Welcome to Night Vale Panels

Meg: Hello and welcome to Good Morning Night Vale, episode 5, “The Shape in Grove Park”. So my name is Meg Bashwiner, I am your tri-host, co-host, what do you call it when there’s three of us?

Hal: Throst?

Symphony: Three…

Meg: Throst?

Symphony: Aa-aa, I was thinking that too.

Meg: And I am joined today by the beautiful Symphony Sanders…

Symphony: It’s me!

Meg: And the beautiful Hal Lublin.

Hal: That’s me.

Meg: And we’re here to talk to you. We’re here to talk to you.

Hal: We’re just here to talk, but you know what? We also wanna listen.

Symphony: [chuckles]

Hal: That’s not gonna work for this show.

Meg: Let’s all listen right now.

Hal: Alright, let’s just listen for half an hour. [long beat] Has it been 30 minutes?

Symphony: That would be terrible.

Meg: Yeah, felt like it.

Hal: Yeah, that felt like 30 minutes of listening.

Symphony: So hey guys! What are we, what do we do in this show, huh?

Meg: We recap and chat about episodes of the hit popular podcast, This American Life, no.

Symphony: Is that popular?

Meg: It was, it was like one of the first podcasts, but I don’t think anyone listens, I don’t think they make that anymore.

Hal: I’m just glad a show exists where somebody recaps and analyzes Joe Rogan’s podcast, and we are those three people!

Meg: No we’re here to analyze and recap the hit popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale.

Hal: That too.

Meg: And this week we’re talking about “The Shape in Grove Park”, which is described as “A protest against the removal of the shape in Grove Park that no one acknowledges or speaks about, plus changes to the school curriculum, a growing tarantula problem in town, and musical auditions”. So that’s a pretty hefty description for lots of things that happen this episode.

Symphony: There are lots of things that happen in this one. Well, first of all, the fact that it’s called the shape and is a shape in, that Cecil repeatedly asked to get a statement from it, and sometimes it quivers or something, but that freaks me out a little. I don’t know about you guys.

Hal: That scared you? Did you get a little scared listening to it? It’s creepy.

Symphony: Well-

Hal: There is a creepy experience to like when you listen to it, especially with headphones, because like the sound picture being painted is so specific that it can, it can creep you out.

Meg: Yeah absolutely. So we’re talking about “The Shape in Grove Park”, so there’s this monument, this landmark, which reminded right away of the removal of confederate statues.

Symphony: [chuckles] Right!

Meg: I was like, this is another one of those like creepy foreshadowing to the public removal of statues where in this case it’s like, no one talks about it or acknowledges it but it’s still really important. That’s kind of the vibe there whereas with confederate statues, we all talk about it and it’s important and we should tear them down, but… [laughter] It’s this kind of similar discussion about public space and monuments and interacting with them.

Symphony: Yes and the City Council isn’t very helpful with all of that at all. Aren’t they trying to make sure, they’re trying to save it right, so they end up putting it in front of the studio in and trouble ensues, obviously.

Meg: Yes. So this is kind of a monumental, monument, monumental episode in the sense that this is where Cecil gets a name.

Symphony: Oh right!

Meg: This is where Cecil gets the name Cecil.

Symphony: I always forget about that, that he’s just like nameless narrator until a certain point. But he still doesn’t have a last name.

Meg: No. And he doesn’t get a last name for a bit. And then he gets a middle name.

Symphony: Yes.

Hal: There is something interesting to this that this is the first time he really gets an identity for the listener in terms of a first name, but the thing that struck me about that it even though there are a lot of things that happen is that it’s just his existential struggle. Like that’s the thing, that was my biggest takeaway from it and the thing that struck me is how well constructed that was, and then it didn’t need to, I mean it has a place in the larger continuum, but it also can exist on its own, just that particular plot line of him struggling like, am I the only one here, for all I know nobody’s listening or. I just, that was something that I was really drawn to and and, just very well written and well executed.

Symphony: Yeah I loved that idea of him possibly being alone in this universe, to something that’s not even connected to anything or anyone else. I mean, haven’t we all felt like that at one moment or another?

Meg: Yes.

Hal: Oh sure.

Meg: (God).

Symphony: [chuckles] Just…

Meg: So yeah, that’s the plot point that launched a thousand theories, conspiracy theories about this show.

Symphony: Yes. [laughter]

Meg: Cecil is alone. There’s been heat death of the world and Cecil is all that is left, alone in his empty universe.

Symphony: Yeah or it’s just, even that he’s like in this all by himself or it’s in his head kind of thing, I’ve seen a lot of those theories on Tumblr and whatnot over the years, so that’s always been really fun.

Meg: I thought this was one of the funnier episodes, I think this is they’re really starting to find their rhythm with their writing structure, their joke structure for how this show works, and this episode is very funny. There’s lots of really interesting things that are done with writing, like when they talk about the tarantula problem. Which is, [chuckling] there’s just so many different things that happen in that paragraph…

Symphony: Teen pregnancy.

Meg: ..teach a spider to read, teen pregnancy teach a spider to read, stop the madness.

Symphony: [chuckles] Yeah.

Meg: It’s just like it just keeps, things just keep happening in that paragraph that keep turning it on its head.

Symphony: Yeah and I love that they are, yes they do find their humor in this, and Cecil starts becoming more of a fleshed out character, you can hear in Cecil’s voice acting even. Like, he starts getting a little bit more into his higher ranges, which is always very fun for me to hear, ‘cause it just is more light-hearted than just like..

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: ..the announcer, I mean Cecil has a gorgeous timbre to his voice already. But when, you know you’re adding these other levels to this person, you are really fleshing out a character.

Meg: Absolutely, we are starting to kind of land in Cecil now that are, this is yeah we’re at this point we’re five episodes in, and so we’ve learned a lot about the world of Night Vale, we’re learning a little bit about the character of Cecil, and then just the continual world building that we’re getting. Michael Sandero gets his second head.

Symphony: That’s more attractive.

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: That his mother prefers, so.

Hal: And puts, I love that she has a list out on, a public list, ranking of her children that goes out in front of her house for everybody to see.

Symphony: In the front yard! [laughs] If only, I mean Hal, you’re an only child, right?

Hal: True.

Symphony: So you’ve never really had to deal with this, but Meg you have a sister as I have a brother. And there is always that sneaking suspicion of who’s like, the more beloved. [laughs]

Hal: Do you think it’s you?

Symphony: No, I think my brother is the more beloved, in a different way.

Meg: Yeah. I think my sister and I kind of trade that position, like over the years in our life we’ve kind of traded that role several times back and forth about who’s the favorite. So we’re just hoping for many more years of trading off who’s the good one, so… [laughs]

Symphony: Can you imagine tho if your parents put that in the front yard for everybody to see it’s like, this is my favorite kid and this is my least favorite kid?

Meg: At least you’d know where you stand, you know.

Symphony: I guess so. It’s all (that truthfulness).

Meg: Which is kind of interesting, ‘cause in my family you know where you stand. There’s like…

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: We’re not really a passive aggressive bunch, we're pretty much an aggressive aggressive bunch [laughter]. So you know when you’re on top and you know when you’re not.

Symphony: [laughs] Oh. Well, what if you grew another head and it was more attractive or people liked that head better, how would you feel about that? It’s not even just like your sibling, it’s like on your own body, like that’s adding insult to injury, now?

Meg: Do you have to do its makeup or does it do it on its own?

Symphony: Well I guess if you share a body, the body has to do all the work. Like the, right? Like maybe you only get one arm like, the left head gets the left arm and the right head, that would be really tough for your eyeliner, I can’t wing with the same hand.

Meg: Yeah. I do most of the stuff with my right hand. The thing that would probably bother me the most is that I would have to share the, the real estate of my body with someone else, like I feel like I’m barely getting by being a clumsy person with the stuff that I’m working with and to have to share that with another entity that would just be, I’d fall down every flight of stairs, I would not be able to chop an onion. [laughter] Symphony: Well and this gets into the territory of Siamese twins, guys.

Meg: Here we are. Episode 5, we finally got there.

Hal: Finally. I can’t wait, this is welcome to the finale of Good Morning, we got there in five episodes, we did it, that’s the record for getting to Siamese twins. I feel like I’m so insecure, the idea of a better looking smarter head on my body is like…

Symphony: Right.

Hal: That is my worst nightmare that I didn’t know I had until you asked that question like two minutes ago.

Symphony: Also is it now incorrect to say Siamese twins? [laughs]

Meg: I think we say “conjoined twins” now.

Hal: We say “conjoined twins”.

Symphony: We say “conjoined twins”. (Grant, cut it!) [laughs] OK. So “conjoined twins”. Yeah after I heard it I was like, that probably sounds a liiittle racist, (--).

Hal: I know that people can’t see what we’re doing right now, but Symphony has a clipboard in her left hand, and when you ask questions like that, you look like a camp counselor who’s going through the sensitivity training like, [laughter] can we say “Siamese twins”? Is that OK, let me mark it down ‘cause I had a note about that, I have finally the answer. Free swim at 9 AM, that’s gonna be fun.

Symphony: And crafts are in the barn.

Hal: Even for you “conjoined twins”, see I do learn. [laughter]

Symphony: After last summer’s debacle, (I mean it is)…

Hal: Surprised you came back, but I’m glad you’re here. [laughter]

Symphony: It’s how we learn, it’s how we learn.

Meg: Right, we just gotta keep the conversation, keep the conversation (going).

Symphony: We’re gonna move forward.

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: So OK, I feel like this is the first time that the people huddle outside the back of the Ralphs. I’ve always loved that imagery, like in the hole of the parking lot.

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: It’s like, what are these people just like hanging out in a hole? Ralphs is a grocery store.

Meg: Yeah, Ralphs is a grocery chain.

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: Right. It’s like real tho?

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: Right, I’m like I feel like I’ve heard of the Ralphs before.

Meg: They’re just in California and maybe there’s one in Arizona.

Symphony: OK, well…

Hal: You know them as Kroger, same company.

Symphony: Ah, I do know a Kroger, seen a Kroger before. But I always think, I saw that recently about like chain grocery stores, and that’s always interesting to me ‘cause what you grow up with you’re like, oh all grocery stores aren’t a Jewel?

Meg: Or a Shoprite?

Symphony: But when people are just hanging out in a huddled mass outside of the Ralph, and they put out an ad for it.

Meg: Yeah, that Cecil delivers earnestly.

Symphony: Like come hang out with us.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: Just an earnest ad for a hole in the parking lot.

Symphony: For you to huddle with other people in.

Meg: Pretty good. So we add to our intern count, intern Leland.

Symphony: Leland.

Meg: RIP.

Symphony: But you know, doesn’t there seem like there’s more pomp and circumstance with this one like…

Hal: Yeah!

Symphony: He dies but they talk about having a funeral and how they bury them in the break room, which…

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: ..was never discussed before, but I like it.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: It seems a propos.

Meg: It’s important to have ceremony surrounding grief, you know.

Hal: Oh absolutely. [chuckles] It just feels, I like, I love watching the little detail like coloring the corners, getting the little nooks and crannies in this world building, and that’s what this feels like ‘cause it’s not, yes a series of, at this point you probably would figure out that most of the interns are going to die. But those little like, you get filled out what actually happens when somebody dies outside of, Cecil makes an announcement that there is a full sort of funeral held in their break room, which is just really for all intents and purposes, a graveyard where they eat sometimes.

Symphony: [laughs] I don’t think they allow that in actual cemeteries, so they get mad if you go in there and try and picnic.

Hal: Have you tried?

Meg: You can. Yeah.

Symphony: Can you?

Meg: Yeah I have a friend growing up whose Mom would take her to the cemetery to eat on her grandparents’ grave, they would like go do that. They would take a hot lunch.

Symphony: But if you didn’t know anybody, you’d just like sit that’s what I’m saying…

Meg: Yeah, then it’s…

Symphony: Not like it’s some of your family.

Meg: Yeah it’s like have some respect, you’re just sitting there like eating a six-inch Subway meatball sandwich just like, I was hungry! [laughter]

Symphony: It’s like, oh I just stopped at the Kroger or whatever like I just needed a place to sit down, and this is closer than the park.

Meg: Quieter, it’s cleaner.

Symphony: Totally, and it’s nice, there’s flowers, trees and stuff.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: Some cemeteries are very nice.

Meg: They are.

Symphony: Although I think a waste of land.

Meg I- I have to agree that they’re a waste of land, although some of the existing ones are pretty special, like-like the famous existing ones they’re special. There’s a bunch of ones that are just like, you know, miles and miles of dead people, where it’s like they probably could have figured out something better to do here with this, but you know.

Symphony: I like the fancy ones in LA.

Meg: Oh.

Symphony: I’ve been to a couple of those.

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Hollywood Forever, where…

Symphony: With like celebrities.

Hal: Yeah, they show movies at Hollywood Forever…

Symphony: Yeah yeah yeah!

Hal: ..you can go see, when Jennifer and I were first dating, we went with Annie Savage who was appeared on the show, and her future husband at the time Fred and Ben Acker, we all went and watched, I think “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure”. Like they just project it onto a mausoleum and a bunch of people show up, and and it’s acceptable.

Symphony: Wow.

Hal: That’s what happens in a Hollywood cemetery. It’s all glamour out here, folks.

Meg: Anything goes in Hollywood. Anything goes.

Hal: All the rumors are true.

Symphony: But I guess that’s what you sign up for when you’re like, oh I wanna be buried in this Hollywood cemetery and then you’re gonna get a movie shown on your grave, you know?

Hal: Yeah. I wanna, if I do that I want it written into my will which movies I will allow.

Meg: What would you pick if you had to like have a list of a few that you would find acceptable to project onto your grave?

Hal: Only “Xanadu”. That’s all I want shown all the time.

Symphony: Yes! [sings] Xanaduu…

Hal: And only the big number at the end where they combine all of their ideas into one horrific – dance number?

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: I’d have to go with “Grease 2”, if it was me.

Hal: [laughs] Bowling alley sequence only?

Symphony: That’s the one with Michelle Pfeiffer?

Meg: Yeah. Yes.

Symphony: OK so, ‘cause I was about to say, I was like wow are we going to let Olivia Newton-John here? And then no it’s ‘cause it’s “Grease 2”. I think on my – “Labyrinth”.

Meg: Oo!

Hal: Nice. Nice.

Symphony: I like that movie a lot.

Meg: That sounds cozy and you know a bunch of college kids would roll up a joint and rock up to your grave and..

Symphony: Right!

Meg: ..(-) [silly voice] “Are we watching ‘The Labyrinth’ at Symphony Sanders’ grave tonight?” And it would be a good time.

Symphony: Yeah, and then my ghost would come out.

Meg: Yeah, and your ghost would love it!

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: Your ghost is like, I’m trying to imagine what your ghost is wearing, it’s a one piece.

Symphony: Yes.

Meg: It’s like a spooky little one-piece jumpsuit. [laughter]

Symphony: You know me and my one-piece living, or dying.

Meg: Your one-piece dying! [laughter]

Symphony: Boo, Sanders! So speaking of celebrities and dead celebrities, Rita Hayworth apparently. But I mean you guys, first of all it’s hearsay of hearsay. This is like the most like not, probably it’s not true at all.

Hal: It did come from an angel, they’re very trusted sources of, they’re known celebrity spotters.

Symphony: They said to Old Woman Josie, who told Cecil, right?

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: The angel didn’t tell Cecil, Old Woman Josie did. She could be a liar.

Hal: Are you saying…

Meg: Wow, accusation.

Hal: ..there are unreliable voices in Night Vale?

Symphony: [laughs] Noo… Yes. No. Maybe. Uuuh, well, do you even know what Rita Hayworth looks like?

Hal: Yes!

Meg: I don’t.

Hal: Have you not seen “The Shawshank Redemption”? She’s the one who whips her hair back when they watch the movie and goes “Who me, boys?” She’s the first poster that he puts on his cell wall.

Symphony: No I was just asking like for posterity, do you know what [chuckling] Rita Hayworth looks like?

Hal: I do.

Symphony: So the answer is yes.

Hal: Yes. She’s shorter and more Hispanic than I remember but…

Symphony: [laughter] (-) that was fun.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: Well, maybe that woman’s name was Rita Hayworth, it just wasn’t the Rita Hayworth that we’re thinking of.

Hal: That’s true, that’s on us.

Symphony: Right? Her name could be Margarita Hayworth. She just goes by Rita. Actually that’s my, a girl I went to high school with. Her name was Margarita so it’s not like…

Meg: No, when I was taking Spanish class in fifth grade, my Spanish name was Margarita, so…

Symphony: Did you know what a Margarita was, the drink?

Meg: Yes.

Symphony: OK.

Meg: I wasn’t drinking them at the time, but I had been to a Chili’s before, so I… [laughter]

Hal: You do a lot of growing up the first time you go to a Chili’s, don’t you?

Meg: Sure, that’s for sure.

Hal: Mm hm.

Symphony: God I love Chili’s. I also have digestive distress, but it’s so good.

Meg: I feel like we have already done this on this show, we have ranked the Applebee’s and the Chili’s and [laughter] and the uh, TGI Fridays, I feel like we’ve already been down this road.

Symphony: Well Applebee’s is on the lowest, it’s on the lowest.

Meg: We all agree that Applebee’s is the worst, it’s Scrabblebee’s.

Hal: Applebee’s is terrible, but I got food poisoning at a Fridays, so that will always be the bottom for me.

Symphony: Well that’s full of people that definitely don’t wash their hands.  

Hal: That’s true. They dump their wings in the toilet before they bring them out.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: And they told me, it’s really on me. I rank myself below Fridays for that reason. (--) OK, you know what, I’ll roll the dice, I’m a gambler. [laughter]

Meg: I also really love the satire that we have of auditions, and (--) as a whole we get for the “Once on this Island” auditions announcement. [laughs]

Symphony: Yes. I love how they do this throughout the series, throughout the show in general, but they’ll do lists of things and it’ll start out normal or it’ll be like a couple normal things, and then it’ll totally go off the rails. Which I love, and I think you know, when you’re an actor, you just gotta have all those skills, you know what I mean?

Hal: Yes.

Meg: Yes.

Symphony: Sniper skills, all sorts of things. What is a dirigible?

Hal: It’s a, it’s a blimp.

Symphony: You’re, [laughing] you’re a blimp?

Hal: (--) I’m a blimp? ‘cause I answered, how rude!

Meg: That’s rude.

Hal: That was just Applebee’s style behavior right there.

Meg: When you’re here, your family. [laughter]

Hal: What is the biggest lie you ever put on your resumé, or like the dumbest skill that you have on your acting resumé?

Symphony: My own? I dunno.

Hal: Did you write stuff on other people’s resumés? When you’re on auditions you wrote like, “doesn’t work well with people”.

Symphony: Well I just remember I was, I was looking at someone’s once, and I just thought it was funny that they put like “burp on command”, they could burp on command.

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: And I’m like, do people like test you on that, or what?

Hal: They might.

Symphony: I mean I’ve always wondered if people get called out, you know.

Meg: If someone were to actually call me out on the horseback riding skills that I list, it probably would be dangerous, I probably would get hurt. Like so you can actually really ride a horse, right? Yeah sure, totally. And like, I would get trampled. It’d be like here, gallop down this beach, and I’d be like oh no, we’re all gonna die.

Hal: [laughs]

Meg: I always wonder why they have the, like where we have to put our that we have a driver’s license and that it’s valid. [laughs]

Symphony: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah!

Meg: Valid driver’s license.

Hal: Like they’re gonna go, oh driver’s license huh? I’ve got a truck downstairs in the garage and they just throw you the keys. Go round the block and don’t hit any stuff!

Meg: Yeah. I’ve never had to act in a car. It’s never been a place for like…

Symphony: Me either, never been in that commercial. That’s usually like commercials, right? Like…

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: You’ll have to be, but do they even like, make you drive in the actual car, or is it like you’re in one of those fake cars on a like green screen?

Hal: It depends. Sometimes you probably have to drive it. But even then if you haven’t ever driven before, and they put you in the car and you do that thing that kids do where you’re like just, you’re constantly moving the wheel..

Symphony: Yeah.

Hal: ..because you know that there’s a steering wheel in a car, that’s how they know this person probably doesn’t have a valid, this person can’t act like they’re driving, they seem really bad at it.

Meg: We would all get not cast in “Once on This Island”. Which is an interesting choice.

Symphony: Well maybe I could because I’m a person of color…

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: So I was encouraged, that’s good.

Meg: That show really should be people of color..

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: ..only. [laughs]

Symphony: Pretty much, well except for, there’s like four white people in the show.

Meg: Yes.

Symphony: They’re like staying at the hotel or wherever.

Meg: Actually I saw Welcome to Night Vale actor Kevin R. Free in a wonderful production of “Once on This Island” at the Papermill Playhouse, and he did a fantastic job. Fun fact about Kevin R. Free is that he has a beautiful singing voice.

Symphony: He’s a good actor.

Meg: He’s a good actor, beautiful singing voice.

Hal: Not a surprise.

Symphony: All around good guy, yeah. Just sending Kevin R. Free some love, that’s all.

Hal: Yeah. I do like the idea of auditions ‘cause that in the later, in the touring show that just concluded, there was another bit about auditions as well, like it’s just a fun thing to come back to, that something’s always being cast and it’s very dangerous. Like the requirements are different every time, but also you know we were talking about the lists earlier, so people who are a fan of comedy and breaking down comedy, listening to and sort of studying how these lists are put together by Jeffrey and Joseph, it’s a little good way to understand heightening and misdirection, and the way they build their laughs out of surprises and then, they build on the surprise, it’s like constant hard turns, and then build build build hard turn that gives them like a reset to build off of, which is really really smart and fun as an audience member to experience, and really fun as an actor to perform.

Meg: Yeah, absolutely like especially in this episode with the list where they talk about the curriculum. “Finally, in addition to the current foreign language offerings of Spanish, French, and modified Sumerian, schools will now be offering double Spanish, weird Spanish, Coptic Spanish, Russian, and unmodified Sumerian.” So yeah, construction of these lists that do, they just take us on a journey, a journey of humor.

Symphony: I love the text books, that was always, that was really funny for me. I just like when they turn the things that would normally happen in everyday life right on its ear, you know like the math and English, those two just switching names but they still are the same like principles right? I just find that really funny and imaginative. And that teachers are astral projecting.

Meg: Yeah. And we get our, I think it’s our first Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner.

Symphony: Yeah, about the moon.

Meg: Where Cecil’s talking about the moon, yeah. [laughter] And Telly the Barber and Carlos, so I think it’s our first Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner, which is a fun segment on this show. So speaking of segments on this show, we have some fan theories and fan questions that we got from our voicemail and from our email, and we’re going to talk about those.

But first, let’s talk about the weather.

[ad break]

Meg: So this episode’s weather was “Jerusalem” by Dan Bern.

Hal: I love Dan Bern.

Symphony: I thought that song was so funny. It had, the tune itself made me think of almost like a 60’s revolutionary folk rock song, but what he’s talking about, the whole thing about the olives was killing me, I was like yes.

Meg: [sings] Olives!

Symphony: I wrote “loves olives”. [laughs]

Hal: Yeah, Dan is super smart and super funny and he sounds, he’s not a Bob Dylan soundalike but he’s super evocative. He’s got a similar vocal style, the way he plays the guitar has that folk rock feeling to it. That is like, he’s the kind of musician where you want to listen to, the lyrics are super important and sometimes just the way the music is built is the most important thing. But with him, you wanna catch all the details of what he’s saying as he sings, ‘cause it’s always super smart and really funny satire.

Meg: Yeah, agree on all of those things, I think it’s a really nice addition to this episode. It feels like it almost matches the rhythm of this episode, where it is one that does kind of, has a more humorous tone to it, has a “hey pay attention to the words” kind of tone to it, observational humor tone to it, it does feel like it is a nice match with that, whether that’s intentional or not, it feels like at home in this episode.

Hal: Yeah, 100 per cent. Probably the most, the best fit in terms of matching what’s going on. It doesn’t feel like it’s hard to turn away from where we’ve been. It feels kind of, it’s logical in a way that…

Symphony: Right.

Hal: The weather doesn’t really have to be, but when it is it’s nice, it’s a nice little sort of surprise.

Meg: Let’s go into the FanZone where we hear from some of our fans who have written into the email address and have dialed into our weird voicemail. So I (-) through the email account today and found some things. We asked, just for these first couple of episodes, we asked fans to react to the first ten episodes of Night Vale and what they had in terms of theories and questions. And Erin B. writes to us and says: “Theories. Carlos was sent to Night Vale by the place he works for, and as soon as time distorted, he wasn’t able to ever send any research back. Theory 2: Cecil was extremely lonely prior to Carlos arriving and pushed people away. Theory 3: The Voice of Night Vale infects Cecil and he doesn’t even really need a radio station to podcast. And theory 4: the secret government agency sent Carlos to Night Vale.” So we’ve got some theories here. I think are interesting when we are listening to it and hear the kind of new things about how Cecil wonders if his microphone is even attached, and if he is all alone. So it’s kind of the first episode that starts to pull back the, the (lens) of possibility and so, hearing from Erin on their theories about what’s going on here. We can’t of course confirm or deny any of these theories. I think that Cecil probably was extremely lonely prior to Carlos arriving. I dunno if he pushed people away, maybe he pushed people away, it’s possible.

Symphony: I think it is interesting that um, just like with a lot of theatre itself like, why is it important now, why are you talking about this thing now? So obviously Carlos coming into his life has been a catalyst for something or it’s been a big deal, because he wasn’t really, like we didn’t hear about Cecil before all that stuff, and now since Carlos has come into his life, things have changed. I dunno if he pushed people away, but now things in his life are changing, and Night Vale especially.

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah. I think they’re good theories.  I like the, I like back filling sort of character. You sorta can find the notes that you need to back fill where a character might have been when they arrive through listening and just sort of what the current relationship is and how important it is to the people, so I’m all for stuff like that. And then it’s fun when the writing either confirms or denies that, and if it doesn’t, then that’s something you can hold on to, and you’re always right.

Meg: Yeah and on that, the similar topic there, (Julianne) writes to us and says, “In episode 5, Cecil explicitly addresses this idea, questioning whether his mike is even plugged in and if the world is held aloft merely by my – his delusions and by his smooth, sonorous voice. But it leaves, it has a hypothetical scenario by not pursuing it past his musing. But his mind being stuck in limbo makes sense, Cecil and the city having (-) sense of time is the biggest clue, followed by a general lack of knowledge about how things – science, correct building materials for drawbridges and - heck, just how weird everything in Night Vale is”, so that’s (Julianne) saying that it makes sense that this might be a real thing that Cecil’s not actually there, that because it might prove that Cecil is stuck in limbo and that creates a weird sense of time, which makes sense why everything is weird in Night Vale.

Hal: I would ask, and (Julianne) you can’t respond. You can do it on social media I guess but right now, [chuckles] right now we can’t have a conversation about it, but I always wonder in those cases, is it more interesting for it to actually exist and be real, or is it more interesting if none of it is real and he is delusional, or has created a reality around him, in which case where is he and what is the real world around him? And I don’t think I, I don’t have an answer one way or the other, but I think that’s sort of the interesting question and conversation that you can jump off, either thinking about it by yourself or discussing with other friends/fans.

Meg: Nice. And Nina asks us, trying to put this the right way, Nina says: “Did I hear that a typo in an early episode resulted in a somewhat prominent change in plot? Can you tell us what that was all about?” So it’s not so, getting the story from Jeffrey, we talked to Jeffrey about this. Not so much that a typo resulted in a prominent change in the plot, it was that a typo resulted in a prominent change in the plot so we had to have Cecil re-record. So the way that the episodes are recorded is Joseph and Jeffrey work on a script, that script goes to Cecil, Cecil sits down, reads the script and kinda figures out his emotional beats, and then he performs it into a microphone and then he sends that recording off to Joseph, who cuts it into an episode. So there’s not a director in the room that is gonna go through word for word and make sure that the writers’ intents come through, so in this situation there was a typo that twisted the meaning, or a word got dropped and that changed the whole meaning of an episode, so he had to go back and have Cecil re-record and get that word in there, and have the episode have the meaning that Joseph and Jeffrey intended.

Symphony: But otherwise, all is well.

Meg: All is well. Sarah writes (-) us about Michael Sandero and Michael Sandero’s mother. So Sarah says: “Michael Sandero’s mother kept a ‘which of my children I like best’ ranking outside her house, which means Michael presumably had at least one other sibling. Why have we never heard about them? Will we ever hear about them? Are they simply so utterly normal compared to Michael and his recordbreakingly awful luck that they don’t stick out at all? Do these siblings actually ask?” And then this is in parenthesis: “Regardless of siblings or lack thereof, Flora is not a good mother, at least to Michael. So if the siblings are real, it would be nice if they showed him the support she does not.” Sarah also says [chuckles]: “How are the troubled tarantulas doing? I hope they’ve managed to turn their dire situation around and get on their many very hairy feet by now.”

Symphony: I don’t know that, like any theory, we can only make assumptions on the information that we have. And knowing how Night Vale is, I mean maybe he does have other siblings, but they don’t get any sort of (interest or play), right? They can’t possibly, ‘cause he’s a big football star. When you got a big football star, if you don’t live up to that, you know? It’s like “Friday Night Lights”.

Hal: He was already at top of the list and then the head beat him out. So he can’t, even when you’re at the top of the list, you’re not at the top of the list. Sorry, Michael.

Symphony: Yeah. You’re never safe.

Hal: Never.

Symphony: Oh and the tarantulas, do we wanna answer that? Is that a question?

Meg: How are they? I hope they’re doing OK. I mean, it seemed like there was a good program in place for them.

Symphony: Yeah, I mean they’re trying to get them to read, which is the first step I think in any sort of, uh, programming.

Meg: Yeah. And I think there’s passionate people involved in trying to rehabilitate and provide opportunities for these tarantulas, just all we can only ever hope for is that people are, there’s good people trying to do their best for them.

Hal: I’m deathly frightened of tarantulas, so they could all walk into a fire as far as [chuckling] I’m concerned!

Symphony: [chuckles]

Meg: That’s so cold, Hal. So cold.

Hal: Yeah. Not the fire, the fire’s plenty warm, if you’re cold get in that fire.

Meg: [laughs]

Hal: It’ll warm you up.

Meg: So let’s burn the tarantulas or not. And thus we end the FanZone. [laughter] Alright, we got through our episode. Thanks so much for discussing “The Shape in Grove Park”, all ‘yall! Next week, we are going to be speaking with Jon Bernstein, you may know him as Disparition. He is the creator of the music for Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn’t Dead, and he is an all around rad dude. We will be discussing episode 6, “The Drawbridge”, so we have that to look forward to, which is exciting. I’m very excited.

Hal: Me too!

Meg: Symphony?

Symphony: I’m not that excited.

Hal: Wow, hateful. The shade!

Symphony: Just kidding!

Hal: [whew].

Symphony: It’s because I’m afraid of bridges.

Hal: [laughs]

Meg: Awww. Well we’ll unpack that and all of our fears in next week’s episode, where we unpack our fears and talk it over with musician Jon Bernstein. You know him as Disparition, I refer to him as Yon. Symphony, do you have any other nicknames for Jon?

Symphony: Berenstain. I call him like Berenstain Bears, he doesn’t like that.

Meg: No. Alright great, (-) one in the (-), thank you all so very much for listening, and we will check in with you next week. And until then, good morning Night Vale, good morning.

Meg: Good Morning is a Night Vale Presents production. It is hosted by Symphony Sanders, Hal Lublin and Meg Bashwiner. It is edited by Grant Stewart. It is mixed by Vincent Cacchione, it is produced by Meg Bashwiner. Theme music by Disparition. Special thanks to our fans who submitted their thoughts. Leave us a voicemail at 929-277-2050, or email us at [email protected], to share your theories and ask questions, or to tell us which host would lie in court for you.

For more information on this show, go to goodmorningnightvale.com and follow us on Facebook and Twitter @NightValeChat. Special thanks to (Christy Gressman), Jeffrey Cranor, Joseph Fink, and Adam Cecil.

Meg: Hey everyone, it’s us again! My name is Meg Bashwiner.

Symphony: And I’m Symphony Sanders.

Hal: I’m Hal Lublin.

Meg: And this is the podcast where we listen to old recordings of the hit popular weird bizarre strange podcast Welcome to Night Vale, and we chat about it. Today we are talking about episode number 4, “PTA Meeting”.

Symphony: The episode description is: “Last night’s PTA meeting accidentally opens a rift in space time and Night Vale faces the consequences. Plus changes about the Night Vale Daily Journal, controversy on Radon Canyon, and our annual high school football preview.”

Meg: And do we have our work cut out for us. And I’m gonna do the thing where I remind us to tell the audience who we are for Welcome to Night Vale just to keep our listeners engaged with who we are. So my name is Meg, I play Deb a sentient patch of haze on the show. I also am the MC of the touring live show and I am the tour director of Night Vale Presents and I have lots of opinions about where to eat in Night Vale.

Symphony: Hi, I’m Symphony Sanders, and I play Tamika Flynn, your local library killing teenage militia leader.

Hal: My favorite charter. I’m Hal Lublin and I play Steve Carlsberg, your brother outside the law.

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: All right. [chuckles] So uh, as a ragtag group of Night Vale performances talking about episode 4, “PTA Meeting”, we have lots of interesting things that happen in this episode, I feel like we’re introduced to a lot of characters. We get a lot of characters that have a lot of meaning in the future of the show are kind of just like thrown into the mix here. We get Diane Crayton, we get her son Josh and the high school football coach Nazr al-Mujaheed. We also get the football player whose name I’m blanking on right now.

Symphony: Michael Sanderooo!

Meg: Michael Sandero!  

Hal: [laughs]

Meg: So, yeah they were teeing up for a lot of Night Vale future in this just, episode number 4.

Symphony: So our episode starts our with Cecil announcing that there was a really noisy glowing portal that happened at the PTA meeting, and some Pteranodons came out. But we later find out they are not Pteranodons, they’re Pterodactys. Which is spelled with a P, did you know that?

Meg: So’s Pteranodon.

Hal: I did.

Symphony: Is it really?

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: I didn’t know that! [laughs] I did no research.

Meg: I was reading along in my Welcome to Night Vale script book, volume 1, “Mostly Void, Partially Stars”.

Symphony: I don’t know, oh I do have that!

Meg: If you don’t have that Symphony, I will send it to you.

Symphony: That’s, you know…

Meg: We have a box (--).

Symphony: As I was about to say I don’t have that, I literally looked up at my book case and it is directly in front of me. Who can’t read, it’s me!

Hal: Are we allowed to curse on this podcast?

Meg: I would say that there’s a couple of them that you shouldn’t say just in life, and those are the ones that you shouldn’t say on this show.

Hal: Like the F word?

Meg: No I think the F word is probably OK. If you say that in life, that’s OK.

Hal: OK good. Meg, you just blew my fucking mind, cause it didn’t even occur to me. I mean I’ve been listening to these and I plan on continuing to listen, but I’m like, why not go look at the script!

Symphony: Oh yeah.

Hal: I didn’t think about it! I have two books sitting in the other room with all the words in it, just in case I’d like need to remember something. Oh! I’m disgusted with myself.

Symphony: We’re smarter than this, Hal.

Meg: I actually, was in the same boat myself until I was reading emails from the fans, and one of them was like “I went through my script book” and I was like, the script book!

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: So there’s a fan to thank for that, and I could look through our Gmail account and find out your name and give you a really touching shout out right now, but I’m not gonna do that show…

Symphony: But you know who you are.

Meg: So anonymous person, touching shout out, thank you for directing us to the script books.

Hal: Seriously.

Symphony: Fan, you know who are you.

Meg: Yeah, I’m gonna do a sales pitch for the sales books right now because, why not. Yeah so there’s two really nice script books that are out if you, they’re in paperback they’re available through HarperPerennial, there’s “Mostly Void, Partially Stars” and the “Great Glowing Coils of the Universe”, which are volume 1 and volume 2, I don’t know how many episodes it contains, but it’s a lot of them.

Hal: And it’s my first published writing work since I was in the Jewish (-) [0:04:59] (Pack) in 1994 in Philadelphia. Very exciting.

Meg: Which is reason enough to own those books.

Hal: Yeah, really. And that newspaper from ’94 if you can find it.

Symphony: The literary stylings of Hal Lublin.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: Speaking of newspapers, the Night Vale Daily Journal.

Symphony: That was a really good segueway.

Meg: Thank you.

Symphony: That I just wrecked. Hal: [laughs]

Meg: Thank you, thank you.

Hal: Let me waste that segueway by talking about it!

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: Alright.

Symphony: Yeah so, the Journal right? They have the platinum premium ads, and why can’t I read my notes? All writers, oh and all the writers were laid off.

Meg: Yes and they have the “write your own news story” section, which struck me as very Huffington Post, I was like oh, they’re just throwing a little shade at our friends at the Huffington Post, just write your own news story which is I mean, hey it’s..

Symphony: Is that what Reductress does as well, they have people submit or no?

Meg: There’s a lot of newspapers that are online now. There’s no such thing as a newspaper where they do submission so, write your own news!

Symphony: Newspaper? What is “newspaper”?

Hal: [laughs]

Meg: There’s so much in this episode about journalism and how money influences journalism and how it’s leading to the failing of the press, but Leann Hart just presses right on.

Hal: We touched on this a little bit last week, about how there are certain parts of this relisten that make me cringe, because they’re so relevant. And this is the one it’s like oh the rise of the citizen journalist. And that idea that where we get our news now, in the world, is just from whoever, whatever (aunt) posts something first might be where we get it, and the idea of confirmation bias and all the terrible things that come with just sort of the wild west of online media the way it exists right now. And seeing that just reminds me, as I listen to this show and especially this episode like, this would be a terrible place to live. You are in constant fear and under constant threat, you don’t know where any of the information is coming from or whether it’s accurate. It’s..

Symphony: And that you’re under watchful eye.

Hal: Yes! Yes and you’re constantly being watched.

Symphony: So, modern day America?

Hal: Yeah!

Meg: Yeah. It’s just shining a mirror at us.

Hal: I talked about the show Bosch near an Amazon (fire) and now I get Bosch ads whenever I go on Facebook. I’m not even kidding.

Symphony: Which is scary.

Hal: I’ve never watched it.

Symphony: I looked at, yeah ‘cause it’s always that ‘cause commercials are always forced on you.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: On Amazon ‘cause they’re like please watch this show. [laughter]

Meg: After I got married on Facebook, I started to g-, like I got married in real life but also on Facebook where you change your relationship status to married, and I started getting a lot of ads for baby stuff. And then I was researching a short play that I was writing about locations of abortion clinics, and I stopped getting ads for baby stuff. [laughter] So the best way to get rid of, if you’re getting a lot of baby stuff ads, just start googling where your nearest abortion clinic is. Also, maybe try googling grad school and they will go away. [laughter] If you’re trying to get rid of those baby ads.

Hal: Pro tip, life hack.

Symphony: Well and that’s just, I mean that’s just a further (-) of the societal like no one’s ever satisfied like, once they’re dating someone they’re like, when are you getting married? And when you’re married they’re like, when are you having a baby?

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: No one’s ever like, well you’ve done all those things, when are you going to die?

Hal: Exactly! [laughs]

Meg: And we’ll start getting ads for coffins.

Symphony: Right.

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: Estate lawyers, you know.

Hal: Yeah. I’m seeing ads for that Al Pacino Kavorkian movie that was on HBO a few years ago.

Meg: I bet, and this is me hypothesizing over here, that elderly people on Facebook probably gets ads to prepay their funerals, ‘cause that’s a thing that people do now, so there’s definitely funeral homes that are advertising to the elderly on Facebook being like, prepay that funeral, save your children that burden. It’s (already a) thing.

Symphony: You know, I have seen the ones about like, funeral insurance. Does that mean I think I’m going to die? I’m not googling like…

Meg: Symphony, I think you’re gonna die.

Symphony: Ugh, well I am gonna die but not today.

Meg: I think we all are. I don’t think today. You’re gonna outlive us all.

Hal: Not me, I’m gonna live forever.

Symphony: I’m sorry that was terrible, I almost said let’s hope I’m like..

Meg: Well no I don’t hope that for you, I hope that you die in the middle of everyone, right? [laughs]

Symphony: Surrounded by many (knives).

Meg: Right? Like I don’t want you to outlive us all, ‘cause that’d be sad for you, but you know you gotta just, I hope that you die somewhere in the middle of all your friends.

Symphony: Let’s just say I can run pretty fast, so if there’s ever a bear attack, you can count on me to try and live.

Hal: [laughs]

Meg: OK.

Symphony: I just have to outrun you people.

Hal: I’ll fool the bear. I’ll say “that tree’s having its period” and then when the bear looks at the tree, I’ll be gone. I’ll be gone! [laughter]

Meg: That’s a really good plan.

Hal: I know how you work, bears. You’re not gonna get me, you’re not gonna get me!

Symphony: Sheer trickery. So uh, some other poignant issues that Night Vale this episode might bring up is the election for the council seats that are up. And how a certain member of your family is gonna get kidnapped and taken to the caves. And I dunno I mean, that sounds pretty like mob-y, but seeing as though our president is a mobster.

Meg: Looking at the, how elections work in Night Vale, I was like is that even preferable to how our elections work, you know?

Hal: Just looking for a new system?

Meg: Yeah, again, out of the box thinking, we were talking about it in the last episode. I’m willing to try something new.

Symphony: Yeah. ‘cause apparently what we got isn’t working.

Meg: We’re not yielding great results.

Hal: You know again, I keep listening to this through the ears of Steve, it’s hard not to filter things through the character I’ve been playing on the show for five years. And this episode I was like, boy Steve feels a really great responsibility to his family and to do good in the world. If he is the one who really understands what’s going on if that’s true, and all of this is happening, like that is a huge burden to bear. Like you’re in a town where they’re going to beat up someone in your family to make sure everybody votes the right way, which is a fun joke and play on elections and.. corruption.

Symphony: They’re just being kidnapped, they’re not being beat up.

Hal: Well, somebody’s getting worked over. I bet they’re getting worked over a little bit, a little light work is being done. But that idea is terrifying.

Symphony: Well they’re said if you don’t vote correctly, you’ll never see them again, so who knows what that could possibly mean.

Hal: Exactly. I think this it’s really like, it’s such a dark, it’s funny how the humor comes from the darkest timeline of any possible part of living in a town. How the elections work, why in last episode, why Big Rico’s Pizza is the only pizza place in town. The woman who, the distribution center that got burned down and that was totally an accident. Please call me insurance person, please call.

Meg: Yeah, that’s Leann Hart.

Symphony: Good old Leann.

Meg: She’ll do anything for her paper, you know.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: So yeah we get the fall football preview which is a first, (-) it’s a first shot, it’s one of the first digs at Desert Bluffs.

Symphony: Right.

Meg: And about how, above against all we have to beat Desert Bluffs ‘cause they’re the worst.

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: Yeah. And is this also the first time do you think that, they said that it was the Night Vale Scorpions so we got like a mascot?

Meg: Yeah. I don’t think we’ve mentioned them before.

Symphony: You know how people are with their sports.

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: Their sports balls.

Hal: Yes.

Meg: Yeah I’m super excited to talk to Jeffrey about this, when we get him on the phone.

Symphony: Oh yes!

Meg: Because he is our local resident person who knows about sportsball.

Symphony: He knows all about it.

Meg: Who we, Joseph always says if you can’t tell who’s writing it, if it’s about sports it’s definitely Jeffrey that’s writing it. [laughter]

Hal: When we’re both on the road, in the same city we’ll find time to sit and talk about sports with one another. Because in that context we’re the only ones, we’re the only two who care. So we’re like, we’ll just go have our conversation in private. We don’t need to..

Meg: Yeah. Or when you get Erin McKeown on the road..

Symphony: Oh yeah, that’s right.

Meg: She’ll talk about baseball, yeah. So she’s your third..

Hal: Yeah, we did talk about that.

Meg: But there’s not a lot of sports enthusiasm among the Night Vale touring cast, unfortunately.

Symphony: I mean, I like sports just fine. But like, I don’t know all the stats.

Hal: Right.

Symphony: I don’t know all the stuff. And most of the plays I don’t know what’s going on. I just know that guy ran with that thing over there and that’s good. You know?

Meg: I like horse racing.

Symphony: Well you are of equestrian nobility.

Meg: Thank you, thank you for seeing me.

Hal: Can we talk about what just happened in San Diego backstage? [laughter]

Symphony: What happened, Hal Lublin?

Hal: We went down a rabbit hole, a couple of us. I think it was like..

Symphony: Oh yeah, I forgot about this! [laughs]

Hal: You were there, and…

Symphony: And you were..

Hal: My wife Jennifer and I think Mal [Blum] was there as well. And Meg was looking up, she wasn’t even like looking for, she was just like, this is the horse that Hal is. He’s like everybody was a horse, and it was right!

Symphony: But it wasn’t even like, she had to look it up. She already knew, it was like she had them bookmarked or something. She was like this is you, this is you.

Meg: They were. I think Jennifer’s was the best one.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: It was like the spirit of your wife, Hal, just on a horse in the screen.

Hal: Yeah. (--).

Symphony: I think Jon’s was the best.

Meg: Jon’s was pretty good too.

Hal: Jon’s was great.

Meg: Disparition’s horse pick was pretty spot on.

Symphony: It just looked, just like his hair! [laughs]

Hal: Wait, can we start a segment of this show called Meg’s Horse Picks where you share, like, Disparition is the Carolina cotton tail who exhibits these qualities.

Meg: Disparition was a Belgian warmblood, first of all.

Hal: That’s right.

Symphony: Ooh, burn! [laughs]

Hal: I knew you’d have the right name.

Meg: With a kind of a swoopy mane, swoopy side bang mane.

Symphony: ‘Cause Jon has a glorious side bang.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: Yes, yes he does.

Symphony: Good old Disparish.

Meg: I dunno, we were talking about sports, that’s how, I was like how did we get here to this? How did, I ask myself that question a lot. How did we get here?

Symphony: Horses are sports.

Meg: Horses are, the sport that I’m most into, mostly just the triple crown. It’s in the spring, you can watch some horses on TV. I went to the Belmont stakes when I was a kid, my uncle took me.

Symphony: What about the Derby?

Meg: I’ve never been to the Derby, that’s on my bucket list. But we’ll see if that ends up happening. I wanna wear a hat, I wanna drink a Mint Julep, I wanna yell at a horse and then maybe get to pet it if it wins.

Symphony: I think you could all of those things individually in a day, but never all at once, except for at the Derby.

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: Like you could probably yell at a horse and have a Mint Julep, but like..

Hal: And pet a horse.

Symphony: Right. Well, if you yell at, you have to pet it first, I don’t think you can yell at it and then pet it, it’s for sure gonna bite you.

Meg: I’m more yelling for it than at it.

Symphony: Oh OK.

Meg: I’m cheering for it.

Hal: I see.

Meg: It needs to be, I can’t just go drive by a field of horses and start screaming at them, I need to be rooting them on.

Symphony: You can do it, eat that grass!

Hal: Believe in yourselves!

Symphony: So I thought it was really funny in regards to the portal that led the Pretanodons, oh no the Pteridactyls out. When people looked in it, they were playing handball or something. They aged like, just the part that they looked in, so their head and shoulders, aged thousands of years. So their body was so normal, but like their head was thousands of years old so it would it be dust, or was it still like liquid, squishy? Or was it like a shrunken head, you know what I mean?

Meg: It was like a fossil.

Hal: Yeah I think it’s like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Symphony: Or like Beetlejuice.

Hal: Well that’s a shrunken head.

Symphony: [laughs] That’s what I think of!

Hal: I thought that too.

Symphony: That’s my headcanon.

Meg: What a good head, that’s funny.

Hal: Headcanon never wrong.

Meg: Headcanon about shrunken heads. Thank you and good night. [laughter]

Symphony: Oh.

Hal: Is this episode the introduction of throat spiders?

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Is this the first time anybody had a case of throat spiders?

Symphony: Oh my god, I love throat spiders, as an illness.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: Not having them.

Meg: Another thing I’m excited to talk to Jeffrey about. Jeffrey, known lovers of spiders, just a huge fan of spiders, not afraid of them at all.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: Is not afraid to look at them or see them or be near them.

Hal: That’s another thing he and I have in common is our love of spiders, just wanna cuddle up to ‘em and wanna, we love that feeling of like, there could be a spider on my back right now. That’s the best.

Meg: Maybe even two.

Hal: Oooooh, so great, so happy about it!

Symphony: I’m generally not afraid of spiders, but if I see a spider in my home, I cannot go to sleep unless it’s dead, and that is when I turn into a murderer. And I know people are gonna be out there saying, “Symphony, they eat the bad bugs!” I don’t care, you’re invading my home. And all interlopers, you know the business.

Meg: I love spiders. Actually love spiders, I am down with spiders, I appreciate them, I don’t kill them when they’re in my home. Sometimes they are compassionately relocated to the outdoors, but I’m not a killer of spiders. Most other bugs in my house get murdered though. My house has many a bug, we’re on the country, we’re the only thing for miles out here, so we have blackflies a lot, we get ladybugs which feed off the carcass of the blackflies. We get moths and wasps and all sorts of fun things. We’ve had bats…

Symphony: Inside your house though?

Meg: Yeah, oh yeah.

Symphony: I’m making a disgusted face.

Meg: It’s fine. I have a Bugzooka. I would like us to be sponsored by Bugzooka.

Symphony: I’m sorry, what is a Bugzooka?

Meg: It’s like, OK so Bugzooka is a device that you kind of, it’s like a gun that you kind of, point at a bug and press a button and it sucks the bug into the gun. And it’s long, so you can reach up into the corners, and then it sucks the bug into a little container where it can be relocated to the outdoors or you can flush it.

Symphony: Oh so it doesn’t like kill it, it just sucks it into like a chamber?

Meg: It sucks it into a tube, yeah. It’s a bug vacuum, but it doesn’t have batteries or anything, it works on suction.

Symphony: OK because “zooka” indicates blowing up, not sucking in.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: I mean am I wrong?

Meg: No, it’s yeah.

Symphony: But I think of the way..

Meg: It’s a branding issue for them. But when they sponsor us, we can help them resolve that brand name issue.

Symphony: But the way you’re describing it sounds nice.

Hal: Yeah, no I was gonna say I think it means that your DM’s are blowing up with all the people going “great job sucking all those bugs out of the room.”

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: Joseph’s kind of in charge of hunting the bugs, I call him my hunter. [laughter]

Symphony: Amongst other things. So do you guys believe in auras? Do you feel like, what do you think your aura looks like? Because they talk about…

Meg: Hal, you live in Los Angeles.

Symphony: Ooh yeah.

Meg: What do you think?

Hal: Uuuuh, I dunno. I dunno how into that I am. I feel like when I do, the moments when I am into it, it feels like I’m not being, I’m just sort of like trying to go along. I don’t know to what extent I’m on board with that…

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: But I also don’t wanna, who really knows, I don’t wanna rain on everybody’s parade I guess.

Symphony: You’re so sensitive, that’s so nice.

Hal: I’m very sensitive.

Symphony: ‘Cause you’re like, get out of here with your fakery. Like, ah your aura’s so golden, get out of here. What am I, the frigging Avatar, the last airbender? Whatever.

Hal: Yeah, you don’t see it.

Symphony: [laughs] But you know, with that being said, who knows.

Hal: Who knows, why you believe in it right?

Symphony: I believe in the possibility of anything, of the quantum possibilities of anything, so yeah maybe there are auras but like, I dunno. I sit the same thing when like someone is really close to you and behind you, you can like feel them, or is that just like body heat?

Meg: I would say that when someone stands close to you and you can feel them, that’s just your body using its sensory information, like you’re using…

Symphony: Oh. Like a snake.

Meg: ..sound and touch and smell to, you’re using your senses.

Hal: Right.

Symphony: Oh. Oh. [laughs]

Meg: It’s hard to pinpoint down ‘cause you’re not using just one single one of them, you’re using a lot of them at once, so it feels like magic, but actually it’s just your brain.

Symphony: I’m using my synesthesia.

Meg: Yes, using your synesthesia.

Symphony: So Meg, what do you think about auras?

Meg: I’m gonna go with what Hal said.

Symphony: OK.

Meg: Yeah I’m not a (woo) person, but if you’re a (woo) person, I want you to feel supported by me.

Symphony: ‘Cause they talk about these unusual auras of things in your home, or just around I guess.

Meg: It’s a really beautiful piece of writing, that part, I remember it sticking out.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: Yeah, it’s pretty neat. So we are all generally pretty questionable about auras. However, what do we think about dinosaurs, true or false?

Hal: True.

Symphony: No flat earthers?

Meg: (True).

Hal: Do you wanna ask what I think about science? I think that’s what you’re really asking.

Symphony: [laughs hysterically]

Hal: What do I think about science? I’m for it.

Symphony: You’re for it? Plus, check plus.

Meg: Yeah. I’m all about that prehistory.

Hal: Thank you. No (trouble).

Symphony: So none of us believe that dinosaur bones were just put in the earth to trick us?

[beat]

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: Well now that you mention it.

Hal: I wanted it to quiet then, I wanted quiet for a second. Let that sink in.  

Symphony: I was like, no!

Hal: I feel like there are people, and not everybody, who would be Flat Earthers who are like, I think we don’t know. And my answer is that you don’t know. There are a lot of people who have known for a very long time. They know, you don’t have to know. I guess. You don’t wanna know. Why do you refuse to know?

Meg: Why not just know? And then there’s the concept of the dinosaur bones being hidden in the earth to trick us. It’s not about you, friend! Like you gotta be some serious selfish, object permanence confused kind of person to think that it is just about you and tricking you. [laughter]

Symphony: But that’s why I find conspiracy theories and people who think about those things so fun. ‘Cause you’re like, wow you are suspending your disbelief soo far, like so far, to a crazy extent where like the logical and not even the easiest explanation for something, you know, they’re like nah nah nah, no way. It’s like OK, so someone really just like dug down in the earth, put those bones there, put all that same earth right on top of it, just to trick you, Gerald G. Pumpkin. [laughs]

Meg: Yeah, ‘cause it’s all about you, Gerald G. Pumpkin. It’s all about tricking you.

Hal: Yeah. As soon as they were done burying those dinosaur bones, they were like, and now we wait.

Meg: Yeah, it’s the longest con.

Symphony: [laughs] It’s the longest con.

Meg: It’s the 70 million year old con.

Symphony: Now I just wanna yell Star Trek style: “Cooooooooon!”

Hal: [laughs] That’s appropriate.

Symphony: Whoa, Star Trek jokes!

Meg: There’s no crossover between Night Vale fans and Star Trek fans.

Symphony: Absolutely not.

Hal: Impossible.

Meg: Zero, to the..

Symphony: No one knows what I’m talking about.

Meg: Those Venn diagrams look like headlights. Two separate.

Symphony: Oh Meg, I thought of you when, there was a part about Carlos was like running by and Josie said he smelled like lavender chewing gum. Because..

Meg: I thought about me too!

Symphony: [laughs delightedly] Meg loves lavender chewing gum. She likes eating old potpourri, apparently.

Meg: It’s mostly the lavender mint, the violets.

Symphony: It’s disgusting.

Meg: They’re, my grandma always had them and they were always in her purse and she always gave one to me and my sister and…

Symphony: Awww, that’s…

Meg: My Mom had them too and..

Symphony: Well then that’s…

Meg: So yeah I have a kind of nostalgia for them. I also like the flavor of the, also they are very strong. I think they are meant for like 1950’s husbands who’d came home from work after having one too many at the bar and have to pretend to be a different person before they came home to their wife and they’d pop one of those in. [laughter] They are strong, they’ll cut through..

Symphony: ‘Cause it would have to cover up every smell, right?

Meg: Yeah, they’re..

Symphony: It’s such a strong. And as the one time I’ve tried it, I swear to God it tasted like I was eating old flowers at my grandma’s house.

Meg: Well Symphony, you know that I like to taste things that are horrible and then make you taste them.

Symphony: Really nasty. You love nasty candy and nasty tastes.

Meg: I love nasty candy. We were in Stockholm, we got all this Swedish candy, it just tasted like ammonia. And I was so excited about it, I was walking down the street with a bag of candy, I was eating it and I was like, this tastes horrible Symphony, try this one. You’d take it and you’d bite it, you’d were like “I’m spitting it out, this is terrible”, and we just kept and kept, we played that on repeat for five blocks while we were walking back to our hotel. [laughter] Just oh try this one, this one (--) can you try it.

Symphony: I really felt like I was being slowly poisoned with this terrible candy.

Hal: Oh you were. For sure you were, no question.

Meg: They’re also salty. There’s like a brand of candy in Sweden called salt(-).

Symphony: But you know, I did not taste the salt at all, all I tasted was that disgusting ammonia taste. And I already don’t like black liquorish, but when you add other earwax flavors on top of it, you’re just gonna make it worse, you know?

Meg: That’s my heaven, it really is, those horrible Swedish candies are my heaven.

Symphony: No offense to Sweden, the rest of it was lovely.

Meg: I know, (--) Sweden.

Hal: Maybe some offense.

Meg: Sweden, I love your culture.

Symphony: Well, I enjoy the fish paste.

Meg: Yeah, the fish paste, the fika, who doesn’t love a fika?

Symphony: Oh the fika was so good.

Hal: Wha?

Meg: The fika is their tradition that they have there, for like around 4 o’clock in the afternoon they have a coffee and a little snack, and it’s called fika.

Hal: I like that. I’m on board. I was just like, I thought it was attached to the fish paste, it’s like every day, they go out and take fish guts into a bucket, stomp it like it’s grapes they trying to make wine with, and then just stick their heads in there and eat their way out.

Symphony: [laughs] Like a trough! No.

Meg: That’s so insensitive to the Swedish people, you know it’s too cold for that.

Hal: That’s true. That’s what makes it so hard, it’s frozen.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: Alright, let’s talk about the apartment etiquette bit.

Hal: Great bit.

Symphony: So I just wrote down “just be considerate”.

Hal: Yes.

Meg: Yes. So there’s lots of important things in there about living in an apartment building, living with another person, living as a citizen of the Earth.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: We are all each other’s room mates, right?

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: Yes.

Meg: On this room called Earth.

Symphony: Well and as you guys both know, I have an awesome upstairs neighbor that I call Stompy. So I’m very aware of apartment etiquette.

Hal: Yeah, it definitely feels like one of those things where the writers are, something they’re really frustrated with so, we’ll just put it in there and find like a twist on it. And I would imagine, having never lived in an apartment in New York, that it is almost impossible to not hear what every neighbor’s doing all the time.

Meg: Yes. Joseph and I would say that our next door neighbors at our first apartment together had a hollering couch, where it’s a couch that they faced just directly at our walls so they could just sit down and holler at the wall. And that’s just what it sounded like in our apartment, it sounded like there was just four people sitting on a couch screaming at the wall. Joseph called it, oh they’re on their hollering couch.

Symphony: [laughs] Like were they, did it sound like directionally it was all coming from one single section of the home?

Meg: Well our apartments were so small that they probably had in their living room just a sofa and a TV and the TV was mounted on the wall and they would talk, and it would sound like they were shouting at us. [laughter] It’s this bit kind of has some weird things where it talks about oozing and visible membranes and.. strange radiating light, and then it’s just like, put the trash in the trash cans, don’t just put the trash in the hallway.

Symphony: Yeah!

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: And then it says, put some clothes on before standing in front of your windows, which is considerate, not something I have to do fortunately anymore, because I live surrounded by no one.

Symphony: You want the hawks to see you naked.

Meg: Yeah that’s..

Hal: Check it out, hawks.

Meg: It’s how I charge my aura, is that… [laughter]

Hal: I know we’re getting close to talking about the weather, but before we get there, the mysterious hooded figure that’s been inside the studio all day, and that interview is really fun. I loved that segment, it’s my best transition into the weather so far.

Meg: Yeah with the static..

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: ..and the static just keeps building, he just keeps standing further and further away.

Hal: Yeah, I love that.

Symphony: Yeah and I don’t remember this in real time when I was listening to it, but now like when I listened to it at first I was like, oh shoot like I started checking my connection, and then he said don’t check your conne-, and I was like oh good it’s not me, geez. But really you don’t get static like that in a streaming thing, right?

Hal: Right.

Symphony: ‘Cause I’m like that’s an old TV thing, right?

Meg: Yeah. Or like tuning your radio station.

Hal: Yup.

Symphony: Yeah yeah yeah. So I just thought that was great, and it actually the static and stuff, the louder it got the scarier it made me, I felt more scared, almost because it was somehow getting louder to like, consume Cecil or something. I was scared.

Meg: You were frightened.

Hal: It’s enough time by now that I can say it reminds me of A Quiet Place, which is real creepy.

Symphony: Mm.

Meg: Creepy creepy moment. So let’s get ready to talk to our guest this episode, Night Vale co-writer, wonderful human, Jeffrey Cranor. But first let’s discuss the weather.

Symphony: So this week’s weather was Closer by The Tiny, and I loved it! I love their voice, and the song I dunno, it just made me feel like I wanted to dance and be like, really coquettish somehow.

Hal: Yeah it’s a really fun, I liked it, really good piece of music. Again, we’ve talked about this and I’m sure that for the several years that we’ll be doing this show, I will still be talking about it. Is that it didn’t really connect to anything for me, it just felt like a break. Which I’m OK with. And I liked it, it was a good piece of music.

Meg: Yeah, it felt like a break, it also had this thing again in this episode where it goes from this buzz buzz buzz from the static into this little piano with strings and this tiny-voiced person singing to us so it’s, and that shift in texture that brings us into the break, which I thought was cool. And yeah, what a fun song. That was our big deep in-depth discussion of the weather. [laughter] So yeah, we go now…

Symphony: The weather was good, we liked that song.

Meg: The weather was, it was a good weather.

Hal: We liked weather.

Meg: So good day.

[ad break]

Meg: We go now to our discussion with Jeffrey Cranor. Hey Jeffrey, welcome!

Jeffrey Cranor: Hi, Meg! Hi Hal, Hi Symph.

Symphony: Heyy!

Hal: Hiiii!

Symphony: Hello, Daddy.

Jeffrey: [laughs] Hello.

Meg: So yeah, first of all Jeffrey, thank you so much for joining us.

Jeffrey: Sure.

Meg: We’ve been having so much fun so far talking about the episodes that came out of your mind in 2012. So what was going on in your world in 2012, what was influencing your mind?

Jeffrey: Let’s, oh when we were writing this one would have been probably some time in the spring. Jillian and I just bought an apartment at the beginning of 2012 in New York City, so we had just moved to Bay Ridge and we were moving in in like March of 2012 of that year. So yeah we were, I was reading through the script earlier, it was like, oh I have a comment about contractors in there, and how terrible they are and that makes total sense. [laughter] Because that’s what I would have been coming just off of, was dealing with contractors and the money months it takes to just put up tile in the bathroom.

Meg: Yeah. This is also, just jumping ahead also that feels like it might have influenced the episode Drawbridge a little bit.

Symphony: Yeah.

Jeffrey: Yes. I think a lot of that, it’s what I was going through at the time, definitely.

Meg: Just the inefficiencies with contracting, but you really like your contractor in Brooklyn, right?

Jeffrey: I do.

Meg: You have a thing for him. [laughter]

Jeffrey: Yeah, he’s Irish Jeremy Renner. He’s super handsome and he’s really nice. He looks like..

Symphony: What? Does he look like Jeremy Renner?

Jeffrey: He looks exactly like Jeremy Renner.

Symphony: Weird.

Jeffrey: And he has an Irish accent, like I feel like maybe this is, Jeremy Renner has a movie about a contractor coming out soon, an Irish contractor, maybe he’s just in character.

Symphony: [laughs]

Jeffrey: I don’t know.

Symphony: He’s just been really method for the past like few years.

Jeffrey: I dunno how method Jeremy Renner is, but yeah. So…

Symphony: Also while doing the Avengers movies. [laughs]

Jeffrey: That’s right. And he does really good work, I was really impressed with his work. He just is I think fairly popular and it takes him a long while to get to a job. But once he does it, it’s good.

Hal: I’ve learned a lot doing this podcast. Mostly I’m learning that Jeremy Renner is not Irish. [laughter] That’s the biggest revelation for me. Not that I ever looked at him and tried to figure out, it’d be kind of odd if my thing was, I’m just trying to figure out where people are from. What’s your nationality, dude on the bus? [laughter]

Jeffrey: I honestly don’t know what nationality Jeremy Renner is, I’m assuming he’s American.

Hal: Sure.

Jeffrey: But that’s really weird, I don’t know why I would just assume that about people, there’s so many just like British imports in American film that I just don’t even realize aren’t American. Like the entire cast of Selma basically.

Symphony: Because they can do our accents better than we can do theirs. [laughter]

Jeffrey: Right!

Meg: Or like Hugh Laurie, unless they’re on the program Nashville, where they cannot do the accents better. I sometimes watch that show and I just scream, they’re trying their Southern accents, and I’m just screaming: You’re British! You’re British! [laughter]

Symphony: That’s like that guy who was Bill in True Blood. He’s British but his Southern accent is terrible!

Meg: Yeah. It’s a bridge too far I think sometimes to ask our British actors to go Southern. They can..

Jeffrey: But you know who has, the Tom Brady of bad accents is Christopher Eggleston from The Leftovers..

Meg: Oh yeah.

Jeffrey: Did you all watch The Leftovers?

Symphony: Yes.

Hal: No.

Symphony: Is he the main-

Jeffrey: He’s the fundamentalist brother.

Symphony: Ooh! Oh.

Jeffrey: And he, and listen I say he’s the Tom Brady of it, of bad accents ‘cause he’s so amazing. It’s hard not to think, wow I’m watching something really stunning. He has an accent I’ve never heard, it is so distinctly American, but I have never heard a human being with this accent before. [laughter] I was just mesmerized every time he was on the screen, it was so good, I loved it so much.

Symphony: Maybe he’s going for something really specific like a small town in Maine or something.

Jeffrey: Sure, I hope so.

Meg: Very specifically regional. Speaking of Tom Brady, and for those of you out there who are not aware, Tom Brady is a football player, and speaking of football players, in this episode we get our fall football preview. And Jeffrey, I’m assuming you wrote that part because it’s a sports thing.

Jeffrey: Yes, I did.

Meg: So you often are the one who is the sports writer for Welcome to Night Vale. Talk about that.

Jeffrey: Sure! [laughs] The town I grew up in Mesquite, Texas, obviously high school football was a really big deal, and the football stadium there was huge, it’s like a 10-15 thousand seat stadium for the Mesquite high schools to play in. And right at the end of one of the end zones is a giant tower, I don’t know specifically how tall it is. But it has to be almost 200 feet tall, and it’s kind of got like an A-sh- oops, (-) my mike. Has like an A-shaped Eiffel Tower style, it’s enormous. And that is the tower for the community radio station of Mesquite, Texas. It’s so huge and so big. And basically all that radio station broadcast was like easy listening hits of the 60’s and 70’s, and then on Fridays, they ran high school football. And then throughout those 60’s and 70’s hits, they would have high school students, they were like radio students come on and they would give community calendars, and that was basically it and there were a ton of high school football updates. So it just seems like if you’re gonna have a community radio station, like sports is gonna be a big part of it. I know Night Vale is probably not in Texas, but yeah it feels like, that was just a really big part of me growing up that you can’t really have a radio station without having sports news.

Symphony: But it does seem like in Night Vale when, they do have a lot of school or town pride because, there’s always that adversarial sort of relationship with Desert Bluffs, and them winning the football game and stuff like that, and so I mean, it is a desert community, could be somewhere near Texas, who knows right?

Jeffrey: Who even knows, nobody does.

Symphony: Not me.

Meg: Yeah. And if you look at the design for the Night Vale logo, it has a very west Texas vibe, with the water tower and it looks like, I think even Rob Wilson who designed the logo said that they were inspired by west Texas, so…

Jeffrey: He sent us when we did the first novel, the Welcome to Night Vale novel for the cover design, he sent over basically, I forget the term he used but it was like a portfolio of images that he used as inspiration for the color palette and the graphic design of the logo. And we got to see that what was amazing is, he has a photo in that of like a purpley sunset and a phone pole and a water tower and a little house. And it’s just the logo, [laughter] is what it is and it’s this photo, it’s so amazing and it says RAWLS on the water tower which is the town in west Texas in the Panhandle that Rob Wilson grew up in. So it was really amazing to kind of see that, yeah the logo literally is west Texas.

Symphony: That’s phenomenal. So in this episode, we do talk about the PTA meetings, have you ever been to a PTA meeting before?

Jeffrey: I have, I remember, yeah not as a parent just as a student...

Symphony: Obviously.

Meg: For your cat Simone. [laughter]

Jeffrey: I just, sometimes just like as a spectator I go to the local high school here in town, I just go to their PTA meetings, just to offer my two cents, what I think.

Symphony: As a taxpayer.

Jeffrey: Yeah as a, just as a fan really.

Meg: Yeah. You’re paying so those kids aren’t dumb, you should at least go see where your money goes, right?

Jeffrey: Yeah.

Hal: I have a question for you Jeffrey. At this point you were writing the fourth episode of the show, and when you’re creating these characters this sports world of Night Vale, and as maybe the only other sports fan involved in the show [laughter], I was saying before that you and I will, if we’re both at a show on tour we’ll find a place to sit and talk about sports, for a couple of hours like a release valve. But at this point, how much thought are you giving to the overall sports world or is it just, here’s something I’m gonna throw in, I dunno whether it’s gonna come back or not, I don’t know if there’s a grand design for the sports community of Night Vale?

Jeffrey: Yeah it is kind of, I think it just initially started as I wanna put sports in here cause I think it’d be fun. But I definitely, once I started writing about the quarterback Michael Sandero, I felt like, Joseph and I hadn’t talked about it at this point yet, ‘cause we hadn’t even put an episode out when we were writing the first five or six of these.

Symphony: Oh OK.

Jeffrey: But the one thing, the only thing we’d really said was just that we can do whatever we want with the show as long as there’s strict continuity, and we both took that to mean as in like, things have consequences and people age and life moves forward. And even if that life is weird and nonsensical at times, so this idea that you can have a junior quarterback, my thought was it’ll be fun next year ‘cause I’ll get to go into the senior year and talk about that. There’s also a thing or two where like, you can tell if I wrote a sports thing or if Joseph wrote a sports thing, ‘cause I always think very carefully what month is this episode coming out. [laughter] And so I’m like OK well you can, in the fall you can have uh, episodes with football or whatever so this one’s..

Symphony: Not in the spring.

Jeffrey: Not in the spring, you can’t have a February like, oh there was a big football game last night.

Symphony: You’re like, no fool that’s basketball.

Jeffrey: [laughs] Yeah. That’s not entirely true tho, ‘cause these early episodes I had no idea when they were coming out, so I think this one came out in the middle of the summer but..

Meg: It is our fall preview, so it’s yeah.

Jeffrey: Oh that’s true, yeah. But yeah that was it, I dunno, just seemed fun to be able to follow this football team like a normal football team, even if their quarterback has two heads. [laughter]

Meg: So other things about this episode, there’s the introduction of throat spiders. Which is..

Jeffrey: Wrote that, yeah.

Symphony: Tell us about your relationship with spiders, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Oh I hate them. No no no I take that back, I like spiders, spiders are cool. We’re cool, I just don’t want to see them. It’s weird because I’m less afraid of actual spiders than I am of photos of spiders, like if somebody sends me a photo of a spider I lose my mind, I just I’m so terrified of that. [laughs] Joseph wrote a tweet recently on the Night Vale account I think and it was, I can’t remember the term now and I don’t even wanna Google it, but it’s basically the term for like all that fang shit in the spider’s face. And I was like what is that term and I started typing it into the Chrome search bar, and then I immediately saw the definition pop down I was like, oh thank you Chrome for just giving me the verbal definition I was like, oh ctrl Q, slammed laptop shut and I threw it out the window.

Meg: Yeah, better just to burn that. [laughter]

Hal: Now you’re just gonna get ads for spiders for the next six months, they’re just gonna go through your..

Jeffrey: Oh shit!

Hal: You may also like: a tarantula on your face while you sleep. [laughter]

Jeffrey: Oh no, I left my Facebook open while we’re doing this.

Hal: I saw that video of the spider that they trained to jump..

Jeffrey: Mm mm.

Hal: Like a hairy spider jumping.

Jeffrey: Mm mm!

Symphony: Why would you do that?

Jeffrey: No they didn’t.

Hal: Because at a certain point science has to be stopped, just from going in certain directions.

Symphony: ‘Cause that’s just…

Hal: I’m super pro science but that is, come on, there’s gotta be something better.

Symphony: That’s just Satanism.

Jeffrey: Yeah, yeah no. They shouldn’t be allowed to do that, I feel like we should probably have some regulations on science.

Symphony: That’s just like, you shouldn’t have fast zombies, I truly believe that.

Jeffrey: [laughs]

Hal: Can we train them to crush themselves under a shoe? Can we do that? [laughter]

Jeffrey: Yeah! That’s perfect. So yeah, throat spiders sounded like the single most horrifying thing ever.

Meg: Yeah, localized to the throat too. I feel like elbow spiders not as scary..

Jeffrey: No.

Meg: Throat spiders, terrifying.

Jeffrey: Yeah ‘cause you can keep an eye on elbow spiders. You know what they’re doing. Throat spiders, also just the idea of how hard it would be to date somebody if you had throat spiders. ‘cause I just imagine they just like, come out of your mouth at any point in time and just go all over your face.

Symphony: Oh no!

Jeffrey: They run some errands up in your hair and then they come back, I have no idea.

Symphony: I’ve always, that imagery to me always meant like a sack of spider eggs in your throat and it busted open, and all the spiders came out. So just internally scream about that for a second. [laughter]

Meg: Or scream out loud.

Symphony: Whatever’s your fancy.

Meg: Depends on where you’re listening to this show.

Hal: Or it’s like the guy who has like a pet tarantula and he’s like, “Look at the trick I taught him!” And then they put the tarantula in their mouth, and close their mouth..

Symphony: Why would you...

Jeffrey: Aah!

Hal: ...and they open their mouth and out comes the spider.

Symphony: Wait…

Jeffrey: Wha-, ugh… [sighs]

Symphony: Why though?

Jeffrey: I have a headache now.

Hal: Well, I’ll tell you where I saw it, because I think I might own, well I have this tape.

Symphony: Uh oh.

Hal: Gather round, children. Back in the day before the Internet, there was tape trading, where editors would take (X sized) footage and build compilation tapes and then trade them back and forth. So I came into possession through my friend Nathan, of a collection of rejected America’s Funniest Home Videos submissions. And I’m pretty sure one of them is somebody like, look at me swallow my pet tarantula! Here comes 10,000 dollars, open up the vaults and just dump the cash in for me. Somebody thought that was gonna be like, that Bob Saget was gonna narrate that.

Symphony: That just sounds like you’re gonna, for sure at least get one of those films where somebody gets killed in it.

Hal: Oh for sure.

Symphony: You know, what are those called? Snuff. [laughter]

Hal: Snuff. Intentional (--). You swallow a tarantula, that is a snuff film. Those things are filled with, they’re venomous creatures.

Symphony: Are they poisonous, do they have poison?

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: ‘Cause I know some… oh.

Hal: You can milk them.

Jeffrey: Ooh.

Symphony: I wouldn’t know, I don’t spend that much time, I’m just oh, big fuck off spider, no thank you. I’ll stay away from that. That’s literally what I spent most of Australia doing, avoiding giant spiders.

Meg: And you came back alive and sound. Did you see big spiders in Australia, Symphony?

