Midst

Critical Role

149 episodes listed below

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Cosmic fiction with practical panic.

The gist

Midst follows the UNEND story into a surreal expedition aboard a vessel that keeps finding stranger rooms, strange truths, and worse timing. Its fiction moves with literary patience, then snaps into anxious crew chatter, dry jokes, and practical panic.

PRESS PLAY

Find your next episode

All episodes

About Midst

Midst is a serialized fiction feed whose recent UNEND chapters treat cosmic exploration as both an epic undertaking and a badly timed workplace problem. The ship is not just transportation. It is a premise, a political object, a home under stress, and a door into spaces that seem to ignore ordinary scale. The storytelling has a long stride. It will spend time with candied pearl fruit, salty mushroom fritters, shimmery gowns, old duties, tired smiles, and a party cracker before letting dread arrive at the window. Then the line tightens. A backpack is ripped open. Something has hatched. Someone laughs at the wrong moment. Someone else has to make the obvious comment, because even impossible hallways of doors are still hallways of doors. That is where the show finds its particular charge: wonder is real, but so are logistics, embarrassment, hunger, status, exhaustion, and the need for another drink. UNEND’s crew and surrounding figures move through a world with formal titles, family obligations, barony politics, scientific promise, and private anxieties that keep leaking into public speech. Dark mica transportation is discussed as history-shaping technology, but also as something a normal person might judge by comfort, bathrooms, fun, and whether anyone could stage a play aboard it. The show trusts the mundane questions. It also trusts ornate strangeness. Scenes can feel ceremonial one minute and bluntly comic the next, with cosmic stakes interrupted by practical concern or social awkwardness. The dialogue has the snap of people who know too much and still cannot control the room. The narration keeps a slightly wry distance without sanding off the feelings. Its world is crowded, tactile, and faintly ominous. Its humor comes from pressure, not detours. Listeners who enjoy speculative audio drama with ensemble chaos, invented lore, odd biology, and slow-burn mystery will find a lot to hold onto here. The feed also includes trailers, interludes, roundtable material, and introduced episodes from adjacent fiction shows, so the surrounding format can be porous. The core appeal remains the same: a strange vessel, a sprawling cosmos, and characters trying to remain functional while reality gets less cooperative.

Made for: For listeners who like serialized audio drama with dense worldbuilding, ensemble tension, surreal comedy, and a willingness to let atmosphere breathe before the plot bites.

What sets it apart: Midst makes the impossible feel lived-in by placing cosmic mystery beside food, bureaucracy, family pressure, awkward interviews, barrooms, and bodily weirdness. Its scale is huge, but its reactions stay human.

In their own words

Taking place several decades after the events of Midst and Moonward, UNEND focuses on a supernatural ship and a remarkable crew set forth on an expedition to explore the highest heights, deepest depths, and furthest reaches of the known Cosmos. But their journey is fraught with peril as they discover truths and realities far stranger than any of them could ever imagine…

As heard by us

Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026

Midst makes cosmic strangeness tangible through crew banter, bodily detail, resource problems, and an unpredictable ship.

Midst turns cosmic peril into an ensemble story crowded with strange bodies, damaged equipment, scarce supplies, and characters still finding time to needle one another.

Read our full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A hallway of doors, a hatched Omelette, and an impossible ship reward your taste for cosmic weirdness.

Press play if you want

an oddball ensemble whose survival problems still leave room for jokes
cosmic mysteries delivered through impossible spaces, unfamiliar bodies, and one consequential ship

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

cosmic voyagesimpossible ship spacesdark mica transportationbarony politicscrew logisticssurreal biologyaudio drama roundtablesspeculative fiction cross-promos

Talks about

Fiction

Best episodes of Midst

Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.

S3 E02: UNEND | PassageApr 15, 2026

A hallway of doors, a hatched surprise, and a crew that treats disaster like routine.

The chapter keeps moving with a steady, slightly absurd confidence: doors, hallway, Cleo's ripped backpack, and Omelette hatching into the middle of it all.

Introducing GIVE ME AWAY (Interview + Episode)Apr 13, 2026

A craft-first opening gives way to a tense procedural stretch with real friction.

The episode starts with a smart stretch on Mac and Jordana: the singular vision, the loose working style, and the way the performers seem to fold into the whole without showing the seams. The best part is how quickly it gets practical.

S3 E01: UNEND | MidnightApr 8, 2026

A banquet scene that turns small talk into a ship sized revelation.

Midnight opens with a crowded banquet of officials, mothers, and old allies, then turns a plain plate of pastries into moonshard history and ship lore.

Introducing WINDFALL - a dystopian sci-fi fantasy from Rogue Dialogue ProductionsMar 18, 2026

Windfall leans on barroom texture, patient tension, and dry timing.

Windfall opens in a barroom that feels tired, tight, and one bad sentence away from snapping. Its strength is the texture: authority, work, half-finished banter, and people too worn out to be polite.

UNEND | S2: Interlude 2Oct 22, 2025

A curious stopover that makes a miraculous ship feel like an everyday problem.

UNEND | S2: Interlude 2 treats a new voyage as a practical question: if dark mica can move people anywhere, what does that feel like inside the ship?

S2 E12: UNEND | AlienationSep 3, 2025

A patient cosmic standoff where hope and dread keep trading places.

UnEnd keeps the rescue math grim and immediate: the companions on the sun are still out of reach, and the crew has to decide whether to keep waiting for Merlin or accept that they may be trapped forever.

S2 E07: UNEND | FlashbackJul 16, 2025

A weary alien walk that turns hunger, curiosity, and memory into something oddly tender.

Midst settles into a bruised, slow-moving run through alien travel: a dark city, a map with holes in it, a newcomer everyone keeps calling the Biological Man, and a crew that feels one bad mood away from a bath and a change of clothes.

S2 E06: UNEND | DowntimeJul 9, 2025

A scrappy pause that stays busy with strain, texture, and character.

S2 E06, "Downtime," is a tight, resource-starved pause that still keeps the story moving. Merlin handles maintenance, Steve stays measured, and Everett ends up crammed into the cockpit, so survival feels less like heroics and more like chores.

Podcasts like Midst

The Magnus ArchivesRusty Quill
Fear, filed carefully, starts to breathe.
The Left Right GameQCODE
A road legend with no way back.
Passenger ListPassenger List and Radiotopia
A vanished flight, a record that will not settle.
Within the WiresNight Vale Presents
Found audio from a world slightly wrong.
The Hyacinth DisasterDavid Carlson
Deep-space panic on a failing channel.
Ghost WaxFar and Tall Tales
Casework from broken reality.

Find your next episode

About Midst

In their own words

As heard by us

Why you'd press play

Talks about

Best episodes of Midst

Podcasts like Midst

Episodes

Excalibur Con Panel - How to Ruin Everything: Third Person on Conflict, Mishap, and Catastrophe in Storytelling.

UNEND | Season 3 Roundtable

S3: UNEND | Postlude

S3 E018: UNEND | The Beginning

S3 E017: UNEND | Journeys

S3 E016: UNEND | Vector

S3 E015: UNEND | Clocking In

S3 E014: UNEND | Fast Forward

S3 E013: UNEND | Flaw

S3 E012: UNEND | Swimming Lessons

S3 E011: UNEND | Recreate

S3 E010: UNEND | Afterlife

S3 E09: UNEND | The Popular Man

S3 E08: UNEND | Breather

S3 E07: UNEND | Flux

S3 E06: UNEND | Bodily Autonomy

FEED SWAP: Introducing How i Died - a full-cast fiction podcast

S3 E05: UNEND | Retrospective

S3 E04: UNEND | Hollower

S3 E03: UNEND | Nostalgia

S3 E02: UNEND | Passage

Introducing GIVE ME AWAY (Interview + Episode)

S3 E01: UNEND | Midnight

UNEND Season 3 Sneak Peek

UNEND Season 3 | Official Trailer

Introducing WINDFALL - a dystopian sci-fi fantasy from Rogue Dialogue Productions

UNEND | S2 Roundtable

UNEND | S2: Interlude 2

S2 E18: UNEND | Die Trying

S2 E17: UNEND | Grace

S2 E16: UNEND | The Vot Hypothesis

S2 E15: UNEND | Crushing

S2 E14: UNEND | Guiding Light

S2 E13: UNEND | The Other Side

S2 E12: UNEND | Alienation

S2 E11: UNEND | Elsewhere

S2 E10: UNEND | Burn

S2 E09: UNEND | Bottled Up

S2 E08: UNEND | Thought Exercise

S2 E07: UNEND | Flashback

S2 E06: UNEND | Downtime

S2 E05: UNEND | Marrow

S2 E04: UNEND | Spectacle

FEED DROP: World Gone Wrong

S2 E03: UNEND | The Mourning After

S2 E02: UNEND | Stranger

S2 E01: UNEND | Lure

UNEND Season 2 | Official Trailer

Weird Kids X Third Person Crossover!

Third Person on Party of One with Jeff Stormer!

FEED DROP: Desert Skies

Midst Messages : Comics from the Cosmos

UNEND | S1 Roundtable

Worldbuilding for Masochists || Team Efforts, featuring THIRD PERSON (Xen, Matt Roen, and Sara Wile)

UNEND | S1: Interlude 1

UNEND | S1 E18: Homeward

UNEND | S1 E17: The Limits of Reality

UNEND | S1 E16: The Delta

UNEND | S1 E15: Last Call

UNEND | S1 E14: Safety

UNEND | S1 E13: Enlightenment

UNEND | S1 E12: Fathom

UNEND | S1 E11: The Disappearance of the Dazzling Duchess

UNEND | S1 E10: Zoron

UNEND | S1 E09: Kinship

UNEND | S1 E08: Relay

UNEND | S1 E07: Derealization

UNEND | S1 E06: Rough Air

UNEND | S1 E05: Hollow

UNEND | S1 E04: Uppermost

UNEND | S1 E03: Dine & Dash