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MISSING: Sage Smith | Case Reaction & Analysis · True Crime Reactions

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Look at the clock right now, like, really, look at
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: the exact time now. I want you to subtract just
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: ninety minutes.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Right, which is just an hour and a half.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Nothing exactly. It's barely a movie. Yeah, but in that tiny,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: you know, seemingly insignificant window of time, a completely normal
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Tuesday evening can just fracture into a void, avoids so
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: deep that neither the police, nor your family, nor the
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: massive global true crime community will ever be able to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: find you.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: You can exist in one minute and then yeah, less
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: than two hours later, you just become a permanent phantom.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: It's terrifying, it really is. And today our deep dive
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: is looking at a distinct piece of media that actually
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: attempts to map one of those exact voids. We're examining
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the June eleventh, twenty eighteen broadcast of the wildly popular
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: show Crime Junkie.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Hosted by Ashley Flowers and brit Prawa, Right.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: And specifically we are focusing on their coverage of the
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: disappearance of Sage Smith. We're looking at the raw facts
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: of the case as they present to them, the frankly
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: terrifying investigative brick walls hit by both her family only
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and the police, and.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Well, we're looking at how you even package an unsolved,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: total dead end into compelling narrative storytelling that gets consumed
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: by millions of people.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Okay, let's unpack this, because before we can even
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: begin to understand the mechanics of the show itself or
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: you know, the sociology of a grassroots family investigation, we
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: really have to look at the inciting incident. We have
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: to look at those ninety minutes on Tuesday, November twenty,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: twenty twelve, which I.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Mean that is an incredibly narrow window to contain what
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: is essentially the total degradation of certainty. Yeah, if you
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: look at the timeline presented in the source material, you
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: are quite literally watching reality dissolve in real time.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Dissolve is the perfect word for it.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Because at five thirty pm, we have our starting point, right,
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: and this is anchored an absolute, undeniable fact. Sage Smith
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: leaves home for a date.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Right, She's leaving for a date.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we have a confirmed location, a confirmed identity,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: and a confirmed intent. But then you know, we move
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: to six thirty pm and the entire higher context of
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: that reality just begins to shift.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Because at six point thirty, sage is seen and we
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: know for a fact she is talking to someone on
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: the phone. But the critical detail that the source material
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: really hammers home here is that she is seen.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Alone, yes, alone, which changes everything.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: It changes everything because if she left at five point
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: thirty for a date, I mean a day implies duality, right,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: it implies an impending pairing, a shared physical space with
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: someone else exactly. Yet a full hour into this timeline,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: she is physically isolated. She's engaging with someone digitally rather
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: than physically.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: That singular word alone. It fundamentally alters the threat model
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: for anyone investigating this case. I mean, think about it.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: If a person is on a date, the immediate investigative
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: focus is on.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: The partner, right, the partner is the primary variable.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Precisely, But if a person is observed alone, just moving
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: through the world independently an hour after leaving for a rendezvous,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: the environment itself becomes a potential threat.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, that makes sense.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: The variables just multiply exponentially. Was the data ruse? Was
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: she stood up? Did she meet the person and then
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: they subsequently separated?
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: And then I mean it gets worse. Just a half
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: hour later, at seven pm, the variables multiply so wildly
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: that the timeline just shatters completely. The source material notes
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: a possible sighting of Sage at a local cafe, possible sighting,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: and again she's noted as being alone. But after seven
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: zero pm it is a complete and total void. No
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: one has seen her since.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: It's like watching a ship sail into heavy fog.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Yes, you see the ship clearly at the dock at
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: five thirty, and then you can, you know, sort of
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: make out its shape in the mist at six thirty. Right,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: you know it's out there, but by seven hours you
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: aren't sure if you're looking at the ship or just
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: a trick of the light in the fog. Why is
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: it that human memory becomes so unreliable the exact moment
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: we need it most.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how the term possibly cited functions
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: as an absolute investigative nightmare. When an investigation hits a posse sighting,
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: it places this paralyzing psychological burden on.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Law enforcement because they have to decide what to trust exactly.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Do they anchor their search perimeter, all their manpower, their
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: forensic resources to the six point thirty confirmed location, or
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: do they stretch their already thin resources to accommodate this
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: seven point zero zero unconfirmed cafe siding.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Wait, let's talk about the mechanics of a possible sighting
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: for a second, because I mean, when a witness comes
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: forward days later to say they saw someone at a cafe,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: are they actually remembering what they saw in that moment
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: or is their brain just like reverse engineering a memory
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: to fit the narrative they just heard on the evening news.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Honestly, it is almost entirely the.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Latter, really just completely fabricated by the brain.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a phenomenon cognitive psychologist called reconstructive memory. We
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: tend to think human memory functions like a video camera,
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: you know, just recording raw footage to a hard drive.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Right, like we can just hit rewind and play it back.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: But it doesn't work like that at all. It functions
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: much more like a digital rendering process. When a witness
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: is sitting in a cafe at seven zero pm, they
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: are not actively attempting to log a definitive timestamp sighting
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: of Sage Smith.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Now they're drinking coffee, they're thinking about.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Work exactly, They're checking their phone. Their brain is discarding
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: like ninety nine percent of the visual information in that
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: room because it deems it irrelevant to their immediate survival
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: or goals.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: So then when the police show up three days later
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: with a missing person poster.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: The witness's brain tries to pull up a file that
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: just doesn't actually exist. And this is where the extreme
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: danger lies in investigations. Think of human memory in this
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: context like a heavily compressed JPEG image.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Oh I like that analogy.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, every time the brain accesses the memory of that
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: cafe on that specific Tuesday, it saves over it, It
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: compresses the file, and it automatically fills in the pixelated
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: gaps with details from the present moment.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Wow. So it's literally overwriting the truth with suggestion.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, the brain takes a vague outline of a person
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: in the periphery, maybe just a certain height or a
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: dark coat, and when prompted by the police poster, it
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: seamlessly pastes Sage's face onto that blurry figure.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: And the witness isn't lying.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. The witness genuinely believes they saw her,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: But mechanically they have constructed a composite reality.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Which means, I mean, if investigators trust that seven point
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: zero sighting, and it's merely a corrupted mental jpeg. They
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: are looking in the wrong place at the wrong time,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: and the trail goes instantly, permanently cold.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Right. But on the flip side, if they ignore it
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: and it happened to be real.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Then they have willingly turned their backs on the final
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: location of a missing person. It's a lose lose situation.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: It is a paralyzing paradox, huh. And it forces investigators
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: to make a tactical retreat because the seven point zero
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: sighting is so corrupted by human error, they have absolutely
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: no choice but to fall back to the last piece
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: of concrete, undeniable evidence. They have to retreat to six
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: point thirty PM.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: But placing all their investigative weight on that six point
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: thirty tether introduces an entirely new nightmare because the source
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: material makes it very clear. Here the police are still
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: looking to speak with the man stage last communicated with that.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Day, the phantom on the other end of the six
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: point thirty phone call.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Exactly the phantom caller. And this is where the timeline
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: gets incredibly frustrating for me, and I imagine for anyone
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: listening who you know actually remembers the year twenty twelve.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Oh for sure, because we aren't talking about the analog
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: era here. We all had cell phones in twenty twelve.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: We all had digital footprints. If I pull my carrier
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: bill right now, it shows every incoming and outgoing number
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: down to the literal second.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Right, It's a permanent ledger.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: So how does a digital tether in the twenty first
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: century just snap and leave a police department staring at
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: a blank wall. Shouldn't digital footprints be permanent?
