Lenore Skenazy

And a couple of things changed back then that were significant.

One is that we got cable television in the 80s, which meant that we suddenly had a 24 hour news cycle, which had never been the case before.

And of course, if you have to keep people glued to the screen for all those hours, you have to find very compelling and I would say very upsetting content, as we've learned from later on with the Internet.

And so that's when we started to sort of obsess about stranger danger.

And also there were two very high profile kidnappings in New York, my city.

In 1979, a boy named Eitan Pates was taken from a bus stop.

um and never seen again and what was interesting about that case aside from utter tragedy is that the working assumption on the part of the public uh at the beginning was that some lovelorn lady had seen this cute little kid and taken him home to raise as her own so we weren't thinking at all

about predators and predators then were like lions and owls and and so it was only gradually as word got out maybe from the police and from the news that well maybe it wasn't the lady maybe it wasn't taken home to raise that people became became just shocked that there would be this weird and horrible and disgusting and upsetting crime and then when it happened to uh adam walsh was taken from outside of a sears in florida in 1982 there was a

a miniseries done on him that broke all ratings records.

And the news and the media are there to make money, right?

Not just to inform you and help you, but really to make money.

And when they saw that this is what really captivated audiences the most, they said, get me more of these.

Don't get me, don't steal more children.

Get me more content like this because the appetite for this has been unending.

And we know that because to this day,

law and order, I think has been on for like 25 or 30 years.

And every day people are tuning in to see just the most depraved and upsetting crimes.

And, you know, you breathe these in and gradually your lungs fill with this despair.

And what seemed to be, you know, almost unheard of in the Eitan Pates case in 1979 becomes something like the same Harris Paul interviewed parents.

And