WEBVTT - Interview: The Devil You Know, with Sarah Marshall 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:04.680 From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is 0:00:04.760 --> 0:00:09.080 riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:12.119 learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:13.880 production of iHeart Radio. 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:29.160 Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:30.080 my name is Nolan. 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:31.760 They call me Ben. 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:34.839 We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:36.040 Tennessee pal Fagan. 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:39.280 Most importantly, you are you. You are here. 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:43.000 That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:47.680 Friends and neighbors, longtime fellow conspiracy realist of a certain age, 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:51.559 you may remember that not too long ago, the United 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:55.640 States and later the world was gripped by a paralyzing fear. 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:59.240 The Devil is real, people claimed, and not only that 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:04.720 his followers are actively doing horrible things to children. This 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:08.880 was an outbreak, right, a moral panic that metastasized across 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:12.800 the cultural landscape, evolving into something we now call the 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:14.080 Satanic panic. 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:17.759 But you know what exactly was this? What is this? 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:20.160 How did it happen? What does it teach us? To 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:23.840 answer these questions more, we are thrilled to welcome none 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:27.920 other than Sarah Marshall, the writer, media critic, and creator 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:31.320 of the new hit podcast, The Devil you know, Sarah, 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:32.840 thank you for joining us today. 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:35.520 Thank you so much for having me here. Then, thank 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:38.080 you for calling it a hit podcast. I love that. 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:40.920 Oh yeah, oh it's especially a hit and we have 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:41.600 it in quotes. 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:47.600 Well, it's a fantastic podcast. It's a dark listen. I 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:50.720 might say, uh, I've set the kids off to school 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:52.720 a couple of times in the past few weeks and 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:57.960 put on an episode and oh it's it's heavy because 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:01.120 of the subjects matter, right, but you handle it pretty 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:05.040 beautifully by talking to people that were truly affected by 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:06.680 what Ben just described there. 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:08.000 I thank you. 0:02:08.320 --> 0:02:10.720 I wonder if you would just let us know how 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:12.639 the Satanic panic came into your. 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:17.440 Life, sir, huh, yeah, I mean it came in via 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:21.480 old Texas Monthly articles, because about fifteen years ago, when 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:23.680 I was in grad school, I was reading a lot 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:26.240 of Texas Monthly because they've always been very generous or 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:27.880 at the time at least, they were about putting their 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:32.120 archive online and have always had great true crime reporting. 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:36.200 And they had some articles about one of the nineteen 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:40.440 eighties Satanic panic daycare bease cases involving a couple named 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:46.000 Fran and Dan Keller, who had a childcare facilic kind 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:49.120 of at home childcare that they as many people do, 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:51.239 and did that they ran in the Austin area, and 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:55.959 they got kind of swept up in what reading about them. 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:59.079 At the time, I was just learning more apparently fairly 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:04.120 commonplace allegations in the early to mid eighties where parents 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:08.320 would become concerned that something was amiss at their child's daycare, 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:11.440 which is a very easy thing to wonder about a 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:13.480 place where your child goes all day and can't really 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:15.760 tell you what they've been doing even if they wanted to, 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:20.240 depending on the age. And it was at the time, 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:26.160 you know, police officers, detective social workers, a lot of 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:30.120 people kind of in the mainstream of the legal and 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:34.200 therapeutic communities were on TV, kind of in the media, 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:37.440 in the news saying, well, you know, it's just kind 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:39.200 of a known fact that there are a lot of 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:41.840 Satanists around that they like to work in daycare centers 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:44.560 and they abuse children there because it's apparently important to 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:49.080 their rituals. And at the time I just thought, wait, what, 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:52.480 this is something that had you know, had happened in 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:54.280 a huge way. But I think in about twenty ten, 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:58.560 our culture was not far enough removed from to be 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.800 to have started really reckoning with in a big way. 