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.

This is a CBC podcast. Just a heads up that this episode contains discussions about child abuse and suicidality.

Please take care while listening.

Welcome to the future.

2025, which sounds like a strange dystopian year. And it is. We have survived and continue to survive a worldwide pandemic. Biff Tannen has come to power. And by that I mean Trump has been re-elected.

And he is already enacting as much policy as possible, where the cruelty is the point.

And the satanic panic, which did not die, simply took a nice refreshing nap and has re-emerged in the form of

QAnon, of trans panic, queer panic, immigration panic, any kind of panic you want,

the United States has got them all. If you've been following this story so far, you've learned a lot about the history of the satanic panic as it spread across North America.

We've talked to people who found their lives intersecting with the panic.

Like Professor Mary DeYoung, who wrote books on child abuse and who refused to participate as an expert

witness in the satanic ritual abuse trials that spread like wildfire in the early 80s.

Or Matt Ferber, whose childhood was shaped by the recovered memory therapy that his mother

underwent when he was growing up. And Justin Sledge, who as a teenager was accused of being in a satanic cult,

as people in his small town struggled to make sense of a recent shooting.

Or, like Liz and Anna from the last episode,

two lesbian friends wrongly accused and brought to trial for satanic sexual abuse.

And after getting to know all these people and traveling this far, you may be wondering why we brought you here and what all of this information amounts to.

Why tell this story? More to the point, why study history at all, if in fact, even those who do remember the past seem condemned to repeat it?

It seems that as a society, we never fully learn from our mistakes. And if we're not panicking about Satan, we can always find something else.

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