Get set for the Paris Paralympics with tales of true grit

Olympic hero Michael Johnson and archer Matt Stutzman interview stars including Kadeena Cox in Rising Phoenix. Plus: five of the best podcasts about classic movies

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If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I am really, really interested in drugs. I read Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain earlier this year after it spent way too long on my “to read” pile, and found its tale of the rise and rise of the Sackler opioid dynasty genuinely terrifying (though isn’t artist turned Oxy campaigner Nan Goldin a total hero?).

Naturally, I got stuck into Scripts this week – a new miniseries from the Atlantic – about “the pills we take for our brains and the stories we tell ourselves about them”. It’s sensitively made, but scary, as much of this stuff is; the tale of two siblings who found themselves on the same treatment for heroin addiction, but whose lives took very different paths, will stay with me for a while. As with Dan Taberski’s recent series Hysterical, about a group of young girls who developed Tourettes-like symptoms in tandem, there are real characters in here dealing with some very difficult ailments, but we’re also never far away from bigger questions about how we think about mental health and selfhood.
Read on for our picks of the week, from scammer dads to a gritty Paralympics pod, and five of the best podcasts for fans of classic movies – from old Hollywood hits to Hammer horror history.
Hannah J Davies
Deputy editor, newsletters

Picks of the week

#1 Dad
Widely available, all episodes out now
Comedian Gary Vider hasn’t spoken to his con artist dad in 24 years, after a childhood in which he made him pose as a young journalist to blag his way into Michael Jordan’s locker room (above), and helped him photocopy dollar bills for school lunch money. In this wild journey, Gary attempts to track him down, to see if he’s still the same fake accent-using, court case-fighting man he ever was – and hopes it won’t end up tearing his family apart.Alexi Duggins

Scam Clinic
Widely available, episodes weekly
The presenter of BBC One’s Bafta-winning Scam Interceptors, Nick Stapleton, tries helping members of the public in this investigative show. It’s a staggering listen, with the opening double bill featuring a jaw-dropping interview with the supposed mastermind behind a £100,000 theft – who seems to want to have a lovely chat about podcasting equipment. AD

Head Number 7
Widely available, episodes weekly
When you donate your body to science, you’d think Harvard Medical School would look after it. So it was a ghoulish scandal when families discovered their loved ones’ body parts had been sold and mislaid. Now, DNA expert Dr Turi King asks where they went, starting with an NYPD officer’s distinctively large head. Hannah Verdier

Don’t Drink the Milk
Widely available, episodes weekly
Sex, drugs and lawns are promised in series two of this delve into the unexpected backstories of familiar things. Reality TV and the missionary position are coming up, but first Rachel Stewart puts an entertaining slant on witch-hunts, heading to Scotland to investigate the history of a misogynistic medieval conspiracy. HV

Rising Phoenix: What Does It Take?
Widely available, episodes weekly
It’s a cliche to say that anything Paralympic-related is inspiring, but this podcast – full of grit and humour – really is. Armless archer Matt Stutzman and fellow medal winner Michael Johnson interview athletes including Kadeena Cox, who talks about her determination to get back into sport after a stroke at 23 and being diagnosed with MS. HV

There’s a podcast for that

This week, Graeme Virtue chooses five of the best podcasts for fans of classic movies, from the highlights of the Hammer horror catalogue to the series reappraising films including Some Like It Hot.

You Must Remember This
Recent seasons of this beguiling show – meticulously written and narrated by film historian Karina Longworth – explored the rise and fall of erotic thrillers in the 1980s and 1990s. But YMRT became an early breakout hit due to Longworth’s immersive dives into the golden age of Hollywood, untangling the scuttlebutt surrounding doomed starlets and spotlighting the sins of amoral moguls. To mark its 10th anniversary earlier this year, the “lost” first episode – long in limbo due to music licensing issues – was remastered and rereleased. That perceptive profile of Vertigo star Kim Novak will probably make you want to revisit a luxurious back catalogue of over 200 instalments.

The House of Hammer
Most profiles of UK film studio Hammer focus on its imperial phase of cheerfully disreputable horror movies from the mid-1950s to the 1970s. But fortnightly podcast The House of Hammer has been patiently progressing through the studio’s filmography chronologically from 1934, applying detailed context and affectionate ribbing to forgotten flicks like nylon-smuggling crime caper River Patrol (1948). The general vibe between hosts Cev Moore, Ben Taylorson, Adam Roche and the mononymous Smokey is laid-back and welcoming. But things have definitely cranked up in the past year, with the show tackling foundational Hammer texts like The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Christopher Lee’s deathless Dracula (1958).

Unspooled
Are there some so-called classic films that should be expelled from the canon? When the slickly produced Unspooled first launched in 2018, movie critic Amy Nicholson and actor/writer/comedian Paul Scheer’s aim was to cast a fresh eye over the top 100 film list created in 2007 by the distinguished American Film Institute. Two years later, the easy-going but diligent hosts had scratched 60 entries off the original ranking and set about adding new films to try to formulate a more representative selection of cinema (one intended to be shot into space to educate and entertain any passing aliens). But it is worth scrolling back through Unspooled’s sprawling episode list to the early days when the pair debated the merits of hallowed titles like Ben-Hur, The African Queen and Some Like It Hot.

The Movie Palace
Consciously or not, it feels like many podcasts about classic movies want to evoke the decadent cocktails-and-cigarettes spirit of old Hollywood itself, often deploying an alluring sound mix to help the decades melt away. The Movie Palace is a more grounded affair, but what it lacks in sonic bells and whistles it more than makes up for in thoughtful discussion. In each episode, Dr Carl Sweeney invites a knowledgable guest to discuss a notable film, from influential noirs to hardscrabble westerns. The result is a crisp, no-fuss primer in old-fashioned cinema. Across the show’s 130+ episodes, Hitchcock has been a recurring presence: notably in a comprehensive eight-part miniseries analysing Psycho.

The Plot Thickens
Not every film podcast can boast a direct link with Hollywood’s golden age. But Ben Mankiewicz – host of The Plot Thickens, produced by US network Turner Classic Movies – is the grandson of Herman Mankiewicz, celebrated screenwriter of Citizen Kane and subject of David Fincher’s 2020 biopic Mank. Among the previous seasons of The Plot Thickens are deep dives into the careers of Peter Bogdanovich (a film-maker obsessed with Hollywood’s past) and righteous blaxploitation butt-kicker Pam Grier. But the current run, Decoding John Ford, attempts to get the measure of the notoriously cantankerous but Oscar-laden king of 20th century directors, with the help of unheard interviews from collaborators including John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart.

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