American Hysteria

A nostalgic dive into the 1990s milk craze and the iconic celebrity milk-mustache ads. The story traces government-industry ties that funded dairy promotion and earlier milk scandals that shaped regulation. It explores milk as a racial and masculine symbol, including modern alt-right stunts. The podcast also covers factory farming harms and contrasts marketing with nutritional reality.

Welcome to our season three premiere! Whether we’re conscious of it or not, hamburgers have always been an American symbol, a metaphor for our special brand of cognitive dissonance as well as our obsession with masculinity, dominance, and conquering. We have heard a lot about the horrors of factory farming, but this episode hopes to look at our relationship to meat and animals in a different way. We’ll look at the plains of the west where colonizers killed millions buffalo to make way for the cows we know today, the cowboy fantasies enshrined by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows, the beef scandals that have rocked our nation since the 1800s, the fast food chains that put a smiling face back on meat, and the War on Burgers that conservative forces are invoking today. we’ll see how our long term attachment to our culinary contribution to the world is really a kind of long term hysteria, an attachment to an original manifest destiny, a story that has long disguised hard truths with happy meals.Please consider donating to the One Spirit Lokota nonprofitAmerican Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch and cowriting assisted by Riley SmithCo-Produced by Miranda ZicklerShow art by RoacheVoice Acting by Will RogersBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are stoked to announce that our season three premieres this coming Monday, February 17th! On this season we're going to explore our most ingrained beliefs, delusions, and archetypes, how cognitive dissonance shapes our culture, and how our reality is created by the stories we tell, especially the stories we tell ourselves. Listen to American Hysteria's season three premiere February 17th wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since we are on a break this week, I wanted to share with you my former work with an incredible paranormal podcast called Euphomet. Together with host and my good friend Jim Perry, we were once invited to Sedona, AZ to climb to the top of Bell Rock in search of alien vortexes with a man famous in his time-- the only attorney to actually sue the US Government for UFO information under the Freedom of Information Act. So today, balance your healthy skepticism with a little bit of magic, or at least, a more heartfelt look at the great unknown. Listen to 'Euphomet' wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a surprise early Season Three premiere! Merry Whatever y'all! Learn about the history of America's relationship to Christmas, and the several wars that have been fought in the name of and against this always controversial holiday, as well as some of the darker sides and forgotten traditions that may change your perspective on the season of giving for good.American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch and cowriting assisted by Riley SmithCo-Produced by Miranda ZicklerShow art by RoacheVoice Acting by Will RogersBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join our Patreon now! American Hysteria has officially left our network and we are striking out on our own for the very first time. We need your help to keep the show going strong while we work on season three. If American Hysteria has been important to you, please consider donating to our Patreon and actively join us in the work that we do. You'll get extra content each month, live streams, shout-outs on the show, and even a chance to help us with the process of creating American Hysteria. Thanks so much for all your support and care so far! It means the world to us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For our season finale, I am going to step into the unknown recesses of the mind, especially my own. I’ll share my upsetting brush with a self-actualization program that taught me that life is empty and meaning when I was ten-years-old. I’ll give a partial history of psychology’s changing ideas about how we think about thinking. Then we’ll look at the Cold War beginnings of this concept called brainwashing when American POWs suddenly became communist sympathizers, and how the US government tried their hand at the same thing. After that, we’ll check out the human potential movement and the new age philosophies that helped influence the Manson Family’s murders. Moving into the 1970s, we’ll follow a kidnapped heiress turned domestic terrorist, and see how the mass deaths at Jonestown influenced her fate. We’ll meet the man who invented cult deprogramming, paid for by families to abduct their wayward loved ones back. At the close, I’ll share more about my modern-era spiritual journey and how it’s informed my own mental health. Does life have meaning? Who knows, and who cares. Come hang out for more more special episode, and let’s get weird, man.American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch and cowriting assisted by Riley SmithCo-Produced by Miranda ZicklerShow art by RoacheVoice Acting by Will RogersBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In part one of Terrorism, we looked at the history of domestic extremists on both the left and the right, from the slave revolts of the 1700s up through the formation and then rebranding of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as their violence during the era of desegregation. From there we looked at far left groups that developed in the late 1960s and early 70s, the Black Panthers and their sometimes allies, the Weather Underground. For part two, we'll move into the modern era, with the militia movements of the 1990s and the rise of white supremacist groups following Obama's election. In the last few years, we have seen movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter investigated as terrorist organizations, while the far left group known as Antifa battles in the streets with the newest iteration of organized white supremacists known as the Alt Right, whose young male members are radicalized through victim narratives on online message boards and disturbing meme propaganda. We'll end up in the park where I was once arrested as part of Occupy Charlottesville, the same park that just a handful of years later would see the most famous far right rally in recent history, as neo nazis carried tiki torches around a confederate monument, with one driving his car through a crowd of counter protesters, while the white supremacists screamed and chanted together about their terror at being replaced.American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch and cowriting assisted by Riley SmithCo-Produced by Miranda ZicklerShow art by RoacheVoice Acting by Will RogersBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since 9/11, the fear of terrorism has centered on what we call Islamic extremism, but this two-part episode will instead explore a topic that is becoming more and more prevalent in our news cycle: domestic terrorism, the kind that is directed at Americans by Americans. We will explore both the radical movements of the far left and far right since this nation’s dark beginnings, and how one movement sought to use violent intimidation to maintain the status quo of white supremacy while the other side fought up upend it. We’ll start with the slave revolts of the 1700s and the “slave catchers” that represent the earliest version of what we now know as the police. We’ll reach the Ku Klux Klan’s beginning as well as the blockbuster hit that led to their rebranding in the 1920s, and their rise again during desegregation, just as the allegedly dangerous Black Panther Party of the late 1960s and their problematic white allies, the bomb-making Weather Underground, inspired serious government intervention that caused more death than it stopped. It becomes obvious that the far right and far left have always battled in the streets, just as we see today.  For part two, we will explore how we got to the modern versions of domestic terrorism, what we have come to know as the Alt-Right and Antifa. Coming next Monday, October 14th.American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosResearch and cowriting assisted by Riley SmithCo-Produced by Miranda ZicklerShow art by RoacheVoice Acting by Will RogersBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eighty-four million Americans witnessed the greatest pop culture spectacle of 2004, when Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson headlined the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Their live performance ended with what became known as a “wardrobe malfunction” when Justin ripped away a portion of Janet’s leather top, revealing her right breast complete with nipple piercing. This salacious scandal, sometimes called Nipplegate roused a moralistic America, even helping President George W. Bush to win his second term.American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-SmithProduced and edited by Clear Commo StudiosCo-written by Riley SmithBecome a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly!Follow American Hysteria on social media:Twitter: @AmerHysteriaInstagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices