Strange Country

What if your home sat on 22,000 tons of buried chemical waste? That was the reality of the roughly 1,000 residents of the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, NY. Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly use their chemaginations to take us back to the 1970s, the idyllic time when polluters could just dump whatever wherever. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousands . Cite your sources...

In Strange Country Ep. 89, co-hosts Beth and Kelly share their beauty secrets before candida auris takes over the planet and destroys us all. Might as well look good during the next pandemic, right? Here's what you can do: make your breasts look like pineapples, enamel your face, and slather on the spermaceti. Cook for 20 minutes, and viola! Cancer! Cite your sources: O'Neill, Therese.  Unmentiona...

Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly hit the road and travel to the place that started this whole venture--the Fox sisters home in Hydesville, NY. They are there to celebrate the anniversary of the knocking that launched the spiritualist movement and enjoy the thicker thin mints. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousands .

"We believe the children" became the rallying cry of the Satanic Panic even as stories tottered on the ridiculous. Bones being replaced by Satan's bones; kids being flown to Mexico to be raped by soldiers; shot than brought back to life. The 1980s and early 1990s were rife with stories of abuse at day care centers throughout the country. Over 80 people were falsely convicted and it sometimes took...

Richard Jewell was called a hero, credited for saving lives when a bomb ripped through the Olympics park in Atlanta, Ga. in 1993. Then the security guard was called a zero, and many other things--mainly by Jay Leno--and Jewell's life was turned upside down as the media descended upon his house and the FBI took his mom's Tupperware. Join Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly as they dissect this...

Well if you are sick of hearing friends, librarians and uber-researchers Beth and Kelly talk about our periods, then just stop listening. This one is period gold. Period. Clelia Duel Mosher was one of America's first physicians, a major researcher, and proponent of women's health issues and a woman on a mission to ease the pain of period cramps via "mosher-ing." And horseback riding and basketball...

You know what cures a depressing winter? A baker's dozen of cookies, that's what. Have you ever heard that expression or been the recipient of such dozen? Kelly and Beth will take you down history's path to where this baking expression originated, in good old New York- Dutch County. Hear a haunted house story that is sure to... leave you wanting a better ghost story. Join librarians, friends, and...

America, the land of truck nutz and morbid obesity, is also the land of guns. In episode 83, Beth and Kelly explore our obsession while telling the story of Amy Bishop, a biology professor at University of Alabama in Huntsville, who opened fire at a faculty meeting, killing three colleagues. Her trail of violence didn't begin there, but started decades earlier with Bishop killing her brother Seth...

Journalist Stephen Glass just seemed to have a knack for being in the craziest scenarios surrounded by the most quote-worthy subjects. He wrote about working for a psychic hotline, finding a George H. W. Bush cult and attending a hacker's convention to the delight of his editors at The New Republic. Trouble was, it was all a steaming pile of horse doo. Glass made it all up. Strange Country co-host...

Hit Me Baby One More Time: Rule Following with Beth and Kelly Hey Readers, are you rule followers? Really what we are asking here is, are you a potential Nazi? Join friends, librarians, contrarians, and mothers Kelly and Beth as they grapple with the rules of society and just how far we will go to please someone who appears to have authority. In this episode of Strange Country, we uncover the comp...

On this very special Valentine's Day episode, Beth and Kelly discuss the life and work of John Brinkley, a man who put goat testicles where no goat testicles had gone before. Brinkley, who bought his medical diploma for $100, made millions "curing" erectile dysfunction with the help of goat balls he sewed into patients' scrotums. People say love hurts for a reason. Theme music: Resting Place by  A...

In this Strange Country episode, friends Kelly and Beth talk about what smoking meant to women in New York City's Bowery district one New Year's Day in the early 1900's - jailtime! One woman, Kate What's Her Name, was arrested right on the spot for striking a match on a brick building, preparing to enjoy a smoke as one does. It's another ride down our country's memory lane when a politician named...

In 1893, Madeline Pollard did the unthinkable. She went public with her ruin by filing a lawsuit against her older, married lover Congressman Willie Breckinridge, the silver-tongued orator known for his long-winded speeches about monogamy. Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly talk about the double standard that destroyed women's lives and how things are so hunky-dory now. Wait--are they? Theme...

