Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Selects: What Is Collective Hysteria?
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: M Hey everyone, it's Josh and I've chosen for this
- 0:03Speaker 1: week's s Y s K Select our two thousand fourteen
- 0:06Speaker 1: episode on the inappropriately named collective Hysteria. It turns out
- 0:11Speaker 1: that people can have a real effect on how other
- 0:14Speaker 1: people feel and behave. So take this as a sign
- 0:17Speaker 1: to be nice and maybe even soothing to others. And
- 0:21Speaker 1: while you're working on that, enjoy the super cool episode
- 0:24Speaker 1: on some super weird psychology. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
- 0:54Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
- 1:03Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
- 1:05Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's over there to the left,
- 1:10Speaker 1: and that makes the Stuff you Should Know got the
- 1:13Speaker 1: a team. Yeah, in the hissy, I call face what Oh,
- 1:18Speaker 1: I'm face of course your face look at you. I
- 1:22Speaker 1: would be a combination of Murdoch and Mr Tamnik. Yeah.
- 1:26Speaker 1: Oh your hair is kind of spiky in the middle today. Yeah, Jerry,
- 1:29Speaker 1: I don't know what she'd be. I guess she'd be
- 1:33Speaker 1: the leader. She'd be Hannibal. Oh, yeah, you know she's
- 1:36Speaker 1: smoking a cigar right now and wearing a black glove.
- 1:38Speaker 1: When did you start smoking cigars? Jerry, that's weird. Very timely,
- 1:43Speaker 1: I said, a team. I don't want to slag off
- 1:46Speaker 1: guest produce a knoll. He's not exactly be team. No,
- 1:49Speaker 1: we'll just call ourselves the O G S. Okay, now
- 1:53Speaker 1: that we have that established, we are the O G S.
- 1:56Speaker 1: We need bowling shirts that say as much on the
- 1:58Speaker 1: bad are you're feeling good? I'm feeling uh nauseous and dizzy?
- 2:04Speaker 1: Oh well, Chuck, did you happen to see somebody else
- 2:07Speaker 1: who is nauseous and dizzy? Well, Jerry was last week,
- 2:10Speaker 1: and then a few more people in the office, So
- 2:12Speaker 1: I just figured we all had the same thing. All right,
- 2:14Speaker 1: I'm gonna diagnose this, okay. It's called collective hysteria, also known,
- 2:20Speaker 1: I think more appropriately is mass psychogenic disorder. I think
- 2:25Speaker 1: when you add the word hysteria to this, it ticks
- 2:27Speaker 1: on certain dimensions that a lot of people could find
- 2:31Speaker 1: very objectionable, you know, hysterics, hysteria. It's like um dogs
- 2:37Speaker 1: and cats living together. Yeah, but I think it has
- 2:40Speaker 1: it has a definite um gender specific connotation to it
- 2:46Speaker 1: from over the years, like women were supposedly very hysterical.
- 2:49Speaker 1: So the the idea of diagnosing somebody as hysterical under
- 2:54Speaker 1: any circumstances. It's kind of it's had him out to
- 2:57Speaker 1: panning the patting him on the head. Yeah, here, nice lady,
- 3:00Speaker 1: you're you're just a little hysterical. Do you just go
- 3:02Speaker 1: calm down and bake something? Right? Yeah? Stop being crazy?
- 3:06Speaker 1: Uh no. Mass psychogenic disorder instead is just kind of like, whoa,
- 3:10Speaker 1: your brain just did something pretty neat, And that is
- 3:13Speaker 1: the case for mass psychogenic disorder if you ask me. Um.
- 3:17Speaker 1: In this article Chuck written by Jacob Silverman, Jeopardy champion,
- 3:22Speaker 1: Yeah well yeah, yeah, you won on Jeopardy. That makes
- 3:25Speaker 1: him a champion? Yeah, I think so. He wasn't like
- 3:27Speaker 1: the ultimate Champion, but he won a couple of episodes, right,
- 3:30Speaker 1: which is why they should have a word for. I
- 3:33Speaker 1: guess like the champion is like the one who won
- 3:36Speaker 1: at all Ken Jennings, Yeah, or um Watson, who's that
- 3:41Speaker 1: the IBM computer? Yeah, so Jeopardy winner. Jacob Silverman wrote
- 3:47Speaker 1: this article years back, and he did a pretty great
- 3:49Speaker 1: job of citing a contemporary outbreak of mass psychogenic disorder
- 3:56Speaker 1: that had been going on around that time down in Mexico,
- 4:00Speaker 1: down Mexico way in Chalco, Mexico at a boarding school.
- 4:04Speaker 1: There apparently was a girls boarding school and the girls
- 4:08Speaker 1: that went to school, they were just twelve to seventeen,
- 4:11Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, they started, well, there was
- 4:14Speaker 1: an outbreak, a weird outbreak. There was vomiting, I believe,
- 4:18Speaker 1: trouble walking. Um, there was fever, that's weird, nausea, and
- 4:26Speaker 1: so the the people running this boarding school like, um,
- 4:29Speaker 1: what's going on? This is not good? Yeah uh, and
- 4:32Speaker 1: they had no idea. The girls went on Christmas break
- 4:36Speaker 1: for ten days, came back, and the thing just took
- 4:39Speaker 1: off again like wildfire. Yeah, six hundred girls, um showed
- 4:43Speaker 1: these symptoms and nobody could figure it out. Um. They
- 4:47Speaker 1: did a lot of tests, they brought in people to
- 4:49Speaker 1: like check out the facilities, and because as you'll see,
- 4:52Speaker 1: there's a trend there. Um, you know here in the West,
- 4:56Speaker 1: they start to blame it, usually on um, like environmental
- 5:00Speaker 1: poisoning of some kind. Right, Um, you know there's some
- 5:03Speaker 1: sort of toxin present that is poisoned everybody. They didn't
- 5:06Speaker 1: find anything there, and eventually, um, they said, this is uh,
- 5:12Speaker 1: what do you call it? Psychosomatic? Mass psychogenic disorder? Okay,
- 5:16Speaker 1: mass psychogenic disorder, but No, that is one of the
- 5:19Speaker 1: one of the names of mass psychogenic disorder collective hysteria,
- 5:22Speaker 1: mass hysteria, or mass psychosomatic reaction. They're all saying the
- 5:28Speaker 1: same thing they are, which is you're not well, but
- 5:31Speaker 1: so you're not really sick. But that is not exactly true,
- 5:33Speaker 1: because that's one thing that differentiates this from something that's
- 5:37Speaker 1: just in your head, as you actually do manifest physical symptoms. Right. Yeah,
- 5:40Speaker 1: there's this article written by a m d Named Timothy F.
- 5:44Speaker 1: Jones from the Tennessee Department of Health way back in
- 5:47Speaker 1: the heady days of two thousand, your two thousand the future, um,
- 5:52Speaker 1: and he writes that you, if you are experiencing mass
- 5:56Speaker 1: psychogenic disorder, it is not just in your head. That
- 6:00Speaker 1: the symptoms that you have are actually very real. Even
- 6:03Speaker 1: though there's no toxic cause they couldn't find some sort
- 6:07Speaker 1: of environmental poison or anything like that, the symptoms are
- 6:10Speaker 1: extremely real. Yeah, it's just psycho somatic. It's just basically
- 6:14Speaker 1: the brain has been tricked into causing this response. Yeah,
- 6:19Speaker 1: and this has happened. Um. They've documented about eighty cases
- 6:23Speaker 1: throughout history, and apparently the National Institutes of Health gets
- 6:27Speaker 1: about two cases per week reported. But um, which is
- 6:31Speaker 1: I mean, like that's that's way more yeah, common than
- 6:34Speaker 1: than you would think. You know, yeah, I would think
- 6:37Speaker 1: there'd be more than eight, because I mean, these have happened.
- 6:39Speaker 1: If you go back and look at I mean, there's
- 6:41Speaker 1: all sorts of crazy list on the internet about these
- 6:43Speaker 1: cases that date back to like the fourteenth century medieval
- 6:47Speaker 1: dancing mania was one of them. Yeah, the dancing plague, Yeah, yeah,
- 6:51Speaker 1: that's in there. The Salem witchcraft trials or the Salem witchcraft.
- 6:56Speaker 1: I guess what led to the trials was UM supposedly
- 7:00Speaker 1: attributed to this kind of thing. Uh. One weird thing
- 7:04Speaker 1: about this condition is more times than not it is
- 7:10Speaker 1: affects females, Yeah, and young females even more specifically teenagers
- 7:15Speaker 1: or even younger, which is as far as it goes
- 7:18Speaker 1: right now, inexplicable UM. And it's kind of a prickly issue,
- 7:23Speaker 1: you know, Like again you kind of come back to
- 7:25Speaker 1: the idea of calling it hysteria. You know the fact
- 7:29Speaker 1: that it does tend to afflict women or girls more
- 7:33Speaker 1: than them boys. UM is apparently one means of diagnosing
- 7:39Speaker 1: psychogenic disordered mass psychogenically that's like one of the first
- 7:41Speaker 1: things we'll say is like all this the sickness is
- 7:44Speaker 1: happening in this place, the school wherever, and the doctor
- 7:47Speaker 1: will say is it a bunch of girls? And then
- 7:50Speaker 1: that will clue them in that hey, this might be
- 7:52Speaker 1: what we're dealing with here and the but the problem
- 7:54Speaker 1: is no one has any idea why. And there have
- 7:57Speaker 1: been explanations of things like, um, uh, I guess girls
- 8:04Speaker 1: this is this is girls culturally acceptable outlet for raging
- 8:09Speaker 1: against the patriarchy. Sure, even if they don't necessarily feel
- 8:13Speaker 1: that that's what they're doing, this is there there? Uh,
- 8:17Speaker 1: this is the symptoms of that. That's one. Yeah, I
- 8:20Speaker 1: thought this was a pretty interesting part. What article was
- 8:22Speaker 1: that from Slate? Uh? There was h Yeah, one called
- 8:26Speaker 1: mass Asteria and Upstate New York by Ruth Graham was
- 8:29Speaker 1: on Slate. That was a good one. It was a
- 8:30Speaker 1: really good one. And we'll get to that case in
- 8:32Speaker 1: a sect. But um, I thought it was pretty interesting.
- 8:34Speaker 1: In one part it says, um, and this is a
- 8:37Speaker 1: quote from someone writing about something and said inform, if
- 8:39Speaker 1: not unconscious intent, it is to protest the sexual repressiveness,
- 8:44Speaker 1: rigid double standard of female team culture. Um. But they
- 8:48Speaker 1: were writing about Beatlemania, Yeah, which is interesting because it's
- 8:52Speaker 1: sort of has a similar vibe of uh, young ladies
- 8:56Speaker 1: being repressed, um, not having an outlet, and so they
- 9:00Speaker 1: see the Beatles and they go berserk and faint and
- 9:03Speaker 1: cry and scream collectively. Whereas boys they're more prone to
- 9:08Speaker 1: just act out if they're not feeling good. Girls are
- 9:10Speaker 1: trained to keep things inward. And they also point out
- 9:13Speaker 1: that ladies and young ladies are more prone to seek
- 9:16Speaker 1: a doctor's help for something. Um. They say that may
- 9:19Speaker 1: account for the bias right there, like guys just won't
- 9:22Speaker 1: go to the doctor exactly. You have to be careful though,
- 9:25Speaker 1: and in just diagnosing mass psychogenic disorder, you physicians out
- 9:29Speaker 1: there who are listening the encounter a case like this, um,
- 9:33Speaker 1: it just by basing it on the fact that it
- 9:36Speaker 1: is affecting more girls than boys. Because there's at least
- 9:38Speaker 1: one case in Great Britain where I think girls were
- 9:43Speaker 1: afflicted by more than half. More than double the number
- 9:46Speaker 1: of girls were afflicted by this, and it turned out
- 9:49Speaker 1: that they were retaining cucumbers being served in in the
- 9:52Speaker 1: lunch room. Yeah, and everyone knows boys hate cucumbers, and
- 9:55Speaker 1: so I mean this is they didn't need anyone, right,
- 9:57Speaker 1: But this is one of the issues with dealing with
- 10:00Speaker 1: UM mass psychogenic disorder, and that it looks and acts
- 10:05Speaker 1: a lot like some sort of weird epidemic. That basically
- 10:10Speaker 1: it looks like either a UM something like bioterrorism. Yeah, uh,
- 10:15Speaker 1: a rapidly spreading affection infection or affection of telemania and
- 10:21Speaker 1: then acute toxic exposure. That's what it looks like. It's
- 10:24Speaker 1: like one person gets sick, this is your index case,
- 10:28Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, everyone around them suddenly has
- 10:31Speaker 1: the same symptoms. Yeah. And it's like you said, it's
- 10:34Speaker 1: super dangerous to just dismiss that as oh it's all
- 10:38Speaker 1: in your head, silly little ladies. Uh, you can't do
- 10:40Speaker 1: that because what if it is something for real? But
- 10:43Speaker 1: it's also a double edged sword, is that doctor pointed out, Um,
- 10:48Speaker 1: you start ordering batteries of tests and it it It
- 10:51Speaker 1: can go both ways. It can Um. What the old
- 10:55Speaker 1: saying is, if you order enough tests, you're gonna find
- 10:57Speaker 1: something so it can fuel that fire. But you all
- 11:00Speaker 1: so can't not run any tests and just dismiss it. Uh.
- 11:03Speaker 1: So it's a very fine line that physicians walk when
- 11:07Speaker 1: dealing with stuff like this. For sure. Indeed, apparently UM
- 11:10Speaker 1: study of mass psychogenic disorder has found that it's more
- 11:15Speaker 1: prevalent in isolated communities and in situations where um, they
- 11:21Speaker 1: are highly rigid, formalized structured rules, like a Catholic school
- 11:27Speaker 1: of Mexico exactly UM. Or again um Salem, Massachusetts in
- 11:31Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, you know. Um. And apparently between nineteen
- 11:37Speaker 1: seventy three and half of all the outbreaks of psychogenetic
- 11:42Speaker 1: or psychogenic illness took place in schools, so that that's
- 11:48Speaker 1: possibly in part by due to kids being susceptible to
- 11:54Speaker 1: it more um, but also because of that that rigid
- 11:58Speaker 1: formalized structure. Yeah. And there's also usually a top down effect,
- 12:02Speaker 1: like it'll start with a teacher or an older student,
- 12:06Speaker 1: and then the younger students follow suit, which if you're
- 12:10Speaker 1: talking influence, would make sense for sure. There was one
- 12:14Speaker 1: very famous case UM. Apparently there's not very many actual
- 12:17Speaker 1: academic studies on this, but there's one that came out
- 12:21Speaker 1: of the New England Journal of Medicine UM that that
- 12:26Speaker 1: described a case in Tennessee where a teacher noticed, um,
- 12:31Speaker 1: some weird gas odor, A gassy odor, uh, like the
- 12:37Speaker 1: chemical kind, Yeah, not like the guy on the front
- 12:40Speaker 1: road too, did right exactly um, and she apparently started
- 12:44Speaker 1: suffering symptoms. Uh, and all of a sudden, like a
- 12:48Speaker 1: hundred and eighties students and teachers had to go to
- 12:52Speaker 1: the emergency room. The school was shut down for two weeks.
- 12:55Speaker 1: That did all this environmental testing, couldn't find anything, and
- 12:59Speaker 1: finally traced it back to UM psychogenic a mass psychogenic disorder,
- 13:05Speaker 1: if that's what didn't and then everyone In most of
- 13:08Speaker 1: these cases we should point out everyone. It starts feeling better, yes,
- 13:12Speaker 1: like in Mexico, and then at school in Tennessee. It's
- 13:15Speaker 1: it's not like they went on to die or anything. Yeah.
- 13:18Speaker 1: So in the school in Mexico, the these girls were
- 13:22Speaker 1: at a boarding school. They were only allowed to see
- 13:25Speaker 1: their parents, I think like three times a year. Yeah,
- 13:27Speaker 1: they couldn't even call. It's like it sounds more like
- 13:29Speaker 1: a prison. They were allowed letters when they went home.
- 13:34Speaker 1: Immediately their symptoms cleared up. The problem is that doesn't
- 13:37Speaker 1: automatically say oh, well, it's obviously mass psychogenic disorder. It
- 13:41Speaker 1: could be an environmental toxin that they were being exposed
- 13:44Speaker 1: to still at the school and we're removed from. But
- 13:48Speaker 1: I think the the definite prognosis is mass psychogenic disorder
- 13:54Speaker 1: in this case. That's right. So the no Seebo effect
- 14:17Speaker 1: we talked about that and what the placebo effect, Well,
- 14:23Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, I was trying to be more clever.
- 14:26Speaker 1: I thought we were more clever than that. Uh, no cebo,
- 14:29Speaker 1: I think we said in that other podcast it was
- 14:31Speaker 1: Latin for eyeshall harm. And that's basically whereas you take
- 14:35Speaker 1: a placebo thinking it's going to help you out, and
- 14:37Speaker 1: it does help you out because the mind is powerful.
- 14:40Speaker 1: The no Seebo effect is thinking something bad will result,
- 14:44Speaker 1: like my teachers getting sick. I think I feel a
- 14:46Speaker 1: little sick too, and then oh, hey, my neighbor is
- 14:49Speaker 1: feeling a little sick. I think I'm feeling a little
- 14:50Speaker 1: sick too. Or this this drug trial that I'm on,
- 14:53Speaker 1: I was told that I could possibly get some sort
- 14:56Speaker 1: of gastro intestinal distress. Yeah, and even though I've been
- 15:01Speaker 1: given a sugar pill, I'm now going yeah because in
- 15:07Speaker 1: my mind because of the no cebo effect. Uh. There
- 15:09Speaker 1: was a famous experiment or case from six where there
- 15:13Speaker 1: was a woman who had a rose allergy and they
- 15:17Speaker 1: showed her an artificial rose and she began to I
- 15:19Speaker 1: guess it was convincing and she began to have her
- 15:22Speaker 1: allergic reaction and they said, ah, ha, it's fake and
- 15:27Speaker 1: you're faking, and uh she said, oh, well, I think
- 15:31Speaker 1: I'm feeling better now, and supposedly that cured her of
- 15:35Speaker 1: her real allergy to real roses. I couldn't find a
- 15:40Speaker 1: lot to back that up. But is it it is
- 15:42Speaker 1: a story? Yeah, well no, that's a I mean it
- 15:44Speaker 1: was in I can't remember the journal, but it was
- 15:47Speaker 1: really Yeah, it was a real deal thing. And um,
- 15:50Speaker 1: I don't I didn't get to the bottom of why
- 15:53Speaker 1: they presented this woman with a fake rose or whatever,
- 15:57Speaker 1: but they definitely didn't. This definitely happened. And um, the
- 16:02Speaker 1: the even the author of the study was saying, like
- 16:05Speaker 1: this woman, she wasn't faking. It was like she she
- 16:09Speaker 1: had real symptoms hives or hives exactly. I can see those. Um.
- 16:13Speaker 1: I think they call it like a rose cold or
- 16:15Speaker 1: something like that. You can get you know, stuffy, your
- 16:19Speaker 1: eyes are watering, your your nose is running, that kind
- 16:22Speaker 1: of thing. And what's interesting is some researchers have studied
- 16:27Speaker 1: the no cebo effect and they basically have isolated this
- 16:32Speaker 1: this chemical that gets released when the no cebo effects
- 16:36Speaker 1: going on. And again we should say it's not just
- 16:40Speaker 1: um making your nose runny or releasing histamines or anything
- 16:43Speaker 1: like that is pain too, Like you can you can
- 16:46Speaker 1: experience pain even though nothing's there to give you pain,
- 16:50Speaker 1: just because of the no cebo effect. What they found
- 16:53Speaker 1: was a um, A, I guess, uh, hormone, I believe
- 16:59Speaker 1: Are you ready? I'm going to try this one. Uh,
- 17:02Speaker 1: Cola cisto kinon. That sounds great, thanks man. I haven't
- 17:06Speaker 1: looked at the word, but it sounds right. Coli cisto kinon. Um.
