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The Waves: Can We Love True Crime When We’re the Victims?

Slate News

Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.66K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2021

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this week’s episode of The Waves, show producer and true crime author Cheyna Roth sits down with Rebecca Lavoie, co-host of the Crime Writers On podcast and fellow true crime author. The pair start by talking about the current state of true crime and beg Hollywood to stop making sexy serial killer movies. After the break, Rebecca and Cheyna dissect how the genre treats victims and whether criticisms of true crime are sexist. Recommendations: Cheyna: The pyramid scheme podcast series The Dream and the 2018 episode of Decoder Ring, Clown Panic. Rebecca: True crime documentary Murder on Middle Beach on HBO; Season 1 of The Staircase on Netflix; and the podcast Canary from the Washington Post. Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Susan Matthews and June Thomas. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves.

0:12.6

Welcome to the waves Slates podcast about gender, feminism, and begging people to stop trying to make

0:18.8

Ted Bundy sexy. Every episode you get a new pair of women to talk about the things we can't get

0:24.4

off our minds. And today you've got me, Shayna Roth, producer of this show, The Waves, and author of

0:30.1

Cold Cases, A True Crime Collection. Right in cold cases and especially promoting it when it came

0:36.9

out about a year ago, I honestly couldn't stop thinking about whether the book that I had

0:43.2

put out into the world was for lack of a better word, a problem. It's a collection of 10

0:49.3

unsolved cases ranging from mass murders to heist, but it was the murders and disappearances

0:54.8

chapters that I kept worrying about, chapters about John Bene Ramsey, Natalie Holloway, and Elizabeth

1:00.8

Short, also known as the Black Dollia, specifically. And by problem, I mean, I was concerned that I was

1:07.6

contributing to a culture that was out of control. True Crime has become something of an industry.

1:14.6

I mean, there's conferences, live tapings of True Crime podcasts. And if you type in True Crime

1:20.4

on Etsy, you will get more than 23,000 hits with shirts, candles, bookmarks, mugs, stickers,

1:27.6

cards, and more that say things like True Crime, Glass of Wine, In Bed by Nine, and just here to

1:34.0

establish an alibi. There's just tons of this stuff out there. And True Crime itself has fans

1:39.7

that range from sort of the casual to the chaotic and true crime podcasts, books, documentaries, and

1:44.6

series. I mean, they are just all over the place. I'm a former prosecutor and I have always been

1:50.4

fascinated by crime. I love mysteries, always have. But as I was writing, I kept seeing patterns

1:57.1

that were concerning to me. So in a lot of the cases, particularly ones that were the victims

2:03.6

were women, usually white women, those were the cases where I found the most research they had

2:08.8

the most documentaries and podcasts and things like that about them. And this is something that I

2:13.4

think is evolving. There are more and more True Crime documentaries that are focused on things

...

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