SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: What is Collective Hysteria?

10:22Josh Clark:Yeah, I thought this was a pretty interesting part. What article? Was that from Slate?

10:27Chuck Bryant:There was one called Mass Asteria in Upstate New York by Ruth Graham was on Slate. That was a good one.

10:33Josh Clark:It was a really good one. We'll get to that case in a sec. But I thought it was pretty interesting. In one part it says, and this is a quote from someone writing about something, and said, in form, if not in conscious intent, it is to protest the sexual repressiveness, rigid double standard of female teen culture. But they were writing about Beatlemania. Yeah. Which is interesting, because it sort of has a similar vibe of young ladies being repressed, not having an outlet, and so they see the Beatles and they go berserk and faint and cry and scream collectively. effectively, whereas boys, they're more prone to just act out if they're not feeling good.

11:13Josh Clark:Girls are trained to keep things inward. And they also point out that ladies and young ladies are more prone to seek a doctor's help for something. They say that may account for the bias right there. Like guys just won't go to the doctor.

11:26Chuck Bryant:Exactly. You have to be careful, though, in just diagnosing mass psychogenic disorder. You physicians out there who are listening that encounter a case like this, just by basing in on the fact that it is affecting more girls than boys because there's at least one case in Great Britain where I think girls were afflicted by more than half, more than double the number of girls were afflicted by this. And it turned out that there were tainted cucumbers being served in the lunchroom.

11:56Josh Clark:Yeah. And everyone knows boys hate cucumbers.

11:58Chuck Bryant:So they didn't eat anything. Right. But this is one of the issues with dealing with mass psychogenic disorder in that it looks and acts a lot like some sort of weird epidemic. That basically it looks like either something like bioterrorism, a rapidly spreading infection, or affection if it's Beatlemania, and then acute toxic exposure. That's what it looks like. It's like one person gets sick. This is your index case. And all of a sudden, everyone around them suddenly has the same symptoms.

12:36Josh Clark:Yeah, and it's, like you said, it's super dangerous to just dismiss that as, oh, it's all in your head, silly little ladies. You can't do that because what if it is something for real? But it's also a double-edged sword, as that doctor pointed out. You start ordering batteries of tests and it can go both ways. It can, what the old saying is, if you order enough tests, you're gonna find something. Right. So it can fuel that fire, but you also can't not run any tests and just dismiss it. So it's a very fine line that physicians walk when dealing with stuff like this, for sure.

13:11Chuck Bryant:Indeed. Apparently, a study of mass psychogenic disorder has found that it's more prevalent in isolated communities and in situations where there are highly rigid, formalized, structured rules. Like a Catholic school in Mexico. Exactly. Yeah. Or, again, Salem, Massachusetts in the 17th century. Yeah. You know? And apparently, between 1973 and 1993, half of all the outbreaks of psychogenic illness took place in schools. Oh, yeah. So that's possibly in part due to kids being susceptible to it more. Right. but also because of that rigid, formalized structure.

14:03Josh Clark:Yeah, and there's also usually a top-down effect, like it'll start with a teacher or an older student, and then the younger students follow suit, which, if you're talking influence, would make sense for sure.

14:16Chuck Bryant:There was one very famous case. Apparently there's not very many actual academic studies on this, but there's one that came out of the New England Journal of Medicine that described a case in 1998 in Tennessee where a teacher noticed some weird gas odor, a gassy odor, like the chemical kind.

14:41Josh Clark:Yeah, not like the guy on the front row tooted.

14:44Chuck Bryant:Right, exactly. Yeah. And she apparently started suffering symptoms. And all of a sudden, like 180 students and teachers had to go to the emergency room. The school was shut down for two weeks. They did all this environmental testing, couldn't find anything, and finally traced it back to a mass psychogenic disorder. That's what did it.

15:10Josh Clark:And then everyone, in most of these cases, we should point out, everyone starts feeling better. Yes. Like in Mexico and then the school in Tennessee, it's not like they went on to die or anything.

15:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So in the school in Mexico, these girls were at a boarding school. They were only allowed to see their parents, I think, like three times a year. Yeah, they couldn't even call.

15:31Josh Clark:It sounds more like a prison.

15:33Chuck Bryant:Right. No phone calls. They were allowed letters. When they went home, immediately their symptoms cleared up. The problem is that doesn't automatically say, oh, well, it's obviously mass psychogenic disorder. It could be an environmental toxin that they are being exposed to still at the school and we're removed from, but I think the definite prognosis is mass psychogenic disorder in this case.

15:58Josh Clark:That's right. What we're talking about is a sort of version of the nocebo effect, which we've talked about before, and we will get into that right after this break. Wait, this is a soda? Yeah. And it has protein? 10 grams. No sugar? Zero. And it actually tastes good? It's Sky Pop. Sky Pop Protein Soda delivers the refreshing taste you want from a real soda. Crisp and delicious with 10 grams of complete protein, zero sugar, and just 45 calories. So you're not choosing between great taste and real benefits. You're getting both in every sip. Sky Pop Protein Soda. Reach for the sky. Get your Sky Pop Protein Soda now at Target or Walmart.

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17:19Chuck Bryant:But our first store was completely community-funded.

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17:43Chuck Bryant:We won the AT &T Small Business Contest Grant, and that was what we needed to open the first AI-powered shipping container grocery store in the country. Having a powerhouse like AT &T stand behind you takes it to a whole new level.

17:58Josh Clark:Connecting changes everything. AT &T. so the nocebo effect we talked about that in what the placebo effect oh well that makes sense yeah i was trying to be more clever thought we were more clever than that no uh nocebo i think we said in that other podcast too is latin for i shall harm and that's basically uh whereas you take a placebo thinking it's going to help you out and it does help you out because the mind is powerful. The nocebo effect is thinking something bad will result. Like my teacher's getting sick. I think I feel a little sick too. And then, oh wait, my neighbor's feeling a little sick.

18:38Josh Clark:I think I'm feeling a little sick too.

18:39Chuck Bryant:Or this drug trial that I'm on. I was told that I could possibly get some sort of gastrointestinal distress. Yeah. And even though I've been given a sugar pill, I'm now going because of my mind because of the nocebo effect

18:57Josh Clark:there was a famous experiment or case from 1886 where there was a woman who had a rose allergy and they showed her an artificial rose and she began to I guess it was convincing and she began to have her allergic reaction and they said aha it's fake and you're faking and she said oh well I think I'm feeling better now and supposedly that curator of her real allergy to real roses. Right. I couldn't find a lot to back that up, but it is a story.

19:31Chuck Bryant:Yeah, well, no, it was in, I can't remember the journal, but it was a real deal thing. And I didn't get to the bottom of why they presented this woman with a fake rose or whatever, but they definitely did, and this definitely happened. Yeah. And even the author of the study was saying like this woman, she wasn't faking. Right. It was like she had real symptoms. Sure. Hives are hives. Exactly. You can see those. I think they call it like a rose cold or something like that. You can get, you know, stuffy. Yeah. Your eyes are watering. Your nose is running, that kind of thing. And what's interesting is some researchers have studied the nocebo effect and they basically have isolated this chemical that gets released when the nocebo effect's going on.

20:26Chuck Bryant:And again, we should say it's not just making your nose runny or releasing histamines or anything like that. It's pain, too. Like, you can experience pain even though nothing's there to give you pain just because of the nocebo effect. What they found was a, I guess, a hormone, I believe. Are you ready? I'm going to try this one. Cholocytokinin. That sounds great. Thanks, man. I haven't looked at the word, but it sounds right. Cholocytokinin. Yeah. Do you see it now? Oh, yeah. That's totally right. I totally did. So it's a hormone, right? And it gets released, and it actually helps you experience pain.

21:09Chuck Bryant:Uh-huh. So it's a nasty little hormone. Yeah. But they found in testing with the nocebo effect that if you block this, you can also block the nocebo effect. So that proves two things.

21:20Josh Clark:Does that block pain though? Yes. Like your pain receptors? Yes. So does that mean if you slam your hand in a door,

21:24Chuck Bryant:you won't feel it? If you can block this. Wow. Yes. So if you can block cholecystokinin. Right. Yes, it will keep you from hypersensitivity to pain, I believe. Yeah. And this guy named Fabrizio Benedetti, who I think was also in the strokes, back in 1997. There was a Fabrizio, right? Yeah. He was testing out the nocebo effect and found that if he told people that he was giving them an injection, which is a pretty cruel test, but effective. Yeah. These post-op people who had just come out of surgery were given an injection and told, this injection is going to increase your pain in 30 minutes. I'm sorry, we have to give it to you.

22:08Chuck Bryant:It's part of the procedure. He gave some people an injection of saline and they reported an increase in pain.

22:15Josh Clark:And they all went behind the two-way mirror and laughed.

22:17Chuck Bryant:Right. They're like, what a chump. Watch, 30 minutes. And then they gave somebody, like the other group, the control group, a chemical, an injection that blocks that pain. But they were told that it was going to increase their pain. But they were given a chemical that blocks Cholecystokinin And the nocebo effect didn't take place They didn't report an increase in pain

22:41Josh Clark:Even though they were told they would

22:42Chuck Bryant:So this guy is saying The nocebo effect Is real When they say it's not just in your head You're experiencing The same thing As if you were experiencing Somebody stabbing you Well it is real That's when you have to start asking yourself

23:01Josh Clark:those deep philosophical questions. Right. Interesting. There's another case that's, have you ever seen the movie Safe, the Todd Haynes movie with Julianne Moore? No. It's from like the mid 90s and she played a lady that started to have environmental sickness just in the air and she got sort of like increasingly crazy as the movie went on as far as scrubbing things and locking herself in her house and making her house a clean environment.

23:32Chuck Bryant:Sounds great.

23:33Josh Clark:It was good. And there's a true story, though, of a lady in London named Debbie Bird. She's a health spa manager that says that she's allergic to EMF, electromagnetic fields. And it's an actual thing now. There's more than her claiming it's called ES, electromagnetic sensitivity, where she has basically transformed her house. She painted it black. She said she's allergic to computers, cell phones, microwaves. She had her house rewired to make it basically EMF-free. She and her husband sleep under a silver-plated mosquito net to keep out radio waves and covered all her windows with protective films.

24:18Josh Clark:She said she's feeling a lot better now.

24:20Chuck Bryant:I saw that ES, electromagnetic sensitivity, that if you expose somebody to an electromagnetic field and then just tell them that you are and don't, they have the same reaction, which would suggest that it's nocebo.

24:36Josh Clark:Well, it's super fascinating because you see cases like this, from that to gluten sensitivity becoming a big thing now. And some people contend that, well, it's maybe a collective hysteria going on. And if you think you're going to be sensitive to gluten, then you're going to be sensitive to things that contain gluten. And I'm not saying that, people, because that's a very hot topic. Sure it is. But some people have claimed that.

25:01Chuck Bryant:Well, we'll talk a little bit more about things that exacerbate the mass psychogenic disorder and the nocebo effect right after this. Stuff you should know.

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26:48Chuck Bryant:Make your way across the country aboard Amtrak. Take in the majestic views from big picture windows and large, comfy seats that elevate your trips to the next level. From dining cars to private rooms, you can make memories in comfort. Capture amazing moments with picture-worthy views. Learn more at Amtrak.com. Amtrak. Retrain travel. Stuff you should know. So Chuck, back in 2007 in New Zealand. Yeah. a drug called L-Troxin. It was a pretty widespread drug in New Zealand. It's a hormone replacement drug. And it was the only one that the government would pay for. So most people who were on this hormone replacement therapy were using L-Troxin.

27:33Chuck Bryant:And it had been that way for like decades. It was just an established drug. GlaxoSmithKline. What was it for though? Hormone replacement. Oh, okay. A GlaxoSmithKline, I think just those. There's no welcome involved. changed just the outer, the inner qualities of it, like the shape of the pill, the color. Yeah. And I think that's about it. But the active ingredient was exactly the same in 2007. And when they released it, all of a sudden, some reports of bad side effects were starting to trickle in. And the government was like, wait, what's going on here? It got a little bit of media attention. and more reports started trickling in.

28:19Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And then the media attention grew, and the reports grew and grew, and apparently the reporting of adverse effects of L-troxin increased 2 ,000-fold in a year and a half. Because of the look of the pill. Because of the look of the pill. Yeah. They went back and studied this, and they found that in areas where there was more reporting about these adverse effects being reported for L-troxin, the more adverse effects were being reported in that area. And that kind of reveals one of the risk factors for mass psychogenic disorder is the media. It's actually spread through the media most easily.

28:59Josh Clark:Yeah, they have a point, though. I mean, I know in this article, too, it points out that pills that are blue and green are usually associated with drowsiness. Yeah. Pills that are orange or yellow are not. and I don't know if that's why they market it that way or if it's the opposite. We just see it that way because of products like NyQuil and DayQuil. Right. But the one that makes you sleepy is green and blue and the one that keeps you awake or doesn't make you drowsy is orange.

29:26Chuck Bryant:I thought about it. I think, I mean, what do you associate with like daytime, sunrise, yellow, orange, red? It totally makes sense. What do you associate with nighttime? Like something tranquil like blue. Oh, yeah. Yeah, scotch amber. Yeah, I mean, you think of, that's what I, I think it came from, I think the pills came after the association rather than the other way around.

29:49Josh Clark:Yeah, I think I even, like when I get a prescription for something, when I see the pill, I make a judgment on it before I've even had it just by saying, wow, look at that thing. It's heavy. Yeah, that's a horse pill or that's a capsule with, you know, powdery stuff inside that's different than the chalky one. I think you just make an association. I don't think I have any preconceived notions on what a larger pill will do to me or a capsule will do to me other than a tablet. But I think it's interesting, though, how you make these judgment calls.

30:22Chuck Bryant:But without even thinking about it. Yeah, totally. You know? I mean, like, you probably don't sit there and look at a pill in your hand. You just take it and just make some sort of almost unconscious judgments about it.

30:36Josh Clark:Yeah, it may remind you of another pill that helps you that you're not even remembering. Exactly. So that would be placebo. Yeah.

30:41Chuck Bryant:That's great. Nocebo effect. Not great. No, and it poses a lot of problems. For instance, there was a study, I think, in the 90s that found that women who believed that they were prone to heart disease were four times likelier to die of heart disease than women who didn't believe they were prone to it, even though they had all the exact same risk factors. basically the same risk factors. There was nothing differentiating these women aside from a belief that they were going to die from heart disease or a belief that they weren't. Yeah. And that led to a four-time, four-fold increase in deaths from that, just basically from a belief is what it suggests.

31:24Josh Clark:Yeah, well, it's sort of like the, I know it's kind of cheesy, but the PMA, the positive mental attitude, I think we all know someone who walks around, oh, so-and-so's sick, oh, I know I'm gonna get it. I just know I'm gonna get sick. Or I just know I'm gonna get cancer because it runs in my family. I think that has an effect on things.

31:42Chuck Bryant:I have to agree. I know some of our more skeptical listeners are pulling their hair out right now, but I totally agree with you. When we did our show in Toronto, on the way back, Yumi and I flew out of Buffalo. And I was feeling a little down, but at the point where I feel like you can talk yourself into staying healthy. Positive mental attitude, I guess is what you call it. PMA. But we were leaving right at about dusk, and the sun was just beaming through the windows and illuminating every single microbe, visible microbe in the air. And I could see them just going into my nose and my mouth. And I'm like, I couldn't stop.

32:24Chuck Bryant:I was like, I'm not going to get sick. I'm not going to get sick. And man, did I ever get sick. But I noticed that right when we took off, and no, you know what it was? somebody shut one of their window covers. Yeah, yeah, the shade. Shade, exactly is the word that I was looking for. Somebody shut their shade and I couldn't see it anymore and I immediately started to feel less symptomatic. Wow. Immediately. It was like turning off a light. Yeah. And I still got sick, but I was just drowning in basically what my brain was interpreting as like being assaulted by foreign invaders, which I am all the time, but I normally can't see them.

33:02Josh Clark:Yeah, I do that all the time. when I open the curtains in the bedroom and I'll see it in the morning, I'll see that stuff in the air and I just think, oh man, that's what I'm walking around. Right. Breathing in. Breathing, yeah. Dog hair and cat hair and Emily hair.

