QUACKERY

QUACKERY

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Lifestyle-brand ‘Goop’ and the expensive products it peddles are just the newest in a long line of medical quackery leading back to the 1800s. America has a long history with selling and buying Snake Oil, bogus cures to any ailment you can imagine, starting with the cowboy showman of the wild west, who sold to the masses through traveling vaudevillian performances. In addition to fake cures, historical American doctors and scientists also have a dark history of identifying and pathologizing both biological and mental illnesses that simply didn’t exist, ones that said much more about the culture’s values than it did about the people who were said to be ill. At the same time, the rich were being diagnosed in spades with a disorder known as Americanitis, leading to much more luxurious treatments. American alternative medicine, as dubious as it may be, formed as citizens rightly grew suspicious of the flawed medical establishment. Though fake cures are not grounded in science, researchers are actually finding that alternative medicine does work to help relieve us of our pain, just not in the ways you might think. American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith Produced and edited by Clear Commo Studios Research and cowriting assisted by Riley Smith Show art by Roache Voice Acting by Will Rogers Become a Patron for extra episodes, interviews, and videos monthly! Follow American Hysteria on social media: Twitter: @AmerHysteria Instagram: @AmericanHysteriaPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episoder(292)

Dear Chelsey and Ask Sarah Marshall

Dear Chelsey and Ask Sarah Marshall

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 give our own unique advice to some of the funnier questions se...

25 Aug 20251h 13min

DEAR ABBY AND ANN LANDERS

DEAR ABBY AND ANN LANDERS

Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, also known as Dear Abby, were newspaper advice columnists answering questions and printing statements from their 100 million readers from the 1950s to the early 2000...

18 Aug 20251h 13min

Titanic in Real Time with Riley Swedelius-Smith

Titanic in Real Time with Riley Swedelius-Smith

This is a bonus episode from our subscribers-only podcast Hysteria Home Companion. Our associate producer (and my brother) Riley Swedelius-Smith is here to tell us the absolutely wild and little-know...

11 Aug 20251h 2min

Polybius: The Arcade Conspiracy

Polybius: The Arcade Conspiracy

This is a bonus episode from our subscribers-only podcast Hysteria Home Companion. I share the history of an 80s urban legend with our producer Miranda Zickler, one about a dangerous video game that a...

4 Aug 202540min

Not Just a Phase: Goths Through History with Christine Laskowski

Not Just a Phase: Goths Through History with Christine Laskowski

Christine Laskowski shares her research into how an ancient barbarian people known as the Goths came to represent everything from edgy Hot Topic fashion and the band Joy Division to the Notre Dame cat...

28 Jul 20251h 15min

The Imaginary Gods of ChatGPT with Journalist Miles Klee

The Imaginary Gods of ChatGPT with Journalist Miles Klee

Miles Klee is the author of a recent Rolling Stone article titled People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies which tells the stories of ChatGPT users who have come to believe that t...

21 Jul 20251h

The FBI's White Christian Nation with Lerone A. Martin

The FBI's White Christian Nation with Lerone A. Martin

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 this episode, Lerone explains how the FBI, led by J. Edgar ...

14 Jul 20251h 23min

Listen Now: American Scandal

Listen Now: American Scandal

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 its founding. From business and politics to sports and soc...

8 Jul 20256min

Populært innen Samfunn

rss-spartsklubben
giver-og-gjengen-vg
aftenpodden
konspirasjonspodden
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
aftenpodden-usa
popradet
rss-nesten-hele-uka-med-lepperod
rss-henlagt-andy-larsgaard
wolfgang-wee-uncut
grenselos
min-barneoppdragelse
rss-dette-ma-aldri-skje-igjen
synnve-og-vanessa
rss-dannet-uten-piano
alt-fortalt
frokostshowet-pa-p5
fladseth
relasjonspodden-med-dora-thorhallsdottir-kjersti-idem
opptur-med-annette-og-ingeborg