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
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
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
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 Juli 20251h 15min
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 Juli 20251h
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 Juli 20251h 23min
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 Juli 20256min
STARING AT THE SUN ON LSD with Sarah Marshall of 'You're Wrong About'
Have you ever heard the urban legend about the group of hippie college students that went blind while staring at the sun during an LSD trip? This tale became a very powerful anecdote in the 1960s as p...
7 Juli 20251h 22min
