Where's Dia? - Podcast Rankings and reviews

I was enthralled and the journalist, Lucy Sherriff who narrated and investigated the story is a true master at her craft. I could not stop listening until I completed the series all in the same day. Could not stop.
5 stars. Great sound engineering as well to make this an enjoyable listen.

Thoughtful and thorough examination of a tragic disappearance. Appreciated the attention to detail and care given to laying out the facts, as well as people’s speculations about the case.

You would think in this day and age, that people would know better about recording quality in podcasting.
The phone calls are garbled. I can’t make out what’s being said half the time, there’s no recap of what was said, and there’s some kind of delay so the callers are constantly interrupting and talking over one another. It’s aggravating.
I’ll give it one more episode and if the story doesn’t make the listening worth it, I’ll just move on. Dateline already covered the story. It’s a much easier listen and you don’t have to hear Malcolm Gladwell interrupting every 15 minutes.

I thought the storytelling was engaging. It was like a high stakes game of table tennis with the back and forth of who might have done it - but the ending left me frustrated. I gave it four stars because I was looking for a good story to listen to on my morning walks and this delivered, but I subtracted a star because for me, it really fell flat at the end - from the new outlandish, un-researched theories and “happenings” with Clinton, to the open-endedness and the attempt at a cliffhanger - I was a little disappointed. I wish they would have waited until June 2025 to release this so we could have some closure on at least one aspect of Dia’s story. If there’s a follow up podcast - I would consider listening to hear Lucy’s take on the ending - but I’d Google what happened first to make sure it won’t be another open ended story.

It seems like a quarter of the podcast is taken up with long commercial breaks with Malcolm Gladwell promoting himself. The podcast drags out a story that has an obvious conclusion but no real resolution. Milking it for more episodes filled with commercials. I got tired of how it dragged on and stopped listening and read the Wikipedia article about this depressing story. And the podcast loses all credibility with the inclusion of psychics who are just grifters exploiting victims of crime and gullible police.

I feel bad for Lucy Sherriff. She spent four years on this and came away with a good first act and then nothing else. Dia is missing. That’s it. No actual crime to discuss. No second act. No catharsis. Nothing to keep the listener engaged. The entire podcast consists of garbled phone calls that lead nowhere. It’s obvious what happened to Dia and who did it. There’s no real mystery. But there’s also no evidence, no arrests, no trial, no statements from authorities etc. Only the speculation of the narrator based on the ramblings of unreliable “eyewitnesses”. Most of which have substance abuse problems or criminal records. Desert people living like desert people. I wish I could get my 5 hours back.