Growing up in the eighties, I’d hear about how it was before televisions were invented or widely available. It was all radio, all the time.
Even when I was a kid, radio entertainment was still very common. A Prairie Home Companion was regularly playing in my childhood home. I would listen, and I thought it was okay, but I never turned it on as an adult. It was a bit too cheesy for me.
Welcome to Nightvale was the first podcast I ever heard of. (Disclaimer: I have tried, y’all. I just cannot get into Nightvale. Please forgive my heresy!) Early on, I just couldn’t conceive of an entertainment media that you didn’t have to pay for, whether cable, books, or music albums. So when podcasting became a thing, I mistakenly thought that you could only listen to them through paid services.
My husband actually started me on podcasts when he introduced me to the Overcast app. I started occasionally listening to podcasts like Hidden Brain from NPR or Lore, by Aaron Mahnke.
And then I discovered narrative podcasts!
It started with Trojan War: The Podcast, by Jeff Wright.
I’m a Greek mythology nerd, and I like to read the Iliad every few years for fun. I’ve read different translations (Alexander Pope is still my favorite. I have no idea why!), and there are novelizations that continue to floor me.
(If you haven’t read The Song of Achilles, by Madeleine Miller; A Song of War, by Kate Quinn and others; or The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker, you haven’t lived!)
Jeff Wright started as an English teacher, then became a professional storyteller, and he is damn good at his craft. If you’ve never experienced the story of the Iliad in any form, I would strongly suggest you begin with this podcast. What I really love about it is that Wright starts waaay back, well before Homer’s account begins, with a wedding gift of a certain golden apple.
He also devotes extra time at the end of each episode to scholarship—the mythology, archaeology, story evolution, and even academic arguments behind his own research for his storytelling.
Don’t ask me why, but what really charms me about Jeff Wright is his accent. He’s so Canadian that other Canadians must look at him with raised eyebrows. But it works!
From there, I found Myths and Legends, by Jason and Carissa Weiser. You’ll have to get through the first season before the narration stops being so wooden, but after that, Jason Weiser finds his inner snarky comedian, and these tales really fly! I love hearing traditional folktales from around the world, not just those I grew up with. (sue me, but I will never lose my love for “Beauty and the Beast”). After each tale, there’s a short segment on a mythical creature, which always comes from a different culture and never has anything to do with the main story.
And then, there’s Old Gods of Appalachia. I’ve never felt the need to buy merch from any other podcast, but I will admit to shelling out for a t-shirt for Old Gods. I’m a tight-fisted penny pincher, so that should tell you something.
This podcast… this is something special. I have told all my friends about it, and the last time I did that was when I started reading A Song of Ice and Fire—and that became a worldwide sensation. (Sorry, but I actually quite liked the final season of the HBO series!)
Take H.P. Lovecraft and stick him in early American coal country; add modern sensibilities about race, class, gender, and orientation; a few good witches; and then a heaping helping of pure fucking genius, and you have Old Gods of Appalachia.
Steve Shell (writer/narrator) and Cam Collins (writer/voice actor) will keep you up long into the night, listening to just one more episode, I swear I’ll go to sleep after one more episode. Because I am such a penny pincher, I won’t pay out for a monthly Patreon membership to get the extra stories—but if they sold them individually, I’d snap them up in a heartbeat! These stories will scare you to death, and then they’ll heal your heart.
Some runners up in my favorite podcasts:
The Magnus Archives. Settle in for the long haul, folks. This immense series of seemingly unrelated “come in and tell us your supernatural experiences” episodes eventually starts to become all tied together. The storytelling uses a horror thematic I hadn’t experienced till I listened to this (What if universal fears were really… spoilers?). It’s scary, fun, hilarious, and sometimes heart wrenching, and you will not believe some of the monsters they’ve come up with!
Bridgewater. From the creator of Lore, this podcast has some big names behind a serious production. Misha Collins voices a small-town folklore professor whose cop father (Nathan Fillion) disappeared decades ago in the so-called “Bridgewater Triangle” (a real area with actual spooky legends surrounding its history). The professor could put his encyclopedic knowledge of local lore to work in solving the supernatural mysteries around him—if he could ever get over his own cynical skepticism!
The White Vault. This one legitimately terrified me, in a fantastic way! I love subterranean horror (read The Descent, by Jeff Long—if you dare!), and this podcast is full of all kinds of goosebumpy goodness. It starts with the disappearance of a team sent to repair some equipment at a research station on the frozen island of Svalbard. The story is pieced together through “found footage,” and includes some very talented voice actors. (It took me quite a while to warm up to Peter Lewis’s voice, but now I could probably recognize it anywhere—and I would immediately turn and run, because oh holy shit where’s the monsters there are always monsters when he shows up!)
The Liberty Podcast. This is another one you’ll have to be patient with for the first season. I found this podcast through listening to The White Vault, as both are created by Fool and Scholar Productions. It starts out rather amateurish, but gets better very quickly. The basic premise is that you have a relatively small terraformed area on a planet hostile to human life. The original colony lost contact with the wider universe, then experienced a civil war, and now languishes as different factions. “The City” is an autocracy of brainwashed citizens living in relative safety, while “the Fringes” are the savage and anarchical un-people portrayed as monsters to the supposedly civilized “Innies.” You’d think that sticking supernatural horror into a futuristic sci-fi landscape wouldn’t work, but you’d be so very wrong. My favorite stories from this universe are “The Narrow” (get ready to hide under your blankets!) and “Mines and Mysteries” (with an obvious twist, but pulled off with so much fun!).
If the pandemic has you bored or lonely, or if you have a long commute, try out some of these great podcasts. Maybe you’ll love these, or maybe you’ll find some that suit you better. Either way, podcasts are the modern reincarnation of great radio entertainment!
The Dog House 