Best podcasts of the week: How one of history’s biggest call centre scams was exposed

Picks of the week

Chameleon: Rip-off Probably
Apple Podcasts, episodes weekly

Most of us have answered an anxiety-inducing, if unconvincing, rip-off name – 82% of individuals within the UK, based on Ofcom. This gripping podcast collection takes that concern to the subsequent degree, with host Yudhijit Bhattacharjee following a staff unravelling one of many greatest name centre scams ever pulled – $300m stolen from tens of hundreds of People. The hunt is on to peg down the shadowy multinational mob behind all of it. Hollie Richardson

Fed Up
Wondery, episodes weekly

Casey Wilson throws an abundance of shade as she tells the story of warring wellness queens Tanya Zuckerbrot and Emily Gellis. When Gellis uncovered the unwanted side effects of Zuckerbrot’s in style fibre-heavy F-Issue food plan, it shook the money-making tree and kicked off a court docket case. Wilson balances a compelling journey into influencer tradition with slightly sarcasm. Hannah Verdier

Daniel Robinson, a 24-year-old geologist who went lacking from a area website exterior Phoenix, Arizona in June 2021, options in NBC’s compelling Dateline: Lacking in America. Photograph: AP

WikiListen
Extensively obtainable, episodes every day

This 10-minute every day podcast collection is the audio equal of vanishing right into a Wikipedia gap. It’s a digression-packed, bantery try to learn via a special Wiki web page daily, with subjects starting from “spontaneous human combustion” to “urine indicator dye”. Alexi Duggins

Proud Stutter
Extensively obtainable, common episodes

Hosted by Maya Chupkov, “a proud girl who stutters”, this podcast goals to alter the best way that we perceive how folks converse. Every week she and a co-host “ally” conduct informative, sincere and insightful interviews with individuals who stammer – beginning within the first episode with Dr Cameron Raynes, a lecturer on the College of South Australia. AD

Dateline: Lacking in America
Extensively obtainable, episodes weekly

There’s all the time one thing very intriguing about individuals who vanish, and Josh Mankiewicz and Andrea Canning peel off the layers of such tales on this podcast. Every episode focuses on one lacking particular person, beginning with Heidi Planck, a California mum whose ex-husband raised the alarm when she didn’t decide her son up from faculty. HV

There’s a podcast for that

England’s gamers have a good time throughout a victory occasion in Trafalgar Sq. in central London on 1 August 2022. Photograph: AFP/Getty Photographs

This week, to have a good time England’s Ladies’s Euro 2022 win, Ella Braidwood chooses 5 of the most effective girls’s soccer podcasts, from in-depth match evaluation to a podcast impressed by the FA’s 50-year ban.

Their Pitch

Hosted by Swedish broadcasters Mia Eriksson and Amanda Zaza, Their Pitch made headlines in April for its interview with Iceland captain Sara Björk Gunnarsdóttir, through which she slammed the choice to play Ladies’s Euros 2022 video games at Manchester Metropolis’s academy floor as “disrespectful to girls’s soccer”. It’s testomony to the standard of this podcast’s protection, which options interviews with high flight gamers and training employees competing in Europe, america and Canada. There’s a giant nod too to these from the Nordic international locations, with star visitors together with Sweden and Chelsea defender Magdalena Eriksson, plus smile-inducing interviews with a few Lionesses, particularly match heroes Ella Toone and Mary Earps. (The latter advises that a great way to recollect the pronunciation of her surname is that it rhymes with “burps”.)

The Athletic Ladies’s Soccer Podcast

Providing methodical and thorough evaluation, The Athletic’s Ladies’s Soccer Podcast has been operating since late 2020 and is important fodder for anybody seeking to get caught into the Ladies’s Tremendous League (WSL). Hosts Kait Borsay and Lynsey Hooper dissect the ins and outs of England’s high tier, alongside the main tournaments throughout Europe. The therapy of the ladies’s sport through the years is examined via a important lens, whereas visitor appearances have included Lioness royalty Kelly Smith, golden boot winner Beth Mead, and former England striker and present sporting director of Los Angeles’s Angel Metropolis FC, Eni Aluko.

Fairly Unsuitable For Females

In 1921, the FA handed a movement declaring that “soccer is sort of unsuitable for females”, banning girls from taking part in on its grounds for half a century. This five-episode collection by the Nationwide Soccer Museum explores the calamitous impression of the ban, alongside the dangerous stereotypes and boundaries confronted by girls and women taking part in right this moment, from the grassroots to the elite degree. The LGBTQ+ inclusivity of the game, and the golden age of the ladies’s sport pre-ban, are additionally highlighted – specifically, with the legacy of Lily Parr and the staff she performed for: Dick, Kerr Girls – whereas its 4 hosts are adept at balancing the informative with the participating.

Purpose Diggers Podcast

A black, female-led podcast by a gaggle of followers who know their soccer, from switch predictions to match round-ups: this present is refreshing, humorous and sensible. The banter is sufficient to make you smile even within the darkest depths of winter, whereas the discussions are insightful, informative and full of witty one liners. The podcast largely seems on the males’s sport, however there are devoted episodes on girls’s soccer – additionally obtainable as slickly produced movies on YouTube – together with an version on the WSL and one forward of the Euros.

The Guardian’s Ladies’s Soccer Weekly

Relive the highs and lows of the Euro with the Guardian’s first girls’s soccer podcast, which follows the match from begin to end. Hosted by sports activities broadcaster Faye Carruthers, it options in-depth match evaluation with visitors together with ex-England internationals Anita Asante and Karen Carney. The Guardian’s soccer journalists Suzanne Wrack and Jonathan Liew additionally make common appearances, offering their insights and, following England’s historic win, their sheer elation. Carruthers additionally heads up TalkSport’s Ladies’s Soccer Weekly podcast, which focuses on the WSL, together with participant interviews and discussions on the therapy of the game: from the standard of refereeing, to the attainable use of VAR within the WSL.

For much more, signal as much as Shifting the Goalposts, the Guardian’s girls’s soccer publication

Why not strive …

• Abortion: The Physique Politic, the legendary US broadcaster Katie Couric’s six-part historical past of reproductive rights in America.

• The tenth season of Hollywood scandal present Disgraceland, targeted on the true story of Britney Spears’ conservatorship case.

• Lexx Schooling, through which standup comic Laura Lexx tries to go her science GCSE once more, aided by her youthful brother.

In final week’s publication we mistakenly offered a hyperlink to the audiobook of The Electrical energy of Each Dwelling Factor, after we meant to hyperlink to the serialised dramatisation.