Symphony: I saw one when I was in a park. I was like standing there, looking around..

Jeffrey: It was reading a paper.

Symphony: It was, oh my god you guys…

Jeffrey: Legs crossed on the bench. [laughter]

Symphony: Very much like, I love Beetlejuice where that cockroach is sitting like, just like flicking its leg, yeah it was just like that. It was disgusting and I took a like close-up video of it, it’s somewhere in my Instagram story, I’m sure. It was horrifying. And I ran away. I was like, enough nature for me!

Jeffrey: That’s terrible.

Meg: So yeah. Jeffrey, did you do a relisten on this episode to prepare for this show or what did you..?

Jeffrey: This is so stupid, no I did a reread of the episode, I don’t know why I did the harder thing.

Meg: I think, I did both, so yeah, one or the other. When you were going back and taking a look at it, was there anything that popped out to you that really struck you as creating some sort of emotion for you? I mean try to define your experience there, did anything happen to you while you read it, tell us?

Jeffrey: I had this thing where, and I can’t remember if, do we know what episode Steve Carlsberg first appeared in? It wasn’t this one.

Symphony: It’s five.

Jeffrey: It’s six. Five or six?

Meg: It’s in my notes, hang on.

Hal: It’s six.

Symphony: Oh it is six.

Jeffrey: It’s after this one though, right?

Meg: Yeah, it’s two after this one.

Jeffrey: So I had this thought recently, partially ‘cause we had a gag about this in the most recent touring live show All Hail, which is the reference to Susan Willman. Who basically I feel like Cecil also hates Susan Willman, and then Diane Crayton hates Susan Willman. Like Susan Willman seems like she totally sucks. And what’s funny is like, Cecil hates Steve Carlsberg but as we learn over time, it’s a much more deep seated personal familial thing that he’s having, that Cecil himself is trying to grapple with his own personal issues and he’s just laying it all on Steve. And then so now we’re sort of, spoiler alert for people further along but his relationship to Steve Carlsberg changes and grows, but I feel like Susan Willman is still in that state of like, I fucking hate her. [laughter] And it’s all the way back in episode 4, in 2012 and in 2018 Cecil is still like, get it together Susan!

Hal: Now more of the hatred can focus on her, it can get more intense.

Jeffrey: That’s right.

Symphony: Thank god!

Jeffrey: She like fat-shamed Diane’s son.

Meg: Yeah!

Jeffrey: She sounds like kind of a piece of shit.

Symphony: Oh right.

Meg: Me hate her, yeah. I am glad that there is this continuity. During this relistening we have found a lot of things in just these first couple episodes that are in the show right now that are like coming to a big head, just little tiny pieces that have been scattered in the first couple episodes, have played huge plot points now in the show and then, for over the past six years of the show things kind of sneak back up. And you don’t necessarily realize that they were there from the beginning.

Jeffrey: I like that, it seems very intentional like we’re super geniuses that had it planned all along, that’s my favorite thing.

Meg: Yeah, I mean I figured when you guys wrote episode one and two and three and four, you really like well this arc is 400 episodes.

Jeffrey: Yeah! I made a big thing like Joseph if I don’t bring up Joel Eisenberg in episode 4, it’s going to delay the arc we have in episode 98-115. [laughter] I’m gonna have to redo the whole 500-episode outline that we drafted.

Meg: Wouldn’t that be great.

Jeffrey: For our first 25 years.

Meg: For the first 25 years of Welcome to Night Vale, yeah. That’d be great. That’s a lot of words. It’s been a lot of words so far.

Jeffrey: The last three words of episode 500 are “end volume one”. [laughter]

Symphony: Please let that be true.

Jeffrey: Please let me get to episode 500, that would be amazing.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: Keep drinking water and getting those vitamins.

Jeffrey: Oh, water? [laughter]

Hal: Oh, start drinking water.

Meg: Start drinking water. Apparently according to, Joseph went to the doctor today for his physical, and the doctor was like, “you know the biggest key longevity is stress management,” and Joseph was like oh well. [laughter]

Jeffrey: That’s amazing.

Meg: So I guess that’s our health tip is stress management.

Jeffrey: Sure, great, that sounds easy.

Meg: The thing is, if you can find a way to have stress management that somehow doesn’t also deter future longevity, it’s like oh yeah I manage stress great, I smoke a pack a day or like, (--) stress great you know, I do as much cocaine as I can get my hands on so… [laughter] This is hypothetical, audience, I don’t do drugs.

Symphony: I do! [laughter]

Hal: I do hugs.

Symphony: Wow.

Jeffrey: Hugs and drugs, sure yeah.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: But yeah, I guess it’s the thing with stress management, it’s gonna kill you if you don’t, but you gotta find a way to do it that doesn’t also kill you. And so you can write 500 episodes of Welcome to Night Vale.

Jeffrey: Great! I will need a lot of cocaine to do that. [laughter]

Symphony: You’ll get it done in like two weeks.

Jeffrey: Sure.

Symphony: That’s one quick bender.

Jeffrey: Mm hm, perfect.

Meg: Yeah. I’m sure the product will be great.

Hal: Yeah. Nothing relieves stress more than having to constantly write to a deadline. That’s just, that is floating down a lazy river on an inner tube, while you’re getting a massage.

Jeffrey: Yep! Nothing brings on the amazing dreams like having several things on deadline at once.

Symphony: You know have multiple shows…

Jeffrey: Uh huh.

Symphony: Let’s do that plug.

Jeffrey: Let’s do that plug, uh… Yeah. No I’m working on, we’re about a little over halfway done with season 3, writing season 3 of Within the Wires, which is the show I co-write with Janina Matthewson. And yeah I’m excited, it’s gonna be a lot of fun. It’s gonna be, each season we have a completely different narrator that tells stories on some type of pre-recorded audio, so season 1 was relaxation tapes that sort of tell the story of an escape from a medical prison, and season 2 was sort of a, a mystery of a missing person told over the course of a decade from um, museum audio guides. Yeah, so we’re working on season 3 now. And it’s fun.

Symphony: Yaaaay!

Jeffrey: Yeah, woo hoo!

Meg: Yeah, it’s definitely fun to listen to.

Jeffrey: Awesome.

Meg: Yeah, I’ve enjoyed both seasons and I...

Jeffrey: I’m glad people like it.

Meg: After listening to season 1, it’s like what’s next and then season 2 is just like a totally different situation and that’s really cool.

Jeffrey: It is awesome. It’s also fun ‘cause we worked with like a super professional actor who lives in New Zealand, which is great ‘cause Rima Te Wiata who’s the actor, is awesome she’s so good, you should see “Hunt for the Wild People” if you have not, it’s an amazing movie…

Meg: I watched it, it was great.

Hal: So good.

Jeffrey: And um, but she is a, she’s like uber-professional and so it was really, but you know we live literally like 12 hours time zone, 12 time zones away from each other. So like communication was always strange and then she would record the stuff, and it’s very funny ‘cause in season 1 Janina co-wrote it and then recorded all of it, so any weird typos we had, this is like Night Vale too, if we have weird typos Cecil will, he’ll just figure it out and if he can’t, he’ll just email and say something, but Rima would read through the stuff and it was really amazing. She would get to something where we’d be like missing an “an” or “the” or something, and she’d stumble over it and she’d just start laughing and she’s like, “The fuck is this supposed to mean?” [laughter] It was amazing! It is so great to listen to all of that. People are like “do you have bloopers”, I’m like no. When you record by yourself, you don’t have bloopers, so I’m like ah, I just had a season full of them, they’re amazing.

Meg: So yeah. So cool cool cool, is there anything that you would like to leave us with regarding this episode or regarding the early episodes of Welcome to Night Vale, Jeffrey?

Jeffrey: One of the things that I remembered about this episode, this was pretty early on when we were starting to get an audience to this and a lot of people would start, they would get on Tumblr and Twitter and start listening and then like live-blogging it or live-tweeting their listening. Anyway somebody tweeted at me one evening and this is kind of, “I just started Night Vale and I love it”, and I was like and I replied, “Awesome, hope you enjoyed it, thanks so much!” And then she messaged back like later that day, later in the evening on Twitter and she was like “I love your show but. Pteranodons are not dinosaurs.” And I’m like, “Just keep listening to the episode”, she’s like “but they’re not dinosaurs.” [laughter] I’m like “just listen to the episode”. And then she never wrote me back, I’m like I hope you finished the episode!

Meg: That’s the real (-).

Jeffrey: Spoiler alert! [laughter] We, we corrected it so anyway that was all. I just remember that argument it was like, I love your show later like, I’ll never listen to again, pteranodons are not dinosaurs.

Symphony: That’s so funny!

Jeffrey: It was amazing. I love fans, they’re the best.

[they keep laughing so I won’t tag every laughter separately]

Symphony: Right. It’s like how about listen to the whole thing before… Oh, no you just wanna listen to the first like six sentences, great cool.

Jeffrey: Great.

Symphony: Thanks, bro!

Jeffrey: So that’s the lesson is always I love fans, and I love Twitter.

Meg: I mean that’s really why you started making Night Vale, so you could interact with fans on Twitter more.

Jeffrey: [chuckles] It’s, um yeah, well we started making Night Vale ‘cause it was something fun to do, I had no idea anybody would listen to it honestly, I really didn’t. But I’m glad that people showed up. And when I say that and I don’t really mean that like sarcastically, even that interaction with the pteranodon person, I really loved that, it makes me really excited that somebody I don’t know cares that much about something we wrote, is really exciting. That’s the crazy thing, I have, Meg you and I have done theater for fewer than 15 people in a room before.

Meg: Sure thing.

Jeffrey: And it’s disheartening when you look out and you just see a bunch of blank faces and most of them are people that you know personally, that you had all of your friends fill the house. And then you look out and you’re like, wow this is really hard. And then when you do a podcast, it’s really amazing that suddenly you just get a bunch of people you don’t know suddenly like, I care so much about this! It’s really fucking cool.

Meg: It is, it is really cool, it’s really cool to have people have (--) into what we’re working on.

Jeffrey: Yeah, agreed.

Meg: Jeffrey, thank you so much for joining us on Good Morning Night Vale.

Jeffrey: Oh my god…

Meg: We really appreciate having you with us.

Jeffrey: What a delight, it was so nice to see you all again and I hope to see you again very soon.

Hal: Likewise.

Symphony: Yay! Thanks, Dad! [laughter]

Hal: Thank you to everybody who has been listening and sending us emails and calls, we really appreciate it. Thank you for joining, I hope you’re relistening with us and joining us on this journey. Next week is “The Shape in Grove Park”, and we will hear from more of you about your theories, we’ll answer some of your questions, and we’ll comment on some of your comments, so we wanna hear from you, get in touch with us. For Symphony and Meg, I’m Hal Lublin saying [echoing] good morning, Night Vale.

Meg: Good Morning is a Night Vale Presents production. It is hosted by Symphony Sanders, Hal Lublin and Meg Bashwiner. It is edited by Grant Stewart, it is mixed by Vincent Cacchione, it is produced by Meg Bashwiner. Theme music by Disparition. Special thanks to our guest this week, Jeffrey Cranor. Leave us a voicemail at 929-277-2050, or email us at [email protected], to share your theories and ask questions, or to tell us which host you would want to be in a buddy cop story with.

For more information on this show, go to goodmorningnightvale.com and follow us on Facebook and Twitter @NightValeChat. Special thanks to (Christy Gressman), Jeffrey Cranor, Joseph Fink, and Adam Cecil.

Meg: Hello all, welcome to Good Morning Night Vale. My name is Meg Bashwiner and I play the voice of Deb on the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, and I’m here co-hosting or tri-hosting this show wiith – Hal Lublin and Symphony Sanders.

Symphony: Hey, I’m Symphony Sanders and I play Tamika Flynn.

Hal: I’m Hal Lublin and I play Steve Carlsberg.

Meg: We are here discussing episode 3 of Welcome to Night Vale, “Station Management”, on this podcast we dissect and discuss episodes of Welcome to Night Vale, and this episode is “Station Management”.

Hal: Here is the description. “It’s contract renewal time with Station Management and the negotiations get tricky, plus a new city litter initiative, books stop working, and a creeping fear comes to town.”

Meg: So so many things. So yeah, it was such a fun episode to go back to, I forgot how deeply strange and weird this one is and how unsettling it ends. Spoilers for the end: it has a very unsettling end.

Symphony: Yeah espec- I wrote I think just the end: “leaves on a scary note.” Cause you’re not sure what happens and Cecil sounds pretty panicked in this one.

Meg: Yeah this was definitely one of the ones where I went to, like went to the next episode right away, be like do we get a follow-up on this, do we like, I pulled out my script book, I was like what happens next, but spoilers, business as usual.

Hal: I had a weird revelation listening to this episode, and it made me think of, of panels that we’ve done at different Comic Cons. And stuff that Jeffrey and Joseph have said, because people, the fans of this show have created such a strong visual canon for what they think the characters look like. And I know Joseph and Jeffrey have hit upon over and over again that that’s up to your interpretation, we never really descri- like, not that the show is devoid of visual description, but that they don’t pinpoint characters necessarily in exactly what they look like, there’s no third eye or flame tattoos, or any of the things that have become normal. And yet, listening to this…

Symphony: They’re tentacles!

Hal: They were tentacles, right right.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: Sorry, my version is flames. Um…

Symphony: Oh sorry, your head canon.

Hal: But uh it just struck me how visually descriptive this felt. And I dunno if that’s me putting it on, because the music really helps to guide my visual sense when I’m listening to it. But I did feel like there were more descriptions of how things looked, and details than I would have expected just based on the talks that we’ve had about it in the past. Does that make sense?

Symphony: Yeah totally. Like when they are describing what the Station Management potentially looks like through the door, and what the office looks like and how it’s like basically impossible, like almost Tardis style, bigger than it’s supposed to be. And then…

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: When they’re coming to get Cecil I guess, [chuckles] like when he’s hiding under the desk, you know he hears the clicking sound and all that stuff and like, you know you can, he talks about how you can make out certain things throughout that. But also if you look at Telly the Barber, he’s super described in this episode, like what he looks like so I thought that was pretty cool.

Meg: Yeah there was a, they’re really good at describing the monster, and describing what the monster looks like in this episode. And yeah what you just said Symphony, where they talk about what Telly looks like, and Telly’s got a lot of defining characteristic, he has like a [pudgy or paunchy?] belly and…

Symphony: Yeah. [chuckles]

Meg: (Like you have an age). So yeah, Station Management is very very frightening, and it’s definitely a frightening episode. We get in the world of Night Vale, we kill our first intern, we think.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: Intern Chad is eulogized in this episode, and there’s also Jerry, who’s eulogized in this episode, although Chad makes it.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: We know, Chad comes back later…

Symphony: Oh.

Meg: Chad has the episodes about him and…

Symphony: It’s the same Chad?

Meg: It’s the same Chad, he gets out, we just think he’s dead.

Symphony: [laughs] I love that Cecil’s willing to just give up on them like he’s not really sure that they’re even dead, but he’s just like, to their families.

Meg: Yeah and then 80 episodes later, we get more information about Chad. And Chad makes waves.

Symphony: Is this the first time that an intern is eulogized?

Meg: I believe this is our first, (--) intern death count.

Symphony: Ooh. I feel like we should make a list or something.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: You know, of all the interns that have gone to the hereafter. I think that’d be fun.

Meg: Yeah. Or those that we think have gone to the hereafter and don’t, there’s definitely some resurgence, there’s a couple interns that die and then return (to us), so…

Symphony: Yeah and there’s some people that get all like, with the orange juice thing, like they’re not dead necessarily like they just…

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: …go invisible or something?

Hal: Yeah. I love how you’re sort of dropped into the middle of this, of what’s going to become a running joke. And I think that’s, what works so well about it is the idea that this has happened some time ago, but he’s now just getting around to telling the parents, because it’s so commonplace.

Symphony: Right.

Hal: At the station that these interns are gone, that it’s like oh yeah also to your parents, too bad. He was a good kid.

Meg: Yeah, which is the best way to tell someone that their child has died.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: It’s just on the radio program (be like) also… [laughter]

Symphony: Also this person has passed away.

Hal: Another thing that struck me in this episode is another thing that I remember sorta early on when Night Vale kinda blew up and people were looking for a way to describe it quickly, is they would describe it as being like Lovecraftian. And I wonder if this episode is the genesis of that, because they talk about the tentacles coming out, the way he describes Station Management seems kinda Cthulhu-esque…

Symphony: Right.

Hal: And I can imagine that something people held on to and made that the, ‘cause I know that Jeffrey and Joseph sorta don’t subscribe to that, you know they’re like, well it’s not supposed to be Lovecraftian. But this might have been the place where people sorta hooked into that first.

Symphony: Yeah, I think that could have been the origin of that, but you know, I dunno how that got onto Cecil, you know what I mean, or is it just like, almost like a living embodiment of, like maybe he’s part of (-), I don’t know. Or just tentacles look cool.

Hal: Mm hm.

Meg: Tentacles are scary. Yeah octopus are a scary animal, because they’re everywhere and they’re super smart.

Symphony: They are, and they can get out of like tiny holes, have you seen that video..?

Meg: I have seen that video where that…

Symphony: Ooooh, so grody!

Meg: Yeah, good for them though.

Hal: When I was a kid, I had an irrational fear of octopi as a child, like in any depth of water, I thought this is the time, I know how it’s gonna happen, it’ll wrap its legs or or tentacles around me, I’ll be dragged to the bottom of the sea and it won’t even be bites, I’ll be wholly consumed in one gulp. And then I saw Popeye, the Robert Altman Popeye, with that giant sea creature, which somehow in my memory is the world’s biggest octopus. And that was like, that’s what they all look like, it’s coming for me! Guaranteed, let’s not go to the swim club.

Meg: And then there’s Ursula the sea witch.

Symphony: True.

Meg: Which I was a little afraid of Ursula tho a child, but as an adult woman I identify with her. [laughter] So…

Symphony: But she would have to eat you through her mouth, ‘cause she was like a half octopus, she was bottom half octopus, top part woman.

Meg: Yeah. She was like a mer-octopus. Yeah, there’s a little bit confused identity there and that’s fine.

Symphony: Right.

Meg: That’s fine. But yeah, she had like a person top half.

Symphony: Right, yeah.

Meg: [overlapping speech]

Symphony: But I think anatomically if you look at an octopus, like don’t they eat with the bottom bit?

Hal: Yeah. It’s the (-) pit, but it swims.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: That’s what it is.

Meg: Yeah. They’re also delicious and I feel bad, it’s one of the animals that I feel really bad about eating.

Symphony: ‘Cause they’re so smart.

Meg: They’re so smart like, yeah I’m not gonna eat a dolphin or a dog but I’m, you know I occasionally eat a pig. Not a whole pig but a portion of a pig.

Symphony: Do you think it’s because it’s ugly?

Meg: No, I think pigs are beautiful, I just think that they’re so…

Symphony: No octopus, octopus.

Meg: No I think octopus are pretty too. I, I dunno there’s also just, to me it’s like they’re tastier than I am morally attached to them.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: I wanna see that Venn diagram so badly, I need that drawn out for me, please. [laughter]

Meg: Back to the show, we have the whole Carlo’s haircut thing that happens, and it’s first description of Carlos we get in the pilot is that Carlos has perfect hair, and then in this episode we have Telly cutting the perfect hair. And it’s just so crashing for Cecil, and we’re not entirely sure why yet, why this is this horrible thing when it’s just a haircut but it’s like, we’re cool with the interns dying, but the haircut, that’s the problem.

Symphony: And he’s so mad about it, that’s how he goes into the whole like, Telly description, it’s almost like he’s calling on his listeners to go after Telly. Right? Kind of.

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yes. Again, this is like the continuation of, the early seeds planted of Cecil being an unreliable narrator. Because he’s, almost all his reaction and what he personally believes as opposed to the fact, it’s like he had perfect hair, he got it cut, here’s the monster that did it, let’s go get him, he’s terrible.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: Yeah. I definitely have those feelings about previous eyebrow waxers of mine, but that’s for another time and another please.

Hal: Wait no, it’s for right now, what how because, I have a question about this. I have a lot of, I get the hair in the middle like my eyebrows are trying to shake hands all the time.

Symphony: Yeah.

Hal: But I shouldn’t wax it, ‘cause it sounds terrible. Couldn’t, did somebody ever wax your entire eyebrow off by mistake? I’m curious.

Meg: No, never the whole eyebrow, but I definitely had varying degrees of, either looing like Teen Wolf or looking like the most Jersey I possibly could be, having been born in New Jersey.

Symphony: (--).

Meg: Yeah, 1998 Drew Barrymore, like…

Symphony: Yees! I was actually looking at old pictures of myself ‘cause it was new headshot day recently. And I was like, god my eyebrows were so thin! But it was like, the look was to have thin very sharp eyebrows and now it’s a little bit more, you know, you gotta fleek it, you gotta fleek the eyebrow.

Meg: Yeah. You gotta fleek it and sometimes you go to get your eyebrows done, as this is the beauty podcast where we talk about getting your eyebrows done. And you pay them depending on where you go and anywhere from 8 to 25 dollars and they do nothing, they take like a little bit off and you’re like I look exactly the same. Or you go and they take way too much. Or you find the perfect person and they do a great job and then you move, or they move.

Symphony: Or they move. Something happens.

Meg: So Hal, don’t get your eyebrows waxed ‘cause it’s just, you’re setting yourself up for a new part in your life where you can be disappointed, by yourself and by others.

Hal: Oh another one? Not interested, yeah I’ll pass, hard pass on that.

Symphony: Well do it yourself or have your wife do it.

Hal: I don’t want… Jennifer! Do you wanna wax my eyebrows? She’s not answering, I don’t think she’s interested.

Symphony: [chuckles]

Meg: If it’s just the center and you’re a dude, you’re already shaving part of your face, you can just fft, just right down the center with that razorblade, you don’t have to worry about it.

Hal: Yeah!

Meg: You’re not-

Hal: I do and then, but I also think, what if I create like a, what if they get too far apart and I always look surprised?

Meg:  But it’s a good thing to always look surprised, you always look like you’re feeling something.

Symphony: Which is different from normal if…

Meg: You’ll have resting surprise face.

Hal: Mmmm, I don’t wanna fool people, I feel nothing.

Symphony: So let’s talk about the contract negotiation, huh? Normally in the general contract negotiation, you go back and forth right, you talk to people. But they don’t get to see them. So he slides an envelope under the door, and oh no the envelope gets slid to him and he has to yell his response through the door. What do you think about that? In terms of uh, business.

Hal: I’m against it. [chuckles] Although it does feel like, that feels to me like the frustration of dealing with office politics.

Symphony: Yeah.

Hal: Blown up, which I think the best sort of fantastic writing has some basis in reality so you have kind of a handle to hold onto, that brings you into it. And that idea that you’re not being heard by the people above you, and they just sorta spit out whatever they feel. And you have to be careful about what you shout, because you don’t wanna make them angry. You know, I think there are a lot of people in their jobs who constantly feel threatened, as if today’s the today I’m going to be found out, today is day I’m gonna be fired. And so you’re walking on eggshells and I think this sorta encapsulates that feeling of general negotiation.

Symphony: Right.

Meg: Yeah. I will say it’s not a good business practice, although I’m open to new ways of doing this. I mean we’ve been negotiating contracts and (--) for years that we’ve been normally doing it so, out of the box thinking right, try something new. Yeah, this is interesting look at the office culture and how it is like, how we are blowing it up to, to poke holes in what it is and showing it as the big monster. Another thing that they talk about, (--) next are talking about the Night Vale Daily Journal, and how it is an unbiased, it is an unbiased publication. Yeah it’s so, interesting where we are right now with our relationship to the media and Night Vale’s relationship to the media and this was, this aired six years ago, this episode almost six years ago, and that was the relationship to the media then, which is even more magnified now, where it’s this focus on being unbiased and unbought. And there’s actually more of that stuff in the next episode, it’s kind of an interesting look on how the Night Vale media has the similar threat to the media in our world.

Hal: I keep being hit with this sense of dread as I listen to the show. Which I’m enjoying, I’m enjoying going back through, but I keep thinking to myself, I wish this was less relevant. I wish I was listening to it as a time capsule rather than, uh, something that actually was not only expressing frustration with how things were then, but it seems just more magnified now and that part of it is a little painful.

Meg: And they should have told us if they did, they should have (let it) so they could have turned out some voters in Pennsylvania, if they had.

Symphony: Mm, mm hm.

Meg: Yeah, send Hillary to Michigan and really just… [chuckles]

Symphony: Yeah definitely I was thinking about that, how people are biased against our media because of perceived partisanship. And uh, having that be such a big deal in Night Vale is pretty poignant, now going back through it but like, did they realize at that time that it was going to be that way?

Meg: I’m gonna say yes 100 per cent.

Symphony: Right!

Hal: [laughs]

Meg: No.

Symphony: If you’re a seer, you should really just like put it out there.

Hal: (Mockeagan?).

Symphony: (Milchefun?) Can’t wait ‘til we get to that episode. [laughs] And like now that’s a good thing that people say, do you think (-) got that from Night Vale?

Meg: I’m gonna say yes 100 per cent. No.

Symphony: And then uh, Larry Leroy, but I dunno why every time I hear his name I think Larry LeRoy. I dunno why.

Hal: There’s no other way, no other way.

