Thinking Sideways: The Dancing Plague of 1518

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking sideways. I don't know. You never know stories of things,
don't know the answer too. Well, Hi everybody, my name's
Devin and I'm joined as always by Joe Steve. Oh

(00:27):
not Joe and Steve. Just Joe Steve. Yeah, yeah, well
my name isn't and Steve, so yeah it's not. I thought, yeah,
I've been a little it's a little weird when you
keep introducing me as and Steve and Steve and people
say hoh, hi and Steve. Well, and you know, put
us three in a room and uh, you've got thinking sideways.
The podcast not to mention synergy of synergy. In this

(00:51):
room here we are the definition of synergy. So the
mystery we're gonna talk about tonight is the dancing plague
of eighteen. As luck would have it, there are actually
a lot of dancing plagues in our history, including one
in the seventies and the seventies and again entire seventies. Okay,

(01:13):
that was not a dancing plague. That was a plague
of dancers. Yeah, yeah, And actually there there was a
case that's kind of relevant to this in like even
two thousand and twelve. Really, where was that The East
coast of America. Sorry, it occurs to me not everybody
is listening in America. But right now we're going to

(01:35):
talk about the dancing plague of fifteen eighteen. I think
it's probably the most famous one. Yeah. Um, and it
starts if if you go to if you type in
dance plague, and this is the one that comes up,
you know, even though there's been lots of others. Yeah. Yeah.
And it took place in what was then the Holy
Roll Roman Empire but is now kind of on the

(01:55):
border of France and Germany Strostburg. Yes, exactly, words words.
I can't say. I'm so bad with German pronunciation. I
don't know why I keep picking stories that have German
pronunciation in them for punishment. It's probably it you actually
secretly want to, you know, spit up, step up your
pronunciation of German. That's that's maybe it's just kind of yea.

(02:18):
Our story starts with fraud Trofa. She's a young woman. Um.
I would say she's the patient zero of this particular
dancing plague. In July, she takes to the streets and

(02:42):
starts dancing quote fervorently, fervently, fervently, pervent fervently, fervently. Okay,
the same word, pronouncing it wrong, Yeah, fervently, ferventally. Don't
ask me. I'm not the one for pronunciations. Yeah, it's
not even a German word for Christ. So for the

(03:02):
she danced for um four to six days apparently not
not a great handle on how many actual days she
danced for, but four to six um. And in the
beginning she was alone, but by the end of the
week thirty four others started boogying with her in the streets,
and by the end of the month, four hundred boogiears

(03:24):
were accounted for what was the population of Strasbourg at
this time. We don't know, really awful, Yeah I don't.
I mean, I don't think we were even doing sensuces.
We they I don't think they were doing sensus. So
a dozens of these people died as a result of this,

(03:47):
either from exhaustion like you would you know, kind of think,
or heart attacks or seizures strokes, excuse me, strokes. So
there's a fairly strong evidence that this did actually happen.
In fact, they're reputable historic documents, including physicians notes, cathedral sermons,

(04:07):
local and regional chronicles, notes issued by a city counts
local city council that are all real, that all mentioned
this plague. In fact, historian and professor at Michigan State
University John Waller goes so far as to say that
the event took place is undisputed, and he wrote a
book about it. To This book is spelled Dance Till

(04:29):
You Die or A Time to Dance, Yeah, he wrote
to or something like that. I don't know, Yeah, I
don't know. Accounts show that people weren't just shaking or
trembling or convulsing, but actually dancing, dancing um, moving their
arms and legs on purpose. I don't know what it

(04:49):
looked like. I don't know that I'm doing the twist,
definitely not doing that. But they were apparently actively moving
their arms and legs. So it wasn't just like people
like spreading out. It was voluntary. It was involuntary. Oh,
this is what I heard is this, and many of
these people were really not happy about their status as dancers.
People reportedly were writhing in pain, screaming for help and

(05:11):
begging for mercy. At the same time, however, apparently they
were experiencing altered states of consciousness, almost like a trance state.
This helps to explain how they could have physically maintained
dancing for so long the trance, Yeah, because you kind
of think, you know, who could dance for six days?
I mean you well, you know, it's just in general,

