FEMALE PSYCHOPATH: Lizzie Borden, Monster & the Myth of Female Rage

How did Lizzie Borden walk out of court a free woman, and why are we still arguing about it more than 130 years later?⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of murder, graphic violence, and speculation about sexual abuse. Listener discretion is advised.On August 4, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were killed with a hatchet in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Their daughter Lizzie was tried and acquitted. Now Ryan Murphy's Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story has brought the case back, alongside Countess Elizabeth Báthory and Aileen Wuornos.Therapists Shannon and Cathy separate the record from the myth and ask how ideas about women shaped the verdict, the nursery rhyme and the Netflix series.CHAPTERS:0:00 More than 130 years of Lizzie Borden0:42 Just watched Monster? Here's what happened1:13 Cara Robertson's The Trial of Lizzie Borden3:06 The rhyme versus the record4:46 Why Ryan Murphy's version works6:12 The acquittal, and why she stayed in Fall River8:29 "How could the deed be done by a woman?" Anchoring bias12:21 Andrew Borden14:23 Abby Durfee Gray Borden17:57 Father, daughter, stepmother: the real relationships19:46 Lizzie and Bridget Sullivan21:23 Countess Elizabeth Báthory24:13 Aileen Wuornos25:13 Axey Facts with Cath26:36 What we know about Lizzie's psychology30:48 The series and its cast35:08 Parricide and women who kill36:09 How fictional is Monster?38:10 Nineteen blows and ten: reading the overkill40:19 "Nothing new to say about female rage"42:31 Axey Facts answersIN THIS EPISODE:• Cara Robertson's The Trial of Lizzie Borden and Edmund Pearson on a case "without parallel"• Abby took 18 to 19 blows and Andrew 10 to 11, not 40 and 41• The handleless hatchet, the burned blue dress and Andrew's locked doors• Maplecroft, animal welfare and 34 years in Fall River after the verdict• Bridget Sullivan, and why there's no evidence of a romance or an accomplice• The 2018 film Lizzie and the origins of the affair theory• Nance O'Neil, the actress Lizzie befriended after the trial• The Báthory blood bath legend, first recorded a century after her death• Ella Beatty, Charlie Hunnam, Rebecca Hall, Billie Lourd, Vicky Krieps, Jessica Barden and Sarah PaulsonCLINICAL TERMS: female psychopathy, anchoring bias, parricide, expressive and instrumental homicide, overkill, reactive and predatory violence, dissociation, emotional numbing, compartmentalization, grief, HCR-20 risk assessmentCORRECTIONS:• The jury deliberated about 90 minutes, not 40.• When Abby was killed, Bridget Sullivan was outside washing windows. She went up to rest in her attic room after Andrew came home, before his murder.• Monster was created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, not Brad Falchuk.SOURCES: Robertson, C. (2019) The Trial of Lizzie Borden · Pearson, E. L. (1937) Trial of Lizzie Borden · Netflix (2026) Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story · Famous Trials (UMKC) Borden chronology. Full APA list on Patreon.Where it all started: our first take on the case, from Season 1, newly remastered.PROFILE: Lizzie Borden, The Fall River Axe Murders Part 1PROFILE: Lizzie Borden, The Fall River Axe Murders Part 2: The TrialTwo licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

