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Donald Trump is facing 91 felony

0:41

charges across four indictments.

0:45

But one charge in Georgia stands

0:46

out. The RICO case

0:48

against Donald Trump in Georgia involves 19

0:52

defendants. And when you

0:54

have a case involving 19 defendants

0:57

and the wide range of crimes

0:59

that they've been charged with committing, it

1:02

creates all kinds of complications.

1:04

The ins and outs of RICO cases and what

1:06

this could mean for 2024. This

1:09

week on The Weeds.

1:14

The nature in Iceland is very

1:17

dangerous.

1:19

You know, wherever you are, whatever time of year,

1:22

if you go up into the highlands, which you know, most

1:24

of Iceland is just the highlands and we just live

1:27

on the sort of on the coastline.

1:30

But if you go up to the highlands by

1:32

yourself, whatever time of year, even in the height

1:34

of summer, nature can be very cruel.

1:37

Lawyer and writer Ragnar

1:39

Jónasson. It's a dangerous place

1:41

to be if you don't know what you're doing. And

1:44

that's like, I think, a common theme in

1:46

a lot of the crime fiction in Iceland.

1:49

Iceland is a dangerous place, but

1:52

crime is incredibly rare. There

1:55

were only four homicides in the

1:57

entire country last year.

1:59

up from just two in 2021. What

2:04

do you think makes Iceland such

2:06

a good place to set crime

2:09

fiction? I mean, it is

2:11

the contrast. You know, you have this snow

2:14

covering the whole country, and then you have

2:16

this one drop of blood, and the

2:18

contrast in that is quite strong,

2:21

and this place has the

2:23

appearance of, you know, it's the most

2:25

peaceful country in the world.

2:28

And so, you know, crime stories that here,

2:31

of course, create an interest.

2:36

People

2:36

in Iceland love reading crime

2:38

fiction, and they love writing

2:40

it too. Even

2:42

the prime minister of Iceland recently

2:45

wrote a crime novel.

2:47

So, we got on a plane to talk with her about it, and

2:51

to figure out why in a country where the biggest

2:53

threats are things like strong winds and

2:56

getting lost, everyone

2:58

is so interested in crime.

3:02

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

3:19

Are you sure this is the way to life? I

3:23

think that's it right there. Where? Right there.

3:28

You're kidding. No. On

3:31

a rainy day this past spring, criminal

3:34

co-creator Lauren Spore and I were

3:36

in Reykjavik, trying to get to our

3:38

meeting with the prime minister. Next

3:41

to the punk museum?

3:42

Yeah, absolutely. The

3:44

prime minister's office is in a plain

3:47

white building downtown. You'd

3:49

never guess. It was the office of

3:51

one of the most important people in the country. There's

3:54

no fence around it, or guards

3:56

outside. Right across from

3:58

the Hard Rock Cafe.

3:59

Oh, it is crossing the heart back. You

4:05

can get out of America. Prime

4:08

Minister Katrin Yakub's daughter has

4:10

been in office since 2017. Before

4:14

that, she was the country's Minister of Education,

4:17

Science and Culture.

4:19

She's also the chairperson of the country's

4:21

Left Green movement. But

4:24

she's always been interested in crime. When

4:27

she was elected, the New York Times wrote,

4:31

A pacifist environmentalist, an

4:33

expert on Icelandic crime thrillers, emerged

4:36

on Thursday as Iceland's new

4:38

prime minister.

4:39

Before I became a politician, I studied

4:43

Icelandic crime fiction. And

4:45

what I think is interesting is that we

4:47

have

4:48

relatively many people writing crime

4:50

fiction, and they are very different.

4:54

We talked with the prime minister in a sitting room

4:56

in her office. It was incredibly

4:58

casual and relaxed. Iceland

5:02

is one of the safest countries in the world. It's

5:05

number one on the global peace index.

5:08

Most police are unarmed. And

5:11

in the entire country, there are only

5:13

five prisons, which can hold 150

5:15

people total. I

5:18

think the interest in crime in

5:20

Iceland is maybe because we have been so privileged that

5:23

crime isn't really very common

5:25

here in Iceland. So

5:28

we like to read about it.

5:30

And I think

5:32

sometimes it's an interesting opposition, really. The

5:36

prime minister's book is called Reykjavik. It's

5:39

about a young girl who goes missing in the 1950s from

5:43

a remote island called Vidae off the coast

5:45

of Reykjavik.

5:48

The prime minister co-wrote it with Ragnar

5:50

Jönesen, who was there with us at the

5:52

prime minister's office. He's

5:55

a best-selling crime writer,

5:57

and he started a crime-writing festival called

5:59

Iceland Noor.

6:01

He met the prime minister a few years ago when

6:03

they were both on a committee, judging the

6:05

best translated crime novels in

6:08

Iceland.

6:09

I mean, I'd known for a long time that she

6:12

wanted to write a book. I mean,

6:14

and then I just had this idea, you know, why not do

6:17

this together? And so I just

6:19

asked her, you know, should we do a crime novel

6:21

together? And I wasn't sure she would say yes, but she

6:23

did. And then I wasn't sure she

6:25

would actually go through with it. But

6:28

she did.

6:28

Ragnar had an idea how it would

6:30

all begin, you know, what would

6:33

really be the start of the book. But

6:37

this young lady disappearing from

6:39

this island very close to Reykjavík.

6:42

And I think that's something that Icelanders relate

6:44

very strongly to, because even

6:46

though we don't have a lot of crime, we

6:49

often have people disappearing simply because

6:52

of the very tough

6:54

natural circumstances. We

6:56

have the ocean around

6:58

us where people disappear. We have

7:01

people simply getting lost in

7:04

the wilderness, etc. So

7:06

we also have kind of a dark

7:10

threat there, which is something

7:12

that we used.

7:15

Icelandic

7:15

crime fiction is part

7:17

of a whole genre of crime novels called

7:20

Nordic Noir, set in the countries

7:22

in and around Scandinavia.

7:25

The genre is often described

7:27

as bleak and gritty. It

7:30

includes books like Sti Glarsens'

7:33

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which

7:35

became the first ever book to

7:38

sell more than a million ebook copies.

7:42

In 2010, The Economist wrote about

7:45

the phenomenon of crime novels coming

7:47

out of Nordic countries, writing,

7:49

quote,

7:50

The protection offered by a cradle-to-grave

7:53

welfare system hides a dark

7:55

underside. I

7:57

think the societal structure is also interesting.

8:00

because I think that's of

8:02

course the reason that Nordic Noware

8:05

is popular because it

8:07

is set in a Nordic welfare society

8:10

which is interesting

8:13

for an author to probe under the surface

8:15

and find really what's happening beneath

8:18

the surface in a Nordic

8:20

welfare society and we have

8:23

many stories that revolve really around that,

8:25

that things aren't as good as they look. And

8:28

even the way it's interesting to have the crime

8:29

fiction come out of this country, I mean the

8:32

prison system here is so different, the

8:34

gun violence is so different, I mean it's

8:37

so interesting that you have such

8:39

a wealth

8:41

of crime fiction coming from a country which

8:44

handles crime pretty well

8:46

I would say compared to

8:48

the US and there's major differences

8:50

here between the two countries.

8:52

Yeah well we really

8:54

think of crime as a

8:57

societal issue and not

8:59

the issue of each individual so and

9:02

I think the reason that where

9:05

societies don't have a lot of crime is that

9:07

they are relatively equal and inclusive

9:10

that's my political

9:13

vision but I also

9:15

think that

9:17

the changes that happened in

9:20

Icelandic society after World

9:22

War Two when because before that

9:25

you could say that Iceland was mainly a rural

9:27

society and then we have the

9:30

making of a city here in Reykjavík

9:33

and

9:34

a new kind of societal structures

9:36

appear which make Iceland

9:39

really a perfect setting for crime

9:41

fiction even though it's a small country you can't

9:43

really know everybody in this new society

9:47

of a modern city.

