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Content warning. This episode contains discussion of the murder of two girls.

When you watch or listen to a lot of true crime programs, you pick up on certain common cliches.

There was one cliché in particular that used to really hurt me.

You'll have a perpetrator, usually a man, who gets busted in relation to a horrifying crime.

There's overwhelming evidence against him.

Maybe in some cases, he's actually been exhibiting red flags for years.

And yet, his wife or kids or close friends or other loved ones, they circle the wagons.

Instead of acknowledging the evidence and the likelihood of the man's guilt, they deny and spout off about how swell their guy is.

It's always like, seriously? Are you kidding me?

You feel a certain resentment toward the people trying to explain away a mountain of evidence pointing to a murderer.

You feel like they're trying to pull a cover up.

And in some cases, they are.

We've all heard of cases where a perpetrator's loved ones have taken direct or indirect actions to help them elude justice.

That certainly does happen. But it's not always the case.

In my own life, through recovering from alcoholism and reading up a bit more on psychology, I've come to realize that humans have an extraordinary capacity for self-delusion.

And that, while it's certainly alarming to behold, there may be more unconscious reactions at play in these kinds of situations than we think.

That brings us to today's topic of conversation.

How does the human brain react when faced with an overwhelming betrayal?

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