We've got some updates for you, a preview of BLOOD MONEY, our upcoming miniseries about the history and ethics of true crime, and we answer your questions, about trauma gremlins, smiling through hell, and how to deal with bad faith arguments.

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When Joe Berlinger packed up his things to go to West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993, he thought he was going to make a documentary about a satanic ritual murder. Instead, he found a witch hunt determined to condemn three innocent boys. Over the next two decades, Joe and his partner Bruce Sinofsky made three documentaries about the case. Those films played a critical role in the eventual release of the West Memphis Three.

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By the time he was sixteen, Jason Baldwin had already felt the sting of prejudice from his community in West Memphis, Arkansas. Kids at the trailer park where he lived had long been shunned by more well off residents of the town. Still, nothing could have prepared him for how vicious these prejudices would turn once the bodies of three eight year old boys were found murdered. Jason and two of his friends were convicted of the murder despite a complete lack of physical evidence. If not for the case coming to the attention of two documentary filmmakers, the West Memphis Three would likely still be in prison today.

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Anna Vasquez was just nineteen when she and three of her friends were accused of a horrific crime that they were completely innocent of. Their case was swept up in the mass hysteria about satanic cults that had seized the country in the 80s and 90s. It would take twenty four years for Anna and her friends to be fully exonerated, including over a decade in prison. But Anna's story didn't end with her release from prison or even with her exoneration. After prison, Anna found love.

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Most people are pretty bad at having difficult conversations. We don't get much practice--the internet makes sure that we mostly see content from people we agree with. When we do see opposing viewpoints, it's usually in the form of hateful comments. But when Dylan Marron started receiving a deluge of online abuse in response to his viral video series, he did the opposite of what most people do. He gave his detractors a call. 

Photo credit: Mindy Tucker

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Jennifer felt trapped--her two sons were addicted to drugs, in and out of jail and rehab, and living on the streets. What had she done wrong as a mother? How could she save them? Was trying to save them her own addiction?

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When our guest today, Christian, was checked into a psych ward in the midst of a manic episode a few years ago, he had no prior history of mental illness. He'd certainly never had delusions of the kind that had come to consume him over the last few days. As it turned out, the culprit for the drastic change in Christian's mental state was not one people would normally think of. His manic episode with psychotic features had been induced by cannabis. 

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Few people can say that they have remade themselves as completely as Lee Turnbull. He went from being a violent young man in London to being a happy, well-adjusted soccer coach in the States. Getting there required not just a change in his lifestyle, but a dramatic change in his values.

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Before Adolf Hitler was a genocidal autocrat, he was a young art student who loved his mother. Before Vladimir Lenin was a Marxist revolutionary, he was the privileged son of loving parents, radicalized by his older brother. And before Joseph Stalin was a ruthless dictator, he was an abused child who was terrified of his father. Why should we know or care about these details? In the face of the crimes these men committed, their early lives seem irrelevant. But Brandon Gauthier argues that it is important to try to have empathy for even the most hateful historical figures. Only by understanding evil, he says, can we stop it from happening again. Brandon stopped by Labyrinths to tell us about his book, Before Evil, that explores the lives of these men before they became the murderous despots we remember them as today.

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You may have heard Molly Bloom's name from tabloid headlines about a "poker princess" or from the 2017 movie, Molly's Game. But Molly has a deeper story to tell. Though her life has taken an unusual number of twists and turns--from poker millionaire to convicted felon to bestselling author--Molly's reflections on it all are universal. They include her thoughts on material gratification, on being represented (and misrepresented) by others, and on finding power within yourself.

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