HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Cheese tax, cheese tax.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) We love cheese tax. You guys ready?
BEN KISSEL
Well then let's not sing the song because he's gonna flag the episode.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know, I know. I don't wanna get in his way.
BEN KISSEL
We don't want to mess with that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't want to actually pay the cheese tax.
BEN KISSEL
The artist. No. An artist and his art, nothing comes between it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So guys, I just wanted before the show even began, I wanted to pepper you with some of my best material I got here.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mass hysteria, what's that? Is that what Oprah goes through every 6 months?
BEN KISSEL
What does that even mean?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mass hysteria.
MARCUS PARKS
Mass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
What the fudge does it mean?
MARCUS PARKS
Are you talking about-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ballooning in weight and size.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In and out. She's going through mass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
You're gonna make fun of Oprah?
MARCUS PARKS
Mass hysteria. And you're also making fun of Oprah from like 15 years ago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mass hysteria? What is this, my new boutique gym?
MARCUS PARKS
That makes less sense.
BEN KISSEL
Let's redo. We have to redo this intro. What does this even mean?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mass hysteria? What are talking about, Oprah's Oprah?
BEN KISSEL
What the fuck? Okay, welcome to Last Podcast on the Left.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ricki Lake.
MARCUS PARKS
Ricki Lake.
BEN KISSEL
Why are you referencing talk show hosts from the 90s?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People that lost a lot of weight and then suddenly gained a lot of weight and lost.
BEN KISSEL
You! You!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mass hysteria, Henry Zebrowski's problem?
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. I don't even understand. Hysteria. I don't understand the hysteria and weight loss and weight gain thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mass hysteria? What is this, some form of long extreme marathon set in the Boston area?
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Wow, I'm confused.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mass hysteria?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Are you focused on the word mass?
MARCUS PARKS
Or the word hysteria? Massachusetts?
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
He said Boston, Mass.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Mass. But how does hysteria tie into a marathon?
BEN KISSEL
It doesn't make sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I said extreme, kind of like a Tough Mudder.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. I understand now.
MARCUS PARKS
Now you're talking about race horses.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I am really very good.
BEN KISSEL
I'm hysterical so I think you actually did a good job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See?
BEN KISSEL
Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left everyone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mass hysteria?
BEN KISSEL
It doesn't make sense. Ben hanging out with Marcus and Henry. Today's episode, I bet you figured it out, it's not about weight gain, weight loss amongst celebrities of the 90s, it's about mass hysteria through time.
MARCUS PARKS
Now we've talked about a fair amount of mass hysterias 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And away we go!
MARCUS PARKS
Most hysterias however, like those surrounding the nuns of Loudun, lie somewhere inbetween historically significant and a merely a curious set of incidents.
BEN KISSEL
Curious?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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.
BEN KISSEL
You think so?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well Spring-heeled Jack was all about like squeaking, squeaking and bouncing, right.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is frowned upon.
BEN KISSEL
Of course. And I think it was then as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And there was other breast-centered hysterias. There was a belly hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
The belly dancing hysteria of the 1920s? We just don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Well these hysteria 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There are certain things that science can't understand. Like the inner workings of...
BEN KISSEL
The female mind? Is that what you wanna say?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm very hungover from the 4/19 show. I took a lot of edibles last night.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I had 16 edibles, I woke up still stoned.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You were all just NPCs to me.
BEN KISSEL
That's what happened.
MARCUS PARKS
I watched him house these enormous edibles and then house three more after that.
BEN KISSEL
And how was the show?
MARCUS PARKS
The show was great. I just don't know what happened afterwards.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I talked a lot. And I don't really remember a heck of a lot that I said.
MARCUS PARKS
I do remember him saying that he was scared a lot.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I did. I felt like scared but pleasant.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Mass hysteria.
MARCUS PARKS
And so today we're gonna explore two kinds of mass hysterias. 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 6, 2021 would be a prime example.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
I think even a better example, Richard Gere's asshole. At no point was there a gerbil, a hamster inside Richard Gere's ass.
MARCUS PARKS
I did think about that. I also thought about the Troy Aikman getting his stomach pumped for come rumor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was real.
MARCUS PARKS
That was also real. However it did not result in aggressive behavior or panic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
We don't know. We can ask Richard Gere.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Because I guarantee you people are like what's in there? What's in there, Richie?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what that's called?
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
Curious?
MARCUS PARKS
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 catalyst other than social and cultural influences.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh, this would be like mass exorcisms, things of that nature perhaps?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Linsanity.
BEN KISSEL
Linsanity. Jeremy Lin.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Good reference.
MARCUS PARKS
New York City deep cut.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow, that's pretty good.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Linsanity was the man.
MARCUS PARKS
You only remember that from New York Post covers, don't you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
He did it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what Flea causes? Bass hysteria.
MARCUS PARKS
Bass hysteria, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Bass hysteria, real good. Wow. You should have stopped him yesterday from eating all these edibles, Marcus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel useless.
MARCUS PARKS
He ate it real fast.
BEN KISSEL
He must have.
MARCUS PARKS
It was like a dog eating a fucking piece of chocolate on the floor. You want to just grab it from him and you can't, it's too late.
BEN KISSEL
Too late. Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then I have astigmatism.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So the lights from the crowd, they were getting super glarey.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it looked like I was talking to fairies.
BEN KISSEL
Cool. All right. What a show.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Havana syndrome.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It is interesting though because if you're feeling the effects of something even if you don't have it, you kind of have it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
True. Again, it's like do you think a thing or are you with the thing?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. 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-
BEN KISSEL
Makes you a podcaster.
MARCUS PARKS
You look it up on the internet, you're gonna see lymphoma.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure. Yeah because you looked it up on the internet which is a catastrophe waiting.
MARCUS PARKS
But you're showing all the symptoms of having lymphoma.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But when you go to a doctor, he says there's no lymphoma, who fucking knows what's wrong with you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then the doctor goes back and makes fun of you with all the nurses.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right. They do do that.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Inserting his own vicious vile hate of doctors.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's about creating his own narrative and sticking to it.
BEN KISSEL
I like it.
MARCUS PARKS
But overdiagnosed or not, somatic illnesses are very real and nowhere are they more on stark display than during hysterical epidemics.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(screaming)
BEN KISSEL
(wailing) Great time for comedy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mass hysteria is sometimes when you're trapped in an elevator and you can't get out.
BEN KISSEL
That would be.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That would be scary.
MARCUS PARKS
But how is that mass?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Too big.
BEN KISSEL
It could be a large elevator to be fair.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We saw some mass hysteria when Kissel broke the chair before leaving for Australia and they had to give him the bottle of wine.
MARCUS PARKS
That's true.
BEN KISSEL
They didn't have to, they felt bad for me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was their hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Well 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're also a lot of times highly unusual.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're very strange, very specific. We don't know where the hell they're coming from. You kind of wonder like how did y'all get the same idea at the same time?
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's because we are all connected via a series of mitochondria, right. Like let's get into this.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Our mitochondria actually are little 5G little portals inside of our brains that broadcast to each other. Our pituitary gland, that's like a drain, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A drain for all of your thoughts to run through into the back of my head, which I call the yard.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the yard is where all the other thoughts are.
BEN KISSEL
Well absolutely. And that's why good improv can exist, pro wrestling can exist. Coexistence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But in pro wrestling, don't they just like pinch each other's nipples?
BEN KISSEL
They do that. But they also have some, it's like mind melding. It's a mind meld.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you go like (whispering) I'm going to do the suplex.
BEN KISSEL
There's a mind meld.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whispering) I'm gonna take the leg, I'm gonna put it up. I'm the Undertaker.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Jamming. You get a bunch of musicians together, you start jamming.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Show an example.
BEN KISSEL
(drum beat)
MARCUS PARKS
(bass playing)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Caw! Caw! Caw caw!
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a crow in the room!
BEN KISSEL
That's crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Well socially these hysterias-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's really good.
MARCUS PARKS
It's hard to come out of a jam that fast.
BEN KISSEL
It is hard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like whiplash.
BEN KISSEL
Whiplash, yeah. That's tough. We're like the string cheese incident.
MARCUS PARKS
Well socially these hysterias most often occur in segregated groups where anxiety is high, places like Salem, Massachusetts in the 17th century.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, excuse me y'all, I think I heard some symptoms in here.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed. The witch menace is around.
MARCUS PARKS
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 status people and moving down. QAnon, for example.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Didn't truly take hold until older people in power started talking about it and giving it credence.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because then we're getting some kind of confirmation from somebody that might know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you don't realize that actually a hotdog vendor can be elected to the House of Representatives if they have enough-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I would take them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like that's what I'm saying.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It just kind of shows anybody could be in the government.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Anybody at all. Which is the point, is it not?
BEN KISSEL
Is it not? You have to sell your soul a little bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have to sell your soul to do fucking anything, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You do, you do.
MARCUS PARKS
How do you have to sell your soul to become that hotdog vendor in the first place?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
First of all, you're part of big nitrate.
BEN KISSEL
You're definitely big nitrate. You can't like pigs. Your family might as well be dead because you're working all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Most of the time you're sending money home to someplace else.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or you're a niche gourmet hotdog guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then you're past vendor. Now you're not a vendor anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And also let's not be too fancy with it, it's a hot dog. Let's have fun with it.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But you could be a vegan and you're forced to sell hotdogs because you need to make money.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Vegan hot dogs.
BEN KISSEL
No, you would sell meat hot dogs but you are a vegan. That would be a conflict of interest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I'm saying.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you both for answering my questions so succinctly and intellectually.
BEN KISSEL
People do compromise, they compromise.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's incredible how much selling out happens at all times.
BEN KISSEL
You have to do it sometimes.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Please.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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 guy got a lot of energy out here, let's work this out. First of all, let's get you out of these coarse clothes.
BEN KISSEL
You wanna open up a strip club. You wanna open up a witchy strip club which yes, does sound fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
It does. It does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Let's just begin a goth dance naked night now.
