Strange Country
Welcome to Strange Country, a podcast devoted to bizarre, surreal and extraordinary stories that make America the weird place it is. Co-hosts Kelly and Beth are former newspaper reporters turned school librarians who have always had a soft spot for a good story--the stranger the better. Discover the first woman to survive a barrel ride over Niagara Falls and the man who invented “complex marriage” in one of the most successful utopian experiments. Things get weird pretty quickly around here.
Episodes
Charles Lindbergh wasn’t only known for that flight, his weird reverence for Nazis and being the public face of America First, he was also interested in literal immortality. In the 1930s, he collaborated with Dr. Alexis Carrel to devise ways to regenerate organs so people could possibly live forever, but not just any people. It’s the 1930s and these two white guys are mainly interested in elongating the lives of other white western...
Dear Dash Hounds, join Beth and Kelly as we try to pull the curtain open on the Wonderful Wizard of credit scores. Do you know your credit score? Do you care? Has it ruined your life? We talk about many things on Strange Country from periods to sex to murder and now, the most secretive of things–money. ‘Mericans don’t talk openly about their money issues, and surprise! That is not good practice. We are stressed and worried and in d...
The mid-20th century was the heyday of figuring out why humans were the worst through the use of social psychological experiments. Strange Country cohosts Beth and Kelly talk about one such experiment, Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers Cave Experiment where Sherif gathered a group of 12 year old boys to see if he could pit the boys against one another. Sherif’s experiment is included in Psych 101 books about group dynamics, but did this hos...
Hey Dash Hounds, are you still there? Beth and Kelly are. Or are we? Has ChatGPT taken over? Can it? We are just women after all. What is our worth? In this episode, we will talk about women’s worth and Emma Goldman, a woman who fought for many things and has been forgotten like so many others. But Strange Country is doing its best to keep women’s work alive before AI eats us up? Thanks always for listening.
Happy 2024! And Beth and Kelly are back with another tale of another cult on another year of Strange Country. What’s to say? It starts off with plans for communal living and burns out in abuse, financial malfeasance and weird sex awfulness.
Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands.
You’ve heard of six-minute abs, but how about the 15-minute orgasm? That’s what Nicole Daedone of OneTaste was touting; female empowerment through clitoris stimulation. Then like most high-demand groups, things go south pretty quickly. In this Strange Country episode, co hosts Beth and very uncomfortable Kelly talk about the rise and fall of OneTaste.
Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands.
Henry Darger is one of the most profitable outsider artists out there. Unfortunately he didn’t reap the benefit of that while he was alive, spending much of it in abject poverty. He was compelled to make and write art during the time he was not working as a janitor or dishwasher. His artwork dealt with themes of child abuse and violence, subjects very familiar with Darger when he was put in an asylum at the age of 12. Strange Count...
Welcome dash hounds to an old episode from the pre-covid days when men could be rich men and spend the weekend urinating on trees and ruminating on how they could make life miserable for the rest of us. Strange Country will be back soon with a brand spanking new episode.
Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands.
Sources:
We’re sure you’ve heard of the Nobel Prize although it’s hard to make the case Beth has since she mispronounces it quite a bit in this episode. But have you heard of Nobel Disease? It’s when people are labeled geniuses and go on to embrace some whackadoodle pseudoscience. In today’s Strange Country episode, Beth and Kelly discuss Kary Mullis, the only Nobel winner to be referred to as “generally barking mad.” He discovered the poly...
Welcome to a blast from the past. This is a re-release of ep. 59 The Osage Murders, repackaged as Killers of the Flower Moon to coincide with the new film by Martin Scorsese. Thanks for all your support, dash hounds. We’ll be back with a new episode soon.
Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands
Cite your sources:
http://usdakotawar.org/history/newcomers-us-government-milita...
Hey DashHounds, if you were listening last episode, we mentioned the true story of Candyman. This may be the very first time Beth and Kelly said “we should look into that” and actually did! Find out how haunting life was in Chicago in the 1980s if you lived in Cabrini Green housing. It is scary to think how people lived and even scarier to hear about how they died. Thanks always for your support and listening; it is an act of love.
...Halloween is the time of year of ghouls, goblins and moral panic about candy. Could some neighbor be handing out candy full of pins? Or even worse, plain boxes of raisins? Where did this all come from? Strange Country cohosts Beth and Kelly talk about the origin of poisoned candy, stemming from one father who poisoned his own kid to collect insurance money.
Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands
Cite your sources:
In the 1980s, whilst the media stirred up frenzies over Satanists in our midst or a nuclear bomb landing in Washington, a reporter made a documentary adding vaccines to the growing list of dangers. Vaccine Roulette claimed the pertussis vaccine caused brain damage in kids, which led to a drop in immunizations, a rise in whooping cough, and a near-end to the production of vaccines. On Strange Country, cohosts Beth and Kelly talk abo...
Mabel Norris Reese shone a light on racism and injustice in Lake County Fla. in the 1950s and 60s before the racist element drove the newspaper editor out of town. Strange Country cohosts and former reporters Beth and Kelly talk about this intrepid journalist and wish that Bugs Bunny gif of him sawing off Florida could somehow come true.
Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands
Cite your sources:
We are requiring all readers of Strange Country and their partners, families and friends and everyone else to watch the Barbie movie. That way you can fully enjoy Kelly and Beth’s homage to Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie. Learn details about the woman who, really, all of us should have studied in school as an example of an entrepreneur. Women have it tough, people. That’s it. Listen with love and let’s keep holding each other ...
If your site is like a video game health regenerator for the Ku Klux Klan, that might be a sign your site needs a facelift. Yet Stone Mountain, Ga., continues to exist as the the largest Confederate monument in the world. Strange Country cohosts Beth and Kelly discuss this paean to traitors and how the United Daughters of the Confederacy united to f*** up history so that we’re still discussing whether we should keep up Confederate ...
Maybe this got lost in the shuffle for you, dear readers, like it did for Beth who completely spaced about this, but in the weeks after 9/11, opening the mail was a terrifying act. That’s because someone was sending anthrax letters to the media and politicians. Five people died and another 17 were sickened in these attacks. It took eight years for the FBI to find their suspect, and even now some questioned whether or not they got t...
Join us this week on Strange Country as we go way back in time to the 1600s when life was grand, and if you lived to be a 50-year-old woman, you should just STFU. Because if you did decide to speak truth of any sort you would likely be accused of witchcraft. That’s what happened to Goody Garlick of Easthampton (originally one word), NY. Enjoy Goody Kelly and Goody Beth as we sweat like they did in the 17th century, and conjure up w...
What is the youngest age a child can live on her own? In this episode, Strange Country cohosts Beth and Kelly discuss the absolutely bonkers documentary “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace” that premiered this year on Investigation Discovery. An Indiana couple petitioned a court to have their adopted child re-aged from 9 to 22 so she could be removed from their home and placed in an apartment.
Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of...
Twenty years before the Stonewall Uprising, another group fought for rights for LGBTQ Americans. Strange Country cohosts Beth and Kelly discuss The Mattachine Society, a group that sought dignity and respect for LGBTQ during a time when being gay was criminalized. Luckily things are chill now. Oh wait.
Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands
Cite your sources:
Chew, Rebecca, and Brian Nimens. “Opinion | State...
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