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That Time Europeans Went Nuts For Dancing · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
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Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Big shout out to our
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Speaker 1: super producer, Mr Max Williams. Big shout out to Mr
0:38
Speaker 1: Noel Brown. They called me Ben. We want to shout
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Speaker 1: out one guy in particular for this episode of Primary
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Speaker 1: Source and almost everything about this story. Uh Dr John Waller.
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Speaker 1: Uh we even and this is true. We even worked
0:54
Speaker 1: on a little song about today's episode. Uh we're ready,
1:00
Speaker 1: pretty apple face. Oh let's see. Uh now, No, you're
1:04
Speaker 1: the probably the most musically gifted. I'm forgetting how the
1:07
Speaker 1: synth part in Dancing Queen goes. You can add it
1:10
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry, no spoilers please, Well we got we got.
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Speaker 1: Let's all right, here we go. Our song for this
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Speaker 1: is dancing plague, Jump and yell and then must scream
1:22
Speaker 1: all day something something had to be that way. It
1:27
Speaker 1: was a dancing plague. I can't you know. Oh my goodness. Yeah,
1:38
Speaker 1: but they're fantastic, aren't they Swedish? They're Swedish, right, yeah? Yeah,
1:46
Speaker 1: so you know the Swede is responsible for the food pyramid.
1:50
Speaker 1: Uh at ikea. They're obviously really good at design and
1:54
Speaker 1: they know how to pump out the bangers because also
1:57
Speaker 1: like Max Martin and a lot of these like kind
1:59
Speaker 1: of hit factory producers, they're they're Swedish. It's it's a
2:03
Speaker 1: it's a whole thing. But uh, yeah, we're not really
2:06
Speaker 1: talking about Sweden specifically today. We are talking about a
2:10
Speaker 1: dancing playing them. Yeah, it's a real thing. Okay, So
2:13
Speaker 1: here's this story. In July of fifteen eighteen, residents of
2:18
Speaker 1: a city called Strasbourg, which is still around. It was
2:21
Speaker 1: part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time, all
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Speaker 1: of a sudden, they were out dancing in the street
2:28
Speaker 1: like that oldies song about summers here and the time
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Speaker 1: is right. But they didn't want to dance. They had
2:35
Speaker 1: an uncontrollable urge, a compulsion, uh, some kind of mass hysteria,
2:41
Speaker 1: you might call it. A lady stepped into the street
2:43
Speaker 1: and then, apparently, you know, without music and without a
2:47
Speaker 1: particularly joyful look, she started to twist, twirl and sort
2:52
Speaker 1: of there was there was shouting promised in the song.
2:56
Speaker 1: There was definitely shouting in this plague. Yeah, okay, so
3:01
Speaker 1: she she is doing this right pretty consistently. According to
3:06
Speaker 1: the story, for almost a week. And by the time
3:11
Speaker 1: this she's been doing this for almost a week, more
3:14
Speaker 1: than three dozen other residents of the city are also
3:19
Speaker 1: out there kind of and I don't yeah, there we go.
3:23
Speaker 1: I don't know if it looked like actual dancing or
3:26
Speaker 1: if it looked like a bunch of people having seizures. Yeah,
3:29
Speaker 1: probably more the latter, I would I would think. But
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Speaker 1: it's true. By August there was an epidemic and it
3:35
Speaker 1: wasn't just fun and games. It wasn't just dancing in
3:38
Speaker 1: the streets with David Bowie and Mick Jagger, you know,
3:41
Speaker 1: jerking around out there. People died. Yeah, and it's it's
3:45
Speaker 1: so strange. We'll get into it right now. It sounds
3:48
Speaker 1: like these events might be apocryphal, right, It might be
3:51
Speaker 1: kind of a legend, like the calendar heist we talked
3:54
Speaker 1: about and stuff they don't want you to know. But
3:56
Speaker 1: the thing is, there is clear sourcing, there's clear documentation
4:01
Speaker 1: and evidence, thanks for the work of John Waller, that
4:04
Speaker 1: this did happen. As a matter of fact, there's more
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Speaker 1: than one dancing plague. It started to get the street names.
4:11
Speaker 1: It's catching st. Virus's dance they were calling it. And
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Speaker 1: a bunch of people wrote about this, Monks, priest, physicians, historians. Uh,
4:22
Speaker 1: you can even find orders from law enforcement at the
4:26
Speaker 1: time that are like, what the heck is happening? Would
4:29
Speaker 1: this have been the kind of thing at this time
4:31
Speaker 1: and history that would have been more likely associated with
4:34
Speaker 1: some sort of demonic presence than than perhaps the medical
4:39
Speaker 1: malady h I think actually we'll get to this too.
4:43
Speaker 1: I think the physicians, contemporary medical experts at the time
4:48
Speaker 1: didn't know what on earth was happening, so they blamed
4:52
Speaker 1: the issue on hot blood. He said, you got hot blood,
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Speaker 1: shake it out, shake it out, leach it out of you. Yeah, yeah,
5:02
Speaker 1: do a little blooding. And then the leach just started dance.
