I think right now in the United States, conspiracy thinking is so integral to the Trump

regime because it's a way that we engage in this collaborative storytelling about this

ghostly enemy within.

Analyst ghostly enemy within. Annalie Newitz is the author of the book Stories Are Weapons, Psychological Warfare in the

American Mind, which traces through history the way disinformation, propaganda, and violent

threats have evolved from military weapons

deployed against foreign adversaries into tools of domestic culture war.

In addition to their nonfiction work, Annalie is also a sci-fi writer, an author of the USA Today

bestseller, Automatic Noodle, as well as a contributor to the independent

daily newsletter, Flaming Hydra. For this episode, Annali gives us a primer on the ways that

sciops and psychological warfare have long propped up the American colonial project, including

the many men who have been masters of its weaponized

storytelling. Just to note, we recorded this episode shortly after the brutal murder of Renee

Nicole Good by Ice Agent Jonathan Ross, and now it's coming out shortly after the brutal murder

of Alex Pretti by an an as yet unnamed ICE agent.

As we watch in real time, the utterly baffling, sinister, psychopathic psychological warfare

being waged by the DHS and the administration at large in regards to these murders,

I hope this conversation can help put what we're living through right now into historical

context and remind us that in addition to fighting against the world we do not want,

we also need to hold inside ourselves the world that we envision, the one we are fighting for. I'm your host, Chelsea

Weber Smith, and this is American hysteria. I am so excited to welcome my new friend,

Annalie, to this show, and we are going to talk today about some very kind of expansive

...