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Speaker 1: But's begun to feel less like this bizarre chapter of

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Speaker 1: history than maybe a preview of what we're inside of now.

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Speaker 2: There are No Girls on the Internet.

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Speaker 3: As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridge

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Speaker 3: Todd and this is there are No Girls on the Internet.

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Speaker 3: It may seem like forever ago now, but last month

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Speaker 3: we had a national conversation about daycares. Our daycares, all scams?

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Speaker 3: Are they being run by people who are actually threats

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Speaker 3: to our kids? The conversation was specifically taking place in Minnesota,

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Speaker 3: and the baseless attacks on daycare workers felt kind of

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Speaker 3: familiar to me. So I turned to Sarah Marshall, who

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Speaker 3: is pretty much my podcast idol. Sarah hosts the podcast

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Speaker 3: You're Wrong About and has a new show with the

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Speaker 3: CBC called The Devil. You Know about the Satanic panic

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Speaker 3: of the nineteen eighties that basically accused daycare workers of

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Speaker 3: harming kids as part of Satanic rituals.

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Speaker 1: I became interested in the Satanic panic initially, and I

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Speaker 1: think about twenty twelve, when I was in grad school

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Speaker 1: and I was a baby teacher, and I was a

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Speaker 1: teacher whose skills were in their infancy. I was not

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Speaker 1: teaching actual babies. And I remember finding a Texas Monthly

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Speaker 1: article about the case of fran and Dan Keller in

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Speaker 1: the Austin article, which was a big Satanic panic case

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Speaker 1: of the eighties, and encountering at around that same time

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Speaker 1: the documentary about the West Memphis three Paradise Lost, and

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Speaker 1: just feeling like I had encountered some kind of glitch

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Speaker 1: in American history that we hadn't talked about enough, that

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Speaker 1: revealed something that I felt like I had not maybe

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Speaker 1: given a chance to understand was there before. And this basic,

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Speaker 1: you know, the idea that you could actually maybe convict

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Speaker 1: someone of murder by arguing that they were Satanic, even

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Speaker 1: if you didn't have physical evidence to support it. And

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Speaker 1: I was absolutely shocked. And then as the years have

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Speaker 1: gone on, it's begun to feel less like this bizarre

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Speaker 1: chapter of history than maybe a preview of what we're

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Speaker 1: inside of now.

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Speaker 3: For folks who are perhaps uninitiated, how would you describe

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Speaker 3: the Satanic Panic?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think I would.

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Speaker 1: Unfortunately, we're being forcibly initiated at this point, so but yes,

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Speaker 1: if you haven't encountered it, Basically the Satanic Panic of

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Speaker 1: the eighties, which is what I've been researching for a

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Speaker 1: long time, and what my NAT show is about is

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Speaker 1: basically this widespread and pretty mainstream belief that gripped North

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Speaker 1: America and sort of spread outwards as well in the

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Speaker 1: early eighties through the early nineties and then began to

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Speaker 1: you know, lost a lot of its mainstream respectability as

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Speaker 1: a theory, but never quite went away, as we can see.

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Speaker 1: And it was the mainstream.

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Speaker 4: Idea that there were.

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Speaker 1: Large scale Satanic cults that had infiltrated North American society,

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Speaker 1: and they were the ones abusing children, and they were

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Speaker 1: the ones kidnapping children, and if we could just find

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Speaker 1: the Satanists, then we could find the real threat to life,

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Speaker 1: love and happiness, I guess, and the threat to the

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Speaker 1: American family.

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Speaker 4: And so it resulted in.

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Speaker 1: Investigations and trials and wrongful convictions, generally without a shred

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Speaker 1: of physical or even circumstantial evidence that really pointed toward

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Speaker 1: child abuse. And now, of course we kind of we

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Speaker 1: have a white House that's kind of openly embracing the

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Speaker 1: idea that if anything happens that you don't like at Satanism.

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Speaker 5: But this was.

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Speaker 1: A very politically bipartisan idea to begin with, and one

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Speaker 1: that for really quite a while it was hard to

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Speaker 1: express doubts about publicly for fear of being accused of

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Speaker 1: being on the side of, if not Satanists and at

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Speaker 1: least child abuse.

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Speaker 3: You might already know some of the big names who

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Speaker 3: pushed the idea that Satanists had infiltrated daycares and were

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Speaker 3: harming our children nationwide, But Sarah's work The Devil you

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Speaker 3: Know focuses on something different, the everyday people swept up

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Speaker 3: in this panic, Teachers and caregivers, people who just wanted

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Speaker 3: to work with kids, only to be branded as members

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Speaker 3: of a Satanic cabal. It is wild to me how

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Speaker 3: much this is kind of back in the zeitgeist again.

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Speaker 3: And something I really really like about the new show

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Speaker 3: The Devil you Know that you've done with the CBC

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Speaker 3: is how the voices that you're hearing are from people

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Speaker 3: who were caught up in this. Right The first voice

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Speaker 3: that we hear is from Diane, just somebody who was

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Speaker 3: doing a photography project with kids in a school, and

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Speaker 3: then everything is going fine, and then all of a sudden,

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Speaker 3: one day hears over the school's loudspeaker, the principal saying

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Speaker 3: if anybody sees that photography, lady, send her directly to

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Speaker 3: my office. The way that regular people got ensnared in

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Speaker 3: this without really a shred of evidence.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love starting off with that story because

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Speaker 1: there's something I find, I don't know, something we really

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Speaker 1: wanted to do that I'm glad you've brought up is

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Speaker 1: trying to, yeah, to hear about this as much as

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Speaker 1: possible in the voices of people affected by it and

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Speaker 1: who kind of were going about their day when suddenly

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Speaker 1: this straying story crept in and maybe even you know,

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Speaker 1: became something that they had to flee in this case,

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Speaker 1: or in fact couldn't escape in time in later examples.

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Speaker 4: And I love that.

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Speaker 1: Story too, because it's about, you know, a woman traveling

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Speaker 1: from you know, from her home in a city to

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Speaker 1: rural Kentucky and with the best of intentions and with

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Speaker 1: this desire to you know, to teach kids, but also

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Speaker 1: I think to kind of forge the connections that we

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Speaker 1: need in any culture to feel like we're part of

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Speaker 1: something more unified and not just a bunch of feuding

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Speaker 1: little groups that are all trying to secure our own interests.

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Speaker 1: And so this idea that.

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Speaker 4: If you set out that way.

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Speaker 1: One day and then you get accused of, you know,

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Speaker 1: literally looking for blonde, blue eyed children to sacrifice because

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Speaker 1: you dared to be a stranger in town trying to

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Speaker 1: teach skills and because there just was sort of a

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Speaker 1: need to find a scapegoat in that moment and you

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Speaker 1: were it. Then you know, these are and we're it

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Speaker 1: feels very similar to what we're saying now, that kind

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Speaker 1: of it feels like part of a healthy society involves

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Speaker 1: people being able to travel around and meet people different

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Speaker 1: from themselves and to find figure out what connects us

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Speaker 1: and learn from each other, and that if that causes

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Speaker 1: fear and superstition and anxiety, then that is, you know,

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Speaker 1: then as now is taking away a lot of a

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Speaker 1: lot of the love and care that we have the

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Speaker 1: potential to offer to each other and making us feel

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Speaker 1: more like enemies who happen to share a country than

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Speaker 1: anything else.

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Speaker 3: That's such a good way to put it, and I do,

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Speaker 3: I do there's this thread of like the demonization and

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Speaker 3: fear and anxiety around children being in contact with adults

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Speaker 3: who are not family right especially, I feel that today

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Speaker 3: that you know, there are all these ways that anxieties

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Speaker 3: about the family and sort of our current sort of

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Speaker 3: social climate is translated into it. It's dangerous if your

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Speaker 3: kid is being watched or taught by an adult that

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Speaker 3: is not a blood relative. You know, I wonder if

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Speaker 3: that's part of it too.

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Speaker 1: I think so, and I feel I mean something that

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Speaker 1: I is very apparent today that I feel like is

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Speaker 1: you know, not even difficult to pick out the subtext from.

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Speaker 1: It feels like it's become text at this point. Is

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Speaker 1: this idea that you know that in the kind of

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Speaker 1: the political conservativism of the United States today, which has

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Speaker 1: become you know, very infiltrated by fundamentalist aspects of Christianity,

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Speaker 1: there's this sense that like someone sexually abusing your child

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Speaker 1: and teaching them about sex at and about you know,

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Speaker 1: about gender and about queerness, that it feels like people

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Speaker 1: are equally afraid of both those things, and that feels

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Speaker 1: like it's bringing this sort of subtexttul part of the

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Speaker 1: satanic panic of the eighties, like straight into the foreground

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Speaker 1: where it's you kind of reach this point and a

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Speaker 1: lot of looking at the fears and anxieties a lot

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Speaker 1: of people, Well, are you worried about someone harming your

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Speaker 1: children or are you even perhaps maybe even more worried

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Speaker 1: about your children learning things that you don't want them

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Speaker 1: to know and then having the power that comes with

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Speaker 1: that knowledge or finding community that empowers them to live

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Speaker 1: a life that you did an invasion for them, because

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Speaker 1: then it becomes, you know, not about protecting your children

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Speaker 1: from harm as much as trying to maintain absolute control,

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Speaker 1: but then passing that off is your desire merely to

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Speaker 1: protect them when in fact or may be the thing

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Speaker 1: that they need to be protected from at a certain point.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know in your in the first episode,

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Speaker 3: when you talk to Mary, that Grand Valley State professor

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Speaker 3: who basically is talking to me, she really breaks it

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Speaker 3: down that at the time when the Satanic panic was

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Speaker 3: really popping off in the eighties, people were really just

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Speaker 3: the FAMI. People were very anxious about the family, right,

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Speaker 3: You had these higher rates of what I guess back

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Speaker 3: then you would call non traditional families.

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Speaker 1: What was that?

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Speaker 3: Is that a euphanism for like single parent households or

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Speaker 3: I couldn't quite pick up on what the subtext.

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Speaker 2: Of that was.

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Speaker 1: I feel like that is just the non nuclear family,

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Speaker 1: you know, which is interesting in its own right, right,

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Speaker 1: because then if we call something the non traditional family

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Speaker 1: for not being a nuclear family. Well it's like, well, okay,

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Speaker 1: the nuclear family isn't super traditional, as evidenced by the

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Speaker 1: fact that it's named after something we didn't discover until

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Speaker 1: like the middle of the twentieth century.

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Speaker 4: Right, great point.

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Speaker 5: Let's take a quick break at are back.

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Speaker 2: So how do you really.

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Speaker 3: Scare people make them afraid for their children? The brilliance

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Speaker 3: and cruelty of these moral panics is how they redirect

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Speaker 3: anxiety away from real structural problems, Because the truth is,

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Speaker 3: supporting a family is really hard.

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Speaker 2: It's expensive.

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Speaker 3: Most families need two incomes just to survive, which means

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Speaker 3: relying on non family adults, daycare workers, teachers, caregivers to

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Speaker 3: help raise kids, and that dependence can naturally feel vulnerable.

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Speaker 3: It requires trust. But instead of addressing why childcare is

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Speaker 3: so expensive, why wages for childcare workers are so low,

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Speaker 3: and why parents are all stretched so thin, it's much

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Speaker 3: easier to create a villain, a satanic conspiracy, a fraudy lie,

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Speaker 3: an immigrant, someone specific to blame, and someone different to fear,

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Speaker 3: so that you have economic anxiety, more women working. And

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Speaker 3: then on top of that, you have these social commentators

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Speaker 3: who were going on TV and really making people afraid

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Speaker 3: of what the consequences of all of this might be. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: and stoking a lot of fear around the family. And

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Speaker 3: I mean, I wonder, do you see do you see

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Speaker 3: us as in a very similar moment today? Because yeah,

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Speaker 3: listening to that episode, I was like, gosh, this could

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Speaker 3: have been written about twenty twenty.

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Speaker 4: Now, that's the creepy part.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess, you know it's I would like

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Speaker 1: for it to be less relevant, but.

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Speaker 4: That's what history does.

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Speaker 1: It repeats, And yeah, I do feel like we're in

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Speaker 1: a similar moment. And it's funny to compare it to

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Speaker 1: the eighties when I think, you know, I was born

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Speaker 1: in the late eighties, so I wasn't you know, I

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Speaker 1: was limited in the things I could learn about what

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Speaker 1: was happening in the news, existing only sort of in

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Speaker 1: egg form, and you can't pay very much attention in

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Speaker 1: that case.

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Speaker 4: But you know, it feels like one of the some

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Speaker 4: of the.

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Speaker 1: Major anxieties were about the death of the American working class, which,

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Speaker 1: in typical fashion, we were like, Reagan, save us by

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Speaker 1: destroying it faster, Thank you, great work, you know, and

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Speaker 1: that fears about the concept of family values and kind

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Speaker 1: of an inevitable backlash to women's lib and gay liberation brewing.

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Speaker 4: And you know, it's easy.

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Speaker 1: To forget now too that it wasn't until the Reagan

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Speaker 1: administration that that the separation between church and state began

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Speaker 1: to get real weird at the White House. And we

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Speaker 1: you know, we had kind of a presidency in which

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Speaker 1: Jerry Folwell got to sort of stick a couple of

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Speaker 1: fingers in and that's never good in my opinion. And

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Speaker 1: also just the kind of the anxieties of the Cold

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Speaker 1: War and this idea of you know, just I think

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Speaker 1: probably at any time in America you can do this,

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Speaker 1: but especially in times of heightened anxiety. It's so nice

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Speaker 1: to be able to point to a villain who you

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Speaker 1: seem very far away and kind of inhuman and having

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Speaker 1: completely different needs and values than us. And I've alrea

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Speaker 1: never thought about this before, actually, but it does feel

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Speaker 1: like the Satanic panic mimics the Cold War just a

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Speaker 1: little bit, you know, where it's like you have these

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Speaker 1: Satanists and it's like talking about Soviets, where like they're

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Speaker 1: not regular people like you and me, Like instead of

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Speaker 1: worshiping Jesus, they worship satan and instead of saying goodbye,

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Speaker 1: they say bad bye. I mean, nobody said that about them,

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Speaker 1: but this idea that they're sort of bizarre humans. It's

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Speaker 1: such a great way to divert our anxieties away from

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Speaker 1: the places that we should be directing them, which are,

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Speaker 1: of course, you know, generally the people in power who

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Speaker 1: are doing whatever they can to save a little bit

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Speaker 1: of money by cutting welfare a little bit more.

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Speaker 2: Yes.

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Speaker 3: Yes, And if you are really worried about your kid

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Speaker 3: being like sexually exploited or sexually abused, it's probably not

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Speaker 3: by Satanists. There are probably you know, like statists, there

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Speaker 3: might be someplace else to statistically speaking, there might be

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Speaker 3: elsewhere that you could be looking if that was a

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Speaker 3: meaningful concern to you other than the occult.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And I think the kind of the thing about the

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Speaker 1: especially in the early eighties that the Satanic panic made possible,

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Speaker 1: which the allure of this makes total sense to me,

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Speaker 1: is you know, to say that this problem of child

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Speaker 1: abuse in America that at this point in history we

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Speaker 1: had only really recently begun talking about that, the problem,

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Speaker 1: you know, wasn't what we now, having had the chance

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Speaker 1: to really study it, understand it to be I think

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Speaker 1: based on all available to which is that it's people

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Speaker 1: in the family, it's people close to the family. If

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Speaker 1: you're in a church, you have to think about the

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Speaker 1: people in your church and the ways that you know,

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Speaker 1: very rigidly hierarchical institutions, including like quite a lot of

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Speaker 1: Christian ones really support and facilitate abuse because of children

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Speaker 1: are disempowered to speak ill of someone who's in a

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Speaker 1: position of authority for them or their family, then that's

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Speaker 1: going to be a lot harder for them to do.

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Speaker 1: And so the Satanic panic I think was so appealing

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Speaker 1: because it was saying not just that there were Satanists

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Speaker 1: who were abusing children, but that the majority of child

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Speaker 1: abuse potentially was being perpetrated by Satanists and once we

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Speaker 1: and also this kind of this idea that I think

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Speaker 1: leads to, you know, people struggling to deal with child

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Speaker 1: abuse in a way that's proportionate, which is the sense

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Speaker 1: of you know that we've seen a lot and kind

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Speaker 1: of American history and probably everywhere of like, well, you know,

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Speaker 1: dare we remove a pillar of the community. Dare we

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Speaker 1: say these things about you know, someone who is in

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Speaker 1: this or that important role, who is in a job

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Speaker 1: that is sort of supposed to be for good people.

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Speaker 4: What are we to do with this information?

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Speaker 1: And the sat Hannic panicist makes it easy that way,

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Speaker 1: We're like, well, here's a Satanist, and as far as

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Speaker 1: we know, they do have fun sacrificing animals and possibly babies,

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Speaker 1: so there's really not It allowed I think adults to

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Speaker 1: protect a child from an absolute villain, as opposed to

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Speaker 1: putting them in in a position that forced them to

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Speaker 1: really question the world that they had built and questioned

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Speaker 1: the safety of the world that they were enforcing, rather

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Speaker 1: than choosing their own prejudices of over a child's welfare,

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Speaker 1: which we can see does happen quite a lot when

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Speaker 1: when Satanists are not a convenient villain.

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Speaker 3: The Satanists, according to those raising the alarm, weren't equal

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Speaker 3: opportunity predators. They supposedly targeted a specific type of child.

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Speaker 2: White, blonde haired, blue eyed kids.

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Speaker 3: This meant the people working in daycares, who tended to

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Speaker 3: be marginalized by race, class, or both became the ones

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Speaker 3: being demonized and speaking of convenient villains, like, something that

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Speaker 3: you say in the I think the first or the

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Speaker 3: second episode is that you know, a lot of the

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Speaker 3: accusations being made were falling on the shoulders of people.

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Speaker 4: Who were marginalized, whether they were.

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Speaker 3: Lower income folks or strangers from out of town, and

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Speaker 3: the idea that, oh, these Satanists, they're not just looking

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Speaker 3: for any child, they're looking specifically for blonde haired, blue

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Speaker 3: eyed children, like those of the children who got to

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Speaker 3: keep at a school.

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Speaker 2: It's just very clear to me how much this was

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Speaker 2: a proxy for attacks.

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Speaker 3: On the other using claims that, as you put it,

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Speaker 3: would be comical if there weren't actual lives at stake.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing, right, is that it's the details

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Speaker 1: of it are so over the top that it really

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Speaker 1: if it weren't real, it would be very funny. And

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Speaker 1: there's even moments where it is funny. You know, you

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Speaker 1: have kind of cult cops, which is what I think

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Speaker 1: they're happy to be called at the time, or at

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Speaker 1: least not too miffed about it. In the eighties, who's

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Speaker 1: you know who make a living by traveling from town

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Speaker 1: to town giving seminars talking about how you can identify

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Speaker 1: like Satanic elements and a murder investigation and talking about

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Speaker 1: you know, oh, I own a copy of the Satanic Bible,

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Speaker 1: but I'm afraid to read it because it's demonic, and

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Speaker 1: it's like, you should read it, and then if you

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Speaker 1: read it, you would find out that in the Satanic Bible,

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Speaker 1: Anton Leavey himself is like, now, of course we don't

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Speaker 1: literally worship Satan, because that would be silly, but this

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Speaker 1: is a relition about celebrating selfishness, and then you would

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Speaker 1: know that.

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Speaker 4: But because I don't know, this idea.

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Speaker 1: Of grown adults being afraid of the state of even

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Speaker 1: opening the Satanic Bible is just like it's when you

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Speaker 1: think about them being in charge of what happens to

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Speaker 1: the rest of us, you're like, oh no, But in isolation,

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Speaker 1: it's hilarious.

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Speaker 3: Or like the story of the people who come into

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Speaker 3: town and they buy yards of black fabric and that's

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Speaker 3: that's it.

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Speaker 2: Satanists. No one worries why else would someone need black fabric?

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Speaker 1: Now I know, And the story behind that is that

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Speaker 1: they were, you know, making dresses for a funeral scene

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Speaker 1: in a movie, and a funeral itself is like a

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Speaker 1: reason that anyone could reach for. And there's an example

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Speaker 1: also in the McMartin case, which was kind of the

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Speaker 1: first big trial in the Satanic panic in these cases

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Speaker 1: of alleged day care sexual abuse where one of the

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Speaker 1: women who ran this staycare center was they searched their

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Speaker 1: house and found a black robe in it, and they

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Speaker 1: were like, oh my god, it's a black robe. What

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Speaker 1: could explain this? Accept use in Satanic rituals? And it

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Speaker 1: was a graduation robe, like so many people hang on to.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's because it's one of these things where

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Speaker 1: you're kind of like, I'm not much of a detective,

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Speaker 1: but even I can think of a reason just offhand

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Speaker 1: why someone would have that.

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Speaker 3: I'm sad to say that not a lot has changed.

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Speaker 3: Daycares remain targets for people looking to attack those who

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Speaker 3: are different, and the playbook today is remarkably similar. In

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Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies and eighties, books like Sibyl and Michelle

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Speaker 3: Remembers laid the groundwork for a Satanic panic. Sibil, published

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Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy three, detailed a woman who supposedly had

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Speaker 3: sixteen personalities uncovered through recovered memory therapy techniques late were

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Speaker 3: discredited but treated as gospel at the time. Then came

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Speaker 3: Michelle Remembers in nineteen eighty, claiming to document recovered memories

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Speaker 3: of Satanic ritual abuse. These books didn't just tell stories,

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Speaker 3: they created a template. They taught people what to look for,

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Speaker 3: what to fear, and how to interpret ambiguous situations as

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Speaker 3: evidence of hidden evil. And this template was weaponized against

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Speaker 3: daycare workers, particularly those who were working class immigrants or

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Speaker 3: people of color. Caregivers who simply wanted to work with

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Speaker 3: kids found themselves accused of participating in elaborate Satanic conspiracies,

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Speaker 3: accused of targeting white, blonde haired, blue eyed kids specifically.

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Speaker 3: The allegations were baselessly sensational, spread through media coverage and

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Speaker 3: word of mouth, but resulted in real destroyed lives and careers.

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Speaker 3: Fast forward to today, and we're seeing that exact same playbook,

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Speaker 3: just with villains. YouTuber Nick Shirley baselessly a cue Somali

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Speaker 3: run daycares in Minnesota a fraud, filming empty buildings during

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Speaker 3: off hours and presenting it as damning evidence. His viral videos,

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Speaker 3: viewed over one hundred and thirty million times, led to

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Speaker 3: frozen federal funding, increased deportation threats, and a new wave

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Speaker 3: of suspicion against immigrant childcare workers, despite state investigators finding

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Speaker 3: no evidence of fraud at the facilities he targeted, and

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Speaker 3: they're all recreating it because it works.

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Speaker 2: Moral panics about children amplified.

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Speaker 3: Through media aimed at marginalized communities doing the work of

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Speaker 3: caring for kids. Yes, the details might change, but the

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Speaker 3: pattern remains the same. So many of these allegations circulated

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Speaker 3: around daycares and places like Kern County, California, like prominently

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Speaker 3: featured Why why daycares? Like why do you think that

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Speaker 3: was like the place where so many of these out

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Speaker 3: legation stem.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting.

