Pods to Investigate

My Favorite Murder is a weekly true crime comedy podcast hosted by American comedians Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. The first episode was released in January 2016. The podcast debuted at #25 on the iTunes podcast charts and peaked at #3 on April 27, 2018. Weekly episodes regularly land within the iTunes' Top 10 Comedy Podcast chart. As of 2020, the podcast gets 35 million downloads per month.

Horror is a genre of podcasts covering fiction, non-fiction, and reviews of the horror genre generally.

Horror podcasts are typically created and run by volunteers in their free time. As some podcasts such as Archive 81 and The Deep Vault have grown they have been able to attract advertisers. The world's longest running, active horror podcast is WithoutYourHead.com which has been going since August 2006 as a semi-regular weekly series with celebrity interviews. Horror podcasts have featured in the Parsec Awards, and in 2013 The NoSleep Podcast won the award for "Best New Speculative Fiction Podcaster/Team" while in 2014 a story from Pseudopod won the award for "Best Speculative Fiction Story: Small Cast (Short Form)" and We're Alive won "Best Speculative Fiction Audio Drama (Long Form)".

The Magnus Archives is a horror fiction podcast written by Jonathan Sims, directed by Alexander J. Newall, and distributed by Rusty Quill. Sims narrated the podcast in-character as the main character, Jonathan Sims, the newly appointed Head Archivist of the fictional Magnus Institute—an institution based in London centered on research into the paranormal. In 2018, BBC Sounds listed the show as one of the largest British dramatic podcasts, with an extensive fanbase on Tumblr having driven much of its success. As of April 2020, The Magnus Archives had reached a download rate of over 2.5 million downloads a month, growing to over 4 million downloads a month by July 2020.

The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air) is a fictional radio drama podcast written and created by Julian Koster, and published by Night Vale Presents. It is the fourth podcast to be released under the Night Vale Presents name. The podcast stars Koster as Julian the janitor, a shy, sensitive employee of the Eiffel Tower who dreams of joining the fictional radio show also titled The Orbiting Human Circus of the Air, which is broadcast from a large ballroom at the top of the tower. Listeners of the podcast hear Julian the janitor's inner thoughts as he discusses his situations with The Narrator, played by Drew Callander, an imaginary voice only Julian can hear. In addition to the conversations in his head, Julian interacts with the staff and talent of The Orbiting Human Circus of the Air, notably voiced by actors such as John Cameron Mitchell, Cecil Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Charlie Day, and Mary Elizabeth Ellis. One of the most prominent themes of the podcast is the pain of loneliness. The first season of the podcasts comprised eight episodes as well as a bonus question and answer episode in which Koster answers questions submitted by fans.

Lore is a documentary podcast on topics such as folklore, legends, and historical events, often with a focus on the macabre. Each episode examines historical events or ancient/urban legends that show the dark side of human nature, and is presented in a style that's been compared to a campfire experience. The series was created in 2015 by Aaron Mahnke as a marketing experiment and received the iTunes "Best of 2015" Award. The podcast was also given the award for the "Best History Podcast" by the Academy of Podcasters in July 2016. At the end of 2016, the podcast was included in the top lists by The Atlantic and Entertainment Weekly. As of October 2017, the series has 5 million monthly listeners.

Limetown is a scripted fiction podcast fiction series created by Two-Up Productions that debuted on July 29, 2015, and became the number one US podcast on iTunes less than two months later. The show has drawn comparisons to the popular podcast Serial and the 1990s television show The X-Files. The series was written and directed by Zack Akers and produced by Skip Bronkie. The second season debuted on October 30, 2018.

Criminal is a podcast that focuses on true crime. It is recorded in the studios of WUNC in Chapel Hill, NC, and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show describes itself as telling "stories of people who've done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle."

Wolf 359 is a red dwarf star located in the constellation Leo, near the ecliptic. At a distance of approximately 7.9 light years from Earth, it has an apparent magnitude of 13.54 and can only be seen with a large telescope. Wolf 359 is one of the nearest stars to the Sun; only the Alpha Centauri system, Barnard's Star, and the brown dwarfs Luhman 16 and WISE 0855−0714 are known to be closer. Its proximity to Earth has led to its mention in several works of fiction.

Welcome to Night Vale is a fiction podcast presented as a radio show for the fictional town of Night Vale, reporting on the strange events that occur within it. The series was created in 2012 by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. Published by Night Vale Presents since March 15, 2015, the podcast was previously published by Commonplace Books. Cecil Gershwin Palmer—the host, main character, and narrator—is voiced by Cecil Baldwin, while secondary characters are sometimes voiced by guest stars or recurring guests—such as Dylan Marron, who voices Carlos the Scientist. The podcast typically airs on the first and fifteenth of every month, and consists of "news, announcements and advertisements" from the desert town, located "somewhere in the Southwestern United States." In an interview with NPR, Joseph Fink said that he "came up with this idea of a town in that desert where all conspiracy theories were real, and we would just go from there with that understood."

The following is a list of horror podcasts, which vary in style of delivery.

The White Vault is a found footage horror fiction podcast created by K.A. Statz. It features an international cast and crew, with notable members including David Ault and Peter Lewis of The NoSleep Podcast, as well as Lani Minella and Eric Nelsen.

Horror is a genre of podcasts covering fiction, non-fiction, and reviews of the horror genre generally.

The Bright Sessions is a science fiction podcast audio drama created by Lauren Shippen and starring Julia Morizawa as the titular Dr. Bright. The podcast takes place in a fictional universe where super-powered individuals, called "atypicals", exist. Dr. Bright is a therapist and the podcast originally focuses on her sessions with various patients.

Within the Wires is a dramatic anthology podcast in the style of epistolary fiction. In the first season, the listener, a medical inmate at a place called the institute, receives guidance from the mysterious narrator of instructional relaxation cassettes. In the second season, an artist named Roimata Mangakāhia communicates with the listener through a series of museum audio guides. The third season, "a political thriller set in 1950s Chicago", is narrated by the bureaucrat Michael Witten; listeners access letters and notes dictated to his secretary.

S-Town is an American investigative journalism podcast hosted by Brian Reed and created by the producers of Serial and This American Life. All seven chapters were released on March 28, 2017. The podcast was downloaded a record-breaking 10 million times in four days and had been downloaded over 40 million times by May 2017.

My Dad Wrote a Porno was a British comedy podcast hosted by Jamie Morton, James Cooper, and Alice Levine. Published from 4 October 2015 to 12 December 2022, each episode of the podcast featured Morton reading a new chapter of Belinda Blinked, an amateur erotic novel series written by his father under the pen name Rocky Flintstone. Morton, Cooper, and Levine react to the material and provide running commentary. Each episode featured Cooper and Levine hearing the chapter for the first time, whereas Morton had read the chapter beforehand to prepare.

Rabbits is a pseudo-documentary podcast from producer and writer Terry Miles. In the show, narrator Carly Parker searches for her missing friend Yumiko "Miko" Takata and finds herself in the midst of a decades-old alternate reality game known as Rabbits or simply "The Game." A main feature of Rabbits is the use of pop culture references, especially to classic video games like Defender and Space Ace.

Tanis is a mystery horror fiction podcast executive produced by Terry Miles who also voices the podcast's narrator, Nic Silver. In the show, Silver undertakes a search to discover what and where the mysterious entity Tanis is. While the style of Tanis evokes the earlier investigative nonfiction podcast Serial and its plot commingles real-world historical events and places with fictional elements, Tanis's production team never acknowledges the story's fictional nature.