Betrayal - Beyond Betrayal: The Making of Season 4
Episode Date: August 5, 2025In this special bonus episode of Betrayal, go behind the scenes with the Betrayal team featuring host Andrea Gunning and the producers, editors, and story team who brought Season 4 to life. This conve...rsation took place on Beyond Betrayal, the official Substack of the Betrayal Podcast and Host Andrea Gunning. If you want to hear more conversations like this, subscribe for FREE today at: https://substack.com/@beyondbetrayal1 In this candid roundtable discussion, you'll hear how a single corrupted audio file nearly derailed the entire season—and how persistence led to one of the most shocking pieces of tape the team had ever encountered. The team explores why they made the crucial decision to expand beyond one officer's misconduct to examine the institutional culture that enables systemic betrayal. They also get personal about the emotional toll of spending months immersed in other people's pain—and the boundaries they've built to stay grounded while telling these difficult stories. From building trust with sources to navigating the complexities of reporting on law enforcement, this conversation offers an unprecedented look at how investigative podcasting really works and the lengths the team took to get to the heart of this story. And don’t forget, a new season of Betrayal Weekly premieres in TWO DAYS, Thursday August 7th. If you aren’t already, please be sure to subscribe to Betrayal for the latest from the Betrayal team. There are a lot of exciting announcements coming this Fall! If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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The Girlfriends is back with a new season, and this time I'm telling you the story of Kelly Harnett.
Kelly spent over a decade in prison for a murder she says she didn't commit.
As she fought for her freedom, she taught herself the law.
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You're supposed to have faith in God, but I had nothing but faith in her. I think I was put here to save souls by getting people out of prison.
The Girlfriends, Jailhouse Lawyer.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey guys, it's Jhene aka Cheeky's from Cheeky's and Chill Podcast and I'm bringing you an
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Sure, I'm a singer, author, businesswoman and podcaster, but at the end of the day,
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Listen to Cheeky's and Chill on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
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Genius is evenly distributed.
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Hey everyone, Andrea here with something special for you today.
What you're about to hear is a conversation I had with my Betrayal production team.
Producer Kerry Hartman, Story Editor Monique Laborde, audio editor Tana Robbins, and associate producer
Caitlin Golden, on how we went about making Season 4 of Betrayal.
We sat down as a team and debriefed.
A postmortem, if you will.
Only this time, we recorded it and launched a video on our new community, Beyond Betrayal,
exclusively on Substack.
In this conversation, we get into the nitty-gritty details about how we conducted our reporting,
the relationships we've built with our sources, and how working on this season impacted each
of us personally.
You'll hear about the moments that shocked us, the challenges we faced, and why we made
some of the bigger storytelling decisions we did.
These are the kind of conversations we're having on Beyond Betrayal.
If you like this, please consider subscribing to Beyond Betrayal exclusively on Substack.
It is completely free, and you'll have access to conversations like these and a lot more
content from me, my team, and our subjects from the Betrayal Podcast. Here is my conversation about the making of Betrayal season
four.
OK, guys.
We are here today with a special video
to commemorate the end of season four of Betrayal.
And I wanted to have everyone, or mostly everyone,
that made this season happen.
So if you guys would all do me a favor
to introduce yourselves, we'll go around starting with Carrie.
Hi, I'm Carrie Hartman and I'm the producer
of Betrayal Season Four.
I'm Monique Laborde and I was the story editor
on Betrayal Season Four.
Hi, I'm Caitlin Golden and I'm the associate producer on season four.
Hello, I'm Tanner Robbins.
I was the audio editor for season four of Betrayal.
I'm really excited to sit and talk with you guys because we haven't really
debriefed the season altogether and I have questions for all of you.
But I want to start with Tanner, because I've
been able to meet everybody week to week with Carrie, Moe,
and Caitlin, and talk about episodes that we've produced.
But I haven't sat or talked with you about the experience.
Tell me a little bit about what it's
been like for you to work
on this season as an editor and as a listener.
