Archive for Podcasts

Escape Pod 151: Behind the Rules

First appeared in Forgotten Worlds, July 2006

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:35 — 21.0MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains strong language and relationship drama.

Today’s Sponsor:
Infected by Scott Sigler

Closing music: “I Feel Fantastic” by Jonathan Coulton.

Behind the Rules

By Stephanie Burgis

The first Jacqui wrote me out a list of instructions thirty pages long. It contained all her history with Robert, in detail. It gave me a list of all the things to say and do when he’s hurt, or angry, or depressed. I think she was the perfect wife. When I think about how hard it is to measure up to her, my stomach feels twitchy.

I’d been doing this job for three months. It was supposed to get easier with time, not harder.

Escape Pod 150: This, My Body

Explicit sexual material

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:00 — 41.9MB)

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Show Notes

Rated X. Contains graphic sexual and culinary scenes.

Today’s Sponsor:
Infected by Scott Sigler

This, My Body

By Jeremiah Tolbert

I am the lover. I am the chef. I am the preterite priest.

I am the secret, unknowable ingredient. You may taste me a thousand times, but never hold my essence on your tongue or capture it in your memory.

I am the flavor of ecstasy. Taste me and know God.
–Prayer of the Assaisonnement Saints

Escape Pod 149: Union Dues: All That We Leave Behind

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:30 — 27.8MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains profanity and violence.

Today’s Sponsor:

Infected by Scott Sigler

Referenced Sites:

The Union Dues Series

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

Union Dues: All That We Leave Behind

by Jeffrey R. DeRego

If I just lay here they will get tired and leave. They can’t hurt me all that much; my body is too hard now, too strong. But I can’t let on that their kicks and punches don’t bother me or who knows what they’ll do next. So I’ll lay here, curled up in the grass like some lump of igneous rock cast from a far away volcano.

“You fat assed son of a bitch! Talk to Loreen again and I’ll kill you! You understand me? I’ll beat your fat lazy ass to death!”

I bet his foot is starting to ache. My stomach is big, but it’s not soft. Not anymore. Not since last month when the change happened. We don’t have a lot of money so my wardrobe is still designed for a three hundred pound teenager, the kind with an almost unnatural love for pizza and potato chips. I still sort of look the same. But I am different, I can feel it. The rolls of flab that once encircled my belly and back are nearly gone, replaced by rippling muscle. My arms and legs are like tree trunks. I could rip Scott’s arms and legs off and beat his torso like a kettledrum. Well, if I wasn’t terrified.

Escape Pod 148: Homecoming at the Borderlands Café

First appeared in Jigsaw Nation, ed. Edward J. McFadden III and E. Sedia.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:26 — 21.6MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains heavy racial and political themes.

Referenced Sites:
Decoder Ring Theatre

Homecoming at the Borderlands Café

By Carole McDonnell

We don’t see a lot of mixed couples around here, and we’re not like some of the other states in the Confederate United Republic. It’s not like they’re gonna get killed or lynched or nothing. But it’s tough just the same. And although it’s weird enough that they’re an interracial couple, it seems to me that they’re arguing about something bigger than merely coming into this café.

I don’t know any Blacks. You got to go to Laramie, or Cheyenne to see them. But I watch Cosby when it’s on. The Confederacy ain’t as bad as the folks in Columbia might think. Sure everyone’s segregated, but it’s all equal and the Platte County school district is pretty good about African-American History Month.

Escape Pod 147: Pressure

First appeared in Strange Horizons, August 2003.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:35 — 28.6MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains moderate violence.

Audible.com Promotion!
Receive your free audiobook at: http://audiblepodcast.com/escapepod

Referenced Sites:
PodCastle

Closing music: “I Crush Everything” by Jonathan Coulton.

Pressure

By Jeff Carlson

I spent the longest five weeks of my life in that tank and in a deeper pool, healing, testing, practicing. My feet and toes had been augmented much like my hands, my thighs shortened to maximize the available muscle. I was damned quick. Relearning construction techniques with my new fingers was sometimes frustrating, yet my progress was real and those periods of solitary labor became important to me.

