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The Knife: Off Record – 116 · The Knife: A True Crime Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to The Knife Off Record. I'm Patia Eton, I'm
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Hannah Smith.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Well, we have a great episode this week. We have
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: a conversation with the producer, writer, and then the new
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: host of The Girlfriend's Podcast, Anna Sinfield. It was so
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: delightful talking with Anna, it really was.
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  Speaker 1: I remember listening to The Girlfriend's first season of the
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  Speaker 1: show and just thinking like, oh, this is like a
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  Speaker 1: beautiful podcast. Yeah, I mean, the host obviously amazing, and
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  Speaker 1: Anna was producing behind the scenes, and you know, I
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  Speaker 1: appreciate what that role is and think it's so cool
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  Speaker 1: that she has since stepped into her new role as host.
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  Speaker 1: And thinking back about the first season, I think what
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  Speaker 1: really drew me into the show is the same thing
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: that draws me into The Girlfriend's Spotlight. And why I'm
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: looking forward to the next season of The Girlfriends so
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  Speaker 1: much is that there's just a real depth to their storytelling.
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  Speaker 1: In the first season, you get this unraveling of a
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  Speaker 1: true crime story but built into this person's like journey
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  Speaker 1: through life and relationships and hoping that this is the
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  Speaker 1: person that you know, this man is going to be
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  Speaker 1: her sort of happy ending in life.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, probably a lot of people listen to The Girlfriend, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: season one, but if they haven't, what's the sort of synapsis?
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  Speaker 1: So season one is a nine part series and the host,
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  Speaker 1: Carol Fisher, is dating this man, a Jewish doctor, and
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  Speaker 1: this is like the pride and joy of her life
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  Speaker 1: in the moment. Is he's successful and he's chivalrous, and
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: you know, there starts to of course, be some red
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  Speaker 1: flags along the way, but the main one is that
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  Speaker 1: his ex wife Gail is missing. At first, that's not
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: really a red flag, it's just this tragic thing that
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: happened to him. But as their relationship falls apart, she
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  Speaker 1: starts really unraveling Gail's disappearance, and she you know, reaches
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  Speaker 1: out to women who have been in this man's life
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  Speaker 1: and eventually they unravel the disappearance. I don't want to
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  Speaker 1: give anything away, but it's so good and it really
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  Speaker 1: draws you in because you become attached to her own
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  Speaker 1: sort of like healing journey of also having been traumatized
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  Speaker 1: by this person in her own way. Yes, and I
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  Speaker 1: just thought it was so well done and I love podcasts, right,
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  Speaker 1: So getting to talk to producers, yeah, so you need
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  Speaker 1: to talk to other producers, like those are the interviews.
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  Speaker 1: I could just keep people on for hours asking them questions.
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  Speaker 1: But it was a really interesting conversation about sort of
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  Speaker 1: both creative choices and storytelling. When you're also reporting on
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  Speaker 1: something that is you know, you have to be very careful.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, Yeah, it was great chatting with Anna, you know,
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  Speaker 2: the girlfriends.
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  Speaker 1: You know.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know if listeners find this interesting. I as
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  Speaker 2: a producer found this really interesting. That they have this
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  Speaker 2: format where they do long seasons of a show, like
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  Speaker 2: the nine episodes, and then so they have season three
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  Speaker 2: coming out. Actually by the time this is out, it
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  Speaker 2: will have just come out. Can't wait to listen to it.
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  Speaker 2: But then they have these standalone episodes called Spotlight that
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  Speaker 2: are also on the feed, and it's great that they
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  Speaker 2: have these long seasons of stories as well as these
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  Speaker 2: shorter stories. So we're going to get to that interview
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  Speaker 2: with Anna very shortly, but you know, I have just
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  Speaker 2: really been reading a lot about this case this week,
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  Speaker 2: so I thought I wanted to give you an update
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  Speaker 2: on it and talk about it, and then we'll get
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  Speaker 2: to Anna's interview, and then at the end, Patia has
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  Speaker 2: some great recommendations I do. Okay. So this case has
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  Speaker 2: been talked about on some podcasts. I think there was
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  Speaker 2: a Discovery Idea episode about it, which I did not watch.
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  Speaker 2: But one of the things, the obvious things that draws
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  Speaker 2: me to it is that it takes place in Oklahoma.
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  Speaker 2: I'm from Tulsa, so I got to love these Oklahoma stories.
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  Speaker 2: But this is actually about Brenda Evers Andrew, who is
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  Speaker 2: the only woman on death row in Oklahoma and has
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  Speaker 2: been on death row since two thousand and four. Okay,
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  Speaker 2: there was a really interesting Supreme Court opinion that relates
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  Speaker 2: to her case that just happened this year in January
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  Speaker 2: and potentially might change the outcome of her case, which
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  Speaker 2: is why I want to talk about it today. But
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  Speaker 2: before we get into that, let me tell you refresh
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  Speaker 2: you about this story and tell you what happened.
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  Speaker 3: So.
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  Speaker 2: Brenda Evers Andrew grew up in Enod, Oklahoma. It's about
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  Speaker 2: like an hour and a half two hours north of
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  Speaker 2: Oklahoma City. It's a city of like fifty thousand people.
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  Speaker 2: She was raised in this middle class family that was
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  Speaker 2: devoutly Christian. Her friends and family say that she was
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  Speaker 2: just like always a really good kid, did well in school,
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  Speaker 2: went to church, and when she was twenty one, she
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  Speaker 2: married Rob Andrew. They had two children together. They moved
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  Speaker 2: to Texas for a bit, but then back to Oklahoma
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  Speaker 2: for Rob's work. He was an advertising executive and pretty
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  Speaker 2: successful in his career. They were both involved in church,
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  Speaker 2: but by two thousand and one, seventeen years into their marriage,
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  Speaker 2: their marriage was basically done. It was totally falling apart.
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  Speaker 2: And what would come to light later with like interviews
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: with their family and community members, is that this was
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  Speaker 2: not a new thing. Their whole marriage basically had been
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: pretty rocky and they had not gotten divorced at that time.
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  Speaker 2: I think because of religious reasons, they sort of didn't
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  Speaker 2: believe in divorce. But eventually by two thousand and one,
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  Speaker 2: it was like, Okay, this is not working, we have
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  Speaker 2: to get a divorce. And one of the main issues
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  Speaker 2: really released that has been written about a lot, is
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  Speaker 2: that Brenda had multiple affairs. In two thousand and one,
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  Speaker 2: Brenda was working as a Sunday school teacher for their church,
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  Speaker 2: and so was this man named James Patt And that
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  Speaker 2: is I think how Brenda and James met, and they
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  Speaker 2: were both asked to step down and quit being Sunday
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  Speaker 2: school teachers because it sort of came out that they
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  Speaker 2: were having this affair. Makes sense, yeah, but then there's
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  Speaker 2: also on top of that, like the folks at church
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  Speaker 2: they didn't really like how Brenda dressed. They thought she
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  Speaker 2: showed a little too much cleavage and she was a
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  Speaker 2: little too flirty. So you know, people were pretty quick
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  Speaker 2: to say that to the press and to the police later.
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  Speaker 2: But regardless, Rob, basically I don't know the exact timeline
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  Speaker 2: of when he moved out, but it's noted that in
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  Speaker 2: October of two thousand and one, Rob, Brenda's husband, he
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  Speaker 2: went to get into his car and he noticed that
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  Speaker 2: there was like a lot of liquid under it, so
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  Speaker 2: he was like, this is weird. He got in immediately,
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  Speaker 2: went to a close by repair shop and just had
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  Speaker 2: them check it out. The guy working at the shop,
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  Speaker 2: suppose Elle, was horrified and said, this is so weird.
