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Sarah Marshall

Sarah is a journalist obsessed with the past. Every week she reconsiders a person or event that's been miscast in the public imagination.

You're Wrong About

What do you get when you combine a horror movie audience, a spiritualist séance, and a haunted house attraction? Beginning in the 1930s and lasting into the 1960s, midnight ghost shows were ghoulishly chaotic, wonderfully campy 4D theater performances that accompanied the scary movies of the era, beloved by a mostly-teenage audience who often became a part of the show themselves. Schlocky showman Chelsey Weber-Smith tells Sarah about how magicians-turned-ghostmasters used paranormal parlor tricks, gory skits, and marketing gimmicks to create a new form of vaudevillian dark comedy. As horror obsessives, Sarah and Chelsey muse about what it would have been like to attend one of these late night wacky fright fests that paved the way for the happily trashy theater camaraderie of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Digressions include the resilience of the horseshoe crab, dollar store competition, and plot holes in the movie High Tension (2003).

More Chelsey Weber-Smith:

Listen to American Hysteria

Original music in this episode is produced + performed by Magpie Cinema Club

(except for Harry Belafonte's Zombie Jamboree which is, in fact, from 1962.)

Listen to their cover of Season of the VVitch

Produced + edited by Miranda Zickler

More You're Wrong About:

Bonus Episodes on Patreon
Buy cute merch
YWA on Instagram

Sarah's other show, You Are Good

Support the show

Midnight Ghost Shows with Chelsey Weber-Smith

Are you a survival pessimist or a survival optimist? Blair Braverman surprises Sarah with a harrowing, heartening, and sometimes hilarious tale of love and endurance in the face of certain death, but you’ll have to listen to find out the seemingly impossible circumstances our subjects had to overcome. Digressions include Sarah’s flight simulation skills, David Goggins' morning routine, and the best way to design your character in The Oregon Trail computer game.

More Blair Braverman:

Blair's new picture book, "The Day Leap Soared"

Advice for Sarah from Blair

Blair on Instagram

More of Blair's work

More You're Wrong About:

Bonus Episodes on Patreon
Buy cute merch
YWA on Instagram

Sarah's other show, You Are Good

Support the show

The Auralyn with Blair Braverman

Who really ended the Cold War, Ronald Reagan or a ten-year-old girl? Eighties correspondent Maris Kreizman joins us for a heartfelt conversation about America’s Youngest Ambassador, Samantha Smith, a child who wrote a letter to Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov in hopes of cooling nuclear tensions. Then, Andropov wrote back. Maris and Sarah discuss the burden we place on the youth to “change the world” while simultaneously scolding them for their naivety. Digressions include the millennial urge to cut up plastic soda can rings, Christina Applegate’s SNL infomercial, and an important lesson from the Golden Girls.

More Maris Kreizman:

Buy the book, I Want to Burn This Place Down

Subscribe to the newsletter, The Maris Review

Maris on Bluesky

More You're Wrong About:

Bonus Episodes on Patreon
Buy cute merch
YWA on Instagram

Sarah's other show, You Are Good

Support the show

Samantha Smith vs. the Cold War with Maris Kreizman

What do John Hinckley Jr. and a jazz age tuberculosis patient have in common? Legal correspondent ​​Mackenzie Joy Brennan takes Sarah through some of the strange cases that helped make—and break—the insanity defense in America. Our story includes a woman who carried her (alleged) victims’ bodies around in a suitcase, and the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan—carried out with the intention of impressing a young Jodie Foster.

More Mackenzie Joy Brennan:

http://www.mkzjoybrennan.com

More You're Wrong About:

Bonus Episodes on Patreon
Buy cute merch
YWA on Instagram

Sarah's other show, You Are Good

Support the show

The Insanity Defense with Mackenzie Joy Brennan

Can you find your way out of the maize? The corn maze has become an enduring attraction of the American autumnal experience, seen at touristy family farms next to pumpkin patches and haunted houses. But what are the historical roots of this iconic living puzzle? Sarah guides the eternally-lost Chelsey Weber-Smith through the twists and turns of the corn’s corridors and reveals the hidden architects that walk behind the rows.

