toxic legacy, straight up
untold: toxic legacy - financial times
It’s the stuff of nightmares. Sylvia moves into a new house in Wales and her animals start to die, her grass won’t grow and her daughter’s gums go green. The host, The FT’s Laura Hughes, reveals the cause within the first seven minutes: one of Sylvia’s dead horses has nearly four times the expected amount of lead in her body. The lead poisoning is caused by a nearby disused lead mine.
Although this happened to Sylvia decades ago, Hughes tells us it’s an ongoing systemic issue: “At almost every point in my reporting I’ve found a government who has largely turned a blind eye to the threat of lead poisoning, and a near total absence of widespread regulations to protect public health.”
From a storytelling perspective, you rather wish Hughes had held more back, but knowing how much to tell listeners at the top of a series or in the marketing materials is difficult. It’s a question we grappled with endlessly in the first season of Bed of Lies, a narrative podcast I exec produced at The Telegraph. It investigated the SpyCops scandal: the British women who found out their partners were undercover police officers using false identities to spy on them. If you tell listeners the men are police officers up front, you give away too much of the story and lose the jeopardy. You need people to keep listening, or what’s the point? But if you don’t, how do you tell people what the series is really about? In the end we used this as the series description:
They have the perfect relationship, until one day he vanishes. Her hunt leads to other women just like her - and a web of state-spun lies. Cara McGoogan investigates one of Britain's biggest secrets.
Pacing aside, it’s pretty terrifying hearing about the invisible poison that infiltrates soil, water and bodies, and the lack of attention paid to it by public health bodies in the UK. While American children are routinely tested for unsafe levels of lead, British children aren’t.
The three episodes released so far deliver sensitive, meticulous reporting that transforms an overlooked issue into an urgent concern. With compelling contributors and rigorous investigation, Hughes doesn't just tell a story - she sounds an alarm. It makes you wonder why we aren’t angrier as a nation. I certainly am now.
straight up - ellie halls and kathleen johnston
I spent Wednesday evening at a live recording of the pop culture podcast, Straight Up at the Curzon Hoxton and it was a joy. The hosts did a brilliant job of acknowledging those in the room while ensuring the episode will be just as engaging for listeners at home. It’s difficult to achieve both.
So I wanted to highlight this podcast because it’s become my weekly cultural compass.
Journalists and best friends Ellie Halls and Kathleen Johnston dissect the week's pop culture and celebrity news. From industry shake-ups to Taylor Swift's cultural dominance, to standout TV moments and fresh takes on representation in media - they tackle it all with equal parts intelligence and fun.
What Kathleen likes, Ellie often doesn’t, and vice versa, so you find yourself vigorously nodding along with one at a time. It’s clever but not pretentious, warm, funny and genuinely useful for navigating what's worth your time in the endless stream of content. It would be all too easy to compare this to the OG millennial-focussed pop culture podcast, The High Low, but really, I prefer it.