☞ Station Archives
A WTNV season 1 retrospective
☞ What is Welcome to Night Vale about?
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.
Hello, listeners.
Current episode — 11: Wheat & Wheat By-ProductsRuntime — August 10-17
Length: 22 minutes
Weather: Cigarette Burns Forever by Adam Green
Initial release: November 15, 2012
"An important announcement from the Night Vale Council for Commerce to regularly consume wheat & wheat by-products. Plus, the dangers of discount bloodstones, property taxes going up, and changes afoot in our health insurance policies!"
Optional: Check out the Good Morning Night Vale cast retrospective.
Traffic report
Current episode — 10: Feral DogsRuntime — August 3-9
Length: 25 minutes
Weather: i Know This: by Rachel Kann
Initial release: November 1, 2012
"A roving pack of feral dogs terrorizes Night Vale. Plus, a new installment of Community Health Tips, the Fireperson Appreciation Parade, and free admission day at the Museum of Forbidden Technologies!"
Optional: Check out the Good Morning Night Vale cast retrospective.
Current episode — 9: PYRAMIDRuntime — July 27-August 2
Length: 23 minutes
Weather: Last Song by Jason Webley
Initial release: October 15, 2012
"A large, philosophical pyramid appears in town, announcing several messages, but is it what it seems? Plus, best practices for regular skin-checks, an update on the levitating cat, and whatever happened to that vile barber?"
Optional: Check out the Good Morning Night Vale cast retrospective.
Current episode — 8: The Lights in Radon CanyonRuntime — July 20-26
Length: 24 minutes
Weather: This Too Shall Pass by Danny Schmidt
Initial release: October 1, 2012
"Mysterious lights and sounds are coming from Radon Canyon. Plus, tips on how to win the town lottery, our newest (incorporeal) School Board member, and the abandoned mineshaft finally gets HBO!"
Optional: Check out the Good Morning Night Vale cast retrospective.
Current episode — 7: History WeekRuntime — July 13-19
Length: 23 minutes
Weather: Despite What You've Been Told by Two Gallants
Initial release: September 15, 2012
"Learn about the storied history of Night Vale during this special week's celebration. Plus, psychological assaults on tourists, highway construction announcements, and metal detectors in schools!"
Optional: Check out the Good Morning Night Vale cast retrospective.
Current episode — 6: The DrawbridgeRuntime — July 6-12
Length: 23 minutes
Weather: Aye by Dio
Initial release: September 1, 2012
"The city faces extensive delays in the revitalization of the Old Town Drawbridge. Plus, time for another pledge drive, changes afoot at the Night Vale Daily Journal, and good news for radio controlled airplane hobbyists!"
Optional: Check out the Good Morning Night Vale cast retrospective.
Current episode — 5: The Shape in Grove ParkRuntime — June 29-July 5
Length: 20 minutes
Weather: Jerusalem by Dan Bern
Initial release: August 15, 2012
"A protest against the removal of the Shape In Grove Park That No One Acknowledges Or Speaks About. Plus, changes to the school curriculum, a growing tarantula problem in town, and musical auditions!"
Optional: Check out the Good Morning Night Vale cast retrospective.
Current episode — 4: PTA MeetingRuntime — June 22-28
Length: 22 minutes
Weather: Closer by The Tiny
Initial release: August 1, 2012
"Last night's PTA meeting accidentally opens a rift in spacetime, and Night Vale faces the consequences. Plus, changes afoot at the Night Vale Daily Journal, controversy at Radon Canyon, and our annual high school football preview!"
Optional: Check out the Good Morning Night Vale cast retrospective.
Current episode — 3: Station ManagementRuntime — June 22-28
Length: 20 minutes
Weather: Bill & Annie by Chuck Brodsky
Initial release: July 15, 2012
"It's contract renewal time with station management, and negotiations get tricky. Plus, a new city litter initiative, books stop working, and a creeping fear comes to town!"
