Just a note, in this episode, we're going to be using terms like madness, lunacy, and insanity.

Not because we think they're great words, but because we'll be discussing some old and antiquated ideas about mental health.

And these words reflect how people spoke about these issues historically.

Okay, here's the episode.

It was December 5th, 2012.

The U.S. was just recovering from Hurricane Sandy in a grueling presidential election, and Congress was deadlocked over the federal budget.

And in the midst of this chaos, a bill landed on Barack Obama's desk, and it kind of slipped through the headlines unnoticed. It was called the 21st Century Language Act of 2012, just 287 words long. And it was meant to do one thing.

Remove a word from the federal code. The word lunatic. See, up until that point, the word lunatic

was still tucked away in different parts of the

U.S. law. Meet reporter and producer Chris Agusa. You could find it in laws about banking,

controlling estates, and others. And even though the bill Obama signed removed the word from the

federal law books, it's actually still in use in some state and municipal laws.

Which is pretty shocking. I mean, imagine being in court and hearing a lawyer say stuff like

this. Quote, the words insane and insane person and lunatic shall include every idiot, lunatic,

insane person and person non-composed, mentos.

Yeah, not great.

The word lunatic conjures up images of the notorious asylums of the 17th and 18th centuries,

straight jackets and padded rooms.

Its history goes back much further, though, millennia back.

The word lunacy comes from the Latin word for moon, Luna, and the Latin word lunaticus,

which essentially means moonstruck, because there was a time when we thought the power to change

our moods and minds came from the sky.

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