MAD GASSERS & MASS HYSTERIA

Paul Giamatti’s CHINWAG with Stephen Asma

Treefort Media & Touchy Feely Films

History, Society & Culture, Science

4.9 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2024

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 Paul and Stephen strive to understand the phenomenon of mass panic and incidences of collective delusion throughout history. Learn the difference between mass panic and mass hysteria, how our minds influence our physical reactions, and the power of the media in escalating these events. What caused the hysteria that surrounded the Beatles and Elvis, or the outbreak of panic after the infamous Orson Welles radio broadcast of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds? Paul knows a thing or two about the “Mad Gasser of Mattoon” (look it up!), dancing manias in the Middle Ages, uncontrollable contagious laughing bouts, ergot poisoning, and the little-known Seattle windshield-pitting epidemic of 1954. Stephen takes a left turn into porn (we’ll let him explain) and flexes theoretical causes like socio political stressors, media and cultural influence, and of course, mirror neurons. It all comes back around to Havana Syndrome, psychogenic phenomena, and wait for it, PENIS THEFT. Paul Giamatti is an award-winning actor and producer. Stephen Asma is a professor and author specializing in the philosophy of science, religion, and art. 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 ========= 📋 Please help us get to know you better by completing our Chinwagger Survey 👉🏼 https://gum.fm/chinwag 📋 ========= New eps of CHINWAG drop Wednesdays for free... n(🧊) Make sure to follow us @chinwagpod 👉🏼 IG: https://www.instagram.com/chinwagpod/ Tik: https://www.tiktok.com/@chinwagpod Website: http://chinwagpod.fm YOUTUBE x CHINWAG Playlists ▶️ YT Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@chinwagpod Full episodes playlist: https://bit.ly/chinwagYT Animated shorts: https://bit.ly/chinwaganimations Send your stories, Qs, or thoughts to 📧 questions [at] chinwagpod [dot] fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello everybody it's Paul Giamotti speaking Stephen Asmas I live and breathe. How are you sir?
0:10.3	I'm doing well. Are you familiar with NPR's throughline podcast?
0:14.6	Yeah, it's an excellent podcast and I've been listening to it for a while.
0:18.0	Yeah, you're a listener. Yeah. I love this show. Every week they go back in time to understand the present
0:24.0	because you can't fully understand the moment we're living in without knowing where
0:27.2	we've been right very true and on every episode of NPR's through line the
0:31.0	hosts take a story from the news and go back to where it started.
0:34.5	They seek to answer one important question, how did we get here?
0:38.0	It's interesting stuff. They have some amazing topics I think our audience will find intriguing.
0:42.1	There was a recent one about the
0:43.2	scientist who tried to stop the aging process because he deemed old age to be a
0:48.5	disease that he could cure so it gets into all kinds of weird stuff.
0:52.1	Wow. Eternal youth. our fear of aging, our fear of death,
0:55.3	that traces he feelings back thousands of years.
0:57.9	It's remarkable discussion.
0:59.4	So very cool stuff.
1:00.9	If you're interested in learning about how the past informs the present, you'll love the through-line podcast from NPR.
1:07.0	On NPR's through-line, the past is brought back to life and listeners get to go inside the stories from then that shape the world we live in now.
1:15.2	Past is shrouded in mystery, correct, Steve?
1:17.6	It is.
1:18.2	To understand it, you have to get up close and reveal what may have gone unnoticed
1:22.1	by revisiting well-known historical
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Treefort Media & Touchy Feely Films, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Treefort Media & Touchy Feely Films and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.