The Rise and Fall of Ruby Franke - Podcast Rankings and reviews

I’m not into true crime but on a record, I gave this a listen. The story is incredible, and tragic; it engaged me to the point where I was watching hours of video about it. The podcast did a good job of exploring all the details, however, the transition from reporting on the vlog to the arrests was jarring for me. I felt like I missed an episode somewhere between the acts and the consequences.

I would also like to explore the root of the abuse—the religion itself—the thing that seemingly encouraged the behavior.

I listen to a lot of Wondery podcasts so I finally decided to subscribe because I want to listen to locked episodes. I feel it’s worth it for $45/year. I’ve been listening to podcasts for a long time so I’ve had trouble finding stories I haven’t heard before.
I appreciated this specific story because it contained real interviews with the father and real content from journals etc

I binged this free on Apple Podcasts.
I loved this story and couldn’t stop listening. It started telling the story from the beginning and I like that. I don’t like stories complex like this that go back and fourth from present day to past back to present.

I’m really enjoying this story. I put off listening for MONTHS! Any and all forms of child abuse are very upsetting for me. But I relented today. And I’m glad I did. I gave it 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

The abuse is not sensationalized so I can get through it. Besides the fact that I would like to punch her in the face…. I Can’t wait to hear how it ends. Hopefully with this witch behind bars.

Wondery true crime has fallen off hard lately! This is the second podcast of theirs now where they consistently allow the people close to the/one of the perpetrators to try to garner sympathy for the perp instead of stating facts. Here, Chad Franke’s lawyer keeps trying to push a narrative that Chad had nothing to do with the abuse of the children - despite the fact that the abuse started far before his separation from Ruby (including withholding food and a place to sleep from children, as well as sending one of his children to a wilderness “rehabilitation” program for “troubled” teens). The fact that Wondery allows this to happen with no pushback is not only disgusting, but also lazy journalism.
As is also a staple of Wondery pods, statements are constantly rephrased and regurgitated to increase the number of episodes and pad runtime.
Another troubling thing I’m seeing here is the use of non-experts in interviews - most of the interview subjects here are just random subscribers to the Frankes’ Youtube channel! What would they know about anything! Would’ve been much more interesting to hear from Mormans on how their culture could’ve led to this, or from lawyers on what some of the trial proceedings mean, or a CPS worker on how it took so long to catch them, etc.
Really discouraging to see such a decline in quality journalism directly on the heels of Wondery shifting to exclusively paywalled content. I’d be livid if I was paying even the $4/month for such shoddy pods!

This is a fascinating story to do a deep dive into but this podcast was really disappointing. It is not well-structured (it’s kind of set up chronologically? But some of the episodes felt like they had no rhyme or reason for how they were put together) and it doesn’t go very deep into the story at all. I ended up with a lot more questions than answers. They grazed over most of the incidents and hardly even addressed the “rise” of Ruby Franke, although it’s literally in the name of the podcast. They didn’t have a lot of experts interviewed and literally just interviewed random vlog followers for many episodes. At one point, one of these random interviewees was discussing the day that her son goes to a neighbor’s house 2 doors away for help. She was like, “He had to walk through tumbleweeds and sand up the street, a half mile in the UT desert…well we don’t know exactly how far, but maybe a half mile…it’s a long way for a 12-year-old.” Tumbleweeds and sand? Have you ever been to southern Utah? Didn’t this kid just walk up the street in a neighborhood? It just sounded like this person making up something random based on the facts. I listen to a lot of true crime and I don’t think I would listen to any other podcasts from this company. This one was so bad.