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Rating

4.7

from

589 reviews

Description

In the 1980s and 90s, Satan and his followers were accused of brainwashing children, sacrificing babies, and infiltrating North American society on a massive scale — yet these thousands of alleged Satanists were nowhere to be found. Even so, the narrative became embedded in our cultural memory, warping everything it touched — including the lives of innocent people.. And it never quite died out. In a new 8-part series, Sarah Marshall (You’re Wrong About) explores the tangled web of the Satanic Panic, in a journey that will take you everywhere from Victoria, B.C. to rural Kentucky to San Antonio, Texas. This is a show about the people who experienced the Satanic Panic in real-time — the believers, the skeptics, the bystanders, and the wrongfully-convicted. What was it like to be a psychologist told to look for Satanists in every case; a mother slowly recovering memories of supposed Satanic abuse; a teenager accused of conspiracy to murder? The stories of these eyewitnesses point us toward the real underlying problems — individual and societal — that the Panic was a response to. The fault, as ever, was not with Satanists, but in ourselves.

Podcast episodes

Check latest episodes from The Devil You Know with Sarah Marshall podcast

Episode 1: Did Swayze Start the Fire?

2025/10/20

In 1988, a young arts educator drove into a small town in Kentucky with a camera and a directive to teach photography to school kids. But she never got a chance. Instead, a full blown hysteria connecting her presence with other dark rumours swirling around about widespread ritual child sacrifice prompted a mad dash escape for her life. The truth behind the drama? Well, it involves Patrick Swayze and an environment where cops, social workers, teachers, parents and reporters were being primed to see Satanic crime everywhere. Can't wait for more episodes? Binge the entire series early on our YouTube channel and on our Apple True Crime channel ad-free for subscribers.

Episode 2: Marylyn Remembers

2025/10/27

Michelle Remembers is the 1980 “biographical” book that brought the idea of Satanic cults into the mainstream. In it, Michelle Smith documents years of alleged Satanic ritual abuse and the man who helped her remember it, psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder. We talk to those who thought they knew Michelle and Larry best: their families. They tell us what it was like to witness the birth of the Satanic Panic from the most intimate vantage point — and how it shattered their lives.

Episode 3: Moral (Panic) Entrepreneurship

2025/11/03

Mary de Young had always been interested in deviants and deviance. As a social-psychologist, she studied “behavior that broke the rules,” and whether the worst parts of a person’s behavior were innate, nurtured, or misunderstood. So when news broke in 1983 about a “new” form of child abuse that she had never heard of before, she was — as a researcher — intrigued, and — as a person — horrified. But as she began to investigate the cases, the details didn’t add up.

Episode 4: Bad Times, Good TV

2025/11/10

How did the Satanic Panic take hold? Whitney Phillips, a professor of journalism at the University of Oregon, guides us through the labyrinth of media and motifs that laid the groundwork for the Satanic Panic in politics and pop culture… and laid down the roots of our current day political landscape.

Episode 5: The Devil in Delaney

2025/11/17

As women increasingly spoke out about the abuse they suffered under the patriarchy, many still struggled to be heard. And the new field of recovered memory therapy became a vehicle for both legitimizing women's trauma and exploiting it. Delaney is a housewife and mother of three, living in Manitoba in the 1980s. A survivor of childhood sexual abuse, she seeks out counselors and psychiatrists and then… she begins to remember. Years later, her son Matt describes growing up during the Satanic Panic, with a mother trying to work through her trauma. We hear from Delaney herself through a biographical manuscript she wrote before she died, exploring her experiences of childhood abuse, her eventual belief that Satanists were involved, and how she came to terms with all of it.

Episode 6: I’m Just a Teenage Cultist, Baby

2025/11/24

How does a victim of a school shooting become accused of masterminding the whole thing in the name of Satan? When Justin Sledge was 17, a friend of his opened fire at their high school, killing two people and wounding seven others. It was one of the first modern-day school shootings, even before Columbine. Over the next few weeks, their once tight-knit town is embroiled in fear and rumors as people search for a reason for the tragedy — eventually landing on a cult of devil worshippers. Justin finds himself at the center of these rumors, leading to him also being arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Check out Justin's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel

Episode 7: Four Lesbians and a Baby

2025/12/01

Though it sounded like a wholesome sitcom premise — four lesbian housemates raise a baby in San Antonio — reality proved anything but. Instead, Liz, Anna, Cassie, and Kristy found themselves caught in a nightmare of a crime drama after being accused of Satanic abuse. They face all the twists and turns of court proceedings, junk science, Satanic allegations, and wrongful convictions — for 22 years.

Episode 8: Where Are We Now?

2025/12/08

Now that we know where we’ve been, where are we going? As the Satanic Panic receded from view, we almost forgot it had happened at all – until it came back. How do today’s moral panics compare to the one we just learned about? And what can we learn from the tragedy at Jonestown?

A second helping from Satan: A closer look at Michelle Remembers

2025/10/30

Canadian director Sean Horlor’s film, Satan Wants You (2023), is a deep dive into the book "Michelle Remembers.” In this bonus episode, he talks to Sarah about the process of making that film and what it was like growing up in Victoria at its so-called satanic heyday.

A second helping from Satan: Arab Spring, Satanic Summer

2025/11/13

In this bonus episode, we look at some impacts of satanic hysteria outside of North America. We hear from Cherine Amr, the founder of the Egyptian metal band Massive Scar Era, who was accused of being possessed by the devil himself in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Producer Mary Steffenhagen speaks with academic Pasqualina Eckerström for a deeper look at heavy metal’s connection with satanism.

A second helping from Satan: SATANISM 101

2025/11/27

Dr. Justin Sledge (who you heard from in Episode 6) is a professor of philosophy and religion. in this bonus episode, we learn how his own experience as a teenager implicated in an alleged satanic plot led to an academic career studying esoterica and the occult.

A second helping from Satan: Satanic Injustice

2025/12/04

How did the U.S. legal system allow the Satanic Panic to proliferate as rapidly as it did? In this bonus episode, Sarah chats with journalist Josie Duffy Rice (Justice In America, The Appeal) who has written extensively about prisons, prosecutors and criminal justice.

A second helping from Satan: Elizabeth Knapp’s Possession

2025/12/11

We travel back in time to 1670s Massachusetts to review the famous case of the so-called Satanic possession of 16-year-old Elizabeth Knapp — which took place twenty years before the Salem Witch Trials. In this bonus episode, Sarah and producer Carolyn Kendrick talk to professor Elisabeth Ceppi to find out more about possession in Puritan America.

Yet another helping from Satan: The Devil’s storytellers

2025/12/12

In this bonus episode, Sarah talks to Professor Bill Ellis who specializes in folklore and urban legends, and they chat about the innate human behaviours that lead us to create panics in the first place.

One more helping, for good measure: Satan (Taylor’s Version)

2025/12/13

In this bonus episode, Sarah talks to Yvonne Eadon, a professor at the University of Kentucky who specializes in conspiracy theory and online misinformation, about GAYLOR — the online fan theory that claims Taylor Swift is a closeted queer woman.

Read The Devil You Know with Sarah Marshall podcast reviews

4.7 out of 5

589 reviews

Lōg44 2026/02/02

Good stuff

I could listen to Sarah Marshall do a podcast about paint drying and love every second of it. She simply does not miss.

Pantene Minus 2026/01/21

The Podcast You Need

Everyone knows that Sarah Marshall is the best. The CBC is also very good.

Anon9421 2026/01/28

Great Podcast But…

An incredible podcast about the Satanic Panic as politics and folklore! Kind if irresponsible to have a scholar who is clearly herself a “Gaylor” on a...

LaraD78 2026/01/20

I love listening to Sarah

More investigative and informative series from Sarah Marshall, please!

ProfTGW 2026/01/17

Fantastic

Sarah Marshall is such a talented writer and a keen observer. I love the depth in which the topic is explored. The final episode took my breath away w...

Zydr8anatomy 2026/01/18

A spellbinding history lesson

As a 90s kid, I knew about the satanic panic, but wasn’t old enough to remember details. As an adult I’ve read a lot about it and this is certainly on...

bradleybannon 2025/12/31

Everything Old (Scratch) Is New Again

Sarah does a great job talking about the OG satanic panic but also drawing the through line straight up to today.

hwpw 2026/01/13

Classic Sarah Marshall

Some moments of real insight, but mostly retreads of her past work/takes threaded through with very myopic millennial-centric perspectives that imagin...

FletchVV 2026/01/07

Excellent until…

Great podcasting work until it stops being about the Satanic Panic entirely by the last few episodes. I don’t entirely agree with her but I don’t d...

ozzie price 2026/01/07

Just report the facts

More liberal trash when it comes to trying to relate history to our current political context. Don’t waste your time with this one

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