Creative Chat with Thin Places Radio

“This makes me feel like my brain got struck by lightning.” — Kaitlin Bruder, Thin Places Radio producer (but also me in re: Thin Places Radio)

Thin Places Radio has become so dear to me: the near-weekly podcast, comprised of tiny, 9-minute episodes, is the ideal dovetail of cozy and creepy, an audiofictive meditation on loss and loneliness underpinned by the conceit of a retro radio call-in show — that real people call in to, mind you — and uplifted by an anonymous, empathic, somewhat-haunted Host who looks for connection in the liminal, the ephemeral, the uncanny, the asynchronous.

Folks, this show gives me goosebumps that won’t go away: it’s eerie; it’s odd; it’s heart-filling and heartbreaking. It’s as much about strange stories from nowhere (and, somehow, everywhere) as it is about writer Kristen O’Neal’s genuine sentiment, narrative drive, and poetic prose, that, for me, feels as timeless and timeworn as Mary Oliver, and as fresh and full-on as Aria Aber.

What’s more, these literary gifts are girded and gilt by Kaitlin Bruder’s lush soundscapes that layer the ethereal, the gossamer, and the atmospheric over the deep-rooted and the memory-cracking: the click of keys on a tape deck, the crunch footsteps on gravel, the muffle of tires on pavement, the tap and release of rain.

Thin Places Radio gracefully weaves all this — along with its by-turns spine-tingling / sweet caller voicemails — with the lore and emotional landscape of our Host, some parts of which are hidden in cyphers and codes and audio cues. It’s a rich and robust work of hybrid fiction: warp and woof, shuttle and loom, all in one.

Perhaps needless to say, I had an absolute blast talking with Kristen and Kaitlin for the pod, discussing everything from creative process and creative collaboration, to beloved cryptids, to charmingly unhinged children’s films from the 1970s.

So let’s all hold hands; wade into the weird with us.

xx, aa