Jay Warner Wallace is a renowned cold case detective who joined us a while back to discuss his previous book, Person of Interest,

why Jesus still matters in a that Rejects the Bible.

His new book is The Truth in True Crime, What Investigating Death teaches us about the Meaning of Life.

That's our topic today. Welcome, Detective Wallace.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm looking forward to this conversation.

You start with a premise. True crime reveals our true nature. I think you might, do you

underline italicize nature? I can't remember. But how so? Most of us aren't criminals.

Yeah, no, that's true. But what happens is, you know,

if I'm holding up a mug and you're looking at this mug and wondering what's in it,

the surest way to find out is to bump it, you know, to nudge it, to punch it. And then whatever

spells out, you're going to see what's really in there. And so many of these cases I describe

in this book are cases where are critical moments.

You know, it's the worst day, obviously, in the history of days for the victim.

But it's often the worst day in the history of days for the suspect as well.

And something has happened that it kind of reveals at least the suspect's true nature.

And then when you start to analyze this and you work these cases for a number of years,

you realize that, you know, to be honest, what you're just seeing is all of our nature,

just revealed at these pressure points.

In other words, I got a chance to see what's in the mug because I get to work the cases

where someone's nudged it, someone has bumped it, and then I get to see what's in the mug because I get to work the cases where someone's nudged it, someone

has bumped it, and then I get to see what spells out. And as you kind of, the more you do it,

the more you recognize yourself, sadly, in some of these cases. So I think that that's why

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