Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book When We Spoke to the Dead, we are reviewing the romance film Ghost.
Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as they take a deep dive into this sexy pottery movie. We'll discuss the themes of the fragility of life, believing in spiritualism, and is Unchained Melody the most epic love song of all time.
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From Sarah Weinman, author of Scoundrel and The Real Lolita, comes an eye-opening story about the first major spousal rape trial in America and urgent questions about women’s rights that would reverberate for decades.
In December 1978, Greta Rideout bravely testified that her husband, John, whom she still lived with, had raped her. She was the first woman in United States history to do this, at a time when the idea of “marital rape” seemed ludicrous to many Americans and was a crime in only four states. After a quick and conservative trial acquitted John Rideout and a defense lawyer lambasted that rape was perhaps "the risk of being married," Greta was ridiculed and scorned from public life, while John went on to be a repeat offender. Thrust into the national spotlight, Greta and her story would become a national sensation, a symbol of a country’s unrelenting and targeted hate toward women and a court system designed to fail them at every turn.
A now little-remembered trial deserving of close, wide, and lasting attention, Sarah Weinman turns her signature intelligence and journalistic rigor to the enduring impact of this case. Oregon v. Rideout directly inspired feminist activists, who fought state by state for marital rape laws, a battle that was not won in all fifty until as recently as 1993. Mixing archival research and new reporting involving Greta, other women victimized by John in later years, as well as the activists battling the courts in parallel, Without Consentembodies vociferous debates about gender, sexuality, and power, while highlighting the damaging and inherent misogyny of American culture then and still now.
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Ghosts spoke. Women listened. Everything changed.It began with whispers in a dimly lit room. In the 1840s, the Fox Sisters―and the legions of mediums they inspired―ignited the Spiritualist movement that swept through Victorian parlors and presidential campaigns alike. Contacting the dead wasn't merely a parlor trick: It was a political statement, a declaration of self that still echoes. Séances attracted suffragists and scientists, skeptics and charlatans, giving women a voice in a society that often refused to hear them. But as Spiritualism surged, it also blurred the lines between faith, fraud, feminism, and financial opportunity, drawing figures as varied as Harry Houdini, Victoria Woodhull, and even modern self-help gurus into its ever-expanding orbit.From wartime séances to the rise of televangelists, from Victorian ghosts to goop-approved wellness rituals, When We Spoke to the Dead unearths the forgotten roots of today's obsession with manifestation, mysticism, and the power of belief. Exploring America's deep-seated hunger for the unseen―whether through politics, personal empowerment, or grief―this book traces how the supernatural, once condemned as heresy, became the ultimate commodity.Step inside the séance room. The spirits have been waiting.
Episode was recorded live December 11, 2025.
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The story of the wildest experiments in early photography and the wild people who undertook them.Today it’s routine to take photos from an airplane window, use a camera underwater, watch a movie, or view an X-ray. But the photographic innovations more than a century ago that made such things possible were experimental, revelatory, and sometimes dangerous—and many of the innovators, entrepreneurs, and inventors behind them were memorable eccentrics. In Flashes of Brilliance, writer and photo editor Anika Burgess engagingly blends art, science, and social history to reveal the most dramatic developments in photography from its birth in the 1830s to the early twentieth century.Writing with verve and an eye for compelling detail, Burgess explores how photographers uncovered new vistas, including catacombs, cities at night, the depths of the ocean, and the surface of the moon. She describes how photographers captured the world as never seen before, showing for the first time the bones of humans, the motion of animals, the cells of plants, and the structure of snowflakes. She takes us on a tour of astonishing innovations, including botanist Anna Atkins and her extraordinary blue-hued cyanotypes and the world’s first photobook; Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey’s famed experiments in capturing motion and their long legacy; large format photography and photographs so small as to be invisible to the naked eye; and aerial photography using balloons, kites, pigeons, and rockets. Burgess also delves into the early connections between photography and society that are still with us today: how photo manipulation—the art of “fake images”—was an issue right from the start; how the police used the telephoto lens to surveil suffragists; and how leading Black figures like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass adapted self-portraits to assert their identity and autonomy.Richly illustrated and filled with fascinating tales, Flashes of Brilliance shows how the rise of a new art form transformed culture and our view of the world.
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Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book Holy Food, we are reviewing the cooking comedy Julie and Julia.
Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as they take a deep dive into this dual story of chefs. We'll discuss the themes of finding your purpose, the kitchen is for everyone, and why making a point holding a big knife is an affective way to make a point.
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Featured : CHRISTINA WARD, Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat — An American HistoryDoes God have a recipe? I know who to ask! Independent food historian Christina Ward’s highly anticipated Holy Food explores the influence of mainstream (and fringe) religious beliefs on modern American food culture. It's the story of true believers and charlatans, of idealists and visionaries, and of the everyday people who followed them—often at their peril. Of course, religious beliefs have been the source of food "rules" since Pythagoras told his followers not to eat beans (because they contain souls, apparently), the Kosher and Halal rules that forbade he shrimp cocktail, or the long-ago Pope who forbade Catholics from eating meat on Fridays (fasting to atone for committed sins—or just needed to boost the fish market value?). Only in the United States—where the freedom to worship the God of your choice and sometimes of your own making—could people embrace such new ideas about religion...and what you’re allowed to put in your mouth (I am going to have to revisit my comedy sketch God costume, aren’t I…) By the way, if you aren’t already enticed, Holy Food features over 75 recipes from religious and communal groups tested and updated for modern cooks. Maybe instead of a cocktail we should have a bake off?
Episode was recorded live November 13, 2025.
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New laws limit access to abortion and threaten doctors with prison. Religious zealots and opportunistic politicians team up to ban books about sex and to “protect” children from their “corrupting” influence. Sound familiar? Welcome to America in the late 19th-century under the Comstock Act, a federal law that prohibited the distribution of information about sex, contraception, or abortion through the U.S. Mail.
SEX RADICAL, the latest film from award-winning writer/director Andy Kirshner, tells the story of one woman who dared to challenge that law, and its namesake, the puritanical “vice-hunter” and U.S. postal inspector, Anthony Comstock. Ida Craddock was a late-Victorian feminist, scholar, and sexual mystic who defied Comstock, face-to-face. Defending the right of a woman to “control her own person,” Craddock risked everything by publishing frank instructional pamphlets about sex. Though arrested multiple times, sentenced to prison, committed to an asylum, and forced to turn over her books for burning, Craddock was undeterred in her fight for women’s sexual equality and her own First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religion. The feminist icon, Emma Goldman, called her “one of the bravest champions of Women’s Emancipation,” and Craddock’s was the very first case to be taken up by the Free Speech League, a forerunner to modern civil liberties groups like the ACLU and PEN America.
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Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of having some Halloween fun, we are reviewing the horror comedy An American Werewolf in London.
Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as they take a deep dive into the themes of transformation, anger and rage, and what's the best song with moon in the title.
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Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book The League of Lady Poisoners, we are reviewing the revenge drama A Vigilante.
Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as they take a deep dive into the themes of Domestic Violence being bad, men's obsession with gender roles, and circumstances and skill sets.
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Featured : BRANDY SCHILLACE, The Dead Come to StayBrandy’s back with a sequel! Jo Jones can't catch a break. She'd hoped that trading her city life for the cozy, peaceful hills of North Yorkshire to inherit a crumbling family estate would finally be her chance for a "fresh start" and a new future. Instead, she's been thrust further into the past than she ever imagined possible. The estate property is littered with traces of ancestors that Jo never knew existed, including the mysterious woman depicted in a half-destroyed painting -- and also including Jo's late uncle, who may hold the key to her cryptic family history. Add to this the gossipy town politics of Abington that Jo's forced to navigate as a neurodivergent transplanted American. And that's not even getting to the murder yet. When the prickly town detective James MacAdams discovers a body in the moors with coincidental ties to Jo Jones, they're forced to team up on the case. The clues will lead them into the wealthiest locales of Yorkshire, from sparkling glass hotels to luxury property sites to elite country clubs. But below the glittering surfaces, Jo and MacAdams discover darker schemes brewing. Local teens and international refugees are disappearing left and right, each case somehow linked to a shady architectural firm -- which happened to employ the dead man from the moors.What began as an unusual murder case plunges Jo and MacAdams into the underground world of rare artefacts and antique trading... and the murderer may not be finished yet…
Episode was recorded live October 24, 2025.
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From Dr Nicholas Wright, leading neuroscientist and adviser to the Pentagon, discover the new science behind warfare.Why did France lose to the Nazis, despite its defenders having more tanks, troops, and guns? How did we bring peace to Germany after World War Two? How do you know if you can trust an ally? How can we make clearer decisions under pressure?In Warhead, Nicholas Wright takes us on a fascinating journey through the brain to show us how it shapes our behaviour in conflict and war. Drawing on his work as a neuroscientist, and over a decade advising the Pentagon and the UK Government, Wright reveals that, whether we like it or not, the brain is wired for conflict – in the office or on the battlefield.
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Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of Brandy's book The Intermediaries, we are reviewing the biopic Milk.
Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as they take a deep dive into this moving but tragic film. We'll discuss the themes of fighting for your rights in the face of oppression, the person Harvey Milk was and how he became a great leader, and reminisce about phone trees.
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Featured : THERESA MACPHAIL, Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing WorldAllergies are a PROBLEM. Hay fever. Peanut allergies. Eczema. Most of us have an allergy to something, but what causes them and why do they seem to be getting worse? And why do some allergies kill? Meet medical anthropologist Theresa MacPhail; she is, herself, an allergy sufferer—and lost her father to a bee sting. It doesn’t make sense that a part of our immune system meant to protect us goes haywire, so she set out to find answers… by starting in 1819. You know it’s going to be good when we go digging into history! She starts with dangerous experiments of early immunologists and moves to the mind-bending recent developments of biologics and immunotherapies. And she gets her hands dirty along the way—no thought experiments here. MacPhail scaled a roof with an air-quality controller who diligently counts pollen by hand for hours every day; met a mother who struggled to use WIC benefits for her daughter with severe food allergies; spoke with doctors at some of the finest allergy clinics in the world; and discussed the intersecting problems of climate change, pollution, and pollen with biologists who study seasonal respiratory allergies. You have questions? She has answers! Join us for an unmatched discussion of the worst allergy season can throw at you—make sure to bring the tissues, just in case.
Episode was recorded live September 25, 2025.
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Al Ridenour, creator and host of the popular podcast Bone and Sickle and author of The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas extends his study of Winter folk celebrations to the Spring, exploring the Old-World Carnival in A Season of Madness.Sumptuously illustrated with over one hundred historical and modern images, Ridenour ushers readers into cultural hinterlands where celebrations still echo the cruel realities of the old, agricultural world, and medieval Christianity intertwines with pagan practice.From ancient Rome to modern Bulgaria, readers encounter a holiday at once beautiful, strange, and savage. Spring is welcomed by clowns waving inflated pig bladders. Stalking sheepskin monsters brandish clubs bristling with hedgehog spines, and plows are dragged over cobblestone streets by celebrants wearing masks painted with cow’s blood. Folk horror fans take heart as the Old World welcomes Spring!
Bone and Sickle. https://www.boneandsickle.com/
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Boy, do I have news for you! On September 11, Mary Roach has agreed to join us to talk about her brand new release: Replaceable You! It’s a fabulous book absolutely enthralling – I am presently reviewing it for the Wall Street Journal! I can’t wait for you to see the fascinating things she has uncovered in the world of replacement parts. Free show!
Episode was recorded live September 11, 2025.
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Tap into your hidden intelligence and transform your lifeHow are some people so much smarter than the rest of us? Where do visionary creatives and savvy decision-makers like Vincent van Gogh, Steve Jobs, Abraham Lincoln, Maya Angelou, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Wayne Gretzky, Warren Buffett, and William Shakespeare get their extraordinary mental abilities?In 2021, researchers at Ohio State’s Project Narrative, renowned for collaborations with NASA, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley, announced they had the answer. They named it Primal Intelligence. And they published scientific proof that Primal Intelligence was impossible for computers—but could be strengthened in humans.Intrigued, U.S. Army Special Operations developed Primal training for its most classified units. The training succeeded. The Operators saw the future faster. They healed quicker from trauma. In life-and-death situations, they chose wiser.The Army then authorized trials on civilian entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers, managers, salesforces, coaches, teachers, investors, and NFL players. Their leadership and innovation improved significantly. They coped better with change and uncertainty. They experienced less anger and anxiety. Finally, the Army provided Primal training to college and K-12 classrooms. It produced substantial effects in students as young as eight.That revolutionary training is now available for the first time in this book. It’s not an optimization hack or a cheat code. It’s a different way of using your brain. It offers a new neuroscientific approach to intuition, imagination, emotion, and commonsense, helping you think more like van Gogh and Jobs, Lincoln and Shakespeare.It’s your edge over AI. Your human genius. Your Primal Intelligence.
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For more than two centuries the United States constitution has given Americans the right to live in a society where church and state exist independently and without conflict. So why is Christianity suddenly being co-opted by far-right groups, politicians, friends, and family members to justify oppressive and unequal policies? And how do we fight back against those acting—literally—in bad faith?Separation of Church and Hate, by comedian and TV and radio host John Fugelsang—himself the child of a former Catholic nun and Franciscan brother—finally offers the answers. In this informative, perspective-shifting guide, Fugelsang takes readers through common talking points and arguments—God condemns abortion, gay marriage is a sin, guns are an ordained right, and more—and exposes their hypocrisy and inaccuracy through scripture, philosophy, and plain old common sense.
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Featured : LISA PERRIN, The League of Lady Poisoners: Illustrated True Stories of Dangerous WomenDescribed as a feast for the senses, this sumptuously illustrated book will introduce you to some of the most infamous women throughout world history, united by their shared taste for poison. Welcome to the League of Lady Poisoners. Lisa Perrin will join our peculiar little group to chat about the stories of more than twenty-five accused women poisoners, and the circumstances (and skill sets) that led them to lives of crime. No lie, you might find yourself rooting for some of them—like Sally Bassett, who helped poison her granddaughter's enslavers in Bermuda, or Giulia Tofana, who sold her name-brand concoction to women wanting to be rid of their abusive husbands. But there’s also some truly villainous doings in this brightly illustrated work—organized into thematic chapters based on motive. It is a treat for true crime fans, feminist history buffs, and any curious readers fascinated by the more macabre side of human nature. You know, folks like us. (Ahem, keep an eye on your cocktails tonight!) Joining us will be alum author Patti McCracken, author of the true crime Angel Makers! A VIP event (see Patreon for details!)
Episode was recorded live August 28, 2025.
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A lively, hilarious, and entirely truthful look at the druggie side of history’s most famous figures, including Shakespeare, George Washington, the Beatles, and more
Did you know that Alexander the Great was a sloppy drunk and William Shakespeare was a stoner? Or how about the fact that Steve Jobs believed taking LSD helped him create the Apple computer, or that Sigmund Freud loved cocaine so much he took it all the time and prescribed it to his patients?
In Human History on Drugs, Sam Kelly introduces us to the history our teachers never told us, offering up irreverent and insightful commentary as he sheds light on some truly bizarre aspects of the historical characters we only thought we knew. With chapters spanning from Ancient Greece (“The Oracle of Delphi Was Huffing Fumes”) to modern times (“Carl Sagan Got Astronomically High”), Kelly’s research covers all manner of eras, places, and, of course, drugs.
History is rife with drug use and drug users, and Human History on Drugs takes us through those highs (pun intended) and lows on a witty and entertaining ride that uncovers their mind-boggling impact on our past.
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Featured : HANNAH CARLSON, Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close Okay, million dollar question: Who gets pockets, and why? It is definitely peculiar and frankly, I have a lot of questions. Why do men’s clothes have so many pockets and women’s so few? And why are the pockets on women’s clothes often too small to fit phones, if they even open at all? GOOD NEWS: Hannah Carlson, a lecturer in dress history at the Rhode Island School of Design, can finally tell us! This book reveals the issues of gender politics, security, sexuality, power, and privilege tucked inside our pockets. (Cue Gollum) #GiveMePocketsOrGiveMeDeath.Filled with incredible images, this microhistory of the humble pocket tells us a lot about ourselves: How is it that putting your hands in your pockets can be seen as a sign of laziness, arrogance, confidence, or perversion? Walt Whitman’s author photograph, hand in pocket, for Leaves of Grass seemed like an affront to middle-class respectability. When W.E.B. Du Bois posed for a portrait, his pocketed hands signaled defiant coolness. And that’s just the beginning. We’ll tackle the past, the present, and the future—with Hannah as our guide. So stuff your own pockets with treats and pull up a chair—Let’s get to the bottom of a sartorial mystery!
Episode was recorded live August 15, 2025.
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