The Conjuring universe keeps asking one question: why do we need the devil to have done it?⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of murder, the deaths of children, possession, and allegations of child sexual abuse and domestic violence. Listener discretion is advised.In 1981 in Brookfield, Connecticut, Arne Cheyenne Johnson's lawyer wanted to tell a jury the devil made him kill. Ed and Lorraine Warren were ready to back him. The judge said no, and forty years later the defense became the title of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.Therapists Shannon and Cathy put James Wan's Conjuring universe on the couch: possession as a language for trauma, the Warrens as a secure base, and why it's easier to fight a demon than face what's inside us.CHAPTERS:0:00 The devil made me do it0:48 Why we need evil to be outside of us3:03 The Perron family and The Conjuring3:38 Enfield, the Hodgsons and The Conjuring 24:51 What a supernatural explanation gives a family8:32 Possession as a language of trauma9:53 The Nun and The Nun II12:27 Children and the failure to protect13:46 Annabelle, Annabelle Creation and Annabelle Comes Home15:25 Ed and Lorraine as a secure base19:22 Why do we believe the Warrens?21:41 The Judith Penney allegations24:10 Valak and evil that wears the face of goodness31:11 Why James Wan makes films about needing demons32:34 Malignant: the one time the monster was insideIN THIS EPISODE:• The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) and Last Rites (2025)• Annabelle (2014), Annabelle: Creation (2017), Annabelle Comes Home (2019), The Curse of La Llorona (2019), The Nun (2018) and The Nun II (2023)• Andrea Perron's account of the Perron haunting in Harrisville, Rhode Island• Janet Hodgson and Guy Lyon Playfair on the Enfield poltergeist• Arne Cheyenne Johnson and the possession defense a judge refused to hear• William Weber, the Lutzes and the Amityville "bottles of wine"• Judith Penney's 2014 sworn declaration about Ed Warren, never tested in court• The Nun's release weeks after the 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy abuseCLINICAL TERMS: externalization, possession and dissociation, therapeutic alliance, validation, Bowlby's secure base, emotional attunement, trauma response, institutional abuse, covert narcissism, protective factors, introspection, shameCORRECTIONS:• Lindsay Clancy's children were strangled, not drowned, and her defense was postpartum psychosis, not possession. Her trial ended in a mistrial in September 2026.• The denial of Judith Penney's account came from Lorraine Warren's attorney, not the Warrens' daughter and son-in-law. No criminal case was brought; the claims surfaced in 2017 through litigation over the franchise, after Ed Warren's 2006 death.SERIES: James Wan Part 2 of 2. Part 1: PROFILE: James Wan, Saw, Insidious & The Conjuring Part 1.SOURCES: People (September 1979) · federal court ruling (1979) · The Hollywood Reporter (2017) · Pennsylvania grand jury report (2018)Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

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 apartment. Cathy leads this Part 1 on the craft: how Wan builds fear like architecture.Therapists Shannon and Cathy break down why we sit down to horror wanting to be manipulated, and how Wan does it to a jaded modern audience the way a panic attack does it to the body: never the same way twice.CHAPTERS:0:00 James Wan and the architecture of fear1:18 Sundance and the Saw screening2:05 Who is James Wan?4:48 Horror like a panic attack7:15 Saw, Dead Silence, Insidious, The Conjuring and beyond10:34 Fun facts: the Splat Pack and how Billy was built14:36 Bringing back 70s torture horror, with characters you care about16:16 Haunted houses and haunted dolls18:49 Doing more with less20:11 The house as a trap23:08 Which house would you refuse to sleep in?27:30 Suspense like a blueprint28:44 Long shots, silence and The Changeling30:07 Lighting, and fearing what you can't see33:02 The geometry of a James Wan jump scare36:02 Halloween's schoolyard scene and false safety37:36 The Insidious demon reveal39:28 Lightning round42:08 Coming up in Part 2IN THIS EPISODE:- Saw (2004), Dead Silence (2007), Insidious (2010), The Conjuring (2013), Furious 7 (2015), Aquaman (2018) and Malignant (2021)- Saw II's needle pit and the reverse bear trap- Leigh Whannell, Tobin Bell, Lin Shaye and Donnie Wahlberg- The Splat Pack: Eli Roth, Rob Zombie and Alexandre Aja- The real Raggedy Ann behind Annabelle- Why Wan starts every haunting in comfort: the cinematic equivalent of love bombing- Long takes and the micro delay versus rapid cuts and the fake-out jump scare- Misdirection, negative space and the threat outside the frame- The Changeling (1980), Black Christmas (1974), Se7en (1995), Poltergeist (1982) and John Carpenter's Halloween (1978)- Which household object would haunt you in a Wan filmCLINICAL TERMS: fear response, panic attacks, panic disorder, habituation, hypervigilance, love bombing, abusive dynamics, projection, safe and sacred space, psychology of horrorSERIES: James Wan Part 1 of 2. Part 2 takes on The Conjuring universe through six psychological questions.Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

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's Zizians in the San Francisco Bay Area: a cult of two, a self-help company and a network of rationalists who believed they were the smartest people in any room.Therapists Shannon and Cathy close the Cults series by asking whether anything about modern cults is new, or whether it's the same mechanism in a new costume, and what actually protects you.CHAPTERS:0:00 The most rational people in the room0:59 Cults Part 3: same mechanism, new costume2:28 Bounded choice: why didn't they just leave?4:23 Coercive control, Biderman and a sheriff's department case10:31 Hillman's soul loss and open door moments13:55 Lori Vallow Daybell: the cult of two20:08 NXIVM and Keith Raniere29:09 The Zizians, and two corrections to Part 137:43 Why knowing about bias didn't help40:57 What changed and what didn't42:33 What actually protects youIN THIS EPISODE:- Janja Lalich's bounded choice, from inside the Democratic Workers' Party- Evan Stark's coercive control and Biderman's chart of coercion- Cathy on coercive control at a systemic level in the LA Sheriff's Department- Why cults recruit capable people at open door moments, not weak ones- Zombies, JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan, and spiritual reclassification- DOS, collateral and the brand as the point of no return- Therapy speak as moral justification, and a Teal Swan callback- Vegan anarcho-transhumanism, unihemispheric sleep and a leader with no title- Six deaths: Vallejo, Chester Heights, Vallejo again and Coventry, Vermont- Why marginalization, not identity, is the vulnerability- Keep one relationship the group does not controlCLINICAL TERMS: bounded choice, coercive control, entrapment, chart of coercion, DDD syndrome, thought reform, loaded language, doctrine over person, milieu control, commitment and consistency, moral disengagement, dehumanization, cognitive dissonance, mana personality, participation mystique, soul loss, escape from freedom, love bombingCORRECTIONS TO PART 1:- The six deaths linked to the Zizians were three in 2022 and three in 2025, not 2025 and 2026.- We've retired "undead" and "p-zombie" as descriptions of Zizian doctrine until they're better sourced.- Everyone charged in the Zizian cases is presumed innocent.SERIES: Cults Part 3 of 3. Part 1: CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians & Jonestown Part 1. Part 2: CULTS: Charles Manson, the Solar Temple & Adolfo Constanzo Part 2.Related Episodes:Season 3 Episode 9 Published Sept. 30, 2020• CULTS: Lori Vallow Daybell & Chad Daybell — The Doomsday CoupleRESOURCE: If you recognize yourself or someone you love, the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) lists therapists experienced with former members.SOURCES: Lalich (2004) Bounded Choice · Stark (2007) Coercive Control · Biderman (1957) · Farber, Harlow & West (1957) · Hillman (1975) Re-Visioning Psychology · Moore (1992) Care of the Soul · Sottile (2022) When the Moon Turns to Blood · US DOJ · The Vow (HBO) · San Francisco Chronicle. Full APA list on Patreon.Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

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-Heights, Quebec because his name made him the Antichrist, then left 53 dead across Switzerland and Canada. Cults Part 2 follows the same question through Adolfo Constanzo's Narcosatánicos in Matamoros, Mexico and Charles Manson's Family in Los Angeles.Therapists Shannon and Cathy ask what changes psychologically when the killing is the ritual, and why the victim in a ritual murder is never really the target.CHAPTERS:0:00 A baby called the Antichrist1:02 From Part 1 to ritual murder2:03 Ritual as the delivery system for moral disengagement5:04 Expressive or instrumental: where ritual murder fits11:20 Milgram, participation mystique and Hillman20:18 The Order of the Solar Temple28:30 Adolfo Constanzo and the Matamoros killings35:16 Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murders46:35 What makes ritual murder different49:34 Coming up in Part 3IN THIS EPISODE:- Three ways ritual moves agency, turns a victim into a symbol and dissolves the self into the group- Milgram's obedience variations: 65%, 92.5% when someone else throws the switch, 10% when two peers refuse- Gina Perry's archive work and Haslam and Reicher's identification reading- Jung's participation mystique, from stadiums to robes in a circle- The Solar Temple: Cheiry, Salvan, the cosmic child and 74 dead by 1997- Constanzo, Sara Aldrete, Mark Kilroy and the checkpoint that broke the case- Palo Mayombe as a legitimate Afro-Cuban tradition Constanzo distorted- Why Manson was not at Cielo Drive, and why that matters- The Stanford Prison Experiment and what survives the critiques- PIG on the door: dehumanization that happened in language weeks beforeCLINICAL TERMS: ritual murder, moral disengagement, displacement and diffusion of responsibility, dehumanization, expressive and instrumental homicide, obedience to authority, participation mystique, soul loss, thought reform, social proof, cognitive dissonance, mana personality, self-dissolution, situational evilCORRECTIONS:- Luc Jouret was the Solar Temple's co-founder and public face, not Emmanuelle's mother. Her mother was Dominique Bellaton.- The Solar Temple member was the mayor of Richelieu, Quebec, not the mayor of Quebec.- Le Texier's critique of the Stanford Prison Experiment ran in American Psychologist in 2019, not 2007.- Bugliosi and Gentry's Helter Skelter (1974) is nonfiction, not a novel.SERIES: Cults Part 2 of 3. Part 1: CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians & Jonestown Part 1. Part 3: a brand burned into a woman's skin, a mother who decided her children were zombies, and the full story of the Zizians.SOURCES: Milgram (1974) Obedience to Authority · Perry (2012) Behind the Shock Machine · Haslam & Reicher (2012) PLoS Biology · Salfati (2000) Homicide Studies · Le Texier (2019) American Psychologist · Reicher & Haslam (2006) British Journal of Social Psychology · Zimbardo (2007) The Lucifer Effect · Bugliosi & Gentry (1974) Helter Skelter. Full APA list on Patreon.Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

