All right. Welcome back to the deep dive. Hey
there. Today we are, um, we're opening a file
that I think for a lot of us is just, it's etched
into our memories, whether we want it to be or
not. It's a defining one. A real line in the
sand. It really is. We're talking about Columbi.
It's the watershed moment. And, you know, we're
sitting here on February 2nd, 2026. Almost 27
years later. Yeah, nearly 27 years. And it still
feels like the dust hasn't settled. It's the
event that really split recent American history
into a before and an after. Before and after
how we look at schools. At safety. Yeah. Teenagers,
really. Completely. And it's not just a memory.
No, and that's the reason we're revisiting this
right now. It isn't just about the historical
weight. The story itself has actually, it's changed.
It has. There's been a, well, a very grim development.
as recently as early 2025, that actually forces
us to rewrite the official statistics of that
day. That's right. History isn't static. And
what researchers call the Columbine effect is
still very much active. Explain that. What is
the Columbine effect? It's the idea that this
specific tragedy became the origin code, like
a script for violence that's been run, you know,
over 70 times by copycats as of last summer.
Seventy. Wow. It established a blueprint for
how to do this. So our mission today, it's pretty
specific. We want to get past the pop culture
version of this story. You know, ignore the TV
movies, the rumors, and go straight to the source
deck you've brought in. The police reports, FBI
files, the actual journals. And the really thorough
Wikipedia compilation of all those events. Exactly.
We want to see what actually happened stripped
of all the mythology. And believe me, there is
a lot of mythology to strip away. There is. And
I think the place we have to start is with the
biggest misconception of them all. Okay. If you
ask the average person on the street what Columbine
was, they'll tell you it was a school shooting.
They'll say two kids went in with guns to shoot
their classmates. And that's the very first thing
the search material just completely corrects.
Columbine was not intended to be a school shooting.
It wasn't. It was a failed bombing. That distinction.
Failed bombing versus shooting. It feels like
a technicality at first, but when you dig into
their actual plan, it changes everything. It
changes the entire scale of their intent. I mean,
a shooting is horrific, obviously, but a bombing?
That's domestic terrorism. Right. Their goal
wasn't to kill 12 students and a teacher. They
wanted to kill hundreds. They wanted to outdo
the Oklahoma City bombing. That's what they said.
They wanted to bring the entire school library
crashing down on top of the cafeteria. The shooting
was just plan B. It was what they resorted to
because their technology failed them. And we
are definitely going to get into the granular
details of that failure because it's terrifying
how close they came to succeeding. It's chilling.
But before we get into the timeline, we have
to talk about the who. Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold. The names everyone knows. And the narrative
that sprung up almost immediately in 1999 was
that these were, you know, two isolated, friendless
loners. The outcasts. Yeah, the outcasts who
were bullied relentlessly until they finally
snapped. That whole Revenge of the Nerds story.
Hmm. It's a very comfortable narrative, isn't
it? How do you mean? Well, it gives us a clear
cause and effect. Society pushed them, so they
pushed back. It makes it understandable in a
way. But looking at these profiles, that doesn't
really hold up. No, the reality is much more
complex and much more disturbing. Let's start
with Eric Harris. He was 18 at the time. And
he was an Air Force brat, as they say. Exactly.
He moved around constantly. His dad was a transport
pilot, so they lived in Ohio, Michigan, New York.
He was always the new kid. For a lot of his life,
yeah. The family finally settled in Littleton,
Colorado in 1993 after his father retired. Which
can be tough, for sure. But then you have Dylan
Claybold, who is the complete opposite. Total
opposite. Dylan was 17, born and raised in Colorado.
He had roots there. And his home life. Yeah.
It really flies in the face of the stereotype.
It really does. His parents were pacifists. They
attended a Lutheran church. They were very vocally
anti -gun. This was not a household where violence
was glorified at the dinner table. And yet these
two find each other. And the label that got slapped
on them, the one that I think most people still
remember, is the Trenchcoat Mafia. Ah, yes. The
great media panic of 1999. I remember the news
footage, the anchors obsessing over this supposed
goth gang that ran the school's underbelly. And
the Trenchcoat Mafia was a real group at Columbine.
It was a clique of kids who were sort of the
anti -jocks. They wore black trenchcoats, listened
to industrial music. But Harrison Klebold weren't
in it. They were not members. This is a key point.
If you look at the official yearbook photos of
the Trenchcoat Mafia from that year, Harris and
Klebold are not in the picture. So they were
adjacent. Exactly. They were friends with members.
They floated in those circles, but they weren't
in the gang. So why the trenchcoats during the
attack if it wasn't a gang thing? It was utility.
Pure and simple. Think about the arsenal they
were trying to conceal. You can't just walk through
a high school parking lot with a sawed -off shotgun
and a carbine rifle hanging by your side. The
codes were to hide the weapons. It was a tactical
decision. It had very little to do with a fashion
statement. It's just wild how a practical choice
by a killer becomes a symbol for a whole subculture.
It's the power of media narrative. But let's
look at their behavior before the attack. Because
they weren't exactly flying under the radar.
They had a criminal record. They did. And this
is a piece of the puzzle that often gets glossed
over. In January of 1998. So a little more than
a year before the massacre. Right. They were
arrested. This was the van incident. Yep. They
broke into a parked van near Littleton. Stole
some tools, computer equipment, nothing huge.
But it was a felony. And they got caught. They
were caught, charged, and they pleaded guilty
to felony theft. Now, in many cases, this is
where a real intervention might happen. You get
into the system, the system sees a red flag.
And they did get into the system. They were put
into a juvenile diversion program. Which is meant
to keep kids out of jail. Exactly. It involves
counseling, community service, anger management
classes. And by all official accounts, Harris
and Klebold were the model students of this program.
They completely gamed it. Perfectly. They went
to the anger management classes. Harris wrote
these incredibly articulate essays about how
much he'd learned, how he understood the error
of his ways. He's chilling. They were so convincing
that their diversion officers released them from
the program a month early. For what? For good
behavior. Wow. So they were sitting in anger
management, nodding along, writing apology letters
to the victim. All... while they were actively
planning the deadliest school attack in U .S.
history. It shows their ability to deceive, their
cunning. They knew exactly what the adults wanted
to hear. They could present this mask of sanity
while their real lives were something else entirely.
And that calculation, that planning, it extended
to the hardware. Oh, absolutely. I want to spend
a minute on the arsenal because when you list
it all out, it's just staggering that two teenagers
could get all of this. It is a massive cache.
Let's break it down by the guns first. Okay.
They had four guns between them. Eric Harris
carried a Highpoint 995 carbine, that's a 9mm
semi -automatic rifle. And a shotgun. And a sawed
-off Savage pump -action shotgun. Okay, so that's
Harris. What about Klebold? Dylan Klebold had
the infamous Tech -9 handgun. A gun that was
basically a media villain in the 90s. Totally.
A semi -automatic pistol. And he also had a sawed
-off Stevens double -barrel shotgun. So neither
of them was old enough to buy these legally,
at least not the handguns or the rifle. How did
they get them? This is the classic straw purchase
scenario. In late 1998, they went to a gun show.
With a friend. With a friend of theirs, Robin
Anderson. She was 18. So she was of legal age.
She was. And at the gun show, she bought the
high point carbine and the two shotguns for them
from private sellers. Which meant fewer background
checks back then. Exactly. The rules were different.
It was what they called the gun show loophole.
She handed over the cash, took the guns, and
later gave them to Harris and Klebold. And did
she have any idea what they were planning? Her
testimony was that she had no clue. She said
she thought they just wanted them for target
shooting. Wow. But that one single act armed
them with three of the four murder weapons. And
the fourth gun, the Tech -9. That came from another
friend, Mark Maines. He sold it to them for 500
bucks. He knew they were underage. Did he get
in trouble? He did. He went to jail for providing
a handgun to a minor. But the guns? As we said,
the guns were just the backup plan. That's right.
The explosives are what really show their ambition.
