Three great podcasts to help cut that winter road trip down to size

Unless you’re one of those folks who just likes traveling to see the world roll by, a long-distance road trip can be a dreadfully dull experience, especially if you don’t have much time to stop and see the sights along the way. That’s why we like to have a great, long-form podcast all cued up and ready to roll before we hit the road.

Podcasts — episodic fiction or non-fiction audio stories that can be found on services like Spotify and iTunes, usually for free — have exploded in variety and quality of the past few years, and there are literally thousands to choose from on topics ranging from cooking to relationships, true crime to science-fiction, conspiracy to country music. The variety and depth of the podcast universe can make separating the great ones from the so-so a tough task.

Seen below are three great, long-form podcasts that will help make that long mid-winter road trip fly by. And if you need a vehicle that will get you there and back in style, safety and comfort, stop in today at McLarty Daniel Nissan for a test drive, or check out our full selection of vehicles at our website right now.

SLOW BURN: BIGGIE AND TUPAC: After doing deep dives during season one and two on the Watergate scandal and the impeachment of President Bill Clinton respectively, you might have expected the phenomenal podcast series “Slow Burn” to go after another political scandal. For season three, however, they threw us a curveball, instead choosing to focus on one of the most tragic stories of 1990s music: the murders of hip-hop artists Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur, which were the apparent culmination of years of an East Coast/West Coast rivalry that finally led to bloodshed and death in the streets. Host Joel Anderson and his team dive just as deep into the controversy as they did on the stories of Nixon and Clinton, taking both the music industry and the media to task for whipping up a feud that eventually took the lives of two of the most talented artists of their generation. Even if you aren’t a fan of Biggie or Tupac, it’s a fascinating story.

THE DROPOUT: Brilliant, eccentric and relentlessly driven, young entrepreneur and college dropout Elizabeth Holmes seemed like the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs when she burst onto the scene in the mid-2010s, with her Silicon Valley startup Theranos promising to revolutionize healthcare with a tabletop device called Edison that could test for hundreds of medical conditions in minutes using only a single drop of blood. After forging a partnership with drugstore chain Walgreens, Theranos soon made Holmes the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world as investors flocked to throw money at a technology that looked like The Next Big Thing. Behind the scenes, however, crusading reporters were beginning to uncover the truth: that Theranos was built on a precarious web of lies. Eventually, it all came tumbling down, taking billions of dollars in funds and the hope for a promising new medical breakthrough with it. In this deep and engaging podcast, host Rebecca Jarvis delves into Holmes’ strange backstory, and reveals how and why Holmes was able to con investors, corporations and medical professionals for so long.

BLACKOUT: If reality is getting a little too real for you, why not try out the fictionalized podcast “Blackout”? Starring and produced by Rami Malek, who recently won a 2019 Academy Award for his performance as Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the podcast follows a radio DJ broadcasting from a small town in New Hampshire as the United States falls into chaos following a mysterious, nationwide power blackout. If you’ve ever considered how dependent we are on reliable electricity for everything from stoplights to banking, refrigeration to charging our phones, getting our news to connecting with loved ones, you know how pulse-pounding and anxious “Blackout” eventually gets, and that’s before it turns to the nefarious background of the event that plunges America into darkness. An unsettling reminder of just how fragile civilization might be in a time of crisis, it’s a nerve-racking ride with one of the best actors working today.