The Red Note podcast director Craig Whitney and producer Estefania Bonilla Hernandez recently joined Ruido en la Red, one of Mexico’s most prominent audiovisual journalism outlets, for a wide-ranging conversation about podcast and the decades-long crisis of femicide in Ciudad Juarez.

The Red Note and its Spanish-language companion, La Nota Roja, premiered on September 22, 2020, making history as the first podcast produced simultaneously in both English and Spanish. The ten-episode series was produced in collaboration with Imperative Entertainment and hosted by renowned Mexican investigative journalist Lydia Cacho.

Whitney wrote and directed the series, while Bonilla Hernandez served as lead producer, overseeing a Mexico-based creative team that conducted interviews on the ground in Juarez.

The podcast investigates the murder and disappearance of thousands of women in Ciudad Juarez over the past three decades, tracing the systemic web of corruption, cartel violence, sex trafficking, and unchecked globalization that has fueled these crimes.

Through the voices of forensic examiners, activists, politicians, and the families of the victims, the series chronicles how local and federal authorities repeatedly failed to bring the perpetrators to justice, and how international pressure eventually forced a reckoning with the scale of the atrocity.

In the two months since its debut, The Red Note had already begun climbing podcast charts around the world, drawing listeners from across Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Publications are already singling the series out as one of the standout podcasts of 2020.