00:08:07.720Well, I think that there are so many people all talking to each other now that it's like the common cold where like somebody is going to have it.
00:08:15.200Yep. Stanley Cohen, the sociologist coined the term moral panic. I believe in 1972. He kind of laid out the set of criteria that it's basically about normative society, finding reasons to protect itself by overestimating a threat coming to it from a countercultural group, or an out group.
00:08:36.620He was looking initially at panic over mods in a seaside town in England in the late 60s, which is very funny.
00:08:45.360You need to find what mods are, just for people who don't care.
00:08:49.500I would say just, you know, people who are like listening to a bit of rock and roll and like looking at Twiggy, you know, and are, I don't know, probably engaging in some light violence as British white males tend to.
00:09:02.760so countercultural in some capacity and that can mean so many different things yeah i think this is
00:09:11.720a thing that normative culture mainstream culture and kind of places within culture
00:09:17.740where power is located like to believe about themselves um i think partly because it's an
00:09:23.540excuse for exercising dominance right because if you're saying i'm insisting on controlling
00:09:30.220everyone who's different from me because I don't like it when people are different from me that
00:09:35.000makes you seem like kind of an unreasonable person but if they're like the significant
00:09:39.900threat to you and your children and your wife then it becomes different and you're
00:09:47.140not overreacting you're heroic um and I think that you know I mean there's something very
00:09:53.660interesting today about how Christianity in America which is one of the most politically
00:09:59.420probably the most politically powerful that a religion has ever been like including the holy
00:10:04.480roman empire has this absolutely obsessional martyr complex which you know the kind of
00:10:11.340our ongoing satanic panic certainly plays into and it's like you guys have not been oppressed
00:10:16.260in like thousands of years you've got to calm down like why do you have to continuously identify
00:10:24.020the interloper that is not like it's not like you can just let the interloper hang out right
00:10:29.240Like pluralism is not possible. It's like it also has to be forcefully rejected because it's like a pathogen.
00:10:36.940Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so talking about kind of the timelessness of moral panics, I mean, something that is almost too obvious to notice about the satanic panic is that it's basically like medieval blood libel, you know, and this idea that, you know, in the Middle Ages, certainly, and I think this comes up in actually Chaucer, you would accuse Jews of eating babies, just because that's kind of the quickest.
00:11:02.460i feel like the the fastest way to demonize another human being you know and to imply
00:11:09.240not only you know violence but uh like operating on a logical level that is completely divorced
00:11:17.540from anything that you or i would ever do um so i feel like in the 80s and now we i used kind of
00:11:25.180the basic moral panic template that had been in use at least since the middle ages and which i
00:11:29.800Today, I think we would understand as basically a meme, where it's something that's easy to replicate by different groups of people in different times, but you have to feel a little bit threatened by somebody and willing to experience or create a certain amount of fear in order to then create social controls that basically stop the group that you're afraid of and are permitting yourself to be
00:11:58.080even more afraid of like life and death afraid of allow you to control them further and so in this
00:12:04.740case if you can also draw a direct line you know the satanic panic starts in the early 80s um and0.74
00:12:12.300it's kind of brewing in the late 70s and that's the time of um the failure of the era and women's
00:12:18.580lib and gay liberation and like a time when the republican party and conservatism has never been
00:12:24.940stronger, right? Arguably compared to now, we're further to the right, but the margins by which
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00:16:41.720Okay, so this is actually a great segue to our next question.
00:16:44.980This comes from Allison, and Melody is going to read it.
00:16:48.240What makes a cultural or moral panic different from conspiracy theories or just misinformation?
00:16:54.320Are they different parts of the same spectrum?
00:16:56.780Does persistent misinformation grow up to be a panic?
00:17:00.160Does a panic live on as a conspiracy after its glory days are over?
00:17:04.440Historically, I'd say that it seems like cultural panics are treated as legitimate concerns worthy of attention and consideration and possible action,
00:17:11.460while the other kinds of beliefs are disregarded as fringe or kooky.
00:17:15.620But in the I'm-just-asking-questions era, it seems like the boundaries are fuzzier.
00:17:20.440Are we just rolling through the cycles of cultural panics much faster now?
00:17:24.320Sorry, this might be several questions in a trench coat.
00:17:27.220We love several questions in a trench coat.
