Atlantic Lens

On a quiet Saturday in March 2024, a Portuguese-Brazilian family of four was killed while waiting for a bus in San Francisco’s West Portal neighborhood. A driver traveling more than three times the speed limit mounted the curb and struck them. No drugs. No alcohol. No medical emergency. Four people, including two very young children, died.

Nearly two years later, a judge was asked a narrower but deeply unsettling question: should the felony charges against the driver be reduced to misdemeanors?

In this episode of Atlantic Lens, I walk through the facts of the case, the arguments made in court, and the ruling that refused to shrink accountability on paper, even in the face of age, remorse, and a life without prior criminal record.

This is a story about responsibility, not intent. And about how the law draws boundaries when tragedy offers no explanation.

🗞️ Prefer to read?I break down this case in writing here:

How does a regime survive 1,000% inflation and protests in 150 cities? Kian Tajbakhsh, a world-renowned political scientist and former Iranian political prisoner, breaks down the current crisis in Iran. As of Tuesday, January 27 (31st day), the wave of unrest has claimed the lives of at least 6,221 people, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which is currently investigating another 17,000 reports of fatalities, potentially bringing the toll to over 23,000.

Tajbakhsh was “Exhibit A” in a Stalinist-style televised trial in Tehran. He spent years in Evin Prison, looking into the eyes of interrogators who told him they would “do anything” to save the regime. In this episode of Atlantic Lens, Kian discusses the machinery behind the 2025-2026 protests and what is truly next for Iran. From the chilling psychology of his own captors to the “digital kill switch” being built with Chinese help, Kian explains why this moment is fundamentally different from the 2009 and 2022 uprisings.

We go beyond the headlines to explore:

The 10% Rule: How an organized minority crushes a disorganized majority.

The Digital Fortress: Iran’s decade-long project with China to build a domestic internet.

The Road to Peace: Why a democratic transition in Iran is the only path to the 'Golden Prize' of Middle East stability.

Key Topics:

The logic of the 'Massive Massacre.'

Why sanctions are a choice, not a necessity.

The existing 'Vessels' of democracy inside Iran.

The Abraham Accords and the 'Golden Prize' of Saudi-Israeli peace.

The Interview in 3 Quotes:

"Organized minorities are more powerful than disorganized majorities."

"The regime knows if there are 4 million people in the street, it is beyond their capacity to control."

"Iran is more ready for a democratic transition than many people think."

Connect & Support:

This podcast episode is part of a series following my analysis of the recent wave of protests and massacre in Iran “Why Iran’s Regime Will Kill to Survive,” published Monday on Atlantic Lens.

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History is repeating itself. 36 years to the day after Manuel Noriega’s capture, Nicolás Maduro faces the same legal fate. But having covered the trials of El Chapo and Juan Orlando Hernández from inside the courtroom, I argue that the legal victory is the easy part. The real danger is the power vacuum left behind.

In this episode, I break down the specific legal trap the SDNY has set for Maduro, why "Head of State" immunity won't save him, and why the fragmentation of the Cartel of the Suns could lead to more violence, not less.

In this episode, we cover:

The Coincidence: Why the January 3rd date matters (Noriega vs. Maduro).

The Legal Trap: How United States v. Noriega killed the "Head of State" defense.

Inside the Courtroom: What I saw during the El Chapo and JOH trials that predicts Maduro's future.

The Vacuum: Why removing a "Kingpin" often leads to a violent scramble for control (The Panama Lesson).

Prediction: What happens to figures like Diosdado Cabello now?

Mentioned in this Episode:

Article: My reporting from inside the "Trial of the Century."

Article: How the US prosecutes a Head of State.

Historical Reference: The 1989 Invasion of Panama and the fall of Noriega.

Quote of the Week:

"Justice for the Kingpin does not always mean peace for the Kingdom."

Connect & Support:

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In this episode of Atlantic Lens, I speak with David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor, now in private pratice, who worked in the Southern District of Florida - the first office to investigate Jeffrey Epstein - to unpack what the public still gets wrong about Epstein’s death.

David Weinstein has stepped inside federal detention centers about a hundred times. He knows exactly what those guards were doing while the cameras were off, and it wasn’t a conspiracy. It was something much more common.

