Terror Talk: True Crime, Serial Killers and Horror

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 apartm...

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&...

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...

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 m...

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, v...

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...

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...

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...

Who gets called a psychopath and who just refused to perform grief the right way? Part 4 of Shannon and Cathy's decade-by-decade Female Psychopath Series lands in the 2010s; a decade that gave us some of the most psychologically complex and culturally fascinating dangerous women in both true crime history and popular culture. This episode covers: True crime: Jodi Arias — the courtroom theatric...

In Part 1 we followed the investigation. Now Shannon and Cathy go somewhere far more unsettling, inside Gary Ridgway's head. What does it actually take to live a double life for nearly two decades? To hold down a job, get married, attend church, and kill without remorse? In Part 2, our two therapists unpack the psychological machinery behind one of the most prolific serial killers in American...

How does a predator this prolific go undetected for so long? He held the same job for 30 years, married three times, and attended church on Sundays. Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, was hiding in plain sight for nearly two decades while methodically strangling scores of women across King County, Washington. In Part 1 of this two-part true crime deep dive, therapists Shannon and Cathy apply th...

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 m...

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 her...

Who gets called a psychopath — and who just failed to cry the right way at the right time? Part 3 of Shannon and Cathy's decade-by-decade Female Psychopath Series lands in the 2000s — a decade obsessed with dangerous women, media trials, and the question of what female violence is actually supposed to look like. This episode covers: True crime: Casey Anthony — the trial that divided a nation a...

What does it actually take to make a horror film fail? Not just bore you, but actively betray everything the genre promises? Two licensed therapists who have spent years analyzing the psychology of fear, dread, and what makes horror work turned their clinical lens on the worst rated horror films of 2025. The result is Titties & Tonic, Terror Talk's annual autopsy of the year's most spe...

What made horror worth watching in 2025? Two therapists with strong opinions, honest reactions, and no patience for hype without substance have your year-end guide. This is Terror Talk's annual Best of Horror episode - a curated, spoiler-free breakdown of the movies, series, and surprises that defined horror in 2025, with the clinical lens and dark humor you come here for. This episode covers:...

How did anyone think this was a good idea? Every year the true crime world delivers darkness, tragedy, and genuine horror. And then there are the other cases the ones that make you stop mid-sentence, turn to the person next to you, and say: what. the. hell. This is Terror Talk's annual roundup of the most ridiculous, unbelievable, and spectacularly misguided criminal behavior of 2025. All new...

⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of violence, murder, abuse, and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. What does it do to a person to discover their father is a serial killer? What happens when a documentary gets a case catastrophically wrong? And what does the comments section look like when people review true crime docs with one star? Shannon and Cathy dive deep in...

Welcome back to Shrink Chat , where two therapists break down horror, TV, books, and the wonderfully bizarre corners of pop culture—one laugh, one eyeball twitch, and one One-Star Review at a time. In this episode, we’re diving into a massive wave of new and upcoming horror releases across film, TV, and documentary storytelling. From rebooted classics to brand-new nightmare fuel, we’re reviewing e...

In this episode of Terror Talk Podcast , Shannon and Cathy unpack the Amanda Knox Netflix documentary through the lens of criminal psychology, media influence, and cultural bias . We’re not lawyers or investigators — just two mental health professionals exploring human behavior and how it’s portrayed in the media. We discuss: Amanda Knox’s behavioral patterns and emotional responses as seen in the...

In this special interview episode of Terror Talk – True Crime • Serial Killers • Horror Movies , we sit down with one of the most influential figures in modern forensic psychology: Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess , trauma researcher, pioneer of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit, expert witness, and author of the new book Expert Witness . This conversation is aimed at listeners who want more than true crime...

Welcome back to Shrink Chat , where horror, humor, and psychology collide! In this episode of Terror Talk Podcast , Shannon and Cathy dive headfirst into the latest in horror and true crime-inspired media — with their signature mix of sharp insight and dark humor. 🎬 This Week’s Reviews: We’re unpacking the brand-new I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) , the chilling thriller The Woman in Cabin...

What does a psychopath look like when she's standing right next to you — and you never see it coming? Part 2 of Shannon and Cathy's decade-by-decade Female Psychopath Series lands in the 1990s — a decade that turned the femme fatale into both a cultural warning and a horror icon, and gave us some of the most chilling real cases in the history of female violence. This episode covers: True c...

In this episode of Terror Talk – Killer Minds and Creepy Stuff, hosts Shannon and Cathy ask the big question: Is the Devil still scary? From The Devil’s Advocate to The Witcher and beyond, we explore how modern horror and pop culture have reimagined Satan — not just as a monster, but as a mirror of human fear, power, and faith. Join us as we discuss the remnants of Satanic Panic and unpack why bel...

In this Unsolved Crimes episode of Terror Talk – Killer Minds and Creepy Stuff , Shannon and Cathy dig into three of America’s most haunting unsolved mysteries. From Hollywood’s glittering shores to 19th-century New York and the shadowed aisles of 1980s Chicago, these cases reveal how beauty, mystery, and tragedy intertwine. We begin with the death of Natalie Wood , whose drowning off the coast of...