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- Bobby’s Snacks Vol. 46: We Are All the Accident of Our Birth
Bobby’s Snacks Vol. 46: We Are All the Accident of Our Birth
Bob Raymonda
April 26, 2026
Happy #AudioDramaSunday Friends!
It has been far too long since I’ve been able to write one of these missives. The last two months of my life have felt like an entire decade and three nanoseconds simultaneously. My wife and I have officially purchased our first home — a 2 bedroom co-op for our rapidly growing child and two rambunctious cats. For a while we had no clue how long it would take, as the closing process was incredibly long and drawn out: until one day, it was time to pack. And move. And paint. And then, worst of all, unpack.
We’re working our way through that last bit slower than I’d like, but we have made a lot of progress. We’ve all switched bedrooms because of some neighbors nighttime aggressive reefer habit, and we’ve reveled in the our fantastic new location by walking to the farmers market and the cafe and the hardware store and just about everything else that’s now in easy distance. It’s all an adjustment, to say the least, but one I’m genuinely grateful for.
I also, in that time, got to go on my first ever “tour” with my band Ghost Tour with our friends in For Lack of a Term. Granted, it was 3 shows over a weekend all within 1 hour of my apartment, so I was home in my own bed and up for my kids early wake up through all of it. But even still, it was an absolute blast and an experience that I had long ago accepted I would never have. Feeling really grateful.
This past week Sam and I celebrated 4 years married, and in just a few weeks, our baby will celebrate 1 year alive. Life just keeps happening, at an honestly alarming pace. But I’m happy for all of it. Truly. It’s more of a gift now that I get to watch someone else experience for the very first time. Witnessing my insides crumble at every first snap of the fingers or new food tasted. Sometimes I want it to slow down. Most of the time, I’m just happy that it’s happening.
Let us talk fake life, though. It’s far more interesting than little old me.
There is not a better indie fiction show than Jade Madison Scott’s brilliant dramedy of messy relationships, endless grief, addiction, and unchecked mental health issues. This third and final season is pulling out all the stops as Marisol works to reconcile with her previously estranged father and follow her mania-induced hallucinations in an attempt to both secure her imagined future and fix her fractured past. There are only a few episodes left. And even though I happen to know how it all ends, I’m not at all ready for it to be here. I will miss this wry and funny and gut wrenching show more than you can even conceive.
Shenee Howard has one of the most distinctive narrative voices I’ve ever experienced in audio fiction. I have loved every bit of her work that I’ve encountered, but nothing has felt so deliciously her before this FANTASTIC new Audible Original. A fresh and decidedly anti-colonial take on old classics like INDIANA JONES and THE MUMMY, this fantastic story sees museum curator Amara (played by Glee’s Amber Riley) go on a globetrotting adventure in an attempt to locate and return a missing artifact to the civilization it originally belonged to. Always satisfying to get to experience another one of her romantic comedies. I know for a fact she’s already sold her next story, and I cannot wait to find out more about it. It’s sure to be as wonderful as this.
It would be hard to overstate how much this show has meant to me since it first premiered two short years ago. Unwell, A Midwestern Gothic Mystery had just ended and SURPRISE! Audacious Machine Creative launched an all new chat show reacting to the horrors of our own world by placing two wonderful best friends, Jamie and Malik, and having them react to the imagine supernatural and post apocalyptic horrors of their own. Across 8 seasons, it has been weird and funny and sad and wonderful and one of the most regular bits of comfort I have experienced throughout Trump 2. That is why I was especially honored to get to guest write their recent Arbor Day Special, which was a story I had an absolute BLAST taking from vague idea to full reality. Doubly so once I found out their upcoming 9th season will be their last. I will miss this show, but I feel so lucky to have been along for the ride since the beginning.
Speaking of Audacious Machine Creative, Gabriel Urbina’s urban fantasy political thriller continues to stun. Between discovering what truly happened in Boston, to seeing how Amy dealt with the threats against her massive arena tour as The Silver Witch, to Adam being forced to postpone his desperately needed vacation in an attempt to solve another impossible sociopolitical and scientific problem in far less time than one should ever have to do so. It’s propulsive, it’s full of action, and an endless array of longing. I’m obsessed and I am also so sad the season is already 75% complete.
