1 Slow Burn: Roe v. Wade
You’ll hardly believe it, but around Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that regulated abortion in the United States at the federal level, there were more Republicans than Democrats in support of the right to abortion.
Informative that is slow burn secure. But even more so, this podcast, which this season zooms in on this lawsuit, focuses on the human efforts surrounding political upheavals. Past seasons of this fantastic narrative podcast have covered the Watergate scandal, the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the 1990s tensions between rappers Tupac Shakur and The Notorious BIG, and the Los Angeles riots. The new season has become quite relevant with the recent developments around abortion law in America.
2 Hannah Arendt. About love and freedom
Klara’s podcasts rarely disappoint. Neither does this one. In four episodes, presenter Greet van Tienen almost crawls into Hannah Arendt’s head. Arendt, a political philosopher who lived through the Cold War and World War II, did not let herself be stopped in achieving her ultimate goal: “Ich muss verstehen” was her motto. She once said that the only limit to her productivity was the speed at which she could type. There is a loving appreciation in the voices of the guests in this podcast. And then we haven’t even mentioned the topics about which Arendt already wrote in the 20th century: abuse of power, denial of truth, freedom, loneliness, the consumer society, segregation, nuclear threat and refugees. Arendt’s relevance is unprecedented.
3 Hot Lost
After his divorce, it’s time for something different, concludes journalist Brendan Francis Newnam. Together with his best friend Danielle Henderson, a cheerful woman whose love life is also more difficult than lucky, he goes on a journey. Danielle is the concerned friend who asks the right questions. The two have great dynamics and speak openly about the trauma of being abandoned. They have a spontaneous approach and are guided by the special conversations that seem to arise with the greatest of ease.
The podcast listens away as if you are in the backpack of this colorful travel group. Everywhere they go, in Montreal, Mexico City and New Orleans, they meet new people through dinner parties, to which they invite themselves effortlessly.
4 Assembly line work
NRC’s Podcast Club previously tipped this beautiful series. This year podcast maker Emmie Kollau is back with her musical ode to the assembly line workers, the people behind the stuff we carelessly put in our shopping carts. The first episode of the second season is about Han, a real meat eater, who checks veggie burgers all day long. Singer-songwriter Luwten was inspired by this and takes on the musical decoration.
Not only are the stories moving in content, but they are also beautifully edited to specially composed music by famous musicians. This emphasizes the feeling of the daily routine in the factory. Whether you go for vegetarian or meat, this will leave you wanting more.
5 Completed life
When can you consider a life completed? And can you make such a decision alone? Is there such a thing as complete self-determination when it comes to death? Euthanasia is a subject full of legal, moral and emotional contradictions.
Completed life, a podcast commissioned by the right to die with dignity (RWS), creates a clear and multifaceted picture by speaking with people who are waiting to die, but also with loved ones who find it difficult to be excluded from such a decision. held. There is also a doctor who was accused of manslaughter after a euthanasia. He waited three years for an acquittal. He never thought about quitting: “My conscience is clear.”
6 Sorry About The Kid
At the age of ten, Alex lost his brother. He remembers everything about that particular day, including the changing behavior of his mother and sister in the days that followed the event.
Still, within two weeks of his brother’s death, Alex began to forget memories of him, and he was increasingly unable to recall his brother’s appearance and personality. By now Alex doesn’t really remember his brother at all. Has he repressed his memory? Can he still get to know his brother now, thirty years later? A moving and very personal podcast about trauma, grief and changing memories.
7 Hey Paul
Since the age of fourteen, radio presenter Michèle Cuvelier (Studio Brussel) was born in 1992 and has been a fan of The Beatles and in particular Paul McCartney. There’s still a youthful obsession in her voice, especially when she reveals the purpose of her podcast; she wants to ask McCartney, “How do you let it be?” The first episode is not that exciting, in it she questions her chances of meeting him and discusses his persona.
Things get more interesting in the third episode, when her underlying reasons come to the fore. Why has she become such a big McCartney fan, and can Cuvelier let go as a perfectionist? Ultimately, this podcast isn’t so much about asking that one question; it is above all a search for the meaning of what it is to be a fan.
8 BioHacked: Family Secrets
Getting information about your father as a child from a sperm donor was nearly impossible in the United States for decades. Thanks to DNA tests and the internet, hidden stories are now coming to light. In the podcast BioHacked the common thread is the story of Amber, who asked for a DNA test before Christmas and found out that she was a donor child after all. The telephone conversation in which she confronts her parents about her discovery hits hard. Also shocking: after Brittany became ill, her parents discovered that the donor had concealed a hereditary kidney disease. The podcast also sheds light on the donor side: is it ethical to track down a donor who was promised anonymity? The podcast provides a fascinating, critical look at the fertility industry.
9 vigilante
In vigilante journalist and private detective Allie Conti travels to a Texas town that serves as the backdrop for True Detective could serve. She searches for Tim Miller, who, after his daughter’s murder, devotes his life to finding missing people. Her body, along with those of three other women, was found on the Texas Killing Fields. The man Tim suspects is disturbingly similar to himself: they lived in the same cities and have the same childhood traumas. That raises the question of whether serial killers are born, or formed. Conversations between Tim and the parents of other murdered children bring you close to the fire. It is extra exciting that the suspect suddenly threatens to be released, and that Tim Miller himself turns out to be an unreliable figure.
10 pim
In retrospect, a story is usually easier to tell. When we now look back to the year of the murder of Pim Fortuyn, we see the threat. At the time, few people saw the death of Pim Fortuyn coming. Not even his own mother, as it turns out in the fourth episode of pimone of the best-listened NRC series ever, which received many favorable reviews in other media.
Guus Valk, editor-in-chief of The Hague, examined the life and legacy of Pim Fortuyn. After his death Fortuyn divided the country into two camps. With both supporters and opponents of the ‘voice of the people’, Guus looks back on an eventful period, to find out how his rapid growth can be explained, where his ideas came from, and whether his legacy influences the current world. politics.
11 Trojan Horse Affair
In The Trojan Horse Affair Doctor Hamza Syed tells of a mysterious letter that “has turned lives upside down, led to government investigations and changes in national policies.” The letter would describe the plan to infiltrate British schools and thus Islamize education: Operation Trojan Horse. The Birmingham doctor with journalistic ambitions is missing the answer to a basic question in the news and discussions in parliament: who wrote the letter and why? A podcast from the makers of serial and The New York Times† Brian Reed (creator of podcast hit S-Town and therefore a kind of god in podcast land) and Hamza Syed spent five years working on this spectacular story. a true page turner in audio.
12 Grey area
This year, De Volkskrant made a special production about a hidden world: that of police infiltration and undercover actions. It is a collection of dramatic stories in which the police balance on the edge of the permissible and morally acceptable.
In the first episode of this series, justice reporter Elsbeth Stoker delves into the so-called Mr. Big method. In this method, undercover agents penetrate deeply into the lives of suspects. This also happened to Baukje and Ad. Ad was suspected of the twenty-year-old ‘shredder murder’. So the police set up an undercover operation in which undercover agents become friends with the couple, with the aim of extracting a confession from Ad. It’s an intriguing glimpse into this method. The candor of Ad and Baukje is also fascinating.
13 Mother Country Radicals
In prison, Bernardine Dohrn made a calendar for her five-year-old son Zayd. When Zayd looks at it again while making this podcast, he notices that Christmas isn’t on it. His birthday is also missing, but on April 13 he reads: “Colfax massacre, 1873”. Zayd’s parents had been on the run for years as terrorists from the left-wing Weathermen.
In Mother Country Radicals Zayd reconstructs left-wing American activism from around 1970 on the basis of conversations with activists of the time, including his parents. When Zayd tries to psychologize his mother’s activism, she blocks it completely. Because of this field of tension, the podcast is a wonderful investigation into the origin of activism and radicalization.
14 Muslima
The Muslim woman we see in the media often walks veiled down the street, behind a buggy or a shopping cart. But this woman, says Cigdem Yuksel in the podcast Muslima, is a complete stranger to many Muslim women. What should a Volkskrant or NRC reader who has seen these kinds of images for twenty years think about the Muslim woman who lives in his neighbourhood?
Yuksel is a photographer and researched the one-sided way in which Muslim women are portrayed in the media. This resulted in this two-part documentary by the VPRO, Het Spoor Terug. Together with podcast maker Maartje Duin, she interviews connoisseurs, Muslim women and various media publishers to find out what we don’t see when we view these photos. How can we change this image?
15 Wild Things: Siegfried & Roy
Do you remember Siegfried & Roy? The two illusionists known for their frizzy hair and their show in Las Vegas with white tigers (one of which would teach Roy a lesson during a show). This series delves into their story: how they met as young German boys on a cruise ship until the attack of the aforementioned tiger.
The series gives a poignant image of the time (remember, when we thought it was quite normal that animals had to do crazy tricks to entertain us?) and is a wonderful listen. A sensational spectacle, in which a new suspense is built up every ten minutes. For example, even the podcast is a true magic show.