American Hysteria explores how fantastical thinking has shaped our culture – moral panics, urban legends, hoaxes, crazes, fringe beliefs, and national misunderstandings. Poet-turned-podcaster Chelsey Weber-Smith tells the strangest stories from American history and examines the forces that create the reality we share, and sometimes, the reality we don't.
http://www.americanhysteria.com/
episode 103: When Conspiracies Aren't Just Theories with Journalist Tom Risen
Journalist and author Tom Risen is here to tell me about some of the real conspiracies that the CIA and the FBI were involved in from the 50s to the 70s and how, in 1975, one senator finally took these agencies to task, revealing shocking truths that would be used for decades to make the conspiracy theories we know today seem far more plausible. Tom writes about government surveillance and spy agencies and is the co-author of the bestselling book 'The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys—and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy,'" which he wrote with his father, James Risen, another journalist who has spent decades covering intelligence agencies.
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Producer and Editor: Miranda Zickler
Associate Producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith
Hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith
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