This is a podcast where we treat movies, television, and other popular culture artifacts not just as entertainment, but as cultural evidence. As artifacts that reveal how we think about crime, justice, power, and culture. I’m Kevin Buckler, PhD in Criminal Justice, and a professor at a four-year public university. On Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours, I bring you sharp, unfiltered content about how film, television, and media shape the way we understand crime, law, and justice — and what those stories reveal about our legal system, our communities, and the world around us.
America's Forgotten Holiday: The Case for a *Celebrated* Constitution Day
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Crime and Popular Culture Office Hours takes a brief departure from the American Crime Landscapes series to examine a different kind of artifact. Instead of analyzing a film, television show, or work of literature, we turn our attention to perhaps the most influential artifact in American criminal justice: the United States Constitution. Why do Americans celebrate Independence Day with fireworks, parades, and family traditions while Constitution Day passes wi...
6 Jul 2026
S1 E12 American (Rural) Crime Landscapes: The Degenerate Family Beyond the Last Gas Station — The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Franchise
Send us Fan Mail The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is widely regarded as one of the most influential horror films ever made. Over the past fifty years, it has grown into a sprawling franchise of sequels, remakes, prequels, and reboots that have continually reimagined Leatherface, his family, and the rural landscape they inhabit. But what does this franchise actually tell us about rural America, crime, justice, family, and the cultural meanings attached to place? In this episode of Crime &am...
29 Jun 2026
S 1 E 11 American (Rural) Crime Landscapes: The Landscape that Demanded Blood — The Wicker Man (1973) and Folk Horror
Send us Fan Mail The Wicker Man (1973) is widely regarded as one of the greatest folk horror films ever made. Although set on a fictional Scottish island, its themes profoundly influenced American depictions of rural crime, isolated communities, and alternative systems of justice, culminating in the 2006 American remake. But what does The Wicker Man actually tell us about crime, authority, belief, and the power of place? In this episode of Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours, host Kevin Buck...
22 Jun 2026
S 1 E 10 American (Rural) Crime Landscapes: The River with Memory but no Witnesses — Deliverance (1972) and the Myth of the Mountain Man
Send us Fan Mail Deliverance (1972) is a film that for generations has shaped how Americans imagine rural danger. For many viewers, the film is remembered for its famous dueling banjos sequence and its brutal sexual assault scene. But what does Deliverance actually tell us about crime, justice, fear, and rural America? In this episode of Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours, host Kevin Buckler explores one of the most influential portrayals of rural crime and violence in American film history...
15 Jun 2026
S 1 E 9 American (Rural) Crime Landscapes: Sheriff Taylor's Small Town America — Mayberry and the Myth of Rural Justice
Send us Fan Mail For generations, "Mayberry" has served as shorthand for a simpler, safer, and more orderly America. But what does The Andy Griffith Show actually tell us about crime and justice? In this episode of Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours, host Kevin Buckler explores one of the most influential portrayals of rural America in television history. Using the classic episode "Crime-Free Mayberry" as a case study, this episode examines how The Andy Griffith Show constructed a vision of...
8 Jun 2026
S 1 E 8 American (Rural) Crime Landscapes: Shirley Jackson’s The Summer People — Rural Degeneration or Misplaced Fear of the Rural Other?
Send us Fan Mail American Crime Landscapes is a series exploring how popular culture imagines crime, justice, deviance, and social control through place. Across novels, films, television, music, and other cultural artifacts, the series examines how urban, suburban, and rural settings become more than locations. They become symbols, myths, and cultural narratives that shape how we understand danger, belonging, and community. In this first episode exploring rural American crime landscapes, host...
31 May 2026
S 1 E 7 American Crime Landscapes: An Introduction to the Crime and Place Series (Urban, Suburban, and Rural)
Send us Fan Mail This is the introductory episode of a new series of Crime and Pop Culture Office Hours. The series is called "American Crime Landscapes." It begins with a simple question: What do we really mean when we say urban, suburban, and rural? In this introductory episode, the host Kevin Buckler explores how popular culture teaches us to think about crime, justice, danger, and belonging through place. Drawing on films and television series such as Se7en, Joker, The Wire, Hallowe...
6 Apr 2026
S 1 E 6 The Juvenile Super Predator: The Monster We Imagined and the Crime Wave That Never Came
Send us Fan Mail This episode of Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours examines the rise and impact of the juvenile “super-predator” myth through two influential 1990s articles by John DiIulio. Using these texts as cultural artifacts, the episode explores how academic claims, media amplification, and political rhetoric converged to construct a racialized narrative linking youth, crime, and Blackness. The episode critically analyzes the demographic and “moral poverty” arguments underlying the p...
14 Feb 2026
S 1 E 5 "The Calls Are Coming from Inside the House": Black Christmas (1974) and 1970s Cultural Anxieties
Send us Fan Mail Black Christmas (1974) is more than an early slasher film. It is a reflection of 1970s cultural anxiety. Set in a sorority house during the holidays, the film follows a group of young women stalked by an unseen killer whose threatening phone calls originate from inside the home. Through its use of point-of-view shots, fragmented voices, and domestic invasion, the film helped establish many conventions that later defined the slasher genre. But beyond its stylistic influence, t...
5 Dec 2025
S 1 E 4 Houston Serial Killer Panic: The Real Cultural Anxieties
Send us Fan Mail In this final episode of our four-part series on the Houston serial-killer panic of 2025, we look beyond the rumors in the bayou to examine the deeper forces shaping the city’s fear. We unpack why “targeted” violence still feels threatening in urban space, how clearance rates and investigative delays cloud public understanding, and why trust in institutions fractures when answers are slow or uncertain. We also explore the real impact of strained policing, forensic backlogs, a...
4 Dec 2025
S 1 E 3 Houston Serial Killer Panic: Medical Examiners' Reports and Undetermined Cases
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, death investigations expert Elizabeth Gilmore takes us inside the medical examiner’s office to explain how cause and manner of death are determined—a process that is far more complex and far more critical than most people realize. She breaks down the five official manners of death, what each classification really means, and how those determinations shape everything from criminal investigations to prosecutorial decisions to charge. She also helps us understand...
4 Dec 2025
S 1 E 2 Houston Serial Killer Panic: Cultural Understandings and Empirical and Definitional Realities
Send us Fan Mail This is the second episode in our four-part series on the Houston serial killer panic of 2025. This episode takes a closer look at how we think—and often misthink—about serial murder. I sit down with two criminologists who bring both clarity and nuance to a topic that’s usually buried under myth and media hype. First, Krista Gehring joins me to unpack the cultural narratives we’ve built around serial killers: the tropes we repeat, the fears we amplify, and the ways pop cultur...
3 Dec 2025
S 1 E 1 Houston Serial Killer Panic: Serial Killers in American (Popular) Culture
Send us Fan Mail This is the first episode of a four-part series on the Houston serial killer panic of 2025. This installment traces the panic’s deeper lineage, following its evolution from the serial killer anxieties of the 1970s and 1980s through the rise of true crime culture and into the social media era, where fear can rapidly intensify into full-blown frenzy.
2 Dec 2025
Introduction to the Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours Podcast
Send us Fan Mail This inaugural episode of Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours introduces the podcast concept and purpose. Crime and popular culture artifacts become cultural rituals that shape our fears, values, and sense of social order. Using Videodrome's (1983) iconic “The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye” moment as a starting point, it breaks down why popular culture artifacts resonate so deeply—and why this podcast exists to document the importance of popular culture a...
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