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10 Crime Dramas To Watch If You Love 'Monster: The Ed Gein Story' · Murder Files Unsealed

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. We're here, as always to
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sift through that huge pile of research, your sources and
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really pull out the most well profound and sometimes genuinely
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unsettling insights.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, the core idea.
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Speaker 1: Exactly, And today we're cutting right into the heart of
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true crime, but maybe not in the way you'd expect.
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We're not just looking at the crimes themselves, but more
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at the shadows they cast, especially the ones thrown by
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America's original pop culture monster, Ed gain.
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Speaker 2: Ah gain foundational right.
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Speaker 1: And how his foundational darkness keeps shaping modern scripted dramas
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even now.
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Speaker 2: Well, I think this is a really critical deep dive
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into the genre itself, isn't it? Because true crime it
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doesn't just stick around because it's sensational.
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Speaker 1: Well, there's more to it there is.
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Speaker 2: It endures because it forces us really to confront the
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abyss of human potential. It blends that psychological depth with
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real historical intrigue, and our analysis today it's going beyond
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the lurid details. We're looking at cycle logical blueprints and
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maybe more importantly, the societal structures that either ignore or
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even cultivate these horrors.
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Speaker 1: Absolutely, and the catalyst for this whole exploration is, while
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it's a fascinating piece of source material, we've got focusing
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on the upcoming twenty twenty five series Monster, the ed
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Gins story, the.
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Speaker 2: Ryan Murphy one for Netflix, that's.
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Speaker 1: The one, and Gin just for anyone needed a quick reminder,
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was this reclusive Wisconsin handyman his crimes in the mid fifties,
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I mean two murders, tons of grave desecration, crafting these
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macabre trophies from human remains.
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Speaker 2: It just paralyzed a nation, especially then right post war
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America thought it was safe. Tranquil geen shattered, that totally shattered.
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And the sources are really clear on this. Yeah, Gen
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is like a macagu cultural architect. His real acts were
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so far outside what anyone thought was possible human behavior unimaginable,
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that they directly inspired some of the most lasting fictional horrors.
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You have to think of the edible madness of Norman
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Bates in Psycho classic example, or you know the sheer
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backwoods skin wearing dread of leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
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You basically can't discuss the modern fictional monster without tracing
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it back to Kin. The research really hammers this home.
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Speaker 1: And what's really grabbing me about this new dramatization, based
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on the source material, is the casting Charlie Hunham. He's
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described as capturing this really eerie blend of quote childlike
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innocence and monstrous curiosity.
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Speaker 2: That's a tricky line to walk, it.
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Speaker 1: Is, And the series apparently isn't just recounting the you know,
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the awful details. It's digging into the roots of that evil,
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looking at the sheer indifference of rural law enforcement back then.
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Speaker 2: And the environment right that repressive post war America exactly.
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Speaker 1: Especially the source material highlights the domineering maternal influence in
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his life, Augusta.
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Speaker 2: Which really sets up our mission perfectly today, doesn't it. Yeah,
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this deep dive isn't just a review of the new
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Gin series.
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Speaker 1: No, it's broader.
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Speaker 2: It's an analysis of what the sources are calling the
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true crime drama landscape. We've basically synthesized the critical takes
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and the thematic links drawn between Green's case and ten
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specific scripted shows, ten of them ten and these shows
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they echo Gen's core really disturbing themes, you know, the
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banality of evil, how fragile justice can be profound isolation, aberration.
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Speaker 1: All the hits.
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Speaker 2: Sort of, Yeah, we're using Gen's pathology as a kind
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of psychological template to understand how we dramatize serial killers now,
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looking not just at the killer, but crucially at the
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mirror they hold up to society.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's untack this then, starting mcgeen's most immediate successor
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in that Monster Anthology series, section one, let's talk about
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the monster formula itself systemic blind spots, because these blind
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spots were clear in Gean's role Wisconsin, sure, but they
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got amplified into this like searing critique in the show
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that actually kicked off the whole anthology, Dahmer Monster, the
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Jeffrey Dahmer story from twenty twenty two.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, what's fascinating there is how the monster formula evolve.
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Do you go from Gen's sort of geographical isolation.
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Speaker 1: Right plainfield, middle of nowhere exactly.
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Speaker 2: His crimes festered there, insulated by rural trust distance. Then
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you get Dahmer, the Milwaukee cannibal, operating in dense urban areas,
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but he's insulated differently house so by systemic indifference marginalization,
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urban anonymity versus rural desolation. But both stories show that
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same terrifying path, don't they from ordinary almost pitiable loneliness. Yeah,
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there's that element to utterly unspeakable acts.
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Speaker 1: And the Dahmer series, I mean, its success fundamentally changed
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the game for true crime TV. The sources detailed this
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massive breakout over eight hundred and fifty six million viewing
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hours first week alone, huge numbers, and Evan Peters deservedly
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got the Golden Globe. But the real thematic link back
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to Gidden's story and this new monster formula is that
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critical focus, the focus on societal failure.
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Speaker 2: Precisely that ten episode series, it deliberately shifts away from
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just you know, fetishizing the lord exploits, which a lot
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of true crime does often does. Yeah, instead of zero's
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in on the systemic blind spots that led Dahmer murder
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seventeen men and boys between seventy eight and ninety one,
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it critically examines racial bias in policing crucially and very importantly,
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how the testimonies of victims of neighbors were just dismissed,
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brushed aside because of societal prejudices against marginalized communities, that
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urban indifference that Dahmer benefited from Yes, like the nineteen
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eighties high stakes version of the rural indifference that let
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Jin operate back in the fifties.
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Speaker 1: And to make that failure really concrete for you, the listener,
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we have to look at that specific example. The source
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material focuses on Nissi Nashbetts as Glenda Cleveland, the neighbor Oh.
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Her performance was incredible, incredible, and her experience just embodies
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the human cost of that systemic bias. We're talking repeated
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nine to one one calls met by cops who were
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just utterly indifferent.
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Speaker 2: We really have to elaborate on that one incident the
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show reconstructs so powerfully. It's nineteen ninety one. Two officers
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respond to clean One's call she'd found a young man naked,
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drug bleeding fleeing Dahmer's apartment. Conrak sent the some Phone
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just a boy only fourteen. Dahmer managed to convince the
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officers that Synthus some Phone is his nineteen year old lover,
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that it's just a domestic dispute. Unbelievable, And because synth
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some Phone was Liotian, couldn't speak much English, and because
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the police were just unwilling to question Dahmer's easy story.
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They left him there, left the victim, who was already
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on a missing person's list by the way, oh god,
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they lift him in Dahmer's hands. He was murdered right
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after they left. The sources point to this sequence as
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the absolute definitive indictment of the whole system.
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Speaker 1: And that moral ambiguity, right, that tension between trying to
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understand the killer's psychology and indicting the system that failed
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so catastrophically to stop him. That's exactly what the source
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material argues as the modern drama's highest achievement.
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Speaker 2: It's not just what the monster did anymore.
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Speaker 1: No, it's why society, whether through bias or bureaucracy or
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just plain difference, created the space for them to thrive.
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That tension, that's what defines the power of this new
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monster formula that started with Dahmer and now moves back Togain.
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Speaker 2: Okay, so if again was partly a result of these
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societal blind spots. Our next step section two is using
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the source material to do a kind of psychological autoxy.
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Speaker 1: H intriguing term.
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Speaker 2: Right, We're drilling down into the science of how that
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monster gets formed. The research really emphasizes how these dramas
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dissect formative trauma, the roots of psychopathy, and linking it
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back again to Gain's own incredibly restrictive maternal environment.
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Speaker 1: And the most maybe rigorous intellectual blueprint for that kind
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of psychological dive has to be Mindhunter, the David Fincher
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series twenty seventeen twenty nineteen Hotephily, it feels like the
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sources suggest like the academic prequel to this whole monster universe.
