In the middle ages hundreds of thousands of Europeans danced themselves to exhaustion. Some danced for weeks on end, many ended up dying of heart attacks and heat stroke. But why? What strange illness was causing this oddity? Turns out, it was all psychological. The dancing epidemic of the middle ages was one of the first noted examples of mass hysteria, a phenomenon where these individuals experience real illness, brought on by imagined ailments. Mass hysteria has been documented in 19th century nunneries, 20th century Palestine and 21st century CIA agents. Today, I attempt to figure out if mass hysteria is more common than we think—and I discover how the same phenomenon has changed the wine we drink, the podcasts we love, and the names we give our kids. 

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Tali Sharot’s book The Influential Mind: https://tinyurl.com/ytvpyuk2

AP Archive footage of the 1983 fainting epidemic: https://youtu.be/8qcQwbJFlsU?si=xgDYI2JWWfmOTJHj

Synchronised clapping: https://youtu.be/Au5tGPPcPus?si=PN_jRK2XQkGSTpgn