John B. Allen (MrBallen)

How do you find this stuff?

Well, that one's pretty well publicized, I suppose.

People know about that.

Yeah, but the thing that, and this is not to toot my own horn, but I think that the thing that I will do to stories that I think brings them to life a little bit is there are stories that are told by loads of people on loads of accounts and channels and movies and TV shows.

But a lot of time, there's sort of like a formula for how each one gets told.

for example, this is completely random, but like Roswell, New Mexico, I don't even have the story in mind, but the way that story is often told is Roswell, New Mexico is like where aliens by the government are like kept, you know?

And like, that's how you start the story.

And then you sort of back into it.

And that's how everybody tells that story.

If I was going to tell, and I'd never done this, a story about Roswell, I would start with some anecdote

that led to this theory even existing.

I would start with somebody's experience in real time that was potentially paranormal, and then I would begin to connect it to Roswell in some way.

Maybe the government comes in after the fact, and suddenly the sighting this person saw, the government's asking questions, and it turns out it's the agents from Roswell, New Mexico.

And so I like to find a way to tell a story where the payoff is only at the end.

You know, it's like...

especially in true crime stories, which we do a lot of, so many times when you tell a story like that, it becomes one fixated on the antagonist, the killer, because they're the most obscene, they're the most memorable in the worst ways.

And you lead with like, today, I'm going to tell you the story of the murder of so-and-so.

And so going into it, you sort of already know what the story is.

And

you're fixated on the killer.