33:18Chuck Bryant:So your lungs are just chock full of it. So one of the problems this poses, Chuck, for physicians is that we expect doctors or we want doctors to be transparent, to not lie to us. Yeah, we've talked a lot about this lately, I feel like. Yeah, we've talked a lot about diseases. Some of our hypochondriac listeners have been like, please stop talking about diseases because now I've got morgulons. I'm going to have some sort of toxic exposure. Toxoplasmosis. Yep, and then very soon, leprosy. Spoiler. So the problem is if you tell somebody that's going into surgery, hey by the way um you know you you might have trouble walking yeah you might feel nauseous for the next six months you like all this stuff that could be associated with which we demand from our doctors yeah it's been shown that if you are fearful or in despair going into surgery that's associated with longer healing times and a higher risk of post-operative infection yeah

34:26Josh Clark:Right?

34:27Chuck Bryant:So if you have the nocebo effect where doctors are saying, okay, if I tell somebody, and it's been proven time after time that in drug trials, people who are still are given placebo will drop out of drug trials because they're experiencing these negative side effects, even though they're given the sugar pill. So if you're a doctor and you know that you are telling somebody something that ultimately may end up harming them, and yet you've sworn an oath to do no harm, you've got a conundrum going on right now. Yeah. And that's what the nocebo effect poses. It's the problem the nocebo effect poses for modern physicians.

35:05Chuck Bryant:Like how much should they tell you? If you're going to tell somebody that they're going to feel nauseous for six months, even though they probably won't, should you tell them and give them a chance to basically have the psychosomatic symptom? Or tell them they're going to feel great. Well, that's another one. Somebody says the solution to this is just frame it differently. Right. Like don't say there's a chance you're going to have nausea for six months. Say half of a percent of patients who go through the same procedure that you're about to go through have nausea for six months. 99.5 % don't.

35:41Chuck Bryant:Right. You're giving them the same information. It's just framed more positively.

35:45Josh Clark:Yeah. And that one doctor who wrote the article on collective hysteria said what he recommends is not naming the illness. Yeah. He said that can help out. because as soon as you give something a name, then it just instantly, you know, you have something you can call it and everyone's calling it that or the media picks up on it. Right. And it's a thing.

36:06Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and that's actually, again, one of the risk factors in the spread of mass psychogenic illness is the larger the response, the emergency medical response to it, and then hence the larger the media response to it, the larger the outbreak tends to be. It's called line of sight exposure. just knowing somebody is sick or seeing somebody sick can give you the same symptoms

36:29Josh Clark:I'm sure if you see a news story that all the other news agencies are running that says there's been some weird chemical leak in the air in Atlanta people are going to start walking around and coughing and saying I'm not feeling so good I have a bitter taste in my mouth there's microbes everywhere well here's a case from that article you sent that I think is super fascinating, the one in upstate New York. Yeah. Because it is not a rash or a cough or nausea. It is Tourette's syndrome. A 16-year-old young lady named Lori Bronwell, what year was this? A couple years ago?

37:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah, not too long ago. I think 2012.

37:10Josh Clark:And Corinth, New York, was at her school's homecoming dance and lost consciousness. This is after she had banged at a concert.

37:19Chuck Bryant:Sorry, man. I thought you were going to leap out like the best part.

37:22Josh Clark:Yeah, she was headbanging at a concert. I wish I knew what concert that was so bad. Me too.

37:25Chuck Bryant:I didn't find it anywhere.

37:27Josh Clark:Apparently passed out there and had passing outfits. Involuntary twitching and clapping started, twisting her hair, fluttering her fingers. Hey, hey, hey. Starting stuff like that. Yeah. And the doctor said, you know what? You've got Tourette's syndrome. So Tourette's syndrome is, we've had a podcast on it. That was a great one. It's not psychosomatic. Yeah. But since that time, 14 other students along with her, 13 girls and one boy started exhibiting at Leroy Junior High School. I'm sorry, Junior Senior High School. Started coming down with Tourette's. Right, which is not contagious. It is not contagious at all.

38:05Josh Clark:Erin Brockovich got on the case, famous environmental activist. And she said, no, I think this has got to do with this train derailment from 1970 that dumped cyanide all over this town. Right. and I didn't see where they found any legitimate effects.

38:24Chuck Bryant:Right. Again, that's the confounding thing about mass psychogenic disorder is that it is still possible that there is some weird toxin in the environment that is causing this. Like maybe there was exposure to cyanide that got in these people's brains and all gave them Tourette. And if you stand back and look at it, you're like, Tourette syndrome isn't contagious. That doesn't mean that you can't all come down with Tourette's syndrome from exposure to a toxin. It's just still this X factor that's out there that you can't just necessarily rule out.

38:58Josh Clark:Yeah, and I believe in that case, too, those 14 students didn't end up with Tourette's syndrome.

39:04Chuck Bryant:That was a good episode, man. I loved Tourette's syndrome one.

39:08Josh Clark:Yeah, that's an oldie. Oldie but a goodie.

39:11Chuck Bryant:And it all came from headbanging. That's how it started.

39:14Josh Clark:That mess. At a Nickelback show.

39:18Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because Corinth is near Canada. Canada doesn't let nickel back out any longer.

39:23Josh Clark:Oh, really? Are they caged in there? Yeah. Nice. There's another case of the toxic lady. Did you hear this one? In Riverside, California, a woman named Gloria Ramirez. Yeah. She was dubbed the toxic lady in 1994. She had cervical cancer and was being treated, and all the medical staff started to get sick that was treating her. This sounds gross, but they said her body exuded a garlicky, fruity smell. and her blood had flecks of what looked like paper, which sounds kind of like morgulons, actually. Nice. You like that? Yeah. And they said that most of the people that got sick while treating her were women, more women than men, and they all took a blood test and came back normal, and the health department said mass hysteria.

40:09Chuck Bryant:So that's funny, because I remembered that story, and I was like, I wonder if that was mass hysteria, and I looked it up, and I found that, no, it was an environmental toxin. Oh, it was? That's what I found.

40:19Josh Clark:So they called it mass hysteria at the time

40:21Chuck Bryant:and then later found out? I think like a year or two later, she was using some sort of salve or something on her skin. And they think that it interacted with her biochemistry and really did produce toxic gas.

40:34Josh Clark:She said it may be this fruit garlic salve.

40:36Chuck Bryant:Right, exactly. That's interacting badly with my pancreas.

40:40Josh Clark:Oh, well, this list needs to be updated.

40:43Chuck Bryant:Dude, that is a fascinating case. It is. People got really sick from that. I think I remember hearing about that too. Well, I'm glad they found a real cause in that case. From what I understand. But that's the point. Right. You can say, well, obviously, women were more affected than men. Yeah. Right? Well, is that because there's more women in the nursing profession and there were more nurses in the room? Yeah, maybe. There's a lot of different things you have to take into account before you just write it off. Sometimes it is real, like sick building syndrome.

41:12Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah.

41:13Chuck Bryant:That's a tough one because after the OPEC oil embargo, apparently people started designing buildings to be more airtight. So your ventilation system was really important. Yeah. And these buildings haven't aged necessarily very well, so the ventilation system is not doing what it's supposed to any longer. And so they think possibly that's leading to what we know as sick building syndrome, which is malaise. It's when you don't feel good when you go to work. Exactly. Which is everybody every day. Some studies have found, like, no, that is the better predictor of sick building syndrome, is job stress or job dissatisfaction.

41:50Chuck Bryant:Yeah. If you have a building full of people who don't like their jobs, you're going to have a building full of people with sick building syndrome. But if you go on to, say, like a local government's website or whatever and you look at sick building syndrome, it's treated as a real thing.

42:05Josh Clark:Yeah. Well, it definitely affects your gastrointestinal like stress does.

42:08Chuck Bryant:Also, apparently, it can set off bouts of asthma. Yeah. which is another reason why they think it might have something to do with like volatile organic compounds in the ventilation system, or new carpeting, that kind of stuff.

42:20Josh Clark:Yeah, off-gassing, man. You smell that stuff when you open up a new product, right? Yeah. There's also the dancing plague, which we mentioned briefly. Tell me about it. Frau Trophia, July 14th, 1518, went out on the streets of Strasbourg, France, and started dancing, even though there was no music, and dancing like a maniac for three straight days, and all these people started dancing with her, saying this is a good time. Said within a month, 100 people were dancing with her and couldn't stop. And hyperventilating, hallucinating, some drop dead of heart attack and stroke and exhaustion. And the authority said, let's just hire a band and let them dance it out because they've got the hot blood is what they called it.

43:04Josh Clark:All right. And so they did. And a lot of people died as a result. and it said 400 people in the end were struck. I don't think they died, but were dancers. Right. And then it just stopped. And that's one they blame, a lot of people blame on ergot poisoning, which we've mentioned before.

43:23Chuck Bryant:I always go with ergot poisoning. Yeah, back then. Those people were clearly tripping on something. They got the hot blood. But what it sounds like you just described is basically how Tom Hanks invented jogging in the 70s.

43:34Josh Clark:Jogging? Yeah. Oh, yeah?

43:35Chuck Bryant:He just started running and people started following him.

43:38Josh Clark:I wish that part had been cut out of that movie.

43:40Chuck Bryant:Oh, really?

43:41Josh Clark:Yeah, I thought that it was a weird thing that should have been on the editing room floor. It really kind of derailed things for a while for me.

43:49Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

43:50Josh Clark:I don't think that movie's aged well, though. I haven't seen it in forever. Other people say, though, that it was Sidenham's chorea, a disorder linked to strep throat and rheumatic fever that causes dance-like twitches. And then, of course, modern medical historians say it was mass psychosis.

44:07Chuck Bryant:I would go with that one.

44:08Josh Clark:Yeah, but back then it made more sense, though, when during the Salem witch trials and before they knew anything about medicine and you could just say you got the hot blood or you're having the fits. Or the devil's possessed you. Yeah, exactly. These modern cases are the ones that really freak me out because so much is explainable now.

44:29Chuck Bryant:Here's the thing, though, Chuck. We've always explained it with something that comes easily to mind. So back in the day before science and medicine, it was the devil possessing you. And don't think that people weren't freaked out when they thought that the devil was there in town possessing people. In the same way that you're freaked out by the idea that it's cyanide in the soil from a train derailment from 1970. Or Beatlemania. Exactly. Which is the deadliest of all the manias. But it's just as real to the experiencer. and it all comes down to people just basically being sick of the establishment and letting loose

45:06Josh Clark:for a while don't want to go to work nice so i'll dance you got anything else uh no sir uh if you

45:14Chuck Bryant:want to know more about collective hysteria which is the name of this article type those words in the search bar howstuffworks.com and it will bring it up and i said search bar which means it's time for listener mail.

45:27Josh Clark:I'm going to call this episode on grief. We got a lot of great feedback and they continue to roll in. Hey guys, just stumbled upon your podcast through my tune in radio app. I guess that's a mini plug. We're available there now. I've devoured almost all of the 600 plus shows. I may be a new listener but I'm already a lifelong fan. So why I'm writing in guys is I lost my twin sister back in 2010. it was a rough time because as a fraternal twin me being the boy I looked at her not only as a sister but as a mother and friend too long story short I wanted to comment on the grief show some time ago I've dealt with my grief through my artwork I'm a small town artist from Johnson City Tennessee and I rarely can get noticed or any attention with my art I wanted to share my new piece I've just finished after listening to how comic books work I'm a huge fan of Marvel Comics and I hope you both enjoy this and he sent this really cool.

46:24Josh Clark:I think it was like every member of the Marvel Universe had to be in this picture that he did. I didn't see that one. It was really, really neat. Just jam-packed full of Marvel comic heroes and villains. So Josh and Chuck, thanks for the inspiration laughs and getting through every day at the office. P.S. My twin Jessica passed away from epilepsy, actually. A condition called SUDEP, Sudden Unexplained Death of Epilepsy. My mother is trying to raise awareness because November is Epilepsy Awareness Month. So if you guys wouldn't mind mentioning this on the show she would be so happy for that yeah also an epilepsy show would be cool too um not a lot is discussed about it and that is jason flack and jason i wrote you back that is heartbreaking about your twin sister yeah very sorry to hear that um and we will definitely do a show on epilepsy and since this is november though uh people should go out and find out what

47:15Chuck Bryant:they can during national epilepsy month yeah we'll follow up with the show i don't know if it'll be

47:20Josh Clark:in November, but we'll get to that one for sure. And thanks for that piece of art. And if anyone's interested in a great comic book artist from Johnson City, Tennessee, you could do a lot worse than Jason Flack.

47:31Chuck Bryant:Jason, thank you very much for sharing that with everybody. That means a lot to us. If you want to share with us and all of our listeners out there, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com slash Stuff You Should Know. You can send us an email with attached artwork to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

48:02Josh Clark:For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

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