Why our obsession with true crime isn’t as dark as you think



Social media has a way of humorously exposing humanity’s peculiarities. Using memes, reels, and trending audio, we love to make fun of ourselves.

One trend that’s been going strong for a while now exposes our strange obsession with true crime documentaries, books, and podcasts. There’s no telling how many thousands of Instagram reels and TikToks out there poke fun at normal people pounding popcorn while bingeing a series on Ted Bundy, for example.

Initially, it’s kind of funny. But a deeper consideration reveals a dark question: Why are we so drawn to serial killer stories? What is it about brutality, bloodthirst, and murder that attracts us?

This is one of many subjects author and Daily Wire host Andrew Klavan touches on in his new book, “The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness.”

On a recent episode of “Relatable,” Klaven and Allie Beth Stuckey unpacked this grim query.

While you might think that the duo arrive at an equally grim conclusion, they don’t. Peeling back the layers of this obsession with true crime leads to a paradoxically optimistic verdict: We are captivated by the collision of darkness and the moral order.

In an age when reading, especially the classics, is a dying practice, true crime fills the gap that dark literature used to fill.

Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” or even the biblical account of Cain’s treachery against his brother Abel are all tales that hinge on murder and betrayal. These stories, Klaven says, explore darkness “within that moral order.” Our instinctive recoiling at the murder of an innocent, for example, shatters the atheistic idea of moral relativism, which can actually lead us to God — the source of truth.

Ultimately, “that's what people are looking for in crime,” he tells Allie. “Murder is the place where everybody says, ‘Yes, that is evil'" because there is something in us that understands “the sanctity of the human person.”

But is true crime a good substitute for dark literature?

Not exactly, says Klaven.

“I think that people would be better off if they were reading Dostoevsky more and maybe being titillated by true crimes a little less,” because “it’s when the mind and heart and soul of the artist engage with murder that we see it become something beautiful in this larger context, which is what I think God is doing with the world itself,” he says.

Allie then brings up another good point: Unlike thought-provoking literature that invites us to explore the human condition, true crime often leads to “fear and paranoia.”

“There is some sort of balance between looking at darkness, recognizing it for the objective evil that it is, [contrasting] it to God's goodness, and constantly dwelling on the darkness,” she says, citing Philippians 4:8, which encourages readers to focus their thoughts on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and praiseworthy.

While not denying the truth of the verse, Klavan says that Philippians 4:8 is not synonymous with the “You Can Fly!” song from Peter Pan, which features the lyric “Now, think of the happiest things / It's the same as having wings.”

“You have to remember that Peter Pan never grows up, and if your faith never becomes the faith of a grown-up person, it's not going to stand up very well when you come into contact with the things that really do happen in this world — not just the evil, but also the suffering, the cruelty,” he says. “We believe in a God who was crucified … that's a very, very tragic truth, and yet the very deepest thing that God does for us is contained within that crucifixion.”

“One of the first things it says in Philippians is meditate and dwell on what is true, and what is true is all the beauty we experience, all the good that we experience, all the God that we experience takes place in this very dark world,” he continues.

The best Christian art, he argues, pointing to Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Mozart, and Bach, dealt with the kind of “sorrow and darkness and pain and suffering that Christianity was meant to address.”

However, even non-Christians unknowingly do this. “Many writers who have no faith have produced beautiful works that speak of God because I think any time you tell the truth, you're going to speak of God,” says Klaven. “The arts convey [and] transform this evil and this darkness into a source of light, and I think that that is a beautiful thing.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.

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To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Drugged for being boys: The TRUTH behind the ADHD scam



Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that people are born with.

Well, at least that’s long been the narrative in the medical field.

But the fact that ADHD diagnoses and Adderall prescriptions have skyrocketed in recent decades, especially in young male populations, has many — even the left’s “experts” — questioning if ADHD is actually congenital. It seems they can’t help but ask: If ADHD is something you’re born with, why the enormous surge in diagnoses?

