Ashley Flowers: born in South Bend, built in Indianapolis

1989 - present

The South Bend start: Ashley Flowers was born on 19 December 1989 in South Bend, Indiana. The encyclopedia record of her childhood is a reader's: Nancy Drew novels and Matlock on television fixed her on cold cases early, and she has said she wanted to be a cold case detective before she learned the job required being a police officer first. She took a Bachelor of Science in biological services at Arizona State University, worked in biomedical research and then in sales, and volunteered with Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana, rising to its board. Before the podcast there was a radio apprenticeship: Murder Monday, a twenty minute local radio segment aimed at younger listeners, which she hosted for a year. It is the classic formation of this section's people, a local media side door, except that everything after the side door happened at national scale and one city south.

Crime Junkie: In December 2017 Flowers launched Crime Junkie with her childhood friend Brit Prawat, and founded the podcast network Audiochuck the same year (see both entries below). The reach figures are the largest in either city's running of this section, and they are printed dated: Crime Junkie garners 10 million weekly listeners, as Wikipedia reports it; Edison Research ranked it the second most listened to podcast in the United States in 2022; and Apple Podcasts named it the number one most listened to show in the United States in both 2022 and 2023, and the most followed and most shared show on the platform in 2022. As of 2024 the show had passed one billion downloads and more than 400 episodes. Flowers herself stood at the top of lists of United States podcasters in 2023 and 2024, with the largest female audience of any podcast in the country.

Printed at its true size: This record does not claim for South Bend what belongs to Indianapolis. Audiochuck is an Indianapolis company, Flowers built it there, and she lives in Indiana's capital region; South Bend's claim on her is the one the encyclopedia fixes, a birth here, and the second claim the next article documents, that her co-host and friend since birth was still living in South Bend when the show began, so that the first episodes of the biggest true crime podcast in America were recorded with one end of the line in this city. Her second career underlines the scale the first one reached: her debut novel, All Good People Here, became a New York Times bestseller in August 2022, and in June 2020 she founded the nonprofit Season of Justice, which funds DNA testing to solve cold cases and had donated more than $225,000 across 31 cases by July 2021, as Rolling Stone reported it.

Sources:

1. Wikipedia, "Ashley Flowers" (born 19 Dec 1989, South Bend, Indiana; the Nancy Drew and Matlock formation; Arizona State; Crime Stoppers; Murder Monday; 10 million weekly listeners; top podcaster lists 2023 and 2024; one billion downloads and 400 plus episodes as of 2024), and its references: Rosman, "Ashley Flowers Wants to Up the Ante of True Crime", New York Times, 2 Feb 2022; ELLE, "The Queen of True Crime", 11 Aug 2022; Spangler, Variety, on the Apple Podcasts rankings, 5 Dec 2022 and 28 Nov 2023.
2. Rolling Stone, Andrea Marks, "Podcaster Ashley Flowers Launches Nonprofit to Fund DNA Testing in Cold Cases", 15 July 2021: Season of Justice and the $225,000 across 31 cases.
3. New York Times Best Sellers, 4 Sept 2022 (via Wikipedia): All Good People Here a bestseller on its August 2022 release.