190 - Listeners

Speaker 1 and I don't just write Welcome to Nightville, we also write books that are not about Nightville, and here are some of them.

Speaker 1 Alice Isn't Dead, a lesbian road trip horror love story for fans of Stephen King.

Speaker 1 The Halloween Moon, my book for kids of any age about a Halloween where things really start to get weird for everyone.

Speaker 1 The First 10 Years, a memoir from me and my wife about our relationship told year by year without consulting each other about our differences in memory.

Speaker 1 And from Jeffrey, You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, an apocalyptic novel that takes place in the same universe as the Within the Wires podcast.

Speaker 1 No matter what you're looking for, we've written a book just for you. Find them where you find books.
Okay, bye!

Speaker 3 In 1994, Lawrence Henwick lived an easily unnoticed life. He worked at the cell phone kiosk at the mall, did his grocery shopping late at night, and mostly kept to himself.

Speaker 3 His few friends were those he had known since high school, and he only saw them one or two times a year. He was polite and orderly, and kept the world out.

Speaker 3 And maybe this would have lasted the rest of his life if he had not let his car registration lapse.

Speaker 3 A routine traffic stop led a suspicious officer to obtain a search warrant on Lawrence's house. And what the sheriff's secret police would find would put him in the record books of U.S.

Speaker 3 law enforcement, a collection of material considered so illegal and so vile that many agents refused to transport it to the station.

Speaker 3 Lawrence Henwick was in possession of the largest collection of writing utensils in the country.

Speaker 3 I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

Speaker 6 Listeners, something has changed for our quiet little town. It seems that the rest of the country has become aware of our existence.
I don't know what this means for us.

Speaker 6 We are usually such private people, content with our corner of the world.

Speaker 6 I hope this doesn't affect real estate values or property taxes and the like, but then maybe tourism would help boost our economy a bit. I suppose we shall just have to wait and see.

Speaker 9 This is the Spork Full. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.

Speaker 9 When we talk about pizza, we don't talk enough about the crust. There's thin crust, cheese-stuffed crust, thick crust.
But no matter what crust you prefer, it's not a pizza without it, right?

Speaker 9 Maybe not. On today's show, we talk with Rico Goldblum, owner of Big Rico's Pizza in Night Vale.
As their saying goes, no one does a slice like Big Rico.

Speaker 11 No one.

Speaker 9 And that's probably true, because all of Rico's pizzas are crust-free.

Speaker 7 How do you eat that, let alone cook it?

Speaker 9 Time to find out.

Speaker 13 Hey, your friend, host Steve Carlsberg, here, and it's time for Dotted Lines, the only podcast to give you the truth behind Nightvale's lies.

Speaker 13 Today I have my daughter Janice on to talk about the total lack of wheelchair accessibility at the Mudstone Abyss.

Speaker 14 Lee Marvin was many things.

Speaker 14 A decorated Marine whose medals included the Purple Heart, who was discharged as a private after being demoted for troublemaking.

Speaker 14 A Western actor whose work in Cat Baloo earned him an Academy Award.

Speaker 14 and a man who turned down a starring role in Jaws because he thought it would make him look silly. A veteran who publicly opposed the Vietnam War and the defendant in the case of Marvin v.

Speaker 14 Marvin, which established the concept of palimony, the financial support of a former partner to whom a person was never married.

Speaker 14 But least known of all is Lee Marvin's later life after he moved to a town

Speaker 14 called Nightvale.

Speaker 14 A strange little desert town almost unknown to the rest of the world in which Lee Marvin would turn 30

Speaker 14 and then

Speaker 14 turn 30 again over and over every single day a birthday.

Speaker 14 Time would cease to move for Lee Marvin. To be honest, Even I find this story difficult to comprehend.

Speaker 14 Join us, won't you?

Speaker 14 For the story of Lee Marvin in Nightvale.

Speaker 18 Hello, and welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie, the show where we don't just report on French science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal, but take part ourselves.

Speaker 19 Yep, when they make the claims, we show up so you don't have to.

Speaker 21 I'm Carrie Poppy.

Speaker 18 And I'm Ross Blotcher. And this week.

Speaker 22 Oh my God,

Speaker 19 this is so crazy.

Speaker 24 This is a wild one.

Speaker 18 Okay, so this week we checked out the joyful church of the smiling God, and it was.

Speaker 19 I mean, well, we are already smiling. Just describing it.

