Passion

Most people have seen a horror movie, or at least seen a preview for them. Love them or hate them, we all know the drill: family moves into a new house, ghosts live there, the family deals with a haunting with some humor and lots of jump scares.

Horror audio dramas also exist, but the lack of visuals forces creators to be more creative with the horrors they describe. Jump scares are near impossible in an audio medium, and describing what it’s like to see a ghost just doesn’t have the same effect as actually seeing one onscreen.

This has forced the creators of horror audio dramas to be innovative in their horror writing; the creepy stories they describe would work only in the audio medium, and yet still manage to give you the adrenaline rush you want from a horror story.

As someone who has always hated horror movies, I was reluctant to begin The Magnus Archives, the audio drama I am currently working through the backlog of. 

However, I discovered that it was mostly the jump scares that turned me off horror movies, and the podcast full of creative horror stories that are intricately woven together into a plot is enjoyable and just creepy enough.

The stories depend on creepy ideas you haven’t thought of before, rather than classic horror tropes. For example, one episode revolves a man who meets and dates a woman, only to discover that she is made of thousands of worms.  The concept sounds silly, but with some creative writing and sound designing, it becomes a creepy story that sticks in your mind for days.

The Magnus Archives is only one of many horror podcasts, each with its own merits and creative style of storytelling: The Alexandria Archives, I Am in Eskew, and Tanis are all popular horror audio dramas with differing storylines and styles of horror.

As someone who was certainly not a horror fan before audio dramas, I recommend them for everyone, adrenaline junkies and scaredy-cats alike. The creative storylines of horror audio dramas have something for everyone.

I’ve already told you about what an audio drama is and how you should listen to them. Today, I’m going to answer the question I’m sure you’ve been asking: why should you listen to them?

First off, explaining why you should listen to audio dramas is like explaining why you should watch TV shows. There are no generalizations I can make that apply to all audio dramas ever and will be persuasive enough for you to actually listen to them.

So, I’ll start with the type of audio dramas that set them apart from any other medium: the ones that, to me, feel like home.

The most popular example of this kind of audio drama is Welcome to Night Vale, a fictional radio show about a town full of supernatural happenings. It has no overarching plot, so there’s no pressure if you zone out while listening, and the episodes follow a consistent pattern with their segments, so you know what to expect going in every time.

Some people find Welcome to Night Vale boring, but for many of the same reasons, I find it comforting. Night Vale was one of the first audio dramas I listened to, and it’s still the one I go back to when I’ve had a long day and I just want to relax. There’s a feeling of nostalgia and familiarity to it from the very first episode, making it a perfect podcast for when you need something familiar and easy to listen to.

Night Vale is the first podcast of its kind that I listened to, but it’s not the best. The best comfort podcast I’ve listened to is The Cryptonaturalist, a podcast written by a poet about the wonders and weirdness of nature, some real and some fictional. 

To me, The Cryptonaturalist is like soul food. It’s the first thing I go to when I feel totally and completely drained; there’s something in the feeling of listening to it and taking a walk that’s impossible to describe. Like Night Vale, listening to it just feels like coming home.

There are plenty of more thrilling audio dramas that I’ll recommend in my future blog posts, but I wanted to start with my base: the podcasts I come home to when I need them.

 

I’ve already explained what an audio drama is and recommended a few to any novices reading. Now that you know what to listen to, I’ll move on to the next pressing question: where should you listen to them?

If you know anything about podcasts, you know that an app already comes on your phone (Apple Podcasts on iPhones, Google Play on other phones), ready for you to start listening. As an iPhone user, I can only speak to the merits of Apple Podcasts, but I’m sure Google Play is similar.

Apple Podcasts is my preferred listening method, but it’s not for everyone. It makes it easy to subscribe and get notifications to multiple podcasts, and a recent update made it convenient to listen to a show without subscribing, which is nice if you want to listen through the backlog of an audio drama without receiving a notification every time the show releases a new episode.

However, Apple Podcasts is usually the least organized when it comes to the order of a show. Some shows are neatly separated into seasons, while others are haphazardly scattered throughout the “More Episodes” tab. 

Another easy way to listen to audio dramas is on the website for the show itself. Websites always organize the backlog of the show neatly into seasons (Wolf 359’s website is a great example of prime organization), and it’s always easy and convenient to start with episode 1. 

However, websites of specific shows can’t act as a one-stop-shop the way Apple Podcasts does. You have to navigate to a new website every time you want to listen to a new show, which is fine until you’re listening to three or four different shows in one day like I do. 

If Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and the website for the podcast don’t work for you, there are apps you can download specifically for listening to podcasts. You can even use your trusty music app Spotify to check out some podcasts, though it is less likely to have smaller-budget, indie audio dramas.

If you’d prefer not to mix your music and your podcasts, Stitcher is a great app for podcast listening. It tracks your total hours of listening and your “streak” of how many days in a row you’ve listened on Stitcher, which are cool to see when you open the app.

Stitcher does not organize shows into seasons, but can sort them oldest to newest or vice versa, so it’s ahead of Apple Podcasts there. However, Stitcher displays your feed of new episodes oddly; Apple Podcasts lays them out neatly on your homescreen, while Stitcher has a scrolling mechanism that makes a specific episode hard to find.

Overall, deciding where to listen to an audio drama is a matter of preference. I tried different mediums for different shows before finally settling on Apple Podcasts for all my shows. 

If you want to listen to audio dramas but find your medium of listening annoying, fear not: there are boundless options, and plenty of time to explore them.

Happy listening!

 

When I say podcast, you probably think of NPR’s news podcasts, the informational but sometimes boring episodes of the likes of Serial, or the many, many sports podcasts that exist.

However, as lucrative and popular as these podcasts are, they don’t capture the full scope, or the best part, of podcasts.

Audio dramas are an underappreciated genre of podcasts that operate similarly to television shows, with actors playing scripted characters, but simply without the visual element.

With nearly 150 million subscribers each, Netflix and Hulu have a reputation as the best ways to binge a show. However, for those who don’t have the time or money to subscribe to multiple streaming services, audio dramas are a perfect alternative. The stories are just as compelling and binge-able as many shows on Netflix, and it’s easy and convenient to listen to them while walking to class or doing laundry. 

The first question people ask when they first hear about audio dramas is how they’re different from audiobooks. The simplest response is that audiobooks are like movies, and audio dramas are like TV. While audiobooks are one long piece you buy all at once, audio dramas usually release 30 minute episodes every other week.

You probably find it daunting to switch to an entirely new medium of storytelling, but audio dramas are not as hard to access as they seem. Most audio dramas can easily be accessed for free on a podcast app on your phone, and getting started is as simple as Googling the name of a podcast you’re interested in.

For novices to the world of audio dramas, Wolf 359 is a great starting point. It starts out funny and engaging, and the flawless sound design makes it feel like a TV show without the “show” part. 

Many audio dramas also surpass TV shows in terms of diversity. There are a multitude of podcasts with well-written female main characters, such as Alice Isn’t Dead and Girl in Space, as well as great LGBTQ representation, such as in The Penumbra Podcast or The Strange Case of Starship Iris. 

Overall, audio dramas are an undiscovered gold mine in the world of podcasts. If anyone is looking for something to listen to while walking to class or doing chores, I highly recommend audio dramas. You will find a world of wonderful stories just waiting to be heard.