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  Speaker 2: It looks like someone has literally cut your brakes. And
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  Speaker 2: then he got three phone calls from an unknown number
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  Speaker 2: saying there's been an emergency, like you have to come
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  Speaker 2: to the hospital in Norman immediately, which was like two
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  Speaker 2: hours south. Your kids are you know, your wife is
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: in the hospital. None of that was true, and he
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: started to put the pieces together that he believed whoever
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  Speaker 2: cut his brakes was also responsible for calling him, hoping
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  Speaker 2: that he would quickly jump in his car, get on
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  Speaker 2: the freeway going eighty miles an hour, and then his
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  Speaker 2: brakes would go out. So he actually told people in
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  Speaker 2: his life as well as police, that he believed that
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  Speaker 2: Brenda and James were trying to.
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  Speaker 1: Kill him because he knew about the affair.
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  Speaker 2: He had found out about the affair. Okay, yeah, So
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  Speaker 2: on October third, two thousand and one, Brenda filed for divorce.
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  Speaker 2: They start living separately. Rob moves out of the family
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  Speaker 2: home and is, you know, worried about his future in
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  Speaker 2: his life. On November twentieth, two thousand and one, he
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  Speaker 2: goes to pick up their kids from their home. It's
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  Speaker 2: like Thanksgiving time. A lot of people in the neighborhood
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  Speaker 2: are away and the kids are in the house. Brenda
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  Speaker 2: said that she wanted him to look at the pilot light,
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  Speaker 2: and so they go into the garage. The garage doors
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  Speaker 2: open and at that time Rob was shot two times
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  Speaker 2: with a sixteen gaged shotgun and died from the gunshot.
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  Speaker 2: W and so it seems like he was lured there potentially. Potentially. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: Brenda was also shot in the upper left arm, but
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  Speaker 2: with a different type of weapon, a twenty two caliber gunshot.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know a lot about guns, not that interested
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  Speaker 2: in learning that much about them, but it was clear
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  Speaker 2: that the wounds to rob were fatal. Sort of seemed
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  Speaker 2: like intentionally, and with Brenda it seemed like a not
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  Speaker 2: that big of a deal. Why are you know, you're
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  Speaker 2: a switching guns in the moment? Yeah, and you know,
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  Speaker 2: so Brenda called nine one one and said, you know
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  Speaker 2: that two masked men had attacked the home. At first,
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  Speaker 2: everyone is, you know, horrified and worried for her. She
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  Speaker 2: goes into the hospital, she recovers, but as the investigation continues,
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  Speaker 2: the two masked men aspect just doesn't make any sense.
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  Speaker 2: It's also a really safe neighborhood. No one else has
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  Speaker 2: seen anyone, you know, running around or no homes had
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  Speaker 2: been broken into. Nothing was stolen from Brenda's house. But
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  Speaker 2: Brenda's neighbors were out of town and they came back
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  Speaker 2: after this happened. They cut their Thanksgiving trip short and
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  Speaker 2: when they went in their home, they could tell that
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  Speaker 2: someone had been inside the house and they even found
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  Speaker 2: like a a shotgun casing on the floor, so they
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  Speaker 2: called the police, and the police started to put together
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  Speaker 2: this idea that the shooter had probably been inside the
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  Speaker 2: neighbor's home because the way the homes were situated, it
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  Speaker 2: was like a clear vantage point. But the thing was
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  Speaker 2: that Brenda had a key to the house and had
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  Speaker 2: been watching the home, getting their mail, watering the plants
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  Speaker 2: while they were gone. So as they start putting the
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  Speaker 2: pieces together, they have this theory that they believe James
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  Speaker 2: Patt was in the home, in the neighbor's house with
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  Speaker 2: a shotgun, and he becomes a suspect. And also they
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  Speaker 2: find out through looking at their bank accounts that Brenda
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  Speaker 2: had right around this time, transferred thirty five thousand dollars
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  Speaker 2: out of a shared account she had with Rob into
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: her account prior to the shooting. I think right after
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  Speaker 2: right after, okay, which is like whatever, that's not suspicious
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  Speaker 2: on its own, like maybe you move money around. But
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  Speaker 2: whenever Rob's funeral comes, Brenda and the kids are not there.
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  Speaker 2: They don't show up, no one knows where they are.
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  Speaker 2: Hours go by, and eventually the police perform a wellness
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  Speaker 2: check and they're just gone, and so is one of
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: their vehicles. And then basically for three months after that,
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  Speaker 2: Brenda and the two kids and James were all missing
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  Speaker 2: and it looked like they fled. Pretty strange, right. Eventually
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  Speaker 2: they figure out that they're in Mexico, they freeze their
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: bank account so they are out of money and they
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: have to come back into the US, and they get
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: them when they are coming back into Texas and arrests
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: both of them. James Pavott's daughter actually ends up notifying
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: law enforcement and working with them to try to find them,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: because she had borrowed her dad's car after this and
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: noticed that there was a bullet on the like on
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: the ground and found this very suspicious. And then he
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: left and he had said something to her like, I
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: think that Brenda and I might leave the country because
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: they think that we did this. So in two thousand
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  Speaker 2: and four, James Pavott's trial was first and he was
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  Speaker 2: convicted a first degree murder and given the death penalty,
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  Speaker 2: and then Brenda's trial was after and she was also
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: convicted a first degree murder and given the death penalty.
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  Speaker 1: They both went a trial. Neither one played right.
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  Speaker 2: Here's the thing. Brenda's been on death row in Oklahoma
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  Speaker 2: for two decades, well since two thousand and four, and
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  Speaker 2: she has maintained her innocence. She has appealed her case
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  Speaker 2: and has gone all the way up to the US
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  Speaker 2: Supreme Court. And the reason for this, Basically, the crux
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  Speaker 2: of her appeal is that the prosecution did not have
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  Speaker 2: enough evidence to convict her, and so they attacked her
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  Speaker 2: character and slept shamed her. And when you look at
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: what happened in the courtroom, it's pretty alarming. The prosecutors
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: used the term slut puppy and hohuchi to talk about her.
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  Speaker 2: What is a slut puppy? I don't even know. It
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  Speaker 2: makes me think of hushpuppy. I'm like a slut puppy.
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  Speaker 2: I've never heard of that. Horrible. This is two thousand
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: and one when this is happening, and they called multiple
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  Speaker 2: witnesses to the stand who were men in the community
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  Speaker 2: who were just there to testify about how she dressed
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  Speaker 2: and how she flirted with them and how they found
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: that inappropriate. They talked to about her relationships that had
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: nothing to do with this, that had happened twenty years prior.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: You know that she had slept with the next boyfriend.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: And in the closing argument, the prosecuting attorney he took
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: a suitcase and opened it up and pulled out like
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: thong underwear and brass from it and was holding it
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: in front of the jury's face and said, quote, the
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  Speaker 2: grieving widow packs this to go sleep in a hotel
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: room with her boyfriend. The grieving widow packs this and
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  Speaker 2: her appropriate active grief. A grieving widow doesn't pack her
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  Speaker 2: thong underwear and run off with her boyfriend.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it's like sadly unsurprising. As a woman. Your
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: marriage is not over the day your divorce is finalized.
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  Speaker 1: Your marriage, you know, your relationship usually ends well before that.
