Redefining the Halloween canon
All Songs Considered
NPR
4.4 • 3.2K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Featured songs:
1. Phoebe Bridgers: “Killer” from ‘Stranger in the Alps’
2. Fever Ray: “If I Had A Heart,” from ‘Fever Ray’
3. Sufjan Stevens: “John Wayne Gacy, Jr” from ‘Illinois’
4. Jack Lenz: “Goosebumps” (theme from the TV show)
5. Disneyland Records: “Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House”
6. Alice Cooper: “Welcome to My Nightmare,” from ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’
7. Oksana Linde: “Horizontes lejanos,” from ‘Travesias’
8. Florence + the Machine: “Everybody Scream,” from ‘Everybody Scream’
9. Ethel Cain: “Housofpsychoticwomn,” from ‘Perverts’
10. girl in red: “We Fell In Love In October” (single)
11. Mimicking Birds: “Bloodlines,” from ‘EONS’
12. Van Morrison: “Moondance,” from ‘Moondance’
13. The Cramps: “I Was A Teenage Werewolf,” from ‘Songs the Lord Taught Us’
14. Dead Man’s Bones: “My Bodies a Zombie for You,” from ‘Dead Man’s Bones’
15. Vince Guaraldi: “The Great Pumpkin Waltz,” from ‘The Great Pumpkin’
Weekly reset: Chilling, thrilling sounds from the haunted house
Enjoy the show? Share it with a friend and leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [email protected]
Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices
NPR Privacy Policy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, |
| 0:07.4 | working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theshmit.org. |
| 0:14.5 | Hazel, I know you love this time of year. I do. I'm a spooky queen. |
| 0:19.3 | Anything horrifying and creepy? That is your comfort zone. Yeah, I live in a spooky queen. Anything horrifying and creepy? |
| 0:21.1 | That is your comfort zone. |
| 0:22.7 | Yeah. I live in a haunted house. |
| 0:25.1 | I've talked about being a vampire in the show before. |
| 0:28.9 | Like, I'm technically at least 3,000 years old. |
| 0:32.0 | Do you change your social media handles to, like, witch hazel? |
| 0:36.7 | Or like, or like, like raboon goblin helton no i don't um because i'm cool |
| 0:48.8 | and i wouldn't do that are you besmirching the good name of everyone who does that year after year? I kind of, I've been off Twitter for so long, but I actually forgot that people did that. Like, they changed their names in kind of like a, almost like a roller derby type fashion. Exactly. Some spooky name. Roller derby is a really good, a good descriptor. But Stephen, I guess you must be into this time of year, too, and I didn't know that about you |
| 1:12.9 | until now. |
| 1:13.9 | I am, but I'm really averse to doing any work. |
| 1:17.6 | So, like, costumes, not my thing. |
| 1:21.0 | Doing up, like, decorating my yard, I don't want to set foot in my yard. |
| 1:26.2 | So, like, really, for me, Halloween is entirely |
| 1:29.6 | candy and cereal. Booberry, by the way, best of the monster cereals. But that's the stuff that I |
| 1:35.8 | love most. I know you wouldn't think that I'm into community, but that's what I love. I want |
| 1:41.1 | trick-or-treaters to come by. I want to decorate the yard. I want to do costumes. Do you, do you scare the trick-or-treaters to come by. I want to decorate the yard. |
| 1:44.3 | I want to do costumes. |
| 1:45.6 | Do you scare the trick-or-treaters? |
| 1:47.8 | Do you have something when they come up on the steps that scares them, or is there a setup? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.