138: Atlanta’s Missing And Murdered and The Robert Kolker Interview

[CW for violence against children]

Toby Ball returns to discuss -- from a safe distance -- HBO's limited series on the Atlanta child murders of 1979-1981, Atlanta's Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children. Is it too ambitious? Did it set out to be a true-crime docuseries, or a sociological study of the rise of The New South? And what did Wayne Williams actually do?

Later, Kevin Smokler talks to Lost Girls author Robert Kolker about how that book became a film; trusting the filmmaking process; "the true-crime media apparatus"; and how his thinking about his new book, Hidden Valley Road (now an Oprah book pick!), evolved.

SHOW NOTES

• Atlanta's Missing And Murdered on HBO.com
• Ep 109 on Mindhunter S2
• Strange Arrivals on iHeartRadio
• Ep 136 on Netflix's Lost Girls
• My review of Random Family on Tomato Nation
• Kolker's "No Way Out" and "Nine Blocks From Home"
• Bob Kolker's latest, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family, on Amazon
• Don't take our word for it; Oprah thinks you should read it too
• Bob Kolker and Kevin Smokler on Twitter