Lord Timothy Dexter was a lucky kind of eccentric from the 1700s. His life in one quick summary: married for money, made ridiculous money through luck, tried to hobnob with the wealthy but wasn't up to snuff, terrible speller but had the money to published a book anyway, and faked his death. He was also a shitty eccentric--beating his wife when she didn't cry at his fake funeral. In episode 77, St...

Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb set out to commit the perfect crime in 1924. Spoiler alert: they got caught. Join Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly as they explore this sordid tale of affluenza, privilege and--get the ladies out of room, now!!! Now, I say!---penises. Beth would also like to mention that she says a few things she regrets, but since she does not know how to edit, there it...

Why can't we just kill everything? It's a good question that Beth asks the world, along with who bought TrumpyBear for the holidays ( https://www.gettrumpybear.com/ ), and is there such thing as feather porn? C'mon-we know you already knew that. Today's episode, our 75th-yes 75th! Readers will discover the strange story of Edwin Rist, a young thief who decimated natural history in one fell swoop....

Amy Archer Gilligan was a good Christian woman who ran a good Christian nursing home--if you substituted "good Christian" for "serial killer" that is. Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly share this macabre story and show off their acting chops in a scene from Arsenic and Old Lace, a play and movie loosely based on Amy Archer Gilligan. Words to live by: Don't drink the lemonade. Theme music: Re...

Jack Parsons helped take rocketry out of the realm of science fiction and into reality. But his involvement with a sex magick cult led to him being shuttled to the corner like Baby at the end of Dirty Dancing. In Strange Country Ep. 73, Beth and Kelly discuss Parsons' accomplishment but focus way more on the sex magick cult because sex magick. Oh and did we mention his involvement with L. Ron Hubb...

So as you know, you ain't getting into heaven unless you have at least three wives. Warren Jeffs took that to heart marrying between 50 to 80 women, many of these "women" being actually 12-year-old girls. He was the Prophet, the voice of God so parents willingly gave their children to this sociopathic sexual deviant. In ep. 72 of Strange Country, Beth and Kelly get back into the wine and cringe wh...

Why is there a Rooster on every box of Corn Flakes? In ep. 71 of Strange Country, co-hosts Kelly and Beth look into the life of J.H. Kellogg, his emphasis on diet and his extreme belief in total celibacy. His obsession to tamp down all sexual desire through bland foods and actual mutilation led to the creation of the corn flakes we see on the shelves today. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of...

How much formaldehyde would you allow in your glass of milk? What about your meat? Is an ounce of floor shavings too much for your container of nutmeg? Well in the late 19th century, Americans had little choice what maggots or arsenic were tossed into their bags of flour---they just had to take it and likely die. Enter Harvey Washington Wiley, chief chemist of the US Agriculture Department. He did...

Arrgghh. It's time me maties to talk about the poop deck or the cockswain...wow could these words be more loaded? Anyone in episode 69--ha! 69!--Kelly and Beth tackle the seven seas and share a story of fair, or more appropriate fearsome pirate by the name of Anne Bonny who chose a life of crime. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousands . Cite your sources: Cordingly, David. Pirate Hunte...

For five days in late October 1948, a toxic smog encased the town of Donora Pa, sickening nearly half the population and killing around 20 people. The industrial mill complex that, for years, belched toxic smoke into the air, claimed it was an act of God. Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly examine the worst air pollution crisis to hit the United States and recognize the current assault on cle...

Viola Drath and Albrecht Muth's union was labeled "The Worst Marriage in Georgetown" in a NYT magazine article, written a a year after Drath's lifeless body was found by Muth on their bathroom floor. At first Drath's death wasn't considered suspicious. She was 91 after all, soon the house of cards Muth so carefully constructed came crashing down. Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly explore thi...

Lydia Pinkham was one of the most recognizable women of the 1800's. Her visage peered from the boxes of Vegetable Compound she created to cure female troubles. She was also one of the first women to experience the trolling of men who took great pains to criticize her hair, her smile, her existence. Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly discuss patent medicines, advertising's impact on women's ro...