Latest / True Crime Reactions / CAPTURED Part 1: Monster in Fort Wayne | Case Reaction & Analysis

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CAPTURED Part 1: Monster in Fort Wayne | Case Reaction & Analysis · True Crime Reactions

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: If a single individual were to cause the deaths of
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: twenty people and physically injure hundreds of thousands more, I mean,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the response would be immediate.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Well, absolutely, it would be an international manhunt exactly.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: It'd be overwhelming. You'd expect helicopters in the air, their
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: face on every single screen, wall to wall news coverage.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the entire machinery of justice would just grind to
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: an absolute halt to find them.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Right, But what if what if the perpetrator isn't hiding
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: in some dark alleyway. What if instead they are operating
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: entirely out in the open, armed.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: With a multi million dollar marketing budget.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a massive budget, glowing press releases, and like the
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: implicit trust of the entire medical establishment.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: It completely short circuits are standard definition of danger, honestly.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, we are biologically and culturally conditioned to fear the.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Anomaly, right, stranger in the shadows.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly, the sudden loud noise. We are not conditioned to
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: fear the well at bureaucracy or you know, a legally
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: incorporated entity operating within a respected industry.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: We just trust it, we do.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: When harm comes from a place of systemic authority, our
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: threat detection systems just kind of fail to register it
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: until it's way, way too late.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: And that systemic failure is exactly the terrain we are
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: navigating today. So welcome to the deep dies, glad to
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: be here. We have a really fascinating stack of source
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: material to get through today, centering on a very specific
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: moment in modern media.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a heavy one, it really is.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: We are looking at a July sixteenth, twenty eighteen release
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: from the immensely popular true crime show Crime Junkie, a
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: massive platform, huge and the focus of their investigation was
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a medical product called the Dalkin Shield.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Which is a narrative that really it challenges the boundaries
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: of what we traditionally consider true crime.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: It shatters those boundaries completely. Our mission today is to
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: pull apart how hosts Ashley Flowers and Britt Prewatt dismantled
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: this devastating case of corporate.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Melth because it wasn't just a mistake, No.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Not at all. We're going to look at the staggering
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: statistics of the harm caused, the deeply unsettling reality of
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: global corporate dumping, and the really unique cross platform collaborative
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: storytelling that force this tragedy back into the public consciousness.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: It's such a vital story for people to understand.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: It is because if you think the highest stakes in
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: crime involve masked intruders, you might be overlooking the fact
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: that the most catastrophic harm often happens in air conditioned boardrooms.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the crime Junkie release we're analyzing, they don't
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: pull any punches and establishing that premise.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Either, not a single one.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, the episode is explicitly titled white Collar the
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Delkin Shield, and the source text we're reviewing describes the
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: events surrounding this in tritterin device as iud in incredibly
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: stark terms. They don't call it a tragic oversight. They
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: don't call it like a medical misadventure.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Which is usually the pr spin Exactly.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: They label it a story of lies, cover ups, and murder.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: And they take it a step further by specifying that
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: this was murder that was done out in the open.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that freezing is doing a massive amount of heavy lifting.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: In the broader landscape of the true crime genre, applying
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: the word murder to a corporate action is I mean,
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: it's a radical linguistic shift.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Because Historically, true crime focuses on the individual.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Bad actor, right, always the serial killer, the crime of passion,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: the bank robber. It's always about an individual or maybe
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: a small group, operating covertly to evade.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: The law, sneaking around.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Right. So, by taking a word that we reserve for
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: the absolute worst, most malicious of human actions and slapping
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: it on to a corporate entity, the creators are demanding
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: a total reevaluation of how we categorize lethal intent.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: See I want to push back on that categorization just
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: a bit, just to really test the strength of the
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: source's argument here. Sure, because the word murder intrinsically implies
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: a specific malicious intent to end a life. Like if
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: someone sneaks up to your driveway two am and cuts
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the brake lines on.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Your car, that is unquestionably murder exactly.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Their goal is for you to drive, crash and die.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: But if a massive automotive corporation knowingly manufactures a car
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: with faulty brakes, maybe because fixing the flaw would cost
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: an extra ten dollars per vehicle, the legal system usually
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: calls that negligence or corporate manslaughter, like corporate manslaughter, but
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: the intent wasn't to kill you. The intent was to
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: save ten dollars. The death is just this tragic byproduct.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: So why does the source material insist on escalating this
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: all the way to murder?
