Merkel years
As a child of the 1990s, the question of how likely Angela Merkel’s political career was was not a question for me. The woman, who grew up in East Germany, had been shaping federal politics for years when my political awareness arose. You don’t look at the Chancellery in surprise, but with a certain self-image. However, as the first German head of government, she was unpredictable for the generation of baby boomers who grew up with chancellors like Brandt, Schmidt and Kohl. In their six-part feature series, Stephan Detjen and Tom Schimmeck review Merkel’s childhood and youth in Templin, her advancement in the CDU and her tenure in office. Contemporary witnesses and companions have their say, including ex-minister Thomas de Maizière, ex-competitor Peer Steinbrück and ex-EU commission head Jean-Claude Juncker. Anecdotes and original recordings catapult the audience back in time and develop a feeling for Merkel’s meticulousness, ability to change and observation. One would have liked to have been there when they parody Putin and Trump in the Chancellor’s plane. Lena Reuters
The Big Ponder
There is, for example, the story of the coconut and the peach. Americans, a common prejudice in Germany, are outwardly open and friendly, but under the sweet surface you quickly come across a hard core – like with peaches. Germans, as some in the USA see it, are like a coconut, on the other hand: you bite your teeth on the shell, but the contents are edible. In The Big Ponder, a German-English production of the broadcaster RBB and the Goethe-Institut, it is also about the prejudices that shape the transatlantic relationship. There is much more diversity between the two cultures, as the makers of the eight-part series impressively demonstrate. You are introducing a pen friendship between Nashville and Magdeburg that began as a language project and is now much more than that. You open your eyes to all the “Little Americas”, as the US barracks in Germany are lovingly called, in which around 35,000 Soldiers are stationed. And they tell the story of the physicist Bob, who sees rural Ohio as well as urban Berlin as a home. The podcast questions, explains, exposes trenches and at the same time creates space for connections. A mix that should not only be reserved for the ears of USA fans. Sarah Zapf
A person disappears
Three years ago Daniel Küblböck disappeared on board a cruise ship. One has to assume that he went overboard and dead. At this point in time Küblböck finally defined himself as a transperson and called himself Lana Kaiser. The host of the ten-part podcast for the Podimo platform, Tom Ehrhardt, and his team present Küblböck / Kaiser as an early queer icon in Germany and as a complex personality – not as a public-hungry teenager who overestimates himself excessively, as he has often been portrayed. “We refuse to see this person as a ridiculous and tragic figure,” it says in every episode. Küblböck’s story cannot be told without its boulevard media dimension. The Berlin drama school, where Küblböck last studied, also felt this in the summer of 2018. Quite a few journalists said they found the reason for the alleged suicide of the TV character there. This podcast makes it by far not so easy to judge people and events, it also allows for contradictions. In this case, they are simply part of it. In doing so, Ehrhardt goes to court with Küblböck / Kaiser where necessary – but always respectfully even in these scenes. Stefan Fischer
The cocaine wave
Good stories thrive on surprise, tension, curiosities and, yes, sometimes also on clichés – as long as they don’t get too intrusive. The drug crime provides perfect templates, which is why it is no wonder that the third season of the NDR podcast Organized Crime – Secret Research lets you hear away pretty well. In three episodes, investigative reporters Philipp Eckstein, Volkmar Kabisch and Benedikt Strunz shed light on the “cocaine wave” and very vividly portray the routes by which the drug flooded Europe. Experts from the police and politics also have their say and contribute valuable details to the search for clues. Surprising: drug gangs try to get a plane from the Vatican to smuggle them. If the Pope only knew! Exciting: In Antwerp, a right-wing mayor is fighting hard against the growing cocaine trade in his city. Because the smugglers now and then take up arms and shoot, the politician is now under police protection. Curious: The amateurishly hidden coke packages in banana boxes, which were almost sold in German Rewe supermarkets. Cliché: the usual mafia gangs from Italy and Albania who handle their drug deals with Latin American cartels – and of course the German rap in the background of the podcast. Thomas Balbierer
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