437: The Journalist & the Serial Killer w/ Mark Braude

In 1939, the crimes of German serial murderer Eugen Weidmann captivated France, culminating in a sensational trial and a public execution by guillotine, the last of its kind in the country, just weeks before the outbreak of World War II. My guest today is Mark Braude, author of The Typewriter and the Guillotine: An American Journalist, a German Murderer, and the Meeting of Two Cultures on the Eve of World War II. In our conversation he shares how Janet Flanner’s reporting brought this case to American readers and why she saw Weidmann’s story as a chilling reflection of a cont...