I’m honored to work with so many amazing clients as part of my podcast services. And most of all, I’m so honored to meet incredible podcasters along the way. A couple of months ago, I introduced an ongoing series spotlighting a few of those podcasters, including some new ones I’ve met along the way. One of those I’m so excited to introduce you to is Stephen Seidel, host of the true-crime podcast, Wolves Among Us. His true-crime podcast is about a family man and dentist, Larry Lavin, who moonlighted as one of the largest cocaine kingpins on the Eastern seaboard.
Let’s get this started! Everyone, welcome Stephen!
Nicole: First, thank you for taking the time to chat with me today. How did you come by your podcast name, “Wolves Among Us”?
Stephen: Our podcast is about the pillars of your community living a double life, as our first story is about an Ivy League dentist who became the biggest drug kingpin of Philly, while he was still in school at U Penn, Larry Lavin. We felt that these people were essentially Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, and initially called our show “In Sheep’s Clothing” before landing on “Wolves Among Us”, as everyone most likely knows a few people (or stories) of someone that they saw at soccer games, PTA nights or at the grocery store that wasn’t who they said they were.
Nicole: What you said gives me chills. There are absolutely people out there living out normal lives who aren’t anything like the person they portray. So, why did you decide to start your podcast?
Stephen: This podcast has been in the making for 20+ years. When I was in college, my roommate was Kelley Reed, and he told me the story of his father, Chuck Reed, and how he was responsible for eventually arresting one of the biggest leaders of the Philly drug scene in the early 80s. There were actually two books written about the story, Dr. Dealer by Mark Bowden, and Dr. Snow by Carol Saline.
Early on in the process,I had the rights to Dr. Snow and lost them, and then got the rights to Dr. Dealer. I was on a mutual text thread chain for the Philadelphia Eagles and realized that another fellow, Matthew Hazara Davis, was too. He had written for Scorpion on CBS, and I invited him for cheesesteaks in Burbank and asked him to write a spec pilot with me. And fortunately, he agreed, and together we met over and over until he made a solid pitch.
Eventually, I got it in front of Sylvester Stallone’s company, Balboa Productions, and they loved it, and we felt like the TV show was on the horizon. And then COVID came, no projects were being made, and we lost the rights to the book. Then we decided to message Larry on Facebook, and to our amazement, he gave us his life rights. We were back in business, and one of Matt’s TV mentors suggested a podcast, so we structured the framework into eight episodes and then pitched Wondery and Cadence 13 by Audacy. Cadence 13 seemed a lot more excited, so we agreed to make it a limited edition series and called it Wolves Among Us.
Nicole: It’s incredible how much happened through one conversation from your college roommate. What have you learned about yourself (and/or others) through your podcast?
Stephen: Creating a podcast is both extremely fun and a boatload of work. At every turn, what we expected to happen never landed that way. We had ideas for a narrator, but they never landed, so I narrated it. We had 13 interviews set up, and half of the people didn’t show up, so we hit the research floor and found 10 more.
After we completed the show, we had interest from SkyDance Media, and then the writer’s strike happened, so it fell through. It felt eerily similar to when the TV show opportunity with Balboa Productions also fell through, but we kept forging ahead. The process from start to finish took almost three years to complete the limited series, and I lost my mother in the process. I was caretaking for her while recording the pilot episodes, and she got to hear those, but never the final product.
This was one of the final projects she was a part of before losing her, so it holds a special place in my heart. It speaks to the process of really digging in on storytelling and finding only the more important moments of each interview. The sound design was a huge element of the audible experience, as these helped transport the listener.
Nicole: I am sure would be so pourd to see how far you’ve come with this podcast. How has your podcast evolved since you first started?
Stephen: We initially started as a limited series around 2020, when the podcast industry was booming, and it’s transformed a few times. Our dream was always to use this as a catalyst to make a larger TV show, and eventually, after season one completed, we were in talks that fell through. Eventually, Universal TV did offer us an option to develop the show with producer Rachel Kaplan, and we’re still in the process of doing that now. We hope to have news soon in the next few months on the status there. The show itself had a second season lined up about wrestling teammates that eventually confronted each other on opposite sides of the law, yet that needed to be postponed. And right now we have shifted our focus to a more “always on” show where we highlight stories of several wolves over the year, instead of just a single ‘wolf” like Larry Lavin, and are in talks to get that back up and running shortly. So the show started as a limited series and morphed into an “always on” format.
Nicole: That’s so exciting! I can’t wait to check out those future episodes. It’s a topic that really resonates with me. What’s been the biggest surprise or challenge you’ve experienced while podcasting?
