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Abstract

In scholarship around podcasts, the idea of intimacy recurs. This intimacy is seemingly innate to the format and could go some way to explaining the popularity of true crime podcasts, particularly for women as listeners. How do true crime podcasts create a sense of intimacy between hosts, interviewees, and listeners? This article discusses the findings of a close analytical listening of the true crime podcasts The Retrievals (2023), The Girlfriends (2023), The Crossbow Killer (2023), and Who Shat on the Floor at My Wedding? (2020).

Findings are grouped into four categories: confessional narration, soundwork and music, liveness and voice, and physical and emotional proximity. The research uncovers how podcasters use editing strategies such as quick dense montage, follow the process of the podcaster rather than traditional narrative arcs, and the physical experience of earbuds to encourage intimate and political listening. Via these components, true crime podcasts position women to respond emotionally to narratives of gender-based violence and encourage a political and caring attitude toward changing justice outcomes.

Keywords

True crime podcasts soundwork intimacy women’s voices

Introduction

The connection listeners feel with podcast hosts can make them seem like ‘sonic friends’. Scholarship on podcasts has a recurring focus on this friendly intimacy. This intimacy is seemingly innate to the format of podcasting, and could partially explain the popularity of true crime podcasts since the release of Sarah Koenig’s podcast Serial (2014). Research has demonstrated that true crime podcast audiences are mostly women (Boling and Hull, 2018), and therefore this intimate friendship established by the format targets this key group of listeners. True crime consumption has direct effects on social perceptions of justice, with research indicating audiences are less supportive of the justice system than the general public and are searching for female agency (Browder, 2006; Horeck, 2019).

While media research has examined podcasts as a broad category that extends and adapts techniques of radio broadcast, little has been written about the way true crime uses soundwork and narrative structure to establish emotional connections with female listeners. This article situates itself between feminist crime writing studies and media literature, and asks: How do true crime podcasts create a sense of intimacy between hosts, interviewees, and female listeners? My article relays the findings of a close analytical listening of The Retrievals, The Girlfriends, The Crossbow Killer, and Who Shat on the Floor at My Wedding? These geographically and topically diverse podcasts use similar strategies to nurture an intimate listening space.

Anglophone true crime as a genre spans hundreds of years (Murley, 2008), and criminologist Tanya Horeck explains that ‘its digital updating raises significant new questions about audience participation in social justice through online media networks and the wider capacity of those networks to address structures of power’ (2019: 7). Unlike earlier true crime forms, podcasting employs a conversational narrative in which hosts structure stories around their personal discoveries. The podcasts are edited and produced to give a sense of liveness and proximity, which is further augmented by use of music and silence. Listeners can engage with podcasts physically, through earbuds or via their vehicle’s Bluetooth, which draws connections to the recurring use of car interiors in the podcasts. True crime podcasts amplify the voices of women who have historically been omitted from broadcast. The intimacy created through these techniques extends beyond the narrative shared, to the way sound is shaped. I argue that the way that true crime podcasts create an intimate listening space is key to why women listen to them so faithfully, and why they form communities who push for new justice outcomes.

True crime and gender

Contemporary true crime is consumed by an audience of mostly women (Boling and Hull, 2018; Browder, 2006; Vicary and Fraley, 2010). Theories for this skew in audience gender include that women are more fearful of crime than men (Kort-Butler and Hartshorn, 2011), are discontented with the justice system’s treatment of women (Browder, 2006), and are seeking to insert agency in cultural narratives about violence against women (Horeck, 2019: 1). These podcasts are taking place within the fourth wave of feminism, which occurs through the internet and social media (Rodgers, 2023: 3052–3053). Audio storytelling relies on sound rather than visual stimuli (Boling, 2023: 994), which may suit a feminist narrative that seeks to distance itself from sensationalist use of women’s bodies through crime imagery. However, women’s voices are also gendered, emanating as they do from the bodies of their speakers and listened to in cultural contexts (Ehrick, 2022).

Voices of victims and their families allow the true crime podcast to become a platform for feminist narratives. ‘Speaking out’ gives victims and women opportunities to use their own stories to change social attitudes about and representations of violence against women (Serisier, 2018; Pâquet, 2021. In a survey of listener reviews on true crime podcasts, Graham and Stevenson (2022: 224) find that a third of the reviewers mention ethics of listening and ‘a proportion of the audience was prepared to tune out if they felt that their enjoyment of a podcast was at the expense of a victim or family member or that their engagement was contributing to a bigger social or ethical issue, such as the further marginalization of a minority group’. Boling’s (2023) interviews of domestic violence survivors finds that the participants listen to true crime podcasts to understand the motivations of abusers, feel connected to victims represented, and believe that the podcasts raised awareness by speaking out – rather than obscuring through silence – the realities of domestic violence. True crime podcasts have a role in enabling ‘political listening’ which ‘goes beyond calls for greater empowerment and amplification of marginalized voices. Rather, it focuses on the responsibility of citizens and institutions to hear and understand these voices’ (Rae, 2023: 183–184). In their eschewal of true crime podcasts they consider unethical, listeners are demonstrating this political listening and are engaging with an online community with similar values, understandings, and hopes for justice.

While the potential of political listening is a positive consequence of true crime podcasts focusing on experiences of victimisation, a frequently criticised element is Missing White Woman Syndrome, a label for how media frames white women as ‘ideal victims’ at the expense of other victims. A recent study of most-listened-to true crime podcasts has found that early episodes have white women as disproportionately ‘hypervisible’ victims (Rodgers, 2025: 115), but that there are positive signs through the emergence of new podcasts focusing on women from non-white backgrounds (Rodgers, 2025: 116–117; Slakoff et al., 2025). Change is occurring, albeit gradually, and some of this change is through the listening choices of audiences.

True crime podcasts use both the media and the genre to engage listeners, sometimes with tangible outcomes. Contemporary true crime has an element of ‘jurification’ in it, in which audiences are invited to adopt the perspective of a jury (Bruzzi, 2016). The host records their voice as they uncover evidence, like a private investigator, police detective, or lawyer (Marsh and Melville, 2009: 131; Pâquet, 2021). The lack of accompanying imagery directs the audiences to listen closely. While corresponding photographs are a familiar feature of paperback true crime stories that often sensationalise murder (Browder, 2006: 930), the emotion of podcast audiences is evoked aurally and through imagination (Vitis, 2023: 100).

This jurified connection induced in podcast listeners relies on their emotional responses. As Sara Ahmed suggests in The Cultural Politics of Emotions (2014: 70), the experience of another’s pain can be conjured through emotional connections between authors and their audiences. Ahmed argues that the emotion of fear reduces women to their physical bodies in private spaces. When authors elicit fear in female audiences, they may experience this physical reaction and the embodiment can allow them to empathise with victims of violence in the narratives they consume: ‘fear works to align bodies with and against others’ (72). Similarly, Probyn (2010) argues that when authors use the emotion of shame, it affects readers physically: ‘Writing is a corporeal activity. We work ideas through our bodies; we write through our bodies, hoping to get into the bodies of our readers’ (2010: 76). Podcasts can create this physical exchange of emotion via speaking and listening. The audio nature of true crime podcasts can make them less distressing for listeners because it removes the visual element (Boling, 2023: 1001).

In engaging a jurified audience, hosts often finish podcasts with an open-ended narrative. Podcasts regularly present scenes to give listeners a sense of momentum, but these may follow the hosts’ discoveries of information rather than the chronology of the crime being explored (Lindgren, 2021: 711–712). Unlike much true crime in other mediums, podcasts are frequently structured not to lead to a sense of closure (Yardley et al., 2019: 511; Pâquet, 2021) but to sustain interest (Bruzzi, 2016: 278). This lack of closure replicates the judicial idea of reasonable doubt (Ora, 2018). Some podcast listeners have successfully advocated for change in formal justice outcomes, such as the notable re-investigation, trial, and murder conviction of Chris Dawson following Hedley Thomas’ Australian podcast, The Teacher’s Pet (2018). This altered justice outcome continues a trajectory established by true crime podcasts. Horeck writes that Serial became successful because of its apparent support of ‘an active, involved listener with the potential to shape events’ (134), despite the adversarial nature of its storytelling. Horeck suggests that subsequent new media series give hope ‘that the current cultural moment may be ripe for a feminist rearticulation of the genre’ (176). This feminist rearticulation will occur via political listeners of mostly women who are ethically and emotionally engaged.

Intimacy in podcasts

Increasingly, true crime has been formatted audibly as podcast series. While podcasting has changed the medium of true crime storytelling, it continues the tradition begun in radio’s golden age, which established the engagement audiences felt to audio stories of crime (Battles and Keeler, 2022: 188). Radio broadcasting traditionally emphasised male voices, whereas podcasts offer new opportunities to people historically excluded from radio (Copeland, 2018: 214); however, discussions of vocal fry by women podcasters demonstrate that certain gendered ideas have continued to plague the new media (Llinares, 2018: 139). According to Sarah Murray, ‘podcasting sustains the traditions of sonic storytelling within the industrial contexts of radio, the discourses of contemporary tech culture, and the resounding cultural understanding of voice as intimate’ (2019: 313). As this argument suggests, a key element of podcasting is its evocation of intimacy.

Research on intimacy in podcasts is evolving and diverse. Scholars suggest that intimacy is a socially mediated concept (Clarke and Collin, 2023: 819; Euritt, 2023: 18). True crime podcast consumers feel intimacy in their consumption because they are a community who negotiate shared ideas of justice and equality. Rodgers came to this finding in her study of My Favourite Murder creators and listeners, who ‘co-creat[ed] culturally significant and coherent sets of ideas around women, victimization and true crime’ (2023: 3050). Intimate listening to true crime podcasts is a negotiation of the private and public spheres. Personal choices such as pausing, rewinding, or skipping podcasts can be monitored and analysed through data mining by distribution companies (Clarke and Collin, 2023: 821). Spinelli and Dann define intimacy in podcasting as, ‘efforts to create and reveal emotional experiences and personal connections in a comfortable space between interviewers and interview subjects, between the producers themselves, and between listeners, producers, and subjects [. . .through] openness, honesty, and authenticity’ (2019: 77). Researchers have written about intimacy in the following ways:

Confessional narration

Researchers posit that hosts and producers create intimacy through narration. The hosts’ personal storytelling that reflects on their processes, described as confessional journalism, is frequently pinpointed as central to podcasts’ intimacy (Vodanovic and Venkateswaran, 2023: 922–923). Lindgren argues that podcasts establish intimacy through editing and ‘journalistic self-reflexivity’ different from newspaper reporting: ‘The personal storytelling approach is an effective way to open an intimate connection, where an individual journalist speaks directly to the individual listener – a performed podcast monologue disguised as a dialogue between host and listener’ (Lindgren, 2021: 714). Likewise, Murray suggests ‘intimate soundwork’ is facilitated through a combination of confessional narration and editing (2019: 304). Confessional podcasting can lead to listeners feeling an emotional connection to hosts (Spinelli and Dann, 2019: 188; Tobin and Guadagno, 2022: 4). Although podcast narration seems informal, journalists often need coaching to develop the correct emotional cadence (McHugh, 2022). Podcasters are ‘well-attuned’ to the art of producing ‘aesthetics of authenticity’ (Murray, 2019: 311). Podcasts employ ‘reminders of the process of story making’ through both sound editing and personalised narration “to develop a sense of trust with an audience [. . .] This exposing of the artifice lends a credibility to the entire project’ (Spinelli and Dann, 2019: 30). Podcasters may expose the artifice of production through editing effects or through their narration that describes how they crafted the podcast.

Liveness

In both radio and podcast research, the concept of ‘liveness’ is integral to discussions of intimacy. Lindgren defines liveness as ‘the impression of listening to an event unfolding in real-time, of eavesdropping on an intimate and private dialogue’ (2021: 715). Euritt explains, ‘At its base, liveness is the study of media that is called “live:” a live television broadcast or a live concert, for example. Both intimacy and liveness describe the process of mediation, then, in relation to co-presence’ (2023: 14). Podcasts include liveness through multiple voices, such as two hosts who discuss their topics together ‘recorded as if live and happening with the listener close by’ which ‘provide an optimal space for audio journalism infused with intimacy and emotions’ (Lindgren, 2021: 716). Liveness may also include the use of interviews with other people. Lindgren suggests that podcasts develop ‘characters’ and ‘over time, reporters and interviewees emerge as sonic friends, whose experiences matter to the listener’ (2021: 715). Many podcasts include interviewees’ words in their own voices, rather than mediated through a journalist.

Other elements that contribute to the sense of liveness in true crime podcasts are the diegetic sounds (i.e. seemingly natural sounds that occur within the podcast) that can, alongside any narration around craft, establish a perception of authenticity. These sounds can be sniffs, coughs, sounds of birds and traffic. It can also include use of silence, which can denote to listeners the emotions of speakers, such as when they are overcome with emotion. Rather than editing out these silences, leaving them in the podcasts can engage listeners in the emotion being communicated, in what feels like a dialogue.

Listening

Listening to podcasts is described as an intimate experience. Listeners inhabit both private and public spaces as they consume podcasts on portable devices such as smartphones. The technological advancement of earbuds is particularly prominent in research. According to Spinelli and Dann, earbuds, ‘placed as they are within the opening of the ear canal, collapse the physical space between a person speaking and the listener; the person speaking is literally inside the head, inside the body, of a listener’ (2019: 83). Yeates (2020: 226) argues that earbuds can make ‘the listening experience [. . .] markedly more personal and intimate than a radio broadcast’. This physical proximity is described by many scholars as inherently intimate (Copeland, 2018: 211; Lindgren, 2021: 715; MacDougall, 2011: 722), through its approximation of physical closeness between speaker and listener. Earbuds dissolve the boundaries between two bodies to ‘push intimacy inside a body – they are, in very real sense, about re-embodying the voice’ (Spinelli and Dann, 2019: 84, original emphasis).

Intimate listening occurs as the listener fills empty space in both their private and public life, such as when they do housework, commute or walk between places. Listening with headphones fills the ‘in-between’ spaces and structures of modern life, which ‘enables users to successfully maintain a sense of intimacy whilst moving through the city’ (Bull, 2005: 344–345). Acheson (2016) suggests that the combination of the physical and editorial proximity makes listening to podcasts an intimate experience: ‘With podcasts, you have someone murmuring things in your ear [. . .] Podcasts accompany us on our daily activities, and that creates an even deeper intimacy’. The way that listeners move through private and public spaces allows them to embed the narratives of the podcasts into their life experiences (MacDougall, 2011: 717).

Method

I selected diverse case studies and conducted a close analytical listening. Lindgren defines this methodology as one ‘specific to analysing audio content [that] involves stopping frequently to take notes about the content, noting sonic elements, storytelling techniques, and how the researcher responded to listening’ (2021: 709–710). I made notes on the podcasts and then found common threads, which I categorised. This methodology is focused on analysing how the podcast hosts encourage intimacy, while data analysis of listeners themselves falls outside the scope of my research.

