Podcasts... on people smuggling, reality TV, and guns
Barzan Majeed, aka Scorpion, is the man behind a major crossChannel people-smuggling operation, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. By all accounts he’s a “highly scary, moneyobsessed scumbag”, who has been happy to fleece desperate people for whatever he can get. And that is a lot. Charging £8,000 for a single place in an overcrowded dinghy, he has been able to net £500,000 from a single trip. The “riveting” new BBC podcast To Catch a Scorpion is about a quest to track Majeed down, and tells the stories of some of those who have been desperate enough to use his services, and those of smugglers like him. It is made by the award-winning documentarymaker Sue Mitchell, with Rob Lawrie, a former soldier with contacts everywhere from Calais to Iraq, and thanks to their efforts, Majeed was arrested in Kurdistan this week.
Reality TV is “proving rich source material for podcasters in the market for wild stories and retrospective outrage”, said Fiona Sturges in the FT. One of the most “disturbing” reality shows ever was Kid Nation, a series from 2007 in which 40 children were thrown together for a Lord of the Flies-type experiment in New Mexico. As is made clear in a fascinating new podcast, Split Screen: Kid Nation, many found the experience a “nightmare”. Host Josh Gwynn paints a “grimly unsettling picture of naive parents, terrified children and ratings-hungry TV execs who are still trying to justify their decisions 17 years later”. Less obviously cruel – but still crass and manipulative – was I Wanna Marry “Harry”, a 2014 TV show that “lured a gaggle of American women to a grotty hotel on the outskirts of Reading” and convinced them that they were competing for the affections of Prince Harry (a lookalike called Matt). Scott Bryan’s excellent new podcast, The Bachelor of Buckingham Palace, takes the deception at the heart of the show seriously, while also having enormous fun with its “myriad WTF moments”.
“How did we get here, and how do we get ourselves out?” That’s the question posed by Long Shadow: In Guns We Trust, a compelling new podcast about the “painfully intense” love affair between so many Americans and their guns, said Jenny McCartney in The Spectator. The host, Garrett Graff, is a gun owner himself, and “grew up in the hunting grounds of Vermont, where ‘the first day of deer season was almost like a state holiday’”. But he’s uneasy about “the gradual sanctification of the right to bear arms”, and worried about its consequences: the highest levels of gun ownership in US history and the highest recorded number of mass shootings. “Thus far this is a gripping podcast, providing a map for the evolution of a grim status quo.”