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How did Lizzie Borden walk out of court a free woman, and why are we still arguing about it more than 130 years later? ⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of murder, graphic violence, and speculation about sexual abuse. Listener discretion is advised. On August 4, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were killed with a hatchet in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Their daughter Lizzie was tried and acquitted. Now Ryan Murphy's Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story has brought the case back, alongside Countess Elizabeth Báthory and Aileen Wuornos. Therapists Shannon and Cathy separate the record from the myth and ask how ideas about women shaped the verdict, the nursery rhyme and the Netflix series. CHAPTERS: 0:00 More than 130 years of Lizzie Borden 0:42 Just watched Monster? Here's what happened 1:13 Cara Robertson's The Trial of Lizzie Borden 3:06 The rhyme versus the record 4:46 Why Ryan Murphy's version works 6:12 The acquittal, and why she stayed in Fall River 8:29 "How could the deed be done by a woman?" Anchoring bias 12:21 Andrew Borden 14:23 Abby Durfee Gray Borden 17:57 Father, daughter, stepmother: the real relationships 19:46 Lizzie and Bridget Sullivan 21:23 Countess Elizabeth Báthory 24:13 Aileen Wuornos 25:13 Axey Facts with Cath 26:36 What we know about Lizzie's psychology 30:48 The series and its cast 35:08 Parricide and women who kill 36:09 How fictional is Monster? 38:10 Nineteen blows and ten: reading the overkill 40:19 "Nothing new to say about female rage" 42:31 Axey Facts answers IN THIS EPISODE: • Cara Robertson's The Trial of Lizzie Borden and Edmund Pearson on a case "without parallel" • Abby took 18 to 19 blows and Andrew 10 to 11, not 40 and 41 • The handleless hatchet, the burned blue dress and Andrew's locked doors • Maplecroft, animal welfare and 34 years in Fall River after the verdict • Bridget Sullivan, and why there's no evidence of a romance or an accomplice • The 2018 film Lizzie and the origins of the affair theory • Nance O'Neil, the actress Lizzie befriended after the trial • The Báthory blood bath legend, first recorded a century after her death • Ella Beatty, Charlie Hunnam, Rebecca Hall, Billie Lourd, Vicky Krieps, Jessica Barden and Sarah Paulson CLINICAL TERMS: female psychopathy, anchoring bias, parricide, expressive and instrumental homicide, overkill, reactive and predatory violence, dissociation, emotional numbing, compartmentalization, grief, HCR-20 risk assessment CORRECTIONS: • The jury deliberated about 90 minutes, not 40. • When Abby was killed, Bridget Sullivan was outside washing windows. She went up to rest in her attic room after Andrew came home, before his murder. • Monster was created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, not Brad Falchuk. SOURCES: Robertson, C. (2019) The Trial of Lizzie Borden · Pearson, E. L. (1937) Trial of Lizzie Borden · Netflix (2026) Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story · Famous Trials (UMKC) Borden chronology. Full APA list on Patreon. Where it all started: our first take on the case, from Season 1, newly remastered. PROFILE: Lizzie Borden, The Fall River Axe Murders Part 1 PROFILE: Lizzie Borden, The Fall River Axe Murders Part 2: The Trial Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes. PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

The Conjuring universe keeps asking one question: why do we need the devil to have done it? ⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of murder, the deaths of children, possession, and allegations of child sexual abuse and domestic violence. Listener discretion is advised. In 1981 in Brookfield, Connecticut, Arne Cheyenne Johnson's lawyer wanted to tell a jury the devil made him kill. Ed and Lorraine Warren were ready to back him. The judge said no, and forty years later the defense became the title of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Therapists Shannon and Cathy put James Wan's Conjuring universe on the couch: possession as a language for trauma, the Warrens as a secure base, and why it's easier to fight a demon than face what's inside us. CHAPTERS: 0:00 The devil made me do it 0:48 Why we need evil to be outside of us 3:03 The Perron family and The Conjuring 3:38 Enfield, the Hodgsons and The Conjuring 2 4:51 What a supernatural explanation gives a family 8:32 Possession as a language of trauma 9:53 The Nun and The Nun II 12:27 Children and the failure to protect 13:46 Annabelle, Annabelle Creation and Annabelle Comes Home 15:25 Ed and Lorraine as a secure base 19:22 Why do we believe the Warrens? 