Idaho Guy Part 2 with Mackenzie Joy Brennan

The psychiatrist tiktok story is how Michelle Remembers SHOULD have ended.

I know one thing that America is wrong about with regard to this case and it's what is generously referred to as a "justice" system. One that allows a case like this to be concluded with a plea that can only be described as "under duress". And, that is actually independent of whether Bryan Kohberger is guilty or innocent of this crime. There has been no justice. Yet... hopefully. Maybe this episode will stand the test of time. Or maybe, it will be just another piece of media that pointed at an autistic person's traits and mocked, berated and misinterpreted them as evil, and thereby helped reinforce a false narrative that helped convict an innocent man. I have no idea which will turn out to be the case. (Hopefully, we will know one day.) I only know that I am deeply sad that these two episodes exist.

For a podcast that for example held the nuances of the victims rights movement and victim impact statements with such care I was really disappointed by this episode. I feel like this really lacked the empathy that YWA built its name on, honestly.

Do you think that (and maybe you get there) the reason girls are raised with more consequences than boys is because girls are more likely to “have it coming” and therefore “should know better”?

There is a fantastic book published in Australia called “See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse” by Jess Hill, and what you spoke about reminds me of it very strongly. It goes into the psychological drivers of domestic violence in men and reframes the focus off the victims and onto the perpetrators.

It’s very important to talk about how women, and white women, uphold the cisheteropatriarchy & its policing male violence in their parenting (I think they do it as a skewed way of trying to get the love that no other men have given them in their lives, from their son, which is fucked up)—but also I think we focus so much on the mothers because, again: we don’t expect men/fathers to do a goddamn thing. Why didn’t his FATHER teach him not to murder? Not to be creepy? Not to be an incel? If he didn’t have a father, why didn’t the men around him do a goddamn thing to curtail his violence? His father shares just as much blame as the mother, no matter her relationship with her murderer son. (Writ large, not just these people.) I know we, as women, feel we should at least be able to expect other women to not fuck us over, but: I don’t think absolving the men in the situation (as the coverage of his mother in this episode does) actually helps. It’s doing to fathers at large what y’all are blaming these mothers for doing to their sons—not expecting more.

Not about this episode but has anyone noticed you can’t download YWA on Apple or Amazon podcasts?

Admittedly disappointed in many of the points that Brennan raised in this episode. Some were oversimplified and even misleading to a harmful degree.

Way too much mom blaming on this episode. Let's stop blaming women for men's actions.

Did anyone else's interest in the case come to a screeching halt when they heard "I had to teach my last boyfriend not to pee on the floor"? I now want to know EVERYTHING about that.

I don’t think you’re allowed to say you “don’t know how to talk to women” when you HAVE SISTERS. Are you fucking kidding me? What, you grew up together and never once held a conversation?

Anecdotal Dershowitz would be a great podcast….or not

Can we please stop blaming mothers for the crimes of their sons? And spare me the lecture from two people who (I don’t believe) have ever been parents on how if only she has given her son consequences, this might not have happened. I would appreciate if YWA would do a deep dive on Sue Klebold’s memoir and then reexamine this issue.

Relevant horror flick : "Into the Dark" episode 'All That We Destroy'

I was stunned and disappointed by all the mother blaming. Especially at the end when Mackenzie said that “mothers” teach boys they’re entitled to women’s bodies. Fathers do that too.

As someone with OCD I was actually a little disappointed with how it was discussed. Postpartum OCD is a real thing but there’s a whole ocean between intrusive thoughts and OCD—without an urge to compulse intrusive thoughts are just thoughts. There are so many misconceptions of OCD out there (including the TikTok-ification of the disorder which is often “intrusive thought=OCD”) that I wish y’all hadn’t gone there without fact checking.

I haven’t finished the episode yet, but I wanted to chime in that she got sick from stress. I was a management consultant for 5-6 years before my health started completely deteriorating. Lots of gut health stuff, chronic pain, etc. I changed careers and am finally starting to feel better 1 year later. It’s sad that these companies continue to abuse employees.

currently dissociating in the bath tub!

Really wish it were true that if you haven't committed murder, you don't need to worry about cops reading your search history. Folks who had abortions (or spontaneous miscarriages!) In ban states are learning about this the hard way.

Also, I work in higher education. Anyone who thinks a serial killer would be out of place there clearly hasn’t spent much time there. 😂

Levity is 100% called for here. This loser needs to be locked away for the rest of his life and mocked for all eternity. I feel like the true crime industrial complex turns these fetid turds into twisted folk heroes. This is not a new phenomenon, arguably birthed by the cottage industry created around Jack the Ripper. For over a century, a nameless, faceless shitty, no doubt in many ways pathetic, man has been centered in the narrative. Genius bogeyman killed a bunch of wretched sex workers living in the squalid East End. Full stop. Virtually to a one male, self-described ‘Ripperologists’ 🙄 often come across as fanboys. When Hallie Rubenhold published her excellent book ‘The Five’ that centered and humanized the victims (debunking much of the conventional wisdom about who they were), the vitriolic attacks leveled at her by the ‘Ripper’ community made her point (speaking of a lack of self-awareness). That the author is a conventionally attractive white woman adds a healthy dollop of spicy mustard to the shit sandwich. Sorry, I know I’m mangling metaphors as I tend to do when I’m fired up. 🤷🏻‍♀️

also epstein was a teacher so

whenever i think of the 24 hour news cycle i think about them deflating tonya’s tires to get a picture of her

Women kill men in self-defense or out of revenge. Do they ever kill men just impersonally?

