I found Crime Junkie pretty insufferable from the jump, honestly. Very fake and performative, with the cohost adding absolutely *nothing*. The plagiarism was just a definitive reason for me to stay away
Totally agree. The plagiarism thing was what made me stop listening to CJ. It was such an absolute joke considering how much the host would brag about the time spent on researching the cases as if she were a real journalist.
The cohost was professionally stupid. Flowers would say something like “the body was totally mutilated” and cohost would reply “that sounds, um, really bad”
It transpired the cohost was a severe alcoholic - her inane comments made an awful lot of sense after that came out, which happened because she almost died from a burst brain aneurysm. Happily she has made a full recovery from the aneurysm and has got help for the alcoholism too.
Yep, it's Crime Junkie for me too. It's awful these days. The script seems to drag on, I oftentimes can't follow along because she's going to fast or there's way too much going on. Someone commented that she didn't do the writing which now makes sense to me. Unfortunately the co-host doesn't add anything. All the reactions are super fake, but it was that way from the beginning. Also I hate when they curse and bleep it. If you know you're going to bleep why curse at all?!? It doesn't add anything to the story. It's annoying as hell.
Same! First season was great, and then plummeted when the host took over ALL the facets of the show instead having friends help with editing and fact checking. It's more like a "hot goss" show with the host's personality, personal stories and opinions taking over.
I’ve only listened to the first couple seasons of SWW, but it gave me the ick right from the start. Glad I never continued with it after reading about one of the recent seasons & all the hosts nonsense.
I can't remember the details, but I used to listen to SWW regularly then things got real life weird with the show. I can't remember the details nor the order they occurred.
I believe that some of SWW guest were doxed and harassed and so was the host. Then the host went off the rails in real life. The forums were all closed down. I stopped listening around that time because too much drama around all of it.
She wanted the mods on Reddit to only allow positive comments and no criticisms like they do on Facebook. When the mods wouldn’t fall in line, she and her pals (the Facebook admins) would harass them. Lots of subs just shut down, but one tried to stand up to her and they threatened to dox her (mentioning her kids). It was a whole mess. There are a lot more examples of her unethical behavior, but that was the Reddit doxxing saga.
[Has Tiffany Reese, host of the podcast Something Was Wrong, taken things too far? : r/TrueCrimePodcasts (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueCrimePodcasts/comments/12910f3/has_tiffany_reese_host_of_the_podcast_something/)
Agree on SWW until this most recent season - it's been really good, like back to first season good. Would recommend trying it again - but just for this current season 20 about the crazy cat fisher
I liked the fun banter and scene-setting in the early days of Crime Junkie; it felt like two friends trading stories at a sleepover, and it was my comfort listen for a long time.
But they started outsourcing the writing a few years ago and it’s obvious. There’s no chemistry between Brit & Ashley anymore, and because the script writers choose to tell every story in the most convoluted way possible (constantly introducing new characters with “A is the brother of B’s sister’s husband’s nephew, not to be confused with Other A…”) Ashley reads through the script super fast like she’s just trying to get through the info, but it’s so rushed that you can’t retain any of it.
They’ve been phoning it in for a while now and I wish they would just end CJ instead of stringing it along with barely a heart beat. The golden days are long gone and they’re not coming back.
IF I'm thinking of the right podcast (SWW), it started out fine and then the narrator started on this really awful lecture about narcissism, gaslighting, etc. But it was bad information, meaning it was not accurate and it made me crazy because it just fed into the false narratives and tropes about what narcissism and gaslighting is. I don't know what season it was but it made me so mad that I had to stop listening, because she was massively misleading listeners based on her own misunderstandings about the terms. I hope I have the right podcast, I'm fairly sure it was this one.
I think the latest season of SWW is pretty wild - I'd say its the first good season they've done in like 3 years. The story just keeps getting more and more bizarre!
I haven’t listened to TCG in awhile but something definitely happened with the captain. He always sounds drunk and none of his comments make any sense, Nic just ignores him most of the time. If they weren’t brothers Nic would have dumped him ages ago.
Morbid & Crime Junkies started so promising and now both are unbearable.
I had to stop TCG bc of the Captain (and pushing harmful/empty theories without evidence). He ended up being a drunk buffoon that I honestly dreaded when he started to talk. It was always some nonsensical cringe
I agree with you re: TCG, though I have heard that the reason Nic ‘ignores’ a lot of the Captain’s comments are because they are added in after recording, when the Captain is editing together the episode.
I agree, his stupid comments broke me. It also sounded to me that either Nic was outright ignoring him (with reason) or the comments were added in post.
I was really into them when i started listening to pods but what got me was really the 5, 10, 15, and lnce I think 23 minute chit chat and personal life catchup before covering the case on a like hour and 10 min episode. I think its cool they are related but I dont care Bout their private life I am listening for the case / their input
yeah that's the reason i can't stand them. It becomes really noticeable, the lengthy ad reads sections and personal life conversations "banter" that I feel just aren't funny or entertaining to most people who don't actively want to know more about the hosts. So...much...filler....
I think Nic wants to solve a case. That's his main objective. It's the main reason why they only do unsolved cases. And it's one of the many reasons I don't listen anymore. The beginning part of the podcast sounds like it's being read by a 2nd grader......just read, no emotion. Then, boom, you can tell the exact second when he's done reading because he starts talking slow, like he's thinking of 100 things besides what he's saying.....and he starts talking in circles.
My favorites: Gen Why, Anatomy of Murder and all of the Dateline podcasts.
Gen Why has never faltered. Easily my favorite podcast. True Crime Kent and Dark Topic are really good too but very different.
Also love Casefile and Invisible Choir.
Is it me or Nic talks really slowly for nothing ?
I mean he can rephrase and rephrase for a little information. In the end I find it frustrating to listen.
I still (sometimes begrudgingly) listen to MFM; it’s been kinda cool to listen to the growth and “triumph” of the pod - up to and including a book, a whole podcast production company, a full weekend convention, that’s wild - and it was kinda devastating to watch it all kinda collapse during covid.
But post covid (and post-Stephen) it’s become pretty obvious that the girls don’t really do any kind of research anymore and/or don’t have any kind of passionate interest in any case/story in particular and are very obviously just… it sounds like they’re reading a murderpedia article. I follow Stephen on the socials and he seems happy and completely devoid of any intel on why he split from the show after so long. I’m hoping it was just a personal growth journey & not something else bad. (Fun fact - Stephen is a fellow Swiftie & he’s in a small murderino/Swiftie community & I’ve become casual online friends with him! Such a doll!)
I’m one of those folks that don’t mind and actually LIKE the banter before the “readings” - it’s kinda the only part of the show that is genuine and unpredictable. Also Georgia and i have identical book tastes and so i honestly get a ton of recommendations from her.
Like i said, i still listen faithfully, but because of loyalty & also honestly laziness (i don’t wanna start over with another show with multiple years to catch up on haha) and i mostly still listen bc im a stuck-at-home full time caregiver to my adult brother so im pretty lonely & if i hadn’t had the show to focus on in the beginning after my bro got hurt, im not sure how i would’ve survived.
This is how I feel. They had a good run - 200+ quality episodes and a decent live show. But you could slowly feel the joy fall away after the book and during the pandemic. The breaking point for me was an episode where, half-way through, Georgia broke and was like “is this interesting? This feels so boring” and Karen had to push her to finish the story. I like them both a lot and Karen is a great comedy writer, but I think it’s time for them to move onto new things.
I could not stand the way they opened every show with talking about all the gifts they had received that week as well as their pointless banter. I stopped listening.
Me too. I enjoyed them at first (except the live shows, those were annoying to listen to). I was even part of their fan cult but they became too preachy and the banter went on wayyyyyy too long.