The four podcasts I analysed were chosen for their contemporaneity and visibility at the tops of Apple charts. They were also chosen to represent variety in geography, topic, and approach, which would give breadth to the sample, although choices were limited to anglophone podcast markets. Through this breadth I could make a wider study of how true crime podcasts enabled a continuation of the Missing White Woman Syndrome, and intimacy across different topics. The podcasts were:

(1) The Retrievals, from Serial Productions and The New York Times, is hosted by veteran This American Life reporter, Susan Burton. Its five episodes range from 33 to 56 minutes. It recounts the experiences of women receiving In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) at Yale Fertility Center who felt severe pain during their egg retrieval operations, due to a nurse, Donna Monticone, switching the pain-relief drug, Fentanyl, for saline water. The women were dismissed when they raised concerns.

(2) The Girlfriends from iHeart, is distributed across nine episodes of 30 to 40 minutes. The host, Carole Fisher, teams up with other ex-girlfriends of cosmetic surgeon, Bob Bierenbaum, in Las Vegas’s Jewish community to share theories on his missing wife, Gail Katz. In the third episode, Gail’s sister, Alayne, joins the podcast and they describe Bob’s conviction for Gail’s murder.

(3) The Crossbow Killer is a BBC Wales podcast of six episodes, each around 30 minutes. The hosts, Tim Hinman and Meic Parry, investigate the 2019 crossbow shooting murder of Gerald Corrigan on the isolated Welsh island of Angelsey. Terry Wall is convicted of the murder, but the podcast questions the involvement of Richard Wyn Lewis, another local who defrauded many elderly neighbours in the area, including Corrigan.

(4) Who Shat on the Floor at My Wedding? is a comedy true crime podcast hosted on Acast out of Amsterdam by New Zealander, Lauren Kilby, about a mystery guest who defecated on the floor at Helen McLaughlin and Karen Whitehouse’s wedding on a boat. The podcast was originally released in 2020, but due to word-of-mouth it became a latent viral sensation in 2023. It consists of thirteen episodes, ranging from 20 to 100 minutes. Ultimately the hosts do not make a definitive conclusion on the identity of the ‘poopetrator’.

The outcomes of my analysis are broken into the four thematic areas of intimacy that I identified: confessional narration, soundwork and music, liveness and voice, and physical and emotional proximity. Some of these areas were reflected in the literature I reviewed following analysis, and other areas were more specific to the true crime genre and emerged from my analysis. I use hosts’ given names, as this is how they refer to themselves.

Findings and discussion

Confessional narration

Confessional narration is central in all four podcasts. The hosts develop narratives using their own personal discoveries, often self-referentially. Twelve minutes into the first episode of Retrievals (Burton, 2023a), Susan Burton discloses the reasons that women undergoing IVF felt pain during their retrieval procedures at Yale Clinic: a nurse with drug addiction was replacing fentanyl with a saline solution. Susan does not structure the podcast as a discovery of a crime, criminal, or victim, but provides all the facts early to establish a relationship of trust with her listeners. She also explains that eleven of her twelve interviewees were plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Yale and that their lawyers were present during the interviews. In Episode Two, Susan continues to share her process on how she crafted the podcast through an explanation of her decision to include a letter the nurse, Donna Monticone, wrote to the judge in her criminal trial, in the absence of an interview as Donna did not respond to requests: ‘I thought carefully about how to tell Donna’s story without her participation. Her case generated many documents that have become part of the public record; documents that include very personal information. I’m choosing to tell a story that includes some of these details’ (Burton, 2023b). As the podcast progresses, Susan receives information from listeners that she includes in her narration as part of her personal discovery. In the final episode, she describes hearing from a former colleague of Donna, and another listener who was a similarly drug-addicted nurse. Susan’s narration of personal discovery extends beyond the story: ‘Most emails I’ve received are about pain; pain that was unacknowledged, not believed, or not adequately treated. Some about fertility treatment, some about birth. Probably the most I’ve heard about are IUD insertions’ (Burton, 2023c). This inclusion of listeners adds to the sense that the podcast is a dialogue, using a specific story to discuss the broader issue of medical misogyny.

The host of Girlfriends, Carole Fisher, is likewise open with listeners about her podcasting journey, admitting that she is a first-time podcaster. She occupies an interesting position within the podcast as an ex-girlfriend of Bob Bierenbaum, whom she suspects murdered his wife, Gail Katz. Carole takes on a conflicted role as potential victim, investigator, and advocate. She introduces the first episode with a warning about domestic violence and suicide, explaining, ‘Hey listener, I just want you to know what to expect from this series before you dive in’ (Fisher, 2023a). She also gives another light-hearted warning: ‘Oh, just one final thing; I happen to swear like a sailor’. As the episode progresses, Carole introduces herself in more detail as someone learning the podcasting vocation: ‘What I’m not is a podcaster, so everything about this is so new to me. But I have my producer, Anna, to help me’. The first two episodes (Fisher, 2023a, b) detail how Carole and other women in Las Vegas had romantic experiences with Bob, before assembling as a group to conjecture about his wife’s disappearance. In the third episode, she introduces Alayne Katz, the sister of Gail Katz. She is apprehensive: ‘I worried a lot about how Alayne would be perceive me as a member of a ladies’ social club that had turned her sister’s disappearance into gossip. I would hate for her to think we made light of the hardest moment of her life. But I’m really ready to learn about Gail and to show all of you who she was’ (Fisher, 2023c). By the final episode of the podcast, Carole has experienced a profound change in her understanding of gender-based violence and brought the listener on her journey. She explains,

Throughout this series, I told you one story: the story of Bob and Gail. But the sad fact is Gail’s case is one of many. According to the UN, in 2021, on average more than five women and girls were killed every hour by their husband, partner or relative. Now, perhaps murder feels a little unrelatable to you, but before Bob was a murderer, he was an abusive and controlling partner and those stats are even more frightening. The UN estimates that across our lifetimes, one in three women are subjected to physical or sexual violence. This number hasn’t really changed at all in the last decade. Let’s take this podcast as an example. Over one-third of the women we interviewed for this story have alleged that they have been impacted by gendered violence or emotional abuse. (Fisher, 2023d)

A montage of snippets from previous interviews then plays, of interviewees casually describing violence they experienced. Near the end of the episode, Carole says,

hosting this podcast has allowed me the opportunity to – I’m going to cry – get to know Gail, get to know Alayne, get to know the family and her friends, and I have a much better understanding that violence against women is an epidemic [. . .] I just want to be part of the solution. (Fisher, 2023d)

Her self-interruption is a moment of confessional narration that specifically ties to emotion. It highlights how her personal journey cannot be compartmentalised from her journey of learning about gendered violence throughout the podcast. It also demonstrates to listeners that she is not an objective journalist but is, or at least represented as, an authentic and involved narrator.

Crossbow Killer pairs two hosts, so that listeners can follow one host, Meic Parry, as he travels around Anglesey and interviews people, structured by the studio-produced narration of Tim Hinman. Meic both opens and closes the podcast (Parry and Hinman, 2023a; 2023b) by describing his personal connection to the place of the crime, having grown up nearby, framing his interest as personal rather than professional. It is less narrative-driven than the other three podcasts analysed for this research, perhaps because the hosts do not interact conversationally. It is also the only podcast analysed that included male hosts and a male victim. In this way, it does not continue the Missing White Woman Syndrome, but instead focuses on a victim who is an older man and therefore less likely to receive proportionate media attention. While the hosts do not use confessional narration and dialogue to create an intimate space, they rely on other effects in music and poetry to sonically craft emotional responses to the narrative. These elements are discussed in the following section.

Who Shat has three hosts, led by New Zealander Lauren Kilby, who is joined by the aggrieved brides of the wedding, Helen McLaughlin and Karen Whitehouse. The narration makes clear their amateurishness to heighten the humour in the podcast. Throughout the episodes, they conduct interviews with experts in criminal psychology, criminal law, forensic science, submarines, and marine animals, as well as Lauren’s mother’s cryptic crosswords group and a psychic. They also conduct ‘interrogations’ of wedding guests whom they suspect are guilty. The host calls herself Detective Lauren throughout. In the first episode she explains, ‘I am qualified. I’ve been involved in plenty of crimes and I’ve actually just recently enrolled into my online private investigator course, of which I’ve received the introductory email’ (Kilby et al., 2020a). In the penultimate episode, she admits she only completed one module of detective training, on keeping a logbook (Kilby et al., 2021d). The humour of the podcast crafts a different relationship with listeners to the serious true crime podcasts, instead based on insider knowledge, laughter and a sense of authenticity through the hosts’ willingness to expose their lack of investigative skills.

The authenticity of confessional narration in podcasts has shifted the format away from traditions that favour white, male paternalism. Llinares argues that podcasting has certain advantages: ‘The resonance of a passionately authentic voice, rather than a more objectively dispassionate delivery, could reflect a cultural shift away from the paternalism of traditional structures of the public sphere and the reliance on “expert” (usually white, male) voices’ (2018: 140). The narration in Retrievals is a combination of conversational, less austere voice with formal and traditional styles, while Girlfriends and Who Shat move entirely away from traditional broadcasting formats. The former two podcasts are also created by first-time podcasters and sound less professionally produced.

Soundwork and music

A key feature of podcasting is the production that occurs after recording. Spinelli and Dann (2019: 33) specify some common editing effects used in podcasts such as quick dense montage, ‘a technique for conveying a multiplicity of similar sentiments or ideas expressed in similar language’. This technique is used in the Girlfriends example above, to highlight the epidemic of violence against women. Another editorial technique is sonic synecdoche, ‘an illustrative sound becoming a metaphor for a larger, more complex idea’ (Spinelli and Dann, 2019: 39). These two techniques were those most common to true crime podcasts, and were used in all four podcasts I analysed.

Who Shat parodies true crime podcasts through the hosts’ narration and soundwork. In Episode Six, the hosts imagine a scenario where the faecal matter may have bounced off a drunk guest’s underpants, described as a ‘temporary hammock’ (Kilby et al., 2021a). This phrase is the subject of conversational hilarity and is often replayed for effect. The hosts replicate expert speech and then dissemble it for comedy. Another example is a quick dense montage in Episode Four (Kilby et al., 2020b) to dramatically reproduce Lauren’s lie detector test questions during interrogations of wedding guests. The way the absurd questions are edited to overlap and echo parodies serious true crime by exposing its artifice. Another example is when the closing credits of Episode Nine are interrupted by Lauren saying, ‘Woah, woah, woah, wait, wait. . . Let’s go back to the winky face [an emoji sent in an incriminating text message]. I’m actually not over that yet’ (Kilby et al., 2021b). She draws conclusions on a potential motive for the defecation, then says, ‘Sorry, we can finish the episode now’ and the credits continue. In these examples, the pretence of podcast production is a source of comedy. In contrast, the amateur nature of the hosts’ investigation is represented as a source of authenticity.

Another crucial element of true crime podcasts particular to the medium is music. Bull suggests that music helps listeners remember the narratives (2005: 349), as demonstrated by sonic synecdoche such as cymbals and harp glissandos in Crossbow Killer, described below; however, I would argue that music has a more important role. It highlights moments of narrative importance and emotional cadence in ways that the host cannot through only voice.

Retrievals features original music scored by French composer, Carla Pallone, with high-pitched violin and all-female choral music. Episode One introduces a quiet lament on violin as the women describe their pain. Their stories begin to overlap and become faster and more urgent, in quick dense montage. Susan then states the main theme of the podcast: ‘All of these stories revealed something about women’s pain: how it’s tolerated, interpreted, accounted for, and minimised’ (Burton, 2023a). After this statement, the choir and violin perform staccato chords (i.e. short and urgent). They stop abruptly and the podcast employs silence to draw attention to Susan’s point.

Music in Girlfriends is composed by Luisa Gerstein and performed by the Deep Throat Choir. All proceeds from sales of the album were donated to NO MORE, a foundation dedicated to helping end gender-based violence through grassroots activism. The music is drum-based and has a driving momentum with, similarly to Retrievals, a female choir singing mostly staccato harmonic chords, then ‘I got you’ repeated in different speeds and melodies. When one interviewee describes her shock at Bob’s strange behavior after their first date, it is palpable through the repeated musical motif sung by the choir. She describes their second date in the Nevada desert and says, ‘it started to get dark’. The music stops, highlighting her anxiety (Fisher, 2023a). The sudden stopping and starting of music aurally punctuates the points of interest for listeners, like an exclamation point. The use of all-female choirs in both Retrievals and Girlfriends is sonically resonant, underscoring the podcasts’ important narratives about women coming together to speak out.

Crossbow Killer employs Welsh talent for its music and, unusually but effectively, for an original poem that introduces each episode. The specially commissioned poems by Rhys Iorwerth, a Welsh Chaired Bard, are interspliced with diegetic sounds of Anglesey, such as waves beating at rocks and squalling seagulls. Unsettling music by Mark Roberts, of Welsh band Catatonia, uses electronic chords, a blues-style guitar riff, and jarring vibrating tones that underlie the narration. In sections throughout the podcast when the hosts probe into the mystery of why Gerald Corrigan was shot, a harp plays a repeated descending glissando of falling notes, connoting the unknown qualities of the crime as a sonic synecdoche for mystery.

Interesting disjunctions occur in true crime podcasts because they straddle the border of intimate soundwork that engenders trust in listeners and the commercial imperatives of production. Advertisements, especially mid-roll, can ‘intrude on the intimacy of the narrative created through the narrator’s voice’ (Pâquet, 2022: 16). Yet, these advertisements are a commercial imperative. Despite their ubiquity, Spinelli and Dann find that podcasters worry advertising ‘intervene[s] in the integrity of the podcaster’s relationship with their listener – one in which a sense of authenticity is a key component’ (2019: 11). Retrievals features pre-roll and mid-roll advertisements, with Susan first explaining to the listener that the episode will continue after the break. The advertisements are non-obtrusive and mostly for other podcasts. Crossbow Killer includes minimal pre-roll advertisements, because of its production by the BBC, and informs listeners that it is supported by advertising outside the UK. Girlfriends and Who Shat include many advertisements pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll. During my analysis, these included advertisements for banking accounts, discount stores, technology, medicine, Uber, television series, other podcasts, and Audible subscriptions. This kind of advertising was obtrusive to the listening experience; however, the podcasts are free to access and therefore most listeners would expect commercial intrusion to support the continued creation of unpaid content. The two podcasts with less advertising were those produced by established companies, the BBC and This American Life.

Liveness and voice

Each of the four podcasts employ liveness to connect with listeners. The liveness emphasises the reality of events in more serious moments, and the humour in others, to draw listeners into a feeling of connection, friendship, and insider knowledge. In the final episode of Retrievals, Susan plays a recording of a nurse board meeting in which Donna’s application to have her license renewed is discussed by her peers, giving a feeling of being there as it happened. Susan pauses the recording to dissect key comments for the listener. It is a rare but effective use of liveness in Retrievals. Girlfriends, on the other hand, includes many sounds that indicate physical movements of speakers such as sniffs, breathing, and creaking chairs. It also includes supplementary soundwork to approximate the scenes of the historical narrative. For example, in Episode One (Fisher, 2023a), Carole describes first seeing Bob at a New Year’s Eve party, which is given a sense of physical liveness for listeners through the addition of pop music, conversation, glasses clinking, and a count down with champagne popping. This soundwork aurally brings the narrative alive for listeners.

Who Shat often includes the sounds of the hosts laughing with each other, inviting listeners into the joke, and maintaining a light-hearted sonic atmosphere. In a similar example to Girlfriends, Who Shat introduces the scene of the crime using diegetic sounds to place the listener into the scene of the wedding. Lauren directly addresses listeners and says, ‘Close your eyes. It’s time to transport ourselves back to the day of the crime: Saturday, 11 August 2018. The big day’ (Kilby et al, 2020a). Silence transitions to added sounds of seagulls, the chatter of wedding guests, and a boat bell. Episode Eleven (Kilby et al., 2021c) includes a scene where the hosts create a space to destabilise and interrogate a suspect, Hank, using a single uncomfortable piano stool, photos from the wedding, and a creepy soundscape of dogs barking, chainsaws, and a woman screaming. Listeners then hear Hank whispering to himself and laughing as he experiences the room. It is a noteworthy moment because listeners are exposed to the hosts’ use of soundwork to elicit an emotional response from Hank.

Crossbow Killer includes a skilful example of liveness in its episodes, which is meticulously produced through a layering of sounds, mostly added in production. The first episode (Parry and Hinman, 2023a), for example, leads listeners through a minute-by-minute description of when Gerald Corrigan was shot by a crossbow outside his house in Anglesey. It is elaborated by added sounds such as doors opening and closing, a muffled television playing in another room, the sounds of a phone ringing, emergency responders, and a jingling cymbal when the arrow is fired. The latter sound becomes a sonic synecdoche for the moment of the crime, repeated whenever it is mentioned.

A related element of liveness common across the podcasts is their inclusion of women’s voices through interviews. Podcasts employ women’s voices and stories in multiple ways; some that continue past gender distinctions of radio broadcasts and others that challenge those histories. Retrievals presents diverse women’s stories. The first episode (Burton, 2023a) opens by describing the victims collectively as ‘the women’ and then begins to introduce and name those who were interviewed. As each interviewee tells their story, with Susan’s questions mostly removed, they develop as more than simply victims but as women with different interpretations of what happened based on their professions and backgrounds; for example, Angela is a criminal defence lawyer and Katie is an addiction researcher, and both found their expert opinions clashed with their emotional responses to their victimisation. When Katie reads out her victim impact letter to the judge in Episode Two (Burton, 2023b), the paper she is holding rustles, giving the impression that the listener is sharing a confessional space with her through this moment of liveness.

All four podcasts highlight women’s voices and encourage political listening. Crossbow Killer is, unusually for the genre, not a story about a murdered woman. It includes as a central voice the secondary victim of Fiona, Gerald Corrigan’s daughter. She concludes the entire podcast by explaining her sense of loss and the unknowingness of murder (Parry and Hinman, 2023b). The podcast focuses more broadly on older victims who do not epitomise the Missing White Woman narrative perpetuated in the media. Its focus on these victims who are not proportionately represented invites listeners to think about how the elderly are vulnerable to scams.

Girlfriends encourages deep political listening. The third episode (Fisher, 2023c) focuses on the domestic violence in Bob and Gail’s marriage, escalating to murder. Interviewees such as Alayne Katz describe the effects of the continued violence on their family and how difficult it was to remove Gail from her dangerous situation, physically and legally. In the final episode (Fisher, 2023d), Alayne explains how, motivated by what happened to Gail, she transitioned into family law to protect women leaving abusive situations. She describes a woman approaching her once and thanking her for telling Gail’s story, which helped her find the courage to finally leave an abusive marriage. Carole then says, ‘And that is why we tell these stories’. This statement offers some responsibility to listeners, who are positioned as ethical earwitnesses who vindicate victims through the act of consumption.

Physical and emotional proximity

The editing, narration and soundwork of each podcast is produced to complement listening through earbuds or headphones. As Murray suggests, podcasts create a

sonic world [. . .] on a designed proximity to the listener as a witness of personal reflection and change. In many episodes, this proximity is articulated through formal elements such as speaking close to the microphone, soft contemplative tones, whispering, long pauses, breathy sighs, understated sound effects, and hypnotic music. (2019: 310)

Other times, the interviews include diegetic sounds, to give a feeling of being in the room with the hosts. Lindgren writes, ‘The imaginary inside of the car creates an experience of being together in a confined – and physically intimate – space. This is further emphasised when listening to the podcast in earbuds or headphones, as stereo recordings create a spatial listening experience with sound moving between right and left channels (and earbuds)’ (2021: 715). All four podcasts analysed for this research included multiple uses of the car interior, a component of true crime podcasts that is scarcely researched. A memorable example from Crossbow Killer (Parry and Hinman, 2023a) amplifies the sound of the torrential Welsh weather, with the sounds of rain pattering on the car roof and the mechanical swish of windscreen wipers. The sense of proximity to the hosts is both editorial through the soundwork of the podcast and physical through the embodied act of listening, especially when through headphones and earbuds (Lindgren, 2021: 708–709). Even without earbuds, such as when listening via Bluetooth while commuting in a car, the physical space of the car interior connects the listener to the podcaster in their car interior. The physical connection highlights how the narrative of the podcast is occurring within a similar physical space to the listener. It is through this bridging of emotional narrative effect and physical connection that a sense of what I label proximate intimacy develops.

The narratives are structured to encourage empathic listening. Girlfriends, in particular, has an emotionally affecting conclusion. Carole and Alayne discuss a woman’s torso that was misidentified as Gail’s, and how many missing women and girls they had uncovered in their research for the podcast. Carole, her friend (and fellow-ex of Bob) Mindy Shapiro, and Alayne read names of missing women in New York state beginning with Alayne reading Gail’s name. It begins 34 minutes into the episode and continues, with music eventually joining the reading of names and then an overlapping quick dense montage, highlighting just how many women there are on the list. The music is haunting, with a sad floating melodic note sung by the women’s choir. The list finishes at 41 minutes 38 seconds. Carole then says ‘If you all made it with us this far, thank you. Truth is, we could have kept going’. After a long silence, Alayne says, ‘I’m emotionally drained. And I’m in awe of you contextualising where my sister stands in the universe. Thank you’. The podcast ends on this moment of contextualisation and memorialisation. Its conclusion also pitches the podcast as ethical through the approval of a victim’s family. Many women as political listeners have also embodied this long list of missing women through their earbuds, re-embodying it. It is indeed a moment of intimacy between Susan, Alayne, and the listener.

Conclusion

Intimacy is enabled through the formatting particular to podcasts and the kinds of storytelling that have evolved. It is commercially important for creators to narrate and edit their podcasts so that listeners feel intimately involved in solving the central mystery. Whether a parody or a serious story of an unsolved injustice, true crime podcasts rely on repeated techniques to engage audiences, including narrative structures that follow the host’s personal discoveries and conclude with open-ended questions, soundwork that constructs a sense of liveness, use of interior and intimate spaces, and music that punctuates the story and highlights important themes. Using these techniques to encourage intimate listening can lead to listeners returning to new episodes and providing more capital for advertisement, but can also jurify the audience and cause them to join ‘fan’ communities of listeners where they parse over important ideas of fair justice, institutional procedure, gender-based violence, and reasonable doubt.

Podcast hosts structure episodes to track their personal discoveries. This confessional narration characterises the host as a kind of detective; the host of Who Shat is even addressed as Detective Lauren. None of the podcasts structure their narratives with big reveals or shocking twists but include moments of reasonable doubt and have open-ended conclusions. Even Girlfriends and Retrievals, both of which feature discovery of the criminal culprits, conclude with the open possibilities of Donna Monticone’s re-instatement as a nurse and Bob Bierenbaum’s parole and release from prison. All four podcasts relate their topics to larger themes of crime and its impacts on communities, broadening out the personal stories. The confessional narration generates intimacy through this combination of the authentic personal story and the broader community story that includes the listener.

Another important element of the podcasts that produces intimacy is the soundwork through editing techniques such as quick dense montages and sonic synecdoche, which are used to evoke emotions in listeners such as empathy, humour, sadness, or outrage. Music also highlights which emotions the producers aim to induce through use of specific instruments and styles, as well as volume changes and inclusion of choirs. Female choirs connote the women’s voices in Retrievals and Girlfriends; Crossbow Killer includes blues music to evoke an isolated location and sonic synecdoche such as a harp glissando; and Who Shat’s glockenspiel, guitar, and drum motif replicates spy thriller music for humour. Silence is a sonic exclamation point to draw attention to important moments. Advertising can intrude on the intimacy established through soundwork and music, particularly when it is mid-roll and interrupts the narrative, but some hosts have included a gentle spoken introduction to the advertising, and this intrusion builds on an understanding of commercial necessity.

Intimacy is also established through the atmosphere of liveness in podcasting. The hosts have conversations with interviewees, or multiple hosts have live interactions. The conversations include sounds of the physical space, which, when listened to through earbuds especially, can seem physically proximate to the audience. The liveness of the host as they travel by car may connect with listeners who are also commuting, giving a sense of immersion in the narrative through physical similarities. The car interior is also an intimate space, when considering intimacy as a physical sense of closeness. When recounting past events in the podcasts, added sounds produce a sonic sense of place, which manufactures an intimacy in space through listeners’ imaginations. The inclusion of women’s voices can also be intimate, considering that many of their stories have been previously omitted from the record. The act of consuming this story is a kind of political listening in which the audience is positioned to feel empathy.

The final element of intimacy in true crime podcasting that my research revealed was the physical actions of the listener. They most likely listen with headphones or earbuds, placing the stories, narration, soundwork, and music directly into their heads. The podcast accompanies the listener through in-between spaces while completing housework, gardening, shopping, commuting, or walking. The everyday space of life is filled with the podcast, making it part of the physical life of the listener. Audiences are jurified, encouraged to come to a judgement. They are emotionally connected to the secondary victims or victim-survivors who are given voices in true crime podcasts. These voices are re-embodied and disseminated across listening communities.

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Lili Pâquet

Author biography

Lili Pâquet is a Senior Lecturer in Writing at the University of New England (Australia) with recent publications on digital writing, poetry, and crime, in journals including Crime Media Culture, New Writing, Computers and Composition, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and Journal of Popular Culture. Her book, Crime Fiction from a Professional Eye: Women Writers with Law Enforcement and Justice Experience was published by McFarland in 2018.

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“It’s time to transport ourselves back to the day of the crime”: The intimacy of sound in true crime podcasts

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

True crime and gender

Intimacy in podcasts

Confessional narration

Liveness

Listening

Method

Findings and discussion

Confessional narration

Soundwork and music

Liveness and voice

Physical and emotional proximity

Conclusion

Footnotes

Funding

ORCID iD

Author biography

References