Episodes

“He seemed so normal. Nobody saw it coming.”
We've all heard those words after something terrible happens. But what if the idea that someone just snaps is one of the biggest misconceptions we have about violent behavior?

In this episode of The Human Pattern, Liv explores three widely believed myths about violent offenders: that people suddenly snap, that certain childhood behaviors predict future serial killers, and that psychopathy automatically means someone is dangerous.

Inspired by a fasci...

For years, people waited for the Epstein files to finally provide answers. A list. Names. Proof. Closure.

Then millions of pages were released, and somehow, the questions only multiplied.

In the fourth and final episode of The Epstein Files, The Human Pattern turns the lens onto us.

Why are we so drawn to conspiracy theories when official explanations feel incomplete? Why does seeing a familiar name in a document feel like evidence? Why can two people read the exact same information and walk ...

Jeffrey Epstein’s 2008 conviction was public. The people around him knew about it. And yet, many prominent, intelligent, and powerful people continued taking his calls, attending his dinners, accepting his introductions, and maintaining relationships with him.

Why?

In Part Three of The Epstein Files, we turn our attention to the people who stayed.

This is not an episode about treating every name in the Epstein files as evidence of wrongdoing. Being photographed with Epstein, appearing in an e...

The FBI had a complaint in 1996. Palm Beach police built a case in 2005. State prosecutors had it. Federal prosecutors had it. Banks handled his money. Universities took his donations.

Again and again, people knew.

So why did Jeffrey Epstein keep going?

In Episode 2 of The Epstein Files, we move beyond the question of why survivors weren’t believed and look at the institutions that were supposed to protect them.

Through the Epstein case, we explore diffusion of responsibility, organizational...

Ed Sheeran never wanted to be an activist musician.

But after Macklemore was removed from his tour, every remaining opening act walked away, protests appeared outside his shows, and Sheeran found himself at the center of a controversy he had spent years trying to avoid.

His response was simple: staying quiet does not mean he does not care.

But what happens when everyone else decides your silence means something anyway?

In this episode of The Human Pattern, we use the controversy surrounding ...

For decades, survivors told people what Jeffrey Epstein was doing. The question is not whether they spoke. It is why so many people failed to listen.
In 1996, Maria Farmer filed a complaint with the FBI. Nearly thirty years later, a government document would confirm what she had been saying all along.

Her story was not an exception.

Girls told police. Survivors spoke to federal investigators. Women went to court, talked to journalists, testified before a jury, and eventually stood before Congr...

We like to believe that whether someone is a victim should depend on what happened to them.

But often, it depends just as much on who we think they are.

In 1995, Sally McNeil shot and killed her husband, Ray McNeil. She said she acted in self-defense after years of abuse. But Sally did not look like the kind of victim people expected to see. She was a Marine, a competitive bodybuilder, physically powerful, quick tempered, and known professionally as “Killer Sally.”

And those details became pa...

We track our sleep. Our steps. Our heart rate. Our workouts.

The numbers were supposed to help us understand our bodies. But somewhere along the way, they started telling us something else: whether we were doing a good job.
In this episode of The Human Pattern, we explore what happens when health data becomes a grade, why a number on a screen can override how we actually feel, and how the pursuit of optimization can quietly turn into self surveillance.

Because a sleep score is supposed to desc...

Five weeks of testimony. More than eighty witnesses. Seven days of deliberation.

And no verdict.

On September 4, 2026, the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy ended in a mistrial after jurors told the court they could not reach a unanimous decision. Then came the detail that changed the conversation entirely: the jury had reportedly been split 11 to 1.

But the more interesting question isn’t whether that one juror was right or wrong.

It’s what happened when a process designed to be private sudden...

When does something a person did become who we believe they are?
Two people make the same reckless decision. Both speed. Both look down at their phones. One gets to work late. The other kills someone.

Same choice. Radically different outcome.

And yet, the way we judge those two people may have less to do with risk, rehabilitation, or even future behavior than we think.

In this episode of The Human Pattern, we start with a seemingly simple claim: some crimes are mistakes that can be punished a...

For most of my adult life, I had a very simple opinion about surveillance:

I don’t care.

I’m not doing anything wrong. Cameras solve crimes. Phone records establish timelines. Search histories reveal things people are trying to hide. If surveillance helps catch someone who hurt another person, then as far as I was concerned, let them look.

I have nothing to hide.

Then I started researching the strongest arguments against that position.

And I found a hole in my reasoning that I had never con...

You follow them every day.

You know their morning routine, their struggles, their transformation story, maybe even the name of their dog. So when they recommend a supplement, sell a fitness plan, or offer to coach you through something they've personally overcome, it doesn't feel like buying from a stranger.

But they are still a stranger.