At the surface, in the shallows, doctors poked and prodded and put me through redundant tortures. I had been warned that the study of my new body would be extensive and did my best not to fear or hate them, but I’d never imagined such intense scrutiny. During my years as a SEAL, I had been like a bug under a microscope, constantly evaluated and scored. Here I was the microscope, my body the only lens through which they could measure their work. Stenstrom tried to be my buddy, as he had always tried, joking and asking what I’d do with the money, yet his possessiveness was obvious. “We’ll be famous,” he said. “We’ll change the world.”

I wasn’t a slave or a pet, exactly, but I was anxious to get started. To get away from them.

Escape Pod 146: Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk

First appeared in Talebones, Spring 2001.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:00 — 30.9MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains strong images of death and violence. Almost certainly not appropriate for small children.

Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk

by Ken Scholes

“Do you know what’s happened to the children?”

Edward swallowed. Suddenly, he wanted to cry. “Yes. They’re… sleeping?”

He hoped and hoped and hoped and hoped, grimacing as he did. He looked around.

Makeshift beds lined the room. Small hands gripped blankets, small eyes stared at the ceiling.

“No.” The boy frowned. “They’ve died.”

“Because of Something Very Bad?”

“Yes. And I need you to be a Very Brave Bear. Can you do that?”

Escape Pod 145: Instead of a Loving Heart

First appeared in All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories (ed. David Moles & Jay Lake).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Parental guidance suggested for violence and ennui.

Audible.com Promotion!
Receive your free audiobook at: http://audiblepodcast.com/escapepod

Referenced Sites:
Jared Axelrod’s Commissions

Instead of a Loving Heart

By Jeremiah Tolbert

We are somewhere among the tallest mountains of the world. When we arrived, I was locked away in a cargo hold, so I don’t know exactly where. Our home is a small, drafty castle and a separate laboratory. Dr. Octavio had the locals construct the lab before he tested the new death ray on their village. There’s very little left there. In my little bit of spare time, I try to bury the bodies and collect anything useful to the doctor’s experiment.

My primary duties consist of keeping the castle’s furnace running and clearing the never-ending snow from the path between the two buildings. Sometimes, it falls too fast for my slow treads and shovel attachment to keep up with and I find myself half-buried in the snow. It is horrible on my gears when this happens, but I use heavyweight oil now and it helps.

It is one of the few benefits of my metal frame that I appreciate. Life in this contraption is like being wrapped in swaddling clothes. I wonder if I would feel anything if my casing caught on fire? I need to ask the doctor when he isn’t in one of his moods.

Escape Pod 144: Friction

First appeared in Albedo One #30.

Rated PG

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:01 — 28.2MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
Nawashi, a podcast novel by Graydancer

Closing music: “Blue Genes” by George Hrab

Friction

By Will McIntosh

Gruen was on the sixty-first master, and while his wisdom had grown steadily, he had worn very little. He was incredibly well-preserved–the palms of his three-fingered hands still sported the deep, swirling ridges that had worn to nothing in most people before they’d lived thirty years. Indeed, all of the myriad folds and ridges in his thick maroon skin were for the most part intact. His eyes were still housed in tight sockets, surrounded by thickly-ridged cheeks.

Besides the feet, the eyes were the greatest point of weakness for those who aspired to read the works of the masters. Ceaseless up-and-down eye movement caused the sockets to wear out, and eventually the reader’s eyes fell out. At that point they were forced to trace the carved words with their fingers. Friction quickly took its toll on the hands; readers rarely made it through one master’s teachings this way before their hands were ground to the wrist, and they were finished.

Genres:

Escape Pod 143: Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths

First appeared in Machine of Death

Rated PG. Contains allusions to profanity and some sexual implication.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:40 — 17.6MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
Metamor City Podcast

Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths

By Camille Alexa

I look at the calendar hanging on the wall above my bed. I reach up, lift it off its nail with one hand and snuggle back under the covers, taking the calendar with me and running a finger over all the red Xs marked over all the days leading up to this one. It’s a little cold out, and the last thing in the universe I want to do is catch an effing cold the week of my birthday, so I snuggle down into the warmth of my flannel sheets even more. I know there’s going to be parties this weekend, and I’m going to want to go.

This is what I’ve been waiting for all these months. All these years, I guess, though before my friends started getting theirs, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. We were all No-Knows then.

Tomorrow, I’m finally going to feel like I belong.

Tomorrow, I’m going to find out how I die.

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