The Crime Junkie Podcast was first released in December 2017 by Ashley Flowers who had a full-time job doing genetics research at the University of Notre Dame while also doing the podcast. In 2019 the podcast became her full-time job. The research in genetics has helped qualify her in this podcast about forensics and information about murders. The podcast is a weekly true crime talk show with Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat who talk about things such as murder, missing people, and serial killers. Flowers researches and writes the episodes while Prawat adds her opinion. Flowers also has other podcasts such as The Deck and The Deck Investigates. Flowers talks about the facts that she researched about the case but then Prawat will chime in with her opinion or questions on the case. They two have been lifelong friends and it shows in the episodes. This leads to my opinion that I really enjoy the podcast in a whole.
Crime Junkie and their podcast listeners have contributed time and money to family members of victims. Flowers has founded a new non-profit called Season of Justice which provides funding to help solve cold cases that they talk about on the podcast. This non-profit has given $145,000 in grants to assist with 25 cold cases. On the podcast, they talk about these cold cases and give their opinions on why the cases went cold.
Crime Junkie is one of the top-ranked true crime podcasts in the world with over one billion downloads and over 450 episodes, but is this ranking too high? In my opinion no but sometimes I would agree with why people say yes. While the podcast is good and shows how much research Flowers does to make this podcast as informative as possible Prawat is seen to have too much opinion and cuts Flowers off while she is saying important things about the cases. For a lot of people, this is their only bad review, and is mine as well the podcast in my opinion is very good.
I think that the episodes bring light to a lot of not-talked-about topics in crime podcasts. Because they talk about the facts and other crimes committed not just murders that have been solved but cases that do not get as much recognition because the podcasters do not have to talk about cases that are not solved. The podcast also has different subgroups that they talk about such as Serial Killers, Murdered, Wanted, Infamous, Mysterious Death Of, Survived, Missing, Conspiracy, and Precedent. These all bring light to different information about these victims. For example, precedent talks about cases that set new laws for certain cases like the Amber Alert started from a missing child’s case about Amber Hagerman.
Another crime podcast is Unsolved Murders: True Crime Storie. This podcast is all about unsolved murders where as Crime Junkie talks about all different types of crime. Also the Unsolved Murders: True Crime Stories Podcast talks about these things more as a joke and makes it funny for their podcast listeners all of the time. This compares to Crime Junkie because while they talk about their opinions they do not make it funny and they consider the family’s feelings by not joking. In my opinion, I think that if people were choosing between the two podcasts to listen to I would recommend Crime Junkie.
In conclusion, some people that review Crime Junkie think that they do not deserve the recognition because of many different reasons but mostly based on how they want more facts and not as much opinion from Prawat. But in my opinion, I think that the podcast is very good in bringing light to cases not talked about as much as others but also do agree that Prawat should stop interrupting Flowers to insert her opinion on things that do not matter. I also like how she inserts her opinion to ask questions about how I would if I were there and questions that are important to the storyline that Flowers might not have talked about if not brought up. Finally, I think that you should listen to this podcast not only because of the things I have said above but because of the easy access to it now. Most people have Spotify which this is on and Apple Podcasts, people who do not have Spotify most likely have some sort of Apple listening app.
