American Hysteria

Happy Pride month to all who observe! This is a rerelease of one of our favorite episodes. Over the last ten years, Gender Reveal Parties have exploded, figuratively and literally. Parents, communities, and social media followers alike can witness the moment that parents and families find out the sex of their future baby, but lately, these parties have gotten so out of hand as to cause massive wil...

Since 1965, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola, has held an incredibly popular public event known as the Prison Rodeo where incarcerated men participate for cash prizes in contests so dangerous they have been banned from the professional rodeo circuit. Adam Mahoney is a reporter at Capital B and the author of a recent article titled The Wildest Show in the South: Spectacle and...

Over the last couple months, groups of Minecraft fans have been making TikTok videos of themselves wrecking havoc in theaters across the nation when their favorite moment of the new Minecraft movie plays. Culture writer and co-host of the podcast The Ends at Prom, BJ Colangelo, teaches me about wtf is going on and together we try not to moral panic while discussing what this new craze means. We’ll...

In 1973, mysterious communications from a young boy came over CB radios in the Southwest, leading to a massive search and rescue mission that generated far more questions than answers. For this episode, I tell American Hysteria Producer (and co-host of our subscribers-only podcast Hysteria Home Companion) Miranda Zickler about the dubious case now referred to as Lost Boy Larry and go through the t...

In 2009, the news reported live as a six-year-old boy careened through the air at 7,000 feet trapped inside a homemade balloon craft. Millions tuned into the harrowing saga, but once the balloon finally hit the ground, no little boy was found inside. Details then emerged that seemed to indicate it was all a hoax created by a family as part of a PR stunt for a reality TV show. On this episode, we e...

Right now we are seeing accusations of gang associations used to to justify abducting immigrants off the street and sending them to either US detention centers or the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador with no due process. We have included a new introduction for this rerelease of our two part Gang Initiation series from 2024 in hopes that we can illuminate how these types of accusations a...

Sarah Marshall takes me on a journey through two possible historical literary deceptions and asks me to try to figure out what is real, what is fake, and what it all means. This is a sibling to our recent episode on You’re Wrong About called Hoax Memoir Spectacular, so make sure you check that out as well. Listen to 'You're Wrong About' and 'You Are Good' wherever you get your podcasts ⁠Become a P...

*Please listen to part one of our series first.* 'The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk' was an 1800s true crime memoir about the horrors a runaway nun claimed to have suffered while living among debaucherous and murderous Catholic clergy in a convent-turned-torture chamber, and at the time, it was the second bestselling book in America. But was it really a truthful account of Maria Monk’s life? Or...

'The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk' was an 1800s true crime memoir about the horrors a runaway nun claimed to have suffered while living among debaucherous and murderous Catholic clergy in a convent-turned-torture chamber, and at the time, it was the second bestselling book in America. But was it really a truthful account of Maria Monk’s life? Or was it all a hoax, a piece of propaganda meant to...

The hottest new (and embarrassing) trend in the billionaire bubble is luxury doomsday shelters, wildly expensive bunkers that the ultra-rich believe will allow them to live extravagantly in a post-apocalyptic world. Join me, Joshua Belhumeur, and Malcolm Critcher of the podcast 'This is Propaganda' as we enter their futuristic world, try to understand their tech bro mindset, and take a look at the...

This is a very special episode I did last year with the podcast You’re Wrong About in which Sarah Marshall and I swapped stories about some of our favorite historical hoaxes and pranks in honor of April Fools Day. Listen to You're Wrong About wherever you get your podcasts Become a Patron to support our show and get ad-free early episodes and bonus content Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Appl...

Woody Shticks is a comic stripper and burlesque performer as well as the director, production manager, and co-star of our recent live stage show with You’re Wrong About. For this episode, Woody and I talk about our histories with and philosophies around modern burlesque, and I tell him about the drama surrounding the first burlesque troupe to make it big in the United States back in the 1860s. Thi...

Exposed thongs were all the rage in the early 2000s thanks to a handful of massive pop cultural moments, but as the craze reached the mainstream market and trickled down to teens and tweens, the skank-shaming heated up as did the moral panics and political backlash. Millennials, however, were far from the first generation to experience thong drama, and for this episode we will go back through the...

Thongs and the battles waged on their backs will be the focus of our upcoming episode. This collection of excerpts from previous episodes will provide some extra context: Wardrobe Malfunction (2019), Teenage Sex (2019), and The Streaking Craze (2023). Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts Sound desig...

American philosopher Jason Stanley is the author of Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. For this episode, Jason helps us understand some of the attacks on educational institutes at home and abroad and how authoritarian movements purposefully repress and reject historical truths in favor of a different narrative that benefits their attempts at grabbing more and mor...

RIP David Lynch, beloved director and otherworldly weirdo. The You Are Good feelings podcast about movies graciously invited me to talk about one of the most influential films and artists of my lifetime. Talking all things Lynchian with Sarah Marshall and Alex Steed, I tried to summarize this famously baffling plot of this film, mused about the concept of Duende, and cried on mic about the Unified...

Gabe Lenners is the host of the new podcast Obscurum: Invasion of the Drones, which explores a mysterious wave of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena that happened in Nebraska and Colorado back in 2019, an event that has a lot in common with the recent wave of supposed drones seen in New Jersey and surrounding states. For this episode, I don my flexible skeptic hat while Gabe tells me about his illum...

This Urban Legends Hotline episode features listener Brandon's inquiry about the legend of the Jersey Devil, a cryptid that has haunted the Pine Barrens of New Jersey for three hundred years. We will explore the various historical events that produced this creature's folklore: a dime museum's elaborate hoax, a radical Puritan woman said to have birthed a monster, a bitchy Quaker feud rife with sat...

The famous cryptid known as the Jersey Devil will be the focus of our upcoming Urban Legends Hotline investigation. This episode will provide some context using excerpts from previous topics we have covered. Full episodes to check out: The Cannibal Pig People of Pig Hill (2023) Fake News (2020) Urban Legends (2021) Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus conten...

Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin are the hosts of the podcast Spirits, a history and comedy show focused on mythology, folklore, and urban legends. Each week they pour a drink and deep dive into stories similar to the ones we cover here. On this episode, my new friends tell me the history of an early 2000s fad called The Game, one that you, dear listeners, have unfortunately already lost. Chec...

Sarah Marshall and I are back for a second helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul, the 1993 best-selling collection of "inspirational" and "true" stories. In part two I tell Sarah about the pair of motivational wealth coaches who created the book and then explain what is currently happening at Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment as new leadership has led it down a dark and exploitative path (all...

Many of you will remember the 1993 best-selling book of inspirational stories, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and its bite-sized, sappy triumphs of the human spirit. But shining a modern light on this book today, the collection hits a little bit differently. For part one of this two-part series, I tell podcaster Sarah Marshall of You’re Wrong About the history of this iconic text and read her some of...

Since the 1970s, Loretta J. Ross has been an instrumental activist in the fight for 'Reproductive Justice', a framework she and her colleagues created in 1994 that went beyond the pro-choice and pro-life debate. She has worked as the Director of the Women of Color Program for the National Organization for Women, the program director of the Black Women's Health Imperative the director of projects f...

Shannon Lynch is the host of the podcast The Alley: DC’s 8th and H Case, a detailed look at the 1984 murder of DC resident Catherine Fuller and the eight young Black men who were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for a crime they did not commit. In this episode, Shannon will take us through the crime, the flawed investigation and trial, as well as the suppression of evidence that could hav...

Because so many Hallmark writers and directors also make horror movies, I called in podcasters Sarah Marshall and Alex Steed of 'You're Wrong About' and 'You Are Good' to discuss the similarities between these two seemingly polar opposite genres. Subscribe to You Are Good and You're Wrong About Get tickets for our Live Show called A Massive Seance in SF and LA Become a Patron to support our show a...