The Thing on the Fourble Board, Quiet Please
This is the one radio drama I need everyone to listen to, in order to learn some incredible lessons about the blending of horror and bleak comedy, about the use of silence and music, and about twist endings. It’s widely regarded the best episode that Quiet Please ever produced, thanks to the layering of real life oil workers’ activities and subterranean mythologies, and the performance of Ernest Chappell as Porky, the narrator. The goal of Wyllis Cooper and Ernest Chappell’s Quiet Please was to immerse their audience in a haunting, personal tale that at some point usually involved the audience by speaking to them directly. Each character that Chappell played was complex, with a detailed background and history, resulting in a believable conversation between his character and you. Chappell here delivers a drawling and ironic oil rig worker with a sharp sense of drama and friendliness that traps you just like the spiders he hates. (And Cecil Roy’s contribution to the story is absolutely frightening). If you want a highly detailed analysis and discussion about this episode, David Rheinstrom and Gabriel Urbina talk about it on an episode of Radio Drama Revival.

A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf, The Black Mass
Woolf’s short story A Haunted House got a chilling re-enactment on the irregular radio show The Black Mass during the 60s. It’s a retrieval and subversion of a ghost story, drawing upon a kind of Gothic dread of what lingers in your periphery leading to something dreamy and unexpected about a woman who can sense a ghostly couple in her house who seek something. The Black Mass, produced by Erik Bauersfeld and which focused on adapting classic horror-fantasy stories to audio, treats this story with the delicate touch it deserves, recreating each shutting and opening door, creak of step, and blowing wind without overwhelming the narrator’s wispy and longing storytelling. The Black Mass was an important influence on Thomas Lopez, the founder of the ZBS Foundation who has been creating radio dramas like Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe and Jack Flanders since the 70s.

House of Greed, The Whistler
cw: sexual assault references
This radio series from the 40s and early 50s boasts a popular opening of a person whistling and the sounds of footsteps, leading to the Whistler himself hosting and narrating a crime story. He acts like a Greek chorus, commenting on the characters’ decision and thought patterns, usually taunting them as their plans fall apart and they make mistakes and always hinting at the ironic, grim ending that is to come. The Whistler host has been a long-time inspiration for many noir films in his sarcasm, grim tones, and taunting mood (including of course the poorly-received eight film adaptations of The Whistler). "House of Greed" is a twisty little story that takes place over the arc of years, starting with a wife walking out on her husband and ending with the fall of a house.
The Whistler on Fourble

Three Skeleton Key, Escape and Suspense
"Three Skeleton Key" is the claustrophobic isolationist tale of three men alone in a lighthouse and whose minds succumb to the oncoming threat of thousands of rats in the walls, adapted from a 1937 short story by French author Georges-Gustave Toudouze. I recently discovered that "Three Skeleton Key", which I knew from the radio show Escape, was also done by their sister radio series Suspense in a completely different tone than the version by Escape with Vincent Price in the lead (thank you, Neil Verma!). The sharp vacillation between a dark thriller and a suspenseful adventure story in the two versions is not just thanks to the distinctive approaches to emphasis and speed by Price and Elliott Reid (of Escape), but in part to the reliance on sudden music stingers in the version of Escape and the creaking soundscape that backs Price in Suspense.
Escape on Fourble | Suspense on Fourble

Knock at the Door, Lights Out
Ella really does not like her mother-in-law. Lights Out was one of the earliest radio horror series created by Wyllis Cooper that came on late at night, with gruesome deaths taking center-stage by the end of the story and dark tongue-in-cheek humor that would help define this grim ironic tone in later radio dramas. Later, the show was taken over by Arch Oboler, who relied on stream-of-consciousness narration and often reflected on his antifascist politics in his work. And this episode is from Oboler's era. “Knock at the Door” is the tale about what happens after Ella pushes her mother-in-law into a well, a tape that opens with her husband knocking hard on his mother’s door to surprise her with his new wife.
Lights Out on Fourble

They Go Bump by David Barr Kirtley, Escape Pod
The Escape Artists collection of podcasts includes the science-fiction anthology Escape Pod which has close to 800 episodes. The host for this episode from 2013, Norm Sherman, was an enigmatic host (who I realized vibes very well with my own host persona for Radio Drama Revival) with a scratchy, mysterious voice and personal storytelling and critique. This episode is narrated by Alasdair Stuart, who is now the co-owner of Escape Artists, and Stuart has honed his storytelling skills for years, as can be heard in this episode where he punches up the exhaustion and terror futuristic invisibility and being guinea pigs. (And of course, he does All The Voices, which is delightful). Escape Pod was one of the very first fiction podcasts, founded in 2005 by Sarah Eley, and its mother network Escape Artists has been pushing at common barriers in their industries since then, with universal narrator and editor pay, careful selection of voice actors and narrators who have the lived experience of the story.
Subscribe: Apple | Spotify | RSS

The Shadow: Black Rock
What evil lives in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows! This fan production of The Shadow is a recreation of the episode “Black Rock”, where The Shadow fights a gang of thieves and ventures onto a dangerous remote island. Leaning into the familiar corny tone of the original Shadow and balancing it with a modern flavor for steady drama, this adaptation remasters the classic theme song and features new music in the style of the original. Graham Rowat as The Shadow plays right to his strength with a deep gravelly voice, a tone that feels like a raised eyebrow and lowered hat brim. This is a fan audio work that should not go ignored when looking into the lasting effect of older radio drama, and how we still marvel at those stories.

DIOTIMA, The Unseen Hour
The phrase “in the style of old-time radio drama” and similar is a common descriptor in various podcasts, but The Unseen Hour is one of the best from British radio drama style, having started as a live audio theater show with three actors playing ten roles. Understanding that this is the twenty-first century, The Unseen Hour approaches the old-timey factor with a heavy coat of surrealism and sprinkling of horror amid the comedy, as the same characters are caught up over and over in an apocalyptic cycle of stories. DIOTIMA follows the investigative journalist version of Rufus Strideforth in his search for the origin of a podcast that seems to be about his own life. From the parodical 40s-style radio advertisements to the sharp-tongued satire of investigative podcasts, “The Unseen Unseen Hour Files Files” episode is a prime example of the trends that The Unseen Hour has pulled together from crime radio drama and true crime podcasts.
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• The Podcast, Seriously awards fund is taking applications until May 1. You can support the fund via Patreon.
• The IndieGoGo for the second season of Death by Dying still has 13 days left. (It has been fully funded!)

• Witchy fiction podcast Kalila Stormfire's Economical Magick Services has come to its series finale.
• Asian-American podcasts to support, at the Women of Color Podcasters community.
• Radio Drama Revival has onboarded a transcriptionist, Katie Youmans. Prepare for transcripts in the coming weeks!
• The monthly fiction podcasts debut column at Bello Collective is out.
• Tor Teen has revealed the cover in the latest book of Lauren Shippen's Bright Sessions spinoff series. It's probably my favorite.