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 mean to call someone a psychopath, and what does it feel like to be in a relationship with one?This is not a diagnostic checklist for your partner. It is a map of a pattern, from the inside.IN THIS EPISODE:- Why psychopathy is not a DSM diagnosis, and what antisocial personality disorder actually covers- Robert Hare and the PCL-R, the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised- Factor 1, the interpersonal and affective traits: glibness, charm, grandiosity, shallow affect, no remorse- Factor 2, the antisocial lifestyle traits: need for stimulation, impulsivity, irresponsibility, early behavioral patterns- Prevalence: under 1% of the general population, roughly 25% of incarcerated populations- Subclinical or "successful" psychopathy, and Snakes in Suits by Paul Babiak and Robert Hare- Why corporate, legal, political and even mental health environments show elevated rates- The honeymoon phase: love bombing, mirroring and future faking- Why mirroring works, and why it is a performance rather than recognition- The shift: devaluation, intermittent reinforcement, gaslighting and isolation- The slot machine effect, and why unpredictable reward builds anxious attachment- What gaslighting actually is, and how "you should get some therapy" gets weaponized- Why an outsider can see it and the person inside cannot- Trauma bonding as a neurobiological response, not a weakness- Why couples therapy is contraindicated, and what to ask a couple's therapist before you start- Safety planning, and why leaving is the most dangerous period even without physical violence- Trauma informed care, somatic approaches, trauma focused CBT and EMDR- Karin Huffer's work on Legal Abuse Syndrome, and litigation as a tool of control- The closing thought: the grief is real, even though the relationship wasn'tCLINICAL TERMS: psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder, PCL-R, Hare Psychopathy Checklist, narcissism, sociopathy, coercive control, love bombing, mirroring, future faking, devaluation, intermittent reinforcement, gaslighting, isolation, triangulation, trauma bonding, anxious attachment, betrayal trauma, plausible deniability, safety planning, EMDRRELATED EPISODES: Stalking, Surveillance and Coercive Control Parts 1 and 2 · How to Identify a Narcissist · Spiritual Narcissism: Twin Flames on Fire · CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians and JonestownTwo licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

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, violence against a pregnant woman, sexual assault and murder. Listener discretion is advised.SHANNON'S THREEBetrayal: Dirty Secrets (Hulu). Colorado Springs police officer Joel Kern held a decorated career and a family man image while running a secret sexual double life with roughly fifty people, using his badge and his schedule as cover. His wife Karoline found out while their daughter was hospitalized. He retired before he could be fired, kept his pension, and was never charged.EDP445: The Sick Mind. Bryant Moreland, a YouTube sports commentator with millions of subscribers, caught in a sting run by the vigilante group Predator Poachers. The clinical ground here is parasocial attachment, predatory persona construction, and the uncomfortable question of what vigilante predator catching actually accomplishes.Conversations with a Killer: The Charles Manson Tapes (Netflix). Berlinger's fifth and final entry, built from 137 previously unheard prison phone calls Manson made to a retired detective across the last nine years of his life. Survivors are centered: Dianne Lake, Catherine Share, Stephanie Schram. One detail stays with you. Manson learned his mind control technique from Dale Carnegie.CATHY'S THREEThe Hillside Strangler (MGM+). Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono killed ten women and girls across Los Angeles in 1977 and 1978. The first on camera interview with Bianchi, and the first-time lead detective Frank Salerno has spoken publicly in over forty years. Bianchi claimed amnesia, submitted to hypnosis, argued his confessions were fabricated, then turned on Buono. Watch how a man relates to his own story across four decades.Maternal Instinct (Netflix). Taylor Parker faked a pregnancy for months, with a silicone belly, false ultrasounds and a gender reveal party, then murdered Reagan Simmons-Hancock, who was thirty-five weeks pregnant. She is the youngest woman on Texas death row. This one is genuinely difficult.The Crash (Netflix). Seventeen-year-old Mackenzie Shirilla drove into a brick building at over a hundred miles an hour, killing her boyfriend and his friend. No skid marks, no braking. Convicted of murder as an adult. All six are streaming now, and the discussion is better if you have already formed an opinion.Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

