Crime Writers On...14 Feb 2022

The Trojan Horse Affair

In 2014, a letter emerged detailing an elaborate plot by Islamic extremists to infiltrate schools in Birmingham, England. It became known as The Trojan Horse Affair. When journalism student Hamza Syed met podcaster Brian Reed, he told him about the scandal and the unexplored question of the author’s true motives. They teamed up to investigate where the ham-fisted letter came from in the first place - and if there was no extremist plot, what was the writer actually hoping to achieve?

From Serial Productions and The New York Times comes “The Trojan Horse Affair.” We follow Hamza and Brian’s frustrating journey to explore whether the letter was more about a labor dispute than an extremist conspiracy - and would proving its mundane origins upend the official narrative used as a pretext for a lasting, hardline government response?

FOR OUR SPOILER-FREE REVEIWS OF "THE TROJAN HORSE AFFAIR" GO TO THE 42:00 MINUTE MARK.

In Crime of the Week: thrown to the wolves.

For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon.

This show was recorded in The Caitlin Rogers Project Studio. Click to find out more.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(738)

Earwitness

In 1995, Deputy Sheriff William Hardy was shot while moonlighting at a Birmingham hotel. An informant told police the shooter was Toforest Johnson. Even though ten people saw him in a nightclub at the...

13 Nov 202345min

Murder in Apartment 12

In 2005, Kevin Jones discovered his girlfriend bludgeoned to death in her Russellville, Arkansas apartment. Police zeroed in on Jones, thinking the murder of former beauty queen Nona Dirksmeyer was an...

9 Nov 202345min

Navajo Police: Class 57

The Navajo Nation is the only tribe that runs its own police academy, training officers for an understaffed force patrolling the largest reservation in the US. The latest class of about two dozen Nava...

6 Nov 202348min

Happy Face

A serial killer father! Truckers! Bunk beds! Prison letters! BEARS! This podcast seemed to have everything, except maybe a point. In this CWO Classic, we'll revisit our October 22, 2018 review of "Hap...

2 Nov 202319min

Big Vape

Grad students James Monsees and Adam Bowen envisioned a new technology, one that would give smokers like them the hit of nicotine they craved without the carcinogens of a combustible cigarette. After ...

30 Okt 202352min

MANslaughter

The 1970 shooting of a Wisconsin man should have been an open-and-shut case - but it led the victim’s niece on a decade’s long search for the truth. On this CWO Classic we’ll revisit our epic April 12...

26 Okt 202331min

Magnificent Jerk

When Maya Lin Sugarman was cleaning out her grandmother’s home, she discovered some screenplays written by her late uncle. Galen Yuen was in a Chinese street gang before becoming a small-time actor. M...

23 Okt 202347min

The Shell Lake Massacre

While his wife and eight of his children lay sleeping, James Peterson awoke to a stranger at his farmhouse door. Within a matter of minutes, all but one family member would be shot to death in Canada’...

19 Okt 202346min