Tanya Talaga: The Knowing
If you’ve ever dug deep into your family history, you know that there are sometimes surprises. Author Tanya Talaga discovered that the life of her great-great grandmother Annie Carpenter was mostly un...
25 Aug 202556min
Alex Eliseev: Cold Case Confession
This week on Wicked Words on Exactly Right: in 1999, a woman named Betty Ketani went missing in Johannesburg, South Africa. She just vanished from the restaurant where she was working. Then a letter f...
18 Aug 202556min
Megan Abbott: El Dorado Drive
New York Times’ best-selling author Megan Abbott often uses true crime stories as a jumping off point for her wildly popular novels. Now she has a new book out called El Dorado Drive. It’s about three...
11 Aug 202558min
Caroline Fraser: Murderland
This week’s author grew up in the Pacific Northwest with the memories of notorious serial killers like Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer, who also lived there. But the region wasn’t just home to th...
4 Aug 202553min
Matthew McGough + Rick Jackson: Black Tunnel White Magic
In 1990, a UCLA student was found murdered in a tunnel in LA. Detective Rick Jackson and his partner were assigned to the complicated case. Who had a motive to stab Ronald Baker? Was the pentagram pen...
28 Jul 20251h 3min
Elon Green: The Man Nobody Killed
We’ve had journalist Elon Green on before to talk about his fantastic book Last Call. His new book is about an inspiring young Black artist in 1980s New York. Michael Stewart ended up dead after encou...
21 Jul 202548min
Jonquilyn Hill: Through the Cracks
When an 8-year-old disappeared from a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C. in 2014, nobody noticed for 18 days, even her family. Seven years later, Relisha Rudd has never been found. The Through the C...
14 Jul 202552min
Mary Kay McBrayer: Madame Queen
This week on Wicked Words we’re traveling back to 1923 Harlem and its seedy world of gambling and racketeering. Author Mary Kay McBrayer tells me about Stephanie St. Clair. She was one of the only fem...
7 Jul 202547min
