American Hysteria

Oct 28 2024 221 ep. 44 mins 18k
American Hysteria Podcast artwork

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
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Buried Alive!

Oct 28 2024 60 mins  
In the 19th century, America and Europe experienced a panic over premature burial, believing that anyone could be accidentally declared dead and entombed before their time was really up. Led by a movement of quacky Spiritualists, the panic culminated in the creation of safety coffins with mechanisms that promised to save anyone who awoke six feet underground. Mere decades later, bu

Context Clues: Grave Mistakes

Oct 21 2024 50 mins  
'Buried Alive,' our upcoming Halloween special, looks at the American fear and fascination with premature burial. We'll explore the panic that swept the nation in the 1800s, leading to the creation of safety coffins for those potentially entombed too soon, and the spectacles drummed up by eccentric performers who competed to see who could stay buried alive the longest. This episode

A MASSIVE SEANCE Live Show Tour with YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT

Oct 18 2024 1 mins  
What could possibly go wrong when two skeptical podcasters try to summon a ghost? Join Sarah Marshall of You're Wrong About and Chelsey Weber-Smith of American Hysteria for a historical, theatrical, ecstatic spectacular for the living and dead. Hold hands with your favorite disembodied voices for a spiritualist séance* featuring fireside conversation, mystifying tricks, special gu

I Was a Teenage Poltergeist with Sarah Marshall of 'You're Wrong About'

Oct 14 2024 98 mins  
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 A

Skibidi Toilet

Oct 07 2024 64 mins  
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

Listen Now: MrBallen’s Medical Mysteries

Oct 07 2024 32 mins  
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

Context Clues: Brr Skibidi Dop Dop Dop Yes Yes

Sep 30 2024 64 mins  
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 wit

The Untold History of the NYPD with Chenjerai Kumanyika of Empire City

Sep 23 2024 63 mins  
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,

Taylor Swift Decoded with Pop Music Journalist Brittany Spanos

Sep 09 2024 64 mins  
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, a

Elvis is Alive!

Sep 02 2024 71 mins  
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 ho