Latest / Ridiculous History / Weird Epidemics, Part One: From Sweating to Pokemon

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Weird Epidemics, Part One: From Sweating to Pokemon · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
0:27
Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
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Speaker 1: the Man, the Myth, the legend, mister Max Williams, who
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Speaker 1: uh yournl, I'm ben yeah and uh we are finally
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Speaker 1: recording in the same city again. I want to say yes,
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Speaker 1: it feels good, it feels and hopefully peek behind the curtain, folks.
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Speaker 1: Hopefully we three will be recording in person sooner rather
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Speaker 1: than later, as the as the iHeart Podcast office nearest completion.
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Speaker 1: Very excited about that. Been a long time coming. We've
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Speaker 1: obviously gotten the hang of this whole remote thing the
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Speaker 1: new way, but there's something kind of charming and quaint
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Speaker 1: about being in the same room look at each other
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Speaker 1: in the I R L eyeballs instead of gazing into
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Speaker 1: a screen and a smell Oh yeah yeah, boys down together,
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Speaker 1: yeah yeah. It gradually builds along with the temperature. The
1:38
Speaker 1: last time we recorded in person together was in the
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Speaker 1: old I Heart office in the Legendary Stuff you should
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Speaker 1: know studio, and the Legendary Stuff you should Know Studio
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Speaker 1: is legendarily small and legendarily not ventilated. I think we
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Speaker 1: could say, right, it gives you a bit of a
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Speaker 1: bit of the sweats sometimes, but we do enjoy the energy,
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Speaker 1: and there's there's sort of this epidemic good vibe that
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Speaker 1: occurs when when we're in person and we all three
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Speaker 1: are actually friends outside of the show. This is not
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Speaker 1: an act. So we do love to hang out together.
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Speaker 1: We can't wait to record in person and maybe one
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Speaker 1: day we can get this show on the road and uh,
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Speaker 1: you know, get it out on its feet in front
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Speaker 1: of an audience. What do you think. No, I'm into
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Speaker 1: But for now we can like figuratively get this show
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Speaker 1: on the road and talk about not just epidemics of
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Speaker 1: good vibes, but epidemics of like, you know, diseases, bad vibes. Really, yeah,
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Speaker 1: just so, there are a lot of epidemics throughout the
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Speaker 1: span of human history, and some of these remain largely
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Speaker 1: unexplained in the modern day. Fellow ridiculous historians, you'll recall
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Speaker 1: that not too long ago we talk to about the
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Speaker 1: dancing plague. I think we had an APPA parody that
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Speaker 1: came up and with scream I don't remember the twist
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Speaker 1: and scream Yeah, and this this, this episode today was
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Speaker 1: originally going to be some kind of bonus plagues if
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Speaker 1: you will, tacked onto the end of that episode, but
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Speaker 1: we realized that we had more than enough with the
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Speaker 1: dancing plague alone to fill out an episode, so we
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Speaker 1: figured we'd uh stick these to the side and add
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Speaker 1: a little bit to them. And now here we are
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Speaker 1: with just some strange and ridiculous plagues throughout history. Yeah. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: So let's start with one that's close to our top
3:41
Speaker 1: of the show conversation. Let's talk about sweating sickness and
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Speaker 1: Cardi sweat star Trek related right, Fortunately, my friend does
3:52
Speaker 1: not have anything to do with the lu picard. I know,
3:56
Speaker 1: research the wrong thing again, same same, I was halfway
4:00
Speaker 1: through what I figured it out, and I texted Patrick
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Speaker 1: Stewart and you know, he mainly texts back in emoji. Um,
4:09
Speaker 1: but he seemed amused as well. A little little bald
4:12
Speaker 1: person emoji, I assume. Yeah, yeah, what do you call it? Bitmoji?
4:15
Speaker 1: He just discovered bitmoji. He loves them like everybody else's parents. Yeah,
4:19
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, but here, like the silver lining
4:22
Speaker 1: here is I'm almost entirely through the entirety of the
4:25
Speaker 1: Star Trek canon, so soon I'll be able to actually
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Speaker 1: carry a conversation with Max Williams. And then I'll just
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Speaker 1: change it to sports. Oh that I can't. That canon
4:36
Speaker 1: is a bit too tall in order for me. I
4:38
Speaker 1: don't think I can get through the cannon of all sports. Oh,
4:40
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, I can't remember if I sent
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Speaker 1: us to both of you. Guys. Definitely sent you Max.
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Speaker 1: Curling is an epidemic in Japan now, Oh they love it.
4:50
Speaker 1: They love It's all over the place. Um, Curling's huge
4:55
Speaker 1: in Korea also, And I think everyone agree, and hopefully
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Speaker 1: you can agree after hearing this, folks, you should prefer
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Speaker 1: an epidemic of curling to an epidemic of sweating sickness?
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Speaker 1: What is sweating sickness? Like? I can't believe we didn't
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Speaker 1: talk about this with the dancing plague. Is it still
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Speaker 1: kind of inexplicable or is it just a European thing?
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Speaker 1: What do we know about? Boy? Is it much like Abba?
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Speaker 1: Although Abba, you know, made its way across the universe,
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Speaker 1: really took it by storm. I mean they've got like
5:29
Speaker 1: a Broadway play and everything. This plague did not get
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Speaker 1: a Broadway musical, unfortunately, or or fortunately it might have
5:36
Speaker 1: been a bit of a bummer, but this plague was
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Speaker 1: very specific to England. It was also known as the
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Speaker 1: English sweat or English sweating sickness, and it is an
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Speaker 1: epidemic of unknown origin that popped up in England five
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Speaker 1: different times, and aside from the second of the times,
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Speaker 1: which was relatively mild, the other four were incredibly severe.
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Speaker 1: A lot of people lost their lives. It began with
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Speaker 1: things like headaches and what is being reported in Britannica
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Speaker 1: as giddiness, which I love, but also not a good
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Speaker 1: kind of giddiness. I'm imagining this is some sort of
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Speaker 1: like nervous energy and kind of almost madness, kind of
6:27
Speaker 1: vertigo too, yeah, yeah, and uh and again. And some
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Speaker 1: of the sources that Britannica is citing severe prostration, which
6:37
Speaker 1: would we talked about that recently as well. Prostration being
6:40
Speaker 1: when you kind of lay on the ground in almost
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Speaker 1: a fetal position. M yeah. Prostration is lying stretched out
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Speaker 1: on the ground, specifically with your face facing down, so
6:55
Speaker 1: it's it's not the most advantageous position, which also kind
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Speaker 1: of forces the idea of vertigo here and astute listeners,
7:04
Speaker 1: you may remember that we explored this not too too
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Speaker 1: long ago in an episode on Henry the eighth and
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Speaker 1: that English sweat. I remember being in love with that title.
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Speaker 1: But uh, but this was this is not the same, right,
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Speaker 1: This is this the same English sweat that Henry the eighth.
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Speaker 1: This is the very this is the very same we
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Speaker 1: focused on. We focused on our boy, Henry eighth. But um,
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Speaker 1: but this was obviously affecting other people. The strange thing
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Speaker 1: is that this remains a mystery. We know about the symptoms,
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Speaker 1: and this was not a fun epidemic. It was a
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Speaker 1: fatal one. And when people got the first symptoms, then
7:47
Speaker 1: they typically if they were going to die, they would
7:50
Speaker 1: die in a window of three to eighteen hours, which
7:54
Speaker 1: is a crazy short time. You know. Yeah, that's right,
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Speaker 1: And it's interesting too the whole prostration element. Um. You know,
8:01
Speaker 1: prostration is also something often associated with religious ritual, you know,
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Speaker 1: to prostrate yourself before God. It's also something that you
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Speaker 1: see often in Islam with calls to prayer, you know,
8:13
Speaker 1: on your prayer rug and all of that. Yeah, oh God,
8:18
Speaker 1: a million percent. So it makes sense that a lot
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Speaker 1: of these epidemics were associated with some sort of curse
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Speaker 1: or you know, a vengeful God, you know, the idea
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Speaker 1: that folks were being forced into these positions, almost like
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Speaker 1: a Sodom and Gomorrah type attack. You would occasionally, in
8:37
Speaker 1: addition to those other symptoms that we talked about, get
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Speaker 1: a pretty nasty rash and um if you if you
8:44
Speaker 1: did get it, it was not something that you could
8:48
Speaker 1: then be immune to, which is the folks now it's awful.
8:52
Speaker 1: And that was kind of, you know, similar to COVID,
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Speaker 1: where some people, it seemed, were immune after getting it.
8:59
Speaker 1: But then we all of a sudden, when we didn't
9:01
Speaker 1: know what the deal was with COVID, we realized that
9:03
Speaker 1: people were getting it multiple times. So this seems to
9:06
Speaker 1: be kind of similar, although some people were more resilient
9:08
Speaker 1: than others. But you gotta wonder too, without any real
9:12
Speaker 1: scientific research at the time available, if this maybe resulted
9:16
Speaker 1: from a mutation. Yeah, and this again, this is an
9:21
Speaker 1: incredibly frightening time for people. We still don't know how
9:26
Speaker 1: it was transmitted necessarily. There are some theories, but this
9:31
Speaker 1: seemed to target young men and often target the wealthy
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Speaker 1: and the powerful, which you can only imagine kind of
9:39
Speaker 1: added to the idea of it being a divine punishment.
9:44
Speaker 1: It's strange because the sweating sickness epidemic when it came
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Speaker 1: in these different waves, it was also particularly short lived.
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Speaker 1: It would just occur for a few weeks in places
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Speaker 1: and move on. Also, I had some nicknames that we
10:01
Speaker 1: would love to share for with you, to the point
10:04
Speaker 1: about frustration. It was sometimes called the stoop gallant or
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Speaker 1: gallant and the stoop nave like you scamp like that one,
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Speaker 1: and much like a curse or you know, biblical type punishment,
10:24
Speaker 1: might you know be presumed to behave? It vanished and
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Speaker 1: then came back. By fifteen seventy eight, it was gone
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Speaker 1: almost entirely, with no evidence left behind of what might
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Speaker 1: have been its cause. And then over a hundred years later,
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Speaker 1: we're in France now in the Jean Luke Piccardi region
10:48
Speaker 1: of France. It's called just a Piccarti region, but presumably
10:53
Speaker 1: that is where Jean Luke gets his namesake, you know,
10:56
Speaker 1: perhaps that was his family seat. I don't know, Max,
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Speaker 1: can you speak to the yeah, the origin story of
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Speaker 1: the Picard family. I don't know. Ben, where is Chateau Picard?
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Speaker 1: Do you know? If you have to ask, you're probably
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Speaker 1: not invited, Yeah, Piccardi. As we're calling it in honor
11:15
Speaker 1: of our pal or. Picardy is a region in France.
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Speaker 1: It's Gonnaly, so think of to the north of the country.
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Speaker 1: It's it used to be its own administrative region or
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Speaker 1: historical territory, and now it's part of a new region
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Speaker 1: quite recently since twenty sixteen. Histories closer than it looks
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Speaker 1: in the rear view mirror. If you go there now,
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Speaker 1: you might sweat, depending on the weather and your activities,
11:43
Speaker 1: but you're hopefully not going to get the sweating sickness.
11:47
Speaker 1: And I can't believe we got this far without mentioning
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Speaker 1: just how much people were sweating. I wish the English
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Speaker 1: is so weird. I wish we could say they sweat. Yes,
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Speaker 1: that's not unfortunately, No, that's a yeah. I liked that
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Speaker 1: a lot. Uh sweated, Yes they they they sweated, for sure.
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Speaker 1: We have a guy by the name of Henry Tidy,
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Speaker 1: which is a great name for a medical expert. At
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Speaker 1: the time, he was fairly certain that this was that
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Speaker 1: same historical plague, the sweating sickness or suitor Anglicus. And
12:27
Speaker 1: then it was kind of, you know, re re rebranded
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Speaker 1: a little bit to the Piccardi sweat, and this time.
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Speaker 1: It stuck around well into what we might consider more
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Speaker 1: relatively modern history until the end of World War One,
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Speaker 1: with one particularly debilitating outbreak for the population, hitting around
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Speaker 1: six thousand people in nineteen oh six, and then once again,
12:54
Speaker 1: like that, it was gone like kaiser SoSE style. And
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Speaker 1: now we all have to wonder every time we sweat,
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Speaker 1: is this the beginning of a new English sweat? Uh?
13:07
Speaker 1: So far the answer is no. But make sure to
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Speaker 1: stay hydrated, folks, and if you if you feel that
13:14
Speaker 1: you are being overcome by severe prostration, please do call
13:18
Speaker 1: a medical expert. Post taste, no doubt. How long was
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Speaker 1: that between these outbreaks in these two different regions. Hundred
13:26
Speaker 1: years years? All right, So we're not quite due for
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Speaker 1: one yet. No, we are. We are so due. We're
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Speaker 1: passing right now. Yeah, I think we are so fingers crossed.
13:39
Speaker 1: And like you said, Ben, stay hydrated, stay frosty. So
13:43
Speaker 1: now let's travel to a different part of the world.
13:48
Speaker 1: Perhaps what is this I'm just I'm laughing because we're
13:53
Speaker 1: segueing to laughter epidemic. Oh that's right, yes, yeah, sorry,
13:56
Speaker 1: that was terrified. I love it. Yeah, that would maybe
13:59
Speaker 1: what would we can say the giddiness perhaps Um, I'm
14:02
Speaker 1: going to Tanzania and the year is nineteen sixty two.
