131 - Brought To You By Kellogg's

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Today, as all days, as every day of of your life, has been brought to you by Kellogg's.

Are you worthy?

Welcome to Night Vale.

Hello, listeners.

Well, we've been having some real budget troubles here at the station, so it does seem that today's entire broadcast will be a sponsorship message from Kellogg's.

I know that feels like a lot, but it was the only way to keep the station up and running.

Station management consumes three tons of soil from Paris each month, and it has been massively expensive digging it up and shipping it here.

Not to mention all the bribes needed for government officials.

All to say that Kellogg's has agreed to pay for, um,

let me check.

Okay.

One month of soil shipments in exchange for us exclusively talking about them for the next three years.

Huh.

Okay.

Well, that doesn't sound like the best bargain, but I'll consult the station's legal advisor and see if we can get out of that.

Our legal advisor is Laura, who is a server down at the Moonlight All-Night Diner.

Between shifts, she likes to read Wikipedia pages about

law stuff, so we often go to her for her expert opinion.

In the meantime, probably best for me to just do what the contract says.

This explanation brought to you, of course.

By Kellogg's.

Let's get to the news.

John Peters, you know the farmer, farmer, said that some folks came to his farm.

They said they were from Kellogg's, said they heard that he grew the finest imaginary corn in the state, said they were thinking of getting into imaginary corn flakes, and that they wanted to buy up his entire crop.

He told them that he already had a deal with Flakios, a good local cereal company, and that he couldn't go back on his word.

One of the folks, from Kellogg's, squinted up at the sun, then spit on the ground through tight lips.

Oh,

that person said, I wouldn't worry about Flakios.

To be honest, listeners, I'm now worried about Flakios.

And now the community calendar.

This evening is the monthly school board meeting.

Topics covered will include updating textbooks to contain words rather than runes and diagrams of ritual dances, Hiring a new vice principal after that whole endless cave of suffering mess a few weeks ago, and replacing all food in the cafeteria with cereal.

Scientists from the Kellogg's Institute say that most food has no nutritional value at all.

Oh, wow, I did not know that.

And that only cereal contains all the protein, vitamins, and corn that a body needs to live.

Ah, that seems right.

Thursday, the Boy Scouts are holding their summer bake sale.

They will have bowls of cereal and nothing else.

The cereal is not available to you.

You are available to the cereal.

Friday is now called Kellogg's Day.

Mentioning the outdated name for Kellogg's Day will result in severe fines and disappearances.

Okay, I'm actually getting some sort of urgent text from Carlos.

He says that something I've said recently is not scientifically accurate, but I don't have time to check what.

Kellogg's isn't paying me to text.

Or maybe they are.

You know, it's not clear what Kellogg's wants from us.

Saturday morning is the Summer Softball League's weekly game, pitting Steve Carlsberg's Happy Hyenas against Susan Willman's Garbage Dump Team.

That's not the actual name of the team, but it should be.

Ugh, Susan Willman.

Kellogg's will be sponsoring the game by replacing the softballs with fistfuls of applejacks and sending employees to hurl boxes of cereal at players.

Sunday afternoon in Grove Park, Sarah Sultan will be offering free meditation classes.

Sarah is, of course, a fist-sized river rock, and so is extraordinarily good at staying still and silent.

And she wants to pass these skills on to you.

Kelloggs will place a six-inch deep layer of special K over the entire park, for reasons that are their own.

The Night Vale Meteorological Society has issued an extreme heat watch for Monday, saying, hey, it's a desert.

In August, it's probably going to be hot as heck on Monday and all other days.

Kellogg's suggests using the sun to cook up some rice krispie treats by building a simple solar energy panel and using that to power an electric oven.

And please, set aside all of Tuesday, as Kellogg's has indicated that they will have use for us, all of us, on Tuesday.

And then Kellogg's made this hollow, dry laugh that sounded like it came from a long, dormant stone well.

This has been the community calendar.

In other news, Flakeyo's executives announced that they are going to stand strong against this current Kellogg's encroachment.

We are citizens of Nightvale, said Flakeyo's chief executive, Leopold Tuesdale.

We've been through a lot of terrifying stuff.

It's a real weird town.

We're not afraid of a competing cereal company.

Then he yelped as the closet in his office opened and the folks from Kellogg's came out.

One of them squinted up at the sun, then spit on the office floor through tight lips.

I wouldn't worry about Flaggios,

the person said.

And then the Kellogg's group left the office while Leopold sputtered about how they got in and why anybody would ever spit on another person's floor.

Next up, we have traffic.

Oh,

nope.

Okay.

