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Best True Crime Documentaries on HBO Max · Murder Files Unsealed

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  Speaker 1: Imagine for a second that you're hiking in the remote woods,
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  Speaker 1: just you and nature.
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  Speaker 2: Sounds peaceful.
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  Speaker 1: Right. Totally peaceful. But then you come across a tent
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  Speaker 1: set up off the trail and inside there is a
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  Speaker 1: deceased hiker.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, geez. Yeah. Okay.
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  Speaker 1: No identification, no cell phone, just like some cash and
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  Speaker 1: a few random supplies. What is your immediate instinct in
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  Speaker 1: that scenario?
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  Speaker 2: I mean, you call the authorities, right? You let the
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  Speaker 2: professionals handle it.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. Exactly. But what if, instead of doing that, you
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  Speaker 1: took a photo, logged on to this massive internet forum,
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  Speaker 1: and started a wild, crowdsourced investigation?
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  Speaker 2: Like an amateur detective kind of thing? Exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. An investigation that eventually led to accusing completely innocent
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  Speaker 1: strangers of murder. Or, I mean, even suggesting the involvement
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: of space aliens.
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  Speaker 2: Space aliens? I mean, it sounds like a parody of
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  Speaker 2: human behavior. You know, an episode of a dystopian sci-fi show.
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  Speaker 1: It really does. But it's not. It's entirely real. And
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  Speaker 1: it's a perfect distillation of a phenomenon we are going
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  Speaker 1: to dissect today.
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  Speaker 2: I am so ready for this.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to another Deep Dive, everyone. Today is Friday, October 2nd, 2026.
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  Speaker 1: And our mission today is to look directly at you,
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  Speaker 1: the listener. And, well, at ourselves, honestly.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're all guilty of this.
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  Speaker 1: We really are. We need to ask some really uncomfortable
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  Speaker 1: questions about our collective, insatiable, and often... incredibly morbid obsession
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  Speaker 1: with true crime.
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  Speaker 2: And we have a very specific roadmap for this exploration today.
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  Speaker 2: We are looking at a piece published just a few
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  Speaker 2: days ago on September 28th, 2026 in Decider.
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  Speaker 1: A great publication.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, really good stuff. It's by a freelance film critic
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  Speaker 2: named John Serba.
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  Speaker 1: Who, as a quick aside, proudly notes in his bio
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  Speaker 1: that he was once hugged by Werner Herzog.
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  Speaker 2: Wait, really?
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  Speaker 1: Yes, which is like the kind of cinematic street cred
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  Speaker 1: I deeply respect.
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  Speaker 2: That is amazing. It definitely sets a tone for the
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  Speaker 2: kind of writer he is. Anyway, the article is titled
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  Speaker 2: Best True Crime Documentaries on HBO Max. Right.
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  Speaker 1: And if you just read that headline, you might think
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  Speaker 1: that we are about to do a standard streaming guide.
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  Speaker 2: Like a listicle.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. A list of things to put on in the
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  Speaker 1: background while you fold laundry on a Sunday. Right.
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  Speaker 2: Which we've all done.
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  Speaker 1: But I thought the exact same thing when I first
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  Speaker 1: opened the source material. But Serba does something much more
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  Speaker 1: subversive here. He doesn't just list titles. By contrasting what
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  Speaker 1: HBO Max chooses to fund and promote against what other platforms,
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  Speaker 1: specifically Netflix, are putting out, he inadvertently constructs this sprawling
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  Speaker 1: psychological profile of the modern viewer.
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  Speaker 2: He really does. He is framing a debate about the
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  Speaker 2: vastly different flavors of true crime we consume and what
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  Speaker 2: those flavors say about our societal anxieties.
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  Speaker 1: So let's break down that thesis because it's fascinating.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. The central thesis Serba presents is a dichotomy. He
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  Speaker 2: argues that HBO Max's catalog leans heavily toward journalistic integrity. Right.
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  Speaker 2: He describes their overarching theme as sobering and deeply troubling
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  Speaker 2: revelations of our morally fraught society.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. Wow. That sounds very high-minded, very like Pulitzer Prize
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  Speaker 1: winning stuff.
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  Speaker 2: It does, right? But then he looks across the streaming
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: aisle at Netflix and he categorizes their dominant flavor of
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  Speaker 2: true crime as Exploitative sensationalism. Or, to use his exact phrase,
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  Speaker 2: an American homicidal train wreck of mental illness.
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  Speaker 1: Which is a hell of a phrase.
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  Speaker 2: It really is.
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  Speaker 1: And to ground that in a concrete example, Serpa points
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  Speaker 1: to a Netflix documentary series called The Widower, Till Death
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  Speaker 1: Do Us Part.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, I remember that one.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. If you aren't familiar with it, the premise focuses
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  Speaker 1: on a man named Thomas Randolph. This man has had
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  Speaker 1: six ex-wives, and four of them are dead.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, let that statistic settle for a moment. Four
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  Speaker 2: dead wives.
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  Speaker 1: It's wild. But the way Serba frames the Netflix approach
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  Speaker 1: to a story like this is that the documentary isn't
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  Speaker 1: primarily interested in the sociological or judicial blind spots that
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  Speaker 1: allow a man with four dead wives to walk around freely.
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  Speaker 2: Right. They aren't asking how the system failed.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. It is interested in the sheer rubbernecking spectacle of
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  Speaker 1: the story. It leans hard into the tabloid nature.
