Neon Hum Media Podcasts

The sign above his hospital bed called him Sixty-Six Garage. For more than 15 years, he would lay there unidentified and unconscious. Or so, everyone believed. From L.A. Times Studios and the team that brought you “Dirty John” and “Man in the Window,” comes “Room 20,” a story about the search for a man’s identity and the truth about his accident. Investigative reporter Joanne Faryon’s two-year journey is filled with twists and turns. Now, she'll finally reveal who Garage really is. But one i ...

In 1960s Los Angeles, after the catastrophic Watts riots, an outsized character emerged — one who found an unexpected way to unite people across race and class. Odds are you’ve never heard of him. From L.A. Times Studios, the team behind “Dirty John” and “Man in the Window,” comes “Larger Than Life,” a docu-series about Big Willie Robinson, a 6-foot-6, muscle-bound street racer who preached peace a quarter-mile at a time. Cops and criminals, movie stars and miscreants, even Crips and Bloods ...

Paperback reads. We love them cheap. We love them dirty. We love to ask: why are white men the only ones with inner lives or three-dimensional personalities? Hosts Amanda Meadows and Geoffrey Golden dig deep into the dollar bins of used bookstores and your grandmother’s storage unit, looking for pulp and sass. Dirt Cheap brings those long-lost stories to life, with a heavy dose of humor and a dash of schadenfreude. This season, we're reading Murder in the Glass Room, a Los Angeles noir novel ...

Reality TV is dismissed as guilty pleasure, low brow... even trash. But whether you want to admit it or not, you probably have heard of Snooki, Lisa Vanderpump or Kim Kardashian. Over the past 30 years, reality TV has become a place to see the social and political moment play out in real time -- from racial tensions on The Real World New York to gender dynamics on The Bachelor. On this season, join host Mariah Smith as she dissects the history of the genre one show at a time, revealing how i ...

The Golden State Killer. The Unabomber. Ted Bundy. Serial killers you’ll be familiar with. But between 1974 and 1975, there was another ruthless serial killer at large, terrorizing San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ community. He was coined the "Doodler” and may have killed as many people as the Zodiac Killer. And yet you’ve likely never heard of the Doodler. While a social movement roared to life in the city, The Doodler haunted its queer nightlife scene. Plagued by a flawed investigation, a frightened ...

Welcome to the new normal. For so many of us around the globe, our lives have been forever changed by the coronavirus. And we will never be the same. On Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays for the foreseeable future, Neon Hum's Jonathan Hirsch will bring you stories of people who are far away...up close. Stories of how each of us are learning to live through this pandemic.

For 30 years, a man claimed to be a priest. He performed baptisms and took confession. Every time he ran into trouble, Father Ryan would move on to another small Midwestern town and start his scheme all over again. Followers who once worshiped him, now accuse him of exploitation, fraud and abuse. Multiple prosecutors have charged him, but he’s never been imprisoned for his crimes. Investigative reporter Alex Schuman, who hails from a small Iowa town himself, set out to find out how Father Ry ...

The VOTING WHILE BLACK podcast goes beyond the rhetoric to reveal how the Democratic candidates for president really think about race. There is no doubt that the promise of fighting racism—and creating a truly equitable, just and safe society for everyone—will play a powerful role in motivating voters in the 2020 election. We are at a critical turning point, and cannot confuse rhetoric with action. Produced by the leading Black voter mobilization program, Color Of Change PAC, and hosted by C ...