2021 Listeners’ Choice British Podcast Awards Winner
Based off Hannah Maguire and Suruthi Bala’s popular podcast of the same name, RedHanded explores real-life true crime cases to help answer once and for all if a killer is born or made.
After meeting at a house party in London, where they discovered a mutual obsession for all things true crime, Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire drunkenly promised to one day start their own murder podcast. Six weeks later they ordered their first microphones and the rest is history. From the hosts of the hit podcast RedHanded (dubbed by Anna Paquin as her “all- time favorite true crime podcast”), Bala and Maguire have amassed a cult following of “spooky bitches.”
What is it about killers, cults, and cannibals that capture our imaginations even as they terrify and disturb us? Do we find these stories endlessly and equally compelling and frightening, because they hold up a mirror to society’s failings and to the horrors that we humans are capable of? RedHanded rejects the outdated narrative of killers as monsters and that a victim “was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Instead, it dissects the stories of killers in a way that challenges perceptions and asks the hard questions about society, gender, poverty, culture, and even our politics.
With their trademark humor, research on real-life cases, and unflinching analysis of what makes a criminal, Bala and Maguire take you through what drives the most extreme of human behavior to find out once and for all: what makes a killer tick?
Review by Twinsie Angie
I purchased this audio book.
Shut up!! I love these ladies. Each chapter was like a mini podcast episode. WE cover so many interesting topics. Any true crime fan should be jumping on to listen to the in depth research about many interesting topics in the true crime world. I love love love the chapter on Mommy Issues!!! But of course, the Cult chapter made me super stoked.
The fact the ladies are the narrators also was genius!! I mean again I listened to a chapter a day. It fed my true crime brain.
Hannah thought she was going to be an actor, then like many she was a teacher and then like not so many, she wound up co hosting the smash hit true crime podcast RedHanded. Podcasting was made for Hannah, as a dyslexic devourer of audio-books and as a lover of stories. On a whim Hannah studied Social Anthropology at SOAS, because she thought it would make her sound interesting.
She was right.
Luckily, it also lent her an anthropological appetite to understand why people do what they do.
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Suruthi has always been an independent, overachiever – whether she was a 3 year old with loose laces because she refused to let anyone tie them, or a 5 year old who had just moved to the UK – and could write perfect cursive with fountain pen, but couldn’t speak a word of English.
She graduated from The University of Birmingham with a BSc and an MSc in Economics, and after quickly becoming disillusioned with the world of finance she went into the relentlessly tiring world of events. After a year out travelling she met Hannah – and RedHanded was born.