Elizabeth Smart is bringing her survivor advocacy to a new weekly podcast, with iHeartPodcasts and Marwar Junction Productions announcing that The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart will begin Aug. 17, 2026. The 48-episode series will be released every Monday and will be available on the iHeartRadio app and wherever podcasts are heard.
The launch lands just a week after the announcement on Aug. 10, giving listeners a short runway before the first episode arrives. For Smart, whose name became known around the world after she was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City home in 2002 and returned to her family nine months later, the new series extends a public life built around child safety, trauma recovery and hope after tragedy.
The podcast is built as a hybrid of survivor interviews and direct audience participation. It will follow survivors of abductions, home invasions, assaults and other traumatic events, while also setting aside special episodes for listener-submitted questions. That structure gives the show a clear rhythm: some weeks will focus on a single survivor’s account, while others will widen the frame to answer questions from people trying to understand healing, justice and what it takes to rebuild after violence.
That breadth is also where the series leaves something unsaid. The launch makes clear who the host is and what kinds of experiences will be discussed, but it does not yet spell out which survivors will appear first or how one guest’s path forward will differ from another’s. Those unanswered details matter, because the success of a show built on testimony will depend on whether each story lands as more than a familiar type of tragedy.
Smart has spent more than two decades in advocacy, and the announcement frames the podcast as a continuation of that work. She is the founder of the Elizabeth Smart Foundation, and her recent Netflix documentary reached No. 1 in ten countries, underscoring that her story still draws a wide audience. The new series now turns that attention into a weekly format that is meant to do more than revisit pain.
What comes next is fixed: the first episode arrives Aug. 17, and then a new installment follows every Monday until the 48-part run is complete. If the series delivers on its premise, the early episodes will show whether Smart can turn one of the country’s most familiar survival stories into a place where other survivors are heard with the same force.
