Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / How the Karen Read Effect Is Shaping the Lindsay Clancy Trial (Part 1) (9/3/26)

Transcript

How the Karen Read Effect Is Shaping the Lindsay Clancy Trial (Part 1) (9/3/26) · The Vault: The Epstein Files

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's up everyone and welcome back to the program. There
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: is a particular kind of contempt reserved for people who
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: take something solemn, something consequential, something capable of destroying lives
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: and turn it into a fucking tailgate party. That's what
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: happened around the Karen Reid case and I'm finished pretending
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: the consequences ended when the cameras outside the courthouse disappeared.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Canton became the laboratory for a new and disgusting strain
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: of true crime culture where evidence became optional Certainty became fashionable,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: and screaming something loudly enough was treated as a substitute
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: for proving it. People picked a jersey, found their section
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: of the bleachers, and suddenly, a homicide prosecution became Patriots vs. Jets,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: with better livestream numbers. Every witness became either a hero
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: or a villain, depending on which uniform the internet had
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  Speaker 1: assigned them, before they ever opened their mouths. Every inconsistency
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  Speaker 1: became a conspiracy, every mundane fact became a clue and
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: every unanswered question became proof that somebody somewhere had engineered
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: the crime of the century. The intellectual standard was not
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: reasonable doubt because reasonable doubt requires reason. The standard became
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: whether an allegation could be squeezed onto a sign printed
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: across the t-shirt, screamed outside a courthouse, or repeated enough
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: times online that thousands of strangers started remembering it as
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: established fact I've spent years swimming through the sewage surrounding
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein. A case where distrust of institutions isn't some
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: exotic concept invented by people on social media. I've watched
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  Speaker 1: prosecutors make extraordinary decisions, powerful institutions fail catastrophically, wealthy people
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: receive accommodations ordinary defendants could never dream of, and survivors
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: spend years fighting merely to be heard. If anybody has
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: earned the right to say that the government narratives should
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: be questioned, I would argue that the people who have
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: seriously studied Epstein are near the front of that line.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: But questioning authority has never meant inventing your preferred answer
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: before examining the evidence. Skepticism is supposed to make your
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: standards higher, not annihilate them altogether. The entire point of
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: examining institutional failure is to distinguish what can be proven
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: from what people desperately want to believe. I can look
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: at Epstein's treatment and say something stinks without pretending every
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: rumor attached to his name therefore becomes gospel. I can
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: demand answers about prosecutorial decisions without manufacturing evidence because the
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: real record is already damning enough to deserve serious examination.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: And look, having discipline isn't cowardice, fence-sitting, or allegiance to
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the government. It's the difference between investigating a scandal and
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: becoming one more asshole manufacturing bullshit for an audience that's
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: already decided what it wants to hear. And that distinction
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: apparently became intolerable in Canton because ambiguity does not sell
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: nearly as well as a holy war. Nuance can't compete
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: with a crowd convinced that it's uncovered an evil empire
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  Speaker 1: before breakfast. Once people emotionally invested themselves in a conclusion,
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  Speaker 1: contrary evidence stopped being information and started being an attack
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: on the tribe. Witnesses were no longer evaluated according to
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  Speaker 1: credibility but processed according to usefulness. Experts were brilliant when
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: they reinforced the story and corrupt, stupid, compromised, or bought
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: when they did not. Law enforcement mistakes stopped being mistakes
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: because every mistake had to become evidence of intentional orchestration.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Coincidence disappeared entirely because coincidence is boring and conspiracies move merchandise.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Even basic uncertainty became unacceptable because admitting uncertainty meant surrendering
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: status inside a movement built upon absolute certainty. This is
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: how supposedly independent thinkers end up marching in intellectual lockstep
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: while congratulating themselves for refusing to follow the herd. They
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: didn't destroy group-thinking Canton. They industrialized it. And then came
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  Speaker 1: the fucking spectacle. The screaming, the signs, the slogans, the costumes,
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  Speaker 1: the social media personalities, orbiting the courthouse as though somebody
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  Speaker 1: had announced auditions for the most morally bankrupt reality show
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  Speaker 1: in America. People behaved as though proximity to a criminal
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  Speaker 1: proceeding transformed them into participants instead of spectators. Cameras rewarded
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  Speaker 1: every theatrical outburst, algorithms rewarded every accusation, and an ecosystem
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  Speaker 1: developed where the most inflammatory person in the room often
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  Speaker 1: became the most visible. That incentive structure is poison when
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: the underlying subject is a man's death and another person's
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  Speaker 1: criminal culpability. Nobody should need to explain that a courthouse
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: is not a comic con for people obsessed with murder cases.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Nobody should have to remind adults that human beings buried
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: at the center of these stories are not supporting characters
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: in somebody else's content strategy. Yet somehow that became necessary
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: because truth was treated as boring and restraint was treated
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: as weakness. The louder the circus became, the more its
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: participants convinced themselves their volume was evidence of righteousness. It
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: wasn't righteousness. It was spectacle feeding upon tragedy until some
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  Speaker 1: people seemingly forgot there had ever been a dead human
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: being at the center of the story. And look, I
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: don't take any umbrage that people reached a different conclusion
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: from somebody else's conclusion. Reasonable people can review complicated evidence
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  Speaker 1: and disagree about what it establishes. That's precisely why juries exist.
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  Speaker 1: and why the burden of proof belongs to the prosecution.
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  Speaker 1: What disgusts me is the deliberate construction of an atmosphere
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  Speaker 1: where disagreement itself becomes grounds for punishment. Question the preferred narrative,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: and suddenly you are corrupt, stupid, compromised, paid off, secretly connected,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: or morally deficient. There was always another accusation available because
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: conspiracy thinking contains its own self-defense mechanism. Evidence against the
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: theory becomes evidence that the cover-up is even bigger than
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: originally believed. A denial proves guilt. Silence proves guilt. Criticism
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: proves guilt. And disagreement proves that you must somehow be
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: part of it. Congratulations. You've built an argument that cannot
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: possibly be falsified. The people who normalized that behavior did
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: not leave behind harmless curiosity confined to Massachusetts. They left
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: behind a blueprint. find a defendant around whom enough sympathy
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: or intrigue can be generated, create an easily digestible counter-narrative,
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  Speaker 1: identify villains, flood every platform available, attack anybody who complicates
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  Speaker 1: the story, and turn public opinion into pressure campaigns surrounding
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: the legal process. The facts can be filled in later, selectively,
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  Speaker 1: as necessary. What matters first is creating the team. Once
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: the team exists, every subsequent development gets interpreted through loyalty
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  Speaker 1: and rather than analysis. That model is now being dragged
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  Speaker 1: from one major criminal case to another like some diseased
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: carnival attraction. People arrive knowing almost nothing about the evidence,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: but already understanding which side they're supposed to join. They're
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: not looking for truth, because truth might force them to
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  Speaker 1: change teams. And changing teams is unacceptable once your identity, audience, friendships,
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  Speaker 1: and income have become attached to the jersey. And that's
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: the part that nobody wants to discuss when they romanticize
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: this phenomenon as ordinary citizens becoming engaged with the justice system. Look,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: engagement is healthy when it involves reading documents, understanding burdens
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  Speaker 1: of proof, questioning witnesses intelligently, correcting mistakes, and remaining willing
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: to change conclusions when facts demand it. What we increasingly
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  Speaker 1: have is fandom, and fandom rewards loyalty. Justice demands skepticism.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: including skepticism toward the people and narratives we personally favor.
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  Speaker 1: Those two impulses are fundamentally incompatible when the stakes involve murder, incarceration, reputations,
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  Speaker 1: grieving families, and the possibility of wrongful conviction or wrongful acquittal.
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  Speaker 1: A fan asks how a development helps a team. A
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: serious observer asks what the development actually proves. Once you
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  Speaker 1: cannot tell the difference between those questions, You have no
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  Speaker 1: business calling what you're doing journalism, investigation, or advocacy. And yes,
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  Speaker 1: the jury pool question hangs over all of this, whether
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: people want to acknowledge it or not. Nobody needs to
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: claim some secret centralized operation to recognize the obvious purpose
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: of relentless public persuasion campaigns when slogans, accusations, videos, personalities, demonstrations,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: and narratives saturate the atmosphere surrounding a prosecution investigation. The
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: possibility that those narratives reach potential jurors isn't some absurd fantasy.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Courts spend enormous effort trying to protect juries from outside
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  Speaker 1: influence for a fucking reason. We don't allow advocates to
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  Speaker 1: wander into the jury room carrying campaign literature because verdicts
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  Speaker 1: are supposed to emerge from admissible evidence presented under rules.
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  Speaker 1: Yet the internet has created a way to carpet bomb
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  Speaker 1: communities with narratives long before 12 citizens ever take their seats.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe an individual campaign succeeds, and maybe it does not.