Working on this season has been really fun, just because there's been so much fascinating
tape and things that I would just get audio from Carrie and Caitlin and realize, how did they get this?
This is absolutely wild.
So it's been a pleasure to hear just such a fully well-rounded
story told in audio that I feel like it's so hard to get.
It's so uncommon to have such a deep access to a group
of people and to an investigation within a police department to have access to those files too.
And then just the random sort of people involved in this story, that nameless people who we can't
name because they were involved in the affairs that Joel committed.
Having audio from those people and their interactions with Joel gives you a lot to work with.
And I actually told Carrie, don't tell me anything in advance.
Every episode I get, I want it to be new.
I want to experience the show as I'm putting it together,
putting it together, hearing the story for the first time.
I thought that would make it for a better experience for me,
that helped me give better feedback,
but also just I get to hear the story as if I'm a listener.
I was going to mention that that was one of your requests,
to not know anything about the story ahead of time.
And so you're really meeting the material fresh with really limited understanding of
where we're going.
Can you tell me a little bit about some of the moments that you found shocking or that
were really memorable to you, like hearing it for the first time?
I'm curious what those were for you. The one that stands out in my mind is when Joel is confronted at his front door by the
husband of one of the women that he slept with, cheated on his wife with, and finding that this guy
and finding that this guy recorded it on his phone or something, recorded this interaction, and then we have that. What are you talking about? I'm not here to harass you. I'm saying Joel?
Yeah, I'm talking about you.
Okay, my wife is there.
I just want to know if you know her.
I have no idea who you're talking about.
I was like, this is amazing.
We sort of talked about this moment
and now we're getting to hear it.
And hear the lies coming from Joel directly, hearing him being confronted with what he's
done and trying to deflect it.
And I was just like, this is incredible.
That was surprising.
The recording of the renter also was surprising because I just love any time
we have in the field, in the moment audio
that can really take you to the actual events.
There's a lot of times in shows like this,
especially true crime shows,
you're looking back on what happened.
Right.
You're asking people, what did you do?
What did they do? What did you do? What did you say? What
did they say? How did this go down? And here we got audio where we get to hear it. We get to hear
exactly how it went down. And because it's such natural tape, there's so much, I don't know,
texture to it that you feel like you're there. I could see it when I was hearing it.
Same.
And that stuff was exciting to me as an audio editor because it really helps me to, you know,
paint the picture with the audio.
Those two moments are extremely intimate.
It is like you're kind of dropping in on a moment and thinking, should I be hearing this?
And you're right, like we're asking audiences to imagine
because it is a lot of it's past tense
or they're talking about something that has happened.
You're asking the audience to imagine something
that has happened or create a person
or an image of a person in their head.
But you're really giving examples through this intimate tape
to really showcase exactly what the interaction
with this person is and was.
It's really fascinating and incredible access.
So it's been a joy working with you on this season
and I'm glad that you were hearing things
as we were producing. And I think that was a really great way
to work together and get feedback, so that was really cool.
Could I pop in with just one quick story
about that audio specifically about that?
Yeah, of course.
We actually almost didn't get that audio of the husband
of the person that Joel had an affair with coming
to the front door. So what happened when we initially got that huge dump of records is
there was one corrupted file in it that I could not open. And at first we were like,
oh, this is probably just it had a really vague name of just an address.
So we had no idea what that was.
But I just had a feeling that it would somehow matter.
And I went back and I poked the police department
and said, oh, I think there's a mistake here.
Can we have this?
And then all of a sudden we get it back
and it's this insane in the moment tape.
And I just remember getting on the phone
right after we got that tape with Andrea and Carrie and Moe.
And I really feel like that was a big moment for us of this
could be a season long story.
So yeah, it's cool to think about how that tape is really
integral to how we are where we are now.
Since we're popping in here, I just
want to mention Tanner responded in real time.
Yeah.
