Sucker for a good story? Here are some of the world’s best fiction podcasts.

Our relationship with a good story has renewed its vows over the past years, with the emergence of fiction podcasting. To celebrate great stories finding new life on the audio airwaves, we’ve compiled some of the world’s best fiction podcasts.

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If intelligent life from another planet suddenly arrived on Earth, what would you do? If you knew they were refugees fleeing injustice, would you welcome them in your home? What if they needed to inhabit human bodies? Would you trade your autonomy for extraterrestrial intelligence? Graham is divorced, middle-aged, and in need of purpose. When he volunteers to join the camp providing hospitality to “The Ghosthouse,” everything, for everyone in his life, changes. Give Me Away is a high-stakes thriller that will catch you up and make you rethink your relationships, intentions, and internal dialogue.

Give Me Away comes in at number 41 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

History meets political thriller and crime drama in 1972, a Brechtian dramatization of the story of Angela Davis and Shirley Chisholm. When civil rights activist Davis is arrested, Congresswoman Chisolm fights tooth and nail for her freedom. Chisolm’s grace matches Davis’ grit; both work toward equality.  Intertwined with the Nixon administration’s iniquitous deals and the run-up to Reaganomics, this fast-paced story holds a mirror up to America, showing the power of persistence. Yhane Washington Smith, the creator of Harlem Queen, has spun a web of history, strong women, relevant political discourse, and great music. Pairs well with a tall, cold glass of iced tea.

1972 comes in at number 40 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

Do you think fiction podcast episodes should be enjoyed in some kind of order? Guess again. Neutrinowatch reinvents the podcast queue by adapting each of its nine episodes a little bit every day. Foundation elements of each episode stay the same, but some parts change, affecting the meaning. Together, the episodes raise questions about the human condition, artificial intelligence, and the universe. Come for the structural experiment; stay for the intricate sound design, Wendy’s mysterious longing, and the possibilities of human error.

Neutrinowatch comes in at number 40 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

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Cozy podcast enjoyment at its finest. Silly Old Bear takes A. A. Milne’s tales from The Hundred Acre Wood and brings them to life with enchanting music, sound design, and some of the finest voice actors in contemporary audio drama. Whether you’re a child, listen with kids, or want to wrap up in a soft blanket of audio comfort, Silly Old Bear should be in your podcast queue. 

Silly Old Bear comes in at number 39 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

This comic adventure mystery tale will lure you into an absurd steampunk universe. Victoriocity’s immersive soundscape and contagious acting will make you want to stay with these characters in their weird world. Inspector Archibald Fleet and journalist Clara Entwhistle try to solve a murder and end up spelunking through a conspiracy that touches every cog and pneumatic tube of Even Greater London. Buckle up for this wild ride.

Victoriocity comes in at number 38 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

If you like your paranormal investigations gritty, sweary, and in desperate need of a pint, A Scottish Podcast is the show for you. Lee, a pompous former radio personality, and his friend Dougie, who puts the “aw” in “ennui,” explore the bowels of Edinburgh, surf St. Caillic, and outlast the attention of Lovecraftian sea creatures and medieval demon kings. Will they ever make a podcast as chilling and engrossing as Serial? Can their friendship survive? If you believe that “life doesn’t feel right until something’s wrong,” this is the absurdist horror comedy adventure for you.

A Scottish Podcast comes in at number 37 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

On its surface, The Golden House is the corporate podcast of a scientific think tank in the English countryside. However, as you listen, you find something seriously wrong in the company. The host has hidden clues in each podcast episode, so you can find his secret recordings of what life is like inside The Golden House. Is it a cult? A weapons program? Who’s in charge? What do they plan to do to the residents and the rest of the world? This limited series will give you plenty to puzzle over. 

The Golden House comes in at number 36 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

First released in 2017, and split into two series (the second one a spin-off of the first), Marscorp is funny, riveting, and downright eccentric. A British product of the Definitely Human production company, the show centers on events taking place in the early 2070s. After the first human colony was established on Mars, E.L. Hob is sent to the planet to oversee its terraforming.

The writing and acting team behind Uncanny County brings the world a freshly dark and peculiar paranormal audio play each month. Wonderfully acted and flawlessly produced, the show’s creative team deserves high praise for continuously creating new worlds of mystery and mayhem.

