Reviews Podcast / Spirit Box Radio

Why YOU Should Listen to Spirit Box Radio

(WARNING: light spoilers for the show. It won’t stop you from enjoying it, I swear.)

Do you like mysteries? Looking for something that has the perfect vibes for spooky season? Want to see an exploration about how trauma can haunt people metaphorically (and literally)? Well then, you should try Spirit Box Radio!

This indie horror audio drama follows Sam Enfield, an extremely new radio host doing their best after the previous host, the enigmatic Madam Marie, disappears without a trace. The show he’s hosting, the aforementioned Spirit Box Radio, is to help out witches and practicers of arcanism with their practices and magical problems. He’s a bit out of his depth from the start of the show - dealing with odd recordings, tarot draws and unnerving augury forecasts - but quickly things become strange and sinister even for a show about witchery. But as the show progresses, things get worse and worse, it becomes clear that Sam is more powerful than they ever knew, and that he has to solve the mysteries of his past before they ruin his future.

1. The LGBTQ+ rep. Look, I know this is par for the course for podcasts, but this still deserves a mention. I cannot think of a single character in this show that is not on the queer spectrum. Sam is pan and uses he/they, Kitty the Investigator is a lesbian, Oliver is queer, Anna’s ace, and etcetera. They’re well developed characters whose queerness is integral to who they are, but isn’t the only characteristic they have.

2. Complex family relationships between characters. Look, family relationships are hard. Not usually with the added stress of magic, but still. It’s clear that the Enfield siblings care about each other, but can be really bad about showing it. (Mid-season 1 Anna, I am looking at you.) They fight and are terrible at communicating, but they still love each other, even if they aren’t as close as they once were. Also, not gonna lie, Anna and Sam’s conversation in episode 4 of season 1 set off my Older Sibling Instinct well before it was actually revealed, so I can attest to the fact that it is very obvious that they are siblings. And as for parental relationships? Well, they’re just as complex, but there’s a bit less love there. I won’t mention specifics to avoid too big spoilers. This show treats those parental relationships and the complicated feelings they bring with a lot of respect, while still acknowledging that yes, this is messed up, actually, which is more than I can say for some shows.

3. Sam and Oliver. Look, could I file this under reason 1? Yes, technically. But these two deserve their own reason, because I love them dearly. They’re the perfect mix of tooth-rotting sweetness and soul-crushing angst. I’m not ashamed to say that I have grinned way too much at the adorable flirting, or nearly cried at a certain moment in 2.27 (You’ll know it when you get there). The chemistry between those two is really well-written and acted. There is a reason they’re one of my favourite couples in podcasting.

4. The writing. When I tell you that certain monologues still live rent free in my head months after listening to it, I mean it. The writing is subtly unsettling in the best possible way, with gorgeous analogies and prose. One of my personal favourite examples of this is the following: 

OLIVER: Every flower in this room, save the snake plants in the corner and the succulents on my desk, is dead. Each one was carefully selected for its beauty, and as a reward for that beauty, sliced from its roots. As deaths go, it’s a violent one, oozing sap and juices, separated from the parts of itself that keep it alive.

It’s not over then, of course. We preserve them in vases, suspended at the moment of death for as long as we can manage it. We feed them chemicals, change the water we hold them in, trim visible signs of the progression of death from their stems, but it’s a losing battle. The moment we sever the bloom from the plant, we are merely delaying an inevitable decline into decay we ourselves condemned it to.

And yet, this condemnation we have made of these flowers is not a tragedy. If the blooms had been left on the plant, they would not be saved. The life-span of a flower is fleeting; ephemeral by design. Nothing you can do will keep a plant in bloom for ever. The best you can do is weed out the death as it appears, allowing new bursts of life.

So, why not cut the bloom from the plant, and place it in a vase, preserve it in its beauty for as long as it lasts? Why not stop and appreciate this fleeting, ephemeral thing for what it is? Does it make the flower less beautiful, knowing that it will be over soon? Perhaps. Such is the way with all things that live; eventually they must die. When you have lived as long as I have, everyone’s timeline is revealed to be hardly longer than that of these blooms, not really, not in real, cosmic terms. So why not stop and notice it whilst its beautiful, and hang on to that beauty for as long as you can?

I think deep within many of us there is an instinct for this. It’s why people love flowers, why they dress them up and adore them. It’s why they are the things held in sweat palms as you walk down the aisle, why they are handed over in anxious fists towards objects of affection. It’s why they adorn the besides of the sick, why they are sent as well wishes, apologies and thanks. After all of that, when a person’s life is eclipsed and they to are held suspended at the moment of death to be gazed at a final, finite time, they are often nestled in a bed of blooms. Vibrant pinks and blues will fade to sludgy beige, and then nothing.

Dust.

OLIVER: [HIS VOICE MUCH CLOSER NOW] That, dear magpie, is why I am a florist.  

5. The general vibes of the show are great as well. Despite being ostensibly a horror show (and it definitely is, there is some genuinely unnerving imagery in there - shoutout to the chess piece!), it can be oddly comforting as well. It’s spooky without completely turning me off, creepy without things like jump scares.

6. CATS!! This show is a 100/10 on the cat scale, with there being more than 3 cats, and those cats actually playing a very important role. You like cats? Come listen to a podcast that has a surprising amount of airtime devoted to Sam cooing over their cats!

In conclusion, please come and listen to Spirit Box Radio! Season 3 is releasing in a couple of months, and they’re currently crowdfunding for it. I can’t wait to see what they do for it.