(05:33):
like who can dance that long? Suffering? Like the patient
zero for out trophia was apparently she would. She danced
until she was exhausted and then just sort of fell
to the ground and fell asleep, and then when she
woke up up started dancing. And I don't know what
she did for food and water in the meantime, no idea. Yeah,
that's a good question. I've never seen anything saying, okay,

(05:54):
well we force fed or food or water down and
I've never seen anything said how they got suss it
might have maybe townspeople just brought in, like you know,
cakes and glasses of water or something like that. I
don't know, something something to eat, something, I mean, if
these people are dancing, that doesn't mean they can't eat.
They can just like you know, people can just walk
up and hand and hand them something to chow down

(06:15):
on and they could eat it while they dance, unless
it's I mean, you know, if it's involuntary. Involuntary though,
and they're just like, yeah, they have no control. I
guess they're out of luck. Yes, she just hand feed them.
You have to shove a little cake in their mouths
or something like that, or some beef turkey and that
sounds messy. Yeah. I was gonna say, this is where

(06:36):
we got pieing in the face. Some of it ends
up in their mouths. Dirty dancing, it is. So, I
guess the only the real question of this isn't did
this happen? Like most of our mysteries are did this happen?
This one is why did this happen? Or more accurately,

(06:56):
why did that happen? Well, I'll tell you why it happened.
Dance fever, dance fever, dance dance revolution exactly. Yeah. Well,
I got to tell you my theory right now. It
was like, uh, these people really wanted to be good dancers.
And you know, if you really want to get good
at something, you've got to do a lot of it practice. Yeah.

(07:21):
That that's your entire theory, is that they wanted to
be good dancers, so they were practicing. Yeah, ok, yeah,
I mean it's not much worse than our first theory. Yeah, yeah,
this is a good theory. I like this one. Yeah,
it was actually the theory of the time with the physicians.
The local physicians diagnosed this woman and then all the

(07:44):
subsequent other people with which was hot blood, which is
a weird diagnosis. Quite understand this, and they said, wow,
she's got a fever. Obviously her blood is just really
hot running through her vein. Although usually they would have
prescribed blood letting at this point because that was kind

(08:06):
of popular thing that was that was actually probably killed
more people that have helped. But yeah, um, but it
was popular, it was popular. They prescribed more dancing. Actually
for her, they said, you should just dance it out,
just walk it out, just walk it out, actually right
out the prescription. I have no idea. The local physicians

(08:31):
quote ruled out astrological and supernatural causes, instead announcing that
the plague was a natural disease caused by hot blood. Yeah,
I'm sad. Supernatural and astrological they were ruled out on
the scene, which means that we can't say it was
demon possession. They knew, like if anybody was going to
know if it was dem in possession, they would have known. Yeah,

(08:52):
it probably was demonic possession. I think probably well, I
assure you guys were like devotees of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
And do you remember the musical episode? Yeah, that was
a great episode, but I remember what it turned out
to be. It turned out there was a demon that
it comes down and this demon caused people to burst
out into song, you know, and so maybe maybe it
was probably what it was. Yeah, a similar demon dancing demon.

(09:15):
Steve is not amused. I can't. I can't believe that
we're talking about Buffy. You can't believe it. Well, Buffy
is like you know what she is? Well, but it
does It doesn't make me think about the actual dancing
in the demonic possession. It does make me think about
some of the stuff that in the reading and the
research that I was doing. Is where Is? I want

(09:38):
to say, Hadis is not the place but in the
Caribbean where people are quote prone to quote unquote demonic possession.
Do you know what I'm talking about? Places where they
they'll be zombiefied for a while. It possession though, but
it's like well spirits, it's spirits will take them over,
is what they say. Yeah, probably some people believe that,

(09:59):
But there's apification in Haitia is when you can actually
give people this drugs from it's made from a local
plant and apparently it it puts you under and then
you basically into a sort of a trance and you're
you can be enslaved to to whoever administered the drug
to you, right and well. And and these people are
known for, you know, being possessed and doing all these things.

