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'Yogurt Shop Murders' Crew on Big Break in the Case · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: True crime is I mean, arguably the most prositable, highly
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: watched genre in television today, oh, without a doubt, right, Like,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: it practically keeps entire streaming platforms afloat. It drives massive
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: subscriber retention.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: A foundational pillar at this point exactly.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: So, why has the Hollywood establishment essentially banned it from
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: winning major awards?
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: That is the million dollar question, isn't it?
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: It really is? And to figure that out, we have
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: to look at a director who just got honestly the
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: most terrifying reality shattering phone call of her career. Oh man, Yeah, okay,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: let's unpack this. We are diving into the aftermath of
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the HBO Docusaries, the Yogurt Shop.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Murders, really heavy piece of media, so.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Heavy, and we're talking about a thirty five year old
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: cold case here, the nineteen ninety one murders of four
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: teenage girls in Austin, Texas, a horrific, you know, just
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: community shattering event that went completely unsolved for.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Decades, decades of just nothing.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So director Margaret Brown spends years making a four
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: part series about well, the profound lack of closure. The
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: show airs, it's over, and then out of.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Nowhere, out of absolutely nowhere, she.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Gets a call saying they found the killer.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's wild.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: So our mission today for you, the listener, is to
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: guide you through this frantic reality of true crime filmmaking
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: when real life literally crashes the party.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: And it does crash it hard, right.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: And we also want to figure out why the television
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Academy just hates this genre that we all binge.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: And really understand the raw, primal impact these stories have
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: on the human.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Psyche exactly because it is the ultimate rug.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Bull it really is right. And to properly orient ourselves
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: for this deep dive, I want you, the listener, to
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: look at the digital backdrop behind me.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see it changing.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is initializing as this stark, dimly lit police
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: evidence room elks so bleak it's meant to be.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: I want you to picture those towering, dusty cardboard boxes,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: the harsh fluorescent overheads cast those long, heavy shadows.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like the ones that buzz slightly.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Exactly, that annoying constant hum. This space represents the physical
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: crushing weight of a cold case.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: It really does feel heavy.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Think about what thirty five years of accumulated files dead
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: ends and just unresolved grief actually looks like in a
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: physical room.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of boxes.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly somber, it's analytical. That is the baseline reality
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: of this story, and it's the exact atmosphere Margaret Brown
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: spent years marinating in to build her documentary.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: It's the perfect visual really, because you spend years in
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: that metaphorical dusty room carefully constructing a narrative about how
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: some questions simply never get answered.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Right, You build a thesis around the unknown.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then reality just kicks the door in, kicks
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: it right off the hinges. I really want to understand
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: the sheer, frantic mechanics of what happens next, because it's
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: not like she had months to plan a follow up episode.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Oh no, not at all. Reality doesn't care about your
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: production schedule.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: So how fast did this all? I'll actually go down.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: The timeline is almost unfathomable from a production standpoint. Margaret
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Brown had exactly two days.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Notice, wait, two days, two days for eight hours.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: That's insane, It's completely insane. The lead investigator on the
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: cold case, a detective named Dan Jackson, contacted her team
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: to give them a heads up. Okay, he basically said,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: we have a definitive DNA match.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Wow, after thirty five years.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Right, He says, the Austin case is breaking wide open
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: and the police department is holding a press conference in
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: forty eight hours.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: How do you even begin to pivot an entire film
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: production in forty eight hours? I mean, she was completely
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: done with the project.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Right, entirely moved on. She was literally on the precipice
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: of starting a completely different project.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Man.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: So she has to instantly put the brakes on her
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: new film, get her producer, Alicehinty, on the phone, and
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: just figure out how to capture history.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Just scramble everything exactly.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: She gets on a plane on a Saturday, flies down
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: to Austin, Texas, and has to menest a film crew
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: out of thin air to start rolling cameras by Monday morning.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: That sounds like trying to build an airplane while you
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: are already in free fall.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: That is a very accurate way to describe it.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about it. If you're shooting scripted television,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: every single frame is meticulously planned, Oh totally.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: You have storyboards, Yeah, you have location scouts, you block
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: the actors, You spend hours lighting a single room just
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: to get the perfect shadow.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: And this is the exact opposite of that.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Right, It's an absolute logistical nightmare.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I would imagine it is documentary filmmaking, especially when it
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: intersects with breaking news. It's a high wire.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Act, no safety net.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Zero. You don't have time to secure permits. You don't
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: have time to interview local cream members to see if
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: they're a good fit.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: You're just taking whoever's available.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You are frantically calling local camera houses on a Sunday,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: begging for rental.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Gear on a Sunday. Good luck with that.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Right Brown is quoted saying we have to rally.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Now. I love that quote.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: It perfectly encapsulates the adrenaline you are capturing history as
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: it violently leaks out into the present. Wow, you cannot
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: say hold on, the lighting is bad or you know,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: can the detective repeat that huge announcement?
