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Hey everybody, this is Josh Hallmark from True Crime [ __ ] and I thought as we were getting into the holiday
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season, it would be a great time for a bunch of true crime podcasters to come together and do what I'm calling I was
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originally calling it crime on crime but that has some very different implications.
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So I I I guess just like actors on actors we're going to get together in small groups and talk about true crime,
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the experience of creating true crime podcasts and I guess just our feelings and thoughts on different cases, each
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other's work and the medium at large. And for this group I'm here with the captain from True Crime Garage and
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Charlie Worrall Worrall from Crime Lines. Hi guys. Hello. How are you? I'm I'm fantastic.
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It's a Wednesday morning. It's great. Love Charlie's voice. And me too. It's like very
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uh soothing in an unexpected way. It's like I feel like It's my maternal nature coming through
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on the mic. I think it is. I feel very unjudged when I'm with you which is an oxymoron but
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I was going to say usually we're sitting there judging other people together. Maybe that's why maybe I feel safe
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because the judgment is usually external. Exactly. Yeah no I it's funny I as we are
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recording this I'm done with an episode and I'm waiting for music clearance and my editor to finish
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and I thought that would be a good jumping off point. When I finish an episode I like to post it immediately
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because for all the interim time I sit there second guessing everything I've just created.
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And so right now I keep being like, should I go change this thing? Should I rewrite this? And so I don't like having
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episodes in in limbo. What what is your process? I guess both like literal like from concept to research to creating and
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then also emotional. Like what's it like for you to like create and birth episodes week
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after week? I do pretty much my whole show by myself. So I find that the research and the writing
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process are so linked. If I get research from someone else, it almost takes me just as much time getting up to speed on
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the information, synthesizing it, deciding how I want to say things, how I want to structure it as if I just did
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the research myself because they're just so linked. I write, I rewrite, I record, I rewrite
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as I'm recording. I don't know if you do that. We're you're like, oh, that sounded really good when I wrote it, but
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it's not really sounding good as I'm saying it. So it's this constant rewrite, but like you
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Josh, if I have something sitting there too long, I'll be like, well, let me go back over it just one more time. And
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then I'm like, okay, well, let me just re-record this one section because I don't think I emphasized the right
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words. So I also have to I don't necessarily Well, sometimes have to release it right away because I hit
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my deadline. And that's like just a just a, you know, procrastination issue, but
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sometimes I never happened to me. Oh, yeah, I know. And it like that actually came up.
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This is my second one of these bonus episodes and we actually discussed how we can't talk to you on Wednesdays
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before because your episode comes up Thursday, so you ignore all of us the day before your episode comes out cuz
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you're busy. But I Yeah, I mean, sometimes I have to get it out just because I hit the
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deadline, but a lot of times I have to do a like a mental block and say, okay, that episode is done and move on just so
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that I don't go back to it. Ours is a little different because we uh record live together and then I edit
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afterwards. So, if Nick misspeaks or something, he tries to correct it in the moment and
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then I kind of take mental notes, you know, fix that error, you know. I used to think that every episode that we're
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going to put out could change the world. I think we took it to made it too precious.
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And I think sometimes you just kind of have to let it go because some of the episodes that you record and you're like
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I don't after we record it, I have the opportunity, you know, I have the opportunity to make it better
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as I edit it. But you know, you can only polish a turd so much, but some some episodes that I that
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I just don't think are that interesting you know, the the audience loves those ones. And and then some of the cases
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that I can't get enough of, they're so tired of us talking about. So, but I think, you know, it just comes down to
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just try to be as honest uh with yourself as possible and I think that that comes across in in everybody's
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work. That any show that's been doing this for longer than a a couple years, I think it's the honesty, but like what
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Charlie said and I'm not going to name any names, but you know, there's there's a lot of shows
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that people have come to me and said, "I don't listen to their show anymore. I can tell they
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don't write their own material." Yeah, I agree. I I think like the research thing is interesting because
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I've had people do like research projects. So, my research team is mostly just like we do our own, you know, small
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research or we look into different things and then we have big long group discussions about it and it's never
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necessarily for a specific episode. It's just more of a holistic research workshop.
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Right. But I've had a few times where people have like researched for a specific
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episode and I have a really hard time with it because it's like well, A, I don't know like
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what you've looked at and what you haven't. Like I don't know how you got here. Of course, they're like citing
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their sources, but I'm like like what got left out? Or like did you pursue this avenue? Or like did you pursue this
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and it led to a dead end? And I just to me, I think it creates more questions than it does help me in my process. And
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then I also agree like the authenticity thing, especially for shows like us who in the true crime world are I like
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ancient at this point. Yeah. I think at a certain point people are like, okay, no, like we've heard this.
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Like they want you to be yourself, which I have a hard time with. Tina Fey just There's this quote from her that
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I both love and scares the [ __ ] out of me where she's like, "Authenticity is dangerous and expensive." And that's my
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big fear is like the more people get to know me, the more they can project [ __ ]
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onto me, and the more they can scrutinize me, and the more they can decide they don't like me. But in the
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same time, like the longer they spend with me, the greater the desire is to get to know me and hear my feelings
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about stuff. So it's this very delicate balance. Yeah, but you have to remember what Adam
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Sandler said in Big Daddy. You're not mad at me. You're just mad at your dad. And I
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Look, I was told to hang myself multiple times when we first started the podcast.
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And especially for somebody that's I struggled with depression and I was actually just went through a period of
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my life where for like 2 years I I I actually was thinking about hanging myself.
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So to actually have somebody that I don't even know say, "I love this podcast, but you ruin
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it." It's like, well, one, there wouldn't wouldn't be a podcast if I didn't help
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Nick create the podcast. Right. That something clicked in me where I was just like I just started apologizing. I
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am sorry that you have to put up with my nonsense to enjoy his show and I appreciate you listening and most of the
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time people would write back and be like, I'm so sorry I should have never said that and cuz I think people forget
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that we do have feelings even though mine aren't I don't have big feelings. Uh sure.
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I'm almost I'm almost dead inside. Hey, if you watch Dawson's Creek like the whole series like more than 15 times
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that might kill you. I will say your Dawson's Creek viewing is legend within the podcast community.
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It's amazing. and it's partly my fault because I was just the first time I ever met you cuz
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here like a great example I had very preconceived notions about you and then I met you and most of them were like
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wildly inaccurate and I think the Dawson's Creek of it all was like such a great metaphor for that like it doesn't
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sum up who you are as a person but I think it is so in opposition to how I think many people perceive you who have
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never met you and so to me it's like a a beautiful allegory and also like a funny
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allegory Well it's tough though too because I mean in simple in simplest form when I
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joined the jazz band in high school I remember my director after a couple weeks said to me, you're not good at
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this. I heard you're good at sports and that really bothered me because I I come off
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as a I come off as a Bob Ruff I come off as a Bob Ruff but inside I'm more a Josh Hallmark. So it's
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it's a weird world that I've navigated. Well on the Dawson's Creek thing is super weird too cuz it wasn't like I
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watched it in high school and you know it's like when people watch Friends cuz it's just nostalgic. It's like no I I
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started watching Dawson's Creek in my 30s. But but that was, you know, heavily medicated, heavily depressed, and
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and it was um I literally thought like by watching this show it's going to give me some answer to life
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um that I missed out on. So, you know, as funny of a thing that that it is it when people like make fun of it
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I'm always like to me I'm like it's it's very depressing to me that I I I've watched this show as many times as as I
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have and anytime I'm in like a bad place in life I start it over again and I I tell
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myself, "What are you doing? This is self-sabotage. You know that she picks Pacey. You know she picks Pacey."
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It's funny cuz I did the same thing with Grey's Anatomy in my 20s where I like I
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saw Meredith Grey and was like, "Wow, I've never felt more seen." And now 20 years later I go back and I'm like,
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"Wow, that is a tough existence." But can you imagine if you tried to rewatch I mean, what is it? 20-some
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seasons? Captain, this is where like the joke's on me. I have. Well, I have to say that I think this
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kind of goes to that authenticity thing and what people will see and hear of us.
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They're only getting part of it when we're doing our podcast. Even if we have a personality-driven show, they're only
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getting part of us and they're kind of building a person around that perception that might not be who we actually are.
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And then we do episodes like this where we're just talking open and honestly and
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people are surprised to kind of see the other sides of us. So, I think that when
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you're listening to somebody on a podcast that is about one thing like Israel Keyes or just true crime in
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general, just remember you're seeing a small amount of that person and not don't build a whole thing around that
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because it might not be an accurate perception of who they are. And on the other hand, like we have to get used to
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that. We have to know that happens and try to not take it personally. Well, it's tough that too because like
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when Nick came up with this idea, I mean, we were in his garage and he said, "What if it was just like this, you
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know, we're just sitting around drinking beer talking about crime." And I'm like, "But
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I don't really drink that often." And he was like, "Well, but I do." And but if you listen
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to the show, he sounds sober the whole time. And I could be drinking orange juice and
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I sound drunk out of my mind. So, that's a difficult thing too, especially if you
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have a I'm going to use a a Rocky quote, a relaxed brain that, you know, sometimes I come off as, you know, like
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this bumbling drunk and so when you get people that Like it's Nobody likes to listen to
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themselves talk. And and we have to not only talk, but then we have to edit it down and then to have somebody say, "Oh
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man, the captain was super drunk on this episode." And you're like, "I I I haven't had a drink in the last
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2 months maybe, you know? So, if I sounded drunk, I was just sounding stupid, you know?"
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That's my like post event feeling is like I have such severe social anxiety. Which I don't think people would know
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when they hear these conversations cuz I'm super comfortable with you guys. And then also like we go to these events
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and they're like summer camp because we'll get to see each other maybe twice a year. And so we're like having fun and
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celebrating. And so like the way people at these events see us is not a holistic view of who we are as people.
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And I always think like, you know, I'll be hungover on the last day and I'm like, "Oh god, everyone saw me like
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wasted three nights this weekend." And now now they think that's who I am, but it's really just in response to being in
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like a high-pressure socially awkward situation with people I see twice a year where I'm like partying and having fun.
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And so it is this weird thing where people get such small windows into who you are, and then those windows become
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the reality of who you are, which is tough. And I see like that's the [ __ ] that like really bothers me. I don't
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mind unfair criticisms. I mean, I do, but they don't I don't like spend my nights like
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crying over them. What bothers me is like the ethos of the unfair criticisms of like
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people who go on to Reddit and say crazy things about you who have never met you
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and don't interrogate that at all. Where it's like, "Oh, that's the world we live
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in now where we can like build a model of someone based on very very very little information whom we've never met
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and present that to the world and most of the world buys into it. And And so like I don't care that people say shitty
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things about me. I care that like no one second-guesses that in a broader sense.
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I hate being misunderstood, and that's what I feel like this is. When someone posts something on Reddit and says, "Oh
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well, you know, Charlie I can't listen to her show. She's such a know-it-all." I'm like, "But I'm not. I'm pedantic,
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and that is not the same thing as being a know-it-all." But maybe I'm being a know-it-all by pointing that out. But
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anyway, so now I've just made it a joke on my show that I'm pedantic all the time because I am.
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But I was like, "No, you don't get it. That's not what I'm It's not what I feel like I'm putting out in the world, but
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it is what they're receiving, and I have to just accept it and move on because I'm I'm not going to change and act not,
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you know, intelligent or whatever they're getting from what I'm doing. I'm not going to stop doing that because
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they're misunderstanding it. But I do hate being misunderstood. Yeah, but there but there's also just
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And I can only speak for men, but I know that there's men out there men out there
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that are afraid of strong intelligent women. I've always liked that, and I think the true crime space has really
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kind of been a platform for intelligent strong women, and I think that's a cool cool thing. And even though we used to
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be called misogynists every episode. Like these guys just sound like two drunken frat boys. I'm like me and Nick
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are the farthest from frat boys. But I you you guys probably get this though, too. I hate when people
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assume opinion I had about a case that I never gave. Yes, I get that all the time.
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I know Josh gets it all the time because I'll see it on Reddit or wherever where
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they're like, "Well, Josh thinks this." And I'm like, he absolutely does not. Why are you saying that? And it just
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they picked up something in the episode that hit them they that they misunderstood the context of maybe. I
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don't know, but I definitely see that happen to Josh. I one time had someone email me and they're like, "I can't
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believe you just this is clearly a wrongful conviction and you just presented the state's case and you
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didn't even present the defense case at all." And then I was like, "What in the world are they talking about?" Because I
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said this is a wrongful conviction case. Like clearly I gave my opinion. And then
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like 6 weeks later she emailed me and said, "Hey, I re-listened and I misunderstood what you were saying. I
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was just so upset about it." And I was like, "Oh, okay. She did ask if she could She did ask if
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she could call me to apologize and I was like, "No, ma'am. We I do not need to give you my phone number."
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And I think if you created enough content, like here's my opinion. If you want to give no information about
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yourself awesome. If that's how you choose to do it. And if you want to have a show where
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you talk about what you ate for lunch and and what's your favorite coffee and you want to
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give every detail of your life, that's cool, too, you know, I or some somewhere in between. I like that I have a partner
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in the show that he is very strict about he will not talk politics, period. Yeah, it's funny. I think like as a gay
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man, politics is so intrinsic to how I exist in the world and how I perceive and synthesize everything I'm doing or
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researching or experiencing. And so, I have such a hard time with it because like yes, I don't want to
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alienate people and I also want to have productive conversations. So, you it's very hard in a podcast to
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like, you know, veer into politics whether it's like apt or, you know, relevant or not and then not have like a
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full productive conversation about why you have that view or like why that view is important or why that view should
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even be considered. I think it's such a tricky fine line because, you know, crime in many ways is political. And so,
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it's hard to have this conversation without bringing in at least like subtext of politics. I I've been able to
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do it with Unsafe Spaces, but that's because it's a show about marginalized people. Um but I always envy like Wine &
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Crime who just say it and then move move on and make They do not care. Yeah. I have found that sometimes politics
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does come up in my show because I do cover a lot of the legal side of things and the people who make our laws are
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politicians. So, it comes up and it came up in a recent episode because the sheriff that is overseeing the case that
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the family is not happy with got a political appointment recently that was then revoked. And so, my audience will
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clearly recognize his name if they read the news because it just happened. So, I
00:19:03
do address that, but I mean, I I also have a different view of what is political and what is not political.
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Like saying that indigenous women go missing at rates higher than any other ethnicity or race within our country is
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a fact. It's not a political stance. However, some people interpret that as a political stance.
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Yeah. Oh, man. I mean, we could be getting into some uncomfortable ground and want to shift
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here. I understand that, but it is How many emails do we want to get? That's the thing, too, is like we have
00:19:36
the choice to read those comments or not. Our episodes get posted to our feed and then they go to our YouTube. And I
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never check YouTube comments after the first day. This person loves to say like skip to
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the marker six, you know, six minutes into the show because everything before that is garbage.
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I see people do that on YouTube all the time. And and my reply to them was, in fairness, it's probably all garbage, you
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know. But my father was a detective, so it's like some of what we're doing is playing
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make-believe that I'm going to be able to look into a case from a bird's-eye view
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and bring something to the table that gets that case solved and I have like a 6-day turnaround to do so every week.
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That's just not likely and Yeah, that's interesting. I think for me like it's such a fine line between
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interrogating someone's actions and then like critiquing or criticizing someone's
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actions. And I just did a two-parter, which the first was one of my favorite I've ever done and the second episode
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was the least favorite episode I've ever done. I you know, I had a fundamental issue
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with the way that the family was handling the disappearance. And I think like I had to and it was also biased
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because there was like familial alienation involved, which is something I've dealt with and so I was trying not
00:21:01
to see it through the lens of my own experience, but also like it was so important to me to like make sure people
00:21:06
knew like the family can't speak holistically about this missing person if they haven't talked to him in 3 years.
00:21:13
Mhm. Uh they can't say like he didn't have a job or he didn't have money cuz they
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don't know. Um and then there was another case that we still haven't covered yet that we have like thousands
00:21:23
of pages on where the gentleman was like out and proud but his family was not. I wouldn't even say condoning of it.
00:21:31
They refused to acknowledge that he was gay and I think that that has created a massive barrier in media coverage of his
00:21:38
case which there's hardly any. And it's like how do you do that? Like cuz part of me is like well you can't
00:21:45
out someone whether they're dead or missing or whatever but this guy was already out and he like had boyfriends
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and was out in the community. Um and so like by reporting on that am I harming his family? Am I alienating his family?
00:21:57
It's it's tough. It's a very hard thing to do and I think we need to hold people
00:22:01
not so much accountable but to the truth without necessarily criticizing them because there's so much we don't know.
00:22:08
When I was looking into the Brian Shaffer case, a missing man from Columbus, Ohio,
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there's all these rumors about his sexuality and and experimentation and and then it's
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like do you put that out to the world? But at the end of the day, all we can do is put out every
00:22:29
piece of information that we have learned that we know is factual. We're not speculating that
00:22:35
he had a homosexual relationship at some point. It's not speculation, it's fact and and
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all you're trying to do in each case is to put as many puzzle pieces on the table.
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Now again, if somebody said well I don't put every puzzle piece on the table for
00:22:54
the public because that's not what kind of content I want to put out there. Um that that's up to
00:23:00
them. But for me I thought it was important. And And like you said, I I had disagreed with the way the has He He
00:23:07
really hasn't looked for Brian or It doesn't seem like he's been involved in in his brother's missing case much at
00:23:14
all. And I was very critical of that when we first started. And now I think in the true crime space, we put
00:23:23
too much emphasis or too much speculation on on what we think we would do in a certain situation.
00:23:30
Mhm. If it would If it was my brother that went missing, then I would do this. And
00:23:34
so by the And And that's very James Renner. And not to call him out, but he You can. We can disagree with something
00:23:43
while still understanding why it happened in that situation, even if we don't think it was the right thing to
00:23:49
do. Because we all do things in our lives that aren't the right thing to do. And looking back, even we know that. But
00:23:56
kind of to the point of what to include and what not to include about someone's personal life or the family's life, when
00:24:02
it comes to unsolved cases, I feel like it's really hard to say what's not relevant because we don't know the
00:24:08
answer, therefore it may be relevant. If you got arrested for, you know, a pot possession 20 years ago, probably not
00:24:15
relevant. I'm not going to bring it up. But if, you know, the person was doing serious hard drugs 6 months before they
00:24:22
disappeared, it may be relevant. When it comes to solved cases, we we get that that broader view of what is and is not
00:24:31
relevant to the case, so it's easier to just know what to leave in and leave out. But like in unsolved cases like
00:24:38
you're talking about, we don't know what's relevant and what's not until it's solved, so we need to put that
00:24:44
information out there so that the person can be found or the killer could be found because that's how they generate
00:24:51
tips. Something gets to the right person and they remember something. Well, in in Charlie, in your case, it's
00:24:58
probably harder because there's sometimes that I say something on the show or Nick says something on the show
00:25:03
and and 5 minutes later the person saying, "Hey, we should probably edit that out.
00:25:09
I'm not comfortable with sharing that." And then then you have a you have a soundboard, somebody going, "Well, no,
00:25:15
no, I think that's good information." Or "No, I agree with you, we should cut that out."
00:25:20
This is where having a network of other podcasters is helpful cuz Josh can tell you how many times in a kind of our
00:25:26
group chat, it's the it's going to be something like, "Hey, I used this word for, you know, a marginalized community,
00:25:32
but I'm not sure that's the current language. How would you say this? Okay, I'm thinking about putting this in the
00:25:37
episode. Here, can you read this paragraph over for me?" And we do that a lot because we don't have a sounding
00:25:43
board, particularly in the moment when we're sitting like by ourselves recording. So, you have a sounding board
00:25:49
automatically, you know, I've had to kind of seek them out. Yeah, it's funny. I um
00:25:55
like I think about that in the process of like forgetting stuff or like not being maybe as PC
00:26:03
driven or forward as you'd like to be. Like, I have a room, literally a room full of binders just on the Keys case.
00:26:10
And like most of that information is in my brain at all given times. And so like
00:26:15
you sit down and you write a script and you rewrite it and it becomes like word salad at a certain point. And then
00:26:20
you're like, "How do I pronounce this?" Or like, "What's the word I'm supposed to be using for this?" And it just gets
00:26:26
lost amongst everything else. And then that's the thing people will glom on to and it's like, "Dude, like I just spent
00:26:32
4 weeks researching where all the trash in Portland goes." Like, [ __ ] off if I
00:26:36
like didn't pronounce this right or like didn't say the most up-to-date like correct word for something. Like, it
00:26:43
just it like again, it goes back to perception versus reality. Yeah, or sometimes Nick is reading the
00:26:49
actual report from the police and he's using the terminology they use. And people will say that, well, that's
00:26:58
not correct. And it's like it's not that's not Nick's words. That's a report he's reading. Again, and then I
00:27:06
think sometimes with the podcast it's tough because there's a big difference if I sit down
00:27:12
at my desk and turn everything off except for a audio book, how I'm going to receive that information as opposed
00:27:20
to if I'm listening to This American Life while I'm while I'm doing the dishes, how I'm
00:27:26
going to receive that information. So, I think sometimes as as content creators,
00:27:31
we have to also give the audience a pass that they they might have been running a a
00:27:37
marathon while while they listened to the the show and they didn't receive the information in the correct way.
00:27:43
I think we also though have a the privilege too of like understanding what happens behind the scenes and like
00:27:50
understanding where mistakes get made or where stuff gets overlooked. And so it's
00:27:55
it can be challenging when like you have the privilege of this information that the audience doesn't necessarily have,
00:28:00
but then the audience is using it against you. I like I wish I could show you what happens behind the scenes so you
00:28:10
understand, but I also can't hold you accountable for like not knowing what you don't know.
00:28:16
And I think that goes with the criticism as well. It's that you know, it sounds like we're closed to
00:28:22
criticism. We're not really receptive to it, but it's as some of it is in the delivery. I
00:28:27
don't need anyone to coddle me. You could say, "Hey, you got this wrong." You don't even have to be nice about it,
00:28:32
but just don't be mean about it. And so, I think sometimes the the mean criticism
00:28:37
kind of like the captain was saying earlier, you know, just the actual violent, you know, feedback that we will
00:28:44
sometimes get. It drowns out the people who actually a point that maybe we should say something a little
00:28:50
differently. Maybe we need to keep something else in mind because it's just at some point you start getting
00:28:56
defensive. I feel like I've moved past that point, but early on because of the like mean criticism, I started getting a
00:29:04
bit defensive to all criticism and that's never a good place to be. Yeah, I only now respond to like
00:29:10
direct not even critique like a direct discourse. Like and granted I very very rarely read any comments
00:29:24
emails from listeners just cuz like you said like we've had to create or what has been
00:29:29
created for us like a pretty tough shell. So like I don't invite anything in that
00:29:35
I don't have the bandwidth to take on. But the the ones I do see that I respond to are like why did you make this choice
00:29:42
rather than like [ __ ] you for thinking this or like I can't believe you did this. It's like
00:29:46
why did you make this choice? Because for me that shows like not a judgment, a curiosity and a willingness to have a
00:29:53
conversation about whatever it is that they don't like, but also an understanding that like there may have
00:29:58
been decisions made that they don't know that impacted why I made that choice. And so I think if you actually like care
00:30:06
about something and want to see it resolved or express your opinion in a meaningful way, it's about creating
00:30:12
discourse and not criticism. But I think it's also difficult. I don't know if you guys have found this
00:30:17
difficult. So in my early 20s one of the things I did for cuz I was a musician is I'd get hired by independent
00:30:27
labels or artists to help them with social media. And so when we started the podcast at first we're
00:30:33
like we're going to have no social media and we just kept on having listeners go
00:30:38
that'll be a great way to help build an audience and it and it was, but then I got sucked back into that world
00:30:45
and I like living in a world that's less me, less in the social media world. So,
00:30:54
do you do you guys find that hard to balance in your life? When I started podcasting, every podcast
00:31:02
had a podcast group. So, that was one of the first things you did on Facebook was
00:31:05
start a podcast group and it turned out to really be a massive headache. Like, a
00:31:10
lot of the people were really nice, but it's hard to moderate people when they start disagreeing. Okay, well, now I
00:31:16
have to decide, are you being too mean or are you not? One time my old podcast got a bad review because they didn't
00:31:23
like how we handled something in the Facebook group. So, with with Crimelines to do with the podcast
00:31:30
Absolutely nothing to do with the podcast. And so, what I ended up doing with Crimelines is like I have a social
00:31:35
media presence, but anyone will tell you I'm not there very often. Um, I rather keep social media to my
00:31:43
personal life where I'm enjoying sharing pictures of going to the park and things
00:31:47
like that. That's how I want to spend my time on social media. Balancing personal
00:31:51
social media and then this podcast social media, it's just too much for me. I do not have the bandwidth for it.
00:31:58
Yeah, when I started, I loved it, but I think it's because the show was smaller and I think the social media landscape
00:32:03
was totally different 8 years ago from what it is today. You know, back then people joined a
00:32:08
group because they were passionate about a topic and wanted to have meaningful conversations about it and I think now,
00:32:14
like, you know, the internet exists for research and trolling and then as the show got bigger, obviously, like there
00:32:21
were disparate points of view and the passion turned into anger and it just got really ugly. Um,
00:32:27
and then it's just now a new medium for people to like say mean things to me where they are confident I'll see it.
00:32:33
And so, I am less and less involved. Um I also think there's been a stronger need to
00:32:41
protect what I call my 99% like the 99% of me that people don't have access to or don't see or don't know.
00:32:50
And so yeah, I think like think that there's a great value to it and I was telling the boys from Somewhere in the
00:32:57
Pines like you just you need to have a Facebook group especially this early on in your career. Um but as I've had the I
00:33:04
guess luxury of getting bigger, I feel less and less the need to be involved in it and I think also like I need a
00:33:12
separation and unfortunately, there's no way to control that. Like people will message me about keys or message me
00:33:18
about my bad thoughts on my personal Facebook or on my personal Instagram or like tracking on your Gmail address and
00:33:24
I'm like like I like I'm not, you know, messaging the AT&T rep on his, you know, home
00:33:31
email address complaining about my phone service. So please don't do the same with me cuz I
00:33:36
know that like my true crime [ __ ] or uh Studio Both And social media is the easiest to find. Like it's harder to
00:33:43
find my personal stuff online. So I'm like you're putting in a lot of effort to like reach me where no one's home.
00:33:51
Well, I turned off um instant messaging on all my podcast social media. So like if you want to talk to me, you are going
00:33:59
to have to email me. I just need everything funneled. If I could have all my DMs forwarded to my email and
00:34:04
funneled into a folder, I would do that. It just I I can't have 700 places to look. So people have to email me and as
00:34:12
soon as I turned it off, I started noticing I was getting a lot more message requests on Facebook on my
00:34:18
personal one from people I'm not friends with and I checked and they were like all podcast
00:34:23
related. But like I turned them off on my podcast stuff not because I don't want people to reach out to me. It's
00:34:28
just I cannot manage, you know, four different mailboxes. I need everyone to send everything to one place.
00:34:34
Yeah, I remember when my grandmother died, I was on Facebook like messaging with my cousins.
00:34:40
And it was my personal Facebook, had nothing to do with the show, and like throughout all these messages were like
00:34:45
messages from listeners being like, "Does this mean we're not getting a new episode?" And like,
00:34:49
"What do you think about this and keys?" And I'm like, "Dude, like Let me grieve for a minute.
00:34:54
Yes, truly. Yeah, but you know, it's um I mean, not to talk [ __ ] to ourselves, but
00:35:03
I also kind of feel like we're lucky to I'm lucky that I get to work at home. I'm lucky that I get to
00:35:15
you know, have a a subject that other people are fascinated in that because of this job, you know, {quote}
00:35:23
{unquote} job, I get to dive into a different case every week and share my thoughts and opinions, and some people
00:35:29
are going to like it, and some people are going to won't. But, we all have met super talented
00:35:36
individuals that have put out content, and they just didn't get any traction. Mhm.
00:35:42
And and some of these individuals put out hundreds of episodes and just eventually one day just
00:35:49
decided to fold up shop, you know? And so, the fact that you know, if you can make a living doing it, it's um
00:35:57
you know, it it is a privilege, and it's also a weird thing, too. Like Josh was saying,
00:36:02
podcasting back in the day was so different than it is now, because everything now is networks,
00:36:08
and they've swallowed up and they own everybody now. And even though they might not own us,
00:36:15
cuz we're not a part of a network, we're of the old school model where the the listeners own you.
00:36:23
And they took ownership of you, and they would fund your beer fund or, you know,
00:36:30
go back to like Sword and Scale where hey, this costs money to put out. I need to raise money and he'd do a GoFundMe or
00:36:37
whatever. And so, you know, before ads became a big part of a lot of people's shows,
00:36:45
we were supported so much by the listeners. So, I think some of original true crime podcast, we we feel
00:36:53
maybe a sense of obligation to the listener. Mhm. Because how how much they supported us,
00:37:00
you know, in the in the beginning. Uh if that makes any sense. Yeah, I think of the listeners as
00:37:05
shareholders. Like they have a vested interest in the product because they have invested so much of their time and
00:37:13
often money into it. But then they also like are not a part of the decision-making and don't see the
00:37:19
machinations, you know, that go on behind the scenes. And I think you're right. Like that creates
00:37:25
a challenging dichotomy of being like I'm so invested in this, but I have very little control over it and I want my
00:37:32
opinions to be heard. Uh but my opinions don't necessarily have the value to the greater podcast
00:37:40
that they do to me. There's a social media influencer named Elise Myers. She does very wholesome
00:37:45
kind of story time content, sometimes some music. And due to like just like an onslaught of negativity, she took a
00:37:53
social media break and a lot of people are like, "Oh, you bullied bullied her off the internet." Whereas other people
00:37:59
are like, "Look, she like sits at her house and does a story time for an hour and makes all this money." So, John
00:38:05
Green, who's a YouTuber and an author, said that, you know, being in that position where you're a public figure
00:38:12
is a privileged position and so your problems are privileged problems, but that doesn't make them not problems. So,
00:38:20
yeah, it is absolutely a privileged problem that I have to sit at my house in my basement in my pajamas all day to
00:38:26
work and support my family and I get to do it all in comfort and yes, I get the emails of people telling me how amazing
00:38:33
I am and all of that really is a privilege. The downsides, it doesn't mean they they're not also problems.
00:38:40
They're just privileged problems. It's interesting because like, you know, I wrote down a bunch of topics for this
00:38:45
conversation and like we got to one. We got to Well, and it wasn't even on my list and I think
00:38:50
it speaks more to where the culture is because I think five or six years ago this conversation is a conversation you
00:38:58
might have for like 15 minutes once a year. Mhm. But I have found I'm having this
00:39:03
conversation with other creators more and more and more frequently and so I agree and I wish
00:39:10
cuz it's too late now, like that had been what this conversation was predicated on is like it is a privilege
00:39:15
and these are privileged problems and we are so [ __ ] lucky to get to do what we love, turn it into a career and have
00:39:21
people who support that even if that support often comes through critique. But also like it speaks volumes to the
00:39:29
culture that more and more often people are feeling the weight and burden of criticism um that you know, either is
00:39:37
unfair or fair criticism that is presented in unfair ways. Not to have the the straight white man cut you off, but
00:39:48
uh I'm used to it. You're fine. about uh privilege. This is something I know a lot about. We're also in a state too
00:39:57
where I think people are struggling with their worth and I saw this Rainn Wilson
00:40:03
had had a podcast but this is a clip of the podcast where his his guest was saying like we only value as a society
00:40:11
money. And we only and and I think I'm not saying that's for everybody, but but I think as somebody
00:40:19
that struggled with self-worth and self-care and self-love and all that stuff. Like to me, the more I've worked on that
00:40:26
and the more I've focused on if somebody doesn't have weight in my life that their opinion doesn't get
00:40:35
weight. I'm the one that gets to choose if it has weight or not. Does that make any sense?
00:40:41
Mhm. Totally. And and you probably seen this with other true crime podcasters when
00:40:46
you're at these events and they're talking about uh contracts and they're talking about maybe they're getting less
00:40:54
ads or maybe they're getting more or their network is forcing them to be a part of the bonus content or
00:41:01
everybody loves to [ __ ] about Ashley Flowers. You know. And I think that's anyone who makes more money than me.
00:41:10
Yeah, and Which includes you, too. But but but I think it's like that you know, like we have to not just as
00:41:18
content creators, but people in general value ourselves more and care about ourselves more. And just like you said
00:41:24
like people are going on and talking [ __ ] to people online and that is not of value or
00:41:32
or something that they would do in real life because it won't be acceptable. But they're allowing it to be acceptable
00:41:41
in a different space. But that's that's them valuing themselves less. And am I am I making any sense here?
00:41:48
Yes, absolutely. And I think like going back to this is such a great full circle thing
00:41:54
is like we don't show that on the shows because either there's no room for it or the
00:42:00
audience doesn't want to hear it or you know, authenticity is dangerous and expensive. But like that also I think
00:42:06
adds to the critique is because people don't see that they presume or assume that like we are not holding ourselves
00:42:14
accountable or we are not interrogating ourselves. I've never met a more self-deprecating,
00:42:19
unkind to themselves group of people than true crime podcasters. And I I wish the audience could see that
00:42:26
because I think they think we hold ourselves on a pedestal and actually we're just beating ourselves up around
00:42:31
the clock. Yeah, but then there's also the host that you meet that and I don't want to give
00:42:38
away names, but they they start creating this fake what is called vibrato or I can't speak.
00:42:46
Vibrato. Maybe maybe I should speak for a living. No, but it's like they they start
00:42:52
creating this sense of you know, me and Nick got into this big argument cuz I was at CrimeCon. It was I want to say it
00:42:59
was Nashville or No, no, it was What was the other one? New Orleans. We're in New Orleans and
00:43:08
I was walk walking around and I saw all these true crime podcasters like by the 6-hour of being there everybody was like
00:43:16
peacocking and and and and strutting their stuff and and sticking out their chest uh because all these people were
00:43:25
coming up to them and wanting pictures and autographs and I just thought I thought it was hilarious.
00:43:31
Because I've been on concert cruises where you're opening up for 311 or Kid Rock or you know, I I opened
00:43:41
Kanye one time. Nobody at that show wanted my autograph, you know? I could have pretended that I was like some big
00:43:49
star, but they were there to see Kanye. So, I think maybe some of my background allows me to view it as like I'm just a
00:43:57
regular person just like the listener. I've just spent a little more time maybe working on the cases and then presenting
00:44:04
the cases. And but I think even the the guys that that puff up their chest they're doing it because they're not
00:44:13
great at self-love and they're not great at self-confidence and they're not I feel like I'm not making any sense at
00:44:20
all but No, I know you're making perfect sense. You're making sense and it's actually
00:44:23
reminding me of something that Josh said at a podcast event we were on we were at
00:44:29
where we each had like a tablecloth and like some stickers and that was our entire table set up and then we look
00:44:35
around and people who were brand new had these full-size like backdrops and all this stuff and we're like oh, I think
00:44:42
there's um a difference in what we think when we're coming into this space because we started when it really was
00:44:49
just a bunch of regular people with a microphone, you know, we all had our blue Yeti's fired up and we were making
00:44:54
podcasts to whoever listened and then people coming in now with now that celebrities are podcasting and
00:45:02
corporations are involved, they see it as as a little bit different than we do where we see ourselves as just regular
00:45:08
people. I mean anyone who's gone to an event that I've been at and I know you and Josh because I've seen you guys at
00:45:14
these events they know we're just hanging out. Like we're just hanging out with everybody.
00:45:18
It's very calm and chill and it's it's like there's not a lot of peacocking happening but so I I mean I think it's
00:45:27
just the the podcast landscape has changed a lot. We all sound like you know, pod grandfather Justin Evans when
00:45:35
we talk about it but you know, we it's just it's so different now. When people ask me for advice to get started on a
00:45:41
podcast and to grow like I have no idea. But not not to talk [ __ ] about Justin.
00:45:47
You can. No, I'm just But that's a great example. All of a sudden one day he's he makes this big point of like we're
00:45:55
the OGs. Well, congratulations Justin. You did a couple episodes before other people did
00:46:01
episodes and they also And they also talked a lot about MMA for, you know, and Bigfoot.
00:46:08
They did. And which is fine. And those were my favorite episodes. And I And I've told
00:46:13
Justin to his face, "Shame on you for not talking about aliens and Bigfoot because those were my favorite
00:46:18
episodes." But But there again, I think that's this thing where that's what the audience doesn't
00:46:25
see. If they see the peacocking, they don't see that sometimes the peacocking is not confidence. It's because of the
00:46:32
lack of confidence or like or why did we get passed over? Why did this other show
00:46:38
become bigger? And or why does this show make more money? And we just put this value we as
00:46:45
a society we put this big value like when people go, "Oh, I listen to true crime. I love Ashley
00:46:51
Flowers. You're going to tell me that she's uh as good at looking and dissecting cases as as Nick?
00:47:00
Not a chance in hell. She does a 45-minute episode that's basically a lot of the cases are Wikipedia
00:47:07
versions of the case. I'm not going to hate on her because she makes more money doing it. The The money doesn't make it
00:47:14
uh better quality. Well, there's a reason Two and a Half Men was the number one show in America
00:47:20
for a decade. Like, you know, it's I I think it's like for the masses. And what uh what I had to decide a long time
00:47:29
ago is like I'm never going to be a top 10 show and I have to be okay with that because I value the work that I'm
00:47:34
putting out and I value the audience who is engaged with that work. And like, as
00:47:38
long as I can make a living and pay my staff and like, you know, keep investing into this staff
00:47:45
that I would love to have here. You have Nick. He's enough. Uh he's enough of a staff. He He He
00:47:52
definitely is a staff. Um No, no, but I think it's it's though, too. And and but I that doesn't mean
00:48:00
that we should sit on this throne of righteousness and be like, "Well, Ashley Flowers doesn't deserve it." You know,
00:48:06
um I saw her uh she did an interview with John Ramsey. And I'm like, "They would never give me
00:48:14
that interview." Because they couldn't control what I'd ask him. They couldn't control if I would be
00:48:22
confrontational or not. And then also like she's her network's putting out what? Five, six shows a
00:48:29
week? Oh my god, I'd hate to put out five or six shows a week. Like and then like and and I look, I
00:48:36
went through a period of that, too, you know, you'd see these shows start taking
00:48:39
off and uh we got this really big bump uh from My Favorite Murder, but we were out for a while and then people were
00:48:47
like, "Oh man, I heard you guys' show on My Favorite Murder." And you're like, "Yeah." But but at least they called us
00:48:53
out. And my only cri- criticism to Ashley Flowers is if you borrowed information or or you listened to a
00:48:59
podcast and got some information from it, why not shout them out? Why not? And I and I've been less precious about
00:49:07
that, you know, I used to not want to talk about other true crime shows as if it was going to diminish my audience.
00:49:15
And it's like uh My Favorite Murder put out some funny it was this this funny social media clip
00:49:22
about their merchandise and they're having their merchandise lady do all the ads and she's just hilarious. And so
00:49:28
I've been putting them in our stories and then if I listened to uh Tim and Lance or or whoever and went, "That was
00:49:36
a great episode." I've been sharing it in our stories. Like and not asking for a
00:49:42
uh promo swap, you know, just going, "Hey, this was good content. And if you're into this kind of content, cool."
00:49:50
Um But and I don't again, I don't want to sit on this throne of well, I'm learning
00:49:55
to love myself. So everybody else should. But I think um it'd be good if we all could get to that
00:50:02
place. Not just as hosts, but the society and everybody and then maybe that would stop some of these
00:50:07
problems. Well, one of the things I've noticed is one of the things I do to center myself
00:50:12
when I'm having like oh my gosh, this show is did a 20-minute episode barely scratch the surface on this case. I
00:50:18
spent hours and hours putting out this huge episode and they got so many more downloads. What I remind myself is if I
00:50:25
wake up tomorrow and I have five times the number of downloads as I had the day before, what would I change about my
00:50:31
show? And the answer is absolutely nothing. I'd be doing the same thing I'm doing now. So I'm just going to keep
00:50:36
doing it. Yeah, it's that's why I said like I I think all all this stuff just comes down to be
00:50:42
you have to just be as honest as you can with yourself and what you're trying to
00:50:46
do and and um and I know everybody's going to be affected by it differently, but it um
00:50:56
you know, but but like you said, I think there is a big difference now because before when we started the podcast and I
00:51:05
always tell this to Nick, the reason why I should get paid more than Nick is when we started,
00:51:13
he's like, wouldn't that be awesome if we made a little money doing this? And I was like, yeah. Like $500 a month.
00:51:24
Because we both drove really shitty cars and I thought $500 a month, we both could drive nicer cars because maybe
00:51:30
because of the show. And Nick didn't hear me correctly and Nick said $500 a year, that would be
00:51:36
awesome. And we're like on the sixth episode. I'm like, this is a lot of work for $500 a
00:51:42
year. But I think when you guys started and when generation Y started and sword and scale
00:51:50
and and and even My Favorite Murder and those when when those shows started it wasn't
00:51:59
Like, I think the the the ladies in My Favorite Murder viewed it as hey, we could talk about this and have a podcast
00:52:05
and this might help our comedy career. Mhm. And then it turned into this other thing
00:52:10
and same, you know, I just thought oh, this would be fun to do this project and if I could make $500 a month, that'd be
00:52:18
amazing. But now I think you're getting a lot of people that get into it for the wrong reason. Oh, if I
00:52:25
if I start a show, maybe I can quit my job. It's like you're not going to you're going to quit your job to take on
00:52:32
another job. Yeah. It's going to be a job, you know. It's going to be an awesome job.
