SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: What is Collective Hysteria?

Chuck Bryant (0:03)

Hey, everybody, and welcome to The Stuff You Should Know Gets Weird Playlist. This is another one of our quarterly playlists, everyone, that we compile, because we found that people like us sort of grouping things and bucketing things and cataloging things into groups of 10 to 12 And I think we have 11 of them this time out. And we're getting started this week with the inaugural episode of the Stuff You Should Know Gets Weird Playlist with our episode, What Is Collective Hysteria? So, please give a listen and enjoy.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from howstuffworks.com.

Josh Clark (0:45)

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And Jerry's over there to the left. And that makes this Stuff You Should Know.

Chuck Bryant (0:55)

Got the A-team in the hissy.

Josh Clark (0:58)

I call face.

What? I'm face.

Chuck Bryant (1:02)

Oh, of course you're face. Look at you. I would be a combination of Murdoch and Mr. T.

Josh Clark (1:08)

Yeah.

Well, your hair is kind of spiky in the middle today. Yeah.

Chuck Bryant (1:12)

Jerry, I don't know what she'd be. I guess she'd be the leader. She'd be Hannibal.

Josh Clark (1:17)

Oh, yeah. She's smoking a cigar right now.

Chuck Bryant (1:20)

And wearing a black glove.

Josh Clark (1:21)

When did you start smoking cigars, Jerry?

Chuck Bryant (1:23)

That's weird.

Josh Clark (1:24)

Very timely.

Chuck Bryant (1:26)

I said A-Team, I don't want to slag off guest producer Noel. He's not exactly B-Team. No.

We'll just call ourselves the OGs.

Josh Clark (1:34)

Okay. Now that we have that established, we are the OGs.

Chuck Bryant (1:38)

That's right.

Josh Clark (1:38)

We need bowling shirts that say as much on the back. You feeling good?

Chuck Bryant (1:43)

I'm feeling nauseous and dizzy.

Josh Clark (1:47)

Oh, well, Chuck, did you happen to see somebody else who was nauseous and dizzy?

Chuck Bryant (1:51)

Well, Jerry was last week, and then a few more people in the office, so I just figured we all had the same thing.

Josh Clark (1:56)

All right, I'm going to diagnose this.

Chuck Bryant (1:58)

Okay.

Josh Clark (1:59)

It's called collective hysteria, also known, I think more appropriately, as mass psychogenic disorder. I think when you add the word hysteria to this, it takes on certain dimensions that a lot of people could find very objectionable.

Chuck Bryant (2:15)

Sure.

Josh Clark (2:15)

You know, hysterics, hysteria.

Chuck Bryant (2:19)

Dogs and cats living together?

Josh Clark (2:21)

Yeah, but I think it has a definite gender-specific connotation to it from over the years. Like, women were supposedly hysterical. So the idea of diagnosing somebody as hysterical under any circumstances is kind of a tad amount to patting them on the head.

Chuck Bryant (2:41)

Yeah. Here, nice lady, you're just a little hysterical. You just go calm down and bake something.

Josh Clark (2:47)

Right, stop being crazy. No, mass psychogenic disorder instead is just kind of like, whoa, your brain just did something pretty neat. And that is the case for mass psychogenic disorder, if you ask me.

In this article, Chuck, written by Jacob Silverman.

Chuck Bryant (3:04)

Jeopardy champion.

Josh Clark (3:05)

Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah, he won on Jeopardy. That makes him a champion, right?

Chuck Bryant (3:08)

Yeah, I think so. He wasn't like the ultimate champion, but he won a couple of episodes.

Josh Clark (3:12)

Right, which is why they should have a word for, I guess, like, champion is like the one who won it all.

Chuck Bryant (3:19)

Ken Jennings.

Josh Clark (3:21)

Yeah, or Watson.

Who's that? The IBM computer.

Chuck Bryant (3:25)

Oh, well, yeah. Sure.

Josh Clark (3:27)

So Jeopardy winner Jacob Silverman wrote this article years back, and he did a pretty great job of citing a contemporary outbreak of mass psychogenic disorder that had been going on around that time down in Mexico, down Mexico way in Choco, Mexico at a boarding school there. It apparently was a girls boarding school, and the girls that went to school there were ages 12 to 17 And all of a sudden, they started, well, there was an outbreak. Yeah. A weird outbreak. There was vomiting, I believe, trouble walking.

There was fever.

Chuck Bryant (4:05)

Yeah.

Josh Clark (4:06)

That's weird.

Chuck Bryant (4:07)

Nausea.

Josh Clark (4:08)

And so the people running this boarding school were like, what's going on? This is not good.

Chuck Bryant (4:14)

Yeah.

Josh Clark (4:15)

And they had no idea. The girls went on Christmas break for 10 days, came back, and the thing just took off again, like wildfire.