Optional: Check out the Good Morning Night Vale cast retrospective.
Episode — 2: Glow CloudRuntime — June 15-21
Length: 20 minutes
Weather: The Bus is Late by Satellite High
Initial release: July 1, 2012
"A mysterious, glowing cloud makes its way across Night Vale. Plus, new Boy Scouts hierarchy, community events calendar, and a PTA bake sale for a great cause!"
Optional: Check out the Good Morning Night Vale cast retrospective.
Episode — 1: PilotRuntime — June 8-14
Read reviews 
Length: 23 minutes
Weather: These and More Than These by Joseph Fink
Initial release: June 15, 2012
"A new dog park opens in Night Vale. Carlos, a scientist, visits and discovers some interesting things. Seismic things. Plus, a helpful guide to surveillance helicopter-spotting."
Optional: Check out the Good Morning Night Vale cast retrospective.
About Station Archives
Station Archives is a digital podcast club that "meets" by listening to and reviewing one episode of WTNV's first season each week, from Pilot through to One Year Later. All the members are linked to in the 'Members' section, and anyone who doesn't have a dedicated page on their site has their reviews hosted on the 'Episodes' page.
I created this club because I adore this podcast and have since I was 13, way back in the bygone year of 1475. It's essentially a way for people to reconnect to the show together!
About Welcome to Night Vale
Genres: Absurdist, supernatural, horror, comedy
Content warnings: Unreality, peril
Average length: ~20 minutes
Welcome to Night Vale is a cult-classic (if I do say so myself) podcast written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. The first episode was released in 2012, and the show has been airing bi-monthly since.
Episodes are narrated by Cecil Palmer (voiced by Cecil Baldwin), the town of Night Vale's local radio host. Episodes are presented as in-universe radio news broadcasts, featuring segments such as the traffic, Children's Fun Fact Science Corner, and weather, as well as occassional guest appearences by characters like Carlos The Scientist, the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home, and Deb, a sentient patch of haze.
Each season is 25 episodes long and features a cohesive plot alongside the more slice-of-life content.
List of episodes
Click on the episode titles to see what our non-Neocities interns have written. Sorted alphabetically.
"Pilot"
Intern Damien
"Let me start by saying that I've never listened to Welcome to Nightvale before, although I have heard about it's existance every now and then over the years..."
Let me start by saying that I've never listened to Welcome to Nightvale before, although I have heard about it's existance every now and then over the years. So the first episode, what can I say?
I really like the premise, an isolated town, weird happenings, a friendly yet kinda menacing in-a-way radioshow host, it has an very cool atmosphere going for it. The part that stood out to me this episode is about the strange lights above Arby's. Such a chilling and funny reading. "Ladies and Gentleman, the future is here, and it's about a 100 feet above the Abry's"
I am exited about the Carlos plotline, a group of scientists enters the town and wants to do research on what is going on. Who or what are the robed figures in the dog park? What about those helicopters with birds on them? What do you mean there is an house there that does not excist? And how come Carlos is so damn handsome?!?
My hopes for the podcast are that there will be connecting points, some story perhaps and hopefully some answers along the way.
Intern İki
"A Scientist Walks into the Desert [,] asks for the truth, and is answered with Cartesian doubt..."
A Scientist Walks into the Desert…
…asks for the truth, and is answered with Cartesian doubt. How to make sense of Night Vale, this notedly “weird”, “absurd”, and “vaguely ominous” (why vaguely?) fictional desert town? Fear not, dear listeners, for City Council is the sole epistemic authority on what is real, even with a scientist (and his team) in town. Oh well, we have all been scientists at one point or another of our lives.