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Speaker 2: It absolutely does. It chronicles the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit
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late seventies, pioneering criminal profiling through those just ground breaking,
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chilling interviews with imprisoned serial killers.
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Speaker 1: The interviews are intense, they are.
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Speaker 2: And the methodology is key. The show, based on Johnny
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Douglas's memoir, details how Agents Holding Forward and Bill Tanch
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they move from what the specifics of the crime to
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the why, the deeper reasons, the deep seated formative trauma,
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often sexual abuse, emotional abuse. This process, this systematic categorization
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and analysis of pathology, it's the exact same intellectual curiosity
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that's driving our deep diyes into Gaen's Source of evil today.
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Speaker 1: And the source material draws this direct honestly terrifying, parallel
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to gain through Ed Kemper, the co ed killer.
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Speaker 2: Cameron Britton's portrayal chilling.
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Speaker 1: Killing, Kemper's sheer size, his unnerving intelligence, and crucially that
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profound matricytal rage. It just eerily parallels Geen's known edible obsessions,
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his completely dysfunctional, destructive relationship with Augusta.
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Speaker 2: We should probably elaborate on the specific horrors there. The
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ones the source of highlight is reflecting Gen's particular kind
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of deviance. Kepra Remember he murdered his own mother, dismembered
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her horrific and he confessed to the agents with this
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almost affable charm. It's deeply unsettling, casually recounting how he
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dismembered his female victims and chillingly how he would converse
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with their severed heads. This conversation happening in the mundane
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setting of a prison interview room, about these unspeakable acts
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that took place in the most banal environments. It just
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profoundly evokes what the sources call Yien's grotesque dovesticity.
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Speaker 1: The skin lampshades, the human bone chairs, mixed in.
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Speaker 2: With the everyday clutter of a Wisconsin farmhouse.
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Speaker 1: And the style of mind Hunter, that icy cinematography of
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the sterile interview rooms. It just cranks up the unease,
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doesn't it.
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Speaker 2: It really does. The series uses that intellectual pursuit trying
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to understand devians as a form of existential horror itself.
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It refuses to glamorize the killers. Instead, it uses their
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confessions to indict, yet again, a society that was blind,
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blind to the pathology festering just beneath the surface until
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a violence became impossible to ignore.
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Speaker 1: It really is the blueprint for understanding forensically the psychological
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context that this new Gaen series is going to try
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and explore. Though we should probably mention the frustration right
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the unresolved season two cliffhanger.
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Speaker 2: Well, don't get me started BTK left hanging painful, painful.
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But anyway, if mind Hunter is that intellectual, realistic blueprint, we.
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Speaker 1: Should transition now to the fictional side of this section,
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but one that's equally dense psychologically. Hannibal Ah.
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Speaker 2: Yes, this is where true crime moves from that forensic
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realism into something else, entirely pure baroque psychological artistry.
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Speaker 1: Brian Fuller's reimagining of the Thomas Harris novels. It just
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elevates the whole serial killer lore to this like operatic scale.
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Speaker 2: It really does. Mads Michelson as doctor Hannibal Lecter, the
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cultured cannibal psychiatrist, and his dance of manipulation with the
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FBI profiler Will Graham played by Hugh Dancy, It's like
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the sophisticated fictional embodiment of those psychological cataclysms, the god
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complexes you see in real killers.
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Speaker 1: And the source material is key here connecting this fictional
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narrative back to Gain's legacy. How so well, the dynamic
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between Lector and Graham directly inspired the later creation of
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Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, right Jane Gumm exactly.
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And Buffalo Bill, as we know, was directly influenced by Geen,
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his collection of human skin trophies, his attempts to change
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his own identity, Ah the skin suit, the skin suit.
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So the connections direct. Even if Hannibal's execution is much
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more fantastical, almost dreamlike, in.
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Speaker 2: The psychological connection you mentioned, it's deeply Freudian, isn't it.
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That's a concept we should probably unpack a.
