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4 Books In Which Children Are Accused – And Their Parents Wrestle with the Truth

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 16:15:02 GMT

I’ve long wanted to write a story where I take something that is considered a universal positive—the love of a parent for their child—and super-charge it and challenge it to the point where that love becomes dangerous. In my experience, we will do things to protect the ones we would love that we would never do, that we could never justify doing, on our own behalf, and that makes for a powerful starting point for a story.

In my new book, What Happened to Nina?, a lovely young couple go away for the weekend, and only one of them comes home. For me the story was never so much about what happened to the missing Nina, or even so much about whether or not her accused boyfriend, Simon, is responsible for her disappearance … for me the story was always about the parents. I put myself firmly in the shoes ocf Nina’s parents, and asked myself if there was anything I wouldn’t do, any length I wouldn’t go to, to get my daughter back? And just as firmly and completely, I tried to see things from the point of view of Simon’s parents. If my son, whom I believed to the core of my being to be innocent, was accused, what would I do? What lengths would I go to to save him? For What Happened to Nina?, I wanted to put two families in crisis in opposition to each other at the centre of a story, and stand back to see what happened. I had a feeling it might be explosive.

Of course, I’m not the first author to tackle this theme, or similar themes, or to write a thriller from the point of view of the parent of the accused. There’s something about the idea of having a child accused of a terrible crime that is, I think, universally horrifying and terribly compelling. Something about the slow peeling back of layers of truth, the fear that maybe we don’t know our child as well as we think we do, the fear of what we might discover next.

I’d like to recommend the following four books that explore this theme, all very different, all equally captivating for their own reasons.

Run Away, Harlan Coben

In Harlan Coben’s Run Away, Simon Greene is a father who has lost his beloved daughter, Paige, to a drug addiction and an abusive boyfriend. Simon and his wife have tried to help Paige through multiple failed rehab attempts, and after one bad experience too many, Simon’s wife decides that enough is enough. She makes Simon promise to stop trying, to let Paige go. Simon makes the promise, but secretly he can’t do it. When Paige disappears again, he keeps searching for her and when her reappearance drags him down a dark and violent path, he can’t seem to stop himself from putting one foot in front of the other, no matter where it takes him.

We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver

It’s easy to look back on a book like Kevin, a book that has become part of the canon, and assume it was an immediate success. In fact, Lionel Shriver’s then agent was so dismayed by the novel’s unrelenting darkness, and by the unsympathetic point of view of the protagonist, Eva (a woman who had never bonded with her son, who didn’t even like him) that she thought it was unpublishable. The book was ultimately picked up by a small publishing house, and it grew to the behemoth it become through snow-balling word of mouth. I have some sympathy with the agent who couldn’t see the book for what it was—something brave and powerful and challenging and important—because hindsight is twenty-twenty, and to read We Need to Talk About Kevin for the first time is to discover something ugly and unsettling. Kevin is an unapologetic mass murderer. Eva is the mother who never loved him, but who, now that it is all done, can’t seem to leave him alone. The question that recurs again and again throughout the book is whether Kevin is the product of nature, or nurture. Was he born the way he is, and is that why Eva couldn’t love him, or did he turn out the way he is because she couldn’t bond with him? This book does not offer any easy answers, but it does leave us with a lot to think about.

One of Our Own, Lucinda Berry

And now for something a little bit different. This one is an audio original, a novella that comes in at a tight four hours and is all the sweeter for it. Felicia is an attorney and a single mom who also volunteers for a domestic violence helpline. She takes a call from a high school student, a young girl who has been sexually assaulted at a party and who is now planning to take her own revenge. Felicia is at first motivated only to help the girl, but she becomes concerned (reasonably) about the revenge plans, in particular as her son attends the same high school. As the story progresses, we learn, alongside Felicia, that her son was at the party where the assault took place. The question for Felicia, and for all of us, is where or not he was involved, and if he was, what Felicia is going to do about it.

Defending Jacob, William Landay

Defending Jacob was first published in 2012, but the TV adaption starring Chris Evans, which was widely praised and released in 2020, brought fresh eyes to the novel. The protagonist in this case is Andrew Barber, a well-regarded District Attorney, who takes on the case of a murdered teenage boy. He loses the case almost as quickly as he took it, when it transpires that Andrew’s son Jacob’s fingerprint has been found on the body of the dead boy. Jacob explains the fingerprint by saying that he found the body but ran away and told no-one, because he was afraid that he’d be blamed for the boy’s death. Other than that statement, Jacob is largely uncommunicative, leaving his parents to try to piece together the truth of his life, and to marry those truths with the boy they thought they knew. This book is a whodunnit, but it’s also an examination of trauma, of the lies we tell ourselves, and of what happens to a family when those lies are exposed.

***

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 13:46:35 GMT

When I was growing up they taught us that humans were the only animals that were conscious. They wasn't any scientific evidence of this, we know now, because it obviously isn't true. And to my own credit, I was sure it was bullshit when I was a kid.

304: Heretics

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 04:54:03 GMT

The story of Reverend Carlton Pearson. He was a rising star in the evangelical movement when he cast aside the idea of hell and, with it, everything he'd worked for over his entire life.

Carlton Pearson's church, Higher Dimensions, was once one of the biggest in the city, drawing crowds of 5,000 people every Sunday. But several years ago, scandal engulfed the reverend. He didn't have an affair. He didn't embezzle lots of money. His sin was something that to a lot of people is far worse: He stopped believing in hell. (2 minutes)Act One: Reporter Russell Cobb takes us through the remarkable and meteoric rise of Carlton Pearson from a young man to a Pentecostal Bishop: From the moment he first cast the devil out of his 17-year-old girlfriend, to the days when he had a close, personal relationship with Oral Roberts and had appearances on TV and at the White House. Just as Reverend Pearson's career peaked, with more than 5,000 members of his congregation coming every week, he started to think about hell, wondering if a loving God would really condemn most of the human race to burn and writhe in the fire of hell for eternity. (30 minutes)Act Two: Once he starts preaching his own revelation, Carlton Pearson's church falls apart. After all, when there's no hell (as the logic goes), you don't really need to believe in Jesus to be saved from it. What follows are the swift departures of his pastors, and an exodus from his congregation—which quickly dwindled to a few hundred people. Donations drop off too, but just as things start looking bleakest, new kinds of people, curious about his change in beliefs, start showing up on Sunday mornings. (23 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Garbage patch kids

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 13:46:31 GMT

Scientists didn’t think it was possible for life to thrive in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Then, they found some anemones ... and some huge questions about entire new ecosystems built on plastic.