5:06
Speaker 1: Of course, of course they got hot blood. They just
5:08
Speaker 1: drink hot blood. Hot blooded blood is running, so eating
5:18
Speaker 1: oh my blood, but dancing. I'm doing this off top
5:25
Speaker 1: my head. We would be so funny. Karay okay, no's
5:29
Speaker 1: a real show supper with it. I mean that sincerely.
5:31
Speaker 1: I appreciate them, enjoy it'd be awkward if I thought
5:35
Speaker 1: you were terrible And no, it's like, hey, but you're
5:37
Speaker 1: getting out there. That's you've you've seen me, You've seen
5:39
Speaker 1: you've seen my chops. I got the Karry, I got
5:41
Speaker 1: the Yoki chops. We've been around the world together. Well,
5:43
Speaker 1: we will be around the world. We'll circumnavigate. At some
5:46
Speaker 1: point I I I can't find my baby. Sorry, please,
5:50
Speaker 1: let's do it. Let's do so. Uh So the most
5:54
Speaker 1: famous of these incidents of dancing plagues happened in fifteen eighteen.
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Speaker 1: Like we talked to out, Strasbourg is now on the
6:02
Speaker 1: eastern border of modern day France. It's about two hours
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Speaker 1: west of stute Guard, the most German sounding city and
6:09
Speaker 1: all of Germany. Yeah, you went to stute Guard, right,
6:12
Speaker 1: I went to I went to Berlin and then I
6:15
Speaker 1: went to Leipzig. But but I would argue is definitely
6:20
Speaker 1: a little more German sounding. Yeah, it almost sounds like
6:23
Speaker 1: a curse, like calling someone, Uh you are an unrepentant
6:26
Speaker 1: stute gut sir. Okay. So we talked about this, this
6:30
Speaker 1: person lady that we believe set off the dance. She's
6:34
Speaker 1: called Frau or you know, mrs basically trope up and
6:39
Speaker 1: she kept dancing until she collapsed. Like as stute listeners,
6:45
Speaker 1: you know, it's impossible for someone to dance without stopping
6:48
Speaker 1: for almost a week. So she would dance until she
6:51
Speaker 1: physically collapsed, and then when her body had rested up,
6:55
Speaker 1: as soon as she came to she started dancing again
6:59
Speaker 1: and thirty people seemed to somehow catch this. No one
7:03
Speaker 1: had any idea, how is it being communicated? Right? Is
7:06
Speaker 1: this miasma? Is there something biting people? Is there something
7:10
Speaker 1: in the water? Post black plague? This is gonna be
7:16
Speaker 1: during the Black this is gonna be after the Black plague.
7:18
Speaker 1: Black figuring out these types of transmission sources and all
7:22
Speaker 1: of that. They're also very much working live. Oh yeah, yeah,
7:26
Speaker 1: the Black the Black plague has um is still to
7:30
Speaker 1: this day the most fatal pandemic and known history. And
7:34
Speaker 1: it was a wave of infections from I think in Europe.
7:38
Speaker 1: It peaked from thirteen seven to thirteen fifty one. So
7:41
Speaker 1: people were aware and it took a bit for them
7:43
Speaker 1: to figure out that it was rats that were that
7:45
Speaker 1: were the vector right right, carrying those fleas. Yeah, that's
7:49
Speaker 1: the that that's the modern understanding. They didn't have that
7:53
Speaker 1: understanding at this point. They were just very scared, as
7:57
Speaker 1: they should have been. Uh So, this fifteen event is
8:02
Speaker 1: probably the last of several outbreaks that predated the Black plague.
8:09
Speaker 1: There's there's hints that these things also occurred in the
8:13
Speaker 1: tenth century all the way through the sixte The first
8:17
Speaker 1: one took place in thirteen seventy four, so like right
8:20
Speaker 1: after the peak of the Black plague, and it was
8:23
Speaker 1: around the Rhine River. So maybe we talked about some
8:28
Speaker 1: of these other plagues just to give people a sense
8:30
Speaker 1: of like how common this one. I don't want to
8:34
Speaker 1: see common. But it was more than one isolated, it's,
8:43
Speaker 1: oh for sure. In another city in Germany or a
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Speaker 1: town named Kolbi, on Christmas Eve of ten one eighteen,
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Speaker 1: people that were hanging out outside of a church started
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Speaker 1: to wildly gesticulate uh spasmodically. The priest Um was not
9:03
Speaker 1: able to carry on with the traditional Christmas Eve mass
9:07
Speaker 1: because of this chaos happening outside in the streets. He
9:11
Speaker 1: asked them to stop, but they the dance was within them,
9:16
Speaker 1: you know, um, and he started to think maybe there
9:20
Speaker 1: was some demon at play. Was referred to by historians
9:23
Speaker 1: as a ring dance of sin. There was all kinds
9:27
Speaker 1: of untoward behavior, leaping, you know, chanting, clapping, you know. Yeah,
9:35
Speaker 1: the priest was absolutely livid um and according to historians
9:40
Speaker 1: or even local. I guess what you would consider journalists
9:42
Speaker 1: of the time the priest actually, you know, because at
9:46
Speaker 1: the time, of course, priests were the law of the land.
9:49
Speaker 1: In many ways, they had more power than the government. Um,
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Speaker 1: he cursed them to dance for one year's time in
9:58
Speaker 1: order to punish them for what he saw as some
10:00
Speaker 1: sort of you know, spontaneous revel kind of right. That's
10:04
Speaker 1: so that's so crazy too, the idea that a Christian
10:08
Speaker 1: priest is out here putting curses on people. You know,
10:11
Speaker 1: that's not very Christian. It doesn't feel like that. But
10:14
Speaker 1: all right, if you are the average person in the
10:17
Speaker 1: medieval Eire at this time, this story seems actually easy
10:22
Speaker 1: to believe. People start saying, well, the ways of God
10:25
Speaker 1: are mysterious, you know, there's a hidden world all around us,
10:29
Speaker 1: and this must be the result of uh something those
10:33
Speaker 1: people did wrong and responsible for this. But it's definitely
10:40
Speaker 1: not me right exactly, and we don't know a ton
10:44
Speaker 1: about the chronicler. Think of it like a historian who
10:47
Speaker 1: is writing about this, But we can't dismiss it as
10:51
Speaker 1: pure invention. It seems like they at the very least
10:56
Speaker 1: embellished a true event. You know, the way lifetime producers
11:00
Speaker 1: when they make movies. Uh. The the issue is that
11:03
Speaker 1: plenty of other sources talk about these bouts of unstoppable,
11:09
Speaker 1: sometimes fatal dancing in just a few centuries later, in
11:14
Speaker 1: twelve forty seven in another German town. So far this
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Speaker 1: is a German thing. And really quickly, speaking of sources
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Speaker 1: once again, John Waller check out his piece or his
11:25
Speaker 1: his research published in the British Psychological Society Dancing Plagues
11:30
Speaker 1: and mass Hysteria, because we've reported or done episodes on
11:34
Speaker 1: mass hysteria in ridiculous history, but also specifically, uh, and
11:38
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know, because mass hysteria
11:41
Speaker 1: oftentimes there was some underlying medical cause, but a lot
11:44
Speaker 1: of times too it was people following the lead of
11:48
Speaker 1: those who were maybe vacant. Uh yeah, yeah, absolutely And
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Speaker 1: this so this happens now we're talking two hundred people
12:00
Speaker 1: in this German town, Erfort, not quite Stuttgard, but it's
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Speaker 1: still very German. And another outbreak happens in thirteen seventy four,
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Speaker 1: and this one is the one we teased earlier, multiple
12:12
Speaker 1: like dozens of towns along the Rhine River. The effort one,
12:17
Speaker 1: by the way, too, was on a bridge over the
12:19
Speaker 1: Mossill River. Just this, this proximity to rivers, I think
12:24
Speaker 1: may well become a theme here. But just just just
12:27
Speaker 1: doing a little mild foreshadowing. Yeah, good to note. And
12:32
Speaker 1: within a few weeks in these towns along the Rhine River,
12:37
Speaker 1: it was obvious there was a huge problem. The epidemic
12:41
Speaker 1: went on unchecked for months. And again, although it sounds
12:44
Speaker 1: really funny, we have to realize these people were having
12:47
Speaker 1: it was having terrible effects on their on their health.
12:50
Speaker 1: They were dancing until they collapsed, you know, just like
12:53
Speaker 1: that curse in hocus Pocus the first one sure, or
12:58
Speaker 1: you know, a thing that often happened is in the
13:00
Speaker 1: kind of ritual ceremonies, perhaps like if you've ever seen
13:04
Speaker 1: the movie in Midsummer Um, there's a kind of a
13:08
Speaker 1: what is it may Mayfair kind of tradition where it's
13:11
Speaker 1: like a dancing contest and whoever literally is the last
13:14
Speaker 1: person standing is crowned the may queen or whatever. And again,
13:18
Speaker 1: I mean this is a movie, I don't know how
13:19
Speaker 1: accurate that is, but I've also seen this in other
13:21
Speaker 1: forms of lore. You know, the idea of like being
13:24
Speaker 1: the last person standing in a wild dance competition. Yeah,
13:28
Speaker 1: and there are other This is a time of other
13:31
Speaker 1: strange compulsions. If you go outside of Germany to the
13:35
Speaker 1: Spanish Netherlands, then you'll see in there were there was
13:40
Speaker 1: this group of nuns that were quote unquote possessed by
13:45
Speaker 1: evil spirits that compelled them to get the zoomies like
13:49
Speaker 1: a cute little dog jump out of trees or meow
13:54
Speaker 1: and cause play cats trying to climb trees. Not the
13:58
Speaker 1: same not the same thing as dancing, but still weird, right,
14:02
Speaker 1: very weird. And I want to just say, can you
14:05
Speaker 1: imagine being, you know, attacked by a nun who jumps
14:08
Speaker 1: out at you from the branches of a tall tree.
14:11
Speaker 1: That sounds like about the most terrifying thing I could
14:13
Speaker 1: possibly picture. Uh they only it only be scarier if
14:17
Speaker 1: the nun was also a clown, like a clown nun
14:22
Speaker 1: hoping not. I hope it's not a widespread thing, but uh,
14:26
Speaker 1: all right, So you go over the next few centuries
14:28
Speaker 1: and you see that, uh, nunner reas in general from
14:33
Speaker 1: Rome to Paris are uh they're they're becoming these hot
14:39
Speaker 1: spots for delirium, for what appears to be outbreaks and
14:43
Speaker 1: mass hysteria We're talking people seemingly without explanation, foaming, screaming, uh,
14:50
Speaker 1: violating various social taboos about sexuality and behavior comportion of
14:57
Speaker 1: a holy woman, uh, and then even making these wild
15:00
Speaker 1: extravagant claims like I have I have had tex with
15:03
Speaker 1: demons or Jesus Christ or both. Yeah. I mean a
15:08
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff historically makes sense to have served
15:10
Speaker 1: as some you know, inspiration for fictional accounts of zombie
15:15
Speaker 1: type scenarios, you know, where everyone all of a sudden
15:18
Speaker 1: becomes this mindless kind of drone, acting not of their
15:23
Speaker 1: own volition. And it really reminds me a lot of
15:25
Speaker 1: this show based on the video game The Last of Us,
15:29
Speaker 1: where these court accepts, uh, you know, fungi that actually
15:33
Speaker 1: are real and infects ants and can cause them to
15:36
Speaker 1: act not in their own best interest to benefit the
15:39
Speaker 1: fungus um once again, fungus, fung fungi and mushrooms. Fascinating things,
15:45
Speaker 1: probably the closest things to extra terrestrials that we have
15:48
Speaker 1: that we have access to to study. But in that film,
15:52
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of these folks they have this
15:54
Speaker 1: heard mentality, you know, and they all of a sudden,
15:56
Speaker 1: you know, wildly gesticulating and running around, and there are
15:59
Speaker 1: state of it as well. Yeah, yeah, and this is
16:03
Speaker 1: this is crazy stuff, right, And we also know that
16:06
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there are a lot of tall
16:09
Speaker 1: tales that get treated as fact from this period in history.
16:13
Speaker 1: And when you do some diga and you find out
16:16
Speaker 1: maybe there's more or less to the story than is
16:19
Speaker 1: presented in popular culture today. But we do know the
16:23
Speaker 1: dancing plagues of thirteen seventy four and fifteen eighteen actually
16:28
Speaker 1: did happen. There's a lot of primary sourcing. Again, our
16:31
Speaker 1: pal John has uh led the charge finding this, digging
16:35
Speaker 1: into it. And so when we set the stage here,
16:38
Speaker 1: I think it's time for us to answer, like the
16:41
Speaker 1: the billion dollar question or attempt, what could have caused
16:47
Speaker 1: this dancing plague? For this answer, we have to go
16:50
Speaker 1: over to the Lancet another article by John Waller Forgotten
16:56
Speaker 1: Plague Making sense of dancing mania? What what do we think?
17:01
Speaker 1: What could have I know there are theories, right, there's
17:05
Speaker 1: certainly our theories and there are theories that are also
17:07
Speaker 1: associated with other forms of mass hysteria, one being the
17:11
Speaker 1: accidental ingestion of er god, which is a mold that
17:15
Speaker 1: grows on the stalks of rye crops and can cause hallucinations,
17:21
Speaker 1: you know, essentially spasms or fits, tremors kind of you know,
17:27
Speaker 1: shaking uncontrollably, and they certainly these types of things certainly
17:32
Speaker 1: did occur in medieval Europe when people ate this contaminated flower.
17:36
Speaker 1: But it's all about timing. And this is another thing
17:38
Speaker 1: that was associated with I believe the witch trials and
17:42
Speaker 1: Salem one of the theories, one of the theories. But
17:45
Speaker 1: that's it's it's also been kind of debunked in that
17:48
Speaker 1: historical event as well as it kind of has been
17:50
Speaker 1: here because it doesn't quite seem to match up with
17:53
Speaker 1: the scale of the thing, right because er God can
17:57
Speaker 1: make uh something that's kind of a kissing cousin of LSD.
18:02
Speaker 1: So the idea that is that people are behaving strangely
18:05
Speaker 1: because I got her got poisoning and they're they're tripping essentially.
18:09
Speaker 1: But John Waller is saying, you know it to your
18:12
Speaker 1: point about timing, Noll, it's if you had that kind
18:15
Speaker 1: of poisoning, it's unlikely that you would have hallucinated for
18:19
Speaker 1: that long, for days at a time, unless you re
18:22
Speaker 1: ingested the stuff, which is also unlikely if you were
18:25
Speaker 1: in the the fit of uncontrollable you know, dancing. Yeah,
18:30
Speaker 1: exactly so. So Waller, again, the world expert on this
18:34
Speaker 1: does says it's not particularly tenable, but points out the
18:39
Speaker 1: same thing that we were thinking about just off the
18:41
Speaker 1: cuff here. Virtually every outbreak, according to him, occurred somewhere
18:46
Speaker 1: along the Rhine and Moselle rivers. Uh. And he says, yes,
18:50
Speaker 1: there's a lot of agriculture there at the time, but
18:53
Speaker 1: they were in different climates, they were using different crops,
18:56
Speaker 1: So how could these very different crops and climates producer
19:00
Speaker 1: got such that it has the same effect. The thing is,
19:04
Speaker 1: it does seem like the victims were having their minds
19:09
Speaker 1: altered somehow. There seems to be something hallucinatory about this,
19:13
Speaker 1: because that's near a superhuman level of endurance to physically
19:18
Speaker 1: dance until you collapse, pop till you drop. Yeah, and
19:25
Speaker 1: and maybe they're in a trance state. Again, it's not
19:28
Speaker 1: like they're singing and inventing the hokey pokey. These are
19:32
Speaker 1: people who are probably waking up terrified, right, And yeah,
19:36
Speaker 1: it reminds me of you know, the LSD experiments done
19:40
Speaker 1: you know under the CIA, which is so horrible when
19:44
Speaker 1: you think about the idea of of dosing unsuspecting people
19:48
Speaker 1: with a substance where they don't understand what's happening to them.
19:52
Speaker 1: If anyone out there has ever, you know, experimented with
19:56
Speaker 1: any kind of psychedelic substance before, you know that it's
20:00
Speaker 1: something that can be very you know, all encompassing and
20:03
Speaker 1: can be very scary or you know, based on whatever read.
20:06
Speaker 1: But can you imagine not knowing what the source of
20:08
Speaker 1: that feeling might be inford to come out of nowhere,
20:10
Speaker 1: you would think you were dying. You would think you
20:13
Speaker 1: were in some way, especially at the time here possessed.
20:16
Speaker 1: And also a lot of the accounts of this do
20:19
Speaker 1: sound like the folks were in physical pain outside of
20:23
Speaker 1: just the act of dancing, that they were screaming out,
20:26
Speaker 1: you know, in pain to be to be helped. They
20:29
Speaker 1: were also apparently screaming out the names of devils. Uh.
20:34
Speaker 1: This is this what I think is a little bit.
20:38
Speaker 1: I don't think this is reliable, but legend has it.
20:41
Speaker 1: They showed strange aversions, the pointed shoes and the color red. Uh.
20:46
Speaker 1: They would also say things like I'm drowning in a
20:48
Speaker 1: red sea of blood and this is where I think
20:51
Speaker 1: we we passed the mic to uh Max real quick. Uh,
20:55
Speaker 1: I think we've got some Max with the facts on
20:57
Speaker 1: the way, all right. So I got two things actually,
20:59
Speaker 1: So the first most one is there's actually a drawing
21:03
Speaker 1: of basically this outbreak, this plague from Peter Bruegel the Elder,
21:09
Speaker 1: And for fans of the series, that might sound familiar
21:12
Speaker 1: because he's the same guy who painted Curling. He's our
21:16
Speaker 1: first known Curling. Is that sneaking enough and he's fallen
21:24
Speaker 1: all just for you right now here? Fact. Yeah, so
21:31
Speaker 1: if you haven't listened to the Curling episode, you should
21:35
Speaker 1: go back and listen to that. But more interesting than
21:36
Speaker 1: you might think. Just just putting that out there again.
21:39
Speaker 1: But as I said, I got two things. And Ben,
21:41
Speaker 1: you mentioned the hookey pokey, and I just want to say,
21:43
Speaker 1: did you guys know I used to be addicted to
21:44
Speaker 1: the hooky pokey? Sorry, but you turned yourself around, myself
21:49
Speaker 1: around all right? No, no, no, So speaking of hookie,
22:04
Speaker 1: and not to to derail you, I want you to finish.
22:06
Speaker 1: Isn't Ring around the Rosie a plague song too? That
22:09
Speaker 1: describes a kind of uncontrollable dance that was being done.
22:13
Speaker 1: I thought was scarlet fever. It is ring around the
22:17
Speaker 1: rosie is a description of various of the black plague
22:23
Speaker 1: at a various cures, purported cures. Okay, so the dance
22:27
Speaker 1: wasn't an uncontrollable dance. It was sort of something that
22:30
Speaker 1: was intended to ritualistically cure it because I know that
22:33
Speaker 1: the ring around the rosie was describing literally a like
22:39
Speaker 1: a mark some k or whatever they're called. Yeah, it's
22:43
Speaker 1: the physical, it's the it's the way the infection looks
22:48
Speaker 1: on skin. It's really dark when you realize what that
22:51
Speaker 1: nursery rhyme is about pocket full of posey being a
22:55
Speaker 1: purported cure or a way to ward off the plague.
22:58
Speaker 1: And then they all fall down a k A die
23:02
Speaker 1: ashes ashes, and they're not talking about eating ashes for nutrition,
23:08
Speaker 1: which is oh wait, this was this is coming out
23:11
Speaker 1: before our Food Pyramid episode. Maybe we'll see it'll make sense. Yeah, yeah,
23:16
Speaker 1: accidental teaser. So this picture that Brugal shows us is
23:24
Speaker 1: pretty disturbing, especially because of the blank expressions of the
23:28
Speaker 1: people dancing. They don't look like they're having fun. Have
23:33
Speaker 1: you gotten to the part in elden Ring where there's
23:37
Speaker 1: a village with all of these crazy like CULTI dancing people,
23:42
Speaker 1: and it's very similar that they won't mess with you
23:44
Speaker 1: unless you attack them first, but they have these blank
23:47
Speaker 1: expressions and they're kind of all dancing, and I haven't
23:50
Speaker 1: really gotten to I sort of took a pause on
23:52
Speaker 1: that game because it was too hard, But um, I
23:54
Speaker 1: feel like there's some lore hidden in some of the
23:57
Speaker 1: items that you might pick up in that game that
23:59
Speaker 1: might descry what's going on with these folks, and wouldn't
24:02
Speaker 1: be surprised if it was inspired by something like this.
24:04
Speaker 1: I also paused on Elden Ring. I went back to
24:07
Speaker 1: sky Rim, and I think I was I was texting, um,
24:10
Speaker 1: maybe maybe it was you Max where I realized that
24:14
Speaker 1: I'm at the level of Skyrim. I'm just trying to
24:16
Speaker 1: get to level eighty now so I can just grind things.
24:19
Speaker 1: But I'm basically I've turned it into animal crossing. I
24:22
Speaker 1: go around in my little houses and build little improvements,
24:26
Speaker 1: you know, I collect fish. It's yeah, there was that
24:29
Speaker 1: one day. It was off Mike, who was you, me
24:32
Speaker 1: and uh obviously front of the podcast Pat Frederick and
24:35
Speaker 1: I was talking about he's all like getting into sky
24:37
Speaker 1: Rim and then you and I just went out a
24:38
Speaker 1: rant about all the end games stuff and how not
24:42
Speaker 1: much fun it is at the end, it's just kidding
24:43
Speaker 1: houses and stuff. I think we really capped his ceiling
24:48
Speaker 1: on what he thinks of that game now, No, I mean,
24:50
Speaker 1: Matt's a beast though with those kind of games, so
24:52
Speaker 1: he's really good at him He's pretty good. If you
24:54
Speaker 1: want to learn more, check out the ephemeral second part
24:57
Speaker 1: where we have Matt on talking about video games with
25:00
Speaker 1: us beautiful and uh, you know you can feel like
25:05
Speaker 1: you're I love that you're compared mentioning that elder ring thing.
25:09
Speaker 1: We need to learn more about the lower there. But yeah,
25:12
Speaker 1: that's that's a pretty strangely accurate depiction of what this
25:17
Speaker 1: dancing plague looks like. We do know that psychologically, humans
25:27
Speaker 1: still have the same hardware now as they did back then.
25:30
Speaker 1: So if you have a lot of bad stress distress,
25:34
Speaker 1: it increases your likelihood of succumbing to an involuntary trance state.
25:41
Speaker 1: And then there's there's this interesting parallel that Waller draws.
25:46
Speaker 1: He says this might not be a coincidence that the
25:50
Speaker 1: dancing plague of thirteen seventy four was spreading in areas
25:55
Speaker 1: that had suffered the worst consequences of a devastating flood.
26:00
Speaker 1: M hmmm, yeah, I don't know. Like again, it feels
26:04
Speaker 1: like something's in the water, right, yeah, I mean. And
26:09
Speaker 1: also life just kind of stinks. Harvests are doing terribly
26:13
Speaker 1: and again these are largely a grarian economies. The grain
26:17
Speaker 1: prices are the highest they've ever been in most people's lifetime.
26:20
Speaker 1: Syphilis is everywhere right Leopards, he's back. And oh if
26:25
Speaker 1: that's not enough, guess what still here? Never left? Shout
26:28
Speaker 1: out to the plague. Don't call it a come back.
26:31
Speaker 1: And yeah, things literally did stink, like actually because the
26:35
Speaker 1: thing that was in the water was probably human waste.
26:39
Speaker 1: We know about the Great Stink of London, you know,
26:41
Speaker 1: and and how that led to sanitation reform. But this
26:44
Speaker 1: is well before that, and there was a lot of
26:47
Speaker 1: just human waste being thrown out into the streets and
26:50
Speaker 1: running off into you know, the things that would feed
26:53
Speaker 1: these bodies of water. Yeah. And if despair creates the
26:59
Speaker 1: you know, the tile soil for an extreme psychological reaction,
27:03
Speaker 1: it still doesn't explain why so many people danced. Why
27:07
Speaker 1: didn't they freak out and have riots, you know what
27:10
Speaker 1: I mean? Why did no, one just kind of go
27:12
Speaker 1: into a catatonic state. This is where you have to
27:16
Speaker 1: look towards anthropology. And this is very interesting to us
27:20
Speaker 1: because in stuff they want you to know, we've looked
27:22
Speaker 1: at a lot of accounts of possession and exorcism and
27:26
Speaker 1: mass possession like the Screaming Girls in Malaysia episodes, right, uh,
27:31
Speaker 1: which is much more contemporary, and I think there's, if
27:33
Speaker 1: not of that exact event, there is video and audio
27:36
Speaker 1: of some of these instances of mass hysteria and it
27:39
Speaker 1: is bone chilling. Yeah, no, it's dark. They are not
27:43
Speaker 1: acting whatever is happening to them. They very much believe it.
27:47
Speaker 1: Uh So, if you look at possession rituals, what you
27:51
Speaker 1: see is there's a huge psychological aspect. People are more
27:55
Speaker 1: likely to enter a trance state if they've expect it
28:00
Speaker 1: to happen and that they will behave in a ritualistic manner,
28:04
Speaker 1: and this manner in which they behave is shaped by
28:07
Speaker 1: the cultural lens of their society. Does that have to
28:11
Speaker 1: do with like people that are more susceptible to hypnosis
28:14
Speaker 1: and also just kind of like when you're in that situation,
28:17
Speaker 1: you're sort of you're expecting and maybe hoping that you
28:20
Speaker 1: will be put into a trance. You know what, I
28:25
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of sand to that one.