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  Speaker 2: It's designed for bingeability.
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  Speaker 1: Yes. It's constructed to make you gasp at the end
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  Speaker 1: of every 45-minute episode so that you hit the next
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  Speaker 1: episode button before the credits even finish rolling.
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  Speaker 2: It's algorithmic adrenaline, basically. It prioritizes the visceral shock over
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  Speaker 2: any kind of structural context.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, hold on, though. Let's pause and really look at this,
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  Speaker 1: because when I read Serba's dichotomy, I immediately bristled a
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  Speaker 1: little bit.
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  Speaker 2: How come?
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  Speaker 1: Well, Serba is giving HBO all this credit for journalistic integrity, but...
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  Speaker 1: In the very same article, he lists HBO documentaries with
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  Speaker 1: titles like Thought Crimes, The Case of the Cannibal Cop,
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  Speaker 1: and Ken and Barbie Killers.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, those are undeniably sensational titles.
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  Speaker 1: Beyond sensational. Cannibal Cop. That doesn't sound like a sobering
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  Speaker 1: revelation of a morally fraught society. It sounds like a
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  Speaker 1: B-movie from the 1980s.
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  Speaker 2: I see your point.
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  Speaker 1: So my pushback here is, like, isn't this distinction just
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  Speaker 1: a bit of intellectual snobbery? Isn't journalistic integrity just a
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  Speaker 1: fancy highbrow rapper for the exact same dark voyeuristic obsession
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  Speaker 1: we all have?
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  Speaker 2: See, that is the essential uncomfortable question at the heart
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  Speaker 2: of the entire genre.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is that we cannot escape the fact
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  Speaker 2: that true crime requires a transgression. It requires an act
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  Speaker 2: of violence or fraud or deep moral failure.
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  Speaker 1: So the raw material is always the same.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. The raw material is always going to appeal to
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  Speaker 2: that primal lizard brain instinct that compels us to slow
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  Speaker 2: down when we drive past a car crash.
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  Speaker 1: It's almost like, think about how we consume incredibly spicy food.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm listening.
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  Speaker 1: Let's say true crime platforms are restaurants. HBO is presenting
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  Speaker 1: itself as this Michelin star culinary experience. The waiter comes
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  Speaker 1: out and explains the soil composition where the ghost pepper
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  Speaker 1: was grown. They serve it on a piece of slate.
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  Speaker 2: Very artisanal.
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  Speaker 1: Right. While Netflix is the late-night food truck selling a
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  Speaker 1: flaming death taco out of a window at 2 a.m.
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  Speaker 2: I love that comparison.
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  Speaker 1: But at a biological level, the capsaicin hitting your tongue
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  Speaker 1: is the exact same chemical compound. The spice burning your
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  Speaker 1: mouth is identical, no matter the presentation.
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  Speaker 2: The raw ingredient is identical.
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  Speaker 1: You are absolutely correct about that.
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  Speaker 2: But the mechanism of digestion... How that spice is processed
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  Speaker 2: by your body, or in this case, how the narrative
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  Speaker 2: is processed by your psyche, is profoundly different based on
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  Speaker 2: the preparation.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, you're going to have to explain that.
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  Speaker 2: And that is where Cerro's distinction actually holds up under scrutiny.
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  Speaker 1: How? Explain the mechanism to me. Because if I'm watching
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  Speaker 1: a documentary about a guy who planned to eat people,
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  Speaker 1: I'm still watching a documentary about a guy who planned
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  Speaker 1: to eat people, whether it has a slick, prestige TV
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  Speaker 1: cello soundtrack or not.
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  Speaker 2: It comes down to the fundamental questions the filmmaker forces
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  Speaker 2: the audience to answer.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: The flaming death taco approach, the sensationalist model, focuses almost
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  Speaker 2: exclusively on the what and the how.
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  Speaker 1: Right, like what did the killer do?
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. Okay. How bloody was the crime scene? How many
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  Speaker 2: wives are dead? It treats the crime as a closed
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  Speaker 2: loop of entertainment. The viewer is just a passive consumer
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  Speaker 2: of shock.
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  Speaker 1: So it's basically a haunted house ride. You get scared,
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  Speaker 1: the lights come on, you leave, and you don't think
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  Speaker 1: about the architecture of the haunted house.
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  Speaker 2: Precisely.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: But the journalistic approach, even with a lurid title like
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  Speaker 2: Cannibal Cop, shifts the structural focus from the what to
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  Speaker 2: the why.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, okay. I'm starting to see it. Right.
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  Speaker 2: Foul Crimes isn't actually a catalog of gore. It's a deep,
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  Speaker 2: uncomfortable exploration of the First Amendment, internet search history, and
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  Speaker 2: the terrifying gray area between having a dark fantasy, and
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  Speaker 2: possessing the intent to commit a crime. Wow.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so it's much deeper.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it asks, at what point does law enforcement have
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  Speaker 2: the right to arrest you for what is inside your head?
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  Speaker 1: Ah, I see the pivot now. It uses the sensational
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  Speaker 1: hook of the cannibal cop to trick you into a
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  Speaker 1: civics lesson about pre-crime and constitutional rights. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: It forces the viewer to become an intellectual participant in
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  Speaker 2: a broader societal debate.
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  Speaker 1: That makes total sense.
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  Speaker 2: The sensationalist documentary leaves you thinking, wow, that guy was
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  Speaker 2: a monster. The journalistic documentary leaves you thinking, our legal
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  Speaker 2: framework for determining intent in the digital age is completely inadequate,
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  Speaker 2: and that terrifies me.
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  Speaker 1: It leaves you with a hangover of awareness rather than
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  Speaker 1: just an adrenaline crash.
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  Speaker 2: It's a great way to put it.
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  Speaker 1: Which brings us to a really crucial transition in Serba's analysis.
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  Speaker 1: Because once we start looking at the why instead of
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  Speaker 1: just the what, the camera inevitably has to pull back.
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  Speaker 2: It has to.
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  Speaker 1: We stop looking at the individual monster, the single serial
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  Speaker 1: killer or the single cannibal cop, and we start looking
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  Speaker 1: at the environment that allowed them to operate. Right. And
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  Speaker 1: this is where true crime stops being about a deviation
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  Speaker 1: from the system and starts exposing cases where the system
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  Speaker 1: is the crime.
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  Speaker 2: We are moving into the realm of systemic, corporate, and
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  Speaker 2: institutional malfeasance, the profit of punishment and deception.
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  Speaker 1: And Serba anchors this with two massive, sprawling documentaries. The
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  Speaker 1: first is a 2025 Oscar-nominated film called The Alabama Solution.
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  Speaker 2: Such a powerful film.
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  Speaker 1: It really is. Now, before we dig into the mechanics
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  Speaker 1: of this film, I need to make a very clear
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  Speaker 1: distinction for you listening. We are analyzing the narrative, the cinematography,
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  Speaker 1: and the claims as they are presented by the filmmakers
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  Speaker 1: Andrew Jaffe and Charlotte Kaufman. Right.
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  Speaker 2: That's an important distinction.
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  Speaker 1: We are acting as a lens for the source material,
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  Speaker 1: not endorsing or verifying the political or legal allegations against
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  Speaker 1: the state of Alabama ourselves. We are completely impartial here.
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  Speaker 2: That framing is vital because the central thesis of the
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  Speaker 2: Alabama solution is not just an accusation of negligence.
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  Speaker 1: No, it's way beyond that.
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  Speaker 2: It is an accusation of a highly calculated, state-sponsored economic
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  Speaker 2: model built on civil rights violations.
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  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. The methodology the filmmakers
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  Speaker 1: use is what makes it so visceral. Jaffe and Kaufman
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  Speaker 1: built this documentary largely around contraband cell phone footage secretly
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  Speaker 1: recorded by inmates inside the prisons.
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  Speaker 2: It's incredible that they got that footage.
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  Speaker 1: It is raw, it is unfiltered, and it documents routine,
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  Speaker 1: severe civil rights abuses. But the true crime element, the
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  Speaker 1: systemic shocker, isn't just that the abuse is happening. It's
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  Speaker 1: the financial ledger behind it.
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  Speaker 2: The documentary lays out a chilling economic argument. It claims
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  Speaker 2: that State officials are fully aware of the constitutional violations.
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  Speaker 1: They know it's happening.
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  Speaker 2: They know. And they are fully aware that these violations
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  Speaker 2: result in massive, multimillion-dollar lawsuit settlements paid out to plaintiffs.
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  Speaker 1: And you would assume, logically, that a state would want
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  Speaker 1: to stop the abuse to stop losing millions of dollars
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  Speaker 1: in lawsuits. I mean, that's just basic economics.
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  Speaker 2: That is the logical assumption of a functioning justice system.
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  Speaker 2: But the filmmakers assert that the state has run a
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  Speaker 2: brutal cost-benefit analysis.
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  Speaker 1: A cost-benefit analysis on human lives.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. The forced labor extracted from the prison population, labor
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  Speaker 2: that generates immense value for both the state and private contractors,
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  Speaker 2: is mathematically far more valuable than the cost of the
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  Speaker 2: lawsuit settlements.
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  Speaker 1: So the settlements are simply categorized as overhead.
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  Speaker 2: As a cost of doing business.
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  Speaker 1: It's just staggering.
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  Speaker 2: The human suffering is amortized.
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  Speaker 1: And Serba places this right next to a documentary about
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  Speaker 1: a completely different kind of institutional fraud. The inventor, Out
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: for Blood in Silicon Valley.
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  Speaker 2: Ah, Elizabeth Holmes. Yes.
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  Speaker 1: Directed by Alex Gibney, who is basically the poet laureate
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  Speaker 1: of corporate corruption. I mean, he did the Enron documentary.
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  Speaker 2: He's brilliant at taking these complex corporate webs and making
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  Speaker 2: them thrilling.
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  Speaker 1: He really is. And the inventor focuses on Elizabeth Holmes
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: and Theranos, which is a story that continues to fascinate
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  Speaker 1: the public.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, endlessly.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Serba even notes there is yet another documentary, you can
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: see everything, coming out this fall about the exact same subject.
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  Speaker 1: We cannot get enough of Elizabeth Holmes. The fake baritone voice,
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  Speaker 1: the black turtlenecks mimicking Steve Jobs.
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  Speaker 2: The unblinking stare.
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  Speaker 1: The unblinking stare. The absolute audacity of raising billions of
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  Speaker 1: dollars in venture capital for a blood testing machine that
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  Speaker 1: simply did not work.
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  Speaker 2: It's pure hubris.
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  Speaker 1: But looking at these two documentaries side by side, the grimy...
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  Speaker 1: contraband footage of an Alabama prison and the sterile, gleaming
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: boardrooms of Silicon Valley, they seem like totally different genres.
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  Speaker 2: On the surface, yes. One relies on the physical subjugation
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  Speaker 2: of the poorest members of society, and the other relies
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  Speaker 2: on the intellectual deception of the wealthiest venture capitalists on Earth.
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  Speaker 1: But the mechanics of the deception are what link them.
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  Speaker 1: Let's think about this like a casino that is systematically
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: scamming its patrons.
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  Speaker 2: Okay. I like this analogy.
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  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, they are the flamboyant stage magician
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  Speaker 1: performing on the casino floor.
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  Speaker 2: Lots of flash and misdirection.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The black turtleneck is a costume. The voice is
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  Speaker 1: a prop. She is doing sleight of hand to keep
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: all the investors mesmerized while she quietly empties their pockets.
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  Speaker 1: It's spectacular performance-based deception.
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  Speaker 2: She weaponized the Silicon Valley mythos. The whole culture of
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: fake it till you make it.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Right. But the Alabama prison system, as depicted in the
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Jarecki film, isn't on the casino floor performing magic tricks.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: They are the casino management sitting up in the corporate office. Wow.
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  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: They aren't wearing a disguise. They've simply looked at the
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: rigged slot machines, calculated the fines they receive from the
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Gaming Commission for having rigged machines, and realized that the
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: profits from the rigged games vastly outweigh the fines.
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  Speaker 2: There is no performance. There was just cold, bureaucratic arithmetic.
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  Speaker 1: So if we connect this to the bigger picture, both
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: scenarios are rooted in the identical pathology of untouchability.
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  Speaker 2: It is the profound arrogance of believing that scale provides immunity.
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  Speaker 2: In Holmes' case, she believed that if she could acquire
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: enough high-profile board members, like former secretaries of state, military generals,
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  Speaker 2: the basic laws of biology and medical ethics would cease
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: to apply to her.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: She thought she could out-network reality. Exactly.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. She was gambling with actual patient health, giving people
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: fake blood test results for cancer markers just to maintain
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: a corporate valuation.
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  Speaker 1: Which is terrifying because if I get a blood test,
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  Speaker 1: I implicitly trust the entire medical industrial complex that the
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: results are real. I don't even question it. Right.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: And that is why systemic true crime is fundamentally more
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: destabilizing to the viewer than a documentary about a single
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: serial killer.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: How do you mean?
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  Speaker 2: Well, if you watch a show about a solitary murderer,
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  Speaker 2: Your brain can construct a psychological safety barrier. You tell yourself,
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: I don't walk alone at night in that kind of neighborhood.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: I double lock my doors. I am safe.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Right. You convince yourself the threat is an anomaly.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. But I can't build a safety barrier against a
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: blood test.
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  Speaker 1: Or against the state government.
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  Speaker 2: You cannot. Systemic true crime strips away the comfort of
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  Speaker 2: the anomaly. It forces you to realize that the threat
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: isn't a shadow in the alleyway. The threat is the
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: infrastructure of everyday life.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: That gives me chills, honestly.
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  Speaker 2: It implicates the viewer. We all use medical technology. Our
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: tax dollars fund the penal systems. It demands that we
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: recognize our own proximity to and sometimes complicity in these
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: massive engines of exploitation.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the ultimate terrifying escalation of that
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  Speaker 1: exact idea. Because if we feel helpless against a corrupt
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Silicon Valley startup or a state prison bureaucracy, what happens
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: when the entity committing the crime is a global superpower? Oh, man.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: This is where it gets really dark. Yeah.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Serba's list moves us from systemic corporate crimes right into
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: the realm of geopolitical thrillers.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Where the state itself is the primary suspect.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: And again, just to be crystal clear and maintain our
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: neutrality regarding the source material, we are discussing the narratives,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the independent investigations, and the claims presented within these specific
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: documentaries regarding Vladimir Putin and the Russian state apparatus. Right.
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  Speaker 2: We are looking at how these filmmakers construct their arguments
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: about geopolitical assassination. We are Simply conduits for the documentary's claims.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. The scale of these documentaries changes the entire nature
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: of the viewing experience, doesn't it?
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Completely. Servin highlights the Oscar-winning documentary Navalny, directed by Daniel Rohrer.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: It is a staggering piece of film.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: It really is. It profiles Alexei Navalny, who is the
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: most prominent face of the Russian political opposition. Navalny was
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: And the documentary catches up with him in 2021, right
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: after he is recovered from the poisoning in Germany. And
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: he is methodically plotting his return to Russia while investigating
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: his own attempted murder.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: It has the pacing and the narrative tension of a
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: fictional espionage thriller.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: It does. You're watching it thinking, this can't be real life.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: But the postscript is what makes it so deeply haunting.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the real world outcome.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Serbo reminds the reader of the tragic reality that occurred
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: after the cameras stopped rolling. Navalny returned to Russia, was
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: immediately imprisoned in a penal colony in Siberia, and died
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: there in 2024.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: Just devastating.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: And the independent investigation cited in the current discourse proved
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: that he was subjected to poisoning yet again while in
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: state custody.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: The documentary captures a man fighting against an entity that
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: has near infinite resources and zero accountability.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: And Serba connects Navalny to what he describes as a
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: loose sequel, a documentary called The Salisbury Poisonings, A Spy
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Next Door.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, the total shift in that one is wild. Right?
