The first podcast I ever loved was Welcome to Night Vale.

We were driving to Maine, which is about an eight hour trip from my house, and my wife told me there was something I needed to hear. She called it a “podcast,” and since I am an actual human being who can put the prefix “pod” together with the suffix “cast,” I didn’t even need her to explain that it was like radio for the internet.

But I did need an explanation. I needed her to explain why she was wasting my time. I knew what a podcast was, but I didn’t think it could be anything important. I didn’t think it could be anything amazing. I didn’t think it could be something that I loved.

But after five hours of listening to Cecil Palmer tell me strange tales from his strange town, I was in love. Night Vale was funny and creepy and touching and horrifying, and it was perfect.

I listen to a lot of podcasts now. I listen for entertainment, for news, for social commentary, for ways to make myself and my world better. I listen in the car, walking the dogs, doing the dishes. I almost always have my headphones with me now, and it’s all because of that one, first podcast.

The Black Tapes wasn’t my first, but it was the best.

Alex Reagan: Hi Nic! You look like a bag of ass dragged through an interdimensional rift covered in razor blades and gasoline!

Nic Silver: Hi Alex! You look like a mental patient that escaped psychiatric hold by using your face to break through the security glass!

Alex Reagan: Anyway, I just wanted to call and let you know that we’ve got it all figured out! Daeva Corp is a front for the Order of the Ceonophus, a Satanic religious order that is owned and operated by Thomas Warren!

Nic Silver: Wow, that’s a serious accusation! Do you have anything resembling proof?

Alex Reagan: Absolutely not! But guess what? Someone was thoughtful enough to smuggle an audio recorded twenty years back in time so that they could record Thomas Warren’s experiments at CERN! And it turns out his machinery was designed to create the Unsound!

Nic Silver: That’s amazing!

Alex Reagan: Oh and guess what? It turns out that all of this stuff about the Mysterium and Percival Black and the Un-Un-Sound and all of that was complete bullshit that doesn’t actually affect the story in any way!

Nic Silver: Holy shit! That sounds like a discovery that should have been made on-air!

Alex Reagan: And get this! Richard Strand, devout skeptic and evangelical atheist, agrees with me that Thomas Warren is using the large hadron collider to open up demonic portals all over the world!

Nic Silver: What an unexpected character development! Hey, while I’ve got you on the phone, let me show you something!

Alex Reagan: I sure hope it’s not a creepy video of me sleeping while a menacing cultist looks on and Tall Paul lurks in the corner, waiting to devour my innocence, my soul, and my flesh!

Ron Howard: It was.

Alex Reagan: Last week, Richard Strand revealed a black tape that contains undeniable physical evidence that Tall Paul is real and manifests in front of children, most likely because he needs to devour their flesh and feast upon their souls in order to bring about the apocalypse. But we’ll get back to that in a minute!

Richard Strand: Hey Alex! So I think the guy mentioned in the prophecy of the Horn of Tiamat is the Protestant reformer John Calvin! He was the oldest of four brothers, killed a heretic, and brought his religion to a new land, Switzerland!

Alex Reagan: And you just happen to have a talk scheduled for Switzerland next week! How convenient!

Richard Strand: I know! Why don’t you come with me! The hotel is very nice, and the beds are easily big enough for both of us!

Alex Reagan: <3 <3 <3

Alex Reagan: Oh my god Richard! Look at all of he children in this photo! They all look exactly like Sebastian Torres!

Richard Strand: I suppose that’s true, if you ignore the fact that this child is blond, this child is a red head, this child is asian, and this child is clearly female.

Alex Reagan: God damn it Richard I am so tired of you having a calm logical explanation for clearly inexplicable occurrences! You can’t just pass this one off by saying “apophenia this” and “Alex, most children have two eyes, a nose, and a mouth” that!

Richard Strand: So I take it you aren’t sleeping again?

Alex Reagan: Look, the fact that I spend every harried night haunted by the echoes of a song I can’t quite hear, the whispered suggestions that I put an end to this farce by killing first myself and then everyone I love, the appearance of scar tissue in the shape of various occult sigils on my arms and legs and torso, and a person I don’t quite recognize staring back at me in the mirror has nothing to do with your inability to admit that this Chinese boy has distinctly hispanic features!

Richard Strand: …Anyway, have you ever heard of stirpiculture? It was an early eugenics program practiced by the Oneida Community, with the goal of producing children that were physically, mentally, and spiritually superior to the average human.

Alex Reagan: Wait, they’re a weird sex cult? I love weird sex cults!

Alex Reagan (on the phone): Hi Simon! I came to Turkey like you demanded! So when can we meet?

Simon Reese (on the phone): Meet? Who said anything about meeting? I’m in Russia, and while I could use my forbidden powers to slip between the worlds and reappear in your hotel room, which I am 100% going to do while you’re sleeping tonight, I thought it would be more mysterious if we spoke over the phone.

Alex Reagan (on the phone): We could have spoken over the phone without me dropping ten grand in airfare, Simon.

Simon Reese (on the phone): Oh yes, you could have, but then your eyes would have been denied the true sight, the sight of the blind fool god, the sight that sees not what is but what was and may yet again be, the sight of the ancient and broken and powerful thing that hides beneath the torn tapestry, the lie that gives all truth its power!

Alex Reagan (on the phone): …what?

Simon Reese (on the phone): Go to the cafe across the street. One of my henchmen is going to kidnap you and take you to the Horn of Tiamat. Jesus, Alex, this isn’t complicated.

Alex Reagan: You’ll remember that last week’s episode ended with a phone call from Thomas Warren, or as I refer to him when I’m having a little alone time, Sexy James Bond. The following is a transcript of that conversation:

Alex Reagan (on the phone): Hi Sexy … erm, Thomas! So glad you called, I was hoping you could help me rend the last few fibers of Richard Strand’s fragile psyche by telling us some dark and terrible secrets about his father Howard!

Thomas Warren (on the phone): Hi Alex and Richard! Well to start with, I can tell you that Howard Strand was working for my organization, Daiva Corporation, because we thought he was the best chance we had at uncovering the long-lost Horn of Tiamat, which we will certainly not use to bring about the Final Conflagration!

Richard Strand (on the phone): And you found the Horn in Iraq?

Thomas Warren (on the phone): Well, no, we didn’t find it, but your father did. He said something about “finally now I can unleash the Great Beast whose Name is Six Hundred and Sixty Six, using the body of my only son as his host, and usher in the End of Days!” before shoving the Horn into his safari vest and running off into the night.

Alex Reagan: This episode of The Black Tapes is brought to you by mother!, the upcoming psychological horror that poses the terrifying question: what could possibly make Jennifer Lawrence sleep with Javier Bardem? Has she been drugged? Blackmailed? Possessed by some vile demon of lust and spite? Or is she just making a play for an Oscar, like Charlize Theron in Monster? There’s an answer somewhere out there, an unlike some people (cough Nic cough) this movie only has 90 minutes to get to the final revelation.

Alex Reagan: Last week, on The Black Tapes, HOLY FUCKING SHIT I CANNOT FUCKING BELIEVE IT CORALEE IS ALIVE I MEAN I KIND OF KNEW SHE WAS BUT JESUS FUCKING CHRIST SHE PULLED UP IN A VAN AND SAID COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE LIKE SHE’S SOME KIND OF GODDAMNED BEEKEEPING TERMINATOR WHAT THE EVEN FUCK IS GOING ON ANYMORE, Amalia told us Keith Dabic’s face was cut off by evil monks and stapled onto some homeless guy’s head, Richard went into exhaustive detail about a fake Gospel nobody’s ever read, and I tried to convince Nic to pay for a trip to the mythical landing site of Noah’s arc. Spoilers, it turns out even shipping me with postage bought from Stamps.com was beyond our budget.

Alex Reagan: Hello, Wayne Coats? I understand you have some shocking revelations about Richard Strand’s youth, secrets that he would refuse to tell me and details that he would be loath to have broadcast to the public, and I was wondering if you’d care to share all of those intimate details with me, my tape recorder, and our thousands of listeners!

Wayne Coats: Why, I’d love to tell you all about my childhood friend, Richie Strand! First, you have to understand that he was always the quiet type, never dramatic, never calling attention to himself. Second, you should know that he was absolutely fearless and totally loyal. Finally, you need to remember that he gained terrible psychic powers through some dark pact with an infernal entity intent on channeling the forces of the apocalypse through young Richie’s soul.

Alex Reagan: Could you go into a bit more detail about that?

Wayne Coats: Sure! See, there was this one time when some bullies knocked me down and tried to steal my bike, but Richie, who was like five years younger and outnumbered ten to one, stood up to them, never blinking, refusing to back down! Even when he was a kid the guy had cantaloupes the size of, well, cantaloupes.

Alex Reagan: No, I mean the inexplicable powers obtained through dark magics.

Wayne Coats: Oh, of course! Silly me. Well, you know about the Boy in the River, right Bobby Maimes, who was kidnapped and murdered in our home town? Well Richie had this terrible dream, a dream that showed him the ghost of a boy and a fork in a river, but that was all a metaphor. See, the ghost boy was a representation of our innocence, and the fork in the river was how our destinies were all being changed by this terrible event. But it was also pretty literal, because a demon named Tall Paul whispered terrible secrets into Richie’s ear while he slept, telling him how Bobby died and where the body was hidden.

Alex Reagan: So … PNWS boom?

Nic Silver: PNWS boom.

[PNWS Boom]

Nic Silver: Hi Alex! Great news! I’ve used my super sleuthing hacker skills to track down incredibly important information about Thomas Warren and the Exorcismatron 2000!

Alex Reagan: You mean you Googled his name and actually read what was on the second page of results?

Nic Silver: …anyway, I found out that Thomas Warren sits on the Board of Directors of a company called Lucaternica, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of DevaCorp, and their most important product is …

Alex Reagan: Oh! I know! I know! Giant demon trapping machines used by shifty men in shady black suits performing bizarre exorcisms while supervised by incompetent medical professional!

Nic Silver: Close! They make pachinko machines!

Alex Reagan: …Are you sure MereKatnip doesn’t want to help with our investigation?