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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

98:26

I Was a Teenage Poltergeist with Sarah Marshall of...

American Hysteria ·

2024/10/14

Today Sarah Marshall transports us to the old world of British Hysteria to reveal the mysterious story of the Enfield Poltergeist and joins me at the seance table to discuss the great unknown and the ghosts we know. Donate to help those affected by the recent hurricanes: Mutual Aid Disaster Relief BelovedAsheville Central Florida Mutual Aid 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

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64:10

Skibidi Toilet

American Hysteria ·

2024/10/07

Generation Alpha has made the uncanny, creepy, and chaotic YouTube series 'Skibidi Toilet' into a viral YouTube sensation, so much so that a famous director may soon be taking it to the big screen, despite the fact that the phenomenon has been called both brainrot and dangerous to the youth. On this episode, we will explain what Skibidi Toilet is, hear about similar internet videos enjoyed by Millennials and Gen X, and learn about famous art movements like net.art, Dadaism, and Surrealism to see if

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32:40

Listen Now: MrBallen’s Medical Mysteries

American Hysteria ·

2024/10/07

The human body is a miracle. But when it’s not working, it can be the stuff of nightmares. On this new series from master storyteller MrBallen, they’re sharing medical horror stories and diagnostic mysteries that are surgically calibrated to make your blood run cold. From bizarre, unheard-of diseases and miraculous recoveries to strange medical mishaps and unexplainable deaths — you’ll never hear the phrase “heart-stopping” in the same way again. MrBallen’s Medical Mysteries is a first-of-its-kind

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64:36

Context Clues: Brr Skibidi Dop Dop Dop Yes Yes

American Hysteria ·

2024/09/30

Our upcoming episode is about the massively successful and deeply uncanny YouTube series Skibidi Toilet, the first content that Generation Alpha's influence has made into a world-wide sensation. Billions of views on YouTube and TikTok are attributed to the original videos and the innumerable fan videos that followed, and soon we may see this bizarro phenomenon on the big screen with a famous director attached. Skibidi Toilet has been called both brainrot and dangerous to the youth, and in this

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63:32

The Untold History of the NYPD with Chenjerai...

American Hysteria ·

2024/09/23

Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika is a Peabody Award-winning audio journalist and an assistant professor of journalism at New York University. His latest podcast, Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD “takes listeners on a journey to uncover the hidden history of the largest police force in the world – from its roots in slavery, to rival police gangs battling across the city, to everyday people who resisted every step of the way.” With the national spotlight yet again on the corruption and

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64:38

Taylor Swift Decoded with Pop Music Journalist...

American Hysteria ·

2024/09/09

Brittany Spanos is a senior writer for Rolling Stone Magazine who has taught a course at NYU called Topics in Recorded Music: Taylor Swift, which analyzes "the culture and politics of teen girlhood in pop music, fandom, media studies, whiteness and power as it relates to her image." Today we are talking about conspiracy theories that come from within the hardcore Swiftie fanbase, and the ones that come from outside, often via the right wing media. Follow Brittany Spanos on Twitter and

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71:37

Elvis is Alive!

American Hysteria ·

2024/09/02

The life of the conspiracy theory that claims Elvis Presley faked his death is an almost unbelievable journey through gimmick-crazy hucksters and true blue believers, the tales turning the king of rock and roll into something more like a cryptid than a superstar, evidence caught in blurry photographs and in secret messages, all covered up by shadowy forces. This zany story shows how conspiracies theories are born, how they transform, and how they never seem to die, no matter what, much like Elvis

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55:28

Context Clues: The King is Dead Probably

American Hysteria ·

2024/08/26

The idea that Elvis Presley did not die in August of 1977, that he instead faked his death, has become one of the most famous and enduring conspiracy theories of all time, essentially elevating the former superstar to the status of a cryptid. For this context clues episode, we are revisiting our 2022 episode called Fangirls which covers the rise of music fandom, including Elvis'. Next week we will explore the bizarre, fantastical creation of the Elvis is Alive movement and the many strange players

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58:14

The Disney Gimmick That Conjured a Ghost with Jim...

American Hysteria ·

2024/08/12

Our paranormal correspondent Jim Perry is back to tell us about his recent ghost hunt inside the Queen Mary ship, where he discovered that Walt Disney had installed some ghostly gimmicks decades ago, inadvertently creating a haunting that continued on long after Disney sold the vessel. We discuss what happens when horror entertainment influences our consciousness and helps to create our modern relationship to the paranormal.Listen to Euphomet wherever you get your podcasts Check out

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82:26

Tarantism: Dancing Mania pt. 2 with Sarah Marshall of...

American Hysteria ·

2024/08/05

For part two of our series, we are returning to the phenomenon called 'Tarantism' that began in the Middle Ages in southern Italy where the bite of a local spider caused bizarre and contagious symptoms almost like that of demonic possession and the only antidote was trance-like, vigorous dancing. Today we look at all the theories about what caused this dancing mania: Was it all truly a reaction to the venom? A religious possession? A full-blown hysteria? A feminist revolt? Or an archaic cult’s

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65:16

Tarantism: Dancing Mania pt. 1 with Sarah Marshall of...

American Hysteria ·

2024/07/29

The phenomenon called 'Tarantism' began in the Middle Ages in southern Italy where the bite of a local spider caused bizarre symptoms almost like that of demonic possession. The only cure was to dance vigorously for hours or days with the dance itself seeming to become contagious. Was it all truly a reaction to the venom? A religious possession? A full-blown hysteria? A feminist revolt? Or an archaic cult’s secret rituals? Sarah and I try to figure it out over this two part series. Become a Patron

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46:08

Spider Slander: Confronting the Myths with Expert Rod...

American Hysteria ·

2024/07/22

Rod Crawford is the curator of the arachnids and related research collections at Seattle’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. His website called Spider Myths debunks the many misconceptions about spiders, and for this episode, he joins me to discuss some of these urban legends and bogus facts. Many of them may surprise you!Check out Rod Crawford's website Spider Myths Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content Or subscribe to American Hysteria

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61:47

The Average Person Swallows Eight Spiders a Year in...

American Hysteria ·

2024/07/15

For this Urban Legends Hotline episode, we are dissecting the myth that the average person swallows a certain number of spiders in their sleep by following this false fact's bizarre and mysterious trail on the early internet, looking at other spider-related urban legends, searching for pop culture references to spiders in mouths, as well as old newspaper articles about the alleged dangers of swallowing spiders, and analyzing the surprising theories behind American's fear of these eight-legged

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24:44

Rewind: Believing in the Blair Witch (Updated!)

American Hysteria ·

2024/06/24

This is an update on the new developments surrounding one of my favorite movies of all time, The Blair Witch Project, paired with our 2019 minisode. When news broke that the film's production company Lionsgate will be reviving the franchise with genre giant Blumhouse, the three original actors took to social media with a serious bone to pick. The Blair Witch Project masqueraded as real found footage of three college students who went missing in the woods while recording a documentary on the local

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53:58

Pretendians: Indigenous Identity Fraud with Robert...

American Hysteria ·

2024/06/17

For this episode, the hosts of the new podcast Pretendians, Robert Jago and Angel Ellis, explain Indigenous Identity Fraud, the phenomenon of scam artists pretending to be indigenous in order to receive certain kinds of benefits. We talk about the motivations of these Pretendians, how they get away with it, the effects these charlatans have on the indigenous peoples they attempt to emulate, and how these living caricatures overshadow the true identities of various indigenous communities.Listen to

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52:54

A Terrorist Attack on the Furries with Nicky Woolf

American Hysteria ·

2024/06/10

Fur and Loathing is a new investigative podcast from Nicky Woolf about an unsolved 2014 chlorine gas attack on the world’s largest Furry convention, an assumed safe place for those who create animal avatars using elaborate costumes. Nicky takes me through the case, shares his experience at a recent convention, discusses misconceptions and urban legends about the Furry community, and explains a dark subculture that lurks in the fringes of this otherwise inclusive and colorful world.Subscribe to Fur

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58:29

Long Live the Ray Cat with Emperor X and Matt Kielty

American Hysteria ·

2024/05/20

Reporter and Radiolab producer Matthew Kielty and musician Chad Matheny (AKA Emperor X) were both part of a 2014 episode of the 99% Invisible podcast called Ten Thousand Years that asked the same question we did in our Talking to the Future episode: how do we communicate warnings about nuclear waste to humans ten thousand years in the future when language, symbols, and familiar technologies have all fallen away? Matt was a contributor to the episode, helping bring the strange story to a much larger

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67:11

Talking to the Future: Nuclear Semiotics

American Hysteria ·

2024/05/13

How do we warn people 10,000 years in the future about nuclear waste sites that will remain extremely dangerous for longer than human civilization has existed? When language, symbols, and technologies are lost to time, how can we get our message across? Atomic Priesthoods, Radiation Cats, Forests of Thorns, manufactured folklore, these are just a few of the unorthodox ideas of government-sponsored academics trying to answer this baffling puzzle.Become a Patron to support our show and get early

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43:08

Context Clues: Going Nuclear

American Hysteria ·

2024/05/06

For some context for our upcoming series that we have not yet revealed, we will revisit excerpts from our past episodes: Horror Movies pt. 1, The End of the World, and Alien Abductions pt. 1 and 2. We encourage you to listen to the full episodes! 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 Weber-Smith Check

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65:54

Magical Overthinking with Amanda Montell

American Hysteria ·

2024/04/29

Amanda Montell is the host of the podcast Sounds Like A Cult as well as the author of the new book The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, a collection of personal essays on various cognitive biases, those flawed ways of thinking that were very important for early humans but now cause all kinds of problems in our technologically advanced world. Amanda explains why these cognitive biases originally existed, how they manifest in the personal and political, and what we can do to

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