The best podcasts for listening on a long walk

What happens when a city on the verge of collapse tries to reinvent itself? How much will it cost? Who will pay the price? Reporter David Weinberg spent years following one city in California’s Mojave desert as it tried to transform itself from a city of prisons to a city of pot. And it worked...for a while. Until it, spectacularly, didn’t. From Crooked Media, this is Dreamtown: The Story of Adelanto. Coming June 7th wherever you get your podcasts.

In 1968, police arrested five Black girls dressed in oversized military fatigues in Montgomery. The girls were runaways, escaping from a state-run reform school called the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, Alabama. The girls were determined to tell someone about the abuse they’d suffered there: physical and sexual violence, unlivable facilities, and grueling labor in the fields surrounding the school. It was, as several former students called it, a slave camp.

UNREFORMED is the story of how this reform school derailed the lives of thousands of Black children in Alabama for decades and what happened after those five girls found someone willing to blow the whistle. Host Josie Duffy Rice investigates the history of the school at the tail end of the Civil Rights movement in Alabama and speaks to former students who are still haunted by their experience but had the will to survive.

How did 9/11 the day become 9/11 the idea? That question drives Pineapple Street Studios and award-winning host Dan Taberski (Missing Richard Simmons, Running From COPS, The Line) to shift the focus to what happened on 9/12, and every day after that. 9/12 is a poignant, surprising, and surprisingly funny seven episode series about people who wake up on 9/12 having to navigate a new, radically altered world. A teenager gets caught up in an out-of-control conspiracy theory that he helped start. A Pakistani business owner finds hundreds of his Brooklyn neighbors are disappearing. Joke-writers at The Onion must figure out just how soon is “too soon”? 9/12 asks what it all means. We know what happened on 9/11. But what happened on 9/12 to alter our memory and our perspective forever?

The series 9/12 earned three Podcast Academy Awards at the 2022 Ambies, including Podcast of the Year.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.

Staggering success, unexpected loss, over-the-top parties, shocking betrayals, and profound intimacy are woven together into a high-profile family-therapy session. The Just Enough Family follows the meteoric rise and staggering fall of the Steinbergs, once one of America’s richest families, through the eyes of Liz Lange— successful fashion designer, captivating storyteller, and niece of the infamous corporate raider Saul Steinberg. Host Ariel Levy (The New Yorker, The Rules do Not Apply), Liz’s friend, gets an inside look at what happened to the once seemingly invincible clan. New money, old secrets, and the fine line between success and excess. Unlock all episodes of The Just Enough Family, ad-free, right now by subscribing to The Binge. Plus, get binge access to brand new stories dropping on the first of every month — that’s all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Just click ‘Subscribe’ on the top of The Just Enough Family show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. A Sony Music Entertainment production. Executive producer Melinda Shopsin (Mystery Show). Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts.