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Escape Pod 1056: Woolly

“Woolly” was first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction (May/June 2025)

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Show Notes

This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get 10% off your purchase.

Woolly

by Carrie Vaughn

At five a.m., Joy got a call from the truck stop off the freeway east of the city. Wasn’t the first time.

“Did it get dumped? Did it get loose from a truck?” Joy asked.

“I don’t know,” the night manager answered. “But it’s digging around in the garbage and you’d better get here before Miles shows up and shoots it.” Miles was the day manager. He’d shot the last mini woolly they’d found digging in the garbage.

Fortunately, the morning rush hadn’t hit, so the expanse of asphalt around the rows of pumps was mostly empty. At the back of the building, a couple of truckers were standing aside, pointing their phones. That told her right where the commotion was. She retrieved a yardstick and a bag of cabbages from her van.

She heard him before she saw him, banging on steel, along with the squelch and thud of bags and boxes getting scattered. When she rounded the corner, she saw the mess for herself.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1054: Takahata-fudo

Escape Pod 1054: Takahata-fudo is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:42 — 62.8MB)

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Show Notes

This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get 10% off your purchase.

Takahata-fudo

by Meridel Newton

If you walk far enough along the old Keio line rail tracks to the west of the crumbling city, you eventually reach a steep hillside covered in blue and purple flowers, host to a beautiful wreck of a temple. The flowers are always blooming, and the temple seems somehow arrested in time, caught between its former glory and the genteel decay that afflicts all human constructs. There’s a stream with clear flowing water and a perfect little retainer pond, and there I’d stopped to refill my water supply when I first met Satou Sekihito, the temple attendant.

It is, of course, unusual for me to encounter anyone at all this far from the city center, much less a lone old man with no weapon but a pushbroom he probably made himself. So I was maybe a little off my guard, which is the only reason he got as close as he did before I heard a soft footfall and whirled around, nearly dropping a precious canteen as I did so.

Picture this, if you will: an old man, thin, but taller than most younger men these days. No mask. He wears a grey robe that was once light blue, and hakama that hangs in tatters around his ankles. He’s wearing tabi, and oddly enough, that’s the detail that relaxes me. You can’t walk very far in tabi, or over any rough terrain at all. This old man probably doesn’t stray far from the temple grounds. He can’t be any threat.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1032: milt

“milt” first apeared in Fission #5 by the British Science Fiction Association (June 2025)

Contains Injury/body horror, climate grief, implied sexual behavior

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:04 — 45.9MB)

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milt

by Victoria N. Shi

The others believe there’s no pulling Yobé out of his depressn. He’s convinced the second cataclysm is coming, worse than tsunami or algae bloom. He’s the most brilliant of us. We know he may be right. Still, it’s been five days since he debarked the NRV CHINOISERIE, which usually I understand because his dedication is righteous, his skin better with dry air and his hands more graceful with touchscreens than the rest of us.

But, then, he missed spawning. Not just any mating night, but our annual poisson d’avril, most cherished for its play. He no-showed.

I didn’t know until I’d already waited two hours in the reefs, touching my back again and again, hoping to find a starfish, le poisson of ritual, tacked there. I ignored all other broodstock calling for me to flash my fins and let down my papilla—none of them have ever been able to handle me.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1030: The Smell of the Planet I Was Born On

Escape Pod 1030: The Smell of the Planet I Was Born On is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:20 — 43.6MB)

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The Smell of the Planet I Was Born On

By Rodrigo Culagovski

There are two moons visible, a large one right above us, and another smaller one about fifteen degrees below it in the star-studded night sky above the almost empty, rocky, lifeless surface of the planet. The horizon slowly takes on the slightly blue stain that comes right after the sunset.

“Still takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”

I turn to look up. Laiendro is standing behind me on the slight rise I chose to sit and enjoy the view.

“Yeah, it really does. It’s nothing like Earth, but it’s also the same, you know?” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1001: Death by Pink in the Lollipop Apocalypse

Escape Pod 1001: Death by Pink in the Lollipop Apocalypse is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:03 — 54.1MB)

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Death by Pink in the Lollipop Apocalypse

By Ryan Cole

In the dark of her bed, curled up in her sheets, Susie tried to hide from the next few days and the reckoning they’d bring: of prom and graduation and the dozens of goodbyes she’d have to force herself to say, wishing she could follow. No college escape. Her applications rejected. Not to mention that she’d been bragging for months—to Piper and all her other refugee friends—about the fake acceptance letter from Delaware State, and the phony full-ride, and the lie that she’d be rooming with Piper in the fall, just like they’d always wanted, two peas in a pod.

