6: Smiling Bob & the Slender Man Stabbings

WARNING: The audio in this episode is rough. What can we say? We were young(ish), dumb, and thought we’d save a little money by sharing one microphone. Yeah. The audio quality improves drastically after episode 9.

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Remember those ‘Smiling Bob’ commercials from the early 2000’s? Of course you do. In this episode, Kristin talks about the man who brought us Enzyte, the “once daily tablet for natural male enhancement.” It’s an insane story, full of fake clinical trials, phony customer satisfaction surveys, and a bunch of other fabrications. But oddly, none of those lies are what brought Steve Warshak down. It was the company’s business practices that ultimately took him to prison.

Then Brandi talks about the heartbreaking story of two 12-year-old girls who lured their friend into the woods and stabbed her multiple times. They said they did it to please “Slender Man,” a creepy but 100% fictional internet meme. Thankfully, due to determination, grit, and a level of bad-assery we can only try to imagine, Payton Leutner dragged herself to safety and survived.

And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.

In this episode, Kristin pulled from:
“Thanks, Smilin’ Bob,” Slate.com
“The rise and fall of the Cincinnati boner king,” GQ
“Sexual Performance Pill” episode, American Greed
“Ohio supplement co. founder gets lower prison term”
“Orange is the new white-collar,” Fortune
“Updating an email law from the last century,” New York Times

In this episode, Brandi pulled from:
“The Girls Who Tried To Kill For Slender Man” by Abigail Jones, Newsweek
“Slender Man Stabbing Survivor’s Parents: ‘She’s Meant to Do Something Special’” by Lauren Effron and Kelley Robinson, ABC News