World News for Students of English

08-02-2022 07:00

Many people like true crime stories, and it seems that they always liked crime.

In the 1500s, British writers wrote short crime stories, and they sold them to people. Also, in the past, it was usual to hang people, who did something bad.  People liked to watch the hanging, and they even bought tickets for it.

With TV, millions of people started to watch true stories about murders and mysteries. Millions of people started to listen to true crime podcasts in 2014, and a year later, Netflix started a true crime series. It became very popular, and 19 million people watched it every week.

Experts say that it is normal and healthy to be interested in crime. It is natural for people to think about good and bad things. It is interesting that women enjoy crime stories more than men. A survey from 2018 showed that about 75% of listeners of true crime podcasts were women.

Difficult words: true crime (a book, film, or podcast about a crime which really happened), hanging (killing a person who did something bad by putting a rope around his neck and dropping him down), survey (questions to get information about people’s thoughts).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.