Podcast findings | 'Searching for Marlotte'

I have noticed there is not really a lively podcast community here on Hive while this has starting to become a bigger and bigger form of entertainment at least here in the Netherlands. So yes I am putting this to attention in maybe the wrong community. On the other hand: maybe movies, TV-shows and podcasts could be in a category together??

So don't shoot me....I am aware of this error and my intentions are good and maybe someone would want to bring this community back to life if there is more interest of course for it since podcasts are growing.

Now I want to make a big difference in whether these podcasts are just about influencers talking about their lives and what their take is one the world, or if these are podcasts where a vivid story is being told where you get sucked in entirely and almost can see the characters right in front of you. Because now it does seem like everyone and their mom has the option to create a podcast, and so they do.

This shout out is entirely for the podcasts that have good stories in there. One example of a really good podcast in Dutch is called 'Fire in Manor House' which is a real life history story that has never been solved but the story sucks you right in. But that is not what this shout out is about.

It is about a podcast called 'Op zoek naar Marlotte' in Dutch or in 'In search of Marlotte' in English and honestly, I could imagine that this story would also get a documentary or a movie form in the upcoming years. For some reason this because a serious hype on Tiktok which I don't have, but for some reason the podcast found me as well. Maybe this is because it has more than 3 million streams at the moment (we only have 17 million citizens) so that means a lot of people have listened to it.

You can find all episodes of the podcast here on NPO which is the public radio and television of the Netherlands. But yeah, they are all in Dutch.

Disclaimer: spoilers are on the way, so think about if you want to continue reading about the topic. On the other hand, you could continue to read to see what all of the fuss is about.

Now I am calling this a story but this is about a real life documentary situation that has happened over the last couple of years. A social worker called Annika befriends a 'patient' called Marlotte over the phone. Marlotte is a 13 year old girl who is alone in the hospital with no parents around anymore undergoing a lot of treatments for all kinds of terrible diseases. Because Marlotte is all alone in the hospital Annika feels for her and eventually after 2 years of texting and helping her with the situation in the hospital (they never physically meet) and being involved in her life Marlotte eventually dies a gruesome and terrible death.

Annika is devastated of course after being in touch for so long with Marlotte with everything around her ill-being and she is also devastated about how the system around kids alone in the hospital is so she decides to seek help to improve the system and contacts a journalist to look into how the system is in place in the Netherlands. The journalist is the woman who made this podcast.

After digging into the whole story the journalist finds out that the patient Marlotte has never existed and that Annika has been caring for a person who was only a story. Now don't worry on this spoiler, this is also being told in the podcast in episode 1 in the first minute as the journalist and Annika were at the place where Annika had 'spread the ashes' of Marlotte which of course also was something else was spreading.

So the journalist starts searching for who was behind this catfish, what the motives are and also how it is possible that also so many official government systems were involved in this even though the girl didn't exist. That is what this documentary is about

Honestly...this story was so disturbing it sucked me right in and I listened to the 5 episodes in 1 day. Mostly because this whole story is true and it has actually happened and you just start to wonder about everything that went wrong in this whole situation and of course you want to know everything about the end 'confrontation'

Now again, you can find these Dutch podcasts here on NPO as they are public radio and for free but they also are in Dutch. Maybe there is some AI system that can translate them for you into your own language as well?

I am also hoping for a visual version in the form of a TV show documentary on this as well. Or would that take away the charm of listening to the story?