Podcast Roundup Week #10

This week I listened to 48 episodes.  My second job is starting to slowly pick up again (there's a normal decline at the beginning of the year, but this year has been especially slow) and so I'm spending a bit more time alone in the car commuting, which is a pretty normal time for me to listen to podcasts.

A highlight for me was definitely listening to the three-part miniseries that Casefile did on the Silk Road, a now defunct dark website that sold drugs, weapons, and poison.   The podcast walked through the development of the site, which could only be accessed using Tor and was one of the first "big" places to accept Bitcoin.  It tells the story of Ross Ulbricht, who would later be sentenced to life in prison on charges related to the operation of Silk Road.   If you want more on the Silk Road, there's a Longform podcast interview with Nick Bilton who wrote a book that was frequently referenced in the Casefile episodes.

Casefile is probably one of the top five true crime podcasts out there. The narrator doesn't even introduce himself - he just gives you the facts about the crime he's dealing with.  Many true crime podcasts try to lighten the mood with jokes and banter and this can frequently come off as disrespectful, particularly when there are victims involved, but Casefile just sticks to a recitation of the story.  The narrator seems to be Australian, too, so there are some cases that I bet are familiar to Australians that get covered, but that are new to me as an American.

I also want to just demonstrate my nerdiness by pointing out that two NPR podcasts I listened to this week made me laugh out loud in a way that attracted attention as I was walking down the street.

Pop Culture Happy Hour had an episode about the Winter Olympics in which Stephen Thompson admits to being stunned into silence as something happened in the bobsled, Glen Wheldon talks about his utter disdain for the entire affair, and somehow coalesced many of my complicated feelings into a fun conversation among friends. Also, Planet Money's yearly compendium of things they are jealous of "Our Valentines" had me rolling on the floor as a born and bred New Yorker talked about how much enjoyed leafing through the pages of Farm Show Magazine.  It was a good time.

There was also a Reveal episode on redlining and I am mostly making this note here so that next semester when I'm teaching this subject, I can quickly refer back to this post.