This unmissable new podcast is a serial thriller
It’s been a long time since I heard a podcast so compelling that it took up residence in my brain and made me recommend it to everyone I know. If I didn’t have newspaper inches to tell you about this one, I’d probably go as far as popping round to your house and lending you my headphones so you could listen. I haven’t felt proselytising podcast zeal this strongly since the first series of Serial, Sarah Koenig’s true crime podcast about the mysterious details surrounding the murder of a young woman in Baltimore, Maryland in 1999.
The new podcast you need to hear is
The Missing Cryptoqueen (BBC Sounds), the strange and spooky still-unfolding investigation of an international scandal swirling around a company called Onecoin, which purports to be working on a global financial revolution using a new cryptocurrency. Its star is the organisation’s glamorous Oxfordeducated leader, Dr Ruja Ignatova. She appeared at glitzy public events wearing ball gowns; she gave a talk at an event run by The Economist; and Sir Tom Jones performed at her birthday party at the V&A. And then, two years ago, Dr Ruja Ignatova disappeared. Her brother has been arrested in the United States on fraud charges.
The podcast, commissioned by the BBC and made by technology journalist Jamie Bartlett and producer Georgia Catt, is dark and thrilling in places, and troubling in others, especially when we hear from heartbroken people who “invested” their savings in Onecoin, which is still operating (Onecoin denies all the podcast’s allegations). The tale is often incredibly surreal and funny too. There are sinister encounters on yachts, at beauty pageants, and on the streets of Bulgaria.
You don’t need to know anything about cryptocurrency to get swept up in this story. Bartlett deftly explains the technological side of Onecoin but, basically, the organised exploitation of ordinary people’s hopes is a tale as old as time. It’s a brilliantly told investigation in the form of a real-life Mafia thriller (possibly – there are four more episodes to go, and plenty of mysteries still left unsolved). It’s also beautifully made, with the masterstroke of a haunting, atmospheric soundtrack by the London Bulgarian Choir.
An investigative podcast is not groundbreaking in itself. Serial became a phenomenon and the most popular podcast ever: episodes have been downloaded over 175million times, it brought podcasting into the mainstream, and it inspired hundreds of similar true crime podcasts. There have been so many podcasts investigating murders, in particular, that they’ve started to make me feel nauseous; it’s become a whole genre in itself, and has the nasty side-effect of sensationalising real-life tragedy. On the other hand, The Missing Cryptoqueen feels as though it’s working on behalf of people who are out of pocket, and Bartlett and Catt prove that you really can have a well-made, addictive investigative podcast without relying on a corpse in episode one.
The BBC seems to commission about a dozen podcasts a day, many of them rushed and not set to change the world (the inane Gemma Collins effort has just been inexplicably recommissioned), but if you can stand to wade through BBC Sounds, The Missing Cryptoqueen is unmissable.
Similarly, the actor, writer and Tony Award-winning musical theatre performer Lin-manuel Miranda, the man responsible for the staggeringly successful musical Hamilton, was an excellent castaway with Lauren Laverne this week on
Desert Island Discs (Radio 4, Sunday). And I’m not just mentioning this because it’s a perfect opportunity to quote Hamilton lyrics. How though, I wonder, would Miranda survive on a desert island, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean, impoverished, in squalor – would he become a hero and a scholar?
Well, “I know the manifold uses of a coconut,” he said, alluding to the song he wrote on the subject for Disney’s Moana. Interviewing him about his passion for music, his fear of regret and his emotional connection to Puerto Rico, Laverne sounded a little star-struck, unusually for her. And Miranda responded in a manner that was an endearing, high-energy combination of puffed-up and anxious.
But he used to be a high school English teacher, and maybe that never leaves you, because his favourite of his eight selected songs was one written by a former pupil. Choosing it was a poignant thing to do, and the warmest moment in one of the most energetic, inspiring and funny episodes of Desert Island Discs for a while.