Latest / True Crime Reactions / Adnan What Serial Didn't Tell You-Reaction & Analysis

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Adnan What Serial Didn't Tell You-Reaction & Analysis · True Crime Reactions

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine for a second that you were just staring at
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: a raw block of computer code.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Right, like a completely unformatted XML document.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Exactly, just lines and lines of text, you know, brackets,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: hyperlinks and data tags on this glaring white screen.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: It looks like pure math at first glance.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Right, But on the surface, if you squint past all
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: that digital architecture, you might actually see the traces of
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: a profoundly human story.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, Yeah.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: You see the names of real people, dates from the
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: late nineteen nineties, the mention of a high school, a
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: city park, and a police investigation.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: But then right next to those names, literally sharing the
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: exact same line of code, you have tracking pixels.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Yes, you have server routing protocols, promotional links for branded merchandise,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and you know phone numbers for text message.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Marketing, and all those massive data collection disclaimers.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Exactly because what you were looking at is the digital
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: file for a true crime audio release.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Which is just wild to think about, it is.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: And if you look closely enough at that back end data,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I mean the metadata, the distribution tags, the marketing copy,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: you no longer just see a story about a tragedy.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: You see a highly sophisticated blueprint, Yes.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: A blueprint for a global digital.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Empire, which completely upends how we normally consume media, right.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, we usually just focus on the performance.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: We just hit play and listen exactly.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: We hit play, we listen to the host voice, We
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: get totally swept up in the narrative, and we completely
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: ignore the infrastructure that delivered that audio to our phones.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: But that infrastructure is never accidental.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Never the text, the tags, the links. That is the
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: actual machinery of the modern media landscape.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: And well, that machinery is our mission for this deep
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: dive today. We are taking a pretty hard left turn
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: from our usual little go cheer.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: We really are. We're not doing the usual thing.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Today, right, We are not analyzing a book or a film,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: or even the actual audio of a show. We are
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: doing a deep dive into the literal Apple Podcasts metadata, just.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: The show notes and the structural premise.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: YEP of one very specific audio release from April of
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. It is an episode of the massively popular
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: show Crime Junkie, and.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: The release is titled ADN What Cereal Didn't tell You
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: exactly and just to set the parameters clearly for you
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: listening right now, We are not evaluating the forty two
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: minutes of audio contained in that file.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Nope, not at all.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Our focus is entirely on the packaging, you know, the
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: comprehensive show description, the network framing, the cross platform strategy, and.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: The global distribution data that surrounds that audio file. We
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: are basically looking at the digital receipt.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: I love that phrase, the digital receipt.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Well. I have to admit when I first looked at
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: our sources for today's deep dive, I had a moment
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: of profound skepticism.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Oh really, why is that?
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I was either thinking, are we seriously dedicating our time
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: today to reading the digital equivalent of a grocery store receipt?
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Like it was just going to be super dry exactly.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I thought, how is this not just going to be
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: a dry technical manual?
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: But then I actually started reading the text they embedded into.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: This file, and it changes everything once you read it.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: It totally blew my mind because the core subject at
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: the center of this specific metadata is a devastating reality.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: It really is. It's incredibly heavy.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: It is the January thirteenth, nineteen ninety nine, disappearance and
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: murder of an eighteen year old high school senior named
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Hayman Lee, and.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Of course the subsequent police investigation that targeted Adnanzaied as
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: the prime suspect. It is a case that has dominated
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: the true crime ecosystem for over a decade now.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Dominating is almost an understatement.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Seriously, But what makes this specific twenty eighteen release so
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: critical to understand is not just the facts of that
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine case, It is the ecosystem that was
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: born into Yes, we are looking at how a massive
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: cultural phenomenon, the first season of the podcast serial left
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: this massive void in the culture.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: And we are looking at how another giant platform, crime
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: junkie engineered a way to step into that void years later.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Right by promising the you know, the four crucial points
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: that the original creators supposedly missed.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: So to truly grasp this for you listening at home,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: we can't just talk about the What we really have
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: to talk about the how.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: The mechanics of it all.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Exactly, how does an RSS feed, which is essentially just
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: a text file sitting on a server somewhere, transform a
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: local tragedy from Baltimore into a heavily monetized, interactive digital
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: product consumed worldwide.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: It's a huge question.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: I want to break down how this XML document is
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: acting like a trojan horse. From the outside, you know,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: it looks like a simple summary of a murder.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Case, but hidden inside its architecture is an army of
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: audience retention strategies and behavioral trackers. Yes, that is the
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: perfect way to frame it.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I mean.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: To understand the true crime industry today, you have to
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: realize that the framing and packaging of the trauma is
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: as rigorously engineered as any Silicon Valley software launch.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, that is so true.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Right. The way the story is presented, marketed, and distributed
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: to you tells us volumes about our psychological vulnerabilities as
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: consumers and.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: The relentless efficiency of digital monetization.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly right.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Let's just crack open the cost because we have to
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: start with the shadow of a cultural behemos.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Let's do it.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: The very first thing this twenty eighteen metadata does is
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: something you almost never see in traditional business. It explicitly
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: brings up a massive competitor in its opening.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Breath, which is such a bold move.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: It really is. The show notes say, and I'm reading
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: directly from the source here, hundreds of millions of people
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: tuned into Serial season one back in twenty fourteen. Wow, Yeah,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: it goes on. Sarah Coneig told us all about the story,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: and it explicitly references this twelve episode series, pointing out
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: that it left people asking did he or didn't he?
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Emphasizing the ambiguity right.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: It specifically notes that it ended with more questions than answers.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is that the phrase hundreds of millions
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: of people is doing an incredible amount of heavy lifting
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: in that sentence. Oh definitely, and we really need to
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: pause and pull that apart. We hear large numbers thrown
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: around constantly in media today, so it is super easy
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: to become numb to them.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Sure, a million views is nothing on TikTok now exactly.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: But back in twenty fourteen, the digital audio space, particularly
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: for serialized investigative journalism, was not a mainstream behemoth at all,
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: not even close. It was a relatively niche medium. People
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: were still trying to figure out how to even download
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: a podcast to their phones.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, I remember you had to physically plug your iPod
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: into your computer sometimes.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Yes. So for a single long form journalistic investigation to
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: hit hundreds of millions of downloads. That is a paradigm shift.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this scale because I was trying to
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: wrap my head around it earlier.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Today, it's hard to visualize it is.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: It's essentially the equivalent of the Super Bowl broadcast, but
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: stretched out over twelve weeks, right, and focus entirely on
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: a single high school in Woodlawn, Maryland, a specific municipal park,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: and a localized legal proceeding from nineteen ninety nine.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: It's staggering to think about that level of concentrated human
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: attention on one local event.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: It completely transforms a highly specific, geographically isolated legal proceeding
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: into the shared global narrative. It essentially makes this real
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: life tragedy one of the most widely consumed pieces of
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: media of the decade.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: But the metadata text we are analyzing doesn't just mention
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the size of the audience, right, It diagnoses the psychological
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: state of that audience.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: That's the key.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: It explicitly points out that the twenty fourteen series ended
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: with more questions than answers.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, and that is very deliberate.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: But wait, why is that detail so crucial for this
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: twenty eighteen show To point out. Isn't it a bit
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: of a risk to remind your listener about an incredibly popular,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: award winning show right before asking them to listen to yours?
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: You would think so, right?
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Like, why point out the ambiguity, because.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: That ambiguity is the very mechanism they are exploiting. Oh,
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: I see, from a psychological and neurological perspective, the human
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: brain intensely dislikes unresolved narratives.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: We hate cliffhangers, We despise them.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: There is a well documented psychological principle called the Zigarnic effect,
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: the what effect, the Zygarnic effect. It essentially states that
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks much better than completed ones.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, we.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Just have this fundamental cognitive drive for closure. So when
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: a narrative as complex, emotionally heavy, and intricate as a
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: murder investigation is presented meticulously over twelve weeks, the audience
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: is actively conditioned to expect a verdict.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: We expect a neat bow at the end.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly, a definitive resolution when the final episode arrives, and
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: that resolution is intentionally withheld when it ends in ambiguity.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: It creates a massive wave of cognitive dissonance.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Across an audience of hundreds of millions.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, that makes perfect sense. It's like watching a three
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: hour blockbuster mystery movie that ends on a total cliffhanger. Yes,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: perfect analogy, like cutting to black right before the killer
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: is revealed. You leave the theater just completely keyed up.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Your adrenalinest spiking. You were literally arguing in the parking
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: lot with your friends about what the ending mem.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: People were doing. Exactly that at water coolers everywhere, right,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: But in.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: This scenario, the studio never schedules a sequel. Nope, there
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: is no second movie coming to resolve the argument. You
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: were just permanently stuck in the parking lot.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, you are stuck in a state of suspended narrative animation,
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: and that state of suspension creates a profound.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Hunger, which is incredibly lucratic. Oh.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. The ambiguity wasn't just a journalistic or artistic choice
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: made in twenty fourteen. It metastasized into an economic and
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: cultural opportunity for the rest of the media ecosystem.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: So let me pose this theory to you. By ending
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: in that state of ambiguity, did that original twenty fourteen
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: series inadvertently create a permanent open market for other creators.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Oh kind of percent did it?
