Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours
This is a podcast where we treat movies, television, and other popular culture artifacts not just as entertainment, but as cultural evidence. As artifacts that reveal how we think about crime, justice, power, and culture. I’m Kevin Buckler, PhD in Criminal Justice, and a professor at a four-year public university. On Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours, I bring you sharp, unfiltered content about how film, television, and media shape the way we understand crime, law, and justice — and what those stories reveal about our legal system, our communities, and the world around us.
Podcasting since 2025 • 5 episodes
Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours
Latest Episodes
S 1 E 4 Houston Serial Killer Panic: The Real Cultural Anxieties
In this final episode of our four-part series on the Houston serial-killer panic of 2025, we look beyond the rumors in the bayou to examine the deeper forces shaping the city’s fear. We unpack why “targeted” violence still feels threatening in ...
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1:47:31
S 1 E 3 Houston Serial Killer Panic: Medical Examiners' Reports and Undetermined Cases
In this episode, death investigations expert Elizabeth Gilmore takes us inside the medical examiner’s office to explain how cause and manner of death are determined—a process that is far more complex and far more critical than most people reali...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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1:06:49
S 1 E 2 Houston Serial Killer Panic: Cultural Understandings and Empirical and Definitional Realities
This is the second episode in our four-part series on the Houston serial killer panic of 2025. This episode takes a closer look at how we think—and often misthink—about serial murder. I sit down with two criminologists who bring both clarity an...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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1:20:13
S 1 E 1 Houston Serial Killer Panic: Serial Killers in American (Popular) Culture
This is the first episode of a four-part series on the Houston serial killer panic of 2025. This installment traces the panic’s deeper lineage, following its evolution from the serial killer anxieties of the 1970s and 1980s through the rise of ...
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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1:11:40
Introduction to the Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours Podcast
This inaugural episode of Crime & Pop Culture Office Hours introduces the podcast concept and purpose. Crime and popular culture artifacts become cultural rituals that shape our fears, values, and sense of social order. Using Video...
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7:09