We've Moved

Greetings friends,

As the podcast has gotten more popular, we have outgrown our comfy little spot on blogger. We've decided to use our own independently hosted space.

HumanEchoes.com is where you can find us.

We will be posting much more than just the show. Al and I, as well as some guests, will be creating blogs, videos, and more. We would love for you all to come over and visit.

Thank you for helping us grow and for listening. We hope to bring you more in 2014.

-Tony Southcotte

HEP - 65 - Unfounded Footage

On this week's episode Al and Tony geek about not-quite-found-footage-film End of Watch. Tony talks about everyone's favourite mayor, Rob Ford. Al tries not to be a racist.

Download the absolutely not-even-a-little-bit-racist awesome now!

Links:

Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett 

The Collector Series by Chris F. Holm

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

Small Gods by...yeah, him again.

Flash Fiction Contest - Aliens Invade History

Aliens. What's up with these guys anyway? They're always flying across the unimaginable interstellar void to conquer earth, and somehow, despite being vastly outgunned, those plucky earthlings always manage to blow them out of the sky. It's like, guys, if you have the technology to travel the great gulf of darkness, how do you not have the ability to terraform Mars? Or one of the other planets in your own system for that matter?

What? Oh, right the prompt. See, Aliens are sort of a recent idea. You can probably trace alien invasion genre back to H. G. Wells and the War of the Worlds, and you could argue the whole flying saucer sighting thing got kicked off with the Great Airship Scare in 1896, both pretty recent on the scale of human civilization. But what if the flying saucers had shown up earlier? How would the fictional aliens of today fare against the Roman Empire or the Genghis Khan's Mongol army? That's the idea we want to explore in this month's flash fiction challenge.

You get a thousand words. Your deadline: Christmas Day. Send your entries in to hepodcast@gmail.com with "Aliens Invade History" in the subject-line of your email. We prefer ".doc" attachments.

The winner of the contest will receive ten dollars and have their story produced in audio form to air on the podcast. Good luck and happy writing!

The deadline for this contest is December 27th, 2013.

HEP - 63 - One Fish, Two Fish, Butt Fish, Blue Fish

This week Al and Tony discuss The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle. Later, Albert becomes a bit unhinged talking about retail and Black Friday.

Download it now!

Links:

Plantonric headphones

Eric Luke

Rob Delaney on Twitter

Moby Dick in Space - Noble Beasts Kickstarter

Hardcore History Podcast

Drabblecast

Nightvale

Ender's Game Alive Audio Drama

The House in Cypress Canyon

Quiet Please

HEP - 62 - Don't Cut the Rope

This week, the guys go way WAY back to the days when people who weren't hipsters wore cool hats to discuss Alfred Hitchcock's Rope.

Download it now!

Links:

Terry Pratchett Alzheimer's

Carrie

Evil Dead

Focus Writer

Q10

Empire of the Ants

"We can't Stop" Miley Cyrus

"Riding Atlas" by Ferret Steinmetz on Pseudopod

"Hollow as the World" by Ferret Steinmetz on the Drabblecast

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Human Echoes Vlog: Al and Ashley Discuss The Last Word by Lisa Lutz

Albert Reviews 500 MPH Storm

Albert Reviews Air Collison

HEP - 59 - Bodybuilding Ninjas for Jesus

This week the guys discuss the crime comedy Pain and Gain and wonder whether Michael Bay may yet have hidden depths. Later the guys discuss the surprising benefits of flatworms, and Tony has never heard of Dave Barry.

Download it now!

Links:

Creationism debate Reddit thread (Al thinks this is fake, but has no proof.)
Salvador Dali's Ocelot

Flat worm allergy treatment

Wall Drug in South Dakota

Dave Barry

The Death of Superman Lives

Michael Shannon

Iceman

Brad Bird

Tommorowland
Escape from Tommorow

Albert Reviews Age of Dinosaurs

Flash Fiction Challenge - On the Frontiers of Madness

In 1845 Sir John Franklin left the ice-bound hulls his ships, the Terror and the Erebus, and led his men into the arctic wilderness carrying a sled-load of button polish, handkerchiefs, curtain rods and a writing desk. Why?

One theory posits that the men of the expedition were poisoned by the lead solder used on their canned food, and became completely delusional.

Imagine it. You're cut off from the world you know, pushing forward into a hostile and alien landscape, exploring territory never before mapped...and then you start seeing things. Without the grounding of familiarity how would you know what was real and was was illusion?

That's the essence of this challenge. Write a story in less than a thousand words about someone losing their grip on reality in a place where they can't be sure what reality is.

Send submissions to hepodcast @ gmail.com with "On the Frontiers of Madness" in the subject line with the story attached (we prefer .doc files if possible). We also prefer double spaced and with a clean font. Comic sans will get you an instant rejection.

The contest winner will be awarded ten dollars and have their story featured produced in audio form on the Human Echoes Podcast. Check out some of our other audio stories to get a feel for what we like.

The contest will end on November 15th, 2013.

HEP - 56 - No Fate But What We Retcon

In this episode of the Human Echoes Podcast, Tony and Al wrap up Time Travel Month with a look back at arguably the greatest action movie of all time, Terminator 2. Later, the guys talk about how various types of media are dealing with the shift to the world of digital content distribution, and Tony convinces Albert that Michael Bay might have finally made a good movie.

Download!
RSS!

Links:

Escape Plan

Rope

Ed Wood

Pain and Gain

The Autobiography of Peter Cartwright

Scott Sigler Audiobook Podcasts

The Eaters of Earth

geophagy  [jee-of-uh-jee]:
noun
the practice of eating earthy matter, especially clay or chalk.

Some people eat dirt. Yes, really. It is weird, it is widespread, and it is not well-understood. Which for our money makes it perfect fodder for this month's flash fiction contest. We're looking for a story of no more than 1,000 words that explores this strange custom. The story does not necessarily need to focus on real examples of geophagy, though it is worth remembering that the best lies stories contain some kernel of truth.

The deadline for entry is October 4th of 2013. Send entries to hepodcast@gmail.com and include "Eaters of Earth" in the subject line. Word documents are very much preferred.

The winner of the contest will receive ten dollars and the story will produced in audio form and published on the Human Echoes Podcast. Good luck, and happy writing! 

HEP - 47 - Frankenstein's Apocalypse

This week its a gore-fest as the guys discuss the Evil Dead remake, chainsaw deaths, and the proper handling of ancient books of forbidden knowledge. Tony checks out the SCP Foundation; Albert screams a lot; dinosaurs continue to be awesome.

Download!
RSS?

Links:
SCP Foundation
I Am a Toaster
Hard Core History
Frankenstein's Army
I, Frankenstein
TVTropes
R.I.P.D.
T-Rex found with soft tissue
The Spellman Files: The Last Word
WWI who stopped sleeping after being shot in the head.

Retraction: Albert got his facts wrong when talking about Eragon in this episode. It was Carl Hiassen who "discovered" Christopher Paolini, not Orson Scott Card.

HEP - 46 - On Revengence

On this week's show Al and Tony break down the bizarre South Korean revenge movie Oldboy. They also break down the new 3D printing boom, and seek out the connections between Napoleon Dynamite and The Prestige. Stay tuned after the sponsors for a nerd out on the film Pacific Rim.

Download!
RSS

Links:
Live octopus eating video from Oldboy.
Star Trek (2009) teaser with welding
3D printed space stations
Robotic hand that can feel
Napoleon Dynamite tether ball incident
Oldboy hallway scene
SPACE VAMPIRE FLASH CONTEST
The Duck of Doom

Albert vs. Movies - 1 - House Hunting

Albert flies it solo suffering his way through the real-estate themed horror film House Hunting with a full-length commentary. Check out the movie on Netflix and watch along he encounters monsters with goofy hats, annoying antagonists, and a twist ending that makes not the slightest bit of sense.

Download the episode here.

HEP 40 - Sympathy for the Slenderman

This week the guys check out the viral web series Marble Hornets, and enter a terrifying world where the Slenderman photo-bombs every home movie ever. Later they discuss the competing values of privacy and security and Al complains about not nearly enough nukes going off.

Download it now.

Links to Things:
Smodcast
Dan Carlin
Vice nuke documentary
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Silver Sickle by Ellie Anne
Pontypool (movie)
Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess
House Hunting
Sympathy for the Slenderman

HEP - 35 - Let's Kill Judas

In this week's episode, Al and Tony walk the haunted halls of The Orphanage and meet some ghosts that aren't completely stupid. They also talk about Minecraft factory farming, new movies, and the strangeness of geophagy.

Download it!

Some Links:

Oblivion

Tropic Thunder

Pacific Rim

Upsteam Color

geophagy

Dante's Inferno

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Next week we talk about Primer (available on Netflix). Don't miss it!

HEP - Short Echoes 3 - Unmeaning by Rebecca L. Brown

Unmeaning

By Rebecca L. Brown

They crawled before his eyes, those centipedes of syllables. He’d gathered them up one sentence at a time and tried to tame them. Tried to teach them how to dance. To punctuate the bareness of a blank page with elaborate linguistic ballet.


Too many parts. Too many nuances of meaning. In each syllable, a palimpsest. All the dirty little sounds - they shared them. Swapped them. Meaning and unmeaning like an ugly Summer morning. Like a mind so full of meanings that they blur. They shifted. Slipped out from the edges of the pages when he wasn't looking. Slipped into his dreams - a linguist’s dreams - and burned their meanings in the darkened corners of his mind ‘til morning.


A word can cut you if you let it. Let them cut or cut them first. Engrave them with new meaning or allow them to define - and you the definition of a fool.


No. He would not be made a fool of.


He’d pinned them to their pages, then, all broken-backed - loose-lettered and unlovely. His pen a scalpel blade, he cut away the silent letters first. Double letters next. A lexicographic massacre - cut deep enough and all that’s left is meaning and the truth inside.


Confetti pages fell like fresh, unwritten snow.


He laughed - is laughter just a sound and not a word? Just sound without a meaning? He laughed until his cheek bones ached and words were nothing but the shadow of forgotten meanings.

***

Rebecca L. Brown is a British writer based in Cardiff, South Wales where she lives with her partner and assorted menagerie. She wanders through various genres (including horror, sci-fi, romance, humour and fantasy), forgets where she was supposed to be going and gets horribly lost on a regular basis.

Rebecca has a first class BA in Archaeology and a keen interest in languages, mythology and science. Her friends regularly discourage her from talking about fractals because things are better that way. Rebecca’s hobbies include martial arts, drawing, baking, weightlifting, leatherworking and music. She has also been known to knit an occasional fish.

For further information, or to contact Rebecca with writing briefs, interview requests etc., you can get in touch with Rebecca atrebeccalbrown@hotmail.co.uk or by visiting her Facebook page.

Short Echoes Prompt - 2 - "The Lexicographer's Dilemma"

Murray, Webster, Johnson. Dictionary makers, titans of language, princes of lexicography. You've got these guys to thank for every time you asked your mother what something meant, and she covered up the fact that she didn't know by telling you to "Look it up". You've also got them to thank for this month's Short Echoes Prompt.

We're asking you to spin a flash fiction tale around the prompt "The Lexicographers Dilemma." Any story under a thousand words about a guy (or gal) encountering difficulty while writing a dictionary is fair game, and the weirder the better.

What's in it for you beyond the pure and orgiastic joys of storytelling? First, we're offering to the writer of the best story a cash prize of ten whole American dollars. Second, we'll produce your story in audio format and feature it on the podcast.

If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of then send your stories to HEPodcast@gmail.com. The deadline for entry is March 15, 2013.