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Well, that distinction between targeted malice and byproduct indifference. That's
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: usually exactly how corporations shield themselves from moral outrage.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Oh interesting, right.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: But this source material is arguing that from the perspective
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: of the victim, that distinction is completely irrelevant.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: The end result is the same.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: The end result is exactly the same. And the use
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: of the words lies, cover ups, and murder in sequence
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: implies a deliberate, calculated methodology. I see, the company behind
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: the Dalcon shield didn't just suffer a manufacturing glitch. They
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: didn't just discover a flaw and scramble to fix it.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: He hit it.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: The implication of a cover up means they saw the data,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: they saw the injuries, they saw the deaths, and they
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: made an affirmative, conscious choice to continue placing a lethal
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: device into the bodies of women.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Wow. So the crime isn't the initial invention of a
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: flawed product. No, the crime is the bureaucracy that protected
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: the product after the flaw was known.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Think of it like a diffusion of responsibility, almost like
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: a corporate firing squad wait house. So well, in a
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: traditional firing squad, one shooter is given a blank cartridge right,
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: so that everyone can tell themselves, hey, maybe I didn't
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: fire the fatal shot.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Oh right, right to ease their conscience.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Exactly in a boardroom, the blank cartridge is the departmental division.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Marketing says, hey, we just sell what R and D
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: gives us.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: R and D says, we just designed what the executive's fund.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: And legal says, we just defend the company.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: The responsibility is so diffuse that no single person feels
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: like a murderer, even as the body count climbs. So
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: by calling it murder out in the open, the narrative
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: strips away that corporate shield.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: It forces us to look at the human beings who
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: sat in rooms, looked at horrifying data, and just prioritize
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: quarterly profits over human survival. Exact and out in the
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: open is the crucial modifier there, Because a guy cutting
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: your brakes, he's terrified at getting caught. He's hiding. The
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: executives managing the Dalkon Shield were actively promoting their product
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: they had glossy brochures in doctor's offices.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: They had the veneer of FDA level legitimacy, which is terrifying.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: We are talking about a weapon that was sold as
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: a tool for liberation and health, which.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Is the most insidious form of betrayal if you think
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: about it. It weaponizes the patient's own pursuit of wellness
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: against them.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's incredibly dark. To really understand how a medical
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: device reaches the threshold of being called a murder weapon,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: we have to look at the physical toll we do,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: and the numbers presented in the source material for the
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Dalkon shield are genuinely difficult.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: To process, the statistics representing catastrophic failure on every conceivable
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: level of public health.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: The source states that this IUD killed at least twenty women,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: and beyond the fatalities, it hurt hundreds of thousands.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Hundreds of thousands. We really need to unpack the mechanics
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: of that harm because stating the numbers in a vacuum
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: just doesn't capture the reality. No, it just sounds like
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: a statistic Right, Let's look at what an IUD actually is.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: This isn't a pill that you swallow and metabolize where
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: maybe a bad reaction passes in a few days.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: An introdderen device is a foreign object designed to be
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: implanted deep inside a highly vascular, sensitive internal organ. It
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: is meant to stay there long term to prevent pregnancy.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: It requires a profound level of trust to allow a
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: doctor to place something inside your body based on the
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: promise that a corporation has thoroughly tested its safety.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Right, So if the device is fundamentally flawed, the harm
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: isn't a one time event. The harm is continuous, internal
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: and often deeply traumatic to a woman's reproductive system. Absolutely,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: and the Force confirms twenty deaths directly linked to it.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: But I find myself stuck on that second phrase, hurt hundreds.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Of thousands, It's massive.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: The scale of that is paralyzing.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: It defies our standard capacity for empathy. Yeah, I mean,
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: we can empathize with one victim or maybe ten, but
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands becomes this huge abstraction.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: To put some mechanics behind that abstraction, think about what
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: it actually takes to reach a number that high. Like
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: when a localized restaurant serves tainted food, maybe fifty people
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: get sick over a weekend, the health department swoops in
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: and the doors are padlocked by Monday. The system works exactly.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: The system breaks the chain of harm immediately. To reach
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of injuries. With a medical device, you
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: are talking about a failure that has to compound over
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: a massive stretch.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Of time, and that time factor is the most damning
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: element of the whole timeline. You don't manufacture, ship, and
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: implant hundreds of thousands of devices in a single afternoon.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: This requires years of sustained.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Effort, which means the feedback loop was completely ignored. I
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: mean doctors would have started seeing complications early on. Absolutely,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: patients would have been returning to clinics and agonizing pain,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: suffering from severe infections or worse. For the number of
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: victims to climb into the hundreds of thousands, the company
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: had to be actively building a wall between the reality
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: of what the device was doing and the doctors who
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: are continuing to prescribe it.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: It operates almost like a reverse quarantine.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: A reverse quarantine, what do you mean?
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Well, normally, in a public health crisis, you quarantine the
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: danger to stop it from spreading to the public.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Right right, You lock down the virus exactly.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: But in a corporate cover up of this magnitude, the
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: company quarantines the truth. Oh wow, they locked down adverse
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: reaction reports. They spin the narrative, and they isolate the
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: doctors from the broader data.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: So the doctors are in the dark.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Right, So if a doctor sees one patient with a
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: severe complication, the corporate rep can say, oh, that's just
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: a rare anomaly. The device is perfectly.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Safe because the doctor has no way of knowing exactly.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: The doctor doesn't know there are thousands of other, quote
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: unquote anomalies happening simultaneously across the country. The truth is quarantine,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: which allows the harm to spread unchecked.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: That reverse quarantine requires an incredibly sinister exploitation of the
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: societal dynamics around women's healthcare too.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, without a doubt.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Because historically and even today, honestly, there is a well
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: documented tendency in medicine to dismiss women's pain. If a
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: woman with a Dalkin shield complained of severe abdominal pain
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: or unusual symptoms, it was entirely too easy for a
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: doctor who had been heavily lobbied by the manufacturer to
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: dismiss it as normal. Menstrual cramping or stress or you know, hysteria.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, medical gaslighting.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The company didn't just hide the data, They actively
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: relied on a systemic bias that silences women to help
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: cover their tracks.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: And that brings us to the core motivation driving this
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: massive machinery of denial money. The source material doesn't leave
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: any room for ambiguity here. It explicitly states that the
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: company actually profited from women's deaths.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I want to spend some time on this because it
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: challenges a very fundamental assumption most of us have about
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: how the economy works. The general consensus is that capitalism,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: for all its flaws, is self correcting when it comes
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: to extreme harm. In theory, right, the theory of the
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: free market suggests that if a product is actively killing
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: or injuring hundreds of thousands of people, word will inevitably get.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Out, Consumers will stop buying it.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Exactly, Investors will flee, lawsuits will drain the accounts, and
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: the company will collapse. The bad product should theoretically starve
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: itself out of the market. Right, So, how does a
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: corporation manage to not just survive, but actively profit from
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: something so violently armful?
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Well, The theory of a self correcting free market relies
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: entirely on one vital component, perfect or at least honest.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Information, which we know they didn't have exactly.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: The market can only correct itself if the consumer and
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: the provider both understand the risks. What the source material
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: exposes is that information asymmetry is the ultimate weapon of
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: white collar crime.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Information asymmetry. Break that down for us. How does that
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: function in practice?
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Okay, imagine you're looking for a restaurant in a new city.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: You check an app and you see a place with
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: thousands of glowing five star reviews. Okay, you go, you eat,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: and you get severe food poisoning.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: That sounds awful, right.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: But what you didn't know is that the restaurant owner
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: paid for a bot farm to generate those five star
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: reviews and simultaneously hired lawyers to send cease and desist
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: letters to anyone who tried to post about getting sick.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, so they rigged the system, right.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: The market can correct the bad restaurant because the signaling
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: mechanism the reviews, has been completely hijacked.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: So, in the case of a medical device, the reviews
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: are the clinical data and the marketing materials given to doctors.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Precisely by utilizing lies and cover ups. The company hijacked
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: the signaling mechanism.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: They severed the feedback loop.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: They did they created an artificial demand for the Dalkin
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: shield by presenting it as a safe, revolutionary breakthrough in
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: contraceptive technology.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: The doctors prescribing it and the women receiving it were
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: operating on a fabricated reality. If the truth had been known,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: the demand would have instantly evaporated.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: So the profits weren't just incidental to the cover up.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: No, the profits were exclusively generated by the cover up.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: It's a completely fabricated reality, sustained by pr and legal mallowing.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: And when you frame it that way, the term blood
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: money isn't hyperable, not at all. It's an accurate accounting
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: term for their revenue stream. I mean, they monetize the
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: physical destruction of their own customers.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Which makes the next piece of information from our sources
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: not just surprising, but genuinely horrifying.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Because eventually the truth does bleed through.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: It always does. The lawsuits do mount, the public outcry
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: reaches a tipping point, and the domestic market finally collapses.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: The artificial reality shatters.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: But the story doesn't end with a recall and a
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: bonfire of the remaining inventory.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: No it does.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: It's a single most alarming detail we have to discuss
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: today centers on a date. This crime Junkie investigation we
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: are analyzing was published on July sixteenth to twenty eighteen,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: right eighteen. In twenty eighteen. As they are summarizing this
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: catastrophic failure that killed at least twenty women and maimed
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands, the host state that the Dalkon Shield
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: is still being used overseas today.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: That is just it's staggering. Decades after the initial tragedy
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: was exposed, heavily litigated, and shut down in its primary market,
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: the device was still in active use elsewhere.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: The logistics of that are mind bending to me. Yeah,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: how does a corporation take a product that has been
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: defa ugatively proven to be a lethal hazard, a product
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: that is generated massive lawsuits, and continued to distribute it.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: It's a great question.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Like if a city discovers that the local reservoir is
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: contaminated with a deadly bacteria, they don't bottle the water
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: and ship it to another town.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: No, they shut the reservoir down right, So, how is
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: it legally or physically possible to just relocate a medical disaster? Well,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: it introduces us to the incredibly dark practice of global
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: corporate dumping.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Global corporate dumping thing.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. To understand how it's possible, you have to look
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: at the fragmented nature of international regulation. There is no
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: singular global FDA. Every nation has its own sovereign regulatory body,
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: its own standards for medical approval, and its own infrastructure
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: for tracking adverse effects.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: So a border essentially acts as a reset button for
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: a product's reputation.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: It acts as an impermeable shield against accountability. When a
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: corporation faces the collapse of a product in a highly regulated,
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: affluent market, usually because the legal system makes it too
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: expensive to continue paying out settlements, they are left with
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: warehouses full of inventory.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Right, someunk costs exactly.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: They can either take the total financial loss and destroy
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: the product, or they can look at a map.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: And they look at a map.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: They search for regions with weaker consumer protection laws, less
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: robust medical oversight, and populations that do not have the
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: financial or legal resources to mount class action lawsuits.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: They export the hazard to populations. They deem expendable.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: It is an aggressive form of medical neocolonialism.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: That is exactly what it is.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: They take a known killer and dump it into markets
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: where women are entirely reliant on whatever medical supplies are
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: provided to their local clinics.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: And these women aren't being handed at pamphlet detailing the
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: history of the Delkin shield's death toll in America.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Of course not. They are simply being given what they
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: believe is standard, vetted medical care.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: The betrayal scales up globally, it does, and it creates
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: this found sense of helplessness. If the domestic regulatory agencies
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: know a product is lethal, but their jurisdiction stops at
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: the border, and the international bodies aren't catching it, who
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: is actually responsible for stopping it?
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: That's the million dollar question.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: If a company can just pack up its deadly product
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: and move it to a jurisdiction with cheaper lives, the
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: traditional systems of justice have completely.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Failed, and that structural failure is the exact reason why
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: the medium that brought this story to light is so vital.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about that.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Because this wasn't exposed to the masses in twenty eighteen
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: by a government press conference or an international regulatory report.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Well it was exposed by a podcast.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Right, Let's shift gears and look at the metal layer
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: of this deep dive, because how this information was disseminated
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: is a fascinating case study in modern media dynamics.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Our source text highlights a very specific, unique collaboration. We
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: have crime Junkie, which is a juggernaut in the audio space,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: hosted by Ashley Flowers and Britprowat under the massive audio
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Chuck network Unbrella, a huge network, right, and they use
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: their colossal platform to cover a story that was researched
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: and originally broken down by an entirely different independent podcast
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: called Swindled. Specifically, their episode titled The Contraceptive.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: And the source material explicitly points this out.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Yes it does.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Crime Junkie gives a huge thanks to Swindled for the
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: research and directs their massive audience to go check out
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Swindled's work, follow their social media, and visit.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Their website, which, in the current media landscape, that kind
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: of cross pollination is surprisingly rare, very rare, because media
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: is inherently competitive, it operates on a scarcity mindset. There
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: are only so many hours in a listener's day, and
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: networks want to monopolize that time, right, you.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Want them listening to your.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Ads, Exactly. You don't see a major streaming service telling
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: its viewers to go log into a rival platform to
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: watch a really great documentary. Never, So, why would a
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: massive entity like crime Junkie dedicate an entire release to
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: explicitly promoting the investigative labor of a different show.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Because it represents a fundamental evolution in what the true
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: crime genre is trying to achieve. How So, for a
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: long time, true crime was largely about morbid entertainment, like
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: a safe way to experience fear from the comfort of
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: your living room.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Right, like a spooky campfire story exactly.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: But over the last decade we've seen a pivot toward
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: active advocacy and consumer protection.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: The genre is weaponizing its audience for good.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Let's look at the mechanics of this collaboration, because both
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: parties brought something essential to the table that the other lacked.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Swindled is a podcast renowned for incredibly dense forensic deep
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: dives into white collar crime and corporate fraud.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Right, they do the grueling work. Yes, they're the ones
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: digging through the court transcripts, untangling the corporate shell games,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: mapping out the timeline of the cover ups, and finding
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: the smoking guns and the financial records.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: They build the rock solid investigative.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Found but incredibly dense forensic journalism doesn't always reach the
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: widest possible demographic.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: No, it can be pretty niche, right, and this is
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: where crime Junkie's infrastructure becomes critical. What they bring to
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: the equation is unprecedented volume and engagement, and.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: The source text gives us a glimpse into the scale
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: of that infrastructure.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: They don't just have passive listeners. They have a monetized
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: fan club for ad free listening, which proves they have
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: a highly dedicated core audience that is financially invested in
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: the content.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: That's huge.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They have dedicated text lines where fans can apparently
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: text Ashley directly to discuss cases.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Which builds such a strong parasocial bond.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, and they maintain a sprawling cross platform social media
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: apparatus Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook for the hosts and the
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: entire audio Chuck network.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: It is a meticulously constructed ecosystem designed for maximum reach
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: and high velocity engagement. So when a show likes Dwindled
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: uncovers vital research about an ongoing threat. And we really
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: have to remember the stakes here. The device was still
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: in use overseas when.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: This aired, right, people were still being hurt.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When that happens, the standard rules of media competition
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: become obsolete.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: It becomes a moral imperative.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, Informing the public overrides hoarding the audience. It creates
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: what we can call a megaphone effect.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: I like that the megaphone effect.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Crime Junkie took Swindled's meticulous blueprint of a corporate murder
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: and broadcast it through the largest megaphone available in the
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: audio space.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Overnight, millions of people who tuned in to hear a
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: standard true crime story were suddenly educated on the intricacies
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: of global corporate dumping and FDA loopholes.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: It completely redefines the relationship between the host and the listener.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: It does the audience is no longer just a passive
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: consumer of those spooky campfire stories. They are being activated.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Activated is the perfect word.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: They're being turned into a decentralized distribution network for vital
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: consumer safety information, and.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: That activation is facilitated by the specific tools of the medium,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: the text lines, the fan clubs, the interactive social media.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: These aren't just marketing funnels. They are community building tools.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: They allow the hosts to foster a sense of collective
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: outrage and.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: More importantly, collective responsibility.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when Ashley and Britt framed the Dalkon Shield tragedy
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: as lies, cover ups, and murder, they are setting a
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: moral baseline for their community. Absolutely, they are inviting millions
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: of people to reject the normalization of white collar crime.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: It teaches the audience how to spot the mechanics of
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: a cover up in real.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Time, whether it's happening in a local government office or
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: a Fortune five hundred boardroom exactly.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Connecting this back to our initial discussion about trust, I
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: mean we open by talking about how naturally we trust
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the medical establishment.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: We do.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: We assume that the sterile environment of a clinic implies safety.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: This collaboration between Swindled and crime Junkie serves as a
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: massive multi platform pub service announcement warning us that blind
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: trust is a vulnerability. Yeah.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: It's a harsh awakening, it really is.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: It strips away the comfort of assuming that someone somewhere
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: is looking out.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: For us, right, the idea that the adults are in charge.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It tells you that the regulatory stacy net
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: has massive gaping holes in it, and corporations are perfectly
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: willing to let you fall through them if it boosts
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the bottom line.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: But paradoxically, that harsh awakening is deeply empowering. Well, it
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: shifts the burden of awareness onto the public, yes, but
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: it also equips them with the knowledge that these systems
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: can be scrutinized, challenged, and exposed.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Knowledge is power, Exactly.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: It champions critical thinking and investigative journalism as the ultimate
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: antibodies against corporate negligence.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the ultimate takeaway of this entire journey.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: It's been a heavy one, it has.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: We started by examining a striking, horrific paradox, a device
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: designed to give women control over their reproductive health instead
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: becoming an instrument of mass injury and death.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: We looked at the sheer, suffocating scale of the tragedy,
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: at least twenty dead and hundreds of thousands physically and
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: psychologically scarred.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we unpacked the mechanics of the deception. How a
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: corporation maintained an illusion of safety, severing the free market's
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: feedback loop to extract profit directly from the suffering of
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: their consumers.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: We confronted the dark reality of global exploitation, realizing that
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: a lethal product wasn't destroyed when it was exposed, but
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: simply shipped across borders to prey on more vulnerable populations
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: as recently as twenty eighteen.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: And we analyze the power of modern media, where massive
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: networks put competitive instincts aside to amplify crucial investigative research
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: using the true crime genre not just to entertain, but
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: to actively educate and protect the public.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: It's a really powerful shift in media.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: All of this matters deeply to you, the listener, because
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: you navigate a world built by corporations. Every single day
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: you do, you take medications, you install devices in your home,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: you drive vehicles on the highway. We all operate on
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: the default setting.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Of trust we have to to function.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: But this deep dive is a reminder that you cannot
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: outsource your critical thinking to a corporate logo or a
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: regulatory stamp of approval. Now you really can't questioning assumptions,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: demanding transparency and seeking out the kind of investigative journalism
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: that breaks through the noise isn't just a hobby for
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: a crime junkie.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: It is a fundamental survival skill.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: The machinery of commerce operates constantly, and it requires vigilant,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: informed consumers to ensure that human safety doesn't become a
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: casualty of the profit march. So, as you go forward,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you with one final lingering question
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: to consider. We now know that the Dalkin Shield, a
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: device with a staggering proven body count, was still quietly
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: circulating overseas decades after its domestic downfall. If that kind
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: of global dumping was still happening in twenty eighteen, what
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: other discredited, band or recalled products from our own past
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: are currently hiding out of site right now? That makes
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: you wonder, it really does. What other toxic legacies have
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: simply been packed up and relocated across a border, quietly
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: generating revenue, just waiting for the next investigative deep dive
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: to track them down