If you want to hear more about plastic in the ocean, we have another episode about how 99% of ocean plastic is missing: http://bit.ly/3HnW9b2

For even more, go to http://vox.com/unexplainable

It’s a great place to view show transcripts and read more about the topics on our show.

Also, email us! unexplainable@vox.com

We read every email.

Support Unexplainable by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Many diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes may actually have a different form of the disease

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 17:32:22 GMT

What are the types of diabetes? Adults with an autoimmune form of diabetes are often misdiagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.

Scientists Translated Spiderwebs Into Music, And It's Absoutely Stunning

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 15:36:07 GMT

We could learn to communicate with them!

Scientists Contact Whales in World-First Communication Experiment

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 02:47:17 GMT

The seeds of alien communication begin in the ocean.

Genealogist Sally Romano can’t imagine life without start.me [Expert Opinion]

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 18:34:02 GMT

Sally Romano is a qualified genealogist through the Society of Australian Genealogists and a former President and Vice President of the Genealogical Society of Queensland (one of Australia’s preeminent family history organizations). She also loves to use start.me to organize her data. In this article, we’ll ask her why and how.

start.me: Could you tell me something about yourself?

Sally: Yes. So my background is in public relations. I had quite a successful agency here in Australia, but then we moved overseas and during that time I wasn’t able to work through visa restrictions, et cetera. I had always had an interest in genealogy and so that’s when I picked it up.

Why did you choose genealogy?

That’s mostly because of my grandmother. She could tell stories about generations of not only our family but families in the local area. I come from a small country town in Victoria. That’s in Australia. The family had been there since the mid-1800s, and my grandmother could literally tell you who was married to whom, what children they had, who they married, what children they had. I was just fascinated by that because when we were young, we had moved away and so I just didn’t have that connection. That’s what drew me to it. It’s that sense of connection that you’re going through genealogy, but it’s also a lot of fun doing the research. It’s like being a private detective in your family tree.

I love the connections genealogy builds – it feels like you actually get to know your ancestors and gain an understanding of why they made the life decisions they did. You get a tremendous sense of social history because you learn about the times that your family lived in. You learn about different countries, wherever they come from. That’s what drove me to genealogy.

What are the challenges in genealogy?

I think we have all thought about genealogy at some point. I think we all want to know who our ancestors were so that we can learn more about ourselves. The key challenge in researching your family history is the enormous amount of records we need to sift through, and the resulting documentation we need to file.

How do you organize your research?

There are many online sites where you can start building your tree for free, like FamilySearch.org. The downside is that anyone can change it so you don’t own that tree – it becomes part of the living global tree, as it were. There are also specialist programs like Roots Magic and Family Tree Maker that you download onto your computer, so you can store your information that way. What happens, as you can imagine, is that you gather vast amounts of data from a diverse array of records, so it really is advisable to use a specialist genealogy program so that you can more easily mine your research.

Think about this… you’ve got hundreds of ancestors who have each lived for decades, across centuries in multiple countries, and they’ve all had countless life events such as births, deaths, and marriages. Then there’s schooling, maybe they’ve won an award or served in the military. Maybe they lived through a natural disaster. There are all sorts of life events that generate data that need to be stored and organized in such a way that it remains accessible – that’s why organizing your genealogy is so important.

Is this where start.me is useful?

Yes, I can’t imagine life without it. I think one of the great strengths of start.me is the homepage functionality because whenever I click on the tab my start.me home page comes up. That’s where I keep all the sites that I use all the time. So if I need to go to any site I don’t have to type in the address – I just go straight to wherever I want to go on the Internet in one click.

The other thing I love about start.me too is how you can nest links. So you’ve got a widget of links, and you can dissect that cluster down into more specific subject areas and nest those links within groups. I love the group functionality.

Example of a Genealogy Page in our Pages Gallery Example of a Genealogy Page in our Pages Gallery Example of a Genealogy Page in our Pages Gallery How did you discover start.me?

Being a genealogist, I’m pretty good at research, so I looked into a lot of different tools. I thought that start.me was the most powerful. I mean those home pages are just remarkable.

The way that you can organize anything you want, from uploading documents to adding images. Just the brilliance of being able to click on a link and go where you want to go instantly – it saves so much time. The other thing I love about start.me, is that it’s so visual. You can change the background and make it your own – you can put your personality into your new start pages.

I mean, there’s just no limit to the number of pages and ideas that you could have with start.me – it’s very, very powerful. The bookmarks widget is by far my absolute favorite widget because they are the backbone of my organizing system.

You’ve also created a community, can you tell us about that?

I started my genealogy organizing community because there are so many Facebook groups relating to genealogy research, but there wasn’t much assistance for people who are particularly interested in organizing their genealogy. So I’ve created this specialized community, with a real focus on organizing genealogy research. With it, I try to help people by building tools and resources that will help them to organize their genealogy. If you’ve got a system that supports you and that’s easy to use and intuitive, then it’s a lot easier to find the joy of genealogy.

I’ve had people comment that they would never have believed they would enjoy organizing because they first thought of it as a chore. In reality, they discovered that it was an empowerment tool. My organizing system is empowering. I think being organized allows you to get into the flow of your research. And if you could create a Facebook group to support that, I’d love that too.

This concludes the Interview

We’d love to hear what our readers think about this interview with Sally Romano. Are you also interested in Genealogy? Do you see other ways for us to improve our support for this field of research? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

The post Genealogist Sally Romano can’t imagine life without start.me [Expert Opinion] appeared first on start.me Blog.

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 02:48:41 GMT

When I was sick I feverishly (literally) burned through this book. I wish we'd read it in our book club though I think it would be a fun book to talk about. I found it interesting because it's like the dark version of Downton Abbey: a British estate that didn't make out so well after the war. 💙📚👀

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 14:27:29 GMT

Today's book review is a Halloween book by Roger Zelazny, that comes recommended by no less an authority than @rlpastore.bsky.social ruinedchapel.com/2023/10/27/b... Honestly, how did I live all these years as a Halloween enjoyer without hearing about this? 📚👀

Astrophysicist Proposes a Genius New Way to Find Alien Megastructures

Sat, 23 Sep 2023 03:12:36 GMT

The search is on.

iOS 17 Ready: 160+ Apps To Download Now

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 14:01:31 GMT

Apple’s iOS 17 is here and, while working on my upcoming Shortcuts updates to be released alongside macOS Sonoma, I spent the rest of my day sharing posts from developers on Mastodon with their app updates.

From that list, plus more apps that mentioned iOS 17 in their app update description (and a few from these replies), I ended up with over 150 apps.

Using some Shortcuts wizardry, I scraped all the App Store links, prices, and app icons to make the following list below, as well as the image for the blog post (I’ll be sharing how I did this all for my membership soon) – enjoy:

Glucomate glucose tracker – (Free on the App Store) Sequel entertainment media tracker – (Free on the App Store) Movie Tracker what to watch – (Free on the App Store)

Book Tracker bookshelf log – (Free on the App Store) MeterStats energy tracker – (Free on the App Store) Attentive digital wellbeing manager – (Free on the App Store) Structured daily planner – (Free on the App Store) MediWear medical ID for Apple Watch – ($1.99 on the App Store) MediSOS medical alert siren – ($1.99 on the App Store) WristBoard Apple Watch keyboard – ($3.99 on the App Store) TV Remote universal remote – (Free on the App Store) TV Launcher live US channels – ($4.99 on the App Store) Music Tracker: Vinyl and CDs collection catalog – (Free on the App Store) Personal Best privacy-first workout tracker – (Free on the App Store) Doppler music player for people who buy music – (Free on the App Store) Morpho Converter for measurement conversions – (Free on the App Store) Hello There greeting card saver – (Free on the App Store) Focus pomodoro timer – (Free on the App Store) Artbox for storing hand-crafted memories – (Free on the App Store) Rocket Homes real estate – (Free on the App Store) Please Don’t Rain weather tracker for important days – (Free on the App Store) Music Info shows current track data – ($1.99 on the App Store) Plant Daddy 3 to remind you to water your plants – (Free on the App Store) Liftin’ weightlifting workout tracker – (Free on the App Store) Zenitizer meditation timer – (Free on the App Store) Race Capture race statistics – (Free on the App Store) HabitBoard habit tracker – ($4.99 on the App Store) LookUp dictionary – (Free on the App Store) Unread RSS feed reader – (Free on the App Store) Chronicling flexible event tracker – (Free on the App Store) World Clock Widgets aesthetic time zone converter – (Free on the App Store) Widgetsmith for endless customization – (Free on the App Store) Cheatsheet quick notes – (Free on the App Store) Focused Work pomodoro timer – (Free on the App Store) Time’s Up! visual timer – (Free on the App Store) LockFlow Lock Screen launcher – (Free on the App Store) Crouton recipe tracker – (Free on the App Store) Big Digital Clock Widget with big digital clock widget – (Free on the App Store) Launcher interactive quick open tool – (Free on the App Store) Study with Subwords vocabulary learning – (Free on the App Store) CardPointers credit card point tracker – (Free on the App Store) Badminton score keeper – (Free on the App Store) Ambre hands-free recipe & cooking app – (Free on the App Store) FoodNoms food tracker – (Free on the App Store) Peak 2 personal fitness dashboard – (Free on the App Store) Things 3 task manager – ($9.99 on the App Store) Timery time tracking with Toggl – (Free on the App Store) Thwip soundboard – (Free on the App Store) Gola goal tracker – (Free on the App Store) Actionary for checking Apple Watch health data – (Free on the App Store) Trendly sales & trend monitor for App Store developers – (Free on the App Store) Paku air quality tracker for Purple Air – (Free on the App Store) Söka bucket list tracker – (Free on the App Store) StickyWidgets widget notes – (Free on the App Store) Tally counter – (Free on the App Store) MusicHarbor – (Free on the App Store) MusicSmart – ($3.99 on the App Store) Play for YouTube – (Free on the App Store) MusicBox – ($2.99 on the App Store) Landscape for mountaineers and alpinists – (Free on the App Store) Mercury Weather widgets and watch – (Free on the App Store) AltStore alternative app store – (Free on the Alt Store) Tailscale secure remote networking for Apple TV – (Free on the App Store) Photo Widget interactive home screen photos – (Free on the App Store) Widgle interactive widget puzzles – (Free on the App Store) Dice by PCalc dice rolling app – ($1.99 on the App Store) Camo Studio streaming app for iPad – (Free on the App Store) forScore sheet music reader – ($19.99 on the App Store) Stoic journal and diary – (Free on the App Store) Amato for staying in touch with loved ones – (Free on the App Store) Flighty flight tracker for Apple Watch – (Free on the App Store) Halide camera – (Free on the App Store) Bills to Budget expense tracker – (Free on the App Store) Signals for HomeKit smart home controller – (Free on the App Store) Highlights PDF reader – (Free on the App Store) Channel Keeper for YouTube – (Free on the App Store) FitWoody fitness & sleep tracker – (Free on the App Store) Longplay album player – ($6.00 on the App Store) Streaks habit tracker – (Free on the App Store) Tasks todo list and kanban – (Free on the App Store) Just Press Record audio recording and transcription – ($4.99 on the App Store) Rise sleep tracker – (Free on the App Store) Broadcasts internet radio – (Free on the App Store) ShortFlow widget launcher – (Free on the App Store) CARROT weather alerts and radar – (Free on the App Store) Widgy widgets – (Free on the App Store) Countdowns event day counter – (Free on the App Store) Lumy sun and photography guide – ($6.99 on the App Store) Opener open links in apps – ($2.00 on the App Store) SanFransymbols SF Symbols app – ($3.99 on the App Store) Mockup sketch UI & UX tool – (Free on the App Store) Pedometer++ step tracker – (Free on the App Store) Doneit kanban todo board – (Free on the App Store) Overcast podcast player – (Free on the App Store) Super Todo’s productivity & organization – (Free on the App Store) AirScrobble music tracker for Last.FM – (Free on the App Store) Tripsy trip planner – (Free on the App Store) Coffee Book – (Free on the App Store) Home Widget HomeKit widget dashboard – ($9.99 on the App Store) TripIt travel planner – (Free on the App Store) Accountit budget tracker – (Free on the App Store) Noir dark mode for Safari – ($2.99 on the App Store) Transcriptionist from Ferrite – ( on the App Store) Tide Guide – (Free on the App Store) Drafts text capture – (Free on the App Store) Bear markdown notes – (Free on the App Store) WaterMinder water tracker – (Free on the App Store) Windy.com weather & radar – (Free on the App Store) Timelines time tracking – (Free on the App Store) NFC.cool – (Free on the App Store) Zones for Training – (Free on the App Store) Moment Pro Camera – ($6.99 on the App Store) SolarWatch sunrise sunset times – (Free on the App Store) PCalc calculator – ($9.99 on the App Store) Magica mileage tracker – (Free on the App Store) GoodLinks link tracker – ($4.99 on the App Store) GoodTask todo list – (Free on the App Store) TotK Travel Guide for Zelda – (Free on the App Store) Countdown app & widget – (Free on the App Store) ActivityBuilder for custom Live Activities – (Free on the App Store) Social Stats Widget – (Free on the App Store) No Meat Today – (Free on the App Store) Countdown day counter – (Free on the App Store) Subjects student planner – (Free on the App Store) Habit Tracker – (Free on the App Store) Agenda notes meets calendars – (Free on the App Store) TickTick to-do list & calendar – (Free on the App Store) My Pollen Forecast – (Free on the App Store) HeartWatch heart rate tracker – (Free on the App Store) Recur subscription manager – (Free on the App Store) Sleep Cycle – (Free on the App Store) Autosleep – ($5.99 on the App Store) Cubox reading & notes – (Free on the App Store) CoachyAR – (Free on the App Store) Liftlog+ gym workout planner – (Free on the App Store) Rent apartments and homes – (Free on the App Store) Reality Tasks – (Free on the App Store) Link Badges – (Free on the App Store) Strides goal tracker – (Free on the App Store) Weather Strip – (Free on the App Store) Dark Noise sound generator – (Free on the App Store) Calzy calculator – ($4.99 on the App Store) FilmNoir – (Free on the App Store) Timewave flowing timers – (Free on the App Store) LockPod music widget – (Free on the App Store) CardioBot – (Free on the App Store) SugarBot – (Free on the App Store) (Not Boring) Vibes – (Free on the App Store) (Not Boring) Weather – (Free on the App Store) (Not Boring) Habits – (Free on the App Store) (Not Boring) Calculator – (Free on the App Store) (Not Boring) Timer – (Free on the App Store) Stilla skincare assistant – ( on the App Store) Platy fun car games – ($0.99 on the App Store) Daylight Goals – ($2.99 on the App Store) RainViewer – (Free on the App Store) WeatherGraph – (Free on the App Store) VinylFetish – (Free on the App Store) MangoBaby – (Free on the App Store) Gentler Streak tracking – (Free on the App Store) Pockity budgeting and expense tracking – (Free on the App Store)

