WEBVTT - Thinking Sideways: The Dancing Plague of 1518 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:16.439 Thinking sideways. I don't know. You never know stories of things, 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:22.040 don't know the answer too. Well, Hi everybody, my name's 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:27.640 Devin and I'm joined as always by Joe Steve. Oh 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:30.880 not Joe and Steve. Just Joe Steve. Yeah, yeah, well 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:35.240 my name isn't and Steve, so yeah it's not. I thought, yeah, 0:00:35.280 --> 0:00:36.839 I've been a little it's a little weird when you 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:40.320 keep introducing me as and Steve and Steve and people 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:42.800 say hoh, hi and Steve. Well, and you know, put 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:46.080 us three in a room and uh, you've got thinking sideways. 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:51.639 The podcast not to mention synergy of synergy. In this 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:55.280 room here we are the definition of synergy. So the 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:58.680 mystery we're gonna talk about tonight is the dancing plague 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:02.080 of eighteen. As luck would have it, there are actually 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:05.160 a lot of dancing plagues in our history, including one 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:12.920 in the seventies and the seventies and again entire seventies. Okay, 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:15.480 that was not a dancing plague. That was a plague 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:22.400 of dancers. Yeah, yeah, And actually there there was a 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:25.119 case that's kind of relevant to this in like even 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.400 two thousand and twelve. Really, where was that The East 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:32.679 coast of America. Sorry, it occurs to me not everybody 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:35.280 is listening in America. But right now we're going to 0:01:35.360 --> 0:01:37.680 talk about the dancing plague of fifteen eighteen. I think 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:41.399 it's probably the most famous one. Yeah. Um, and it 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:43.959 starts if if you go to if you type in 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:46.480 dance plague, and this is the one that comes up, 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:48.960 you know, even though there's been lots of others. Yeah. Yeah. 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:51.960 And it took place in what was then the Holy 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:55.560 Roll Roman Empire but is now kind of on the 0:01:55.560 --> 0:02:02.279 border of France and Germany Strostburg. Yes, exactly, words words. 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:06.080 I can't say. I'm so bad with German pronunciation. I 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:08.359 don't know why I keep picking stories that have German 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:12.240 pronunciation in them for punishment. It's probably it you actually 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:14.960 secretly want to, you know, spit up, step up your 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:18.040 pronunciation of German. That's that's maybe it's just kind of yea. 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:26.960 Our story starts with fraud Trofa. She's a young woman. Um. 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:30.320 I would say she's the patient zero of this particular 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:42.800 dancing plague. In July, she takes to the streets and 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:50.279 starts dancing quote fervorently, fervently, fervently, pervent fervently, fervently. Okay, 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:56.080 the same word, pronouncing it wrong, Yeah, fervently, ferventally. Don't 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:59.040 ask me. I'm not the one for pronunciations. Yeah, it's 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:02.560 not even a German word for Christ. So for the 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:07.600 she danced for um four to six days apparently not 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:10.960 not a great handle on how many actual days she 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:13.880 danced for, but four to six um. And in the 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:16.000 beginning she was alone, but by the end of the 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:21.000 week thirty four others started boogying with her in the streets, 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:24.120 and by the end of the month, four hundred boogiears 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:28.960 were accounted for what was the population of Strasbourg at 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:34.239 this time. We don't know, really awful, Yeah I don't. 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:36.240 I mean, I don't think we were even doing sensuces. 0:03:36.400 --> 0:03:41.800 We they I don't think they were doing sensus. So 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:47.040 a dozens of these people died as a result of this, 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:50.640 either from exhaustion like you would you know, kind of think, 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:57.800 or heart attacks or seizures strokes, excuse me, strokes. So 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:00.880 there's a fairly strong evidence that this did actually happen. 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:07.400 In fact, they're reputable historic documents, including physicians notes, cathedral sermons, 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:11.480 local and regional chronicles, notes issued by a city counts 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:15.760 local city council that are all real, that all mentioned 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:20.080 this plague. In fact, historian and professor at Michigan State 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:23.200 University John Waller goes so far as to say that 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:26.640 the event took place is undisputed, and he wrote a 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:29.080 book about it. To This book is spelled Dance Till 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:32.440 You Die or A Time to Dance, Yeah, he wrote 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:37.039 to or something like that. I don't know, Yeah, I 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:40.840 don't know. Accounts show that people weren't just shaking or 0:04:40.920 --> 0:04:46.120 trembling or convulsing, but actually dancing, dancing um, moving their 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:49.320 arms and legs on purpose. I don't know what it 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:51.799 looked like. I don't know that I'm doing the twist, 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:55.960 definitely not doing that. But they were apparently actively moving 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:57.679 their arms and legs. So it wasn't just like people 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:02.320 like spreading out. It was voluntary. It was involuntary. Oh, 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:03.920 this is what I heard is this, and many of 0:05:03.960 --> 0:05:07.120 these people were really not happy about their status as dancers. 