Mass Hysteria, Why You Say “Like,” Beauty’s Moral Value

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 963 Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Learn about the harmful effects of the “mass hysteria” label; why you say “like”; and the link between beauty and moral worth.

Additional resources from neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan and further reading about the 2011 "mass hysteria" at LeRoy Junior-Senior High School:

Pick up "The Sleeping Beauties And Other Stories of Mystery Illness" here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/606597/the-sleeping-beauties-by-suzanne-osullivan/
NHS page: https://www.uclh.nhs.uk/our-services/find-consultant/dr-suzanne-osullivan
Follow @Suz_OSullivan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Suz_OSullivan

Neale Gulley. (2012, June 23). School’s end clears up New York students’ mystery twitching. U.S. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-students-twitcnew-york-h/schools-end-clears-up-new-york-students-mystery-twitching-idUSBRE85M0DF20120623

Verbal tics and filler words by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Kitty in San Francisco)

So, Um, How Do You, Like, Stop Using Filler Words? (Published 2017). (2021). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/verbal-ticks-like-um.html
Enfield, N. (2018, January 9). A linguist explains why it’s okay to say “um” and “uh.” Quartz; Quartz. https://qz.com/work/1175505/a-linguist-explains-why-its-okay-to-say-um-and-uh/
Liberman, M. (2014). Language Log» More on UM and UH. Upenn.edu. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=13713
Dr. Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein. (2017, March). A linguistic anthropologist explains why Christopher Mele’s New York Times article on filler words is wrong and banning phrases like “like” and “um” could be sexist. Quartz; Quartz. https://qz.com/921004/lets-stop-demonizing-filler-words/

We see beautiful things as having more moral worth by Cameron Duke

Moral standing | ethics | Britannica. (2021). In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/moral-standing
Klebl, C., Luo, Y., & Bastian, B. (2021). Beyond Aesthetic Judgment: Beauty Increases Moral Standing Through Perceptions of Purity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 014616722110236. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211023648
Williams, P. H., Burgess, N. D., & Rahbek, C. (2000). Flagship species, ecological complementarity and conserving the diversity of mammals and birds in sub-Saharan Africa. Animal Conservation, 3(3), 249–260. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-1795.2000.tb00110.x
Young, E. (2021, August 11). Here’s Why We Believe That Beautiful Animals Are More Deserving Of Our Protection. Research Digest. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/08/11/heres-why-we-believe-that-beautiful-animals-are-more-deserving-of-our-protection/
Episode about funny memes to protect ugly species: https://www.curiositydaily.com/rub-some-dirt-on-it-to-heal-wounds-funny-memes-can-save-endangered-species-and-space-changes-the-shape-of-astronauts-hearts/

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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/mass-hysteria-why-you-say-like-beautys-moral-value

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com.
0:06.4	I'm Cody Gough.
0:07.4	And I'm Ashley Hamer.
0:08.4	Today you learn why a psychosomatic illness in New York got worse after it was labeled as mass hysteria with
0:14.7	neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan. Then we'll like answer a listener question
0:19.7	about why we say like and you'll learn why we see beautiful things as having more moral worth.
0:26.0	Let's satisfy some curiosity.
0:29.2	About a decade ago, girls at high school in New York began suffering from mysterious symptoms.
0:35.0	No one could figure out why, but the symptoms were spreading.
0:39.0	There was a media frenzy, but just as quickly quickly all that attention died down. So what actually
0:46.4	happened to those girls? Well Suzanne O'Sullivan is back to tell us all about it.
0:51.8	She's a neurologist and science writer who has just published her latest book,
0:56.0	The Sleeping Beauty's and other stories of mystery illness.
1:00.0	Here's what she had to say about this bout of so-called mass hysteria.
1:05.0	Yeah, so I mean this is really sort of quite a quintessential story of what is often reported as mass hysteria.
1:11.0	So what happened is, was at the end of 2011 some school girls in
1:16.3	upstate New York all in the same school in a place called Leroy started getting
1:20.4	sort of ticked like the symptoms so just twitching basically. It was contained in the first instance
1:25.8	within a single friendship group and obviously they had access to good medical care so they saw their local neurologist and they were told that they had
1:37.0	what neurologists call a psychosmatic disorder is a conversion disorder so it's quite a
1:40.8	Freudian term I'm not sure I agree with it. It refers to converting stress into physical symptoms.
1:47.0	But they were given a diagnosis of a psychosomatic disorder under one of its many names.
	...

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