Hello Crime Junkie team! I have a bit of a story incoming, and this might classify better as fan mail, but I felt the need to share this with you. I’ve been listening to the podcast since the very early days (I remember when pruppet of the month and the goods segment were introduced…) and have never been able to press pause since then. Because of this, I have noticed The Nina Effect. Ever since the Crime Junkie team expanded enough to be able to have private reporters, making the calls and knocking on doors more than the production team could afford to in the early days, there has been a HUMONGOUS shift in the amount and precision of information that you guys are able to cover for each case. In my head, I call this The Nina Effect because every time I am in awe at something you guys managed to find out, it is almost always preceded by the words “thanks to our reporter, Nina.”
Getting a bit personal, even though I now identify as nonbinary, I was raised as a girl who always wanted to find out everything about everything. I loved writing and asking questions and was often discouraged from ‘digging into things.’ Seeing the very real impact of Nina’s work, both through the episodes and the real-world, case-solving help they led to, all thanks to a determined and powerful woman who Will Not Stop Digging, has been leaving me awestruck for years now. I am one of the lucky few people who already found a field they love, and I’m in college on my way to becoming a University Professor, which has been my dream for a long time, but I find myself always thinking that, were it not for that, I would want to be just like Nina. A few other crime junkies said the same when I talked to them about this. I just wanted to let you all know that aside from the wonderful stuff you all do daily, and the insane amount of help you’ve provided to so many over the years, you also inspire people who are halfway across the world to such a degree that they sometimes even question their chosen career track!!
Thank you, Crime Junkie team, and thank you, Nina!! Keep being yourselves (and therefore awesome)!!!
With love, a starry-eyed Crime Junkie.