Tanis (podcast)

Nic Silver, a former radio host, discovers references to something called Tanis in two disparate sources. He begins hosting the podcast in an effort to determine what and where Tanis may be, quickly enlisting the help of an "information specialist" known via the username Meerkatnip. Silver comes to believe that Tanis is currently somewhere in the Puget Sound area. His search, aided with information provided by Meerkatnip, leads him to confront a variety of mysterious groups and organizations: Tesla Nova Corporation, a group Silver calls "The Cult of Tanis", and a group known as the Grackles.

Tanis is a mystery horror podcast released every two weeks on iTunes and other services.[1][2] Terry Miles, with the production company Public Radio Alliance, serves as the show's executive producer and provides the voice work for Silver, who Miles refers to as his "cousin" and who is listed as the show's other executive producer.[1][3] Episodes of the show take approximately one week to plot and write, another week to record, and two weeks to mix, edit, and score. Dialogue is recorded where it occurs in the narrative, such that a scene which takes place in Tanis in a living room would be recorded in an actual living room. Tanis is scored with backing music and features a musical intro song by Miles's former band, Ashley Park. Financial support for the podcast comes from listeners via Patreon and sponsors, for whose products and services ads are integrated into the production.[3]

The podcast was described as "deep fiction" by The Guardian because, while it blends real-world and fictional events and people into its narrative, the show's creators and characters never acknowledge that the podcast is fictitious.[1][4] The podcast, according to Molly Osberg in Vice, occurs in a world that "isn't so much an alternate reality as [a world] that hovers comfortably adjacent to ours."[5] In addition to the regular episodes, Miles also produces a variety of supporting documents and interviews which he posts on the show's official website in order to lend plausibility to the notion that the events of the show may be real.[3] Tanis mimics the successful format of the earlier nonfictional investigative podcast Serial, notably its "unpretentious narrative style and mystery 'plot'".[2] It is one of a spate of podcasts released in the wake of Serial's first season in 2014 that remixed those elements of Serial with the horror and mystery genres, other such podcasts including Alice Isn't Dead, ars Paradoxica, and Tanis sister show The Black Tapes.[2]

Themes of powerlessness and uneasy alliance with a (possible) enemy are present in Tanis's narrative.[2] Michael J. Collins described a pattern in mystery horror podcasts of narrators existing within uncertain personal or professional situations, such as Silver's inconsistent work and sleep schedules, which mimic "the lifestyles of overworked, yet unremunerated, Millennials."[2] Collins wrote that Tanis evoked millennial economic unease when Silver accepts aid in his investigation from Tesla Nova Corporation and thus becomes complicit with the organization Silver believes may be responsible for the goings-on he is investigating.[2]