00:18:07.460Yeah. You know, because anyone can develop a conspiracy theory, which you can do all by yourself, whereas you need at least one other person to conspire with, I guess. But the I don't know, I feel like the interesting thing about conspiracy theories, too, is that they often come to function like conspiracies themselves, right? Where you're like trading information with people who you want to be in the know, or you're like, you know, approaching some teenage girl who's clearly coming down from mushrooms, because you want to tell them about chemtrails, which is how I first heard about chemtrails.
00:18:37.460I was the girl on mushrooms. And even then I was like, leave me alone. You don't smell good.
00:18:46.900Or even the other the other part that Allison mentions, which is that sometimes a moral panic dwindles down into a conspiracy theory.
00:18:56.340So something like the satanic panic, which I think people like there are still people who think that this is a real thing.
00:19:03.420Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're called Baptists.
00:19:07.460but yeah well because like i could tell you like i could be like listen i've got or to quote so i
00:19:15.440don't have to come up with one to quote so i married an axe murderer let's say that like
00:19:18.980the world is run by the illuminati which includes the pope and colonel sanders and if he's not
00:19:24.260running the world then how does he have a secret history of herbs and spices that makes you crave0.85
00:19:28.440it fortnightly and you could be like okay that's kind of compelling focus more on the illuminati
00:19:36.000thing because I don't think you're going to teach people to be afraid of Colonel Sanders. You know,
00:19:39.880like that one is probably not going to take off. That's my own little conspiracy theory.
00:19:44.440Although I don't know, I think we could probably, if we freaked out enough about Colonel Sanders,
00:19:49.120get KFC to change the logo. Not by alleging that it's racist, of course, but with, you know,
00:19:55.700like with, what was it, Procter & Gamble that had to change their logo because enough people
00:20:00.640freaked out that it was satanic yeah so there had been a lot of media in in christian uh kind
00:20:08.140of publishing in the 60s and early 70s about how the counterculture was actually satanic in all
00:20:13.240its forms and how like horoscopes were satanic as well as as just outright satan worship that
00:20:18.360you didn't have to know that you were into satan to be there and that was you know not catching on
00:20:24.560in mainstream anxieties in in that time period it took a while but at the same time we had movies
00:20:31.480like rosemary's baby and the exorcist which had this kind of what if quality right well and also
00:20:36.700gave like a um a visual like prompt almost of what this would look like right it has to make
00:20:43.720you have to make it imaginable in some way that's true yeah and it becomes something you feel like
00:20:49.540you've seen because you saw it in a movie and actually in michelle remembers which is the book
00:20:53.620that kind of helps to be the initial domino that then starts kind of this chain reaction of all
00:21:00.320these daycare cases. Can you talk about what the daycare cases are? Yeah. Well, so yeah,
00:21:07.960kind of like we talked about with the Fran and Dan Keller case. So this starts at McMartin,
00:21:14.840which is a preschool in Southern California. It's in Manhattan Beach. And basically a parent who
00:21:20.900later turns out to be an unreliable witness for for a few reasons um but basically pertaining to
00:21:27.840untreated mental health issues um comes to suspect that her son who's two has been sexually abused
00:21:35.700and specifically that he's been a victim of forms of abuse that very young children we know now
00:21:42.720statistically like very rarely experience like child abuse is much much much more common than i
00:21:49.940I think anyone wanted to realize um in the in the early 80s which is when we began to really talk
00:21:56.480about it um certainly sexual abuse was much more common than mainstream culture had attempted to
00:22:03.280come to grips with but once you begin to study it you do begin to realize that there are certain
00:22:09.700trends and what the trends don't support is this idea of children being abused in a ritualistic
00:22:15.020fashion, being abused in a way that's religiously significant for the abuser. And then the forms of
00:22:21.460sexual abuse that were being alleged by this initial parent, again, are possible, but would
00:22:26.820be statistically very unusual. But nobody had really studied it yet. And so there was a sense
00:22:32.100that kind of anything could be going on. And so in this case, the police didn't have best practices
00:22:39.080for how to keep an investigation from getting contaminated
00:22:43.240and how to forensically question very young children
00:22:46.760about how they had potentially been abused.
00:22:49.940And so this plus the idea within culture,
00:22:52.900which is very much bolstered by Michelle Remembers,
00:22:55.600which is a book that came out in 1980 of alleged nonfiction
00:23:38.860And one is this thought of like, well, we don't know how any of this works and we don't want to dismiss it out of hand because what if there's any chance that it is going on?
00:23:48.260Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it reminds me, though, of like when the unimaginable happens, in this case, the sexual abuse of a small child, how do you make sense of it?