(10:20):
One of the things they do all the times, they
do those kind of wild erratic dances, and it may
I'm not saying it's the same thing, but it makes
me think about what it might have looked like to
watch these people in this plague. Yeah. Well, actually that's
an interesting theory, you know, because when you think about
the zompification in Haiti. If you administer this this naturally
occurring drug to people and enslave them to your will

(10:42):
and just say okay, go out in the streets and
just dance your ass off, you know, and maybe, you know,
maybe that's maybe it was some guy who was doing
something like that. Maybe it was some guy drugging people
and making them dance. I mean, you think you'd want
to go to the drug them and make them go
go to the A T. M And get some cash
out to give to you or something like that, because

(11:04):
there were so many a t M s at that time.
How many were there at Strasbourg at that time, probably
only like five? Ye do a google on it. The
next theory is that it was mass hysteria. Yeah, so
remember John Waller from He's written two books on the subject,
and he posits that it was caused by mass psychogenic illness.

(11:30):
What is psychogenic? Because I couldn't ever get a real
clear answer on what that means. Psychogenic diseases are psychological
illnesses that stem from emotional trauma. Okay, so it's it's
it's just essentially like a physical ailment that has that

(11:51):
that isn't really real. It's not caused by a physical illness.
It's caused by psychological Yeah, it's like a physical manifestation
of emotional or mental stress. Okay, Okay, well yeah I
can I can follow that because there's a lot of
people who I swear I have this and then they
exhibit every symptom, textbook symptom, but when the actual tests

(12:13):
are done, they don't really have anything. So would that
be a good correlation to example of it? No, that's
like in their head or it could also be a
hysterical something like a hysterical pregnancy is not an actual pregnancy.
It's a pregnancy where a woman ye shows all the

(12:33):
signs of it, but it's actually just her body or
her brain tricking her body into thinking that she's pregnant.
So that's what psychogenic is. That kind of Okay, that
makes sense, and that's kind of but it's more like
your brain. You're experiencing a lot of stress. So you
here's a great example. Actually, and I was going to
talk about it a little bit later, but we'll just

(12:53):
talk about it right now. Um, this this case, in
two twelve on the East coast of the United States
of America, twelve students, all going to the same school,
developed these strange symptoms that look a lot like treats.
So they're involuntary physical tics and voluntary vocal tics like

(13:18):
you know Tret's patients but have. But it just developed
overnight and in twelve people at the same time. Of course,
I could have been twelve teenagers decided they wanted to
and they wanted a good excuse to yell. That's true. Also,
I watched some interviews with these students and it is
definitely not that it is definitely involuntary. No, they're not

(13:41):
faking it. It's involuntary twitches. It looks awful. It has
totally disrupted their lives. Is a hard one to fake
for real. I don't know if you've ever known anybody
with it. I a coworker years ago. I have not.
He was on med's for it and I was just
I didn't know, and I was taught to him, and
then he was at my desk talking to me and

(14:02):
just sort of locked up and had this screwed you know,
his face kind of screwed up for a second. He
let go and he let out a deep breath and
that he apologized, like, my meds are a little office
like and I didn't know, and he explained it was like, oh,
and so he would do he would have weird little
just he's just sitting there, typing away at his desk
and just you know, he's he just kind of bunch

(14:23):
up at the neck and his eye would just kind
of twitch. I mean, it was it was very obvious
what it was once you knew what it was. That's
hard to fake. It's uncomfortable actual turetts, isn't You don't
actually seal out swear words some people and some people do,
but it's mostly you just you have these verbal ticks
and oftentimes it's just like a stutter or like a

(14:43):
stumble over words or physical So this in this instance,
the school district ruled that it wasn't an environmental anything,
that somehow these twelve students had all just developed this
for unknown reasons. That is a great example of this
kind of mental disorder. They're saying now that it's just

(15:04):
that these twelve students have some kind of stress in
their lives and this is how it's manifesting. Or fear
to me, it could be something that viral in origin too,
I suppose that's true. Have you ever heard of Bell's pals? Yes? Yeah,
a friend of mine caught that once years ago. He
wakes up one day and and one half of his
face is paralyzed. He couldn't move it at all. Yeah.

(15:24):
You know, doctors have tested these kids for pretty much
everything under the sun, and it doesn't seem to be anything.
They think it's definitely psychological in some nature. So that's
a psychogenic disorder that they think at this point that
it's just some kind of stress. Another great example would
be a thing that a lot of people have probably
heard of, which is the laughing disease that that after

(15:47):
there was this group of African girls who got it right. Yeah,
it was very interesting. There's a great radio lab on it.
A bunch of schoolgirls in Tanzania just started laughing uncontrollably
and couldn't off themselves from really yeah for like weeks. Yeah,
those are examples of psychogenic illnesses. Okay, so what's what's

(16:08):
going on in the area. That would not a great question.
They're in the middle of a really awful famine caused
by cold winters, hot summers, crop frost, and violent hail storms.
Also suffering an outbreak of smallpox, siphilis, and leprosy. So
the whole community is going through this, and you could

(16:31):
kind of think that absolutely it makes sense to me
that everybody would just kind of have this, or at
least maybe one person has this break, right, the psychogenic
break that causes her to uncontrollably dance for whatever reason,
and then people see it and for the first couple
of days they think, oh, there's there's frau out there.

(16:53):
She's just being great, just being crazy, and then a
couple of them are like just compelled to join her
for whatever reason. They see it every day, and they're
also in these stress mental states, and for whatever reason,
their brain says, yeah, let's do that too. And the
more people that join, the more people that join, you know.

(17:13):
So I guess that's the only it's also the only
one that really explains why the group would have gotten
exponentially bigger over time. It was kind of like the
reverse of the placebo effect too, and that is that,
you know, back in those days, people were pretty superstitious,
and so you see somebody dancing like that and apparently
against it, well, and just you start thinking, Wow, demons,

(17:34):
how much longer do I have to go before the
demon get? You know? And then you sort of talk
yourself into believing that there's a demon out there who's
going to take over your body and and do this
stuff to you and and correct me if I'm wrong.
But this particular plague, I think you said this before,
is not the first time it happened, Nope, nor the last.
It was just kind of the biggest and best documented

(17:56):
I think what it's the first documented case was in
twelve or thirteen hundreds somewhere in Yeah, it's that's really interesting.
There's this period of time from the twelve century ish
to like the seventeenth century ish where we see dancing
plagues and really not since then and not before then really,

(18:18):
I mean maybe before then, maybe we just were like
odd demons and so it was just kind of a fad.
Then maybe do you know why it stopped? No? Do
you know why? Well, I mean I've read some stuff
on it. It's okay, what's his name, saint? Is it
Vitas or Vitus? Which? How do I don't know which

(18:40):
way to pronounce. I'll go I'll go with Vitas. Gonna
go with Vitas, Okay, so we'll say it's Vitas. I
know that in the readings that we were doing, there's
the thing about St. Vitus and heat. You're going to
steal my next theory. Well, but but it actually it
plays into why it's stopped. Okay. So for St. Vitus
was a saint and correctly correct me if I'm wrong

(19:02):
on how the story goes. But basically he called down
dancing as a punishment. Yeah, if you if you were
a sinner, he would send down plagues of compulsive dancing
to anyone that angered him. Okay, and people God. What
was the predominant religion at the time. It wasn't christian

(19:22):
It wasn't Christianity fully Roman Empire. Okay, well, I I
just I know that there was a shift in the
direction of the church. And at that time, in that era,
a lot of the worship was you worshiped the Saints,
I mean God, but you still worshiped the Saints. And

(19:45):
about the sixteen seventeen hundreds they shifted away from worshiping
the saints as much. So then the knowledge about this
saint calling this down on people fell out of popular knowledge.
So then this reign of dancing terror wasn't something that
you knew about anymore. And people are collectively forgot about.

(20:07):
Are you saying that if you forget what a saint
will do to you, that saint can no longer do
it to you. I am not going to say what
a saint can or can I do do you. I'm
not going to fall into that trap. But I do
know that people were worried about it. And it goes
back to this this psychogogenic is at the right work,

(20:28):
is that when you're in these times of stress and
things are bad, and then oh, Saints, you know Vetus
is setting his stuff down on us, and we're going
to be plagued by him. But if you're not, that's
not being preached at you all the time. You don't
know that that's a potential punishment. I guess I kind of.
I kind of was in the same thought process. And

(20:49):
I didn't include this because it's not a theory that
I came across that was substantiated at all. But I
was like, Wow, they're in this horrible famine. Maybe Frau
was like, wow, I remember we used to do rain
dances like to appease the gods for whatever reason whatever,
they're a great grandmother speak of. I'm just gonna go
do that for a little while. But that doesn't explain

