Cosby Unraveled traces the life of Bill Cosby through its dark present

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A Podmass Series Spotlight
Cosby Unraveled

If there’s one thing certain about Bill Cosby, it’s that we haven’t heard the last of him. The Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney insists he will re-try the entertainer for an alleged 2004 sexual assault despite the case ending in a mistrial. And Cosby isn’t done with us either, as his upcoming sexual assault legal clinic tour shows.

The Philadelphia Public Radio podcast Cosby Unraveled does a serviceable job of trying to understand the man. Many people struggled when claims of date rape against the formerly beloved comedian first began to pile up a few years ago—Philadelphians especially. Cosby is a native son of the city, one of its most celebrated citizens since Benjamin Franklin. But if the allegations against him are true, he’s also a heinous and unimaginably prolific sexual predator.

Cosby Unraveled grapples with this dichotomy by revealing the many others that make up Cosby’s life: He’s a high school dropout who later earned a Doctor of Education degree. A black stand-up succeeding in the Civil Rights era with a non-racial set, he nevertheless was deeply committed to black causes offstage, yet in later years leveled criticisms that many African Americans regarded as hostile and shaming. The podcast takes on disparate formats, beginning as a narrated biography, featuring interviews with the musicians Cosby hung around with as an aspiring jazz drummer; the Philadelphia mayor who cozied up to his star at the apex of his career as Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show; and the academics who contextualize his subsequent turn as a “tough love” black activist.

Halfway through the series, however, the trial starts and the program morphs into a broadcast news program recounting recent courtroom proceedings. A legal reporter summarizes the opening arguments and testimony, relating the similar accusations of Andrea Constand and Kelly Johnson. The series wrap-up includes a discussion of legal next steps following the mistrial and the difficulty of cases involving allegations of long-ago sex crimes. Not so much an epilogue, but a preface outlining the next go-round.