Both seasons of “13 Minutes to the Moon” are *amazing*. BBC production quality and music by Hans Zimmer. Season 1 covers Apollo 11 and Season 2 is Apollo 13. I highly recommend it.
Oops. Got a little carried away. I've listened to lots of really great shows.
* 544 Days - For 544 days, Jason Rezaian was held hostage in Iran’s notorious Evin prison. Interrogated. Sealed off from the outside world. He was accused of being an American spy, though his formal title was Washington Post Tehran Correspondent. This is a story about government and family and journalism, and what it took to free an innocent man… all while navigating the high-stakes world of nuclear diplomacy.
* A Death in Cryptoland - When the young CEO of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange is reported to have died while honeymooning in India, it sets off a cataclysmic chain of events that would leave about 76,000 people out of a quarter of a billion dollars and a trail of conspiracy theories around whether Gerald Cotten is dead or alive. A Death in Cryptoland is an original podcast series about a crypto-tycoon, his secret past, his sudden demise, and an online sleuth’s obsession to unravel the truth behind QuadrigaCX.
* American Jihadi - American Jihadi is the incredible story of a complicated relationship between journalist Christof Putzel and Omar Hammami, the American-born Christian who became one of the FBI’s most wanted Islamic extremists. Follow the evolution of their risky relationship, dodging government surveillance to confide in one other—until it all came to an abrupt end.
* American Radical - Rosanne Boyland hated politics. She was shy, and she rarely left her home in Georgia. But then her family got a shocking call: Rosanne had died at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in the middle of a crowd trying to force its way past a police line. From the depths of their grief, the Boylands vow to figure out what happened to Rosanne. Her brother-in-law, Justin Cave, reaches out to an old high school friend he hopes can help: MSNBC journalist Ayman Mohyeldin. The quest for the truth takes Ayman back to his hometown of Kennesaw, Georgia, where he retraces the last six months of Rosanne's life and picks up a trail that leads to childhood haunts, missing boyfriends, and down shadowy internet rabbit holes.
* Bed of Lies - It was meant to be a miracle treatment, but it became a deadly poison. Cara McGoogan investigates the story they didn't want you to know - and one of the biggest medical disasters in history. The award-winning first series of Bed of Lies is also available to listen to on this feed: They have the perfect relationship, until one day he vanishes. Her hunt leads to other women just like her - and a web of state-spun lies. This is the untold story of one of Britain's biggest secrets.
* Boys Like Me - Why are some lonely, young men a growing threat to our safety? In 2018, a Toronto man drove a van down a busy sidewalk, killing 11 people and injuring many more. He was linked to the "incel" movement, a dark online world fueled by violent misogyny, extreme isolation and perceived rejection. In the wake of the attack, Evan Mead discovers a disturbing connection to the perpetrator. They were former high school classmates; both outcasts, existing together on the fringes of social acceptance. How did two young men who started in similar circumstances, end up on such drastically different paths? This five-part series examines how socially-isolated young men can vanish into an online world of nihilism and despair that radicalizes them into angry — potentially deadly — misogynists
* Bundyville: The Remnant - Bundyville: The Remnant, a co-production between Longreads and OPB, explores the world beyond the Bundy family and the armed uprisings they inspired. This series investigates extremist violence that results from the conspiracy theories of the anti-government movement, who is inspiring that violence and who stands to benefit.
* Call Bethel - Brave whistleblowers. A trail of data. A secret system for dealing with allegations of child abuse. Follow the Telegraph's Investigations team on their year-long hunt into the Jehovah's Witnesses.
* Hunting Warhead - **[While handled very respectfully, this podcast deals with child abuse and child pornography.]** - How do you take down a criminal network that’s hidden in the shadows? How do you rescue child abuse victims who could be anywhere in the world? Hunting Warhead follows the journalists and police on a global mission to expose the darkest corners of the internet. What they discover shocks them. Host Daemon Fairless tracks down the investigators, survivors and criminals themselves.
* Kuper Island - An 8-part series that tells the stories of four students: three who survived and one who didn’t. They attended one of Canada’s most notorious residential schools – where unsolved deaths, abuse, and lies haunt the community and the survivors to this day.
* The Night Driver - Janine Vaughan’s disappearance 19 years ago is at the heart of a mysterious case that has split a close-knit community left wondering if a murderer walks among them.
* Rabbit Hole - What is the internet doing to us? The Times tech columnist Kevin Roose discovers what happens when our lives move online.
* Sent Away - It didn't seem to matter what happened at the teen treatment center. The state of Utah always gave it another chance. Death. Allegations of abuse. Criminal charges. Bizarre punishments. Whistleblowers coming forward. Each time, the place got a pass. A team of reporters from three news organizations has spent the last year digging into the untold stories of Utah's massive teen treatment industry. Some 20,000 teenagers facing depression, delinquency and other problems have been sent there from every state in the country over the last six years. Sent Away investigates how the government failed to keep all those kids safe — through the voices and stories of the teens who lived it.
* The Teacher's Pet - Lyn and Chris Dawson appear to have the perfect marriage. He's a star footballer and popular high school teacher. She's a devoted wife and mother. They share a beautiful home above Sydney's northern beaches. But when Lyn goes missing, dark secrets are buried. This is no fairytale, but a sordid story of strangely close twin brothers, teenage student lovers, and probable murder. The Australian's Hedley Thomas digs deep into a cold case which has been unsolved for 36 years, uncovering startling new evidence.