Speaker 18 We're definitely smiling. Very painful.
In fact, it won't stop. And I think it's permanent.

Speaker 19 I think it's permanent. And it's

Speaker 5 painful.

Speaker 25 It's technology. It's entertainment.

Speaker 22 It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

Speaker 26 I'm Anoush Zamarodi.

Speaker 22 Today on the show,

Speaker 27 and wheat byproducts.

Speaker 26 Can they be trusted?

Speaker 8 This episode of Comedy Bang Bang is brought to you by yearn.com.

Speaker 17 Have you ever yearned?

Speaker 26 You know what I mean?

Speaker 28 What a pain it is to yearn for things. Sitting by the window, looking at the sky, feeling specific emptiness.
Ah.

Speaker 28 Every one of us does it all day, every day, and it leaves little time to eat or sleep or make long-running, incredibly successful, critically acclaimed comedy podcasts.

Speaker 24 Well, now there is yearn.com.

Speaker 28 You tell us what you're yearning for, and one of our professional yearners will yearn for it on your behalf.

Speaker 17 Yearn.com, yearn better.

Speaker 24 Yearn now.

Speaker 28 All right, back to the show. We are here with Lee Marvin, star of the new HBO sitcom, Howard's End.

Speaker 10 Brothers, for years, my brother-in-law was pretty mean to me. He works at the local community radio station, and he would tell lies about me from his position there,

Speaker 10 telling his listeners, for instance, that my scones lack salt and are tasteless which is ridiculous uh i am an excellent scone baker recently what everybody feels like they're good at scones anybody who's ever made scones i feel like it feels like they're good at scones right well it's hard to make if you can make them just to begin with it's already an achievement recently we have reached a point of understanding and are now quite friendly sometimes however i feel like his niceness can just be as aggressive sorry can be just as aggressive as his former meanness he still talks about me on the radio and he shouts compliments about me to the government agents tasked with watching my house.

Speaker 10 It's overly friendly, and it makes both me and the government agents feel uncomfortable.

Speaker 10 How can I help him find a balance between his former malice and his current well-intentioned but overly friendly behavior?

Speaker 7 What do you think, Trev?

Speaker 30 Hello, guy. Hello, Tim.

Speaker 31 Welcome to another episode of The Worst Idea of All Time.

Speaker 32 A title that feels, if I'm honest, more and more literal every episode.

Speaker 24 Yeah, sort of a joke at first, but now more like an eternal torment.

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 24 So we are watching the movie Grown Ups 2 once a week. This is our 10,000 third watch, so that puts it at...
Just around 190 years we've been doing this.

Speaker 24 Right here in this grey room where there is nothing but a grey couch and a single TV that only plays Grown Ups 2 once a week and and otherwise does not function. It's a grim existence, Tim.

Speaker 24 It really is. What was your shining light this week?

Speaker 24 I had a dream that we escaped this room. It was a beautiful dream of freedom I felt.
Light on my face. I saw the sun.
But then I woke up and

Speaker 24 I was here.

Speaker 6 Well, it seems that our existence is causing something of an uproar for the rest of the the country. I'm not clear why.
We are just one small town, ordinary in most ways.

Speaker 6 We are Americans like you, unless you are not American, in which case, unlike you.

Speaker 6 Surely this clamor and outcry is unnecessary for a town as tiny as ours. But what do I know of the world? Honestly, very little.

Speaker 22 Hi, I'm Gabby Dunn, and this is Bad with Money.

Speaker 22 Okay, Deadbeats, today we're talking about how money works in a very strange place. I'm sure you've seen the news.
I don't have to tell you.

Speaker 22 We've all discovered that there's a town called Nightvale in the American Southwest, and folks, it's very weird.

Speaker 22 It's just, wow, a very strange place in more ways than I have time to summarize here, and I love to talk.

Speaker 22 It might not surprise you to learn that my first thought upon hearing about Vale was: huh, how does money work in a place where, until recently, time didn't even work?

Speaker 22 Money is so much a trust game, the belief that currency will still be worth something by the time you get around to spending it.

Speaker 22 How does that trust game work in a place with a literal sheriff's secret police?

Speaker 22 To find out, I hopped on the phone with a couple citizens of the town. I had to.

Speaker 22 And the first was named, Are you ready?

Speaker 4 The Glow Cloud.

Speaker 22 Let's hear what they had to say.

Speaker 31 Today on the pod, the discovery of a town called Night Vale within the U.S. borders in which every known law of physics and metaphysics is broken.

Speaker 31 And what does that mean for the upcoming special elections in Minnesota? Also, President Biden is looking at cutting funding to a Vague Medicine government agency.

Speaker 9 Can he do that and should he?

Speaker 34 This is underunderstood.

Speaker 26 Hey, everyone.

Speaker 17 Hello.

Speaker 5 Hello. Hey, Adrian.

Speaker 22 What do you all know about the town of Nightvale?

Speaker 24 The town of Nightvale.

Speaker 26 You know, I think I know kind of everything.

Speaker 5 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 26 Like, I just woke up recently and the knowledge was just in my mind.

Speaker 24 And I knew...

Speaker 26 Literally everything there is to know about Nightvale.

Speaker 26 And everything about the town is impossible, but my knowledge of Nightvale Vale is absolute and involute.

Speaker 22 Yeah, me too.

Speaker 22 Me too.

Speaker 8 Welcome to the Dark Owl Podcast.

Speaker 35 I'm Michelle Ton Wing, and you are definitely not cool enough to listen to my music opinions.

Speaker 35 End of episode.

Speaker 1 Goodbye.

Speaker 20 This is The Illusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzmann, try to find language on a map.

Speaker 20 There it is, up there at the top, right next to the Great Lakes. This episode is about Michigan.
Or is it Michigan? Or Minstekan?

Speaker 20 Michigan?

Speaker 1 Michaigan.

Speaker 20 No two people have ever agreed how to pronounce the word. And if you've never heard of Menchiten, you're not alone.
It's widely considered the least recognizable state in America.

Speaker 36 Alright, so the guy sees a dark planet lit by no sun.

Speaker 5 Oh, Dave.

Speaker 36 Above his workplace, what?

Speaker 28 What do you mean what? Dave, I don't like where this is going.

Speaker 36 So, okay, so he decided to move to Nightvale.

Speaker 1 I knew it. Oh, Mike, every time.

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 25 Uh-huh.

Speaker 37 I'm Sarah Marshall. I'm working on a book about the satanic panic.

Speaker 32 I'm Michael Hobbes.

Speaker 38 I'm a reporter for the Huffington Post.

Speaker 37 And on this episode of You're Wrong About, we're going to talk about the Mudstone Abyss.

Speaker 38 Ooh, it's like Boston's big dig, but in the desert.

Speaker 30 All right, Sarah, should we get to our listener mail?

Speaker 35 Yes. Our first email is from Cecil Gershwin-Palmer.

Speaker 34 Cecil says, Hi, Percast.

Speaker 35 My cat, Kaushik,

Speaker 35 pronounced Kaushik, by the way. Oh, okay.
And I listen to your show all the time. He doesn't photograph well, but here's the best picture I own.
Oh, let's bring out the picture.

Speaker 15 Oh,

Speaker 36 is this a prank? This photo is completely dark.

Speaker 35 No, no, no, wait, look, there's a faint outline.

Speaker 11 What? What?

Speaker 39 Are those wings?

Speaker 35 It's a cat, Steven, not a bird. No, those are clearly tentacles.

Speaker 40 Everyone has a blind spot. It's literally the place on the retina where the optic nerve connects to the eye.
No visual information is collected there, which leaves a blank in our vision.

Speaker 40 But these blind spots aren't obvious like a hole in a photo or a smudge on a window. No, even the existence of a blind spot is a blind spot to us.

Speaker 40 We don't see what's missing because our brain fills in the rest of the image. We think we are seeing everything we see, but we're not.

Speaker 40 So in 2012, when landscapers in the small desert town of Nightvale discovered the house that wasn't there, a scientist explained it as simply a trick of the mind, a blind spot.

Speaker 40 The house was right there when you looked at it, and it was between two other identical homes, so it would have made more sense for it to be there than not.

Speaker 40 After years of research, though, the scientists concluded that the house didn't exist at all. But that scientist discovered a blind spot of his own.

Speaker 40 I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore.

Speaker 34 You chose to hit play on this podcast today, Smart Choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices.

Speaker 34 That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies.

Speaker 34 So you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this episode at progressive.com.

Speaker 34 Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations.
Prices vary based on how you buy.

Speaker 32 I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times.

Speaker 30 And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from the League VEEP or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

Speaker 32 We come together to host Unschooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them. We're talking Parasite the Home Alone.

Speaker 30 From Greece to the Dark Knight.

Speaker 33 So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure.

Speaker 30 Listen to Unschooled wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 32 And don't forget to hit the follow button.

Speaker 41 Hello from the Magic Tavern, a weekly podcast from the magical land of Foon.

Speaker 41 I'm your host, Arnie Niekamp, and six years and a couple of months ago, I fell through a dimensional portal behind a Ralph's in the town of Nightvale into the magical, fantastical land of Foon.

Speaker 15 And I am Usador, wizard of the...

Speaker 12 Wait, who is this, Ralph?

Speaker 41 Ralph is not a person, Usador. Ralph is a grocery store chain on my world.

Speaker 11 Liar.

Speaker 5 Oh, and why were you behind Ralph? Were you trying to surprise him or puke?

Speaker 11 I was behind a Ralphs.

Speaker 21 Not behind a guy named Ralph.

Speaker 12 And I was just huddling with some of my buds. You know, like you do.
Who is this A-Ralphs?

Speaker 15 Huddlebuds. I want us to be huddlebuds.

Speaker 12 Chun, we are huddlebuds.

Speaker 11 Come on, let's go behind Rudds. Come here, come here.

Speaker 5 Come here.

Speaker 15 Blue.

Speaker 28 Wizard 42. Blue.
Wizard 42.

Speaker 15 Huddle. Huddle.

Speaker 18 Hike.

Speaker 36 Oh, my legs are so sore. We just hiked yesterday.

Speaker 41 There's something about it. It's not as satisfying if it's not behind a Ralph's.

Speaker 42 Wreck it.

Speaker 21 Welcome to Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonald's, the Investigative Journalism Program, or IJP, where I ask the question, whatever happened to the pizza at McDonald's?

Speaker 21 I'm your host, Brian Thompson. Many of you have written in to inform me that there is a McDonald's in the town of Knightvale.

Speaker 21 This McDonald's does not serve pizza, but it does have a hole in the back that they call the pizza hole.

Speaker 21 It is a small hole in the wall near the storeroom, and customers are encouraged to crawl into the pizza hole. No customer has ever returned from such a trip into said hole.

Speaker 21 I knew I had to give this McDonald's location a call.

Speaker 42 Welcome to Song Exploder. I'm Rishikesh Hirway.

Speaker 42 Michelle Wynne is the owner of the legendary music shop Dark Owl Records.

Speaker 42 She's a champion of underappreciated music forms, but not a lot of people know that she was also the leader of the early 2000s music collective Hands, Legs, Mouths, Horizon.

Speaker 42 They're best known for their 2003 single, Buzz. In today's episode, Michelle breaks down the making of Buzz, starting with the demo that she created by shaking a beehive.

Speaker 42 And she tells the story of working with superstar producer Max Martin, who convinced her to update her sound by shaking a wasp hive instead.

Speaker 22 This is Maintenance Phase, the podcast that turns snakes back into wheat and wheat byproducts.

Speaker 38 Aubrey, I just want to eat a normal loaf of bread again.

Speaker 23 Hi, I'm Deb, the sentient patch of haze, and welcome to Nightvale through the side window, your travel companion to all the wonders and delights of Nightvale.

Speaker 23 Today, we will be looking at the best hikes for kids in Radon Canyon.

Speaker 8 How to eat like a local at the moonlight all night, and how to leave Nightvale.

Speaker 23 Spoiler, it's pretty hard and you probably can't.

Speaker 26 This is Hidden Brain.

Speaker 43 I'm Shankar Vedanta. When John Peters was 17 years old, he was an elite baseball player.
Major League Scouts loved his strength, his speed, and his mechanics.

Speaker 43 But before he graduated high school, John inherited his family farm. And he gave up his hopes of playing professional sports to grow invisible corn.

Speaker 43 Today on the show, Hometown Blues. Why we choose to stay in the communities where we are raised, and is it possible to leave?

Speaker 27 Hello, and welcome to Planet Money.

Speaker 35 I'm Mary Childs, and I'm Sarah Gonzalez.

Speaker 27 Today on the show, what happens when a billionaire dies and leaves all of his money, as he phrased it in his will, to the hierarchy of angels.

Speaker 35 And what do we make of the conspiracy theories that the late investor marcus banston is still operating his business from beyond the grave

Speaker 44 this is 99 invisible i'm roman mars

Speaker 15 if you were a resident of the small desert town of nightvale in the last 10 years you probably heard radio commercials that went like this listeners are you lost Don't know where to turn?

