Dark Arenas

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Have you ever thought about whose job it is to track international fugitives, hunt child abductors, conduct espionage, or pull human remains from concealed mass graves? Everyday thousands of good and decent people work in these Dark Arenas. They’ve chosen professions that grapple with the grotesque, deal with the deviant, and dodge the dangerous. In this audiochuck original series you will hear first-hand accounts of what it's like to investigate the darkest crimes and most violent criminals in society. Host Delia D’Ambra has traveled across the United States to collect one-on-one interviews with crime scene experts, FBI agents, forensic interviewers, medical examiners, DEA agents, a former CIA Director, ATF special agents, and more. Each week she works to understand how these professionals’ jobs affect them, and most importantly, why they keep at it day after day. read less

Our Editor's Take

The Dark Arenas podcast is a documentary true crime show. The host is investigative journalist Delia D'Ambra. She interviews the investigators who apprehend the worst criminals. They share their harrowing true stories. Guests on the show include forensics experts, spies, and detectives. They investigate crimes like counterfeiting and human trafficking. Listeners will hear about the real world these people live in.

D'Ambra is a passionate storyteller above all else. She studied journalism at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her career began in TV news reporting. D'Ambra moved into true crime when she began researching a murder in her hometown. This research led to her weekly true crime podcasts CounterClock and Park Predators. After producing several other podcasts, she started the Dark Arenas podcast. With this podcast, D'Ambra gets the perspective of those who see the worst of humanity.

True crime fans often hear about awful crimes. Dark Arenas explores the lives of law enforcement professionals who investigate them. D'Ambra interviews federal agents. She also speaks to an investigator from the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Former CIA Director Porter Goss shares the hidden world of international intelligence. Agents of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) reveal how they identify and prevent bombings. In one of the darkest arenas of all, a federal agent discusses her experience tracking child predators.

Investigators on the Dark Arenas podcast come from all sorts of backgrounds. Guests include a former US Secret Service agent tasked with guarding presidents. Another is a forensic sketch artist who recreates faces from witness descriptions. Some guests on the show have investigated the unthinkable. An FBI agent reveals his investigation of child abductions. Whoever the guest is, the stories on the show are both fascinating and terrifying. All fifteen episodes of this limited series are available for streaming now.

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Announcing Dark Arenas

Announcing Dark Arenas

Have you ever thought about whose job it is to track international fugitives, hunt child abductors, conduct espionage, or pull human remains from concealed mass graves? Everyday thousands of good and decent people work in these Dark Arenas. They’ve chosen professions that grapple with the grotesque, deal with the deviant, and dodge the dangerous.In this audiochuck original series you will hear first-hand accounts of what it's like to investigate the darkest crimes and most violent criminals in society. Host Delia D’Ambra has traveled across the United States to collect one-on-one interviews with crime scene experts, FBI agents, forensic interviewers, medical examiners, DEA agents, a former CIA Director, ATF special agents, and more. Each week she works to understand how these professionals’ jobs affect them, and most importantly, why they keep at itday after day.

Episodes

Announcing Dark Arenas

Announcing Dark Arenas

Have you ever thought about whose job it is to track international fugitives, hunt child abductors, conduct espionage, or pull human remains from concealed mass graves? Everyday thousands of good and decent people work in these Dark Arenas. They’ve chosen professions that grapple with the grotesque, deal with the deviant, and dodge the dangerous.In this audiochuck original series you will hear first-hand accounts of what it's like to investigate the darkest crimes and most violent criminals in society. Host Delia D’Ambra has traveled across the United States to collect one-on-one interviews with crime scene experts, FBI agents, forensic interviewers, medical examiners, DEA agents, a former CIA Director, ATF special agents, and more. Each week she works to understand how these professionals’ jobs affect them, and most importantly, why they keep at itday after day.

Episode 1: Protective Detail

Episode 1: Protective Detail

Working for the United States Secret Service means you're called to take a bullet if need be...but most people probably don't how much planning goes into ensuring that doesn't happen. On this episode of Dark Arenas, Delia speaks with a retired presidential bodyguard and limo driver who knows first-hand what security from all angles requires.

Episode 2: Hunting the Hunters

Episode 2: Hunting the Hunters

When a child disappears, every second counts. Communication between law enforcement agencies, the public and the child's family has to happen. A special agent from the FBI's Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team explains the Dark Arena of trying to find a missing child...and bring them home, either dead or alive.

Episode 3: Art of Identity

Episode 3: Art of Identity

Recreating a person's identity from nothing but bones is no easy task. In this episode, Delia learns the science and vision behind the work of a forensic sketch artist and sculptor tasked with giving faces and names to the dead, missing and unidentified.

Episode 4: The Most Wanted

Episode 4: The Most Wanted

Carry a gun. Kick down a door. Repeat. Sounds like a script ripped right from a television show, but U.S. Marshal Chief Deputy Manny Puri explains that the reality facing fugitive task force teams is darker than anyone can imagine. Marshals aim to shield the public from mayhem by knocking on a criminal's door before he or she can do any more damage to society.

