Hysteria!

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Hysteria!

Written by: Phoebe Bennett, Nick Minter
Narrated by: Alice Lowe
Free with 30-day trial

₹199 per month after trial ends. Cancel anytime.

About this listen

Hysteria! presents tales of howling nuns, fainting schoolgirls, witches, wombs, online panics and threats, both imagined and real. Crossing decades and continents, and from personal panics to societal scares, Alice Lowe explores hysterical behaviour. Come join the delirium....

Hysteria is a word that regularly gets misused. It gets attached to everything from overly emotional behaviour to moral panics, via stock market crashes, stampedes, viral videos and more. It's often used, pejoratively, about women, and it shares its roots with the ancient Greek word for womb. The story of hysteria touches on issues of stigma, gender, morality and power. But how do we separate mass psychogenic illness from mere emotional excess?

Filmmaker, actress and writer Alice Lowe has long been fascinated by the grey area between behavioural control and abandon. In this six-part series, she explores what we really mean when we talk about frenzies, fevers, manias and panics, both individually and throughout society.

Produced by Wisebuddah for Audible Originals.

This is an Audible Original Podcast. Free for members. You can download all6 episodes to your Library now.

©2019 Audible, Ltd. (P)2019 Audible, Ltd. Psychology Psychology & Mental Health
Episodes
  • Ep. 1: Film, Nuns and Deathly Dances

    Ep. 1: Film, Nuns and Deathly Dances
    Jul 24 2019

    Cinema thrives on hysterical characters, especially when they inhabit closed environments such as convents or girls schools. But what can we make of the dozens of people who died during a dancing epidemic in medieval France?
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    34 mins
    Free with 30-day trial
  • Ep. 2: Witches, Wombs and Women

    Ep. 2: Witches, Wombs and Women
    Jul 24 2019

    Hysteria shares its etymological roots with the ancient Greek word for womb. Does that explain why women are still more likely than men to be accused of hysterical behaviour?
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    25 mins
    Free with 30-day trial
  • Ep. 3: Spirits, Angels and Seances

    Ep. 3: Spirits, Angels and Seances
    Jul 24 2019

    Death – or being in close proximity to death – encourages unusual social behaviour. From the birth of Spiritualism to WW1 and beyond, how are our beliefs shaped by the people we lose?
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    28 mins
    Free with 30-day trial
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