In a recent New York Times article titled "Have We Been Thinking About A.D.H.D. All Wrong?" writer Paul Tough challenged the idea that ADHD is solely a fixed, biologically driven condition and suggested that it might also be driven by various environmental factors, including increased academic pressure, pervasive screen time, sleep deprivation, and post-pandemic stress.

In response, the Daily Wire published an article titled "The ‘Experts’ Are Finally Admitting That ADHD Is A Scam,” in which the writer acknowledged that mainstream sources are finally beginning to question what many of us have known all along: ADHD is a misdiagnosis of normal behavior.

The writer alleges that the feminization of education, pharmaceutical greed, and the mislabeling of normal male behavior are what’s really driving ADHD diagnoses and prescriptions.

On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn dove into these new conversations revolving around ADHD.

“The truth is we've been told not that a feminized education system has increasingly punished normal male behavior it doesn't understand; it's not that schools have lost their capacity to educate male students; it's not that smartphone use and electronics in general have become distractions teachers have been unable to control. Instead, we're led to believe that boys have suddenly become afflicted with a severe psychological disorder,” Glenn reads from the Daily Wire piece.

He agrees that what’s being done to boys in education is a travesty.

“Everything is just push the girls, push the girls, push the girls — ‘you can be anything.’ ‘Shut up, sit down, have some Ritalin’ to the boys,” he condemns.

The boys who are being written off as distractible and out of control are really just being typical boys. The Daily Wire article mocked one experiment conducted at the University of Central Florida, in which children were placed in front of a computer and shown two videos: a math lecture involving basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication, and a pod-racing scene from “Star Wars.”

Surprise, surprise — the kids were more likely to fidget and spin around in their chairs during the math lecture than they were when watching the “Star Wars” scene.

Using these “groundbreaking” findings, the UCF published a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology titled “ADHD Kids Can Be Still — If They’re Not Straining Their Brains.”

The Daily Wire ridiculed this, arguing that the study merely “discovered the concept of boredom.”

Glenn agrees and humorously compares the UCF study to discovering that your children “like sugary cereal over bran flakes” and then trying to “get them on LSD” to correct the problem.

While it’s true that some children struggle to focus in school more than others, it doesn’t mean they have a psychological disorder, Glenn says. It means that “all kids are wired differently; boys and girls are wired differently.”

Our differences are not the problem. The problem is that "public schools are made for everybody to be the same."

To hear more of the conversation, watch the clip above.

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SCOTUS temporarily blocks Texas immigration bill. Here’s what COULD happen after the final ruling on March 13.



Just as Texas reached its limit with Biden’s open border policies and proposed Texas Senate Bill 4, which would allow the state to arrest illegal immigrants, the Supreme Court stepped in and halted progression.

Now, Texas once again has its hands tied with the invasion at the border — at least until March 13, when SCOTUS will make a final ruling.

“We can't enforce our laws; we can't keep our border sovereign,” sighs Sara Gonzales.

To make matters worse, “We're finding out there was a FOIA lawsuit from the Center of Immigration Studies that revealed that the Biden administration has been coordinating flights for approximately 320,000 illegal immigrants to 43 different cities across the country.”

“You don't even have to walk these days,” says Sara. “You can just get a free flight, free money, free debit card, free phone — free everything, but if you're an American citizen, no. If you’re a homeless veteran, stay on the streets.”

“It's so blatant, and you may see the Supreme Court end up taking the position of the Federal Government because I do not think that they want freer states,” adds Eric July of Rippaverse Comics.

How Texas would respond to such an unfavorable ruling poses some serious implications.

According to Eric, if SCOTUS blocks SB4 and prevents Texas from protecting its borders, the state must take the position of “we don’t care” and decide to protect the border anyway, regardless of what that means on a national level.

Sara agrees — “What are they going to do? You already have Border Patrol who is calling out Joe Biden and saying he is doing a horrible job ... and they have already come out and said we respect the Texas National Guard.”

“Maybe violence breaks out, but maybe that’s what it has to come to.”


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