Nobody Should Believe Me - True Story Media Presents: Affirmative Murder

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

We’re kicking off our new series introducing the shows of True Story Media, Andrea’s ethical true crime network. In this conversation, Andrea sits down with Alvin, the host and creator of Affirmative Murder, to talk about the wild landscape of podcasting in 2025. They dive into questions of diversity and representation, the ethics of telling real-life stories, and what’s at stake when we shine a spotlight on tragedy. From unpacking the recent P. Diddy trial and its ripple effects in the media, to reflecting on the bravery of Erica Pratt—a young girl who escaped a kidnapping—Andrea and Alvin explore how true crime intersects with politics, parenting, and the stories we choose to tell.  *** Listen to Affirmative Murder: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/affirmative-murder/id1296864488 Order Andrea’s book The Mother Next Door: Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy.  Click here to view our sponsors. Remember that using our codes helps advertisers know you’re listening and helps us keep making the show!   Subscribe on YouTube where we have full episodes and lots of bonus content.  Follow Andrea on Instagram: @andreadunlop Buy Andrea's books here.  For more information and resources on Munchausen by Proxy, please visit MunchausenSupport.com The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children’s MBP Practice Guidelines can be downloaded here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

True Story Media Hello, it's Andrea, and today I have a really fun crossover episode for you. This is my conversation with Alvin Williams, creator and co-host, along with Fran Evans, of the wonderful weekly true crime show Affirmative Murder. This is the first of four episodes in which I'm going to be introducing you to the shows on my new network, True Story Media. These episodes are going to be part behind-the-scenes conversation, and I also asked each host to bring me a story that they thought you would find interesting. I hope you love these episodes, and please do check out all of these fine shows that we are so proud to be partnering with. We are going to be bringing you so much in the next couple of months here at Nobody Should Believe Me, including more coverage from our season-6 case, which is ongoing to say the least. We also have our mailbag episode about that season coming up very soon, so please send us your question.

and your thoughts, the best way is to email us at hello at nobody should believe me.com, and we also do check the Spotify comments if you want to drop them there. We have gotten an unprecedented amount of feedback about this season, and we really love hearing from you. If you want more, as always, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or on Patreon to get our subscriber-exclusive show, Nobody Should Believe Me After Hours. This month, Dr. Beck's and I are discussing the Netflix film Unknown Number, The High school catfish. However, I got so many questions about this film and this case that I'm also

going to be doing a main feed episode where we're going to bring some experts in to discuss it. And if two extra episodes a month is not enough, bless you, I have an additional tier on Patreon where I have been doing an extra episode each month called Nobody Should Believe Me Diaries, where I share behind the scene stuff about making the show and all of the things that that brings up. As always, if monetary support is not an option, rating, reviewing, and sharing the show on social media are all great ways to support us. Thank you so much for all of the ways in which you support this show, including just being here listening. It never ceases to feel like a miracle that I'm able to keep making this ambitious show independently, and I literally couldn't do it without you.

Now, on with the show. If you just can't get enough of me in your ears, first of all, thank you. I have a job because of you. And secondly, did you know that I have a new audiobook out this year? The Mother Next Door, which I co-authored with Detective Mike Weber, is available in all formats wherever books are sold. It's a deep dive into three of Mike's most impactful Munchausen by proxy cases, and I think you'll love it. Here's a sample. When Susan logged in, what she discovered shocked her to the marrow of her bones. Though the recent insurance records contained pages and pages of information about Sophia, there was nothing about hope. Susan dug deeper and looked back through years of records.

There wasn't a single entry about Hope's cancer treatment. For eight years, the Putscher family had lived with a devastating fear that their beloved daughter and sister was battling terminal cancer. For months, they'd been preparing for her death. But in that moment, a new horror was dawning. For nearly a decade, Hope had been lying. Well, hello, Alvin. What's going on, Andrea? How you doing?

I'm, you know, I'm okay. It's 2025. It's just a day-to-day. Okay, okay is an acceptable answer in 2020. If you're just okay, I think that's great. I think that's the bar of like doing pretty good for 2025. Yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, it's a crazy time to be alive. I don't know what else to say. I don't have any, I don't have any hot takes. Other than that, how are you? doing, Alvin? I'm good. I think that most people get the energy from you from you is that like we're all that meme of the dog in the kitchen and the cold kitchen is on fire and you're just

sipping your coffee and you're like it's it's all good. Everything's all good. It is starting to feel like that. Alvin, can we just start off by telling us who are you and what do you do? Yeah, as Andrea said, my name is Alvin. Hello. Hi. I do a podcast called Affirmative Murder. We are a true crime comedy-based podcast, I know sometimes people get a little bit, you know, standbackish about that kind of stuff. But me and my co-host Fran started a podcast about seven years ago. We wanted to highlight stories that don't get a ton of attention from the mainstream media. And we wanted to infuse our own perspective in a space that just didn't feel like it had it

at the time. Now there's other, you know, the space has definitely come a cool way since then. Still, you know, a lot more different perspectives that could be. infused and platformed and stuff like that. But yeah, we've been doing this for a while and we enjoy learning and having tough conversations and, you know, changing our minds and changing other people's minds and just, you know, participating in the art of dialogue. I love that. And I love your show. That's why you're here. Affirmative Murder is one of the shows in my new True Crime Network, True Story Media. And you are one of my, one of my, one of my, one of my talk

picks when I started looking for shows. And it's exactly because you bring this really, this different perspective that, as you said, you know, podcasting has changed a lot in the, you know, it changes really quickly. It kind of changes every six months or so. It's such an interesting industry. And I think people who are just listeners to podcasts and don't have any visibility into the behind the scenes don't know how young and how dynamic this industry is. But having a podcast for seven years is actually quite a lot. long time in this industry. Like you are, I think, could be fairly considered a veteran because this space was very different in 2018, right? That's true. That's very true. And so as you said,

it is more diverse than it was, but certainly, I think, arguably not diverse enough. And I think especially in the true crime space. And I think, you know, you have great chemistry with Fran. You can tell your friends. I think that some of the best co-host pairs are people who are friends in real life before they started co-hosting a show together. But this is tricky to blend, you know, laughs with the worst things that have happened to actual people. Right. So how do you and Fran approach that and maybe how has that changed over the years for you too? Well, I think that first things first is we're never making jokes at the expense of the story. You know, like we really are interested in, you know, as professionally as we can, like we would never pretend.

