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SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: What is Collective Hysteria? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hey everybody and welcome to the Stuff You Should Know
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Gets Weird playlist. This is another one of our quarterly playlists, everyone,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: that we compile because we found that people like us
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: sort of grouping things and bucketing things and cataloging things
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: into groups of 10 to 12. And I think we
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: have 11 of them this time out. And we're getting
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: started this week with the inaugural episode of the Stuff
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: You Should Know Gets Weird playlist with our episode, What
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: is Collective Hysteria? So please give a listen and enjoy it.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me,
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And Jerry's over
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: there to the left. And that makes this Stuff You
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: Should Know.
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: Got the A-team in the hizzy.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: I call face.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: What?
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: I'm face.
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: Oh, of course you're face. Look at you. I would
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: be a combination of Murdoch and Mr. T, I think. Yeah.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: Well, your hair is kind of spiky in the middle today.
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Jerry, I don't know what she'd be. I guess
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: she'd be the leader. She'd be Hannibal.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: She's smoking a cigar right now.
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: And wearing a black glove.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: When did you start smoking cigars, Jerry?
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: That's weird.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: Very timely.
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: I said A-team. I don't want to slag off guest
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: producer Noel. He's not exactly B-team. No. We'll just call
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: ourselves the OGs.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Okay. Now that we have that established, we are the OGs.
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: We need bowling shirts that say as much on the back.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: You feeling good?
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: I'm feeling nauseous and dizzy.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Oh, well, Chuck, did you happen to see somebody else
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: who is nauseous and dizzy?
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: Well, Jerry was last week, and then a few more
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: people in the office, so I just figured we all
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: had the same thing.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: All right. I'm going to diagnose this.
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: It's called collective hysteria, also known, I think... more appropriately,
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: is mass psychogenic disorder.
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: I think when you add the word hysteria to this,
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: it takes on certain dimensions that a lot of people
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: could find very objectionable.
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: You know, hysterics, hysteria, it's like.
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: Dogs and cats living together.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think it has a definite gender-specific connotation
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: to it from over the years. Like, women were supposedly
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: very hysterical. So, the idea of diagnosing somebody as hysterical
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: under any circumstances is kind of a tad amount to
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: patting them on the head.
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, here, nice lady, you're just a little hysterical. You
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: just go calm down and bake something. Right.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Stop being crazy. No, mass psychogenic disorder instead is just
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: kind of like, whoa, your brain just did something pretty neat.
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: And that is the case for mass psychogenic disorder, if
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: you ask me. In this article, Chuck, written by Jacob Silverman.
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: Jeopardy champion.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah, he won on Jeopardy. That makes
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: him a champion, right?
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think so. He wasn't, like, the ultimate champion,
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: but he won a couple of episodes.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: Right, which is why they should have a word for,
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: I guess, like, champion is, like, the one who won
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: it all.
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: Ken Jennings.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or Watson.
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: Who's that?
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: The IBM computer.
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: Oh, well, yeah, sure.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: So Jeopardy winner Jacob Silverman wrote this article years back,
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: and he did a pretty great job of citing... a, uh,
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: contemporary outbreak of mass psychogenic disorder that had been going
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: on around that time down in Mexico, down Mexico way
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: in Chalco, Mexico at a boarding school there. Uh, it
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: apparently was a girl's boarding school and the girls that
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: went to school, they were ages 12 to 17 and
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden they started, uh, well, there was
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: an outbreak, a weird outbreak. There was vomiting, I believe,
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: trouble walking, um, There was fever. Yeah. That's weird.
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: Nausea.
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  Speaker 3: And so the people running this boarding school were like,
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: what's going on? This is not good.
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And they had no idea. The girls went on Christmas
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: break for 10 days, came back, and the thing just
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: took off again like wildfire.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. 600 of the 3,600 girls showed these symptoms and
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: nobody could figure it out. They did a lot of tests.
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: They brought in people to like check out the facilities. Yeah.
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: Because as you'll see, there's a trend there. You know,
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: here in the West, they start to blame it usually
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: on like environmental poisoning of some kind.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: Right. You know, there's some sort of toxin present that
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: has poisoned everybody.
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: But they didn't find anything there. And eventually they said
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: this is. what'd you call it? Psychosomatic?
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: Mass psychogenic disorder.
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: Okay. Mass psychogenic disorder.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: But no, that is one of the names. Mass psychogenic disorder,
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: collective hysteria, mass hysteria, or mass psychosomatic reaction.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah. They're all saying the same thing.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: They are.
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: Which is you're not, well, I was about to say
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: you're not really sick, but that is not exactly true
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: because that's one thing that differentiates this from something that's
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: just in your head is you actually do manifest physical symptoms.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: There's this article written by a MD named Timothy F.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: Jones from the Tennessee Department of Health way back in
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: the heady days of 2000, the year 2000, the future.
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: And he writes that if you are experiencing mass psychogenic disorder,
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: it is not just in your head. that the symptoms
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: that you have are actually very real. Even though there's
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: no toxic cause, they couldn't find some sort of environmental
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: poisoning or anything like that, the symptoms are extremely real.
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: It's just psychosomatic. It's just basically the brain has been
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: tricked into causing this response.
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and this has happened. They've documented about 80 cases
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: throughout history, and apparently the National Institutes of Health gets
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: about two cases per week reported.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: But, um, which is, I mean, like that's, that's way
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: more common than, than you would think.
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: You know? Yeah. I would think there'd be more than 80.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: Cause I mean, these have happened. If you go back
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: and look at, I mean, there's all sorts of crazy
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: lists on the internet about these cases that date back
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: to like the 14th century.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: Medieval dancing mania was one of them.
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah. The dancing plague. Yeah. Yeah. That's in there.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: Uh, the Salem witchcraft trials.
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Or the Salem witchcraft, I guess what led to the
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: trials was, um, supposedly attributed to this kind of thing.
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah. One weird thing about this condition is more times
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: than not, it affects females.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And young females, even more specifically, teenagers or even younger.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: Which is, as far as it goes right now, inexplicable.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: And it's kind of a prickly issue, you know? Like, again,
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: you kind of come back to the idea of calling
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: it hysteria. Yeah. The fact that it does tend to
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: afflict women or girls more than boys is apparently one
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: means of diagnosing psychogenic disorder, mass psychogenic disorder.
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's like one of the first things they'll say
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: is like all this sickness is happening in this place,
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: this school, wherever. And the doctor will say, is it
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: a bunch of girls? Yeah. And then that will clue
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: them in that, hey, this might be what we're dealing
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: with here.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: But the problem is no one has any idea why.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: And there have been explanations of things like, I guess,
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: this is girls' culturally acceptable outlet for raging against the patriarchy.
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: Even if they don't necessarily feel that that's what they're doing,
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: this is the symptoms of that. That's one.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I thought this was a pretty interesting part. What article?
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: Is that from Slate?
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: There was one called Mass hysteria in upstate New York
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: by Ruth Graham was on slate. That was a good one.
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: It was a really good one. We'll get to that
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: case in a sec. But I thought it was pretty interesting.
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: In one part it says, and this is a quote
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: from someone writing about something, it said, inform, if not
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: in conscious intent, it is to protest the sexual repressiveness,
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: rigid double standard of female teen culture. But they were
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: writing about Beatlemania.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: Which is interesting because it sort of has a similar
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: vibe Of young ladies being repressed, not having an outlet.
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: And so they see the Beatles and they go berserk
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: and faint and cry and scream collectively. Whereas boys, they're
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: more prone to just act out if they're not feeling good.
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: Girls are trained to keep things inward. And they also
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: point out that ladies and young ladies are more prone
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: to seek a doctor's help for something. They say that
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: may account for the bias right there.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 4: Like guys just won't go to the doctor.
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: Exactly. You have to be careful, though, in just diagnosing
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: mass psychogenic disorder. You physicians out there who are listening
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: that encounter a case like this, just by basing it
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: on the fact that it is affecting more girls than boys,
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: because there's at least one case in Great Britain where
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: I think girls were afflicted by more than half, more
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: than double the number of girls were afflicted by this.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: And it turned out that there were tainted cucumbers being
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: served in the lunchroom.
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And everyone knows boys hate cucumbers.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: So they didn't eat any. Right. But this is one
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: of the issues with dealing with mass psychogenic disorder in
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: that it looks and acts a lot like some sort
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: of weird epidemic. That basically it looks like either something
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: like bioterrorism. a rapidly spreading infection, or affection if it's
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: fetal mania, and then acute toxic exposure. That's what it
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: looks like. It's like one person gets sick. This is
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: your index case. And all of a sudden, everyone around
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: them suddenly has the same symptoms.
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's, like you said, it's super dangerous to
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: just dismiss that as, oh, it's all in your head,
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: silly little ladies. You can't do that because what if
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: it is something for real? But it's also a double-edged sword,
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: as that doctor pointed out. You start ordering batteries of tests,
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: and it can go both ways. It can, what the
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: old saying is, if you order enough tests, you're going
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: to find something.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: So it can fuel that fire, but you also can't
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: not run any tests and just dismiss it. So it's
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: a very fine line that physicians walk when dealing with
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: stuff like this, for sure.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: Indeed. Apparently, study of mass psychogenic disorder has found that
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: it's more prevalent in isolated communities.
