Welcome To Night Vale: Jeffrey Cranor interview

Ira Glass must have been bemused. His NPR smash This American Life ostensibly immovable atop the iTunes Podcast Top 10 list for an eon, only for a fledgling horror programme to unseat it. A year into its existence, in the summer of 2013 Welcome To Night Vale became the most downloaded podcast in town. Set in the titular, fictional desert community in the Southwestern United States where all conspiracy theories are true, Welcome To Night Vale plays out like a series of community radio news bulletins, announcements and advertisements given a devilish twist. Wittily written, it provides laughs, the odd shiver down the spine and a healthy dose of political satire, as narrator Cecil Baldwin paints an audio picture of a place where mysterious hooded figures gather in the dog park, gruesome deaths and chilling disappearances are frequent, otherworldly portals open at the drop of a hat and the government is capable of controlling the weather.
With that in mind, the case could be made that ...Night Vale provides a more accurate commentary on American life than Ira’s show. Jeffrey Cranor, who started the podcast with Joseph Fink in 2012, lets out a delighted roar of laughter. 
“Well it’s a different reflection on American life! As a huge fan of This American Life, I’d be hard-pressed to put myself above it at all… Even TV or radio news is not that great of a reflection of America. It’s these really wonderful stories where you dig deep into actual people’s lives. I find those people’s stories more newsworthy than anything, In that way, I find TAL to be one of the most interesting shows out there for really getting a sense of life in America.”
Cranor is pleased to see narrative-based podcasts start to make an impact. With the market flooded with shows where a couple of comedians sit in front of mics and talk about comedy, he thinks it’s high time for a little make believe.
“I think fiction tells a lot of truths too. I don’t know if it’s like this worldwide, but in America we’re very obsessed with facts. And facts are sorta bullshit, for the most part, without context. In …Night Vale, the number of facts is pretty low. But I think it can be a pretty interesting reflection of at least me and Joseph’s worldview of America.”
You can leave all that at the door and dive into …Night Vale regardless. The 20-odd (really odd) minute sonic trips into the absurd and horrific are not simply entertaining, but quite hypnotic. They’re proving to have universal appeal. This autumn, the live show comes to Europe, with two Dublin shows in October.
“Very early on when we started to have fans that weren’t our friends and family, we started hearing immediately from people in Canada, the UK and Australia, Ireland and a lot of the other English-speaking countries. That was a real surprise to us but it makes sense – it’s a podcast that’s available for free internationally, wherever you are.”
With Fink dreaming up the “conspiracy theories are real” premise, the two writers, who met through theatre, approached the project with little more than “let’s do a podcast” in their minds. An East Village live performance of an early script by Cecil broadened their horizons. “It was really interesting because it was at that moment we realised: ‘this is a whole crowd of people that are normally at the bar, half-listening to music while chatting and doing whatever else’. We just give Cecil a script, not unlike an old-timer radio show where you have an actor with a script. He does the rest.”
Cranor adores the idea of a monologist making a personal connection, be it in dramas, on community stations or on talk radio.
“It’s really fascinating to me. It’s a really beautiful art form and a very comforting art form to me because you have this voice in your ears. It becomes the voice in your head and something very, very personal to you.”
Apparently a difficult thing to do across the Atlantic, too, without descending into right-wing shouting a la Rush Limbaugh.
“Ha, yes! Well… you obviously haven’t read some of our new scripts!” 
You can bet they’ll continue to aim for the space where old-timey, downhome US radio favourite News From Lake Wobegon gets a David Lynch twist. The real life conspiracy nuts are still ripe for the picking as well.
“I grew up Dallas, Texas, where JFK was assassinated, so you grow up in that town surrounded by conspiracy theorists all the time, especially around the Kennedy assassination. I definitely feel pretty in tune with that. I’ve always had a liking for the Area 51 mythos in Nevada. The aliens at Roswell, etc… When I was a teenager, if I could get it in late at night, you could listen to the Art Bell show [late night cult call-in Coast To Coast AM]. I always took that as more comedy than anything, the callers were so fascinating.”
Now he listens with a notepad and pen.
“Yeah! Sometimes I’ll go online and dial him up, there’s a lot of clips of his show on Youtube. Some of them make me laugh and some of them really are… the caller’s so convincing that you really do get a little panicked. A little freaked out.”

Episodes of Welcome To Night Vale are available here. For more info, go to [link]commonplacebooks.com[/link]