Long distance drives in a slow truck means that we always have plenty of time to listen to podcasts on road trips. Sometimes they’re strictly for entertainment purposes (Serial), for inspiration (How I Built This), or to learn about a country we’d love to visit one day (Russia Rising). Others, like The Other Latif and Sanctioned help us catch up on current events in much more detail than a snippet of news ever could.
These are our current Top 5 podcasts, based on the fact that these are the ones that we constantly recommend to friends and family. We’ll create a Part 2 to this list in the future, but for now you’ve got plenty to listen to. Enjoy!
Serial – Season 1
A high-school senior named Hae Min Lee disappeared one day after school in 1999, in Baltimore County, Maryland. A month later, her body was found in a city park. She’d been strangled. Her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was arrested for the crime, and within a year, he was sentenced to life in prison. The case against him was largely based on the story of one witness, Adnan’s friend Jay, who testified that he helped Adnan bury Hae’s body. But Adnan has always maintained he had nothing to do with Hae’s death. Some people believe he’s telling the truth. Many others don’t.
Sarah Koenig sorted through thousands of documents, listened to trial testimony and police interrogations, and talked to everyone she could find who remembered what happened between Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee. She discovered that the trial covered up a far more complicated story than the jury – or the public – ever got to hear. The high school scene, the shifting statements to police, the prejudices, the sketchy alibis, the scant forensic evidence — all of it leads back to the most basic questions: How can you know a person’s character? How can you tell what they’re capable of? In Season One of Serial, she looks for answers.
How I Built This
Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world’s best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.
We recommend starting with the Lonely Planet episode.
In 1972, Maureen and Tony Wheeler bought a beat-up car and drove from London “as far east as we could go.” They wound up in Australia, by way of Afghanistan, India and Thailand. The couple’s budget travel notes became a book, which grew into Lonely Planet — the largest travel guide publisher in the world.
The Other Latif
Radiolab reporter Latif Nasser always believed his name was uniquely his own. Until he makes a shocking discovery that he shares his name with another man: Detainee 244 at Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. government paints a terrifying picture of The Other Latif as Al-Qaeda’s top explosives expert, and an advisor to Osama bin Laden. Nasser’s lawyer claims that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and that he was never even in Al-Qaeda. This clash leads Radiolab’s Latif into a years-long investigation, trying to uncover what this man actually did or didn’t do. Along the way, Radiolab’s Latif reflects on American values and his own religious past, and wonders how his namesake, a fellow nerdy, suburban Muslim kid, traveled such a strikingly different path.
Russia Rising
Russia Rising is an investigative limited series hosted by Jeff Semple, the Europe Bureau Chief for Global News. In this series Jeff talks to Russian Trolls, look at Cyberwarfare and Hacking, KGB agents, and The Putin Generation. Jeff is on the ground gathering stories to form pieces of a puzzle, to separate fact from fiction, and unravel the mystery behind Putin’s Russia.
Sanctioned: The Arrest of A Telecom Giant
The arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver in December 2018 placed Canada in the middle of a global trade war. Stephen Quinn narrates a story of international intrigue set against a dramatic battle to dominate the economies of the future.
What are your favourite podcasts? Let us know in the comments below!