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August 5, 2025 58 mins

Who’s to blame for the Dancing Plague of 1518?

This week, The Alarmist (Rebecca Delgado Smith) is searching for the cause of the Dancing Plague of 1518 in the city of Strasbourg. What possessed a woman named Frau Troffea to start dancing unstopped for 6 six days straight? And why did hundreds of others join in, some dancing themselves to literal death? Did “laughing veins” have something to do with it? Perhaps economic struggles during mystical times were the cause. Or maybe this had something to do with the Patron Saint Vitus. Fact Checker Chris Smith and Producer Clayton Early joins the conversation.

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