The story of Norma and Chad Styles revealed a hidden world. The story of Jeff "The Bug" Vilencia showed how far that world reached. In the final episode of American Crush, we examine what happened when lawmakers, courts, and the public were forced to confront a disturbing question: where does morality end and legality begin?
Using newspaper archives, court records, and historical reporting, this episode explores the legal battles surrounding crush videos, the constitutional questions they raised, and the challenges of regulating content in the early days of the internet.
As the series comes to a close, we look back on one of the strangest and most controversial chapters in recent American history, and consider what it can tell us about law, media, and human behavior.
This episode contains discussion of animal cruelty, abuse, sexual fetishes, and disturbing criminal conduct.
American Crush was researched, written, and produced by a real human, Tyler Martinez.
The voice used for this episode was a professional grade clone, trained on 3 hours of audio recorded by Tyler Martinez using his grief novel Ordinary Sun. Trained entirely on his own words, with his own voice.
You can license his voice for your own projects at Elevenlabs.io:
Ordinary Sun - Reflective Narration (Used for this Podcast)
(https://elevenlabs.io/voices/wU623zSQmlTKQPc2lBAb)
For a more energetic voice you can use Ordinary Sun - Friendly Energy
(https://elevenlabs.io/voices/t3QWIMpbzg4RdPJvfexr)
If you'd like him to record something for you without the use of AI, you can visit OrdinarySun.com for more information, or contact him at OrdinaryVoice@outlook.com.
The excellent music for this episode was created by a very real human being.
"Indie Rockin' 5" is an original song produced by MareProduction. You can use it for your own project by visiting: https://freesound.org/s/350810/
License: Attribution 4.0
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