21:41 The Judith Penney allegations 24:10 Valak and evil that wears the face of goodness 31:11 Why James Wan makes films about needing demons 32:34 Malignant: the one time the monster was inside IN THIS EPISODE: • The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) and Last Rites (2025) • Annabelle (2014), Annabelle: Creation (2017), Annabelle Comes Home (2019), The Curse of La Llorona (2019), The Nun (2018) and The Nun II (2023) • Andrea Perron's account of the Perron haunting in Harrisville, Rhode Island • Janet Hodgson and Guy Lyon Playfair on the Enfield poltergeist • Arne Cheyenne Johnson and the possession defense a judge refused to hear • William Weber, the Lutzes and the Amityville "bottles of wine" • Judith Penney's 2014 sworn declaration about Ed Warren, never tested in court • The Nun's release weeks after the 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy abuse CLINICAL TERMS: externalization, possession and dissociation, therapeutic alliance, validation, Bowlby's secure base, emotional attunement, trauma response, institutional abuse, covert narcissism, protective factors, introspection, shame CORRECTIONS: • Lindsay Clancy's children were strangled, not drowned, and her defense was postpartum psychosis, not possession. Her trial ended in a mistrial in September 2026. • The denial of Judith Penney's account came from Lorraine Warren's attorney, not the Warrens' daughter and son-in-law. No criminal case was brought; the claims surfaced in 2017 through litigation over the franchise, after Ed Warren's 2006 death. SERIES: James Wan Part 2 of 2. Part 1: PROFILE: James Wan, Saw, Insidious & The Conjuring Part 1. SOURCES: People (September 1979) · federal court ruling (1979) · The Hollywood Reporter (2017) · Pennsylvania grand jury report (2018) Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes. 🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

How does James Wan turn an ordinary family home into the scariest place in the movie, and why does it work on audiences who think they've seen everything? Spoiler warning: we discuss endings, including Saw's. James Wan, the Malaysian-born Australian filmmaker behind Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring, redefined 21st century horror on budgets that started with a puppet built in his own apartment. Cathy leads this Part 1 on the craft: how Wan builds fear like architecture. Therapists Shannon and Cathy break down why we sit down to horror wanting to be manipulated, and how Wan does it to a jaded modern audience the way a panic attack does it to the body: never the same way twice. CHAPTERS: 0:00 James Wan and the architecture of fear 1:18 Sundance and the Saw screening 2:05 Who is James Wan? 4:48 Horror like a panic attack 7:15 Saw, Dead Silence, Insidious, The Conjuring and beyond 10:34 Fun facts: the Splat Pack and how Billy was built 14:36 Bringing back 70s torture horror, with characters you care about 16:16 Haunted houses and haunted dolls 18:49 Doing more with less 20:11 The house as a trap 23:08 Which house would you refuse to sleep in? 27:30 Suspense like a blueprint 28:44 Long shots, silence and The Changeling 30:07 Lighting, and fearing what you can't see 33:02 The geometry of a James Wan jump scare 36:02 Halloween's schoolyard scene and false safety 37:36 The Insidious demon reveal 39:28 Lightning round 42:08 Coming up in Part 2 IN THIS EPISODE: - Saw (2004), Dead Silence (2007), Insidious (2010), The Conjuring (2013), Furious 7 (2015), Aquaman (2018) and Malignant (2021) - Saw II's needle pit and the reverse bear trap - Leigh Whannell, Tobin Bell, Lin Shaye and Donnie Wahlberg - The Splat Pack: Eli Roth, Rob Zombie and Alexandre Aja - The real Raggedy Ann behind Annabelle - Why Wan starts every haunting in comfort: the cinematic equivalent of love bombing - Long takes and the micro delay versus rapid cuts and the fake-out jump scare - Misdirection, negative space and the threat outside the frame - The Changeling (1980), Black Christmas (1974), Se7en (1995), Poltergeist (1982) and John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) - Which household object would haunt you in a Wan film CLINICAL TERMS: fear response, panic attacks, panic disorder, habituation, hypervigilance, love bombing, abusive dynamics, projection, safe and sacred space, psychology of horror SERIES: James Wan Part 1 of 2. Part 2 takes on The Conjuring universe through six psychological questions. Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes. 🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

