Must-Listen: Alice Isn't Dead, a Mystery Podcast

When Fringe actress Jasika Nicole read the scripts for the podcast Alice Isn't Dead, she was basking in the sun outside her acupuncturist's Los Angeles office. Still, she "started to have chills," reflecting on a moment in the first episode when her character, a truck driver searching through Middle America for her presumed-dead wife, is confronted by a grotesque man in a roadside diner. Before committing a gruesome act that's too good to spoil, he devours an omelette in front of her with his bare hands. The scene is told with excruciatingly icky details that--alongside elements like a highway exit sign proffering a vague "Anaconda Opportunity"--exhibit the podcast's peculiar descriptive flair. But at its heart, Alice Isn't Dead is a compelling existential mystery, like Twin Peaks on the move. Narrated by Nicole and created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor (the duo behind the mega-popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale), it presents an engrossing and dread-inducing shadowland that resembles our world, albeit populated by murderous phantoms and towns that inexplicably burst into flames. "It creates such a distinct atmosphere of fear and being unsettled," Nicole says. "It penetrates your subconscious."

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