Talking Scared

Deep dives don’t go any deeper than lost Atlantis!

In this latest station of the Dark Tower readalong, we head back to the 1960s for Stephen King’s Hearts in Atlantis – a book closer to my heart than almost anything King has ever written. As such, this gets a little contentious and arguments ensue. I will not back down!!

We talk about how this capsule of the USA’s most turbulent decade links directly to the Dark Tower. We spot hints of Randall Flagg. We talk peace and love, cynicism and hope, and we celebrate one of King’s greatest ever pieces of character work. Chris meets Low Men for the first time (or is it!?) and Nat gives us his take on the anti-boomer despair at the fulcrum of this novel.

It’s a lot. Hence the 2.45 running time.

Hope you enjoy it.

• Koko (1988), by Peter Straub
• First Blood (1972), by David Morrell
• From a Buick 8 (2002), by Stephen King
• Matterhorn (2009), by Karl Marlantes
• The Sorrow of War (1987), by Bảo Ninh

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You may know Jane Schoenbrun as the genius behind I Saw the TV Glow and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasm, but I’m telling you that you HAVE to check out their debut novel.

Public Access Afterworld is an epic of the inbetween. It’s about a mysterious TV signal that reveals ruptures in reality, and how all of existence is so much stranger than we know. It’s an extension of Jane’s creative obsessions and their work to date, but also entirely it’s own insane thing.

Jane and I talk about the big themes. Media and reality, identity and transformation, horror and love. We give no spoilers, we just invite you in. Come join us between the static and the signal.

Enjoy – and thanks for listening.

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The 300th author interview is here. And I’m delighted it’s with a debut author, about a truly wonderful book.

Dorian Ravenscroft’s The White North Has Thy Bones is a supreme slice of Polar Gothic and Queer Horror alike. It’s the story of a disastrous 1860 expedition to the Arctic, and the competing stories of brutality and survival told by the few who make it home. Despite all the bloodshed and … strange meat… it’s also, somehow, a moving love story.

We talk about all of those elements, as well as the weirder parts of Arctic naval history and just why the great frozen north is such a good backdrop for Queer stories. And I give my advice for how to survive being starvation on the ice.

Enjoy – and thanks for listening.

The Terror (2007), by Dan Simmons

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (2025), by David Grann

Where the Dead Wait (2023), by Ally Wilkes

Coffin Moon (2025), by Keith Rosson

An Immaculate Deception (2026) by Isabela Livino

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Happy Whalefall Weekend!

Brian Duffield’s incredible adaptation of Daniel Kraus’ novel is now in cinemas. I was lucky enough to see an early screening and even luckier to get time with Brian and Daniel to talk about how the hell they made something so audacious.

We talk daddy issues aplenty, whale stomach sets, practical FX and the toll they took on the star, Austin Abrams. And I get lost in my own rapture over a certain scene that almost made me feel a real, authentic human emotion. Unbelievable.

Enjoy!

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In Solace House, Will Maclean takes us back to the 90s for a drug-fuelled trip through some mindbending architecture. It’s a chance to get nostalgic for a more innocent time, when the clothes were baggy, the music was better, and you could spend a summer spent renovating an old asylum without needing to put in on TikTok.

It’s all fun and games until the existential terror kicks in and the fabric of reality comes unwoven.

Enjoy. This one was a good laugh.

• The Apparition Phase (2020), by Will Maclean
• And He Shall Appear (2025), by Kate van der Borgh
• The Modern Antiquarian (1998), by Julian Cope
• The Prisonhouse of Language (1972), by Fredric Jameson
• The Human Evasion (1969), by Celia Green
• Starmaker (1937), by Olaf Stapledon
• A Short Stay in Hell (2009), by Steven L. Peck
• “The Jaunt,” in Night Shift (1978), by Stephen King
• The Divine Farce (2009), by Michael Graziano

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This episode needs no attempt at a witty introduction. Stephen King is back to talk about Other Worlds Than These – the concluding volume of The Talisman saga, begun with Peter Straub 45 years ago.