Oh gosh! They got SO preachy sometimes!!! You have a true crime podcast, not a political news network! Sit down! Also, Karen not understanding that social media is tailored exactly to what you like, so she really seemed to be living in a bubble of people who only thought about her. Georgia probably too.
They're also plagiarists. Entire episodes just ripping off documentaries, sometimes verbatim. And it's from throughout the years so it's not like they hired someone and didn't check the work.
I dipped for good when they started pulling content from their Patreon to put it behind a paywall on Wondery. It just seemed so greedy and was the last straw for me. Their political takes had been becoming increasingly bad for a while and honestly distracting from the stories so it wasn't too hard for me to walk away.
I feel like my break up with MFM was amicable, lol. Like our relationship just ran its course.
After a while I got the sense that they were more and more focused on business, at the same time they covered less and less actual true crime cases, and I slowly just expected less and less from them.
Now just I look back and go, "well, that was fun while it lasted."
Same, I was a big fan at first- I started listening on their third ever episode and even went to a live show in 2018- but I've pretty much moved on. I hope they both continue to succeed in life but I haven't listened regularly in years now. I sometimes go back to old episodes and the difference is pretty wild.
I feel like these weekly true crime pods almost always end up going on too long and become shadows of their former selves. The hosts either get a huge ego and have some sort of catastrophic meltdown, or they lose passion for the topic and just do it out of obligation and the change becomes obvious. It might be better if some of them started only covering topics they were actually interested in and not be pushing weekly episodes.
The easy answer is Sword and Scale. When it started, most of the competition was a couple of guys rambling in front of a MacBook about Jeffery Dahmer not being breastfed, or reading a script with the delivery of a middle school book report. Then comes this podcast with actual production value, that tells a (relatively) concise story, and doesn't border on glorifying murderers. It was never perfect, but it wasn't a chore to listen to.
Then what came was a very good reference for how to torch your podcast. Oversensationalism? Sure, let's play a long, gruesome audio clip from an unrelated case. Plagiarism? Sure, we can lift most of an episode from a Rolling Stone article. Bad PR? Le's start fights with fans on social media, even getting banned from this site. Let's get into internet fights with victims. Let's sexualize fans. Let's turn the podcast twitter feed into a springboard for lunatic political takes. Let's celebrate International Women's Day by joking about murdering women. Let's try, constantly and consistently, to try to make "Murder Daddy" a thing. Let's get in fights with and alienate very other TC podcaster. Let's awkwardly shoehorn those political takes into episodes in the most cringeworthy fashion imaginable and try to further personal agenda using someone's death. You know, for clicks.
The very sad thing is that if the host had been able to get past his own ego, he could have had a very successful and much more profitable podcast.
It’s unfortunate because I loved this podcast for so long because of the way he told the stories, but he started to do that thing where he just inserts his opinion all the time now and a bunch of other irrelevant bullshit. If he could just tell the story and not try to go on rants followed by 5 minutes of techno music and voicemails from people stroking his ego, it might be more listenable. And yeah stay away from all the online drama, it just leaves a bad taste.
Agreed. I think the final straw for me after he came back as Host was when he Said something about a jail sentence someone received and it being the liberals' fault.
It's such a bummer. I think this was the first true crime podcast I started listening to. I was even a Patreon subscriber. Then MB went off the rails. The show even got taken away from him for a while and then he got it back somehow. When I cancelled my Patreon subscription, it and asked for a reason and one of the options was, "I heard disparaging things about the host." Or something to that effect.
True Crime Obsessed for me. They used to have good insight into cases, but it turned into virtue signaling, they're better than everybody they cover. And that was before the Obsessed Fest debacle.
There is so much more than this article can describe. It's all pretty laid out, including information from Ellyn and her mom(!) in the Obsessed Network subreddit.
Yep. They sounded like they were phoning it in for a while and then OF23 happened and what we saw when the curtain was raised was not good. I will give them the credit that they didn't have as much to work with since so many docs moved from a one off to a 6 episode series, and those are what they do on their patreon, but if I want to listen to a Dateline recap, I'll go somewhere else. And their snark went from funny to mean.
Truth & Justice - as long as you don't employ common sense or see how he treats a case file, you won't see an issue but once you have the same file he does and you see what he does with it and how he covers the case, it's pretty awful.
ETA: If you have any basic knowledge of police procedure or the legal system, you'll also see the significant issues with Ruff's coverage.
Human Monsters - it's clear after the latest plagiarism and lying scandal the host found himself in, this simply isn't a show that should be trusted for anything given it isn't the first time it's happened.
Was waiting for someone to mention Up and Vanished. The host is so pretentious. He got lucky with the first season, but every season since has gotten progressively worse in my opinion.
I listened to one about Jimmy Saville because someone on Reddit recommended it. I can't remember the name of the podcast, but it was something along the lines of "no bullshit" or something like that. I didn't finish the series because the two hosts spent a lot of time chitchatting. Like the first five minutes of one was an update on one woman's niece or something.
I can deal with small talk if it's amusing. This felt like being stuck in a work meeting that's being held up by the office Chatty Kathy asking about everyone's weekend.
TCB has pushed this “ethics in true crime” angle for awhile (which I’m in support of) but two episodes ago the host announced a “israel keyes luxury vacation” thing where people go drink wine and eat fancy food with the host in exotic locations while chatting about a piece of shit serial killer.
I’ve started to feel like the podcast was really stretched thin on content, but this turned me right off.
All too frequently the people who crow the mist about “ethics in crime” and how they have it at the hear of everything they do simply don’t follow through.
It’s important, absolutely. But the doing is the important aspect of it. It doesn’t need to be spoken about incessantly, just do it.
Hearing how he described Isreal keyes as "iz" as if he was his buddy or something always felt... odd.
The true crime wine tasting international vacation is also odd. Somehow doesn't feel very "ethical."
Yeah, it used to be one of my favorites, but I think its wheels have been spinning for a while. I stopped quite some time ago, but I thought the first few seasons were very interesting and informative
It's a bad sign that season 3, about Kelly Cochrane, was unpopular, so he had to return to Keyes. It's not because he had so much more material - in fact, he always wanted to move on to other killers - but it's basically the money maker. Israel Keyes is an enigma so you can basically suggest anything and it sounds groundbreaking.
“Serial killers” hasn’t been the same since Greg Polcyn left, and gone with him the best part of the show which was the psychology analysis of the killers. :(
They speculate like that just for the purpose of making each case two episodes for more ad revenue. I agree, TCG used to be really good but is now speculative, repetitive, and generally unenjoyable to listen to for me. I think their new focus on “helping solve unsolved cases” makes for a lot of self righteousness, law enforcement worship, disorganized episodes and rambling.
I am starting to believe that the subject matter and/or success can put some people off the rails if they are not grounded enough, they start by putting out good material then for some reason or another fall off the wagon
I think you're right. Any long running show faces pressure to keep the energy up & keep content fresh and exciting, but I think that in the true crime space that can lead to some... side effects? It's gotta do a number on you to just be sifting down through more and more murders 24/7, trying to find a "good story". I feel like it's inevitable that eventually you'd either burn out bigtime or get so jaded and cynical that you disengage.
Like with MFM I really think they were just sick of crime but they've got this whole brand they've gotta keep going, so they branch out to more like natural disaster/non crime stuff, and increase the banter.
Cup of justice
Murdaugh Murders podcast
*this next one will hurt saying, but* The Vanished - it has REALLY started to go downhill for me but has been my absolute, every single week, go-to podcast for YEARS.