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Speaker 1: I mean I couldn't say exactly why, but I think

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Speaker 1: there are a few factors, and that it started with

404
00:24:09,520 --> 00:24:12,720
Speaker 1: this case in McMartin, where you had a parent of

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Speaker 1: a preschooler who had some severe mental health issues that

406
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Speaker 1: she was dealing with and who I think kind of

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00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:23,600
Speaker 1: latched on to this idea that was being you know,

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Speaker 1: already kind of in the air and being talked about

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Speaker 1: by experts and by people who had every reason to

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Speaker 1: be a bit more skeptical about it, that you know, daycare, well,

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Speaker 1: not daycare sexual abuse so much, but just that satanists

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Speaker 1: were looking for young children to abuse, and also that

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Speaker 1: this was you know, if you were looking at sexual abuse,

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Speaker 1: then you would have to wonder about Satanism.

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Speaker 4: And that kind of came from.

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Speaker 1: This book that came out in nineteen eighty called Michelle Remembers,

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Speaker 1: which was a kind of a smaller scale bestseller at

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Speaker 1: the time, but was actually used to train social workers

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Speaker 1: in police and so it was, you know, kind of

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Speaker 1: a sensationalistic paperback. It was definitely a sensationalistic paperback on

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Speaker 1: the same scale as like I mean, it was attempting

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Speaker 1: to emulate Sybil to an extent. That was another highly

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Speaker 1: fictionalized book that was then treated as treated as gospel

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Speaker 1: by people who who perhaps could have known better, and

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Speaker 1: then a lot of people who just were acting on

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Speaker 1: the advice of experts and so and this was a

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Speaker 1: book where, you know, a woman went through therapy and

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Speaker 1: after a lot of unethical treatments that we talk about

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Speaker 1: in an episode two, had kind of been really pushed

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Speaker 1: by her therapists to stand by the story that she

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Speaker 1: had been abused by Satanists as a small child, and

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Speaker 1: that satan had told her what his plan for the

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Speaker 1: eighties was and that that was going to be his

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Speaker 1: decade to take over. And so I believe that kind

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Speaker 1: of thing. It was extremely stressful, you know. And and

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Speaker 1: so it seems as if we had this initial daycare

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00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:15,000
Speaker 1: case and McMartin, where essentially a mother became concerned that

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Speaker 1: her child had been abused. There wasn't any actual evidence

439
00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:22,840
Speaker 1: of this, and in my opinion, it was something that

440
00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:27,320
Speaker 1: she kind of had on her mind and brought brought

441
00:26:27,320 --> 00:26:29,440
Speaker 1: that concern to her child, who was kind of too

442
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:33,000
Speaker 1: young to confirm or deny it because of being I

443
00:26:33,040 --> 00:26:37,679
Speaker 1: think two or three years old. And of course, you know,

444
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:40,720
Speaker 1: it's worth mentioning that at this time, we really didn't

445
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:43,960
Speaker 1: know how to forensically question children, especially young children, about

446
00:26:43,960 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 1: whether they had experienced abuse, because we hadn't you know,

447
00:26:48,080 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 1: no one had really bothered to learn how to do

448
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:55,320
Speaker 1: that before. It wasn't something that the police in North

449
00:26:55,359 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: America had too much experience with. The idea of childhood

450
00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 1: sexual abuse as a social concern or is something that

451
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 1: people were talking about on a bigger scale was just

452
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:07,520
Speaker 1: very new.

453
00:27:07,800 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 4: And so there's this, you.

454
00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:12,720
Speaker 1: Know, combination of we didn't know what to do because

455
00:27:12,760 --> 00:27:14,840
Speaker 1: no one had had time to research yet, and also

456
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:17,120
Speaker 1: the sense of blame of like, well, why didn't why

457
00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:18,120
Speaker 1: hadn't we done that?

458
00:27:19,320 --> 00:27:21,320
Speaker 4: But that was what the situation was, and then it.

459
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,680
Speaker 1: Seems as if there was almost kind of a meme

460
00:27:24,840 --> 00:27:29,119
Speaker 1: quality to it where this case progressed, because then you

461
00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 1: had police and social workers who didn't know how to

462
00:27:32,119 --> 00:27:36,320
Speaker 1: question young children and so inadvertently contaminated their witness pool

463
00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:42,000
Speaker 1: and were fairly quickly began pressuring young children to corroborate

464
00:27:42,080 --> 00:27:45,480
Speaker 1: details that they were able to get other kids to mention,

465
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:49,880
Speaker 1: and often would get those details through kind of imaginative play.

466
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 1: So we ended up with these extremely, extremely strange and

467
00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 1: elaborate claims against the family that ran McMartin as this

468
00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:01,600
Speaker 1: investigation persons. And it was on the level of there

469
00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:04,880
Speaker 1: were these tunnels under the school, and the kids were

470
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:07,560
Speaker 1: being taken up in planes and taken to other countries,

471
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 1: and they were forced to kick a pony to death,

472
00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:12,679
Speaker 1: and you know, one of their abusers, one of their

473
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 1: alleged abusers, flew through the air, which was supposed to

474
00:28:16,760 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 1: prove that they were using witchcraft, and it was a

475
00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:23,320
Speaker 1: lot of it. In retrospect pretty clearly seems to have

476
00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:27,920
Speaker 1: been just child aren told to play with puppets until

477
00:28:27,920 --> 00:28:30,919
Speaker 1: they said something that could maybe be connected to the

478
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:33,840
Speaker 1: idea of a crime. And then being asked to implicate

479
00:28:35,520 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 1: or to confirm each other's stories in the same way

480
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:40,240
Speaker 1: that you would maybe ask people to implicate each other

481
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:43,320
Speaker 1: when they were your suspects rather than their witnesses. So

482
00:28:43,520 --> 00:28:48,600
Speaker 1: just this really, this absolute nightmare of an investigation that

483
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:53,720
Speaker 1: was the most expensive legal proceeding in California until the O. J.

484
00:28:53,840 --> 00:28:59,360
Speaker 1: Simpson trial, and that ultimately went nowhere. But it did,

485
00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:01,240
Speaker 1: you know, just to write the lives of the people

486
00:29:01,240 --> 00:29:04,280
Speaker 1: who were accused to had no choice but to be

487
00:29:04,360 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 1: caught up in this for several years.

488
00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:07,280
Speaker 4: But then the.

489
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:10,880
Speaker 1: Issue is that once in terms of how it gets replicated,

490
00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 1: I think the McMartin investigation breaks his national news and

491
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:18,360
Speaker 1: then I think there's just something about it where people

492
00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 1: are primed to look for the devil, where it's this

493
00:29:20,680 --> 00:29:27,720
Speaker 1: idea of could Satanists be secretly abusing your child who's

494
00:29:27,760 --> 00:29:30,360
Speaker 1: too young to really be able to give you much

495
00:29:30,400 --> 00:29:35,400
Speaker 1: information about what they're doing all day long, And it's

496
00:29:35,440 --> 00:29:40,320
Speaker 1: something where similar cases then pop up elsewhere in the country,

497
00:29:41,800 --> 00:29:45,680
Speaker 1: which can if you're looking for it, give the impression that, oh,

498
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:48,320
Speaker 1: my god, the Satanists really are everywhere. I mean, they're

499
00:29:48,360 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 1: not just in California. There's a case in Florida, there's

500
00:29:51,800 --> 00:29:54,800
Speaker 1: a case in Massachusetts, there's a case in New Jersey.

501
00:29:56,920 --> 00:29:59,240
Speaker 1: So this if you're looking for it, you can say, well,

502
00:29:59,280 --> 00:30:02,000
Speaker 1: this is just proof of how wide the Satanist reaches.