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Right? They're not doing another take for you.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Once the moment happens, it evaporates forever. That makes complete
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: sense regarding the logistics, but it raises a huge question
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: for me creatively, Okay, what's that? Does this kind of lightning, fast,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: chaotic regrouping inherently change the actual cinematic quality of the documentary.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, Because if you spend four episodes building this slow, deliberate,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: beautiful piece of art, which she did right, and then
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: suddenly you're doing run and gun shooting in a police precinct,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, doesn't it just turn into raw, urgent journalism.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how that logistical scramble creates an
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: incredible thematic whiplash.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Well, clash, that's the perfect word for it.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: You have to remember the thesis of the original four
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: part series. It was deliberately constructed around the agonizing lack
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: of closure, yeah, the not knowing. Aesthetically, it was a meditative,
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: atmospheric exploration of grief.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Lots of lingering shots, I bet exactly.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: The pacing was slow, mimicking the agonizing drag of thirty
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: five years without answers.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Oh that's smart.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: But then suddenly episode five has to happen, and you're right,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: it is a one hundred and eighty degree turn.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: It has to be.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: It shifts from a reflective, almost poetic meditation into the urgent,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: chaotic reality of a police press conference.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: The viewer has to feel that whiplash too.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, we definitely, do you.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Spend four hours completely immersed in this melancholic exploration of ambiguity.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: The camera lingers on empty rooms and sad faces, setting
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: that mood, and then boom, the final chapter hits. And
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: it's probably shaky handheld cameras, harsh fluorescent lights, and just
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: the jarring procedural reality of the present day.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: It's like watching an art house indie film that suddenly
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: turns into a live CNN bro.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: But that collision is precisely what makes it so resonant.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Really, you think the stylistic clash works.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: I do. The audience is forced to experience the exact
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: same jarring disruption that the families and the filmmakers experienced.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, I didn't think about it like that.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The unvarnished, ugly reality of the present violently intrudes
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: on the carefully curated memory of the past.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: It rips you right out of the mood, It.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Strips away all that cinematic polish you mentioned, and leaves
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: you with the raw, exposed nerve of breaking news.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: And while Margaret Brown and her crew were scrambling for
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: a single weekend to capture this breakthrough, we really have
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: to zoom out here.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: We do.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: We have to remember the families of those.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Four girls, the real victims here, right.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Because they have been scrambling emotionally for over.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Three decades, thirty five years, thirty.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Five years of waiting for the other shoe to drop,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: which brings us to the actual revelation, the big break. Yeah,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: because when the cameras finally started rolling at that press conference,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: they got a name. They did, but they absolutely did
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: not get what we would traditionally call a satisfying ending.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: No, no, they didn't. What happened, well, the DNA match
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: conclusively linked the nineteen ninety one crime to a known
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: serial killer named Robert Brascher's.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they have a guy.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: So on one level, the families finally had a definitive answer.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: The dark void of the unknown finally had a face.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Right, they can point to someone.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: But the tragic caveat to this revelation is that Robert
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Brashers died by suicide in nineteen ninety nine.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, so he's been dead for twenty five years.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and the ripple effects of that are.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Immense, I can't even imagine.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, the DNA exonerated four specific men who had spent
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: the last twenty years fighting false accusations related to these
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: exact murders.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Wait, hold on, let's unpack the situation with those four
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: men first.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: It's a huge part of the.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Story because that is a staggering detail. Some investigators had
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: previously targeted them, and they spent two decades trying to
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: clear their names.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, for those four men, this DNA match to a
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: dead serial killer is absolute, definitive exoneration. Finally, the cloud
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: of suspicion that ruined their reputations, drain their finances, and
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: basically derailed their lives is finally lifted.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: But imagine the psychological weight of that.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: It's crushing.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: You lose twenty years of your life, two decades of
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: prime earning, years of relationships of societal trust, all to
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: a false narrative.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: It's completely unfair.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: And when the truth finally arrives, it doesn't arrive with
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: a dramatic courtroom vindication where you get to look at
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: your accusers in the eye.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: No, it doesn't.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: It arrives quietly via a posthumous DNA match to.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: A ghost, to a ghost that is exactly what he is.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: And what about the families of the victims? I really
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: have to push back on something here.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Sure, go for it.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: When a case gets solved, people always throw around the
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: word closure.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: They love that word.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: They say, finally the families have closure. But with the
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: actual killer having escaped any form of just by dying
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: twenty five years ago. I mean, is this actually closure?
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: It's highly debatable because to me it sounds like a
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: completely different, maybe even more frustrating kind of haunting. How
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: so you get the who, but you are permanently denied
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the why.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: I think we need to carefully define what closure actually
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: means in the context of extreme trauma.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's define it.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: You are arguing that without justice, there is no closure.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my instinct.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: And it's true that traditional justice is entirely impossible here right,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: there's no trial, there is no purp walk. The families
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: will never get the chance to stand in a courtroom,
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: look Robert Brasher's in the eye and deliver a victim impact.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Statement, which is such a huge part of the healing
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: process for a lot of people.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, the target of their immense anger simply doesn't exist anymore.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You've been directing this massive, heavy grief and rage
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: into a void for decades literal void, and the exact
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: moment you finally get a face to project that rage on,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: you realize the guy checked out in nineteen ninety nine.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: He took the easy way out.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: So you can't punish him. You can't ask him why
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: he chose that yogurt shop on that specific night.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: You get nothing from him.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: It's maddening.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: But I would argue that closure and justice are not
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: always the same thing.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Really, how are they different?
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: For these families, Closure in a psychological sense is the
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: termination of ambiguity.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: The termination of ambiguity.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: For thirty five years, these families had to look at
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: every stranger in the grocery store, every neighbor, and wonder
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: was it you?
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's shilling.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: They had to live with the agonizing possibility that the
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: killer was still out there, living a happy.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Life, just walking among them.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: The DNA match provides an endpoint to that specific torture.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: It kills the mystery exactly.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: The mystery is dead. So yes, it is an abrupt,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: hollow termination.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: It's deeply unsatisfying.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: It completely defies the neat narrative arcs we expect from
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: television where the bad guy is handcuffed in the final act.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: We're so conditioned to expect that.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: But it is an ending.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: That's a really fair distinction, the termination of ambiguity. But man,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: it's so messy.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: It is incredibly messy.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: There's no Catharsis. You just get a fact and then
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: you have to go home and live with it.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: A cold, hard fact.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Well, you know that lack of a neat narrative arc,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: that incredibly messy, unsatisfying reality. That is exactly why true
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: crime is so compelling to watch. Oh, we are obsessed
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: with the chaotic realities of human nature that defy neat categorization.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: We truly are. The viewership numbers for docusriies like this
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: are consistently astronomical.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: They're huge.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: The genre is a foundational pillar for modern media consumption.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Which makes this next part completely bizarre to me.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: The awards situation.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Yes, if audiences are devouring this genre, if true crime
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: is practically printing money for studios, why does the Hollywood
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: establishment refuse to reward it.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: It's so hypocritical.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: We're talking about the awards circuit here, specifically the Emmys
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: and the Television Academy, the big leagues, right, Why are
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: they allergic to giving crophies to the shows that everyone
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: is actually watching.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: It is the great true crime paradox to paradox. There
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: is a massive gaping disconnect between cultural footprint and critical acclaim.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: How bad is the disconnect?
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: To put this in perspective, the yogurt Chot Murders is
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: only the fifth murder focused docuseriies to be nominated for
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: a major nonfiction series award in an entire decade.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Five five in ten years, in ten years.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Just think about your own streaming habits.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Right, I can scroll past five new true crime series
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: on Netflix in about.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Ten seconds easily. They drop every week.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: What were the other four that actually broke through?
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Those is very short?
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing Making a Murderer as one.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, you had Making a Murderer back in twenty sixteen,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Classic The Keepers in twenty seventeen. Oh, that was so dark,
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Tiger King in twenty.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Twenty, which was a cultural phenomenon.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and The Jinks Part two recently.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that's a rare company.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: To understand why the Television Academy operates this way, you
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: have to look at the mechanics of voting bodies. What
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: do you mean, Well, the documentary and nonfiction categories have
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: historically shown a massive preference for sweeping nature, science, or
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: lifestyle documentaries. UH think of shows like Planet Earth through
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: one hundred foot Ways.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Shows that make you feel good about the world exact.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: They're visually magnificent, onspiring, but they're incredibly safe.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Precisely, voting for Planet Earth makes a Television Academy member
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: feel like they are rewarding high art and environmentalism.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: It makes them feel smart.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Yes. Furthermore, in recent years, the Academy's preference has skewed
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: heavily toward celebrity focused biographical.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Series like the pr Pieces.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Basically, you see nominations for projects about beloved or highly
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: visible figures Martin Scorsese, Rafael the Doll, Sean Diddy Combs.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: These are projects that celebrate legacy talent or pop culture.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: But traditional gritty, murder centric true crime yeah, is almost
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: uniformly ignored.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I have an analogy for this, and I want to
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: see if it tracks for you.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Let's here.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: The Television Academy's relationship with true crime feels exactly like
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: a prestigious five star Michelin rated.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Restaurant Okay Fancy.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: That is secretly serving greasy fast food out the back
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: door in the alley. Well, that's good, right, because every
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: single person in the building is consuming the fast food.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Everyone the immense revenue from the fast food is paying
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: the entire staff's salaries and keeping the lights on in
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the building.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: The industry relies on it.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: But absolutely no one wants to print the fast food
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: on the official Golden Boss menu out front.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: God forbid, It's.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Considered too lowbrow to acknowledge publicly, even though it's what
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: everyone is actually eating.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: That is an exceptionally accurate breakdown of the industry.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Mechanics just feel so snobby.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: It's the rigid separation of public prestige and private consumption.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Academy voters are human beings. True, when they fill out
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: a ballot, they are off projecting an idealized version of
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: their own tastes.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Oh for sure, Look how cultured I am.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: They want to celebrate the craft of filmmaking, but they
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: struggle with the morality of celebrating a commercial product built
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: entirely out of someone else's real life tragedy. Fairpoint, it
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: feels unsanely to give a shiny gold statue to a
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: show about four murdered teenagers.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting though, Yeah, why did
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: the yogurt shop murders manage to break through that exact snobbery?
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: That is the big mystery here.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Margaret Brown herself is apparently hesitant to declare exactly why
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: her show succeeded where hundreds of others failed. She's being modest,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: but there is a massive glowing detail here. Emma Stone
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: serves as an executive producer on this docusaries.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: That is a critical variable that cannot be overstated.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: It's huge right when you.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Are analyzing how the Hollywood machine operates, the packaging of
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: a project is frequently just as important as the content itself.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Packaging is everything, especially when it comes.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: To awards visibility. Let's clarify the cross over here. Yeah,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: explain that Emma Stone is an OSCAR winning a List actor.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: She's an absolute darling of the Academy of Motion Picture
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Arts and Sciences.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Everyone loves her.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: By taking her immense film prestige and bringing it over
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: to the television side, she provides a massive halo effect.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: It's a permission slip exactly.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Her attachment to the project immediately signals to television Academy
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: voters that this isn't just another pulpy, sensationalist, churn and
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: burn serial killer show.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: It says this is art.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: It gives the project a veneer of undeniable respectability. It
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: allows voters to say, well, if Emma Stone is producing this,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: it must be an elevated piece of work, not just
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: based true crime. She essentially gave voters the psychological permission
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: they needed to bypass their inherent genre bias.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: I want to shift the visual to match this exact disconnect.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's do it.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Look at the digital backdrop now for you listening, we're
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: transitioning away from that dusty star dark police evidence room.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, yeah.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Now it's a glitzy, blindingly bright, entirely sterile Hollywood red carpet.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: The flashbulbs are intent.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Velvet ropes, flashing cameras, people in tuxedos. It perfectly represents
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: the jarring dissonance we're talking about.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: You have a director who has spent years excavating the darkest, grittiest,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: most agonizing realities of human suffering, real pain, and then
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: to get the industry to validate her work, she has
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: to put on a gown walk down this sterile red
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: carpet and politely smile for cameras.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: The visual contrast is almost grotesque, isn't it. It is
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: the sterile, manufactured gleam of the red carpet against the
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: backdrop of a thirty five year old quadruple homicide.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: It makes my stomach turn a little bit.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: It highlights exactly why the voting body is so uncomfortable.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: But you know, the involvement of Emma Stone isn't the
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: only reason it succeeded.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: No, it's not just the packaging.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: It seems like Margaret Brown fundamentally approached their recipe differently
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: than the standard true crime formula.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: She absolutely did, and this brings us to the core
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: of her directorial intent.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: What was her strategy?
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Well, Brown didn't set out to make a typical cliffhanger
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: driven hit. In fact, she admits something quite shocking for
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: a genre director. What's that she didn't sit down and
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: watch a bunch of true crime classics before making this? Wait, really,
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: she went in completely blind to the genre's standard playbook.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: That is wild to me.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: That's definitely unconventional.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: If I'm hired to direct a sci fi movie, I'm
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: watching Alien and Blade Runner and Star Wars I want
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: to know the language.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: It's the standard operating procedure. You study the pacing, the tropes,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: the expected beats.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: You have to know the rules to break them.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Right. Usually yes, But Brown explicitly bypassed all of that.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Why her goal wasn't just to solve a mystery or
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: to lay out a sterile timeline of police errors.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Which is what most of them do, right.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Her goal was to use a true crime format as
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: a vehicle to explore how human beings process green over decades.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's heavy.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: She has this profound quote where she calls grief primal
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: simply because, as she puts it, we all die.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: She wanted to see if she could allow people to
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: connect with her own personal, everyday experiences of grief through
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: the extreme lens of this specific genre.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: I love how you described this in your notes earlier. Actually,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, you called it a trojan horse approach.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: It is the perfect metaphor can you expand on that
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: if we connect this to the bigger picture. The fundamental
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: flaw of the true crime genre is that it almost
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: always treats victims as mere plot devices.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Ooh, that's true, though.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: The victim is just the inciting incident that forces the
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: detective to go on a journey, or they're just a
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: prop exactly, or worse, the victim is just a puzzle
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: piece for the audience to play with.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: On Reddit, the armchair detectives.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: By refusing to play by those rules, Brown recentered the emotional.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Fallout the Trojan Horse.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, the Trojan Horse is the true crime packaging promise
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: of a mystery.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: That's what gets them to click play.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Right, But the actual soldiers hidden inside the horse are
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: the inescapable realities of grief, mortality, and human endurance.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: She tricks you into feeling something real.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: She forces the viewer to confront the agonizing permanence of loss,
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: rather than getting distracted by the mechanics of the murder.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Itself, by not studying the greats of the genre, by
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: not trying to emulate the deliberate withholding of clues or
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: using those you know, sinister music stings at the end
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: of an episode to manufacture a cheap cliffhanger.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: The done done moments.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, did she accidentally create a much more authentic piece
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: of art?
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I feel like sometimes ignorance of the rules is the
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: only way you can actually invent a new game.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: That is a brilliant way to phrase it. Ignorance as
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: an artistic asset. Right, when you steep yourself in the
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: conventions of a genre, you unconsciously start to mimic its rhythms.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: You can't help it.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: You started thinking, Okay, we are at minute forty five,
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: episode two. We need a massive plot twist to keep
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: them watching.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: We need a red herring.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Right. Brown wasn't thinking about plot twists. She was thinking
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: about emotional endurance.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Because she didn't know the standard architecture. She had to
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: build her own structure from scratch.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: And she built it out of empathy rather than suspense.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: And clearly that raw emotional authenticity didn't just resonate with
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: television critics, not at all. It reached a massive, deeply
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: invested global audience in highly unexpected places, very unexpected. And
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: when we say a massive global audience, we mean it
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: traveled to places you would never expect. An exploration of
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: local Austin, Texas grief to go.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: It's a fascinating testament to the universality of her approach.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Give it's an example.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: Brown mentions that she was traveling at eastern Europe taking
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: an uber okay, and what is her driver passionately talking
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: about the yogurt.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Shop murders in eastern Europe?
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: A driver halfway across the world, deeply invested in the
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: trauma of Texas community. That is why to Brown quite
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: a bit of convincing to make the driver believe she
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: was actually the director.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: I bet yeah, I made that, Sure you dead, lady.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: But the Uber story isn't even the most striking example
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: of where she's found her audience.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: No, the detail that really stuck with me is the airplanes.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: The airplanes.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, fans are constantly taking photos over other people's shoulders
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: on Delta flights and sending them to Brown.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: It's so intrusive, but so fascinating.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Photos of passengers sitting in the middle seat watching this
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: intense docuseries on those tiny little seatback screens and.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Just weeping, openly, crying, openly.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Crying on a commercial flight over a murder documentary.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Let's dissect the psychology of that specific reaction, because it
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: is incredibly revealing.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Let's do it. Why are they crying?
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Why are people having visible emotional breakdowns in the middle
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: of a crowded commercial airline cabin.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: It's such a weird place to cry.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Your planes are liminal spaces. We are exhausted, our defenses
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: are down, and we are surrounded.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: By the altitude does something to you?
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: I swear it really does, But we have to link
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: it back to that trojan horse of grief.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Right right.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: If this show was merely a sterile procedural about DNA typing,
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: timeline analysis, and police bureaucracy.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Like forensic files, exactly, you might.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Be intellectually intrigued, but you wouldn't be weeping into your
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: complimentary pressols.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Definitely not.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: They are crying because Brown successfully bypassed their intellectual defenses.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: She got inside the horse.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: They are connecting with their own suppressed grief, their own
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: unvocalized fears of mortality, all projected onto the suffering of
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: these families.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: It's incredibly powerful. But there's another deeply fascinating psychological reaction
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: detailed here. The gender divide, yes, a starkly gendered divide,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: and how people are consuming this show.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: This is so interesting.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Brown noticed that among her female friends there are two.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Extreme polls, complete opposites.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: They either obsessively binge the entire series the second it
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: drops yep, or they absolutely fundamentally refuse to watch a
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: single minute of it.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: There is almost zero middle ground, and.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Even Brown herself admits the subject matter got to her
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: so much that, for the first time in her life,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: she had a home alarm system installed.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: This polarized reaction among women is incredibly revealing.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: What does it tell us?
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: It actually ties directly back into our earlier conversation about
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: why the Television Academy historically shuns this genre.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Oh really? How so?
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question. Is the Academy's lack of
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: true crime nominations not actually rooted in high brow artistic snobbery,
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: but in genuine, visceral fear.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Wait you think the voters are just scared?
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Do voters simply refuse to press play on something that
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: genuinely terrifies them? I mean, maybe we see this historical
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: struggle with the horror genre in television as well.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: That's true horror never wins anything.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Look at the current success of a show like Widow's Bay.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: I love Widow's Bag.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: It's great, but it's widely believed that it only managed
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: to break through to the Academy's genre bias because it
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: uses strong, campy comic elements to.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Dilute the terror It makes it palatable.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: It gives the audience a pressure release.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Valve, and true crime doesn't have that.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: True crime doesn't have a comedic safety valve. It is pure, unfiltered,
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: real world dread.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Let's switch up the visual to match this vibe for
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: the listener. Look at the digital backdrop. Now, it's transitioning
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: from that bright, sterile Hollywood red carpet into a blurred,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: slightly shaky view of an airplane cabin.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, I see it.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: The overhead lights are dimmed and the glowing seatback screens
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: are illuminating the dark cabin.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: It's a very specific atmosphere.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: This emphasizes exactly what we're talking about. The bizarre juxtaposition
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: of human beings consuming the most intimate, horrific media imaginable
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and a highly vulnerable public space miles above the earth.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Surreal.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: But this raises a huge question for me on why
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: is it that women, who statistically speaking, make up the
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: vast majority of the true crime audience. That's a verified statistic, yes, right,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Why are they also the ones having these extreme polarized reactions.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: It's a great question.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Why are they either devouring it entirely or putting up
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: an impenetrable boundary against it.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: It speaks directly to the sociology of fear.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: The sociology of fear for many women navigating the physical
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: world involves a baseline level of situational awareness regarding personal
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: safety that many men simply do not have to consider
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: on a daily basis.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: That is a very sad but true reality.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: True crime. For the subset of women who obsessively binge,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: it often functions as a subconscious form of exposure.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Therapy Wow exposure therapy.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Or even a survival manual. They're studying the mechanics of
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: predation from a safe distance.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: So they're taking notes.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Basically mentally, they're asking what did the victim do right
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: before the attack? How did the perpetrator gain access?
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Did they leave a window unlocked?
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: How do he manipulate the situation? How can I ensure
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: this does happened to me?
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Wow, It's like studying film tape before a mabor game,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: but the game is just trying to survive walking to
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: your car at night in a dark parking lot exactly.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: It provides an illusion of control over the uncontrollable, an.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Illusion of control because you can't actually control it.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Right. It turns chaotic violence into a recognizable pattern that
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: can supposedly be avoided.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Well, what about the other group, the ones who won't
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: watch it?
