Hi, Steve Patterson here, host of the debaters, the show where Canada's top comedians answer Canada's top questions like, is Winnipeg the best place to raise a family?

We're expecting to raise a little heck with this one, so don't miss it wherever you get your podcasts.

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Welcome to your bonus episode.

This is The Devil You Know.

I'm Sarah Marshall,

and today we're talking with Josie Deffie Rice,

a journalist who focuses on prosecutors, prisons, and other criminal justice issues.

Josie is also the host of the Corruption Uncovered podcast and former president of The Appeal.

Josie is here to talk with us about the United States legal system and how it may have allowed the satanic panic to rip through it a little bit faster than it would have otherwise. We've talked a lot about how moral panics work,

but how can the way that a system functions or doesn't function allow a moral panic the chance

to grow and flourish for much longer than it should have.

And we also look at the question of what kind of blind spots might a system have

if it tries to sort people into the categories of hero and villain

and the vast gulf of humanity that lies between the two.

I'm trying to come up with sort of the best description for sort of the unifying theme of some of that, at least as I see it, because, you know, I was drawn to your work when I started

thinking critically about

the legal system. And to me, really, like, the ultimate truth of it all is that, like, none of it

is sacred. And, like, parts of it are good, but the fact of part of something being good doesn't mean

the whole works. And I feel like it's, you know, showing the lack of logic and the actual motives sort of animating

the way different parts of the system work is how you understand the whole overarching problem.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that our criminal justice system is a microcosm or a macrocosm,

...