The podcast White Smoke: America’s Chemsex Killer is hosted by Patrick Strudwick, an investigative journalist who has reported extensively on LGBTQ issues, and that background matters enormously to how this podcast handles its subject. The case at the center involves a high-profile Hollywood figure, exploitation, and the chemsex scene — and rather than treating that world as lurid backdrop, Strudwick situates it carefully within patterns of harm that target vulnerable communities, particularly queer men who exist at the intersection of social isolation, stigma, and predatory behavior.
The reporting is rigorous and the interviewing is strong, but what distinguishes this from similar true crime audio is Strudwick’s refusal to let the podcast become a vehicle for moral panic. The chemsex scene is complicated, the people in it are complicated, and the harm that gets done is real — the podcast holds all of that simultaneously rather than collapsing it into a simpler story. Available on Audible.
