I’m surprised I didn’t see anyone recommend The Adventure Zone, especially the first season. One of the best actual play podcasts out there, especially the first two seasons.

I’ll recommend some hidden gems that need more love:

• Mabel: A woman works as a live in nurse for an elderly woman, and the show is voicemails she’s leaving to her ward’s estranged daughter. It’s poetic and beautiful, and then strange events start occurring.

• Dark Ages: a fantasy workplace comedy where an unpopular museum gets a new exhibit, the crown of the Dark Lord, who terrorized the country hundreds of years ago… Who just recently was resurrected and wants it back. Probably the best produced shows I’ve listened to with a great intro song.

• The Cryptonaturalist: a very normal nature show that is normal about normal nature. Also has poetry! Actually feel good podcast.

• Wolf 359: science crew is in a remote space station, and picks up a radio signal out of nowhere. Starts off funny, then gets wild.

• Brimstone Valley Mall: three demons disguised as humans, working at a mall in the 90s.

• Cult Or Just Weird: in depth dives into things which could be a cult or are just weird.

• Wooden Overcoats: British comedy podcast about a funeral home in a small village suddenly having to deal with competition

• Everything Is Alive: interviews with inanimate objects

• Uncanny County: Welcome to Nightvale meets Twilight Zone but it’s also funny

Also there’s podcast versions of books written on the Internet, which I’ll plug here!

• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky: What if Harry was not an idiot and knew what science was and was actually supported at home? Fixes a lot of dumb plot holes from the original series and frankly, is better. Also explores rationalist thinking!

• Worm by Wildbow: This is literally my favorite book and will make you never see the superhero genera the same again. Superpowers can happen to anyone seemingly at random. A young woman gets the power to control insects and wants to be a hero, but after meeting some villains the line between hero and villain blurs. There’s a chapter that’s one short sentence long and I’ve had conversations over an hour long about what it meant.

-Twig by Wildbow: A world where mad, Frankensteinian science took off instead of the regular kind. Follows a child experiment and his fellow childhood experiment friends on adventures for the definitely evil empire!

Pact by, you guessed it, Wildbow: Guy who just pulled himself out of homelessness who hates his crazy manipulative family gets the inheritance from his grandmother, which he didn’t want. Turns out that also involves also inheriting the karma from his family, who were practicing the most hated form of magic possible, diabalism. So now the whole magical community is actively trying to kill him as he’s scrambling to survive

Also if you like audio books, check stuff out from your library, too. It helps them out and helps them get funding when people do stuff like that.