Serial was the first podcast I ever loved. I listened to it alone on a long drive through the flat center of California, where the landscape is so empty it feels abstract. With nothing much to look at, Sarah Koenig’s voice took over, filling the car. It was the first time a story in my ears felt larger than the space around me. The case mattered, but what held me was the sense that I was inside the thinking itself, moving through the questions with Sarah instead of listening from a distance.
That was the first time I understood that in audio, suspense isn’t only about what happens next. It’s about the relationship you form with the voice guiding you through it.
Podcasts create a unique kind of closeness. The attention they ask for is different from the attention a page demands. You can slip into them, the way you slip into the company of someone you know well.
And if you’re really taken with the hosts, their voices begin to travel with you—into traffic, into laundry, into the other mindless parts of your day. They start to feel less like entertainment and more like companions. You might catch yourself answering back, or lowering the volume when someone enters the room, as though you’re protecting something private.
Week after week, their rhythm becomes familiar. You recognize the laugh that means something is genuinely funny, the shift in tone that signals uncertainty, the choked sound of holding back tears. Because the voice arrives directly in your ears, it feels intimate, even when it’s broadcast to millions.
I’ve felt that closeness myself in ways that are slightly embarrassing, albeit sincere. I wrote an entire novel about podcasters, and much of its emotional backbone was shaped by a decade of fangirling Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark from My Favorite Murder.
Ten years is a long time to spend with someone’s voice, long enough that certain stories feel like shared history and inside jokes no longer feel inside. If one of them found themselves in trouble and put out a call for help tomorrow, I know my hand would go up before I had time to analyze the impulse. I would donate. I would repost. I would look for some tangible way to be useful.
The instinct would be automatic, the same way it would if a friend texted me in a bind. It doesn’t feel like fandom in the moment. It feels like loyalty. And yet we’ve never met. They don’t know my name. Still, the reflex is there.
That reflex is what I wanted to explore in This Story Might Save Your Life. The novel follows two best friends, Benny and Joy, who host a wildly popular comedy survival podcast. Millions of listeners come for stories about plane crashes and avalanches, but they stay for the banter—for the way Joy cuts Benny off when he starts overexplaining, for the way he pretends to be offended and then doubles down anyway.
Their chemistry isn’t scripted; it’s the ease of people who know each other well enough to finish each other’s sentences. Over time, Benny and Joy’s audience stops behaving like spectators; they start behaving like participants.
So when Joy vanishes, the mystery unfolds in a huge public way. Overnight, the world decides it knows something. The same listeners who once tuned in to puzzle through survival stories now find themselves puzzling through one of their own. People are certain they’ve seen her in airports, in small towns, in cities she’s never visited. Tip lines flood with calls. Theories contradict each other. Sightings overlap.
Everyone wants to help, or at least to be part of the story. But as more voices enter the conversation, the harder it becomes to separate noise from evidence.
What none of these callers know is that Joy has only been sharing part of herself. The version of her they heard each week was honest, but it was curated. Some details were too complicated to discuss. Some fears weren’t fit for broadcast. The audience had been given access to her voice, but they didn’t have the full picture.
That difference matters. Joy had shared her humor, her anxieties, her friendship with Benny. She had invited listeners into what felt like the center of her life. But a microphone is a one-sided mirror. It made Joy feel accessible, while keeping everyone firmly on the other side. Once she was gone, there was no way through. Still, that didn’t stop anyone from thinking they could help.
Writing this book forced me to think about suspense differently. Joy’s disappearance spills outward into a community that already loves her. When the missing person has been narrating your commute for years, the story doesn’t stay between detectives and family. It belongs to everyone who feels entitled to an answer.
Long before I understood any of this as a writer, I felt it as a listener, alone in my car with Sarah Koenig’s voice. I didn’t know her, and she certainly didn’t know me. But when the episodes stopped, I missed her. That surprised me then. It doesn’t now. A voice can reach millions and still feel singular. When it goes quiet, the silence feels personal.
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