Category Archives: Podcast

Sarah tells Mike how Ed Gein became one of America’s most famous serial killers despite not actually being one. Plus, the cinematic villains Gein inspired and what the slasher movies of the 1980s were really about. Digressions include Freud, summer camp logistics and the T-1000. Mike continues to awkwardly insert his teenage crushes into every conversation.

Mike tells Sarah how an over-simplified diagnosis, over-confident doctors and over-zealous prosecutors got thousands of innocent parents thrown in prison. Digressions include food poisoning, Sherlock Holmes and 1950s medical ethics. Mike wanted to mention Louise Woodward but he forgot. 

Links!

• The 1962 paper proposing the existence of abused children
• The original 1971 article that invented shaken baby syndrome
• And the later debunking by the same doctor
• 2011 New York Times Magazine article about Trudy Munoz Rueda
• A long and glorious scientific dismantling of the shaken baby syndrome hypothesis
• Another scientific review finding insufficient evidence
• Jeffrey Havard and the unlicensed medical examiner

Sarah tells Mike how pop culture created a two-decade-long obsession with multiple personality disorder and repressed memories. Digressions include Dead Poets Society, restless leg syndrome and the low editorial standards of the American publishing industry. The Satanic Panic makes a cameo appearance.

Links!

• The case of the human meat hamburger
• Excerpt from Debbie Nathan’s “Sybil Exposed”
• Excerpt from Elizabeth Loftus’ The Myth of Repressed Memory
• Frontline documentary: The Hunt for Memories

Mike tells Sarah that America has sent the wrong messages and done the wrong things about obesity for more than half a century. Digressions include height (again), sweatshops and Julianne Moore. Sarah and Mike’s mothers both make extended appearances. 

Here’s a link to Mike’s article!

The photo is Corissa Enneking, one of the people Mike interviewed for his article!

Special guest Rachel Monroe (re-)joins Mike and Sarah to talk about all the myths surrounding the second-biggest news event of the 1990s. Digressions include car crashes, September 11, Diane Sawyer and the terrors of teenage journaling.

Links!

• Dave Cullen’s book (which all three co-hosts agree was kind of meh but he seems like a nice guy)
• An interesting write-up weighing the evidence for various theories of the killers
• Rachel’s lovely and disturbing essay on “Columbiners”

Mike tells Sarah why the biggest scandal of Reagan’s presidency provides more (depressing) lessons about current politics than Watergate. Digressions include Mormons, Top Gun and the X-Files. Both co-hosts have considered what they will name their deliberately boring tax-shelter corporations.

Links!

• Mike’s essay about his parents living in Iran in 1979
• The Yale Law Review article about the structural failures of Iran-Contra
• The findings prepared by the hilariously impotent Tower Commission
• The amazing CJR story that asks why the press didn’t care about Iran-Contra
• An overview of the scandal from Brown University
• The 1991 Independent Counsel report

Sarah tells Mike that shoddy policing (and Milwaukee generally) are responsible for one of America’s most prolific serial killers. Digressions include panel vans, Anita Bryant, early man and Hannibal Lector. Mike struggles, as usual, not to cry during the gross parts.

Links!

• Sarah’s wonderful essay about Dahmer: http://www.partisanmagazine.com/blog/2016/5/3/living-things
• And Sarah’s wonderful article about Ted Bundy: https://believermag.com/the-end-of-evil/
• A Vanity Fair article on Dahmer just after his arrest: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/1991/11/jeffrey-dahmer-dennis-nilsen-serial-killer
• The “48 Hours” interview with Dahmer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZauuAyuA2Y
• Trial footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnuSl8PNYqc
• A review of Roy Ratcliff’s book: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/us/11land.html
• Inside Edition interview part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtvmGdzgdLM and part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COKYJdoUV2w
• The Silence of the Lambs trailer featuring the awesome voiceover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCR2WlUuvqE
• Jeff and his dad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8izoYj7_Fg

Corrections!

*  Jeff was born in Milwaukee, not Iowa. We regret the error! 

Mike tells Sarah that the D.A.R.E. program did not, in fact, keep kids off drugs. But that’s just the beginning of the debunking. Digressions include Martin Scorsese, Iceland and control groups. Both co-hosts reveal that they were not cool enough to be offered drugs in high school. 

Links!

• “A popular program for preventing teen drug use does not help. Here’s what does.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-just-say-no-doesnt-work/
• More on how D.A.R.E. crushed dissent: http://www.courtinnovation.org/sites/default/files/DARE.pdf
• A 1994 review of the evidence on D.A.R.E.: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/152055NCJRS.pdf
• Carol Weiss’s study on why educators kept DARE even when they knew it didn’t work: http://people.uncw.edu/imperialm/UNCW/PLS_506/E&PP_DARE_Ignoring_Evaluation_findings_2005_28_247.pdf
• Iceland: “Those fuckers are good at everything”: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/01/teens-drugs-iceland/513668/
• The fascinating statistical-methods paper that that debunks *everything*: “The Social Construction of ‘Evidence-Based’ Drug Prevention Programs”

Sarah tells Mike that animal behavior is an imperfect template for human society. Digressions include rabbits, Bob’s Burgers and online dating. Mike makes an awkward observation about locker rooms.  

Special guest Candace Opper tells Mike and Sarah about how the death of a rock star changed the field of suicidology (which is a thing). Digressions include eating disorders, car crashes and the insane grimness of the term “family annihilation.” The cringe-worthiness of Mike’s teenage years reaches new depths. 

Links! 

• Check out Candace’s work! https://candacejaneopper.com/ 
• And her tweets! https://twitter.com/candaceopper
• Here’s an essay she wrote about Kurt copycat suicides: https://www.guernicamag.com/the-chemistry-of-an-echo/
• And a bit more on the Kurt Cobain conspiracy theorist in Seattle: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/16/court-rules-against-conspiracy-theorist-in-bid-to-release-kurt-cobain-death-photos

Sarah tells Mike about how America’s favorite gangster movie is really its favorite killing-the-American-Dream movie. Digressions include the Mona Lisa, Bruce Springsteen and the tyranny of height-ism. The sound quality continues to worsen. 

Links!

• Kael Reviews:
  http://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2017/12/30/the-godfather-alchemy-review-by-pauline-kael/
  http://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2017/12/12/the-godfather-part-ii-fathers-and-sons-review-by-pauline-kael/
• Making of:
  https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/03/godfather200903
• on Lucy Mancini’s vagina:
  http://the-toast.net/2014/10/09/please-dont-forget-american-classic-godfather-important-subplot-big-vagina/
• A great essay on the godfather III: https://www.tiff.net/the-review/the-teenage-heartbreak-of-sofia-coppolas-mary-corleone/
• Puzo’s obituary:
  https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/03/movies/mario-puzo-author-who-made-the-godfather-a-world-addiction-is-dead-at-78.html

Sarah and Mike take a break from debunking to reflect on the first 10 episodes and tell the secret history of how they met. Digressions include “Portlandia,” Snapchat and the The New York Post. The recording quality, as usual, is wildly inconsistent. 

Links!

Sarah’s Tonya Harding essay: https://www.believermag.com/issues/201401/?read=article_marshall

Mike’s millennials article: http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millennials/ 

Mike tells Sarah that America’s most devastating oil spill was not, in fact, a DUI. Digressions include “Titanic” (obviously), the Cuyahoga River, Jennifer Lopez and marshmallows. Punitive damages make a triumphant return. Mike, a professional writer, continues to misuse the word “literally.” 

Links!

• The NYT article summarizing the Supreme Court decision: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/washington/26punitive.html
• The study on “disaster trauma” in Cordova: http://www.arlis.org/docs/vol1/B/243478793.pdf
• Retro Report episode on the spill: https://www.retroreport.org/transcript/exxon-valdez-in-the-wake-of-disaster/
• Episode Hero Ricky Ott: http://www.rikiott.com/

Links!

The gross 20/20 “debunking”: https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=277685&page=1

Two debunkings of the debunking: https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/02/debunking-stephen-jimenezs-effort-to-de-gay-mat/196229

https://thinkprogress.org/the-book-of-matt-doesn-t-prove-anything-other-than-the-size-of-stephen-jimenez-s-ego-c7ba5d0becee/

We can’t find Andrew Sullivan’s posts about Shepard from 2004, but here’s one from 2013: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/09/16/challenging-the-myth-of-matthew-shepard/