It’s time for Pioneer Days in Night Vale again! Wow, has it already been a year since the last festival? The answer is: no, it hasn’t, because Pioneer Days happen at random times whenever the Night Vale Utilities company shuts off all the power and water in the town, leaving everyone to sit in the dark while all the food in their refrigerators spoils. It’s festive.

Listen in as the Binary System Podcast talks this week about the Night Vale festival with time-traveler photographs, an Interactive Boardwalk in the desert, and a truly horrifying recipe for Cherries Jubilee. Plus, we’ll ramble for a bit about fever dreams, photo exhibits, cosplay issues, and our very favorite podcasts (other than this one, naturally).Read OnBinary System Podcast #167 – Welcome to Night Vale #143 “Pioneer Days”

While this week’s Night Vale recap had a lot of UFOs, shape-changing trees, and french fries, it also had a lot to say about life and loss and grief. So to switch gears we talked about some of the Oscar Nominated shorts, one of which is also about life and loss and grief. Right. So we pitched the recaps out the window and talked about Vampire Diaries instead, because if we’re going to talk about death we’d like there to be vampires, thank you.Read OnBinary System Podcast #166 – WTNV #142 “UFO Sighting Reports”

In what’s quickly becoming an annual tradition, the Binary System Podcast (with special guest Nathan Adams) watched the Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts at our favorite cinemas, and we’re here to give you the details. Which short do we think will win? Which short would we like to win? Which short wasn’t our favorite, and which “Highly Commended” short was absolutely robbed, ROBBED, through no fault of its own? (We’re assuming it was for something that wasn’t the creators’ fault. Problematic Russian politics aside, there’s no reason we can see why “Tweet Tweet” shouldn’t have blown the competition away.)Read OnBinary System Podcast #165 – The Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts

Technically this podcast is about websites that help you watch movies, but aside from the RunPee app (and what a glorious invention that is) it’s mostly about sites that can give you a heads up about triggers in movies.

Here at Binary System we’ve never been sure what to think of trigger warnings, but we’re fascinated by websites that categorize movies by every potentially traumatizing thing you can think of: snakes, bugs, car crashes, clowns, damaged teeth; you name it, there’s a site that can tell you if a movie has it. So this week we’re going over some of our favorite finds (including the RunPee app, which counts if you think being super uncomfortable for the last twenty minutes of a movie is traumatic, which we do.)Read OnBinary System Podcast #164 – Websites that…help you watch movies?

Yay, Welcome to Night Vale is back from hiatus! To celebrate, Night Vale is having a party this week at Dark Owl Records!

Well, it’s more of a fundraiser than a party (the new music store in town, Burger Barn Gladtown Records Express, is affecting sales at Dark Owl Records and owner Michelle Nguyen HAS OPINIONS ABOUT THAT.) Plus, the host of the party really hates parties, and there may be a shambling horror from underneath the store about to slaughter all the guests. But there’s plenty of cake and iced coffee, so come on over and dig for the latest records! Through the dirt. With your bare hands.Read OnBinary System Podcast #163 – WTNV #141 Save Dark Owl Records

Can we just say for the record that if you’ve attended a convention and been bitterly disappointed, you have our sympathies. THAT BEING SAID, grab some popcorn, because in the wake of the Fyre Festival documentaries (which we adored) we’re going to talk about a bunch more conventions that imploded due to inexperience, egos, financial shenanigans, downright mental incompetence, or all of the above. (We don’t know why we love Convention Disaster Stories, but we really, really do.)

Listen in as we go over what we know about TanaCon, Dashcon, Nerdcon, RainFurrest, and Universal FanCon, not to mention a bunch of geeking out about Fyre Festival because holy cow that crapfest makes for a great story.Read OnBinary System Podcast #162 – Convention Disaster Stories

It sure doesn’t happen very often: both the East and West Coast branches of Binary System actually saw a movie before it left the theaters. But it was a Transformers movie, and the reviews were great, so how could they NOT go see it?

Spoilers ahoy! Listen in as they break down everything they loved (and a couple teeny tiny things they didn’t) about Bumblebee. After that they segued into…more Transformers stuff, including the Transformers The Movie mini-documentary that Kathryn recommends, IDW’s Transformers: Historia, and, you know, all the other IDW Transformers books that they loved.Read OnBinary System Podcast #161 – Bumblebee and other Transformers topics

Well, that didn’t take long, did it? Not that we’ve fallen behind on our podcasts by accident, oh no. We knew it would freak out our listeners if we actually stayed ahead of schedule for too long, so we went back to our tried-and-true method of skipped weeks, delays, and a complete lack of planning. Because we’re considerate.

We also have an Arizona convention for Elizabeth to talk about, a new Transformers movie for Kathryn to squee over (best in the series, suck it Michael Bay!) and we really really really need some suggestions for cosplay, because Wondercon is coming up in less than three months and the only ideas we have so far would take, oh, about two years to put together.Read OnBinary System Podcast #160 – Happy New Year…two weeks late

So did you watch Haunting of Hill House, or did you skip it and wonder what the fuss was about? Did you love all of it, or did you recognize the parts that were deeply flawed? Did you enjoy the ending, or did the last line make you want to flip a table? Pull up a chair, we’ve got you covered, as special guest Hannah Wallace returns to help us break down this wonderful yet sometimes bafflingly annoying show.Read OnBinary System Podcast #159 – The Haunting of Hill House

Last week was our Christmas episode so of course Night Vale released a Christmas episode for us to recap the next day. But seeing as how it was a downer of a story about mortality and terror, it’s probably good we waited until after Christmas to recap it. And to cheer ourselves up, we also talked about Penguin’s father on Gotham, Klaus’ predicament after season three of The Originals, and the city of pirate ships in China Mieville’s The Scar.

A very happy new year to everybody!Read OnBinary System Podcast #158 – WTNV #140 “A Blood Stone Carol”