Ask Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark about a few of their favorite things, and guaranteed, you won’t get a song about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.
Instead, their tune would be about trauma, tragedy and triple homicide, or death, depravity and derangement.
And believe it or not, you might feel better after hearing about it. That’s the point.
The two California women are the co-hosts of “My Favorite Murder,” an insanely popular podcast that blends comedy with true crime, and they’re presenting it live in Honolulu today, at Blaisdell Concert Hall.
With language as salty as the sea, quips as colorful as a rainbow and stories ripped from the crime logs, they’ve spawned a legion of fans who number in the tens of millions around the world.
“What it is is two people talking about their interest in true crime and talking about true crime stories that we see on TV and read about and that they make documentaries about,” said Kilgariff.
“Podcasts are like personalized radio shows, where people do deep dives into things of interest, and as we all know, true crime is a huge interest to a lot of people. It always has been.”
‘MY FAVORITE MURDER’
With Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
>> Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall
>> When: 8 p.m. Friday
>> Cost: $39.50 to $59.50
>> Info: 800-745-3000, ticketmaster.com
THE WOMEN give their own unique take on serial murderers like Joseph Naso, who took pictures of his victims alongside mannequin parts.
Or unsolved cases like the infamous Black Dahlia murder, for which they recently appeared on a television special marking the start of “I Am the Night,” the latest TV miniseries inspired by the 1947 killing of Elizabeth Short.
They’ve also discussed five unsolved murders of women in Honolulu in 1985 and 1986, victims of the so-called Honolulu Strangler, comparing that with a series of mysterious deaths on the Galapagos Islands in the 1930s. That show was themed “Coincidence Island.”
The seeds were sown for their partnership when they met at a Halloween party and started talking about a deadly event with striking similarities to the Jan. 28 incident in Kakaako, when a vehicle careened into a crowd of people.
Kilgariff was a witness — and near victim — in the 2014 incident, in which a drunken driver drove into a crowd of people at the South by Southwest cultural festival in Austin, Texas, killing four people.
“Everyone else in the conversation seemed to kind of step away the moment we started talking about something gory,” Hardstark said. “But the two of us immediately bonded, so after one or two hangouts where we talked about it and realized we were so into this subject, but it was so taboo that we didn’t have anybody to talk about it with, we decided to start a podcast.”
“My Favorite Murder” launched in 2016. Told of last week’s Kakaako incident that left three pedestrians dead, the two women gasped in dismay. They went on to explain that their show is partly aimed at helping people process such situations.
Kilgariff said the show has helped her deal with her experience.
“I went through something that I think I’m still processing, because I could have been the first person hit,” she said .
“Things like this happen to people every single day, and almost everyone that we all know lives with some trauma in their life.
“I think up until very recently, Americans liked to go, ‘Don’t talk about it and pull yourself by your bootstraps and keep going.’ But now people are saying, ‘No, this needs to be discussed and it needs to be brought out into the light of day,’ because that’s how people heal from trauma.
“In no way am I saying that’s what we’re doing, like healing people, but I know we are healing each other from having these conversations.”
HARDSTARK HAS always been a fan of true crime, but kept her interest to herself, dealing with it through “anxiety and fear and constant worry,” she said.
“Having an outlet like the podcast to talk about it has really alleviated some of those fears,” she said. “Because I realize that not only does my friend Karen have the same kind of thoughts that I do, but so many people who listen have them as well, and we’ve all just kept them to ourselves because that’s the ‘proper thing to do.’”
While they spice up their commentary with a lot of funny, and often caustic asides, that is intended as relief from the horror of the stories.
“It’s the need to lighten it up because it’s so awful; that’s where the comedy comes in,” Kilgariff said. “The comedy is not about the topic itself, really.”
The women also take particular care to show empathy for crime victims, something they say is often missing from common news reporting or even crime-oriented shows.
“When you watch it on TV, you get the journalistic approach, the somber approach of, ‘This terrible thing that happened,’” Kilgariff said.
“We’re discussing it as consumers and viewers. We’re the ones who go, ‘This guy is such an a—hole,’ things that reporters aren’t allowed to say, where we’re allowed to editorialize as we sit there going, ‘How did this guy not get arrested the first time?’”
They also occasionally feature guests, including television talk-show personality Conan O’Brien, who appeared to discuss his obsession with true crime.
“MY FAVORITE Murder” has proved especially popular with women, who have created a passionate fan base that any sports franchise would envy.
Calling themselves “Murderinos,” they’ve propelled the podcast to a consistently high rank among the top 20 podcasts on iTunes’ U.S. charts, at one point reaching No. 4.
That response was unexpected, the hosts said.
“It took a good year for us before we even believed it was happening,” Hardstark said. “We’re still just kind of amazed by it.”
Although the show is called “My Favorite Murder,” some of their stories are in fact about survivors.
People they’ve talked about have contacted them to offer support, with one coming to a live show and talking about her experience.
“It was truly one of the most incredible experiences we’ve ever had,” Kilgariff said. “That’s who we think about when we do this.”
The podcasters have found that their audience members are interested in taking measures to stay safe or otherwise improve their lives, and encourage this.
“We’ve had people who’ve told us they went back to school to do something in forensics, or went back to become a psychologist,” Hardstark said, “and on the other hand we’ve had people tell us they now carry pepper spray with them wherever they go.”
Their staged show is simply a live version of their podcast — an impromptu, unrehearsed discussion of crimes that they’ve individually researched and would like to talk about.
“We open with a dance number,” Kilgariff said. “No, not really. Just joking.”
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