Personal History Podcast Recommendations

The Man Who Calculated Death

The Last Request

An odyssey 80 years into the past, Suzanne Rico (our curator) follows her own ancestry all the way to the top of the N@zi regime, when her grandfather headed the project to build the world's first cruise missile.

This podcast explores generational guilt and responsibility, the importance of knowing your own history (even if it's painful), and a decades-old family legend that has an incredible true crime twist. This adventure through time will leave you thinking about how the past is inextricably linked to the present.

The Nightingale of Iran

Episode 1 - The Time Machine

In this well-crafted podcast, sisters Danielle and Galeet Dardashti explore their Jewish family history in Iran, when their grandfather was a famous Persian singer known as "The Nightingale of Iran."

The podcast explores why their family emigrated to America and unearths unspoken secrets that the sisters work to understand.

Stolen: Surviving St. Michael's

Episode 1: The Police Officer and the Priest (S2 Surviving St. Michael's)

This deeply personal podcast won both the Peabody and the Pulitzer, and deservedly so. It follows journalist Connie Walker as she journeys into time to revisit her late father's experience in a residential school in Canada.

The result is the excruciating tale of what happened to him as a child (and so many others) in this Saskatchewan school 40 years earlier, and the dreaded, dreadful secret kept by her own family for all this time. As with many personal history narratives, what Walker uncovers turns out to be a much bigger story.

Lucky Boy

Gareth | Lucky Boy Ep1

This podcast gives voice to the story of Gareth (not his real name), a man who says he had a sexual relationship with a teacher at the age of 14. The show looks at the lasting damage of abuse.

It follows Gareth back into the 1980s to figure out the truth behind what happened, exploring how time can morph memory, and details the history of the time Gareth grew up in, when norms and ideas around sexual abuse were much different than the present.

Your Own Backyard

Episode 01: A Face On A Billboard

The best non-fiction stories often have elements that link the storyteller to the narrative, and that is true in this podcast. A brilliant indie by Chris Lambert, the story takes Chris back to his hometown on California's central coast to understand the murder of Kristin Smart.

What is obviously a true crime podcast has strong personal history elements. Chris looks at how he processed the disappearance of Kristin, an experience that stayed with him for years until he decided he could no longer ignore the call to dig into a painful history that intersects with his own.

Impact After Hours

What are the world’s biggest change makers really like off duty? Impact After Hours takes a fun and rare peek into the lives of your favorite social impact leaders (and ones definitely worth knowing!)

If you want to kick back, laugh, and be frivolous (all while changing the world), you’re in the right place. In each episode, you may find a great book recommendation, a new travel destination, or a unique after-hours hobby. You’ll also hear guests answer tell-me-something-good questions they never get asked. Because what happens outside of work can have an impact, too.