The strangest, bleakest student summer holiday job I had involved working in a psychiatric hospital, spending days on end transcribing consultants’ patient notes. The role was made odder by how solitary it was: tiny tapes would be posted through the door of a private office that had only a desk, chair and foot pedal to control listening speed. Whole working days would pass without any physical human interaction, while all the time eavesdropping on the lives of others.
All those lonely people. Decades on, it would still be a betrayal to say where they all came from. But last week my mind was cast back to that sparse setting and the succession of fractured, unfulfilled lives glimpsed there by Intrigue: Ransom Man, a new BBC podcast and Radio 4 series about a catastrophic 2020 data breach at a Finnish psychotherapy service.
The hacking of Vastaamo, a nationwide service, allowed a cybercriminal access to the records of 33,000 patients. After first attempting to blackmail the company, “ransom_man” moved on to targeting individuals. To prove he was serious, he started posting 100 records online daily (including those of children) with the invitation: “Enjoy!” Then, apparently by accident, he posted the entire database. On darknet sites, jeering users made sick jokes about potential suicides. The hack is linked to at least one suicide, as well as relationship, familial and personal breakdowns. By number of victims, the eventual 2023/24 criminal trial of “ransom_man” (Julius Kivimaki) was the biggest in Finland’s history.
The series begins with Tina, a head teacher who, in October 2020, after a stressful day dealing with a Covid outbreak at school, emerged from her home sauna to discover a blackmailing email. Some years earlier Tina had sought therapy, feeling overwhelmed by having two severely disabled children. The talking cure had helped; now this email brought on a panic attack. She likens the ordeal of waiting to see if her innermost life would be exposed to “a public rape”.
The series is written and presented by the 2025 Orwell prizewinning Jenny Kleeman, whose outstanding series The Gift for Radio 4, tracing the Pandora’s box-like impact on some lives of doing a DNA test, has been a recent documentary highlight. People have divulged to her their shock at discovering baby swaps or surprise fathers and siblings.
Here she deftly follows the story from the private realm (a woman in her bathrobe post-sauna) towards the public (the international investigation to track down Kivimaki and bring him to trial). Episode three offers a fascinating interview with Blair, a once-prolific US teenage hacker, whose fallout with Kivimaki in a chat room led to the latter waging a years-long “swatting” vendetta on his family: takeaways and prostitutes turning up at their home; prank calls to the police claiming home shootings; stuff online that led to job losses.
For Kleeman this story has implications far beyond Finland. “Can our deepest secrets ever be private in the digital age?” she asks. The Finnish prosecutor Pasi Vainio removed himself from all social media after this case. More wide-ranging, this may not have the urgency of the best episodes of The Gift, but still merits attention.
Secrets and lies swirled through two other compelling new investigative series. The History Bureau: Putin and the Apartment probes one of post-perestroika Russia’s most contested and consequential legends: that in September 1999, weeks after Vladimir Putin became prime minister, four apartment-block bombings that killed hundreds were not perpetrated by terrorist Chechens but the FSB, keen to dislodge Boris Yeltsin and have their own man in the Kremlin. Putin took over that December. I feel I have heard this story — or bits of it — before, in other podcasts. But Helena Merriman (who created the superb Tunnel 29, about a group of students who dug under the Berlin Wall) and her expert interviewees retained my attention.
More painful secrets, suddenly laid bare, swirled through The Walkers: The Real Salt Path. Here Chloe Hadjimatheou gives the fullest account yet of her explosive Observer exposé of the bestselling 2018 memoir The Salt Path and its author, Raynor Winn.
The Salt Path, one of the standout non-fiction successes of the past decade, tells the moving story of a fiftysomething couple — Raynor and Moth — who, after falling into debt, lose their beloved family home, just as Moth receives a devastating medical diagnosis. With nothing else to lose, they resolve to walk the South West Coast Path. That act of magical thinking proves transformative, seemingly restoring Moth’s health and confirming their love.
It’s a story of hope and resilience, which millions read and felt invested in. It also received widespread praise for highlighting the plight of rural homelessness. I have witnessed Winn, who portrayed herself as a noble victim, receive standing ovations from packed, thousand-strong literary festival audiences. Other bestselling follow-up memoirs followed.
Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in the film adaptation of The Salt Path
BLACK BEAR PICTURES/BBC
Then last July, just weeks after the release of the film adaptation of The Salt Path, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, Hadjimatheou scored the literary scoop of the year with a newspaper story that cast serious doubt on the redemptive story, and alleged that Winn (real name Sally Walker) was a thief and a fraudster.
People were invested in Winn’s original story, but they have also embraced this takedown one. There are reams and reams of Mumsnet threads (my favourite username is AllMothNoFroth), frequently referring to Hadjimatheou as “Dear Chloe”. More importantly, on the back of the original exposé, family members from both sides got in touch to make further allegations of theft against Walker. As did people who had recognised themselves from the book, but not their unflattering depiction.
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Possibly all of this has already appeared in news stories and a Sky documentary presented by Hadjimatheou. But if you are fascinated by this story (and I am) you get far more here, told better. Hadjimatheou is one of the UK’s premier podcast players (behind the investigative series Intrigue Mayday for the BBC about the White Helmets; Lucky Boy and The Gas Man for Tortoise). Here you hear her chasing down this story in her own words — and the voices of those who have entrusted her with bitter family secrets buried for decades.
It also works as an audio story because that is where many first experienced The Salt Path, which was a hit audiobook. There is certainly enough juice in this sensational story for another squeeze. I expect this to be a hit podcast.
What podcasts have you enjoyed listening to recently? Let us know in the comments below