American Hysteria

When a security camera caught footage of a 31-year-old Florida resident eating the face of a homeless man, the news and social media dubbed him the Miami Zombie, and it was widely speculated that he was under the influence of a new synthetic drug called Bath Salts, a claim that was later found to be false. Hysterical drug rhetoric has long talked of zombies and monsters and aggressors with superhuman strength and an imperviousness to police bullets, and panic around drug use has long been manufactured by politicians with specific groups in mind, to dehumanize those who appear to cause a threat to the established social order, marking them inhuman groups in need of social control and even long-term imprisonment. Many of us were drafted into the War on Drugs as kids and teens through faulty programs implemented by D.A.R.E. police officers, and taught to mimic this unreasonable rhetoric that has caused irreparable harm to many American communities and continues to do so to this day.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 RogersThanks to Sarah Deutsch for advisingBecome 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 week's episode of the Calm Down, my guests are the women of Feminist Folklore. Each week Carela Holl-Jensen and Rachael Marr consider what fairytales, folk stories, and urban legends can tell us about culture at large, about beliefs surrounding gender and sexuality and the prescribed roles of women. Today we’ll be discussing different interpretations of the Hook man urban legend as well as the true crime stories of Lover’s Lane, while we dissect the phenomenon of the teenage urban legend and what it has to do with American traditions.This week's were Carela Holl Jensen and Rachel Marr of Feminist Folklore Hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithThis episode was produced by Clear Commo StudiosBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcastNext episode we will talk about American Drug panics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1996, Scream taught American teenagers the first rule to surviving a horror movie. Never, ever have sex. Classic slasher movies have their roots in an urban legend we all heard growing up: a guy and a girl are parked on a deserted lover’s lane making out while a hook-handed killer is on the loose. The 2000s gave us urban legends about dangerous teen sex games, Rainbow parties and sex bracelets, as well as bans on high school dances over grinding and twerking, and with the recent outrage over teen sexting, it seems that kids these days are out of control. But since the invention of the American teenager, rumor and outrage has swirled around this reckless developmental stage. Through looking at the start of teenage culture in the 1920s, when risqué dance trends and controversial make-out parties scandalized the nation, we’ll find the roots of these modern moral panics, and see how our battles around sex education have left them in an uneducated limbo, creating suburban legends to make sense of their parents’ utter horror at their private lives.American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosShow 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 the Calm Down this week my guests are my two Christian friends who wish to remain anonymous, as they are sharing some anti-establishment opinions. Brianna is a poet who got her masters with me at the University of Virginia, and her husband Patrick has a master’s degree in biblical and theological studies and teaches the bible at a private high school. Brianna and Patrick are dedicated to questioning and exploring their faith in big ways, and today we’ll talk about their changes of heart as young Christians, what the the Bible says about homosexuality in its historical context, and how the philosophy of queerness just might help save the Christian faith. This is American Hysteria’s The Calm Down Hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithThis week’s guests were Brianna and PatrickThis episode was produced by Clear Common StudiosBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcastJoin us next week for the panics surrounding Teenage Sex. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The purse-carrying, tutu-wearing purple Teletubby Tinky Winky was outed as a homosexual in 1999, capping off a decade of conspiratorial anti-gay writings and videos that influenced politics straight up to supreme court. Accused of using kids shows and public schools to influence impressionable minds and recruit new young homosexuals, the gay militants were secretly powerful agents of a massive conspiracy to bring down traditional American values and take over the country. The creation of the Gay Agenda theory borrowed from a long history of devastating misinformation and a concerted effort to rid America of this apparent moral disease without mercy, a process that began as the first puritans encountered tribal communities with ways shockingly different than their own, and began their own anti-gay crusade that has lasted centuries.American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosShow 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 most of us living in the US, clowns have become much more associated with horror than the laughter of kids. The “killer clown” epidemic went viral in 2016, with reports across the nation of evil clowns trying to lure children into the woods, attacking adults, and threating harm to local schools, but as you might guess, they were all hoaxes or hysteria. However, it wasn’t the first time that America was invaded by Phantom Clowns. For this episode, I will trace the history of our relationship to the clown as a cultural archetype, explore a strange theory of creepiness known as the uncanny valley, and try to understand why these particular creatures emerge from the woods when they do.American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosShow 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

*Please be aware that this episode talks about child sexual abuse* We recommend listening to part one of Satanic Panic first. In 1980s America, when 60% of people believed that devil worship was a serious problem, two new characters, Stranger Danger’s murderous pedophile and the Satanist, blurred into a new villain and psychological archetype: The Satanic pedophile. In part one, we saw how Satanic hysteria was sown through pop culture, sensational media, and religious hucksters, causing the widespread fear of Satan’s influence over children and their behavior. We touched on the cultural anxieties that were raging during this time, with women beginning careers and leaving kids in daycare for the first time in history, and the Moral Majority pushing fundamentalism into the political sphere. For part two, Chelsey covers ‘satanic ritual abuse’, the belief that Satanic cults were using daycare centers as fronts to physically, sexually, and emotionally abuse children in horrifying religious rituals allegedly described by the children themselves. This moral panic has been called the Salem Witch Hunt of our modern era, including the longest and most expensive trial in US history, with some of the accused wrongly imprisoned for twenty years. Chelsey will try to understand this shocking moment in our recent history, how something like this could have happened, and the cultural issues it was really about.American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosShow 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

This episode is part one of our two-part series on perhaps the most mystifying moral panic in US history, the 1980s and early 90s 'Satanic Panic.' For this episode, Chelsey covers the rise of organized Satanism beginning in the late 60s, as well as the adversarial countercultures of the hippies and the metalheads, and their apparent Satanic crimes that would be hailed as proof of their evil, as well as proof that teens, as well as children, were in serious moral peril. Satan was allegedly hypnotizing the youth with secret messages in backwards rock songs, teaching them occult magic in Saturday morning cartoons, and causing suicides through a popular role-playing game, all while helping religion blur into politics for good. For part two Chelsey will cover what came next, a serious investigation into an imagined network of Satanic cults ritually abusing children in daycare centers all over the country. Chelsey will try to understand this shocking decade in history, why it happened, and the cultural issues it was really about. Part two is coming after the holidays.American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosShow 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 episode, we'll explore the mother-of-all conspiracy theories, the Illuminati, an alleged secret society and their evil world domination plan known as the New World Order. Chelsey takes a stroll down memory lane with friend Austin Smith, to a time when they believed in the Illuminati and found what seemed like proof. We’ll explore the history of the theory itself, why some people are more prone to believing than others, and how at the heart of the theory lies a dark ideology that has affected our culture into the present.Check out A Culture of Conspiracy by Michael Barkun for further readingAmerican Hysteria is written and produced by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosShow art by RoacheVoice acting by Will RogersThanks to my guest, Austin Smith, check out his new book of poemsBecome 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

This episode takes a look at our history with candy, the desire and the panic, and explains why sweets have always been a source of fear for parents. Starting with the strange 1800s religious beliefs of Dr. Harvey Kellogg, about candy leading to sexual deviancy, we'll move through the goofy urban legends of the 1970s, to the 80s and 90s when people allegedly began finding dangerous objects in their foods, like syringes in Pepsi cans and poison in Halloween candy.American Hysteria is written and produced by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Rod RodriguezShow art by RoacheVoice acting by Lily Orrey and 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