Po is a 2021 audio chuck original made for our friends at Sirius XM.

We hope you enjoy this exclusive content re-released for free on full-body chills.

And for the best experience, we kindly recommend you listen with headphones.

We kindly recommend you listen with headphones.

Laughter heals, or at least it steals, a moment from the pain.

But like any remedy, comedy can be abused, and if you're always drunk on humor, you'll stumble like the fool, completely

oblivious to those around you, to those you hurt, and to those who wish to see you in chains,

to hang you up and watch you burn.

In this story, the punchline leaves no one laughing.

That is, except for Hop Frog.

Hop Frog, or the eight-chained orangutans by Edgar Allan Poe, adapted by Jake Weber, 2021.

Jake and I hope you have enjoyed these weird, spooky 19th century stories.

Today, I'm going to tell you the story of Hop Frog, which is a fairy tale that is so bizarre there was no way to adapt or

reimagine it in a contemporary setting. But before I do, I want to tell you a bit about

Edgar Allan Poe, whose life story was as compelling and weird as his work. He was born in Boston

to actors. Poe's father abandoned the family when Poe was a toddler,

and a year later his mother died of tuberculosis. Two-year-old Edgar and his brother and sister were

taken in by a wealthy family, but were never officially adopted, and in adolescence, Edgar got in

all kinds of trouble. He liked to gamble and drink and got himself expelled from the University of Virginia. At that point, his relationship with his foster parents was in bad shape, and John Allen refused to support Edgar any longer.

Edgar bummed around for a while, doing odd jobs, and then enrolled in the army under a

false name because he was broke and started writing poems and getting them published. But there

was no money in writing poetry unless you were famous. Poe didn't become famous until 20 years later

...