True Crime
11/22/19 - From TV crime dramas like SVU to the explosion in true crime podcasts, we delve into the public - and especially women’s - fascination with murder content. Whose stories are centered? How prevalent is murder these days anyway? Why is the subject so bingeable? Rachel Monroe joins us to discuss. Plus, how and when we think about our own deaths.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
Photo by Chris Bloom (cc by-sa)
TRANSCRIPT: TRUE CRIME
[Ads]
(0:58)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: Hello.
Ann: Hi.
Aminatou: It's nice to meet you too. [Laughs]
Ann: Oh my god, I know. I don't know why I was so surprised to find you there. [Laughter] You know, some days the small talk comes more easily than others. That's just the truth.
Aminatou: Whew, that's a word Ann. Whew child.
Ann: What are we talking about today?
Aminatou: Today we're talking about a favorite white lady pastime, true crime.
[Theme Song]
(1:55)
Ann: True crime is quite the agenda. Like we're going to do our best in the span of this episode but honestly I feel like you could have a whole con -- I mean there are whole conferences. You could fill days and days with analysis and opinions about this genre of books, television, movies, podcasts.
Aminatou: So real, so real, so real.
Ann: Well I'm going to be honest which is that I have never understood the appeal of murder TV/murder podcasts.
Aminatou: Do you really not understand the appeal of it or are you saying that it does not appeal to you?
Ann: You're right, that's overstated a little bit. Well it's true that it doesn't appeal to me but part of it is the idea of the kind of true crime superfan who is like "I listen to five different podcasts and Law and Order is how I calm down at the end of the day" or whatever. Like someone who is consuming just a lot of media across the board that's focused on predominantly women getting murdered is a thing I actually don't understand. Like it's hard for me to understand the appeal and I find it so unsettling and not settling.
Aminatou: I think there are a lot of things going on here. I personally am not interested in the spate of podcasts that we have that are about people getting murdered. It's not my preferred way of dealing with that content. Am I heavily invested in the Law and Order series? In general absolutely, for both murder- and non-murder reasons.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: I also think there is something always very interesting. Whenever people say true crime it's like what is it really? Because there's 100% the stereotype of like oh, women getting murdered on TV or whatever. And then even within that whole genre you have this kind of thing where people think they're doing something a bit more elevated where they talk about cases that don't necessarily involve women or they're trying to exonerate people. I'm not quite sure what we're saying when we're talking about true crime. It's like sometimes are all on the same page?
(3:55)
Ann: Right. I guess I would lump the sort of air-quote high-brow things like Serial in with a true crime podcast that is like recycling reporting from somewhere else about a crime -- a murder that has happened in a small town. I feel like it is related thematically.
Aminatou: You and I are on the same page about this. I cannot speak for everyone but I think that generally the contours of that stuff that is interesting to people, I think that for some people it's truly just a kind of normal . . . like I wouldn't say obsession but a kind of normal psychological path to pursue. It's not any different than somebody who's like into doing newspaper clippings right? It's like hi, the news prioritizes dead people so let's do it.
I think there's also the obvious evil is fascinating to a lot of people. Then there's also the horror show of the 24/7 news cycle which I'm like you can read about Trump or you can read about true crime and honestly sometimes the true crime is less heavy. [Laughter]
Ann: Fair enough, and I guess I don't see the read about Trump or read the news is optional, which is like duh, of course it's an option. Of course I'm making a choice when I do that, yeah.
Aminatou: But here is one thing I think is also true about true crime is that for a lot of people it helps you feel prepared almost. I'm thinking about the interview that I did with Carrie Goldberg a couple of weeks ago was that awesome bad-ass lawyer who deals a lot with revenge porn. And one of the points that she had made was that being prepared for shitty things to happen to you is a better framework for your life than being in crisis and having to figure out what to do. And I think that when I think about the women who I know who are super into murder TV one of the underlying things there is they're like oh, I am most likely to be a victim of murder so what do I need to know about this?
(5:52)
And there are entire TV channels that this is their bread and butter. It's like this very sick kind of let's get you prepared for the hurricane of your life. Some people are obviously like adrenaline junkies and it makes them happy. Some people -- like there was one person that I was talking to that I'm definitely not friends with but I remember them saying how . . .