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: And in situations where there are highly rigid, formalized, structured rules.
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: Like a Catholic school in Mexico.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: Or, again, Salem, Massachusetts in the 17th century.
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: You know, and apparently between 1973 and 1993, half of
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: all the outbreaks of psychogenic illness took place in schools.
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: So that's possibly in part due to kids being susceptible
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: to it more.
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: But also because of that rigid formalized structure.
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's also usually a top-down effect, like it'll
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: start with a teacher or an older student, and then
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: the younger students follow suit, which, if you're talking influence,
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: would make sense for sure.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: There was one very famous case. Apparently, there's not very
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: many actual academic studies on this. Yeah. But there's one
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: that came out of the New England Journal of Medicine
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: that described a case in 1998 in Tennessee where a teacher...
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: noticed some weird gas odor, a gassy odor.
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: Like the chemical kind.
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, not like the guy on the front row tooted.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: Right, exactly.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: And she apparently started suffering symptoms. And all of a sudden,
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: like 180 students and teachers had to go to the
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: emergency room. The school was shut down for two weeks.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: They did all this environmental testing, couldn't find anything.
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: And finally- traced it back to a mass psychogenic disorder.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: That's what did it.
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: And then everyone, in most of these cases, we should
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: point out, everyone starts feeling better.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: Like in Mexico and then the school in Tennessee, it's
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: not like they went on to die or anything.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so in the school in Mexico, these girls were
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: at a boarding school.
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: They were only allowed to see their parents, I think,
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: like three times a year.
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they couldn't even call. It's like, it sounds more
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: like a prison. Right.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: No phone calls. They were allowed letters. When they went home,
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: immediately their symptoms cleared up.
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: The problem is that doesn't automatically say, oh, well, it's
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: obviously mass psychogenic disorder. It could be an environmental toxin
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: that they were being exposed to still.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: At the school and were removed from, but I think the...
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: Definite prognosis is mass psychogenic disorder in this case.
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: That's right. What we're talking about is a sort of
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: version of the nocebo effect, which we've talked about before,
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: and we will get into that right after this break.
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: So the nocebo effect, we talked about that in what?
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: The placebo effect.
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: Oh, well, that makes sense. Yeah. I was... Trying to
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: be more clever. Thought we were more clever than that. Nocebo,
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: I think we said in that other podcast too, is
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: Latin for I shall harm. And that's basically, whereas you
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: take a placebo thinking it's going to help you out,
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: and it does help you out because the mind is powerful.
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: The nocebo effect is thinking something bad will result. Like
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: my teacher's getting sick. I think I feel a little
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: sick too. And then, oh wait, my neighbor's feeling a
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: little sick. I think I'm feeling a little sick too.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: Or this drug trial that I'm on. I was told
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: that I could, possibly get some sort of gastrointestinal distress. Yeah.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: And even though I've been given a sugar pill, I'm
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: now going, yeah, because of my mind, because of the
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: nocebo effect.
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: There was a famous experiment or case from 1886 where
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: there was a woman who had a rose allergy and
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: they showed her an artificial rose and she began to,
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: I guess it was convincing, and she began to have
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: her allergic reaction And they said, aha, it's fake. And
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: you're faking. And she said, oh, well, I think I'm
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: feeling better now. And supposedly that cured her of her
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: real allergy to real roses.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: I couldn't find a lot to back that up. But
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: it is a story.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, no. I mean, it was in, I can't
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: remember the journal.
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: Oh, it really was?
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a real deal thing. And I didn't
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: get to the bottom of why. They presented this woman
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: with a fake rose or whatever, but they definitely didn't.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: This definitely happened. Yeah. And even the author of the
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: study was saying, like, this woman, she wasn't faking.
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: It was like she had real symptoms. Sure.
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: Hives are hives.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: You can see those.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: I think they call it like a rose cold or
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: something like that. You can get, you know, stuffy.
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: Your eyes are watering, your nose is running, that kind
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: of thing. And what's interesting is some researchers have studied
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: the nocebo effect, and they basically have isolated this chemical
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: that gets released when the nocebo effect's going on. And again,
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: we should say it's not just making your nose runny
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: or releasing histamines or anything like that. It's pain, too.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: You can experience pain even though nothing's there to give
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: you pain just because of the nocebo effect. What they
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: found was a, I guess, a hormone, I believe. Are
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: you ready? I'm going to try this one. Cholecystokinin.
