The Knife: Off Record – 116

Hannah and Patia sit down with Anna Sinfield, the producer and writer behind the first two hit seasons of The Girlfriends, to talk about why the world needs more stories of women winning. Stepping into the host seat for The Girlfriends: Spotlight, Anna shares what it’s like to dive headfirst into a story, the emotional toll of true crime, and what to expect from the highly anticipated new season, The Girlfriends: Jailhouse Lawyer. Also, Hannah shares an update on the Brenda Andrew case, including a U.S. Supreme Court opinion issued in Jan 2025. 

Recommendations  

Netflix Documentary: The Twister: Caught in the Storm  

Podcast: Big Time (Apple/Campside Media) 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-girlfriends-spotlight/id1695875823 

Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Only Woman on Oklahoma Death Row: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-only-woman-on-oklahoma-death-row-confirming-admission-of-prejudicial-gendered-evidence-can-violate-due-process-rights 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

(00:20):
Welcome to The Knife Off Record. I'm Patia Eton, I'm
Hannah Smith.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, we have a great episode this week. We have
a conversation with the producer, writer, and then the new
host of The Girlfriend's Podcast, Anna Sinfield. It was so
delightful talking with Anna, it really was.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
I remember listening to The Girlfriend's first season of the
show and just thinking like, oh, this is like a
beautiful podcast. Yeah, I mean, the host obviously amazing, and
Anna was producing behind the scenes, and you know, I
appreciate what that role is and think it's so cool
that she has since stepped into her new role as host.

(01:00):
And thinking back about the first season, I think what
really drew me into the show is the same thing
that draws me into The Girlfriend's Spotlight. And why I'm
looking forward to the next season of The Girlfriends so
much is that there's just a real depth to their storytelling.
In the first season, you get this unraveling of a
true crime story but built into this person's like journey

(01:22):
through life and relationships and hoping that this is the
person that you know, this man is going to be
her sort of happy ending in life.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
I mean, probably a lot of people listen to The Girlfriend, yeah,
season one, but if they haven't, what's the sort of synapsis?

Speaker 1 (01:37):
So season one is a nine part series and the host,
Carol Fisher, is dating this man, a Jewish doctor, and
this is like the pride and joy of her life
in the moment. Is he's successful and he's chivalrous, and
you know, there starts to of course, be some red
flags along the way, but the main one is that
his ex wife Gail is missing. At first, that's not

(02:00):
really a red flag, it's just this tragic thing that
happened to him. But as their relationship falls apart, she
starts really unraveling Gail's disappearance, and she you know, reaches
out to women who have been in this man's life
and eventually they unravel the disappearance. I don't want to

(02:22):
give anything away, but it's so good and it really
draws you in because you become attached to her own
sort of like healing journey of also having been traumatized
by this person in her own way. Yes, and I
just thought it was so well done and I love podcasts, right,
So getting to talk to producers, yeah, so you need

(02:45):
to talk to other producers, like those are the interviews.
I could just keep people on for hours asking them questions.
But it was a really interesting conversation about sort of
both creative choices and storytelling. When you're also reporting on
something that is you know, you have to be very careful.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, totally, Yeah, it was great chatting with Anna, you know,
the girlfriends.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
You know.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
I don't know if listeners find this interesting. I as
a producer found this really interesting. That they have this
format where they do long seasons of a show, like
the nine episodes, and then so they have season three
coming out. Actually by the time this is out, it
will have just come out. Can't wait to listen to it.
But then they have these standalone episodes called Spotlight that

(03:28):
are also on the feed, and it's great that they
have these long seasons of stories as well as these
shorter stories. So we're going to get to that interview
with Anna very shortly, but you know, I have just
really been reading a lot about this case this week,
so I thought I wanted to give you an update
on it and talk about it, and then we'll get
to Anna's interview, and then at the end, Patia has

(03:51):
some great recommendations I do. Okay. So this case has
been talked about on some podcasts. I think there was
a Discovery Idea episode about it, which I did not watch.
But one of the things, the obvious things that draws
me to it is that it takes place in Oklahoma.
I'm from Tulsa, so I got to love these Oklahoma stories.

(04:12):
But this is actually about Brenda Evers Andrew, who is
the only woman on death row in Oklahoma and has
been on death row since two thousand and four. Okay,
there was a really interesting Supreme Court opinion that relates
to her case that just happened this year in January
and potentially might change the outcome of her case, which

(04:35):
is why I want to talk about it today. But
before we get into that, let me tell you refresh
you about this story and tell you what happened.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
So.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Brenda Evers Andrew grew up in Enod, Oklahoma. It's about
like an hour and a half two hours north of
Oklahoma City. It's a city of like fifty thousand people.
She was raised in this middle class family that was
devoutly Christian. Her friends and family say that she was
just like always a really good kid, did well in school,
went to church, and when she was twenty one, she

(05:05):
married Rob Andrew. They had two children together. They moved
to Texas for a bit, but then back to Oklahoma
for Rob's work. He was an advertising executive and pretty
successful in his career. They were both involved in church,
but by two thousand and one, seventeen years into their marriage,
their marriage was basically done. It was totally falling apart.

(05:28):
And what would come to light later with like interviews
with their family and community members, is that this was
not a new thing. Their whole marriage basically had been
pretty rocky and they had not gotten divorced at that time.
I think because of religious reasons, they sort of didn't
believe in divorce. But eventually by two thousand and one,
it was like, Okay, this is not working, we have

(05:49):
to get a divorce. And one of the main issues
really released that has been written about a lot, is
that Brenda had multiple affairs. In two thousand and one,
Brenda was working as a Sunday school teacher for their church,
and so was this man named James Patt And that
is I think how Brenda and James met, and they

(06:12):
were both asked to step down and quit being Sunday
school teachers because it sort of came out that they
were having this affair. Makes sense, yeah, but then there's
also on top of that, like the folks at church
they didn't really like how Brenda dressed. They thought she
showed a little too much cleavage and she was a
little too flirty. So you know, people were pretty quick

(06:35):
to say that to the press and to the police later.
But regardless, Rob, basically I don't know the exact timeline
of when he moved out, but it's noted that in
October of two thousand and one, Rob, Brenda's husband, he
went to get into his car and he noticed that
there was like a lot of liquid under it, so
he was like, this is weird. He got in immediately,

(06:56):
went to a close by repair shop and just had
them check it out. The guy working at the shop,
suppose Elle, was horrified and said, this is so weird.
It looks like someone has literally cut your brakes. And
then he got three phone calls from an unknown number
saying there's been an emergency, like you have to come

(07:19):
to the hospital in Norman immediately, which was like two
hours south. Your kids are you know, your wife is
in the hospital. None of that was true, and he
started to put the pieces together that he believed whoever
cut his brakes was also responsible for calling him, hoping
that he would quickly jump in his car, get on
the freeway going eighty miles an hour, and then his

(07:40):
brakes would go out. So he actually told people in
his life as well as police, that he believed that
Brenda and James were trying to.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Kill him because he knew about the affair.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
He had found out about the affair. Okay, yeah, So
on October third, two thousand and one, Brenda filed for divorce.
They start living separately. Rob moves out of the family
home and is, you know, worried about his future in
his life. On November twentieth, two thousand and one, he
goes to pick up their kids from their home. It's
like Thanksgiving time. A lot of people in the neighborhood

(08:13):
are away and the kids are in the house. Brenda
said that she wanted him to look at the pilot light,
and so they go into the garage. The garage doors
open and at that time Rob was shot two times
with a sixteen gaged shotgun and died from the gunshot.
W and so it seems like he was lured there potentially. Potentially. Yeah,

(08:35):
Brenda was also shot in the upper left arm, but
with a different type of weapon, a twenty two caliber gunshot.
I don't know a lot about guns, not that interested
in learning that much about them, but it was clear
that the wounds to rob were fatal. Sort of seemed
like intentionally, and with Brenda it seemed like a not
that big of a deal. Why are you know, you're
a switching guns in the moment? Yeah, and you know,

(08:59):
so Brenda called nine one one and said, you know
that two masked men had attacked the home. At first,
everyone is, you know, horrified and worried for her. She
goes into the hospital, she recovers, but as the investigation continues,
the two masked men aspect just doesn't make any sense.
It's also a really safe neighborhood. No one else has
seen anyone, you know, running around or no homes had

(09:23):
been broken into. Nothing was stolen from Brenda's house. But
Brenda's neighbors were out of town and they came back
after this happened. They cut their Thanksgiving trip short and
when they went in their home, they could tell that
someone had been inside the house and they even found
like a a shotgun casing on the floor, so they
called the police, and the police started to put together

(09:45):
this idea that the shooter had probably been inside the
neighbor's home because the way the homes were situated, it
was like a clear vantage point. But the thing was
that Brenda had a key to the house and had
been watching the home, getting their mail, watering the plants
while they were gone. So as they start putting the
pieces together, they have this theory that they believe James

(10:09):
Patt was in the home, in the neighbor's house with
a shotgun, and he becomes a suspect. And also they
find out through looking at their bank accounts that Brenda
had right around this time, transferred thirty five thousand dollars
out of a shared account she had with Rob into
her account prior to the shooting. I think right after
right after, okay, which is like whatever, that's not suspicious

(10:31):
on its own, like maybe you move money around. But
whenever Rob's funeral comes, Brenda and the kids are not there.
They don't show up, no one knows where they are.
Hours go by, and eventually the police perform a wellness
check and they're just gone, and so is one of
their vehicles. And then basically for three months after that,
Brenda and the two kids and James were all missing

(10:54):
and it looked like they fled. Pretty strange, right. Eventually
they figure out that they're in Mexico, they freeze their
bank account so they are out of money and they
have to come back into the US, and they get
them when they are coming back into Texas and arrests
both of them. James Pavott's daughter actually ends up notifying
law enforcement and working with them to try to find them,

(11:16):
because she had borrowed her dad's car after this and
noticed that there was a bullet on the like on
the ground and found this very suspicious. And then he
left and he had said something to her like, I
think that Brenda and I might leave the country because
they think that we did this. So in two thousand
and four, James Pavott's trial was first and he was

(11:38):
convicted a first degree murder and given the death penalty,
and then Brenda's trial was after and she was also
convicted a first degree murder and given the death penalty.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
They both went a trial. Neither one played right.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Here's the thing. Brenda's been on death row in Oklahoma
for two decades, well since two thousand and four, and
she has maintained her innocence. She has appealed her case
and has gone all the way up to the US
Supreme Court. And the reason for this, Basically, the crux
of her appeal is that the prosecution did not have

(12:15):
enough evidence to convict her, and so they attacked her
character and slept shamed her. And when you look at
what happened in the courtroom, it's pretty alarming. The prosecutors
used the term slut puppy and hohuchi to talk about her.
What is a slut puppy? I don't even know. It

(12:37):
makes me think of hushpuppy. I'm like a slut puppy.
I've never heard of that. Horrible. This is two thousand
and one when this is happening, and they called multiple
witnesses to the stand who were men in the community
who were just there to testify about how she dressed
and how she flirted with them and how they found

(12:57):
that inappropriate. They talked to about her relationships that had
nothing to do with this, that had happened twenty years prior.
You know that she had slept with the next boyfriend.
And in the closing argument, the prosecuting attorney he took
a suitcase and opened it up and pulled out like
thong underwear and brass from it and was holding it

(13:18):
in front of the jury's face and said, quote, the
grieving widow packs this to go sleep in a hotel
room with her boyfriend. The grieving widow packs this and
her appropriate active grief. A grieving widow doesn't pack her
thong underwear and run off with her boyfriend.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
I mean, it's like sadly unsurprising. As a woman. Your
marriage is not over the day your divorce is finalized.
Your marriage, you know, your relationship usually ends well before that.
And obviously the affairs that she had, you know, not great,
but like certainly not evidence of murder.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Well that's the thing, right, It's not a crime to
have an affair. It's not a crime to wear a
thong or to flirt. Someone could think that those are
not great things to do, to have an affair on
your partner, but it's certainly not something you would be
sent to prison for. And that's a really clear line
that should be drawn. They also painted her as a

(14:20):
bad mother and tried to just totally rip apart in
her reputation and act like she was just this horrible person.
But actually there are accounts that she was a gray mother,
that she was very involved with her kids' lives, and
she was like a very good neighbor and community member.
So anyway, in twenty twenty three, the tenth US Circuit
Court of Appeal upheld her decision. But it was like

(14:41):
a two to one vote. So there were three judges
looking at it, and one of them said, I think
this is a violation of her rights, but two of
them agreed. So then it went all the way to
the US Supreme Court and in January they issued an opinion,
and it says, among other things, the prosecution elicited testimony
about Andrew's sexual partners reaching back two decades, about the

(15:03):
outfits she wore to dinner or during grocery runs, about
the underwear she packed for vacation, and about how often
she had sex in her car. And the prosecutors also
brought out a book during her original trial that she
had in her home called two hundred and three Ways
to Drive a Man Wild in Bed and hold this
up as if it were evidence that she had shot

(15:24):
and killed her husband. First of all, we don't know
what's going to happen. Basically, her case is going back
down to the Tenth Circuit Court and they're going to
have to decide what happens. There's possibility that she'll have
another trial, or it's possible that she'll just be re

(15:45):
sentenced with this information. But essentially the whole idea is
that the court decided that the focus on her sex
life influenced any realistic chance that the jury could really
truly give her a fair shot and understand her version
of events. Like, basically, the ruling just said that she
didn't really have a fair trial. That doesn't mean she's innocent,

(16:08):
that doesn't mean that she wasn't involved in this. We
don't know for sure because they focus so much on
her as a person, her as this sort of Jezebel
scarlet letter woman, that that is what she was judged on, seemingly.
One of her attorneys, who's also a Cornell law professor, said,

(16:30):
with this decision, the US Supreme Court has for the
first time signaled that prosecutors may not use and courts
may not admit prejudicial evidence attacking women's abilities as mothers
and their private sex lives without violating women's constitutional rights.
And I think that feels like such a big moment
because there are so many cases throughout history. I mean

(16:53):
just thinking about Amanda Knox right, like where women have
been vilified because of their sexuality and that gets murky
and twisted and can end up giving them a guilty
verdict not based on evidence or facts at all.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, it's like there's this hatred of women that can
be preying on and like used to convince someone that, well,
what does it matter, Like we think she did it
and she's so awful, don't you instead of here's exactly
the reasons that we have to believe she was like
planning this out or knew it was going to happen,

(17:30):
or instigated it with her partner. I'm curious did her
boyfriend did he ever turn on her? Did he ever
say she knew about this? Like what was his stance?
He was just like I had no knowledge of it.
They both have always said that. I am not totally sure.
I didn't look into his trial. I know that he

(17:52):
was convicted. There was a reporting about a letter that
he wrote or that was in his handwriting saying that
she had nothing to do with it. But I'm not
totally sure what happened with his case. Yeah, I mean
it's surprising and not surprising that would take this long
for that to be said about court room standards or

(18:13):
whatever you want to call it, Like you cannot just
talk about the underwear that she wore, Like what is
the relevance? You cannot just be rate her character in
all of these other ways. You have to talk about
what happened. Yeah, totally and give everyone a fair chance.
I mean that's why I think like it feels, even
though it's sort of a dark story, this Supreme Court

(18:35):
ruling feels like a hopeful positive thing for cases going forward,
at least to have this decision on record, to show like, yeah,
it is unconstitutional to just sex shame someone in court
and then give them the death penalty because of that,
this is someone's life. I'm amazed the death penalty exists.
If you've we've gotten around before. Totally, I totally agree,

(18:57):
should not exist. Should not exist. That's our stance of
the death penalty.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
That is, we're clear yeah about that, and we will
apologize for it. Okay, Well, well that's.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
A win for women, even though it's in the context
of this extremely dark case. Obviously someone was killed. That's terrible.
But you know, a fair trial is important, like whether
or not someone is guilty. We have to set the
standard that everybody accused of something, charged with something. It's
a fair trial and it matters a lot.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, it can be a slut and also not a murderer.
Go be a slut or a slut puppy, whatever you want.
That's right. Well, let's get into this conversation with Anna Sinfield.
Let's get into it. Hiannah, thanks so much for joining
us on the knife. Yeah, we're really excited.

Speaker 4 (19:49):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm not used
to being in the hot seat, so this is cool.
Oh yeah, reversal for me.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
You're used to interviewing and now we're going to interview you.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, I'll try to flip the script on you. Guys.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Well, we are such big fans of The Girlfriend's Podcast.
We loved season one. If anyone hasn't listened, definitely go listen.
It covers the murder of Gail Cats and it's the
story of how women came together to bring down one
ex boyfriend and seek justice for Gail. It was so good.
It was followed up by season two, which is also
just excellent. We love it. And now there's a series

(20:24):
that dropped a couple of months ago called The Girlfriend's
Spotlight and you're the host, which is so exciting, and
we want to get into all of this, but first
we kind of want to know a little bit about
how you got to be where you are. How did
you get into podcasting and true crime? Kind of lead
us up to what you were doing before you got

(20:44):
to The Girlfriends.

Speaker 4 (20:46):
Well, it was a bit of a strange journey that
I took to get into a podcast because I actually
started off working as a musician. I was a singer
for about nine years or something, and it was really fun.
Used to do really cool things. I got flown out
to sing at like a weird wedding in Marrakesh in
the middle of a swimming pool, and I used to

(21:08):
play at a jazz bar three nights a week and
I had a really good time. I was on the
road a lot. I was like a blues and jazz
singer doing all of the standards. But also it started
to kind of grind on me a little bit. It's
a tough life. It's a tough hustle to make sure
you've got enough money to pay the bills, and the
work kind of started drying off. I started teaching singing,
and I was like, this sucks, So what can I

(21:31):
do that would be another use for my voice. I
remember when I was a kid driving to school in
the car with my dad, we had listened to the radio,
and I remember having this thought where I was like,
I either want to be in one of the bands
or I want to be the radio DJ. And I
kind of went down the band's route for a really
long time. And then when I was kind of leaving

(21:51):
that behind, I thought, I guess I'll try the other thing,
And so I went and studied radio. I had this
amazing year studying radio, and yeah, I went into it
thinking that I'd want to be on the mic, and
then actually what really hooked me was kind of helping
other people tell their stories and the artistry of that
of kind of helping someone gives me an interview, and

(22:13):
then I get to really decide how that's put across,
like what bits I give emphasis to, what certain things mean,
the context that it's delivered in the music, all of that,
and so I just like went down that route for
a really long time and had a great ride with it.
I never thought that I'd end up in front of
the mic again. I genuinely had completely given up on

(22:35):
that dream.

Speaker 3 (22:35):
I hadn't thought about it.

Speaker 4 (22:36):
And then, you know, a few projects later, I got
to work on some cool radio dramas.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
I did a lot of.

Speaker 4 (22:42):
Like nature documentaries, and so I was recording on the
top of mountains and cool things like that, and then
I did my first true crime project. Ended up doing
The Girlfriends where I was a bit on Mike just
naturally as the producer, and we got into the kind
of SERI now spotlight where we needed a host and

(23:03):
it was like, You're already kind of one of the Girlfriends.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
People know who you are. It felt the most natural
for me to step up into that.

Speaker 4 (23:10):
But when I was asked, I was like, well, I
was completely mind blown by the suggestion that I'd get
back on Mike, even though that was the original goal.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
And so it's gone a bit three sixty, which is fun.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
That's awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
I met Hannah working on The Opportunist. Hannah's the lead
producer and host of that show. While I was working
on it, and created the show, and I came on
as a producer, and so you know, going from producer
to host, it is a journey. And I didn't have
the vocal experience that you have, so luckily I just
have Hannah's expertise at my disposal. But it's a really

(23:44):
exciting way to go from Like there's a lot of
say when you're producing, like how you bring someone's story
to life, but it's a whole other connection with your listenership.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
It's just really intangible, totally.

Speaker 4 (23:56):
Yeah, And I think these days you have a lot
of people who end up in the prison and to
chair because they're influencers for other reasons. You know, they've
just got a lot of social media likes or followers
or whatever. Not to say they're not valid, but back
in the day, it used to be a natural journey
that someone would be a journalist or a producer and
they'd end up on the microphone. And that comes with

(24:17):
a lot of training that you're perhaps not aware that
you're having that makes you good at doing, say an interview,
you know. And I've worked with a lot of influencer
style hosts who are doing it for the first time
and being an interviewer is not a natural thing that
comes to them. But I wasn't so scared about that part,
the part where I'm having to talk to people, because
I've been doing it for years and years anyway as

(24:38):
a producer.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, you have such a
great voice for podcasting in your narrative style is really
natural and good, which is like such a joy to
listen to. I agree, Like I love listening to all
kinds of voices, but in a podcast series especially, I
love hearing a narrator who was deeply involve and making

(25:00):
the show because I think then they have all these
different insights and they're so invested in the people that
they're interviewing, in the story that they're telling, and it
can be such a powerful experience, as I'm sure you
know when you're working on a story and you know
you're spending so much time speaking with people and doing
interviews and patient. I talk a lot about how we
have like different experiences of a story that we're producing.

(25:25):
It's like the first initial discovery of it. There's the
investigative part, the interviews, and then there's this whole other
experience of like putting it together and the choices that
you make editing it, and then the audience just gets
to have that sort of one experience of listening to
the final thing, right, But there's so much more that
goes into a story, or like, there's so many more

(25:47):
experiences that we have that don't come out in that
final piece, and so I'm curious. There's probably so many
of them. But I'm curious if you have any moments
that stand out to you, like from season one or
season two of your experience producing The Girlfriends, whatever it
is that is sort of memorable to you about those
first two seasons.

Speaker 4 (26:06):
Oh my god, I mean all of it. It was
a really huge experience for me because although I'd made
this true crime show that also was number one in
the US before that that was called Stolen Hearts, and
so that was my first big.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
Success and that was really interesting.

Speaker 4 (26:24):
But it was also a UK based story, so a
lot of the experiences didn't feel too different to me.
Being on the road a lot as a musician because
I used to drive around the UK all the time.
Driving down to Wales to do some interviews felt pretty
normal for that one. But coming to the US for
a reporting trip that felt so glamorous. Oh my god,

(26:44):
I've arrived. I'm in New York City, I'm in Times Square.
So as a personal just experience of doing that, that
was amazing, But when it comes to the actual kind
of like editorial content, meeting the women who ended up
being involved and spending time with them physically in the
States felt huge for me. You know, getting to sit

(27:08):
down with Elaine, the sister of Gaelcats, who is such
a formidable, amazing woman, and like everyone who listens to
the show is obsessed with a Lane because she's got
this incredible voice, and she's in charge of every room
she's in, as she should be. She has earned that place.
And to kind of go and try and interview her

(27:29):
and kind of naturally just be deferential to her power
was like something that really stayed with me. And trying
to like navigate that and the trust that they all
put in me, the kind of tears that a lot
of them shed around me felt those kind of moments
still stick with me. Is you know, I feel very
a lot of warmth towards all of those women, but
also its kind of strange sort of behind the scenes things,

(27:51):
you know, I had odd phone calls with people defending
Bob that never end up on tape. But you know,
I remember one point, I was at my parents' house
and I couldn't reschedule this phone call with somebody that
Bob knew, and I was like lying on my parents' sofa,
this place that should be sort of relaxing, you know.
My mom's pottering in the kitchen making cups of tea,

(28:13):
being like the typical English mother, and I'm having this
phone call with someone defending a murderer that went on
for two hours.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (28:21):
You know, moments like that just kind of stay with you,
I think, almost, like especially because they don't end up
on tape. You know, like so much of the stuff
that I really remember, there's good reasons why I didn't
end up on tape. Some of it I legally couldn't
put on tape. But you end up becoming the like
guardian of the weird quirks that happen behind the scenes,
you know, and they stick with me totally.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, for that conversation, were you not able to put
it on tape because this person didn't agree to that?
Or why did you not put that conversation in the podcast?

Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, it was off the record.

Speaker 4 (28:55):
They just were quite spiritual and had gone through a
whole journey of being I think manipulated into having the
views that they had, and they just really wanted to
persuade me to see the other side. But the other
side was the other side that a lot of people
who are if I can swear like arseholes had of

(29:17):
Gail because it was the whole kind of she was
such a difficult person, like, of course he did it. Basically, Wow,
obviously that's that's not a great argument against you know,
why someone should be put in prison for murder.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yeah, yeah, I would say it's a terrible argument.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
It's not going to stand off in a court of
law quite rightly.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yeah, those of the record conversations are like, as a producer,
you know, I'm taking this copious notes or you know,
Hannah and I will immediately like just information download to
one another. But yeah, it's tough and sometimes I'm like,
how much of my time am I giving this? Like
I want to know everything I need to know from

(29:57):
this person. But also when someone just starts trying to
persuade me of something, I'm like, okay, I know the
show that I'm making. Usually, and yeah, it's a balance too.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Completely Yeah, Yeah, sometimes it can be tough to like
draw those boundaries because it is like can become like
very all consuming and sort of as you had mentioned earlier, Anna,
like when you're working on a story, you get so
like deeply invested with the people that you're interviewing and
the people whose story it is and Patient I feel

(30:28):
the same way. Like we talk a lot about how
important it is when someone tells us their story. We
feel a huge responsibility to do justice to it, to
tell the best story we can, and to tell a
true and fair story, well research story. But we don't
want anyone coming back to us and saying like, oh god,
you did a horrible job. You totally watched my story, right,

(30:48):
Like I want them to feel good about putting it
out to the world. But I feel, like you know,
I have in the past, Patias in the past, like
we get very deeply involved with people that we're making
these stories with. Then do you have any thoughts about
that as far as like boundaries that you have to
make personally for yourself or how do you feel about it?

Speaker 3 (31:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (31:05):
I think that's really complicated because we're asking for a
lot of people, and I really feel that and I
feel that. You know, obviously we can all kind of
wax lyrical about how grateful we feel, because of course
we feel grateful these people are providing us with a
job and allowing us to make art or stories or

(31:26):
however you like to define podcasts into something that hopefully
helps other people or at least entertains other people, or
whatever the purposes that you have. But I also think
you have to remember that it isn't an exchange, and
it really feels like most human interactions. You go, I
want you to give me loads of yourself, and in

(31:47):
order to do that, I shall give you loads of me,
And that's what the relationship building is. But there's some
situations where you're perhaps interviewing people who aren't good people,
Like if you start giving yourself in order to have
somebody who you perhaps don't trust or has committed a crime,
you have to be really cautious.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
Also, we deal.

Speaker 4 (32:08):
With like very very fragile people, and I think you
have to be aware that the person they present themselves
to be at the start isn't necessarily the person they're
going to be throughout. And so it can be very
easy to kind of build a relationship based on this
one particular moment. But actually a lot of people who've experienced,

(32:30):
you know, abject trauma, their reaction to a story coming
out about them might be really explosive, and then suddenly
their feelings about you might really change, and you have
to prepare yourself for that and kind of sure yourself
up as you go along to make sure that actually
they don't suddenly feel betrayed when you do step back.
You know, if they suddenly explode and you've been all like,

(32:53):
you're my best friend, blah blah blah, and then suddenly
you're giving them loads of distance, that's really cruel. And
so it's important to maintain those boundaries all the way through.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
But it can be hard.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
It can be really hard. I mean I recently had
an experience that I hadn't had yet where we came
across this story and this woman I had connected with
about it, she seemed really excited about telling her story.
It would have been the first time she'd ever told it,
and it was a sexual assault that took place in
her home an intruder. And as I did like a

(33:24):
second sort of preliminary call with her, and her tone
sort of shifted about, like my intentions and the intentions
of the podcast, and you know, we always level with people,
this is what our show is, this is what it's not,
you know, and our goal, you know, is to tell
your story in a way that you're happy with it,

(33:45):
but we never want to make it sound like it's
more than it is. And her whole demeanor shifted, and
then she said, but I still want to do the interview.
And I was like, I don't think this is a
good bit. And it actually never had that happen before,
but it felt like maybe this story, it would be
something our audience would be really interested to hear, but
I don't think it would go smoothly after the fact.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 4 (34:08):
And it's good for you to kind of step in
and recognize that, and you know, maybe you have to
be the bad guy, you know in the first instance,
but actually it pays dividends to them later on, you know.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah, totally. Yeah, So I want to talk about the
girlfriend's spotlight. Yeah, I'm so interested in it. It's exciting
to hear it on the feed and exciting that you
are the host. You know, we got to hear you,
as you said a little bit in season one and

(34:42):
season two you were on Mic a little bit more,
and so we were already familiar with who you were,
and now you're the host and it's such a cool series.
I want to ask you about. You know, one of
the taglines is stories about women Winning. Yeah, I thought
that was really intriguing, and so I'd love for you
to tell us like how the girl Friend's Spotlight came
about as an idea and how you landed on that

(35:03):
sort of theme and tagline.

Speaker 5 (35:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:06):
So, I mean the way Spotlight came about as a
concept was just that we had this feed and these
shows that had kind of a mastered a big audience
of supporters and you know, big community of people who
felt really invested in it, and naturally we wanted to
just kind of keep growing that we keep building it.

(35:28):
But the brutal producery reality is that it's really hard
to make narrative series and they take a lot of
time and you can't just put those out every single week,
and so we're trying to figure out ways that we
could keep the feed going in between those big narratives,
but also a way where we could tell stories that

(35:48):
couldn't be turned into narratives, because obviously we go through
so many stories in order to decide what those narratives
are going to be, and very often, ninety nine percent
of the time you're going, oh, this one couldn't really
sustain that amount of episodes. This one doesn't have enough characters.
Most of them are dead so they couldn't talk, or

(36:09):
something like that. There's so many different hurdles that mean
something wouldn't make a good limited series, but.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
They are really great stories.

Speaker 4 (36:17):
And so doing one off episodes allowed us to do that.
So that's kind of how it ended up coming about.
And the women winning tagline was also because we were
trying to figure out like what the girlfriend's was and
I think, like the first two series, they were associated

(36:38):
with each other, right, you know. Series two was a
continuation of the first series. We didn't really have to
think about it too much for the second one, and
we were like, okay, so it's about kind of a
group of women getting together and seeking justice. That was
the first idea, and then that group of women thing
actually became quite tough.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
It's not always a group of women.

Speaker 4 (37:00):
It means that you can't tell those kind of stories
of the single kind of warrior woman who's doing something
that often just like collectively does impact and benefit multiple women.
So there's a sort of coming together. There are kind
of greater good for the sisterhood or whatever, and so
we're like, that needs to be part of it. The
other thing that feels like it's really really important, perhaps

(37:23):
the most important thing to the girlfriends, is that there's
this like feeling within true crime that every time a
woman features, she gets murdered, and she's just like cast aside.
She's a loser in that story. You know, often they
should be the center of the story, it's all about them,
but they're the least known character. And I really tried
to flip that for the girlfriends. So I was like

(37:44):
really trying to get to know the women who'd been
victimized and make them the central characters of the story,
not Bob. And at the end of it, there needs
to be some kind of sense of actually, therefore, it's
not all bad to be a woman. You know, women
can exist in society and have terrible things happen to
them but still have like great friendships and gossip and

(38:07):
still put the bad guy away if that's what they're
trying to do, or still just ignore him entirely. You know,
there's so many other ends for women involved in bad
things than just murdered, and so that's what it became.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
I think that you've done a really great job at that.
By the way, Like even from the I think it's
the pilot episode about Tracy, Yeah, there's just enough about
her assailant to like place him in her life and
in the story, and then it's just her and obviously
that's a theme that continues on. But you do a
great job. I actually noticed it immediately and was like,
I love this, Oh great, same.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
Yeah, it really stands out and it's so refreshing when
listening to true crime. We love that. And then you
do it really well in The Girlfriend's Spotlight as well
all the episodes, Like there's some very dark episodes, some
darker than others, but there's a lot of positivity and
a lot of like like levity, levity, Yeah, and you

(39:05):
get really good to know these women in a cool way.

Speaker 4 (39:08):
Yeah, And I think that reflects my experience of life
and friendships right with other women is my friends. We
all go through really bad things, some worse than others,
but most of the time it's dealt with in a
way that's like, you know, heartwarming. And you're there and
you can cry my shoulder all of this, but also
at some point, I'm just going to make you laugh

(39:29):
about something, you know, Like, at some point we're going
to poke fun at this thing.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
We're going to find the joy. We're going to ignore
it entirely.

Speaker 4 (39:36):
And it's not all gloom. Trauma doesn't happen in this
one traumatic life, sad and depressing bubble, and that's the
only thing that you experience. I think often when you
talk to people about the worst things that have happened
to them, they'll go, oh, and then the weirdest thing happened,
Like you know, I found out my grandma died and

(39:56):
then like my cat just threw up, and it was
just like it punctured the moment, do you know what
I mean. It's just like and these little moments that
kind of like pierce a scene is actually what happens
in real life.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
So I wanted to capture that in the Girlfriends.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yeah, I think you've successfully done that. I have noticed
it in all of the Spotlight episodes. Actually, I'm curious
how much interaction do you have with the people that
you're interviewing prior to recording.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
For Spotlight none from me.

Speaker 4 (40:26):
That's all done with the producers who do like a
pre interview with them, write up kind of an interview,
brief doc and some questions, and then I review that.
So it's quite different from doing the narrative series, whereas, like,
obviously for that I would have spoken to people for
ages on the phone and video calls, and then I

(40:47):
fly out to be with them and spend often days
basically living with them. But this this way for Spotlight,
I have an hour and a half to bond meet
them for the first time, get them comfortable enough to
tell me about the worst thing that's ever happened to them,
and then like also kind of try and make them
not feel terrible at the end of it. Yeah, it's

(41:11):
a test of social skills more than anything.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
I think.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah, do you find that doing interviews remotely? I mean,
obviously there's a difference in the amount of time you're
spending with someone at all, virtually or otherwise, But do
you find any challenges of like connecting with someone virtually
or everyone feels so used to that now sometimes I
wonder how much of a difference it's making.

Speaker 4 (41:36):
It is harder, I think, yeah, because you don't have
the sort of body language that you have in person.
You also don't have the sort of niceties at the
bit before where it's like do you want a cup
of tea or known? Or do you have oat milk?
You know, these little things that it signifies of someone's personality.
And it also I think it's different with different people.

(41:57):
Like younger people are very used to talking like this
and so they can figure it out quite quickly. But
a lot of the time kind of older people they
can struggle with the technology and that really stresses them out.
And that's a stressful start and I kind of feel
crap for that. And then yeah, they kind of if
I'm looking a different direction or something, just because I'm listening,

(42:20):
that feels like a break of eye contact.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
So I'm conscious of that. I'd love to do all
my interviews in person. I much prefer that, But you know, that.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Would be the dream. It would be the yeah sidebar,
The idea of being able to offer someone that you
can even really interview a cup of tea is just
like so delightful to me. I'm like, oh my gosh, Like,
you know, you've really got that figured out over there.
What do we have water or like like a lacoir
or whatever. Yeah, like, oh my god, that's tea. I'm like, wow,

(42:49):
offering someone a cup of tea just sounds like such
a great thing to do. It's like communal, it's comforting.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
Yeah, I love it. It's like a little hug at the
start and.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
The girlfriend spotlight. You have such a kind of wide
variety of topics and people that you speak with. I
mean it's really like pretty wide ranging, and I guess
you know, thinking about women winning as a theme really
allows you to talk with a lot of different kinds
of people. You know, you speak with lu Anne Patian
I both really loved that episode who escaped this polygamous

(43:22):
Kingston clan. And then like on a different side of
the spectrum, you have like a Russian activist from Pussy Riot,
and then you have like an investigator who's solving cold cases,
which is so cool and really I love that episode
and really speaks back to what you're talking about, like
one woman thriving can like have such a ripple effect

(43:43):
of helping other women. This If people haven't listened to it,
they have to listen to the episode with Rose Brady
from the Baltimore County SVU who started to investigate this
backlog of cold cases, rape kits that this forensic pathologist
had just kept, you know which like yah him as well, right,
and she starts to solve these cases. Really incredible, But
you know, how do you think about what types of

(44:06):
stories do you want to tell because they are so
really different?

Speaker 3 (44:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (44:11):
Well, I mean I was conscious, and the whole team
was conscious that we didn't want to just stick in
true crime the whole time, or for it to be
one brand of true crime.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
I think it'd be very easy.

Speaker 4 (44:23):
For every episode or series of The Girlfriends to be
some sort of domestic violence case, because that's what we
kind of started out exploring, and you know, like a
bad husband or a bad boyfriend. And I think that
also feels if we ended up just doing that but
always trying to put some sort of like positive spin
or levity within, that would also still be being reductive

(44:46):
to what the experiences are. You know, women come in
all shapes and sizes, with all kinds of experiences, so.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
I want to cover it.

Speaker 4 (44:54):
I also don't personally just want to sit in really
sad stories the whole time. So one's like when we
had June Millington, the guitarist from the like you know,
first all women rock band in the US.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
That's like a rock star.

Speaker 4 (45:13):
You know, she was just a rock star and like, yeah,
of course she's experienced misogyny on her rise in rock
and it was tough.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
She also is just a rock star who has a
really cool story.

Speaker 4 (45:24):
And I want to have those on the feed as well,
because I mean, it's just it's fun, isn't there. Those
are great stories and they should be told. And that
is an example of a woman winning, So why not.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Yeah, I mean I think the girlfriends and Spotlight, it's
a great example and in something worth striving for. On
the Knife is like it falls within this true crime genre,
but you feel good about having listened to it.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
That's great to hear.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
You don't feel icky, right, feel Yeah?

Speaker 4 (45:51):
I love to not give the ick. That's like top goal. Yeah,
so thank you for that.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
No ick. How is your audience for responded to Spotlight
and yeah, this sort of change in format pretty well.

Speaker 4 (46:07):
Yeah, it's a lot of change for people to adjust to.
But I haven't had any hate mail, so that's been wonderful.
It's only been positive.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
You know.

Speaker 4 (46:17):
After the Nadia episode from Pussy Riot, somebody messaged me saying,
I've been thinking about Nadia.

Speaker 3 (46:24):
It was so nice to hear her voice.

Speaker 4 (46:25):
I was worried about her because that is one of
those stories, the pussy Riot story, that kind of has
lived in a lot of our minds, you know, like
what's going on there, what happened, and people have been
I was obviously personally very worried taking over as host
because Carol's so amazing and everyone loves Carol as they should,

(46:45):
and taking over that role having been the sidekick the
whole time, I thought people wouldn't like that, But actually
people have been really lovely and embraced me, and I'm
interested to see how they kind of embrace me or
cope with the idea of a new narrative series as well,
because that's when it will feel like we're really departing

(47:06):
from those first two series. I think it will really
feel like we're doing something new, and I'm hosting.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
That as well.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
It's well deserved. You're doing such a great job and
it's a great show, and I want to hear a
little bit more about this narrative series that you have upcoming.
But just for clarity, so is Spotlight over will Spotlight
continue to come out weekly in between the narrative seasons.

Speaker 4 (47:27):
Yeah, so, I mean Spotlight is in perpetuity at the moment.
So the way it's working at the moment, eight of
the Spotlight episodes have already come out. There's a short pause,
depends when you put this out, but there's a short pause,
and then Gelhouse Lawyer, our next narrative series is going
to come out on July fourteenth, and then we have

(47:47):
another narrative series coming out straight after that, just to
kind of really indulge the listeners, and then more Spotlight
and from then on we're hoping to have the pattern
of kind of eight Spotlight episodes a narrative, eight Spotlight
episodes a narrative and hopefully do that forever and ever
and ever. Please iHeart.

Speaker 5 (48:08):
Are you listening? I heart they are? Yeah, thank you
so much, Katrina. Yeah, well cool, I mean I love that.
I love that format, and I also love producers and
you know, makers of podcasts spreading the word about like, yeah,
it's really it takes so much work to make these
long seasons of his show, and Patien I know that well.

(48:30):
And it's also great to just like make content and
put it out and be able to tell these smaller
stories and continue making just one of the reasons why
we started the Knife because we just we want to
make podcasts. We want to connect with people and put
something out regularly. Tell us about the new series, The
Girlfriend's Jail House Lawyer, Like, what can you tease about
what we can expect from this new series.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
Well, The Girlfriend's Jaehouse Lawyer is going to feel.

Speaker 4 (48:56):
Very different from what people have already heard on the feed,
and I'm really excited about that because I like every
series to be some sort of challenge. But this series
is about a woman who was convicted of murder, a
murder she says she didn't commit, but she did spend
twelve years behind bars for that. And while she is
behind bars because she was adamant she did not do this,

(49:18):
she was innocent. She trained herself up in law and
she became this sort of jailhouse lawyer figure. And at
first it was like, obviously, to help sort out her
own case. She was really trying to get herself out
of prison, but she also, along the way, which is
the sort of girlfriendsy bit, she was helping other women
with their cases and she even got some women out

(49:39):
of prison herself, which is so cool, or really helped
get them out of prison herself. And so that's the
sort of simple version of the story. Women convicted of
murder says she didn't do it, went to prison trying
to be a jailhouse lawyer, busted herself and some other
women out of prison.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
Happy days.

