The Vesta Clinic

(a) Writers casting themselves as a main character (or even as the only voiced character), for example:

Beth Crane as Kilner in We Fix Space Junk

HR Owen as The Presenter in Monstrous Agonies and The Traveller in Travelling Light

Jonathan Sims as Jonathan Sims in The Magnus Archives

Lauren Shippen as Sam in The Bright Sessions and Harper Two Thousand and Late

Leon Egan as Leo Quinn in Tell No Tales

(b) Writers casting themselves as fun supporting roles, for example:

Chris Sugden as Chief Inspector Keller and Jen Sugden as Mrs. Pomlingan in Victoriocity

David K Barnes as Dr. Henry Edgware in Wooden Overcoats

(c) Writers casting themselves as roles with an interesting meta implication, for example:

Alexander Danner as the Narrator in Greater Boston (Jeff Van Dreason as Chuck Octagon could arguably fall into (b) or (c) since he is both a fun side character and a reporter who delivers information about the narrative)

Emily St James, Christopher Dole and Sara Ghaleb having cameos as the Editors in Arden S1

There's not really a broader point to this post except that I like thinking about patterns. A writer acting in their own story is so common in fiction podcasts and comparatively rare in film, TV, theatre etc. This is obviously down to a combination of various factors including the low-budget independent nature of many fiction podcasts and the way that so many of them are labours of love by people who are willing to wear many hats.

coming to you live with some exciting @phantompulseband casting announcements! 🔉

we, along with our good friends over at @atypicalartists, are THRILLED to share that #Jordan Doww will be starring in the musical ghost-hunting fiction podcast as frontman Ren Wakefield. with credits like Hallmark's #The Way Home, science-fiction podcast @thebrightsessions, and @augustyearroundprod's #Moonburn, Doww is amped and ready to serenade away some evil spirits; he's even recorded an album for the project!

also joining the @phantompulseband cast are #Kristian Bruun and #Ali Ghandour! Bruun voices Perry Watts, an experienced ghost hunter and ex-priest who helps mentor the band as they learn more about their powers. Ghandour plays Watt’s protégé, Jason Salman, a young man grappling with a lifetime of grief. other co-stars include @briggonsnow, Erika Ishii, Juliana Gutiérrez Arango, and Erin Caesar.

keep an eye out for one final, super secret casting announcement coming soon... you’re not going to want to miss it, trust us 👀

following a 90s rock band who can banish ghosts with their music, @phantompulseband tackles the themes of found family, the complexities of religion in America, and hope in the face of terrible grief. a new fiction podcast from creative director, writer, and director @thelaurenshippen, and executive produced by Ella Watts, Evan Cunningham, Brandon Grugle, and @tumblr, the Phantom Pulse music album is set to release later this october leading up to the official podcast show premiere next year.

it will be fun they said

WRONG

Alice Isn't Dead- Don't Tell Alice: starting off strong with the sequel to my favorite piece of media ever made. these episodes are NOT letting me down. loved Rob with more than one B and how fucking crazy and random that scene was?? hello?? also THEORY CONFIRMED for who the woman was!

The Reality Shaper: the song "Top Ten Worst Ways To Die" is gonna be stuck in my head forever and ever amen. Kep and i may do a karaoke of it because Sair Kaufman was nice enough to email me the instrumental track...

The Great Chameleon War: finished it and even wrote a little post on my thoughts on it! basically- extreme, beautiful, violent, trippy, excellent sound design.

Cold Shift: things just keep getting more and more interesting around here... the bait and switch with who Thomas Grind is was really surprising but idk why I'm surprised by anything being surprising anymore. who is doing Jaran's chores?? has the duplicate come back??

It's only because astronomers noticed an unusual gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter that we found out there's anything there at all.

It looks so dense on maps and especially in the movies.

But most asteroids are relatively tiny and they're 1 million km apart from each other.

🌬️Hey guys. Did you know? We make the world.

It's honestly disgusting how good @midnightburgr is. You know how sometimes a big Everyone Shows Up for the Final Fight episode can be kinda...lame? This one wasn't. Everything was earned. Everyone had their moment and everyone's moment fit perfectly into the story, and there were two big scary dinosaur-type guys. The season finale is going to make me weep. As usual. Midnight Burger is incredible, guys. (Also idk if the Inn Between Cafe was a reference just for me, but it felt like it was ❤️ we are all Midnight Burger.)

🫀 It's really hard to describe just how good @thegospelofhaven is at horror. There's a piece of art that's been on their blog for a while that is extremely visceral, and I thought I understood what was happening in there. And then I heard this week’s episode, and fellas: it’s so much worse. I love what Daisy Macnamara is doing this season. Who wants to bet the scary outside noise is Crane!

👯‍♂️ OMGGGGGGG @theredactedunit. Oh my gosh. I love a doppelgänger situation. I love the interplay of doppelgängers and twins. I suspect that this particular instance isn’t quite over yet. MAN, Redacted is good. Give me all the Val lore and the uncomfortable twin situations and the imposters, I LOVE it.

💸 Friends, Romans, Countrymen. I know things are super tough right now, but there are three podcast people who need our help. Do you have a number of bucks divisible by three? Can I ask you to consider donating to audio drama critic Podcake’s escape from homelessness? Would you consider giving to help clear the medical debt of Cole Burkhardt, creator of the sci-fi audio drama Null/Void and voice actor extraordinaire? Could I persuade you to help fix the collapsing roof of audio drama friend and newly minted trans girl Eleonora and her family? All of these needs are urgent for quality of life—and these folks deserve LIFE. I love them dearly. Please help if you are able.

I'D LOVE TO ELABORATE because this is one of my favorite astronomy stories.

Okay. So in the field of Radio Astronomy, there's this phenomenon called a "fast radio burst", a very short, strong radio pulse picked up by a radio telescope. They're still poorly understood, and are considered very exciting to radio astronomers because of how rare they are.

In the 2010's, astronomers working at Australia's Parkes Radio Observatory identified a number of radio signals picked up by the telescope that appeared to resemble fast radio bursts, which they called Perytons.

However, they quickly realized that the signals had to be terrestrial in origin due to the strength of the signal.... as well as the fact that they always occurred during weekdays, around the same time.

The signals tended to be clustered around midday... hmm...

Further evidence that the signals were man-made... this trend also followed daylight savings!!!

(Unless aliens also follow Australian daylight savings conventions, which is highly unlikely...)

It took the astronomers several years, but they eventually tracked down the source to a microwave oven in the facility's break room.

They were unable to recreate the signal, until they tried opening the microwave door before it beeped. Turns out the microwave was letting out a tiny amount of radio emissions when the door opened, which the nearby telescope was sensitive enough to detect.

The Peryton signals had been popping up in the data for over a decade, presumably because astronomers taking their lunch breaks had been opening the break room microwave prematurely for the same reason cited by OP.

I imagine they must have a big sign reading "LET THE MICROWAVE FINISH BEFORE OPENING" hanging in the break room now.

TLDR: If you work in radio astronomy, let the microwave beep before opening it and removing your lunch.

We've got the designs you'd expect, such as our cover art on hoodies, stickers, tote bags and more...

But we've also got a few new designs that I'm really excited about, including a range of different Better Place logos, and a few new stickers!

Plus loads more on the site!

Distribution and printing is handled through Printful, who have a few international distribution centres, so international shipping should be relatively simplified regardless of where you're ordering from.

As with any new launch, there may be a few hiccups in the early days, so if you're having trouble ordering please do let me know and I'll fix it right away!