So let's talk about this new show, Deviant. Yes.

And for those of you who don't know us, my name is Dan Sematowitch.

I'm Andrew Iiden.

And if you do know us, you probably know us from our work on Down the Hill, the Delphi Murders, a podcast we did a few years ago. As of this recording, that is still an ongoing case, and there's still plenty to talk about there, but that's not why we're here. That's for another time. That's for another time. Who knows? Maybe a different series. But since the last episode of that show we made, which was a little bit ago, Andrew and I have been talking for a while, and we're like, We want to do another story. We want to do something else. What should we do? And of all the possible crime stories, of all the possible deviance out there, of all the possible things we could cover, we kept coming back to Israel Keyes. There's just something about him. This guy is just such an aberration on society. Even among serial killers, he He's so unique. That fascinated me. I think it fascinated you, too.

Yeah, and there are things about him that are also a very classic serial killer. I think narcissism comes into play. I think an inflated sense of self, an arrogance. I think he He's intelligent. He seems like an intelligent guy. You can't do what he did and get away with it for as long as he did by being stupid. There are some classic tropes to his story as a criminal, but also the things that are unlike the others, which is the lengths he went to to commit his crimes, the meticulous planning years ahead of time he's thinking about. Years.

That's a crazy thing to me, man. First of all, most serial killers kill within a certain geographic region. They keep their hunting ground, if you will, which is the terms you need to think of with these folks, confined to a certain place. Israel Keyes traveled everywhere in the United States. He traveled everywhere in Canada. He traveled to South America. He traveled to the Middle East. As far as we know, most of his crimes were confined to a certain geographic area, that being the entire United States, and possibly Canada.

He was in the military. What impact did that have on his life? What impact did that have on his criminal activity? He talks about that in the tapes. What about his upbringing? What about the wiring of his family? How did that impact him?

What was he like as a kid, right?

We talk about that. We talk to some people who knew him as a teenager. We talk to some people that knew him as a coworker that spent time with in the moments in the years when there were some very, very crazy things going on in his life that we're going to try to pin down. So trying to understand this guy, yes, on some level, it's like, why would you want to do that? And that's a fair question.

But also- Flipside, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you want to understand? I think the thing that really fascinates us about serial killers, as most of the population are not serial killers, I think, hopefully, one of the things that does interest us about serial killers is how different they are. We look in the mirror and we see a human being. They look in the mirror and see a human being. We're not all that different physically, but we're so just different mentally. I think we all want to figure out how could us as normal, well-adjusted, compared to them, human beings do something like that.

The other thing that's compelling about Keyes is that he is aware that he is two different people. He says it multiple times in his tapes. Sure. He tells law enforcement, Look, there is no one who knows me or who has ever known me who knows anything about me, really.

They're going to tell you something that does not line up with anything I tell you because I'm two different people, basically. And the only person who knows about what I'm telling you, the things I'm telling you is me.

How long have you been two different people?

A long time. 14 years.

I am not the same person that the people you're going to talk to I am. Because operating as two different people, oftentimes, there's not a self-awareness of that, but he is self-aware that he is operating on two different planes throughout his entire life.

He's managing both those personalities. It's not like he's switching back and forth. I don't even know if he would consider the front that he put to the rest of the world, a side of him that's authentic. I don't think he would. Why don't you? What do you think?

It's hard to say. Look, I spent 20 years in the true crime journalism universe, and I've done a lot of stories over the years of people that have done horrible, horrible things. And Israel Keyes, to me, is like Defcon 2 different. He is just completely, completely different from any that I've ever read about or covered or anything. He's completely in his own zip code.

Drew and I have worked together for a very long time. And one thing that goes back a long time is, and I'm very proud of Drew for developing the skill, it is understanding the Defcon system. Back in the days of down the hill. He used to say this would be a Defcon 5 alert. For those of you who are not familiar with the Defcon system, five is the least serious, one is the most serious.

Which is, I think, the inverse of what everybody thinks.

Which is the inverse of what everyone thinks. Making a podcast, spending long hours, spending long months with each other in such an intense environment can sometimes cause friction. For some reason, the Defcon thing really got to me during down the hill. But we made it through and we're working together again on this new show. Deviant. And this show is different from other true crime shows in a way. Yeah. Think about true crime shows, they're two different general spheres, right? They're the season-based ones where you listen to a story told over, I don't know, 10 episodes. The season ends, and hopefully that show, you like it, it comes back a year from now.

The Cereals, Beyond All, Repair, all those shows that we all know.

Yeah, and what those podcasts do as a hallmark, well-produced, well-reported, they really get in there and they make it sound beautiful. And there's lots of scripting and storytelling. Then there's the other sphere, different, not worse, just different, where it's more folks talking, right? It's more an episode every week, and then they keep it rolling. And that's a different experience. What Deviant does is melds those two experiences. We want to bring that deeply reported, well-produced listening experience to you every week. When we're done telling a story, we're just going to tell the next one. We're not going to leave for a year.

I think about these things as magazine pieces. You spend some time, you say to the listener, you say to the reader, whatever it is, you say, Look, I'm going to spend some time with you. I'm going to tell you this story. We're going to go as long as it needs to go, and we're going to all meet at the end and reconvene. That's what I like to do. I think that's what we did with Down the Hill. That's the content that I tend to gravitate towards. I think that you and I and our team have been clear from the jump with a consensus of like, that's how we want to do this. It made sense that Keyes was the way to start this thing because there is so much there to look at and try to peel back layers on.

Yeah, he is an amazing onion. I can't wait for all of you to hear what we've been working on and the story we're going to tell about Israel Keyes.

Journalism is where we were and have been forever. That's the way we're going to approach this thing is making sure that we have the facts straight, that we have all the people that we can to lend some context and some color around the spine of the story that we're working on.

Yeah, and we don't want this to just be a one-way conversation. We don't want it to just be us talking to you. We want to hear from you, too. So make sure you follow us and interact with us on social. You can find us on most of the platforms at deviant. Podcast. We'll be there. We'll be there telling other stories. We'll be there talking about what's on our mind in the crime world. And we hope you'll join us there, too. Our first episode, what week from today?

June 25th. Is that a week from today?

That is a week from today. But I was wrong. I lied to you. The first two episodes are coming out on June 25th. We're releasing the first two episodes simultaneously of Deviant, Series One. We call them Series. Each story we'll tell will be a series. Israel keys. We plan on telling Israel keys over seven parts. If you haven't yet, please follow Deviant wherever you get your podcast. Tell your friends, get them to follow it. We look forward to going on this journey with you.