PODCAST · society
Cosmic Donut Holes
by Kaina Gillespie & Tyson Roehrkasse
We are Kaina & Tyson, siblings and best friends who survived a cult. We use fiction to escape, rebuild, and argue about whether Batman could survive a Dungeon Crawler World floor. We’re here to dissect stories, pop culture, politics, philosophy, and build a beautiful community of nerds. Subscribe for the vibes, stay for the Meatball Princess.
Episodes
-
A Parade of Horribles Deep Dive, Vol. 3: Dungeon Gods & The Celestial Ascendancy
Kaina spent several hours combing all eight books for keywords, mostly god names, and the result is a PowerPoint so deranged and conspiracy-board-coded that the FBI will be sending recruitment letters anytime now. By the end, she had a moment best described as "holy frickin' shit, I think I…
more -
You're Canceled, See Ya
TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual assault — this episode also touches on transphobia, antisemitism, gun violence. After months of talking about it, we finally delivered the episode discussing cancel culture. Buzzword alert, don't get triggered. We start with a warm up question: name someone who got…
more -
Our Love of Gaming ft. QuakeCon
Tyson is filming this one in from the field, with boots on ground at the Gaylord Hotel in Grapevine, Texas for QuakeCon's 30th anniversary, and Kaina's holding down the home base for a very special episode: why do we actually love gaming? We start with a trip down core memory lane. The twelve…
more -
The Ballad of Ugly Crying
The Ballad of Falling Dragons picks up everything we loved about the first book and then turns the emotional dial up all the way. Kaina ugly cried multiple times, and Tyson maintains that all of his crying was quite beautiful. In this episode, we dig into all the dirty details about the series…
more -
A Parade of Horribles Deep Dive Vol. 2: The System AI
⚠️ FULL SPOILER WARNING: All eight books, plus kinda sorta REALLY major spoilers for Mistborn Era 1 and The Stormlight Archive at around minutes 24-25. Cascadia voice — Sorry bout that. YO! DADDY! What the actual frick frack snick snack did that coming out party mean?! A Parade of Horribles...
-
Tent Soup: A Catchup Episode
We're alive!! Welcome back to Cosmic Donut Holes. It's been a few weeks since we've recorded, and since then, Kokaina moved to a new city, went to Puerto Rico for a birthday, survived a wedding weekend, and is now back to cosplaying as a sourdough baker that totally has their life together. Tyso...
-
A Parade of Horribles Deep Dive Vol. 1: Crawler Character Arcs
After realizing a single deep dive into book 8 would’ve been approximately 8 hours long, we decided to turn this into a series — because too much happened in A Parade of Horribles to cover in one sitting, and we refuse to half-ass this. Vol. 1 is crawler character arcs. We start with Donut's two...
-
Going Down The Rabbit Hole (Responsibly)
We have opinions about conspiracy theories, and Tyson wore his Illuminati shirt for the occasion. This week, we are running through a stack of conspiracy theories — mainstream, weird, plausible, and deeply unhinged — and rating each one on a scale of Nah, Hmm, Actually Though, and I Need to Lie...
-
Homeschooled Losers Tell All
Picture this: a 15-year-old girl walks into a high school cafeteria for the first time, sees everyone already deep in their friend groups, and quietly takes her lunch to the bathroom instead. That girl was Kaina. And yes, we're blaming homeschooling…at least partially. This week we're doing...
-
A PARADE OF HORRIBLES: First Read Brain Dump
⚠️ FULL SPOILER WARNING: If you haven't finished Book 8: A Parade of Horribles, SCRAM. SKERDADDLE. We’ll see you after you've recovered. Still here? Good….NOW WTF WAS THAT?! After the early access version Dungeon Crawler Carl Book VIII on Matt Dinniman's Patreon left us reeling, we decided to…
more -
We Went in Blind and One of Us Found Satan
We gave each other books. We couldn't read the back cover. We couldn't Google it. We just had to start reading and trust the other person completely. This is either a beautiful act of sibling love or a war crime, depending on the book. Tyson handed Kaina The Descent by Jeff Long, which is a 1999...
-
We Aren't Really Strangers (GET INTO OUR VAN)
In true Cosmic Donut Holes fashion, this episode is unhinged, unplanned, and unscripted. It's sweet. It's us. Now…get in the van. This episode starts strong with Kaina getting a phone call mid-recording that sends her into orbit — she's leaving the hellscape that is rural Louisiana. From there,...
-
Jeff Hays Is a Genius and We Are Not (A Story in Two Parts)
After last week's two-hour deep dive into masculinity left us in a full state of brain salad, we decided this one was going to be a cozy hang. A palette cleanser. A little treat. And treat it was — because this episode is (mostly) about the unsung heroes of the bookish world: audiobook narrators....
-
What is this Toxic Masculinity you speak of?
Strap in guys, we are talking man stuff and it’s a long one ;) The manosphere is not a fringe internet problem anymore; it’s a radicalization pipeline spurred by algorithms and expanded by recruitment tactics that two cult survivors recognize from a mile away. As the old-school script for being a...
-
Dungeon Crawler Carl: Electric Boogaloo
No agenda. No rules. Just two people that have spent an irresponsible amount of time thinking about this series. We’re back in the dungeon for a loosey goosey session – the type where we just crack open the lore and start poking things until they move. We get deep into some unhinged theories: how...
-
Is Hard Magic Just Sci-Fi in a Cape?
We need to talk about magic. Not the vague, hand-wavy "she summoned a glowing orb and won the battle" kind — the good kind. The kind that is detailed, complex, and fits perfectly into the world. In this episode, Kaina and Tyson break down what actually makes a magic system work. We’re debating…
more -
ACOTAR SHMACOTAR: Excitement & Theories for Books 6 & 7
Sarah J. Maas walked into the Call Her Daddy studio and handed us two release dates, a therapy session, and more questions than answers. Let’s talk about it. This episode kicks things off with a full debrief of the interview — what SJM actually told us, why A Court of Silver Flames is more…
more -
The Cracked Spiritweb: How Broken People Save the World
Pull up a chair in the “Next Step” clinic, because we’re going deep on something Brandon Sanderson has been doing better than almost anyone (other than writing books in his sleep): representing mental health realistically in fiction. We break down the Cracked Spiritweb – the spiritual blueprint...
-
Creativity in the Age of AI
Title: Creativity in the Age of AI Series: Scary Shit, Vol. I Is AI a creative partner or a corporate scavenger? In this episode, Kaina and Tyson step away from the fiction to discuss the actual dystopia being built in real-time: Generative AI. We’re unpacking the ethics, the environmental cost,...
-
Dungeon Crawler Carl: A Review of Lore, Characters, and Important Sh*t (Book 8 Prep)
What the fuck is that??? Oh, it’s just us doing a massive deep dive into the absolute unhinged masterpiece that is the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. If your brain is currently 40% dungeon lore and 60% Princess Donut quotes, you’ve found your people. Seriously though…"The Oak Fell," and so did our...
-
Sibling Spice Chronicles: The One Where I Introduced my Brother to Smut
Welcome to the first of many installments in the Sibling Spice Chronicles – a segment where dedicated romantasy scholar Kaina “forces” her brother Tyson to confront the world of shadow daddies, faerie porn, and ham wallets (MONGO IS APPALLED). In this episode, we tackle the elephant in the room…
more -
NEW ACHIEVEMENT: YOU STARTED A PODCAST
What happens when you take a brother and sister who grew up in a cult, give them unrestricted access to the internet, and hand them microphones? You get the brain-child of two siblings where a fire breathing bitch queen, gunslinging allomancers, and an apocalyptic AI with a foot fetish collide....
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
We are Kaina & Tyson, siblings and best friends who survived a cult. We use fiction to escape, rebuild, and argue about whether Batman could survive a Dungeon Crawler World floor. We’re here to dissect stories, pop culture, politics, philosophy, and build a beautiful community of nerds. Subscribe for the vibes, stay for the Meatball Princess.
HOSTED BY
Kaina Gillespie & Tyson Roehrkasse
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Cosmic Donut Holes have?
Cosmic Donut Holes currently has 22 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Cosmic Donut Holes about?
We are Kaina & Tyson, siblings and best friends who survived a cult. We use fiction to escape, rebuild, and argue about whether Batman could survive a Dungeon Crawler World floor. We’re here to dissect stories, pop culture, politics, philosophy, and build a beautiful community of nerds. Subscribe...
How often does Cosmic Donut Holes release new episodes?
Cosmic Donut Holes has 22 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Cosmic Donut Holes?
You can listen to Cosmic Donut Holes on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Cosmic Donut Holes?
Cosmic Donut Holes is created and hosted by Kaina Gillespie & Tyson Roehrkasse.
URL copied to clipboard!