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Two 2025 Peabody Nominations!

Not one but TWO Western Sound shows are 2025 Peabody Award nominees!

Pulse: The Untold Story, reported, written and hosted by Trevor Aaronson, and Ripple, reported, written and hosted by Dan Leone. Both these shows are incredible works of audio journalism that push the boundaries of what our medium can do. And both shows are the result of incredible reporting efforts that never would have happened without our wonderfully supportive partners at Audible and APM Studios.

If you haven’t listened to these shows, now’s a great time. Ripple is free on all platforms. Pulse: The Untold Story is “Only on Audible” and if you don’t have an account, hit me up for a code to listen for free.

Keep your fingers crossed — Peabody winners are announced on May 1.

Ripple wins the 2025 Ambie for Best Original Score and Sound Design!

We’re very excited that our podcast Ripple has brought home the 2025 Ambie award for Best Original Music and Sound Design! The Ambies are sort of like the Oscars for podcasting, so this is a huge honor for Western Sound and Dan Leone — creator, host, and composer / sound designer for Ripple.

Into the Madness is a nationwide Best-Seller

Our podcast slash audiobook Into the Madness — out now on Audible — reached number 8 on this week’s best-selling audiobooks chart! If you haven’t listened, hit us up for a code so you can listen for free (even without an Audible subscription).

Ripple is New York Times 2024 Top Ten Podcast

Our podcast Ripple, a coproduction with APM Studios, has made a number of year end “Best Of” lists, but none more prestigious than the New York Times Top Ten list. Unlike most outlets, which have very long lists in multiple categories, the New York Times chooses just ten to highlight. We’re very honored to be selected!

Alphabet Boys makes it to Congress: Senator Wyden urged the FBI to explain tactics we exposed in Season 1

We’re excited that our new original show Alphabet Boys is having an impact. The Guardian reported that Senator Ron Wyden urged the FBI to explain the tactics reminiscent of those from Hoover’s COINTELPRO that we uncovered in Alphabet Boys.

Here’s an excerpt from The Guardian article:

Ron Wyden, the Democratic senator from Oregon, is calling for the FBI to explain how it came to recruit a violent felon as an informant who then went on to gain prominence among Denver racial justice activists. The informant is alleged to have encouraged protesters to engage in increasingly violent demonstrations while trying to entrap them in criminal misdeeds.

“If the allegations are true, the FBI’s use of an informant to spy on first amendment-protected activity and stoke violence at peaceful protests is an outrageous abuse of law-enforcement resources and authority,” Wyden told the Guardian…

Strangeland Season 2 is a Top 5 Podcast!

We’re thrilled that the second season of Strangeland: Murder in Maple Shade made it to the top 5 shows on Apple Podcasts.

Thanks to our partner audiochuck, and thank you to everyone for listening.

Western Sound shows on year-end best of lists

Western Sound shows made a number of year-end best of lists. Two of our favorite mentions come from The Atlantic on Strangeland, and Variety on Lost Hills.

The Atlantic: Strangeland is a true-crime show that involves some familiar threads: evidence gathering, suspect lineup, investigation critique. But hosts Sharon Choi and Ben Adair avoid the predictable, turning the show into a thoughtful meditation on race, culture, and immigration. In 2003, in Los Angeles’s Koreatown, a woman named Chi Hyon Song, her 2-year-old son, and her nanny, Eun Sik Min, were murdered. Though someone was convicted of the triple homicide, the show casts doubts on that verdict. Choi, who is Korean American, translates and provides cultural context about how Koreans tend to view obligations to family, to neighbors, and to strangers. Strangeland isa brilliant example of how true crime can contain surprising depth.

Variety: Season 2 of the true-crime series, hosted by New Yorker writer Dana Goodyear, focuses on the suspicious drowning in January 1981 of Verna Johnson-Roehler and her young son, Doug, while boating 30 miles off the coast of Malibu. Verna’s husband, Fred Roehler, was the sole survivor and only witness. Initially, the deaths were ruled accidental. But a phone call from a Malibu neighbor changed everything. Was Fred a monster, masquerading as the perfect Malibu dad — or was an innocent man convicted by his gossiping neighbors?

But more important than any year-end list is the support and loyalty of our listeners. And our sources for entrusting us to tell their stories.

Here’s to a healthy and prosperous new year!