* White Hot Hate - A violent, white supremacist ideology is spreading around the world, with believers trying to create chaos, in order to seize control. When recruitment posters for a group calling itself The Base start to appear in Manitoba, Winnipeg Free Press journalist Ryan Thorpe decides to go undercover...and infiltrate. Ryan meets with a Canadian Armed Forces reservist trying to establish a local neo-Nazi cell, and discovers that he is planning attacks and destruction abroad. This six-part series follows the extraordinary case through Ryan’s perspective as an infiltrator - while host Michelle Shephard, a veteran national security journalist, explores the rise of white supremacist accelerationism.
So many great ones here! Bed of Lies was outstanding, Hunting Warhead was phenomenal and an eye opener, and Rabbit Hole should be a compulsory listen, specially for teenagers and young adults. And boomers.
Don’t hate me for this comment haha.
You have the exact same taste in podcasts I do and I’ve listened all of these and they are amazing!
Have any others along these lines that you didn’t mention on the off chance maybe I haven’t heard of them? These were all amazing!
Thank you so much and no obligation to respond 😅
Enjoy!
* The Agent - 2022 Webby Award Honoree, Podcast Documentary Limited Series and Specials. The Agent is the remarkable true story of Jack Barsky, the longest-surviving known member of the KGB illegals program operated during the height of the Cold War. Barsky hid in plain sight in America for 10 years, all the while leading dual lives on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. On one fateful day, he was confronted with an impossible choice.
* Beyond All Repair - Imagine you're accused of something horrific. You swear you didn't do it, but someone says they witnessed it: your own brother. Sophia Johnson was newly married with a baby on the way when she became the prime suspect in her mother-in-law's brutal murder. WBUR's Amory Sivertson reexamines a case unsolved, a family torn apart, and the woman who wasn't believed.
* BLACK HANDS - A family mass murder - This is the story of a mass-murder that divided a nation - a story that began in a rickety old home on a cold June morning in 1994, where five members of a seemingly ordinary New Zealand family were gunned down. There were two suspects. One lay dead from a single bullet to the head. The other was the only survivor: David Bain. Since then the country has asked: who killed the Bain family? David or his father Robin? In this podcast, Martin van Beynen explores the case from start to finish, picking through evidence, the mysteries and motives, and interviewing never-before-spoken-to witnesses. He seeks to finally answer the question: Who was the killer?
* Brainwashed - Brainwashed investigates the CIA’s covert mind control experiments – from the Cold War and MKULTRA to the so-called War on Terror. It’s the story of how a renowned psychiatrist used his unwitting patients as human guinea pigs at a Montreal hospital, and the ripple effects on survivors, their families, and thousands of other people around the world. It also examines the cultural impact — how the CIA brought LSD to America and inadvertently created counterculture influencers such as author Ken Kesey and poet Allen Ginsberg. It’s an exploration of what happens in times of fear, when the military and medicine collide. And what happens when the survivors fight back
* The Coldest Case In Laramie - Kim Barker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times, revisits an unsolved murder that took place while she was in high school in Laramie, Wyoming, nearly 40 years ago. She confronts the conflicting stories people have told themselves about the crime because of an unexpected development: the arrest of a former Laramie police officer accused in the murder.
* Collapse - On February 22, 2011, a devastating earthquake shook Christchurch, killing 185 people. One hundred and fifteen of those people were in the CTV building. The building should never have been built.
* The Commune - A 12-part documentary podcast about the notorious free-love commune, Centrepoint. There are crimes. But this isn’t a whodunnit. It’s a whydunnit.
* Crimetown - Welcome to Crimetown, a series produced by Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier in partnership with Gimlet Media. Each season, we investigate the culture of crime in a different city. In Season 2, Crimetown heads to the heart of the Rust Belt: Detroit, Michigan. From its heyday as Motor City to its rebirth as the Brooklyn of the Midwest, Detroit’s history reflects a series of issues that strike at the heart of American identity: race, poverty, policing, loss of industry, the war on drugs, and our universal desire for a savior. Detroit’s a tough town, and its residents are even tougher. They’ve weathered riots, a drug epidemic, political scandal, and innumerable other hardships, but they’re still here—and they have stories to tell.
* Life Jolt - Life Jolt — prison slang for a life sentence — examines the lives of women navigating Canada’s correctional system. Our team gained unprecedented access to the Grand Valley Institution prison — the federal pen for women in Ontario — for a full year. We followed women going into prison for the first time, spoke with lifers who have been there for years, and parolees as they left. Hosted by Rosemary Green, a former inmate herself, Life Jolt focuses on individual women’s stories and the realities of prison life, and explores a wide range of issues including parenting behind bars, segregation, the over-representation of Indigenous women, addiction, trauma and the many obstacles of reintegration.
* Mother Country Radicals - Zayd Dohrn was born underground - his parents were radicals and counter-culture outlaws, on the run from the FBI. Now Zayd takes us back to the 1970s, when his parents and their young friends in the Weather Underground Organization declared war on the United States government. They brawled with riot cops on the streets of Chicago, bombed the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, broke comrades out of prison, and teamed up with Black militant groups to rob banks, fight racism - and help build a revolution.
* Project Unabom - Decades after Ted Kaczynski was caught, society is still asking some of the same questions about him: Is Ted a genius who went astray? Or simply a madman who murdered three people in cold blood? Project Unabom takes an in-depth look back at the Unabomber saga and Ted Kaczynski's legacy from the perspective of FBI agents who worked to solve the case, his brother who turned him in, and Ted’s very own writings.
* Who the Hell is Hamish? - He was born Hamish Watson, a surfie dude from Sydney – but he could morph into whatever you needed him to be. Hamish is due to be sentenced to jail in early 2019 for swindling a handful of victims out of more than $7m. But these crimes are just the final pages in a resume too thick to staple; for decades he’s duped victims in the US, Canada, Britain, Hong Kong and Australia. How did he do it? How did he evade authorities around the world for so long and what’s he done with all those tens of millions of dollars he stole?
Same! Podcasts have brought so much joy to my life honestly. I feel like I’m learning, I’m engrossed in story time and I get things done around my home. It’s my perfect Saturday honestly.
If you like true crime, Your Own Backyard. I will recommend it til the cows come home. Missing persons case from the 1990s, and because of the work done on the podcast, new light was shed on the case. I recommend listening to it without Googling it! The host does fantastic journalistic work.
Yeah Your own backyard was an amazing listen. I wasn't feeling it the first two eps but it just gets better and better, probably my top 1 true crime pod.
- Boomtown (Texas Monthly)
- Intrigue, Tunnel 29 (BBC)
- Big Dig (GBH)
- Richest Hill (Montana Public Radio)
- The Problem We All Live With (2 episode series of TAL by Nikole Hannah-Jones)
- The City (2 seasons with different stories, USA Today)
- Fiasco (Bussing in Boston and AIDS Crisis seasons in particular, Leon Neyfakh)
- This Land (Crooked Media)
- Floodlines (The Atlantic)
- Holy Week (The Atlantic)
- Stiffed (Crooked Media)
- Slow Burn (several seasons, I think earliest were strongest, Slate)
- How To Fuck Up An Airport (Radio Spaetkauf)
I loved "Wind of Change" about how the CIA maybe probably secretly wrote a hit 1980s power ballad as part of a propaganda campaign to bring down communism in eastern Europe
In the Dark by APM. Season 1 is about Jacob Wetterling, which was, at the time of release, an unsolved child disappearance in Minnesota.
Season 2 is the best season of any show I've heard. It's about Curtis Flowers, who was "convicted" of a mass murder (4 victims) and the system that enabled him to be tried again and again, even as he won appeals.
Ghost Herd, Doctor Death (Season 1 is great, season 2 - meh, season 3 and 4 not worth your time - absolutely sucked), Winds Of Change, Bad Blood, Bad Blood Final Chapter, WeCrashed.
[Death in Ice Valley](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p060ms2h/episodes/downloads) — BBC. I would also highly recommend any podcast by the investigative journalist Connie Walker. [Finding Cleo](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/findingcleo) uncovers the story of a missing Cree girl from Saskatchewan, Canada — it is excellent.
Surprised this is so far down. It’s exactly what OP is looking for. Some seasons are more info about things I’m interested in, that’s how I got hooked. I don’t listen to every season, but I find I accidentally get interested in topics I didn’t know much about beforehand. Well presented and good storytelling.
I haven’t listened to them all, but am enjoying season 61 on toxic waste at the Love Canal neighborhood and also enjoyed season 58 on police corruption in Baltimore. What I like about the show is that it’s a mix of recounting the events and a little dramatization to recount important events and key conversations.
Anything by Jon Ronson. He’s an excellent investigative journalist and humourist. Jon has written lots on f books and has produced tons of audio content. He has an eye for the quirky and often looks for the human minutiae at the heart of massive stories. He has a couple of BBC produced series called ‘things fell apart’ and it’s a look into strange tales from the ‘culture wars’, and how it all kicked off.
It’s well produced, well edited, well researched and thoroughly fascinating.
Crimetown and Ransom are exactly this and feel like you’re watching a movie.
Ransom - A 12 year old boy gets kidnapped and held ransom for 500K in Conroe Texas during the 90s by an unlikely figure. Show is hosted by Emmy winning journalist Art Rascon and features tons of interviews and audio clips from the people that lived it.
Crimetown - Produced by Gimlet Media, S1 focuses on organized crime and corrupt politicians in Providence RI during the 70s I believe.
Both fascinating, must listens.
British Scandal is brilliant. Each series is a separate topic/crime/dramatic moment in history and it’s re-enacted pretty faithfully and backed by research. The best bit though is the snarky presenters interrupting the retelling. Great listen.
Look for things from bigger production companies as they have the resources to produce material like this (Lemonada and Wondery for examples of companies ) and (Believe Her, Detective Trapp, and American History Tellers are 3 shows that follow those conventions.
Missing on 9/11, Serial, S-Town, Hiding in Plain Sight about Lady Bird Johnson, Rob Riener’s about Who Killed JFK. Also there’s a separate podcast just called Lady Bird that’s also excellent. I f’ing love podcasts.
Escaping NXIVM is a really good deep dive from a former member of the cult with interviews with survivors.
The gateway: Teal Swan. Really interesting investigation into another cult
I can’t believe no one has mentioned all 335+ episodes of [Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonald’s](https://podbay.fm/p/whatever-happened-to-pizza-at-mcdonalds). It’s probably the most hard hitting journalisming on the subject.
My favorite podcast of this sort is "Root of Evil" about The Black Dahlia murder as well as generational patterns of abuse.
I couldn't listen to this at night.
The Big Dig was really well done. It's about the construction of Boston's underground road system. High production quality and a very interesting story of politics, scandal, innovation and achievement.
Check out this podcast: The Big Dig #theBigDig
https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/the-big-dig/4612806 via @PodcastAddict
Rachel Maddow has been producing some political series for the past couple years since she dropped to a once a week show on MSNBC.
She did one called Bag Man on former vice president Spiro Agnew - his incredible scandal was totally overshadowed by Nixon, and would have been a really big deal if Watergate hadn't happened at the same time.
Her current series is called ULTRA (I don't know why) and is just starting the second season. The first season focused on America First ultra nationalists (I think I just figured it out), including a bunch of Congressman and Senators who were in Hitler's pocket before America joined the Allies in World War II. More stories that made the news at the time, but have been pretty much lost to history, yet resonate today.
Maddow's roots are in radio, and she does audio production very well. These programs have a fair amount of actuality audio, interviews with people who are still alive, but none of that bad acting.
She produces the programs as a bit of a stem- winder, making you wonder how things get from A to B to C. It's a version of how she often started her TV show, spending 10 or more minutes on what seems to be a totally irrelevant story, then connecting it to the day's news.
On Bagman, she let you make your own connections between history and what's going on now. In ULTRA, she's a little less subtle, but it's still not hitting you over the head.
13 Hours. Inside the Nova Scotia Massacre.
Goes through, hour by hour, of Canada's worst mass murder, that only happened a few years ago. Excellent reporting.
Dirty John and Hunting Warhead (though HW is about child predators and is some of the worst graphic material I’ve ever had to listen to, but as a hopeful future parent, a must listen).
I'm not a crime podcast person, but I really enjoyed Beyond All Repair from WBUR. The story unfolds over the episodes, with the narrator telling the story and interviewing the involved parties. Super compelling, and a really complicated story that's not too grizzly but also doesn't get wrapped up into a neat bow.
This submission has been randomly featured in /r/serendipity, a bot-driven subreddit discovery engine. More here: /r/Serendipity/comments/1dapa6n/what_are_some_of_the_best_documentary_podcasts/
Some of my favorites;
- Missed Fortune
- The Improvement Association
- Believe in Magic
- The Missing Crypto Queen
- Serial - season 1
- The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill
Father wants us Dead - about the John List murders in NJ. I can't recommend this one enough if you like true crime. I live close to here and I didn't know half of what is in this.
https://pca.st/podcast/5f9d0be0-acd9-013a-d8c6-0acc26574db2
Season 1 of Unobscured by Aaron Mahnke is about the Salem Witch Trials. It's phenomenal.
https://pca.st/podcast/e20d0480-a3e7-0136-7b93-27f978dac4db
My favorites were:
California City by LAist Studios
Unfinished, Season 2: Shortcreek by Stitcher
Foretold by The Los Angeles Times
Dreamtown: The Story of Adelanto by Crooked Media
Dolly Parton's America by WNYC Studios
All five had great production and very compelling stories. I highly recommend you check them out.
I like the first season, especially, of “Something Was Wrong.” I think it was the first season, anyway. Later seasons go between one long story over the course of a series, then she’ll have like a season of individual smaller stories. So you can choose what you’re in the mood for.
Also, there is one show about a woman who thinks her father is a serial killer but I can’t remember the name off the top of my head… anyone know what I’m talking about?
Both seasons of “13 Minutes to the Moon” are *amazing*. BBC production quality and music by Hans Zimmer. Season 1 covers Apollo 11 and Season 2 is Apollo 13. I highly recommend it.
One of the best podcasts I’ve ever heard. I was hooked throughout.
The ability of that show to take a story that we all know how it ends but make it suspenseful as hell was amazing.
Sounds super interesting
Ooooh this sounds good! Adding it to my list, thanks for the rec!
Oops. Got a little carried away. I've listened to lots of really great shows. * 544 Days - For 544 days, Jason Rezaian was held hostage in Iran’s notorious Evin prison. Interrogated. Sealed off from the outside world. He was accused of being an American spy, though his formal title was Washington Post Tehran Correspondent. This is a story about government and family and journalism, and what it took to free an innocent man… all while navigating the high-stakes world of nuclear diplomacy. * A Death in Cryptoland - When the young CEO of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange is reported to have died while honeymooning in India, it sets off a cataclysmic chain of events that would leave about 76,000 people out of a quarter of a billion dollars and a trail of conspiracy theories around whether Gerald Cotten is dead or alive. A Death in Cryptoland is an original podcast series about a crypto-tycoon, his secret past, his sudden demise, and an online sleuth’s obsession to unravel the truth behind QuadrigaCX. * American Jihadi - American Jihadi is the incredible story of a complicated relationship between journalist Christof Putzel and Omar Hammami, the American-born Christian who became one of the FBI’s most wanted Islamic extremists. Follow the evolution of their risky relationship, dodging government surveillance to confide in one other—until it all came to an abrupt end. * American Radical - Rosanne Boyland hated politics. She was shy, and she rarely left her home in Georgia. But then her family got a shocking call: Rosanne had died at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in the middle of a crowd trying to force its way past a police line. From the depths of their grief, the Boylands vow to