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: That sounds great.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: Thanks, man.
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: I haven't looked at the word, but it sounds right.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: Cholecystokinin.
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: Do you see it now?
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: That's totally right.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: I totally did. So it's a hormone, right? And it
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: gets released, and it actually helps you experience pain. So
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: it's a nasty little hormone.
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: But they found in testing with the nocebo effect that
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: if you block this, you can also block the nocebo effect.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: So that proves two things.
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: Does that block pain though? Yes. Like your pain receptors? Yes.
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: So does that mean if you slam your hand in
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: a door, you won't feel it?
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: If you can block this.
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: Yes. So if you can block cholecystokinin.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: Yes. It will keep you from hypersensitivity to pain, I believe.
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: And this guy named Fabrizio Benedetti, who I think was
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: also in the strokes, back in 1997. There was a Fabrizio, right?
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: He was testing out the nocebo effect and found that
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: if he told people that he was giving them an injection,
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: which is a pretty cruel test, but effective. Yeah. These
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: post-op people who had just come out of surgery were
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: given an injection and told this injection is going to
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: increase your pain in 30 minutes. I'm sorry, we have
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: to give it to you. It's part of the procedure.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: He gave some people an injection of saline and they
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: reported an increase in pain.
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: And they all went behind the two-way mirror and laughed. Right.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: They're like, what a chump.
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: Look at him writhing.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: And then they gave somebody like the other group, the
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: control group, a chemical, an injection that blocks that pain,
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: but they were told that it was going to increase
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: their pain.
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: But they were given a chemical that blocks cholecystokinin and
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: the nocebo effect didn't take place. They didn't report an
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: increase in pain.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: Even though they were told they would. Yes. Wow.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: So this guy's saying like the nocebo effect is real.
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: Like when they say it's not just in your head.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: You're experiencing the same thing as if you were experiencing
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: somebody stabbing you.
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: Well, what it is real, you know, that's when you
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: have to start asking yourself those deep philosophical questions. Right. Interesting. Um, there's, uh,
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: another case that's, have you ever seen the movie safe?
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: The Todd Haynes movie with Julianne Moore?
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: No.
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: It's from like, uh, the mid nineties. And she played
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: a lady that, um, started to have environmental sickness, um,
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: just in the air. And she's got sort of like increasingly, um,
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: crazy as the movie went on as far as scrubbing
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: things and locking herself in her house and making her
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: house a clean environment.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: Sounds great.
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: It was good. And there's a true story, though, of
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: a lady in London named Debbie Bird. She's a health
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: spa manager that says that she's allergic to EMF, electromagnetic fields.
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: And it's an actual thing now. You know, there's more
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: than her claiming it's called ES, electromagnetic sensitivity, where she has...
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: basically transformed her house. She painted it black. She said
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: she's allergic to computers, cell phones, microwaves. She had her
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: house rewired to make it basically EMF free. She and
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: her husband sleep under a silver plated mosquito net to
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: keep out radio waves and covered all her windows with
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: protective films. And she said she's feeling a lot better now.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: So I saw that ES, electromagnetic sensitivity, that if you
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: expose somebody to an electromagnetic field and then just tell
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: them that you are and don't, they have the same reaction,
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: which would suggest that it's nocebo.
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: Well, it's super fascinating because you see cases like this
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: from that to like gluten sensitivity becoming a big thing now.
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: And people, some people contend that, well, it's maybe a
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: collective hysteria going on.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: If you think you're going to be sensitive to gluten,
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: then you're going to be sensitive to things that contain gluten.
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: And I'm not saying that, people, because that's a very
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: hot topic.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: Sure it is.
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: But some people have claimed that.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: Well, we'll talk a little bit more about things that
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: exacerbate the mass psychogenic disorder and the nocebo effect right
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: after this. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. So, Chuck,
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: back in 2007 in New Zealand, a drug called L-troxin.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: It was a pretty widespread drug in New Zealand. It's
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: a hormone replacement drug. And it was the only one
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: that the government would pay for. So most people who
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: were on this hormone replacement therapy were using L-troxin. And
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: it had been that way for, like, decades.
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: It was just an established drug. GlaxoSmithKline.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: What was it for, though?
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: Hormone replacement.
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: Oh, okay.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: GlaxoSmithKline.com. I think just those, there's no welcome involved, changed
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: just the outer, the inner qualities of it, like the
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: shape of the pill, the color. And I think that's
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: about it. But the active ingredient was exactly the same
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: in 2007. And when they released it, all of a sudden,
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: some reports of bad side effects were starting to trickle in.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: And the government was like, wait, what's going on here?
