Behind the Mic with Three of Audible’s Top Investigative Podcasters
Time is running out for cold-case investigator Paul Holes. It’s the end of episode three in the Audible series Finding the Lost Girls and he’s trying to connect a series of unsolved murders and disappearances to convicted serial killer Joseph Naso, but the 90-year-old has been moved to a health care facility and may be deathly ill. Can Holes get him to talk before it’s too late, or will the names of the rest of Naso’s victims vanish with him?
Suspenseful moments like these are why Audible’s investigative podcasts are so addictive. They’re also defined by journalistic integrity and storytelling excellence. “These are shows you can’t get anywhere else: bingeable, with twists and turns, and yet backed up by deep reporting and even perspectives,” says Marshall Lewy, Head of Audible Content, North America. “Audible has become the home for the most compelling audio-first investigative series by creating long-term collaborations with some of the most brilliant investigative journalists and hosts working in the medium today.“
Holes is one of them. A retired police detective who became well-known in true crime circles for his role in identifying the Golden State Killer in 2018, Holes is not interested in celebrity. “People see me as this media figure, but I’m not,” he says. “I show up, I do my thing, and move on. I don’t even listen to myself afterward.” Rather, the point of recording his work is to make sure the women at the center of these cases are finally seen and that their families know someone is still fighting for answers.
That’s why Holes appreciated Audible’s willingness to allow him the time he needed to pursue the truth. As the production deadline for Finding the Lost Girls approached, Holes and other law enforcement agencies were trying to get Naso to identify more of his victims, and Holes knew the series release might make the attention-averse killer refuse to talk. “Audible agreed it would be in everybody’s best interest to delay the release,” he says, a decision that allowed the various agencies to continue quietly building cases and ultimately identify more victims.
Where Holes’ series are focused on the hunt for the bad actors behind crimes, Laura Beil’s work is about exposing the systems that enable and protect them. The veteran health and science reporter continues to stun audiences with the award-winning documentary series, Dr. Death, with each season focusing on a different, monstrous doctor and the ways they were able to continue operating for years, despite multiple red flags. In the fifth season, which released on Audible on June 4, one of the most searing moments comes when Beil reveals that the neurosurgeon with a history of malpractice complaints, and whose license was revoked after a patient death, was discovered working at a VA hospital, performing surgeries on U.S. veterans.
She says, “That, to me, is the crux of every story: how did this happen?” That same question drives her Audible series Exposed, about Robert Hadden, the Columbia University OB GYN who sexually assaulted patients for two decades and then was protected by the institution, which failed to alert his patients after he was convicted. Across all her work, Beil is acutely conscious of “the responsibility we have as journalists to try to keep this from happening again,” she says. “Which is the reason people tell you their stories: they don't want anyone else to get hurt.”
And their stories are having real impact. After Dr. Death’s first season Texas passed a law, informally dubbed the “Dr. Death law,” aimed at closing some of the loopholes that let dangerous physicians move from state to state and, as Beil says, “reinvent themselves and escape their past.” In the wake of Exposed, Columbia increased its settlement to survivors and initiated a new external investigation that led to the dismissal of two senior leaders.
If Beil’s work brings to light the harm done by individuals and institutions, journalist Leon Neyfakh likes to upend people’s assumptions. His Audible series have challenged our way of thinking about the vaping industry, attention deficit disorder, and now, with OnlyFantasy, the world of OnlyFans, a social media platform that allows users to pay for content from creators, including public figures, fitness trainers, musicians and more, but is most commonly used for hosting adult content. He does this by approaching subjects with an open mind.
“I try to talk to as many people as I can who were involved with or witnessed the story I’m trying to tell, then triangulate them,” he says. This requires approaching interviews as a blank slate, asking open ended questions and ending up with “a story that has room for all kinds of different angles and voices.”
OnlyFantasy, which Neyfakh co-hosted with comedian and OnlyFans creator Gracie Canaan, follows some of the creators and subscribers who comprise OnlyFans’ erotic ecosystem, offering unexpected revelations and nuances along the way. For instance, one creator was a drag queen who realized, while texting with male subscribers as a female “chatter,” that she was a trans woman. She was one of many who reported to Neyfakh that OnlyFans changed their lives for the better. By contrast, Neyfakh’s little sister, who appears in the show’s first episode, reported the parasocial nature of the relationships she formed as an OnlyFans creator, where she was on the receiving end of so much adoration, made it challenging for her to have “real” relationships later. And for subscribers, Neyfakh adds, “it can create habits and expectations that are not realistic and that will be detrimental once they do meet someone (in real life) and start comparing the relationship to what they’re used to on OnlyFans.” The show includes all these perspectives and offers no easy answers.
Such a complex inquiry is possible largely because Audible gives him “unusual time and trust.” For OnlyFantasy, Neyfakh and his team spent about nine months reporting, meeting creators, subscribers, managers, agents and chatters, then overlapping that with outlining and scripting. Working in tandem, their editor at Audible weighed in on any loose threads or storylines that needed more reporting. That amount of time and latitude, says Neyfakh, “is not normal in this media environment. There just aren’t many institutions around that have the resources to invest in a long and deeply considered piece of media.”
The payoff for that time can also be more meaningful than anyone anticipates: by delaying the release of Finding the Lost Girls, Holes garnered trust with various law enforcement entities, including FBI agent Marty Parker, who was able to get Naso to confess to one more victim, thereby helping one more family get answers. Parker then brought her candid, behind-the-scenes experience to an episode of the series, deeply enriching the story for listeners.
As a journalist and storyteller, Neyfakh appreciates this kind of freedom: “Because Audible is a company built on long form narrative, they know what it takes, and they know the value of a substantive work.”
