Friday, January 5, 2018

Weekly Rec: The Assassination

The BBC generally makes most of my favorite podcasts (I guess because what I actually like is radio documentaries), and they've just started a new one that's really great - The Assassination, about the assassination of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto, which took place ten years ago. It borrows a bit from the format popularized by Serial, with a whole series devoted to an in-depth look at a single crime, except in this case the murder in question is a world-shaking political assassination. It's hosted by Owen Bennett Jones, who knew and covered Bhutto for years and has clearly put a lot of time and effort into investigating her death, and he uses clips from archival recordings of his own BBC news reports as well as interviews that took place over decades as well as those done just for this project. There's a ton of useful background and context about Pakistani politics and history in general as well as this fascinating figure and her death. I followed the story of the assassination at the time and yet even in the first few episodes of this podcast I've learned a ton. If you're interested in recent history and how it intersects with current world affairs, give it a try!

No comments:

Post a Comment