Presenting: Twenty Thousand Hertz
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Satanic Panic ripped through America, rock music was in the crosshairs. Could songs contain secret backwards messages urging children to take drugs and worship the devil?
This special episode is from Twenty Thousand Hertz, a podcast all about the rich world of sound.
Follow Twenty Thousand Hertz wherever you get your podcasts. https://www.20k.org/
This episode mentions death by suicide. If you are suffering emotional distress or having suicidal thoughts, support is available - for example, from the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US, or the Samaritans in the UK on 116 123
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.1 | Do you ever wish your office felt better? |
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| 0:11.8 | more creative, and more fun. |
| 0:13.7 | If you need a quiet corner to focus or a collaborative space to brainstorm, |
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| 0:19.5 | Head to Buzzy.Sspace to check out their innovative solutions |
| 0:22.8 | and make your office a place people actually love coming to. |
| 0:26.4 | That's B-U-Z-Z-I-D-Space. |
| 0:31.6 | Pushkin. |
| 0:44.0 | A warning, this episode will contain a mention of suicide. |
| 0:47.8 | If you're suffering with suicidal thoughts, support is available. For example, from 988 suicide and crisis lifeline in the US, or the Samaritans in the UK. |
| 0:56.6 | In the 1980s, satanic panic ripped through America as listeners to cautionary tales well |
| 1:04.2 | know from our episode demonising Dungeons and Dragons. |
| 1:09.2 | But tabletop role-playing games weren't the only thing spreading alarm. |
| 1:13.6 | So too was rock music. Were musicians slipping in secret messages? Convincing young children |
| 1:22.2 | to take drugs and worship the devil? Messages that could be decoded only if you played the music backwards? |
| 1:32.5 | 20,000 Hertz is a brilliant podcast all about sound, and they've explored the bizarre history |
| 1:40.0 | and science around this rock music hysteria. So I'm going to hand over to them for this episode. |
| 1:48.1 | I want to take you back to Reno, Nevada. I want to take you back to 1985. |
| 2:01.3 | Tragedyneau Nevada. Two young men attempt to take you back to 1985. Tragedy occurs in Reno, Nevada. |
... |
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