
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.
Latest episodes

7 snips
Jun 30, 2025 • 1h 35min
The Call is Coming From Inside the House with Sarah Marshall of 'You're Wrong About'
You've probably heard the urban legend called the Babysitter and the Man Upstairs or at least know the idiom it inspired: “The call is coming from inside the house.” Sarah Marshall of the podcasts You’re Wrong About and You Are Good joins me as I share some new ideas about where this tale came from, focused on an epidemic of obscene phone calls in the 1960s and a true crime story that was happening at the same time. We also discuss whether this urban legend may have actually created the entire slasher film genre.
Listen to our new house band Magpie Cinema Club
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 American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Leave us a message on the Urban Legends Hotline at americanhysteria.com
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jun 23, 2025 • 1h 2min
THE HIPPIE BABYSITTER BABY ROAST
Have you ever heard the urban legend about the babysitter who takes LSD and accidentally bakes a baby in the oven believing it to be a raw turkey? For this Urban Legends Hotline episode, we will explore the possible origins of and the meaning behind this piece of 1960s folklore.
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline at americanhysteria.com
Sound Designer and Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Voice Actor: Will Rogers
Written, Produced, and Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jun 16, 2025 • 55min
Context Clues: Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's High
This episode will give some extra context for our upcoming urban legend episodes: The Hippie Babysitter and the Baby Roast, The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs, and the one where the college students go blind staring at the sun on LSD.
We use excerpts from our episodes:
Fangirls (2022)
Suburbia (2020)
Mind Control (2019)
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Leave us a message on the Urban Legends Hotline at americanhysteria.com
Sound design and Production by Riley Swedelius-Smith
Edited by Miranda Zickler
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jun 9, 2025 • 47min
GENDER REVEAL PARTIES: Pride Rewind
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 what in the world is going on here by exploring the history of gendered baby items, of the strange divination methods once used to guess the biological sex, and take a look at the idea of rituals around the mystery of pregnancy. Of course, we’ll also ask questions about the regressive nature of this blue and pink gender binary, and I will share a little about my own childhood growing up as a non-binary kid, a word I wouldn’t know for two decades.
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline at americanhysteria.com
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Voice Actor: Will Rogers
Written, Produced, and Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

10 snips
Jun 2, 2025 • 1h 2min
The Last Prison Rodeo with Journalist Adam Mahoney
In this episode, Adam Mahoney, a reporter at Capital B and author of 'The Wildest Show in the South,' unveils the shocking reality of the Angola prison rodeo, where inmates engage in perilous contests for cash. He delves into the dark legacy of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, originally a slave plantation, and discusses the exploitation and systemic injustices tied to this spectacle. Mahoney highlights the emotional connections forged through arts and crafts, contrasting cultural identities and the ethics of using incarcerated individuals as entertainers.

May 26, 2025 • 1h 18min
Mayhem! at the Minecraft Movie with BJ Colangelo
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 Show and the rebellious mayhem that we ourselves once wrought upon the nation.
Listen to This Ends at Prom wherever you get your podcasts
Follow @BJColangelo on TikTok and Instagram
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

May 19, 2025 • 1h 14min
Lost Boy Larry with Producer Miranda Zickler
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 episode is a shortened version of our subscribers-only podcast Hysteria Home Companion. Head to patreon.com/americanhysteria or subscribe on Apple Podcasts to get access to Hysteria Home Companion as well as ad-free episodes.
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

May 12, 2025 • 59min
BALLOON BOY
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 of the hot air ballooning craze in the 18th and 19th centuries where hoaxes and wild spectacles were a foundational part of the emerging scientific field.
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline at americanhysteria.com
Sound Designer and Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Voice Actor: Will Rogers
Written, Produced, and Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

11 snips
May 5, 2025 • 1h 53min
New Context: Gang Accusations and Initiations
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 immigrantjustice.org/know-your-rights
Sound Designer and Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Voice Actor: Will Rogers
Written, Produced, and Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Apr 28, 2025 • 1h 40min
Hoax Diary Spectacular with Sarah Marshall of 'You're Wrong About'
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 American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices