“In this special minisode, Karen and Georgia read your hometown murder stories that include a prophetic child, a heroic dog, the Easter Sunday Massacre, and more. They’re all succinct and horrifying!"

As an unapologetic, embarrassingly passionate fan of shows like Hannibal and Homeland, I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’ve become indifferent to fictionalized murder; whenever my parents flinch and groan at a violent scene in a horror film, I hardly bat an eye.

So, naturally, the next step up would be real murder, right? Wrong! Well, half-wrong.

Independent podcast network Feral Audio has pumped out another hit, affectionately named “My Favorite Murder." Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, two LA-based comedians brought together by their shared love for true crime, create the kind of content that has almost immediately gained a cult following.

“We kind of are fans – not of murdering people! – what it is, is ‘What you’re doing is wrong, I wish you would stop it...Just, I don't know, the level of planning that goes into it...’” The women laugh about their admiration of serial killers from the comfort of Hardstark's couch, where they record the majority of their episodes.

You wouldn’t think a podcast of two young women cracking jokes about John Wayne Gacy and the LA Freeway Killers of the '70s would get to be very popular. But, just in the past couple of months, the podcast has risen to iTunes’ #1 comedy spot, and their Facebook group is just shy of 48,000 members.

The atmosphere of the show is akin to a slumber party, and usually opens with Karen and Georgia chatting and going on tangents about shows like The Night Of or Making a Murderer before they dive in to the week’s grisly murders. Each woman comes prepared with a famous case to share with the other, who interrupts periodically with a "No!" or horrified gasp. Towards the end of the hour, they prefer to wrap up with their catchphrase, “Stay Sexy, Don’t Get Murdered!” – which, as it turns out, makes for some impressive Etsy merchandise. One episode is released every week, sometimes accompanied by a half-hour “minisode” consisting solely of the listeners’ hometown murders that gets published the day before.

When I first started listening to “My Favorite Murder,” I was initially put off by how blasé they were when they handled something as dark as the abduction, assault, and murder of children: “Have at least four – two normal, two alternates…love one the best and protect them the most.” Something about cracking jokes about sacrificing your least favorite child struck a chord in me, and you can probably imagine that doesn’t happen very often. I was hesitant to continue. I even brought up the issue with the friend who recommended it to me in the first place, to voice my concerns. I asked her if the hosts are always this macabre, and she admits that “[The podcast] starts out pretty strong…it walks a very fine line and crosses it sometimes," then rushed to assure me that she’s not a budding serial killer. Upon further investigation, the most common criticism is not the trivialization of the violence, but rather the general lack of structure and proper research, which often leads to long tangents and playing fast-and-loose with the facts.

But, because I felt I needed a little bit of controversy in my otherwise uneventful summer vacation, I continued. I couldn’t deny that Karen and Georgia had a certain charisma to them, or that they were definitely respectful and sympathetic to the victims of true crime. I soon realized, and strongly identified with, the fact that their humor was their way of coping with this traumatizing thing called life. As Georgia aptly puts it, “I think humor is a lot of people’s way to take away the fear and anxiety of a thing that scares the shit out of you. That’s definitely our angle.”

Apart from making me really glad I never lived on the west coast in the 70’s, and that I wasn’t alive during the '70s, and have never really been to LA in general, listening to Karen and Georgia’s candor about their anxieties gave me a strange sense of camaraderie.

Perhaps, in the age of desensitization due to constant media exposure to violence both real and simulated, we should be asking ourselves if it's okay to continue to perpetuate this trivialization of violence, or if we should embrace it. Would talking about it openly - and lightheartedly - encourage mindfulness on how to avoid dangerous situations, or how to approach life with something other than cynicism?

I certainly think so. Just being a woman means I always have to be on my guard. I can never go anywhere alone, I learn to look for objects in the street that could be used as weapons, I’m paranoid to the point of double- and triple-checking the locks on all the doors and windows of my house before going to bed. Well, so are Georgia and Karen – and they’re laughing at it. This dynamic duo talking openly about rape, mental illness, murder, and suicide with a tinge of candid, genuine humor makes it feel a lot more personal than those specials on Investigation Discovery. We're all in this together, right?

Our feelings about our safety aren't unfounded, either. Women have been murdered at school, murdered for saying no to a promposal, murdered while jogging, murdered while walking her dogs, murdered by her co-worker in a Lululemon Athletica store, murdered in her own home, murdered in her own bed, murdered by the police, murdered at church, murdered in the parking lot of a restaurant, murdered in the frozen food aisle. We hear the word "murder" so often it almost seems to lost its meaning as one of the most traumatizing and permanent phenomena of the human experience.

So don't forget to laugh.

You can download "My Favorite Murder" free from iTunes, or listen to it all right here.