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  Speaker 1: And obviously the affairs that she had, you know, not great,
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  Speaker 1: but like certainly not evidence of murder.
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  Speaker 2: Well that's the thing, right, It's not a crime to
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: have an affair. It's not a crime to wear a
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: thong or to flirt. Someone could think that those are
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: not great things to do, to have an affair on
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: your partner, but it's certainly not something you would be
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  Speaker 2: sent to prison for. And that's a really clear line
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  Speaker 2: that should be drawn. They also painted her as a
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  Speaker 2: bad mother and tried to just totally rip apart in
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: her reputation and act like she was just this horrible person.
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  Speaker 2: But actually there are accounts that she was a gray mother,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: that she was very involved with her kids' lives, and
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: she was like a very good neighbor and community member.
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  Speaker 2: So anyway, in twenty twenty three, the tenth US Circuit
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Court of Appeal upheld her decision. But it was like
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: a two to one vote. So there were three judges
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  Speaker 2: looking at it, and one of them said, I think
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: this is a violation of her rights, but two of
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: them agreed. So then it went all the way to
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: the US Supreme Court and in January they issued an opinion,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: and it says, among other things, the prosecution elicited testimony
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: about Andrew's sexual partners reaching back two decades, about the
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: outfits she wore to dinner or during grocery runs, about
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: the underwear she packed for vacation, and about how often
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: she had sex in her car. And the prosecutors also
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: brought out a book during her original trial that she
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: had in her home called two hundred and three Ways
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: to Drive a Man Wild in Bed and hold this
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: up as if it were evidence that she had shot
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: and killed her husband. First of all, we don't know
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen. Basically, her case is going back
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: down to the Tenth Circuit Court and they're going to
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: have to decide what happens. There's possibility that she'll have
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: another trial, or it's possible that she'll just be re
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: sentenced with this information. But essentially the whole idea is
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: that the court decided that the focus on her sex
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: life influenced any realistic chance that the jury could really
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: truly give her a fair shot and understand her version
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: of events. Like, basically, the ruling just said that she
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: didn't really have a fair trial. That doesn't mean she's innocent,
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that she wasn't involved in this. We
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: don't know for sure because they focus so much on
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: her as a person, her as this sort of Jezebel
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: scarlet letter woman, that that is what she was judged on, seemingly.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: One of her attorneys, who's also a Cornell law professor, said,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: with this decision, the US Supreme Court has for the
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: first time signaled that prosecutors may not use and courts
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: may not admit prejudicial evidence attacking women's abilities as mothers
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: and their private sex lives without violating women's constitutional rights.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: And I think that feels like such a big moment
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: because there are so many cases throughout history. I mean
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: just thinking about Amanda Knox right, like where women have
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: been vilified because of their sexuality and that gets murky
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: and twisted and can end up giving them a guilty
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: verdict not based on evidence or facts at all.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like there's this hatred of women that can
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: be preying on and like used to convince someone that, well,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: what does it matter, Like we think she did it
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: and she's so awful, don't you instead of here's exactly
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: the reasons that we have to believe she was like
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: planning this out or knew it was going to happen,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: or instigated it with her partner. I'm curious did her
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: boyfriend did he ever turn on her? Did he ever
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: say she knew about this? Like what was his stance?
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: He was just like I had no knowledge of it.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: They both have always said that. I am not totally sure.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't look into his trial. I know that he
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: was convicted. There was a reporting about a letter that
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: he wrote or that was in his handwriting saying that
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: she had nothing to do with it. But I'm not
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: totally sure what happened with his case. Yeah, I mean
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: it's surprising and not surprising that would take this long
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: for that to be said about court room standards or
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, Like you cannot just
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: talk about the underwear that she wore, Like what is
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: the relevance? You cannot just be rate her character in
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: all of these other ways. You have to talk about
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: what happened. Yeah, totally and give everyone a fair chance.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I mean that's why I think like it feels, even
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: though it's sort of a dark story, this Supreme Court
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: ruling feels like a hopeful positive thing for cases going forward,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: at least to have this decision on record, to show like, yeah,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: it is unconstitutional to just sex shame someone in court
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: and then give them the death penalty because of that,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: this is someone's life. I'm amazed the death penalty exists.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: If you've we've gotten around before. Totally, I totally agree,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: should not exist. Should not exist. That's our stance of
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: the death penalty.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: That is, we're clear yeah about that, and we will
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: apologize for it. Okay, Well, well that's.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: A win for women, even though it's in the context
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: of this extremely dark case. Obviously someone was killed. That's terrible.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: But you know, a fair trial is important, like whether
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: or not someone is guilty. We have to set the
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: standard that everybody accused of something, charged with something. It's
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: a fair trial and it matters a lot.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it can be a slut and also not a murderer.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Go be a slut or a slut puppy, whatever you want.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: That's right. Well, let's get into this conversation with Anna Sinfield.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: Let's get into it. Hiannah, thanks so much for joining
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: us on the knife. Yeah, we're really excited.
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me. I'm not used
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: to being in the hot seat, so this is cool.
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, reversal for me.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: You're used to interviewing and now we're going to interview you.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll try to flip the script on you. Guys.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Well, we are such big fans of The Girlfriend's Podcast.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: We loved season one. If anyone hasn't listened, definitely go listen.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: It covers the murder of Gail Cats and it's the
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: story of how women came together to bring down one
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: ex boyfriend and seek justice for Gail. It was so good.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: It was followed up by season two, which is also
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: just excellent. We love it. And now there's a series
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: that dropped a couple of months ago called The Girlfriend's
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Spotlight and you're the host, which is so exciting, and
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: we want to get into all of this, but first
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: we kind of want to know a little bit about
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: how you got to be where you are. How did
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: you get into podcasting and true crime? Kind of lead
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: us up to what you were doing before you got
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: to The Girlfriends.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: Well, it was a bit of a strange journey that
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: I took to get into a podcast because I actually
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: started off working as a musician. I was a singer
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: for about nine years or something, and it was really fun.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: Used to do really cool things. I got flown out
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: to sing at like a weird wedding in Marrakesh in
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: the middle of a swimming pool, and I used to
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: play at a jazz bar three nights a week and
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: I had a really good time. I was on the
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: road a lot. I was like a blues and jazz
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: singer doing all of the standards. But also it started
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: to kind of grind on me a little bit. It's
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: a tough life. It's a tough hustle to make sure
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: you've got enough money to pay the bills, and the
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: work kind of started drying off. I started teaching singing,
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: and I was like, this sucks, So what can I
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: do that would be another use for my voice. I
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: remember when I was a kid driving to school in
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: the car with my dad, we had listened to the radio,
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: and I remember having this thought where I was like,
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: I either want to be in one of the bands
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: or I want to be the radio DJ. And I
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: kind of went down the band's route for a really
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: long time. And then when I was kind of leaving
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: that behind, I thought, I guess I'll try the other thing,
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: And so I went and studied radio. I had this
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: amazing year studying radio, and yeah, I went into it
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: thinking that I'd want to be on the mic, and
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: then actually what really hooked me was kind of helping
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: other people tell their stories and the artistry of that
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: of kind of helping someone gives me an interview, and
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: then I get to really decide how that's put across,
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: like what bits I give emphasis to, what certain things mean,
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: the context that it's delivered in the music, all of that,
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: and so I just like went down that route for
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: a really long time and had a great ride with it.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: I never thought that I'd end up in front of
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: the mic again. I genuinely had completely given up on
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: that dream.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: I hadn't thought about it.
