Everyone knows at least one person who either binged episodes of ancient aliens or spent an evening scrolling Reddit conspiracy theories.

I'm guilty of both of those. Some of you might even know a guy at a party that one time he obsessively ranted to everyone with an earshot about a race of lizard people at 3 a.m.

And you took that as your cue that it was time to head home.

It's all fun in games until you realize that some people take it seriously,

so much so that they even decide to kill their own children to save the world.

Along with COVID-19, there was another virus that rapidly spread and spiraled out of control,

conspiracy theories, and it infected Matthew Taylor Coleman.

Thank you. Welcome to 10-minute murder, brief and bingeable true crime.

My name is Joe.

I'm the host, and thank you for joining today.

And in doing research for this podcast, not necessarily this episode, but for the podcast overall,

I read a lot about personality types and psychology and habits and just overall mental health because that has a lot to do with the subjects that we talk about here in this podcast.

And that's the most interesting part of it to me.

The most interesting part of true crime is the motivation,

what drives these people to do what they do. Now, every now and then, I hurt my own feelings with

what I learn. For instance, think about this and tell me, do you consider yourself to be

overly independent? You don't count on others to help you get your needs met. If you encounter

a problem, you don't even consider who can help you fix it before trying to do it yourself.

Is that you? Did I just describe you?

Well, being overly dependent is a defense mechanism from being let down so many times by other people.

It hurts a little bit, right?

But like the wordsmith, John Mayer said,

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