Ann: Caveat, I'm definitely not friends with this person. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Yeah, I'm definitely not friends with these people. But we were talking about -- I forget what show it was but they were very much like oh, part of why I like watching this is I'm glad that it's not me. And I'm like hmm, this is such a . . . it's such a morbid thing to say. But you know, I don't know, I also don't feel that true crime is so much different than the people I know who like to watch horror movies. You know how I cannot fuck with horror movies, and I think that some people just want to be scared in a hyper-controlled kind of way.
Ann: That's true but it's really hard for me to get around the idea that there are surviving family members or survivors who made it out without getting murdered whose story is sort of being turned into the same kind of entertainment that like a horror movie might be. And that's not to say everything I consume I can justify on this highbrow ethical level but it really is -- and I know something, this is something that was discussed a lot with regard to Serial because the young woman who was murdered, her family did not participate in the reporting for that right? That was very much a thing that I thought about and it was written about quite a bit and when that was dominating a certain type of media consumer's radar in like, when was that, 2015? 2014? You know, I think you're right about the desire to kind of be scared in a controlled way. But it's a weird thing because it is taking that step to realize like yes, scared in a control way for you but there are real humans who this was not so controlled for. Yeah.
(7:50)
Aminatou: Of course. And I obviously very much agree with you. I think that another very complicating factor is sometimes the victim's families are the ones who are keeping the story alive, you know? And that is for very specific kind of reasons, like it is to their advantage to have the public talk about them or to have buzz around law enforcement and things like that. So I completely get it. I just think that the conversation about true crime is not as simple as people make it out to be but I think that one thing that always makes me feel uneasy and it's true in murder TV, it's true about rape TV, it's true about all sorts of things, just this impulse to consume other people's suffering without thinking of them. Like my whole obsession with this is obviously like part of it is that I do want to be prepared. It's just like what am I supposed to do? Somebody murders me . . .
Ann: You mean like if somebody attempts to murder you? Is that what you mean?
Aminatou: Yeah, if somebody attempts to murder me you'd better believe I'm going to have a fistful of their hair in my hand. I'm like you are not getting away with this. But I think that -- and I think a lot about oh, what would I want if I were a victim of a crime? I would one thousand percent not want people uncritically consuming it and sending memes to their friends about it and talking about -- you know, I'm like golden rule should apply here. Like treat people . . .
Ann: Right. If you would not meme your best friend's death you should not meme the death of a stranger.
Aminatou: Right. Right. And I think a thing that you alluded to also very early on about the fact that a lot of this medium now is basically recycling other people's reporting and other people's words, there is a news function for why we report out murders. I do not always agree with how that plays out or how it is done but there's a framework for how we do that. We don't have a framework for people just getting on microphones gabbing about dead people all the time and that is -- I imagine that it is deeply painful for the people that it involves. It also I think disseminates a very kind of media illiteracy that I really despise and ultimately I think that it's very heartless.
(10:05)
Ann: Right. I'm also reminded of the fact that there's a lot of statistics about who is most vulnerable to being murdered by a stranger, by an intimate partner. You know, these are things that while not 100% comprehensive it's something that because it often involves law enforcement there is some kind of statistic. Then there is also kind of what we know to be true about whose bodies are endangered in our world or like people who might be more vulnerable to violence as well. And I think it's interesting because I'm not saying I would rather have a slew of true crime podcasts that are only about trans sex workers being murdered, right? I'm not saying I want to shift the genre to being hyper-focused on a different kind of pain. But I am aware of the way that a certain perception of who is most at risk informs perhaps the appetite for taking action or actually protecting people who in fact are most at risk of violence, particularly when it comes to violence from strangers.
Aminatou: I mean let's unpack that a little bit. In less academic words what are you saying?
Ann: [Laughs] Like basically missing white woman syndrome is what I'm trying to talk about.
Aminatou: I know. Well, you know, I don't know, I would push that a little bit further but I'm not going to put words in your mouth. I also think that if you actually watch a lot of the content that is produced about this there are definitely things that are different. So again I'm not going to touch the podcast because that's its own wild, wild world.
Ann: So you're talking about television then?
Aminatou: So on television for example I will say that Law and Order SVU is a TV show that is problematic for many, many, many, many reasons. 100% deals in missing white woman syndrome. I have a lot of feelings about how the police is represented on that show and, you know, what kind of intervention -- like what is the place the police really has in the system or whatever, really problematic. Law and Order also interestingly gets some things right. A TV show that has consistently been pushing the message that the rape kit backlog is a huge problem in this country and that's something that I was like okay, you are doing this kind of education at mass scale and I'm not seeing it anywhere else.
(12:20)
I also think that sometimes when SVU gets it right about the fact that there is -- they never take it lightly that for a survivor to involve the police to report their crime is something that's going to be easy. They do it in a really shitty way but I think that that is actually like -- that's a huge takeaway for me where it's like hi, you are really asking people to give a lot of themselves and you are showing them that the system is broken from start to finish.
Ann: Right, and that acknowledgment alone is sort of like a prompt for reform.
Aminatou: Right, which is not a thing that most people do. Again a show that is very problematic but they definitely have things that they're engaging in. To me it's not an accident that it's predominantly white women that are interested in white women crimes when it's really mostly who is more likely to be a victim of violence? Probably someone with a brown body. As we're seeing, at least on social media, a lot of it involves black men for example. Where is the spate of podcasts on police violence against black men? Not seeing it.
And so it makes me think a lot about who is allowed to be a sympathetic victim? Who is allowed to tell their stories? Who really drives this narrative? Because all of the stuff that is happening on TV and these podcasts -- people are consuming them -- this has huge consequences for how people who are actual victims of crimes are treated and how they're perceived and how they're pushing that.
(14:00)
Ann: I just want to say thank you. That is 100% what I was trying to say and way more articulate than my bumbling. And that is why I sort of am like I don't think that it is bad to have people interested in true stories of what it is like to interact with the criminal justice system, and I think it is in fact like it's more interesting to say how do we take that interest and widen the lens of what that could mean in terms of involving people and changing it?
Aminatou: Whew, true crime. And I guess one thing I want to be clear on is that I am not indicting people for consuming this content. I consume this content. In fact when we had our friend Josie Duffy Rice on the show, I want to say last year maybe, talking about the criminal justice system Josie is someone who spends every waking hour trying to make the criminal justice system better and going after prosecutors who are just doing nonsense. And Josie is my number one Law and Order SVU texting pal. So the point is not don't consume the content; the point is are you consuming this content with a critical lens? And also what are you actually doing with the knowledge you have and what does it mean for the community you're in? Because if you're doing it just to be in your own like weird little fear-mongering bubble well news for you, you are probably part of the reason that the criminal justice system is fucked.
Ann: Right. The question is which true crimes right? Not like true crime content is bad, it's just like which true crimes are you consuming? That episode is actually almost exactly a year old. It's called Seeking Justice and we'll link it in the show notes. And I also want to shout-out this podcast 70 Million which is like a story-telling focused show about criminal justice reform with a focus on local jails, like a real focus on the community level. So yeah, they've just produced a second season also worth checking out in addition to Josie's work.
(16:00)
Aminatou: Right. And also the podcast Atlanta Monster. That is an investigative journalism podcast about the infamous Atlanta child murders that occurred 1979 to 1981. If you don't want to listen to the podcast you can listen to this new season of Mind Hunter and it's a big point of it but you should probably listen to the podcast if you like crime podcasts.
Ann: Great recs. Do you want to take a break?
Aminatou: Yes, very much so. [Laughter] Murder break.
[Ads]
(19:25)
Ann: So in this vein I talked to the reporter and writer Rachel Monroe about her new book. It's called Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession. The reason I wanted to have her on the show was to talk about the introduction where she grapples with some of these ideas about why people are drawn to crime stories and what in the minds of even particular individuals creates this can't stop thinking about it, can't let it go reaction. So yeah, so I spoke to Rachel about her new book and about all of these issues.
[Interview Starts]
(20:00)
Ann: Rachel thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Rachel: Oh I'm so happy to be on this excellent podcast.
Ann: I am on a very personal level excited to have you here because I feel like you might be able to explain to me the appeal of true crime.
Rachel: [Laughs]
Ann: Like you spend a lot of time -- like this is something I have watched grow in popularity, something I have . . . and I don't even mean this in a sense of like oh, I'm better than it or I have a moral objection although that's an interesting conversation.
Rachel: Yeah.
Ann: I just mean I just don't love it the way that many, many women clearly do.
Rachel: And I think that's a whole other level of alienation too when you see people not just enjoying something but enjoying it with this extra level of energy or fascination or hunger. I mean I did keep coming back to those metaphors of hunger when I was writing the book.
Ann: Yeah. And so okay, maybe talk a little bit about the framing of the book: the questions you set out to answer and the reporting you did to answer those questions.
Rachel: It did really start with my own curiosity about myself, like why did these crime stories which I am as a reporter, as an aware person in the world, I realized they were a distorted version of reality and yet they would get their hooks in me in a way that other stories wouldn't. And I also was curious thinking more broadly about why this was such a phenomenon among women. I was aware that most murders are committed by men. Most victims of murder are also men actually which is something that sometimes surprises people. The people working in the world of murder or who are committing murders, it's a masculine world and yet these stories are overwhelmingly consumed by women. So I just wanted to think about what was drawing so many people to those stories and then also going beyond that what is the effect in the world politically, socially, culturally on a both personal and larger level of having certain stories get so much attention and certain stories not?
(22:20)
Then I did it through looking at four women over the course of like the past century or so who each became fascinated with a crime that didn't happen to her rather than just talking about myself or talking about some idea of women as a broad category.
Ann: Yeah. And this is just like my own feelings upon -- my own feelings as a kind of distant observer of this phenomenon and also just as a reader of your book is it seems to me a lot of the more interesting conversation about deeper reasons why obsession with horrific crimes occurs, those conversations are interesting but in the kind of mainstream spaces where these crimes are discussed. So the message boards at Crime Con, on podcasts. That doesn't seem to be a dominant part of it.
Rachel: Yeah.
Ann: And maybe I'm being dismissive because it's not my genre but I would love to hear you talk about that.
Rachel: Totally. And I think stories about other people's pain because that's sometimes how I describe this book is how do we relate to other people's pain? What is our responsibility? What is it? Why are we attracted to it and repelled by it? And I think stories about other people's pain can open you up in a way, right? And connect you to other people's pain and make you realize how much vulnerability there is in the world. Or they can totally shut you down and turn you inward and make you just think about yourself and your own experience and people who are like you. Yeah, I wish there were more of those conversations, those kind of opening up conversations in these worlds but I don't see a ton of it either which is not to say it doesn't exist. True crime like a lot of genres that appeal to women gets dismissed a lot as trashy or vapid.
(24:10)
Ann: Right, trashy voyeurism full stop.
Rachel: Right, exactly. And so I think that when something has been dismissed it's really easy to retreat into a kind of defensiveness, you know? And any time criticism or a critique or questioning is brought up to just want to double down and not allow any of that. But I think good criticism is a form of like great love and respect, you know? I hope -- I tend to think that. I wish there was more space for that.
Ann: Yeah. It's funny you bring up good criticism because I really loved your review of the May Favorite Murder women's book and it felt -- I kept wondering, I was like is she holding back?
Rachel: [Laughs]
Ann: Does she really want to indict kind of -- not that they are the only podcast that does this but wondering whether you . . . they are an appropriate vector for a certain type of critique.
Rachel: Yeah. Well I did -- that was actually my first instinct. I had not listened to the podcast I think when I was writing the book.
Ann: Do you listen to any of the ten million true crime podcasts?
Rachel: I have listened to a handful of them. I listen to the kind of miniseries ones that are like eight episodes. But the ones that are just like every week I can't.
Ann: Like a new case every week?
Rachel: Yeah, yeah. I don't know if it was just like too much. Writing this book was like eating pizza every day for three years and now I kind of can't look at pizza.
Ann: Sorry, I cut you off.
