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Dancing Until You Drop · Why We Do What We Do

0:03
You're listening to Why we Do what we Do. Welcome to Why we Do
0:16
what we Do. I am your boogeying host Abraham and I'm your footloose and
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fancy free host Shane, or a psychology podcast. We talk about all the
0:25
things that humans do, sometimes what animals do, and sometimes when humans dance.
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That is the thing that we might talk about. Also, did not
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expect this one to come up, but here it is on our bingo card.
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I guess I'm sure And just let you know, Builbilding this right at
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the front that if you would like to support us, you can join us
0:40
on Patreon, pick up some merch leave us a rating and review, follow
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us on social media, and of course you can go start a national dancing
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circuit and name it why we do what we do in honor of us,
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and we would appreciate that. And they'll talk more about how you can support
0:54
us at the end of this discussion. So this episode comes out on June
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fourteen, and there are some things that you should know and celebrating when this
1:03
episode happens, that you can go about your day and acknowledge the holidays that
1:07
are out there. Yes, for the month of June it is Pride MONTHO
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yeah, exactly, full support. And also National Soul Food Month, which
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I don't know that we talked about already, but delicious, I don't think
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we have. It is Flag Day, which is exciting, and then when
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I'm personally excited about it, is World Blood Donor Day to go out and
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donate that blood while wearing a flag. Maybe, as I say, you're
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about due for that, aren't you. Yeah, Actually I was thinking about
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I think someone of these upcoming weeks. I just did it a couple of
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weeks ago, but one of these upcoming weeks I am due. Yeah.
1:37
It's also International Bath Day, which is a sore point for me because I
1:42
yet to find the bath that I fitted. Funny fact, I am somewhere
1:45
down the line related to President Taft, who historically had trouble with baths because
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he was considered the largest president. So interesting fact, I've got presidential blood
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in me. And also it's National Strawberry short Kick Day, which is arguably
1:57
the best part of all of these. Yeah, so donate blood while using
2:02
a flag designed towel, maybe taking a bath, eating strawberry shortcake, celebrating
2:08
Pride, and maybe they make that shortcake soul food somehow, somehow. Yeah,
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all right, we have this where Donna kick this one off for this
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very lovely little quote, I guess vignette, if you will this short little
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story, take it away, Shane. This is a quote from the book
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The Black Death and the Dancing Mania from eighteen eighty eight, so it's a
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little old. It goes like this quote. They formed circles hand in hand,
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and, appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued dancing
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regardless of the bystanders, for hours together in wild delirium, until at last
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they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of
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extreme oppression and groaned as if the agonies of death until they were swathed in
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clothes bound tightly around their waists, upon which they again recovered and remained free
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from complaint until the next attack. And that comes from justice. Read Carl
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Hecker's book The Black Death and Dancing Menia. Awesome. I really love that
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you include these notes. When you're the one who's responsible for taking these on
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is asking the question what do pokemon, which is bread and drugs all have
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in common? It is always fun to kind of like tie these weird things
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together and how they're related, and dancing plagues is not where I expect to
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POKEM on the show. Up the research takes us in wacky places, and
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so it's fun to sort of ask that question, the Trivia night question of
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what those have in common? Yeah, and yeah, you just said it.
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I don't think we had mentioned yet. We are talking about the dancing
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plagues, of which there have been a few, and we'll go through that.
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What are they and why did they happen? And when did they happen
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and all those questions you might have and like why are you talking about this
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might be a question you have, and we're going to answer that all in
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this discussion today. Yeah, dancing plagues are kind of this wild, very
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strange human phenomenon. So it is exactly as absurd as it sounds. Okay,
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just so everybody's aware, Like when we say dancing plagues, it is
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a large group of humans that get together and they dance uncontrollably. But let's
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go ahead and like actually get a formal definition. So dancing plagues also known
4:13
as dancing mania or Saint Vitus Dance or Chorea Mania, Saint John's Dance or
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tarantism. Sure, it was a phenomenon that took place during the fourteenth and
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seventeenth centuries in Europe. Mostly essentially, what would happen was that large groups
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of people, usually like within a certain village or a certain radius of an
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area, large groups of people, sometimes nearing numbers well into the thousands,
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would sporadically begin dancing and not stop dancing, just keep on going. The
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energizer bunny. It's very much so the scene from pocus Pocus when they all
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get the wished and they're dancing and they can't stop. It's that, but
4:48
worse. Maybe that's what happened. The Sanderson sisters are the blame for all
4:53
these events. I think we'll find out. So you mentioned this is a
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mania, So for everyone listening, as a quick reminder, mania is quote
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mental illness marked by periods of great excitement or euphoria, delusions, and overactivity
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end quote. And that's important to keep that definition in mind. A lot
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of people, I think, sort of misuse manic and mania, and that's
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really what it is, is those those periods of great excitement and sort of
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what looks like maybe over stimulation sort of yea hyperactivity in a way kind of
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like above what is like considered like a social norm. Yeah, now this
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supposedly impacted adults and children across Europe, and those impacted by the mania,
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this dancing mania would continue to dance or move radically until they either stopped as
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a result of injury or exhaustion. So this is an important piece of this.
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It wasn't that they were just dancing and then they danced for a long
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time. It wasn't like Coachella or a Burning Man like. What you're talking
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about is specifically like they're dancing until they hurt themselves or they are so exhausted
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they can't dance anymore. So it's very similar to like the Beetlejuice dinner party
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scene. I was gonna ask, Yeah, yeah, without the possession part.
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Got it well as far as we know, as far as we know,
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as far as we know, I guess that's fair. Yeah, So
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the Bewitched scene from Hocus Focus or the Dinners scene from Beetlejuice, both very
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old movies at this point, really dating ourselves here. I haven't watched Beetle
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Juice in a minute. I bet that. I bet it holds up.
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It was really fun. It's very scary, is it? Okay? You
6:17
know it's very Tim Burton like that kind of horror like that you saw and
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like Dewey's Big Top or whatever it is with the truck driver and all that.
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Very scary. I never saw that, but now I'm very curious.
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But I mean, yeah, there's there's there's a lot of sort of horrific
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and sort of I don't know, I'm a cob and twisted imagery and that
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has to do with sort of the afterlife and death and that sort of thing.
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So yeah, there's that. Anyway, we're talking about dancing plagues.
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This type of psychological phenomenon has also been classified as a mass psychogenic illness or
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MPI. So MPI means mass psychogenic illness, and these types of phenomenon are
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considered essentially social, meaning that it is it takes cue from the social environment.
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People see what others around them are doing and react accordingly in a way
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that maybe sometimes feels involuntary the way of thinking about it. Yes, and
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we are going to talk about mass psychogenic illnesses and what that means another kind
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of phrase, and we'll get into this more as a mass hysteria. Right.
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The technical term is mass psychogenic illness. But if you're familiar with the
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term mass ysteria, that's really what this is all about, fair enough,
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So I think it's worth talking about a specific phenomenon, a specific dancing plague
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that occurred that kind of led me to kind of dive into some of this
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discussion, and that's a dancing plague of fifteen eighteen. This is one of
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the most well documented events to take place related to dancing phenomenons or the dancing
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plagues, and this occurred in a very specific area in fifteen eighteen. So,
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as you said, it began in fifteen eighteen, so we're talking more
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than five hundred years ago. Uh. And it was apparently started by a
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person and this was a woman named Frau Trophea. That sounds like it was
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made up, but that was apparently her name. And so she just began
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dancing in the street, well before Martha Reeves and the Vandelas, who did
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it before David Bowen McJagger, But just dancing in the street, you know.
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Yeah. Also Billy Aisles Dancing with Myself and Bruce Springsteen's Dancing in the
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Dark are much better songs than dancing in the street. So I'm just gonna
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just lay that out there for everybody. Oh, if you have an opinion,
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feel free to reach it, to reach out to us, email us
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and let us know. But I'm gonna go ahead and say those that's it.
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I like dancing with myself, it's good. Yeah, dancing the dark,
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good to anyway, They're all good. They're all good songs. I'm
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just saying on it. If I had to rank all three, ie,
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it's gonna go dancing with myself, dancing in the dark, dancing in the
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street. So you're not criticizing him, You're just offering a sort of list
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of preference. Yeah, like a hierarchy of sorts. Okay. Now,
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this reportedly occurred for about one full week, with about forty people joining the
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dance during this time. Now you might be going, this is fifteen eighteen
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and they're documenting only forty people being involved in this, So that's not a
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lot of people in the grand scope of human history. But some reports included
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that people died as a result of this specific event, and so that's where
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this kind of comes in. It is like people were like where it started,
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with forty people joining, it didn't seem like a lot but it does
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get worse. Well, and you know, thinking about that, long ago,
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the population of the earth was much much, much much smaller than it
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is currently, so forty people was proportionately quite a bit more. Also,
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I think villages, cities, and towns tended to be much smaller, so
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forty people may have been a large chunk right of a particular municipality, if
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you will. And the other thing too, is like, this is such
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a weird phenomenon that any amount of people doing it would probably be something that
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made the news. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. Yeah, yeah, just
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to randomly start dancing. So we started talking about this as fifteen eighteen dancing
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plague started by fraud trophia or trophia or whatever, and several weeks later,
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about four hundred more people were swept up in the mania. And throughout the
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course of this specific event, it was reported that people suffered reported Obviously,
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the news outlets at the time maybe weren't as reliable and consistent as as what
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we have today. Yeah, take that as you will, but it was
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reported that people suffered strokes or heart attacks in the mania of their dancing.
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And this claim is debated, as we said, as you can imagine the
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records aren't that great, so take that as you will. But the reports
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did happen that they had these medical events while in these long bouts of dancing.
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It doesn't it's not an unreasonable thing to suspect may have happened to at
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least somebody. Yeah, and just to be clear too, this wasn't like
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they would dance for a couple hours and then just go to sleep like.
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It was things that it continued on, like people were staying up and like
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falling down from exhaustion from literally not sleeping during this. Authorities in general could
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not stop people from dancing. That was another part of this, Like they
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couldn't just like interrupt people dancing, and local governments went so far as to
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ban music wow, which you know, they banned music and the dancing still
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continued. So I guess I would say Kevin Baker will probably be pretty proud.
11:01
The music was in their souls the whole time. That's it. That's
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it. There wasn't a preacher in the world that could have stopped them from
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dancing. I imagine that the police were afraid that they got close to the
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dancing people they'd be swept up in it. And start dancing themselves and look
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kind of like the twenty seventeen Ghostbusters or twenty sixteen whatever it was. Oh
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yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yea, yeah yeah,
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where everybody was possessed in dancing. Yeah, that would been I forgot about
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that too. There's I guess there's so many like involuntary dance movies out there.
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Now, we can get Bernie's I never actually saw that. The second
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one, he gets possessed and he dances the whole time. Okay, this
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body is still around for some reason. There's probably more, you know what,
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people, what we need is we need you to go on social media
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tag us and then list of movies that we have not mentioned that have dancing,
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involuntary compulsory dancing going on. Yes, absolutely, because clearly this is
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a genre unto itself, which is impressive. It spans genres even, that's
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right, Yeah, it does. It is a larger umbrella than we would
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have thought. And I feel like I feel like we have to be clear
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we're not talking about dance fighting, so we can exclude West Side Story and
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Guardians of the Galaxy like dance fighting is not part of this. We're talking
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about like mass group dancing. That's not maybe not a musical either. Yes,
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that's correct, because I feel like that's like bound to happen, like
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Okay, Green's everybody's dancing. That's fine. It's got to be involuntary.
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It can't be musical. It's got to be involuntary. Do with that what
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you will. Yes. Now, what is known about this specific event we're
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still in fifteen eighteen, by the way, is that the people people did
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dance, and nobody had any clue why it started or why it lasted as
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long as it did. Obviously at fifteen eighteen, some believed that it was
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a result of demonic possession, which would fall in line with some of the
12:45
movies we've described. It was also hypothesized to be due to overheated blood,
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whichcraft could have been involved. Standard fair you know, for the fifteen eighteen
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time period is they were going to go with anything but a reasonable explanation.
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There's all kinds of explanations, and the ones that that kept coming back to
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were those ones. But now I'm also picturing like police in fifteen eighteen,
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because we know police forces didn't really exist, but they kind of did so,
13:09
Like that's like really like the Royal guard or whatever. But like now
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I'm picturing like a horse with a light on its head, like you know,
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like you know, with the siren like but the but like it's almost
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like a you know, Monty Python where they're like the knight is just going
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like doing the air, you know. So that's pretty great. I do
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like that image. So while you all ponder that and you think about that,
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we're gonna take a n ad break and come back and discuss why this
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even happened at begin with. Okay, so we were describing this dancing plague
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of fifteen eighteen one of the earliest ones, and obviously we want to then
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talk about why this might have happened. We obviously mentioned sort of their hypotheses
13:54
for the time, but some more contemporary hypotheses suggested that maybe the cause of
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the fifteen eighteen dancing plagues, as well as some others that came later,
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could have been the result of several things. One that jumped out that is
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maybe a more plausible explanation is food poisoning, specifically a fungus that causes ergotism
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from you know, ergot and this type of fungus related to food poisoning comes
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from grainy foods that get contaminated with fungus. I think it's like if they're
14:20
left moist or something like that, not not properly stored, and this produces
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ergotamine I think is how that said, which has a psychoactive properties similar to
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LSD. Actually a fun fact, this same fungus was linked to some of
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the Salem which trials. Another fun fact is I think that the original LSD
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recipe was developed from some of the compounds found in ergot. And honestly,
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ergot might be a thing worth doing a whole episode on in the future,
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and like Ergot poisoning because it was it was a pretty wild time back when
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they did not know what was happening and will all of a sudden just be
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like tripping out on their their fungal grains. Yeah, you know, this
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is one of those episodes. I'm surprised that we didn't really get into mk
15:03
ultra, but you know, there's a direct line from dancing plagues to mk
15:07
ultra and acid tests that were done in like you know, poisoned water holes
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and stuff like that. So that's always fun. How many things have we
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linked together? I think we've gotten about witches and bread and drugs. So
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far, so far. Yeah, hey we're missing one. Oh we're gonna
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get there. So you brought up you brought the Salem with trials, which
15:24
you know, at the time too was also linked to besides the argotism and
15:28
all that, it was linked to stress induced mass hysteria. So these dancing
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plagues just to kind of picture this. Living in Europe at this time,
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especially fifteen eighteen, very difficult, not easy for anybody, right, Like
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I mean, really living anywhere as a human not very easy for anybody.
15:45
But besides there being very little in the way of resources, those without resources
15:48
were very limited in their resource even more so, they were starving, and
15:52
royalty lived extravagantly, and while those that were in their care or there,
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you know, they're people, they're the people that they were supposed to take
15:58
care of in their kings, in their territories were often relegated to long,
16:03
hard work conditions, extreme weather, very little nutritious food, which I mean,
16:07
if you've ever seen an English breakfast then you've then you know. But
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it's it's incredibly stressful to say the least. Like it was a bad time.
16:15
So you know, it makes sense that people would maybe like kind of
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snap and start dancing, like that seems like a better option. You know.
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Another possible explanation here was religion. There were many of these explanations,
16:27
though there's really no credence to the explanations here, so yeah, that might
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have been another thing. Yeah, it was super weird, Like they brought
16:36
up religion, but they didn't really explain like why, Like I couldn't find
16:40
like why religion was a thing. Why would that be a cause unless it
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was like maybe part of like a mass or like some kind of sermon,
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But like this event in particular had nothing to do with any sermon, So
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there was not really a good explanation for that. But I want to kind
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of unpack the general phenomenon of mass psychogenic illness because we kind of talked about
16:56
that later the dancing. We'll get to that later. But like this idea
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of like mass hysteria mass psychogenic illness MPI. MPIs defined as an event where
17:06
people in a group start feeling sick at the same time or it have some
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kind of sensation, feeling, some kind of phenomenon, even though there is
17:14
no physical or environmental reason for them to be sick. Yeah, so this
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idea of like a lot of people are experiencing this event, the singular thing,
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but there's no reason why, yeah, Chernobyl, not an MPI.
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There was no good reason for them would be sick. Yes, it was
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a lot of radiation exposure. Yeah, huh, yep, yep, opposite
17:30
of an MPI. Yeah, all right. Other names for this phenomenon also
17:34
include a mass sociogenic illness, mass psychogenic disorder, epidemic hysteria, and mass
17:42
hysteria, which you've already sort of alluded to as a way to describe what's
17:47
happening here. Yeah. Now, some features of MPIs can include, but
17:51
are not limited to, symptoms that have no organic basis, symptoms that are
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transient and benign. You would assume that dancing would be a thing that would
17:59
kind of pass and be kind of relatively harmless, and there's a rapid onset
18:03
and recovery, so it seems to kind of come out of nowhere, and
18:06
it's really prevalent, and then it disappears all of a sudden. Some other
18:08
features might include extraordinary anxiety symptoms spread via site, sound or oral communication.
18:15
As we said, this does seem to be social in its nature, and
18:18
then it also moves down the age scale. Yeah, I thought that was
18:22
kind of interesting. So like it's like like it starts with older folks and
18:26
then like the new participants start getting younger and younger and younger. Okay,
18:30
got you, I see. Yeah, it's a reverse of what trends are
18:33
today. The trends actually starts with the older generation and then it is picked
18:37
up by the younger generation. This will be the equivalent of like TikTok being
18:41
started in a nursing home and then finding its way back to a preschool much
18:45
later. In the nursing home is being like, you guys are behind other
18:48
times, like so two thousand and late, Yeah, that's that's a totally
18:53
timely phrase as well. Hey we're almost like we're five years away from being
18:59
able to twenty twenty late. True. Oh that's horrible. Another thing that's
19:03
kind of unique about this is that there's a high rate of female participants.
19:07
And I put an asterisk nest this because I think it's important to kind of
19:08
unpack this. The term hysteria obviously a problematic if you are not familiar with
19:14
the history of the term hysteria and what that meant, and a lot of
19:17
times what would happen is any sort of like anything that was outside of a
19:19
social norm or social expectation that benefited men. Like women in the society would
19:23
end up getting blamed for or being diagnosed or sent off to some psychiatric ward
19:27
or told that they were demons or whatever. Right like, women have had
19:30
it very difficult for many, many, many, many, many many years.
19:33
And part of it is because the term hysteria is really all about it
19:37
was coined for women who were not acting according to social norms, so which
19:41
is why we're looking at MPIs and not mass hysteria at a time. So
19:45
anyway, there were a lot of female participants in this in these events,
19:48
partly because of you know, social standards. Oh you're having a period,
19:52
Okay, you must be hysterical. Sure. Some other common symptoms of these
19:59
phenomenon also include headaches, nausea, cramps, coughing, fatigue, sore throat,
20:03
chest tightness, vomiting, anxiety, diarrhea, rashes, itches, and
20:07
loss of consciousness. Ask your doctor if ozempia is right for you. Yeah,
20:14
there are all these other things that would come up, and it's kind
20:17
of like it was just a wild experience, but there's general consensus that stress
20:19
and anxiety play a key role in triggering these types of events. And we'll
20:23
see as we go through some other events that are like this, these these
20:27
mass psychogenic illnesses, you're gonna find kind of a common thing, which is
20:32
there's some stress, there's something going on, and then it just kind of
20:34
like catches like wildfire across like social behavior. Indeed, throughout history. We
20:41
started with this fifteen eighteen one. That seems, as far as I can
20:42
tell, as the sort of first example at least that someone wrote this down
20:47
and decided to talk about it as possible had happened before and we just have
20:49
no record of it. Sure they were really good at getting away with things
20:53
and leaving no trace back in the day. But there have been more events
20:57
than just that fifteen eighteen one. There have been multiple that have been attributed
21:02
to stress and anxiety, though this analysis has been retroactively conducted, and so
21:06
we don't actually know, like that's like we're trying to reflect on it and
21:10
determine what could have been the cause. Then it lacks information due to the
21:14
sort of record keeping practices at the periods during which analysis would have taken place.
21:18
But there are some more examples of this, and we've already mentioned the
21:22
first one here, which is a Salem Which trials, or just which trials
21:26
in general, because Salem was kind of on the tail end of some of
21:29
the which trial stuff. The Which trials were really bad. So there's also
21:33
the Irish Fright, which I hadn't heard about. And there's also the Hammersmith
21:37
ghost hysteria from eighteen o three, And basically what this was was that people
21:41
began seeing a ghost and were reported to have been assaulted by it, and
21:44
many people began arming themselves with guns. Specifically, Thomas Millwood was a bricklayer
21:49
and he was shot and killed during the event after being mistaken as a ghost.
