Speaker 1: Okay, Ruby, tell me about what you've been listening to
Speaker 1: this year.
Speaker 2: I've been listening to a lot of things this year.
Speaker 2: To be really upfront about it, a lot of it
Speaker 2: is Australian focused, and a lot of it is investigative journalism,
Speaker 2: media critique and true crime. Those are my interests and
Speaker 2: I have not strayed very far from them this year.
Speaker 1: You don't want something a little bit lighter than that.
Speaker 1: You heard it here first. Ruby Jones is into journalism
Speaker 1: and shows about journalism. Today, she's bringing you her favorite
Speaker 1: podcasts of the year, and while they don't stray too
Speaker 1: far when it comes to themes, she's mixing it up
Speaker 1: on format, recommending everything from immersive narrative series to friends
Speaker 1: with chat shows. I'm Daniel James and you're listening to
Speaker 1: seven AM today Ruby Jones with her five favorite podcasts
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty five. It's Friday, December twenty six. I
Speaker 1: hope the food Coma is treating you well.
Speaker 2: So the first podcast that I wanted to talk about
Speaker 2: was a series from Background Briefing, which is the ABC show.
Speaker 2: It's a five part series called The Invisible Killer.
Speaker 1: You know, the perfect place to be a serial killer.
Speaker 3: An aged care home.
Speaker 1: Background Briefing is a great podcast. What can you tell
Speaker 1: me about the Invisible Killer?
Speaker 2: Yeah? They did a lot of good series this year,
Speaker 2: but this one really stood out to me. So there's
Speaker 2: five episodes. It's hosted by Anne Connolly. She's an incredible journalist.
Speaker 2: So she's best known for her twenty eighteen four Corners,
Speaker 2: which was all about abuse and neglect in Australian nursing homes.
Speaker 2: And that episode of four Corners is so famous because
Speaker 2: before it even went to air, the Prime Minister at
Speaker 2: the time, Scott Morrison, announced a Royal commission into aged care,
Speaker 2: so she's got a lot of credibility in this space.
Speaker 2: And this series is also about aged care. It focuses
Speaker 2: on one particular nursing home in New South Wales, in Newcastle,
Speaker 2: and then her case kind of hones in on one
Speaker 2: particular man who worked in that center.
Speaker 3: The search is on the firm was we had more
Speaker 3: than likely a possible serial killer. We were very concerned
Speaker 3: there was going to.
Speaker 4: Be more and the police race against the clock to
Speaker 4: find out who did it.
Speaker 5: I believe that I would say prime suspect.
Speaker 2: And what I thought was so clever about this series is.
Speaker 2: It's really gripping. It really follows a lot of the
Speaker 2: kind of true crime serialized formats, but usually, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like a young woman who's gone missing, a beautiful
Speaker 2: young woman, whereas in this case, you've got these elderly
Speaker 2: people who I think a lot of the time, you know,
Speaker 2: people have forgotten about. And I think what she really
Speaker 2: does in this series is show us how easy a
Speaker 2: target some of these people are in these homes for
Speaker 2: a person who in this case is potentially a serial killer.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that gets a my goat
Speaker 1: about true chrime podcast is that you listen to hours
Speaker 1: and hours and hours worth of a series and it
Speaker 1: reveals nothing new about the case. So does this particular
Speaker 1: podcast actually reveal anything new about these killings, these murders. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that was always the danger in this case
Speaker 2: because a lot of where the story begins has already
Speaker 2: been reported. But I think what she does that's new
Speaker 2: is that she actually speaks to the person who is accused.
Speaker 2: He's in prison, so I don't want to kind of
Speaker 2: put any spoilers in, but she gets in touch with him,
Speaker 2: and it's really fascinating hearing her trying to work out
Speaker 2: whether or not she thinks he's done it, and what
Speaker 2: his motivations might be and what he's trying to extract
Speaker 2: out of her. So that's really interesting. But then she
Speaker 2: does push the case further because he is accused of
Speaker 2: three killings, but she starts to look into previous places
Speaker 2: that he's worked and to figure out if there were
Speaker 2: an unexplained deaths there. And I think that what becomes
Speaker 2: clear is that there are a lot of unexplained deaths
Speaker 2: in aged care.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that was the invisible killer by background briefing
Speaker 1: sounds fascinating. What was your second pick?