The source notes say they had 99 bombs. 99! Think
about that. The sheer logistics of building 99
explosive devices in your parents' garage without
anyone noticing. What kind of bombs were they
making? It was a whole mix. They had simple pipe
bombs. Like galvanized pipe, gunpowder. Yep.
Filled with shrapnel. They had things they called
crickets, which were CO2 cartridges, like for
a BB gun that they filled with powder. They had
Molotov cocktails. But the main event, the heavy
hitters. The heavy artillery was the propane
tanks. And these weren't the little green camping
canisters. No, no. These were the standard 20
-pound propane tanks you hook up to a barbecue
grill. They took these tanks and rigged them
with timing devices made from cheap alarm clocks.
So you have two high school kids building what
are basically weapons of mass destruction in
their suburban bedrooms. And that brings us to
the plan, the actual original plan for April
20th. To understand the horror of what they wanted,
you really have to visualize the school's layout.
You do. They took two large duffel bags. Inside
each one was one of these 20 -pound propane bombs
surrounded by cans of gasoline and shrapnel to
maximize the carnage. And they walked these into
the cafeteria. During the busiest time of day,
the A lunch shift, they just placed these two
bags under tables among all the other backpacks.
Nobody gave them a second look. And then they
just walked out. They walked out, leaving the
timers ticking. Set for a very specific moment.
11 .17 a .m. At that moment, the cafeteria held
488 students. Almost 500 people. And the plan
was for those bombs to detonate simultaneously.
The fireball would have killed or maimed everyone
in the immediate vicinity, but the real goal
was the structural damage. The library. The library
was located directly above the cafeteria. So
the blast was meant to go up. The blast goes
up, the floor of the library collapses, and everyone
in the library falls into the burning cafeteria
below. My God. The police later estimated that
if those bombs had worked as designed, the death
toll would have easily been in the hundreds.
It would have been the deadliest act of domestic
terrorism in U .S. history at that point. And
while all this was supposed to be happening,
where were Harris and Klebold? They planned to
be outside in the parking lot waiting. For what?
To shoot the survivors. Their plan was to wait
for the explosion, and then as the wounded, burning,
terrified students came running out of the rubble,
Harris and Klebold would be waiting with their
rifles to pick them off. It was a kill zone,
a two -stage ambush. And they even planned for
the police response. Diversionary bombs. Right.
They planted a bomb in a field about three miles
away. It was set to go off a few minutes earlier
to draw the fire department and police away from
the school, buying them more time. And that smaller
bomb actually did go off. Right. It did, partially.
It detonated and started a small fire. The diversion
worked to a degree. But the main event, the cafeteria
bombs, they failed. So take us to that moment.
It's 11 .17 a .m. You're Harrison Klebold. You're
outside. You're waiting for the world to end.
Yeah. And then... Just silence. 11 .17 comes
and goes. 11 .18. Inside, you can see on the
surveillance footage, it's just a completely
normal lunch period. The bombs are sitting there,
inert. Do we know why they failed? Not for sure.
It could have been faulty wiring, bad timers,
something in their construction was flawed. But
the terrorist attack was a failure. And this
is the pivot. The psychological turning point.
Most people, if their plan failed so spectacularly,
they might just run. They'd panic, get out of
there, cut their losses. But they didn't run,
they improvised. At 11 .19 a .m., realizing the
explosion wasn't coming, they walked to the top
of the West Staircase. It overlooks the fields
where students were eating lunch. And they made
a statement, visually. They did. Harris took
off his trench coat. Underneath, he had a white
t -shirt with the words natural selection printed
on it. And Klebold. Klebold kept his coat on,
but underneath he wore a black T -shirt with
the word wrath in red letters. Natural selection
and wrath. It's like they were wearing their
motives. At 11 .19 a .m., they raised their guns
and the shooting began. The first victims, they
were right there on the grass having lunch. Rachel
Scott and Richard Costaldo. Just two kids enjoying
the sunshine. Harris opened fire. Rachel Scott
was hit four times, killed instantly. Richard
Costaldo was hit eight times. Eight. He survived,
but was left permanently paralyzed. It happened
so fast. Yeah. And then they turned their attention
to the staircase itself. Yes. Shooting at students
coming in and out of the west entrance. Daniel
Rohrball was killed there. And inside, the confusion
must have been absolute. You have to remember,
this is a high school. Kids hear popping sounds.
They think it's fireworks, a senior prank, maybe
a paintball gun. It doesn't register as real
at first. No. But one person knew exactly what
was happening. Dave Sanders. The teacher. He
was a coach and a business teacher, and he was
in the cafeteria when the shooting started. He
heard the gunfire, saw the panic. And he didn't
run away from it. He ran towards it. He and some
of the school custodians started yelling at students,
getting them to hide under tables, then evacuating
them out other exits. He's credited with clearing
that cafeteria. He saved hundreds of lives in
those first few minutes. Hundreds. If the shooters
had entered that packed cafeteria, even without
the bombs, the death toll would have been so
much higher. But they didn't go into the cafeteria
yet. They went into the school, down the hallway.
And eventually, they made their way to the library.
11 .29 a .m., 10 minutes after the first shot
was fired, they enter the library. And this.
This is the deadliest part of the entire event.
Looking at the timeline, it's just a black hole
of violence. It is. The library massacre lasted
from 11 .29 to 11 .36 a .m. Seven and a half
minutes. In those seven and a half minutes, 10
students were murdered and 12 more were wounded.
It was an absolute slaughterhouse. And the accounts
from the survivors in that room, it wasn't just
random violence. It was sadistic. They were taunting
their victims. They were clearly reveling in
the power and the terror they were causing. They
were playing games. They were. They would walk
up to tables where students were hiding, slam
their hands on the top, and then look underneath.
The infamous peekaboo moment with Cassie Bernal.
Harris said that right before he shot her. Yes.
He looked under the table, said peekaboo, and
pulled the trigger. This brings up a specific
myth we have to address right now. The she said
yes story. The story of martyrdom. Exactly. The
story that went around the world, it became books
and songs, was that one of the shooters put a
gun to Cassie Bernal's head and asked, do you
believe in God? And that she said yes, and then
they killed her for her faith. A powerful story.
But the source material is very clear. It is.
That did not happen to Cassie Bernal. The witnesses
who were hiding right next to her, specifically
a student named Emily Wyant, confirmed that the
peekaboo exchange was all that was said to Cassie.
So where did the God question come from? It didn't
just appear out of thin air? No, it was a conflation
of events. A similar exchange did happen, but
with a different student. Valene Schnur. Yes.
Valene had already been shot and was on the floor
bleeding. In her pain and panic, she was screaming,
oh my God, oh my God. And Klebold heard her.
Klebold walked over to her and tauntingly asked
if she believed in God. She said yes. He asked
why. She said it was because of her faith and
what her parents taught her. And then he just
reloaded his gun and walked away. He didn't shoot
her again. She survived. So the theological confrontation
happened, but the victim. And the outcome were
completely different from the famous story. Exactly.
It shows how trauma and chaos can merge different
stories into one powerful but inaccurate narrative.
There was also a racial element in the library,
wasn't there? Yes, with Isaiah Schulz. He was
one of the few African -American students at
the school. He was. And survivor accounts are
clear that when Harris and Klebold found him
under a table, they yelled racial slurs at him
before Harris shot him. It adds another layer
of hate to the crime. It wasn't just indiscriminate.
It was a hate crime within a mass murder. Correct.
And then we have the victims who tried to fight
back, even in that moment. Daniel Mauser. A very
brave kid. The reports say he shoved a chair
at Harris, tried to stop him, and Harris shot
him in the face. It shows that even in the midst
of that absolute terror, there was resistance.
So the killing in the library stops at 11 .36
a .m. But the event isn't over. Not by a long
shot. And this is the part of the timeline that
just makes you want to scream. Where were the
police? This is the source of so much anger and
frustration even today. Police were on the scene
outside the school by 11 .22. So they were there
before the library massacre even started? Yes.
