Beyond Welcome to Night Vale

My old podcast rec/request list is still getting notes so I figured I’d make a new list with everything I’ve downloaded since then. Favourites are italicized*.

For updates, please check @insomniac-podcaster.

Audio drama (Fantasy)

Alba Salix, Royal Physician* - Follows trials and tribulations of Farloria’s head witch of the House of Healing, Alba Salix. It is a 6-part mini-series (+ bonuses) with no future episodes currently planned.

The Behemoth -  15-year-old Madyson tells the story of the Behemoth, a large, lumbering beast that has emerged from the waters off of Cape Cod. It will be a 20-part mini-series.

Hello From the Magic Tavern - An improv comedy podcast hosted by Arnie, a man who accidentally passed through a portal into the land of “Foon”. Every week Arnie interviews patrons of the Vermilion Minotaur tavern including monsters, wizard, and adventurers.

Audio drama (Horror)

Alice Isn’t Dead* - A truck driver searches across America for the wife she had long assumed was dead, encountering not-quite-human serial murderers, towns literally lost in time, and a conspiracy that goes way beyond one missing woman along the way. This podcast is produced by the same people who brought you Welcome to Night Vale.

Archive 81 - These are the recovered tapes of missing archivist Daniel Powell, posted by a well-meaning friend hoping to locate him.

Help Me - Nicole investigates the mysterious death of her friend Olivia and possible link to a dangerous entity. It is a 15-part mini-series with no future episodes currently planned.

Limetown* - Radio host Lia Haddock investigates the sudden disappearance of the residents of Limetown. It is a 7-part mini-series (+ bonuses) with future seasons (and possibly a TV show) in the works.

Return Home - Jonathan Baker returns to his home town after being contacted by a mysterious entity. Episodes are broken up into multiple parts aired every week, with breaks between episodes.

Audio drama (Pseudo-radio show)

The Black Tapes* - (horror) A weekly radio show hosted by Alex Reagan that investigates unsolved paranormal phenomenon documented by the Strand Institute. They also produce TANIS.

The Message* - (sci-fi) Nicky Tomalin documents the work of a team of cryptologists as the attempt to decipher an alien message. It is an 8-part mini-series.

Good Morning Zakera Ward - (sci-fi, Mass Effect) A morning radio show set in the Mass Effect universe. It is an 11-part series that appears to have ended abruptly, but is still worth a listen if you’re a fan of the games.

King Falls AM - (sci-fi/fantasy) A late-night talk show from quaint town of King Falls that is frequently interrupted by peculiar happenings and paranormal events.

TANIS - (horror) A docu-drama series hosted by Nic Silver exploring the myth and conspiracy of Tanis. They also produce The Black Tapes.

Welcome to Night Vale - (cosmic horror)  Community radio updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff’s Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events.

Audio drama (Sci-Fi)

ars PARADOXICA* - A journey through spacetime and the Cold War with Dr. Sally Grissom, a physicist send back in time when an experiment goes awry.

The Bright Sessions* - The recorded therapy sessions of Dr. Bright, who provides support for patients with unusual talents. ((It’s more of a paranormal drama that a true sci-fi)).

The Bunker - A breakfast radio show broadcast back in time to us from the post-apocalyptic year 2414. It’s a 12-part mini-series, and the developers are currently working on another sci-fi series that will be titled Mars Corp.

EOS 10* - The adventures of two maladjusted doctors, their medical team, and a hypochondriac ex-prince aboard an intergalactic travel hub.

Kakos Industries - Corporate announcements for Kakos Industries, a corporation dedicated to helping you ‘do evil better’.

Liberty - Tales from Atrius, a colony cut off from humanity and racked by civil war, and the surrounding lawless expanse known as the Fringe. It consists of multiple mini-series.

Sayer - Acclimate to life on Earth’s man-made second moon, Typhon, with the assistance of the self-aware AI SAYER.

Thrilling Adventure Hour - A podcast in the style of an old-timey radio show consisting of the regular sub-series ‘Sparks Nevada: Marshall on Mars’ and ‘Beyond Belief’ as well as other segments.

Wolf 359*** - Follows the crew of the U.S.S. Hephaestus Research Station as they orbit around the red dwarf Wolf 359. This is my all-time favourite series - you should be downloading it right now… unless you’ve already heard it in which case you should definitely treat yourself and listen to it again.

Informational

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History - As the title implies, this is really hardcore history. Episodes are exceedingly well-researched and is surprisingly easy to listen to considering the density of the subject matter.

Lore - A podcast examining myths and folktales alongside the true dark stories that either inspired or arose from them. A chilling listen that also has a TV show in the works.

Myths and Legends - Re-tellings of both popular and obscure legends that make them very accessible to a modern audience (i.e. people like me who DON’T read Beowulf in it’s original Old English for fun in their free time).

Sleep With Me* - Honestly, I have no idea what this podcast is actually about because Ackerman’s ramblings are so soothing I’m usually asleep shortly after turning it on. If you have insomnia and problems falling asleep to silence (like myself), this is a must-download - it’s more engaging that rain/wave/whale noises but you don’t have to worry about missing anything.

Literature

Escape Pod - Every episode consists of a sci-fi short story from a variety of sub-genres, and they are generally 30-60 minutes in length. If you enjoy Escape Pod, also check out their fantasy (PodCastle) and horror (PseudoPod) podcasts.

The NoSleep Podcast - Narrations of short horror stories posted to the NoSleep reddit board. It’s featured horror stories for every squick and trigger imaginable so be careful with this one if you aren’t into hardcore horror, and definitely heed the warnings at the beginnings of episodes.

True Crime

Serial - I don’t think it’s possible to be a podcast fan and not have (at the very least) heard about Serial. If you haven’t listened to it yet, definitely give it a go - there’s a reason it was at the top of the (Canadian) iTunes store for close to a year. It’s produced by ‘This American Life’, which is another professionally-produced podcast worthy of downloading.

Someone Knows Something - A series produced by CBC that examines unsolved cases of missing or murdered individuals.

Thin Air Podcast - Two English majors investigate cold cases by examining evidence and interviewing people involved with the original investigation.

Pending - I either haven’t started these or haven’t listened to enough to categorize them, but most have been rec’d by multiple sources so check them out!

A New Winter - A first-hand account of the unsolved murders and disappearances of 25 people in a small UK village.

The Cleansed: A Post-Apocalyptic Saga - (audio drama - sci-fi) An epic post-apocalyptic saga set in a world ravaged by fossil fuel scarcity.

Greater Boston - An audio drama set in Boston that blends the real and the unreal, the historical and the fantastical.

Hadron Gospel Hour - (audio drama - sci-fi)A sci-fi comedy/adventure following a duo of scientists stranded ouside of spacetime in the Hadron Bunker.

Jim Robbie and the Wanderers - (audio drama - sci-fi) Follows two female musicians travelling surreal America with their robot companion, Jim Robbie.

Monster Talk - (informational) Examines the science behind cryptozoological and legendary monsters. 

The Night Blogger - (audio drama - paranormal) It appears to follow blogger Brian Foster’s encounters with the paranormal.

Our Fair City - (audio drama - sci-fi) A campy (their words), post-apocalyptic audio drama.

Pete’s Paranormal Chronicles -  (audio drama) In 1996, Pete Schwartz began work on a documentary series called Pete’s Paranormal Chronicles, but his sanity began to unravel during the production of the program and he became completely immersed in a nationwide conspiracy.

The Twilight World of Ultimate Smoothness - A podcast chronicling the decline and fall of radio veteran Greg Willis. It is a 6-part mini-series.

Ruby: The Adventures of a Galactic Gumshoe -  (audio drama) Ruby is a hip, tough-talking detective hired to track down the malefactors who are manipulating the media on the planet Summa Nulla (the “high point of nothing”).

Unexplained - (informational) A podcast about strange and mysterious real-life events that continue to evade explanation.

Looks like, for the second year in a row, Wolf 359 is in the running for the Audio Verse Awards! This is super exciting, really touching news, and I want to thank everyone who supported us by making sure that we’re nominated for these awards. It’s an absolute honor (and, frankly, a little scary!) to be in the running for these prizes, especially in the company of so many great podcasts and audio dramas (I see you up there @thebrightsessions, @theboardofdirectorslovesyou, @arsparadoxica, @woodenovercoats, and @hadrongospelhour, you beautiful, audio-producing beasts!)

Wolf 359 as a whole is up for the Best Original, Long Form, Small Cast, Ongoing, Dramatic Production category, which is a tremendous honor. But you know what makes me even happier? 

All of this: 

THAT. That makes me overjoyed. The only reason why Wolf 359 works on any level is all of the amazing, wonderful people who have devoted their time and talents to making it happen. I have the best, most amazing, most tireless, most generous, and just all around tremendous collaborators that any artist could have ever asked for, and I am so thrilled that Cecilia, Emma, Michaela, Zach, Alan, and Zach are getting their amazing contributions to the show recognized. 

So thank you to everyone who’s helped us get here. It means a lot to us. 

I don’t travel much. The last time I’ve been on a plane is when I was moving out of my home state a few years ago. The last time I’ve been on a bus, beyond my many times entering and exiting the rickety yellow things to school, was when I spent ten hours traveling to Louisiana for a Christmas in the deep south. 

These long trips rarely ever bugged me, as to me it was just more time to think and listen to my road trip playlist. In fact, I look back at traveling by rental car through deserts as a child, settling down in a hotel in Nevada or a grandmother’s apartment in Arizona with great fondness. But I can’t say I’ve ever traveled by subway. Not ever.

As the spring time buds around the corner, so has a new trend in the podcast community. As their audiences grow bigger, so does the ambition of these producers.

They now find themselves asking for a bit of help from their loyal listeners. Even a simple dollar bill to keep their projects going and improving overtime can make a big difference in the long run. And thus Patreons came rolling out quicker than I could catch up with them.

There are likely a few that I’m missing, though these are ones that are still in need in more support. I hope to expand this post overtime as more and more podcasts ask for crowdfunding. Feel free to link me one I missed or add one on yourself.

Note: I am only posting links to Patreons that have not reached their goals or have less than a hundred Patrons. So you won’t find any links to the funds for Wolf 359 or Tanis.

The Bright Sessions: Dr. Bright provides therapy for the strange and unusual.

info: http://www.thebrightsessions.com/

patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thebrightsessions?ty=h

Greater Boston: An ongoing audio drama set in an alternate Boston.

info: http://greaterbostonshow.com/

patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2398561&ty=h&u=2398561

Kakos Industries: The shareholder announcements for Kakos industries, an organization that helps you to Do Evil Better.

info: http://www.kakosindustries.com/

patreon: https://www.patreon.com/KakosIndustries?ty=h

A lot of you have already donated to our Patreon and for that we are eternally grateful. We’ve now got enough pledged to pay for our subscription fees, editing software, and to start paying off some of the expenses that have piled up to get this whole thing going.

We are all happy to be doing this podcast for free - it’s a passion project and one we love doing. But all my actors are serious, professional actors who are taking time out of their busy schedules to record and I would love to pay them for their time. As an actor myself, I know how frustrating it is that actors are so often expected to work for free when other people in the film industry are never expected to. I promised myself that if I was ever on the other side of the equation, I would do my darnedest to reward my actors for their wonderful talents. 

So if you were wondering what we were using the Patreon for, that’s the main goal right now. Obviously, the more funding we get, the more we can do - bigger episodes, more characters, better production quality. 

And if you don’t have the funds or inclination to donate to our Patreon, leave us a review on iTunes! It really does make a difference for us on the podcast charts and we really love hearing from you. And of course, keep blogging and sharing. 

Thanks and stay strange, 

Lauren (writer/producer/occasional time traveler)

Smash/Cut: An Anthology Radio Drama Series

info: http://www.smashcutthepodcast.com/

Hadron Gospel Hour: To save the multiverse, Hadron scientist Dr. Francis Oppenheimer Valdini and I.T guy Mike Wilkinson must visit freaky new alternate timelines.

info: http://www.hadrongospelhour.com/

Jim Robbie and the Wanderers: Two female musicians travel a surreal post-apocalyptic America with their robot companion.

info: http://jimrobbieandthewanderers.com/

ars PARADOXICA: In 1943, the accidental inventor of time-travel finds herself press-ganged into service for a secretive branch of the US government.

info: http://arsparadoxica.com/

Spirits: A Drunken Dive into Myths and Legends: A boozy biweekly podcast about mythology, legends, and lore. Hear fresh takes on classic myths and learn new stories from a round the world, served up over the ice by two tipsy history geeks.

info: http://spiritspodcast.libsyn.com/

patreon: https://www.patreon.com/spiritspodcast?ty=h

Return Home: A serialized radio drama that follows the story of Johnathan Barker, who is compelled to return home to Melancholy Falls, NJ to investigate the strange things that have been going on in town and discover his purpose.

info: http://www.returnhomepodcast.com/

Our Fair City: A campy post-apocalyptic audio drama.

info: http://www.ourfaircity.com/

Small Town Horror: A bi-weekly serialized docudrama about one man’s search for answers in his hometown, the site of his own mysterious kidnapping 18 years ago. Are the answers he seeks worth the cost of returning to the place known as Crazytown?

info: smalltownhorrorpodcast.com  

Archive 81: A few weeks ago, my friend Daniel Powell disappeared. Before he vanished, he send me hours and hours of audio he’d collected while working as an archivist for the HHCNYS. The tapes..are strange.

info: http://www.archive81.com/

I’m up to date with all of my podcasts, so I threw myself on the kindness of strangers. And did they ever deliver.

If you listen to Welcome to Night Vale, EOS 10, Wolf 359, King Falls, or anything else a little weird and wonderful, then you MUST wrap your ears around the Bright Sessions. 

Each episode is a dictaphone recording of a therapy session involving clients with very singular issues… the mysterious undertones contrasting starkly against the achingly ‘normal’ issues had me hooked from episode 1.

As many of you know, I write the science fiction audio drama, @thebrightsessions. It’s still a young podcast, with our 13th episode in the pipeline, but the response has been wonderful and I have enjoyed making it more than I ever thought. And while the writing, performing, and sharing of The Bright Sessions has been a wonderful joy, the thing that has surprised and delighted me the most is the podcasting world at large. 

I’ve loved podcasts for a while. I probably first got into them in 2010, when I spent the summer as an intern at npr’s @soundcheckradio. It was a great way to catch up on the backlog of shows so that I could be prepared going into my internship. When I realized all my favorite npr shows could be listened to this way, I was hooked. 

But I didn’t get into audio drama until 2014. Someone had recommended Welcome to Night Vale to me, and I had let the episodes pile up in my queue, never quite mustering the interest to press play. But then I was acting in a short film that was shooting in Angeles National Forest. I had to drive an hour and a half every morning at 3AM, through the hills north of Los Angeles, into the dark and cold woods. I couldn’t handle the news or any of my other non-fiction podcasts that early in the morning, so I put on WTNV. Cecil’s voice turned out to be the perfect thing to ease me into the land of the living and driving through the forest, watching the sun slowly rise over the mountains as I listened to “A Story About You” (still one of the finest pieces of podcast writing I’ve ever heard) is one of my fondest memories of my first year in LA. 

And that’s where my love affair began. I then got into live radio shows - Cabin Pressure (sadly not a podcast but worth the dough) and Thrilling Adventure Hour (made by people I can genuinely say are really freakin’ awesome irl) kept me laughing in the famed LA traffic. Then came the rest of the audio drama world and with it new discoveries about the way sound could make me feel. Limetown made me turn around as I was washing dishes, listening to someone bang at the door and scream “LIA, LIA HADDOCK”, because it felt so real. The Black Tapes and Tanis have made me search online to find out what was fiction and what was based on fact. Wolf 359 has made me simultaneously laugh and feel the loneliness and fear of space (guys, that spider episode. I couldn’t stand it. I hate spiders). 

By the time I started writing The Bright Sessions last year, I was head over heels. I love all entertainment - it’s why I moved to LA to be in the industry. But so often with media that I love, I am on the outside looking in. I consume as much of it as I can, but I know that I may never get to be a part of it. Podcasting hasn’t been like that. It has been a more welcoming and nurturing community than I ever would have expected. 

I’ve been in LA for nearly three years now, and I’ve done pretty decently. I’ve cut my teeth on student films and extra work on big sets, I’ve met with industry bigwigs, gotten an agent, auditioned for network television, and am currently a lead on a web series that actually has full funding and a home with a magazine. But, as I’m sure you’ve heard, the entertainment industry isn’t the warmest place. It’s highly competitive and occasionally ruthless, especially when you’re just starting out. Now that I’ve gotten some experience and made wonderful friends, it feels like people are rooting for me to succeed, instead of fail. I feel like I’m starting to be part of a community - I was at a rehearsal for a short film last weekend that I think will be really fucking awesome and it was one of the first times I felt completely and totally welcomed by a group of people. Everyone there was supporting each other, regardless of position or role. It was a place filled with love and respect. 

I waltzed into the podcasting world as a creator 4 months ago and I feel like that is the environment I walked into: warm, welcoming, unassuming, and kind. I’m sure there are jerks in podcasting, because jerks exist everywhere, but I haven’t met any yet. When I went to reddit to promote the show, I was pretty nervous - I’ve heard how reddit can be. But I was met with enthusiasm. No one was trying to check my credentials, look up my credits, disprove my right to belong there; they were just happy to have me. Podcasters and podcast-fans alike were excited that I was there. 

