Podcasts to try

Alice Isn't Dead is a podcast presented as a series of audio diaries by a truck driver in her search across America for the wife she had long assumed was dead (the eponymous Alice). In the course of her search, she encounters not-quite-human serial murderers, towns literally lost in time, and a conspiracy that goes way beyond her missing wife. The series was created in 2016 by Joseph Fink, and it has been published by Night Vale Presents since March 8, 2016. The main character and narrator, whose name is only mentioned as being Keisha on the last episode of the first season, is voiced by Jasika Nicole. During its run, the podcast typically aired on alternating Tuesdays. The first season ended on July 12, 2016, with a second season premiering on April 4, 2017 which concluded on August 8th, 2017. Fink stated that the third season would be the final season; it began airing on April 24, 2018, and concluded in August, 2018.

The Teacher's Pet is a 2018 Australian crime podcast that investigated the disappearance of Lynette Dawson. Published by The Australian newspaper, the podcast was hosted by journalist Hedley Thomas and produced by Slade Gibson. As of 2020, the series has had close to 30 million downloads and reached number one in podcast charts in Australia, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand.

Lynette Dawson was an Australian homemaker and mother. She disappeared without a trace in 1982 and her whereabouts, dead or alive, have never been determined. The Teachers Pet podcast investigated details of her marriage to rugby league player and teacher Chris Dawson, her disappearance, an extramarital affair between her husband and a sixteen-year-old school girl, claims of sexual misconduct between teachers and students at Cromer High and other Northern Beaches public high schools, flaws in the police investigation, effects on the families involved and the unwillingness of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to charge Chris Dawson despite two coronial inquests concluding that Dawson was dead and most likely killed by her husband.

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."

Homecoming is an American psychological thriller television series based on the Gimlet Media podcast of the same name. Created by Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg, the series premiered November 2, 2018, on Amazon Prime Video. Horowitz and Bloomberg also serve as writers and executive producers alongside Sam Esmail, Chad Hamilton, Julia Roberts, Alex Blumberg, Matt Lieber, and Chris Giliberti. Esmail also directed every episode of the first season, which stars Roberts, Bobby Cannavale, Stephan James, Shea Whigham, Alex Karpovsky, and Sissy Spacek.

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.

Crime Writers On... is a twice weekly podcast hosted by four American true crime authors: Rebecca Lavoie, Kevin Flynn, Toby Ball, and Lara Bricker. The podcast started on December 12, 2014, as a commentary on and review of the hit true crime podcast Serial. Crime Writers On grew to cover journalism and a variety of crime-related pop culture topics including other podcasts, films, and television shows. The panel often provides updates on the real life cases discussed in previous episodes as they develop.

Paul Holes (born March 15, 1968) is an American former cold-case investigator for the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office. Holes is known for his contributions to solving the Golden State Killer case using advanced methods of identifying the killer with DNA and genealogy technology. Since retiring in March 2018, Holes has contributed to books, television, and podcasts about the Golden State Killer and true crime.

Holes studied at the University of California, Davis, from 1986 to 1990. There he received his Bachelor of Science in biochemistry.

Holes was sworn in as an investigator for the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office in Martinez, California, in 1994. In the same year, Holes first discovered the cold case files of the East Area Rapist (EAR). His interest in the case was ignited and he remained close to the files, reviewing them any chance he had between active cases in Contra Costa County until a DNA break in 2001 expanded the case even further. When DNA from the EAR matched other unsolved murder crimes throughout California, the case again gained traction and had expanded in evidence.

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.

In the Dark is a podcast produced by American Public Media (APM), with episodes released between September 2016 and October 2020. Hosted and narrated by Madeleine Baran, and produced by Samara Freemark, the series featured investigative journalism and in-depth reportage from APM's investigative reporting and documentary unit, APM Reports. The series produced two full seasons, each focusing on a high-profile case and the actions and conduct in the policing or prosecuting of those cases — the kidnapping/murder of Jacob Wetterling and the quadruple homicide case for which Curtis Flowers was tried 6 times. A subsequent "Special Report" series, released in Spring 2020, reported on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Mississippi Delta. The series was cancelled in May 2022 as part of APM's dissolving of APM Reports and "incorporating select programming elements" from the unit into its MPR News operation. In March 2023, In the Dark joined The New Yorker to produce and distribute the upcoming third season.

Pineapple Street Studios (formerly Pineapple Street Media) is a podcast studio based in Brooklyn, New York. In August 2019, it was acquired by Entercom (now Audacy, Inc.). Pineapple's work includes multi-episode narratives, investigative journalism, branded podcasts, and talk shows. They've created series for companies like Nike, Hulu, Netflix, HBO, and The New York Times. In 2020, they led all podcast companies with two Peabody Award nominations, for The Catch and Kill Podcast with Ronan Farrow and Running From Cops. Twelve of their shows have reached #1 on Apple Podcasts.

Pineapple Street Media was founded in 2016 by former BuzzFeed head of audio Jenna Weiss-Berman and Longform co-founder Max Linsky.

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.

Serial is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig, narrating a nonfiction story over multiple episodes. The series was co-created and is co-produced by Koenig and Julie Snyder and developed by This American Life; as of July 2020, it is owned by The New York Times.

Season 1 investigated the 1999 killing of Hae Min Lee (Hangul: 이해민), an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County. Season 2 focused on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, an American Army soldier who was held for five years by the Taliban, and then charged with desertion. Season 3, which debuted in September 2018, explores cases within the Justice Center Complex in the Cleveland area.

Serial ranked number one on iTunes even before its debut and remained there for several weeks. Serial won a Peabody Award in April 2015 for its innovative telling of a long-form nonfiction story. As of September 2018, episodes of seasons 1 and 2 have been downloaded over 340 million times, establishing an ongoing podcast world record.