If knowing about cognitive bias could protect you from a cult, why didn't it protect the Zizians? ⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of murder, the murder of children, suicide, sexual coercion and branding, coercive control and cult trauma. Listener discretion is advised. Lori Vallow Daybell in Idaho and Arizona, Keith Raniere's NXIVM in Albany, New York, and Ziz LaSota's Zizians in the San Francisco Bay Area: a cult of two, a self-help company and a network of rationalists who believed they were the smartest people in any room. Therapists Shannon and Cathy close the Cults series by asking whether anything about modern cults is new, or whether it's the same mechanism in a new costume, and what actually protects you. CHAPTERS: 0:00 The most rational people in the room 0:59 Cults Part 3: same mechanism, new costume 2:28 Bounded choice: why didn't they just leave? 4:23 Coercive control, Biderman and a sheriff's department case 10:31 Hillman's soul loss and open door moments 13:55 Lori Vallow Daybell: the cult of two 20:08 NXIVM and Keith Raniere 29:09 The Zizians, and two corrections to Part 1 37:43 Why knowing about bias didn't help 40:57 What changed and what didn't 42:33 What actually protects you IN THIS EPISODE: - Janja Lalich's bounded choice, from inside the Democratic Workers' Party - Evan Stark's coercive control and Biderman's chart of coercion - Cathy on coercive control at a systemic level in the LA Sheriff's Department - Why cults recruit capable people at open door moments, not weak ones - Zombies, JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan, and spiritual reclassification - DOS, collateral and the brand as the point of no return - Therapy speak as moral justification, and a Teal Swan callback - Vegan anarcho-transhumanism, unihemispheric sleep and a leader with no title - Six deaths: Vallejo, Chester Heights, Vallejo again and Coventry, Vermont - Why marginalization, not identity, is the vulnerability - Keep one relationship the group does not control CLINICAL TERMS: bounded choice, coercive control, entrapment, chart of coercion, DDD syndrome, thought reform, loaded language, doctrine over person, milieu control, commitment and consistency, moral disengagement, dehumanization, cognitive dissonance, mana personality, participation mystique, soul loss, escape from freedom, love bombing CORRECTIONS TO PART 1: - The six deaths linked to the Zizians were three in 2022 and three in 2025, not 2025 and 2026. - We've retired "undead" and "p-zombie" as descriptions of Zizian doctrine until they're better sourced. - Everyone charged in the Zizian cases is presumed innocent. SERIES: Cults Part 3 of 3. Part 1: CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians & Jonestown Part 1. Part 2: CULTS: Charles Manson, the Solar Temple & Adolfo Constanzo Part 2. Related Episodes: Season 3 Episode 9 Published Sept. 30, 2020• CULTS: Lori Vallow Daybell & Chad Daybell — The Doomsday Couple RESOURCE: If you recognize yourself or someone you love, the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) lists therapists experienced with former members. SOURCES: Lalich (2004) Bounded Choice · Stark (2007) Coercive Control · Biderman (1957) · Farber, Harlow & West (1957) · Hillman (1975) Re-Visioning Psychology · Moore (1992) Care of the Soul · Sottile (2022) When the Moon Turns to Blood · US DOJ · The Vow (HBO) · San Francisco Chronicle. Full APA list on Patreon. Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes. PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

Why would members of the Order of the Solar Temple kill a three-month-old baby they had never met? ⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of murder, ritual killing, the murder of an infant and of children, mass death, cult trauma and coercive control. Listener discretion is advised. In 1994 the Order of the Solar Temple, led by Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret, killed a baby in Morin-Heights, Quebec because his name made him the Antichrist, then left 53 dead across Switzerland and Canada. Cults Part 2 follows the same question through Adolfo Constanzo's Narcosatánicos in Matamoros, Mexico and Charles Manson's Family in Los Angeles. Therapists Shannon and Cathy ask what changes psychologically when the killing is the ritual, and why the victim in a ritual murder is never really the target. CHAPTERS: 0:00 A baby called the Antichrist 1:02 From Part 1 to ritual murder 2:03 Ritual as the delivery system for moral disengagement 5:04 Expressive or instrumental: where ritual murder fits 11:20 Milgram, participation mystique and Hillman 20:18 The Order of the Solar Temple 28:30 Adolfo Constanzo and the Matamoros killings 35:16 Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murders 46:35 What makes ritual murder different 49:34 Coming up in Part 3 IN THIS EPISODE: - Three ways ritual moves agency, turns a victim into a symbol and dissolves the self into the group - Milgram's obedience variations: 65%, 92.5% when someone else throws the switch, 10% when two peers refuse - Gina Perry's archive work and Haslam and Reicher's identification reading - Jung's participation mystique, from stadiums