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: It got a little bit of media attention and more
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: reports started trickling in.
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: And then the media attention grew and the reports grew
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: and grew. And apparently the reporting of adverse effects of
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: L-troxin increased 2,000 fold in a year and a half.
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: Because of the look of the pill.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: Because of the look of the pill.
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: They went back and studied this and they found that
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: in areas where there was more reporting about these adverse
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: effects being reported for L-troxin, the more adverse effects were
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: being reported in that area. And that kind of reveals
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: one of the risk factors for mass psychogenic disorder is
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: the media. It's actually spread through the media most easily.
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they have a point, though. I mean, I know
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: in this article, too, it points out that pills that
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: are blue and green are usually associated with drowsiness. Pills
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: that are orange or yellow are are not, and I
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: don't know if that's why they market it that way
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: or if it's the opposite, is we just see it
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: that way because of products like NyQuil and DayQuil. But
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: the one that makes you sleepy is green and blue,
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: and the one that keeps you awake, or not keep
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: you awake, but doesn't make you drowsy is orange.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: I thought about it. I think, I mean, what do
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: you associate with, like, daytime, sunrise, yellow, orange, red?
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: It totally makes sense.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: What do you associate with nighttime? Like, something tranquil, like blue.
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, scotch amber. Uh, yeah, you, I mean, you think of, uh,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: that's what I, I, I think it came from, I
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: think the pills came after the association rather than the
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: other way around.
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I think I even, like when I get a
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: prescription for something, when I see the pill, I make
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: a judgment on it before I've even had it just
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: by saying, wow, look at that thing. It's heavy.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: That's a horse pill or that's a capsule with, uh,
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: you know, powdery stuff inside that's different than the chalky one.
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: It's you. I think you just make an association. I
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: don't think I have any preconceived notions on what a
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: larger pill will do to me.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: Or a capsule will do to me other than a tablet.
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: But I think it's interesting, though, how you make these
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: judgment calls.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: But without even thinking about it.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: You know, I mean, like you probably don't sit there
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: and look at a pill in your hand. You just
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: take it and just make some sort of almost unconscious judgment.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: judgments about it.
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it may remind you of another pill that helped
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: you that you're not even remembering.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: Exactly. So that would be placebo.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: That's great. Nocebo effect poses a lot of problems. For instance,
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: there was a study, I think, in the 90s that
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: found that women who believed that they were prone to
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: heart disease were four times likelier to die of heart
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: disease than than women who didn't believe they were prone
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: to it, even though they had all the exact same
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: risk factors, basically the same risk factors. There was nothing
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: differentiating these women aside from a belief that they were
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: going to die from heart disease or a belief that
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: they weren't. And that led to a four-fold increase in
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: deaths from that, just basically from a belief is what
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: it suggests.
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it's sort of like the, I know it's
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: kind of cheesy, but the PMA, the positive mental attitude,
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: I think we've all know someone who walks around saying, oh,
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: so-and-so's sick. Oh, I know I'm going to get it.
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: I just know I'm going to get sick. Or, you know,
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: I just know I'm going to get cancer because it
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: runs in my family. I think that has an effect
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: on things.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: I have to agree. I know some of our more
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: skeptical listeners are pulling their hair out right now, but
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: I totally agree with you. When we did our show
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: in Toronto, on the way back, Yumi and I flew
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: out of Buffalo. And I was feeling a little down,
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: but like at the point where I feel like you
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: can talk yourself into staying healthy.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Positive mental attitude, I guess is what you call it.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: But we were leaving right at about dusk and the
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: sun was just beaming through the windows and illuminating every
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: single microbe, visible microbe in the air. I could see
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: them like just going into my nose and my mouth.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, I couldn't stop. Like I couldn't I
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: was like, I'm not going to get sick. I'm not
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: going to get sick. And man, did I ever get sick.
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: But I noticed that right when we took off and no,
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: you know what it was? Somebody shut one of their, um, their, uh,
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: window covers. Yeah. Yeah.
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: The shade.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: Shade. Exactly. Is the word that I was looking for.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: Somebody shut their shade and I couldn't see it anymore.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: And I immediately started to feel less symptomatic.
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: Wow. Immediately.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: It was like turning off a light.
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: And I still got sick. But I was just drowning
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: in basically what my brain was interpreting is like being
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: assaulted by foreign invaders, which I am all the time.
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: But I normally can't see them.
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, I do that all the time when I
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: open my the curtains in the bedroom and I'll see
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: in the morning, I'll see that stuff in the air.
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: And I just think, oh, man, that's what I'm walking around.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: Breathing in. Breathing.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: Dog hair and cat hair and. Emily hair.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: So your lungs are just chock full of it. So
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: one of the problems this poses, Chuck, for physicians is
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: that we expect doctors or we want doctors to be transparent,
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: to not lie to us.
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we've talked a lot about this lately, I feel like.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah. We've talked a lot about diseases. Some of our
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: hypochondriac listeners have been like, please stop talking about diseases
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: because now I've got morgulons. I'm going to have like
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: some sort of toxic exposure.
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: Toxoplasmosis.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Yep. And then very soon, leprosy.
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: Spoiler.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: So the problem is, is if you tell somebody that's
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: going into surgery, hey, by the way, Um, you know, you,
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: you might have trouble walking.
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: You might feel nauseous for the next six months. You
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: like all this stuff that could be associated with, which
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: we demand from our doctors.
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: It's been shown that if you are fearful or in
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: despair going into surgery, that's associated with longer healing times
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: and a higher risk of postoperative infection.
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: Right. So if you have the nocebo effect where doctors
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: are saying, Okay, if I tell somebody, and it's been
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: proven time after time that in drug trials, people who
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: are still are given placebo will drop out of drug
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: trials because they're experiencing these negative side effects, even though
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: they're given the sugar pill. So if you're a doctor
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: and you know that you are telling somebody something that
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: ultimately may end up harming them, and yet you've sworn
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: an oath to do no harm, you've got a conundrum
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: going on right now. And that's what the nocebo effect poses.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: It's the problem the nocebo effect poses for modern physicians.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: Like how much should they tell you? If you're going
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: to tell somebody that they're going to feel nauseous for
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: six months, even though they probably won't, should you tell
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: them and give them a chance to basically have the
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: psychosomatic symptom?
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: Or tell them they're going to feel great.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: Well, that's another one. Somebody says the solution to this
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: is just frame it differently.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: Like, don't say there's a chance you're going to have
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: nausea for six months. Say half of a percent of
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: patients who go through the same procedure that you're about
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: to go through have nausea for six months. 99.5% don't.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: You're giving them the same information. It's just framed more positively.
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And that one doctor who wrote the article on
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: collectivist area said what he recommends is not naming the illness.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: He said that can help out because as soon as
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: you give something a name, then... It just instantly, you know,
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: you have something you can call it and everyone's calling
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: it that or the media picks up on it. Right.
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: And it's a thing.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And that's actually, again, one of the risk factors
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: in the spread of mass psychogenic illness is the larger
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: the response, the emergency medical response to it. Yeah. And
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: then hence the larger the media response to it, the
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: larger the outbreak tends to be. It's called line of
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: sight exposure. Yeah. Just knowing somebody is sick or seeing
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: somebody sick can give you the same symptoms.
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: I'm sure if you see a news story that all
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: the other news agencies are running that says there's been
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: some weird chemical leak in the air in Atlanta, people
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: are going to start walking around and coughing and saying,
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: I'm not feeling so good. I have a bitter taste
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: in my mouth.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: There's microbes everywhere.
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: Well, here's a case from that article you sent that
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: I think is super fascinating. The one in upstate New York.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: Because it is not a rash or a cough or nausea,
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: it is Tourette syndrome. A 16-year-old young lady named Lori Bronwell,
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: what year was this? A couple years ago?
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, not too long ago. I think 2012.
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: In Corinth, New York, was... At her school's homecoming dance
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: and lost consciousness. This is after she had headbanged at
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: a concert.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: Sorry, man. I thought you were going to leap out
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: like the best part.
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, she was headbanging at a concert. I wish I
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: knew what concert that was so bad. Me too.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: I didn't find it anywhere.
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: Apparently passed out there and had passing outfits. Involuntary twitching
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: and clapping started, twisting her hair, fluttering her fingers. Hey, hey, hey.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: Starting stuff like that. Yeah. And the doctor said, you
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: know what? You've got Tourette's syndrome. So Tourette's syndrome is,
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: we've had a podcast on it.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: It's a real thing.
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: It's not psychosomatic. But since that time, 14 other students
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: along with her, 13 girls and one boy started exhibiting
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: at Leroy Junior High School. I'm sorry, Junior Senior High
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: School started coming down with Tourette's.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: Right, which is not contagious.
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: It is not contagious at all. Erin Brockovich got on
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: the case, famous environmental activist. And she said, no, I
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: think this is, got to do with this train derailment
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: from 1970 that dumped cyanide all over this town. And
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: I didn't see where they found any legitimate effects.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: Again, that's the confounding thing about mass psychogenic disorder is
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: that it is still possible that there is some weird
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: toxin in the environment that is causing this. Like maybe
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: there was exposure to cyanide that got in these people's
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: brains and all gave them Tourette. And if you stand
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: back and look at it, you're like, Tourette syndrome isn't contagious.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: That doesn't mean that you can't all come down with
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: Tourette syndrome from exposure to a toxin. It's just still,
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: it's this X factor that's out there that you can't
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: just necessarily rule out with confidence.
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I believe in that case too, those 14
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: students didn't end up with Tourette syndrome.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: That was a good episode, man. Loved Tourette syndrome one.
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's an oldie.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: Oldie but a goodie.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: And it all came from headbanging.
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: That's how it started.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: That mess.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: At a Nickelback show.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because Corinth is near Canada. Canada doesn't let Nickelback
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: out any longer.
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: Oh, really? Are they caged in there? Yeah. Nice. There's
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: another case of the toxic lady. Did you hear this one?
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: In Riverside, California, a woman named Gloria Ramirez.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: She was dubbed the toxic lady in 1994. She had
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: cervical cancer and was being treated and all the medical
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: staff started to get sick that was treating her. This
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: sounds gross, but they said her body exuded a garlicky,
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: fruity smell, and her blood had flecks of what looked
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: like paper, which sounds kind of like Morgulans, actually.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: You like that?
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: And they said that most of the people that got
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: sick while treating her were women, more women than men,
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: and they all took a blood test and came back normal,
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: and the health department said, Mass hysteria.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: So that's funny because I looked, I remembered that story
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: and I was like, I wonder if that was mass hysteria.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: And I looked it up and I found that no,
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: it was an environmental toxin.
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: Oh, it was?
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: That's what I found.
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: So they called it mass hysteria at the time and
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: then later found out?
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: I think like a year or two later, she was
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: using some sort of salve or something on her skin.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: And they think that it interacted with her biochemistry and
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: really did produce toxic gas.
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: She said it may be this fruit garlic salve.
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: Right, exactly.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: That's interacting badly with my pancreas.
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: Oh, well, this list needs to be updated.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: Dude, that is a fascinating case. It is. People got
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: really sick from that.
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: I think I remember hearing about that, too.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: Well, I'm glad they found a real cause in that case.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: From what I understand. But that's the point. Right. You
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: can say, well, obviously, women were more affected than men.
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: Right? Well, is that because there's more women in the
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: nursing profession and there were more nurses in the room?
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of different things you have to take
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: into account before you just write it off. Sometimes it
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: is real, like sick building syndrome.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: That's a tough one because after the OPEC oil embargo,
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: apparently people started designing buildings to be more airtight. So
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: your ventilation system was really important.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: And these buildings haven't aged necessarily very well. So the
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: ventilation system is not doing what it's supposed to any longer.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: And so they think possibly that's leading to what we
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: know as sick building syndrome, which is malaise.
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: It's when you don't feel good when you go to work.
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: Which is everybody.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: But some studies have found like, no, that is the
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: better predictor of sick building syndrome.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: Is job stress or job dissatisfaction. Yeah. If you have
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: a building full of people who don't like their jobs,
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: you're going to have a building full of people with
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: sick building syndrome. But if you go on to say
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: like a local government's website or whatever, and you look at,
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: Sick building syndrome. It's treated as a real thing.
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, it definitely affects your gastrointestinal like stress does.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: Also, apparently it can set off bouts of asthma.
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: Which is another reason why they think it might have
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: something to do with like volatile organic compounds in the
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: ventilation system. Or new carpeting, that kind of stuff.
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Off-gassing, man. You smell that stuff when you open
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: up a new product, right?
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: There's also the dancing plague, which we mentioned briefly.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: Tell me about it.
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: Frowtrophia. July 14th, 1518, went out on the streets of Strasbourg, France,
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: and started dancing, even though there was no music, and
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: dancing like a maniac for three straight days. And all
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: these people started dancing with her, saying this is a
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: good time. It said within a month, 100 people were
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: dancing with her and couldn't stop. And hyperventilating, hallucinating, some
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: dropped dead of heart attack and stroke and exhaustion. And
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: the authorities said, let's just hire a band. And let
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: them dance it out.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: Because they've got the hot blood is what they called it.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: And so they did. And a lot of people died
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: as a result. It said 400 people in the end
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: were struck. I don't think they died, but were dancers.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: And then it just stopped. And that's when they blame,
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: a lot of people blame on ergot poisoning, which we've
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: mentioned before.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: I always go with ergot poisoning.
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, back then.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: Those people were clearly tripping on something.
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: They got the hot blood.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: But what it sounds like you just described is basically
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: how Tom Hanks invented jogging in the 70s.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: Yogging?
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah?
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: He just started running and people started following him.
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: I wish that part had been cut out of that movie. Oh, really? Yeah,
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: I thought that it was a weird thing that should
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: have been on the editing room floor. It really kind
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: of derailed things for a while for me. Yeah. I
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: don't think that movie's aged well, though.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: I haven't seen it in forever.
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: Other people say, though, that it was Sydenham's chorea. a
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: disorder linked to strep throat and rheumatic fever that causes
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: dance-like twitches. And then, of course, modern medical historians say
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: it was mass psychosis.
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: I would go with that one.
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but back then it made more sense, though, when
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: during the Salem witch trials and before they knew anything
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: about medicine and you could just say you got the
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: hot blood or you're having the fits.
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: Or the devil's possessed you.
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. These modern cases are the ones that really
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: freak me out because so much is explainable now.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: Here's the thing, though, Chuck. We've always explained it with
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: something that comes easily to mind. So back in the
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: day before science and medicine, it was the devil possessing you.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: And don't think that people weren't freaked out when they
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: thought that the devil was there in town possessing people
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: in the same way that you're freaked out by the
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: idea that it's cyanide in the soil from a train
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: derailment from 1970.
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: Or beetle mania.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: Exactly. Which is the deadliest of all the manias. But
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: it's just as real.
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: To the experiencer. And it all comes down to people
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: just basically being sick of the establishment and letting loose
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: for a while.
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: Don't want to go to work. Nice. So I'll dance.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: You got anything else?
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: No, sir.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: If you want to know more about collective hysteria, which
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: is the name of this article, type those words in
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: the search bar at howstuffworks.com and it will bring it up.
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: And I said search bar, which means it's time for
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: listener mail.
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: I'm going to call this episode on grief. We got
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: a lot of great feedback and they continue to roll in.
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: Hey guys, just stumbled upon your podcast through my tune
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: in radio app. Uh, I guess that's a mini plug.
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: We're available there now. Um, I've devoured almost all of
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: the 600 plus shows. I may be a new listener,
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: but I'm already a lifelong fan. So why I'm writing
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: in guys is I lost my twin sister back in 2010. Uh,
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: it was a rough time because as a fraternal twin,
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: me being the boy, uh, I looked at her not
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: only as a sister, but as a mother and friend, too.
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: Long story short, I wanted to comment on the Grief
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: show some time ago. I've dealt with my grief through
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: my artwork. I'm a small-town artist from Johnson City, Tennessee,
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: and I rarely can get noticed or any attention with
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: my art. I wanted to share my new piece I've
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: just finished after listening to how comic books work. I'm
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: a huge fan of Marvel Comics, and I hope you
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: both enjoy this. And he sent this really cool... I
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: think it was like every member of the Marvel Universe
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: had to be in this picture that he did.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: I didn't see that one.
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: It's really, really neat. Just jam-packed full of Marvel comic
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: heroes and villains. So Josh and Chuck, thanks for the
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: inspiration laughs and getting through every day at the office. P.S.
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: My twin Jessica passed away from epilepsy, actually. A condition
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: called SUDEP, Sudden Unexplained Death of Epilepsy. My mother is
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: trying to raise awareness because November is Epilepsy Awareness Month.
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: So if you guys wouldn't mind mentioning this on the show,
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: she would be so happy for that. Also, an epilepsy
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: show would be cool, too. Not a lot is discussed
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: about it. And that is Jason Flack. And Jason, I
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: wrote you back. That is heartbreaking about your twin sister.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is.
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: Very sorry to hear that. And we will definitely do
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: a show on epilepsy. And since this is November, though,
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: people should go out and find out what they can
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: during National Epilepsy Month.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: We'll follow up with the show. I don't know if
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: it'll be in November, but we'll get to that one
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: for sure.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: And thanks for that piece of art. And if anyone's
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: interested in a great comic book artist from Johnson City, Tennessee,
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: I could do a lot worse than Jason Flack.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: Jason, thank you very much for sharing that with everybody.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: That means a lot to us. If you want to
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: share with us and all of our listeners out there,
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: join us on Facebook.com slash SubYouShouldKnow. You can send us
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: an email with attached artwork to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. And
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.