I think a lot of the negative reviews are coming from people who don’t understand what Shane was trying to do with this show. She uses herself and her position to expose the messy and exploitative nature in our documentary media landscape. I found the show super interesting to listen to. Would recommend!

Those giving this low ratings don’t truly get the producer’s intention. This is simultaneously an interrogation of how documentary gets made — the magic behind the curtain, so to speak — as well as a failed attempt to flip the unequal process in which producers, whether for podcasts or docs, get all the wins like career, rep, money. People coming to find stories that conform to standard documentary — sensational, dramatic type stuff — will be disappointed. Jess doesn’t play to the typical “rules”. That’s the point.

I don’t understand how waiting until the end to do a marathon listen with the participants was collaboration. People aren’t neat and tidy, and the creator seemed stuck on typical documentarian pursuit of near and tidy without understanding that working with people requires effort to meet them where they are and work in a way that they can participate. The premises of the series was interesting to me, and I would have welcomed something that was outside of the typical documentarian view of what draws in listeners. Instead, the main “characters” (or people, as those outside the industry would call them) were just an excuse for the narrator to talk about herself. I was relieved to hear a modicum self awareness at the end, but it wasn’t enough.

See title. I hope her subjects are doing well, and I sincerely hope Jess does better in the future. With peace and love, I think she would benefit from some self reflection on her pretentious nature and ask if documentary work is really what she excels at. I think she has a talent for podcasting as an audio art, but her storytelling skills I think could use some work.

I kept waiting for this to turn into something more interesting… for the twist or insight. But it never came. I also had relatively high expectations due to the fact that this was rated one of the top podcasts of the year, but aim sorry to say that it wasn’t even one of the top podcasts I listened to this week. (and I’m not a true crime fan or sensationalist when it comes to podcasts so I don’t need constant stimulation. But this just really fell short.) First, I’m sorry, but the people profiled are not very interesting, especially Ernesto, who speaks in a monotone and has nothing at all to say. Michael is more likable, but he’s similarly superficial and doesn’t really offer much. The most interesting situation is that ofJudy, whose episode apparently needed to be eviscerated due to some kind of higher principle that the creator is trying to explore. So the twist, I guess, is that we lost the twist. And instead of letting the (admittedly fairly dull) people just carry the narrative, it’s full of inside-baseball, navel-gazing, meta reminders of what they’re trying to do that’s so different from other documentaries that basically go nowhere. So a lot of agonizing over principles and decisions that just aren’t very interesting at all.

I prefer to think of it as a fictional production in the style of a “Nathan for You.” Jess Shane calls it a documentary. God, I hope not because *that* would be shocking and heartbreaking. Surely it’s fictional. Surely there’s no way Radiotopia would go to the expense of producing a series with a host as clueless and dangerously absorbed by her “art” to the extent of the way she holds her power over her participants. Was this an elaborate poison pen letter to the audience for being complicit by consuming exploitative content or a documentary? I’m giving it all stars because it certainly raised unsettling questions and feelings with excellent production values and sound.

I listened to this entire podcast because it was on a ‘best of 2024’ list. All episodes. I kept waiting for it to develop a story or reveal interesting things about the subjects. The sound quality and effects were great but that’s about it. Don’t waste your time on this one.

Most of all, I think the podcaster needs to get a degree in social work to clue in to how she presents herself (and misrepresents herself) and puts herself in her subjects’ shoes. She misses obvious signs of trauma and mental health issues and defaults to examining her own meta ideas. Very interesting idea though. Get a social worker in your team though, STAT!

Wish I felt like I knew the subjects, not the podcaster- who ultimately lets her subjects know that SHE has the power, that HER career is what really counts. Depressing.

This series definitely made me cringe.. sometimes painfully so.. but it also opened my eyes to what kinds of things happen when podcast producers and documentary makers *aren’t* recording, and what they sometimes have to sacrifice to tell a story that will sell. Reminded me of Janet Malcolm, retooled for the age of social media and the content boom that followed. You could call Jess Shane self-absorbed or naive or whatever, but aren’t we also naive for consuming stories of so many peoples’ suffering and trauma and personal growth, without considering how these stories have been shaped to keep us listening, what these stories are actually doing for the world, or where they leave their characters? Nice to see a series about such a dry topic tackled with so much play and punch

Jess Shane comes off as an entitled, sheltered, brat. She says she wants certain things from making the podcast and then gets frustrated and upset when she gets them. Her lack of empathy and compassion for the people she is documenting is worse than just exploiting them because she does it under the guise of being just the opposite. It’s also frankly not very interesting; the people she works with, other than Judy, feel like fleeting two-dimensional objects rather complex human subjects. Not worth your time to listen, unless you’re in the mood to be seriously grossed out.