Backwater Bastards: An Actual Play Podcast

It is London, 1885 — an alternate history, where the computer age has come 150 years early. In this world of airships, automatons, and computational engines, a family of Victorian science geniuses match wits and weapons against a criminal mastermind for the fate of the Empire.

The future is full of epic “what ifs." What if we could read minds? What if a hostile attack took down our nation’s power grid? In every episode of Hyperthetical, host Kerry Bishé asks one of these questions. Then, we explore that question two ways - through speculative science fiction, and through insight from the world’s most brilliant scientists. The result is a genre-bending story woven with real facts and science, bringing together education and imagination. Time travel into a near-future where our biggest “what ifs” become “now whats?”

Starring Firefly’s Summer Glau as a video game designer who discovers that the game she created has been stolen as part of a top secret project—and might be the only thing keeping the world from plunging into war.  While battling monsters and exploring dungeons in the world of Alternis, nations compete for real-world resources, and losing has catastrophic consequences. Desperate for help, Team USA hopes that bringing in the game’s actual designer—in secret—will give them the upper hand they need.  But in a futuristic world where losing has catastrophic consequences, is the game itself playing fair? Ctrl-Alt-Destroy is a Realm production, written by Andrea Phillips, Maurice Broaddus, Jacqueline Koyanagi, and E.C. Myers. Listen Away. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm.

Shadows at the Door brings to life a collection of unearthly tales and spirited debate. Drawing on the haunted landscapes of classic folk horror, the podcast lifts the veil on some of your favourite ghost stories, and presents new fables throughout a series of macabre audio dramas. Shadows at the Door: The Podcast artfully showcases the unsettling, the unearthly, and the uncanny, with new tellings of beloved ghost stories, and spectral yarns created exclusively for the podcast by some of the most exciting writers in modern horror. Join hosts Mark Nixon and David Ault as they bring you ghoulish dramatisations, and discuss what makes the ghost story such a powerful, enduring force in cultures around the world.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Scott Sigler comes a tale of murder, madness, and an unspeakable evil lurking beneath the streets of San Francisco. San Francisco homicide inspector Bryan Clauser is losing his mind. How else to explain his dreams, dreams that mirror — with impossible accuracy — gruesome murders drenching the city in blood? How else to explain the feelings these dreams provoke in him? Not disgust, not horror, but excitement. As Bryan and his longtime partner Pookie' Chang investigate the killings, they learn that things are even stranger than they initially seem. The victims are all enemies of an ostracized teenage boy, a boy gripped by the same violent, prescient dreams that haunt Bryan. When Bryan and Pookie dig deeper, they uncover disturbing details of a mysterious cult known as “Marie’s Children,” and of San Francisco’s secret history of serial killers, a history that their superiors — from the mayor to the police chief and on down — seem desperate to keep hidden.  Featuring a dazzlingly plotted mystery and a terrifying descent into a nightmarish underworld -— along with some of the most incredible action scenes ever told and an explosive, gut-wrenching conclusion you won't soon forget — NOCTURNAL is a spectacular outing from one of the horror genre's brightest stars. CREDITS: Presented by Empty Set Entertainment Written by Scott Sigler Narrated by Phil Gigante Directed & Engineered by Corey Young Podcast production assistance by Allie Press and Evo Terra of Simpler Media Productions (Simpler.media) For more audio fiction from Scott Sigler, please visit ScottSigler.com

Everyone knows the history of Scotland: the romance of the highlands with Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Northern Isles with their Pictish and Viking heritage, Dundee with Jute and Jam, Glasgow and its shipyards and Edinburgh and the New Town Enlightenment. But what of the Borders? A published historian and archivist, Mary, and her friend, Doug, explore the less well-trodden paths of Scottish history and folklore as they shine a light on some of the best kept secrets of times past and present in the Scottish Borders. Join them as they chat and natter about the chequered history of the Borders region and reveal that, despite the best efforts of Hollywood, not all of the dramatic, historical intrigue and derring-do took place in the Scottish Highlands.