Category
Crime, courts & justice
True crime, courtroom drama, and the systems behind both. The cases and their consequences.
In this category
The CSI effect: how crime TV reshaped real courtrooms
Decades of forensic dramas have changed what juries expect from evidence and how prosecutors and defense attorneys argue their cases — an unintended consequence of entertainment on real verdicts.
12 min
Criminal profiling: the science and the myth
How the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit built the idea of profiling serial offenders, what the research actually supports, and how popular culture inflated it into something far more certain than it is.
12 min
The Nuremberg trials and the invention of crimes against humanity
After World War II, the world faced an unprecedented question: how do you put a regime on trial? Trace how Nuremberg built the legal machinery for prosecuting atrocity and shaped international law ever since.
12 min
Algorithmic sentencing and the bias in the code
Courts increasingly use risk-assessment software to inform bail, sentencing, and parole. Explore how these tools work, the evidence of built-in bias, and the debate over letting algorithms shape justice.
12 min
Plea bargaining and the trial that almost never happens
An exploration of how the American criminal justice system transitioned from a trial-based model to a plea-negotiation machine, and the resulting 'trial penalty' that shapes modern justice.
12 min
Forensic junk science and the innocent people it convicted
Bite-mark analysis, hair comparison, and other techniques were treated as hard evidence for decades before being exposed as unreliable — how flawed forensics sent people to prison, and the ongoing reckoning.
12 min
Miranda v. Arizona and the right to remain silent
How a single Supreme Court case gave rise to the warning every TV cop recites, what rights it actually protects, and the long fight over whether it helps or hinders justice.
12 min
How DNA exonerations proved eyewitnesses are often wrong
The wave of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence exposed how unreliable eyewitness memory can be, and why the courtroom's most trusted testimony is frequently mistaken.
12 min
About Crime, courts & justice
True crime with the system attached. The stream covers the forensic junk science that convicted innocent people, how DNA exonerations exposed eyewitness memory, the forensic genealogy that caught the Golden State Killer, algorithmic sentencing, and the plea-bargain machine that made trials rare. Cases and their consequences — what the verdict changed, not just whodunit.
Fylom episodes are researched and written by AI. Automated checks help catch inaccuracies, but episodes aren't reviewed by a human and AI can still get things wrong. Treat them as a starting point, not a source of record — more in our accuracy disclaimer.