to be professional journalists or you know anything like that but as professionally as we can tell people what what the story is about and i think that always liking it to like your internal compass like if you if you step into a weird area i think you feel it and if not then you shouldn't be doing this and because we've been doing it for so long i trust i trust my compass and i trust my co-host compass to be like hey man i feel weird about making a joke there so we're not going to do that, you know, and when when we do make jokes, it just feels like this is a good space to do so. Also, we do, this is important to tell people too. Like, we do a lead off in the beginning of the show where we talk about current events and stuff like that. So again, we do put the, the timestamps in the show notes. So if you just want to jump to the story, I respect that. But if you are looking for where we usually get a lot of the jokes off and shoulder, you know, get loosened up for telling some really gruesome and terrible things a lot of times because that's what we're doing. We're telling you guys some of the most objectively horrible things that have, you know, happened. We're talking about the worst day in people's lives. And so sometimes you just need to kind

of shake that off. And laughter is a good medicine for that sometimes. But yeah, I think to answer the question is we try not to ever make jokes that could even be perceived to be at the expense of the victim or, you know, taking precedence over the story. Yeah, I think that's really important and that really shows in the work. And I think having the funny banter sort of segmented at the beginning really works. And I think, you know, I'm very aware of the need for levity. You know, when you're talking about this dark of things, we had, you know, we've just launched our sixth season and it was very tough emotionally. And so I know the team and I, as we were putting it together, we were looking for, and obviously there's nothing to laugh about.

the media of the story, but we were looking for any sort of moments of levity that we could find even if it was just, you know, funny stuff about us being on the road or, you know, we had a big extended bit about the difference between huddle house and Waffle House. And it was just like, we really were looking for like any moments where we could, because just to give, you know, to give us some relief and to give the listeners some relief. And because obviously, like, I think there can be catharsis, right, in finding the humor, the absurdity. the, you know, the moments of levity even within the darkness, as long as you're doing it respectfully, which I think you guys do. Thank you. And I just feel like, just to add this, I feel like, you know, I don't think the true crime genre, true crime entertainment space, it's not really, it's not going to go anywhere.

And so if we allow these horrible people that we talk about who've done these terrible things to weigh down the world and not allow us to find joy, even after telling. such a horrible story, then I just feel like they win. Like, that's their mission is to like make the world a worse place. And as much as, as you know, you talk about all these terrible things, you being able to end your day with a laugh or even find a laugh in the mix of going through the emotions that you just felt is, you know, that's the spice of life. Yeah. And I mean, I will tell you sort of our, the one of the things, you know, because we cover a

very specific thing, there's a big sense of community within my show and the people who listen to it, and especially the people who've been on it, because we've all sort of been through this really similar experience. And I think there are jokes that we would make with each other that I would never put on air because they're so dark, but it's like that gallows humor, like you really, really need it. And I think that that's something that when people have been through a traumatic experience, and especially if they are talking to someone else who has been through a parallel experience, it's like I think people would be surprised by that sometimes. Yeah. But yeah, so as you said, you know, you and Fran started in a time when, you know, a lot of the dominant shows. And I mean, I think this is still true to a huge degree. But I certainly there's more variety and more diversity now. And this is a genre that has been with us forever. But obviously a lot of true crime is focused on crime that happens to white women. And specifically like young, especially conventionally attractive, white women. Like those are the stories that really.

end up taking up a lot of space. And that is obviously a problem because that's not representative of crime and who it's happening to necessarily. And so tell me about, you know, with you and Fran, how do you determine which stories are an affirmative murder story? That's a great question. I think that what the cool thing that true crime podcasting did is that it made it more accessible to the layman. And I think that's what. the explosion of all these different, you know, pink-haired people and makeup artists and all these different ways to get to disseminate true crime as opposed to like a case file or a law and order where it was very procedural.

Or hard copy. Remember hard copy. Yeah. Like it's just like, that's the way that we've all watched true crime things our entire lives. It's just, it's now become this more hanging out with your friends environment if that's what you're into. Obviously, a lot of people still like procedural type of podcast.

But it's not all, like, strong-jawed white guy presenters with, like, slick back hair kind of delivering. You know, but yeah, for us, I'm like, if we haven't heard of it, that's like step one. Like if this, if a story comes across that I just have never heard of, that's like, okay, this is something that I feel like we should be trying to tell more people about. Especially if it's a cold case or an unsolved murder or something like that where there could be something beneficial to happen. But also in the case of just marginalized communities in general, I feel like the bigger mission for us was like, specifically in the black community, if you think that serial killers are always white guys and then there's a serial killer in your neighborhood, it's hard to be convinced that that's what it is. And so you don't know to look out for, you don't protect yourself. You know, like you just think that, you know, I live in this kind of community. This is what happened with Jeffrey Dahmer. Like these are the kind of things that. it breeds. There was another incident where there was this guy here in Baltimore where I'm from. He killed a young lady who was here. She was a tech company owner and she was young, thriving. She was on the Forbes list and all these things. And this guy had committed all these

murders leading up to killing her. But because the idea of one person committing all these gruesome matter, it was like the police department didn't want to alarm people. They didn't want to say that this is a string of murders. And so they kind of danced around it a bit. And they left the public unaware to be on the lookout for suspicious characters. So I think that just letting people know that there's not one face to the serial killer motif and Hispanic people and all of these ice raids and everything. And that kind of chaos, a serial killer could thrive, you know, because there's people being disappeared every day off the street. But if they don't know to be afraid of a serial killer because they just are on the lookout for some white guy and Coke bottle glasses,

then they don't know to be on their P's and Q's and on their toes to watch out for what's happening around them. So that was kind of our broader mission. But like I said, you know, queer folk, black and brown folk, women, people that, you know, that don't get the attention that they deserve because it's not the attention grabbing headline news stories is what we try to focus on. Yeah. And I think, you know, I think you're right in a lot of ways there in terms of how the space is diversified in ways. I think in ways good and bad, as is always the case, right? Because I think with getting a lot of, you know, folks into the space who are not professionals, quote unquote, you know, which I think like being a professional

podcaster is like, you do it and you make it your profession and now you're a professional podcaster is like there's, you can't go to school. The arduous process of becoming a professional. Yeah, I mean, which is not easy to do, right? But I think, you know, having all of those people in the space that do not necessarily have background in law enforcement or training as any kind of professional that would be associated with this space or training as a journalist, obviously. And I think it's, I think there's a way in which that's fine and there's a way in which that can be really treacherous, right? Because

I think this is very much, you know, work that I have learned on the job. I do consider myself a journalist now. But I didn't when I got into it. You know, when I got into it, it was sort of, you know, I was doing a lot of research on this topic. I'd met a lot of experts. I always try and talk to experts, but I, you know, I didn't have a background as a journalist. I had a background as a writer. But that's something I've learned on the job. And that's taken some doing, learning that on the job, right?

