You can’t talk about true crime podcasts without acknowledging the granddaddy of the genre. Dating way back to 2014, series one of ‘Serial’ is the most famous and successful podcast of all time: Sarah Koenig’s hyper in-depth exploration of a 1999 Baltimore murder has been downloaded well over a hundred million times, and had a vast cultural impact. It laid down a template that many, many true crime podcasts have understandably followed. But it still stands up terrifically today.
If you’re into podcasts, there’s a pretty decent chance it’s because of true crime. While, sure, there’s much more to the podcasting world than true crime, there’s no denying that the genre dominates. There are simply few things quite so gripping as grappling with a mystery – and knowing that it could all be true.
True crime’s success was no doubt launched by the mind-boggling listenership of 2014’s ‘Serial’ and these days the standard TC ‘cast often follows a very similar form. An intrepid investigative reporter usually digs into a criminal case – often a cold one – and sheds new light through multi-part documentaries that go deeper than any TV show would likely be allowed to.
And crime isn’t all just dead bodies and morbid stuff – as we’ll show in this list. Below are some of the best true crime podcasts around, featuring everything from a reappraisal of Jack the Ripper’s victims to an in-depth examination of British colonial looting.
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