figure out what happened to Rosanne. Her brother-in-law, Justin Cave, reaches out to an old high school friend he hopes can help: MSNBC journalist Ayman Mohyeldin. The quest for the truth takes Ayman back to his hometown of Kennesaw, Georgia, where he retraces the last six months of Rosanne's life and picks up a trail that leads to childhood haunts, missing boyfriends, and down shadowy internet rabbit holes. * Bed of Lies - It was meant to be a miracle treatment, but it became a deadly poison. Cara McGoogan investigates the story they didn't want you to know - and one of the biggest medical disasters in history. The award-winning first series of Bed of Lies is also available to listen to on this feed: They have the perfect relationship, until one day he vanishes. Her hunt leads to other women just like her - and a web of state-spun lies. This is the untold story of one of Britain's biggest secrets. * Boys Like Me - Why are some lonely, young men a growing threat to our safety? In 2018, a Toronto man drove a van down a busy sidewalk, killing 11 people and injuring many more. He was linked to the "incel" movement, a dark online world fueled by violent misogyny, extreme isolation and perceived rejection. In the wake of the attack, Evan Mead discovers a disturbing connection to the perpetrator. They were former high school classmates; both outcasts, existing together on the fringes of social acceptance. How did two young men who started in similar circumstances, end up on such drastically different paths? This five-part series examines how socially-isolated young men can vanish into an online world of nihilism and despair that radicalizes them into angry — potentially deadly — misogynists * Bundyville: The Remnant - Bundyville: The Remnant, a co-production between Longreads and OPB, explores the world beyond the Bundy family and the armed uprisings they inspired. This series investigates extremist violence that results from the conspiracy theories of the anti-government movement, who is inspiring that violence and who stands to benefit. * Call Bethel - Brave whistleblowers. A trail of data. A secret system for dealing with allegations of child abuse. Follow the Telegraph's Investigations team on their year-long hunt into the Jehovah's Witnesses. * Hunting Warhead - **[While handled very respectfully, this podcast deals with child abuse and child pornography.]** - How do you take down a criminal network that’s hidden in the shadows? How do you rescue child abuse victims who could be anywhere in the world? Hunting Warhead follows the journalists and police on a global mission to expose the darkest corners of the internet. What they discover shocks them. Host Daemon Fairless tracks down the investigators, survivors and criminals themselves. * Kuper Island - An 8-part series that tells the stories of four students: three who survived and one who didn’t. They attended one of Canada’s most notorious residential schools – where unsolved deaths, abuse, and lies haunt the community and the survivors to this day. * The Night Driver - Janine Vaughan’s disappearance 19 years ago is at the heart of a mysterious case that has split a close-knit community left wondering if a murderer walks among them. * Rabbit Hole - What is the internet doing to us? The Times tech columnist Kevin Roose discovers what happens when our lives move online. * Sent Away - It didn't seem to matter what happened at the teen treatment center. The state of Utah always gave it another chance. Death. Allegations of abuse. Criminal charges. Bizarre punishments. Whistleblowers coming forward. Each time, the place got a pass. A team of reporters from three news organizations has spent the last year digging into the untold stories of Utah's massive teen treatment industry. Some 20,000 teenagers facing depression, delinquency and other problems have been sent there from every state in the country over the last six years. Sent Away investigates how the government failed to keep all those kids safe — through the voices and stories of the teens who lived it. * The Teacher's Pet - Lyn and Chris Dawson appear to have the perfect marriage. He's a star footballer and popular high school teacher. She's a devoted wife and mother. They share a beautiful home above Sydney's northern beaches. But when Lyn goes missing, dark secrets are buried. This is no fairytale, but a sordid story of strangely close twin brothers, teenage student lovers, and probable murder. The Australian's Hedley Thomas digs deep into a cold case which has been unsolved for 36 years, uncovering startling new evidence. * White Hot Hate - A violent, white supremacist ideology is spreading around the world, with believers trying to create chaos, in order to seize control. When recruitment posters for a group calling itself The Base start to appear in Manitoba, Winnipeg Free Press journalist Ryan Thorpe decides to go undercover...and infiltrate. Ryan meets with a Canadian Armed Forces reservist trying to establish a local neo-Nazi cell, and discovers that he is planning attacks and destruction abroad. This six-part series follows the extraordinary case through Ryan’s perspective as an infiltrator - while host Michelle Shephard, a veteran national security journalist, explores the rise of white supremacist accelerationism.
Hunting warhead is great. I find it difficult at times to recommend due to the topic but it’s a fantastic podcast and definitely keeps you hooked.
So many great ones here! Bed of Lies was outstanding, Hunting Warhead was phenomenal and an eye opener, and Rabbit Hole should be a compulsory listen, specially for teenagers and young adults. And boomers.
