July 14, 2025 • 19 mins
July 14th, 1518: A woman begins dancing in Strasbourg's streets and can't stop. Within weeks, over 400 people join her in a deadly frenzy that kills 15 people daily. From the medieval Dancing Plague to Tanzania's Laughter Epidemic, discover the terrifying psychology behind mass hysteria and how entire communities can lose their minds simultaneously. The shocking truth about humanity's darkest collective breakdowns.
Find our videos on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheInBetweenTales
Got a STORY? - InBetweenTales@gmail.com
Business Inquiries? - TheInBetween@ekhoinc.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:32):
July 14th, 1518.
Strasbourg, France.
A woman steps into the cobblestone streetsand begins to dance.
Six days later, she's still dancing,her feet bloody and raw.
But she can't stop.
And neither can the hundreds of otherswho've joined her.
From meowing nuns in medievalFrance to schoolgirls
(00:53):
laughing uncontrollably in 1960s Tanzania.
What is it that makes entire communities
lose their collective minds?
I'm Carol Ann.
Welcome to The InBetween.
It's a sweltering summermorning in Strasbourg,
(01:16):
and the city is already struggling.
The year 1517 was called “The Bad Year”by residents.
Consecutive cropfailures, skyrocketing grain prices
and thousands of starving farmersflooding the city gates.
Disease is rampant.
Syphilis, bubonic plagueand something called
“EnglishSweating Sickness” are making the rounds.
(01:38):
But 1518 brought even more chaos.
Emperor MaximilianI had just died months earlier in January,
throwing the Holy Roman Empireinto succession uncertainty.
The election campaign for his replacement,Charles V, was creating
political turmoil across the region.
And to make matters worse, thisnew fangled idea from a monk named Martin
(02:02):
Luther about reforming the Catholic Church
was spreading like wildfire.
The world was literally coming apartat the seams.
Strasbourg itself was a fascinating place,an Imperial Free City,
meaning it governed itselfwithout answering to regional nobles.
Its narrow cobblestonestreets were lined with half timbered
(02:23):
houses, their upper storeysjutting out over the walkways below.
The magnificent cathedral,still under construction
after more than three centuries,
dominated the skylinewith its single towering spire.
Into this perfect storm of misery steps
our patient zero Frau Troffea.
(02:44):
We don't know her first name,but we know that she lived in one of those
half timbered houseson a narrow street in the city center,
most likely strugglingto put food on the table.
Same as everyone else.
But what she did on July 14th,1518, was not the same
as everyone else,and would be remembered for centuries.
(03:04):
According to Sebastian Brandt, a
prominent lawyerand societal satirist of the day,
who also happened to be the city clerkwho documented the whole thing,
Frau Troffea just started dancing,not to music.
There was no music.
She just began moving in what
witnesses describedas frenzied and compulsive motions.
(03:25):
And she couldn't stop.
But this wasn't joyful dancing.
Witnesses described her movementsas violent, jerky, almost convulsive.
Her eyes became glassy and distant,as if she wasn't really there anymore.
Her sweat soaked through her clothesas she danced on the rough cobblestones.
But she couldn't stop.
(03:46):
Her husband watched helplesslyas she danced through the first day,
then the second.
By the fourth day,her feet were bleeding through her shoes.
Her legs were swollenand she was barely conscious.
But still she moved as the impossiblestarted happening around her.
Other people started joining her.
(04:08):
The Inland Family Chronicle,one of our best sources,
tells us that within four days, 34people were affected.
By the end of the month, over 400 people
were dancing in the streets of Strasbourgday and night, unable to stop.
And the way it spread was terrifying.
Someone would see the dancers andsomething in their brain would just snap.
(04:33):
They'd start moving, first tentatively,then more violently,
until they too were caughtin the same frenzied, unstoppable rhythm.
The symptoms were consistentand horrifying.
The dancer's body would go rigid,then convulse.
They'd sweat profusely, their clothesbecoming drenched within minutes.
(04:54):
Their feet would swell and bleed,but they couldn't stop moving.
Some reported seeing hideous facesin the air around them.
Others claimed to hear voicescommanding them to dance.
And the strangest part?
Many of them seemed
to be following the same rhythm,even though there was no music playing.
Now, you'd think the city authoritieswould see
(05:16):
hundreds of peopledancing themselves to death and think.
Maybe we should try to stop this. no.
The doctors of Strasbourgdeclared it a “natural disease
which comes from overheated blood” andprescribed the worst possible treatment.
These go to 11.
Let's turn it up to 11. That's right.
(05:37):
Just dance it out.
Medieval medicine at its finest heldthe theory that the human body
contained four humors - blood, phlegm,yellow bile, and black bile.
And that all illnesswas caused by imbalances between them.
So they believed thatif people could just sweat enough,
their humoral balance would be restoredand they'd be cured.
(06:00):
So the city council got to work.
They hired dozens of musiciansto play drums, fiddles, pipes, and horns.
They built wooden platforms in the horsemarket and the grain market, strong enough
to hold dozens of people jumpingand thrashing around simultaneously.
They even hired professional dancersto guide the afflicted
(06:21):
and strongmen to catch peoplewhen they collapsed.
The municipal records showthey spent hundreds of pounds - 500 pounds
being about a quarter of a millin today's dollars.
But it gets worse.
The more platforms they builtand the more music they played,
the more people joined in.
The sound of drums and tambourinesechoing through the narrow streets
(06:44):
seemed to pull more peopleinto the frenzy.
Thousands of people on woodenplatforms thrashing and gyrating
to the beat of drums, while crowdsgathered to watch this dance-a-thon
train wreck.
The smell of sweat and bloodfilled the air.
The sound of hundreds of feet pounding onwood echoed through the medieval streets.
(07:06):
Every day more people joined in.
Every day more collapsed from exhaustion.
And every day brought more deaths.
We don't know the exact numbers,but at the peak of the insanity, reports
are that there were up to 15 people a day
dancing themselves to death.
(07:27):
Luckily for the citizens of Strasbourg,it only took a couple of weeks
for somebody to say, whoa, whoa, whoa,this ain't working.
And they changed tactics.
Sebastian Brandt's handwritten notesfrom August 3rd, show they Let's dance.
banned dancing entirely
with a fine of 30 shillingsfor anyone dancing in the city or suburbs.
(07:50):
That was seriousmoney, enough to feed a family for weeks.
They made exceptionsonly for “honorable persons”
wanting to dance at weddingsand religious ceremonies,
and even then, only stringedinstruments were allowed.
No drums or tambourines.
They just made things worse.
(08:10):
The dancers who were still alive,were loaded into carts
and taken 30 miles northwestto the shrine of Saint Vitus in Saverne.
Saint Vitus was the patronsaint of epileptics
and those suffering from what medievalpeople called convulsive disorders.
You know, like shaking or twitchingthey couldn't control.
(08:30):
At Saverne,the afflicted dancers were given blessed
red shoes,small crosses drawn with consecrated oil
and sprinkled with holy water,and participated in high masses.
Some reportedly recovered at the shrine.
Others didn't.
Those who died were buried in the shrinecemetery.
Their families left to wonderwhat supernatural force
(08:54):
had claimed their loved ones.
By winter, it was over.
The Dancing Plague had burned itself out,leaving behind a city traumatized,
bankrupt, and wonderingwhat the hell just happened.
Eight years later,a revolutionary physician
named Paracelsus would visit Strasbourgand analyze what had happened.
(09:15):
He classified the conditionas “Chorea Lasciva”,
and proposed that certain peoplehad what he called laughing veins - blood
vessels that were prone to overheating -in naturally sensitive areas of the body.
His treatment protocol was revolutionary,for the time:
cold waterimmersion fasting on bread and water
(09:36):
and application of chemical compoundsto sensitive body regions.
But Paracelsus also noted somethingthat local physicians
had missed -the social nature of the outbreak.
He wrote that the conditionsseemed to spread through observation.
He was the first person to suggestthat psychological factors
(09:56):
were at play,alongside the physical symptoms.
But here's where things get interesting.
Some modern historians have notedsomething the medieval physicians missed.
Only the poor were dancing.
The wealthy elite of Strasbourgnever joined in.
Not one.
And in a citywhere the main food supply was rye bread,
(10:17):
that raises some uncomfortable questions.
You see, rye can be contaminatedwith a fungus called ergot,
which contains compounds similar to LSD.
Oh, man,
that's heavy shit.
Ergot poisoning caused hallucinations,convulsions, and uncontrollable movements.
(10:38):
Symptoms that sound awfully familiar.
The wealthy could affordwheat bread or higher quality grain.
The poorthey got whatever cheap rye was available,
potentially ccontaminatedwith a mind altering fungus.
Now, the Dancing plague might be the mostfamous mass psychogenic illness
(10:59):
(or LSD rave) in history.
But it's far from the only one.
In fact, outbreaks of collective,bizarre behavior
pop out throughout historywith disturbing regularity.
As early as the seventh century,there were reports
of dancing epidemicsin various parts of Europe.
In 1237,a group of children in Erfurt, Germany
(11:21):
started dancing and couldn'tstop, leading them out of the city
and into the countryside,where many disappeared forever.
In 1374, a massive outbreakswept through the Low Countries
like Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourgand northern France, as well as Germany,
affecting thousands of people acrossmultiple cities.
(11:43):
But let's talk about one of the strangest
- the Meowing Nuns epidemic in medievalFrance.
A single nun in a French convent startsmeowing like a cat.
Within days,the entire convent is engaged in
what witnesses described as “catconcerts”, hours
long sessions of synchronized meowingthat were loud enough
(12:04):
to disturb the neighborsoutside the convent walls.
Now, this might sound funnyuntil you remember that in medieval
Catholic theology, cats were associatedwith the devil.
Pope Gregory IX’spapal bull “Vox in Rama” in 1233,
had specifically linked catsto satanic rituals.
So when an entire convent of supposedlyholy women
(12:28):
starts acting like demonic creatures,people pay attention.
The situation escalateduntil local authorities sent in soldiers
who threatened the nuns with whippingif they didn't stop.
And just like that, the meowing stopped.
The entire convent returned to normalas if nothing had ever happened.
(12:49):
Even stranger was the Biting Nuns epidemicin 15th century Germany.
It started when one nun began biting hersisters.
The behavior spread like wildfire,
not just within her convent,but to other convents across the region.
Soon, nuns were biting each otherin a frenzy that lasted for months.
(13:09):
The epidemic only ended when the affectednuns were forcibly separated
and moved to different locations.
But mass hysteria isn't just a medievalphenomenon.
Jump forward to January30th, 1962, in Kinshasha, Tanzania.
Three girls at a mission boarding schoolstart laughing uncontrollably.
Not happy laughter.
(13:31):
This was distressing, with crying,
fainting,screaming and difficulty breathing.
Within weeks, 95 of the school's159 students were affected.
The episodes weren't joyous.
They were a distressing ordeal that lasted
from a few hours to 16 days,
(13:51):
with the average duration of about a week.
Studentswould break into uncontrollable laughter
that would turn into cryingand then screaming, then fainting.
Some even developed rashes.
The school closed on March 18thafter 48 days of disruption.
When it reopened on May 21st,
(14:13):
a second wave hit 57 more students.
The epidemic spread to other villagesas students returned home,
eventuallyaffecting about a thousand people
and forcing 14 schools to close.
The Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic,as it came to be known,
lasted almost 18 months.
Like the Dancing Plague, it struckduring a time of massive social upheaval.
(14:37):
Tanzania had just gained independencefrom British colonial rule on December
9th, 1961,just weeks before the outbreak began.
Not to mention that the boarding schoolwas run by British missionaries,
imposing strict disciplineand Western educational standards
on young girlsfrom traditional communities.
But just like in Strasbourg,authorities were completely baffled.
(15:01):
They conducted medical testson affected students.
No infections,no toxins, no neurological abnormalities.
The bloodwork was normal.
Brain scans showed nothing unusual.
It Those are we sick?
And a d.
Nothing abnormal.
Detected.
(15:22):
was purely psychological,spreading through
what researchers nowcall social contagion.
So what's really happening here?
How do hundreds of people suddenly startexhibiting the same
bizarre behavior across centuriesand continents?
The answer lies in something called MassPsychogenic Illness or MPI.
(15:44):
It's not contagiousin the way we think of diseases.
You can't catch dancing maniaby kissing a dancer.
Instead, it spreads through observationand psychological stress in a process
that's far more complexand fascinating than simple imitation.
Think about it.
In 1518, Strasbourg, you had a populationliving under extreme stress,
(16:07):
famine, disease,economic collapse, political upheaval,
and religious uncertaintyall raining down at once.
People were stretchedto their psychological breaking point.
When Frau Troffea started dancing,she provided a visible outlet
for all that unexpressedanxiety and desperation.
(16:28):
But it's not just “Monkey see.
Monkey do.” Our brains are wiredwith something called mirror
neurons, cellsthat fire both when we perform an action
and when we observe someone elseperforming the same action.
In normal circumstances,this helps us learn and empathize.
But in high stress situations, themirroring system can go a little haywire.
(16:52):
When people saw Frau Troffea’sfrenzied movements,
their mirror neurons firedas if they were dancing themselves.
Combined with their ownpsychological stress, this neural activity
could actually triggerthe same physical symptoms.
It's like their brains were practicingthe dancing until their bodies
couldn't tell the differencebetween imagination and reality.
(17:14):
But, don't think for a second
that we've evolved past such nonsense,
because social media is cooking upits own weird outbreaks.
Viral challengeslike the Cinnamon Challenge
or Tide Pod Challenge spreadlike 1518, dancing.
Back then it took weeks to hit400 dancers in Strasbourg.
(17:37):
Now a TikTok can sparkchaos worldwide in hours.
The dancing plague of 1518ended five centuries ago,
but the questions itraises are as relevant today as ever.
What happens when an entire communityreaches its psychological breaking point?
How do we maintain our individual agency
(17:59):
when everyone around us is losing theirs?
So next time you find yourselfmindlessly scrolling through social media,
feeling inexplicably compelled to join insomething everyone else is doing,
remember Frau Troffeastepping into those Strasbourg streets
on that summer morning in 1518,and ask yourself:
(18:22):
Are you dancing to your own rhythmor someone else's?
Sometimes the sanest thing you cando is just refuse to dance.
That makes
my feet hurt just reading about it.
But if you have more stamina than I do,would you probably do
and want to keepon this journey of strangeness?
(18:45):
Watch this video right here.
I promise it'll raise your heart ratewithout having to boot.
Scoot Boogie.
Be careful out there
and I will see youhere again on The InBetween.
July 14th, 1518.
Strasbourg, France.
A woman steps into the cobblestone streetsand begins to dance.
Six days later, she's still dancing,her feet bloody and raw.
But she can't stop.
And neither can the hundreds of otherswho've joined her.
From meowing nuns in medievalFrance to schoolgirls
(00:53):
laughing uncontrollably in 1960s Tanzania.
What is it that makes entire communities
lose their collective minds?
I'm Carol Ann.
Welcome to The InBetween.
It's a sweltering summermorning in Strasbourg,
(01:16):
and the city is already struggling.
The year 1517 was called “The Bad Year”by residents.
Consecutive cropfailures, skyrocketing grain prices
and thousands of starving farmersflooding the city gates.
Disease is rampant.
Syphilis, bubonic plagueand something called
“EnglishSweating Sickness” are making the rounds.
(01:38):
But 1518 brought even more chaos.
Emperor MaximilianI had just died months earlier in January,
throwing the Holy Roman Empireinto succession uncertainty.
The election campaign for his replacement,Charles V, was creating
political turmoil across the region.
And to make matters worse, thisnew fangled idea from a monk named Martin
(02:02):
Luther about reforming the Catholic Church
was spreading like wildfire.
The world was literally coming apartat the seams.
Strasbourg itself was a fascinating place,an Imperial Free City,
meaning it governed itselfwithout answering to regional nobles.
Its narrow cobblestonestreets were lined with half timbered
(02:23):
houses, their upper storeysjutting out over the walkways below.
The magnificent cathedral,still under construction
after more than three centuries,
dominated the skylinewith its single towering spire.
Into this perfect storm of misery steps
our patient zero Frau Troffea.
(02:44):
We don't know her first name,but we know that she lived in one of those
half timbered houseson a narrow street in the city center,
most likely strugglingto put food on the table.
Same as everyone else.
But what she did on July 14th,1518, was not the same
as everyone else,and would be remembered for centuries.
(03:04):
According to Sebastian Brandt, a
prominent lawyerand societal satirist of the day,
who also happened to be the city clerkwho documented the whole thing,
Frau Troffea just started dancing,not to music.
There was no music.
She just began moving in what
witnesses describedas frenzied and compulsive motions.
(03:25):
And she couldn't stop.
But this wasn't joyful dancing.
Witnesses described her movementsas violent, jerky, almost convulsive.
Her eyes became glassy and distant,as if she wasn't really there anymore.
Her sweat soaked through her clothesas she danced on the rough cobblestones.
But she couldn't stop.
(03:46):
Her husband watched helplesslyas she danced through the first day,
then the second.
By the fourth day,her feet were bleeding through her shoes.
Her legs were swollenand she was barely conscious.
But still she moved as the impossiblestarted happening around her.
Other people started joining her.
(04:08):
The Inland Family Chronicle,one of our best sources,
tells us that within four days, 34people were affected.
By the end of the month, over 400 people
were dancing in the streets of Strasbourgday and night, unable to stop.
And the way it spread was terrifying.
Someone would see the dancers andsomething in their brain would just snap.
(04:33):
They'd start moving, first tentatively,then more violently,
until they too were caughtin the same frenzied, unstoppable rhythm.
The symptoms were consistentand horrifying.
The dancer's body would go rigid,then convulse.
They'd sweat profusely, their clothesbecoming drenched within minutes.
(04:54):
Their feet would swell and bleed,but they couldn't stop moving.
Some reported seeing hideous facesin the air around them.
Others claimed to hear voicescommanding them to dance.
And the strangest part?
Many of them seemed
to be following the same rhythm,even though there was no music playing.
Now, you'd think the city authoritieswould see
(05:16):
hundreds of peopledancing themselves to death and think.
Maybe we should try to stop this. no.
The doctors of Strasbourgdeclared it a “natural disease
which comes from overheated blood” andprescribed the worst possible treatment.
These go to 11.
Let's turn it up to 11. That's right.
(05:37):
Just dance it out.
Medieval medicine at its finest heldthe theory that the human body
contained four humors - blood, phlegm,yellow bile, and black bile.
And that all illnesswas caused by imbalances between them.
So they believed thatif people could just sweat enough,
their humoral balance would be restoredand they'd be cured.
(06:00):
So the city council got to work.
They hired dozens of musiciansto play drums, fiddles, pipes, and horns.
They built wooden platforms in the horsemarket and the grain market, strong enough
to hold dozens of people jumpingand thrashing around simultaneously.
They even hired professional dancersto guide the afflicted
(06:21):
and strongmen to catch peoplewhen they collapsed.
The municipal records showthey spent hundreds of pounds - 500 pounds
being about a quarter of a millin today's dollars.
But it gets worse.
The more platforms they builtand the more music they played,
the more people joined in.
The sound of drums and tambourinesechoing through the narrow streets
(06:44):
seemed to pull more peopleinto the frenzy.
Thousands of people on woodenplatforms thrashing and gyrating
to the beat of drums, while crowdsgathered to watch this dance-a-thon
train wreck.
The smell of sweat and bloodfilled the air.
The sound of hundreds of feet pounding onwood echoed through the medieval streets.
(07:06):
Every day more people joined in.
Every day more collapsed from exhaustion.
And every day brought more deaths.
We don't know the exact numbers,but at the peak of the insanity, reports
are that there were up to 15 people a day
dancing themselves to death.
(07:27):
Luckily for the citizens of Strasbourg,it only took a couple of weeks
for somebody to say, whoa, whoa, whoa,this ain't working.
And they changed tactics.
Sebastian Brandt's handwritten notesfrom August 3rd, show they Let's dance.
banned dancing entirely
with a fine of 30 shillingsfor anyone dancing in the city or suburbs.
(07:50):
That was seriousmoney, enough to feed a family for weeks.
They made exceptionsonly for “honorable persons”
wanting to dance at weddingsand religious ceremonies,
and even then, only stringedinstruments were allowed.
No drums or tambourines.
They just made things worse.
(08:10):
The dancers who were still alive,were loaded into carts
and taken 30 miles northwestto the shrine of Saint Vitus in Saverne.
Saint Vitus was the patronsaint of epileptics
and those suffering from what medievalpeople called convulsive disorders.
You know, like shaking or twitchingthey couldn't control.
(08:30):
At Saverne,the afflicted dancers were given blessed
red shoes,small crosses drawn with consecrated oil
and sprinkled with holy water,and participated in high masses.
Some reportedly recovered at the shrine.
Others didn't.
Those who died were buried in the shrinecemetery.
Their families left to wonderwhat supernatural force
(08:54):
had claimed their loved ones.
By winter, it was over.
The Dancing Plague had burned itself out,leaving behind a city traumatized,
bankrupt, and wonderingwhat the hell just happened.
Eight years later,a revolutionary physician
named Paracelsus would visit Strasbourgand analyze what had happened.
(09:15):
He classified the conditionas “Chorea Lasciva”,
and proposed that certain peoplehad what he called laughing veins - blood
vessels that were prone to overheating -in naturally sensitive areas of the body.
His treatment protocol was revolutionary,for the time:
cold waterimmersion fasting on bread and water
(09:36):
and application of chemical compoundsto sensitive body regions.
But Paracelsus also noted somethingthat local physicians
had missed -the social nature of the outbreak.
He wrote that the conditionsseemed to spread through observation.
He was the first person to suggestthat psychological factors
(09:56):
were at play,alongside the physical symptoms.
But here's where things get interesting.
Some modern historians have notedsomething the medieval physicians missed.
Only the poor were dancing.
The wealthy elite of Strasbourgnever joined in.
Not one.
And in a citywhere the main food supply was rye bread,
(10:17):
that raises some uncomfortable questions.
You see, rye can be contaminatedwith a fungus called ergot,
which contains compounds similar to LSD.
Oh, man,
that's heavy shit.
Ergot poisoning caused hallucinations,convulsions, and uncontrollable movements.
(10:38):
Symptoms that sound awfully familiar.
The wealthy could affordwheat bread or higher quality grain.
The poorthey got whatever cheap rye was available,
potentially ccontaminatedwith a mind altering fungus.
Now, the Dancing plague might be the mostfamous mass psychogenic illness
(10:59):
(or LSD rave) in history.
But it's far from the only one.
In fact, outbreaks of collective,bizarre behavior
pop out throughout historywith disturbing regularity.
As early as the seventh century,there were reports
of dancing epidemicsin various parts of Europe.
In 1237,a group of children in Erfurt, Germany
(11:21):
started dancing and couldn'tstop, leading them out of the city
and into the countryside,where many disappeared forever.
In 1374, a massive outbreakswept through the Low Countries
like Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourgand northern France, as well as Germany,
affecting thousands of people acrossmultiple cities.
(11:43):
But let's talk about one of the strangest
- the Meowing Nuns epidemic in medievalFrance.
A single nun in a French convent startsmeowing like a cat.
Within days,the entire convent is engaged in
what witnesses described as “catconcerts”, hours
long sessions of synchronized meowingthat were loud enough
(12:04):
to disturb the neighborsoutside the convent walls.
Now, this might sound funnyuntil you remember that in medieval
Catholic theology, cats were associatedwith the devil.
Pope Gregory IX’spapal bull “Vox in Rama” in 1233,
had specifically linked catsto satanic rituals.
So when an entire convent of supposedlyholy women
(12:28):
starts acting like demonic creatures,people pay attention.
The situation escalateduntil local authorities sent in soldiers
who threatened the nuns with whippingif they didn't stop.
And just like that, the meowing stopped.
The entire convent returned to normalas if nothing had ever happened.
(12:49):
Even stranger was the Biting Nuns epidemicin 15th century Germany.
It started when one nun began biting hersisters.
The behavior spread like wildfire,
not just within her convent,but to other convents across the region.
Soon, nuns were biting each otherin a frenzy that lasted for months.
(13:09):
The epidemic only ended when the affectednuns were forcibly separated
and moved to different locations.
But mass hysteria isn't just a medievalphenomenon.
Jump forward to January30th, 1962, in Kinshasha, Tanzania.
Three girls at a mission boarding schoolstart laughing uncontrollably.
Not happy laughter.
(13:31):
This was distressing, with crying,
fainting,screaming and difficulty breathing.
Within weeks, 95 of the school's159 students were affected.
The episodes weren't joyous.
They were a distressing ordeal that lasted
from a few hours to 16 days,
(13:51):
with the average duration of about a week.
Studentswould break into uncontrollable laughter
that would turn into cryingand then screaming, then fainting.
Some even developed rashes.
The school closed on March 18thafter 48 days of disruption.
When it reopened on May 21st,
(14:13):
a second wave hit 57 more students.
The epidemic spread to other villagesas students returned home,
eventuallyaffecting about a thousand people
and forcing 14 schools to close.
The Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic,as it came to be known,
lasted almost 18 months.
Like the Dancing Plague, it struckduring a time of massive social upheaval.
(14:37):
Tanzania had just gained independencefrom British colonial rule on December
9th, 1961,just weeks before the outbreak began.
Not to mention that the boarding schoolwas run by British missionaries,
imposing strict disciplineand Western educational standards
on young girlsfrom traditional communities.
But just like in Strasbourg,authorities were completely baffled.
(15:01):
They conducted medical testson affected students.
No infections,no toxins, no neurological abnormalities.
The bloodwork was normal.
Brain scans showed nothing unusual.
It Those are we sick?
And a d.
Nothing abnormal.
Detected.
(15:22):
was purely psychological,spreading through
what researchers nowcall social contagion.
So what's really happening here?
How do hundreds of people suddenly startexhibiting the same
bizarre behavior across centuriesand continents?
The answer lies in something called MassPsychogenic Illness or MPI.
(15:44):
It's not contagiousin the way we think of diseases.
You can't catch dancing maniaby kissing a dancer.
Instead, it spreads through observationand psychological stress in a process
that's far more complexand fascinating than simple imitation.
Think about it.
In 1518, Strasbourg, you had a populationliving under extreme stress,
(16:07):
famine, disease,economic collapse, political upheaval,
and religious uncertaintyall raining down at once.
People were stretchedto their psychological breaking point.
When Frau Troffea started dancing,she provided a visible outlet
for all that unexpressedanxiety and desperation.
(16:28):
But it's not just “Monkey see.
Monkey do.” Our brains are wiredwith something called mirror
neurons, cellsthat fire both when we perform an action
and when we observe someone elseperforming the same action.
In normal circumstances,this helps us learn and empathize.
But in high stress situations, themirroring system can go a little haywire.
(16:52):
When people saw Frau Troffea’sfrenzied movements,
their mirror neurons firedas if they were dancing themselves.
Combined with their ownpsychological stress, this neural activity
could actually triggerthe same physical symptoms.
It's like their brains were practicingthe dancing until their bodies
couldn't tell the differencebetween imagination and reality.
(17:14):
But, don't think for a second
that we've evolved past such nonsense,
because social media is cooking upits own weird outbreaks.
Viral challengeslike the Cinnamon Challenge
or Tide Pod Challenge spreadlike 1518, dancing.
Back then it took weeks to hit400 dancers in Strasbourg.
(17:37):
Now a TikTok can sparkchaos worldwide in hours.
The dancing plague of 1518ended five centuries ago,
but the questions itraises are as relevant today as ever.
What happens when an entire communityreaches its psychological breaking point?
How do we maintain our individual agency
(17:59):
when everyone around us is losing theirs?
So next time you find yourselfmindlessly scrolling through social media,
feeling inexplicably compelled to join insomething everyone else is doing,
remember Frau Troffeastepping into those Strasbourg streets
on that summer morning in 1518,and ask yourself:
(18:22):
Are you dancing to your own rhythmor someone else's?
Sometimes the sanest thing you cando is just refuse to dance.
That makes
my feet hurt just reading about it.
But if you have more stamina than I do,would you probably do
and want to keepon this journey of strangeness?
(18:45):
Watch this video right here.
I promise it'll raise your heart ratewithout having to boot.
Scoot Boogie.
Be careful out there
and I will see youhere again on The InBetween.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.