Three Great True-Crime Podcasts for Your Next Road Trip

Whether you’re travelling for business or pleasure, a lot of us will wind up making a long-haul road trip at some point in 2020. After the excitement of the journey wears off, you’ll find you have a lot of hours to fill as the miles roll by. One lifesaver for road-trippers in recent years has been the rise of modern podcasts. Basically, they’re audio stories that are told either in one or multiple episodes, with topics ranging from cooking to music to relationships and everything in between.

One of our favorite podcast genres is True Crime stories, especially those that take a deep and enlightening dive into the forces and motives of the criminals and the cutting-edge methods and insight it took to catch them. There’s a ton of them out there, but you really have to do some research to separate the truly great from those that are just so-so.

Luckily for you, a lot of us here at McLarty Daniel Ford of Bentonville are podcast fans, and we’ve got some great suggestions for True Crime podcasts that will really cut your next roadtrip down to size. Check them out below. And if you need a great new or reliable pre-owned car to get you there in comfort and style, stop in at McLarty Daniel Ford of Bentonville today, or check out our full selection on our website right now.

DIRTY JOHN — To well-off divorcee Debra Newell, John Meehan seemed to be the man she had always been looking for: good looking, charming, romantic, attentive, an anesthesiologist who swept the Southern California-based interior designer off her feet from pretty much the moment they met through an online dating site. Even though Newell’s daughters urged her to be cautious, within weeks, their whirlwind romance led to a quick marriage. As you might have guessed given that they made an eight-part podcast (and now a Netflix series) about their relationship, from there, Meehan and Newell’s marriage soon spiraled into a nightmare of lies, deceit, addiction and fraud as Meehan’s true backstory became known bit by disturbing bit. Eventually, it all culminated in a terrifying moment that you’ll never see coming. Hosted by L.A. Times journalist Christopher Goffard, who reported extensively on the case, “Dirty John” goes deep into the story of Meehan and Newell, ferreting out previously unknown details about the conman who wormed his way into an unsuspecting woman’s life through her heart. It’s a must-listen for true crime fans, and the ultimate affirmation of the old saying: “Marry in haste, repent in leisure.”

SWINDLED — Another very old, very wise saying holds that money is the root of all evil. Those out to get money from others by any means necessary can go to some truly dastardly and devious lengths to do so, and once they’re caught, unwinding those tangled webs of lies, machinations and schemes can make for some very entertaining listening. “Swindled” is a podcast devoted to seeking out and telling the stories of some of the most shameless and audacious grifters the world has ever known. Hosted by an unnamed “Concerned Citizen,” whose deadpan delivery and wry humor takes some getting used to, each episode usually includes details of two swindles in the same vein, connected by a common thread. There’s currently 12 full-length episodes of “Swindled” available online, and the topics run the gamut of human failings, including a sea captain who went on the run after discovering one of the richest sunken treasures in history, a mortician who used her knowledge of death to defraud insurance companies for a fortune, the true story of the Love Canal industrial contamination that poisoned an entire neighborhood, the life and mysterious death of Oklahoma nuclear whistleblower Karen Silkwood, the disturbing crimes of convicted boy band mogul Lou Perlman, the great McDonald’s Monopoly scam and scandal of the 1990s and more.

THE DROPOUT — Few tech gurus have had a more meteoric rise and dazzling fall in recent years than Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Beautiful and brilliant, Holmes seemed like she was a shoo-in for the tech sector’s Next Big Thing in the 2010s, when her Silicon Valley startup Theranos started generating huge buzz — and equally huge checks from investors — after Holmes announced the company was on the brink of revolutionizing medicine through a tabletop device called Edison that could diagnose hundreds of illnesses and genetic conditions in minutes, using only a single drop of a patient’s blood. Holmes eventually inked a groundbreaking partnership with the drug store chain Walgreens that helped make her the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world. All the while, Holmes was selling her investors and the public on the idea that Edison would soon do for medical testing what the iPhone did for communication. The truth, however, was that the company was built on a tissue of lies, with engineers struggling to make Edison work as promised and an increasingly-desperate Holmes going to ever-more elaborate lengths to keep those demanding results at bay. Eventually, the house of cards came tumbling down. This six-episode podcast is a riveting exploration not only of Holmes and Theranos, but also the resilience of the American Dream in the startup era.

Any one of these great true-crime podcasts will help you knock your next road trip down to size, and you might even find yourself a podcast addict like a lot of us! Need a beautiful new Ford or Lincoln to get you there? How about a reliable pre-owned vehicle with plenty of miles left to give? Then stop in today at McLarty Daniel Ford of Bentonville, or check out our full selection online right now.