True crime content can influence the justice system

Adnan Syed's case became a podcast phenomenon thanks to 'Serial'

The 2014 debut of "Serial" is a journalist-led podcast series that overviews an investigation into a 1999 murder, reinvigorated the true crime genre, and set a new standard for audio storytelling. The 12-episode series also upended the investigation itself, leading to the vacated murder conviction of the victim's former boyfriend, Adnan Syed. Syed's conviction was reinstated, but his sentence was reduced. The series has hundreds of millions of downloads and accolades accompanied by "just about every major journalism award."

True crime, explained

Tales exploring some of the most grisly and unthinkable crimes have satisfied the public's morbid curiosity for more than a century, and modern podcasting has shot the genre to new heights. Want to learn more about the history of true crime? 1440 has the breakdown here.

Nearly a quarter of the US's 451 top-ranked podcasts belong to the true crime genre

Perhaps, Pew Research Center proposes, this popularity stems from the fame of "Serial," the 2014 hit series about a 1999 murder in Baltimore. Politics and government is the second top genre. Outside typical genre divides lie series such as fictional radio stories and Dungeons & Dragons podcasts, which account for 12% of top-ranked podcasts.

True crime fans can sometimes disregard the real people and trauma behind cases

True crime content has become a social gathering place. In addition to content generated by creators, consumer-driven true crime spaces have blossomed on social media. In these spaces, consumers track developments and share theories as if criminal cases are sports. Citizen sleuths can sometimes inspire new leads but often add to survivors' suffering and sling speculation that can clog tip lines and hit innocent bystanders.

Experience a year inside an American courthouse with 'Serial' Season 3

Season Three of "Serial" immerses listeners in a Cleveland courthouse for a year, showcasing how everyday justice unfolds—through plea deals, judicial decisions, and the quiet mechanics behind daily life in the criminal justice system.

A Mississippi man was tried six times for the same crime, each time before an all-white or nearly all-white jury

This podcast investigates how prosecutor Doug Evans systematically struck Black jurors across decades of cases. The team built a database of every jury strike Evans made over 20 years, uncovering a racial pattern that was later cited by the Supreme Court when it overturned Curtis Flowers' conviction in 2019.

True crime survivors often deal with the fallout from their association long after the case is closed

Collier Landry was a preteen when he notified police and later testified that he had overheard his father killing his mother. His role in the case cost him his dog and adoptive sister, and, as recently as 2023, led his extended family to reject him.

One murder and two siblings' betrayal

Sophia Johnson was convicted and later acquitted of murder in the 2002 slaying of her mother-in-law. More than 20 years later, she continues to deny the allegations first voiced by one of her younger brothers who said he saw Johnson commit the crime. This is the first episode in a 10-part series covering a three-year journalistic investigation into the cold case.

Go inside a real jury room as 12 Americans deliberate a criminal case

This PBS "Frontline" documentary from 1986 was the first to film actual jury deliberations on American television, capturing a Wisconsin criminal trial jury wrestling with the evidence and the case's consequences.

The 1979 murder trial of Ted Bundy was the first nationally televised trial

Most of the world's known serial killers are made in America, a country with a seemingly bottomless appetite for true crime. Masses of viewers watched the trial of Ted Bundy, who admitted to killing 30 girls and women. "It was the first time serial murder and serial rape was made into live entertainment," says Joe Berlinger, director and "godfather of true crime."

S-Town: Murder in a small Alabama town

From the team behind "Serial," investigative journalist Brian Reed goes back to his hometown of Woodstock, Alabama, to probe an alleged murder. The hit series was downloaded a record 10 million times in four days, wrapping seven mini-stories in each episode into a twisting narrative with an ultimately suspenseful and surprise ending.

Searching for a hate crime's unknown victim

In 2004, two federal agents heard a rumor: two white men, one under investigation for an unrelated crime, had gotten away with killing a Black man 15 years earlier as a requirement to join a white supremacist group. One of the men confessed to the crime, though he didn't know who was killed. This series dives into the search for the slain man and the justice he deserved.

The OJ Simpson case interrupted soaps’ daytime dominance, changing the genre

OJ Simpson's 1995 murder trial was broadcast for months, bumping soap operas from the airwaves. Fittingly, the trial provided the same salacious story lines, compelling characters, and open-ended narratives that soaps offered viewers. The key difference, of course, was that the Simpson trial was real life.

Investigating 'the city that kills women'

For nearly three decades, thousands of women have disappeared near Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Some were mutilated in ways that led authorities to suggest it the work of a serial killer, some were trafficked into slavery, and others have never been found. Opening with a hail of bullets, this 10-part podcast series hopes to uncover those responsible for the femicides.

‘Sentimental Journeys’ first suggested the Central Park Five's innocence

In 1989, after a young white woman jogging in Central Park was brutally assaulted, police rushed to charge five Black and Hispanic teenagers with the crime. As outrage against the group grew publicly, Didion shared details of a flawed investigation and argued race-based hatred served as motivation against the youths.

How uploading your consumer genetic testing could lead to a distant relative's arrest

This podcast includes a discussion about how law enforcement can compare DNA samples from a crime scene against voluntarily uploaded DNA on consumer genealogy databases to close cases. Investigators can and have cross-referenced a suspect's crime scene DNA with that of a suspect's relatives who happened to have chosen to upload their genetic information to an open-source genealogy database.

Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood,' a pioneer of the true crime genre, isn't wholly accurate

The nonfiction novel "In Cold Blood" influenced true crime's narrative and investigative bend and was supposedly only 92% accurate. Journalist Ben Yagoda reflects on its accuracy after finding the fact-checking file for the four-part series published before the story was converted into hardback. Yagoda says the inaccuracies are "especially striking" because the story was originally published in one of the magazines credited with establishing fact-checking as a practice. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Explore how free speech and justice coexist and sometimes clash

From the abolition of slavery to South African apartheid, this podcast explores how censorship has historically been used to suppress racial justice movements—and to promote them—and asks whether free speech is a foundation for, or a threat to, equality.

Rockwell's 'Murder in Mississippi (Southern Justice)' was a response to real events

The 1965 painting was inspired by the 1964 murders of three men—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. The men were affiliated with the Council on Racial Equity and killed by the Ku Klux Klan in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The painting accompanied an article about the inequities of the justice system, which is why its title often includes the parenthetical "(Southern Justice)."

Listen to how gaps in schizophrenia care helped to lead to a murder

Michael Laudor attended Yale, succumbed to schizophrenia, and killed his pregnant fiancée. The podcast, which includes a long but moving interview with Laudor's friend Jonathan Rosen, uses the tragedy to frame how America's approach to severe mental illness has fallen short.

An adultery and poisoning case examined whether federal treaty power supersedes state law

This Radiolab podcast unpacks Bond v. United States, where a local love-triangle assault became a federal case under an international treaty—forcing the Supreme Court to confront a founding question: How far can federal power reach into crimes traditionally handled by the states?

Hip-hop lyrics are often used in criminal trials, blurring the line between art and evidence

Song lyrics from other genres are rarely used by prosecutors, but it's commonplace for hip-hop and rap. Legal scholars and rap artists say that's a problem, and that it fundamentally misunderstands the music by interpreting artistic expression as absolute fact.

The quiz show scandals eroded trust in the media

Many viewers were attracted to the shows because they were filled with real people winning real money. After it was exposed that “Dotto,” “Twenty-One,” “The $64,000 Question,” and others had been fixed, the genre struggled to regain viewers’ trust. The government intervened, too: President Eisenhower called the shows’ deception “a terrible thing to do to the American people” and Congress amended the Communications Act in 1960, explicitly outlawing fraudulent game shows.

School integration is designed to improve student outcomes

This American Life follows a Missouri district’s court-ordered integration program that dramatically improved achievement gaps, revealing how desegregation remains an effective yet underused education reform.

Kendrick Lamar's breakthrough concept album was inspired by real events

The rapper's 2012 album "good kid, m.A.A.d city" follows a young, impressionable protagonist who unwittingly becomes associated with a series of crimes. As this episode of the "Disgraceland" podcast explains, Lamar's album may be nonlinear and impressionistic, but it's based on autobiographical elements.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

Recent research found that the brain doesn't seem to massively rewire following amputation—upending earlier beliefs about the cause of phantom limb pain.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

View the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.