Podcast Roundup November 2020

I think this whole never leaving the house thing really got to me this month. Most of these are "podcast episodes that made me cry."

In the Dark is probably the best investigative podcast there is. Period.  It has produced two brilliant seasons. The first season covered the investigation into the disappearance of Jacob Wetterling and how law enforcement mishandled the investigation from the beginning. The second season was all about a man who had been put on trial for the same crime six times.  After that season concluded, that man, Curtis Flowers, was released from jail and eventually the charges against him were dropped.  I put off listening to the interview they did with Flowers because I wasn't sure I was ready for it, and I wasn't. I cried when Flowers talked about what it was like to watch as his neighbors on death row ate their last meals and walked to the final moments. I cried when he talked about how he couldn't go to his mother's funeral. I cried when he talked about how he understands that some people in his hometown think he committed the crime that led to the deaths of four people and that he stays away because of that. Flowers was composed, articulate, and his grief came through, but so did his empathy for the families of those who had been horribly murdered.  

I was chopping garlic and onions for dinner while listening to this episode with my headphone in and (apparently) I was sighing heavily and throwing things about. Dr. BB tapped me on the shoulder with a raised eyebrow.  And then I was explaining him to him that I was listening to this episode from The Indicator called "Why Women Are Leaving the Workforce" and suddenly I was sobbing. 

There's some sort of cliché out there about how statistics are boring, but a story is tragic. I KNEW, I KNEW that women were leaving the workforce in troves. Within my book club alone, I know one woman who quit her job entirely, one woman who went from full-time down to six days a month (every Friday and every other Saturday), and another woman whose hours were slashed.  But anecdotes aren't data and I had sort of ignored this trend in workforce numbers.  

But this episode just drove it home. Most women make less money than men, so of course women will stay home more often to deal with childcare and schooling and whatever else is happening the world these days.  And suddenly hearing that the gains made in the 1990s and 2000s have been undone in the last eight months was absolutely heartbreaking to me.  I am absolutely undone myself.  With rage.

I know that I talk about Reveal a lot, but it's because Reveal does excellent work.  "An Adolescence, Seized" is a follow-up to a story Aura Bogado did earlier this year about a girl from Honduras who had been in US immigration custody for six years.  More rage.  The way this child was treated, the way her family was treated, the way it all ended up?  Absolutely rage inducing.

And that's it. 3/3 episodes that made me cry.