Podcast Spotlight: Dunesteef
The Dunesteef is the speculative fiction podcast edited and hosted by Big Anklevich and Rish Outfield. One thing that sets them apart is the talk after the show–often longer than the actual story goes on. It’s easy enough to skip the talk if you don’t dig it, but I find it fun–Big and Rish talk about the story…though usually only a little bit before they go down a dozen tangents. But they’re fun tangents, talking about 80s movies, film school, whatever else.
Another cool aspect is that most of the more recent episodes of the show are guest produced by volunteers. This gives a place for people who are thinking about getting into podcasting to give a try before they start their own. And it’s interesting to see how different producers approach an episode. Most of the episodes have full-cast recordings, but the number of side effects and other production varies from episode to episode.
Sometimes there are extra scripted things that aren’t the main fiction offerings–banter with their robotic production assistant R080T, public service announcements from The Incredible Hulk, visits from celebrities like Fake Sean Connery or Shockwave (of Transformers). These are consistently hilarious, with most impressions by Rish.
HISTORY
The Dunesteef launched in July 2008 with “Double Vision” by Derek L. Palmer. The podcast has published with patchy regularity since then, through several moves and new addition to Big’s family. In the beginning of the show, most of the episodes were produced by Big and Rish themselves, but as time went on they moved toward having guest producers for as many episodes as possible. In the last year or two they’ve moved toward publishing more of their own stories on the podcast.
BEST EPISODES
- “This Must be the Place” by Elliott Bangs
- “Hang Up and Try Again” by Derek L. Palmer
- “The Day Hypnotism Died” by Kevin David Anderson
- “The Short Life and Slow Death of Timmy Van Lowe” by Bryan Lincoln
- “Peacemaker, Peacemaker, Little Bo Peep” by Jason Sanford
- “Anakoinosis” by Tobias S. Buckell
- “Überman” by John Medaille
- “Plague Birds” by Jason Sanford
- “Saying Goodbye” by Christopher Munroe
- “The Dead of Tetra Manna” by Mark L.S. Stone
- “Whelp” by Damon Shaw
- “Tattletale” by Christopher Fisher
- “Tupac Shakur and the End of the World” by Sandra McDonald
- “Good Day” by Saul Lemerond
- “Open Twenty-Four Hours” by Edward McKeown
COMING UP
Next month I’ll cover the Cast of Wonders podcast, the young adult speculative fiction podcast hosted and edited by Marguerite Kenner.
