Squaring the Strange

Ben titled this episode. In which we speak of all the reasons why you should think twice about renting a monochrome, windowless van in unfamiliar territory. From cursed vehicles to the average person's psychological priming that led police off the trail of the Beltway Sniper case, we look at the role vehicles have played in urban legends, dangerous rumors and real-life crime. How have the most common vehicles in our environment also become the most feared? Buckle up!

First Pascual and Celestia examine a mysterious woman "haunting" AI art, dubbed "Loab." Then we dip into a selection of the less famous lake monsters. There are literally hundreds. We talk about how they've spawned from either high-profile sightings/photos or questionable "news" stories from the period of yellow journalism. And even how some people have claimed copyright over a few of them for merchandising purposes! From Champ's cousin George (who lives, predictably, in Lake George) and Tahoe Tessie to Lake Erie Larry and the Canadian monsters Cressie and Memphre, we'll go over eye-witness reports and what themes emerge--and then submerge!

Ben has returned from adventures, so we hear about some of his travels and then discuss the Twitter blue checkmark brouhaha. In our main segment we look at Ley Lines, a literal game of connect-the-dots played on the surface of the earth. Somehow these evolved from simple common routes noticed by an early 20th-century landscape photographer to a catch-all mysterious network that affects dowsing, psychic energy, nodes, vortices and crop circles. Called holy lines by Nazis and dragon lines by writers inserting them into ancient Chinese culture, these supposed energy lines are slippery to pin down--but boy do they make for a great plot device in pop culture, from Batman to Star Wars.

This week, after we take a moment to tally exactly how many kids were killed by rainbow fentanyl passed off as Halloween candy, we bring Sharon Hill on to speak about the excitement around a decade ago when Dr. Melba Ketchum announced she had tested and confirmed Bigfoot DNA. Ben sets the stage in terms of Bigfoot evidence timeline and the rise of genetic technology. Once a vacuum became apparent, it seemed inevitable that someone would eventually become a self-taught geneticist, open an unaccredited lab, and find some genetic evidence for our big hairy friend.

First, Pascual and Celestia puzzle over Ben's location and discuss a few places in Vegas that skeptics might like to see while they attend CSI Con. Then we celebrate the nearly $1 billion judgment against Alex Jones and look into a minor (non)mystery about a ghost boat from WWII appearing in a California lake. Our main topic this week is a look back at our favorite scary episodes, and why they creep us out.

First we get sucked down a bit of a rabbit hole on all the things we never knew about crystal flutes. Then vampire expert Dr. Stanley Stepanic joins us to talk Slavic folklore, rabies and other diseases, shape-shifting, religious clashes in Eastern Europe during the early centuries of Christianity, and how all monster roads seem to lead back to vampires. Stepanic covers a lot of ground, all the way through movies and present-day vampire ostension (oh yes, Vampire: The Masquerade comes up). Grab yourself a tall bloody Mary and strap in, it's quite a crash course!

First Celestia gushes about "3,000 Years of Longing," starring Idris Elba as a sultry Djinn. Then Ben talks to us about the pirate life, which had a lot more worms than one might expect. What's the difference between a privateer and a buccaneer? Or a sloop and a four-masted mariner? We go into daily activities, reasons people ended up on pirate ships, and of course how pirates typically met their end. Then we spotlight a few female pirates and talk about Blackbeard, who had the greatest PR team on the high seas.

Part roadside attraction -- and apparently also part magnetic marvel, part harmonics and Ley Line energy well, part mystical creation of a stone-singer, part love letter, and part obsession, the Coral Castle in Homestead, Florida, has baffled engineers and scientists for decades. Or so it's been said. What was the real force behind this peculiar non-coral non-castle, exactly? Ben has written about and visited the Coral Castle and pored through the pamphlets of its builder, Latvian-American eccentric Edward Leedskalnin, to peel away the layers of mysterious woo that have been draped over this pretty nifty feat of one-man engineering. Was Leedskalnin a hopeless romantic, a hard-working fellow with just a touch of tuberculosis, a sorcerer, a crank, or an incel? Or a bit of each?

Yes, so our guest this episode is . . . Ben! We take a look at a few strange things in the news first, like "Hunger Stones" and a "Surprise Spanish Stonehenge"! (No one expects the Spanish Stonehenge!). Then we dive into some media literacy themes and lessons in Ben's latest book, "America the Fearful: Media and the Marketing of National Panics." Part primer on what ties folklore of old to the anxiety-riddled news of today, part catalog of biases that influence the news, and part exploration of solutions, our talk goes into some familar territory for longtime listeners.

To our credit, we manage to not giggle like third-graders for most of the episode, as we discuss the strange belief that one's penis has gone missing, become smaller, or been switched out. A peculiar mix of superstition, body dysmorphia, and curse belief, Koro has many traits of a mass sociogenic illness (MSI) and is "contagious" to a degree. When we peel back the layers, it's not such a funny topic after all, and falls into the category of suspicious folklore that results in harm: to victims, to endangered species, and to those suspected of witchcraft.