Random Tape is a podcast by David Weinberg, and it’s exactly what its name implies—it’s audio from a random tape. The most recent episode (discovered via @samlistens) is “Dec. 31, 1995,” and it records a troubling argument between what appears to be an older couple, Kenneth and Miriam. 

We asked Weinberg for some context:

“The Kenneth and Miriam tape came from a stranger—a guy who liked the podcast and sent it to me. He picked the cassette up at an estate sale, I can’t remember where though. The unedited tape is so dark. It just goes on and on. There’s no redemption in it. Kenneth and Miriam just get drunker and drunker and meaner and meaner. There’s little forensic evidence of anything other than a bitter marriage and Fox news is playing in the background. Not one sweet moment in the whole recording.

“The first time I listened to it I was in an airport. I distinctly remember watching a stream of people emerge from a plane and feeling really sad for Miriam and disgusted with Kenneth and wondering which of the people walking past me were actually monsters. It was one those recordings that haunted me. (In a strange coincidence I found out later from the man who sent me the tape that Kenneth was an airline pilot.) And at the same time I was a little elated. I had the feeling I get when I come a cross a really great piece of undiscovered tape. And of course I wanted to know more more about Kenneth and Miriam. So I made it up. It’s the first time I tried to do a kind of hybrid piece of writing fiction around found tape.”

Check out more from Random Tape here.

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