American Hysteria

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

We all remember the very real threat of cooties, a contractable playground malady that developed out of the adult fear of germs. Cooties have long acted as a tool of kiddy quarantine as well as a tool to define who are the social others of the school hierarchy. Today we will dive into the long history of cooties, from wartime trenches to the jungle gym. American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch and cowritten 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

In a real sense, germs are our only modern predator and they are invisible and impossible to detect; what could be scarier? America has adjusted to the threat of germs by not only working toward cures and vaccinations, but by making uncleanliness in general a cultural symbol meant to separate social others from the affluent. Anxieties about race and immigration, about gender and sexuality and class, played out in the way products were marketed, as well as in how public policy and public opinion were formed, leading to several needless quarantines and travel bans throughout history. American’s obsession with cleanliness has become a kind of religious ritual, and scientists and psychologists now believe that the fear of germs may influence all our political and moral opinions without us evening knowing it. American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch 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

American Hysteria presents the AFTER SHOCK, a follow-up minisode to the main episode before it, basically The Shit They Didn't Show or From The Cutting Room Floor. We'll cover one interesting story every other week. This episode is about 'griefbots,' a new form of AI that app developers are creating. By scouring social media posts and text messages of deceased persons, they work to design chat bots that loved ones and future generations can actually interact with. One developer is even offering a way to contribute to a future digital version of yourself, that could live on long after you die. 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

For the season two premiere, we are exploring the rich American history of Spiritualism, a massive 80-year trend of popular culture lasting from the Civil War to the Jazz age in which mediums began speaking to, and then speaking for, the spirits of the dead. A sudden craze of magical, fun, gross, and sexy parlor room séances swept the nation, materializing during the awe-inspiring age of invention and scientific inquiry. But the movement also had a political side; for the first time women were given a voice for social and political change, a voice that just happened to be channeled from beyond the veil. How they used that otherworldly voice, however, was both revolutionary and problematic, much like the progressive movements we experience today. American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch 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