Olivia’s impact statement—/ just wow.

I genuinely didn’t want to listen to the Idaho Guy episodes because I didn’t want to hear the tired story, and I have no idea why I didn’t have faith in Sarah. Both episodes are so good and thoughtful.

I feel like there’s this cycle with women and men in relationships where women are automatically given the responsibility of raising their partner because their partner’s mother only half did that… because she was also likely raising his father. It feels like a cycle for a lot of straight relationships

“Destruction diminishes the people who carry it out”

As a dad of a daughter, I'd love to hear you two talk for two hours about how you wish fathers would be

I am not a lawyer nor play one on tv. However, I am an avid Lawtube watcher and followed a lot of this closely. Patching a couple of holes- Anne Taylor was an assigned public defender and largely due to being one of the few death penalty certified lawyers in the state. And the plea deal- while all families were not pleased, one of the key reasons it was likely offered was to keep said surviving roommates from having to testify. And if you want a really wild side quest related to this case is the whole other defamation case related to the "TikTok psychic" and this poor professor targeted as the suspect in these murders. It is legit crazy town. And even scarier than the trash social media "correspondents" yall refer to.

Thank you for playing Alivea’s statement in full.

If we're open to more "true crime-ish but not True Crime" recommendations, I think other YWA fans would love the Respect The Dead podcast! The focus is mostly on bad people who died (think Kissinger, OJ, and some historical figures), but they also go into some good or neutral ones. Their most recent episode was about Titanic. Personal favorites: Carl Tanzler, Graham Linehan's Marriage, The Tigers, and Action Park/Eugene Mulvehill. The Carl Tanzler one in particular has a lot to say about men who try to possess women. (Also I think Sarah would love the Helen Gurley Brown episode, about the real mid-century woman who inspired Sex and the City!)

sarah is one of the few people i can think of that i WOULD be cool with reading my search history tbh 😅

Truly, truly I enjoy this show and tell people to listen all the time. And yet this was the first episode where I felt a bit disappointed. There are so many times that moms are blamed for not teaching their sons to do x, y, or z. It really felt like you both fell into the trap of blaming the woman. Not to scapegoat this particular mom for whatever part she had in shaping the guy’s personality and perspective, but really his dad is as much, perhaps more to blame for whatever part the parents played. And more generally, please, please, please, it is not mom’s role to teach their little boys not to pee on the floor. That is 1000% dad’s corner!

the ed gein stuff is very much a myth btw. and psycho was not based on him in any real way other than the writer saw a thing about a guy getting away with murder for a long time in wisconsin and was like i'm gonna write a book about a guy getting away with murder for a long time in a small town. if anything the mythology of ed gein was more based on psycho than the other way around lol. medusone on youtube got into this in a desperate housewives video actually (highly recommend that video btw bc it gets into the Blaming Mothers For Men Being Bad thing) and has been planning a big ed gein video for a long time, and she recently put a video up on her bonus channel that's more about the upcoming ryan murphy show. like she's apparently the only person to have done any significant research actually using contemporaneous documents it's wild. but i also want to say that i do feel like there is an issue in the mother blame thing where i think that it is still a symptom of the patriarchy and i think ppl will often talk about the bad or inappropriate things a mother has done and not even investigate the father's role in this, or the men in the guy's life. like "why are all these mothers creating bad men" feels like it's missing a key component. and like we don't have to like these particular women obviously, but it still rubs me the wrong way. there's still something that feels awfully gendered about it, like the PROBLEM is that they're WOMEN parenting when like. that's obviously not the problem. idk anything about idaho guy's father and whether or not he's in the picture might actually be a large contributing factor next to Mother™ ykno

Not making us wait a month for the second part is an absolute gift 💕

This little series is great and I would love if it went on forever. I wish more people covered true crime this way.

I also love the Baldwin book The Evidence of Things Not Seen, very nuanced and powerful work (though there are a couple strange tangents in it).

The OCD sounds pretty on point with how you talked about it, I have super taboo intrusive thoughts and am terrified of them coming to fruition, just for a personal example, one of my core fixations is around morality and being “good”. Who knows how it affects someone else though

🎵 "I could really use a shrimp right now, shrimp right now, shrimp right noOow.." 🎵 (sorry)

The victims’ sister’s statement… wow. Thank you for including it in its entirety. Went from crying, to being in total awe, to feeling great pride for the strength of women. Good. For. Her. Her sisters were absolutely cheering her on from the other side.

Postpartum OCD is a thing. Sometimes they’re the first symptoms a person has had, but not always.

Can confirm postpartum intrusive thoughts/OCD is extremely real and intense!

I love the Bad Women podcast that centers the victims of the white chapel murders

I hear a lot of Joy …