Denver’s best podcasts for 2022 include alien conspiracies, stoner culture, police reform and more

Emmy-winning director and playwright donnie l. betts ignored the pull of podcasts for nearly a decade — despite knowing his 23-year-old, nationally acclaimed radio show would likely go digital at some point.

“To me, the magic of it is doing it in front of a live audience,” said betts, whose “Destination Freedom: Black Radio Days” this month released an MLK Day-relevant episode about the 1955 Mississippi lynching of Emmett Till through distributor Broadway Podcast Network.

“One of our last, pre-pandemic shows at the Newman Center (at the University of Denver) was about gun violence,” said betts, referring to “Tale of the Bullet,” which featured professional musicians and actors. “We had (Colorado State Rep.) Tom Sullivan, one of the parents of an Aurora theater shooting victim, on to talk about it, and other people touched by it who have never really had the chance to discuss the loss of their loved one.”

“Destination Freedom” has continued to evolve since joining the podcasting world in 2013, with downloads and streams replacing most of the 170 public and commercial radio stations it once aired on.

It’s only one of several projects from betts — he’s working on the “Stop Resisting” documentary on policing in America — that’s eliciting national attention, alongside a host of newly relevant Colorado podcasts that have carved out audiences during the pandemic.

“Guardians of the River,” a deeply reported series from Denver writer and producer Cat Jaffee, last year won the Tribeca Film Festival’s Best Narrative Nonfiction Podcast, amid others. It required more than two years of reporting and thousands of miles of travel to paint its nuanced portrait of the pristine Okavango water system and the modern threats it faces.

Fortunately, Jaffee had support from big-name collaborators National Geographic and the Wild Bird Trust.

“I had to drive the length of the African continent seven times, I got malaria and dengue fever, and I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer (while in Africa),” said Jaffee, the founder of Denver’s House of Pod incubator, which has worked to bring women and marginalized groups into podcasting. “But even as podcasting means so many different people, there are these broad assumptions about it. … You’re having unbelievably, meticulously researched work coming out next to someone who recorded their show in an hour.”

That’s not a bad thing, Jaffee said, as House of Pod stands for open access to this media. But audience assumptions about podcasting can work against budding hosts.

Jaffe estimated the cost of a professionally produced podcast at $10,000 per episode, although industry averages are closer to $20,000, she said, given the complexity of writing, fact-checking, editing, music, design and other considerations. Most people don’t have those budgets, and her House of Pod has supported dozens of podcasts since opening in 2018.

In October, Jaffee warned supporters that House of Pod might close due to a mixture of pandemic and funding challenges. That has since been revised, fortunately, as her five-member staff shifted to contract work and her brick-and-mortar location, at 2565 Curtis St., began renting out its studio and focusing on production.

Creating podcasts that stand the test of time  — unknowable until that time has passed — gives listeners a stockpile of bingeable material. But there are early candidates. Last fall, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver’s insightful “How Art is Born” podcast allowed Regis University professor and writer R. Alan Brooks to interview different artists (not just comics artists) after he created dozens of episodes of his Black-comics podcast, “Motherf***** in a Cape,” which was formerly recorded live at Munity Information Cafe.

“There are people in the podcasting world who wouldn’t have shows anywhere else right now,” said Brooks, also a  guest on podcasts that have combined feminism and pop-culture nerdery, Black culture and social justice, and lesbian issues and comics. “There’s such a low barrier to entry that you don’t have these gatekeepers trying to box you out. But the audience has definitely become more fractured.”

There are too many Denver-based newsletters, public-radio deep-dives and grassroots cultural titles to list here. But we’ve got a few favorites. If you don’t see yours here, check out past podcast guides and features.

“He’s Just 23 Chromosomes“ Colorado College student Anya Steinberg last year won National Public Radio’s grand prize in the Student Podcast Challenge: College Edition, for this savvy, short-format work. It follows the search for her birth father and its surprising results, according to Corey Hutchins, an instructor at Colorado College’s Journalism Institute. Steinberg also created the “New Narratives” podcast, which showed up on a recent list of the best Asian-American podcasts.

“Within“ How many podcasts are recorded inside prisons? (Not many, we’d wager.) This award-winning show is “committed to shifting the conversation on who is in prison, specifically within the Colorado Department of Corrections,” according to the DU Prison Arts Initiative. The brilliantly humanizing, entertaining series is usually recorded at a trio of Colorado correctional facilities, with Season 1 available as of September 2019, and the virtually crafted Season 2 arriving in September.

“Systemic“ There are plenty of worthy, public-radio podcasts emanating from Colorado that dissect the social, cultural and legislative issues of our time. But there’s only one that’s laser-focused on police reform and other issues facing Black Americans. Host and producer Jo Erickson steers clear of pat explanations in this fascinating, four-part Colorado Public Radio look at historical and contemporary racial injustice, police violence and reform, which launched last spring.

“The Confessional“ Denver-based New York Times best-selling author (thrice, even), recovering alcoholic and Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber finds drama and catharsis in “The Confessional,” an interview-based show that offers “a carwash for people’s shame and secrets.” Religion-themed podcasts are often choir-preaching affairs, but “The Confessional” is a frank, sometimes profane interrogation of faith and second chances that can be a strong complement to 12-step programs and therapy (trust me) — or just make for riveting listening.