This conversation is the second layer of reporting following my investigation,“What Really Happened in the Final Days Before Jeffrey Epstein Died,” published yesterday on Atlantic Lens.

On the podcast, we go inside:

* How federal detention centres like the MCC actually operate

* What the Bureau of Prisons (BoP) failures really tell us

* How to read the newly released Epstein files

* And whether there is any factual basis for the so-called “Black Book” mythology

Weinstein brings a prosecutor’s perspective grounded in experience, explaining how these systems fail, how investigations really work, and why Hollywood-style explanations often collapse under scrutiny.

This episode is for listeners who want facts, context, and clarity.

🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: here, Apple, or Spotify.

If you value independent reporting on justice and power across the Atlantic, subscribe here: free or paid.

👉 Read the first layer of this investigation here:

Editor’s Note

Fifteen years have passed since the ‘Renato Seabra case,’ my first criminal justice assignment in the United States. In the decade and a half since the 2011 trial, I have tracked the intersection of mental health and the American punitive system through the lens of this case. I am writing about this case now not to revisit the crime itself, but because recent cases have exposed the same recurring misunderstandings about how the American justice system works.

⸻

The very first criminal justice case I covered in New York taught me how quickly our assumptions about crime unravel once a case enters a courtroom.

On January 7, 2011, I had recently moved to the United States, completing journalism post-graduation training in New York while on leave from my job as a business television reporter in Portugal. I had committed to serving as my network’s first U.S. correspondent that year, then TVI/TVI24 (now CNN Portugal). That night, I began to fulfill that role when my newsroom woke me up to cover what initially appeared to be an unexplained death and quickly revealed itself as a homicide that would come to define my professional life for the next two years.

The case became known in Portugal as the ‘Renato Seabra case,’ involving two Portuguese citizens. It was the first criminal trial I followed in the United States from the crime scene to final sentencing.

By the time I reached the Midtown hotel around 3 a.m., it was still an active crime scene. Police cars lined the entrance. Inside, investigators moved in and out of elevators carrying sealed boxes of evidence. By morning, hotel guests were visibly shaken by the scale of the police presence. There was still little confirmed information, but it was already clear this would not be a routine case.

Fifteen years later - having covered the most consequential criminal cases of the past two decades, including Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, ‘El Chapo’, Sam Bankman-Fried, and the various criminal prosecutions of Donald Trump - I still see in that first trial the same systemic patterns. Largely while working for Fox News as their first resident member of the press corps covering New York State and federal courts, I recognized in the Seabra case many of the same public misunderstandings that resurface whenever extreme violence intersects with mental illness.

A Brief Factual Recap

For readers unfamiliar with the case: Carlos Castro, a Portuguese tabloid personality, was brutally killed in his New York hotel room in Times Square. The crime involved prolonged violence, including sexual mutilation, and lasted for an extended period of time. NYPD officers later testified that the scene was one of the most complex they had processed, requiring more than a full day of forensic work.

The brutality of the act fueled tabloid coverage in New York. Renato Seabra was dubbed the ‘castration killer’ by the New York Post, the city’s most influential tabloid, a label that came to define the public’s perception of the case. He was ultimately convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to the maximum of 25 years to life in prison, becoming eligible for parole in 2036. It will be up to a Parole Board to evaluate his release, a request that can be repeatedly denied and reviewed, typically every two years, which could potentially keep Seabra in prison for the rest of his life.

While the 2012 verdict appeared to seal Seabra’s fate, his attorney, Scott Tulman, revealed to Atlantic Lens that, although no appeal has been filed recently, he is currently drafting a post-conviction motion. While the likelihood of success at this stage is slim, the move indicates that the defense is still seeking to exhaust all available procedural remedies.

The Enduring Myth: Mental Illness as Absolution

From the outset, the Seabra case was framed - publicly and emotionally - through the lens of mental illness: psychosis, bipolar disorder, a psychological break. These questions were legitimate, but they were also profoundly misunderstood.

In the U.S. legal system, mental illness does not automatically negate criminal responsibility. And despite what popular culture - and Hollywood films in particular - suggest, the insanity defense is not only rare; it is almost never successful. This is another persistent myth, one I explored in depth in my 2014 book on the case, The Renato Seabra Case: Behind the Curtains (published in Portuguese).

At trial, the defense relied heavily on psychiatric testimony. There was little alternative: the defendant had confessed to the crime, and the physical evidence was overwhelming. Diagnoses were presented, and multiple experts testified. Yet the jury was not asked to rule on whether mental illness existed, but only whether it fully eliminated intent at the precise moment of the crime.

Ultimately, twelve New York jurors unanimously concluded that it did not. They found that, at the time of the killing, there was sufficient awareness to establish criminal responsibility.

This distinction, between explaining behavior and excusing it, is one of the hardest for the public to accept. Yet it is foundational to how American courts function, and it remains widely misunderstood on both sides of the Atlantic.

What Juries Actually Weigh

One of the most important lessons from that first trial was understanding how juries truly evaluate cases: not morally, but structurally. Jurors are not tasked with resolving existential questions of good and evil. They are instructed to assess evidence against a strict legal standard: proof ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ In practice, they focus on: intent, sequence of actions, coherence of behavior before and after the crime, attempts to conceal or explain, and credibility of expert testimony.

In the Seabra case, there was no premeditation, but there was prolonged violence, extreme brutality, and post-crime behavior that weighed heavily in deliberations. That analytical framework has repeated itself across vastly different cases I later covered: from Weinstein’s abuse of power, to Epstein’s long-running impunity, to the unprecedented criminal exposure of a former U.S. president (Trump). Different crimes, different defendants, same legal architecture.

Before Verdicts: the System’s First Response

Months before a jury ever deliberated, I was granted exclusive access to Rikers Island, where the defendant was held for roughly two years while awaiting trial and sentencing. Rikers is not a prison designed for rehabilitation or treatment. It is a massive pretrial detention complex operated by New York City, one of the largest and most dangerous in the U.S., and a place where mentally ill defendants often wait months or years before their cases move forward. The defendant in this case was housed in a psychiatric unit, sharing space with dozens of other detainees diagnosed with mental illness.

The environment was heavy, volatile, and deeply institutional. During our reporting visit, alarms suddenly sounded and the crew was evacuated due to an internal emergency. It was a stark reminder that long before questions of guilt or innocence are resolved, the system’s first interaction with mental illness is often containment, not care.

In 2013, Seabra was transferred into the New York state prison system and held for over a decade at Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in the far north of the state, often referred to as “little Siberia” because of its isolation and harsh climate.

According to official records Atlantic Lens had access to, Seabra was transferred on April 4, 2024, to another maximum-security facility in upstate New York: Attica Correctional Facility.

The corrections department conducts regular transfers of “hundreds” of incarcerated individuals across the state system every month and explained to Atlantic Lens tha…

If you missed the preview of the hearing, read it here.

The transition from a presidential palace in Caracas to a high-security cell at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn is a distance that cannot be measured in miles.

Today, Nicolás Maduro Moros and his wife, Cilia Flores, appeared before Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse for their formal arraignment. Under the heavy gaze of U.S. Marshals and amidst a total security lockdown of Pearl Street, the couple, once the most powerful figures in Venezuela, stood to hear the charges that could see them spend the rest of their lives in American prison. The man who once commanded Venezuela entered shackled at the ankles (not that common at SDNY), though not at the wrists, wearing prison orange shoes, beige pants and a blue shirt.

The “Not Guilty” Plea

As expected, Maduro and Flores entered pleas of “not guilty” to all counts, including narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation, and the newly unsealed weapons charges.

“I am not guilty, I am a decent man, I am still the president of my country,” said Maduro in Spanish and through a court interpreter.

At another instance, Maduro’s frustration boiled over. He declared: 'I am the President of the Republic of Venezuela (...) I am here kidnapped (...) I was captured at my home in Caracas.' Judge Hellerstein, maintaining the brisk pace of the court, immediately cut him off, informing the defendant that there would be an 'appropriate time' for such arguments, but that time was not today.

The physical toll of the extraction was also laid bare for the court. Mark Donnelly, the Houston-based attorney representing Cilia Flores, informed the judge that his client sustained significant health issues during her capture, including bruising to her ribs that the defense believes may be a fracture requiring immediate X-ray and medical attention.

