I want to start with a paradox that I've just
been turning over and over in my head while reviewing
the research for this deep dive. We live in a
society that is, I mean, absolutely obsessed
with safety. We buy smart locks. We have doorbell
cameras that, you know, tell us if a leaf blows
across the porch. Right. We track our family
members on apps. Exactly. We track our kids.
We track our partners just to make sure they
got home okay. We spend... Billions, literally
billions of dollars trying to sanitize our lives
of any and all risk. And yet. And yet. The moment
we feel safe behind those double locked doors,
what do we do? We voluntarily plug into a feed
of the most gruesome, the most terrifying and
the most detailed accounts of human malevolence
we can possibly find. It's the safe danger contradiction,
isn't it? Yeah. It's fascinating. We are biologically
wired to flee from a predator in the wild. But
when that predator is trapped inside a book or
a podcast app, we run right toward it. We run
toward it. We have, in essence, built this massive
industrial complex around packaging our own worst
nightmares as leisure activities. And industrial
complex is absolutely the right term for it.
Today we're doing a deep dive into true crime.
And I want to be really clear about the scope
here because the reading list you sent over was
just, uh... It's a huge topic. It is. We aren't
just talking about, you know, the modern podcast
hosts solving cold cases in their basements.
We are looking at this as a specific nonfiction
genre that examines actual crimes, the actions
of the perpetrators, and this is the key, their
motives. Right. It's that pin it from just what
happened to why did they do it that really defines
the entire genre for me. Right. And even within
that definition, there's a huge spectrum that
we need to navigate today. On one end, you have
the striply journalist. approach. The court reporter.
The court reporter, the investigative journalist
who sticks rigidly to the known facts, you know,
the who, what, when, where. But as we move through
the history, which we're about to do, we see
the rise of the more speculative style. And what
do you mean by speculative? That's where the
author inserts themselves into the narrative.
They start offering personal theories, maybe
filling in the blanks of a killer's internal
monologue. Ah, I see. And that is precisely...
Where the line between history and, well, entertainment
starts to get very, very blurry. It's interesting
you mention history because I think the average
listener, and frankly, myself included, before
this week, assumes true crime is a relatively
modern invention. Sure. Most people do. You know,
maybe we trace it back to the noir era of the
1940s, or if we're being generous, maybe the
penny press of the Victorian era. The timeline
you've laid out here just completely upends that
whole idea. It really does. We aren't starting
in London or New York. We are starting in the
late Ming Dynasty in China. We are. I mean, if
we want to find the true roots of a commercialized
interest in crime stories, we have to look at
the Book of Swindles. The Book of Swindles. This
is a collection published around 1617 by a man
named Zhang Yin Yu. And it's fascinating because
it's not about the bloody murders we obsess over
today. It was focused on fraud. Which actually
makes a lot of sense if you look at the context
of the Ming Dynasty at that time. I was reading
the background notes on this, and it was a period
of massive economic expansion, but also a lot
of social anxiety. That's the key. You had merchants
traveling further than ever before. You had them
dealing with total strangers carrying silver.
The stranger all of a sudden became a figure
of deep suspicion. So it was a world where these
traditional social bonds were kind of fraying
because of commerce. Precisely. The Book of Swindles
wasn't just, you know, a bit of fun entertainment.
It was almost a survival guide. A how -to manual
for not getting ripped off. Basically, yeah.
It featured these incredible stories about court
officials getting duped, merchants being tricked
out of their cargo. It spoke to that very specific,
very new anxiety of how do I navigate a world
where anyone I meet might be trying to cheat
me? You know, it reminds me of the modern obsession
with con artist stories. Oh, absolutely. Things
like the Tinder swindler or inventing Anna. We
like to think those are new phenomena. But Zhang
Yunyu was doing the exact same thing 400 years
ago. He was tapping into the fear of the counterfeit
person. And around the same time, we also see
the rise of what's called Gong and Zhaoshuo,
or court case fiction. The Magistrate Bao stories.
Yes, the Magistrate Bao stories. These are absolute
classics. Magistrate Bao was a real historical
figure from the Song Dynasty. But by the 16th
century, he had become this... Almost Sherlock
Holmes type figure in Chinese fiction. Right.
These stories blended real accounts with, you
know, sometimes supernatural elements or really
exaggerated logic. But the core hook was the
procedural aspect. The nuts and bolts of the
investigation. The nuts and bolts. The audience
wanted to see the crime committed. They wanted
to understand the villain's logic. And then crucially,
they wanted to see the restoration of order through
the court. That. Restoration of order piece feels
so crucial. It's the comforting part of the whole
genre, isn't it? But if we swing the lens over
to Britain around the same time, roughly 1550
to 1700, we see something a little less orderly
and a lot, a lot grittier. Yes, we do. We see
the explosion of street literature. This is the
era where the printing press really starts to
democratize information. Or at least democratize
scandal. You have pamphlets, broadsides, and
these little things called chapbooks just flooding
the streets of London. And what's interesting
is, contrary to the idea that this was just,
you know, trash for the poor, the research shows
these were purchased mostly by the artisan class
and above. Yeah, you needed a bit of disposable
income and, you know, you had to be literate
to consume them. It wasn't for everyone. And
the content was incredibly graphic. But what
really struck me in the source material was the
format of the execution ballads. The ballads,
yes. These weren't just news reports. They were
songs, verses that were posted on town walls.
And they were often written from the perpetrator's
point of view. That is the psychological link
to today. That's the through line. Even in 1650,
people were not satisfied with just knowing a
murder happened. They wanted to inhabit the mind
of the murderer. They wanted the why. They wanted
the why. These gallants would be written as these
first -person laments. I did this terrible thing.
Here is why I did it. Here is my deep regret.
It was an attempt to humanize the monster, or
at least to understand the internal mechanism
of the sin. It's the 17th century version of
the breathless televised interview with a serial
killer. Absolutely. We want to hear the voice.
But as we move into the 19th century, the tone
shifts a bit. It stops being just street gossip
and it starts becoming, well, it becomes almost
an intellectual exercise. And for that, we have
to talk about Thomas De Quincey. De Quincey is
pivotal. In 1827, he published an essay with
the most provocative title you can possibly imagine
on murder considered as one of the fine arts.
An incredible title. Now, De Quincey was a satirist
and he was being incredibly dark, but he was
introducing a completely new way of looking at
crime. It's such a biting piece of writing. He's
essentially mocking the way the public and the
intellectuals of his time were treating these
sensational crimes as if they were theater. Right.
He talks about the composition of a murder, the
aesthetics of it. The aesthetics of a murder.
It's shocking. He was pointing out that once
the initial moral horror passes, society tends
to treat the crime as a spectacle to be critiqued.
Was it a good murder? Was it dramatic enough?
He was holding a mirror up to the audience. Exactly.
And in doing so, he kind of gave permission for
the intellectual class to engage with true crime
as a subject of serious study, not just the guilty
pleasure. And following that thread, we get William
Roughead in Scotland. The notes describe him
as the dean of the genre. He was a lawyer, correct?
A Scottish lawyer, yes. For six decades, he attended
every major murder trial in Edinburgh and wrote
these incredibly detailed, dryly witty essays
about them. Wow. Six decades. He collected them
in a book called Classic Crimes. And Roughhead,
he treated the murder trial as a sociological
event. He wasn't just looking at the blood and
guts. He was looking at the jury, the judge,
the witnesses. He was chronicling the whole human
comedy that surrounds a tragedy. And across the
pond, we have the Americans trying to catch up.
In 1807, we get Henry Tufts publishing his memoir,
A Narrative of the Life, Adventures, Travels,
and Sufferings of Henry Tufts. Which is a great
title, by the way. It's an amazing title. It
is. And it's likely the first extensive biography
of an American criminal. Tufts was a thief, a
swindler, a soldier, a deserter, you name it.
