Radio Rental · Tenderfoot TV & Audacy

Episode 74

·39 min·2 clips

A text on the man's phone reads 'she's really cute, do you think she'll do?' — confirming both strangers on either side of her are working together.

1. Radio Rental Episode 74 features two listener-submitted stories of encounters with strangers that escalated into perceived abduction attempts, presented without resolution. 2. The usual host, Terry Carnation (Rainn Wilson), is absent with laryngitis; his cat Malachi nominally takes over, though the episode uses standard voice narration. 3. The episode's central question is whether both stories reflect planned human predation, supernatural intervention, or something that defies both explanations. 4. In the first story, a college freshman named Macy attends a theater production alone for a theater appreciation class, entering by herself without friends from the course. 5. A man in his late 20s to early 30s positions himself behind her in line, then climbs over her legs to sit on her left, remarking 'I can't believe I'm sitting right next to her.' 6. Over the course of the show, the man exactly mirrors every detail Macy shares: her chemistry major, her favorite book (The Book Thief), her favorite artist (lesser-known Regina Spektor), all connected back to himself. 7. A woman sits to Macy's right and initiates nearly identical small talk, asking the same questions and claiming the same interests — creating a sense of scripted deja vu. 8. At intermission, the man returns with pre-opened M&M and Milk Dud packages that he never eats again after Macy declines; she later realizes the theater had no concession stand. 9. The man's phone lights up with a text from an unsaved number reading 'she's really cute, do you think she'll do?' and he grabs the phone when he notices Macy has read it. 10. Seconds later, the woman's phone shows a reply from an unsaved number — confirming the two strangers had been texting each other throughout the performance. 11. Macy runs to the bathroom as the play ends, then sees the man and woman in a whispered argument across the lobby; a friend coincidentally greets her by name, causing the man to vanish into the crowd. 12. As Macy leaves, the man calls out 'Macy, hope to see you again' — her name never having been given to him. 13. In the second story, the narrator and her 17-year-old friend Kaylee respond to a newspaper rental ad in May 2004 and visit a generic, dim house next to a liquor store. 14. A nondescript man in his mid-30s to late 40s gives them a house tour, then becomes fixated on getting them to enter a pitch-black drywall-framed space he calls a closet — which Kaylee can see has a hole in the back wall leading somewhere else. 15. The man asks them at least three times to enter the closet; both girls begin silently calculating whether they could fight their way out of the house. 16. The narrator's next clear memory is being stopped at a traffic light several miles away, Kaylee talking about a college project as if nothing happened, with the car clock showing nearly three hours have passed. 17. Neither Kaylee nor the narrator can account for how they left the bedroom, exited the house, entered the car, or drove to the intersection — the narrator compares the return to consciousness to 'an audible popping noise, like coming up from underwater.' 18. Weeks later, the narrator drives past the address and the house is physically absent — the space between the liquor store and the neighboring house is too narrow to have ever contained it, with no driveway curb cut remaining; Kaylee independently confirms the same. 19. Both stories are told in a matter-of-fact first-person voice; neither narrator claims a definitive explanation, and the show presents both as unresolved. 20. Listeners who follow true crime and unexplained disappearances would find both stories compelling; those who need closure or logical resolution may find the open endings frustrating.

As heard by us

A video-store wrapper gives way to a rattled first-person story about being cornered by strangers.

Radio Rental leans on the video-store frame just long enough for Malachi to hand off the reins, then settles into a first-person account of a night at a play that starts with candy, a bathroom stop, and the uneasy sense that two strangers are moving together.

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Why you'd press play

Candy, a play, and one stranger who makes the night feel wrong.

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