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Speaker 1: Little for the listener, Yeah, fuller script weaves in this
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intense Freudian dread. The sources specifically compare Lecter's atipal becoming
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of Graham like the Master, consuming the students psychologically, to
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Gin's intense destructive maternal haunting.
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Speaker 2: Right gins pathology was so defined by his inability to
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separate from his mother's control, her religious fervor. Hannibal uses
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its gothic setting, It's incredibly visceral visuals to explore that
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horror of identity, consumption, psychological fusion, and the.
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Speaker 1: Visual aesthetics are just unforgettable. The source calls it a
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gourmet feast of the macarbre.
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Speaker 2: That's a good description. Lecter's murders presented as these edible sculptures,
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highly stylized, grotesque yet somehow beautiful, and Graham's Viggins blurring
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his empathy with the actual emulation of the violence.
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Speaker 1: It gets inside your head, it does.
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Speaker 2: Hannibal really demonstrates that the psychological depth of these cases,
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the trauma, the obsession, the consumption, can be mined for
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this kind of sublime terror. It proves that the roots
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of Geen's horror are universal, whether they sprout in a
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plainfield farmhouse or a Grand Baltimore psychiatric office.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's transition now into section three. We're exploring domestic
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facades and systemic misogyny. Gan I mean, he was the
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definition of evil hiding and plain sight.
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Speaker 2: Wasn't absolutely man rural home, and.
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Speaker 1: His private acts were just unspeakable. Our sources critically tie
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his ability to do this to that repressive post war
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America strict gender norms, law enforcement indifference, especially towards the vulnerable.
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It was all part of the mix.
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Speaker 2: And this is where we look at killers who really
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master that dual life. That's the core thematic link back
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to genes whole methodology. We should start with that taut
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BBC Netflix thriller The.
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Speaker 1: Fault, Jamie Dornan as Paul Specter.
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Speaker 2: Exactly the perfect contemporary example. He's a seemingly benign grief
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counselor family man by day seems normal totally, but by
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night he's a sadistic strangler targeting professional women. His meticulous,
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methodical abductions. They directly echo what the source calls gains,
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predatory patience and domestic facade.
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Speaker 1: But what gives the fall its critical edge why it's
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relevant for our deep dive today is Detective Superintendent Stella
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Gibson Gillian Anderson fantastic character. She brings this necessary, searing
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feminist fury to the narrative, doesn't she Her mission isn't
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just catching specter. She's determined to dismantle the institutional misogyny
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she believes allows men like him to thrive, you know,
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minimizing their crimes, blaming the victims.
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Speaker 2: That is the essential parallel to the Green critique right there,
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Gibson's focus on power dynamics, on how society minimizes violence
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against women. It's entirely analogous to the source materials analysis
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of those postwar gender norms, the law enforcement attitudes that
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let Green operate for so long without anyone really looking
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too closely.
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Speaker 1: And the show said in that rainslicked bell fast across
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three scensons. It forces you, the viewer, to confront the
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violence with this kind of clinical intimacy. It avoids just
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being exploitative.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it has real philosophical depth, grounded in the authenticity
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of real cases like the Blackout Ripper.
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Speaker 1: Moving from Northern Ireland then to the heartland Texas, we
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find another maybe surprising example of domestic horror in Love
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and Death from HBO.
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Speaker 2: Max Elizabeth Olsen as Candy Montgomery.
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Speaker 1: That's right, the nineteen eighty case murdering her friends and
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Betty Gore with an axe after an affair.
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Speaker 2: Now, the connection between this, you know, suburban axe murder
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and Guine's rural grave robbing, it isn't in the specific
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type of violence.
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Speaker 1: Well, it's the environment exactly.
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Speaker 2: The source material links them through the exploration of domestic suffocation.
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This Midwestern story where repressed desire just violently erupts. It
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mirrors Gin's own farmhouse festering.
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Speaker 1: How so can you elaborate on that festering.
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Speaker 2: Well, Guin was trapped by his mother's religious zelotry and
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control in total isolation. Montgomery, in a different way, was
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trapped by the rigid, smiling conformity of suburban nineteen eighties
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Texas life, the pressure to be perfect.
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Speaker 1: So it acts as a kind of Midwestern echo of
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Monster's Heartland horrors.
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Speaker 2: Precisely because the common denominator is that oppressive atmosphere, a
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small community where appearance is everything, and where any deviation
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from the norm, whether it's you know, sexual desire like
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Montgomery or necrophilic fixation like Guin, it has nowhere to
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go but inward festering until it explodes into.
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Speaker 1: Violence, and the series is structured to build that tension, right,
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contrasting Olsen's bright, cheerful demeanor with the inevitable courtroom Catharsis
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and Lily Rabe as Betty.
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Speaker 2: Gore haunting the edges tragic.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and finally anchoring the section on domesticity shattered facades,
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we have The Staircase twenty twenty two, focusing on that
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highly ambiguous Michael Peterson trial, the two thousand and one
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death of his wife Kathleen. The owl theory, right, the
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owl theory everything what binds this very ambiguous domestic drama
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to Guide's specific situation.
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Speaker 2: Okay, the theme here is the transformation of the hume
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into the central crime scene, and crucially, how the narrative
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is used to as the source says, probe privileges.
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Speaker 1: Shield, Colin Firth is Michael Peterson.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and the show just minutely dissects how his wealth,
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his social standing, his complex personal life, how all of
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that played into the initial investigation the subsequent trials.
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Speaker 1: So Gimm's home was this literal hidden chamber of horrors
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of poverty and isolation. Peterson's home was this grand, upper
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class place, shielding secrets and ambiguities, but the.
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Speaker 2: Themes the same underneath. Isn't it what happens when the
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domestic sphere of the place society tells us is the
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most private, the safest, what happens when it is shattered
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by suspicion? The investigation forces you, the viewer, to question
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every single detail of the family's.
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Speaker 1: Life, which makes it a slow, simmering monster kin as
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the Source.
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Speaker 2: Puts it exactly. The horror isn't immediate Gore, It's that
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gnawing uncertainty. Who is the person next to you? Really?
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And Tony Kalett as Kathleen Peterson, she provides that essential
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emotional grounding, reminding you that these dramas fundamentally are about
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fractured real lives. Okay, so now we shift focus. In
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section four, we're moving away from Gen's isolated farm, looking
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instead at urban settings, even international ones. If Gen taught
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us about pathological isolation, which he certainly did, then this
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next set of dramas demonstrates that evil's universality, as the
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Source calls it, in its precision and pathos translates just
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as easily across cultures, across continents.
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Speaker 1: Okay, where do we start.
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Speaker 2: Let's begin with Despus, the twenty twenty mini series. Yeah,
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David Tennant delivering just a masterclass in quiet revulsion as
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Dennis Nilsen them as Well.
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Speaker 1: Hill Murderer London seventies eighties.
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Speaker 2: Right, and the specific parallels to Gin's methodology they're striking
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despite this shift from rural Plainfield to urban London. Nilssen
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loured lonely men, often estranged from society, vulnerable back to
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his flat, strangled them, and then then he dissected their
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bodies in his bathtub, sometimes keeping them for weeks before disposal.
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That terrifying routine is frighteningly reminiscent of Gin's kitchen table atrocities,
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that casual domestic setting for unspeakable acts of dismemberment, necrophilia.
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Speaker 1: And the trigger for his arrest in eighty three. It's
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one of those mundane, almost disgusting details that the sources highlight.
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It emphasizes the banality of it all.
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Speaker 2: The human remains clogging his apartment trains. Yeah. Daniel Mays
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as dsp Jay, He embodies that weary empathy investigators need
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when they confront the sheer psychological reality of someone like Nilsen, but.
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Speaker 1: Beyond the individual horror, Days serves as this powerful societal
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indictment too.
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Speaker 2: Oh absolutely. The source material points out how the show
19:15
critiques the pervasive nineteen eighties homophobia. It emphasizes that many
19:19
of Nielsen's victims, mostly gay, young often immigrants, were basically
19:23
ignored marginalized by the police because of their status.
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Speaker 1: So that's systemic and difference again exactly.
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Speaker 2: It allowed him to operate with impunity for years. Connects
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right back to the investigative failures we talked about with
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Gain and with Dahmer. Tenant's portrayal captures this fastidious loneliness.
19:39
His sauce spoken, almost polite discussion of his necrophilia. It
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echoes gains unsettling candor when he was finally discovered.
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Speaker 1: Okay, next, we're jetting off from urban alienation to a
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completely different space geographically psychologically.
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Speaker 2: The serpent One Tahrahem as Charles Sobrausch.
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Speaker 1: The Bikini Killer, operating along Southeast Asia's hippie trail in
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the seventies. This is described as a globe trotting contrast
20:03
to Gain's backwoods barbarism.
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Speaker 2: It really is Gain was defined by his inability to
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leave home his oppressive home, Sobridge was defined by constant
20:12
movement and his mastery of charismatic deception different methods. Totally
20:16
Gain relied on the local trust of a small town
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Soraje used the chaotic, unregulated international vibe of the Hibbie Trail,
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poisoning victims with pills disguised as dysentery cures. But the
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forces argue they're united by that profound ability to manipulate.
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Speaker 1: And the source material also draws a strong parallel in
20:35
that toxic bond between Subrage and his accomplice Marie Andre
20:39
Leclair played by Jenna Coleman ah Yes. Her complicity, her
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emotional criminal complicity, is compared the gen's own maternal tether,
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that deep, dysfunctional attachment that drove his pathology. In both cases,
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the killer's actions are enabled sustained by a profoundly damaging relationship.
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Speaker 2: And the Serpent is interesting because it mostly issues Gore
20:59
for his psychological sleight of hand, right, it focuses on
21:02
the subtle manipulation. It mirrors that quiet, subtle build up
21:06
to horror that defined Geen's story before the shocking discovery and.
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Speaker 1: The ending, because so Bruj was so elusive in real life.
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It leaves you with this kind of serpentine unease, as
21:18
the source calls it.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that final psychological punch, the realization that these kinds
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of people often operate outside the easy confines of justice.
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Speaker 1: Okay. Finally, in this section, we look at fame pop
21:29
culture immortality with the assassination of Johnny Versacci American.
21:33
Speaker 2: Crime story Darren chris amazing performance won an.
21:36
Speaker 1: Emmy as Andrew Cunanan, the nineteen ninety seven spree killer
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who murdered Versauci.
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Speaker 2: Now Kinnon's crimes weren't rooted in rural isolation like Geen's.
21:44
They were rooted in delusional grandeur and media fixation.
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Speaker 1: So how does that link to Geen?
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Speaker 2: It links to Geen's subsequent influence, his reluctant pop culture immortality.
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Gee never saw fame quite the opposite. Keunan craved it.
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His violence was expression of that craving.
22:01
Speaker 1: That contrast is really key for you, the listener, to
22:04
grasp the juxtaposition of Versachi's almost mythic opulence, the silk robes,
22:10
gilded villas, global fame, the height of fashion against Cunan's
22:15
squalid envy, as the source puts it, it frames this
22:19
powerful narrative. If Gien's crimes critique societal isolation and rural repression,
22:24
Rasace's murder critiques the toxicity of the spotlight, the destructive
22:28
desire for recognition. It shows how the societal environment really
22:32
shapes the killer's motives, their whole trajectory.
22:34
Speaker 2: So as we move into our final section, section five,
22:37
we need to pull back a bit analyze the unifying
22:40
underlying theme across all these narratives. It doesn't matter the
22:42
killer's type, location, era, it's the failure of the justice system,
22:47
law enforcement indifference.
22:48
Speaker 1: Right, Those investigative lapses are just a constant, recurring theme,
22:52
started with the police dismissing victim disappearances and Plainfield back
22:55
in the fifties.
