Transcription
[Music] Together, we can have a lot of fun. For you, chat and talk to me. These are lessons. You can go time for us to show living name H on, and we can go for [Music] you the world of true crime stories of fear and Justice.
True Crime is popular now, but it's not new. It was in the 16th century that the True Crime genre began to take shape. Publishers in England produced pamphlets that reported local crimes. These pamphlets often made events more dramatic to catch readers' attention. They also included moral lessons, showing readers what would happen if they did something wrong.
By the 1800s, new forms of crime stories—broad sheets and Penny dreadfuls—appeared. They were cheap, so anyone could afford them. They also provided detailed crime accounts that appealed to a wide range of readers. When criminals were caught, detectives would interview them. These meetings started influencing crime reporting too, as they added more investigation details about why criminals committed these crimes.
A major milestone for True Crime came in 1966 with novelist Truman Capote's *In Cold Blood*. The novel is often regarded as one of the first non-fiction novels, and it set a new standard by combining real facts with storytelling. It showed that pairing in-depth investigation with an engaging story could maintain readers' interest.
Hello everyone, welcome to English for you. I'm Mike, and I'm Laura, and we are back today with day two of our look at True Crime podcasts and television shows. These are very popular things. Laura is a big fan. I know you actually fit the demographic because I think it's women are actually more interested in these shows than men, which is kind of an interesting thing.
Yeah, um, so we've already talked a bit about True Crime, about, you know, what it is and how it looks at, you know, famous real crimes—often murders—that have taken place in the past, and in many cases, um, they're not solved. These are unsolved or cold cases, so people like to um, sort of listen along, follow along, and maybe even act the detective, play the sleuth, um, you know, embrace your inner Sherlock Holmes or your inner and try to solve a crime just like Drew for me, the Nancy Drew. Okay, Miss Marple, uh, solve a crime just like the Great Hero detectives of many famous stories have done, but in real life. So we've learned a bit about that. Today we're going to turn our attention to the history of True Crime. You might think this became most popular since podcasts and because of Netflix and other shows like that or services like that. No, crime has been fascinating people, it's safe to say, for hundreds of years because we humans are weird, dark, twisted creatures. So let's find out about true crime and its history. It says, "True Crime is popular now, but it's not new," so it is popular now, but it's been around for a while—quite a long while.
Wow. It was in the 16th century that the True Crime genre began to take shape. I'm amazed. I would have guessed maybe the 19th century, uh, you know, with some of the early mystery stories and whatnot, but it was actually the 16th century. So this is the 1500s. This is like when William Shakespeare was writing plays and things like that. So that time period, back in the time of pirates and the Spanish Empire and whatnot, the 16th century—and that's when the genre or this style of entertainment and writing it began to take shape, or it began to form.
Okay, okay, take shape. Oh my gosh, after months of practice—true story—my K-pop dance routine finally began to take shape. Congratulations! I want to I want to see it. Hopefully it's not a true crime. I'm sure it'll be very, very good. It says, "Publishers in England produced pamphlets that reported local crimes," so okay, this was kind of an early form of uh, of newspaper reporting, story reporting, in the same way that uh, we can read all sorts of true crime stories on on websites of newspapers. You could get pamphlets back then; they were being published because the public wanted to read about them; they were popular and entertaining. A publisher is a person who makes printed things like books, magazines, newspapers. All right, so a publisher will print your new book, or everyday publishers around the world make newspapers for people to buy a few hours later. In this case, they were making very, very small little pieces of paper with information called pamphlets. A pamphlet these days probably not somewhere you'll you'll get news from, but it might be used for advertising. If you've seen people outside, maybe an MRT station or a busy store, and they're giving out these pieces of paper that talk about a new business in the neighborhood, that could be a pamphlet. So it's a very simple um, often folded two-sided piece of paper that has important or interesting information on it—very cheap to produce and easy to give away. I want one of these like um, cold crime pamphlets; that'd be kind of interesting. I want to see what they look like. Okay, so publisher England, okay. Let's—these pamphlets often made events more dramatic to catch readers' attention. See, it's 500 years ago, but they still do the same thing. Often the people who write the stories make them more dramatic, more exciting, uh, you know, more interesting to people, um, and they want to catch readers' attention. If they're saying the uh, something kind of boring and plain and ordinary happened today, you're not going to take the time to read that, but if they say, "Blood! Blood! Death! Death! Murder!" you're like, "I want to know more about that." There's actually an old line in the newspaper business: "If it bleeds, it leads." In other words, if this if there's a crime and someone got hurt, that's the top story, 'cause that's the story are going to read, right, rather than, "The president today made a new law to do something with taxes." No, we want to know about the car crash where a bunch of people died or something. As I said, humans are dark, weird creatures, um, but we do like dramatic things. If something's dramatic, there's a lot of emotion, a lot of excitement; it's really interesting; it's certainly not dull and boring. For example, Rachel told us a dramatic and very funny story about getting lost in an airport and also missing her plane. Many exciting things happened to her that time. She sounds like a Rachel from *Friends*. Could be. Yeah, yeah. Okay, dramatic. This one dramatic. For example, my little sister gets so dramatic; she acts like it's the end of the world if she loses at a game. We also saw the phrase "catch somebody's attention." Are you getting annoyed by this song? Caught everyone's attention with its catchy beat and fine lyrics. So along with the drama and the blood and the excitement, it says they also included moral lessons, showing readers what would happen if they did something wrong. So someone stole something and got murdered; someone drinks too much and they committed a crime when they were drunk; you know, these kind of moral lessons that you might learn in school or at church or something like that—kind of giving the people the entertainment in the blood but saying, "You won't do this, will you," even after entertaining us with all of those terrible stories. So the moral lessons. By the 1800s, so now we're getting much closer to now—150, 200 years ago or so—by the 1800s, new forms of crime stories—broad sheets and Penny dreadfuls—appeared. So the broad sheets are the newspapers we kind of think of today—more serious kind of newspapers—and Penny dreadfuls; these are like shocking comic books back in the old days. They cost a penny, and they were full of dreadful, shocking, horrible stories that still entertained lots of people. Penny dreadfuls—I like that name. But says they were cheap, so anyone could afford them. Of course, back then books were still probably quite expensive, and average working people—many of whom could read now because of new education laws, right—so even poor people in England at that time could read, uh, which was kind of a new thing. They couldn't afford to go to a library or have a big library of books at home, but they could afford a Penny Dreadful, and often you'd share it with your friends and family because they were cheap. And if something is cheap, you can probably afford it, because to afford is basically just to be able to to buy something, or in a simpler way of thinking of it, to have enough money for something. Okay, if something costs a million dollars, and you have a thousand dollars, you can't afford that, I'm sorry, um, or if you want to afford it, you'll have to save money until you have enough money, and then you will be able to afford it; you will have the ability in money to buy something. For example, "The new smartphone is really cool. I agree, but I don't think I can afford one right now since it's quite expensive." Afford—not home. I can't afford something. After saving for months, she can finally afford to go on her dream vacation. Ooh, that's great. She gets to go to Gong. Okay, that's pretty cool. All right, back to our article. They also provided detailed crime accounts that appealed to a wide range of readers. So this was a bit more of the news style of these uh, publications, these things that were being sold and enjoyed by lots of people. There would be the shocking and the crime and that kind of drama, but they would also provide detailed crime accounts that appealed to a wide range of readers. Remember, this is before TV news; this is before anything like that. A lot of people might not even know what police did or how crimes were solved in any way, so the writers would kind of explain that to common people who might work on a farm and, you know, never see a crime or never be near a big city or anything. So they would have these different accounts of the story, and basically an account is a story; it's a version of a story. If something happens and we're both there, my account might be different than yours, but we will both have an account because we witnessed it; we saw it with our own eyes, and we can write or talk about what we saw; that is our account. For example, "The victims told their accounts of what happened during the bank robbery to the police," because I said everyone who was there might have a slightly different account or version of the story. We're not talking about bank accounts here, guys. Okay, no, ma'am, account. For example, "Her travel blog provides an exciting account of her adventures around the world." We also saw the phrase "a range of something." For example, "This store offers a range of snacks from different countries." I'm going to get some. All right. Now, back then, just like now, it says, "When criminals were caught, detectives would interview them," right? So we catch the person; we know it's the person; we found blood on their clothes or whatever; we found them right there where the crime happened; they catch them, but still they will interview them; they still want to know a lot of uh, information about why, who, when, how—all of that kind of stuff. Inter—all right, so these meetings, it says, "These meetings started influencing crime reporting too, as they added more investigation details about why criminals committed these crimes." It's all very good to know that John killed Sam with a with a knife or something like that, right? But we learn a lot more if we find out why John—why Jon killed Sam. What did Sam do? Was