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Basically, you know, send out a signal flare to every
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: true crime producer in the world, inviting and infinite re
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: litigation of the case purely because that massive audience was
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: left starving for an ending.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: The metadata we are looking at proves your theory perfectly. Yes,
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  Speaker 2: it created a massive open market.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Because if you have hundreds of millions of people walking
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: around for four years with an unresolved open loop in
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: their heads regarding ad Non Saied and Hayman Lee, any
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: piece of media that comes along and promises to close
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: that loop has a built in, highly motivated audience.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: They don't have to work for it, exactly.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: The twenty eighteen show doesn't have to build an audience
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: from scratch. It simply has to harvest the frustration left
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: behind by the twenty fourteen show.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: And that transition right there, from the cultural phenomenon to
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the twenty eighteen harvesting of that phenomenon brings us to
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: the absolute center of this metadata.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: The core reality.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the eye of the hurricane, because beneath the talk
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: of hundreds of millions of listeners. Beneath the twelve episode
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: narrative arcs and beneath this massive open digital market, there
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: is a very real, very grounded tragedy. There really is
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: the source text we are analyzing abruptly shifts tone here
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: and it grounds this entire digital architecture and the reality
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: of the victim.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, the metadata reads and again I will quote the
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: source directly here. Eighteen year old Hayman Lee, a high
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: school senior, disappeared on January thirteenth, nineteen ninety nine.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: So young.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: It goes on to say, Hay's body was later found
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: in Leacoln Park, and not too long after the discovery
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: of her body, police zeroed in on their prime suspect
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: at Nanci It.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: It's honestly jarring to read it in the middle of
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: all the promotional copies.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: It really pulls you out at the marketing speed.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: You have this quiet, devastating reality at the center, an
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: eighteen year old girl whose life was violently cut short
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine. That is the center of the hurricane. Yeah,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: but the swirling storm around it is decades of highly
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: produced entertainment driven media consumption.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, It is
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: a remarkable distillation. I mean, if we look at the
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: mechanics of those two sentences, the author has managed to
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: compress years of incredibly complex, highly debated legal proceedings, profound
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: human grief, and exhaustive investigative work into about forty words.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Forty words for a whole tragedy.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: It is a masterclass in summary. For the sake of
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: digital consumption, true crime metadata requires this kind of compression.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: You literally have to shrink human tragedy into a digestible
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: bullet point so the algorithm can index it.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: I want to make sure we are being very careful
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: here because for you listening, we are talking about real
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: people and a highly contested legal case. Absolutely, our sources
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: for this deep die are just the show notes, and
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: those notes present this timeline neutrally. They state a disappearance,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: a discovery of a body, and the police zeroing in
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: on a suspect. We aren't here to litigate the case
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: or take a position on a non's guilt or innocence, right,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: We are strictly looking at how this is being summarized
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: for a digital audience.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: That is a crucial distinction. We must maintain strict neutrality.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Just as the text itself does at this specific juncture.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just reporting the facts of the timeline.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: The metadata neutrally states the ronological facts of the initial
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine police investigation. It is stating what the
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: police did, not, declaring a universal truth about the ultimate
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: guilt or innocence of the parties involved. Right, we are
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: observing the factual timeline as a narrative device used in
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: the show notes.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: But regardless of the neutrality, the juxtaposition is what I
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: find so deeply unsettled.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, the clash of tones.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as someone reading this raw XML file, you see
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: the tragic date of January thirteenth, nineteen ninety nine coded
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: into the exact same digital block as promotional text for
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: a proprietary fan club, ad, free listening apps and social
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: media handles.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate paradox of the true crime genre.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: It feels almost wrong, and it.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Is perfectly, almost violently encapsulated in this single digital document.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: The gravity of severe human loss exists in the exact
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: same digital breath as monetization and audience acquisition strategies.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: The trauma is the product exactly.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: The trauma is the product, and the metadata is the packaging.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, so put yourself in the shoes of a creator
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: operating in twenty eighteen. You're looking at this heavily guarded,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: highly saturated.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Space, a space dominated by giants.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Right, this is a story that has already been told
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: to a massive portion of the global population. How do
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: you possibly carve out your own territory? It seems impossible,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: according to the metadata we are looking at. You do
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: it by making a massive counterintuitive demand of your audience.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: You demand prerequisite knowledge.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: And this is where the strategy becomes incredibly bold, almost
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: arrogant in its confidence.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: The episode notes explicitly state we won't be recovering the
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: serial story. We jump in assuming you already know it. Wow,
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: it continues. So if you haven't listened yet, check out
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: the first season of Cereal.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: I had to read that sentence three times when I
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: first saw it.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: It's so counterintuitive.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. In a digital audio
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: space that is usually desperate to acquire every single new
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: uninitiated listener, it can find I mean a medium where
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the golden rule is to make your content as accessible
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: to the widest possible demographic. This forty two minute piece
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: of media throws up a massive brick wall.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: It actively turns people away.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: It demands that you, the audience, first go consume roughly
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: ten or more hours of a competitor's content before you
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: are allowed to hit play on this one.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: It defies conventional marketing logic, but if you look at
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: the mechanics of audience filtering, it is brilliant.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Really. How so, think.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: About this from the perspective of an advanced university education.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: You cannot just wander off the street and sit down
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: in a four hundred level advanced seminar on quantum physics.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Right. The professor at the door would stop you and say,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: did you take the one on one course? No, then
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: you don't have the vocabulary for this conversation.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly, Go take the prerequisite and come back. They refuse
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: to waste the classes time on basic exposition.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, I see where this is going.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: By doing that in an audio format, the creators are
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: elevating the genre. They are intentionally assuming an educated audience,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: and psychologically they are flattering the listener.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Oh it's tricky.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: They are essentially saying, we know you are smart, we
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: know you've done the reading. We aren't going to insult
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: your intelligence. By re explaining the basic timeline.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: It validates you before you even start listening.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, it allows the creators to skip the narrative throat
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: clearing and dive straight into advanced granular analysis.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: But doesn't that intense barrier to entry severely risk alienating
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: casual consumers.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Well?
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Yes, but like if I'm just browsing for something to
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: listen to in my commute and the show notes tell
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: me I have to go do ten hours of homework first,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to click away. Sure, isn't that terrible
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: for business? You are literally telling potential ad impressions to
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: go away.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: In the short term, perhaps you lose the casual commuter,
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: But in the modern digital economy, the raw size of
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: an audience is often less important than the density of
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: its engagement.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Density over volume.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: A hyper invested, highly engaged community is incredibly valuable. By
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: requiring that prerequisite knowledge, the creators are essentially curating an
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: audience of amateur experts. Oh wow, they are filtering for
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: people who have already spent hours, maybe days, agonizing over
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: the minutia of this nineteen ninety nine case.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Oh I see, So it's not about catching every single
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: fish in the ocean. It's about only catching the whales exactly.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: When you speak to an audience that has already invested
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: that much emotional and temporal capital into a narrative, their
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: engagement metrics.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Skyrocket that makes total sense.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Their likelihood to subscribe to your feed, their likelihood to
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: share the release on social media, and crucially, their likelihood
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: to pull out their credit card and join a paid
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: fan club are significantly higher than a casual.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Listener because they're already obsessed.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: They aren't passive tourists wandering through the story. They are
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: highly motivated, active participants. The prerequisite is a filter designed
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: to concentrate the most profitable type of listener.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: That completely refrains how I look at show notes. It
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: isn't just a summary, it's a filtration system.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Intentional gate check.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: And once you have that highly educated, deeply invested, filtered
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: audience sitting in your four hundred level digital seminar, how
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: do you hook them?
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: You give them what they're missing.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Right, You hook them with the promise of the missing pieces.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: The source text for this April twenty eighteen release says
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: it will sum up the quote top four points. Serial
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: didn't tell you, But you need to know before you
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: decide whether or not you think ed Non is guilty.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question. We really need to unpack
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: the psychological weight of that specific promise, the untold story.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: It's such a powerful phrase.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: When a piece of media boldly claims to possess the
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: crucial data points that a massive, well funded journalistic juggernaut missed.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: It executes a very specific psychological maneuver on the listener.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: What does it do?
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: First? It instantly validates the listener's lingering doubts. If you
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: listen to that twenty fourteen series and felt unsatisfied, this
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: twenty eighteen release says you were right to feel that way.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: You were right to feel like the picture is incomplete.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly, we have what they hid from you.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: It strokes the listener's ego, It validates their frustration. But
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: what really strikes me is the second half of that sentence, the.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Part about deciding yes before.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: You decide whether or not you think ed Non is guilty.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: They are entirely deputizing the listener.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: They are handing you the gavel.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Literally.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: The twenty fourteen series ended with the journalist essentially saying,
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know for sure. This twenty eighteen piece is
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: structurally framing itself as the final evidentiary hearing.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: It's like you're the judge now.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: It implies that all the evidence has now been gathered.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: These four missing points are the final puzzle pieces, and you,
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: the person sitting in your car or doing your laundry,
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: are at the ultimate jury.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Dad is wild.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: You are being empowered to make the final judgment on
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: a real, legally complex murder case. That is an incredibly
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: intoxicating proposition for a consumer of true crime.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: It gives you a sense of power and participation that
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: traditional media rarely are offers. Absolutely, but here's where we
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: have to talk about the most maddening, brilliant and frankly
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: hilarious detail in this entire XML document.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, I know what you're going to say.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: It's a detail regarding the character limit on Apple podcasts.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: It's so good.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: The show notes promised these four massive case altering points.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: You are practically vibrating with anticipation to know what they are. Right,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: But then the metadata includes this disclaimer. It says sources
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: and it redirects you to their website. It's brilliant. They
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: promise four points, but they literally refuse to list them
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: in the text.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate evolution of the clickbait mechanism, but
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: heavily disguised as academic rigor.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, like we have too much evidence to show you
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: here exactly now.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: To understand how this works, we have to look at
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: the literal architecture of an RSS feed. Apple podcast doesn't
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: actually host the audio files or write the descriptions.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: They just pull it in right.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: An RSS feed is just a standardized format that uses
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: XML tags to pull data from a creator's hosting server.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: One of those tags is the.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Description tag, and there are limits on that.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Yes. Historically, platforms like Apple have imposed care character limits
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: on how much text can be displayed in that specific
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: tag before it gets truncated.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: So the limitation is technically real. The platform physically won't
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: let them paste one thousand pages of legal documents into the.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: App description, correct, But it is how they utilize that
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: technical limitation as a marketing tool that is so fascinating.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: It's turning a bug into a feature.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: By explicitly stating sources cannot be listed here due to
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: character limitations, they are implying the existence of an overwhelming
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: mountain of research. Right, it suggests that there's so much
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: hard data, so much robust documentation backing up these four points,
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: that the literal digital infrastructure of Apple Podcasts cannot contain it.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: It's bursting at the seams. The evidence is too massive
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: for the.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: App exactly, it has to be housed on a completely
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: separate server on their own proprietary website. It magically condenses
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: the illusion of a massive investigative archive into a tight
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: forty two minute runtime. It signals incredible rigor, authority and
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: depth to the listener, all through a simple, mundane administrative
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: disclaimer about character limits.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: You are right. That is brilliant as a listener reading
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: that your suspense is maxed out.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: You have to know.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: You can't just skim the notes to find out the
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: four points. You have to hit play. You have to
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: go to their website. You are forced into their ecosystem.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: You're fully captured.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the underlying architecture of that ecosystem. Because,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: as we've established, this level of sophisticated marketing, audience filtration,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: and psychological engagement doesn't just spontaneously happen.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: No, it takes massive coordination.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: It requires an engine. It is supported by a massive
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: invisible infrastructure, which this source text actually lays bear right
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: in front of us if we know how to read it.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: This is where the XML document stops being a simple
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: description and becomes a corporate perspectus.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the tone shifts again.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: If we look closely at the bottom half of this metadata,
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: the narrative of the nineteen ninety nine crime almost completely vanished.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: It is gone.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Instead, we see the massive machinery behind the hosts Ashley
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Flowers and brit Preywatt. We see the branding of the
