Digital Media

Are You Going To Worship The Mighty Glow Cloud?

What is Welcome to Night Vale?

Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast sensation that has taken America and people across the world by storm. This podcast was created by a guy named Joseph Fink and has gotten lots of publicity recently, though it has been around since 2011. Recently, an article featured two characters from the series about the “Best Gay Characters in a Radio Program”. That would be referring to the main radio host of Night Vale who’s always heard speaking about the news around the town, Cecil Baldwin, and his fascinating and “perfect” boyfriend/not-boyfriend Carlos the Scientist.

Not really sure what I’m talking about? That’s okay; a lot of people don’t seem to know that much about this podcast. If you’re into morbid humor or you’re into weird fictional stories about librarians that eat children when you come into the library or that the secret police is around every corner, then you’re in luck – this is the podcast for you! The very first episode of the podcast featured the Glow Cloud that took control of everyone in the town to make it bow down to it as it rained down dead animals instead of rain or hail like a cloud normally would.

If you’re wanting more information about this place, the link to it is: http://commonplacebooks.com/welcome-to-night-vale. Though on the page itself it says:

"WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE is a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff's Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events.

Turn on your radio and hide.
Written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. Narrated by Cecil Baldwin. Music by Disparition. Logo by Rob Wilson"

They recently started doing live shows that others can attend and watch Cecil Baldwin in action. Though he is completely different in person than what someone’s normal head canon for him might be, that doesn’t stop a lot of people from attending. The live shows will start again in the beginning of 2014. The money from these shows all go to making more of the podcast and then having more merchandise made. This show also relies on monthly donations to keep itself afloat. So, in the end, this podcast is entirely made up for and by its fans. Fans can even be featured in the podcast as being part of the city of Night Vale! During Poetry Week, people sent in their poetry of Night Vale and it was featured on the podcast. They also feature a lot of new artists in their podcasts to help them get noticed. Isn’t that nice of them?

With all of this going on with the podcast, there’s no way that it could do anything other than continue to go up. This podcast has a growing fan base of who even knows how many teenagers and adults and has more publicity than possibly ever imagined. If you’re not into this podcast by now, it might be time to start catching up before there’s more than a hundred episodes that you’ll have to go through.