I want to take you back to a very specific place
in time. It's, let's say, the late 19th century.
We're in rural France. Okay, I'm with you. I
want you to really picture this. A convent. And
it's isolated. It's austere. Right. You've got
these high stone walls. Cold floors and a community
of nuns who live their entire lives in, you know,
strict silence and absolute devotion. It's a
pressure cooker. It is a total pressure cooker
of repression. I can just imagine it. The quiet
must have been deafening. It was until, well,
until a Tuesday. We don't know exactly why it
started, but on a Tuesday, one of the nuns began
to make a sound. Okay. And she didn't speak.
She didn't pray. She started meowing. Meowing,
yes. Like a cat. Full -throated, visceral cat
sound. Just, mew. And she didn't just do it once.
She kept doing it. Wow. Now, in a normal setting,
you'd think, okay, Sister Marie's having a breakdown.
You'd take her to the infirmary. But that's not
what happened here. This is the famous meowing
nun's case, isn't it? It is. And the really terrifying
part is the spread. within a week it wasn't just
sister marie another nun started meowing oh no
and two more then ten and eventually you had
this surreal almost nightmarish reality where
every afternoon at a specific time the entire
convent we're talking dozens of women would gather
together and meow like a Like a clowder of cats
for hours on end. Just imagine the sound of that
echoing off those stone walls. That's horrifying.
It was so loud and so disturbing that the surrounding
village began to panic. They were convinced the
nuns were possessed. They thought it was the
devil. Which was a very common explanation for
things at the time. The default explanation,
really. And do you know how it finally ended?
It wasn't through prayer, was it? No. The local
government had to call in a company of soldiers.
They marched up to the convent gates, lined up
with rods and whips and told the nuns very clearly,
if you do not stop meowing right now, we are
coming in there and we are going to beat you
until you stop. Silence. Just like that? Instant
silence. The meowing stopped effectively immediately.
And that right there, that tells us everything
we need to know about the nature of the problem,
doesn't it? How so? Well, you can't beat a virus
out of someone. You can't threaten a bacteria
with a rod. Exactly. If they all had the flu,
the threat of violence wouldn't stop the fever,
would it? But this stopped. That story, it just
perfectly captures the absolute strangeness of
what we're diving into today. Because when you
hear meowing nuns, it sounds like a joke. It
sounds like a Monty Python sketch. But it was
not a joke. No. For those women, the compulsion
was real. The distress was real. And this is
just one example of a phenomenon that has, well,
it's shadowed humanity for as long as we've been
social creatures. Today, we are talking about
mass psychogenic illness. Or as it was historically
known, mass hysteria. Right. And we should probably
put a pin in that word, hysteria. Yes, we're
going to be careful with that word today for
reasons we'll definitely get into. But the mission
of this deep dive is to really look at these
plagues of the mind. We're trying to understand
how a group of people, rational, normal people,
can suddenly develop rashes, seizures, fainting
spells, or even hallucinations with absolutely
no biological cause. And we've got a massive
stack of research here to get through. We've
pulled papers from the British Journal of Psychiatry.
reports from the Tennessee Department of Health,
historical chronicles from the Middle Ages, and
even case studies on Pokemon. Oh, yes. Pokemon
plays a surprisingly huge role in the modern
understanding of all this. So if you're listening
to this and thinking, oh, I'm too smart for that,
I wouldn't start meowing just because my neighbor
did, maybe don't be so sure. That's the scary
part, isn't it? The research suggests that under
the right conditions, the right stress, the right
environment, our human hardware is just. It's
wired to malfunction in sync. Let's start by
grounding this then, because mass psychogenic
illness, or MPI, that sounds very clinical, very
formal. But in the media, this is almost always
treated as a mystery. You see the headlines,
mystery illness strikes high school, or diplomats
sick with unknown syndrome. It sells papers.
Mystery is much scarier, much more compelling
than the truth. And it's all in their heads is
a really unsatisfying answer for a lot of people.
It sounds dismissive. It does. But scientifically,
do we have a concrete definition of what this
is? Or is it just a kind of... bucket where doctors
throw things they can't figure out. But we don't
know folder. Exactly. No, we do have a definition.
It's not just a guess. If we look at the clinical
literature, especially the definitions used by
researchers like Simon Wesley, MPI is defined
as a nervous system disturbance. Okay, bring
that down for me. Nervous system disturbance.
So it involves the excitation, loss, or alteration
of function. That's the two phrase. Excitation,
loss, or alteration. Right. So that means your
body is either doing something it shouldn't be,
like twitching or shaking, that's excitation,
or it stops doing something it should, like being
able to walk or speak. That's a loss of function.
Okay. But I can have a nervous system disturbance
if I drink too much coffee. My hands might shake.
True. But the second part of the definition is
the real clincher. It describes the rapid spread
of signs and symptoms affecting members of a
cohesive group. Cohesive group. That phrase seems
to be the operative term in every single case
study I read. It's absolutely crucial. You almost
never see MPI start among, say, strangers on
a subway train who aren't talking to each other.
Right. It thrives in places where social bonds
are tight. Schools, factories, convents. Military
units. Military units, exactly. Places where
people are constantly observing each other, mirroring
each other, and sharing the exact same stressors
day in and day out. And then there's the third
part of the definition, which I think is the
absolute hardest for the general public to accept.
It's that the symptoms are exhibited unconsciously.
Yes. And if we get nothing else across today,
this has to be it. We have to make this crystal
clear. These people are not faking it. Okay,
but let me play devil's advocate for a second.
If I'm a teenager and I have a big math test
I didn't study for and I see my friend fainting,
maybe I just decide fainting sounds like a good
idea too. Get out of the test. And that definitely
happens. That's called malingering. But that
is a conscious decision to deceive for some kind
of gain. Okay. MPI is different. In an MPI case,
the person genuinely believes they are sick,
they feel the nausea, their blood pressure might
actually drop. If you hook them up to an EEG
or an EKG, you would see their physiology reacting
to a threat. The threat is just internal, not
external. So it's the difference between pretending
to be asleep and actually being in a coma. That's
a perfect analogy. And the symptoms can be incredibly
graphic and varied. I want to pull up the data
from Timothy F. Jones. He was with the Tennessee
Department of Health, and he did this really
comprehensive review of outbreaks between 1980
and 1990. This is the study that looked at thousands
of cases to try and find the common threads,
right? Exactly. And when you look at the symptom
profile that emerged, it's just fascinating.
What do you think was the number one symptom?
Fainting? Good guess, but no, it was headache.
67 % of cases reported a headache. Which, okay,
that makes sense. Stress causes tension headaches.
That's a very direct biological link. Absolutely.
But then look further down the list. Dizziness
or lightheadedness in 46%. Nausea, 41%. Abdominal
cramps in 39%. Now, what do those sound like
to you? Fight or flight. Classic fight or flight
responses. If a lion walks into this room right
now, your body dumps adrenaline. Your digestion
stops, which causes cramps, and all the blood
rushes to your major muscle groups, which can
make you feel dizzy. Your body is preparing for
a threat that isn't actually there. But then
you get the weird ones, the outliers on the list.
The chattering of teeth. Yes. That one stood
out to me. It was from the Blackburn School outbreak
in England. An entire group of kids whose teeth
were just chattering uncontrollably. Or the hyperventilation.
Or the rashes. Okay, wait. The rashes are where
I get stuck. I can understand feeling faint from
stress. I can understand a headache. But how
does your mind, your psychology, create a physical
rash on your skin? That feels like a biological
impossibility. It sounds like it, but it's not.
It's called a psychogenic dermatosis. The mind
-body connection is powerful enough that extreme
stress can trigger the release of histamines
in your body. The same stuff that causes allergic
reactions. Exactly. You can literally worry yourself
into getting hives. That is... deeply uncomfortable
to think about. It really shows that the boundary
we draw between mental and physical is much,
much blurrier than we like to think. So we know
the symptoms, but not all outbreaks look the
same. In the notes, you highlighted this important
distinction made by the British psychiatrist
Simon Wesley. He splits mass hysteria into two
distinct categories. Yes, and this is a vital
distinction because it helps us understand the
dynamics of an outbreak and maybe even predict
how it will end. Wesley categorized them into
mass anxiety, hysteria, and mass motor hysteria.
Let's tackle mass anxiety hysteria first. This
is the gas leak scenario, right? That's the classic
example, yes. Mass anxiety hysteria burns hot
and it burns fast. It's usually acute, very sudden
onset, and it's almost always triggered by some
kind of sensory perception. Like a smell. Someone
smells a weird smell. Someone sees a glittery
dust in the air. Someone hears a rumor that the
water is poisoned. And then boom, panic. Immediate
panic. And the vector transmission, the way it
actually spreads, is visual. You see someone
collapse, your own anxiety spikes through the
roof, and suddenly you feel faint too. It ripples
through a crowd like a wave at a stadium. And
who does this affect primarily? overwhelmingly
school children it is very very common in schools
but the good news if you can call it that is
that it has a short duration usually once the
kids are separated sent home and calmed down
by their parents it just it dissipates within
a day okay so that's type one but the meowing
nuns that didn't last a day that went on for
weeks correct the meowing nuns were suffering
from mass motor hysteria motor as in movement
Exactly. This type involves abnormalities in
motor behavior. So twitching, shaking, dancing,
vocal tics like meowing. And the trigger is different
here. It's not a sudden scare. Completely different.
Mass anxiety hysteria is triggered by a sudden
acute scare. Mass motor hysteria is triggered
by prior tension. Long -term crushing inescapable
stress. Like living in a strict convent where
you can't speak for years. That's a perfect example.
Or working in a dangerous low -paying factory
for 12 hours a day. Or living under a repressive
political regime. The stress builds up over months
or even years until the nervous system just...
It snaps, and it finds a release valve in these
strange involuntary movements. And because the
stress is chronic, the illness becomes chronic.
That's it. These outbreaks spread gradually.
It takes time to move from person to person,
and they can last for weeks or even months. It's
a slow -motion disaster. Speaking of slow -motion
disasters, we have to go back to the Middle Ages.
Because if you think meowing nuns are weird,
the dancing manias of Europe are on a whole other
level entirely. The dancing plagues, St. John's
dance, Tarentism. This is the mass motor hysteria
model pushed to its absolute horrifying extreme.
Paint the picture for us. This happened between
the 13th and 17th centuries all across Europe.
Imagine a village square in medieval Germany
or Italy. Suddenly, a group of people starts
dancing. But it's not joyful dancing. This isn't
a festival. The accounts describe it as... Manic,
uncontrollable. It was compulsive. People were
screaming. Some accounts say they were foaming
at the mouth. They would make obscene gestures.
They'd rip their clothes off and they just would
not stop. For how long? They would dance for
days, sometimes weeks, ignoring hunger, ignoring
thirst, ignoring their own bleeding feet, until
they literally dropped dead from exhaustion,
dehydration, or heart failure. That is absolutely
terrifying. And it wasn't just 10, 20 people.
No, no. In some of the larger cases, like the
outbreak in Aachen in 1374, it involved thousands
of people. The mania spread from town to town
like a real plague. Now, at the time, they didn't
have the term psychogenic illness. What was their
explanation for what was happening? Well, the
church's go -to explanation was, of course, demons.
Possession. Obviously. Right. But in Italy, specifically
for the phenomenon called Tarantism, the folklore
was that everyone had been bitten by a tarantula
spider. A spider bite? Cause them to dance? The
belief was that the venom was deadly and would
kill you unless you danced it out. The frantic
non -stop movement was seen as the only cure,
so if you felt even a little bit sick or if you
just feared you had been bitten, you would start
dancing to save your own life. And seeing everyone
else dancing just reinforces the belief that
the spiders must be everywhere. It's a perfect
feedback loop of terror. But when we look back
with a modern lens, we see the context. These
outbreaks almost always followed periods of extreme,
unimaginable misery. The Black Death had just
swept through. There were famines, floods. And
prior tension. The ultimate prior tension. You
had a population that was deeply traumatized,
starving, and terrified of hellfire. The dancing
mania was, in a way, a mass dissociation. It
was a way for the collective mind to just check
out of a reality that was too painful to endure.
It's fascinating that in the Middle Ages, the
script for the illness was dancing. In the convent,
it was meowing. It really seems like the culture
dictates the specific symptoms. That is such
a profound point. It's called the symptom pool.
Every culture, every era has a sort of subconscious
list of acceptable ways to go crazy or express
extreme distress. So in the Middle Ages, the
script was possession or dancing mania. Exactly.
But then as we moved into the 20th century, as
we became more industrial and scientific, the
script changed. Let's move to that industrial
era then. We leave the villages and enter the
factories. But the dynamic, as you said, remains
the same. The environment changes, but the human
brain stays the same. There's a fascinating series
of outbreaks that were documented in Singapore
between 1973 and 1978. This is covered in those
papers by W .H. Foon from the Ministry of Labor.
Yeah, it's the one. Singapore was going through
this period of rapid industrialization. You had
thousands of young women, mostly from rural Malay
communities, moving into these high -pressure,
loud, regimented electronics factories. A massive
culture shock for them. Huge. And the outbreaks
really reflected that clash. The symptoms were
things like hysterical seizures, screaming, and
sometimes violence. But the explanation given
by the workers themselves wasn't, I'm stressed.
It was spirits. They claimed to be possessed
by djinn, or ghosts, from the land the factory
was built on. Yes. They would point to a specific
corner of the factory and scream that they saw
a black figure or a spirit. And then they would
collapse into a trance. And the management's
response to this is a master class in what not
to do. It really is. I mean, logic would dictate
you try to calm everyone down, you get the person
medical attention. But the factory managers,
maybe trying to be culturally respectful or maybe
just desperate to get production back up, they
called in bomos. Medicine men. They brought in
medicine men to perform ritual exorcisms right
there on the factory floor. They sacrificed goots
in the parking lot. They sprinkled holy water
on the assembly lines. Which, it sounds like
it should help. If the workers believe in spirits,
shouldn't an exorcism be the perfect - placebo
to cure them? You would think so. It's a logical
assumption. But in many of these cases, it backfired
spectacularly. Why? Because by bringing in the
bomo to fight the spirit, management was officially
confirming, yes, there is a spirit. The threat
is real. They validated the delusion. They took
a psychological problem and gave it a supernatural
stamp of approval. It just ramped up the fear.
Workers would think, oh, my God, even the boss
thinks there's a ghost here. The outbreaks often
got worse or reoccurred almost immediately after.
That is a critical lesson for any kind of crisis
management. Sometimes. Validation can be dangerous.
It is. And that leads us perfectly into one of
the most studied cases in American history, a
case where the validation didn't come from a
medicine man, but from the media and the medical
establishment itself. You're talking about the
June bug. I am. The June bug epidemic of 1962.
This is the textbook case. If you study sociology
or public health, you study this. So let's set
the scene for the June bug, because the details
here are so important to understand how strain
works. It's June of 1962. Where are we? We are
in a dressmaking factory in the southern United
States. And what's the environment like in there?
It's intense. It's the peak season. So the production
quota is through the roof. The managers are pushing
everyone for overtime. It's physically hot. This
is before universal air conditioning. The noise
of the sewing machines is constant. It is a loud,
sweaty, high pressure environment. And crucially,
the workforce is socially very tight knit. Yes,
it's mostly women, many of whom know each other
from their communities, their churches. They're
not strangers. So the fuse is lit. The environment
is primed. What was the spark? A rumor. A very
simple rumor began circulating that a shipment
of fabric that had just arrived from England
contained a strange biting insect. The June bug.
Right. And soon, a few women started reporting
bites. But it wasn't just, ouch, something bit
me. The symptoms escalated quickly and dramatically.
We are talking about severe nausea, numbness,
and gross skin breakouts. Actual rashes appearing
on their bodies. There's that rash again. It's
such a problem for skeptics because if I see
a physical rash on your arm, my first assumption
is that something touched you. It's very, very
convincing. Within a few days, 62 workers, almost
all of them women, came down with this illness.
The factory had to be shut down. Production ground
to a halt. So they call in the cavalry. They
did. They brought in entomologists, bug experts
from the Communicable Disease Center, what we
now call the CDC. They brought in public health
officials. They brought in exterminators. They
tore that factory apart looking for this bug.
And what did they find? Absolutely nothing. Nothing.
Not a single unusual bug. Well, they found a
few normal house flies, a couple of gnats, but
absolutely nothing that could bite or cause a
rash like the ones being reported. No strange
chemicals in the fabric either. The factory was,
for all intents and purposes, clean. So if there
was no bug, why did 62 people get sick? And more
specifically, why those 62 people and not others?
This is where the sociological analysis by the
researchers Kirchhoff and Back is just brilliant.
They didn't just look for bugs. They looked at
the people. They analyzed the social structure
of the factory. And they found a pattern. A very
clear one. First, they looked at what they called
strain. The people who got sick were disproportionately
those who were working the most overtime. The
most exhausted. Exactly. They were also more
likely to be the main breadwinners for their
families, meaning they had the most financial
pressure. They were physically and mentally worn
down. So their immune systems, or at least their
nervous systems, were already on the edge. Precisely.
But here is the second crucial factor. Social
contagion. The illness didn't spread randomly
across the factory floor. It didn't jump from
table one to table two to table three. It jumped
from friend to friend. So if my best friend at
work got sick, I was statistically more likely
to get sick next, even if I sat all the way across
the room from her. Yes. It traveled along the
lines of social influence and friendship. And
here's the kicker. The isolates. The workers,
who didn't really have many friends, who kept
to themselves, were almost completely immune.
If you were a loner, you didn't get the June
bug. That is incredible. It's a disease that
literally requires friendship to transmit. And
then the third factor, the amplifier, the media.
The local papers. The local newspapers ran these
huge front page stories about the mystery bug
plaguing factory. They validated the threat.
Once the workers saw it in print, the bug became
a fact. It wasn't just a rumor anymore. And that's
when the cases really peaked. So the lesson from
the June bug is that stress loads the gun, social
ties aim it, and the media pulls the trigger.
Perfect summary. And if you want to talk about
media pulling the trigger, we absolutely have
to fast forward to 1997. We have to talk about
Pokemon. The Pokemon shock. This is like the
holy grail of mass illness cases because it combines
real biology and psychology in such a unique
and measurable way. It really bridges the gap
between the two. So for listeners who might not
know the story, it's December 16th, 1997. We're
in Japan. It's 6 .30 p .m. Millions of kids are
sitting in front of their TVs. It was the highest
rated television show in its time slot. A huge
hit. And they're all watching an episode of Pokemon
called Electric Soldier Porygon. An episode which,
by the way, has never been re -aired anywhere
in the world. For a very good reason. Right.
So about 20 minutes into the episode, the hero,
Pikachu, uses an electric attack to blow up some
incoming missiles. And to show this massive explosion,
the animators decided to use a very specific
visual technique. It's called Paka Paka in the
industry. It involves rapidly alternating red
and blue strobe lights that fill the entire screen.
And it wasn't just a brief flicker. No. It flashed
at a rate of 12 hertz. That's 12 flashes every
second for about six full seconds. Wow. That
sounds intense even if you don't have epilepsy.
It is. And the immediate result was catastrophic.
Japan's Fire Defense Agency reported that night
that nearly 700 children were rushed to hospitals.
700 kids? Yes. They had blurred vision, nausea,
and in the more severe cases, actual convulsions
and loss of consciousness. Okay, I want to pause
here and challenge you on this. You said earlier
that MPI has no organic cause, but strobe lights
do cause seizures. That's a known medical fact.
So how is this MPI? You are 100 % right. That
first wave, those initial 600 to 700 kids who
got sick that night, that was not MPI. That was
genuine photosensitive epilepsy. The strobe light
directly attacked their neurology. It was a purely
biological event. OK, so where does the psychology
come in? It comes in the next day. The aftermath.
Exactly. The next morning, this was the biggest
news story in Japan. Pokemon attacks kids. It
was on every news channel. And this is almost
unbelievable. Some of the news reports actually
rebroadcast the clip of the explosion during
the report. You're kidding me. Here is the dangerous
clip that is putting hundreds of kids in the
hospital. Let's show it to you again. It happened.
But even for the millions of kids who didn't
see the clip again, the story just took over
the schools. Every kid went to school the next
day talking about the Pokemon shock. They were
anxious. They were terrified. And then the numbers
exploded. They exploded. Suddenly, thousands
more children started reporting symptoms. In
total, over 12 ,000 children in Japan reported
feeling sick after the episode. So we went from
about 700 real biological seizures to over 12
,000 sick kids. Exactly. Researchers like Radford
and Bartholomew analyzed this incredible event.
They looked at the symptoms of that second massive
wave of kids. And guess what? They look different
from the first wave. How so? The first wave had
classic epilepsy symptoms. Stiffness, drooling,
eye rolling, convulsions. The second wave, headaches.
Dizziness. Nausea. The MPI checklist. Precisely.
It was a classic case of mass psychogenic illness
that was triggered by a real medical event. The
initial seizures provided the scare, and then
the media coverage and the school environment
provided the spread. It's fascinating how the
school environment just keeps coming up. It seems
to be the perfect incubator for this kind of
thing. We saw with Pokemon, but our outline is
just full of school -based outbreaks. Why are
schools such a hotspot? Well, just think about
the architecture of a school, both physically
and socially. You have high -stress environment
exams, discipline, academic pressure, social
pressure. Right. You have a highly cohesive social
group peers who are constantly watching each
other, mimicking each other, trying to fit in.
And you have adolescents. Hormones. Hormones,
developing nervous systems, and this desperate,
all -consuming need to fit in. It is the perfect
storm for social contagion. famous, and frankly,
one of the most bizarre school cases is the Tanganyika
laughter epidemic of 1962. This one is so often
misunderstood. People hear laughter epidemic
and they think it sounds fun. Like that scene
in Mary Poppins where they float up to the ceiling.
But it wasn't fun at all. No, it was deeply distressing.
It started in a small village school in what
is now Tanzania. Three girls started laughing,
but it wasn't a chuckle. It was described as
hysterical, tearful, breathless laughter. They
couldn't control it. They couldn't stop. And
it spread like wildfire. It did. From those three
girls, it spread to 95 students in that school.
The school had to be shut down. But when the
kids went home, they spread it to their villages.
Eventually, it affected over 1 ,000 people. It
forced 14 different schools to close down. And
it lasted for months. Months of uncontrollable
laughter. Why there? Why then? Context is everything.
Tanganyika, as it was called, had just gained
independence from Britain in 1961. There was
this massive cultural shift happening. And these
children were being pushed into a new, rigid,
Western -style educational system that was very
strict and completely alien to their traditional
upbringing. So you have this huge clash of values
creating an enormous internal tension. Exactly.
The laughter was a release valve. It was a way
for their bodies to rebel against the strictness
and the pressure, but in a way that wasn't direct
disobedience. They weren't yelling at the teacher.
They were just laughing. It's so interesting
you mentioned that clash between a traditional
upbringing and new pressures. Yeah. Because that
seems to be a recurring theme in these global
outbreaks. We see this again and again in Malaysia,
specifically in the state of Kelantan. Yes, Kelantan
is a very religiously conservative area of Malaysia.
And for decades, they've had these recurrent
outbreaks in all girls' schools. What does it
look like there? What are the symptoms? It's
very dramatic. Girls start screaming. They claim
to become incredibly strong, needing multiple
people to hold them down. And they say they see
a face of pure evil or supernatural figures from
local folklore, like the Pontianak. The Bontianak
is a kind of empiric ghost, right? Correct. And
again, look at how the authorities often respond.
They will bring in religious leaders for mass
prayer sessions. In some cases, they've actually
cut down old trees around the school because
they believe the trees are hiding spots for the
spirits. Which going right back to the Singapore
factory example. just validates the fear. It
confirms the supernatural explanation. It absolutely
does. And experts like the sociologist Robert
Bartholomew, who has studied this extensively,
argue that as these schools have become more
religiously strict, it creates a very constricted
environment. Young women in particular are under
immense scrutiny regarding their behavior, their
dress, their piety. That pressure builds up and
it explodes as possession. It's a way of acting
out in a society where you aren't allowed to
act out. If you just scream at your teacher,
you get punished. But if you are possessed by
a ghost and you scream, you get sympathy and
attention. Exactly. It's a subconscious negotiation
for power in a powerless situation. But sometimes
the tension isn't religious. It's geopolitical.
We have to talk about Kosovo in 1990. This was
right before the breakup of Yugoslavia. An incredibly
volatile and dangerous time. The ethnic tensions
between the Serbs and the Albanians in that region
were at a breaking point. And in March of 1990,
a mystery illness struck. Yes. Thousands of ethnic
Albanian adolescents, mostly in schools in the
province of Kosovo, began collapsing. They reported
dizziness, breathing issues, fainting. And immediately
the narrative about what was happening split
right down ethnic lines. Completely. So you have
these two narratives, poison versus hoax. What
was the truth? A federal commission was sent
in to investigate. They ran all the tests. They
found no toxins, no poisons. Their official conclusion
was that it was a mass psychogenic illness precipitated
by the extreme cultural and political fear that
these kids were living under. But try telling
that to the parents of a sick child. You can't
in that climate telling the Albanians it's just
stress sounded like you were taking the side
of the Serbs. It's incredibly difficult to tell
a population you aren't being poisoned. You are
just incredibly stressed when they have very
valid reasons to be afraid of being poisoned.
We saw an almost identical situation play out
very recently in Iran in late 2022 and early
2023. Yes. And the context there was the massive
woman life freedom protests. The regime was cracking
down violently. And then suddenly thousands of
schoolgirls across the country started falling
ill, believing they were being poisoned by some
kind of gas attack at their schools. And again,
the fear was that the government was doing this
deliberately to punish them for protesting or
to scare them into staying home. It's a completely
logical fear in that context. But the Iranian
intelligence ministry eventually conducted an
investigation. It was. released in April 2023,
and they stated that no toxic substances were
found. They attributed the illnesses to a combination
of exposure to non -toxic substances, mass hysteria,
and malingering. It's just a tragedy because
the fear is so real and so justified. If you
believe you are being targeted by your own government,
your body is going to react as if it's under
attack. And that's why experts like Bartholomew
argue so passionately that we should be careful
about using the word hysteria. It carries so
much baggage. It sounds so dismissive. There
was that case in Kenya in 2023 that highlights
this, right? Yes. At St. Teresa's Ereji Girls
High School, over 100 students were hospitalized
with uncontrollable shaking and involuntary movements
in their legs. The official finding from the
health ministry was stress due to upcoming exams.
But if you tell a parent. Your daughter is hysterical.
It sounds like you're insulting her. Exactly.
It sounds like you're saying she's crazy or she's
weak or she's making it up. But if you say she's
suffering from mass psychogenic illness due to
extreme academic pressure, it reframes it. It
makes it a legitimate medical response to an
identifiable environmental factor. It's more
dignified. And frankly, it's just more accurate.
That distinction is so important. We need to
destigmatize the diagnosis so people can actually
get treated. And the treatment usually means
lowering the stress, not searching for a non
-existent poison. Precisely. Now, if we connect
this to the bigger picture of the modern world,
it's not just schools anymore. It's national
security. It's global terror. This is where the
stakes get incredibly high and the confusion
becomes even more widespread. Let's go back to
2001. After 9 -11 and then the anthrax letters
that were mailed in the U .S., the entire world
was terrified of biowarfare. And the psychological
impact of the anthrax attacks was so much greater
than the biological impact. In the U .S. alone,
there were over 2 ,300 false anthrax alarms.
And people were actually getting sick from these
false alarms. Opening a letter with sugar in
it. Yes. People developed re - Real physical
symptoms. Nausea, dizziness, throat irritation,
rashes, purely from the fear of being exposed
to a biological agent. There was a famous case
in Maryland where a man just sprayed window cleaner
in a subway station. It's Windex. Just regular
window cleaner. But 35 people were treated for
symptoms because they thought it was a chemical
attack. Their throats felt like they were closing
up. They felt faint. Their bodies reacted to
the perceived threat. That is the nocebo effect
in action, right? Yeah. We all know about the
placebo effect. Your belief that a sugar pill
will work can actually make you better. The nocebo
effect is the evil twin. Your belief that you
are in danger can actually make you sick. It
is the perfect demonstration of the nocebo effect
on a mass scale. And we saw this during the first
Gulf War, too. When Iraqi Scud missiles hit Israel,
about 40 % of the civilians in the vicinity of
the impacts reported breathing problems. Because
they thought the missiles contained chemical
weapons. Exactly. They didn't. They were conventional
explosives. But the fear was so intense that
their bodies prepared for the worst and produced
the symptoms of chemical attack. And then, of
course, that brings us to Havana syndrome. This
has been dominating the news for years now. This
is the ultimate modern mystery. It starts in
2016. U .S. embassy staff in Cuba, then it spreads
to China, even to Washington, D .C., reporting
these strange sounds and a collection of symptoms
like brain fog, dizziness, and headaches. And
initially the theory was a sonic weapon or some
kind of... pulsed microwave energy. It sounded
like something right out of a James Bond movie.
It did. And because the victims were diplomats
and CIA agents, people we view as tough, rational,
high status individuals, the media and the government
hesitated to call it hysteria. If it had been
a group of teenage girls at a high school, they
would have called it hysteria on day one. One
hundred percent. There's a clear bias there.
But because it was spies, the assumption was
it has to be a weapon. But as the years went
on and the investigations got deeper, that weapon
theory really started to crumble. The 2023 intelligence
community assessment was pretty definitive about
it, wasn't it? It was a major turning point.
It basically undercut the weapon theory, saying
it was very unlikely that a foreign adversary
was responsible. The consensus now is that Havana
syndrome is essentially a socially constructed
catch -all category. What does that mean in plain
English? It means you have a group of high -stress
individuals, spies, living in hostile foreign
territory. They have pre -existing conditions,
they have environmental factors, they have immense
fatigue. But then you introduce a name, Havana
Syndrome, and a scary story about a secret sonic
weapon. Suddenly, every single headache, every
dizzy spell, every ringing in the ear gets relabeled
and attributed to the syndrome. It's the June
bug all over again, but on a geopolitical scale
with spies instead of factory workers. It really
is. And it shows that even the most highly trained
skeptical professionals are not immune to the
power of suggestion and social contagion. I want
to talk about a very specific and frankly heartbreaking
type of this phenomenon that seems to only happen
in one place. That's resignation syndrome in
Sweden. This is a truly tragic and bizarre culture
bound syndrome. It almost exclusively affects
the children of asylum seekers in Sweden. When
they learn that their families are facing deportation
back to a country they fled, these children fall
into a coma -like state. A literal coma. It's
called an apathetic state. They stop eating.
They stop talking. They become completely unresponsive,
even to pain. They have to be tube -fed. They
essentially hibernate. They shut down. And this
only happens in Sweden. That's the bizarre part.
It's been prevalent there since the early 2000s,
but it's virtually unknown in other countries
that have very similar refugee populations like
Germany or Denmark. Why? Why only there? That
is the million dollar question. And there is
some controversy around it. Some investigations
have raised difficult questions about whether
parents might be, in some cases, forcing or coaching
children to act this way to gain residency. Permit's
a kind of scam theory. That's a very dark possibility.
It is. And some investigative journalists have
critiqued the Swedish media for not looking into
that angle enough, perhaps out of a fear of seeming
anti -immigrant. But other experts argue that
even if there is an element of coaching in some
cases, the spread of the behavior among the youth
has a genuine element of psychological contagion
to it. Meaning the kids aren't just faking the
coma. It's likely a complex mix, but for many
of them, the hopelessness of their situation
is absolutely real and the symptom of falling
into the state is a culturally learned way of
shutting down. They see other kids do it. They
hear about it in their community. So when the
trauma of a deportation order hits them, their
brain selects coma from the symptom pool as the
appropriate response. It shows how the mind can
just hit the off switch when it's faced with
unbearable trauma and how culture provides the
script for how we hit that switch. In Sweden,
for these kids, the script is fall into a coma.
In the Middle Ages, the script was dance until
you drop. Which brings us to the newest script
and the newest vector for contagion, social media.
Mass social media induced illness, or MSMI. This
is a term that has only emerged in the last few
years for obvious reasons. We saw this with the
explosion of... Tick -tock ticks, right? Exactly.
Around 2019, and especially during the pandemic
in 2021, doctors and pediatric neurologists around
the world started seeing this sharp, sudden rise
in teenage girls coming into their offices with
severe kinetic -like behaviors. It looked a lot
like Tourette's syndrome. But Tourette's usually
starts in young boys, and it develops slowly
over time. This was sudden onset and overwhelmingly
in teenage girls. Right. The presentation was
all wrong. And when they investigated, they found
a common thread. These teenagers were all watching
popular influencers on TikTok who had Tourette's
or Tourette like ticks. So they were effectively
catching the ticks through the screen. In a way,
yes. The theory involves mirror neurons, which
we should get into, but it's also the power of
the algorithm. If you watch one video of a girl
with Felix, the algorithm immediately feeds you
10 more. You are bombarded with this specific
behavior. Combine that with the intense stress
and isolation of the COVID -19 pandemic, plus
rising eco -anxiety, and you have a perfect environment
for a new kind of outbreak. It's the cohesive
group of the 21st century. You don't need to
be in the same factory or schoolroom anymore.