In this episode of The Human Pattern, we use the case of fitness influencer Brittany Dawn Davis to explore something much bigger than one influencer or one ...

How much can you say about another person before you've crossed a line?

Probably much more than you think.

We tend to imagine defamation law as a guardrail that keeps public commentary responsible. But the legal line is surprisingly far away from the line most of us would consider careful, fair, or even accurate.

In this episode of The Human Pattern, we start with a sentence from another podcast about the ongoing Lindsay Clancy trial: “She had psychosis.”

That sentence isn't what sent me dow...

Almost everyone has had a thought that scared them.

A sudden image of doing something dangerous. An unwanted violent thought. A bizarre impulse that seems to come from nowhere and leaves you wondering why your brain went there at all.

But then there are the other thoughts.

The text you send at one in the morning. The thing you say in an argument before you can stop yourself. The purchase that feels like a great idea until the next morning.

Both can feel like impulses, but they are not the sa...

In Part One, we walked through the night at Artesia General Hospital, the evidence surrounding the death of Alex Ray Fierro, and the New Mexico Supreme Court ruling that dramatically changed the prosecution's case.

But this case raises a much larger question:

What would have had to be different, and when?

In Part Two, we step beyond the facts of one criminal case and examine the pattern surrounding newborn deaths after concealed or denied pregnancies.

We look at the research on pregnancy den...

In January 2023, nineteen-year-old Alexee Trevizo arrived at a small New Mexico emergency room with severe back pain.

Hours later, hospital staff discovered a newborn baby, Alex Ray Fierro, inside a bathroom trash can.

What happened next was captured on police body cameras and became the footage that defined the case for millions of people.

But a jury may never see it.

In Part One of this two-part episode, we walk through the night at Artesia General Hospital, what the evidence actually esta...

Should a person's past determine their future?

When someone has a long history of criminal behavior, it feels intuitive to believe that pattern should matter. But in the criminal justice system, when and how it matters is far more complicated than most people realize.

In this episode of The Human Pattern, we examine one of the most difficult questions in criminal justice: Should patterns of behavior be considered when deciding guilt, sentencing, or whether someone is safe to release?
Using the...

The trial of Lindsay Clancy has become one of the most discussed criminal cases in recent years. Long before opening statements began, millions of people had already reached a conclusion.

But why?

In this bonus episode of The Human Pattern, we're not trying to decide whether Lindsay Clancy is guilty or not guilty. Instead, we're exploring the psychology behind why our minds rush to certainty before all the evidence has been presented.

Using the ongoing trial as a starting point, we examine wh...

Why do ordinary people sometimes do extraordinary harm?
Most of us like to believe we'd stand up for what's right. That we'd question authority, trust our conscience, and refuse to cross certain moral lines.

But history, and decades of research, tell a more uncomfortable story.

In this episode of The Human Pattern, we explore Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiments and what they reveal about human behavior. Why are people willing to follow orders that conflict with their own values? How...

The Patterns Trauma Leaves Behind
Why do some experiences stay with us for years, while others seem to fade away?

Trauma isn't defined by the event itself. It's defined by what happens inside us afterward. Two people can live through the exact same experience and walk away carrying completely different patterns. That's because trauma isn't just about what happened. It's about how our brains and bodies adapted to survive.

In this episode of The Human Pattern, we explore how trauma shapes the wa...

On March 26, 1997, police entered a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and discovered 39 people who had died together in what would become one of the most infamous mass suicides in modern history.

The world quickly labeled them as brainwashed.

Crazy.

A cult.

Case closed.

But what if that's the wrong question?

Instead of asking, "How could they believe something like that?" what if we asked, "How does any belief become so powerful that we're willing to sacrifice everything for it?"

In...

What if believing something false has less to do with intelligence and more to do with being human?

We like to think that smart people are immune to misinformation, conspiracy theories, scams, or irrational beliefs. But history and psychology tell a very different story. Intelligence doesn't protect us from false beliefs. In some cases, it can actually make us better at defending them.

In this episode of The Human Pattern, we explore why our brains aren't designed to seek truth as much as they...

Why We Trust the Wrong People
Have you ever looked back on a relationship, friendship, or even a leader you once believed in and wondered...

How did I not see it?
It's a question almost everyone asks at some point. We assume we'd recognize manipulation, deception, or red flags when they appear. But psychology tells a very different story.

In this episode of The Human Pattern, we explore why trusting the wrong people isn't usually a sign of weakness or naivety. It's often the result of normal p...

The stories you tell yourself become the lens through which you see the world.

Maybe you've always believed you're not good enough. That you're bad at relationships. That you'll never be successful. Or maybe you've convinced yourself that certain things happened because of who you are, instead of what happened to you.

In this episode of The Human Pattern, we explore how these internal narratives are formed, why your brain fights to protect them, and how they quietly influence your confidence, ...