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question about how the general public
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: fundamentally misunderstands the architecture of a twenty twelve era digital footprint.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: We all assume a phone call is just a simple
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: line drawn between phone A and phone B, Right, Yeah.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Log neatly by Verizon or AT and T or whatever exactly.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: On a standard circuit switch network. But the reality of
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: digital telecommunications is vastly more complex and frankly porous porous.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, So we aren't just talking about a traditional carrier network.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Then not necessarily no, if a call is made using
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: voiceover IP so VoIP or a third party web based application,
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: it doesn't travel over the cellular network as a continuous
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: radio signal.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, so how does it travel.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: It's broken down into tiny data packets, and these packets
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: are routed through the Internet, often bouncing between international server
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: just scattering all over the place. Yeah, and if the
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: caller was utilizing a proxy server, their IP address is
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: intentionally masked, so the data packet hits a server in
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: say Switzerland, gets stripped of its originating data, and is
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: then forwarded to the recipient.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: So let me get this straight. The police subpoena of
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the phone records, they see the outgoing or incoming data
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: connection at six point thirty, they try to trace it back,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: and they just hit a server farm on another continent.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: A server farm that completely he refuses to comply with
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: the local warrant. Yes, oh my god, the local police
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: department hits a wall of jurisdictional static or i mean,
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: considered even simpler mechanical evasion.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: The burner phone, right, the classic burner phone, you buy
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: it at a gas station.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly, a device purchased with cash, activated with a totally
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: false name, and never once linked to a permanent contract. Now,
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: a burner phone still pings a cell tower to connect
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: the call, which does give police a geographic radius, but
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: only while it's on. Right the moment the battery is
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: physically removed and the device is tossed into a storm drain,
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: it drops off the network registry permanently. The tower data
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: points to a piece of plastic that no longer has
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: a pulse, and it's registered to a ghost.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: I really want you, the listener, to internalize that for
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: a second. If the police pulled your phone right now today,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: how much of your actual life, your real conversations, is
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: hidden inside encrypted third party apps that would never show
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: up on a standard carrier bill, most.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Of it for a lot of people today.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: How easily could a crucial conversation in your life just
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: vanish into the digital ether if the physical device itself
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: went missing.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: It is a profound vulnerability in modern investigations and for detectives,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: the terrifying realization is that a digital void can be
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: vastly more impenetrable than a physical.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: One, because you can't just send dogs to go sniff
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: out an IP address exactly.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: You can organize the search party to grid out a forest,
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: but you cannot drag a destroyed overseas server for a
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: deleted conversation. The phantom remains a phantom, because the very
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: architecture of the Internet allows for targeted non existence.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Targeted non existence that is chilling, and when the digital
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: forensic trail snaps like that, the entire dynamic of the
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: case fundamentally shifts, because when the institutional machinery of the
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: police department hits that proxy server or that burner phone
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: and just stalls out, the physical human element has to
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: take over.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: They have no other choice.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Right when the badge hits a wall, the blood relatives
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: step forward.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: It's the transition from an institutional investigation to a grassroots one.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: And the source material highlights this incredibly tragic parallel track.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Sage's father and her friends became advocates and attempted to
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: investigate the disappearance on their own.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Let's really examine the mechanical reality of what that actually means,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: because you know, grassroots investigation sounds like this noble, organized
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: cinematic effort.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Like they're setting up a war room with corkboards and red.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: String exactly, But on a mechanical level, in real life,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: it is just the exhaustion of permutations fueled purely by trauma.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Imagine being a father and the police look at you
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: until you they have lost the digital tether to your child.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: The helplessness must be overwhelming.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: So you have to become a detective. You are canvassing neighborhoods.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: You are knocking on doors, essentially asking strangers to bypass
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: that reconstructive memory glitch we talked about earlier. You were
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: trying to manually force the physical world to yield the
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: answers that the digital world hid.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: And you are doing all of this without the psychological
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: armor of a professional investigator.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're just raw, so raw.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Every single door of Father knox On is a simultaneous
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: exercise in profound hope and abject terror.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Because he wants to find something, but he's terrified of
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: what that something might be.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Precisely, he is desperately seeking a breakthrough while simultaneously writing
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: that the breakthrough might be the discovery of a tragedy.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: It requires an emotional compartmentalization that is simply unsustainable for
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: a normal human being investigating the disappearance of their own child.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: It makes me think of like two distinct groups trying
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: to dig a tunnel through a mountain from completely opposite sides.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Okay, I could see that on.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: One side of the mountain, you have the police, they
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: have industrial drills, geological surveys, state funding, and this massive
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: team of engineers the institutional resources right the heavy machinery.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: And on the other side of the mountains, starting at
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: the exact same time, you have Sage's father and her friends.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: They have absolutely no machinery. They are swinging pick axes
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: with their bare hands, just tearing their muscles up, operating
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: purely on adrenaline and love.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: That's a devastating image.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: They are both digging furiously toward the center of this
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: man and hoping to meet in the middle and find
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: the truth. But here is the horrifying reality the source
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: material gives us. Both groups dig until their tools break
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: and they both hit the exact same impenetrable titanium core.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: They both end up at a dead end.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture of the
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: true crime landscape, we need to define what a dead
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: end mechanically looks like in an investigation.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's not like a brick wall in an alleyway.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: No, it's rarely a sudden, dramatic stop. A dead end
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: is an evaporation. It is the slow, agonizing, mathematical reality
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: that you have exhausted every single permutation of the data
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: available to you.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: You've turned over every stone.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: You've interviewed everyone in the social circle, you've cross referenced
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: every alibi, you've mapped every cell tower ping, and the
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: resulting equation still just equals zero, Which.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Makes the families independent search even more agonizing, frankly, because
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: they didn't just accept the police's failure as gospel. They
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: manually verified it. They did the grueling leg work, They
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: chased all the local rumors, and they arrived at the
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: exact same titanium core.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: And that shared failure is actually a tragic validation of
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: the inciting incident. What do you mean by that, Well,
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: when a passionate, deeply invested family arrives at the exact
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: same conclusion as a methodically resourced police department, it validates
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: the terrifying reality that s. H. Smith truly vanished without
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: a trace.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Right. It proves there wasn't some glaring mistake by the
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: cops that the family easily found.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly her disappearance possessed a structural completeness that baffled both
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: love and law. It wasn't a failure of effort on
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: anyone's part. It was a structural void in the fabric
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: of the timeline itself.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: So how do you take a story about a titanium wall,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: a missing phantom, and a complete structural void and turn
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: it into media.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: That is the million dollar question, because when the.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Phi physical search of vaporates and the digital search of aperates,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: how do you narrativize a dead end from millions of listeners?
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: You turn to narrative architects. Yeah, which brings us right
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: to the methodology of crime Junkie.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Yes, here's where it gets really interesting. This is where
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: we have to look at the June eleventh, twenty eighteen
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: episode hosted by Ashley Flowers and Britt Praywatt, and the
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: sheer mechanical challenge of what they are doing here is
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: staggering to me.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: It's an immense structural hurdle.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: They are condensing a complex human life, a terrifying ninety
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: minute window, a phantom suspect, and an active but stalled
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: police investigation into a twenty nine minute audio experience.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: And you have to remember, traditional storytelling is heavily reliant
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: on a three act structure.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Right right, set up conflict resolution exactly.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: You have the setup, the rising action and the resolution. Yea,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: the audience is culturally conditioned to expect that the tension
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: introduced in the first act will eventually be alleviated by
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: a catharsis. In the third act, the mystery is solved,
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: the Hagginist is caught, the world returns to a state
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: at equilibrium.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: But Ashley and Britt know going into the recording booth
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: that they cannot provide that catharsis. They don't have an ending.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: They are actively structuring a narrative around a void. They
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: have to engineer a story where the dead end itself
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: is the climax.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Which requires like a masterful manipulation of pacing. Instead of
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: driving the narrative engine toward a neat resolution, they have
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: to maintain tension entirely through the exploration of the negative space.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, they must make the questions themselves as compelling as
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: the answers would have been.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Right, they have to highlight the frustration of the institutional failure,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: the agony of the grassroots canvassing, and the ominous unresolved
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: nature of that six point three phone call.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: But they do something else too, which is vital to
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: their specific.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Format, and this is the part of the source material
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: that really caught my eye. The source doesn't just list
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: the facts of Sage's case. It lists the infrastructure of
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: the crime junkie community itself right.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: It talks about the fandom.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: It specifically mentions an ad free fan club. It knowes
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: a massive global footprint spanning from North America all the
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: way to the Age of Pacific. And crucially, it gives
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: a direct.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Phone number, the three seventeen number.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's as listeners can text Ashley directly at three
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: one seven seven three three seven four eighty five to
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: talk all things true crime.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: That three seventeen number is the key to understanding their
