Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours

Send us Fan Mail The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is widely regarded as one of the most influential horror films ever made. Over the past fifty years, it has grown into a sprawling franchise of sequels, remakes, prequels, and reboots that have continually reimagined Leatherface, his family, and the rural landscape they inhabit. But what does this franchise actually tell us about rural America,...

Send us Fan Mail The Wicker Man (1973) is widely regarded as one of the greatest folk horror films ever made. Although set on a fictional Scottish island, its themes profoundly influenced American depictions of rural crime, isolated communities, and alternative systems of justice, culminating in the 2006 American remake. But what does The Wicker Man actually tell us about crime, authority, belief,...

Send us Fan Mail Deliverance (1972) is a film that for generations has shaped how Americans imagine rural danger. For many viewers, the film is remembered for its famous dueling banjos sequence and its brutal sexual assault scene. But what does Deliverance actually tell us about crime, justice, fear, and rural America? In this episode of Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours, host Kevin Buckler exp...

Send us Fan Mail For generations, "Mayberry" has served as shorthand for a simpler, safer, and more orderly America. But what does The Andy Griffith Show actually tell us about crime and justice? In this episode of Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours, host Kevin Buckler explores one of the most influential portrayals of rural America in television history. Using the classic episode &quo...

Send us Fan Mail American Crime Landscapes is a series exploring how popular culture imagines crime, justice, deviance, and social control through place. Across novels, films, television, music, and other cultural artifacts, the series examines how urban, suburban, and rural settings become more than locations. They become symbols, myths, and cultural narratives that shape how we understand danger...

Send us Fan Mail This is the introductory episode of a new series of Crime and Pop Culture Office Hours. The series is called "American Crime Landscapes." It begins with a simple question: What do we really mean when we say urban, suburban, and rural? In this introductory episode, the host Kevin Buckler explores how popular culture teaches us to think about crime, justice, danger, and be...

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours examines the rise and impact of the juvenile “super-predator” myth through two influential 1990s articles by John DiIulio. Using these texts as cultural artifacts, the episode explores how academic claims, media amplification, and political rhetoric converged to construct a racialized narrative linking youth, crime, and Blacknes...

Send us Fan Mail Black Christmas (1974) is more than an early slasher film. It is a reflection of 1970s cultural anxiety. Set in a sorority house during the holidays, the film follows a group of young women stalked by an unseen killer whose threatening phone calls originate from inside the home. Through its use of point-of-view shots, fragmented voices, and domestic invasion, the film helped estab...

Send us Fan Mail In this final episode of our four-part series on the Houston serial-killer panic of 2025, we look beyond the rumors in the bayou to examine the deeper forces shaping the city’s fear. We unpack why “targeted” violence still feels threatening in urban space, how clearance rates and investigative delays cloud public understanding, and why trust in institutions fractures when answers...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, death investigations expert Elizabeth Gilmore takes us inside the medical examiner’s office to explain how cause and manner of death are determined—a process that is far more complex and far more critical than most people realize. She breaks down the five official manners of death, what each classification really means, and how those determinations shape everythin...

Send us Fan Mail This is the second episode in our four-part series on the Houston serial killer panic of 2025. This episode takes a closer look at how we think—and often misthink—about serial murder. I sit down with two criminologists who bring both clarity and nuance to a topic that’s usually buried under myth and media hype. First, Krista Gehring joins me to unpack the cultural narratives we’ve...

Send us Fan Mail This is the first episode of a four-part series on the Houston serial killer panic of 2025. This installment traces the panic’s deeper lineage, following its evolution from the serial killer anxieties of the 1970s and 1980s through the rise of true crime culture and into the social media era, where fear can rapidly intensify into full-blown frenzy.

Send us Fan Mail This inaugural episode of Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours introduces the podcast concept and purpose. Crime and popular culture artifacts become cultural rituals that shape our fears, values, and sense of social order. Using Videodrome's (1983) iconic “The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye” moment as a starting point, it breaks down why popular cultu...