There are moments in every narrative genre where a story comes along and through a magic combination of craft, skill, charctors and plotting that transcends the genre itself, and becomes more than it’s parts and tells us something vital and compelling about ourselves and wider humanity. It is exactly this that happenes in the new hit true crime podcast Who Shat On The Floor At My Wedding.

In this twelve part podcast brides Karen and Helen enlist the help of their friend Lauren, who is doing an online course in detection an buys a lie detector for 99Euro, for an epic quest to find which of their nearest and dearest took a huge dump on the floor of the bathroom at their wedding in 2018. While it feels asthough the wedding was some time away, and possibly the brides should have moved on, if not some kind of accident or medical emergency, the contempt in such an act is rather hard to ignore. I suspect many of us would ponder the question in idle moments for years to come if it had been something that happened at our own nuptuals.

The trio investigate all possibilities, potentially ruining friendship, and even go as far as to question the mother of one of the bride. But the questioning does not stop there, they enlist the help of several experts, including a forensic scientist, an expert in monkey behaviour, a submarine specalist and a sex expert and try to employ tactics like bribery and torture. Theories of what could have happened range from a prank, to an act of anger, an escaped zoo animal or a fetish. This podcast has it all.

All of which combines to create a hugely fun listening experience, in a genre which more often than not tends towards the grim. The creators are aware of the genre and it’s tropes, as well as how ridiculous their quest is. It is this self-awareness and irreverance which means it is ultimately a relaxing and pleasurable experience, unlike many true crime podcasts.

I for one hope that when humanity finally wipes itself of the face of the planet due to a combination of climate change and what young people optimistically call late stage capitalisim, that whatever alien races comes to piece the stories of our many civilisations together, that this will be one of the remaining texts, from which they will extrapolate and theorise about what this says about humaninity for many years, with whatever creatures they are dedicating whole carears to it’s meaning