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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.

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All Episodes

51:33

Off Book #17 – Undertone, with Ian Tuason and Nina Kiri

Talking Scared ·

2026/04/10

Listen at your own peril this week. I spoke with Ian Tuason and Nina Kiri, the director and star of Undertone – billed as “the scariest movie you’ll ever hear!” It’s the story of an isolated podcaster, who makes the terrible mistake of listening to some very unnerving audio files…which then start to bleed into her own life. You can imagine the number it did on me! Ian and Nina talk about the movie’s roots in Ian’s own experience of late-life care for his parents, and the responsibility

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82:16

274 – Carter Keane & Working Ourselves to Death!!

Talking Scared ·

2026/04/07

Corporate culture is a nightmare, but getting out of the office brings its own problems in Carter Keane’s debut novella – Morsel. It’s a story about monsters and eldritch beings, about killer cults and evil law-enforcement, about wellbeing scams and a boss from hell – but it’s also a springboard for a whole conversation about the cons (many) and pros (debatable) of capitalism. Carter indulges my devil’s advocacy, before we get back to the matter of strange forest disappearances and horrible

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33:50

Let Us Palaver #8 – The Black House Debrief

Talking Scared ·

2026/04/03

Nat and I stick around in the shadowed recesses of Black House for another half hour, to discuss all the things that Chris got right and wrong – and to make some entirely unfounded claims of our own.It’s overflowing with spoilers for the whole Dark Tower series, so don’t listen if you’re a newbie. We start to ask who is the Crimson King? Would Roland and Jack have gotten along? And we get very grumpy about certain wolves in a certain town further down the road. Enjoy. Support Talking

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149:26

The Dark Tower Deep Dive #8 – Black House

Talking Scared ·

2026/03/31

Time to whet our appetites for the Dark Tower again – this time with an extra serving of ass cheek! After three months away, we’re picking up with travellin’ Jack Sawyer after we left him in The Talisman. We find him in a sleepy Wisconsin town, where the dimension-hopping, child-eating Fisherman is plying his awful trade. Yep… it’s time for Black House. The book in which King’s universes collide. Nat, Chris and I argue – about where we see the spirit of King and Peter Straub in this story,

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55:15

Off Book #16 – Something Very Bad is Going to Happen,...

Talking Scared ·

2026/03/27

After seeing an early screener of Something Very Bad is Going to Happen I immediately thought it was going to be huge!So I leapt ahead of the curve and invited writer and showrunner, Haley Z Boston to come talk scared about weddings, soulmates, David Lynch and Danish horror, and what it’s like to work with the Duffer Brothers. This show has been my whole personality for two weeks. Ihope you watch, listen to this interview, and love it all. Enjoy Support Talking Scared on

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79:52

Episode 273 – Tamika Thompson & The Shadow of the Gun

Talking Scared ·

2026/03/24

Tamika Thompson talks me through the great American curseof the 21st Century on this week’s episode. No, not Tangerine Cthulhu … but the plague of gun deaths that is coring out the country. That’s the focus of her new novel, The Curse of Hester Gardens, which asks whether the deaths gunning for the young men of an inner-city housing project are criminal, or something much weirder! Yeah, that’s right. Listen to a cossetted little English guy try and keep up in an conversation about gun crimes

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75:45

272 – Annie Neugebauer & The Colour of a Terrible...

Talking Scared ·

2026/03/17

Some stories just boggle your mind and boil your imagination.Such are the ideas in Annie Neugebauer’s You Have to Let Them Bleed, and her logic-shattering novella The Extra. The Uncanny Valley, obsessional thoughts, dangerous knowledge, mothers who aren’t mothers and a camping group that destroys the workings of math and memory… these are just some of the inexplicabilities we discuss in this week’s episode. If this episode gives you an existential crisis, ontological collapse, or just plain

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90:18

271 – Avery Curran & The Naughtiest Ghosts in School

Talking Scared ·

2026/03/10

Time for sex and seances this week on Talking Scared.Our guest is Avery Curran and her debut novel Spoiled Milk. It’s a story of spiritualism and sapphic desire, set in a 1920s boarding school where death, rot, haunting and much worse things (patriarchy!) runs rampant. Avery is a specialist in the history of spiritualism (with a brand new PhD to her name) and this conversation is a deep and deeply enjoyable route through all of her books haunted classrooms. It’s one of those episodes

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55:31

Off Book #15 – Dolly, with Rod Blackhurst

Talking Scared ·

2026/03/06

This Off Book episode is a trip into the deep dark woods, for a very special playdate!Our guest is Rod Blackhurst, director and co-writer of the new retro horror movie, Dolly. It’s a film about a very scary house in the woods and the even scarier person who lives inside…and who wants nothing so much as a new toy of her own. Rod and I talk about the tone, gore and influences behind the movie – from 16mm classics to New French Extremity. We discuss the pathos of a truly great horror

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69:26

270 – Christopher Buehlman & One Seriously Epic Road...

