Strange Country

Strange Country
  • 3.4 (179)
  • Comedy
  • Updated Monthly

Welcome to Strange Country, a podcast devoted to bizarre, surreal and extraordinary stories that make America the weird place it is. Co-hosts Kelly and Beth are former newspaper reporters turned school librarians who have always had a soft spot for a good story--the stranger the better. Discover the first woman to survive a barrel ride over Niagara Falls and the man who invented "complex marriage" in one of the most successful utopian experiments. Things get weird pretty quickly around here.

  1. May 14

    America's Most Hated Woman

    How do you become the Most Hated Woman in America? Kelly and Beth have been trying for nine years, but we still have no trophy with those words. And maybe that's a good thing. Is it worth fighting for what's right and telling the truth if it means in the end you get murdered anyway? Learn about Madalyn Murray O'Hair who won that title according to Time Magazine, back in the era of Phil Donahue and people actually reading Time Magazine. Thanks for listening; it's an act of love, which we need more of these days! Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnMkhk9vAz8. Anderson, Owen. "Do You Remember Madalyn Murray O'Hair? | Owen Anderson." American Reformer, 7 April 2025, https://americanreformer.org/2025/04/do-you-remember-madalyn-murray-ohair/. Accessed 10 May 2026. "Become a Member." American Atheists, https://atheists.org/join/. Accessed 10 May 2026. Lancaster, Katherine, and Clarence B. Garrett. "O'Hair, Madalyn Murray." Texas State Historical Association, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/ohair-madalyn-murray. Accessed 10 May 2026. "Madalyn Murray O'Hair." Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madalyn_Murray_O%27Hair. Accessed 10 May 2026. Seaman, Ann Rowe. America's Most Hated Woman: The Life and Gruesome Death of Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Bloomsbury Academic, 2005. Accessed 10 May 2026.

    58 min

  2. Apr 23

    Bath School Massacre

    America is known for multiple things: apple pie, Mr. T, and school massacres. But the worst massacre of all time is likely one you've never heard of before. Strange Country cohosts Beth and Kelly talk about the 1927 bombing of Bath Consolidated Schools that resulted in the deaths of 43 people, mainly children. Just your ever-so-often reminder that while it seems like things are extra terrible now, we've always been pretty s****y. Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands. Cite your sources:  Bernstein, Arnie. Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing. University of Michigan Press, 2009. "Deepening Farms with Dynamite." Farms.com, 2 Nov. 2017, www.farms.com/reflections-on-farm-and-food-history/historical-articles-archive/deepening-farms-with-dynamite. Originally published in The Farmer's Advocate, 29 Aug. 1912. Gulliver, Katrina. "Why We Have Forgotten the Worst School Attack in U.S. History." Time, 12 December 2023, https://time.com/4492872/kehoe-attack-history/. Haddad, Ken. "96 years later: Michigan's Bath School disaster remains deadliest in US history." ClickOnDetroit, 18 May 2023, https://www.clickondetroit.com/features/2023/05/16/96-years-later-michigans-bath-school-disaster-remains-deadliest-in-us-history/. Accessed 22 April 2026. "Survivors Recall 1927 Michigan School Massacre." NPR, 17 April 2009, https://www.npr.org/2009/04/17/103186662/survivors-recall-1927-michigan-school-massacre. Accessed 22 April 2026.

    48 min

  3. Mar 26

    Tylenol Poisonings

    In 1982, seven people died after taking doses of Extra Strength Tylenol, leading to a full-blown and safety standards for over-the-counter meds. To this day, the murders remain unsolved. Strange Country cohosts Beth and Kelly discuss this 1982 mystery and its possible suspects while Beth mispronounces "business ethics" because that's not really a thing. Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands. Cite your sources:  Bergmann, Joy. "A Bitter Pill." Chicago Reader, 2 Nov. 2000, https://chicagoreader.com/news/a-bitter-pill/. Accessed 22 Mar. 2026. Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders. Directed by Yotam Guendelman and Ari Pines, Netflix, 2025. Accessed 22 Mar. 2026. Harris, Gardiner. No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson. Random House, 2025. Locke, Taylor. "Tylenol Orders in Pregnant People Plummeted after Trump Falsely Linked the Drug to Autism." Scientific American, 12 Mar. 2026, www.scientificamerican.com/article/tylenol-orders-in-pregnant-people-plummeted-after-trump-falsely-linked-the/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2026. "Searching for Tylenol Murder Suspects." Thirteen / PBS, https://www.thirteen.org/programs/chicago-stories/searching-for-tylenol-murder-suspects-iamsis/. Accessed 22 Mar. 2026. Waxman, Olivia B. "The True Story Behind Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders." Time, 26 May 2025, https://time.com/7287680/tylenol-murders-documentary-netflix/. Accessed 22 Mar. 2026. "Who Committed the Tylenol Murders? After More Than 40 Years, the Case Remains Unsolved." WTTW Chicago, https://www.wttw.com/chicago-stories/inside-the-tylenol-murders/who-committed-the-tylenol-murders. Accessed 22 Mar. 2026. Winny, Annalies. "The Evidence on Tylenol and Autism." Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 7 October 2025, https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/the-evidence-on-tylenol-and-autism. Accessed 23 March 2026.

    55 min

  4. Mar 5

    Inez Nathaniel-Walker

    Hey dear Dash Hounds, we are back this week in a regular kind of way talking about a woman you probably have never heard of—unless you are a folk art phenom like Beth. Learn about a woman and artist whose life may have gone unnoticed except for her self-taught crayon portraits. They go for about $3K on Antiques Roadshow, which is so close to our going rate for Patreon. Inez Nathaniel-Walker's life was not easy, but somewhere, someone with an easier life is looking at her work and likely wondering who was she? Well you have come to the right place. Thanks for listening; it is an act of love. Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands Cite your sources:  https://www.inezwalker.com/, 2024, https://www.inezwalker.com/. Accessed 28 February 2026. "American Folk Art Museum." Women's Studies, https://folkartmuseum.org/exhibitions/womens-studies/. Accessed 28 February 2026. Bellows, Sierra. "Tales From and Attic." The American Scholar, Phi Betta Kappa, 4 March 2024, https://theamericanscholar.org/tales-from-an-attic/. Accessed 4 March 2026. Brown, Chris. "Her ex-husband cut off her hands. Now she is trying to help other Russian victims of domestic violence." CBC, 26 March 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/margarita-gracheva-tv-show-1.5949790. Accessed 4 March 2026. D'Ambrosio, Paul. "Bad Girls." American Folk Art, 31 March 2010, https://folkartcooperstown.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html. Accessed 27 Febrauary 2026. Kippert, Amanda. "Women Serve Longer Prison Sentences After Killing Abusers." Domestic Shelters, 22 June 2020, https://www.domesticshelters.org/articles/in-the-news/women-serve-longer-prison-sentences-after-killing-abusers. Accessed 4 March 2026. "Memorial Service for Pat Parsons." https://www.essexonlakechamplain.com/pat-parsons/. Rhodes, Adam. "New York Women's Prison with a hostory of Violencehired a high ranking officialknown for abuse." https://prismreports.org/2026/02/25/bedford-hills-michael-blot-transgender/.

    45 min

  5. Feb 19

    Viola Liuzzo

    It may seem the government's technique of denigrating the people they kill to make it appear that the killing was justified is a new fun thing in 2026, but we've been here before. It's likely you've never heard of Viola Liuzzo, the only white woman murdered during the Civil Rights Movement. Her name kept popping up on the social media accounts of historians after the murders of Renee Good and Alexi Pretti, trying to tell us all once again to maybe pay attention to the past. In this episode of Strange Country, cohosts Beth and Kelly talk about Liuzzo's life and how J. Edgar Hoover made sure to smear her as a drug-taking, orgy-loving, baby-neglecting mother who deserved being shot in a head by klansmen. Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands Cite your sources: Baird, Jonathan. "The tragic and forgotten story of Viola Liuzzo." The Nation, 4 November 2024, https://www.thenation.com/travellog/the-tragic-and-forgotten-story-of-viola-liuzzo/. Accessed 30 January 2026. Baumgartner, Neil. "Viola Gregg Luizzo." Jim Crow Museum, February 2013, https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/witnesses/violaliuzzo.htm. Accessed 30 January 2026. "City officials unveil new civil rights memorial monument honoring Viola Liuzzo at park bearing her name." City of Detroit, 28 September 2023. Accessed 8 February 2026. Crayton, Kareem. "The Voting Rights Act, Explained." Brennan Center for Justice, 17 July 2023, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-rights-act-explained. Accessed 8 February 2026. Dalby, Beth. "Killed by KKK and Smeared by FBI, Civil Rights Martyr Finally Hailed as Hero." Patch, 7 April 2015, https://patch.com/michigan/ferndale/killed-kkk-and-smeared-fbi-civil-rights-martyr-finally-hailed-hero-0. Accessed 8 February 2026. Daley, David. "John Roberts's Decades-Long Project to Neuter the Voting Rights Act." The Atlantic, 10 December 2025, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2025/12/justice-roberts-voting-rights-act/685193/. Accessed 8 February 2026. di Florio, Paola, director. Home of the Brave. Emerging Pictures, 2004. Amazon Prime. Kaufman, Michael T. "Gary T. Rowe Jr., 64, Who Informed on Klan In Civil Rights Killing, Is Dead (Published 1998)." The New York Times, 4 October 1998, https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/04/us/gary-t-rowe-jr-64-who-informed-on-klan-in-civil-rights-killing-is-dead.html. Accessed 8 February 2026. May, Gary. The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo. Yale University Press, 2005.

    51 min

  6. Jan 29

    Psychic Readers Network

    "Ask again later" would have been a common response if you had asked your magic eight ball when Strange Country would have a new episode over the last weeks. But now "the outlook is good" because here are cohosts Beth and Kelly together again to talk about the time people spent tons of money to talk to barely trained psychics over the phone lured in by the infomercial featuring the self-proclaimed shaman Miss Cleo. Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands Cite your sources:  Aniskovich, Celia, and Jennifer Brea, directors. Call Me Miss Cleo. 2022. Amazon Prime.   Burnham, David. "F.C.C. Eases Rules for Broadcast TV." The New York Times, 28 June 1984, https://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/28/arts/fcc-eases-rules-for-broadcast-tv.html. Accessed 4 January 2026.   Madison, Bennett. "I Was a Hotline Psychic for Miss Cleo (Published 2016)." The New York Times, 5 September 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/fashion/mens-style/hotline-psychic-miss-cleo-commercials.html. Accessed 3 January 2026.   Scott, Liam. "The repeal of the fairness doctrine accelerated the polarization of US media." The Poynter Institute, 22 April 2025, https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2025/poynter-50-repeal-fairness-doctrine-rush-limbaugh-conservative-talk-radio/. Accessed 10 January 2026.   Shreya, Kumari. "Steven Feder and Peter Stolz: Where Are PRN Co-Owners Now?" The Cinemaholic, 16 December 2022, https://thecinemaholic.com/steven-feder-and-peter-stolz-where-are-prn-co-owners-now/. Accessed 13 January 2026.   "Why Do We Believe Our Horoscopes?" The Decision Lab, https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/barnum-effect?adw=true&utm_campaign=21+Biases+-+Barnum+Effect&utm_medium=ppc&utm_source=adwords&utm_term=barnum%20effect%20psychology&hsa_mt=b&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ad=500704987386&hsa_src=g&hsa_cam=12413027018&hsa_kw=barnum   "Two companies, owners fined in 'Miss Cleo' case." Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 4 October 2002, https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/2002/10/04/two-companies-owners-fined-in-miss-cleo-case/28723891007/. Accessed 13 January 2026.

    58 min

  7. 11/27/2025

    Huey Long

    While he may have been called a demagogue and a counterfeit Mussolini, Huey Long had some darn tootin' good ideas—mainly taxing the rich into oblivion. Strange Country cohosts Beth and Kelly talk about Long's rise to populist power in the 1930s and the corruption in its wake, but also how much a 65% tax increase on the rich makes a whole lotta sense. Like Long said "We only propose that, when one man gets more than he and his children and children's children can spend or use in their lifetimes, that then we shall say that such person has his share. That means that a few million dollars is the limit to what any one man can own." Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands Cite your sources: Burns, Ken, director. Huey Long. PBS, 1985.   Ganz, John. "Swamp Creature." When the Clock Broke : Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked up in the Early 1990s, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024, pp. 1-42.   "Governor Huey Long: Kidnapper." Medium, 21 November 2021, https://medium.com/historys-trainwrecks/governor-huey-long-kidnapper-52b69644141c. Accessed 15 November 2025.   Kolbert, Elizabeth. "The Big Sleazy." The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 12 June 2006, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/06/12/the-big-sleazy. Accessed 15 November 2025. White Jr., Lamar (April 2, 2018). "Huey P. Long wasn't assassinated"Bayou Brief. Archived from the original on June 9, 2020 White, Richard D. Kingfish : the Reign of Huey P. Long. Random House, 2006.

    1h 2m

  8. 11/13/2025

    ELIZA

    In 1964, MIT researcher Joseph Weizenbaum created the first therapy chatbot ELIZA and realized soon after that it sucked and humanity was worse for it. Sixty years later, our new tech gods are like "sex porn bots for all!" Strange Country cohosts Beth and Kelly emulate the AI versions of themselves as they tell the tale of a computer scientist realizing Frankenstein's monster is a pile of generic platitudes that soaks up more energy than is sustainable. Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands Cite your sources: Huet, Ellen and Rachel Metz. "The Chatbot Delusions." Bloomberg Businessweek, 7 November 2025.    Jargon, Julie, and Sam Schechner. "Seven Lawsuits Allege OpenAI Encouraged Suicide and Harmful Delusions." The Wall Street Journal, 6 November 2025. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/seven-lawsuits-allege-openai-encouraged-suicide-and-harmful-delusions-25def1a3?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqdpfGBceCV1PHQljKMjMLgWMGTLtjo_qhdIzShR2uA8xXfuaqhIpJX4vBln7J0%3D&gaa_ts=69150f7d&gaa_sig=AnCNwO6N3LypulT6ufqqtDnUS7qBWHLFLX6Yc2FxlQSZHHDw9CJrvlSkJqa5vuxoI6qLwxyfA8BhD4sDghUwaw%3D%3D   Killgrove, Kristina. "'ELIZA,' the world's 1st chatbot, was just resurrected from 60-year-old computer code." Live Science, Future US Inc, 18 January 2025, https://www.livescience.com/technology/eliza-the-worlds-1st-chatbot-was-just-resurrected-from-60-year-old-computer-code. Accessed 9 November 2025.   Metz, Cade. "Are A.I. Therapy Chatbots Safe to Use?" The New York Times, 6 November 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/technology/ai-therapy-chatbots-ash.html. Accessed 8 November 2025.   Tarnoff, Ben. "Weizenbaum's nightmares: how the inventor of the first chatbot turned against AI." The Guardian, 25 July 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/25/joseph-weizenbaum-inventor-eliza-chatbot-turned-against-artificial-intelligence-ai. Accessed 9 November 2025.   Weizenbaum, Joseph. "Computer Power and Human Reason." W. H. Freeman and Company. 1976. http://blogs.evergreen.edu/cpat/files/2013/05/Computer-Power-and-Human-Reason.pdf   Wells, Sarah. "Exploring the Dangers of AI in Mental Health Care." HAI, Stanford University, 11 June 2025, https://hai.stanford.edu/news/exploring-the-dangers-of-ai-in-mental-health-care. Accessed 8 November 2025.

    49 min
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3.4
out of 5
179 Ratings

About

Welcome to Strange Country, a podcast devoted to bizarre, surreal and extraordinary stories that make America the weird place it is. Co-hosts Kelly and Beth are former newspaper reporters turned school librarians who have always had a soft spot for a good story--the stranger the better. Discover the first woman to survive a barrel ride over Niagara Falls and the man who invented "complex marriage" in one of the most successful utopian experiments. Things get weird pretty quickly around here.

Information

  • Creator
    Strange Country
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2026
  • Episodes
    312
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2017 Strange Country Podcast
  • Show Website
    Strange Country

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