When I started podcasting in 2008, the true crime space looked completely different. There were a handful of shows, mostly covering cold cases and historical mysteries. Today there are thousands, and the race to cover breaking news has fundamentally changed what "true crime podcast" means.
At Myths & Malice, we made a deliberate choice to stay focused on historical cases. Not because modern cases aren't important, but because historical distance gives us something invaluable: perspective.
Distance Allows Accuracy
When you cover a case from last week, you're working with incomplete information. Evidence hasn't been fully processed. Witnesses change their stories. Charges get amended. What seems certain on Monday looks different by Friday.
Historical cases give us the full picture. Court records are complete. Appeals have been decided. We can trace the impact a case had on law, society, and the community. That context makes for better storytelling and more responsible journalism.
Forgotten Stories Deserve Telling
Every town in America has stories that have been buried by time. Crimes that were front-page news for months, then forgotten within a generation. On Hometown History, we've covered hundreds of these stories — industrial disasters, unsolved murders, scandals that shaped communities in ways people still feel today but can't explain.
On Foul Play, Wendy and I investigate cases that go back centuries. Victorian poisoning rings. Edwardian murder trials. Cases where the forensic science of the era was barely more than guesswork, and justice was far from guaranteed.
We Don't Compete with the News
There's a pressure in true crime podcasting to cover the latest case before anyone else. That race leads to speculation, errors, and coverage that can genuinely harm ongoing investigations. By focusing on historical cases, we remove that pressure entirely.
Our episodes take weeks to research and produce. We verify facts across multiple primary sources. We consult historical records, court documents, and newspaper archives. That process doesn't work on a 48-hour turnaround.
History Repeats
The most striking thing about researching historical crime is how familiar the patterns feel. The motivations haven't changed. The systemic failures that let crimes go unpunished — corruption, institutional bias, resource gaps — are the same ones we read about today.
Understanding where those patterns came from is the first step toward breaking them. That's why we do what we do.