Hey everyone. Before we get started, I wanted to take a moment to address the June 24th, 22 Supreme Court

decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the right to have a safe and legal abortion. Abortion is a basic

health care need for millions of women, girls, and people who can become pregnant.

Everyone should have the freedom to decide what's best for themselves and their families.

That's a given, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy.

This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety and could and probably will have harsh repercussions on other landmark decisions.

If you want to find out how you can get involved, you can visit choice.crd.co.

That's choice.cr.c.c.o. And you can find links in our show notes as well. If you're able to support others, please consider donating to abortion funds. We encourage you to spread the word, to speak up, to stay safe, and to find the imperfect solidarity that is the only way that we get through this.

Thank you so much. And now here's the show.

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.

I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any

foreign war.

In May 1940, one week after the Nazis invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and France,

polls showed that 90% of the American public still did not want to get involved,

with President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself, long promising that he would not allow

the nation to be dragged into the conflict. An isolationist, nationalist mood, tinged with our own

interest in eugenics, permeated the culture, spread by groups like the America

First Committee that boasted more than a million members and was represented by the likes of

Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg, who was quoted in a 1939 Reader's Digest article saying that, quote,

...