The true-crime industry is booming. But there’s a cost to repackaging tragedy as entertainment.

How big is true crime?
It’s a nationwide obsession. According to a recent study by Edison Research, some 230 million Americans, or about 67% of the population, consume true-crime content: documentaries, podcasts, YouTube videos, and books that delve into real-life murders, scams, and scandals. The genre’s popularity can be seen in last year’s top-5 most-watched documentary TV shows on Netflix. Four had a true-crime theme and the No. 1 series, American Murder: Gabby Petito, had more than 60 million views. On podcast charts, series such as Crime Junkie and the audio version of NBC’s Dateline routinely sit among the most downloaded shows. This demand for crime-related content has led media giants to heap cash on top producers: In 2022, Amazon paid more than $100 million for exclusive distribution rights to the hit podcast My Favorite Murder. For the loved ones of some of the victims covered in the shows, it’s traumatizing to see their real-life pain replayed for profit and entertainment. “I’m so tired of murder victims being used as cash cows,” said Charlie Shunick, whose 21-year-old sister Mickey was kidnapped and murdered in Lafayette, La., in 2012. 

How did the genre become so popular?
True-crime stories have long been a subject of public fascination, from the penny dreadfuls of Victorian England to the murderheavy newsmagazine shows launched in the 1980s and ’90s, such as Dateline and CBS’s 48 Hours. But it was an NPR podcast, Serial, that ushered in the modern true-crime craze. For the first season in 2014, host Sarah Koenig delved into the 1999 murder of Baltimore high schooler Hae Min Lee, finding weaknesses in the case that led to the conviction of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed. He was freed in 2022. That Serial season was downloaded more than 300 million times, and its success spawned thousands of copycats and a vast community of true-crime fans. “Everybody loves a whodunnit,” explains criminologist Scott Bonn.

Who are true crime’s biggest fans? 
They tend to be white and female. Women make up 62% of listeners to true-crime podcasts and an oversize share of truecrime TV watchers. Some social scientists say women may be drawn to the genre because, in an often violently misogynist society, they want to pick up on survival skills. “If you are more fearful, you are more interested in knowing more about how these situations can occur,” said psychologist Dean Fido. Others say it’s simple human nature to be fascinated with taboo subjects like murder and rape—just as it’s natural to rubberneck at a car crash. But critics argue that true crime gives Americans a misleading picture of real crime. Serial killers, a favorite of the genre, are exceptionally rare. And true-crime creators disproportionately focus on white female victims such as Petito, 22. Her 2021 murder in Wyoming Bridger– Teton National Forest received extensive media coverage, unlike the more than 700 Indigenous women who had disappeared in the park over the previous decade.

What happens when a crime is spotlighted? 
Sometimes, coverage results in a breakthrough. The case of 19-year-old Kristin Smart, who was murdered in her California Polytechnic State University dorm room in 1996, went cold until 2019 when Christopher Lambert, then a Cal Poly student, started a podcast, Your Own Backyard. Listeners sent in tips, and in 2022 former Cal Poly student Paul Flores was convicted of Smart’s murder. True crime can also reveal miscarriages of justice: Investigative podcast In the Dark helped free Curtis Flowers, a Black man from Mississippi who faced execution after being tried six times for the same crime. But critics say those shows are outliers, and that most of the genre is pure exploitation. Family members of the 17 young men murdered by Jeffrey Dahmer were outraged by Netflix’s hit Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, saying the streamer not only failed to consult them but also glamorized the serial killer. “We’re all one traumatic event away from the worst day of your life being reduced to your neighbor’s favorite binge show,” said Eric Perry, a cousin of Dahmer victim Errol Lindsey. 

Are there other problems with the genre?
Independent sleuths can interfere with active investigations. After the suspected February kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today co-host Savannah Guthrie, hordes of true crime livestreamers set up camp outside Nancy’s Tucson home. Police had to deploy extra patrols to manage the vloggers, one of whom had a pizza delivered to the crime scene. Those streamers typically don’t adhere to the journalistic standards of mainstream reporters. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos had to publicly refute allegations made by some streamers that members of Guthrie’s family were involved in Nancy’s disappearance, calling the claims “wrong” and “cruel.” Meanwhile, some psychologists warn that hardcore fans can become desensitized to violence. My Favorite Murder listeners, who call themselves “Murderinos,” can buy T-shirts featuring the hosts’ catchphrases, including “Stay sexy. Don’t get murdered.”