Uncanny County comes in at number 34 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

Masterfully written, produced and voiced by Adam Bash, Sayer is a sci-fi chronicle of life on Earth’s second, man-made moon, Typhon. Sayer is an artificial intelligence built to program humans to adapt to their new lunar home. More than 60 episodes cover the new world, and Sayer’s efforts to maintain and save it.

Sayer comes in at number 33 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

First released in 2016, Small Town Horror has now evolved into three seasons. The simple premise of the show revolves around a video diary Ryan Jennings made in the late nineties about the shocking and frightful mysteries that took place in his hometown of Crayton, Minnesota. When he returns home 18 years later, Ryan’s past is there to haunt him.

Small Town Horror comes in at number 32 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

Victoria’s Lift is a fictional horror podcast with almost 50 episodes spanning three seasons. The series centers around a mysterious girl, Victoria, the lift operator in a dilapidated old manor, who guides the protagonists of each installment through a journey of their own haunting discoveries.

Victoria’s Lift comes in at number 31 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

In the post-apocalyptic Our Fair City, survival is the name of the game, and it takes place in a labyrinth of caves and tunnels underneath a destroyed city. With more than 170 episodes released since 2012, the riveting sci-fi series was composed by a team of Chicago theatre veterans headed by Eleanor Hyde, Clayton Faits, and Jeffrey Gardner.

Our Fair City comes in at number 30 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

The Funn siblings, Rudyard and Antigone, run their family’s dwindling funeral parlor on the island of Piffling, free of any competition, until they learn of their faultless new nemesis, Eric Chapman. Episodes of the quirky British comedy, Wooden Overcoats have been in circulation since 2015 and see the Funns scheme their way into defeating their newfound competition.

Wooden Overcoats comes in at number 29 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

Fans of horror fiction will love the concept driving The Magnus Archives, produced by Rusty Quill. It centers on the Magnus Institute, a research facility that explores the strange and peculiar happenings of the world.

The Magnus Archives comes in at number 28 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

Ars Paradoxica is a story of time travel. Dr. Sally Grissom opens the first episode as a physicist who is inadvertently knocked into 1943, the period of the Second World War. What ensues is a riveting story — a battle for power and a race against time for Sally to use her powers in science for good, not evil.

Ars Paradoxica comes in at number 27 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

All the playfulness of a fairytale comedy, juxtaposed with a hospital procedural drama. Alba Salix, the head witch and royal physician of Farloria, has a full docket of patients, including the King and Queen. Help comes in the form of a defrocked monk, Magnus, and an easily distracted fairy herbalist, Molly. Can Alba make sure that all’s well that ends well? Alba Salix, Royal Physician, is clever fun.

Alba Salix, Royal Physician, comes in at number 26 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

A joint project of Tor Labs and Gideon Media, Steal The Stars is a 14-part series set at the Quill Marine, a secure facility with a dark underbelly. Written by the award-winning writer Mac Rogers, the series traces the workplace romance between two security officers charged with protecting the secret that lies at the heart of the mysterious facility.

Steal The Stars comes in at number 25 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

Imagine being trapped inside someone else’s memory, to recollect their haunted past from their own internal perspective. That’s the premise for the Darkest Night podcast. This horror mystery immerses you, the listener, into the memory of the recently deceased to help you discover the secrets behind a person’s death. This show uses binaural audio to add verisimilitude; use headphones. 

Darkest Night comes in at number 24 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

The Unexplainable Disappearance Of Mars Patel is a kids’ adventure story podcast, made for middle graders by middle grade kids. Two-times nominated for the Webby awards and a past Peabody winner, the scripted series follows eleven-year-old Mars Patel’s search for his missing friends, which leads to his own disappearance and inevitable journey into space.

The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel comes in at number 23 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

With 50 episodes produced and released since 2016, Penumbra primarily follows the work of a private investigator, Juno Steel, who sets out to expose the corruption and mayhem that lies beneath the surface of Hyperion City. But laced throughout the main storyline are several one-off stories that tie the whole show into a wonderful ode to great storytelling.

Penumbra comes in at number 22 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

From the team that brought the world Welcome to Night Vale comes their newest show, Within The Wires. Uniquely imaginative, each episode of the show is presented as an audio guide — in season one, the listener is an inmate in a psychiatric hospital and receives a relaxation guide; in season two, a famous artist delivers the listener museum audio guides.