In fact, a Jefferson County deputy, Neil Gardner,
had already exchanged gunfire with Harris at
the West Entrance. They knew there were active
shooters. They knew kids were inside. So why
didn't they go in? The doctrine at the time.
In 1999, standard police procedure for a situation
like this was perimeter and contain. Meaning
what? Meaning you surround the building, you
stop the shooter from escaping, you call in the
SWAT team, and you wait. You treat it like a
hostage situation or a barricaded suspect. But
this wasn't a hostage situation. This was an
act of execution. Every second counted. We know
that now. Hindsight is 20 -20. But at the time,
the officers on the ground were following their
training. They set up a perimeter and they waited.
Swatt didn't enter the high school until 1 .09
p .m. 1 .09. That's almost two hours after the
first shots were fired. And more importantly,
it's an hour and a half after the shooting in
the library stopped. So what were Harris and
Klebel doing during that hour and a half? They
left the library around 11 .36. They just wandered
the halls. They went back down to the cafeteria.
And the security camera footage from the cafeteria
during that time is... It's just bizarre. It's
so eerie. They look almost aimless. The adrenaline
seems to have worn off. They walk around. They
try to shoot the propane tanks again to get them
to explode. They throw a Molotov cocktail at
one. But the bombs still don't go off. Total
failure. Their grand plan was a bust. And while
they're wandering around trying to light a barbecue
tank on fire, Dave Sanders is upstairs bleeding
to death in a science room. That is the ultimate
tragedy of the police delay. Sanders had been
shot in the hallway around 11 .26. He managed
to stagger into a classroom where students pulled
him in. And these kids? They were trying to save
him. They were. Applying first aid, using their
own shirts to put pressure on his wounds. They
put a sign in the window of the classroom. It
read, one bleeding to death. So the police outside
could see it? They could. But the protocol was
to wait for SWAT. The paramedics weren't allowed
inside a hot zone. He bled out for three hours.
He died just before paramedics were finally able
to reach him. Just devastating. So the shooters,
they eventually go back to the library. They
do. Around noon, they go to the windows. They
fire a few last shots at the police outside.
And then at approximately 12 .08 p .m. They kill
themselves. They sit down among the bookshelves
and commit suicide. So by 12 .08, the violence
is over. But the toll. We've always said 12 students
and one teacher killed, 13 victims. That was
the official number for 26 years. But that brings
us to the update you mentioned at the very top
of the show, the 2026 perspective on this. It's
a really important and tragic clarification of
the record. It concerns Anne -Marie Hochhalter.
She was one of the first students shot outside.
Yes, she was having lunch with Rachel Scott.
She was shot in the back and paralyzed. She survived
that day, but her life was, you know, completely
changed. Chronic pain, endless surgeries. And
her family suffered, too. Her mother committed
suicide just a few months after the shooting.
The ripple effects are just, they're immeasurable.
But Anne -Marie, she became this symbol of resilience
for so many people. She did. But the damage to
her body from that bullet was cumulative. On
February 16th, 2025, Anne -Marie passed away.
And her death wasn't ruled as being from natural
causes. No. And this is the key point. In March
of 2025, the coroner's office made a landmark
ruling. They ruled her death a homicide. Because?
Because the complications that ultimately killed
her were a direct result of the gunshot wounds
she sustained on April 20th, 1999. So, legally
and historically, The death toll of the Columbine
massacre is now 14 victims. It is. The event
didn't end in 1999. The physical toll continued
for decades. It's such a crucial thing to understand
about gun violence. The bullet keeps moving through
a life long after it stops. We see that slow
motion tragedy with other survivors too, don't
we? Austin Eubanks. Austin's story is heartbreaking.
He was in the library. He was shot in the hand
and knee. He watched his best friend Cory DePooter
get murdered right next to him. And in the hospital,
they gave him painkillers. opioids for the pain,
which was standard procedure. But that prescription
triggered a decade long battle with addiction.
