Dung dung dung

dung as we've long covered on American hysteria

a folk devil is a person or a group of people

unfairly blamed for society's problems

the focus of those pesky moral panics.

It's safe to say that most of you, dear listeners, know what it's like to be deemed a cartoonish, salacious, and satanic villain for no reason at all.

So we've created our merch series, Folk Devils United,

with the motto, Skate scapegoats against scapegoating.

The image shows three radical doubles from different periods of American history,

joining hands the way our show hopes we all can, united in rag tag solidarity.

We got t-shirts, baseball teas, totebags, all available now at American hysteria.com slash

merch, shipping out in early January. We have limited stocks so make sure you head

to American hysteria.com slash merge today. Any sort of public facing industry, like you're a wrestler. I'm so sorry to be the

fair of bad news. You are. Just own it. Our returning pop culture correspondent, B.J. Colangelo, is a writer and editor at slash film and host of the podcast, This ends at Prom, with her wife, cherished former guest Harmony

Colangelo, which analyzes movies made for teenage girls. Recently, B.J. wrote a brilliant review of the new movie, The Iron

Claw for slash film, so I wanted to invite her on to tell me about one of her favorite things, the fantastical

world of pro wrestling, which brings together athleticism and over-the-top acting, to create a kind of manly soap opera, a kind of hyper-masculine drag.

We'll discuss the quirky history of pro wrestling and its changing landscape in terms of gender and

sexuality, as well as the complicated psychology of K-Fabe, in which staged performances are presented as genuine.

BJ will teach us how K-Fabe works both on and off stage until reality starts to blur with fantasy in ways

that are difficult to pick apart. Together we'll come to the conclusion that when you really think

about it we are all pro-restlers. I'm your host, Chelsea Weber Smith, and this is American Hysteria.

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