14:12
Speaker 1: So laughter is already this very fascinating thing scientifically, right,
14:19
Speaker 1: laughter is a language all its own, and sometimes you
14:22
Speaker 1: can hear laughs and you know that what someone is
14:25
Speaker 1: trying to communicate is not necessarily just innocuous amusement. Right.
14:31
Speaker 1: There are evil laughs. There's sesame street laughs like the
14:35
Speaker 1: count uh and uh. Then there are laughs that sound
14:39
Speaker 1: like nervous laughter, right, almost like a park Yeah, yeah,
14:46
Speaker 1: and laughter right whoa, whoa you put that one back
14:51
Speaker 1: in your laugh sack a laugh sack or yeah, like
14:57
Speaker 1: the clown laugh. Of course oh u. Laughter can be
15:01
Speaker 1: a signal of distress. Also, I'm very proud that no
15:04
Speaker 1: one has heard my real laugh on air because it
15:06
Speaker 1: sounds frightening. But laughter can. Fake laughs are pretty frightening too.
15:13
Speaker 1: Benefits fake laugh and fake laughs are pretty easy to detect,
15:16
Speaker 1: I would imagine for a lot of people. Right. So
15:19
Speaker 1: it can come from unfunny places. It can come from anger,
15:23
Speaker 1: unfortunate surprise, sadness. It can be yeah, malevolence, yeah, and
15:29
Speaker 1: it can come from an epidemic. The most famous example
15:32
Speaker 1: of this happened back when Tanzania was called Tanganyika in
15:37
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two. But the weird thing is, unlike the
15:42
Speaker 1: sweating sickness, laughter epidemics are still around in the modern day,
15:48
Speaker 1: and we kind of touch on this and stuff they
15:50
Speaker 1: don't want you to know. I think a little bit
15:51
Speaker 1: when we talk about, you know, outbreaks of mass psychogenic events.
15:56
Speaker 1: That's right, And we talked about that a good bit
15:58
Speaker 1: as well in our episode on the Dancing plague, where
16:03
Speaker 1: part of the phenomenon of some of these things might
16:06
Speaker 1: be that. Again, since we don't have, you know, tests
16:09
Speaker 1: or like any kind of necessarily scientific data to back
16:13
Speaker 1: these up, whether or not all of these cases were
16:16
Speaker 1: in fact infections, or whether it was just kind of
16:20
Speaker 1: this mass hallucination or kind of like mass group think
16:26
Speaker 1: kind of copycatting, you know, m yeah, right, and copycatting.
16:31
Speaker 1: That's an important point because we have to ask ourselves
16:34
Speaker 1: whether people are just communicating something social right versus something physiological,
16:41
Speaker 1: something psychological right. And this outbreak in nineteen sixty two,
16:46
Speaker 1: it occurs at an all girls school and then it
16:49
Speaker 1: spreads to these other communities. Current estimates say the laughter
16:55
Speaker 1: epidemic may have affected somewhere around a thousand people and
16:59
Speaker 1: it lasted for months. This wasn't like the sweating sickness
17:03
Speaker 1: that only lasted for several hours or would pop up
17:09
Speaker 1: and then disappear. And we want to shout out an
17:12
Speaker 1: excellent article by our friends at Atlas Obscura. The nineteen
17:16
Speaker 1: sixty two laughter epidemic of Tanganika was no joke. Get it.
17:22
Speaker 1: Shout out to Taotao Holmes. It did have a pattern though,
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Speaker 1: Like in most cases a mass psychogenic phenomenon, a single
17:31
Speaker 1: person would be the origin point, right, And this person
17:36
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two was a schoolgirl and they fell
17:40
Speaker 1: into what experts believe was a fit of anxiety induced laughter.
17:44
Speaker 1: And then the dominoes started to fall as well, and
17:47
Speaker 1: other girls started finding themselves laughing against their will, not
17:51
Speaker 1: in a fun way, uncontrollably. This reminds me a lot
17:55
Speaker 1: of another episode we did on Stuff that I wanted
17:57
Speaker 1: you to know about the screaming girls of Malaysia. Yeah,
18:00
Speaker 1: and I don't know that the video we had wasn't
18:04
Speaker 1: necessarily the exact instance that we talked about on the show,
18:08
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, But there is a video you
18:09
Speaker 1: can find that shows this phenomenon like in full effect.
18:14
Speaker 1: And it is chilling. Yeah, no one's having fun is
18:18
Speaker 1: not a pleasant experience. And these students who were who
18:22
Speaker 1: found themselves affected, weren't just suffering from one bout of
18:27
Speaker 1: uncontrollable laughter. It would come and it would go, which
18:32
Speaker 1: is one of the most annoying things about hiccups. If
18:34
Speaker 1: anybody has ever suffered from hiccups, at which point I
18:38
Speaker 1: want to stop and ask you, guys, have a good
18:41
Speaker 1: hiccup cure. Your old roommate Frank is probably the guy
18:48
Speaker 1: with the most consistent hiccup cure. But yeah, he's like
18:51
Speaker 1: a hiccup shirt or something. Yeah, he does this move
18:55
Speaker 1: that's very much a psychological trick where he kind of
18:58
Speaker 1: gets he puts his hand on the top of your
19:00
Speaker 1: head and asks you to foot and he sort of
19:02
Speaker 1: like asks you to almost like funnel your hiccup energy
19:05
Speaker 1: up through the top of your head and into his hand.
19:07
Speaker 1: And somehow, yeah, somehow the psychology of that does. I
19:10
Speaker 1: have seen it work. It's worked on me. I typically
19:13
Speaker 1: do the old hold your breath for about ten seconds
19:16
Speaker 1: and then swallow. And you know, a lot of these
19:19
Speaker 1: remedies are kind of placebo effects. You know, it's not
19:24
Speaker 1: but but you know, a lot of times the hiccups
19:26
Speaker 1: have to do with a spasm in your diaphragm, and
19:29
Speaker 1: if you are able to kind of like relax it
19:31
Speaker 1: by maybe doing this thing that I'm describing, it can
19:34
Speaker 1: make it go away. But it also doesn't work every time,
19:36
Speaker 1: And believing in the cure is almost more important than
19:40
Speaker 1: the cure itself. Yeah, and this happens with hiccups, of course,
19:45
Speaker 1: are not psychogenic, right, The hiccup is a spasm of
19:49
Speaker 1: the diaphragm. But in the case of the laughter epidemic
19:53
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty two, we saw that a lot of
19:57
Speaker 1: attempted cures didn't work because people didn't really understand what
20:02
Speaker 1: was happening. You would just fall into this bout of
20:05
Speaker 1: laughter that could last for a few hours, which is
20:07
Speaker 1: already a very long time to laugh, in my opinion,
20:10
Speaker 1: not sounding a stick in the mud. And you're laughing
20:14
Speaker 1: too long. You don't like funnies. It's forty five minutes,
20:19
Speaker 1: the fun is over. Will return to our regularly scheduled
20:24
Speaker 1: mirth tomorrow anyway. Yeah, they're laughing for sixteen days. Doesn't
20:29
Speaker 1: seem fun at that point, it does. It is kind
20:32
Speaker 1: of like an inescapable bout of hiccups, and people were
20:35
Speaker 1: running around too. They were very agitated. There was occasional violence,
20:40
Speaker 1: but no one could figure out what was causing it.
20:44
Speaker 1: And this is where we have to introduce Christian Hempelman
20:47
Speaker 1: of Texas A and M University, who's done some pretty
20:50
Speaker 1: solid work on this. That is correct. Hempelman researched the
20:56
Speaker 1: incident and described it as a case as we've already
21:00
Speaker 1: kind of established of mass psychogenic or also known as
21:04
Speaker 1: sociogenic illness, which oftentimes is linked to very high stress situations,
21:13
Speaker 1: you know, which certainly applies to schools, you know, where
21:16
Speaker 1: where the pressure is very high to succeed and to perform,
21:20
Speaker 1: especially at certain types of maybe you know, this is
21:22
Speaker 1: an all girls school, and oftentimes those are anytime there
21:27
Speaker 1: are gendered schools, those usually are kind of high performance,
21:32
Speaker 1: very academically rigorous settings, wouldn't you say them like boarding schools.
21:36
Speaker 1: And again there's a different country, so maybe all the
21:39
Speaker 1: schools are segregated in this way. But in my experience,
21:42
Speaker 1: you know, when you have an all girls school or
21:44
Speaker 1: all boys school, they're either some type of reform school
21:47
Speaker 1: or they are like really highly academically focused institutions. Yeah,
21:52
Speaker 1: and this is something that Hempelman recognizes, and he says, hey,
21:58
Speaker 1: there are some social factors that are coming into play
22:03
Speaker 1: that need to be acknowledged, need to be interrogated a
22:05
Speaker 1: bit more. And he also points to geopolitical events and
22:13
Speaker 1: he says, you know, this country is becoming newly independent,
22:17
Speaker 1: and this independence happens just a month before the laughing epidemic?
22:23
Speaker 1: Is there a relationship here? And we've got a great
22:26
Speaker 1: quote from Himpelman where he says, on the one hand,
22:29
Speaker 1: it sounded too good to be true, and on the
22:31
Speaker 1: other hand, people were citing it in support of all
22:34
Speaker 1: kinds of things across the spectrum and contradictory things. So
22:39
Speaker 1: this caused him to look back at the situation and
22:44
Speaker 1: ask a surprisingly deep question. He said, what does this
22:48
Speaker 1: situation tell us about humor? Right? And also he poses
22:52
Speaker 1: a question that we often see in reports of these
22:54
Speaker 1: type of events, did this actually happen? All? Of which
22:59
Speaker 1: I think is an interesting one because this is you know,
23:02
Speaker 1: this is in the sixties, so presumably the reporting would
23:06
Speaker 1: be pretty solid. So what do you think he means
23:09
Speaker 1: when he says did this actually happen? Because we've also
23:12
Speaker 1: seen you know, situations that are over you know, blown
23:17
Speaker 1: in the historical record, whether it be a battle or
23:21
Speaker 1: whether it be you know, some event like this for particular,
23:25
Speaker 1: maybe reasons associated with the political agenda. So do you
23:28
Speaker 1: think that's what he's getting at or what do you
23:29
Speaker 1: think he means when he said did this actually happen?
23:32
Speaker 1: I get the sense that he is question whether the
23:37
Speaker 1: story was embellished, right, I think? And I think that's
23:40
Speaker 1: a fair question to ask because nineteen sixties we've got
23:44
Speaker 1: mass media, but there can still be a lot of storytelling,
23:49
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Just like how when an
23:52
Speaker 1: historic event occurs, you know, it's just the next year
23:56
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy will be assassinated. And as the decade
24:00
Speaker 1: wound on since that assassination, more and more people started
24:04
Speaker 1: saying they were there, that they actually witnessed it, far
24:09
Speaker 1: more people than were actually there. So I think it's
24:11
Speaker 1: right to question how the extent of this And he's
24:16
Speaker 1: not being a jerk by asking that, but he was,
24:20
Speaker 1: you know, he confirmed and multiple people have confirmed that
24:23
Speaker 1: this laughing epidemic is real. It did occur, There is documentation.
24:27
Speaker 1: But Hempelmann gets kind of annoyed when people point to
24:32
Speaker 1: this as evidence of laughter being contagious. He has the
24:37
Speaker 1: sense that this incident tells us much more about other
24:40
Speaker 1: stuff and not a lot about humor, because he says,
24:44
Speaker 1: you know this, we have to look at this laughter
24:47
Speaker 1: as a nerve symptom, a nerve related symptom of psychogenic illness,
24:53
Speaker 1: and we have to think about it that way. It
24:56
Speaker 1: is kind of reductive to say, oh, this is when
25:00
Speaker 1: contagious laughter goes wrong, so be careful. You know, if
25:03
Speaker 1: something makes you laugh too long, it's interesting, isn't it.
25:07
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea we know, we know laughter can
25:10
Speaker 1: be you know, contagious, but there are a lot of
25:14
Speaker 1: psychological reasons why that might be the case. You know,
25:16
Speaker 1: nobody wants to seem like the person that didn't get
25:19
Speaker 1: the joke. You know. It's a group think kind of mentality,
25:22
Speaker 1: especially if you're staying a movie, you know, or watching
25:25
Speaker 1: a movie with friends. I can usually tell when I
25:28
Speaker 1: truly I mean, I think I know, and then all
25:30
Speaker 1: three of us know when we truly find something funny.
25:33
Speaker 1: But the mind is a very tricky beast, and usually
25:36
Speaker 1: I can tell if I truly believe something that's funny
25:38
Speaker 1: if I laugh at it. When I'm alone. I laugh
25:41
Speaker 1: and stuff by myself all the time. And apparently if
25:45
Speaker 1: you make yourself laugh, well you're just hanging out by yourself.
25:49
Speaker 1: Apparently that's weird, But I guess that's what we get
25:52
Speaker 1: for being only children. That's probably true. You even gonna say,
25:57
Speaker 1: I have a brother that's only a darn't half older
25:59
Speaker 1: than me. I laugh on myself all the time. So
26:01
Speaker 1: whoever told you that I I is a full bunk
26:04
Speaker 1: or we're all, you know, a little strange, or we're
26:07
Speaker 1: all on our slow boat toward our own laughing epidemic. Yeah.
