(Make sure you listen to part one first!) Today, Chris shares his experience becoming a sudden villain in the fringe conspiratorial zeitgeist, and then we move gracefully on to sharing the value we have found in talking to strangers, him as a podcaster who has conversations on an anonymous hotline, and myself as a former hitchhiker. Chris hosts the podcast Beautiful Stories From Anonymous People, stars in a new stand-up special Half My Life, and is the author of Weird New York. Watch Chris Getha...
Jul 19, 2021•29 min•Season 4Ep. 31
Chris Gethard is a stand-up comedian, podcaster, actor, filmmaker and author of Weird New York as well as an editor at Weird New Jersey and Weird US, all of which cover local ghost stories, urban legends, and roadside attractions. Over the next two episodes we will be discussing the most dangerous waterpark in history, the last vestiges of American tourist traps, the outrageous 1980s and 90s childhood experience, what urban legends can tell us about cultural clashes, and much more of all that we...
Jul 12, 2021•57 min•Season 4Ep. 30
Susan Styker is the author of Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution as well as a filmmaker, distinguished professor, and longtime activist for the LGBTQ community. She began transitioning in the late 1980s, a very different era for gender nonconformity than the one we find ourselves in today. In this episode we discuss fragmentation within the wide rainbow umbrella, issues between feminists and transgender women, and how to deal with the generational and ideological gaps that have...
Jun 28, 2021•48 min•Season 4Ep. 29
Over the last ten years, Gender Reveal Parties have exploded, figuratively and literally. Parents, communities, and social media followers alike can witness the moment that parents and families find out the sex of their future baby, but lately, these parties have gotten so out of hand as to cause massive wildfires, explosions, damage to homes, injuries, and death. For this episode, we will try to figure out what in the world is going on here by exploring the history of gendered baby items, of th...
Jun 14, 2021•43 min•Season 4Ep. 28
Pride Rerelease! This is a listener favorite. Back in 2018, I had my two Christian friends on the show, who wished to remain anonymous, as they shared some pretty anti-establishment opinions. Brianna is a poet who got her masters with me at the University of Virginia, and her husband Patrick has a master’s degree in biblical and theological studies and teaches the bible at a private high school. Brianna and Patrick are dedicated to questioning and exploring their faith in big ways, and today we’...
Jun 07, 2021•28 min•Season 4Ep. 27
Listen or re-listen to learn all about our panics surrounding what amounts to the queer illuminati and their evil plans to recruit children and overthrow the government, plus some queer history of the US dating back to precolonial indigenous tribes. We are leading up to our pride special coming later in the month on our new and dangerous American obsession, Gender Reveal Parties. Look for more Pride content all through June! Become a Patron to get access to Chelsey's other podcast Walk with Me H...
Jun 01, 2021•37 min•Season 4Ep. 26
Finally, it is ME CHELSEY WEBER-SMITH as our interview guest, questioned lovingly by our producer Miranda Zickler. We will discuss season four, what I learned, what we didn’t cover and why, the power of the Rainbow Coalition solidarity, couples we would make out with in a haunted house, a dream dinner party with Mary-Kate and Ashley, the importance of Teen Dramas, and yes that’s right, I talk for too long about my spiritual journey and current relationship to the Great Unknown. Thank you for a g...
May 10, 2021•49 min•Season 4Ep. 25
The kids' book series Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was based largely on urban legends, and when I read them for the first time I realized that I had heard them before, but as something true that happened to a friend of a friend. For our season four finale, I will be sharing my own journey with contemporary myths, from that first book series through the 1998 teen slasher Urban Legend, the landmark work of Mr. Urban Legend, and the man who finally got to the bottom of the most memorable story...
May 03, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 4Ep. 24
In preparation for our season finale next week on Urban Legends, we wanted to replay our deep dive into the 2018 viral internet urban legend about "Momo", a creepy humanoid figure with giant eyes, an uncanny too-wide smile, and grotesque chicken legs. Momo was somehow believed to be involved in mysterious texts that teens and kids were receiving on messaging apps, giving them escalating dangerous challenges sometimes ending in self-harm and suicide. Obviously, these kind of stories abound in the...
Apr 26, 2021•15 min•Season 4Ep. 24
The genres of modern scary movies known as slashers, meta-horror, torture porn, and social thrillers, each tell us about the anxieties of the generation in which they came to exist. Like part one, this episode explores the themes present in some of the most important films in the horror canon; themes of feminism and satanic ritual abuse, of Reagan-era morality and greed, of moral ambiguity in times of war, and those that are coming to define the smoldering culture wars we find ourselves in today...