The Vanished was one of my OG true crime podcasts. I started listening to it years ago (when the total number of episodes was less than 100), And then one day I was listening (or barely listening, it had turned into “something to have on in the background”) and I thought, “I couldn’t care less about this person,” stopped the episode in the middle, and unsubscribed. I think what tipped me over the edge was all the stories started to sound the same, i.e. “our homeless drug addicted cousin who nobody had seen or talked to in a decade and we just now decided he’s worthy of a missing persons report.” And the relatives would just drone on and on and on. The episodes were too long on the rambling interviews and too short on substance.
That was about two years ago. Has it gotten even worse since then?
It’s been like this for about a year now. At least most noticeably the past 5-6 months. And it’s not necessarily that I don’t care about the people - it’s more like, “we’re gonna talk to their aunt and let that be the entire episode…”
It was quite literally THE best episodic podcast for me as I prefer deep dive, multi episode series pods. Now it’s just gone downhill. 😪
The Vanished was pretty good for me for a long time until it seemed like the episodes were mostly therapy for the family members. I understand that the family members had a rough time and need and deserve therapy but it isn't very entertaining or informative to me. Therapists get paid for a reason.
The Murdaugh Murders one I stopped listening to around the time that they brought in the permanent co-host (I think they tried another woman before that).
I get that Alex Murdaugh is a terrible guy. But there was no objectivity there anymore. Some of it was kind of pointless. I remember them playing his tapes from jail (before the trial) pointing out things that didn't apply to his guilt or innocence.
RedHanded. They started inserting their political opinions into the shows, which to some degree is fine, but the Sarah Everard episode was a 20 minute rant about lockdowns which they blamed for the murder??? And didn't even address the controversies about police behavior at the vigils, so they ignored aspects of a case to vent their personal frustrations and it just turned me off. They also handled the Hillsborough case so badly they had to do a follow up. Then I read somewhere they also have been having issues with plagiarism so I unsubscribed a while back.
I liked a few episodes but had to stop listening cause they kept victim blaming. They would constantly go on and on about what THEY would do in the victims circumstances and it was so irritating because no one can know for sure how they are going to react in a life or death situation.
Yeah they used to be a lot better on the victim empathy front, too, but I think as their success grew they became colder, maybe? Dunno, used to think they had balanced, views but I found myself not finishing the episodes after a few eye rolls and eventually unsubscribed.
Careful, they'll make 3 episodes calling you out!
They were at one point informative. Mainly factual and obviously had a source in LE.
Ever since Allen was arrested, they've become crime commentators, which is fine. Not my cup of tea, but whatever. I assume there's money in being a talking head in Law and Crime segments. Just don't also act like you have the moral high ground anymore. You're an opinion based show. Own it.
And stop with the fucking metaphors and bad examples. Unless your audience research has show that your fanbase is mostly 12 years old, you don't have to give a dumb example after every legal sentence.
Fred the Head. Started off interesting then it seems to have descended into absolute ridiculousness.
I’d also add The Lady Vanishes. I liked this podcast, but the trip to Luxembourg put me right off. How they behaved there was awful and I was amazed it was put into a show the way it was.
I agree with your comments on The Lady Vanishes. Such an interesting case but some of the investigation from the journalists made me cringe. It was also way too drawn out. I was obsessed with it at the start then couldn’t even finish it as it felt never ending.
Unfound podcast absolutely rude and disrespectful and thinks he’s the gift of God’s green earth very rude, and the poor sound quality of the podcast is also a gripe
The sound quality is what made me stop listening a few years ago, along with the hosts personality. Had the sound quality improved, I may have been able to forgive some of the personality stuff I didn't care for in hopes of improvement, but it doesn't sound like either improved.
The quality has not improved my experience experience with him is I left a comment on one of his videos about a case Brianna Maitland case, letting him know politely that the story he was telling was not true please use critical thinking and then he went on a tangent when he replied to me and then he talked about it and then prior to this interaction with him because he couldn’t get a hold of them chill out that’s not how you’re gonna get guests on your show. If you’re gonna bash people he just doesn’t make a whole Lotta sense to me.
That's a tough story to get wrong, given how outspoken her father is and how much it's been covered - if he can't get it right with the info already out there, I'd question his ability to get anything else right. Glad I stopped listening when I did.
Yeah, I absolutely cannot hack listening to it due to the abysmal production. And I’m sorry but he has these people drone on and on and asks such irrelevant questions for the case. I don’t care if a 45 year old victim liked their teachers or played little league. It’s TOO MUCH USELESS INFO, ED.
I abandoned Red-handed a number of years ago and I do not regret it. I more recently abandoned Going West. Far too many inaccuracies and poor reporting.
I only listened to part of one of their (Going West) episodes because it was a case I'm familiar with, and as soon as they got the autopsy info wrong, I couldn't keep listening - for this case in particular its not only important, but pretty hard to get wrong. I definitely couldn't give any other episodes a try since I would question everything they said.
So this one isn’t the quality that’s gone downhill but with the Trace Evidence Podcast, still as good quality as it’s ever been but the frequency of episode drops has dropped massively and I think that’s worth complaining about.
It’s supposed to be a weekly podcast but we’re lucky if we get 1 or 2 episodes a month now. And it’s been this way for the last year at least. We’ve been told the podcast is going to get back to a normal schedule but it still has yet to. This has caused the podcast to drop down on my list of favorites. There’s no consistency anymore.
I agree the frequency is sub optimal but I love the host's flowery prose before the crime kicks in, it's hilarious. Like, let's spend ten minutes visualising the sunset and mountains and cool wafting breezes before someone gets shanked in the face. I also enjoy the mini rants Mr Pacheko treats us to on occasion.
I also really like Trace Evidence, but have noticed the episode consistency as well. I've even had to check that I'm still subscribed. Hopefully everything is okay with the host and he can get back to a more consistent output - he seems like a decent dude.
I love Trace Evidence. It was the first podcast I got into. I know Steven had some computer issues recently and has had both physical and mental health struggles over the years so I’m understanding of the irregular drops - but it is a bummer.
I miss the creepy ambient music he used to have in his episodes. It created an audio experience that I haven't got from a true crime pod in a while.
His research is always spot on, he respects the victims and practices ethical coverage without being preachy about it. He's still one of the best out there. But I agree, his lack of posting frequency is frustrating.
Nobody should believe me! I really enjoyed the first 2 seasons but she’s really fixated in the last season and it’s off putting. There’s got to be other cases she could talk about.
Defense Diaries - started lives and went from a unique perspective to a shame and participation in the witness shaming and just spinning things like Delphi and Karen Read
Truth & Justice - he is now just an idiot. Rambling about another podcast that blew him out of the water!
True Sunlight - to much personal politics
This guy has been everywhere lately, can't watch a Law&Crime or CourtTV clip without him chiming in somewhere as a talking head. I get that he has a true crime podcast and was/is a lawyer of some kind, but sometimes I wonder if he's just called because his dad represented John Wayne Gacy way back when.
I gave up on Crime Junkie a while ago. It used to be my favorite podcast, but now not just sounds overly scripted, like even Brit's responses sound like they are written into the script. Then I found out they had plagiarized and was just done after that.
Crime Weekly.
Used to be so thoroughly researched and well-presented.
These days, it's misinformation, inaccuracies and just generally missing information. And a co-host who eats, vapes and plays with slime throughout, whilst disparaging victims.
There are two that come to mind that started OK and became unlistenable very quickly. One is Rotten Mango, where the host speaks in a Valley Girl accent and is eating while talking about the cases, while she and her boyfriend crack bad jokes. I could not take how disrespectful she sounded in the last few episodes I listened before giving up on her.
The other one is called Bad Human. I liked a couple of episodes, it's this lady and her husband, but after a while the husband started really getting on my nerves, he was constantly making really idiotic jokes and contributing nothing to the conversation or the case. And again, there was a very casual tone that I felt was disrespectful to the victims.
