WEBVTT - Mass Hysteria and the Mad Gasser 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Flow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.720 Works dot com. Hey everyone, welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:16.800 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie A. Dougmax. 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:20.079 And in today's episode, first of all, we want to 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:25.560 take you back in nineteen okay, to the sleepy town 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:32.920 of Mattune, Illinois. All right, a prowler is terrorizing the streets. 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:35.600 That's what everybody's talking about, right It's it's on the 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:40.800 lips of victims from thirteen area homes. It's in the newspaper, 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:45.080 and most of the accounts are breaking down like follows. 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:49.440 A man in black is creeping through the night. He's 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:53.480 prying open windows. Perhaps perhaps you're r window right now, 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:57.240 and he's probably open just enough to shove the nozzle 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:00.200 of a gas gun in Okay, then he pulled the 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:02.840 trigger and he pumped your home with some sort of 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:07.959 a noxious paralyzing chemical, a cloud of this stuff that just, uh, 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:10.280 that just makes you sprawl out on the kitchen floor, 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:11.680 and then you can't move. All you can do is 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:13.840 you can you can just listen to the sound of 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:18.400 hopefully the prowler, the mad gasser, running off into the night, 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:20.479 and not say coming and trying to open your door. 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:27.160 And this is the subjective reality of the residence of Mattoon, Illinois. 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:30.920 I like this for several reasons, and one of the 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:34.920 reasons is that it sounds like a potential news item 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:37.959 for the podcast Night Veale. It does sound very night 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:41.840 And I love that there's this idea that there's this 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:46.520 marauding mad gasser. And of course this idea all started 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:50.160 with someone named Alice Kearney who smelled a strange gas 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:53.120 smell and in fact, the whole community was smelling this 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:57.880 weird smell and uh, she soon said that her throat 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:01.040 and lips were burning and she'd and to panic when 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:07.560 her legs became paralyzed. And this story just rippled throughout 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:11.600 the community, made its way to news stories, and that's 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:15.720 when other people began to assume the symptoms for themselves. Yeah. 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:18.560 So suddenly, I mean, in no time at all, you 0:02:18.639 --> 0:02:23.000 have thirteen area homes, twenty seven different alleged victims, all 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:26.320 claiming the same story, and the whole time there seems 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:28.880 to be there's no motive that seems to be at play. 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:32.520 These individuals were not uh you know, the homes were 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:36.440 not robbed. They weren't. They weren't in any other way 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:39.480 of you know, violated. Though you could argue that if 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:42.840 someone were to pump a noxious chemical into your house 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:45.560 one that didn't you know that this disables your body, 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:49.480 even temporarily, that that's that's quite a violation. But still 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:52.280 this it didn't seem to make sense. Why would someone 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:56.360 be doing this? What possible reason? And then inevitably the 0:02:56.360 --> 0:03:00.440 authorities look into it and nothing turns up, like, there's 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:04.600 like no proof. They they bring in an expert in chemicals, 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:06.840 and none of the none of the symptoms seem to 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:12.000 match up with any potential uh with most potential chemical agents. 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:15.000 It just all kind of falls apart, and then in 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:17.320 no time at all, people kind of forget about it 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:19.120 and they move on with their lives. But there was 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:24.160 this this brief period in which this person, this creature, 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:28.040 this whatever was real, like even if the objective reality 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:31.240 didn't match up, the subjective reality definitely did. And it 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:33.560 turns out to be one of the finer examples that 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:36.920 we have of mass hysteria. And that is not the 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:41.760 only example, especially when it comes to mysterious odors that 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:44.920 people smell in different communities or other examples out there, 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:47.920 But the fact that there was this marauding mad gasser 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.920 in this example and that so many people fell ill 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:55.280 makes it a stand out yea. Even though this particular 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:57.960 story isn't one that just gets crazy amounts of attention, 0:03:58.000 --> 0:03:59.400 which is one of the reasons I was drawn to 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:01.000 it because I never heard of it before and it's 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:05.040 just so weird and unique. But but individuals have um 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:07.680 investigated it more, and some people will make more of 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:11.320 a uh more of a play for a hoax element, 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:14.840 particularly with the newspapers. Uh. And then some people some 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:17.080 actually make an argument that there may have been like 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:20.480 one mad gassing incident or two or even three that 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:24.680 were legitimate, but in those cases still you would have 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:29.120 something that spiral out of control into mass hysteria. Be 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:31.479 it a hoax that people believed in, which of course 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:34.960 instantly brings to mind, say the orson Wells a war 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:37.520 the world's broadcast right, where we have something that is 0:04:38.480 --> 0:04:42.280 a hoax of fiction that people buy into and start 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:46.080 reacting to. Or it's a situation where it happens one 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:48.919 time and then everyone assumes it's happening all the time, 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:51.760 uh and that everyone is in danger and for that 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:54.599 I simply uh invite you to turn on the evening 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:57.840 news and you're gonna dose with that. Yeah. And I 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:02.560 think what's interesting about any sort of potential threat is 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:06.799 that there are two extreme ways in which to assess 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:09.599 a threat, and one is, say, the normalcy bias. And 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:12.159 we've talked about this before. This is the tendency for 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:15.200 some people to say, oh, nothing is a miss, business 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.000 as usual. There's not a crazy guy spewing chemicals into 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:20.599 my house through a nozzle, because that just doesn't happen, 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:24.080 or even like that chemical smell nothing, probably from the 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:27.560 banana bread. I'm bacon, right, So that's just kind of 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:29.400 you know, the Ostrich effect, putting your head in the 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:32.000 ground and and not trying to face it. Now, the 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:35.880 polar opposite of that would be this kind of hysteria 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:40.480 in which you overreact and then a panic spreads among people. 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:44.320 And there are countless examples of this, but we thought 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:46.520 we would roll out a couple to try to give 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:49.920 people an idea of how throughout the ages and even 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:53.240 in modern times, there are cultural things at work here. 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:55.760 There's a sort of pattern behind all of this. You 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:58.560 know that the first when you mentioned instantly that brings 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:01.799 to mind emails that you get, generally from a concerned 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:06.600 family member who says, I heard that someone is going 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:09.159 around like the kids are like. The one that I 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:13.040 read most recently was that if you're an egg is 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:15.840 thrown at your windshield, it's because it's a gag and 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:17.800 what they want you to do is turn on your 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:21.400 windshield wipers, which will then me money up your your 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:23.240 windshields even more and then you have to pull over. 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:26.080 That's when the game gets you. So so it's it's 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:28.680 a ridiculous idea and it's totally there's no there's no 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:31.240 truth to it at all. The people buy into it, 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:34.479 and that because they think, well, you know which side 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:35.600 am I going to be on? Am I gonna be 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.680 the person that didn't believe that the crazy email from 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:41.600 my uncle? Uh? And and then end up getting attacked 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:43.240 by a gang? Or am I going to believe it 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:46.120 and survive? Right? So right, you can go to to 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:48.839 one of those extremes. You can do that normal cy bias, 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:50.880 you can go to hysteria or hey, you could go 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:53.280 in the middle and really assess the threat as it is. 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:57.359 But um, that being said, there are plenty of instances 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:02.200 in which people have kind of fallen prey to that hysteria. Indeed, 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:04.320 and one of the best is the dancing plague or 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:08.560 dancing epidemic of eighteen, a time in which there was 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:13.360 no CNC music factory, and yet everybody danced. Now it's 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:16.560 no factory to turn it out. But even though there 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:19.000 was no CFC music factory, Uh, they had some other 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:22.080 things going on. They had they had the plague. Yeah, yeah, 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:25.320 they had they had warfare, they had starvation, they had 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:29.200 just every every normal extreme poverty, along with any other 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.400 daily anks that we might have in our our modern 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:35.800 age of of comfort. Yeah. And it turns out that 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:39.560 this made just contribute to the right conditions for someone 0:07:40.080 --> 0:07:43.280 to try to unload all that stress and have their 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:48.880 own one woman street party. Right they started dancing. Firsts 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:52.920 it's one gal dancing right than somebody else. Then it's 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:55.760 it's two, then it's three, and it just escalates until 0:07:56.040 --> 0:07:59.480 it's it's an epidemic. It's mania. People are dancing in 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:04.320 the street eats for seemingly no reason. And uh and 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:06.920 and and we've spent the rest of history trying to 0:08:06.920 --> 0:08:09.440 explain why. I mean, there's been various theories that it 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:11.760 was that it was poisoning, that it was some sort 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:15.560 of toxicity or illness, but those don't really really actually 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:19.840 level out all that well. And John Waller, history professor 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:24.040 at Michigan State University UM, he argues that we're really 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:27.720 looking at a great classic case of math hysteria. And 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:29.720 key of all of this is to realize that this 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:32.199 didn't come out of nowhere. It's not. There was a 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:35.840 pre existing script for the dancing um to a large extent, 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:39.319 and that's because the dancing plagues, according to John Waller, 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:43.600 were a calling card of St. Vitus, an early Christian 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:46.920 martyr venerated with dance parties. So the idea is already 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:49.960 in the in the in everyone's heads, and then one 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:52.959 person starts that everyone else follows in with it. So 0:08:53.559 --> 0:09:00.560 communities stress community and then an existing script for their behavior. Yeah, 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:03.880 and it was called the dancing Plague of Strasburg because 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:06.079 it kind of was like a plague in the sense 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:10.400 that it began to spread throughout the community, but not 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:13.880 only that people were dancing to their deaths. Now, that 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:17.160 wasn't too hard given the circumstances, because you know, one 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:21.040 person might be riddled with disease, another person was starving 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:24.560 to death, but they were going out dancing. Yeah, well, 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:26.440 that's a heck of a way to go. Why not 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:28.840 you're gonna you're gonna topple over into the gut or anyway, 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:32.320 why not do it after a lengthy about of dancing, 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:35.079 just tork out your existence. Yeah, And of course another 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:38.120 element to this too is the idea that that there 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:41.280 was there was a psychosomatic element here too, write that 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:43.800 that not only was it affecting behavior, but it was 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:48.120 affecting at least your perception of your your body the 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:52.719 way then manifesting in symptoms of the body. And we'll 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:55.640 get into that more as we go forward. Yeah, Now, 0:09:55.679 --> 0:10:00.600 fast forward a bit. You've got the Salem which trials, 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:03.600 and you have what is more of a kind of 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:08.320 moral mas hysteria. And we're talking about, of course, the 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:14.360 group of girls who seemed to be exhibiting these demonic signs. 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:20.199 And in some cases, uh, these girls were wrongly convicted 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:23.360 of witchcraft. In other cases, there was a kind of 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:28.760 stress reaction to these moral underpinnings among the girls in 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:32.960 which they were exhibiting tick like behavior. And important here 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:35.679 is to is to again keep in mind stressful situation, 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:42.160 stressful environment and young people and a pre existing script, 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:44.959 because if you've listened to our past episode Hammer of 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:48.679 the Witches, where we went into depth about witchcraft culture 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:54.959 and the paranoia about witchcraft, there was very much there 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:58.599 was a strong script in place for witchcraft and manifestations 0:10:58.600 --> 0:11:02.080 of witchcraft within a community, so they could easily draw 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:04.920 on that and everyone I knew what it was supposed 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:06.800 to be. Well, And I was just thinking about the 0:11:06.840 --> 0:11:10.200 spiral of silence the last episode that we recorded in 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.200 this idea that there is a kind of silence that 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:16.880 settles upon the minority when the majority speaks out very strongly. 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:19.880 In this case, you have the majority those in power 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:22.080 are saying that there is witchcraft in this town. This 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:26.040 is going on, and authority people in the church, yeah, 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:28.760 you know, particularly who are saying that yes, which not 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:30.720 only is witchcraft a threat, but is like the big 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:34.560 threat today, Yeah, among our girls, and we know what's happening. 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:37.640 So in this weird way, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:39.960 I'm sure for some of these girls who say, well, 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:44.719 there they say that the Satan is inhabiting us, and 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:49.040 maybe I'm feeling Satan inhabiting myself right now. And that's 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:52.400 why I'm shuddering or I'm talking in voices or exhibiting 0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:55.959 these these really aggressive ticks. All right, fast, fard once more. 0:11:56.040 --> 0:11:59.000 The two thousand six, two thousand seven, a mysterious illness 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:02.439 begins to affect girls at a boarding school in Choco, Mexico, 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:05.839 that's near Mexico City. The school, which is run by 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:09.200 Roman Catholic nuns, is one of ten in Asian Latin 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:12.880 America operated by a charity called World Villages for Children 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:15.560 in Asia. The girls, aged twelve and seventeen began to 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:21.640 show strange symptoms that such as difficulty walking, fever, nausea 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:24.160 and UH. After the girl and this was after a 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:27.640 girl's returned from a ten day Christmas break, the ills, 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:30.720 this illness spreads even more so eventually six hundred out 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:34.560 of the thirty d girls at the school showed these symptoms. 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:36.920 And you know, the doctors are looking into it, and 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:39.040 no one can figure out what exactly going on. You know, 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:42.800 you're looking for that underlying illness, that underlying environmental cause 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:46.240 even and nothing is popping up. So after conducting numerous 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:51.320 test uh surveying the facility interviewing folks trying to get 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.280 to the heart of it. Doctors decided that it was 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:58.520 it was all a matter of mass psychogenic disorder, which 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:03.000 we also call collective sterea, mass psycho somatic reaction, and 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:06.720 of course mass hysteria. There's not one term that we 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:11.040 end up using because vs M hasn't hasn't ruled on 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:13.320 a a P style doesn't have have one that they like, 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:16.880 so UH for all intens and purposes, mass hysteric. So 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:20.079 going back to the girls at the boarding school, consider 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:25.800 that these kind of symptoms spread and began after they 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:29.400 returned from Christmas break, because this is pretty key because 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:33.280 it turns out that this is a really highly structured environment, 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:38.160 very disciplined from regimented, and the correspondence and interaction with 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:40.720 parents is sparse. Their children see their parents no more 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:44.160 than three times a year, and these kids are returning 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:46.880 from having just spent time with their families, and it 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:51.199 kind of stress settles in again in this highly regiment regimented, 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:56.160 almost you know, foreign environment to them, the opposite of 0:13:56.200 --> 0:14:00.160 what you would think of as a family supportive UH structure, 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:03.080 And that explains a lot of the reasons why this 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:06.360 These kids were reacting the way that they were, and 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:10.079 why it kind of spread in that manner um. Now, 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:14.440 I wanted to mention two quick outliers here in the 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:21.000 mass hysteria village. One is Pokemon. A strange and uh 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:27.520 seemingly inexplicable outbreak of bizarre behavior struck Japan in when 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:31.800 thousands of Japanese school children experienced frightening seizures after watching 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:36.560 an episode of Pokemon, and intense flashes of light during 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:41.680 the show triggered relatively harmless and brief seizures, nausea, and headaches. 0:14:42.040 --> 0:14:44.720 And when doctors diagnosed some of the children with a 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:49.080 rare pre existing condition called photo sensitive epilepsy, which is 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:52.000 brought on by all this flashing lights, and they figured 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:53.720 out that you know, indeed, there was like, you know, 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:57.320 a couple of kids that were reacting to the show, 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:03.120 but the other kids there reacted, We're just simply exhibiting 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:06.080 signs of mass hysteria because they had heard about the 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:10.360 other kids who were having seizures. So since they were 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:15.160 copying those symptoms, but but in a more meaningful way almost, 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:17.720 I mean, they were kind of they were actually participating 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:19.960 in it. Yeah, And if you think about Pokemon and 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:23.880 it being such a strong cultural signifier, then it kind 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:26.640 of follows that, oh wow, if those kids had such 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:29.360 a reaction to it, maybe I would because it's there's 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:32.280 this is really an important cultural signifier. Well you think 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:34.880 you think back to Beatlemania, right, and you see those 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:37.840 that the footage of the girls just going completely crazy, 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:41.840 like screaming, mad house crazy over the Beatles, you know, 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:45.080 which is it can be difficult to understand, right because 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:47.440 I mean, the things that we love in our lives 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.040 we don't go that crazy for, or at least I 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:52.080 don't so. But but if you think of it from 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:54.520 that point of view, that like, like you know, one 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:57.640 one fan starts acting that way, then another and then another, 0:15:57.680 --> 0:15:59.840 and then that is the that is the script for 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:03.320 how to react, and you just jump in, you join it. 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:06.040 It's it's parts peer pressure, it's part fitting in with 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:11.080 the crowd, but then it has these psychosomatic aspects as well. Yeah, 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:14.800 apparently the Beatles at some point um at the top 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:18.080 of their popularity, when when you know, girls were swooning 0:16:18.080 --> 0:16:21.400 and painting and shouting and screaming. They said that it 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:25.720 became absolutely unbearable to perform because they couldn't even hear 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:29.320 their instruments, so they and what they were saying is 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:32.760 that they had become a cultural phenomenon, but not for 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:37.000 themselves or their artistry. And in fact, their musicianship was 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:39.640 all but you know, swept aside in this sea of 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:43.000 scream So it became about the sea of screams rather 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:45.680 than them. Huh. You know, I also can't help but 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:50.320 think about the faith based healing uh situations and uh 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:52.640 and particularly one. I don't know if I've mentioned this 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:55.960 before in the podcast, but when I was in late 0:16:56.000 --> 0:16:58.880 high school early college, went with a friend to check 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:03.160 out a jerk in Huntsville, Alabama, and the they were 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:06.720 doing this thing where people would be healed by the pastor, 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:09.720 but they would they would fall to the ground and 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:12.520 they would laugh hysterically and they would roll around laughing, 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:15.159 and then they would have to bring around blankets to 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:18.639 put over the females because they addresses on and you know, 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:20.960 it's like a modesty blanket while you roll around with 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:24.080 the Holy Spirit rolling through you and making you laugh hysterically. 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:26.360 And uh. You know, I tried to figure out that 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:29.000 that out for a long time. But when you start 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:31.399 looking at it from the guise of mass hysteria. It 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:33.119 makes a lot more sense. Yeah, and it's kind of 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:35.960 speaking in tongues to the same thing is at work. 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:39.440 You're part of this thing, whatever it is you're engaging 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:42.040 in the times, in the ritual. In a ritual, as 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:45.399 we've discussed before, is incredibly powerful. Now, imagine being a 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:49.879 lonely nun in eighteen forty four. You're in a French 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:53.879 uh convent and I don't know, you just feel like, 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.119 you know, I like a cat. And all of a 0:17:57.160 --> 0:18:00.239 sudden you have your fellow nuns me O I with 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:04.240 you every day at a certain time, for several hours together, 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:09.399 so much so that the neighbors began complaining that this 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:14.640 cavalcade of nuns me owing is driving them insane. And 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:19.160 here you have another lovely little case of mass hysteria, 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:23.400 and you have those cultural underpinnings present. In other words, 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:26.280 you talked about the story before, right. The story here 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:30.600 is that Satan sometimes can take the form of animals, 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:36.760 particularly cat. Right, So maybe Satan entered you and began 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:39.680 meowing like a cat so that you could let others 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:41.520 know that you are now in league with Satan and 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:44.480 you need help, you know, you think Satan would be 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:47.360 more creative when he took over a nunnery. I feel like, yeah, 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.280 I feel like the Italian films the nineties, seventies and 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:54.360 eighties really had more imaginative vision of this sort of thing. 