Apr 19, 2021•57 min•Season 4Ep. 23
We need a little extra time for Horror Movies II, so here is a re-release of a very related and very important episode. Monsters come from the darkness, from the depth of lakes and swamps, from the shadows of forests and hills, and live too in the dark parts of all of us. However, this episode is less about Bigfoot and more about the idea of the monstrous, and how it has been used as a tool to demonize black folks since the first slave ships landed in America, both through folktales and famous w...
Apr 12, 2021•37 min•Season 4Ep. 22
Carmen Maria Machado is the author of three books, the award-winning Her Body and Other Parties, a collection of vibrantly haunting short stories, In the Dream House, a bestselling memoir and examination of queer relationship abuse, and most recently, a graphic novel horror story called The Low Low Woods. She has also taught several courses at the University of Pennsylvania, most relevant today, a fiction course called The Art of Haunting. Today we are over the harvest moon to talk to Carmen abo...
Apr 05, 2021•55 min•Season 4Ep. 21
Lil Nas X and the sexy-ass Satanic imagery featured in Call Me By Your Name has sparked a mini Satanic panic, especially after his Satan Shoes went viral, the ones that contain a drop of human blood. This two-part re-release of our Satanic Panic episodes dives deep into evil cartoons, toys, and games, heavy metal's backward messages, the suspicion of hypnotized teenaged devil worshippers, fake memoirs by alleged members of Satanic cults, and the unfortunate union between feminist and fundamental...
Mar 30, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 4Ep. 20
Horror movies, consistently written-off by critics, exist unbound from mainstream respectability and because of this, they can often tell us the brutal truth. For this two-part series, we will be investigating what horror movies, their plots, their victims, and their villains reflect back to us about the dominant repressed fears of each generation. From the Big Bug movies of the atomic era, the earliest monster movies of post-WWI eugenics, the psychotherapy gender-panic of Psycho inspiration Ed ...
Mar 29, 2021•53 min•Season 4Ep. 19
Mara Wilson is a writer, actor, and the former star of the 1996 classic movie Matilda as well as the author of the memoir 'Where Am I Now? True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame'. In this episode, Mara shares her relationship to the character that many in the public still see her as 25 years later, and we talk about the dramaturgy of living, our on-stage and off-stage personas, and for Mara, the pressure that comes from yet another mask. We’ll also talk about mental health, queerness, drag...
Mar 15, 2021•47 min•Season 4Ep. 17
The new American archetype known as the “Influencer” has existed in various forms long before the advent of social media, and long before Kendall Jenner and the offensive brand activism of a now infamous Pepsi commercial. For this episode, we will trace the history of how corporate brands have used the idea of personal “authenticity” to sell us shit we don’t need since the mid 1800s: we’ll hear about the early form of visual social media that swept America in the 1860s, the story of the first li...
Mar 08, 2021•55 min•Season 4Ep. 16
Gael Aitor is a senior in high school and the host of the podcast Teenager Therapy, a show where he and four other teenagers talk about mental health and the experiences they share with a rare and empathetic nuance. Today Gael and I will explore the differences and similarities between Gen Z and Millennials and the importance of moving through our egos and being vulnerable. Today, I’ll check in with the kids to find out if they are, in fact, alright. Next week: Influencers Make sure you subscrib...
Mar 01, 2021•41 min•Season 4Ep. 15
Our Live Variety Hour is not your run-of-the-mill podcast live show, but an actual two-hour theatrical production performed in 2019. For the first time ever, you can get access to the full video on Patreon (pay what you can)! Using my background as a drag and performance art producer, a handful of my brilliant creative partners and I created a vaudevillian bananas bonanza with skits, drag, dance, stand-up comedy, and videos from clips you'll remember from season one. Expect a lot of weird surpri...
Feb 22, 2021•3 min
As the nation grapples with a volatile culture war over just what version of American history our children will grow up learning, in this episode we will see that the Public School has always been a complicated, explosive, sometimes bizarre socio-political battleground. We’ll look at the messy transformations of children’s curricula through the conservative and progressive clashes over the bible, evolution, Black anti-literacy laws, Indian boarding schools, anti-commie-patriotism, good suburban ...
Feb 15, 2021•55 min•Season 4Ep. 14
Ellen Cushing's recent piece in The Atlantic called “I was a teenage conspiracy theorist” tells her story as a young Illuminati-truther during the post-9/11 years. Her history with conspiracy theories isn't all that different from my own, so I asked Ellen to join me to talk about our experiences to try to explain what these stories were like back in the 2000s, and how they intersect with the stories we hear now. We’ll also ask the biggest question of all, how do we combat this alternate reality?...