I fell off of this show not long before my kid was born. The feature-length episodes were especially intimidating when I was sleeping in little gasps at a time. It wasn’t until I was painting my new place before the Wi-Fi was set up that I was able to marathon the last few chapters of season 4. And GOOD GOD. It was so good. Karim Kronfli is one of our preeminent mustache twirling villains in so many shows where he shows up, but his turn here as the Three Sisters’ father was legitimately delicious. I’ve now begun season 5, with the team split across the cosmos. I can’t wait to see how they get out of this one.
One of my other marathons over the last few months was this one. I’m officially all caught up and good god damn: what began as a charming tale of kids and cryptids became a gripping thriller that plays into the true crime and school violence obsessed world we are unfortunately living in. Shit got real, fast, as students continued to disappear and parents and police spent more time protecting the likely culprit rather than actively investigating him. Chilling stuff, absolutely worth your time.
Local Files Club is the exact kind of DIY punk ethos I love seeing in indie audio fiction. Adam Cecil has teamed with producers like Oliver Morris (who I was lucky enough to work alongside on The Perfect Sentence) to release series as D2C albums on Bandcamp instead of ad-supported podcasts. While it lives behind a paywall, it creates a way for listeners to directly support the artists they admire without them having to rely on ad sales, and simultaneously giving them a place to provide fun BTS content. It feels like buying a DVD with extras which all but disappeared in the streaming age. And this first show? It’s a true delight. It’s giving Miyazaki meets Becky Chambers with introspection and magic and rest, rather than cliffhangers or world ending plots. And I loved every second of it.
For their second release, we took a trip into deep space with Justin Hellstrom, the weirdo behind THE GREAT CHAMELEON WAR and THE GOBLET WIRE. This man’s brain operates on a wave length that seems to plug directly into my psyche and takes me on the exact ride I need, even when I don’t know I need it. The emotional depth to be found from a drone tasked with finding life on a lifeless world is honestly surprising here. And Hellstrom’s whimsical and innocent performance pairs perfectly with the trippy music that orchestrates the doomed adventure. Plus—listen to all of that same music without all that pesky beautifully prosaic sci-fi!
I have not had a chance to finish this show, and part of that is by design. I’m not ready for it to end. But good god, what a journey to get here! Things have gotten bleak for Ram as he’s been beaten savagely and abandoned by his partner in vigilantism. Only… there’s another person who doesn’t want to see his retirement come so soon. Especially not without addressing the elephant in the room that is his own brother, Logan, who has been anxiously trying to admit his own failings all along. God, I know this finale is going to hurt me. I’m so mad at Andas Productions for not just letting this incredible series just go on forever. 😂
Night Vale may have been the show that got me into audio fiction, but it’s this series that truly bore its way into my very soul. Where Welcome to Night Vale is a warm blanket, Alice Isn’t Dead is an unsettling conversation with a loved one during the endless depths of a long road trip. I was so happy that the show didn’t drag itself out during its original run: instead allowing Keisha and Alice to find some long and winding way to a certain sort of happiness. And yet? When I found out that it would be returning for a fourth season this month? I rejoiced. I listened to the audiobook of the original series’s novelization in preparation and then dove immediately back in. And I am so excited to see what Lynchian nightmares Joseph Fink and company have coming around the bend.
BONUS SNACK:
Okay, so I won’t lie: I was bound to be a sucker for this one because of how much I was obsessed with Honey I Shrunk the Kids as a child. For some reason, the idea of being the size of a 6” action figure, having to traverse the expanse of my regular sized home, was something I couldn’t stop imagining. But this fresh take on that story has way more depth than I would have expected from this. Matthew Macfayden and Elizabeth Banks play a married couple who have taken turns supporting each other’s ambitions over the course of their lives, with all the simmering bitterness and resentment that can come from that kind of arrangement. It’s whacky. It’s funny. And I really, really love it. Worth a watch!