Jul 27, 2026 · 35 min · 12 segments
IN THIS EPISODE With his out date - the end of his prison sentence - now starting to come into view (albeit still in the distance), John would have been best served by keeping his head down. But there…
John KiriakouHost
When your days are as measured as a prisoner's are, by which I mean regulated, timed, and tightly controlled, you become intensely aware of time and how exactly it's passing or not passing.
With that in mind, prisoners serving long or life terms have to literally change how they think about time.
Understand that even though you're living inside a prison with terrible conditions, terrible food, and terrible everything, you have to find a reason to go on.
Long-timers can't think of themselves as doing time when time stretches that far into the distant future.
They engage deeply in hobbies, interests, sports, physical fitness, or even religious faith.
Really and truly, they teach themselves how to live differently than they lived before in the prison system.
More than a few of these guys spent their first few years raising hell, both inside and outside the prison system.
By contrast, there were people like me, short-timers who were counting the seconds.
In fact, there's a condition called short-timer's disease or short-timer's syndrome, a state of heightened anxiety, impatience, and intense focus on the outside world, making the final weeks feel like they're literally taking forever.
I had established myself in the Loretto community as a straight shooter, someone other prisoners could trust as much as prisoners could trust other prisoners.
The prison authorities, though still determined to silence me, knew they were outclassed, outgunned, and outwitted.
On a day-to-day basis, I had my rhythms and routines, but it's prison, right? There were still plenty of ways and plenty of time for everything to go horribly wrong.
The easiest, maybe the smartest thing to do would've been to just lay as low as possible.
The problem with being a whistleblower is that once you've seen the light, you just cannot unsee it.
What's key is that the thing outraging their sense of morality is flat-out illegal, and someone is getting away with it.
When your days are as measured as a prisoner's are, by which I mean regulated, timed, and tightly controlled, you become intensely aware of time and how exactly it's passing or not passing.
With that in mind, prisoners serving long or life terms have to literally change how they think about time.
Understand that even though you're living inside a prison with terrible conditions, terrible food, and terrible everything, you have to find a reason to go on.
Long-timers can't think of themselves as doing time when time stretches that far into the distant future.
They engage deeply in hobbies, interests, sports, physical fitness, or even religious faith.
Really and truly, they teach themselves how to live differently than they lived before in the prison system.
More than a few of these guys spent their first few years raising hell, both inside and outside the prison system.
By contrast, there were people like me, short-timers who were counting the seconds.
In fact, there's a condition called short-timer's disease or short-timer's syndrome, a state of heightened anxiety, impatience, and intense focus on the outside world, making the final weeks feel like they're literally taking forever.
I had established myself in the Loretto community as a straight shooter, someone other prisoners could trust as much as prisoners could trust other prisoners.
The prison authorities, though still determined to silence me, knew they were outclassed, outgunned, and outwitted.
On a day-to-day basis, I had my rhythms and routines, but it's prison, right? There were still plenty of ways and plenty of time for everything to go horribly wrong.
The easiest, maybe the smartest thing to do would've been to just lay as low as possible.
The problem with being a whistleblower is that once you've seen the light, you just cannot unsee it.
What's key is that the thing outraging their sense of morality is flat-out illegal, and someone is getting away with it.
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