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:11.120 People reportedly were writhing in pain, screaming for help and 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:15.640 begging for mercy. At the same time, however, apparently they 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:19.960 were experiencing altered states of consciousness, almost like a trance state. 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:23.200 This helps to explain how they could have physically maintained 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:26.159 dancing for so long the trance, Yeah, because you kind 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:29.680 of think, you know, who could dance for six days? 0:05:30.240 --> 0:05:33.799 I mean you well, you know, it's just in general, 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:38.200 like who can dance that long? Suffering? Like the patient 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:41.080 zero for out trophia was apparently she would. She danced 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:42.920 until she was exhausted and then just sort of fell 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:45.040 to the ground and fell asleep, and then when she 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:47.279 woke up up started dancing. And I don't know what 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:50.320 she did for food and water in the meantime, no idea. Yeah, 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:54.360 that's a good question. I've never seen anything saying, okay, 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.960 well we force fed or food or water down and 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:00.279 I've never seen anything said how they got suss it 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:03.960 might have maybe townspeople just brought in, like you know, 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.360 cakes and glasses of water or something like that. I 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:09.840 don't know, something something to eat, something, I mean, if 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:11.800 these people are dancing, that doesn't mean they can't eat. 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:13.760 They can just like you know, people can just walk 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:15.680 up and hand and hand them something to chow down 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:19.200 on and they could eat it while they dance, unless 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:21.800 it's I mean, you know, if it's involuntary. Involuntary though, 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:24.560 and they're just like, yeah, they have no control. I 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:27.719 guess they're out of luck. Yes, she just hand feed them. 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:29.520 You have to shove a little cake in their mouths 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:31.320 or something like that, or some beef turkey and that 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:36.400 sounds messy. Yeah. I was gonna say, this is where 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:40.600 we got pieing in the face. Some of it ends 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:45.000 up in their mouths. Dirty dancing, it is. So, I 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.039 guess the only the real question of this isn't did 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:51.320 this happen? Like most of our mysteries are did this happen? 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:56.599 This one is why did this happen? Or more accurately, 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.839 why did that happen? Well, I'll tell you why it happened. 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:06.880 Dance fever, dance fever, dance dance revolution exactly. Yeah. Well, 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:09.479 I got to tell you my theory right now. It 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:13.360 was like, uh, these people really wanted to be good dancers. 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:15.360 And you know, if you really want to get good 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:20.600 at something, you've got to do a lot of it practice. Yeah. 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:24.360 That that's your entire theory, is that they wanted to 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:31.720 be good dancers, so they were practicing. Yeah, ok, yeah, 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:36.280 I mean it's not much worse than our first theory. Yeah, yeah, 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:38.239 this is a good theory. I like this one. Yeah, 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:40.920 it was actually the theory of the time with the physicians. 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:44.120 The local physicians diagnosed this woman and then all the 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:47.240 subsequent other people with which was hot blood, which is 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:52.320 a weird diagnosis. Quite understand this, and they said, wow, 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:58.160 she's got a fever. Obviously her blood is just really 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:01.960 hot running through her vein. Although usually they would have 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:06.040 prescribed blood letting at this point because that was kind 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:09.800 of popular thing that was that was actually probably killed 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:13.600 more people that have helped. But yeah, um, but it 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:17.600 was popular, it was popular. They prescribed more dancing. Actually 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:20.160 for her, they said, you should just dance it out, 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:24.760 just walk it out, just walk it out, actually right 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:31.560 out the prescription. I have no idea. The local physicians 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.880 quote ruled out astrological and supernatural causes, instead announcing that 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:39.559 the plague was a natural disease caused by hot blood. Yeah, 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:43.640 I'm sad. Supernatural and astrological they were ruled out on 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:45.880 the scene, which means that we can't say it was 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:49.079 demon possession. They knew, like if anybody was going to 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:51.439 know if it was dem in possession, they would have known. Yeah, 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:55.040 it probably was demonic possession. I think probably well, I 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:58.400 assure you guys were like devotees of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:02.280 And do you remember the musical episode? Yeah, that was 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:04.920 a great episode, but I remember what it turned out 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:06.480 to be. It turned out there was a demon that 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:08.880 it comes down and this demon caused people to burst 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:12.040 out into song, you know, and so maybe maybe it 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:15.400 was probably what it was. Yeah, a similar demon dancing demon. 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:19.000 Steve is not amused. I can't. I can't believe that 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:21.640 we're talking about Buffy. You can't believe it. Well, Buffy 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:24.760 is like you know what she is? Well, but it 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:27.640 does It doesn't make me think about the actual dancing 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:31.400 in the demonic possession. It does make me think about 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:33.920 some of the stuff that in the reading and the 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:38.160 research that I was doing. Is where Is? I want 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:40.880 to say, Hadis is not the place but in the 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:45.680 Caribbean where people are quote prone to quote unquote demonic possession. 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:48.079 Do you know what I'm talking about? Places where they 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:53.679 they'll be zombiefied for a while. It possession though, but 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:56.920 it's like well spirits, it's spirits will take them over, 0:09:57.040 --> 0:09:59.360 is what they say. Yeah, probably some people believe that, 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:01.839 But there's apification in Haitia is when you can actually 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:04.240 give people this drugs from it's made from a local 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:08.800 plant and apparently it it puts you under and then 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:11.000 you basically into a sort of a trance and you're 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:14.240 you can be enslaved to to whoever administered the drug 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:16.880 to you, right and well. And and these people are 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:20.600 known for, you know, being possessed and doing all these things. 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:22.480 One of the things they do all the times, they 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:26.480 do those kind of wild erratic dances, and it may 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:28.720 I'm not saying it's the same thing, but it makes 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:30.840 me think about what it might have looked like to 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:33.839 watch these people in this plague. Yeah. Well, actually that's 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:36.640 an interesting theory, you know, because when you think about 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:40.080 the zompification in Haiti. If you administer this this naturally 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:42.280 occurring drug to people and enslave them to your will 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:44.560 and just say okay, go out in the streets and 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:48.040 just dance your ass off, you know, and maybe, you know, 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:50.360 maybe that's maybe it was some guy who was doing 0:10:50.400 --> 0:10:55.080 something like that. Maybe it was some guy drugging people 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:57.840 and making them dance. I mean, you think you'd want 0:10:57.840 --> 0:10:59.880 to go to the drug them and make them go 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:01.720 go to the A T. M And get some cash 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:04.440 out to give to you or something like that, because 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:06.280 there were so many a t M s at that time. 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:09.320 How many were there at Strasbourg at that time, probably 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:13.200 only like five? Ye do a google on it. The 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:17.480 next theory is that it was mass hysteria. Yeah, so 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:23.240 remember John Waller from He's written two books on the subject, 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:29.920 and he posits that it was caused by mass psychogenic illness. 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:34.840 What is psychogenic? Because I couldn't ever get a real 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:41.040 clear answer on what that means. Psychogenic diseases are psychological 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:46.839 illnesses that stem from emotional trauma. Okay, so it's it's 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:51.800 it's just essentially like a physical ailment that has that 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:54.240 that isn't really real. It's not caused by a physical illness. 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:59.319 It's caused by psychological Yeah, it's like a physical manifestation 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:03.880 of emotional or mental stress. Okay, Okay, well yeah I 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:05.920 can I can follow that because there's a lot of 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.360 people who I swear I have this and then they 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:13.000 exhibit every symptom, textbook symptom, but when the actual tests 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:15.480 are done, they don't really have anything. So would that 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:20.520 be a good correlation to example of it? No, that's 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:24.480 like in their head or it could also be a 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:29.840 hysterical something like a hysterical pregnancy is not an actual pregnancy. 