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PODCAST

American Hysteria

chelsey weber-smith

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

All Episodes

46:51

Gender Reveal Parties: Pride Rewind

American Hysteria ·

2025/06/09

Happy Pride month to all who observe! This is a rerelease of one of our favorite episodes. Over the last ten years, Gender Reveal Parties have exploded, figuratively and literally. Parents, communities, and social media followers alike can witness the moment that parents and families find out the sex of their future baby, but lately, these parties have gotten so out of hand as to cause massive wildfires, explosions, damage to homes, injuries, and death. For this episode, we will try to figure out

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61:35

The Last Prison Rodeo with Journalist Adam Mahoney

American Hysteria ·

2025/06/02

Since 1965, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola, has held an incredibly popular public event known as the Prison Rodeo where incarcerated men participate for cash prizes in contests so dangerous they have been banned from the professional rodeo circuit. Adam Mahoney is a reporter at Capital B and the author of a recent article titled The Wildest Show in the South: Spectacle and Suffering at America’s Biggest Prison. For this episode, Adam discusses with me the surreal reality of

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78:26

Mayhem! at the Minecraft Movie with BJ Colangelo

American Hysteria ·

2025/05/26

Over the last couple months, groups of Minecraft fans have been making TikTok videos of themselves wrecking havoc in theaters across the nation when their favorite moment of the new Minecraft movie plays. Culture writer and co-host of the podcast The Ends at Prom, BJ Colangelo, teaches me about wtf is going on and together we try not to moral panic while discussing what this new craze means. We’ll also talk about how the Minecraft mayhem compares (or doesn't care) to both The Rocky Horror Picture

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73:58

Lost Boy Larry with Producer Miranda Zickler

American Hysteria ·

2025/05/19

In 1973, mysterious communications from a young boy came over CB radios in the Southwest, leading to a massive search and rescue mission that generated far more questions than answers. For this episode, I tell American Hysteria Producer (and co-host of our subscribers-only podcast Hysteria Home Companion) Miranda Zickler about the dubious case now referred to as Lost Boy Larry and go through the tangle of strange new information I feverishly uncovered deep in the archives of newspapers.com. This

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5:54

Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore

American Hysteria ·

2025/05/17

Join hosts Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore as they take you deep into the world of the most notorious crimes ever — where a single clue can crack a case wide open. From shocking murders to serial killers, Clues dives into all the forensic details and brilliant sleuthing of the world's most infamous cases. CLUES is a Crime House Original, powered by PAVE Studios. Follow and listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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59:07

Balloon Boy

American Hysteria ·

2025/05/12

In 2009, the news reported live as a six-year-old boy careened through the air at 7,000 feet trapped inside a homemade balloon craft. Millions tuned into the harrowing saga, but once the balloon finally hit the ground, no little boy was found inside. Details then emerged that seemed to indicate it was all a hoax created by a family as part of a PR stunt for a reality TV show. On this episode, we explore the story of Balloon Boy, ask whether the event was indeed a hoax, and look at the early history

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112:52

New Context: Gang Accusations and Initiations

American Hysteria ·

2025/05/05

Right now we are seeing accusations of gang associations used to to justify abducting immigrants off the street and sending them to either US detention centers or the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador with no due process. We have included a new introduction for this rerelease of our two part Gang Initiation series from 2024 in hopes that we can illuminate how these types of accusations and their consequences are straight out of the American playbook. Head to

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100:00

Hoax Diary Spectacular with Sarah Marshall of 'You're...

American Hysteria ·

2025/04/28

Sarah Marshall takes me on a journey through two possible historical literary deceptions and asks me to try to figure out what is real, what is fake, and what it all means. This is a sibling to our recent episode on You’re Wrong About called Hoax Memoir Spectacular, so make sure you check that out as well. Listen to 'You're Wrong About' and 'You Are Good' wherever you get your podcasts ⁠Become a Patron⁠ to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content Or subscribe to

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91:42

The Runaway Nun Hoax pt. 2 with Sarah Marshall of...

American Hysteria ·

2025/04/21

*Please listen to part one of our series first.* 'The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk' was an 1800s true crime memoir about the horrors a runaway nun claimed to have suffered while living among debaucherous and murderous Catholic clergy in a convent-turned-torture chamber, and at the time, it was the second bestselling book in America. But was it really a truthful account of Maria Monk’s life? Or was it all a hoax, a piece of propaganda meant to incite hatred of the early immigrant folk devils of

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86:59

The Runaway Nun Hoax pt. 1 with Sarah Marshall of...

American Hysteria ·

2025/04/14

'The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk' was an 1800s true crime memoir about the horrors a runaway nun claimed to have suffered while living among debaucherous and murderous Catholic clergy in a convent-turned-torture chamber, and at the time, it was the second bestselling book in America. But was it really a truthful account of Maria Monk’s life? Or was it all a hoax, a piece of propaganda meant to incite hatred of the early immigrant folk devils of American culture? In this two part series, Sarah

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65:54

Luxury Doomsday with 'This is Propaganda'

American Hysteria ·

2025/04/07

The hottest new (and embarrassing) trend in the billionaire bubble is luxury doomsday shelters, wildly expensive bunkers that the ultra-rich believe will allow them to live extravagantly in a post-apocalyptic world. Join me, Joshua Belhumeur, and Malcolm Critcher of the podcast 'This is Propaganda' as we enter their futuristic world, try to understand their tech bro mindset, and take a look at the history of prepping to see how unchecked capitalism has transformed the way we think about the end of

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70:50

Hoax Spectacular! with You're Wrong About

American Hysteria ·

2025/03/31

This is a very special episode I did last year with the podcast You’re Wrong About in which Sarah Marshall and I swapped stories about some of our favorite historical hoaxes and pranks in honor of April Fools Day. Listen to You're Wrong About wherever you get your podcasts Become a Patron to support our show and get ad-free early episodes and bonus content Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline Carolyn Kendrick produced this episode

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80:43

Burlesque This Mess with Comic Stripper Woody Shticks

American Hysteria ·

2025/03/24

Woody Shticks is a comic stripper and burlesque performer as well as the director, production manager, and co-star of our recent live stage show with You’re Wrong About. For this episode, Woody and I talk about our histories with and philosophies around modern burlesque, and I tell him about the drama surrounding the first burlesque troupe to make it big in the United States back in the 1860s. This sexier-than-usual episode will show that the radical joy of art forms like burlesque continue to speak

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74:30

Thongs

American Hysteria ·

2025/03/17

Exposed thongs were all the rage in the early 2000s thanks to a handful of massive pop cultural moments, but as the craze reached the mainstream market and trickled down to teens and tweens, the skank-shaming heated up as did the moral panics and political backlash. Millennials, however, were far from the first generation to experience thong drama, and for this episode we will go back through the last ten decades to see how half of the time moral guardians have tried to legislate the thong out of

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56:29

Context Clues: Let Me See That Thong

American Hysteria ·

2025/03/10

Thongs and the battles waged on their backs will be the focus of our upcoming episode. This collection of excerpts from previous episodes will provide some extra context: Wardrobe Malfunction (2019), Teenage Sex (2019), and The Streaking Craze (2023). Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts Sound design and Production by Riley Swedelius-Smith Edited by Miranda Zickler Hosted by Chelsey

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61:25

Erasing History with Philosopher Jason Stanley

American Hysteria ·

2025/03/03

American philosopher Jason Stanley is the author of Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. For this episode, Jason helps us understand some of the attacks on educational institutes at home and abroad and how authoritarian movements purposefully repress and reject historical truths in favor of a different narrative that benefits their attempts at grabbing more and more power away from the people.Get a copy of Erasing History Become a Patron to support our show and

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91:30

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive with 'You Are Good'...

American Hysteria ·

2025/02/24

RIP David Lynch, beloved director and otherworldly weirdo. The You Are Good feelings podcast about movies graciously invited me to talk about one of the most influential films and artists of my lifetime. Talking all things Lynchian with Sarah Marshall and Alex Steed, I tried to summarize this famously baffling plot of this film, mused about the concept of Duende, and cried on mic about the Unified Field. Whether you are a fan of David Lynch or not, I hope you enjoy this conversation that was very

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60:14

Invasion of the Drones with Podcaster Gabe Lenners

American Hysteria ·

2025/02/17

Gabe Lenners is the host of the new podcast Obscurum: Invasion of the Drones, which explores a mysterious wave of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena that happened in Nebraska and Colorado back in 2019, an event that has a lot in common with the recent wave of supposed drones seen in New Jersey and surrounding states. For this episode, I don my flexible skeptic hat while Gabe tells me about his illuminating experience reporting from the ground, first seeing drones himself, and then interviewing locals

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55:35

The Jersey Devil

American Hysteria ·

2025/02/10

This Urban Legends Hotline episode features listener Brandon's inquiry about the legend of the Jersey Devil, a cryptid that has haunted the Pine Barrens of New Jersey for three hundred years. We will explore the various historical events that produced this creature's folklore: a dime museum's elaborate hoax, a radical Puritan woman said to have birthed a monster, a bitchy Quaker feud rife with satanic accusations, and the impoverished people of the Pine Barrens who helped cultivate the tale as a

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53:53

Context Clues: The Devil Went Down to Jersey

American Hysteria ·

2025/02/03

The famous cryptid known as the Jersey Devil will be the focus of our upcoming Urban Legends Hotline investigation. This episode will provide some context using excerpts from previous topics we have covered. Full episodes to check out: The Cannibal Pig People of Pig Hill (2023) Fake News (2020) Urban Legends (2021) Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts Sound design and Production by Riley

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