Podcast Summary: The Dream – "Satanic Panic!"

Host: Jane Marie
Guest: Sarah Marshall (host of "The Devil You Know", co-host of "You're Wrong About")
Date: October 31, 2025

Overview: Main Theme & Purpose

In this Halloween episode, Jane Marie welcomes author and podcaster Sarah Marshall to dive deeply into the phenomenon of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s. Marshall’s new series, "The Devil You Know," explores the spread of this collective hysteria through individual stories and personal experiences. Together, they examine how the Satanic Panic arose, its cultural drivers, the real-world harm it caused, and its echoes in today’s moral panics. The conversation intertwines pop culture, psychology, and social commentary to unpack America’s periodic obsessions with evil, the occult, and the people (often women) caught in the crossfire.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Was the Satanic Panic?

• Personal & Cultural Memories:
  • Jane Marie recalls being a child "sneaking episodes of the Phil Donahue show," underlining how mainstream and urgent the panic felt at the time. [03:57]
  • Discussions reflect on the era's media landscape—daytime talk shows like Oprah, Donahue, and Geraldo—all capitalizing on and amplifying panic around supposed Satanic ritual abuse.
• The Book That Ignited It:
  • "Michelle Remembers" (1980) is identified as the core text that delivered Satanic Panic into public discourse, blending fabricated therapy sessions with recovered memory tropes.
  • Quote: “It was marketed as nonfiction … told as a real story, a real story about this woman who went into therapy and ... realized that her mother had given her to a satanic cult.” – Sarah Marshall [08:14]
  • The book’s influence extended to police officers, social workers, and entire communities—especially the authors’ hometown of Victoria, BC.

2. Media Hysteria and Daytime TV

• TV was instrumental in publicizing and legitimizing the panic, with wild stories boosting ratings.
  • Quote: “What could be better in terms of ratings… than the Satanic panic as a topic?” – Sarah Marshall [04:39]
• Jane reminisces about how even mundane TV details (like Donahue’s extended theme) formed part of the cultural memory. [05:03]
• The media’s role in transforming unproven allegations into "hard news."

3. Therapy, Recovered Memory, and Power

• Explores how questionable therapeutic techniques (often hypnosis or suggestion) produced “memories” of Satanic abuse, leading to real-world investigations and personal tragedy.
• The therapist-patient relationship at the heart of "Michelle Remembers" is called out for unethical boundaries and “moral laundering”:
  • Quote: “You can kind of have an affair with whoever you want as long as you’re protecting mankind from Satan.” – Sarah Marshall [12:08]
• Narrative Control: Therapists, often men, dismiss the ordinary suffering of women and instead propose sensational, supernatural explanations.
  • Quote: “I have an idea of what my issues are and I want to talk about them. And therapists [are] like, no, you don’t. I’m deciding what we’re talking about, and I’m going to destroy your life.” – Sarah Marshall [26:41]

4. Investigations, Child Testimony, and Lack of Evidence

• No actual physical evidence or missing children ever materialized, yet authorities pressed on, convinced by stories extracted from children through leading and coercive questioning.
  • “If you think you know what the child is going to say, you can pretty much get them to say it…” – Sarah Marshall [18:34]
  • Playful or disturbing statements from kids (e.g., peanut butter in rituals) were interpreted as proof of massive criminal conspiracies. [21:26]
• The infamous McMartin preschool trial and other cases demonstrate how hysteria spread via faulty interviews and the lack of forensic best practices.

5. Pushback, Skepticism, and Persistent Belief

• Early skeptics like journalist Debbie Nathan and FBI’s Ken Lanning found zero evidence for alleged conspiracies, but were accused of being themselves in league with Satanists.
  • Quote: “…By the time he issued a report stating this, things have become so heated that true believers in the Satanic panic ... just turned around and accused him of being in cahoots with the Satanists …” – Sarah Marshall [30:34]
• The logic of the panic required ever-larger conspiracies to explain the total lack of proof:
  • “You kind of have to believe in Satan more than almost any Satanist ever could to make the theory work.” – Sarah Marshall [28:46]

6. What Did It Mean? Why Was It So Powerful?

• The panic was, at heart, a way to avoid confronting the prevalence of actual abuse, especially in the family; blaming Satan was a cultural cop-out.
  • “What you can boil it down to is this extremely sustained, increasingly ridiculous effort to avoid the point... that child abuse is actually pretty rampant.” – Sarah Marshall [31:23]
• It also enforced existing gender and sexual norms, and preserved power structures:
  • “If you want to pillage ... you can accuse [others] of being in league with Satan and then you can kill whoever you want…” – Sarah Marshall [34:01]

7. Modern Resonance and Marshall’s Reflections

• Marshall expresses both satisfaction and fatigue after reporting the series, noting the uncanny parallels with contemporary conspiratorial thinking and moral panics:
  • Quote: “I really want to stop it from happening so much again, because ... I can’t take on Satan.” – Sarah Marshall [33:49]
• The cycle of blaming the “other” using Satanic imagery is embedded deeply in North American (and colonial) history.
• Listening to firsthand experiences made the phenomenon feel less like distant history and more like a lived and recurring social dynamic.
  • “It was just daily life and everyone is just trying to figure out how to survive within that.” – Sarah Marshall [35:37]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “That was hard news at the time.” – Sarah Marshall on Donahue and panic TV [04:07]
• “It’s a hard city to hide Satanists in.” – Sarah Marshall on Victoria, BC [13:33]
• “Satan kind of allows you to commit murder and call it good.” – Sarah Marshall [34:09]
• “Where are the babies coming from? ... How is Satan able to not leave a shred of physical evidence?” – Sarah Marshall [27:51]
• “You can’t trust the FBI now.” – Sarah Marshall on the shifting targets of conspiracy theorists [30:44]

Important Timestamps

• 02:01 – Introduction to episode theme and guest, Sarah Marshall.
• 02:25 – Sarah Marshall describes her new podcast and long-term fascination with the Satanic Panic.
• 04:09 – Daytime TV’s central role in spreading moral panics.
• 08:14 – The story and agenda behind "Michelle Remembers."
• 12:08 – Affair, moral panic, and promoting the book.
• 18:34 – Problems with child testimony and forensic interviewing.
• 21:26 – Bizarre “evidence” and the problem of suggestibility.
• 26:41 – Therapy, multiple personality disorder, and the exploitation of women by therapists.
• 30:34 – Early skepticism and the impossibility of disproving a conspiracy to believers.
• 33:49 – Marshall’s reflections on history repeating itself.

Tone & Style

The conversation is candid, sharp-witted, and analytic, moving effortlessly between pop culture references, academic analysis, and personal storytelling. Both Jane Marie and Sarah Marshall retain a sense of dark humor and skepticism throughout, using irony and lived examples to both humanize victims and skewer the architects of the panic.

For Listeners New to the Topic

This episode provides an accessible yet thorough historical overview of the Satanic Panic, connecting 1980s tabloid TV and psychoanalysis to longstanding patterns of social scapegoating and contemporary conspiracy culture. It’s equally valuable as a primer, an investigation, and a reflection on the power of mass belief—and the real people it can harm.