Matt and Sam are joined by special guests Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes of the You're Wrong About podcast to discuss moral panics—from tales of rampant Satanism in the late 1970s to the Stranger Danger wave in the 1980s and beyond—and their role in the rise of rightwing politics in America. What do such "Save the Children" stories tell us about the way the conservative mind conceives of morality and power? What do they tell us about American culture and politics? It all builds to a discussion of QAnon and both the promise and problems with empathy.

FURTHER READING AND LISTENING:

Sarah Marshall, "Remote Control: Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, and the Spectacles of Female Power and Pain," The Believer, January 1, 2014

Michael Hobbes, "Everything You Know about Obesity is Wrong," Huffington Post, September 19, 2018

John Paul Rollert, "Going to Extremes: What Acting Taught Me about the Limits of Empathy," Commonweal, January 27, 2021

Rebecca Jennings, "What we can learn about QAnon from the Satanic Panic: An Interview with Sarah Marshall," Vox, Sept 25, 2020

Paul M. Renfro, Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State, (Oxford University Press), June 2020. 

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