While the proceedings were brief - roughly 20 minutes, the atmosphere was historic. This was a collision of international law and American executive power. Judge Hellerstein, a veteran of the bench known for his no-nonsense efficiency, moved through the procedural requirements with the same rigor that he’s known for. In this room, Maduro was not “El Presidente”, but rather a defendant facing a superseding indictment that carries a mandatory minimum of 50 years to life.

To a non-American audience, a “not guilty” plea can sound defiant or strategic but in U.S. federal court, it is neither. At this stage, the plea functions as a procedural placeholder. It preserves the defendants’ rights, allows discovery to begin, and opens the door to pre-trial motions. Almost every federal defendant enters the same plea at arraignment, including those who later plead guilty.

The Pollack Defense: A Tactical Start

The most significant development inside the courtroom today wasn’t the reading of the charges, but the presence of the man standing next to Nicolás Maduro. Barry Pollack, the veteran trial lawyer who famously secured Julian Assange’s freedom, has officially taken the lead for the defense.

His appearance signals that the defense strategy will not be a simple denial of facts, but a sophisticated assault on the legal architecture of the prosecution. Pollack is a specialist in “extraterritoriality”, challenging the U.S. government’s right to arrest and try foreign citizens for actions taken on foreign soil. By retaining him, Maduro has moved from a political defense to a high-level constitutional one.

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The Immediate “Remand”

Judge Hellerstein ordered that both Maduro and Flores remain in federal custody without bail.

Pollack did not offer a formal argument for release today, a tactical choice. In a case of this magnitude, asking for bail at an arraignment is a losing battle. Instead, Pollack’s focus remained on the long game. By accepting detention for now, he preserves his ability to file more complex motions regarding Maduro’s status as a “Prisoner of War” or a “protected head of state” later this month.

While awaiting trial, the couple will be held at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn. Since the 2021 closure of the MCC in Manhattan - following the fallout of Jeffrey Epstein’s death - the Brooklyn facility has become the primary destination for the SDNY’s highest-profile defendants. Maduro and Flores now join a roster of notorious current residents that includes Luigi Mangione, and former ones such as Sean “Diddy” Combs, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Ghislaine Maxwell.

In cases involving terrorism-related charges, international narcotics trafficking, and mandatory minimum sentences measured in decades, detention is structural. Flight risk is absolute, the sentencing exposure here is significant, and bail is functionally irrelevant.

The Noriega Shadow

The timing is actually ironic: 36 years ago to the day of Maduro’s capture, on January 3, 1990, Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega was brought to the United States following a military invasion.

As I’ve reported previously, the “Noriega Precedent” is the roadmap for this case. In 1990, during George H. W. Bush administration, the courts established that the U.S. could try a foreign leader captured during military operations, even without prior Congressional authorization - as we have seen now under Trump’s tenure. And today, we saw the 21st-century version of that playbook.

The Legal Battlefield Ahead

While the arraignment is over, the real legal war is just beginning and the next hearing has been scheduled for March 17. David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice with Hinshaw & Culbertson, has previously told Atlantic Lens that the coming months will test the boundaries of international law.

“What we will see in the weeks ahead are arguments about the USA’s extraterritorial power to enforce our laws, the reach of conspiracy statutes, the Geneva Convention and prisoners of war, and head of state immunity,” Weinstein noted.

The most contentious fight will likely center on ‘Head-of-State Immunity.’ Maduro’s defense is expected to argue that he is protected from prosecution as a sitting leader. However, the U.S. government’s explicit refusal to recognize the results of the July 2024 Venezuelan elections, and its recognition of opposition figures as the legitimate victors, strips Maduro of that legal shield in the eyes of the SDNY.

The Math of “Full Wrath” = Death Penalty?

Despite some headlines suggesting otherwise, the death penalty is not currently on the table for Nicolás Maduro or Cilia Flores. While reports have speculated about capital punishment, the legal reality at SDNY is far more grounded in existing statutes.

The “full wrath of justice” promised by Attorney General Pam Bondi is mathematically staggering, but it is focused on ensuring the couple never leaves a U.S. prison alive, not on an execution.

