CrimeCon Las Vegas Podcast Spotlight: GENERATION WHY
February 11, 2022
LIVE EVENT
This week crimeHQ brought the first in our series of CrimeCon: Las Vegas Podcast Spotlights. Aaron Habel and Justin Evans of esteemed podcast "Generation Why"—who have been part of the CrimeCon family since Indianapolis—joined us for a really fun conversation.
After host Kelly McLear introduced them, Justin said, "we feel like the house band of CrimeCon at this point." She also offered them congratulations, as the podcast is celebrating its 10-year anniversary this year.
McLear asked the guys to share their "origin story" of how the "Generation Why" podcast began. Just shared that he met Aaron at a "little crappy restaurant" called Stephenson's Apple Tree in 1993. It was Justin's first day on the job as a dishwasher, where he was reporting to Aaron. Right away Justin noticed Aaron's Psychic TV T-shirt, which impressed him. The two quickly formed a friendship based on shared musical taste. Aaron said, "We quickly realized we were working at a place where we were underpaid and overworked. And by overworked I mean like 12-hour days."
Justin, who described himself as being a "young, punk kid" back then, said there was one day on the job when they were both being harassed by the other staff. When one waiter wouldn't stop harassing them, Justin started breaking plates until he stopped talking and "walked away in a huff." Aaron said that day was the cornerstone of their friendship, and it's only "built up since."
McLear wondered what got each of the guys into true crime and the unexplained. Aaron confessed that it started when he was a child watching Leonard Nimoy host the classic "In Search Of …" That led to a voracious appetite for true crime books, which has stuck with him. "True stories where there are lives on the line, justice on the line, there's something about that that really gets its hooks in and I think about it long afterward," he said.
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