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. Zebrowski: This is gold-star material. [ Episodes denoted as “gold star” mean they are incredibly gruesome and not for the faint of heart.]plus you'll receive generous discount codes every month to use at our ever-expanding merch store full of Last Podcast goodies

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.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. 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.

Zebrowski: I will say it does not stop being an overwhelming experience knowing that our idiocy can help. It really is, and I think it’s awesome, because a lot of times, I do it to help me. Joking on my end helps me get through rough times, so I’m just so glad that anybody can get anything remotely positive from the horrible things that come out of my mouth.

You guys mentioned at one point that you, specifically Marcus, you became more involved in researching and reading books. What sparked that?

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?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. Due to the manufacturing process, sizes of items listed in descriptions are approximate and actual size may vary slightly.