Join Alexis and Lottie on a deep-dive into WORLDBUILDING. Why it's menacing to be told to start with a timeline, how Twin Peaks' BOB came to be, why you must never call pulled pok 'flesh-spicing', and why the architect of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao probably didn't start with the toilets. Alexis, unsportingly, refuses to get cross.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Fallen London and Sunless Sea, by Alexis Kennedy & Failbetter Games
- The Silmarillion, by J. R. R. Tolkien
- Beowulf, by ???
- Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake
- Hard Times, by Charles Dickens

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This week we take a break from literature and talk about the weird stories in our own lives. Join Sheep-Stealer and Big Head as they introduce you to Great Uncle Gilbert, the teenage flying ace and real-life Great Escape artist, and David the contract officer for the Sultan of Oman who brought a wolf to tea. All shot through with poisonous headwear, what Britain wants for Christmas, and gentlemen flying kites.

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Can you really trust anyone? Join Alexis and Lottie as they roundly conclude that you can't. We talk unreliable narrators via toilets, relevance theory, echoic mentions, the four levels of Star Wars canonicity and Lovecraft being surprisingly confident that his monsters were real.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

• Cultist Simulator, by us
• RimWorld, by Ludeon Studios
• Prison Architect, by Introversion Software
• Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Luzhin Defense, by Vladimir Nabokov
• Chess Story, by Stefan Zweig
• Aspects of the Novel, by E. M. Forster
• The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James
• As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality, by Michael T. Saler
• Soldier of the Mist, by Gene Wolf

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Madness, blood and ladies! We talk all things bloody, from Freud to Pliny to the Red Grail to Queen Elizabeth the First to murdering an entire hive of bees. The Madonna / whore complex? Check. Horrible Norse mythology about men being scared of ladies, and gods being made out of spit? Check. Etymology that devolves into single entendre riddles about vegetables? We gotchu. Also, Lottie gets increasingly cross.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Natural History, by Pliny the Elder + John Healey
- The Joy of Sex, by Alex Comfort
- Paradise Lost, by John Milton
- Various Norse mythology, which Kevin Crossley-Holland translates excellently

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Join Alexis and Lottie for a run-down of forbidden knowledge: the type that's ipso facto dangerous and the type that's dangerous because of what you can do with it. We discover Christopher Marlowe was definitely a spy, nuclear codes are modern occultism and everyone's neighbour Mrs Thrumb writes a very boring diary.

We skim past Papist plots, diabolical monkeys, why Lovecraft is like watching a snake getting dressed and conclude that if you can't poke something with an umbrella it's probably bad news.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Fallen London, by Alexis Kennedy & Failbetter Games
- The King In Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers
- The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe
- Different Kinds of Darkness, by David Langford
- 'Green Tea', by Sheridan Le Fanu

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From ancient Egypt to modern web comics, döppelgangers haunt us all. Join Alexis and Lottie as they discuss the ins and outs of these look-alikey ghouls, from Scottish fetches to Capgras syndrome via Dostoyevsky, Silent Hill 2, neuropsychology and scary mirrors. All with a sprinkling of gothic literature.

Oh! And if you run into a doppelganger in a graveyard, pray that it's the right time of day.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- BOOK OF HOURS, by us
- 'The Screwfly Solution', by James Tiptree Jr.
- 'Liking What You See: A Documentary', by Ted Chiang
- The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, by Oliver Sacks
- 'The Entrance', by Gerald Durrell
- Through the Woods, by Emily Carroll

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Panthers, dragons, monoceri, yales, wendigos, hell-hounds and pigs! This isn't an occult incantation, this is a half-hour deep-dive into our favourite spooky beasts from medieval bestiaries, epic poems and early 20th century ghost stories.

Whether you're into shapeless bear-cubs, dirty bonnacons or being grumpy about Elizabeth I, there's a feast of beasts here for you.

Games / books mentioned in this episode:

- BOOK OF HOURS, by us
- The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser
- The Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood
- The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood
- The Medieval Bestiary

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Vampires, vampires and more vampires! From the Malay 'polong' and 'pelesit' to the soucouyants and empousai of Cultist Simulator, Alexis talks the history of the vampire myth before Lottie jumps in with a rendition of Carmilla. Then she embarrasses herself by wishing everyone a spooky day.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice
- Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu
- The Vampyre; a Tale, by John Polidori
- Varney the Vampire, by James Malcom Rymer

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Support the show