This summer was packed with poignant, timely podcasts that captivated listeners during the hotter months. From an experiment with generative AI to a deep dive into why no one was held accountable for the Haditha massacre, these are five podcasts from this summer worth running back to before the fall — or even during it!
Shell Game (Independent)
The birth of a new class of generative artificial intelligence software has put this technology in the spotlight, as experts bounce between extolling its praises and warning about it ending the world as we know it. In his new podcast "Shell Game," journalist Evan Ratliff tests the limit of publicly available AI tools by creating a voice clone of himself and linking it to an AI chatbot. If there is one thing to "take away from this six-episode banger of a podcast," it is that "all this AI stuff can actually spark (or in some cases, re-spark) curiosity, ability and individual economic mobility," said Podcast Delivery. Listen on Substack.
Embedded: Tested (NPR and CBC)
Canada's CBC collaborates with NPR's Embedded podcast for this limited series, looking into the 100-year-old history of the controversial practice of "sex testing" in elite sports. Host Rose Eveleth is "no stranger to making stellar sports audio docs," Vulture said. The show follows the story of two women caught up in new regulations from track and field authorities of World Athletics that said the pair could not compete in the female category unless they lowered their body's naturally occurring testosterone levels. The series "comes at a particularly resonant time" because of this summer's Olympics and a "larger political background of LGBTQ+ rights being under duress around the world," said Vulture. Listen on Apple, Spotify or NPR.
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Hysterical (Pineapple Street Studios and Wondery)
Mass hysteria stories are becoming a popular subgenre of narrative podcasts, and Wondery's "gripping" seven-part series about a "mass psychogenic illness" that affected girls at a high school in upstate New York in 2011 is no exception, said The Guardian. It started with one girl developing a "conversion disorder," which usually entails physical symptoms, such as a limp or a tic, with no apparent cause. Suddenly, a growing number of teenage girls were "tic-ing and shouting, making noises and twitching", almost as if they had Tourette's. Host Dan Taberski is a veteran podcaster and a charming presenter who makes this complex story "clear, intriguing and fun," the outlet said. "The best writers pinpoint something you've felt for ages but haven't been able to articulate. This series is like that, every minute." Listen on Apple or Spotify.
In the Dark season three (The New Yorker)
Season three of the acclaimed investigative podcast lands in a new home at The New Yorker. Its first project under the magazine features host Madeleine Baran and her team looking into the Haditha massacre in Iraq, for which four American marines were charged with murder. Only one was found guilty of the lesser charge of negligent dereliction of duty and served no jail time. Four years ago, Baran and her team began looking into the incident. They interviewed over a hundred sources and "repeatedly sued the military for the release of thousands of records, in order to learn why a well-documented mass killing had gone virtually unpunished," The New Yorker said. The result of that deep-dive investigation is "stellar, upsetting and yet another much-needed opportunity to critically consider the state of U.S. military engagement," said Vulture. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or The New Yorker.
Writer and comedian Jamie Loftus takes a look at the internet's main characters of yesteryear and dives into "how their stories relate to our media habits and cultural shortcomings," said Esquire. Her episode on the viral "Hide your kids, hide your wife" video "unpacks the exploitation of minorities for entertainment, as well as the glossing over of sexual assault for the sake of humor." She revisits these moments for more than just nostalgia's sake. "It would be so easy to just make this a surface-level "Hey, remember this eBaum's World clip?" podcast, but it's not," Esquire said. Listen on Apple or Spotify.