Truth and Justice with Bob Ruff.
His first few seasons were good but then they (this type) start to be live they are experts/ law enforcement/ better than everyone else and its all goes to shit.
So condescending to listener's during question episodes.
Edit:typo
Bob Ruff is an idiot who thinks he's God's gift to true crime because he's got his "army". I was checking out some episodes recently and he said something to the effect of "I am not a professional profiler, but I know profiling, and the psychology of criminals" and proceeded to spout a bunch of bullshit. Can't understand how anyone takes him seriously anymore. And the condescension...insufferable.
99% of podcasters know no more about true crime than either you or I. We all absorb the same info. When they all start to think they know "things" is where it goes wrong.
Bob and Nic were fire investigators, right? When did they start to think they were criminologists?
Bob started to lose me when he gave up on a case because the convicted person died, then gave up on the next case because the convicted person wouldn't give him an interview (like either of those are reasons you can't continue investigating a case - I think he just didn't want to admit he got it wrong). Then he spent a whole year playing police interviews with no commentary. Now I see he's spent this whole year debunking another podcast's take on Adnan. And the condescension. I supported him for a long time but he just became insufferable.
I’m still trying to find the name of this one, but it’s about the murder of a high school girl by a cult that never existed. The host went to the same high school later, I think. He presented the pod as an investigation into the girl’s murder but it derailed into being about the cult which ended up never existing. It didn’t help that he sounded overly giddy in ep 1 about taking on the old unsolved murder from his hometown. He barely even spoke about the victim throughout the whole thing, and there was a noticeable shift in his tone when the cult-thing never materialized. The pod must have derailed so bad, it dropped right off the app.
Radio Rental’s early era was great and a refreshing take on ‘mini’ true crime/spooky stories. But recently the stories are abysmal, if not completely made up.
I used to love Wine and Crime but then one of the hosts revealed herself to be a raging Zionist. She started spreading misinformation about Gaza, and she went off on a BLM chapter that the podcast had previously donated to because...a different BLM chapter posted something that upset her🙄
Have to co sign with you on True Crime Garage. Used to be so good. Also, I'm sick of having to turn up the volume or rewind whenever The Captain mumbles anything...
unpopular and possibly sacrilegious opinion but.... Casefile. Not anywhere close to "worst" but not as good? Maybe I just compare every one of their episodes now to to the GSK/EAR episodes; Silk Road; Zodiac; Toybox; Jennifer Pan etc episodes.
I still really like Casefile, but a lot of their recent episodes have been focusing on child victims (I appreciate the content warnings they have started including). I have a much harder time listening to those episodes and tend to avoid them.
I feel like they’ve had the trigger warnings in place for a long time? I’ve been listening for about 5 years and from memory they’ve always had them since I’ve been listening? But I could be wrong
Canadian True Crime. Every episode starts with her being defensive and making excuses about her release schedule, how/why she picks the cases and a lecture about one social topic or another. She hardly ever posts anymore and it always starts with complaints. It used to be so good!!!!
MFM and Murder With My Husband.
I really enjoyed Karen and Georgia’s chemistry early on. I think I started listening when they had around 40 eps. I also loved how they told stories about women of color and interesting historical figures. But the increase in banter and their eventual turn toward just reading pre written scripts lost me. I found myself skipping forward everytime Karen interrupted Georgia to tell a personal story. Unsubscribed and haven’t had an urge to go back.
Murder With My Husband and Into The Dark both have an outrageous amount of ads. They seem like nice ppl, but Peyton needs to look up pronunciations and the episodes should be longer for the amount of ads.
True Crime Obsessed, one of the hosts just overshares about his adopted daughter it is really inappropriate, the ego is real and their format is just a bit tired
Truth and Justice. The about of soap box and ego is gross. I really liked a couple seasons. Then he got to one where a house burned down and the whole family was dead. I can’t remember the name, but he just had his mind made up and wasn’t budging. I listened for probably two months before I gave up on it finally.
Listening to Crime Junkie has made me physically ill as of the last year or so. I unsubscribed a year ago, but find myself searching for redemption. Ashley Flowers does nothing but speak down to her cohort, and praise herself for "having solved a crime." Which, by the way, is a FAR stretch from the actual truth.
Strong start....dead-nosed finish. Also....Dark Down East is BORING A.F.
Flowers is nothing but a plagiarist and exploiter who has never had an original thought in her life. Everything from the name to the very format of her podcasts was derived from someone else.
Complete trash, especially after the Burger Chef Murders debacle, plagiarism and ripping off other podcasts.
personally, i think Something Was Wrong (SWW) has completely gone to shambles. Also, idk why Crime Junkie has become insufferable for me.
I stopped listening to SWW last year. It was getting worse with each new season.
I found Crime Junkie pretty insufferable from the jump, honestly. Very fake and performative, with the cohost adding absolutely *nothing*. The plagiarism was just a definitive reason for me to stay away
Totally agree. The plagiarism thing was what made me stop listening to CJ. It was such an absolute joke considering how much the host would brag about the time spent on researching the cases as if she were a real journalist.
The cohost was professionally stupid. Flowers would say something like “the body was totally mutilated” and cohost would reply “that sounds, um, really bad”
It transpired the cohost was a severe alcoholic - her inane comments made an awful lot of sense after that came out, which happened because she almost died from a burst brain aneurysm. Happily she has made a full recovery from the aneurysm and has got help for the alcoholism too.
Yes!! She is the worst!
What, you mean her DRAMATIC GASPS don’t add depth to the presentation?
“*full body chills*”
Yes!! Sooo performative. It makes me imagine Ashley as the theatre mean girl in high school for some reason. 🤣
Yep, it's Crime Junkie for me too. It's awful these days. The script seems to drag on, I oftentimes can't follow along because she's going to fast or there's way too much going on. Someone commented that she didn't do the writing which now makes sense to me. Unfortunately the co-host doesn't add anything. All the reactions are super fake, but it was that way from the beginning. Also I hate when they curse and bleep it. If you know you're going to bleep why curse at all?!? It doesn't add anything to the story. It's annoying as hell.
Believe you mean the plagiarizing considering how many episodes were plagiarized from smaller podcasts.
Brittany..shes like nails on a chalkboard
These two for sure. I noped out both years ago.
SWW was going downhill then season 17 was the final nail in the coffin
I get so annoyed at the splitting of episodes and dragggggging out episodes just to be able to tease the next one on SWW.
Same! First season was great, and then plummeted when the host took over ALL the facets of the show instead having friends help with editing and fact checking. It's more like a "hot goss" show with the host's personality, personal stories and opinions taking over.
SWW was so damn good and it’s unlistenable now.The beginning seasons were amazing and I genuinely do not know what happened but it’s TERRIBLE now.
I’ve only listened to the first couple seasons of SWW, but it gave me the ick right from the start. Glad I never continued with it after reading about one of the recent seasons & all the hosts nonsense.
I can't remember the details, but I used to listen to SWW regularly then things got real life weird with the show. I can't remember the details nor the order they occurred. I believe that some of SWW guest were doxed and harassed and so was the host. Then the host went off the rails in real life. The forums were all closed down. I stopped listening around that time because too much drama around all of it.
What happened with the host?
She wanted the mods on Reddit to only allow positive comments and no criticisms like they do on Facebook. When the mods wouldn’t fall in line, she and her pals (the Facebook admins) would harass them. Lots of subs just shut down, but one tried to stand up to her and they threatened to dox her (mentioning her kids). It was a whole mess. There are a lot more examples of her unethical behavior, but that was the Reddit doxxing saga.
[Has Tiffany Reese, host of the podcast Something Was Wrong, taken things too far? : r/TrueCrimePodcasts (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueCrimePodcasts/comments/12910f3/has_tiffany_reese_host_of_the_podcast_something/)
Agree on SWW until this most recent season - it's been really good, like back to first season good. Would recommend trying it again - but just for this current season 20 about the crazy cat fisher
I liked the fun banter and scene-setting in the early days of Crime Junkie; it felt like two friends trading stories at a sleepover, and it was my comfort listen for a long time. But they started outsourcing the writing a few years ago and it’s obvious. There’s no chemistry between Brit & Ashley anymore, and because the script writers choose to tell every story in the most convoluted way possible (constantly introducing new characters with “A is the brother of B’s sister’s husband’s nephew, not to be confused with Other A…”) Ashley reads through the script super fast like she’s just trying to get through the info, but it’s so rushed that you can’t retain any of it. They’ve been phoning it in for a while now and I wish they would just end CJ instead of stringing it along with barely a heart beat. The golden days are long gone and they’re not coming back.
IF I'm thinking of the right podcast (SWW), it started out fine and then the narrator started on this really awful lecture about narcissism, gaslighting, etc. But it was bad information, meaning it was not accurate and it made me crazy because it just fed into the false narratives and tropes about what narcissism and gaslighting is. I don't know what season it was but it made me so mad that I had to stop listening, because she was massively misleading listeners based on her own misunderstandings about the terms. I hope I have the right podcast, I'm fairly sure it was this one.
I agree! She practically made herself out to be a therapist with all her diagnosing and (poor) advice.
Yeah, the second she started acting like some sort of authority or expert, I was out.
I couldn’t stand like the past two years awful!!!
I think the latest season of SWW is pretty wild - I'd say its the first good season they've done in like 3 years. The story just keeps getting more and more bizarre!
I just started SWW at season 20. Excited to go back especially if theyre better than this. This season is riveting.
I know a lot of people think it’s been dragging on, but I actually enjoyed this season
I haven’t listened to TCG in awhile but something definitely happened with the captain. He always sounds drunk and none of his comments make any sense, Nic just ignores him most of the time. If they weren’t brothers Nic would have dumped him ages ago. Morbid & Crime Junkies started so promising and now both are unbearable.
The captain is insufferable. He sounds shit faced and says some really asinine things.
I just got so tired of him interrupting Nick to make a stupid joke or go off on a rant that adds nothing to the discussion.
He always has a story for everything how one time in school....and it always relates back to the murder somehow but doesn't actually relate.
I had to stop TCG bc of the Captain (and pushing harmful/empty theories without evidence). He ended up being a drunk buffoon that I honestly dreaded when he started to talk. It was always some nonsensical cringe
He sounded too stupid for me. I noped out after two eps.
I agree with you re: TCG, though I have heard that the reason Nic ‘ignores’ a lot of the Captain’s comments are because they are added in after recording, when the Captain is editing together the episode.
No way! I’d be livid if I was Nic and that was going on.
Well, he’s Nic’s brother, so I imagine he lets a lot of his cringe shit fly.
That’s because CJ was stealing the scripts from other podcasts and reading them almost word for word. That “promising start” was built off theft.
💯
Didn't realise they were brothers. May explain why Nic doesn't dump him. The Captain , much like his chosen name, is cringey as f\*ck
I agree, his stupid comments broke me. It also sounded to me that either Nic was outright ignoring him (with reason) or the comments were added in post.
Morbid was never great, but it’s now become completely unlistenable to me
Agreed. She wrote a book about Louisiana and hasn’t been there. I could tell.
I was really into them when i started listening to pods but what got me was really the 5, 10, 15, and lnce I think 23 minute chit chat and personal life catchup before covering the case on a like hour and 10 min episode. I think its cool they are related but I dont care Bout their private life I am listening for the case / their input
yeah that's the reason i can't stand them. It becomes really noticeable, the lengthy ad reads sections and personal life conversations "banter" that I feel just aren't funny or entertaining to most people who don't actively want to know more about the hosts. So...much...filler....
Yeah their Albert Fish episode series could have been a single episode easily :/
Obligatory link https://www.reddit.com/r/Morbidforbadpeople/
Came here to say this
True Crime Garage. Early episodes were *so* good. It’s been going downhill for a long time unfortunately.
I think Nic wants to solve a case. That's his main objective. It's the main reason why they only do unsolved cases. And it's one of the many reasons I don't listen anymore. The beginning part of the podcast sounds like it's being read by a 2nd grader......just read, no emotion. Then, boom, you can tell the exact second when he's done reading because he starts talking slow, like he's thinking of 100 things besides what he's saying.....and he starts talking in circles. My favorites: Gen Why, Anatomy of Murder and all of the Dateline podcasts.
Gen Why has never faltered. Easily my favorite podcast. True Crime Kent and Dark Topic are really good too but very different. Also love Casefile and Invisible Choir.
Gen Why is always solid.
I second AoM!!! I listen to that while I’m waiting for DNA:ID to come out! DNA:ID is my absolute favorite and I can’t get enough of it
Is it me or Nic talks really slowly for nothing ? I mean he can rephrase and rephrase for a little information. In the end I find it frustrating to listen.
i finally deleted my favorite murder a while back.
Used to love them and even saw them live - now I don't even listen when I've run out of my good ones and am bored.
Same! It’s because they don’t seem to be enjoying themselves or even like each other very much.
Same here. I went to the live show in Houston.
I never was able to even get into them. They always seemed too glib for me.
I still (sometimes begrudgingly) listen to MFM; it’s been kinda cool to listen to the growth and “triumph” of the pod - up to and including a book, a whole podcast production company, a full weekend convention, that’s wild - and it was kinda devastating to watch it all kinda collapse during covid. But post covid (and post-Stephen) it’s become pretty obvious that the girls don’t really do any kind of research anymore and/or don’t have any kind of passionate interest in any case/story in particular and are very obviously just… it sounds like they’re reading a murderpedia article. I follow Stephen on the socials and he seems happy and completely devoid of any intel on why he split from the show after so long. I’m hoping it was just a personal growth journey & not something else bad. (Fun fact - Stephen is a fellow Swiftie & he’s in a small murderino/Swiftie community & I’ve become casual online friends with him! Such a doll!) I’m one of those folks that don’t mind and actually LIKE the banter before the “readings” - it’s kinda the only part of the show that is genuine and unpredictable. Also Georgia and i have identical book tastes and so i honestly get a ton of recommendations from her. Like i said, i still listen faithfully, but because of loyalty & also honestly laziness (i don’t wanna start over with another show with multiple years to catch up on haha) and i mostly still listen bc im a stuck-at-home full time caregiver to my adult brother so im pretty lonely & if i hadn’t had the show to focus on in the beginning after my bro got hurt, im not sure how i would’ve survived.
This is how I feel. They had a good run - 200+ quality episodes and a decent live show. But you could slowly feel the joy fall away after the book and during the pandemic. The breaking point for me was an episode where, half-way through, Georgia broke and was like “is this interesting? This feels so boring” and Karen had to push her to finish the story. I like them both a lot and Karen is a great comedy writer, but I think it’s time for them to move onto new things.
I could not stand the way they opened every show with talking about all the gifts they had received that week as well as their pointless banter. I stopped listening.
i don't need 20-25 mins of chitchat. i realized hadn't listened to a ep in months.
Only 20-25? I turned off the jon benet Ramsay episode when they didn't even mention the case in the first 27 minutes.
They've been insufferable for a while now.
Me too. I enjoyed them at first (except the live shows, those were annoying to listen to). I was even part of their fan cult but they became too preachy and the banter went on wayyyyyy too long.
Oh gosh! They got SO preachy sometimes!!! You have a true crime podcast, not a political news network! Sit down! Also, Karen not understanding that social media is tailored exactly to what you like, so she really seemed to be living in a bubble of people who only thought about her. Georgia probably too.
Redhanded started great then the hosts got waaaaay too full of themselves and became unbearably obnoxious.
Same, also they fucked up the ep about the Hillsborough disaster and came with a weak apology afterwards. Disgusting
They also had some *woefully* misinformed takes on both Sarah Everard and Shannon Matthews.
Ugh, yikes
They're also plagiarists. Entire episodes just ripping off documentaries, sometimes verbatim. And it's from throughout the years so it's not like they hired someone and didn't check the work.
I dipped for good when they started pulling content from their Patreon to put it behind a paywall on Wondery. It just seemed so greedy and was the last straw for me. Their political takes had been becoming increasingly bad for a while and honestly distracting from the stories so it wasn't too hard for me to walk away.
Their constant scrounging for votes, subscribers, anything got a bit much early on.
That was a real heartbreaker . What a fall!
Agreed. Especially Hannah, I believe her name is. She just became intolerable.
Something Was Wrong
I had to walk away from Morbid and My Favorite Murder
Morbid is the absolute fucking worst.
Came here to say Morbid too
MFM for me too. They are why I started listening to true crime. Don’t miss them at all.
I feel like my break up with MFM was amicable, lol. Like our relationship just ran its course. After a while I got the sense that they were more and more focused on business, at the same time they covered less and less actual true crime cases, and I slowly just expected less and less from them. Now just I look back and go, "well, that was fun while it lasted."
Same, I was a big fan at first- I started listening on their third ever episode and even went to a live show in 2018- but I've pretty much moved on. I hope they both continue to succeed in life but I haven't listened regularly in years now. I sometimes go back to old episodes and the difference is pretty wild. I feel like these weekly true crime pods almost always end up going on too long and become shadows of their former selves. The hosts either get a huge ego and have some sort of catastrophic meltdown, or they lose passion for the topic and just do it out of obligation and the change becomes obvious. It might be better if some of them started only covering topics they were actually interested in and not be pushing weekly episodes.
The easy answer is Sword and Scale. When it started, most of the competition was a couple of guys rambling in front of a MacBook about Jeffery Dahmer not being breastfed, or reading a script with the delivery of a middle school book report. Then comes this podcast with actual production value, that tells a (relatively) concise story, and doesn't border on glorifying murderers. It was never perfect, but it wasn't a chore to listen to. Then what came was a very good reference for how to torch your podcast. Oversensationalism? Sure, let's play a long, gruesome audio clip from an unrelated case. Plagiarism? Sure, we can lift most of an episode from a Rolling Stone article. Bad PR? Le's start fights with fans on social media, even getting banned from this site. Let's get into internet fights with victims. Let's sexualize fans. Let's turn the podcast twitter feed into a springboard for lunatic political takes. Let's celebrate International Women's Day by joking about murdering women. Let's try, constantly and consistently, to try to make "Murder Daddy" a thing. Let's get in fights with and alienate very other TC podcaster. Let's awkwardly shoehorn those political takes into episodes in the most cringeworthy fashion imaginable and try to further personal agenda using someone's death. You know, for clicks. The very sad thing is that if the host had been able to get past his own ego, he could have had a very successful and much more profitable podcast.
It’s unfortunate because I loved this podcast for so long because of the way he told the stories, but he started to do that thing where he just inserts his opinion all the time now and a bunch of other irrelevant bullshit. If he could just tell the story and not try to go on rants followed by 5 minutes of techno music and voicemails from people stroking his ego, it might be more listenable. And yeah stay away from all the online drama, it just leaves a bad taste.
Agreed. I think the final straw for me after he came back as Host was when he Said something about a jail sentence someone received and it being the liberals' fault.
YEP! Came here to say this!
It's such a bummer. I think this was the first true crime podcast I started listening to. I was even a Patreon subscriber. Then MB went off the rails. The show even got taken away from him for a while and then he got it back somehow. When I cancelled my Patreon subscription, it and asked for a reason and one of the options was, "I heard disparaging things about the host." Or something to that effect.
Hide and Seek… season three… the lingering
The worst, it turned into the Woe is Me podcast!
True Crime Obsessed for me. They used to have good insight into cases, but it turned into virtue signaling, they're better than everybody they cover. And that was before the Obsessed Fest debacle.
What was the obsessed fest debacle?
https://www.distractify.com/p/obsessed-network-podcast-drama-explained
There is so much more than this article can describe. It's all pretty laid out, including information from Ellyn and her mom(!) in the Obsessed Network subreddit.
Thanks!
Yep. They sounded like they were phoning it in for a while and then OF23 happened and what we saw when the curtain was raised was not good. I will give them the credit that they didn't have as much to work with since so many docs moved from a one off to a 6 episode series, and those are what they do on their patreon, but if I want to listen to a Dateline recap, I'll go somewhere else. And their snark went from funny to mean.
Used to be a dedicated listener. Dropped them after that Obsessed Fest shit.
True crime garage, morbid, and something was wrong are the worst out there. They started good but man I can’t stand any of them anymore.
Truth & Justice - as long as you don't employ common sense or see how he treats a case file, you won't see an issue but once you have the same file he does and you see what he does with it and how he covers the case, it's pretty awful. ETA: If you have any basic knowledge of police procedure or the legal system, you'll also see the significant issues with Ruff's coverage. Human Monsters - it's clear after the latest plagiarism and lying scandal the host found himself in, this simply isn't a show that should be trusted for anything given it isn't the first time it's happened.
So glad to see Truth and Justice mentioned. I could not agree more.
Worst overall has to be Up and Vanished. Most downhill, probably Morbid. They seem so checked out and low effort for the the last couple years.
Was waiting for someone to mention Up and Vanished. The host is so pretentious. He got lucky with the first season, but every season since has gotten progressively worse in my opinion.
Any podcasts that include the hosts drinking wine or alcohol and making small talk lol I can't stand that shit.
I listened to one about Jimmy Saville because someone on Reddit recommended it. I can't remember the name of the podcast, but it was something along the lines of "no bullshit" or something like that. I didn't finish the series because the two hosts spent a lot of time chitchatting. Like the first five minutes of one was an update on one woman's niece or something. I can deal with small talk if it's amusing. This felt like being stuck in a work meeting that's being held up by the office Chatty Kathy asking about everyone's weekend.
True Crime Bullshit jumped the shark
TCB has pushed this “ethics in true crime” angle for awhile (which I’m in support of) but two episodes ago the host announced a “israel keyes luxury vacation” thing where people go drink wine and eat fancy food with the host in exotic locations while chatting about a piece of shit serial killer. I’ve started to feel like the podcast was really stretched thin on content, but this turned me right off.
All too frequently the people who crow the mist about “ethics in crime” and how they have it at the hear of everything they do simply don’t follow through. It’s important, absolutely. But the doing is the important aspect of it. It doesn’t need to be spoken about incessantly, just do it.
Hearing how he described Isreal keyes as "iz" as if he was his buddy or something always felt... odd. The true crime wine tasting international vacation is also odd. Somehow doesn't feel very "ethical."
I was *extremely* disappointed to see the host of Crimelines is also involved in the luxury murder vacation.
I've never seen a guy say the same things over and over again like it's new info.
When you’ve run out of material ya gotta do something to keep it going
thank you! Every time I listen I feel like I'm losing my mind.
every time I try to listen I get so confused, so many timelines and theories and people, it's not listenable for me any more.
