← LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy Story Podcast (Sci-Fi | Audiobook | Short Stories)
LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy Story Podcast (Sci-Fi | Audiobook | Short Stories)
"The Aerialist" by Yoon Ha Lee + "The Star Where We Meet" by Sam W. Pisciotta
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- [00:05]
Narrator
Lightspeed.
- [00:07]
Alison Bell Bues
Hello, my name is Alison Bell Bues. Pleased to be your muse for the Lightspeed Magazine podcast today we have quite the pair of stories for your listening pleasure. First up is the short shot the Aerialist by Yoon Ha Lee, narrated by Justine Eyre. Coming up right after this message.
- [00:30]
Commercial Voice
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- [00:38]
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- [00:39]
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- [00:51]
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- [01:02]
Alison Bell Bues
And now Justine Ayer
- [01:06]
Narrator
the Aerialist by Yoon Ha Lee the typewriter proved at first glance to be a poor investment for a daring aerial escape. Callista had been drawn to the typewriter from the moment she viewed it, languishing in a museum of curiodities, a pun that 3% of Pennon City citizens might appreciate if one rounded to the nearest human. The jury was out as to whether the placard's sententious overview of strange old anti fae percussive instruments was someone's idea of trolling, or, equally likely, an exercise in mellifluous snake oil. Anti Fae charms and tchotchkas were all the rage ever since the Queen's latest unpopular alliance. Or alliance. No one will miss this, she thought optimistically. Twenty minutes gone, she planned to pen a stern letter to the curators, rebuking them for shoddy upkeep. As far as she could tell, some drunk transcriptionist had spilled a ledger's worth of ink over the machine, leaving a sticky dark residue. She'd seen less comprehensively blackened coal mines, a so called childhood career path she was not eager to return to. You were supposed to be the solution, callista muttered as she crouched in the museum's cloakroom, listening for the guard's heavy footfalls. Steal a rare artefact, Fence it. Never mind that aerialists weren't supposed to traffic with that stratum of society and buy her commission back. What could be simpler? Her palms cramped on the aggravatingly hefty machine. Its edges bit into her palms. The typewriter might be portable by the standards of some well heeled undercover journalist, the kind with a servant, but she hadn't thought to purloin a carrying case ahead of time. Some revoltingly stubborn part of her refused to loosen her grip or exchange the typewriter for a lighter item. At this rate, she was going to nick an artery on it. So since she didn't have a blunt spoon, Kalista yearned for the weight and resistance of the throttle, the roar of propellers, the sweet inhalation burn of her biplane smoke. Fairy fuel permitted it to fly distances previously achieved only by Dragon cavalry. The intoxicating effects of the smoke only became well known some years after the founding of the aerialist corps, an addiction Callista would have repeated a hundred times over. Better the upward rising smoke of flight, of self conflagratory battle, than the miserable lightless grit of the mines. A belated surveillance of the coats around her suggested she'd chosen her loot more poorly than she'd realized. She could anatomize the problem to her heart's content. After she escaped, she'd swept by the cloakroom on the way in, sweltering beneath the lumpy greatcoat that concealed her sky and silver uniform. Sky and silver once, now the silver piping and braid were storm dark, storm tarnished, reflecting her current status. The uniform's damnably high collar made the greatcoat mandatory. Nothing else she owned would have covered up the collar with its telltale colours, which would have revealed her identity, her disgrace to anyone with half an eye. Even if Callista hadn't been bound by the disciplinary Gaius to wear the tarnish of disgrace, she would have clung to her uniform and the memory of flight. If she hadn't been in a rush, she would have inspected the brooding coats and jackets more closely on her way in, ascertained the nature of the threat. She availed herself of the opportunity now. A handsome array of outer garments, to be sure. Gold buttons, winking hatpins of new, polished silver, brooches of beaten bronze, and not a single morsel of cold iron. It wasn't her fault, strictly, that she'd been cashiered from the aerialist corps. No reasonable person would have expected that fetching lady to be an admiral's daughter. Especially not a lady who lingered in parlors where people passed around fay leaf cigars as freely as body rhyme. I was made to fly, Callista thought, irked by everything. The sweat that plastered her uniform to her skin and her own sour reek. The aftertastes of fey leaf faintly redolent of skyward smoke. The unfairness of fetching ladies who made overtures to an aerialist the night before her tour of duty without disclosing important particulars about their family connections. How can I fly when I've been barred from my machine? Callista succumbed at last to the dust and the sharp smell of camphor, and sneezed as she did so. A guard's tread announced itself to her ears. Her hopes that someone had merely knocked down some heirloom pepper mill were dashed when she next heard the fluting garble of