PODCAST · fiction
Mystery – The Drabblecast
by Norm Sherman
Stories feature on the Drabblecast are generally narrated by charismatic host, humorist, and musician Norm Sherman. A full production, the Drabblecast features multiple voice actors, music, and foley effects. The podcast has a finely tuned 'voice' that crosses all genres, including horror, science fiction, fantasy and 'other.' Special features include 100-word stories called, “drabbles,” 100 character stories coined “twabbles,” as well as Norm's own Bbardles, songs based on story themes. Original cover art accompanies every episode.
Episodes
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Drabblecast 501 – Pastorale
In a little pastel house, a seer and a psychopomp have questions. This week on Drabblecast– something’s fishy in a curious small town. We bring you a paranormal murder-mystery byCormack Baldwin & EV Smith. Enjoy! Cormack Baldwin (he/him) and EV Smith (he/she/they) are a daring duo of authors and...
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Drabblecast 463 – A Hymn Upon the Lips of the Dead
Episode Sponsor– Mothmen 1966 The secret’s out on this week’s Drabblecast, and nothing will ever be the same. We bring you an original Drabblecast story called “A Hymn Upon the Lips of the Dead,” by Mav Lux. Oh and Norm sings us a song about singing that he should have just told you. Enjoy! Cover...
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Drabblecast 459 – 7099 Brecksville Road, Independence, Ohio
Norm is cryptic this week in terms of offering information on the featured story, “7099 Brecksville Road, Independence Ohio,” by JR Hamentaschen. He will say that that’s the story, and that’s the author. And to listen with headphones on. And also, check out our episode sponsor this week…
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Drabblecast 455 – How Lovely Are Your Branches
Norm closes out the year and existence as we know it, due to the phenomena known as “The Continuation,” with the Drabblecast annual holiday Tim Pratt story, an original commission called “How Lovely Are Your Branches.” Enjoy! Somebody was murdering people, but the killer’s name wasn’t showing up…
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Drabblecast 447 – Echoes
The Drabblecast is on the scene this week, with an original story by Gail Ann Gibbs, read by Starla Hutchton, that reminds us that it’s ok to be a little weird. Or maybe even, SUPER weird… I like the way Richard smells. The next time a psychiatrist asks me what makes me happy, I’ll say […]
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Drabblecast 432 – Housebound
Weirdness is in the air at Drabblecast as we bring you an original story about spousal life and home ownership by author Ao-Hui Lin. “Hey babe, where did the closet go?” The Hubby, Victor, gives me a blank look, like the word “closet” is Swahili for “bratwurst”. He neither understands the…
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Drabblecast 425 – Unlike Most Tides
Norm pays tribute and bids farewell to the greatest unsung hero of the podcast for the past two years: editor Sandra Odell. This fantastic story and many others have been brought to your ears through her hard work! Our story is another original Drabblecast commissioned story for Women & Aliens...
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Drabblecast Director’s Cut – Sing
“A Musical on a Submarine” Norm and author Kristine Kathryn Rusch discuss her story from way back in 2008 for Drabblecast #53. This is the “Director’s Cut – Sing.” We also dive into a discussion about unsung women in Science Fiction, like Leigh Bracket and James Tipree Jr. Why use a pen name…
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Drabblecast Fan Pick: The Belonging Kind
As the Drabblecast Reborn Kickstarter campaign continues, we bring you another Fan Pick: The Belonging Kind. Drabblecast fan Kyle Sellers introduces this eerie story about how hard fitting in can be sometimes… It might have been in Club Justine, or Jimbo’s, or Sad Jack’s, or the Rafters; Coretti...
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Drabblecast 342 – I’m Bill Kurtis
Nate had expected the first serial killer. In fact the first thing he’d said to Kelly once their Ford rolled to a stop on the shoulder was, “This is serial killer country. We’re finished.” She made scaredy-cat eyes and drew a finger across her throat. “Finished,” he enunciated. She’d heard his…
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Drabblecast 314 – The Blue Celeb pt. 2
“Get out of sight, Joe.” He hustled into the shop and locked himself in the bathroom. The first cruiser that pulled up had Frank Boone riding shotgun. Less than a minute later, the sidewalk was swarming with cops. The Blue Celeb by Desmond Warzel When me and Joe got […]
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Drabblecast 313 – The Blue Celeb pt. 1
When me and Joe got home from Vietnam, we went into business together, cutting hair. Bought a little shop in the old neighborhood and been there ever since. Back then, wisecracking Harlem barbers weren’t a cliche yet — at least not south of 110th Street. The Blue Celeb by Desmond […]
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Drabblecast 310 – The Ugly Chickens
My car was broken, and I had a class to teach at eleven. So I took the city bus, something I rarely do. I spent last summer crawling through The Big Thicket with cameras and tape recorder, photographing and taping two of the last ivory-billed woodpeckers on the earth. You can see the films at […]
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Drabblecast 290 – The Screaming Door
It has been two hundred days since the door to my study began screaming. I was nodding over a volume of Edwin Corang’s collected prose when I first felt it; a curious ripple that moved through the room, standing my hair on edge, followed by the sensation of coffee spilling into my lap as the […]
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Drabblecast 279 – The Country Doctor
Gardner was drowning, and strangers were laying hands on the bones of my forebears. I felt obligated to see that liberties weren’t taken with my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and other good, God-fearing ladies, so I put the business on auto pilot and made the drive as if on auto pilot myself.
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Drabblecast 264 – The Belonging Kind
It might have been in Club Justine, or Jimbo’s, or Sad Jack’s, or the Rafters; Coretti could never be sure where he’d first seen her. At any time, she might have been in any one of those bars. She swam through the submarine half-life of bottles and glassware and the slow swirl of cigarette smoke…...
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Drabblecast 256 – Roanoke, Nevada
“It’s the extra-terrestrials,” the General said, watching for my reaction. “Our extra-terrestrials are falling ill.” “Really?” I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice. My eyes wandered back to the picture on the general’s wall. He noticed. “That’s an untouched photo,” he said. “The aliens…
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Drabblecast 221 – Year of the Rabbit
It used to be that the sun would go down and the streetlamps would come on and make pools of this wet, yellow light. No matter where you stood, you could see the lights on somewhere. You could run from streetlamp to streetlamp and you could look down the streets and you’d never drown in […]
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Drabblecast 207 – Pinion
The witness was beautiful, in a way that was almost hard to look at. His face was abstract and fashionable, all eyes and angles, with a luminous innocence too perfect to be entirely sincere…
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Drabblecast 199 – In the Octopus’s Garden
I woke to this new darkness, swirling about me. A phrase sticking in my mind — “Lazarus Syndrome.” What happened to people when they had died, but, for some reason, some lack of death’s completion — some unfinished business — had rejoined the living. In this episode of the Drabblecast, with a…
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Drabblecast 195 – A Matter of Size
“Wow.” Tiny Tim shakes his head slowly. Peels off his crimson domino mask and slaps it down on the meeting table. “That makes three of us.” “We’re marked men….” Dust Mite’s voice trembles. He tugs at the hood of his pale gray body suit. “Every costumed avenger with the power to shrink…”
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Drabblecast 186 – Garkain
His home is in the dense jungle along the banks of the Liverpool River. Should anyone venture into that jungle Garkain, who can fly as well as walk, will wrap himself around the intruder, and smother him with the loose folds of skin which are attached to his arms and legs. —Charles P. Mountford,...
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Drabblecast 185 – Horror World 2025: Part II
Kyle lifted another lightsaber. “Want one? They’re not as random or clumsy as a flamethrower.” “Sh*t. The geek is strong in this one. Sure, Jedi me.” Kyle tossed it to her with a grin. Hang on Grandpa. We’re coming… Norm starts this week’s Drabblecast starts with a bbardle about Phantom Claus, to...
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Drabblecast 184 – Horror World 2025
It started in the cemetery, like these things usually do. Everyone knows being in a cemetery after dark’s a bad idea, which is exactly why Kyle had begged his grandpa to take him… This episode of Drabblecast is a Halloween Special where our (g)host Norm gives us suggestions on how to…
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Drabblecast 181 – Funeral Song for a Ventriloquist
A puppet’s words infect. They taint. They do this without ever sounding like a thing, without the listener realizing they have been spoken. A true ventriloquist, as those who are educated and informed may or may not choose to tell you, is an adept in the art of keeping those mouths shut… On this...
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Drabblecast 176 – Cinderlands
Dexter crouched beneath the toxic fruit trees in his grassless back yard, turning over black earth with the spade he’d taken from the old man, and every shovelful revealed worse things: clumps of cinders and the dust of ashes; rusting nails, practically dripping tetanus; wickedly-curved shards of...
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Drabblecast 175 – The Outsider
Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books. Such a lot the gods gave to me – to me, the dazed, the disappointed; the barren, the […]
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Drabblecast 168 – Route Nine
Two years ago it must’ve been. Me and Manny and a couple of the other boys — Carlos and T-Bone — met up at the last Dairy Queen outside of Lompoc. Manny was going on at me about that shortcut I liked, Route Nine. “I’m telling you that place is God-awful weird, Joe.”
