There’s a group of podcasts we listen to that are kind of interconnected on themes of progressive values, moral panics, urban legends, and historical curiosities.

American Hysteria podcast is very much embedded in the intriguing world of moral panics. From the WOKE MOB, to Satanic panics, or freaking out about bog roll (COVID-19 reminder), they’re a fairly common occurrence.

Broadcaster and poet Chelsey Weber-Smith hosts, with regular collaborations from You’re Wrong About’s Sarah Marshell, and it’s an excellent into how some people lose their crap over things.

Jeez Laweez it’s Time to Panic for the American Hysteria Podcast

“American Hysteria explores how fantastical thinking has shaped our culture – moral panics, urban legends, hoaxes, crazes, fringe beliefs, and national misunderstandings. Poet-turned-podcaster Chelsey Weber-Smith tells the strangest stories from American history and examines the forces that create the reality we share, and sometimes, the reality we don’t.”

Moral panics are intriguing, as damaging as they can be to society. We’re in the grips of the GREAT WOKE MOB panic right now, which seems to primarily dominate UK and North American (particularly the US) social conscience. Even though it’s a complete non-issue and doesn’t exist as a thing.

In England and the US there’s also he ongoing mania regarding immigration.

The thing with them is they’re often irrational, stirred up by politicians or the media, relying on urban legends, and they’re rarely backed by any evidence. One example we remember was the 2001 summer of the shark in the US, which saw the media whip up a panic about shark attacks and oh my gawd sharks will eat us all.

This moral panic ended abruptly following the September 11 attacks.

Around the same time and, believe it or not, thongs caused a moral panic with “skank shaming” for any woman who dared put one of these things on. This is the first episode of American Hysteria we’re flagging up, the format showing the research behind the topic, why some people freaked out, and how it all resolved itself.

For the urban legends side of American Hysteria, there’s stuff like the OFT QUOTED non-stat that we swallow eight spiders per year during sleep. Which is, of course, a bit of a baseless claim.

Chelsey Weber-Smith is sometimes joined by an expert guest to provide extra insights into why some of us lose our crap over things. And it’s all very intriguing and entertaining, if this is your type of thing.

And a find complement to the network of podcasts that are offering a lot of hope and therapy for people across the world right now. From Caroline O’Donoghue’s Sentimental Garbage to Alex Steed’s You Are Good, the more of this stuff the better.

We bloody well need it.

You can find the podcast on all the usual sources, from Apple through to Spotify.

It’s free to listen to, of course, although a £2.49 monthly subscription can remove the ads. Otherwise, there’s one new episode a week. Now that’s something to get into a panic about!

And a Brief History and Criteria of Moral Panics

Throughout human there have been these episodes of moral panics, which we can trace back to the witch hunts of the Middle Ages. There was an intensive period of this between 1450 and 1750 (into the Age of Discovery), with women being the main target.

However, men were also targeted as witches…  because why not, eh?

It’s estimated there could have been up to 60,000 executions due to this complete nonsense, with the last batch taking place in the 18th century (in Europe).

The term didn’t exist back then, it was developed as a social theory by sociologist Stanley Cohen. He introduced the moral panic term in a 1967 PhD thesis, which set the scene for his 1972 book Folk Devils and Moral Panics. Interestingly, one of the examples he flagged in the work was with British ’60s counterculture and the mods and rockers riots.

This behaviour, mixing with the new wave of music emerging to eclipse traditional jazz and trad jazz, really triggered off older generations. That was all repeated in the late ’70s with the punk movement and The Sex Pistols.

Cohen defined the various hysterias as a:

“Condition, episode, person or group of persons [emerging] to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests.”

As with the whole immigration and woke mob stuff right now. Again, there doesn’t need to be any evidence to trigger people off, once the idea catches on people can collectively work themselves into a paranoid frenzy.

Cohen even put together a model of moral panic and listed the stages each one goes through:

1. Something being perceived as a threat to societal values.
2. The mass media amplifying the perceived threat, often presenting the issue with a surface level overview rather than the complex situation it usually is.
3. Social anxiety ramps up.
4. Morality gatekeepers (media moguls, politicians, religious leaders) wade into the debate to propose solutions.
5. The threat is dealt with or disappears of its own accord.

It’s worth noting quite a lot of moral panics will come to a natural end with no real conclusion.

For example, there was a horse meat ready meal scandal here in the UK. That was in 2013 and people were horrified about it for a short while, before losing interest and it sort of petered out.

Another example was with video nasties in the 1980s, with Christian Conservatives seeking to ban horror films. This was backed by then prime minister Margaret Thatcher and The Video Recordings Act of 1984 came into effect. This is something right-wingers here conveniently forget during the woke mob moral panic, in which they claim left-wingers are trying to cancel everything.

Another we remember was the “dangerous dogs” hysteria of the early 1990s, which has left a seemingly permanent stain on the reputation of pit bulls and Rottweilers.

Anyway, it’s all very intriguing.

But the interesting thing for us is moral panics, intended to preserve moral decency and uphold societal values, often end up damaging society. As with the woke mob crap right now, with people voting in droves to enforce brutal measures to clamp down on a non-existent issue. The human condition, eh? Folly!