Tapes from the Darkside

I’ve had to cut way back on my true crime binges because my 5 year old was starting to pay attention. Anyway, I came back to this show and am right back in love. The thorough research, the writing, the super-clean audio and mesmerizing voice, the interesting cases, the dedication and hard work. I’ll be a subscriber forever.

Some podcasts simply don’t work because the podcaster just doesn’t have a good voice to listen to. This podcaster has a great listening voice. It works!

I really enjoy the hosts voice, pacing, and overall presentation, and I really enjoy the cases they pick to deep dive into. However, a huge portion of each episode is just long clips from another podcast. Especially the latest season. The hosts mentions fair use, but it feels less like original commentary and more like reposting someone else’s work. I’d much rather hear original analysis.

I’m giving Tapes from the Dark Side Season 8 a try. This is the first season I’ve listened to, and perhaps the host's voice is something I’d eventually get used to, but if I hadn't already depleted every other true crime podcast I could find, the voice alone would have been enough to make me stop. The episodes are very short in general. When you factor in the commercials and the excessive credits, you’re left with barely 15 minutes of content. On top of that, the show constantly gets off-track. The host claims it’s a "fool's errand" to go over the history of North Korea, yet that is exactly what he does. He then embarks on another fool's errand: spending an excessive amount of time speculating on whether the claims Otto made in his press conference speech were true. We already know the entire thing was a farce and the speech was scripted for him—the host even admits this several times. Devoting what little airtime he has to dissecting something so obviously fake is a waste of time. By the fourth episode, I had to stop listening.