American Hysteria

AFTER SHOCK: Many of us were gifted a strange robotic creature in the last years of the 1990s, a furry animatronic friend that children taught to speak, or so America believed. With misconceptions around the technology of Furby came strange urban legends and conspiracy theories about its possible use as spy equipment, the possibility of it crashing planes and stopping life support machines, and its alleged demonic possession that left an entire generation of kids haunted for years to come.American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosCo-written by Riley SmithBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After the heavy first half of this season, I wanted us to take a little break together and have some fun. We will be covering the volatile toy riots of the 1980s and 90s, from Cabbage Patch Kids to Tickle Me Elmo to Beanie Babies to Pokemon. Let’s take a trip down memory lane to when adults created a market for these toys out of thin air, with pointless plush selling for tens of thousands of dollars, and we’ll even hear a little from my Grannie about her personal mission to find a precious Tickle Me Elmo. I’ll explore just what it is about these fad toys that have led adults to fight each other in the aisles, to break each other’s arms, to create smuggling rings, and even commit murder, sometimes trampling the very children the toys were made for. Thanks to my Grannie Sheila Haagenson!American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch and cowriting assisted by Riley SmithCo-Produced by Miranda ZicklerShow art by RoacheVoice Acting by Will RogersBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this very special episode, we present to you a mash-up of some of our favorite parts of American Hysteria’s LIVE VARIETY HOUR in Seattle. Special guests include Tinky Winky, Satan, Alex Jones, and John Harvey Kellogg. Expect drag, banned dances, urban legends told in the high school halls, favorite PSAs from the 80s and 90s, and even a little romance. CWS hosts this round up of the most hilarious and horrifying moments from season one. You’re gonna want to see our videos, make sure you head to our social media now!Guest hosted by our producer Rod RodriguezProduced by Clear Commo StudiosAssistant Produced by Riley SmithCo-written, Produced, and Starring Lily Orrey, Erin McCarthy, and Will RogersProduced, directed, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I plan to lose all creditability among our dedicated skeptics by sharing my ghost experiences, talking about astrology, and even getting a tarot card reading. Instead of abandoning me, I ask you to indulge yourself into the unknown for just one episode. With the amazing Sapphire Sandalo of Something Scary asking me the kinds of questions I love, I promise to keep my skepticism alive while also respecting the great mysteries that have always fueled me, and led me here, to American Hysteria.Thanks to Sapphire Sandalo, make sure you follow her and her projects on Instagram @awkwardsapphire  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AFTER SHOCK: In the summer of 1944, Americans saw terrifying headlines about a possible Nazi chemical weapons strike in the form of an invisible poison gas. Underneath those headlines, a small town in Illinois began experiencing apparent “anesthetic attacks” by a mysterious figure that would come to be known as the Mad Gasser of Mattoon. Could it have been an escaped Nazi hellbent on the town's destruction? An urban legend leading to a mass hysteria? Or a sadistic homosexual trying to poison his intolerant neighbors with invisible gas? American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch and co-writing assisted by Riley SmithBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Monsters come from the darkness, from the depth of lakes and swamps, from the shadows of forests and hills, and live too in the dark parts of all of us. However, this episode is less about Bigfoot and more about the idea of the monstrous, and how it has been used as a tool to demonize black folks since the first slave ships landed in America, both through folktales and famous works of fiction. We also explore how Darwin's theory of evolution affected white Americans and led to the actual creation of human zoos that displayed African people as both the missing link and blood-thirsty monsters. American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch and cowriting assisted by Riley SmithShow art by RoacheVoice Acting by Will RogersBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AFTER SHOCK: This 1970s rockstar biopic of a man whom we can all agree should be deeply reviled isn’t a new or shocking concept in America, the country with the world record for serial killers in the last 100 years. Zac Efron's sculpted and lovable Ted Bundy personifies an ongoing American obsession with this allegedly handsome killer turned celebrity, a man who confessed to 30 murders and brutal sexual assaults. What does it mean that these boogeymen for which we carry pepper spray, check our backseats, and deadbolt our doors have also become our sex symbols and household names? And what of women who love serial killers? How different are we from them when we cannot seem to look away?American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch and co-writing assisted by Riley SmithBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whether we like to admit it or not, we have celebrities that we follow, and we can watch their dramatics play out on a public stage, their dramatics that remind us of our own. On this episode, we will trace the major events that shaped American fame as we know it, forming our fantastical ideas about celebrities and their personas on and off screen. We’ll explore the anthropology and psychology behind our celebrity celebrity obsession, a process that is actually embedded in our very DNA. We’ll also look at the history of the concept of personality, something that only came to be at the turn of the 19th century, that would shift our focus from what a person does to who a person is. The value of “character” was replaced with the value of “personality,” a philosophical shift has gotten us where we are today, for better and for worse.American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch and cowriting assisted by Riley SmithShow art by RoacheVoice Acting by Will RogersBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AFTER SHOCK: On this week's show we talk about a disease known as Parrot Fever that frightened the nation in 1929, leading to parrots being abandoned in the streets and thrown overboard from ships. But just as quickly, the hysteria gave way to ridicule as America and the media made Parrot Fever into a joke, a made-up illness, a silly panic. But in reality, sickness and death struck 20% of those who contracted Parrot Fever, and though the concern was overblown, the denial of its existence was too. American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch assisted by Riley SmithBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Lifestyle-brand ‘Goop’ and the expensive products it peddles are just the newest in a long line of medical quackery leading back to the 1800s. America has a long history with selling and buying Snake Oil, bogus cures to any ailment you can imagine, starting with the cowboy showman of the wild west, who sold to the masses through traveling vaudevillian performances. In addition to fake cures, historical American doctors and scientists also have a dark history of identifying and pathologizing both biological and mental illnesses that simply didn’t exist, ones that said much more about the culture’s values than it did about the people who were said to be ill. At the same time, the rich were being diagnosed in spades with a disorder known as Americanitis, leading to much more luxurious treatments. American alternative medicine, as dubious as it may be, formed as citizens rightly grew suspicious of the flawed medical establishment. Though fake cures are not grounded in science, researchers are actually finding that alternative medicine does work to help relieve us of our pain, just not in the ways you might think.American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch and cowriting assisted by Riley SmithShow art by RoacheVoice Acting by Will RogersBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices