Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 529: Mass Hysteria Through Time

Episode Date: April 22, 2023

This week the boys breakdown the bizarre, highly controversial phenomenon of Mass Hysteria by analyzing some of the strangest cases of Mass Hysteria... Through Time! From dancing plagues to laughing to death, it's gonna be mass hysterical!

Hey, everybody, Wizard and the Bruiser and Page 7 are going back on the road this summer. That's right, release the Butthole Cut Tour returns. Where are we going, Jake? Oh, you can find us in Salt Lake City, Denver, Las Vegas, Portland, Tacoma, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, and St. Louis, Missouri. Last podcast, network.com for tickets. Go to lastpodcastnetwork.com for Page 7 and Wizard and the Bruiser present. It's the Butthole Cut Tour.

So, guys, I just wanted before the show even began, I wanted to pepper with you with some of my best material I got here. Yeah? Mass hysteria. What's that? Is that what Oprah goes through every six months? What does that even mean? Mass hysteria.

Mass hysteria. What the fuck? What does it mean? Yeah, are you talking about ballooning in weight and size? Oh, my God. In and out. You're going to make fun of Oprah. You're going to make fun of Oprah.

Mass hysteria. And you're also making fun of Oprah from like 15 years ago. Mass hysteria. What is this? My new boutique gym? That makes less sense. Let's redo. We have to redo this intro.

What does this even mean? Mass hysteria. What are we talking about? Oprah's... Oprah? What the fuck? Okay. Welcome to last podcast.

Ricky Lake. Ricky Lake. What are you referencing? Talks to a host from the 90s. People that lost a lot of weight and suddenly gained a lot of weight and lost. But how... But how is that... Mass hysteria.

Henry Zabrowski's problem. Oh, my God. I don't even understand hysteria. I don't understand the hysteria and weight loss and weight gain thing. Mass hysteria. What is this? Some form of long, extreme marathon set in the Boston area? I don't...

Wow. Wow, I'm confused. Mass hysteria. What are you focusing on, the word mass? The word hysteria. Massachusetts? Is that... See, that's not...

That's not... Boston mass. He said Boston... Boston mass. Yes. Mass. But how does hysteria tie into a marathon? It doesn't make sense because it's...

I said extreme kind of like a... Like a... Like a tough mutter. Wow. But it actually... I understand now. Now you're talking about resources. I am really very good.

I'm hysterical. So I think you actually did a good job. See? Welcome to the last podcast on the left, everyone. Mass hysteria. Ben, hanging out with Marcus and Henry, today's episode, I bet you've figured it out. It's not about weight gain, weight loss amongst celebrities of the 90s. It's about mass hysteria through time.

Now, we've talked about a fair amount of mass hysteria here on last podcast, from larger scale, long lasting, consequential movements like the Salem Witch Trials to smaller, cryptid outbreaks like the Spring-Heeled Jack Saga. Where do we go? Mass hysterias, however, like those surrounding the nuns of Lodon, lies somewhere in between historically significant and a merely curious set of incidents. I will say a lot of mass hysterias, maybe it's got to do with even the name itself. It really does have a lot to do with tits.

You think so? Well, there was a... Well, Spring-Heeled Jack was all about like squeaking, squeaking and bouncing, right? Which is frowned upon. Yeah, of course. And I think it was then as well. And there was other breast-centered hysterias. There was a belly hysteria.

The belly dancing hysteria of the 1920s. We just don't know. Well, these hysterias lie in the realm where the mental and physical faculties that keep us tethered to the earth temporarily break for reasons science does not fully understand. There are certain things that science can't understand. Like the inner workings of... The female mind. Is that what you want to say?

I'm very hungover from the 419 show. I took a lot of edibles last night at 60 edibles. I woke up still snowing. You were all just NPCs to me. I watched them house these enormous edibles and then house three more after that. And how was the show? The show was great. I just don't know what happened afterwards.

Yeah. I talked a lot. And I don't really remember a heck of a lot that I said. I do remember him saying that he was scared a lot. I did. I felt like scared, but pleasant. Okay. Mass hysteria.

And so today we're going to explore two kinds of mass hysteria. There is, of course, collective delusions in which a large group of people succumb to a certain false rumor or assertion, then turn that rumor into an accepted reality that thereafter causes panic or aggressive behavior. January 6th, 2021 would be a prime example. Yes. I think even a better example. At no point was there a gerbil, a hamster inside Richard Gears ass.

I did think about that. I also thought about the Troy Aikman getting a stomach pumped for com rumors. That was real. That was also real. However, it did not result in aggressive behavior or panic. I mean, I don't know. We can ask Richard Gears. Oh yeah.

Because I guarantee you people are like, what's in there? What's in there, Richie? You know, that's called what ass hysteria curious. More fascinating, however, is the idea of mass psychogenic illness, where people actually become afflicted with an illness or they suffer from the symptoms of an illness without any pathogen or a catalyst other than social and cultural influences. This would be like mass exorcisms, things of that nature. Perhaps.

Linsanity. Linsanity, Jeremy. What? Good reference. New York City deep cut. That's pretty good. Linsanity was the man. You only remember that from New York Post covers, don't you?

Yeah. He did it. You know what flea causes? Bass hysteria. Bass hysteria. Bass hysteria. Oh, real good. Wow.

We got it. You should have stopped him yesterday from eating all these animals. He ate it real fast. He must have. It was like a dog eating a fucking piece of chocolate on the floor. You want to just grab it from him and he can't. It's too late. Wow.

And then I have a stigmatism. Wow. The lights from the crowd, like they were getting super glaring and it looked like I was talking to Ferris. Cool. All right. What a show. Well, epidemic hysteria, as it's called, it is a somatic disorder, meaning it's a mental

disorder in which an individual has actual physical symptoms, but without the medical condition that is associated with those symptoms. Havana syndrome. Yeah. It is interesting though, because if you're feeling the effects of something that even if you don't have it, you kind of have it. It's true. Again, it's like, do you think a thing or are you with the thing?

For example, one might vomit uncontrollably, they might sleep very little, they might suffer from night sweats, they might deal with constant fatigue, which if you look it up on the internet, makes you a podcaster. You look it up on the internet, you're going to see lymphoma. Sure. But when you go... Yeah, because you looked it up on the internet. Yeah.

Which is like a catastrophe machine. Yeah. But you're showing all of the symptoms of having lymphoma. Right. But when you go to a doctor, he says, there's no lymphoma, who fucking knows what's wrong with you? And then the doctor goes back and makes fun of you with all the nurses. Yeah.

Right. They do do that. Now, I'll say from experience that most of the time when a doctor shrugs and give a diagnosis of, oh, you're just stressed, that's the sign of a lazy baffled or, to be fair, overworked doctor. Inserting his own vicious vile hate of doctors. About creating his own narrative and sticking to it. I like it.

But overdiagnosed or not, somatic illnesses are very real and nowhere are they more on stark display than during hysterical epidemics. Great time for comedy. Mass hysteria is sometimes when you're trapped in an elevator and you can't get out. That would be scary. But how is that mass? Too big. It could be a large elevator to be fair.

We saw some mass hysteria when Kissel broke the chair before we were getting leaving for Australia and they had to give him the bottle of wine. That's true. They didn't have to. They felt bad for me. That was their hysteria. Yes, indeed. In a physical sense, the symptoms shown during these epidemics have no plausible organic basis.

The symptoms are transient and benign and they show a mysteriously rapid onset and recovery. You're also a lot of times highly unusual. Yeah. They're very strange, very specific. We don't know where the hell they're coming from. You kind of wonder, like, how'd y'all get the same idea at the same time because we are all connected via a series of mitochondria, right? Like, let's get into this.

The marmitechondria actually are little, like, 5G little portals inside of our brains that broadcast to each other, our pituitary gland. That, it's like a drain, right? A drain for all of your thoughts to run through into the back of my head, which I call the yard. And the yard is where all the other thoughts are. Well, absolutely. And that's why good improv can exist.

Pro-wrestling can exist. Co-existence. But in pro-wrestling, do they just, like, pinch each other's nipples? They do that. It's like mind-melding. It's a mind-meld. Because you go, like, I'm going to do the suplex. But there's a mind-meld.

Yeah. If I take the leg, I'm going to put it up. I'm the undertaker. Jammin'. You get a bunch of musicians to get the jammin'. Here, we'll show an example. Bow. Bow.

Bow. Bow. Bow. Bow. Bow. Bow. Bow. Bow.

Bow. Bow. Bow. Bow. Wow. There's a crow in the room. That's crazy. This is hysteria.

That's really good. It's hard to come out of a jam that fast. I didn't see it. It's like, whizzing. That's tough. Wow. We're like the string cheese incident. Well, socially, these hysterias most often occur in segregated groups where anxiety is

high. Places like Salem, Massachusetts, in the 17th century. Oh, yeah. As in Salem, the symptoms are spread through communication, whether it be seeing the symptoms or simply hearing about the symptoms, which is how the witch menace spread across Massachusetts. Remember, it wasn't just Salem. Hey, excuse me, y'all. I think I heard some symptoms in here.

Yes, indeed. The witch menace is around. Most interestingly, I think, when it comes to humans being tribal primates at the end of the day, the spread often, but not always, moves down the age scale, starting with older, higher, saddest people and moving down. QAnon, for example, didn't truly take hold until older people in power started talking about it and giving it credence. Well, because then we're getting some kind of confirmation from somebody that might know,

and then you don't realize that actually a hot dog vendor can be elected to the House of Representatives if they have enough, like that's what I'm saying. It just kind of shows, you know, anybody could be in the government. Yeah. Anybody at all. Which is the point? Is it not? Is it not?

You have to sell your soul a little bit. Oh, of course. Thanks. You have to sell your soul to do fucking anything, man. You do, you do. How do you have to sell your soul to become that hot dog vendor in the first place? First of all, you're part of Big Nitrate. You're definitely Big Nitrate.

You can't like pigs. Your family might as well be dead because you're working all the time. Most of the time you're sending money home to someplace else. Yeah. Or you're a niche, like gourmet hot dog guy. Sure. But then you're past vendor. Now you're not a vendor.

Yeah. And also let's not be too fancy with it. It's a hot dog. Let's have fun with it. Oh, yeah. But you could be a vegan and you're forced to sell hot dogs because you need to make money. Vegan hot dogs. No.

You would sell meat hot dogs, but you are a vegan. That would be a conflict of interest. That's what I'm saying. Thank you both for answering my question. It's incredible how much selling out happens at all times. You have to do it sometimes. Now, since hysterical epidemics are a social affliction, the cure partly comes from removing the afflicted from the social element.

The area in which the hysteria is occurring must be quarantined. And individuals experiencing the symptoms have to be separated. That's why you take Facebook away from mom and dad when they get too crazy with it. Yes. But again in Salem, the failure to do this is what made the whole tragedy worse. By keeping the afflicted girls together during the witch examinations, authorities were exacerbating the physical and mental symptoms, which made the infernal tortures appear to be all too real.

Now, had those girls been separated or better yet removed from the courtroom altogether, then there's little doubt that the hysteria would have reached the fever pitch that it did where so many people needlessly died. If a couple of more clever town leaders could have taken all of those twitching women down to the river and said, Hey, I know you guys got a lot of energy out here. Everybody let's work this out. First of all, let's get you out of these, these course clubs. You want to open up a strip club.

You want to open up a witchy strip club, which yes, does sound fantastic. Yes, it does. Yes, let's just begin a golf dance naked night. What about let him, what about let him go to school? It's already proved to be difficult. But to that point, there's really no way to prevent mass sociogenic illness because it is difficult for humans to recognize when it's actually happening to win. Hysteria's almost always occur as an outcropping of the cultural anxieties of the era and location

in which they occur. One day I'd love to talk to an expert in this field. There's very few. That's the problem is that there actually aren't experts in this field. It's very difficult to put together because like how do you put this? Each man is an island in their own way, right? Like your computer now, like now how we've made algorithms being exteriorization of our like little windows into the world.

That the fact that you don't know, most people don't know that what they see on their computer is actually different than what other people say on their computer. And so they are actually creating their own like echo chamber inside their own head. But then your own brain is also very dedicated in keeping you locked into your own perspective. It's very difficult. Like empathy is a learned skill, I think. Like you have to figure out that other people view things from other angles and have things outside of them that are factors to create who they are.

And it's something like this shows that like it's kind of a flaw in our consciousness that we can get locked onto a thing and it really would take your whole life bottoming out for you to understand that you've been incorrect. Or do you just take the pill and stay in the matrix? Sure. Because they're just like sweet. I love it. We talked about with you and on that it's all like it's about the friends you made along the way.

January 6th was just more of a fun afternoon for a lot of these guys because they did not understand really kind of what they were in the middle of, that they were volunteering to be a part. Some definitely did. Oh yeah. Some. They came heavily armed. Oh yeah. Well, they were taken into the next step.

Like they were taken like they were taken it really seriously. And some of them were heavy in the arms, but most of them were heavy in the middle part. I saw a lot of that. A lot of butts. Mass hysteria. There we go. Well, as I just said, like even though mass hysteria is used to explain away all manner of events, whether it be, you know, the aforementioned January 6th.

It's very much like a swamp gas. Yeah. UFOs. It's also used to explain that away. It's used to explain away moth man, any sort of cryptid signing, any sort of flap. Flaps are usually ascribed to mass hysteria. All the time. Yeah.

All right. Studies on the phenomenon are few and experts in the field are scant. What we do know is that there are typically two forms of epidemic hysteria. The first is seemingly more common. Mass anxiety hysteria. It's basically societal paranoia, and one can use it to explain pretty much every satanic panic in history from QAnon to the devil cult accusations leveled at North American daycares in the early 90s.

Yeah. Because they are they're feeling this paranoia. The times are tight. Yeah. Things are intense in the country. And so that kind of like feeds some kind of inner mechanism. But again, we don't know what the hell it is. Not to mention the cover of the ghoulies.

How many people think the ghoulies are in their toilets to this day? I can't simply because of that cover. That's why. What's the name of the kitty litter we've been working with? They have been at my savior. I think it's cat. Well, pretty litter. Pretty litter.

It's been so good to just let loose in a bucket of pretty litter. Because again, no ghoulies. No ghoulies. Because I can check the bottom of it. This toilet's ghoulie free. Trust me. Uh-oh. Now it's ghoulie full.

Now that ain't right. Mass hysteria. Well, for example, in 1992 in the town of Martinsville in Saskatchewan, a parent alleged that someone at a local daycare run out of the ominous home had sexually abused her child. Serious allegations. Very serious. But as it often happened in the early nineties when it came to daycares

and sex abuse allegations, the case soon spiraled into the realm of the satanic. Yes, but not the fun. You can't do the horns. No, it's not fun. It's not fun. It's not. It's not fun. But pretty soon, the accuser was roping in everyone she could on these allegations,

alleging that the daycare owner's entire family was involved in the molestation, along with members of three nearby police departments. Oh, mama. Allegedly, they all belong to a devil-worshipping cult called the Brotherhood of the Ram, who specialized in drugging, beating, and sodomizing children. That's the only thing I don't like. Yeah, well, that's good. Those are strong principles, Henry.

Yes, they did it. They took them out of the daycare and brought them to a quote unquote devil church. That's not good. It's just, again, it's very difficult to get real estate. I don't think you guys understand that. It is. Now, never mind that there wasn't a shred of physical evidence for these insane allegations. About a hundred charges were soon filed against over a dozen people.

Wow. The local papers were reporting that 30 children had been sexually abused before they'd been locked in freezers and forced to drink the blood of cult members. Well, that's not good. That's not good. That's what I would say. If I was there right now, go back. Ben Kessel, my age.

I read the papers. That's not funny. This ain't good. I can see you there in the devil church as they're molesting and bleeding all the children. I would be there. You'd be like, hey, guys, hey, let's think about this a second time. That's not good. So intense was the fear felt by this small town that when a local priest called the police

station one night to tell them that a horde of murderous devil worshipers were on their way at that very moment, the police chief took him seriously. All the dudes in the police department, they brought up their shotguns. They set up barricades. It's very interesting, but nothing happened. Nothing happened because there were no Satanists. But what if something did happen? What if it did?

Be prepared. Yes, but that's what January 6th, they kind of say, whatever with it, it's weird. There are things that are weird within it because what you saw was that there was a mass hysteria moment building, and then there were architects on top that obviously saw benefits from what this could all do. And I do believe it was on all sides where they were like, how do we spin this entire event? And that's why they walked in. They didn't know what to do.

They were like doors let open for them. It's a bunch of sketchy shit inside of that. Well, all of that stuff was, yeah, that was them trying to get the... Anyway, I don't know what I'm talking about. But you know what I mean? It's something like this where these things blow up because there are people in various influential spots that watch these things build and they think, how do we benefit from this wave? Yeah.

But there was a lot. People were being escorted around us because they were trying to get them away from all the politicians. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah. But then that's when... It's a whole day.

It was a whole day. It's a whole day. No, I remember. It was America's big day. It was America's big day. It was, yeah. I'm not even doing July 4th anymore. America's big day.

I'm only doing J.S.S. I... I was wondering why you stood in the middle of the 101 with the chair with those sparklers and the American flag this year. Ooh, mattress sales. The idea that the police actually bought into this panic that a horde of Satanists were coming, it's incredible. Yeah.

Because the police officers were themselves the ones who were being accused of being satanic devil worshipers. They knew that they were not devil worshipers, yet still they played into the anxiety because it was brought to an appropriate level and because it was directed at them. Yeah, and then they had to shut down the other police officers so that they didn't look like they were the Satan worshiping police officers. What you got to do is you got to show up, you got to present a series of mirrors in front of the cops.

Oh, yeah. And you say, you're the horde. Yeah. Now you're the horde. Whoa. Wait a second. Is that a Kendall Jenner commercial for Pepsi? That would be incredible.

That would be incredible. She saved everything. She did. She solved it all. Now, this all occurred in 1992, but it took until the early 2000s for the people who were charged to get any sort of compensation, the daycare owner's son. He did time for a molestation. He went to jail.

Oh, that's the worst thing to go to jail for. He is innocent. Well, I mean, it's widely believed that he's innocent. He never appealed his conviction, which no one really can figure out why, but it's widely accepted that yeah, everyone was innocent of all charges. He just happened to go down for it, but then you either don't got no money, no more, right? Or you're just so beaten down and destroyed by it or there was a bunch of other molestations that you did.

And then you just got caught on the bad one and now you know that he's so in jail. Everybody's maybe believing that you're innocent because you're like, I get hard for it. I get all I like is milk. Like he goes up to the lunch lady in the prison and he goes like, Oh, I wish I could give those a squeeze. And they're like, there is no way Jerry's a child molester and then you don't know that actually you are guilty of a bunch of child blessing. Just not the one that you're in jail for.

Fantastic idea. I don't know if there's lunch ladies in prison. What? It is also possible. There's no lunch ladies in prison with other prisoners. There's lunch people. Yes. There's no.

No, they don't. Yeah. Remember, but there's lunch men. Remember John Wayne Gacy was a lunch man. Yeah, I do. Yes. But it is also possible, as we see with false confessions, that you can almost be a victim of mass hysteria yourself and actually trick yourself into thinking that you did something

wrong. We'll get into a prime example of that here in a minute. That's a strange human conundrum. Well, what's the rest of the defendants in the McMartensville trial had the advantage of years and distance? The courts easily saw that the accusations were so far beyond reason that monetary compensation to the tune of millions of dollars was handed over or millions of Canadian dollars. My question is how much time would you serve for $10 million?

Oh, man, but not for child molestation. No. I mean, you were in solitary at best. No, no, no, no, no, no. For $10 million, did I get it after? Yeah, you get it after. I mean, it's not going to help you during. I don't know.

I don't know. Knowing what it would, how much it would destroy my mental health for the rest of my life. Six days. Six days? Voluntarily. Yeah. Six days. Yeah.

I don't know if I'm going to do good in the big house. $10 million. I've watched a lot of Big Herk and I know that they don't like the funny guys. Yeah. No, they don't. I'd have to figure out. I have to get into the, honestly, if I could teach them all, like I could cook, teach acting classes.

Yeah. I feel like I could teach acting classes inside of jail. Yeah. Yeah. A guy like me. Like, and you're talking like federal prison, right? We're talking. Yep.

Federal prison. Yeah. Federal prison. Jim popped federal prison. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Day and a half.

Maybe I'd spend a night there. Strong like bull. How long do you think you could do in jail? Oh God. Well, first thing you do, you go when you drop trial right away. You say line up, boys. There's a new show pouring in town and you give everyone what they need. Handys, suckies.

And hopefully after that, they give you a little bit of respect. You know, and I actually, I think I'm too tall. I think I'll be uncomfortable. Oh, you'd be very uncomfortable in jail. It would. I could survive. I just, I want to train little. I don't want to though.

Yeah. I train mice and pigeons. Maybe that guy with little like circle glasses going, you know, sometimes it's just, it's the smaller they are. They understand more what it's like to live in a small place. You know, you could sell it. You say very like, I'm so big. You're so tiny.

And then we can fit together. Yeah. Like two Lego blocks. Yeah. Well, yeah. Marcus, it would be bad for you because you're also kind of a feminine build. No, no, no. Yeah.

I'm androgynous in many different ways. Yeah. Yeah. We could flop you around. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We flopped around real bad.

There we go. Six days for Marcus. I took it down to a day and a half. I do a fortnight. The one funny thing is that stupid. We'll get back to this, but that dumb show where people volunteer to go to prison for 60 days. Oh, the world's toughest prisons.

No, not that. There's that. There's the one was the, well, yes, that man, but then they just have normal people to go to prison for like 60 days. And then sometimes they actually commit a crime in prison and then they get sentenced to prison. That suck. Why would you do this?

They're stupid. Yep. Well, while the mass anxiety scares are certainly more consequential in the societal sense, the more interesting and mysterious of the two kinds of epidemic hysteria is mass motor hysteria. What's that? F1. Nice.

Oh, no, it's like a deep, it's like deep purple mass motor hysteria is off the rails. Space truck. Wow. Does this episode come with an edible? Hey, man, I'm just getting into the 420 spirit. I haven't smoked weed in years, but hey, man, it's like Christmas. You got to get into it. It's because I put it in your water.

Yeah. You're gonna have a mental breakdown. Please God. And yeah, I know Godzilla was blue aster called, so don't give me any shit. No one's caring. No one cares. No one knows. Well, in this condition, in mass motor hysteria, a slow accumulation of pent up stress within

a bad social scene can eventually result in dissociation, histrionics, and alterations to psychomotor activity. They'll shake, twitch, contort, and contract, which is pretty much what people do when they're supposedly possessed by the devil. This actually, I've seen this. Now when you mention all of this, it reminds me of an evangelical. Oh, yeah. Where are we?

We've talked about this. Do you not think that like it's mostly voluntary though? Like it's not involuntary because you also, so you get, so you get called up in front of the pastor, right? And then you get the lane on my hand and you have to do something societal pressure. But also it's, I just do the robot. Whoa. Oh my God.

He's been, whoa. That would crush when I got the hands laid upon me and, you know, you fall over, they just push you over. Yeah. But yes, you do. You go over. I mean, there, that is, that's your role in that, in that game. Wow.

What kind of a wide berth did they give behind you? Well, bro, I was a bit younger then and I opened my eyes and I was looking right up a girl's skirt. She was my age. She was my age. When he fell over, they all went into mass hysteria. Yeah. They were so scared of his eyes.

But it's like that, crash test dummy song, great song. Yeah. How is it like that song? Because they talk about going to the church, everyone's rolling around on the ground, climbing around like worms. Do they? Yeah. I'll have to take his word for it.

Yeah. I thought it was just one about polka dots. No, no, no. There's a bunch of stuff. You're a high. Well, unaddressed or worse, encouraged, the symptoms of mass motor hysteria can last weeks or months. Wow.

If it's encouraged or if people simply take it seriously, as say, a mass demonic movement, then it quickly spreads from person to person. Case in point are the so-called dancing plagues of Europe. You know, for a long time, people thought they're still been kind of like, there was like a debunked movement for a while, trying to say that these didn't happen. But now they're actually showing that there's a lot more evidence than they thought there was originally to show that like dancing plagues happened. People were.

What's a dancing? Well, get into it. The dancing plagues started in the 11th century and occurred regularly until the mid 17th century, sometimes called St. Vitus's dance after the patron saint of dancing. The dancing plagues could last weeks, sometimes months and could often be fatal to the involuntary participants. They danced themselves to death? Yes.

Because dancing plagues is a little bit, because it's kind of both, because some seem like they are actual dancing. Some do seem more like giant group seizures that also kind of happen, which is weirdly that comes up several times, that actual phenomenon. Yeah. But dancing plagues are actually the earliest recorded instances of what we now call mass sociogenic illness, although the frenzied Dionysian antics in the 405 BC play, the Bacchae, certainly imply that motoric mass hysteria has existed throughout mankind's

social history. Do they not? I'm really interested. They just really interested to die. I wasn't prepared for this voice. No, I don't. Bacchanalian. Bacchanalian frenzied dance.

Bacchanalia is a thing. It was a thing. I don't know what is real. I don't know. I don't know. A lot about it. I know the Dionysians were a cult. Princess Diana was murdered.

I don't know. I think her head just did that. She was. She was killed by the paparazzi. Yep. By us almost in a way. Isn't that true? By our attention.

Isn't that a fact? First person in history, murdered by photography. Indy. Except for many Amish, so they're so scared of it. So the earliest recorded example of a dancing plague comes from the year 1021, during a Christmas eve mass in the Germanic town of Korbik. That evening, the priest was interrupted by 18 people dancing with wild abandon making noise outside the church.

Wow. This is German, so it's Oompa music. When do you think polka music began? Polka music is not German. That's Polish. Czech. I'm talking Oompa music. What do you mean polka music is not fucking German?

They're all the same. No, polka music. It's Polish. Yeah, it's Polish and Czech. It's Eastern European. That's your people. Yeah. And when you mix polka with traditional Latin American.

It becomes Mariachi. It becomes Tejano. Oh, cool. No, not Mariachi. It becomes Tejano. Nice. What's the difference? Texas tornadoes, they're Tejano.

Wow, I'm spontaneously dancing over here. All right. Very good. It's a great episode. Really solid. It's something. Not the first episode to introduce us to new listeners. I thought you said there was content.

On synths at the bank. There is content. What I really enjoy about last podcast is they really inject intelligence into the humor. And since that the dancers weren't giving a Christmas Eve mass, it's due respect. The priest marched outside and ordered them to stop. They ignored him. And like something out of a folk horror film, the dancers held hands and danced around

the priest in what was called a ring dance of sin, clapping, leaping and chanting in unison. We, we, we are a butthole. We, we, we are a butthole. You're inside a butthole. That makes the priest a turd. According to a local chronicler, the priest was so enraged that he cursed the dancers to dance for an entire year as punishment for that quote unquote outrageous levity.

Well, if you're going to be out there making a show out of something's not a show, then you better be dancing for the rest of the goddamn year. All right. This is the smoke a whole pack of cigarettes. See if you get sick. Reportedly, the people believed enough in the priest power where it actually worked. And it wasn't until the following Christmas that the dancers stopped. Hey, hey.

Wow. Yeah, they dance themselves. Whoa. Well, these dancing plagues. As Henry mentioned, very briefly, this isn't like fun and sexy, like salt and pepper, shoot dancing. Like it's not, I've been. I've been getting into shit like this song. I'm blue that was originally by the I gets and then the monitor and to be do be do

And then of course that song was sampled the I gets version was sampled and shoot by salt and pepper So I've been watching that video like a lot lately and they can dance boy. They can dance Really We got to see them perform during the daylight at the Comedy Central Comedy Festival because they was all wrong and the musicians performed before comedy I tell you I made chili always be always be my girl. Yeah, yeah, that is TLC The whole thing about salt and pepper is that one of the same salt and the other one is named And then there's been to Rella I just got it. I must we got to go So everyone's favorite was left. I

But I was sexually attracted to chili Well, they're all hot. I like she was the one with the long hair But yeah, this isn't that type of dancing This is like white woman on a retreat in Sedona like letting her hair down after screen therapy like this is beetle Bob This is like Charles Manson bebop and in jazz and after that reporter asked him to define his unique charm But regardless after the Christmas Eve dancers stopped following the priest curse They reportedly fell into a deep sleep and some of them subsequently died from exhaustion That's a fairly incredible story

Because while it's unknown exactly how long a human can go without sleep the current record is 11 days It's a record. You don't want to try to beat. No, what a nightmare Perhaps the dancers continued twitching during sleeping hours and began the boogie anew upon their next awakening Well, you've heard about a fatal insomnia Yeah, were you inside die from insomnia? It's a really fun like You have problems with like, you know intrusive thoughts or like kind of like any form of hypochondria like it's like the most Frightening thing that you've ever heard because it just happens. They don't know why it happens You just stop being able to go to sleep and then you go insane to death

That's fucking horrible Grumble that yeah To get someone to go to sleep well they happen they have to put you out for a while They try to do with anesthesia. It doesn't really really work. So you don't really really Yes So I bet you there's something I feel like all of this is kind of weirdly connected in the way That and locked in Kill me kill me

Yeah, of course, I mean we'll make fun of you a bunch first. Yeah Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah first and we'll get some content out of it. Yeah, use the body film the roast Henry We're roasting Henry's corpse. Uh-huh, and that's it 18 months. That's great. And then we'll You can try it out of it. Great. Well Regardless of logistics, we know that if this story is exaggerated It's only exaggerated a bit because dancing plagues continued for centuries Specifically in Germany now people tend to dismiss stories of dancing plagues pretty much just because it sounds fucking stupid Yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but a lot of these epidemics were recorded by reliable sources

And they're corroborated by multiple chroniclers who were otherwise trusted in everything else. They wrote weird It's really strange when the German town of Eiffelt in 1247 200 people were said to have danced on a bridge until it collapsed drowning them all people are like tiktok's the problem Oh, it's literally it's even doing this ever since that is just called planking. Yeah, well that actually is interesting as well I don't know if we cover it, but the Brooklyn Bridge when it first opened the mass hysteria somebody someone's like it's going down Yeah, a bunch of people got trampled to death. I'm not sure if that really is my it's kind of mass Or mass panic mass panic Yeah

Well in the next century thousands of people in the Germanic lands of the low countries Gathered and danced for weeks while screaming that they were having terrible visions and pleading in great pain For monks and priests to save their souls About 30 or 40 years after that monks in the city of Trier Recorded that masses of hallucinating dancers hopped and leaped for six months. That's not seizures That's something totally different something else. Yeah, and some of them even in fact died after they landed badly They broke their ribs. Some of them broke their loins. I think they mean their hips. I mean, oh people They're still German at the end of the day. Yeah, we're not a jump in people. No, no, no, no, no, you're a kicking people

You're marching people What about Detlef Schrempf? Yes, we move a shooter not much But there's been a Dirk perhaps Yeah, and so it went at least once a century and Strasburg in the summer of 1518 400 people were caught in a dancing plague So uncontrollable that they danced themselves to death Yeah, knowing all the while but sunstroke would kill them if they did not stop people are dropping dead at their feet And they're not stopping. Yeah, how about that? How about that Coachella?

Oh god, we're just fucking so old. Yeah Coachella. Oh that lineup is garbage. It's not for us. No, it's not. Oh, I love tribut in Mr. Mr. Bankel and I love I think it's stank pink. Yeah. Oh stank pink is one of my favorite violent God hyper pop. There we go. Really good No, the city of Strausburg tried getting proactive with their dancing plate and therefore Constructed a special stage in the heart of the city Content. Yeah, why not if they're gonna be dancing anyway, but I'm on stage the dancers were herded to the stage where they could ostensibly

I think the logic was like let him get it out of their system Attention so much. You know what happens when Germans let it get out of their system That's gonna be great really let loose what's inside the German. Yeah, eventually the city even hired professional dancers and Musicians to accompany the people in the dancing trances either to give the dancers a structure or to just make them Visually less unsettled. There was a dude that watched this at some point. He was like This needs choreography It's like we were doing this all wrong like he arrived. It's like we need to put up a backdrop

We gotta put some lights strangely sympathetic approach. It really is. They're like, let's help them out Now there's a reason to dance. Yeah, well, they're not dancing a beat Yeah, they're not but at least it's not them dancing in silence. You just hear the Of the feet, which is don't forget the bones crackin. Yeah. Oh, yeah, the bone Slowly cat about bones slowly crackin. Oh, that would be horrible to dancer near fucking ankles break. Yeah, but of course Once the professional dancers began dancing with the sick ones the professional dancers also got caught in the epidemic Even though they would try their hardest not to it's really strange Yeah, very weird now

It's been wrongly theorized that every single one of these dancing plagues were a result of ergot poisoning Ergot I mean, you know, cuz they have ergot poisoning when they figured out that ergot does that they're all like every single historian was like Let's sprinkle some ergot on it. Yeah. Well, I mean, does it have anything to do with it? No, but it doesn't wash because when you consider that people would dance for weeks or months on end without showing any other sign of ergot Persons that just puking or shake yourself into a coma. You're also just seeing stuff Yeah, this is the nature of how many times it's all everybody who talks about hallucinogens that has never done any Yeah, where they're all like who makes you go crazy We're like mostly it just makes you see shit weird and and you kind of just like ball up amongst inside of yourself

I found that the phrase that I find myself saying the most when doing hallucinogens is uh-oh. Yeah Yeah, in my mind, it's also very like this makes sense or like I like these like oh, of course that that fucking pinecone would be there Oh, like that says oh, oh, all right. Let's okay. Let's but it's uh-oh in a good way or like, oh, all right I mostly just sit down. Yeah, mm-hmm gonna chill out Well people did exhibit a rational psychedelic sounding behavior during these prolonged trances in the well-documented 1347 case in the low countries the afflicted yelled out the names of devils They claimed to be drowning in a sea of blood and they developed stranger versions to the color red and Pointed shoes now that really points towards the society's fears. I think that's because they were getting kicked

By all these people in pointed shoes. I mean, yeah, and then also but it's indicative of the devil of the of a wicked man A wicked person and so you're basically taking like how we say we Transmute our pop culture ideas to our visions of aliens and shit It's the same as that where they're just scared of stuff, which is actually to them very scary at the time Yeah, it would be funny if aliens come back wearing like 1300s garb be like, oh, I guess we got to say tree Rub, do you not think that the next wave of fashion is gonna be all of that? It's all I mean like Dude life is coming and it's gonna be a real. Oh, yeah, but apparently I had bought a snoot I told you I took a picture in it, but it looks a bit

ethnic And I tried to put it on I Listener said it to me was great. I thank you, but yeah, I can't wear it because I do I look like You can wear I look like a professional 40 year old dishwasher from 36 years ago I'm saying it's very it's a knit cap. All right. I understand that in and to that point Henry We went to the Renaissance fair last week Oh, yeah, and I was told many a time that I looked like I fit right in the only thing that was Renaissance clothing on My body was the pants the shirt wear that shirt all the time

The shoes wear their shoes all the time they just and yet I fit right in in the Renaissance. You look like that's not a compliment You look like a farmer's confused son. Yeah from the Renaissance times confused Into what happened that we only want to do is write poetry. He doesn't have anything to do with the fig farm No Marcus was arguing about very important Star Trek issues Which we are not gonna. No, I am not approaching. Absolutely not. Absolutely not deep space nine It's more than just gargling Now as we said earlier Mass hysteria can come from extreme stresses in the times in which these dancing plagues occurred the Middle Ages

They were horrific for the monkey brain of a human. Yeah in the 1347 case for example The black death had swept through Europe only 25 years earlier and in the Strasburg outbreak There had just been a famine Accompanied by the arrival of a new disease called syphilis welcome to the games In addition to recurrent outbreaks of both leprosy and the plague syphilis does make you go mad, right? No, no, no, no does syphilis takes like 30 40 years to drive you crazy. I got you interesting. You got plenty of time I'm good. Interestingly though dancing to process and heal trauma is actually pretty common amongst human beings Oh, yeah, dancing is one of the most powerful

Artforms ever be because it's not hemmed in by language Society or culture each each culture has its own dance and we're united by dance. Yeah, sure I mean look at the electric slide If we brought it to Afghanistan if we brought the electric slide to Iran I feel that we could really fix all of that But cultures and dancing it is an interesting way to study cultures through dance, isn't it? If we could just drop that fucking what was the that the This is your chance to do the hump, right? We do the

We drop the Humpty hump over Ukraine Yeah, maybe that would help maybe that would help Well, it could be that a dancing plague is an example of the brakes getting cut on a coping mechanism Hmm that however doesn't explain how dancing plagues spread which is still to this day a mystery It is really it's interesting all of these versions of mass hysteria It's like I guess that you see a bunch of people doing something There's a maybe a little part of you that's like man. I want to give everything up Everywhere, you know like let's go but it is strange and then you get locked in

Yeah, you drop out of society and then you realize that society was the net that was keeping you up Wow, wow Okay, but society's fucking making me mad You're getting it now Your home is where you're happy. It's not where you're not free. That's Charles Manson. That's Charles Manson lyric But speaking of the middle ages medieval convents were common places for outbreaks of mass hysteria where there were nuns That was weirdness. Oh, yeah, there was Indeed indeed well these hysterias were usually led by women who had been forced into nunneries

Where they lived in prison-like conditions under strict behavioral guidelines a lot of stress This mom's mother superior is a really got to keep those nuns in a short leash He's got to make sure that clean number one. Yeah, that's gotta make sure that first of all when sister claims slapper shows up You want to be ready for that? It's just Iniquity yeah, her name is Helen Where a scissors not just an office supply isn't that nice Revan oysters for dinner again Mass hysteria Yes

No, perhaps because nunneries were such odd constructs full of women forced to be there So too where the mass hysteria is contained there and often strange and oftentimes these were just either Lesbian women or women that wanted to read Go to the nunnery you're also discounting women's where the whole family has been murdered and they have nowhere to go And they have no agency within society or women like youngest daughters who can't be married off You know like or who have not but who kind of aged out of being married off You're 35 you're fucking done. Yeah, it's your square of a head got two round of a head Right in the nunnery nuns on the run. Oh, I'm gonna sneak into a nunnery. Well in one french convent

Well in one french convent one nun began for reasons unknown Meowing like a cat which is of course an animal associated with witches and therefore satan I've heard people do this now. That's what I call mass hysteria. I mean I seriously people meow sometimes Well pretty soon all the nuns in the convent people meow sometimes Yeah, they do they do who meow sometimes. I've been to some bars and people just yeah women women meow You're different. You're you're single. You're out there. What bars have you been to or women just meow? It's the pussy hut. There was a tabby corner Garfield's place. I don't know

Get the normal Well pretty soon all the nuns in the convent were meowing like cats Eventually falling into a chorus of catarwalling for hours every day Wow weird the meowing only stopped when local soldiers were ordered into the convent to whip and spank the nuns Until the kittens quieted down. I think that was the point of the meowing. You got a bark The soldiers are barking. Yeah, the soldiers are barking the playing cat and dogs. They're just trying to have sex with each other Yeah But mass hysterias amongst nuns could also spread from convent to combat the meowing nuns. That was just one convent

And this happened simply by word of mouth or should I say happened simply by word of mouth in the 15th century? For example nuns began biting each other in convent spread across france and the germanic states This is what you really need russle crows the pope sex or six They show up and fix this shit because this is this is really weird. I mean, I mean, yes, yes, this nuns just All right, they are it's it turns a nunnery into more of a nommery. Yeah, because they're eating it there They're nom nom nom and on it. I mean they're viciously biting each other. Wow. What a weird time to be a nun Before long the biting nun thought virus had spread to italy in the netherlands And no one could get the nuns to stop biting people no matter how much they begged them to stop

Wow when prayer failed as well the church ordered mass exorcisms and when that was a bust They fell back on the old standbys of flogging and drowning and just honestly get them a peloton Yeah, they needed to be worked out But once several nuns were flogged and or drowned word spread to the other convents and the biting miraculously stopped Wow, weird. I wonder what did I wonder? I actually sometimes think if you know go along get along You're biting you will you're biting. I think we're biting a little bit start biting slightly than the Salem witch trials We talked a little bit about the concept of okay. I have no agency. I haven't put into this thing I I'm in society not in my choice. Uh, it's not my choice to be here

I'm also in this nunnery. It's not my choice and on some level this aberrant behavior actually gives me power To control over it. It's a rebellion. Yeah, you know, even though you're biting each other You know, I'm biting everyone but still a sort of rebellion. I don't know. I don't know if that's the fully decals But it does make sense sure And you know that actually sort of makes sense a little bit with the very first dancing plague that we talked about You know, they're rebelling against the church and then the church. Oh, you know, we're not dancing. Fuck you. Yeah, I'm always dancing Always dancing Now throughout the Middle Ages mass hysterias were often blamed on the devil

And our next story the Milan poisoning was no different Now as we know the salad days of the black plague within the 14th century the appetizer course I love it But it persisted in Europe and occasional flare-ups until the 1800s This of course caused much consternation whenever it occurred and while many people usually blamed the jewish folk when the plague came to town Another group shared the bill in the 17th century. Thank god I just you know, I mean that's the jewish people. I mean, come on. You gotta leave them alone

Leave alone Well in conjunction with the Salem hysteria just a few decades later Rumors were spreading across europe in the early to mid 1600s that the plague was being spread by witches and witchcraft And I do believe this is a mechanism of population control like and also saying that we don't like aberrant people in our society We don't like the fringe people and so anytime you see one It's a new way to scapegoat anybody you may not like or may not like the cut of the jib of Because now you can say like oh, well, they're sneaking plague in everybody's so scared of plague that they're immediately gonna react Yeah, well you have no choice at that point because you know, you're gonna if you get the plague you know, you're gonna die

So yeah, why take the chance? Why take the chance? Indeed, it was of course as we covered in the black plague a lot of commerce was the reason. Oh, yeah for the spread Well in the best example of this rumors consequences in this story does actually have to do with commerce a bit Milan was struck with a horrific plague in 1630 in which a quarter of the city's population Was dead when the whole thing was a quarter But at the height of the panic the governor of Milan received word from king philip the fourth of spain King philip said them four Frenchmen had escaped from prison and were spreading the plague with poisonous ointments

No, I couldn't really figure out why he said this thing I guess it was a way to try to catch the criminals where they just these guys were released No one really knows the nature of why of what they have who they were Why it was they were so important to be caught But it sounds like they did that being so that people wouldn't look out and try to get these motherfuckers And I don't know the Frenchman. I don't know who they double crossed. Yeah to experiences or what information they had about king philip the fourth He did not like from hush my real name stanley. Oh, he's out of here Well, the hysteria increased in may of 1630 when citizens in Milan reported seeing people placing poison ointments in a cathedral

Just a little dab dab on the benches little dab dab will do you and this presumably is where witchcraft got mixed up into the story An attack on the church But while authorities found nothing in the cathedral all the doors along the main street of Milan the next day were marked with a mysterious Dob, this is really a mysterious Dob like you know, like you get some Vaseline Get like a big jar of petroleum jelly and you put two fingers into it. You got it always See, I always

I like to use my three fingers More mass He uses three fingers on the pudding. I think it's a three or two finger That's a three finger man. He gives it what I call it's called the dolphin Where you put the three the three in the middle go in and then you got two fins Yeah, well, you got two fins in order to hold the pudding cup Yeah, you want to do that putting cups so you're never without putting in any chance It's amazing like the quick decline of that weird weird man so fast

Yeah, but you know, he has that leaked tape where he's like when you're a celebrity you can grab any pudding by the pussy Now you're satirical and I enjoy your satire I enjoy your satirical take on things the capital steps are coming out next. They're broken up political reasons But the mysterious dob was real and it is this is interesting because this is truly just pranksters Yeah, somebody heard this ruler that these guys are showing up with plague and so then they're they're doing it with cream Yeah, they're doing it with cream and they're just putting mysterious dobs on all the main all the doors in the main street So everyone would be able to see them and one of the fun time to be a teenager during this era very much

So because you can just everybody right no one has any clue what's real or what's not real unless they have a froth gone And you have to believe them for some reason and if you're a teenager in this era like you're an adult You're a man. You're an adult. Yeah, you're an adult. Yeah, you're you've had your father Yeah, you're not like driving around and you're Chevy, you know going beep beep going on the drag smoking cigarettes No, you're not doing that. No, you're doing none of that. No, you're farming your sustenance farming. Yeah about the parking lot Taco Bell Oh no Taco Bell is only is this 1620s. It's like 20 years away. Yeah, Taco Bell has only been around since like 1645 Right, you're not going that there. You're not going to the opposite side of the sonic drive-in Not the first side the second side because that's where all the kids hang out. I actually don't know that

Yeah, no, it was a texas thing. I believe weird. You wouldn't understand. I know that it was a goop though Yeah, it was something put on the walls was they said it was yellow. Yeah Yeah, but the mysterious dog was nothing poisonous. It sounds like tallow like dog like yeah like fat, you know Or some dobbable material. Okay, but it was a prank It was playing off the poison plague fears that have been steadily building Yeah, sometimes if you want to create a fake plague a little dobble, do you? Yeah, absolutely But instead of breaking the tension the prank increased the fear and soon no one was saved from accusation or assault In one case an old man just minded his own business while sitting on a bench

He was accosted by a mob after a dob of something was seen on the bench the old man was sitting on That's just my poop I couldn't hold it anymore. I was thinking about the last plague And now I'm sitting in my duke and everybody's saying I'm the bad guy You're a bad guy now. You're a you're a wizard I need hell You do you need to die. I wish I could I still live. You will every day. I wake up You'll be dead soon. Thank you

Well, the old man was beaten and dragged into a church I'm sorry This is how it's gonna go poop. I'm just so I know Oh, I'm lost. No, you're just where you want to be Then they dragged him to the magistrate and that's where he died. That's where he did. Yeah. Yeah I always wanted to waste a lawyer's time Magistrates a sheriff I thought they were like everything a judge. I thought a magistrate was a judge. Huh, so we're magistrates a judge

So ben is once again, right? Perhaps the satirical mind is more clever than ours Oh, you don't think he has a satirical mind. No I have a Stereo mind. Yeah, he just spent two minutes screaming about poop No, nothing's satirical about that. What a genius in a lab All right Yes, I know

Well taking things even further citizens then accused a barber surgeon named Jean Giacomo Mora of working with satan To make poisonous potions. Oh, geez now the whole Giacomo Mora saga was a tragic misunderstanding of the highest order See if you'll remember the black plague produces painful boils that erupt in the groin in the armpits of the infected And Giacomo Mora had devised a salve that helped soothe the pain of these burst boils Word of Mora's miracle ointment soon spread and people began crowding his shop to buy a dob for themselves before he ran out Naturally, many of those people were infected with the plague So when they rubbed up against the uninfected in close quarters the plague spread it seems I have created more of a problem with my very helpful ointment

Which is why now that you have received a plague from being said my establishment while trying to buy anti plague formula I've actually made plague filled formula That should actually counteract the actual plague I think we got ourselves a robert f. Kennedy jr. Voter But instead of blaming themselves or saying like hey Maybe I got the plague from those guys that I was right next to who also had the plague don't make sense They blamed Mora. Oh, yeah, saying that he was a minion of satan who'd spread the plague through his sad No, I spread the plague through my incredible deals

And the amazing content. Yeah, it just seems like every day. There's a different landmine. You step in on accident It was always it is it has not changed nothing has changed And so Mora was arrested and brutally tortured for a month. I'm just thinking that this is an overcorrection I think so too. I just made a helpful ointment Yeah, well, they're also looking for people to blame, you know, like people are like the plague is going very poorly You know, like 25 of the population is dead or dying You know, people need a bit of a distraction. People like something to blame. They like something to talk about. Yeah I just wow. Yeah, you get some. Yeah, it's not like it happens anymore. No, no

Yeah, totally be that but while being stretched on the rack right around the time that his sinews began popping I I am sick of the ointment. I'll never make ointment again. Don't make it again Mora not only confessed, but he began naming accomplices. Oh, yeah, buddy. I'll you guys are fucked. Yeah If I'm stretched out, dude, oh, I know these accomplices were then arrested and tortured until they named more accomplices And those people were arrested and tortured and named more accomplices and so on and so forth down the line It's not good. Every one every single person who confessed after prolonged torture was executed So they just uh, yeah, that's the prisoner's dilemma that is technically that is the fly in the ointment Indeed it is. I wonder how many craps. What do you what's the average crank?

You crank like five six times. Oh, no for the rack. Yeah. No, no, you're talking about maybe two minutes Two to three minutes. That's it. Yeah, that's it because your arm is dislocated. Yeah, because it's really slow Yeah, if they very long like because you go I don't think I've seen the rack at all the torture museums we've been to I don't We just did. Yeah, did I see one? I think about like a big gear and you know like to kunk you just want to do like One just work and that's enough because part of the torture is the tension of how much more they're gonna stretch you And how long it's gonna be until they stretch you more Of course I think the one that I would like the the least is that one where you sit and then they put the weights on your legs

That'd be the Spanish donkey. Yeah, I don't like that Spanish donkey. No, you would not. No, no, no That's why you got to build up to it. Yeah I've been working with this incredible Italian footstool. Oh, which is really kind of just I'm using it I'm working up to it because I started with what's called the prairie mound Diacomo Moro's body itself was exhibited as a warning to other supposed poisoners because after he confessed They broke him on the wheel. They put him on the wheel They you know, they you know destroyed all of his joints and he eventually died from that Uh, and he was then his body was dumped in the river and then they burned down his home and his business just because you know

Because at this point they were like, well, why don't we need to start all of this over, right? Yeah Now it was difficult to prove whether or not any poisonings had actually occurred because thousands of people were dropping dead of the plague In Milan every day by august it was said that 4,000 dead bodies were in the streets just What a smell august italian son Oh mama, but even so people were so anxious about the plague that they began accusing themselves of associating with witches and sorcerers They began going to authorities turning themselves in and then being executed

Geez weird it was fucked up because I also I bet you get neck skewed. It's a lot nicer than dying of the fucking plague It might be I mean, I guess it is a form of suicide to just break the tension. She's like, yeah, it's me Fucking shot my head off. Let's go. Yeah, I think maybe just the iron maiden just slammed that door shut poke me real fast It's a low slow. The point of the iron maiden is that it's a very very slow death because it doesn't hit the vitals Yeah, it sticks in just a little bit Now if we stay in the realm of the devil for a moment Let's head over to the city of lié in France to an all girls boarding school in 1639 Each one of these mass Astoria episodes sound pretty hot. It's an all girls boarding school. They're like 10

There you go. Yeah Sorry now I'm imagining other I'm talking about if it was cast. Yeah, he's talking about a 21 year old. Yes. He's talking about an all girls boarding school Yes, 21 to 38. That's my goal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's fun 35 and up It looks like my mill sporting school. I gotta start an all Miss mill if you didn't get your homework in time And then she starts yelling at you and the debasing you and you kind of feel bad. Yeah Well, they're a french mystic named Antoinette Bouillon who believed that she was chosen by god to restore the true christianity

She became besieged by demonic visions Upon visiting the school Antoinette saw a swarm of little black angels flying around the heads of the schoolgirls and she became so obsessed with the black imps That she began telling the schoolgirls that it was they who were the ones who were attracting the devils with their behavior They're sinful schoolgirl behavior That was very simple similar to the devils only don't very much so Naturally with an authority figure telling them that the devil was around always that it was their fault

The girls also began to see the little black devils and the whole school soon became obsessed with the devil Well, it's just so much more fun to have a life where you're seeing all these little devils and you're mixing all your shit up It's a very boring life. Yeah, you're in old Like boring sounds like everyone's dying. There's a life of drudgery. You're like cleaning the floors Listening to fake science and math and you know like all this shit until yeah, of course We're gonna turn into a bunch of little devil girls and so much more fun. Yeah, be careful for the weirdos out there We are the weirdos, sir. God just seeing you dresses. I see you dresses Well, finally one girl couldn't take it anymore and ran away from the school

She feared that she would become possessed the staff of course caught up with her and returned her to the school But when she got to the school She said that the devil had taken her away and then she of course confessed to being a witch And it'd been so since the age of seven And the old school version of the nepo baby. Did they kill her? No, once it was announced to the class 50 school girls took it as a cue and spontaneously erupted into fits and convulsions and 201 all 50 confessed to being witches Okay, that's a lot

Yep, and like the satanic panic of the 90s the girls tried out doing each other with stories of demonic dealings They quickly escalated. Oh, yeah, we ride broomsticks. Okay, fine. Oh, yeah, we can go through keyholes Wow Oh, yeah, we're attending demon meeting Thank you. Did you not bring the soda water? No, isn't it infernal how I lie? Oh, I was just joking. Of course. I brought the cells Yes, and then finally

The feasting of baby flesh. Oh Yeah, they pop up. That's that's how it always Always the it always goes to baby eating constantly constantly. It's been that 1639 the baby eating has been around It's been 100s upon thousands of years for a long time and uh, man, all I know is I'm hungrier for some comet pizza I love it. But honestly, have you ever been to boardies? No, it is the only it's an abortionist slash Bowls they just do bowls and one of my favorite is just like they just put a whole slurry in there It's nice that at least it goes somewhere. That is nice. That is very appropriate

And then you get some stem cells in the process and you look for you look two weeks younger Yeah, wow That's incredible. That is incredible Really aged you fast Well, incredibly when the clergy and local authorities investigated these claims of witchcraft riding brooms eating babies They found the confessions of these children to be valid. Oh valid all 50 school girls were sentenced to be burned at the stake Now that is just a lot of work. Oh, yeah, I'm the executioner guys Also, just come on how annoying would that be to get them all in there? Because they're all yeah, these kids are already kind of loud

They're crazy, you know any of getting them all ready to be burning around the stake You do it once no you spread it amongst like 10 days five girls a day five girls a day all But an individual burnings. Yeah. Yeah, each one's got to be um, no, no, no No, you do it in a line. You do it in a line. Oh god. Wow. They don't even get to be special. Yeah I wouldn't want to do it. I wouldn't want to go that way either It's honestly, it's crazy about how there's always there's always been too many kids in the classroom Well, thankfully though, some of the more clear-headed adults stepped in and told authorities that the kids had gotten those ideas From crazy old Antoinette Bollion who is locally known as a mentally unstable person. Yes. I'm your local crazy bit

You gotta have one. That's my whole thing. I love them The children were there after set free and the case was closed. Well case closed, but any do they apologize? No, no, no, no, no. Why would they? We don't even apologize. No, no. They told authorities like hey, they got these crazy ideas Before the burdens. Yeah. The children, I just said the children were set free. I just said that. No, I know But I not all I just said that okay I wasn't sure if it was all of them or not all the children were there after set free. There was 50 total So technically 10 still could have died guys

Oh god, please Please stop, this is Mass Hysteria. This is Mass Hysteria. I'm catching on. Fly from your grave. Now earlier, we mentioned Spring Hill Jack as an example of a mass hysteria. Yes. But Jack was not the only London creature to cause a fuss.

Thirty years before Jack in 1803, Londoners in the Hammersmith district were supposedly haunted by a glass-eyed, horned ghost dressed in white. Now the rumors of sightings in Hammersmith very quickly turned into encounters. One man said that the ghost had risen from a grave and choked him, while rumors spread that two women had died of fright after they got spooked too hard by the Hammersmith phantom. Dude, how many people do you think Ashton Kutcher could have killed if he would have kept on with that show, punked? He almost killed Frankie Munits that one time.

Oh, you did? That was funny. Now Frankie Munits can't remember nothing. That was funny. But I actually have a... This is a witness encounter of the Hammersmith ghost. It's from Thomas Groom. I was going through the church yard between eight and nine o'clock with my jacket under

my arm, my hands and my pocket. When seven people came from behind a tombstone, in which there were only four square in the yard behind me, and caught me fast by the throat with both hands, and held me fast. My fellow seven, who was going on before, hearing me scuffling, asked what was the matter, and then, whatever it was, gave me a twist around, and when I saw nothing, I gave a bit of a push out with my fist and felt something soft, like a great coat. Weird, okay, cool. The citizens armed themselves and- What are you going to do?

Why is it a ghost? It's really interesting. It's unclear. But it's very specific. This story is really interesting because people said that they saw a physical guy, but dressed as a ghost. Okay. But they were kind of creeped out by this guy that they were like all trying to decide

whether or not he was a physical thing or a ghost. Yeah. But he was touching people. So people were like, well, he's got to be physical. Yeah. And it was very, very similar to, you remember, the good old days of the clowns, the clown sightings in the UK, and the Gimp costume dude. It was like three years ago.

That's still around. That was about eight, nine years ago. I was in 2016. There was the clown sightings. And it was because it's interesting because they never really fully got to the point where people were shooting these clowns. But people were really freaked out. Let's not shoot the clowns.

Let's not shoot them. Yeah. And so that's a thing. Hit them with a pie. Yeah, they're clowns. Yeah, bullets in it. They also wouldn't work. It wouldn't do anything.

Well, yeah. But then you show them, you know, like, hey, think about this next time with bullets. Yeah. Spray them with the seltzer. What are you throw a pie on them? And that's a, that's a clown. That's how they feel shame. You just call CPS.

Yeah. Well, citizens armed themselves and patrolled the neighborhood to somehow apprehend or murder the ghosts. But as it often goes, when mass hysteria meets guns, tragedy struck when an armed citizen named Francis Smith happened upon a bricklayer named Thomas Millwood one night. Tragically, Thomas was dressed in white pants, a white shirt, and a white apron. That's the clothing of a bricklayer. Of a bricklayer.

He was actually told by his family to not dress like this. Yeah. You're like, listen, do not do this. There is the, they're looking for a guy dressed all in white right now. And he was just like, oh, my bricklayer. That's what I do. This is the beautiful bricklayer. Wow.

He probably didn't have that many different clothes. Yeah, probably not. No, I think that he just. He dressed like a bricklayer. He was proud. Yeah. Well, mistaking Thomas Millwood for the ghost, Francis Smith got spooked and made a hamburger out of Millwood's face with the shotgun killing him.

Yep. Smith was tried and convicted for murder, but his death sentence was commuted to one year of hard labor for the extenuating circumstances created by a ghost panic. Interesting. This is the first time they were, they tried to figure out in court at this time period about, are you excused for murder? If you believe that that person is a ghost. Yeah.

No, no. He actually was not. It was settled way later on. They, they eventually, they were like, no, you murdered. And then they've, they've got him out of jail later. But later on they were like, no, just because you believe in ghosts, does it mean you can like openly murder anybody with the sheet on their head unless they are obviously grand wizard of cookbooks.

Yeah. You can kill them. I mean, I mean, you're still in trouble, but yeah, we'll all like you. Yeah. I won't tell you. Interestingly, however, it was eventually learned that the quote unquote ghost had actually been real after a fashion. The ghostly figure in white had actually been a shoemaker who was wearing the costume to

frighten his apprentice because the apprentice had been scaring the shoemaker's children with ghost stories. Just a funny guy. Just a funny guy. I got a guy murdered. Yeah. Moved for a fucking bit. Oh my goodness.

Now, while some mass hysterias are very much outward operations, sometimes the consequences are inflicted inward as they were during the Halifax slasher incident of 1938. One night in November, two young women named Mary and Gertrude, definitely a young women's name. Yes. They were attacked at the local mill where they worked by what they said was a mysterious man with a mallet and bright buckles on his shoes. It's the leprechaun.

I want to be cool. Oh, I thought it would be a big clown. That's I imagine it like bozo the clown. No. They don't wear buckles and clowns. I don't see buckles and clowns. I see him as a munchkin. You do.

A big munchkin. Yeah. A munchkin. Yeah. I could see that munchkin. Yeah. A big. So you mean a man, a regular sized man dressed as a munchkin with a big mallet, like a Hummel

character. Sure. He's got in my head. It's like a gnome like hat. Like a terry gnome style hat. Yeah. And he's got like a beard and he's got a fancy little shoes and little tiny little pointed boots on.

He's got a big mallet. Right. I could see it. I always, I for some reason associate mallets with clowns. It's unique. I don't, I don't. Yeah. I could see it.

Honestly, I see that. Do you see it? See, I see people like, I think of clock people. Clock people. Yeah. I could see that. Like wooden soldier guys. Yeah.

Like the Kibler. Side stories. L-P-O-T-L at gmail.com. What do you associate mallets with? Clowns or clock people? Interesting. Absolutely. We'll see.

We'll see how that goes. We'll use the mallet to fix the clock. Well, after the attack, Mary and Gertrude ran to a nearby house with facial wounds inflicted by a razor blade, supposedly perpetrated by the man with bright buckles on his shoes. Very similar to the stories of Spring Hill Jack. And you remember the butt slasher in Brooklyn? Yeah. Oh, well the butt slasher was very real.

Yes. But I mean like it is, it's weird. The slashing epidemics have happened before and have, and continue to happen. Now Halifax had been gripped in a slashing epidemic a little over a decade earlier when a man named James Leonard stalked and slashed the clothing of six women in town. He, however, was ruled out of the 1938 attacks on account of how none of the witnesses described his abnormally large nose. Really?

It was so big. The sky shames me again. It was so big that if you saw it, you would not, you would notice it. That's the first thing you would say. So in this case, the big nose saved him. Yeah. Well, you know, he slashed a bunch of other people. Yeah.

Yes. That's not good. Yeah. An encounter of the nose. I know. It was just a few days after Mary and Gertrude reported the man with the bright buckles. Anxiety over slasher attacks had gripped the town. Five days after the first attack, another young woman was supposedly attacked by a guy

who cut her wrist. And three days later, another girl got slashed, and then another, and then another. By then the newspapers picked up the story and gave it a name, the Halifax Slasher, which seemed to only create more slashing victims. And if it's truly Canadian, you know he sent that letter at some point and be like, actually it's the St. Kenosha River Slasher. If you really want to know how they named my guy, you need to know where the man lives. You don't want to do it that way.

Halifax, England. Oh. Yeah. You fucking idiot. I'm fucking. Yeah. Whatever, man. Wow.

Canadians just got you. I know. I'm sorry. I got got. Well, vigilante groups began patrolling the streets, beating up anyone who wasn't known to the mob personally. Oh, cool. Yeah.

It sucks. They isolated the story by saying she had been attacked by a man wielding something called a dirty Macintosh. I have to look up that. I tried looking up what a dirty Macintosh is. I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't find it. What's a dirty Mac?

Maybe if I asked chat GPT. Oh, no. Don't ask it. Don't ask it or dirty Mac and a dirty Mac is it's a weapon. It says here that it's a, when you come in a Yeti water bottle and you put it in your girlfriend's ass and you fuck her as she shits and then it also says here really say that is this is incredible. That sounds like a bit of an improv.

I don't think any. I don't think that's a dirty Mac and dirty Mac is a dirty Mac as a foo who's trying to get at the same female as yourself. Oh, like a like return of the Mac. Yeah. Like a Mac, like a Mac, like a Mac daddy. Yeah. I don't think that that's what they were referencing.

That guy's like, oh, that bag of chips. Yes. That would be a snack. But by the end of the month, one of the victims, a one Percy Waddington, Percy Waddington, he admitted that he'd actually inflicted the razor wound on himself. You know what they say here also. And according to the other one, dirty Mac brigade is it in England, it's a dirty, it's dirty old men in a group, dirty old men on a group.

But this woman said that she was attacked by a man wielding something that felt like a dirty Macintosh. I don't know. He's a foo that's trying to go after somebody else's woman. That's the only thing I could decide. Well, after Percy Waddington admitted that he'd slashed himself, nine of the 12 victims admitted that they'd also slashed themselves. Yeah.

Now you're just like in this trap of like, you're everybody's getting attention out of this thing. It feels really crazy. And I wonder why. Again, why? Well, they're both creating and participating in the panic. And then perpetuating the panic, which in actually kind of gives you something to do. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Boredom is really the underlying story here. The idea of jumping into, cause we all like group things. Yeah. And it's 1930, but I don't know about boredom cause it's 1938. Like this is the war years. Like Germany is. Oh, you cut yourself.

Bomming. Well, I feel like that's UK. Actually, I think that you just spelled it out right there. It's what we've talked about. It's about stress. Yeah. So if you are getting bombed and you're in this place, that is definitely a way to sort of express it.

Yeah. Cause again, cause weirdly. Cut yourself. It's also, it's not about the war anymore. No. You've been dealing, you're in this war. You've been experiencing it now with something else. Now it's butt slashing.

It's about the bombs that don't explode. It's about the bombs you don't drop. That's what war is. That's what Hitler's jazz was all about. I'm just glad we're here on 420 really done. That guy's really knew how to tweak. You see that video of him at the Olympics? Yeah.

Him just rocking back and forth on that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was on speed. Yeah. He was a weird guy. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Real strange guy. Strange. Well, perhaps the strange birthday today. Yeah. I know. Yeah.

420. Columbine as well. Yeah. But remember that. What a day. Can we, bro? Oh my God. Two out of three.

Is it not the loss of innocence for America today? It could be. I don't know, man. I think that started July 4th, 1776. Shut up. Shut up. Nope. Nope.

I mean, I am. Think about it. You haven't made sense once yet. I am. Almost two hours. I am trapped inside of a prison of my own brain. But perhaps the strangest modern mass epidemic occurred in 1963 in the country of Tanzania in East Africa, just a month after they gained their independence from the United Kingdom.

There, a teenage girl at a missionary boarding school began having a fit of anxiety-induced laughter. And pretty soon, she and her friends were all laughing uncontrollably. Every one of these things happening at boarding schools and convents, every story of mass hysteria amongst little girls all feels like anime movies. Yeah, it really does. All I know is as a performer who does comedy, great crowd. Right.

This crowd is great. They're not smizing, though. Like it's ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah, I don't care. I just want to hear it. Oh, you just want to hear the empty hollow laughter? Well, that's all I'm certain. That's what I see.

Ha ha ha ha. Hmm. Yeah, it gives me noises. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, before long, 95 out of the 159 students were unable to stop laughing.

They were sent home, but then the laughter spread to their families and thereafter throughout their communities. This can only mean one thing. Fluffy has arrived. Wow. Okay, really? Yes. This is really famous.

Yes. Well, the Genji Ito-like epidemic spread to thousands of people all over the region and lasted for months long enough where the schools were closed. In some cases, the laughter would only last two hours, but in other people, they could suffer for weeks. That's Natalie. In one case, it was a year before someone stopped laughing. Jesus Christ.

Very interesting. Would you rather do non-stop laughing or non-stop hiccuping? Laughing. Ah, hiccuping. Because then at least you could get stuff that you could talk still. If you're laughing, you can't talk. Hiccuping makes me crazy. I do hate a hiccup.

Yeah. I hate a hiccup. I love to laugh. But you're also in your mind, you're in hell. Yeah, I am already. Your face is like, you're just talking about generalized anxiety and OCD. Yeah. I'm already there.

Yeah. You're here, man. Yeah, I'm in a nightmare up top. Just falling out of here. Well, soon the laughter turned into uncontrollable crying, aimless running, and violent aggression. There was no physical reason why any of this started or any physical reason why any of it stopped. The only theory anyone could come up with was that the schoolgirls were increasingly

stressed by the alien environment of a Christian missionary boarding school. At first I thought you meant of like the, the, the aerial school for another. Yeah. That alien. That's an alien environment. That would have been interesting. Maybe they just missed the queen. I doubt it.

The queen. Of England. This is 1963. It just keeps going. She just started. Like she would had been in power at that point by like nine years. This is when she was like fuckable. Yeah.

That's how long ago they say they don't, they no longer have control. So they missed the queen. Yeah. Okay. Now I get you. Yeah. That's exactly what I was about to say actually. Oh, great.

Yeah. This is cause I mean it's a transitory, it's a transitional anxiety. Wow. Like, you know, the country's finally set free from colonial bonds. They've got, I mean, this is the making. I didn't even have to fucking write that down. Yeah. You really didn't?

Great. That's a good idea. I understand, but I liked what you said. Well, I'm doing the way you wrote it. I think it works. I think it works. I think it works. Cool.

Do what you, do that. You know, have you heard about, if you go trust a spoken, I acquiesce. Have you heard that there's that new school supply sale coming up? It's got a class hysteria. Okay. Why not? Why not? Well, perhaps the most well-known epidemic in modern times, however, is the Japanese

Pokemon Panic of 1997. Whoa. What is this? Have you heard of this? No. Do you know about this? No. Have you heard about this?

I haven't. I've heard about this. So I didn't even realize Pokemon was out in 97. Yeah. But I guess it's been around for a long time. It was on its 38th episode. Yeah. No shit.

