Welcome to Night Vale: fighting anxiety through a 'terrible world'
The fictional town of Night Vale — where alien abductions and monsters are part of daily life — can actually help people deal with real-life anxieties say Welcome to Night Vale podcast creators Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor.
"Life is a terrifying place and it can kill us at any time," said Fink in an interview with Podcast Playlist's Lindsay Michael.
Fink said he's dealt with "debilitating anxiety" in his own life, and thinks Welcome to Night Vale gives people a model to deal with fear.
"Night Vale is this very scary town. People die in Night Vale constantly. There's literal monsters in Night Vale, but everyone in Night Vale just gets on with their lives. They just deal with it."
The show's narrator Cecil Baldwin tells these horror stories with a calm, tenor voice — and creators say they hear from listeners who say the podcast is their bed time story.
"There is something about a person navigating you through a terrible world in a way that it sounds like it's going to be okay," said Cranor.
"In Night Vale it's alien abductions and in real life it's cancer, but I think having this model for how to deal with a life that is random and scary and still be okay — I think that resonates with a lot of people," Fink said.
Story-telling, not 'radio drama'
Welcome to Night Vale is a work of fiction, but Fink and Cranor don't consider it to be a radio drama.
"We have had audiences literally gasp when we say we haven't heard Prairie Home Companion," said Fink.
"What we were trying to capture with Night Vale is way older than radio — is just the people around the campfire thing, of just a single voice with nothing added to it, telling you a story and how gripping you can make it."
You can hear the full interview by listening to the audio.
This interview originally aired on Podcast Playlist's episode about "Imagined Futures."