The Duggar Family, Reality TV Crime, and the Rise of Brain-Computer Hybrids

The Big Mad Morning Show hosts Corbin, Gimpy, and Lindsay opened with news that another Duggar sibling—one of the 19 children from the reality show 19 Kids and Counting—had been arrested. The 31-year-old was charged with lewd and lascivious behavior involving a victim younger than 12, and a separate charge of lewd and lascivious behavior toward a victim aged 18 or older. The hosts parsed the legal language: the second charge refers to unwanted sexual conduct with an adult, not a child. "It's subjective," one host noted, "but if the behavior was not consensual, that's what makes it criminal." The conversation quickly widened into a broader critique of the Duggar family's insulated religious culture. "How these types of cultures aren't investigated is beyond me," one host said, recommending the documentary Shiny Happy People on Amazon. The hosts debated whether there should be a legal limit on how many children a family can have—ten was proposed as a trigger point—but acknowledged the difficulty of regulation. "As long as the kids aren't being harmed," one host said, before another countered: "They are. Not always. How many times do we have to hear about a kid getting molested and go, there's a systemic problem in that group?"

Reality TV Stars and the Criminal Justice System