Podcast Spotlight: Sword & Scale’s 20th Episode Is Too Disturbing For Words (NSFW)

(Note: Let me know if this is too far afield. I know we sometimes get blowback on non-film items running on the site, but this podcast episode left such a deep impression on me, I felt it had to be shared.)

Sword and Scale is a new true crime podcast (their first episode posted on Jan 1st, 2014) and one I’m looking forward to catching up with in the coming weeks. My newfound enthusiasm for the show comes from their 20th episode, which I heard about on the latest episode of Night of the Living Podcast (also great). Here’s the synopsis:

Ronald William Brown was a ventriloquist puppeteer on a television program called Joy Junction, a variety show on the Christian Television Network. Last year he received a 20-year sentence for child pornography charges, but the real story is much more disturbing. Brown along with 42 others were netted in a child porn sting that spanned two continents and perpetrators from every walk of life. Believe it or not, the worst part of the story isn’t that these individuals wanted to molest children. Instead, their online chat logs revealed a deep desire to murder, mutilate and eat their corpses too. Brown even had a particular victim in mind, a boy that attended his local church. The horrific level of detail in their plans is captured in the eerily benign nature of their back and forth dialog, which has been recreated using computer voices for this program. Sword and Scale has never released a show this disturbing, so if you are sensitive to topics like this please do not listen.

Since listening to the episode, I’ve done a lot of thinking about the validity of the cannibalistic activity claimed by Ronald William Brown and the people he was chatting with. Slate ran a piece questioning the extreme sentencing in Brown’s case, stating, “the judge inflated Brown’s sentence because Brown’s desires were so twisted and disturbing.” That’s hard to deny, especially given what the judge had to say during Brown’s sentencing (the details of which are on the podcast) and it’s also an important reminder that Brown never did any of the things he talked about. Yes, his hard drive was full of child pornography, but he never killed nor ate any children and the people he was chatting with could possibly be in the same boat. That doesn’t make their fantasies (all of which are highly sexualized and involved very real pornography, some of it snuff-related) any less disturbing, but it helps me to sleep a little better knowing that some of the transcribed chats are just that: fantasies.

The things mentioned on this episode of the podcast are truly unforgettable and I’ll be thinking about them and the minds that came up with them for a long time to come. For those of you looking for a truly engaging, deeply disturbing new podcast, I can’t think of anything that fits the bill more than this. Just be warned that the disclaimers given by myself and the show aren’t bullshit. This actually turned my stomach.

You can find the episode by clicking the picture below:

(Final note: Though this really doesn’t have anything to do with movies, fans of The Found Footage Festival will probably recognize Joy Junction, the show on which Ronald William Brown appeared.)