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: entire methodology. It is the architecture of a parasocial investigation.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Break that down for us. Explain how a parasocial investigation
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: differs from a traditional true crime experience, because, I mean,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: giving out a text number feels vastly different than a
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: detective on a nineteen NINETYES TV show asking viewers to
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: call a generic one eight hundred tip line.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, it is entirely different. Historically, consuming true crime was
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: a fundamentally isolating experience.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you just watched it alone in the dark.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You sat in your living room and watched unsolved
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: mysteries alone, or you read a mass market paperback alone.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: The detective on the screen or in the book was
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: the actor participant, and you were just the passive consumer.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: You are just receiving the story, right.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: But by providing a direct text line to the host's
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: actual area code, by creating a tiered fan club, crime
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: Junkie effectively shatters the fourth wall of the investigation.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: They are transforming the consumer into a participant.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly when they broadcast an unresolved case like Sage Smith's,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: they are not just recounting a sad story. They're essentially
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: crowdsourcing the investigation to a massive global audience.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: They are shifting the paradigm from the lone genius detective
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: trope of the twentieth century to the hive mind digital
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: sleuth of the twenty first century.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: That is a brilliant way to put it. Think about
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: the psychological function of that network. The police hit a wall,
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: the family hit a wall, the physical search is over,
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: but the podcast acts as a digital monument.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: A digital monument.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: I love that by engaging this global community, they ensure
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: that Sage Smith's name, her specific timeline, and the anomaly
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: of the six point thirty phone call are continually circulated
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: in the algorithmic consciousness it creates.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: It's this really stark dichotomy. You have the cold, silent,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: absolute finality of the physical dead end in November twenty.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Twelve, which is just silence.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, complete silence, and that is jextaposed directly against the loud,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: hyper engaged global true crime machinery of June twenty eighteen.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: When a listener in Tokyo or London downloads that twenty
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: nine minute episode, the dead end is momentarily suspended because
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: new minds are actively engaging with the data.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: It defines the finality of the physical void. The narrative
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: architecture of the show generates a perpetual digital conversation, ensuring
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: that even if the physical trail degraded in ninety minutes,
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: the narrative trail will endure for years, maybe decades.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? We started today by
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: talking about the terrifying reality of a timeline.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: Fracturing the ninety minutes.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Right, we broke down the ninety minutes that defined Sage
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Smith's disappearance and the paralyzing paradox of a corrupted memory
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: at a cafe we looked at the mechanics of a
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: severed digital tether and the phantom on the other end
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: of a VOIIP call, and.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: We felt the found tragedy of a father's swinging a
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: pickaxe into the same titanium wall as the police.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we've dissected how a twenty nine minute deep
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: dive into the source material can take that absolute void
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: and democratize the search, turning a lobalized disappearance into a
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: global parasocial pursuit.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: It demonstrates that when institutional systems fail and when the
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: physical world refuses to heald answers, human beings will build
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: massive narrative structures to keep the search alive.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: It is a testament to the fact that a case
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: being formally at a dead end does not mean it
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: is culturally forgotten. But before we wrap this up, we
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: cannot let this remain a distant clinical analysis.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: No, we really can.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: It is far too easy to listen to these facts
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: and view them purely as a media critique of something
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: that happened to someone else a long time ago.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: I agree completely. We have to ground this in our
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: own reality, and I want to leave every single person
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: listening right now with a thought experiment to ponder long
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: after this audio stops playing. Okay, let's here think back
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: to the very first thing we discussed today, that ninety
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: minute window where certainty degraded into a complete void.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Look at your own life over the exact last ninety minutes.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, trace your own steps for the last hour and
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: a half. Where were you, Who did you interact with physically?
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: What encrypted apps did you open? Who did you text?
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: If you were to vanish right now in this exact second,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: what would your final sequence of events look like to
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: an outsider?
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: What are your confirmed sightings and what are your corrupted
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: possible ones? Ask yourself who was the last person to
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: occupy your digital space?
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: That is so eerie to think about.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Would the breadcrumbs you left behind in the last ninety
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: minutes lead investigators or your desperate family to the truth
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: of your final movements? Or would your seemingly permanent digital
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: footprint snap at a proxy server, routing everyone who loves
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: you straight into an impenetrable dead end.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Would your timeline leave them with answers or would it
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: leave them staring at a phantom It's a chilling question,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: and it's exactly why the mechanics of cases like Sage
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Smith's demand our attention. Thank you for joining us on
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: this deep dive. Keep asking questions, keep interrogating the negative space,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: and we'll see you next time.