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  Speaker 1: But if you want to pretend that the possibility is irrelevant,
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  Speaker 1: I would call you naive. If public opinion did not matter,
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  Speaker 1: people would not invest so much time trying to manufacture it.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: The entire circus depends upon the belief that enough noise
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: eventually creates real-world pressure. And look, there's something pretty revolting
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  Speaker 1: about watching people wrap themselves in the language of justice
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  Speaker 1: while engaging in behavior that corrodes the very concept. Justice
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  Speaker 1: is not getting your preferred person acquitted. Justice is not
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  Speaker 1: getting your preferred person convicted either. Justice is a process
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  Speaker 1: designed imperfectly and sometimes disastrously to force accusations through rules
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  Speaker 1: intended to separate evidence from emotion. I know perfectly well
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  Speaker 1: how badly institutions can fail that promise because Jeffrey Epstein's
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  Speaker 1: history provides chapter after chapter of institutional failure. But institutional
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  Speaker 1: failure does not give the public a license to replace
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  Speaker 1: the justice system with an algorithmic popularity contest. The answer
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  Speaker 1: to prosecutors cutting questionable deals is not TikTok prosecutors inventing evidence.
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  Speaker 1: The answer to law enforcement misconduct is not amateur investigators
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  Speaker 1: treating speculation as probable cause. The answer to institutional arrogance
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  Speaker 1: is not crowdsourcing a parallel system where the loudest asshole
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: receives appellate jurisdiction. You don't repair a damaged standard by
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: eliminating standards entirely. The Epstein case taught me something else
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  Speaker 1: that seems completely lost in this new culture, which is
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  Speaker 1: that suspicion becomes meaningful only when you're willing to interrogate
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  Speaker 1: your own suspicions. There are hundreds of seductive theories surrounding
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  Speaker 1: Epstein because his life touched wealth, politics, intelligence, speculation, finance, royalty, academia,
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  Speaker 1: and extraordinary government failure. Some questions are supported by documents,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: some are supported partially, some remain unanswered, and some are
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  Speaker 1: simply bullshit. The responsibility of anybody claiming to take the
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: case seriously is to know the fucking difference. It would
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: be incredibly easy for me to tell an audience that
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  Speaker 1: every rumor is true, because doing so would create endless
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  Speaker 1: sensational content. It would also make the work worthless. When
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: you're serious about this, evidence occasionally ruins the story you
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: hoped was true, and serious people accept that disappointment instead
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  Speaker 1: of attacking the evidence for refusing to cooperate. Canton-style fandom
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  Speaker 1: reverses that relationship entirely. The story becomes sacred, and reality
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  Speaker 1: is ordered to conform. That inversion produces some of the
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  Speaker 1: ugliest behavior in modern true crime, because once the narrative
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  Speaker 1: becomes sacred, actual human beings become expendable. People can be mocked, harassed, followed, accused, dissected, doxxed, humiliated,
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  Speaker 1: and treated as collateral damage because the movement has declared
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  Speaker 1: itself morally righteous. Every crusade finds a way to convince
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  Speaker 1: its participants that cruelty is acceptable when committed against the
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  Speaker 1: correct target. The Karen Reed Circus provided an especially vivid
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  Speaker 1: example of how quickly ordinary boundaries can disintegrate once thousands
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  Speaker 1: of people grant themselves moral permission to become fucking monsters
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  Speaker 1: towards strangers. They tell themselves they're exposing corruption, which means
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  Speaker 1: anything they do in pursuit of exposure becomes justified. They
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  Speaker 1: tell themselves they're fighting injustice, which conveniently removes any obligation
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  Speaker 1: to act justly. They claim compassion for one person, while
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: demonstrating astonishing indifference toward anyone placed on the opposite side
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  Speaker 1: of their narrative. My friends, that is not empathy. What
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  Speaker 1: it is, is selective humanity. And there are few things
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  Speaker 1: more morally bankrupt than people congratulating themselves for compassion, while
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: deciding everybody outside their tribe deserves none. Then there are
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  Speaker 1: the content creators who discover the outrage is an extraordinarily
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  Speaker 1: efficient business model. A complicated evidentiary question might require hours
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  Speaker 1: of reading before producing an answer that begins with the
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  Speaker 1: commercially disastrous words, we don't know. A conspiracy requires a thumbnail.
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  Speaker 1: Certainty creates clips. Anger creates engagement. Villains create returning customers.
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  Speaker 1: And tribal warfare creates audiences that refresh their feeds looking
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: for the next dose of confirmation. Suddenly, the creator has
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: a powerful financial and psychological incentive never to resolve the
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: uncertainty that built the audience in the first place. Every
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: new filing must contain a bombshell. Every hearing must produce
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: a humiliation. Every witness must be exposed, and every mundane
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: procedural development must become evidence that the walls are closing in.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: We've seen this vocabulary vomited across the internet coverage until
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: the words themselves mean practically nothing. People aren't covering cases anymore.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: They're writing episodic television in real time and forcing reality
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: into the screenplay. The dead become intellectual property in the
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: courtroom becomes the season finale. All right, folks, we're going
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: to wrap up episode one right here. And in the
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  Speaker 1: next episode, we're going to pick up where we left off.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: All the information that goes with this episode can be
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: found in the description box.