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Episode 402 - Tsathoggua (Patreon)

Published:
2018-05-03 10:33:00
Edited:
2025-05-18 19:51:49
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

For our premiere show on Patreon, we're covering Tsathoggua by Michael Shea with special guest PATTON OSWALT!

It's a super-sized, hour-long FREE episode including the vocal stylings of Andrew Leman!

Please join our team to expand and continue the show. Existing subscribers: when you sign up on Patreon, we will take care of closing your existing account. It's easy!

Sign up today!

Comments

Forrest Rush

YES YES YES. I am so very happy you guys are finally on patreon. What level is needed to be able to listen to every subscription only podcast?

Gregg A Helmberger

Congratulations, Chad and Chris! This is a great new venture and I wish you all the luck in the world with it. I hope your success grows and grows.

Ben Mund

Congrats Chris & Chad! Your work is audio comfort food for my ears. It's like a great cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee spiked with the severed thumb of a werewolf ghost.

Ben A

Congratulations on the expanding forum for the podcast, Chad and Chris! Quite the wonderful surprise to hear Patton Oswalt with you both this morning! But, be careful about conjuring up those you cannot put down!

Markovian

Holy crap what an episode! Can't wait for Patton to come back.

Brittney Elmer

So glad you guys have moved to Patreon. This show was the only reason I was holding onto my PayPal account.

Red

Def glad I caught up today to find out the new changes. It's super exciting to see and I wish you dudes the best!

Jeffery Sumler

Terrific episode, I've already listened twice today! Thanks!

Hermagoras (pronounced HerMAgoras)

This was an amazing episode. I've listened twice. One question: the version of the story you link to gets the following review on Amazon: "Skips passages, repeats others. Unintelligible, an impossible to read." Is the text OK?

Hermagoras (pronounced HerMAgoras)

Followup to previous question: there is an ebook called *Demiurge: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales of Michael Shea* available on Kindle. That seems to have most of the Shea stories you're going to cover.

Nate

Good call updating to Patreon guys! Also great show <3

Richard Horsman

On etexts: anyone got a line on a readable one for "Burial of the Rats"? Standalone or anthologized, free or paid. The one at Wikisource.org looks okay (first Google hit), but sonething more e-book-y wold be nice.

Doug McCool

I'm not saying that you guys aren't awesome by yourselves, but with Patton Oswalt on board and Leman reading... I mean, wow! Bravo, sirs!

Andrew Buchanan

Awesome show! The comment near the end about those in the know remind me of Scott Siglar’s podcast/book The Nocturnals. Also set in SF with crazy old monsters. Anyone else?

Will Dennis

RODNEY DAGGONFIELD....come on. pure genius

Tia Bowman

So excited to find you on Patreon! Been listening since episode 31. Keep up the great work!!

Aaron Sprinkle

So I am now addicted to Michael Shea. In a desperate search for audio versions of Shea stories (i prefer to read but am currently working and in school full time so am relying on audio for the moment) I found a great Youtuber by the name of Morgan Scorpion who just endlessly narrates huge amounts of gothic horror stories, old and new. Quite a good voice, very creepy. She does Shea's 'The Autopsy' (with permission) and it's one of the most transfixing horror tales I've ever heard. Will certainly be investing in the hardcover of these stories when able. Wonderful writer! Thanks HPLLP!

Parker Longbaugh

I was literally thinking this a month ago: "Why don't they get on Patreon??" Synchronicity! I'm glad you guys made the leap, I've been listening since 2009.

Jahn Shultz

This one was so much fun!

TheGoodHeathen

Patton is a wonder and a treasure. Happy he could be a part of this episode. You guys finally getting to Michael Shea brought up some serious nostalgia in the more murky parts of my brain. When I was in high school, back in the late 90's, Shea's short story 'The Autopsy' AND 'Uncle Tuggs' were on the reading lists. Before anyone asks, I was in a private catholic high school that was extremely progressive. Along with an extensive list of short stories (some covered on your previous shows) we also read 'The Shining', 'The Exorcist', and 'The Elementals' (future mutli-episodes for Elementals? huh?) Excellent episode and I will choke up the cash to get a copy of that near perfect collection of Michael Shea shorts.

doctorpandaman

The new feed’s working so far. The “name” of the show’s changed again (“Witch House Media FEED” instead of “Witch House Media” instead of “The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast”), so iTunes downloaded all the episodes again, but it worked. Still the same fave podcast. I’m still stubborn enough to manually add the show artwork so it shows up on my iPod. 😝

Taylor Cornelius

I've listened to this one about four times now. So funny and a great story.

