Mon Jan 6

Elon Musk, Gauguin and are we Australia fair? The 10 best podcasts of 2024

Written by Siobhan McHugh, Honorary Associate Professor, Journalism, Consulting Producer, The Greatest Menace, Walkley-winning podcast, University of Wollongong

This year saw podcasts attract widespread attention for their influence on the political agenda (a hack that goes back to 2015, when Obama caused outrage with his raw take on race on Marc Maron’s WTF).

Spotify continues to push “video podcasts”, but apart from the technical problems they present, they hold no appeal for those who love audio at least in part because it frees them from screens.

The podcasts below, my picks for the year, do much more than that: they inform, illuminate, touch the heart and unleash the imagination.

1. In The Dark

In The Dark’s new series forensically unpacks a day in 2005 when United States marines went on a rampage in Haditha, Iraq, killing 24 civilians. Over four years, host Madeleine Baran and team conducted hundreds of interviews and secured thousands of previously unreleased government documents. As Iraqi family members speak in Arabic about their horrendous loss, superlative production makes their testimony deeply moving. In one heartbreaking scene, the interpreter herself breaks down. I’ve only heard this happen once before, when American oral historian Studs Terkel interviewed survivors of Hiroshima to open his acclaimed documentary Born To Live. Apex investigative journalism that underlines the human cost of war. 2. Come by Chance

The gentle but gritty Canadian podcast Come by Chance probes the intertwined meaning of family and identity. Set in remote Newfoundland, it investigates the origins of two men who look strikingly dissimilar to their siblings. You can guess the outcome, but that doesn’t diminish the pleasure and pain of discovering what happened. We warm to locals whose unaffected demeanour and distinctive phrasing make for revelatory storytelling that is never exploitative. 3. Australia Fair

This timely series Australia Fair provides a fresh take on Australia’s “weird and troubled immigration history”. Host Janak Rogers, whose mother came from high society Delhi and whose father was “a big hulking white guy” from Birmingham, is well placed to untangle this tapestry. Heartfelt accounts from successive waves of arrivals, interwoven with illuminating archival clips and expert commentary, reveal fraught undercurrents. The Chinese attacked on the goldfields. Pacific Islanders kidnapped to cut cane. European migrants lampooned after World War II, the xenophobia shifting to Vietnamese boat people, Muslims from the Middle East, Africans. All alongside unrelenting racism towards Indigenous Australians. A major flaw is its depiction of settler Australia as a monolithic white society, ignoring the vilification of the Irish from the arrival of the first political convicts in 1791. But overall, Australia Fair offers a bracing challenge to our oft-claimed status as a “successful” multicultural country. 4. Empire

Empire, hosted by polymath historian William Dalrymple and journalistic offsider Anita Anand, examines how empires rise and fall and how they shaped the world. Dalrymple’s puppydog enthusiasm belies his vast knowledge of power hierarchies from India to the Ottomans, while Anand deftly retrieves him from rabbit holes. Episodes verge into the history of pirates, North Korea, the Cuban Revolution, the dispossession of Native Americans and a cracker analysis of the Vietnam War. 5. The Belgrano Diary

Lauded Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan examines the political and military machinations behind the 1982 Falklands War in The Belgrano Diary. O’Hagan’s shrewd but unshowy narration and writerly eye for character are a major asset. A former naval officer, Narendra Sethia, whose diary is the British government’s undoing, is “skinny, covered in tattoos, with […] the appearance of someone who’s been on a lifelong gap year”. Episode two, Gotcha, is the ghastly telling of the sinking of Argentinian cruiser the Belgrano with the loss of 323 lives. Archival tape and eye-witness testimony are interwoven with burbling underwater sonic detectors and muffled explosions of torpedoes. A survivor describes how those burnt the worst were given morphine first, “M” dabbed on their foreheads in their own blood. Consummate sound design allows us to absorb its huge emotional and moral heft and weep for the dead of Islas Malvinas, as Argentinians call the Falklands. 6. The Gauguin Dilemma

The sparky series The Gauguin Dilemma, commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia, shows “branded podcasts” need not be schmaltzy PR. Coinciding with the recent Paul Gauguin exhibition, it delves deep into controversial aspects of the artist. Was he simply a destructive, colonising paedophile, to be cancelled forthwith? A robust range of perspectives complexifies this vexed topic. 7. Elon’s Spies

Elon’s Spies drills into Musk-the-man, featuring chilling stories of those who have crossed him. They include Vernon Unsworth, architect of the Thai schoolboys’ cave rescue in 2018. Musk branded him “paedo-guy” because Unsworth slighted Musk’s mini-submarine proposal. Musk’s then-girlfriend Amber Heard was surveilled on the Gold Coast; a whistleblower was bankrupted; Scottish Muslim leader Humza Yousaf was mercilessly hounded. Musk’s capacity for vengefulness makes Trump seem almost benign. 8. Short Cuts

Short Cuts logo In its 12 years, Short Cuts has showcased eclectic, poetic audio features from producers all over the world. Winningly hosted by comedian Josie Long, the 30-minute episodes have diverse short pieces, loosely linked by a theme: the tipping point, a piano, or beasts (in which Laurie Anderson performs a concert for dogs). It is, mystifyingly, to be axed – unless a petition changes the BBC’s plans. Listen while you can. 9. Stop and Search

Stop and Search tracks how 20-year-old apprentice tradie Brad Balzan was shot dead in his backyard in Western Sydney after a police encounter went wrong. Host Paul Farrell meticulously exposes the bigger context: how proactive police searches discriminate according to class and race. Depressingly, Indigenous people and lower socio-economic areas are more likely to be targeted, searches are often unlawfully conducted and 90% of searches found nothing. 10. This is Alice Springs

This is Alice Springs, hosted by Yorta Yorta man Daniel James, takes us behind the miserable headlines about youth violence and curfews in Alice Springs. It makes such a difference to hear Indigenous people telling their own stories, and not to a white journalist. Keenly observed writing and immersive sound bring the camps, streets and landscape alive, providing nuanced insight into a complex, troubling situation. Authors: Siobhan McHugh, Honorary Associate Professor, Journalism, Consulting Producer, The Greatest Menace, Walkley-winning podcast, University of Wollongong

Elon Musk, Gauguin and are we Australia fair? The 10 best podcasts of 2024

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