Why Carlos? (“Why his perfect and beautiful coat?”) My friend has this theory that if a Pleistocene man was transported to here and now, what he’d see would not be buildings, public spaces that are not public spaces (the “Dog Park”), triangulated air surveillance, commercial airlines disrupting basketball practice – he couldn’t quite perceive them, what he’d see would be primordial soup: colors, shapes, and perhaps, the hooded figures, and throw in angels to the mix too (Yum! But no, perhaps – they could throw in a few logs to the bonfire, in exchange for some meat? Did we have salt back then? Yes?).
But primordial soup has to wait for Carlos has brought his toolbox: a lab, a team, experiments, seismic monitors, and “a blinking box in his hand covered with wires and tubes” which, to me, reads essential scientific equipment. He’s measuring, experimenting, calculating, investigating – what does he find out? That the sun doesn’t set at the right time, that there’s a house that wants to remain peerless in its non-existence, that there are ghost earthquakes, that there is something seriously wrong with the Night Vale Radio Station. He finds that the town of Night Vale is a giant heap of noise where a reliable signal is a needle in a haystack. Except, no, there’s a pattern here: It’s all aleatory, my God, there’s not a single constant. Let there be soup.
I fear for Carlos. Yes, the vague yet menacing agency plays a part in this. But also, “I fear for anyone caught between what they know and what they don’t yet know that they don’t know”. Doesn’t that perfectly sum up the condition of the stranger in town?
Listeners around the world have classified Night Vale as a “horror” podcast, while simultaneously asserting that it’s a “surreal comedy”. I fear for genre conventions, fear for my ability to predict and calculate based on existing structures. I wonder, why is tuning into Cecil so calming with terrors abound? Why, “while we all pretend to sleep” (isn’t this what trying to fall asleep looks like?), we tune in, as I have every night when I was eighteen? Perhaps for the simple fact that if there’s everything to fear – there’s nothing to fear. Perhaps, if there’s everything to doubt – there’s nothing to doubt. I fear for my epistemic freedom as a free man, which, coincidentally, is what the name “Carlos” means.
So why Carlos? I remember a quote, which is from a writer I’m not name dropping for immersive reasons, that all great stories start one of two ways: a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. Night Vale is the latter – is it Carlos or us, the listener? Do we dare knock on the door of this non-existent desert town? This town that is almost trivially unknowable, except, it is unknowable in interesting ways.
So I have redeemed my epistemic freedom, and I know the City Council is not happy about this. Businesses dead at conception, Arby’s haloed with an alien glow, vast underground cities beneath bowling alleys – I already know the theory of Night Vale cannot be completed. I hope that there are a thousand competing hypotheses in this conspiratorial town, and as soon as we falsify one, I hope there are these and more than these, and we dig in deeper, to end up at something which turns out to be nothing, which turns out to be something.
And we saw the truth, and it was good; and we were going to divide the truth from the false. I swear. The soup just has more of a kick to it, this way.
Intern Jesse
"Carlos, perfect and beautiful..."
Carlos, perfect and beautiful. I've listened to a smattering of random episodes but I'm excited to finally start this series. I'm very delighted with the style it is definitely of a certain time and niche but the writing's quality keeps it from feeling dated. I'm interested in how episodic it'll be as well.
Intern list
How to join
Listen to one episode of Welcome to Night Vale each week and write something about it! Post it to your site or forward your piece to me through my email or my Neocities profile . Make sure to include your name (and a link to your website or a social media profile if you want)!
QnA
How long does my review have to be?
That's totaly up to you! Just make sure it's not, like, a sentence and you're good.
When's the deadline to send my review in?
Sunday at 10:00 PM. It's perfectly alright if you're a bit late.
What kind of review should it be?
Once again, whatever you'd like! The goal of this club is simply to get people talking about WTNV's first year. You could write anything — from a collection of your thoughts on it to a critical 15,000 word response, including everything in-between and elsewhere.
I want to join, but I only found out about this [X] weeks after it began.
No worries! Listen to whatever episode we're on that week, write a review, and send it in. Preferably you'd then go back and do the same for previous episodes.
