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