00:24:00.400And one way that you make sense of it is through, like, writing a melodrama on television, right, or a book that makes sense of how these things happen and ascribes, like, a very clear perpetrator, victim, all those things, right?
00:24:17.780And we don't want to – people really don't want to see, like, think about the fact that so much of this happens within the home.
00:24:23.640And then the other way is like the book does it, but then also all of these other texts that are saying, well, this is Satanist. Like this abuse is happening because of Satanist instead of examine thyself. But it's a very easy way to make it imaginable. Does that make sense?
00:24:41.580Yeah, no, it really does. And I think that there's something about this period when it feels like we've had and this is because my this is my theorizing, right? This is what I was I have these conversations with my mom where I like present this argument. She's like, yeah, maybe. And I'm like, no, it's not. It's we're talking sociology here. So it's just anything is like, yeah, kind of who can say, you know, whereas she was a doctor. So it's like, well, we can't give the patient the wrong drugs, you know.
00:25:08.400yeah um we can't give the the long 20th century the wrong medication we have to figure out exactly
00:25:14.760what it is but my conjecture basically is that you know we have these advances in women's rights
00:25:19.640you know women were running marathons and writing checks what's next right you know this idea that
00:25:24.900is being set out loud um in more media than than probably ever before that marriage is kind of a
00:25:31.700raw deal for women and that also just taking spousal abuse into account which we're also1.00
00:25:36.960just beginning to talk about, it kind of makes you wonder if maybe women would be able to parent
00:25:42.540more successfully if they weren't dependent on any drunk they happened to marry when they were 18
00:25:47.880years old to not abuse them and to continue to support them financially because God knows things
00:25:53.120were rigged so that they couldn't make a living because World War II was over. And so I feel like
00:25:59.900the satanic panic is because this, you know, serves many functions. But one of the many things
00:26:05.360it does to crush a subculture that's growing strength is to drive women back into the home
00:26:11.900where, you know, statistically, if they're going to experience abuse, and if their child is going
00:26:17.260to experience abuse, there's a very good chance it's going to be there and a very low chance that
00:26:21.360it's going to happen in the forest where the Satanists are supposed to be. That it allows
00:26:27.940frequently scary men to continue their reign and question because there's Satanists out there.
00:26:33.500Right. And like, as you said earlier, it re-inscribes the powerful. Like it wasn't like men's power was actually under threat. Patriarchy was not legitimately under threat. There was just some like tiny gains for women. And that had to, that had to be deflected by a re-inscription of like the male home.
00:26:53.860yeah and I would say looking around today that there's like a sense of that like the massive
00:26:59.560fragility of those in power um looking at the reasonable questions of oppressed subcultures0.60
00:27:08.000as part of this because you have kind of the Christian right running America now and acting1.00
00:27:13.360very afraid of everything and it's like everyone's afraid of you and rightly so I might add you know1.00
00:27:20.020So we had, what was it, Mike Johnson came to, I don't know if he came to Portland or just heard
00:27:26.320about it, but he said that the world naked bike ride in Portland was like the scariest thing he'd
00:27:31.120ever seen. And it was like, really? I have friends who met there and then got married.
00:27:37.780It's actually really goofy and great, you know?
00:27:40.740Yeah. I mean, you do hope that people are wearing enough sunscreen, but I wouldn't call that the
00:27:44.760scariest thing I'd ever seen. I mean, I don't know if you've seen that part in Deep Blue Sea where
00:28:19.480So the other question, I mean, just a lot of like, why are people flipping out over the existence of trans people?
00:28:25.560But then also questions in the line of like, there are these moms in the freaking playground who keep saying like, well, schools have litter boxes now because kids are identifying as cats.
00:28:36.500Right. Which is like a way to discipline anyone who's thinking about like fluid gender identity or changing gender identity or that sort of thing.1.00
00:28:44.680Right. So what do you see going on here?
00:28:47.260Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm so glad so many people asked that because it is just, you know, very infuriating. And it is, I don't know, nice to be reminded that a lot of this cultural backlash, I think, was somewhat invented for political gains by the right in this country, right?
00:29:08.460The idea that Republicans, while taking all of your money and your quality of life, are0.85
00:29:13.960also going to protect you from a trans child in the bathroom, something that has never
00:29:19.780been a problem for anyone in human history.0.83
00:29:23.120Or trans kids on the sports team, which is so statistically small and they're not taking
00:30:03.640Right, that kids will kind of be friends with anyone0.96
00:30:05.920as long as you know they're not a jerk about when to give over the video game controller if that's
00:30:11.180still something kids fight about um and i also i mean something that i like just personally think
00:30:17.700about is that i mean i don't have kids and i'm like you know a very happy cat lady in these
00:30:24.660united states and therefore also uh destroying america which is great because i never thought
00:30:30.100I had that much power. And if I do have it, then to quote Veep, I must be using it very discreetly.
00:30:38.800But if I had kids, something I would find very stressful is that I watch YouTube
00:30:44.46048 hours a day, you know, it's just all my favorite stuff is on it. And what is so worrying
00:30:52.660about children's YouTube is that you can see how the algorithm, it seems conclusively and like in
00:30:59.480an intentional way you know as with Facebook and boomers is geared towards showing kids things that
00:31:06.560will disturb and upset them because apparently that makes them watch it more and everyone can
00:31:14.400make a little bit more money yeah like there are very scary things trying to reach our kids all the
00:31:19.400time but none of them are kids on the soccer team yeah do you think that this is like if we're
00:31:24.340getting very broad strokes about like these panics arrive when power is under threat like
00:31:30.800there was a moment right like and it's 2015 when like statistically if we look at polls that
00:31:38.080talk about like how people feel about accepting trans people like there is a moment in 2015 where
00:31:44.920like the numbers are much higher than they are now that like yes the the republican party has
00:31:50.820engineered this as like a flashpoint as something to be concerned about as like a problem that
00:31:55.560doesn't exist but that they have insisted on as a problem but also just this idea that like oh
00:32:01.820america is changing so what how do we react to that like it's make america great again but in
00:32:08.020part and parcel of that is like we have to demonize trans people yeah yeah i mean i think i don't know
00:32:15.120i love the way you just put that what is it that moral panics arrive when power is questioned
00:32:19.600Yeah. You know, what's interesting, too, is that that aligns really well with 2020, where we had, you know, these massive protests. I think there's maybe kind of a spectrum of people where you're like politically engaged and kind of processing information. And you're like, yeah, I'm thinking thoughts. Sometimes I disagree with things, but I don't make it my personality. And we all try to be there. Or we don't all try to be there. But I would like to try to be there. And I welcome you here to this zone when we're behaving ourselves.
00:32:48.400And then sometimes you're like, you're just not paying attention for whatever reason. And then there's like the side of the spectrum, I think, or the hoop or whatever it is, where you're like, aware of what's going on, but not in a way that's helpful to you or anybody else. And where things seem like personally upsetting to you in an interesting way that would seem to relate more to your personal baggage than anything else.
00:33:14.840And it's interesting to me that in this time of like spring, summer of 2020, like really questioning infrastructure and saying like, should the police really be able to kill whoever they want? A topic that America kept returning to and not coming up with an answer to.
00:33:31.320And it feels like this time of really reasonably questioning hierarchy that we also got the panic that really, I think, brought our satanic panic of the 2020s off to a strong start of like, don't put your child in a mask.
00:33:48.480Masks are a conspiracy so that your child can be abducted because you'll be unable to recognize someone who you probably dress today because you can't see the lower half of their face.
00:34:00.740and they'll be abducted for sex trafficking specifically yes yeah as will you probably
00:34:06.080kelly the details have to change slightly right like they can't just replicate a past social
00:34:11.460panic like it has to be right we can't say satanist will sacrifice him in the old quarry
00:34:17.100that would be ridiculous it has to be he's going to put in a shipping container yes somehow which
00:34:24.080i also like i find it also interesting that in this time and again this is where i'm like is this
00:34:30.000this is it might be a bit much to theorize this but it at least shows that like i was paying
00:34:35.240attention when i was in grad school of you know this time of like putting pressure on the idea
00:34:41.760of like no like what if america is basically rooted in white supremacy and if you're white
00:34:46.700you have benefited from it in some way even if you never thought about it before which i get that1.00
00:34:52.100that's a threatening idea somehow um but that in response to that it seems like white women0.97
00:34:59.380especially in the past you know five ten years have like really locked into this idea of like
00:35:04.300human trafficking it's happening and it's happening to me and I will be put in a shipping
00:35:09.480container and it's like why are you so upset about being told about the slave trade which
00:35:15.560did involve people literally being shipped from Africa to build the White House and stuff or at
00:35:24.400for their children to do that and their children's children and this idea of like I I can't get off0.97
00:35:30.420the theory that like we were so in denial of having to learn about slavery that like white
00:35:36.320women in suburbia invented the theory that we in fact are going to become enslaved but it also0.52
00:35:43.700psychologically makes absolute sense right it's just like an incredible avoidance of shame yeah
00:35:49.100you're like don't tell me about slavery I could become enslaved at any minute anytime I buy craft0.68
00:35:53.740supplies i'm very brave right and also just this like like age old like for white lady fragility0.68
00:36:03.400too right like that that is always the actual demographic that's most under threat instead of
00:36:08.320the the demographics that are most under threat yeah and it's like this thing i think where like
00:36:14.360that white womanhood historically at least in the united states is like your ability to be relevant
00:36:20.580is so tied to your ability to be a potential victim that anytime the focus is off of you
00:36:27.220as a potential victim there is you can see people being like hey excuse me i've invented a crime
00:36:33.200that i'm now the victim of and i think we should all talk about it right right like when it's kind
00:36:38.080of like everyone has to relate it back to their own experience in some way right like so if someone's
00:36:43.780talking about a way that they've been marginalized or like yeah experience like really serious like
00:36:48.760ramifications of systemic racism you'll have someone be like well do you know that the irish
00:36:54.600used to be discriminated against right or like it was hard when i moved to a big town and like
00:37:02.960my accent was it kind of marked me and like yes those things are hard but that's not what we're
00:37:07.540talking about right like you don't have to like this constant re-centering onto the self which
00:37:15.660is incredibly american the resistance of thinking about social structures and the insistence on
00:37:21.160thinking about the vulnerability of the the self and the family unit that vulnerability instead of
00:37:27.080like our vulnerability as a like a society right yeah and i think there's like you can maybe see
00:37:33.600the the moral panic in some ways is like a resistance to empathy right because if if we're
00:37:39.320having kind of moral panic today partly in response to social justice movements which i would say is
00:37:45.640is, I think that's reasonable to say at this point. Yeah. I think there's a discomfort that
00:37:51.220comes when you're being called on to empathize in a way you're not prepared for and are in a way
00:37:55.240that you feel implicates a system that you've benefited from. And I feel like it's possible
00:38:00.820to push through that and many people do. And sometimes you don't. And I feel like if you
00:38:05.680don't, then maybe it becomes necessary for the psyche to soothe itself by saying, I am in no way0.50
00:38:11.720negatively implicated in the world as it's existing and being lived by by marginalized0.82
00:38:19.240people i in fact am at risk by them all the time and i need to protect myself and i don't even need0.88
00:38:28.120and the thing about the the way the moral panics function too i think is that you don't even have
00:38:32.780to think about your perceived enemy as human because they're being accused of things that
00:38:37.400you know you could never conceive of doing i know that's like well and to me it strikes me
00:38:43.960always as a profound odds with like the lived deep like i'm talking anabaptist like protestant
00:38:53.700tradition which is that the world is fucking evil right like if you actually live deep within those0.97
00:39:00.400faiths like we are a fallen world everything is bad you have to live with that badness like you0.99
00:39:06.380look at stories in the bible and before you get to like some of the happy shit that's happening1.00
00:39:10.520in the new testament like things are bad and then things get worse and it's your fucking fault0.99
00:39:15.220like you live within that that culture of like of sin essentially but the way that we have0.98
00:39:21.620narrativized it i think in contemporary america especially like within these panics is like
00:39:26.100you can empathize like a white middle class person is led to understand that they can empathize
00:39:31.800with someone who has been historically marginalized
00:39:35.020through, like, a text that ultimately allows them
00:39:38.860to still be the hero in the story, right?
00:39:41.280So it's always, like, there is goodness in the world
00:39:44.020instead of, like, there is evil in the world
00:53:15.260And well, something that's interesting too, and we weren't even really able to get into this in this show because this is such a big story really.
00:53:22.200But that later on the, you know, we start with the daycare cases and then this becomes a movement in therapy for adult women.
00:53:29.780And we start to have cases kind of in more in the late 80s and early 90s that are not criminal, but civil cases where typically an adult woman has gone into therapy. She's had a therapist who's very attached to the idea because it's very popular at the time that any issues you might have as a woman, like, you know, mild depression, eating disorder, anxiety, anything that like actually women are just, we all have multiple personalities and these multiple personalities were caused by sexual abuse.
00:53:59.220yeah and so you know there there are many cases of people suing a family member in civil court
00:54:05.980and accusing them of abuse and also in many cases later recanting that and saying that they
00:54:11.580stopped the therapy and came to no longer believe it that it was a belief that they had to put effort
00:54:16.460into sustaining and that was kind of created through being asked to imagine being abused by
00:54:22.300various family members and seeing if any of those felt right for example this is a therapeutic tactic
00:54:27.040of the time. And so when the legal threat comes for people who have real financial and legal
00:54:34.640resources and for people kind of verging into the upper middle class, suddenly it gets a lot
00:54:41.060less traction than it did when we were accusing and in quite a few cases bringing to trial
00:54:46.800because people who worked for generally very low wages and very long hours at daycare centers and
00:54:53.580didn't have the legal resources to adequately defend themselves a lot of the time yeah and also
00:54:59.880like just puts this spin on like what therapy does what happens when you're trying to help
00:55:04.800like figure out why your life is hard you know what i mean like and you're like well oh yeah it0.98
00:55:10.000just like leads people down like it's just bullshit like this is not something that you should0.94
00:55:14.100reach for like if we ever want to think about why there are so many of our parents generation is0.98
00:55:18.860like well like therapy is just like uh what do they call it like a brain scrambler or whatever
00:55:23.900like all of the history is there come into focus yeah and also just kind of on all the sort of
00:55:29.340wacky pop therapy stuff in the 70s you know like asked where you're like right therapy was just
00:55:35.040like another way to abuse women for a long time and you know and it's always going to be vulnerable
00:55:40.100to that there's also this idea in kind of peak satanic panic therapy that if you've had a lot
00:55:46.120of failed relationships with men then that is an indicator that you've experienced satanic abuse
00:55:51.980and it's like maybe it's men that are the problem right right no and that's like just that that
00:55:59.060complete deflection instead of looking at like oh maybe it's the way that we have like conditioned
00:56:05.280men to treat women like what dating culture is like there's just so many bigger picture things
00:56:11.100that you can look at or you can just blame satan and i think that like right now you know we got
00:56:15.680so many questions about screens so like are we in the midst of a moral panic about screen time
00:56:21.540and i think that will like 10 years from now 15 years from now 20 years from now i hear people
00:56:27.220on both sides saying we will look back and either we will think the wide-scale rapid adoption of
00:56:33.540screens is the worst thing that we ever did as a society and like this is a blip that we are going
00:56:38.580to spend like generations correcting or it's like this is a long progression that we have been
00:56:46.080on for many many decades like this is just where we're marching towards like this is not something
00:56:52.560that you should be panicked about yeah man i don't freaking know honestly i know that's why i didn't
00:56:58.780go there i was like i can't talk about ai i don't want to talk about yeah i know i've already brought
00:57:04.700it up let's stick with with good old comforting satan you know because that is the nice thing
00:57:09.940about satan right like anything that you don't want to yes look close to home um to try and
00:57:16.380solve you're like i think satan did that and it's like surely something is our fault i mean sometimes
00:57:22.000i do wish i had that that like moral simplicity right like sometimes i'm like if i lived in 15th
00:57:28.100century like christian culture like i would just know always it was always my fault right like
00:57:33.460everything that I did as a woman. It was just always my fault. I sinned and God was punishing
00:57:38.000me. The simplicity. Sarah, this has been everything that I dreamed of and more. Can you tell us where
00:57:46.840people can find you on the internet if they want to hear more from you? Yeah. So you can find me
00:57:52.240and all of my thoughts about Satan on The Devil You Know. It's a podcast that I was so lucky to
00:57:58.900get to make for CBC podcasts. With my producer, Mary Stephan Hagen, we talked to some amazing
00:58:04.740people whose lives were, you know, in some cases, just absolutely destroyed by the satanic panic.
00:58:11.620And what we also tried to do is to not make this a downer, right? Because like, you'll get depressed
00:58:17.620anyway, learning about this, we don't have to try. And I think there's, there's so many amazing,
00:58:24.120strong, good people who were seen as a threat simply because they tried to make the world a
00:58:32.560little bit better for themselves and the people that they cared about. And what I also hope is
00:58:37.020that listening to it will make you realize that being the victim of a moral panic, much like the
00:58:45.200one we're having now, is something that happens to people who I think often are inciting fear
00:58:50.900because of their capacity to love and forgive.