His book laid the groundwork for that American
anti -hero narrative, the outlaw who tells his
own story. So by the time we hit the 20th century,
all the ingredients are there. They're all on
the table. We have the court case structure from
China, the psychological curiosity from the British
ballads, and then this new intellectual detachment
from De Quincey. Which brings us to the boom,
the golden age of print. If you walked past a
newsstand in New York in, say, 1935, the visual
noise would just be overwhelming. And a huge
chunk of that real estate was taken up by true
crime magazines. The scale of this is something
I think people often forget. The first... dedicated
magazine, True Detective, launched in 1924. By
the time we get to the pre -WWII era, there are
roughly 200 different titles on the stands. Wait,
200 titles? 200 different magazines. That is
just market saturation. That's incredible. It's
massive. And between them, they were selling
6 million copies. Per month. Six million a month.
True Detective alone was moving two million units.
This wasn't a niche hobby. This was mass entertainment
on a scale we can barely imagine. And the aesthetic
was very, very specific, the pulp art style.
Oh, absolutely. The covers are iconic. It's almost
always a damsel in distress, you know, a shadowy
figure lurking, a gun. It's lurid. But the notes
mention that as the decades went on, specifically
into the 60s, the imagery got nastier. It did.
In the 20s and 30s, there was a sort of noir
mystery to it, a sense of suspense. By the 60s,
it became much more explicitly violent and sexualized.
How so? The cover started featuring women in
much more compromising, terrified positions.
It became less about the detective work and more
about the act of victimization. Eventually, though,
that market just collapsed. Why? Pastes changed.
Television came along. Interest just waned in
the 70s. And True Detective finally folded for
good in 1996. But just as the lowbrow pulp magazines
were dying out, the genre was putting on a tuxedo
and trying to get into the country club. That's
a great way to put it. This is where we see the
transition to literary true crime. And Edmund
Pearson seems to be the bridge figure here. Pearson
is the direct link between De Quincey and the
modern era we're in now. He was a librarian,
a very proper buttoned up American intellectual,
but he was obsessed with murder cases, specifically
the Lizzie Borden case. And he started publishing
true crime essays in The New Yorker and Vanity
Fair. Which is a huge signal. You don't put trash
in The New Yorker. No, he was validating the
topic for the upper class. Exactly. He was basically
saying it is OK for you to read about an axe
murder, provided the prose is elegant enough.
And that whole effort to elevate the genre. really
culminates in 1965 with the publication of Truman
Capote's In Cold Blood. This book changes everything.
And I think we need to unpack why it was such
a massive shift. It wasn't just that it was a
bestseller. It was the technique Capote used.
He called it the nonfiction novel. And that term
is the key to everything. Before Capote, true
crime was usually written either as a dry, journalistic
report or a sensationalist shout from the tabloids.
Right, one extreme or the other. Capote applied
the tools of high fiction internal monologue,
setting the scene with rich detail, extensive
dialogue, nonlinear storytelling, to a brutal,
senseless murder of the Clutter family in Kansas.
He made the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickok,
into fully realized literary characters. He did.
And that brings up the first major ethical friction
that we really need to highlight in this whole
story. Capote didn't just report on them. He
befriended them. He spent years getting inside
their heads. And the criticism, which has only
grown louder over the years, is that he manipulated
them, or at the very least manipulated the narrative,
to get a better ending for his book. The ending
of the book, the execution of Smith and Hickok,
was the ending Capote needed for his masterpiece.
There's a lot of documentation to suggest that
he was desperate for the execution to happen
so he could finally finish the book. It's chilling.
It is. It established a very dangerous precedent.
The writer who is more invested in the story
arc than in the human reality of the situation.
But commercially, it was a blockbuster. It proved
to publishers that true crime could win awards
and make millions of dollars. And frankly, it
paved the way for the specific obsession that
completely dominates the genre today. The serial
killer. The serial killer. This is the monster
subgenre, and statistically it is a complete
and total anomaly. Murder makes up less than
20 % of reported violent crime, and serial murder
is a fraction of a percent of that. It's vanishingly
rare. Vanishingly. But if you look at the bookshelves,
serial killers make up about 40 % of the tales.
So we are actively ignoring the 99 % of crime,
the domestic assaults, the gang violence, the
robberies. To focus on the Hannibal Lecters of
the world. Because the serial killer represents
the other, the unknowable evil. It's a much more
compelling story. Books like Helter Skelter,
which remains the best -selling true crime book
of all time. Still to this day. Still. Or Ann
Rule's The Stranger Beside Me about Ted Bundy.
These books aren't just about crime. They are
about the terror that the person sitting next
to you, the charming, handsome guy, might be
a monster. In Rule's case, it's particularly
wild because she knew Bundy. She worked at a
suicide crisis center with him. Right next to
him. That intimacy is what sold the book. It's
that proximity to evil. Exactly. But while we
have these high watermarks of literature like
Capote and Rule, the success of the genre also
birthed something much, much cheaper. The instant
book. The airport paperback. You know, the look
-black cover, bold red font, usually titled Death
in the Suburbs or... the freeway killer. Those
are the ones. They were churned out by journalists
immediately after a high -profile verdict. And
the criticism here is, I think, very valid. They're
formulaic. They treat the tragedy as a commodity
to be harvested as quickly as possible. There's
no De Quincey -style reflection here. None at
all. It's just content. And content demands visuals.
As we move into our next section, the technology
shifts and the audience follows right along.
We have to talk about how the camera completely
changed the equation. Visual media changes the
intimacy. Reading about a crime is one thing.
Seeing the crime scene photos or the tearful
confession on camera, that's another thing entirely.
And the landmark here is, without question, Errol
Morris' documentary The Thin Blue Line in 1988.
I rewatched parts of this recently for our prep,
and what really stands out is how stylized it
is. The music by Philip Glass, the lighting.
But the big controversy at the time was his use
of reenactments. It was scandalous in the documentary
world back then. The purists argued that by hiring
actors to play out the shooting of the police
officer, Morris was fabricating truth. He was
making a movie. not a documentary. That was the
argument. But Morris's point was that the official
truth, the police report, the court verdict was
a lie. He used the reenactments to show the contradictions
of the evidence to show how different witness
accounts just didn't add up. It worked. I mean,
it actually worked. The film helped get Randall
Adams released from prison. It did. It proved
that a stylized, even subjective retelling could
sometimes get closer to the real truth than a
dry recitation of so -called facts. It legitimized
the cinematic true crime documentary. But while
the US was having these high -minded debates
about documentary ethics, Hong Kong cinema in
the 90s was taking things in a... Well, a very
different direction. A much more visceral direction.
The Hong Kong boom was fascinating. You had the
rise of the category three films, which is their
rating for 18 plus content. So extremely graphic.
Extremely. Films like The Untold Story or Dr.
Lamb. These were based on real horrific serial
killers, but they were filmed with the aesthetic
of a full blown slasher movie. Gory, sensational
and incredibly popular. And then you also add
more mainstream films like Crime Story with Jackie
Chan. Right, which was based on a real life kidnapping
of a businessman. So you see this huge range
from the arthouse exploitation film to the big
budget action movie, all drawing from the same
well of real crime. It's interesting because
it shows that this fascination isn't just a Western
phenomenon. It's global. But back in the U .S.,
the real shift in our consumption habits comes
with cable TV, the 24 -hour news and entertainment
cycle. The networks realized that crime is the
ultimate sticky content. You just can't look
away. Investigation Discovery, or ID, built an
entire empire on this principle. But the most
telling business move for me was the network
Oxygen. I remember when Oxygen launched. It was
Oprah's network, wasn't it? It was supposed to
be lifestyle, yoga. Talk shows aimed at women.
Exactly. It was empowerment television. But the
executives looked at the data and they saw this
strange anomaly. What was it? The reruns of their
one or two crime shows, like Snapped, were absolutely
crushing the yoga shows in the ratings. It wasn't
even close. So they followed the money. They
followed the money. In 2017, they completely
pivoted. They rebranded the entire Oxygen network
as a specialized true crime network. They stopped
trying to tell women how to live their best lives
and started showing them in detail how lives
end. Wow. That pivot speaks volumes about the
audience, which we are definitely going to get
to. But the final evolution of the visual medium
before we get to audio is streaming. Netflix,
and Making a Murderer in 2015. Making a Murderer
introduced the binge. Before that, you'd watch
a 60 -minute episode of Dateline or 48 Hours
and you'd go to bed. Right, it was appointment
viewing. Making a Murderer gave you 10 hours
of a dense, complex, legal nightmare and said,
good luck stopping. It turned a murder trial
into an immersive weekend event. It proved that
audiences had the attention span for the minutia
of the justice system as long as it was packaged
correctly. Which is the perfect setup for the
medium that I think really defines the current
moment. The podcast. We are in the golden age
of audio and it is absolutely built on the back
of crime. It really is. And we can pinpoint the
exact moment it happened. October 2014. The launch
of Serial. We all know the numbers. Five million
downloads faster than any podcast before it.