Wow. But that year, over 12,000 children exhibited physical symptoms ranging from nausea to seizures after watching an episode of Pokemon called Computer Warrior Plurigon. Okay. Okay. Now at first, the sickness that eventually came to be known as Pokemon shock. And that's normally when you have one of those little balls up in your vagina for two months.

Your vagina. Yes. Yes. I didn't even write that down. I didn't come up with anything. I didn't write that down at all. It was attributed to a photosensitive epileptic fit triggered by the bright flashing lights used in the episode when Ash and Pikachu went into the computer.

Well, because that's what he thought at first. I thought this really was just a response to the lights, but it was more complicated than that. Well, the more complicated in a way that we don't understand those same flashes, they've been used in previous Pokemon episodes and they've been used in other anime. In fact, this tension building technique of different colored lights flashing over and over again. It was used so often that it has a name.

Paha paha. Oh well. You know, you feel like people should have been used to it at this point. Or that's not even necessarily that they would have been used to it, but if it was the flashing lights, it would have happened before this point. Oh, absolutely. Okay. But for whatever reason, after this episode in particular, over 600 children were taken

to the hospital complaining of shortness of breath, nausea, and blurred vision. The event then got picked up by the news who unwisely reared the segment in its entirety during the newscast. You mean this segment? That's really smart. Yeah. I mean, it really could be. But anyway, as a result, a further 12,000 kids were afflicted.

Yeah, they just did it again. They did it to everybody. Oh my God. But I mean, I actually just thought about this. Maybe it could be. I mean, Pokemon was an incredibly popular show from the beginning. It could be that when it was used in other episodes, it didn't have as big, it didn't have as big of an audience.

Who knows? And people didn't pay attention. People didn't put together the, you know, the, the dots, they didn't connect the dots. The dark world of Pokemon. Also, is there something to the order of the lights and the colors of it that maybe could affect the human brain? I don't know. Yes.

You saying yes? Yes. I'll take your word for it. That's the expert that I know. To my left. Probably. Now the Pokemon case is fascinating. Not just for the speed at which it happened, but for how something so large can happen

so quickly without any real scientific explanation as to why it happened. To this day, no one is really sure what happened and to make sure, and to make sure that the episode has never been re-air. Really? Yeah. Not in Japan. We're going to show it on the stream. Yeah.

Not in Japan at least. Yeah. You can find it, but it's never been re-air on TV in Japan. 97. Wow. Now, scientists who have studied the causes of mass sociogenic illness have had largely inconclusive findings. Good.

Great. Mostly this is because these illnesses are so spontaneous and they're so difficult to see while they're happening, especially hard to see by the people it's happening to. I love the Mueller report of Pokemon. Oh, yeah. And I love our experts, right? All of our experts.

Yeah. They're big old brains and they're large books. Does anyone wear their It's Mueller time shirts anymore? No. That compassion. That fashion is past. Now I remember that. Yeah.

It's Mueller time. It's Mueller time. I love that German Inquisitor. Was it Mueller? It's fucking Mueller. Okay. It's Mueller. Yeah.

But the concept of you're dealing with an issue that is widespread and immediate. And then, you know, as we have all discovered, as we've gotten older, when you're trying to figure out how to get an answer from all these various experts, these people that are at work for the government, and they just kind of want to button up whatever situation is going on real fast, they just want to be, they want it just to have it be done. They just want to go on spring break. Yes. They just want to wrap it up.

Yeah. And so they look at you and as soon as it's, you know, mysterious, they're like, It's like working for the weekend is great in theory, unless you're in charge of our nukes. Yeah. You like work for Tuesday? Yeah. Yeah.

Like, unfortunately, I know it's a Sunday, but you're in charge of the Department of Transportation. Mr. Mootage Edge. You got him. Speaking of Pokemon. He's a little. He likes to Pokemon. Wow.

Wow. I was going with a size jump, but then you came in and totally redeemed yourself. Good job. And then boom, an A plus bringing you to a B. That's all I need. Well, there's no pattern when trying to identify social, psychological or physical characteristics to find groups more susceptible than others when it comes to mass hysteria. People of every race, age, socioeconomic status, mental stability, nationality, all of us are capable of falling into a mass hysteria of some kind or another.

As far as we know, nobody is immune from mass sociogenic illness, no matter how strong you think you are, no matter how smart you believe yourself to be. I know there's people out there going, yeah, not me. If the right, you got that person, you made up in your mind, if the right, how you win an argument on all times, I invent the other side and I go, well, fuck you and your mother. It's done. And I did not really. If the right button gets pushed in your lizard brain, then you too could lose yourself in

a torrent of mass hysteria. In other words, reality is ultimately a construct created by human consensus. You know, buddy, we right now need to be stabilizing figures. I don't know if I don't like, I'm not sure if I'm loving the diatribe to wrap it up. Bro, we can change how we perceive reality dangerously fast. Why don't we just perceive it like it is now? You know what you need is some tincture. You'll be back, you'll be back in.

I just don't know if we need to be like, it's all wiggly wiggly. We just be like, yo, but some things are set in stone. No, what I'm trying to say is that you actually got to hold on to yourself harder because we can change how we perceive reality dangerously fast, especially when we've got other people of our same peer group telling us to do so. Again, I bring up January 6th when hundreds of people storm the Capitol fully convinced by their political and media leaders that they would be going down in history books as the saviors of the Republic for rescuing the country from a satanic cult.

Well, did they know that entire thing is going to be perched from the history books? I mean, they just wandered around filming themselves like the spell. You saw the spell being broken. They don't know what to do. They got here and they're like, it's like, you know what they say, I mean, it's the Joker. If he got a hold of the car, what do you even know what to do with it? Well, you steal the car, steal the car, take it, drive it around.

It's more of a dog scenario, I think. It is, but he attributed to the Joker in the film. Did they? Oh, this new one's going to be interesting. Okay. So close. So close. Okay.

But that is to say, when anxiety has whipped up hard enough over a long period of time, people can convince themselves that anything is true. And when that happens, you better make damn sure that you or your group aren't the ones in the crosshairs. A little Dan Carlin right at the end of that. Wow. A little Dan Carlin. Mass hysteria.

I like to wrap up. Thank you. Crosshairs. I don't necessarily, again, I'm 50-50 on it. On mass hysteria. On the conclusion. On the conclusion? Yeah.

All right. Crosshairs. Everyone's getting shot. Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of mass hysteria is due an end in murder. That's violence. Sometimes when you catch yourself looking simping hard for some woman, you found yourself deep in the middle of last hysteria.

There you go. Thank you all so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope that you did. I mean, if you're a particularly big fan of UK punk, you might find yourself in cross hysteria. Yes. Wow.

Kissle. Well, I'll tell you one thing. When I think about hysteria, I always think about, well, I actually, let's fish in mass hysteria. You're good today. And if you're a particularly big fan of ska music, you might find yourself in brass hysteria. Yeah. Interesting.

Very good. Ass. Pass. Yeah. Mass. Anything that rhymes with it there? Grass. Oh, there you go.

That's what I'm experiencing today is a brass hysteria. And if you're a skeptic of UFOs, you might find yourself in Philip J. Class hysteria. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. He got out of it. Yeah. Oh, I'm done.

I am done. Do we have anything to say? To wrap it up? No, not anymore. Just fucking enjoy your time. Ladies and gentlemen. We do have a lot of things coming up, but we haven't. We're not ready to announce.

But if you go to Z2 comics, you can purchase last comic book on the left. Pre-order it. Pre-order it. Pre-order. But we're going to make sure that they come out on time. Yeah. Just like Mussolini. We're going to make sure that those comics come out and we can't wait for you guys to

see what we're working on now. Guaranteeing it. Actually, guaranteeing it. Guarantee. Guarantee. Guarantee. Guarantee. Guarantee.

Guarantee. Guarantee. And also today is that it's already passed, but Spring Hill Jack Coffee was doing a 420 special. If you buy any sort of coffee, it's too late because they were going to give it to the last person or project, but they're going to start selling shirts of the design that they just did, which is fucking awesome. Great design.

Spring Hill Jack and then some chunk of that money is going to go to the last person or project. Yeah. Well, yeah. And next week, what's going to be fun is that we're actually going to be going on a bit of a spring break. We're giving everyone the week off, including ourselves. I mean, I'll be, I'll be worrying.

Yeah. Worrying. Of course. But we're going to do a little best of, and then we're going to be back the next week with some blood. We're going to have some big drippy, drippy blood, and then I think we're jumping into some historical periods. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. We're going to be jumping into some. Speaking of drippy blood. Particularly big. When does the tampon come out? We'll cover that. Yeah. That's the history of the tampon.

You know what? Every woman listener can't wait to hear our perspective on the nature of the tampon. I'm a fan of free bleeding. Why not? Let me know where you've been. Speaking of free bleeding, come to see Wizard of the Bruiser on page seven live with the release the butthole cut tour. Let me give you a rundown of these days.

Will they ever release the butthole cut? No, because then they have to stop the show. They really should. You think so? I want to know what the butthole looks like on these cats. I mean, just, you can just go find a cat and take a look at a bottle. No, but I want to see the CGI because someone had to work really hard on it, which is kind of funny to think about.

I would just say everybody's, you know, leave the cat alone. Leave the cat. May 9th, 2023, Salt Lake City, May 10th, Grandwood Village, Colorado, May 11th, Las Vegas, maybe June 21st, Portland, June 22nd, Tacoma, Washington, July 11th, Oklahoma City, OK, and July 12th, Kansas City, Missouri. Go and check it out. I love that barbecue. Yes.

Also May 7th. That's right. I'll be doing in Brea. I'll be doing a hail yourself. I'm up for that. All right, everyone. Hail yourselves. Hail again.

My good solutions. When you give yourself, you hail yourself. Hail yourself, of course. And hail yourself. And if you're done with that, hail me. There you go. Don't go crazy. Good advice.

Try not to. Try not to. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.