Looming Suspicions in Guthrie Search, the DARK Psychology of the Reiner Case, & Origins of Parricide

Hello, and welcome to your Tuesday edition of The Nerve. I am your host, Maureen Callahan. And today, a Nerve favorite, a real provocateur, Professor Sam Vachnan is with us. Now, we spoke to him earlier in January, but we decided to hold this interview. There was a Nick Reiner arraignment date that got pushed back. And so we thought this might do better there, but then the Savannah Guthrie case exploded. And as we know, based on Ashley Banfield's impeccable reporting, and she's been on the nerve to discuss it, law enforcement has been looking at Savannah Guthrie's brother-in-law and potentially sister as prime suspects in the disappearance of their mother, 84 year old Nancy Guthrie. If this turns out to be the case, we are looking at yet another very high profile case of intimate family violence. You know, it was what made the OJ case so shocking. It seems as though it's like a complete rarity, like an outlier of a crime. And as we began speaking with Sam, I preface this with him by talking about how it's always been a motif in literature, in drama. I mean, you go back to the ancient Greeks, the second characters who show up in the Old Testament, Cain and Abel. So it's been with us, it seems, since the birth of humanity. So Sam is joining us to talk about this. And again, you think a conversation with Sam is going to go one way, and he brings you along to the most fascinating back roads intellectually, spiritually, philosophically, spiritually, morally. So we think you're going to really enjoy this conversation as much as we did. It's a conversation you really won't hear anywhere else but on the nerve. And then after that, we are going to do some troublemaker feedback just to lighten things up a bit. Here we go. Are you looking for a healthier snack that also tastes great? Then give Masa a try. Masa chips are made with just three real ingredients, organic corn, sea salt, and 100% grass-fed beef tallow. 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No bigger story in Hollywood and the entertainment media right now than the shocking double homicide of Rob and Michelle Reiner, allegedly at the hands of their son, 32-year-old Nick Reiner. But as we learn more, and we will continue to learn more, the question will inevitably become, just how shocking was it really? Or were the family dynamics such that a tragedy like this seemed inevitable? We at The Nerve are here to have the conversations that no one else is having. And this story opens up a dark but fascinating topic, one as old as mankind itself. The phenomenon of parasite, that being the murder of one or both parents by their own child. And who better to help us understand this darkest of human aberrations, but the one and only professor sam vachnin joining us now sam welcome back to the nerve it's great to open the year with you but i'm not sure what that what you've just said whether i should take it as a compliment or a major insult oh i you know it's so funny we were talking to nancy grace not not long ago and she said the same thing i said who better to talk about the the nuances of this trial with and she It was like, are you saying I have a dark heart? No such thing. No such thing. But Sam, you know, I've been thinking about this since the story broke. And, you know, I think back to the very first family of the Bible, of the Old Testament, Cain and Abel, the first siblings. And it's fratricide. So it's not parasite, but it's related, the killing of Abel by Cain. Um, why is this such a narrative strain? I mean, you go back to the ancient myths of Oedipus who killed his father, married his mother. Um, it is throughout at least three Shakespeare works, Hamlet, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus. Um, what is it in, in, um, in the darker heart of, of humanity that can give us any insight into this phenomenon? Killing our family members is normal. It is not killing them that is abnormal. And you were worried I thought you had a dark heart. As dark as they come. I think what I'm trying to say is that when we look at the animal kingdom, killing your parents is the only way to move ahead it's the only way to climb the social ladder social upward mobility depends on killing your parents you know in what species is this most almost all in almost especially especially the more advanced the species is for example primates and and apes great apes and so on so forth chimpanzees and but also among among lions and tigers, in most of the genera of the animal kingdom, parricid is very common, especially patricid, especially killing the father. And what is that about? It's about making place for the new generation. It's about removing obstacles, as I said, to upward mobility. It's about establishing hierarchy. It's about gaining the favors of the female species, the female of the species, gaining access, actually. And so it's normal. The normal thing in the animal kingdom is to kill your parents. It is only with the advent of civilization that we have created restraints and constraints and inhibitions and laws and regulations and self-control and self-discipline, mores and ethics and norms and the Bible and you name it, this is a veneer. This is a very thin veneer. It's about, what, 5,000 years old, maybe? And so if you look at it from a statistical point of view, our behavior as a species where we refrain from killing our parents is a very, very late addition to evolution and highly aberrant or highly abnormal in the big picture of things. So Sam, what's the evolutionary adaptation that caused mankind to shun parasite? If you're saying this is actually in our nature, what is the evolutionary benefit of not killing the father or the mother? It takes a long time to raise a human child. And if parents know that they're about to be assassinated once the job is over, then they will simply not engage in it. From the point of view of the species, it behooves us to not get rid of our parents, at least not violently. And well, you know, there are other ways. And the reason is we want to motivate them to parent. We want to motivate them to act as parents. Now, the human cub, the human baby, requires an inordinate amount of time, according to some scholars, 31 years, maybe 25 years, according to Twenge and Campbell, and at the very least, 18 years, according to most legal systems. So it takes decades to raise the human baby and bring it to the level of an adult. In some cases, majority of cases, this fails. But okay, so it requires a lot of investment. Now, how would we motivate people to invest in raising up children? We would guarantee them that they will stay alive having done so. This is not the case with chimpanzees, with horses, with zebras, with elephants. I mean, they emerge, they are born, and within days, they're self-sufficient. Really? There's no need for parenting. We think of elephants as a very sort of peaceful species. It's a matriarchal species. We see them in herds. We see these animals grieve when a child dies or when one of the tribe dies. We've seen it with great apes. We've seen them lined up looking at the body of another ape with shock and despair on their faces. So this all really runs counter to sort of the messaging we get that a parasite is an event that is so rare as to be truly shocking. You know, there was a period of history, I forget, maybe it was the Middle Ages, I do forget, where Parasite was considered the absolute worst crime one could commit. Roman Republic. Thank you. In the Roman Republic, Parasite was the only offense punishable by death. Really? The only capital offense was Parasite. Not even murder. So this was during the Roman Empire. And take, for example, the stories of the Grimm brothers from Hansel and Gretel. Hansel and Gretel are twice abandoned by their mother and rescued by the father. They actually gravitate towards the father's cabin. That's how they come across the witch and her sweet gingerbread home and whatever. And so the Grimm brothers captured this dilemma of this conflict, incipient conflict between children and their parents. The Grimm brothers did not illustrate the family as this ideal environment or idyllic environment, But they actually depicted the family as a kind of a fight club or an arena where children contest the parents. Parents abandon children to die. Witches intervene in some ways. And then the children kill the witch. The witch is also a maternal figure, if you have a close look at it, because she offers shelter and she offers food and so on. Then the father is remote and you have to work very hard to get to the father, although the father is a protector figure. There's a duck, a talking duck that helps them to get along and get there. In short, the family is a nightmare. In the stories of the Green Brothers, the family is a nightmare, a veritable nightmare. And of course, you mentioned the Oedipus complex, the Electra complex, the Adjaci complex. I mean what's the what's the ladder that you just referenced some of these uh some of these complexes are um less known so some of them involve sibling rivalry some of them involve sibling collusion against parents and so on there's a panoply of complexes in psychoanalytic literature which describe the inevitable violence between family members members violence lethal violence and so um i think i think we we tend to ignore the reality of this at our peril you see relationships between family members especially parents and children are by far the most intense not only are they most intense but there is a relation the relationship is reminiscent of creator-creation interactions, that the parents are the creators, you know? Yes. And the same way we rebel against God, like Nietzsche said, God is dead, the same way we rebel against God, we rebel against these divine infallible figures of our early childhood. We want them dead because the alternative is to never become. if you put the parents together that's who you are essentially big parts of you are nothing but the internalization and introjection of your parents your parents are a huge part of you if you are emotionally regulated and stable and boundaried and mature and everything then you can cope with it somehow you learn to identify the parts of you that are not exactly you that your parents and you learn to put, you know, a firewall between these parts and the rest of you. But what if you are dysregulated? What if your internal defense is weak? What if you're mentally ill? What if you are, you know, then you need to get rid of these parts. These parts become overwinning, domineering, tyrannical, and you need to get rid of these parts. And sometimes the only way to get rid of them is to physically kill your parents on very rare occasions. Well, not so rare, actually. About two to four percent of crimes committed involve family members. This is interesting because there's two things you're hitting on that I wanted to talk to you about. One, you said, you know, it's a killing of the creators. And to me, this is one of the most self-destructive acts one could commit. You are killing the people who literally created you. And it seems like a murder of one's own soul to commit such a crime. And I also wonder if there is any data on such intrafamily violence when it comes to adult children or adolescent children who are living with the parents. It seems that that close, close proximity or living in the house beyond an age that seems emotionally healthy is potentially a contributing factor. Paracid is intimately linked to adolescence. And the fact that in adolescence, there is a phenomenon known as identity diffusion. Yes. Identity is not settled yet. There's a lot of experimentation, a lot of angst about who I am and what's the meaning of my life and where am I going and so on. A lot of anxiety and depression in this period of life. And a lot of individuating from the parents, rebellion. Yes, there is what we call negative identity formation where you define yourself in contradistinction, in opposition to the parental figure. You say, I am never going to be like my mother or I am going to be someone who is the opposite of my father or whatever. None of this works, by the way. So there is a lot of inherent tension that is innate, that takes place in the adolescent's mind, that is very often not evident and not observable. Be that as it may, the statistics are very clear. The vast majority of parasites are committed by minors who live with their parents. Really? We're talking well over 90%. Teenage boys are the most likely to commit parasite. Teenage girls are far less likely. The victims are usually parents who are somewhat strict or rigid or pillars of the community or perfectionists have high expectations impose their wishes fantasies and demands on the child where the interaction is pretty unidirectional The parent dictates, the child obeys. And so I don't want to go into the family dynamics of the Reinhers, but I would not be shocked or surprised if we were to find out that the father and possibly also the mother were a lot less amicable. and chubby than they appear to be, and a lot more strict and rigid and demanding. This is very common in this. And so a parasite is an act of rebellion. When we interview these killers, they say, I wanted to be different. I wanted to have a different life. There's a lot of envy, a lot of rage, a feeling of extreme inadequacy, which is fostered by the parents. The inadequacy is fostered. So there is a process known as internalized bed object. The parents broadcast to the child, you're a failure. You're inadequate. You're imperfect. You should be fixed. You know, you're broken. You should be fixed. And so on and so forth. And the child internalizes this external view and renders this view his or her own. So the child kind of appropriates the parental point of view. And we call it an internalized bed object. This used to be called a primitive superego, by the way. And so the child is full of rage, full of anger and resentment. Yes. And envies the parental figures because they're perceived throughout life to be perfect, adequate, accomplished. And this leads to this combination, this unholy combination between rage and envy and an attempt to break out and create a different life. Fear, a sense of being controlled from the outside, an external locus of control. An interpretation of the parental behavior is abuse, which is not counterfactual. It's quite true. It is abusive. Today's show is sponsored by Cowboy Colostrum. 