503
00:30:02,040 --> 00:30:04,600
Speaker 1: But you can also say this is the kind of

504
00:30:04,640 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 1: investigation leading potentially to warnful investigator. But you can also

505
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:12,400
Speaker 1: say that this is the kind of investigation leading potentially

506
00:30:12,440 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 1: tarrongful conviction. That is easy for police in different locations

507
00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:20,080
Speaker 1: to replicate if they want to, because if you keep

508
00:30:20,240 --> 00:30:24,080
Speaker 1: pressuring young children, especially a large group of them, to

509
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 1: say that an adult has done something, at some point

510
00:30:28,400 --> 00:30:33,560
Speaker 1: they're going to like it. Weirdly, I think these cases

511
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:37,200
Speaker 1: replicated so quickly because parents were terrified, as they had

512
00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:42,080
Speaker 1: every reason to be, because parents are always, i think

513
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:47,200
Speaker 1: justified in feeling afraid all the time. And then people

514
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:51,760
Speaker 1: in authority hadn't done the work that they needed to

515
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:56,160
Speaker 1: to be able to really evaluate these stories as thoughtfully

516
00:30:56,200 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 1: as they had to. They didn't know how to question children.

517
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 1: And then if you push children to confirm a story,

518
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:08,160
Speaker 1: then similar dynamics to the way that you get false confessions.

519
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 1: You know where if there are some people and especially

520
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:17,280
Speaker 1: people with low IQ's which again puts them in a

521
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:20,800
Speaker 1: similar category to kids where if you just keep pushing and.

522
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:22,080
Speaker 4: Pushing them to just.

523
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:26,479
Speaker 1: Tell them now that you did it, and kind of

524
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:29,800
Speaker 1: especially focus on the idea of short term relief for

525
00:31:29,880 --> 00:31:33,040
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't have a great concept of long term consequences,

526
00:31:33,080 --> 00:31:35,480
Speaker 1: like a small child, then you can kind of get

527
00:31:35,520 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 1: what you want out of them. And so it feels like,

528
00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:42,040
Speaker 1: you know, from that perspective, maybe an inevitable pattern, but

529
00:31:42,080 --> 00:31:44,400
Speaker 1: also kind of a sinister one because this, you know,

530
00:31:44,440 --> 00:31:46,920
Speaker 1: the catchphrase of this was believe the children, and yet

531
00:31:46,960 --> 00:31:50,160
Speaker 1: a lot of children really had the experience of being

532
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:53,040
Speaker 1: systematically disbelieved by the adults in their lives.

533
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 3: So let's say that we were in the eighties and

534
00:31:55,280 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 3: we were watching this go down, if I had been like, guys, wait,

535
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 3: maybe it's not satan. Maybe these kids are just saying

536
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:05,920
Speaker 3: what they think the adults want. Was that was taking

537
00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:08,440
Speaker 3: that stance terribly unpopular when this was all going on.

538
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it definitely was, and certainly at the beginning.

539
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:15,400
Speaker 1: And you can you look at you know, especially looking

540
00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:18,920
Speaker 1: at local newspapers and local journalists, you can see people

541
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:21,880
Speaker 1: I mean, that's another thing I kind of have wanted

542
00:32:21,880 --> 00:32:26,480
Speaker 1: to emphasize, especially in talking about this show and sharing it,

543
00:32:26,520 --> 00:32:30,720
Speaker 1: is that then as now right, I think we all

544
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:33,480
Speaker 1: probably have a much better sense of what this all

545
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:35,720
Speaker 1: looks like in action because we're living through it. Like

546
00:32:35,760 --> 00:32:39,280
Speaker 1: your country can be doing something awful and you cannot

547
00:32:39,440 --> 00:32:41,920
Speaker 1: support it a tiny little bit and there will probably

548
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:44,560
Speaker 1: be no record of you in the history books, you know,

549
00:32:44,640 --> 00:32:46,960
Speaker 1: and then people can study your country and be like, wow,

550
00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 1: it's crazy that everyone just agreed that.

551
00:32:49,560 --> 00:32:51,520
Speaker 4: They were all going to become evil all at once.

552
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 1: I would never write, which I think is kind of

553
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 1: how we were taught about Nazism when I was in

554
00:32:56,480 --> 00:33:00,400
Speaker 1: middle school. I'm just like, wow, it sucks to sack.

555
00:33:00,480 --> 00:33:04,560
Speaker 1: Wouldn't want to be evil and have that happen in

556
00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:07,360
Speaker 1: a country where I lived. And then you're like, oh no,

557
00:33:07,840 --> 00:33:11,760
Speaker 1: that's it's slightly more complicated, and so yeah, you look

558
00:33:11,760 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 1: at there's you know, journalists locally kind of in especially

559
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:18,479
Speaker 1: in local newspapers in the early eighties who were like,

560
00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:21,840
Speaker 1: I just don't know about this. I have some questions,

561
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:24,520
Speaker 1: and this seems strange, and I'm going to bring up

562
00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:30,080
Speaker 1: some inevitable logical fallacies, and then you know, it's just

563
00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:33,520
Speaker 1: would be something that maybe would have you would hope

564
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:35,440
Speaker 1: would have a little bit of a ripple effect and

565
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:38,480
Speaker 1: that some people would read and be affected by, and

566
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:42,120
Speaker 1: that it would maybe kind of slow to some extent

567
00:33:43,560 --> 00:33:48,960
Speaker 1: the progress of this this kind of epidemic of conspiracy theories.

568
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:52,840
Speaker 1: But it could have I think, could have pretty negative

569
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:55,120
Speaker 1: effects for your career, because it was the kind of

570
00:33:55,160 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 1: thing where, even more so than now, I think that

571
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:04,120
Speaker 1: you would really be in a position of being accused

572
00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:08,879
Speaker 1: of being sympathetic to child abuse or even to Satanism,

573
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:16,440
Speaker 1: and by people who you know, were not as conspiracy pilled,

574
00:34:16,560 --> 00:34:20,359
Speaker 1: I think, as the people that who and by people

575
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 1: who are not as conspiracy pilled, as the people who

576
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:27,720
Speaker 1: would be mad at you for saying that today, because

577
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:30,280
Speaker 1: it was really more, at least in the early years,

578
00:34:31,040 --> 00:34:34,280
Speaker 1: much more accepted as a mainstream belief that these Satanists

579
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:36,759
Speaker 1: were behind child abuse. And also we're dealing with it

580
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:39,839
Speaker 1: for the very first time, so we have to deal

581
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 1: with it this way apparently, And yeah, that social pressure

582
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:44,319
Speaker 1: was definitely there.

583
00:34:47,719 --> 00:35:00,640
Speaker 3: More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.

584
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 3: I guess I just feel like we're in such a

585
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:10,640
Speaker 3: different climate now. However, we still have these highly sensationalized,

586
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 3: over the top claims with like little to no evidence

587
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 3: really driving our public policy decisions, with like that similar

588
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 3: kind of real human cost, real human consequences. I just

589
00:35:22,160 --> 00:35:24,000
Speaker 3: don't know what to do with that. That here we

590
00:35:24,040 --> 00:35:27,320
Speaker 3: are decades later, and it's almost like people have figured

591
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:31,800
Speaker 3: out how to turn that into a personal money making

592
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 3: or at least attention generating.

593
00:35:33,360 --> 00:35:39,879
Speaker 1: Enever, yeah, I think so, and I think there's I mean,

594
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:41,880
Speaker 1: I really struggle with that, and it was kind of

595
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:45,960
Speaker 1: making this show, as you might imagine or maybe not,

596
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:48,960
Speaker 1: because when I imagine other people making creative stuff, I'm like, Wow,

597
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:50,440
Speaker 1: it must be great to know what to do.

598
00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:51,239
Speaker 4: Most of the time.

599
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 1: And then you hear about them discuss it and you're like,

600
00:35:53,560 --> 00:35:57,600
Speaker 1: oh no, we're all just kind of we're just figuring

601
00:35:57,640 --> 00:36:00,879
Speaker 1: it out, you know, one thing at a time, if

602
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:03,920
Speaker 1: that for the most part, And with this, there were

603
00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:05,640
Speaker 1: times when it was hard to work on because I

604
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:07,200
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know what I want to say

605
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:10,319
Speaker 1: because I don't really feel like I have anything constructive

606
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:13,560
Speaker 1: or hopeful, you know, because there's just times when that's

607
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:16,520
Speaker 1: kind of your emotional response to the world that you're in.