You know, what I love about podcasting is that it's the Wild West, when I hate about podcasting is that it's the Wild West, right? Yeah, for sure. I think especially true crime podcasting because the stakes are so high. One, like, that's the, that's always like the biggest and most important part is what the stakes are in this genre in this field, but also we are in a content-driven era, I feel like more so than ever. I mean, obviously, content has been the name of the game for a while, but now with the implementation of TikTok and all these different social media platforms, it feels easier than

ever to create something. And I think that a lot of people look at the algorithm. You know, like 10 years ago, it might have been a great idea to start a pop culture. culture podcast, but the market might be saturated. So now people might jump into true crime just for the sake of doing numbers. They don't have any interest. They don't have that compass I was talking about. They just want to make something that they think will drive the numbers. And when you get bad actors into a space like this, it makes for potential for triggering people, handling things the wrong way, interfering in cases in a way that is

detrimental to them being solved. Like, these are real things. These aren't just ghost stories we're telling. Like, these are real people's lives. So if you come into this space and your attitude is like, how can I make the biggest, most fun, whatever, then I think you're already starting off on a bad foot. But you can, your podcast can still go, even in a bad faith. So that's what makes it scary. You could become one of the biggest true crime podcasters who, like, does make up and true crime and whatever. And you're the biggest thing in the world, but you're doing it in a way that's harmful. So that's why I always talk about that compass, like I said. Yeah. And I think it's a space that deserves a lot of scrutiny, you know, because it's not pop culture. It's not, and obviously

those things can intersect with some very serious topics as well. So it's not to sort of write that off. You know, I think especially the sort of comedy, light, chatty space. I think it's fine to approach that, you know, in the way that you and Fran, I think, really handle that, uh, handle that balance nicely. But, you know, we, we really insist that our creators do as you two do, which is to make sure that you're getting the details right and using credible sources because I don't think people realize how unregulated this space is

and that a lot of people in it are not journalists. And that's okay, they don't all have to be, but I think there have to be, I think we need to self-regulate as an industry and as a space within creators of like what is acceptable true crime coverage and what isn't? Yeah, I always use this as an example.

So the first episode that we ever did of Affirmative Murder I talked about this case of a woman named Michelle Blair. She killed her two kids. She put him in the freezer. And when she went to trial, her accusation was that the kids were molesting the youngest child. And so it was some form of vengeance. And at the time, I was 22. I didn't have any kids.

And admittedly, I'd come from a city and a culture that where like a corporal punishment is pretty normal. right now not to the extent of hurting anybody killing anybody but i foolishly in the midst of telling the story was like i don't know man like i guess i kind of understand the logic i wasn't saying i i agree i just was like i get her logic and it took me growing and also being open to criticism because that was one of the most controversial things i had ever said on this podcast and i opened myself too i didn't just go y'all know what i meant like you guys don't understand what i meant to just get out of here. I kept myself open. I referenced that this a lot, that that was a mistake that I made because I want people to know, hey, man, there's a wrong way and a right way

to talk about these things. And then like you're saying, even if you get all the details right, there's those little, when you choose not to be procedural and you choose to, you know, infuse your opinion into a story, you have to be open to whatever criticism comes your way from people's thoughts on what your opinion was. And so if you're not open to that, if you're not open in general in this space, you're not going to last very long. Because if you think it's like, I did it the right way, because so much of this is opinion-based, if I'm talking about somebody, a victim and somebody's family member comes forward, and they're just at, from the base point of their issue is, I don't even like that you talked about the story. Who am I to

come at them with anything other than an apology, take the story down? Whatever they need for me, you need to acquiesce because this is a real person that you're talking about their family member. You might be hurting them, re-triggering them. And if that was to happen, then I would gladly oblige because you need to be open to the fact that you're talking about real people. Yeah. Have you had that happen before? No. Yeah.

You know, I mean, I'm sure, you know, bigger podcast, that happens more often. I would imagine that that has to happen. It does. And I think, unfortunately, I won't, I won't name names because I haven't done enough due diligence to have. stuff in front of me. But certainly, like you said, you are, you have to be open to criticism because if you want to have a public platform, that is part of the deal. I mean, I think people are entitled to think and say and discuss my podcast. I'm not trying to get in the middle of those discussions. I don't read them unless they're directed at me specifically. And then I, you know,

filter them because some of the feedback that I get from listeners is, most of it is very nice and very supportive and very lovely. Some of it can be just a lot because there are, you know, a lot of things that people react to. So some of it can be difficult to read. And I just need to sort of save it for when I have the space. And then sometimes it's very mean and sometimes it's scary. You know, I have gotten the occasional death threat. So I have an interesting relationship with feedback. But certainly I'm always open to it. And specifically if I feel like I have gotten something wrong. You know, we talk about a lot of complicated things that are not areas of my expertise. My expertise is on this specific, you know, phenomenon and type of crime. And I have a depth of

expertise in that. And I spend a lot of time interviewing experts about that. But there are other things, you know, certain conditions that come up that I don't, you know, that there was a condition that we were talking about that listeners felt we didn't describe exactly right. And so we are trying to do better on that. And I feel like that's the kind of feedback that I'm always really open to or, you know, the other big one that I got got some feedback from that I really took seriously was that I had recommended a podcast about J.K. Rowling that I thought was an interesting podcast and kind of didn't do my due diligence about who had made it. It was created by Barry Weiss, who's, you know, a sort of notable transphobic person and J.K. Rowling is obviously extremely notable transphobic

person. And so we got, you know, some feedback about that. And so, and like, oh, this is like very valid criticism, actually, because, you know, I want to make sure that people just understand understand where I stand on that because I know those listeners are part of my community and I want them to feel welcome in that community. And I think that's really important, especially given the tenor of like the conversation around trans people in this country right now, which is absolutely horrific. And that's that's one thing that I have also grown in the sense that like, I can't tell people how to feel about looking to you as some kind of beacon of righteousness or. or good or whatever because they're in your community. Right? So I always try to tell people like, I'm not perfect. I'm not going to get anything right. But you've got to be open to criticism for like the real issue.

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One thing I wanted to ask you about is we have both gotten some, you know, on the sort of topic of politics and our opinions about things and current events. Both of us have gotten some blowback about what people perceive as us not staying in our lanes. And I find this criticism odd, because I can't imagine where people don't think that true crime and the things we talk about in the true crime space, the justice system, the health care system, inequalities in those spaces, you know, family court, like who gets what treatment from the, the child protection apparatus, like all those things I talk about on my show and like all of the things you talk about on your show, those are not apolitical topics. And those are not

unaffected by public policy, by who's directing it. Those things are deeply intertwined. So this idea that all pining about politics or having feelings about politics is, you know, and I don't talk about politics specifically a ton on the show. But the idea that like I should be neutral about that is so wild to me. And impossible. I don't think everyone needs to comment about everything. I don't think I'm not going to go off about something. I'm not going to take up a bunch of space on my show talking about something that I don't,

I'm not well informed about. But I think like you build your own platform in this industry and like you have, you do have the right to use it the way you see fit. And people can react to that kind of however, again, however they like, they can stop listening at any time. It is free and so easy to stop listening. to a podcast. It really is. I don't think people get that because like I see I like to read other people's comments and reviews, not my own to just for my own. I do too. I was just like to see like

what are this podcast? Yeah, I'm like I love this podcast. What are other people think about this podcast? And so many of like the baseline reviews are like, you know, who gave this person a podcast? Nobody. Like for the most part, most people just went to the guitar center and bought some things. If you don't like it, just turn it off. In my case, specifically, there's nobody to email to, like, get me off the air. Oh, yeah, me either. I'm in a closet right now. This is a hanger from my closet that I'm in right now. I know. I'm like, I could grab a hanger as well. I'm right. I'm next to the closet. But yeah, I'm in my basement. No, to your point, like, we're both independent podcasts. I think a lot of, you know, some shows have bigger distributors. That was not

an arrangement that worked out for us famously. That is where the boldest reporting can happen, right? When nobody can call your boss. Yeah. So, like, for me, about the, uh, the politics discussion like everything is politics specifically today i think some people especially when we're talking about the the the loud online contingent of people that listen the podcast that are willing to like leave your message they have a an antiquated idea of what politics is and so if i'm telling a story about a man who killed 30 sex workers and i don't have a stance about legalizing sex work and the benefits of that and how that helps the community or the impoverished neighborhoods that these bodies are being left in, you're telling

the story wrong. If you're just telling the gruesome thing about the bodies and the people being killed, but you're not talking about the systemic issues around the true crime story, that's political. You can only take one or two steps in that direction before you're talking about legislation or the lack of legislation. If you're doing it the right way, in my opinion, I can't say what the right way and the wrong way is, but there's so many different stories. of child abuse and then you do some research and like how does how did this kid how did he get abused this much and nobody stepped in it's like well they sent somebody out but then they said they sent somebody out from CPS but they didn't actually do it and the bureaucracy around it like you're going to

end up stepping into the world of politics in true crime so much and so the idea that you think that you can tell a story and remain apolitical is is like cowardly to me if that's what you're trying to do at this point. Again, a few years ago, I understood it. You know, I get it. The world was a different place. Like, why step into something and give your opinion if you don't need to? And you just want to tell your true crime story and satiate your audience and everything like that. But in 2025, I'm not going to sit and read the big beautiful bill line by line, but I am going to let people know, like, hey, man, there's people that are going to get kicked off of Medicare. Yeah. And if you don't have any sympathy or empathy for people because you don't think they work hard, let me tell you

about this woman who was a hard worker, worked 50 hours a week, and then she got brain tumors. And now she can't work. So that doesn't make you lazy. And if you can't say that on a microphone, then you're a chump. Like, I don't know what this, like, if that's how you feel, like, if that's how you feel, but you're like, I don't want to. I don't want to alienate, you know, people in my audience that don't agree with that. I agree.

I agree. I agree. You're a chump. You're a coward. I know. I completely agree with you. Because I do have listeners, especially a handful of vocal ones. So I don't have a 100% liberal audience and I do have conservative listeners and I value them.

I think that that being the show being a space where, you know, where we recognize sort of all of the nuance and a lot of what we're talking about, you know, a lot of the politics that we talk about on the show can be hyper local. But I think what I want to say to our colleagues in the true crime space is that if you are trying to present crimes as context free, like, you said, not mentioning these things, not taking these things into consideration, not contextualizing that for listeners, then you are very likely not creating content that is helpful or good or ethical. Because if you're presenting them context-free, then what is the point of your show? Because I think true crime, obviously we are creating a product that needs to engage people and that people need to be, you know, engaged with, compelled by, entertained by whatever combination of that thing. And that's fine. So it's not to say that we all need to just

be talking about politics every day. And certainly, like, I recognize that people come to podcasts where they don't want to listen about just the news of the day. But I think also to kind of completely remove it from context is not ethical considering what you're talking about. 100%. I feel like in my personal experience with the audience that we've been lucky to cultivate over the last few years, when we see people in person, people want to consume content from people that they feel confident that they have some kind of a backbone. Now, you're going to come across people who go, you just said something I disagree with. So I don't like your thing anymore and I'm out of here. But most people aren't, as much as they are looking to listen to the podcast

to, like, escape, it is a paris social relationship. So, like, they do need to see something of value in you to continue to listen. And for me, I feel the same way about the audience. Like, you know, when I see people like walking down the street, jumping out of U-Haul trucks with like stormtrooper masks on and marching on capitals and all this stuff, I'm like, if that's who you've cultivated as your, like, if this is all the audience of some true crime podcaster person, you're a bad person and like your audience is bad. And I can't say my whole audience is good or bad. But I know that when they look at me, they know that I'm never intended to hurt anyone's feelings. I'm never intending to be malicious or anything like that. And so anything that comes

with any level of critique, I can live with because I feel like the audience that we have knows enough of me to know that I'm coming from a place of positivity. So I did want to ask you about what is today a current event by the airing of this will have been in the world for a few weeks. and I know you're going to talk about it on the show, and you've done some coverage on the show, but one of the big stories, which I have not been following this case, beat for beat, just because I already have enough gruesome stuff in my research, but is the Diddy Trial. So there was the verdict came down yesterday. It was a mixed verdict. Can we get like a little minute of kind of your take on this and sort of what it means and what you guys have already explored about this case?

on the show and what you're going to be exploring going forward. Yeah, we covered the first like two and a half weeks of the trial. A lot of the Cassie Ventura testimony is what we centered our discussion around. But unfortunately, I kind of called it. I mean, I don't feel good about that, but I just felt like either they should have taken more time to lay the case out or they should have charged him with things that they felt more confident about sticking because they painted him out to be a monster. Like, there's no question that they did the job of being like, this guy committed crimes,

but I'm just not sure that they charged him with those crimes, except for the ones that he was found guilty on, which I think, you know, traveling across state lines for the purpose of prostitution, I was like, they're going to get him on that. But those are the lesser charges. The whole criminal organization, the RICO of it all, I think that was hard to prove. out of the gate and I think that what they did was they did a great job of being like this guy's a pariah like companies stay away from him women stay away from him this is a bad guy but they didn't really lay enough out to put him in prison for the rest of his life and now

you have this guy who because he wasn't charged with the rico I think at most he gets seven years with time served and now he's out and he's got a vendetta against Kit Cuddy and Cassie Ventura and whoever else went up on the witness stand and whoever else was a journalist in the audience who gave him unfavorable coverage and he's back into the world with unlimited resources and money and that's the dangerous part, right?

Like, because you didn't get him but you've left this man who, in my opinion, I think that Pete Dedy cares way more about being famous than having money. So yes, he gets to get out and have money, but he'll never be on MTV again. He'll never dance on a VMA stage. And that makes him a man who's dangerous.