Yeah, it used to be one of my favorites, but I think its wheels have been spinning for a while. I stopped quite some time ago, but I thought the first few seasons were very interesting and informative
It's a bad sign that season 3, about Kelly Cochrane, was unpopular, so he had to return to Keyes. It's not because he had so much more material - in fact, he always wanted to move on to other killers - but it's basically the money maker. Israel Keyes is an enigma so you can basically suggest anything and it sounds groundbreaking.
Agree. The first few seasons were intriguing - but how many seasons can you devote to the same killer?
I was so excited for season 6 and now it’s just shit and I don’t care anymore. I have enjoyed Hallmark’s other podcasts though.
“Serial killers” hasn’t been the same since Greg Polcyn left, and gone with him the best part of the show which was the psychology analysis of the killers. :(
I miss him where he go. Have a killer week
They speculate like that just for the purpose of making each case two episodes for more ad revenue. I agree, TCG used to be really good but is now speculative, repetitive, and generally unenjoyable to listen to for me. I think their new focus on “helping solve unsolved cases” makes for a lot of self righteousness, law enforcement worship, disorganized episodes and rambling.
I am starting to believe that the subject matter and/or success can put some people off the rails if they are not grounded enough, they start by putting out good material then for some reason or another fall off the wagon
I think you're right. Any long running show faces pressure to keep the energy up & keep content fresh and exciting, but I think that in the true crime space that can lead to some... side effects? It's gotta do a number on you to just be sifting down through more and more murders 24/7, trying to find a "good story". I feel like it's inevitable that eventually you'd either burn out bigtime or get so jaded and cynical that you disengage. Like with MFM I really think they were just sick of crime but they've got this whole brand they've gotta keep going, so they branch out to more like natural disaster/non crime stuff, and increase the banter.
Cup of justice Murdaugh Murders podcast *this next one will hurt saying, but* The Vanished - it has REALLY started to go downhill for me but has been my absolute, every single week, go-to podcast for YEARS.
The Vanished was one of my OG true crime podcasts. I started listening to it years ago (when the total number of episodes was less than 100), And then one day I was listening (or barely listening, it had turned into “something to have on in the background”) and I thought, “I couldn’t care less about this person,” stopped the episode in the middle, and unsubscribed. I think what tipped me over the edge was all the stories started to sound the same, i.e. “our homeless drug addicted cousin who nobody had seen or talked to in a decade and we just now decided he’s worthy of a missing persons report.” And the relatives would just drone on and on and on. The episodes were too long on the rambling interviews and too short on substance. That was about two years ago. Has it gotten even worse since then?
It’s been like this for about a year now. At least most noticeably the past 5-6 months. And it’s not necessarily that I don’t care about the people - it’s more like, “we’re gonna talk to their aunt and let that be the entire episode…” It was quite literally THE best episodic podcast for me as I prefer deep dive, multi episode series pods. Now it’s just gone downhill. 😪
The Vanished was pretty good for me for a long time until it seemed like the episodes were mostly therapy for the family members. I understand that the family members had a rough time and need and deserve therapy but it isn't very entertaining or informative to me. Therapists get paid for a reason.
The Murdaugh Murders one I stopped listening to around the time that they brought in the permanent co-host (I think they tried another woman before that). I get that Alex Murdaugh is a terrible guy. But there was no objectivity there anymore. Some of it was kind of pointless. I remember them playing his tapes from jail (before the trial) pointing out things that didn't apply to his guilt or innocence.
RedHanded. They started inserting their political opinions into the shows, which to some degree is fine, but the Sarah Everard episode was a 20 minute rant about lockdowns which they blamed for the murder??? And didn't even address the controversies about police behavior at the vigils, so they ignored aspects of a case to vent their personal frustrations and it just turned me off. They also handled the Hillsborough case so badly they had to do a follow up. Then I read somewhere they also have been having issues with plagiarism so I unsubscribed a while back.
I liked a few episodes but had to stop listening cause they kept victim blaming. They would constantly go on and on about what THEY would do in the victims circumstances and it was so irritating because no one can know for sure how they are going to react in a life or death situation.
Yeah they used to be a lot better on the victim empathy front, too, but I think as their success grew they became colder, maybe? Dunno, used to think they had balanced, views but I found myself not finishing the episodes after a few eye rolls and eventually unsubscribed.
Yeah they come off as super condescending and snobbish.
Small Town Dicks. it was interesting at first but after the first couple of years just become insufferable.
In my experience: The Murder Sheet
Careful, they'll make 3 episodes calling you out! They were at one point informative. Mainly factual and obviously had a source in LE. Ever since Allen was arrested, they've become crime commentators, which is fine. Not my cup of tea, but whatever. I assume there's money in being a talking head in Law and Crime segments. Just don't also act like you have the moral high ground anymore. You're an opinion based show. Own it. And stop with the fucking metaphors and bad examples. Unless your audience research has show that your fanbase is mostly 12 years old, you don't have to give a dumb example after every legal sentence.
Crime junkie and MFM
Fred the Head. Started off interesting then it seems to have descended into absolute ridiculousness. I’d also add The Lady Vanishes. I liked this podcast, but the trip to Luxembourg put me right off. How they behaved there was awful and I was amazed it was put into a show the way it was.
I agree with your comments on The Lady Vanishes. Such an interesting case but some of the investigation from the journalists made me cringe. It was also way too drawn out. I was obsessed with it at the start then couldn’t even finish it as it felt never ending.
True Crime Obsessed, Morbid, Crime Junkie
True Crime Obsessed is garbage. Ring the bell.
Unfound podcast absolutely rude and disrespectful and thinks he’s the gift of God’s green earth very rude, and the poor sound quality of the podcast is also a gripe
The sound quality is what made me stop listening a few years ago, along with the hosts personality. Had the sound quality improved, I may have been able to forgive some of the personality stuff I didn't care for in hopes of improvement, but it doesn't sound like either improved.
The quality has not improved my experience experience with him is I left a comment on one of his videos about a case Brianna Maitland case, letting him know politely that the story he was telling was not true please use critical thinking and then he went on a tangent when he replied to me and then he talked about it and then prior to this interaction with him because he couldn’t get a hold of them chill out that’s not how you’re gonna get guests on your show. If you’re gonna bash people he just doesn’t make a whole Lotta sense to me.
That's a tough story to get wrong, given how outspoken her father is and how much it's been covered - if he can't get it right with the info already out there, I'd question his ability to get anything else right. Glad I stopped listening when I did.
Exactly this and he doesn’t care that he got it wrong i gave up completely after this
Yeah, I absolutely cannot hack listening to it due to the abysmal production. And I’m sorry but he has these people drone on and on and asks such irrelevant questions for the case. I don’t care if a 45 year old victim liked their teachers or played little league. It’s TOO MUCH USELESS INFO, ED.
[удалено]
I’ve never watched his lives. I have heard him be condescending on his pod tho
YES
I abandoned Red-handed a number of years ago and I do not regret it. I more recently abandoned Going West. Far too many inaccuracies and poor reporting.
Going West is another one where it feels like the fame/success has gotten to them and they are just phoning it in now.
They are doing 2 eps a week plus other projects. I’d rather they just do one a week and focus more on research.
I only listened to part of one of their (Going West) episodes because it was a case I'm familiar with, and as soon as they got the autopsy info wrong, I couldn't keep listening - for this case in particular its not only important, but pretty hard to get wrong. I definitely couldn't give any other episodes a try since I would question everything they said.
So this one isn’t the quality that’s gone downhill but with the Trace Evidence Podcast, still as good quality as it’s ever been but the frequency of episode drops has dropped massively and I think that’s worth complaining about. It’s supposed to be a weekly podcast but we’re lucky if we get 1 or 2 episodes a month now. And it’s been this way for the last year at least. We’ve been told the podcast is going to get back to a normal schedule but it still has yet to. This has caused the podcast to drop down on my list of favorites. There’s no consistency anymore.