Nickthulhu

I was always under the assumption that Robert E. Howard had created Tsathoggua in his story “The Black Stone,” but first without name, only referring to the “grotesque toad-like creature” in his tale as “the Master of the Monolith” and Smith had just ran with Howard’s creation, eventually giving the “squat and pot-bellied… monstrous toad” (as Smith similarly describes it in "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros”) the hideous name we now all know and love. However, I just noticed that both stories were published side-by-side in the November 1931 issue of Weird Tales! Am I seeing this right? Is this merely a coincidence, and both creators had somehow conjured up the same creature in their thoughts, as if this was merely in the collective unconscious of these horror writers at the time. Or, had they somehow collaborated in the creation of this creature? Baffling matters even more though, I read that Howard and Smith most likely had not started a correspondence with one another until late 1932 — a year after they published these stories! Any information on this mystery would be greatly appreciated.

Nickthulhu

Hmm, this may support a little pet theory of mine. Since both men were already writing Lovecraft at the time and not each other yet (supposedly), I wonder if Smith had told Lovecraft of his creation, Tsathoggua, and then Lovecraft had in turn told Howard, perhaps encouraging Howard to write tales in his Cthulhu Mythos universe, such as “The Black Stone” — making note that Smith had already begun taking somewhat of a stab at it. And so Howard, who was said to be already aware of Smith and in praise of him, created “The Master of the Monolith” as a nod to Smith’s Tsathoggua simply as an element of Yog-Sothothery: the sort of joke being that this Hyporborean entity was still being worshipped as late as 1526, until being put down by invading Turks as per the historic events in “The Black Stone”. Of course, this is just speculation at best. I have no clue whether or not Smith even created Tsathoggua as a being originally inspired by Lovecraft’s universe, or that Lovecraft encouraged Howard to write in his universe at all before Howard wrote “The Black Stone”.

doctorpandaman

The story has me hooked on Shea now.... and Patton, of course.

Forrest Rush

Just finished Tsathoggua and wow. Please more Shea and plesae please more Patton.

Clara Meath

Wow, I want Patton to narrate everything I've ever read now....

Ben Genaux

I found Uncle Tuggs!!!

Ben Genaux

Hey guys :). I’m so grateful for what you guys produce with this podcast. It’s really an awesome show! I got a little obsessed when I realized that the short story “Uncle Tuggs” that Patton Oswalt described. I finally found it when looking for public domain in google. Hope people get to enjoy it :) -Ben <a href="https://the-eye.eu/public/Books/scifi%2C%20cult%2C%20horror%20and%20fantasy%20film%20and%20fiction%20zines/Fantasy%20%26%20Science%20Fiction/US/Fantasy%20%26%20Science%20Fiction%20v070n05%20%281986-05%29.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://the-eye.eu/public/Books/scifi%2C%20cult%2C%20horror%20and%20fantasy%20film%20and%20fiction%20zines/Fantasy%20%26%20Science%20Fiction/US/Fantasy%20%26%20Science%20Fiction%20v070n05%20%281986-05%29.pdf</a>

Scott McCrate

LOVED this episode and it was great having Patton on as a guest/host. So much fun! This also turned me onto Michael Shea and Patton's mention of The Color Out of Time led me to find it at the local library. The copy I got was a yellowed first-edition DAW paperback (Donald Allen Wollheim anyone?) so that was kind of cool. Really lurid front cover too!

Darth Oldius

At home, the conversation sounds like the dialog from a Kevin Smith movie, so I didn't even notice the f-bombs. I also don't mind the politics, nor do I think Lovecraft's work would have held the same weight were it not for his xenophobia. Lastly, while both parties say racism is bad, one party fails horribly as living up to that.

Kaz

So listening to this episode for the third time, I caught something that Patton recited towards the end when he described these alien species. The wolfish ice skaters and amoebic manta rays that he discribed are species that I remembered seeing in Barlow's Guide to Extraterrestrials. The Tran and the Tyreean, specifically. I'm still trying to ID the saurian species, but did Michael Shae pull his descriptions directly from that book?

Randall

i signed up just to hear the tsathoggua reading again...but instead I only get the talked over rehash. Sadly disappointed that the reading isn't in the archives even for patreons.

RebeccaR

That was a truly great episode. Thanks, guys!

Dave Parfitt

I loved this episode! Also, late to the party, but this story reminds me of that old song "if the van's a-rockin', cloacae are probably interlocking"