The question of why we love true crime podcasts has been asked over and over again. Serial might've turned it into a mainstream phenomenon back in 2014, but the trend thrives to this day with dozens of the most popular true crime podcasts racking in hundreds of thousands of downloads.
But the truth is, our true crime obsession isn't anything new or even all that strange. The general public has harbored a bloodthirsty fascination for real-life violence for centuries. "If it bleeds, it leads," has long been a truism not just for the media, but also for true crime podcasts.
What's newer, though, is our collective questioning of the morality behind this longstanding bloodthirstiness of ours, and pausing to wonder where it comes from.
The answer to that question is multi-faceted. They range from our psychological need to pay attention to danger, the desire to arm ourselves with information for women in particular (who make up a disproportionate percentage of true crime lovers and are also usually the victims in true crime stories), or the uncomfortable truth that true crime just makes for good storytelling with mystery, violence, tragedy, and drama.
We're not here to interrogate why you love true crime, or to judge you for this obsession. Because we are one of you. But with such an oversaturation of true crime podcasts out there, it can be hard to know what's worth your time and what's garbage. So we took on the seemingly impossible task of finding the best true crime podcasts of all time. (Though, of course, with the caveat that we undoubtedly missed some, or maybe already covered them in a different podcast roundup.)
Obviously, taste and mileage vary. But if you're looking for quality storytelling, an abundance of murder, quests to solve cold cases, and hard-hitting investigations into criminal justice systems, you've come to the right place.
Serial
Why it's one of the best: The sensation that launched a thousand true crime podcasts — but its later seasons are still somehow underrated.
What it's about: OK, let's get the obvious one out of the way. Serial was a phenomenon in 2014, awakening a love for true crime and podcasts for many. Yet while Serial Season 1 masterfully told the story of Adnan Syed's conviction for allegedly killing his high school girlfriend Hae Min Lee, the podcast's other two seasons remain wildly overlooked. True crime lovers will especially appreciate how Koenig expertly tackled Season 3 in 2018, with different cases from a single courthouse, told week by week. Koenig and her team have a knack for finding the gripping and revealing throughline in every alleged crime, no matter how big, small, inscrutable, or loaded.
S-Town
Why it's one of the best: Another classic that revolutionized what we thought true crime could be.
What it is: You know this one too and, actually, you might also know it's quite controversial. From the team at Serial, a messy, heart-breaking story unfolds that's impossible to summarize, but defies all traditional true crime expectations. Similar to Koenig, host Brian Reed does even more hand-wringing over being exploitative, the journalistic ethics of getting too emotionally involved with his subjects, the cultural dichotomies at play, and how his experience became part of the story. We won't debate here whether or not S-Town should exist. Undeniably, though, it is a stunning, gut-wrenching, agonizing journey.
Into the Dark
Why it's one of the best: A Peabody award-winner that stands on the laurels of its rigorous reporting, asking bigger questions about the ripple effects of a case through gripping storytelling.
What it is: In 2016, reporter Madeleine Baran tackled the locally famous Minnesota cold case of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling. Akin to Netflix's Making a Murderer, it's less a question of whodunit and more of a how-did-this-happen? The details of the case are hard to believe. But it's the wild failures of local police and dangerous precedents set in the wake of its aftermath that are truly on trial in In the Dark. That continues in the show's second season, too, which investigates how a court could try Curtis Flower, a black man in Mississippi, a staggering six times for the same crime of allegedly shooting four furniture store employees.
Missing & Murdered
Why it's one of the best: Exposing the disproportionate, under-reported crimes and injustices committed against indigenous women.
What it is: Missing & Murdered threads the line between the deeply personal and the all-encompassing. Each season, CBC reporter Connie Walker (a First Nation woman herself) investigates the case of a missing or murdered indigenous woman in Ontario, Canada. But each victim unearths a chasm of family and generational trauma, historic injustices with viscerally ongoing systemic repercussions, and an entire continent's refusal to reckon with the victims they'd rather forget. While both seasons are phenomenal, the second season's hunt to get to the bottom of Cleo Semaganis Nicotine's disappearance, a young girl in the 1970s, crystallized the podcast as one of the greatest. Missing & Murdered ultimately reveals how the blood is on the hands of all who continue to benefit from the deaths of First Nation people to this day while ignoring the untold suffering of those who survived it.
Last Podcast on the Left
Why it's one of the best: A rag-tag team of comedians who became true crime podcasting monoliths through heavily researched deep dives into all things serial killers, cults, conspiracies, and the "spooky gooky."
What it is: Listen, everyone has their problematic fav. The very popular Last Podcast on the Left covers true crime with cavalier and often flat out revolting gross-out humor which either is or is not for you. Admittedly an acquired taste, there's no denying that Last Podcast on the Left goes places few other true crime podcasts would touch with a 10-foot pole (maybe for good reason) — and they've been doing it for longer than really anyone else on this list. While you shouldn't take anything hosts Henry Zebrowski, Ben Kissel, or Marcus Parks say too seriously, they take their jobs very seriously with their own brand of rigor. Always thoroughly entertaining and researched, every topic covered gets the full Last Podcast on the Left treatment, whether it's L. Ron Hubbard, JonBenét Ramsey, or the cryptozoological search for bigfoot.
Criminal
Why it's one of the best: Bringing a truly singular, fresh approach to the oversaturated landscape through the human-interest stories behind off-the-beaten-path crime stories.
