Established in 2012, semimonthly podcast Welcome to Night Vale poses as a radio broadcast from the fictional U.S. desert town of Night Vale. Within a year of hitting the Internet, the surrealist/satire show was one of the most popular podcasts on iTunes. Welcome to Night Vale started releasing recordings of live-theater editions of the show beginning in 2014, and in 2017 the show's sixth live album, Ghost Stories, became its first to top the Billboard Comedy Albums chart. Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink created Welcome to Night Vale in 2012, posting its pilot episode on June 15 of that year via Commonplace Books. Future episodes arrived on the first and 15th day of each month. With narration by Cecil Baldwin as host Cecil Gershwin Palmer, the show quickly found a following, and by mid-2013 it was battling NPR's This American Life for the number one spot on the iTunes podcast chart. In early 2014, Welcome to Night Vale began touring with a live show; the album Condos: Live at the Bell House saw release in February 2014. It was followed by Debate: Live at Roulette that May and Thrilling Adventure Hour & Welcome to Night Vale Live in San Diego in July. The Librarian: Live at Skirball arrived in early 2015. Coinciding with the release of the first novel based on the show, in October of 2015 Fink and Cranor were guests on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The franchise then reached the Top Three of the Billboard Comedy Albums chart with consecutive albums: 2016's The Investigators, 2017's Ghost Stories (their first number one), and 2018's All Hail (which reached number two). ~ Marcy Donelson