608
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:19,239
Speaker 4: And I think that In the end, I feel like,

609
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:21,160
Speaker 4: you know, it ended.

610
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:25,239
Speaker 1: Up with a conclusion that I believe in and that

611
00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:28,480
Speaker 1: you know, is not telling people that we have to

612
00:36:28,560 --> 00:36:31,120
Speaker 1: love each other, because that's not good advice, you know.

613
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:33,399
Speaker 1: It's like, just just do it, just love each other,

614
00:36:33,680 --> 00:36:37,080
Speaker 1: just just do it. It's not helpful, I don't think.

615
00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:40,080
Speaker 1: And so I hope that it I don't know that

616
00:36:40,120 --> 00:36:45,360
Speaker 1: it provides context in that way and that we also

617
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:49,319
Speaker 1: can kind of can encounter some of that frustration of like,

618
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:51,520
Speaker 1: oh my god, why are we living through this? We

619
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:55,240
Speaker 1: just did this one and now we're doing it a can.

620
00:36:56,640 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 4: You know. But I feel I also feel.

621
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:02,799
Speaker 1: Like there's you know, we end in this place of

622
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:06,719
Speaker 1: inviting the listener to think of it, partly from the

623
00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:11,160
Speaker 1: perspective of if we have to watch history repeat itself,

624
00:37:11,160 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 1: which I think we do, you know, And I think

625
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:18,280
Speaker 1: it's even if even if you do understand the past,

626
00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:20,120
Speaker 1: you still have to repeat it, or you still have

627
00:37:20,200 --> 00:37:22,120
Speaker 1: to live in a world of people who are repeating

628
00:37:22,160 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 1: it and live through the consequences of their choices. But

629
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:30,280
Speaker 1: I think that studying those patterns and studying the times

630
00:37:30,360 --> 00:37:34,040
Speaker 1: when people have lived through something similar to what we're

631
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:36,600
Speaker 1: going through now which there will always be parallels.

632
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:39,560
Speaker 4: I think that can be useful.

633
00:37:39,600 --> 00:37:42,520
Speaker 1: I think there's like a sadness in that that we

634
00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:45,840
Speaker 1: deserve to let ourselves feel that we really would like

635
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:47,799
Speaker 1: to be able to learn more.

636
00:37:49,080 --> 00:37:52,040
Speaker 4: As a species. And yet I don't know.

637
00:37:52,440 --> 00:37:54,920
Speaker 1: In a way, it feels like studying human history and

638
00:37:54,960 --> 00:37:58,880
Speaker 1: behavior is like looking after like a dog or a baby.

639
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:01,440
Speaker 1: You know, we're like no matter how Actually I mean,

640
00:38:01,480 --> 00:38:05,480
Speaker 1: dogs are much more trainable, I think, but we're like

641
00:38:05,560 --> 00:38:08,080
Speaker 1: I can confirm that, yeah, baby, or a cat, let's say,

642
00:38:08,120 --> 00:38:11,040
Speaker 1: we're like no matter. Like I can explain to my

643
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:14,560
Speaker 1: cats for the rest of my life that if they

644
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:16,879
Speaker 1: stick their pond a glass of water and pull it over,

645
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:18,719
Speaker 1: then like they're not going to get what they want,

646
00:38:18,800 --> 00:38:20,319
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to get what I want, and

647
00:38:20,360 --> 00:38:22,800
Speaker 1: we're just going to get water and potentially a broken

648
00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:27,200
Speaker 1: glass everywhere. And yet they can't hear what I'm saying

649
00:38:27,320 --> 00:38:31,800
Speaker 1: because they guess our relationship doesn't happen on that level.

650
00:38:33,120 --> 00:38:35,440
Speaker 1: But I can leave fewer glasses out.

651
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:36,960
Speaker 4: For them to do that too.

652
00:38:37,640 --> 00:38:39,680
Speaker 1: And I do feel like, you know, you look at

653
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:42,640
Speaker 1: the Satanic panic, for example, and like there are lessons

654
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:44,680
Speaker 1: from it, and the lessons that we chose not to

655
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:47,400
Speaker 1: learn because it would have been hard. But you know,

656
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:49,880
Speaker 1: on the bigger scale, there's the issue that it revealed

657
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:55,120
Speaker 1: that the American legal system was extremely vulnerable to bad

658
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:59,359
Speaker 1: outcomes for examples like, well, we're very reliant on eyewitness

659
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:05,840
Speaker 1: testimony despite knowing more and more about how unreliable human

660
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:08,399
Speaker 1: memory is. Not that you can't rely on it at all,

661
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:11,600
Speaker 1: but that it's tricky, and that there are ways there's

662
00:39:11,640 --> 00:39:15,080
Speaker 1: magical thinking around it, which you know has been proven

663
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:18,279
Speaker 1: not to be true. There's also a belief that the

664
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:24,719
Speaker 1: Satanic panic really benefited from that testimony under that you

665
00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:28,200
Speaker 1: produced under hypnosis was more reliable, and you're not more

666
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:31,920
Speaker 1: truthful under hypnosis, but you are more vulnerable to suggestion,

667
00:39:34,280 --> 00:39:36,600
Speaker 1: and that ended up coming out quite.

668
00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:36,960
Speaker 4: A bit, you know.

669
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:40,480
Speaker 1: And so there were things that we could learn and

670
00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:42,520
Speaker 1: that some people did learn, and that we still, if

671
00:39:42,560 --> 00:39:45,480
Speaker 1: we look at it, have the capacity to learn today

672
00:39:45,520 --> 00:39:49,799
Speaker 1: because those lessons don't expire about just not surrendering our

673
00:39:49,840 --> 00:39:52,759
Speaker 1: common sense to authority figures, and about the ways that

674
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:56,600
Speaker 1: it's comfortable to shift your anxiety over to escapegoat when

675
00:39:56,640 --> 00:39:59,520
Speaker 1: really the people who deserve it are in your community,

676
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:05,080
Speaker 1: often in leadership roles, and so those lessons are there,

677
00:40:05,560 --> 00:40:08,880
Speaker 1: and we can recognize those patterns around us. If we

678
00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:12,080
Speaker 1: study the past, then we can see more clearly how

679
00:40:12,120 --> 00:40:15,000
Speaker 1: it's replicating in the present and try and try and

680
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:20,880
Speaker 1: do something to affect it or to affect things meaningfully,

681
00:40:20,920 --> 00:40:24,880
Speaker 1: and to provide shelter for people who inevitably those myths

682
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:28,360
Speaker 1: are going to come for in some way. I guess

683
00:40:28,440 --> 00:40:30,560
Speaker 1: I think it's important to try and find this middle

684
00:40:30,600 --> 00:40:34,800
Speaker 1: ground of you know, if you can't stop history from happening,

685
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:39,279
Speaker 1: then how do you live within it and even protect

686
00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:43,200
Speaker 1: some of the people who are stuck inside of it

687
00:40:43,239 --> 00:40:45,239
Speaker 1: with you? And I think that's the goal, because it

688
00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:47,440
Speaker 1: is so tempting to feel despaired that we can't just

689
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:50,080
Speaker 1: explain something to people really, really well and then they

690
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:51,120
Speaker 1: won't ever do it again.

691
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 2: Yeah.

692
00:40:52,560 --> 00:40:54,360
Speaker 3: I mean, one of the points that you make, I

693
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:56,719
Speaker 3: think at the end of the first episode is that

694
00:40:57,040 --> 00:41:00,160
Speaker 3: it really is a story about people encountering something it's

695
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:01,040
Speaker 3: just a little bit.

696
00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:02,920
Speaker 2: Unusual or just a little bit not what.

697
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 3: They were expecting, and then being stirred into such a

698
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:09,279
Speaker 3: state of anxiety that it's not just the worst thing

699
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:11,719
Speaker 3: that they can imagine, they're jumping to the conclusion that is.

