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- Bobby's Snacks Vol. 42: The Big One
Bobby's Snacks Vol. 42: The Big One
Bob Raymonda
April 27, 2025
Happy #AudioDramaSunday folks!
This might honestly be my last update for a bit. We’re at T-Minus just a few days until my firstborn’s here, and even if I have another free Sunday in two weeks before she arrives, I think I’m going to be real with myself and you all that this is going to have to take a backseat for a minute. I absolutely plan on keeping listening and supporting to everybody’s work, but I’m going to take at least a month, if not the entire summer, to focus on my family. As I’ve already mentioned, I’m deliriously excited and terrified and all of the other understandable emotions that come wrapped up in a little bow around milestones like this one. And I think what’s most important for me right now is that I ride that wave.
In the meantime? Y’all are legitimately killing it out there. I’ve listened to 28 episodes in the last 14 days, and every single one of them has done something different for me. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve been on wild adventures, and spent time with characters in their most private and reserved moments. This medium is the gift that keeps on giving for me, and I’m continually blown away by the creatives in this field at every single level, doing the absolute most in order to tell unique and captivating stories that stick with me for days, weeks, months, and even sometimes years afterward. I genuinely cannot thank you all enough for what continuous joy you’ve brought to my life. It has been one of the greatest gifts, falling in love with this weird little punk rock wonderland.
On that note, I’ve got 17 shows to talk about, so let’s dive right in:
This is it. This is the episode that I’ve been waiting to share with you all, ever since we first finished writing the season all the way back in 2021. It features some of the biggest, most ambitious set pieces we’ve ever attempted, and I really believe that Adam went above and beyond bringing them to life. Between Argus and co.’s attempted rebellion against their human overseers, and the rest of the Grounders’ confrontation with Queen Wanda throwing a wrench in their own plans for the future, there was a lot of ground to cover here. But biggest props have to go out to our pal Emily Battles who plays Helina for her absolutely bone-chilling performance, as she attempts to murder the woman who represents all of the deepest traumatic experiences of her life. She is an incredible talent, and if any of you are ever looking for new folks to work with, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d be more than happy to make the proper introduction.
God dammit, I know that I’m not the first person to say this, but I think this may be the best depiction of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson that I’ve experienced in my entire life. I mean, obviously we all know that these men are deliriously in love with one another, but to see them actually grapple with that subtext in a way that’s decidedly textual is utter brilliance. Also, when they SPOILER REDACTED the SPOILER REDACTED? Such a wonderful and exciting twist to the entire season’s wider adventure. Plus: the fact that our eponymous duo (or, well, trio as you’d have it) are the primary private detective agency serving all of London? Means that we’re in store for some amazing stories in seasons 3 (and beyond)!
You know, Fool & Scholar just finished an impeccable season of The White Vault: Goshawk, so one could really understand if they wanted to take a bit of a breather… but nope! Husband & wife duo of K.A. Statz and Travis Vengroff are truly unstoppable when it comes to consistently releasing amazing stories. This second edition of a show I already adored picks up following a new family, who’ve just found themselves as caretakers of an immense mansion on an isolated island. It has huge Mike Flanagan vibes so far, pulling a lot of eerie horror out of dusty rooms that haven’t been visited in what seems like decades. Also? Shout out to the disability rep. There’s a lot to be said for how difficult it can be to navigate a life of uncertainty during a stressed out parent’s get rich quick scheme, let alone when he’s squirreled you away to the middle of nowhere to a place that’s never heard of a wheelchair ramp (or a working lift). Finally! The baby monitor as walkie talkies introduced in the premiere are going to make for a lot of fun audio storytelling as the season commences.
I’m three episodes deeper into this show, and so happy that it exists. I’ll be honest: I’ve always been more of a Marvel than a DC guy in my comic reading habits, so though big marquee names like Year One and The Long Halloween are in my cultural lexicon, I’ve never actually read them. So getting to experience them in this way, in a medium that means so much to me personally, brought to life by a team of folks who are clearly so dedicated to the craft is a delight. And while I’m not one to consume my pods in a video-centric way, I do love that their YouTube versions include the pages that they’re adapting in real time. It’s such a nice little easter egg for folks who utilize that platform. Also? Haven’t dove in, but cool that they’re doing a BTS interview pod as well!
I’m finishing up Chapter 15 as I write this update. One of the things that I’ve really loved here is getting to hear KC Wayland’s son, Auggie, work alongside Christie Carlson Romano. First of all, because he does a fantastic job working alongside her (as you can see in some BTS footage shared on the team’s social accounts), secondly because I’ll never be able to separate my love for her from watching Even Stevens growing up, but finally, truly, because it excites me to think about working with my own kid in the future. We’ve already captured Jack’s son Milo in an episode of Forgive Me!, as well as my niece, but I just know it’s gonna hit different for me when my little peanut is old enough to take part. As I tear through this final part of the chapter, though, I’m especially loving newbie character Nakoma. Vanessa Born has made herself incredibly at home in the series’ ensemble, and I’m so excited to see what else her story has to offer, after learning more about the blowgun she’s become ubiquitous for.
