Bioethicist, expert in medical humanities, horror fan and Jeopardy runner-up Dr. Catherine Belling joins me in this week's episode to talk about why horror and health are inextricably linked. Starting with the throughline between Dr. Pimple Popper and the early work of Ridley Scott, we examine a whole casebook of media – including hereditary possessions, anti-Hippocratic oaths, verminous transformations and infested Mayan ruins – and touch on dissection, infestation, plastination, cancerification and death.

There's some pretty grim stuff mentioned in this one, so content warnings for discussion of suicide, eugenics, ablism, and that white goopy stuff that comes out of pimples and cysts.

By the way, the anthropological text neither of us could think of the name of was Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger.

In episode 8, Raquel S. Benedict, most dangerous woman in speculative fiction, joins me to talk about what a mid-budget movie is, what's great about them and why they're an endangered species. Expect a discussion of the magic of The First Wive's Club, the deadly influence of the Thinkpiece-Industrial Complex, and how James Gunn became a victim of his own blob.

Go check out Raquel's own podcast, Rite Gud (Patreon here) and here's Raquel's most recent contribution to BloodKnife.

In episode 7, horror writer, movie critic and troublemaker Montilee Stormer is here to talk about the difference between horror on the page and horror on the screen. Join us for an invigorating chat about final girls, the ascendance of the TikTok Moment, how green bubble wrap is better than crap CGI, whether the current crop of horror novels could even be novelised (and how many words of text Midsommar might actually amount to), why we all need Bad Decisions, and what makes an unfilmable book unfilmable.

Check out this interview with Montilee at the GLAHW here and then make sure to subscribe to Movie Reelist for Montilee's regular movie reviews.

This episode, I'm joined by queersoteric hero Tamsin Davis-Langley to talk about one of the Great Questions of our era.

Grimes or Poppy?

That's where we start, anyway. But it gives us an inroad to talking about billionaire Singularity enthusiasts, whether consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, the shocking history of sideburns and sandwiches, and how you get a banging pop tune inspired by the sort of people who want us dead.

Stick around for the discourse, and then go and find Tamsin's book (writing as Misha Magdalene) Outside the Charmed Circle.

In episode 5, I'm joined by actor Joanna Swan to talk about the horror of being neurodiverse in a neurotypical world, why the best depictions of neurodiversity in cinema are in horror, and to do some deep dives into the movies Excision (2012) and May (2002).

In this episode I talk with Kier-La Janisse – writer, editor, festival programmer, award-winning director of Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched and much more – about her hugely influential book House of Psychotic Women, the new and expanded edition of which is due out very soon. You can pre-order the book at fabpress.com/hopw-expanded-edition-hardcover.html.

It's episode 3! I'm super honoured to have with me multiple award winning author and official Nicest Person in Horror Gwendolyn Kiste. I talk with Gwendolyn – writer of The Rust Maidens, Boneset and Feathers, And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe and others – about the modern Gothic, the relationship of the human body to its environment and some other stuff, because we like digressions, like what an ambry is.

You should totally go and look at gwendolynkiste.com: her new novel, Reluctant Immortals, has just come out and is well worth your time.

In this week's episode, I'm joined in a flurry of tripartite author names by my pal Eve Elizabeth Moriarty, to talk about the Good For Her Cinematic Universe: the "girl bossification" of horror, bad takes about The Witch (2015), Midsommar (2019) and Promising Young Woman (2020), and how all these things reflect more than just dodgy critique.

Eve's take on Midsommar can be found here.