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Just head to cowboycolostrum.com slash Maureen and use code Maureen at checkout. That's 25% off when you use code Maureen at cowboycolostrum.com slash Maureen. And after you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show. Tell them you're a troublemaker and the nerve sent you. So to not, not to, we're not talking specifically about the Reiners here whatsoever, but what What did strike me about that, that crime in the scene itself was the savagery. It was a butchering, really. They were stabbed multiple times, both slit across the throats, which to me was a metaphor for shutting them up. I don't want to hear anything anymore. it seemed as though this was a 32 year old man living at home who had been somewhat infantilized you know brought along as a third wheel to a hollywood party full of very successful accomplished famous people and um you talk about the difference because you know the the reputation that the reiners do have in hollywood is of very convivial uh you know pillars of the community all of that i would imagine in cases of parasite again i'm not talking about this one specifically That dynamic you just described where the outward facing reputation is one of near perfection. What is going on inside the house is perceived as the child radically different to the point where no one would ever believe what that child has to say. Yeah. This is a name. We call it pseudo hostile and pseudo mutual families. Families which are internally hostile. where the dynamics internally involve antagonism and conflict and competition and envy and rage. But outwardly, the families present mutuality, a united front of cohesion and love and compassion and empathy and affection. And, you know, so this contrast and this is known as pseudo mutual, pseudo hostile family. but i think i don't want to slit the viewers at least not on your show you know um of course not yeah right so um i want to make clear that i'm describing one type of killer one type of parasite parasite parasite and there's another type yes so the type that i've described is the most common These are teenagers without a criminal record, they're highly pro-social. They are loners, but they are people-pleasers. They are very mellow and obsequious and obeisant and so on and so forth. they may abuse substances but they do it in order to escape reality which they find intolerable and unbearable deep inside they're good people truly good people and they reach a point of a breaking point because they're weak constitutionally weak they reach a breaking point and they kill the parents that's what you just said though i need you to go a little deeper on that because i think people are going to have a very hard time squaring that you just said they are fundamentally good people. Yes. Well, that's one class. That's one group. But let's unpack that just a little, little bit. Please explain how someone could be described as a fundamentally good person who kills their parents. Even good people commit crimes and even good people do evil deeds. Everyone is a breaking point. Circumstances, the environment, interactions with other people, expectations, social pressure, cultural context. We all have a boiling point. We all have a breaking point. We like to believe that it's not true. Like if I were to ask you, tell me, I would never kill another person. I would never murder someone. I'm sorry. That would be counterfactual. That's untrue. So, what is happening with these children, these are children, these are teenagers. What's happening with them, they experience the parental environment as, as I said, intolerable, unbearable, overbearing, abusive, domineering, threatening. They need to escape. But because they lack resources, they lack their will, they are not efficacious, they don't know how to accomplish things. They are highly dependent on other people for the regulation of their sense of self-worth. They derive their identity from other people. They have what I call a hive mind. because they are so broken and so damaged to start with, the only way, the only method of escape they can conceive of is to get rid of these gods who are tormenting them. So there is a discrepancy between the interpretation of the situation, the interpretation of the environment, of the interpersonal relationships, and what's really happening. these people, these teenagers are immured and immersed in fantasy the fantasy is very dark and very nightmarish and they believe the only way to wake up is to kill the people who they identify as the sources of the fantasy, the sources of a nightmare Sam is there I'm sorry, is there any data on what a paracidal offender thinks is going to happen once they actually do murder the parents. You know, you're talking about this fantasy that they will be free when the truth is they're going to spend the rest of their lives either in a mental institution or behind bars. So what is going on in the mind at that moment? We actually do have studies, quite a few, and they show pretty conclusively that they believe that they will have a different life. Now, as far as you and I go, prison or mental asylum is a bad alternative. They would beg to disagree. Really? They would consider any change preferable to the status quo. So the rage and the anger are dysregulating in the sense that they remove inhibitions and they cause these teenagers to simply lash out, lose control of themselves, which is very lowered as it is. And they form an identity, a new identity by getting rid of the parents. It's a kind of externalized, ritualized identity formation. You mentioned the multiple stabs and so on and so forth. It's a ritual. It's the equivalent, it's a rite of passage. It's the equivalent of a religious rite. That is fascinating. It's a liminal transition between one life and another. Now, we have in many religions ceremonies that involve bloodletting. I was just going to say bloodletting. Yeah. We have many ceremonies that involve bloodletting or other usages and mortifications. Yes. Blood is a cleanser. Blood is a cathartic thing. So by multiply stabbing your parents and by shedding visible blood ostentatiously all over the place and so on, you are engaging in an act of unadulteration, in an act of purification and cleansing. And you will emerge from this firestorm a newly a new person, a newly created entity and so on. And it doesn't really matter. The physical environment doesn't really matter. Because as I've just indicated, these people live inside their heads, not outside. They're totally internalized. They're immured. I use the word immured, not even immersed within the fantasy. They're buried in the fantasy. They're unable to exit. But this is one class of parricidal killers. Well, you know, you say it's mostly adolescent men. but it also makes me think of a case that shocked America and we talk about it to this day, Lizzie Borden with the axe, the bloodletting, the ritualistic rebirth as it were, demonic though it may be, yes. Yes, Lizzie Borden belongs to the second group. The second group, which are the minority. These are people who are interested in money, the greedy, avaricious. The Menendez brothers, perhaps? Sorry? The Menendez brothers, perhaps? The Menendez brothers, Blackwell in the United Kingdom, Lizzie Baudet, was interested in money. To this very day, scholars believe that she killed her parents because they refused her. She asked for some things and they refused to get these things. Really? They refused to give her the money. So there's money, entitlement. The money is intimately connected with a sense of entitlement. I deserve the best. I deserve the most. I deserve it now. There's no ability to postpone gratification. And if I don't get it, the people who are frustrating me need to be removed. So there is frustration, aggression. It was first described by Dollard in 1939. There is an immediate transition from frustration to aggression because of the entitlement, the narcissistic entitlement. These people are narcissist basically yes and they want money and they have alloplastic defenses in the sense that they blame others they blame their parents they blame other people for their own misbehavior and misconduct so they would say i killed them but they they had it coming they deserved it they constantly frustrated me and abused me they didn't recognize my talents and and they didn't recognize my need for the money. I needed the money to become someone. So they have this grandiose, inflated, fantastic self-concept, which gives rise to entitlement, which translates immediately, usually, to material benefits, including money. And then they kill in order to obtain the money, which they think they deserve. And so the parents are cast in the role of thieves. the parents are the criminals because this money belongs to the killer not to the parents and so you have this in in similar situations where there's no parasite but for example when custody is contested or guardianship is contested and the child says this money is mine my parents are in control of the money but that's unjust that's a crime This money belongs to me, you know? And so this is a kind of sublimated, refined parasite. The parent's reputation is tarnished. Yes, I was going to ask you about other forms of parasite that are not literal murder. The ways in which the children just completely obliterate the parents. You know, we were talking about this not too long ago, and I think it's not unrelated. this trend of going, quote unquote, no contact, I have excised you from my life is a form of spiritual, emotional murder. There are many ways to kill your parents. Yeah. Yes. The stupid way is to kill them. I mean, physically, but there are many other ways to kill them. Parents describe excruciating pain when, for example, they are abandoned and rejected by their children, ignored by their children there is reputational assassination a reputational cost involved in raising children who later become your enemies so there are many ways to kill the parent and in today's world there is no presumption of innocence when it comes to parents parents are automatically and immediately guilty until proven otherwise I blame Oprah I blame Freud i think we can meet in the middle i get you there i do i think it's a bit older than oprah and um so i blame oprah for the mainstreaming of it you know more people sadly in today's world are familiar with the teachings of oprah rather than the writings and works of sigmund freud right but um i i absolutely agree with you go on by the way in the united kingdom uh we're talking the second class of killers the first class of killers as i said are are people who are whose fantasy has taken over they have a fantasy life which has taken over reality and in this fantasy life they are imprisoned and incarcerated and confined by monsters these monster monsters never let them become never let them be happy never let them realize and actualize themselves so they have to kill these monsters that's one group the second group simply want money they simply want the money because they feel they're entitled to it they They have grandiose conceptions and so on and so forth. And these people are mentally ill. They usually have personality disorders and they abuse substances. Now, shockingly, a court in the United Kingdom ruled that a personality disorder is a mitigating circumstance. There's a guy called Blackwell. He killed both his parents cruelly, as is the case usually. And the judge said, well, he's mentally ill. He has narcissistic personality disorder. So that the concern that vis the Reiner case right now that the mental illness aspect will overshadow everything The McNaughton rules guilty by insanity and not guilty by virtue of insanity, as the McNaughton rules, are very clear. Can you tell the difference between right and wrong? All these people can tell the difference between right and wrong. They just don't care. Yes, yes, yes, yes. There is an impulse you couldn't control. That's extremely rare in Parasite. It's usually not impulsive, actually. The perpetrator has been thinking about it for years sometimes, imagining it, relishing it, you know, experiencing it vicariously via his or her imagination. Probably coddling the fantasy because the anticipation is probably as fun, if not more so, than the actual doing. And I don't mean that in a flip way, But I will not be surprised at all to learn that in this case, that was an extremely sick house, that this this this was a problem that was known within the within the walls and the intimate family, you know, external family members and friends, the satellites around it. And that this probably was something that he had been fantasizing about. You know, maybe we'll find his journals. Maybe we'll find drawings. I don't know. We see it often with, you know, it's another topic, but school shooters. Same thing. They fantasize in writings and drawings about it. Exactly, yes. It's not premeditated. It's not like you say, on Thursday, I'm going to kill my parents at 10th birthday because I have an appointment at 12. But it's not this kind of premeditated, but it's definitely relished, anticipated, imagined and reimagined. There is a, we call it vividness. There is a kind of living and reliving the experience long before it had occurred. So I want to go back to the Grimm brothers' story. Yeah. The mother's role is to be present for the child, to take care of the child's needs, shelter, food, and so on. And the father's role is to protect. Yet in Hansel and Gretel, the story, they both fail. The mother abandons the children, twice, by the way, not once. And the father is not there. He lives far away in a cabin, which is inaccessible. They have to ride the back of a duck to get there. And it's a talking duck. Don't ask. Horror. So what this story is telling us, actually, is that the expectations of the children are crucial when it comes to parasite. I insist that the children in the story do commit parasite. they committed by they committed by proxy they killed the witch but if you look at the witch at the role of the witch in the story she is a mother she gives them shelter she gives them food she gives them a bed to sleep in she is totally maternal and then they kill her and so I think it's like killing the parents by proxy, by caries and so, and why do they kill. Why is this parasital instinct or drive in the story? Because the parents have failed them. The children perceive the parents as having failed them, having frustrated them and disappointed them, having not fulfilled the classical parental roles. This is the case with all parasital killers. They perceive the parents as having failed them in some way. The psychopathic ones or the narcissistic ones, they say the parents failed me, they didn't give me enough money. And the less pernicious ones, the less insidious ones, less evil ones, they say the parents have failed me because they wouldn't let me become. They wouldn't let me be me. They did not really love me. They loved maybe what I represented, or they loved what I could have become, or they loved what I should have become, but they never loved me. Now, back to the Reiners. The father didn't have to actually do anything. It's sufficient that he was successful and accomplished. That in itself is a trigger. That in itself, I think, is an act of aggression, perceived aggression. Yes. His very presence is a constant reminder of failure and inadequacy. his very success his very accomplishments the very fact that they had a circle of friends while evidently Carl Reiner didn't and so the child it grates it's a process of friction it's incremental it's invisible and yet the child is being corroded and eroded to the point that all the defenses crumble all the inhibitions fall away and the child honestly and truly believes that the only way to survive is to get rid of the parental figures. They have become what we call in psychology persecutory objects. They have become the enemy. And if parents don't know how to manage these situations, I don't think, I mean, parasite is not that common, but the equivalent of parasite would be. the disappearance of the child from your life, the vanishing of the child, the child will vanish simply one way or another. Sam, unfortunately, I mean, I could talk to you about this for hours and hours, and I'm sure we'll revisit it as this story unfolds. But to that point, are there, you know, you say so much of this is invisible, is unobservable, undetectable. Are there any signs, is there any data that tells us what parents can look out for that might clue them into this kind of burgeoning rage within a child? Substance abuse. Substance abuse is a great sign. Experimentation with identities, which is out of the normal. i'm not necessarily talking about gender dysphoria and transgender and so on but i was going to ask when the child experiments with identities on a constant basis this is a process known as moratorium so it expands on a constant basis and seems to be unable to settle on a single identity when the child rejects not the parental behavior but the parents themselves when the child defines itself, negative identity, defines itself in contradiction to the parents as mutually exclusive entities, have nothing to do with the parents, refuses. When the child becomes aggressive and violent out of context and begins to develop hypervigilance, begins to interpret innocuous acts and innocuous utterances and words as insults or slides or threats or attacks. So there's a lot of this. When the child becomes entitled and makes unreasonable demands on the resources of the parent, could be money, could be time, could be energy, could be, you know, drive me to school every morning, otherwise I won't go to school. Entitlement is a major warning sign. Interest in weapons, guns, and so on definitely is a warning sign. but I think if you really are looking for something that is unequivocal unambiguous and happens all the time it's this discrepancy that I mentioned between the facade that the family puts outside outwardly, public facing and what's really happening the parents know this they know that it's a facade they know it's fake the parents are aware that the image of the family, this curation, you know, curation of the image of the family. Now so prevalent with social media. Yes, they know it's not true. Falsity, the major sign in my view, is falsity, when it's false, when it's fake, when it's pretend, when internally there's conflict and antagonism and resentment and frustration and hatred and aggression and fighting and then when you go out, when the family goes out, it's all wine and roses. It's all wonderful and there's a lot of love and compassion and empathy. Even the Reiners, and I'm not trying to say that I know anything about them beyond what I've read, but even the Reiners have presented what we call a pseudo-mutual facade. Like, look how much I love my son. Despite all his brokenness and his horrible, inexcusable behavior. Look how much I'm giving him. Look how much I'm investing in him. Look how much. Look, look. It's about the look. It's about attracting attention. It's about managing impressions. It's all artificial. It's all about appearances, not about substance. Agreed. You know, I think about this with the, there's a lot of talk about the film that Rob made with Nick. And it was called Being Charlie. And I believe it was co-written by Nick. And it was meant to try to usher Nick into Rob's world of successful filmmaking, successful artistic endeavor. But it was also about Nick's brokenness, Nick's addictions, Nick's inability to get his shit together. And