Howdy y'all, it is Jeffrey Cranor. I'm not sure which episode of Welcome to Night Vale you're listening to, but I am speaking to you from April of 2026, and I'm here to tell you we're gonna be in Europe. If you want to see Night Vale live, and you're gonna be in Europe, come check us out at the end of May. We're gonna be in Edinburgh on May the 27th.
We will be in Manchester on the 28th, London on the 29th, and Amsterdam on May the 30th. Just go to welcometonightvale.com slash live to see the show dates and to get your tickets. This is our newest Night Vale live show, Murder Night in Blood Force. It is so much fun.
Please come check it out. Also coming up this month here in April, it is the return of Alice Isn't Dead. Brand new episodes of our other crazy hit podcast. This is written by Joseph Fink, produced and with music by Disparition, and starring Jessica Nicole.
So make sure you are still subscribed to Alice Isn't Dead, and go get those on April the 13th as new episodes come out. Finally, speaking of other shows, do you want to hear us talk about other things? We have three other really great chat shows. First of all, there's Good Morning Night Vale for all of your Night Vale needs.
You can hear Hal, Meg, and Symphony talk about every single episode in order of Welcome to Night Vale. Also, we have Random Horror Number 9. That is me and Night Vale star Cecil Baldwin talking about horror movies one at a time in a random order. And then Joseph and Meg do Best Worst, which is a really fun podcast where they look at hit TV shows and they review the best rated on IMDb, the worst rated on IMDb, and if you're a Patreon member, they will review the middlest rated on IMDb.
So check out all of those at nightvalepresents.com or just wherever you get your podcasts. And hey, thanks. Good hidden recording devices make good neighbors. Welcome to Night Vale.
Councilmember Tamika Flynn announced today that she's pretty comfortable doing this whole City Council thing now that Night Vale is completely crime-free. She announced this standing atop an onyx pyramid, waving a golden scepter. Mayor Dana Cardinal responded that while crime is clearly down, budgets for the new fiscal year have not been completed and Night Vale is showing a marked financial loss this quarter, due in large part to strict evening curfews. She announced this silently into her journal, which she plans to publish as a scathing memoir someday.
Sheriff Sam announced that the increased number of secret police officers has really had a positive impact on crime, but most of the police force now is volunteer or underpaid and grossly unqualified. It's basically a bunch of random citizens with makeshift weapons carved out of tree branches or fashioned from broken blade-based kitchen appliances. The sheriff noted that management of Councilmember Flynn's citizen patrols has greatly impeded the capture of both the serial robber and the escaped librarian. Sheriff Sam quietly grumbled this into their bathroom mirror before finally putting on makeup and facing their day.
Councilmember Flynn later said she received a postcard from the rest of City Council, who has been vacationing in Milstican the past month. On the front of the postcard was a serene lake nestled among tall pines and speckled with herons and fishing boats. Above the lake were eight Blackhawk helicopters dangling each of the letters of the state name MIBSTICAN. On the back, the city council had written, Saw an article that Night Vale has the lowest crime rate.
Guess you're doing fine without us and we don't need to come back. The postcard continued, We learned how to kayak and we bought a professional-grade DSLR and learned to tie sailing knots. Michelin is awesome. Maybe we won't ever come back.
Maybe we are not wanted. Councilmember Flynn said she wrote them back a postcard, which she taped to a giant scorpion that read, Yeah, I've got this under control. Happy apple picking. Night Vale coroner Lorelai Alvarez issued a report today on the autopsy of the two bodies found at the Green Market Co-op, which burned down last month in an apparent robbery arson.
These bodies are believed to be those of Green Market owner Tristan Cortez and his daughter Camilla, a business student at Night Vale Community College. Alvarez, however, said that without dental records for the Cortezs, she can't be certain that these bodies are theirs. The bodies had almost no burns on them, despite being found in a building leveled by fire. There were also no gunshot wounds.
Alvarez said these two bodies were wearing 19th century formal attire and had apparently been pecked to death by birds. She added she had not ruled out that birds could have committed robberies, nor that the Cortez family had an anachronistic fashion sense. Alvarez added with a grin that she's also gotten a few bodies that have been mostly devoured by the escaped librarian. She said it's fascinating that librarians tend to eat only bones and ligaments and not flesh or skin.
So most of these corpses look like rumbled soft leather sacks, which makes them much easier to store. Alvarez has so much more free space in her office now and has added a tetherball pole. And now sports. Tonight the Night Vale High School Scorpions take on division rival Red Mesa Ant Carpenters in varsity wheelchair basketball.