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: For the other subset of women, the ones who put
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: up the hard boundary and refuse to watch even a trailer,
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: their protective mechanism is the exact opposite.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: They just block it out.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: They recognize that their baseline anxiety is already high enough
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: just existing in the world.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: They can eat any more fuel for the fire.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: And they know that marinating in the absolute worst case
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: scenarios will only corrode their peace of mind.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: That makes total sense.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: Both reactions, the obsessive binging and the absolute refusal, are
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: ultimately defense mechanisms against the exact same underlying societal terror.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: That makes total sense. And if the audience is having
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: this visceral, psychologically taxing of a reaction just from passively
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: watching it on a screen for.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: Four hours, imagine making it right.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: The toll on the creator, who has to live inside
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: this material for years must be staggering.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: It breaks people.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: You're not just watching it once, you are editing.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: The footage frame by frame.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the nine to one one calls
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: on a loop to get the audio mix right.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Staring at crime scene photos.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Which brings us perfectly to the final, incredibly candid revelation
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: for Margaret Brown.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Indeed, we have to look at the true cross.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Of the descent, the descent into the dark room.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: After spending years submersing herself in this incredibly dark world,
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: meticulously editing the trauma of others, and then being violently
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: yanked back into it for that sudden, frantic, forty eight
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: hour scramble to film the press conference.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: She just hit a wall, didn't she.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: Brown basically reached her absolute limit. She says, she completely
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: understands white people avoid the genre.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: I don't blame her.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Her final quote in the piece is striking. She says,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: life is too short, and I'd rather make a movie
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: about dogs or crows or love or anything but death.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: And rape, dogs or crows or love. Yeah, that is
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the sound of total, profound, creator burnout.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: She's completely depleted.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for you listening? When
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: we pull back and look at everything we've unpacked today.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: It's not just a story about a cold case suddenly
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: getting a DNA match.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, It's much bigger than that.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: It is a story about the messy, deeply unsatisfying reality
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: of real world justice, where sometimes the bad guy just
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: dies before he can be punished, and innocent men lose
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: twenty years of their lives.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: It's about the hypocrisy of critical acclaim.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Yes and the establishment's deep psychological fear of confronting darkness
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: without a safety net.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: The Michelin restaurant hiding the fast food, And.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Most importantly, it's about the heavy emotional tax paid by
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: the people who are tasked with chronicling human depravity.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: It forces a mirror onto us as consumers.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: I want you, the listener, to really think about your
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: own media. What are you binging When we as an
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: audience drive the metrics that demand endless, constant true crime content,
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: when we make it the most bankable genre in Hollywood,
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: what are we actually asking of.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: These filmmakers We're asking for a lot.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: We are asking directors, producers, and editors to spend years
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: of their lives marinating in the absolute worst days of
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: other people's.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Lives, so bathing in it.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: And we must also ask ourselves what we are demanding
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: of the victim's memories, commodifying their ultimate trategies for our
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: evening entertainment. On a delta flight.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: We are essentially asking these creators to walk into that dark,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: dusty evidence room so we don't have to.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: That's exactly it.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: It's a heavy thought. And as we wrap up this
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: deep dive, I want to leave you with one final
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: provocative thought.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: To Mulov, something extra to chew on.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Something that builds on this entire conversation but wasn't even
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: touched upon in the original sources.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: I like this.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: We talked extensively about how this thirty five year old
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: case was suddenly cracked why open because of advancements in
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: DNA technology the post you mismatch right if true crime
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: documentaries are essentially modern day cautionary tales that allow us
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: to practice our survival instincts from the safety of our couches.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Like we discussed with the exposure.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Therapy, exactly what happens to our collective psyche when real
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: life DNA advancements, genealogical databases, and surveillance technology eventually catch
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: up and solve all the cold cases?
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: Oh wow? When the backlog is empty.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: When technology reaches a point where anonymity is impossible and
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: there are simply no more mysteries left to explore.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: That is a fascinating premise.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Will the true crime genre completely collapse without the distraction
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: of the who do unit?
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: It might have to evolve into something else entirely.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: And if the mystery is gone, will we finally be
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: forced to sit in the quiet and actually confront the.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Grief without the puzzle to distract us.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Think about that the next time you press play.