OK, so as soon as he listened to these things,
we would get these wild texts like, oh my god,
are you kidding, he did what? So he really was like a
listener. And it was another way we kind of knew we were telling a
good story was because editors are sort of notoriously, I don't
want to generalize, but I'm going to generalize, like very steady,
they have like a kind of a flat affect.
You know, they work with tape all day.
He was like so emotive about these things.
So we kind of knew from his response
that it was interesting and different.
I was angry.
I was like, this guy's a piece of shit,
is what I was thinking.
And it's like every new episode, I was like, this guy's a piece of shit, is what I was thinking. And it's like every, every new episode, I was like, wow, this guy is plumbing the depths
of human depravity every single episode.
And I didn't mention, there's the tape of the two people who are, well, the guy who's
accusing him and then the woman who's sort of helping him cover it up the renter who is being forced to lie
Joel's making her lie, right and later on we have the interviews the internal affairs
investigation interviews with Joel
Can you describe that force?
Just met her through there and then, um, we started talking and then, um, shared common
interests and became friends.
But I just know her as her first name.
I don't know her last name or anything like that.
Well, you recognize the pictures, right?
Yeah, now I do, yep.
Joel, you know how that's looking, right?
Is this the person making allegations?
We'll get to that.
But, I mean, if we're trying to establish credibility, veracity, I'm showing you a picture,
I'm giving you a chance to take a look at it, and you're telling me to my face that
you don't recognize him.
Well, I was mistaken.
I apologize for that.
I recognize her because I just met her at the brew functions.
But that's it.
Where you get to hear him lie through his teeth to his colleagues about what's going
on all the while we already know that he's lying and we get to hear him waffle back to his colleagues about what's going on.
All the while we already know that he's lying
and we get to hear him waffle back and forth.
They know he's lying also,
which was so exciting to hear that just the tension.
And I had a lot of fun building that moment in audio
with sound design, these questions
that are like leading questions.
And it's very obvious that the police know what's going on,
and Joel's just not picking up on it.
And it was so satisfying after all the what the fuck moments
before that to get to the, I mean,
it's hard to call it comeuppance,
but it's the closest to comeuppance
that we were getting at that moment.
So that was really exciting too. I've gotten a lot of messages from, you know, friends and family
members and listeners saying, you know, Joel is one of the most complicated characters out of the
all four seasons for a lot of people. And I'm not saying his crimes are the most egregious
because we know that they aren't,
but I think a lot of people are struggling with Joel
because you could know this guy and not know.
Meaning it feels so close.
Yeah.
And I really appreciate that messaging
because that's actually the point of the show, which
is like these everyday betrayals that really root the, you know, the pervasiveness of what's
happening I think often is overlooked.
It's like we can't always have these massive extreme betrayals for people to lean in and listen. It's these
really everyday things that make people question, okay actually there's something
that's going on and this is actually close to home. Mo, my next question is for
you. You story edited the season but you also had the privilege of interviewing
Dr. Jennifer Fryde who was featured in the last episode.
And you were a huge advocate for getting Dr. Fried
on the show.
Can you tell me a little bit about why you felt
like that was important and walk me through, you know,
the importance of why we had her on the show?
Yeah, so with Dr. Fried, I hadn't heard of her
before I started on this show.
But after I started working on betrayal,
I was interested in the psychological experience
of betrayal trauma and what it does to a person's brain
and nervous system, mostly just so I could better understand
the subjects we were working with
and better tell their stories.
And so when I was doing that research, Dr. Frye is the godparent.
The godmother of betrayal.
The godmother of betrayal trauma. I mean, she pioneered the field, coined the term betrayal trauma.
And then the more I was watching interviews with her,
listening to interviews with her,
and reading about her work,
I realized especially betrayal blindness as a concept
was pretty mind blowing to me.
And I think really clicked,
made a lot of sense in what we see
in the subjects we work with.
We get so many comments from listeners saying,
how could this person not have known?
And I think there is a lack of understanding
about how the trail blindness really functions
and that psychological phenomena.
