American Hysteria

Latest Episodes:

URBAN LEGENDS May 03, 2021

Show notes

The kids' book series Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was based largely on urban legends, and when I read them for the first time I realized that I had heard them before, but as something true that happened to a friend of a friend. For our season four finale, I will be sharing my own journey with contemporary myths, from that first book series through the 1998 teen slasher Urban Legend, the landmark work of Mr. Urban Legend, and the man who finally got to the bottom of the most memorable story from my mom’s own childhood: The Bunny Man (I’ll let her tell you about it). So come sit around the midnight campfire, listen to some of the greatest hits, and see what they have to tell us about ourselves and our society, and what they have to do with the tangled mess of conspiracy theories we find ourselves in today.

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Head to tryfirstleaf.com/hysteria to get 6 bottles of wine for $29.95

Finding You is out May 14th

American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith

Sound design by Clear Commo Studios

Research and co-writing by Riley Smith

Co-produced and edited by Miranda Zickler (listen to Shiny Little Corners now!)

Voice acting by Will Rogers

Follow American Hysteria on social media:

Twitter: @AmerHysteria

Instagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast

Find our merch at americanhysteria.com

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Rewind: The Momo Suicide Challenge Apr 26, 2021

Show notes

In preparation for our season finale next week on Urban Legends, we wanted to replay our deep dive into the 2018 viral internet urban legend about "Momo", a creepy humanoid figure with giant eyes, an uncanny too-wide smile, and grotesque chicken legs. Momo was somehow believed to be involved in mysterious texts that teens and kids were receiving on messaging apps, giving them escalating dangerous challenges sometimes ending in self-harm and suicide. Obviously, these kind of stories abound in the days of the viral internet, but they are actually part of a much older folklore tradition. Next week we will look at the last 50 years of American urban legends to see how we started to figure out that many of the stories we love to tell are simply too good to be true.

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Twitter: @AmerHysteria

Instagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast

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HORROR MOVIES pt. 2 Apr 19, 2021

Show notes

The genres of modern scary movies known as slashers, meta-horror, torture porn, and social thrillers, each tell us about the anxieties of the generation in which they came to exist. Like part one, this episode explores the themes present in some of the most important films in the horror canon; themes of feminism and satanic ritual abuse, of Reagan-era morality and greed, of moral ambiguity in times of war, and those that are coming to define the smoldering culture wars we find ourselves in today. With a never-ending series of sequels, each new American terror resurrects our collective fear, making it perfectly clear that horror never dies.

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Head to tryfirstleaf.com/hysteria to get 6 bottles of wine for $29.95

Check out the Queery podcast today!

American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith

Sound design by Clear Commo Studios

Research and co-writing by Riley Smith

Co-produced and edited by Miranda Zickler

Friggin incredible voice acting by Will Rogers and Miranda Zickler

(Check our Miranda's band Kuinka and their new single All Mine)

Follow American Hysteria on social media:

Twitter: @AmerHysteria

Instagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast

Find our merch at americanhysteria.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rewind: Monsters Apr 12, 2021

Show notes

We need a little extra time for Horror Movies II, so here is a re-release of a very related and very important episode. 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.

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Follow American Hysteria on social media:

Twitter: @AmerHysteria

Instagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast

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On Haunted Houses with Carmen Maria Machado Apr 05, 2021

Show notes

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of three books, the award-winning Her Body and Other Parties, a collection of vibrantly haunting short stories, In the Dream House, a bestselling memoir and examination of queer relationship abuse, and most recently, a graphic novel horror story called The Low Low Woods. She has also taught several courses at the University of Pennsylvania, most relevant today, a fiction course called The Art of Haunting. Today we are over the harvest moon to talk to Carmen about haunted house motifs in American horror movies, the emotional core of these stories, and our personal experiences with various kinds of ghosts, both the scary and the beautiful.

Get yourself a copy of Carmen’s books!: In the Dreamhouse, Her Body and Other Parties, and The Low Low Woods

Next time on the show: Horror Movies pt. 2

Head to TryFirstLeaf.com/HYSTERIA to get six customized wines delivered to your door for just $29.95!

Become a Patron to watch our entire Live Variety Hour and our brand new podcast Walk with Me

Produced by Miranda Zickler

Sound design by Clear Commo Studios

Follow American Hysteria on social media:

Twitter: @AmerHysteria

Instagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast

Find our merch and more at americanhysteria.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

HORROR MOVIES pt. 1 Mar 29, 2021

Show notes

Horror movies, consistently written-off by critics, exist unbound from mainstream respectability and because of this, they can often tell us the brutal truth. For this two-part series, we will be investigating what horror movies, their plots, their victims, and their villains reflect back to us about the dominant repressed fears of each generation. From the Big Bug movies of the atomic era, the earliest monster movies of post-WWI eugenics, the psychotherapy gender-panic of Psycho inspiration Ed Gein, to the new age of gore born from the violence of the late 1960s, horror movies may be vital in helping us survive the true terrors of American life.

Come back next week for Return of the Horror Movies where we cover the 1970s to the present with all the teenaged blood and guts you could ever dream of!

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Become a Patron to get access to Chelsey's other podcast Walk with Me

American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith

Sound design by Clear Commo Studios

Research and co-writing by Riley Smith

Co-produced and edited by Miranda Zickler

Voice acting by Will Rogers

Follow American Hysteria on social media:

Twitter: @AmerHysteria

Instagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast

Find our merch at americanhysteria.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Unmasking Matilda with Mara Wilson Mar 15, 2021

Show notes

Mara Wilson is a writer, actor, and the former star of the 1996 classic movie Matilda as well as the author of the memoir 'Where Am I Now? True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame'. In this episode, Mara shares her relationship to the character that many in the public still see her as 25 years later, and we talk about the dramaturgy of living, our on-stage and off-stage personas, and for Mara, the pressure that comes from yet another mask. We’ll also talk about mental health, queerness, drag and burlesque, and finding one's self among those who most fully embrace the performance.

Get a copy of Mara's book Where Am I Now?

Subscribe to Queery now!

Become a Patron to watch our entire Live Variety Hour and our brand new podcast Walk with Me

Produced by Miranda Zickler

Sound design by Clear Commo Studios

Follow American Hysteria on social media:

Twitter: @AmerHysteria

Instagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast

Find our merch and more at americanhysteria.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

INFLUENCERS Mar 08, 2021

Show notes

The new American archetype known as the “Influencer” has existed in various forms long before the advent of social media, and long before Kendall Jenner and the offensive brand activism of a now infamous Pepsi commercial. For this episode, we will trace the history of how corporate brands have used the idea of personal “authenticity” to sell us shit we don’t need since the mid 1800s: we’ll hear about the early form of visual social media that swept America in the 1860s, the story of the first living brand, Aunt Jemima, the handcrafted PR industry created by Sigmund Freud’s propagandist nephew, the skateboard sponsorships of the late 1990s. We’ll look too at the psychological and biological imperatives behind the “brand”, both those of companies and those of our own, and whether this thing we call authenticity even exists at all.

Subscribe to Lolita Podcast now!

Become a Patron to get access to our brand new podcast Walk with Me

American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith

Sound design by Clear Commo Studios

Research and co-writing by Riley Smith

Co-produced and edited by Miranda Zickler

Voice acting by Will Rogers

Follow American Hysteria on social media:

Twitter: @AmerHysteria

Instagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast

Find our merch at americanhysteria.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gen Z and the Millennial with Gael from Teenager Therapy Mar 01, 2021

Show notes

Gael Aitor is a senior in high school and the host of the podcast Teenager Therapy, a show where he and four other teenagers talk about mental health and the experiences they share with a rare and empathetic nuance. Today Gael and I will explore the differences and similarities between Gen Z and Millennials and the importance of moving through our egos and being vulnerable. Today, I’ll check in with the kids to find out if they are, in fact, alright.

Next week: Influencers

Make sure you subscribe to Teenager Therapy!

Subscribe to Beach Too Sandy Water Too Wet

Become a Patron to watch our entire Live Variety Hour and our brand new podcast Walk with Me

Produced by Miranda Zickler

Sound design by Clear Commo Studios

Follow American Hysteria on social media:

Twitter: @AmerHysteria

Instagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast

Find our merch and more at americanhysteria.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

American Hysteria: LIVE VARIETY HOUR (Watch the full show!!) Feb 22, 2021

Show notes

Our Live Variety Hour is not your run-of-the-mill podcast live show, but an actual two-hour theatrical production performed in 2019. For the first time ever, you can get access to the full video on Patreon (pay what you can)! Using my background as a drag and performance art producer, a handful of my brilliant creative partners and I created a vaudevillian bananas bonanza with skits, drag, dance, stand-up comedy, and videos from clips you'll remember from season one. Expect a lot of weird surprises along the way. Special guests include Satan, Tinky Winky, John Harvey Kellogg, and Alex Jones.

Head to our Patreon for access to our live show and so much more!

*No one turned away for lack of funds, email americanhysteriapodcast@gmail.com for link*

Acting, writing, and production by

Lily Orrey

Erin McCarthy

Will Rogers

Chelsey Weber-Smith

Produced/edited by Riley Smith

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