Outro S4 E8 - Mayhem and Wonder

Outro – S4 E8

Hello Survivors! Welcome back to another episode of After the Apocalypse.

We are at episode 8 in season 4 and it is November of 2023. Happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate it.

We’re up to 432 Facebook members and are cruising along at around 17,000 downloads a month – across all episodes.

It’s interesting to look at the statistics. Because, it shows that out of those 17,000 downloads, I would guestimate that around 2,000 are listeners that have caught up and are listening to the shows every two weeks as I drop them.

But the vast majority of those downloads are spread across the other episodes. Which, I guess, means people are binge listening through the whole show and are at different points.

Not that it matters to us – I’m just happy to know that there are living, breathing, apocalypse enthusiasts on the other side of the table paying attention to my odd ramblings.

It’s been a couple of busy weeks for me and I’m a bit behind. But, I am working on getting back on top.

In the last couple of weeks, I took a trip down to DC to see my youngest daughter and run the Marine Corps Marathon. This week I had a birthday. Something about the ageing process lends urgency to these creative projects.

I mean, if I’m lying cold and stiff off the side of the trail, who’s going to finish our story here?

What’s Chris been listening to?

Good question. I took the suggestion of some listeners on the Facebook group and listened to the first book of the Infected Trilogy Podcast. This is essentially an audio book by Scott Sigler, New York Times best selling author, that he reads into audio himself in a podcast format.

I had frankly been avoiding it because it’s got a lot of content. There are three books, or seasons. I worked through the first season as I was doing my yard work over a weekend. There were 23 episodes and each was 30 minutes or more long – so a solid 15-20 hours of content.

First of all, Scott does a great job with the read. He does a fantastic job with the character voices.

And the audio is studio quality, which is rare for podcasts of this vintage. Scott recorded the first season in 2009. I was podcasting back then as well, and the technology was not great.

It’s a proper book. He builds the characters well and makes you care for them. He builds the narrative and unwraps it slowly to reveal and add tension.

Definitely a thumbs up if you have the time and energy to devote to it.

Scott has over 30 books to his credit in the horror and sci-fi genre. I might have to reach out and talk to him.

In a slightly different vein… One of the other podcasts I have listened to for a long, long time is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast. This podcast is not going to be for everyone, but if you are a literature geek, you may like it. Basically, the senior fiction editor from the New Yorker Magazine Deborah Treisman, asks a noted author to read their favorite piece from the magazine. They talk about it before and after.

The most recent one was Margaret Atwood, yes that Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale, reading a story from Mavis Gallant. It was super inside-baseball literary stuff, but I was out on a trail run lost in the woods and found it incredibly fascinating.

And I can truly say it was a pleasure to hear Atwood being a wise-ass to Treisman.

So, What is Chris watching?

I have a couple of apocalypse or at least dystopian hum-dingers for you this week. I’m pretty sure you can find both for free on cable.

The first one is a movie called Mayhem. This is a 2017 film starring our old friend Stephen Yeung from the walking dead. Basically we get to be a fly on the wall when an office building full of high-powered lawyers gets infected with a bug that turns them all homicidal. It’s a hold-my-beer slaughter-fest with a sense of humor.

Next is a Nicholas Cage movie that I can’t for the life of me understand why this movie never found an audience. It’s called Wily’s Wonderland from 2012. If you like Nicholas Cage, you’ll love this. It’s clever and interesting and Cage is wonderful in his role. It’s campy and funny and gory – just a wonderfully awesome movie.