26:14
Speaker 1: Implement points out that in these stressful situations, what happens
26:20
Speaker 1: is people find that they cannot extract themselves from an
26:25
Speaker 1: environment of constant stress of some sort. And he says
26:29
Speaker 1: that in this situation, when a person has no power
26:32
Speaker 1: over that stress, their mind as a difficult time coming
26:36
Speaker 1: up with an appropriate response. So, again to Himpeleman, you
26:41
Speaker 1: can identify certain demographics here, he says, quote, such a
26:45
Speaker 1: person is more commonly young than old, identifying female rather
26:49
Speaker 1: than male, and they tend to be employees rather than supervisors.
26:54
Speaker 1: And this has this feeling, this stress, this response has
26:59
Speaker 1: topress itself somehow, and laughter happens to be one of
27:04
Speaker 1: the ways that it could come out. At least that's
27:06
Speaker 1: what I'm getting from his exploration. What do you think?
27:10
Speaker 1: I agree? And I also think part of his annoyance
27:13
Speaker 1: with it is in that whole like headline kind of
27:16
Speaker 1: mentality that we see all the time. Laughing sickness just
27:19
Speaker 1: sounds cool and creepy. Done that. Yeah, it sounds like
27:23
Speaker 1: a story arc for the joker. And it's and it's
27:27
Speaker 1: you know history or you know journalists or whatever it
27:31
Speaker 1: might be, a story ends or journalist glomming onto the
27:34
Speaker 1: most relatable and understandable aspect of something that is ultimately
27:37
Speaker 1: much more complex than just that one thing. Oh no,
27:40
Speaker 1: are you saying people over simplify history. I think I
27:44
Speaker 1: am ben. I know that's a hot take. Oh yes,
27:48
Speaker 1: Reductive reductive reporting, it's a thing. We see it all
27:53
Speaker 1: the time, and again sometimes it is specifically toward an
27:56
Speaker 1: agenda of some kind, you know, to to create a
28:00
Speaker 1: sense of who the victor was or who the bad
28:02
Speaker 1: guys are the good guys. History is written by the winners,
28:06
Speaker 1: so check the authors on your textbook. We also know
28:11
Speaker 1: that mass psychogenic illness in multiple forms may be fairly common.
28:18
Speaker 1: It's just not often reported under that name, because there's
28:24
Speaker 1: this idea that you're you're attacking the validity of what's
28:28
Speaker 1: happening to people, and it really is happening to them,
28:30
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're not waking up and making the
28:34
Speaker 1: choice to laugh for hours and hours. There is a
28:38
Speaker 1: real issue there, and when we talk about, okay, when
28:44
Speaker 1: we talk about social aspects of epidemics, I think one
28:50
Speaker 1: example that would surprise a lot of people, definitely surprise
28:54
Speaker 1: me at least, is something called the Pokemon Shock, which
28:59
Speaker 1: happened not too long ago in nineteen ninety seven. No,
29:03
Speaker 1: were you guys Pokemon kids? Uh No, it was a
29:12
Speaker 1: little past my age set. I didn't really become a
29:16
Speaker 1: Pokemon kid until I had a kid and then we
29:20
Speaker 1: started playing like Pokemon cards. But then she kind of
29:24
Speaker 1: got over that pretty quick. We do have a bunch
29:26
Speaker 1: of Pokemon cards and it's actually a really fun game.
29:28
Speaker 1: It's kind of like Magic to Gathering, but like simpler
29:31
Speaker 1: and more you know, kid friendly, But um, it's cool.
29:35
Speaker 1: I love you know, I think we all love anime stuff.
29:38
Speaker 1: And the design and the whole idea of having to
29:42
Speaker 1: catch them all is interesting because it's sort of a
29:45
Speaker 1: trap because you can never catch them all because they're
29:47
Speaker 1: always making new ones. Well, you can try to catch
29:49
Speaker 1: from all I'm trying to do here in my Pokemon
29:51
Speaker 1: Gold what you're supposed to be You're so supposed to
29:54
Speaker 1: be producing this podcast. I can I can multitask. Okay,
29:59
Speaker 1: Well you remember Pokemon Go though that was an epidemic
30:02
Speaker 1: on itself. Oh yeah, because we talked about that on
30:05
Speaker 1: stuff that I want you to know. The company, I
30:07
Speaker 1: think they're called Nantick were originally some sort of governments
30:13
Speaker 1: Intel offshoot that then split off and started creating consumer products.
30:19
Speaker 1: I remember hanging out with hanging out with work buddies
30:23
Speaker 1: and say no, don't put your phone, don't put your
30:26
Speaker 1: phone towards me. It was one of those I had
30:28
Speaker 1: a brief stint of Pokemon Going, and you would say
30:31
Speaker 1: stuff like, oh no, Ben, you don't understand. It's on
30:34
Speaker 1: your shoulder, Dude, I got I gotta get it. I'm like, no,
30:37
Speaker 1: I'm running away. I don't want to be part of this,
30:39
Speaker 1: no part in this. This isn't specifically referring to Pokemon Go.
30:43
Speaker 1: This is much earlier than that, Like in the original days,
30:47
Speaker 1: right when Pokemon, the cartoon and the you know, there
30:50
Speaker 1: were a lot of video games too, There were a
30:52
Speaker 1: lot of like, actually, this might even have been earlier
30:54
Speaker 1: than that. This is in the late nineties, so I'm
30:57
Speaker 1: having a hard time thinking of the trajector of all
31:00
Speaker 1: those games like Nintendo DS and all of that stuff
31:03
Speaker 1: that probably was more in the two thousands. So this
31:05
Speaker 1: is really ground zero Pokemon days. Yeah, it really took
31:10
Speaker 1: the country by storm in terms of the cartoon and
31:13
Speaker 1: the card games. I think was probably the biggest thing.
31:16
Speaker 1: Oh man. Yeah, and this is for everyone playing along
31:19
Speaker 1: at home. This is one year after the Olympics come
31:23
Speaker 1: to Atlanta, Georgian nineteen ninety seven. And a lot of
31:28
Speaker 1: this is coming to us from an excellent article on
31:31
Speaker 1: Motherboard via vice. Did Pokemon actually give kids seizures in
31:36
Speaker 1: the nineties? Shout out to author there, Kaylee Rogers. Kids
31:41
Speaker 1: are always going to be into flashy, fascinating stuff, and
31:46
Speaker 1: parents are always going to be concerned about some of
31:50
Speaker 1: the things that their kids see, even before YouTube became
31:55
Speaker 1: so ubiquitous, even before social media came into its heyday.
