Who doesn’t love a good year-end list? With 2018 about to hit the rear view mirror, we took a look back at all of the podcasts we shared in our weekly podcast newsletter in 2018. It wasn’t easy, but here are, in our humble opinions, the best podcasts of the year.

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Surviving Y2K

There was so much hype and hysteria around what would happen when the year went from 99 to 00. Would all the computers stop working? Would missiles get fired without anyone telling them to? Would the planet descend into chaos? We all know that none of that happened, and none of the fear was really warranted, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting to look back on the phenomenon of Y2K.

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Uncovered: Escaping NXIVM

Keith Raniere is the leader of NXIVM, an organization that claims to be humanitarian and pushes a system that it says will transform the powerful and elite into ethical leaders. But on March 26, 2018, Raniere was arrested on charges of sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, and conspiracy to commit forced labour. He pled not guilty. But Sarah Edmondson, a former NXIVM member, has a story to tell.

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Dr. Death

Do you get easily queasy? Don’t like to hear about blood, gore, or pain? Don’t listen to Dr. Death, the story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch. Duntsch was a butcher. Without giving away too much, the descriptions of his surgeries by actually qualified physicians will make your stomach lurch. The patients were almost always left worse off than they started… if they were left alive at all. This podcast is hard to listen to, but even harder to stop listening to.

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Caliphate

How does someone raised in a good family end up an ISIS fighter? Perhaps more importantly, what happens when he changes his mind? NYT Podcast Caliphate provides a first hand account that answers both of those questions, and is an absolutely enthralling listen.

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Atlanta Monster

Atlanta, 1979. Several young black children have been found murdered and several more have gone missing. Police have no clues and the city is in an absolute panic. Eventually a suspect emerges, but is he really behind these monstrous crimes?

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