Fiction Podcast Debuts: October Roundup
Light the flame of inspiration
October is, without a doubt, the busiest month in the landscape of fiction podcasting every year. On top of the usual expectations of horror stories this month, there were stories of love, whimsy, daring, and all the forms they take. This is only a selection of the forty or fifty podcasts that debuted in October, in particular, of the independent creators who have lit the flames of inspiration either once more or for the first time.
Moonface
In six raw episodes that cut straight to the bone, James Kim’s Moonface tells the story of a young Korean-American man, Paul, as he navigates his career desires, his friendships, and his mother. He wants to come out to his mother, but he doesn’t speak Korean, and she doesn’t speak English. Listen to Moonface if you’re looking for deeply moving audio stories, drawn partially from life, full of a beautiful appreciation for silence and for sound.
Margaritas & Donuts
I’ve been starving for more romance podcasts, and Margaritas & Donuts delivers in the best way. Josephine and Malik, both doctors over forty and tired of the paths their romantic lives have taken them in, end up in opposing offices after a regrettable introduction. This story is cute, heart-warming, and relatable, and it contains all of my top picks for romcoms: honest communication, the absurdity of real life, and the friendships that get you there along the way.
Zero Hours
Gabriel Urbina, Sarah Shachat, Zach Valenti
From the team that brought us Wolf 359 and No Bad Ideas comes Zero Hours, a sometimes grim, always empathetic look at moments in time when it felt like the end of the world (and maybe a few when it really was). These seven stories, spread out across the timeline we know and the one we can only imagine, are lovingly rendered and expertly paced. You don’t have to listen to them in order, but I highly recommend you do, because of course, there’s always something a little extra with these folks.
The Godshead Incidental
Cara Ehlenfeldt, Amy Giacomucci
Em is an advice columnist in Godshead, the city where gods and pigeons (so many pigeons) live in dubious harmony with regular people. Godshead Incidental is a whimsical dramedy about petty, annoying gods and the people who do not want to have to deal with them, like Em, who doesn’t answer a letter one day. It’s urban fantasy that will cut you with its sharpness, both in humor and in emotion.
Mockery Manor
Laurence Owen, Lindsay Sharman
JJ is three days late for her training at the strange amusement park Mockery Manor, which is re-opening in 1989 under the Wizzard Entertainment brand. The UK’s answer to Disneyland is trying to bury its old, grotesque history, just like JJ is trying to bury her old self. Mockery Manor is just the right shade of creepy for when old histories come out of the dark.
OBSIDIAN
Adetola Abdulkadir, Safiyah Cheatam
Obsidian is a speculative anthology podcast rooted in Afrofuturism, creating immersive alternative realities of the distant future to examine the Black experience. Every three stories are grouped in phases, which act as guides for listeners to explore the story at hand, and perhaps those that lay ahead as well. We’re starting off with the lens of Relationships, and the Walker family’s visit to the moon on a trip that feels close to home — “I want to play I Spy, and he doesn’t!” ring a bell to anyone?
The Subjective Truth
J. Christian Ellett, Bajio Alvarado
The Fenn Treasure is a rumored buried treasure, gold and gems up in the Rocky Mountains, which Fenn published treasure hunt clues for in his memoirs. The Subjective Truth follows Graham Anderson on her hunt for what happened to Buddha Kline, a podcaster who disappeared while searching for the treasure. This docudrama is exquisitely presented, with enough turns to satisfy every kind of treasure hunt conspiracy fiend.
Tales from Beyond the Pale
Larry Fessenden, Glenn McQuaid
Glass Eye Pix have been producing and selling horror audio stories in the style of 1930s radio dramas since 2010, but now they’re releasing their newest season for free on their podcast. These stories are chilling and disturbing, with a classic style of scoring and modern topics; in the list of podcasts that mimic old radio shows, Tales from Beyond the Pale demonstrates a lot of practice walking the fine line between vintage and modern sound.
DUST: Horizons
Margaret Laney, Stephen Michael
This podcast, from the science-fiction brand DUST, is an anthology of speculative sci-fi works adapted and performed for audio. It includes works like “The Pendulum” by Ray Bradbury, “Peter Skilling” by Alex Irvine, and “Beyond Lies the Wub” from Philip K. Dick, all of them performed either by a single narrator or a full cast, depending on the story.
Cryptic
Cole and Julie Kurtz have a somewhat-popular podcast about cryptids, like Bigfoot and Mothman, and now that Julie’s back in town, they’re getting deep into their investigations across Ohio. But the reasons they are gripping on these stories with both hands if they can are very different, and reality starts to get a little slippery. Cryptic, complete with squabbling siblings and weird things happening in a forest, gets steadily stranger and scarier as you go along.
