What a lovely surprise to see EscapePod. One of the early early podcasts. If you search through their backlog along with the backlog of their sister podcasts, you’ll find some narrations from a much younger, less tired, me.

I miss that age of podcasting. I’m glad EscapePod is still going.

If you can't be awed by science and nature, you can't be awed by magic or alien worlds either... Reminds me of some of Eliezer Yudkowsky's essays like https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/x4dG4GhpZH2hgz59x/joy-in-the...

Great short story. The premise reminds me of Simpsons treehouse of horror episode “Time and Punishment” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treehouse_of_Horror_V

It may be getting too much traffic, it's coming back with a database error for me at least. Here's the archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/20260701213459/https://escapepod... .

Wow, this podcast has been bringing science fiction stories to listeners since 2005. [1]

[1] https://escapepod.org/2005/05/12/ep001-imperial-by-jonathon-...

hug of death. Archive: https://archive.is/jaw2F

This was a nice one-shot. Concise, clear, and not cluttered. It should also be posted to Reddit’s HFY subreddit.

> Because my folks lived in a little house just around the corner from Harry’s,

Was life going swell and everything was just peachy except, of course, for the undeniable fact that every single morning your mother would make you a big ol' bowl of sauerkraut for breakfast?

(Now try re-reading it without it coming across as a Weird Al voiceover).

I loved this story and writing.