KZSM — Cryptids, pirates, and radio magic

Our programming at KZSM.org expresses the creativity and imagination that abounds in our city. Sundays at 9 p.m., you can explore the alternative universes invented by Texas State Theater graduates on “Live Radio Theater.” Over the past two or three years, Garrett Buss, Josh Davis, Mitchell Oden, Jordan Pilkenton, and their friends have produced seven different shows, most of them on Sunday evenings.

For the first show, “Roscoe Taylor the Tallahassee Tween,” now encoring at 8 p.m. Sundays, Buss sent his young hero through an imaginary West on his talking horse Checkers Justice. More recently, “Lance Vibratto, Astronaut Attorney” has defended aliens in a galaxy distant in time and space. The last season ended on a cliffhanger with Lance tricked into entering a time machine, sending him into the era of the dinosaurs. “How can you even represent a dinosaur? They don’t even need lawyers,” says Buss.

Shows emerge through a twelve-person group chat; each potential host has their own process for generating ideas. Buss will “choose a genre, imagine a character, frame them as the main character, and have their name and adjectives about them be the title of the show.” Pilkenton devises episodes of “Cryptid Park Service” by choosing a cryptid—a mythological creature from folklore, like Bigfoot— and giving the creature a job as a Park Service Intern. For “Reel Movies,” Thursdays at 7 p.m., host Mitchell Oden interviews his guest about imaginary films that play on real movies or parody genres, such as “a horror film about blades of grass getting killed by a lawnmower.” Whatever the central premise, the plot is often “no more than a sentence”; the actors improvise all the dialogue and the action.

Currently, “Cryptid Park Services” alternates in the 9 p.m. slot with “Abigail Bones, Bucktoothed Buccaneer.” That pirate saga takes its intrepid heroine, voiced by June Strickland, through classic adventures like the search for buried treasure and encounters with mermaids and a kraken. The performers plan to connect some of their imaginary landscapes with season three of “Lance Vibratto, Astronaut Attorney. Time-traveling Lance might find himself in the West of Roscoe Taylor or on the high seas with Abigail Bones.

With creative sound effects, multiple voices, and plenty of imagination, these young performers are bringing back the golden age of traditional radio. According to Buss, “KZSM has been a great outlet for bringing back what makes radio, radio.”