Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Popular Culture
Episode: Debbie Felton, "Monsters and Monarchs: Serial Killers in Classical Myth and History" (U Texas Press, 2021)
Description: Even if the term "Serial Killer" wasn’t coined until the end of the 20th century, the practice of multiple murder has followed humanity through the ages. In Monsters and Monarchs: Serial Killers in Classical Myth and History (U Texas Press, 2021), professor Debbie Felton digs deep into the sources to demonstrate instances of what we might recognize as serial killers in antiquity, from myth to Imperial Rome to rhetorical exercises and maybe even on our small screens at home. Tracing these gruesome lineages, she exposes examples of these “types” of criminals through history, including more recognizable names like Jack the Ripper...