Imagine Neil Gaiman got drunk and started writing the local dispatches for a small town NPR station.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Here at Tosche Station, we like to bring you the very best of non-Star Wars geekery and flail about the awesomeness of things like Mageworlds and Pacific Rim, in addition to our main mission.  Now we are adding Welcome to Night Vale to our collective list of things to be enthusiastic about.  In June, Welcome to Night Vale overtook NPR’s This American Life to become the #1 most downloaded podcast on iTunes.  (You can listen to NPR’s interview with Night Vale creators Jeffery Cranor and Jeremy Fink here.)

Night Vale has slowly been taking over Tumblr lately.  It’s the second best podcast on iTunes (after Tosche Station Radio, of course), featuring the news and events from Night Vale, a small desert community somewhere in the American Southwest where all sorts of strange things happen.  Narrated by the sonorous tones of Cecil, listeners can keep up with what’s going on around town, what new civic works are opening (like the dog park), public service announcements (people and dogs are not allowed in the dog park), and be reminded that the sheriff’s secret police and a vague, but menacing government agency are always watching.

It may take a few episodes for the humor to truly sink in, but Night Vale also produces a number of incredibly quotable comments that you can then use to torment your friends and relatives, such as “The future is here, and it’s about a hundred feet above the Arby’s”; “Wednesday has been cancelled, due to a scheduling error”; and “ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD” (The Glow Cloud now being the Night Vale school board president).  Citizens of Night Vale include Cecil, the radio broadcaster, Carlos the Scientist with his perfect and beautiful hair, Teddy Williams, owner of the Desert Blossom Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex and its mysterious city under Lane 5, Old Woman Josie and her angels, the Hooded Figures, City Council, and Hiram McDaniels, a 3600 lb. 5-headed dragon currently incarcerated for insurance fraud, among other notables.

If you listen to only one podcast, it should be Tosche Station Radio.  But if you listen to only TWO podcasts and have have a yen for something that might have resulted if H.P. Lovecraft had lived in the American Southwest and had a sense of humor, and you also have about thirty minutes twice a month, then we suggest adding Welcome to Night Vale to your iTunes subscription list.

(Trust us, you won’t regret it.  Until you will.  Good night, dear readers, good night.)

(Also, if you *do* listen to Night Vale and didn’t read this post in Cecil’s voice, you totally should have, because that was completely how I wrote it.  For shame, readers, for shame.)