Hello and welcome. It is Eric Erickson here. The Eric Erickson show, the phone number is 877979-9-7-4-25. You know, I've been telling everybody lately just because I think it's important. If you text the word show to 33-77, you can get links to the podcast, Google, Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, you get the 24-7 live stream link, and you get the daily stack of stuff, link to my daily email.

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interviews, all that sort of stuff by subscribing. So text the word show to 3377. Now, I got to begin

with a difficult topic. It should not be a difficult topic except for the age that we live in.

And to do this, I've got to be a little bit repetitious from where I was yesterday. We must

actually go in the way back machine to 1374. It was an outbreak of St. Vittis's dance. St. Vittis is the saint of dancers.

Back in 1374, groups of people, thousands at a time, started dancing uncontrollably. Now, some

scientists think they actually had a medical condition,

but a lot of people think it was something called a mass psychogenic illness or a social contagion.

It continued for days. People throughout Europe, not just in an isolated location, it spread through

Europe, sometimes for weeks, sometimes location, it spread through Europe.

Sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months.

Some people reportedly danced until they died.

Some had heart attack.

Some broke bones.

One written account described people as united by one common delusion, said James Fowler,

professor of medical genetics and political science. The dancers seemed to hallucinate and lose control of their senses. To this day, nobody really

knows how many there were. But experts like James Fowler of the University of California

believe the 14th century dancing outbreak was an early example of a social contagion.

So you know how, in fact, when I was in college, buddy mine said, if you want to know how a girl is interested in you, if you're at a bar or something and you think a girl's looking at you yawn.

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