Welcome to Night Vale

Welcome to Night Vale, created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, is a bi-monthly podcast in the format of a fictional radio show. The podcast, set in the small desert town of Night Vale, chronicles the events in the town and will typically include local news, editorials, adverts, and 'the weather', which is always a different piece of music from a independently published artist. Each episode is between twenty and thirty minutes long.

The show combines elements of both horror and humour as the residents of Night Vale deal with the bizarre events in the town. The humour is often quite surreal in nature - Joseph Fink has commented that the starting point for the show was of a town "where all conspiracy theories were real". As well as surreal humour, Welcome to Night Vale is also contains a lot of satire, especially about topics such as government bodies and gun control.

The show has a wide-range of interesting and well-developed characters, such as the smooth-voiced radio host Cecil (voiced by Cecil Baldwin), who talks about the town and who often goes off on tangents; handsome newcomer Carlos (voiced by Dylan Marron), a scientist with perfect hair who is investigating the town; Old Woman Josie, who lives with angels; and Hiram McDaniels, who is literally a five headed dragon. Welcome to Night Vale has also had several guest stars on the show, such as Mara Wilson, who is the voice of the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home.

The podcast, which began in 2012, started gaining a larger fanbase in July 2013, where it became the most downloaded podcast on iTunes. The sudden increase in popularity has been attributed by creator Jeffrey Cranor to the Hannibal fandom, who were between seasons, but it could also be down to the show having a same-sex relationship become canon around that time. Since then, the Welcome to Night Vale fandom has continued to grow steadily.

In October 2013, Welcome to Night Vale began a live tour of America, performing some of the episodes with added material as well as two new episodes exclusive to the tour. One of the new live episodes, 'Condos', was released on the show's bandcamp.

With a diverse cast of characters, over forty episodes so far and counting, and a book scheduled for 2015, Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast that is sure to capture your imagination, so plug in your headphones and remember to stay out of the dog park.