Um,

I'm I'm being told that traffic has been replaced today by our news segment.

Listeners, I'm pleased to bring you Common Kellogg's Questions, in which you ask questions and I answer them with off-the-cuff answers that are not written down for me on these carefully scripted cards.

Question number one.

How much is too much cereal?

My offhand answer.

How much is too much life?

How much is too much love?

Would you deny yourself blood in your veins?

Would you deny yourself dreams in your evenings?

There is not too much.

There is only ever the deficit and the longing.

Okay, question number two.

Sometimes it seems my cereal boxes are watching me.

I don't know how else to describe it.

They don't have eyes or anything and they're just sitting there, but it feels like they're watching me.

Just improvising here, but certain measures are taken for your own good.

Don't worry about it.

It's fine.

And question number three.

Is this coupon for frosted mini wheats still usable?

I've had it since like 2007, but it doesn't have a date on it.

Is it still good?

In answer to your question and for your extemporaneous listening pleasure, here are 10 seconds of a person eating cereal recorded really, really close to their mouth.

This has been Common Kellogg's Questions.

Let's just keep this going.

Health tips.

Did you know that cornflakes cure most cancers?

The reason you didn't know that is that it isn't true.

But we have made a person on the radio say it to you, and now you will remember that he said it and forget that he said it wasn't true.

Because our minds are fallible and easily manipulated.

Okay, this is just

insulting.

Do I really have to

keep moving?

Flakio's chief executive, Leopold Tuesdale, has vanished under mysterious circumstances.

A white van with a Kellogg's logo pulled up to him as he walked to his car, and a group of people hustled him into a burlap sack and the burlap sack into the van.

One of the people stopped to squint up at the sun and then spit on the ground through tight lips before jumping in and the van roaring off.

So I am being hired by our current sponsors to report that nothing is known about Leopold's disappearance and there are no clues indicating what happened.

Yeah, probably he just got scared about the quality of his competitors' products and fled.

Happens all the time.

All the time, Kellogg's has asked me to repeat.

Now, let's see what kind of weather Kellogg's has deigned to give you.

A chalkboard full of secrets.

It was like some kind of code

to tell the stars and planets how to fall and how to glow.

But when she turned to face the classroom, there was chalk upon her nose.

Like the ghost of Madame Curie or a clown

in women's clothes and the boys dismissed the work so quick, they laughed at her instead.

As just in girls spilled some numbers from her head

late night in the library

in the basement by herself

Alone among some books again

at home between the shelves While she was searching for some answers

When she stumbled in the dark

on a girl with colored pencils and black eyes like question marks And they said hello

In stereo, then they both just stood and stared

as a normal sort of silence filled the air.

The girl asked her what she studied

and what she read so late at night

The thoughts that filled her notebooks and the stars that filled her eyes.

Oh, but she said she couldn't tell her.

She said she'd just get bored.

It was a story told in numbers, not a story told in words.

But the girl just laughed and leaned right back, said, Try me if you dare.

So, stories when there's something more to share.

So she shrugged, and her hands began to speak

a dance of differentials and of poetry and greed.

She sought for new dimensions,

vibrations of the strings.

And from a single derivation,

all

the worlds can rise to meet.

And she drew concentric circles with

her finger in the air.

They glowed where there were no

more,

but manifold they share.

And being

perfect synergy, joined in all agrees.

They touched in ways that no one else could see.

Real and girl's eyes lit with fire

like milk and kerosene

It was the smartest thing she'd ever heard and the hottest thing she'd seen

So she grabbed her by the brainstem

And and she threw her to the floor

And they kissed like their equations had never balanced quite before

Cause every lonesome thesis

just describes the unobserved

There's always one who'll fall upon the tale of every curve.

There's so many locks

So many doors so many twisted keys

within the standard deviation from

me.

There's so many locks, so many doors, so many twisted keys

within the standard deviation from

me.

Hey, it's Jeffrey Kraner with a word from our sponsor.

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Visit the official sponsor of Welcome to Night Vale, Kraken Rum.com to release the Kraken this Halloween.

Copyright 2025, Kraken Rum Company, Kraken Rum.com.

Like the deepest sea, the Kraken should be treated with great respect and responsibility.

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In the beginning, there was nothing.

There was not non-existent, nor existent.

There was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.

What covered in and where?

And what gave shelter?

Was water there, unfathomed, depth of water?

Darkness was upon the face of the deep.

Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal.

Then

there was Kellogg's.

Nothing became something.

Kelloggs spread and formed.

Kelloggs became the planets and the stars.

Kelloggs gathered into long strands to become the arms of galaxies, an infinity of Kelloggs.

