UNITED STATES—Inside the first episode of “Targeted,” where Jonathan Taylor’s quiet life collides with the full force of corporate reprisal.
In the inaugural episode of Targeted, the new investigative podcast from Next Chapter Podcasts, we are invited not into the arena of courtroom drama or corporate exposé, but into something more quietly devastating: the intimate wreckage of a life once ordinary. Jonathan Taylor, a British lawyer who worked for the Monaco office of Dutch oil-services firm SBM Offshore, recalls the exact moment the ordinary slipped away.
“The last normal day I had was January 31st 2012. I had an entirely normal and enjoyable life. It was a good life. I was very fortunate.”
The tone is flat, the voice calm—perhaps too calm for what’s to follow. Because what Targeted presents is not just a story of corporate corruption; it is a portrait of the emotional, psychological, and professional implosion that can accompany the act of doing what is right.
An Accidental Spy
Taylor’s role at SBM was in legal compliance. He was not, by any stretch, a radical. But he was methodical, and he was taken aback when a bribery scheme was discovered within his company.
“I got a call saying there was suspicion that SBM had been paying bribes to an agent… soon, it was very clear that the business model, fabric and DNA of what the company did to do business and win contracts was through the payment of bribes.”
A cost controller handed him a thick stack of payments to agents—quarter-billion dollar thick. It’s a paper trail, too specific to be denied. Taylor connects the dots in a matter of days: dates, countries, deals, all neatly aligning with a series of shadow agreements.
“This was a print out of the bribes the company had made.”
His tone remains steady, but the gravity of his words reverberates through the episode like the slow toll of a bell. The narrator doesn’t need to embellish; Taylor’s cadence, soft and clinical, does more to unnerve than dramatization ever could.
The Green Shoots of a Cover-Up
It all moves quickly. One day Taylor is doing his job; the next, he’s suddenly on a committee “bizarrely” tasked with investigating the very corruption that management—he now suspects—already knew about. The absurdity doesn’t escape him.
“It became very clear very quickly that the green shoots of cover up were already there to be seen within days.”
At this point, Targeted shifts from narrative to noir. There’s a door shut softly behind him by the company’s general counsel, a whispered warning, nervous meetings with colleagues joking about which jail might be the most comfortable.
Taylor was let go—only after receiving compensation and signing a stringent NDA. “That was hush money”, he recalls.
The Wikipedia Gambit
Taylor finds another job in Perth, but soon realizes the NDA he signed blocks him from future job opportunities as a lawyer. Frustrated, and after seeking compensation in vain, Taylor resorts to something both subversive and symbolic: Wikipedia.
“I went on the SBM page and copied and pasted an 8-page document… a summary of SBM bribery activities that I knew about.”
It’s an act of desperation, bordering on performance art. The entry vanishes in seconds—Wikipedia’s silent moderators already on the case. But a trace remains. “Little known to me,” Taylor says, “there is a history tab.” Eventually, a journalist cites the page. The floodgates open. The matter becomes public.
There is something quintessentially modern in this act: the whistleblower shouting into the digital void, hoping to be heard—and ultimately, being heard in ways both unexpected and irreversible. It’s a moment both tragic and wryly comedic. A man dismissed as a nuisance becomes a footnote that won’t disappear. The rest of the story will be told in the second episode of the podcast.
The Anatomy of a Podcast
The structure of Targeted is intentionally sparse. There are no sensational sound cues, no dramatic reenactments. Instead, the production allows Taylor’s voice—and his silence—to carry the weight. The restraint works. We’re not being led through a labyrinth of intrigue; we’re bearing witness to a collapse.
But beneath the sparse aesthetics lies a methodological rigor. The episode is not just about Taylor; it’s about the system that allowed his targeting. The legal instruments. The emails laced with polite menace. The weaponization of ambiguity.
“There was a rumor that I’d been speaking in a bar in Singapore about things I shouldn’t be.”
This sentence, he received in an email from an SBM employee, almost laughable in its banality, signals something far more sinister. Taylor, once a well-placed legal advisor, is now cast as a liability. He is watched. He is nudged. And ultimately, he is disappeared from the world he once navigated with ease.
The Series Ahead: The Expanding Web of Targeting
Jonathan Taylor’s story is not unique in its trajectory, only in its details. As Targeted progresses, the podcast will broaden its scope, tracing the contours of a new, borderless system of intimidation — one that uses legal threats, reputational sabotage, and digital warfare to silence dissent. Each guest will reveal a different facet of this coordinated suppression.
We’ll hear from Pavel Ivlev, a Russian lawyer who refused to participate in the Kremlin’s fabricated case against oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and was subsequently forced into exile, declared a fugitive for crimes he did not commit. Gaurav Srivastava, a commodity investor, found himself at the center of an elaborate disinformation campaign after his association with a sanctioned figure, caught in a reputational storm that leveraged fake news outlets and social media bots to destroy his credibility. And Nathan Law, a young pro-democracy activist and former Hong Kong legislator, tells of life under surveillance and threat, having been labeled one of China’s most-wanted simply for advocating freedom.
In this way, the podcast becomes more than a series of profiles. It is a map of the modern state of retribution — one that stretches from corporate boardrooms to authoritarian capitals, from courtrooms to the anonymous void of the internet.
As Targeted unfolds, its quiet urgency builds. It challenges listeners to consider: if anyone can be targeted, then what shield do any of us really have? In a world where speaking out is riskier than ever, the question is no longer why someone like Jonathan Taylor would blow the whistle — but why more people don’t.