Hundreds of millions since. It was a cultural
phenomenon. But looking at the critique of Serial,
what made it so dissonant wasn't just the case
of Adnan Syed. It was the storytelling mode.
That's the key innovation. Sarah Koenig wasn't
a voice of God narrator telling you the definitive
answer. No, not at all. She was transparent about
her own uncertainty. She would say, I don't know
what to think about this. Or I flip -flopped
on this three times today. That intimacy, that
vulnerability made the listener feel like a co
-investigator. It shifted the dynamic from a
lecture to a conversation. And that just unlocked
the floodgates. The floodgates opened. Suddenly
you had my favorite murder, Dirty John, up and
vanished. The whole landscape changed overnight.
And Apple Podcasts eventually had to create a
dedicated true crime category in 2019. They had
to because the shows were clogging up every other
category, history, news, even comedy. But here's
where we need to look at the demographics, because
the stereotype of the gore hound might be a teenage
boy in his bedroom. But the reality of the true
crime podcast listener is very, very different.
It is overwhelmingly female. The 2019 data showed
that 73 percent of true crime podcast consumers
in the U .S. are women. 73 percent. That is not
a margin of error. That is a complete domination
of the audience. So we have to ask the uncomfortable
but necessary question. Why are women primarily
the ones consuming stories about the brutalization
of women? There are two main competing theories
here, and they're both pretty compelling. The
first is what's called the survival instinct
theory. OK. This is supported by research from
psychologists like Amanda Vickery. She found
that women are specifically drawn to stories
that contain survival information. So it's educational,
like here is how to spot the red flags in a first
date or here is how to escape from the trunk
of a car. Essentially, yes. It's a form of rehearsal.
The argument is that women, on average, live
with a higher baseline fear of sexual and physical
violence than men do. Listening to these stories
is a way of simulating the worst case scenario
and mentally preparing for it from a safe distance.
So it's not just entertainment. It's a strategy.
It's a kind of grim precautionary strategy. But
I have to push back on that slightly. Is it actually
making anyone safer? Or is it just a form of
anxiety management? Because the other theory
is purely physiological. It's the adrenaline
junkie theory. That's the flip side of the coin.
The fear response. When you hear these horrific
stories, our bodies release adrenaline and cortisol.
The fight or flight response kicks in. Right.
But because we are safe on our couch or in our
car, we get the chemical rush without the actual
danger. It's a high, similar to riding a roller
coaster or watching a horror movie. And podcasts
are perfectly built for that. They're perfectly
engineered to deliver these hits. They're serialized.
They use sound design, cliffhangers, and dramatic
music to heighten tension. They are designed
to give you these dopamine hits over and over
again. So it's either a survival guide or a horror
movie for your ears, or more likely some combination
of both. I think that's right. But this brings
us to the most critical part of this whole deep
dive. We aren't just consuming this stuff in
a vacuum. The true crime industrial complex has
real world consequences. We need to talk about
the impact. The impact is profound and it really
cuts both ways. On the positive side, you have
the citizen detective phenomenon. We have the
incredible case of the jinx on HBO. The Robert
Durst hot mic moment. The hot mic moment. Killed
them all, of course. He muttered it to himself
in the bathroom, not realizing his microphone
was still hot. The filmmakers discovered that
audio. It led directly to his arrest. You can't
get a clearer line than that from entertainment
product to justice served. You can't. And you
also found that stat from Australia regarding
Crimestoppers that really highlights this. Yes.
Between 2012 and 2017, the number of reports
to Crimestoppers in Australia that led to actual
charges being pressed. Doubled. Doubled. And
authorities there directly attributed this spike
to the massive popularity of true crime podcasts.
People are learning to pay attention. They are
looking at the details in their own communities.
They're realizing that they might hold a piece
of the puzzle. That is the best case scenario.
Yeah. The audience becomes an army of witnesses.
It is. But there is a much, much darker side
to this. We have to talk about the Nebraska study
and what sociologists call the mean world syndrome.
This is where that educational argument starts
to fall apart. The 2011 study out of Nebraska
found a direct, undeniable correlation. People
who consume large amounts of nonfiction crime
shows have a significantly increased fear of
being a victim themselves. So even if crime rates
are historically low, which they are in many
places, the heavy listener feels like they're
living in a war zone. Exactly. Their perception
of reality becomes distorted by the content they
consume. Their world feels meaner, more dangerous
than it actually is. And this isn't just a personal
anxiety issue, is it? It translates directly
into politics. It does. The study found that
these same viewers had increased support for
the death penalty. Wow. And at the same time,
decreased support for the criminal justice system's
due process. They were willing to trade civil
liberties for a perceived sense of security.
That is massive. It means this entertainment
is actually shifting the electorate toward more
punitive, more aggressive policies. We are literally
voting based on the fear that the podcast gave
us. And that leads directly to the ethical criticism
of trash culture. Are we, as consumers, complicit
in the exploitation of real people's worst moments.
I think about the families constantly when I
engage with this stuff. The author Jack Miles
writes about this, the concept of narrative imposition.
Imagine being a mother whose child was murdered.
That is the worst moment of your life. And then
10 years later, a podcaster decides to make it
into a six -part series with, you know, catchy
theme music and advertisements for mattresses
in the middle. It's re -traumatization for profit.
The victims' families don't get a royalty check.
They don't get editorial control. They just get
their deepest trauma dredged up for our amusement,
for our commute. There is a growing movement
of victims' families asking for the right to
be forgotten. But the public's appetite is just
voracious. It seems to be. And the final layer
of this distortion, and maybe the most insidious,
is the issue of truth itself. We call it true
crime, but how true is it really? We mentioned
Capote maybe fixing his ending, but this happens
constantly. It's called narrative shaping. A
good story needs a clear villain. A pure victim
and a satisfying climax. Real life is messy,
it's boring, and it's often unresolved. So writers
and producers, they smooth the edges. They smooth
the edges. They might leave out exculpatory evidence
because it ruins the flow of the episode. The
author Christiana Gregorio analyzed this. She
calls it tabloidization. You can read two different
books about the exact same killer. And the facts
prevented will be completely different because
the authors are prioritizing the drama. over
the historical record. So we are. Potentially
judging real people who are in real prisons based
on a fictionalized version of their worst actions.
We are. We are turning the justice system into
fan fiction. That is a very sobering thought
to land on. We've traced this incredible arc
from the 17th century moral pamphlets of London
and the fraud stories of the Ming Dynasty. Through
the pulp magazines, the literary reinvention
by Capote, the visual explosion of cable TV.
All the way to the podcast in your earbuds right
now. It's a journey that shows one constant.
We are obsessed with the dark side of human nature.
We always have been. But the so what? Here, the
big takeaway is that this obsession isn't benign.
It isn't passive. It shapes how we see our neighbors.
It shapes how we vote. And it shapes our very
concept of justice. It drives tips to the police,
but it also drives paranoia in the voting booth.
And it leaves us, the listeners, with the responsibility
to... ask how we are consuming it are we bearing
witness to a tragedy or are we just gawking at
the car crash that's the question and that is
the question i want to leave you with if the
authors and podcasters we love are blurring the
lines between journalism and horror fiction just
to keep us hooked Are we actually learning anything
about crime? Or are we just participating in
a sophisticated form of voyeurism that treats
real lives as props for our own adrenaline fix?
And if we enjoy it? And if we enjoy it, if we
are sitting here waiting for that next episode
to drop, does that make us complicit in the trash
culture that critics warn about? It's an uncomfortable
reflection, but a very necessary one. Something
to mull over before you hit play on the next
episode? Thanks for diving in with us. See you
next time.