Speaker 25 Might I recommend the Brownstone Spire?

Speaker 38 Do you need cash?

Speaker 25 Cast your eyes to the Brownstone Spire.

Speaker 44 The Brownstone Spire. It's a real structure, but no one knew what the ads were selling or who was paying for them to play multiple times a day.

Speaker 45 We were inspired by crystals.

Speaker 45 You know how crystals have a voice, but not when you can hear. Just a resonance that speaks to you up through your bones, into your viscera and then overtakes your soul.

Speaker 45 That was the impetus for our marketing campaign, and it's been hugely successful.

Speaker 44 That's Missy Wilkes. She lives in Knightvale.

Speaker 7 She's also the director of community outreach for Wendy's.

Speaker 6 And so it goes. The world is talking about us now.
After all these years, we have taken our place in the conversation.

Speaker 6 Well,

Speaker 6 I suppose it is nice to be talked about now and then. But I don't think we should get used to it.

Speaker 6 Surely they'll move on once some new headline distracts: a plane crash, or Blight, or the visiting king of a galactic civilization. These things come and these things go.

Speaker 6 But if you are a new listener, I welcome you. You are all welcome here.

Speaker 6 Good night, Night Vale.

Speaker 15 Good night. night.

Speaker 4 Welcome to Night Vale is a production of Night Vale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Kraner and produced by Disparition.
The voice of Steve is Hal Lublin.

Speaker 4 The voice of Michelle Wynn is Kate Jones. The voice of Deb, the sentient patch of haze, is Meg Bashwinner.
The voice of Nightvale is Cecil Baldwin. Original music by Disparition.

Speaker 4 All of it can be found at disparition.bandcamp.com. Thank you to the many podcasts who generously agreed to take part in this episode.
For a list in order of appearance, please consult the show notes.

Speaker 4 Comments, questions, email us at info at welcometonightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at nightvale radio or invent a desert town and spend nine years writing about it.

Speaker 4 Check out welcometonightvale.com for info about our nightvale live North American tour in 2022. We cannot wait to be in a room with you once again.

Speaker 3 Today's proverb, hope for the best.

Speaker 4 Prepare for the best too. It's going to be great.

Speaker 3 What could go wrong?

Speaker 29 Well, you need to start, I guess, doing more neutral things for him to observe.

Speaker 7 Just standing on a lawn

Speaker 10 right between the lines.

Speaker 29 Yeah, standing on your lawn with as neutral a face as you can, wearing all khaki is a good place to start.

Speaker 10 Maybe like a big sandwich baggie full of porridge or oatmeal because it's like, thank you for this. It is inconvenient, but I appreciate the thought.

Speaker 10 And oh my gosh, these two just canceled each other out.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 39 And maybe

Speaker 10 like a fly a kite, but that's really bland and maybe like made out of like uh some kind of plain white paper yes that's yeah absolutely like informational like you know the parts of the tax form that you don't have to send back but you print off anyway because you're a bad boy perfect just make a kite out of those really boring things and there's like yes it's neutral this is perfect right make it make a kite out of like saran wrap right that's gonna you're getting you're getting into some challenging aerodynamic ideas travis that's fair that's like really challenging that's fair uh maybe okay here's what you you make some scones right half of them delicious half of them gross right and then you just kind of mix and match okay here's here's some i want to red flag one of these okay if they get one of the bad scones first they're never gonna go back for a good one you know like you're not you're not gonna house that bad one and then be like let me check let me try it let me find out let me try one more time we do how about like a a a perfectly made scone?

Speaker 36 Yes. That is flavored like cut grass.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that's neutral.

Speaker 10 That's neutral.

Speaker 1 Hi, we're Meg Bashwiner and Joseph Fink of Welcome to Night Vale.

Speaker 33 And on our new show, The Best Worst, we explore the golden age of television.

Speaker 1 To do that, we're watching the IMDb viewer-rated best and worst episodes of classic TV shows.

Speaker 16 The episode of Star Trek, where Beverly Crusher has sex with a ghost. The episode of The X-Files, where Scully gets attacked by a vicious house cat, and also the really good episodes, too.

Speaker 16 What can we learn from the best and worst of great television? Like, for example, is it really a bad episode, or do people just hate women?

Speaker 1 The best, worst, available wherever you get your podcasts.