Within The Wires comes in at number 21 on our list of the Best Fiction Podcasts.

Before his disappearance, Dan Powell is charged with cataloging the recorded interviews that make up Archive 81. What’s on the recordings? And what strange and haunting world do they uncover? Before his disappearance, Dan sent hours of audio of the Archive 81 recordings to his friend Marc Sollinger, the host of the show, who needs your help to find Dan.

Archive 81 comes in at number 20 on our list of Best Fiction Podcasts.

Soren Narnia is a brilliant writer and has the enviable skillset of a master storyteller. His podcast, Knifepoint Horror, tells disconnected novellas of horror and mystery. Impressively, Narnia has been producing episodes since 2010, releasing more than 40 sporadically over that time, and if you’re drawn to the horror genre, you’ll find it hard not to devour all of them at once.

Knifepoint Horror comes in at number 19 on our list of Best Fiction Podcasts.

If you have a penchant for old-school gangster stories, you’ll fall head over heels for Bronzeville. Conceived, produced and voiced by acting heavyweights Larenz Tate and Laurence Fishburne, the series traces Jimmy Tillman, a black kid who kills a white man in self-defense, flees his home of Arkansas, and ends up in Bronzeville, a town gripped by organized crime.

Bronzeville comes in at number 18 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

Ben and Sammy host the hit small town radio show, King Falls AM. With episodes released twice a month since 2015, the show sees the hosting pair cover the strange and peculiar events in the “lonely little mountain town” of King Falls.

King Falls AM comes in at number 17 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

Whether you’re interested in Norse mythology because you dig the Marvel movies or you can’t get enough of the Poetic Edda, Jarnsaxa Rising is the adventure you can’t miss. Jarnsaxa, the last survivor of Jotunheim, wants to punish her former lover, Thor. With her cousin, Loki, she’s worked to bring about Ragnarok for centuries. In 2094, the world’s most powerful energy corporation crosses her, and revenge is inevitable.  

Jarnsaxa Rising comes in at number 16 on our list of Best Fiction Podcasts.

Season 1 (The Message) and Season 2 (Lifeafter) of this podcast by GE Podcast Theater and Panoply take you into worlds of cryptology, extraterrestrial life, and top FBI secrets. In The Message, Nicky Tomalin works with the NSA and a team of cryptologists to decipher an alien message. In LifeAfter, while mourning the recent death of his wife, FBI clerk Ross Barnes hears something strange in the background of one of her recorded messages, which sparks him to pursue a shocking discovery. 

The Message / Lifeafter comes in at number 15 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

A young scientist in New York City discovers the secret that humans have been searching for since the beginning of their time on earth, and it drags her into a war amongst those who’ve known it all along. With episodes dating back to 2008, there are few more enthralling sci-fi audio adventures than The Leviathan Chronicles.

The Leviathan Chronicles comes in at number 14 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts. Heard this podcast before? Leave it a review.

“Movie for your ears” is the tagline for the podcast, The Truth, and there’s little wonder why. The show, part of the Radiotopia podcasting network founded by Jonathan Mitchell and Hillary Frank, takes a cinematic approach to sound. Timely and thought-provoking material informs their stories. Try the limited series The Off Season, inspired by #MeToo, What About Ruth?, a response to the pandemic, or The Death of Poe for a terrifying tale about political corruption and elections. If you want your mind to wander and meander through some seriously rich audio storytelling, The Truth is your fix.

The Truth comes in at number 13 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts. Heard this podcast before? Leave it a review.

Contained to just one season spanning ten installments, Deadly Manners is a murder mystery set during the winter of 1954. When wealthy socialites get together for their annual dinner party, a snowstorm locks them inside the Billings’ grand mansion, and a murderer goes to work. One by one, the party guests disappear, prompting the survivors to work out who’s behind the killings, before they, too, are lost to the night.

Deadly Manners comes in at number 12 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

From the creators of Welcome to Night Vale comes the epic audio journey, Alice Isn’t Dead.  Alice, presumed dead, waits at the end of a long and harrowing search by her truck driver wife, who ventures to all corners of the country to find her and solve the mystery of her disappearance. What stands between the searcher and the lost is a web of darkness, murder, and conspiracy that combines to make this show so irresistibly compelling.