We keep it spoiler-free, but we talk about Jack Sawyer’s journey and how it entwines with The Dark Tower. We reflect on The Talisman and Black House, on Wolf and my heartbreak. We discuss Peter’s inspiration for the story and how King summoned him to bring it to a close. And we even get some hints of what’s cooking in Steve’s brain for future projects. It seems he’s never slowing down, no matter what he say.

I hope you enjoy this.

Other books mentioned:

• Julia (1975), by Peter Straub
• Ghost Story (1979), by Peter Straub
• Redheaded Peckerwood (2010), by Christian Patterson
• King Sorrow (2025), by Joe Hill
• Sleeping Beauties (2017), by Stephen and Owen King
• Trad Wife (2026), by Sarah Langan

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Leaning into absolute high geekery this week – with Kyle Winkler’s novel of how family game night can go badly wrong!

The Ship of Death is about a cursed (and I mean CURSED!) tabletop role-playing game and the unlucky couple who choose to play it. Or, as Kyle describes it “Dark Jumanji.”

It prompts a conversation about games in life and fiction. Epistolary structure and found-fiction. We discuss his relationship with the bizarre, his love for mysteries without answers, we consider who is really responsible for the world-building in a story, and we pay a lot of respect to cosmic horror influences beyond Lovecraft.

It’s was a delight to record. Hope you enjoy listening.

Other books mentioned:

• Grasshands (2024), by Kyle Winkler
• Boris Says the Words (2022), by Kyle Winkler
• The Nothing That Is (2020), by Kyle Winkler
• Borne (2017), by Jeff VanderMeer
• Zothique (1970), by Clarke Ashton Smith
• The Dying Earth (1950), by Jack Vance
• Enduring Love (1997), by Ian McEwan
• Negative Space (2020), by B.R. Yeager
• True Crime (2020), by Samantha Kolesnik
• The House Next Door (1978), by Anne River Siddons
• My Dark Places (1996), by James Ellroy
• Penpal (2012), by Dathan Auerbach
• Mockingbird (1980), by Paul Tevis
• The Blacktongue Thief (2021), by Christopher Buehlman

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This week’s episode shows what a good haunted house can do.

Deena Helm is a mixed American-Palestinian author, who’s debut novel, Our Cut of Salt, puts all the power of the Gothic to use in framing the occupation and oppression of Palestine. It takes place before the ongoing genocide, but offer a chance to consider how horror fiction can play its part in framing that obscenity.

That all sounds heavy, and it rightfully is – but this book also has a frightening, tragic and murderous house at its core… so there’s (our kind) of fun to be had as well.

This is an important episode for the show. I hope you listen and enjoy.

Other books mentioned:

White is for Witching (2009), by Helen Oyeyemi

Tell Me I’m Worthless (2021), by Alison Rumfitt

Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013), by Ahmed Saadawi

Mornings in Jenin (2006), by Susan Abulhawa

Behind You is the Sea (2024), by Susan Muaddi Darraj

Gentle Things (2026), by Danielle Giles

Hungerstone (2025), by Kat Dunn

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Home is where the horror is this week, with Chris Panatier and Worry Box!

This latest offering from Panatier’s uniquely strange mind is a complete revision of the haunted house as we know it. It’s a house that means well, but understands little. Couple that with a family in flux and a child suffering intrusive thoughts, and you have a recipe for terrible, no-good disaster.

In short, it’s 400 pages of slowly tightening dread!

I hope you enjoy.

Other books mentioned:

• The Redemption of Morgan Bright (2024), by Chris Panatier
• This House isn’t Haunted but We Are (2025), by Stephen Howard
• Our Cut of Salt (2026), by Deena Helm
• Pet Semetary (1983), by Stephen King
• The Library at Mount Char (2015), by Scott Hawkins
• Gideon the Ninth (2019), by Tamsyn Muir
• Gormenghast (1950), by Mervyn Peak
• Angel Down (2025), by Daniel Kraus
• Chimera Skin (2026), by Johnny Compton
• The Butcher of Nazareth (2026), by David Scott Hay

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There are big books and big books. This week we cover a HUGE book.

