Fiction Podcast Debuts: September Roundup
Pick every smell and color for your own audio fiction bouquet.
With the onset of a new seasonal cycle comes the vast and beautiful bouquet of choices in fiction podcasts. Every September and October, I notice a large uptick in the number of productions that debut, as if everyone has an internal clock that’s synced to the same time. Here, you’ll see some familiar titles like Passenger List and We’re Alive, familiar creators like Marissa Tandon of Superordinary, and brand new first-time creators like Dwight Ballard and Aisha Casey. Relax and take a breath to inhale the sound of these sweet and clever fictions.
Republic of Camberville
This eight-part series is inspired by the twin towns of Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts, and the people who inhabit them. Danielle Monroe brings Cambervlle to life through her characters’ monologues, unspooling the interconnected lives they lead in a nonconformist and dramatic community environment, without ignoring the colonialist and gentrifier stories at its roots.
Fun City
Mike Rugnetta, Taylor Moore, Jenn de la Vega, Nick Guercio, Shannon Odell, Bijan Stephen
A Shadowrun actual play podcast co-GM’d by Mike Rugnetta (Reasonably Sound) and Taylor Moore, who rolls dice and voices mainly the antagonists, Fun City follows a group of reluctant housemates as they go on a mission for rent money. Maybe they could even move out of Vivian’s houseboat. Fun City, set in 2101 New Jersey, is quick witted and easy paced, and Rugnetta and Moore are seamless in the way they switch off leading the scene.
Philip’s Apocalypse
Climate change led to an apocalyptic series of uncontrollable and destructive fires that rampaged across the surface of the Earth, . Philip Parson is a lone survivor, trying to go home and find a piece of his history and himself. In the ashes of the old world, Philip meets new and different living beings that change the arc of his life. This is a potential future that feels uncomfortably close sometimes, and Philip’s voice is one that’s familiar to my heart.
Deadbeats
Aisha Casey, Shacora Mitchell, Audre Douglas
Kassidy is a single mother, newly jobless. When their lives spin out of control, she and her similarly unemployed friends take down deadbeat fathers and husbands. At the same time, her daughter Tori tries to settle into life in public school in Manhattan, struggling against the new rules she’s faced with and an uncompromising father.
The Sword and the Stoner
Arthur, Kay, and Gwen are all best friends born on the same day, and if you think this sounds like the set-up for an Arthurian joke, you’re only sort of right. Welcome to Marissa Tandon’s (Superordinary) The Sword and the Stoner, where three goofballs get high, get lost in the woods, pull a sword from a stone, and end up in the middle of an ancient Arthurian prophecy. And Merlin is an overly dramatic magician-for-hire — what’s not to love?
Passenger List
John Scott Dryden, Lauren Shippen, Mark Henry Phillips
Probably one of the most talked about fiction podcasts of the year, Passenger List tracks Kaitlin Le’s (Kelly Marie Tran) investigation of Kaitlin Le (Kelly Marie Tran) as she tries to find the truth behind the disappearance of Flight 702 — the flight her twin brother had been on. She goes down the list of passengers and interviews them, aggressively and fueled by her grief; the mystery is so delicately interwoven into this window into grief and loneliness and the things they can make us do.
The Sigmund Freud Files
The Sigmund Freud Files is a translation of a successful German series adapted from stories by Heiko Martens. In 1920 Vienna, Professor Freud is contacted by a constable for his help in a murder case, in which Freud and his daughter Anna see an opportunity to explore more of the nuances of human behavior.
Cryptids
Alexander V. Thompson, Devin Shepherd
Trevor is a radio show host and minor celebrity in the world of cryptozoological conspiracies; Eve is a pediatric nurse who listens to his show and is a true believer. Their lives arc and slowly converge over the strange story about a Moon-based storage location for human souls. Cryptids approaches the shadowy topics eyes forward and heart-first, with a couple of kind protagonists who make the things in the shadows and become a symbol for hope.
Dart
The beauty of microfiction is when you can get a fulfilling story in under a few minutes, and Dart promises to do just that. Jenny works for Dart, a food delivery app, and does the tedious day-in and day-out of any gig economy delivery driver. When a fellow Dart driver turns up dead, Boston starts going dark and sticky and Jenny’s past tragedies come back to haunt her.
The Edge of Sleep
From QCODE media (Blackout, Carrier) comes, a horror-thriller starring Markiplier as Dave, a night watchman with insomnia and night terrors who leaves work one day to discover everyone who went to sleep the previous night has died. Interspersed with the ongoing story of his childhood wrecked by inability to sleep soundly, The Edge of Sleep is a tense thriller stuffed with hallucinatory-effects when slipping into Dave’s somnambulant state.
