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American Hysteria explores how fantastical thinking has shaped our culture – moral panics, urban legends, hoaxes, crazes, fringe beliefs, and national misunderstandings. Poet-turned-podcaste...
When the Bennington Five disappeared in Southwest Vermont between 1945 and 1950, the local refrain became: Don't go into the woods while wea...
At Bennington College in southwest Vermont, tales of a curse have been passed around for 75 years. Known as the Bennington Triangle, the nea...
Today we bring you an episode of another great podcast: History Daily. Every weekday, host Lindsay Graham (American Scandal, American Histor...
In 1980, a Stonehenge-esque monument called the Georgia Guidestones appeared in the rural county of Elbert. Financed and designed by a myste...
Take a seat in our old, ornate theater for the confounding wonders of this traveling magic show. For this episode, my dear friend is here, t...
This is a Subscribers-Only episode from 2024 in which I tell our producer Miranda about a wild April Fools Day prank that took place in 19th...
Prior to becoming stars of the stage, screen, and of wondrous World’s Fairs, dinosaurs had to be uncovered, dug out, studied, and finally, d...
The dinosaur craze of the 1990s, inspired largely by the Jurassic Park movies, led to a legion of children dreaming of becoming paleontologi...
The extended media universe of Pokémon has been an obsession for young people since the late 1990s, and for this goofball episode my friends...
Have you ever been suspicious of a corporation showcasing their commitment to the environment, to marginalized groups of people, or to those...
We have had many media panics about swarms and hordes, about infestations and plagues of dangerous insects and arachnids that promise to rai...
[We are taking a break this week so please enjoy a re-release of one of our favorite episodes!] How do we warn people 10,000 years in the fu...
If you thought the first part of our series was catchy, wait til we enter the modern era where all the jingles that played throughout our li...
We’re excited to share a preview of a new podcast we think you’d enjoy: Mind Games. What if you could hypnotize yourself into a better you?...
We all contain within us the many cheesy tunes of catchy capitalism that marked our childhoods, those hyper-memorable earworms that, dependi...
Joseph Laycock is the author ofThe Penguin Book of Cults, and for this episode we discuss how our culture thinks of and reacts to what we of...
Annalee Newitz is the author of Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, which traces the way disinformation, propa...
For this collaboration with the podcast No Such Thing, we covered the tales of nefarious forces secretly replacing famous people with clones...
A grilled cheese sandwich, a tortilla, an auto loan company building, a cinnamon roll, and a forkful of spaghetti are just a handful of the...
Ross Benes is the author of the book 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times. Together we revisit wha...
In part two of our two-part series, I show Sarah a more radical side of the American Mall Santa. I tell her stories of how, in some cases, t...
For this two-part holiday special, I tell Sarah Marshall all about the history of the American mall Santa Claus from the 1800s into the pres...
Jelani Cobb is the Dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and the author of the new book Three or More Is a Riot: Notes on How We...
In honor of my favorite movie's 50th anniversary, I wanted to share an episode about The Rocky Horror Picture Show with all of you unconvent...
On May 5, 1993, three 8-year-old boys were brutally murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas. The tiny local police department launches an investi...
Brace yourselves, we are marching along with the Macy's Parade to learn about the chaos energy that has always animated this cultural instit...
Sarah Marshall of You're Wrong About joins me to wade back into the tall tales that devil-spawned the friendship we have today. In honor of...
Our associate producer (and my brother) Riley Swedelius-Smith is here to tell our producer Miranda Zickler and me about the chaotic opening...
Have you ever wondered if the person you are arguing with in a social media comment section is really a person at all? Perry Carpenter is a...
Bloody Mary...Bloody Mary...Bloody Mary...For our Halloween special, we are going to trace the history of the slumber party ritual known as...
Sarah Marshall is here to teach me about the confounding phenomenon of Spontaneous Human Combustion in which a person is found almost totall...
This is a rerelease of our 2023 Halloween special about the 12 Ft Skeleton Halloween craze and the strange history of our relationship to sk...
What Went Wrong hosts Chris Winterbauer and Lizzie Bassett join me to tell the stories of three allegedly cursed horror movies and the unexp...
For this episode, I get schooled on the history of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the children's horror book series that terrified 80s a...
George Civeris is the host of the comedy podcast Straightiolab as well as a new podcast called United States of Kennedy that explores our cu...
Tim Harford is the host of the podcast Cautionary Tales which recently put out a series on the most famous magician of all time, Harry Houdi...
This is a rerelease of our 2021 episode. In 2017, YouTube Kids was embroiled in a major scandal when it was discovered that a dark underbell...
From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate, to the Octopus Murders and the Waco Siege, the world is full of deception, manipulation, and destruction. L...
Warning: REALLY WEIRD EPISODE. On social media and YouTube, bizarre, shocking, disgusting, creepy, and confusing animated ads for simple mob...
In the spirit of American advice columnists Dear Abby and Ann Landers, I am joined by Sarah Marshall of the podcast You’re Wrong About to gi...
Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, also known as Dear Abby, were newspaper advice columnists answering questions and printing statements fro...
This is a bonus episode from our subscribers-only podcast Hysteria Home Companion. Our associate producer (and my brother) Riley Swedelius-S...
This is a bonus episode from our subscribers-only podcast Hysteria Home Companion. I share the history of an 80s urban legend with our produ...
Christine Laskowski shares her research into how an ancient barbarian people known as the Goths came to represent everything from edgy Hot T...
Miles Klee is the author of a recent Rolling Stone article titled People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies which tells...
Lerone A. Martin is the author of The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism . For...
Every scandal begins with a lie. But the truth will come out. And then comes the fallout and the outrage. Scandals have shaped America since...
Have you ever heard the urban legend about the group of hippie college students that went blind while staring at the sun during an LSD trip?...
You've probably heard the urban legend called the Babysitter and the Man Upstairs or at least know the idiom it inspired: “The call is comin...
Have you ever heard the urban legend about the babysitter who takes LSD and accidentally bakes a baby in the oven believing it to be a raw t...