The Devil You Know with Sarah Marshall

In this bonus episode, Sarah talks to Yvonne Eadon, a professor at the University of Kentucky who specializes in conspiracy theory and online misinformation, about GAYLOR — the online fan theory that claims Taylor Swift is a closeted queer woman.

We travel back in time to 1670s Massachusetts to review the famous case of the so-called Satanic possession of 16-year-old Elizabeth Knapp — which took place twenty years before the Salem Witch Trials. In this bonus episode, Sarah and producer Carolyn Kendrick talk to professor Elisabeth Ceppi to find out more about possession in Puritan America.

Now that we know where we’ve been, where are we going? As the Satanic Panic receded from view, we almost forgot it had happened at all – until it came back. How do today’s moral panics compare to the one we just learned about? And what can we learn from the tragedy at Jonestown?

How did the U.S. legal system allow the Satanic Panic to proliferate as rapidly as it did? In this bonus episode, Sarah chats with journalist Josie Duffy Rice (Justice In America, The Appeal) who has written extensively about prisons, prosecutors and criminal justice.

Though it sounded like a wholesome sitcom premise — four lesbian housemates raise a baby in San Antonio — reality proved anything but. Instead, Liz, Anna, Cassie, and Kristy found themselves caught in a nightmare of a crime drama after being accused of Satanic abuse. They face all the twists and turns of court proceedings, junk science, Satanic allegations, and wrongful convictions — for 22 years.

Dr. Justin Sledge (who you heard from in Episode 6) is a professor of philosophy and religion. in this bonus episode, we learn how his own experience as a teenager implicated in an alleged satanic plot led to an academic career studying esoterica and the occult.

How does a victim of a school shooting become accused of masterminding the whole thing in the name of Satan? When Justin Sledge was 17, a friend of his opened fire at their high school, killing two people and wounding seven others. It was one of the first modern-day school shootings, even before Columbine. Over the next few weeks, their once tight-knit town is embroiled in fear and rumors as people search for a reason for the tragedy — eventually landing on a cult of devil worshippers. Justin finds himself at the center of these rumors, leading to him also being arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

Check out Justin's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel

As women increasingly spoke out about the abuse they suffered under the patriarchy, many still struggled to be heard. And the new field of recovered memory therapy became a vehicle for both legitimizing women's trauma and exploiting it.

Delaney is a housewife and mother of three, living in Manitoba in the 1980s. A survivor of childhood sexual abuse, she seeks out counselors and psychiatrists and then… she begins to remember. Years later, her son Matt describes growing up during the Satanic Panic, with a mother trying to work through her trauma. We hear from Delaney herself through a biographical manuscript she wrote before she died, exploring her experiences of childhood abuse, her eventual belief that Satanists were involved, and how she came to terms with all of it.

In this bonus episode, we look at some impacts of satanic hysteria outside of North America. We hear from Cherine Amr, the founder of the Egyptian metal band Massive Scar Era, who was accused of being possessed by the devil himself in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Producer Mary Steffenhagen speaks with academic Pasqualina Eckerström for a deeper look at heavy metal’s connection with satanism.

How did the Satanic Panic take hold? Whitney Phillips, a professor of journalism at the University of Oregon, guides us through the labyrinth of media and motifs that laid the groundwork for the Satanic Panic in politics and pop culture… and laid down the roots of our current day political landscape.

Mary de Young had always been interested in deviants and deviance. As a social-psychologist, she studied “behavior that broke the rules,” and whether the worst parts of a person’s behavior were innate, nurtured, or misunderstood. So when news broke in 1983 about a “new” form of child abuse that she had never heard of before, she was — as a researcher — intrigued, and — as a person — horrified. But as she began to investigate the cases, the details didn’t add up.

Canadian director Sean Horlor’s film, Satan Wants You (2023), is a deep dive into the book "Michelle Remembers.” In this bonus episode, he talks to Sarah about the process of making that film and what it was like growing up in Victoria at its so-called satanic heyday.

Michelle Remembers is the 1980 “biographical” book that brought the idea of Satanic cults into the mainstream. In it, Michelle Smith documents years of alleged Satanic ritual abuse and the man who helped her remember it, psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder. We talk to those who thought they knew Michelle and Larry best: their families. They tell us what it was like to witness the birth of the Satanic Panic from the most intimate vantage point — and how it shattered their lives.

In 1988, a young arts educator drove into a small town in Kentucky with a camera and a directive to teach photography to school kids. But she never got a chance. Instead, a full blown hysteria connecting her presence with other dark rumours swirling around about widespread ritual child sacrifice prompted a mad dash escape for her life. The truth behind the drama? Well, it involves Patrick Swayze and an environment where cops, social workers, teachers, parents and reporters were being primed to see Satanic crime everywhere.

Can't wait for more episodes? Binge the entire series early on our YouTube channel and on our Apple True Crime channel ad-free for subscribers. 

In this new 8-part series, host Sarah Marshall (You’re Wrong About) takes a closer look at the people who experienced the Satanic Panic in real-time—the believers, the skeptics, the bystanders, and the wrongfully-convicted.