Sep 1, 2026 · 4 min listen · Last updated September 1, 2026
From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Here are today's top 6 true crime stories. Let's get into it. First, from CrimeReads (Literary Hub). Big Cult Energy: Excerpt and Cover Reveal. That made me hesitate. ” Tay got a little twitchy.
Listen · storyflo · true-crime
Daily True Crime Brief · September 1st
0:00-4:00
Pick your daily storyteller
Subscribe to match with Theo, Jessica, Chloe, Mason, Brock — your voice, every brief.
Audio pre-rendered by Storyflo · cached + delivered from the edge
Big Cult Energy: Excerpt and Cover Reveal
That made me hesitate. “A cult?” Tay got a little twitchy. “We were like, making pancakes? This morning?” Shawna said, “We always make pancakes on Sundays. And right when we were turning off the stove, somebody knocked on the front door.” “Like, really gentle, you know?” Tay said. He added, “We barely heard it.” Holy shit, I thought. A declarative sentence. “Honestly, we ignored the knock at first because we thought it was just more Amazon packages getting dropped off,” Shawna said. “But then they kept knocking.” She hesitated again. I didn’t rush her.
Last week, we lost the great Dolly Parton. It was a devastating loss. Not only was she the rare figure beloved by all of our divided nation (and beyond), but she was a progressive force promoting values like love, hard work, gratitude, courtesy, humility, and generosity. Born into poverty, she became a star because of her prodigious singing talent, clever songwriting, and her commitment to showmanship, but she became an icon because of her extraordinary wit, her lack of an ego, her refusal to forget where she came from, and her desire to help help others.
The Watergate Theory That Never Made It Into the Movies
I thought I understood the Watergate scandal which brought down President Nixon in August of 1974. After all, as a ten-year-old boy the televised Senate hearings had played constantly as a daily drama in my house, my parents and the country talked incessantly about it, and when in 1976 I saw the film, All the President’s Men, I thought there could be no higher calling than becoming an investigative journalist like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. And this was despite my parents having both supported Nixon in 1968 and 1972.
Gabbi Calabrese on What Kids Can Learn from Reading Mysteries
The thread that wove me together was made of curiosity. As a child, my favorite game to play was asking “Why?” My brother would make a statement that required no further elaboration, but still I’d ask, “Why?” And when he’d explain, I’d ask again. I liked to see how long it would take for him to run out of becauses. I think we all know how this game goes. In my teenage years, I often found myself whisked into the whirlwind of Wikipedia. One article led to another until I had accidentally wasted hours reading about subjects that had no bearing on my day-to-day world.
Madeline Martin on Matthew Hopkins and the Deadliest Witch Hunt in England
Ropes swung from the makeshift gallows, hastily erected in Bury St. Edmunds at Thingoe Hill, a popular spot for executions. One that would taste death once more that day on August 27, 1645, when eighteen souls accused of witchcraft would be hanged in England’s largest mass execution for witchcraft. Sixteen women and two men had pleaded guilty to charges ranging from using their imps to kill cows and murder people to entering into pacts with the devil. Some even confessed to using their powers to kill beloved family members. But these confessions didn’t come from earnest admissions.
Rebecca Stafford on the Entrancing Moral Quandaries of Dark Academia
For some time now, my Instagram feed has been awash with the imagery of “dark academia”: oak paneled rooms and vaulted ceilings, the glow of solitary reading lamps, and row upon row of packed bookshelves receding into infinity. Shadows abound, and it’s always raining beyond those mullioned windows. I love it. I regularly fantasize about transforming my bedroom into what I can only describe as Sherlock Holmes’ Fancytime Boudoir. My bookshelves are from IKEA, however, and I recently discovered a colony of ants living between my bedroom window and the screen.