then the two of them go on this media tour in which we see openly hostile emotions and statements and expressions coming from nick and you know it's sort of treated like how could this ingrate you know be such a brat and it's kind of like well if you if you were the broken one and your oscar nominated father was making a movie about how fucked up you are you might have some rage too and i'm not blaming the victim in any way i'm just saying this is a very very nuanced situation it's not the binary black and white that we're getting from the media No, it's not. And when you have the situation of a saint, a saint, a saintly father figure is a saint. I mean, to have suffered Nick, to have suffered his son for so long, that requires nothing short of sainthood. So he is a saint and his son is the heretic. His son is the, it's a religious morality play, all good, all bad. Yes. It's a religious morality play where Rob is in the role of the all good parent and his son is in the role of the all bad, ungrateful, vicious, aggressive son. The thing is that throughout all this, there's still hope. Hope raises its ugly head, if you wish. And what I mean to say is the child still hopes. The child still hopes. The children still hope that they can gratify the parent. The child still hopes that he can somehow meet the parent's expectations. The child wants to fit in the parent's world. The child wants to emulate and imitate the parent. The child wants to become the parent. This is a process known as modeling. In Parasite, modeling gets out of control. Whereas in normal healthy families, if you ever come across, let me know, there is the modeling involves the emulation and imitation and adoption of highly functional behaviors of the parent. In this kind of families, modeling involves the internalization of the duplicity. The modeling involves, I'm going to deny myself in order to make my father happy. I am going to not be there is a perception by the child that the expectation of the parent is for the child to not be that the child is some kind of disappointment some kind of an experiment some kind of a bankruptcy a lost endeavor an enterprise so the child says the only way I can gratify my parent, the only way I can meet my parents' approval is by not being. And the child is hell bent on denying itself, repressing itself, reshaping itself. Child becomes a shape-shifting thing. And in adolescence, this is exceedingly dangerous because anyhow, there is identity diffusion. At the moment of parasite, at the very second that the child engages in the act, there is dissociation. The person is no longer there. It's absolutely not there. Something automatic takes over, a kind of animalistic survival instinct, a wish to get rid of this nagging, intrusive, overbearing, obfuscating and suffocating presence which the parents have become. and the child is unable to face what he or she is doing. Usually it's a he. And then the child dissociates completely. We know this from studies. We've spoken to these children afterwards, these killers. And they describe moments of oblivion, lost time. And then they wake up, kind of wake up. Do they remember most of them committing the crime or is it a blackout state? It's a kind of blackout state. At least that's what the majority of them claim. And we do know from similar situations, not involving parasite, but we know from traumatic situations that dissociation is very common. But I think the dissociation in this case is extremely likely because the child learns to adopt dissociation as a survival mechanism, as a coping strategy. The father broadcasts to the child, as you are, you are not good enough. As you are, you're a failure. As you are, you're inadequate. As you are, you're ruining my life. That's a message. And so the child says, okay, dad, I'm going to suspend myself. I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to not be. And I'm going to become anything you want me to be, except myself. And so the child has a lot, huge experience with dissociation. Huge. Dissociation has become the main tool, actually. And, of course, one way to accomplish dissociation is substance abuse. when you drink you drink to excess you dissociate it's called blackout or brownout i mean brownout is previous stage when you when you do drugs in some types of drugs there is dissociation so this is artificially induced dissociation but the child also does it habitually internally generated from the inside association becomes a defense and then when the moment comes to get trait of the parents who are the source of the dissociation, that would be the ultimate and last dissociation, the last frontier beyond which the child's family believes that they're finally going to become. And that is why all of them say, I thought I would have a different life. Wow. Wow. I thought I would be different. I mean, literally all of them say this. It's unbelievable. You know, again, we're not, we're in no way saying that the Reiners are are to blame for, for what happened to them. We are simply discussing with deep thought and nuance that the dynamics that can lead to, you know, again, I think the Roman Republic made Paraside, the crime worse than all others. I mean, including infanticide, probably because it is such an, it's such a dark beating, persistent part of what it is to be human, this urge, you know, and I, I really, I. It's the worst crime because you're killing yourself. When you kill your parents, you're killing yourself. Yeah, I had the same thought about that. They constitute a huge part of who you are, so huge that, you know, there's no way of avoiding this truth that you're actually committing suicide. You are. You are. And when you were talking about, you know, the adolescent, quote unquote, killing themselves in order to mold themselves to the parental desire, that too is a form of suicide. You know, there are all these acts of violence that take place that are not physical well before the power side. Yeah. But I think we owe it to the viewers to emphasize again, there's a group of killers who are cold-blooded psychopathic narcissists. They haven't gone through any of the dynamics that I've described. They are not good people. They are not people pleasers by any extension of the phrase. They are entitled. They are cruel. They are sadistic. They are not talking about these people. And this group does exist. And they kill for money, basically. That's the overriding motive. They kill for money They want to abscond with their parents resources They regard the parents as obstacles And these are the kind of people who would kill other people not only the parents Yes. There is no, in this group of, in this second group of killers, there is no particular attachment to the parent. The parent doesn't represent any special relationship. There's no bonding. There's no love. There's no, they are just there and then they're not there. You know, it happens. and these kind of people would trample on anyone who would stand in their way to accomplishing goals. End of story. Sam, yet again, a fascinating, fascinating conversation with references from the Grimm Brothers to the Roman Republic. You know, I just love every time you're with us and we look forward to having you back on very soon. Thanks for joining us today at The Nerve, Sam. See you again this year. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Take care. Wow. What a conversation. So that is the nerves beginning take on the Reiner trial. I guarantee you, you watch mainstream media coverage of this, and you're going to get one story, one version, one kind of emotional and what passes for intellectual take on this crime, which is Nick Reiner, Psychopathic Monster, and Robin Michelle Reiner, Total Saints. And these things are way, way more nuanced. And it is healthy to have these kinds of conversations because these are the ones, I think, that are value adds to the culture in general and to our understanding of dynamics that are far too often just swept right under the rug. We will be back in a moment. Troublemakers, next time you're in the kitchen, read the ingredients on your kid's cereal box. Red dyes, seed oils, synthetic pesticides, fake flavors. It's poison dressed up as breakfast. That's why you should switch to Lovebird cereal. The founder created it after his daughter was born, refusing to feed her the garbage that big food pushes. Just a handful of clean, organic ingredients are listed right on the lovebird front. No refined sugar, no lab made flavors and no tricks. My favorite is cacao made with pure buckwheat, cassava, coconut, raw cacao, honey, coconut sugar, and sea salt. That's it. Grain-free, gluten-free, packed with prebiotic fiber for gut health and third party tested glyphosate free. 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Lovebird Cereal, join the real food revolution and take back our country's health from big food box by box. we are back and now the best part of any nerve your feedback first of all we got a i never saw this coming i never saw this coming we got a ton of feedback on the peter atiyah segment that we did on the nerve last week if you haven't watched it go over to youtube and and watch it um and I've also heard from a few of you. I'm going to get to him. It's in the email as well. More than a few about another offender. We'll get to, trust me, trust me. You know, we only have so much time in any given show. Dear Maureen, this is Troublemaker Joan. What is stopping CBS from kicking Peter Attia, who was in the Epstein files, saying, again, if you have small children around, drop this part of the show audio wise, right? Emailing Jeffrey Epstein saying that pussy is indeed low carb. This guy, by the way, who I couldn't believe I forgot about this. And I meant to say it in the last segment was partying with Epstein while his baby saw his newborn son was fighting for his life in the hospital. And the wife is saying, Hey, will you come be by my bedside while our newborn son fights for his life. And Peter Atiyah is like, no, I'm hanging out with the most famous pedophile in the world. Just my supposition, just my opinion. So Maureen, yes, Joan, what is stopping CBS from kicking Peter Atiyah to the curb? This is not even a close call. Couldn't agree with you more. As editor-in-chief of CBS News, Barry Weiss has made one bad decision after another. She should follow Atiyah out the door. 1,700-plus chummy frat boy emails with this disgusting, convicted pedophile. Smug, casually dismissive, and indefensible. Atiyah's sycophantic and infantile envy of Epstein's lifestyle is palpable throughout his seedy correspondence with him. Health and wellness correspondent? I think not. Hi, Maureen. every time my seven-year-old would walk into the living room and see you on the screen, she'd say, you're watching the news again. What can I do? Tell her it's Hollywood smut, not news, troublemaker Veronica. We think it's both. We think it's both. Anyway, Veronica liked the Atiyah coverage, but notice no coverage on the Deepak Chopra email. Trust me, we're going to get there. Veronica says, I lived in New York City for a short stint. interestingly, Chopra seems to be a spiritual guide, a spiritual guru rather to New York media people. Oprah brought him to us and trust me, wood chipper, troublemaker Veronica. This is from troublemaker Heather and we have full screen art of a screenshot to show you guys, does Hoda ever stay at home with her kids? And this screenshot shows Hoda barely able to contain her glee now that she is back ensconced on the today show set because her bff savannah who was most recently seen being held captive by hoda in the back of an suv this is before this tragedy involving savannah's mother savannah could barely hide her contempt now here's hoda warming savannah's chair and um we've got the useless dei hire chanel with her hands in prayer like an emoji and her eyes closed. Get the fuck out of here. Okay. This troublemaker's subject header, I put a spell on you, Jim Curtis. And this is incredible troublemaker art of Jennifer being hypnotized by her celebrity hypnotist boyfriend, Jim Curtis, who most recently was on the Today Show. and Jim is holding cash money in his right hand. He has a QR code affixed to his lapel and he's slinging in his right hand a yo-yo to hypnotize her, which I just think is brilliant. And then this troublemaker put on Jen's pillow a yellow butterfly because Jim has told all of us on the Today Show that if we need to calm ourselves down, we just need to look for yellow butterflies. Dear Maureen and Team Nerve, this is regarding the Nancy Guthrie investigation, and this is from troublemaker Erin. She loved our take on the sheriff, Barney Fife, who's loving this media coverage. Erin says, my husband, a former police officer, keeps saying that there is something off about this case, and I agree. What is currently standing out to me is how awkward the brother has been in the ransom videos. that combined with the police saying they haven't ruled anyone out. Could it be him? I love your thoughts. I actually don't think the brother is involved at all. I think what we're going to learn is a couple of things. Now, there's a theory that perhaps the brother does suspect the sister and the brother-in-law. And again, not to get too ahead of the story, but other people are noticing this as well. So perhaps the brother already thinks that the sister and the brother-in-law aren't comporting themselves in a way that tracks with what's going on or has seen the police has been there as investigators have searched the garage, at least the garage, possibly the house removed 15 bagged items of potential evidence. Investigators