Smart people don't ruin their lives by accident. They do it by being convincing — and the person they convince is themselves.

American Regret is a forensic examination of how capable, self-aware people talk themselves into the choices that end their lives as they knew them — and how the rest of us are doing the exact same thing right now, just with smaller stakes and no federal agents involved yet.

Every episode takes one person who had everything to lose and lost it: the cancer researcher who trusted the wrong person, the dealer who cooperated with the DEA for six years and called it bad luck, the Border Patrol agent who refused to cooperate and did the time. We don't tell their stories for the shock. We dissect them for the pattern — the rationalization, the language people use on themselves, the four seconds of hearing yourself clearly that separates the people who stayed free from the ones who didn't.

This isn't true crime and it isn't self-help. There's no healing arc, no five steps, no redemption on a schedule. Just the unflinching architecture of self-deception, examined by someone who built her own and did her time taking it apart.

Your host is Deana Martin — the Fairy GodFelon. She's not a doctor or a coach. She's the smartest person who was ever wrong about everything, finally telling the truth. New episodes every two weeks.

Listen close. You're going to recognize someone. The problem is it's going to be you.