Talking Scared

Mar 05 2025 244 ep. 74 mins 950
Talking Scared Podcast artwork

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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229 – Agustina Bazterrica & The Wicked Nuns of Oz

Mar 05 2025 71 mins  
No one is doing dystopia right now like Agustina 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

Off Book #7 – Scott Derrickson

Feb 28 2025 87 mins  
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 st

228 – Sophie White & An Island of Formless Dread

Feb 25 2025 89 mins  
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-l

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

Feb 18 2025 77 mins  
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,

226 – Virginia Feito & A Good Old-Fashioned Bad Girl

Feb 11 2025 79 mins  
Time to misbehave. Virginia Feito’s new novel, Victorian Psycho, is all about good behaviour, positive standards and polite conduct…and what happens when you flout all that, by – I dunno – slaughtering a houseload of people. It’s a much buzzed about book that takes the psychopathy of American Psycho back to the straightlaced, be-corseted world of the 19th Century, the

225 – Lucy Rose & The Cumbrian Chainsaw Massacre

Feb 04 2025 78 mins  
Are you hungry? Depending on your…erm… tastes, the next hour of conversation will do strange things to your appetite. Our guest is Lucy Rose, whose debut novel, The Lamb renders muscle and fat and sorrow down into a rich stew of cannibalism and rural Gothic. We talk about how rooted this book is in the landscape, history and folklore of Northern England – and we also talk

Let Us Palaver #1 – The Dark Tower Debrief

Feb 03 2025 25 mins  
Here is the first Let Us Palaver minisode – in which Nat Cassidy and I kick Chris off the call, and get to grips with the inner workings of The Dark Tower, without spoiling anything for him, or any of you on your first trip through these books. If you still listen after this spoiler warning and the two I give in the first few minutes of the episode… well, you only have yoursel

The Dark Tower Deep Dive #1 – The Gunslinger

Jan 28 2025 133 mins  
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the podcaster followed…” Welcome to the start of what is sure to be an epic journey. Step by step, over more than a dozen episodes, Talking Scared will be following the beam all the way to the Dark Tower – that mad edifice at the heart of Stephen King’s opus. Maybe it’s the heart of every story ever told… time will tell.

Off Book #6 – Dutch Marich & Horror in the High Desert

Jan 24 2025 70 mins  
The latest Off Book episode takes you out to the American desert and leaves you there, cold, alone and confused. We’re speaking with Dutch Marich, the surprisingly lovely mind behind the most terrifying found footage I’ve seen in years – The Horror in the High Desert series. These films are full of a particular kind of fear. Never obscure, but always hidden – leaving you

224 – Susan Barker & The Denial of Death

Jan 21 2025 68 mins  
Tyranny is the key this week on Talking Scared this week. How fitting. Susan Barker’s Old Soul is a globe-trotting, decade-spanning supernatural tour of autocracies, from behind the Iron Curtain to contemporary China. If that isn’t frightening enough, it also features an ageless woman who curses anyone she meets, a grand cosmic entity, and the exhilaration and terror of deep