Where's Dia?

Nearly 40 years ago, in the parking lot of a community college in Port Huron, Michigan, a 20-year-old student named Scott Macklem was shot dead in broad daylight. His murder shocked the community. It made no sense. The police quickly found their suspect. There was only one problem: the man said he was nowhere near the scene of the crime. And he could prove it. In Examined: The Backfire Effect, journalist Josie Duffy Rice talks with eyewitnesses, investigators and local reporters to unravel a shocking story of judicial apathy and expedience — a story that leaves no one off the hook.

Examined looks at overlooked cases that never got the real investigation they deserved. Each season features deeply reported stories about crime, punishment, and the criminal legal system. 

Find more episodes of Examined: The Backfire Effect wherever you get podcasts. Binge the full series now with a Pushkin+ subscription — sign up on the Examined Apple show page or at pushkin.fm/plus. 

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In February 2024, celebrated children’s book author and illustrator Petra Mathers and her husband, photographer Michael Mathers, mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide. Petra and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and deeply in love. As much a love story as one about death, it begs the question: what did that decision do to the people left to mourn them?

In season 3 of Death of an Artist, journalists Leon Neyfakh and Alice Gregory set out to interview everyone who got one of Petra and Michael’s letters—as one married couple trying to understand another. Told through intimate conversations with Petra and Michael’s friends and family about their own relationships to aging, grief, death, and the friends they thought they knew, Death of an Artist weaves together a portrait of a community grappling with the Mathers’ deaths and the final words they left behind.

Search for Death of an Artist wherever you get podcasts. And get early, ad-free access to the entire season now by subscribing to Pushkin+ on the Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus.

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Deep Cover's new season, The Family Man, tells a story about how families can deceive each other and the lengths we’ll go to to protect our loved ones Elise and Marissa grew up in a seemingly normal house in the suburbs of St. Louis, but it was a house built on secrets. There were things their father never told them—like how he really made his money. One night, the police showed up, raided their house, and seized boxes of evidence. Hours later, the sisters turned on the TV and saw something surreal: their father in the middle of a police chase. The local news identified him as “The Boonie Hat Bandit”. The girls were stunned. They struggled to accept the truth: Dad had been living a double life. How long had he been lying to them? What had he done? And who, exactly, was their father?

Find Deep Cover: The Family Man wherever you get podcasts. If you want to know how the story ends right now, binge the full season by signing up for a Pushkin+ subscriptions on the Deep Cover show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus.

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Here’s an excerpt from a new Pushkin audiobook, The Pain of Others by Miguel Ángel Hernández. In a quiet town in the Spanish countryside, Miguel Ángel Hernández’s best friend murdered his sister and took his own life by jumping off a cliff. No one ever knew why. The investigation was closed, and the crime forgotten. Twenty years later, when time has dulled the shock but not the questions, Miguel returns home, putting himself in the shoes of a detective, in an attempt to reconstruct the tragic night that marked the end of his adolescence. But the investigation will awaken ghosts that he thought he had left behind: a childhood marked by sin and guilt; the constant presence of illness and death; the oppressive, closed world from which he managed to escape. Based on true events, The Pain of Others is a chilling audiobook that blends police thriller, investigative reporting, and literary suspense—an unflinching reckoning with violence, memory, and the question that still haunts the author: Did he fail to see the warning signs that his best friend was capable of this horrific crime?

Find The Pain of Others on Audible, Spotify, pushkin.fm/audiobooks or wherever you get audiobooks.

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Here's a preview of a podcast we think you'll enjoy, Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister, a special limited series from RTÉ. The story of Elizabeth Plunkett – a 23 year old woman from Dublin who was murdered by Ireland’s first serial killers. On the last weekend of summer in 1976 Elizabeth Plunkett went on a night away with friends, to Brittas Bay in county Wicklow before she was abducted by John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans. Now, almost 50 years later, Elizabeth’s family are finally trying to get their sister some justice.

Binge all episodes of Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister early and ad-free with a Pushkin+ subscription. Sign up at pushkin.fm/plus or on the Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister show page on Apple Podcasts. 

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Here's episode 3 from Valley of Shadows, a new Pushkin true crime podcast that examines how the search for a missing deputy uncovered the Mojave’s meth epidemic, the outlaw bikers supplying it, and the corrupt police force covering it up.

At the time of Jon Aujay’s disappearance, California is under siege by a meth epidemic and the Antelope Valley is the epicenter. So when investigators receive tips that Aujay was killed after stumbling upon a meth lab, it seems like a theory worth looking into. But LASD detectives are quick to dismiss the leads. Questioning why the cops are so dismissive, Betsy and Hayley discover there was one cop, Homicide Detective Larry Brandenburg, who bucked the company line and refused to let the Aujay trail go cold.

If you liked these first few episodes of Valley of Shadows, there’s much more to come. Find Valley of Shadows wherever you get podcasts. Binge the entire season of Valley of Shadows, ad-free, by subscribing to Pushkin+. Sign up on the Valley of Shadows show page on Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin.fm/plus.

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Here's episode 2 from Valley of Shadows, a new Pushkin true crime podcast that examines how the search for a missing deputy uncovered the Mojave’s meth epidemic, the outlaw bikers supplying it, and the corrupt police force covering it up.

After deputy Jon Aujay disappears, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department claims he was suicidal—pointing to marital troubles and erratic behavior in the weeks before he vanished. But the LASD’s official story doesn’t square with what Aujay’s loved ones and colleagues remember. Then, investigators start to hear rumors that the deputy didn’t take his own life, but was murdered for something he witnessed out in the desert.

Find Valley of Shadows wherever you get podcasts. Binge the entire season of Valley of Shadows, ad-free, by subscribing to Pushkin+. Sign up on the Valley of Shadows show page on (00:00:35) Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin.fm/plus.

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We're sharing an episode from Valley of Shadows, a new Pushkin true crime podcast that digs into a nearly 30-year old secret buried in the California desert. On June 11, 1998, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy Jon Aujay went for a run in California’s Devil’s Punchbowl park...and never came back. Nearly 30 years later, the mystery surrounding his disappearance has only deepened. Some say Aujay is just another missing hiker, claimed by the inhospitable landscape of the Southern California desert. Some say he took his own life out there. But there’s another theory that many of Aujay’s friends and LASD colleagues are convinced is true—that he was the victim of foul play, and that his own department is covering it up. Through exclusive interviews, revealing wiretaps, and buried police files, investigative reporters Hayley Fox and Betsy Shepherd uncover vestiges of the Wild West in a small California town, where outlaw biker gangs crank out methamphetamine and local cops operate on both sides of the law.

Find Valley of Shadows wherever you get podcasts. Binge the entire season of Valley of Shadows, ad-free, by subscribing to Pushkin+. Sign up on the Valley of Shadows show page on (00:01:05) Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin.fm/plus.

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About a year after the release of the series, Lucy Sherriff and Producer Daphne Chen sit down to talk about where things stand in the Dia Abrams case. They also answer listener questions and discuss some behind-the-scenes details about making the podcast.

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We’re sharing a preview of another podcast we think you’ll enjoy, Deep Cover Presents: Snowball. Snowball follows journalist Ollie Wards as he unravels the wild story of how his own family was taken in, and taken down, by a charming con woman from California…and tries to find out where she is now. He embarks on a question to find out how she did it, why she did it, and where she is now. Financial ruin, shattered trust, and a mystery that stretches across continents and decades—it’s got all the twists and turns you'd expect from a high-stakes crime thriller…only it's all true. Here’s a preview of Snowball by the Unravel Podcast team. 

If you can’t wait to find out what happens, binge episodes of Deep Cover Presents: Snowball early and ad-free with a Pushkin+ subscription. Find Pushkin+ on the Deep Cover show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus.

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