He has nothing left to lose, in my opinion. I mean, I'm really scared for, like, the inner workings of the music industry with that man being out and not having any Fs to give, you know? So I think that, like I said, I did, in a sense, I did think that this is how it was going to go, which was that he wasn't going to get found guilty on the RICO, but get found guilty on the prostitution charges. And that's the way it went, unfortunately. Yeah, I mean, it brings up so much. And I think that people who have sort of more of a passive engagement with true crime stories or just listen to the big ones that are in the news or don't, you know, or maybe are listening to shows that don't explain how these systems work or sort of how this process really goes. And I think, you know, a lot of what I've found out about how crimes and like, you know, serious, like violent crimes are investigated, prosecuted. Like, I think people. people just would be shocked if they knew how much of this comes down to individual police departments, how competent and motivated they are, individual DAs making decisions, and then

that the fact that like, you know, some, yeah, and money. And I, and I think like if someone has, you know, can afford really good lawyers, I, that's a tough, that's a tough case every time. But I think I agree with you that, you know, you really worry about the people who took. the very brave step to testify against someone like that. And now that I think that arguably the prosecution really may have put those people in harm's way by letting them do that in a context where they really didn't have the evidence to make it stick. I think about that a lot in sort of the larger wake of the Me Too movement where you talk about, you know, one I think about all the time is Christine Blasie Ford, you know, who testified during the Brett Kavanaugh

hearings and that was incredibly brave and the reality was as much as that testimony was very moving and impactful for people to hear they were never going to stop him from getting on the Supreme Court and Christine Blasey Ford dealt with death threats she had to relocate and the rest of us who are sort of watching that who are women and especially for people who've had some analogous experience which unfortunately is a lot of us you know had to watch someone be brave and then nothing happen and sort of everyone be like me like thanks for sharing but I don't know we don't care and I think that also I think that this is going to have that kind of similar impact right of like oh these people could be that brave and like Kathy could be that

brave and go up and I mean like especially just pregnant and just like so vulnerable and like tell all these terrible things that happened to her and everyone could kind of go yeah but like me and I think like that's really on the prosecution first or putting her in that position do you think the reputational damage will stick? Do you think that he will continue to be a pariah? Or do you think that that will be sort of lost to our collective memory? Like, there's that new Formula One movie with Brad Pitt. And so he's doing a bunch of press.

And I'm like, wow, nobody cares what a well-documented abuser, Brad Pitt is. I mean, this stuff, like, was very, like, again, was, I don't feel like there's a lot of questions about those allegations that they, really happened. This is a person who none of his adult children want anything to do with him. And it's just like, oh, wow, but everyone's still just like, oh, my God, he's the finest actor of our time. And he's so, isn't he so handsome still in his 60s? And I'm like, but what about this other stuff? And it was just like, oh, maybe we just really don't care. It's like, maybe with the right person, we don't care. Well, here's what I'll say, like, to tie everything that you said, because I agree with so much what you just said. I don't think it's any coincidence

that Brand Pitt is doing the F1 Formula One race car movie. I think that when you bring up Brett Kavanaugh and you bring up the Diddy and the parallels in those trials. One big thing that, as me as a man, that I noticed is there was all these toxic conversations that were taking place around men of like, oh, what took her so long? And why would you wait this long and money? And she just wanted money and all of these things. And then not to dilute it into such a simple term, Brett Kavanaugh won. P. Diddy kind of won.

So you validate. Trump won. I mean, adjudicated rapist from the E.G. Carroll trial. You know, he lost a huge defamation suit. Yeah. And obviously there's many, many other allegations against him. And yeah, I mean, one, won all the things. Like it just is the most powerful person in the world by some pretty solid arguments right now. You validate all that toxicity, right? I mean, I've heard some of the most despicable narratives and conversations about what these women, they knew what they signed up for and they just wanted money and this. And so much of what happened in the Brett Kavanaugh situation was

there was so much just toxic conversations around rape culture and the patriarchy and all of these things now the p ditty trial was interesting because you couldn't avoid it right so well and not as much positive like feelings out there for p ditty to begin with right i mean bradette i think was like had such a positive image before that happened yeah that he could sort of like recover it you know in a way that maybe isn't accessible to p ditty i think at the time of all this happening i think you're kind of indifferent to Pete Ditty. You recognize that P. Diddy's P. Diddy. And maybe we all go, yeah, it's P. Diddy, man, he dances and whatever. But I don't think anybody had like an undying love for P. Diddy. And then when the video of Cassie, him beating Cassie comes out, so that

turned the favor. And then the trial starts and then you start finding about all these other things. And what's interesting is when you ask me, do I think that this will blow over? Interestingly enough, this is something I battle with because one of the most horrible things of this trial is that there are going to be people who don't like P. Diddy. anymore because they think he's gay. You know, so it's like you're battling this like, okay, well, if it was just that he was a man and paying these women and whatever, but when you introduce any kind of fluid sexual situations into it, all of those men immediately are like, oh, yeah, no, this guy's gay.

So I can't really answer that question because the men that I would expect to ride for him like they did for Brad Pitt or the Brett Kavanaugh situation or Donald Trump, a lot of them homophobic. So it's like, who is, who's left to ride for you if you have alienated even the worst of people? Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's, I was like, is that good? I don't know. I was like, I don't know which calling to put that. He won't have any audience because he might be gender fluid. People are going to hate him. They're going to hate him for the wrong reasons, but at least they hate them, question mark. I don't know. But I mean, I will, I will tell you, I'm like one of the things that I love about your show and about your conversations with Fran, is that you guys have some really

interesting conversations about gender and about masculinity. And I think I'm like, the relief of listening to, you know, smart, aware, straight men talk about these issues around gender and masculinity is such a relief. And you guys have such a good take on it. And I think, again, gender is such an interesting thing that sort of, that has a massive influence on crime and how we metabolize crime. And it's so interesting that you were talking about one of the things that you felt like you got wrong on one of your, you know, your very first case was a mom that had murdered her own children. And obviously that is very much in my wheelhouse. And that's something that we're up against all the time, right?

It's just this idea that like, oh, if a mom does something bad to their kids, they must be, or if a woman does something violent, they must be either crazy or sort of justified in some way, I think. And certainly, like, there's so much nuance here. But obviously, like, we have a very strong desire not to see women as dangerous, and that is really affects how we deal with female criminals in which exist. Fall is coming, and this is my favorite season, so I'm very excited to move my fall clothes to the front of the wardrobe, but getting dressed starts with great intimates. And my all-time favorite brand for these, even before they were a sponsor, is skims.

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but I do want to get to the case that you brought us because you brought us a case to talk about today. What are we talking about today in terms of a true crime story? so this is kind of a feel-good story it's i think it's a great story to talk about in the sense that it allows conversations around awareness and informing people about things to tell their kids i just recently became a dad and i feel like we've lost sight of so many little things that i remember from me being a kid like my grandmother used to ask me all the time what my mom's phone number was or what my address was like all these things that just like i remember being four years old and just reciting them just because with no thought of like danger just like just this is something that

you should know in case something happens but we're we're going to make it a fun game like we're just and then when the moment comes where you're lost in that Kmart and your mom's there but you don't know where she is you know her name you know her full name you know her phone number like you can handle yourself in some kind of way and begin with the development of technology and phones and contact lists and stuff I just feel like we lose sight of those things that we should be telling kids in order to keep them safe. So this is, I wanted to talk to you about the story of a young lady named Erica Pratt from the city of Philadelphia. In July of 2002, she was out playing with her sister who was five and like a neighborhood friend. And one thing I'll say is like Philadelphia

and Baltimore are so like cousin cities that I just feel this type of summer day. Like just being out running around, playing hopscotch, like all those things. But they were out and, you know, playing being kids when a white van pulled up on Erica and snatched her and put her in the van really quickly and her sister ran off to try to tell some adults and within 20 minutes they had driven her from she was in southwest Philadelphia and they drove her to like northern Philadelphia they took her into a home duct taped her hands in her mouth and then put her in the basement of the building and then they left and then what they did was they proceeded to call her grandmother's house upwards of six or seven times

demanding ransom money. And in the meantime, over the next 24 hours, because they kind of went away for a while, assuming we just kidnapped a seven-year-old girl, she's where we put her. This little girl got the tape off of her mouth. She nod through the tape on her wrists

and then proceeded to try to find a way out. She makes her way up the stairs to try to get through the door, but the door shut. And then she sees a window and she starts to try to flag down help. Now, the perpetrators turned out to be some people who knew Erica Pratt's family. Right. So what happened was a couple of months prior to this incident, one of her grandmother's sons had passed away. And there was a rumor. This happens, you know, all the time. If people are in your business, somebody passes away and then people start making assumptions about if they

had property or money or anything like this. A rumor hit around the neighbor. of a life insurance policy. So they thought that Erica's grandmother's son had passed away, and then there was some insurance policy that was cashed out, and they wanted to get a piece of that. So they kidnapped Erica Pratt to ransom her for money that they thought existed. That didn't even exist. So they kidnapped Erica, put her in this house. You know, if we fast forward, back to the house.

She's calling for help. It's been a full 24 hours. So now it's, you know, mid afternoon, late morning, and there's two kids riding bikes in the neighborhood, and they hear this little girl calling for help. They're about nine years old. They make their way over to her and see that she's in one of those little windows in a basement, and they're, you know, communicating with her and asking her if there's any way, is there a stool or is there a table or something? She says, no, but there's a hammer. Erica Pratt takes the hammer, busts out both the windows that are in the basement, and these two kids pull her out of the small window, and they run and make their way to a police station. I couldn't imagine at seven years old doing anything other than panicking, and hoping an adult comes to, for her to have this much ingenuity and, like, taking her life into her own hands.

And I know she didn't look at it that way at the moment. you know, you're seven years old, you're not thinking like, I'm not going to let this be how I die, you know, to even have those kinds of instincts, you know, because again, I'm sure you're more familiar with the statistics than I am, you know, 24 hours after a kidnapping, the likelihood of you being returned home, it drops tremendously. And so I don't think she really knew what danger she was in, but she knew she didn't want to be in it anymore. So she gets out, she makes her way to an adult, the adult takes her to, to a police station. And she identifies one of the men. There was two culprits, James Burns and Edward Johnson, because James Burns had a prior relationship with her family. They were able to make this connection really quickly that. James Burns, the year before, had tried to kill her other uncle named Edward Pratt. He shot at his house. So they immediately were like, well, here's the connection that we were looking for. And so, So they showed her mugshots and she fingered this guy.

This seven-year-old girl was able to, in the midst of being snatched up, put in a van, duct taped, she remembered his face enough to identify him in a lineup. And within three days, both these men were arrested. And one of the most fascinating things about this to me, the men served about 15 years or they got sentenced to 14 and a half to 49 years. I don't think they're still in prison at this point. If they are... When did this happen? This happened in 2002. Okay.

So at least they've been up for appeal. They might not have been released yet, but they've served a good chunk of the sentence that they were handed down. But for me, I'm like, a story like this is cinema. And I don't think anybody, I don't think a lot of people have heard about this story. Erica Pratt went back into private life, I think about a week after this whole thing happened, Time magazine made her a person of the week. And then a year later, the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. gave her a medal of honor you know they had a ceremony for her now eight years old you did this amazing thing and there's all this beauty and an incredible triumph in her story but then she

went back in their private life very quickly i mean i'm not saying that she was supposed to go on some kind of press tour at eight years old but a story like this you would think that you know people would be encouraging her to grow up and go and do public speaking engagements or something like that or there would be something that happens that revitalizes the interest in the story and maybe that sparks her interest in stepping forward in being like I'm Erica Pratt and I can't speak to her feelings towards the situation because she like I said she's a very private person I don't know where she is today she's in her probably early 30s late 20 something like that she was seven in 2002 so I'm not great at math but yeah she's probably like 31 or

29 somewhere in their range and yeah I just feel like story this is This story should be more mind-blowing and should be more of a testament to the strength of a child and a warning to people. You know, like we hear so many stories about kids being snatched up and never being seen again. And I feel like when you see a story of it not going the way that you think it might go in the worst possible way, one, it's a great opportunity to have a discussion about the statistics around kidnapping and who are the people that we should be looking out for, whether it's, you know, the statistics. of how often it's a family member, and if it's a non-family member, how often the statistics skew as far as how dangerous the situation is and how much time goes by or worse the odds get, we can have a conversation around that. And it's an easier one, like I said in the beginning.

And like we were talking about the levity and the lightheartedness. When the story ends positively, it puts you in a space to have the tough conversation and it not be so heavy. Right. I think a lot of times you hear a story and the kid was kidnapped. and something awful happened. And it's just like, let's just sit in that. Because I think sometimes we might be hesitant to victim blame or feel like we're victim blaming about what could have been done.

Or blame the parents or, yeah. Yeah. But when it's like, oh, my God, can you imagine what could have happened? But thankfully, this little girl chewed through the duct tape and the kids from across the street broke the window and pulled her out. And all she had to do was go to the doctor. She had like a small laceration on her eye from the glass from the window. That's it.

Now let's have a conversation about like, You know, what happens when a van pulls up and, you know, what do you do? You know, who to call? Do you know my phone number? What's my full name? I would, I bet people would be surprised how many of their kids don't know their full name, you know? It seems so like small and simple, but like you'd be surprised how many kids are like, that's my mom. I don't know. I don't know. I think my dad calls her Jan. I think. You're like, your name's mom. What are you talking about? Yeah. I mean, I think this is so, it's so interesting. That brings up so many things for me. And I think, like, it's hard to know, right? Because, yeah, maybe Erica Pratch was just like, this was a, you know, traumatic event in my childhood. And because I think even, even though it had a good ending, that's obviously traumatizing. And I'm sure there was some follow out for that for her, hopefully not too severe. But I think without knowing that your points well taken, that it's sort of like, I mean, you think about, what's the girl?

Was it Jamie Smart, the girl who was, who got away from Elizabeth Smart, Elizabeth Smart, who, you know. She was 15. Blonde, yeah. Which of these stories get attention and which just sort of slip away. And it does sound like this got some media coverage. And it's hard to know if that's something that Erica Pratt wanted or was interested in. I mean, I will say, like, I have an interesting take on the idea of whether or not victims of crimes and people who've been through really traumatizing experiences, like under what circumstances is it good for that person to have a problem? public persona. I hear from a lot of people who want to tell their story on the show. And I have

sort of a set of considerations around that. And it can be really damaging for someone to tell their story publicly if they're not ready, if they have expectations of what's going to happen. You know, like even in our most current story, who the person who came forward was incredibly brave, you know, Michelle, who is our main sort of point of contact from this family and is telling the story of, you know, not only the abuse of one of her siblings, but the very suspicious death of another one of her siblings and just incredibly brave decision to come forward and tell this story. And one of the conversations that I really had with her was, you know, we can do everything we can to get to the bottom of what happened here. And we ended up finding

out a lot. I don't have any control over what law enforcement, child protective services, any of those entities are actually going to do once this information is public. It's certainly could help, but it's not going to, like, the cavalry is not going to just, like, ride in because we've told them what happened here. It's not, there's so many individual decisions, like, you actually need a pretty motivated detective to pick up something that's been, you know, not been investigated before. And it's sort of like, that can be very, very retramatizing to tell that story. But yeah, I agree with you that that is a story that just in and of itself sort of deserves more attention because it is extraordinary. And what really strikes me is, you know,

And I think we were talking about this sort of like totally different world that we were raised in in like the 80s and 90s when we did not, when people did not have cell phones and when there was a lot more of, you know, for me being born in 82, this is like chief stranger danger panic time. And so that was actually the white van was the thing that we were told to be afraid of. Right. And like a, you know, creepy stranger behind a bush. And like the statistically it almost never is a stranger. And even in this case, right, it wasn't something. like it wasn't a family member, but it was someone that had ties with the family that had motives that were attached to what they thought was going on in the family, you know, an existing grudge with another family member. It's like it almost certainly is going to be someone that you know who kidnaps you. Related in some sense. And so yeah, related in some way. And so I think it's like, you know, we're both parents, right? You have a baby and I have a three-year-old and a six-year-old. And I do think all the time about sort of what is it what I come across in my work that's like a threat to my kids and how to sort of metabolize. And then, of course, it can make it can make it a hard job, right, having kids of just like you read about terrible things that happen to kids or just terrible people who are out in the world and you're like, maybe you weren't held accountable, maybe you weren't dealt with that we maybe are not dealing with these things in our community properly.

And then you're like, oh, I'm sending my children out into this terrifying world, you know. but I think like for me I've metabolized this was sort of like it's really important to talk to kids about who are safe adults and to have this like you know you're obviously not quite at that stage of parenting yet but I think especially for my six year old six and a half year old who just finished kindergarten so that was like such a big step into the world and it's it's a lot of trust right and I think we have to trust in our community I think it's important to have that trust I think there's this move towards like isolating kids more and pulling them out of schools and like again politics is everything's politics right One of the things that I've really come to like appreciate on my show and like really emphasize, and again, something that sometimes people take issue with is this idea of like kids are part of a community. Like this is something I say all the time is like with because we are really up against this medical kidnapping conspiracy theory, the conspiracy theory that doctors are conspiring with one another to falsely accuse parents of abuse for the purposes of taking their children away to what. what end for any of these people, no one ever says just they're like, ah, they're just evil, you know, whatever. And it's, we're up against this, like, very strong sort of parents' rights movement. And what I sort of really come back to on the show is that I do not believe that children are the property of their parents. Obviously, parents should have rights to their

children. Obviously, parents should be in charge of their, a lot of things for their children. But I think that has limits. I don't think parents should be able to do anything they want to their children. There are, unfortunately, more people out there that do believe that and do not believe that law enforcement, child protective services, schools, doctors, teachers, coaches should have any role in protecting that child. And I totally disagree because if I'm going to send my child out into the world, which I want to do, I do not want my child to be isolated. I want her to go to soccer practice and I want her to go to school without me. We need to feel like we can send our kids out into the world. We obviously need to be aware of the adults that are around our children, but we don't want to live

in a world where we can't trust any adults around our children. And that means sort of strengthening those apparatus, is not weakening them, you know? 100%. I fully agree. And to the point that you made a little bit ago, as far as in situations like the Erica Pratt story where you go, it's kind of up to them whether they want to take on the attention and owning their story and giving it out to people that is where I feel like our podcast it has an important level because so many people come to me and ask me how you start a podcast like so many people that I grew up around so many so many black and brown people don't they think it's an unattainable like you must have you must have to have a million dollars to

tell your story you must have to how do this and you know to use Erica Pratt as an example I don't know this obviously I don't know this to be true but you know if you don't know that that there is a lane for your story to help people because you go, I don't even really listen to podcasts. And I don't listen to the podcast that talk about the thing that I went through. That's just something I went through. If you don't even see it as an option, as a job, as a attainable goal, and this is where it gets political, right? Where it's like, because you've never been shown and because everybody in the space looks a certain way. Right. They're all Elizabeth smart. They're all white and blonde. And that's the people whose voices are being heard to the extent that they are.

You know, those are the stories we pay attention to. It's like, there's a name for missing white women syndrome. It's like, yeah, there's something that's addressed in our community, yeah. Yeah. So if you go, Elizabeth Smart was able to take this and find this second life in her story and take charge of it and ownership and movie deals and books and all these things because somebody told her that she could. Somebody told her or maybe nobody even had to tell her. It's like, yeah, you know, people were interested. And so that's just what happened.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But on the flip side of where you're talking about, one of the most tragic things I've ever seen. It's a very small moment in television. But there's this woman named Ayonla Van Zant. She's like a black therapist. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yonle fixed my life, right? Yes. Yes. So a story that I talked about years ago was this young lady named Kamaya Mowgli. She was kidnapped from a Jacksonville hospital when she was a baby and raised by this woman in another town. She, like, worked at the hospital. She got her fake birth certificate and all these things.

And at some point when Kamaya became like 15, 16 years old, she couldn't keep up the, you know, the deck of cards started falling down. Her medical records. The doctors are like, this is, you know, that whole thing. And she eventually told her that like, you know, I stole you. And not long after her mom was arrested. So she had to be reintroduced to her real family. Somebody thought this was a great idea to take this on a Janla Van Zanzh show, freshly happening. Like a year into her mom being arrested or her kidnapper being arrested, her meeting her new family.

And she had to deal with this woman's my biological mom. She hates my mom, who is in my mind my mom. But I'm not mad at my mom. I'm sad that she's in prison. And so I agree with you in the sense that it's not always the right time to try to get somebody to unpack the trauma of the thing that they went through. And that's why it's up to them. Because this went horribly. You could just see the pain.

She wasn't ready. You could see the trauma and the damage that was done. And it wasn't the time to be on a therapy show. Well, and that, it's like the time and then the, you know, the format and the people who are doing it, right? Was a illness team equipped to evaluate whether or not this person was ready to go on? Were they taking those steps, you know, in terms of like trauma-based trauma-informed reporting where they're making sure that the person has support and has a therapist and has someone they can talk to and unpack it and is going to have support before and after they make this appearance.

Because, you know, those are the steps that we take on our show. Like, that immediately came to mind of like, that's so complicated because even if that person obviously did a terrible thing, and I'm sure that there were other terrible things that went along with that. That's my guess is that's not an isolated incident in that person's life. But, you know, but still that person who is raised by her is going to love her because that's their mom. And I mean, I've seen one of the most heartbreaking things about my work is the extent to which abuse victims still love their parents and still feel protective of their parents and will defend their parents and will deny their own abuse in order to protect their parents. That happens all the time. When you talk to people

who work in crimes against children, you know, one of the reasons that you don't rely on an outcry from a child is because they feel very attached to that parent and love that parent and may want to protect them and they're going to be heartbroken if they're separated from not always like sometimes there really is no bond and we've seen that in cases where they like you know the alicea wayburn case that we covered in season two she was kind of like yeah i don't need my mom anymore and just didn't really like have a bond with her to begin with um we certainly see that but more often than not there there is that bond it doesn't necessarily go two ways but that the child feels very protective of their parents. So, oh, that's really heartbreaking. Yeah, it just all needs to be

handled with care. But I am very interested to know, do we know anything about what? I mean, maybe you should have her on your show and talk to her. That would be so interesting. I would love to, if she's still in Philadelphia, if somebody's hearing this and they know Erica Pratt, we talked about her story a couple of years ago. And at that time, I definitely wasn't like, I don't think we could reach out to get to somebody. You know, I just started calling myself a podcaster, like within the last year and a half. But, yeah, no. With the last year and a half, you've been on here for seven years.

What were you doing before? It was a hobby. We just did a hobby in my, in my attic, you know. But now, you know, I do feel like, yeah, I would love to have her on. If she does hear this and know that I find her story to be amazing and heralding and such a story that could be encouraging to families and parents. And I would love to talk to her, hear her perspective about a lot of the things we just talked about in the last 15 minutes. Like, if she wants to do a podcast, I'd love to set it. love to help her out. I feel like her story's amazing, and I bet she could be really helpful to

other people. And, you know, one more thing on the, on the Yanla Van Zan thing, you know, I think that fresh out of trauma, immersive therapy on television isn't the best way to go. Like, you know, here's a bat. Like, this doll represents your mom. Hit the, hit the doll. It's like, that's not the, her techniques work a lot, but you need to be able to gauge the levels of trauma. And this person needed private therapy and time. I mean, that's really, that's really upsetting. And I mean, I have absolutely seen where telling your story, you know, and even from people I know who are sort of much more frontline people who are in the courtroom, even for a child testifying

about their own abuse can actually be very empowering. You know, if that person is ready, if they have the support. Again, lots of ifs there. Sometimes people assume, you know, having talked to like crimes against children, detectives, like Detective Mike Weber has been on the show a lot. People sometimes assume like, you can't put like an eight year old on the stand or you can't put like a kid on the stand. And actually like there are instances where that can be very healing and very empowering for that child to be able to sort of reclaim and talk about their experience as long as it's done, you know, with so

much care. We have had a teenager. We did have Alyssa Weber and, you know, talk about her experiences. And that was something that I took a lot of extra caution with and obviously had a lot of conversations with her parents. But I think that was, it was a really positive experience for her and that has you know that happened a couple of years ago and so I know you know she's she's talked about that that was a very positive experience to be able to speak to other people who've been through it and she's testified in front of the Texas legislature as well so I think like it's like I see all of the positive things that can come from someone telling their story publicly and having it be validated by other people and I think that's another arena where I have a lot of

feelings about people coming on and telling their first person story like you just, it's just something you have to take a lot of care with because you can't control how people react to it. You can't control the outcome on that person's life if that, you know, gets back to the people they're talking about and all kinds of things, right? So it's like, it's just something that people need to be very careful with. Again, it is a challenge to get a show on the air every week. I don't think people totally recognize how much work that takes. And I think sometimes that can make people be looking for content in a way that maybe they are not taking those things into consideration.

A hundred percent. And that's, again, why I always am like, follow the compass. Because if your first thought when you hear about a story is like, oh, this will go viral, then it's going to start you on a path that is already bad. And you're going to jump through things that you shouldn't be doing to chase that. You know, when it might not be the best time to talk about this story or you shouldn't be reaching out to this person to try to get some kind of exclusive. They don't want to be called right now. Just respect them as people and not as a story. And I think that if you do that, you can't go wrong.

Yeah. Well, you can't go wrong, but just be ready to be ready to be open to the criticism. You can always go wrong. You can always go wrong. I think one of the things I love about this medium, I love the intimacy of it. I love the parisocialness of it. I love how, you know, I just love audio. I love hearing people's voices. And I think it's a really special medium. And having come from something that is very different, right, being books, which is like something you work on by yourself, you know, for years. And I love how collaborative podcasting is and how much crossover we can do with each other. And like, you know, with books, you get feedback from readers, but it's nothing like, you know, having having a podcast and sort of the ongoing conversation

of it. And so I think like that, I think, again, it's okay to, it's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to learn from those mistakes. And I don't think you're doing it right if you, if you're not. And I think people should take risks, right? I think, like, you should take risks that are measured and not harmful. And if you make a mistake, you should learn from it. But I also think, like, I really appreciate people who are willing to do bold reporting and willing to say their peace and willing to really add something to the conversation beyond just telling a story that might be sort of titillating or compelling because it's a story about something awful that happened to somebody, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I fully agree.

Well, Alvin, we're going to share an episode from your show the day after this episode drops, but do you have some recommendations if someone is new to your show, if they are listening for the first time? You have obviously a tremendous back catalog. Are there specific episodes, and we can link to them in the show notes too, are there specific episodes or stories that you've covered that you think nobody should believe me listeners would be a good place to start for them? I think that if you've never listened before, I think that, you know, listening to the Diddy trial is a good way to just kind of understand us and how we discuss things. I think that's always the most important thing. I never want people to not know what we

are before going into it. So if you listen to that and you think that that's interesting, then I recommend pretty much anything that we talk about. I feel like if you like that, you'll like how we approach most things. I think that, you know, there was another case that we covered about this guy named Harrison Graham, he was also from Philadelphia, it was this crazy, multiple personalities. Then that gets you into, you know, the dissociative identity disorder conversations and all those kinds of things. Which we've talked about on the show, actually. Yeah. Yeah. So like if you imagine having that conversation with your friends over at Chili's Triple Dipper. Like that is, that is our podcast, you know? So I say the P. Diddy Part 1 episode is a good place to

start to kind of get a feel for what our podcast is. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for making the time to come chat with us, Alvin. It's such a pleasure to have you. It's such a pleasure to have you in the network. We are proud to be working with you. And we'll talk again soon. Absolutely.

Thank you so much. Nobody should believe Meek is produced and hosted by me, Andrea Dunlop. Our editor is Greta Stromquist, and our senior producer is Mariah Gossett. Administrative support from Nola Karmouche.