(21:11):
why it was involuntary, why it was like a trance state.
Yeah no, and yeah, I mean the St. Vitus thing.
You'd have to believe that that is what caused it.
And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say that that's
what's caused it. But I just wonder if you're in
that suggestible state because life sucks and do something, well,

(21:34):
it would be easy. Oh, that lady is still doing it.
And like Joe said, when when am I? When am I? When?
When's my card? Oh? I'm being pulled on the dance floor.
You know, the conception of saints is vengeful does appear
to have gone away? Yeah, I mean we still have
our saints and everything, but we don't we don't really

(21:54):
see them as vengeful. And I'm not sure exactly when
that when that sort of turned. I know that it's
the same thing happened with angels. You know, if you
look at the Old Testament, angels were not they were
not nice. They were not sweethearts, like they were God's
hit man. They were they were badass, and he didn't
want it. He didn't want to meet an angel. Yeah,

(22:14):
and now that it's totally reverse. Now angels are wonderful.
They're like, you know, good fairies. They are good. Yeah.
So while we're talking about saints, since you totally steamrolled
my next theory, my last theory, I guess we're gonna
talk about St. Anthony's fire that. No, it's actually ergotism,

(22:35):
which is how we've decided we're going to say this word. Um.
Ergotism is what you get after you eat ergo. Yeah,
I'm not sure if it's I think it's ergo, but
it might be ergo. Okay, what of our listeners, would
you look it up and send us an email right now,
right now? While recording and we talked about this as

(22:57):
a possible answer for the Mary Celeste. If you guys
will recall I do recall, so I don't think our
listeners probably recall this. Yeah, yeah, we did. We totally
we did. Our listeners may or may not recall that
this is something that you get. Ergo is a mold
that grows on rye bread when it's stored improperly, and

(23:18):
they didn't exactly have good good options and hey, you
remember that famine thing exactly, so you're gonna eat whatever
you can. It's also a psychotropic mold that can cause delirium, hallucinations,
and seizures, among other things. Yeah, but apparently from whatever

(23:39):
the symptoms of ergotism are are basically kind of spat.
You just sort of spass out. You know, you don't
really dance, You're just gonna twitch and spas. Yeah, that's
a problem. It'll also a problem for me is why
more and more people would be suffering from it instead
of a big outburst to begin with and less and
less people, which is what you would kind of assume

(23:59):
if everybody was eating gross bread. Uh, you know, actually
have an idea on that. What's your idea on that? Okay,
so Fraul was dancing and everybody's kind of coming around
and watching her, and then somebody else joins in the dance.
And the local was that the city commission or whatever

(24:20):
they were they set up. They turned the whole thing
into like a giant dance hall when they decided to
let them dance it out musicians. Ok So, so what
happens when you do that? People gather to check it out.
So then there's somebody industrial says, you know what, all
these gonna set up a food car and all these

(24:43):
people are gonna buy my food, and just happens to
have a whole stash of bread that is infected and
laced with it. And now people are standing around watching it,
and then they're afflicted with arctism, and then they start
dancing and more come to watch, and that guy's just
taken all the bready can and serving it to everybody.

(25:04):
I could see how exponentially that would help encourage the
growth of the epidemic. If that's what cost it, If
the organtism is what made it happen. But like you said,
I mean, organism is twitching. It's it's not full body
where it sounds like. Mostly it's in the extremities and
you're not jumping up and down in quote unquote dancing

(25:26):
the boogie woogie. Yeah, of course, you know. I mean
this this happened like many many years ago, like five
years ago. So, and as we all know, tales have
a way of growing and the telling, so they might
have just been spazzing out of it and then somebody
described it as dancing at some point. You know, the
historic documents that we have very clearly state dancing, not

(25:49):
teasing or spasm ing. They specify that it's dancing full
on with legs and arms and everything. And some of
the other accounts that I read about, now this one's specifically,
but I think it was an earlier one. I think
it was a monk that was writing about it and
was saying that people were doing it and they were
falling down and dying because they would fall and they'd

(26:14):
break a rib or I can't remember the exact phrasing
of it, but it was something about breaking their loins. Basically.
I think that breaking bones in their legs or everything
is so tender that muscles are tearing inside and they're
falling and it sounds like internal bleeding at that point.
But you're just you're tearing your legs. I mean, you

(26:36):
think about your feet if you dance, you know, you
go to an event and you dance for an hour,
and you go home, you take your shoes off. All
my feet hurt so bad. Now think about if you've
been doing that for twelve, eighteen thirty some odd hours,
your feet are gonna be hamburger. Yeah, well, your whole

(26:56):
body is, but especially your legs and your feet. Yeah.
And that's one of the main problems people have with it.
Why they say that it must have been a trance
or altered state of mind, because there's just no way
for a human to sustain that, particularly if it's voluntary.
You know, it's further proof for why it was involuntary,
because who does that because they've decided to do it

(27:18):
and continues to do it that long. Yeah, I don't.
I don't think I would ask for five minutes. I
don't think I would. Yeah. The whole trance thing, though,
would explain why they would just push past push past
the pain. Yeah, because if they were in an altered
state of consciousness, they probably wouldn't even be registering the pain,
recognizing the pain, or not nearly strong enough to stop right. Yeah. Yeah,

(27:42):
So I mean that that lends a little craziness to
the possibility of a trance. But I still don't understand exactly,
still buy how they got into this trance. It's still
a little odd to me. And and the other thing
that that I don't know if you guys came across this,
and I'm probably gonna butcher. The pronunciation here is send
in hands correa. Does that sound Does that sound like hands? Correa?

(28:09):
Because I was looking this up, is it's a disorder
and evidently it pronounces itself. For the symptoms of it
are rapid, uncoordinated, jerky movements which are in the hands,
the feet, and the face, which I could see how
somebody could construe that is dancing. If I'm standing there

(28:31):
in my hands and my feet and my face are
kind of jerking around and spasm ng, you would think, well,
you're just doing a weird dance. You're doing a dance.
I'm totally dancing. Yeah. Now, this particular affliction is something
that actually, this particular thing, it affects like kids mostly,

(28:53):
it's mostly kids, and it's like it's like an autoimmune disorder. Yeah,
and it's one that usually recover from. Now I know
that this particular thing comes about as an effect or
after effect of rheumatic fever, which is again this is
a disease that would have been possibly running rampants. It

(29:15):
also can be an after effect of a streptococcus infection also,
so yeah, and so it's like one of those things
where it does sufficient nerve damage, you know, to your
nervous system, and then eventually your your your immune system
starts to attack itself, start to attack and starts to
attack it's your nervous Yeah, and that's when you get

(29:36):
all spastic and everything. But apparently most people recover from it.
But it have been that widespread though, well, well, any
idea too that it would suddenly afflict all these different
people all at the same time. It's strain, but it
could have been some random strain of streptococcus or rheumatism
or rheumatism it's rheumantic fever. Yeah, it could have been

(29:58):
some oddball strain it came through and everybody didn't realize
what that they had. You know, let's just say everybody's
gotta It's like having a small cold. You don't realize
that you're really that that's sick, and so everybody's got it,
and so it's on setting to them, and that's why
it was so strangely pronounced at that time. But it
hasn't that that version of the disease hasn't lived into

(30:22):
our day and age and died out, which we've seen
with other with other infectionous diseases like the plague, the
black plague. We no longer have that because we beat
it off eventually and it it's gone, and it's originally
it's ogally it's a form that that took and killed
so many people. That version is no longer around, and

(30:46):
there's but the point is that I could see how
that happens out. Granted, again, this afflicts mostly children, but
I could construe it back in time to a different
strain that could have been afflicting a I guess it
just seems like they did a pretty good job keeping
the records in this place, and the physicians were obviously

(31:09):
on it. I mean, you know, they diagnosed all blood
but they would have. I think they would have probably said,
it's so weird. Everybody had this cold and now everybody's dancing.
But everybody might not have reported the cold. I mean,
think about it. You go to the physician when you're
sick and you have money to pay. It's not a
healthcare system. I have to have the money to go
see the doctor. It's like, oh, I'm gonna go see

(31:32):
the doctor. He's gonna at least take some of my
blood out of my body. He's gonna put on again.
Have you ever said this is a random aside. Have
you ever seen the old Saturday Night Live skip with
Steve Martin where he's the barber. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah,
he's a constantly ordering blood letting. That's what I always
think about. Anybody liked Evin who's staring at me blankly,