Meg: So you wanna make it a little fancier, that’s a good impulse.

Symphony: I’m a fancy gal, that’s why.

Meg: I loved the traffic report in this episode, it’s hilarious.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: It’s, yeah they’re breaking down the trope of a news report and giving it just a hilarious traffic report where it’s just someone watching traffic and reporting back on that.

Symphony: And imagine like what Cecil’s, what the studio must look like if he’s like oh no, that guy you know. It’s like can you actually see it or he’s getting a play-by-play, what’s happening?

Hal: Right, is it the store front radio station from Northern Exposure. Or I always imagine the studio is more of a vault, and maybe this is only when I go uh, when we do live shows and I go on stage I’m supposed to be in his studio, I get a very specific idea in my head of what it looks like. And it’s never anywhere outside, it’s definitely deep within the building. Like no windows…

Meg: Yeah, I don’t have windows in my head canon about this, OK so my head canon for the Night Vale radio is just where they were, like the Frasier recording studio but like bizarro Frasier. So it’s like…

Symphony: So the producer is like outside, like Roz.

Meg: Yeah. It’s like the Frasier studio but everything is weird. [laughter]

Hal: In my mind, similar to when we were discussing the bathroom, what I thought that looks like, I always think it looks like a studio that was top of the line renovated in 1958. And it’s been 50 or 60 years, and it’s not falling apart, but it definitely needed to be updated at least 30-40 years ago.

Meg: It’s got those mid-modern vibes, but not in a good way.

Symphony: Yeah. And I always in my head think that there’s always flashing lights, just like flickering lights everywhere. Everyone’s (-) to epileptic fits, you know? [laughter]

Meg: They can never get those halogen bulbs in just right.

Symphony: So Cecil is recovering from Lyme disease?

Meg: That’s, that was yeah, there’s a fun fan theory that we’ll talk about with that, when we get to the fan theory section. But yeah offhanded Cecil is just like oh that’s also, when the creeping dread comes in, it could just be recovering from Lyme disease. Which is good, I’m glad that Cecil was diagnosed and got treatment for Lyme disease, ‘cause it’s a very bad, very serious disease.

Symphony: I know I was thinking about that I’m like can you be um, like you can lose faculties of your legs and stuff?

Meg: Yeah. Lots of not good things can happen to your body from Lyme disease. Your joints and there’s, yeah it’s a really bad one and it’s really often misdiagnosed or not diagnosed.

Symphony: And it’s ticks right, ticks?

Meg: Yeah, ticks are carriers of it. Very um, the ticks feed on, they’re called deer ticks, but uh I think it’s really the ticks are feeding on the mice, and the mice spread the disease.

Symphony: I know no one can see my face right now, but it’s in a [chuckles] upturned scowl.

Hal: Disgusted snarl.

Symphony: [laughs] That’s a much better description.

Hal: Yeah, I remember the Lyme disease being referenced on the Thrilling Adventure Hour crossover episode. And like going, wait, really? For some reason in my head then, that was where it was introduced. But it was established that was canon, like I found that I think in rehearsal, that it had already been established I was like, boy this is, this is levels of deep that I have not visited, ‘cause I couldn’t, it’s like a throwaway!

Symphony: Right! And even now going back to it, and I was like oh yeah, I forgot about that. Because it isn’t referenced and when it is it’s just like, oh yeah. You know, there’s just so many things it’s like oh yeah, this is just the way it is. I have Lyme disease.  

Meg: There’s also a really good Big Rico’s ad read that happens during this.

Symphony: Yes!

Meg: We get the slogan, “no one does a slice like Big Rico”.

Symphony: That is also like the only pizza in town, because literally all the other ones had been burned down.

Hal: Oh my god.

Symphony: You know, and it’s like, it’s mandated for you to eat at Big Rico’s. But I kinda wanna eat there still.

Meg: Yeah I mean it’s pizza.

Symphony: I love pizza.

Hal: I do too, but I have a feeling their pizza is like Roundtable. And if you like Roundtable, there’s nothing wrong with that except that the pizza is terrible and you could do better. I want you to do better. I’m like for you, this is not about what I think, I want better for you, in life. You deserve it.

Symphony: Wait, what’s a roundtable?

Hal: Exactly.

Symphony: Uh.

Hal: It’s like Domino’s but not as good, is that painting the picture for you?

Symphony: Another disgusted scowl. [laughs]

Hal: There it is, yeah.

Symphony: I mean I feel a little biased as I am a Chicagoan, that you know pizza is where my heart is, and my heart is directly in my stomach.

Hal: It’s a knife and fork food for you, because it’s deep dish, right?

Symphony: Actually, yeah I do like deep dish, but like only occasionally, you can’t eat it all the time otherwise, especially not me ‘cause I’m like, have lactose intolerance so…

Hal: Ooh!

Symphony: That cheese, woo boy!

Meg: You’re also a little sensitive to tomato sauce sometimes, too you get the reflux.

Symphony: I get the heartburns.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: I get the acid reflux. But yeah, I personally like a nice crispy thin-crust pizza with, I’m more of a topping person, not a crust girl.

Meg: I love crust. I just had good Jersey pizza from a place called Esposito’s in Cedar Grow, New Jersey, shoutout. And it’s…

Symphony: Sponsor us.

Meg: They just, oh oh, seriously scatter my ashes there…

Hal: Officially sponsors.

Meg: The place is excellent. And we asked for broccoli and they forgot to put the broccoli on, we just got a plain and it was delicious, I think toppings are great but you can really measure a pizzeria on their plain.

Symphony: And it’s like your toppings to sauce to (cheese) to crust ratio. You know, that really is gonna make the difference.

Meg: Yeah, their crust is perfect, it’s like Michealangelo just did the Italian gesture of kiss noise thing like…

Symphony: You’re like [smack, smack]…

Meg: Whenever I’m doing rapid fire Q and A’s at panels I always ask Joseph and Jeffrey whoever I’m doing the lightning round with, Big Rico’s or Moonlite All-Nite?

Symphony: And what’s usually the answer?

[ad break]

Meg: Hey, it’s Meg. You might know me from the podcast that you’re listening to, or the other podcast that you like to listen, Welcome to Night Vale. I am also the tour manager and tour director for Night Vale Presents, and have spent the past year sending over 1,000 emails and looking at many spreadsheets and shouting into the void. Now it is time for you to shout back from the void at me and tell me that you are going to get tickets to the brand new 2018-2019 Welcome to Night Vale live world tour. That’s right, we’re going into the world. You know the world, you live there. We’re going to over 40 cities in North America, in Europe, in the UK. You probably are near one of them, and if you’re not, I’m so sorry and I am the person to yell at, please don’t tweet at Joseph Jeffrey and Cecil. But speaking of Cecil and Symphony and Disparition and yet to be named guest stars, we are going to be coming to you to bring you this brand new show which deals with – secrets in the world of Night Vale. I have a secret: seeing you at live shows is my favorite thing. Tickets and information at welcometonightvale.com.

[ad break ends]

Meg: What do you pick for Big Rico’s or Moonlite All-Nite?

Symphony: I think I, oh that’s tough. I think I’m gonna go with Big Rico’s.

Meg: OK.

Symphony: Even tho I do like diner food.

Meg: Halligator?

Hal: I love pizza so much. And now it’s the last thing we talked about, so like a dog I’m like that, but…

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: I can’t, I grew up going to diners, my favorite restaurant growing up was the Country Club diner on Cottman Avenue, shoutout, another sponsor of the show, bakery and restaurant, in northeast Philadelphia. And so I just love diners. If there’s a diner somewhere, I will draw Jennifer in there, like we should go to the diner, it’s the best restaurant on Earth!

Symphony: Are you Guy Fieri?

Hal: How dare you.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: How dare you, never in a million years. Meg, what about you?

Meg: I’m gonna go with Moonlite All-Nite for similar reasons to you, Hal, it’s that I’ve got that northeast diner nostalgia. I always said I wanted to have my wedding at the Six Brothers diner in (-) New Jersey. [laughter] I didn’t have my wedding there, but I should have…

Symphony: Classic.

Meg: …now going back and thinking about it. But yeah.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: Well you can have your…

Meg: ..second wedding there? Oh. [laughs]

Symphony: Yeah. I was gonna say rededication but that’s not the right word. You’re not a building.

Hal: Renew your vows.

Meg: Renewing your vows.

Symphony: Yes renew, yes it’s…

Meg: And we really should be including more diner foods in our vows next time we (go around to it), so I’ll talk to Joseph about that.

Symphony: You’re the bacon to my eggs. You know.

Meg: Absolutely. You’re my veggie omelet, I’m your Greek salad.

Hal: We will stick together like raisins in rice pudding.

Meg: So we’re going to hear some fan comments, questions and theories about this episode. But first, let’s talk about the weather.

Symphony: So today’s weather was “Bill and Annie” by Chuck Brod+sky, and it was saad!

Meg: It was a sad one. What I loved is that at the end of this episode right before the weather, Cecil’s like hiding under a desk, he’s broadcasting from the end of his life, we don’t know what’s gonna happen there’s like, ominous music playing and then all of a sudden we are in this twangy folk song.

Symphony: Yeah but it’s, one of the story ones where you’re like oh it’s about people and relationships and love and loss and it’s pretty beautiful, as many of our songs on the weather are.

Hal: Yeah, it’s a really nice piece of music. For some reason I didn’t attach it to what was going on, it just felt like a break from the intensity, which I was OK with.

Symphony: Mm hm.

Hal: That in general is my relationship with the weather in Night Vale is I don’t always attach it to what’s going on, it just feels like this is a break in the action, and then when we come back, our conclusion.

Symphony: I agree.

Meg: Yeah I have that vibe too. This situation though was like, what a night-day shift like, what a bounce..

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: ..from like the ominous tones to ba-na-now-now, that’s not how it sounds, Chuck I’m sorry [laughter] that’s not how it sounds, I was not trying to do a bad banjo sound. But it’s just a different tone, musically.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: Oh and when we come back from this weather, Cecil is still hiding under his desk and that’s when we get another great description of the Station Management. But yeah it does kind of, the weather did take us out of that tense sort of situation and gives you like a respite from that adrenaline-fueled fear.

Meg: And we come back and it’s not resolved.

Symphony: Oh no.

Hal: Yeah!

Meg: It was, there was none of that nice like..

Symphony: Oh no.

Meg: …(-) cleans up while the weather happens that occasionally, that happens in a lot of episodes, it’s just like everything gets all cleaned up underneath the weather, we come back and we figure out what happened, but this one it was like oh no no, we’re still in it, we are exactly where we left off. With our narrator in peril.

Hal: I liked that it felt, it was refreshing. It was refreshing just based on, I mean the first two episodes but also like that’s always my memory is we come back, it gets resolved and obviously for the live shows it’s different, it kinda has to, you don’t wanna leave the audience on a cliffhanger and then say alright, have a safe drive. But for that reason, it felt like oh this is, I’m more on the edge of my seat and it does a great job of me as a listener being drawn in for the next episode, and and wondering what the resolution will be, what’s gonna happen. And at this point we’re only three episodes in, so it would have been easy to assume..

Symphony: Right.

Hal: Is Cecil not gonna be the narrator anymore, will we have another person next week so, it’s interesting to imagine what it would be like to be listening to this, when it was first released with no other material, you know at this point. You don’t have a ton of people to discuss fan theory with ‘cause it’s not the biggest podcast in the world. So I love that idea that we’re left with a bunch of questions, not only about this character but what it means for the overall show.

Symphony: And especially, when yeah it is so early in the thing and, when they’ve already killed off two interns so easily, so what is it like, we’re not technically super attached to the host, but thank goodness he was OK. Sorry, spoilers, spoilers.

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: Six years later.

Meg: Do we wanna take a look at some of what the fans are saying..

Symphony: Yes!

Hal: So much, so much.

Meg: We asked our lovely fans to write to us or call our Google voice number with information, comments, questions, theories about the first ten episodes of the show, and we got such a great response and I’ve had just the best time today going through that Gmail inbox looking at all the fun things that you sent me. And to let everyone know, I read every email and listened to every voicemail, so you have been heard. If you’re not spoken about right now, just know that a woman sat in her office and looked at your thing. And that woman was me.

Hal: It’s worth pointing that at this point we’re recording this, I mean it’ll be listened to later but we’re recording this in the beginning of May, and nobody has any idea what they were submitting questions, comments, and theories for. These are blind submissions that you looked through, which it blows my mind.

Meg: Yeah. It was so great…

Hal: I’m very excited.

Meg: ..to get such a response for this show that doesn’t exist yet. So uh, well it exists, just not to you but it does now, we’re in a time loop.

Symphony: (Dill-oo, dill-oo, dill-oo)!

Meg: I dunno what to tell future Meg, I guess keep flossing, it’ll only get better from here. [laughter] So we have from Elizabeth, Elizabeth writes: “In episode 3, while the creeping fear is passing thru town, Cecil mentions his reaction to it could be part of his battle of Lyme disease. I personally excuse the ‘boringness’ of the first few episodes by headcanoning that he is just exhausted from his health problems.”

Symphony: Ah!

Meg: And I will say that Elizabeth wrote us a lovely email where Elizabeth talked about how they love the show and how it’s great and every episode has a different meaning for them and lots of wonderful things, so but Elizabeth did say that the first couple of episodes where we were finding our feet were growing to the par that Elizabeth would come to expect from us. So uh, I guess describing it as boring, Elizabeth’s not saying bad things but, Elizabeth said other nice things anyway. so..

Symphony: Constructive.

Meg: Constructive, so yeah I think that’s funny that we can just, us finding our feet with making the show could just be written off as Cecil’s battle with Lyme disease, that’s funny.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: Well it’s a testament to how much Elizabeth loves the show, that they were able to go back and say, we’ll I’m gonna retcon all of this, it’s clearly the Lyme disease. But also here’s an interesting thing that I learned years ago I was working on a TV pilot and I, writing it and I went back and watched like what are the greatest pilots of all time. And by and large, the pilot episodes of your favorite shows are nowhere near where they wind up. It’s very few..

Symphony: Right.

Hal: Like Cheers was there right out of the gate, Mary Tyler Moore was pretty close, but a lot of, like I’m a huge Friends fan. The first episode of Friends it was great in 1995, but when you watch it now knowing how great it is in season 3 4 and 5, you go, this is not that good.

Symphony: Yeah I think anytime you’re developing characters and introducing a whole new world to someone, I mean there’s gonna be stuff number one you as the audience don’t know, right? So you have to be patient to understand what’s happening in the world, like you’re not gonna understand everything, it’s not like… It’s like when you’re born, you don’t know everything, right? You’ll only find it out soon thereafter.

Hal: Right.

Meg: Exactly. Yeah this is episode 3 and, these first 10 episodes that we’ve asked audience members to react to is, this is the first time that Joseph and Jeffrey ever wrote a podcast, this is the first time that Cecil ever recorded a podcast, this is the third time Cecil ever sat behind a microphone with a Night Vale script and created this world, so attempt number 3 looks a lot different than attempt number 126.

Symphony: Right.

Meg: So I think that it’s really great that we were at such a strong point in the beginning, when we were really starting from nothing uh, to be where it is at the beginning of the show, and to get to where it is today.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: So it was a little boring at first when compared to, you know the sparks of Strex Corp and the sparks of all sorts of crazy things that happened in Night Vale, but it can be a little bit boring in comparison to all of those things that have been developed and exploited.

Symphony: But I dunno, I’m one of those people that is really in it for the journey though, you know like I don’t need it to be wham bam… out of the gate, I kinda wanna be like oh, who is this person, what’s happening, whatever. And especially with Night Vale being soo weird, like it’s gotta be really tough to be like, oh yes now you understand all the inner workings of, you know this and you should love this guy.

Meg: Cool, so we have Fiona has written in and said, Fiona’s theory is interns don’t die, they find their way out of Night Vale.

Symphony: Mmmm!

Meg: That’s an interesting take and offers hope for all of those interns out there.

Symphony: But as you mentioned, Chad does come back so he didn’t, he’s not…

Meg: Chad comes back with a story.

Symphony: [laughs] That is a pretty interesting theory tho, that they just like escaped Night Vale. Or somehow were thrust out, maybe through some sort of, you know, door to a different dimension or something, who knows.

Meg: We have from (Gwen) and I hope I’m saying your name right, from episodes 1-10, (Gwen) says: “My favorite episode is probably number 3, Station Management. I love scary monsters and this episode nailed how bone-chillingly scary Station Management is, how it can decimate anyone’s life and how it is not a force to be reckoned with. We may not know anything about its appearance other than terrifying, but honestly I think Station Management is cool and scary as heck. Hearing its footfalls and roars was so thrillingly honest, I think Night Vale’s medium is really what made it feel as intimately as it did.” So…

Hal: I have to agree with that 100 percent, I listened to this with headphones on, and it really but again it’s enough description plus the music, and then the moments where there is no music. There aren’t a ton of sound effects in this. You really only have Cecil and, and the stuff that Disparition is doing. So the way those work together it really I mean, again there was a time when the audio medium was the way we told stories and the way we ingested stories, and it’s such a great medium in that it requires you to use your imagination, you will fill in the blanks. And the way they set up the terror in this does that beautifully, I think it’s a very well made point, like (Gwen).

Meg: And then we have one more from Sarah. Sarah writes: “Leann Hart has been one of my favorite characters since she was introduced. I really relate to her, her love of journalism, her innovative ideas, her willingness to blatantly deny things that she has done, and her hatchet abilities. Even though all of those characteristics weren’t fleshed out in these first episodes, the groundwork was laid for a fantastic woman.” And then also from Sarah we have a theory. Sarah’s theory is “Cecil 100 percent had something to do with Telly’s fate, whether through some sort of mental powers of his own, either conscious or unconscious, or through some other entity that he has a vested interest in Cecil’s happiness. Telly definitely barbed, barbered the wrong stunning coif.”

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: So from Sarah, yeah I like, we didn’t really talk about Leann Hart, this is the first episode where Leann Hart is introduced and I really liked how Sarah describes her and how Sarah connected to Leann. And yeah, we were talking about earlier in the episode how Cecil has some beef with Telly and is maybe putting some stuff out there in the universe for Telly. [chuckles]

Symphony: [chuckles] Yeah, I definitely agree with that theory that like, Cecil had something to do with whether it was him directly or him just like, calling on his listeners to, you know, go get Telly like to roll up on him, hey boys let’s roll up on this fool cutting people’s hair. But I always love the characters that like necessarily don’t have a voice, but you always hear about them, like the fire chief Ramona Encarnación and Leann Hart and, she’s not the one that’s the rock?

Meg: No, no.

Symphony: No that’s uh…

Meg: The river rock.

Symphony: I’m gonna remember that later. But yeah, I always love those characters ‘cause they’re so interesting and they give a depth to the world of Night Vale, and it makes it even more strange ‘cause you’re like, why do they have a take on this issue or they were at this thing? So I dunno, it just fleshes out the universe.

Meg: So those are our fan questions, comments and fan theories. More information in our credits about how you can talk to us about your fan theories, comments, and questions about future episodes of Welcome to Night Vale on Good Morning, Night Vale. So this brings us to the end, y’all, of episode number, 3, “Good Morning Station Management”. I wanna thank everyone for listening, I wanna thank Hal and Symphony for being beautiful beautiful creatures. Next week, we are going to be doing episode 4, “Good Morning PTA Meeting”, where we will speak with our guest Jeffrey Cranor, who is the co-writer of Welcome to Night Vale and your real Dad. So we have an exciting episode coming up next week with Jeffrey.

Symphony: He is our Daddy. He is Daddy!

Meg: He is our Daddy.

Hal: Papa!

Meg: [laughter] But until then, good morning Night Vale, good morning.

Meg: Good Morning is a Night Vale Presents production. It is hosted by Symphony Sanders, Hal Lublin and Meg Bashwiner. It is edited by Grant Stewart, it is mixed by Vincent Cacchione, it is produced by Meg Bashwiner. Theme music by Disparition. Special thanks to our fans who submitted their thoughts, questions, and deeply held beliefs to us. Leave us a voicemail at 929-277-2050, or email us at [email protected], to share your theories and ask questions, or to tell us which host you would prefer to receive an organ donation form. 

For more information on this show, go to goodmorningnightvale.com and follow us on Facebook and Twitter @NightValeChat. Special thanks to (Christy Gressman), Jeffrey Cranor, Joseph Fink, and Adam Cecil.

Meg: Here we are, episode 2 of “Good Morning Night Vale”, Glow Cloud episode! Awesome, welcome to it, my name is Meg Bashwiner and I work on “Welcome to Night Vale”, that’s me.

Hal: I’m Hal Lublin, I am the voice of Steve Carlsberg and just an interested citizen.

Symphony: And I’m Symphony Sanders, Tamika Flynn, your local cat-headed… lady. [laughter]

Hal: I’m an Egyptian goddess, got a cat for a head.

Meg: We’re in a real (punchy) place. But thank you so much for joining us again on this Night Vale recap show, and today we are recapping episode two of “Welcome to Night Vale”, which is entitled “Glow Cloud”. So we are, this podcast aims to take a look back on the episodes of “Welcome to Night Vale” and talk about our feelings after relistening to them, and telling some fun stories about the making of them. So the Glow Cloud episode description is: “A mysterious glowing cloud makes its way across Night Vale. Plus new boy scouts hierarchy, community events calendar, and a PTA bake sale for a great cause.” That’s our description. What are our reactions and revelations, guys?

Hal: Well this is the episode that launched a million umbrella-based cosplays. [laughter] Isn’t it?

Symphony: Yes.

Meg: Sure is.

Hal: The thing I see the most, wherever I go, if there’s Night Vale cosplay, are always a ton of Cecils and Carloses of course. But the number of Glow Clouds I’ve seen is staggering, and I forgot that it showed up this early on the show. There’s another one, we talked about this last week, with how much of the mythology is put in place, and it’s here again: Khoshekh, the Glow Cloud, John Peters –just, it’s crazy.

Symphony: Yeah and when you look at the Glow Cloud cosplay, you can really see the variety there. Like there’s the Glow Cloud where it’s just like, oh I’m just gonna have an umbrella and then other ones where I am the cloud and they were like a big ball gown. Funnily enough, I was at a parade this past weekend, and there was a woman who had a clear umbrella that had cotton business all over the top, and I was like I just yelled: “Glow Cloud!” She was not a Glow Cloud, she was just a cloud, because there was rain coming down, there were crystal beads coming down from it. But that’s how influenced I am by this.

Meg: It’s permeated, permeates you even at parades.

Symphony: [laughs] Yes! This episode also talks about Hiram McDaniels for the first time.

Meg: Yeah, we get our first Hiram. And this is like, there’s a lot of us interesting characters that make their way into this episode. We kind of, in the first episode we get angels, so that’s kind of our first weird thing that happens. This episode we get the Glow Cloud and we get Hiram McDaniels, which are just very much other type of characters. We also get John Peters, you know, the farmer. Which not to say John Peters is basic, not to align John Peters with basic, dumb, but yeah so we get the Glow Cloud and we get Hiram McDaniels all in one episode.

Symphony: I can’t remember, is this the one where the guy with the Indian head just, I can’t remember if it’s this one or the one…

Meg: The Apache Tracker.

Symphony: The Apache Tracker.

Meg: They mention the Apache Tracker in the first episode, but they call him Indian Tracker. This is the first time that the Apache Tracker is corrected.

Symphony: And they talk about what a racist asshole he is.

Meg: Yes. Also in this episode, we get Khoshekh, which is a floating cat.

Symphony: Aww!

Meg: So we’ve got a glowing cloud, a floating cat, and literally a five-headed dragon. So these are the characters that are starting to show up in Night Vale, things that are not your basic farmer, your basic racist cultural appropriator, but things that are definitely broad strokes in the supernatural.

Hal: Khoshekh is my favorite, bar none favorite Night Vale character. Like bar none.

Meg: Yeah?

Hal: I’m not a cat person, I’m a dog person, I’m a publically awoved and known dog person. But if I could have a Khoshekh, like something about the description in the story of Khoshekh as it develops, I for some reason connect to that character. And that is the thing, more than anything else that is talked about in the show, that I have a very clear picture in my head of…

Symphony: Yes.

Hal: What I think Khoshekh looks like, what I think the bathroom looks like. And I don’t know why, I don’t know why that’s the thing I connect with, but it’s intense.

Symphony: Honest?

Meg: Will you talk about your head canon for Khoshekh, and for the bathroom?

Symphony: Yes.

Hal: You know, I…

Symphony: Cause I will.

Hal: Go ahead, you talk about Khoshekh. You talk about Khoshekh, I’ll talk about the bathroom, how’s that?

Symphony: Well I-I think they go hand in hand, let’s be honest.

Hal: True.

Symphony: [chuckles] True. So Khoshekh for me, even before he’s described even more like, because he’s floating up like, a certain amount off the ground and whatnot. I just imagine him being, almost like balled up like he’s just about to nap all the time. But honestly I always imagine the bathroom as having that one flickering light. But it’s constant, it’s never actually bright enough to see anything, it’s just kind of like flickery. It’s like that weird bathroom that you’d probably back out of.

Hal: That’s hilarious, see I always picture a black cat or initially my image was a black cat, but you know when you pick a cat up by its middle, and its paws are sort of dangling?

Symphony: Yeah.

