True Crime: Why Are We So Drawn to the Dark? | Emily Paulsen & Jen Schaffer
There’s something about true crime that pulls us in. The tension, the mystery, the attempt to piece together what went wrong. I’ve felt that pull myself, the quiet compulsion to keep listening, even when the story feels too heavy. When I spoke with Jen Schaffer, host of Crude Acts, I wanted to understand why. Why do so many of us, especially women, gravitate toward stories of danger and darkness? What does that curiosity give us, or reveal about us?
Jen’s relationship with these stories began long before the genre existed as entertainment. Her father was a homicide detective, and the cases he worked on weren’t distant headlines, they were the background of her everyday life. She told me how she’d sit watching the news as a child and suddenly realize she recognized the name or the town. The work that defined her father’s days slowly became a thread in her imagination, something she would return to years later with a researcher’s patience and a writer’s attention.
The Stories That Stay Unsolved
Jen spends months, sometimes years, tracing the threads of old cases. She reads court records, interviews families, revisits archives that most people stopped opening decades ago. There’s something in that process that feels almost meditative. Each document she studies, each silence she sits with, seems to hold another question waiting underneath. Listening to her describe it, I could sense how her work lives in the space between what’s known and what’s still missing.
As she spoke, I started thinking about how rarely we allow uncertainty to linger. We want resolution, proof, a name, a confession. But the real stories, about people, power, fear, rarely end that way. Jen’s research reminded me that there’s something valuable in staying close to what isn’t finished. That patience, that willingness to stay with what resists closure, feels like its own form of understanding.
What struck me most was the respect built into her attention. Every fact she checks, every silence she holds, carries weight. There’s no rush to fill the space, only an awareness that stories like these hold real grief. Her work reminded me how presence itself can be a form of care, the kind that doesn’t fix, but honors.
When Curiosity Meets Fear
We also talked about who listens to true crime and why. Women make up the majority of the audience, even though we’re far more likely to be the victims in the stories being told. Jen and I explored that paradox. Why do we keep returning to something that mirrors our worst fears?
Maybe it’s not fascination with violence at all. Maybe it’s something closer to vigilance, a way to study patterns, to recognize danger before it appears at our door. When Jen said, “I want to know my monster,” the sentence landed quietly. It felt like a kind of recognition, a way of naming what most of us sense but rarely articulate. To know is to look directly, even when the looking feels uneasy.
After our conversation, I kept thinking about how curiosity can coexist with fear. How one doesn’t cancel the other. Sometimes the act of learning, of refusing to look away, is what steadies us. It’s the difference between fear running through us and fear moving with us.
That reflection also made me wonder what stories I turn to when I want to understand the world. Which ones I avoid. And what both choices might say about me. Curiosity can be a mirror that doesn’t flatter, but it always reveals.
Curious About Why We’re Drawn to True Crime? Start Here.
If this episode stirred something in you, here are a few ways to explore it more intentionally:
Pay attention to your reactions. Notice what emotions come up when you listen to true crime, fear, empathy, fascination, and what each one might be trying to tell you.
Look for patterns. How do the stories that hold your attention reflect what you care about or fear most?
Question the framing. When you hear a story told in a certain tone, sympathetic, sensational, detached, what does that tone shape in you as a listener?
Take a break. If you find yourself saturated, step away and see what lingers. What questions still follow you?
Stay human. Remember that these stories are about people, real lives, real communities, real consequences. Let that awareness guide your curiosity.
Let’s Stay Curious Together
Talking with Jen reminded me that curiosity has many faces. It can look like fascination, empathy, even self-protection. It can draw us closer to what we fear, not to glorify it, but to understand it. That kind of attention takes time, and a willingness to sit with what doesn’t resolve neatly.
You can listen to the full episode of Curious Life of a Childfree Woman wherever you get your podcasts.
I’d love to know what this brings up for you, share your reflections with me on Instagram @curiouslifeofachildfreewoman.
Let’s stay curious together.
