Strange Country Ep. 207: Elizabeth Packard
Strange Country
In the 19th century, men could commit women to asylums for such stellar reasons as excessive thinking or novel reading. Elizabeth Packard was married to a real prince who committed her because she was smarter than him. Strange Country cohosts share her heroic tale, and Beth reveals an alarming secret about her cat.
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Strange Country Ep. 206: Victorian Tapeworm Diet
Strange Country
One constant--besides death and taxes--is the notion that women need to work to attain that ever-morphing ideal body that doesn't actually exist. Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly talk about diet plans like ingesting tapeworms to obtain the consumption look in Victorian times. There's also asides on the many ways humans choose to destroy themselves. Fun!
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Strange Country Ep. 205: Mountain Meadows Massacre
Strange Country
America's home-spun religion of Mormonism has a bloody past. The founder Joseph Smith was murdered, and the Saints run out of various places they settled. This us-versus-them mentality really fermented in the Great Salt Valley where Brigham Young whipped his flock into a frenzy about interlopers and outsiders. Strange Country cohosts Beth and Kelly talk about how that volatile mx led to some Mormons murdering approximately 120 adults and children.
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Strange Country Ep. 204: Exorcism
Strange Country
Dear Dash Hounds: Has worry from Covid taken over your life? Are you behaving in ways that seem rather devilish, as your rage powers on? Might you be possessed? If you are, Beth and Kelly know who to call and you will too after listening to this episode of Strange Country. We discuss the original muse/ inspiration for the movie The Exorcist. We hope you enjoy this brief escape from reality…or is it? Thanks always for listening, it is an act of love.
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Strange Country Ep. 203: Weigh Down Workshop
Strange Country
Maybe you've tried Keto or Atkins or the blood type diet, but have you thought about maybe trying God? The Weigh Down Workshop was founded by Gwen Shamblin in 1986. She didn't believe in dieting, exercising or counting calories. Shamblin instead told followers to rely on God and pray that He will slap the Doritos out of your hand. Strange Country cohosts Beth and Kelly talk about this program turned church and how some cult experts see it as a cult.
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Strange Country Ep. 202: The Goat Castle
Strange Country
Today's Strange Country tale involves murder, racism and goats. The big three, as we like to say. In 1932, Jennie Merrill was murdered in Natchez, Miss. Her neighbors who lived in a dilapidated estate nicknamed The Goat Castle likely had something to do with it, but it was a black laundress named Emily Burns who was convicted of the crime. Because everything is garbage.
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Strange Country Ep. 201: Cahokia
Strange Country
You know Beth and Kelly have issues with numbers, and anything prior to or around BC, AD and CE is hard for us to comprehend. So please bear with us this episode as we go back 1,000 years to the hopping city of …Cahokia. Have you ever heard of it? We didn’t think so (but if you have, please tell us!) It is real and it is part of the important but ignored history of North America. And who can we blame for the fact that thousands of earthen mounds with rich and deep history have been plowed under?
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Strange Country Ep. 200: Sante Kimes
Strange Country
Strange County episode 200, everybody! That means, you've likely wasted 199 hours of your life. Why not waste an hour more with today's story of Sante Kimes, a grifter with a penchant for fraud, arson and murder. Beth and Kelly also share a new way to express anger.
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Strange Country Ep. 199: Tania Head
Strange Country
Tania Head told a harrowing tale of survival, making it out of the twin towers just seconds before the south tower collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001. She turned her trauma into action as head of a WTC survivor network. Trouble is, her story was completely untrue. Strange Country hosts Beth and Kelly discuss Head's deceit and their disbelief over the steps Head took to maintain her ruse.
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Strange Country Ep. 198: Fannie Lou Hamer
Strange Country
Britney Spears conservatorship got Kelly and Beth thinking about the ways society tries to clamp down on women's bodies. Because of Kelly's feeblemindedness, she forgot that Beth already covered the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck, but lucky for her--is lucky the right word?--there are a ton of forced sterilizations to choose from. Listen to the story of one such woman Fannie Lou Hamer who turned her trauma into activism.
info_outlineArrgghh. 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 Hunter of the Carribean. Random House Publishing Group, 2011. Ebook.
Norton, Rick. Gay History and Literature. Lesbian Pirates:
Anne Bonny and Mary Read http://rictornorton.co.uk/pirates.htm. Accessed Nov. 24, 2018.
Tucker, Philip Thomas. Anne Bonny, The infamous Female Pirate.
Woodard, Colin. More Than a Pirate, a Rebel With a Democratic Spirit
Opinion. New York Times. Nov. 22, 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/opinion/blackbeard-pirate-golden-age-.html
Woodard, Colin. Republic of Pirates Website http://www.republicofpirates.net/Bonny.html, accessed Nov. 24, 2018.
Yolen, Jane. Bad Girls; sirens, jezebels, murderesses, thieves and other Female Villians. Watertown, MA : Charlesbridge, c2013.