, Author: Arden Baker, Narrator: Jess Lewis
Duration: 31:32
2:41-3:29
Boot
Rookie pilot. See also – nugget.
You called us ‘boots’ when we turned up to the flight deck that first morning I laid eyes on you.
The halogen lighting shone down onto the makeshift parade ground with a harsh insistence matched only by your loud drill calls.
You looked the part. Milspec features matched with an impeccably pressed grey uniform. Hair shorn close to the scalp to fit the Z94-OptiGuard Quiklok Aerospace Aviation Helmet that you wore in combat. Broad shoulders and piercing eyes. Tall and built like a true Martian. Rust in your blood.
Escape Pod 1015: Space Pirate Queen of the Ten Billion Utopias
October 16, 2025, 4480 words, Author: Elly Bangs, Narrator: Christiana Ellis
Duration: 40:53
2:45 – 3:23: Ursa Major got right the fuck out of our universe on the very afternoon she learned there were other options. It was the lucky break of her life that she just happened to be there, a short sprint from one of those points where the alien aethertrain briefly punched through into our world: a multidimensional mechanical worm intersecting our reality as a rush of vaguely boxcar-like shapes strung between entry and exit portals, thirty-odd feet above one suburb or another, a cornfield, a strip mall, a stadium.