32:01
Speaker 1: But in nineteen ninety seven, people started to ask, what
32:04
Speaker 1: if a cartoon can actually hurt my child. And it
32:09
Speaker 1: was December of that year that an episode of Pokemon
32:12
Speaker 1: aired in Japan, and apparently tens of thousands of children
32:18
Speaker 1: watching this experienced seizures, and soon enough people were calling
32:23
Speaker 1: this the Pokemon Shock. Yeah, so okay, I was sort
32:27
Speaker 1: of off the mark. The nineteen ninety seven is when
32:31
Speaker 1: the Pokemon cartoon originated in Japan. The US didn't see, Yeah,
32:37
Speaker 1: the US didn't see it's Pokemon craze until several years later,
32:43
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. The franchise was created by Satoshi
32:46
Speaker 1: Tajiri in nineteen ninety six, and then the cartoon debuted
32:51
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven and is ongoing with various iterations
32:55
Speaker 1: and you know, tie ins and video games and all
32:58
Speaker 1: kinds of different stuff, movies, it's set. But this was
33:00
Speaker 1: specifically the original Japanese Pokemon craze that we're talking about here.
33:06
Speaker 1: A yeah, and it's almost you know, it almost didn't
33:10
Speaker 1: make it to the States because people were worried about
33:12
Speaker 1: this Pokemon Shock. The idea that children are getting seizures
33:17
Speaker 1: caused a widespread panic in Japan, where Pokemon is still
33:21
Speaker 1: very very popular now, and the show went on hiatus
33:25
Speaker 1: for four months. It almost got canceled, but a guy
33:28
Speaker 1: named Benjamin Radford, who co authored a study on this,
33:33
Speaker 1: noted that the story may have become more dangerous than
33:37
Speaker 1: the actual events, like the folklore of it, the tale
33:42
Speaker 1: of it may have become scarier than what actually transpired.
33:47
Speaker 1: And Radford and a co author said this was fascinating.
33:51
Speaker 1: They thought they could bring something to the table here.
33:55
Speaker 1: Sir Radford in particular reopens the case out of quote,
33:59
Speaker 1: just my own curiosity, so I could try to figure
34:02
Speaker 1: out what happened, and he traces down the exact episode.
34:05
Speaker 1: It's the thirty eighth episode of season one. Can you
34:10
Speaker 1: imagine that every British television producer just had a heart attack. Unbelievable. Yeah,
34:17
Speaker 1: in terms of the length of the season, right right,
34:20
Speaker 1: you know, a British six episodes made right? What was it?
34:25
Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes was three episodes, but they were all like
34:27
Speaker 1: an hour and a half. Those are like many mini
34:29
Speaker 1: series and things like that. A lot of times they're
34:31
Speaker 1: self contained and there won't be very many at all
34:34
Speaker 1: in a season. But this is much more of an
34:36
Speaker 1: American you know, phenomenon, but even more so with these cartoons.
34:41
Speaker 1: Thirty eight the thirty eighth episode of an eighty two
34:43
Speaker 1: episode long season, and this for something about this episode,
34:49
Speaker 1: right is what triggered this event um. It aired as
34:53
Speaker 1: as usual on the evening of December sixteenth, nineteen ninety seven.
34:57
Speaker 1: The plot is that Ash, who's the young Pokemon trainer
35:01
Speaker 1: and and his you know, ragtag band of Pokemon uh
35:06
Speaker 1: get transported into a like I guess it's sort of
35:11
Speaker 1: like a kind of like a teleportation machine you might
35:14
Speaker 1: see in like Star trek um and they call it
35:18
Speaker 1: a Pokemon Transmitter, and they get sent to an alternate
35:22
Speaker 1: universe that's kind of digitized versions of reality, and then
35:27
Speaker 1: they have to battle a specific Pokemon, a digital pokemon
35:32
Speaker 1: um named Porrigon that is being deployed by the villains
35:37
Speaker 1: of the show, who are the most low key, least malevolent,
35:40
Speaker 1: bungling villains of any kind of show. You know, they're
35:43
Speaker 1: always going to lose because they're kind of it's like
35:45
Speaker 1: Doctor claw in in Inspector Gadget. The stakes are quite low.
35:50
Speaker 1: Team rockets Um, and they're always trying to get Pikachu.
35:54
Speaker 1: They want Pikachu so bad. Yeah, there's only Yeah, for
35:58
Speaker 1: whatever reason, that's the one they're always after. Them. They've
36:00
Speaker 1: got like a cat that they hang out with talking Pokemon.
36:03
Speaker 1: They have a pokemon it's a meal that actually talks,
36:06
Speaker 1: the only one that's such a cool Pokemon they have,
36:08
Speaker 1: and they're always like, no, we need these other Pokemon
36:10
Speaker 1: or just like every covetous is what they are. They're
36:12
Speaker 1: just covetoists, power hungry psychopaths, sociopaths, and they're always pulling
36:17
Speaker 1: these heist right, and Egon's part of this heist. Yeah.
36:21
Speaker 1: It's sort of like Pinky in the Brain, where in
36:22
Speaker 1: every single episode their goal is to take over the world.
36:26
Speaker 1: The Team Rocket has a singular goal just like that.
36:29
Speaker 1: So after Ash and Company defeat the Porrigon, that's when
36:34
Speaker 1: the team I wonder, I wish I could pull up
36:37
Speaker 1: some images from this episode. I'm imagining it would be
36:40
Speaker 1: stylized to some degree, this whole digital aspect of it,
36:44
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering if they used any kind of blocky
36:46
Speaker 1: pixelae kind of stuff to represent this world, like sort
36:49
Speaker 1: of bad nineties representations of what the Internet looks like.
36:53
Speaker 1: Because they are then attacked by an anti virus program,
36:56
Speaker 1: but Pikachu of course saves the day with his famous
36:59
Speaker 1: thunderbolt to get it. Electricity, digital world, nice drap Pikachu
37:04
Speaker 1: very good. He's very very smart, even despite the fact
37:06
Speaker 1: that he can only say so. Nodder very unclear. For
37:13
Speaker 1: a lot of these features, I would say I think
37:15
Speaker 1: they're all pretty gender. Generation two they introduced gender. They do. Okay,
37:19
Speaker 1: all right, you know Max, I thought Max wasn't paying attention.
37:24
Speaker 1: I thought he was lost in the Pokemon sauce. But
37:26
Speaker 1: you're you're, you're here, all right, Yeah, I'm paying attention
37:29
Speaker 1: to answer the Pokemon question. That has not distinguished whether
37:31
Speaker 1: or not I've lost in the Pokemon sauce or not.
37:35
Speaker 1: You have fair point, my friend, fair points. So okay,
37:38
Speaker 1: here's where the poke rubber hits the poke road. The
37:42
Speaker 1: animators want to style on this a little bit. It's
37:45
Speaker 1: your point all about it being a digital world, and
37:48
Speaker 1: so they use a technique that they call paca PoCA
37:51
Speaker 1: and this is a this is a process wherein true
37:55
Speaker 1: colors flash rapidly on the screen. They're red and blue.
37:59
Speaker 1: Flash is right, We're all thinking epilepsy at this point,
38:02
Speaker 1: are Yeah, twelve flashes per second for about six seconds,
38:08
Speaker 1: and you know we epilepsies absolutely something that can be
38:13
Speaker 1: triggered by flashing lights. Well, nowadays, there's warnings, there's trigger
38:18
Speaker 1: warnings for anything, like I just recently saw the new
38:21
Speaker 1: movie from Brandon Cronenberg, Infinity Pool, and it uses all
38:25
Speaker 1: in camera and practical effects entirely, and there is a
38:30
Speaker 1: scene that there's like a transformation of one of the
38:32
Speaker 1: characters that is incredibly strobe. And the same with I
38:37
Speaker 1: think the most recent Incredibles movie, there was a sign
38:40
Speaker 1: before you even bought tickets, letting you know, and I
38:43
Speaker 1: have to imagine that that is largely we have this
38:46
Speaker 1: event to thank for that kind of thoughtfulness, you know,
38:49
Speaker 1: in terms of like making sure that everyone has a
38:52
Speaker 1: good time. There's some people I know that have that
38:54
Speaker 1: are triggered by these types of flashes, that just can't
38:56
Speaker 1: go to concerts for fear that there might be some
39:00
Speaker 1: sequence of lights that might bring on an attack, right,
39:04
Speaker 1: and it might be something that a venue doesn't think
39:08
Speaker 1: is extreme enough to warrant heads up, but it can
39:11
Speaker 1: still affect people with photosensitive epilepsy. And this is what
39:16
Speaker 1: parents are worried about. This is what a lot of
39:19
Speaker 1: people in the Japanese public are concerned with because they think,
39:22
Speaker 1: you know, at the very end of a show their
39:24
Speaker 1: kid loves, their kid might get a seizure due to
39:28
Speaker 1: this visual effect. But if you look at the reports
39:34
Speaker 1: and you see some discrepancies. The reports suggested or implied
39:37
Speaker 1: that up to twelve thousand kids experienced dizziness, blurred vision,
39:42
Speaker 1: and convulsions after watching this episode of the show. But
39:47
Speaker 1: about one and one hundred people have epilepsy, and only
39:51
Speaker 1: three percent of those one and one hundred people have
39:55
Speaker 1: photosensitive epilepsy specifically. That's right, So it's not you know,
40:00
Speaker 1: one size fits all type situation. Um, that rate is
40:04
Speaker 1: a little bit higher in uh, in young children. But uh,
40:09
Speaker 1: these reports that were talking about suggested that ten times
40:13
Speaker 1: as many people had uh photosensitive epilepsy as might have
40:18
Speaker 1: been expected. Um, so perhaps this is a regional thing.
40:23
Speaker 1: It's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's it's a little bit unclear,
40:26
Speaker 1: right then, I mean the question then becomes, our Japanese
40:29
Speaker 1: kids more susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy? Is there a higher
40:34
Speaker 1: number that that sort of you know, uh kind of
40:38
Speaker 1: bucks the trend. I guess, right, that's the greater trend
40:41
Speaker 1: of of just human beings. Or is there something else
40:45
Speaker 1: at play here? Right? Right? Max You've got a great
40:49
Speaker 1: note about the numbers here where where you you said, look,
40:54
Speaker 1: using these percentages as as we understand them, now, forty
40:58
Speaker 1: million children would have to watch this show, and they
41:01
Speaker 1: would only be watching it in Japan, right or primarily
41:05
Speaker 1: watching it in Japan. And for another new here, in
41:08
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, the population of Japan was just a
41:11
Speaker 1: little over one hundred and twenty six million, So this
41:15
Speaker 1: would be an incredible, a preposterous number of children, right right,
41:22
Speaker 1: Like you know, if we if we want to try
41:24
Speaker 1: to like eliminate variables or possible things, we can kind
41:27
Speaker 1: of eliminate like, was it just a ridiculous number of
41:30
Speaker 1: people watched this episode? But it's like no, it's like
41:33
Speaker 1: the amount of people who would have to watch this
41:35
Speaker 1: episode for this normal percentages to make sense for the
41:38
Speaker 1: amount of people who got sick just don't line up. Yeah,
41:41
Speaker 1: but the damage has been done. People were worried, you know,
41:46
Speaker 1: and they're your kids, you don't want they're someone's kids.
41:50
Speaker 1: In general, people don't like bad stuff to happen to
41:53
Speaker 1: children because in general people are decent. At least call
41:57
Speaker 1: me an optimist, but that's what I would learn opt
41:59
Speaker 1: to believe thank you, thank you. It's it's a struggle.
42:02
Speaker 1: I'm a nihilistic optimist. You're an optimist, thank you, Max
42:07
Speaker 1: an optimist Prime. Oh chucks, you guys, you guys, I
42:11
Speaker 1: didn't even get you anything today. But call me you're
42:14
Speaker 1: a megatron exactly, I'll be your huckleberry. But hey, the question, so,
42:19
Speaker 1: what is the issue here? How could this be something
42:22
Speaker 1: similar to the kind of copycat mentality that we've been describing,
42:26
Speaker 1: you know that would require people physically seeing others exhibiting
42:33
Speaker 1: these symptoms. If if these kids are watching this show
42:36
Speaker 1: in their own private homes, they wouldn't know what was
42:40
Speaker 1: happening with the other kids watching the show in their
42:43
Speaker 1: own private homes. Right, Yeah, And this is where Radford
42:48
Speaker 1: goes into the psychogenic aspect, just like the laughing epidemic,
42:54
Speaker 1: and he's saying, look, it's possibly a self produced physical reaction.
43:00
Speaker 1: People have been convinced by these external influences. You know.
43:04
Speaker 1: Another thing that makes at least in my experience, another
43:07
Speaker 1: thing that kids really love is getting access to stuff
43:12
Speaker 1: they're not supposed to get access to. Right, So, how
43:16
Speaker 1: much cooler did that episode of Pokemon become when someone said, hey,
43:22
Speaker 1: you can't watch this show anymore. And so now you're
43:24
Speaker 1: a kid, You've heard the stories, right, and you sneak,
43:29
Speaker 1: you somehow sneak inter viewing, and you are so certain
43:33
Speaker 1: that something will happen to you, that the reaction occurs
43:37
Speaker 1: or some kind of some kind of reaction and curse.
