American Hysteria explores how fantastical thinking has shaped our culture – moral panics, urban legends, hoaxes, crazes, fringe beliefs, and national misunders...
American Hysteria explores how fantastical thinking has shaped our culture – moral panics, urban legends, hoaxes, crazes, fringe beliefs, and national misunders...
More
Available Episodes
5 of 182
Lemuria: The Strangest Place to Never Exist with Author Justin McHenry
Justin McHenry, author of the forthcoming book Lemuria: A True Story of a Fake Place, tells me an expansive tale of an alleged long lost continent first written about in early scientific works, then harnessed by esoteric eccentrics and new age mystics, mutating over the decades into fantastical fuel that is embedded in the strangest of conspiracy theories and cults to this very day.
Preorder Lemuria: A True Story of a Fake Place
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
American Hysteria is produced and hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
Edited by Miranda Zickler
Sound design by Clear Commo Studios
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
9/18/2023
56:45
The Killer Crossdresser with Horror Analysts BJ and Harmony Colangelo
To unpack the movie trope of the Murderous Man in a Dress, prolific horror film analysts and writers BJ and Harmony Colangelo discuss with me all the complicated trans and drag “representation” in movies like Sleepaway Camp, Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, Dressed to Kill, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We’ll look at how these crossdressing killers have affected the psyche of Americans through the decades, whether there is anything redeemable about these characters, and what they have to tell us about the horrors of the present day.
Listen to This Ends at Prom
Preorder 'Sleepaway Camp'
Read Harmony's thoughts on The Silence of the Lambs
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
American Hysteria is produced and hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
Edited by Miranda Zickler
Sound design by Clear Commo Studios
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
9/11/2023
1:16:18
Early Drag Queens pt. 2
For part two of our series, we are starting in the anti-gay moral panic of the 50s and 60s to see how the drag scene continued to transform underground, with female impressionists dazzling the starlets they tried to copy as closely as possible. We'll be introduced to a nationwide pageant circuit which allowed drag queens the opportunity to compete just like Miss America contestants, leading to a popular and well-reviewed documentary that revealed the controversial personal lives of these performers. Then we'll drop right into the Gay Liberation Movement where rifts between gay men, lesbian feminists, and drag queens led to a harsh animosity. Next we'll look at the southern tradition of Womanless Weddings that stretches back to the 1800s, where well-to-do men acted out every part of ceremony as a community wide ritual of hilarity. Finally, we'll travel all the way back to 16th century London where a moral panic around the theater's evil influence very much included the boys and men who dressed in woman's costumes to play their roles.
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Tell us your teenage tale on our Urban Legends Hotline!
American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
Sound design by Clear Commo Studios
Research Assistant: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Voice Acting by Will Rogers
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
9/4/2023
1:02:01
Early Drag Queens pt. 1
This series will cover the moral panics and cultural crazes that have long followed the controversial art form once called "female impersonation." For part one of our two part series, we'll start back in the 1800s to look at the earliest drag balls put on by formerly enslaved men as well as the police raids that made front page news. We'll learn about a famous Vaudeville star known for his hyper-feminine on-stage and hyper-masculine off-stage personas. We'll explore a time when gay was in, the 1930s Pansy Craze, and the political crackdown that inevitably followed. And finally, we'll cover the smash-hit drag musicals put on by the manly soldiers of WWII and the closeted GIs who may have woven in a secret campy code. Throughout, we'll start to analyze how the culture reacted to female impersonation based on the changing events of the decades, bestowing on these performers both massive success and frightening suppression, usually depending on who was performing and what their intentions were.
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Tell us your teenage tale on our Urban Legends Hotline!
American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
Sound design by Clear Commo Studios
Research Assistant: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Voice Acting by Will Rogers
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
8/28/2023
56:00
Context Clues: Long Live the Queens
Our upcoming series, Early Drag Queens, will cover the surprising relationship between "female impersonation" and American masculinity in the time before the gay and transgender civil rights movements. This episode will give historical context with excerpts from these previous episodes:
Gender Reveal Parties
Trash Talks Shows
Horror Movies pt. 1
Join our Patreon for ad-free early episodes and bonus content!
Call into our Urban Legends Hotline and share your teenage tale!
This episode was produced by Riley Smith
Produced and hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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.