Geek Pizza

Before doctors had licenses and hospitals had beds, there was a woman with a black bag who came in the dark. She delivered the babies and prepared the dead and carried the knowledge of what keeps a community alive through generations when no one else would. Tonight we talk about the granny witch, the Cherokee Corn Mother Selu, and the women of Appalachian tradition who stood at every threshold bir...

Spring in the Appalachian mountains is not just a season. It’s a medicine chest opening up.   This week we’re going into the garden and into the traditionof the granny witch, the herb woman, the yarb doctor, the neighbor lady who kept communities alive with nothing but what grew in the holler and what her mother taught her.   In this episode:  • The granny witch tradition who these women really we...

Season One is here. Welcome back to the Geek Pizza MediaPodcast.  We’re kicking off a brand new format short, focused episodesevery two weeks, each one tied to the natural calendar and the folklore, lore, and mountain wisdom of the Appalachian hills. Then we follow it straight into the fiction, the games, and the stories we’re all trying to tell.   This week we’re starting where spring starts with...

Come on in. Gather round the hearth. Once a year, folklore tells us, the world thins. The wind sounds like hooves where hooves should not be, and ancient riders move along the edges of reality. In this episode of Geek Pizza , we explore the Wild Hunt as more than a ghost story. We look at it as a moving boundary, a reminder that thresholds, not dates, are what truly change us. Along the way, we tu...

A Christmas ghost story from the Appalachian holler. This Geek Pizza Holiday Special reimagines A Christmas Carol as a fireside folk tale set in a coal-town valley, filled with bottle trees, candlelit windows, and restless spirits. Eben Crane has money, property, and power, but on Christmas Eve, he is forced to face the cost of a life lived cold. Three spirits walk him through memory, consequence,...

From the misty lochs of Scotland to the deltas of Africa, every river has its ghosts. Join me by the hearth as we delve into tales of the Kelpie, the Washer at the Ford, the Nøkk, the Lorelei, the Water Panther, and Mami Wata spirits, which remind us that water remembers. Come on in, kinfolk, the creek’s whispering tonight.

Gather round the hearth for a Halloween tale born from the misty hollers and the old country beyond. In this special episode of Geek Pizza , Nathaniel tells the story of Elias Boone, a young miner who makes a desperate bargain at the crossroads for the gift of music. But when the debt comes due, it is not the Devil who rides to collect. It is The Rider, whose blue flame burns with the light of eve...

Step off the porch and into the yard, where old magic still hums in the wind. From haint blue paint to bottle trees and iron gates, we dig into the traditions that kept mountain homes safe and the stories that still guard the holler when the night gets quiet.

Geek Pizza: A Slice of Life is a podcast about the stories and adventures that make up geek culture. Each week, host Nathaniel King talks about video games, movies, tabletop role-playing games, and folklore. Every episode explores how stories shape our world and how a bit of magic can be found in everyday life. Nathaniel is a lifelong gamer, storyteller, and Army veteran who grew up in the Appalac...