7 chapters across the catalog
Kimberlé Crenshaw invokes the historical case of Willie Horton and the actions of President Andrew Johnson to frame current opposition to CRT as a "tried and true playbook" of anti-black sentiment. The 1988 Willie Horton ad campaign is cited as a precedent for using racial fear for political leverage. This framing suggests that modern "hysteria" over school curricula is a continuation of post-Civil War backlash against racial equality.
A historical account describes the 1962 laughter epidemic in a village near the Uganda border, which began with three schoolgirls and eventually affected over 1,000 people. The "contagion" forced the closure of 14 schools and lasted up to 18 months. Investigators ruled out environmental factors, classifying it as a classic case of mass hysteria.
In 1983, nearly 1,000 Palestinians, mostly schoolgirls, were hospitalized for fainting and nausea. While initial reports blamed Israeli chemical warfare or nerve gas, medical investigators eventually determined the event was a mass hysteria triggered by psychological stress and the tense political climate of the region.
A 1939 incident in a Louisiana school involved female students developing uncontrollable muscle twitches, starting with a single girl at a school dance. The phenomenon spread to other students, causing parental alarm. Investigators eventually concluded the behavior was a form of mass hysteria driven by a desire for attention.
In 2006, residents of Mumbai flocked to Mahim Creek to drink seawater they claimed had miraculously turned sweet, despite the water being heavily polluted with sewage. The phenomenon lasted 18 hours before the water was reported as salty again. The hosts link this sensory delusion to reports of COVID-19 patients losing their sense of taste and smell.
The "Dancing Plague" of 1518 in Strasbourg, France, saw 400 people dance uncontrollably for a month, leading to numerous deaths from heart attacks and exhaustion. While theories ranging from spider bites to ergot poisoning were proposed, it remains a primary historical example of mass psychogenic illness. The hosts note that modern mass communication could scale such hysteria.
Dr. Oz and Dr. Drew provide commentary on TMZ regarding the mass hysteria surrounding COVID-19, urging healthy people to focus on protecting the elderly rather than panicking. They criticize the hoarding of medical masks by the general public and suggest that the population has been "primed" for this panic by entertainment products like the Netflix series *Pandemic* and the movie *Contagion*.