to robes in a circle - The Solar Temple: Cheiry, Salvan, the cosmic child and 74 dead by 1997 - Constanzo, Sara Aldrete, Mark Kilroy and the checkpoint that broke the case - Palo Mayombe as a legitimate Afro-Cuban tradition Constanzo distorted - Why Manson was not at Cielo Drive, and why that matters - The Stanford Prison Experiment and what survives the critiques - PIG on the door: dehumanization that happened in language weeks before CLINICAL TERMS: ritual murder, moral disengagement, displacement and diffusion of responsibility, dehumanization, expressive and instrumental homicide, obedience to authority, participation mystique, soul loss, thought reform, social proof, cognitive dissonance, mana personality, self-dissolution, situational evil CORRECTIONS: - Luc Jouret was the Solar Temple's co-founder and public face, not Emmanuelle's mother. Her mother was Dominique Bellaton. - The Solar Temple member was the mayor of Richelieu, Quebec, not the mayor of Quebec. - Le Texier's critique of the Stanford Prison Experiment ran in American Psychologist in 2019, not 2007. - Bugliosi and Gentry's Helter Skelter (1974) is nonfiction, not a novel. SERIES: Cults Part 2 of 3. Part 1: CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians & Jonestown Part 1. Part 3: a brand burned into a woman's skin, a mother who decided her children were zombies, and the full story of the Zizians. SOURCES: Milgram (1974) Obedience to Authority · Perry (2012) Behind the Shock Machine · Haslam & Reicher (2012) PLoS Biology · Salfati (2000) Homicide Studies · Le Texier (2019) American Psychologist · Reicher & Haslam (2006) British Journal of Social Psychology · Zimbardo (2007) The Lucifer Effect · Bugliosi & Gentry (1974) Helter Skelter. Full APA list on Patreon. Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes. 🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

Have you ever left a relationship more confused about yourself than about the person you were with? ⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of emotional abuse, coercive control, gaslighting and intimate partner violence. Listener discretion is advised. Therapists Shannon and Cathy open Season 9 with the question everyone asks and almost nobody asks clinically: what does it actually mean to call someone a psychopath, and what does it feel like to be in a relationship with one? This is not a diagnostic checklist for your partner. It is a map of a pattern, from the inside. IN THIS EPISODE: - Why psychopathy is not a DSM diagnosis, and what antisocial personality disorder actually covers - Robert Hare and the PCL-R, the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised - Factor 1, the interpersonal and affective traits: glibness, charm, grandiosity, shallow affect, no remorse - Factor 2, the antisocial lifestyle traits: need for stimulation, impulsivity, irresponsibility, early behavioral patterns - Prevalence: under 1% of the general population, roughly 25% of incarcerated populations - Subclinical or "successful" psychopathy, and Snakes in Suits by Paul Babiak and Robert Hare - Why corporate, legal, political and even mental health environments show elevated rates - The honeymoon phase: love bombing, mirroring and future faking - Why mirroring works, and why it is a performance rather than recognition - The shift: devaluation, intermittent reinforcement, gaslighting and isolation - The slot machine effect, and why unpredictable reward builds anxious attachment - What gaslighting actually is, and how "you should get some therapy" gets weaponized - Why an outsider can see it and the person inside cannot - Trauma bonding as a neurobiological response, not a weakness - Why couples therapy is contraindicated, and what to ask a couple's therapist before you start - Safety planning, and why leaving is the most dangerous period even without physical violence - Trauma informed care, somatic approaches, trauma focused CBT and EMDR - Karin Huffer's work on Legal Abuse Syndrome, and litigation as a tool of control - The closing thought: the grief is real, even though the relationship wasn't CLINICAL TERMS: psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder, PCL-R, Hare Psychopathy Checklist, narcissism, sociopathy, coercive control, love bombing, mirroring, future faking, devaluation, intermittent reinforcement, gaslighting, isolation, triangulation, trauma bonding, anxious attachment, betrayal trauma, plausible deniability, safety planning, EMDR RELATED EPISODES: Stalking, Surveillance and Coercive Control Parts 1 and 2 · How to Identify a Narcissist · Spiritual Narcissism: Twin Flames on Fire · CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians and Jonestown Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes. 🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

Six documentaries, two therapists, and one question running under all of them: what does the camera do to a case? Shannon takes Betrayal: Dirty Secrets, EDP445: The Sick Mind, and Joe Berlinger's Conversations with a Killer: The Charles Manson Tapes. Cathy takes The Hillside Strangler, Maternal Instinct, and The Crash. ⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of child predation, violence against a pregnant woman, sexual assault and murder. Listener discretion is advised. SHANNON'S THREE Betrayal: Dirty Secrets (Hulu). Colorado Springs police officer Joel Kern held a decorated career and a family man image while running a secret sexual double life with roughly fifty people, using his badge and his schedule as cover. His wife Karoline found out while their daughter was hospitalized. He retired before he could be fired, kept his pension, and was never charged. EDP445: The Sick Mind. Bryant Moreland, a YouTube sports commentator with millions of subscribers, caught in a sting run by the vigilante group Predator Poachers. The clinical ground here is parasocial attachment, predatory persona construction, and the uncomfortable question of what vigilante predator catching actually accomplishes. Conversations with a Killer: The Charles Manson Tapes (Netflix). Berlinger's fifth and final entry, built from 137 previously unheard prison phone calls Manson made to a retired detective across the last nine years of his life. Survivors are centered: Dianne Lake, Catherine Share, Stephanie Schram. One detail stays with you. Manson learned his mind control technique from Dale Carnegie. CATHY'S THREE The Hillside Strangler (MGM+). Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono killed ten women and girls across Los Angeles in 1977 and 1978. The first on camera interview with Bianchi, and the first-time lead detective Frank Salerno has spoken publicly in over forty years. Bianchi claimed amnesia, submitted to hypnosis, argued his confessions were fabricated, then turned on Buono. Watch how a man relates to his own story across four decades. Maternal Instinct (Netflix). Taylor Parker faked a pregnancy for months, with a silicone belly, false ultrasounds and a gender reveal party, then murdered Reagan Simmons-Hancock, who was thirty-five weeks pregnant. She is the youngest woman on Texas death row. This one is genuinely difficult. The Crash (Netflix). Seventeen-year-old Mackenzie Shirilla drove into a brick building at over a hundred miles an hour, killing her boyfriend and his friend. No skid marks, no braking. Convicted of murder as an adult. All six are streaming now, and the discussion is better if you have already formed an opinion. Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes. 🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

What does horror actually do to the person watching it and do this season's releases earn the reaction they're going for? Season 9 of Shrink Chat opens with Evil Dead Burn, the series Silo and The Shards, and a run through the rest of what's landed lately: Disclosure, Obsession, They Will Kill You and Passenger. Therapists Shannon and Cathy review them the way nobody else does, not on scares per minute, but on whether the psychology holds up: what the films get right about fear, grief, control and the way people actually behave under threat, and where they reach for a cheap shortcut instead. Reviewed in this episode: Evil Dead BurnSilo (series)The Shards (series)They Will Kill YouDisclosureObsessionPassengerForbidden FruitWhistlePlus, horror trivia and games with Cathy More from Season 9: S9E1 CULTS Part 1: how a group turns ordinary people into killersTwo licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT. Until then... sleep safe. 😴 🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound.📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

How does a nurse, a teacher, a software engineer end up participating in mass death? Shannon walks Cathy through the clinical pathway that turns ordinary people into killers using Heaven's Gate, the Zizians, and Jonestown to prove the same mechanism runs every single time. ⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of mass suicide, murder, death by poisoning including the deaths of children, cult coercion and coercive control. Listener discretion is advised. Season 9 opens with the question that sits underneath every cult story ever told: how does a group turn ordinary people into killers? Not people who were always dangerous. A nurse. A teacher. A college student. A software engineer. Someone whose neighbors would describe them as quiet and kind. Shannon takes the lead on this one, and the argument is deliberately uncomfortable; the pathway from ordinary person to cult member to participant in mass death is not about weakness, mental