We're obsessed. Why?
ANSWER - SARAH WEINMAN: 
"Humans have long been fascinated by crime stories. I think though there is something to be said for times of unrest when people are rethinking their own attitudes to seemingly tried and true concepts, like when Truman Capote's In Cold Blood was published, that coincided with a real movement to abolish the death penalty, and there were bunch of supreme court rulings that helped codify the way police ought to be acting with respect to suspects. And certainly in the intervening 50 years we've learned some lessons but we've also managed to unlearn a lot of those lessons. 
So there is always this push and pull between perennial fascination and this of-the-moment re-thinking, and I do see that persisting for quite some time..."
READ: LA TIMES, 1994: 'In Cold Blood' Murders Haunt Death Penalty Debate : Kansas: Opponents and supporters of restoring capital punishment refer frequently to the Clutter family, memorialized in Truman Capote's book.
Sarah attributes this moment to the phenomenon that was season one of the podcast Serial, the groundbreaking podcast that week-by-week that both investigated the murder of a Hae Min Lee and interrogated her alleged killer, her high school boyfriend, Adnan Syed, and the court process that put him away for her murder. Serial took over the world in 2014, and ushered in the modern era of global engagement in a singular crime story – getting INVOLVED in a story. Can't you just hear that signature piano plucking? Raise your hand if you can still recite the mailchimp commercial...READ: Independent UK, 2019 Serial: The success of the true crime podcast, five years on

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