Podcast Corner: Half-time analysis of 2022's podcasts

Here's our selection of the best podcasts of the year so far

Thomas Stofiel: The Lost American

The 2 Johnnies — The GAA Catfish

At the start of summer, it seemed like everyone was talking about the story of the GAA Catfish’, a serial catfisher who is believed to have been in contact with more than 30 men. We’ve talked about Sweet Bobby before, one of the best series of last year, and catfishing continues to enthral (See Catfish: The Podcast, from MTV and Wondery, which brings you the most shocking episodes of the hit TV series in audio form). 

Here, Johnny B explained he had been messaging a woman he met online last year, detailing a complex web of connections, Instagram accounts, and stories from other men in the first half of the two-part series, wrote Maeve Lee in an explainer for the Irish Examiner. 

After sharing their first podcast on the topic, more people got in touch, alleging they had also been catfished by the same woman under a number of different names. We won’t spoil the rest because you have to listen for yourself.

The Trojan Horse Affair

Brian Reed’s previous series, S-Town is hailed in similar terms to Serial, though his latest is a tougher sell, examining an alleged Islamist plot in Birmingham schools in Britain in 2014. A story of racism, politics, and investigative journalism, it’s dense but hooks you in. Controversy has swirled in its aftermath too — maybe there’s more of this story to come…

Unreal: A Critical History of Reality TV

Last year’s Harsh Reality: The Story of Miriam Rivera was a brilliant look back on the peak of reality TV in the early noughties, of a show that sounded bad at the time, but looks far worse now. 

Rivera’s story is one of those told on Unreal, hosted by Observer podcast columnist Pandora Sykes and Sirin Kale. From Big Brother to Real Housewives, and with the Kardashians in between, by the end, the hosts are asking if the format’s in crisis.

And one of our own — The Lost American

Two-part series. When Echo journalist Mostafa Darwish was researching an award-winning series on deaths of people in Direct Provision, he discovered that one of those who passed away was an American, Thomas Stofiel. Digging deeper into his past opened up a strange and often poignant story. 

Thomas was a man with illogical and unsettling beliefs, someone often struggling with his mental health, manacled to his convictions even as his life veered off course. An investigation kept turning up more elements, opening more doors into his past — of his life in America, his life online, and ultimately, his time in Ireland, living as an asylum seeker in Tralee.

Thomas had a habit of going missing, and he was also the proverbial lost soul.