Vernon and Baran explore race and horror 

  • by Staff

Mathew Vernon and Stacey Baran explore race and horror on their Fear of the Dark Podcast 

fear of the dark

 Craving a horror podcast with brains? Fear of the Dark is the one for you. Hosted by Ph.D. candidate Stacey Baran and Associate Professor Matthew Vernon, it is not your average two guys at a mic, shouting hot takes. Instead, Baran and Vernon use the lens of race to ask big questions about one of the most dynamic and politically relevant genres in pop culture. How does the nation dream itself on screen in the midst of a zombie apocalypse? How do race and gender alliances transform in moments of crisis? How does fear on screen change over time from Frankenstein (1931) to Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)  to Frankenstein (1970) to Blackenstein (1973) to Frankenstein (1994) to Frankenstein (2025)? Why do we return to the same stories again and again? Should we be scared of AI or was the ending of Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014) a happy one?   What is that strange banging noise coming from outside of the recording studio and should Baran and Vernon go out to investigate?   

They cover a wide range of films, from classics like the F. W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu: Symphony of Horror to recent hits like Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk (2025). Moreover, they invite other voices onto the podcast to lend their expertise to conversations, critics such as Dawn Keetley (Lehigh University) and Eleanor Johnson (Columbia University) have joined in, with more guests to come. A fan of horror who wants to hear a smart discussion of the genre? This is the podcast for you. Not a fan of horror? You should listen too! They watch (and tastefully gloss over) the gory bits so you don’t have to. More importantly, they try to make the conversation about horror broadly relevant, so you don’t need to have seen or liked a particular film to be part of the conversation. Baran and Vernon instead try to prove to you that there is nothing to fear about the dark. The podcast serves up scholarly insight – seasoned with a touch of the undead – each episode. Available now on all major platforms.