Crimes of the Times

The storyline is amazing. The narrator and interviewer did a great job. However, the editing and where the ads were placed was horrible. All the ads happened mid sentences. There’s no break to know when an ad is about to come on, it just abruptly cuts off and goes to ad. It’s hard to believe that it’s a Wondery podcast with the poor editing.

This podcast is very good however it sounds as if it was edited by a high schooler on an iPhone. People are cut off mid-sentence as it cuts abruptly to a commercial for another podcast. Like another reviewer, I thought I’d accidentally hit the forward button. I thought it must be a fluke but no the entire series is like this. For real? There’s free apps that can edit sound bites better than this. It’s really distracting.

The reporting is good but the casting of Debra as an innocent victim is ridiculous. She puts her children in danger because of her own selfishness. Her only defense could be that she is genuinely very unintelligent but I think she knows better. She never once says out loud that she feels guilty, the podcaster reports it which I think means she never actually expressed any remorse, they had to add it in to make her sympathetic

One of the most binge-worthy pods I’ve ever listened to. Great pace, without feeling rushed or dragged out. And I really enjoyed the way they presented each person in the story. Instead of each person being boringly predictable from the start, I found myself feeling one way fairly strongly... only to feel *very* differently as it all unfolded. An obvious example of this was with her daughters. In the first episode, I was like ‘what self-centered b**ches’. Then in the subsequent episode, I was like ‘ahh what great young women’.. hahaha Highly recommended.

The audio editing on this podcast is *so bad* that I felt compelled to review. Ads are always placed abruptly in the middle of a sentence, and there are 3-4 (very long!) ads per episode. So someone is speaking, then in the middle of their sentence it cuts to a 3-minute ad, then it abruptly cuts back to the rest of their sentence. Makes me hate Simplisafe (the advertiser), even though it’s not their fault. At least once (episode 3 I think?), the audio company promoted themselves on top of the podcast, i.e. two different voices were going at the same time. The storytelling is good, but it’s borderline unlistenable.

Usually wonderly podcasts get an automatic 5 stars, and I usually finish them in a day. They’re well told and always super interesting. This one I kinda felt less interested, and more forced into just sticking with the story. The story was definitely done well and good but nothing comparable to the other wonderly podcasts I’ve listened to.