DEATH

American Hysteria

W!ZARD Studios

History, Society & Culture

4.4 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2020

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For our season finale, we will be exploring our ultimate human fear, our number one cognitive dissonance that arguably leads to all our American hysterias, all our archetypes, beliefs, and delusions, our moral panics. We’ll be taking at look at the historical progression of how Americans have dealt with mortality starting with a place known as the Disneyland of Death, then traveling back to learn about the Puritan idea of the Good Death, and then see how the mass casualties of the Civil War and Lincoln’s embalmed corpse changed our relationship to bodies and immortality, all the way up to the present day tech billionaires funding strange new science to live forever. But we’ll also explore how, historically, the deaths of Black people have been treated in an almost polar opposite way to the deaths of white people, and how the echoes of this reality reach into the present day. Through a psychological concept known as the Terror Management Theory, we’ll try to understand how this uniquely human knowledge of our inevitable deaths shapes our psychology, society, and culture. We will be taking a hiatus for the summer but please stay with us, stay subscribed, follow us on social media or if you can, become a Patron. We love you all so much, thank you for being the best audience we could ever hope for <3 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 Co-Produced by Miranda Zickler 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 Consider donating to the nonprofits and organizations we mentioned in this episode. This week's #AmericanHysteriaBookClub (on Instagram) Worm at the Core by Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, this is our season finale, and we'll be going on a hiatus for the summer to figure out what is next for our show and to take a break after a very intense season. We're meeting with networks now in the hopes of finding a new home so we can keep doing what we do. Please stay with us in the meantime. Stay subscribed to our show.
0:25.9	And if you want to keep up with us, you can become a patron or you can follow us on social media.
0:32.0	There are links in our bio for both. It also always helps so much if you leave us a review on Apple. We thank you so deeply
0:41.3	for the ways you support us, and we will be keeping in touch through this feed as much as we can.
0:48.0	Look out especially for our merch coming soon. And please stick with us.
0:54.9	We couldn't be luckier to have an audience like you.
1:00.2	Please be aware that this episode contains descriptions of racial violence.
1:05.4	Music On this season, we'll explore our most ingrained beliefs, delusions, and archetypes, the ways that cognitive dissonance shapes our culture and how our reality is created by the stories we tell. I'm your host,
1:30.5	Chelsea Weber Smith, and this is American hysteria. At Forest Lawn, we understand how important it is
1:38.6	to be right the first time, because when it comes to funerals, it'll be the only time. Dr. Jesse Carmesan is talking about transfusions with the young blood from teenagers.
1:50.0	An embalmer and a funeral director were on the train full-time, constantly attempting to refresh the unrefrigerated corpse.
1:59.0	Sometimes it was myself in the coffin.
2:01.7	It was my brother's in the coffin.
2:04.3	It was, I can't describe it precisely.
2:12.9	Really, how do I open an episode called death?
2:16.8	I've struggled with this for a few weeks,
2:19.1	and I can't seem to find the clean, personal story that could lead us into this final topic
2:24.9	the way I've tried to throughout this season. And maybe that's the best place to start. I don't
2:31.7	know. As much as these episodes have been about understanding our shared
2:36.7	history, our shared psychology, and our shared modern culture, I also set out to try to get to
2:43.8	know myself in these contexts as much as I could. But at the end of the day, of course, my own life and life in general remains a great
2:55.4	and ever-expanding mystery. Death is a universal fact. Perhaps all that we can each be certain of.
	...

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