What should we be afraid of next?

The historical controversies, arguments, quotations, publications, inventions, and events featured in Panic Patrol are based on research and historical sources.

Whenever possible, we provide the receipts, including links to original articles, primary sources, historical documents, and further reading so you can explore the story yourself.

Most of what you see and hear on Panic Patrol is a dramatic recreation.

We use a combination of original writing, editing, filmmaking techniques, digital tools, and generative AI to create characters, voices, locations, photographs, footage, and other visual elements.

Unless something is specifically identified as archival material, visual depictions should be understood as dramatic recreations rather than authentic historical photographs or film.

Our recurring field reporters are fictional AI-generated characters and are not intended to depict or bear the likeness of any real person. Historical figures may be depicted through AI-assisted dramatic recreations informed by available photographs, portraits, descriptions, and other historical sources.

These recreations are interpretive and should not be understood as authentic photographs, film, or exact visual reconstructions.

Because history has a marketing problem.

A bizarre newspaper clipping from 1897 may contain an extraordinary story, but most people will never encounter it. And even fewer will stop scrolling long enough to read a thousand-word explanation of it.

Generative tools let us experiment with a different approach. With the use of AI, we turn forgotten historical debates into short, cinematic stories that can compete for attention in the places people already spend their time.

The technology is a means, not the point.

Panic Patrol isn’t intended to be the final word on any subject.

Quite the opposite.

Each episode is designed to be a starting point - something entertaining enough to catch your attention, surprising enough to make you wonder whether it really happened, and intriguing enough to send you looking for the answer.

Follow the sources. Read the original arguments. Question our interpretation. Discover something we missed.

If a short comedy sends you down a two-hour historical rabbit hole, the Patrol has done its job.

History becomes especially interesting when we stop treating people in the past as idiots.

The fears featured in Panic Patrol often made sense to someone at the time. New technologies disrupt habits. Social changes threaten established norms. People worry about unintended consequences.

Sometimes those fears prove justified.

Sometimes they look ridiculous in hindsight.

And sometimes the most interesting question isn’t whether people were wrong.

It’s why they were so afraid in the first place.