They say the Devil’s in the details, but when conspiracies captivate our imaginations, we often overlook the real devils walking among us.
From the creators of the hit podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill comes a new show, Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, which takes you back to the Satanic Panic that gripped America in the 1980s and 90s.
This limited series explores how hysteria gripped parents and teens through cautionary tales like Go Ask Alice, influenced notorious criminal cases like the West Memphis Three, and catapulted the political agenda of the Moral Majority.
Join as we seek to understand how this wave of panic devastated innocent lives and diverted the church’s attention from the evil lurking in its own pews.
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They say the Devil’s in the details, but when conspiracies captivate our imaginations, we often overlook the real devils walking among us.
From the creators of the hit podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill comes a new show, Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, which takes you back to the Satanic Panic that gripped America in the 1980s and 90s.
This limited series explores how hysteria gripped parents and teens through cautionary tales like Go Ask Alice, influenced notorious criminal cases like the West Memphis Three, and catapulted the political agenda of the Moral Majority.
Join as we seek to understand how this wave of panic devastated innocent lives and diverted the church’s attention from the evil lurking in its own pews.
Do you hear what I hear? Backmasking.
From the Beatles to Led Zeppelin, rumors of hidden, subversive messages in popular music sent Christians into a frenzy. Backmasking wasn’t just a recording trick—it was seen as proof that rock musicians weren’t just after album sales but after the very souls of our children. Today, we’re unpacking the hysteria around backmasking, but first let’s explore the conservative resurgence and the world events that set the stage for a full-blown moral panic.
We’ll begin at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, where megachurches mobilized thousands of evangelists to the spiritual frontlines of the world games, then we’ll head south to the buried secrets within the Southern Baptist Convention. At the center of this resurgence were two men with unchecked power—Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson. Their legacy was once seen as the North Star of conservative values but would later be tainted by allegations of abuse and cover-ups that exposed the very evil they claimed to stand against.
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Can’t wait for the next episode? Join host Mike Cosper for a livestream every other Monday on the CT YouTube channel or the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea Facebook page.
Resources:
Matthew D. Taylor, scholar and author, The Violent Take it By Force
Robert Downen, reporter, The Texas Tribune
Sarah Pulliam Bailey, religion reporter
Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a production of Christianity Today
Hosted and written by Mike Cosper
Produced by Rebekah Sebastian, with production assistance by Dawn Adams
Sound Design and Mix Engineer: TJ Hester
Sound Design, Animation, and Video: Steve Scheidler
Graphic Design: Nim Ben Reuven
Music by Dirt Poor Robins
Erik Petrik and Mike Cosper are the executive producers of CT Media Podcasts, and Matt Stevens is our senior producer.
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Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
They say the Devil’s in the details, but when conspiracies captivate our imaginations, we often overlook the real devils walking among us.
From the creators of the hit podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill comes a new show, Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, which takes you back to the Satanic Panic that gripped America in the 1980s and 90s.
This limited series explores how hysteria gripped parents and teens through cautionary tales like Go Ask Alice, influenced notorious criminal cases like the West Memphis Three, and catapulted the political agenda of the Moral Majority.
Join as we seek to understand how this wave of panic devastated innocent lives and diverted the church’s attention from the evil lurking in its own pews.