Hal: Like it’s sort of hunched around, that’s the state that Khoshekh is constantly in, like just being picked up by an unseen force, and sort of (--) like a glow. And then the bathroom is the kind that you would find at like, your elementary school where they updated the building in like 1955, and it hasn’t gone into disrepair, it just keeps getting cleaned and they’ll never add anything new to it. So you’ll have original paper towels, original soap dispensers, the separate sinks, it’s got odd fluorescent lighting, and the weird like the tile pattern where it’s all white tile and every once in a while there’s a tile that’s got some color to it.

Symphony: Yes.

Hal: And they were like, this is a great pattern.

Symphony: Children will like this.

Meg: Great construction in the 50’s. My canon for the bathroom is like a little bit more early 80’s, where the choices are made like the formica countertops, they’re pink formica countertops.

Symphony: Wow.

Hal: Yes.

Meg: And my head canon for Khoshekh is an orange cat.

Symphony: Wow.

Meg: It’s like a fluffy orange cat, like Jeffrey’s cat Simone. Jeffrey Cranor has a gorgeous cat named Simone, who is a big fluffy orange cat, and I kind of picture Khoshekh before we got more descriptors about Khoshekh, this is the cat I pictured like a fluffy, kind of bouncy orange cat.

Symphony: He sounds like this: [creaky] Meeeea, meeeea.

Hal: I feel like I reject any version of Khoshekh described beyond what I imagined in my head. [laughter] I’m unwilling to let go of the head canon.

Symphony: You’re stuck on that.

Hal: It’s a very fan thing to do. It’s like no, what they said it’s wrong, clearly it’s a black cat being picked up by its middle in a 1950’s bathroom. I should write a letter! [laughter]

Meg: Fans, we would love to hear from you. Tell us about your station men’s bathroom headcanon and your Khoshekh pre-any desriptions, your Glow Cloud episode Khoshekh canon, tell us that canon. Great, so yeah but we’ve devoted a lot of time to speaking about Khoshekh…

Symphony: He’s important.

Meg: But it’s just that Khoshekh becomes such an important character.

Hal: Yes.

Meg: All of these characters become super…

Symphony: You is important. You know? You is kind, you is (-).. [laughs]

Hal: You is smart.

Symphony: Look, Khoshekh I mean, for obviously as we toured, Khoshekh became very popular on the social meeds.

Meg: What is that sort for?

Symphony: Social media.

Meg: Oh, OK. [laughter]

Hal: The soc-meeds.

Symphony: For nothing, it’s just…

Meg: The soc-soc-meeds-meeds.

Symphony: It’s just as long. It’s actually longer. But I have to make a confession, you guys.

Hal: Oh, oh boy.

Symphony: Khoshekh is gone.

Meg: You lost Khoshekh?

Symphony: I lost it. I’m so sad.

Hal: What?

Meg: OK, OK. OK.

Symphony: I had put him in my suitcase, and I think he’s in Hampton Inn somewhere.

Meg: He’s not in Australia?

Symphony: No. Cause he didn’t make it to Australia. I realized when I was in Australia that I didn’t have him, and I was like oh I must have just left him, cause I put him back on my bookshelf when I come home. And then I got home, he was not there.

Meg: Do we tell the listening audience that Khoshekh was the stuffed cat that was gifted to you (--) talk about that?

Symphony: Oh I guess maybe we should tell them that.

Meg: So there’s, a wonderful fan gifted us a Khoshekh that Symphony has taken around the world. And now Khoshekh has found a new home.

Symphony: In the void.

Meg: We’re not sure where or what it all means, but no, Khoshekh had an important life. The stuffed Khoshekh.

Symphony: I will gladly accept a new one to bring with me on new tours.

Hal: You know, to bookend this a little bit, one time I sneaked a Hiram McDaniels that somebody had given, which was like a five-headed dragon costume that they had painted. So you had all the different colored heads and it sat on my desk at work. And then I had an intern one summer who has a Night Vale fan, and so as a gift to her at the end of her internship, I gave her the Hiram.

Meg: That’s nice of you, way to go Hal, look at you really taking the lesson of internship.

Symphony: Friends and fans. I don’t know if you know this, but Hal Lublin is the sweetest mushiest lover that there ever was. He will give you the shirt off his back. Not really, because he only has five shirts.

Hal: [laughs hysterically]

Meg: He’s a generos-

Symphony: He’s generous, yes.

Meg: He has 150 shirts and they’re all just Welcome to Night Vale/Thrilling Adventure Hour cross(over) T-shirts. [laughter]

Hal: I do have multiples of that shirt.

Meg: As you should.

Hal: And I did not do the smart thing, where I like one of them is like this is for later. I just wear them both, one of them is the one with the hole and one of them is the one without the hole, but they’re both like, I’ve almost gone to the point where I’m like, could I go to, WeLoveFine made those T-shirts I think. And I thought can I go to them and get like the mold for it somewhere or something, can I get more? I need more!

Meg: Send you the (--) file and then you can print as many as you want.

Hal: Yes, I could make my own!

Symphony: That will be the only shirt Hal wears ever.

Hal: But I have a hoodie and a hat and socks and pants.

Meg: A tuxedo, have it printed just like, (--) tuxedo.

Hal: Every time I wear that shirt, it’s an opportunity to tell somebody that I’m part of the show. Either one. And then I’ll get..

Meg: Either one.

Hal: ..somebody’s like, great shirt and I always get to go, which one? And they’re like, well Night Vale, I’m like I play Steve Carlsberg.

Symphony: And they’re like whooooa!

Hal: They’re like, OK, great good job. And then I’m like, I need to go to therapy about this. This all needs to be unpacked, why do I need to do this? That’s what this podcast is really about, forget the episode 2, let me lay down on the couch for a second.

Meg: Hal, I hate to tell you. This is actually not a podcast, this is an intervention.

Hal: Oh no! Oh, you’re gonna read letters?

Meg: Knowing you, the best way to get you in an intervention would be to tell you you have to be on a podcast! [laughter]

Hal: You tricked me! You did, that was a good one.

Symphony: Gotcha! Got him!

Meg: It’s a trap, podcaster Hal Lublin trap.

Symphony: It’s a trap!

Meg: (--) trap a Hal Lublin it’s like, you wanna be on my podcast? [laughter] If you’re looking to snare the most dangerous game of Lublin.

Symphony: Oh my god!

Hal: It’s true, I admit it. can I, I have a question, bring it back to the episode?

Meg: Yes, please.

Hal: When they call the Apache Tracker an asshole, is that the only time there’s ever been cursing on Night Vale, cause I do not remember cursing really being a part of the show? I mean I know it’s not a regular part of it.

Symphony: Yeah, they don’t drop F bombs.

Meg: I was struck by that too, the a-hole comment. I can’t speak to the catalog of cusses on this show, but I do know that it’s pretty much, they do make an effort to not write cusses into the show, and then when we do get that little “explicit” logo, it’s because of the weather, because we don’t censor our weather because we’re not gonna censor someone else’s art. But you know, Cecil’s on the radio. And maybe I don’t know about the rules of the radio on Night Vale, but if you can say F or S or effing S. But..

Symphony: Effing your S, effing your A and S.

Meg: That’s (a lot).

Symphony: Hey Night Vale fans, reach out to us, let us know if you’ve catalogued the cuss words, the curses, however you say it.

Meg: I actually say curses but I feel like it’s funnier to say cusses.

Symphony: My grandma always said cuss, and it’s like “oh you shouldn’t cuss”. But then curse words, that’s very proper. You know be like [prissy] “Don’t say curse words”.

Hal: Profanities.

Symphony: Yes. [chuckles]

Hal: There has to be a cusses of Night Vale Tumblr, I’m sure it exists.

Symphony: It’s gotta be some(-).

Hal: Where it’s all catalogued.

Meg: There’s an every kind of Tumblr that exists, and that’s why the Internet is great, and that’s why the Internet is wrong.

Symphony: That’s why I live there.

Meg: Alright, so this episode we get the scouts, we get the full-on listing of the scouts which I think later are amended when we get some more scouts.

Symphony: Right.

Meg: But that is one of my, little favorite parts of Night Vale is the different, how much fun they must have had writing those different scout names. Do you guys have a favorite scout? I’m drawn to the Eternal Scouts, just because it’s the strongest one.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony:  I mean come on, yeah. But I like the fear scout. Like it’s just fun and they just keep going with it, which is in classic Joseph and Jeffrey style, just being like, let’s see how ridiculous we can get with this thing.

Meg: They could take this thing that is normal that is just like, you know the boy scouts and turn it into this like, what do the boy scouts look like in Night Vale? You learn so much about this world by taking something from our world and putting it into their world and showing what it looks like.

Symphony: And there aren’t so many of them, right? Even going to girl scouts and boy scouts it’s like, you could be Eagle Scout, you could be a boy scout, you could be a cub, you can be all those other things. (Weblows), is that one, (Weblows)? Night Vale fans, tell us about it. [laughs]

Hal: We talked about cosplay a little bit at the beginning, but another thing I’ve seen a lot of is people sporting all the badges…

Symphony: Yes, it looks so good!

Hal: ..showing off the scouts, Eternal Scouts and it’s like, I don’t know if it’s become like, there are actual people who are Star Trek fans that live as Klingons. I wonder if Night Vale equivalent is like, we have formed an actual version of the scouts and here are the things to become an Eternal Scout and…

Symphony: I hope so.

Hal: You know that kind of, which is my favorite as well because it just sounds like, if you’re gonna be a scout be an Eternal Scout.

Meg: Be Eternal Scout, yeah.

Hal: What are we doing here?

Symphony: I mean Hal I mean that is the dream, right, that someone is being like, living this is my real life.

Hal: Yes.

Meg: And on the subject of the cosplay and the fans kind of making their own thing, one of the best most interesting pieces slash weird pieces of burlesque that I ever saw was the group of burlesque performers in New York City, Welcome to Night Vale night where they, there was different pieces that were done, and Joseph and I went to see them, and it was so great that when we did a Night Vale birthday party, we asked some of those performers to come and do their Night Vale inspired burlesque pieces for our audience at the birthday party, and there was two performers who were scouts, and they were so creepy. There was two of them, they dressed exactly the same, they moved in perfect unison together and did a burlesque act, and they were just like it was so cool and so beautiful and so weird and creepy, that it was these Eternal Scouts in burlesque and yeah it was just, a really cool thing. That some fans of the show made that we got to see and then show to our audience.

Symphony: I was kittening for them that night, so I was picking up all their droppings all their, you know, burlesque droppings. And one of those performers was Liberty Rose from Philly, and they were both so amazing and all those burlesque performers that we had that night were just like phenomenal and they continue to be fans and support the show.  

Meg: Yeah. Iris Explosion, she does a Kevin, there’s a Kevin act that is perfectly Night Vale toned, or Desert Bluffs toned I guess, voice for Kevin and has it as her act, that Kevin act and it’s so good. And Iris is just such a wonderful person and so great to work with and so great to see but like, Iris’ Kevin is my second favorite Kevin, next to Kevin R. Free. If there was any other way I want to see it, is it as this specific burlesque performance.

Symphony: Yes, agreed.

Meg: Up next, we have a conversation with the writer and creator of Welcome to Night Vale, Joseph Fink. But first, let’s talk about the weather. This episode is “The Bus Is Late” by Satellite High, which is a rap song.

Symphony: OK, I’m gonna tell you. You know I love the rap musics, right? I’m an African American lady. So I am keen to the hip hops. And I just saw this song, I remember the first time I heard it, even before I relistened to it, I was just like ah, so cool. And it was just a little song that you could pop along to and you’re, I’m late for the bus. And, really? Who’s never been late for the bus. Everybody.

Meg: Yes, it really is, it’s a universal story, right? You’re waiting for the bus in the rain, and the bus isn’t coming, other buses come but not your bus.

Symphony: Yes! At least you didn’t get splashed, girl.

Meg: Yeah. But such a catchy tune.

Hal: It’s kind of a companion piece to Kris Kross’s “I Missed the Bus”. There’s a lot of discussion on buses. I mean I’m not comparing the two, I’m saying they’re nice complementary pieces for bus-based hip hop.

Symphony: [laughs delightedly]

Meg: That’s one of my favorite niches, of all the niches, of any type of niche you can have as bus-based hiphop. It’s also fun to say, into your pop filter. Bus-based hiphop.

Symphony: Bus-based hiphop. That’s hard to say. Say that five times, fans!

Meg: When we did one of our first Night Vale live shows “Condos”, we did at the Booksmith in San Francisco. It was a really great night and we filled this book store with Night Vale fans and we did the performance of “Condos”, and our live weather was Satellite High, who did “The Bus Is Late” for our audience and it was super cool and super great to have this song kind of blaring through a book store on Haight Street in San Francisco for a packed room of gorgeous Night Vale fans. A fun little insider fact is that this was a live weather at one of our first shows.

Hal: That’s awesome.

Symphony: That’s really awesome. Wait wait wait, so they were actually there?

Meg: Yeah, Satellite High.

Symphony: Were they from San Francisco?

Meg: I think he was living in the Bay Area at the time. I’m pretty sure.

Symphony: It’s just one person?

Meg: For this application it was just one person.

Symphony: OK I was just gonna say you were there, and it was just the one dude.

Meg: Yes, I only saw one dude.

Symphony: [laughs] It could have been many dudes in one giant coat.

Meg: Yeah, it could have been many dudes in one giant coat. It was September of 2013, so who’s to say what was going on in our lives then?

Symphony: Where were any of us?

Meg: I was there, I remember being there. And the people at the Booksmith were really nice to us and they showed us a really good time, and actually the person who helped book us there, Lauren O’Niell, went on to become our tour manager for our first two…

Symphony: L-Money!

Meg: ..real big tour and then our..

Hal: Shout-out!

Meg: Yeah, it’s an interesting little throughline is that’s how we met L-Money and L-Money was one of, I consider L-Money like a soul friend.  

Symphony: Yes.

Meg: And we met just because they helped book us at the book store, cause Lauren was a fan and helped get Night Vale to this bookstore to do a live show. And now Lauren is in my heart forever.

Symphony: When being a fan wasn’t cool, yes.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: So let’s just talk about that for a second like, back in the day in the early days of Night Vale when people were just like yeah, we’ll do things with our friends. That’s kinda how the whole deal worked, yeah?

Meg: Yeah when we started the podcast, Joseph was like I like working with Jeffrey, he’s a good guy, he’s a good writer, let’s see if he wants to work on this thing with me and the same thing with Cecil, like Cecil is a good guy, Cecil has a good voice, is a good actor. And so that’s kinda how we picked the (strays) and now built the company that we have today, from just you know, connecting with people and we come across people who are good to work with, really latching on. Which is why I’m on the phone with the two of you, years later. Years and many shows later.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: We still find time to join together, to speak of our origins.  

Symphony: It’s like yeah, origin story. We're like superheroes, kind of.

Hal: We did it.

Symphony: We did it you guys, we did it.

Meg: Let’s go get Joseph. Hey Josy!

Joseph: [distant] Yes?

Meg: You ready to do it?

Hal?: Stay right there. Good Morning Night Vale will return after a brief break.

[musical break]

Meg: So Joseph, what’s up?

Joseph: Hey I’m-I’m in the next room over with the door closed, so that our voices don’t bleed into each other, that’s what up.

Meg: That’s great, so Joseph we’re talking about episode two of the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the podcast Welcome to Night Vale. But we’re talking about episode two, which is “Glow Cloud”. So this episode…

Joseph: Yeah I l-

Meg: Yeah, this e-

Joseph: I’m sorry, go ahead.

Meg: This episode-

Joseph: I thought you were leading into me.

Symphony: [laughs] This is great.

Meg: I am, I’ve been trying to get you on this train. So this episode premiered July 1 of 2012. What was your life like then, Joseph?

Joseph: Well, I was selling green energy on the streets of New York City. I stood at a table for five hours at a time, and I pointed at a piece of paper and I asked people if they pay the (-) bill, and then if they did I tried to get them to sign up for the company I was selling for. Um so it wasn’t great, my life. [laughter]

Symphony: I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at your life.

Joseph: No you should, it wasn’t good. Yeah it was weird listening to the, I took a walk today and listened to this. And it’s probably, it’s definitely the first time I’ve listened to it since 2012 probably. Cause I reread the script for the script books we did, but I didn’t bother with listening to those episodes, I just read the scripts for them.

Meg: So what were your takes and reactions, did you have any reactions or takeaways when you listened to it today?

Joseph: Yeah I mean there’s a lot of stuff that, is super specific to me just in terms of like I was noticing things with the editing. For instance there’s this weird pause towards the beginning in the middle of a bit, where I was just, apparently wasn’t good enough at editing yet to get rid of that pause. So I was just noticing some bad editing that annoyed me.

Meg: Yeah, fun thing to know, Joseph also edits all of these episodes, “produced by Joseph Fink” means that he sits with an Audacity file and chops things together and puts things apart and sometimes makes weird sound effects, so that’s another thing that Joseph Fink makes for this podcast is the actual nuts and bolts (editing).

Joseph: Yeah, entirely self-taught so that’s where, there was a lot trial and error in episode 2, so I didn’t know how to do as much then. But I was also very pleased with myself, I remember being pleased with myself at the time. That if you relisten to the bit with the scouts, right when Cecil says, I forget which scout name but it’s one of the cool ones, the music shifts into this very cool-sounding music, and that was very intentional, I lined that up. And relistening to it, I felt proud of myself all over again.

Symphony: That’s so awesome, Joseph.

Hal: Joseph, is it difficult to listen to any episode of this now without going into that editor brain? Cause when I edit something if I watch it or listen to it again, all I’m looking at is alright I did that well, I did those cuts, are you able to step back from it also a little bit and sort of appreciate where it sits in the greater canon of Night Vale?

Joseph: I am noticing the editing, but it’s long enough ago that I’m not like, I can’t fix it now.

Hal: Sure.

Joseph: I’m six years too late to fix it. So I’m noticing stuff like also this was the first Night Vale that has stuff by Jeffrey in it. You know, the pilot was just me throwing things together and this is a combination of our writing. So stuff like, Jeffrey introduced Hiram McDaniels, I remember him writing that bit. He also introduced Khoshekh. So it was really cool to have, I remember that feeling of I had kind of gotten the ball rolling on this world, but then having another person catch that ball and start expanding on it in ways that I hadn’t thought of, was a really cool feeling.

Symphony: And working with Jeffrey on the script, how did you go back and forth like were you sitting together writing that? I don’t think a lot of the fans understand how you guys co-write things.

Joseph: Have you seen the movie Ghost?

Symphony: Yes.

Joseph: Because it’s like that but with a laptop instead of a (--).

Symphony: Wait, are you Whoopi Goldberg or are you Patrick Swayze or are you Demi Moore?

Joseph: Which one do I get to have my shirt off for?

Symphony: Patrick Swayze.

Meg: Whoopi Goldberg. [laughter]

Joseph: Great, I never write…

Symphony: Both! That’s a thing.

Joseph: I never write with my shirt on. [laughter] I have, it’s a moral code really.

Symphony: Oh my god! OK, by the way, now I am gonna constantly picture you at your desk in your basement office wearing no shirt, just like furiously typing away.

Joseph: Yeah that’s pretty accurate. Jeffrey and I, we don’t really write together, we always write on our own. There’s only been one scene when we ever actually sat in the same room and wrote. Back in those days, we’ve changed how we do it, but back in those days what we did is we just had a shared document that we could just both contribute a lot of Night Vale writing to, so it was just filled up with these possible storylines that we’d written, you know little traffic bits and whatever else, and then when it was, you know we’d take turns putting together the episodes. So whoever’s turn it was would start grabbing, you know would pick a main storyline from there, in this case the Glow Cloud and would also grab a bunch of bits, like the Eternal Scout bit and then, I think I was the one that put this together, so I saw the Hiram thing, grabbed that put it in there, and then we would both edit it. It’s changed a bit since then, but that’s how we did it for the first year or so.

Symphony: I’m now imagining it as, you guys just wrote ideas and tossed them in various bins, and then just yanked it out and then were like yeah, that was your basic outline.

Joseph: Yeah, that’s pretty close.

Symphony: [laughs delightedly]

Hal: How far along did you get in doing that where you were pulling chunks that you’d sort of written and contributed to this, sort of into the ether? At what point do you look at it and go OK, this is now we’re looking at larger arcs and the choices we made to sort of put stuff in episode 3 and 4, now are gonna pay off in some way in episode 20, 30, 40 and so forth?

Joseph: Those decisions tended to happen we were writing episode 20, 30, or 40 or whatever. From the beginning, it was very important to us that we had strict continuity. Because, the other thing is we didn’t wanna limit on how weird we went. We wanted to be able to do literally anything within that world, but the only way to make that work storywise is if, then, everything that happens matters, everything that happens has to have stayed happened, and affect the world moving forward. Otherwise, nothing has any weight. So from the very beginning, we knew we wanted strict continuity and that everything had to kind of carry on and affect each other. So that kind of led naturally to these long-term storylines, because as a writer as you build, since you don’t want to violate the continuity, you’re constantly going back and re-reading what’s happened and then try to build on that.

Symphony: Writing is hard.

Joseph: Everything’s hard.

Meg: Writing such a big world is hard. Like here, Joseph you always talk about how you don’t want to write non-fiction cause you don’t want to research, you want to be able to just make things up. But at this point you have now made up a world that you sometimes need to research to be able write for.

Symphony: [chuckles] So true.

Joseph: Yeah but it’s, there’s that wishy-washiness. If I make a little mistake and I don’t wanna violate a major continuity thing, but if I have something happen in episode 100, that in episode 5 we said was illegal, in Night Vale - eh, it’s not the end of the world. What I always say with like non-fiction, or even worse, historical fiction, I just get really panicky about all the little details. Like you can research big historical events, but then you’re gonna get like how belt buckles worked in the 19th century wrong, and someone’s gonna yell at you. And that’s the stuff that gives me a panic attack.

Symphony: Zippers weren’t invented yet, and you’re like (ah god)…

Meg: There’s gonna be someone who’s gonna go [snottily] “Well, actually.” They’re gonna say it like that. “Actually”… [laughter]

Symphony: Who’s the first person who said [snottily] “Well, actually”?

Meg: [more overdone] “Actually”. So Joseph, looking at “Glow Cloud” and creating the character of the Glow Cloud, which is now such a big part of the fandom and a big part of the story, and we’re touring a live show right now called “All Hail”, which is about the Glow Cloud.

Symphony: We were.

Meg: We were. I think as the date of this airs, you should be able to listen to, hopefully, your very own episode of “All Hail”. But yes so we, so much in the world has been created around the Glow Cloud. When you were beginning to create this character and create this episode, did you think it would be such a big important part?

Joseph: I didn’t think much about the future at all at the time, it was such a new project. That it was just sort of a thing to do, we hadn’t thought at all about, here’s how long we’re gonna do this, here’s the future of it. It was just kind of, let’s do this for now and see if it stays fun. So yeah as I said, we didn’t start thinking about building long-term stories or revisiting characters much, probably for a few months. Cause at the beginning we were just trying stuff, and it wasn’t until later that it occurred to us to start kind of bringing things back and building out. Really it wasn’t until even the second year that I think we really tried our hand at a story that went over several episodes.

Symphony: Did you ever go back and listen to episodes, when you were writing like season 2, did you ever go back and you were like, oh what did we say there or did you just let it go?

Joseph: We constantly go back, I mean the nice thing is so all of our scripts, I probably shouldn’t say this cause someone’s I’m sure figured out how to hack Google Documents.

Symphony: [laughs]

Joseph: But all of our scripts just live in a shared Google Document folder. And the cool thing, well, I would say the cool thing about Google Docs is that it has a search function. That search function is kind of a piece of shit, but it does sort of walk. So any time from the very beginning and all the way until now, if I’m gonna write about a character, I’ll search that character in all of our scripts and kinda read the last five ten things we said about them.  Just to kind of see where they are and make sure that I’m continuing their story in a coherent way.

Symphony: Nice.

Meg: So Joseph, you’re on this second ever episode of Good Morning Night Vale, is there anything you want to say or share in this Night Vale chat zone?

Hal: Oh yeah, any plugs?

Joseph: The chat zone. [laughter] Any plugs? Uh yeah, listen to “We Got This”…

Hal: Good, I like it.

Joseph: I was sitting here, well I was watching Nashville, but then I was worried that that was, once the internet started getting weird I started playing my Switch, and I was listening to you all talk about “Bus Is Late”. I don’t think anyone expect-, like that became such a weird hit with our fans. People really focused on that song, which I don’t think either us or the person who made that song saw coming. That was back when, in my original conception for the Weather, all the songs were gonna be kind of weird. And then I abandoned that almost immediately, like episode 3 is not a weird song at all, it just went into that my new criteria for a Weather became “song I like”.

Symphony: Right.

Joseph: But this was still like, Satellite High is one person, this guy named Jay Friedman. And I knew him through the website Something Awful, the same way I knew Jon Bernstein who does, who’s Disparition, does the soundtrack for Night Vale. And he has songs I like more, it’s just that was kind of, a really unusual song. It’s actually based on, there was this Twitter account of this guy and it was like at the time back in 2012 or whatever, this Twitter account became kind of a viral sensation. It was just this guy that was very obsessed with buses and he would just like take pictures of buses as he rode them. And everyone kinda really got to like him, he was just a very enthusiastic guy who really liked buses and so..

Symphony: The inside of a bus?

Joseph: Usually the outside, like the guy rode buses but as he waited, he would take pictures of other buses and also tweet about the bus and what was going on with it. So this song is actually from an EP that Satellite High that was like an entire concept album about this guy’s Twitter feed. He has since, I think kind of the focus on the song freaked him out a bit, and he changed his name from Satellite High to something else. And now, I don’t know if he still does music, I know he does a podcast actually, I think it’s called “I Don’t Even Own a TV”, about bad books, but yeah, he’s kinda taken his own internet journey since 2012.

Symphony: Internet’s hard, you know. It’s a hard mistress, and if you’re not prepared for it, it could thrown you into a tizzy.

Joseph: Yeah I mean I get it you’re a rapper who is outside of this song, serious rapper like this was kind of a joke song and so I think it was just a little weird for him to have this one blow up.

Symphony: Weird Al didn’t become Weird Al in a day, you know?

Joseph: He did not, it took him two days.

Symphony: He’s so good.

Meg: I love Weird Al. Joseph, thank you so much for chatting with us today on Good Morning Night Vale about the Glow Cloud, we really appreciate you taking time out of your very busy schedule where you make many a podcast and write many a book, to chat with us about this show. So we really appreciate it.

Hal: Thank you for creating this show, and now this show where we talk about the show that you created, on the network that was created out of that show, and now there are a bunch of other show, it just blows my mind. After meeting you, we met five years ago at a “Thrilling Adventure Hour” show and now look, [sternly] now look what you did, dammit.

Joseph: Now look what I did. Yeah we met Hal at “Thrilling Adventure Hour” and Hal was from the very first time we met him, just one of the most friendly people I’ve ever met.

Hal: I have fun talking to both of you.

Joseph: I don’t have a follow-up, it’s just, you’re a very nice person.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: Well so are you.

Meg: There’s a lot of Hal love in this episode, you know? Which is good.

Hal: [chuckles] I always love that you guys are out in LA and we get to have dinner and I’m so happy to get to see y’all because I don’t get to see you very often, so when I do I relish it.

Meg: Yeah. It’s been nice having a friendly face in town, and that friendly face belongs to you, Hal Lublin.

Hal: That’s right. I’m here.

Symphony: I wanna be there.

Hal: Come on!

Meg: And you keep that friendly face in a jar next to your bed.

Symphony: Wow, Eleanor Rigby.

Meg: Just like Eleanor Rigby.

Hal: Yeah, my alarm clock is that face screaming at me in the morning. That’s how I wake up.

Symphony: Aaaagh! [laughs]

Joseph: [chuckling] Thank you guys.

Meg: And we close this podcast out with a prayer, as always, no. Thank you so much for listening to episode 2 of “Good Morning Night Vale”, “Good Morning Glow Cloud”. Next week we’re gonna be talking about the episode “Station Management”, where we will be hearing from Night Vale listeners out there about their theories, their questions, their comments. We wanna hear from you. So look forward to that in our next episode where we’re going to be engaging with you, the listeners.

Hal: Cannot wait.

Symphony: Yes!

Meg: Us, the talkers.

Hal: I love A and Q’s. So let’s get some good Q’s in there, and we will A the F out of them.

Meg: Yeah. Thank you so so much for listening, and I wanna say thank you to Hal and Symphony for really bearing with us and being just the most lovely people to have.

Symphony: Yeah.

Hal: Thank you to you, because there wouldn’t be three of us without you. You’re also lovely and wonderful and like a den mother to all of us, for goodness sakes.

Symphony: Because you’re a bear mama.

Meg: Thank you, thank you. I am most cozy in a den. Thank you so much, and good morning, Night Vale, good morning.

Symphony: I was like ooh, I got a little chill when you said that Hal, that was cute.

Hal: Thank you. I exist to give people chills, that’s what I’m here for. I’m a chill monster.

Symphony: You’re very talented.

Hal: Some people say I have no chill, [laughter] but I think I just proved differently.

Symphony: I think you have lots of chill.

Hal: Thank you.

Meg: All right everyone. [laughs] I think you have the most chill.

Hal: Oo!

Meg: Hey everyone, welcome to Good Morning Night Vale. A new podcast where we recap every episode of Welcome to Night Vale!

Symphony: Woo!

Meg: Woo! Everyone’s afraid to talk. [laughter] I know.

Symphony: [laughs] I think I’ll get better later but right now I’m like, do I say yes?

Meg: Welcome to the clunky intro of our brand new show. My name is Meg Bashwiner and I am the woman who talks to you at the end of every Welcome to Night Vale episode. I also play the voice Deb, sentient pyatch o’ haze, and I am the MC of the live shows, if you’ve been to one of our live shows you’ve seen me, for the most part, unless you came to the show in Birmingham in 2015 you didn’t see me, I wasn’t at that one. Other than that, that’s me. Who else is on the call with me, who else is here? Silence.

Hal: Oh I was saying ladies first, but I’ll go.

Symphony: I was waiting for you, you go.

Hal: OK. My name is Hal Lublin and I am the voice of Steve Carlsberg and I have been since… 2013. Wow. I can’t believe it’s been since 2013, my mind is ready to explode, with happiness, and I’m really excited to be a part of this and to stroll back through Night Vale with the both of you.

Symphony: And I’m Symphony Sanders and I play teen militia leader Tamika Flynn, in Welcome to the Night Vale. And I have since… I also think 2013, I’m not sure, someone would have to tell me. And I’m super excited to go through all of these episodes with you guys.

Meg: I’m also excited to go through all these episodes, it’s been fun, it’s nice to take a look back on the, oh lots and lots of episodes. By the time this airs, I think there will be like a 129, 130 episodes of Welcome to Night Vale…

Hal: Wow.

Meg: ..which is really wonderful.

Symphony: That’s a lot of episodes, Meg.

Meg: Not to mention all the live shows and uh, and yeah all the things. Yes so we’re going back, we’re gonna be talking with some people who are involved in the Welcome to Night Vale world. On this episode, we’re going to hear from the voice of Night Vale, Cecil Baldwin. We’ll chat with him about his experiences and his reactions to the pilot episode of this show, and we’ll have that for you later, which is really exciting. Yeah so we’ll be hearing from different people involved in the Night Vale world over the course of the podcast, and in this episode specifically we’ll be hearing from Cecil, and we’ll be talking about the different episodes of the show, our personal reactions to them, as well as the global reactions to them.

Hal: Can I jump in for a second and say what I love about the show that we’re doing?

Meg: Please.

Hal: Even if it’s the first episode and the first, five minutes of it.

Symphony: [laughs] Yes.

Hal: This is what’s cool about it. For all you Night Vale fans out there who have not been able to come to a Comic Con where we’ve done a panel, who have never got to see us in person or gotten to sort of learn a little bit about what’s going on behind the curtain of the show. I think it’s really cool that you get three people who have been involved in the show for a very long time, sort of walking you through it, and not only talking about what happened but giving you some insight and we’ll be answering your questions on occasion as well. So this is really for all of you out there who are fans of the show, to give you another layer of Night Vale, maybe answer some questions you had, or raise some new ones if we’re doing our job.

Symphony: Agreed. [laughter]

Hal: Was I wrong?

Symphony: Correct.

Hal: Was I bad?

Symphony: No you were correct.

Meg: No that’s really beautiful.

Hal: OK, good.

Meg: Yeah, it’s really beautiful.

Symphony: It was just such a good, you really impacted us, it was such a good description. [laughs]

Meg: Yeah. I was speechless. I’m really looking forward to seeing where this podcast takes us. So let’s get down to business, we’re doing the pilot of Welcome to Night Vale, we’re discussing that today. The plot description of which is: “A new dog park opens in Night Vale. Carlos, a scientist, visits and discovers some interesting things, seismic things. Plus a helpful guide to surveillance helicoptering.” I’m a really good reader. [laughter] So yeah.

Symphony: That’s why you do this fictional podcast.

Meg: Yeah, that’s why I do this fictional podcast. So we, to reel us in, do you want to talk about what our reactions were?

Symphony: Yeah. I mean if you really look, not even that deeply into it, a lot of the things that come up in the first episode are some of our biggest fan things, like the dog park obviously what were, or so many people are known for talking about hooded figures and the Sheriff’s Secret Police, and kind of introducing the town of Night Vale and immediately putting you in this space of, uh, distrust. [chuckles] Right? And you can’t go in the dog park, even though a new one was built, dogs aren’t allowed in there, people aren’t allowed in there. Basically don’t acknowledge it.

Meg: Yeah I was struck by that too, by how so much of the Night Vale world that we know today existed in this first episode. So we’ve got the dog park, we’ve got hooded figures, we’ve got the Sheriff’s Secret Police, we’ve got Old Woman Josie and angels and Big Rico’s Pizza and the Desert Bluffs rivalry, like there’s so, and Carlos and Cecil, like he says in this episode “I fell in love with Carlos”, Cecil says it’s. it’s just like, there’s so much of what makes Night Vale Night Vale just in this first 20 minutes.

Hal: Yeah I think the hallmark of really good storytelling is, rather than beginning at the beginning is to start in the middle, and you are dropped into the middle of what feels like a fully realized world. And it’s a testament to how it was written that all those elements of the pilot have just been built on. And even that thing that, the great humor in Night Vale for me, the thing that I enjoy the most is that contrast in the ordinary with the fantastic that’s being treated as completely mundane and, like standard. So there’s no wink to the audience, there’s no we get this is weird, it’s just this is the world you’re in, and that allows you to sort of jump into it completely. And I love that Joseph and Jeffrey joke rhythm they have where they’re like, there are no dogs allowed in the dog park. Do not look at the dog park, do not taste the dog, like that building rhythm, where they just attack a type of announcement or an angle of something over and over again and keep building on it, I really loved seeing that from the beginning. I forgot, I hadn’t listened to this in years and years and years. And it was really interesting to see how formed their voice was for this from the jump.

Meg: Yeah I hadn’t listened to this episode until like it was probably, this episode premiered June 15 2012, which is Night Vale’s birthday. Almost six years ago to the airing of this episode. That was the last time I listened to it, when Joseph was like “hi do you wanna listen to this thing I made?” And I was like sure hun, you know, what do you got? And that was the last time I listened to it, and it really is great to be able to look back at it and hear so much of their voice and also Cecil’s voice, and the development of the character of Cecil as our reliable unreliable narrator.

Hal: What did you think the first time you heard it, way back then when it was like listen to this thing I made, what was your impression of it?

Meg: I think I was initially just, it was so different than anything else I’d seen Joseph make before and also so, I’m always impressed by Cecil the actor. Cecil the person, you know I love and is a dear friend and Cecil the actor blows me away every time. No matter how many, how long I’ve worked with him and how long I’ve known him, so I was really impressed by his voice acting and how much world he was able to build just behind the microphone. The world of audio fiction was in a newer place then, so it was interesting to kind of see what one man and one microphone could build and that was really cool, I remember being like, this is cool. And you know, that was before Night Vale was a thing, so I was like this is cool, what do you want for dinner? Like [laughter], Joseph you made a nice thing, it’s great.

Symphony: Yeah along that..

Meg: I remember him sa-

Symphony: Along that line, where did you think this was going? Did you think it was gonna go anywhere, did you think it was just a fun project that he is working on? What were your initial ideas?

Meg: I remember him saying to me: “I feel like this could be thing.” Which is interesting now, cause it definitely has been a thing, but at the time it was like he never, we’d have projects that we worked on, we’d had projects that we did. And I think the confidence that he had in this project was different than what we had seen before from him. And he had definitely had successful projects before, but definitely nothing with the audience and impact that Welcome to Night Vale has had. So… yeah.

Symphony: And so past this pilot when, cause this happened in 2012 but like, when did you guys, do you remember the day that you were like oh this is, more than just a thing you do?

Meg: Yes. I don’t remember the specific day, but it was about a year later.

Symphony: Nice.

Meg: The first year of Night Vale was great, people listened to it, Joseph and Jeffrey were like, hey some of our friends have listened to this show, how great is that? I remember there was like one fan that we saw, Joseph would search Twitter to see if anyone was listening to it and we would often get people being like up all night, [vale]. [Vale] is the verb in Spanish does it mean I think it, what does [vale] mean? So we would get those tweets, we’d search for Welcome Night Vale tweets, we’d get people in Spanish saying [vale]. And then eventually we saw people talking about and there was this one fan who’s named Dana, and Dana would tweet about listening to the show with friends, and there was one tweet that was from Dana that was like “Mom, stop ftrying to bring us enchiladas, we’re listening to Welcome to Night Vale.”

Symphony: Aww!

Meg: And so we thought that was really super sweet, and so they named the character Dana after Dana the person who was tweeting at us. [chuckles]

Hal: That’s cool.

Symphony: That’s so funny. Also I love enchiladas.

Meg: Yeah. But if you’re trying to listen to Welcome to Night Vale, and your Mom was trying to bring you enchiladas, I would personally be like thanks Mom, but…

Symphony: Right, it’s like a listening snack.

Meg: No shade to Dana but [laughter]. So yeah, about a year into it it started to get some tractions. We did our first birthday party at a space in New York that had about 100 people come to it, which was awesome. So cool that we had 100 people that knew about us. And then things changed pretty rapidly. In July of 2013, we used to sell Welcome to Night Vale T-shirts on Amazon, and I think we printed like 50 of them. And once a week or so, we’d get an order for a T-shirt. Joseph would package it up and take it to the post office and send it out. And then over the course of a weekend, we got an order for 1000 T-shirts. Before Amazon shut it off, because it kind of went out of control super quick.

Symphony: It’s like too much.

Meg: It was too much, it was like there was, we didn’t have the stock for that, so we went and had more T-shirts printed…

Symphony: You broke the system.

Meg: One weekend just sitting in our studio apartment in Brooklyn, packaging T-shirts, a thousand of them. Which is a number that doesn’t really make sense until you actually sit down and do it, and it was so hot..

Symphony: That’s a lot.

Meg: I sat in the apartment and I just did it, and I think I watched like the first season of A Chef’s Life on Netflix while I did it. And I was using packaging type, touching it over and over again so I had no skin left on my finger tips at the end of it.

Symphony: It was just slowly pulling off layers of skin.

Meg: Yeah. And then I made Joseph take me out for ramen and.. [laughter] That was my payment for packaging 1000 T-shirts was my husband or my boyfriend at the time took me out for ramen.

Symphony: That’s like, in Seinfe- I probably can’t mention that. In that one show where that lady died, she was sending out her wedding invitations and she kept licking the stamps, licking the stamps and the glue was poisonous, good thing you’re still alive though.

Hal: Wait…

Meg: Yeah, I still have use of my fingers.

Hal: Why can’t we mention that show? Are we restricted from (--)?

Symphony: I mean can you?

Hal: Sure.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: I don’t know the rules of audio recording.

Hal: I’ll tell you what.

Meg: Seinfeld! McDonald’s!

Symphony: [laughs hysterically]

Hal: I’ve been around the block and let me say something, Jerry Seinfeld. You’re welcome to come on this podcast anytime you wanna show your face.

Symphony: Yes, yes!

Hal: We’ll all get into an old car with you, you can take us out for coffee.

Symphony: Ooh, for coffee!

Hal: We can complain about comedy, it’ll be great. Making that offer right now.

Symphony: I’m very funny.

Hal: He who will not be named.

Meg: I will make sure I say nothing funny. [laughter]

Symphony: I won’t even smile the whole time.

Hal: I do love that show, but he complains all the time.

Meg: Yeah, it’s gotta be hard being him.

Hal: Yes, really difficult.

Meg: Anyway, that’s not to throw shade on Jerry.

Hal: No.

Meg: Yeah so that’s, we kind of got off on our lovely little tangent talking about the very beginning and where we are now.

Symphony: Yeah. But we can go back, look…

Meg: Let’s go back.

Symphony: That’s the great thing about a nice conversation. Let’s go back, let’s talk about the beginnings of Celios, the beginnings of Carlos and Cecil.

Meg: Yeah, the [C’s/seeds?) [0:14:11].

Symphony: Before it was Cecil, just nameless announcer, just announcer. Or narrator, right? But people I guess didn’t even, did they reference him, what did they do before he had a name?

Meg: I dunno. I dunno if anyone listened to the show, like (if we had) fanbase before the.. [laughter]

Hal: Yeah, we’re in the early early days. It struck me, was it weird for either of you now, listening to it through the lens of six years of content almost? Five and a half, wherever we’re up to as of this recording, that everything sort of takes on extra meaning? For me in particular, playing somebody who’s like not the conspiracy theorist, but the guy who seems to know the truth about what’s going on? That through that lens I was like, he’s lying, he’s a puppet. I can hear it right now, because all of that was just being established. Did either of you get that sense or am I just going in too deep?

Symphony: No I think that is like, I’m not as conspiracy theorist but I am also dazzled by magic. And there are things in the early episodes of Welcome to Night Vale that I’m like, how did they know?

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: Like how did they know? And I just love it, I like going back and listening to and I’m like oh my gosh, talking about like, seismic activity and there’s something happening in Night Vale like how he was talking about the different, how it was very interesting scientifically. Just finding out those things, you’re just like oh now I’m like, did they know from the beginning? But then now I know because they’re my friends I’m like, they didn’t know. Or maybe they did, who knows? Maybe they’re possessed.

Meg: They’re probably possessed. We’ll find out later…

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: .. in season 18 of Welcome to Night Vale, it’ll be revealed.

Hal: [chuckles] I remember talking to Joseph, and this had to be some time in I think 2013 early 2014. And I know at that point, things were still being sort of plotted out. Like hey we had some thoughts about what, and that conversation was about Steve and Cecil’s relationship and maybe Cecil’s not the most reliable narrator. So now that’s something, that sort of rung in my head and it developed over the course of a couple years, but now going back, when you go back with that knowledge of what’s to come, it colors everything that you hear. Which I think is a hallmark of how good the writing is that they were able to take it, even if that’s not something they had planned out for 2014-2015, that they got there in a way that the internal logic stays intact. As a whole.

Symphony: Yeah. That you can go back and relisten to stuff and you’re like, oh yeah there’s no gaps where you’re like oh, that was totally forgotten about. It’s not like Lost.

Hal: Yeah, you’re watching like they don’t even know, he doesn’t even know what’s gonna happen, I can’t believe I’m listening like I have more knowledge than the character does.

Symphony: Right.

Hal: And it’s you’re getting to watch them, you get to rediscover it by listening along, which I think is really really cool.

Meg: That is really cool. I hadn’t thought about that, but it is a pretty cool experience to be like uh, I’m the reliable narrator know cause I know.

Symphony: Cause you’re from the future.

Meg: I’m from the future.

Hal: Oh my goodness, we’re all time travelers! This is very exciting.

Symphony: Ah, you guys!

Meg: (You’re all) Is this the best time to time travel?

Symphony: [laughs] I feel like I’m in Quantum Leap! I’m just gonna start mentioning major television shows. [laughter]

Meg: Yes, hey I think it’s fun, they can all come for us, they can all come directly for us.

Hal: Yeah what are they gonna do, send us to Cheers? [laughter]

Symphony: The Borg gonna get us from Star Trek?

Meg: Yeah I mean we're just like Raymond, everybody loves us. [laughter]

Hal: Sesame Street. You were saying, Meg?

Meg: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was just thinking. Alright, so yeah I think it was interesting what we were talking about for a moment, with the sparks of love between Cecil and Carlos. I think it’s interesting to, this show was not one that describes people’s physical characteristic very much, but Carlos is described right away. His teeth and hair are described, which when I wrote that down I was like, teeth and hair! [laughter]

Symphony: What wonderful notes.

Meg: What wonderful notes, yeah, and Cecil’s description “I fell in love instantly”. And so they describe his perfect hair and his teeth like a military cemetery,a nd that he is beautiful.

Symphony: Hey, you like what you like, I guess.

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: The lens of Cecil’s developed.

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: Is that how you felt about Joseph the first time you saw him?

Meg: I felt, being honest about the first time I met Joseph, I did not think that he was uh.. I thought he was gorgeous, I mean like he’s a good-looking dude.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: But we did not get along on a personal level, I think cause I didn’t quite understand who he was, and then once I got to know him I fell in love, over time slash instantly. But yeah we met in the box office of the Kraine Theater, which is, the Kraine Theater is the place I met Joseph, I met Jeffrey Cranor, and I met Cecil Baldwin. So it’s a sacred, sacred space, yeah when I met Joseph and..

Symphony: Most of the important men in your life.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: Yeah. When I, all of them except for, you know like my Dad and Hal Lublin.

Hal: Correct.

Meg: I met my Dad in the hospital when I was born. [laughter] It was a good day. Like I met my Mom and my Dad and maybe my sister all in the same day, which was pretty great.

Symphony: That’s a big day!

Hal: That’s pretty important.

Meg: Did I know at the time like how important these people would be to me? No, I was an infant, I was a newborn but, I felt it I think, maybe. [laughter] Alright. So when I first, but this isn’t a love podcast. When I first met Joseph I was like, who is this kid? What does he want? And then yeah we became friends and I, only wanted things from him from that point out.

Symphony: Then you made him yours.

Meg: Yeah so then I realized how wonderful and smart and, I always knew he was attractive, he is a good looking kid.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: He really is. Anyway, alright. Other things in this episode, there’s the NRA bumper stickers.

Symphony: OK, here’s the thing.

Meg: The intr-

Symphony: Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.

Meg: I wasn’t gonna say anything, I was making..

Symphony: I’m sorry. I got really excited, because I was thinking about this in the first two episodes, they make their stance very very clear about where they stand with like governments, and the NRA and guns and all sorts of business like that. So to all of you (friendlings) out there, who love your second amendment, we love you too, however listen to the episodes.

Hal: Yeah, it is really striking, I agree. I had the same, I wrote that down too that idea of like, you know where they stand right away and sadly, it’s really sad that six years later, that is really relevant to the point that listening to it I was like hold on, this could have been written any time in the last year.

Symphony: Three weeks ago.

Hal: It could have been an hour ago, and it would feel just as relevant. Which is, that’s a piece of commentary about a lot of different things, but in particular it’s..

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: It’s nice to see like, it’s very much them, and what’s inside of them and then writing their, what’s in their heart. Probably with the idea that hey it doesn’t matter who listens to us, we’re gonna make something that we care about. And that comes through big time, in moments like that in particular.

Meg: Yeah if Night Vale is an American city, which it’s a city in the American southwest, it’s set in the America so the people who, we can’t hide from that, we can’t run from that whether it is this totally bizarre world where up is down and down is up, it is still footed in America. And so there’s these things that are unescapable about it. And yeah, Joseph and Jeffrey are not ones to ever really hide their opinions when it comes to things like gun violence…

Hal: True.

Symphony: True. So and as we have also evidenced by, when we travel throughout this beautiful country of ours, I remember there has been airports that we’ve come through, where there’s been a sign that says: “Did you forget to take the gun out of your luggage?” And I’m like oh, I never put one in there, dang it!

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: I guess I forgot to bring that.

Meg: I can’t bring dry shampoo.

Symphony: Right?

Meg: But.. [laughter] Like literally, you’re like we can’t bring that dry shampoo.

Symphony: What about my yoghurt?

Meg: What, hang on, sidenote. Tangent, why are old people always trying to bring yoghurt on the airplane? Like it’s a liquid, friends, like…

Symphony: [laughs] Constant struggle.

Hal: Oh my god. One time I was at the metal detector at LAX and I was behind a group of older German tourists, and it was like they huddled up beforehand, they were like alright, which rule do you wanna break cause we shouldn’t all do the same one.

Symphony: What?

Hal: I’ll have a pocket full of coins, meanwhile you’ll have a gallon of water in a camel bag that you’ve strapped on that you don’t understand you can’t have for a variety of reasons. [laughter] And then could you be juggling grenades as you try to walk through? That would be great, alright, break. And it took forever, it felt like I mean, again probably wasn’t that long but it felt like nine days, of waiting for them to get it together and realize that they can’t drive a car through the metal detector. It was bizarre.

Symphony: You grew a beard in that time.

Hal: I grew a long wispy bread. I scratched several lines, both horizontal and vertical, into the wall to mark how long I’d been there.

Meg: Alright. Welcome to this very important podcast where we talk about, how things can be frustrating at lines at airport security.

Hal: Yeah. We’re so sorry (it’s all)..

Symphony: It’s all part of the Night Vale experience.

Hal: Yeah. I was gonna say we were talking about Joseph before, I wanted to bring it to the weather. Meg: Yeah, the weather. Let’s tease it like they do on the show so we’ll be like, next up we’re gonna talk to Welcome to Night Vale’s voice, Cecil Baldwin, but first – we’re gonna talk about the weather. [sings] Da-daa..

Symphony: That was a good, that was a good teaser.

Meg: We teased it. Really teased that.

Symphony: We teased the shit out of it. [laughter]

Meg: Yeah, so the weather. These and More than These…

Symphony: It was Joseph!

Meg: By Joseph Fink.

Symphony: That’s your husband.

Hal: I didn’t know who, I was listening to it, I was like this guy sounds super familiar, but I don’t, I can’t place him musically to any other songs that I would have heard from him.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: And then I’d get to the end of the episode where like, (-) the weather was These and More than These by Joseph Fink, I’m like get the fuck out of town!

Symphony: Right?

Hal: That was Joseph? And…

Symphony: He’s such a good singer!

Hal: He has a beautiful singing voice, how do I not know this after all this time? And it’s an enjoyable song.

Symphony: It’s a good song.