So I thought having her explain it
would be incredible for the show
and really educational for our
audience because I had learned so much researching her. She is really the academic foremost expert
on this topic. And without her, a lot of the concepts we talk about, you know, we wouldn't
have this cultural understanding about betrayal trauma. We wouldn't have these words without her work.
So I was really honored and grateful
that she agreed to do the interview with us.
You had a really interesting job this season.
While Carrie, Caitlin, and the editors
were in the weeds of the everyday,
you were that larger perspective of keeping
the train on the tracks.
And it's like, are we making it to our destination?
Tell me a little bit about what episode
you found the most challenging, at the same time rewarding.
So for me, I couldn't come in blind.
Yeah.
We've talked about before on the substack.
I had worked with Caroline potentially making her story for
the weekly series and I had done the first interview with her. That was a pretty long
interview, like five hours. And so I knew already a lot of the details of the story,
but seeing it all come together with the tape we were able to access from the police department
and from the current family's life that they gave us, the people around Caroline and her
family, that was really incredible. And I think one of the challenges that we
hit was when we decided to expand the story out to be about more officers in
the Colorado Springs Police
Department that were also breaking the code of conduct.
And so we talked a lot internally about, is this the
right thing to do to zoom out?
We're shifting focus from Caroline's story, but there is
a larger pattern here, and Joel is not a one-off case.
And I think a lot of what we do, the work we do on betrayal,
is taking a story and then expanding out
to a larger pattern of behavior, of wrongdoing,
and looking into how that plays out in society
and how people are able to get justice or
able to try to repair those wrongs. So I think that was one of the biggest challenges, but
I'm really happy that we did that. So we have a larger perspective and scope on the Colorado
Springs Police Department outside of just Joel's employment there.
Yeah. I want to turn my attention to Caitlin.
You've been on a few sub stacks, so people kind of already
know you as our associate producer.
I want to talk to you specifically about tracking
down the archival and certain people of access
for this season.
What were some of your roadblocks?
What were some of your breakthroughs?
What was it like?
Because you were kind of a dog on a bone this season.
One of the biggest challenges was like Mo was talking about figuring out how do we zoom
this out without getting too far away from that initial story and these issues that we're
really asking people to think about of, you know, police officers who are betraying the badge.
And Claudia Aldrich, the whistleblower, was really at the core of all of that. And I think gaining
her trust and getting her to see that we are people who would honor her story and the story of so many other former cops and employees at CSPD was really difficult.
But, you know, one of the things that doesn't get featured on the show is that we build real relationships with these people. Mm-hmm. And, you know, it's been really nice to, yeah,
feel like we now have a relationship with Claudia
and that we've been able to, you know,
she's connected us to so many different sources
that we had on the show, like a former cop named John,
who really helped us to understand
the story of Glenn Thomas.
And that was a really big get for us.
Yeah, I think the biggest challenge of the season was trying to get former officers,
current officers, current employees, former employees of CSPD to participate. And when we
were out in Colorado Springs, we had people lined up, they fell through. But while we were on the
ground, we had already known about this whistleblower network, but it wasn't something that we had really dug into
yet to get access to. And I remember Carrie and I just like looking through
all the posts, sitting down with our attorney at lunch and being like, look at
what's out here, look at what's online and being reported, and figuring out a
way to make contact.
And that was something that you took on and really ran with and create a relationship
with Claudia, which was incredible.
It went from this thing that felt far away online to an interview in a matter of months,
which was amazing.
And I think had impact.
And I think one of the biggest struggles,
and I think you guys can all probably understand
is that there was this balance of leaning
into misconduct and culture.
Because I do think the culture at CSPG
is like the larger discussion, right?
Because it breeds opportunity for misconduct.
We kept saying this isn't an example
of the most egregious misconduct out there.
But we were really examining what does a culture do
and how does culture affect the behavior of people
that are trying to protect your community.
And I think that was the larger point of episode six and seven.
I don't know how that occurs for any of you guys or how you feel about that. Yeah, I think it was the larger point of episode six and seven. I don't know how that occurs for any of you guys
or how you feel about that.
Yeah, I think it was important for us
because in our previous seasons, especially two and three,
we've been able to zoom out and talk about child sexual abuse
materials and how they're prosecuted
or those crimes are not prosecuted often.
And then with child sexual abuse,
in particular of boys in season three,
we were able to zoom out and talk to one in six.
With this one, we don't have the same kind of statistics
and we can't universalize it in the same way.
But there are people like Joel in a lot of police departments.
And for me, it just comes down to the fact that if I would call 911 in a crisis,
I don't want someone like that showing up.
It's a position of power.
It really is.
And I think it's important to be able to talk about those people.
So I do think that zooming out for episode six and seven, even though it was a departure, added something to the larger story.
Yeah, I also think it's in a lot of true crime media, there's a really deep focus on the psychology of perpetrators. And I think that's super interesting to find out, you know, how does
a person become a serial killer, for instance. But I think the trap that a lot of true crime
media gets into with that is if it's just about individual psychology, then it's just
about these bad apples. And I think what we've been able to do with this season
is explore how is that psychology coupled
with this broader culture of misconduct,
creating these perfect storms and making it
so that these people who maybe did have histories of abuse
or maybe naturally were
more inclined towards lying were then pushed even further.
Right.
I just wanted to add, you know, we were talking about institutional betrayal in episode 10.
And I feel like these episodes, like episodes six and seven, where we're broadening out
and talking about police misconduct, I feel like that's also in the cultural context that
we live in right now.
I think people are very aware, maybe more aware than ever, that there are bad apples,
but they also spoil the whole bunch as the expression goes, and that it is a culture
that we all experience and does have an impact on our lives. And so hearing this, it's kind of like
we're telling the audience what they already in some ways know, but we're giving them this view
of this very specific department and how the sausage of this institutional betrayal is made,
which I thought was really valuable. And also, if not shocking, at least validating to the way that a lot of people feel and think about their own police department. Yeah, that's another reason I was so glad we were able to
interview Dr. Fried because Caroline having put
20 years of her life into supporting her husband and
believing in the police department and
his career in the police department,
bringing him food and making food for the other officers,
and just opening her home up to be a
place where they felt welcome. Like the experience of having the officers who stayed employed there
turn their backs on her and not believe her was something that it's hard to understand the
magnitude of that betrayal. So having Dr. Fried be able to talk about institutional betrayal, the metaphor she used
about the second concussion, like a brain injury, the first hit on the head being the
betrayal and then the second hit of the head being the lack of being supported or lack
of being believed by an institution when you report
or when you try to say, this is what happened.
And I think Dr. Fry being able to contextualize institutional betrayal with real research
was like really helpful to illustrating the point of the loss Caroline experienced.
Totally. And it didn't dawn on me until this season.
The one main thing that will get you fired as a police officer
is not telling the truth, is lying.
And we all understand misconduct and excessive force
and things like that.
But the standard, like there is no, you get caught lying, you're done.
That was something that was a new concept for me. And I really think that it was an important
exploration this season of why truth is important, why truth is important in our justice system,
and how that works.
Because I don't think as a society,
as just citizens of your community,
you think about the importance of truthfulness
when it comes to law enforcement is so important.
Something you just kind of take for granted.
You see someone in a uniform,
you assume that they're a respectful person, a truthful person. But when you really pressure test and second guess, is that person
capable of lying to me? And what does that mean for my basic civil liberties? I think
that it just makes you sit with those questions that I think are really important for our
society today.
I think it's worth noting that Joel got in trouble for lying to his own department, to
other police officers, not for lying to anybody else.
He didn't, I mean, he can lie to people out in public.
He can, police officers notoriously are able to lie to the suspects and the people they're
interrogating.
Yeah.