(31:54):
who hasn't seen this before just looking up on YouTube.
I know it's out there and it's it's a sick Martin,
but it's really funny. But it's just blood letting. Yeah,
that's what don't cure you. It's it's actually theorized that
George Washington died from that. Really, yes, yeah, he got sick,
but then his doctors were like draining his blood from

(32:15):
his body, and you know it might not have he
might not have died. He needed that blood. Yeah, yeah,
you need blood. It's weird such thing as a surplus
of blood in your body. No. No, And it's also
weird how far in history we think of I always
think of blood letting is kind of a medieval thing. Yeah,
But the fact that it's you know, we're talking sevent
hundreds and possibly eight people were still using blood letting

(32:39):
as a treatment, it's just so archaic and weird to
think that it made it that far forward. And I
can't wait until like twenty years from now we're like,
I was so archaic using antibiot you know. Yeah. I
mean a lot of a lot of received wisdom is
overturned all the time if you're paying attention to know,
when I was a kid, they said, you know, they

(32:59):
had the USDA food pyramid, which is pure bunk. Oh
it absolutely and they and they said you have to
drink eight sixty nuts glasses of water a day. And
now somebody just made that up. You know, Salt bad.
WoT No, it turns out salt isn't bad for you.
Coffee bad way. Now it turns out it's not butter's
bad fat. No, it turns out fat that's not bad
for you, great for you. Carbs maybe actually bad for you. Yeah,

(33:21):
exactly that we were like, hey, just have these instead,
I would low fat car Yeah. Yeah, stuff is being
overturned all the time. That's true, Like blood letting. Although
you know, in twenty years we're going to find out
blood letting actually the most effective and fighting cancer. I'm
not taking that. I'm not taking that treatment leaches their gross. Yeah, seriously.

(33:44):
So I guess we're out of Yeah, I guess I
tend to take a vote. Yeah, I guess it is
time to take a vote. Yeah, so I'm going to
go for the Buffy solution. It was a it was
a demon that made you dance, Okay, Steve, I h
The only one that I guess I could kind of

(34:05):
possibly get behind is the psychogenic one, you know, I
trance states happened, and I maybe see that being the
reason I'm not sold on any I like the moldy bread, yeah, oh,
the irrogant like moldy bread. Yeah. I don't like to
eat it, but I like you want some toast. I

(34:25):
saw some moldy bread over there, thank you. Not interested
in that. Actually, I'm actually kind of liking my theory
that somebody was actually drugging people and putting them over
a trance and and then making them telling them to dance,
because that's definitely the most effective use of people. Yeah. Well,
but if you're you're forte as a craftsman is to
build dancing stages, it's going to pay off because the

(34:51):
city built that stage. And he's like, I'm the number
one dance contractor, I'll build it perfect. He would be responsible.
We just found the culprit. Go. Yeah, so all I
have to do is go back some contractor. Yeah, find
the contractor of go, dig up his grave and spit
on him. That'll teach him. Yeah. Well, you know, you know,
it could be that it could be that he was

(35:11):
administering the drugs and he was not able to admit
to administer to specific people. So you know, he had
a few people that he really wanted to get the
drug too, because you have wanted to steal their their
fortune or have sex with them or something, and so
all the other ones he would just say, Oh, you're
a trance, why don't you go out in the streets
and dance. I got some work to do. Yeah, yeah,

(35:33):
totally fair. Yeah, well, if you want to see the
links from this episode, good luck. You got a dancer.
Way to our weapon. Dancing is absolutely required. I feel
like this is the opposite of the City of Beaumont
from Footloose, That's what this is the opposite of that.

(35:58):
So dance your way over to our website, Thinking Sideways
podcast dot com. You can listen to our podcast there
of course. Um, you can leave us a comment if
you want there as well. Uh, you can also listen
to us on iTunes, where you should definitely leave us
a comment in a rating. We're loving those They're awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome.