This afternoon there will be a pep rally led by team captain Janice Palmer. Also, she's my niece. The team captain is my niece. Councilwoman Tamika Flynn will also deliver a speech at the pep rally about the importance of teamwork and fighting crime with sports.
Also, the importance of books. Did you know there are books about sports? Is the title of Flynn's speech. Flynn also requested, for reasons having to do with public safety, that the pep rally be moved away from the high school to the old Night Vale Armory and that every person there stand exactly two feet apart and bring some type of shield and or sharp object that could be used to fend off robbers or librarians.
The pep rally is at noon. Go get them, Janice. Listeners, Mayor Cardinal and her director of emergency press conferences, Pamela Winchell, have called an emergency press conference to denounce the city council's poor efforts to sustain the integrity and stability of Night Vale. Mayor Cardinal dismissed the city council's, essentially Tamika Flynn's, curfew as virtually meaningless now that more than half of the population is on the citizen patrol force.
We basically have a town of municipally approved armed vigilantes walking around at all hours of the night. Winchell seconded the mayor's point by adding, Why do I video myself sleeping? What am I hoping to discover? What secrets does my body whisper when I am unconscious?
Also, the president of the Night Vale School Board, the giant glowing cloud who drops dead animals, made an impassioned speech in support of the mayor via mind control. The entire crowd chanted, All hail the mighty cloud who wants the lowly city council to pass a budget that favors increased spending on education. We grovel before the almighty cloud. How hard can it be to make a human budget?
All hail, they repeated. The mayor said she's received many letters from people claiming they have lost their jobs as waiters, cab drivers, theater managers, and costumed superheroes because of these strict curfews. Night Vale community radio host, Cecil Palmer, also announced today, live on his radio show, right now, that the curfew has been super productive for his TV watching as he has already burned through every HBO and Showtime series plus all of Difficult People on Hulu, which features his second favorite actor, James Urbaniak. My favorite is, of course, Lee Marvin.
May his name ring forever in eternity. Palmer added, at this very second, that while he's caught up on a lot of good television and is very excited for the new season of the documentary series Stranger Things, he and his husband are getting a little stir-crazy. There are only so many games of strip Uno a couple can play before they just want to go out for a nice dinner and maybe a romantic stroll in the park. Councilwoman Flynn was not available for comment, although a sign above her locked office door said, Quiet, reading a book on how to do financial spreadsheets.
Listeners, I mentioned earlier my niece Janice and how proud I am of her for captaining her school's basketball team. But I'm also a bit worried about her, too. She looks perpetually exhausted. In the preseason tournament, she led all players in assists.
She did everything she could to win games, but they just couldn't quite do it. Her statistics bear this out, but still, she's taken on so much responsibility for the team's losses. Her dad and team assistant coach, Steve Carlsberg, says Janice has increased her practice time to improve her already fantastic passing skills, hoping to at least double the number of assists she gets. But Steve says that despite her better skills and a more focused demeanor during practice, her teammates just aren't hitting their shots when she passes to them.
She throws them the ball, shouting, Shoot it! You're open, Julie! But they miss, over and over. Even the ones named Julie.
Steve is trying to convince her to work more on her defense and shooting, that assists aren't everything. But Janice got frustrated with this and called Steve selfish. Assists are the most unselfish thing, Steve Carlsberg! She shouted before leaving the gym to pout by her locker earlier this morning.
Maybe I should just quit, Steve heard her mumble. You know, I'm sure it's just a teenager fighting with her stepdad, and she'll be all ready to go for today's pep rally, which is set to start in a few minutes. I'll check in with her later tonight to make sure she's Welcome to Nightvale is a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor and produced by Joseph Fink.
The voice of Nightvale is Cecil Baldwin. Original music by Disparition. All of it can be found at disparition.info or at disparition.bandcamp.com. This episode's weather was Animal Skin by Brian Dunn.
A link for more information is in the show notes. Comments, questions, email us at info at WelcomeToNightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at Nightvale Radio or put your hand as far as it can go into a mailbox. Just see if anything reaches back. Check out WelcometNightvale.com for more information on this show and the 27-city book tour for our new novel from the world of Nightvale, It Devours, which comes out in just two days.
Oh my God! Today's proverb, we are all, in a neat few, in this, a secret underground emergency bunker, together, on our own, without public knowledge. Hi, we're Meg Bashwinner. And Joseph Fink.
of Welcome to Nightvale. 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 Skelly 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 your podcasts.