Tales from the Moosiverse
Angel Jackson, Trevor Whitaker Black
Deep in the woods of Maine, Montgomery the Moose is stuck — his antlers are too large. This is a problem, because somewhere up ahead, there’s chocolate; he can smell it. On Montgomery’s adventures, there’s mice and frogs and also dragons; the Moosiverse sounds like ideal listening for family time, full of accidentally getting into trouble and unlikely friendships.
LikeWise Fiction
Mike Sakasegawa’s LikeWise Fiction is a podcast dedicated to showcasing short stories written by women, nonbinary people, people of color, and queer people. Sakasegawa is a consummate narrator and performer for these selected stories; each episode has gentle music backing it, enabling the listener to sink just that much deeper into the words.
Occupy Me
Occupy Me is about first contact, with psychic manipulation and galactic domination. The show is a member of NOC Media collective, and it tells of aliens battling in a race for a mysterious generator that runs on emotion. The only way they can find it is through embedding themselves in the minds of two humans who may — or may not — have had an encounter with it recently.
Supernatural Sexuality with Dr. Seabrooke
From Passer Vulpes Productions (Love & Luck) comes another queer, radical, hopeful romance with an eye towards humor as well as honesty. Dr. Seabrooke is a sex and romance advice radio show host in a world where the monsters are real, living with us, working with us, and dating us. This is such a charming show with a fresh, upbeat perspective on sex and romance, and how the two entangle with all the other ways we intersect in the world.
Confessions from the Nocturne Nebula
Carly Schorman, Dale Rasmussen
Nolan Stone owns a nightclub on Aldfar Station. One night, after the station celebrates the departure of one of their own to her home planet, the departee comes back with injuries and a heap of trouble behind her. Stone reluctantly becomes involved in this space noir, a look into the seedy underbelly of the future, full of unexpected visitors, bad news, and edgy, thumping, jazzy scoring.
In This Economy?
In This Economy? is a collection of self-contained stories commenting both on the unsustainability of the gig economy and the flexibility of participating in it, made by freelancers hired from sites like Fiverr. As a freelancer, I had a moment of “will this actually make me want to cry into my fifth bowl of lentils and rice this week”, but these stories are fascinating and just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek.
Conference Call
Charles Rogers, Jordan Firstman, Bridey Elliot, Sarah-Violet Bliss, Abby Elliot, Kelly Hudson, Dan Klein
The managers at Cursed, an aptly-named talent agency, return from four solid months of vacation to discover that all their clients have left them. This improvised comedy takes place across a series of chaotic, company-wide conference calls that will make you break out in hives if you’ve ever been on one of those calls.
Audible Visions Drama: Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro is a four-part series about what happens when “Kai-fall” replaces snow in the 1970s and triggers the growth of plants that make Earth a dangerous place for humans. The word “chiaroscuro” is an art term that refers to the use of strong light and dark contrasts, and that contrast appears here in Katherine Berry’s research into the Kai-plants and the darkness the blossoms forth.
Harbor
Sam Greer returns home to Harbor, a small town in Appalachia where his sister has secretly been working alongside cryptids who have even messier lives than the humans. Small town politics and sweltering Southern humidity make personal relationships, whether sibling-sibling or crypto-human, even more complicated.
Marutech University
Juliann Van Wormer, Kevin Michael Lennan
When your university is staffed by people who have way too much time and access to forbidden knowledge, things tend to get difficult. Aaron is one of those “forever students”: he’s been studying for over a decade with his mentor Professor Magnus Croworth, and Croworth thinks Aaron needs some adventure. With evidence of conspiracy and dark rituals for forgotten gods, Aaron’s going to end up on a hell of a ride, even if he really, really doesn’t want to be there.
I Love Olivia
I Love Olivia is the story behind VIVA’s rock record “Living Well is the Best Revenge”, a queer tragicomedy rock musical that explains the stories behind each song on the album. These are mostly fictionalized stories behind fast-burning relationship between VIVA and a popular novelist, written and agonized over as a way to get at the truth.
The Culling
Randy Greer, Josh Monroe, Gabriel Alvarez
Harker is a bright, upbeat, excited intern who gets sent to a remote and cryptic outpost to work under her professor. Very few people there are kind, and they all seem to be on edge. Listeners can follow Harker’s journey across branching paths, as The Culling is built in the style of a classic choose-your-own-adventure.
The Creeping Hour
Three friends listen to a lot of creepy stories, and end up transforming into monsters — and now they’re here to creep you out with their stories. Axe, Toro, and Weta gather around in the basement and get down to the business of scaring each other. Each episode is a different horror story crafted for kids ages 8–12.
This playlist was sponsored by Podchaser. Check out Podchaser’s Creator Profiles to find your favorite podcast hosts, producers, editors, guests, voice actors, and more!
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