Why We’re Watching So Much True Crime During the Pandemic

This week, Julia, Tod, and Rider talk about their favorite true crime and mystery—and why we’re all so hooked on the genre, anyway.

From the episode:

Rider Strong: It’s soothing in a way, because the point of the story is usually pretty clear, in the sense that there’s a bad person who did a bad thing and we are trying to either solve that crime or understand that, or absolve this person in some cases, or whatever it is. The moral universe is pretty obvious. As opposed to, say, other forms of fiction or storytelling where you don’t know necessarily why you’re reading it. Crime is one of those genres where you know why you’re reading it.

Tod Goldberg: Yeah, I mean, it brings order to chaos. And this is why I think during the pandemic specifically, people have really gravitated to watching these crime documentaries on Hulu or Netflix or whatever, or watching a lot of the true crime stuff at night. I know we’ve talked about this on the show over the course of the last several months—we’re reading a lot of true crime stuff or listening to podcasts. Because when you feel like you’re out of control and that nothing is within your ability to stop things around you, it’s actually very gratifying to read about some chaotic thing that a normal person, a cop or detective or whatever, or science—particularly science—figured out or solved for. You’re like, oh, right, right, there’s an answer out there for even this seemingly absurd, bananas crime that has happened where there was no evidence.

***

To listen to the rest of the episode, as well as the whole archive of Literary Disco, subscribe and listen on iTunes or wherever else you find your favorite podcasts.