Written by and starring Lauren Shippen

https://www.atypicalartists.co/breaker-about

The world ended in 1968. Six years later, one of the survivors makes her way out across America to try and find out what happened, why she survived and how she really feels about her life before and whatever comes next. She has a CB radio, a car and unquenchable curiosity. This is her journey.

Lauren Shippen’s podcasting work has been a vital part of the audio drama community for years and this, her latest project, may be her strongest yet. It’s structurally fascinating, wrapping Whiskey’s low tech set up around the attention span of its audience and delivering week day episodes of no more than five minutes. Whiskey’s always on the move, and time passes between episodes, meaning Shippen can present us with what William Goldman would call ‘the good bits version’. We experience the pauses in her journey but rarely the journey itself and oddly that gives much more of a sense of distance and time passing.

The format also allows Shippen to dig in on her heroine’s past. Whiskey is always compelling but not always likable, a criminal whose unique skills and viewpoint are key to her survival but may also be part of her problem. Shippen is as good an actor as a writer, and is unafraid to dive into the darker parts of Whiskey’s world view. Crucially Shippen also writes Whiskey as someone of her time, not a modern character wearing her time’s clothes. She smokes sometimes, she’s not quite got the emotional or psychological vocabulary to realize she could well be either gay or bisexual. She’s very angry and very guilty and doesn’t quite look either in the eyes.

Over a hundred episodes in, Shippen is also teasing out some compelling mysteries. America is quiet but not destroyed, almost everyone having vanished. A broken foghorn that needs manual operation, somehow, works in one episode. In another Whiskey encounters a dog too friendly and well groomed to be feral. In one of the best Halloween episodes I’ve encountered, she catches a long few seconds with someone who cannot possibly be there. The whole time she’s driven forwards by her desire to leave her one time partner in crime behind and her desire to understand. Cryptic morse code messages hint at the truth and she dives for all of them. Shippen’s pacing is exemplary and the format only ever works for her. No episode outstays its welcome and, as the series has continued, it’s started to become clear what’s happened. What Whiskey does about that, or what role she may have played, or what happens next? Well those are where she goes next.

Verdict: This is podcasting audio drama at its best. Clever, honest and unique storytelling that drops new episodes Monday to Friday. Even now, over a hundred episodes in, it’s easy to jump aboard or catch up. It’s a journey worth taking. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart