Content is good but there’s a problem with the mixing. The show’s volume is really low, you have to turn your device volume way up. The issue with that is that the ads have regular volume so they’ll be loud. This is especially true for that annoying “hey prime members” bit.

I’m not into true crime but on a record, I gave this a listen. The story is incredible, and tragic; it engaged me to the point where I was watching hours of video about it. The podcast did a good job of exploring all the details, however, the transition from reporting on the vlog to the arrests was jarring for me. I felt like I missed an episode somewhere between the acts and the consequences. I would also like to explore the root of the abuse—the religion itself—the thing that seemingly encouraged the behavior.

I wasn’t 100% sure within the first two episodes. I did feel it did have a slow start, and I had to fast forward through all the clips of Ruby and her YouTube videos. in the beginning, I could care less of what she did with her kids. It was a little boring. But halfway through is when my attention was caught and it ended well. I’m glad they did the bonus episode

I agree with previous review They could’ve gone deeper into the wacko religious aspect

SO good, I never heard of Ruby Franke and am obsessed with this story! Thisis podcast is SO good! I binged it, couldn’t stop.

The story is an interesting one, but this is a bit drawn out. Less is often more.

Efficient podcast that gets the job done. The job being my commute. I only know of in court facing changes RF . Didn’t watch the actual show, so I’m enjoying the sound bites from the YouTube channel, the subscribers who explain the shows shift and how RF changed before their eyes after the intro of the therapist.

I think this podcast is painfully surface level. Completely skates over the Mormon Cover up, the fact that Jodi's abuse of her niece was directly centered around anti LGBTQ bigotry, doesn't address that religious fanaticism is why this case happened. They also completely let Kevin off of the hook. He is a part of this abuse. He encouraged the exploitation of his children and did not stop or report the abuse. What kind of father just peaces out on his kids and leaves them with a mentally unstable religious lunatic? Criminal negligence. Jodi got her degree to practice therapy from a religious college, specifically from a religion that doesn't believe in basic human rights for all humans. Can't believe the writers of this podcast were so uninterested in following any leads.

Thank you for sharing a lot of the background info on the participants of this story - far more than what was made public on national news. Those children may never overcome the trauma they experienced; they were never allowed to be “typical children.” I grew up in a large family with parents who expected us to be perfect, and not making allowances for our humanness. Also, my parents were more concerned about the “alphabet soup of letters” following a professional’s name—not common sense—maybe clouded by evangelicalism at that time. Sometimes my punishment was greater than the infraction. A great, but sad, podcast.

Great podcast!

I remember hearing about this story when it first broke, and I did learn more new things from this free podcast on Apple. I’m so glad they came back with new info after they thought it was the closing episode to the series. The new information is like the cherry on top. True crime has always caught my attention. I am still shocked about this whole story unfolding… I hope that this tragic event leads to changes in the future of Vlogging children’s lives, and the way parents “discipline” children. Praying for these sweet children, and their futures!

Cults interest me, I thought this would be fascinating. It was not. This was a very high level look, missing big topics and talking too much on unimportant ones. I found myself googling several topics that were eluded to but never explained. I found another podcast that gave me a MUCH better explanation and they did it in 2 hours.

I’m really enjoying this story. I put off listening for MONTHS! Any and all forms of child abuse are very upsetting for me. But I relented today. And I’m glad I did. I gave it 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 The abuse is not sensationalized so I can get through it. Besides the fact that I would like to punch her in the face…. I Can’t wait to hear how it ends. Hopefully with this witch behind bars.

I’m so confused about how quickly they let Kevin off. The podcast doesn’t add anything to the investigation other than an overview. The amount of time they spend painting Kevin like a victim too is baffling, honestly made me wonder if Kevin was behind this podcast. Completely overlooked the abuse during 8 passengers and his neglect of his children. P much any other podcast on this subject would be better.

I binged this free on Apple Podcasts. I loved this story and couldn’t stop listening. It started telling the story from the beginning and I like that. I don’t like stories complex like this that go back and fourth from present day to past back to present.

I think most reviews are either Utahan Mormons or disgruntled wonder+ subscribers. It’s overall a decent review of the facts as they happened, with an eye toward the social media phenomenon that swirled around this case. My one point off is for some hand waving toward the end to Ruby herself by authorities. It moves past the theory of a connection between mythical religious thinking and the submission to authority required by Ruby and her kids throughout this story to get this bad. Jodi is no saint and deserves some time herself, but the idea that she’s worse than Ruby (the one with the actual duty to protect her kids) is abhorrent to me and idk how any trained psychologist would hand wave this away. If Jodi is the problem, so is the church, Kevin, and anyone remotely close to the situation. All of these people are only sorry because they got caught. DR Honda in one of the final episodes all but excuses her for being “brainwashed” despite the abuse starting well before her and Jodi’s mentorship. He even says how there’s this movement to reject progressive thought, and without Jodi the kids probably would’ve been fine. As if this rejection of progressivism isn’t directly signaling Ruby’s caveman level interpretation of the world. Oh no, it was this one bad person, not the swarm of factors telling Ruby that she was right and on a godly path.

Very informative and well done. It seems the negative ratings are form folks of a certain religion or from a certain region as well as people who cannot imagine paying less than it costs to get Starbucks in order to listen to something several human beings worked hard on. Ridiculous. It’s good. Give it a listen.

WAY too many blanket statements and digs on religion and on Utahns. Focus on the crimes. Stop trying to relate all people of her faith to her.

This is a fascinating story to do a deep dive into but this podcast was really disappointing. It is not well-structured (it’s kind of set up chronologically? But some of the episodes felt like they had no rhyme or reason for how they were put together) and it doesn’t go very deep into the story at all. I ended up with a lot more questions than answers. They grazed over most of the incidents and hardly even addressed the “rise” of Ruby Franke, although it’s literally in the name of the podcast. They didn’t have a lot of experts interviewed and literally just interviewed random vlog followers for many episodes. At one point, one of these random interviewees was discussing the day that her son goes to a neighbor’s house 2 doors away for help. She was like, “He had to walk through tumbleweeds and sand up the street, a half mile in the UT desert…well we don’t know exactly how far, but maybe a half mile…it’s a long way for a 12-year-old.” Tumbleweeds and sand? Have you ever been to southern Utah? Didn’t this kid just walk up the street in a neighborhood? It just sounded like this person making up something random based on the facts. I listen to a lot of true crime and I don’t think I would listen to any other podcasts from this company. This one was so bad.

It’s really disappointing that a group as reputable as wonder wouldn’t do background research on Kati Morton. She’s controversial if not highly unethical. It’s also lazy. Find a therapist instead that has likes and clicks to feature and instead get one that actually has specific experience to the research you’re doing. Disappointed is an understatement.

Felt as if I was hearing the same allegations over and over again with minimal new information in each episode. That made it really hard to keep listening. She was mean to her kids. We get it! I don’t need 20 examples.

Definitely not worth the pay wall, and not worth waiting to listen to.

Anyone else find it absolutely insane that this show which is picking apart the unethical practices of mental health pro Jodi Hildebrandt is also rife with ads for BetterHelp? Better help is itself shilling unethical therapeutic practices, like setting people up with therapists who have no qualifications. Pretty ironic. Stop advertising for BetterHelp.

I agree with everyone else. Don’t make people pay to get the episodes then make them wait weeks at a time to get new episodes. Such a money grab. Listen, I’m ok paying to binge episodes but when you blatantly drag it out like that, it feels incredibly sneaky. As for the content- slopping storytelling. Repeated audio clips to drag out episodes that are again- behind a sneaky paywall. Then there’s the dog piling on the Mormon church. Listen- there are super crappy people in the church but its bias reporting when all you interview are people who do those horrible things or have left the church and have an ax to grind. Maybe do a little more homework and you’d find out that the huge majority of the members of the church do not condone anything Ruby or Jody have done in the slightest. But again- there’s bad eggs in every demographic. Kinda like podcasts. . .

I have watched several YouTube videos about this case that were more informative and engaging. I was very excited for this podcast and it’s a giant nothing burger.

Waited forever to listen to this without the paywall.. was pretty disappointed. Could have been told a lot better

Wondery true crime has fallen off hard lately! This is the second podcast of theirs now where they consistently allow the people close to the/one of the perpetrators to try to garner sympathy for the perp instead of stating facts. Here, Chad Franke’s lawyer keeps trying to push a narrative that Chad had nothing to do with the abuse of the children - despite the fact that the abuse started far before his separation from Ruby (including withholding food and a place to sleep from children, as well as sending one of his children to a wilderness “rehabilitation” program for “troubled” teens). The fact that Wondery allows this to happen with no pushback is not only disgusting, but also lazy journalism. As is also a staple of Wondery pods, statements are constantly rephrased and regurgitated to increase the number of episodes and pad runtime. Another troubling thing I’m seeing here is the use of non-experts in interviews - most of the interview subjects here are just random subscribers to the Frankes’ Youtube channel! What would they know about anything! Would’ve been much more interesting to hear from Mormans on how their culture could’ve led to this, or from lawyers on what some of the trial proceedings mean, or a CPS worker on how it took so long to catch them, etc. Really discouraging to see such a decline in quality journalism directly on the heels of Wondery shifting to exclusively paywalled content. I’d be livid if I was paying even the $4/month for such shoddy pods!

I guess I won’t be listening to the rest of this podcast since I am required to pay $5.99/month to hear it in its entirety.

The continuous weaving of anti-traditional and anti-conservative trope throughout, especially in Episode 7, makes this a tired, rather than fresh, podcast. When a social worker suggests that, in order to know what goes on in families, we should have someone embedded in the home for at least a week, you lose any credibility. If you like that sort of thing, this is the one for you.

Repeating so many facts and not giving any new information. Taking forever to let the episodes out. It’s a story that should be told, by someone with more information.

It's a decent podcast but they repeated alot of recordings and information to make extra episodes. Just kept making me disinterested and distracted.

Wish wondery wouldn’t nickel and dime its audience. We pay for Apple Podcasts already and you put ads in the episodes. I’m not paying for podcasts!

I’d rather wait for all episodes to drop than do ANOTHER subscription to listen to this. Us peasants are suffering from inflation and are sick of ads and additional subscriptions. We are already paying to use Apple Podcasts. No thanks.

I’m so tired of being nickled and dimed for everything and this is a great example. I’m not going to pay for podcasts.

It wasn’t a bad podcast but it’s not good enough to subscribe. Kind of disappointed.

The first couple episodes are peppered with the DUMBEST examples of “bad parenting” and has people talking about their “concern” that probly don’t even have kids… not letting her daughter get her nails done or getting a little frustrated getting hit in the face… this isn’t out of the ordinary! What she ends up doing absolutely is, but these first episodes are just so judgmental and pathetic… and why does this host keep interviewing two children that watched this that obviously have no kids and have no idea what it is to parent. Who wanted their opinion, they the only 2 viewers you could find? Before Jody Hildabrant it all seems pretty harmless. You try raising 6 kids….

I listen to a lot of Wondery podcasts so I finally decided to subscribe because I want to listen to locked episodes. I feel it’s worth it for $45/year. I’ve been listening to podcasts for a long time so I’ve had trouble finding stories I haven’t heard before. I appreciated this specific story because it contained real interviews with the father and real content from journals etc

I refuse to pay for podcast content! This case is so old and yet most of episodes are still wonders+ only. I’m over waiting to the release dates and will not be back to listen. It’s not that well produced and the info is already out!

I binged it in a day!

I’m confused by the negative reviews. Maybe it’s not the greatest podcast, idk I didn’t think it was that bad, but this story is insane! If you just think about the story being told, Judy is a sociopath and the way she manipulates the people around her is terrifying. You know this is happening elsewhere and it’s hard to imagine. Ruby was the PERFECT target for Judy. Crazyyyy what can happen when these two kind of people meet.

I found this podcast to be very engaging and thorough and indeed a reminder that child abuse can happen under the care of parents who are educated and have money. I found myself often aghast at the information reveled regarding Ruby and Jodi and their treatment of the children. The demon was definitely in Ruby and Jodi not the children as Ruby felt they were which is such a sick thought to have of your own child. As a mother myself it really is so sad to me, that nobody was able to protect them from this abuse for years and that these children had to suffer at the hands of these monsters-one of them being their mother. The father plays a huge part in all of this too because he was a doormat. Sadly he didn’t have the strength to stand up to his wife and challenge her and protect his kids. He is culpable in not doing anything.

That’s dumb and will not listen

This story feels sloppily presented, with pointless interviews with fans of the channel treated like experts on the family. The narrator repeats information over and over again. This honestly feels like someone read a news report and then tried to create a podcast! Not happy!

Very well written and produced. All three of the main grownups involved with this family are terrible humans, including the father. Their choices are what put these kids in danger.

It’s alright but not worth the hype to subscribe

The definition of stretching a thin premise. Many many moments of an “expert” explaining something unnecessary - feels like the last few paragraphs of a book report

You can only listen to the first episode. No thank you.

I subscribed for a month to listen to this series. It’s mostly interviews with other content creators and former fans of the 8 passengers YouTube channel. Some of the takes by other content creators are so off base it’s embarrassing. One even said the young girl found emaciated was obstinate. If you’ve viewed the body cam she’s clearly petrified! Not the normal level of quality I’m used to for Wondery limited series. Not worth the subscription free at all.

First ep you can listened to but rest of season is behind a paywall. It was decent but not worth paying for when you can get free podcasts, videos and documentaries. Podcast creators should focus on finding advertisers rather than charging listeners.

This story could have been told in half the episodes. The editing was done to stretch info into as many minutes as possible. Many audio clips are used 4+ times till you get sick of listening but want to hear how it ends. I won’t bother starting other podcasts by this production team.