00:52:38
I didn't see a profit for 3 years and I was uh consistently in the top 50. And I
00:52:45
think and that and it was way easier back then to make money than it is now unless you're a celebrity. And I think
00:52:51
that's the thing people don't realize. So many people are like, oh, I'm um I want to become a podcaster and make
00:52:57
money. And I'm like, well, don't cuz you're not going to. Me and Nick differ on this. I think we
00:53:03
should do a state of the union every year to say, this is what's happening with the podcast. This is how our
00:53:09
contract is broken down. I mean, they don't need to know every detail, but like we're contractually we're contract
00:53:17
contractually obligated to release X amount of episodes per year. And so we we talked about the JonBenét
00:53:26
Ramsey case. We thought it was going to be a one-parter because we've talked about it a million times. Turned out to
00:53:31
be a three-parter and we put two of the two of the episodes behind a paywall and
00:53:36
we got people talking [ __ ] you know, oh, you guys are just always grabbing at the money. It's like, "No, we were only
00:53:44
contractually obligated to release one episode that week, and we weren't going to give
00:53:51
them extra episodes because they didn't deserve the extra Not not the audience, but the
00:53:57
the ad agency didn't deserve the extra episodes, and they don't see they don't see that
00:54:03
we weren't try we weren't trying to upcharge anybody. We didn't think, "Oh, we're going to release these and make a
00:54:09
bunch more money." We thought, "No, we're going to release this content cuz we have it to the audience,
00:54:17
but we're not going to give the the advertisers a cut of this, you know, because we we've met our obligation."
00:54:24
I wish they could see the big picture cuz when I tell people like, "I'm lucky if I make a penny for every download I
00:54:30
get," they're shocked. And you're like, "No, like we're not raking in the I mean,
00:54:35
even, you know, I have a friend who was on one of the most successful TV shows in the history of television.
00:54:42
And I we were talking, and I was like, "So, are you going to like buy a house?" And they were like, "I can't afford to
00:54:47
buy a house." And I'm like, "You are top five billing in one of the biggest shows, and you can't afford to buy a
00:54:52
house." I think people have such a distorted idea of like compensation and how money is moved around in the
00:54:59
entertainment industry writ large and by an extension the podcast industry. Yeah, or some And I think the other
00:55:07
tough thing about what we're creating is if you put out a 45-minute episode, you know, I think we did because of our
00:55:16
contract, we had a multiple weeks that we put out a one-parter, and we're normally putting out two-parts.
00:55:23
And we got somebody saying, "Oh, man, you guys are getting pretty lazy." It's like, "Well,
00:55:28
we're not we're not going to put out two episodes for no reason. Like, the case dictates how much content we
00:55:37
will put out. Right. If the case lends itself to have all these talking points, well, that might
00:55:43
be a two-parter. Might be a four-parter. But they also don't see that sometimes that 45-minute episode took us 40 hours
00:55:52
or more to create. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the biggest thing and I've tried to like
00:55:58
delicately explain that to the audience over and over and over again is like for
00:56:02
every 40 minutes of content you hear, expect that there's been 80 hours of work.
00:56:06
You You think about doctors and and I would put, you know, Charlie and Nick and Josh in this category. You guys have
00:56:15
been specially Josh has been working on one case. So, it's not just even if you put out an episode of you just
00:56:25
regurgitating information or thoughts that you've had about keys, well, how many hours are you at now?
00:56:32
25,000 hours? 3,000 hours? There's no way to quantify at this point. Yeah, it's been so much. Yeah, I've
00:56:41
definitely found that my listeners do respond to me, like you said, doing a state of the union. I didn't do one last
00:56:49
year cuz I was like so swamped and overwhelmed with other things. But most years I do a end of the year wrap-up.
00:56:56
You know, not every the casual listener is not going to click play on it, but your core listeners will. And in those I
00:57:02
talk about any changes that were in the podcast, including this year I'm going to include why I have more ads
00:57:10
in my podcast now versus when I started. And I'm getting into how industry standards have changed, how
00:57:17
We're forced to. We're forced to and how Apple, you know, changed how they did things. Everyone
00:57:22
took a big hit on their downloads. So, now we're getting paid less per episode. Like if you put in two an extra ad
00:57:29
break, that's basically just to make what you used to make two years ago. So, I'm just I put it all out there because
00:57:36
I mean, I don't put like how much money's in my bank account, but I put it pretty much everything else out there
00:57:41
because I think people are interested in it. And I also think people will understand more if they know there's a
00:57:47
reason behind it and it's not just oh, I was slacking off and that's why this isn't a two-parter or I'm just grabbing
00:57:54
money, which is why I put in an extra, you know, ad break. There is actually a reason, I promise.
00:57:59
Yeah, I I try to remind people that I didn't want to do this. I was forced to do this.
00:58:08
You know, and it's so funny cuz we've done 800 and some episodes on the main show, over 200 episodes of bonus
00:58:15
content. So, over a thousand episodes and there's not a single person out there on the
00:58:20
internet calling the cops and saying, "Look, we know for a fact that this guy, Nick, kidnapped this
00:58:30
drunk sailor and he's forcing him to edit all of his thoughts on whatever he wants to talk
00:58:39
about. And he's been uh he's been in hiding. We don't even know if he's in the country anymore.
00:58:46
Um and nobody has once come to my defense and and called law enforcement to try to
00:58:52
have me found. It's it's kind of sad. I mean, I I also I wrote a book about it, but Nick uh
00:58:58
stole all that material. Releasing that uh later this year. Yeah, it's that's the biggest crime of
00:59:06
the true crime space. Really, think about it. I think like the perfect like metaphor I
00:59:13
have for what we do is every time we're at an event, like a you know, uh true crime podcast festival or any big event
00:59:21
where there's a lot of podcasters, on like the very first morning, you can kind of walk around and everybody has
00:59:28
this look on their face of like, "Okay, I'm here. I'm on the floor. What do I do? What do
00:59:35
I do? What do I say?" And I think like that exemplifies how we exist in this space
00:59:41
at large. It's like, "Okay, I'm here. Now what? do?" I also wonder if it's different for me
00:59:49
than because I don't feel like I and look, I have friends of mine that will be like,
00:59:56
"The show would be nothing without you." I'm like, "Nick would be just fine if I never talked once on the show." And
01:00:03
there's been episodes that I've just sat there and thought, "Let's see how long I
01:00:07
can go before he lets me talk." And he will just keep going. I mean, I think the
01:00:13
longest like time that I had was like 20-some minutes of me not talking and and he
01:00:20
just kept going. So, but I so I wonder if it's different because like Josh and Charlie, you're the you're
01:00:29
the face of it and somebody could go, "Well, you're the face of this, but I'm the captain, you know? I don't even
01:00:36
own a boat. Zero sense at all, you know? So, I think there maybe I view things a
01:00:43
little different because I I don't even view it as my show. I view it as it's Nick's show,
01:00:50
you know? And and we have some friends that have no clue about the podcast space. So, one of my buddies um
01:00:57
I don't know, about a year or so ago, he like pulled me aside and he was like, "Hey, man,
01:01:03
I know who the talented brother is. And the whole world one day is going to see that. Don't worry, man, your time is
01:01:10
going to come." I didn't have the heart to tell him like, "I'm not Nick's employee, you
01:01:15
know?" But uh yeah, but maybe I maybe I feel different about it that way or maybe I it's also
01:01:23
cuz my my dad was a detective and there's sometimes that I just think like my dad
01:01:29
got paid nothing to go into a room with a stab victim that was stabbed 40 times and have to try to figure out what
01:01:39
happened. And he was paid nothing, you know, like like we weren't we weren't broke, but
01:01:46
there was no extra money to put in savings, you know. Right. Yeah. So I think sometimes um
01:01:54
you know, when we had this uh we we vibe or something like that. It was like a like like adult sex toys joy toys uh
01:02:04
and like they wanted us to read that and I just thought there's no way it's going
01:02:07
to be graphic. So sure, we'll do it. Like why not? Like my dad got paid nothing. We should just be happy to do
01:02:15
They were like the most graphic ads ever and we had to contact them and say we can't read this anymore. This
01:02:22
probably probably embarrassing. But no, it's like maybe I I I think of it different that
01:02:28
way cuz I mean even just like you know and I you know, like you said a lot of things
01:02:35
are changing. You know, we used to get a little bit of a bonus you know, at the start of the contract
01:02:42
just to get things up and going and to get content going. And now those days are done. I just we don't get But you
01:02:48
know, I remember getting the first bonus and telling my dad what it was and he he
01:02:52
almost [ __ ] himself, you know, cuz he's like man, he's like I actually did this
01:02:56
for a living and they didn't pay me. They didn't give me that much. What are your highs and lows of this
01:03:02
whole experience? Like the worst part of it and it can be a specific thing or a general thing and then like the best
01:03:07
part of it, same specific or general. Why don't you start, Captain? I mean it's going to sound a little
01:03:11
sappy, but like my you know, Nick's my brother and it's something that he like dreamed up and I
01:03:21
have and like I said, he's gone above and beyond. I mean, the amount of times that
01:03:28
he goes, "Hey, we got a couple thousand dollars in the beer fund. Let's donate that to
01:03:33
um Project Porchlight or, you know, uh National um Center for Missing Children. And and just how he's gone above and
01:03:43
beyond trying to make a difference with the platform that we have. I mean, the amount of times that I go, "I've never
01:03:51
heard of this case." He goes, "Don't worry about it. I got you know, I'm talking to this detective. They reached
01:03:56
out. They're trying to get more people talking about the case." So, just to be able to say that like he
01:04:03
had this dream and I helped facilitate that and he's then instead of gone on and and and I mean,
01:04:11
yeah, he's got a big head about himself now and his [ __ ] don't stink, but um but he's also doing really good in
01:04:19
the world and and so I'm proud of that. And uh I don't know. It's hard to say that there is lows because I
01:04:27
like I said, I I've struggled with depression and um self-confidence and self-worth and
01:04:34
all that stuff and I and I actually think the negative comments help me confront that.
01:04:40
And then I've also just met so many great people like Charlie and Josh and and uh what
01:04:48
you know, dare I say Bob Ruff guys from Generation Y and and then the people that I haven't met personally,
01:04:56
but like My Favorite Murder, like Karen is hilarious and I just think it's such a talent and
01:05:03
and just so many smart people and so I I don't know. I don't know if I guess I I the worst part would be when you
01:05:12
talk to the victim's family and you don't know if you can help them. I guess that would be the worst part,
01:05:18
you know. But other than that, I mean, I I've had a great time doing it, you know, and I
01:05:24
hope you know, we can continue for another like 3 months and then I'd like to retire.
01:05:32
What about you, Charlie? Um I mean, as some people know, I had a podcast before Crimelines and it ended poorly.
01:05:39
Uh my Unlike Unlike the captain, my co-host wasn't diligently working on things and that was I mean, that is in
01:05:47
That would have to be absolutely the hardest because it's not you know, I ended a podcast which I hate
01:05:53
disappointing people and so every message a listener sent that they were disappointed, like I appreciated the
01:05:59
support, but also every one of those was like a stab and then also, I mean, literally walked away from thousands and
01:06:07
thousands of dollars in upcoming ads that I then had to start over and start Crimelines where I was
01:06:14
barely making anything again. So, starting over was really really hard. Best thing ever, but really really hard.
01:06:21
Um so, that's kind of my big downside of this entire journey. But honestly, it's I comes back to
01:06:29
people again with the best part is I've met so many listeners. I've networked with people I would never
01:06:37
think I would ever have a conversation with, people who are experts in their field, whether you know, it's forensics
01:06:43
or they're psychiatrists or they're investigators, which has just been incredible and then,
01:06:49
you know, the podcast through podcasting, some podcasters have become, you know, my go-to people in my personal
01:06:56
life, too. If I have something coming up, you know, with my kids, like I don't always just text everybody about
01:07:02
podcasting. And so, making, you know, really strong connections has been incredible.
01:07:08
My low is probably the bad ways that this has changed me. Like, I was thinking about there was
01:07:14
someone I was friends with like 15 years ago who like vaguely through the show and has vaguely come back into my life
01:07:21
and I was like thinking of the ways I've changed in that time and I think because
01:07:24
of the podcast I'm like a harder person. I think I used to be a lot less cynical, a lot more open, a
01:07:33
lot more willing to share myself with people than I am now. And that kind of bumps me out and I know
01:07:38
that all comes from just like self-preservation from doing the work that we do. Yeah.
01:07:42
And then I think the high is yeah, the people. Um of all the people, like being able to
01:07:49
engage with people who have experienced traumas or experienced, you know, significant responses to the crimes that
01:07:57
we discuss or crimes similar to the crimes we discuss. And then the podcasting friends I've made, like
01:08:03
the fact that there are probably 20 true crime podcasters who I didn't know 6 years ago who I now talk to every
01:08:10
single day and vacation with and travel with and like I'm excited to see when we go to
01:08:16
these overwhelming, you know, events is the coolest thing in the world and like Charlie said, most of the time we're not
01:08:22
even talking about podcasting and I think because we all experience this very like niche, often isolating career,
01:08:32
we're able to be a whole or version of ourselves with each other in a way that everyone else understands because we
01:08:38
know this strange experience. It's a it's an experience that nobody else gets and then like my
01:08:46
experience is different than yours because I have a a partner. So, you know, the guys in Generation Y like
01:08:54
we get along but we've shared similar experiences if that makes any sense. Totally. Totally. And even and like
01:09:02
victims' families, like who I you know, there are so many people who I've never met who I care about immensely. And I
01:09:08
know I started this by saying it's made me a harder person, and it has, but it's
01:09:12
also made me a much softer person. Yeah, but and I I don't know if you guys would agree
01:09:17
with this or not, but the true true crime fan. And Nick used to talk about this fictitious person when we started. He He
01:09:30
just wanted to have like a We want to put out the best show that we can that has the most factual
01:09:36
information about a case that we can. And he would always talk about the true true crime fan. And we've seen like a a
01:09:44
fad in the true crime world, but I think the true true crime fans, whether we agree on theories or suspects
01:09:53
or whatever, like they're good people because they want the case solved. They want justice or closure for the victims.
01:10:02
And and that's crazy to see when you're at a CrimeCon and you see thousands of of these individuals that they're not
01:10:12
just there to take a picture with you. They're also there to get information to try to help
01:10:19
solve cases. I couldn't agree more. And I think that's Oh, my alarm is going off. So, I
01:10:25
think that is the perfect way to end this conversation. The alarm with Josh is Yeah. Well, we
01:10:30
can end with Josh's alarm saying, "Let's go. Move it along." Shut the [ __ ] up, you three.
01:10:35
I just want to say it's a privilege knowing you. I hope uh a ton of success. Uh we'll all uh get our flowers, no pun
01:10:45
intended, 2025. Same. And I hope that Nick lets you out of the garage at some point, Captain.
01:10:53
Well, happy holidays, everyone. And uh this has been really lovely. I love doing
01:10:58
these conversations with people because you never know what's going to come.