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:05.080 And I was just absolutely shocked because I had a 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:07.840 very you know, I grew up watching Law and Order, 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:10.840 and as people who grow up watching law order and 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:14.080 not having to actually tangle with the legal system often believe, 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:16.160 I was like, well, surely we have a basically good 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:20.919 legal system and things are basically fair, right, right, And 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:22.840 so in this way that I think that my interest 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:25.000 in the Satanic Panic kind of set the tone for 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:28.000 everything that was going to happen in actual day to 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:30.400 day American life for the next fifteen years, because it 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:33.920 felt like this astounding part of history that I was discovering, 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:35.760 and then as soon as I started learning about at 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:39.000 present day events started basically mimicking it as far as 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:42.039 I can tell. And so now it feels maybe less 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:45.479 shocking than today, and maybe in a way I think 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:47.599 even it can offer some comfort, which we try and 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:49.320 get to by the end of the show of saying, 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:53.800 you know, this is it's shocking how deep into conspiracy 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:56.520 theories people can get and how easy it is to 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:59.920 have a legal system. Certainly our legal system corrupted by 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:03.000 stories that have no actual evidence to support them. But 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:06.600 also if it's not an anomaly but something that humans 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:09.279 do a fair amount, then maybe that's something that we 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:12.279 can study and undermine rather than just being shocked by. 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:16.200 For sure, did the documentary Paradise Lost the child murders 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:19.719 at robin Hood Hill cross your eyeballs when you were younger? 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:23.120 Yes, that was actually after the Texas Monthly articles. That 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:26.120 was the second thing I encountered, which, again, you know, 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:30.000 this is kind of a fairly late case in terms 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.240 of the initial spread of the Satanic Panic, because this 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:36.000 is in the early nineties and West Memphis, Arkansas. But 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:39.680 I think that as happens with a lot of things 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:43.200 are kind of widespread phenomena, the Satanic Panic kind of 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:47.120 spread initially through mainstream media, and then after it had 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:51.919 begun to be taken less seriously in kind of in 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:54.839 big cities in the United States and North America, it 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:58.360 kind of stayed lodged in more rural areas, I think, 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:02.359 and certainly in the Bible Belt. And that was a 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.560 documentary that I remember watching and things and coming to 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:08.559 the closing arguments. I think of Damien Eckles's trial, and 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:12.560 I believe the prosecutor saying that there was not a 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:15.760 soul in his body. I was like, but surely you 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:19.520 can't say that in a trial, right. 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:22.279 It seems outside of the realm of legal jargon. 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:27.120 Say that at a trial. And they did, and they 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:29.280 got a conviction. And I was like, well, God, what 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:34.640 else is in law and order telling? We do? Go 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:37.040 back and watch lawn Order, And I gotta say, I 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:38.880 don't know if McCoy is that good at his job. 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:41.600 Actually he says a lot of pretty lammatory. 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:42.200 Some of them are. 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:47.120 Yeah, there may be built more for the stage than 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:47.720 the courtroom. 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:52.520 Yeah, maybe we need to cancel McCoy. Maybe I need 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:53.320 as well. 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:55.680 But you heard it here first, folks. 0:06:56.920 --> 0:07:00.200 One thing that stands out, Sarah, not just in or 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:01.839 latest project. 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.560 But in a lot of your earlier work is. 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:10.000 The concept of moral panic and in st in the 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:15.600 phenomenon that we call the Satanic panic. I think you 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:19.320 hit on something really interesting with how much it has 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:23.760 in common with other outbreaks of public concern and paranoia, 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:28.320 like the infamous Red scare of McCarthyism, where you know, 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:32.800 high level US politicos thought dar near everyone was a communist, 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:38.160 or maybe more recently, things like Pizzagate, Wayfair QAnon, right, 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:42.640 those all three take cues from the panic, the Satanic Panic. 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:47.960 So the question here is, if we're defining the Satanic 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.320 Panic in like a window of time, what would that 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:52.240 window of time be? 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:55.080 You know, I think that everybody seems to break it 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:58.160 down a little bit differently, and I tend to put 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:05.120 the sort of need the big tent, polls or fence posts, 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:08.400 I don't know, Yeah, the trees between which we can 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:14.000 put the hammock of the Satanic Panic at its most powerful, maybe, 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:19.559 and it's big enough for everyone. Feminists, fundamentalists, whoever claim 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:22.360 in there figure it out later, but I would I 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:24.960 would put it between the publication of Michelle Remembers in 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:28.240 nineteen eighty because that was, you know, a book that 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:30.880 was marketed as nonfiction. And not only that, but he 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:33.559 used to train you know, new social workers and in 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:37.280 these police trainings that you see throughout the eighties of 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:40.520 you know, not only is this book published in the 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:44.440 non fiction genre, but we're going to believe absolutely everything 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:46.160 it says and go out looking for the things it 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:49.880 tells us to look for. And then in the early nineties, 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:52.680 and I want to kind of put this at about 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:57.800 about nineteen ninety two, we had the publication of the 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.400 Landing Report, which I believe was that year Landing's FBI report, 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:04.160 because he was the person whose job it was to 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:07.720 try and do student diligence and see if he could 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:12.200 find any evidence of actual Satanic cults in the US 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:17.280 the way that was being described, and despite using all 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:23.040 of the FBI's resources, could not ever find anything suggesting 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:27.920 that there was cult activity the way that people were describing, 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:31.079 you know, you had occasionally, like I guess learned recently, 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:33.920 there was a case in Long Island in the eighties, 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:37.840 for example, where a teenager murdered his friend or murdered 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:40.120 another teenager that he knew and said that that was 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:42.800 for the glorification of Satan, you know, and there were 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:47.160 kind of Satanic elements, and this was I just learned 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:50.360 to kind of the inspiration for the song Teenage dirt Bag, 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:55.440 which has been stuck in my head since I learned that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:09:56.040 --> 0:09:58.800 this idea of like, you know, being profiled. Were also 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:01.640 enjoying Iron Maiden back in the day, right, So you 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:05.440 have cases of you know, an individual sometimes will do 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:10.840 something violent and bring up Satan somewhere adjacent to that. 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:13.439 But this idea of organized cults, especially with some kind 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:17.559 of a hierarchical like top down structure, who have kind 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:19.840 of goals and principles and are functioning like a church, 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:22.120 there is never any evidence of any of that. And 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:23.840 then of course you have the Church of Satan, which 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:26.960 says in its literature that they don't literally believe in Satan. 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:29.120 But if you want to hide a fact in America, 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:33.800 you should put it in a published book. And then, 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:38.840 of course, in the early nineties also Ensures stopped covering hypnotherapy, 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:41.040 which I think was a big part of this, because 0:10:41.040 --> 0:10:43.320 if you have therapists who believe it's their job to 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:50.680 recover repressed memories and every patient, then it stops being 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:53.720 lucrative to do that. And interestingly, I think, you know, 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:56.720 some of the reasons that we moved moved on from 0:10:56.760 --> 0:10:59.960 the Satanic panic as a culture is partly because we 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:02.920 you know, the evidence that we expected to define wasn't there, 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:05.959 but also because people were kind of I think, getting 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:07.760 tired of it being in the media. We've done a 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:09.880 lot of specials, you know, it's not being something you 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:11.880 could make a lot of money on as a therapist, 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:14.199 and so I think the financial incentive is also kind 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:14.760 of dried up. 