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:57.360 But yeah, well, I mean, you know that we're talking 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:01.640 about some very basic folkloreic totems here, like cats, and 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:05.359 I mean we're again stress and anxiety and almost kind 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:07.280 of a release valve. Like you think of it as 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:10.960 the like the crack and that regimented society, and you know, 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:14.520 maybe there's not room for a full blown goat worshiping release, 0:19:14.840 --> 0:19:17.320 but there's just enough room for me owing to be 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:19.359 the thing, and then it just catches like well, you know, 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:21.960 in one In some ways, it's probably a lot more 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:25.080 acceptable to be possessed by Satan and start me owing 0:19:25.200 --> 0:19:27.480 like a cat rather than just being like this place 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:31.600 is driving me crazy. You're screaming and acting out, yeah, 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:33.800 because then there's something really wrong with you. But if 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:36.960 it's Satan, just kind of like it's like getting your 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:40.520 email account hacked, right, you just have to say, all right, hey, everybody, 0:19:40.800 --> 0:19:42.840 if you've got a weird email from me yesterday, just 0:19:42.880 --> 0:19:46.800 disregarded I was hacked by Satan. Right, Satan as a 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:49.840 sacrificial goat in the form of a cat. Yes. Um. 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:53.880 If you guys want more like full on none mass 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:57.119 hysteria and other tales, make sure to check out our 0:19:57.160 --> 0:20:00.439 sister podcast If Mom never told you They're crazy? No, no, 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.080 they're not actually hysterical. They're not, And they are hysterical, 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:07.320 but not in that hysteria way. But their episode is 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:10.440 called the Mysterious Case of Convulsive Cheerleaders and they look 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:13.959 a little bit more into the female Factor. All Right, 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:16.359 we're gonna take a quick break and when we get back, 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:21.320 we're going to talk more about what mass tripogenic filmness is. 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:32.480 All right, we're back. We're talking about mass hysteria. We've 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:35.760 we've run through a number of different encounters from crazy 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:40.720 guys with gas guns to me owing nuns. And you know, 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:43.440 the the amazing thing about the crazy thing about it 0:20:43.680 --> 0:20:47.000 is that with all of these cases, on the surface level, 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:51.119 you have two crazy stories to choose from. Is because 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:55.399 on one level, meowing nuns, crazy people with gas guns, 0:20:55.400 --> 0:20:59.080 those are crazy ideas and you don't want to live 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:03.120 in a world where they're crazy gas gun wielding maniacs 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:06.240 and me owing nuns possessed by the devil, Like that's 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:08.880 that's a crazy world. But on the other hand, you're 0:21:08.920 --> 0:21:13.480 talking about a world in which you can catch this 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:17.159 kind of crazy, where there's the you'll have a situation 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:20.320 where even if the objective reality doesn't match up, the 0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:24.879 subjective reality becomes We're possessed by the devil. And people 0:21:24.880 --> 0:21:28.440 were buying into this behavior. People are are are feeling 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:30.720 things in their body and experiencing things at least in 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:33.439 their memory and not in the perception of reality, that 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:38.080 are starkly different from what's really going on. So where 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:41.679 it becomes helpful is to really break down mass hysteria 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:44.120 and and this and and sort of take a few 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:47.160 different steps to get there, to realize that this isn't 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:51.320 really a crazy exception to our experience of reality, but 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:54.160 just a step to the left. Yeah, because you make 0:21:54.160 --> 0:21:56.640 a good point. You have these extreme examples, but when 0:21:56.680 --> 0:21:58.679 you really start to look at mass hysteria, it's a 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:01.960 lot more subtle than you think, and it actually permeates 0:22:01.960 --> 0:22:05.720 our culture in less flamboyant ways. Like the best way 0:22:05.760 --> 0:22:07.919 to start, really, I think, is to talk about the 0:22:07.920 --> 0:22:12.119 psychosomatic aspects here, like the idea that you can just 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:16.159 thinking something, believing something, buying into it with your mind 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:20.119 can have manifestations in your body which can sound a 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:23.679 little hippie dippie perhaps or more magical on the surface 0:22:23.720 --> 0:22:26.159 of things, except it's been tested out. And one of 0:22:26.200 --> 0:22:29.439 the best examples of this is the cebo effect, but 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:33.240 also the no no cebo effect, which are basically two 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:38.440 different shades of the same thing. Yeah, it's essentially expecting 0:22:38.480 --> 0:22:41.120 a certain outcome and that could be a positive outcome 0:22:41.280 --> 0:22:43.480 or it could be a negative outcome. And we've seen 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:46.680 this and rafts of studies that have to do usually 0:22:46.800 --> 0:22:49.960 with a drug that's being tested out. Right, there's a 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:53.720 laundry list of negative effects that someone might experience. They're 0:22:53.720 --> 0:22:56.960 given the sugar pill and lo and behold, they experience 0:22:57.119 --> 0:23:02.080 heart palpitations or you know, anxiety depressions, so on and 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:04.800 so forth, because the expectation is there. Yeah, it's the 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:07.879 same mechanism that allows the individual who receives the sugar 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:12.720 pill to feel revitalized and healed. So with both cases, 0:23:12.840 --> 0:23:16.280 there is a there's there's a physical manifestation of what's 0:23:16.280 --> 0:23:18.440 going on. You know, it's not to the effect where 0:23:18.440 --> 0:23:20.560