RESULTS ARE IN, FOLKS. In the past month, Sarah and Cyrus made a bet to see who could read the most books out of their combined TBR piles. Sarah is a super fast reader with one day a week to functionally dedicate to churning through books; Cyrus is an absolute competitive maniac who would rather destroy their body and mind rather than lose. The stakes: either financial ruin for Cyrus, or automotive ruin for Sarah. Two men enter; one man leaves (with their dignity, at least).

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Back at it again in the Animorphs mines. This time, we're reading books 28 through 32, a group that contains vitally important plot, thoughtful and moving character moments, and also whatever is happening in book 28. Cyrus professes their undying love for Marco's self-aware ruthlessness. Sarah understands the world better through children's literature. We both get increasingly nervous about our upcoming reading death pact.

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Okay, maybe it's not a death pact. More of a "financially ruinous" pact for Cyrus specifically. But with the stakes on the table, they're more than willing to dive in. And with how annoying Cyrus is in this episode, Sarah is happy to crush them beneath capitalism's bootheel.

But this is mostly, theoretically, not an episode about engaging in potentially friendship-ending contests of reading might. Mostly it's about the cool books we've read, the cool books we want to read, and the fact that Cyrus utterly eviscerated Sarah in a word count competition and will never let her forget it.

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This week on Cracked Spines, we are discussing Animorphs books 23 through 27, a chunk that includes one of the best books of the series so far and also Cassie lying to strangers about androids while inside a Spencer's Gifts. The series contains multitude and, as we get into this middle stretch, filler. Join us as we watch young teens grapple with intergalactic war, cross-species dating, and the Space Devil.

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Our favorite horror writer is back at it again! This week we read Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix, a truly harrowing mixture of pregnancy horror, social horror, and eels. In this episode, as you can probably imagine, we talk a lot about abortion rights, fucked up pregnancy stuff, and infanticide. Like honestly probably way too much discussion of infanticide, oopsie, sorry about that. Proceed with caution accordingly.

More pregnancy/motherhood/baby horror recs:

• Nestlings by Nat Cassidy
• Immaculate (2024)
• The First Omen (2024)
• Huesera: The Bone Woman (2022) (Note from Cyrus: I forgot to mention this one on the episode but IT'S SO GOOD PLEASE WATCH IT. One of the rare movies that actually made me scream aloud)

And lastly, if you want to read/listen to Cyrus's story mentioned at the end of this episode, it's not about pregnancy but it is very much horror: Hemorrhage on Pseudopod.org (not .com as we say on the podcast, I'm a fool)

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Hey, everyone! Sarah is one of the thousands of unionized healthcare workers on strike in Oregon. At their last job, Cyrus saw how hard a company will work to destroy a union. Let's do some labor chatting.

This is a different episode than usual. We've been thinking about doing some extra episodes on our off weeks about stuff, and this episode? Well, I'm not sure it's the best example of our ideas for what the interstitial episodes will look like, but by god it's sure not about books.

Click here to donate to the strike fund. You can also click here to go to our patreon, where we'll be donating a third of our income from that to the strike fund for the duration of the strike.

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We discuss the new Murderbot novel, System Collapse by Martha Wells! Which came out in... 2023. We're really part of the zeitgeist. And really, we only talk about Murderbot a little bit before the episode just becomes a confessional booth. Our financial habits are tearing this family apart. Our construction projects are tearing our house apart. Here is a link to Emily Axford's journey to flush a cake down the toilet. No one can say this episode didn't go up on Monday.

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Haunted catacombs! Mysterious knights! Rat man! For those looking for a game manual on their quest through Vermis, you couldn't ask for more. For those looking to actually play Vermis, well, we've got bad news. The book is a video game manual for a retro soulslike that doesn't exist. It's a fantastic piece of meta-fiction with amazing art by Plastiboo, and we loved it so much---and had complicated feelings about the sequel. So select your character (Rat Man superiority) and dive in.

Check out Vermis here: https://hollow-press.net/products/vermis-i

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