28:27
Speaker 1: I think that's a great observation. Like we know, and
28:30
Speaker 1: Waller points us out, we know that female mediums in Madagascar,
28:35
Speaker 1: which has a very interesting religious background in comparison to
28:39
Speaker 1: UM the African continent UH. In Madagascar, these mediums will
28:44
Speaker 1: take on distinct personas of the spirits that are believed
28:48
Speaker 1: to possess them. You also see this in Voudoun, where
28:53
Speaker 1: there's the pantheon of gods that can ride or possess
28:58
Speaker 1: practitioners in the UH. The people who are possessed by
29:02
Speaker 1: these loa will then exhibit known personality traits. So that's
29:08
Speaker 1: supernatural being. And you know, I said vudon, that's one
29:12
Speaker 1: of the names of the belief system known today as voodoo.
29:17
Speaker 1: V O d o you. So, now we kind of
29:21
Speaker 1: get to the part of the story that maybe starts
29:24
Speaker 1: to lean more into the idea of mass hysteria and
29:27
Speaker 1: what might cause any psychological need or you know, influence
29:33
Speaker 1: for behaving in this way. Yeah. Yes, So now we
29:37
Speaker 1: look at some more primary sources, legal works of the day,
29:41
Speaker 1: historical chronicles, even even unto paintings on altars. We see
29:47
Speaker 1: that people were aware of this, and the zeitgeist of
29:51
Speaker 1: the day was one of terror. People were not just
29:55
Speaker 1: aware of this stuff happening, they were afraid it was
29:57
Speaker 1: on the way to them. And if you lived by
30:01
Speaker 1: a commercial waterway, you would probably be pretty terrified that
30:06
Speaker 1: these spirits might one day hit your town next, you know,
30:11
Speaker 1: because the one thing you know for sure is that
30:13
Speaker 1: it's happening around water again. People are clocking this in
30:17
Speaker 1: the days of yesteryear as well. That's right, and I
30:20
Speaker 1: think it shouldn't be you know, minimized that you know,
30:23
Speaker 1: while there certainly is almost definitely a medical explanation for
30:27
Speaker 1: this stuff. You know, you've heard of the idea of
30:30
Speaker 1: having a bad trip. It's all about like what your
30:33
Speaker 1: belief system is and how being in an altered state
30:36
Speaker 1: can really bring a lot of that stuff up to
30:38
Speaker 1: the four And this was a time of great fear
30:41
Speaker 1: of God and fear of retribution and fear of demonic
30:45
Speaker 1: possession and evil spirits from the beyond. So it makes
30:49
Speaker 1: sense that in terms of the zeitgeist, there would be
30:52
Speaker 1: a collective kind of emphasis on these types of things.
30:55
Speaker 1: You know, these ideas of rivers of blood and you know,
30:59
Speaker 1: demons and deals. Yeah yeah, like okay, so we're talking
31:03
Speaker 1: about expectations, right, we're talking about the psychology here. So
31:08
Speaker 1: there's another interesting thing Waller finds. It's that a lot
31:12
Speaker 1: of these outbreaks of the st venis dance. The current
31:16
Speaker 1: towns that are close to cities that have already been
31:19
Speaker 1: infected by this epidemic. Uh So they're aware of it.
31:23
Speaker 1: They're thinking it's gonna happen. All it would take then
31:27
Speaker 1: is a few people believing themselves to be subject to
31:32
Speaker 1: the curse to slip into a trance. They start dancing,
31:35
Speaker 1: someone else sees it, and then they might be driven
31:39
Speaker 1: by fear. They might think, okay, I can get through
31:43
Speaker 1: this by dancing. So maybe they fall out of the
31:46
Speaker 1: transfer a second and they say, the only way to
31:48
Speaker 1: lift the curses if I keep going. That's right. And
31:51
Speaker 1: it it makes me think of what we were talking
31:54
Speaker 1: about earlier, where in certain events of mass hysteria, sometimes
31:58
Speaker 1: there were people that were mimicking folks that were maybe
32:01
Speaker 1: not actually you know, afflicted, you know, because the power
32:06
Speaker 1: of suggestion that you guys are, I mean, this is
32:08
Speaker 1: dancing going on as we speak the power of suggestion
32:11
Speaker 1: when paired with religious ideology that's like incredibly deep rooted,
32:17
Speaker 1: is incredibly powerful and can cause people to do things
32:20
Speaker 1: and to behave outside of their own best interests or
32:23
Speaker 1: outside of things that they would you know, normally do.
32:27
Speaker 1: Yeah a d And you know, you can see the
32:31
Speaker 1: role of belief here when you look at the speed
32:35
Speaker 1: at which the epidemics disappeared. When people took cultural actions
32:41
Speaker 1: that seemed appropriate in this situation. So victims would pray
32:45
Speaker 1: at certain shrines or the local clergy would give them
32:50
Speaker 1: an exorcism ritual. We know about this because there are
32:54
Speaker 1: some accounts from the mid to late fifteen hundreds of
32:59
Speaker 1: cults of a bunch of entrance dancers in towns close
33:03
Speaker 1: to the Black Forest, right where the Ryan enters the
33:06
Speaker 1: North Sea. These people would deliberately enter a trance and
33:09
Speaker 1: then they would dance, and they were fancy about it.
33:11
Speaker 1: They danced with music, and they danced towards these shrines
33:16
Speaker 1: to patron saints, to St. Fittis and St. John. And
33:21
Speaker 1: this seemed like there was a way to reframe the
33:26
Speaker 1: phenomenon here. This epidemic, whether it's psychological or physiological, this
33:31
Speaker 1: epidemic has now been channeled into becoming a positive thing,
33:36
Speaker 1: a religious ritual. Now we're dancing because we want to,
33:40
Speaker 1: and it's in service of our belief system. Yeah, you
33:43
Speaker 1: could leave your friends behind. And if your friends don't dance,
33:46
Speaker 1: and if they don't dance, and then they're no friends
33:47
Speaker 1: of mine and going to hell. I'm gonna just stay
33:50
Speaker 1: at this. I got signed up to do that song
33:52
Speaker 1: in karaoke when else in Chicago one time? Not friend
33:55
Speaker 1: of mine? Not the easiest song to singing karaoke, especially
33:57
Speaker 1: when you are quite in debraid like I was at
33:59
Speaker 1: the time. Put me in the game, coach. Yeah, I'll
34:03
Speaker 1: go in there with you. Uh oh, we got I
34:06
Speaker 1: did dance a lot. There you go there. Point I
34:09
Speaker 1: stopped saying. I just screamed dance. Both the Williams brothers
34:13
Speaker 1: are dancing fools, that's for sure. By the mid sixteen hundreds,
34:17
Speaker 1: it seemed that the the dancing plagues are in a
34:21
Speaker 1: sharp decline. They disappear, and Waller ties this to uh
34:28
Speaker 1: the decline of supernaturalism, right where the mid sixty hundreds
34:32
Speaker 1: were entering a new era of thought, and by the
34:36
Speaker 1: late sixteen hundreds, St. Vitus's dance it gets well appropriated.
34:43
Speaker 1: That's the word Waller uses to describe a very different
34:46
Speaker 1: medical condition. So really what we're learning, I think is
34:50
Speaker 1: the power of belief, which can be as dangerous as
34:54
Speaker 1: it is positive. No, I completely agree, And we we
34:58
Speaker 1: teased a few other legs that you know, we're similar
35:01
Speaker 1: to this early on. But we also have an incredible
35:04
Speaker 1: list of other odd plagues that I honestly think we
35:08
Speaker 1: should maybe just do another episode on weird plagues because
35:13
Speaker 1: there's a ton of them out there, like things like
35:15
Speaker 1: the Pokemon shock. That's the thing. Yes, finally, laughter epidemics. Uh, well,
35:22
Speaker 1: we don't want to give you too many, too many spoilers,
35:24
Speaker 1: because I think you're right. No, I think this is
35:26
Speaker 1: its own episode. With this in mind, we are going
35:31
Speaker 1: to call it a day. We're gonna put on our
35:34
Speaker 1: own dancing shoes and go off to have some weird adventures.
35:40
Speaker 1: I think, Nol, you and I might even briefly meet
35:42
Speaker 1: for a second. Yeah, and uh, we're gonna hang out
35:46
Speaker 1: because again, Max, Noel and I are friends in real life.
35:50
Speaker 1: This is more than just a job to us, and
35:52
Speaker 1: we consider you a friend as well. So we hope
35:55
Speaker 1: that the next time you're dancing. It is consensual. You're happy,
35:59
Speaker 1: you're not tripping, and you can stop whatever you want. Yeah,
36:03
Speaker 1: tripping either physically, you know, over your feet or cognitively. Also,
36:09
Speaker 1: before we end the episode, can I just say, let's dance,
36:13
Speaker 1: put on your red shoes and dance the blues? How
36:15
Speaker 1: does one dance the blues? I've always did the blues.
36:17
Speaker 1: Doesn't really seem like much of a dancing, uh situation.
36:20
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm wrong and you kind of not. You kind
36:23
Speaker 1: of nod only you want to know how? Let's dance
36:28
Speaker 1: to the song they're playing on the radio. Yeah, Well,
36:31
Speaker 1: tremble like a flower, that's the They sort of describe
36:34
Speaker 1: the dance in the song. Always a fan of a
36:36
Speaker 1: song that describes how to do the dance that the
36:39
Speaker 1: song is about. And uh, we are about here. We
36:44
Speaker 1: hope you're hafting. We hope you're having a great week.
36:47
Speaker 1: We will be back either right after or right before
36:50
Speaker 1: this with an exploration slash expose a on theod Food Pyramid,
36:56
Speaker 1: Thanks as always to Jonathan Strickland are own StatET Vetics.
36:59
Speaker 1: They too, of course the magnificent work of John Waller.
37:04
Speaker 1: Thanks to let's see he's Jeff cot Yeah, super producer
37:08
Speaker 1: and research associate to Max Williams Alex Williams who composed
37:12
Speaker 1: this theme, And thanks to you, Ben, We'll see you
37:15
Speaker 1: next time, folks. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
37:25
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
37:27
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.