Two days after its wide release, “Death County, PA” has risen to the top spot of Apple’s ranking for top ‘Podcast Series.’
The six-part series is based on a years-long investigation of a series of suspicious deaths at the Dauphin County Prison since 2019 by Pennlive reporter Josh Vaughn. Vaughn narrates the podcast series.
As of Wednesday afternoon, “Death County, PA” is also ranked 8th overall for Top Shows by Apple Podcasts and the show is ranked 19th in the Top Subscriber Shows category. The first episode of the show, “Natural Causes,” is the 37th highest ranked episode.
WE’RE NUMBER 1!!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/2YDiGQokgn
— Joshua Vaughn (@JoshuaPVaughn) April 30, 2025
Vaughn will be hosting an AMA (ask me anything) session on Reddit at noon Thursday. Listeners of the podcast can leave their questions now.
Although Apple’s exact formula is private, podcast rankings are typically determined by a variety of factors, including number of subscribers, number of downloads and listener engagement. Apple’s rankings are particularly focused on the growth of new listeners, according to the podcast company Lower Street, especially new listeners in the previous one to three days.
The show is also ranked in the top 100 of Spotify’s list of “trending” shows — landing at 85, as of Wednesday afternoon.
Apple’s podcast listeners tend to be a little older, include more women and include more long-time listeners, according to a recent study by Cumulus.
The first two episodes of the show look into the mysterious deaths of two men in their 20s who died at the jail under mysterious circumstances. The show takes a critical look at the conclusions of Graham Hetrick, the Dauphin County coroner, who previously hosted his own reality TV show about his work as coroner.
The podcast was produced as a collaboration between PennLive and Wondery. PennLive is part of Advance Local, one of the largest news media groups in the United States, operating in 20 cities. Wondery has developed a number of award-winning, long-form podcast series, some of which have gone on to be produced into TV series.