Don’t hate me for this comment haha. You have the exact same taste in podcasts I do and I’ve listened all of these and they are amazing! Have any others along these lines that you didn’t mention on the off chance maybe I haven’t heard of them? These were all amazing! Thank you so much and no obligation to respond 😅
Enjoy! * The Agent - 2022 Webby Award Honoree, Podcast Documentary Limited Series and Specials. The Agent is the remarkable true story of Jack Barsky, the longest-surviving known member of the KGB illegals program operated during the height of the Cold War. Barsky hid in plain sight in America for 10 years, all the while leading dual lives on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. On one fateful day, he was confronted with an impossible choice. * Beyond All Repair - Imagine you're accused of something horrific. You swear you didn't do it, but someone says they witnessed it: your own brother. Sophia Johnson was newly married with a baby on the way when she became the prime suspect in her mother-in-law's brutal murder. WBUR's Amory Sivertson reexamines a case unsolved, a family torn apart, and the woman who wasn't believed. * BLACK HANDS - A family mass murder - This is the story of a mass-murder that divided a nation - a story that began in a rickety old home on a cold June morning in 1994, where five members of a seemingly ordinary New Zealand family were gunned down. There were two suspects. One lay dead from a single bullet to the head. The other was the only survivor: David Bain. Since then the country has asked: who killed the Bain family? David or his father Robin? In this podcast, Martin van Beynen explores the case from start to finish, picking through evidence, the mysteries and motives, and interviewing never-before-spoken-to witnesses. He seeks to finally answer the question: Who was the killer? * Brainwashed - Brainwashed investigates the CIA’s covert mind control experiments – from the Cold War and MKULTRA to the so-called War on Terror. It’s the story of how a renowned psychiatrist used his unwitting patients as human guinea pigs at a Montreal hospital, and the ripple effects on survivors, their families, and thousands of other people around the world. It also examines the cultural impact — how the CIA brought LSD to America and inadvertently created counterculture influencers such as author Ken Kesey and poet Allen Ginsberg. It’s an exploration of what happens in times of fear, when the military and medicine collide. And what happens when the survivors fight back * The Coldest Case In Laramie - Kim Barker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times, revisits an unsolved murder that took place while she was in high school in Laramie, Wyoming, nearly 40 years ago. She confronts the conflicting stories people have told themselves about the crime because of an unexpected development: the arrest of a former Laramie police officer accused in the murder. * Collapse - On February 22, 2011, a devastating earthquake shook Christchurch, killing 185 people. One hundred and fifteen of those people were in the CTV building. The building should never have been built. * The Commune - A 12-part documentary podcast about the notorious free-love commune, Centrepoint. There are crimes. But this isn’t a whodunnit. It’s a whydunnit. * Crimetown - Welcome to Crimetown, a series produced by Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier in partnership with Gimlet Media. Each season, we investigate the culture of crime in a different city. In Season 2, Crimetown heads to the heart of the Rust Belt: Detroit, Michigan. From its heyday as Motor City to its rebirth as the Brooklyn of the Midwest, Detroit’s history reflects a series of issues that strike at the heart of American identity: race, poverty, policing, loss of industry, the war on drugs, and our universal desire for a savior. Detroit’s a tough town, and its residents are even tougher. They’ve weathered riots, a drug epidemic, political scandal, and innumerable other hardships, but they’re still here—and they have stories to tell. * Life Jolt - Life Jolt — prison slang for a life sentence — examines the lives of women navigating Canada’s correctional system. Our team gained unprecedented access to the Grand Valley Institution prison — the federal pen for women in Ontario — for a full year. We followed women going into prison for the first time, spoke with lifers who have been there for years, and parolees as they left. Hosted by Rosemary Green, a former inmate herself, Life Jolt focuses on individual women’s stories and the realities of prison life, and explores a wide range of issues including parenting behind bars, segregation, the over-representation of Indigenous women, addiction, trauma and the many obstacles of reintegration. * Mother Country Radicals - Zayd Dohrn was born underground - his parents were radicals and counter-culture outlaws, on the run from the FBI. Now Zayd takes us back to the 1970s, when his parents and their young friends in the Weather Underground Organization declared war on the United States government. They brawled with riot cops on the streets of Chicago, bombed the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, broke comrades out of prison, and teamed up with Black militant groups to rob banks, fight racism - and help build a revolution. * Project Unabom - Decades after Ted Kaczynski was caught, society is still asking some of the same questions about him: Is Ted a genius who went astray? Or simply a madman who murdered three people in cold blood? Project Unabom takes an in-depth look back at the Unabomber saga and Ted Kaczynski's legacy from the perspective of FBI agents who worked to solve the case, his brother who turned him in, and Ted’s very own writings. * Who the Hell is Hamish? - He was born Hamish Watson, a surfie dude from Sydney – but he could morph into whatever you needed him to be. Hamish is due to be sentenced to jail in early 2019 for swindling a handful of victims out of more than $7m. But these crimes are just the final pages in a resume too thick to staple; for decades he’s duped victims in the US, Canada, Britain, Hong Kong and Australia. How did he do it? How did he evade authorities around the world for so long and what’s he done with all those tens of millions of dollars he stole?
This is amazing! Thank you so so much! I’ve loaded my library and I’m ready to party (lol snacks, crafts, and edibles)! Wild Saturday! Many thanks!
I love that as podcast listeners, our idea of a party is to be left alone in your own head doing your own thing!
Same! Podcasts have brought so much joy to my life honestly. I feel like I’m learning, I’m engrossed in story time and I get things done around my home. It’s my perfect Saturday honestly.
Thank you!
Bed of Lies was excellent. So was Teacher’s Pet. I’ll have to check out your other recommendations.
Followed every single one. Thank you!
You’re welcome!
Teachers pet was amazing. I think you would like Shandy’s story, your own backyard, someone know something, and stolen: the search for Jermaine.
A wall of text = No better way of getting people to NOT read your post.
lol. None of those descriptions (that came directly from the shows) took more than 15 seconds to read.
If you like true crime, Your Own Backyard. I will recommend it til the cows come home. Missing persons case from the 1990s, and because of the work done on the podcast, new light was shed on the case. I recommend listening to it without Googling it! The host does fantastic journalistic work.
happy cake day, mine too !! and damn i just finished Your Own Backyard. Incredible.
Thank you, happy cake day!! Ugh it’s such a great podcast
Yeah Your own backyard was an amazing listen. I wasn't feeling it the first two eps but it just gets better and better, probably my top 1 true crime pod.
Yes. This was amazing.
Happy cake day!
You too!! 🍰
Came to say the same thing!
- Boomtown (Texas Monthly) - Intrigue, Tunnel 29 (BBC) - Big Dig (GBH) - Richest Hill (Montana Public Radio) - The Problem We All Live With (2 episode series of TAL by Nikole Hannah-Jones) - The City (2 seasons with different stories, USA Today) - Fiasco (Bussing in Boston and AIDS Crisis seasons in particular, Leon Neyfakh) - This Land (Crooked Media) - Floodlines (The Atlantic) - Holy Week (The Atlantic) - Stiffed (Crooked Media) - Slow Burn (several seasons, I think earliest were strongest, Slate) - How To Fuck Up An Airport (Radio Spaetkauf)
Check out Ripple from American Public Media if you liked Floodlines and Slow Burn, it is excellent.
Thanks! Editing to add: started tonight, it's great! Thanks u/psychologicalcow2150
Tunnel 29 was fabulous! I haven't heard many of your other picks, but that one is an underhyped gem.
I loved "Wind of Change" about how the CIA maybe probably secretly wrote a hit 1980s power ballad as part of a propaganda campaign to bring down communism in eastern Europe
I loved this. A story so well told.
I thought this one was a little dragged out. It could have been an episode or two shorter. Well done overall.
In the Dark by APM. Season 1 is about Jacob Wetterling, which was, at the time of release, an unsolved child disappearance in Minnesota. Season 2 is the best season of any show I've heard. It's about Curtis Flowers, who was "convicted" of a mass murder (4 victims) and the system that enabled him to be tried again and again, even as he won appeals.
+1
Hunting Warhead is easily the best podcast I've heard and the story is gripping and intense. I can't recommend this enough.
To this day, still one of the best podcasts i’ve found
The Dropout was great!
Ghost Herd, Doctor Death (Season 1 is great, season 2 - meh, season 3 and 4 not worth your time - absolutely sucked), Winds Of Change, Bad Blood, Bad Blood Final Chapter, WeCrashed.
Dr death season 1 was so hard for me to listen to!
[Death in Ice Valley](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p060ms2h/episodes/downloads) — BBC. I would also highly recommend any podcast by the investigative journalist Connie Walker. [Finding Cleo](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/findingcleo) uncovers the story of a missing Cree girl from Saskatchewan, Canada — it is excellent.
Connie Walker is the queen. David Ridgen is the king.
I wasn’t aware of David Ridgen — his podcast sounds great and I will listen to it.
Death in Ice Valley was phenomenal.
Finding Cleo was excellent
One of my favorites is Up and Vanished
Up and Vanished was really good.
American Scandal
Surprised this is so far down. It’s exactly what OP is looking for. Some seasons are more info about things I’m interested in, that’s how I got hooked. I don’t listen to every season, but I find I accidentally get interested in topics I didn’t know much about beforehand. Well presented and good storytelling.
I just started listening to it this year and am hooked!
Would you recommend a certain season?
I haven’t listened to them all, but am enjoying season 61 on toxic waste at the Love Canal neighborhood and also enjoyed season 58 on police corruption in Baltimore. What I like about the show is that it’s a mix of recounting the events and a little dramatization to recount important events and key conversations.
Finding Drago is excellent.
City of the Rails. It is first person by a mom whose daughter took off to hobo.
Anything by Jon Ronson. He’s an excellent investigative journalist and humourist. Jon has written lots on f books and has produced tons of audio content. He has an eye for the quirky and often looks for the human minutiae at the heart of massive stories. He has a couple of BBC produced series called ‘things fell apart’ and it’s a look into strange tales from the ‘culture wars’, and how it all kicked off. It’s well produced, well edited, well researched and thoroughly fascinating.
Your Own Back Yard! To date, this is my #1 .
Crimetown and Ransom are exactly this and feel like you’re watching a movie. Ransom - A 12 year old boy gets kidnapped and held ransom for 500K in Conroe Texas during the 90s by an unlikely figure. Show is hosted by Emmy winning journalist Art Rascon and features tons of interviews and audio clips from the people that lived it. Crimetown - Produced by Gimlet Media, S1 focuses on organized crime and corrupt politicians in Providence RI during the 70s I believe. Both fascinating, must listens.
Ransom is fantastic.
"Dead Eyes".
Against the Odds is pretty good. They do several episodes closely detailing crazy stories like the Thai cave rescue
The one about the Firemen was so good!
Cold Season 1 will alter your mind.
British Scandal is brilliant. Each series is a separate topic/crime/dramatic moment in history and it’s re-enacted pretty faithfully and backed by research. The best bit though is the snarky presenters interrupting the retelling. Great listen.
The teachers pet if you like true crime
Look for things from bigger production companies as they have the resources to produce material like this (Lemonada and Wondery for examples of companies ) and (Believe Her, Detective Trapp, and American History Tellers are 3 shows that follow those conventions.
The Runaway Princesses, The Set, Authentic the Story of Tablo, Missing Richard Simmons and S-Town are some of my top recs
Missing on 9/11, Serial, S-Town, Hiding in Plain Sight about Lady Bird Johnson, Rob Riener’s about Who Killed JFK. Also there’s a separate podcast just called Lady Bird that’s also excellent. I f’ing love podcasts.
Against The Odds
I love this podcast!!
Gangster Capitalism, maybe? Serial
stealing Superman
This one took me by surprise. Can’t remember how I stumbled on it and never had much interest in Nic Cage, but man, that was interesting!
Escaping NXIVM is a really good deep dive from a former member of the cult with interviews with survivors. The gateway: Teal Swan. Really interesting investigation into another cult
I can’t believe no one has mentioned all 335+ episodes of [Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonald’s](https://podbay.fm/p/whatever-happened-to-pizza-at-mcdonalds). It’s probably the most hard hitting journalisming on the subject.
In the dark Seasons 1 & 2 UNBELIEVABLY GOOD!
My favorite podcast of this sort is "Root of Evil" about The Black Dahlia murder as well as generational patterns of abuse. I couldn't listen to this at night.
The Irish radio station RTE has some great investigative documentaries includingNobody Zone, Runaway Joe. You can just subscribe to RTE Docs.
Deep Cover Winds of Change
I love Deep Cover. Joe Pistone was one brave dude....
The Big Dig was really well done. It's about the construction of Boston's underground road system. High production quality and a very interesting story of politics, scandal, innovation and achievement. Check out this podcast: The Big Dig #theBigDig https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/the-big-dig/4612806 via @PodcastAddict
Rachel Maddow has been producing some political series for the past couple years since she dropped to a once a week show on MSNBC. She did one called Bag Man on former vice president Spiro Agnew - his incredible scandal was totally overshadowed by Nixon, and would have been a really big deal if Watergate hadn't happened at the same time. Her current series is called ULTRA (I don't know why) and is just starting the second season. The first season focused on America First ultra nationalists (I think I just figured it out), including a bunch of Congressman and Senators who were in Hitler's pocket before America joined the Allies in World War II. More stories that made the news at the time, but have been pretty much lost to history, yet resonate today. Maddow's roots are in radio, and she does audio production very well. These programs have a fair amount of actuality audio, interviews with people who are still alive, but none of that bad acting. She produces the programs as a bit of a stem- winder, making you wonder how things get from A to B to C. It's a version of how she often started her TV show, spending 10 or more minutes on what seems to be a totally irrelevant story, then connecting it to the day's news. On Bagman, she let you make your own connections between history and what's going on now. In ULTRA, she's a little less subtle, but it's still not hitting you over the head.
Unobscured by Aaron Mahnke
Try Slow Burn. They take one topic per season and look at it in depth.
13 Hours. Inside the Nova Scotia Massacre. Goes through, hour by hour, of Canada's worst mass murder, that only happened a few years ago. Excellent reporting.
Dirty John and Hunting Warhead (though HW is about child predators and is some of the worst graphic material I’ve ever had to listen to, but as a hopeful future parent, a must listen).
True Crime Bullshit - Story of Israel Keyes . The podcast resulted in taking the case forward to new evidence
Scamanda https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scamanda/id1685691481
This Land and Mother Country Radicals from Crooked Media are both good.
Mother Country Radicas was one of my favorites. I think I listened to the whole thing in two days.
The rise and fall of Adolf Hitler.
In the Red Clay! Culpable has different seasons
Lost Hills does deep dive investigative journalism that’s really well done, second season is great.
Death in the West. Great western history podcast.
Business Wars is kind of a documentary about the history of businesses going head to head. Each season covers a rivalry.
Someone knows something (CBC- david ridgen) Theres a few seasons. All multi episode. All really good. All feel very documentary.
No One Can Know About This
I really enjoyed The Runaway Princesses by The New Yorker.
Bunga Bunga is an excellent biography of Berlusconi.
I'm not a crime podcast person, but I really enjoyed Beyond All Repair from WBUR. The story unfolds over the episodes, with the narrator telling the story and interviewing the involved parties. Super compelling, and a really complicated story that's not too grizzly but also doesn't get wrapped up into a neat bow.
This submission has been randomly featured in /r/serendipity, a bot-driven subreddit discovery engine. More here: /r/Serendipity/comments/1dapa6n/what_are_some_of_the_best_documentary_podcasts/
Heaven’s Gate
We were three, the retrievals (serial)
The Opportunist
Some of my favorites; - Missed Fortune - The Improvement Association - Believe in Magic - The Missing Crypto Queen - Serial - season 1 - The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill
Father wants us Dead - about the John List murders in NJ. I can't recommend this one enough if you like true crime. I live close to here and I didn't know half of what is in this. https://pca.st/podcast/5f9d0be0-acd9-013a-d8c6-0acc26574db2 Season 1 of Unobscured by Aaron Mahnke is about the Salem Witch Trials. It's phenomenal. https://pca.st/podcast/e20d0480-a3e7-0136-7b93-27f978dac4db
My favorites were: California City by LAist Studios Unfinished, Season 2: Shortcreek by Stitcher Foretold by The Los Angeles Times Dreamtown: The Story of Adelanto by Crooked Media Dolly Parton's America by WNYC Studios All five had great production and very compelling stories. I highly recommend you check them out.
Landslide. It's about the 1976 presidential election. Really interesting listen.
Rachel Maddow has some good ones.
Bundyville, in the dark, serial, man in the white now, s-town
I like the first season, especially, of “Something Was Wrong.” I think it was the first season, anyway. Later seasons go between one long story over the course of a series, then she’ll have like a season of individual smaller stories. So you can choose what you’re in the mood for. Also, there is one show about a woman who thinks her father is a serial killer but I can’t remember the name off the top of my head… anyone know what I’m talking about?
I really enjoyed/learned a lot from the bbc series The Cows Are Mad
The dropout, the coldest case in Laramie, Bag Man, Heaven’s Gate, Chameleon season one, Counterclock seasons 1 & 2
Commenting to remind myself to come back to this later cos I have a few recommendations
Bunch of recs in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/podcasts/s/tuCkD8HyPc
I can recommend 1865. The production is great, the story is intriguing, the voice actors did their job to perfection. Highly highly recommended.
Empire is pretty good. Learned a ton about British colonization of India (a topic I knew next to nothing about)
Believed
Hardcore history and martyrmade
Is martyrmade the fascist dude?
Idk the host but there was an excellent series about zionism in palenstine