Phoebe Judge

Photo courtesy of Sara Price

Phoebe Judge is the host and creator of Criminal, This Is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Follow her on Twitter here. Follow Criminal on Twitter here, This is Love on Twitter here, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery on Twitter here.

How did you get introduced to the audio space? Have you always loved it, before podcasting?
I started working in radio at a small station on Cape Cod -- WCAI. I was an intern at first and then started doing some reporting. My first real assignment was covering a murder trial on Nantucket. It was the first murder that had happened there in decades. Then I moved to Mississippi where I was the Gulf Coast Reporter for Mississippi Public Broadcasting. I was there for two years. Then I worked as a producer for an American Public Media show called The Story with Dick Gordon. I started guest hosting the show sometimes and really liked doing longform interviews. That’s where I met Lauren Spohrer. We started working together on more and more stories. She suggested we make our own show, after work, and put it online. That’s how we started.

You are an OG in podcasting. Did you have a difficult time explaining it to people, or getting them excited about it, back in the day?
Absolutely. No one cared. I remember my father asking “how will people find the show?” Someone we worked with suggested we’d get sick of our “hobby.”

Criminal and This is Love feel completely different yet there is often overlap. Where does the venn diagram meet in the middle, and how do the shows most differ?
I think the shows are actually very alike. Really they’re just stories about living a life. We’re curious about why people do the things they do, and what keeps them going. When we started the love show we wanted to try our hand at making something hopeful. It felt like a time when people could use some good news. But really I think we wanted to challenge ourselves (like we’ve done with Criminal) to find stories that push the boundary of what the word “love” means. Unconventional stories. We knew this was not going to be a show with a lot of “boy meets girl” stories. We weren’t interested in that.

What made you want to start Phoebe Reads a Mystery?
For years, people have asked if I could read a book sometime. So when the whole world started shutting down in March because of COVID, we thought we would give it a try. A chapter a day, every single day, at 10am EST. Just something there for people if they wanted a routine. I know a lot of people listen on walks, or to fall asleep. For my part, I am reading all kinds of old public domain books I’ve never read before. My favorite has been The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.How do you unearth these interesting stories?

Do you think on your runs, or do you listen to something?
I never listen to anything when I am running. No podcasts, no music. The problem with listening to music is I think about how long songs are -- how much time is passing -- how much longer I have to go. If a song is maybe 4 minutes long, and I have listened to three songs, that means I have only been running about 12 minutes and then I start dreading what’s ahead of me. I don’t carry a phone or water or anything else. It’s good to have a break.

What’s more important, story or sound?
Story is more important definitely, but if the sound is too bad it can get in the way of the story.

What’s something listeners don’t understand about podcasts and what goes into making them?
When a podcast has a host, like our shows, people don’t know how many people’s work goes into making each episode. Every bit of our shows is produced collaboratively with Lauren Spohrer, Nadia Wilson, and Susannah Roberson. I am on the microphone, but the ideas for the stories, the storytellers, the questions, the way we structure and pace various parts of a story -- every moment of finished audio is a collective creative act. A lot of shows are made like this. We should talk about it more. The really brilliant engines of podcasting are working off mic.

Should podcasters read their Apple Podcast reviews?
I am always amazed when people write reviews for our shows. I think it is a kind thing for them to do -- to take the time and care to let others know what they think. I don’t read them though. I never have. I get a lot of bad emails about my voice. If it is a really angry one I send it along to everyone so we can all look at it.

Thanks, Phoebe!