Talking Scared

60:33

298 – Stephen King & The Final Turn of the Big...

Talking Scared ·

2026/10/06

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

en-us

88:31

297 – Kyle Winkler & Roll For Your “F**K You” Stats

Talking Scared ·

2026/09/29

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

en-us

73:06

296 – Deena Helm & Horror Says Free Palestine

Talking Scared ·

2026/09/22

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

en-us

92:27

295 – Chris Panatier & If These Walls Could Talk

Talking Scared ·

2026/09/15

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

en-us

109:55

294 – China Miéville & A Million Dreaming Words for...

Talking Scared ·

2026/09/08

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

en-us

65:19

293 – James Tynion IV & How to Draw a Dismembered Child

Talking Scared ·

2026/09/01

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 suchpop-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

en-us

76:31

292 – Chuck Wendig & Little Vulgar Hell-Babies

Talking Scared ·

2026/08/25

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

en-us

89:38

291 – Natasha Pulley & No Priests Were Harmed in the...

Talking Scared ·

2026/08/18

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

en-us

75:39

Off Book #23 – Are We Doomed? A Cheerful Guide to...

Talking Scared ·

2026/08/14

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

en-us

74:56

290 – Liam Higginson & Awful Things in Lonely Farmhouses

Talking Scared ·

2026/08/11

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

en-us

74:45

289 – Annie Jacobsen & Be Afraid… Be Very Afraid

Talking Scared ·

2026/08/04

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,

en-us

41:50

Let Us Palaver #10 – Wolves of the Calla Debrief

Talking Scared ·

2026/07/31

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 knowwhat 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

en-us

150:08

The Dark Tower Deep Dive #10 – Wolves of the Calla

Talking Scared ·

2026/07/28

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

en-us

71:19

288 – Danielle Giles & A Spoonful of Skulldust (Makes...

Talking Scared ·

2026/07/21

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 Support Talking Scared on

en-us

75:25

287 – Megan Bontrager & The Cave of Cosmic Narcissism

Talking Scared ·

2026/07/14

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,

en-us

81:21

286 – Chuck Tingle & Kill the Vegan Rockstars

Talking Scared ·

2026/07/07

Love is very very real on this week’s episode. The man, the myth, Chuck Tingle returns for a conversation about his latest novel, Fabulous Bodies – a story of body horror, influencer culture, artistic integrity and glam rock graverobbing. We talk about all of that, as well as the different rules for famous people, combining humour and extreme violence, we get some nuggets of info about Chuck’s youth, and I rant about how I hate Coldplay. Chuck is a force for good in the world. Hear his

en-us

71:43

285 – Paul Tremblay & Eternity at Bernie’s

Talking Scared ·

2026/06/30

This week we’re putting the boot right into the ribs of the AI Industry, but doing it in horrific style, with Paul Tremblay and Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep. It’s a story of a young gamer, tasked with piloting a man’s comatose body across the United States using AI tech. But deep inside, the man is still conscious, and what he’s experiencing is nightmarish. Dark stuff, but surprisingly fun, maybe even funny. Paul and I talk about the humour and the human indignity of his story. He

en-us

96:01

Off Book #22 – Scaredy Boys & The Coward’s Guide to...

Talking Scared ·

2026/06/26

Part Two of my Scaredy Boy special, in which I quiz my friends in fear, Damo, Sean and To—AKA the Scaredy Boys themselves—about what they’ve seen and suffered through in their podcasting mission to conquer horror movies. We talk number one examples of dread, disgust and despair. We pick our favourite horror villains. We talk about the films we’ll never watch again and those we’re too scared to watch in the first place. Consider this a viewing guide for the brave and the frightened

en-us

85:19

284 – Tom Lin & Who Wants to Live Forever?

Talking Scared ·

2026/06/23

Would you rather die or live on and on and on and on… That’s one of the questions at the heart of Tom Lin’s Babylon, South Dakota. It’s a novel about a Chinese family who inherit an American farm, and whose lives are forever changed when the US military build strange missile silos on their land. It’s weird, inexplicable, deep, epic, sad and joyful and all the other things that make a good book. But it’s also dark. It prompts questions that might keep you awake in the warm depths of the

en-us

80:11

Off Book #21 – Scaredy Boys & The Coward’s Guide to...

Talking Scared ·

2026/06/19

The first of a two-part special with the Scaredy Boys, mybrothers-in-cowardice from Down Under. Damo, Tom and Sean are famously and unashamedly terrified of horror movies, and started a podcast to face their fears. Since 2020 they’ve been watching and analysing a horror movie every week – so now they’ve probably seen more than most of us. I got them onto Talking Scared to discuss their insane project, their changing attitudes to horror, and ask them some specific questions about what they’ve

en-us

All Episodes

Similar Podcasts

BroadwayRadio

BroadwayRadio

The Quilter on Fire Podcast

Brandy

The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society: Books, Film, Music, TV, Art, Writing, Creativity, Education, Environment, Theatre, Dance, LGBTQ, Climate Change, Social Justice, Spirituality, Feminism, Tech, Sustainability

Mia Funk

The Unstoppable Singer

Danielle Tucker

Landscape Photography World

Grant Swinbourne