Okay, so, this might be a funny reason to be into something, but the most recent release here worked so well for me because instead of a single story, it gave me two. This approach made me feel like I was spending time with a classic episode of Rugrats or Hey Arnold!, where the entire narrative would be wrapped up in ten minutes, with a commercial break, before it’s time to start all over again with something new… only, you know, with a horrifying twist. These pieces, by S.G. Woodhouse and Ben Wooding, work so well on their own, but in tandem bring something else entirely out in each other. Such a nice experiment!
The second update from Cecil Palmer’s community radio station sees the return of a dangerous annual literary tradition that sets the residents of this tiny desert otherworld on a collision course with their worst nightmare… Librarians. I’ve been especially loving the way this show has been revisiting concepts from early in its run, but in a way that still feels fresh and exciting. It’s like the past two years have been full of remixes that remind me why I fell in love with it all those years ago, while also bringing in something completely new. Also? The horoscopes are one of the best recurring bits of all time.
It’s really funny because reading this show’s title, you really expect it to be some sort of epic sci-fi adventure series, but the truth is so much more satisfying. I’m biased, but slice-of-life storytelling is one of the most underrated genres in all of audio fiction. Stripping away all of the pomp and circumstance of fantasy or horror or any other supernatural shtick, getting to spend time with a bunch of regular kids, trying to live their regular lives can feel revelatory. I find the entire thing supremely tender and with some stakes that are so low, yet feel like the highest things in the world to the people they affect. That moment at the end of Chapter 11, where Lucas admits to his boss that he hired the wrong person at The B Side? chef’s kiss
Another episode down in my marathon of my favorite creepy crime procedural, and hot damn, was it intense. It felt like a fantastic throwback to one of my all time fiction-pod favorites, Boom: A Serial Drama and the more bombastic episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. Experiencing the aftermath of a suicide bombing with not only the confused ghosts of the victims, but also the ghost of the perpetrator? It’s pretty heinous. And! I love how clear it is to the detectives that our intrepid forensic scientist/mortician probably shouldn’t know everything he knows, even if it is getting them some impeccable results.
You’re telling me that Easter just so happens to fall on 4/20 this year, and you expece me not to do anything with that? In all seriousness, when I was trying to come up with another minisode to release during our season 4 crowdfunding campaign I thought: ugh, we’ve already done Easter, but I guess that’s the next logical conclusion…. then I looked at the date, and the thing fully wrote itself. Shoutout to my wife’s Aunt whose longtime catchphrase Holy Goodnight! officially comes out of Father Klem’s trap in this one. And another shoutout goes to our star Casey Callaghan i.e. Father Ben, who’s an admitted marijuana-agnostic who played high with aplomb.
In other news: this is the one of the last times you’ll hear from me personally about our crowdfunder, so let me just say again, if you could spare a few bucks it’d really help us out. We just extended our end date through the month of date, and while I’ll be otherwise occupied, Adam and Jack will keep up with you in regards to episode title and cast announcements, followed by some pretty exciting potential crossovers, should we hit our later funding goals. PLUS! If you don’t follow us on social media, we recently announced that we’ll be working with Ashlie Atkinson, a beloved character actor who you’d probably know better as Dak in Steal the Stars, or Janice in Mr. Robot, or Connie in BlacKkKlansman, or, so much more. I’m beyond thrilled to have had this experience, and can’t thank Mac Rogers, Sean Williams, and Jordana Williams from Gideon Media for making the connection for us. It was a literal dream come true.
I’ve still got a long way to go to catch up to this one, especially since I haven’t dipped my toes back in since I first discovered it back in January, but it continues to be a warm, soothing creepy blanket. Eira Major’s delivery as The Apprentice is hypnotic, and the story of the man with the broken pocket watch drew me in immediately. There are some definite hints at the bigger picture in this one, even if the story at large remains as obfuscated for our narrator as it does for us, the audience. This will definitely be a comfort listen once my newborn’s here, during our first weeks together. And I’m really looking forward to seeing how the rest of season one plays out.
Look, as much as I love a Bridge Troll that doubles as a new cultural phenomenon, the juiciest thing that’s happened on this show in the past few weeks just so happens to be the appearance of Jamie and Malik’s first ever guest, Riley played by Unwell, A Midwestern Gothic Mystery mainstay Kat Hoil. The entire story about a hummed melody becoming an alt-universe Popstar Malik’s biggest hit that just so happened gets plagiarized in this universe? Lots of theoretical law talk here that opens up a whole bunch of cans of worms and doesn’t fully successfully solve them. Kudos to Jess Best, another Audacious Machine Creative mainstay who’s absolutely killing it with this fourth season. Also, kudos to the whole team & Gabriel Urbina for the selection of their new show The Harbingers in this year’s Tribeca Audio!
Huzzah! What a perfect capper to another delightful season of this steampunk delicacy. Eisen is understandably pissed now that he realizes how much Telesphore has kept from him for their entire relationship, but not so much that he’s unwilling to do everything it takes to ensure his love isn’t killed by the poison he’s been inundated with. And look, while his light pickpocketing isn’t going to bring in the 500 francs as fast as he’d like, at least he’s being proactive in his love. My favorite part of the episode was for sure the ending gambit at the theater, which was just so gratifying in every single way. I’ll miss this one until it comes back, but that does help me segue directly into my next review…
Because on the tails of their finale, this team has officially launched their sister show, created by Addison Peacock and Henry Galley, which means we’ve got plenty to enjoy in the coming weeks in a whole new world. I may or may not have definitely had some inside insight into the world of this hyper-violent, hyper-horny cyberpunk brawler, thanks to a certain co-collaborator whose character will be introduced later this week, but good god, hearing about it doesn’t hold a candle to hearing it. The characters are bold, the aesthetic is impeccable, and the writing had me hooked from the second I pressed play. I’m so hyped to follow along and meet even more of the psychotic meat sacks that Faustina Fetamine will dismantle along the way. It’s gonna rule.
I’m so glad that this show is already back for another go at this whole unsolved murder thing! Though I’m sure the people of Beavermont are less than thrilled about having to deal with a second dead body showing up, not to mention the eight feet of snow that’s now blanketing the entire town. A strong, confident two episode opener that I’m positive is going to captivate and entertain me just as much, if not more, than their first outing. What can I say? I just love Frenchie and Dougie and the whole overly polite ensemble.
Now that Yvonne’s solo quest to see the Kaiju is out of the way, we get to follow Karo as they go on their own in order to encounter The Endling. This journey to the center of the planet is fraught, but includes many friends along the way like Leeman Kessler’s Raven and Cole Burkhardt’s Xavi, a wonderful new character that I’m excited to learn a whole lot more about. What I truly loved here, though, was getting to see D.J. Sylvis playing a part in their own world, especially one as whimsical and frustrating as this one. Because, you see, there are answers to be found here, even if they aren’t exactly the key to the past our hero was looking for, and a promise for much more to come in their future in October. This first season’s almost over, and I’ll be sad when it is, anxiously awaiting a return to a world where all of my favorite stories can be true, at the same damn time.
While I had to miss out on Atypical Artists’ 10-Year Anniversary Season One Livestream last night (yet!!), and I’m not fully caught up with the series re-listen, I did get a chance to tear through the first four episodes again while doing the laundry yesterday for the first time since they premiered back in 2015. It’s so funny, because this world is where it all began for so many of us, and yet for some reason I feel like it’s been no time at all since I first discovered it, and an actual entire millennium. One can truly not overstate the impact that this world that Lauren Shippen, Julia Morizawa, Briggon Snow, and Anna Lore created together have had on just about every producer I’ve ever met. I personally know that the structure of the world-building directly influenced the way we brought Forgive Me! to the world five years later: as a small, two-character study that slowly begins to peel back the layers of the onion before becoming a full ensemble series later down the line. And yet, going back again, after all this time? It felt like I was listening to it for the first time again. And sure, while I can hear the kind of technical blemishes that can only be ironed out with trial an error that weren’t as noticeable when I had no idea how to make something like this, I can’t help but feel like I’ve come home.
You know, I’m not a person who often revisits stories. It’s not because I don’t love them, or wouldn’t want to go back to find something new on a revist it’s just… I only have so much time here on this planet, and there are more narrative threads for me to follow than I’ll ever be able to accomplish while my meat sack still functions. And yet, when I do finally allow myself to go down a rabbit hole like this one? I can’t help but feel eternally grateful. For this world, these characters. Their blemishes and their hopes and their dreams and their loves and their cruelties. They’ve helped create the modern DNA of our entire medium, and if you could go back in time and tell that group of misfit friends who met in acting class that that had happened? I very much doubt they’d believe you. I owe them all such an enormous debt of gratitude. And I’ll be happily following along as they take their victory lap through the rest of this summer.
BONUS SNACK
When this band announced, only days before their second album Ants From Up There, that lead singer Isaac Wood would be leaving, I was devastated. I was worried they’d hang up the towel, and I’d never get to see them, or experience their baroque prog pop sensibilities in a live setting. But they soldiered on, bringing us a beautiful live album the next year, with no attempts to replace or replicate their previous singer’s sound, and instead writing a whole new batch of songs to redefine what the future could look like. And yet, that future didn’t feel fully set in stone until just a few weeks ago, when the official studio-recorded follow up came out. Now fronted by the trio of Tyler Hyde, Georgia Ellery, and May Krenshaw, there’s a new sense of hopefulness and whimsy that I may not have previously attributed to this same band. And yet? While the sound has changed, it’s still so unmistakably them. The aux port in my very old car broke, and instead of getting it fixed, I decided that buying a CD burner and a stack of blanks would be a better use of my money, and this record was one of the earliest additions to my more limited driving music selection. And god it’s been a wonderful one to take in, on arguably the best speakers I own, as loud as humanly possible with the windows down.