I haven’t written a mid-year podcast update in a while (I completely skipped it for 2022, if I remember correctly) but reading the Six Stories series has reminded me that it’s time to do a mid-Year podcast update so that I won’t have too much to write and feel overwhelmed at the end of the year.

In keeping with the “don’t feel overwhelmed” theme, I’m avoiding doing a very in-depth review of all my podcasts but instead just want to talk about some shorter series that I’ve finished so far this year.

Bad Women season 2: I talked about this in my 2022 podcast post and… I don’t have much to add. I thought it remained rather unfocused until the end; I would have preferred a story that focused on domestic abuse, or one on the blackout ripper, because both themes were not balanced very well.

I’m not a Monster Season 2: the Shamima Begum story: This was soooo good! I listened to each episode as soon as it came out. I found the story to be fascinating, detailed, and balanced. Josh Baker and his team clearly did a lot of research. I did read some criticism that this podcast was too kind to Shamima, but I think Josh also pointed out the flaws in her story and fact-checked her where possible, so while she gets to tell her story, it’s not a one-sided account.

The Incident at Ong’s Hat: This is a 5 part series from BBC which started cause I heard it had Tanis vibes (voice does sound like Nic Silver’s). It’s short, very atmospheric, and very bingeable. It’s no surprised that I listened to all five episodes at one go. It’s perhaps a bit too pat at the end but overall I really enjoyed this one.

The Teacher’s Pet: It took a while for me to finish this but it’s very moving and upsetting, especially since it’s not just about a murder but also the exploitation of children in the education system. Honestly, I’m glade this podcast was used to help bring justice to Lynn Dawson’s family.

The New Gurus: Listened to this on BBC Sounds instead of my usual podcast app since I had cleared some podcasts and was looking for new things to try. I found the first few episodes to be rather shallow (she really just interviews the gurus and lets them speak, which was interesting but I wanted more). Luckily, the show got more interesting from the episode where she talked about the Peterson fan who became disillusioned with his guru and it turned out to be an interesting exploration of why we follow people online and turn them into gurus and how a lot of the guru-sphere interact.

Sold a Story: I was riveted to this one and pretty much binged it! It’s about how children learn to read and how they are being taught to read in America – shockingly, many schools in America don’t follow what the science says about this issue. I just don’t understand how teaching kids to read (it’s not even about what they are reading, just whether they can connect words to sounds!) can be such a partisan issue because surely we want everyone to be good readers, right?

Let me know if you have any podcast series you recommend, especially those that are short and bingeable! I’ll update again about what I’ve started and what I’ve stopped at the end of the year (: