There is very little that makes me as angry at white collar crime. Partly because it so often takes advantage of people in precarious situations and partly because it's so rarely prosecuted. But hearing about it is key, especially since the lack of prosecution often allows this brand of criminal to return to public life without any consequences. Enter Swindled.
Swindled in an independent podcast produced by an anonymous host called A Concerned Citizen (ACC). He speaks in an even and almost monotonous voice, which took me a little time to adjust to. I've grown to truly appreciate it because it lands some of his sarcasm incredibly well and because the topics are so infuriating that outrage on his part would be overdone. Each episode covers 2 swines - an intro and then a connected main story. ACC is unafraid of backlash and, in true Millineal fashion, posts the complaint emails and DMs he gets to his IG feed (which I also follow). This is also seen in his choice of targets - he's gone after Dole and the banana republics, Mother Theresa, the Space Program, con artists, politicans, and public servants. The first episode I listened to was about the Dalkon Shield, which Crime Junkies also did as a crossover. I have never been so enraged by a podcast and I was hooked.
From a design perspective, the music is excellent (music is produced by Deformr (aka Trever Howard) and each episode gets some killer artwork, much of which becomes available as various types of merch. ACC clearly cares a lot about his work and I appreciate how much research and sheer time is involved since he's a mostly single-man enterprise.
I am a Patron on Patreon for Swindled and I've been eyeballing merch though I haven't gotten any yet. Mostly, I needed access to extra episodes (I have a problem). As large podcast networks start popping up and consume independent entities, supporting independent or small podcast entities it critical in determining what kind of programming will be available in this media as it continues to grow. As ACC likes to say, it sucks to live in late stage capitalism and try to create something, but rent must be paid.
Money truly is the root of all evil.