Episode 5: Overseeing Outcries

Episode 5: Overseeing Outcries

Every day children are abused both physically and sexually. Every day they have to tell someone about what happened to or is still happening to them. So, whose job is it to interview that child and learn the dark details of their outcry? We're finding out in this episode of Dark Arenas.

Episode 6: Man of the Law

Episode 6: Man of the Law

Former United States Attorney David DeVillers sits down with Delia to talk about what it takes to go toe-to-toe with organized crime syndicates and terrorist organizations at home and overseas. The dark world of breaking up criminal enterprises takes guts and a knowledge of federal law that many people cannot imagine.

Episode 7: Game of Spies

Episode 7: Game of Spies

Who is the real Jason Bourne? Is Jack Ryan real? In this episode we sit down with former director of the CIA, Porter Goss, to take a closer look at the darker side of international espionage.

Episode 8: War on Drugs

Episode 8: War on Drugs

The war on drugs is real and intense every day for agents who work for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. In this episode, Delia speaks with a DEA Special Agent who investigates and attempts to unmask the dark characters pushing poison into, out of and across America.

Episode 9: Defining Death

Episode 9: Defining Death

Most people watch a TV show and think they know what a forensic pathologist does...but they couldn't be more wrong. In this episode, Delia sits down one on one with a forensic pathologist whose job takes him beyond his lab and white coat and to the crime scenes of mass shootings and murder.

Episode 10: Things that Go Boom Part 1

Episode 10: Things that Go Boom Part 1

In an era where you can order pretty much anything off of the internet, federal ATF agents working to foil bombings and mass shootings have to keep up with the times. In this episode we sit down with special agents to discuss the Dark Arena of bomb making, arson, and explosives.

Episode 11: Things that Go Boom Part 2

Episode 11: Things that Go Boom Part 2

Delia learns about a valuable tool the ATF uses to track down and combat the illegal firearms market. A special agent and his partner reveal how human intelligence can't compare to canine savvy.

Episode 12: Devil in the Details

Episode 12: Devil in the Details

Some federal agents' nine-to-five job is reviewing thousands of images and videos of child sex abuse material. Their meticulous work in this Dark Arena exposes details hidden within the images that help track and catch predators. In this episode, Delia talks one-on-one with the FBI agent whose best tool against child sex predators is the predator.

Episode 13: Bodies are Everywhere

Episode 13: Bodies are Everywhere

Dive deep into the Dark Arena of dissecting death. In this episode nationally-consulted forensic anthropologist Dr. Heather Walsh-Haney sits down to talk about the bodies, burials, and bloodshed many people have no idea are happening in their backyards.

Episode 14: Crimes in the Homeland

Episode 14: Crimes in the Homeland

Rich Kolko has seen it all. Everything from investigating terrorist attacks, to busting up gang networks, working missing persons cases, to unearthing mountains of financial fraud. In this episode, we're sitting down with the former FBI supervisory special agent to better understand the Dark Arenas hiding in the quiet neighborhoods of America.

Episode 15: Recreating Death

Episode 15: Recreating Death

Recreating the scene of a homicide takes patience, a skilled mind, and a stomach for the gruesome job. Piecing together the puzzle of how someone's demise occurred is the Dark Arena Delia is taking us into in this episode.

NEW SEASON: CounterClock Season 6

NEW SEASON: CounterClock Season 6

Since the release of CounterClock Season 1, Delia has received hundreds of requests from families of victims of violent crime. In November 2022, one message in her inbox stood out from the rest. It was from a middle-aged woman asking for Delia's help investigating the mysterious death of her 27-year-old brother from 1991. The message stood out for one big reason. The man's mangled body was found in an all-too familiar place to Delia. Eastern North Carolina.Thirty-three years after Douglas Wagg, Jr. turned up on a lone stretch of railroad tracks in the middle of the night in rural Martin County and over a year since Delia took on the case the scope of what was really going on in the area during the 1990's has come into view. Who was Doug? How did he end up so far from home? Who was he last seen with? Was the train really what killed him? Why was his case never investigated?The journey to find the answers to those questions has revealed a web of small town secrets that feel like fiction, except they're not. Over the course of the Season 6 investigation Delia has interviewed more than 45 people, spoken with convicted murderers in prison, and traced the origins of a disturbing pattern of behavior within local law enforcement that may have resulted in a decades-long cover up of multiple deaths. The investigation into what happened to Doug Wagg appears to be just the tip of a very large, very complicated iceberg that someone has worked hard to keep hidden for more than three decades. For even more time with CounterClock, follow us on social media.Instagram: @counterclockpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @CounterClockPod | @audiochuckFacebook: /CounterClockPodcast | /audiochuckllc