Podcasts – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Podcast Review: Monstrous Agonies

Monstrous Agonies captures the late-night, weekly advice segment of the UK’s only dedicated radio station for people of the night. Each episode features two letters and their responses as listeners write in to ask for advice on all things liminal, from vampires trying to eat more ethically to ghosts whose crushes look right through them.

Winner of the 2022 British Fantasy Award for Best Audio, Monstrous Agonies was our first podcast and our first foray into getting our audience involved in the storytelling process. Listeners were able to send in their own letters and questions, shaping the universe of the show as it was being created.

Monstrous Agonies wrapped up in September 2023.

My Review

I’ve been listening to this podcast on and off for the last couple of months. Each week there are a couple of letters that the host has to answer. Each letter asks a different question, which cover all sorts of dilemmas. Over the course of the three series, there is a through line of the Hosts relationship with Mab, which goes from antagonistic to loving. There is also a sub-plot in which the station is threatened by a corporation that is trying to take over all businesses that serve the liminal community.

The letters can easily be interpreted as referring to Neurodivergent and Queer issues. Everything from imposter syndrome to being the only one in the family, to having a young family member who is being treated badly by parents who won’t listen to an adult with the same identity. And then there’s the dragon who has taken on a princess and has struggled to find a hero to rescue her. And the giant spider cursed with empathy who can’t eat the creatures lured into her webs.

The creativity and humour of this podcast kept me entertained through 111 episodes, while the advice dispensed is actually rather useful. You just have to work out the context…

Throughout the three series, Hero makes pointed criticism of capitalism, bigotry, and landlords. Landlords get hit with a metaphorical big stick. As they should. I enjoyed their social commentary.

All of the episodes are short, about 15 minutes, so you don’t have to commit huge amounts of time to get through a couple of episodes. It’s good walking to the shops or going on your break at work listening. I really enjoyed the writing, the storytelling, and Hero has a lovely voice for audio. If you enjoy urban fantasy, love folklore, and are a bit anti-capitalist, you’ll enjoy this podcast. Highly recommended.

I’ve moved on to their next podcast, Travelling Light. I shall report back once I’ve listened to all of them.

I’ve started a podcast.

I’m scared and the first episode is a bit of a mess because I don’t have any editing software, so it’s just me talking into a microphone with some stock music added at the beginning and end. I reviewed two books quite quickly and mentioned others on the blog. WordPress has some sort of agreement with Spotify because every time I publish a blog post I get a ‘turn it into a podcast’ message, and I finally gave in after writing my review for Legends & Lattes earlier. I bit the bullet and made use of a borrowed microphone. I’m hoping to get better at recording and try to find editing software that will let me take out my hesitation and repetition, as well as the dogs making noises in the background.

I hope to release a new episode every fortnight, hopefully with at least two reviews and any rambling chatty stuff that sneaks in. I like to talk about my work so I probably will end up discussing the neurodiversity heritage project and possibly even the allotment.

I should probably tell you what it’s called and all that.

The blog is called:

You can find it on Spotify and Anchor.

If you can bare to hear my weird voice and don’t mind me rambling a bit, please give it a listen and leave any constructive feedback in the comments of this post.

I tried a weight management programme for 18 months and all I got was worse mental health

This is a long one, get comfy. I don’t talk about personal stuff much now, since my blog has evolved into a book blog from a general/mental health blog.

For the first time in 18 months, I weighed myself today. Last time I got weighed was at the start of 2020 when I was weighed at the start of a ‘get active’ programme with the local leisure centres, where I started swimming two to three times a week, and then a ‘weight management programme’ a few weeks later.

I will be talking about weight and BMI, so if that’s not a happy thing for you to think about, probably best not to read on.

I haven’t lost or gained any weight, but apparently I’m 6 centimetres shorter than I was in February last year…

More podcasts I like

Have I mentioned I like to listen to podcasts while I write? I probably have. I thought I’d tell you about another one I enjoy. I was listening to the Standard Issue Magazine podcast and they interviewed Rachel Fairburn and Kiri Pritchard – McLean, who present comedy/true crime podcast ‘All Killa, No Filla’ after their Edinburgh Fringe show. I had to look for their Facebook page to find a link to their actual podcasts. I found it eventually, here.

There are episodes going back two years, so I’ll be kept entertained for some time. Right, time to get back to Charley’s War. We’re getting to the turning point in the plot now.