Speaker 2: So my second pick is actually two podcasts. I think
Speaker 2: it's been a really interesting year for independent podcasts, and
Speaker 2: there's two that have launched this year that are kind
Speaker 2: of focused around the media industry and media criticism. So
Speaker 2: the first is called We Used to Be Journos and
Speaker 2: the second is Lanme.
Speaker 1: Stream tell Me about used to be Journals.
Speaker 2: We used to Be Journos as Jan Fran and Antonettler.
Speaker 6: Two, We're a media and critique show, where it's a
Speaker 6: media literacy and critique show, and it might be worth
Speaker 6: I guess, just breaking it down for some of our
Speaker 6: listeners how this story came about and how it ended
Speaker 6: up published, because it's got a few twists and turns crazy.
Speaker 2: Little unusual. So people probably know jan Fran from her
Speaker 2: time at SBS and she did a lot of commentary
Speaker 2: on social media. She's hugely popular and Antonette toof or,
Speaker 2: she's been on seven Am before, but she also has
Speaker 2: worked at ten at the ABC at SBS, and she's
Speaker 2: obviously been in the headlines more recently after being unlawfully
Speaker 2: terminated from a role at the ABC after sharing a
Speaker 2: Human Rights Watch post, and so their podcast was sort
Speaker 2: of launched off the back of that case. And I
Speaker 2: think what's really great about it is that they together
Speaker 2: have so much knowledge of the way the industry works,
Speaker 2: and so when they really kind of go deep on
Speaker 2: the way that certain stories are covered, and sometimes breaks
Speaker 2: stories of their own, there's a lot of credibility there
Speaker 2: to back them up.
Speaker 1: And the second one, lind Stream, was that about.
Speaker 2: So that's os freaking Scott Mitchell, who also have a
Speaker 2: lot of experience across different newsrooms the Abcvice nine and
Speaker 2: of course both of them once were editors of this
Speaker 2: show and as a result, both of them are good
Speaker 2: friends of mine as well, full disclosure, And I think
Speaker 2: like they used to be, Journo's strength is that you
Speaker 2: can tell that they have been friends for a long time,
Speaker 2: just like Jan Fran and Antonette have and so these
Speaker 2: kind of conversations that they're having around the way the
Speaker 2: media works, you can kind of hear that they've been
Speaker 2: having those conversations probably for a long time without you know,
Speaker 2: Mike's in front of them. Five hundred billion dollars could
Speaker 2: be wiped from property values.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. Did I even mentioned climate or was that
Speaker 1: just it?
Speaker 5: That's just it, that's no mention.
Speaker 6: I actually think news dot com have cracked it there,
Speaker 6: Like if the riddle is how to get people to
Speaker 6: read about climate.
Speaker 2: Change fully fully. The industry is obviously fragmenting. There is
Speaker 2: a lack of trust. We know that the industry is
Speaker 2: changing really rapidly. So I'm really curious to see how
Speaker 2: podcasts like this go and whether you know, they can
Speaker 2: kind of maintain success, whether they continue to exist, whether
Speaker 2: they can make money. It's a really difficult time to
Speaker 2: launch an independent media company. So I think one of
Speaker 2: the reasons that I'm keeping a on what they're doing
Speaker 2: is because I think their success or not will tell
Speaker 2: us a lot about the future of the media industry.
Speaker 1: I trust you, Ruby, want that on the record. Coming up,
Speaker 1: A journey into the Australian Outback. Okay, Ruby, what's your
Speaker 1: third pick?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go back to beautifully produced, expansive narrative podcasting.
Speaker 2: And one of my favorites of this year was Expanse
Speaker 2: nowhere Man. So that's another ABC production.
Speaker 5: It's August nineteen ninety nine and something strange is happening
Speaker 5: in the Australian Outback.
Speaker 4: When I got there was just organized chaos. It's one
Speaker 4: of the most extensive searchers ever mounted in the Great
Speaker 4: Sandy Desert.
Speaker 2: The story begins in nineteen ninety nine. There's this young
Speaker 2: American man, Robert B. Begooki. So he he basically left
Speaker 2: his bike by the side of the road and he
Speaker 2: walked out into the Great Sandy Desert in WA and
Speaker 2: he was out there for a very long time. There
Speaker 2: was a huge media circus around his disappearance. And then
Speaker 2: in I think twenty twenty two, the host of this podcast,
Speaker 2: Aaron Park, she becomes interested in what had happened to him.
Speaker 2: Why would a fit, intelligent young man with everything to
Speaker 2: live for, plunge into one of the deadliest landscapes in
Speaker 2: Australia on purpose, and I think kind of one of
Speaker 2: the early things that really interested me about it was
Speaker 2: the way that she kind of describes the media circus
Speaker 2: around his disappearance. It was the nineties, which is sort
Speaker 2: of the boom time for you know, current affairs television,
Speaker 2: and when he's actually found, it's by a Channel nine
Speaker 2: helicopter and they kind of descend on him. He'd been
Speaker 2: gone for six weeks, he hasn't eaten for six weeks,
Speaker 2: and they kind of just like land in front of
Speaker 2: him and just film the entire thing. And I think
Speaker 2: at one point they kind of give him a banana
Speaker 2: and then they film him trying to eat it and
Speaker 2: he's like not able to and it sounds highly distressing,
Speaker 2: but I think that that was kind of the way
Speaker 2: the media industry worked at that point in time. They're
Speaker 2: allowed into his hospital. What Park does is she kind
Speaker 2: of pushes it a lot further and tries to answer
Speaker 2: this question that I don't think ever really has been
Speaker 2: answered because until this point Bigookie has never done any interviews,
Speaker 2: which is sort of why he chose to go out
Speaker 2: into the desert, what he was trying to achieve, and
Speaker 2: whether or not he actually kind of found what he
Speaker 2: was looking for.
Speaker 1: So, without giving away too many spoilers or those spoilers
Speaker 1: at all, where does that lead us? Where does that
Speaker 1: take the investigation?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really interesting. So she spends a lot of
Speaker 2: time trying to track down Bigookie. She's like, this podcast
Speaker 2: takes place over I think five or six years, but
Speaker 2: she does end up going all the way to Alaska
Speaker 2: where he lives, that's where he's from, and then sort
Speaker 2: of circles back again to Australia, and this story ultimately
Speaker 2: becomes about Australia, about the outback and the kind of
Speaker 2: way that people, white people and Indigenous people see the desert,
Speaker 2: the things that white people in particular project onto it,
Speaker 2: and what happens when someone who has no real understanding
Speaker 2: of that kind of chooses to use that landscape is
Speaker 2: a way to answer some of their own kind of
Speaker 2: spiritual questions, I suppose.
Speaker 1: So the landscape of the Great Sandy Desert and Alaska
Speaker 1: are kind of characters in this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very visual story, really, and I think
Speaker 2: that they do a very good job of conveying that
Speaker 2: it's really beautifully produced. The soundscapes are beautiful, the narration
Speaker 2: is wonderful. Aaron is a great person to take you
Speaker 2: on this journey, and you really do feel like you
Speaker 2: are in these places.
Speaker 5: I haven't been here long, but this place, interior Alaska,
Speaker 5: it already feels strange. The non stop sunlight and the cold,
Speaker 5: prickly air, the snow peaked mountain ranges towering so high
Speaker 5: they make the small smattering of city buildings and its
Speaker 5: people feel in significant.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that was expanse nowhere man by the AVC.
Speaker 1: You were gracious enough to choose one overseas podcast in
Speaker 1: your mentions for this year, the latest season of In
Speaker 1: the Dark.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, in the Dark is one of the most
Speaker 2: well regarded long form narrative series in the US, I think,
Speaker 2: but I remember listening to the first series back in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, which looks into the abduction of this eleven
Speaker 2: year old boy, Jacob Weddling, and as it's progressed, various
Speaker 2: seasons have done really well. Season two looked into the
Speaker 2: case of Curtis Flowers, who is this black man from
Speaker 2: Mississippi facing execution. He was tried six times for the
Speaker 2: same crime. Then after the podcast was released, he was free.
Speaker 2: So the show's won numerous awards, there's been several seasons,
Speaker 2: it's got a lot of credibility. So when the new
Speaker 2: season was announced, I was intrigued, So.
Speaker 1: What is this new season about?
Speaker 2: So this season looks into a historical case from the UK.
Speaker 2: So it's the nineteen eighty five White House farm murders.
Speaker 4: The story I want to tell you begins here deep
Speaker 4: in the English countryside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's the farmhouse and the case is horrific. So
Speaker 2: there's five family members who were massacred. They were all
Speaker 2: shot to death inside a locked manner. There's been books
Speaker 2: written about this, there's been documentaries, there's been TV series.
Speaker 2: So it's a kind of interesting thing to revisit something
Speaker 2: that has had so much coverage, I think, So.
Speaker 1: What was the what was the impetus for revisiting it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so at the very beginning you kind of learned
Speaker 2: that the journalist Hardi Blake has had this kind of
Speaker 2: new tip off about the case, and what she's really
Speaker 2: doing is trying to work out whether or not there
Speaker 2: has been a wrong full conviction.
Speaker 4: The story I uncovered challenged what I thought I knew
Speaker 4: not only about the murders at white House Farm, but
Speaker 4: also about the police, the judiciary, the whole British legal establishment.
Speaker 2: It is really interesting because you think something like this
Speaker 2: must have been so exhaustively covered and they can't possibly
Speaker 2: be anything new in it. But it does seem like
Speaker 2: that there was this real momentum behind I guess the
Speaker 2: attempt to sort of place one person be accused as
Speaker 2: the person who's responsible. And you know, maybe some of
Speaker 2: those reasons are valid, but the further along you get,
Speaker 2: the more you realize that there's perhaps a lot of
Speaker 2: prejudice going on about the person involved.
Speaker 1: There's a do a good job of actually sort of
Speaker 1: paying respect to the victims of the crime. So one
Speaker 1: of the things I find with true crime podcast is
Speaker 1: that the victims of any given true crime podcast are
Speaker 1: often seen as still like two dimensional. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that's a really interesting point. And it's hard
Speaker 2: because at certain points they kind of do become archetypes,
Speaker 2: I think, and that is because obviously their voices are lost.
Speaker 2: It's everyone else's voices in the podcast, it's not the
Speaker 2: voices of the people who've died. But I think she
Speaker 2: does a very good job of trying to put particularly
Speaker 2: the mother in this series, trying to really understand her
Speaker 2: life and her struggles. I mean, it's a very dark story,
Speaker 2: but I think that she does try and kind of
Speaker 2: tell it with a level of nuance that probably was
Speaker 2: not used back in the eighties when this story first
Speaker 2: came out.
Speaker 1: Coming out Everyone's favorite pomp and Finally, Ruby, you've given
Speaker 1: a special mention to Luis the Roue's interview series.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's up to season six now, and I
Speaker 2: know that everyone loves Louis Thrue, but there's a reason.
Speaker 3: Hello, Oh that was too loud. Sorry, Hello, it's me,
Speaker 3: Louis Theroum.
Speaker 1: How are you.
Speaker 3: I'm delighted to say my podcast is back for a
Speaker 3: brand new series.
Speaker 2: You know, he's so curious and so self effacing and
Speaker 2: managers to ask these, you know, really straightforward questions that
Speaker 2: need to be asked in such a disarming way. And
Speaker 2: I think obviously by this point in his career, he's
Speaker 2: really helped by the fact that almost everyone who comes
Speaker 2: on his show knows and trusts him. So he's starting
Speaker 2: off with this kind of built in trust from his subjects.
Speaker 2: But he still just has these kind of pre wheeling
Speaker 2: conversations in which you always learn something new. And I
Speaker 2: also just think that the people that he choose us
Speaker 2: to come on the show, the kind of the range
Speaker 2: of subjects is really interesting.
Speaker 1: And is it funny because Louis is the actually really
Speaker 1: really funny guy.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is there a lot of laughs in this series?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's hilarious, right, he's so dead. Pat Yeah, you've.
Speaker 3: Said you look like the boy next door if you
Speaker 3: lived next door to a was Liam.
Speaker 7: I probably said that in a week moment thirty years ago. Okay,
Speaker 7: this is the problem with the internet. It doesn't breathe
Speaker 7: once it's locked in.
Speaker 3: Then you have something special about your face. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's definitely at times like very serious, but
Speaker 2: he's he's very good at sort of like reaching that
Speaker 2: point of deep seriousness and then flipping it and you know,
Speaker 2: kind of like bringing you in and making it light again.
Speaker 2: So it is always like a real journey for these interviews.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for taking us on this journey, Ruby
Speaker 1: a number of very interesting podcasts that people would sink
Speaker 1: their teeth into this summer. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Daniel