6 Podcasts About Scandals and Cover-Ups

Podcasts are an ideal medium for investigative journalism, allowing for more in-depth storytelling than even a lengthy magazine article. These six podcasts are some of the best in the genre, combining retrospective interviews and new reporting to build suspense; explore stories of corruption and institutional wrongdoing; and forge an emotional connection between the listener and the people affected.

A co-production of NPR and Michigan Radio, “Believed” focuses on one of the most defining stories of the #MeToo era. The podcast explores how Larry Nassar, the former doctor for U.S.A. Gymnastics, was able to sexually abuse hundreds of women and girls over more than two decades, despite numerous complaints, and how a group of survivors brought him to justice. The hosts are Kate Wells and Lindsey Smith, veteran Michigan Radio journalists, whose empathetic reporting and deep knowledge of their subject anchor an often harrowing history.

Starter episode: “The Good Guy”

While the nation was transfixed by Watergate in 1973, a team of young federal prosecutors in Baltimore were quietly uncovering a separate corruption scandal that would also reshape Richard M. Nixon’s presidency. Hosted by Rachel Maddow, “Bag Man” chronicles how Vice President Spiro T. Agnew accepted tens of thousands of dollars in kickbacks during his time in local, state and federal office. The podcast makes a complex saga digestible and entertaining, and also highlights how Agnew’s confrontational tactics and anti-elite messaging created a blueprint for today’s grievance-driven politics.

Starter episode: “An Unsettling Secret”

Dan Taberski, a former producer for “The Daily Show,” began the documentary podcast “Headlong” in 2017 with the popular but controversial season titled “Missing Richard Simmons.” Though there would seem to be little in common between that subject and the third season about the long-running reality show “Cops,” there is a connection: Both explore the darker sides of beloved cultural phenomena. Released in 2019, six episodes delve into the stories of people whose arrests were broadcast nationally and who were often asked to sign releases while intoxicated or in a highly vulnerable state. “Running From COPS” also examines the close relationship between the show’s producers and police departments, and how that could reinforce stereotypes and tip over into what critics call copaganda.

Starter episode: “The One-Celled Amoeba”

This documentary podcast from the BBC showcases compelling stories “from the shadows,” a broad remit which has included grave robberies, museum heists and miscarriages of justice. Its most recent season, “Impulsive,” explores the behavioral side effects of dopamine agonists, a class of drug most commonly prescribed for Parkinson’s disease. Ten episodes chronicle stories of patients who underwent significant, often devastating, personality changes: a retired teacher who lost his life’s fortune to romance scams, a young woman who developed a gambling addiction and a respected lawyer who ended up imprisoned for fraud. Alongside the stories of emotional and financial ruin, Noel Titheradge, an investigative journalist for the BBC, examines evidence that drug companies were aware of the risk for serious impulse control side effects for many years before warnings were added to patient leaflets. “Impulsive” also leaves listeners with a haunting question: Just how much of human personality comes down to chemistry?

Starter episode: “Warning Signs”

During the Cold War, paranoia about the threat of a sophisticated Soviet brainwashing program drove the C.I.A. to develop a series of inhumane and illegal mind control experiments for use on unwitting subjects, most notably the MK-Ultra project. This atmospheric and often chilling podcast from the Canadian Broadcast Corporation homes in on the Allan Memorial Institute, a psychiatric hospital in Montreal whose lofty reputation during the 1950s belied its true nature as a covert northern outpost for the C.I.A. as it conducted MK-Ultra experiments. The first episode picks up with Michelle Shephard, an independent investigative reporter formerly of The Toronto Star, paying a visit to the institute (still in operation today as an outpatient facility) alongside Allan Tanny, whose father, Charles, was subjected to a battery of treatments in 1950s that left him a shell of his former self. Across six gripping episodes, “Brainwashed” combines contemporary reporting with archival audio to tell the stories of patients who underwent experiments involving LSD, electroshock therapy and sensory deprivation. The podcast also follows their families’ continuing fight for justice.

Starter episode: “RAVENSCRAG”

Each season of this meticulously reported investigative podcast from The Telegraph focuses on a story involving institutional deception, abuse of power and corruption in Britain. The first season dealt with the “spy cops” scandal, in which undercover officers from the Metropolitan Police force of London infiltrated activist groups and formed long-term intimate relationships with women under false identities. Cara McGoogan, the Telegraph’s first narrative audio journalist, spotlights four of these victims, who describe in detail how they were seduced and manipulated for years. A later season explores the decades-long contaminated blood scandal, during which thousands of Britons were infected with incurable diseases via blood transfusions. Another delves into the supposed collusion between the British state and loyalist paramilitaries during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Starter episode: “Infatuation”