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: It takes this massive geopolitical conflict and drops it right
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: into the middle of the most mundane setting imaginable.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: The contrast is what makes the Salisbury case so jarring.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: It's the definition of jarring. Sergei Skripal is living in Salisbury, England.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: It's a quaint, picturesque, quiet town. Skripal is a former
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Russian military officer who had flipped and provided intelligence to MI6.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: He's living this quiet suburban life.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And suddenly he and his daughter Yulia are found
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: unconscious on a park bench, poisoned with Novichok, a highly
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: lethal nerve agent.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: In the middle of an English park.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: The documentary details how this signature move of the Putin
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: regime turned an idyllic English town into a hazardous material
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: zone and sparked a massive international crisis.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: It's surreal to watch.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: But looking at these two films, I really struggle with
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the categorization here. I genuinely have to ask, can we
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: even call this true crime?
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Why wouldn't we?
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, traditionally, a crime implies a violation of the
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: law within a society that has a mechanism to enforce
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: that law. When the perpetrators are world governments deploying chemical
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: weapons in English parks or Siberian prisons, haven't we left
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the genre of crime documentary and entered the realm of
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: horrifying historical documentation of warfare?
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question, actually. You are hitting on
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: the exact reason why these films create such a profound
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: sense of psychological dissonance in the viewer.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Tell me more about that.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: Let's break down the mechanics of the traditional true crime narrative.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: At its core, the genre relies on the underlying architecture
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: of a functioning justice system.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Right. Police, courts, judges.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly. There is an inciting incident, the crime. There is
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: the investigation, which provides the narrative momentum. And there is
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: the resolution, the arrest, the trial.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: The implicit psychological promise made to the viewer is that
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: chaos has occurred. but order will be restored.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Yes. The gavel comes down, the bad guy goes to jail.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: The viewer can turn off the TV and go to
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: sleep feeling safe.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: But in the geopolitical thriller, that entire framework of justice
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: completely collapses.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: It vanishes. In Navalny and the Salisbury Poisonings, who is
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: the detective? who is the judge. There is no local
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: police precinct that can issue an arrest warrant for a
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: head of state.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Right, you can't just send a squad car to Moscow.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: There is no courtroom that can hold a nuclear superpower
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: accountable in a way that provides narrative closure or societal safety.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: It's a murder mystery where the murderer also owns the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: police station, the courthouse, and the prison.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: It is the absolute assertion of unchallengeable power. These documentaries
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: borrow the cinematic language of a Hitchcock thriller, the hidden cameras,
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: the suspenseful score, the spy next door tropes, but they
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: strip away the comforting resolution.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: They force the viewer to sit with the reality that
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: sometimes massive, systematic violence happens, and there is absolutely no
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: mechanism to punish the perpetrators.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: It induces a profound state of helplessness.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Helplessness, that is the exact word. You watch Navalny investigating
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: his own murder, calling his own assassins on the phone.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: That scene is incredible.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: It's mind-blowing. But you watch it knowing the ending is
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: his death in a Siberian cell. It is devastating.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: But Serba doesn't leave us languishing in global helplessness. He
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: takes the list and pivots sharply. We go from the vast,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: untouchable machinery of sovereign nations right back down to the smallest,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: most claustrophobic environment possible.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: The family home.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Yes. The transition from macro-betrayal to micro-betrayal.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: If the state betraying its citizens is terrifying, how much
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: worse is it when the threat isn't a foreign operative
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: with a nerve agent, but the person making breakfast in
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: your kitchen?
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: That's the scariest thing of all. Serba moves into the
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: psychology of denial and domestic horrors, and he highlights a
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: documentary with a title that he rightly calls one of
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the most true-crime-iest titles ever conceived, There's Something Wrong with
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Aunt Diane.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: This is a case that over a decade later still
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: generates intense, heated debate.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, people get so angry talking about this case.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Because it so violently disrupts our assumptions about the people
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: we love.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: The facts of the case are just brutal. In 2009,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Diane Shuler, who was universally described by friends and family
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: as a perfect, hyper-competent, upstanding suburban mother, drove a minivan
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: the wrong way down the Taconic State Parkway in New
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: York for nearly two miles.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: It's almost impossible to imagine.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: She caused... A horrific head-on collision. She killed herself, her
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: own young daughter, three of her nieces, and three men
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: in the vehicle she struck. Eight people dead.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: It's just an unfathomable tragedy.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: But the documentary, directed by Liz Garbus, isn't just a
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: forensic recreation of a car crash. The emotional core of
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: the film is the aftermath, specifically focusing on Diane's husband,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Daniel Shuler.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: And this is where the psychology comes in.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Right. Because the state toxicology report showed that Diane had
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: dangerously high levels of alcohol and THC in her system
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: at the time of the crash. But her husband relentlessly,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: obsessively rejected this reality.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: He refused to believe it.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: He spent enormous amounts of time and money trying to
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: prove the medical examiner wrong, trying to prove she had
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: a stroke or a tooth abscess, anything other than the
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: fact that his wife was deeply intoxicated with a van
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: full of children.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: The film is a masterclass in observing the architecture of denial.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: It is staggering to watch. The way I process his reaction,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: it's as if he is standing in the living room
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: of his house and the walls are engulfed in flames.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: The roof is collapsing. The fire department has broken down
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the door and they are spraying water everywhere. And he
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: is aggressively arguing with the firefighters saying, no, you don't understand.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: My house isn't on fire. We just have a really,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: really robust fireplace. She always liked the room warm.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: That is exactly it.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: The refusal to look at the ashes is absolute.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Because to look at the ashes means accepting that his
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: entire reality was a fiction. This is where we need
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: to examine the concept of the facade.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Let's unpack that.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: In Aunt Diane, the facade was the flawless suburban mother.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: She was the one who organized the camping trips, the
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: one who handled the finances, the rock of the family.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: She was the one holding it all together.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Right. That facade was so load-bearing for her husband's psychological
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: stability that when it fractured, he couldn't survive the collapse.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: His denial wasn't just about protecting her reputation.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: It was about his own survival.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: Yes. It was a desperate, primal mechanism to keep his
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: own identity intact. He was protecting the idea of his wife,
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: because confronting the reality of her hidden substance abuse would
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: mean he didn't know the person he shared a bed with.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: He would have to admit that a stranger had been
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: raising his children.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And Saraba pairs Aunt Diane with another domestic documentary
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: where the facade is even more insidious and arguably much
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: more malicious. Mommy Dead and Dearest.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: The title is a dark play on the infamous Joan
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Crawford memoir, but what actually happened makes Hollywood look tame.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: It's one of the most disturbing cases of the modern era.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: This documentary covers the 2015 murder of Dee Dee Blanchard.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: She was stabbed to death in her home by her
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: daughter's boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, at the behest of her daughter,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Gypsy Rose Blanchard.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: But the murder is almost secondary to the context.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Right. Because for Gypsy's entire life, Dee Dee subjected her
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: to severe medical child abuse, clinically known as Munchausen syndrome
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: by proxy.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: It went on for years and years.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Decades. Dee Dee convinced doctors, charities, her neighbors, and for
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: a long time, Gypsy herself, that the child was terminally ill.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: She claimed Gypsy had leukemia, muscular dystrophy, that she required
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: a feeding tube, a wheelchair, and multiple unnecessary surgeries.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: It's horrifying.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: The documentary includes incredible access to featuring interviews with Gypsy
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Rose from prison.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: If we look at the mechanics of Munchausen by proxy,
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: it is the ultimate weaponization of the domestic facade.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Walk me through that. How does a mother justify that
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: level of torture? And how does she fool a hospital
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: full of pediatricians for over a decade?
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: The pathology is deeply complex. The perpetrator, usually the mother,
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: is not primarily motivated by a desire to harm the child,
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: which is what makes it so hard for outsiders to comprehend.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: So what's the motivation?
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: The primary motivation is the extraction of validation, sympathy, and
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: attention from the community and medical professionals. The child is
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: merely the instrument used to harvest that empathy. Wow.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: That is dark.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: D.D. Blanchard constructed a flawless facade of the tragically burdened,
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: endlessly devoted, saintly caregiver. And society is biologically hardwired to
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: revere that archetype.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: We want to support the struggling mother.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Of course we do. Dee Dee knew that if she
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: played the part of the weeping mother perfectly, the doctors
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: would doubt their own test results before they doubted her devotion.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: That's terrifying.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: She used our collective societal empathy as a shield to
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: hide the fact that she was actively torturing her daughter
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: behind closed doors.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: She hacked the system of human compassion.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: She absolutely hacked it. And that is why these domestic
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: true crime stories resonate on such a visceral frequency.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Right, because it hits so close to home. Literally.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: We build our entire social fabric on the foundational assumption
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: that the people closest to us are who they say
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: they are. We assume a mother loves her child. We
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: assume our spouse isn't hiding a catastrophic secret.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: But when a documentary shatters that assumption, it forces the
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: viewer into a terrifying state of paranoia. It asks, Do
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: you actually know the people sitting at your dinner table?
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Or do you only know the avatar they have constructed
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: for you to see?
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: That is deeply unsettling.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: If we can't trust the people inside our own houses,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the world becomes an impossibly chaotic place, which actually forms
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: the perfect psychological bridge to Serba's next category.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Chaos. Yes.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: When human beings are confronted with that level of chaos,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: when terrible, senseless things happen that defy logic or trust,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: we don't just sit quietly and accept it.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: We panic. We need answers.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And we try to force a narrative onto the
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: chaos to make it make sense.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: The projection of narrative. The desperate need for a reason.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Yes. And Serba anchors this phenomenon of crowdsource hysteria with
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: what is arguably the foundational text of the modern investigative
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: true crime documentary, Paradise Lost, The Child Murders at Robin
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Hood Hills.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is a classic. Released in 1996, directed by
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. This film didn't just document
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: a case. It actively altered the trajectory of the American
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: judicial system.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Serber notes that Berlinger is still a massive force in
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: the genre today, making huge Netflix hits like Cold Case.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: But Paradise Lost is the raw, uncut origin story.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: It really set the template.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: It follows the case of the West Memphis Three. In 1993,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: three young boys were found brutally murdered and mutilated in Arkansas.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: The police and the community quickly zeroed in on three
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: local teenagers. Damian Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Miskelley Jr.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: But the evidence wasn't forensic.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Not at all. It was entirely cultural. These teenagers wore
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: black Metallica t-shirts, they listened to heavy metal, they read
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Stephen King novels.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: The horror.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Right. And because of the horrific nature of the murders,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: the town descended into full-blown satanic panic.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: We really have to understand the cultural context of the
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: early 1990s to understand how this happened.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Please, explain the panic. Because looking back now, the courtroom footage...
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: where they are seriously arguing about teenage satanic cults in
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: the woods feels like the Salem witch trials. How did
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: a modern court allow that?
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: It was the culmination of a decade of media-stoked paranoia.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: In the 1980s and 90s, you had sensationalist daytime talk shows.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Geraldo Rivera, Oprah. running specials on alleged underground satanic cults
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: operating in daycares.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, I remember those. It was everywhere.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: It was a moral panic driven by changing social norms
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: and the rise of counterculture media. So when these three
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: innocent boys were murdered in West Memphis, the community was
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: confronted with a senseless, chaotic tragedy.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: And they needed a reason.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: To accept that someone could just randomly murder children means
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: accepting that the world is inherently, uncontrollably dangerous. The human
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: psyche cannot tolerate that level of existential dread.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: So they projected a narrative onto the chaos.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: They decided Satanists did this. Because if Satanists did it,
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: then the evil is identifiable. You can spot the teenagers
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: wearing black, you can arrest them, you can lock them away,
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: and you can restore the illusion of safety.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: The community sacrificed three innocent teenagers to alleviate their own
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: psychological terror.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the camera acts as the only sober observer
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: in a town drunk on panic. Serba points out that
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Paradise Lost, along with Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: proved that a documentary could basically function as an appellate
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: court when the actual legal system is blinded by hysteria.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: But what's brilliant about Serba's article is how he traces
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: this exact psychological mechanism into the modern era. He juxtaposes
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: the 1996 satanic panic with two recent documentaries about internet-driven chaos.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: The digital panic.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: First, there's Beware the Slenderman. In 2014, two 12-year-old girls
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: lured their friend into the woods in Wisconsin and stabbed
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: her 19 times.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: Miraculously, the victim survived.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, thank goodness. When the girls were interrogated, they claimed
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: they did it to appease Slenderman, a fictional faceless ghoul
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: created on an internet horror forum.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Serber rightly notes the ethical complexities of this documentary, given
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: the ages and the severe mental health issues of the perpetrators.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: But structurally, it explores the terrifying intersection of youth alienation,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: and the algorithmic echo chambers of the internet.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: And then we get to the peak of digital hysteria.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: They called him mostly harmless.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: This one is just wild.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: The premise sounds like a classic mystery. A hiker is
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: found dead in a tent on the Appalachian Trail. No wallet,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: no ID, just excellent dental work and some cash. When
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: local law enforcement exhausts their leads, the case goes to
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: the internet.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: And that's when the chaos starts.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Amateur, keyboard warrior, true crime... detectives step in, and the
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: documentary watches as these Facebook groups and Reddit threads descend
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: into total toxicity.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: They lose their minds.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: The internet sleuths become violently competitive over their theories. They
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: dox innocent people who they decide look like the hiker.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: The theories escalate from runaway fathers to secret agents to, yes,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: space aliens.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Serba calls it a microcosmic view of the human condition.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: But wait, let's really connect these threads. Okay, let's unpack this.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at the townspeople in 1996 Arkansas screaming about
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: satanic rituals, and I'm looking at a 2020 Reddit user
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: typing furious paragraphs about how a dead hiker must have
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: been abducted by aliens.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: I see where you're going with this.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Are these internet sleuths in Mostly Harmless really any better
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: than the panicked mob in Paradise Lost? Have we actually
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: evolved our critical thinking, or did we just trade our
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: literal pitchforks for digital keyboards?
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: That is such a profound question. And the answer is
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: we haven't evolved the underlying mechanism at all. We have
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: simply amplified it with broadband. The psychological drive is identical.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: So it's the exact same panic.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: But there is a crucial, fascinating difference in the motivation
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: between the two eras.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: What's the difference?
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: In West Memphis, the community was driven by terror. They
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: were trying to manage the trauma of violence in their
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: own backyard. But the Internet sleuths in Mostly Harmless are
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: separated from the tragedy by a scream.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: It's not their backyard.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: No. For them, the unidentified body isn't a source of terror.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: It is a canvas. It is a blank space onto
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: which they can project their own egos.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. They treat it like an alternate reality game.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Like a puzzle to be solved for points.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Precisely. They aren't actually trying to bring peace to the
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: deceased man's family. They are trying to be the hero
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: of the narrative. They want the dopamine hit of being
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: the smartest person in the forum. It's all about clout.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: The gamification of true crime on the internet. strips the
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: humanity away from the victim. When they dox an innocent person,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: they aren't thinking about ruining a life. They are thinking
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: about winning an argument.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: That's incredibly bleak.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Whether it's blaming Satan to alleviate local terror, or blaming
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: aliens to win an internet argument, people will invent absolutely
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: anything to avoid facing the mundane, tragic reality of the
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: human condition.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: The crowdsourced chaos is rarely about finding the truth.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: It is almost always about managing our own anxieties or
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: feeding our own egos.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Feeding our egos at the expense of someone else's tragedy.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Which brings us, incredibly, to the final stop on our
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: journey today.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: The finale.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: And when I first read Serba's list, I thought this
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: was a typo. After wading through systemic corruption, international assassinations,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: mothers murdering daughters, and the satanic panic, Serba caps off
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: his list with, of the best true crime with a
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: documentary about a water park in New Jersey.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: It is a violently jarring tonal shift.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: I literally asked out loud, what does this have to
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: do with true crime?
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: That's a fair question.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: The documentary is Class Action Park. It's a retrospective look
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: at Action Park, this legendary, completely unhinged amusement park that
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: operated in the 1980s and 90s.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: It was founded by a skeevy Wall Street stockbroker who
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: essentially viewed safety regulations as optional suggestions.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: The first half of this documentary is riotously funny. It's
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: packed with nostalgic testimonials from comedians and locals talking about
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: rides that sound like medieval torture devices.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: The Cannonball Loop.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, they had the Cannonball Loop, which was a fully
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: enclosed fiberglass water slide with a complete vertical loop at
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: the end. People would go down it, not have enough momentum,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: get trapped inside the dark tube, or come out with
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: missing teeth and bloody noses.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: The documentary presents this with bright colors, upbeat music, and,
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: you know, the aesthetic of a classic 80s teen comedy.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Right. You're sitting there laughing. I was laughing. I'm thinking,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: oh my gosh, the 80s were a lawless wasteland. I
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: can't believe they let kids do this.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: It's so entertaining.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: You are completely swept up in the absurdity of the danger.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: But then the documentary pulls the rug out from under you.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: The music changes. The tone shifts.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: And it drops the chilling reality.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Six people died at this park. Six human beings lost
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: their lives drowning in the wave pool, electrocuted on a
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: kayak ride, suffering head trauma. Six families destroyed because of
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: a corporate pursuit of unregulated, dangerous fun.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: It just hits you like a ton of bricks.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: And Serba leaves the reader with this incredible, haunting quote
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: about the film. He writes, In that quote, in this.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Film, is the most brilliant, intellectually rigorous capstone to this
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: entire discussion of the true crime genre.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? You really think it fits?
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: It feels so wildly different from a heavy, devastating film
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: like Navalny or Aunt Diane.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: It fits perfectly because Class Action Park is essentially a
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: meta-commentary on the viewer. It tricks you. And in doing so,
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: it forces you to analyze your own consumption habits.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, lay it out for me.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: Think about the psychological journey you just described. The documentary
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: invites you in. It makes you complicit in the fun.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: You are sitting safely on your couch, enjoying the thrill
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: of proximity to danger. You are consuming stories of physical
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: trauma as light entertainment.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: It's the flaming death taco.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But when the documentary drops the hammer and reveals
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: the death toll, it holds a mirror up to your face.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Suddenly you realize you were just laughing at a machine
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: that killed six people.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: You feel a sudden, sharp pang of guilt.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: And isn't that the exact unspoken dynamic of the entire
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: true crime genre? We log on to HBO or Netflix.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: We show up for the entertainment. We show up for
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: the puzzle, the mystery, the adrenaline rush of the Hitchcockian thriller.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: We consume the worst, most traumatic, most devastating days of
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: other people's lives as our Friday night entertainment.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: Class Action Park brings us in on a wave of amusement,
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: only to confront us with the stark reality of lost
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: human life. It forces the audience to ask, why do
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: we find danger, trauma, and death so endlessly entertaining?
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Wow. It completely indicts the viewer. It makes us the
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: final suspect in our own deep dive.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Serba took us on this massive, sweeping journey today. We
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: started by looking at the systemic cages, the calculated, monetized
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: cruelty of the Alabama prison system, the fraudulent, venture-backed empires
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: of Silicon Valley.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: In the international scale.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Right, we moved to the vast geopolitical battlegrounds of poisoned dissidents.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Then we crept through the locked doors of seemingly perfect
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: suburban homes, peeling back the deadly facades of domestic life.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: We waded through the paranoid, chaotic forums of the internet.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: And finally, we ended up at a deadly waterslide in
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: New Jersey, laughing right up until the exact moment we
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: realized the joke was actually on us.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: We have traversed the entire landscape of human failing, ending
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: with our own voyeurism.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: So to you, the listener, the next time you are
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: sitting on your couch, scrolling through the menus on HBO
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Max or Netflix, when you pause your remote over a
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: true crime thumbnail, you know the one. The dramatic black
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: and white lighting, the bold yellow font, the promise of
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: a shocking twist. Take a second to look at what
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: you are about to click.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: Just pause and think.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Ask yourself, what flavor am I choosing today? Am I
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: genuinely looking for justice? Am I trying to gain a
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: deeper structural understanding of our morally fraught society? Or am
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: I just looking for the thrill of staring into the
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: abyss from a perfectly safe distance?
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: And if we push that thought just one step further
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: into the future, we have to consider the economic reality
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: of the streaming era. Our viewing habits... are the data
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: points that feed the algorithms.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: And those algorithms dictate exactly which of these documentaries get funded, greenlit,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: and produced next year.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: So are we the ones ultimately writing the script for
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: the next era of crime media? If we continually click
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: on the exploitative, the sensational, the flaming death tacos, will
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: the journalistic integrity of platforms like HBO eventually just disappear entirely,
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: swallowed whole by our own demand for endless spectacle?
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Are we financially subsidizing the very hysteria and exploitation that
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: we claim to be investigating? That is a heavy, uncomfortable
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: question to leave you with. But navigating that discomfort is
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: exactly why we do this. Thank you for joining us
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: as we waded through the diagnostic muddy waters today. Don't
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: forget to keep questioning the narrative, look closely at the
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: facades around you, and most importantly, keep interrogating the media
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: you choose to consume. We will see you next time.