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: And then, you know, a few projects later, I got
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: to work on some cool radio dramas.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: I did a lot of.
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: Like nature documentaries, and so I was recording on the
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: top of mountains and cool things like that, and then
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: I did my first true crime project. Ended up doing
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: The Girlfriends where I was a bit on Mike just
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: naturally as the producer, and we got into the kind
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: of SERI now spotlight where we needed a host and
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: it was like, You're already kind of one of the Girlfriends.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: People know who you are. It felt the most natural
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: for me to step up into that.
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: But when I was asked, I was like, well, I
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: was completely mind blown by the suggestion that I'd get
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: back on Mike, even though that was the original goal.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: And so it's gone a bit three sixty, which is fun.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: That's awesome. Yeah.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: I met Hannah working on The Opportunist. Hannah's the lead
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: producer and host of that show. While I was working
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: on it, and created the show, and I came on
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: as a producer, and so you know, going from producer
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: to host, it is a journey. And I didn't have
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: the vocal experience that you have, so luckily I just
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: have Hannah's expertise at my disposal. But it's a really
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: exciting way to go from Like there's a lot of
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: say when you're producing, like how you bring someone's story
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: to life, but it's a whole other connection with your listenership.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: It's just really intangible, totally.
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think these days you have a lot
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: of people who end up in the prison and to
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: chair because they're influencers for other reasons. You know, they've
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: just got a lot of social media likes or followers
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: or whatever. Not to say they're not valid, but back
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: in the day, it used to be a natural journey
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: that someone would be a journalist or a producer and
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: they'd end up on the microphone. And that comes with
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: a lot of training that you're perhaps not aware that
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: you're having that makes you good at doing, say an interview,
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: you know. And I've worked with a lot of influencer
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: style hosts who are doing it for the first time
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: and being an interviewer is not a natural thing that
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: comes to them. But I wasn't so scared about that part,
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: the part where I'm having to talk to people, because
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: I've been doing it for years and years anyway as
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: a producer.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, you have such a
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: great voice for podcasting in your narrative style is really
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: natural and good, which is like such a joy to
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: listen to. I agree, Like I love listening to all
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: kinds of voices, but in a podcast series especially, I
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: love hearing a narrator who was deeply involve and making
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: the show because I think then they have all these
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: different insights and they're so invested in the people that
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: they're interviewing, in the story that they're telling, and it
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: can be such a powerful experience, as I'm sure you
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: know when you're working on a story and you know
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: you're spending so much time speaking with people and doing
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: interviews and patient. I talk a lot about how we
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: have like different experiences of a story that we're producing.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: It's like the first initial discovery of it. There's the
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: investigative part, the interviews, and then there's this whole other
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: experience of like putting it together and the choices that
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: you make editing it, and then the audience just gets
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: to have that sort of one experience of listening to
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: the final thing, right, But there's so much more that
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: goes into a story, or like, there's so many more
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: experiences that we have that don't come out in that
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: final piece, and so I'm curious. There's probably so many
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: of them. But I'm curious if you have any moments
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: that stand out to you, like from season one or
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: season two of your experience producing The Girlfriends, whatever it
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: is that is sort of memorable to you about those
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: first two seasons.
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: Oh my god, I mean all of it. It was
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: a really huge experience for me because although I'd made
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: this true crime show that also was number one in
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: the US before that that was called Stolen Hearts, and
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: so that was my first big.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: Success and that was really interesting.
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: But it was also a UK based story, so a
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: lot of the experiences didn't feel too different to me.
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: Being on the road a lot as a musician because
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: I used to drive around the UK all the time.
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: Driving down to Wales to do some interviews felt pretty
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: normal for that one. But coming to the US for
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: a reporting trip that felt so glamorous. Oh my god,
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: I've arrived. I'm in New York City, I'm in Times Square.
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: So as a personal just experience of doing that, that
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: was amazing, But when it comes to the actual kind
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: of like editorial content, meeting the women who ended up
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: being involved and spending time with them physically in the
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: States felt huge for me. You know, getting to sit
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: down with Elaine, the sister of Gaelcats, who is such
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: a formidable, amazing woman, and like everyone who listens to
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: the show is obsessed with a Lane because she's got
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: this incredible voice, and she's in charge of every room
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: she's in, as she should be. She has earned that place.
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: And to kind of go and try and interview her
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: and kind of naturally just be deferential to her power
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: was like something that really stayed with me. And trying
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: to like navigate that and the trust that they all
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: put in me, the kind of tears that a lot
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: of them shed around me felt those kind of moments
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: still stick with me. Is you know, I feel very
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: a lot of warmth towards all of those women, but
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: also its kind of strange sort of behind the scenes things,
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: you know, I had odd phone calls with people defending
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: Bob that never end up on tape. But you know,
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: I remember one point, I was at my parents' house
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: and I couldn't reschedule this phone call with somebody that
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: Bob knew, and I was like lying on my parents' sofa,
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: this place that should be sort of relaxing, you know.
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: My mom's pottering in the kitchen making cups of tea,
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: being like the typical English mother, and I'm having this
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: phone call with someone defending a murderer that went on
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: for two hours.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: You know, moments like that just kind of stay with you,
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: I think, almost, like especially because they don't end up
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: on tape. You know, like so much of the stuff
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: that I really remember, there's good reasons why I didn't
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: end up on tape. Some of it I legally couldn't
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: put on tape. But you end up becoming the like
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: guardian of the weird quirks that happen behind the scenes,
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: you know, and they stick with me totally.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for that conversation, were you not able to put
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: it on tape because this person didn't agree to that?
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: Or why did you not put that conversation in the podcast?
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was off the record.
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: They just were quite spiritual and had gone through a
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: whole journey of being I think manipulated into having the
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: views that they had, and they just really wanted to
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: persuade me to see the other side. But the other
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: side was the other side that a lot of people
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: who are if I can swear like arseholes had of
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: Gail because it was the whole kind of she was
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: such a difficult person, like, of course he did it. Basically, Wow,
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: obviously that's that's not a great argument against you know,
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: why someone should be put in prison for murder.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would say it's a terrible argument.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: It's not going to stand off in a court of
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: law quite rightly.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, those of the record conversations are like, as a producer,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm taking this copious notes or you know,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Hannah and I will immediately like just information download to
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: one another. But yeah, it's tough and sometimes I'm like,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: how much of my time am I giving this? Like
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: I want to know everything I need to know from
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: this person. But also when someone just starts trying to
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: persuade me of something, I'm like, okay, I know the
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: show that I'm making. Usually, and yeah, it's a balance too.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Completely Yeah, Yeah, sometimes it can be tough to like
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: draw those boundaries because it is like can become like
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: very all consuming and sort of as you had mentioned earlier, Anna,
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: like when you're working on a story, you get so
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: like deeply invested with the people that you're interviewing and
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: the people whose story it is and Patient I feel
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: the same way. Like we talk a lot about how
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: important it is when someone tells us their story. We
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: feel a huge responsibility to do justice to it, to
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: tell the best story we can, and to tell a
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: true and fair story, well research story. But we don't
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: want anyone coming back to us and saying like, oh god,
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: you did a horrible job. You totally watched my story, right,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: Like I want them to feel good about putting it
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: out to the world. But I feel, like you know,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: I have in the past, Patias in the past, like
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: we get very deeply involved with people that we're making
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: these stories with. Then do you have any thoughts about
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: that as far as like boundaries that you have to
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: make personally for yourself or how do you feel about it?
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: I think that's really complicated because we're asking for a
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: lot of people, and I really feel that and I
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: feel that. You know, obviously we can all kind of
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: wax lyrical about how grateful we feel, because of course
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: we feel grateful these people are providing us with a
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: job and allowing us to make art or stories or
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: however you like to define podcasts into something that hopefully
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: helps other people or at least entertains other people, or
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: whatever the purposes that you have. But I also think
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: you have to remember that it isn't an exchange, and
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: it really feels like most human interactions. You go, I
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: want you to give me loads of yourself, and in
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: order to do that, I shall give you loads of me,
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: And that's what the relationship building is. But there's some
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: situations where you're perhaps interviewing people who aren't good people,
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: Like if you start giving yourself in order to have
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: somebody who you perhaps don't trust or has committed a crime,
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: you have to be really cautious.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: Also, we deal.
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: With like very very fragile people, and I think you
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: have to be aware that the person they present themselves
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: to be at the start isn't necessarily the person they're
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: going to be throughout. And so it can be very
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: easy to kind of build a relationship based on this
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: one particular moment. But actually a lot of people who've experienced,
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: you know, abject trauma, their reaction to a story coming
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: out about them might be really explosive, and then suddenly
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: their feelings about you might really change, and you have
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: to prepare yourself for that and kind of sure yourself
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: up as you go along to make sure that actually
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: they don't suddenly feel betrayed when you do step back.
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: You know, if they suddenly explode and you've been all like,
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: you're my best friend, blah blah blah, and then suddenly
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: you're giving them loads of distance, that's really cruel. And
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: so it's important to maintain those boundaries all the way through.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: But it can be hard.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: It can be really hard. I mean I recently had
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: an experience that I hadn't had yet where we came
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: across this story and this woman I had connected with
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: about it, she seemed really excited about telling her story.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: It would have been the first time she'd ever told it,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: and it was a sexual assault that took place in
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: her home an intruder. And as I did like a
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: second sort of preliminary call with her, and her tone
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: sort of shifted about, like my intentions and the intentions
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: of the podcast, and you know, we always level with people,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: this is what our show is, this is what it's not,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: you know, and our goal, you know, is to tell
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: your story in a way that you're happy with it,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: but we never want to make it sound like it's
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: more than it is. And her whole demeanor shifted, and
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: then she said, but I still want to do the interview.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't think this is a
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: good bit. And it actually never had that happen before,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: but it felt like maybe this story, it would be
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: something our audience would be really interested to hear, but
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I don't think it would go smoothly after the fact.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: And it's good for you to kind of step in
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: and recognize that, and you know, maybe you have to
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: be the bad guy, you know in the first instance,
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: but actually it pays dividends to them later on, you know.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Yeah, So I want to talk about the
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: girlfriend's spotlight. Yeah, I'm so interested in it. It's exciting
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: to hear it on the feed and exciting that you
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: are the host. You know, we got to hear you,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: as you said a little bit in season one and
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: season two you were on Mic a little bit more,
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: and so we were already familiar with who you were,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: and now you're the host and it's such a cool series.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: I want to ask you about. You know, one of
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: the taglines is stories about women Winning. Yeah, I thought
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: that was really intriguing, and so I'd love for you
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: to tell us like how the girl Friend's Spotlight came
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: about as an idea and how you landed on that
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: sort of theme and tagline.
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: So, I mean the way Spotlight came about as a
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: concept was just that we had this feed and these
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: shows that had kind of a mastered a big audience
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: of supporters and you know, big community of people who
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: felt really invested in it, and naturally we wanted to
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: just kind of keep growing that we keep building it.
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: But the brutal producery reality is that it's really hard
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: to make narrative series and they take a lot of
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: time and you can't just put those out every single week,
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: and so we're trying to figure out ways that we
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: could keep the feed going in between those big narratives,
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: but also a way where we could tell stories that
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: couldn't be turned into narratives, because obviously we go through
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: so many stories in order to decide what those narratives
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: are going to be, and very often, ninety nine percent
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: of the time you're going, oh, this one couldn't really
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: sustain that amount of episodes. This one doesn't have enough characters.
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: Most of them are dead so they couldn't talk, or
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: something like that. There's so many different hurdles that mean
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: something wouldn't make a good limited series, but.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: They are really great stories.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: And so doing one off episodes allowed us to do that.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: So that's kind of how it ended up coming about.
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: And the women winning tagline was also because we were
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: trying to figure out like what the girlfriend's was and
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: I think, like the first two series, they were associated
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: with each other, right, you know. Series two was a
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: continuation of the first series. We didn't really have to
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: think about it too much for the second one, and
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: we were like, okay, so it's about kind of a
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: group of women getting together and seeking justice. That was
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: the first idea, and then that group of women thing
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: actually became quite tough.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: It's not always a group of women.
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: It means that you can't tell those kind of stories
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: of the single kind of warrior woman who's doing something
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: that often just like collectively does impact and benefit multiple women.
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: So there's a sort of coming together. There are kind
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: of greater good for the sisterhood or whatever, and so
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: we're like, that needs to be part of it. The
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: other thing that feels like it's really really important, perhaps
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: the most important thing to the girlfriends, is that there's
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: this like feeling within true crime that every time a
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: woman features, she gets murdered, and she's just like cast aside.
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: She's a loser in that story. You know, often they
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: should be the center of the story, it's all about them,
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: but they're the least known character. And I really tried
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: to flip that for the girlfriends. So I was like
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: really trying to get to know the women who'd been
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: victimized and make them the central characters of the story,
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: not Bob. And at the end of it, there needs
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: to be some kind of sense of actually, therefore, it's
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: not all bad to be a woman. You know, women
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: can exist in society and have terrible things happen to
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: them but still have like great friendships and gossip and
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: still put the bad guy away if that's what they're
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: trying to do, or still just ignore him entirely. You know,
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: there's so many other ends for women involved in bad
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: things than just murdered, and so that's what it became.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: I think that you've done a really great job at that.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: By the way, Like even from the I think it's
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: the pilot episode about Tracy, Yeah, there's just enough about
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: her assailant to like place him in her life and
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: in the story, and then it's just her and obviously
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: that's a theme that continues on. But you do a
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: great job. I actually noticed it immediately and was like,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: I love this, Oh great, same.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it really stands out and it's so refreshing when
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: listening to true crime. We love that. And then you
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: do it really well in The Girlfriend's Spotlight as well
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: all the episodes, Like there's some very dark episodes, some
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: darker than others, but there's a lot of positivity and
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: a lot of like like levity, levity, Yeah, and you
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: get really good to know these women in a cool way.
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think that reflects my experience of life
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: and friendships right with other women is my friends. We
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: all go through really bad things, some worse than others,
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: but most of the time it's dealt with in a
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: way that's like, you know, heartwarming. And you're there and
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: you can cry my shoulder all of this, but also
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: at some point, I'm just going to make you laugh
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: about something, you know, Like, at some point we're going
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: to poke fun at this thing.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: We're going to find the joy. We're going to ignore
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: it entirely.
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: And it's not all gloom. Trauma doesn't happen in this
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: one traumatic life, sad and depressing bubble, and that's the
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: only thing that you experience. I think often when you
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: talk to people about the worst things that have happened
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: to them, they'll go, oh, and then the weirdest thing happened,
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: Like you know, I found out my grandma died and
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: then like my cat just threw up, and it was
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: just like it punctured the moment, do you know what
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: I mean. It's just like and these little moments that
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: kind of like pierce a scene is actually what happens
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: in real life.
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: So I wanted to capture that in the Girlfriends.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you've successfully done that. I have noticed
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: it in all of the Spotlight episodes. Actually, I'm curious
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: how much interaction do you have with the people that
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: you're interviewing prior to recording.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: For Spotlight none from me.
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: That's all done with the producers who do like a
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: pre interview with them, write up kind of an interview,
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: brief doc and some questions, and then I review that.
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: So it's quite different from doing the narrative series, whereas, like,
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: obviously for that I would have spoken to people for
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: ages on the phone and video calls, and then I
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: fly out to be with them and spend often days
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: basically living with them. But this this way for Spotlight,
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: I have an hour and a half to bond meet
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: them for the first time, get them comfortable enough to
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: tell me about the worst thing that's ever happened to them,
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: and then like also kind of try and make them
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: not feel terrible at the end of it. Yeah, it's
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: a test of social skills more than anything.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you find that doing interviews remotely? I mean,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: obviously there's a difference in the amount of time you're
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: spending with someone at all, virtually or otherwise, But do
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: you find any challenges of like connecting with someone virtually
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: or everyone feels so used to that now sometimes I
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: wonder how much of a difference it's making.
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: It is harder, I think, yeah, because you don't have
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: the sort of body language that you have in person.
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: You also don't have the sort of niceties at the
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: bit before where it's like do you want a cup
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: of tea or known? Or do you have oat milk?
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: You know, these little things that it signifies of someone's personality.
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: And it also I think it's different with different people.
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: Like younger people are very used to talking like this
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: and so they can figure it out quite quickly. But
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: a lot of the time kind of older people they
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: can struggle with the technology and that really stresses them out.
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: And that's a stressful start and I kind of feel
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: crap for that. And then yeah, they kind of if
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: I'm looking a different direction or something, just because I'm listening,
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: that feels like a break of eye contact.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: So I'm conscious of that. I'd love to do all
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: my interviews in person. I much prefer that, But you know, that.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Would be the dream. It would be the yeah sidebar,
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: The idea of being able to offer someone that you
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: can even really interview a cup of tea is just
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: like so delightful to me. I'm like, oh my gosh, Like,
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: you know, you've really got that figured out over there.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: What do we have water or like like a lacoir
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: or whatever. Yeah, like, oh my god, that's tea. I'm like, wow,
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: offering someone a cup of tea just sounds like such
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: a great thing to do. It's like communal, it's comforting.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it. It's like a little hug at the
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: start and.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: The girlfriend spotlight. You have such a kind of wide
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: variety of topics and people that you speak with. I
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: mean it's really like pretty wide ranging, and I guess
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: you know, thinking about women winning as a theme really
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: allows you to talk with a lot of different kinds
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: of people. You know, you speak with lu Anne Patian
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: I both really loved that episode who escaped this polygamous
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: Kingston clan. And then like on a different side of
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: the spectrum, you have like a Russian activist from Pussy Riot,
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: and then you have like an investigator who's solving cold cases,
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: which is so cool and really I love that episode
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: and really speaks back to what you're talking about, like
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: one woman thriving can like have such a ripple effect
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: of helping other women. This If people haven't listened to it,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: they have to listen to the episode with Rose Brady
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: from the Baltimore County SVU who started to investigate this
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: backlog of cold cases, rape kits that this forensic pathologist
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: had just kept, you know which like yah him as well, right,
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: and she starts to solve these cases. Really incredible, But
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: you know, how do you think about what types of
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: stories do you want to tell because they are so
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: really different?
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean I was conscious, and the whole team
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: was conscious that we didn't want to just stick in
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: true crime the whole time, or for it to be
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: one brand of true crime.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: I think it'd be very easy.
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: For every episode or series of The Girlfriends to be
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: some sort of domestic violence case, because that's what we
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: kind of started out exploring, and you know, like a
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: bad husband or a bad boyfriend. And I think that
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: also feels if we ended up just doing that but
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: always trying to put some sort of like positive spin
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: or levity within, that would also still be being reductive
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: to what the experiences are. You know, women come in
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: all shapes and sizes, with all kinds of experiences, so.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: I want to cover it.
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: I also don't personally just want to sit in really
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: sad stories the whole time. So one's like when we
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: had June Millington, the guitarist from the like you know,
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: first all women rock band in the US.
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: That's like a rock star.
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: You know, she was just a rock star and like, yeah,
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: of course she's experienced misogyny on her rise in rock
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: and it was tough.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: She also is just a rock star who has a
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: really cool story.
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: And I want to have those on the feed as well,
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: because I mean, it's just it's fun, isn't there. Those
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: are great stories and they should be told. And that
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: is an example of a woman winning, So why not.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think the girlfriends and Spotlight, it's
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: a great example and in something worth striving for. On
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: the Knife is like it falls within this true crime genre,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: but you feel good about having listened to it.
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: That's great to hear.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: You don't feel icky, right, feel Yeah?
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: I love to not give the ick. That's like top goal. Yeah,
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: so thank you for that.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: No ick. How is your audience for responded to Spotlight
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: and yeah, this sort of change in format pretty well.
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a lot of change for people to adjust to.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: But I haven't had any hate mail, so that's been wonderful.
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: It's only been positive.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: After the Nadia episode from Pussy Riot, somebody messaged me saying,
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: I've been thinking about Nadia.
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: It was so nice to hear her voice.
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: I was worried about her because that is one of
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: those stories, the pussy Riot story, that kind of has
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: lived in a lot of our minds, you know, like
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: what's going on there, what happened, and people have been
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: I was obviously personally very worried taking over as host
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: because Carol's so amazing and everyone loves Carol as they should,
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: and taking over that role having been the sidekick the
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: whole time, I thought people wouldn't like that, But actually
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: people have been really lovely and embraced me, and I'm
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: interested to see how they kind of embrace me or
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: cope with the idea of a new narrative series as well,
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: because that's when it will feel like we're really departing
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: from those first two series. I think it will really
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: feel like we're doing something new, and I'm hosting.
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: That as well.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: It's well deserved. You're doing such a great job and
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: it's a great show, and I want to hear a
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: little bit more about this narrative series that you have upcoming.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: But just for clarity, so is Spotlight over will Spotlight
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: continue to come out weekly in between the narrative seasons.
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so, I mean Spotlight is in perpetuity at the moment.
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: So the way it's working at the moment, eight of
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: the Spotlight episodes have already come out. There's a short pause,
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: depends when you put this out, but there's a short pause,
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: and then Gelhouse Lawyer, our next narrative series is going
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: to come out on July fourteenth, and then we have
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: another narrative series coming out straight after that, just to
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: kind of really indulge the listeners, and then more Spotlight
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: and from then on we're hoping to have the pattern
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: of kind of eight Spotlight episodes a narrative, eight Spotlight
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: episodes a narrative and hopefully do that forever and ever
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: and ever. Please iHeart.
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: Are you listening? I heart they are? Yeah, thank you
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: so much, Katrina. Yeah, well cool, I mean I love that.
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: I love that format, and I also love producers and
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: you know, makers of podcasts spreading the word about like, yeah,
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: it's really it takes so much work to make these
• 48:25
  Speaker 5: long seasons of his show, and Patien I know that well.
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: And it's also great to just like make content and
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: put it out and be able to tell these smaller
• 48:34
  Speaker 5: stories and continue making just one of the reasons why
• 48:37
  Speaker 5: we started the Knife because we just we want to
• 48:40
  Speaker 5: make podcasts. We want to connect with people and put
• 48:42
  Speaker 5: something out regularly. Tell us about the new series, The
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: Girlfriend's Jail House Lawyer, Like, what can you tease about
• 48:49
  Speaker 5: what we can expect from this new series.
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: Well, The Girlfriend's Jaehouse Lawyer is going to feel.
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: Very different from what people have already heard on the feed,
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: and I'm really excited about that because I like every
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: series to be some sort of challenge. But this series
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: is about a woman who was convicted of murder, a
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: murder she says she didn't commit, but she did spend
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: twelve years behind bars for that. And while she is
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: behind bars because she was adamant she did not do this,
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: she was innocent. She trained herself up in law and
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: she became this sort of jailhouse lawyer figure. And at
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: first it was like, obviously, to help sort out her
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: own case. She was really trying to get herself out
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: of prison, but she also, along the way, which is
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: the sort of girlfriendsy bit, she was helping other women
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: with their cases and she even got some women out
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: of prison herself, which is so cool, or really helped
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: get them out of prison herself. And so that's the
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: sort of simple version of the story. Women convicted of
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: murder says she didn't do it, went to prison trying
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: to be a jailhouse lawyer, busted herself and some other
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: women out of prison.
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: Happy days.
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: But there's layers of kind of complicatedness that we explore
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: within that in regards to what it means to be
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: a villain or a victim, and actually kind of what
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: my role has been and your guy's role has been
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: as true crime reporters in deciding that and in reinforcing
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: ideas of what victims are and what villains are, what
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: the state has done to make you see a certain
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: person as a victim or a certain person as a villain,
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: and how murky it can be when sometimes the two overlap.
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: And so there's lots of sort of interesting analysis along
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: the way too, but tied up within like a very
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: juicy story forward podcast.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to hear it. Yeah, that sounds so good.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: I'm very excited, thank you.
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm really excited for it to go out, But
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: I'm also nervous because it does feel like a flip
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: in the fact that before we always had these very
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: clean cut characters who, you know, you've just got this
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: one bad guy, and you've got these women who kind
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: of really just haven't seemed to have done anything wrong.
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: And in this one, we're really asking people to go,
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: I know, she's still got a murder church, you know,
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: or like, I know she's still been accused of murder,
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: but what if it's more complicated than that. Like I'm
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: asking people to actually extend compassion to someone who would
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: be traditionally seen as the perpetrator of the crime. Augh,
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: and that's a woman at the center of the story.
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: I love that.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Hannah and I on the Knife and on our
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: previous show, like loved exploring this idea of like good
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: and bad, good and evil, whatever you want to call it,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: being in every one of us. And you never think
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: it's going to be you until it is. And like,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: when you're faced with these circumstances that you could have
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: never anticipated, you could think right now how you might react,
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: but that's usually not the case.
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, Yeah, And that's what That's what Kelly, the central character, says.
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: She's like I ask her at one point in the
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: first episode, I say, how important is it to you
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: that the audience believes you, that they believe that you're
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: innocent because everyone's jury, you know, And she's like, you
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: know that no one can say what they'd do if
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: they were put in a situation, you know, at any
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: one given time, if you were put in the situations
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: I was, what can you do?
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: And it's true.
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: You know. The reason it's a wrestle for me at
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: points to tell the story that I'm telling in Jailhouse
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: Lawyer is because I've lived a.
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: Really good life.
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: I have, like so much, as much as I try
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: to be a great impartial, you know, journalist, someone on
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: the outside looking in the observer, it's like, that's not true.
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: It's like so much of what I see and what
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: I interpret, just like everybody else, is based on the
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: fact that I've lived certain life, and my life is
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: very far from the abuse that she's experienced, the drug
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: abuse that she's experienced, the homelessness that she was experiencing
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: at the time. So how can I judge because I'm
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: sure if I was in those situations, I'll be doing
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: desperate things.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well that makes me even more excited to hear it.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: I'm obviously already a huge fan, but can't wait.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love those kind of complex stories, and I
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: love that you're taking You're gonna sounds like going to
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: take us to a place where you explore that in
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: a thoughtful way. I think that's the best kind of
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: true crime. Like, that's true crime when it's really doing
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: its job. It's making us think about other people's experiences
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: and lives and like beyond ourselves and have some sort
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: of story. You know, the narrative really helps us get there.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: But to be able to stop and think about that,
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: what would that be Like? I don't have to go
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: through that myself in life to be able to really
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: stop and wonder about someone else's story and take Karen,
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: really think about it, and yeah, we're really excited from everything.
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: Good. Well, you have to let me know what you think.
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: As people who are often in the same position as.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: Me will listen with a cup of tea, Yes, please,
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: as I expect. It's always fun for me when I'm
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: listening to someone who's hosted a show I enjoy, and
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: then speaking with them, I'm like, oh, this is so cool.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: It doesn't get old for me. So thank you so much,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: really appreciate you taking this time. I know it's later
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: over there. Yes, thank you so much, Anna.
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much. It was so lovely to do
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: the exact same thing back at you, hear your guys
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: voices and meetium kind of in the flesh on a
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: laptop screen.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: And I was also thinking, you know, earlier for us,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: it would be so glamorous if we were ever in
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: the UK doing something. I'm oh wow, that would be
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: whoa yeah, I mean over the moon.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: Get to go to Europe to record something, Yeah to
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: your bucket list.
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, but come on over to Europe and I
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: will take you for some like glamorous cocktails or something,
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: and then it can really reinforce that image.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, I'm going to start my story search over
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: there right now.
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: One last fun thing I want to ask, you know,
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: are you listening to anything right now? Do you have
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: any kind of recommendation for our listeners. It could be
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: true crime or not. It could be podcast, It could
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: be a great documentary you just watched. It doesn't have
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: to be favorite of all time. Is there anything that
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: like you're thinking about and loving right now?
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: Got I was actually asked this question on a podcast
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: like two days ago, and I gave the worst answer
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: because I'm you know, when you're so deep. I'm sure
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: you guys experienced this, when you're like so deep in
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: the hard bit of making a show and everything's so
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: heavy and you're just like tired, and the idea of
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: listening to something that is like relevant to the work
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: you do, okay, true crime or like serious or documentary or.
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: Whatever, it's just farting up.
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: So I've been going back into the normal gossip archives
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: and just been gossiping.
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: Just gossip, gossip, gossip.
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: I'm on the staremaster gossip, I'm walking with dog gossip.
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: I'm not doing anything serious at the moment. So yeah,
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: I don't have a good answer for you. I'm afraid
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: just gossip.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: That's a great pick. Actually, an associate producer we worked
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: with previously, she recommended that show to us. It was
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: the first time I had heard it. This is years ago,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: and it's awesome.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: It's great. Yeah, it's such a fun show.
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: It's so good. That's a cup of tea of a show. Yeah,
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: that's a warm cup of tea.
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Well awesome, Thank you so much, thank you.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much Anna for joining us in the podcast.
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: That was such a fun interview. I know, like to
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: stay the obvious.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: We love podcasts, but getting to speak with someone and
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: I've been listening to their voice as the host, I'm
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: always like, oh, that's so cool.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: It is so cool. Yeah. I always love to talk
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: to a fellow podcaster and hear what they're thinking about,
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: especially someone working in true crime. So it's great to
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: hear Anna's perspective. Can't wait for season three. Yes, and
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: I actually have two recommendations today. Oh yay.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: One's a podcast. One's a documentary. Okay, so the podcast Trek. Okay,
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna start with a story, okay.
