Part 2/2 of my conversation with Rick Emerson on his book, Unmask Alice. Listen to part 1 before this one!

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Welcome to another archives episode! Where I speak to a previously selected book club pick author.

In 2024, I launched this podcast to delve deeper into our book club's nonfiction selections by engaging directly with the authors—the experts behind these compelling works.

Over the years, our club has explored some exceptional books, and today, I am finally releasing my 2 part episode covering "Unmask Alice: LSD, the Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries" by Rick Emerson. This is one of my favorite books of all time, and easily one of the best podcast episodes I've been a part of.

About the book: "In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous. But Alice was only the beginning. In 1979, another diary rattled the culture, setting the stage for a national meltdown. The posthumous memoir of an alleged teenage Satanist, Jay's Journal merged with a frightening new crisis—adolescent suicide—to create a literal witch hunt, shattering countless lives and poisoning whole communities. In reality, Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal came from the same dark place: Beatrice Sparks, a serial con artist who betrayed a grieving family, stole a dead boy's memory, and lied her way to the National Book Awards. Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries is a true story of contagious deception. It stretches from Hollywood to Quantico, and passes through a tiny patch of Utah nicknamed 'the fraud capital of America.' It's the story of a doomed romance and a vengeful celebrity. Of a lazy press and a public mob. Of two suicidal teenagers, and their exploitation by a literary vampire."

About the author: Rick Emerson is a longtime radio and television broadcaster, the former host of the nationally-syndicated Rick Emerson Show, and the coauthor (with Lisa Desjardins) of Zombie Economics: A Guide to Personal Finance. He's a regular guest on America's finer podcasts, and can be seen in occasional television roles and a truly dreadful commercial for tires. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his two dogs, Willard and Philo.

Join the book club, subscribe to the book box, buy a shirt, and more...

https://themorbidlycuriousbookclub.com/

Welcome to another archives episode! Where I speak to a previously selected book club pick author.

In 2024, I launched this podcast to delve deeper into our book club's nonfiction selections by engaging directly with the authors—the experts behind these compelling works.

Over the years, our club has explored some exceptional books, and today, I am finally releasing my 2 part episode covering "Unmask Alice: LSD, the Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries" by Rick Emerson. This is one of my favorite books of all time, and easily one of the best podcast episodes I've been a part of.

About the book: "In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous. But Alice was only the beginning. In 1979, another diary rattled the culture, setting the stage for a national meltdown. The posthumous memoir of an alleged teenage Satanist, Jay's Journal merged with a frightening new crisis—adolescent suicide—to create a literal witch hunt, shattering countless lives and poisoning whole communities. In reality, Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal came from the same dark place: Beatrice Sparks, a serial con artist who betrayed a grieving family, stole a dead boy's memory, and lied her way to the National Book Awards. Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries is a true story of contagious deception. It stretches from Hollywood to Quantico, and passes through a tiny patch of Utah nicknamed 'the fraud capital of America.' It's the story of a doomed romance and a vengeful celebrity. Of a lazy press and a public mob. Of two suicidal teenagers, and their exploitation by a literary vampire."

About the author: Rick Emerson is a longtime radio and television broadcaster, the former host of the nationally-syndicated Rick Emerson Show, and the coauthor (with Lisa Desjardins) of Zombie Economics: A Guide to Personal Finance. He's a regular guest on America's finer podcasts, and can be seen in occasional television roles and a truly dreadful commercial for tires. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his two dogs, Willard and Philo.

Part 2 will be uploaded right after this one.

Our April 2025 pick was “Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America's Modern Militias" by Kevin Cook.

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https://themorbidlycuriousbookclub.com/

Shout out to member Jillian for helping me with the outro to this one...

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Join us for the live show discussion of Waco Rising on the Morbidly Curious Book Club's Facebook, Instagram, and/or YouTube page 4/27 at 7pm EST!

"In 1993, David Koresh and a band of heavily armed evangelical Christians took on the might of the US government. A two-month siege of their compound in Waco, Texas, ended in a firefight that killed seventy-six, including twenty-five children. America is still picking up the pieces; we still haven’t heard the full story.

Kevin Cook, who revealed the truth behind a mythic, misunderstood murder in his 2014 Kitty Genovese, finally provides the full story of what happened at Waco. He gives readers a taste of Koresh’s deadly charisma and takes us behind the scenes at the Branch Davidians’ compound, where 'the new Christ' turned his followers into servants and sired seventeen children by a dozen 'wives.' In vivid accounts packed with human drama, Cook harnesses never-reported material to reconstruct the FBI’s fifty-one-day siege of the Waco compound in minute-to-minute detail. He sheds new light on the Clinton administration’s approval of a lethal governmental assault in a new, definitive account of the firefight that ended so many lives and triggered the rise of today’s militia movement. Waco drew the battle lines for American extremists—in Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s words, 'Waco started this war.' With help from sources as diverse as Branch Davidian survivors and the FBI’s lead negotiator during the siege, Cook draws a straight line from Waco’s ashes to the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol and insurrections yet to come.

Unmissable reading for anyone interested in the truth of what happened in Texas three decades ago, Waco Rising is chillingly relevant today. Here is the spark that ignited today’s antigovernment militias."

About the author: Kevin Cook is the author of more than ten books, including The Burning Blue, Ten Innings at Wrigley, and Kitty Genovese. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, GQ, Smithsonian, and many other publications and has often appeared on CNN, NPR, and Fox News. An Indiana native, he lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.