21:53
So like these can be very dangerous. Do you think he was an
21:56
ancestor of Mike Pence. It's very possible. That's why they thought years ago
22:02
this is so pale and so weird. That really sounds like, you know
22:08
that there's a parallel between that and today's UAP sightings that's been dominating the news
22:14
cycle lately, so very similar. Spring Heeled Jack sightings eighteen thirty seven to
22:19
nineteen o four and the Halifax slasher are also examples of this. There's also
22:25
the War of the World's radio broadcast. If you're not familiar with that.
22:27
They aired H. Wells as HD Wells. I think it's HG. Wells,
22:33
but apparently I heard it as skeptical sort of takedown of that, and
22:37
they were like, honestly, there's only a few people that would have been
22:38
listening at the time that it was aired, and like, yes, some
22:41
people did get really upset by it, and I thought it was real,
22:44
but like how widespread it was seems like it was blown way out of proportion,
22:47
Like the news about it was way bigger than the sure actual panic about
22:51
it. Yeah. Well, and so like that's why I thought was interesting.
22:53
It was like it was listed as like one of these mass hysteria events,
22:57
so I was like, okay, all right. There's also the Ghost
23:00
Rockets of nineteen forty six, which sounds awesome. Yeah, I love that
23:04
name. Yeah, I want a ghost rocket. I think maybe I don't
23:07
maybe, Yeah, it might be fun. There's the do my best with
23:11
this word Tanganika laughter epidemic of nineteen sixty two that sounds scary. Yeah.
23:18
There's also the Satanic Panic of the eighties, like everybody was like real freaked
23:21
out about that, and and like that's why D and D got banned from
23:23
so many places. Right, Finally we get our last major connection here is
23:29
the Pokemon Panic of nineteen ninety seven. Yeah, this was not Pokemon Go,
23:33
although that might qualify. That might qualify, that might qualify. So
23:37
the Pokemon Panic, there's an episode of the Pokemon Show where it had to
23:41
do a Poorregon. If you're not familiar with Poregon, Porrigons, the computer
23:45
Pomon and all that. Okay, so anyway, the whole thing is like
23:48
it's very electronic based and computer based, and so they were like the strobing
23:52
lights in the show, and people all over Japan started having seizures. They
23:56
couldn't replicate it, but it started happening in like thousands and thousands of kids
24:00
had this experience, and so they ended up pulling the episode. You can't
24:04
like, you can't find it unless you like really dig for it. So
24:07
oh wow, yeah, it's kind of strange. And then some of you
24:11
may remember just a few short years ago the twenty sixteen clown sightings around the
24:15
United States that people just randomly dressed as clowns walking down the street for no
24:19
apparent reason. What was the thing that happened. Yeah, it was like
24:22
that was happening a lot. It was. Yeah, it was like a
24:25
whole thing, like clowns would just walk out of the woods. Yeah.
24:27
I feel like if I were younger, like our friends would have been those
24:30
friends that would have liked totally perpetuated it, Like it would have been a
24:33
problem where we would have absolutely done that. Sure, But also I think
24:37
people were just getting like shot less back when we were kids in terms of
24:41
like just like random like stand your ground, castle law shootings. I feel
24:45
like that was happening less when we were younger, So like, I don't
24:48
know, I feel like maybe we probably would get away with it differently.
24:52
That would have been a much more on brand for twenty twenty type of thing.
24:56
Yeah, actually know a tent twenty retrospect. It might be kind of
25:00
a fun discussion. The Year from Hell, the Year of the World Went
25:03
inside. Yeah, yeah, that was because I remember that was like murder
25:10
hornets and yes, yes, protests and those all kinds of stuff happening.
25:17
Yeah here, Yeah, North Korea was testing nuclear weapons or something like something
25:21
like so many things. It was real bad. Fire tornadoes, they're fire
25:25
tornados. On the West coast. Yeah, yeah, oh what a bad
25:27
time. Yeah, a retrospective of the horror that was twenty twenty got so
25:33
bad at some point it was almost funny but like sad. Yeah yeah.
25:37
Yeah. It was like it was like what next, I can't even pop.
25:40
It was like it was like everything from Cabin in the Woods got out
25:44
right. Yeah. Yeah, that scene when the like elevator dings and like
25:49
all of the horrors just explode, Yeah, out of the elevators. That's
25:52
that's what it was. January first, ding sixteenth or whatever. Yeah,
25:59
it's so bad. What a bad time. I don't like that. Yeah.
