Post Description: This editorial was written and submitted by Jennie Ergott, a junior at Grimsley. In her editorial, she discusses the role of audio dramas as a storytelling medium and how the past decade of podcasts has opened the door to broadening both explicit and implicit diversity. This editorial also includes three recommendations of podcasts to listen to if you're new to the genre.
An interpretation of Carlos the Scientist and Cecil Gershwin-Palmer from the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, drawn by kurofae (kurofae.tumblr.com)
Chances are, you know what a podcast is. Whether your first thought upon hearing the word is NPR or Night Vale, you're aware of the usage of radio to tell stories, a practice that's dated back to the inception of the radio itself. It's human nature to tell stories with whatever means are on hand, and podcasts have taken to the role quite well. Taking a cursory glance at Spotify or iTunes, you can find an abundance of podcasts in a variety of genres and formats, including talk shows, interviews, anthologies, short stories, and long-term audio dramas.
As a writer, I'm going to focus on the audio dramas, because they're the ones changing storytelling and representation for the better.
Audio dramas are by no means a new concept. Originally called radio dramas because, well, they were only available on the radio, they're unique because of the fact that the actors performances rely solely on what you can hear. There's no visual aspect to it at all, which opens the door to free interpretations of characters, a concept that's broadened the spectrum of representation in media faster than J.K. Rowling can claim another useless retcon.
While the practice of telling stories purely through audio began all the way back in the 1920s (one of the better things of the Roaring Twenties that has been brought back around in the last century!), it's the current practice of both explicitly and implicitly representing marginalized communities that has made the medium stand out amongst its peers.
Take, for example, the hit podcast (and arguably the first to popularize audio drama podcasts in the modern day) Welcome to Night Vale, which began back in 2012. Written and produced by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor, the podcast is pitched as "bi-monthly community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, where every conspiracy theory is true" and set a new standard with its main character, narrator, and host, Cecil Gershwin-Palmer, who is an explicitly gay Jewish man with a physical disability. He goes on to have an endearing romance throughout the course of the eight-years-and-running series. Until recent years, it was difficult to find a single character from one of those communities in a piece of media, and even harder to find if you limit yourself to non-stereotypical portrayals, let alone a character embodying that intersection.
And let's not end it there. Cecil's skin tone is never described, leading to interpretations that he's a number of ethnicities, including Black, Hispanic, and Native American, and his described proclivity for bizarre and gender-bending fashion choices has led to some believing that he may be non-binary. Then there's Carlos the Scientist, Cecil's love interest from the very first episode, who's described as being Hispanic/Latino and having perfect hair, but from there? The opportunities are endless, and that's the beauty of it.
Relying solely on vocal performances, audio dramas have the opportunity to both represent communities that can rarely see the spotlight thanks to the easy-to-publish format of podcasts, as well as leave many details up to the interpretation of the individual listener that makes the stories personal to each listener's experience and preferences. They allow the listeners to step into the shoes of their protagonists and into their (often bizarre) worlds, providing an escapist medium that one can travel to as easily as connecting a pair of headphones.
"Now, where do I find these podcasts?" you ask, knowing that quarantine will likely last forever and therefore you have nothing to lose in trying one of these audio dramas.
It's quite easy, actually!
For those not ready to commit their phone storage to the podcast lifestyle, you can simply search Spotify, iTunes, or Google Music for the podcast of your choice, and listen from there. If you find yourself ready to take the plunge, there's also specialized podcast apps like Stitcher and Podbean that you can download and listen from.
I'll throw my top three audio drama podcasts at the end of this article. In the meantime, grab a pair of headphones and get ready to be transported to a whole new world partially of your own creation.
Obviously, my number one recommendation for any podcast newbie is Welcome to Night Vale from Night Vale Presents (yeah, they made it that big). It's written by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor. If you were on Tumblr in 2012 (or Pinterest in… any of the subsequent years), you've probably seen Night Vale appear in the form of a cryptic, mildly unnerving quote or art of a pale man with lots of purple and tentacle tattoos, but there's a lot more to it than that, and a lot more still to come! Formatted as a radio station hosted by Cecil Gershwin-Palmer (voiced by Cecil Baldwin) who's known as the Voice of Night Vale, it follows the bizarre happenings of a desert town in the middle of southwest America that includes literal multi-headed dragons, dog parks that you shouldn't think about, angels that don't exist, and a possibly-benevolent glow cloud that rains down animal carcasses. Featuring a wealth of political satire (that… might feel a tad too real given our current state of the world) and a unique song from an indie musician in the space of each episode's weather report, Night Vale's preferred form of storytelling is gradual year-long arcs. That makes twenty-four episodes in each arc, plus the occasional multi-part episode storyline for the more intense bits. This format maintains an enjoyable episodic world that's easy to return to time and time again.
(And if you've already listened to Welcome to Night Vale, maybe try out Alice Isn't Dead, another Night Vale Presents production about a trucker who journeys across a bizarre America looking for the wife she assumed was dead, or Good Morning Night Vale, a Night Vale recap podcast hosted by three cast members that discusses the deeper ideas of the podcast as well as where the creators were at mentally as they wrote each episode.)
If you prefer more of an out-and-out horror story or had a phase in middle school where you were weirdly obsessed with a specific set of Lovecraftian-inspired short stories (me? nooo…), maybe give The Magnus Archives a shot. Produced by Rusty Quill and written by Jonathan Sims, The Magnus Archives follows the recently-promoted head archivist of the Magnus Institute, also named (and voiced by) Jonathan Sims (in case you haven't noticed, there's a bit of a trend with podcast characters being named after their actors). Jonathan Sims makes it his mission to organize the archives and digitize audio recordings of statements that people have given to the institute, statements that more often than not include creepy, horrifying, or just straight-up gross elements. As Jonathan records more statements, common threads appear. Some of those elements start to get closer and closer to him and his archival assistants, eventually culminating into a full-blown cosmic horror with incredibly compelling writing and character relationships. The character Jon is asexual and has romantic interest in both men and women, and there's a number of subtextual same-sex relationships. However, the story is ultimately a tragedy, so don't go into it hoping that the finale (which has yet to be released— the show is in its final season now) will end with all of your favorites living happily ever after.
If you'd rather start off with something a bit more light-hearted, why not try The Bright Sessions, created by Lauren Shippen and pitched as "the X-Men go to therapy?" This podcast follows the lives of Dr. Bright (voiced by Julia Morizawa) and her patients as she helps them control their atypical powers through mindfulness and conversations about the similarities and differences of their lives as opposed to those of people without powers. The variety of stories include a romance between a teen empath and the guy he realizes drowns out the chaos of high school emotions, an anxious time-traveler who finds a man lost in time and makes it her mission to help him, and an artistic telepath who uses both her ability and art to help a traumatized veteran. Naturally, they all eventually collide. The series is finished, so there's no unknown finale hanging over your head, but there are two spin-offs. One has already begun on Luminary, an exclusive podcast subscription service. The second spin-off is the first book of three that dives further into the story of Caleb Michael's, the aforementioned teen empath, as he navigates high school, football, and dating with the ability to feel everything his classmates do.
Jennie Ergott is a Grimsley junior who has dreamed of being a writer her entire life. When she's not struggling through her first novel, she can be found obsessing over whichever queer fiction podcast or sci-fi/fantasy novel has caught her attention at the time.
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