When I talk to my students about literature and life, one of the things that always fascinates them is the power of the human mind, not just in the inspirational sense that grit and determination can push someone to achieve greatness, but in the haunting, fragile sense of what happens when the mind convinces us of something that

isn't really there. We talk about the 18 people in Leroy, New York, who not that long ago, in

2011, began developing sudden uncontrollable ticks. Otherwise, healthy individuals, 17 of which were high school

students, and 16 of those 17 were teenage girls, who began exhibiting Tourette's-like symptoms seemingly

overnight. Doctors couldn't pinpoint one physical cause. Instead, they pointed

to the psychological, stress, anxiety, even social contagion. In other words, mass psychogenic illness,

or mass hysteria. Or I'll tell them about pseudosysis. And that's when a woman

believes so completely that she is pregnant that her body follows along. Her abdomen swells,

her hormones shift, she lactates. Her body mimics the process of creating life, but there's no baby.

The mind alone commands the body and the body obeys.

History is full of these strange echoes of the mind's power.

In 1518, dozens of people in Strasbourg

danced themselves to exhaustion and even death in what became known as the dancing plague of

1518. Some blamed ergot fungus on rye bread. Others believed it was mass hysteria. Either way, the streets

filled with writhing bodies because of something that began, not with muscle or bone, but with the brain.

It's crazy what our minds can convince us of, the miraculous, the terrifying, the unexplainable,

and that's what brings me to our story today. Was our case this week a matter of shared psychosis

or something else entirely? This is the case of the Trump family.

Thank you. This is the case of the Trump family. Welcome to coffee and cases where we like our coffee and cases where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Allison Williams.

And my name is Maggie Damron.

We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement so justice

and closure can be brought to these families with each case we encourage you to continue in the

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