WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.580 I want to start with a paradox that I've just 00:00:01.580 --> 00:00:03.859 been turning over and over in my head while reviewing 00:00:03.859 --> 00:00:07.299 the research for this deep dive. We live in a 00:00:07.299 --> 00:00:10.179 society that is, I mean, absolutely obsessed 00:00:10.179 --> 00:00:13.800 with safety. We buy smart locks. We have doorbell 00:00:13.800 --> 00:00:16.260 cameras that, you know, tell us if a leaf blows 00:00:16.260 --> 00:00:18.460 across the porch. Right. We track our family 00:00:18.460 --> 00:00:20.679 members on apps. Exactly. We track our kids. 00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:22.800 We track our partners just to make sure they 00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:25.850 got home okay. We spend... Billions, literally 00:00:25.850 --> 00:00:28.750 billions of dollars trying to sanitize our lives 00:00:28.750 --> 00:00:32.049 of any and all risk. And yet. And yet. The moment 00:00:32.049 --> 00:00:34.210 we feel safe behind those double locked doors, 00:00:34.350 --> 00:00:37.469 what do we do? We voluntarily plug into a feed 00:00:37.469 --> 00:00:40.189 of the most gruesome, the most terrifying and 00:00:40.189 --> 00:00:43.390 the most detailed accounts of human malevolence 00:00:43.390 --> 00:00:46.250 we can possibly find. It's the safe danger contradiction, 00:00:46.509 --> 00:00:49.810 isn't it? Yeah. It's fascinating. We are biologically 00:00:49.810 --> 00:00:53.049 wired to flee from a predator in the wild. But 00:00:53.049 --> 00:00:55.469 when that predator is trapped inside a book or 00:00:55.469 --> 00:00:59.009 a podcast app, we run right toward it. We run 00:00:59.009 --> 00:01:01.289 toward it. We have, in essence, built this massive 00:01:01.289 --> 00:01:04.409 industrial complex around packaging our own worst 00:01:04.409 --> 00:01:07.849 nightmares as leisure activities. And industrial 00:01:07.849 --> 00:01:10.530 complex is absolutely the right term for it. 00:01:10.609 --> 00:01:13.489 Today we're doing a deep dive into true crime. 00:01:13.769 --> 00:01:16.049 And I want to be really clear about the scope 00:01:16.049 --> 00:01:18.730 here because the reading list you sent over was 00:01:18.730 --> 00:01:23.590 just, uh... It's a huge topic. It is. We aren't 00:01:23.590 --> 00:01:25.310 just talking about, you know, the modern podcast 00:01:25.310 --> 00:01:27.450 hosts solving cold cases in their basements. 00:01:27.629 --> 00:01:30.549 We are looking at this as a specific nonfiction 00:01:30.549 --> 00:01:33.950 genre that examines actual crimes, the actions 00:01:33.950 --> 00:01:35.989 of the perpetrators, and this is the key, their 00:01:35.989 --> 00:01:39.170 motives. Right. It's that pin it from just what 00:01:39.170 --> 00:01:42.290 happened to why did they do it that really defines 00:01:42.290 --> 00:01:44.450 the entire genre for me. Right. And even within 00:01:44.450 --> 00:01:46.329 that definition, there's a huge spectrum that 00:01:46.329 --> 00:01:48.969 we need to navigate today. On one end, you have 00:01:48.969 --> 00:01:51.370 the striply journalist. approach. The court reporter. 00:01:51.450 --> 00:01:52.950 The court reporter, the investigative journalist 00:01:52.950 --> 00:01:56.469 who sticks rigidly to the known facts, you know, 00:01:56.489 --> 00:01:58.849 the who, what, when, where. But as we move through 00:01:58.849 --> 00:02:01.129 the history, which we're about to do, we see 00:02:01.129 --> 00:02:03.810 the rise of the more speculative style. And what 00:02:03.810 --> 00:02:05.349 do you mean by speculative? That's where the 00:02:05.349 --> 00:02:07.150 author inserts themselves into the narrative. 00:02:07.650 --> 00:02:10.210 They start offering personal theories, maybe 00:02:10.210 --> 00:02:11.909 filling in the blanks of a killer's internal 00:02:11.909 --> 00:02:15.310 monologue. Ah, I see. And that is precisely... 00:02:15.759 --> 00:02:18.699 Where the line between history and, well, entertainment 00:02:18.699 --> 00:02:21.479 starts to get very, very blurry. It's interesting 00:02:21.479 --> 00:02:23.379 you mention history because I think the average 00:02:23.379 --> 00:02:25.479 listener, and frankly, myself included, before 00:02:25.479 --> 00:02:27.879 this week, assumes true crime is a relatively 00:02:27.879 --> 00:02:30.439 modern invention. Sure. Most people do. You know, 00:02:30.479 --> 00:02:33.520 maybe we trace it back to the noir era of the 00:02:33.520 --> 00:02:36.219 1940s, or if we're being generous, maybe the 00:02:36.219 --> 00:02:39.870 penny press of the Victorian era. The timeline 00:02:39.870 --> 00:02:42.490 you've laid out here just completely upends that 00:02:42.490 --> 00:02:44.729 whole idea. It really does. We aren't starting 00:02:44.729 --> 00:02:46.710 in London or New York. We are starting in the 00:02:46.710 --> 00:02:50.310 late Ming Dynasty in China. We are. I mean, if 00:02:50.310 --> 00:02:52.689 we want to find the true roots of a commercialized 00:02:52.689 --> 00:02:55.469 interest in crime stories, we have to look at 00:02:55.469 --> 00:02:58.009 the Book of Swindles. The Book of Swindles. This 00:02:58.009 --> 00:03:01.689 is a collection published around 1617 by a man 00:03:01.689 --> 00:03:04.469 named Zhang Yin Yu. And it's fascinating because 00:03:04.469 --> 00:03:06.490 it's not about the bloody murders we obsess over 00:03:06.490 --> 00:03:09.439 today. It was focused on fraud. Which actually 00:03:09.439 --> 00:03:11.419 makes a lot of sense if you look at the context 00:03:11.419 --> 00:03:13.319 of the Ming Dynasty at that time. I was reading 00:03:13.319 --> 00:03:15.900 the background notes on this, and it was a period 00:03:15.900 --> 00:03:20.520 of massive economic expansion, but also a lot 00:03:20.520 --> 00:03:23.360 of social anxiety. That's the key. You had merchants 00:03:23.360 --> 00:03:25.879 traveling further than ever before. You had them 00:03:25.879 --> 00:03:27.900 dealing with total strangers carrying silver. 00:03:28.060 --> 00:03:30.520 The stranger all of a sudden became a figure 00:03:30.520 --> 00:03:33.120 of deep suspicion. So it was a world where these 00:03:33.120 --> 00:03:35.360 traditional social bonds were kind of fraying 00:03:35.360 --> 00:03:39.280 because of commerce. Precisely. The Book of Swindles 00:03:39.280 --> 00:03:40.979 wasn't just, you know, a bit of fun entertainment. 00:03:41.400 --> 00:03:44.439 It was almost a survival guide. A how -to manual 00:03:44.439 --> 00:03:46.520 for not getting ripped off. Basically, yeah. 00:03:46.620 --> 00:03:49.520 It featured these incredible stories about court 00:03:49.520 --> 00:03:51.919 officials getting duped, merchants being tricked 00:03:51.919 --> 00:03:54.639 out of their cargo. It spoke to that very specific, 00:03:54.819 --> 00:03:57.840 very new anxiety of how do I navigate a world 00:03:57.840 --> 00:04:00.259 where anyone I meet might be trying to cheat 00:04:00.259 --> 00:04:02.900 me? You know, it reminds me of the modern obsession 00:04:02.900 --> 00:04:06.020 with con artist stories. Oh, absolutely. Things 00:04:06.020 --> 00:04:10.120 like the Tinder swindler or inventing Anna. We 00:04:10.120 --> 00:04:12.520 like to think those are new phenomena. But Zhang 00:04:12.520 --> 00:04:15.599 Yunyu was doing the exact same thing 400 years 00:04:15.599 --> 00:04:18.540 ago. He was tapping into the fear of the counterfeit 00:04:18.540 --> 00:04:20.620 person. And around the same time, we also see 00:04:20.620 --> 00:04:22.759 the rise of what's called Gong and Zhaoshuo, 00:04:22.980 --> 00:04:25.860 or court case fiction. The Magistrate Bao stories. 00:04:26.339 --> 00:04:28.699 Yes, the Magistrate Bao stories. These are absolute 00:04:28.699 --> 00:04:31.680 classics. Magistrate Bao was a real historical 00:04:31.680 --> 00:04:34.980 figure from the Song Dynasty. But by the 16th 00:04:34.980 --> 00:04:38.100 century, he had become this... Almost Sherlock 00:04:38.100 --> 00:04:40.339 Holmes type figure in Chinese fiction. Right. 00:04:40.500 --> 00:04:43.500 These stories blended real accounts with, you 00:04:43.500 --> 00:04:46.019 know, sometimes supernatural elements or really 00:04:46.019 --> 00:04:48.879 exaggerated logic. But the core hook was the 00:04:48.879 --> 00:04:51.259 procedural aspect. The nuts and bolts of the 00:04:51.259 --> 00:04:53.759 investigation. The nuts and bolts. The audience 00:04:53.759 --> 00:04:55.399 wanted to see the crime committed. They wanted 00:04:55.399 --> 00:04:58.019 to understand the villain's logic. And then crucially, 00:04:58.019 --> 00:05:00.019 they wanted to see the restoration of order through 00:05:00.019 --> 00:05:03.569 the court. That. Restoration of order piece feels 00:05:03.569 --> 00:05:05.829 so crucial. It's the comforting part of the whole 00:05:05.829 --> 00:05:08.689 genre, isn't it? But if we swing the lens over 00:05:08.689 --> 00:05:11.189 to Britain around the same time, roughly 1550 00:05:11.189 --> 00:05:14.990 to 1700, we see something a little less orderly 00:05:14.990 --> 00:05:19.629 and a lot, a lot grittier. Yes, we do. We see 00:05:19.629 --> 00:05:22.470 the explosion of street literature. This is the 00:05:22.470 --> 00:05:25.290 era where the printing press really starts to 00:05:25.290 --> 00:05:28.250 democratize information. Or at least democratize 00:05:28.250 --> 00:05:31.430 scandal. You have pamphlets, broadsides, and 00:05:31.430 --> 00:05:33.850 these little things called chapbooks just flooding 00:05:33.850 --> 00:05:35.629 the streets of London. And what's interesting 00:05:35.629 --> 00:05:37.850 is, contrary to the idea that this was just, 00:05:37.930 --> 00:05:40.069 you know, trash for the poor, the research shows 00:05:40.069 --> 00:05:42.329 these were purchased mostly by the artisan class 00:05:42.329 --> 00:05:44.310 and above. Yeah, you needed a bit of disposable 00:05:44.310 --> 00:05:47.389 income and, you know, you had to be literate 00:05:47.389 --> 00:05:50.069 to consume them. It wasn't for everyone. And 00:05:50.069 --> 00:05:52.370 the content was incredibly graphic. But what 00:05:52.370 --> 00:05:54.529 really struck me in the source material was the 00:05:54.529 --> 00:05:56.990 format of the execution ballads. The ballads, 00:05:57.009 --> 00:05:59.029 yes. These weren't just news reports. They were 00:05:59.029 --> 00:06:01.569 songs, verses that were posted on town walls. 00:06:01.930 --> 00:06:03.889 And they were often written from the perpetrator's 00:06:03.889 --> 00:06:06.149 point of view. That is the psychological link 00:06:06.149 --> 00:06:09.899 to today. That's the through line. Even in 1650, 00:06:10.079 --> 00:06:12.279 people were not satisfied with just knowing a 00:06:12.279 --> 00:06:14.620 murder happened. They wanted to inhabit the mind 00:06:14.620 --> 00:06:16.839 of the murderer. They wanted the why. They wanted 00:06:16.839 --> 00:06:19.259 the why. These gallants would be written as these 00:06:19.259 --> 00:06:22.360 first -person laments. I did this terrible thing. 00:06:22.500 --> 00:06:24.819 Here is why I did it. Here is my deep regret. 00:06:25.399 --> 00:06:28.319 It was an attempt to humanize the monster, or 00:06:28.319 --> 00:06:30.600 at least to understand the internal mechanism 00:06:30.600 --> 00:06:33.720 of the sin. It's the 17th century version of 00:06:33.720 --> 00:06:36.120 the breathless televised interview with a serial 00:06:36.120 --> 00:06:38.120 killer. Absolutely. We want to hear the voice. 00:06:38.319 --> 00:06:41.060 But as we move into the 19th century, the tone 00:06:41.060 --> 00:06:43.600 shifts a bit. It stops being just street gossip 00:06:43.600 --> 00:06:46.079 and it starts becoming, well, it becomes almost 00:06:46.079 --> 00:06:48.600 an intellectual exercise. And for that, we have 00:06:48.600 --> 00:06:50.699 to talk about Thomas De Quincey. De Quincey is 00:06:50.699 --> 00:06:54.029 pivotal. In 1827, he published an essay with 00:06:54.029 --> 00:06:56.529 the most provocative title you can possibly imagine 00:06:56.529 --> 00:06:59.329 on murder considered as one of the fine arts. 00:06:59.470 --> 00:07:02.170 An incredible title. Now, De Quincey was a satirist 00:07:02.170 --> 00:07:04.649 and he was being incredibly dark, but he was 00:07:04.649 --> 00:07:06.689 introducing a completely new way of looking at 00:07:06.689 --> 00:07:09.430 crime. It's such a biting piece of writing. He's 00:07:09.430 --> 00:07:11.870 essentially mocking the way the public and the 00:07:11.870 --> 00:07:14.370 intellectuals of his time were treating these 00:07:14.370 --> 00:07:17.170 sensational crimes as if they were theater. Right. 00:07:17.250 --> 00:07:20.009 He talks about the composition of a murder, the 00:07:20.009 --> 00:07:21.769 aesthetics of it. The aesthetics of a murder. 00:07:21.910 --> 00:07:24.449 It's shocking. He was pointing out that once 00:07:24.449 --> 00:07:27.769 the initial moral horror passes, society tends 00:07:27.769 --> 00:07:31.170 to treat the crime as a spectacle to be critiqued. 00:07:31.370 --> 00:07:34.050 Was it a good murder? Was it dramatic enough? 00:07:34.290 --> 00:07:36.490 He was holding a mirror up to the audience. Exactly. 00:07:36.920 --> 00:07:40.160 And in doing so, he kind of gave permission for 00:07:40.160 --> 00:07:43.040 the intellectual class to engage with true crime 00:07:43.040 --> 00:07:46.259 as a subject of serious study, not just the guilty 00:07:46.259 --> 00:07:48.540 pleasure. And following that thread, we get William 00:07:48.540 --> 00:07:51.360 Roughead in Scotland. The notes describe him 00:07:51.360 --> 00:07:53.819 as the dean of the genre. He was a lawyer, correct? 00:07:54.019 --> 00:07:57.250 A Scottish lawyer, yes. For six decades, he attended 00:07:57.250 --> 00:08:00.149 every major murder trial in Edinburgh and wrote 00:08:00.149 --> 00:08:03.269 these incredibly detailed, dryly witty essays 00:08:03.269 --> 00:08:06.009 about them. Wow. Six decades. He collected them 00:08:06.009 --> 00:08:08.990 in a book called Classic Crimes. And Roughhead, 00:08:09.069 --> 00:08:11.629 he treated the murder trial as a sociological 00:08:11.629 --> 00:08:13.649 event. He wasn't just looking at the blood and 00:08:13.649 --> 00:08:15.709 guts. He was looking at the jury, the judge, 00:08:15.850 --> 00:08:19.149 the witnesses. He was chronicling the whole human 00:08:19.149 --> 00:08:21.740 comedy that surrounds a tragedy. And across the 00:08:21.740 --> 00:08:24.300 pond, we have the Americans trying to catch up. 00:08:24.480 --> 00:08:27.920 In 1807, we get Henry Tufts publishing his memoir, 00:08:28.180 --> 00:08:31.279 A Narrative of the Life, Adventures, Travels, 00:08:31.279 --> 00:08:33.919 and Sufferings of Henry Tufts. Which is a great 00:08:33.919 --> 00:08:35.879 title, by the way. It's an amazing title. It 00:08:35.879 --> 00:08:38.179 is. And it's likely the first extensive biography 00:08:38.179 --> 00:08:41.139 of an American criminal. Tufts was a thief, a 00:08:41.139 --> 00:08:43.659 swindler, a soldier, a deserter, you name it. 00:08:43.799 --> 00:08:46.519 His book laid the groundwork for that American 00:08:46.519 --> 00:08:49.480 anti -hero narrative, the outlaw who tells his 00:08:49.480 --> 00:08:51.740 own story. So by the time we hit the 20th century, 00:08:51.860 --> 00:08:53.500 all the ingredients are there. They're all on 00:08:53.500 --> 00:08:55.340 the table. We have the court case structure from 00:08:55.340 --> 00:08:57.720 China, the psychological curiosity from the British 00:08:57.720 --> 00:09:00.580 ballads, and then this new intellectual detachment 00:09:00.580 --> 00:09:02.639 from De Quincey. Which brings us to the boom, 00:09:02.779 --> 00:09:05.759 the golden age of print. If you walked past a 00:09:05.759 --> 00:09:09.580 newsstand in New York in, say, 1935, the visual 00:09:09.580 --> 00:09:11.980 noise would just be overwhelming. And a huge 00:09:11.980 --> 00:09:14.059 chunk of that real estate was taken up by true 00:09:14.059 --> 00:09:16.299 crime magazines. The scale of this is something 00:09:16.299 --> 00:09:19.139 I think people often forget. The first... dedicated 00:09:19.139 --> 00:09:22.700 magazine, True Detective, launched in 1924. By 00:09:22.700 --> 00:09:25.899 the time we get to the pre -WWII era, there are 00:09:25.899 --> 00:09:28.159 roughly 200 different titles on the stands. Wait, 00:09:28.259 --> 00:09:31.620 200 titles? 200 different magazines. That is 00:09:31.620 --> 00:09:33.820 just market saturation. That's incredible. It's 00:09:33.820 --> 00:09:36.080 massive. And between them, they were selling 00:09:36.080 --> 00:09:39.730 6 million copies. Per month. Six million a month. 00:09:39.889 --> 00:09:42.509 True Detective alone was moving two million units. 00:09:42.629 --> 00:09:45.730 This wasn't a niche hobby. This was mass entertainment 00:09:45.730 --> 00:09:48.950 on a scale we can barely imagine. And the aesthetic 00:09:48.950 --> 00:09:50.870 was very, very specific, the pulp art style. 00:09:51.070 --> 00:09:53.190 Oh, absolutely. The covers are iconic. It's almost 00:09:53.190 --> 00:09:55.350 always a damsel in distress, you know, a shadowy 00:09:55.350 --> 00:09:58.330 figure lurking, a gun. It's lurid. But the notes 00:09:58.330 --> 00:10:00.350 mention that as the decades went on, specifically 00:10:00.350 --> 00:10:03.789 into the 60s, the imagery got nastier. It did. 00:10:04.269 --> 00:10:06.870 In the 20s and 30s, there was a sort of noir 00:10:06.870 --> 00:10:11.090 mystery to it, a sense of suspense. By the 60s, 00:10:11.090 --> 00:10:14.190 it became much more explicitly violent and sexualized. 00:10:14.289 --> 00:10:17.169 How so? The cover started featuring women in 00:10:17.169 --> 00:10:19.169 much more compromising, terrified positions. 00:10:19.509 --> 00:10:22.110 It became less about the detective work and more 00:10:22.110 --> 00:10:24.970 about the act of victimization. Eventually, though, 00:10:25.049 --> 00:10:28.289 that market just collapsed. Why? Pastes changed. 00:10:28.570 --> 00:10:30.830 Television came along. Interest just waned in 00:10:30.830 --> 00:10:33.570 the 70s. And True Detective finally folded for 00:10:33.570 --> 00:10:37.009 good in 1996. But just as the lowbrow pulp magazines 00:10:37.009 --> 00:10:40.649 were dying out, the genre was putting on a tuxedo 00:10:40.649 --> 00:10:42.230 and trying to get into the country club. That's 00:10:42.230 --> 00:10:44.070 a great way to put it. This is where we see the 00:10:44.070 --> 00:10:46.669 transition to literary true crime. And Edmund 00:10:46.669 --> 00:10:49.470 Pearson seems to be the bridge figure here. Pearson 00:10:49.470 --> 00:10:53.110 is the direct link between De Quincey and the 00:10:53.110 --> 00:10:56.070 modern era we're in now. He was a librarian, 00:10:56.269 --> 00:10:58.470 a very proper buttoned up American intellectual, 00:10:58.730 --> 00:11:01.710 but he was obsessed with murder cases, specifically 00:11:01.710 --> 00:11:04.070 the Lizzie Borden case. And he started publishing 00:11:04.070 --> 00:11:06.649 true crime essays in The New Yorker and Vanity 00:11:06.649 --> 00:11:08.789 Fair. Which is a huge signal. You don't put trash 00:11:08.789 --> 00:11:11.350 in The New Yorker. No, he was validating the 00:11:11.350 --> 00:11:13.629 topic for the upper class. Exactly. He was basically 00:11:13.629 --> 00:11:17.029 saying it is OK for you to read about an axe 00:11:17.029 --> 00:11:19.429 murder, provided the prose is elegant enough. 00:11:19.809 --> 00:11:23.090 And that whole effort to elevate the genre. really 00:11:23.090 --> 00:11:26.409 culminates in 1965 with the publication of Truman 00:11:26.409 --> 00:11:29.230 Capote's In Cold Blood. This book changes everything. 00:11:29.470 --> 00:11:31.730 And I think we need to unpack why it was such 00:11:31.730 --> 00:11:34.230 a massive shift. It wasn't just that it was a 00:11:34.230 --> 00:11:36.710 bestseller. It was the technique Capote used. 00:11:37.009 --> 00:11:39.970 He called it the nonfiction novel. And that term 00:11:39.970 --> 00:11:43.049 is the key to everything. Before Capote, true 00:11:43.049 --> 00:11:45.549 crime was usually written either as a dry, journalistic 00:11:45.549 --> 00:11:49.289 report or a sensationalist shout from the tabloids. 00:11:49.309 --> 00:11:51.409 Right, one extreme or the other. Capote applied 00:11:51.409 --> 00:11:53.830 the tools of high fiction internal monologue, 00:11:53.970 --> 00:11:56.789 setting the scene with rich detail, extensive 00:11:56.789 --> 00:11:59.850 dialogue, nonlinear storytelling, to a brutal, 00:11:59.970 --> 00:12:02.309 senseless murder of the Clutter family in Kansas. 00:12:02.610 --> 00:12:05.590 He made the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickok, 00:12:05.710 --> 00:12:08.450 into fully realized literary characters. He did. 00:12:09.370 --> 00:12:12.750 And that brings up the first major ethical friction 00:12:12.750 --> 00:12:14.669 that we really need to highlight in this whole 00:12:14.669 --> 00:12:17.669 story. Capote didn't just report on them. He 00:12:17.669 --> 00:12:20.129 befriended them. He spent years getting inside 00:12:20.129 --> 00:12:22.789 their heads. And the criticism, which has only 00:12:22.789 --> 00:12:25.570 grown louder over the years, is that he manipulated 00:12:25.570 --> 00:12:28.210 them, or at the very least manipulated the narrative, 00:12:28.409 --> 00:12:31.169 to get a better ending for his book. The ending 00:12:31.169 --> 00:12:33.669 of the book, the execution of Smith and Hickok, 00:12:33.809 --> 00:12:36.190 was the ending Capote needed for his masterpiece. 00:12:37.190 --> 00:12:39.850 There's a lot of documentation to suggest that 00:12:39.850 --> 00:12:42.070 he was desperate for the execution to happen 00:12:42.070 --> 00:12:44.429 so he could finally finish the book. It's chilling. 00:12:44.710 --> 00:12:46.850 It is. It established a very dangerous precedent. 00:12:47.330 --> 00:12:50.570 The writer who is more invested in the story 00:12:50.570 --> 00:12:53.090 arc than in the human reality of the situation. 00:12:53.490 --> 00:12:56.590 But commercially, it was a blockbuster. It proved 00:12:56.590 --> 00:12:58.549 to publishers that true crime could win awards 00:12:58.549 --> 00:13:00.509 and make millions of dollars. And frankly, it 00:13:00.509 --> 00:13:02.610 paved the way for the specific obsession that 00:13:02.610 --> 00:13:04.990 completely dominates the genre today. The serial 00:13:04.990 --> 00:13:08.220 killer. The serial killer. This is the monster 00:13:08.220 --> 00:13:11.179 subgenre, and statistically it is a complete 00:13:11.179 --> 00:13:14.159 and total anomaly. Murder makes up less than 00:13:14.159 --> 00:13:17.299 20 % of reported violent crime, and serial murder 00:13:17.299 --> 00:13:20.100 is a fraction of a percent of that. It's vanishingly 00:13:20.100 --> 00:13:23.159 rare. Vanishingly. But if you look at the bookshelves, 00:13:23.220 --> 00:13:26.139 serial killers make up about 40 % of the tales. 00:13:26.379 --> 00:13:29.960 So we are actively ignoring the 99 % of crime, 00:13:30.200 --> 00:13:32.919 the domestic assaults, the gang violence, the 00:13:32.919 --> 00:13:35.960 robberies. To focus on the Hannibal Lecters of 00:13:35.960 --> 00:13:37.899 the world. Because the serial killer represents 00:13:37.899 --> 00:13:41.059 the other, the unknowable evil. It's a much more 00:13:41.059 --> 00:13:43.639 compelling story. Books like Helter Skelter, 00:13:43.720 --> 00:13:45.740 which remains the best -selling true crime book 00:13:45.740 --> 00:13:49.100 of all time. Still to this day. Still. Or Ann 00:13:49.100 --> 00:13:51.860 Rule's The Stranger Beside Me about Ted Bundy. 