About Us
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Neil McRobert
Your Podcast host
Neil is a writer, podcaster and recovering academic. After completing a PhD in Contemporary Gothic Fiction (useful!) He fled the ivory halls to live a quiet life amidst the moors and dark satanic mills of northern England. Here he dwells, writing words, talking to famous writers and doting upon his dog. And yes, that is Stephen King’s front gate in the photo.
Want me to write for you? Get in touch.
![](https://talkingscaredpod.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Benji.jpg)
Ted
Your Podcast mascot
The reason i’m a freelance podcaster (who could leave that face at home?). My own personal Cujo. He gets more likes than me on Instagram.
THINGS I HAVE WRITTEN
Look upon my works and despair…
- The Best Horror Books of 2024 – Esquire (ongoing)
- Why Carrie is Still Scary as Shit! – Esquire (April 2024)
- 11 Books That Scratch the 3-Body Itch – Vulture (March 2024)
- 12 Books to Read if You Can’t Move on From Night Country – Vulture (February 2024)
- The Best Horror Books of 2023 – Esquire (December 2023)
- My Macabre Weekend at StokerCon – Esquire (October 2023)
- The Scariest Sci-Fi Horror Movies for Halloween – New Scientist (Oct 2023)
- Shock of the New: Jordan Peele, Mariana Enriquez and More on the Horror Fiction Renaissance – Guardian (October 2023)
- The Long Tale (Tail?) of Dogs in Fiction – Esquire (August 2023)
- Whalefall Review – New Scientist (August 2023)
- Interview with Lauren Beukes – Elle (August 2023)
- Generation H: Meet the Writer’s Shaping Horror’s Next Golden Age – Esquire (July 2023)
Black Mirror Season 6: The Good, The Bad and The Existentially Harrowing – Elle (June 2023)
- The Deluge, review – Guardian (March 2023)
- How Black Filmmakers Reinvented the Horror Genre – Esquire (Feb 2023)
- The 22 Best Horror Books of 2022 – Esquire (Nov 2022)
- What to Read this Halloween and Beyond – Guardian (Oct 2022)
- Where to Start with Stephen King – Guardian (Aug 2022)
- The Fifty Best Horror Books of All Time Will Scare You Sh*tless – Esquire (May 2022)
- All 75 Stephen King Books, Ranked – Esquire (Sept 2022)
- The Final Girl Breaks Out –Slate (Sept 2021)
- Billy Summers, review – Guardian (August 2021)
- Project Fear: What Will Brexit Gothic Look Like? – Guardian (Feb 2019)
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155 – Stephen King & Writing From the Nerve Endings
The architect of modern horror. The creative North Star of my life, and probably yours. Here’s here to talk about a life lived in books.
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154 – Alex Woodroe & The Sweet Science of Folk Horror
Alex is a Romanian writer of dark fictions. Her debut, Whisperwood, is full of Transylvanian myth and legend without a vampire in sight.
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153 – Chuck Tingle & Riding the Lonesome Train
This week we’re joined by the man, the myth, the mystery that is Chuck Tingle. Who knows the truth of this enigmatic figure? Puzzles abound.
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152 – Andrew Michael Hurley & Our Green, Unpleasant Land
This week I’m recording very close to home with Andrew Michael Hurley – about his reissued folk-horror nightmare, Starve Acre.
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151 – Verity Holloway & The Onion Skin of Trauma
War, what is it good for? Absolutely noth…. well actually, it is quite good for horror stories, as Verity Holloway shows us.
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150 – Danielle Trussoni & Puzzling All Over the World
Danielle Trussoni’s The Puzzle Master crams in a whole Discovery Channel series’ worth of conspiracy, mysticism and esoteric history.
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149 – Clowns at Midnight – The Big IT Deep-Dive (Part Two), with Ally Malinenko & Nat Cassidy
In this second part of the dive into Stephen King’s IT, things are getting weird. We’re delving into Pennywise.
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148 – Feral Childhoods – The Big IT Deep-Dive (Part One), with Ally Malinenko & Nat Cassidy
Yes, finally we’re off to Derry, to do battle with that goddamn clown. In this first part we talk Losers and why we love them
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147 – Mike Flanagan & Lighting Up the Darkness
We’re joined this week by Mike Flanagan, our most literary horror director, to talk haunted houses and Dark Towers.
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146 – Paula. D. Ashe & A Bizarre & Bitter Reprieve
The Empress of Excess is here to talk about extreme horror, horrendous crimes and the thorny problem of readers’ feelings.
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145 – Sarah Gailey & The Scariest Place in the House
What if the house that shaped you was a broken, haunted place? Sarah Gailey’s Just Like Home asks this very question.
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144 – Nicholas Binge & the Spookiest of Entanglements
Nicholas Binge is the author the horror-sci-fi, Ascension. It’s about a very weird mountain that lures the unwary. Nothing good occurs, of course.
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131 – Johnny Compton & A Pyroclastic Flow of Negative Energy
Johnny Compton’s The Spite House delivers more ghosts than you think you could fit into 250-pages … and none of them are anything less than
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128 – C.J. Tudor & Locked Rooms at the End of the World
The Drift, takes C.J. Tudor from her crime chillers into a whole other world of horror. We talk failed novels, TV adaptation and pandemic grief.
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127 – Grady Hendrix and the Radical Puppet Collective
They say selling a house is up there with divorce and death. Now imagine that house is haunted… by demonic puppets. That’s the premise of
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123 – Rachel Harrison, Josh Malerman & A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Self-Indulgence
It’s the Christmas Special and with the obligatory requirement to do something different – we’re turning the tables. I’m the one being interviewed this week.
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121 – Craig Engler & What Makes a Shudder Movie?
I’ve swapped books for movies this week – with the man who makes our nightmares. Craig Engler, GM of Shudder is in the house!!
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120 – Philip Fracassi & A Screaming Inferno of Chaos and Emotion
Philip Fracassi’s new novel broke my heart. It’s an all-timer, and we talk about writing compelling children, villains and monsters.
A Special Thanks to my Patrons
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