In this episode of pplpod, we dig into the story behind the man the media branded “The Red Ripper” and the late Soviet system that struggled to stop him. We follow how fear spread, why the investigation kept missing the mark, and how politics, bureaucracy, and bad assumptions can turn a criminal case into a long-running disaster.

We also zoom out from the headlines to talk about what this case reveals about human behavior, profiling, and the way societies explain evil when the truth is messy and uncomfortable. This is a true-crime episode with a focus on context and impact, not gore.