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:17.520 Just to jump up this idea of the media, it 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:20.040 occurred to me that, like, you know, obviously we have 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:23.079 moral panics that resemble the Satanic Panic, because things like 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:26.400 the same witch trials and the Spanish inquisition. Is the 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:28.559 thing that makes the Satanic Panic sort of more of 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:32.319 a modern construct, its relationship with the media and the 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.600 legal system, and just this the way that it was 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:37.760 elevated in this very modern way. 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:41.720 Yeah, I think so. I think that one of the 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:43.800 interesting things about it is that it you know, we 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:47.720 have the first daycare you know, like satanic ritual abuse 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:52.200 case is famously the McMartin case and eventually trial in 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:56.720 southern California, and then you can see pretty clearly that 0:11:56.800 --> 0:12:00.720 once that reached his national news, then some number of 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:03.400 parents who have their kids in daycares or some number 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:09.200 of local police see those stories and it's it's just 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:11.960 kind of it's almost a meme of an idea, right 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:15.280 where it's one of these things that just replicates itself 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:21.040 so easily in different communities because it's just such a 0:12:21.120 --> 0:12:23.640 it's a fear that feels very easy to catch, right 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:26.080 and kind of speaking about, you know more in the 0:12:26.120 --> 0:12:30.520 present day, the wayfair stuff and the way I remember 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:34.040 in the summer of twenty twenty one people were, you know, saying, well, 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:36.800 you know, actually putting your child in a mask is 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.480 just deployed by human traffickers, because if the traffickers get 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:45.840 your child at the food Lion, then you won't know 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:47.720 that it's your child because they'll have a mask on, 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:50.840 because you won't recognize any of their clothes or shoes 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:51.520 or hair. 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:54.800 Well, well, first off, thank you for that food Lion 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:55.920 shout out. 0:12:57.120 --> 0:12:58.640 I like that reference there, Sarah. 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:03.240 We also we also see kind of the commonality that 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:07.120 you and nol are speaking to. There's a really great 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:12.520 point here about you know, what we described as the 0:13:13.280 --> 0:13:18.600 phenomena of satanic panic metastasizing across a culture going viral. 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:20.119 As we would say. 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:26.560 Now, it appears though, to persist in some form even now, 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:31.520 in increasingly secular twenty twenty five, we will find allegations 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:37.640 of ritualized, satanically themed or as you said, adjacent abuse. 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:43.240 So is it is it persistent? Because it's so binary, 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:47.200 like very evil, powerful people and the most innocent victims 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:51.600 imaginable or like what's the what is this story telling 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:52.720 us about society? 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:55.920 Yeah, well, yeah, these are such good questions. I mean 0:13:55.960 --> 0:13:57.800 that makes me think of a couple of things, which 0:13:57.840 --> 0:13:59.959 is a I think, yes, I think that it is 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:03.679 because it's so binary and this idea of I mean, 0:14:04.320 --> 0:14:06.959 for a while I was really fascinated by and this 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:08.600 is you know, about ten years ago and a lot 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:11.880 of the things that seemed to be coming have come true, 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:14.120 but kind of fascinated by the language of kind of 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:17.199 the pro life movement and especially the number of people 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:22.680 who were fixated on, you know, not protecting actual babies 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:25.320 that had been born in children who we already exist 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:28.880 in this country because like who cares about them? But 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:33.360 like in this idea that sort of in conservative American 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:36.200 doctrine that like babies were interesting only to the point 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:38.760 of birth and then after that they were like too 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.480 old to take care of or something, you know, because 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:46.720 the idea of we're gonna cut benefits, we're gonna cut 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:51.200 any kind of access to resources that parents need, but 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:54.280 if that baby is still inside or even like a 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:56.800 frozen embryo, we were going to do everything in our 0:14:56.840 --> 0:15:00.560 power to protect that theoretical baby. And then even that 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:02.960 they were kind of. There was a subset within the 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:06.000 pro life movement that was fixated on snowflake babies, which 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:09.000 they named them, which is, you know, basically, when people 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:11.720 do IVF, you often get left with extra embryos and 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:13.920 you can either decide to keep them in the deep 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:17.520 freeze forever or donate them or just you know, I thought. 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:19.680 Snow snowflake babies were like soft liberal baby. 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:21.160 I think that's what it is now. I think now 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:26.240 we're all actually snowflake babies and today's parlance. But but yeah, 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:30.320 this idea that like that rather than chucking your unused 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:32.800 embryos down the drain or whatever they do with them, 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:37.720 that you should donate them to some fundamentalist Christians who 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:41.200 will then raise them with corporal punishment or whatever, which is, 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:45.560 you know, a great thing to invasion happening to my 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:48.960 imaginary embryos. But I guess this idea that like we 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:51.840 were turning away from actual babies because we'd found a 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:54.840 smaller baby, and then even with fetuses, it was like, 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:57.680 but what if there was a smaller and even more 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:00.520 innocent baby because it was just a blast cysts that 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.240 barely existed at all. Like that, you can't get more 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:08.200 innocent than that, right, And I'm sure just event yeah, 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:10.360 I'm sure we'll find an even smaller version of life soon. 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:13.240 But yeah, this idea that it almost feels like it 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:15.320 came up as a form of smoke and mirrors because 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:17.160 we were starting to talk in the seventies and a 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:20.080 way we hadn't before about sexual assaults and rape as 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:23.480 an endemic problem, and about child sexual abuse is something 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:26.800 that was happening in significant numbers, which as a culture 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:28.840 we hadn't really reckoned with before. And I think it 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:31.560 was very It saved us from a lot of difficult 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:35.680 conversations and from a lot of you know, pointing the 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:39.600 finger justifiably at having, you know, our society set up 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:42.480 in a way that kind of does facilitate abuse, you know, 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:44.120 where we can see now that like a lot of 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:47.040 abuse happens in churches and not Satanic ones, and that's 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:49.360 because of you know, kind of a very rigid hierarchical 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:51.760 power structure, for one. 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:55.200 And there is proof of that, by the way, right, there's. 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:58.000 Actual evidence of those ones. And so I feel like 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:00.320 the idea of having you know, this cross can who's 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:02.920 getting abused and who's committing the abuse it's like, well, 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:08.440 only tiny children and or you know, once it moves 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:10.760 on to adults, you can use it to say like, well, 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:13.960 you know, you know, babe, you weren't satanically abused, like 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:16.040 you weren't ever tied up in a field and made 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:19.320 to you know, stab a baby like you were. Only 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:22.919 you only experienced garden variety abuse of the kind that 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:26.600 women have experienced forever. So who cares? It was interestingly 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:31.119 like a way of saying who cares while claiming to 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:34.120 care so deeply about a problem. And then I think 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:36.840 there's just the fact that we've had the Devil as 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:39.600 an American character since the very beginning, and so we 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:41.800 just can he'se him, We're used to him. He kind 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:43.359 of he he's ready. 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:45.880 Okay, we're gonna take a quick break here, aware from 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:48.680 our sponsor, and then come right back to our conversation 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:55.720 with Sarah, and we're back. Let's jump right back in. 0:17:57.600 --> 0:17:59.919 You pointed out a neat distinction. I just wanted to 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:03.399 ask you about the moment when the devil became a 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:07.520 thing that's just around versus the devil of the Bible 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:11.160 that you see when you go to hell after you've 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:13.919 lived a bad life, this idea of taking the devil 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:17.520 and inserting it into everyday life and becoming a thing 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:19.840 that you can find all around you. 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:22.040 Yeah. 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:25.040 Just how that sort of you know, propelled. 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:28.760 This kind of thing, right, Yeah, And there's like there's 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:31.800 this interesting unspoken thing and the initial sproad of the 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:35.440 Satanic panic, where if you're secular, then you can say, well, 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:37.720 you know, these people believe in Satan, and there's do it. 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.040 They're doing all these things because they believe in Satan, 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:42.320 and so belief is scary enough. We don't have to 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:45.680 believe in actual Satan. But then within the movement there's 0:18:45.720 --> 0:18:50.600 always people who you know unspoken or very much spoken reasons. 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:53.680 The problem is no, like the devil is showing up. 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:56.239 People hold these rituals and he's there, you know. And 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:59.600 then Michelle remembers the devil turns up as a character 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:02.520 and the last portion of the book and he speaks 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:06.520 in dogg girl. It had to be very hard to 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:08.440 come up with all those rhymes, and I can't believe 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:13.240 Michelle followed through it, to be honest, But I don't 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:15.639 know the thing. I always feel like I have an 0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:18.080 interesting blind spot here too, though, because I grew up 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:22.000 pretty secular, and like, I am so much more ready 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:23.760 to believe in God than I am to believe in 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:26.040 the devil. I just have no interest in the devil, 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:27.840 you know. And I think that you can see in 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:32.040 kind of modern American Protestantism, the strain of thinking that 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:36.040 you know, goes through different denominations by different names, but 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:40.159 this idea that no, the devil is actually responsible for 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:42.080 the thoughts that you don't want to be having, for 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:46.040 your depression, you know, for the feelings that are inconvenient 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:48.119 to you, for the things that you feel tended to 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:51.640 do that maybe are very reasonable but are forbidden by 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:54.119 the religion that you're stuck in, you know, So that 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:58.639 the devil just becomes an interesting character, partly because I 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:01.360 think everyone kind of means some one slightly different when 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:03.080 they when they refer to that person. 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:05.200 Absolutely right. 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:09.960 It's it's not only its names, but its definitions are legion, 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:14.600 I think, is what we're saying here. And Okay, we're 0:20:14.640 --> 0:20:17.359 gonna have to talk about Patrick Swayze at some point. 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:22.960 How However, before we do that, there's something that I 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:25.359 think is really connecting with a lot of our fellow 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:31.040 listeners tuning in here which is Michelle Remembers, with which 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:34.760 Matt and you mentioned just a minute ago, but it 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:40.080 also ties into the psychology. So up there with mass media, 0:20:40.480 --> 0:20:44.359 I think we also see something akin to the earlier 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:49.080 spiritualism movement, the idea that science can answer the supernatural 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:53.680 or allegations thereof. So can you tell us a little 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:59.280 bit more about the origin story of Michelle Remembers and 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:04.280 the psychology and evaluation controversy involves. 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:07.440 Yeah, yeah, I mean, spiritualism is such an interesting thing 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:10.879 to compare it to because it feels like a feel 0:21:10.960 --> 0:21:14.439 that we created out of kind of the things that 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:17.600 we desired to be able to figure out. And so 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:21.720 Michelle Remembers is a book about this real woman. Her 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:24.360 name was Michelle. This was in Victoria, BSI in the 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:29.040 nineteen seventies, and she went back to her former therapist 0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:32.040 and I think late nineteen seventy six because she was 0:21:32.080 --> 0:21:36.439 experiencing depression following a miscarriage, and interestingly, her therapist was like, 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:38.760 there's no reason for you to be this depressed. You're 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:43.480 simply too depressed, which I like to think a therapist 0:21:43.560 --> 0:21:46.080 wouldn't say today. But you know, half of the time 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:48.679 people seeking therapy have to just just talk to someone, 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:50.840 you know, who's like eating popcorn in the whole time 0:21:50.880 --> 0:21:54.800 and working for better help. So it could probably happen today. 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:57.040 But he just felt that, like he had given her 0:21:57.080 --> 0:21:59.359 such good therapy in the past, this is according to 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:03.160 the book, that there had to be something more, and 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:06.840 so he put her into some kind of a trans 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:09.400 like state. The book never refers to it as hypnosis. 0:22:10.080 --> 0:22:13.760 It seems at least hypnosis adjacent. And you know, hypnosis 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:16.480 is also kind of a complicated concept that is not 0:22:16.560 --> 0:22:18.640 as magical as we would like it to be, because 0:22:19.320 --> 0:22:22.840 what we kind of know now about the way hypnosis 0:22:22.840 --> 0:22:25.399