Sam innocent? Did he hurt Jon? Where did this happen? You know, what time of day was it? Giving these details helps us understand the crimes more, but also as readers, makes them more real, right? Makes them more realistic. Adding details and interesting little facts to your story just makes it seem more alive, more like we're actually there seeing it, um, because of course we want to know exactly all the reasons why a person committed a crime. And to commit something, especially in this case, when we commit crimes, we're doing something wrong or illegal. By breaking the law, you are committing a crime. You could commit a terrible crime like murder, or you could commit a smaller crime like, I don't know, driving a little bit too fast or something like that. For example, "Lonnie committed a big mistake when he decided to lie to his teacher." Now the teacher knows about the lie, and Lonnie is in deep trouble. He didn't commit a crime, but he definitely committed a big mistake. Language and focus. Let's take a [Music] look. Gia language INF Focus. For as Sophie grew older, she began helping her younger brother with his schoolwork every [Music] afternoon. For example, "Fold the paper as the book explains so you can make the shape of a bird." Since, because, for example. We had to wait at the stop for over 30 minutes as the bus was late. Lisa ordered a cup of coffee and a muffin for breakfast as usual. Selfie works as a photographer, taking beautiful pictures of weddings and special events as blah blah blah. As for example, "The water in the lake is as clear as glass, and you can see all the fish swimming." Commit. For example, "The detective worked hard to find out who committed the crime." Commit. For example, "You should never commit to something you don't truly believe in." All right. A major milestone for True Crime came in 1966 with novelist Truman Capote's *In Cold Blood*. Yeah, that's a very, very famous book; a very good book. I would recommend reading it if you're a fan of True Crime, um, and that was also what made True Crime kind of popular because uh, Truman Capote actually was a novelist, as it says there; he wrote books for entertainment, so he wasn't just a newspaper reporter repeating facts; he was kind of making it come alive, and he was actually part of the the story too. Um, a novelist, as I mentioned, is a person who writes novels; they write fiction stories. So this is not a a historian; this is not a journalist; this person isn't writing about things that are real and facts and things that exist in the world; they're making up stories, making up situations, making up characters. If you think of Charles Dickens, if you think of Kurt Vonnegut, if you think of J.K. Rowling, if you think of many of these popular people who write entertaining stories and books, those are novelists. Here's a good one to know if you like crime: Agatha Christie was a novelist who wrote many popular mystery novels. Check him out. Okay, milestone. For example, "The novelist spent years researching history to make her book more realistic." *In Cold Blood*. [Music] Yeah, you can definitely find a version in English or in Mandarin. It's such a famous book; I think they've made it into a movie a few times too. The novel is often regarded as one of the first non-fiction novels, and it set a new standard by combining real facts with storytelling. And it definitely set a new standard. A standard, in this case, is kind of a level of performance; how good something can be. In other words, a high standard—it's really good; low standard—that's not not very good; you need to get better. Um, if you're looking at the stars in a restaurant or a hotel, right, a five-star hotel should have a higher standard of everything than a one-star hotel, right? It should perform at a higher level; be better than others. For example, "To be a professional athlete, you need you will need to play your sport to a very, very high standard." If you're a pretty good basketball player, you're not getting to the NBA; you got to be amazing. Example, "The new restaurant has set a standard for quality in the neighborhood." It showed that pairing in-depth investigation with an engaging story could maintain reader interest. So that's what the success of *In Cold Blood* showed—that you can take in-depth investigation; you can kind of try to solve the crime as the police would, but you can tell engaging and entertaining and interesting story, and together, both of the sort of fact-based stuff that the police would do and the entertaining dramatic stuff that might appeal to people—that can make for a very, very entertaining book. We have our chat question: In your opinion, should true crime stories include moral lessons? Why or why not? For sure, like, you know, that's so we won't just focus on the murdering part. Okay, so I think seeing the consequences of a criminal act might make people think twice before doing something harmful. I would definitely hope so. Yeah. [Music] ably vocabulary review. [Music] Dramatic. When my friend Ben tells a story, he gets loud and waves his hands in a dramatic way. Afford. Since Harry's family is poor and cannot afford to go on vacation, they always just stay at home. Account. Jack gave us an account of everything that happened at the party last night; it sounded pretty crazy. Commit. People who commit serious crimes should understand how much harm they cause to others. Novelist. Jerry decided to become a novelist because he enjoyed writing and always had great story ideas. Standard. When people started using computers, they became the standard for most types of writing and office work. [Music] Genre, publisher, pamphlet, broad sheet, Penny Dreadful, milestone. [Music]