One reason the story of Lori Vallow is so shocking is because, by all accounts, she was so kind. Kindness can be a mask of its own, a thing used to bait people into a cafe, chloroform held under their noses. And it worked for her. It must have been exhilarating when people believed what she told them about zombies — and everything else — and didn't say she was crazy. That must have been when Lori figured out that false kindness was a better cloak than beauty could ever be. Lori was recorded telling people that she wanted to kill Joe Ryan. Witnesses told police Alex Cox had said he wished Charles Vallow would die. And yet no one reacted. So maybe the heart of this story is something much more endemic: a societal numbness to death and violence, and a fixation on fear. It felt like the case could be an allegory for the rest of the world, for everything happening right now in this country. There seems to be a sense of doubt that evil can be sitting right in front of us, a belief that moral questions are things only to be considered in a voting booth and not in our everyday lives. When you start to look around, you can see fear everywhere. Fear in politics. Fear in policy. Fear every time we pull-to-refresh and a new hell confronts us. It seems we have collectively decided to laser-focus our energy on personal and collective ruin, and the case of Chad and Lori is, in effect, a ripple of that.

— When the Moon Turns to Blood by Leah Sottile (88% - 89%)