There are a lot of people who are super into the true-crime genre but aren’t always fans of horror movies, and I think that’s such an interesting dichotomy. Do you guys, as dabblers in both fields, have any theories as to why that may be? You guys mentioned at one point that you, specifically Marcus, you became more involved in researching and reading books. What sparked that?

Give it to your beloved ones or get one for yourself. You will love the soft feel and want to wear it all day long.Due to the difference monitor and light effect, the actual color and size of the item may be slightly difference from the visual image. Material: 100% pre-shrunk cotton, or composition (96% cotton, 4% spandex) for maximum comfortable stretch. Products will be automatically fulfilled with existing materials to optimize production and delivery time to customers. Parks: Yeah, the book gets into the details very heavily at quite a few points, and they did not flinch once. HMH was great. I have nothing but nice things to say about them or our editor, who taught me how to write a book. For me, horror can be so immersive that it becomes overwhelming, whereas if I’m reading it or listening to it, I can control the images. But it’s visceral in a different way. I’ve noticed that my horror tolerance has wildly changed since I’ve gotten older. Parks: One of the things that I know I’ve personally heard from a lot of people over the years is that being open about mental illness and being open about all that sort of stuff and approaching some of these people from a human perspective helped them out a lot and helped them to accept their own problems and get help for them. And it feels great. Especially when we see people face-to-face, during tours and during meet and greets and all that. It feels good that this weird thing that we started so many years ago actually helps people through hard times.

Parks: We always like to say: This is what we think, this is our opinion on this. We always encourage people to go out and do their own research and to form their own opinions on things, because we are not experts. Well, we’re accidental experts, but we didn’t go to school for this. We are not academics. I have a degree in creative writing, Henry has one in theater, and Ben has one in political science. We don’t have master’s degrees here; these are still just our opinions.Due to the different monitor and light effects, the actual color and size of the item may be slightly different from the visual image. Before Serial and Criminal and other more serious, journalistic true-crime podcasts came to dominate the conversation, there was The Last Podcast on the Left.

Of course, the podcast remains the engine behind it all. What began as a way to talk about anything macabre or weird that caught their fancy — chaos magic, aliens, horror movies, government conspiracies, John “Papa John” Schnatter’s personal life — has turned into something the guys take very seriously, even if they don’t take themselves very seriously at all. We talked to the gang about the podcast, their new book, and the evolution of their process. Due to the manufacturing process, sizes of items listed in descriptions are approximate and actual size may vary slightly. plus you'll receive generous discount codes every month to use at our ever-expanding merch store full of Last Podcast goodies access to the feature-length films Last Podcast on the Left: Live in Chicago, Last Podcast on the Left: Live in New Orleans, and Last Podcast on the Left: Live in Omaha Kissel: [True crime is] more research-based, it’s more sociological and anthropological in a lot of ways, learning about the study of how humans act in the worst kind of ways … Horror is entertainment, so it’s a bit of a different thing. So if you don’t get your entertainment by watching people suffering through a maze by someone who wants to teach you a lesson like Jigsaw, and you’d rather watch 50 First Dates, that makes a lot of sense to me … I don’t think that they necessarily need to be intertwined.Personally, I started listening to you guys at a pretty rough time, and it was weirdly soothing, which I think is the case for a lot of listeners. What’s your guys’ typical relationship with your fans?