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 feel like someone was behind the eyes watching you.

She did not just see that.

Behind those big blue eyes are predators

tracking your child's every move.

My name is Talking Angela and this is my app.

No one else is here but me.

Talking Angela made her fashionable feline debut in late 2012 as a part of the early boom of iOS apps and games,

many of which featured chatbots that you could speak to and who would speak back to you.

Angela was a fashion-obsessed, classy teenage white cat with big blue Disney-fied eyes who spent

her days luxuriating at a hip Parisian cafe.

She was a digital friend to other animated AI animals, like Talking Ben

the Dog, Talking Gina the Giraff, and Talking Tomcat, who I found out is actually

our subject's long-term boyfriend. Talking Angela was the newest of these chatbots put out by a company called Outfit 7 Limited

that boasted over 1.5 billion downloads of their various applications.

Talking Angela alone was downloaded 57 million times by 2014.

This is my local cafe hangout, Couture Cafe. Can you guess what attracted me to try it out?

The name. Couture Cafe means fashion cafe, and I'm a cat who loves fashion.

Like so many mobile games, this one centered around choosing the coolest outfits for talking

Angela.

But you could also buy little gifts for her, including heart-shaped chocolates, delivered by a

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