In 2009, Jonathan Mitchell and Hillary Frank received funding from
American Public Media to produce pilot stories together. One of those stories was "Moon Graffiti", which was later featured on
The Guardian podcast and won the 2010 Gold Mark Time Award. This story later became the first episode of
The Truth. In December 2011, Ed Herbstman and Mitchell hired a group of improvisors (many from the
Magnet Theater, which Herbtsman co-founded) to write stories together, with the goal of producing a story in one month. The first piece was "Interruptible". The group continued working together and eventually reached the podcast's current output of two stories a month.
The Truth was named by iTunes to be the Best New Arts podcast of 2012 and the #1 new podcast of 2012 by
The Daily Dot. The show's title comes from a quote by
Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures."
The Truth stopped production in 2023 after the episode
Pariah. == Episodes ==