Host

Chelsey Weber-Smith

About the Show

An ongoing field guide to American freak-outs.

American Hysteria is a podcast about the fantastical thinking and irrational fears of Americans — the moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories, and wild beliefs that shape our history and our culture, and why we end up believing them in the first place.

Through meticulous research and personal narrative, poet-turned-podcaster Chelsey Weber-Smith examines the sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrifying stories of historical and modern American freak-outs — how psychology and biology inform our personalities and politics, and the real social issues these bizarre panics so often work to cover up.

It is, at heart, an alternative history of the United States — one that traces how clashes around race, gender, sexuality, and class have shaped our fears, from the Puritans to the present.