Podcast. White Lies

I quite enjoy listening to podcasts that investigate and retell the various angles of a story and how it has evolved both socially and factually. The ever-evolving game of telephone we play as kids can be so harmful as adults in social circles, and so very difficult to unravel when an entire community plays it for over five decades.

A Story of Law & Social Influence

The podcast White Lies by NPR takes two young men from Alabama to the small town of Selma, Alabama to investigate a trial that occurred shortly after, and likely was related to, the Bloody Sunday Massacre after a peaceful march led by Martin Luther King, Jr. in the mid-1960s.

The two podcast hosts search desperately for the trial transcripts for the murder of a white religious leader and northerner who had come to Selma after Bloody Sunday in an attempt to help the turbulent town. Along the way, they interview people alive at the time including trial jurors, discover various media circulated at the time, and unravel stories told down through generations of the stories told socially through the many grapevines. Depth is added to the investigative story by way of current political and historic structures and stories of the town that help paint a picture of how the town may have looked in the 60's.

The White Lies podcast is well written, well executed, and well balanced. I highly recommend it to the podcasts listeners among us.