Top Documentary Podcasts

NAKED SPORTS lives at the intersection of sports, politics, and culture. It is a niche groundbreaking interview-based show that dives deep into the lives of the game-changers who have helped shape our world. We explore how sports are interwoven not only into their personal lives; but the role they play in the global experience.  NAKED SPORTS is hosted by Cari Champion, a trailblazing broadcast journalist and television personality renowned for her pioneering contributions to sports media for women.

In each episode, this distinguished host sits down with, a diverse array of athletes, politicians, and cultural innovators who have left an indelible mark on their fields. Through intimate, unfiltered conversations, the show reveals the raw and vulnerable sides of their journeys—peeling back the layers to explore the defining moments, personal struggles, and transformative experiences that live at the intersection of sports, culture, and politics.

These conversations are thematically linked to live at the intersection and on this new season of NAKED SPORTS, we begin with a six-part docu-series, The Making of a Rivalry: Caitlin Clark vs. Angel Reese, in which Cari questions how this “rivalry” started. Does the necessity for success depend on a foil? In a time of divisiveness, are sports—more specifically the WNBA—a reflection of our country? Or will the greatness of two supernovas unite this country and heal race relations?

NAKED SPORTS guests will span varied backgrounds, providing diverse perspectives as we examine how sports play a crucial role in nearly every aspect of life.

Connect: @CARICHAMPION 

Exploring the evolving identity of the American West. Produced by Wyoming Public Media and PRX, The Modern West takes you on a sound-rich journey into some of America's most iconic landscapes. Guided by host Melodie Edwards' personal connection to the region, it's an unflinching look at the American West--its problematic history, its modern-day struggles and resilience, and how its present and future are being shaped.

The Corrymeela Podcast

Reparations: The Big Payback is an immersive, narrative podcast, hosted by social justice filmmakers Erika Alexander (Living Single, Get Out) and Whitney Dow (Two Towns of Jasper, Whiteness Project). Erika, a black woman, and Whitney, a white man use their unique storytelling skills and experiences to explore the argument for and against reparations for Black Americans.

For resources and more info please visit ReparationsBigPayback.com

A taxi driver is shot dead in front of his children. A high-security room goes up in flames. Then terrorists are unmasked as spies. And behind it all, a shadowy unit of the British Army, who ran the notorious agent Stakeknife. Award-winning journalist Cara McGoogan investigates the biggest cover-up of the Northern Ireland Troubles and asks: is the British state getting away with murder?

The first and second series of Bed of Lies are also available to listen to on this feed:

Series 2: It was meant to be a miracle treatment, but it became a deadly poison. Cara investigates the biggest medical disaster in NHS history, the infected blood scandal.

Series 1: They have the perfect relationship, until one day he vanishes. Her hunt leads to other women just like her - and a web of state-spun lies. Cara investigates the untold story of the "spycops" and the undercover policing scandal.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Reveal Presents is home to multi-part investigative series produced by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.

In season three, reporter Anayansi Diaz-Cortes investigates a mystery that has haunted Mexico for 8 years. In 2014, students from a rural college in Mexico came under attack by police. Six people were killed and 43 young men disappeared without a trace. Families suspected the government was hiding the truth. Now, Reveal is exposing corruption at the highest levels, and an unsettling connection to America’s war on drugs.

Josh Baker enters a dangerous world of fear, greed and betrayal as he sets out to uncover the truth behind one of the biggest missing-person cases of our time - the abduction of American journalist Austin Tice.

Josh - creator of two of the BBC's most award-winning and widely listened-to investigative podcasts, I'm Not a Monster and The Shamima Begum Story - returns for his most ambitious chapter yet, in a major new series from BBC Radio 4 and NPR's Embedded.

This is not the retelling of a closed case. It is a real-time investigation into a disappearance that has remained unsolved for more than a decade, conducted in close contact with Austin's family.

What started out as a personal effort to help a mother find her son has turned into a multi-year journalistic investigation stretching from the corridors of power in Washington DC to the depths of the Syrian security state.

Austin Tice is a journalist, law student and former Marine officer, who vanished in Syria in 2012. Since then, competing stories have emerged about his fate. In some, he is alive - held in a cell and waiting to be rescued. In others, he was smuggled out of Syria and hidden away. In the darkest versions, he died long ago.

His disappearance has reached the highest levels of power - from presidents to popes - yet remarkably little is known about what happened to him.

Investigative journalists Josh Baker and Sara Obeidat begin following Austin's trail long before the fall of the Syrian regime. Then everything changes. The regime collapses, and the black box of Syria's intelligence state opens. Sources step forward, unprecedented leaks arrive and doors to secret bases that had been sealed for years open. Josh and Sara speak to spies, search secret prisons and track down alleged war criminals in hiding, uncovering information that has never been made public and making discoveries that generate international headlines. The audience follows every breakthrough as the investigation closes in on those who may know the truth - while Syria is transformed and powerful interests compete to shape what happens next.

Some claim Austin was working for the CIA. Others say he was simply a young journalist trying to make his name in war reporting.

His fate has become entangled in secret negotiations and geopolitical power struggles that are still unfolding. At the centre of it all is his mother, Debra Tice, who has never stopped searching for her son.

There are people who know exactly what happened to Austin.

Some of them do not want the truth to come out.

So where is Austin Tice?

The media is powered by primary sources. People who were there. People who saw it. People who lived it. Now with a camera in every pocket, phone footage is powering the press. From warzones to wildfires, every person is a cameraman filming one angle of a worldwide documentary. Source Material presents world events through the recordings of those who lived it. Cut out the host, cut out the reporter, and hear the Source Material for yourself. 

Source Material is a multimedia project that takes you behind the headlines and straight to the source. It is also a video series. Watch on VICE Youtube for original episodes.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.