43:41
Speaker 1: And again, like any psychogenetic phenomenon, this does not mean
43:45
Speaker 1: people are faking it. They're not making it up. By
43:49
Speaker 1: and large, the symptoms are real. It's just they may
43:52
Speaker 1: be happening due to some other cause. And with this,
43:58
Speaker 1: we realize that we started digging in these into these stories,
44:02
Speaker 1: and we discovered this larger phenomenon, and we still have
44:07
Speaker 1: more that we want to explore. So this is going
44:10
Speaker 1: to be we talked to area, this is going to
44:12
Speaker 1: be a recurring thing for us. There's so many strange
44:18
Speaker 1: historical tales of epidemics from human civilization that have a
44:22
Speaker 1: lot of these commonalities. For now, nol Max, it sounds
44:26
Speaker 1: like we're gonna we're gonna call this a day. And
44:29
Speaker 1: I hope that this episode does not itself become the
44:32
Speaker 1: cause of an epidemic, or maybe if it's a good epidemic.
44:36
Speaker 1: Epidemics are never good, right, No, they are not. I
44:40
Speaker 1: do kind of want to just toss the stand here
44:42
Speaker 1: at the end, because I was thinking about this when
44:44
Speaker 1: we're going through Pokemon's shock. But it's like, I haven't
44:47
Speaker 1: having problems with my skin like allergic reactions. And so
44:50
Speaker 1: one of these things my doctor has me doing now
44:52
Speaker 1: is reintroducing things that like like basically try to eliminate
44:57
Speaker 1: them as being a potential allergen. And so this weekend
45:00
Speaker 1: I treat us for the first time in a long time,
45:03
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you right afterwards, for about the next hour,
45:06
Speaker 1: I thought I was having an allergic breakout, and then
45:08
Speaker 1: I went and did something and I was fine. And
45:10
Speaker 1: so it shows what like, you know, are what we
45:15
Speaker 1: can be like with situations like this, the power of suggestion, right,
45:19
Speaker 1: because the mind is an amazing and often misunderstood phenomenon itself.
45:26
Speaker 1: So we hope you enjoyed this exploration of epidemics. We
45:31
Speaker 1: are going to be back with some more, including things
45:34
Speaker 1: like well, without spoiling it too much, we're gonna get
45:36
Speaker 1: to Koro at some point, and we can't wait for
45:39
Speaker 1: you to join us on that journey. In the meantime,
45:43
Speaker 1: Noll you think we got a Disney related episode in
45:46
Speaker 1: the future. Maybe, Oh my god, Yeah, that's a really
45:49
Speaker 1: good point because when we were talking to our buddies
45:52
Speaker 1: over at my Mama told you for a segment that
45:55
Speaker 1: should be coming out before long with the stuff that
45:57
Speaker 1: I want you to know, Crew, Matt, myself and you've been.
46:00
Speaker 1: They were asking all these questions about Disney where I
46:02
Speaker 1: just returned from. One of them being is it true
46:06
Speaker 1: that at Disney no one can actually ever die there
46:09
Speaker 1: because if you die there, they remove your corpse and
46:12
Speaker 1: basically just trundle you out in the front door through
46:15
Speaker 1: a series of secret tunnels. So while this might be
46:18
Speaker 1: a bit of maybe this is a crossover episode where
46:20
Speaker 1: we have Matt on and talk about some Disney history
46:25
Speaker 1: kind of conspiracies that are a little more lighthearted, maybe
46:29
Speaker 1: something more in the ridiculous history vein because those parks
46:32
Speaker 1: at this point, I mean, Disney parks are fifty years
46:36
Speaker 1: old at this point, this is the fiftieth anniversary, and
46:40
Speaker 1: they've repurposed so many things. They've rebuilt things, they've replicated things.
46:45
Speaker 1: I mean, there really is some interesting history to the
46:48
Speaker 1: Disney theme parks and of themselves outside of just the
46:52
Speaker 1: larger company, not to mention. I don't know if you
46:54
Speaker 1: guys know this, you probably do. But finally, Mickey Mouse
46:58
Speaker 1: is about to officially be in the public domain because Disney. Yeah,
47:03
Speaker 1: it's happening. Disney is if anyone has followed this for
47:07
Speaker 1: a long time, the Disney, the Walt Disney Company, has
47:10
Speaker 1: single handedly been responsible for significant changes in laws surrounding
47:15
Speaker 1: intellectual property and trademark. And they, you know, we're able
47:19
Speaker 1: to continuously extend the Mickey Mouse character, you know, extend
47:24
Speaker 1: that copywriter trade. I'm maybe confusing the two, but the
47:27
Speaker 1: point is things are supposed to enter the public domain
47:31
Speaker 1: after one hundred years or so. For example, Winnie the
47:34
Speaker 1: Pooh just did. And you'll notice there is a slasher
47:38
Speaker 1: movie called Winnie the Pooh, Blood and Honey that is
47:41
Speaker 1: a direct result of that character entering the public domain.
47:45
Speaker 1: And that could soon happen with the Mouse himself in
47:49
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, depending on what Disney, what the Mouse's
47:53
Speaker 1: lawyers do, Mickey what a journey. Mickey's also you know,
47:58
Speaker 1: well established in pan h So we'll see how this
48:03
Speaker 1: affects We'll see how this affects America's favorite mouse. They're
48:08
Speaker 1: potentially saying that the that the um did that Mickey
48:12
Speaker 1: will be replaced by the Purple Dragon figment, as as
48:17
Speaker 1: the mascot of the Disney parks. At the very least,
48:20
Speaker 1: Disney's characters a lot of changes that didn't age well,
48:24
Speaker 1: you know, Song of the South, etc. So we have
48:28
Speaker 1: definitely got an episode or more on Disney that's going
48:32
Speaker 1: to be coming your way. Folks. We can't wait for
48:34
Speaker 1: you to join us and stay tuned for some of
48:38
Speaker 1: our future episodes. We have some guests coming on. We
48:41
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil too much, but you're in for
48:44
Speaker 1: some wild rides in the meantime. Speaking of wild rides,
48:47
Speaker 1: thanks to our pal Alex Williams for this amazing soundtrack.
48:51
Speaker 1: Thanks to our research associate and superproducer Max Williams. Thanks
48:56
Speaker 1: to Disney, Thanks to Japan Noel, Thanks to you. I
48:59
Speaker 1: really now I'm in my head about it. I really
49:01
Speaker 1: hope that we are never responsible for an epidemic. Oh yeah, me,
49:06
Speaker 1: I don't want to be patient zero or one, you
49:09
Speaker 1: know two? Uh yeah, No, it's it's it's a very
49:14
Speaker 1: it's a it's a heavy burden to carry. It's heavy,
49:19
Speaker 1: heavy waste the crown. Oh man, what a day we'll
49:23
Speaker 1: see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from my
49:32
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
49:36
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.