More Chelsey Weber-Smith:

www.americanhysteriapodcast.com

Mr. Jeff's Labyrinth Typology Hand Out:

https://www.labyrinthos.net/Labyrinth%20Typology.pdf

The Labyrinthos Labyrinth and Maze Resource Photo Library and Archive:

https://www.labyrinthos.net/index.html

Listen to Magpie Cinema Club:

linktr.ee/magpiecinemaclub

Support You're Wrong About:

Bonus Episodes on Patreon
Buy cute merch

Sarah's other show, You Are Good

Support the show

Corn Mazes with Chelsey Weber-Smith

In the second part of our series, pop culture historian Jamie Loftus takes us through the meteoric rise of Pee-wee Herman and the withering of Paul Reubens' world as dubious allegations surface that threaten to turn a beloved children’s character into a real life villain. Jamie tells us about his struggle to reconcile the character of Pee-wee with the real Paul Reubens, and how his longtime friendships became his sanctuary until the very end. 

Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of explicit materials involving minors 

More about Jamie Loftus:

https://www.jamieloftus.xyz/

Support You're Wrong About:

Bonus Episodes on Patreon
Buy cute merch

Sarah's other show, You Are Good

Support the show

Pee-wee Herman Part 2 with Jamie Loftus

What’s today’s secret word? Paul Reubens spent years bringing to life one of America’s most beloved characters, Pee-wee Herman, an icon of joy for weirdos of all ages. In the first of this two part series, Pee-wee superfan-turned-historian Jamie Loftus lets us into the playhouse for a journey through Paul’s early life and art school days, his collaborations and relationships, and the beginnings of a kind of fame that would blur the line between character and creator.

More about Jamie Loftus:

https://www.jamieloftus.xyz/

Support You're Wrong About:

Bonus Episodes on Patreon
Buy cute merch

Where else to find us:

Sarah's other show, You Are Good

Support the show

Pee-wee Herman Part 1 with Jamie Loftus

What happens when you’re just a little too good at forging the diaries of Adolf Hitler? And why did so many people want to read them? In 1983, the West German news magazine Stern bought sixty volumes of forged journals and held a press conference to announce their publication. This week, Adrian Daub of podcasts In Bed With the Right and The Feminist Present is here to tell us all about what would be the publishing hoax to end all hoaxes…if only the book in question wasn’t so boring. 

More about Adrian Daub:
https://www.adriandaub.com/

More about the Hitler Diaries (German language podcast):

https://www.stern.de/faking-hitler/

Support You're Wrong About:
Bonus Episodes on Patreon
Buy cute merch

Where else to find us:
Sarah's other show, You Are Good

Support the show

The Hitler Diaries with Adrian Daub

Who is out there behind the howling midnight parties in the distance? For generations we have coexisted in varying degrees of rivalry, conflict, and admiration with the North American canine known as the coyote. From pre-colonization to our modern backyards, through the wild west and the streets of San Francisco, award-winning NPR science reporter and YWA Maligned Animal correspondent Lulu Miller takes our pack on a journey toward a better understanding of these resilient creatures.

*EDITOR'S NOTE: Lulu Miller would like to submit a correction to her statement that Ronald Reagan put a band on coyote poison, she actually meant Richard Nixon. Sarah would like to add that he grew up drinking raw milk and at least one of his brothers died of tuberculosis which really makes you think, doesn't it?

Terrestrials // “The Howler: The Dog Who Joined a Coyote Pack”
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab-kids/articles/the-howler-the-dog-who-joined-a-coyote-pack

More about Lulu Miller:
https://radiolab.org/team/lulu-miller

Visit Christine E. Wilkerson's website 
https://scrappynaturalist.com/

Support You're Wrong About:
Bonus Episodes on Patreon
Buy cute merch

Where else to find us:
Sarah's other show, You Are Good

Links:

http://patreon.com/yourewrongabout
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-about
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpod

Support the show

Coyotes! with Lulu Miller

Where did all these teens come from? Harmony Colangelo, co-host of This Ends at Prom, is here to explain how, before Americans got to worry about what teenagers were up to, we first had to decide what they were—and how a boom in postwar educational films taught a generation of adolescents what not to do.

Skipper Learns a Lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8kJzBJrOkU
1950 Family Date: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8kJzBJrOkU

More about Harmony Colangelo:

https://www.instagram.com/veloci_trap_tor

Support You're Wrong About:

Bonus Episodes on Patreon
Buy cute merch

Where else to find us:

Sarah's other show, You Are Good

Links:

http://patreon.com/yourewrongabout
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-about
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpod

Support the show

Support the show

Inventing the Teenager with Harmony Colangelo

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. 

Continue reading →

Support us:
Subscribe on Patreon
Donate on Paypal
Buy cute merch

Where to find us: 
Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads 
Mike's other show, Maintenance Phase

Support the show

Stranger Danger

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