- 17:11Speaker 1: Do you see it now? Yeah, that's totally right. I
- 17:13Speaker 1: totally did. So. It's a hormone, right, and it gets
- 17:15Speaker 1: released and it actually, um, it helps you experience pain.
- 17:21Speaker 1: So it's a nasty little hormone. But they found in
- 17:24Speaker 1: testing with the no cebo effect that if you block this,
- 17:28Speaker 1: you can also block the no sebo effect. So that
- 17:30Speaker 1: proves two things. Does that block pain though, like your
- 17:33Speaker 1: pain receptors. So does that mean if you slam your
- 17:35Speaker 1: hand in the door you won't feel it if you
- 17:37Speaker 1: can block this? Yes? So um, if you can block
- 17:41Speaker 1: Coli cisto knon, yes, it will keep you from um
- 17:46Speaker 1: hypersensitivity to pain, I believe. And this guy named Fabrizio
- 17:50Speaker 1: Benedetti I think was also in the Strokes Back. Yeah.
- 17:57Speaker 1: He uh. He was testing out the no eebo effect
- 18:00Speaker 1: and found that if he told people that he was
- 18:03Speaker 1: giving them an injection, which is it's a pretty cruel
- 18:05Speaker 1: test but effective. These post stop people who had just
- 18:10Speaker 1: come out of surgery. Uh, We're given an injection and
- 18:15Speaker 1: told this injection is going to increase your pain in
- 18:17Speaker 1: thirty minutes. I'm sorry, we have to give it to
- 18:19Speaker 1: it's part of the procedure. He gave some people an
- 18:22Speaker 1: injection of saline and they reported an increase in pain
- 18:26Speaker 1: and they all went behind the two way mirror and laughed,
- 18:28Speaker 1: right yeah, they're like yeah. And then they gave somebody,
- 18:34Speaker 1: like the other group, the control group, a chemical an
- 18:39Speaker 1: injection that blocks that pain. But they were told that
- 18:41Speaker 1: it was going to increase their pain. But they were
- 18:45Speaker 1: given a chemical that blocks coal is sister kinon, and
- 18:49Speaker 1: the cbo effect didn't take place. They didn't report an
- 18:52Speaker 1: increase in pain even though they were told they would. Yes,
- 18:55Speaker 1: so they So this guy is saying, like the no
- 18:58Speaker 1: cebo effect is like when when they say, it's not
- 19:02Speaker 1: just in your head. You're experiencing the same thing as
- 19:06Speaker 1: if you were experiencing somebody stabbing you. Well, what it
- 19:10Speaker 1: is really? You know, that's when you have to start
- 19:12Speaker 1: asking yourself those deep philosophical questions. Interesting. Um, there's another
- 19:18Speaker 1: case that's Have you ever seen the movie Safe, the
- 19:22Speaker 1: Todd Haynes movie with Julianne Moore. No, it's from like
- 19:26Speaker 1: the mid nineties, and she played a lady that um
- 19:30Speaker 1: started to have environmental sickness, um, just in the air,
- 19:34Speaker 1: and she's got sort of like increasingly um crazy as
- 19:39Speaker 1: the movie went on, as far as scrubbing things and
- 19:41Speaker 1: locking herself in her house and making her house a
- 19:43Speaker 1: clean environment. It was good and um there's there's a
- 19:47Speaker 1: true story though of a lady in London, UM named
- 19:51Speaker 1: Debbie Bird. She's a health spot manager that says that
- 19:55Speaker 1: she's allergic to E m F electro magnetic fields. And
- 20:00Speaker 1: it's an actual thing now you know, there's more than
- 20:02Speaker 1: her claiming. It's called e S electro magnetic sensitivity. Where
- 20:07Speaker 1: she has basically transformed her house. She painted it black.
- 20:12Speaker 1: She said she's allergic to computers, cell phones, microwaves. She
- 20:16Speaker 1: had her house rewired UH to make it basically e
- 20:20Speaker 1: M F free. Uh. She and her husband sleep under
- 20:23Speaker 1: a silver plated mosquito net to keep out radio waves
- 20:26Speaker 1: and covered all her windows with protective films, and she
- 20:30Speaker 1: said she feel a lot better now. So I saw that, Yes,
- 20:34Speaker 1: electromagnetic sensitivity, that if you expose somebody to a an
- 20:39Speaker 1: electromagnetic field and then just tell them that you are
- 20:42Speaker 1: and don't they have the same reaction, which would suggest
- 20:46Speaker 1: that it's it's no cibo. Well, it's super fascinating because
- 20:50Speaker 1: you cee cases like this from that to like gluten
- 20:53Speaker 1: sensitivity becoming a big thing now and people some people
- 20:57Speaker 1: contend that, well, it's maybe collective hysteria going on, and
- 21:01Speaker 1: if you think you're going to be sensitive to gluten,
- 21:04Speaker 1: then you're gonna be sensitive to things that contain gluten.
- 21:06Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that people because that's a very
- 21:08Speaker 1: hot topic. Sure it is, but um, some people have
- 21:12Speaker 1: claimed that, well, we'll talk a little bit more about
- 21:15Speaker 1: things that exacerbate the mass psychogenic disorder and the no
- 21:19Speaker 1: cebo effect right after this, so chuck. Back in two
- 21:37Speaker 1: thousand seven, in New Zealand, UH, a drug called el
- 21:42Speaker 1: trokes in it was a pretty widespread drug in New Zealand.
- 21:46Speaker 1: It's a hormone replacement drug, and it was the only
- 21:48Speaker 1: one that the government would pay for, so most people
- 21:50Speaker 1: who were on this hormone replacement therapy, we're using l
- 21:53Speaker 1: trokes in. And it had been that way for like decades.
