In the Dark is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Madeleine Baran, and produced by Samara Freemark, The New Yorker, and Condé Nast Entertainment.

"[10] The inspiration for In the Dark's title came from not only the time when Wetterling was kidnapped (just after 9:00 p.m. CDT on October 22, 1989) but also the lack of transparency by the Stearns County, Minnesota, Sheriff's Department in the case.

The location was revealed by Danny Heinrich, a long-time person of interest in the abduction of another boy, Jared Scheierl, in the nearby town of Cold Spring.

[12] Production on Season 1 had been underway for 9 months and was in its final stages (it was scheduled to premiere on September 13, 2016) by the time Wetterling's remains were discovered and Heinrich confessed to the crime.

[13] The edits to the first two episodes of In the Dark turned out to be minimal, for by then, the reporting team's focus wasn't so much about who may have been responsible for Jacob Wetterling's disappearance but more about the investigation of the crime and its effects on the community.

The developments that led to Danny Heinrich's confession in the Jacob Wetterling case prompted APM to re-record those episodes and release them on September 7, six days earlier than scheduled.

The second season of In the Dark explored the legal odyssey surrounding Curtis Flowers, who was accused of shooting four people to death inside Tardy Furniture, a Winona, Mississippi, store, in July 1996.

[20] While the APM Reports team never set out to prove Flowers' guilt or innocence, the investigation featured in In the Dark was credited with alerting the public and turning the case around.

Rather than focus solely on matters of crime or jurisprudence, the special series instead examined the effects of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on rural America, in particular the Mississippi Delta.

Episodes were released to New Yorker subscribers one week early and ad-free, exclusively on the magazine's website and mobile app, before airing to the public via other podcatchers.

The show's first Peabody honor came in spring 2017, with the award's governing body applauding the program for its "immaculate storytelling talent and journalistic precision" in its probing the investigation of Jacob Wetterling's disappearance as well as its "deftly incisive" way of telling the human side of the case and its broader policy implications.