While you’re here, check out my collection of over 1000 shortcuts in the Shortcuts Library.

P.S. Here’s the full graphic of all the apps:

Strange Mathematical Pattern Found in The Cells of The Human Body

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 13:54:09 GMT

Scientists counted them, and noticed something odd.

Crime Novels Featuring Interpreters, Transcribers, and Other Invisible Law Enforcement Professionals

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 13:52:26 GMT

It’s the detectives, the private investigators and the lawyers who are usually front-and-center in crime fiction, but there are scores of professionals working in the criminal justice system to whom most of us give little thought. There are archivists who manage police records, people who clean police stations, who service their cars, and IT specialists who maintain computer systems. We all know what it’s like to feel unappreciated and undervalued at work. In some, this feeling makes us vulnerable to crossing moral and ethical lines. What knowledge and sensitive information might people in these auxiliary positions have access to? If they did act out, what could they get away with doing before anyone noticed? Line of Duty, the contemporary British TV series, is one of many novels, TV shows and films about corruption that suggest the ideal hiding place for a career criminal is in plain sight, working from within the police service.

Years ago, when I read a newspaper article by an interpreter, I learned that these language professionals are integral to the functioning of the criminal justice system in any multicultural city. Not only had I never given thought to interpreters before, I realised that most people hadn’t, even those who work in the system. I read surveys and academic research papers where interpreters reported feeling invisible. Revelle, the protagonist of my novel, The Interpreter, didn’t become a police and court interpreter in order to commit crimes. Years of feeling unseen and frustrated at how often the criminal doesn’t get caught turns her into a kind of linguistic vigilante, and she starts to deliberately mistranslate witness statements and misinterpret police interviews in order to help convict those she believes are guilty.

Interpreting is a ‘background’ role within policing, but I was able to bring Revelle to the foreground in what I believe is the first crime fiction novel where a language interpreter is the protagonist. It’s a similar approach to the one Jeff Lindsay uses in his brilliant novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Dexter, who probably needs little introduction, is a blood splatter analyst with the Miami police, a scientist who occasionally gets to visit a crime scene but is usually quietly working away in the police lab. It’s Dexter’s extracurricular activity—killing bad guys—which drives the novel, and of course he takes advantage of his role within the police system to aid his crimes. In contrast to my Revelle, Dexter wasn’t radicalized on the job, though–we learn by the book’s conclusion that precisely this kind of background role within the police system has always been his destiny.

In Nell Pattison’s The Silent House a shocking murder takes place in the Hunter household, a deaf family, making police reliant on British Sign Language interpreter Paige Northwood to conduct their investigation. Northwood’s links to the family, and the wider deaf community, make the situation extra complicated in this clever spin on the procedural thriller where the detectives are forced to step back.

Before becoming an author, Hannah Morrissey was a real-life police typist, like the protagonist in her refreshing and atmospheric novel, Hello, Transcriber. Hazel Greenlee works night shifts as a transcriber at the local Black Harbor Police Department, typing up police notes and recorded conversations. Isolated in her personal and professional life, Hazel is very much toiling away in the background until she starts to feel too watched, and becomes entangled with both a notorious drug dealer and the lead investigator on his tail.