26:03
Well, we got way off track, so we should probably let the
26:04
ads take over for a second so we can get back on track. Now,
26:17
we've been talking about these dancing plagues and some examples of sort of mass
26:21
hysteria if you will, or mass psychogenic illness is the more appropriate term to
26:26
classify these. I guess let's talk about sort of from a behavioral science more
26:30
perspective. Let's dig in the science of psychology here and what that might have
26:34
to say about this. Yeah. So when I was trying to do some
26:37
research on this, there wasn't a lot of new research on it, but
26:41
there were several studies focused on MPIs and vaccines. I thought that was kind
26:47
of interesting. Interesting, Yeah, yeah, interesting. Not surprised they're try
26:52
and find a link. Yeah yeah, I mean, you know, everybody's
26:56
got their things. So the first article I want to talk about is from
26:57
Bartholomew and Perez from twenty eighteen, and they basically reported that in Cuba there
27:03
were at least twenty four people reporting to hear a loud, high pitched sound,
27:07
which resulted in other symptoms like headaches, memory loss, fatigue, difficulty
27:11
concentrating, hearing loss, and nosebleeds. Wow, they were able to go
27:14
in and they were able to rule out weapons due to the nature of like
27:18
acoustical equipment that would be able to do that. Like they were basically saying,
27:21
like where these people were, they couldn't just do like a sound based
27:23
or like acoustic based weapon, Yeah, to like you know, like disorienting
27:27
thing, Like it wouldn't have worked the way that they were saying because especially
27:30
because like people were so targeted and it was believed this event might have been
27:33
an MPI, but they needed more information. They were saying, basically they
27:37
could not find any sort of like environmental source for why this was happening,
27:41
But they were able to document that this thing did happen, and they were
27:45
a consistent kind of report around the symptoms and this like kind of like this
27:48
triggering event, right. A study from Troube and colleagues in twenty nineteen,
27:55
this was related to hair loss post finisteride syndrome or PFS A lot easier to
28:00
say, but it's discussed as a potential delusional disorder. Basically, once treatment
28:04
related to hair losses to discontinue, a series of symptoms that have no related
28:10
medical origin begin to emerge. And so that's sort of another thing that was
28:15
observed here. Yeah, Basically they were saying that like for like men who
28:18
experienced like genetic male pattern paulness and all stuff, they would go get treatment
28:22
for hair loss. But then what would happen is once those treatments stopped,
28:26
all of a sudden, they started expressing these symptoms that had nothing to do
28:29
with their treatment and had been ruled out in clinical trials. So basically they
28:33
were saying, like, what these guys were experiencing after they ceased treatment was
28:37
just a very unique kind of experience. They basically were saying like this,
28:40
PFS, the syndrome might not even be a real thing. Do you think
28:42
that they were micro dosing them with like mushrooms and then when they took them
28:48
off they had withdrawals? Yeah, it's very possible that that'd be a fun
28:52
trip, like where you're just like you just think that your hair is growing.
28:55
Yeah, now I think that there's one in here. I really like
28:59
this. This seems to me to be one of the most parsimonious explanations that
29:03
we can give in sort of thinking of Acam's razor here and what's going on
29:07
with these dancing plagues or these mass psychogetic illnesses, and a lot of what
29:11
is definitely happening is there's some amount of modeled behavior, meaning someone is doing
29:17
something that is sort of seen as a demonstration that could be followed. And
29:21
then observational learning, which is people seeing like other people joining they join in
29:26
and they practice what they're sort of mirror what they see in a way.
29:30
So an argument could be made that a feature of these plagues could involve these
29:34
components that we see people definitely use and other things we see people use observational
29:40
learning. They see something and then they sort of replicate it themselves. And
29:44
this is actually something that other animals do, but not to the extent that
29:48
humans do like we do a lot as there's actually we kind of lean on
29:52
the fact that humans do this well as a part of our training. When
29:56
a lot of times people are training new people for a job, they'll just
29:59
show them how to do and then expect them to be able to replicate it,
30:02
right, And that's not completely unique to humans, but it is something
30:04
humans do a lot and very well relative to other non human animals. And
30:07
then the other thing I mentioned is this observing model of behavior among other members
30:12
of the community. And so a sequence would be something simple like I see
30:17
someone dancing and they get some there's something going on here. They seem to
30:21
be having fun. They might be getting attention that it feels good. There's
30:25
cheering and laughter, and then the person's sort of like I feel compelled to
30:30
move and they join in. They engage in similar behavior. Is they get
30:33
similar rewards, they feel like they're a part of something, maybe there's some
30:37
sense of unity community. They sort of get into a cycle of like the
30:42
exercise maybe even feels kind of good, but it's not super impact and it's
30:47
low stakes, and so you get like endorphins happening, and it's sort of
30:51
you know, there's this the cycle of like stuff feels good until it doesn't.
30:56
That right, So it makes sense because if I join in, I
30:57
get those similar rewards. But I think there's another part of this too,
31:00
where you know, like I can watch this, but then also accounting for
31:04
the fifteen eighteen plagues, were like it's very possible that everybody was dripping on
31:07
acid like on LSD, And you think about that, then it makes sense
31:11
that like, not only am I seeing this happen, but I am also
31:14
seeing this under the influence, So I'm inebriated, so I have less inhibitions,
31:18
so I'm more likely to engage in behavior than I normally wouldn't. That
31:22
doesn't explain the length of period for like why people have engaged for so long,
31:26
or like why people would go weeks and weeks while of doing this,
31:30
but it does explain at least how people how easy it would be for somebody
31:33
to join in and participate in an event like this. I've heard people talk
31:37
about like when they've played Tetris for hours and hours and they just like are
31:41
constantly then imagining blocks falling and they like how they would twist and have them
31:45
fit into a thing. And I've had that experience, you know, when
31:48
you've played video games a lot, or you've done anything where you've been super
31:52
focused on one activity for a really long time, and then even when you
31:56
move away from that, your mind is still kind of like in that mode,
31:59
if you will, right, And I imagine that there's some of that
32:01
going on here. And I think if you really just think about this as
32:04
the more you do something, the more you are doing that thing, that
32:07
sort of carries metaphorically momentum, right, and you can sort of you have
32:13
this mass behind it of like the more you've done it, the more established
32:16
it becomes in your behavior and your muscles and your repertoire and the environment around
32:22
you that has now has all of the stimula that had no effect to whatsoever
32:25
that are now a que that is associated with that behavior. And so now
32:30
you're in this environment that sort of constant is signaling do this, and there's
32:34
really no queue that says don't do this at any point, right. And
32:37
I think that that doesn't necessarily explain it completely, but I think it can
32:40
account for a lot of it getting started and at least maintaining it to some
32:44
degree. Yeah, I think it makes sense. I think another thing too,
32:46
is this idea of pro social behavior or social norms for example, this
32:51
topic is kind of diving into it. It made me think about kind of
32:53
what pro social behavior is. And for anybody who doesn't know what pro social
32:58
behavior is, it's any sort of sponsor behavior that is designed to benefit others
33:02
or the community as a whole. Right, So like, I engage in
33:05
behavior because it will serve the tribe essentially. So here we could ask the
33:09
question, is it possible that the behavior of dancing wildly with a group of
33:13
people could have been a benefit if you're talking about mass stress, you're talking
33:16
about hey, like I get a little bit of like a release, a
33:19
little bit of an outlet, some kind of fun. So like, it
33:22
makes it like it could possibly it provides like use stress for people in this
33:27
space that are experiencing all of this distress kind of an ongoing basis. I
33:30
don't know, it's possible that that's probably a little bit of a stretch.
33:34
But if the behavior persists over time and it becomes kind of a fairly like
33:38
normal behavior in a repertoire or a consistent repertoire in the community. Then what's
33:44
the difference between this and I guess other communities were dancing a central practice,
33:47
right, it's like really kind of like a regular, ongoing thing and this
33:51
is maybe like a one off thing that's kind of abnormal. But maybe they're
33:54
dancing in different places or different context. Maybe because it was out of context,
33:58
people were really worried about it. There's a lot to kind of unpack
34:00
within it, especially because we just don't know enough about these events. Maybe
34:04
people just need to dance. That's it, let's dance, right, According
34:07
to David Bowie, that's right. See it all comes back. It's a
34:10
full circle. We did it all right. A few more interesting tidbits here.
34:15
These outbreaks are often referred to as the quote unquote forgotten plagues because they
34:21
were so low impact compared to other major events. There was no known cause.
34:25
They were kind of a fleeting, weird flash in the pan that usually
34:29
didn't include a ton of people, although they did get some of them got
34:31
fairly large, and so these were kind of written off as psychological reactions to
34:37
stress more than anything. But yeah, it's just the thing to consider there.
34:40
Yeah, Another thing I thought was really interesting is many times what would
34:44
happen is like when somebody would get involved at a dancing plague, what people
34:47
would do, what authorities would do is they would quarantine those folks that were
34:51
suffering, or they would be like they would get isolated. But in some
34:53
other places, what they would do is they would just play music to match
34:57
the rhythm of the dancers and then just try to slow the tempo down so
35:00
they would dancing more slowly. And what ended up happening was one people just
35:06
kept dancing regardless of how slow the music was, and too playing the music
35:08
actually brought more people into the dancing, so it ended up backfire and causing
35:15
a lot more problems. That's kind of funny. I think that's pretty great.
35:20
Where it's like, you know what we're gonna do. You know,
35:21
we're gonna treat this, We're gonna get a band together, and they do
35:23
that, and they're like and they slow it down, like Nope, everybody
35:27
wants to dance until midnight or two am. It's like, I guess it's
35:29
like kind of like being on a cruise ship. Yeah, yeah, I
35:30
mean the logic wasn't terrible on it, but that's funny that how poorly it
35:36
ended up working out. I guess arguably at that time that was probably the
35:38
smartest thing that anybody ever did. Actually, Yeah, a really good point.
35:43
Absolutely, that's the most logical thing as opposed to them go you know
35:45
where they're dancing it's the frogs and you're like, what, like, how
35:49
do we be here? All right? I think that's what you have to
35:51
say on dancing plays. Do you have anything before we move on to our
35:53
recommendations? No, I mean, I just it's a really bizarre thing that
35:58
has happened in human history, and like the this like mass psychogenic illness thing
36:01
is pretty unique and interesting and there's still really no answers for it. So
36:06
I think that's kind of the thing that we landed on, was like,
36:07
how could this have happened? We don't really know because nobody knows anything about
36:10
this particular phenomenon. Yeah, I agree, Yeah, I think if I
36:14
had any major tacom point is that, as you said, we're not clear
36:16
on exactly what happened here. I think there's some things that we can turn
36:20
to that are at least relatively low hanging epistemological fruit if you will, some
36:25
ontological explanations that make more I think, parsimonious sense than those that were offered
36:30
up definitely at the time and even possibly since then, although I like argetism
36:36
as a possible contributing variable to that. But yeah, we'll get to some
36:40
recommendations, but we'll do the credits first to make sure that you stick around,
36:44
because the recommendations are kind of the fun part. And then I don't
36:46
want people to just skip this. But it's important to acknowledge that we could
36:50
not do this without the support of the people who have joined us on Patreon.
36:52
They joined us because they like us and they're sweet, amazing, generous
36:55
humans. And you can be one of those people too. And you do
37:00
that, you get access to bonus stuff in the back end, such as
37:02
early access to episodes, add free episodes, behind the scenes content and that
37:07
sort of thing. If you If you don't want to do that, you
37:08
can support us one time by making a purchase of something at our web store,
37:12
which includes things like T shirts and mugs and hats and beanies and water
37:15
bottles and all kinds of stuff that just looks cool, you know. Yeah,
37:19
and maybe for like one of the holidays that we've mentioned, you could
37:22
get that as a celebration. There will be more holidays, I promise you
37:25
have several. At least I've yet to see a day that does not have
37:29
any holidays listed, so I think we're full up on holidays and gifts are
37:34
just from our web. Sorce specifically are a great way to do that.
37:37
As I said, leave us a rating review. Can reach out to us
37:38
if you'd like to tell us about dancing plague, some dancing plague that you've
37:42
been a part of or will like to be a part of, or correct
37:45
us anything that we've said, you should definitely reach out to us. You
37:46
can email us directly info at WWDWWD podcast dot com. You may have noticed
37:52
that we've been getting more active on social media, so definitely reach out to
37:54
us there. Yes, I wanted to mention at the top of this discussion
37:58
and forgot that we have registered for the Podcast Awards, so I think it
38:02
starts in July. You can go to Podcast Awards dot com. You should
38:06
be able to find us there and vote on us. Once I have more
38:08
information, I'll communicate that in one of our episodes. For nominating us that
38:14
does not open until July first of twenty twenty three, so you can go
38:16
on and nominate us for an award, and if you do that, we'll
38:20
super appreciate it. So consider maybe those people who have already joined us on
38:23
Patreon. I forgot to mention I need to say, I need to tell
38:25
you who they are because they're so wonderful. We have Mike, m Meghan,
38:29
Layla, Mike T, Justin, Kim, Joshua, The Daily BA,
38:32
Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, and Brian. Thank you all so much
38:37
for your continued support. As always, writing and fact checking are done by
38:42
Me, Shane and Jess. Special thanks to Shane for putting together today's discussion,
38:47
and of course thank you to Justin for music and production and all the
38:52
editing that he does so great. And I think there's everything before we give
38:55
us some recommendations. Yeah, I think it covers it perfect recommendations. So
39:08
I went and saw a movie that is just incredible and that is Spider Man
39:14
Across the Spider Verse. Looks good. Did you see it into the Spider
39:16
Verse? I did. I loved it. I was very impressed. I've
39:21
been very excited to see this new one. So I'm looking forward to it.
39:24
It's incredible. I mean, like, when you pay attention to the
39:27
little details in it, it is so so amazing what they were able to
39:30
accomplish. They were able to bring in like over a thousand artists to do
39:34
different art styles throughout the entire movie. Wow, there's some really cool Easter
39:37
eggs. There's some really fun things. Sure, the voice cast is great,
39:42
and it just makes you want to be Miles Morels and like, and
39:45
he's such a great spider man. Like he is so different than Peter Parker,
39:50
but he's so endearing and you you just can't help but love him as
39:53
a character. So sure, anyway, it's really really good and I definitely
39:57
recommend everybody going to see it in the theater. It's long, so make
40:00
sure you use the bathroom before you watch it. Fair enough, that's awesome.
40:04
Love that. Yeah, Yeah, I thought the first one's fantastic.
40:06
This one looked really good. I'm really excited to see it. So it's
40:09
so fun. In a similar vein kind of in terms of media that we're
40:13
pushing, I'm gonna recommend ted Lasso season three. Have you watched any of
40:17
the ted Lasso show. I've never watched it, but I've heard it's really
40:21
great. Oh my god, I love it so much. And I think
40:24
it's really the fact that it's about soccer or football for the rest of the
40:29
world is kind of incidental to the story. I mean, it is like
40:32
the setting of a lot of the story, and there are some really fun
40:36
scenes of like games taking place. When they're choreographed, they're fun to watch.
40:39
Yeah, but it's really in my minds when I see this, it's
40:43
really about human beings, opportunities for human beings at their best to like sort
40:49
of be the best of humanity. Yeah, just showing really wonderful arcs,
40:53
showing each other kindness and compassion and redemption and forgiveness and just such a well
41:00
written show. And it's funny and it's engaging. And season three in particular,
41:06
it was definitely my favorite season. I think sadly it's going to be
41:09
the last season. I think they're definishing it after this. Yeah, the
41:13
streams on Apple TV Plus, so however you get access to that. That's
41:16
the only way I think that it's viewable. But I just really really love
41:21
the show and could not recommend it highly enough, and particularly season three was
41:23
just phenomenal, just so well done. Yeah, I heard it was really
41:28
good. I heard a lot of people crying about it. Yeah. I
41:30
can imagine. There's a lot of sort of tiriad moments in there, and
41:32
they ended it really really well. I mean, just so many kudos and
41:37
hats off to the writers and the directors of that show. They did an
41:39
incredible job. I love that. All right, Well, thank you so
41:42
much everyone for listening about Dancy and plagues. As I said, reach out
41:45
to us, but I think for now that is all we have. Anything
41:46
of them forgetting or anything you'd like to add before we say goodbye. Goolist
41:49
to David Bowie, fair enough on that this is a brand. It's a
41:54
shame we're out see it. You've been listening to Why We do what We
42:00
You can learn more about this and other episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast dot
42:06
com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.