Liminal: New Audio Fiction

While you wouldn’t have known it from the Golden Globes podcast nominations this year, audio fiction podcasts are largely a province of independent podcasting. While large podcast networks like Spotify have not figured out how to recoup their considerable investment in audio fiction, innovative indie podcasters have found that sweet spot between creative innovation and financial prudence.

Leave it to an independent podcaster like Acorn Arts and Entertainment to innovate a way to produce a high-quality sci-fi audio drama that has the sonic palette of a million-dollar production. Acorn Arts & Entertainment, which brought listeners Silvertongues, The Call of the Void, and The Inn At The End Of Things is back with another high-concept audio fiction (sci-fi, drama, horror, paranormal), called Liminal.

The premise is simple, deceptively so. When their brother is trapped in a terrifying dreamscape, Dominic and Caleb risk their minds and their lives to pull him back. The show is a limited series told in four episodes.

The show blends elements of dreams, alternate reality, paranormal forces, and brotherly love into a nightmarish hellscape where nothing seems real, but the stakes are all too real. The word, Liminal, is defined in two ways. First, occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold. Second, relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process. That’s the locus of the concept of this audio fiction masterpiece. It’s to Netflix’s Stranger Things show’s core concept of the Upside Down, a dark, parallel dimension mirroring our own, and more recently, a new documentary offering an inside look at the series finale

According to The Daily Dead, the show features liminal landscapes in the style of The Backrooms and is part of their existing VoidVerse Podcast Multiverse, which has amassed over 1.6 million global downloads.

Michael Alan Herman writes, “We have always been deeply inspired by the unnerving feeling of liminal spaces; they seem to be both comforting and deeply unsettling at the same time, and we set out to make a show that gives you that spine-crawling sensation.”

The podcast stars Isaac Jay (Head Count, Lessons in Chemistry), Daniel Santillana (Silvertongues), and Jeannine Thompson (Star Trek: Horizon).

Director and co-writer Josie Eli Herman adds, “Against this intriguing backdrop of horror, sci-fi, and mystery, the characters are the true centerpiece of the show. The actors of Liminal have some of the best performances we’ve featured in the VoidVerse to date.”

Who are the mad scientists mixing beakers of plot, character, action, suspense, conflict, eerie agitation, and space-time disorientation?

We have Michael Alan Herman, who is an award-winning writer and actor from St. Joseph, Michigan. He was the co-writer of James Franco’s film The Mad Whale in collaboration with Elysium Bandini Studios and has an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California.

Josie Eli Herman is the founder of Acorn Arts and Entertainment. She is a multi-avenue artist with a background in theater and fine art.

Some of her greatest passions are directing for theater and film, acting, photography, and portrait painting.

Liminal is ideally suited for those listeners who love the audio experience, exciting, mind-bending fiction, and being immersed in a world where the rules we live by are temporarily suspended.

Also check out by Acorn Arts and Entertainment, The Inn At The End Of Things, a Sleep Theatre podcast designed to help the listener find rest, guiding audiences gently to their dream spaces through folklore and kitchen table wisdom.

Hosted by the Inn’s Keeper, each listener is guided through simple meditations, adventures, and soundscapes. You'll meet the other residents and guests of the Inn, who share tales gathered from around the world. These tales are equipped with empowering archetypes and timeless themes, allowing the listener to reach full relaxation before falling asleep.

Check out the Best Independent Podcasts of 2026

For more podcast reporting, check out Ear Worthy on Forbes magazine.

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