On this podcast, we explore fantastical thinking, moral panics, conspiracy theories, and urban legends, examine the forces that shape our culture, and tell the stories that create the realities we share and sometimes the realities

we don't.

I'm your host, Chelsea Weber Smith, and this is American hysteria.

It's like every person that I put out, you know, will never stop being a star.

But what we're going to do is you're going to be trained to appear in number one places

around the country and even before the king and queen.

My mom would say, now see, they're dressed in this.

These kids did $200 million in record sales and $800 million in foreign and merchandise. I was like, I'm in the wrong business.

What'd you do?

I said, I think I can do that.

I think I can put a group like that together.

In March of the boy band Banner Year of 2000, a four-part vocal group called InSync dropped their second album,

No Strings Attached, which immediately topped the Billboard charts and sold more than 2.4 million

copies in the first week, a new industry record. But heartthrobbed Justin Timberlake, bad boy, J.C. Chazze,

goofball Joey Fetone, babyface Lance Bass, and proto-steampunk Chris Kirkpatrick were struggling

behind the scenes.

The album name came from Chris, a reference to the song, I've Got No Strings, from Disney's Pinocchio. The first single off the album, certainly

their most memorable song, Bye Bye, Bye, shows the boys as marionette puppets breaking from their strings and

running, running, running, on top of a train for some reason, followed by a car chase

featuring a very obvious product placement for BMW. The puppet master, theSync was saying bye, bye, bye to,

was infamous producer and Ponzi schemer Lou Pearlman, the mastermind that handcrafted

both NSYNC and their rival group, The Backstreet Boys. This episode is largely a story about

...