Today I talk about Roy Kaplan! It's a cyberpunk paranormal detective show about an ex-burglar solving mysteries by talking to the dead. It's got a lot going for it, and I highly recommend it!

Also, you may have noticed that I'm not posting as often; turns out it's really hard to listen to entire podcasts and put out reviews on a weekly basis. I'll now be doing reviews once a month, to give me more time to really appreciate the podcasts I'm reviewing!

The Pinwheel Lab proudly presents to you: Out of Sight, the first season of Roy Kaplan (or Roy Kaplan, Private Investigator if you prefer), consisting of twelve original and intriguing audio mysteries, 30-40 minutes long each. Join Kaplan–private investigator, ex-burglar, and psychic–as he takes on strange cases across the city and uses his sharp observations, his psychic lock cracking and ghost speaking abilities, and the occasional assist from his ghost roommate Wes to unbury the truths that nobody else can.

Roy Kaplan is a paranormal cyberpunk detective audio drama which focuses heavily on investigation. There are no magic answers here–Kaplan puts his feet on the pavement and his wits to the test to unsnarl the cases that come across his desk. The series is written episodically–each episode more or less can be listened to on its own without requiring knowledge of other episodes (though it is still preferred to listen in release order). It is heavily inspired both by old time radio classics like Richard Diamond as well as 1930s to 1950s hardboiled detective fiction. It is written, edited, and produced by Jesse Peng and features the voice talents of 35 voice actors across the season as well as an original soundtrack courtesy of Beacon.

Wakers has a lot of content warnings: necrophilia, substance abuse, foul language, graphic depictions of violence, self-harm, suicide, and brief mentions of sexual assault. If you can stomach it though, it's a great show!

There are a couple minor spoilers but I feel they're necessary for mental health safety reasons; I want everyone to be informed going into this since it's such a mature show! But it is truly an amazing work of art and I don't think these spoilers take away from the experience at all.

In this grimly humorous audio drama, the afterlife isn’t as restful as you’d hope. When corpses are brought back to life with a little bit of love (and necrophilia), they find themselves alone, confused, and in a world that has moved on without them.

WAKERS follows the newly undead as they stumble through their second chance at life. From mandatory group therapy to barely functioning government programs, they will find that life wasn’t quite ready for them. Not to mention the anxiety, depression, memory loss, the burnings, that weird club, that weirder church, my head’s leaking, I don’t know where I am or where to go or who I am, but hey -- at least I’m alive! ...right?

Anyways... prepare for laughter, emotions, and discomfort as these reanimated souls explore the nature of identity, loneliness, and making a home when there’s nowhere else to go.

WAKERS was produced by Bedrock Productions. It was written and directed by Garrett Atkinson and co-directed by Dalton Sides.

Full disclosure: Storybook Ending's Keeper of Stories is my spouse, Loxley Blaine! I wouldn't recommend the show if I didn't truly think people would like it, though. That said, if you want to skip this episode, I understand. Rest assured that this is an anomaly, and won't happen often (or possibly ever again).

Today I talk about Storybook Ending. It's a fun as hell actual play podcast (which I don't usually cover, but it's really good). It's about stories coming to life in a small town where four humans are granted word-based magic.

For some insight into the podcast, I have Storybook Ending's own Killian Day with me to talk about the show! Killian plays Tabs, so if you're a fan of Storybook, tune in for some Tabs Talk! The Keeper Loxley also pops in for a bit to build some spells with us using Spell the RPG's system.

(Forgive the dogs barking in the background once or twice in the latter half of the ep, we had a busy day.)