He was trying to numb not just the physical pain,
but the emotional trauma. He eventually got clean
and became an advocate. He became a really powerful
speaker on addiction and trauma. And then so
tragically, he relapsed and died of an overdose
in 2019. Would you count him as a victim? How
can you not? The shooting put the needle in his
arm just as surely as it put the bullet in his
knee. And Greg Barnes. Greg was a jock. A basketball
star. He witnessed Dave Sanders being shot. A
year later, in May of 2000, he committed suicide.
The weight of what he saw was just too much to
carry. The blast radius of this event just keeps
expanding. It does. Which brings us to the question
that hangs over all of this. The question the
sheriff admitted he couldn't answer in 1999.
Why? Why did they do it? Why? This is where we
have to tread carefully because there are so
many myths and theories. Let's start with the
one we can mostly debunk, the bullying theory.
This is the most persistent one. The idea that
this was a simple act of revenge against a cruel
jock culture. Was there bullying at Columbine?
Oh, sure. And were they sometimes on the receiving
end? Yes. There are credible reports of kids
throwing ketchup -covered tampons at them in
the cafeteria. Things like that happened. But
if you read their journals, especially Harris's,
they weren't at the bottom of the social ladder.
Harris was a bully himself. He bragged about
picking on younger students, on freshmen. He
had a massive superiority complex, not an inferiority
complex. It wasn't a revenge fantasy against
jocks. It was a revenge fantasy against humanity.
They looked down on everyone. Okay, what about
the cultural scapegoats? Marilyn Manson. Poor
Marilyn Manson. The media absolutely crucified
him. They said his music was the soundtrack to
the massacre. Turns out they weren't even fans.
They weren't. They listened to German industrial
bands like KMFDM and Ramstein. They thought Manson
was too mainstream to pop. Manson wrote a really
insightful piece in Rolling Stone about it later.
He did. He said if he could talk to the shooters,
he wouldn't say a thing to them. He would just
listen because that's what nobody else did. And
video games. Doom. The Doom connection is a little
stickier. They were obsessed with it. Harris
even created custom levels for the game called
W ads. And he wrote in his journal that the attack
would be like Doom. He did. But, you know, millions
of kids played Doom in the 90s. I played Doom.
I did, too. And I never planned a massacre. Exactly.
The game might have provided the imagery, the
language for their violent fantasies, but it
didn't plant the seed of murder. That C came
from somewhere much deeper and darker. So if
it wasn't bullying or music or video games, what
was it? This is where we get into the FBI's psychological
analysis. The theory that has become the standard
explanation. The psychopath and the depressive.
Right. This was largely popularized by the journalist
Dave Cullen based on the work of FBI profilers.
The theory is that this was a toxic partnership
of two very different pathologies. So Eric Harris
was the psychopath. A clinical psychopath. Yes.
No empathy, manipulative, grandiose, a pathological
liar. He had this messianic complex. He wanted
to kill the world because he genuinely believed
he was superior. His T -shirt said natural selection.
And Dylan Klebold. Dylan was the depressive.
He was suicidal, full of rage, but also this
infinite sadness, as he wrote in his journal.
He was a follower who was in immense pain. So
the theory is Harris wanted to kill and Klebold
wanted to die. And Harris basically said, I have
a way for you to die that will be epic. We can
go out in a blaze of glory. It's a very neat
theory. It explains the dynamic. But is it the
whole truth? Well, there is some pushback from
other experts. Some psychologists argue it simplifies
them too much. For instance, if you look at the
evidence, Dylan wasn't just some sad puppy following
Eric around. He had his own rage. His shirt said
Raph. Exactly. And Dylan was actually the first
one to mention going on a killing spree. In his
journal, long before Eric did, he had his own
violent fantasies. And Eric. He wasn't just a
cold, calculating robot. No. He was taking an
antidepressant. Lou Vox. And there's the Nixon
tape. Wait, tell us about the Nixon tape. I think
most people have heard of the basement tapes,
but this is different. Right. The basement takes
were the infamous videos they made in Harris's
basement, showing off their guns and ranting.
The police destroyed those tapes in 2011 to stop
them from becoming propaganda for copycats. But
the Nixon tape. Eric left a microcassette recorder
on his kitchen table right before they left for
the school. It's a final audio diary entry. What's
on it? He says goodbye to his parents. He sounds
emotional. He says, people will die because of
me. It will be a day that will be remembered
forever. It's a glimpse into a mind that is fully
aware of the horror it's about to unleash. And
is doing it anyway for the memory, for the fame.
For the infamy. Which brings us to the legacy.
How the world changed because of this day. We
talked about the police failure. That failure
actually revolutionized American policing, didn't
it? It absolutely did. It gave birth to a tactic
called IRD. Immediate action, rapid deployment.
Exactly. Before Columbine, the first officers
on scene would wait for SWAT. The perimeter and
contain model. Right. After Columbine, the new
rule is if you are a police officer and you hear
gunshots in a school, you go in. You don't wait
for backup. You don't wait for a team. You move
directly toward the sound of gunfire to neutralize
the threat. That sounds incredibly dangerous
for the officer. It is. But the cold, hard math
is that every second you wait is another potential
victim. This new protocol has saved lives at
Virginia Tech, at Sandy Hook, at so many other
shootings. It ends the killing faster. The other
legacy is in the schools themselves. We entered
the era of zero tolerance. We did. Suddenly you
have metal detectors, clear backpacks, mandatory
ID badges, active shooter drills where you're
teaching kindergarteners to hide from a gunman.
We turned schools into fortresses. We hardened
the targets. And we can debate whether that makes
kids feel safer or just more anxious. But Columbine
was the catalyst for that entire security industrial
complex in education. But the darkest legacy.
The one that keeps this story so relevant is
the Columbine effect. The copycats. The script.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this. The threshold
model. Right. The idea that if no one is rioting,
it's very hard to be the first person to throw
a rock. But once one person throws a rock, it
becomes much easier for the second person and
the third. Columbine was the rock. It was the
rock. It lowered the threshold for this kind
of violence for disturbed, angry young men everywhere.
And they study it. They obsess over it. The shooter
at Virginia Tech referred to martyrs Eric and
Dylan. The Sandy Hook shooter had a massive spreadsheet
of mass killings, but he was obsessed with Columbine.
The Parkland shooter researched their tactics.
It became the gold standard. There's even an
online fandom. People call them Columbiners.
It's a sickening subculture, but yes. On platforms
like Tumblr and TikTok, you can find teenagers.
A lot of them are young girls, interestingly,
who write fan fiction about Harrison Klebold.
They draw fan art. They romanticize them as these
tragic, misunderstood antiheroes. A cult of personality
built on mass murder. Pretty much. Which leads
to the really uncomfortable thought I wanted
to end on. We've got this entire deep dive dissecting
their plans, their motives, their psychology.
We know their names better than we know the names
of most of the victims. That's a sad truth, but
it's true. And the sources show that they talked
about this. They talked about what the movie
of their lives would be like. They did. They
debated which director should make it. Spielberg
or Tarantino. Yeah. They were casting their own
biopic before they'd even committed the act.
They were planning their legacy. We wanted to
be famous. They wanted to be immortal. They wanted
people like us to be sitting here talking about
them 27 years later. And here we are. So the
provocative question is, and it's one I really
struggle with, by doing this, by trying to understand
the why, by analyzing every detail, are we inadvertently
giving them exactly what they wanted? That's
the paradox of prevention, isn't it? To stop
the next one from happening, you have to understand
this one. But in understanding this one, you
keep their names in the lights. You feed the
myth. It's a trap they set for all of us back
in 1999, and we are still caught in it. That
is a heavy thought to leave our listeners with,
but I think it's the right one. We have to somehow
learn the lessons of that day, the failed bombs,
the warning signs, the victims like Anne -Marie
whose suffering lasted for decades without glorifying
the teachers of that lesson. Well said. This
was a tough one. But thank you for walking us
through the reality of it, not just the mythology.
And to all of you listening, take care of yourselves.
Stay curious. Stay critical. But maybe hug your
loved ones a little tighter today. We'll see
you in the next deep dive.