Bloody Mary (rewind)
This is a re-release of last year's Halloween special. Vote early! Here is a guide to help if you have any questions. Bloody Mary...Bloody M...
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American Hysteria
American Hysteria explores how fantastical thinking has shaped our culture – moral panics, urban legends, hoaxes, crazes, fringe beliefs, and national misunderstandings. Poet-turned-podcaste...
Episodes
20 of 325 episodesMYSTERY BLOOD
For this Halloween special, we are going to look at a handful of American cases in which mysterious blood suddenly appeared without a sensib...
Pennywise and the IT Girls (1990) with This Ends at Prom
Don’t you want a balloon? For this episode, the Wives Colangelo of the movie podcast This Ends at Prom join me to honor not only the 1990 ho...
The Cat in the Hat Serial Killer Panic with Guide to the Unknown
Breaking news, my dear friends, and this one’s a doozy, an urban legend born from an uncanny movie. Some of it’s silly, some of it’s serious...
Halloween Newspapers.com Dive pt. 2 with Sarah Marshall
This is part two of our Halloween season kick off celebration with Sarah Marshall, host of the podcast You’re Wrong About. In this series, w...
Halloween Newspapers.com Dive pt. 1 with Sarah Marshall
It’s the beginning of Halloween season here at American Hysteria, and we are kicking it off with this two part episode cohosted by Sarah Mar...
Let's Talk About Sex (Ed) with Margaret Grace Myers
For this Back to School episode, we are getting schooled in the history of sexual education by Margaret Grace Myers, author of The Fight for...
Baby Got Backstory with Heather Radke
For this episode, we are covering the storied history of the Butt, that humorous, salacious, anxiety-inducing part of the body, the shape an...
Ye Olde Cleanse Diet with Zoë Rom of 'Your Diet Sucks'
For all of American history, we have been obsessed with the idea that what you eat is about more than just the purity of the body, it’s abou...
Solar Storms and the Carrington Event with Ben Bradford of 'Are We Doomed?'
In 1859, a powerful solar storm known as the Carrington Event hit the world, disrupting early technology in a shocking way. Our guest today...
KU KLUX SCAM pt. 2
At the height of their popularity, the 1920s era Ku Klux Klux counted millions of Americans as part of their secret society, and as we cover...
KU KLUX SCAM pt. 1
We often think of the Ku Klux Klan as anonymous, masked vigilante terrorists, but for several years of the 1920s, joining their ranks was a...
Rednecks (rewind)
As a companion to our upcoming two part series, the topic of which we are not yet revealing, please enjoy this rerelease (2020) of one of ou...
The Aggressive Christianity Missionary Training Corps with Harrison Hill
The Aggressive Christianity Missionary Training Corps was a militaristic evangelical cult with an incredibly dark history, led in this case...
Hobby Lobby: Crafting a Christian Nation with Michael Blanding
The multibillion dollar arts and crafts corporation Hobby Lobby has long been steeped in Evangelical Christianity, owned by a family that is...
90s Angel Craze with Christine Laskowski
Back in the 1990s, it seemed like angels were everywhere in popular culture: in movies, TV shows, songs, and home decor. Our guest today is...
FIREWORKS pt. 2 with Sarah Marshall
Just like every year, more and more stories are coming out about how wild, unpredictable, and dangerous fireworks can be, and yet our capaci...
FIREWORKS pt. 1 with Sarah Marshall
Love them or hate them, there are few things that feel as quintessentially American as fireworks, the favorite way to celebrate during every...
Playing Indian with Rebecca Nagle
As we endure surreal celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the United States, we hear the same Disneyfied history being told over and ove...
In Defense of Queer Villains with BJ Colangelo
Have you ever noticed that many of the most iconic evil-doers in movies seem, well, pretty gay? Think Scar from the Lion King, Jafar from Al...