Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. A decade before True Crime Podcast like Serial were even a thing. The series, Criminal, brought listeners stories of people who "have done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle." That's how the production team describes the work.

Each week, host and co-creator, Phoebe Judge talks to people who fall somewhere along that spectrum like a woman who fell in love with a prisoner and decided to smuggle him out of jail in a dog crate, or a woman who was a regular victim of identity theft, only to discover the perpetrator was her own mom, or people who steal petrified wood from national forests and how park rangers try to prevent it.

The series is confounding and empathetic, and nuanced, and it regularly appears on best-of lists, including The New York Times most recent one. It says Criminal has "grown" only more impressive with time, and that the show demonstrates "range and humanism." To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Criminal is about to kick off a multi-city international live tour. It'll be in our area next month. Joining us now to talk about the podcast and the live show is Criminal host Phoebe Judge. Phoebe, welcome to All Of It.

Phoebe Judge: Oh, thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, if you have a favorite Criminal episode, we want to hear about it. Our phone number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You may call in, you may join us on the air. You can also text to us at that number, 212-433-9692. Social media is available as well @AllOfItWNYC, we are talking about the podcast Criminal.

It's the 10th anniversary. We'll start with some history. You co-created Criminal with Lauren Spohrer. Lo Spohrer, very excited, hi to Lauren Spohrer when you talk to her. What makes a true crime podcast work, in your opinion, now that you've been working on it for 10 years?

Phoebe Judge: Well, I don't know if I have the exact answer to that question. Sometimes I think I'm more confused about what makes a good podcast now than when we started out, but it's a beginning, middle, and end. I think built into a lot of these true crime stories, you have a narrative arc. When we came up with the idea for the show, and when Lauren said, "Let's do a show about crime." I thought, "Well, that's the smartest thing I've ever heard." We're never going to run out of compelling stories.

Knowing that then it was our job to figure out, "Okay, what lens are we going to take to these crime stories? How are we going to try to do it a little differently and make our own mark on it?"

Alison Stewart: You'd been a reporter before. Did you have any association with a crime beat?

Phoebe Judge: No.

Alison Stewart: Did you have any previous engagement with crime?

Phoebe Judge: Not at all, people sometimes talk to me and say, "Well, oh boy, it must be such a dark world you live in. You think about crime all the time." I say, "Well, I think about crime, but I also think about a million other things." No, there's nothing that I love about crime more than a million other topics. It's just such a wonderful subject to explore. I was interested in crime, just like I'm interested in a million other news, politics, but crime just was something that we felt we could take a new look at. When we started the show, there were not many true crime podcasts at all, and so we thought, "Let's give it a shot."

Alison Stewart: I'm wondering if you read anything In Cold Blood or any sort of books about crimes, or did you just decide to go in fresh, just freshly?

Phoebe Judge: Well, it was rather fresh, I think. Lauren would say she's a wild Raymond Chandler fan, and certainly, we appreciated a lot of the old-time, long-form crime reporting, but I think what we wanted to do was to really create something new. At the base of that was that we would have a hosted show, but the main job would be to get the host out of the way. We always say the best episodes of Criminal are the ones where you hear me the least. It's why for so many of the episodes, we start with our subject's voice first. We get me out of the way and let someone just tell their story.

Alison Stewart: Editorially, how do you decide what to cover? Do you know what makes a criminal story?

Phoebe Judge: Well, it's kind of a joke around here because sometimes one of the producers will pitch a story and we'll all look at each other and we'll say, "Wow, that's a real criminal story." A woman smuggling a man out of jail in a dog crate, that's a real criminal story. Petrified, but that's real.

For me, a criminal story is a real criminal story when it pushes the boundaries of what that word crime means. We wanted to take this word and blow it apart and surprise our listeners by what falls under that. The best episodes for me are sometimes the ones that you might listen and think, they're calling that a crime story? Because it's funny or odd or strange. I love those types of stories.

Alison Stewart: Since we've talked about the Lady and the Dog Crate already, let's talk a little bit more. That is called Off Leash, that's the title of the episode. Tell us a little bit more about this woman, Toby.

Phoebe Judge: Well, Toby Dorr loved dogs, and she was working in a dog training program for incarcerated men in Michigan, and there are many of these programs, we've heard about them all over the country. They're wonderful programs. She fell in love with one of the inmates and lost her mind, I would say. The best thing about talking to Toby is when I was asking her about what happened, she looked at me and she said, "Phoebe, I can't tell you. It's so wild to me too. I got in over my skis."

She ended up smuggling this man out in a dog crate, and it ended up with a car crash and going to jail, but she's happy now. I think for me, it shows how we're all humans and we all do things that sometimes we never thought that we could even imagine. Those episodes I love to do because I think we can all put ourselves in each other's shoes and think, "Well, I wouldn't do that, but then, I don't know, maybe it might happen."

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a clip from the episode Off Leash. This is part of the episode where Toby tells you about making the decision to smuggle this man, John, out of prison in Lansing.

Toby Dorr: The next time I come up, he said, "I figured out, we do it this way." Finally, I said, "I think that could work. I think that might work. I think we could pull this off." To me, when I was talking to him about it, in some ways it was like a game, to figure out what would work and what wouldn't, but then all of a sudden, we had come up with a plan that was real enough that it was doable. Then all of a sudden, we were setting a date and it just seemed like overnight. Okay, all of a sudden we have a plan.

Phoebe Judge: I guess when the first option is shipping yourself out in a UPS box, actually the dog crate seems pretty practical.

Toby Dorr: Yes, it did.

Alison Stewart: Despite your name, you are famously and beautifully not judgmental when people tell you these stories, as you could hear there, you're just working it out with her. Like, "Yes, I guess that does make more sense than UPS." In those moments when you hear something incredible like that, what's going through your mind during a conversation like that?

Phoebe Judge: I think that that's a kind thing for you to say, not judgmental. I think the whole point of the show was to not cast judgment on good or bad or right or wrong, but rather just to try to understand why people do the things they do. That was very important to us when we created the show. I think you know both Lauren and I, neither of us really believe in evil. We believe people do horrible things and get themselves in horrible situations.

Our job is to just try to understand how something like that could happen. I think when you come to these stories with a lens like that, we're not going to wrap it up in a pretty little bow and tell you at the end, "Well, he's bad, so he should be in jail for four decades," rather just what happened, I think it allows you to just be curious. That's all I want to be as an interviewer and a host of this program, is just curious.

Alison Stewart: My guest is, I'm going to use the cough button for a minute. Hold on. My guest is Phoebe Judge. She's the host and co-creator of Criminal. Criminal will be at Town Hall on Wednesday, February 14th at 8:00 PM as part of their 10th anniversary tour. Let's take a call from a fan of yours. This is Alex calling in from Brooklyn. Hi Alex.

Alex: Hi. Thanks so much for having me on, and thank you, Phoebe, for the great show. I have been a fan of Criminal for a long time, and even though I'm not going to mention a specific episode, I did just want to say that it really got me through some of the most turbulent moments of the Trump years because it was the only podcast on my rotation that was not about anything overtly political in the moment, and it was the only thing I could listen to for, I don't know, a solid couple of years. So thank you for getting me through that, and thank you for continuing to make a great show.

Alison Stewart: Alex.

Phoebe Judge: That's very nice, Alex.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling in. Following up Alex's point, was that a consideration? Is that a consideration, politics or not covering politics?

Phoebe Judge: Oh, boy. There are so many news outlets that can cover what's going on in the world today. Of course, when we see something going on in the world that we want to comment on or think that we can bring something new, a new angle to, we will address it and we'll address it, I hope, in a new way, so that when you listen to Criminal, and it makes you think about something you've been hearing about in the news, but you're getting more context, a different angle, hearing a different voice talking about it.

No, I think that we realized early on that that would be overwhelming to try to stay up to beat with every single thing that was happening and to respond to it. We would let people better equipped to do that with much larger staffs. What we would try to do is just find the most interesting stories possible and put them out week by week, and surprise people by the order that we put them out in.

Alison Stewart: Our number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We're speaking with the host and co-creator of the podcast Criminal. If you're a listener and have a favorite episode, you can call in, or maybe you have a question for Phoebe about the work she does. 212-433-9692, 212-433 WNYC.

Interviewing people who have been victims or victimized is difficult to do. What's your approach? How do you build a rapport and possibly even trust with somebody when they're telling you something that is perhaps a very difficult or dark part of their past?

Phoebe Judge: The first thing I do is I never force anyone to talk to me. That's not the game I'm in. It's nothing we want. We don't want to make someone tell their story if they don't want to tell it. That's first. If there's any hesitation, then we say, if you ever do want to tell your story, come back to us and we'd like to help you share it.

The other thing is that I really try and I've always tried to just be curious, but also to understand that this job that I've been given, which is to tell someone's story, I have a great respect for that and I have great reverence for the stories that we tell. I believe that if someone genuinely believes that you are interested in what they're saying, you can ask them anything. That's been my experience over 10 years, is the minute that someone thinks you're just asking because it's a list that you gotta get through or that you're trying to have an agenda, they pick up on it.

We know. Humans know when someone's just trying to get the job done. I ask questions and I ask prying questions, but I hope I do it always with the thought that I am genuinely interested in what someone's going to say. I'll let the conversation go wherever it needs to go, and no one needs to say anything to me that they don't want to. I won't press anyone. I'm not interested in that.

Alison Stewart: You made an episode about a famous/infamous New Yorker, Crazy Eddie. For those who don't remember Crazy Eddie, tell us a little bit about him.

Phoebe Judge: Crazy Eddie, Eddie Antar. Many New Yorkers might remember the Crazy Eddie commercials, which he was veer very famous for. This is a discount electronics chain in the '70s and '80s that became very popular, probably most popular for their commercials. Their prices were pretty good too. It blew up. This was a very big electronic store. Then it became known that actually why their prices were so cheap is that the whole thing was a big scam. They were doing a lot of shady business evading taxes, insurance fraud.

The company went public in 1984. The company was taken over by another business owner in 1987, and when they got to the books, they thought, "What is going on here?" The head of Crazy Eddie's store ended up in jail for seven years. We were able to speak with his cousin about what had all happened.

Alison Stewart: That cousin's name is Sammy Antar. He was very candid with you. Let's listen.

Phoebe Judge: As the chain expanded, they kept evading taxes, but that wasn't all they were doing

Sammy Antar: At the time winters got really cold in New York or the New York State metropolitan area. Now, most retailers to avoid floods, keep the water running at a little level, so that the water doesn't freeze inside the pipes and cause the pipes to burst from the water pressure. We didn't do that because there was merchandise that we couldn't return to manufacturers. It was damaged merchandise, so the best way to take care of that was to make sure that it was underwater in a flood.

Anytime there was a rainstorm, we would take the merchandise, we'd move the unsellable merchandise from various stores, and make sure that that store had a flood.

[music]

Phoebe Judge: They submitted insurance claims for the damaged merchandise.

Sammy Antar: Now, after we were paid for these goods by the insurance company, we put the merchandise inside and saved it for the next flood. That was called flood goods.

Phoebe Judge: Rain was a good thing?

Sammy Antar: Yes, rain was a good thing. Storms were even better. We didn't believe in setting fires because that was too dangerous. We were gentler crooks, so to speak, in that regard.

Alison Stewart: Phoebe, how do you approach a conversation with someone you know has, we'll say, a flexible relationship with the truth?

Phoebe Judge: That's something you have to watch out for. You can have a lot of empathy towards someone telling you their story, but I think that what we try to do is we do pre-interview. We speak with people before I speak with them, the team here at Criminal, and we do that not because I don't want to speak with them before, but sometimes people think if they told you the story once, they don't tell you again.

We've gotten pretty good over 10 years at sussing out someone who's not really telling us the truth or is going to hold back. If we get a sense that someone wants to tell just part of their story, they're going to leave out big facts, we stop it right there. We don't want to force someone to talk to us, but we also, if someone agrees to talk to us, we want to make sure that they're not going to just leave big holes and leave me saying, that's not actually what happened. You're missing five years there.

We've been pretty good about getting around that by just speaking to someone before and saying, "You want to tell a little bit of the story or do you want to tell the whole story?"

Alison Stewart: How has the show changed in 10 years?

Phoebe Judge: In some ways it hasn't changed at all. I think about that every day. I think I'm sitting here arguing over one word in a script, tearing our hair out. Lauren and I are still battling over me not saying the word awesome in a script. That's just the way it's always been. In other ways, it's changed completely. We have a team of 10 now, wonderful producers working on this show. I'm so lucky to work with all of these minds.

We make the show just as we have with a lot more people. In the same way that we keep our heads down, we don't worry about anyone else's doing. We never have. We just make the best stories possible. The mark for that is not the most popular story, the stories that we know get a big name, the splashy stories, but rather stories that we're curious in. If we are curious in the subject, it is enough. We've always used that as the mark for what goes on the show.

Alison Stewart: One of the most popular episodes is called 48 Hours. When people hear about it, they may think, "Wait, isn't that a Netflix special that's happening now?" 48 Hours is the Gone Girl story. Would you explain what that means?

Phoebe Judge: Yes. 48 Hours is a story about Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn. A couple who were living in California and one night, Denise Huskins was kidnapped from her boyfriend's home, from Aaron's home. When Aaron was tied up and he was finally able to call the police to report that his girlfriend was missing and had been abducted. The police brought him into the station for questioning, and a detective told Aaron that he didn't believe him. He thought the whole thing was a hoax, that it had all been made up.

When Denise was finally released after being held captive for 48 hours, the police didn't believe her either. They thought they had ginned this story up for publicity. The episode follows what happened to this couple, to their personal relationship, but also just the traumatic events of the kidnapping and then the traumatic events of no one believing your story.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a clip from the second part of 48 Hours. This takes place after Denise was released, and it's been reunited with her boyfriend Aaron, and it's clear the police and the FBI think Denise and Aaron were lying. This is from Criminal.

