Podcast Roundup Weeks 40 and 41

Since I last rounded up, I've listened to 107 episodes. That's a lot. I've narrowed it down for you and this is what you should be listening to.

The City is a limited run podcast that does a deep dive into an illegal dump that was operating in a black neighborhood in Chicago. When I first heard the premise of the show, I was less than enthused about listening to it, but it's so good. If you ever think about environmental racism, this is the show for you. A dump gets put up in a white neighborhood and it's immediately dealt with, but black residents deal with it for decades. It's a USA Today production and I guess I didn't know that it had an audio division, but if this is going to be the quality of its work, I'm going to be a fan.

I don't always love podcasts that use tape from secondary sources like courtroom proceedings or 911 calls. Usually the quality of the sources is not great and I can't hear it well.  That's why I think I've probably not talked about Court Junkie on here before. She is focused on courtroom trials, and she generally picks interesting cases, but I frequently end up just skipping episodes because the audio quality is not great. Her most recent episode " The Fatal Football Practice" looks at a case in Kentucky in which a high school football coach is tried for the death of a player on his team after the player died after a practice in incredibly hot conditions. I have so many qualms about sports and athletics and this case really resonated with me as I was listening to it. I didn't know anything about the case going in, either, so I was really surprised by the ending.

The most recent episode of The Moth that I listened to is "Disney, Racecars, and Red Sox" and the first three of the stories really just struck a nerve in me. In the first one, Jessi Klein tells the story of attending her younger sister's wedding at Disney as a single person and all the baggage, figuratively and literally, that comes with that.  In the next one, Joe Limone tells the story of how he and his best friend are responsible for the recent greatness of Boston sports franchises.  And in the third one, a child of hoarders deals with being the child of hoarders. As you can imagine, I really felt for her.

My last recommendation is a collaboration between The Boston Globe and WBUR called Last Seen. So far there are four episodes out and I binged them all on yesterday when I was cleaning the house*. In the art world, the story of the heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum is a legend. On March 18, 1990, two men dressed as policemen entered the museum, tied up the two security guards using duct tape, and stole thirteen works of art valued at a combined total of $500 million. Despite the fact that this was nearly thirty years ago, no one knows who stole the art or where the art is.  This podcast is looking at what we know and has some fascinating interviews with fascinating people, including the two security guards who were working that night.

*Gah. I had to wash the windows. Is this a chore other people do? It took approximately FOREVER.