Podcast Corner: Six of the best international shows of 2023
Podcast Corner's best shows of 2023
There will only ever be one Serial - one seismic moment in podcasting that saw the form explode. But it’s been anything but diminishing returns from the production company since. They linked up with the New York Times in 2020 and this year released two brilliant shows. Eight-parter The Coldest Case in Laramie saw Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Kim Barker revisit an unsolved murder that took place while she was in high school in Laramie, Wyoming, nearly 40 years ago.
The Retrievals is a five-part series that makes for uncomfortable listening, recounting how dozens, possibly hundreds, of women came to Yale Fertility Clinic and found themselves in impossible pain during the egg retrieval surgical procedure despite being given the opioid fentanyl for relief. A nurse at the clinic had been stealing the fentanyl and replacing it with a saline (saltwater) solution.
The cherished actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus hosts this 10-part series that celebrates older women. Louis-Dreyfuss, who has battled cancer and turns 63 in January, seeks to learn life lessons from her elders. Guests include Fran Lebowitz, who says she’s 72 but feels 82, Rhea Perlman, Carol Burnett, and Jane Fonda, 85, who opines: “One of the things I’ve learned as I’ve gotten into serious old age is when you’re inside it as opposed to looking at it from the outside, it’s not nearly as scary.”
This six-parter was released around late October, but it’s not just for Halloween, though it features psychics, ghost-hunters, and visions of faceless women. Journalist Tristan Redman says he doesn’t believe in ghosts but can’t help but think of one in his childhood home, recounting what happened in the house to subsequent owners. “I’ve got this crazy idea that it might be connected to the murder of my wife’s great grandmother in the house next door,” he says. Cut to what seemed like an open-and-shut case for the police at the time in 1937 - or maybe not. A riveting unravelling.
An eight-part series about a US magazine, Viva, that started in 1973 and finished in 1980 and sought to do for women what Penthouse had done for men. Both magazines, not coincidentally, were launched by Bob Guccione, who says things in interviews like: “I thought I was the smartest guy in the world where women were concerned.” Anna Wintour was fashion editor at Viva for a couple years, writers included feminist Betty Friedane, and its covers featured stars such as Bianca Jagger, all alongside revealing male centrefolds. But why did it only last seven years?
From Wondery and initially launched on Audible, this 10-part series, co-hosted by the original host of Slow Burn, Leon Neyfakh, goes in depth on MJ, explaining his complicated legacy, re-examining the allegations made against him, and looking at his undeniable rise. For those still not sure how to feel about him in 2023, this series helps clarify some thoughts.
