I feel like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was probably so annoying. Like you're trying to have a trial and he's like,

excuse me, I wrote some stories once you know and you're like you okay you

want to decide who gets I'm Sarah Marshall. It's the holidays and naturally we're talking

about cattle mutilation. We are joined today by Rachel Monroe, contributing writer for the

New Yorker, chronicler of some of the weirdest stuff in America,

and all-around friend of the show.

If you did not waste your adolescence watching the History Channel Cattle medallations were a phenomenon that apparently occurred in the 1970s.

They inspired a lot of conspiracy theories, their own little footnote to the satanic panic.

And like so much else, trend-wise, they are coming back,

and I wanted to get Rachel onto the show to tell us about why we are bringing back not just the

fashions of the past but some of the conspiracy theories as well. This is a story

about some very wild UFO and or satanic panic and or insert the conspiracy of your choice theories that emerged and that part is for me very fun to talk about but we are that

that part is for me very fun to talk about but we are basing it off of some actually

sad and inexplicable things that did happen to some real animals

and we do get into a little bit of the specifics of what happens

when we talk about an alleged cattle mutilation. There's a little bit of gore, there's a little bit of that kind of stuff, but it's not something that we're trying particularly hard to linger on.

We're really trying to talk about the American mind.

We've got some fun bonus episodes for you as always on Patreon and Apple Plus

subscriptions you can listen to me talk to Chelsea Weber Smith about urban Legends and the movie Urban Legend.

And most recently, we are doing something I've been threatening to do for a few years now.

I've done an audio book for you. We have made a you're wrong about

original audio book of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol, read by me and so we're

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