illness, or stupidity. It's about psychology. And it runs the same way every single time, whether you're looking at a California mansion in 1997, a Silicon Valley rationalist community in 2025, or a settlement in the Guyanese jungle in 1978. Same process. Different costume. Three cases, deliberately chosen because they have nothing in common but the mechanism. Heaven's Gate believed human bodies were containers for extraterrestrial souls. The Zizians organized around AI existential risk and analytic philosophy. Peoples Temple organized around socialism and racial justice. Cosmic, rationalist, political; three completely incompatible belief systems, one identical psychological structure underneath. That structure is what Shannon and Cathy spend the episode taking apart. Robert Jay Lifton's eight criteria of thought reform. Margaret Singer's self-dissolution process. Erich Fromm on why freedom is psychologically expensive enough that people will trade it away. Jung's Mana Personality, which explains why a leader's word can override what you can see with your own eyes. And running through all of it, Albert Bandura's moral disengagement — the four specific mechanisms by which a person with an intact conscience does something monstrous and does not experience themselves as monstrous while doing it. The core argument, and where the episode lands: The most dangerous thing about a cult isn't the leader. It's the moment when the group becomes more real to you than your own perception. That isn't weakness. That's how human psychology works. And knowing that is the only protection. Heaven's Gate · Marshall Applewhite · Bonnie Nettles · Rancho Santa Fe, California · March 26, 1997 · 39 dead · the Next Level · "the Demonstration" The Zizians · Ziz LaSota · rationalist and effective altruism communities · AI existential risk · "undead" and "p-zombie" ideology · six deaths, 2025–2026 Peoples Temple · Jim Jones · Jonestown, Guyana · November 18, 1978 · 918 dead, 304 of them children · White Night rehearsals · the largest mass death of American civilians before 9/11 Clinical terms: thought reform · coercive control · moral disengagement · self-dissolution · cognitive dissonance · milieu control · dehumanization · DDD syndrome · the Mana Personality · the ShadowThis is Part 1 of a three-part Cults series. Part 2 goes into ritual violence. Part 3 goes deeper into contemporary cases Until then... sleep safe. 😴 🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound. 📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

What does it mean to be scared in 2026? Horror Facts with Cath is back — and so is the watch list that somehow kept growing. This month Shannon and Cathy work through thirteen titles across film and series, from a claustrophobic submarine nightmare and a wedding week that was never going to end well, to a spider in a 1930s trench coat and a medical examiner who doesn't know when to quit. This episode covers: Film: Iron Lung — claustrophobic, gorgeous, more blood than any horror film in historyThe Backrooms — A24's liminal space debut from the youngest director to ever hit number one at the box officeHokum — Damian McCarthy's follow-up to Oddity, atmospheric Irish horrorLee Cronin's The Mummy — demon possession, practical gore, and a Blumhouse/Atomic Monster collaborationWhistle — teen slasher meets cursed artifact meets Final Destination logicThrash — hurricane sharks, Netflix, Tommy Wirkola, exactly what it sounds likeUndertone — audio-driven A24 horror built almost entirely on sound designReturn to Silent Hill — the third attempt to adapt the greatest horror game ever madeSend Help — 2026's genre wildcardScream 7 — Sidney Prescott returns. Ghostface returns. Shannon and Cathy have thoughts.Series: Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen — Netflix, Duffer Brothers produced, wedding horror, 8 episodes of dreadScarpetta — Nicole Kidman as Kay Scarpetta, Prime Video, forensic thrillerSpider-Noir — Nicolas Cage as a 1930s New York superhero-turned-private investigator, Prime VideoTwo licensed therapists — one forensic psychologist, one clinical marriage and family therapist — reviewing horror so you know what's worth your time and what's worth avoiding entirely. Until then... sleep safe. 😴 🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound.📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

Why are audiences so fascinated by female psychopaths? In the 2010s the most talked about stories in true crime, film and television kept landing on the same unsettling idea: that psychopathy does not always look violent or chaotic. Sometimes it looks calm, strategic and socially invisible. This episode continues our Female Psychopaths by the Decade series with the 2010s, the decade that changed how audiences talked about it. THE REAL CASES Jodi Arias, and what forensic psychologists mean by emotional congruence Joanna Dennehy, the Peterborough ditch murders, and the difference between psychopathy and sadism Miranda Barbour, the Craigslist killing of Troy LaFerrara, and self mythologizing Katherine Knight, and why her case came roaring back in the 2010s Gypsy Rose Blanchard, Dee Dee Blanchard, and the collision of victim and perpetrator THE FICTIONAL ONES Amy Dunne in Gone Girl, and why the one star reviews say more than the five star ones Villanelle in Killing Eve, and why Cathy could not finish the show Rose Armitage in Get Out Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones Azula Plus the clinical groundwork: cognitive versus emotional empathy, primary versus secondary psychopathy, and why early psychopathy research built its rubric on male prison populations and then failed to recognise women who did not match it. We are discussing psychopathic traits and behaviors. We are not diagnosing anyone. Which female psychopath from the 2010s disturbed you the most, and why? CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS Game of Thrones premiered in April 2011, which puts it squarely inside the decade. Shannon says on air that it started before the 2010s. Katherine Knight: Cathy hedges on who the remains were served to, and the record is clearer than the hedge. Knight murdered her partner John Price at Aberdeen, New South Wales, in February 2000. She skinned him, cooked portions of his body, and set the table with place settings and notes for his three children. They never arrived and never ate. Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes. 🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

Gary Ridgway lied to detectives for hours at a time and never once bragged. So how did FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole get the Green River Killer to confess to 49 murders? ⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes graphic discussions of murder, sexual assault, necrophilia, child sexual abuse and violence against a child. Listener discretion is advised. Part 2 of two on Gary Leon Ridgway, the Green River Killer, who was convicted of 49 murders around Seattle and has admitted to more than 70. This is the half where the psychology meets the investigation, and where the victims get their names back. Therapists Shannon and Cathy take apart how an unremarkable man built a double life, and how one FBI profiler used his need to look cooperative to take it apart. In this episode: - Why being thin, quiet and unthreatening was the weapon, and how he used photographs of his young son to win trust - Fallon Gannon's description in Wicked Horror: "a boring little man of meager intelligence" - Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear, and how women are taught to give the benefit of the doubt - Ann Rule, who knew Ted Bundy, calling him a mousy little man - The method, the strangulation, and the necrophilia, including returning to bodies days later - Not paying them: humiliation as the actual point, and the revenge fantasy aimed at his mother - The dump sites he returned to, and why they calmed him - July 15, 1982: Wendy Lee Coffield, 16, found in the Green River - Gisele Lovvorn, 17. Debra Lynn Bonner, 23. Marcia Faye Chapman, 31. Cynthia Hinds, 17. Opal Mills, 16 - Roberta "Bobby Jo" Hayes, his 47th known victim, missing in 1987 and not found until 1991 - Detective David Reichert, first on the scene - The Strip, and how he found the largest victim pool in the country - His father, who berated prostitutes in front of him and then left Gary in the car while he used them - His mother, still bathing him into his teenage years, and still buying his clothes after he married - The first wife's affair, and shame, humiliation and inadequacy as the trigger - The diathesis stress model: predisposition, and the environment that switches it on - The serial killer who did not want attention, kept no public trophies and stayed emotionally flat - Mary Ellen O'Toole, the Bureau's expert in psychopathy, and why a woman lowered his defenses - The strategy: making a confession the path of least resistance for a man who needed to look cooperative - "I have been lying and have manipulated you. I killed them all." - The plea: remains in exchange for his life, and Judge Richard Jones handing down 48 consecutive life sentences in December 2003 Clinical terms: sexual sadism, necrophilia, paired association, psychopathy, dehumanization, moral disengagement, diathesis stress model, infantilization, depersonalization, affective flattening, fetish and control, risk assessment. This is a two-part series: Part 1, PROFILE: Gary Ridgway, The Green River Killer Part 1, is the early years and the psychology, through to the DNA match. Part 2 is the victims, the method, the investigation and the confession. Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes. 🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

Gary Ridgway confessed to 71 murders and Ted Bundy is still the household name. Why does almost nobody know the Green River Killer? ⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of murder, child sexual abuse and violence against a child. Listener discretion is advised. Gary Leon Ridgway, the Green River Killer, hunted the Seattle area of Washington State for nearly two decades and was convicted of 49 murders, more than Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy or Jeffrey Dahmer. He was a husband, a father, a churchgoer and a dependable employee, and that is exactly why police questioned him and let him go. Therapists Shannon and Cathy take Part 1 as the psychological build: where the sexual sadism came from, and why the most ordinary life in the catalogue was the thing that hid it. In this episode: - Why the most prolific serial killer in American history is the least discussed, and what the victim pool had to do with it - Sex workers and runaways, and who gets looked for when they disappear - Convicted of 49, confessed to 71. Bundy around 30, John Wayne Gacy around 33, Jeffrey Dahmer around 17 - Ridgway against Dennis Rader, Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, cool and calm against anxious and histrionic - Born February 18, 1949, in Salt Lake City, Utah, the second of three sons - His parents Thomas Ridgway, a bus driver, and Mary Rita Steinman, described as domineering and volatile - The family's 1960 move to SeaTac, Washington, and two grades held back - Bedwetting into his early teens as a trauma symptom, and what he alleged his mother did - The six-year-old boy he stabbed in the mid 1960s, who survived - Three marriages: Claudia Kraig Barrows, 1970 to 1972; Marcia Lorene Brown, 1973 to 1981; Judith Lorraine Lynch from 1988 until his 2001 arrest - The 1980 arrest for choking a woman that produced no charges, and the 1982 solicitation arrest - Wendy Lee Coffield, 16, last seen July 8, 1982, found in the Green River at the Meeker Street Bridge in Kent, Washington - Strangulation with the victim's own clothing as a signature - The dump sites: woods near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, shallow stretches of the Green River, empty lots, construction zones, and why he returned to them - Bodies in clusters, ligatures and knots, and objects left at the scenes - Seattle, the war on drugs, Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted - Fragmented jurisdictions that would not share evidence, the same obstacle as the Richard Ramirez case - How he passed a polygraph, and 2001, when STR DNA testing finally matched him - King County detective Dave Reichert, and FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole Clinical terms: sexual sadism, paired association, psychosexual development, psychopathy versus sociopathy, characterological versus mental illness, shame and humiliation as offender triggers, risk assessment, masking, compartmentalization, narcissism. This is a two-part series: Part 1, PROFILE: Gary Ridgway, The Green River Killer Part 1, is the psychology and the early years, through to the DNA match. Part 2 goes into his pathology, the investigation and the confessions, including FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole, who got him to admit to 49 murders. Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes. 🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

Why are people so spectacularly bad at being people? Shannon and Cathy take a break from profiling serial killers to profile something arguably more baffling — the sheer, staggering stupidity of ordinary human behavior. From dumb criminals to absurd laws still on the books, this episode is pure chaos with a psychological twist. Because even ridiculous behavior tells you something about the human mind. And some of it is genuinely unhinged. Until then... Sleep safe. 😴 🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound. 📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

What do a centuries-old vampire, a polio-era nightmare and a monster's bride have in common? Shannon and Cathy have opinions. Shrink Chat is where two psychologists get gloriously off-script. This episode Shannon and Cathy dig into their latest horror movie, series and book reviews, including Dracula, Iron Lung and The Bride, plus trivia, highlight games and the general jackassery you come here for. No serial killers this week. Just horror, laughs and two PhDs with too many feelings about monsters. Until then... sleep safe. 😴 🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound. 📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising