As someone who constantly watches crime shows, whether it is fictional or not, I have always found them interesting. Of course there is no way to play Law and Order: Special Victims Unit while I am driving or cleaning, since I need to be focused. With Crime Junkie, a podcast about mysterious murders or serial killers, I am able to clean while I listen to Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. A new episode is released every Monday, which gives their audience plenty of time to listen to older podcasts. Their categories are wanted, missing, murdered, conspiracy, serial killers, and updates of past episodes. 

Of course the topics of the podcast are intriguing, but even the simplistic set up of the script is just as nice, and adds to the experience. Flowers normally finds a case she wants to discuss, or one that is quite popular, and tells her co-star Prawat about what she has found. The first one I listened to was about this young woman, Amy Lynn Bradley, who mysteriously disappeared from a cruise ship, and police still have not found her. The simple explanation was that she fell overboard, but that was quickly debunked as the woman was a strong swimmer and the waters were actually quite shallow since they were to dock soon. Police think that she was actually taken and forced into the human trade, especially because a picture of her was taken years later, on the same island. She had the same distinctive tattoo and had aged a few years, but her family was still unable to locate her. The typical episode is around forty-five minutes, and the suspense of each story lingers way past their closing music.

I thought just listening to a crime podcast would bore me, especially as you are unable to see the collected evidence or visually follow along with the story. Flowers and Prawat have an instagram, @crimejunkiepodcast, and website, where they post pictures and links to crimes they have discussed. The visuals are quite helpful when you are playing an episode, as it gives the listener a way to completely understand each episode. Sometimes the pictures can be quite graphic, so Flowers or Prawat will warn listeners each time. 

As of right now, my favorite episodes are the ‘Women of Juarez’ and ‘Infamous: Alice Crimmins.’ Every podcast is carefully and thoroughly researched each time, making sure to inform the listeners to everything that was given to the public. Flowers and Prawat have a Patreon, where they publish even more podcast episodes for a fee of five to twenty dollars. That has been something I have not explored yet and hopefully will sometime in the future. Some episodes are quite dark and may not be suitable for those who are squeamish around such content. If you are interested in listening to Crime Junkie, you can find the podcast at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or their website.