Podcast
Forensic Psychology
Hosted by Circle Of Insight Productions · EN
Dr. Carlos is an adjunct Professor in Forensic Psychology and Criminal psychopathology. He discusses concepts in the world of forensic psychology. He discusses legal issues pertaining to forensic psychology, psychology disorders, the criminal justice system and more
29episodes
Episodes
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The Nonsense Defense: Ganser Syndrome, Malingering, and the Psychology of Faking Madness
6d ago00:05:26Tap to summarizeGanser Syndrome is one of the most bizarre and contested diagnoses in all of forensic psychiatry, a condition where individuals give deliberately approximate but almost-correct answers to simple questions, as if performing madness rather than experiencing it. This episode examines the clinical history of the syndrome, its signature feature of Vorbeireden, and the razor-thin forensic line between genuine dissociative presentation and calculated courtroom theater. We explore what Ganser cases reveal about the psychology of deception, the limits of psychiatric evaluation, and what it means when the mind chooses absurdity as its armor.
Transcribe →The Confession Trap: Why Melissa Ellison’s Killer Called the Police After 39 Years of Silence
1w ago00:05:16Tap to summarizeOn December 28, 1987, 20 year old Melissa Ellison was beaten to death in her Jacksonville mobile home while her 13 month old daughter sat crying on the living room couch. For nearly four decades the case sat cold, until this month, when 70 year old Gary Edward Glowacz picked up the phone and called the sheriff’s office himself. This episode examines the psychology behind why unidentified offenders sometimes surface on their own after decades of silence, and what that impulse reveals about guilt, aging, and the collapse of long term concealment.
Transcribe →Narco-Terrorism and the Criminal Mind: What the 22nd MEU's Caribbean Campaign Reveals About Cartel Psychology, Organizational Violence, and
2w ago00:04:54Tap to summarizeThe transnational narco-terrorist networks that the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit spent ten months hunting across the Caribbean under Operation Southern Spear are not simply criminal organizations that happen to carry weapons, they are hierarchically sophisticated, psychologically coercive institutions that have evolved deliberate organizational cultures built around controlled violence, paranoid loyalty enforcement, and the systematic psychological conditioning of members at every level to normalize lethality as a routine instrument of business and territorial control. This episode applies a forensic psychology lens to what the scale and military character of the 22nd MEU's counter-narcotics deployment tells us about how far cartel organizations have traveled from street-level drug trafficking toward something that more closely resembles a paramilitary state, examining the leadership psychology, coercive control structures, and collective identity mechanisms that allow these networks to absorb law enforcement and military pressure, reconstitute themselves, and continue operating across international boundaries with a level of organizational resilience that conventional criminal justice frameworks were never designed to confront. Drawing on the operational realities exposed by Southern Spear, this episode asks what forensic psychology, organizational behavior science, and the emerging literature on narco-terrorism can tell us about why these organizations are so difficult to permanently dismantle and what it would actually take to break the psychological and social infrastructure that keeps them alive. IAB Tags: Health/Medical/Mental Health, Crime/True Crime, Military/Defense, Law/Government/Legal, Society/Issues, Education, News/Politics Let me know if you want a narco or covert operations version added to complete the full set.Sonnet 4.6 Low
Transcribe →The Hunting Ground: Transnational "Tourist" Crews Target Suburban America
2w ago00:04:43Tap to summarizeIn this episode, we break down a troubling new security trend hitting the master-planned communities of Southern California. On June 30, 2026, authorities in Irvine executed a series of coordinated arrests, taking down six individuals—including four juveniles—tied to a predatory "burglary tourism" operation. We look at the chilling logistics of how foreign and domestic organized crews are systematically scouting affluent American neighborhoods, treating safe suburbs like soft targets, and what you need to do to harden your perimeter.
Transcribe →Inside the Criminal Mind: A Retired DEA Agent on the Psychology of Colombian Cartel Leadership, Loyalty, and the Architecture of Narco Viol
3w ago00:50:19Tap to summarizeColombian cartel organizations are not simply criminal enterprises held together by money and fear, they are sophisticated psychosocial ecosystems built on coercive loyalty, paranoid leadership structures, and the systematic psychological conditioning of everyone from street-level sicarios to high-ranking operatives who learn to dissociate violence from moral consequence in order to function inside a world where betrayal and death are constant environmental variables. This episode sits down with a retired DEA agent whose career was spent penetrating, dismantling, and understanding those ecosystems from the inside, examining what decades of cartel investigation reveal about the forensic psychology of organized criminal leadership, the coercive control mechanisms that keep narco organizations intact under pressure, and the psychological toll that sustained exposure to that level of violence and deception exacts on the investigators who dedicate their careers to fighting it. Drawing on lived operational experience rather than academic theory, this conversation offers a rare and unflinching window into the human psychology driving one of the most powerful and destructive criminal enterprises in modern history.
Transcribe →The Psychology of Sacred Betrayal: What Father Richard Storey's Alleged $160,000 Embezzlement Reveals About Moral Disengagement, Entitlement
4w ago00:04:06Tap to summarizeFather Richard Storey held one of the most psychologically powerful positions a person can occupy in a community — a trusted religious authority with unrestricted access to congregational finances, moral legitimacy, and the deeply human tendency of parishioners to extend unconditional deference to the cloth — and prosecutors allege he used every dimension of that position to systematically divert nearly $160,000 in church funds toward luxury cruises, international travel, casino withdrawals, and personal indulgences while his congregation continued to give in good faith. This episode applies a forensic psychology lens to the case, examining the cognitive and psychodynamic mechanisms behind white-collar religious fraud including moral disengagement, narcissistic entitlement, the compartmentalization of a public identity built on virtue alongside a private life built on exploitation, and how institutional trust structures in religious organizations create precisely the oversight gaps that predatory personalities are drawn to and depend on. The Storey case is not just a financial crime story, it is a case study in how authority, moral elevation, and systemic accountability failures combine to create conditions where betrayal can flourish undetected for years inside the very institutions people turn to for safety and meaning. IAB Tags: Health/Medical/Mental Health, Crime/True Crime, Law/Government/Legal, Religion/Spirituality, Society/Issues, Personal Finance/Financial Crime, Education Let me know if you want a true crime or crime watch version added to go alongside this one.
Transcribe →The Warrior Identity After Combat: A Forensic Psychology Lens on Wil Ravelo's Transition from Green Beret to SWAT Officer
Jun 2201:50:51Tap to summarizeWil Ravelo's trajectory from Green Beret to police officer to SWAT operator is not just a career story, it is a forensic psychology case study in identity continuity, adaptive functioning under chronic stress, and what it looks like when a person successfully channels the hypervigilance, threat assessment instincts, and operational discipline of Special Forces into a new institutional structure without losing the psychological coherence that made them effective in the first place. This episode examines the psychological architecture behind elite military and law enforcement performance, exploring how warriors like Wil navigate the transition between combat identity and civilian professional identity while managing the residual neurological and psychological imprinting that comes from years of high-stakes operational service. Drawing on the lived experience of a man who has operated at the highest levels of both worlds, we explore what forensic psychology tells us about resilience, professional identity formation, and the hidden psychological cost of being built for violence in a society that rarely knows what to do with the people it trained.
Transcribe →Profiling the Proxy: The Psychology of Tehran’s Assassins
Jun 1600:09:36Tap to summarizeExplore the dark psychological architecture behind state-sponsored terror as we profile the operatives recruited into Iran’s Quds Force. This episode examines the complex intersection of ideological radicalization, coercive control, and the compartmentalized mindsets required to execute cross-border assassinations. By analyzing the behavioral patterns of captured cells, we decode how sovereign nations psychologically weaponize proxies to project deniable power globally.
Transcribe →Inside the Cartel Mind: The CJNG World Cup Gambits
Jun 1500:06:31Tap to summarizeThis episode delivers a deep-dive behavioral analysis of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and their calculated psychological warfare executed on the eve of the World Cup. By analyzing the brutal ambush of five police officers in Michoacán, we decode the tactical terrorism and high-stakes manipulation used by cartels to exploit global media spotlight. Discover the chilling forensic profiling behind "El Mencho’s" successors and how criminal syndicates weaponize national events for psychological dominance.
Transcribe →The Psychology of Playing Under Cartel Terror: What Colombia's 1994 World Cup Reveals About Fear, Identity, and Coercive Control
Jun 900:12:59Tap to summarizeColombia's 1994 World Cup squad carried into every match not only the weight of national expectation but the invisible psychological burden of operating inside a cartel-controlled threat environment where performance had life-or-death consequences they could not openly acknowledge or escape. This episode examines the forensic psychology of chronic coercive threat, how Pablo Escobar and rival narco organizations used the World Cup's global stage to amplify their soft power while players navigated terror, compliance, and the psychological splitting required to compete at the highest level under those conditions. The assassination of Andrés Escobar following Colombia's World Cup elimination is analyzed as a clinical case study in how criminal systems manufacture silence through ambient fear and what it costs individuals who become symbolic casualties inside an institution they never fully controlled.
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