Stephen: The biggest challenge with podcasting is distilling such a powerful story into a small amount of time. For “Wolves Among Us”, we were fortunate that our lead character, Larry Lavin, carries the gift of gab, but when we flew down to meet him at Tampa and interviewed him at his house, he spoke for roughly 10 hours. Not to mention every other time we speak to him, he drops 10 more gems. So the challenge became the following: A. How do we get the gold no matter when we talk to him, and B. How can we cram this much gold into a 45-minute episode, when we have 10+ other characters?
We used several tools to transcribe the audio and help us put together the outline and write the story with the interviews, but at the end of the day, we left a lot on the floor. This is one reason why the TV show will show much more of what Larry Lavin was, in fact, the Forrest Gump of crime. At one point in his life, Larry was the man behind the #1 Song, Double Dutch Bus, the #1 boxer in the world, Tim Witherspoon, as well as the owner of the CBA Philly basketball team and a seat on the Philly Stock Exchange. Let’s just say the guy was busy. The second biggest challenge was finding archive footage, but fortunately, Cadence 13 and Audacy were able to help support there.
The biggest surprise was that I am now really close friends with one of the former FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted, as well as Billy Motto, a man who helped Larry grow his business in Philly, who is rumored to have very high connections to many “made” men. These two men have been nothing but kind, caring, and loyal to me and my co-creator, Matt Davis, in the process. We’ve had people come in at the last hour and try to woo Larry with money or promises, but he stayed loyal to us, just like he did while running his business. You see, I came at this from the side of the law, as I knew Chuck Reed, the man who was responsible for eventually bringing Larry (and Billy Motto down. I felt like this was going to be like Walter White, and that the “bad” guys would be bad, but to me, they were not. They were fathers, friends, and fellow humans caught in a bad situation, fighting for their way out. We went out to make a podcast and make new friends, and a new perspective on life, too.
Nicole: What an eye-opening experience! What has been your most memorable episode(s) and why?
Stephen: Our most memorable episode is Episode 5 of Wolves Among Us, called “The O’Neils”. As with any true crime podcast, there is a cat-and-mouse chase. For ours, it was the ruthless Chuck Reed looking to stay one step of Larry Lavin. However, Larry is a really smart man, so much so that he was able to convince the University of Penn to let him join their school even after he was kicked out of Phillips Exeter. Needless to say, Larry was one step ahead of Chuck in many areas, and I don’t want to give things away, but this is the episode where Lavin’s brilliance shines bright. It was a challenge for us as podcasters on how to reveal certain information, whether it was a tease, archive footage, or just leaving them with their pants down. And in the episode, you’ll hear it, we left them with their pants down.
Nicole: I hope people listen to that episode (and of course the whole series!). How do you prepare for each episode?
Stephen: Given this was a limited series, we worked on the overall series arc. Then we broke each show down into a 3 act structure with a cold open, and then each act with a tease before the commercial break, while leaving them with soundbites to carry them through into the next episode. We prepped each episode by going back through our 13 interviews, and making sure we selected who our key characters were for each episode, and then choosing what the key pieces of the stories we needed to include. Once we did that, we pieced together the interviews and stitched in my narration to simply further the story or fill in any open areas.
Nicole: i love how you followed a traditional story arch. If you could have a dream guest on your podcast, who would it be and what would you talk about?
Stephen; We talk about this a lot and recently we saw the Olympic Snowboarder Ryan Wedding enter the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted List. Much like Larry, when people compete at extreme levels, they know nothing less than success. So a side business can easily transform into a fully fledgling cocaine enterprise. We’d love to talk with Ryan about how training and competing at such a high level could have been the catalyst to his double life as a “wolf.”
Nicole: What an interesting correlation! What major accomplishment or milestone have you been most proud of through your podcast?
Stephen: To date, we’ve accrued over 2.5 million downloads and were ranked #1 on Apple’s Podcast charts when we first came out. We have a 4.8 rating with roughly 2K reviews. We enjoy reading the reviews and the occasional emails we get from people who were either inspired by the story or involved in it. We are actively developing Wolves Among Us: The Larry Lavin Story for TV and hope to be able to share that we were the first Audacy podcast to ever be turned into a TV Show. Fingers crossed. If you’d like to learn more about our process, podcast or future productions, please contact the narrator and producer, Steve Seidel, at Steve@TheSeidelAgency.com.
Nicole: What an incredible story! Thank you so much for connecting. Remember everyone, where you stream your favorite shows:
- Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wolves-among-us/id1642525489
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1GQjeqrijpNecxyEHu95Jq
- Audible: https://www.audible.com/podcast/Wolves-Among-Us/B0BDWL5TVY
