Podcast Corner: Four shows to check out this week
Muhammad Ali's fight with Joe Frazier in 1971 has been given the podcast treatment (Photo by Tim Graham/Evening Standard/Getty Images)
The best kind of podcasts are the niche ones, the shows that make you think, ‘how did they get so many episodes on that topic!?’ Celebrity Memoir Book Club - do you need a bio!? - has clocked up more than 90 episodes since September 2020, opening up with Jessica Simpson’s Open Book. Since then, hosts (and comedians, naturally) Claire Parker and Ashley Hamilton have delved into the tomes of the likes of Amy Schumer, Sharon Stone, Dave Grohl, and Jamie Lynn Spears. A standout episode concerns actressnOlivia Munn’s Suck It, Wonder Woman!, which sounds like a troublesome book but makes for a cackle-along of an episode.
A seven-episode series that came out at the start of the year, Wild Things examined the curious story of German-born illusionists Siegfried & Roy’s final show, which was seemingly wrapped in mystery - doesn’t every podcast have to have some element of whodunnit these days? - and saw one of their beloved tigers attack Roy. Emmy-winning filmmaker and journalist Steven Leckart is the inquisitive host, telling the story of a duo who were bafflingly big and then just… stopped. A good binge listen.
Ahead of Anthony Joshua’s big fight with Oleksandr Usyk this month, go back more than 50 years to well, the fight of the century. In six episodes, narrated by the rapper Nas and detailing the years from 1967 to 1971, this was when boxing was at its feverish high, celebrities from all walks of Hollywood scrambling for tickets to Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971. It sounds great, with commentary from the bouts, the hard hits filling your earlobes, and charts the fascinating swirl of Vietnam, civil rights, black rights, and counterculturalism that was gripping America at the time.
One of the big pods of summer, you might’ve come across this plenty times scrolling through your audio apps - and how could you not listen! The description: “In the 1940s, a group of Mormon dreamers started a town in the Mexican desert. But what began as a utopian vision quickly turned sour when the founding family’s son, Ervil LeBaron’s struggle for control of the community unleashed a multi-generational crimewave – the ripples of which are still being felt today.” To be honest, there’s a lot going on here, and you might need to keep notes for the baker’s dozen of 50ish-minute episodes so far. But if it clicks, you’ll be engulfed in Ervil’s world.
