Criminal
Criminal is the first of its kind. A show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Named a Best Podcast of 2023 by the New York Times. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Episodes
May 1, 2026 • 38 mins
In January 1993, a lot of children started showing up at Seattle Children’s Hospital with the same unusual symptoms. Doctors didn't know what was going on – until they realized that most of the children had recently eaten at the same restaurant: Jack in the Box.
Jeff Benedict’s book is Poisoned: The True Story of the Deadly E. coli Outbreak That Changed the Way Americans Eat.
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April 24, 2026 • 50 mins
When Fannie Davis and her family moved to Detroit in the mid-1950s, they hadn’t prepared themselves for how hard it would be. They had trouble finding steady work. So, Fannie found a way to take care of her family. She started small, but built a robust and lucrative operation… a business that a lot of people knew about but no one talked about.
Bridgett Davis’ book is The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Det...
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April 17, 2026 • 38 mins
On the morning of May 20, 1957, a bomb exploded under Don King’s front porch. Police got a tip that they should search the home of someone he knew - a woman named Dollree Mapp. But when they got there, she refused to let them in. Soon, her case would go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Carolyn Long’s book is Mapp v. Ohio: Guarding Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures.
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April 10, 2026 • 40 mins
Alice and Leonard Rhinelander had only been married for a few weeks when his family lawyer came to their house and took Leonard away with him. The next time Alice saw her husband was a year later, in a courtroom.
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April 3, 2026 • 37 mins
For years, John Moore and Tanner Mansell ran shark diving tours off the coast of Florida. One day, they came across a fishing line in the middle of the ocean – with over a dozen sharks caught on it. “This looked like something very illegal going on. And we felt like if we didn’t act, these sharks would definitely die.”
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March 27, 2026 • 33 mins
On Christmas Eve in 1926, a man came running into Bellevue Hospital in New York screaming that Santa Claus had been chasing him for blocks with a baseball bat. Not long after that, he died. And then another person arrived in the emergency room. And then another. This started happening in emergency rooms around the country. And it was happening because of a plan created by the U.S. government.
Deborah Blum’s book is The Poisoner’s ...
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March 20, 2026 • 54 mins
When Elzire Dionne gave birth to five identical babies, she caught the attention of reporters and doctors hundreds of miles away, the Chicago World’s Fair – and the Ontario government. Before the quintuplets were ten months old, they passed a new law: the Dionne Quintuplet Guardianship Act. “These children are our own royal family.”
Sarah Miller’s book is The Miracle and Tragedy of the Dionne Quintuplets.
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March 13, 2026 • 35 mins
When Cecilia Gentili was growing up in Argentina, she felt so different from everyone around her that she thought she might be from another planet. “I think that we are all aliens until we find our communities.”
This episode was originally released in 2019.
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March 6, 2026 • 59 mins
When Angelo Quinto died, his family said police were responsible for his death. But a lawyer told them his official cause of death would likely be something called “excited delirium.”
You can read more of Renu Rayasam's reporting on "excited delirium" at KFF Health News.
Arjun Byju's article for Current Affairs is: Excited Delirium: How Cops Invented a Disease.
Reporter Chris Gelardi obtained Rochester Police Department training...
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February 27, 2026 • 47 mins
After a gang leader was murdered in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the only witnesses who would talk with the police were tourists. They looked through so-called “mug books” filled with photographs of Asian men - and pointed out a man named Chol Soo Lee. Years later, a journalist decided to investigate his case, and described it as an “unreal, Alice-in-Chinatown murder case."
Today’s episode comes from the Smithsonian’s Sidedoor podca...
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February 20, 2026 • 42 mins
In 1864, a 41-year-old woman named Mary Surratt was running a boarding house in Washington, D.C. One of the most famous actors in the country began visiting her – which led to her becoming known as the woman who “kept the nest that hatched the egg."
Kate Clifford Larson’s book is The Assassin’s Accomplice.
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February 13, 2026 • 48 mins
In the early 2000s, the hip hop group Silibil N’ Brains seemed like they were on the brink of becoming very famous. They had a record deal with Sony, had been on MTV, and were talking about making a TV show. But they weren’t who they said they were.
Gavin Bain's book is California Schemin'.
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February 12, 2026 • 41 mins
This episode is unlocked and available for everyone to listen to!
Phoebe tells a story about an uncooperative plane passenger. Plus, Lauren and Phoebe discuss what embarrasses Phoebe the most, the intentional vagueness of Criminal episode descriptions, and whether or not Phoebe is a "finger princess."
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February 6, 2026 • 41 mins
When Mike Williams went missing while duck hunting on Lake Seminole, investigators wondered if he had been eaten by alligators. But Mike’s mother was sure something else had happened.
Mikita Brottman’s book is Guilty Creatures: Sex, God, and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida.
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January 30, 2026 • 33 mins
In 1963, Jeanne and Alan Abel traveled to Washington, DC to picket in front of the White House. They said they were part of a campaign that wanted to put clothes on animals — including the first lady’s horse.
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January 23, 2026 • 37 mins
While investigating a murder, a Polish detective discovered an unusual clue – a novel that contained an odd number of similarities to the real-life crime.
David Grann is the author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon, and his article about Krystian Bala is contained in his collection The Devil and Sherlock Holmes.
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January 16, 2026 • 46 mins
One night in 1989, Karen Palmer got in her car with her husband and two daughters and drove away from their home in California. They didn’t tell anyone where they were going.
Karen Palmer’s memoir is She’s Under Here.
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January 9, 2026 • 35 mins
One day in 2011, Lindsey Schweigert’s roommate came home to an open garage, a missing dog, and an overflowing bathtub. Lindsey remembers waking up in police custody.
Ramya Nagesh is the author of A Practical Guide to Insane and Non-Insane Automatism in Criminal Law – Sleepwalking, Blackouts, Hypoglycaemia, and Other Issues.
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December 26, 2025 • 43 mins
In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean was invited to write a letter to a man on death row named Elmo Patrick Sonnier. She told us, “I thought that all I was going to be doing was writing letters. And lo and behold, two years later, I am in that execution chamber.” When we spoke to her in 2021, she was 81, and had been present at the executions of six men.
Sister Helen’s book, Dead Man Walking, is about her time as a spiritual advisor to E...
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December 19, 2025 • 36 mins
Stories of animals really going for it.
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We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery.
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