Since we launched the thing about Pam podcast in 2019, it's been downloaded a lot, the whole lot, more than 20 million times so far.

And one of those listeners was a woman by the name of Renee Zellweger.

She of course is the Academy Award winner, famous for blockbuster hits like Bridget Jones Diary, Jerry McGuire, Judy and more.

She's starring as Pam Hupp, an NBC six episode scripted series, The Thing About Pam, streaming on Peacock.

She sat down to tell us about the series and proceeded to blame me for it.

I'm quite sure that it's your fault.

I hope so.

Because your telling of the story and the podcast was so compelling that I listened to the entire thing from the first episode till the final in one sitting on a road trip.

No, come on, really?

100% one trip. Yeah. And I found it. I'm sure like most people who are fans of the podcast and the episode of Dateline that it's impossible in the imagination because the absurdity of it is so obvious in hindsight, probably.

So in the telling of the story as the events unfold, you keep saying to yourself, that's impossible. And it begs a question, how?

Over and over again for hours, I just kept asking that question, how? And it says so much about personal and social bias and how it comes into play in the criminal justice system and how we interact with one another socially today, especially in America, that I figured, wow, this is probably worth exploring.

And so she did.

The story revolves around the 2011 murder of the Missouri mother, wife, DJ, cancer patient named Betsy, Ferria. It's also about Betsy's friend, Pam Hoppe.

The woman who drove her home the night she was killed. The name Pam is in the title for a reason. Let's just say she can be very convincing.

Her charm that she's so funny and available as a friend triggers a certain memory of this kind of person that we all have.

We know her from the grocery store, from church, from the school drop offline, from the Cubscouts, the soccer mom, all of these things, the nice PTA lady who will give you a ride home. She's a safe place to go.

And obviously it just speaks to the certitude that we all carry about what we know is true and just how wrong we can be if we don't pay attention to the evidence that's in front of us that doesn't support what we already believe to be true.

You're known for playing these famous people here, you were playing a less famous one, but one who was interesting in her own way.

How do you become Pam Hoppe, all people? How did you go about that?

You know, I just thought about it as sort of a dynamic examination of human behavior.

So I was looking at everything that was available in the materials, basically with everything standing on the foundation of the podcast that you did so beautifully and the date line episode.

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