BEN KISSEL
What about let them go to school? That might be good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's already proved to be difficult.
MARCUS PARKS
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 wit, hysterias almost always occur as an outcropping of the cultural anxieties of the era and location in which they occur.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One day I'd love to talk to an expert in this field.
MARCUS PARKS
There's very few. That's the problem is that there actually aren't experts in this field.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very difficult to put together because how do you put this? Each man is an island in their own way, right. Like your computer now.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now how we've made algorithms being exteriorization of our 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 see on their computer. And so they are actually creating their own, like the echo chamber inside their own head. But then your own brain is also very dedicated in keeping you locked into your own perspective.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very difficult.
BEN KISSEL
It is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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 something like this shows that like it's kind of a flaw in our consciousness.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That we can get locked onto a thing and it really would take all your whole life bottoming out for you to understand that you've been incorrect.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Or do you just take the pill and stay in the matrix?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
BEN KISSEL
You're just like sweet, I love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We talk about with QAnon that it's about the friends you made along the way.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that nice?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
January 6th was just more of a fun afternoon for a lot of these guys.
BEN KISSEL
A lot of people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they did not understand really kind of what they were in the middle of.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That they were volunteering to be a part of.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well some definitely did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, some.
BEN KISSEL
They came heavily armed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well they were taking it to the next step, like they were taking it really seriously.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And some of them were heavy in the arms but most of them were heavy in the middle part of their bodies.
BEN KISSEL
I saw a lot of that, a lot of butts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
There we go.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as I just said, even though mass hysteria is used to explain away all manner of events, whether it be the aforementioned January 6th or-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very much like a swamp gas.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, UFOs. It's also used to explain that away. It's used to explain away Mothman, any sort of crypt sighting, any sort of flap. Flaps are usually ascribed to mass hysterias.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All the time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because they're feeling this paranoia. The times are tight, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Things are intense in the country.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so that kind of like feeds some kind of inner mechanism. But again, we don't know what the hell it is.
BEN KISSEL
Not to mention the cover of the Ghoulies. How many people think the Ghoulies are in their toilets to this day simply because of that cover?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why what's the name of that kitty litter we've been working with? They have been my savior.
BEN KISSEL
I think it's cat-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh, pretty litter.
BEN KISSEL
Pretty litter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's been so good to just let loose in a bucket of pretty litter.
BEN KISSEL
You using that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because again, no Ghoulies.
BEN KISSEL
No Ghoulies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I can check the bottom of it.
BEN KISSEL
This toilet is Ghoulie-free, trust me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Uh oh, now it's Ghoulie full.
BEN KISSEL
No, that ain't right. Mass hysteria.
MARCUS PARKS
Well for example, in 1992 in the town of Martensville in Saskatchewan, a parent alleged that someone at a local daycare run out of the owner's home had sexually abused her child. Serious allegations.
BEN KISSEL
Very serious.
MARCUS PARKS
But as it often happened in the early 90s when it came to daycares and sex abuse allegations, the case soon spiraled into the realm of the satanic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes! But not the fun.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They can't do the horns or (metal guitar riff).
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not fun.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
This isn't fun.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Oh mama.
MARCUS PARKS
Allegedly, they all belong to a devil worshiping cult called the Brotherhood of the Ram.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Who specialized in drugging, beating, and sodomizing children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the only thing I don't like.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Well that's good. Those are strong principles, Henry.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. They took them out of the daycare and brought them to a quote unquote "devil church".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
That's not good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just again, it's very difficult to get real estate. I don't think you guys understand that.
BEN KISSEL
It is. It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Now nevermind that there wasn't a shred of physical evidence for these insane allegations, about 100 charges were soon filed against over a dozen people.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And 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.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's not good. That's what I would say. If I was there right now, go back, Ben Kissel. I read the papers, I go honey!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey.
BEN KISSEL
This ain't good!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can see you there in the devil church as they're molesting and bleeding all the children.
BEN KISSEL
I wouldn't be there!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You'd be like hey guys, hey, let's think about this a second time.
BEN KISSEL
That's not good.
MARCUS PARKS
Well 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 worshippers were on their way at that very moment, the police chief took him seriously.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just so ridiculous.
MARCUS PARKS
All of the dudes in the police department, they brought out their shotguns, they set up barricades. Nothing happened of course.
BEN KISSEL
But nothing happened, huh?
MARCUS PARKS
Of course! Nothing happened because there were no satanists, there was never-
BEN KISSEL
But what if something did happen?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What if it did?
BEN KISSEL
Be prepared.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes but that's why January 6th, they kind of say like 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.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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, there were doors let open for them. It's a bunch of sketchy shit inside of it.
BEN KISSEL
Well all of that stuff was, yeah, that was them trying to get the... Anyway, I don't want to-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well 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?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But there was a lot. The reason that they were being escorted around is because they were trying to get them away from all the politicians.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. I know.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then that's why... It's a whole thing.
BEN KISSEL
It's a whole day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a whole day. No, I remember.
MARCUS PARKS
It was America's big day definitely.
BEN KISSEL
It was America's big day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'm not even doing July 4th anymore. I'm only doing Jan 6th.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was America's day out. I was wondering why you stood in the middle of the 101 with the chair with those sparklers and the American flag this year.
BEN KISSEL
That would be fun. Ooh mattress sales.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the idea that the police actually bought into this panic that a horde of satanists were coming, it's incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
You know what you gotta do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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.
BEN KISSEL
What you gotta do is you gotta show up, you gotta present a series of mirrors in front of the cops and you say you're the horde.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You're the horde.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa. Wait a second.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that a Kendall Jenner commercial for Pepsi?
BEN KISSEL
She saved everything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She did.
BEN KISSEL
She solved it all.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
The daycare owner's son, he did time for molestation.
BEN KISSEL
He did?
MARCUS PARKS
He went to jail.
BEN KISSEL
That's the worst thing to go to jail for. And he is innocent.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean it's widely believed that he's innocent. He never appealed his conviction, which no one really can figure out why.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But it's widely accepted that, yeah, everyone was innocent of all charges. He just happened to go down for it.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then you either don't got no money no more, right, or you're just so beaten down and destroyed by it.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or there was a bunch of other molestations that you did and then you just got caught on the bad one.
BEN KISSEL
He got caught.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And now you know so in jail everybody's maybe believing that you're innocent because you're like I get hard for, 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!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they're all like there's no way Jerry is a child molester.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you don't know that actually you are guilty of a bunch of child molesting, just not the one that you're in jail for.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic idea. I don't know if there's lunch ladies in prison.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
It is also possible-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's no lunch ladies in prison?
BEN KISSEL
It's other prisoners.
MARCUS PARKS
There's lunch people.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Remember, there's lunch men. Remember John Wayne Gacy was a lunch man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I do.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. But it is also possible as we see with false confessions that you can almost be a victim of mass hysteria yourself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
You can be.
BEN KISSEL
And actually trick yourself into thinking that you did something wrong.
MARCUS PARKS
We'll get into a prime example of that in a minute.
BEN KISSEL
Which is very interesting, that's a strange human conundrum.
MARCUS PARKS
Well once the rest of the defendants in the Martensville 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.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. (gagging) Yuck. My question is how much time would you serve for $10 million?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh man. But not for child molestation.
BEN KISSEL
No, I mean you are in solitary at best.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no, no, no, no. For $10 million. Do I get it after?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you get it after. I mean it's not gonna help you during. What are you gonna spend it on?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Knowing how much it would destroy my mental health for the rest of my life, six days.
BEN KISSEL
Six days?
MARCUS PARKS
Voluntarily? Yeah, six days.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I don't know if I'm gonna do good in the big house, man.
BEN KISSEL
$10 million.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've watched a lot of Big Herk and I know that they don't like the funny guys.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No, they don't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'd have to figure out... Honestly if I could teach them all, I could teach acting classes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like I could teach acting classes inside of jail.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, a guy like me. And you're talking like federal prison, right?
BEN KISSEL
Yep. Federal prison.
MARCUS PARKS
Federal prison. Gen pop federal prison?
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay, yeah. Day and a half. Maybe I'd spend a night there.
BEN KISSEL
Strong like a bull.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How long do you think your could do in jail?
BEN KISSEL
Oh god. Well first thing you do, you go in and you drop trou right away.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And you say line up, boys! There's a new show pony in town.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And you give everyone what they need. Handys, suckys, and hopefully after that they give you a little bit of respect. I don't know actually. I think I'm too tall, I think I'd be uncomfortable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You'd be very uncomfortable in jail.
BEN KISSEL
I could survive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want to train to train little mice.
BEN KISSEL
I don't want to though. Yeah, do the mice thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'd train mice and pigeons. I'd be that guy with little circle glasses going you know sometimes, it's just the smaller they are, they understand more what it's like to live in a small place.
BEN KISSEL
You'd be a good celly. We'd be good cellies. I'm so big, you're so tiny. And then we could fit together.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Two LEGO blocks.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. But yeah Marcus, it would be bad for you because you're also kind of a feminine build.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, yeah. I'm androgynous in many different ways. It's not gonna be good for me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, we could flop you around.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
You could flop around real bad. There we go.
BEN KISSEL
Six days for Marcus?
MARCUS PARKS
I took it down to a day and a half. Day and a half.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'd do a fortnight.
BEN KISSEL
One funny thing is that stupid ass, we'll get back to this, but that dumb show where people volunteer to go to prison for 60 days.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh, the World's Toughest Prisons?
BEN KISSEL
No, not that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's that dude that does-
BEN KISSEL
Well yes, that man. But then they just have normal people that go to prison for like 60 days and then sometimes they actually commit a crime in prison and then they get sentenced to prison.
MARCUS PARKS
Ugh!
BEN KISSEL
Doesn't that suck?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why would you do this?
BEN KISSEL
They're stupid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
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 hysterias is mass motor hysteria.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(revving noise)
BEN KISSEL
What's that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
F1.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Jethro Tull. No, it's like Deep Purple, (singing) mass motor hysteria!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude.
BEN KISSEL
This is off the rails.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Space truckin!
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
(guitar sounds)
BEN KISSEL
Does this episode come with an edible? Swear to god.
MARCUS PARKS
Hey man, I'm just getting into the 4/20 spirit. I haven't smoked weed in years. But hey man, it's like Christmas, you gotta get into it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's because I put it in your water.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're fucked. He's gonna have a mental breakdown.
BEN KISSEL
Please god.
MARCUS PARKS
And yeah, I know Godzilla was Blue Oyster Cult. So don't give me any shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's too late.
BEN KISSEL
No one's caring. No one cares. No one knew. No one knows.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
People shake, twitch, contort, and contract, which is pretty much what people do when they're supposedly possessed by the devil.
BEN KISSEL
This actually, I've seen this. Now when you mention all of this it reminds me of my evangelical roots.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
When I was growing up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We've talked about this. Do you not think that it's mostly voluntary though? Like it's not involuntary.
BEN KISSEL
So you get called up in front of the pastor, right. And then you get the laying on by hands.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The hands.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And you have to do something.
MARCUS PARKS
It's societal pressure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'd just do the robot. Whoa! Whoa!
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(robot sounds)
BEN KISSEL
That's would crush. But I got the hands laid upon me and you know you fall over, they just push you over.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But yes, you do. You go over. That's your role in that game.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow. What kind of a wide berth did they give behind you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Timber!
BEN KISSEL
I was a bit younger then. And I opened my eyes and I was looking right up a girl's skirt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I remember.
BEN KISSEL
She was my age.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When he fell over, they all went into mass hysteria, they were so scared of his size.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. But it's like that Crash Test Dummy song.
MARCUS PARKS
(humming song)
BEN KISSEL
Great song.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. How is it like that song?
BEN KISSEL
Because they talk about going to the church, everyone's rolling around on the ground, climbing around like worms.
MARCUS PARKS
Do they?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll have to take his word for it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
I thought that was just one about polka dots.
BEN KISSEL
No, no, no. There's a bunch of stuff. You're high! Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well unaddressed or worse encouraged, the symptoms of mass motor hysteria can last weeks or months.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know for a long time people thought, there was like a debunk movement for a while trying to say that these didn't happen.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But now they're actually showing that there's a lot more evidence than they thought there was originally.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They showed that dancing plagues happened, people were obsessed with it.
BEN KISSEL
Well what's a dancing plague?
MARCUS PARKS
We'll get into it. The dancing plague started in the 11th century and occurred regularly until the mid 17th century. Sometimes called Saint Vitus Dance after the patron saint of dancing, the dancing plagues could last weeks, sometimes months, and could often be fatal to the involuntary participants.
BEN KISSEL
They danced themselves to death?
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Because dancing plagues is a little bit, it's kind of both. Because some seem like they are actual dancing.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some do seem more like giant group seizures that also kind of happen.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which weirdly that comes up several times, that actual phenomenon.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The dancing plagues are actually the earliest recorded instances of what we now call mass sociogenic illness. Although the frenzied Dionysian in the 405 BC play The Bacchae certainly imply that motoric mass hysteria has existed throughout mankind's social history, do they not?
BEN KISSEL
Really interesting. Really interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wasn't prepared for this voice.
MARCUS PARKS
Bacchanalian. It's a bacchanalian frenzied dance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bacchanalian is a thing, it was a thing.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know that is real. I don't know a lot about it.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know the Dionysians were a cult.
BEN KISSEL
Princess Diana was murdered. I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Quote unquote. I think her head just did that.
BEN KISSEL
She was killed by the paparazzi.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. By us almost in a way.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that true?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
By our attention.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that a fact?
MARCUS PARKS
First person in history murdered by photography.
BEN KISSEL
Indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Except for many Amish. That's why they're so scared of it.
MARCUS PARKS
So the earliest recorded example of a dancing plague comes from the year 1021, during a Christmas Eve mass in the Germanic town of Kölbigk. That evening the priest was interrupted by 18 people dancing with wild abandon, making noise outside the church.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh ah! Ooh ah! Shamone!
BEN KISSEL
Wow. This is German, so it's oompa music.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well actually when do you think polka music began?
BEN KISSEL
Well polka music is not German.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's Polish.
MARCUS PARKS
Czech.
BEN KISSEL
I'm talking oompa music.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What do you mean polka music is not fucking German? They're all the same.
MARCUS PARKS
No, polka music-
BEN KISSEL
It's Polish!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's Polish and Czech. It's Eastern European.
BEN KISSEL
That's your people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah and when you mix polka with traditional Latin American-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It becomes Mariachi music.
MARCUS PARKS
It becomes Tejano.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh cool.
MARCUS PARKS
No not Mariachi, it becomes Tejano.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's the difference?
MARCUS PARKS
Texas Tornadoes, they're Tejano.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, I'm spontaneously dancing over here. All right, very good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is a great episode.
BEN KISSEL
Really solid. It's something. Not the first episode to introduce us to new listeners. Thought you said there was content?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There is content!
MARCUS PARKS
Well what I really enjoy about Last Podcast is they really inject like intelligence into the humor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We do.
MARCUS PARKS
Well and since 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We, we, we are a butthole! We, we, we are a butthole! You're inside a butthole!
BEN KISSEL
That makes the priest a turd.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Well according to a local chronicler, the priest was so enraged that he cursed the dancers to dance for an entire year as punishment for their quote unquote "outrageous levity".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well if you're gonna be out there making a show out of something that's not a show, then you better be dancing for the rest of the goddamn year.
BEN KISSEL
All right. This is the smoke a whole pack of cigarettes, see if you get sick.
MARCUS PARKS
Reportedly, the people believed enough in the priest's power where it actually worked.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And it wasn't until the following Christmas that the dancers stopped.
BEN KISSEL
They must have been tired.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(exhausted voice) We, we, we are the butthole.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they danced themselves to death!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
Well these dancing plagues, as Henry mentioned very briefly, this isn't like fun and sexy like Salt-N-Pepa Shoop dancing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Say it again.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, we're so old.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay. Well for a No Dogs In Space episode-
BEN KISSEL
Shoop.
MARCUS PARKS
I've been getting into shit like this. The song I'm Blue, it was written originally The Ikettes.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And then The Monks turned it into We Do Wie Du.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
And then of course that song was sampled, The Ikettes version was sampled in Shoop by Salt- N-Pepa. So I've been watching that video a lot lately.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
And they can dance, boy. They can dance.
BEN KISSEL
Boy can they.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They really can.
BEN KISSEL
Boy can they.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
Really powerful.
MARCUS PARKS
(singing) Shoop baby.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Shoop baby, shoop.
BEN KISSEL
We got to see them perform during the daylight at the Comedy Central Comedy Festival because it was all wrong and the musicians performed before comedy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll tell you what, Chilli will always be my girl.
BEN KISSEL
That's TLC.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that is TLC. They're two different groups. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Cause the whole thing about Salt-N-Pepa is that one of them is named Salt and the other one is named Pepa.
BEN KISSEL
And then there's Spinderella. And there's fucking Spinderella.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We have ground to fucking haul. We gotta go, I have to go.
BEN KISSEL
Also everyone's favorite was Left Eye, so you're wrong.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know, I liked Left Eye too but I was sexually attracted to Chili.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but Left Eye... Well they're all hot.
MARCUS PARKS
I liked Chili, she was the one with long hair, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I liked her.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I liked the tall one from Salt-N-Pepa.
BEN KISSEL
They're all hot. Yeah, they're all very attractive.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, they really are. 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 scream therapy.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Like this is Beatle Bob. This is like Charles Manson bebopping and jazzing after that reporter asked him to define his unique charm.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
But regardless, after the Christmas Eve dancers stopped following the priest's curse, they reportedly fell into a deep sleep and some of them subsequently died from exhaustion.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now that's a fairly incredible story.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Because while it's unknown exactly how long a human can go without sleep, the current record is 11 days.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a record you don't want to try to beat.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
No. What a nightmare.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps the dancers continued twitching during sleeping hours and began the boogie anew upon their next awakening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well have you heard about fatal insomnia?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Where you die from insomnia?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a really fun-
BEN KISSEL
God, what a horrible way to die.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you have problems with like intrusive thoughts or kind of like any form of hypochondria, 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.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I would imagine that you do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man. And it just happens.
MARCUS PARKS
That's fucking horrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Isn't that great? There you go, run with that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Okay, cool.
BEN KISSEL
There has to be a way to get someone to go to sleep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they have to put you out for a while. They try to do it with anesthesia, it doesn't really, really work because you don't really sleep with anesthesia.
BEN KISSEL
So the brain is just like we don't sleep anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. What a trip.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like all of this is kind of weirdly connected in a way.
MARCUS PARKS
It does feel like it.
BEN KISSEL
I mean that and locked in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh locked in syndrome.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Those are very scary.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no, no, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Always kill me.
MARCUS PARKS
Kill me, kill me, kill me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Both of you know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, of course.
BEN KISSEL
I mean we'll make fun of you a bunch first.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure, sure, sure. Yeah. First get some content out of it. Use the body, film the roast. We're roasting Henry's corpse. And then that's it.
MARCUS PARKS
18 months.
BEN KISSEL
That's great.
MARCUS PARKS
And we'll-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, sure. Whatever you can drain out of it.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really strange.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in the German town of Erfurt in 1247, 200 people were said to have danced on a bridge until it collapsed, drowning them all.
BEN KISSEL
I could see that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And people were like TikTok's the problem.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Literally they've been doing this ever since.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is just called planking.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
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, someone's like it's going down!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And then a bunch of people got trampled to death. I'm not sure if that really is, it's kind of mass hysteria.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
BEN KISSEL
Cause it wasn't going down.
MARCUS PARKS
Or mass panic.
BEN KISSEL
Mass panic, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
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 that seizures, that's something totally different.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's something else.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And some of them even in fact died after they landed badly. They landed bad.
BEN KISSEL
Too much hopping.
MARCUS PARKS
They broke their ribs, some of them broke their loins, which I think they mean their hips, like old people.
BEN KISSEL
They're still German at the end of the day. We're not a jumping people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no, no, no. You're a kicking people.
BEN KISSEL
Kicking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well you're marching people.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, marching. Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
What about Detlef Schrempf?
BEN KISSEL
Yes, bit more of a shooter. Not much Detlef. But there's been Dirk, perhaps.
MARCUS PARKS
Nowitzki, yeah. And so it went at least once a century. In Strasburg in the summer of 1518, 400 people were caught in a dancing plague so uncontrollable that they danced themselves to death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To death!
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Knowing all the while that sunstroke would kill them if they did not stop, people are dropping dead at their feet and they're not stopping.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. How about that, Coachella?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, god. We're just fucking so old.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Coachella.
MARCUS PARKS
Ugh, that lineup is garbage.
BEN KISSEL
It's not for us.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I love Tribet and Mr. Bangle. And I love, I think it's Stank Pink?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Stank Pink is one of my favorite violent...
MARCUS PARKS
Hyperpop.
BEN KISSEL
There we go. Really good.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the city of Strasburg tried getting proactive with their dancing plague and therefore constructed a special stage in the heart of the city.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Make it content.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, why not? If they're gonna be dancing anyway, put them on stage.
MARCUS PARKS
The dancers were herded to the stage where they could ostensibly, I think the logic was like let them get it out of their system.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Let them perform.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, oh they want attention so much.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And you know what happened when the Germans get it out of their system. That's gonna be great.
MARCUS PARKS
Really let loose what's inside the German, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Let loose!
MARCUS PARKS
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 unsettling.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There was a dude that watched this at some point and he was like this needs choreography.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's watching this, he's like we're doing this all wrong.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like he arrived and he was just like we need to put up a backdrop, we gotta put up some lights.
MARCUS PARKS
We need music.
BEN KISSEL
But this is a strangely sympathetic approach.
MARCUS PARKS
It really is, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Cause they're like let's help them out now.
MARCUS PARKS
(trumpet playing)
BEN KISSEL
Now there's a reason to dance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now they're definitely...
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they're not dancing a beat!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they're not. But at least it's not them dancing in silence and you just hear the (shuffling) of the feet.
BEN KISSEL
And don't forget the bones cracking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hoo-hoo. Shamone!
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, the bones slowly cracking, of course.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. That would be horrible to dance til your fucking ankles break.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It happened.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh! Like doing the Michael Jackson scream.
MARCUS PARKS
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 no to.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really strange.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Very weird.
MARCUS PARKS
Now it's been wrongly theorized that every single one of these dancing plagues were a result of ergot poisoning.
BEN KISSEL
Ergot.
MARCUS PARKS
Ergert perserning.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, ergert perserning. When they figured out that ergot does that, like every single historian was like let's sprinkle some ergot on it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Well I mean does it have anything to do with it?
MARCUS PARKS
No!
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
It doesn't wash because when you consider that people would dance for weeks or months on end without showing any other sign of ergert perserning such as puking or shitting yourself into a coma.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're also just seeing stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the nature of how many times... Everybody who talks about hallucinogens that has never done any.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where they're all like well it makes you go crazy. Where like mostly it just makes you see shit weird and you kind of just like ball up inside of yourself.
MARCUS PARKS
The phrase that I find myself saying the most when doing hallucinogens is uh oh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. In my mind it's also very like this makes sense or oh of course that fucking pinecone would be there.
MARCUS PARKS
Uh oh. Uh oh, all right. Okay. But it's uh oh in a good way. Like uh oh, all right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mostly just sit down.
BEN KISSEL
Kinda chill out.
MARCUS PARKS
But people did exhibit irrational 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 strange aversions to the color red and pointed shoes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now that really points towards the society's fears.
BEN KISSEL
I think that's because they were getting kicked by all these people in pointed shoes.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean yeah. But then also it's indicative of the devil, 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.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It would be funny if aliens come back wearing like 1300s garb, be like oh I guess we got the century wrong.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you not think that the next wave of fashion is going to be all of that? It's all gonna be like 1300s, like medieval fashions.
BEN KISSEL
It all comes back.
MARCUS PARKS
Snoodwear?
BEN KISSEL
Snoodwear.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Snood life is coming and it's gonna be real.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But apparently I bought, I told you I took a picture in it but it looks a bit ethnic. And I tried to put it on, a listener sent it to me and it was great, thank you. But yeah, I can't wear it because I look like...
BEN KISSEL
You can wear it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I look like a professional 40 year old dishwasher from 36 years ago.
BEN KISSEL
What's wrong with that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just saying it a knit cap.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
I understand that. And to that point Henry, we went to the Renaissance Fair last week.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's his clothes.
MARCUS PARKS
The shoes, wear those shoes all the time. And yet I fit right in in the Renaissance.
BEN KISSEL
That's not a compliment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You looked like a farmer's confused son from the Renaissance.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Confused? I was not confused.
BEN KISSEL
Let's get right into what happened that week.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All he wants to do is write poetry. He doesn't have anything to do with the fig farm. He's just out there picking flowers and dancing.
BEN KISSEL
Aw, the fig farm. No, Marcus was arguing about very important Star Trek issues which we are not gonna get into.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I am not broaching it.
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Deep Space Nine truly is-
BEN KISSEL
We are not gonna get into it.
MARCUS PARKS
It's more than just guarding a wormhole, goddamnit.
BEN KISSEL
We're just not gonna get into it.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as we said earlier, mass hysterias can come from extreme stresses. ANd the times in which these dancing plagues occurred, the middle ages, they were horrific for the monkey brain of a human.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Welcome to the game, syphilis!
BEN KISSEL
God dang.
MARCUS PARKS
In addition to recurrent outbreaks of both leprosy and the plague.
BEN KISSEL
Syphilis does make you go mad right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It can.
MARCUS PARKS
After a very long period of time.
BEN KISSEL
So these people weren't suffering from syphilis?
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no, no, no. Syphilis takes like 30-40 years to drive you crazy.
BEN KISSEL
I got you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you got plenty of time.
BEN KISSEL
I'm good.
MARCUS PARKS
Interestingly though, dancing to process and heal trauma is actually pretty common amongst human beings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, dancing is one of the most powerful art forms to ever be because it's not hemmed in by language, society, or culture. Each culture has its own dance and we're united by dance.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look at the electric slide.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's true, that's true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like if we brought it to Afghanistan-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If we brought the electric slide to Iran, I feel that we could really fix all of that stuff.
BEN KISSEL
But cultures and dancing, it is an interesting way to study cultures through dance, isn't it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If we could just drop that fucking... What was the (singing) this is your chance to do the hump. Right?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh, do the Humpty Hump.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do Humpty Hump.
BEN KISSEL
You want the Humpty Hump, sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We we drop the Humpty Hump over Ukraine.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Maybe that would help. Maybe that would help.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it could be that a dancing plague is an example of the brakes getting cut on a coping mechanism. That however doesn't explain how dancing plagues spread, which is still to this day a mystery.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is really, it's interesting, all of these versions of mass hysteria. It's like I guess you see a bunch of people doing something, there's maybe a little part of you that's like man, I want to give everything up. Yeah! Yeah!
BEN KISSEL
Let's join in, why not?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Improv everywhere.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's go. But it is strange that then you get locked in.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you drop out of society and then you realize that society was the net that was keeping you up.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Wow. Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But society is fucking making me mad.
BEN KISSEL
You're getting it now.
MARCUS PARKS
Your home is where you're happy, it's not where you're not free.
BEN KISSEL
That's Charles Manson.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, Charles Manson.
BEN KISSEL
That's a Charles Manson lyric.
MARCUS PARKS
But speaking of the middle ages, medieval convents were common places for outbreaks of mass hysteria. Where there were nuns, there was weirdness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, there was. I've seen a lot of that.
BEN KISSEL
Indeed, indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Well these hysterias were usually led by women who had been forced into nunneries.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Where they lived in prison-like conditions under strict behavioral guidelines. A lot of stress.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those Mother Superiors really gotta keep those nuns in a short leash.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, real short.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's gotta make sure they're clean, number one.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta make sure that first of all, when Sister Clamslapper shows up, right-
BEN KISSEL
You want to be ready for that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just a nickname.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Her name's Helen. But if you find out why they call her that-
MARCUS PARKS
Helen Clamslapper! Nice to meet you.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed. Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whereas scissors, not just an office supply.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that nice? We're having oysters for dinner again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now perhaps because nunneries were such odd constructs full of women forced to be there, so too were the mass hysterias contained therein often strange.
BEN KISSEL
And oftentimes these were just either lesbian women-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh sure.
BEN KISSEL
Or women that wanted to read. And then they're like go to the nunnery.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're also discounting women where the whole family has been murdered and they have nowhere to go and they have no agency within society.
MARCUS PARKS
Or women like youngest daughters who can't be married off or who have kind of aged out of being married off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, spinsters.
MARCUS PARKS
If you're 32-35, you're fucking done.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got too square of a head, got too round of a head, right to the nunnery.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Nuns on the run. Ooh I wanna sneak into a nunnery.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
I've heard people do this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Meow that's what I call mass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
I mean seriously, people meow sometimes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well pretty soon all the nuns in the convent-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're just saying people meow sometimes?
BEN KISSEL
They do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They do.
MARCUS PARKS
Who meows sometimes?
BEN KISSEL
I've been to some bars and people will just meow. Women.
MARCUS PARKS
What?
BEN KISSEL
Women meow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're different, you're single, you're out there.
MARCUS PARKS
Wait a second, what bars have you been to where women just meow?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the Pussy Hut, there was Tabby Corner.
BEN KISSEL
Gabby Corner.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Garfield's Place. I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Get the Nermal.
MARCUS PARKS
Well pretty soon all the nuns in the convent were meowing like cats, eventually falling into a chorus of caterwauling for hours every day.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Weird.
MARCUS PARKS
The meowing only stopped when local soldiers were ordered into the convent to whip and spank the nuns.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
MARCUS PARKS
Until the kittens quieted down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that was the point of the meowing.
BEN KISSEL
You gotta bark. They should have (barking). Meow meow, bark bark.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that's the thing, the soldiers are barking.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The soldiers are barking, they're playing cats and dogs.
BEN KISSEL
They're just trying to have sex with each other.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man.
MARCUS PARKS
But mass hysterias amongst nuns could also spread from convent to convent. The meowing nuns, that was just one convent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
For sure.
MARCUS PARKS
And this happens 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 convents spread across France and the Germanic states.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is when you really need Russell Crowe's The Pope's Exorcist to show up and fix this shit. Because this is really weird.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it turns a nunnery more of a nommery.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, cause they're eating it there. They're nom nom nomming on it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I mean they're viciously biting each other.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, what a weird time to be a nun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Before long, the biting nun thought virus had spread to Italy and the Netherlands and no one could get the nuns to stop biting people no matter how much they begged them to stop.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Just honestly get them a Peloton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they need to be worked out.
MARCUS PARKS
But once several nuns were flogged and/or drowned, words spread to the other convents and the biting miraculously stopped.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wonder what did it?
BEN KISSEL
I wonder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually sometimes think go along, get along.
MARCUS PARKS
Go along, get along?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're biting.
BEN KISSEL
We're biting now, so I'll start biting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We talked about it a little bit slightly in the Salem Witch Trials. We talked a little bit about the concept of okay, I have no agency. I've been put into this thing.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm in society, not in my choice, 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 in a situation.
BEN KISSEL
You have some control over it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a rebellion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Even though you're biting each other and biting everyone, it's still a sort of rebellion.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know. I don't know if that's fully the cause.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but it does make sense.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
And that actually sort of makes sense a little bit with the very first dancing plague that we talked about.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They're rebelling against the church and then the church curses them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, we're not dancing? Fuck you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'm always dancing.
BEN KISSEL
Always dancing.
MARCUS PARKS
And 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 solid days of the black plague were in the 14th century.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The appetizer course.
BEN KISSEL
I love it.
MARCUS PARKS
But it persisted in Europe in 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.
BEN KISSEL
Thank god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Was it movie reviewers?
BEN KISSEL
The Jewish people, I mean come on. You gotta leave them alone.
MARCUS PARKS
Come one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gotta leave them alone!
MARCUS PARKS
Gotta leave them 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I do believe this is a mechanism of population control and also saying that we don't like aberrant people in our society. We don't like the fringe people. And so any time 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 again, everybody's so scared of plague that they're immediately gonna react.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well you have no choice at that point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Because if you get the plague, you know you're gonna die. So yeah, why take the chance?
BEN KISSEL
Why take the chance indeed. Of course as we covered in the black plague, a lot of commerce was the reason for the spread.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in the best example of this rumor's consequences, and 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 said and done.
BEN KISSEL
Dang.
MARCUS PARKS
A quarter. But at the height of the panic, the governor of Milan received word from King Philip IV of Spain. King Philip said that four Frenchmen had escaped from prison and were spreading the plague with poisonous ointment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now I couldn't really figure out why he said this thing. I guess it was a way to try to catch the criminals.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These guys were released, no one really knows the nature of why, of who they were-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why 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.
BEN KISSEL
The Frenchmen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know who they double-crossed to experience this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Or what information they had about King Philip IV.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh, he did not like fromage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My real name is Stanley.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, he's out of here.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Little dab dab will do ya.
MARCUS PARKS
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 daub.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is really interesting.
BEN KISSEL
A mysterious what?
MARCUS PARKS
Daub.
BEN KISSEL
Daub?
MARCUS PARKS
Like you know like you get some Vaseline, you get like a big jar of petroleum jelly and you put two fingers into it.
BEN KISSEL
Always.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, always. See I always DeSantis it, I like to use three fingers.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you gotta get that with the pudding.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause you can get more mass.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He uses three fingers on the pudding?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I think it's a three or two finger.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a three finger, man. This is called the dolphin where you put three in the middle go in and then you've got two fins on the side.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you've got two fins in order to hold the pudding cup.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you wanna do that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So you're never without.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pudding at any chance, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Amazing the quick decline of that weird, weird man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So fast.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kissel! That is satire.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I'm on fire.
MARCUS PARKS
Now you're satirical and I enjoy your satire, sir.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
I enjoy your satirical take on things.
BEN KISSEL
The capitol steps are coming up next.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are broken up!
BEN KISSEL
I know, for political reasons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
That's sad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the mysterious daub was real.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this is interesting because this is truly just pranksters.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Somebody heard this rumor that these guys were showing up with plague.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they're doing it with cream, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they're doing it with cream.
BEN KISSEL
We would have done it.
MARCUS PARKS
They're just putting mysterious daubs on all the stores in the main street so everyone would be able to see them.
BEN KISSEL
Would it be a fun time to be a teenager during this era?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very much so. Cause you could fuck everybody.
BEN KISSEL
Right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No one has any clue what's real or what's not real unless they have a frock on and you have to believe them for some reason.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know, if you're a teenager in this era, you're an adult. You're a man.
BEN KISSEL
You're an adult?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you're an adult. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you've had children, you're a father.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you're not like driving around in your Chevy going beep beep, going on the drag, smoking cigarettes with your buddy Wes.
BEN KISSEL
No. They're not doing that?
MARCUS PARKS
No, you're doing none of that.
BEN KISSEL
No Taco Bell, huh?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're farming, you're sustenance farming.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What about the parking lot at Taco Bell?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, Taco Bell.
MARCUS PARKS
No parking lot, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the 1620s, it's like 20 years away.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause Taco Bell's only been around since like 1645.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
You're not going to the opposite side of the Sonic drive-in?
BEN KISSEL
Not having any fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Not the first side, the second side because that's where all the kids hang out.
BEN KISSEL
I actually don't know that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That was a Texas thing, I believe.
BEN KISSEL
Weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You wouldn't understand.
BEN KISSEL
I know that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a goop though.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it was a goop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The stuff they put on the walls was they said it was yellow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
But the mysterious daub was nothing poisonous. It sounds like tallow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Like fat.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
Or some daubable material.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But it was a prank. It was playing off the poison plague fears that had been steadily building.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Sometimes if you want to create a fake plague, a little daub will do you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
But instead of breaking the tension, the prank increased the fear.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
And soon no one was safe from accusation or assault. In one case, an old man just minding his own business while sitting on a bench, he was accosted by a mob after a daub of something was seen on the bench the old man was sitting on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's just my poop.
BEN KISSEL
Aw that's sad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I couldn't hold it anymore. I was thinking about the last plague! And now I'm sitting in my dook and everybody's saying I'm the bad guy.
BEN KISSEL
You're a bad guy now, you're a wizard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I need help!
BEN KISSEL
You do, you need to die.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish I could! I still live.
BEN KISSEL
You will.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everyday I wake up.
BEN KISSEL
You'll be dead soon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you!
BEN KISSEL
No problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the old man was beaten and dragged into a church.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is not how I wanted to die!
BEN KISSEL
Sorry. This is how it's gonna go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's my own poop! I'm just so...
BEN KISSEL
I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I'm lost!
BEN KISSEL
No, you're just where you want to be.
MARCUS PARKS
Then they dragged him to the magistrate and that's where he died.
BEN KISSEL
That's where he died.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Good, great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I always wanted to waste a lawyer's time.
BEN KISSEL
There you go. Aw.
MARCUS PARKS
Magistrate's a sheriff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I thought that they were like everything.
BEN KISSEL
I thought a magistrate was a judge. I think magistrate's a judge.
MARCUS PARKS
So Ben is once again right.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps the satirical mind is more clever than ours.
BEN KISSEL
Oh you don't think he has a satirical mind?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I have a hysterical mind.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he just spent two minutes screaming about poop.
BEN KISSEL
No, nothing satirical about that. What a genius. In a lab. Wow. All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, I know.
MARCUS PARKS
Well taking things even further, citizens then accused a barber surgeon named Gian Giacomo Mora of working with Satan to make poisonous potions.
BEN KISSEL
Ah jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
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 and the armpits of the infected.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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 daub 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.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It seems I have created more of a problem with my very helpful ointment.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is why now that you have received plague from being inside my establishment while trying to buy anti plague formula, I've actually made plague filled formula that should actually counteract the actual plague in society.
BEN KISSEL
I think we got ourselves a Robert F. Kennedy Jr voter.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
That would make sense.
MARCUS PARKS
They blamed Mora.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Saying that he was a minion of Satan who'd spread the plague through his salve.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I spread the plague through my incredible deals and the amazing content!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it just seems like everyday there's a different landmine you step in on accident back then.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. It has not changed.
BEN KISSEL
Nothing has changed.
MARCUS PARKS
And so Mora was arrested and brutally tortured for a month.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just thinking that this is an overcorrection.
BEN KISSEL
I think so too.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just made a helpful ointment.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well they're also looking for people to blame.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The plague is going very poorly, like 25% of the population is dead or dying. People need a bit of a distraction. People like something to blame, they like something to talk about.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They do.
MARCUS PARKS
And so yeah, it's not like it happens anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, we beat that. We beat that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, totally beat that. But while being stretched on the rack, right around the time that his sinews began popping-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I am sick of the ointment! I'll never make ointment again!
BEN KISSEL
Don't make it again.
MARCUS PARKS
Mora not only confessed but he began naming accomplices.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, buddy. You guys are fucked.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
If I'm stretched out, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I know.
MARCUS PARKS
These accomplices were then arrested and tortured until they named more accomplices.
BEN KISSEL
And so on, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And those people were arrested and tortured and named more accomplices and so on and so forth down the line.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not good.
MARCUS PARKS
And everyone, every single person who confessed after prolonged torture was executed.
BEN KISSEL
So they just... Yeah, that's the prisoner's dilemma.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is the fly in the ointment.
BEN KISSEL
Indeed it is. I wonder what's the average crank? You think you could get cranked like 5-6 times?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh no, for the rack?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, you're talking about maybe two minutes. 2-3 minutes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's it?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah cause your arms dislocate cause it's really slow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a very long-
BEN KISSEL
I don't think I've seen the rack at all the torture museums we've been to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We just did.
BEN KISSEL
Actually did I see one?
MARCUS PARKS
Think of it like a big gear and you're like tu-cunk. You just wanna do one tu-cunk.
BEN KISSEL
Just one and then that's enough.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Of course. I think the one that I would like the least is that one where you sit and then they put the weights on your legs.
MARCUS PARKS
That would be the Spanish donkey.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I don't like that Spanish donkey.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, you would not.
BEN KISSEL
No, no, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why you gotta build up to it. I've been working with this incredible Italian footstool.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm using it. I'm working up to it.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I started with what's called the Prairie Mound.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Giacomo Mora'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 destroyed all of his joints. And he eventually died from that. And then his body was dumped in the river and then they burned down his home and his business just because.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because at this point they were just like well we need to start all of this over.
BEN KISSEL
Right, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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 4000 dead bodies were in the streets just rotting.
BEN KISSEL
What a smell.
MARCUS PARKS
In the August Italian sun.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh mama.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez. Weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was fucked up because also I bet you getting executed is a lot nicer than dying of the fucking plague.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It might be.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean I guess it is a form of suicide to just break the tension.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just be like fuck it, yeah, it's me. Fucking chop my head off, let's go.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I think maybe just the iron maiden, just slam that door shut, poke me real fast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a low slow death.
MARCUS PARKS
The point of the iron maiden is that it's a very, very slow death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It sticks in like an inch.
BEN KISSEL
Cause it doesn't hit the vitals?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It sticks in just a little bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just bleed.
BEN KISSEL
Oh well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sounds like I just told you the picnic was postponed.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh well.
BEN KISSEL
That sucks, that's not good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess I'll have to get my hotdog someplace else.
MARCUS PARKS
Now if we stay in the realm of the devil for a moment, let's head over to the city of Lille in France, to an all girls boarding school in 1639.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Each one of these mass hysteria episodes sound pretty hot.
BEN KISSEL
It's an all girls boarding school. They're like 10.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sorry.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm imagining other, I'm talking about if it was cast.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he's talking about a-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
21 year olds.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he's talking about an all girls boarding school. Yes. 21-38.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's my goal, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
35 and up. It's my MILF boarding school. I gotta start an all MILFS boarding school.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh, a MILF boarding school is good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Miss Milf, you didn't get your homework in time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then she starts yelling at you and you debasing you and you kind of feel bad.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well there, a French mystic named Antoinette Bourignon 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, their sinful schoolgirl behavior.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was very similar to the devils of Loudun.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're at an old dumb boarding school.
BEN KISSEL
Well is it boring? It sounds like everyone's dying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a life of drudgery.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're like cleaning the floors and listening to fake science and math.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's all this shit. So yeah, of course we're going to turn into a bunch of little devil girls. It's so much more fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Be careful for the weirdos out there. We are the weirdos, sir.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, I see you dressed as Fairuza Balk in my mind.
BEN KISSEL
I'll fly at you.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
And had been so since the age of 7.
BEN KISSEL
And?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Truly the old school version of a nepo baby.
BEN KISSEL
Did they kill her?
MARCUS PARKS
No. Once it was announced to the class, 50 schoolgirls took it as a cue and spontaneously erupted into fits and convulsions. And all 50 confessed to being witches.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, that's a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And like the satanic panic of the 90s, the girls tried outdoing each other with stories of demonic dealings. They quickly escalated. Oh yeah, we ride broomsticks. Okay, fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
BEN KISSEL
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, we can go through keyholes. Oh wow, that could be interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah. We're attending demon meetings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow!
BEN KISSEL
Demon meetings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
Did you not bring the soda water? Did you not bring the chips?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, isn't it infernal how I lie?
BEN KISSEL
Oh goddamnit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was just joking, of course I brought the seltzer.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And then finally the feasting of baby flesh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yay!
BEN KISSEL
Oh my. Come on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they pop up. That's how it always goes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Always with the baby eating.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It always goes to baby eating. Constantly.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Constantly.
MARCUS PARKS
1639, the baby eating has been around for hundreds upon thousands of years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Forever.
BEN KISSEL
For a long time. And man, all I know is I'm hungry for some Comet Pizza.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love it. But honestly have you ever been to Bortie's?
BEN KISSEL
No. Is it good?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's an abortionist/bowls.
BEN KISSEL
Good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They just do bowls. And one of my favorite is they just put all slurry in there.
BEN KISSEL
That's good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's nice that at least it goes somewhere.
BEN KISSEL
That is nice. That is very appropriate.
MARCUS PARKS
And then you get some stem cells in the process.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
And you look two weeks younger.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look how young I look.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, wow. Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look how young I am.
MARCUS PARKS
That's incredible. That is incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Beating back the clock.
BEN KISSEL
Those edibles, they aged you fast.
MARCUS PARKS
Well incredibly, when the clergy and local authorities investigated these claims of witchcraft, riding brooms, eating babies-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They found the confessions of these children to be valid.
BEN KISSEL
Oh valid.
MARCUS PARKS
All 50 schoolgirls were sentenced to be burned at the stake.
BEN KISSEL
Now that is just a lot of work for me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'm the executioner, guys. Come on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also just how annoying would that be to get them all in there? Kids are already kind of loud, they're crazy. The idea of getting them all ready to burn around the stake and stuff.
BEN KISSEL
Do you do it once?
MARCUS PARKS
No, you spread it amongst like 10 days. 5 girls a day.
BEN KISSEL
5 girls a day. All but individual burnings.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, each one's gotta be-
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no. You do it in a line. You do it in a line.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. They don't even get to be special.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I wouldn't want to do it. I wouldn't want to go that way either.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly it's crazy about how there's always been too many kids in the classroom.
MARCUS PARKS
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 Bourignon who was locally known as a mentally unstable person.
BEN KISSEL
Okay great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, I'm your local crazy bitch.
BEN KISSEL
You gotta have one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's my whole thing.
BEN KISSEL
I love them.
MARCUS PARKS
The children were thereafter set free and the case was closed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Case closed. But then did they apologize?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no.
MARCUS PARKS
Why would they?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This was back in the day.
BEN KISSEL
They burned like 50 girls to death.
MARCUS PARKS
No, they didn't burn them
BEN KISSEL
Oh they didn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We don't even apologize now.
MARCUS PARKS
No, they didn't burn them.
BEN KISSEL
None of them.
MARCUS PARKS
They told authorities like hey, they got these crazy ideas-
BEN KISSEL
Before the burnings.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I just said the children were set free. I just said that.
BEN KISSEL
No, I know but not all of them.
MARCUS PARKS
I just said that.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. I wasn't sure if it was all of them or not all of them.
MARCUS PARKS
The children were thereafter set free.
BEN KISSEL
But there was 50 total, so technically 10 still could have died.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Guys. Guys, please. Please stop. This is mass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
This is mass hysteria.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's catching on.
MARCUS PARKS
But earlier we mentioned Spring-heeled Jack as an example of a mass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But Jack was not the only London creature to cause a fuss. 30 years before Jack in 1803, Londoners in the Hammersmith District were supposedly haunted by a glass-eyed horned ghost dressed in white.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A boo and whatnot. I'm not a nerd, I'm dead.
BEN KISSEL
Boo and whatnot.
MARCUS PARKS
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, got spooked too hard by the Hammersmith phantom.
BEN KISSEL
Dude, how many people do you think Ashton Kutcher could have killed if he would have kept on with that show Punk'd?
MARCUS PARKS
He almost killed Frankie Muniz that one time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh he did.
BEN KISSEL
That was funny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now Frankie Muniz can't remember nothing.
BEN KISSEL
That was funny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I actually have, this is a witness encounter of the Hammersmith ghost.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's from Thomas Groom. (British accent) "I was going through the churchyard between 8 and 9 o'clock with my jacket under my arm, my hands in my pockets, when 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 servant 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 feet and felt something soft, like a great coat."
BEN KISSEL
Weird. Okay, cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Well citizens armed themselves.
BEN KISSEL
What are you gonna do? It's a ghost!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
It's unclear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's very specific, this story is really interesting because people said that they saw a physical guy but dressed as a ghost.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he was touching people. So people were like well he's gotta be physical.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is very, very similar to remember the good old days of the clowns, the clown sightings in the UK and the gimp costume dude.
BEN KISSEL
That was like three years ago.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The gimp costume guy is still around.
MARCUS PARKS
That was about 8, 9 years ago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was 2016.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's the clown sightings. It's interesting cause they never really fully got to the point where people were shooting these clowns.
MARCUS PARKS
Not yet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But people were really freaked out.
BEN KISSEL
Well let's not shoot the clowns, let's not shoot them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You hit them with a pie.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, they're clowns.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With bullets in them.
BEN KISSEL
No. That also wouldn't work, it wouldn't do anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but then you show them and you're like hey, think about this next time, those bullets.
BEN KISSEL
You spray them with a seltzer water, you throw a pie on them and that's a clown's, that's how they feel shame.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just call CPS.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well citizens armed and patrolled the neighborhood to somehow apprehend or murder the ghost. 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of a bricklayer. And he was actually told by his family to not dress like this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're like listen, do not do this. They're looking for a guy dressed all in white right now.
BEN KISSEL
Weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he was just like (British accent) I'm a bricklayer! That's what I do. This is the uniform of a bricklayer!
BEN KISSEL
He probably didn't have that many different clothes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, probably not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I think that he was proud.
BEN KISSEL
You dress like a bricklayer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was proud.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause this is the first time. 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?
BEN KISSEL
That it was a ghost. yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then they don't know. It was settled way later on. Eventually they were like no, you murdered. And then they got out of jail later. But later on they were like no, just because you believe in ghosts doesn't mean you can like openly murder anybody with a sheet on their head unless they are obviously a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you can kill them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean you'll still get in trouble but...
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll all like you.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I won't tell on you.
MARCUS PARKS
Well 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a funny guy. Just a funny guy, got a guy murdered.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Murdered for a fucking a bit.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
MARCUS PARKS
Now while some mass hysteria 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-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Definitely young women's name.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
BEN KISSEL
It's the leprechaun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want me gold.
MARCUS PARKS
I thought it would be a big clown. I imagine it like Bozo the Clown.
BEN KISSEL
No, they don't wear... Buckles and clowns? I don't see buckles and clowns.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I see him as a munchkin.
MARCUS PARKS
You do?
BEN KISSEL
I can see a munchkin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But a big munchkin. A bunchkin!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I could see a bunchkin, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So you mean a man, a regular sized man-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dressed as a munchkin with a big mallet. Like a Hummel character.
BEN KISSEL
Sure, sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's got, in my head it's like a gnome-like hat, like a Terry the Gnome style hat.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's got like a beard and a fancy little shoes and tiny little pointed boots on. And he's got a big mallet.
BEN KISSEL
Right. I could see it.
MARCUS PARKS
I for some reason associate mallets with clowns.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's unique. I don't, I don't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I could see it. Honestly, I see that.
MARCUS PARKS
Do you see it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See I see people, like I think of clock people.
BEN KISSEL
Clock people. Yeah, I could see that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like wooden soldier guys.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, like the Keebler.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like Keebler elves.
MARCUS PARKS
Sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com. What do you associate mallets with? Clowns or clock people?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll see how that-
BEN KISSEL
Well you use the mallet to fix the clock.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very similar to the stories of Spring-heeled Jack. And you remember the butt slasher in Brooklyn?
BEN KISSEL
Yes, that was bad.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh we the butt slasher was very real.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But the slashing epidemics have happened before.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And continue to happen.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Halifax had been gripped and is 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.
BEN KISSEL
Really?
MARCUS PARKS
It was so big-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My schnoz saves me again.
MARCUS PARKS
It was so big that if you saw it, you would notice it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa!
MARCUS PARKS
That's the first thing you would say.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Big nose!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So in this case the big nose saved him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he slashed a bunch of other people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, that's not good.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. On account of the nose.
BEN KISSEL
I know, the nose knows.
MARCUS PARKS
Now within 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.
BEN KISSEL
I believe that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if it's truly Canadian, you know he sent that a letter at some point being like actually it's the Saint Kenosha River Slasher. If you really want to know how to name a guy-
BEN KISSEL
The exact district, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You need to know where the man lives.
BEN KISSEL
You don't wanna do it that way.
MARCUS PARKS
Halifax, England.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you fucking idiot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whatever, man.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, Canadians just got you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know, I'm sorry.
BEN KISSEL
You got got by Canadians.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got got.
MARCUS PARKS
Well vigilante groups began patrolling the streets, beating up anyone who wasn't known to the mob personally.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh cool.
BEN KISSEL
That sucks.
MARCUS PARKS
And one of the girls escalated the story by saying she had been attacked by a man wielding something called a dirty Macintosh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have to look up what that is.
MARCUS PARKS
No dude, I tried looking up what a dirty Macintosh is. I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't find it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's a dirty Macintosh?
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe if I asked ChatGPT.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No AI.
BEN KISSEL
Don't ask it. Don't ask it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dirty Mac is-
BEN KISSEL
It's a weapon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It says here that 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 it also says here-
BEN KISSEL
Does it really say that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is incredible.
MARCUS PARKS
That sounds like a bit of an improv. I don't think that's-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, this is a dirty mac. A dirty mac is a fool who's trying to get at the same female as yourself.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh, like Return of the Mack.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Like a Mac Daddy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I don't think that's what they were referencing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That guy's all that and a bag of chips.
BEN KISSEL
Of course. That would be a snack.
MARCUS PARKS
But by the end of the month, one of the victims, a one Percy Waddington-
BEN KISSEL
Ooh Percy.
MARCUS PARKS
Percy Waddington, he admitted that he'd actually inflicted the razor wound on himself.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what they say here also according to the other one, Dirty Mac Brigade is in England.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's dirty old men in a group.
MARCUS PARKS
Dirty old men in a group. But this woman said that she was attacked by a man wielding something that quote "felt like a dirty Macintosh."
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a fool that's trying to go after somebody else's woman.
BEN KISSEL
That's the only thing I could decide.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after Percy Waddington admitted that he'd slashed himself, 9 of the 12 victims admitted that they'd also slashed themselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez, you're wasting time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now you're just in this trap of everybody's getting attention out of this thing, it feels really crazy. And I wonder why. Again, why?
MARCUS PARKS
Well they're both creating and participating in the panic.
BEN KISSEL
Gotta have fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And perpetuating the panic which it actually kind of gives you something to do.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Boredom is really the underlying story here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the idea of jumping into... Because we all like group things.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But I don't know about boredom because it's 1938. This is the war years. Like Germany is bombing the UK.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually I think that you just spelled it out right there.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's what we've talked about, it's about stress.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, about stress.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe stress.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So if you're getting bombed and you're in this place, that is definitely a way to sort of express it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Cut yourself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's not about the war anymore.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're in this war, you've been experiencing it, and now it's something else, now it's butt slashing.
BEN KISSEL
It's about the bombs that don't explode. It's about he bombs you don't drop. That's what war is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what Hitler's jazz was all about. I'm just glad we're here on 4/20.
BEN KISSEL
Man, that guy really knew how to tweak. You see that video of him at the Olympics?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, him just rocking back and forth on meth?
BEN KISSEL
Tweaking, bro.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he was on speed.
MARCUS PARKS
Hard tweaking.
BEN KISSEL
But I didn't know it was that bad.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was a weird guy.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Real weird guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Real strange guy.
BEN KISSEL
Strange, yeah. It's his birthday today.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I know.
BEN KISSEL
It's 4/20.
MARCUS PARKS
Columbine as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep, I remember that.
BEN KISSEL
What a day. And weed, bro!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh my god.
BEN KISSEL
Two out of three.
MARCUS PARKS
Is it not the loss of innocence for America today?
BEN KISSEL
It could be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Columbine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it started July 4, 1776.
BEN KISSEL
Shut up. Shut it. No, no, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, think about it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I am.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Think about it.
BEN KISSEL
You haven't made sense once yet. Almost 2 hours of not making sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I am trapped inside of a prison in my own brain.
BEN KISSEL
Aw.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
That's scary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every one of these things happening at boarding schools and convents, every story of mass hysteria amongst little girls all feels like anime movies.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it really does.
BEN KISSEL
All I know is as a performer who does comedy, great crowd.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Working it.
BEN KISSEL
This crowd is great.
MARCUS PARKS
They're not smizing though. Like it's ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I don't care, I just want to hear it.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh you just want to hear the empty hollow laughter?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that's what I seek.
BEN KISSEL
Ha ha ha.
MARCUS PARKS
Ha ha ha.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just give me noises.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, okay.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
And thereafter throughout their communities.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This could only mean one thing, Fluffy has arrived in Africa.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa! Gabriel Iglesias. He's really famous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the Junji Ito-like epidemic spread to thousands of people all over the region and lasted for months.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ask Natalie.
MARCUS PARKS
In one case it was a year before someone stopped laughing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus Christ.
BEN KISSEL
What would you rather do? Nonstop laughing or nonstop hiccuping?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Laughing.
MARCUS PARKS
Hiccuping. Because then at least you could get stuff done, you could talk still. If you're laughing you can't talk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hiccuping makes me crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I do hate a hiccup.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hate a hiccup. I love to laugh. It's gonna say that in my obituary.
BEN KISSEL
But also in your mind you're in hell.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I am already though.
BEN KISSEL
Your face is like ha ha ha ha.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're just talking about generalized anxiety and OCD. See, I'm already there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you're here, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'm in a nightmare up top. It's fun out here.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At first I thought you meant of like the Ariel School phenomenon. That alien environment.
MARCUS PARKS
That's an alien environment.
BEN KISSEL
Would have been interesting. Maybe they just missed the queen. I doubt it.
MARCUS PARKS
The queen...?
BEN KISSEL
Of England.
MARCUS PARKS
This is 1963.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's just keep going.
BEN KISSEL
1963
MARCUS PARKS
But she had been in power by that point by like 9 years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is when she was like fuckable.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how long ago this was.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but I'm saying they no longer have control. So they miss the queen.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Okay, now I get you. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's exactly what I was about to say actually.
BEN KISSEL
Oh great.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Because I mean it's a transitional anxiety.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Like the country is finally set free from colonial bonds.
BEN KISSEL
I didn't even have to fucking write that down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
You really didn't.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a good idea. I mean you said it in a way that I didn't understand but I liked what you said.
BEN KISSEL
Well do it the way you wrote it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it works.
MARCUS PARKS
I think it works. All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it works.
MARCUS PARKS
The tribal trust has spoken, I acquiesce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Have you heard that there's that new school supply sale coming up, it's class hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Why not?
BEN KISSEL
Why not?
MARCUS PARKS
Well perhaps the most well-known epidemic in modern times however is the Japanese Pokemon panic of 1997.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is freaky too.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa, what is this?
MARCUS PARKS
Have you heard of this?
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
You don't know about this?
BEN KISSEL
No!
MARCUS PARKS
Have you heard about this?
BEN KISSEL
I haven't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Have you heard about this?
BEN KISSEL
I didn't even realize Pokemon was out in '97.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I guess it's been around for a long time.
MARCUS PARKS
It was on it's 38th episode.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No shit? Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that year, over 12,000 children exhibited physical symptoms ranging from nausea to seizures after watching an episode of Pokemon called Computer Warrior Porygon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now at first the sickness that eventually came to be known as Pokemon shock-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's normally when you have one of those little balls up in your vagina for too long.
BEN KISSEL
In your vagina, yes, yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I didn't even write that down. I didn't come up with anything.
BEN KISSEL
Didn't write that down at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wasn't prepared.
BEN KISSEL
You didn't write that down at all.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because that's what I thought at first, I thought this really was just a response to the lights. But it was more complicated than that.
MARCUS PARKS
Well 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, paka paka.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow. And so you feel like people should have been used to it at this point.
MARCUS PARKS
Or 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
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 re-aired the segment in its entirety during the newscast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You mean this segment?
BEN KISSEL
That's really smart.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I mean it really could be. But anyway, as a result a further 12,000 kids were afflicted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they just did it again.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But I mean I actually just thought about this, maybe it could be... I mean Pokemon was an incredibly popular show from the beginning.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It could be that when it was used in other episodes-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not as many people saw it.
MARCUS PARKS
It didn't have as big of an audience.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who knows?
MARCUS PARKS
And people didn't pay attention, people didn't put together the dots, they didn't connect the dots.
BEN KISSEL
The dark world of Pokemon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also is there something to the order of the lights and the colors of it that maybe could affect the human brain?
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know you.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
You're saying yes?
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll take your word for it.
BEN KISSEL
Probably.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the expert that I know to my left.
BEN KISSEL
Probably, why not?
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
To this day, no one is really sure what happened.
BEN KISSEL
That's so weird.
MARCUS PARKS
And to make sure, the episode has never been re-aired.
BEN KISSEL
Really?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Not in Japan.
BEN KISSEL
We gotta see this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna show it on the stream.
MARCUS PARKS
Not in Japan at least.
BEN KISSEL
I wanna see it.
MARCUS PARKS
You can find it but it's never been re-aired on TV in Japan.
BEN KISSEL
97, wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now scientists who have studied the causes of mass sociogenic illness have had largely inconclusive findings.
BEN KISSEL
Good, great.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
I love the Mueller Report of Pokemon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. And I love our experts, right, all of our experts.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Their big old brains and their large books.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Does anyone wear It's Mueller Time shirts anymore?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, that fashion has passed.
MARCUS PARKS
Now I remember that. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's Mueller Time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, It's Mueller Time.
MARCUS PARKS
Mueller time.
BEN KISSEL
I love that German inquisitor.
MARCUS PARKS
Was it Moo-ler?
BEN KISSEL
It's fucking Mew-ler.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mew-ler.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
It's Mew-ler.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mew-ler. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the concept of you're dealing with an issue that is widespread and immediate and then 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 work for the government, and they just kind of want to button up whatever situations going on real fast. They want just to have it be done.
BEN KISSEL
They just want to go on spring break.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. They just want to it up, yeah. And so they look at you and as soon as it's mysterious, they're like-
BEN KISSEL
It's like working for the weekend is great in theory unless you're in charge of our nukes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Can you like work for Tuesday?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately I know it's a Sunday but you're in charge of the Department of Transportation, Mr. Buttigieg.
BEN KISSEL
You got him! Speaking of Pokemon. He's a little-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He likes to fuck a butt.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow, wow.
BEN KISSEL
I was going with a size joke but then you came in and wow!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He likes to poke the butt.
BEN KISSEL
Totally redeemed yourself.
MARCUS PARKS
Gay joke, good job.
BEN KISSEL
This whole episode, complete C work. And then boom, and A+, bringing you to a B.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all I need.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(screaming)
MARCUS PARKS
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 nuh uh, not me!
BEN KISSEL
You got that person you made up in your mind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how you win an argument at all times. I invent the other side then I go well fuck you and your mother. And it's done. I'm brilliant.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You know buddy, we right now need to be stabilizing figures.
MARCUS PARKS
Nah!
BEN KISSEL
I'm not sure if I'm loving the diatribe to wrap it up.
MARCUS PARKS
Bro, we can change how we perceive reality dangerously fast.
BEN KISSEL
Why don't we just perceive it like it is now?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what you need is some tincture.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Then you'll be back in.
BEN KISSEL
I just don't know if we need to be like it's all wiggly woggly! Can't we just be like yo, but some things are set in stone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no. What I'm trying to say is that you actually gotta hold on to yourself harder.
BEN KISSEL
Good.
MARCUS PARKS
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 stormed 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.
BEN KISSEL
Little did they know that entire thing is gonna be purged from the history books.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean they just wandered around filming themselves.
BEN KISSEL
They loved it.
MARCUS PARKS
Like the spell, you saw the spell being broken. They don't know what to do once they get there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they got here and it's like what they say. I mean it's the Joker if he got a hold of the car, would even know what to do with it?
BEN KISSEL
Well he'd steal the car, take it, drive it around. It's more of a dog scenario I think.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they attribute it to the Joker in the film.
BEN KISSEL
Did they? This new one's gonna be interesting. Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So close.
BEN KISSEL
So close.
MARCUS PARKS
But that is to say when anxiety is 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Little Dan Carlin right at the end.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, little Dan Carlin. Mass hysteria!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like the wrap up.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you. In the crosshairs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Again, I'm 50/50 on it.
MARCUS PARKS
On mass hysteria?
BEN KISSEL
On the conclusion.
MARCUS PARKS
ON the conclusion?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
All right.
BEN KISSEL
Crosshairs, everyone's getting shot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I mean a lot of mass hysterias do end in murders.
BEN KISSEL
Less violence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sometimes when you catch yourself simping hard for some woman, you found yourself deep in the middle of lass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
There you go. Thank you all so much for listening! I hope you enjoyed this episode.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hope that you did.
MARCUS PARKS
And if you're a particularly big fan of UK punk, you might find yourself in crass hysteria.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes!
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kissel?
BEN KISSEL
Well I'll tell you one thing, when I think about hysteria, I always think about... Well I actually, ass hysteria.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm good today.
BEN KISSEL
You're good today.
MARCUS PARKS
And if you're a particularly big fan of ska music, you might find yourself in brass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Yeah, that's good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting. Very good. Ass.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pass. Bass.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, anything that rhymes with it there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Grass.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I'm experiencing today is grass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, there you go.
MARCUS PARKS
And if you're a skeptic of UFOs, you might find yourself in Philip J Klass hysteria.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, thank you so much for listening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He got out of it!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Oh I'm out. Oh I'm done. I am done. Do we have anything to say?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
About what?
BEN KISSEL
To wrap it up?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, not anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
Fucking enjoy your time, ladies and gentlemen.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We do have a lot of things coming up that we're not ready to announce.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But if you got to Z2 Comics you can purchase Last Comic Book on the Left Volume III.
MARCUS PARKS
You can preorder it.
BEN KISSEL
Preorder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Preorder. But we're gonna make sure that they come out on time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they will.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just like Mussolini. We're gonna make sure that those comics come out and we can't wait for you guys to see what we're working on now.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Guaranteeing it. Actually, guaranteeing it.
BEN KISSEL
That's a good idea.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's not gonna help us.
MARCUS PARKS
Guarantee!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Guarantee!
BEN KISSEL
Guarantee.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And also today, it's already passed but Spring-Heel'd Jack coffee was doing a 4/20 special, if you buy any sort of coffee. It's too late cause they were gonna give it to Last Prisoner Project. But they're gonna start selling shirts of the design that they just did which is fucking awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Great design.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Spring-Heel'd Jack. And then a chunk of that money is gonna go to Last Prisoner Project.
BEN KISSEL
Hell yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And next week what's gonna be fun is that we're actually gonna be going on a bit of a spring break. We're giving everyone the week off including ourselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I mean I'll be worrying.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, worrying, of course. It's not a break from worrying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'll spin around a bunch probably.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, we'll do this kind of stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
But we're gonna do a little best of and then we're gonna be back the next week with some blood.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna have some big drippy, drippy blood and then I think we're jumping into some historical periods.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Oh yeah, we're gonna be jumping into something particularly big.
BEN KISSEL
Speaking of drippy blood, when does the tampon come out? We'll cover that. All right everyone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. History of the tampon. You know what, every woman listener can't wait to hear our perspective on the nature of the tampon.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. I'm a fan of free bleeding. Why not? Let me know where you've been.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Speaking of free bleeding, come to see Wizard and the Bruiser and Page 7 live with the Release The Butthole Cut tour. Let me give you a rundown of these.
BEN KISSEL
Will they ever release the butthole cut of Cats?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, because then they'd have to stop the show.
BEN KISSEL
They really should.
MARCUS PARKS
You think so?
BEN KISSEL
I wanna know what the butthole looks like on these cats.
MARCUS PARKS
You can just go find a cat and take a look at a butthole.
BEN KISSEL
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.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What I would just say to everybody is leave the cat alone.
BEN KISSEL
Leave the cat alone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
May 9th, 2023 Salt Lake City. May 10th, Greenwood Village, Colorado. May 11th, Las Vegas baby. June 21st, Portland. June 22nd, Tacoma, Washington. July 11th, Oklahoma City, OK. And July 12th, Kansas City, Missouri. Go and check it out.
BEN KISSEL
Oh they're gonna love that barbecue. Yes, also May 7th, that's right, I'll be doing, in Brea, I'll be doing Hail Yourself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, Brea Improv, which is great.
BEN KISSEL
Come out for that. All right everyone, hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein!
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Would you give yourself, hail yourself of course.
BEN KISSEL
Hail yourself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if you're done with that, hail me.
BEN KISSEL
There you go. Don't go crazy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good.
MARCUS PARKS
Try. Try not. Try not to.