China Miéville is the guest. The award-winning author of Perdido Street Station, Embassytown, The City & the City, and other modern speculative classics – and he’s back with a book two decades in the making.

The Rouse is an epic of true proportions, a 1300-page saga of the twentieth century, rife with war, atrocity, tragedy, and a secret war fought with ghosts?? That’s the premise but it barely touches the sides of this ginormous undertaking.

This is not just a conversation, it’s a search for answers – in which we plumb the personal, political, and supernatural influences behind this story of shady military conspiracy and ghosts of many strange kinds.

I hope you enjoy, ‘cos I worked my ass off for this one!

Other books mentioned:

• King Rat (1999), by China Miéville
• The City & The City (2009), by China Miéville
• Ducks, Newburyport (2019), by Lucy Ellman
• Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), by Thomas Pyncheon
• Against the Day (2006), by Thomas Pyncheon
• House of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. Danielewski
• “The Ash Tree” (1904), by M.R. James
• A Dark Corner (1971), by Celia Dale

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James Tynion IV is a modern master of the horror comic. He’s the maniac behind so many contemporary classic series, but perhaps none are such pop-culture behemoths as Something is Killing the Children.

I mean… with a title like that, how could it fail?

With the new omnibus collection out right now, and an in-world novel (co-authored with Kiersten White) coming in October, I thought now was a good time to get James on the show and talk monsters, masks, mythology and the most baddass hero in graphic novels.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• The Woods (2014-2017), by James Tynion IV
• Memetic (2014-2015), by James Tynion IV
• Hide (2022), by Kiersten White
• At the Mountains of Madness (2019), by Gau Tenabe
• Monster (1994-2001), by Naoki Urusawa

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Wendig is here!! The man my wife refers to as “Chuck Apples” (as opposed to “Chuck Fight Club) is back to talk about his most fun, yet nastiest book to date. The Calamities is what would happen if The Godfather had cenobites, if Logan Roy had made a pact with monsters, it prompts me to ask the questions “who’s your favourite demon Chuck?”

That kinda book.

Chuck tells us how the study of demonology has underpinned almost his entire writing career. We discuss the increasingly tight links between his novels, the influence of D&D structure, and the challenge of making the reader care about some of the worst-behaved characters in the world.

And I drop the C-bomb for the first time on air. That damn baby deserves it.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• Staircase in the Woods (2024), by Chuck Wendig
• Daytide (2026), by Chris Panatier
• The Three Body Problem (2008), by Cixin Liu
• Books of Blood (1984-88), by Clive Barker
• Cabal (1988), by Clive Barker
• Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology (2021), by Ed Simon
• Blacktail (2026), by Scott Hawkins

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No one let the Pope listen to this week’s episode.

Our guest is Natasha Pulley, genre-defying author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, The Bedlam Stacks, The Kingdoms, and now, in the The Salt King she pits the Vatican and Catholic Doctrine against something much, much older, lurking in the salt mines of the world.

It leads us to a conversation about faith of many kinds, about reality-adjacent fiction, the horrid truth of Sodom and Gomorrah, dark representations of the Catholic Church, and the challenge of fusing folk horror and global apocalypse.

There are also some holy dick pics.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• Gentle Things (2026), by Danielle Giles
• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2024), by Susanna Clarke
• The Hill in the Dark Grove (2026), by Liam Higginson
• The Name of the Rose (1980), by Umberto Eco
• Foundation (1951), by Isaac Asimov
• A Canticle for Liebowitz (1959), by Walter M. Miller Jr
• Father Alberto and the Flying Girl (2026), by Timothy X Atack

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Happy Friday! Let’s talk about the end of the world.

Our guest is Ben Bradford, creator and host of Are We Doomed? – the new hit podcast examining the existential risks facing humanity.

“Dammit Neil”, I hear you say “Are we not suffering enough.” To you I reply … sure, Ben and I make talk nukes and rogue AI, climate change and supervolcanoes, but believe me, you’ll feel more optimistic at the end of this episode!

Somehow, the general answer to Are We Doomed seems to be “no, not if we don’t want to be.” So have faith, listen, and have a great weekend.

Enjoy!

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Finally, we dare venture to the darkest land of all. Wales!

After years of avoiding the terror of the Valleys, Liam Higginson takes us to The Hill in the Dark Grove – his debut novel of isolation, folk-memory, and things unearthed from the soil of a mountain farm.

We talk about the link between folklore and nationalism, about marriage and madness (not linked) and why it’s always men who go barmy in these situations.

This is up there with my favourite books of the year.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• The Shining (1977), by Stephen King
• Incidents Around the House (2024), by Josh Malerman
• The Salt King (2026), by Natasha Pulley
• Small Gods (1992), by Terry Pratchett
• Meet Me at the Surface (2024), by Jodie Matthews
• Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil (1998), by Avram Davison and Grania Davis
• North Woods (2023), by Daniel Mason
• Country People (2026), by Daniel Mason

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This may be my scariest episode ever!

We’ve covered non-fiction before, but rarely is the truth more frightening than the stories we tell. This week it just might be… cos Annie Jacobsen is here with Biological War: A Scenario.

It unveils a narrative of speculative reality, in which an engineered pathogen escapes a lab, and runs rampant through our civilisation. Cities fall, millions die, the lights go out.

I dared myself to read it. I dare you to listen to Annie tell us about her research, and the stuff she found that scares the hell out of her.

Enjoy (sort of!)

Other books mentioned:

• Nuclear War: A Scenario (2024), by Annie Jacobsen
• “A Modest Proposal” (1729), by Jonathan Swift
• World War Z (2006), by Max Brooks
• The Deluge (2023), by Stephen Markley
• A Brief History of the Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters (2021), by Andrew H. Knoll

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In our main Wolves of the Calla Deep Dive, we came within touching distance of the Dark Tower’s biggest secret yet. Chris doesn’t know what to think, which is just where Nat and I want him.

So we stuck around to talk in full-spoiler terms about all the stuff Chris is yet to discover, and our own thoughts on books to come, on choice lines from Calla, and just what that reveal in the final pages really means for the nature of Roland’s world.

Enjoy. But for your father’s sake Do Not Listen if you haven’t read the entire Dark Tower saga!!

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Hallelujah, come commala, we’re back together!

Finally, after stopping for side missions with Jack Sawyer, and a pair of stories of Roland’s younger days, we’re back in Midworld’s here-and-now to push on towards the Dark Tower. It’s time for Wolves of the Calla, a novel of old friends, new enemies…and a quite surprising amount of boobs.

This is also where certain things start to get REAL!! We’re on the precipice of great discovery and you can hear Chris Panatier try to deal with it.

Enjoy folken!

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Time for a horrid history lesson.

Daniell Giles is the author of medieval gothic Mere (2025), and the brand-new Restoration horror-show, Gentle Things. In this episode she talks about the nightmare of research, the similarities between the 1660s and our own sh**ty decade, and how much we both love Sarah Waters.

But mostly it’s a guided tour of a dirty period in history, of murder, misogyny and… medicinal cannibalism!

Yes, it’s a thing, and it’s nasty.

Enjoy

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I hope you have your headtorch this week – cos we’re going to some deep, dark places.

Megan Bontrager’s debut novel, The Sea Hides its Dead, is a story of a mysterious cave, an unprepared expedition, and the monstrous secrets they find within. It’s shadowed by Lovecraft, it has big freaky monsters, and a whole deep mythology to unpick.

In short it’s my kinda story. The exact level of geekery I like to discuss.

Discuss we do. Meghan and I talk about video game inspirations, global sea cults, monsters and mysteries in The Bible, and worst of all – sleazy academics.

Plus, I give my honest opinion on spelunking! (It’s not favourable)

Enjoy

Other books mentioned:

• The Eye of Ouroboros (2024), by Megan Bontrager
• The Caretaker (2026), by Marcus Kliewer
• The Fisherman (2017), by John Langan
• The Ruins (2006), by Scott Smith
• Babylon, South Dakota (2026), by Tom Lin
• The Faceless Thing We Adore (2025), by Hester Steel

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