I like the world-shrinking impact that bleak overseas (I’m an American and a proud East Portlander) podcasts have on me. Hence my love affairs with a Norwegian/British (Death in Ice Valley) and an Australian (The Teacher’s Pet) podcast. American podcasts, produced by the likes of CNN, MSNBC or, for that matter, the Comedy Channel, all reek of the candy-scented Disneyland ozone of positivity and prospective commercial advantage which we love to sniff under the Stars and Stripes and which wafts off every media product we create. Give me a UK podcast recorded in the Bergen rain (Ice Valley) any day. Only accented perspectives from such a dismal location can teach us that life is both no more and no less than a burning corpse and an unrecovered suitcase at the train station.
There are two red hot podcasts from this summer and you must hear them both asap.
The Teacher’s Pet one is about the worlds worst gym teacher ever. A young wife and mother vanishes. Her gym teacher husband, an unreconstructed rugby star and male model, moves his 16 year old lover into their house within two days. Neighbors, friends and family suspect foul play, but the photogenic athlete evades prosecution for 35 years.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/the-teachers-pet
Death in Ice Valley involves the death of a possible female spy in Norway in 1970.
