Welcome to a new season, all about magic and literature! We talk William Shakespeare's Tempest, from women-wizards from Algiers to royal demonology. Caliban's Moth, Ariel's Lantern and AK nearly dies in a spiegel tent. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - "The Tempest", by William Shakespeare - Against Worldbuilding, and Other Provocations, by Alexis Kennedy - Daemonologie, by King James I - The Lesser Key of Solomon, anonymous Follow us on Twitter...

What makes games 'savoury'? Why is Twitter such a bad place to get game design advice? And is it ever sensible to push a count off a cliff? This episode, Lottie and Alexis talk art, games and critique, through architect Christopher Alexander to Jack Cohen and Brian Aldiss' fight over speculative xenobiology in Helliconia. Listen to avoid the perils of categorisation, and the pitfalls of diamonds - and hear Alexis fake his own death. Literally. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for...

Hiraeth? Sensucht? Saudade? Listen to Alexis and Lottie cry as we talk nostalgia, sequels and games, from 17th-century Swiss cowbells to sailing away from your loved ones into danger. We talk transmission of experience from one generation to the next, the future of games as gamers get old, and the impossible loss of childhood - and why that's not such a bad thing after all. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - Sunless Sea, by Alexis Kennedy and...

The conclusion of an epic two-parter. Who would win in a fight between TRPGs and CRPGs? What happens if a giant worm swallows a city? Is a dolphin the same as a cat? We attempt to answer these questions with appeals to Simon Baron-Cohen's empathising-systemising theory, work out why TRPGs rely so heavily on rule-sets when lots of people don't follow them anyway, and end up convincing ourselves that Game of Thrones is Love Island for nerds. PROVE US WRONG IF YOU DARE. Games / books mentioned...

"I don't want to be Elfstar anymore! I want to be Debbie!" Join us for a romp through tabletop gaming's earliest origins and the effect its had on modern video games. Well, that was the intention. We actually stop around the 1980s with fundamental Christianity and a woman called Janine who is bad at charades. But we talk about the defining characteristic of nerdery, Star Wars vs Star Trek, Boris Johnson and the Devil's testicles in between. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your...

Real talk: APOPHENIA. Alexis and Lottie discuss subliminal pattern-seeking from its coinage by a Nazi psychologist to its use by modern indie game developers to cover up the fact we don't have any budget. Wait! We meant to make clever, co-operative immersive experiences. All via werewives, apophanies and Zhou Enlai. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - Cultist Simulator, by us - Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco - Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas...

This episode is about sex and games and the libertine novels of eighteenth-century France. From Talleyrand, the Napoleonic clergyman and diplomat, through to Cindy Crawford, Peter Bradshaw and Amouranth, the Twitch streamer scandal du jour, we talk erotica, porn and those anime sex games you see all the time on Steam. Listen for the power of 'not for me', the uselessness of banning things, and Alexis's really bizarre description of one of Lottie's favourite games. Games / books mentioned in...

Join Alexis and Lottie for a discussion of antagonists and villains! Via witches, Belgium, Simon Baron-Cohen, a charming Irish vagabond and, of course, Nazism. Alexis talks about how rubbish games are and destroys Lottie's argument; Lottie talks about...

What's the connection between the Labyrinths of Night and the Bright Ditches? This question and many more we don't really answer in this episode on mazes, labyrinths and game design.Meet labrys, the lesbianic double-headed axe. Leave kittens in mazes...

Skeleton Songs season two, baby! This season's all about GAMES, but not as you know 'em. Join Alexis and Lottie as we discuss genre via Aristotle and Wittgenstein, cyberpunk and film noir, the Berlin Interpretation and, er, fish genitalia. Also there is...

Ragnarok! Gotterdammerung! Armageddon outta here! In the final episode of season one, we talk eschatology, chocolate, fake news and the bloody gothness of Old Germanic literature. Sexy zombie apocalypses and millennial doomsday cults make an appearance...

Maenads! Who are they, what do they want, and how do they wear their fox-skins? Kittens! How can they be so cute and so murderous at the same time? Join Alexis and Lottie as they discuss why frenzied Bassarids and Cutie McFloofcat are both the same...

Join Alexis and Lottie on a deep-dive into WORLDBUILDING. Why it's menacing to be told to start with a timeline, how Twin Peaks' BOB came to be, why you must never call pulled pok 'flesh-spicing', and why the architect of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao...

This week we take a break from literature and talk about the weird stories in our own lives. Join Sheep-Stealer and Big Head as they introduce you to Great Uncle Gilbert, the teenage flying ace and real-life Great Escape artist, and David the contract...

Can you really trust anyone? Join Alexis and Lottie as they roundly conclude that you can't. We talk unreliable narrators via toilets, relevance theory, echoic mentions, the four levels of Star Wars canonicity and Lovecraft being surprisingly confident...

Madness, blood and ladies! We talk all things bloody, from Freud to Pliny to the Red Grail to Queen Elizabeth the First to murdering an entire hive of bees. The Madonna / whore complex? Check. Horrible Norse mythology about men being scared of ladies,...

Join Alexis and Lottie for a run-down of forbidden knowledge: the type that's ipso facto dangerous and the type that's dangerous because of what you can do with it. We discover Christopher Marlowe was definitely a spy, nuclear codes are modern occultism...

From ancient Egypt to modern web comics, döppelgangers haunt us all. Join Alexis and Lottie as they discuss the ins and outs of these look-alikey ghouls, from Scottish fetches to Capgras syndrome via Dostoyevsky, Silent Hill 2, neuropsychology and scary...

Panthers, dragons, monoceri, yales, wendigos, hell-hounds and pigs! This isn't an occult incantation, this is a half-hour deep-dive into our favourite spooky beasts from medieval bestiaries, epic poems and early 20th century ghost stories.Whether you're...

Lottie and Alexis tackle vampires.