On this podcast, we explore fantastical thinking, moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and crazes, 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.

I had made a grilled cheeses.

A cinnamon bun which bears an uncanny resemblance to Mother Teresa.

It's impossible for an image of Jesus to appear in a tortelia.

It's kind of hard to say whether it's real or not, but I think it is.

I think everyone's been waiting for this and it's about time.

Thank you. been waiting for this and it's about time. In the spring of 1991, as the Memorial Day traffic of Northeast Atlanta clogged Memorial Drive,

a woman named Joyce Simpson pulled into a Texaco beside a billboard

lording over a jiffy lube across the street.

The 41-year-old mother, fashion designer, and bodybuilder was at that moment asking for a sign from

God about whether or not she should leave her church choir to take her singing talents to the secular

world. In her telling of events, quote, the Holy Spirit simply said, look up. I looked up and as soon as I looked up, I lost my breath. I saw the crown of thorns. I saw the deep set eyes. I saw the nose, the mustache. I saw just the total vision of Christ.

But the total vision of Christ had not appeared to Joyce in rolling white clouds or the shape of faraway hills.

This Christ, king of kings and lord Lord of Lords, was revealing himself on that

roadside billboard in a giant forkful of Pizza Hut spaghetti, the words spaghetti

Junction, cutting across his holy chest.

Spaghetti with meatballs, our version of the traditional Italian favorite.

Now, there's more to Pizza Hut than pizza.

Around the time of Joyce's revelation, Pizza Hut had placed dozens of new billboards around Atlanta,

advertising lunchtime deals on pan pizzas and pasta, including their $1.29 spaghetti.

It was a pretty unremarkable act for a fast food empire,

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