New podcasts that go deeper

The podcast market, which was booming a few years ago, has calmed down somewhat. It is therefore worth taking a look at sequels to well-known and quite successful podcast brands such as “Tatort Kunst” or “Springersteifel”.

1 Crime Scene Art (Deutschlandfunk App)

The art world doesn’t like to talk about this. “Tatort Kunst” is an exciting address, and not just for true crime fans. Four new episodes of the lavishly produced storytelling podcast are launching this week.

Hosted by Rahel Klein and Stefan Koldehoff, the podcast takes you into the fascinating and often opaque world of museums, auction houses and secret archives. Exciting entertainment and an in-depth discussion with the dark sides of the art world.

© Deutschlandradio Jann Höfer

The start is spectacular, linked to the question: How safe are our museums? “Museum break-ins – Chinese loot” looks at the series of break-ins in German and European museums with East Asian collections, which have particularly affected museums in Cologne and Hildesheim.

The thieves are brazen, quick and ruthless. Some museums are reacting with sometimes drastic security measures. In view of Chinese history, doubts are being raised as to whether many of the artefacts were even brought to Germany legally. Is someone trying to get the art back?

This is followed, at 14-day intervals, by “Missing Manuscripts – The Disappeared Kafka”, an investigation into the mysterious circumstances surrounding lost manuscripts by Franz Kafka, an in-depth analysis of Hanover’s Nazi past and the controversial return of a Lovis Corinth painting in the case “Nazi Past – Hanover’s Dark Legacy” and “US Looted Art – Thieving Liberators”, a search for works of art that disappeared during the Second World War and resurfaced in the USA decades later. True crime of a different kind. (meh)

2 Judging Amanda Knox (Popular podcast portals like podcast.de)

© Screenshot: TSP

The title of the podcast contains a subtle but meaningful play on words: “Judging Amanda Knox”, i.e. judging Amanda Knox, refers on the one hand to the court cases that Knox had to face, but also to the evaluation of her person in the court of the world public.

For weeks, the then 20-year-old American was the subject of reports, articles and headlines. She was portrayed as the “angel with the ice-eyed” perpetrator. She was accused of brutally murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy.

The murder was allegedly carried out as part of excessive sexual activity, as the prosecution tried to prove at the time. Knox was portrayed as a beast without morals – and everyone, especially the media, went along with it.

Knox was acquitted and now lives in the USA again. The “Spiegel” journalist Alexandra Berlin met her and wrote articles about the now 37-year-old. Together with podcast mastermind Khesrau Behroz, she lets not only Knox but also other actors in the case have their say.

Even though we know how the story ends, the podcast about Amanda Knox is gripping, also because it exposes us as a society, as a mindless mass that makes any sacrifice out of a thirst for sensationalism. (sisi)

3 Combat boots (ARD audio library)

© MDR/ Moise Youmba

In a sense, it is in keeping with the Elections in ThuringiaSaxony and soon also in Brandenburg: this prominent podcast from ACB Stories, MDR and Fritz from RBB, which started its second season in August with five new episodes.

Hendrik Bolz (probably better known by his stage name Testo, a rapper who forms the hip-hop duo Zugezogen Maskulin with rapper grim104) and Don Pablo Mulemba travel through their homeland again. They hear party hits with Nazi slogans, see right-wing extremist slogans, raw violence. Something has happened in East Germany in recent years.

People there are increasingly saying: The 90s are back. Bolz and Mulemba meet a woman from Zittau whose son has become a right-wing extremist. They get to know the daughter of a contract worker from Vietnam who had to deal with neo-Nazis in Cottbus in the 2000s.

And they speak to a Tunisian who was the victim of racist witch hunts in Chemnitz in 2018. What has happened here since reunification? Why are so many young people becoming right-wing extremists again? And has the violence ever gone away?

For Hendrik Bolz, this is apparently a life theme. In February 2022, the Leipzig native’s autobiography “Nullerjahre” was published. An extremely personal search for clues with pressing topicality. (meh)

4 In the Shadow Monastery – Chronicle of a Brainwashing (Audible)

© Screenshot: TSP

Making the world we live in a better place: that’s what Tom and Jana have set out to do. The young couple has two children, is part of the alternative scene in Leipzig and finds traditional family concepts basically outdated.

The two join a housing project: The group “Go & Change” promises a “culture of love”. In 2017, it buys an old monastery in Lülsfeld. There, people live in a community, share worries, fears, meals, and child-rearing is taken over centrally, while the parents have time for their personal development.

Sounds like paradise? But it quickly turns out to be an authoritarian regime of two leaders, where oppression, sexual and psychological abuse and drug parties are the order of the day. In the end, two children even die.

In the podcast “Im Schattenkloster” Tom tells his story, but experts also have their say. The group “Go & Change” is examined in depth. The two reporters Eva Hoffmann and Patrick Bauer also question sect and group dynamics, find out what has to happen for victims to become perpetrators and at what point people voluntarily submit themselves and completely give up their autonomy. (sisi)

5 Lost in the Middle East (ARD Audiothek)

© picture alliance / NurPhoto | Momen Faiz, Montage: BR/Giulia Bochnig

A look far beyond Germany: The podcast on the war in Israel and Gaza. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists will attack Israel. Since then, War in Israel and Gaza. What exactly happened back then? Why is the violence there continuing to escalate?

In seven episodes, people in Israel and the Palestinian territories are visited who have very different views on the conflict. An unvarnished look at October 7th from two perspectives: Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Does that give us hope for peace in the Middle East? Not really, if you listen to the individual episodes. The podcast, hosted by Ann-Kathrin Wetter, investigative reporter for BR, lets the extreme settler Ari speak in his illegal settlement in the West Bank, for example. A place that cannot be found by satnav, which stands in the way of a rapprochement between Israelis and Palestinians.

Ari’s opinion, which he openly expresses to the team of reporters around Sophie von der Tann, with a gun on his belt: The settlers only want to defend themselves. Palestinians should not have their own land here. This land belongs to the Jews. Ari becomes increasingly annoyed during the interview. And anyway: Why are the Germans interested in the situation here in the West Bank? There are enough other conflicts in the world?

Israeli settlers rarely give interviews to journalists. This podcast has already managed to do that. And the realization: peace in the region seems more distant than it has in a long time. (meh)