9:50

Many

9:52

Icelandic crime novels are

9:54

set in Reykjavík including

9:56

those by one of the most famous Icelandic

9:58

crime writers are

10:02

He started writing crime fiction in the late 90s

10:05

after working as a journalist. Before

10:08

his books, people thought that crime

10:10

stories set in Iceland didn't really

10:12

work, because it's so safe there.

10:15

He once said in an interview, this

10:18

is the challenge you're faced with, to be

10:20

realistic and believable. You

10:23

can never use easy solutions, solve

10:25

the matter with a gunfight.

10:27

You need to burrow into the characters, look

10:30

for a psychological, intrinsic

10:32

solution, rather than an external,

10:35

explosive solution.

10:37

The prime minister wrote about his work

10:40

for her master's degree dissertation, and

10:43

about how early crime fiction from

10:45

outside of Iceland helped influence

10:47

modern-day Icelandic noir.

10:50

It's interesting that when we

10:52

see the crime fiction really being born

10:55

as a shard with Edgar Allan Poe

10:57

and Arthur Conan Doyle,

10:59

etc., those

11:02

stories and books are translated into

11:04

Icelandic very quickly, just a

11:06

few years after they are published in

11:09

the native language. Obviously,

11:12

there was a very strong interest

11:14

in this new trend here in

11:16

Iceland from the very beginning. We

11:18

saw Icelandic

11:21

novels being published that were imitating

11:23

this new shard. We

11:28

have actually a story called An

11:30

Icelandic Sherlock Holmes, which tells

11:33

a story about an amateur

11:35

private investigator, etc. I

11:38

think we were pretty quick to really

11:41

discover this trend and

11:44

making our own version of it. I

11:47

would say that the crime

11:50

fiction shard didn't become acceptable

11:54

in Iceland until maybe around

11:56

the year 2000, when it became

11:58

really acceptable in part.

11:59

of a very strong literary

12:02

genre in Iceland before it was considered

12:05

to be more well, lowbrow.

12:08

Exactly.

12:09

But I think we can actually we can even

12:11

go back further I mean to

12:14

the Icelandic sagas, I mean from the middle ages. Some

12:17

of those stories really

12:19

are crime thrillers even

12:21

like legal thrillers. So we have this very

12:23

strong heritage dating back centuries

12:26

of writing crime fiction

12:28

in a way.

12:30

The Icelandic sagas were written

12:32

about 800 years ago. They

12:35

tell the story of the people who settled

12:37

Iceland, often following them

12:39

for generations, and are

12:41

written almost like modern novels

12:44

in a simple straightforward style. They're

12:47

about families, conflict, and

12:49

everyday life.

12:51

And I think that's also

12:54

a part of why we write and read so much because

12:56

you know our heritage is the sagas

12:59

much more than like anything else. I

13:01

mean we don't have this you know that

13:03

although you know nations have heritage

13:05

of you know architecture or art in a way

13:08

from that from that period. I mean we have the books

13:10

we have the stories.

13:15

We'll be right

13:16

back.

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15:39

The Prime Minister of Iceland has

15:41

said her background in crime fiction helped

15:44

prepare her for her role in government,

15:46

saying that it, quote,

15:48

is about not really trusting anyone and

15:51

that's generally how politics works. She's

15:55

also said,

15:56

every politician needs to have something to

15:58

take his or her mind off

15:59

the daily business of politics. She's

16:03

described crime fiction as

16:05

quote, very therapeutic. One

16:09

of her favorite authors is Agatha Christie.

16:12

She has been very influential, but then

16:14

I read everything, you know, Raymond

16:17

Chandler, Tashaal Hammett, Dorothea

16:20

Alsayers, et cetera. I

16:22

read all of those. So so I kind

16:24

of I really, you know, it's

16:27

so and when you have read so many crime

16:29

novels, it's so enjoyable

16:32

when you kind of find one that you

16:35

don't see through and you're actually surprised

16:38

when the ending comes.