Talking Scared ·

2026/03/03

This week we’re sharpening our swords and checking our armpits for boils! Christopher Buehlman is the guest, author the hugely-acclaimed 2012 medieval horror fantasy, Between Two Fires – now being reissued for a new, wide audience. It’s a book that everyone has been screaming at me to read, and I’m glad I did. Christopher and I get hellishly geeky, talking history, plague, angelology and demonology, Biblical reference and epic poetry. But he also tells us about his past career insulting

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71:07

269 – Catriona Ward & Where Children Fear to Tread

Talking Scared ·

2026/02/24

Clap your hands twice if you believe in Catriona Ward!Cat is back on the show this week, to talk Nowhere Burning – a horror novel informed by everything from Peter Pan (it has its own Tinkerbell), to certain disgraced megastars, and even the CIA checklist on what constitutes a cult! It’s a lot, and we talk about all of it, as well as various weird mysteries, the grimmest cult we’ve ever heard of, and Cat’s various brushes with fame over the years. This little precise may have you

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72:04

268 – Brennan LaFaro & The Darkness on the Edge of Town

Talking Scared ·

2026/02/17

When is a zombie not a zombie?I don’t have a punchline to that joke. But something…something … revenant! Brennan LaFaro’s The Denizens is about a small southern town with a very unusual relationship with death. What precisely is the nature of the corpses roaming the woods, and what do they want with the living. You’ll have to listen to find out. What is certain is that this book gives Brennan and I a launchpad for a conversation about writing action-horror scenes, the ethics of

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94:18

267 – Wuthering Heights, with Agatha Andrews (from...

Talking Scared ·

2026/02/10

This Valentine’s week, come for a walk up on t’moors with me and Agatha Andrews. I’ve invited Agatha, my friend and sister-in-Gothic, host of She Wore Black podcast, for a conversation about Wuthering Heights. It’s known as “the greatest love story ever told,” but that’s such nonsense. Instead we talk about mania and melancholy, hate and power, cannibalism and necrophilia… and we also look ahead to the Hollywood adaptation with bated (but amused) breath. Enjoy! Other books

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68:57

– Mama Came Callin, with Ezra Claytan Daniels &...

Talking Scared ·

2026/02/06

A bit of chaos on the show for the weekend. We start with one guest and end with two. And there’s a dude with an alligator’s head running amok!Mama Came Callin’ is the slasher/cryptid/mystery/noir graphic novel written by Ezra Claytan Daniel and illustrated by Camilla Sucre. It’s set in the swamps of Florida, amongst murky waters and dirtier histories. The three of us (eventually) talk about the horrendous racist truth underpinning the story, we discuss how two creatives can bring their

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79:47

266 – Justin C. Key & Don’t Scroll Before Bed

Talking Scared ·

2026/02/03

We’re tiptoeing towards the sci-fi end of things this week, with Justin C. Key and The Hospital at the End of the World.This is a techn-othriller about AI run amok in the medical establishment, and the junior doctor who must navigate a shadowy conspiracy, a fatal (and horrific) disease, all whilst making time for class at the sole human-led teaching hospital left in the country. It’s a lot. And a lot of fun – when it’s not ambushing me with one of my greatest medical phobias!!! Justin

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39:38

Let Us Palaver #7 – The Talisman Debrief

Talking Scared ·

2026/01/30

After our loose, freeform chat about the high strangeness of The Talisman, Nat stuck around to Palaver a little more behind Chris’ innocent back.In this spoiler-filled 35 minutes (do not listen if you haven’t finished The Dark Tower) we get into some firmer connections between King’s magical worlds, we look at the order of books to come, weigh our saddest deaths in King stories…and even after all these hours we’re forced to ask, “what the f*ck is the Talisman anyway? Enjoy. Support

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147:12

The Dark Tower Deep Dive #7 – The Talisman

Talking Scared ·

2026/01/27

We’re on the road again with our Dark Tower journey, running through adjacent worlds, lighting out for the Territories. Our latest side-quest takes us to The Talisman, the 1984 epic dark fantasy, co-authored by Stephen King and Peter Straub. It’s a wild, hallucinatory ride, that contains my favourite King character of them all! Nat, Chris and I talk about that dude, as well as discussing where Jack Sawyer ranks in the league table of King’s childhood heroes. But mostly we try to pin down the

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77:18

265 – Yah Yah Schofield & Pretty Words for Ugly Things

Talking Scared ·

2026/01/20

We're Southbound for monster-loving this week on Talking Scared. Georgia writer, Yah Yah Schofield comes to discuss her Southern Gothic debut, On Sundays She Picked Flowers – a story of monsters, spirits, swamps, and generational trauma. There’s a very bad mama and a very haunted house. Yah Yah and I talk about mother-daughter relationships, the difference between ghosts and haints, the influence of elders, and why the rules are different for Black ‘weird girls.’ Plus, in Yah Yah’s own

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78:52

Episode 264 – Courtney Summers & Dead Is Not Better

Talking Scared ·

2026/01/13

Imagine you’re back in high school – but worse! The shuffling idiots actually want to EAT you!That’s the premise of Courtney Summers’ This is Not a Test, her 2012 zombie novel of teen despair amongst the undead, now reissued in a fresh ‘definitive’ version for 2026. When better than a time in which the mindless, greedy and brutal are running amok in the real world. Courtney and I talk about zombies in 2012 and now, we discuss optimism versus despair, we track the challenges of writing a

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71:09

263 – Kristi DeMeester & The Purity of Anger

Talking Scared ·

2026/01/08

The year may have started with more real-world horrors from old white dudes, but here on Talking Scared they get their comeuppance – in the form of Kristi DeMeester’s Dark Sisters.Kristi returns to the show for the first time since 2022, to talk about her novel of religious hypocrisy, patriarchal control and feminine revenge. It’s a three-timeline story of curses through the century and the dark magic that underpins everything. She tells us about her own childhood in the fundamentalist

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319 results

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