Serial is over (for now)—but there’s no reason to kick your addiction to downloadable stories.
Anyone
who’s ever heard a public radio pledge drive knows that a “driveway
moment” is when the show you’re listening to is so good, you’ll sit
parked in your car until it’s over. Now, with great podcasts flooding the digital airwaves,
downloadable stories have spread “driveway moments” all over the world —
to gyms, subways, kitchens, and, well, more driveways.
Serial,
the weekly podcast that explored the murder of a young Baltimore woman,
was the most recent show to capture everyone’s ears. The last episode
of Serial’s first season dropped Thursday, but there are a lot of other
great podcasts worth a listen.
Here are seven podcasts to tide Serial fans over until the show returns for a second season:
Can’t get enough of Serial? Neither could the folks at
Slate Magazine, who created a complimentary podcast to discuss and
dissect the details of each week’s episode. Designed to be listened to
following the corresponding episode of Serial, this show is also weekly,
and features hosts David Haglund and Katy Waldman nit-picking over the
case’s finer points, as well as how Serial’s producer Sarah Koenig has
crafted the narrative. (Warning: Spoilers, obviously).
Part Twilight Zone part A Prairie Home Companion,
this fictional, bi-weekly podcast takes the form of radio broadcasts to
the Southwestern desert town of Night Vale, where eerie (and often
humorous) occurrences pop up all the time. Performed by a central
narrator (or news reporter) named Cecil, the show has periodic guest
voices, winding, recurring storylines, and — even better, for new
listeners — almost 60 episodes under its belt (and counting) to binge on
before you get throttled by its first and 15th of the month broadcast
schedule.
Digging deep into the areas where the law doesn’t dare
tread, this podcast talks to everyone from cooks to coroners in its
pursuit of the story. From tales of the mysterious — like the Venus
flytrap kidnapping ring — to cold-blooded drive-by shootings, these
episodes, which last around 20 minutes each, will keep you on the edge
of your seat, while locking you in with masterful, expert-level audio
production. It’s true crime at its finest.
This highly entertaining, live recorded podcast evokes the
golden age of radio through a variety of segments, including fictional
ads, one-off sketches and periodic updates from recurring stories, like
the tales of diva detective Desdemona Hughes, the campy adventures of
Captain Laserbeam, and the story of a time-traveling Amelia Earhart who
faked her death.
Packed with cameos by voices you’d no doubt recognize,
like Joe Mantegna, Neil Patrick Harris, and Alison Brie, it’s a great
way to see (well, listen to) your favorite actors in a whole new light.
But get it while you can — sadly, after 10 years of monthly shows, the
Thrilling Adventure Hour will be ending in April 2015.
Unpredictable, dark, and absolutely enthralling, this
podcast sets out to explore the unknown and does so with a great staff
of radio producers from literally all over the world (one even lives in
Antarctica). In its most popular episode, the show follows a woman who,
in the wake of losing her daughter, seeks alternative treatment for her
extreme grief by taking highly powerful hallucinogens that can only be
found in the Amazon rainforest. Other episodes are also strange trips,
from explorations of white supremacist churches to covering the ways
that crows mourn their dead, they take listeners down unexpected
avenues, to places where they’d never venture otherwise.
Arguably the radio show that launched the entire genre of
podcasts, this public radio show launched Serial as a spin-off, but had
considerable success on its own for more than 15 years. In that time,
it’s put out more than 500 episodes and given the world fantastic
stories by Ira Glass (the show’s host), David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell,
Mike Birbiglia, Jon Ronson, and others. Its top-notch audio production
has been aped by many podcasts since, but none have ever matched its
popularity. In fact, while weekly episodes of This American Life are
available for download, past episodes can be accessed through the show’s official app, something few other podcasts can boast.
A bit off topic from the true crime and great story
podcasts listed above, this weekly comedy download takes an up-close,
highly-critical, and wickedly funny look at terrible flicks that
Hollywood pumps out, and rips them to hilarious shreds. Hosted by Paul
Scheer and packed full of guests like Adam Scott, Dan Harmon, and Amy
Schumer, the host and guests dissect films like Pamela Anderson’s Barb Wire, Miley Cyrus’s LOL, and even Sylvester Stallone’s classic, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.
And since there’s no stopping the movie industry from making bombs like
these, you can’t expect this podcast, soon to be in its fifth year, to
quit any time soon.
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