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From KQED. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. M. Gessen is known for their incisive writing on autocracies, including Putin's Russia, on political repression and state terror in the U.S. and on violations of rights. But their latest project has been a more personal one, a serial podcast, exploring a crime their cousin Alan committed, trying to hire someone to kill his ex-wife and the mother of his children.

Alan is now serving a 10-year prison sentence.

And Gesson's podcast series explores how Alan could do such an unthinkable act, as well as the range of reactions from their family members and their own capacity for empathy and compassion.

Listeners, have you had a relative do a terrible thing? What effect did it have on you and your family?

Gesson's podcast is called The Idiot. And M. Gessen joins me now. And a note, this conversation may have some spoilers.

M. Welcome to Forum. Thank you. It's great to be here.

I really appreciated the way your podcast explores so, so deeply the very complicated, rippling effects of a terrible act by a family.

Remember, what made you want to turn your reporter's lens and practice on this particular

incident in your family?

Well, the simple answer is that it happened to my family.

And, you know, when something like that happens, it's one of those events where you wake up

in the morning and for a second you don't remember and then you remember, right?

And you remember that you're waking up into a world in which Alan took out a hit on his

ex-wife.

...