In The Dark

In The Dark is one of the most decorated podcasts ever produced, and every bit of that recognition is deserved. Hosted by Madeleine Baran, the show takes a single case per season and pulls it apart with the patience and rigor of a full-scale newsroom investigation. Season 1 re-examined the abduction of Jacob Wetterling and the sheriff who failed to solve it for 27 years. Season 2 followed Curtis Flowers through six trials for the same crime in Mississippi, exposing prosecutorial misconduct that eventually reached the Supreme Court. Season 3, which won a Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting, investigated unpunished killings of civilians in Haditha, Iraq. More recent seasons tackled the runaway princesses of Dubai's royal family and a 1985 English manor murder. That range shows a reporting team unafraid to follow evidence wherever it leads, domestic or international. Baran's style is methodical and unhurried. She builds her narrative brick by brick, and there are stretches where you realize the reporting team spent months on a single detail that takes up five minutes of airtime. That level of commitment shows. The podcast has earned three Peabody Awards, a George Polk Award (the first for a podcast), and a duPont-Columbia Award, among others. With a 4.6-star rating from nearly 28,000 reviewers across 70 episodes and six seasons, In The Dark proves that investigative journalism still has the power to change outcomes in the real world.