Meg: It is, the lyrics are great, they’re super weird and fun.

Symphony: OK so first of all, let’s talk about the weather being a song.

Meg: Yeah, this is the first time that happened.

Symphony: The first time I ever, I remember back in the day when I first listened to the episode, I remember I was like, OK and now the weather. Cause it had other installments like Community Calendar and whatever and you’re like OK, that’s cool that makes sense it’s like weird and kind of funny. But then the weather is music. What a brilliant idea. And now that I know Joseph as well, it makes so much sense. Joseph and Jeffrey, it makes so much sense because they are so focused in music, they both love music so much, and Joseph especially loves independent music. And I admire that. And listening to this show, I have found more musicians and more music that I would have never ever heard of in my entire life.

Hal: Sure.

Symphony: And it’s like getting a recommendation from a friend, right? You’re like, they’re like you would like this song, and they play the song and it’s like wow. But this song in particular being the first song, I keep thinking I’m like, was he just like oh, I’m gonna put this song on there, or had he thought oh I’m gonna try to see if I can find other people, or whatever. I guess I don’t know that bit.

Meg: I mean knowing Joseph and knowing his process behind this, he was definitely like well OK what do I have the rights to? OK, something that I own.

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: And then yeah, I don’t know his process behind selecting. Joseph has a lot of songs, he’s had some be on the weather, he’s had some that weren’t on the weather that just exist. I used to go see him play at open mics and (-) places in New York City, and he would play his original songs, and he would also play a Leonard Cohen cover or two, because that’s how adorable he is. So I think, I don’t know why he selected this one “These and More than These”, but I like it, I think it’s really fitting in the first episode, I think you’re gonna get an interesting.. Joseph’s voice as a songwriter as well as Joseph’s voice as a writer.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: So yeah I think he was first starting to place the weather, he was like who do I know that will say yes to this, and he was the one who could do that for the first episode. [chuckles]

Symphony: It me, you know.

Meg: It me, and now it’s branched out like so many people, people like the Mountain Goats have premiered songs on the show and..

Symphony: That’s phenomenal.

Meg: ..Dessa has premiered songs on the show and people have, like The Felice Brothers have premiered stuff so it’s like, there’s all these bands that we love and have loved forever, and musicians that are putting their work on our show and it’s so cool to start from here and get to a bigger place.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: As well as the submissions. There was a while we were taking submissions for the weather, and we got so much great music from people. And that’s the point where it’s like, we still use those submissions, we opened submissions I think for like a couple weeks, and we still use some of those submissions. As there were just hundreds of great great songs.

Hal: Amazing.

Symphony: But that’s also how we get introduced to so many great artist that we’ve heard from and once that we’ve worked with. Mary Epworth and Eliza Rickman and Dessa and Doomtree and all sorts of people, people from all over the world which is really phenomenal and actually I’m going to see Dessa this weekend, for her new Chime tour so I’m pretty excited about that.

Meg: It’s a great album.

Symphony: It’s so good.

Meg: She hasn’t made anything I don’t like. She hasn’t sent a text message I didn’t like. Like every piece of her writing is that good. [laughs]

Symphony: She’s a poet.

Meg: She’s a poet, yeah seriously. She Facebook comments in a beautiful way like she just.. [laughter] Which is a, super (sick) (--). Yeah it’s like, we get to meet such great people and luckily we get to work with them when they came on tour with us like we’ve had, and we’ve really bonded with all of them. I think tour will bond you to people.

Symphony: Yes.

Meg: It’s cool to bond to people who are like, they start as outsiders and then they become insiders.

Symphony: They’re from the inner circle. Actually we should, just a sidenote, we should have a maybe special episode talking about tour, I feel like we’ll talk about it anyways but, be like oh tour shows, Investigators… what else did we do, Ghost Stories?

Meg: Yeah we did Ghost Stories, Old Oak Doors we didn’t tour but we did it live.

Hal: The Debate.

Meg: Condos we sort of toured, The Debate.

Symphony: That’ll be really interesting when we come across those. And we’ll have to go over the controversy of, what we call the controversy of the original Tamika Flynn. [laughter]

Meg: I think we will, stay tuned audience, we’ll go over that controversy.

Symphony: It’s me, it’s always been me!

Meg: There’s also the controversy of the original Carlos.

Hal: Oh yeah, for sure!

Symphony: Yes, we’ll talk about that with Jefe.

Meg: Yeah, with our Jefe and maybe even with Dylan Maroon, short of Dylan Marron.

Symphony: Ooh!

Meg: We have more fun guests coming, but speaking of more fun guests coming, we go now to our conversation with Cecil Baldwin.

Hal: Stay right there. Good Morning Night Vale will return after a brief break.

Meg: We go now to our conversation with Cecil Baldwin. Alright, so who do we have with us on the line, who could it be?

Cecil Baldwin: Wait, is that me?

Meg: It’s you.

Hal: Do you know who you are? You get three guesses.

Cecil: It’s me!

Hal: Alright, that’s fun.

Cecil: [chuckling] That’s one. Also me! And my telephone.

Meg: Cecilia Joyce Baldwin.

Cecil: That’s right. It’s me Cecil Baldwin!

Meg: So Cecil Baldwin, what is it that you do for Welcome to Night Vale? [laughter]

Cecil: What don’t I do for Welcome to Night Vale?

Meg: True.

Cecil: I’m a voice actor on Welcome to Night Vale. I play the character of Cecil Palmer, although we’re talking about the pilot episode..

Symphony: Yes.

Meg: Sure are.

Cecil: So there was no Cecil and there was no Palmer. It was just “guy”. It was like, dude on mic.

Symphony: Unbodied voice.

Cecil: Just the voice of.

Meg: Yeah. You were the voice of for a very long time before you got proper-named.

Cecil: Yeah.

Meg: So yeah we have Cecil Baldwin with us, Cecil is of course of the voice of Night Vale, the velvet host of Night Vale Radio, the velvet-voiced vost, the velvet… voiced host.

Symphony: Yeah. That’s a lot of words.

Meg: So as you mentioned, we’re discussing the pilot episode. So the pilot episode aired June 15, 2012. What was your life like in June 15 in 2012? [chuckles]

Cecil: Oh my god. If I was better at multitasking, I would totally look up my Facebook page from 2012, just to see what was up but I literally can’t talk and uh, handle technology at the same time so…

Symphony: You need a time hop.

Cecil I know I know, I was thinking about that. See, had I done any preparation for this show, I would have already done that. But the prep I did was listen to the pilot twice, while I made dinner tonight. So you know, I was like that’s enough. What was my life like? I was probably waiting tables six days a week at a restaurant in Chelsea, New York. Probably doing Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Trying desperately to get onto Law and Order [laughter] or, oh man, what was…

Symphony: Like every New York actor.

Cecil: Like every New York actor. What was the one on HBO? That was like…

Meg: Carnivale?

Cecil: No, no no it was like..

Meg: Oh no, the one.

Cecil: Like (five points) New York, old rough New York.

Meg: Yeah yeah, with Steve Buscemi.

Cecil: With Steve Buscemi, yeah.

Hal: Boardwalk Empire.

Cecil: Boardwalk Empire. I was like…

Meg: Boardwalk Empire, yes.

Cecil: That was like, as long as that show was on, somebody kept calling me back and I was like maybe this time, and I never got it. So that was probably what I was doing, [chuckles] at that point in my life and living in like, the tiniest apartment in West Harlem with the tallest man that could possibly fit into that apartment with me. And that was where I recorded this pilot episode.

Hal: You were living in a sitcom. [laughter]

Symphony: He is (-).

Cecil: Yeah, it was like a sad kind of foul-smelling sitcom.

Hal: I have a question for you, Cecil.

Cecil: Yeah.

Hal: This is Hal Lublin, I play your uh, brother outside the law, Steve Carlsberg. Just to introduce myself, it’s me.

Cecil: Who are you?

Hal: We’ve roomed together, we’re road roomies.

Cecil: Who am I?

Symphony: Me too!

Meg: Me too.

Cecil: I think we’ve, have we all roomed?

Meg: I’ve, yeah.

Symphony: Everybody except for like, I haven’t stayed with Hal before.

Meg: I haven’t stayed with Hal either, so yes Cecil you’re the unique one in this conversation, you’ve roomed with Hal.

Cecil: Nice.

Meg: We’ve all roomed with you.

Cecil: I’m the spoke of the wheel. Everybody’s like..

Symphony: Cecil’s gotten around.

Cecil: Next tour Cecil has his own room, it’s fine. [laughter]

Hal: So my question is, which room mate was the best? No I, my actual question…

Cecil: Which room mate was... [laughter]

Symphony: Wow.

Hal: In (listening to -)..

Cecil: And the (--) breakfast (-).

Meg: Symphony Sanders is a pretty good room mate. I’ll say it. I mean I can’t speak (--) but Symphony Sanders is an excellent room mate. She always brings you water…

Symphony: I’m a pretty good room mate.

Meg: She always brings me water so…

Cecil: Coconut water and, yeah no (-).

Symphony: I like to create an experience, you guys.

Hal: I wish I hadn’t asked that question.

Cecil: And you leave to go exercise, wakes me up, so I can then go back to sleep. And then say hello to you after you’ve worked out, and be like oh maybe I should get out of bed now. [laughter]

Symphony: I come in glistening and I’m like hey wake up, are you ready? Ready to face the day?

Cecil: The sun’s been up for six hours. [laughter]

Symphony: I’ve had a full day.  

Cecil: Did you have a question, Hal? I can’t remember.

Hal: Yes. I did have an actual question listening to it, one thing that struck me even in like the first three minutes of the episode listening to it, was like oh I’m listening to Cecil find his character.

Cecil: Oh yeah.

Hal: As you were doing it it was evolving, even in the first couple moments which was really impressive to watch you kind of zero in on it. Cause I know, we’ve heard the story before in panels, but I’d love to hear a little bit about your initial approach for this episode, looking at it, how much direction you had an like how you were directing yourself, how many takes it took, that kind of stuff.

Cecil: Well, first it sounds like Cecil on Xanax, like it sounds real, I was like wow I sound very sedate in this.

Symphony: Yeah.

Cecil: And I think, that more than anything set the tone for people who then later would be like, oh my god I fall asleep listening to your voice, so soothing. Because listening to those first couple of episodes it really is super neutral, like it’s so neutral and like just really quiet, just reading. And there was, like the character of, which would later evolve, wasn’t there as much. Because I don’t know. I guess I knew this idea it would be like an episodic thing, and it would go on from there but I had no idea, how many we were doing and where this was all going and stuff like that, so I was like well let’s just, you know, keep it really basic and simple and just start by words on the page, and then finding ways to you know, have that sort of very neutral narrator voice, and slowly finding the moments in Joseph and Jeffrey’s writing when Cecil does comment on stuff. And there’s little ones in this first episode. It’s just like, so and so brought the corn muffins and they needed salt. Oh like that was a moment when I, that was like a Cecil moment rather than a neutral narrator NPR, late night radio DJ, generic.

Symphony: Right. So when you were initially finding the character, a lot of that was just like feeling it out..

Cecil: Yeah.

Symphony: And you weren’t sure where it was gonna come from.

Cecil: Mm hm, yeah.

Symphony: Right or where it was gonna go so you just were like, I am gonna read this thing as well as I can.

Cecil: Yeah exactly like, put words on sound, into a mic.

Symphony: Exactly. And as an actor of course obviously you’re trying to do the writers’ words justice, right?

Cecil: Mm hm, yeah.

Symphony: So I think that’s part of it but now listening to it when you go back and have heard it again, what would you think you might have done differently?

Cecil: What I’d done differently?

Symphony: If anything, or was it a perfect read?

Cecil: [laughs] No it was not perfect. I dunno, I do wish that I’d had a chance to take a crack at it again. I think I would have, in a way getting to do kind of the last paragraph as the foreword to the book, the first book, was kind of a chance to do a do-over. And it was so much fun to be at the studio, in a fancy, you know like midtown studio with an engineer and a director and all that stuff getting to redo what was essentially the very first episode of the podcast. And having 70 plus episodes of Night Vale under my belt at that point, that was really cool, that was super cool.

Symphony: So did you feel more connected to it?

Cecil: Yeah, I felt more connected and also giving every part of the language weight. Cause when you’re reading something, for the first time especially if it’s absurd like no-linear. You just have to kind of be like, OK these are the things that I’m gonna try and hit, and highlight and let the chips fall where they may. But if I had a chance to go back and redo the pilot, I think I would have made some of the one-off jokes, like the two-sentence jokes punchier, punch it up kid, you know?

Symphony: [laughs] Well I feel like that we get to do now in the live shows where we get to repeat and do the shows over and over again, but..

Cecil: Yeah.

Symphony: When you record it one time, you’re like oh man, now that I listen to it I can do something differently.

Cecil: Yeah.

Symphony: Speaking of taking a time travel, let’s go back to the time hop thing for one second. So in your world, back then you said you were just recording this, you didn’t know where it was going and you were waiting tables, right?

Cecil: Yeah.

Symphony: So when you recorded this, how did you record it? Did you go to a place, can you tell that sort of story?

Cecil: I had to borrow Joseph Fink’s Snowball microphone. Which is this giant plastic, you know like ball on a tripod. You know it’s like…

Meg: I still have it.

Cecil: Oh really?

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: Get out of here!

Cecil: Like you can just throw them around and, but they’re kinda bulky. And so he had wrapped it up in a sweatshirt. [laughter] And we met at a coffee shop near Union Square, and he was just like OK, here take this, plug it up to your computer and just record it, just do it. You can use Audacity or Garage Band, whatever. And I had heard of Audacity through the Neo-Futurists for free sound editing software, so I was like OK I’ll check, OK. So I took this like contraband, little straw baby back to my apartment. [laughter] And I plugged it in. And I think I recorded maybe the pilot and the second episode at the same time? Or I think one, two and three happened within the same week.

Symphony: OK.

Cecil: So that way, cause I had the microphone borrowed, and then eventually I had returned it and got my own. And then we did the reverse of this, like pass off this weird little small child sized microphone, wrapped in the sweatshirt in front of the coffee shop on the street. It was podcast drugs, it was like illegal podcast contraband. [dramatic voice] In a world where podcasting is illegal and the penalty is death! [laughter] It’s somewhere..

Meg: And the rest is history.

Hal: It’s like a Logan’s Run scenario where there’s only podcasts inside the dome.

Cecil: That’s right, it’s… [laughs]

Hal: If you live outside the dome, you’re gonna find your way in that city.

Cecil: It’s like A Handmaiden’s Tale, except for podcasting.

Hal: Did you record them in order?

Cecil: Yes. For the most part absolutely. It wasn’t until like literally years later that I started getting, it was like three episode arcs or stuff like that where stuff would be out of order but mostly was like, literally one two three four five six in succession, for years.

Symphony: And did they give you any indication, were they like, oh we’re just gonna keep doing this until we can’t do it anymore, or?

Cecil: Yeah. I think around like episode seven or eight, I emailed Joseph I was like, heeeeyyyy. So where’s this going? You know like, is there a, do y’all have like a giant dry erase board that you’re, have like characters written out and shit like that? And they were like, absolutely not. [laughter] I think Joseph’s reply was like, we just figure we’re gonna keep making it until we don’t wanna make it anymore. Until it stops being fun, I think literally he was, we’re gonna make it until it’s not fun to make anymore. And I was like, OK, well here we go.

Meg: And here we are.

Cecil: And here we are.

Meg: 125 episodes in.

Cecil: I know, right? And I know that’s been like, there’s been a lot of fun stuff along the way involving like, continuity and stuff like that because, literally that was how we made it was just like, OK here’s an episode, and here’s another episode that kind of mentions this other character, however many episodes back. And like you kind of half-remember stuff. For me it was a lot of, for my end it was more about like, trying to find episodes that that character was mentioned, to be like wait, does Telly the Barber have a voice? Did we ever give him a voi-, does he ever say anything?

Symphony: Right.

Cecil: Cause there’s like, when you’re reporting stuff second hand on, which this show is, you kind of have the choice every time you see words in quotes, to like is it impersonation of that character? Or is it Cecil, are you trying to sound like the character themself or are you trying to sound like, what that narrator’s personification of that character is. And usually the easiest way is just to be like, “and then they said a whole bunch of stuff”. Much like a newscaster.

Symphony: You’re not doing an impersonation, you’re just..

Cecil: Exactly.

Symphony: ..reporting on what they said.

Cecil: Exactly. And I would just kind of feel it out in this very like one foot in front of the other, episode by episode kind of way. And then later on, I was like oh man, have we heard from Big Rico? Does Big Rico have a voice or a sound and I’m sure there have been like, characters that sounded one way and then, maybe 20 episodes later they say like one sentence and you’re like, that’s totally not right, there must be like a million of those. Or at least there is in my mind.

Meg: So when you were doing your relisten tonight, was there anything that jumped out at you that struck you as weird or interesting or like, any feels about listening to the show?

Cecil: OK so the first thing that I noticed from the very beginning is, sort of the entity of Night Vale Presents. And I was like oh man, it was like Jeffrey came on and they were talking about the Tingle podcast and, Conversations with me you know Dylan and, I was like oh man. Because of course it makes absolute sense but in my mind I was like, some of those early intros especially with Joseph where he’s like, I was like are we going to get to (Dash) convention?

Symphony: Yes.. [laughter]

Cecil: You know it’s not that early on, but I was like oh man, those are as much of a time capsule, almost more than the show itself of like how far..

Symphony: The announcements, yeah.

Cecil: ..how long ago this was. When we were just like..

Meg: Those are gone now.

Cecil: They’re like all of them are gone?

Meg: They’re a gone.

Cecil: Hey, I mean..

Symphony: Yeah it’s just like thanks..

Meg: (--).

Symphony: ..it’s like thanks for loving us, donate if you can, like whatever you get special content, right?

Cecil: I hope somebody has a copy of them somewhere.

Meg: I think they do exist somewhere.

Cecil: See, that’s all I wanna know.

Meg: Because of the advent of dynamic insertion, which sounds really dirty but really…

Symphony: That sounds nasty!

Meg: ..it just allows you to move stuff around. So a while back, I re-recorded all the credits and proverbs and made...

Symphony: Get out of here, no you didn’t!

Meg: Yeah.

Cecil: What?

Meg: Yeah and…

Symphony: Meg?!!

Meg: And then they chop up what I say at the end of this show and like, there’s different versions of it, so I do like a different version and that gets like edited around, to be like when I talk about the mailing or I talk about merchandise or I talk about live shows, that stuff kinda moves around.

Cecil: Wow.

Symphony: Get out! OK and then that goes into every episode just in case somebody’s listening now for the first time, to the first episode like they get the current stuff?

Meg: Yeah they get the current stuff so they get, what we’re talking about now and if you listen to the pilot now and download the pilot now you’ll get, I don’t remember if it was Joseph or Jeffrey they do, they talk about live shows or something.

Hal: It’s Jeffrey.

Symphony: Yeah I heard Joseph talking about donating to get, and you can get special content and all that stuff. Oh, that’s so interesting!

Cecil: All that special content.

Symphony: Technology!

Meg: Yeah, so they can move all that stuff around, they can change it. It’s good cause you don’t wanna, like if someone’s listening to episode 70 and they wanna come see a live show, they don’t wanna hear about a live show that happened a year and a half ago, they wanna (--) the stuff going on…

Cecil: Come see The Investigators!

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: I do slightly feel betrayed, in a heavy way. Just like, I wanna hear those old, cause that’s what I remember when I first listened to it.

Symphony: Hal wants the classics! [laughter]

Hal: It was always Joseph coming in, saying there is no Joseph Fink and like here’s..

Cecil: Yeah, we’re all Joseph Fink..

Hal: Here’s how you can support the show, we are all Joseph Fink.

Symphony: That was always really fun to record.

Meg: Let me make some phone calls, let me see if I can get those recordings for us to work off of. Let me see, so we don’t have to work off the new ones.

Cecil: And if Good Morning Night Vale, if Good Morning Night Vale is truly a retrospective show, I feel like you should go through an episode later like pull out some choice ones, and play them for the listeners of like (--).

Meg: Good idea, thanks for the content idea, that’s a good one.

Hal: Yeah! And then we can submit it to the Smithsonian along with that Snowball mic, as part of the Night Vale exhibit.

Meg: Which is…

Cecil: When there’s a Night Vale exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, and they have all the artifacts and all the deer paintings, and the laminate for Big Rico’s Pizza that I stole from San Diego Comic Con, stuff like that. [laughter]

Cecil: There’ll be little listening booths for all the children.

Hal: I actually volunteered to live for three months.

Cecil: Oh really? [laughs]

Hal: Yeah just like in a tank, like it’s a David Blaine thing but I will have a bed, so that’s the difference. [laughter]

Cecil: Oh my god.

Hal: And a (potty) with a (--) so I can (--).

Cecil: The artist is present. And it is Steve Carlsberg.

Hal: I mean you press a button to deliver a low level electric shock, it’s fine, I can deal with it. [laughter]

Cecil: You get like food pellets.

Symphony: I know, that’s what I was thinking, I was like food pellets.

Cecil: And Carlsberg beer.

Symphony: Yeah, it’s Carlsberg.

Hal: If I can solve the puzzle.

Symphony: Isn’t that like not even full alcohol beer?

Cecil: Oh, is that a low alcohol beer?

Symphony: Is it? Or is it just terrible tasting? [laughter] Who knows?

Meg: I dunno if I’ve ever had one.

Symphony: A Carlsberg? We should do that this tour. If you buy us a Carlsberg beer, oh wait, no one will hear this but…

Hal: Symphony will drink it. [laughter]

Symphony: [laughs hysterically]

Meg: This episode premieres June 7.

Hal: If you see one of us..

Symphony: Nevermind, cut it! Cut it, (-) cut it!

Cecil: I think according to Wikipedia I think Carlsberg is a normal beer.

Symphony: OK. Did you look it up?

Cecil: Yeah I did.

Meg: Are you multi-tasking with technology?

Cecil: I’m trying to multi-task but it’s really hard.

Symphony: Look at you and your science.

Hal: Look at you.

Symphony: Speaking of science…

Meg: Is it…

Cecil: Dark magic.

Meg: Is it a Dutch beer?

Hal: Probably.

Cecil: Denmark.

Meg: Is Carlsberg Dutch, oh Denmark.

Cecil: Denmark.

Meg: It’s a Danish beer.

Symphony: Who knows with those people?

Meg: Those people who are our fans, who listen to us, who love to go see… [laughter] Hey, we love you Copenhagen!

Cecil: Oh my god, right?

Symphony: Literally no one is hating on Denmark, like ever, so they can take it.

Cecil: Oh my god, there’s a special place in my heart for Copenhagen.

Symphony: I wanna go there so bad.

Cecil: I had such a splendidly shitty time both times I went. But it was like, fireworks of shit. The best crazy, travel stories that in the moment you’re like this is the longest day of my life. However..

Symphony: Is that when they lost your luggage?

Meg: It really was.

Cecil: But I know future me is gonna eat up every moment of it. And it’s all because of Copenhagen. Copen-hahgen.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: Do you say hay-gen or hah-gen?

Meg: I say Copen-haygen. I guess you can say both, I’ve heard both.

Symphony: Are both correct or is it just like willy-nilly?

Cecil: My guess is it’s Copen-hahgen for people who live there, Copen-haygen with an American accent? I dunno.

Symphony: Maybe.

Cecil: That’s my guess.

Symphony: Sammy Hey-gar. No. Sammy Hah-gar.

Cecil: Sammy Hah-gar. [laughter]

Meg: Hey-gen-Dasz. Hah-gen-Dasz.

[They’re basically just saying Häagen-Dazs in various ways and something about Chicago, I dunno how to transcribe it]

Symphony: It’s funny because I live here.

Hal: This is topical.

Meg: Well, this conversation has been…

Symphony: Next!

Meg: …a joy. Cecil, thank you so much for joining us on the first ever Good Morning Night Vale, it’s so great to hear from you.

Cecil: Thank you for having me. Yeah, it’s super weird to be talking to you all in a professional capacity with like, listeners listening in. Just FYI.

Meg: It’s like they’re backstage with us.

Cecil: I know.

Meg: Except we’re wearing clothes. Well, I’m wearing clothes, I don’t know about, I can’t speak for anyone else on this call.

Cecil: I’m wearing clothes, for once.

Symphony: Kinda.

Cecil: Kind of. [laughs] State of undress.

Symphony: A crop top is clothes. I’m wearing a crop top and leggings, is that, that’s clothes?

Hal: And I’m covered in body paint, so I’m good.

Symphony: [laughs]

Cecil: Oo! I’ll say, I’m wearing a full suit from the waist up and nothing from the waist down.

Meg: Perfect.

Hal: Business on top, party on the bottom.

Symphony: [laughs] Yes!

Meg: Alright, cool. Well thanks, Ceec!

Cecil: Party on.

Meg: Thanks. Bye!

Cecil: Bye!

Hal: Bye!

Meg: Thank you so much for joining us on our first ever episode of Good Morning Night Vale. Next week, we’re gonna talk about the episode 2, “Glow Cloud”, and we’ll be joined by special guest Joseph Fink, the creator and writer of Welcome to Night Vale and my personal husband.

Symphony: Amongst other things. [laughs]

Hal: You’ll hear us next time.

Meg: You’ll hear us next time. Thank you so much. Good morning, Night Vale, good morning.

Symphony: Good morning. Byeee!