Like Morrissey, author Sheila Lowe is a graphologist who brings her unique professional experience to her books. In Poison Pen, the death of a Hollywood publicist is ruled a suicide, but the victim’s partner is convinced it was murder. In most crime fiction novels, this is the point at which a private investigator would be hired to look around, but in Lowe’s book, it’s forensic handwriting expert Claudia Rose who gets the job, and she starts by analysing the scrawl of the apparent suicide note.

Though I haven’t yet read The Lies You Wrote, the forthcoming book by Brianna Labuskes, I’m very eager to do so. Labuskes’ novel features FBI forensic linguist, Raisa Susanto, who is called to investigate copycat killings on the anniversary of some heinous crimes. FBI profilers and forensic psychologists get plenty of attention in crime fiction, so I’m looking forward to this rare example of an FBI linguist stepping up to take the lead.

It's Official: NASA Finally Unveils Its First 'Serious' Report on UFOs

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 01:50:58 GMT

"We don’t know what these UAP are."

Sun, 20 Aug 2023 16:56:27 GMT

RSS Zero isn’t the path to RSS Joy.

Will the War on Chronic Pain Sufferers Ever End?

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 11:42:00 GMT

Recent years have brought an endless stream of rules, regulations, and demands from governments, doctors, and pharmacies meant to battle the evils of opiate addiction. What was once between a chronic pain sufferer and his primary care physician is now a multi-person group fuck. I don’t blame doctors or pharmacists. Government has forced upon them numerous rules that make it harder and harder for chronic pain sufferers to receive relief.

I am required to see my primary care doctor every three months to continue to receive narcotic medications. I currently take Vicodin (Hydrocodone), five tablets per day. Three scripts at a time are sent to the pharmacy. I can’t fill the prescriptions early. They must be filled on the day listed on the script. This means you are typically out of medication on the day you fill your prescription. Of course, if you don’t get to the pharmacy at the right time or they are OUT of your medication, you are screwed. Long-term narcotic pain meds users are not addicts. They are, however, physically dependent on narcotics. When pain medications are suddenly stopped, the patient goes through horrific withdrawals.

Last year, the pharmacy I use was out of Vicodin. Well not “out.” They had enough of the drug to give me a partial fill, but according to the pharmacist, CVS was not permitted to give patients partial fills for narcotics.

“Fine. Please transfer my prescription to another pharmacy.”

“I’m sorry, but we are not allowed to do that either.”

“You do know what happens if I suddenly stop taking Vicodin”?

“I understand, but there’s nothing I can do. We won’t have any Vicodin until Wednesday (four days).”

This was on a Saturday. My prescribing doctor was out of town until Monday. I knew calling the on-call doctor was a waste of time. He would think I was a drug-seeking addict.

Fortunately, I only went without Vicodin for thirty-six hours. I borrowed some Percoset from a dear friend of mine to tide myself over. Of course, doing so was a crime. On Monday, my primary care doctor was able to fix the problem for me by sending the script to a different pharmacy.

Keep in mind ALL narcotic prescriptions are tracked with software. All doctors and pharmacists have access to this system. It is IMPOSSIBLE to abuse legally prescribed narcotics. I can’t think of one way a patient can game the system. Scripts are no longer handwritten. They are transmitted digitally, straight to the pharmacy. The prescriptions can’t be filled early. There’s simply no way for me to abuse the narcotics I take five times time a day. Yet, here I sit tonight, unable to fill my August 8th prescription until August 13th.

My doctor prescribes me a thirty-day prescription of one-hundred-fifty tablets every twenty-nine days. This means I have an extra five tablets each month. Five. Not twenty. Not fifty. Five. These five tablets provided me a monthly buffer in case of a pharmacy problem or I have a really, really, really, really, really bad pain day. Five tablets. Unbeknownst to me, the pharmacy was tracking these five extra tablets, and today was the magic day when they decided to bring the hammer down on me.

The pharmacy will not automatically fill a narcotics refill. Even though my doctor digitally sends the script to them, I must call them to have it filled. That’s what I did today, only to find out that they would not fill my prescription until August thirteenth. Five days of no medication. I have nine tablets on hand, so I have to cut my medication by seventy-five percent — two tablets a day. Why? Five tablets. Five tablets each month for six months is thirty tablets, the pharmacist informed me. I tried to explain things to her, but it mattered not. All she saw is what she called a “retention issue.” Those tablets I “retained” were actually used when needed. Long-term chronic pain sufferers learn to manage their narcotic meds, adapting usage to pain levels. None of this matters. Fundamentalism rules supreme when it comes to prescribing pain medications. “These are the rules. Obey. Don’t obey, we will punish you.”

Will the War on Chronic Pain Sufferers Ever End? I ask in the title of this post. Death, that’s what will put an end to this pernicious war against chronic pain sufferers. Patients who have their medications suddenly cut off have a higher risk of suicide. Despair sets in when you think, and often know, no one is listening to you. Allegedly, the goal of the medical profession is to alleviate pain and suffering. My primary care doctor had that as his goal when I first started seeing him twenty-seven years ago. And he still does today. The only difference, of course, is that twenty-seven years ago no one stood between us. Today, the FDA, the state of Ohio, pharmacies, pharmacists, and insurance companies stand between us, materially affecting the prime directive: alleviate pain and suffering.

It remains to be seen how the next five days will go. Polly is fearful that I might kill myself, but I told her as she left for work, “Don’t worry. I’m fine.” She asked me “Why aren’t you more upset over this?” I replied, “I have no control over any of this. None! Yes, I am angry, beyond angry, but all the rage in the world won’t change the fact that my prescription will NOT be filled until August thirteenth.”

My singular goal is to make it to the thirteenth. Will one tablet every twelve hours, lots of Tylenol, and aspirin be enough to stave off the worst of withdrawal? I doubt it, but what else can I do? Maybe drink Jamison for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

I plan to take a drive to Michigan where marijuana is legalized. According to state law, I can’t legally buy cannabis, but Michigan dispensaries will sell it to Ohio residents. Rumor has it that the Ohio sheriff’s departments that border Michigan — particularly Williams and Fulton — are using off-book undercover officers to write down the license plate numbers of Ohio residents who dare to visit Michigan dispensaries. Yes, indeed. Crimes of the century are taking place just over the state line.

Writing helps distract my mind from my ever-present pain, so if you see a flurry of new posts, you will know why.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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The post Will the War on Chronic Pain Sufferers Ever End? appeared first on The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser.

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 15:22:22 GMT

Something important about voting. Don't think of your vote as expressing yourself. It's not like First Amendment speech. Your vote is you governing us. We're like a fourth branch of government. We don't get to say who runs everything, just our part of everything. One vote is a small thing, but they add up to a decision. So when you vote for a third-party candidate, or you don't like any of the candidates and don't vote at all, you are expressing yourself, but you are not governing. You don't like Hillary Clinton, so you stay home. You are not motivated. Then a few years later you're holed-up in your appartment, quarantined, because the government couldn't get its shit together to stop transmission of Covid. Or you're stuck with paying back your student loan because the court is 6-3 instead of 5-4. Because you and a lot of other people didn't "like" Hillary Clinton. See how whether you like her or not is beside the point? Or you or a family member has to carry a pregnancy to completion, have a baby you didn't want, or maybe die because your doctor couldn't figure out what the legislators meant, and didn't want to lose their medical license. So maybe next time, show up to govern. Put your feelings aside. Say what you feel on social media but use your mind when you vote.

Sleeping on the Wing

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 14:11:42 GMT

Some swifts and frigatebirds stay aloft for months. But for a long time, scientists did not know if the birds might be sleeping on the wing. A 2016 study provided answers. Tiny devices attached to the heads of frigatebirds revealed fascinating information: the birds did sleep while aloft, most often one half of the brain at a time. But they also fell into normal, whole-brain sleep and sometimes, even deeper REM sleep. But this deepest sleep came in bursts of just a few seconds — an inflight power-nap.

More info and transcript at BirdNote.org.

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Sat, 08 Jul 2023 01:01:50 GMT

Today Jury duty denied my “watch my children” excuse to which I responded “ok thanks but now who will watch my 10 and 4 year old?”

What Causes Giant Rogue Waves?

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 20:09:11 GMT

Wave-science researcher Ton van den Bremer and Steven Strogatz discuss how rogue waves can form in relatively calm seas and whether their threat can be predicted.

The post What Causes Giant Rogue Waves? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Boosting This Amino Acid – Not Telomeres – Might Be The Secret to Longer Lifespan

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 15:39:06 GMT

The supplement delayed aging in worms, mice, and monkeys.

Journalism is pretty bad

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 12:48:45 GMT

How bad is journalism? Let me tell you.

A journalist claimed to have given podcasting its name.

He didn't. It's a lie.

But he somehow got it on the Wikipedia page for podcasting.

And there it stayed. And every reporter writing a story about podcasting, saw it, and liked it, and copied it.

As a journalist himself he knew how it works. They don't actually check anything, they just copy and paste. And get paid by the word.

So all the bullshit you hear about how ChatGPT has hallucinations, from journalists, covers up the fact that most of what journalists write is complete bullshit. They aren't factual or verified, they just copied something from another journalist, who copied it from a different journalist. They're full of shit, so much so that the journalist knew his lie would never be outed. Even if it were true, it wouldn't be news, but usually what they write contains little or no truth.

These same journalists will never say anything bad about Apple btw, even when they offer up a completely ridiculous product for a market that doesn't exist. Everyone gushes, oh it's so great, when no one even the CEO of the company would be caught with the thing on their head. They do this because they won't get invited back if they don't.

Best advice, if you have a question, ask ChatGPT, far more likely it's correct than some random journalist.

PS: This is how podcasting actually got its name.

PPS: International Podcast Day, which is cited as an authority by Google, says there is a dispute about who did what re podcasting between Adam and myself. We have our differences, that's for sure, but I'm not aware of any dispute about how podcasting was created and productized and promoted to turn the idea into a medium. I've always been clear that Adam came to me with the idea, at first I didn't listen, then I got it, and set about implementing it in software. And then creating podcasts, and promoting. We both did a lot of each of those things, but the software was my job, and the development of the standard format. I've never heard Adam dispute any of that. I think they should take that bit about disputes off their description esp since it's being quoted as an authority. And please take Hammersley off the credits. That makes the whole thing stink.

PPPS: There are journalists I trust. For example Monica McNutt. I'm sure she wants to rise, and she deseves to, but I'm pretty sure she says what she thinks and doesn't worry about access. Donald McNeil is another, which was why I was so disappointed when he was a victim of NYT internal politics. A real journalist should be forgiven for failing to pander adequately, we like our journalists like that, not that the NYT culture cares what their customers want. There are actually many more and everyone has to do a little pandering, and the lines aren't always totally clear. But as the podcast naming fiasco indicates, most journalists don't care about the truth enough to check their "facts."

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 17:17:01 GMT

GoodPods is a social network for podcasts.

7 True Crime Podcasts You Need to Listen to This Summer

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 14:21:42 GMT

Are you worried about the future of, well, just about everything, given the decidedly-not-creeping rise of AI? The way concepts like “deep learning” and “neural networks” will soon worm their way into all manner of media, from podcasting to my own dearly beloved scribbling?

I know that AI is nothing new (Philip K. Dick was writing about the concept way back in the ‘60s), that the current model upon which the open-use version of ChatGPT is based is not “new” itself. Instead, it’s stuck in a Palm Springs-style time loop of sorts (its knowledge base stops at September 2021.)

Back in September 2021, generative AI was the furthest thing from my mind. I was fresh off a road trip to Key West, where I ate what I will attest to my dying day was the best piece of key lime pie in human history.

I still dream about that cold, creamy slice of citric heaven (and the grainy slab of graham cracker crumble upon which it sat).

A few years from now, could I “feed” a text-based prompt to an AI, describing the exact texture of pie’s sandy (but in a good way) bottom, the rich filling’s tang, the way crust and filling intermingled to create a veritable symphony of unforgettable flavor, and have the AI make me an exact replica of that pie?

(Okay, I know what purple prose is, that it is something generally to be avoided, and that a large-language model [LLM] reading this would probably flag the above paragraph as such, but I simply do not care. The pie was that good.)

In all seriousness, I am somewhat afraid. On-demand pie is one thing. The death of the writing profession is quite another. I am all for any LLM that wants to make me pie, but the day AI outpaces the abilities of human writers such as myself is one I’m not looking forward to in the slightest.

Out of curiosity, I recently fed ChatGPT the synopsis of my novel-in-progress, which I’ve been working on for the past three and a half years or so. (In typical Zil fashion, the book is far from finished, though I do have pretty solid flap copy!)

I won’t tell you what it’s about, but I will share that my favorite two writers are Ottessa Moshfegh and Alissa Nutting, so that should give you a bit of an idea of the direction my book is going in.

Anyway, the prompt I gave ChatGPT was something like, “Write a 137-page novella with the following synopsis…” followed by the synopsis of my novel.

When ChatGPT informed me that writing an entire novella was not within its powers, instead of springing for GPT4, I cut my request down to a 1000-word short story. What resulted? Well, it was something that sort of resembled my novel. The general contours were about the same, but the whole direction the AI took my novel in (think heavy doses of therapy and positive self-actualization for the wayward narrator) were decidedly not what I had in mind. Self-improvement? Please. My characters and I prefer to soak in Olympic-sized pools of self-loathing and disgust.

In all seriousness, I am a big proponent of therapy. But I don’t want my novel to resemble my “real” life because my real life is actually quite boring.

You know what? I had so much fun writing this intro. If a machine wants to take that away from me, well, to employ a turn of phrase any halfway decent LLM would label as “clichéd,” he/she/it will have to pry my sticker-covered, missing-a-bunch-of-keys laptop from my cold, dead, unmanicured hands.

Freeway Phantom
(Tenderfoot TV/Black Bar Mitzvah/iHeartPodcasts)
Premiered May 17, 2023. New episodes every Wednesday.

Carol Spinks, age 13. Darlenia Johnson, age 16. Brenda Crockett, age 10. Nenomoshia Yates, age 12. Brenda Woodard, age 18.

If you don’t know their names, you should. They belong to five young Black girls and women, all of whom were murdered during a 17-month period, their bodies left along highways in the Washington, DC area. More than five decades later, their cases still have not been solved—racial inequity is rife in the criminal justice system, and cold cases involving people of color go unsolved at alarming rates

—but host Celeste Headlee (a long-time radio journalist based in DC whose work has appeared on NPR, PBS, and TEDx) and executive producer Jay Ellis (Insecure, Top Gun: Maverick) are working to change that.

Freeway Phantom is the result of two years of writing, research, and reporting on—years poring over original case files, visiting important sites from the case, interviewing people connected to the case, and working closely with Romaine Jenkins, the now-retired DC police detective who dedicated years of her life to bringing justice and closure to the victims’ families.

The still-uncaught perpetrator, who earned the moniker the “Freeway Phantom” and is said to be DC’s first serial killer, terrorized victims’ families with phone calls and authored a note claiming responsibility for the murders. Over the course of this ten-episode series, Headlee dives head-first into the details of the case, painting a picture not only of the murders but also of the precious lives these young girls and women were robbed of. Check out the teaser trailer here.

The Debutante
(Audible Originals)
Premiered April 2023

As you can probably guess from the title of this podcast, the person at the center of Jon Ronson’s (So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, The Psychopath Test) newest project was a debutante. An award-winning equestrienne and daughter of wealthy parents, Carol Howe’s path veered very much away from the world of Tulsa high society as she entered adulthood.

After graduating from high school, Howe fell in with a violent band of Neo-Nazis, began dating infamous right-wing terrorist Dennis Mahon, and lived for a time in a white-supremacist compound called Elohim City. Though it in no way makes up for her utterly reprehensible viewpoints and actions, Howe later became a confidential ATF informant, documenting the white-supremacy movement’s activities in meticulous detail and passing info along to the feds. Among that information was an Elohim City plot to bomb Oklahoma federal buildings, which Howe shared with her handlers just months before the fatal April 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. What were the links between Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Elohim City residents? Could the 1995 tragedy possibly have been averted? Did the feds take Howe’s tip seriously, and if not, why? Why was Howe “deactivated” as an informant not long after she shared news of the bombing plot with feds? That’s what Ronson (in his excellent British accent) is here to find out.

Who Killed Strawberry?
(Audacy)
Premiered March 2023

Politics and true crime are a deliciously devious (not to mention delectable) duo, and this next podcast serves both up: Who Killed Strawberry is one part deep-dive into one of Detroit’s most notorious unsolved (technically speaking, but we’ll get to that in a minute) murder cases, one part political corruption thriller.

Two decades ago, Tamara Greene was a mother of three who was attending school to become a nurse. The twenty-seven year-old, who used the stage name “Strawberry,” worked as a high-end exotic dancer to support her family. Tragically, her life was cut short in 2003 when she was killed in a drive-by shooting on Detroit’s west side.

Some sources say that the intended target was Greene’s boyfriend, that her murder was an unfortunate “wrong-place, wrong-time” incident. Others will tell you…well…a very different story, one with very House of Cards vibes.

You see, four months before her death, Greene allegedly (there’s so much disagreement surrounding the particulars of this case, you can basically stick an “allegedly” in front of every active verb moving forward) danced for then-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick at the Manoogian Mansion (for those of you who aren’t Michiganders, the Manoogian Mansion is the mayor of Detroit’s official residence.) According to some, the very-much married Kilpatrick’s wife showed up, did not like the fact that Greene was giving the mayor a lap dance, and proceeded to beat Greene with a baseball bat. Or a high-heeled shoe. It depends on whom you ask.

Was Greene’s death connected to what has become known in Detroit news circles as the “never-proven Manoogian Mansion party”? True, the Kilpatrick administration was involved in some very shady dealings. (In 2013, Kilpatrick—and I promise these things aren’t spoilers since they’re not related to Greene’s case—would be convicted of wire fraud, mail fraud, and racketeering and sentenced to 28 years in prison.) But a murder cover-up? Who Killed Strawberry dives into the conflicting viewpoints surrounding this case by interviewing those who were directly involved in the case (including the person who is currently the number-one suspect in Greene’s murder.)

Smoke Screen: Just Say You’re Sorry
(Sony Music Entertainment/Marshall Project)
Premiered May 1, 2023

I’ve always been fascinated by false confessions. What prompts someone to confess to a crime he or she did not commit? Assuming the person is not confessing in pursuit of fame and notoriety (as was likely the case with John Mark Karr, who in 2006 confessed to the murder of JonBenét Ramsey—DNA testing revealed his confession to be false), why would someone do such a thing? What circumstances need to be in place (or, more specifically, what kinds of unethical psychological techniques would law enforcement need to use) for a false confession to take place?

In Smoke Screen’s sixth season, criminal justice journalist Maurice Chammah (author of Let the Lord Sort Them: The Life and Death of the Death Penalty and a staff writer for The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization focusing on the criminal justice system–definitely recommend checking out their long-form investigative articles) tackles the case of Air Force veteran Larry Driskill, who in 2015 confessed to the murder of Bobbie Sue Hill, a 29-year-old mother of five living in the Fort Worth Area. Driskill’s confession was extracted by one James “Jimmy” Holland, a Texas Ranger who gained a reputation as a “serial killer whisperer” on account of his ability to coax information out of supposed criminals.

You may not have heard of Holland before, but if you’re a true-crime addict like I am, you’ve probably heard of the person largely responsible for solidifying his reputation: Samuel Little, the US’s most prolific serial killer to date. Over the course of 700 hours (and shared helpings of grits and milkshakes), Holland got Little to confess to no fewer than 93 murders (as of publication time, FBI officials have confirmed Little’s involvement in 60 of those murders.)

In Smoke Screen: Just Say You’re Sorry, Chammah pulls back the curtain on the shocking, manipulative—but legal—tactics Holland used with Driskill, including hypnotism, lies, and brutal interrogation techniques. In so doing, Chammah reveals not only how one false confession came to be (one that would wind up sending the innocent Driskill to prison for a 15-year bid), but also the terrifying way such interrogation techniques have become part and parcel of the modern criminal justice system.

Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch
(Campside Media)
Premiered April 3, 2023

So, I wanted to do a cool intro to this next pod by mentioning the fact that Donna Tartt (author of The Secret History, The Little Friend, and The Goldfinch) is from the same town in which the murder in question took place, but…

Well, let’s just say my knowledge of Mississippi geography extends more to fictional places like Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County than real towns. Turns out Madame Tartt (would she mind if I called her this? Maybe “Lady” or “Duchess” would be a better honorific for the veritable grand dame of Southern Gothic noir) is from Greenwood, whereas Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch takes place in Greenville.

Plans to impress you with my literary knowledge foiled, I shall now give you the general contours of this next pod, which seems ripe for a big screen adaptation by none other than Tartt herself. (Does she do screenwriting? Or are such plebeian pursuits beneath her?)

In Greenville, MS, which is exactly one-hour due west of Tartt’s hometown of Greenwood, a brutal murder of a beloved grandmother has remained unsolved for nearly two decades. In 2003, Larrison Campbell’s 85 year-old grandmother Presh was discovered bludgeoned to death in the parlor of her home. Campbell, a journalist (who attended my alma mater of Wesleyan University!), spent the last year “trying to figure out why the person who murdered my grandmother is probably walking around free.” The result is this podcast, Campbell’s own investigation into her grandmother’s murder, one that will take Campbell back to her hometown, a pocket of the Deep South where as many as 80% of homicides remain unsolved.

The New England Gothic
(Cait Ford)
Premiered January 2023. New episodes every Friday.

if you’ve ever snuck a peek at my Pinterest (I have no shame in admitting that I am an extremely dedicated user of what I recently learned is the world’s 14th most popular social media platform—I’m @lizzymeowmeow if you wanna be friends or whatever), you’ll see that a good chunk of my boards and pins revolve around the following themes: autumn, witches, pumpkins, and Halloween.

I spent a large portion of quarantine in rural Massachusetts (and I’m talking very rural—as I think I’ve mentioned before, our closest neighbors were of the bovine persuasion), where I traded in my obsession with all things Floridian for a love of New England spookiness.

While I may have since moved back to NYC, I’ve kept up with my #NewEnglandGothic pinning, which is why I was so happy to learn that a podcast of the exact same name.

Halloween may be more than five months away (not that I’m counting down the days to my favorite holiday…but actually I do have an orange countdown timer on desktop whose purpose will remain classified), but luckily, I can bask in all things spooky thanks to this new-in-2023 podcast. On the menu? “Jolly” Jane Toppan, a Victorian-era nurse-turned-murderess who terrorized the Boston area with her deadly exploits (and confessed to a total of 21 killings). Also check out host Cait Ford’s episode on the Borden family (turns out Lizzie isn’t the only Borden with some sordid tales in her past—the family tree is sprawling and has more than enough nefariousness to go around.)

The Last Ride
(WGCU Public Media/NPR)
Premiered April 4, 2023. New episodes every Tuesday

You didn’t think you were getting out of here without a Florida podcast recommendation, did you? The Last Ride, which explores the negligence and systemic racism at the heart of the Sunshine State’s criminal justice system, is one of my favorites this season, and not just because it examines a set of cases that took place not far from where I grew up.

It’s October 2003. George W. Bush is president. The Iraq War is barely seven months old. Stateside, Nelly, P. Diddy, and Murphy Lee’s “Shake Ya Tailfeather” dominates the airwaves while Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is raking it in at the box office. In the early morning hours of October 14th in Naples, Florida, Felipe Santos, a 24-year-old new father, is involved in a minor traffic accident while on his way to work. Because Felipe was driving without a license or insurance, responding officer Steve Calkins takes him away in his patrol car. Calkins insists that he “unarrested” Felipe not long after picking him up and dropped him off at a nearby Circle K. Felipe, a devoted father with a four-month-old daughter at home, is never seen or heard from again.

Three months later, an eerily incident occurs. Terrance Williams, a 27-year-old Tennessee transplant, disappears after an interaction with Calkins. Calkins claims once again that he “unarrested” Williams (who had been driving without a valid driver’s license and expired registration), dropping him off a Circle K.

In both cases, Calkins’s story of dropping each man off at a Circle K could not be corroborated.

Nearly two decades later, neither Santos nor Williams has ever been located, nor has Calkins ever been charged with any crime in connection with the two men’s disappearances.

What happened to these two young men of color? Why did law enforcement fail to solve their likely murders? Why were their stories ignored by the media for so long? Hosted by award-winning journalist Janine Zeitlin and featuring reporting by the Naples Daily News and Fort Myers News-Press, The Last Ride includes exclusive interviews with Tyler Perry (who became involved in the case in 2018), legendary civil rights attorney Ben Crump, and investigators who were involved in the two men’s cases. What’s more? You’ll get to hear original polygraph audio direct from the case files.