700
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:12,520
Speaker 2: Worse than that.

701
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 3: And I think I would love to live in a

702
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:19,399
Speaker 3: world where that's not our first instinct. But unfortunately, as

703
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:22,239
Speaker 3: you just beautifully articulated, I'm not sure if that's the

704
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:24,879
Speaker 3: world that we have today, so many decades later, I'm

705
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:27,040
Speaker 3: not sure if we have learned those lessons or if

706
00:41:27,040 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 3: we ever will.

707
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:31,719
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, And I also just's I don't know.

708
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:34,880
Speaker 1: It was kind of a fun show for me to do,

709
00:41:35,160 --> 00:41:37,600
Speaker 1: partly in times in terms of thinking about who is

710
00:41:37,640 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 1: this cultural figure, the devil who we love to blame

711
00:41:40,719 --> 00:41:41,160
Speaker 1: stuff on.

712
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:44,560
Speaker 4: Because I grew up pretty secular, I've never had actual.

713
00:41:44,239 --> 00:41:49,479
Speaker 1: Anxiety about the devil, and so trying to think about

714
00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:51,560
Speaker 1: what would it be like to have that figure.

715
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:51,840
Speaker 4: In my life.

716
00:41:53,200 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 1: It would be very scary, you know, to think that

717
00:41:56,880 --> 00:41:59,319
Speaker 1: someone is always out there trying to tempt me or

718
00:41:59,360 --> 00:42:03,399
Speaker 1: trying to make me stop doing, you know, the right

719
00:42:03,400 --> 00:42:06,080
Speaker 1: thing in life. I feel like I actually, I guess

720
00:42:06,120 --> 00:42:08,040
Speaker 1: I do have a concept of that, and it's just

721
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:12,359
Speaker 1: my internal sense of like anxiety, you know, and that

722
00:42:12,360 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 1: that's They're like things inside of my brain, are inside

723
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:19,080
Speaker 1: of my mental health that are trying to sabotage me

724
00:42:19,120 --> 00:42:23,160
Speaker 1: all the time, and that's what I have instead of Satan.

725
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:30,080
Speaker 1: But it feels like, you know, there's that Satan is

726
00:42:30,120 --> 00:42:35,799
Speaker 1: a character who you may find yourself clinging to if

727
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:40,680
Speaker 1: you need to believe in the righteousness of yourself a

728
00:42:40,719 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: little bit more than is necessary, if you're you know,

729
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:45,800
Speaker 1: if you're saying, well, you know, I'm breaking a few eggs,

730
00:42:45,800 --> 00:42:49,840
Speaker 1: but I'm fighting the devil and so it's okay. Or

731
00:42:49,920 --> 00:42:54,319
Speaker 1: I'm taking on pure evil and I'm I'm really a

732
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:56,720
Speaker 1: worrier for God and all this so I can do whatever.

733
00:42:56,800 --> 00:43:00,759
Speaker 1: And it's like, what what if what if didn't know

734
00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: that we were being these great heroes and we had

735
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:06,040
Speaker 1: to actually keep evaluating our actions one thing at a

736
00:43:06,080 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 1: time and not be so sure that everything we were

737
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:12,000
Speaker 1: doing was necessary, because I think that would cause us

738
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: to listen more, you know.

739
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:14,160
Speaker 4: And I think it's.

740
00:43:17,200 --> 00:43:20,720
Speaker 1: I think it's we're able to do more good works

741
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:24,359
Speaker 1: for each other if we're not so sure that we're

742
00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:28,040
Speaker 1: the heroes in our own story. And and that's like

743
00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:30,839
Speaker 1: a positive thing that comes from discomfort, where I think,

744
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:32,920
Speaker 1: if you know, you look at people in the Satanic

745
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:37,920
Speaker 1: panic who just got really deep in it and became

746
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 1: some you know, fell into some kind of expert role potentially,

747
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 1: and they were in a position, especially in you know,

748
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:48,960
Speaker 1: I think in mental health fields where a lot of

749
00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:51,640
Speaker 1: your victories are very slow and hard one and can

750
00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:55,439
Speaker 1: reverse themselves out of nowhere. That wouldn't it be nice

751
00:43:55,480 --> 00:43:57,840
Speaker 1: to just to be the hero and to fix the

752
00:43:57,920 --> 00:44:02,399
Speaker 1: patient one day and just to like just to do

753
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:08,239
Speaker 1: something kind of impossibly great and good. And I hope

754
00:44:08,239 --> 00:44:10,840
Speaker 1: it's reassuring for people to hear. I think it's reassuring

755
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:13,440
Speaker 1: for me to think about the fact that you don't

756
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:15,719
Speaker 1: have to be in that hero role to do good

757
00:44:15,719 --> 00:44:18,919
Speaker 1: in the world, and even that if you do find

758
00:44:18,960 --> 00:44:20,920
Speaker 1: yourself in that role, then that might be a warning

759
00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:24,240
Speaker 1: sign because it could mean that you're just not thinking

760
00:44:24,280 --> 00:44:27,880
Speaker 1: clearly enough about what you're doing one thing at a time.

761
00:44:28,200 --> 00:44:28,440
Speaker 4: You know.

762
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:32,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to say, I'm so glad that you

763
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:36,320
Speaker 3: brought up just sort of Satan as a character.

764
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:39,719
Speaker 2: I grew up in the South, my parents. I grew

765
00:44:39,760 --> 00:44:40,719
Speaker 2: up pretty religious.

766
00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:44,920
Speaker 3: My parents were like in the church, but not super

767
00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:48,120
Speaker 3: into it, but then the like one sphere over so

768
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:51,360
Speaker 3: like my extended family and where we lived, super super religious.

769
00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:55,040
Speaker 3: I went to religious schools all of that, and you know,

770
00:44:55,080 --> 00:44:59,360
Speaker 3: you interview one person in the show that their experience.

771
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:02,160
Speaker 3: I was like, Oh, that is exactly where you see

772
00:45:02,239 --> 00:45:05,360
Speaker 3: like people with the long denim skirts and all of that.

773
00:45:05,360 --> 00:45:08,480
Speaker 2: That was my childhood. I was like, definitely recognize that.

774
00:45:09,040 --> 00:45:12,640
Speaker 3: And when I tell you the role that Satan like,

775
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:15,520
Speaker 3: there was definitely an under Satan had had a recurring,

776
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:19,480
Speaker 3: undercurrent role in my childhood to the point where, you know,

777
00:45:20,200 --> 00:45:23,360
Speaker 3: I remember going to do a school project at someone's

778
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:27,080
Speaker 3: house where we had to It was a project about

779
00:45:27,120 --> 00:45:29,640
Speaker 3: Ouiji boards, and her mom made us keep it on

780
00:45:29,680 --> 00:45:31,759
Speaker 3: the front porch because she was like, it's if you

781
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:34,480
Speaker 3: kept the project inside, it would be like inviting the

782
00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:38,719
Speaker 3: devil into our house. And I remember when I when

783
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:42,880
Speaker 3: I was growing up, the group three six Mafias already

784
00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:45,319
Speaker 3: right there, six sixty six. They had a song called

785
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:48,680
Speaker 3: Stay Fly, and the rumor was if you played their

786
00:45:48,760 --> 00:45:53,680
Speaker 3: song backward, what the chorus actually said was Lucifer is

787
00:45:53,719 --> 00:45:56,120
Speaker 3: my king till I die. So like all of these

788
00:45:56,200 --> 00:45:58,680
Speaker 3: like ways where we were taught to sort of be

789
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:02,280
Speaker 3: both afraid of Satan, never have any kind of interaction

790
00:46:02,360 --> 00:46:07,120
Speaker 3: with Satan, but also be obsessively looking for her presence everywhere.

791
00:46:07,719 --> 00:46:10,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like when you like hate someone who turns

792
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:12,600
Speaker 1: out to be your crush, Like it's.

793
00:46:16,840 --> 00:46:20,640
Speaker 2: Yes, that's such a good way to put it.

794
00:46:21,120 --> 00:46:23,960
Speaker 3: So much of your work, including this project, is about

795
00:46:24,239 --> 00:46:26,160
Speaker 3: looking back to get a sense of where we might

796
00:46:26,160 --> 00:46:27,920
Speaker 3: be headed in the future.

797
00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:29,600
Speaker 2: Where do you think we're headed?

798
00:46:30,560 --> 00:46:36,040
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm I'm a I'm an optimist and

799
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:38,880
Speaker 1: nothing can beat it out of me, apparently, So I'm

800
00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:45,600
Speaker 1: honestly very hopeful in a way, because you know that

801
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:48,960
Speaker 1: the show closes with an episode where we actually talk

802
00:46:49,840 --> 00:46:52,480
Speaker 1: quite a bit about Jonestown and the People's Temple and

803
00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:55,799
Speaker 1: about this question of sort of, well, why is it

804
00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:57,680
Speaker 1: that we felt a why did we feel the need

805
00:46:57,760 --> 00:47:01,600
Speaker 1: to invent the Satanic panic when we had a case

806
00:47:01,600 --> 00:47:05,319
Speaker 1: of a large scale cult operating under everybody's noses, and

807
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:08,000
Speaker 1: that we just kind of ignored that one, And we're like,

808
00:47:08,040 --> 00:47:10,279
Speaker 1: but what about an imaginary one?

809
00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:11,399
Speaker 4: Though, Let's focus on that.

810
00:47:13,360 --> 00:47:19,120
Speaker 1: And you know this thing that I feel like I

811
00:47:19,160 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 1: can see pretty clearly, especially having done this research, where

812
00:47:22,080 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 1: you look at the United States and the past few

813
00:47:25,200 --> 00:47:28,840
Speaker 1: years politically, and it feels like we're, you know, we've

814
00:47:29,719 --> 00:47:32,359
Speaker 1: become infiltrated by fascism, and as far as I can

815
00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:37,239
Speaker 1: tell from this experience, a fascist government operates similarly to

816
00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:40,080
Speaker 1: a cult, and that a cult operates basically like an

817
00:47:40,080 --> 00:47:43,040
Speaker 1: abusive household. And then it feels to me at this

818
00:47:43,120 --> 00:47:46,960
Speaker 1: point like there's just sort of fractals. We have the

819
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:50,920
Speaker 1: same logic replicating itself, which is scary and also helpful

820
00:47:51,040 --> 00:47:55,600
Speaker 1: because it's kind of the same story over and over again,

821
00:47:56,640 --> 00:47:59,120
Speaker 1: and then maybe you can kind of anticipate the logic

822
00:47:59,160 --> 00:48:03,760
Speaker 1: of it. And I do tend to think just from

823
00:48:04,640 --> 00:48:09,960
Speaker 1: looking generally at what happens when people get very attached to.

824
00:48:11,400 --> 00:48:14,719
Speaker 4: Kind of a dictator like figure, is that you.

825
00:48:14,680 --> 00:48:19,600
Speaker 1: Know there's there have been horrors and will be horrors

826
00:48:19,680 --> 00:48:22,719
Speaker 1: that can't be undone because of that.

827
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:26,160
Speaker 4: But also it's charismatic.

828
00:48:26,360 --> 00:48:31,439
Speaker 1: Evil leaders can't really be replaced that easily, and I'm

829
00:48:31,480 --> 00:48:32,360
Speaker 1: just excited for that.

830
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:38,040
Speaker 3: I like closing out a little bit of an optimistic note,

831
00:48:38,080 --> 00:48:41,799
Speaker 3: even though the story itself is like not super optimistic.

832
00:48:42,680 --> 00:48:45,719
Speaker 1: I guess it's attempting realism. I don't know if I'm

833
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:49,879
Speaker 1: ever able to get there with my sort of need

834
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:56,560
Speaker 1: for Pollyannism, which you can see is very loud, but yeah,

835
00:48:56,640 --> 00:49:00,280
Speaker 1: I think that you know, within the within this story

836
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:02,640
Speaker 1: of the satanic panic, you kind of you step away

837
00:49:02,640 --> 00:49:05,279
Speaker 1: from the Devil and you're like, Okay, we haven't met

838
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:08,160
Speaker 1: this guy. We haven't been able to talk to him really,

839
00:49:08,280 --> 00:49:10,880
Speaker 1: So what we really have are a bunch of stories

840
00:49:10,960 --> 00:49:15,319
Speaker 1: of individual people who were able to get what they

841
00:49:15,360 --> 00:49:18,399
Speaker 1: wanted by striking a lot of fear and anxiety into

842
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:21,399
Speaker 1: people and getting what they wanted out of them, and

843
00:49:22,480 --> 00:49:25,640
Speaker 1: the idea of looking forward to a time when that

844
00:49:25,680 --> 00:49:29,520
Speaker 1: will end, because on a human scale, everything ends. Yeah,

845
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:33,760
Speaker 1: it's nice to remember that we're not dealing with cosmic evil.

846
00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:37,120
Speaker 4: We're dealing with very very.

847
00:49:36,880 --> 00:49:43,800
Speaker 1: Prideful individual kind of often mortifying to look at human

848
00:49:43,920 --> 00:49:49,240
Speaker 1: control and abuse, and that's you know, we're not dealing

849
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:52,520
Speaker 1: with something that is inevitable or cosmic or has to

850
00:49:52,560 --> 00:49:53,080
Speaker 1: take place.

851
00:49:53,120 --> 00:49:53,960
Speaker 4: We're dealing with.

852
00:49:55,960 --> 00:49:58,400
Speaker 1: Shitty little men being given too much power, and we

853
00:49:58,440 --> 00:50:00,000
Speaker 1: can deal with that one a lot easier.

854
00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:01,279
Speaker 4: Hell.

855
00:50:01,400 --> 00:50:04,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, the show is The Devil, you know on CBC.

856
00:50:04,880 --> 00:50:06,040
Speaker 2: Where can folks check it out?

857
00:50:06,719 --> 00:50:10,680
Speaker 1: You can check it out wherever you get your podcasts.

858
00:50:10,880 --> 00:50:12,839
Speaker 1: I know that's how we all tell people to find

859
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:17,480
Speaker 1: podcasts now, but you know, just your your normal platforms

860
00:50:17,600 --> 00:50:21,480
Speaker 1: or if you're my mom and that phrase stresses you out,

861
00:50:21,600 --> 00:50:25,240
Speaker 1: you can you can simply search it on your favorite

862
00:50:25,239 --> 00:50:28,600
Speaker 1: search engine. You can bing it like Andrew Garfield and

863
00:50:28,800 --> 00:50:34,480
Speaker 1: spider Man, and there's a You can listen to the

864
00:50:34,520 --> 00:50:37,480
Speaker 1: first episode on my podcast You're Wrong About, which is

865
00:50:37,520 --> 00:50:40,520
Speaker 1: a show where we have talked over the years about

866
00:50:40,640 --> 00:50:46,319
Speaker 1: the Satanic panic and survival stories and bimbos and uh

867
00:50:47,600 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 1: so much other stuff. So check that one out too.

868
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:51,120
Speaker 1: If you feel like it.

869
00:50:56,160 --> 00:50:58,200
Speaker 3: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or

870
00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:00,360
Speaker 3: just want to say hi, you can be just Hello

871
00:51:00,400 --> 00:51:02,880
Speaker 3: at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for

872
00:51:02,920 --> 00:51:05,600
Speaker 3: today's episode at tenggody dot com. There Are No Girls

873
00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:08,000
Speaker 3: on the Internet was created by me bridget Tod. It's

874
00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:09,720
Speaker 3: a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed.

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Speaker 5: Creative.

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Speaker 3: Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our

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Speaker 3: producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer.

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Speaker 3: I'm your host, bridget Tood. If you want to help

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Speaker 3: us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For

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Speaker 3: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple

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Speaker 3: podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.