Breaker Whiskey

Atypical Artists
  • 4.7 (65)
  • FICTION
  • DAILY SERIES
Breaker Whiskey

Get all the week's episodes early, each Monday

$4.99/mo or $49.99/yr after trial

BREAKER WHISKEY is an ongoing, daily microfiction podcast exploring one woman’s journey to find additional survivors in an America made empty by an unknown event in the late 1960s. In 1968, two women find themselves in rural Pennsylvania during what turns out to be some kind of apocalyptic event. By the time they discover that everyone else is gone, it’s too late to figure out what happened. Despite not liking each other at all, the women work together to survive, until six years later one of them sets out on her own, driving around the country to find other survivors. This is her, calling out to anyone who might listen. BREAKER WHISKEY is made by Lauren Shippen and recorded on a 1976 Midland CB Radio. It releases daily, Monday through Friday. If you would like the entire week's episodes as one single download, released on Monday, you can support the show at patreon.com/breakerwhiskey or by becoming an Atypical Plus supporter at atypicalartists.co/support. Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey.

  1. EPISODE 44

    Forty-Four

    Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday. ------ [TRANSCRIPT] [click, static] Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey calling out for Birdie. [click, static] I got your message. [click, static] “Job important. Hurt people.” I—I’m not sure what to do with that. Um, you told me that I wasn’t in danger and that you weren’t in danger, but I don’t know if that’s the same as knowing if you’re dangerous or not. I’m not sure knowing the answer to that question is important. [click, static] Yeah, I really don’t know what you want me to do with that. If you’re looking for a shoulder to cry on or looking for absolution. If it’s that—if it’s hoping that somebody will absolve you of the hurt you caused or the guilt that you feel then I am not that person. I guess I could tell you to not feel guilty because I don’t— I don’t think necessarily you should, but then again, what do I know about you or your job? [click, static] A lot of people think that their jobs are important and very very few people are right, so I’m not sure how to judge which one of those you are. I think being a doctor is important, healing p eople. But if you feel like you’ve hurt a lot of people as a doctor…I mean a lot of that is out of your hands, right? You don’t strike me as a type of person who would intentionally injure someone. [click, static] You know, when I first heard your code broadcasting, I wondered if it was some sort of government system. Some sort of emergency broadcast that had switched on six years ago and never switched off. And maybe you can’t tell me this, but maybe I wasn’t totally off. Government jobs can be important. They can also be useless and corrupt and hurtful. You could’ve hurt a lot of people working for the government. I know that I was hurt by— [click, static] Whatever it is—whatever you did, I can tell you not to feel guilty but I’m not sure that you should trust me on that. That’s—that’s what I mean by me not being that—that person. There are things that I should feel guilty for—things that I did, things that I was, things that I still I am I don’t know. And I don’t know that I feel all that guilty about any of it. [click, static] That’s not true. I do feel guilty for what Harry and I did. We—we made a choice that day when we started our weird little existence. Before everything happened or maybe simultaneous with everything that happened I mean…like I told you we were a little caught up in our own affairs and, well, we made a choice that day. Clear eyed and maybe not of completely sound mind, but no one could say that we had no other options. And we made a choice and I can’t say with complete certainty that I would go back and make a different choice but that doesn’t mean that I feel so confident about it. Anyway, if you knew me—really knew me, I don’t— [click, static] I don’t think that you would be looking to me to make you feel better about whatever it is that you did. And maybe if I knew what you did, I wouldn’t be trying to get to you, but I guess I’m curious… Do you feel like you had a choice? [click, static]