Legal expert David Weinstein explains why a death sentence is highly improbable.

“It is unlikely that they would seek the death penalty and even unlikelier that it would be imposed. The current charges don’t carry that penalty. They would have to supersede and add a Continuing Criminal Enterprise (CCE) charge, and they would likely have to specifically allege a death in the indictment.”

While some may speculate that under a Trump-appointed DOJ anything is possible, the legal reality is that the death penalty is not a unilateral executive decision. Even if prosecutors were to supersede the indictment to seek capital punishment, federal law requires a jury - not just a judge - to unanimously authorize a death sentence. Ultimately, the trial remains under the gavel of Judge Hellerstein, a Clinton appointee known for a strict, by-the-book adherence to sentencing guidelines.

Under the current federal law:

* Narco-Terrorism: Carries a 20-year floor.

* Weapons Stacking: The unsealed 2026…

There are intellectual, and spiritual, encounters that flip us inside out. Gary Zukav, who is the author of ‘The Seat of the Soul’ - a 36-year-old bestseller that somehow feels timeless - is one of them. I’m reading the book for the second time. The first was about three years ago, at the beginning of my true spiritual awakening, when it blew me wide open. And recently, I listened to a podcast episode of his that struck me as particularly provocative, so I want to share some reflections with you.

Zukav became a global reference in personal growth and spiritual development largely because of his long relationship with Oprah Winfrey. She says he changed her life; he says the same about her. For years, he became one of the thinkers she most often brought to her show and not by accident. He talks about spirituality with the clarity of a scientist.

The episode opens with a disarming sentence:

“The universe doesn’t judge.”

Written on a mug, it could be a cliché, but Zukav takes it somewhere else entirely: if the universe doesn’t judge, then the concepts of “justice” and “injustice”, as we use them generically, collapse. Not because “anything goes,” but because everything that happens is, in his words, “appropriate to the soul that experiences it.”

🎙️Listen To The Podcast Episode For More Depth On This Topic, Here Or On Spotify:

When The Spiritual Meets The Courtroom

This particular episode struck me for reasons that go beyond spirituality, it touches something at the core of my work: criminal justice. I spent over a decade covering criminal justice in the U.S., dealing with victims, trials, systems that fail, tragedies that never should have happened and witnessing devastation and trauma up close and perhaps that’s why Zukav’s framing caught me off guard.

He does not say suffering is desirable, does not deny the existence of harm or evil, nor does he argue against accountability. What he says is that every choice generates consequences, and those consequences become our lesson in what he calls the Earth School, the school of life, where everything that happens is neither fair nor unfair, but simply the natural consequence of choice.

Zukav argues that the universe doesn’t operate through judgment, not in the way human institutions do, not in the way courtrooms do, and not even in the way we do when we say: this is unfair, this is unjust, this shouldn’t be happening to me. In his view, the deepest form of justice is non-judgment. The thing we call “karma” is, he says, “the universal, impersonal teacher of responsibility.” And here’s where he goes further: karma unfolds not just in this lifetime, but in the next.

This is not empirically provable and he never pretends otherwise, but it makes sense: every choice carries an energetic imprint that eventually returns, even if not immediately, even if not in this life.

Covering Epstein, El Chapo, and the stories that break us

This idea collided with my years covering cases that felt incomprehensible: from Jeffrey Epstein to ‘El Chapo’, extremely violent crimes and murders, massive fraud and scandals, tragedies, loss and accountability. I’ve heard “That’s not fair” more times than I can count: from victims, defendants, families, even prosecutors.

Nothing in Zukav’s framework minimizes these experiences. Everything that reaches your life - even the painful, devastating, senseless - is “appropriate to the person experiencing it,” he says. Not because they deserve it, but because it serves their evolution. Zukav suggests that fairness isn’t the point, learning is. It’s a difficult idea, until you sit with it and then it becomes strangely stabilizing.

Fear, Love, And The Only Two Choices That Matter

Zukav returns again and again to one simple question: from where do I respond, fear or love? He says something simple and brutal: “Justice is the lack of judgment.”