Rachel: Yeah, I listened to the podcast when I was reviewing that book and my immediate instinct was like oh this is terrible and wanting to write something very critical. But then I realized part of my motivation I think -- if I wrote that that would be me drawing a line and being like they're on the other side of this line and what they're doing is bad and I'm on this side and I'm good. I'm doing this in a virtuous way. I'm not bad. And I had a lot of friends and family members who I really like and respect who love that podcast.
(26:10)
When I was writing I was literally working on that review and a friend of mine came into the coffee shop and was wearing a Stay Sexy Don't Get Murdered sweatshirt and I was like oh my god, I'm writing a review of their book. And then she was like "Oh, I've got the necklace too."
Ann: Whoa.
Rachel: So it felt important to me to write a review that wouldn't be insulting to her as a person who I respect and care about and who gets something from this, you know? And so it's easy. It seems like it would've been easier in a way to condemn it and write it off but I was like is there a way to critique this that also encompasses the fact that this is meaningful to her?
Ann: Yeah. And, you know, to the point of drawing a line. I mean lines get blurry really, really fast.
Rachel: Yeah.
Ann: Like the difference between someone who's in the role of breaking news newspaper editor or like local TV person enacting the classic if it bleeds, it leads.
Rachel: Yeah.
Ann: Like yes, there's a guise of news but they say that because people are interested in things that are horrible, you know what I mean?
Rachel: Yeah.
Ann: Really that is the underlying motivation is still entertainment. And I don't even know what to call . . . the other people's pain phenomenon, if I were to put it in your terms.
Rachel: Yeah.
Ann: Playing out in so many different contexts. And you would think that at this point -- like this is the other thing I kept thinking reading your book -- you'd think that in this moment there would be less appetite for this than ever.
Rachel: Yeah.
(27:45)
Ann: Because the news has always been full of horrors but I think like people are feeling -- people who are relatively safe in the day-to-day are feeling overwhelmed and threatened in a new way. And I think I'm speaking specifically about like our demo of 30-something cis white women.
Rachel: Yeah. But I think that's -- in a way it makes total sense as to why this is happening now because you have these threats that I feel I guess are kind of ambient and abstract and I feel like terrible political movements and climate change, that vague end of the world feeling, and yet on a day-to-day level my life is mostly fine and comfortable. And so these stories I think speak to a kind of threat -- they speak to that part of us that feels threatened or vulnerable but the villain is, rather than enormous systems, the villain is a bad dude and you can catch him and so it speaks to those anxieties but lets you feel, at least in a momentary way, a kind of relief or closure. But then of course it doesn't really assuage anything and so you need another one and another one and another one. I think that's when it starts to feel compulsive.
I think it's very interesting that we are at this moment, when the world feels really precarious, the violent crime rate is basically at the lowest that it's ever been and I think that that gets left out of the discussion a lot when we're steeping in these stories of violence. And some of that has to do with media maybe and how stories of terrible things that happened a thousand miles away are like really available to us. In the book I write about this Pew study where they ask people every year "Do you feel like the crime rate is going up or down?" And while the trends have been since '91 or whenever like a steady precipitous decline almost every year people think that crime is going up.
(30:00)
And that is also something that happens in these podcasts where you -- particularly the ones that are re-treading crimes from the '70s and the '80s and the '90s, and it gets kind of blurred in this way where people's sense of where danger is or who is vulnerable or what the actual risk in the world is, it gets kind of fuzzy or distorted from reality.
Ann: Right.
Rachel: The fact that men are the majority of murder victims. The fact that violent crime is basically the lowest it has been for generations. These things need to be repeated when we're talking about true crime.
Ann: Right. And it's the difference between other people's pain that becomes a sense of like oh my god, the world is closing in and crime is getting worse.
Rachel: Yeah.
Ann: Then there's other people's pain, like maybe a demographic that we don't see on TV all the time where it's more like oh, distant statistic. In some ways -- I mean I would never argue it's a privilege to have something that's horrific and violent that happened to you turned into entertainment fodder but there is sort of a lesson there too about the relative safety and privilege of consumers of these stories versus . . . yeah.
Rachel: Yeah. And I think the thing that's really complicated is it's this overlapping zone of privilege and vulnerability where white women have our vulnerability kind of over-represented.
