Why journalists who suffer from Scrupulosity should avoid true crime podcasting

Hello! I want to introduce you to a very interesting and little known mental disorder called Scrupulosity. It’s a kind of OCD, where the sufferer has an obsessive concern with religious or moral matters. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, apparently had it. One time he accidentally stood on two bits of straw in the shape of a cross and it tormented him for ages. Martin Luther apparently had it too. He once accidently omitted the word ‘for’ during the Eucharist and he later said he might has well have murdered his parents. That’s why Lutheranism was so stringent - it came from his Scrupulosity. All those poor Lutherans, being forced to be super religious because of their leader’s mental disorder. And look at Trump - a different mental disorder but we all still have to live inside it. Plus ca change.

Anyway, I mention it because I think I briefly had a touch of Scrupulosity when I was making my podcast The Last Days of August. I want to write a little about that, and about journalistic ethics in general – about when we don’t worry enough, and when we worry too much.