“Dateline NBC”’s“ ”Keith Morrison Explores 'Triumphs and Tragedies' in New Podcast “Morrison Mysteries” (Exclusive)

The award-winning journalist tells PEOPLE listeners will “get glued” to the literary works featured in his new podcast series plumbing the highs and lows of humanity

Keith Morrison has covered a wide range of topics over the course of his previous eight podcast shows — the murder of a beauty queen, the killing of a teen in her blue Mustang — but with his newest podcast series, the Dateline NBC correspondent is putting true crime aside for once and dipping into the literary world.

Morrison Mysteries, premiering Oct. 23 on all major podcast platforms, sees Morrison narrating classic fiction — something he was skeptical at first about when Dateline special projects senior producer Charmian Ling proposed the idea. The two have worked together for nearly 23 years, collaborating initially on a story about Vietnam.

“When she comes up with an idea, you pay attention to it,” Morrison tells PEOPLE. “At first, I thought she was nuts, but it grew on me.”

Morrison is starting with Washington Irving’s haunting 1820 short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, long considered one of American’s finest ghost stories. The podcast will break up the work into three episodes. After that, the veteran journalist and storyteller hints he may tackle another well-known work of fiction ideal for the holiday season.

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“Their language may sound arcane at first, but they are really interesting explorations of how people do things, how they react, their foibles and their triumphs and their tragedies,” he explains.

While fiction like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has unequivocally been read by millions of people since its debut, adapted to audio books and several films, Morrison suggests his podcast show will make the works sound fresh despite their time-honored origins.

“When you put them together the way we have and listen to them, they're quite absorbing and they follow a narrative track that is hard to not listen to as you go. You kind of get glued to it,” he says.

That’s a lofty promise to make, but when it comes from Morrison, it’s worth giving the masterful storyteller the benefit of the doubt.

The journalist’s previous podcast series, Murder in Apartment 12, a six-episode true crime series that debuted in September investigating the death of Arkansas beauty queen Nona Dirksmeyer, hit number 1 on the Apple Podcasts chart and still sits at the third spot. Many of his previous podcast series, including The Thing About Pam, The Girl in the Blue Mustang and Murder & Magnolias, also performed well on Apple’s podcast chart.

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Morrison, who records podcasts episodes in a “little office” in his California home, is surprised with the sheer success of his podcast shows. Given his more traditional journalism background in TV, and his start in radio, Morrison has expressed outright incredulity when he’s approached by colleagues about projects he views as somewhat unconventional.

“I'll say, ‘Are you crazy?’ Same thing I've said about this Morrison Mysteries, but inevitably it's turned out to be terrific ideas and they work,” he admits, adding, “Podcasts are especially effective, and in some ways more so than a movie or television show in that they're very intimate. You want to be enveloped in the story, and it's almost a better way to do that I find if you're listening, maybe driving along or something, but your attention is focused on the words.”

To that end, Morrison is flattered by the legions of people who listen to his podcasts, whether they're driving, running, cooking or even falling asleep to his buttery smooth narration.

“You wouldn't believe the number of people who said I put them to sleep every night, which happy to, but it reminds me also of the old radio days when the family would gather around the radio to listen to some drama which had been prepared for them,” Morrison continues. “It's really exactly the same thing.”

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The first three episodes of Morrison Mysteries release on Monday, Oct. 23 on all major podcast platforms, with additional episodes dropping in the coming months tied to the holidays.

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