    4 min

  2. EPISODE 45

    Forty-Five

    Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. ------ [TRANSCRIPT] [click, static] I wish I had a camera. I am in Cawker City, Kansas, home of the world’s largest ball of twine. [click, static] Can you believe it? That someone bothered to do this? To wrap up a ball of twine so big it gets its own sign? The world is a strange and mysterious place and human beings might be the most mysterious of all. [click, static] But I still wish I had a camera. I did go into the general store in town and found a postcard with the twine ball on it, so I’ve got a little souvenir, but I would’ve liked to put a camera on a self-timer and taken a photo of myself with the freakish thing. Proof that I saw it. Proof that I was here. Here in Cawker City, here in Kansas, here on planet Earth, all on my own. [click, static] I know I said I never had any power and I still don’t and…that’s true. For most of my life I’ve been an anonymous drifter with no family, no roots, no community. I couldn’t change the world, so I just tried to work around it. But I left my mark on it still. And I’ve had a lot of empty years to think about what kind of mark that is. And I’m not sure I like the answer. [click, static] Maybe I’ll actually write out something on the postcard, leave my mark that way. I’d just…I’d like to leave something good behind. Not just the imprints of my nails in the skin of this world from where I tried to hold on so tightly to my own life. [click, static]

    2 min

  3. EPISODE 46

    Forty-Six

    Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday. ------ [TRANSCRIPT] [click, static] Dear Harry, Today I saw the world’s largest ball of twine. The photo on the front of the postcard doesn’t do it justice. Don’t misunderstand—it represents the size well, but it doesn’t capture the central essence of “...huh?” that the ball draws out in the viewer. But that’s what art is, right? According to you, at least. Art is meant to provoke, to create a reaction; it’s not meant to be pretty all the time. Well, I’m sure you’d have quite an opinion on the ball of twine. Glad you’re not here—AR. [click, static] So. Yeah. I wrote out a postcard. Harry’s the only person I know alive other than you, but I’m already talking to you. Not like I’m going to send it or anything, obviously—I couldn’t even if I wanted to. But...I don’t know, it felt odd to write on the postcard without addressing it to anyone. [click, static] I’m gonna make this a thing, I think—postcards of the weirder attractions around this country. If and when I can find them at least. Because it did occur to me that even if I went and got a camera, I don’t know anything about developing film. The only way I could take any pictures would be if I came across a polaroid, so I’m keeping an eye out for that. [click, static] Have you traveled much, Birdie? Like I said, I’ve gotten around a little, but I’ve definitely never traveled this much in this amount of time. Now that I’ve been doing it for a while, it’s gotten...I don’t know, it’s kind of fun again, the way it was the first week or so. My body’s adjusted to driving so much and I’m headed to parts of the country I’ve never been to so it’s beginning to feel like an adventure again. Like a real adventure. I’m going to cross over into Colorado if I keep driving West, so I’m going to go up to Nebraska first, just so I can say I’ve been there. Alright, Whiskey out. [click, static]

    2 min

  4. EPISODE 47

    Forty-Seven

    Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday. ------ [TRANSCRIPT] [click, static] You know, the last time I took a trip was probably...it was ’65. Or—’66? Just a few years before the incident. The last time I took a vacation, I mean— [click, static] Not that this is a vacation, but, you know, it’s not a work trip, it’s uh— [click, static] I had this...um, friend—a writer I’d met at a club in New York—who had a house upstate. She technically lived in the Village, but she was hardly ever there—I guess writers really like their solitude. So I’d go up there sometimes, just for a weekend. Take the metro-north to the last stop—she’d pick me up in this old Ford pick-up she had and we’d go straight to the grocery store before heading back to the house. She’d ask me what I wanted to cook that weekend, like I ever had any idea. I’ve got about five dishes I can make with any kind of proficiency, but she loved to cook and she wanted to include me, I guess. Which was nice. I’d usually pick out the wine and then we’d take our haul back to the house and put on a record—Joan Baez or James Brown—and we’d drink and cook and eat and talk about books or what she was working on at that moment. She knew what I did, but she knew not to ask too much about it. So mostly I’d tell her about the weird people I’d met, or the shows I’d seen recently. [click, static] I loved going to see shows on Broadway. Maybe that’s surprising to you —it’s surprising to a lot of people who’ve met me. But I loved it. Loved any kind of live performance, whether it was Broadway, off-Broadway, music concerts, beat poetry, whatever. Just seeing people get up on a stage and open themselves up to strangers in that way...there’s something extraordinary in it. And my friend, she didn’t get to the city much by that point, like I said, so she liked hearing about all the shows I went to go see. And, uh, if I had enough wine by that point in the evening, I might even get up and act out some of the more dramatic bits of what I’d seen on her living room carpet. She would laugh so hard at that. [click, static] She had a great laugh. [click, static] There were so many times in the last six years that I wished I’d been trapped with her in her cabin in the woods instead of in Pennsylvania with Harry. I’m sure there would’ve been things about each other that drove the other insane, but at least there would have been... compensations. [click, static] She was a good friend. A really good friend, you know? It wasn’t...um, it wasn’t committed or anything, but...yeah, she was a really good friend. [click, static]

    4 min

  5. EPISODE 48

    Forty-Eight

    Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday. ------ [TRANSCRIPT] [click, static] I drove past a sign advertising “Pioneer Village” in a place called Minden and obviously had to check it out and guess what? It’s like Colonial Williamsburg—some guy in ‘53 decided he wanted to create his own little frontier amusement park. The place is half old west ghost town and half...random inventions from through the ages. Old airplanes and cars, guns, farming equipment, early electric lights...if I could figure out a way to get the power going again, I’m pretty sure I could live there for the next hundred years. Really homestead it up. What is it with America’s obsession with the past? Why do we create these towns that let you pretend you exist in a time that was more unpleasant for pretty much everybody? [click, static] God, I mean, talk about choice, right? The people who built this pioneer village - who claimed to have built this whole country, those are the people who have had every possible choice in front of them at all times. And so often they used it to make everyone else’s lives worse. And I’ve —I’ve never understood that. [click, static] I think—I’d like to think if I had that kind of control over other people, I’d just leave everyone alone. Is there something about getting to that level of influence that just rots away at someone’s brain? How do people care that much about what other people do for a living or what god they pray to or what they get up to in the privacy of their own homes? [click, static] Sorry, Birdie. I’m maybe getting a little off topic here. It’s only...well, I was thinking about upstate New York and my friend and Francis Lennon and a lot of different people I’ve known in my life who were, you know, maybe a little different than the norm, and therefore had fewer choices in front of them. Myself included. My life has been a series of diminishing crossroads. [click, static] And here we have a monument to ‘pioneers’, but what did they really pioneer? What ground did they break, what progress did they make? What did they have to do in order to claim that variety of choice on where to live, how far west to go, how to make their money. Who did they have to drive over? Who did they have to kill? [click, static] Don’t worry, I recognize the irony in me saying all this. Here I am, with the whole nation as my personal playground. A glut of choice. And it... well, it really feels like no choice at all. [click, static] Maybe that’s what happens to people at the top. They go insane with excess. [click, static] Alright, Birdie, hope to hear from you soon. Whiskey out. [click, static]

    3 min

  6. EPISODE 49

    Forty-Nine

    Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday. ------ [TRANSCRIPT] [click, static] Well, I’ve done it, I’ve been to Nebraska. [click, static] I can’t say it’s really all that different from Kansas. That’s true of every state crossing, I guess. The borders feel especially arbitrary out here, all straight lines and perfect corners. The roads are all so straight too. Though I have started to wander more, dipping into suburbs and rural areas, keeping my eyes peeled. [click, static] I was gonna head back through Kansas the way I came before I start West again. I thought...I don’t know, it can’t hurt to go past where I saw that dog one more time and see if I can catch him again. [click, static] I keep running through it in my head, what would I say if I actually saw a person in flesh and blood. I didn’t really get to choose my first words to you, Birdie, because I was just speaking to...the concept of humanity I guess, but seeing someone in person would be different, wouldn’t it. [click, static] I’d start with my name maybe. Say it was good to see them because it would be good to see them. Ask them their name, ask if they’re okay, where they’re from. But from there...I have no idea how to carry on that conversation. Do I jump right into asking about what happened six years ago? Or is that rude? [click, static] Where’s Emily Post when you need her, huh? [click, static] It’s all a moot point. A fantasy, a daydream. And those can get dangerous if you let them take root. [click, static]

    2 min

  7. EPISODE 50

    Fifty

    Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday. ------ [TRANSCRIPT] [click, static] (siren sounds) [click, static] Can you hear that? (siren sounds) [click, static] There’s um—there’s a tornado. There’s a goddamn tornado. [click, static] When it first sounded, I thought it was an attack siren, like the ones they used to play for school drills. When we’d have to hide under our desks and clutch onto the table legs like that would save us from a nuclear bomb. [click, static] I don’t know who they thought they were fooling. [click, static] I can’t believe I’m in actual fucking Kansas and there’s a tornado. It feels too cliche to be real, somehow. [click, static] Everything I know about tornadoes, I know from The Wizard of Oz. (chuckles) That’s really not fucking helpful at the moment, is it? I don’t have Toto or ruby slippers or a basement to hide in. I can’t remember anything about what you’re supposed to do in a tornado other than going into a basement. But the siren started going when I was on the road and like I said I thought I was—I thought we were, you know, under attack because its the same goddamn noise, um, but then I—I saw in the distance—and you know, there’s nothing around me. I pulled over obviously but I don’t know if I should be driving away or if I should be looking for a bridge or an overpass...I think there’s something about bridges. They’re either the worst place to be or the best place to be. [click, static] Really f*****g helpful, I know. [click, static] I’ve already gone on a journey to a strange land, you know? That’s what the world feels like—like waking up in technicolor after being in black and white but...um, the reverse I guess. If I get caught up in the tornado, do you think I’ll go back? To the way that things were? [click, static] Back? I don’t know what I’m saying. Back where? I didn’t travel anywhere, there’s nothing to go back to unless I can figure out a way to invent time travel and stop whatever it was that happened. [click, static] I keep thinking about hell. In the sense of...is this hell? Sometimes I get that feeling of unreality, the strange sensation that I’m somehow outside of myself, looking at myself from just off to the side. It’s gotten worse since I left Pennsylvania. Maybe I really should look in the mirror more often. I barely even use the car mirrors, it’s not like there’s other drivers to be aware of, and maybe that’s the problem, there’s so little to be aware of around me that I feel hyper aware of me. [click, static] But what if we died? What if we died when we were trying to get away and all of this has been a kind of purgatory, a terrible punishing afterlife from a god with a twisted sense of humor? [click, static] Never mind, I’m just wigged out. The sound of the sirens is, um...it’s spooky, you know? Eerie. I guess that makes it a good warning system for tornadoes and potential nuclear threat because there’s something in the sound that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. [click, static] It’s rattling me, somewhere deep down, in some hind brain that triggers my fight or flight. The tornado is still really far away and... [click, static] I thought—I thought I saw a tornado, but I can’t—I can’t see it anymore, but, who knows, maybe the emergency system is just malfunctioning but the sky looks so terribly gray, a kind of gray that’s got a little bit of green to it, like the atmosphere itself is feeling sick. [click, static] I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. [click, static]

    5 min

  8. EPISODE 51

    Fifty-One

    Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday. ------ [TRANSCRIPT] [click, static] I’m...I’m okay. [click, static] I don’t know if you were wondering about what happened to me—or if you even heard my last transmission at all but um— [click, static] I’m okay. Turns out you can outrun a tornado so...take that Dorothy. [click, static] I—um, I hope everything’s okay with you. It’s been a week of radio silence now and I’m, um... [click, static] Well, yeah, I hope you’re okay too. [static] [radio noise] [click off]

    1 min
See All Season 1 (212)

Trailer

Shows with Subscription Benefits

  • The Bright Sessions is a science fiction audio drama that follows a group of therapy patients. But these are not your typical patients - each has a unique supernatural ability. The show documents their struggles and discoveries as well as the motivations of their mysterious therapist, Dr. Bright.  The show was created by Lauren Shippen and is a production of Atypical Artists. The show has seven seasons, including the previously paywalled Seasons 6 and 7, The AM Archives and The College Tapes. The Bright Sessions has been downloaded tens of millions of times and cemented itself as a classic of audio fiction. Three spin-off novels were published through Tor Teen: The Infinite Noise, A Neon Darkness, and Some Faraway Place. If you enjoy this show, check out the rest of Atypical Artists' shows!

    • 4.8 (6567)
    • DRAMA

  • New Year's Day is a yearly fiction podcast from the team behind The Bright Sessions that comes out every January 1st. Out of the billions of human beings in the world, there are just two that share an earth-shattering secret. Charles Chambers and John Fogg are immortal; since making this discovery, they meet up every 13 years to discuss the world, their lives, and the unique challenges of living forever. It is written and directed by Lauren Shippen, starring Andrew Nowak and Briggon Snow. For more information and to receive monthly missives, please visit atypicalartists.co/newyearsday.

    • 5.0 (20)
    • FICTION

  • A new podcast musical from the producer of The Bright Sessions and creators Jeff Luppino-Esposito, Brett Ryback, and Matt Sav. After a tragedy in the Whitetail National Forest, 18-year-old Peregrine Wells seeks out survivalist skills from an enigmatic old recluse. In this fictional documentary musical with an original folk-pop score, listeners will follow producer Brett Ryback as he explores themes of grief, adolescence, and our precarious relationship to the wilderness - all set against a sleepy northern Minnesota town reeling from a loss of innocence it will never get back. In Strange Woods is a production of Atypical Artists. It is created and executive produced by Jeff Luppino-Esposito, Brett Ryback, and Matt Sav.

    • 4.4 (631)
    • FICTION

  • A sci-fi(ish) romantic comedy podcast starring a repressed lawyer, a criminal client, a pesky sister and her fiance, an infuriatingly sexy coworker, and an android in the mood for love.Jeanine Bell​ is a robotics intelligence lawyer whose laser focus on her career has come at the expense of her romantic and social lives. After successfully keeping AI genius Penelope Lane out of prison, Jeanine receives the gift of LEO(h),​ an android with Synthetic Sentience. LEO(h) is Loving, Empathetic, Optimistic, and (only sorta) helpful. He's programmed to love Jeanine. He’s also very, very illegal.Created by Octavia Bray and produced by Atypical Artists.

    • 4.9 (177)
    • FICTION

  • Two young men meet on a beach every night with a telescope and the unanswered questions from years of a friendship lost as they await their parent’s return from a mission to Mars. As re-entry draws closer...so do they. Starring Evan Bittencourt (Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists) and Briggon Snow (The Bright Sessions). Produced by Atypical Artists and created by Briggon Snow.

    • 4.8 (209)
    • FICTION

  • GREENHOUSE is an anxious audio love story about a recluse writer and a lonely florist who learn, letter by letter, that the world is a whole lot brighter when you have someone to share your story with. It was created by Lillian Holman and produced by Atypical Artists. For more information, please visit atypicalartists.co/greenhouse

    • 5.0 (103)
    • FICTION

Get all the week's episodes early, each Monday

$4.99/mo or $49.99/yr after trial

View Subscription FAQs

Hosts & Guests

4.7
out of 5
65 Ratings

About

BREAKER WHISKEY is an ongoing, daily microfiction podcast exploring one woman’s journey to find additional survivors in an America made empty by an unknown event in the late 1960s. In 1968, two women find themselves in rural Pennsylvania during what turns out to be some kind of apocalyptic event. By the time they discover that everyone else is gone, it’s too late to figure out what happened. Despite not liking each other at all, the women work together to survive, until six years later one of them sets out on her own, driving around the country to find other survivors. This is her, calling out to anyone who might listen. BREAKER WHISKEY is made by Lauren Shippen and recorded on a 1976 Midland CB Radio. It releases daily, Monday through Friday. If you would like the entire week's episodes as one single download, released on Monday, you can support the show at patreon.com/breakerwhiskey or by becoming an Atypical Plus supporter at atypicalartists.co/support. Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey.

Information

More From Atypical Artists

You Might Also Like

To listen to explicit episodes, sign in.

Stay up to date with this show

Sign in or sign up to follow shows, save episodes, and get the latest updates.
Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada