the best long-form podcasts by investigative journalists
I’m part of Podcast Club, something I set-up in late 2019 when my ‘adult’ life was falling apart, an ideal pre-cursor to the larger scale falling apart that was 2020 (and onwards!).
The point? Bring lonely, bored, frustrated, people together with something safe to discuss. Perhaps, ‘safe‘ strikes you as an interesting choice of adjective? Well, if the common denominator in the group was being over 30 and less than content in where you were in life, I can assure you many topics can feel loaded and depressing.
Pregnancy and children? When you desperately want them but are single, or don’t want them and alienated from nearly all your peers? Avoid.
Career? When you live for the weekend; don’t have a permanent contract; loathe your job; don’t have any prospects in your location; are too scared to leave because your employer is sympathetic of mental health issues; wish a plague (not knowing one was on the horizon) to strike down your colleagues; your wages are barely keeping you afloat; you feel like you betrayed your younger self? Avoid.
Politics? When the ruling party; Brexshit; treatment of refugees and the environmental crisis make you want too either kill everyone else, or yourself, and you feel like it’s all hopeless? Avoid.
Hopes? Non-existent, unattainable, or make you feel like you’re stuck in a loop of arrested development? Avoid.
Ok, ok, I jest. We weren’t as bleak as all that. But, we were sometimes. It’s not always easy to make new friends as you get older, mostly because we are so damn good at masking by this age, protecting ourselves, saying what is expected to make everything easier. Having a podcast to both springboard and anchor the conversation just felt like an easier way of forging connections, preferable to doing a round the house of how everyone is doing and inevitably lying!
As kinda-nerdy-leftie-creative-types, we chose podcasts that inspired the kind of meaty conversations we all craved, and personally, it felt enriching. I would leave with more people/concepts to look into; frequently having had my own thoughts challenged. This is my ideal type of growth, pushed about something not so immediately about yourself. It’s like a book club, but for people with ADHD, or who are too busy to settle with a book, most of us listened during chores or commutes, brightening up cleaning and cooking sessions.
It worked too, Hannah (freshly back home after years of living in Canada) Joe (wanting to let his inner nerd out and spend time with people outside of pubs) and Charely (just moved to Cardiff from Gloucester) made new friends. Chronic over thinkers, had a space to focus on something external, the introverted conversationalists could listen for hours, and for me, with a mind unhappy in its own company, I just got to feel really present and pause the inner-monologues.
Whether you want to start your own Podcast Club, or just be inspired by quality investigative journalism, here’s a list of some of the podcasts that kept us talking the longest.
Perfect podcasts for long commutes
All of the following recommendations explore one topic in depth, providing at least 8 hours of immersive entertainment. These are the kind of capers to get lost in, either on long journeys or to brighten up the chores.
Wind of Change - Pineapple Street Studios and Crooked Media
Premise: Did the CIA write The Scorpions hit song, ‘Wind of Change‘? The very song, that helped fuel the revolution that ended the Soviet Union?
What to expect: A series that’s pulling on a thread and hoping for everything to unravel. There’s interviews with fascinating people, be them former CIA agents or rock icons; really odd on-location meetings like a GI Joe convention; and a deep dive into 1989’s Moscow Peace Festival.
Nice Try Utopian! - Curbed and Vox Media
Premise: This series explores the ways in which, and reasons why, utopias have failed. This is ideal if you’re looking for something that has an overarching theme but, you want to be able to listen to stand-alone episodes.
The host, Avery Trufelman, was a producer on the award-winning design podcast 99% Invisible (which I’ve shouted out before, in my ‘7 Of The Best Podcasts About Culture 2019’ post) and it’s exciting to see that she’s written this. Her attention to detail, and the depth of the research done, sets her stuff apart.
What to expect: Big visions, some executed beautifully and others ending disastrously, all revealing something about the human desire to find and uplift community, or to runaway from it all together and start again.
Coverage is diverse: Jamestown, the first permanent British colony in America; Chandigarh, and the team of Indian architects who attempted to write a new narrative for India through urban design; Levittown/Concord Park, a suburb that dared to make home ownership for African Americans a reality; Alapine, a lesbian community in Alabama and even Disney World’s Epcot - an acronym for the “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow”.
Ear Hustle - Radiotopia
Premise: Ear Hustle started in 2017 and was the first podcast created and produced in prison, California’s San Quentin State Prison to be precise. The series features stories of the daily realities of life inside, shared by those living through it.
I found this podcast in 2019 and have been smitten ever since, when it was named a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting, I couldn’t have agreed more with the summation that each installment is “consistently surprising and beautifully crafted”.
What to expect:
More vulnerable truths than sensationalist statements.
To become besotted by Earlonne Woods (prisoner).
And, to appreciate the easy dynamic between Earlonne and co-presenter Nigel Poor (visual artist, teaches classes for the Prison University Project). It’s probably not that easy to establish, there could have been a formality to their relationship or an obvious division of mentor and mentee, but it feels like a real friendship, and the episodes benefit from their mutual curiosity and respect.
The Trojan horse Affair - Serial Productions and New York Times
Premise: A letter accusing a host of muslim school management members of trying to radicalise their students, prompted investigations and additions to counterterrorism policies. But, was it a fake? Who lost and who benefitted? What were the motivations?
What to expect: Well, this one kept me up at night, as a former teacher who trained in a multicultural Birmingham school. I barely survived Michael Gove, and his hideous ideas about education, so seeing him painted as a villain suited my own bias! The stand-out strand of the series, was the way the hosts (a young British Muslim and older white American man) realised they had entirely different views of how to show journalistic integrity.
Read a great article about it here.
The Shrink Next Door - Wondery
Premise: Journalist Joe Nocera, had a story gift wrapped for him when he realised that his neighbour in the Hamptons, psychiatrist to celebrities and host of endless, extravagant summer parties, might have actually usurped one of his patients to become the home owner.
What to expect:
A tight narrative structure, necessary, when a complicated 30-year long relationship is being condensed into 10 episodes.
More twists and turns than a rollercoaster.
A true-crime podcast about mind control rather than murder.
Welcome to Your Fantasy - Pineapple Street Studios and Gimlet Media
Premise: Taken straight from the show itself because, as far as a summary goes, it’s a cracking description! This is the story of how two men—an immigrant from India and a children’s TV producer from New Jersey—transformed a seedy nightclub in Los Angeles into a global phenomenon, and how paranoia and greed turned Chippendales into a hotbed for drugs, corruption, and murder.
What to expect: Another amazing presenter, sensing a theme? Historian, Natalia Petrzela leads us through the labyrinthine story and transforms my naive perception that the Chippendales were harmless greasy chumps into a more sinister understanding of how the commodification of their bodies served a few power-hungry men.
That’s my roundup for now, please let me know in the comments if you do give any of these a listen because I’d love to hear your views. Recommendations are also welcome.
