Life & Work with Charlie Worroll of Red Bridge

Today we’d like to introduce you to Charlie Worroll

Hi Charlie, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
For many years, I homeschooled my children and stayed busy with organizing learning co-ops, field trips, and park days. Then, they decided to try public school leaving me home alone with a 2 year old. Frankly, I got bored. I realized I needed a project, and I had recently gotten into listening to podcasts. I decided to start one by Googling “how to start a podcast.” That was September of 2015. By 2017, I had a monetized podcast that ended in March of 2019.

I wasn’t sure I was ready to jump into another podcast right away, but with the tough love of some friends who basically told me to get over myself and get back on the horse, I launched Crimelines in May of 2019.

Since then, I’ve traveled to live shows, conferences, and events that have connected me with the broader podcasting community but also with families who have been impacted by crime. Instead of seeing podcasting as a fun hobby that made a little extra money, it became a vehicle to educate the public on our legal system while advocating for the victims of crime.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest struggle I’ve encountered so far was the end of my initial true crime podcast. I created the show with a co-host who I met in an online podcasting group. The show began when true crime podcasts were on the rise and quickly gained a sizable audience. We had the usual ups and downs of collaboration but nothing we couldn’t work through. Then one day, my co host sent me a script and I realized it was verbatim from a YouTube video I had seen on the same case. I went back and checked other scripts she had sent me and learned she had been plagiarizing all of her episodes for at least 8 months.

I take plagiarism very seriously, and I immediately ended the show even thought it meant canceling thousands of dollars in upcoming sponsorship deals. When I launched my current show Crimelines, it took me nearly two years to rebuild to where I was.

Since then, podcasting has had a number of plagiarism scandals and shows didn’t end over it, but I do not regret my choice at all. In true crime podcasting especially, we owe it to the people whose stories we tell to do so with integrity.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I create a true crime podcast called Crimelines that walks the listener through true crime events, pairing captivating tales with clear storytelling. I bring in appropriate historic and cultural context to look beyond what happened and consider why it happened. One topic of particular interest for me is the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and cover those cases whenever I have the chance.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Growing up, I was very shy which is hard for people to believe now. I was very good at school when it came to class discussion and tests, but I never could focus on homework or busy work. The one thing I could focus on was writing, so I welcomed essay tests while the rest of the class groaned. I remember being assigned the largest word count of the class for an 8th grade project–2500 word report on the Civil War–and I thought how could I ever research and write that much. Now, my weekly writing exceeds 10,000 words and hours and hours of research. My writing would often pull up my low grades from not turning in homework and now it pays my bills.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.basementfortproductions.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crimelinespod/
• Twitter: https://x.com/crimelinespod