Dr. Stein worked as a forensic psychologist under California's Sexually Violent Predator Act. Her role was to evaluate violent sex offenders alone, one by one, at various prisons across the state. It was her job to determine whether these offenders were fit for release or would remain behind bars for the rest of their days.

We caught up with Dr. Stein to discuss her book "Evil at Our Table: Inside the Minds of the Monsters Who Live Among Us" and what it was like to sit less than 3 feet away from some of the most danerous and violent offenders in the state of California.

On Halloween night we had the pleasure of speaking with Mike Brown of the Pleasing Terrors podcast and the Pleasing Terrors Ghost Tour in Charleston, South Carolina! We discuss spooky tales from Charleston and other places that Mike has had a chance to visit. We also discuss some of our own experiences!

What if the people running online scams weren't criminals by choice—but victims themselves?

In this episode, we talk with Ivan Franceschini and Ling Li, authors of Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds, about the hidden world of online fraud across Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and the Philippines. Based on years of fieldwork, their book reveals how thousands of people are trafficked or coerced into "pig-butchering" romance scams and investment cons inside prison-like compounds.

Franceschini and Li explain how organized crime, corruption, and technology have turned Southeast Asia into a global hub for cybercrime—and how many of the perpetrators are actually victims of modern slavery.

Ivan Franceschini is a lecturer at the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne, where he studies transnational crime and labor issues in China and Southeast Asia. Ling Li is a PhD researcher at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, focusing on technology's role in modern slavery and human trafficking. She also works directly with survivors of scam compounds across the region.

On the morning of August 28, 1993, the quiet shores of Nags Head, North Carolina, were shattered when 35-year-old visitor Janet Siclari was found raped and fatally stabbed behind the Carolinian hotel. What followed was a decades-long pursuit of justice marked by false leads, courtroom drama, and groundbreaking DNA technology.

In this episode, we talk with investigative author John Railey, whose new bookThe Carolinian Murder at Nags Head: The Janet Siclari Story tells the full story of this brutal crime for the first time. Drawing on exclusive interviews with insiders, John unravels the twists and turns that led to a conviction—and the lingering questions about who else might have been involved.

We also explore John's deep ties to the Outer Banks, his career as a journalist, and how his body of work has consistently sought truth and justice in some of North Carolina's darkest stories.

You may have heard of "The Pinkertons," the infamous detective and spy agency that dealt with matters of national intelligence and security, labor union disputes and much more. But what do you know about Allan Pinkerton, the founder of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency?

Author Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones explores the life and adventures of Pinkerton in his latest book, "Allan Pinkerton: America's Legendary Detective and the Birth of Private Security." With Rhodri, we trace Pinkerton's unlikely rise from a Scottish immigrant to America's first "detective," his role in protecting Abraham Lincoln, his battles with outlaws and activists, and the controversial methods that made his agency both feared and admired. Rhodri also helps us separate fact from legend, while reflecting on how Pinkerton's legacy continues to influence modern security and surveillance.

We'll also learn more about Rhodri himself: born in Wales in 1942, descended from poets, miners, and industrialists, educated at Cambridge, Michigan, and Harvard, and a longtime professor at the University of Edinburgh who has written more than twenty books on American history.

In the early 1990s, East New York was known as one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America, a place dubbed "The Killing Fields" after a wave of murders shook Brooklyn. What if the real crime story started decades earlier, in boardrooms and banks?

Author Stacy Horn takes us inside her new book, The Killing Fields of East New York, to uncover how a well-intentioned housing policy in the late 1960s spiraled into America's first subprime mortgage scandal. When most people think of a subprime crisis, they think of 2008. But long before that, East New York became ground zero for greed, fraud, and systemic neglect, devastating an entire community.

Stacy traces the domino effect: fraudulent FHA-backed loans, families trapped in crumbling homes, abandoned blocks, and a surge in violence that left East New York with one of the highest murder rates in the country. Along the way, she shares the human stories behind the statistics, the investigators who tried to stop the collapse, and why these failures still matter today.

This is a look at how white-collar crime can destroy neighborhoods as completely as street violence—and why history keeps repeating itself.