The Heavyweight podcast takes a turn for the dark

The Heavyweight podcast, from Gimlet Media, is a series I go back to time and time again. There is warmth and humanity in its stories about other people’s lives, even if those stories turn out to be sad. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard “Gregor” (all the episodes are named after the people at the centre of them), about a man who lent a box set of CDs to his friend, Moby, who then sampled the tracks on them and made a multimillion-selling album called Play. In the episode, Gregor wants his CDs back along with a glimpse of the life he could have had.

Then there’s Rob, who recalls breaking his arm when he was a child, and is baffled when his family says it never happened; Rose, who was kicked out of her college sorority and, a decade later, wants to know why; and Brandon, a one-time school misfit who is still wondering why he was asked to the prom by one of the most popular girls in his class. Was it pity, or a dare?

Heavyweight is, then, a podcast about turning points, finding answers to enduring questions and reckoning with the past. It is hosted by Jonathan Goldstein, who facilitates these reckonings, acts as intermediary and asks the questions that those at the centre of the story can’t bring themselves to ask. Throughout all this, Goldstein manages to find laughter amid the melancholy, invariably at his own expense, all the while displaying remarkable empathy towards his subjects and finding profundity in their predicaments.

But the past few episodes have brought a change in rhythm and gone to places you suspect even Goldstein couldn’t have imagined. “Justine” hears from a daughter whose father told her wild stories about hanging with rock stars and robbing banks when she was small; now, as an adult, she wants to know if he was telling tall tales. Goldstein goes through the stories one by one, testing their veracity and, while some appear to be true, others do not.

But then Justine comes back with another long-buried memory of her father telling her that her brother wasn’t his biological son and swearing her to secrecy. I won’t spoil what comes next, except to say that Stephen, Justine’s brother, becomes the subject of a companion episode that actually made me weep.

And then there’s the latest story concerning Barbara, who died recently and whose obituary told of a life that an old friend of hers didn’t recognise. Becky, who spent the best summer of her life with Barbara 50 years ago, wants to know the real story of her friend’s life. Over two episodes, Goldstein unearths a tale so remarkable, involving childhood abandonment and murder, that I was compelled to listen twice to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Trust me when I say you should do the same.

gimletmedia.com