Welcome to Night Vale - 283 - Work from Home

Episode Date: March 1, 2026

It's a bad sandstorm out there. Plus, a short film festival, how plants work, and a new intern(?) Weather: "The Emerald and the Mine" by Bishop Decker⁠⁠ Original episode art by Jessica Hayworth Episode transcripts 2026 TOUR DATES Tix on sale now! Listen to UNLICENSED⁠⁠ by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor. Only on Audible Welcome to Night Vale Roleplaying Game Subscribe to the Night Vale newsletter for news and stories Patreon is how we exist! Music: Disparition Logo: Rob Wilson Written by Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor & Brie Williams Narrated by Cecil Baldwin Follow us on BlueSky, Facebook, TikTok, Tumblr, and Instagram A production of Night Vale Presents Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Howdy y'all. It is Jeffrey Craneer. I'm not sure which episode of Welcome to Nightville you're listening to, but I am speaking to you from April of 2026. And I'm here to tell you we're going to be in Europe. If you want to see Nightville live and you're going to be in Europe, come check us out at the end of May. We're going to be in Edinburgh on May the 27th. We will be in Manchester on the 28th, London on the 29th, and Amsterdam on May the 30th. Just go to Welcome to Nightville.com slash live to see the show dates and to get your tickets. This is a our newest Nightville live show Murder Night in Blood Forest. It is so much fun. Please come check it out. Also, coming up this month here in April, it is the return of Alice Isn't Dead, brand new episodes of our other crazy hit podcast. This is written by Joseph Fink, produced and with music by Dysperition and starring Jacique and Nicole. So make sure you are still subscribed to Alice Isn't Dead and go get those on April the 13th as new episodes come out. Finally, speaking of other shows, do you want to hear us talk about other things? things. We have three other really great chat shows. First of all, there's Good Morning Nightvale

for all of your Nightvale needs. You can hear Hal, Meg, and Symphony talk about every single episode in order of Welcome to Nightvail. Also, we have Random Horror Number Nine. That is me and Nightville star Cecil Baldwin talking about horror movies one at a time in a random order. And then Joseph and Meg do best, worst, which is a really fun podcast where they look at hit TV shows and they review the best rated on IMDB, the worst rated on IMDB, and if you're a Patreon member, they will review the middlest rated on IMDB. So check out all of those at nightfallpresents.com or just wherever you get your podcast. And hey, thanks. You can't undo what has been done, but you can pretend it didn't happen. Welcome to Night Vale. There's a sandstorm in Nightvale today,

which has made the roads really dangerous. The sanitation department is out there now pouring ice and sleet everywhere to try to prevent the sand from building up. We're expecting four to six inches of sand, along with wind gusts up to 25 miles per hour, so schools are closed, as are most workplaces. Though, there's still that dilapidated house near Larry Leroy out on the edge of town that still seems to be open, despite the treacherous conditions. It's not even really a house so much as three and a half walls, barely supporting each other and no roof.

Still, there are lights on in the windows and people there. The people at the dilapidated house walk inside, and then different people walk out minutes later. I think it's an art gallery or an escape room or something. Anyway, that place is still open, but everywhere else in town is closed because of the sandstorm. The roads are not safe, Night Vale, what with the high winds and the thick sand covering the streets. And all are doppelgangers plodding through the dusty haze with murder flickering like bonfires in their eyes. My husband Carlos, who is the bravest scientist who ever lived, closed his. his labs today. Even I, the most intrepid radio journalist alive, am having to do my show

from home. Though I did ask my producer, Elise, to go up to the station so that she could patch my ISDN line through to the radio tower. Thanks, Elise. Well, we'll discuss a raise at your next performance review, Elise. But for now, I hope everyone, other than and the people milling about the dilapidated house, are staying safe inside, conducting their work over Zoom or Slack or Hinge or whatever the big tech sites are these days. Personally, I find a work-from-home day kind of nice because I get to see my family. Carlos right now is teaching our son Esteban about plants. They're growing an avocado plant from a seed on the windowsill.

Carlos is explaining how plant life grows from seeds. In fact, how all life is a miracle of science that each of us grows from tiny cells into a full person. Esteban looks pretty incredulous. It's very cute when he's trying to understand something new. He frowns and furrows his brow and you can see his eyes narrow. He's quite the determined little guy. Well, I'm here to report the news, not describe how adorable my boy is. Let's have a look at the community calendar.

Wednesday night is the winter recital at Elegant Sally's Kitchen Supply Store and Dance Studio, the downtown location. There will be performances by all of her classes from the five-year-old creative movement kids, all the way up to the teenagers who are in advanced ballet. They'll be performing pieces from master choreographers, Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, Jose Limon, and Renada Bliss. The winning teams at Wednesday night's recital will be promoted to the professional Night Vale Ballet Theatre. The losing teams will be relegated to Swank Jim's Choreography Warehouse and Kitchen Utensel Outlet, the one by the airport. Thursday afternoon is a career fair over at the rec center.

professionals from dozens of fields will be on hand to meet those seeking work or looking into new careers. There will be seminars on hot topics in business right now, like how to brace yourself for layoffs, and human resources are your besties. Girl, you can tell us anything. Of course, dozens of companies will have booths, where candidates can talk to those representatives and even hand in a resume that will be carefully ignored and then shredded and used as betting for the CEO's guinea pig breeding tank, the one he raises to feed his pet boa constrictor. No jobs will be offered at the career fair. Friday night is karaoke night at the post office. George Dunham, Night Vale's postmaster, said he thought it was a waste to close the post office every day at 4 p.m. So why not have a

daytime business and a nighttime business at the same location. You see it all the time with those dance studio and kitchen supply store combos, he said. Dunham added, the post office doesn't have a license to sell alcohol, so it's BYOB. They also don't have a karaoke machine, but he's pretty good at guitar and he knows all the popular songs, like that famous one by Jason Isbell and a couple of other Jason Isbell numbers, specifically the slower Jason Isbel songs that mostly use open chords. So, come on down to the post office this Friday night. Saturday afternoon, the Night Vale Cinemaplex will be showing Oscar-nominated short films. Of course, you'll see all the animated, live-action, and documentary shorts from 2025's slate,

but also some classics from yesteryear, like Bimdob the Kleptomaniac dragon from Finland, a groundbreaking dock called Beneath the Village Green, the left-handed astrology cults of Midland Odessa, and maybe my favorite live action short of all time, beyond here nothing, and maybe not even that. It's about two young people who sit out to prove the Earth is flat by walking to its edge. But along the way they fall for each other,

and it is through the power of love that they come to understand that the world is, in fact, round. That all things are round. Everything is a sphere. The earth, marbles, love, waffles, cats, filet mignon, potato chips. They get married and have a baby, who is a perfect sphere, and they live alone in a house that looks like a volleyball, and raise chickens that also look like volleyball.

balls. It's very romantic. Finally, this Sunday is the day that the prophecy mentioned. This is, according to a press release, sent to me by Harrison Kipp, and I can't tell if he's announcing it as adjunct archaeology professor at Nightvale Community College, or if it's got something to do with that religion of his. It sounds like the latter. Either way, he just says, but here, I'll read you the whole thing and you can make up your own mind what he's getting at. This Sunday is the day our great prophecy has long predicted. Observe Sunday, devotees and derelicts alike, for it shall be as has been foretold. I mean, that could be anything, right?

End of the world. An eclipse? A sale at the Toyota dealership. Come on, Harrison, help us out here. I don't know. maybe I should give his show the Twilight Gospel Hour a listen someday. But when you work in radio, it's like listening to the radio just feels like you're still at work? This has been the community calendar.

I'm getting an update from the sanitation department that the ice they've been pouring over the roads doesn't actually melt the sand. They got it backwards, so there's a mudslide on Route 800 on the southbound slope to exit. for. The wind is really picked up outside, so mudslide or not, Nightvale, I'd stay indoors for the next several hours. Also, as is usual for a sand storm, I can see everyone's doubles out there on the hunt for flesh. Thin black shadows shambling through the dust clouds. In fact, I can see the faint outline of two men and a little boy standing just on the edge of our lawn, staring at our house. I cannot make out faces, but I think I already know what they look like. Speaking of doubles, I heard from Dana Cardinal, our former mayor, and

current amateur detective. She's found some new details into the murders of the angel, formerly known as Marcus Vansden, as well as the stabbing death of Jalen Rutherford at the radio station, as he was trying to apply for an internship. Dana said she looked up Rutherford's LinkedIn account, which I think is a dating app. Like I said, I don't know all these tech sites. But not only was Jalen a business student at Nightvale Community College, but his previous employment was part-time bookkeeping for Marcus Vansden, The Angel. So, we have a connection between the two murder victims.