You just need to be on the same For You page
on TikTok. That is a profound observation. The
digital tribe is the new cohesive group. So let's
get into the science of why. You mentioned mirror
neurons. I want to really understand this. How
does my brain mimic what your brain is doing?
Mirror neurons are a really special class of
cells in your brain. They fire both when you
perform an action yourself and when you observe
someone else performing that same action. Give
me a simple example. If I pick up this cup of
coffee a certain set of neurons in my motor cortex
will fire. If I watch you pick up a cup of coffee,
many of those same neurons in my brain will fire
as if I were doing it myself, even though my
hand isn't moving. It's the basis of empathy,
right, of learning by watching. It's absolutely
fundamental to empathy. It's how we learn by
watching. It's how we feel a pang of sadness
when we see someone else cry. Our brain is simulating
their experience. So the theory is that people
who are more susceptible to MPI have what, overactive
mirror neurons? That's one of the strongest hypotheses.
It's interesting to contrast this with autism.
Autism is often associated with underactive mirror
neurons, a biological difficulty in reading social
cues and understanding others' intentions, and
it affects males more often than females. MPI
historically affects females more often, who,
on average, tend to have more active mirror neuron
systems. It's like their empathy dial has turned
all the way up to 11. That's a great way to put
it. They literally feel what others are feeling
physically. So if they see someone hyperventilating,
their mirror neurons fire, their own chest tightens,
and suddenly they are hyperventilating too. It's
not a conscious choice. That makes it sound almost
like a superpower gone wrong. It's a kind of
extreme empathy that becomes a vulnerability.
It is. It's a heightened sensitivity to the social
cues of the group. But diagnosing this has to
be a complete nightmare for a doctor, isn't it?
Because you're essentially... trying to prove
a negative. That is the diagnostic trap. We often
call MPI a residual diagnosis or an argument
from ignorance. A doctor runs every conceivable
test for poisons, for viruses, for bacteria.
They all come back negative. So they're left
to say, well, we can't find anything, so it must
be hysteria. Which feels really unsatisfying
for both the doctor and the patient. It is. And
it carries a huge, huge risk. What if there really
is a new unknown toxin that our current tests
just can't pick up yet? There is always the of
a false positive for MPI diagnosing hysteria
when it's actually a subtle gas leak. But the
reverse is true too, right? Yes. And this happens
all the time. If you keep testing and testing
for every chemical under the sun, you might find
a false positive for a toxin. You might find
a trace amount of mold in the air vents that
isn't actually causing the problem, but everyone
latches onto it. Uh -huh. It's the mold. And
then you spend millions of dollars removing the
mold. But the illness continues because the underlying
stress is still there. It's a terrifying tightrope
walk for medical professionals. It really is.
And at the end of the day, we just have to respect
the incredible power of the nocebo effect. We
readily accept that the mind can heal placebo's
work. That's proven. We have to also accept that
the mind can harm. If you believe, truly believe,
you are in danger. your body will produce the
cortisol, the adrenaline, and the very real physical
symptoms of that danger. So where does this all
leave us? We've gone from nuns meowing in a French
convent to teenagers ticking on TikTok. What's
the through line? The through line is that we
are fundamentally social animals. We look to
each other to interpret reality, especially when
it's ambiguous or scary. When the group says
there is a threat, Our bodies respond to that
threat, whether the threat is defined as a demon,
a bug, a poison gas, or a sonic weapon. It really
challenges our modern idea that we're all these
rational, independent individuals. We are so
much more connected and vulnerable to each other
than we like to think. Absolutely. The researchers
Bartholomew and Wesley summed it up best when
they said that MPI is a behavioral reaction that
anyone can show in the right circumstances. It
is not a sign of weakness. It's not a sign of
low IQ. It's not a sign of being crazy. It's
a sign of being human. I think that's a great
place to leave the history and the science. But
I do have one final thought that's been nagging
at me throughout this whole conversation. We
talked about how the Internet, how social media
is the new vector. Well, if the Internet creates
a global cohesive group, are we moving toward
a future where we could see a global psychogenic
illness? I mean, could a symptom, a tick, a phrase,
a feeling of nausea travel around the entire
world in seconds, affecting millions of people
simultaneously across dozens of cultures just
because they all saw the same viral video at
the same time? That is a terrifying and a fascinating
possibility. As we become more digitally connected,
our village becomes the whole world. And if the
village gets sick, we all might feel it. Something
to mull over next time you're scrolling through
your feed. Thanks for joining us on this deep
dive into the mysteries of the mind. Always a
pleasure. Stay curious and maybe take a break
from the screen every now and then. See you next
time.