Prison can be both terrifying and fascinating. We devote this week's episode completely to the topic, with a look at what's it's actually like to live behind bars and why America is addicted to locking people up.
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The food could easily be one of the worst aspects of prison, second to only the loss of freedom and constant fear of death. This week Sword and Scale shows you how to make some from the comfort of your own kitchen.
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At age 16 Brenda Spencer wanted a radio, instead her father bought her a gun. For this girl with obvious signs of psychological problems, the result would be an inexplicable act that would forever change the trajectory of her life.
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On February 18, 1916, Father Schmidt was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison. This is a story about forbidden love, murder, and the only priest in the history of the United States to have died in the electric chair.
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Murder is an unfathomable action by most sane people, but the act of familicide is in a different class altogether. Most would never be able to even imagine killing their entire family just days before Christmas.
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This week we're joined by former ex-inmate Glenn Langohr, who spent 10 years behind bars at some of California's toughest level 4 prisons, before reinventing himself as a best-selling author. His latest book, Prison Riot, takes the reader through the details of an actual prison riot he was involved in at California's Solano State Prison. We also...
Read MoreSo we're working on a very interesting story about prison. The show will talk about different aspects of the topic, including a one-on-one interview with a former inmate of a high-security prison, a professor who believes America is addicted to incarceration, and prison food, which is only the second most dreaded aspect of being locked up for...
Read MoreBrenda Spencer was from San Diego, California. At some point in her childhood her parents were divorced. Brenda lived an impoverished life with her father Wallace. They slept on a single mattress on the floor and empty alcohol bottles around the house. She is said to have self-identified herself as being gay from birth. In 1978 Spencer was sent...
Read MoreThis is a story about forbidden love, murder, and the only priest in the history of the United States to have died in the electric chair. Born in 1881, Hans Schmidt was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in Mainz, Germany, in 1906. Handsome and charismatic, he appeared to be a bright young star in the German church. His enthusiasm was...
Read MoreWhen 20-year-old Morgan Ingram tragically died in 2011, the family couldn't deal with their grief. What followed was a bizarre and prolonged Internet campaign of hate which has attempted to ruin the lives of at least a dozen people. Sword and Scale followed the rabbit hole to see where it would go, and we soon found that the pattern of behavior...
Read MoreMurder is an unfathomable action by most sane people, but the act of familicide is in a different class altogether. Most would never be able to even imagine killing their entire family just days before Christmas, but that's exactly what happened in 1981 when their worst mass murder in Arkansas history consisted of a man killing 14 family members,...
Read MoreWhat happens when a family's grief slips into malice and madness, when a mother is so hell-bent on being portrayed as a victim that she begins victimizing everyone who doesn't see her as one? Welcome to the sad story of Morgan Ingram's untimely death and the circus of insanity that followed and continues to this day. When Morgan's car was...
Read MoreColombian-born Pedro Alonzo Lopez said he knew he would be a killer by the age of 8. That’s when his mother, a prostitute who also produced 12 other children, threw him out of their home for fondling his younger sister. He was quickly taken in by a man who repeatedly sodomized and beat him, apparently over several weeks, until Lopez could run...
Read MoreAny untimely death is a tragedy, but when the victim is young, beautiful, and an all-around wonderful person, the whole thing seems to be much worse. Unfortunately, there are two high-profile cases in the news this week that fit this too-familiar mold. We walk you through the backstory of both of them, told by those who knew the victims best. We...
Read MoreWhether as host of the Olympics or instigator of unrest in Ukraine, it seems the global media spotlight has been on Russia of late. These days, the country can more readily handle its high profile, but it certainly proved ill-prepared in April 1992, when the eyes of the world were fixed on a small-town Russian courthouse for the first...
Read MoreSword and Scale covers the underworld of criminal activity and the demented minds that perform the most despicable and unthinkable actions.
The Sword and Scale Podcast debuted in 2013 and is available on iTunes. Get to know more about Sword and Scale at our About Us page.
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