Bitch Listen, a rewired news group podcast hosted by Imani Gandhi.

This is Bitch Listen.

So bitch, listen.

Welcome to Bitch Listen.

I'm Imani Gandy. Angry Black Lady, if you've ever been on the business end of one of my online rants.

This is the podcast where we interrogate power, harm, and the stories that decide who gets our empathy.

In the last episode, I talked with Violissa Thompson about disability, visibility, and what

happens when entire communities are erased from the narratives that shape public empathy.

That conversation was about absence, who doesn't get seen, who doesn't get protected, and who

gets left out of the story entirely. Today's conversation

picks up that same thread but from a different angle, because this appearance doesn't just

happen. It gets filtered through media, storytelling, and attention. And few people understand

that ecosystem better than my guest today. Josh Mankowitz. Yes,

that Josh Mankowitz. Veteran television journalist for NBC. Dateline voice. True crime institution.

Voice of suspicious alibis. Narrator of terrible husbands. Patron saint of ominous B-roll.

A man who has calmly described more

bad decisions than most of us will make in a lifetime. He's a true crime legend, and he knows

that true crime isn't just entertainment. It's a sorting mechanism for empathy. It's one of the

most powerful storytelling machines in American

culture. It determines which victims become household names and which families grieve in silence.

Some victims become national obsessions. Others barely get a headline. Josh knows that tension is

real. And so we talk about what it means to work

...