Which made her want to run—like Dad always did. But she couldn’t be like him. Couldn’t leave when his only child needed him most. When the city they’d fled—along with half a million others—was buried in a thick layer of saccharine crust. A crust that devoured every street, every house, every skyscraper standing like a hollowed-out lollipop, that only kept spreading, kept crushing every straggler that lay in its path, as relentless as a river and impenetrable as stone. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 995: This, My Body (Flashback Friday)

This, My Body originally appeared in Interzone 2005.

Contains graphic sexual and culinary scenes. Rated X.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:05:39 — 90.6MB)

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This, My Body (Excerpt)

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

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Escape Pod 931: The Rhythms of the World

The Rhythms of the World originally appeared in Mithila Review, Issue 16, July 2022.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:04 — 51.4MB)

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The Rhythms of the World

By Johnny Caputo

As always, we’re starving to death.

From our place inside the leather pouch tied to Aamsaa’s belt, our two remaining stalks ache with hunger, barely able to hold our withered green-spotted spore caps upright. We reach down with what’s left of our network of hyphal tendrils, hoping to lap up any remaining contaminants from the patch of poisoned soil Aamsaa found last week, but there’s nothing left. No scraps of heavy metals or drops of industrial toxins. We’ve consumed it all. And if Aamsaa doesn’t find more food for us soon, we’re as good as dead.

What can we say? Toxic pollution isn’t as easy to come by as it once was. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 892: Rogue Farm (Flashback Friday)

First appeared in Live Without a Net, ed. Lou Anders

Now available in Wireless, by Charles Stross

Rogue Farm originally appeared on Escape Pod on Episode 206 on July 11, 2009.

Includes strong language, chemical violence, and drug-abusing dogs.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:35 — 54.8MB)

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Show Notes

Recorded at Balticon 43, May 23, 2009

Read by:

Joe – Jared Axelrod (of The Voice of Free Planet X),

Maddie – J.R. Blackwell (of Voices of Tomorrow)

The Farm – Evo Terra and Sheila Dee (of Evo at 11, et al.)

Brenda the Barkeep – Dee Reed (of Nobilis Erotica),

Wendy the Rat – Laura Burns,

Art the Boy Toy – John Cmar,

Bob the Dog – Earl Newton (of Stranger Things),

Narrator – Serah Eley

Special Thanks To:
Paul Fischer (of The Balticon Podcast) for instigating and organizing
Nobilis Reed (of Nobilis Erotica) for engineering

Rogue Farm (Excerpt)

By Charles Stross

“Buggerit, I don’t have time for this,” Joe muttered. The stable waiting for the small herd of cloned spidercows cluttering up the north paddock was still knee-deep in manure, and the tractor seat wasn’t getting any warmer while he shivered out here waiting for Maddie to come and sort this thing out. It wasn’t a big herd, but it was as big as his land and his labour could manage – the big biofabricator in the shed could assemble mammalian livestock faster than he could feed them up and sell them with an honest HAND-RAISED NOT VAT-GROWN label. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 885: The CRISPR Cookbook: A Guide to Biohacking Your Own Abortion in a Post-Roe World

“The CRISPR Cookbook: A Guide to Biohacking Your Own Abortion in a Post-Roe World” originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine (September 2022).

Abortion, forced pregnancy

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:52 — 33.3MB)

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The CRISPR Cookbook: A Guide to Biohacking Your Own Abortion in a Post-Roe World

by MKRNYILGLD

If you’re reading this—on some godforsaken imageboard, or dog-eared book page, or in encrypted base pairs sequenced off 3D-printed oligos—you’re probably grappling with a pretty tough decision right now.

Breathe.

I’m not judging you. I know how it goes. You tried your best but nothing’s infallible, or you slipped up one night, or he just straight-up went, your biological clock’s ticking, and hacked your birth control, knowing once it happens you won’t have a choice. The second his sperm enters your egg, he’s done, back to his star-studded career cranking out Science and Cell papers, and you’re stuck at home—with everything from your calories to your screen time dictated to you by Big Brother—hoping your research project will still be waiting for you after the baby pops out.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 877: He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars

He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars was originally published in Clarkesworld Issue 178 (July 2021)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:09 — 59.7MB)

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He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars

by Grace Chan

Yennie’s new therapist started by checking his biorhythm recordings—sleep patterns, heart rate, blood pressure. Then, the therapist’s soma projection leaned into the space between them and asked what Yennie would like to talk about.

Yennie glanced out the window. An ice storm, a froth of glassy dust, was blowing in over the bone-colored hills. He was on Enceladus; his therapist was on Mars. He wanted to describe how sometimes his body felt hollow, and other times he felt his skin could not contain all that was within him—but he didn’t have the words. Half the solar system divided them, and more.

(Continue Reading…)

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