- 21:57Speaker 1: It was just an established trug Glaxos Smith client hormone
- 22:02Speaker 1: replacement Glaxo Smith Klin. I think just those there's no
- 22:06Speaker 1: welcome involved. Um changed just the like the outer the
- 22:12Speaker 1: inner qualities of it, like the shape of the pill,
- 22:15Speaker 1: the color um and I think that's about it. But
- 22:18Speaker 1: the the active ingredient was exactly the same in two
- 22:22Speaker 1: thousand seven, uh And when they released it, all of
- 22:26Speaker 1: a sudden, some reports of bad side effects were starting
- 22:31Speaker 1: to trickle in, and the government was like, wait, what's
- 22:33Speaker 1: going on here. It got a little bit of media
- 22:36Speaker 1: attention and more reports started trickling in, and then the
- 22:41Speaker 1: media attention grew, and the reports grew and grew, and
- 22:44Speaker 1: apparently the reporting of adverse effects of altrusin increased two
- 22:51Speaker 1: thousandfold in a year and a half because of the
- 22:54Speaker 1: look of the bill. Because of the look of the pill,
- 22:57Speaker 1: they went back and studied this, and they found that
- 22:59Speaker 1: in areas where there was more reporting about these adverse
- 23:03Speaker 1: effects being reported for all trucs, and the more adverse
- 23:07Speaker 1: effects were being reported in that area. And that kind
- 23:10Speaker 1: of reveals one of the um risk factors for mass
- 23:14Speaker 1: psychogenic disorder is the media. It's actually spread through the
- 23:19Speaker 1: media most easily. Yeah, they have a point, though, I mean, um,
- 23:22Speaker 1: I know in this article too, it points out that
- 23:25Speaker 1: pills that are blue and green are usually associated with drowsiness.
- 23:29Speaker 1: Pills that are orange or yellow are not. And I
- 23:33Speaker 1: don't know if that's why they market it that way
- 23:35Speaker 1: or if it's the opposite, as we just see it
- 23:37Speaker 1: that way because of products like niquil and day quill.
- 23:40Speaker 1: But the one that makes you sleepy is green and blue,
- 23:42Speaker 1: and the one that keeps you awake or keep you
- 23:45Speaker 1: awake but doesn't make you drowsy orange. I thought about it.
- 23:48Speaker 1: I think, I mean, what do you associate with like
- 23:50Speaker 1: daytime sunrise? Yellow? Orange makes sense? What do you associate
- 23:55Speaker 1: with nighttime like something tranquil like blue? Yeah, Scotch gotch
- 24:00Speaker 1: Hamber Uh, yeah, I mean you think of that's what
- 24:04Speaker 1: I I think it came from. I think the pills
- 24:07Speaker 1: came after the association rather than the other way around. Yeah.
- 24:11Speaker 1: I think I even like when I get a prescription
- 24:15Speaker 1: for something, when I see the pill, I make a
- 24:17Speaker 1: judgment on it before I've even had it, just by saying, well,
- 24:20Speaker 1: don't look at that thing that Yeah, that's a horse pill,
- 24:23Speaker 1: or that's a capsule with you know, powdery stuff inside
- 24:27Speaker 1: that's different than the chalky one. It's you. I think
- 24:30Speaker 1: you just make an association. I don't think I have
- 24:32Speaker 1: any preconceived notions on what a larger pill will do
- 24:35Speaker 1: to me or a capsule will do to me other
- 24:38Speaker 1: than a tablet. But I think it's interesting, though, how
- 24:41Speaker 1: you make these judgment calls, but without even thinking about Yeah,
- 24:45Speaker 1: totally you know. I mean like you're you're you probably
- 24:48Speaker 1: don't sit there and look at a pill in your hand.
- 24:50Speaker 1: You just take it and just make some sort of, um,
- 24:54Speaker 1: almost unconscious judgments about it. Yeah, it may remind you
- 24:58Speaker 1: another pill that helps you that you're not even remembering exactly,
- 25:00Speaker 1: So that would be placebo. Yeah that's great. No cebo
- 25:04Speaker 1: effect not great. Poses no, and it poses a lot
- 25:07Speaker 1: of problems. For instance, there was a study I think
- 25:12Speaker 1: in the nineties that found that Women who believed that
- 25:15Speaker 1: they were prone to heart disease were four times likelier
- 25:19Speaker 1: to die of heart disease than women who didn't believe
- 25:22Speaker 1: they are prone to it, even though they had all
- 25:25Speaker 1: the exact same risk factors, basically the same risk risk factors.
- 25:28Speaker 1: There was nothing differentiating these women aside from a belief
- 25:31Speaker 1: that they were going to die from heart disease or
- 25:34Speaker 1: a belief that they weren't, and that led to a
- 25:37Speaker 1: four time four fold increase in deaths from that. Just
- 25:42Speaker 1: basically from a belief, is what it suggests. Yeah, we well,
- 25:46Speaker 1: it's sort of like the I know it's kind of cheesy,
- 25:48Speaker 1: but the p M A the positive mental attitude. I
- 25:51Speaker 1: think we've all know someone who walks around so and
- 25:55Speaker 1: so sick. Oh I know I'm going to get it.
- 25:56Speaker 1: I just know I'm going to get sick, or you know,
- 25:59Speaker 1: I just know I'm gonna get cancer because it runs
- 26:01Speaker 1: in my family. That I think that has an effect
- 26:03Speaker 1: on things. I have to agree. I know some of
- 26:05Speaker 1: our more skeptical listeners will are pulling their hair out
- 26:08Speaker 1: right now, but I totally agree with you. When we
- 26:11Speaker 1: did our show in Toronto on the way back, you
- 26:15Speaker 1: me and I flow out of Buffalo, and I was
- 26:17Speaker 1: feeling a little down, but like at the point where
- 26:21Speaker 1: I feel like you can talk yourself into staying healthy,
- 26:25Speaker 1: positive mental attitude. I guess that's what you call it.
- 26:27Speaker 1: But we were leaving right at about dusk, and the
- 26:30Speaker 1: sun was just beaming through the windows and illuminating every
- 26:35Speaker 1: single microbe visible microbe in the air. I could see
- 26:40Speaker 1: them like just going into my nose in my mouth,
- 26:43Speaker 1: and I'm like, I couldn't stop, Like I couldn't. I
- 26:46Speaker 1: was like, I'm not gonna get sick. I'm not gonna
- 26:48Speaker 1: get sick. And man, did I ever get sick. But
- 26:50Speaker 1: I noticed that right when we took off, and no,
- 26:54Speaker 1: you know what it was. Somebody shut one of their
- 26:57Speaker 1: um their window covers. Oh the shade, shade exactly is
- 27:02Speaker 1: the word that I was looking for. Somebody shut their
- 27:05Speaker 1: shade and I couldn't see it anymore, and I immediately
- 27:07Speaker 1: started to feel less symptomatic. Immediately, it was like turning
- 27:11Speaker 1: off a light. And I still got sick, but I
- 27:14Speaker 1: was just drowning. And basically what my brain was interpreting
- 27:17Speaker 1: is like being assaulted by foreign invaders, which I am
- 27:21Speaker 1: all the time, but I normally can't see them. Yeah,
- 27:24Speaker 1: well I've done I do that all the time when
- 27:25Speaker 1: I opened my uh the curtains in the bedroom and
- 27:29Speaker 1: I'll see you in the morning. I'll see that stuff
- 27:30Speaker 1: in the air and I just think, oh, man, that's
- 27:32Speaker 1: what I'm walking around breathing in everything. Dog hair and
- 27:35Speaker 1: cat hair and Emily hair. So your lungs are just
- 27:41Speaker 1: chocked full of it. So one of the one of
- 27:44Speaker 1: the problems this poses chuck for physicians is that we
- 27:49Speaker 1: expect doctors, or we want doctors to be transparent, to
- 27:53Speaker 1: not lie to us. Yeah, we've talked a lot about
- 27:55Speaker 1: this lately. I feel like, yeah, we've talked a lot
- 27:57Speaker 1: about diseases. Some of our um I pochondriac listeners have
- 28:01Speaker 1: been like police talking about diseases because now I've got Morgellons,
- 28:07Speaker 1: I'm gonna have like some sort of toxic exposure. Um
- 28:12Speaker 1: and then very soon leprosy spoiler. So uh, the problem
- 28:19Speaker 1: is is if you tell somebody that's going into surgery, hey,
- 28:23Speaker 1: by the way, um, you know you you might have
- 28:28Speaker 1: trouble walking, you might feel nauseous for the next six months.
- 28:32Speaker 1: You like, all this stuff that could be associated with
- 28:34Speaker 1: which we demand from our doctors. It's been shown that
- 28:38Speaker 1: if you are fearful or in despair going into surgery,
- 28:41Speaker 1: that's associated with longer healing times and a higher risk
- 28:45Speaker 1: of post operative infection. Right, So, if you have the
- 28:49Speaker 1: no cebo effect where doctors are saying, okay, if I
- 28:53Speaker 1: tell somebody, And it's been proven time after time that
- 28:56Speaker 1: in drug trials, people who are still are given placebo
- 29:00Speaker 1: will drop out of drug trials because they're experiencing these
- 29:05Speaker 1: negative side effects even though they're given the sugar pill. So,
- 29:09Speaker 1: if you're a doctor and you you know that you
- 29:12Speaker 1: are telling somebody something that ultimately may end up harming them,
- 29:15Speaker 1: and you've sworn an oath to do no harm, you've
- 29:18Speaker 1: got a conundrum going on right now. And that's what
- 29:21Speaker 1: the no cebo effect poses. It's the problem the no
- 29:24Speaker 1: cebo effect poses for modern physicians, like how much should
- 29:27Speaker 1: they tell you? If you're gonna tell somebody that they're
- 29:30Speaker 1: gonna feel nauseous for six months even though they probably won't,
- 29:34Speaker 1: should you tell them and give them a chance to
- 29:37Speaker 1: to basically have the psychosymatic symptom, or tell them they're
- 29:41Speaker 1: going to feel great. Well, that's another one. Somebody says,
- 29:44Speaker 1: the solution to this is just frame it differently, Like,
- 29:47Speaker 1: don't say there's a chance you're gonna have um nausea
- 29:51Speaker 1: for six months. Say half of a percent of patients
- 29:55Speaker 1: who go through the same procedure that you're about to
- 29:57Speaker 1: go through have nausea for six months ninety nine point
- 30:00Speaker 1: five percent. Don't write you're giving them the same information.
- 30:04Speaker 1: It's just framework positively. Yeah, and uh that one doctor
- 30:07Speaker 1: who wrote the article on collectivist area said, Um, what
- 30:10Speaker 1: he recommends is not naming the illness said that can
- 30:15Speaker 1: help out. Um, because as soon as you give something
- 30:18Speaker 1: a name, then it just instantly you know you have
- 30:23Speaker 1: something you can call it and everyone's calling it that,
- 30:25Speaker 1: or the media picks up on it and it's a thing. Yeah,
- 30:27Speaker 1: and that's actually again one of the one of the
- 30:30Speaker 1: risk factors in the spread of mass psychogenic illness is
- 30:34Speaker 1: the larger the response, the emergency medical response to it,
- 30:37Speaker 1: and then hence the larger the media response to it,
- 30:41Speaker 1: the larger the outbreak tends to be. It's called line
- 30:44Speaker 1: of sight exposure. Just knowing somebody is sick or seeing
- 30:48Speaker 1: somebody sick can give you the same symptoms. I'm sure
- 30:51Speaker 1: if you can see a news story that all the
- 30:53Speaker 1: other news agencies are running that says, uh, there's been
- 30:56Speaker 1: some weird chemical leak in the air in Atlanta. Uh,
- 31:00Speaker 1: people are gonna start walking around and coughing and saying,
- 31:04Speaker 1: I'm not feeling so good. I have a bitter taste
- 31:06Speaker 1: in my mouth. There's microbes everywhere. Well, here's a case
- 31:11Speaker 1: from that article you sent that I think is super fascinating,
- 31:14Speaker 1: the one in upstate New York. Because it is not
- 31:17Speaker 1: a rash or um a cough for nausea, it is
- 31:21Speaker 1: tourette syndrome. Sixteen year old UM, young lady named Laurie Brownwell, uh,
- 31:27Speaker 1: what year was this? A couple of years ago? Yeah,
- 31:29Speaker 1: not too long ago, I think two. Um in Corinth,
- 31:32Speaker 1: New York. Um was at her school's homecoming dance and
- 31:36Speaker 1: lost consciousness. Um, this is after she had banged at
- 31:40Speaker 1: a concert. Sorry, man, I thought you were gonna leave
- 31:42Speaker 1: out like the best part. Yeah, she was headbanging at
- 31:44Speaker 1: a concert. I wish into a concert that was so
- 31:46Speaker 1: me too. I didn't find it anywhere. Apparently passed out
- 31:49Speaker 1: there and had passing outfits. Uh, involuntary twitching and clapping,
- 31:53Speaker 1: started twisting, her hair, fluttering, her fingers, hey, hey, hey,
- 31:58Speaker 1: starting stuff like that, and the doctor said, you know what,
- 32:01Speaker 1: You've got turette syndrome. So Tourette's syndrome is is We've
- 32:06Speaker 1: had a podcast on It's a real thing and it's
- 32:07Speaker 1: not psychosomatic. Um. But uh, since that time, fourteen other
- 32:13Speaker 1: students along with her, thirteen girls and one boy started
- 32:16Speaker 1: exhibiting at Leroy Junior High School. I'm sorry, Junior Senior
- 32:20Speaker 1: High School started coming down with threats, right, which is
- 32:23Speaker 1: not contagious and is not contagious at all. Um. Aaron
- 32:27Speaker 1: Brockovitch got on the case, um, famous environmental activists, and
- 32:31Speaker 1: she said, no, I think this has got to do
- 32:34Speaker 1: with this train derailment from nineteen seventy that dumped cyanide
- 32:37Speaker 1: all over this town. Um, and I didn't see where
- 32:40Speaker 1: they found any uh legitimate effects. Right. Again, That's the
- 32:46Speaker 1: confounding thing about mass psychogenic disorders, that it is still
- 32:50Speaker 1: possible that there is some weird toxin in the environment
- 32:55Speaker 1: that is causing this, Like maybe there was exposure to
- 32:59Speaker 1: cyanide that in these people's brains and all gave them turette.
- 33:03Speaker 1: And if you stand back and look at it, you're
- 33:05Speaker 1: like to Tourette syndrome isn't contagious. That doesn't mean that
- 33:10Speaker 1: you can't all come down with Tourette syndrome from exposure
- 33:14Speaker 1: to a toxic It's just still it's this X factor
- 33:16Speaker 1: that's out there that you can't just necessarily rule out.
- 33:18Speaker 1: Which Yeah, and I believe in that case too. The
- 33:21Speaker 1: um those fourteen students didn't end up with Tourette syndrome.
- 33:25Speaker 1: That was a good episode, man. I love Turette syndrome one. Yeah.
- 33:29Speaker 1: It's an oldie, oldie, but a goodie. And it all
- 33:32Speaker 1: came from him banging. That's how it started at a
- 33:36Speaker 1: Nickelback show. Yeah, because Corinth is near Canada. Canada isn't
- 33:43Speaker 1: let nickel Back out any longer? Really? Are they caged
- 33:45Speaker 1: in there? Nice? Uh? There's another case of the toxic Lady.
- 33:50Speaker 1: Did you hear this one? And Riverside, California woman named
- 33:53Speaker 1: Gloria Ramirez. Um. Yeah, she was dubbed the Toxic Lady
- 33:56Speaker 1: in n She had cervical cancer and was being tree
- 34:00Speaker 1: did and all the medical staff started to get sick
- 34:02Speaker 1: that was treating her. Um. This sounds gross, but they
- 34:06Speaker 1: said her body exuded a garlicky fruity smell, and her
- 34:09Speaker 1: blood had flecks of what looked like paper um, which
- 34:13Speaker 1: sounds called Morglon's actually nice, you like that um. And
- 34:18Speaker 1: they said that most of the people that got sick
- 34:22Speaker 1: while treating her were women, more women than men, and
- 34:25Speaker 1: they all took blood test and came back normal, and
- 34:28Speaker 1: the health department said mass hysteria. So that's funny because
- 34:31Speaker 1: I looked, I remembered that story, and I was like,
- 34:33Speaker 1: I wonder if that was mass hysteria. And I looked
- 34:36Speaker 1: it up and I found that No, it was an
- 34:38Speaker 1: environmental toxic Oh it was, That's what I found. So
- 34:40Speaker 1: they called it mass ysteria at the time, and then
- 34:42Speaker 1: later found out, I think like a year or two later,
- 34:44Speaker 1: she was using some sort of salve or something on
- 34:47Speaker 1: her skin and they think that in interactive with her
- 34:50Speaker 1: biochemistry and really did produce toxic toxic gas. She said
- 34:55Speaker 1: it maybe this fruit garlic sav exactly. That's interacting badly
- 34:59Speaker 1: with I pancreas. O. Well, uh, this list needs to
- 35:03Speaker 1: be updated that that, dude, that is a fascinating case.
- 35:07Speaker 1: People got really sick from that. I think I remember
- 35:10Speaker 1: hearing about that too. Yeah. Well, I'm glad they found
- 35:12Speaker 1: a real cause in that case from what I understand,
- 35:14Speaker 1: But that's that's that's the point. Like you can say, well,
- 35:17Speaker 1: obviously there's women were more affective than men, right, Well,
- 35:21Speaker 1: is that because there's more women in the nursing profession
- 35:24Speaker 1: and there were more nurses in the room. There's a
- 35:27Speaker 1: lot of different things you have to take into account
- 35:29Speaker 1: before you just write it off. Sometimes it is real,
- 35:31Speaker 1: Like sick building syndrome. Yeah, that's a tough one because
- 35:36Speaker 1: after the Opeque oil embargo, apparently people started designing buildings
- 35:42Speaker 1: to be more air tight, so your ventilation ventilation system
- 35:45Speaker 1: was really important, and these buildings have an aged necessarily
- 35:50Speaker 1: very well, so the ventilation system is not doing what
- 35:53Speaker 1: it's supposed to any longer, and so they think possibly
- 35:56Speaker 1: that's leading to what we know as sick building syndrome,
- 35:58Speaker 1: which is more lays it's when you don't feel good
- 36:01Speaker 1: when you go to work exactly. But some studies have
- 36:04Speaker 1: found like no, that is the better predictor of sick
- 36:07Speaker 1: building syndrome is job stress or job dissatisfaction. Um, if
- 36:13Speaker 1: you have a building full of people who don't like
- 36:15Speaker 1: their jobs, you're gonna have a building full of people
- 36:16Speaker 1: with sick building syndrome. But if you go on to
- 36:19Speaker 1: say like a local government's website or whatever, and you
- 36:22Speaker 1: look at sick building syndrome, it's a it's treated as
- 36:25Speaker 1: a real thing. Yeah, well, it definitely affects your gastro
- 36:28Speaker 1: intestinal like stress does well. Also, apparently it can set
- 36:31Speaker 1: off bouts of asthma um, which is another reason why
- 36:34Speaker 1: they think it might have something to do with like
- 36:36Speaker 1: volatile organic compounds in the ventilation system or new carpeting,
- 36:40Speaker 1: that kind of stuff offcasting. Man, you you smell that
- 36:43Speaker 1: stuff when you open up a new product. Right. There's
- 36:46Speaker 1: also the dancing plague, which we mentioned briefly. Tell me
- 36:49Speaker 1: about it. Uh Fraul Trophia July four, eighteen went out
- 36:55Speaker 1: on the streets of Strasbourg, France, and started dancing even
- 36:58Speaker 1: though there was no music, and dancing like a maniac
- 37:01Speaker 1: for three straight days, and all these people started dancing
- 37:04Speaker 1: with her, saying this is a good time. Um said.
- 37:07Speaker 1: Within a month a hundred people were dancing with her
- 37:10Speaker 1: and couldn't stop and hyperventilating, hallucinating, some drop dead of
- 37:16Speaker 1: heart attack and stroke and exhaustion. And the authority said,
- 37:20Speaker 1: let's just hire a band and let him dance, dance
- 37:23Speaker 1: it out because they've got the hot blood, is what
- 37:25Speaker 1: they called it. And so they did, and um, a
- 37:30Speaker 1: lot of people died as a result. It said four
- 37:32Speaker 1: dred people in the end were struck. Uh. I don't
- 37:36Speaker 1: think they died, but we're dancers. And then it just stopped,
- 37:39Speaker 1: and that's when they blame a lot of people blame
- 37:41Speaker 1: on ergot poisoning, which we've mentioned before, poisoning, and those
- 37:46Speaker 1: people are clearly tripping on something. They got the hot blood.
- 37:49Speaker 1: But what it sounds like you just described is basically
- 37:52Speaker 1: how Tom Hanks invented jogging in the seventies. Yogging. Yeah. Yeah,
- 37:57Speaker 1: he just started running and people started following. I I
- 38:00Speaker 1: wish that part had been cut out of that movie. Yeah.
- 38:03Speaker 1: I thought that it was a weird thing that should
- 38:06Speaker 1: have been on the editing room floor. They really kind
- 38:09Speaker 1: of derailed things for a while for me. I don't
- 38:12Speaker 1: think that movie's age well though. Uh. Other people say
- 38:15Speaker 1: though that it was Sydenham's Korea disorder linked to strep
- 38:21Speaker 1: throughout and rheumatic fever that causes dance like twitches. Um.
- 38:25Speaker 1: And then of course modern medical historians say it was
- 38:27Speaker 1: mass psychosis. I would go with that one. Yeah, I
- 38:30Speaker 1: mean back then it made more sense though, when during
- 38:34Speaker 1: the Salem witch trials and before they knew anything about
- 38:37Speaker 1: medicine and you could just say you got the hot
- 38:39Speaker 1: blood or you're having the fits, like yeah, exactly. These
- 38:45Speaker 1: modern cases the ones that really freaked me out because
- 38:48Speaker 1: so much as explainable. Now here's the thing that chuck.
- 38:51Speaker 1: We've always explained. It was something that comes easily to mind.
- 38:55Speaker 1: So back in the day before science and medicine, it
- 38:59Speaker 1: was the will possessing you. And don't think that people
- 39:01Speaker 1: weren't freaked out when they thought that the devil was
- 39:04Speaker 1: there and possessing people in the same way that you know,
- 39:07Speaker 1: you're freaked out by the idea that it's cyanide in
- 39:10Speaker 1: the soil from a train derailment, from just exactly, which
- 39:15Speaker 1: is the deadliest of all the manias, but it's just
- 39:19Speaker 1: as real to the experiencer. And it all comes down
- 39:23Speaker 1: to people just basically being sick of the establishment and
- 39:27Speaker 1: letting loose for a while. I don't want to go
- 39:28Speaker 1: to work nice, so I'll dance. Have you got anything else? Uh, no, sir.
- 39:34Speaker 1: If you want to know more about collective hysteria, which
- 39:38Speaker 1: is the name of this article. It typed those words
- 39:40Speaker 1: in the search bar at how stuff works dot com
- 39:43Speaker 1: and it will bring it up. And I said, search
- 39:45Speaker 1: bars means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call
- 39:49Speaker 1: this UM episode on Grief. We've got a lot of
- 39:53Speaker 1: great feedback and that continue. Uh, they continue to roll in. Hey, guys,
- 39:58Speaker 1: just dumbled upon your podcast through my tune in radio app.
- 40:01Speaker 1: I guess that's a mini plug. We're available there now. Um,
- 40:05Speaker 1: I've devoured almost all of the six D plus shows.
- 40:08Speaker 1: May be a new listener, but I'm already a lifelong fan.
- 40:11Speaker 1: So why I'm writing in guys is I lost my
- 40:13Speaker 1: twin sister back in two thousand ten. It was a
- 40:16Speaker 1: rough time because as a fraternal twin me being the boy,
- 40:19Speaker 1: I looked at her not only as a sister, but
- 40:21Speaker 1: as a mother and friend. Too. Long story short, I
- 40:24Speaker 1: wanted to comment on the Grief Show some time ago.
- 40:27Speaker 1: I've dealt with my grief through my artwork. I'm a
- 40:29Speaker 1: small town artist from Johnson City, Tennessee, and I rarely
- 40:33Speaker 1: can get noticed or any attention with my art. I
- 40:36Speaker 1: wanted to share my new piece I've just finished. After
- 40:39Speaker 1: listening to how comic books work. I'm a huge fan
- 40:41Speaker 1: of Marvel comics and I hope you both enjoy this.
- 40:43Speaker 1: And he sent this really cool. I think it was
- 40:46Speaker 1: like every member of the Marvel universe had to be
- 40:48Speaker 1: in this picture that he did. I didn't see that one.
- 40:50Speaker 1: It's really really neat, just jam packed full of Marvel
- 40:53Speaker 1: comic heroes and villains. Um. So, Josh and Chuck, thanks
- 40:56Speaker 1: for the inspiration. Last and getting through every day at
- 40:58Speaker 1: the office at p S. My twin Jessica passed away
- 41:02Speaker 1: from epilepsy actually a condition called sue dep Sudden unexplained
- 41:06Speaker 1: death of epilepsy. My mother is trying to raise awareness
- 41:10Speaker 1: because November is epilepsy Awareness month. So if you guys
- 41:14Speaker 1: wouldn't mind mentioning this on the show, she would be
- 41:16Speaker 1: so happy for that. Also, an epilepsy show would be
- 41:18Speaker 1: cool too. Um. Not a lot is discussed about it,
- 41:21Speaker 1: and that is Jason Flack and Jason wrote you back
- 41:25Speaker 1: that is heartbreaking about your twin sister. Very sorry to
- 41:29Speaker 1: hear that, um, and we will definitely do a show
- 41:31Speaker 1: on epilepsy. And since this is November, though, people should
- 41:35Speaker 1: go out and find out what they can during National
- 41:37Speaker 1: Epilepsy month. We'll follow up with the show. I don't
- 41:41Speaker 1: know if it'll be in November, but we'll get to
- 41:43Speaker 1: that one for sure. And thanks for that piece of art.
- 41:45Speaker 1: And if anyone is interested in a great comic book
- 41:47Speaker 1: artist from Johnson City, Tennessee, do a lot worse than
- 41:51Speaker 1: Jason Flack. Jason, thank you very much for sharing that
- 41:54Speaker 1: with everybody. That means a lot to us. If you
- 41:57Speaker 1: want to share with us and all of our listeners
- 42:01Speaker 1: out there, you can tweet to us at s y
- 42:03Speaker 1: s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot
- 42:06Speaker 1: com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us
- 42:09Speaker 1: an email with attached artwork to stuff Podcast at how
- 42:12Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at
- 42:15Speaker 1: at home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com.
- 42:20Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
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