Brief descriptions/genres definitely recommended. Please don't be afraid of being :LIB:, I feel like so many podcast recs on this site focus of Political Pods which while fun, I can find myself listening to audio content for 6 hours on some days and I don't always wanna blast politics into my ears, and I know a lot of other people don't either.
I enjoy a good audio drama.
Alice Isn't Dead is probably my favorite, a woman thinks she's a widow but then sees some evidence that her supposedly dead wife, Alice, is alive and well somewhere in the US, so she becomes a long haul trucker to travel around and look for her. Season 1 is the best, Season 2 was good, IIRC, like many audio drama it falls off a bit at the finish line in season 3.
They're kinda bad, but Pacific Northwest Stories is fun (The Black Tapes, Rabbits). Big "NPR journo unraveling an occult mystery" energy. Similarly, Season 1 tends to be best.
Archive 81 is about an audio engineer restoring a bunch of old interview footage that, you guessed it, turns out to be haunted, in an isolated facility in the woods. Season 2 shifted gears a lot and I fell off of it.
Limetown is about an NPR type investigating a cult and/or company town where a bunch of people disappeared years ago. Uh, you can probably guess but after season 1 they didn't seem to know what to do with the plot they'd built up.
**Podcast podcasts: **
I enjoy Last Podcast on the Left a good amount. They did a series on the history of the Mormon church that is pretty great.
The Nonsense Bazaar: Mixed bag, they're definitely into new age stuff, but they have a lot of episodes discussing dangerous new age cults and are very critical of all the crypto Nazi stuff like I AM Activity. Listened to several eps after QAA sent me down the I AM rabbit hole. Eps 22-27 and 38-39 are of interest if these theosophical cults are interesting to you.
ALICE ISN'T DEAD IS SOOO GOOD i still need to listen to season two omfg
Season 2 had a lot of good episodes IIRC, which is a good run for an audio drama lol.
i added descriptions to my comment, i think you'd like a lot of the audio dramas on my list if you enjoyed Alice Isn't Dead
Algorithm sounds VERY interesting, and your description of I Am in Eskew makes me a lot more interested. Person on the outside investigating it is always more interesting to me than the actual supernatural element.
The Silt Verses I actually started and couldn't finish because the audio was so quiet I couldn't understand it on full volume while mowing/doing dishes. I might try again because the premise is so cool.
the direction they take the question of "what is eskew from the outside" is very cool
cant reccomend TSV enough but it is very quiet. the official transcripts are great with things like tone indicators and captioning background noise, might be worth just knocking out a reading of it in a week
This. They are kinda bad. They're also fun. Only one I really lost my patience with was TANIS.
Full corpo media but I liked that podcast about some soldiers who get their minds wiped by a shady government contractor. They made an Amazon show based on it. Homecoming.
In the same vein, I liked The Left Right Game. Kinda weird sci fi horror show about a convoy taking turns down the road until they cross some boundary into a strange fae world, but with pretty good production values. Made by the company QCODE, never liked any of the their other shows I tried, but this one was great.
There's a few SFF short story magazines that put out monthly podcasts where they read a story they published. My favorites are Clarkesworld and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. https://escapeartists.net/ is also good, they have four separate podcasts (Horror, Sci Fi, Fantasy, and YA) depending on what flavor you like.