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:33.640 It's a pregnancy where a woman ye shows all the 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:36.240 signs of it, but it's actually just her body or 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.160 her brain tricking her body into thinking that she's pregnant. 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:42.640 So that's what psychogenic is. That kind of Okay, that 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:46.560 makes sense, and that's kind of but it's more like 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:50.040 your brain. You're experiencing a lot of stress. So you 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:52.280 here's a great example. Actually, and I was going to 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:53.840 talk about it a little bit later, but we'll just 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:56.120 talk about it right now. Um, this this case, in 0:12:56.160 --> 0:13:00.640 two twelve on the East coast of the United States 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:04.480 of America, twelve students, all going to the same school, 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:10.800 developed these strange symptoms that look a lot like treats. 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:18.199 So they're involuntary physical tics and voluntary vocal tics like 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:21.480 you know Tret's patients but have. But it just developed 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:25.560 overnight and in twelve people at the same time. Of course, 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:28.000 I could have been twelve teenagers decided they wanted to 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:31.480 and they wanted a good excuse to yell. That's true. Also, 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:37.080 I watched some interviews with these students and it is 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:41.480 definitely not that it is definitely involuntary. No, they're not 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:45.439 faking it. It's involuntary twitches. It looks awful. It has 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:49.880 totally disrupted their lives. Is a hard one to fake 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:51.680 for real. I don't know if you've ever known anybody 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:54.040 with it. I a coworker years ago. I have not. 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:57.840 He was on med's for it and I was just 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:00.720 I didn't know, and I was taught to him, and 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:02.920 then he was at my desk talking to me and 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:05.840 just sort of locked up and had this screwed you know, 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:08.840 his face kind of screwed up for a second. He 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:10.839 let go and he let out a deep breath and 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:13.480 that he apologized, like, my meds are a little office 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:15.640 like and I didn't know, and he explained it was like, oh, 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:18.000 and so he would do he would have weird little 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:20.360 just he's just sitting there, typing away at his desk 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:22.920 and just you know, he's he just kind of bunch 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:25.240 up at the neck and his eye would just kind 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:27.240 of twitch. I mean, it was it was very obvious 0:14:27.360 --> 0:14:29.800 what it was once you knew what it was. That's 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:34.520 hard to fake. It's uncomfortable actual turetts, isn't You don't 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:38.200 actually seal out swear words some people and some people do, 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:41.400 but it's mostly you just you have these verbal ticks 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:43.720 and oftentimes it's just like a stutter or like a 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:48.600 stumble over words or physical So this in this instance, 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:53.320 the school district ruled that it wasn't an environmental anything, 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:58.080 that somehow these twelve students had all just developed this 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:01.680 for unknown reasons. That is a great example of this 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:04.120 kind of mental disorder. They're saying now that it's just 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:06.640 that these twelve students have some kind of stress in 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:09.320 their lives and this is how it's manifesting. Or fear 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:13.240 to me, it could be something that viral in origin too, 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:17.000 I suppose that's true. Have you ever heard of Bell's pals? Yes? Yeah, 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:19.480 a friend of mine caught that once years ago. He 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:21.200 wakes up one day and and one half of his 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:24.400 face is paralyzed. He couldn't move it at all. Yeah. 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:27.200 You know, doctors have tested these kids for pretty much 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:29.560 everything under the sun, and it doesn't seem to be anything. 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:33.280 They think it's definitely psychological in some nature. So that's 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:37.600 a psychogenic disorder that they think at this point that 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:41.120 it's just some kind of stress. Another great example would 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:44.840 be a thing that a lot of people have probably 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:47.600 heard of, which is the laughing disease that that after 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:51.800 there was this group of African girls who got it right. Yeah, 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:54.880 it was very interesting. There's a great radio lab on it. 