Laughter has been known to spread like a virus.
- Let's talk about that. - (laughs)
♪ (theme music) ♪
- Gooood Mythical Morning! - Now, if I were to tell you that Noah was
- acting hysterical-- - I'd believe you.
Well, he's not. He's pretty calm right now.
He seems so unstable. Just kidding, Noah.
It might be that he had dropped his phone in the toilet and he was
- very upset about it. - Somebody contain this guy!
- Let's get him under control. - But what if I told you, no no no,
that doesn't mean that Noah dropped his phone in the toilet, it means that Noah
has literally danced himself into a coma.
- That would be unusual, right? - Yeah, I would say,
- "Let's put that on YouTube." - Well that's because we don't often use
the correct understanding, or the clinical understanding of what hysteria actually is.
Are you saying the definition of hysteria is dancing yourself into a coma,
- specifically? - Just stick with me and you'll find out
where I'm going. Mass hysteria is defined as: The condition affecting a group of
persons, characterized by excitement or anxiety, irrational behavior or beliefs,
or inexplicable symptoms of illness. It's when people start acting crazy together.
Yeah. Like waiting in line for a new gadget for days, in tents, and like...
If they all started doing the same weird thing, maybe you would have a case of
- mass hysteria. - Like piling human refuse in public
- locations in front of the Best Buy. - Now you're getting warm, and I'm not
talking about the human refuse. I'm talking about conceptually, you're
- getting warm. - Okay.
Because... and the funny thing is, science can't even explain what causes this, and
it continues to happen to this day. We're gonna take a look at an old case and
we're gonna take a look at a more recent case.
- Okay. - Let's start with the Dancing Plague of
1518. This is the earliest recorded case of mass hysteria. July 1518 in
Strasbourg-- that sounds like Germany, I know, but it's in France. A woman named
Frau Troffea walked out into the middle of the street and just started dancing.
Oh, cool! Hey! Look! She's got rhythm! You know, Frau is dancing. Not unusual.
- Or slightly unusual. - But then she just kept dancing.
She kept dancing, and dancing... a week later--
- Are we talking, like-- - Nonstop dancing.
Jiggling like there's something in her pants? Like there's ants in her pants?
I don't know what was-- I don't know, it wasn't like she was dancing to...
- Like, did she have a really bad itch? - the latest Pharrell track,
'cause he didn't exist at this point.
- No. - And I don't know if it was music, but
I'm just, you know, 1518 dancing. Heyyyy! Kinda like something Steve Martin would've
- done in 1978, I'm sorry, but... - You don't have footage of this.
I don't. I don't know what the footage would show other than Frau dancing.
Or Frau (pronounced "Frow") dancing. I'm gonna call her Frau.
- A week later-- - Are you about to tell me somebody
- catches this? - Link, the first thing I said that you
just let wash right over you is I said "a week later." She danced for a week.
- No rest, no stopping. - No sleeping?
No sleeping. She danced for a week. By that time, 34 people had joined in.
Yeah. So, you're telling me that it was like a dance party.
- That didn't stop. - But clinical. It's not like, "Hey, she's
throwing a party, let's go dance with her." They were compelled to do it?
- I don't know. - Like, medically?
Science doesn't even know. I'm just telling you, brother. I'm telling you that
Frau started dancing. A week later, 34 people had danced her. (laughs)
Had joined her. And then, within a month, 400 people were dancing in the streets.
This is tough to believe. You just have illustrations of it.
Okay, so this seems like it would be physically impossible, but there's a
written record of this. We're not saying that it is unequivocally true, but
everything that we know that you can know about 1518 suggests that this is true, and
that it's actually kinda confirmed by the fact that people started
- dying from dancing. - Oh, wow.
Now, I've had some long dance sessions in my life. Not really. I'm not one--
you know, when I see people dancing at a wedding reception, that's the only time
- I see people dancing. - Right.
I don't go to the club. Look at me, guys, 'cmon. Get a grip.
- You join out of guilt, right? - I'm like, (sighs) Why do we humans
do this? Let me go out there and do my Michael Jackson and make everybody laugh.
I've pulled a muscle dancing, but I've never killed myself dancing.
- I think I'd remember that. - Dozens of people died from dancing
and no one could figure out how to stop them from dancing.
Like they were dancing so much, they didn't stop to eat or drink and there was
- starvation? - That is my understanding, Link.
- Gah! - They danced themselves to death.
- That's crazy! - A lot of people believe that this was a
case of severe stress. That area had been plagued by famine and disease for years.
But there is really no explanation for why people joined in, and this is not a
completely unusual thing. This is one that is a little bit on the lighter side of
- people just dying from dancing. - But my theory is that it's like-- it has
to be some sort of brain virus. That has to be what it is.
- The old brain virus? - It's attacking the dance centers
- of the brain. - That's a good theory, but according to
modern science, you would be wrong. And this next case that happened in the
sixties, they actually did blood tests and brain tests.
Really? They were studying it as it happened? They were dancing again?
Okay, no. This is one of the most famous cases of mass hysteria in history.
This began January 30th in 1962 in and around a small village of Kashasha
- in Tanganyika, which is now Tanzania, - (Link) Okay.
(Rhett) Near the border of Uganda. It started pretty simply. Three girls in
an all-girl boarding school. One girl tells a joke to the other girls-- I don't
know what the joke was-- but it caused the other girls to begin giggling.
And they were just struck-- they went into a laugh attack, not unlike the laugh
attacks that we used to have. We had 'em all the time. We had 'em at school, we had
- 'em in the church balcony. - Oh yeah, yeah.
There's nothing like a church balcony to make you wanna bust out.
- We just could not stop laughing! - (laughs)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You had to entertain yourself somehow.
And sometimes we would just induce laugh attacks on purpose when we were bored.
- Right, just like-- - One guy would--
(both laugh)
- Like that. - We did that.
- We just... it was stupid. - At some point, later than the point
we were just at, it would morph to legitimate laughter.
Real laughter. It was much easier when you were, like, eight, you know?
- Yeah. And high on fudge rounds. - Thirty years later it's not quite
- as easy. - I'd eat, like, five fudge rounds in
- one sitting. - Listen, kids. Don't grow out of your
ability to induce a laugh attack. But also, hopefully, this won't happen to you.
- Anyway-- - How big did this get?
Okay. These three girls start laughing. They can't stop laughing. They laugh
for sixteen hours straight.
There's at least a point of reference here, in that laughter is contagious,
kinda like yawning is contagious. The dancing thing is still weirder than this,
unless... but this one is in the sixties, so there's more data.
This one's more recent and there's more data, yeah. So they laugh for sixteen
hours, and at that point, the laughter has spread to 95 of the school's 159
students. We've got the majority of these girls at this school laughing to the point
that, on March 18th... now, see, it says that it began on January 30th, and then
by March 18th... so this is months long and I don't know... it was like this thing
that kept recurring, kept happening. It wasn't like they just laughed constantly.
- It would come in waves? - Well, I just don't think you can--
I guess you could physically laugh for that long. I don't know that specific
detail, I just know that the school shut down on March 18th.
- Wow. So strange. - But the epidemic continued.
Other girls that lived around this village ended up infecting 48 of 154 students at
another school, and that school had to be shut down in June, so a few months later.
- It kept going until-- - Was it only girls?
over fourteen schools in the area had been shut down and over a thousand people had
- been infected. - And what-- do you know what they would
do? Would they, like, pin 'em down and like, "Stop laughing!"
- and cover their mouths? - I mean, what can you do when somebody's
- laughing? If you-- here's the thing. - (laughs)
If somebody's laughing and you try to help 'em--
- It's annoying after a while. - You get up there and you're like--
- (both laugh) - You don't touch 'em, you catch it!
- Is that how you got it? - You can't touch 'em!
- I don't know. - You don't know.
I figure. All I know is a thousand people got it! But none of the teachers--
teachers, of course-- were affected by this. None of the teachers were affected.
They were probably very affected in a negative way. They were probably very
- upset about it. - That's interesting.
- You said they took blood tests? - Scientists came in and they ruled out
any biological or environmental causes. No virus, no bacteria, no chemicals in the
food supply. Blood samples were taken. Nothing physically wrong with any of the
patients. And RadioLab did a piece about this and described that-- they talked
about this, but they also talked about how there's been smaller outbreaks in
Tanzania. This is a thing that happens in Tanzania even in modern times, but
nothing like this initial one that shut down all these schools.
So there's no ultimate conclusion? There's no explanation?
Most people think that this was-- this happened just after Tanzania declared
independence from Great Britain, and so...
- Euphoria. - There was a massive social change, which
is usually induced by stress, but you can have good stress at the same time you can
have bad stress. And that's the only thing people can point to. I think the moral of
this story is, I'm never laughing again, 'cause I don't want the show to get
- shut down. - It's too much of a risk?
See, I'm trying to right now, but... 'cause if I start laughing, then you start
laughing, then Morgan starts laughing, Eddie starts laughing, next thing you
- know, this show's gonna get shut down. - It's debilitating. Well, that's kinda
- the sad irony of the thing. - And then other internet shows are gonna
- get shut down. - It's like the euphoria associated with
dancing or laughing leads to death or schools being shut down? It's like,
the one thing, the one thing, the one safe place we can all go to experience
joy, to emote joy, dancing or laughing, is being taken from us by an unknown
scourge. It's alien. If it's not viral, then it has to be alien.
Aliens exist, we've proved it this morning on Good Mythical Morning.
- What're you laughing at? - (crew laughs)
I mean, what's your explanation? Come on!
Aliens exist. I'm in complete agreement with you.
- And this is what they're doing. - And they're gonna shut down your school.
You don't have to wait for the snow to come, just start laughing.
I don't know. I mean, you can feel free to let us know in the comments what you
think. I'm sure you know more than we do in one way or another.
- Thanks for liking and commenting. - You know what time it is.
- Hi, I'm Becca. - And I'm Caroline.
- And we're from South Carolina. - But today we're in New York City.
(both) And it's time to spin the Wheel of Mythicality!
Make sure you go and check out the wrapping up of Crew Madness at
facebook.com/rhettandlink. Go over there to find out who won the whole thing.
Click through to Good Mythical More, where I'm told there is an amazing laughter
chain video, so we're gonna try to induce an epidemic, going against what you
just said, in Good Mythical More. Join us for that. See if you'll laugh.
Contemplating... music.
(voiceover on top of soothing piano) (Rhett) Music. Just a little bass, which
is spelled the same as "bass." I once got a pair of headphones that had extra
- "bass." I was sorely disappointed. - Music.
[Captioned by Caitrin: GMM Captioning Team]