Radio Rental · Tenderfoot TV & Audacy

Episode 61

·37 min·3 clips

A 17-year-old au pair meets a stranger at the airport after her supposed employer vanishes.

Rain opens the rental house. Terry treats the visit like a strange VHS drop-in, with Malachi on edge and lightning helping sell the bit. The setup is goofy. Then the story settles into a plain account of a pickup that feels wrong almost right away. The guest wants out. The driver pushes back, saying the area is only for pickup and that she could be fined. That answer makes the situation feel tighter. The guest agrees to move, even as she knows agreeing is the wrong move. She asks again. The woman still does not just let her leave. Instead, she says they can drive somewhere else and think about it. The ride is only a few minutes, but the guest remembers it as stretched and useless. Her mind bolts ahead. She imagines being trafficked, kidnapped, murdered, or driven off before anyone can figure out where she went. When the car reaches a hangar, she gets out and calls her mom, crying hard enough to scare her. Her mother hears it immediately. The guest explains that this woman is not the person she had been talking to, and her mother tells her not to go with her. Her father gets angrier and tells her to call a good friend in the city. That gives her something practical to do. The friend answers, her dad will pay for a taxi, and she is left outside the car, shaken but finally aimed toward someone safe.

As heard by us

A wrong pickup turns into a steady, very human scare.

Radio Rental is at its best when Terry Carnation's VHS-store framing steps aside and the story can just breathe. The airport pickup mix-up is plain on its face, but that ordinary detail is what makes the fear settle in.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

An airport pickup goes wrong when the driver is not the person you expected.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Radio Rental