Talking Scared

By Neil McRobertSociety & Culture Arts Books

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Typical duration
75 min
per episode

Based on Podcast App listening data

Talking Scared episodes

May 01 Off Book #18 – Hokum, with Damian McCarthy
This week we host one of the most exciting horror filmmakers of the decade – Damian McCarthy, the twisted mind behind Caveat, Oddity and
now, Hokum.

It’s the biggest film in Damian’s career so far, with his biggest star, Adam Scott playing Ohm, a deeply flawed American writer who travels to Ireland, to spread his parent’s ashes. Whilst staying in a creaky old hotel, he stumbled across dark human conspiracy and witchy haunting.

Damian is so much nicer than Ohm, and this is a cheery conversation about the cheeriest scary film I’ve seen in a while!

Enjoy

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55 min
April 28277 – Marcus Kliewer & Rules Help Control the Fun
Cognitohazards abound this week, as Marcus Kliewer joins me for a conversation about the reality-shredding We Used to Live Here and his new novel of obsessional rules, The Caretaker.

In both books, there are things that should not be known, and certainly not questioned. Yet questioning is my job – so we get into the expansive and weird universe Marcus is building, and the process of playing games
and leaving clues for the reader. We talk about how his own terrors and neurodivergence informs his fiction, and I pass on a lecture from my wife that these books should come with an OCD trigger warning.

Plus – you get not one but TWO recommendations for true existential
horror reads.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:
We Used to Live Here (2025), by Marcus Kliewer

House of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. Danielewski

The Denial of Death (1973), by Ernest Becker

A Short Stay in Hell (2009), by Steven L. Peck

The Divine Farce (2009), by Michael Graziano

Japanese Gothic (2026), by Kylie Lee Baker

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Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hr 20 min
April 21276 – Kylie Lee Baker & Swords Make Everything Worse
A conversation about codes of honour and the rules of haunting in this week’s episode – as I’m joined by Kylie Lee Baker, author of 2025’s incredible Bat Eater, and the brand-new Japanese Gothic.

It’s the story of a very particular haunted house, a brutal samurai family, and a murderer who can’t remember his crime. It’s exhilaratingly weird and Kylie leads me through its many strange rooms.

We talk about her own dual heritage, it’s role in the story, and links to the very real historical Samurai. We discuss the meanings of Gothic in her work, the art of writing puzzling fiction, and Timothy Chalamet's role in inspiring the novel.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:
Bat Eater (2025), by Kylie Anne Baker

Mexican Gothic (2020), by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

So Thirsty (2024), by Rachel Harrison

Rekt (2025), by Alex Rodriguez

Man of Wind and Moss (2026), by Alex Rodriguez
Support Talking Scared on Patreon

Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]

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1 hr 9 min
April 14275 – Caroline Bicks & The Stuff Too Dark for Even Stephen King
When Stephen King tells you to have a guest on your podcast – you listen!

That’s how I came to meet Caroline Bicks, the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair at the University of Maine, and author of the Monsters in the Archive – the first full-length study of the King literary collection.

It’s part memoir, part literary biography, part granular exploration of King’s editorial process – but ALL fun. I’m a nerd on this subject, and I found out plenty that I didn’t know.

As well as discussing our own relationship with King’s early work, we also talk about the stuff that never made it to print. The exploding vampire babies, the Kaiju-sized Carrie and the original ending of The Shining that is so much darker than you could bear.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:
Carrie (1974), by Stephen King

‘Salem’s Lot (1975), by Stephen King

The Shining (1977), by Stephen King

Night Shift (1978), by Stephen King

Pet Semetary (1983), by Stephen King

On Writing (2000), by Stephen King

North Woods (2023), by Daniel Mason

Ulverton (1992), by Adam Thorpe

Support Talking Scared on Patreon

Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hr 35 min
April 10 Off Book #17 – Undertone, with Ian Tuason and Nina Kiri
Listen at your own peril this week.

I spoke with Ian Tuason and Nina Kiri, the director and star of Undertone – billed as “the scariest movie you’ll ever hear!”

It’s the story of an isolated podcaster, who makes the terrible mistake of listening to some very unnerving audio files…which then start to bleed into her own life. You can imagine the number it did on me!

Ian and Nina talk about the movie’s roots in Ian’s own experience of late-life care for his parents, and the responsibility of portraying that on screen. We discuss how the film weaponises sound, how the internet is a scary, fascinating place, and even a little exclusive heads up about more to come in this universe.

Enjoy

Support Talking Scared on Patreon

Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
52 min
April 07274 – Carter Keane & Working Ourselves to Death!!
Corporate culture is a nightmare, but getting out of the office brings its own problems in Carter Keane’s debut novella – Morsel.

It’s a story about monsters and eldritch beings, about killer cults and evil law-enforcement, about wellbeing scams and a boss from hell – but it’s also a springboard for a whole conversation about the cons (many) and pros (debatable) of capitalism. Carter indulges my devil’s advocacy, before we get back to the matter of strange forest disappearances and horrible shit that happens with bears.

It’s a whole range of ways to feel scared of the world.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:
The Ritual (2011), by Adam Nevill

Last Days (2012), by Adam Nevill

All the Fiends of Hell (2024), by Adam Nevill

The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (2017), by Margaret Killjoy

Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1989), by Frederic Jameson

Debt: The First 500 Years (2011), by David Graeber

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (2017), by Kate Raworth

The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America’s Wildlands (2020), by Jon Billman

Rust Belt Femme (2020), by Rachael Anne Jolie

Night of the Grizzlies (1969), by Jack Olsen

Support Talking Scared on Patreon

Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hr 23 min
April 03 Let Us Palaver #8 – The Black House Debrief
Nat and I stick around in the shadowed recesses of Black House for another half hour, to discuss all the things that Chris got right and wrong – and to make some entirely unfounded claims of our own.

It’s overflowing with spoilers for the whole Dark Tower series, so don’t listen if you’re a newbie. We start to ask who is the Crimson King? Would Roland and Jack have gotten along? And we get very grumpy about certain wolves in a certain town further down the road.

Enjoy.

Support Talking Scared on Patreon

Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

Come talk books on Bluesky @talkscaredpod.bsky.social
on Instagram/Threads, or email direct to [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
34 min
March 31 The Dark Tower Deep Dive #8 – Black House
Time to whet our appetites for the Dark Tower again – this time with an extra serving of ass cheek!
After three months away, we’re picking up with travellin’ Jack Sawyer after we left him in The Talisman. We find him in a sleepy Wisconsin town, where the dimension-hopping, child-eating Fisherman is plying his awful trade.

Yep… it’s time for Black House. The book in which King’s universes collide.

Nat, Chris and I argue – about where we see the spirit of King and Peter Straub in this story, about the believability of characters and the RIGHT amount to mourn a fallen hero. But we also agree about the beauty of theprose, the sublime depiction of the deepest horrors, and the sheer joy of one of the Dark Tower’s nastiest villains.

It’s as much fun as you can have with a book about so many dead kids.

Support Talking Scared on Patreon

Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

Come talk books on Bluesky @talkscaredpod.bsky.social on Instagram/Threads, or email direct to [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
2 hr 30 min
March 27 Off Book #16 – Something Very Bad is Going to Happen, with Haley Z. Boston
After seeing an early screener of Something Very Bad is Going to Happen I immediately thought it was going to be huge!

So I leapt ahead of the curve and invited writer and showrunner, Haley Z Boston to come talk scared about weddings, soulmates, David Lynch and Danish horror, and what it’s like to work with the Duffer Brothers.

This show has been my whole personality for two weeks. Ihope you watch, listen to this interview, and love it all.

Enjoy

Support Talking Scared on Patreon

Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
56 min
March 24Episode 273 – Tamika Thompson & The Shadow of the Gun
Tamika Thompson talks me through the great American curseof the 21st Century on this week’s episode. No, not Tangerine Cthulhu … but the plague of gun deaths that is coring out the country.

That’s the focus of her new novel, The Curse of Hester Gardens, which asks whether the deaths gunning for the young men of an inner-city housing project are criminal, or something much weirder!

Yeah, that’s right. Listen to a cossetted little English guy try and keep up in an conversation about gun crimes and street life.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:
The Rats (1974), by James Herbert

The Ghosts of Sleath (1994),by James Herbert

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (2022), by Kim Fu

Mystery Lights (2024), by Lena Valencia

“How to Do Diversity When You’re Lazy, Ignorant and/or Malicious” (2018), by Tamika Thompson – Link HERE

Support Talking Scared on Patreon

Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hr 20 min

About Talking Scared

From the publisher's feed

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.