Crime Junkies Host Ashley Flowers on True Crime, Activism, and Becoming a Novelist

As part of our summer series of re-airing the best of “For the Love,” we also have Jen’s long time friend, Amy Hardin, joining Jen to introduce this episode that was originally aired on the premium channel. In this new episode, we’ll hear about Jen and Amy’s summer so far and what constitutes guilty pleasure TV binges.

True crime might be considered a guilty pleasure, but if you haven’t done a deep dive into the genre, then this will be an eye opening conversation for you. We’ve got an amazing guest who is here to talk about the true crime podcast phenomenon, and she’s one of the folks that really put it on the map — Ashley Flowers, the host of the wildly popular podcast, Crime Junkies. 

Ashley Flowers and her co-host Brit have spent years researching, analyzing, and solving cases. And with over 1 billion downloads, it’s easy to say they are pretty good at what they do. Jen and Ashley get into how Crime Junkies got started, their thoughts on why the true crime genre is so popular and how Ashely’s using the platform to educate as well as entertain.

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Thought-Provoking Quotes:

“I was looking for something specific, and the way we tell the stories was all based on me as the fan, not coming into a genre and being like, ‘It's popular. What can I do to make it successful?’ It was, ‘What would I really care about?’ And I think that's been the success of this show, as it comes from such a genuine place.” – Ashley Flowers 

“I founded a nonprofit called Season of Justice that's all about funding testing for law enforcement. We pay the labs directly so we can do this advanced testing. Because I found in my work and the more I talk to families, the more I talk to law enforcement, one of the barriers over and over again was just finances. And that's where I was like, ‘I can fix that.’" – Ashley Flowers  

“If you're truly invested in the community, there are so many different ways you can get involved and use your own talents to make a real difference and help solve these cases. I'm a storyteller, I'm a business owner, and now I'm solving murders.” – Ashley Flowers 

Guest’s Links:

All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers - ​​https://www.amazon.com/All-Good-People-Here-Novel/dp/0593496477 

Ashley’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ashleyflowers/?hl=en 

Crime Junkie’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/crimejunkiepodcast/?hl=en 

Season of Justice - https://seasonofjustice.org 

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