The week in radio and podcasts: Bad People; The Bomb; Nice White Parents

Bad People | BBC Sounds
The Bomb | BBC Sounds
Nice White Parents | New York Times

Three new podcasts this week, each directly or indirectly considering the idea of when humans go wrong. The first, Bad People, is explicit. In it, criminal psychologist Dr Julia Shaw and comedian Sofie Hagen take a look at properly horrible people: murderers, cannibals, sexual abusers, corporate psychopaths. Why? Well, partly because true crime sells, and partly because examining such extreme people might lead us to understand more about the human psyche.

In episode one, Shaw and Hagen wondered about women who fall for serial killers. Actually, they mostly wondered about the women who fell for one particular serial killer, Richard Ramirez, whom I hadn’t heard of, but who was seemingly the bee’s genoux when it comes to revolting murderers who also happen to be not bad-looking. Back in the 80s in the US, Ramirez committed dozens of horrific crimes, against children and adults, men and women – an equal access killer. Thrillingly for those who get sweaty about such details, he had a tendency to decorate the murder scenes with pentagrams and messages scrawled in the victims’ blood. Shaw and Hagen considered both the many women who wanted to be his girlfriend (one went off him once they’d actually met; strange, that) and the woman who married him, Doreen. Doreen was a self-declared Catholic virgin. Luckily for her, Ramirez died of cancer, so what we might call her status remained intact.

Hagen and Shaw are loquacious and funny, and Shaw manages to sneak in some fascinating information between their bants, such as that research shows that many of the women who fall for notorious murderers are manipulative controllers themselves. They remain in control of the relationship because their beloved is under lock and key. Interesting, no?

Next up on the “are human beings irredeemable?” list is The Bomb, a World Service podcast about the invention of the atomic bomb, and its use by allied forces to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This podcast is actually the story of Leo Szilard, who first conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction. It’s told by Emily Strasser, whose grandfather also worked on creating the bomb: she remembers seeing a photo of him in front of a mushroom cloud on a bedroom wall.

The Bomb is well told, satisfyingly paced, nicely scripted. There are several rather heavy mentions of chain reactions, using the metaphor of how a nuclear explosion works to wonder if a single different factor leading up to August 1945 might have meant that this most terrible attack would never have occurred. We all recognise those questions that flood your mind when considering life-changing events: what if I’d turned left instead of right, what if he’d missed the train, what if, what if… As you get older, you understand that what-iffery leads to madness, but it’s used nicely here, and this is an excellent podcast so far.

More awful things that humans do? Welcome, Nice White Parents. From the same stable as Serial 1, 2 and 3, this podcast has This American Life reporter Chana Joffe-Walt consider racial integration problems within the New York public school system. Wait! Come back! Nice White Parents is great. Joffe-Walt takes us right into the heart of a Brooklyn junior high school with few students, all black or Hispanic, that was deemed to be “failing”, and what happened when a group of well-meaning white parents decided to send their children there.

She really gets stuck in, Joffe-Walt, capturing both the hurt and insult of the parents who have been involved in the school for many years, and the well-meaning, tone-deaf newcomers. For a non-American listener, the amount of parental fundraising is shocking, as well as the straightforward racism of a gifted-and-talented programme that only seems to feature white children. But the issues highlighted in this show are evident in this country too: the gaming of the system by white parents, and the assumption that the type of school that white people like is the type of school that every parent likes. This is an excellent podcast – gripping, relevant, uncomfortable. The consideration of the word “innocent” at the end of episode two is worth your time alone.

Three shows that explore American tragedies

Memphis and Martin Luther King: They Wouldn’t Treat Me Like a Man
This excellent series, on at 2am on Sundays on Radio 2, was originally made to honour the 50th anniversary of Dr King’s assassination in 1968. It’s an oral history that dives deep into his association with Memphis; the city in the era of Jim Crow, why King was in Memphis at all, and how his death still affects the city. We hear from the man who was the first black child to attend a white school; from the Memphis Invaders (a local answer to the Black Panther movement); from musicians and staff at Stax records (the music on the show is excellent). Unmissable.

The Crisis of American Democracy
This three-part Radio 4 series demonstrates just how warped the US voting system is. Last week, BBC political correspondent Ben Wright looked at access to voting in Florida, which has become partisan – Republicans don’t want people with criminal records to be able to vote, Democrats do. This week, he looks at the state maps and how they encourage voter bias; next week, he’ll consider the structures of US electoral democracy. Did you know that Texas, with a population of 29 million, returns just two senators to congress – and so does Vermont, which has 624,000? A sobering series, presented soberly.

American Rehab
A gripping, shocking investigation into a controversial drug and alcohol rehabilitation scheme run by a company called Cenikor. Reporter Shoshana Walter discovers that this private rehab programme uses work to “cure” addiction: this work is often unsafe and the money earned by the workers goes straight to Cenikor. Major companies such as Walmart, Coca-Cola and Shell use such workers. The series begins with a woman, Penny Rawlings, who’s relieved to get her brother into rehab, but soon realises that getting him out will be the problem. The final episode came out on 8 August: ripe for bingeing.