Category: Various and Sundry

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Real Secret Societies You May Not Know

What with the casting going on for our show Quorum, we have secret societies on our mind, but what about the actual ones?

As Jackie Mansky writes for Smithsonian magazine, actual secret societies are often centered around good causes (certainly as far as the members are concerned). Not only that, but these days, they’re not too secret. Indeed, their existence is often in plain sight even if their purposes might seem mysterious.

Yeah, a traditional secret society in Quorum would totally be a front organization designed to throw people off track.

Or is that what we want you to believe?

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When Did Those American Colonists Stop Sounding Like Brits?

A lot of us here in Deepest Springfield are obsessed with accents. How do we do a good Scouse accent so no one will think it’s Geordie? But with that obsession is also learning about the history of accents and how things shift.

So we’re doing some research for some scripts that raise the question “when did American colonists lose their British accent?”

Damn Yanks and their “audio theaters!”

Well, Matt Soniak over at Mental Floss has some answers. Granted, it’s not exhaustive like a linguistic tome, but it is informative.

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Raise the Fungal Radiation Shields!

We’d heard about species of radiation-loving fungus in relation to Chernobyl in the past, but this article by Stephen Johnson in Big Think explains how they’ve been testing it on the International Space Station.

Specifically, they’ve been testing it with the idea that some form of this radiotrophic fungus could help shield astronauts bound for Mars. Exciting news.

And, as we’ve put real-universe science into Rogue Tyger, we’ll almost certainly have some mention of the “radiotrophic fungal layer” in the ship’s shielding in some future episode.

Because science is cool.

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War of the Worlds, Classic Style!

We had great fun adapting H.G. Wells’ sci-fi classic The War of the Worlds for radio last year, transporting the action from England to the outskirts of Washington, DC and also to the present day with War of the Worlds, 2018.

In fact, many people have adapted it to times and places convenient for them. It’s kind of what they do.

However, having based on our audio version in no small part to the original novel, we really would love to see a version that includes some of the creeping dread (and creeping weeds) of the original novel… set in the original time period.

If you’re like us, take a look at this:

C’mon BBC, make sure not to cut the final valiant act of HMS Thunder Child. We’re so looking forward to it!