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:54.360 These books aren't just about crime. They are 00:13:54.360 --> 00:13:56.799 about the terror that the person sitting next 00:13:56.799 --> 00:13:58.840 to you, the charming, handsome guy, might be 00:13:58.840 --> 00:14:00.639 a monster. In Rule's case, it's particularly 00:14:00.639 --> 00:14:02.879 wild because she knew Bundy. She worked at a 00:14:02.879 --> 00:14:04.740 suicide crisis center with him. Right next to 00:14:04.740 --> 00:14:06.659 him. That intimacy is what sold the book. It's 00:14:06.659 --> 00:14:09.720 that proximity to evil. Exactly. But while we 00:14:09.720 --> 00:14:11.879 have these high watermarks of literature like 00:14:11.879 --> 00:14:15.139 Capote and Rule, the success of the genre also 00:14:15.139 --> 00:14:18.399 birthed something much, much cheaper. The instant 00:14:18.399 --> 00:14:21.440 book. The airport paperback. You know, the look 00:14:21.440 --> 00:14:24.159 -black cover, bold red font, usually titled Death 00:14:24.159 --> 00:14:27.179 in the Suburbs or... the freeway killer. Those 00:14:27.179 --> 00:14:29.360 are the ones. They were churned out by journalists 00:14:29.360 --> 00:14:33.019 immediately after a high -profile verdict. And 00:14:33.019 --> 00:14:36.559 the criticism here is, I think, very valid. They're 00:14:36.559 --> 00:14:39.940 formulaic. They treat the tragedy as a commodity 00:14:39.940 --> 00:14:42.460 to be harvested as quickly as possible. There's 00:14:42.460 --> 00:14:44.919 no De Quincey -style reflection here. None at 00:14:44.919 --> 00:14:47.220 all. It's just content. And content demands visuals. 00:14:47.759 --> 00:14:49.379 As we move into our next section, the technology 00:14:49.379 --> 00:14:51.340 shifts and the audience follows right along. 00:14:51.480 --> 00:14:53.299 We have to talk about how the camera completely 00:14:53.299 --> 00:14:56.519 changed the equation. Visual media changes the 00:14:56.519 --> 00:14:59.039 intimacy. Reading about a crime is one thing. 00:14:59.059 --> 00:15:00.960 Seeing the crime scene photos or the tearful 00:15:00.960 --> 00:15:03.240 confession on camera, that's another thing entirely. 00:15:03.559 --> 00:15:06.159 And the landmark here is, without question, Errol 00:15:06.159 --> 00:15:08.620 Morris' documentary The Thin Blue Line in 1988. 00:15:09.279 --> 00:15:11.580 I rewatched parts of this recently for our prep, 00:15:11.720 --> 00:15:14.360 and what really stands out is how stylized it 00:15:14.360 --> 00:15:16.740 is. The music by Philip Glass, the lighting. 00:15:16.940 --> 00:15:19.779 But the big controversy at the time was his use 00:15:19.779 --> 00:15:22.159 of reenactments. It was scandalous in the documentary 00:15:22.159 --> 00:15:26.000 world back then. The purists argued that by hiring 00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:27.960 actors to play out the shooting of the police 00:15:27.960 --> 00:15:31.259 officer, Morris was fabricating truth. He was 00:15:31.259 --> 00:15:33.899 making a movie. not a documentary. That was the 00:15:33.899 --> 00:15:36.519 argument. But Morris's point was that the official 00:15:36.519 --> 00:15:39.679 truth, the police report, the court verdict was 00:15:39.679 --> 00:15:42.970 a lie. He used the reenactments to show the contradictions 00:15:42.970 --> 00:15:45.009 of the evidence to show how different witness 00:15:45.009 --> 00:15:47.690 accounts just didn't add up. It worked. I mean, 00:15:47.690 --> 00:15:49.789 it actually worked. The film helped get Randall 00:15:49.789 --> 00:15:52.190 Adams released from prison. It did. It proved 00:15:52.190 --> 00:15:55.669 that a stylized, even subjective retelling could 00:15:55.669 --> 00:15:58.129 sometimes get closer to the real truth than a 00:15:58.129 --> 00:16:01.629 dry recitation of so -called facts. It legitimized 00:16:01.629 --> 00:16:04.350 the cinematic true crime documentary. But while 00:16:04.350 --> 00:16:06.309 the US was having these high -minded debates 00:16:06.309 --> 00:16:09.090 about documentary ethics, Hong Kong cinema in 00:16:09.090 --> 00:16:12.220 the 90s was taking things in a... Well, a very 00:16:12.220 --> 00:16:14.679 different direction. A much more visceral direction. 00:16:14.960 --> 00:16:17.019 The Hong Kong boom was fascinating. You had the 00:16:17.019 --> 00:16:20.200 rise of the category three films, which is their 00:16:20.200 --> 00:16:23.740 rating for 18 plus content. So extremely graphic. 00:16:24.120 --> 00:16:26.840 Extremely. Films like The Untold Story or Dr. 00:16:27.039 --> 00:16:29.899 Lamb. These were based on real horrific serial 00:16:29.899 --> 00:16:32.240 killers, but they were filmed with the aesthetic 00:16:32.240 --> 00:16:35.539 of a full blown slasher movie. Gory, sensational 00:16:35.539 --> 00:16:38.320 and incredibly popular. And then you also add 00:16:38.320 --> 00:16:40.940 more mainstream films like Crime Story with Jackie 00:16:40.940 --> 00:16:43.440 Chan. Right, which was based on a real life kidnapping 00:16:43.440 --> 00:16:46.100 of a businessman. So you see this huge range 00:16:46.100 --> 00:16:49.299 from the arthouse exploitation film to the big 00:16:49.299 --> 00:16:51.740 budget action movie, all drawing from the same 00:16:51.740 --> 00:16:53.990 well of real crime. It's interesting because 00:16:53.990 --> 00:16:56.350 it shows that this fascination isn't just a Western 00:16:56.350 --> 00:16:59.350 phenomenon. It's global. But back in the U .S., 00:16:59.350 --> 00:17:01.389 the real shift in our consumption habits comes 00:17:01.389 --> 00:17:04.170 with cable TV, the 24 -hour news and entertainment 00:17:04.170 --> 00:17:06.789 cycle. The networks realized that crime is the 00:17:06.789 --> 00:17:08.809 ultimate sticky content. You just can't look 00:17:08.809 --> 00:17:12.529 away. Investigation Discovery, or ID, built an 00:17:12.529 --> 00:17:14.650 entire empire on this principle. But the most 00:17:14.650 --> 00:17:16.769 telling business move for me was the network 00:17:16.769 --> 00:17:19.670 Oxygen. I remember when Oxygen launched. It was 00:17:19.670 --> 00:17:21.210 Oprah's network, wasn't it? It was supposed to 00:17:21.210 --> 00:17:24.029 be lifestyle, yoga. Talk shows aimed at women. 00:17:24.170 --> 00:17:27.089 Exactly. It was empowerment television. But the 00:17:27.089 --> 00:17:30.289 executives looked at the data and they saw this 00:17:30.289 --> 00:17:34.269 strange anomaly. What was it? The reruns of their 00:17:34.269 --> 00:17:37.390 one or two crime shows, like Snapped, were absolutely 00:17:37.390 --> 00:17:40.670 crushing the yoga shows in the ratings. It wasn't 00:17:40.670 --> 00:17:42.730 even close. So they followed the money. They 00:17:42.730 --> 00:17:45.180 followed the money. In 2017, they completely 00:17:45.180 --> 00:17:48.599 pivoted. They rebranded the entire Oxygen network 00:17:48.599 --> 00:17:51.779 as a specialized true crime network. They stopped 00:17:51.779 --> 00:17:53.819 trying to tell women how to live their best lives 00:17:53.819 --> 00:17:56.859 and started showing them in detail how lives 00:17:56.859 --> 00:17:59.900 end. Wow. That pivot speaks volumes about the 00:17:59.900 --> 00:18:01.359 audience, which we are definitely going to get 00:18:01.359 --> 00:18:03.619 to. But the final evolution of the visual medium 00:18:03.619 --> 00:18:06.299 before we get to audio is streaming. Netflix, 00:18:06.359 --> 00:18:09.240 and Making a Murderer in 2015. Making a Murderer 00:18:09.240 --> 00:18:11.720 introduced the binge. Before that, you'd watch 00:18:11.720 --> 00:18:14.380 a 60 -minute episode of Dateline or 48 Hours 00:18:14.380 --> 00:18:15.779 and you'd go to bed. Right, it was appointment 00:18:15.779 --> 00:18:18.660 viewing. Making a Murderer gave you 10 hours 00:18:18.660 --> 00:18:22.099 of a dense, complex, legal nightmare and said, 00:18:22.180 --> 00:18:25.150 good luck stopping. It turned a murder trial 00:18:25.150 --> 00:18:28.349 into an immersive weekend event. It proved that 00:18:28.349 --> 00:18:31.390 audiences had the attention span for the minutia 00:18:31.390 --> 00:18:33.750 of the justice system as long as it was packaged 00:18:33.750 --> 00:18:35.890 correctly. Which is the perfect setup for the 00:18:35.890 --> 00:18:38.029 medium that I think really defines the current 00:18:38.029 --> 00:18:41.150 moment. The podcast. We are in the golden age 00:18:41.150 --> 00:18:43.170 of audio and it is absolutely built on the back 00:18:43.170 --> 00:18:45.230 of crime. It really is. And we can pinpoint the 00:18:45.230 --> 00:18:49.089 exact moment it happened. October 2014. The launch 00:18:49.089 --> 00:18:51.779 of Serial. We all know the numbers. Five million 00:18:51.779 --> 00:18:54.180 downloads faster than any podcast before it. 00:18:54.220 --> 00:18:55.940 Hundreds of millions since. It was a cultural 00:18:55.940 --> 00:18:59.039 phenomenon. But looking at the critique of Serial, 00:18:59.059 --> 00:19:01.000 what made it so dissonant wasn't just the case 00:19:01.000 --> 00:19:03.539 of Adnan Syed. It was the storytelling mode. 00:19:03.799 --> 00:19:06.720 That's the key innovation. Sarah Koenig wasn't 00:19:06.720 --> 00:19:08.680 a voice of God narrator telling you the definitive 00:19:08.680 --> 00:19:11.200 answer. No, not at all. She was transparent about 00:19:11.200 --> 00:19:14.079 her own uncertainty. She would say, I don't know 00:19:14.079 --> 00:19:16.720 what to think about this. Or I flip -flopped 00:19:16.720 --> 00:19:19.500 on this three times today. That intimacy, that 00:19:19.500 --> 00:19:22.619 vulnerability made the listener feel like a co 00:19:22.619 --> 00:19:25.539 -investigator. It shifted the dynamic from a 00:19:25.539 --> 00:19:28.480 lecture to a conversation. And that just unlocked 00:19:28.480 --> 00:19:31.160 the floodgates. The floodgates opened. Suddenly 00:19:31.160 --> 00:19:34.819 you had my favorite murder, Dirty John, up and 00:19:34.819 --> 00:19:37.380 vanished. The whole landscape changed overnight. 00:19:37.900 --> 00:19:40.380 And Apple Podcasts eventually had to create a 00:19:40.380 --> 00:19:43.339 dedicated true crime category in 2019. They had 00:19:43.339 --> 00:19:45.720 to because the shows were clogging up every other 00:19:45.720 --> 00:19:49.119 category, history, news, even comedy. But here's 00:19:49.119 --> 00:19:51.140 where we need to look at the demographics, because 00:19:51.140 --> 00:19:53.880 the stereotype of the gore hound might be a teenage 00:19:53.880 --> 00:19:56.299 boy in his bedroom. But the reality of the true 00:19:56.299 --> 00:19:58.799 crime podcast listener is very, very different. 00:19:58.920 --> 00:20:01.759 It is overwhelmingly female. The 2019 data showed 00:20:01.759 --> 00:20:04.259 that 73 percent of true crime podcast consumers 00:20:04.259 --> 00:20:07.089 in the U .S. are women. 73 percent. That is not 00:20:07.089 --> 00:20:08.930 a margin of error. That is a complete domination 00:20:08.930 --> 00:20:10.930 of the audience. So we have to ask the uncomfortable 00:20:10.930 --> 00:20:14.569 but necessary question. Why are women primarily 00:20:14.569 --> 00:20:16.750 the ones consuming stories about the brutalization 00:20:16.750 --> 00:20:19.170 of women? There are two main competing theories 00:20:19.170 --> 00:20:21.509 here, and they're both pretty compelling. The 00:20:21.509 --> 00:20:23.470 first is what's called the survival instinct 00:20:23.470 --> 00:20:26.250 theory. OK. This is supported by research from 00:20:26.250 --> 00:20:28.869 psychologists like Amanda Vickery. She found 00:20:28.869 --> 00:20:31.029 that women are specifically drawn to stories 00:20:31.029 --> 00:20:34.579 that contain survival information. So it's educational, 00:20:34.819 --> 00:20:37.319 like here is how to spot the red flags in a first 00:20:37.319 --> 00:20:39.900 date or here is how to escape from the trunk 00:20:39.900 --> 00:20:43.019 of a car. Essentially, yes. It's a form of rehearsal. 00:20:43.319 --> 00:20:46.420 The argument is that women, on average, live 00:20:46.420 --> 00:20:48.940 with a higher baseline fear of sexual and physical 00:20:48.940 --> 00:20:51.920 violence than men do. Listening to these stories 00:20:51.920 --> 00:20:53.859 is a way of simulating the worst case scenario 00:20:53.859 --> 00:20:56.619 and mentally preparing for it from a safe distance. 00:20:56.940 --> 00:20:58.799 So it's not just entertainment. It's a strategy. 00:20:59.000 --> 00:21:01.720 It's a kind of grim precautionary strategy. But 00:21:01.720 --> 00:21:03.869 I have to push back on that slightly. Is it actually 00:21:03.869 --> 00:21:06.910 making anyone safer? Or is it just a form of 00:21:06.910 --> 00:21:08.930 anxiety management? Because the other theory 00:21:08.930 --> 00:21:11.170 is purely physiological. It's the adrenaline 00:21:11.170 --> 00:21:13.390 junkie theory. That's the flip side of the coin. 00:21:13.589 --> 00:21:16.569 The fear response. When you hear these horrific 00:21:16.569 --> 00:21:19.769 stories, our bodies release adrenaline and cortisol. 00:21:20.009 --> 00:21:22.569 The fight or flight response kicks in. Right. 00:21:22.809 --> 00:21:25.730 But because we are safe on our couch or in our 00:21:25.730 --> 00:21:28.410 car, we get the chemical rush without the actual 00:21:28.410 --> 00:21:31.619 danger. It's a high, similar to riding a roller 00:21:31.619 --> 00:21:33.779 coaster or watching a horror movie. And podcasts 00:21:33.779 --> 00:21:35.559 are perfectly built for that. They're perfectly 00:21:35.559 --> 00:21:38.420 engineered to deliver these hits. They're serialized. 00:21:38.440 --> 00:21:40.440 They use sound design, cliffhangers, and dramatic 00:21:40.440 --> 00:21:43.700 music to heighten tension. They are designed 00:21:43.700 --> 00:21:46.339 to give you these dopamine hits over and over 00:21:46.339 --> 00:21:49.339 again. So it's either a survival guide or a horror 00:21:49.339 --> 00:21:53.140 movie for your ears, or more likely some combination 00:21:53.140 --> 00:21:55.460 of both. I think that's right. But this brings 00:21:55.460 --> 00:21:57.460 us to the most critical part of this whole deep 00:21:57.460 --> 00:22:00.029 dive. We aren't just consuming this stuff in 00:22:00.029 --> 00:22:03.170 a vacuum. The true crime industrial complex has 00:22:03.170 --> 00:22:05.809 real world consequences. We need to talk about 00:22:05.809 --> 00:22:08.569 the impact. The impact is profound and it really 00:22:08.569 --> 00:22:11.130 cuts both ways. On the positive side, you have 00:22:11.130 --> 00:22:13.329 the citizen detective phenomenon. We have the 00:22:13.329 --> 00:22:15.950 incredible case of the jinx on HBO. The Robert 00:22:15.950 --> 00:22:19.170 Durst hot mic moment. The hot mic moment. Killed 00:22:19.170 --> 00:22:21.589 them all, of course. He muttered it to himself 00:22:21.589 --> 00:22:23.390 in the bathroom, not realizing his microphone 00:22:23.390 --> 00:22:25.930 was still hot. The filmmakers discovered that 00:22:25.930 --> 00:22:29.059 audio. It led directly to his arrest. You can't 00:22:29.059 --> 00:22:30.799 get a clearer line than that from entertainment 00:22:30.799 --> 00:22:33.900 product to justice served. You can't. And you 00:22:33.900 --> 00:22:36.400 also found that stat from Australia regarding 00:22:36.400 --> 00:22:39.259 Crimestoppers that really highlights this. Yes. 00:22:39.319 --> 00:22:42.380 Between 2012 and 2017, the number of reports 00:22:42.380 --> 00:22:44.599 to Crimestoppers in Australia that led to actual 00:22:44.599 --> 00:22:47.130 charges being pressed. Doubled. Doubled. And 00:22:47.130 --> 00:22:49.930 authorities there directly attributed this spike 00:22:49.930 --> 00:22:53.130 to the massive popularity of true crime podcasts. 00:22:53.589 --> 00:22:55.950 People are learning to pay attention. They are 00:22:55.950 --> 00:22:57.869 looking at the details in their own communities. 00:22:58.109 --> 00:23:00.329 They're realizing that they might hold a piece 00:23:00.329 --> 00:23:02.250 of the puzzle. That is the best case scenario. 00:23:02.509 --> 00:23:04.650 Yeah. The audience becomes an army of witnesses. 00:23:04.970 --> 00:23:07.910 It is. But there is a much, much darker side 00:23:07.910 --> 00:23:10.289 to this. We have to talk about the Nebraska study 00:23:10.289 --> 00:23:13.269 and what sociologists call the mean world syndrome. 00:23:13.930 --> 00:23:16.069 This is where that educational argument starts 00:23:16.069 --> 00:23:19.450 to fall apart. The 2011 study out of Nebraska 00:23:19.450 --> 00:23:23.109 found a direct, undeniable correlation. People 00:23:23.109 --> 00:23:25.490 who consume large amounts of nonfiction crime 00:23:25.490 --> 00:23:28.529 shows have a significantly increased fear of 00:23:28.529 --> 00:23:31.750 being a victim themselves. So even if crime rates 00:23:31.750 --> 00:23:33.970 are historically low, which they are in many 00:23:33.970 --> 00:23:36.410 places, the heavy listener feels like they're 00:23:36.410 --> 00:23:39.210 living in a war zone. Exactly. Their perception 00:23:39.210 --> 00:23:41.809 of reality becomes distorted by the content they 00:23:41.809 --> 00:23:45.369 consume. Their world feels meaner, more dangerous 00:23:45.369 --> 00:23:47.829 than it actually is. And this isn't just a personal 00:23:47.829 --> 00:23:50.009 anxiety issue, is it? It translates directly 00:23:50.009 --> 00:23:52.869 into politics. It does. The study found that 00:23:52.869 --> 00:23:55.049 these same viewers had increased support for 00:23:55.049 --> 00:23:57.779 the death penalty. Wow. And at the same time, 00:23:57.819 --> 00:24:00.380 decreased support for the criminal justice system's 00:24:00.380 --> 00:24:03.200 due process. They were willing to trade civil 00:24:03.200 --> 00:24:05.319 liberties for a perceived sense of security. 00:24:05.599 --> 00:24:07.759 That is massive. It means this entertainment 00:24:07.759 --> 00:24:09.859 is actually shifting the electorate toward more 00:24:09.859 --> 00:24:13.140 punitive, more aggressive policies. We are literally 00:24:13.140 --> 00:24:15.279 voting based on the fear that the podcast gave 00:24:15.279 --> 00:24:18.180 us. And that leads directly to the ethical criticism 00:24:18.180 --> 00:24:23.529 of trash culture. Are we, as consumers, complicit 00:24:23.529 --> 00:24:26.170 in the exploitation of real people's worst moments. 00:24:26.369 --> 00:24:28.809 I think about the families constantly when I 00:24:28.809 --> 00:24:31.369 engage with this stuff. The author Jack Miles 00:24:31.369 --> 00:24:34.609 writes about this, the concept of narrative imposition. 00:24:35.279 --> 00:24:37.579 Imagine being a mother whose child was murdered. 00:24:37.720 --> 00:24:39.980 That is the worst moment of your life. And then 00:24:39.980 --> 00:24:42.539 10 years later, a podcaster decides to make it 00:24:42.539 --> 00:24:44.859 into a six -part series with, you know, catchy 00:24:44.859 --> 00:24:47.200 theme music and advertisements for mattresses 00:24:47.200 --> 00:24:49.279 in the middle. It's re -traumatization for profit. 00:24:49.519 --> 00:24:51.619 The victims' families don't get a royalty check. 00:24:51.779 --> 00:24:54.000 They don't get editorial control. They just get 00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:56.519 their deepest trauma dredged up for our amusement, 00:24:56.660 --> 00:24:58.420 for our commute. There is a growing movement 00:24:58.420 --> 00:25:00.420 of victims' families asking for the right to 00:25:00.420 --> 00:25:02.880 be forgotten. But the public's appetite is just 00:25:02.880 --> 00:25:05.740 voracious. It seems to be. And the final layer 00:25:05.740 --> 00:25:08.079 of this distortion, and maybe the most insidious, 00:25:08.099 --> 00:25:10.940 is the issue of truth itself. We call it true 00:25:10.940 --> 00:25:13.359 crime, but how true is it really? We mentioned 00:25:13.359 --> 00:25:16.279 Capote maybe fixing his ending, but this happens 00:25:16.279 --> 00:25:19.299 constantly. It's called narrative shaping. A 00:25:19.299 --> 00:25:22.029 good story needs a clear villain. A pure victim 00:25:22.029 --> 00:25:25.349 and a satisfying climax. Real life is messy, 00:25:25.490 --> 00:25:28.789 it's boring, and it's often unresolved. So writers 00:25:28.789 --> 00:25:31.109 and producers, they smooth the edges. They smooth 00:25:31.109 --> 00:25:33.670 the edges. They might leave out exculpatory evidence 00:25:33.670 --> 00:25:35.970 because it ruins the flow of the episode. The 00:25:35.970 --> 00:25:38.710 author Christiana Gregorio analyzed this. She 00:25:38.710 --> 00:25:41.490 calls it tabloidization. You can read two different 00:25:41.490 --> 00:25:44.509 books about the exact same killer. And the facts 00:25:44.509 --> 00:25:46.690 prevented will be completely different because 00:25:46.690 --> 00:25:49.230 the authors are prioritizing the drama. over 00:25:49.230 --> 00:25:51.980 the historical record. So we are. Potentially 00:25:51.980 --> 00:25:55.019 judging real people who are in real prisons based 00:25:55.019 --> 00:25:57.319 on a fictionalized version of their worst actions. 00:25:57.460 --> 00:25:59.539 We are. We are turning the justice system into 00:25:59.539 --> 00:26:01.539 fan fiction. That is a very sobering thought 00:26:01.539 --> 00:26:04.319 to land on. We've traced this incredible arc 00:26:04.319 --> 00:26:06.900 from the 17th century moral pamphlets of London 00:26:06.900 --> 00:26:09.579 and the fraud stories of the Ming Dynasty. Through 00:26:09.579 --> 00:26:11.940 the pulp magazines, the literary reinvention 00:26:11.940 --> 00:26:15.180 by Capote, the visual explosion of cable TV. 00:26:15.279 --> 00:26:17.460 All the way to the podcast in your earbuds right 00:26:17.460 --> 00:26:19.980 now. It's a journey that shows one constant. 00:26:20.829 --> 00:26:23.630 We are obsessed with the dark side of human nature. 00:26:23.769 --> 00:26:26.990 We always have been. But the so what? Here, the 00:26:26.990 --> 00:26:30.190 big takeaway is that this obsession isn't benign. 00:26:30.190 --> 00:26:33.269 It isn't passive. It shapes how we see our neighbors. 00:26:33.349 --> 00:26:35.789 It shapes how we vote. And it shapes our very 00:26:35.789 --> 00:26:38.930 concept of justice. It drives tips to the police, 00:26:39.029 --> 00:26:41.849 but it also drives paranoia in the voting booth. 00:26:42.009 --> 00:26:44.390 And it leaves us, the listeners, with the responsibility 00:26:44.390 --> 00:26:48.380 to... ask how we are consuming it are we bearing 00:26:48.380 --> 00:26:51.240 witness to a tragedy or are we just gawking at 00:26:51.240 --> 00:26:53.799 the car crash that's the question and that is 00:26:53.799 --> 00:26:55.859 the question i want to leave you with if the 00:26:55.859 --> 00:26:58.180 authors and podcasters we love are blurring the 00:26:58.180 --> 00:27:00.660 lines between journalism and horror fiction just 00:27:00.660 --> 00:27:03.460 to keep us hooked Are we actually learning anything 00:27:03.460 --> 00:27:06.140 about crime? Or are we just participating in 00:27:06.140 --> 00:27:08.339 a sophisticated form of voyeurism that treats 00:27:08.339 --> 00:27:11.140 real lives as props for our own adrenaline fix? 00:27:11.359 --> 00:27:13.559 And if we enjoy it? And if we enjoy it, if we 00:27:13.559 --> 00:27:15.599 are sitting here waiting for that next episode 00:27:15.599 --> 00:27:18.799 to drop, does that make us complicit in the trash 00:27:18.799 --> 00:27:21.440 culture that critics warn about? It's an uncomfortable 00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:24.259 reflection, but a very necessary one. Something 00:27:24.259 --> 00:27:26.279 to mull over before you hit play on the next 00:27:26.279 --> 00:27:28.599 episode? Thanks for diving in with us. See you 00:27:28.599 --> 00:27:28.920 next time.