fairy speech rising in pitch and urgency and more footsteps. Callista cursed and banged her hand down on the keys, no longer able to contain her rage. The room blurred as though veiled by a mist of missed opportunities. Her eyes smarted, her palm stung with the fresh imprint of unexpected logaria spiced with blood where she'd ripped her skin open. Through that veil she discerned words in poorly kerned typescripts, ink dark upon the parchment of her misspent nights. I am your machine. Transfixed, Callista stared at the words, then shook her head. The heat was getting to her. I am your machine. The footsteps beat closer, closer, with an urgency like that of her own skyward heart. I am your machine. She knew, in the way of dreams and drug designations that the offer of sorceries unknown would not be made a fourth time. If you're my machine, callista snarled, snatching up the typewriter and straightening so abruptly her back spasmed. Let's fly. Damned if she was going to submit quietly, besmirched, Admiral's daughter or no, the machine brightened, lightened. Moment by moment, it admitted no more weight than the airy mass of her aspirations. The smudged dark residue sloughed away to reveal the brightness of silver. Fey silver, not the more usual iron or steel. The mirror sheen of her own hopes reflected back to her a dazzlement of defiance. Callista no longer heard the footsteps, the fluting voices over the ringing of bells aslant the waking world. Callista had dozed through all three mandatory lectures on interfacing with Fey technology during basic training, but even she understood the bargain. Why not? What did she have to lose but the plane they had taken from her already? A typewriter has no propeller, she said, half questioning, all challenging. You're the least aerodynamic object in a 10 mile radius. You don't have wings. The typewriter, gleaming, had shed all the world's weight. Callista's back no longer hurt. The greatcoat, despite its heavy falled wall, revealed the lambent colors of the aerialist's uniform beneath it, as though illumined by the light of years to come. Words are wings. The cloakroom's doors slammed open. In that moment, Calista, no devotee of the transcriptionist arts, slammed her hands unergonomically upon the typewriter's keys with their steganography of tarnish and ink, joining her blood to the machine. Together they translated themselves out of the museum, soaring on wings of word.
- [09:50]
Alison Bell Bues
You have just heard the Aerialist By Yoon Ha Lee Narrated by Justine Eyre Yoon Ha Lee's debut novel Nine Fox Gambit won the Locus Award for Best First Novel and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula and Clark Awards. His novel Dragon Pearl won the Locus Award for YA and the mythiopeac Award. His latest book, Standalone Linguistic Space, Opera Code and Codex, is forthcoming from Saga Press in October 2026. His short fiction has appeared in venues such as Reactor magazine, formerly Tor.com, audubon magazine, Clark's World, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. He's currently pursuing an MFA in Media Composition and Orchestration at Thinkspace Education with the aid of a flopsy Catton Lee lives in Louisiana with his family and has not yet been eaten by two alto clefs. Justine Eyre is a classically trained actress who has narrated many audiobooks, earning the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration and numerous Earphones Awards. She has appeared on stage and has had starring roles in four films on the indie circuit. Her television credits include Two and a Half Men and Mad Men. Welcome back. Up next is the Star Where We Meet by Sam W. Peixoda Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki Coming up right after this message
- [11:23]
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- [13:20]
Alison Bell Bues
Buckle up. We're going to Lightspeed
- [13:25]
Commercial Voice
the Star where we meet By Sam W. Peshoda the most Surprising Thing about my journey well, the first most surprising thing is that the dream I experienced while traveling lasted a thousand years. A single dream stretching all the way to the Iota star in the Gemini constellation. I dreamt of Bindi, my childhood dog, a healer and pointer mix who used to follow me everywhere. Now it seems she's even followed me to this distant star. In this dream, she and I stood in a meadow made lush by a full spectrum of greens and dappled with wildflower pinks and yellows. The field smelled of lilac, which was my mother's favorite flower. She would cut them from the bush in the backyard and leave the flowers in vases around the house. A psychologist might say that my subconscious pulled these memories into my dream as a way of comforting me, a way of protecting me, as my consciousness sailed 125 light years through the galaxy on a quantum chip. And this all sounds very reasonable and logical, except that I never had a dog named Bindi and my mother died when I was still a baby. The thing is, I remember Bindi and I remember my mom, even as I remember never having either of them in my life. At the end of the Thousand Year dream, that is to say, when I arrive here at the junction of Castor and Pollux, I wake to starlight, which likewise seems like a dream, although I know that it isn't. I'm consciously aware of myself, the collection of photons within the quantum matrix that holds my quirks and foibles, my loves and concerns, and I feel myself becoming, and it's like waking to flashes of sunlight in my