Clarity On Fire

One of the many jobs that I, Rachel, had in the years after graduating college was admin at a criminal defense law firm. I encountered a whole new level of humanity in the year I worked there. I had two convicted murderers compliment me on the quality of my work … which I was not at all sure how to take, ha! Without getting into the gross details (because you really don’t want to hear what happened), one of those murderers was appealing his case because the officer who discovered the body of the victim had done so without a proper warrant. In legal terms, even though it was beyond evident that he was guilty, the discovery of the body was fruit of the poisonous tree—AKA, if the source of the evidence is tainted (obtained illegally), then anything gained (the “fruit”) from it is tainted, too. Moving on from the macabre … this metaphor has more than just legal implications. It’s the perfect way to describe what’s going on in our brains, too. On this episode, we’re getting into: How one seemingly innocuous incid