That's a really good point, Tanner. I want to say with that too, the internal affairs tape, like we've said before, we know
this is not the most egregious example of, Joel's case is not the most egregious example
of police misconduct, but having an internal affairs proceeding with all this tape, one
of the reasons it's so valuable is because these things are often happening extraditiously,
even if someone could be charged with a crime.
Instead, what happens is the internal affairs process.
And so it's kind of, it's almost like the military court system, you know, like a military
trial.
Like, what is happening inside when something goes wrong?
And that is not something we see because it's not often
brought to court unless it's the most egregious examples.
Carrie, we've unpacked a lot of this season, but I'm curious.
I don't know if we've talked about this yet.
What was it like for you to build a relationship
with Caroline especially since she had gotten so comfortable
with Moe?
Was something that this season we had never encountered
before in previous seasons.
So I'm just curious, what was that like for you?
A challenge.
Yeah.
I think one of the things that helped
was I kind of acknowledged it from the gate.
So when we were out in Colorado, and she's like,
I love you, but you're not
no. I was like, and I said, No, no. And you know, she brings a set to the table. But you
know, you I'm like, I'm like a fungus, I will grow on you. And that's what I think happened, honestly. Because, you know, when you pour
your guts out to somebody, and sometimes I think it really is easier with a total stranger.
When somebody doesn't know all the players, they don't know your family, you can tell
them everything. But she had just done that.
So me walking into the picture after that was like, wow.
Having said that, she said it in a cheeky way.
And I think we, over time, established trust.
And I would get funny little tidbits,
or she'd have a thought and text
me and that's when I know we've kind of rounded that corner.
One thing that we do as a team, we go out to wherever they live, Utah, Colorado,
wherever, and we spend real time. We have meals together, we meet family and
friends, and I think that has a lot to do with how we're able to build rapport.
Because, you know, we're not in a 30-minute Zoom call.
We're together for hours, and people can get a better idea of who you are,
what your goals are, how you work.
So I think that helped.
But she did set a high bar for me to jump over, I have to say.
Well, when we first did that, when I first
did the interview with Caroline, we
didn't know that it would become season four.
We thought it would be for the weekly series.
And so once we got this tape from the police department
and decided this is a bigger story
and got season four, Green greenlit as Caroline's story,
it was also important for me to really take a step back
and hand, do an official pass off and say,
Carrie is gonna be your producer now,
knowing that you were gonna be there in person
with Andrea, meeting her in her home
and that that relationship would grow over time
and deepen in a way that I would never had access to because you're there in person in her home and that that relationship would grow over time and deepen in a way that
I would never have access to because you're there in person in her life.
And like it was important for me to officially kind of transition it off so that there weren't
two, I wasn't a shadow producer where she's calling me also and telling me about something
and then I have to tell you she told me something.
I was like, I've had that happen.
I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, it could be. I mean, this is like really
behind the curtains, like inside baseball. But this is what happens. I mean, you have a whole
team working on a story. And you develop, like real feelings for people. I still hear from some
of the women we worked with, these are continuing relationships,
which is one of the reasons I like being here,
because we're a little bit more invested.
And speaking to that investment,
when you're dealing with working on something so intense and heavy
that has real impact,
that can be hard to deal with day in and day out for six
months, eight months, nine months, a year. I'm curious for all of you, what boundaries
or emotional scaffolding do you guys have to help get through some of the hard
days when you're hearing stuff that are really intense. I know for me, I work out, I do weightlifting,
and that's a huge way of me kind of processing the day before.
So I'm curious for you guys, how do you manage?
Because you feel the stress, you can feel that sadness,
and it can stay with you.
I'm really good at compartmentalizing that stuff.
There have been a few occasions where I leave work.
When I leave work, it means I leave this room
and go to another room, but I leave work
and it's still, you know, I'm thinking about it
and thinking about it, I'm dreaming about it.
But those instances are few and far between.
So I'm able to kind of like keep things in a place.
Mm-hmm.
And when I can't, you know, I break out the Chianti.
Not as healthy as your solution, obviously.
Tanner, how about you?
For me, luckily, I have some distance from all of this.
I'm getting, you know, the pieces of the interview that have already been like looked through
by the producers.
They've already picked the best parts and so I don't have to hear maybe the worst elements
as well.
Shows where you're talking about CSAM or you're talking
about gruesome crimes. I would say I don't think I handle it very well in the
sense that I'm like everything's fine but you know I walked on a true crime
show where I had to start some anxiety medication because I was just like
getting too paranoid about you paranoid about my own safety.
You hear stories sometimes, and things happen to people, and you can't help but extrapolate
that to like, well, could somebody do that to me?
Yeah, I had that on there and gone.
Yeah.
It's terrifying, especially when there's so much mystery around like what happened to a person.
It really, it really opens up the the floodgates of your minds to, you know, catastrophize.
I do bring some of my betrayal stuff home with me. I mean, Caroline was asking this
about when we were on Colorado Springs. We were meeting with her and Suzanne, they because
I had recently got engaged.
And they were like, does any of this
affect how you feel about marriage and relationships?
And I'm not going to lie.
There are moments where I'm really tough.
And even how I approach finances and really big decisions
about bringing fully together is impacted by these stories that I've worked on,
because I focus on people who are
dealing with the aftermath of a relationship falling apart.
And so I give a lot of credit to my fiance.
It's hard.
So that stuff I think I definitely
I'm not necessarily conscious of, but I'm definitely, it comes out.
It's also so interesting, you know, because we're always kind of dealing with the big story on the
limited run and then dealing with many stories at once on Betrayal Weekly and you never really know
what is going to really hit for you. I mean, you know, we were working on a betrayal
weekly episode just a few weeks ago,
where, you know, I think all of us had this moment of,
wow, this is something that's really physically violent
and is hitting us in really different ways.
I feel like I often get the question from friends of mine
of like, are you depressed
all the time from all this material?
And I think one thing that's been really helpful for me is just centering a deep sense of gratitude.
It is so remarkable that every single day each of us are talking to people who have been through some of the
hardest things that people can ever go through. And they're not only coming out on the other
side of it for themselves, but they're making the choice to help other people. And to be
a part of helping those people help other people is a huge honor.
And I think makes our work feel a lot less heavy to me.
Yeah. Well, for me,
there's really two different emotional experiences.
And the one that's the most difficult is the interview.
When I'm in an interview with someone,
I really am feeling their emotions with them.
And sometimes I'm crying with them.
And you know, that's a really emotional experience that I like have to recover from and like
take care of myself afterwards. But after that happens, you know, when we say goodbye,
almost always they're thanking me for listening and they're saying how it feels good to be
able to be heard and believed and to tell their story in one sitting.
And so that I leave ultimately feeling positively about the interaction that we've had, even
though they've told me about some of the worst things they've ever experienced.
And then it's that gratitude that comes with the continued interaction with them, as with the storytellers,
as they're screening the episodes,
as we're following up,
that they're so proud to have shared their story and happy to have shared their story.
I'm able to focus on that feeling and not the feeling or
the experience of the worst part of their story.
But yeah, the larger point is that the interview, I feel one way and then once I'm
seeing it in a script, I feel a little more clinical about it.
It's a little bit, it's removed.
It's like, okay, this is an episode now and I'm able to separate, compartmentalize those
two experiences out and think about it from the listener's experience when making the
episode as opposed to the interpersonal experience I'm having
in the interview.
I have a question for you.
Oh, you do?
I was going to ask you, Dre, about how this, because this season is different in a few
ways from the other seasons we've worked on.
One of the biggest differences is that the person who was doing the portraying was never
convicted of a crime. So I'm
wondering about your experience reporting this as well and how do you
think about this one differently from previous seasons you've worked on?
Yeah I mean because he wasn't convicted of a crime we needed to see what was in
the public domain and what was out there. And so that's really what started
the hunt for the IA files.
And so once we got all of that reporting and understood
we have all of these files and this is really
what's underneath, it was kind of like any other season
because there were so much documentation, so much reporting.
The investigation files were there.
And this story, I feel like, kind of met me at the right time
because I think we all kind of are in a place and time where, like, what is truth
and what does the truth mean to you? And I think that the season really,
really explores that. Well, before we wrap up, we have, this is not the end of Betrayal.
We have a lot of news. So, Mo, obviously, you produce the Always On.
That show's coming back. You want to tell the audience when to expect to hear the first episode?
Yes. Our first episode of season two of Betrayal Weekly comes out Thursday,
August 7th. So mark your calendars, subscribe, and we are gonna be starting with some episodes,
some incredible episodes, some stories unlike anything I've ever heard. We really found some storytellers who are able to
reflect on what they've been through and have overcome things unimaginable. So
it's been a really rewarding season to start working on. We're about six
episodes in to our production, so we're really excited to start sharing these episodes
with you all in August.
And season five is right around the corner.
Caitlin, you are producing this season.
You want to give a little bit of a teaser
and when we should expect that to launch?
Yeah, for sure.
So season five is coming out mid-January.
And it's a story about what happens
when the person who is caring for you
turns out to be the one causing you to be suffering.
And it's also a story about what happens
when the law isn't on your side. And I think it's also a story about what happens when the law isn't on your side.
And I think it's very relevant to a lot of global stories that are going on right now.
And it's coming directly from many stories that we've been hearing from listeners in
our inbox.
So I think it'll be a very special season.
Well, I have to say I'm really proud of everyone and their work this season.
And thanks for all of your hard work.
It's been kind of a race to the finish line.
So congrats to everyone.
And congrats to Matt, who is another editor on the show who is not here today.
But thank you so much.
And I've loved every second of working on this season with you guys.
Thank you for listening to Betrayal Season 4.
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team, email us at betrayalpod.gmail.com.
That's betrayalpod.gmail.com.
Also please be sure to follow us at Glass Podcasts on Instagram for all Betrayal content, news,
and updates.
One way to support the series is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts.
Please rate and review Betrayal.
Five-star reviews help us know you appreciate what we do.
Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in
partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison.
Betrayal is hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.
Written and produced by Carrie Hartman.
Also produced by Ben Fetterman.
Our associate producers are Caitlin Golden and Kristen Malkuri.
Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck.
Story editing by Monique Laborde.
Audio editing by Matt Dalvecchio and Tanner Robbins.
And mixed by Matt Dalvecchio and Tanner Robbins, and mixed by
Matt Alvecchio. And special thanks to Caroline and her family. Betrayal's theme is composed
by Oliver Baines, music library provided by Mide Music. And for more podcasts from iHeart,
visit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Girlfriends is back with a new season,
and this time I'm telling you the story of Kelly Harnett.
Kelly spent over a decade in prison
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As she fought for her freedom, she taught herself the law.
He goes, oh God, Harnett, jailhouse lawyer.
And became a beacon of hope
for the women locked up alongside her.
You're supposed to have faith in God, but I had nothing but faith in her.
I think I was put here to save souls by getting people out of prison.
The Girlfriends. Jailhouse Lawyer.
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I had the skill and I had the talent.
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Yeah.
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Genius is evenly distributed.
Opportunity is not.
To hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership,
listen to Black Tech Green Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the
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Hey guys, it's Jhene, AKA Cheeky's from Cheeky's and Chill Podcast.
And I'm bringing you an all new mini podcast series called Sincerely Jhene.
Sure, I'm a singer, author, business woman and podcaster,
but at the end of the day, I am human.
And that's why I'm sharing my ups and downs with you
in real time and on the go.
Listen to Jikis and Chill on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare.
Someone was posting photos.
It was just me naked.
Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts.
This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope, about
the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it.
Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast.
Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is an iHeart Podcast.