From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee…

I don’t have an enormous amount to say about Minkowski Commanding. Not because it’s not a great episode - it is - but because I don’t feel like I had an enormous hand in much of its creation. Sarah and I collaborated very closely with Let’s Kill Hilbert, but for her second outing I took a step back and really let her wrestle with the craft of the episode.

I think the main directive that I gave her was, “I want a Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner cartoon starring Minkowski and the Space Mutant Plant Monster.” And she delivered on exactly that. If I remember correctly, my notes for the first two or three drafts of the script were, “This is great, but it feels a little safe. Can we make it more cartoony and extreme?”

Likewise, I take the “directed by” credit for this episode with nothing but extraordinary hesitation, since I can’t think of a single note that I gave Emma during the entire outing. This is a hysterically over-serious, overcommitted performance, and it came into the studio fully formed. I spent the two hours it took to record this episode mostly sitting back, asking for the occasional retake, and roaring with laughter.

And then, of course, the inevitable cliffhanger. We are nothing if not Mood Whiplash: The Series.

Assorted Notes:

As I mentioned in a recent post, the working title for this episode was first Repetition and then The Definition of Madness. I still quite like the second one, but we never quite found a way to get that to be a line in the episode itself. 

The original plan for the Season 2 finale included a plot of the crew having to go up agains the Plant Monster, who had become more aggressive after being exposed to the star’s change in radiation, while slowly starting to descend into paranoid madness due to the same radiation. The paranoia made it through, but after finishing Minkowski Commanding we all felt that this episode more or less closed the book on the topic of Plant Monster hunting, so that part of the plan was eliminated.

We’d all wanted to do an episode narrated by someone other than Eiffel since the start of the show. Minkowski was the natural choice for the first alternate, since her perspective is very different from Eiffel’s but still limited to more or less the same amount of knowledge.

If I start listing every time that Emma’s performance in this episode makes me laugh, we’ll be here for days. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, her comedy chops are the show’s secret weapon.

Also harpoons. Harpoons are always funny. 

Tbtp is going on hiatus fandom.

😟

Right?

Tbtp is going on hiatus fandom.

😟

“I don’t know where this trip started, what counts as the first moment, but for lack of a better answer, I’ll start with this: I mourned you, Alice. I never loved anyone so hard. From my goddamn gut! So…screw you for that. I mean, really.”

I’m looking for narrative fiction, not short stories.

I’ve heard good things about Audiodiary of a Superhero, think it would suit my mood?

List of shows I’ve already listened to, and either liked or abandoned, but either way I don’t need recommended to me again:

The Elysium Project

Out Fair City

Welcome to Night Vale

EOS 10

Sayer

Wooden Overcoats

Wolf 359

Kakos Industries

The Black Tapes

It’s About Time Travel Agency

King’s Falls AM

Hadron Gospel Hour

The Truth is also quite good. It’s a mix of short stories. Some are feel good. Most are thought provoking.

Like Limetown and the Black Tapes it’s told in the style of Serial. That is, a female investigative journalist, called Nicky Tomalin, guides us through the action. Actually, I think she’s more of a wannabe journalist, but you get me. 

She follows the Cypher Group, a team of code breakers, as they attempt to decode this alien message that earth received back in the 1940s, but that no one has managed to decipher so far. The message soon takes a turn for the sinister, and it’s a race against time to work out what it means before serious consequences are incurred. There’s kind of two twists at the end, one of which I felt was a lot more satisfying than the other, but from posts that I’ve seen about it, I’m in in the minority with that opinion.

It’s not scary as such, but parts of it are quite suspenseful and tense, and so I’m not sure if it’s something you’d want to listen to at the moment. I haven’t listened to Tanis yet so I couldn’t comment, but the Message is no where near as intense a listening experience as Limetown. I guess it’s more Season 2 of Wolf 359 than 1.

Hope that helps! If you do listen, let me know what you think of it!

I’m looking for narrative fiction, not short stories.

I’ve heard good things about Audiodiary of a Superhero, think it would suit my mood?

List of shows I’ve already listened to, and either liked or abandoned, but either way I don’t need recommended to me again:

The Elysium Project

Out Fair City

Welcome to Night Vale

EOS 10

Sayer

Wooden Overcoats

Wolf 359

Kakos Industries

The Black Tapes

It’s About Time Travel Agency

King’s Falls AM

Hadron Gospel Hour

The Truth is also quite good. It’s a mix of short stories. Some are feel good. Most are thought provoking.