“Hello, weirdos.”
That’s how the hosts of the popular “Morbid” podcast, Alaina Urquhart and her niece, Ash Kelley, greet their listeners at the top of each episode. On their show, which they’ve produced since May 2018, the Boston-based duo delve into scary tales about serial killers and cold cases, from classic mysteries to ghost stories. More recently, they’ve broadened out beyond true crime into topics like UFOs, strange illnesses and other unexplained phenomena. “People are craving strange things,” Urquhart says. Kelley adds, “These are things that aren’t often talked about; people feel weird bringing them up.”
But beyond a fascination with ghoulish goings-on, fans of true crime podcasts connect with the hosts differently from followers of other kinds of interview shows. “Our fans are like a friend in the room, and we’re telling them a story,” says Urquhart. “We don’t have any gimmicks.”
True crime has been a staple of pop culture dating back to the days of Jack the Ripper — which Urquhart says is still her all-time favorite case. “It was all done in complete darkness!” she exclaims about the Ripper’s crimes. “You literally couldn’t see your hand in front of your face!”
These days, the true crime genre has found particular resonance in podcasts, a medium well suited for the telling of long-form tales of murder, kidnapping and other diabolical activities. “There’s an intimacy in podcasting. It’s you and your headphones,” says Max Cutler, founder of PAVE Studios, which produces a slate of podcasts under its Crime House banner. “You’re building a relationship with your host, who becomes your best friend.”
At the end of 2024, an estimated 42 million American adults listened to true crime podcasts on a monthly basis, per a study conducted by podcast hosting platform Libsyn and research and media firm Sounds Profitable. And interest in the space has not died out: In 2025, listening hours of true crime on Spotify alone increased around 50% year over year, the company says.
Shows like Audiochuck’s “Crime Junkie,” SiriusXM’s “Morbid” and PAVE’s “Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes” regularly land at the top of the overall podcast charts. “It’s a category where the audience can’t get enough. They’ll try almost any new show,” says Will Pearson, president of iHeartMedia’s iHeartPodcasts division.
True crime podcasts started out as a niche — and in the early days, advertisers were wary about buying into them, concerned about their brands being adjacent to what might be perceived as grisly or sensational content. But there’s been a shift in the category as brands have recognized that the most popular creators have a strong and trusted relationship with their audience, Pearson says.
Automaker Hyundai, for example, recently signed on as a sponsor to iHeart’s biggest true crime show, “My Favorite Murder,” from veteran podcasters Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, who have hosted the show since 2016. Last fall, Pearson was in Chicago with the pair to meet with ad agencies. As they were walking down the street, he says, “a fan of the show spotted Georgia and Karen, came up to us and said, ‘You’re in my ears right now!’ She started crying. People approach them almost as if they’ve known them for years.”
True crime fans skew female. Among U.S. podcast listeners, women are almost twice as likely as men to regularly tune in to true crime podcasts (44% versus 23%), according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey.
Vanessa Richardson, a voice actor and former member of L.A.’s Groundlings, hosts three true crime shows for PAVE: “Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes,” “Serial Killers & Murderous Minds” and the daily “Crime House 24/7.” She believes women gravitate to the genre out of a sense of empathy for the victims, and to gain a sense of empowerment — and community — in an uncertain world.
At one time, true crime podcasting was “all about the killer and the blood at the crime scene,” Richardson says. Some shows would even include sound effects for a stabbing in a reenactment of a brutal murder. By and large, that has been toned down, says Richardson. “It’s evolved to thinking about the victim and how to avoid becoming a victim.”
Over the years, Richardson has built a large community of listeners who share ideas, comments and their personal experiences. “Your audience is part of the show in a way,” she says. “In the beginning it was like I was in a vacuum telling stories and not knowing who was listening.”
The business of true crime podcasting, since advertisers have recognized that it’s no longer a weirdo niche, keeps scaling up. SiriusXM has signed sales and distribution deals for four of the biggest podcasts in the category: “Dateline NBC,” “Rotten Mango,” “MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories” and “Morbid.”
In mid-2025, Urquhart and Kelley moved their deal from Amazon’s Wondery to SiriusXM. Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM’s president and chief content officer, says overall ad revenue for “Morbid” has grown 68% in the first quarter of 2026 to date compared with the fourth quarter of 2025.
Maximizing ad revenue for a podcast is, of course, good for SiriusXM. But it also “allows the talent to be as big as they can be,” says Greenstein.
One of the macro-trends in podcasts overall is the rise of video. Apple Podcasts plans to add integrated features for video podcasts into the app this spring. The tech heavyweight will join Spotify and YouTube, which already are big platforms for watching podcast shows.
The addition of video has allowed true crime podcasts to provide a lot of interesting additional content and context, such as field interviews and crime-scene photographs, says Jordan Newman, head of content partnerships at Spotify. Video helps “bring a deeper rapport with the audience, beyond just the hosts’ voice,” he says.
And video podcasts can reach expanded audiences on TV-centric platforms, including those who have never listened to an audio-only show. Spotify’s original true crime series “Killer Stories,” hosted by actor Harvey Guillén (“What We Do in the Shadows”), is among the podcasts the company has licensed to Netflix.
Along with seemingly unlimited demand, there is also a continual supply of ripped-from-the-headlines crimes that serve as source material. In one recent example, on Feb. 16 two people were shot and killed by a family member at an ice rink in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. But podcasters must be cautious in covering events where the facts are unconfirmed. “These can be very delicate things,” says iHeartPodcasts’ Pearson. “There’s so much unknown and so much speculation.”
It’s a top priority to fact-check and legally vet true crime podcasts, which have higher review requirements than other podcast genres. That’s important not only for reasons of legal liability but to ensure that podcasts — and their hosts — preserve the trust of their listeners.
“It’s really important for us to get these stories right,” Pearson says.
Variety will host the inaugural True Crime Summit, presented by Investigation Discovery and featuring a diverse lineup of panels and speakers, at SXSW on March 13.
English (US) ·