Brooklyn speculative fiction, wrapped in a running comic sketch.
Kaleidocast is an audio magazine of Brooklyn's speculative fiction writers, reading stories that run from a pooka weighed down by a blood debt to a stylist seized by a vision of drowning. Season-four cold opens begin with a closing-doors warning and tip into a running comic sketch starring Allison and Val.
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Former executive producer Cameron Roberson describes Kaleidocast as an audio magazine of Brooklyn's speculative fiction writers, and the label fits. Fiction read aloud is the core. The stories range across fantasy, folklore, horror, science fiction and the plainly weird. One excerpt follows a pooka, sick, mangy and too feeble to change shape, carrying an unpaid blood debt and unable to dislike the mortal he resents, Liam O'Casey. A selkie named Ian, who says everyone on the docks knows him, wants the pooka's own embarrassing tale as payment for information. Another excerpt stays at a stylist's mirror, where Maura finishes a client's hair and is dragged into a vision of the woman wading into night surf with an impossibly small body in her arms. A third belongs to Lamina, who rises from the rainbow flow of Ninth Street and runs her hands over the scars across her torso; the narrator answers with old cigarette burns they call constellations. The prose in these readings is sensory and close, and it does not look away from pain. Then the frame arrives, and Kaleidocast becomes a different kind of show. Season-four cold opens begin with 'Stand clear of the closing doors, please' and tip straight into a running comic storyline. Allison binges the podcast for thirty hours on Funyuns and prank-calls Val's studio, only to find Val has installed a phone system that leaves callers talking to themselves. With Allison missing in 'S4 Ep7: Special Delivery & How the Pooka Came to New York', the remaining voice has no choice but to team up with someone or something called Val the Vegan, and science fiction ASMR gets floated as an innovation. Elsewhere Val is declared, after extremely scientific testing, neither werewolf nor vampire, NFTs get pitched, a headline claims an archaeological dig confirms Lovecraft, and the cast posts internet junk to train Val's algorithm while planning a workplace exposé. The comedy is broad, the fiction can be tender or grim, and the swing between the two is the show's fingerprint. Bios share the playful streak; one presents Kara Mast as a retired tall-ship sailor, a failed academic and a reluctant finance professional. Outside the numbered seasons is an Off Season Stories with Extras release built around Jonathan Lethem's 'The Insipid Profession of Jonathan Hornebom', introduced by a mock-academic cast that includes Professor Brad Overstreet and Senior Junior Lecturer Sam Spellingbaum; Sam Schreiber, one of the co-editors and co-producers, also speaks there. The Constellations Mentorship Interviews are a separate strand, produced by Roberson as exit interviews in his last act in the role. Constellations is the show's outreach to the Octavia Project, a summer camp for girls and non-binary teens built around STEM and speculative fiction, and professional Brooklyn authors mentored its alumni on their fiction. In 'Constellations Mentorship Interviews Episode 1 Marcy and Leah', one interviewee describes revising the first twenty pages of a middle-grade fantasy full of nonsense words, plus a published story in which Lev the Leviathan tries to emigrate from Russia while Sergei the Yeti chases the paperwork. Episodes close with thanks to Patreon supporters and a Creative Commons non-commercial, no-derivatives license.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants fantasy, horror and science fiction performed as stories rather than discussed, and who enjoys a goofy Brooklyn sketch before the fiction turns serious.
What sets it apart: Its sensory, sometimes dark story readings sit inside a serialized comedy about Allison and Val, and the feed also carries Constellations mentorship interviews tied to the Octavia Project, so it plays like a literary magazine with a sense of humor and an outreach program attached.
The Mission of the Kalediocast is to showcase new voices in speculative fiction alongside stories from today’s top writers.
A pooka gets lost in New York; your route there starts with an impossible brie sandwich.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A thoughtful mentorship conversation about dyslexia, revision, and speculative fiction moving from idea to performance.
Constellations Mentorship Exit Interviews uses Cameron Roberson's final turn as Kaleidocast executive producer to consider how speculative fiction is passed along through mentorship, revision, and performance.
A prank-call war opens into a mermaid vision that turns seaside spectacle into dread.
A prank-call fight over Funyuns, AI clones, and a quote-unquote vegan Val gives this Kaleidocast episode its first charge, before the story slips toward a mermaid parade and a vision of drowning.
A workplace comedy where an AI assistant makes efficiency feel like a curse.
Kaleidocast turns office efficiency into a workplace nightmare as the staff confront Val over IU, an artificial intelligence built to sort routines, spot inefficiencies, and correct them.
A clickbait-splashed broadcast gives way to an underwater test of trust.
Kaleidocast begins in a rush of clickbait headlines, cat pictures, NFT buzz, and sponsor patter, then reveals the trick underneath: Allison and Veronica are on vacation, and the voices left behind are IUs carrying the same memories but not the same legal standing.
A missing Allison, an impossible brie sandwich, and a sick puka stretch the episode into a sharply odd shape.
Allison's absence throws Veronica into a makeshift partnership with Val the Vegan, whose impossible brie sandwich order and interest in food and literature turn the booth into a small comic performance.
Comic-shop instincts at market speed.
Serialized pulp radio drama: Red Panda battles android-army supervillain Captain Clockwork in 1930s Toronto.
Mike Muncer and a different guest dissect two horror films per episode, by subgenre.
Joe Lipsett and Trace Thurman find queer subtext in everything from Anaconda to The Mummy.
Cameron Roberson introduces Kaleidocast’s Constellations Mentorship Exit interviews and explains that the project connects Brooklyn speculative fiction writers with Octavia Project alumni, then records excerpts with professional actors.
Kaleidocast S4 Ep10 pairs Andrea Jaynes’s “As Bright as a Pearl,” read by Tatiana Gray, with Brooke Bolander’s “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies,” read by Naya DeRusso, after a meta opening about Val, AI clones, and cheesecake sabotage.
Kaleidocast turns to Evan Burkow’s “A Song for Sunken Streets,” a Brooklyn set in the wake of an economy crash and a seawall failure that leaves the Gowanus Canal flooded.
Kaleidocast S4E8 opens with Val pitching an “IU,” short for “An artificial intelligence for your real life,” while the hosts mock his claim that it will improve work-life balance.
Kaleidocast S4 Ep7 combines a comic framing device with two narrated stories: Carlos Luis Delgado’s "Special Deliveries" and Delia Sherman’s "How the Pooka Came to New York City." The first story follows Juan Lazaro, an Epicurious app delivery driver in Brooklyn, where a mistaken order of garlic crumble phoenix wings, a 3 a.m.
A speculative fiction podcast featuring a dramatic reading of a story about a surreal fire in Brooklyn.
A podcast that showcases speculative fiction stories, with hosts introducing and discussing a new tale.
A group of academics in a fractured Brooklyn encounter a bizarre mystery involving a character named Don Fairweather Jenkins.
A fictional audio drama following story hunters in a fractured Brooklyn as they compete to collect the best speculative tales.
An interview with author Theodora Goss discussing her immigrant experience, politics in writing, and the writer's journey of self-discovery.
An interview with author Theodora Goss about her novel The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, recorded at ReaderCon.
An interview with author Theodore Goss discussing vampires, fairies, and the modern monster in literature.