American Hysteria

American Hysteria explores how fantastical thinking has shaped our culture – moral panics, urban legends, hoaxes, crazes, fringe beliefs, and national misunderstandings. Poet-turned-podcaster Chelsey Weber-Smith tells the strangest stories from American history and examines the forces that create the reality we share, and sometimes, the reality we don't.

Society & Culture
History
176
HAUNTED DOLLS
55 min
177
Context Clues: The Uncanny Valley of the Dolls
36 min
178
Rainbow Fentanyl: Poisoned Halloween Candy Rere...
42 min
179
Halloween is Millennial Christmas with Podcaste...
60 min
180
FLORIDA SCAM
36 min
181
FLORIDA MAN
57 min
182
Context Clues: Feeling Like a Freak on a Beach
27 min
183
An Irresistible Movement with Reproductive Just...
48 min
184
WOMB WARS pt. 2
52 min
185
WOMB WARS pt. 1
55 min
186
Context Clues: Maybe it Ain't About the Babies
30 min
187
Postcolonial Astrology with Alice Sparkly Kat
39 min
188
THE PLANETARY PROPAGANDA OF THE ANTI-NAZI ASTRO...
36 min
189
The Supernatural Imaginary of the Third Reich w...
56 min
190
ASTROLOGY
50 min
191
All the Other Snuff with Sarah Marshall of 'You...
55 min
192
ROTTEN.COM
25 min
193
SNUFF FILMS
50 min
194
Context Clues: Pornography
This rerelease will give some context for next week's new episode called Snuff Films.
38 min
195
Hear ye! Hear ye! Extra extra hear all about it!
Just a handful of little announcements as we take a few weeks off (back in late April).
2 min
196
The Séance of Selena with Poet Melissa Lozada-O...
Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a Guatemalan-Colombian-American poet, screenwriter, and educator, and co-host of the podcast Say More. She is the author of a novel in verse called Dreaming of You, about bringing 90s Mexican-American pop star Selena back to life through a séance and the disastrous consequences that follow.
38 min
197
Scene Queens with Podcasters BJ and Harmony Col...
'This Ends at Prom' is a podcast that dives deep into coming-of-age and teen girl movies from the queer, feminist cisgender and transgender perspectives of wives and film analysts BJ and Harmony Colangelo. Today we chat about millennial pop groups, the emo scene, pop punk, hair metal, gender contamination, boy band haircuts, and what we hope for the next generation of stars and the fans that make them.
57 min
198
BOY BANDS
Behind every manufactured boy band there is what the press calls a Svengali, a puppet master who assembles the group and styles everything about them. This episode will introduce us to the eccentric producers and talent agents who have long shaped pop music from behind the curtain.
52 min
199
FANGIRLS
Hysterical fangirls have become so commonplace in popular music that we hardly pay attention to them anymore, no matter how loud they scream. But there was a time when the screaming, crying, fainting teenage fan was seen not only as a psychological puzzle but also as a major threat to the American empire.
44 min
200
Context Clues: Teenage Sex
To prepare for our series called Fangirls and Boy Bands, we are heading back to the fantastical realm of the teenager and the reactionary moral panics their sex lives have inspired since the days of the Puritans. In this episode, pay special attention to the invention of the teenager in the 1920s and 40s as well as the way the small revolutions that music and dance were able to incite, and then come back next week when we will break down the archetype of hysterical fangirl and see how these seas of swooners were seen as both ridiculous and extremely dangerous to the very fabric of America.
36 min