The fascinating and fearless best-selling author Jillian Lauren joins me to discuss her upcoming true-crime book, Behold the Monster: Confronting America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer (due out July 18, 2023). Before Samuel Little died in 2020, he confessed to having murdered 93 people, mostly women, between 1970 and 2005. Jillian was determined to give a voice many of his victims and so fostered a personal relationship with him to get material for this book.

She is a candid and engaging guest. I first encountered Jillian by viewing her 2014 TEDx talk on adoption and was immediately hooked. Jillian is also the author of Everything You Ever Wanted, Pretty, and my personal favorite, Some Girls: My Life Inside a Harem, where she recounts her time in a harem as the girlfriend of the brother of the Sultan of Brunei. Jillian is married to Weezer bassist Scott Shriner. They live in Los Angeles with two adopted sons, one from Ethiopia and one from a foster-to-adopt program.

F-Bomb Warning: this episode contains expletives but we decided to keep them in the final cut as they are true to Jillian’s expressive delivery.