Nancy Guthrie Is Missing. The Internet Isn't Helping.
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How the attention economy, distrust of all authority, and an actual crime turned a suburban Arizona street into the place to be for certain content creators.
Guest: Luke Winkie, Slate staff writer, author of the piece “The Haunting American Scene Unfolding Outside Nancy Guthrie’s House.”
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, it's Mary. Looking for a little help from you as we put together our shows in the |
| 0:08.0 | coming weeks. As you probably understand, we're looking at all kinds of angles and stories coming |
| 0:13.5 | out of Iran. And we want to make sure we're getting the Iranian perspective on everything that's |
| 0:19.1 | going down. So we're asking for your help. If you're Iranian or |
| 0:23.6 | Iranian-American or otherwise impacted by the conflict that's going on right now, would really like it if you |
| 0:28.8 | gave us a call and let us know how you're doing and how you're thinking about this war. It's meaning, |
| 0:35.0 | it's objectives. The way to reach us is to call 646-582-0-0-9-1. You can just leave a |
| 0:41.9 | voicemail right there, or you can drop us a voice memo at what next at slate.com. So give us a call, |
| 0:48.7 | 646-582-0-0-91, or leave us a voice memo at what next at slate.com. Thank you so much. Just a heads up, there is some brief, strong language in this episode. By the time you hear this episode, Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of today's show host, Savannah Guthrie, will have been missing for a month. |
| 1:20.7 | Think about that for a second. A woman whose disappearance became a national event is still simply gone. |
| 1:29.3 | You can sum up the things we know about Nancy Guthrie's disappearance in a few sentences. |
| 1:34.3 | She went missing on February 1st. |
| 1:36.7 | The FBI have released haunting doorbell cam footage of a person they think was involved in her abduction. |
| 1:43.8 | And droplets of Guthrie's blood have been found on a patio wall outside her door. |
| 1:50.1 | But Slate's Luke Winky. |
| 1:51.9 | He says this lack of information, it has not led to a lack of speculation. |
| 1:58.1 | I have friends that were like in group text just dedicated to Nancy Guthrie going through like, you know, all of these kind of rumors and claims and theories and things like that. |
| 2:06.4 | It seemed like a lot of people were. |
| 2:08.2 | It's not particularly new for a private tragedy to become public entertainment. |
| 2:13.5 | But something about this case is streamers who've camped out in front of Nancy Guthrie's home, |
| 2:19.4 | the way internet sleuths have latched on to a mystery that's for now unsolved and beginning to feel unsolvable. |
| 2:27.0 | No one's been arrested. |
... |
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