If justice is the absence of judgment, then what we call “injustice” may simply be a misunderstanding of how the universe teaches. Choices create consequences and consequences create growth. Fear generates more fear, while love generates clarity. Judgment generates more judgment, especially toward ourselves.

Judging someone, he argues, doesn’t only affect them, it affects us, because judgment creates consequences that eventually return to the one who generated them. In the Earth School, everything we emit comes back.

What happens in court is only one layer of justice: the human layer. The deeper layer is internal, personal, spiritual, and far older than our institutions.

“Nothing Occurs In Your Life That Does Not Serve Your Spiritual Growth”

Zukav repeats this like a mantra:

“Nothing occurs in your life that does not serve your spiritual growth.”

You may not agree and, years ago, I wouldn’t have agreed either. However, today, I think he’s right, not in a fatalistic way but in an empowering one. It’s not about destiny but about accountability - for instance Madonna, whose spiritual life I analized in another post, has said many times that she wouldn’t have pursued her path if it weren’t for the traumas she experienced early in life.

What Zukav is really saying is this: we always have the freedom to choose our next response, and that love or fear are not emotions, they’re decisions.

A world with “new consciousness”?

Zukav often says his work is part of “an unprecedented new consciousness,” a new world being born. Is he right? Because in this chaotic world it doesn’t always feel like it. We’re living through polarization, disinformation, extremism, and systems under strain, but he argues that evolution is messy and that crises accelerate clarity and that fear rising to the surface is part of a transition to a more conscious collective.

Are there indicators of rising collective awareness? There are small ones: mental health conversations, trauma literacy, restorative justice experiments, shifts toward meaning-driven work. There is certainly no empirical measure of “global consciousness” but, being in my forties, I can say this: we have far better tools for introspection and healing than our parents or grandparents ever did.

A final thought

This is one of Zukav’s gift: a concept of justice that moves beyond blame and into existential responsibility, not judicial. Maybe that’s why The Seat of the Soul feels more relevant today than when it was published. We live in a world obsessed with punishment, spectacle, and moral certainty, yet profoundly disconnected from meaning.

If you want to change your life, Zukav points to, change the choices you make from fear into choices you make from love. Everything else follows, in this lifetime or the next.

Zukav is one of our greatest teachers and, honestly, I should listen to Zukav every single day. It’s astonishing how quickly we lose sight of our own essence.

If you found these reflections meaningful, I go deeper into them on the Atlantic Lens podcast, available here, on Apple Podcasts, and on Spotify:

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What do former classmates remember and what do they refuse to speculate about?

In this 10-minute documentary-style episode of Atlantic Lens, journalist Marta Dhanis reconstructs the early academic years of Cláudio Valente and Nuno Loureiro at Lisbon’s Instituto Superior Técnico - long before violence reshaped their names.

Through firsthand testimony from former colleagues and teaching assistants, this episode traces two brilliant but diverging trajectories: one marked by rupture, silence, and disappearance; the other by steady international recognition and scientific achievement.

The episode explores elite academic pressure, immigration and identity, unprocessed failure, and the ethical limits of retrospective explanation - without offering diagnoses, excuses, or easy answers.

This is not an episode about crime.It is about promise, fracture, and the silences that often precede collapse.

🎧 Atlantic Lens is a transatlantic podcast on justice, power, and the stories shaping our world.

Australia just became the first democracy to ban social media for anyone under 16, a decision shaking governments, platforms, and parents worldwide.

In this episode, Stephen Balkam, founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), a global non-profit, breaks down what this moment tells us: explains why this moment matters far beyond Australia. He breaks down how Europe is preparing its next big regulatory push under the DSA review, why the U.S. fell years behind after weakened protections by the Trump administration, and what his latest international research reveals about parents and teens across multiple countries.

Stephen also warns that the next challenge will move beyond social media: generative AI is already becoming a source of advice, information, and emotional support for kids.

A timely, global look at where child online safety is headed and why democracies can’t afford to wait.

When Ana Walshe vanished on New Year’s Day 2023, the case spiraled into one of the most shocking domestic crime stories in recent American memory. In this episode, Marta Dhanis unpacks the evidence, the digital trail, and the psychological pull behind the Brian Walshe trial. A transatlantic look at true crime, justice, and the stories we can’t look away from.