Can such shows keep our attention? 
There are some signs the industry is stagnating. While true-crime podcasts today account for 15% of all new podcasts released, that share is down 20% from 2022, according to industry journalist Frank Racioppi. And today’s most-listened-to truecrime podcasts are largely the same ones as those four years ago. But few experts think our fascination with true crime will fade anytime soon, because it runs so deep. Dr. Michael Mantell, former chief psychologist for the San Diego Police Department, notes that prehistoric humans painted “true crime” images of people killing one another on cave walls. “This is not something that’s new,” he said. “It didn’t start with Ted Bundy. This began 30,000 years ago.”

“Strange as it sounds, it’s uplifting to visit Ukraine these days,” said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. That’s because “the good guys are winning—or at least holding their own.” Ukrainian troops pushed back a ferocious Russian offensive last fall, and their cities survived a frigid winter despite a Russian blitz on energy infrastructure. Now it’s spring, the power is still on, a $106 billion loan from the EU has been approved, and Ukraine is outpacing Russia despite being outgunned. The country’s military said it killed or wounded some 35,000 Russian troops in March, the highest monthly toll of a four-year war in which Russia has suffered more than 1.2 million casualties. That battlefield success has been powered by Ukraine’s homegrown drone industry. Its drones account for about 90% of all Russian casualties and are hitting targets deep behind enemy lines, including oil export facilities near St. Petersburg. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin “is facing a spring of discontent,” said Nathan Hodge in CNN.com. Ordinary Russians are frustrated with the sanctions-battered economy, “rolling digital blackouts” intended to curb dissent, and the war’s rising death toll.

Kyiv has achieved all this without President Trump, said Phillips Payson O’Brien in The Atlantic. For more than a year, Ukrainian officials held out hopes they could win him over, even after Trump publicly berated President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House, repeatedly lavished praise on Putin, restricted military aid—first out of spite, then out of a need for weapons to strike Iran—and tilted peace negotiations in favor of the Russian invaders. “But now Kyiv appears to have given up on the U.S.” It is striking new diplomatic and military partnerships, sharing its hardwon expertise in drone warfare with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf nations targeted by Iran, and with European nations threatened by Russia. “Writing the U.S. off as a friend might once have been a sign of doom for Ukraine. It isn’t anymore.”

Other American allies are following Kyiv’s example, said David French in The New York Times. In Europe and Canada, governments are racing to achieve greater military and financial independence from the U.S. They have woken up to the dangers of relying on a superpower protector whose leader has slammed them with sanctions, toyed with leaving NATO, and threatened to annex their territory. America may still be the world’s most powerful nation. But “the moral and strategic heart of the defense of liberal democracy” no longer beats in Washington. “It’s in Kyiv.” 

Charlize Theron was shaped by brutality, said Lulu Garcia-Navarro in The New York Times Magazine. Growing up in South Africa in the 1980s, “you couldn’t avoid violence and turmoil,” says the actress, 50. Her hometown saw violent uprisings against apartheid and vicious state repression. “I saw things I shouldn’t have seen at a very young age. I saw a man burn inside a car on the side of the road.” Violence permeated her own home. Her father was a “full-blown drunk,” and a “scary” one. “He didn’t hit me, but there was a lot of verbal abuse, a lot of threatening language that just became normal.” Her mother spent years thinking about ways to extricate herself and Charlize. Then, when Theron was 15, her father tore into the driveway after a drinking session and “I just knew something bad was going to happen.” Theron and her mom tried to barricade the front door, but he began shooting through it, “making it very clear that he was going to kill us.” When he gained entry, Theron’s mother pulled her own gun and shot him dead. “The next morning she sent me to school. She was just like, We’re going to move on. Not necessarily the healthiest thing, but it worked for us.” Now a campaigner against domestic violence, Theron says “these things should be talked about because it makes other people not feel alone. I’m not haunted by this stuff anymore.”