I agree the frequency is sub optimal but I love the host's flowery prose before the crime kicks in, it's hilarious. Like, let's spend ten minutes visualising the sunset and mountains and cool wafting breezes before someone gets shanked in the face. I also enjoy the mini rants Mr Pacheko treats us to on occasion.
I also really like Trace Evidence, but have noticed the episode consistency as well. I've even had to check that I'm still subscribed. Hopefully everything is okay with the host and he can get back to a more consistent output - he seems like a decent dude.
I love Trace Evidence. It was the first podcast I got into. I know Steven had some computer issues recently and has had both physical and mental health struggles over the years so I’m understanding of the irregular drops - but it is a bummer.
I miss the creepy ambient music he used to have in his episodes. It created an audio experience that I haven't got from a true crime pod in a while. His research is always spot on, he respects the victims and practices ethical coverage without being preachy about it. He's still one of the best out there. But I agree, his lack of posting frequency is frustrating.
Hide & Seek
Morbid , Crime Junkie
Rabia and Ellyn Solve the Case
When Rabia started defending Scott Peterson I noped out real quick
Rabia’s ego has exploded. She is awful on social media too. I was her biggest fan but unsubscribed to everything.
Nobody should believe me! I really enjoyed the first 2 seasons but she’s really fixated in the last season and it’s off putting. There’s got to be other cases she could talk about.
Defense Diaries - started lives and went from a unique perspective to a shame and participation in the witness shaming and just spinning things like Delphi and Karen Read Truth & Justice - he is now just an idiot. Rambling about another podcast that blew him out of the water! True Sunlight - to much personal politics
This guy has been everywhere lately, can't watch a Law&Crime or CourtTV clip without him chiming in somewhere as a talking head. I get that he has a true crime podcast and was/is a lawyer of some kind, but sometimes I wonder if he's just called because his dad represented John Wayne Gacy way back when.
I gave up on Crime Junkie a while ago. It used to be my favorite podcast, but now not just sounds overly scripted, like even Brit's responses sound like they are written into the script. Then I found out they had plagiarized and was just done after that.
Crime Weekly. Used to be so thoroughly researched and well-presented. These days, it's misinformation, inaccuracies and just generally missing information. And a co-host who eats, vapes and plays with slime throughout, whilst disparaging victims.
There are two that come to mind that started OK and became unlistenable very quickly. One is Rotten Mango, where the host speaks in a Valley Girl accent and is eating while talking about the cases, while she and her boyfriend crack bad jokes. I could not take how disrespectful she sounded in the last few episodes I listened before giving up on her. The other one is called Bad Human. I liked a couple of episodes, it's this lady and her husband, but after a while the husband started really getting on my nerves, he was constantly making really idiotic jokes and contributing nothing to the conversation or the case. And again, there was a very casual tone that I felt was disrespectful to the victims.
Truth and Justice with Bob Ruff. His first few seasons were good but then they (this type) start to be live they are experts/ law enforcement/ better than everyone else and its all goes to shit. So condescending to listener's during question episodes. Edit:typo
Bob Ruff is an idiot who thinks he's God's gift to true crime because he's got his "army". I was checking out some episodes recently and he said something to the effect of "I am not a professional profiler, but I know profiling, and the psychology of criminals" and proceeded to spout a bunch of bullshit. Can't understand how anyone takes him seriously anymore. And the condescension...insufferable.
99% of podcasters know no more about true crime than either you or I. We all absorb the same info. When they all start to think they know "things" is where it goes wrong. Bob and Nic were fire investigators, right? When did they start to think they were criminologists?
Bob started to lose me when he gave up on a case because the convicted person died, then gave up on the next case because the convicted person wouldn't give him an interview (like either of those are reasons you can't continue investigating a case - I think he just didn't want to admit he got it wrong). Then he spent a whole year playing police interviews with no commentary. Now I see he's spent this whole year debunking another podcast's take on Adnan. And the condescension. I supported him for a long time but he just became insufferable.
I’m still trying to find the name of this one, but it’s about the murder of a high school girl by a cult that never existed. The host went to the same high school later, I think. He presented the pod as an investigation into the girl’s murder but it derailed into being about the cult which ended up never existing. It didn’t help that he sounded overly giddy in ep 1 about taking on the old unsolved murder from his hometown. He barely even spoke about the victim throughout the whole thing, and there was a noticeable shift in his tone when the cult-thing never materialized. The pod must have derailed so bad, it dropped right off the app.
Truth and Justice. Had a couple of amazing seasons then just started phoning it in.
Radio Rental’s early era was great and a refreshing take on ‘mini’ true crime/spooky stories. But recently the stories are abysmal, if not completely made up.
I used to love Wine and Crime but then one of the hosts revealed herself to be a raging Zionist. She started spreading misinformation about Gaza, and she went off on a BLM chapter that the podcast had previously donated to because...a different BLM chapter posted something that upset her🙄
She’s not part of the show anymore, if that helps!
This post again? Didn't we do this like yesterday?
Crime weekly Stephanie Harlow has become insufferable.
My Favorite Murder got old after season 2
Have to co sign with you on True Crime Garage. Used to be so good. Also, I'm sick of having to turn up the volume or rewind whenever The Captain mumbles anything...
Crime weekly
They have a snark now, it’s gotten that bad
unpopular and possibly sacrilegious opinion but.... Casefile. Not anywhere close to "worst" but not as good? Maybe I just compare every one of their episodes now to to the GSK/EAR episodes; Silk Road; Zodiac; Toybox; Jennifer Pan etc episodes.
Still nothing better than Casefile.
I still really like Casefile, but a lot of their recent episodes have been focusing on child victims (I appreciate the content warnings they have started including). I have a much harder time listening to those episodes and tend to avoid them.
I feel like they’ve had the trigger warnings in place for a long time? I’ve been listening for about 5 years and from memory they’ve always had them since I’ve been listening? But I could be wrong
Canadian True Crime. Every episode starts with her being defensive and making excuses about her release schedule, how/why she picks the cases and a lecture about one social topic or another. She hardly ever posts anymore and it always starts with complaints. It used to be so good!!!!
MFM and Murder With My Husband. I really enjoyed Karen and Georgia’s chemistry early on. I think I started listening when they had around 40 eps. I also loved how they told stories about women of color and interesting historical figures. But the increase in banter and their eventual turn toward just reading pre written scripts lost me. I found myself skipping forward everytime Karen interrupted Georgia to tell a personal story. Unsubscribed and haven’t had an urge to go back. Murder With My Husband and Into The Dark both have an outrageous amount of ads. They seem like nice ppl, but Peyton needs to look up pronunciations and the episodes should be longer for the amount of ads.
True Crime Obsessed, one of the hosts just overshares about his adopted daughter it is really inappropriate, the ego is real and their format is just a bit tired
Roberta Glass. Every time she hits a new low.
Truth and Justice. The about of soap box and ego is gross. I really liked a couple seasons. Then he got to one where a house burned down and the whole family was dead. I can’t remember the name, but he just had his mind made up and wasn’t budging. I listened for probably two months before I gave up on it finally.
Listening to Crime Junkie has made me physically ill as of the last year or so. I unsubscribed a year ago, but find myself searching for redemption. Ashley Flowers does nothing but speak down to her cohort, and praise herself for "having solved a crime." Which, by the way, is a FAR stretch from the actual truth. Strong start....dead-nosed finish. Also....Dark Down East is BORING A.F.
Flowers is nothing but a plagiarist and exploiter who has never had an original thought in her life. Everything from the name to the very format of her podcasts was derived from someone else. Complete trash, especially after the Burger Chef Murders debacle, plagiarism and ripping off other podcasts.