have been there with a case. We talked about like a physical case. We talked about this with Ashley Banfield and Phil Holloway last week. It's something called the Celebrite and it can retrieve deleted data from any number of electronic devices, phones, laptops, what have you. So maybe his antenna are up. I also think, and again, not to get ahead of this, two other things strike me the sister annie i think we're going to learn a lot about the finances of um of her and her husband um i don't think they're going to be in great shape i think we're going to learn a lot about the family dynamics i have a feeling that savannah was the golden child um i have a feeling that maybe um the other two had a more complicated relationship with their mother. And I also noticed you can't help but notice this. And I'm not saying anything. I'm just making an observation. Annie looks nothing like Savannah and her brother. Savannah and her brother do look alike. Annie looks nothing like them. Anyway, Troublemaker Erin also says, what she's done listening to Ask Not, she's going to listen to the book I wrote about Israel Keys. do it. Don't do it at night though. Trust me. I've heard plenty of comments about that. Okay. This is from troublemaker, Sarah, your assessment of the sheriff's office in Tucson is right on this. This email grabbed me, grabbed me a few years ago. Sarah writes, my husband's stepmother was found dead in her backyard in Tucson. This woman had been in a wheelchair for 25 years, had been taken to her lawyer by a caregiver to change her will to make said caregiver her executor and a beneficiary in the will and her medical POA, power of attorney. The sheriff's office, their determination, their finding was that her husband's stepmother was found outside while watering her plants. A wheelchair-bound elderly woman. We let them know the circumstances of the will change, etc., and the fact that she was wheelchair bound. We also hired a private investigator that found that the caregiver had done this to another woman in a neighboring town. We tried and tried to get the authorities to investigate, and we were told that none of our information warranted further investigation. Again, this is just this troublemaker self-report. Needless to say, we are not surprised to see that the ineptitude continues with this case. We, of course, hope for a good outcome for the Guthrie family, but it will not come, this troublemaker writes, from any efforts by the Pima County Sheriff's department. Do they do recall elections in Pima County? I think they should consider it. Okay, this is troublemaker Elizabeth. Hi, Maureen, a troublemaker from the very first show. I had to write you after your absolute takedown of our pathetic sheriff here in Pima County. When he ran for this elected office, he was even more insufferable. And now that he is clearly way out of his league, Sheriff Nanos has proven himself to be not only inept at best, but now perhaps a danger to solving this incredibly tragic case. Trust me, none of us in Tucson feel safe with him at the wheel. But this troublemaker is including a picture of her own troublemaker, Nellie, a dog that they rescued off the streets of Guadalajara with her eight puppies. Life is good for her now. And hey, Troublemaker, I think Nellie can protect you more than Sheriff Nanos ever could. Dear Maureen, never miss a show. Thanks, Troublemaker Kaz. Almost got into an accident while listening to your recent Nerve at Night about Savannah Guthrie's mother. I watched to the press conference on Thursday, February 5th, and you nailed it. I think we're all coming to the exact same conclusion. It's right in front of our eyes. We all hear the same thing. Barney Fife, which is our name for Sheriff Nanos, is unbelievable. I said from the outset that he chats too much, and today he did just that. Better yet, I followed up over on CNN, and they had an FBI profiler on. And she specifically stated that these criminals watch press conferences. They do. And that they watch everything. They follow everything online. They do. They do. They do. I learned it while writing American Predator. The sheriff's delivery was confusing on a few notes. And she went on to say that when there is not a clear delivery and intention, as we saw the FBI special agent give us, FBI special agent Yanke, if I'm pronouncing it right, it's J-A-N-K-E. He gave a clear delivery, clear intention. The sheriff does not, I cannot believe that Savannah Guthrie's people have encircled the wagons and told this chump to go take a hike. Also, this troublemaker makes a very astute observation. It is not cynical to think this. It's not. This is actually what's going on. I can't help but think this troublemaker writes, I believe during the May sweeps that the Today Show, forever attempting to be relevant, an impossible task, had each of their many hosts go back to their respective hometowns for homecoming segments. We're going to go over Savannah's because it's relevant to this case. I happen to get, and this is in no way, no way, no way to blame Savannah, but there is a salient observation here that we will also be discussing as this unfolds. This troublemaker, Kaz, writes, I happened to catch Savannah's. She was in Tucson with her mom, letting the world know how her mom still lives there, their favorite restaurant. They shot too much personal information, I thought, at the time. Dead on. Our final troublemaker email. Giving it to Gayle King. They screenshot this and sent it to us, excuse me, and we're throwing it up here for you to see. Gail King tears up over Savannah Guthrie's missing mother, Nancy. Hi, Maureen. I saw this and can't wait to hear your thoughts. I threw up. Love a troublemaker. Lucretia, mom of the ancient dog in Pearls, Jackie O, we know you, Lucretia. Oh my God. And your dog, of course, with her pearls. Listen, if you're in the news business as i say the old saw is if this is how cynical you have to be if your mother tells you she loves you get a second source gail king has zero business on air crying and weeping about savannah guthrie's mother she's making it all about herself gail it's not about you you know what's about you where the fuck is steadman that's it that's it for our Tuesday edition of The Nerve. Come back and see us tomorrow for The Nerve at night. If you haven't already, check out our sub stack at thenerveshow.com and be sure to subscribe plus Nerve merch. Go grab something for yourself or pick something up for a fellow troublemaker at shopthenerve.com. You can also listen to The Nerve every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9 a.m. Eastern on Megan's podcast playlist. You can find that over on Sirius XM channel 111, the Megan Kelly channel. We will see you troublemakers back here tomorrow at The Nerve, where you will never guess what we're about to say next.