Racism and xenophobia whipped up by anxieties about immigration.

It's so clearly never about the thing it's claiming to be about, because throughout history,

it doesn't matter who the mob is scared of.

The mob just wants to be scared of something.

We are back for part two of our of. The mob just wants to be scared of something.

We are back for part two of our runaway nun hoax series with podcaster Sarah Marshall of Your Wrong About and You Are Good. All about the 1836 memoir, the awful disclosures of Maria Monk, the hidden secrets of a nun's life in a convent

exposed. In our first episode, we went through a strange and brutal tale spun by the narrator,

an alleged former nun who escaped a convent-turned torture chamber full of evil nuns and the murderous, debauchous priests that controlled them.

For this episode, we're going to look at how this massively successful and influential book was debunked,

who the true authors were, and why they created this fake yet outrage-provoking text.

We will also look at the violent and bizarre anti-Catholic culture of the 1800s, when a wave of

Irish and German Catholic immigrants entered the United States, much to the vicious displeasure of many in the Protestant majority.

It will become clear that those spitting incendiary rhetoric about various groups of immigrants have always used the same playbook,

painting entire cultures of people as criminal and

conspiratorial in order to justify extremely harsh treatment based on fabricated evidence.

I'm your host, Chelsea Weber-Smith, and this is American Hysteria.

Hello, dear listeners, we are back for part two of the awful disclosures of Maria Monk,

and I am here, of course, with my beautiful co-host today, Sarah

Marshall. Welcome back. Hello, Charmed, I'm sure. I'm sure. So, all right, today we are going to

take what we heard in part one. Obviously, go listen to part one if you haven't heard it yet. Who is that psycho that goes into a part two without listening to a part one? I feel like we're always like, make sure you listen to part one first. Right. I know. And also, anyone who is listening to part two first also is not going to respond positively to being told to listen to Part 1.

So, like, if you're committed to listening to Part 2 all by itself, I can do nothing to stop you.

And I hope that it gives you a sense of control to hear that.

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