Maren Cole

Casting Call — Maren Cole New Gods of Sablehook — Principal Co-Host, Season-Long

THE HOOK

Below the Fold is a weekly national show — the kind you have heard before, the kind that lives in your phone next to your favorites. Maren Cole has co-hosted it for years. This season she is following a small-town drama teacher into a story the rest of the press buried.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

New Gods of Sablehook is a 12-episode scripted fiction podcast set in the small town of Sablehook, Washington, where 4,371 people vanished in a single day in April 2026. The show is presented through a layered, in-world structure — a national investigative podcast, a local late-night radio program, and the voices of the town's remaining residents — as it works toward an answer the rational world is not equipped to give.

The tone target is grounded, character-driven fiction with an undertow of the strange. We are not making a horror anthology. We are making a show about people who live near something they do not have language for.

WHO WE ARE

Apocrypha Productions was founded by friends Tobias SK Cichon and Brent LaRowe in the Rabid Brewing taproom in Chicago, IL — a bastion for the artistic and strange. We're in it for the creative fun, and for the satisfaction of making professional productions we dream up ourselves. It matters to us that everyone involved is having a good time.

THE ROLE

Maren Cole — 30s to 40s, female. Co-host of Below the Fold, a weekly radio show and podcast on which she and Rajan Cross invite independent journalists to deep-dive stories buried under the daily onslaught of political outrage. She is affiliated with CNN. The show has been on for years and is now running its episodes on the Great Disappearance of Sablehook.

Maren is very sharp and believes personal politics have far less to do with the reality of people's choices than most of her viewers would assume. She knows we live in a world of ethical penumbra and that we are all afflicted by the human condition.

She is the more analytical half of the hosting duo. Where her co-host leads with empathy, she leads with structure. She sees ethical complexity everywhere and is willing to sit with ambiguity longer than most journalists. Her skepticism is real but never dismissive — she chose this story because she believes it was buried unjustly.

WHAT WE ARE LISTENING FOR

• A real-person host, not generic prestige-podcast cadence. No NPR mimicry.
• Surgical questions delivered without cruelty. She can make a guest feel both safe and exposed in the same sentence.
• Precise, probing, occasionally wry. Comfortable with on-mic transitions — handing off, picking up, the natural choreography of co-hosts.
• Range that supports a season-long arc: she begins the season at full professional distance and ends it considerably closer to the story.
• Responsiveness to live direction. Sessions are real-time; we will iterate on takes together in the moment.
• An ear for chemistry. Callbacks will pair shortlisted Marens with shortlisted Rajans, recorded together live.

SIDES

Two sides attached, both written as dialogue between Maren and Rajan. Record your half of each, leaving roughly the right amount of space for the other voice — we will hear how you handle the rhythm of a co-host exchange:

SIDE A — Episode Opener

The opening of a Below the Fold episode. You are introducing this season's story to your audience for the first time. Procedural, warm, settling in. The strangeness is still abstract.

MAREN: Welcome to Below the Fold. I'm Maren Cole.

RAJAN: And I'm Rajan Cross.

MAREN: Every week we bring you a story we think got buried — not by accident, exactly, but by the gravitational pull of louder stories that crowd the front page. This week's story has been buried for almost a year.

RAJAN: It's a story most of you have heard of and most of you have already stopped paying attention to.

MAREN: On April twenty-second of last year, four thousand three hundred and seventy-one people walked out of the town of Sablehook, Washington, and did not come back. That is one of those sentences I have now read aloud enough times that I have to remind myself, every time, that it is true. Four thousand three hundred and seventy-one people. Not metaphorically. Not in some news-cycle figurative sense. Literally walked out and were not seen again.

RAJAN: And our guest this season is the only person willing to keep asking what happened to them.

MAREN: Her name is Delilah Moore. She lost her family in the disappearance. She is, as of this recording, the only journalist still working the story. Delilah, welcome to the show.

SIDE B — Episode Closer (Late Season)

Late in the season. You and Rajan have been hearing testimony from Delilah for weeks. Something has just been described in this episode that neither of you has language for. You are still a host. You are also still a person.

MAREN: Delilah, thank you. We're going to take a break there. Or — I think I need to take a break there.

[pause]

RAJAN: Yeah.

[pause]

MAREN: I've been doing this job for fifteen years. Rajan and I have been doing this show together for nine. And I want to say something on this episode that I don't think I have ever said on this show before, which is that I no longer know what kind of story we are telling.

RAJAN: Yeah.

MAREN: I'm not — I'm not saying I believe everything we've been told. I want to be careful about that. But I am also not willing to sit here and pretend that I have a framework for what Delilah just described, because I don't. And I think it would be dishonest to act like I do.

RAJAN: I think that's right.

ESTIMATED RECORDING TIME

Maren appears in every episode — one of the most time-intensive roles in the cast. Plan on a substantial share of each recording day.

THE COMMITMENT

Season 1 is 12 episodes, recorded in focused pushes across roughly a year — not a weekly grind. It is a real, year-long commitment, and we treat it like one.

• Recording happens on full-day Saturdays in the South Chicagoland region, in pushes of two days at a time.
• The first two dates are Saturday, July 11 and Saturday, July 25, 2026. These start at 9am and can run long, so plan accordingly.
• Two more pairs of Saturdays follow at roughly quarterly intervals over the following nine months, with exact dates set together once the crew is locked.

Because recording days are few and full, we will confirm your availability for July 11 and July 25 early in the process. If you can't make both, this particular role may not be the right fit — tell us up front so no one's time is wasted.

HOW WE RECORD

All recordings are live-directed. We are not working in an async send-a-take, wait-a-day model — the producer and director are in the room with you and the other actors during the session, giving real-time direction and pickups.

You arrive on location in South Chicagoland; some sessions are recorded outdoors, others in a sound-controlled environment, and we handle all the equipment. You bring the talent.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

For your audition only: any clean home recording is fine. You need a quiet space and a microphone capable of delivering audio we can evaluate the performance on — a USB mic and the ability to send a clean take is plenty. For the actual recording sessions, we handle the gear; you just show up.

COMPENSATION

This art project is in its infancy, and compensating people fairly is a core value of both founders. We can deliver a full credit, a clip for your sizzle reel, and a team that treats your time and craft with respect.

If the project monetizes, we will share revenue with the cast, with specific terms formalized in a written agreement before any revenue is distributed. We will be transparent at every step.

Let's make some stories. — Tobias and Brent

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR AUDITION

• Record both attached sides at home, separated by about three seconds of silence.
• Send a single audio file (WAV preferred, MP3 acceptable) to [redacted].

Subject line: Sablehook — Maren — [Your Name]

• In the email body: your name, location, prior credits (if any — not required), a short note on why this role interested you, and confirmation that you can make both July 11 and July 25.

Deadline: Wednesday, June 24, 2026, 11:30 PM Central.

We respond to every submission, including those we cannot move forward with.