Could you catch a traitor in your life?

I am a big fan of The Traitors TV show. My friend and collaborator Kelda Stagg actually competed in the Swedish version of the show recently! As an anthropologist and avid people-watcher, I love watching how difficult it is for the Traitors not to give themselves away, or how the Faithful turn on their own when searching for anything remotely suspicious. It also intrigues me how people can and do justify their behaviour to themselves - for the sake of the TV show, they can remind themselves "it's just a game", "we've got to play the game", but in real life, of course, such treachery can have very different outcomes. That got me thinking about treacherous forensic cases, and I found one that, I think, shows how victims often cannot see what is happening to them until it is too late. I made a little video about it here. Do you think you would recognise this if it was happening to you in real life? Could you catch a traitor in your life?

Premature Burial

Hi there! Sorry for the lack of posts recently! I can only say that I have been working hard. For Christmas, I received a beautiful, hard-bound copy of The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe.

One of his most famous horror stories, "The Premature Burial", eloquently described how this was a real fear for people in Victorian times, and reminded me of the elaborate contraptions that were invented at the time to prevent this horrific fate from occurring. I recorded a short video about the fear of 'vivesepulture' (being buried alive), which you can see here.

I am excited to be attending the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting next week in Baltimore, not only because of the exciting forensic science that I will be sharing and absorbing, but also because I will get to visit Edgar Allan Poe's grave, and learn more about this genius of the detective mystery genre.