Feb 08, 2021•49 min•Season 4Ep. 13
Join me and our Disney darling of the day, podcaster Sarah Marshall of ‘You’re Wrong About’ and ‘Why Are Dads?’ as we discuss our love for Disney parks, the weird history of animatronics, and Disneyland’s hilarious, disastrous opening day. So grab a Dole Whip, sit back and enjoy the tour through this gleefully haunted mansion of America. Listen to You’re Wrong About Listen to Why Are Dads? Subscribe to the One Strange Thing podcast today! Thanks to our sponsor Skillshare, get your free trial of ...
Feb 01, 2021•48 min•Season 4Ep. 12
Disney has been presenting a fairytale reality within a reality since the 1920s, a far cuter reality that mimics our reality until reality is no longer reality at all. Make sense? For this episode, we will look at the possible underlying biological reasons for the success of the Disney corporation and the history of this ever-softening societal construction we call childhood. We’ll explore both the finished and unrealized projects of the company, and how they have long presented us with a much s...
Jan 25, 2021•57 min•Season 4Ep. 11
Alissa Bennett is co-host of The C-Word podcast on Luminary as well as a decorated historian of bad behavior. “By sifting through the cultural trash heap of history,” her podcast dives deep into the lives of famous women who have been called "Crazy" throughout history, the stories that we’re told about them through the tabloid press, and the real life that was happening behind the scenes. Alissa is also the author of four zines; collections of essays reflecting on dozens of fascinating character...
Jan 18, 2021•41 min•Season 4Ep. 10
There are few pieces of popular culture as problematic as the trash talk shows of the 1980s and 90s. Many of us remember Jerry Springer, Geraldo, Jenny Jones, and so many others trying to outdo each other in a parade of sensationalized deviance. The more outrageous, the better, but some of what was considered outrageous then is different than it is today. These programs certainly reinforced stereotypes and exploited their guests for profit, but like the Freak Shows of the past, they also offered...
Jan 11, 2021•58 min•Season 4Ep. 9
Due to the what appears to be an attempted coup happening right now at the Capitol, I wanted to re-release this vital interview immediately. Please listen and share if you can. This is the colossal power of conspiracy theories. Today we are talking to Jason Stanley, Jewish-American professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of the New York Times bestselling book 'How Fascism Works'. He'll help us understand more about the relationship between conspiracy theories, moral panics, and the...
Jan 06, 2021•35 min
Podcaster and storyteller Glynn Washington grew up in an extremist religious sect called the Worldwide Church of God and also hosted the Heaven’s Gate podcast about the UFO cult that famously committed a mass suicide in 1997. He’ll tell us all about this experience and how it shaped him, and together we will talk about how cults draw well-meaning people in, and what it means to be a seeker. For more monthly content become a Patron and get access to our new exclusive podcast called Walk with Me T...
Dec 14, 2020•26 min•Season 4Ep. 8
The charismatic leaders we are talking about today offer utopia and doomsday, salvation and absolute truth, perfection of the self and of the world at large, as long you dedicate yourself completely to the reality of these embodied Gods. Their radical alternate realities can draw in hundreds, thousands, even millions, as they preach spiritual wholeness and heaven, equality and communalism, or apocalyptic visions of a degrading nation, promising they alone can make it great again. For this episod...
Dec 07, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Season 4Ep. 7
“I would like to step out of my heart/and go walking beneath the enormous sky”, poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in 1918, probably consumed with a similar human anxiety to the one we each bear every weirdass day of our lives. This is the first episode of our new biweekly Patron’s-only podcast where you’ll come on a walk with me, either literally or figuratively, from wherever you happen to be. Walks facilitate, by nature of our very biology, more creative ways of thinking about the world; they are ...
Nov 30, 2020•40 min
Today we are talking to two scholars of religion, Professor Lerone A. Martin of Washington University in St. Louis and Professor Anthea Butler of the University of Pennsylvania about the relationship between white and black evangelicalism and televangelism in the 20th century through the present day. Lerone is also the author of Preaching on Wax: The Phonograph and the Making of Modern African American Religion and Anthea is the author of Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified...
Nov 23, 2020•56 min•Season 4Ep. 6
At this point in American culture, televangelists are often seen as overblown parodies, with their pleas for private jets, their fiery sermons, their many scandalous falls from grace. However, millions of people believe in the messages of these celebrity Christians who preach the Prosperity Gospel, that money donated to their megachurches will return to the donor in fantastical ways. Since the 1950s, conservative political preaching has slowly weaved into the gospels of prominent televangelists ...
Nov 16, 2020•54 min•Season 4Ep. 5
