Advertise on podcast: Forensic Psychology

Courts have long allowed detectives to use certain deceptive tactics during interrogations — falsely claiming an accomplice confessed, or that evidence exists when it doesn't — but that doesn't mean anything goes. This episode examines the Supreme Court case Frazier v. Cupp and the voluntariness rule, the legal standard used to separate acceptable psychological pressure from coercion that produces an unreliable confession. We explore how deception tactics interact with suggestibility, stress, and compliance in the interrogation room, and why some forms of pressure can push a confession from strategic to involuntary. It's a close look at where legally sanctioned psychological tactics end and constitutionally protected rights begin.

Can damage to the brain actually change someone’s personality enough to contribute to criminal behavior? From impaired impulse control to aggression and poor judgment, injuries to certain brain regions can dramatically alter how a person behaves. This episode explores what neuroscience can—and cannot—tell forensic psychologists about the connection between brain injury, responsibility, and crime.

When Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian security officer, fell inexplicably ill in London in 2006, doctors initially had no explanation — until forensic testing uncovered polonium-210 in his system. This episode examines how that finding reshaped the investigation, forcing forensic teams to trace radioactive contamination across an entire city while reconstructing the method behind the poisoning. We explore why standard toxicology screening missed the cause entirely, and what the case reveals about the intersection of forensic pathology, covert violence, and investigative persistence. It's a striking example of how physical evidence can expose what was designed to stay hidden.

When 19-year-old Stephen Smith was found dead on a South Carolina road in 2015, investigators initially attributed his death to a vehicle strike — a conclusion that didn't hold up over time. This episode looks at what happened when his body was exhumed eight years later, and what forensic pathologists can and can't still determine after that much time underground. We examine how the second autopsy and surrounding physical evidence forced a re-reading of the case, and what it reveals about the limits and possibilities of forensic science in cold and contested cases. It's a window into how physical evidence continues to shape — and complicate — our understanding of a death long after the fact.

Through the lens of forensic psychology, this case illustrates how pathological jealousy and an obsessive need for control can drive an intimate partner toward violent, calculated homicide. Émile Gourbin demonstrated the traits of an organized offender, weaponizing social manipulation and cognitive bias by tampering with a clock to exploit his friends' alcohol-impaired perception of time. Ultimately, his intellectualized alibi unraveled when confronted with undeniable physical proof, exposing the fatal gap between a killer’s calculated arrogance and the uncontrollable reality of his actions.

China just deployed the EngineAI T800 humanoid robot alongside SWAT officers in Shenzhen, walking real public patrols with fluid human-like motion, 5G real-time alerts, and zero fatigue – the most advanced real-world test of AI policing yet. In this episode we break down the massive pros for public safety, cost savings, and officer protection, plus a few honest cons around jobs and privacy, and how these $25K–$50K humanoids will evolve into smart-city staples by 2030. If you love cutting-edge robotics, Tesla Optimus updates, or the future of law enforcement tech, hit play and subscribe for more high-CPM AI breakthroughs.

The NFL’s billion-dollar concussion settlement was designed to compensate former players suffering from the devastating neurological consequences of a career in professional football — but a bombshell report reveals that five law firms systematically exploited that system through an organized scheme of fraudulent diagnoses. Special masters appointed by a federal court found that attorneys steered clients to unapproved doctors willing to hand out Parkinson’s disease diagnoses regardless of symptoms, funneling over $95 million in fraudulent claims through the fund before an audit shut it down. Today we unpack what this scandal reveals about the psychology of institutional betrayal, the vulnerability of injured athletes, and what happens when the people trusted to protect you become the threat.

Jana Monroe, the first female FBI agent in the Behavioral Science Unit, spent her career applying crime-scene analysis and victimology to roughly 850 homicide cases — work she describes as systematic suspect-pool reduction, not psychic access to a killer's inner life. This episode unpacks that distinction and why it matters, since decades of television have trained the public to expect a kind of certainty profiling was never designed to deliver. It's a grounded look at the actual methodology behind forensic behavioral analysis, straight from someone who built a career practicing it.

On May 20, 2012, a gang fight inside a privately run Mississippi prison exploded into a multi-hour riot that left the facility in chaos. Twenty-four-year-old Senior Correctional Officer Catlin Carithers, called in on his day off, was cornered and beaten to death on the roof after inmates used food carts as a makeshift ladder to reach him. This episode walks through how the riot escalated, what happened to Carithers, and how prosecutors later held accountable the men who took part in the attack and destroyed evidence in its wake.

In part two of their look at vigilantism, Carlos and retired FBI profiler Andrew Bringuel dig into what actually motivates someone to bypass the justice system and act on their own. Using the PEPS model — personal, economic, power/political, and social motives — they break down real cases, including the Bernhard Goetz shooting, to separate the myth of the vigilante from the psychology behind it. The conversation also turns practical, weighing what "good" versus destructive vigilante behavior looks like when communities feel the system has failed them.

The legend goes that gangster "Machine Gun" Kelly coined the term "G-Men" when he begged federal agents not to shoot during his 1933 arrest — but the real story is a lesson in institutional myth-making. This episode traces how J. Edgar Hoover's Bureau and a cooperative press turned a routine capture into a branding coup months after the fact. It's a case study in how authority, narrative control, and media complicity combine to shape public memory long before anyone had a Twitter account.

A billionaire’s son gets caught in a trailer park sting. The league says it is reviewing the matter. This is what happens when the story a man tells himself finally meets the version everyone else can see. Every case has a moment before the moment. A man sits in an SUV at a mobile home park in East Palestine, Ohio, waiting for something he told himself was one thing while some other part of him knew it was another. That is where this story starts, not with the arrest, but with the choice that made the arrest inevitable.

Nine years after Belgium, in the English countryside, a military-trained parachute instructor jumped from four thousand feet with both her main and reserve chutes disabled — and lived. Behind it sat a husband, a life insurance policy, and a marriage already in freefall long before she was. This part covers the near-impossible survival, the motive, and what two cases a decade apart reveal about this method of killing.

In 2006, an experienced Belgian skydiver stepped out of a plane and discovered mid-air that neither of her parachutes would open. What looked at first like an unthinkable equipment failure turned out to be something far colder — a killing engineered days in advance by someone who never had to be in the room. This part covers the jump, the investigation, and the rival who built a death out of patience.