Readers listen, but not in exactly the same way as they read. With a book, you hear the voices of the author and their characters, distinct and loud in the chamber of your own head. It is different when you listen to stories told by someone — the nightlong cycles of “kathas” narrated by expert dramatisers in India, writers speaking their own words, radio novelisations and fiction podcasts. But the word was meant to be heard as well as seen, one way or another.
Podcasts took off in 2004, when the iPod and high-speed broadband made audio broadcasts widely available and easy to download, though they were around even earlier in the form of audioblogs. In the past five years, podcasting has become far more mainstream — Nieman Labs suggests that there are about 350,000 podcasts today, many of them making the number 1 slot on iTunes. As the form has grown, so has its ability to breathe new life into fiction.
Some of the most compelling podcasts in 2017 are like slicker…