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Culture Study Podcast

Tracing Cultural Panics with Sarah Marshall (!!!)

Culture Study Podcast

Culture Study Podcast

Arts, Society & Culture

4.5789 Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What is it about a particular cultural object — or trend, or perceived trend — that makes people FREAK THE F OUT? Anyone who's looked at historical freakouts knows: it's never really about the thing itself, but more about ideologies that are under threat and in flux. If you challenge the status quo, in other words, there's a high likelihood that you could get swept up in a panic about something that has nothing to do with the way in which you're actually challenging the status quo.The best person to talk about these sort of freak-outs is Sarah Marshall, beloved host of You're Wrong About and current host of a new CBC limited series on the satanic panic called The Devil You Know. In this episode, Sarah brings her trademark empathy to your smart questions about freak-outs old and new (yes, we talk about kids & screens, but not for the entire episode). This episode was an utter delight to record and I can only hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. If you're a paid subscriber and haven't yet set up your subscriber RSS feed in your podcast player, here's the EXTREMELY easy how-to .And if you're having any other issues with your Patreon subscription — please get in touch! Email me at annehelenpetersen @ gmail OR submit a request to Patreon Support. Thank you for making the switch with us — the podcast in particular is much more at home here!Side Note: We're experimenting with producing our own (very imperfect) transcripts. You can find it here.If there's enough demand, we might consider putting in the not insignificant labor to make these super readable — but for now, they're a backup to the podcast, not a replacement for it. Thanks to the sponsors of today’s episode!Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://trymiracle.com/CULTURE and use the code CULTURE to claim your free 3-piece towel set and save over 40% OFF.Get 15% off OneSkin with the code CULTURE at https://www.oneskin.co/CULTURE Go to shopbeam.com/CULTURE, use code CULTURE, and get up to 50% off during Beam’s Cyber SaleVisit AuraFrames.com and get $45 off Aura’s best-selling Carver Mat frames - named #1 by Wirecutter -  by using promo code CULTURE at checkoutShow Notes:Listen to THE DEVIL YOU KNOW on CBC or wherever you get your podcasts! More about Sarah's work hereListen to You're Wrong About here If you missed the episode we did on conspiracy theories last year, it's a great companion to this oneWe're currently looking for your questions for future episodes about: WEIRD ENGLISH WORDS (where do they come from!) with Colin Gorrie, who writes explainers like this one on the word DOGQuestions About How to Respond When People Ask/React To the Knowledge That You're Not Having Kids How Did Everyone Low-Key Become an Influencer? AKA How do you see influencer posting logic creeping into non-influencer accountsThe Wild Largely Unregulated World of IVF Audiobooks!!! (with MVP audiobook narrator Julia Whelan) Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segmentAs always, you can submit your questions (and ideas for future eps) hereFor this week’s discussion: I'd love to hear your alternate reads on what caused any of the cultural panics we discussed in the show.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, everyone. So before today's episode, I just wanted to give you a quick heads up that today's

0:04.8

episode, because it's about cultural and moral panics, it does involve some discussion of some

0:10.8

disturbing things, including the sexual abuse of children. We just want to put that out there at the

0:15.7

beginning of the episode.

0:26.9

This is the Culture Study podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.

0:31.6

I'm Sarah Marshall, and I am the host and creator of The Devil You Know.

0:34.2

First of all, I'm so happy you're here.

0:37.0

It's so nice to see you, and I'm so excited about the new show.

0:51.0

I'm so happy to be here. It's so nice to see you. And I'm so excited about the new show. I'm so happy to be here. I feel, I felt like a special sense of kinship with you ever since I had you when you're wrong about a couple years ago when we talked about how horrible email is. That felt incredibly cathartic and it still does.

0:58.5

Well, and when I asked for questions for this show, I can't tell you how many people were,

1:02.5

first of all, just super excited and just basically wrote a question that was like,

1:04.3

I don't have a question, I'm just excited.

1:05.9

That's so exciting. I already feel like Chris Farley in the S&L sketch that was a parody of the Share,

1:10.6

Hair, Care Infomercials in the early 90L sketch that was a parody of the share hair care infomercials

1:11.9

in the early 90s where she's like, Lori Davis is like, I'm getting letters from so many women

1:18.5

and they're all excited in how that was just, I don't know, I find it, I can go to sleep to that

1:24.5

thing. It's just so comforting. And then others, as we'll talk about,

1:30.5

that are like, okay, well, here let me reference all of these different places where Sarah has talked

1:34.9

about, like, moral panics to try to ask a question. So like, there are people who are very, very deep in the

1:41.2

universe. I think that if there's one thing my career is proof of, it's that you can become erroneously seen as an expert in something by simply talking about it for seven years straight. Because, like, I'm not an expert in the Satanic Panic. I've read about it a lot. I have two shelves of books on it, you know, which is a lot, you know, and a lot of them

2:02.2

were out of print and I had to order them. So I put time into it. But like, I feel very humbled and

2:08.0

appreciative and lucky about how much people want to hear what I have to say about the satanic panic

...

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