The Preppy Murder

Sarah tells Mike how an aspiring rich kid became an emblem of a world he didn’t belong to. Digressions include drill teams, prep schools and eating disorders. The p-pops are worse than usual.

Plus, an announcement! You can now support us on Patreon!

Links!

•  “A Current Affair” clip from 1988
• “East Side Story,” New York Magazine
• “Preppy Killer’s Girlfriend Gets to Serve Probation, Still Loves Her Man”
• Lisa Birnbaum’s legendary and essential Preppy Handbook from 1980.

 

The “Ebonics” Controversy

Mike tells Sarah how a simple idea in a single school district became a nationwide racial panic. Digressions include slasher movies, Space Invaders and homeschooling. The taglines are becoming more esoteric.

Thanks to our special guests Dionna Latimer-Hearn and Daniel Russell!

• Mike’s video!
• The abstract of Dionna’s Ph.D. dissertation, which won the the AERA Minority Dissertation Fellowship Award!
• The full text of the “Ebonics” resolution
• Transcript of the Congressional hearing
• James Baldwin’s 1979 op-ed, “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?”
• William Labov’s 1972 Atlantic article, “Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence”
• A history of “cultural deficit theory”

 

Terri Schiavo

Mike tells Sarah how the media, the president and the Pope turned a simple medical story into a complicated legal one. Digressions include canine loyalty, unionized space-workers and polyamory logistics. Both co-hosts recorded in tiny rooms, but with very different acoustics.

Links!

• The Joan Didion essay in the New York Review of Books (we love her but this gets a lot of things wrong!)
• “Suppose the Schindlers Had Won the Schiavo Case”
• The first independent investigator’s report, from 1998
• The second independent investigator’s report, from 2003
• “Schiavo And Its (In)Significance”
• “Terri Schiavo — A Tragedy Compounded”
• Nice Newsweek tick-tock written just before Schiavo’s death

Anna Nicole Smith

Sarah tells Mike how a poor Texas girl made herself into an icon and America made her into a punchline. Digressions include massage technique, “Death Becomes Her” and (obviously) “The Godfather.” Mike sounds even sicker than he did last week.

Plus, special thanks to Ian at Marfa Public Radio, who helped Sarah record this episode!

Links!

• Sarah’s 2017 Buzzfeed essay
• Anna’s 1993 Playboy video centerfold
• Mimi Swartz’s wonderful Texas Monthly profile of Anna Nicole and J. Howard
• Dan P. Lee’s New York Magazine essay on Anna Nicole’s legal and personal woes
• Skip Hollandsworth’s 1993 article on early Anna
• Pamela Colloff’s 2002 profile of Rusty Hardin

 

 

 

 

Acid Rain

Mike tells Sarah how an environmental problem became a national rallying cry, a sticky diplomatic issue and, eventually, a conspiracy theory. Digressions include “Alien,” Field & Stream and NRA public service announcements. Both hosts are recovering from colds and at least one spends the episode under a blanket. 

Links!

• The EPA report on the costs and benefits of the Clean Air Act
• “Sour Showers: Acid Rain Returns–This Time It Is Caused by Nitrogen Emissions”
• “The Organisation of Denial: Conservative Think Tanks and Environmental Skepticism”
• “Is Acid Rain a Thing of the Past?”
• “How Cold War Politics Helped Solve a Climate Crisis”

 

Gary Hart

Sarah tells Mike how a dubious affair distracted from the real scandal of the 1988 election. Digressions include “Good Will Hunting,” People Magazine and Linda Ronstadt. Michael Dukakis is described, for the first time ever, as “the soulmate who was there all along.”

Links!

• “Was Gary Hart Set Up?”
• “The Road to Bimini,” Gail Sheehy, Vanity Fair, 1987
• “The Selling Out of Donna Rice” –Excerpt from Inside People
• “Why is Lee Atwater So Hungry?” David Remnick, Esquire, 1986
• The infamous tank ad
• “Talking Trash with Mike Dukakis,” Boston Magazine, Garrett Quinn 
• Excerpt from Bad Boy: The Life and Politics of Lee Atwater, by John Brady
• Bob Herbert on the Southern Strategy 

Corrections!

• Lynn Armandt sold the pictures to the National Enquirer, not People. Sorry!

Tammy Faye Bakker and Jessica Hahn

“She only said one thing her whole life”: Sarah tells Mike how two decent women became scapegoats for the actions of one terrible man. Digressions include Larry Flynt, NPR tote bags and Playboy back issues. The co-hosts discover they have wildly different relationships with “Saturday Night Live.”

 

Enron

Mike tells Sarah how a “bad apples” explanation kept us from seeing the real scandal at the heart of America’s largest corporate bankruptcy. Digressions include “Casino,” Thanksgiving economics and corruption catchphrases. Neither co-host truly understands how the stock market works.  

Links!

• The hilarious Houston Chronicle article full of red flags
• The 2001 article that started Enron’s downfall
• A detailed breakdown of Enron’s accounting shenanigans
• “Understanding Enron: It’s About the Gatekeepers, Stupid”

The Challenger Disaster

It wasn’t an accident. Mike tells Sarah how the infamous space shuttle disaster came to be seen as a white-collar crime. Digressions include the Donner Party, George Lucas and “Jurassic Park.” Both co-hosts are audibly recovering from colds. 

Links!

• The Rogers Commission Report
• The House of Representatives Report
• A wonderful Popular Mechanics oral history of the Rogers Commission
• Diane Vaughan’s 1997 article on “the normalization of deviance”
• Fascinating clips of Feynman talking about the accident and its organizational causes
• Feynman’s appendix

 

“A Dingo’s Got My Baby”

Sarah tells Mike how a tragic story became a hacky catchphrase. Digressions include raccoon anarchists, flu remedies and late-night Arby’s. Sarah’s Google alerts will surprise none of our listeners.

Links!

• The clip from “Seinfeld” 
• Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton’s website
• The Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton collection at the National Museum
• of Australia
• Trial and investigation resources
• “Dear Lindy”
• The Australian Supreme Court decision quashing the Chamberlains’ convictions
• The 2012 inquest that confirmed Lindy’s story

 

The 2000 Election

Mike tells Sarah how a close election and an even closer Supreme Court decision established the political template we’re still living with today. Digressions include quarks, Ouija Boards and (sorry) moral philosophy. The “lemonade theory” turns out to be less fun than it sounds.

Links!

• The Supreme Court decision
• Ronald Dworkin’s election wrap-up for the New York Review of Books
• A long and suspenseful Vanity Fair tick-tock
• Executive summary of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission Report
• A nice writeup of the lemonade theory and why we only got lemons

 

Amy Fisher

Sarah tells Mike about the sad reality — and the terrible man — behind the infamous Long Island Lolita. Digressions include software terms of service, the rise of beepers and Monica Lewinsky’s LinkedIn profile. Mike, a 36-year-old man, appears not to understand what pimps do. 

Links!

• The “In Living Color” sketch featuring caricatures of Joey and Amy

• The People Magazine article “Treachery in the Suburbs” 

• Pier Dominguez’s lovely BuzzFeed essay on Amy

• Clip from “Casualties of Love” aka “L’Affaire Amy Fisher”

• Betsy Israel interviews Amy in prison in 1996

• Joey Buttafuoco on Judge Jeanine Pirro

 

Good World

I had some free time over the holiday weekend, so I adapted a John Haskell short story that has been making me cry since 2004.

Here’s the audio:

 

Here’s John’s book, which is wonderful.

And here’s a video I made based on another one of his stories.

 

Roe v. Wade

Special guest Megan Burbank tells us about the history, limitations and loopholes of a landmark court ruling. Digressions include Betty Ford, “Maude” and naming conventions for anonymous defendants. The glories of Washington State politics are examined in depth.

Links!

• Megan is on Twitter and the internet
• The article that resulted from Megan’s trips to all those pregnancy crisis centers
• Megan’s Seattle Times coverage of abortion, adult ballet and Seattle rain
• Megan in Teen Vogue talking about states’ diverging abortion restrictions
• A look back at “Maude’s Dilemma”

 

The Duke Lacrosse Rape Case

Mike tells Sarah how a false rape allegation became a right-wing rallying cry and a left-wing conspiracy theory. Digressions include JonBenet Ramsay, “24” and “The Vagina Monologues.” Mike regrets not commenting on the metaphorical significance of being trapped in the closet throughout the episode.

Links!

• The North Carolina Attorney General’s summary report
• A 2007 American Journalism Review article on the media’s role
• Durham in Wonderland, the excruciatingly detailed blog that chronicled the case in real time
• The credulous New York Times story from August 2006
• An interesting law review article on the case from 2007
• A typology of false rape allegations
• A scathing review of William D. Cohan’s terrible book

 

 

Lorena Bobbitt

Sarah tells Mike how a case of marital rape and spontaneous mutilation became a national punchline. Digressions include Ron Jeremy, Alan Dershowitz, Motörhead and the tortures of self-reflection. Sarah reviews John Wayne Bobbitt’s later works.

Links! 

• Lili Anolik’s Vanity Fair retrospective 
• A clip from “John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut”
• “His Wife Seized His Prize and Cut It to Size”: Folk and Popular Commentary on Lorena Bobbitt
• CNN coverage of Lorena Bobbitt’s trial
• John Wayne Bobbitt on Howard Stern’s New Years Rotten Eve Pageant 1994

 

Stranger Danger

How inflated statistics, cultural anxieties and moral crusaders turned a tiny number of missing children into a decade-long political project. Digressions include 1870s parenting, “E.T.” and the lack of parks in Los Angeles. Both co-hosts secretly believe that the popularity of TV movies in the 1980s explains all of America’s social problems.   

Links!

• Podcast Patron Saint Joel Best’s terrific 1988 article debunking the “missing children” statistics
• “The Enterprise of Child Safety in the Age of Reagan”: Another great article on how missing children became a right-wing political crusade
• A lovely rumination on the disappearance of Etan Patz and what it meant for kids in New York City
• A 2009 New York Magazine feature on the suspect in the Etan Patz murder
• 1977 article on the “discovery” of child abuse
• Spin Doctors and Moral Crusaders: The Moral Panic behind Child Safety Legislation
• The long, weird and winding podcast series on the disappearance of Adam Walsh
• Terrific analysis of the “children as prey” trope
• Philip Jenkins’ Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America
• The Maryland parents who came under police suspicion for letting their children go to the park

 

 

Urban Legends Spectacular!

Razorblades in apples, babysitters on acid, killers in backseats and “rainbow parties”: In this episode, Mike and Sarah investigate the scary stories Americans tell each other and discover the actual anxieties behind them. Turn on your high beams for this one. 

Links!

• “The Razor Blade in the Apple: The Social Construction of Urban Legends”
• Miriam Forman-Brunell’s awesome book on babysitters
• Snopes’ debunking of the “killer in the backseat” myth
• The terrible 2005 New York Times article asking whether “rainbow parties” are real
• Caitlin Flanagan’s 2006 “streetwalker” opus in the Atlantic

Corrections!

The first two times Sarah mentions Miriam Forman-Brunell’s book, she calls her “Miriam Forman-Brunelli.” Sorry!

Halloween Special! Ed Gein and Slasher Movies

Sarah tells Mike how Ed Gein became one of America’s most famous serial killers despite not actually being one. Plus, the cinematic villains Gein inspired and what the slasher movies of the 1980s were really about. Digressions include Freud, summer camp logistics and the T-1000. Mike continues to awkwardly insert his teenage crushes into every conversation.

Shaken Baby Syndrome

Mike tells Sarah how an over-simplified diagnosis, over-confident doctors and over-zealous prosecutors got thousands of innocent parents thrown in prison. Digressions include food poisoning, Sherlock Holmes and 1950s medical ethics. Mike wanted to mention Louise Woodward but he forgot. 

Links!

• The 1962 paper proposing the existence of abused children
• The original 1971 article that invented shaken baby syndrome
• And the later debunking by the same doctor
• 2011 New York Times Magazine article about Trudy Munoz Rueda
• A long and glorious scientific dismantling of the shaken baby syndrome hypothesis
• Another scientific review finding insufficient evidence
• Jeffrey Havard and the unlicensed medical examiner