Episoder
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Brittany Spanos is a senior writer for Rolling Stone Magazine who has taught a course at NYU called Topics in Recorded Music: Taylor Swift, which analyzes "the culture and politics of teen girlhood in pop music, fandom, media studies, whiteness and power as it relates to her image." Today we are talking about conspiracy theories that come from within the hardcore Swiftie fanbase, and the ones that come from outside, often via the right wing media.
Follow Brittany Spanos on Twitter and Instagram
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Find us on Instagram @americanhysteriapodcast
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline or get your mitts on some merch at americanhysteria.com
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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The life of the conspiracy theory that claims Elvis Presley faked his death is an almost unbelievable journey through gimmick-crazy hucksters and true blue believers, the tales turning the king of rock and roll into something more like a cryptid than a superstar, evidence caught in blurry photographs and in secret messages, all covered up by shadowy forces. This zany story shows how conspiracies theories are born, how they transform, and how they never seem to die, no matter what, much like Elvis himself, allegedly.
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Find us on Instagram @americanhysteriapodcast
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline or get your mitts on some merch at americanhysteria.com
Sound Designer and Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Voice Actor: Will Rogers
Written, Produced, and Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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The idea that Elvis Presley did not die in August of 1977, that he instead faked his death, has become one of the most famous and enduring conspiracy theories of all time, essentially elevating the former superstar to the status of a cryptid. For this context clues episode, we are revisiting our 2022 episode called Fangirls which covers the rise of music fandom, including Elvis'. Next week we will explore the bizarre, fantastical creation of the Elvis is Alive movement and the many strange players that brought this tale into the conspiracy theory hall of fame.
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 design and Production by Riley Swedelius-Smith
Edited by Miranda Zickler
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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Our paranormal correspondent Jim Perry is back to tell us about his recent ghost hunt inside the Queen Mary ship, where he discovered that Walt Disney had installed some ghostly gimmicks decades ago, inadvertently creating a haunting that continued on long after Disney sold the vessel. We discuss what happens when horror entertainment influences our consciousness and helps to create our modern relationship to the paranormal.
Listen to Euphomet wherever you get your podcasts
Check out SpectreVision's other podcasts
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Find us on Instagram @americanhysteriapodcast
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline or get your mitts on some merch at americanhysteria.com
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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For part two of our series, we are returning to the phenomenon called 'Tarantism' that began in the Middle Ages in southern Italy where the bite of a local spider caused bizarre and contagious symptoms almost like that of demonic possession and the only antidote was trance-like, vigorous dancing. Today we look at all the theories about what caused this dancing mania: Was it all truly a reaction to the venom? A religious possession? A full-blown hysteria? A feminist revolt? Or an archaic cult’s secret rituals? Sarah and I explore these ideas and add a few unorthodox ones of our own.
Listen to You're Wrong About and You Are Good wherever you get your podcasts
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Find us on Instagram @americanhysteriapodcast
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline or get your mitts on some merch at americanhysteria.com
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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The phenomenon called 'Tarantism' began in the Middle Ages in southern Italy where the bite of a local spider caused bizarre symptoms almost like that of demonic possession. The only cure was to dance vigorously for hours or days with the dance itself seeming to become contagious. Was it all truly a reaction to the venom? A religious possession? A full-blown hysteria? A feminist revolt? Or an archaic cult’s secret rituals? Sarah and I try to figure it out over this two part series.
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Find us on Instagram @americanhysteriapodcast
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline or get your mitts on some merch at americanhysteria.com
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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Rod Crawford is the curator of the arachnids and related research collections at Seattle’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. His website called Spider Myths debunks the many misconceptions about spiders, and for this episode, he joins me to discuss some of these urban legends and bogus facts. Many of them may surprise you!
Check out Rod Crawford's website Spider Myths
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Find us on Instagram @americanhysteriapodcast
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline or get your mitts on some merch at americanhysteria.com
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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For this Urban Legends Hotline episode, we are dissecting the myth that the average person swallows a certain number of spiders in their sleep by following this false fact's bizarre and mysterious trail on the early internet, looking at other spider-related urban legends, searching for pop culture references to spiders in mouths, as well as old newspaper articles about the alleged dangers of swallowing spiders, and analyzing the surprising theories behind American's fear of these eight-legged freaks.
Thanks to listener Rebekah for her submission!
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Find us on Instagram @americanhysteriapodcast
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline or get your mitts on some merch at americanhysteria.com
Sound Designer and Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Voice Actor: Will Rogers
Written, Produced, and Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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This is an update on the new developments surrounding one of my favorite movies of all time, The Blair Witch Project, paired with our 2019 minisode. When news broke that the film's production company Lionsgate will be reviving the franchise with genre giant Blumhouse, the three original actors took to social media with a serious bone to pick. The Blair Witch Project masqueraded as real found footage of three college students who went missing in the woods while recording a documentary on the local legend. The story of the missing students and the lore of the Blair Witch were both widely believed during its monumental release, and we are covering just how the directors and marketing team were able to pull off one of the greatest hoaxes in American history, creating an original urban legend and facilitating its spread while also using a truly unorthodox method of filming, essentially becoming the Blair Witch, that encouraged true fear out of the actors.
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Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Find us on Instagram @americanhysteriapodcast
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline or get your mitts on some merch at americanhysteria.com
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For this episode, the hosts of the new podcast Pretendians, Robert Jago and Angel Ellis, explain Indigenous Identity Fraud, the phenomenon of scam artists pretending to be indigenous in order to receive certain kinds of benefits. We talk about the motivations of these Pretendians, how they get away with it, the effects these charlatans have on the indigenous peoples they attempt to emulate, and how these living caricatures overshadow the true identities of various indigenous communities.
Listen to Pretendians wherever you get your podcasts!
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Head to americanhysteria.com to get merch and leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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Fur and Loathing is a new investigative podcast from Nicky Woolf about an unsolved 2014 chlorine gas attack on the world’s largest Furry convention, an assumed safe place for those who create animal avatars using elaborate costumes. Nicky takes me through the case, shares his experience at a recent convention, discusses misconceptions and urban legends about the Furry community, and explains a dark subculture that lurks in the fringes of this otherwise inclusive and colorful world.
Subscribe to Fur and Loathing wherever you get your podcasts!
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Head to americanhysteria.com to get merch and leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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Reporter and Radiolab producer Matthew Kielty and musician Chad Matheny (AKA Emperor X) were both part of a 2014 episode of the 99% Invisible podcast called Ten Thousand Years that asked the same question we did in our Talking to the Future episode: how do we communicate warnings about nuclear waste to humans ten thousand years in the future when language, symbols, and familiar technologies have all fallen away? Matt was a contributor to the episode, helping bring the strange story to a much larger audience while Emperor X created a folk song containing lore about the Ray Cat (that biologically edited feline who would turn colors when getting too close to radiation). Could a catchy earworm stay stuck in the collective American head for ten thousand years to help warn future generations? We’ll discuss their experiences with nuclear semiotics, the rise of the Ray Cat and the associated public response, as well as how these thought experiments can be vital to imagining and creating a more hopeful future.
Follow @EmperorX on Instagram or check out his website
Follow Matthew Kielty on Twitter @Matt_Kielty
Check out Ten Thousand Years from 99% Invisible
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Head to americanhysteria.com to get merch and leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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How do we warn people 10,000 years in the future about nuclear waste sites that will remain extremely dangerous for longer than human civilization has existed? When language, symbols, and technologies are lost to time, how can we get our message across? Atomic Priesthoods, Radiation Cats, Forests of Thorns, manufactured folklore, these are just a few of the unorthodox ideas of government-sponsored academics trying to answer this baffling puzzle.
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
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Find us on Instagram @americanhysteriapodcast
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline or get your mitts on some merch at americanhysteria.com
Sound Designer and Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Voice Actor: Will Rogers and his daughter Zoe
Written, Produced, and Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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For some context for our upcoming series that we have not yet revealed, we will revisit excerpts from our past episodes: Horror Movies pt. 1, The End of the World, and Alien Abductions pt. 1 and 2. We encourage you to listen to the full episodes!
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 design and Production by Riley Swedelius-Smith
Edited by Miranda Zickler
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
Check out our new merch line Folk Devils United
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline
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Amanda Montell is the host of the podcast Sounds Like A Cult as well as the author of the new book The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, a collection of personal essays on various cognitive biases, those flawed ways of thinking that were very important for early humans but now cause all kinds of problems in our technologically advanced world. Amanda explains why these cognitive biases originally existed, how they manifest in the personal and political, and what we can do to understand, combat, and maybe even harness them to our advantage.
Get a copy of The Age of Magical Overthinking
Follow Amanda Montell and her new podcast Magical Overthinkers on Instagram
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Head to americanhysteria.com to get merch and leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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Sarah Marshall joins me to chat about how, in 1968, one unsuspecting young woman’s bustline almost caused a stock market bust when thousands of Wall Street employees became obsessed with watching her walk to work. I also tell Sarah about an absurd 20-year-long craze called Girl-Watching that taught "genteel" men the "refined art" of covertly checking out women, as well as the avant-garde artist and feminist responses to the treatment of Francine Gottfried who would come to be known as the Wall Street Sweater Girl.
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Head to americanhysteria.com to get merch and leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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In the late 1950s, an organization known as SINA started a campaign with the mission of clothing naked animals for the sake of decency. Today we will look at this bizarre moral crusade and its leader, whose life you'll have to hear about to believe.
Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content
Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Find us on Instagram @americanhysteriapodcast
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline or get your mitts on some merch at americanhysteria.com
Sound Designer and Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Voice Actor: Will Rogers
Written, Produced, and Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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Journalist and author Tom Risen is here to tell me about some of the real conspiracies that the CIA and the FBI were involved in from the 50s to the 70s and how, in 1975, one senator finally took these agencies to task, revealing shocking truths that would be used for decades to make the conspiracy theories we know today seem far more plausible. Tom writes about government surveillance and spy agencies and is the co-author of the bestselling book 'The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys—and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy,'" which he wrote with his father, James Risen, another journalist who has spent decades covering intelligence agencies.
Get Tom's Book
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
Head to americanhysteria.com to get merch and leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline!
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John O'Connor is the author of The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster, a cross-country adventure and investigation into the lore around Bigfoot as well as the personalities of those who spend their lives chasing this elusive creature.
Get John's book here
Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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For the second part of this Urban Legends Hotline episode, we are continuing to explore various tall tales of ruthless gang initiations from the 1990s onward, as well as looking at the sweeping anti-gang laws of the 80s and 90s that had devastating effects on communities and categorized entire neighborhoods as gang associates, enacting severe punishments based on erroneous assumptions and outright lies.
Call for a Ceasefire and Help End Civilian Suffering
Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline
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Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts
Sound designer and associate producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Producer: Miranda Zickler
Voice Actor: Will Rogers
Written, produced and hosted by by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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