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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast, More What You

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Here, Weekday Afternoon's On the Drive. He's an actor, director, and

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writer. Sarah Wayne Callus, most
recently seen in The Company You Keep,

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NBC's The Council of Dance and The
Walking Dead, is now expanding her foray

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into something near and dear to my
heart storytelling with sound. Sarah is the

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creator, writer and director and voice
of the science fiction podcast after Shock,

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now in its second season. Hello
Sarah, glad to have you a long

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good morning, sir, thank you
for having me. Let's start about the

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Let's just remind everybody what Aftershock is, and then we'll get into the differences

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of the first season in the second
season. All right, So Aftershock is

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it's an audio drama, which is
a television show that you watch with your

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eyes closed. Right this, we're
going all the way back to the sort

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of Twilight Zone radio drama, kind
of roots of American storytelling here. And

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the story the first season is that
that earthquake everybody's always been talking about finally

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comes and it levels La thirteen miles
off the coast in international waters. A

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new island rises up out of the
sea. So then it kind of becomes

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the story of westward expansion and there's
new land, it's to the west,

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who goes there and why? But
I was curious about exploring some of those

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stories from the perspective of maybe writing
in some women and some people of color

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and sort of seeing how those dynamics
would all work out. So a bunch

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of people get to the island.
Our hero played by me because I wrote

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it, is looking for a young
woman who we think is her daughter.

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And they get to the island,
and people keep coming, and then people

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keep dying, and the body's sort
of pile up, and by the end

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of the first season almost everybody has
a fair amount of blood on their hands.

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And so in season two, what
we're really kind of exploring is atonement

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and forgiveness. When you have done
the unforgivable, what do you do then?

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Who do you become? And how
do you make it right? How

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do you ask for forgiveness? How
do you give forgiveness? That seemed like

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something at this moment in our culture
in North America, that seemed like something

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worth talking about. Aftershocks Season two
is the podcast available on the iHeartRadio app

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and everywhere you get podcasts. Have
you been personally through any earthquake or earthquakes.

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I've been through a couple, none
serious. Mercifully, I was you

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know, my John Burnthall as a
close friend of mine, and years ago

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I was staying with him and his
wife and there at the time new baby,

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and we were in Venice and John
was somewhere else. He wasn't in

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the house. His wife was cleaning
up the dishes and I felt the wall

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start to shake, so I ran
upstairs. I grabbed the baby. I

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run to the middle of the street. I'm waiting for everybody to come out

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so we can all be safe,
and maybe ten minutes go by it I'm

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alone. His wife comes out and
she goes, what the hell are you

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doing? I said, I'm saving
the baby. It's not that better an

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earthquake. Get back inside and put
my kid back to sleep. I'm so

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sorry. So that was my failed
hero moment, but thankfully it was not

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any kind of a serious earthquake.
I have been through several here in Oklahoma.

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People don't realize it, but we're
very seismically active, and in the

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last several years especially so. And
I guess the biggest one I went through

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it. Yes. So the biggest
one I went through was about a three

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point four, and I was more
fascinated than fearful. I heard it coming

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in almost a Doppler effect. At
first, I thought, why is there

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a helicopter landing in the backyard,
because that's what it sounded like. It

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was. It was a wobble wabble
wobble wappa sound. And then the whole

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house was vibrating with that wabble wobble
wappa sound. And my wife was in

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the shower. She came running out, what the hell is going on?

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I said, it's an earthquake.
And about the time I said that,

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you felt it doppler to the south
and to the east, and I went

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out the front yard and I heard. I didn't realize it would make a

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sound, but I heard it.
I heard the effect of it leaving,

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and I guess the whole experience was
maybe thirty seconds, and we didn't sustain

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any damage, but it was.
It was fascinating to me, not unnerving

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like many people were rattling. Yeah, well, and you know it was

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interesting to me. Was exactly that
audio question is going through this right?

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You know? So I write this
script, we get it to Jeff Schmidt,

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who is I think the best audio
engineer in the business, and he

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goes, right, so all of
this is audio, What does this sound

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like to you? And I was
like, I don't know, buddy,

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I I think I'm going to make
that your problem. And that was kind

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of our partnership because I would write
these things and I would write a tsunami,

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I'd write a kayak flipping over.
I'd you know, write someone falling

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off the cliff, and Jeff would
go, okay, well, and you

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know, he'll send me three options
and I go, oh, b is

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great, but let's bring up the
base here and let's make it rattle a

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little more. And that has been
in a really exciting part of this kind

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of audio journey is how do you
take a natural master and land it fully

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in someone's ears in an immersive way. And this season, actually he's done

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something really cool. He's done three
D sound. So you know, if

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you can take a second and you
know, put your beats on or your

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bows or whatever your giant headphones are, then it'll the sound will actually move

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around you and it's cool. A
few times while I was editing, I

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couldn't help myself I'd look behind me
because I'd hear the footsteps of somebody coming

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up in a scene, and I
was like, oh, this is so

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cool. Yeah, that's the part
that I love. Sarah Wayne Callous is

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with us Aftershock Season two is the
podcast that she produced, and it's it's

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it's going back to old school radio
drama. But and I'm sure you've done

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this, Sarah, gone back and
listen to some of the old dramas and

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listen to how they had to improvise
to make various sound effects, whether it's

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a shaking a piece of ten to
simulate thunder or a war of the world.

