About this episode

The episode explores how Oprah Winfrey and Art Bell influenced American media and conspiracism in the 1990s.

Listen to the full episode The 1990s were a special time in American media. Female-coded, liberal-leaning, daytime TV talk shows like the Oprah Winfrey Show normalized past-life regression, alien abduction, and Satanic Ritual Abuse for housewives. At the same time, male-coded, conservative-leaning, night-time AM-radio shows like Art Bell’s Coast to Coast did the same for their husbands and brothers on the graveyard shift at budget hotels or driving enormous trucks on long stretches of open highway. For the latest installment in his Roots of Conspirituality series, Julian digs into how these two media figures brought conspiracism, pseudoscience, and the paranormal into America’s mainstream, setting the stage for how the internet and social media would melt everybody’s minds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People in this episode

Host: Julian Walker

Topics covered

• 1990s media
• conspiracism
• pseudoscience
• paranormal
• daytime TV
• AM radio

Keywords

• Oprah Winfrey
• Art Bell
• 1990s
• conspiracism
• pseudoscience
• paranormal
• media influence

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