22:56
Speaker 2: And the officer's failing to intervene with Dahmer decades later.
22:59
It's depressingly consistent.
23:00
Speaker 1: And to show the full breadth of this theme within
23:03
this true crime drama landscape, our source material does something compelling.
23:07
It includes a mini series that isn't actually focused on
23:10
a killer at all.
23:10
Speaker 2: Quick What is that?
23:11
Speaker 1: Ava DuVernay's twenty nineteen series When They See Us.
23:14
Speaker 2: Ah The Central Park five Exoneration powerful television.
23:18
Speaker 1: Incredibly powerful, and this four part series, it's the searing
23:22
indictment of institutional racial injustice, specifically in how serial rape
23:27
investigations were handled, leading to wrongful accusations. The theme resonates
23:32
profoundly with that core concept of ed Guin's investigative lapses,
23:36
so it shows that when the system fails, the damage
23:39
is catastrophic permanent. If justice failed in cases of isolated
23:44
murder and grave robbing in the fifties, that failure is
23:47
magnified exponentially when systemic racial bias drives the investigation, when
23:51
getting a conviction becomes more important than finding the truth.
23:55
Speaker 2: The source material specifically notes Cherald Jerome's performance as Corey Wise,
23:59
it's devastating capturing the sheer life altering trauma inflicted by
24:03
a justice system that prioritized a quick conviction over actual
24:06
factual investigation.
24:08
Speaker 1: It really forcefully reminds us, doesn't it Whether the failure
24:11
is ignoring a frantic neighbor's call like in Dahmer, or
24:15
coercing false confessions from kids based on entrenched bias like
24:19
in When They See Us. The integrity of the whole
24:22
investigative process is constantly being tested by indifference, by prejudice.
24:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, this series powerfully connects the dots between the monsters
24:30
we hunt and the systems that either allow them to
24:33
operate or tragically end up wrongfully creating entirely new victims.
24:38
Speaker 1: Wow. This has been a genuinely fascinating journey, hasn't it.
24:41
We've gone from the oppressive silence of that isolated Wisconsin
24:44
farmhouse to.
24:45
Speaker 2: The urban anonymity of Milwaukee, the intellectual terror of FBI
24:49
profiling rooms, the international deceit along the hippie.
24:52
Speaker 1: Trail, right, And what connects all these disparate dramas ultimately
24:56
is that shared focus on the profound, ripple effects of
24:59
formative trauma. Yes, but also on the specific societal environments,
25:02
the ones that cultivate or enable, or sometimes just ignore
25:05
true darkness.
25:07
Speaker 2: And we've hopefully established that these dramas they serve a
25:09
function beyond just you know, simple entertainment or morbid curiosity.
25:14
By providing that deep psychological context that historical.
25:17
Speaker 1: Depths analyzing everything from edible fixations to institutional misogyny.
25:23
Speaker 2: To urban homophobia, they help the audience understand and maybe,
25:27
just maybe encourage critical thinking about how we might avert
25:31
such nightmares in the future. They transform true crime history
25:35
into necessary sociological commentary.
25:37
Speaker 1: So what's the final takeaway for the learner? For you
25:40
listening seeking knowledge in these complex, often dark narratives.
25:44
Speaker 2: I think the deepest insight offered by all these powerful
25:47
scripted narratives, yeah, is that they extend monster the Ed
25:50
Gaines stories legacy, absolutely, but they do it by reminding
25:54
us that behind every single monster there lurks a mirror,
25:57
a mirror to our world. We watch not just to
26:00
be horrified by the individual pathology, but hopefully to critically
26:04
examine the systemic failings, the societal pressures that contributed to
26:07
the making of that killer and that perhaps still exist
26:11
in our own communities today.
26:12
Speaker 1: That is a potent and yeah, provocative thought to end
26:14
on when you engage with these dramas stream wisely and
26:18
definitely look beyond the surface level gore for that crucial
26:20
psychological and systemic critique. Thank you for joining us for
26:24
this deep dive