Space made tangible out of the empty.

Kelloggs became soil and water.

It became trees and it became birds and it learned to sing and it learned to speak.

The first man rose and found the first woman waiting for him, and her name was Kellogg's, and his name was Kellogg's, and they shouted in horror at their own mortal forms.

Later there were cities, and before that, there were communities.

And it all came from Kellogg's, and was of Kellogg's, and belonged to Kellogg's.

The people knelt and they gave a joyful thanks for their own creation, but Kellogg's could not hear.

It was a heaving, dumb creature, and it created out of a natural impulse, like how humans bleed, like how birds bleed, like how trees bleed.

It did not create out of benevolence.

Kellogg's is not benevolent.

It is not evil either.

It is a stone.

It is a star.

It is every empty distance between the stones and the stars.

It is not capable of morality.

It is Kellogg's.

It is forever.

Once, long ago, the first king looked out over the first kingdom.

It was not a very big kingdom, but then there weren't a a lot of people at that time.

Great empires would come later, but at that moment the world was very small, a stretch of grassland near water.

And the person who held that grassland was a king, and the grassland became a kingdom.

There were titles given and borders erected.

The king felt that he had created something great here,

that his name would ring out forever.

No one knows his name now.

Even a hundred years after his death, it was forgotten.

The only name that rings out forever

is Kellus.

Once, there was a farmer who lived at the edge of a forest.

And she worked her fields.

She would look at the forest with longing because it seemed to her that her life was built only of routines and chores, and that these were the walls that boxed her in, and that by monopolizing her days, these routines were killing her.

They were killing her in the sense that they were taking her entire life away from her.

And she felt that if she ever got the nerve, one Kellogg's day evening, she would run into the forest.

Maybe it would be scary in there, probably dangerous.

She would be less comfortable than she was on the farm, but she would also be truly herself.

It was all waiting for her in the forest.

She never ran into it.

Later she died while working one of her fields.

This story doesn't matter.

The only thing that matters is Kellogg's.

Years from now, the universe will disperse.

The stars will dim, running out of the energy imbued to them when it all exploded.

Planets will become cold rock and molecules will stop forming and atoms will stop vibrating and it will be still.

It will be still forever.

Or at least until the next thing.

And nothing from this thing will ever see the next thing.

Kellogg's will watch the universe grow tired and will help it lay itself to rest.

And Kellogg's will wait in the darkness.

Will wait as long as it needs to, forever.

Or what a human would perceive as forever.

Maybe it will wait for ten times as long as this universe ever existed.

But eventually it will stir.

There will be water there, unfathomed depth of water.

Darkness will be upon the face of the deep and it will all start

anew.

There is a town

and that town

is called Night Vale.

It exists on a plain in a desert surrounded by the scrublands and the sand wastes.

Above us are lights that flit about and that peer.

We peer back wonderingly.

We are simple and we love each other and we conceal secrets and we hold multitudes and in this way we are like anyone.

We live lives that are rich with meaning and awe.

Or we live lives that are heavy with torment and worry.

Or we live lives that pass by like a Wednesday afternoon.

We reach the end and say, oh my God,

is that it?

And it was.

We are a community.

Like the king, we have made the world smaller.

And in claiming this tiny corner as our entire world, we have created a kingdom.

Like the farmer, we eye the forest and contemplate what could be out there if we ever left, if we ever went.

But few of us do.

And like the universe, we are brought to us

by Kellogg's.

We belong to Kelloggs, and we are made of Kelloggs.

We cannot understand Kelloggs, and that may be because the mystery is too complex.

Or it may be because it is as simple as a monolith.

And truly, there is nothing to understand.

Flaky Odes

is no more.

The company has been bought out, with no management left to resist the hostile takeover.

It is now a research wing of Kellogg's, designed to test out a concept that Kellogg's says they have just invented all on their own, which is a line of cereal meant for nighttime only.

The new head of this division squinted up at the sun, then spit on their own office floor through tight lips before

I wouldn't worry about Flinkios.

That's it for our sponsored show.

Remember, today

has been brought to you

by Kellogg's,

and Kellogg's

can take today

away.

Good night, Night Vale.

Good night.

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 Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin.

Original music by Disparition.

All of it can be found at disparition.info or at disparition.bandcamp.com.

This episode's weather was Standard Deviation by Danny Schmidt.

Find out more and get Danny's music at dannyschmidt.com.

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You might know me from the League Veep or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

We love movies and we come at them from different perspectives.

Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas, and I don't.

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Let's not forget that Paul thinks that Dune 2 is overrated.

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

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