All episodes of The Michael Shermer Show

The Michael Shermer Show · 2025-10-15 · 96 min · 15,125 words

The Serial Killer Era of the 70s/80s: Lore, Patterns, and Plausible Explanations

Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Why times can differ in your player

You're listening to The Michael Shermer Show. All right, everybody, it's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer Show. My guest today is Caroline Frasier, the author of Prairie Fires Prairie Fires, The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, which we'll discuss a little bit later, in the show, but she won the Pulitzer Prize for that, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, which is huge, and the Heartland Prize and the Plutarch Award for the best biography of the year. She's also the author of God's Perfect Child.

Look, I have the first edition from 1999 about uh living and dying in the Christian science church. You know, Carolyn, when I saw, you know, I saw your name come up with the with the new book, which I'll introduce properly in just a moment, I thought, I know this woman. I I I'm pretty sure I read that book. And then I'm looking at the back back blurbs and it's like Michael Shermer. With the brilliant clarity of a talented writer and the thoughtful depth of a serious scholar, Carolyn Fraser has documented precisely how Mary Baker Eddy created the cult of Christian science and turned it into the religion it is today.

A must-read for anyone interested in the powerful role of religion in American society, God's Perfect Child is a first-rate work by an insider With the distance and maturity for proper context and perspective. And if you're a Christian scientist, this book could literally save your life. All right. We'll come back to that a little bit later.

That is the first couple of minutes. The rest is $1.49.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (96 minutes, 15,125 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.

get it now

Ready in under two minutes.

credits never expire

Packs go up to 1,000 episodes. Need more? Email contact@podmenti.com and we will make you one.

One episode is up to 4 hours of audio; a longer one counts as one more for every started 4 hours. Secure checkout by Stripe. Paying once needs no account: we create one from your email. By paying you agree to the terms.