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: The story is when these fires were happening in California
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: earlier this year in January, I could see the policies
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: fire from my living room. We were that close to it,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: and we left. We went to Las Vegas because we
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: were concerned about the air quality. We have a toddler
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: and we had lots of work to do, so we're like, okay,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: hotel rooms in southern California in that moment very expensive.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: Let's just go to Las Vegas. They're cheap, and we
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: get a hotel room there. My husband was on calls
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: all day. It's a small room, and so I'm like, okay,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: I have to take my daughter somewhere to entertain her.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: So I'm driving around to go to the park. It's
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: really cold. She's a California girl. She's not excited about
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: the fact that it's cold. She doesn't want to wear
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: a jacket. It feels like restrictive. So, oh my God.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: To find somewhere so she can run around. So we
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: go to the kids museum. She rips through the kids museum.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: She's still got energy. I'm like, what do we do.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: I see this mall across the street with like a
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: good Will in it, and I'm like, wow, I love
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: thrift shops.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: Let's go there.
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Great way to spend an afternoon. Great way to spend
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: an afternoon. She is so uncooperative, and I'm like, well,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: let's just get out here. I'm just gonna let her
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: run around this mall. We then go into the mall
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: so she can just run.
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what she does.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: And then as I pull her off, this door it
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: starts opening, so I go in and then I realize
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: it's in like an aquarium type situation. So I'm like, okay,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: let's just get two tickets to whatever this is. I'm
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: not putting a lot of thought into this. This place
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: is called SeaQuest, and I'll start the story with I'm
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: not glad I gave them my money, but i have
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: to talk about this.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: It was nuts.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: We get our tickets, which involves tokens, and I'm like, well,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: what are these tokens for? Is like food for the animals.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, okay, okay, so is it a zoo?
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: Is an aquarium you feed the animals? Like, what's going
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: on here? So the first little exhibit is these otters.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: They look like wasels, but they go in the water.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: I think they were like small otters.
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: And the wall that these I'm going somewhere with this
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: these otters are behind is not that big. And I
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: turned to the guy like, you could reach your hand
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: over it kind of yeah, because they can kind of
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: stand up okay, quite long. And so they know that
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: we have these tokens. They're waiting the otters yeah, and
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: so they're kind of like food. They want the food,
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: and I realized we're the first people in here. These
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: animals are hungry, and so I'm like okay, and I
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: give them the food or whatever, and this kind of
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: like apathetic employee.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: I ask him.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: I go, it looks like they can kind of get
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: out of there, like they're jumping and climbing really hide,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: and he goes, they get out all the time.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh my god, what are running around
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: the mall? Yeah?
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: I don't.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: I'm just yeah, that's happening. Yeah.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: And so I just pick up my kid and I'm like,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: We're going to the next exhibit.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: And so it's iguanas. Okay, okay. I'm like, are these
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: typical animals for an aquarium? I thought this is thought
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: it would be fish. It's a great question. Same here.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: So I'm like, well, iguanas. You know, I'm picturing like
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: a very still animal. I don't picture iguanas like, you know,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: doing a lot. I picture them sunbathing. So I also
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: don't picture myself next to them. So we go into
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: this door. It's like, no employee necessary for entry, and
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, why would there be. I have my
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: kid in my arms and I have food in my
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: left hand. Open the door. These iguanas. I've never seen
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: an animal move so quickly.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, I was rushed by two iguanas for this
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: food and I'm throwing the food. I'm trying to run
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: back out of there, my kids holding me, going Mama, no. Anyway,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: So I had this very strange, bombarded, very strange experience
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: at this place called Sequest that I wouldn't do it again.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, Now I feel so sad for the animals. It
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: was truly sad. Okay.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: So I was listening to this podcast this is my wreck.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: It's called big Time a Good Time in Apple podcast,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: and it is true crime, but not necessarily like crime.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: The way we normally think about it. Okay.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: And there's a two part episode about a shark, miss Helen,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: that goes missing from an aquarium in Texas.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: And the second part of this two part series is
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: about the owner of that aquarium and he owns SeaQuest. Wow,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: or it did, and it is no longer involved because
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: of things they'll get into in the show. But I
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: was like, Sequest, Sequest, I've heard of Sequest. Yeah, it's
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: like it's everything I thought it was. Wow, Okay, weird
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: and questionable.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Well I'm going to listen to it.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but big Time is great, and I really recommend it.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: And that's my podcast wreck.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: My other wreck is a documentary, and I think you'll
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: love this or you'll be like, I've already watched this
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: ten times Netflix. The Twister Caught in the Storm The Twister,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: like the movie, it's a documentary about a massive tornado
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: in twenty eleven in Joplin, Missouri.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: Okay, naturally, disaster didn't have to watch the documentary because
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: I went there after this happened and helped. Oh okay,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: well there you go. But yeah, no, I mean I
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: would be interested in the documentary. Tell me about it. Yeah,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: it was.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: They follow people who were just going about their life
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: that day, Like there's a kid working on a froyo shop.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: There were kids graduating from their high school graduation and
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: that ceremony, and you know, the whole is just obliterated
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: by this tornado. And there's, you know, one really terrifying
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: moment where I mean, there's so many but apparently you
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: just know about tornadoes. If you live in tornado country,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: you probably know that. But these people were caught in it,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: and they saw blue skies and they were yelling to
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: the other people around them who were maybe less familiar,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: stay down, stay down because they were in.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: The eye of the tornado.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so they could see up and see blue skies,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: but they knew they were still in it. They were
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: just in the center.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, and they survived to tell about this, talk
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: about it. Mm hmm. That's good. Yeah, wow, yeah, No,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: I will definitely watch this.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: I yeah, not everyone survives, but yeah, it was a
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: great documentary. And you know, these were kids at the
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: time that they were interviewing, and now they're adults reflecting
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: on it and it's just stuck with them.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: Was it a recent documentary, Yeah, I.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Think it's twenty twenty five. Okay, yeah, twenty twenty five documentary.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I remember that tornado because that was a
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of tornadoes, but sometimes it's
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: a particularly bad one or if it especially if it
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: touches down in an area where there's a lot of
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: homes and what not destruction. So that was a bad one.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: And I went with some people and did like some
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: food delivery kind of volunteering after it happened, because I
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: was living in Tulsa at the time, which is pretty
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: close to Joplin actually, but I remember we drove through
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: some of the neighborhoods where it had you know, touched
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: down and just taken out a bunch of houses and stuff,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: and it was just wild how you couldn't recognize, like
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: you didn't know what street it was or what address,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: like people sort of had to figure out even what
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: their house was because it was so just stripped everything,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: you know, kind of destroyed.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember there's a moment about that in the
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: documentary where they're trying to get home but there's all
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: the landmarks you're used to were gone, there's no more streets.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, everything has to bring in it. Yeah, I was.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's incredibly sad and there were lives lost
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: and Joplin really came together afterwards and that was a
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: nice thing to see, but obviously a a very sad thing.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well I'll watch it. Thanks for the recommendation. Yeah,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: and that's our episode. Thanks for listening. We'll see you
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: next week.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: If you have a story for us, we would love
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactlyrightmedia
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram at
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: the Knife podcast or a Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: This has been an Exactly Right production, hosted and produced
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: by me Hannah Smith and me Paysia Ety.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: is Christina Chamberlain. Our theme music is by Birds in
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: the Airport Artwork five vansa Lilac executive produced by Karen Kilgareff,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.