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I still have no idea how they
how they made the sound of the

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artillery because I can't tell what it
is. It sounds like a like a

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almost like a fire extinguisher going off, but I don't know what they used.

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I think they put a mason jar
down in a toilet when the spaceships

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were you know, we're unscrewing the
lids of the spaceships and they were coming

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to But but that was my point. We have so many more resources available

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to us now in the digital age. We do we do, and you

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know what it allows us to do
I think is tell more vibrant stories.

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And even you know, look,
I'm recording this with actors who were all

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over the place. I mean we
shot We recorded Dave Harbor I think in

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a closet in rural England somewhere.
I think he was out there shooting something.

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You know. We record Jeffrey Dean
Morgan in his garage in between cigarette

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which is always amazing. I've always
ended up. His wife is Hillary Bird

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Morgan, who's an absolutely brilliant actor
and writer, and I've always got to

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call her and be like, hey, Hale, would you set your husband

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up because he's swearing at his TV
screen and this tech is pissing him off.

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But we can do these things remotely
in a very different way, and

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then send the tracks over, yeah, to our audio engineer who pieces it

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all together. Whereas like back,
you know, during the first season of

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prison Break, they asked me to
do a couple episodes of the Twilight Zone

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radio dramas they were redoing it all
with Stacy Keach as the host, and

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even then we were all in the
same room. Fully, artist was right

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there. There were a lot of
after effects too, but it was limited

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by who you could get into the
room and who was available that day.

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And now we don't have that,
you know, we record things over riverside

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or squadcast, and it gives us
access to brilliant actors wherever they are in

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the world. Sarah Wayne Cally's the
podcast is after Shock. It's in season

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two. What is it about podcasting? I think it's because people want to

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have more going on when they're cutting
the grass or going for a jog.

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My brother in law no longer reads
the newspaper. Every morning. He gets

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up, gets his cup of coffee
and he listens to a couple of podcast

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You know, it's an interesting question. I mean, on the scripted side

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with what I'm doing. What I
think is really great for people is I

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don't care how big your special effects
budget is. In a movie, it's

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coming out of the minds of the
director and the producers and the writers and

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the special effects team. When you
listen to a podcast, those special effects

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are coming right out of your brain. Whatever it is that scares you the

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most when you hear that door creak
open, that's what you're imagining. Whatever

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it is that makes the most beautiful
sunset to you. Wherever you've been your

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brain's pulling that image up and flooding
it. When we talk about I'm on

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a boat in the middle of the
ocean and the sun's coming up, And

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I think there's something extraordinary that allows
people's imaginations to tailor the story to them

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in a way that's not available in
any other medium. So I'm gonna be

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fall in love with the medium at
a young age. That's why I got

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into radio, because I wanted to
do that kind of thing. And I

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was like, I was about five
years old listening to a radio draw and

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I thought, Wow, this is
great. I love this. I see

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something different than what my sister sees
when we listen to this, and to

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me, it is magic. Yeah, it's exactly right. It's exactly right.

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And you know, it also allows
us as actors to play I think,

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a wider range of characters, right, because you can manipulate your voice

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in ways that you can't quickly manipulate
your body. And then that's just it.

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It's a ton of fun. You
get to play and play and play

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and play. I do think it's
interesting that so much of our world is

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migrating to podcasts. You know,
when you talk about your brother in law

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and not wanting to read the paper, but to listen to it. To

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me, what I think is well, that allows him to listen and sit

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with a cup of tea and watch
the sunrise and actually engage with the beauty

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around him and the piece around him
at the same time that he's engaging with

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the cast and the news, and
maybe that makes it a little easier to

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swallow. Give it how challenging these
times stuff for everyone. Sarah Wayne Kelly's

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the name of the podcast Aftershock season
two. I thank you for the conversation

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and for the podcast. We look
forward to talking to you again. Thank

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you so much for having me be
well. Thanks for listening to Later with

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Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast,
and remember to listen to The Drive Live

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weekday afternoons from five to seven and
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