Plus, we know that days before his death, Marcus Vansden wrote up a will, which left everything in his estate, worth billions, to the community college. Interesting discovery from Dana. It makes me wonder, was Jalen Rutherford in some kind of cahoots with Marcus Vansston that rubbed someone the wrong way? And what cahoots would make that someone want to kill twice? and how is Nightvale Community College involved? Surely they wouldn't want them dead unless they were trying to speed up that whole estate transfer thing. Oh yeah, maybe they killed Jalen to keep him quiet. They thought if he were to work at the radio station, he might blab to a trained journalist

who would have broken this huge story and then won a Pulitzer. Ooh, a Pulitzer would have been really cool. This is all conjecture, though. We still don't know how an entire community college could get in and out of Vanston's locked library. Or how they could have killed him. What's that, Elise? Oh, that's just your double at the door. It's a sandstorm.

Elise, what did you expect for her to bring you cookies? Of course, she's threatening you with a shorthy. shovel and howling. Elise just locked the door. No, definitely don't let her in. She'll disappear when the sandstorm lets up. More on the murder investigation soon. But let's go now to the Children's Fun Fact Science Corner.

Today, in the Children's Fun Fact Science Corner, we're discussing how life is created. I'm actually learning all this for the the first time myself, as Carlos is trying to explain to our nine-year-old son that you can't grow an avocado plant in a day. Life is a slow process. It needs a seed, fertilization, water, sunlight, warmth, and nutrients. Each day the tiny seed grows a bit more, changes imperceptibly. It sprouts roots and limbs. Or in the case of a boy, it grows taller and stronger. You can't see the change, but it's happening. Millions of cells dividing every day.

Science only seems like magic, but it's actually an observable miracle. Carlos is saying to Esteban, but Esteban is just shaking his head no. Maybe he needs a nap. He looks grumpy. Esteban has picked up the avocado seed held half in the cup of water by toothpicks. He's pulling out the toothpicks and cradling the seed to his chest. He's whispering something to it. Now he's placing it on the floor and pressing it down into the carpet. It seems to be sinking as if the rug were soft, unpacked loam. Esteban is turning his body east,

lifting his hands high and uttering an incantation for the gods of nature. A small vine is emerging from the floor. It's growing thick with leaves and bulbs. Oh, that's now a full-grown avocado plant. Esteban looks so proud of himself. He's really into this witchcraft thing. Carlos looks dejected. No, honey, I'm sure it's just a phase.

He'll learn to love science just like I did. Oh, you're cute when you smile, you know. There you go. Well, this has been the children's fun fact, wizardry corner. Sure. And now let's have a look at financial news. What's that, Elise? You let her in the building.

No, your double wants to kill you. Elise, go get a knife from the breakroom and end her before she ends you. Oh, not a she? A he? Goodness, that is quite the strange turn. Um, let's talk off air while I give an update on the... Carlos? Carlos, what is happening out there?

Oh, God. Okay, listeners, the avocado plant has grown to the ceiling and is rapidly twisting itself around the living room. I need to go save Carlos and find Esteban. Elise, take them to the weather. It's never too early to plan your summer story in Europe with WestJet, from rolling countryside to cobblestone streets. Begin your next chapter.

Book your seat at westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. Welcome to via rail. Embarked and profite. Embarked and see. Celebrate. Rigolet. Publié.

Savour. Admire. And profite. Via Rae. The voice that we're OK. Oh, that was close. So, thankfully, I was recording

this show from my study where I keep all my books, including Plantopedia, the definitive guide to houseplants by Lauren Camilleri and Sophia Kaplan. It's the collector's edition, which comes with a small electric chainsaw. I managed to cut Carlos free from the branches which had wrapped around his throat and chest.

Then we found Esteban in the corner crying because he knew he was in trouble for doing unapproved magic. We explained to him sternly that people can get hurt if you're not careful. This is true for magic, for science, even for journalism. All of us have to be very careful with the choices we make. we cannot act solely out of anger or frustration or fear. Every action must have intention. Esteban wouldn't look at us. He knew all this.

This is why he was crying. He was embarrassed and scared, which made us feel terrible. There is a constant, horrible balance as a parent between wanting to teach your child consequences, not raise them to be entitled, Set them up to understand that their choices can hurt others. And on the other hand, your deep drive to protect them,

to keep them from any harm, to save them from negative emotions. It is an impossible equation, and a parent is asked to solve it every day. We sent him to his room and told him to take a nap. He's not in trouble, but we wanted to talk to him at dinner and before watching any videos. Carlos is cutting up what's left of the giant plant. It's going to take more than a day to clean all this up. But the avocados it grew are the size of affin-pinchers, so I guess we'll have guacamole for the whole neighborhood.

Oh, and I talked to Elise, who said that the person outside the radio station was Jalen Rutherford's double. He was waving a shovel because he was planning to kill his double, but was actually kind of relieved to find that his double was already dead, murdered months ago by a still unknown assailant. Elise asked Jalen's double where he comes from and where he goes when the sandstorm ends. He says he doesn't know the answer to either. He just is, and then he is not.

But while he is here, he simply knows he is his. other self and that he must find that other to destroy and hopefully replace them. Elise said, well, your resume is pretty good, Jalen. If you have the same skills as your double, would you still like to intern here? Assuming you don't disappear when the sandstorm dies down, she added. And Jalen said yes. He would love to intern for the radio station. It's his dream to replace his double. The two of them had tea. They made small talk and watched the dust clouds swirl past the windows, down the streets and out into the sandwastes. As the blue of the sky lazily but fully emerged, Jalen's double touched his own hands, then his own chest, then his own face. He finally

reached out to Elise, and she took his palm in hers, a firm, reassure, a firm, reassure. A firm, reassure. handshake, an agreement that he still exists, that he had a job, that he had a body, that he was Jalen Rutherford. So, I guess we have an intern now. I'm excited to meet him. Last time I saw Jalen, he was face down in his own blood in our lobby, so it'll be weird to see him all normal like. I bet Dana will be excited to hear about this. She, killed her double way back when she was my intern she and jaylin will have so many fun stories to share oh and i should note the sandstorm has passed so has the workday stay on that zoom call if you want but now it's a fun zoom call maybe you want to finish managing your digital infrastructure business solutions in letterboxed again who can

up with all these apps. All I'm saying is you're welcome to keep working if you think you have to, but I'd urge you to get outside, sweep your lawn, steal the last bit of sunshine, and then make dinner with your husband, with your son, maybe a dessert, maybe play a game. Maybe you can still catch the latest episode of Antler Cove after the kid goes to bed. Remember that work can visit your home, but it's not welcome to stay the night. Stay tuned next for the sound of a tired scientist digging through the cabinets for that danged mulcahete we got as a wedding present, but have never actually used. As always, good night, nightvale. Good night. Welcome to Nightvale as a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Kraner, and Bree Williams.

sound design and production by The voice of Nightvale is Cecil Baldwin. Original music by Disparition. All of it can be found at disparition.net. This episode's weather was The Emerald and the Mine by Bishop Decker. Find out more at the link in our show notes. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvale.com or follow us on blue sky at Nightville radio.

on Instagram, Tumblr, and TikTok at Nightvale Official. Or just go to sleep. Do you have any idea how late it is? You'll feel better if you get more sleep. But mainly, check out welcome to nightvail.com, where we have a twice monthly mailing list that is the best way to keep up to date directly from us to you. Just the real humans over here, sending you real humans out there some news. No billionaires involved. Today's proverb, money doesn't grow on trees. Not with that attitude it won't. Hi, we're Meg Bashminer. And Joseph Fink.

Of welcome to Night Vale, and on our new show, The Best Worst, we explore the Golden Age of Television. To do that, we're watching the IMDB viewer-rated best and worst episodes of classic TV shows. The episode of Star Trek, where Beverly Crusher has sex with a ghost, the episode of The X-Files, where Scully gets attacked by a vicious housecat. And also, the really good episodes, too. What can we learn from the best and worst of great television? Like, for example, is it really a bad episode or do people just hate women?

The best worst. Available wherever you get your podcasts.