eyes, a hyper focused moment in which I unspool from one spindle while simultaneously respooling onto another. And as I thread into Central Station, a name that only humans call this place because we don't know what else to call it. My world shifts like shadows on a wall. At first I only have the sense of being confined in a place where I've never been. Gradually, I become aware of the chair beneath me, contoured to fit a body that I gave up a thousand years ago. There's a table in front of me and I'm not alone. I've come here to meet you, to make first contact. Although once I see you sitting across from me, I realize we already know each other. Hello, dad, you say. William. I reach out to shake your hand and you take my hand into both of yours. Your grip is warm and firm, and it occurs to me that I'm very proud of you, proud of the man you've become. You're not much younger than me, maybe even the same age, and you have your mother's green eyes that promise gentleness and understanding. It feels so good to see you again, even though I know that I've never had a child, let alone a son named William. But here you are, William, the boy who spent every Friday night watching classic monster movies, the boy who rode his three speed bike in circles around the cul de sac, and I remember how you attended Princeton University for three semesters before dropping out to hike the Appalachian Trail. No. You shake your head as if you've only then realized something important. My father is dead. Yes, pancreatic cancer. I remember that too, Remember lying in bed and gazing at a photograph of you and holding Emily's hand while she cried. But also, it feels like only yesterday that we were together on the other side of an impossibly long dream. And now it's morning and I've woken and here you are again. We sit across from each other at a kitchen table that once sat in our home before it orbited this distant star, and I wonder which one of us brought it here, this symbol of familiarity and comfort. We've prepared for this moment, you say. I've prepared. There's no need to do this. Do what? I say, still confused by the sight of you. Impersonate my father. I'm not impersonating anyone, I say, and the injustice of the accusation moves me to the edge of my chair. I know who I am. I can ask you the same question. I snip back, and perhaps I'm still dreaming, or I've lost touch with who I truly am, even though neither of those things feels true. We look at each other with mistrust, not knowing what to believe about the other. A silence unfolds between us, and then it's broken. The room fills with a sound, familiar but so distant in time and space it sounds foreign at first, a chirp and a twill, a string of bird song fills the room and knits into a delicate fabric of notes. I cock my head to listen. I hear it too, you say. From the corner of my eye I see a figure standing across the room. I startle and glance over to find a woman, dark skinned, with a welcoming smile and bright eyes, a manifestation of joy pressed too far forward, like a fossilized expression lifting from stone. Do you? You stammer. I mean, is that yes? I say. I see her. Welcome, the woman says. I've been expecting you. Without stepping towards us, her hands fold over her heart, and we receive a data packet that we are to read, her gesture as one of warmth. We are all so very proud of you, she says. Proud of this achievement. Of course, this meeting will be preserved for posterity, an archaeological artifact to remind us of your mission and its importance. We are meant to read her statement with pride and gratitude. Who are you? I ask. I'm the one who's waited to greet you and record your meeting. But where do you come from? I ask. I come from here. I am this place, your central station. The room is still, and we are all very still now, and I'm not sure what question I should ask, not sure what to expect as the moment unfolds. But before I can speak again, Station breaks the silence. Please continue with your meeting and know that the other is not deceiving you. She dissolves before her final words are spoken. You look as puzzled as I feel. Even in this quantum state, there's an urge toward anxiety. I lie my hands flat on the table, reaching for the illusion of certainty. Let's start with what we know, I say. You nod, tension tight around your eyes, the same look you had when your mother and I told you that my cancer had metastasized. You'd driven up from the coast that day, excited and eager to tell us the news of your imminent departure. I knew what you were going to tell us by the lightness in your step as you bounded up the walkway, your whole body taut with joy. Your eyes held a gleam that told me you had received the news you'd been hoping to hear, that you had been chosen to travel across the galaxy and represent humanity in First Contact. It was selfish of me to share my news first, to tell you of my own imminent departure, that the cancer had spread And I only had months of life left. But I needed to be the one who said goodbye first. I needed my hand to be the first one to let go. And it worked. You reached out and held on tighter. Tighter than you had since you were a small child. When I still stood at the center of your universe. In that life. You left for the star and not me. And it's so strange to have these memories of an entire lifetime that I lived so differently than the life I knew when I left for this star. That life where you never existed. Here's what we know, I say. You sent a signal and we followed it. No, you sent the signal. We picked it up on a low band frequency in the Gemini constellation. It is true that in both remembered lives, with and without a sun, my world received an extraterrestrial communication. So who sent the signal? I ask, looking towards the space where the station's manifestation had stood. But even as I put forward the question, I know the answer. It's a third memory stream. And I dip into it as easily as the other two lives. I remember. We speak the name at the same time. CanCorp. Long before your birth or mine, the CanCorp Deep Space Network sent a message array scattered across the sky, a graphic representation of a human DNA strand. Then, just over a century later, Earth received a reply from Iota in the Gemini constellation. A string of three irrational PI, the golden ratio, and Feigenbaum's constant. Each number repeated to the 125th decimal position. The number of light years between Earth and Iota in the other two memory streams, the life where you don't exist, and the life where I die of cancer. We received the DNA image and sent the three irrational numbers in my third memory stream. That's all reversed. Now I see that we not only replied to the message, but we also sent it. I'm trying to wrap my head around this when I glance up and catch you staring back at me with wonder. You stammer something about a different life, and I realize that you also remember more than one life together. And then your expression turns to disgust or anger or sadness or some other emotion I can't quite decipher. But I know exactly why your look holds such contempt for me. Because I was there, too. I lived that other life with you. I remember that other life. You admit in that world, CanCorp sent the message and received a reply. In that world, you were the person selected to make first contact. Not me. You gave up mom and you gave up me. You chose to make the trip, chose the signal over us. You look away and the silence grows bloated and awkward between us. It's that third memory stream I now hold, and I can still see the boy in you. I remember you on a particular August afternoon. The sun fell toward the horizon and the heat lay heavy in the valley. You were 2 years old and we had spent the day at the county fair. Your mother suggested we move into the shade of elms near the edge of an amphitheater where a band played folk songs on acoustic instruments, a guitar, a banjo, a fiddle. We spread our blanket across the grass and sat beneath the shifting shadows to take off our shoes, to sip soda from bottles, to let the music push aside the silence that had grown too thick between us. You sat restless at the edge of the blanket and your fingers sticky with cotton candy, ripped fistfuls of sunshine. You sat restless at the edge of the blanket and your fingers sticky with cotton candy, ripped fistfuls of sunshine. From the lawn the band took up the tune. I am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger. At least that's a song I remember when I think about that day. You jumped up and snatched at the music, tumbling with the rhythm and letting the melody spin you around and around into tight, dizzy circles that made you walk like a drunken person. Your mother's laugh was a glowing ember. In every life I lived with her, Emily knew how to surrender to the moments that mattered. I watched you dance swirling gobs of sunshine between us, and I wanted so badly to reach out and grab you, to take you into my arms. But I knew that if I did I would never let you go, could never find a way to say goodbye when they called me to the stars. And so I stood up, made an excuse of wanting to get a beer, and turned and walked away. Eventually they did call, and I did get my chance, and although it wasn't easy, I was able to say goodbye. I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger traveling through this world below. There is no sickness, toil, nor danger in that bright world to which I go. I'm sorry, I say, but the bluntness of an apology can't pierce the hard shell between us. There is another world, the life I actually came from, to be here where you don't exist. Emily and I never married and you weren't born. Surprise flashes across your face before you can cover it with a sheet of control and reason. I couldn't hurt her like that, I say. I knew what I wanted from life, and a family wasn't part of it, something in the way you refused to Meet my eye reveals the betrayal you feel. I can sympathize. I really can. In both lives. I wasn't willing to give up my dream. The only difference in that other life you remember the life in which I left you. There was a human toll. A steep price that you were asked to pay. Better to live my life alone. A life not accountable to anyone but myself. I remember the day you left. You say Ma and I were brought into a room with chairs, a long couch, and a monitor on the wall. I remember it the day I was uploaded onto the Maziar board. I was scared. I served this up to explain, to rationalize the distance and lack of emotion I showed that day. It pains me to remember how little love I was willing to show you and your mother before I left our world. But I'm not sure I could have moved forward if I'd let myself reach out. It didn't feel like I was going on a journey. It felt like death. You say it before I can finish the sentence. You share a similar memory from a different life, so of course you know how it felt. Your own goodbye to a father dying of cancer was handled with much more grace and love. And I know that you're a better man than me. Mom and I sat in the lounge waiting for you to come onto the monitor. And I didn't want to be there, but mom said that I would regret it if I missed the chance to say goodbye. And she was right. Not because I needed to hear you say the words, but because I needed to let go of the illusion of you. I wouldn't understand that until years later, when I was older than you were. On the day you left, you were my father. Yes. But more than that, you were a human being with your own desires and fears and flaws. And that's how I grew to see you. After a long silence, you speak and there's injury in your voice. But not the pain I expect to hear. Not the pain of abandonment, although I'm certain that still lives there too. But rather the guilt of your own decisions. I'm no better than you, you say. What do you mean? I left you behind in that other life we both remember. I left you to die of cancer. Without me. I could bear it. And Mom? I haven't any words to answer. In these three remembered lives, Emily bore the cost of those she loved, leaving her behind. But I believe there is a world, and probably an infinite number of worlds, where Emily was the one who left for this distant star. And in some of those worlds, at least, I choose to believe this. Emily and I sit across from one another, reunited in the light of this star. We all deserve to pursue our dream, I say. The cost was high. It often is, I think. But I'm sorry all the same. You nod, and with genuine curiosity, ask the world you come from, the one without me. I was happy. I'm not sure how you'll take that, but I don't want to lie to you. Your jaw relaxes, so I say. I didn't have anything to compare it to. It was just my life, you know. The past wafts through the room on scents I never expected to experience again. Summer grass and gasoline, a sensation from a thousand years ago, A lawnmower vibrating in my hands, sunshine hot on my neck. Your head turns up and your nostrils flare. You smell it too, and a smile breaks across your face like the birdsong earlier. This isn't a memory but a meta sensation, a construct of Central Station that we're both experiencing simultaneously. Station manifests beside us. She sits in a chair to my right, to your left, and her eyes shift between us. Your missions are nearly complete, she says. You look up, confused, and I think I know how you feel. Such a vast distance to cross only to find each other again, to have another chance at empathy and compassion and forgiveness. And then what? You ask. Station reaches for your hand, reaches for mine. We are to read this as compassion. Your constructs will be deleted, she says. A weight drops deep within me, pulling me towards some unthinkable bottom, and when I see the tears spill from your eye, I feel a gasp for breath, the memory of a visceral reaction stored on a Maziar board and carried through the galaxy for a thousand years. This moment, this meeting, will continue, she says. There just won't. There won't be any more, I say. Not for us. I'll give you time to say goodbye, station says, and fades away. Sometimes life must be this way. Space is made, places constructed in order to give us a chance to meet, to come together with an imperfect understanding but a desire to know the other. I remember the day you said goodbye. It was difficult for me to move by then, and I wasn't able to come to the base for the planned events. The company came to me instead, setting up closed circuit conference equipment to guarantee our privacy. It was a media circus. The world was witnessing the first human interstellar flight. A human being was going to exist on a quantum chip and fly through space in front of a solar sail, travel 125 light years to meet with a new life form. The moment deserved every bit of spectacle. When your image came onto the monitor, I was speechless. What could I say to tell you how proud I was of you, how much I loved you? When I finally did say it, the words felt so small and unnecessary. Later your mother remarked that none of us had said much. We'd just sat there looking at one another. But I think it was the right response to saying the last goodbye to someone you love, to sit with them without words getting in the way. And so I traveled here, you say. And so I traveled here, I echo. I feel myself unspooling, and the softness in your eyes tells me that you feel it too. We're losing memories and bits of ourselves. The room expands and the laws of physics fall away, and the starlight bends to meet us. Your eyes settle on me with your question. Was it worth it? You ask. Was this moment worth giving everything up? Sunrises and sunsets, scratching itches on your nose, falling into bed at night, fingers tracing the edge of a greeting card, summer beer and winter blankets and the weight of your body measured as home. The irrationality of traveling such a distance only to meet ourselves, to give up everything, to sacrifice everything. And yet, even in this digitized existence of electrons opening and closing and phasing from one state to another, I know that what I say next matters. Our lives are entangled, held in superposition, and waiting for my answer to your question. Was it worth it? You sit across the kitchen table from me, the son I never knew, the son I've always known. My answer was there before you asked the question. Yes, I say. It was worth it. No matter what life I lived to get here, it was all worth it. You are worth it.
- [37:16]
Alison Bell Bues
You have just heard the Star Where We Meet by Sam W. Peshotta Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki and directed by me. Sam W. Pixoda is a writer and visual artist. Find his short fiction in Lightspeed, Analog, Asimovs, Nightmare, Podcastle, and other publications. He is a graduate of The Odyssey Writing Program 2023 and a member of Clarion's 2026 Novel Writing Workshop. He has an MA in Literary Studies from the University of Colorado. Powered on morning coffee and late night tea, Sam splits his time between Colorado and New york. Connect@silo34.com ando34 on Instagram andpeshoda on Blue Sky Social. Stefan Rudnicki is a double Grammy winning audiobook producer and an award winning narrator who has won 17 audio awards as well as more than 35 earphones awards and been named one of audiophiles golden Voices. Stefan has been producing Lightspeed magazine podcasts since 2010, eventually adding nightmare and Fantasy magazine and sharing the Hugo awards for best semiprozine in 2014 and 2015.
- [38:35]
Glass Cannon Podcast Promoter
The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying. The Darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadowdark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s. And man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8pm Eastern on YouTube.com theglasscannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.
- [39:35]
Meg Bashwiner or Joseph Fink
Hi, we're Meg Bashwiner and Joseph Fink of welcome to Night Vale. And on our new show, the Best Worst, we explore the golden age of television. To do that, we're watching the IMDb viewer rated best and worst episodes of classic TV shows. The episode of Star Trek where Beverly Crusher has sex with a ghost. The episode of the X Files where Skully gets attacked by a vicious house cat. And also the really good episodes too. What can we learn from the best and worst of great television? Like for example, is it really a bad episode or do people just hate women? The Best Worst available Wherever you get
- [40:08]
Woodbine Podcast Narrator
your podcasts, there are vampires out there. They walk among you, shoulder to shoulder in the dark. Heading to work, heading home, going to the bar. It's a life just like anyone else's, and I have grown used to it. To the darkness, to the moon, to the taste of blood on my tongue. But vampires are dying out. We are a fading kind, and I am the first one created in so long. And that is a dangerous thing to be. Those who came before me, elders of all stripes, they do not want to see our kind gone. And they will do anything to keep their power. And for myself and for Grace, who created me, that is is a sword that hangs above our heads. And the worst person of all carries our secret. And he will use it however he sees fit. Who do you look to when things are at their darkest? From the creators of Park Dil Haunt comes Woodbine a podcast about monsters, dreams and changes those you want and those you never saw. Coming Season 2 arrives September 24th distributed by Realm.
- [41:18]
Alison Bell Bues
These stories were taken from the pages of Lightspeed Magazine, which is edited by John Joseph Adams. The podcast is co produced by Stefan Rudnicki and Allison Belbuse at Skyboat Media and the stories and podcast are copyright 2026. Post production was by Alex Barton at Faceshift and our music was composed and performed by Jack Kincaid. Once again, I am Alison Belle Buse and I hope these stories gave you something new. Thank you for listening.