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 per minute, but on whether the psychology holds up: what the films get right about fear, grief, control and the way people actually behave under threat, and where they reach for a cheap shortcut instead.Reviewed in this episode:Evil Dead BurnSilo (series)The Shards (series)They Will Kill YouDisclosureObsessionPassengerForbidden FruitWhistlePlus, horror trivia and games with CathyMore from Season 9:S9E1 CULTS Part 1: how a group turns ordinary people into killersTwo licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT.Until then... sleep safe. 😴🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound.📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

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 children, cult coercion and coercive control. Listener discretion is advised.Season 9 opens with the question that sits underneath every cult story ever told: how does a group turn ordinary people into killers?Not people who were always dangerous. A nurse. A teacher. A college student. A software engineer. Someone whose neighbors would describe them as quiet and kind.Shannon takes the lead on this one, and the argument is deliberately uncomfortable; the pathway from ordinary person to cult member to participant in mass death is not about weakness, mental illness, or stupidity. It's about psychology. And it runs the same way every single time, whether you're looking at a California mansion in 1997, a Silicon Valley rationalist community in 2025, or a settlement in the Guyanese jungle in 1978.Same process. Different costume.Three cases, deliberately chosen because they have nothing in common but the mechanism. Heaven's Gate believed human bodies were containers for extraterrestrial souls. The Zizians organized around AI existential risk and analytic philosophy. Peoples Temple organized around socialism and racial justice. Cosmic, rationalist, political; three completely incompatible belief systems, one identical psychological structure underneath.That structure is what Shannon and Cathy spend the episode taking apart. Robert Jay Lifton's eight criteria of thought reform. Margaret Singer's self-dissolution process. Erich Fromm on why freedom is psychologically expensive enough that people will trade it away. Jung's Mana Personality, which explains why a leader's word can override what you can see with your own eyes. And running through all of it, Albert Bandura's moral disengagement — the four specific mechanisms by which a person with an intact conscience does something monstrous and does not experience themselves as monstrous while doing it.The core argument, and where the episode lands:The most dangerous thing about a cult isn't the leader. It's the moment when the group becomes more real to you than your own perception. That isn't weakness. That's how human psychology works. And knowing that is the only protection.Heaven's Gate · Marshall Applewhite · Bonnie Nettles · Rancho Santa Fe, California · March 26, 1997 · 39 dead · the Next Level · "the Demonstration"The Zizians · Ziz LaSota · rationalist and effective altruism communities · AI existential risk · "undead" and "p-zombie" ideology · six deaths, 2025–2026Peoples Temple · Jim Jones · Jonestown, Guyana · November 18, 1978 · 918 dead, 304 of them children · White Night rehearsals · the largest mass death of American civilians before 9/11Clinical terms: thought reform · coercive control · moral disengagement · self-dissolution · cognitive dissonance · milieu control · dehumanization · DDD syndrome · the Mana Personality · the ShadowThis is Part 1 of a three-part Cults series. Part 2 goes into ritual violence. Part 3 goes deeper into contemporary casesUntil then... sleep safe. 😴🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound.📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

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 episode covers:Film:Iron Lung — claustrophobic, gorgeous, more blood than any horror film in historyThe Backrooms — A24's liminal space debut from the youngest director to ever hit number one at the box officeHokum — Damian McCarthy's follow-up to Oddity, atmospheric Irish horrorLee Cronin's The Mummy — demon possession, practical gore, and a Blumhouse/Atomic Monster collaborationWhistle — teen slasher meets cursed artifact meets Final Destination logicThrash — hurricane sharks, Netflix, Tommy Wirkola, exactly what it sounds likeUndertone — audio-driven A24 horror built almost entirely on sound designReturn to Silent Hill — the third attempt to adapt the greatest horror game ever madeSend Help — 2026's genre wildcardScream 7 — Sidney Prescott returns. Ghostface returns. Shannon and Cathy have thoughts.Series:Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen — Netflix, Duffer Brothers produced, wedding horror, 8 episodes of dreadScarpetta — Nicole Kidman as Kay Scarpetta, Prime Video, forensic thrillerSpider-Noir — Nicolas Cage as a 1930s New York superhero-turned-private investigator, Prime VideoTwo licensed therapists — one forensic psychologist, one clinical marriage and family therapist — reviewing horror so you know what's worth your time and what's worth avoiding entirely.Until then... sleep safe. 😴🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound.📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising