Bored from listening to the same songs from your playlist on repeat? This podcast will fill your sense of boredom and crime-solving all at once

I’ve been scarred from watching horror movies ever since being pressured into watching “The Visit” and “Human Centipede” in seventh grade. 

Although watching horror movies is an activity that keeps me from sleeping for weeks, listening to them is a whole other story. There’s a difference between imagining a crime and actually seeing it happen, but when I gave up watching horror movies and started listening to the podcast “Crime Junkies” about a year ago, I had no idea how much this podcast would save me when I’ve already rewatched all of my Netflix and Hulu binges.

In the podcast Crime Junkies, Ashley and Brit, the two hardcore crime junkies themselves each with a craving for case solving, break down mysteries, crimes, theories or missing person cases — transgressions that are all worth listening to. The two are the epitome of crime junkies, always intrigued and excited by criminality and what may be lurking under the surface of numerous inexplicable events such as murder, arson — you name it and they’ve covered it. Their utter excitement extends itself to me, making me hang on every last of their words. 

Over this year, I’ve binged every episode since the podcast debuted in 2017, and I’m still excited when a new episode is released. Trust me when I say you’ll be hooked within the first 30 seconds of them setting the scene, before a bomb drops out of nowhere that the suspect had a connection and motive to the victim. 

On Mondays, aka “Crime Junkie” episode release day, I get in my car and drive with no destination in mind. I listen to the sometimes hour-long episodes, sitting on the edge of my seat the whole time to see if they find a fingerprint at the crime scene or a new suspect in question — leaving me with “full body chills”, as Ashley and Brit would say.  

While the show is free on Spotify, my addiction for these true crime stories has gotten so extreme that I’m incentivised to start paying the extra $5 a month just to get an extra fix of bonus episodes each week. The most recent bonus episode covers the mysterious disappearance of Carole Baskin’s former husband, Don Lewis from the infamous “Tiger King” docu-series, which I am dying to listen to. 

Since most of the episodes are unsolved crimes, you’re given the role of detective and an opportunity to develop your own opinion about what might have happened in these infamous cases. Ashley and Brit explain in detail the nature and occurrence of the crime, before delving further in to share different theories and their predictions — whether that be foul play, the dark truth revealed about a suspect or someone missing but presumed dead. 

Although this podcast has become my guilty pleasure, it has also given me a whole new lens of looking at criminal cases through a new standpoint and keeping an eye out for anything suspicious in the world we live in.