Why Did 400 People Dance Until They Collapsed?

In 1518, a woman started dancing in a street in Strasbourg and couldn't stop. Within a month, as many as 400 people had joined her. The city's answer was to hire musicians and build them a stage. It made everything worse. This video follows the dancing plague of 1518, a laughter epidemic that closed schools in Tanganyika in 1962, and a wave of sudden tics that spread through teenagers who had never met, starting in 2019. Three outbreaks, five centuries apart, with no poison, no infection and no damage anyone could find. What they share says something uncomfortable about mass hysteria, the nocebo effect, and how much your own body takes its cues from the people around you. CHAPTERS 0:00 The dancing plague of 1518 0:24 One woman starts dancing 1:14 The cure that made it worse 2:23 A saint, a fungus, or fear? 3:39 The laughter epidemic of 1962 4:36 How the laughter spread 5:38 Why those girls? 6:51 Teenagers with sudden tics 8:08 A spike around the world 9:23 Why your body does this 10:41 What it all means SOURCES The dancing plague of 1518 - Dancing plague of 1518, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_plague_of_1518 - The Public Domain Review, "The Dancing Plague of 1518": https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-dancing-plague-of-1518/ - Discover Magazine, "Dancing till death: the mystery behind dancing manias": https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/dancing-till-death-the-mystery-behind-dancing-manias - Big Think: https://bigthink.com/the-past/dancing-plague-middle-ages/ - German History 27(2), Oxford Academic: https://academic.oup.com/gh/article-abstract/27/2/286/643079 The Tanganyika laughter epidemic - Rankin, A.M. & Philip, P.J. (1963). An epidemic of laughing in the Bukoba District of Tanganyika. Central African Journal of Medicine. - Tanganyika laughter epidemic, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika_laughter_epidemic - IFLScience: https://www.iflscience.com/the-tanganyika-laughing-epidemic-of-1962-a-case-of-mass-hysteria-at-the-e