Phoebe Judge: There was someone insisting that Denise and Aaron were telling the truth. They were sending emails to the San Francisco Chronicle taking responsibility for the kidnapping.

Aaron: The kidnappers actually sent emails after the police press conference calling at hoax. They sent four, I think, five emails trying to clear our names and describing how they did the crime in great detail.

Phoebe Judge: The emails contain details that had not been made public. The sender emphasized that Denise and Aaron were victims and that this was not a hoax. Denise and Aaron and their attorneys thought the presence of details that no one else knew would be persuasive to the police.

Denise: In fact, they use this as another joke. People rolled their eyes and "kidnappers coming to their defense" and dismissed it as if we wrote it, including law enforcement. They even, I think, accused my attorney at one point of maybe helping me write something, and that was pre-scheduled emails. It didn't matter what happened, it was decided there was no escaping it.

Alison Stewart: Denise and Aaron's story is now a Netflix docuseries called American Nightmare. What is it like for you to see this story, as opposed to hearing it?

Phoebe Judge: I'm kind of a radio girl and always have been. I like audio, but I think to see any of these stories become visual is so interesting to me. It's interesting when you see what people look like. I always am interested in what these stories become when they become something else. In that series, be able to see in real life what the scene looked like. I think it can only lead to a greater understanding of what they maybe went through.

Alison Stewart: Could you get a sense from interviewing this couple and really spending time in the story, what was it about them or about the situation that the police didn't believe them?

Phoebe Judge: I think this police department was known to be pretty corrupt. It's too good to be true. It was too perfect of a crime. There were so many things. Wait a second,wait, what, what? Once that ball, once that little bit of doubt gets implanted in your mind, you run with it and then the public runs with it, and you hear the word gone girl. It was just a terrible circumstance, this terrible series of events that led up to this. At the core of it, you've had some pretty corrupt players.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the podcast Criminal with its host and co-creator, Phoebe Judge. They'll be at Town Hall on Wednesday, February 14th at 8:00 PM as part of their 10th anniversary tour. Phoebe, you know this, I'm sure, and I don't know if our listeners know this, there are entire Reddit threads devoted to your voice with descriptions like, "Insanely soothing. Phoebe Judge could read the phone book and I'd be happy." When did you realize people were having this reaction to your voice?

Phoebe Judge: Oh, I don't know. Isn't it the funniest thing? You talk to people around here, they don't want to hear me say one more word. I don't know when people started saying that. I think it's hard to talk about your own voice. I know people talk about my voice. I think there's people who like it, and I'm sure that drives people up the wall, too. Some people think I'm from Canada, I'm not. I'm from Chicago. Sometimes when I read something, I do this thing where I read books and I don't do accents. I just read the book. I think maybe people are just liking that I usually stay in one register. My voice doesn't go very high or very low. I'm like a freight train. I just plow ahead.

Alison Stewart: How have you been able to use your voice in the storytelling?

Phoebe Judge: You do this too. You know what it's like talking in front of a microphone. It's all about your breath. Sometimes I think that when you read a script, people think about commas and periods. When I read something, I think about a comma as a breath. I think about holding my breath and getting through the sentence. You just get better at it. I think someone said, I think it was Ira Glass who once said, it's a famous quote, which is, "You learn to be the best sense of yourself." That's how you sound good on a microphone. You don't try to be anyone else, you just get better at being you. It takes a long time because I think when you start out, you maybe sound like you're trying too hard. It's just getting back to just what you really sound like.

The greatest compliment I always have is when someone says, in real life they meet me and they say, "Oh, you sound like just like you do on the radio." Then I think, "Oh, good. Good."

Alison Stewart: To celebrate Criminal's 10th anniversary, you're on this tour. What happens at a criminal live show?

Phoebe Judge: Brand new stories. We've got seven of them. I think this is our best coming up. You close your eyes and you think to yourself, "I'm listening to an episode of the podcast." Then you open your eyes and you see that I'm narrating live and we have these big visuals behind us in animations and behind the scenes stuff. There's very good chance I'll screw up and try to tell bad jokes, but it's really just a chance for us to be with this audience who's stayed with us for so many years and hopefully, bring you some more really good stories.

Alison Stewart: Phoebe Judge is the host and co-founder of the Podcast Criminal. You can listen to episodes of Criminal wherever you get your podcasts. You can catch it live on tour, to celebrate the 10th anniversary, Town Hall on Wednesday, February 14th at 8:00 PM. For more information, go to thisiscriminal.com/live. Phoebe, happy anniversary.

Phoebe Judge: Oh, thanks for having me.

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