Ripper history and slasher lore, told loud and loose.
Alexandria Young-Rae and co-host Sunshine mix jokes, tangents and blooper-ready fumbles with research on real murders and fictional ones. Their Jack the Ripper episodes give individual victims their own installments, filling in Polly's and Annie's marriages, work and family life.
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Pomegranates and Pitchforks sets true crime and horror side by side and lets two hosts talk their way through both. Alexandria Young-Rae hosts, with Sunshine as her co-host, and their back-and-forth supplies most of the texture: running gags, swearing, derailments and a habit of announcing that a botched line is going in the bloopers. It is not a polished production, and it does not pretend to be. The two joke openly about how far they are from making a living at it. What rewards patience is the history underneath. The Jack the Ripper material gives real room to the conditions of the poor, and one episode is titled '41. Jack the Ripper ep 1 - Victorian England Sucked'. That conversation covers workhouses, tramping, casual wards and vagrancy laws that punished a temp worker or a beggar exactly as they punished a thief. The hosts' verdict on the workhouse is blunt: a system designed to rob poor people of dignity. On the Whitechapel killings, the talk turns to case detail. A coroner's report citing two weapons, with wounds inflicted both right-handed and left-handed, pushes them toward the view that the first two Whitechapel victims were killed by more than one man. The alternative, an ambidextrous dual-wielding Ripper, gets dismissed in a single line. The most distinctive thread is the victims themselves. Polly and Annie each get an episode under the subtitle The Victims of Jack the Ripper, and the hosts rebuild ordinary lives in detail: Annie's marriage to John, a domestic worker at the upper end of his trade, and her closeness to her mother and sisters; Polly's repeated retreats from her marital home to her father and brother. Tangents come along too, including a detour into factory workers drinking beer as liquid bread. Horror fiction gets the same loose handling. An episode on the history of slashers retells a mystery in which a group of guests is killed off one by one to the verses of a nursery rhyme, and the hosts make a point of reading the 'Ten Little Soldier Boys' version instead of repeating the original's slur. Mike from Boston Harbor Horror guests on the ghost ship Palatine episode, where the talk turns to outlines and to how much research never reaches an audio drama script. In another cold open the hosts read their first one-star review aloud, a complaint about half-done research and politics, and play it for laughs. Sign-offs point to Patreon and Ko-fi, where supporters can get stories cut from episodes and blooper reels, before a round of love-you-byes. For a listener who wants Ripper history with the social context left in and the rough edges left on, it is an easy fit.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants Jack the Ripper and slasher history told with the swearing, tangents and jokes left in, and who cares as much about workhouses and vagrancy laws as about the killings.
What sets it apart: Its Jack the Ripper coverage gives named victims such as Polly and Annie their own episodes about their marriages and families, and sets the murders against workhouses and vagrancy laws. All of it comes as unfiltered, joke-heavy talk rather than solemn narration.
Pomegranates and Pitchforks is a horror and true crime podcast that brings true stories and not so true stories together in beautiful and disturbing harmony.Alix is a creep, and Sunshine is her creep enabling best friend. Together they tackle all things horror. History, politics, science, and sociology - from zombies to serial killers.
A 'wavy railroad' laugh gives way to Annie Chapman's daughters; you get both levity and loss.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Annie Chapman's family life comes through in a quietly humane account of work, loss, and domestic ties.
Annie Chapman's life is framed through uncertain work in London, a marriage rooted in domestic service, and a lasting pull toward her mother and sisters.
A grounded, humane look at Polly's domestic life and the pressures around Jack the Ripper's first canonical victim.
Polly comes through less as a fixed name in a famous murder case than as a woman pressed hard by the limits of Victorian domestic life. The episode follows her repeated departures from the marital home between 1878 and 1880, her time with her brother and father, and the pain…
A forensic puzzle about 39 stabs, two weapons, and whether Jack the Ripper worked alone.
This single-episode review frames the hour around a sharp forensic question: could one killer have delivered 39 stab wounds using two weapons and both hands?
A victim-centered Jack the Ripper opener rooted in workhouses, tramping, casual wards, and the poverty surrounding the case.
Pomegranates and Pitchforks opens its Jack the Ripper series by turning the lens away from the killer and toward the people most often flattened by the case.
A grim nursery rhyme gives a dinner-party murder mystery its strange, absurd blueprint.
Pomegranates and Pitchforks settles into a chatty single-episode review of a murder-mystery premise built around dinner guests, accusation, an unseen killer, and a framed nursery rhyme that seems to map each death.
ABC Audio's Theranos fraud series that also introduces its other true-crime podcasts.
LA Times reporter Christopher Goffard traces con man John Meehan's fraud, abuse, and its Bravo TV adaptation.
Annie Chapman grew up between Queen's Lifeguard service and crowded working-class housing, then spent adulthood chasing respectability through domestic labor, marriage, and photographs.
Pomegranates and Pitchforks covers Polly Nichols, born Mary Ann Walker on August 26, 1845, and treated as the first canonical victim of Jack the Ripper.
Pomegranates and Pitchforks connects Jack the Ripper ep 2 to Edwardian gender rules, Karen-as-social-type language, and the way white women used privilege inside patriarchy.
A vagrant woman in Whitechapel could be treated as a sex worker simply for wearing ragged clothing.
Alexandria Young-Rae and Sunshine Pallon trace horror from Edison’s 18-second “The Execution of Mary Stewart” and George Melies’ 3-minute “House of the Devil” to 1922’s “Nosferatu” and 1920s German expressionism.
Pomegranates and Pitchforks examines the ghost ship Palatine, an emigrant vessel connected to Block Island, Rhode Island, in the early to mid-1700s.
Pomegranates and Pitchforks introduces the prison-industrial-complex series through debtors’ prisons, British impressment, and the historical relationship between England and American law.
Pomegranates and Pitchforks features Alexandria Young-Rae, Sunshine Badan, and astronomy instructor Tamara Young discussing vampire stars, neutron stars, white dwarfs, black holes, novas, and supernovas.
Pomegranates and Pitchforks traces the Attica Prison Uprising from the September 8 confrontation involving Leroy Doer to the September 13 retaking of Attica.
Alexandria Young-Rae and Sunshine Belong introduce Attica Prison, built near Buffalo in 1931 for about nine million dollars and designed around controlling uprisings.
Alexandria Young-Rae and Sunshine Bellon examine Bruce MacArthur, a Toronto landscaper and mall Santa arrested in 2018 after eight murders were linked to him.
Alexandria Young-Rae and Sunshine Bolan's Pomegranates and Pitchforks mini-sode examines the CDC's official zombie-apocalypse guide as a route into ordinary emergency preparation.
Pomegranates and Pitchforks episode 32, “The Final Clown,” examines how 1960s friendly clown imagery led into the darker association created by John Wayne Gacy and Pogo the Clown.
Pomegranates and Pitchforks examines how the early-1900s American sad-clown archetype developed through circus performance and tragedy.
A horror and true crime podcast blending real and fictional stories from an LGBTQ perspective.
The hosts recap the Dean Corll serial killer case and discuss predictors of violence.
The hosts discuss vampires and share personal anecdotes while promoting a guest appearance on another podcast about abortion.
The hosts introduce their horror podcast and share a personal ghost story from one host's childhood.
The episode opens with a classic urban legend about a couple encountering an escaped murderer with a hook hand, then transitions into a horror-themed podcast introduction.
Two hosts introduce a new horror podcast, discussing their personal history with horror and setting up a blend of true and fictional scary stories.