Ann: Yes, overstated.
Aminatou: And that is not purely a privilege because I think it worms its way into your head in really complicated ways. But it is more of a privilege than having your vulnerability erased or not considered important or not considered real.
[Ads]
(34:00)
Ann: I just realized I hadn't asked you in terms of the crime con audience, in terms of what you know about the consuming audience for these stories, is it mostly white women?
Rachel: I wasn't really able to have any clear stats about that so all I can say is from the audience I saw at crime con and what people see at the My Favorite Murder events it does tend to be white women but I also know anecdotally that the audience is not homogeneous.
Ann: Right.
Rachel: There's definitely a crime con that's overwhelmingly young white women.
Ann: And I guess it's sort of, aside from questions of audience which might be harder to have some definitive statistic about, we can look at the stories that are shared as part of true crime and see some similarities among the victims of those stories.
Rachel: Right, right. And then it becomes this vicious circle where if empathy is one of the engines that's running this I look at these stories are appealing to me because they represent somebody's pain who makes me think about my own pain. We can look at who's represented in those stories then make assumptions about the audience, or at least the intended audience.
Ann: Right.
Rachel: Whether they're hitting in the way they intend to I guess is another question. I was thinking about the earlier phenomenon before the current moment, because that was one of the other fun things about writing the book was getting to write about beyond just the current moment and how those things have played out. It's not just a contemporary phenomenon.
Ann: Right. And also you really had to be more intensely obsessed with a murder to get info about it in the pre-Wikipedia decades.
Rachel: Yeah. You really had to. But just these hugely popular magazines like True Detective, but they would sell millions of copies on the newsstand and it was . . .
Ann: Not an HBO show, a magazine. [Laughs]
(35:50)
Rachel: Right. Yes, exactly. This was in the '40s and '50s. It's so interesting at this time when women are -- particularly white women are starting to have more autonomy, more women living alone separate from families, working, you have this intense cultural obsession with stories of terrible things happening to women basically like when they get in the car with the wrong guy or walking down the street. And so some of the message there is telling women all the terrible things that can happen to them and fetishizing that. There's almost always models on the cover of True Detective so they didn't actually look at all representative of the victims.
Ann: Sure.
Rachel: But it was very sexualized, like these women who were kind of tied up and frightened and this was huge mass entertainment for men and women, these stories of the bad things that happen.
Ann: Right, the original Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered.
Rachel: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Ann: I'm curious about the other -- before I let you go -- the other works, they could be books or not books, that informed the way that you approached yours. I'm curious about whether they are kind of "crime books" -- air quoting -- or whether you had some influences and inspiration that were from beyond the world of voyeuristic murder.
Rachel: Sure. In terms of crime books I really -- I remember reading Robert Kolker's book Lost Girls. Do you know that book?
Ann: I do. Give like the one line.
Rachel: Yeah, it's about an unsolved series of murders in Long Island I believe. And because it's unsolved it's kind of really nice, he can't obsess about the psychology of the killer because we don't know who he is and instead it's this focus on the women who were the victims. And it ends up being a book about sex work and the really precarious position that some sex workers are put in because of just the financial incentives and the way that the justice system plays out and all of these ways that these women were made vulnerable or not listened to. And so that, I was like this is a way that true crime can become like sociology in a way and can have this -- like acknowledge this political dimension of these stories and not just make it a fable about evil and good.
Ann: Right, it's structural. Yeah.
(38:30)
Rachel: Yeah, exactly. Like why these women who were much more demographically representative than, you know, the cheerleader . . .
Ann: Demographically representative of women who would disproportionately get murdered?
Rachel: Yeah, women who were victims of crime, or serial killers particularly.
Ann: If our listeners want to find your work or this book where should we point them?
Rachel: The book should be available wherever fine books are sold I suppose.
Ann: Right.
Rachel: My website is Rachel-monroe.com. I'm on Twitter too much probably @rachmonroe.
Ann: Thanks for being on the show.
Rachel: Oh thank you so much.
[Interview Ends]
Ann: Oh, thinking deeper. Thinking deeper about the things we consume obsessively and why.
Aminatou: Whew girl, see you in murder town.
Ann: Oh my god, I don't want to see you in murder town.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: I want to see you in alive town. I want to see you in my texts and in person and thriving. I do not want to see you in murder town.
Aminatou: Are you one of these people like me who thinks about dying all the time or no?
Ann: I mean I do think about dying but honestly I think about dying in the sense of I'm going to fall down a flight of stairs and break my neck, like Russian doll style deaths. I don't think about like I'm going to get murdered death.
Aminatou: That's what I was going to say. I think about dying constantly, 24/7. I have every scenario. I'm convinced it's going to be one of these humiliating deaths where they'll be like there was a pencil sharpener involved, like something stupid.
Ann: Oh completely.
(40:00)
Aminatou: You know how every year they publish those and they're like seven people died from glue and four people died from -- like it's always that thing. I'm going to be one of these humiliating ones. But murder never crosses my mind, not because I don't think I couldn't be murdered. I just think there are so many other ways people die all of the time.
Ann: Totally. I mean, okay, first of all I think all the time -- I am rarely on a piece of gym equipment but if I am I think about having an aneurysm on it then dying flopped over the piece of gym equipment. I think about that with regularity.
Aminatou: That's real. That happens to people.
Ann: It does. And I also -- this is why I don't cross between the cross lights, especially in a city like Los Angeles. I will always cross at the light because I'm convinced I'm going to get hit by a car as a pedestrian. So yeah, those are my two keep me up at night.
Aminatou: Yeah, popular ways. I'm telling you.
Ann: Popular deaths. [Laughs]
Aminatou: People do die in very pedestrian ways. It's just . . . .
Ann: Literally. Literally pedestrian.
Aminatou: Very pedestrian ways. Murder is -- you know, I don't know, it annoys me also because there is so much danger lurking in all this stuff but I just think the attention that we give it is so outsized compared to what is actually happening.
Ann: Right. And speaking of outsize I think there is a reason why I don't think about it as much which is I'm a really big body to dispose of. Like if you were roving around for a murder victim I'm like I just -- there is someone easier to put in the trunk than my frame. And I think about that and that is not to shame anybody with any kind of body but I just want to recognize my big body priv when it comes to not fearing a stranger in a dark alley.
Aminatou: Ann, this is how I know you don't watch any murder TV. First of all the technology has vastly improved. There are so many ways to do it.
Ann: Wait, for killing big women?
Aminatou: For disposing of bodies in general.
Ann: Oh my god.
(41:48)
Aminatou: This is my most enduring feminist belief I have. Like most -- like it's not women are equal to men. Mm-mmm. My most enduring belief is that there are probably the same number of women serial killers as men serial killers but they never catch the women because women are smarter because they have periods and they know how to get rid of blood.
Ann: Okay. [Laughs]
Aminatou: That's me. That's me. Zero basis in evidence because yeah, it's like my murder TV -- my obsession is serial killers and every time I watch it I'm like where are the ladies? Are there no ladies or are they not getting caught? And I'm believing they're not getting caught.
Ann: Well there is that movie where Charlize Theron was like I'm going to be not pretty and try to get an Oscar from a long time -- like pre-Mad Max.
Aminatou: Shout out to Monster. Shout out to Monster.
Ann: Monster, that's what it's called.
Aminatou: Shout-out to Charlize Africa which everybody forgets that's her real Instagram handle, Charlize Africa.
Ann: Wow.
Aminatou: She is South African. For monster.
Ann: Sure, but the whole continent though? Like . . . [Laughs]
Aminatou: Listen, Charlize Africa. I'm going to let her have it. Murder, something I would like to think about less even though it happens and I also, you know, I also want to really acknowledge that it is something that also happens to a lot of people and if you're listening to this and it's hard I'm sorry about that.
Ann: I was going to say stay sexy and don't have an aneurysm on the elliptical but it feels not right after that very sincere and warranted comment so maybe we should just say I'll see you on the Internet?
Aminatou: Just stay sexy. I'll see you on the Internet. You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf where Sophie Carter-Kahn does all of our social. Our associate producer is Jordan Baley and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.