The Program audio series · IMS | Writing an audio drama sci-fi anthology about history of the future | Not at AI

The Program Shows of Accolade: Absolutely No Adventures, Remnants & The World to Come

·28 min·1 clip
You separate Good and Evil Students, then teach Evil Students advanced magic.
This is an audio drama comedy featuring Sig, a 14-year-old legendary hero prophesied to defeat the Avatar of the Dark, who has zero interest in adventures and wants only to open a patisserie and bake cakes. Oliver, a talking cat from Hexwell wizardry school, shows up to recruit him. Sig resists, citing his brother Kurt's horrifying experience at the school (nearly dying or world-ending every break). When Oliver claims only 30% of Evil Students work with the Avatar of the Dark, Sig points out the school's obvious institutional problems: separating Good and Evil students then teaching Evil students advanced magic. The prophecy interpretation gets increasingly absurd as Oliver tries to make Sig fit the 'one foot in each world' requirement through his parents' sports team affiliations. Suddenly Bee arrives—a grad-school-tired student from another dimension who coded a program using a magic rock lodged in her laptop to escape university applications. She's immediately willing to take the hero role, and Sig convincingly argues she fits the prophecy better. The episode brilliantly subverts hero fantasy tropes through sharp dialogue, institutional satire, and absurdist comedy logic.

As heard by us

Three fiction picks, moving from comic strain to haunted detail to speculative conflict.

The Program gives these fiction picks a dry, roomy shape, moving from comedy into melancholy and then into speculative pressure without losing the thread.

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Why you'd press play

A legendary hero wants a patisserie, then the feed shifts into ornate object stories that feel haunting and precise.

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