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:59.359 A bunch of schoolgirls in Tanzania just started laughing uncontrollably 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:04.040 and couldn't off themselves from really yeah for like weeks. Yeah, 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:08.760 those are examples of psychogenic illnesses. Okay, so what's what's 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:12.080 going on in the area. That would not a great question. 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:16.840 They're in the middle of a really awful famine caused 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:20.680 by cold winters, hot summers, crop frost, and violent hail storms. 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:28.080 Also suffering an outbreak of smallpox, siphilis, and leprosy. So 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:31.280 the whole community is going through this, and you could 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:34.640 kind of think that absolutely it makes sense to me 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:37.120 that everybody would just kind of have this, or at 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:41.920 least maybe one person has this break, right, the psychogenic 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:46.480 break that causes her to uncontrollably dance for whatever reason, 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:49.040 and then people see it and for the first couple 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:53.120 of days they think, oh, there's there's frau out there. 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:57.480 She's just being great, just being crazy, and then a 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:01.200 couple of them are like just compelled to join her 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:04.480 for whatever reason. They see it every day, and they're 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:07.200 also in these stress mental states, and for whatever reason, 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:10.800 their brain says, yeah, let's do that too. And the 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:13.760 more people that join, the more people that join, you know. 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:17.200 So I guess that's the only it's also the only 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:20.200 one that really explains why the group would have gotten 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:23.679 exponentially bigger over time. It was kind of like the 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:25.920 reverse of the placebo effect too, and that is that, 0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:29.119 you know, back in those days, people were pretty superstitious, 0:17:29.160 --> 0:17:31.320 and so you see somebody dancing like that and apparently 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:33.800 against it, well, and just you start thinking, Wow, demons, 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:35.840 how much longer do I have to go before the 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:38.440 demon get? You know? And then you sort of talk 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:40.960 yourself into believing that there's a demon out there who's 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:43.399 going to take over your body and and do this 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:47.280 stuff to you and and correct me if I'm wrong. 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:50.200 But this particular plague, I think you said this before, 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:53.520 is not the first time it happened, Nope, nor the last. 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:56.080 It was just kind of the biggest and best documented 0:17:56.320 --> 0:17:58.720 I think what it's the first documented case was in 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:03.040 twelve or thirteen hundreds somewhere in Yeah, it's that's really interesting. 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:09.680 There's this period of time from the twelve century ish 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:15.040 to like the seventeenth century ish where we see dancing 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:18.760 plagues and really not since then and not before then really, 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:20.840 I mean maybe before then, maybe we just were like 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:23.560 odd demons and so it was just kind of a fad. 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:27.919 Then maybe do you know why it stopped? No? Do 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:30.920 you know why? Well, I mean I've read some stuff 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:36.639 on it. It's okay, what's his name, saint? Is it 0:18:36.840 --> 0:18:40.160 Vitas or Vitus? Which? How do I don't know which 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:42.360 way to pronounce. I'll go I'll go with Vitas. Gonna 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:45.280 go with Vitas, Okay, so we'll say it's Vitas. I 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:48.919 know that in the readings that we were doing, there's 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:51.440 the thing about St. Vitus and heat. You're going to 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:54.159 steal my next theory. Well, but but it actually it 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:59.520 plays into why it's stopped. Okay. So for St. Vitus 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:02.560 was a saint and correctly correct me if I'm wrong 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:05.200 on how the story goes. But basically he called down 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:10.880 dancing as a punishment. Yeah, if you if you were 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:14.040 a sinner, he would send down plagues of compulsive dancing 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:18.480 to anyone that angered him. Okay, and people God. What 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:22.480 was the predominant religion at the time. It wasn't christian 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:27.199 It wasn't Christianity fully Roman Empire. Okay, well, I I 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:29.760 just I know that there was a shift in the 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:34.760 direction of the church. And at that time, in that era, 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:38.720 a lot of the worship was you worshiped the Saints, 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:43.720 I mean God, but you still worshiped the Saints. And 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:50.359 about the sixteen seventeen hundreds they shifted away from worshiping 0:19:50.400 --> 0:19:54.320 the saints as much. So then the knowledge about this 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:58.800 saint calling this down on people fell out of popular knowledge. 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:03.600 So then this reign of dancing terror wasn't something that 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:07.200 you knew about anymore. And people are collectively forgot about. 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:10.240 Are you saying that if you forget what a saint 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:12.520 will do to you, that saint can no longer do 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:16.399 it to you. I am not going to say what 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:18.600 a saint can or can I do do you. I'm 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:21.720 not going to fall into that trap. But I do 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:24.600 know that people were worried about it. And it goes 0:20:24.640 --> 0:20:27.640 back to this this psychogogenic is at the right work, 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:30.040 is that when you're in these times of stress and 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:34.560 things are bad, and then oh, Saints, you know Vetus 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:36.679 is setting his stuff down on us, and we're going 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:40.680 to be plagued by him. But if you're not, that's 0:20:40.680 --> 0:20:42.520 not being preached at you all the time. You don't 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:46.439 know that that's a potential punishment. I guess I kind of. 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:49.199 I kind of was in the same thought process. And 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:51.800 I didn't include this because it's not a theory that 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:54.439 I came across that was substantiated at all. But I 0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:58.680 was like, Wow, they're in this horrible famine. Maybe Frau 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:01.400 was like, wow, I remember we used to do rain 0:21:01.480 --> 0:21:05.480 dances like to appease the gods for whatever reason whatever, 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:08.359 they're a great grandmother speak of. I'm just gonna go 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:11.240 do that for a little while. But that doesn't explain 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:13.640 why it was involuntary, why it was like a trance state. 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:17.400 Yeah no, and yeah, I mean the St. Vitus thing. 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:21.479 You'd have to believe that that is what caused it. 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:23.360 And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say that that's 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:25.840 what's caused it. But I just wonder if you're in 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:34.359 that suggestible state because life sucks and do something, well, 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:37.399 it would be easy. Oh, that lady is still doing it. 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:40.880 And like Joe said, when when am I? When am I? When? 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:45.479 When's my card? Oh? I'm being pulled on the dance floor. 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:50.000 You know, the conception of saints is vengeful does appear 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:52.359 to have gone away? Yeah, I mean we still have 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:54.560 our saints and everything, but we don't we don't really 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:58.640 see them as vengeful. And I'm not sure exactly when 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:01.080 that when that sort of turned. I know that it's 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:02.760 the same thing happened with angels. You know, if you 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:05.520 look at the Old Testament, angels were not they were 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.919 not nice. They were not sweethearts, like they were God's 0:22:08.960 --> 0:22:12.240 hit man. They were they were badass, and he didn't 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:14.520 want it. He didn't want to meet an angel. Yeah, 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:18.000 and now that it's totally reverse. Now angels are wonderful. 0:22:18.000 --> 0:22:20.879 They're like, you know, good fairies. They are good. Yeah. 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:24.880 So while we're talking about saints, since you totally steamrolled 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:28.960 my next theory, my last theory, I guess we're gonna 0:22:29.000 --> 0:22:35.240 talk about St. Anthony's fire that. No, it's actually ergotism, 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:39.199 which is how we've decided we're going to say this word. Um. 0:22:39.400 --> 0:22:44.480 Ergotism is what you get after you eat ergo. Yeah, 0:22:44.800 --> 0:22:46.560 I'm not sure if it's I think it's ergo, but 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:49.720 it might be ergo. Okay, what of our listeners, would 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:52.280 you look it up and send us an email right now, 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:57.080 right now? While recording and we talked about this as 0:22:57.119 --> 0:22:59.480 a possible answer for the Mary Celeste. If you guys 0:22:59.520 --> 0:23:02.040 will recall I do recall, so I don't think our 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:07.399 listeners probably recall this. Yeah, yeah, we did. We totally 0:23:07.600 --> 0:23:10.600 we did. Our listeners may or may not recall that 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:14.560 this is something that you get. Ergo is a mold 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:18.800 that grows on rye bread when it's stored improperly, and 0:23:18.880 --> 0:23:22.800 they didn't exactly have good good options and hey, you 0:23:22.840 --> 0:23:26.320 remember that famine thing exactly, so you're gonna eat whatever 0:23:26.480 --> 0:23:34.800 you can. It's also a psychotropic mold that can cause delirium, hallucinations, 0:23:34.880 --> 0:23:39.240 and seizures, among other things. Yeah, but apparently from whatever 0:23:39.359 --> 0:23:42.520 the symptoms of ergotism are are basically kind of spat. 0:23:42.600 --> 0:23:44.800 You just sort of spass out. You know, you don't 0:23:44.800 --> 0:23:47.960 really dance, You're just gonna twitch and spas. Yeah, that's 0:23:47.960 --> 0:23:50.280 a problem. It'll also a problem for me is why 0:23:50.480 --> 0:23:53.080 more and more people would be suffering from it instead 0:23:53.119 --> 0:23:57.800 of a big outburst to begin with and less and 0:23:57.880 --> 0:23:59.720 less people, which is what you would kind of assume 0:23:59.760 --> 0:24:04.320 if everybody was eating gross bread. Uh, you know, actually 0:24:04.400 --> 0:24:07.719 have an idea on that. What's your idea on that? Okay, 0:24:07.760 --> 0:24:11.679