The Truth was an anthology fiction podcast and founding member of Radiotopia by PRX. Episodes were released about once every two weeks. Several nationally syndicated public radio programs, including This American Life, Studio 360, Snap Judgment, and The Story, featured work by The Truth.
Voice actors who appeared on the show included Jesse Eisenberg, Lauren Adams, Scott Adsit, Craig muMs Grant, Tami Sagher, James Urbaniak, Tom Ligon, Jo Firestone, Tallie Medel, Jackie Hoffman, and F. Murray Abraham.
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.