16:41

People

16:41

in Iceland read a lot, an

16:44

average of 2.3 books every month. On

16:48

Christmas Eve, there's a tradition called

16:51

the Christmas book flood.

16:54

And there's an Icelandic saying that

16:56

everyone gives birth to a book. The

17:00

phrase literally translates to

17:02

everyone has a book in their stomach.

17:06

It's reported that one in 10 Icelanders

17:08

will publish one in their lifetime. People

17:11

tend to think that it's kind of normal to write

17:14

books. How did you how

17:16

do you find time? You know, both

17:18

of you do other things, obviously. How

17:21

did you find time to write? Did you write at

17:23

night? Did you send chapters back and forth

17:25

at night after the work of the day was

17:27

over? Well, it took

17:29

a long time.

17:30

You know, we were writing this book for

17:34

two years. Yeah, more than two years. More than

17:36

two years because we don't

17:38

you know, we don't have any time. But obviously during

17:40

the pandemic, you kind of the routine

17:43

was a little bit different. So

17:45

that created some time, at least for me, who

17:49

normally is out on meetings every

17:51

night. And and doing meeting

17:53

people, which you didn't do during the pandemic.

17:56

So all of a sudden, instead of just

17:59

watching. Netflix or something

18:01

to relax. We

18:03

were creating our own story. But it

18:05

was obviously a little bit, you know, a

18:08

strange experience to do this with a Prime

18:11

Minister. You know, when I called

18:13

to ask how this chapter was

18:15

progressing and that chapter, she was having

18:18

meetings with the Prime Minister of Britain

18:20

or the, you know, heads

18:23

of states all over the world. And it's a strange

18:25

conversation to have. You know, I've jumped

18:27

out of this meeting with the Prime Minister of

18:29

the UK

18:31

to speak to you. And I mean, how do you respond

18:33

to that? That's just like a bizarre

18:35

scenario. It requires

18:38

a lot of patience, obviously, for the co-author.

18:41

But it was, but the good thing

18:43

was I would never probably have written it

18:45

alone because he

18:48

kept pushing it really until

18:50

we had a finished manuscript. And even

18:52

then I said, OK, here we

18:54

have a manuscript. It's probably not good enough.

18:58

So the biggest surprise for

19:00

me was when actually

19:02

we were in the process of saying,

19:04

OK, it's going to be published. Then it

19:06

became very real. And then

19:08

I got a little nervous. Yeah,

19:10

that was probably the only point,

19:12

you know, only time she got really mad at me during

19:15

this process was during the editing because I hate

19:17

editing books. So

19:19

I was sort of stalling on that, you know, writing something

19:21

else. And then I got this call from the Prime Minister

19:24

one day last summer and she was, you know, she

19:26

was angry at me. She was like, you need to finish

19:28

this editing so we can move on. And again,

19:31

that's a new experience to get like a call from the

19:33

prime minister of your country, you know, telling

19:35

you off a little bit. So

19:38

that I would

19:38

be the same, you know, you know,

19:40

it doesn't matter if my

19:42

job doesn't matter because this is just who I am.

19:46

Keep calling people and telling them what to do.

19:50

Are you ready to write another one? No,

19:54

not really. Of course we are. Yeah. I'm

19:57

not saying it won't happen at some

19:59

point, but. But somehow

20:02

time has been filled with a lot

20:04

of stuff. So, no, we haven't

20:06

started

20:06

that. No, we haven't started it. But it's an ongoing

20:09

conversation. Basically, you know,

20:11

me saying that we should start it, he's saying

20:13

no, but I think we'll figure it out.

20:23

There was one other person I wanted to talk

20:25

with about crime in crime fiction

20:27

in Iceland. His name is

20:30

Peter Guominson, and he deals

20:32

with both. How many people

20:34

do what you do in Iceland?

20:38

I'm pretty much the only one. Most

20:41

of the time, it's just me. Peter

20:44

Guominson is a forensic pathologist

20:46

who works in Reykjavik. Before

20:49

he took the job a few years ago, there

20:51

were no forensic pathologists based in Iceland

20:53

at all. He and a colleague

20:55

who flies in once a month handle all

20:57

of the autopsies done in the entire country,

21:01

which has a population of about 380,000 people.

