True Crime anything is very popular right now, and no medium is more saturated with it than podcasts. Five years ago when Sarah Koenig came out with Serial, it really kickstarted True Crime flood of entertainment. Afterwards, Making a Murderer and The Jinx came into play and now we have a True Crime renaissance.
There’s so many podcasts out there about true crime it’s hard to keep up. Here’s a list of a few we’ve listened to that have not only resonated with us but have inspired some of our writing.
These are podcasts that we’ve listened to and enjoyed. Matt has a one hour commute to and from work so he burns through quite a few podcasts during the week.
If you liked Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder’s Serial, this podcast is very similar.
To Live and Die in LA follows the disappearance of Adea Shabani who went missing the week prior to the production of the podcast. At the time, her estranged boyfriend Christopher Spotz was the person of interest in her disappearance.
Neil Strauss is a reporter for Rolling Stone, and he does an awesome job working with a private detective showing the workings of the missing person’s case. I don’t want to give away too much but it’s got a lot of twists and turns and is fascinating listening to the actual case unfold. I actually looked forward to my hour long commute to work so that I could find out what happened next. That is quite an accomplishment.
Gimlet media, the people who brought us The Jinx put out some great podcasts, this one’s our favorite. They’ve done two seasons of Crimetown and each following a different city. The first season was Providence Rhode Island, covering the Patriarca Crime Family and the rise and fall and then re-election of Mayor Buddy Cianci Jr. It goes from the 1970s to mid 2000s and it’s awesome.
The second season covers Detroit’s drug dealers, corrupt politicians and racist cops of the 1970s. I personally liked the first season better but as a New Englander I’m biased.
Speaking of New England, Bear Brook is about the Bear Brook murders in New Hampshire, where people’s remains were found in a barrel in the 1980s. The case was unsolved until recently thanks to DNA evidence. The case was also talked about in a recent episode of The New York Times, Daily podcast. The link will bring you to that episode about genetic detectives.
If you’re into My Favorite Murder, Crime Junkie is very much in the same vein.
I think it’s better executed than My Favorite Murder, which relys on Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff’s personalities to be entertaining. Georgia and Karen are great but if you just want to listen to two people talk about true crime, Crime Junkie is your podcast. It’s very well researched and the storytelling is well done. One of the co-hosts Ashley Flowers worked at Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana.
I really like how they start each episode with the type of crime that’s being covered, like “Missing,” “Murdered,” “Serial Killer,” and even “White Collar.” That way you can bounce around and pick by True Crime subgenre as your mood hits you.
This follows the Hodel family and George Hodel’s probable (practically irrefutable) involvment in the Black Dahlia murder. Like To Live and Die in LA, the LAPD does not look great in this. Warning on this one, some of the stuff they talk about is brutal and I don’t mean the descriptions of the Elizabeth Short murder. George Hodel was horrific.
Hodel was a terrible human being, and his son Steve, a retired police detective has written books claiming his dad murdered Elizabeth Short. It’s also pretty well known within the family that he (George) killed his secretary and got away with it.
The podcast is wild, hosted by members of the Hodel family talking about their monster of a father, grandfather, great-grandfather.
What’s also interesting about this podcast is that it was produced by TNT and put out in tandem with their show I Am the Night which I admittedly, have not seen yet.
Fun fact, that crazy asshole George Hodel was the inspiration for John Huston’s character in Chinatown. Listening to the podcast, you’ll understand why. Years earlier, Huston would actually hang out with Hodel and the other people of Avant-garde Los Angeles in the 40’s like Man Ray and Henry Miller. Those had to be some weird parties. Hodel was also a big inspiration for Dr. Polk in our upcoming feature, Under the Knife. Right down to the mustache.
Also, listening to the story of the Hodel’s I couldn’t help but think how much of this must have been common knowledge with the aforementioned Chinatown reference and also Jame’s Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia which came out in 1987 and is strikingly on point. It’s also the first of the excellent LA Quartet series, which is worth reading if you haven’t already.
We at American Pulps love dark humor and feel that comedians talking about murder and the occult is always fun. These guys were very much an inspiration for our upcoming feature, Under the Knife. Which has some Operation Paperclip shoutouts throughout along with other things the guys on Last Podcast have talked about.
I almost left them off the list because they are so well known and popular it’s almost like having a list of podcasts and putting This American Life on it, everyone know’s This American Life.
Let us know if you think we left any great podcasts out, we’d love to hear from you and we’re always on the lookout for new stuff. Email us at [email protected]
Oh, and for non-True Crime podcasts we really like How I Built This, Revisionist History, 99% Invisible, Drink Champs, Hardcore History, Bill Burr’s Monday Morning Podcast, and The Pitch. In case you were wondering.
