Each year, Peabody Awards select the best in audio storytelling across genres. From true crime to history to investigative journalism, here are recent stories worth a listen:
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For True Crime Fans:
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In the Dark APM Reports [Peabody Nominee]
An investigative podcast that raises profound questions about whether the criminal justice system in America is fair and just. Season Two investigates the case of Curtis Flowers, a black man on death row in Mississippi who has been tried six times for the same crime, and reveals what can happen when the power of a prosecutor goes unchecked.
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The Runaways This American Life and ProPublica Inc. [Peabody Nominee]
An examination into how Long Island police failed to investigate a series of gang murders when the victims were immigrant teenagers, missing leads, ignoring key evidence, and brushing aside distraught parents who had information that could’sve been helpful.
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For History Buffs:
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Buried Truths WABE [Peabody Winner]
Journalist Hank Klibanoff and his Emory University students investigate the death of Isaiah Nixon, a black man gunned down outside his South Georgia home in 1948 for exercising his right to vote.
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Monumental Lies Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, PRX, and Type Investigations [Peabody Winner]
This podcast explores the contested history and contemporary debates surrounding monuments both in the South to the Confederacy and in the Southwest to Spanish ancestors implicated in the genocide of indigenous peoples.
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Bag Man MSNBC [Peabody Nominee]
In-depth investigation and historic look by Rachel Maddow and Mike Yarvitz at the forced resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, the brash politician who waged an all-out assault on the public officials who uncovered his criminal past and those who reported on it.
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For Social Change Activists:
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Believed Michigan Radio/NPR [Peabody Winner]
A searing account of how Larry Nassar got away with abusing hundreds of women and girls for more than two decades and an amazing exploration of the cultures that enabled this abuse.
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Kept Out Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, PRX, PBS NewsHour, and the Associated Press [Peabody Winner]
Reporters show that redlining—the practice of discouraging non-white people from living in certain neighborhoods by manipulating rentals and homebuying—is still an active practice in dozens of metro areas across the United States.
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Ear Hustle PRX’s Radiotopia [Peabody Nominee]
Stories of life inside prison, shared by those living it, including that of co-host Earlonne Woods, who, after the commutation of his life sentence by California Governor Jerry Brown, reflects on the difficulty of leaving prison, while his older brother and cellmate remains inside.
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For Newsies:
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The Daily The New York Times [Peabody Nominee]
Roughly 20-minute episodes each morning put real people—a farmer, a taxi driver, an undocumented worker, a Congress member, a Russian troll and, of course, reporters themselves—at the center of the biggest stories of our time.