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Drabblecast 166 – Jubilee
Thousands of fish — dead, dying, or flopping in the shallows — littered the shore. A dozen people in their nightgowns, pajamas, or hastily-thrown-on street clothes moved along the shore, bending, exclaiming, whistling, laughing. Some had flashlights, but most worked by moonlight, scooping up...
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Drabblecast 143 – The Golden Age of Fire Escapes (Part II)
The Drabblecast continues this two-part series with “The Golden Age of Fire Escapes (Part II)” by John Aegard. If you haven’t heard Part I, you should listen to it here. We also conclude Connor Choadsworth’s adventures in “In Search of the Mongolian Death Worm.” Story Excerpt: The crowd was lined...
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Drabblecast 137 – Doubleheader V
Sam Android found Gail Galaxy skipping monopoles off the inactive accretion disk of a small black hole on the outskirts of the galaxy. Every once in a while, she shot one in at too large an angle, and it was captured by the black hole and, with a blinding burst of X-rays, swallowed up. “I […]
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Drabblecast 136 – The Great Old Pumpkin
You must know, Doctor, that I did not choose to seek psychiatric help. I have no faith that I shall exit this room a healed man; I know now that I have been destined for the asylum since childhood. No mere conversation with you can steer me clear of that fate. That said, let us […]
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Drabblecast 133 – Over the Walls of Eden
“Why do you remember the books?” he finally asks. She smiles again. “O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams, That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere, Till pride and worse ambition threw me down…”
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Drabblecast 126 – Dagon
As I crawled into the stranded boat I realized that only one theory could explain my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under…
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Drabblecast 109 – Babel Probe
This episode of the Drabblecast features “Babel Probe” by David D. Levine. This superbly narrated tale follows a nano scale robot on its mission to the past. Six thousand years earlier it uncovers the myths surrounding the Tower of Babel. A thought-provoking story unfolds. Which came first, God…
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Drabblecast 84 – Doubleheader 1
“She was called Mrs. Underhill, because that’s where she lived, and I assumed she was some kind of hob, because she obviously wasn’t human…” In some Drabble News, Norm Sherman shares the interesting tale of well fed “Terry the Crocodile.” The featured stories are a double-dose of Michael Stanwick...
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Drabblecast 80 – Standing in Line
I sense a diference the instant I step out of the water. In the unnatural stillness there is an arid taste in the air that assaults the back of my throat… Norm Sherman brings us an episode about endings, and why they don’t always have to be bad. The Drabble is about a “beautiful” end. […]
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Drabblecast 51 – Crimson
What wonders my kin saw as the passed away, none living will ever know. Only those willing to taste the waters see as they did. Only those willing to taste the waters die with their eyes open…
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Drabblecast 45 – The Fine Point
Once you start to see them, they seem to be everywhere… The Drabble News report, of a 5-year scientific study which showed staring at women’s breasts prolonged the lifespan of males, inspires a now-infamous skit. Norm details the riot among medical test subjects when the non-boobie control group...
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Drabblecast 44 – The Arc of Hronos
I’ve almost finished checking those measurements. That tooth—it looks homo sapien. This could be huge… Norm presents, in his inimitable style, a one-minute review of his long-awaited movie indulgence, “Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.” The week’s Drabble concerns an auto thief reaching the top of…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Stories feature on the Drabblecast are generally narrated by charismatic host, humorist, and musician Norm Sherman. A full production, the Drabblecast features multiple voice actors, music, and foley effects. The podcast has a finely tuned 'voice' that crosses all genres, including horror, science fiction, fantasy and 'other.' Special features include 100-word stories called, “drabbles,” 100 character stories coined “twabbles,” as well as Norm's own Bbardles, songs based on story themes. Original cover art accompanies every episode.
HOSTED BY
Norm Sherman
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Mystery – The Drabblecast have?
Mystery – The Drabblecast currently has 40 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Mystery – The Drabblecast about?
Stories feature on the Drabblecast are generally narrated by charismatic host, humorist, and musician Norm Sherman. A full production, the Drabblecast features multiple voice actors, music, and foley effects. The podcast has a finely tuned 'voice' that crosses all genres, including horror, science...
How often does Mystery – The Drabblecast release new episodes?
Mystery – The Drabblecast has 40 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Mystery – The Drabblecast?
You can listen to Mystery – The Drabblecast 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 Mystery – The Drabblecast?
Mystery – The Drabblecast is created and hosted by Norm Sherman.
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