Speaker 4 (49:57):
But there's layers of kind of complicatedness that we explore
within that in regards to what it means to be
a villain or a victim, and actually kind of what
my role has been and your guy's role has been
as true crime reporters in deciding that and in reinforcing

(50:18):
ideas of what victims are and what villains are, what
the state has done to make you see a certain
person as a victim or a certain person as a villain,
and how murky it can be when sometimes the two overlap.
And so there's lots of sort of interesting analysis along
the way too, but tied up within like a very

(50:41):
juicy story forward podcast.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
I can't wait to hear it. Yeah, that sounds so good.

Speaker 3 (50:47):
I'm very excited, thank you.

Speaker 4 (50:50):
Yeah, I'm really excited for it to go out, But
I'm also nervous because it does feel like a flip
in the fact that before we always had these very
clean cut characters who, you know, you've just got this
one bad guy, and you've got these women who kind
of really just haven't seemed to have done anything wrong.
And in this one, we're really asking people to go,

(51:12):
I know, she's still got a murder church, you know,
or like, I know she's still been accused of murder,
but what if it's more complicated than that. Like I'm
asking people to actually extend compassion to someone who would
be traditionally seen as the perpetrator of the crime. Augh,
and that's a woman at the center of the story.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
Yeah, Hannah and I on the Knife and on our
previous show, like loved exploring this idea of like good
and bad, good and evil, whatever you want to call it,
being in every one of us. And you never think
it's going to be you until it is. And like,
when you're faced with these circumstances that you could have
never anticipated, you could think right now how you might react,

(51:57):
but that's usually not the case.

Speaker 4 (52:00):
Absolutely, Yeah, And that's what That's what Kelly, the central character, says.
She's like I ask her at one point in the
first episode, I say, how important is it to you
that the audience believes you, that they believe that you're
innocent because everyone's jury, you know, And she's like, you
know that no one can say what they'd do if

(52:22):
they were put in a situation, you know, at any
one given time, if you were put in the situations
I was, what can you do?

Speaker 3 (52:29):
And it's true.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
You know. The reason it's a wrestle for me at
points to tell the story that I'm telling in Jailhouse
Lawyer is because I've lived a.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
Really good life.

Speaker 4 (52:41):
I have, like so much, as much as I try
to be a great impartial, you know, journalist, someone on
the outside looking in the observer, it's like, that's not true.
It's like so much of what I see and what
I interpret, just like everybody else, is based on the
fact that I've lived certain life, and my life is

(53:02):
very far from the abuse that she's experienced, the drug
abuse that she's experienced, the homelessness that she was experiencing
at the time. So how can I judge because I'm
sure if I was in those situations, I'll be doing
desperate things.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Yeah, well that makes me even more excited to hear it.
I'm obviously already a huge fan, but can't wait.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Yeah, I love those kind of complex stories, and I
love that you're taking You're gonna sounds like going to
take us to a place where you explore that in
a thoughtful way. I think that's the best kind of
true crime. Like, that's true crime when it's really doing
its job. It's making us think about other people's experiences
and lives and like beyond ourselves and have some sort

(53:45):
of story. You know, the narrative really helps us get there.
But to be able to stop and think about that,
what would that be Like? I don't have to go
through that myself in life to be able to really
stop and wonder about someone else's story and take Karen,
really think about it, and yeah, we're really excited from everything.

Speaker 4 (54:05):
Good. Well, you have to let me know what you think.
As people who are often in the same position as.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Me will listen with a cup of tea, Yes, please,
as I expect. It's always fun for me when I'm
listening to someone who's hosted a show I enjoy, and
then speaking with them, I'm like, oh, this is so cool.
It doesn't get old for me. So thank you so much,
really appreciate you taking this time. I know it's later
over there. Yes, thank you so much, Anna.

Speaker 4 (54:34):
Thank you so much. It was so lovely to do
the exact same thing back at you, hear your guys
voices and meetium kind of in the flesh on a
laptop screen.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
And I was also thinking, you know, earlier for us,
it would be so glamorous if we were ever in
the UK doing something. I'm oh wow, that would be
whoa yeah, I mean over the moon.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Get to go to Europe to record something, Yeah to
your bucket list.

Speaker 4 (54:59):
Yeah yeah, but come on over to Europe and I
will take you for some like glamorous cocktails or something,
and then it can really reinforce that image.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
Oh wow, I'm going to start my story search over
there right now.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
One last fun thing I want to ask, you know,
are you listening to anything right now? Do you have
any kind of recommendation for our listeners. It could be
true crime or not. It could be podcast, It could
be a great documentary you just watched. It doesn't have
to be favorite of all time. Is there anything that
like you're thinking about and loving right now?

Speaker 1 (55:32):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (55:32):
Got I was actually asked this question on a podcast
like two days ago, and I gave the worst answer
because I'm you know, when you're so deep. I'm sure
you guys experienced this, when you're like so deep in
the hard bit of making a show and everything's so
heavy and you're just like tired, and the idea of
listening to something that is like relevant to the work

(55:54):
you do, okay, true crime or like serious or documentary or.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
Whatever, it's just farting up.

Speaker 4 (56:00):
So I've been going back into the normal gossip archives
and just been gossiping.

Speaker 3 (56:06):
Just gossip, gossip, gossip.

Speaker 4 (56:08):
I'm on the staremaster gossip, I'm walking with dog gossip.
I'm not doing anything serious at the moment. So yeah,
I don't have a good answer for you. I'm afraid
just gossip.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
That's a great pick. Actually, an associate producer we worked
with previously, she recommended that show to us. It was
the first time I had heard it. This is years ago,
and it's awesome.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
It's great. Yeah, it's such a fun show.

Speaker 4 (56:31):
It's so good. That's a cup of tea of a show. Yeah,
that's a warm cup of tea.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
It really is.

Speaker 5 (56:38):
Yeah, Well awesome, Thank you so much, thank you.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Thanks so much Anna for joining us in the podcast.
That was such a fun interview. I know, like to
stay the obvious.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
We love podcasts, but getting to speak with someone and
I've been listening to their voice as the host, I'm
always like, oh, that's so cool.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
It is so cool. Yeah. I always love to talk
to a fellow podcaster and hear what they're thinking about,
especially someone working in true crime. So it's great to
hear Anna's perspective. Can't wait for season three. Yes, and
I actually have two recommendations today. Oh yay.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
One's a podcast. One's a documentary. Okay, so the podcast Trek. Okay,
I'm gonna start with a story, okay.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
Great.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
The story is when these fires were happening in California
earlier this year in January, I could see the policies
fire from my living room. We were that close to it,
and we left. We went to Las Vegas because we
were concerned about the air quality. We have a toddler
and we had lots of work to do, so we're like, okay,

(57:49):
hotel rooms in southern California in that moment very expensive.
Let's just go to Las Vegas. They're cheap, and we
get a hotel room there. My husband was on calls
all day. It's a small room, and so I'm like, okay,
I have to take my daughter somewhere to entertain her.
So I'm driving around to go to the park. It's
really cold. She's a California girl. She's not excited about

(58:10):
the fact that it's cold. She doesn't want to wear
a jacket. It feels like restrictive. So, oh my God.
To find somewhere so she can run around. So we
go to the kids museum. She rips through the kids museum.
She's still got energy. I'm like, what do we do.
I see this mall across the street with like a
good Will in it, and I'm like, wow, I love
thrift shops.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
Let's go there.

Speaker 3 (58:30):
Love it.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
Great way to spend an afternoon. Great way to spend
an afternoon. She is so uncooperative, and I'm like, well,
let's just get out here. I'm just gonna let her
run around this mall. We then go into the mall
so she can just run.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
Yeah, what she does.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
And then as I pull her off, this door it
starts opening, so I go in and then I realize
it's in like an aquarium type situation. So I'm like, okay,
let's just get two tickets to whatever this is. I'm
not putting a lot of thought into this. This place
is called SeaQuest, and I'll start the story with I'm

(59:07):
not glad I gave them my money, but i have
to talk about this.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
It was nuts.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
We get our tickets, which involves tokens, and I'm like, well,
what are these tokens for? Is like food for the animals.
And I'm like, okay, okay, so is it a zoo?
Is an aquarium you feed the animals? Like, what's going
on here? So the first little exhibit is these otters.
They look like wasels, but they go in the water.
I think they were like small otters.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
And the wall that these I'm going somewhere with this
these otters are behind is not that big. And I
turned to the guy like, you could reach your hand
over it kind of yeah, because they can kind of
stand up okay, quite long. And so they know that
we have these tokens. They're waiting the otters yeah, and
so they're kind of like food. They want the food,

(59:53):
and I realized we're the first people in here. These
animals are hungry, and so I'm like okay, and I
give them the food or whatever, and this kind of
like apathetic employee.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
I ask him.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
I go, it looks like they can kind of get
out of there, like they're jumping and climbing really hide,
and he goes, they get out all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
And I'm like, oh my god, what are running around
the mall? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
I'm just yeah, that's happening. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
And so I just pick up my kid and I'm like,
We're going to the next exhibit.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
And so it's iguanas. Okay, okay. I'm like, are these
typical animals for an aquarium? I thought this is thought
it would be fish. It's a great question. Same here.
So I'm like, well, iguanas. You know, I'm picturing like
a very still animal. I don't picture iguanas like, you know,
doing a lot. I picture them sunbathing. So I also

(01:00:41):
don't picture myself next to them. So we go into
this door. It's like, no employee necessary for entry, and
I'm like, okay, why would there be. I have my
kid in my arms and I have food in my
left hand. Open the door. These iguanas. I've never seen
an animal move so quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
I mean, I was rushed by two iguanas for this
food and I'm throwing the food. I'm trying to run
back out of there, my kids holding me, going Mama, no. Anyway,
So I had this very strange, bombarded, very strange experience
at this place called Sequest that I wouldn't do it again.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
Okay, Now I feel so sad for the animals. It
was truly sad. Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
So I was listening to this podcast this is my wreck.
It's called big Time a Good Time in Apple podcast,
and it is true crime, but not necessarily like crime.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
The way we normally think about it. Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
And there's a two part episode about a shark, miss Helen,
that goes missing from an aquarium in Texas.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
And the second part of this two part series is
about the owner of that aquarium and he owns SeaQuest. Wow,
or it did, and it is no longer involved because
of things they'll get into in the show. But I
was like, Sequest, Sequest, I've heard of Sequest. Yeah, it's
like it's everything I thought it was. Wow, Okay, weird
and questionable.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Well I'm going to listen to it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
Yeah, but big Time is great, and I really recommend it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
And that's my podcast wreck.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
My other wreck is a documentary, and I think you'll
love this or you'll be like, I've already watched this
ten times Netflix. The Twister Caught in the Storm The Twister,
like the movie, it's a documentary about a massive tornado
in twenty eleven in Joplin, Missouri.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
Okay, naturally, disaster didn't have to watch the documentary because
I went there after this happened and helped. Oh okay,
well there you go. But yeah, no, I mean I
would be interested in the documentary. Tell me about it. Yeah,
it was.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
They follow people who were just going about their life
that day, Like there's a kid working on a froyo shop.
There were kids graduating from their high school graduation and
that ceremony, and you know, the whole is just obliterated
by this tornado. And there's, you know, one really terrifying
moment where I mean, there's so many but apparently you

(01:03:08):
just know about tornadoes. If you live in tornado country,
you probably know that. But these people were caught in it,
and they saw blue skies and they were yelling to
the other people around them who were maybe less familiar,
stay down, stay down because they were in.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
The eye of the tornado.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
Oh yeah, so they could see up and see blue skies,
but they knew they were still in it. They were
just in the center.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Wow. Yeah, and they survived to tell about this, talk
about it. Mm hmm. That's good. Yeah, wow, yeah, No,
I will definitely watch this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
I yeah, not everyone survives, but yeah, it was a
great documentary. And you know, these were kids at the
time that they were interviewing, and now they're adults reflecting
on it and it's just stuck with them.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Was it a recent documentary, Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Think it's twenty twenty five. Okay, yeah, twenty twenty five documentary.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
But yeah, I remember that tornado because that was a
you know, there's a lot of tornadoes, but sometimes it's
a particularly bad one or if it especially if it
touches down in an area where there's a lot of
homes and what not destruction. So that was a bad one.
And I went with some people and did like some
food delivery kind of volunteering after it happened, because I
was living in Tulsa at the time, which is pretty

(01:04:16):
close to Joplin actually, but I remember we drove through
some of the neighborhoods where it had you know, touched
down and just taken out a bunch of houses and stuff,
and it was just wild how you couldn't recognize, like
you didn't know what street it was or what address,
like people sort of had to figure out even what
their house was because it was so just stripped everything,

(01:04:38):
you know, kind of destroyed.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
Yeah, I remember there's a moment about that in the
documentary where they're trying to get home but there's all
the landmarks you're used to were gone, there's no more streets.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
Yeah, everything has to bring in it. Yeah, I was.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
I mean, it's incredibly sad and there were lives lost
and Joplin really came together afterwards and that was a
nice thing to see, but obviously a a very sad thing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
Yeah, well I'll watch it. Thanks for the recommendation. Yeah,
and that's our episode. Thanks for listening. We'll see you
next week.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
If you have a story for us, we would love
to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactlyrightmedia
dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram at
the Knife podcast or a Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
This has been an Exactly Right production, hosted and produced
by me Hannah Smith and me Paysia Ety.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer
is Christina Chamberlain. Our theme music is by Birds in
the Airport Artwork five vansa Lilac executive produced by Karen Kilgareff,
Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.