Alice Isn’t Dead comes in at number 11 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

Seven and a half light years away, a team of astronauts occupies the U.S.S. Hephaestus as it orbits around the star Wolf 359 in search of alien life. With 60 episodes released since 2014, the show’s protagonist, Doug Eiffel, has recorded an endless stream of audio logs about his time in orbit and the happenings of his flying team, culminating in a masterful sci-fi epic.

Wolf 359 comes in at number 10 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

Masterful in terms of audio innovation, What’s The Frequency takes classic radio and noir tropes and mixes them with radio frequency psychedelia. Walter “Troubles” Mix and his partner Whitney investigate the disappearance of a writer and a radio show that might be responsible. Fasten your seatbelts; this is a bumpy and unforgettable ride. 

What’s The Frequency comes in at number 9 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

What happened to the people of Limetown? On February 8, 2004, a call to emergency services from a distressed female caller triggers the most puzzling discovery and ensuing investigation in American history. So what really happened to the 300 residents of the remote research facility in Tennessee? That’s the question American Public Radio reporter Lia Haddock wants to be answered. If you liked Serial but want something much stronger, this is your mystery show. 

Limetown comes in at number 8 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

From Gimlet Media, Homecoming is a psychological thriller with performances from Catherine Keener, Oscar Isaac, and David Schwimmer. Through phone calls, therapist recordings, and other eavesdropped moments, a caseworker at an experimental facility defies her toxic boss to try and save a soldier who wants to return to civilian life. The murky, intertwined character arcs and sounds make you question the characters’ reality and your own perception. 

Homecoming comes in at number 7 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

Have you ever wanted to disappear? If you make the right call and talk to the right people, it’s possible. The Amelia Project is a comic mystery where a top-secret company helps clients fake their own deaths and start new lives elsewhere. Hilarious and puzzling, this show always delivers the goods. Pairs well with a cup of hot cocoa.

The Amelia Project comes in at number 6 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

“Therapy for the strange and unusual”. That’s the tagline for The Bright Sessions, the hit series written by Lauren Shippen. The show follows the work of Dr. Bright, a therapist whose young patients include a time traveler and a mind reader, who struggle with the mental challenges of being supernaturally empowered. How did they all get into her office, and what secret is Dr. Bright hiding? 

The Bright Sessions comes in at number 5 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

Another Serial- like show by the production team who brought you Tanis and Rabbits, The Black Tapes is a series where a plucky young investigative reporter, Alex Reagan takes her listeners with her on an adventure of paranormal discovery, pursuing the cases documented by paranormal investigator and skeptic, Dr. Richard Strand. What’s he hiding, and why? Can Alex solve the mysteries (the titular tapes) that he couldn’t? 

The Black Tapes comes in at number 4 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

Hello From The Magic Tavern is one of the giants of the fiction podcasting genre. An immersive listening experience, the concept is truly unique and masterful. Host of the show, Arnie Niekamp, was a regular dude living in Chicago before he fell into a magical realm out the back of a Burger King and landed in the world of Foon. Stuck in his new world permanently, Niekamp decides to set up a podcast to teach Earth about Foon, and introduces new fictitious characters and events from the Magic Tavern in each new episode.

Hello From The Magic Tavern comes in at number 3 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

If you’re a fan of the zombie horror sub-genre, your ears and imagination will thank you for listening to We’re Alive – A “Zombie” Story of Survival. In a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, army reservist, Michael Cross, is thrust into a broken world, one he must survive. 

We’re Alive – A “Zombie” Story of Survival comes in at number 2 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

Welcome to Night Vale is a critically acclaimed and extremely popular radio comedy-drama about a fictional town, Night Vale. Each new episode sees news, weather, and stories from the small town where every conceivable conspiracy theory is real. If you’re a fan of deadpan comedy, surrealism, and some uncanny valley podcasting, dive in head first.

Welcome To Night Vale comes in at number 1 as one of our Best Fiction Podcasts.

These aren’t the only excellent fiction and audio drama podcasts worldwide. New shows launch every day. For milestones, debuts, and finales of the new and best fiction podcasts, subscribe to The Fiction Podcast Weekly. It’s free and hand-crafted just for you. And, if you’ve ever relished the idea of making a fiction podcast, we can help you learn how to produce and edit your own.