Alzheimer’s is no laughing matter. But apparently Canadian comedian Gavin Crawford didn’t get that memo. His seven-part podcast Let’s Not Be Kidding is packed with funny stories about his ailing mother, Donna – like the time she was convinced Crawford’s husband invented Christmas trees. It quickly becomes obvious that he’s using humour to deal with the grim reality and heartbreak of dementia, and also to convey what a wonderful person Donna was and how much he loved her. The final instalment is about her death and will leave you in tears, even as Crawford makes jokes about the dispersal of her ashes.

The Evaporated: Gone with the Gods

When Jake Adelstein’s Japanese accountant disappeared without a trace, his investigative journalist mind started ticking over. Adelstein, who wrote the book on which the TV series Tokyo Vice is based, discovered that officially around 80,000 Japanese people go missing every year, and the actual number is probably three times that. Adelstein and co-host Shoko Plambeck went looking for answers and discovered all the ways a person in trouble in Japan can evaporate, often with the help of organisations called “fly by night” shops. By the final episode, Adelstein even uncovers the truth about his missing accountant and a showdown takes place.

The Last Soviet

If you’d have told me a year ago that I would spend hours listening to a podcast from former NSync boy band member Lance Bass, I would have said you were nuts. But The Last Soviet – about Sergei Krikalev, the Russian cosmonaut who was aboard the Mir space station in 1991 when the USSR crumbled – is diverting stuff. Krikalev was given a choice – stay up there or return to Earth and jeopardise the space program. What’s Bass got to do with all this? Improbable as it may seem, in 2002, he moved to Russia and trained to be a cosmonaut. His old bandmate Justin Timberlake may have shone brighter, but Bass had his eyes on a different kind of star.

Bear Brook

At the end of episode one in the second season of Bear Brook, there’s such a big twist it will give you whiplash. It involves exactly who was in the room when teenager Jason Carroll confessed to murdering a pregnant woman. And then the host, Jason Moon, admits that he deliberately delayed sharing this information with listeners to heighten the impact of the revelation. It’s a telling moment, because true crime podcasts are all about framing the narrative for maximum effect. It also feeds right into the story of Carroll, who lost control of his narrative in the worst possible way, confessing to a crime he didn’t commit. Why would anyone do that? You’ll just have to listen.

Inside the Tribe

Years ago, whenever I used to visit Katoomba, I’d drop into Common Ground, an inviting cafe that had amazing pancakes and looked like Middle Earth. After listening to Inside the Tribe, the award-winning podcast from Good Weekend journalist Tim Elliott, my memories have been sullied. The Twelve Tribes, who ran the cafe, along with many other businesses around the world, present a benign face as a utopian religious community. But Elliott finds past members who have managed to escape, and they claim it’s a repressive cult that controls and abuses its members, cutting them off from the outside world and making them virtual slaves. Now those pancakes don’t seem so sweet.

Magnificent Jerk

Maya Lin Sugarman’s Uncle Galen was always a bit of a mystery to her. She lived with him for a short time in Los Angeles and knew that he had moved there to try to make it in the movie business, but he only got to play roles such as “Low Life Number 1” in Kindergarten Cop. Years later, Sugarman discovers that Crazy Six, a schlocky 1998 drugs-and-guns movie starring the unlikely combination of Rob Lowe, Burt Reynolds and Ice-T, was loosely based on his life. It turns out her uncle had secrets. Her podcast investigates what stories we tell about ourselves and what we choose to keep hidden.

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The Retrievals

This is sometimes an uncomfortable listen, but so it should be. It investigates the story of a nurse at a fertility centre at Yale University who oversaw egg retrieval procedures and replaced the fentanyl that women should have been getting with saline. Subsequently, these women went through excruciating pain, while the nurse horded the fentanyl for her own addiction.

Their complaints were largely dismissed by the doctors and the university. But the story takes surprising turns. The women at the centre of the controversy act as a kind of Greek chorus, and their take on what happened is often complex and tells us a lot about how the world views motherhood.

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