21:05

Do you know any other countries where there's

21:07

only one forensic

21:10

pathologist? No.

21:16

No, no westernized countries, at

21:18

least, I think.

21:20

He and his colleague work with the police to

21:22

investigate sudden and unexplained

21:24

deaths in Iceland. Although

21:27

murders are rare in Iceland, he

21:29

says suspicious deaths are more common,

21:32

at least double the homicide rate.

21:35

So our role

21:37

in the investigation is, of course, also

21:41

like ruling out homicide

21:44

when something appears to be a homicide.

21:48

What is your day? What is your

21:51

typical day like? I mean, I

21:53

assume you're not working on any homicides today.

21:57

No, not physically, but we have had some...

22:00

In June,

22:02

we had three homicides. So

22:07

there's

22:07

a lot of work involved in

22:10

these cases, even if you're not standing

22:12

in autopsy in them. But the

22:14

normal day is, I come

22:16

in and there is,

22:18

I mean, people have died. They're

22:22

brought here. And

22:24

the majority of the day is, of course, standing

22:28

with the bodies and autopsy.

22:30

And

22:31

at the end of the autopsy, you can say it

22:36

was that kind of force. It hit them in that

22:38

place. Then it went through

22:41

this artery,

22:42

released this amount of blood. And

22:44

that's why the person died. You

22:47

have built up the whole chain

22:50

before your eyes, the

22:52

chain of causation.

22:57

That's the job. And it's really

22:59

interesting sometimes coming in and seeing

23:01

what's happened. And of course, usually,

23:04

if there is something interesting, you

23:06

see it on the news before you

23:09

come in that something has happened, some

23:12

big accident or

23:13

something. And because you're

23:16

the only guy there, you know you're probably

23:18

going to get to see that individual

23:20

at some point.

23:23

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So

23:25

if you're

23:27

having a nice weekend at home or something,

23:30

and you're hoping for an easy weekend,

23:32

easy following week at work,

23:34

and then there is on the news car

23:37

accidents and whatever, and then

23:41

you know beforehand that your week won't

23:43

be as easy as you

23:45

hoped for. Because

23:49

it's also such a small country that everything

23:51

makes headlines, even

23:53

small happenings.

23:59

Peter Guominson became Iceland's

24:02

only forensic pathologist in 2018.

24:06

And then he started getting questions

24:09

from Icelandic crime writers. What

24:12

types of questions do they ask?

24:15

You couldn't really, like,

24:17

generalize anything

24:20

because the nature

24:22

of the questions is most often

24:24

that they are really, really specific.

24:27

It's like,

24:30

how long does it take

24:32

to die if half of your

24:34

body is immersed in

24:37

seven-degree cold water? And

24:40

so on. And

24:42

how does a body smell that has

24:44

been confined in

24:47

a

24:49

metallic tank for 17 years? So

24:53

it's very specific questions.

24:56

He told me he's even gotten questions

24:59

like, can a dead body make a sound

25:01

or change position?

25:04

Eventually, he got so many questions

25:07

from so many writers

25:09

that he decided to just teach a class

25:11

on it. In the last three years,

25:13

I think I'm right. I

25:16

have had every fall and

25:19

every spring at least one course.

25:22

It has been close

25:25

to full or full. So I'm a

25:27

criminal writer. They have a serious interest,

25:30

a professional interest in forensic

25:34

medicine and pathology for

25:36

their profession. So I offer

25:39

them a chance for

25:41

starting with the basics to gain insight

25:44

into what we are dealing

25:46

with, how we think, what are the

25:48

problems, what is difficult, what is easy,

25:51

what can we say, what

25:54

would we be able to say,

25:56

and so on. Do you get

25:58

the sense that these authors are

26:00

really trying to get the details right.

26:03

You know, that the people who come to your

26:05

workshops, your lectures are there because

26:08

they want to make what they're writing

26:10

as realistic as possible, that that really

26:12

matters to them.

26:14

Yeah, I've had conversations with authors

26:17

that are really ambitious to having

26:20

it right, like

26:23

it is in reality. And

26:27

I'm sitting there and

26:30

talking to them, and they have

26:32

this divine

26:33

power

26:37

of fiction in their hand. They can take

26:39

and they can say whatever they want. And I tell

26:41

them,

26:43

you don't have to keep

26:45

it like it is in reality,

26:49

because you can write whatever you want. And it

26:51

surprises me, that's the thing,

26:53

it surprises me that authors, when

26:55

they get stuck in this fixating

27:01

on the problem of writing

27:04

like reality, because it's a

27:06

kind of a

27:08

backwards thing, if you just think about

27:10

it, because they are writing fiction. Why

27:13

do you think, I mean, there's

27:16

so few violent deaths,

27:19

murders in Iceland, why do you think that crime

27:22

fiction is so popular there? Yeah,

27:26

it is a very, very popular

27:29

genre here

27:31

in Iceland, as well as in probably all the Nordic

27:34

countries also. I think

27:36

people are somehow

27:38

drawn towards the subject.

27:41

And they find it interesting,

27:44

why do people die, put

27:47

on it and so forth. I

27:50

mean, maybe people are even more interested in it

27:52

there, because they see it so

27:54

rarely. Yeah,

27:58

I know what you mean. Like, if you have a

28:00

homicide here, despite

28:05

how unusual or interesting

28:07

it really is, then

28:09

it will make headlines in every media,

28:12

of course, and everyone will know about it

28:15

within like 45 minutes or something.

28:18

It's a small community,

28:21

it's true, and people are interested

28:23

in it if there

28:26

is like evil

28:28

or something bad happens

28:31

or so it's

28:34

close to them.

28:39

He told me he personally doesn't

28:42

read much crime fiction. I don't.

28:45

I've read a few of the Icelandic authors

28:47

and yeah, I think I get plenty

28:50

of death and all

28:54

these things during the work

28:56

day.

28:57

You've seen enough. Yeah,

29:00

yeah, yeah, thanks. We

29:04

recently spoke with

29:06

the Prime Minister of Iceland about her new

29:08

crime novel. Did she ask you any questions?

29:13

No, no she didn't. Well,

29:17

I think she's maybe going to write another one so she

29:19

might call. Oh nice, I

29:21

look forward to it.

29:30

Reykjavik, a crime story written

29:33

by Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir

29:36

and Ragnar Jönesen will be out

29:38

in the US this September.

29:41

Criminal is created by Lauren Spore

29:44

and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior

29:46

producer, Katie Bishop is our supervising

29:48

producer, our producers

29:51

are Susanna Roberson, Jackie Sajiko,

29:53

Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, Sam

29:55

Kim and Megan Knane. Our

29:58

technical director is Rob Baier.

29:59

years, engineering by Ross Henry.

30:03

Julian Alexander makes original illustrations

30:05

for each episode of Criminal. You can see them

30:08

at thisiscriminal.com.

30:11

And if you're a fan of crime fiction, you

30:13

might enjoy Phoebe Reads a Mystery, a

30:16

show where I read classic crime novels.

30:20

Our latest book is The Strange Case

30:22

of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I've

30:25

also read books like Arthur Conan Doyle's

30:28

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and

30:31

The Mysterious Affair at Stiles by

30:33

Agatha Christie.

30:35

You can listen back through our entire catalog, 25

30:38

books total, and look out for new books

30:40

coming soon. And

30:42

if you want to hear Phoebe Reads a Mystery, or any

30:44

of the shows we make with no ads, check

30:47

out Criminal+. Learn

30:49

more at thisiscriminal.com.

30:54

We're on Facebook and Twitter at CriminalShow

30:57

and Instagram at Criminal underscore

30:59

podcast. Criminal

31:02

is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public

31:04

Radio, WUNC. We're

31:06

part of the Vox Media Podcast

31:09

Network. Discover more great

31:11

shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

31:15

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.