5 podcasts where truth is stranger than fiction

There's an overwhelming amount of news to keep up with right now, and it can sometimes feel impossible to look away or take a break. Getting absorbed in a truly compelling story can be a great antidote to doom-scrolling, and if focusing on fiction isn't working, you can try a crazy-yet-true audio narrative. These five podcasts center on stories so shocking, unbelievable and full of twists that it's hard to believe they're nonfiction.

1. 'Noble'

"It takes 28 gallons of fuel, and a spark, to burn a human body." So begins the attention-grabbing opening to Noble, which describes the process of cremation in grueling detail to set up the story about to unfold. In February 2002, investigators acting on an anonymous tip discovered a pile of more than 300 corpses abandoned in a wooded area of Noble, Georgia, a tiny town in the Appalachian foothills. This horror movie scene was found on the grounds of the Tri-State Crematory; it turned out that the owner had been improperly disposing of bodies for years while assuring grieving families that their loved ones had been cremated. In a sensitive eight-part series, Shaun Raviv, an Atlanta-based journalist who has written for Wired and The Washington Post, unravels the emotional and legal details of this disturbing tale through interviews with investigators, experts and family members. Raviv also uses this story to explore deeper questions about what the living owe the departed and our ambivalent relationship with death.

Starter episode: "The Gas Man"

2. 'Sold a Story'

For decades, a staggering number of top-rated primary schools across the country have failed to effectively teach children how to read. That sounds as if it can't possibly be true, yet during 13 detailed episodes, this American Public Media podcast lays out how a deeply flawed teaching method took hold despite having been widely debunked by cognitive scientists. The approach (known as the "whole language" method) encourages children to decode words by understanding the overall meaning of a text rather than learning words by sounding them out (known as phonics), and the conflict is so fraught that demands for reform have mounted nationwide. In Sold a Story, Emily Hanford speaks with educators, linguistics experts and parents to weave together an exposé of this systemic failure and its ramifications for children.

Starter episode: "The Problem"

3. 'Kill List'

In 2020, Carl Miller, a technology writer, received a tip about a murder-for-hire service operating via the dark web, where customers could anonymously order hits and pay with bitcoin. The first six episodes of this gripping series from Wondery outline the investigation that followed, as Miller and his small London-based team try to track down who is behind the kill list and find out if it's a real crime syndicate or an elaborate scam. The show then shifts into more episodic storytelling, with each of the 12 additional installments spotlighting one of the people whose names ended up on the list. Alongside its obvious themes of cybercrime and the internet's capacity to erode our empathy, Kill List is about toxic masculinity; a large majority of these kill orders are traced back to abusive or spurned male partners. It's also a deeply humanistic podcast, anchored by Miller and his colleagues' reflecting on the human toll of responsibly reporting these kinds of stories.

Starter episode: "The Hack"

4. 'Inconceivable Truth'

The growth of affordable DNA testing over the past couple of decades has allowed people to unlock the secrets of their ancestry, but the process sometimes comes with a twist. Finding out that your presumed father is, in fact, not a biological relative is common enough that there's a genealogical term for it: a nonpaternity event, or NPE. Matt Katz, an investigative reporter, grew up with an unreliable, often absent father whom he found both fascinating and frustrating until he dropped out of the picture altogether. After spending years unsuccessfully trying to track down his father, Katz took a DNA test that revealed the truth. In this unguarded, compassionate series, Katz's personal story intersects with a broader one about the widespread impact of New York's largely unregulated artificial insemination industry during the 1970s.

Starter episode: "Warren"

5. 'The Superhero Complex'

During the early 2010s, dozens of people in downtown Seattle experienced a scene right out of a movie. Just as they were on the verge of witnessing or becoming victims of a crime, a masked man swooped in to intervene. The mysterious figure wore a hooded rubber mask and a skintight black-and-gold suit, went by the moniker Phoenix Jones and seemed to be motivated by a desire to make the streets safer. But after Jones became a local celebrity and started a local citizen patrol group called the Rain City Superhero Movement, things became a lot more complicated. David Weinberg, host of The Superhero Complex, leaves no bizarre stone unturned in his chronicle of the rise and fall of Seattle's professed vigilante.

Starter episode: "Out of the Shadows"