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.

Hi, I'm Chelsea Weber-Smith, and welcome to Jackass. I mean American hysteria.

An MTV insists this is not a copycat incident.

A big brother madly game tells you how to commit suicide, broken, and also explicit descriptions

of sex.

Steve Burd has faced so bad he ended up looking like Freddy Krueger.

There are double hustler named Evil Kneeble, who is one of the more grotesque spectacles

in our history.

Hi, I'm Johnny Knoxville. Welcome to Jackass.

Three, two, one, rock!

At the turn of the millennium, rowdy preteens and teenagers, like me, started doing things

like pushing each other in shopping carts through the dim parking lots of chain grocery

stores, slamming into curves until we sawed in disculpted hedges.

Our parents' handheld cameras capturing a creative stream of aggressively irritating stunts,

pranks, and pathetic attempts at kickflips.

The tapes now, mercifully, melting away in some never-ending landfill.

While skateboarding with abandoned, I racked up a fractured wrist that left me poolless

for the summer, my cast wrapped in a bread bag when I needed to take a shower.

Then I got a somewhat serious hand injury after trying and failing to jump off a yellow cement

pole and land on my skateboard.

...