If you’ve ever read a Wikipedia description of a horror movie instead of actually watching that movie, you’re not alone — especially if that description kept you up all night, anyway.
Reply All podcast hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman have launched a new podcast for the horror-adverse, The Scaredy Cats Horror Show. The show premieres every other Tuesday on Spotify, then goes wide on Friday. The first episode, though, is out this Thursday.
Vogt is the titular scaredy cat here, with Goldman urging his cringing pal to take in horror classics, like 1973’s The Exorcist — which Vogt screens before episode one. The episode also features special guest Jason Mantzoukas of the How Did This Get Made? podcast — a.k.a. “Derek” from The Good Place. Mantzoukas adds a few new rules for Vogt during the episode (including that he must watch horror movies at night) after Vogt admits that he watched the movie in chunks — some with his hands over his eyes. The format is looser than Reply All, with the hosts and guest just riffing on the movie.
The duo will continue to make Reply All, but found the new podcast a bit easier to produce during the nationwide social distancing measures put in place due to COVID-19. They recently found viral fame during the pandemic when the episode “The Case of the Missing Hit” took off across the internet. That show centered on a Nineties song that a guest remembered in full but could not locate online.
“We made the episode in a completely different time than the one we’re living in now,” Vogt told Rolling Stone. “The episode was about the small things that kind of set your brain on fire — you can’t put them away and you’re not sure why and you’re not sure what’s going on. Now, all the conversations I’m having with everyone I love and care about is that we are all massively living in intolerable uncertainty. I think, in one way, it’s just a nice replacement. It’s like, ‘OK, well here’s a difficult question that is actually answerable and that isn’t important.’”
Perhaps watching horror movies in tandem with a self-avowed scaredy-cat will act as a similar balm.