Essential podcasts for your autumn road trips
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Hitting the road this autumn? Of course, you are.
Naturally, you’re going to need some entertainment, so here are my top six narrative-style (read: incredibly binge-able) podcasts for long road trips. They’re so gripping you’ll be sorry when you arrive.
Welcome to your Fantasy
Many of us know about The Chippendales—the shirtless male strippers whose racy shows were a mainstay of girls’ nights out in the 80s and whose impact on popular culture paved the way for shows like Thunder from Down Under and movies like Magic Mike.
Well, you might know The Chippendales, but I doubt you’ve heard of the story behind their rise to international stardom—a journey filled with sexual liberation, drugs, lawsuits, blackmail, hitmen and even murder.
Hosted by social historian Natalia Petrzela, Welcome to Your Fantasy is a fascinating (and hilarious) look at The Chippendale’s colourful history and their lasting impact on Western culture.
By the way—it’s now a hit show on Disney+, so listen before you watch it!
Bed of Lies
Covering one of the biggest scandals in modern British history, Season One of Bed of Lies uncovers a series of true events straight out of an action blockbuster.
Seven true love stories are told in sequence, each with a British woman at the centre. These relationships are similar, yet different. So why did the British Government offer these women an official apology years after these relationships ended?
Death in Ice Valley
In 1970, a woman’s body was found in a remote valley in Norway, near Bergen. At the train station, police found her suitcase in a locker, filled with wigs, clothes from luxury boutiques and passports with different names.
Who was this woman—and what information did she have that cost her life? Find out in Death in Ice Valley.
The Lazurus Heist
Did you know there’s a connection between the hacking of Sony Pictures in 2014 (you remember—the one that exposed Hollywood industry secrets like never before) and the world’s biggest cyber bank heist, where hackers attempted to steal $1 billion dollars from the central bank of Bangladesh in 2016?
BBC World Service podcast The Lazurus Heist uncovers the link behind these hackings—and plenty more—in a nail-biting narrative that combines North Korea, fake viagra, Seth Rogan, undercover FBI agents and a fake divorce party at the Playboy Mansion. You’ll wish your drive was longer. No, really.
Who Killed Emma?
For true crime fans out there, this slickly produced BBC Radio Scotland is investigative journalism at its best.
When Scottish woman Emma Caldwell was found dead in 2005, Scottish police waded into Glasgow’s gritty underbelly of prostitution, drugs and crime to solve her murder. But over 10 years later, they still don’t have a perpetrator.
Enter BBC Radio Scotland journalist Sam Poling, who conducts her own four-year investigation into the case—with jaw-dropping results.
Casefile: Silk Road
You’ve probably heard about Silk Road—the black market website that operated between 2011 and 2013 where people could exchange Bitcoin for drugs and guns. It sparked a worldwide debate about personal freedoms and drug use—but the story behind its creation (and its demise) is more epic than you would ever expect.
Australian podcast Casefile—one of the world’s most successful true crime podcasts—has crafted an epic three-part podcast about Silk Road’s creation and the man behind it, then-27-year-old Ross Ulbricht.
Listen as American law enforcement agencies play a game of cat and mouse with Ross in the dark web—it’s true crime without the gore.
