Attorney vs. Serial Killer

Josh and Aaron ponder why our culture has fallen in love with true crime content. They also offer some conversational tips for first dates.

Listen here or read the transcript below. FVF’s Summary Judgment podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and more.

0:00:00.7 Aaron: Hey, Josh.

0:00:03.0 Josh: Oh, hey Aaron. It’s so nice to see you sitting there.

0:00:06.7 Aaron: Same to you, buddy.

0:00:07.4 Josh: Oh, thanks buddy.

0:00:08.6 Aaron: Do you like my shirt?

0:00:08.6 Josh: Yeah, it’s pretty, I like, particularly the way that the dark buttons contrast on the light blue shirt. It’s working.

0:00:15.7 Aaron: That’s to distract you from the wrinkles.

0:00:17.5 Josh: Yeah. Okay. Alright. Well, it’s working.

0:00:20.7 Aaron: I did that on purpose.

0:00:22.5 Josh: It’s working.

0:00:24.1 Aaron: Do you know what serial killers, true crime podcasts and personal injury law have in common?

0:00:32.1 Josh: They’re both very mysterious.

0:00:34.7 Aaron: They both? They all three, they all relate to a particular mindset. Like, let’s start here. Why do people like the world of serial killers and true crime podcasts?

0:00:55.8 Josh: I like them because they… Maybe not so much serial killer podcast, but like true crime podcasts where there’s sort of doubt about whether the police got it right or there’s an unsolved mystery because it brings a sort of element of the unknown and opens the door for a lot of sort of creative thought about what might have happened.

0:01:21.0 Aaron: Yes, human psychology is at work here big time, right? Like when you look at the phenomenon, and it is a phenomenon of like most podcasts. In fact, this podcast is eventually probably gonna be a true crime podcast at some point.

0:01:37.9 Josh: Makes sense. Yeah, who done it though?

0:01:39.5 Aaron: We’re going that direction. [laughter] But the reason is, is like you said, it’s there’s this like juxtaposition of fear and intellectual curiosity that is just really addictive. And that can be true of personal injury trials. There’s like, what’s gonna happen? Should I fear the defendant’s conduct? And this is totally different than what I was gonna say in the beginning, but you’ve convinced me. My original point was going to be, I think what ties them all together is the idea of smugness. Because people love just, you know, thinking to themselves like, “I’m bad, but I’m not like band sawing my neighbors bad. You know, I’m not that bad.” And jurors sometimes sit on our cases and think to themselves, “I know this person was just rear-ended by a semi-truck, but if it was me, I think I could have gotten out of that.”

0:02:52.3 Josh: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe so, maybe there’s this sort of element of like, “Hmm, I’m better than that person.”

0:03:00.9 Aaron: Yeah.

0:03:01.0 Josh: “Hmm. What could I get away with though?”

0:03:02.2 Aaron: Smugness is a deep human-like element.

0:03:07.4 Josh: Yeah. Yeah. So what true crime podcasts or murder mystery podcasts have struck your fancy the most?

0:03:17.2 Aaron: Oh man, I actually have to confess that I haven’t gone down this rabbit hole.

0:03:22.6 Josh: You haven’t really watched many?

0:03:25.3 Aaron: Serial, of course was, you know, a true crime pod. It’s the original Blockbuster podcast. You know, the whole like is it’s Adnan or… I can’t remember the guy’s name. He was accused of murder. He was in jail and Sarah Koenig was the podcaster, the journalist who dug deep and found out that this guy might have been wrongly convicted. That definitely hooked me. Does that count?

0:03:57.6 Josh: Yeah, I think it counts. I think if you find yourself listening over and over and jonesing for the next episode on a mystery that has not yet been solved in your brain and it involves something morbid, it probably counts. We recently were listened to an interesting one called Ghost Story.

0:04:26.6 Aaron: Okay.

0:04:28.1 Josh: And we had a bunch of time in the car and we just started it and it was like a fascinating culmination, not just of a murder mystery, but also of ghosts. And basically, the story was there was… The narrator of the podcast is a famous journalist, learned that the house that he grew up in was haunted. And it actually turned out then that he subsequently met his to-be-wife unknowing that her grandmother and grandfather had grown up in the house next door, and the grandmother had been murdered in a way that was unsolved. And the podcast sort of unravels both kind of like the existence of ghosts as well as like calls into question this whole family history about this patriarch. It was really, really fascinating.

0:05:30.0 Aaron: Was your 11-year-old in the car?

0:05:31.6 Josh: My 11-year-old was like begging for us to keep playing it because I’m that parent.

0:05:37.8 Aaron: I love this.

[laughter]

0:05:43.7 Josh: But yeah, I think you know, it touches upon kind of this like, oh man, particularly when you’ve got maybe a little bit of like, you got a little ghost action in there and it’s like, man, I don’t know how it was. Did he move the pot?

0:06:00.8 Aaron: Do ghosts exist?

0:06:00.9 Josh: Do ghosts exist?

0:06:02.4 Aaron: No.

0:06:06.3 Josh: Yeah, definitely they do.

0:06:06.4 Aaron: I think the proper answer is, “I don’t know.”

[laughter]

0:06:11.7 Aaron: Like honestly, if you’re on a date, first date and the person across the table is like, “I need to know if you believe in ghosts.” You definitely should be like, “I don’t know.”

0:06:22.8 Josh: Yeah.

0:06:25.2 Aaron: Because if you say no hard, no, they are like, this person just has no fun.

0:06:29.6 Josh: I think you have to hard-commit to that one, man.

0:06:32.3 Aaron: If you say yes though…

0:06:35.3 Josh: I think you have to hard commit one way or the other.

0:06:35.4 Aaron: If you say, yes, you’re either getting married or she’s walking out, like something is gonna happen.

0:06:41.6 Josh: Don’t you have to like… I feel like if you’re in a budding relationship, that’s something that’s you really have to get out on the table early, because like you’re talking about the ethereal, man. Like, you’re not talking about just the here and now you’re talking about the forever after, right? I mean, that’s a big topic of conversation. You’re talking about lying or at least omitting your true feelings about like the forever after.

0:07:12.0 Aaron: Yeah. Is that a question that should ever be asked on our first date? Maybe that’s where we should have started this whole podcast.

0:07:19.8 Josh: Absolutely.

0:07:21.1 Aaron: Yeah.

0:07:21.5 Josh: Absolutely. It should. I mean…

0:07:21.6 Aaron: It’s aggressive.

0:07:21.9 Josh: I guess it depends on how boring the conversation’s going, but what a conversation starter. In fact, it’s a frequent topic of conversation in our household. In fact, we have guests at our house right now, and it was a topic of conversation last night.

0:07:37.0 Aaron: Due to your fervent belief in ghosts.

0:07:39.6 Josh: Due in part only to my fervent belief in ghosts.

0:07:44.1 Aaron: Which you now have brought your child into.

0:07:46.6 Josh: Well, you know, she can make up her own mind.

0:07:49.0 Aaron: That’s true.

0:07:51.3 Josh: But I mean…

0:07:51.2 Aaron: Someday she’ll ask though.

0:07:51.3 Josh: But someday she’ll know that they’re real.

0:07:52.4 Aaron: You’ll be the most proud of her when that’s her first question on her first date.

0:07:56.5 Josh: Yes, I will, I will.

0:08:00.4 Aaron: Yeah, I’ll be proud of both of you. Thanks for talking to me about True Crime podcasts today.

[laughter]

0:08:06.9 Josh: This is great.