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PODCAST

Talking Scared

Conversations with the biggest names in horror fiction. A podcast for horror readers who want to know where their favourite stories came from . . . and what frightens the people who wrote them.

arts books

All Episodes

134:36

The Dark Tower Deep Dive #3 – The Waste Lands

Talking Scared ·

2025/06/03

We’re finally on the path of The Beam. The Dark Tower Readalong reaches the land of wonder and ruination, in Book 3, The Waste Lands. Accompanied by Nat and Chris, we battle the great bear, get dirty in the speaking ring, and brave the streets of Lud. But we also have the first quake in our Ka-tet, when Chris offers the most egregiously wrong opinion that anyone could offer on these books. You may agree with him… but if you do, we have a problem. I have never cursed or yelled so much on

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93:28

240 – John Connolly & Detective Gothic: The Charlie...

Talking Scared ·

2025/05/27

John Connolly is, in my opinion, the greatest living writer working in the overlap of crime and horror. His long-running series of novels—focused on the Strange cases of his haunted detective, Charlie Parker—is now over twenty books strong. The latest, The Children of Eve is a pivotal instalment, so this seemed a good time to get John on the show, to grill him about this saga’s many mysteries, and hideous horrors. We talk about creating iconic villains, writing violence against the vulnerable,

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74:51

239 – Sarah Pinborough & What Are Ghosts But Lies...

Talking Scared ·

2025/05/20

It’s a week of sadness and hilarity on Talking Scared.The happy stuff comes courtesy of Sarah Pinborough, author of Weird domestic gothics, like Behind Her Eyes and the brand new ghost story (or is it?) We Live Here Now. We talk about confounding expectations, about the rules of the psychological thriller, about the British horror scene then and now, and about the dark truth that we all lie to each other. The sadness... well you’ll hear that in the outro if you want to stick around for

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65:13

238 – The Frozen Frontier: Ally Wilkes and Michelle...

Talking Scared ·

2025/05/13

Talking Scared goes live!In April I was invited to chair a conversation between Michelle Paver and Ally Wilkes at the Oxford Literary Festival. I duly leapt on a train and bundled my way there – to ask the two survival horror queens about their stories of haunting and isolation in the coldest parts of the world. We talk about handling the Victorian attitudes of exploration horror, the unique properties of fear in the vast open, and how their law careers led them to write such wild

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50:08

Off Book #9 – Eli Craig & Clown in a Cornfield

Talking Scared ·

2025/05/09

Send in the clowns!In this Off Book episode I talk to Eli Craig, director of cult-classic Tucker and Dale vs Evil, and the man who put Clown in a Cornfield up on the big screen. After crowbarring my way into his press day, I asked him what drew him to the project, what else there is to ‘do’ with scary clowns and slashers in cinema, and what this movie has to say about Middle America right now. We go deeper than you’d expect for a movie about clowns chasing kids with

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73:51

237 – Joe Abercrombie & The International Brotherhood...

Talking Scared ·

2025/05/06

Let’s get grim and dark with Lord Grimdark! Perhaps the greatest benefit of having a book podcast like mine is the opportunity to speak to my very favourite authors. I’ve been reading Joe Abercrombie’s violent, world-weary dark fantasy for TWENTY years! And now he’s on the show. Consider me excited. His new book may be called The Devils, and it may contain werewolves, vampires, necromancers and oceans of blood – but it’s quite a cheery affair for Joe. I have never laughed so much in

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79:17

236 – Brian Keene & Living in the Splatter

Talking Scared ·

2025/04/29

Brian Keene has written so many damn books!…and I had never read any of them. This absolute horror faux-pas (and my embarrassment) is the reason that it’s taken so long to get Brian on the show. But I set a week aside and read as many Keene books as I could and here we are… on a leisurely stroll through Brian’s life and career,both of which he has devoted to stories of really nasty s*** happening to undeserving people. We talk abouthis bleak coming-of-age novel, Ghoul, his story of a

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94:12

235 – Nat Cassidy & Emotional Doomsday Prepping

Talking Scared ·

2025/04/22

I’ve been looking forward to releasing this one…Nat Cassidy comes to Talk Scared about When the Wolf Comes Home, his new novel that I –and people like me – are already calling out as one of the Best Books of the Year™. It’s a shaggy, undisciplined, sprinting beast of a book that obeys no rules. You may think it’s a werewolf novel, and you may be right... but also very wrong. It’s a book about transformations of many kinds, about fatherhood and the very nature of fear itself. But it’s also

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56:28

Off Book #8 – Kyle McConaghy & Dead Mail

Talking Scared ·

2025/04/18

Back to the 80s this week for one of the most singular horror movies of the year – now streaming on Shudder.Dead Mail is an ode to the era, but there are no neon fonts or leg warmers (or Olivia Newton Johns) here. Instead we’re in the drear of the decade, for a story about a synth-obsessed man who keeps his business partner captive in his flock-wallpapered bathroom. The poor victim’s only hope is the investigative ‘Dead Mail’ department of his local post office. If that sounds mad… well, it is

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79:54

234 – Katherine Arden & The Devil’s Train Timetable

Talking Scared ·

2025/04/15

In the week that the world changed, we’re talking about the last time things got this crazy. Katherine Arden is the author of The Warm Hands of Ghosts — a novel set in the trenches of the First World War and on the borderline between horror and fantasy. It’s a Faustian pact made in No-Man’s Land, where our memories are the price we pay for keeping ourselves alive. In this episode we talk a lot about history, about inflection points and moments of no-return. We talk about how systems of power can

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75:20

233 – Tariq Ashkanani & Bloodstained Hands Across the...

Talking Scared ·

2025/04/08

This week we go from Edinburgh, Scotland to Nashville, Tennessee, in the company of crime author Tariq Ashkanani.Tariq’s The Midnight King is a tricky, quasi-metafictional murder mystery about cursed manuscripts, familial secrets and the most heinous murders. It’s also a love letter to the kind of occult-tinged American crime epics that both he and I grew up loving. We talk about the challenge of writing about serial killing without exploitation, about the unstable boundary between crime and

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65:26

Episode 232 – Punk Goes Horror, with William...

Talking Scared ·

2025/04/01

Time to throw ourselves around. We’re covering Punk Goes Horror.The anthology of stories inspired by punk and alternative rock songs came out just a few weeks back. It brings together a mosh-pit full of authors, both new and established, to transmute their favourite songs into nasty little stories. I invited the anthology editor, William Sterling, and two of his contributors, Wendy Dalrymple and Brian McCauley, to talk about punk, and horror and the affinity between the two. We get into our

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31:41

Let Us Palaver #2 — The Drawing of the Three Debrief

Talking Scared ·

2025/03/28

The second Let Us Palaver minisode – in which Nat Cassidy dig into the things we couldn't say about The Drawing of the Three, and give MAJOR SPOILERS about whole Dark Tower series. We're really start to wonder if Chris is punking us. Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Bluesky @talkscaredpod.bsky.social on Instagram/Threads, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

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135:10

The Dark Tower Deep Dive #2 – The Drawing of the Three

Talking Scared ·

2025/03/25

The Ka-tet picks up exactly where we left off: on the beaches of Midworld, with Roland Deschain. (If none of that makes any sense to you, go listen to episode one of the Dark Tower Deep Dive immediately) Nat Cassidy, Chris Panatier and I gather for a long, philosophical, expletive-littered conversation about Book 2: The Drawing of the Three. We get further into the character of Roland and his quest, and spend some time with the gaggle of oddballs he meets along his scenic tour of the coast. The

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76:11

231 – Stephen Graham Jones & Rewilding the Vampire

Talking Scared ·

2025/03/18

It’s always great when Stephen Graham Jones comes to Talk Scared with us – but for once we aren’t talking about slashers!No, this time, we’re talking vampires! Or are we? Stephen’s new novel, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, is his best yet. Or at least the one that I love the most. It’s an epic and brutal saga of American history and shame, told through three very distinctive voices, speaking across the centuries. There are monsters with fangs AND with flags. We talk about Stephen’s relationship

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69:40

230 – Alex Grecian & Weirdos in the West

Talking Scared ·

2025/03/11

Saddle up for a weird west week on Talking Scared. The start of a loose trilogy of sorts. This first instalment features Alex Grecian, talking about his fantastical vision of the Old West (and East) in 2023’s Red Rabbit and the brand-new follow-up, Rose of Jericho. We cover western inspirations, the melancholia of ghosts, Kansas legends and surprising witches. There’s also a nerdy little cryptid section thrown in there too cos you know I can’t resist. It’s a charmer this week. With a glint in

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71:56

229 – Augustina Bazterrica & The Wicked Nuns of Oz

Talking Scared ·

2025/03/05

No one is doing dystopia right now like Augustina Bazterrica.After Tender is the Flesh made us all consider vegetarianism, now she’s back for a long hard look at patriarchy, religion and populism in The Unworthy. It’s a quiet end of the world, set almost entirely in the confines of a strange convent, and the cult who will do anything to maintain their power. We talk about how Augustina finds the necessary voice of her characters, why love is just another form of madness, how science-fiction

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87:40

Off Book #7 – Scott Derrickson

Talking Scared ·

2025/02/28

The latest Off Book episode has me facing my demons.My guest is Scott Derrickson, one of the best horror movie makers to ever do it. He scared us with Sinister, moved us with The Black Phone, marvelled us with Doctor Strange, and ruined my life with The Exorcism of Emily Rose. He’s back with The Gorge, a mad genre mashup, starring Anya-Taylor Joy and Miles Teller, currently streaming on Apple+. Scott joins me for a leisurely conversation about making that artistically-inclined ‘drive-in’ movie,

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89:43

228 – Sophie White & An Island of Formless Dread

Talking Scared ·

2025/02/25

Ready to hear a conversation about some devastatingly dark things? Sophie White and I have got you covered! In this expansive chat, we talk about her calculatingly distressing novel, Where I End – in which an isolated island community plays host to the worst, cruellest kind of loneliness. And that books is a springboard for others things, psychosis, weaponised empathy, real-life atrocity and the way that all that darkness can seep into a place forever. But then we also have a good old chat

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77:32

227 – Kirsty Logan & Queer as in F**K You

Talking Scared ·

2025/02/18

The title speaks volumes this week. It’s a mission statement. Kirsty Logan is the master of certain kind of edgy, on-the-margins fiction, Queer in every meaning of the word. She can be witchy and folkloric, or contemporary and cutting edge – and all of that range is showcased in her new collection, No & Other Love Stories. We talk about female desire and monstrous fantasy, formal experimentation and the personal logic of stories…and some reassuringly unsettling focus on the erotics of human

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300 results

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