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: audio Chuck network.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: We see heavy coordinated cross platforms social media integration across Instagram, Twitter, TikTok,
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: and Facebook.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: And the contrasts embedded in this infrastructure are totally wild.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: That do you mean? Well? Right in the middle of
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: this metadata, it says texts Ashley at three one seven
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: seven three three seven four eighty five to talk all
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: things through crime, get behind the scenes updates and more. Ah. Yes,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: it is offering this incredible, disarming level of intimacy. It
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: feels like you were just texting a friend about a
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: case you both find interesting.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: It's highly personalized exactly, but.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Right below that phone number. The text pivots to sterile
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: corporate legal ease. It reads hosted by simple Cast, an
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: adds Whiz company, SEEPCM dot adswiz dot com for information
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: That intense juxtaposition is the defining characteristic of the modern
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: true crime business model.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: It's like two different worlds colliding.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Let's break down both sides of that coin. On the
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: front end, you have the text line. This is designed
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: to foster what sociologists call a parasocial.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Relationship, meaning you feel like you actually know them exactly.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: You feel intimately connected to the hosts. You feel like
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: you are part of a private, exclusive community investigating a
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: mystery together.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you are texting them. You are joining the fan
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: club for an ad free experience through.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: A proprietary app. No less, it is a highly curated
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: lifestyle brand built around crime.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: But on the back end, it's not two friends in
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: a basement. It's a surveillance apparatus.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Precisely on the back end we encounter the reality of
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: ads Whiz and.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Simple Cast and then they are just hosting files.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Not at all. These are not just audio hosts. They
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: are highly sophisticated data collection and monetizy platforms. Right when
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: you hit play on that file, the RSS feed is
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: communicating with servers that log your IP address, your device type,
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: and your geolocation. They use this data for programmatic ad insertion.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, hold on, explain dynamic ad insertion for a second,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: because I think a lot of people listening probably assume
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the ads an audio file are just baked in forever.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: In the early days, they were. The host would read
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: an ad, it was mixed into the audio, and if
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: you listen to it ten years later, you heard the
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: exact same ad.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Like an old radio broadcast exactly.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: But dynamic insertion, which companies like ADS was specialize in,
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: changes the game entirely. The audio file has.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Markers in it, invisible markers.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Right when your specific phone requests to download or stream
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: the episode, the sever checks your IP address, figures out
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: you are driving through Chicago, looks at your behavioral profile,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: and instantaneously stitches a targeted AD for a local Chicago
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: car dealership into the audio file before it hits your headphones.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: That is wild.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: It happens in milliseconds.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: So the file I hear in Chicago today is technically
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: a different digital file than the one someone hears in
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: London tomorrow, entirely different because the server is actively manipulating
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the file based on our data profiles exactly.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: So when we look at this metadata, we are seeing
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: the collision of.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Two worlds, the parasocial and the corporate.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: The intimate parasocial front end that invites you to text
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: the host about a tragedy seamlessly integrated with a massive
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: back end corporate reality of behavioral tracking and dynamic monetization.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for the global footprint
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: listed in this source text? Because it is staggering, it
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: really is. When you scroll through the country availability data
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: for this single forty two minute file, a file about
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: a local nineteen ninety nine crime in Baltimore, Maryland, it
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: is available and presumably being listened to in places as
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: divers as Algeria, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Iceland, Vietnam, and Kuwait.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: It forces us to confront the bizarre nature of digital globalization.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: That's hard to even picture.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Think about the highly specific geographic and physical realities of
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: Leakoln Park, the physical soil of Maryland, the specific hallways
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: of Woodlawn.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: High School, real, tangible places.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: All of that physical, localized reality has been digitized, compressed,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: and distributed across server nodes to nearly every corner of
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: the planet.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: It's no longer a place, It's just data.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, a listener in Cape Verde or Tajikistan or Iceland
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: can pull up this file on their morning commute, examine
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: the four missing points presented to them, and act as
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: the jury for a crime that happened thousands of miles
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: away in.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: A culture they may have never experienced.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: Over two decades ago. A digital infrastructure has entirely divorced
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: the event from its original physical and temporal reality.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: It's completely untethered.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: The tragedy is no longer tethered to Baltimore. It is
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: flowing freely through global servers, being actively tracked, dynamically monetized,
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: and casually debated on a planetary scale.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Which is a really heavy, vital question directly to you.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: The listener, a question we all need to ask ourselves.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Think about the media you consume, how does it change
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: your relationship with the tragedy of Hem and Lee, knowing
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: that you are consuming it through this highly engineered, monetized,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: globally distributed, multi platform machine.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Does The sheer scale of the data tracking and the
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: fan club marketing make it harder to remember the quiet
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: reality at the center of the hurricane.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Right when the packaging is this loud, Can you still
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: hear the story?