(36:19):
You can also, if you forget to download the episode
before you leave, stream it through Stitcher on any of
your mobile devices. If you want to join the conversation,
check our Facebook group out. There's been some really interesting
conversations happening there. There's been some fun stuff on. Yeah.
You can always send us an email at Thinking Sideways
Podcast at gmail dot com. And speaking of our email,

(36:42):
I think we have some listener mail tonight. We got
a couple, oh, a couple. Well, you should probably read
the first one because you'll really like the first one.
Oh I will, Yes, Okay, this one is from Ali Miles,
who's from the United Kingdom. I'm sorry for doing that
weird accent. Cheerio says high Folks. Just wanted to say

(37:04):
I really enjoy your podcast. Not quite sure how I
found it how it found its way to me here
in whole England, but I think it was when I
was trying to find out about the Isadel Woman a
few months back. Oh, yeah, the Isel. That's yeah, I
say things right all the time. We have great pronunciation
on this show evidently today. Yeah, I'm really into historical mystery,

(37:26):
so I downloaded quite a few of your shows. It's
really good stuff, in particular, like the Tom and Shrewd
and lead Mask episodes. I told you, yeah, my episode.
What about my episodes? Well, he listened to the one
the Isdell Woman, and then he has a suggestion of
a show like almost everybody does. It's awesome and I'm

(37:49):
actually really excited about this. I'm gonna try and jump
on this pretty quick here, which is funny because I
told him that you would probably be all over that
one German words in it. Yeah, lot it actually is
all in German, so we're going to do an all
German podcast. So yeah, thanks for the email. Ali that
we have one more, which this isn't something that we

(38:11):
normally do, but I really like this because this was
a really cool thing to do. Is we got a
email from Ormand and Ormand evidently listened to a show
that had just come out. We had released the episode
about the Nazi Bell. Yeah. If you guys don't know,
we prerecord these. Yeah, so so this is a we're

(38:32):
a little bit ahead when we're doing this show today.
And so Ormando listen and said, hey, that reminds we
have another story and sent us a link to another
story which I don't know if either of you, I
didn't know about this. I came across you know, I
saw that one. It was it was I don't know
how I came across that investigating the Nazi Bell story,

(38:55):
but that was. This one was definitely one that I
checked out, and it's the Kecksberg you Fo incident. Yeah,
would you you kind of know the story? What I mean,
let's just talk about it briefly because it's a great
follow up to the Nazi Bell. Yeah. Yeah, So the
Hexburg UFO incident. I didn't include it in the Nazi
Bell because it's like, even though it's slightly Nazi bell shaped,

(39:17):
it's like, it doesn't appear to be related to the
Nazi bell. But but this was a UFO that crash
in n in Pennsylvania, and uh, it reportedly lots of
people saw the fireball and a cross sonic booms and
stuff like that, and it dropped fire as it went
and caused fires. Are yeah, yeah, and it winds up
in this patch of woods in Pennsylvania somewhere. And then, uh,

(39:40):
some of the locals that went out and found it
and saw it, and they reported this this acorn shaped object,
which is kind of sort of it don't look like
that sort of a little bit like the Nazi bell,
and it's got what appears to be hieroglyphics around the
outside of it at the bottom. And but apparently it's
this usual thing, you know, like the little him came
in and sealed off the area and then black you know, yeah,

(40:03):
and trucked it away. But nothing to see here, folks. Yeah. Yeah.
So even though yeah, some people have tried to connect
us with the Nazi Bell, I don't think they're related,
but it's kind of a it's a cool, quirky, weird story. Yeah,
it is an interesting little story. I like it too,
it's just not it's just not Nazi bell like quite

(40:23):
enough to conclude with the Nazi. But I did like
how quick he was on the draw. He was he
knew exactly what it made him think of. And you
shot that email right over, which I love. I think
that's awesome. Man. If people hear things in shows and
it makes you think of something, by all means tell us,
because it's hard to catch every related thread, and I mean,

(40:44):
we worked really hard at it, but you just can't
always find him. Now we've got we've got a huge
office full of interns who are checking out. And you
know that your cats are not interns. They type, and
by type, I mean walk across your documents. Very good
at that. Yeah, at yah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'll

(41:09):
have anyone is an intern. Yeah. Yeah, So anyway, now,
but I did do my due diligence in that story,
and I did see the CAx spurg Ufo incident, but
I'm still not sure they related. But still thanks for
the link, because it is an interesting little story. Who
who knows. Maybe we'll talk about it someday. I guess
with that we're out of here. I guess it is

(41:32):
that time. It's a quick time, but it's that time.
So anyway, that's it for us. So dance, dance, everybody
will be on out of here. Yeah, rock on, boys
and girls, great good music to this guy.