Radioland
Samuel Burton, Elena Frances Bender, Abi Nielsen Hunsaker
Gabriel Rodríguez runs his car into a tree and wakes up in Wendell scraped up, with a pounding headache and without a functioning car. Wendell is a tiny town, and it’s weird.here’s a strange scarecrow, and there’s a voice on the PA system no one but Gabe seems to be hearing. What’s happening in Radioland is an exploration of narrative, of learning when we are hurting others and ourselves, and of taking an active role in shaping the world that affects us and the people we live here with.
Mija
Mija es el primer podcast de Studio Ochenta, un cuento sobre familia e inmigración. Nuestra narradora cuenta las vidas de los miembros de su familia, las razones por las cuales inmigraron, y las vidas que encontraron, empezando con ella misma y andando así por toda la familia. Esto es narración oral clásico, creado con amor por Lory Martinez; es una representación ficticia de las veces que cuentan las historias familiares que contienen una riqueza ignorada o denigrada. Mija es una celebración de las cosas que traes contigo cuando sembras tu hogar en algun lugar nuevo.
Studio Ochenta’s first podcast, Mija, is a story about family and immigration. Our narrator tells the life stories of her family, the reasons they immigrated, and the lives they found, starting with herself and going on down the family line. This is classic oral storytelling, lovingly created by Lory Martinez, a fictional representation of what it’s like to tell the tidbits and histories of your family in a place where that richness is often denigrated or ignored. Mija is a celebration of what you bring with you when you make your home somewhere new.
Nulyn: The New Age
If you long for classic fantasy of farm boys and prophecies, deep-voiced grandfathers telling ancient stories about the formation of the world, Nulyn: The New Age has you covered. Faylin is the farm hand who heads off on an adventure, chased by demons and seeking magic artifacts. The sound of Nulyn is all crisp swords and echoing halls; it has the feel of every ancient storybook.
The Tower
David Devereux’s (Tin Can, Middle: Below) newest foray into fiction is a gorgeous, seven-part experiment into solace, self-discovery, and purpose. Kiri climbs the Tower, an absurdly complex, ziggurat-like structure that disappears amongst the clouds, built by a long-dead king who ached to be in the sky. As she climbs, she uses payphones installed at certain points to check in with her mother, her friend, and the odd man who tests the payphones for a paycheck. The Tower features Devereux’s impactful interweaving of music and storytelling, with each episode having its own original score.
Observe and Report
Zuri is a reckless and brilliant young alien in a space pilot program who is ordered to spy on humanity, and ends up stealing a shuttle and crash-landing on Earth. Accompanied by her best friend and their new human pal, Zuri has to try and get the shuttle back from the alien-hunting Special Operations team before the commanders at planet Alethia notice Zuri’s disobeyed orders. Observe and Report is an immersive suspense thriller, with endearing characters who struggle to grow up and figure out how to let people in.
Living in Fantasy
Life in a fantasy village is like life in any other village: farming, markets, quiet walks, and the dragon moving in next door. Living in Fantasy is composed of news segments featuring real stories about real people in the fantasy realms, from expectant births, locations to keep in mind for your trip, and the unfortunate consequences of a dragon moving in (like missing sheep). Baldly stating things like “they rather hoped it would just go away” and employing traditional musical cues from true crime shows, Living in Fantasy is a sharp parody on the news.
We’re Alive: Goldrush
The third installment of the long-running We’re Alive series stands on its own; listeners hear Carl tell a young and rebellious recruit the story of when Carl and his father and their friends found a map that led to gold. It’s a spaghetti Western with zombies, and creator Kc Wayland keeps tongue firmly in cheek when necessary as he guides listeners on a riveting adventure through the desert and friendships in the apocalypse.
Scouters
Two bounty hunters travel across the solar system for the highest bidder and struggle to figure out brotherhood and family amid a post-cyberpunk world. In their hunt for a low-level drug smuggler confusedly going for ten thousand credits, they find their only viable lead seven hundred thousand miles away from the planet. Scouters is full of the crackle and zap of a futuristic universe, and the warm conversations between family that are forever.
No Stone
Emma Rose Ryan, Christel Thompson
Celeste and Monday are digging into the strangeness of their town and getting in over their head. Journalism students armed with the internet and their own wiles, they start to investigate the body found floating in the campus lake and posted all over Reddit. No Stone centers a deep friendship in their decisions to go after answers for their 300-level class assignment: a nonfiction podcast.
What Happened at Great Times Amusements?
Amanda Fuller was abducted from her local carnival in New Mexico; Christa Hendrickson tracks down what happened at that carnival on her podcast Misinformations. Christa puts herself in harm’s way to find the truth, to find missing records and tapes, and to find the ancient evil society at the root of Great Times Amusements. This investigative fiction podcast takes some of its cues from classic nonfiction podcasts and horror mysteries, from the very first twist in Part I.
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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