Wired.com presents the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. And here is your host, David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello and welcome to episode 185 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Joseph Leacock,

an assistant professor of religious studies at Texas State University

and author of the non-fiction books Spirit Possession Around the World and Vampires

Today. And we'll be talking with him about his new book, Dangerous Games, which

explores the satanic panic that surrounded Dungeons and Dragons in the 1980s.

And for more on that you might also want to check out our panel on the history of

Dungeons and Dragons in episode 170.

And now here's our interview with Joseph Leacock. All right, so we're here with Joseph Lacock.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks, glad to be here.

Okay, so first of all, just tell us a bit about your history as a Dungeons and Dragons player.

Well, I talk about this in the preface of the book.

I think I first learned about the concept of Dungeons and Dragons.

When I was pretty young, I mean, maybe six or seven years old at a summer camp for gifted kids.

But what we were doing was not actually Dungeons and Dragons.

It was sort of a, you know, more of a cops and robbers type of make-believe game it wasn't until later that I realized

This is a real game played with dice and you actually have to do a lot of reading and a lot of study to learn how to

Play it by high school school I was a pretty big D&D nerd and that continued

on into college when I was involved in my gaming group at Hampshire College.

Sadly, I have not played D&D in a long time.

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