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: It is a profound, almost unresolvable.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Tension, it really is.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: On one hand, this massive machinery ensures that the victim
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: is not forgotten. It ensures that the case continues to
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: receive intense public scrutiny, which can sometimes lead to actual
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: legal momentum.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: True awareness can do good things.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: But on the other hand, it means that this deeply
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: personal tragedy is now inextricably, permanently linked to our entertainment ecosystems.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: It becomes content.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: It is bound to our digital data profiles, behavioral tracking,
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: and our monthly subscription models.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, we need to zoom out and recap the incredible
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: journey we've just taken. Through this single page of XML.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Code, we covered a lot of ground.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: We started with the local tragedy in nineteen ninety nine.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: We explored how crime Junkie's specific forty two minute release
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen brilliantly analyzed and utilize the massive unresolved
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: wake of the twenty fourteen serial phenomenon to capture a
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: built in hungry audience.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: We examined the mechanics of audience filtration, yes.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: The forehead level course analogy.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: We saw how this specific release demanded prerequisite knowledge, intentionally
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: filtering out casual listeners in order to cultivate a deeply invested,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: highly profitable community of amateur experts.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: And we broke down how they hooked that curated audience
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: with the psychological promise of four undisclosed case altering points
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: about amand's side.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: They deputized you, the listener, to make the final judgment.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Right, and they use the technical reality of Apple podcasts
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: character limits to create the illusion of an overflowing investigative archive.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: And finally, we explored the trojan horse itself.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: The infrastructure. How this narrative is structurally supported by a sprawling,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: interactive global business framework that balances the intimacy of a
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: direct text line with the cold corporate reality of adswiz,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: data collection and dynamic geolocation.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: It truly is a masterclass in modern digital storytelling, audience capture,
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: and data monetization.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: We're looking at the exact blueprint of how a tragedy
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: is transformed into a global commodity. But as we wrap
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: up this analysis, we have to ask where this leaves
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: us in the grand scheme of the true crime genre.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Right, because this isn't just about one show in twenty eighteen.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: This is about the trajectory of an entire industry.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Precisely, if modern true crime media is now being built
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: entirely on the foundations of other true crime media, oh wow.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: If we have a massive piece of media in twenty
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: eighteen that is structurally designed to respond to a massive
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: piece of media from twenty fourteen, which itself was about
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: a decade's old crime, are we entering an era of
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: true crime inception?
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: That is a crazy thought.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: We are no longer simply investigating the original event. The
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: original event is almost lost in the layers.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: We are now investigating the media's investigation of the event.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly. We're consuming the reaction to the reaction to expanding.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: In a hall of mirrors, you look at the reflection
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: of the reflection of the reflection, and eventually the original
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: object in the center becomes completely distorted.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: The packaging becomes the product it really does, and the
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: question I want to leave you the listener to ponder
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: as you log off today? Is this in an ecosystem
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: driven by dynamic ad insertion, algorithmic engagement, and the constant
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: psychological promise of the untold story? At what point does
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: the media cycle become completely irrecoverably divorced from the original
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: human event.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Are we still genuinely trying to solve the tragedy of
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: January thirteenth, nineteen.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Ninety nine, or have we simply become hopelessly addicted to
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: consuming the endless, highly optimized media machinery that surrounds it.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: That is a heavy but absolutely necessary question to carry
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: with you. We have to start looking past the audio
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: and reading the code.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: We really do.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Keep asking questions, keep challenging the infrastructure of the packaging,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: and never stop analyzing the media you consume. We'll catch
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: it next time.