What it is: Host Phoebe Judge, the voice of ASMR in true crime podcasting, does the impossible with Criminal: She brings something genuinely new to the genre, week after week. These aren't your run-of-the-mill cases of murder, wrongful conviction, or serial killers (though there's some of those too). Criminal often covers far more unexpected stories involving unlawful acts, like an airplane hijacker or a mother who steals the identities of her own family to commit fraud. Through intimate interviews with perpetrators, victims, family members, witnesses, experts, and government officials, Judge paints an intricate portrait of what it really means to commit wrongdoing in America.
74 Seconds
Why it's one of the best: Another Peabody Award-winner, 74 Seconds makes heartbreaking sense of the senseless murders of unarmed black men by police officers, zeroing in on the case of Minnesota's Philando Castile.
What it is: MPR News' 74 Seconds refers to the amount of time that elapsed in the Facebook Live video captured by Philando Castile's girlfriend, who was in the passenger seat when an officer who'd stopped him for a minor traffic violation shot Castile seven times point-blank in his car. His name would go on to become a rallying cry at Black Lives Matter protests, along with the names of far too many other unarmed black men murdered by police brutality. But 74 Seconds does the remarkable job of painting a vivid portrait of who Castile was before he was a victim, depicting the insurmountable loss of his life as well as the larger cultural forces at play. 74 Seconds refuses to let you become desensitized to the now sickeningly familiar true crime cases we've seen in countless videos broadcast across social media.
Conviction
Why it's one of the best: Examining the untold damage of well-meaning but bloodthirsty hunts for justice that call into question the righteousness of our entire society's punishment system.
What it is: The cleverly-named Conviction isn't just about wrongful convictions, though of course there's plenty of those in both Seasons 1 and 2. It also tackles our own convictions, the questionable morals and psychological underpinnings behind not only the system but our own personal need for justice. In the first season, reporter Saki Knafo follows Bronx private detective John Quinney in his tireless pursuit to rectify the biggest wrongful conviction case of his storied career. The second season dives into the Satanic Panic, America's most bizarre modern example of a witch hunt that put many innocent people behind bars. The podcast focuses on a (now grown-up) young son, whose damning testimony sent his own father to prison for allegedly running a satanic cult leader.
Crime Junkie
Why it's one of the best: It tells captivating, binge-worthy, often undercovered true crime stories with weekly episodes on different murders, missing persons, mysterious deaths, and serial killers.
What it is: Crime Junkie is exactly what it sounds like, and can turn even those who don't think true crime is their thing into bonafide obsessives. What I appreciate most about the show is that, rather than focus on the killers, it often tells the story from the victims' or their loved ones' points-of-view. They are careful to portray the person they were before becoming a victim, addressing what so often feels morally unsettling about loving true crime while also bringing new outlooks to infamous cases.
Where Crime Junkie shines most though is in covering cases beyond your usual Missing White Girl. Shedding light on victims too often overlooked — with episodes on women in the military, the women of Juarez, Mexico, victims of color, and sex workers — hosts Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat ask their audience to be active in seeking justice for the forgotten. They even partner with worthwhile foundations, like Crime Stoppers. (Last year, the show faced accusations of plagiarism for using uncited reporting, a problem that plagues many podcasts. Hopefully the hosts, who admit they are not journalists, will show more caution in the future.)
Alibi
Why it's one of the best: A deep dive into injustice and criminality in South Africa, told through rigorous investigative reporting and intimate interviews around two astounding cases.
What it is: The issues around miscarriages of justice are far from exclusive to America. In Alibi, it becomes clear that complex questions of systemic marginalization and racism are always at the heart of any justice system, no matter where you are in the world. The first season tackles the gob-smacking case of a potential wrongful conviction caught in the complex chaos of post-apartheid South Africa. Journalist Paul McNally investigates the story of a man behind bars who says he was framed by the policeman who tortured him years before at the height of racial tensions in the '80s during the reform of segregationist law. The second season tackles the violent and very public assassination of beloved high school principal Priscilla Mchunu, diving into a conspiracy that uncovers the growing industry of guns-for-hire in KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere in South Africa.
Someone Knows Something
Why it's one of the best: A more dramatic, narrative approach to cold case investigations, confronting the gut-wrenching reality of the loved ones left behind.
What it is: Unlike most of the other hosts on this list, David Ridgen is first and foremost not a journalist but a writer and filmmaker. That's immediately apparent in the podcast's more theatrical investigative process, as Ridgen joins the family members of missing and murdered victims seeking answers. To be clear, the theatrics aren't unwarranted, matching the raw and real emotions of mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers haunted by the questions of what happened. As a result, Someone Knows Something always keeps the humanity of the victim and those grieving at its center, unlike more questionable audio-narrative cold-case investigations like Payne Lindsey's Up and Vanished.
Chasing Cosby
Why it's one of the best: An excruciating look at what it takes to bring down a beloved monster, both as a victim and a journalist.
What it is: The Los Angeles Times is up there with the CBC in producing some of the most stellar, award-winning true crime investigative podcasts to date (others of which we covered here). But Chasing Cosby stands out because of the sheer doggedness of reporter and host Nicki Weisensee Egan, who has been fighting tooth and nail to tell his survivors' stories since 2005. No one listened then, and there is a spine-tingling power in hearing their personal accounts and courage of enduring the decades-long pursuit to put their seemingly untouchable attacker behind bars.
