Transcript of Episode 650: Plagues of Hysteria with Andrew McMahon

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I'm Indra Vaama, and in the latest season of The Spy Who, we open a file on the spies who invaded suburbia. The illegals weren't just blending in. They were the embodiment of the American dream. Nine to five jobs, dropping the kids off at soccer practice, and just the right amount of charm to slide into the orbits of the powerful. But behind closed doors, they were Russian operatives, meticulously crafting coded messages and feeding Moscow everything it needed to stay one step ahead of the US. When a powerful mole reveals the names and locations of the undercover spies, lies, the FBI finds itself walking a tightrope, protect its most crucial informant whilst avoiding a catastrophic diplomatic firestorm. Follow the Spy Who on the Wondery app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or you can binge the full season of the spies who invaded suburbia early and ad-free with Wondery Plus. I'm Efa Hersch. I'm Peter Frankerpern. And in our podcast, Legacy, we for the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, Genghis Khan. Best known for his brutal campaigns, he was accused of causing millions of deaths, but he also gave his followers religious freedom and education.

So is there more to his story than Violence and Bloodshed. I suspect that there might be, Peter. And since Violence and Bloodshed is basically all I ever learned about Genghis Khan growing up, I'm actually really curious to find out what lies behind the legend I can promise you are in for a treat because the Mongols were capable of exceptional acts of brutality. But all the stuff in the positive column either is never talked about or gets brushed to one side. I'm really grateful to have the chance to speak up for Mongol history. Follow Legacy Now wherever you get your podcasts. Or binge entire seasons early and ad free on WNDYRI Plus.

Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash.

I'm Elaina.

And I'm Andrew.

This is a special episode episode of Morbid, Everybody.

It's special. We have I guess.

We do. It's Andrew McMahon on the show. You might know him from one of his several bands. We've got something corporate, Jack's Mannequin, or Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness.

That's me. Welcome. Yeah, I'm glad to be here. You're all of those. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, of course. Thanks for coming. Thanks for being in the studio.

It's like such a cool place to be. I'm honored.

So are we.

Getting into the questions, I did read that you are somewhat of a child prodigy when it came to the piano. What drew you to the piano so young?

I mean, it's going to get heavy really quick. We had a loss in our family. My uncle passed away. Right around that same time, I had a friend's dad teach me how to play a Jerry Lee Lewis song on the piano. I had piano lessons a little bit as a kid, but I took the cord that he taught me and all of a sudden just started writing songs. That was how I processed my grief from losing my uncle. That was it for me. I was like, this is the thing. You know what I mean? Writing songs became my whole... I would come home from school and I would just sit at the piano until I was told I had to go to sleep or do something for school or whatever. I love that. And it's been that way ever since.

That's when you know it's meant to be, when it's something that like heels apart. Yeah, exactly.

I just started trying to learn. I got like a keyboard. It's hard.

Yeah. I mean, I think when you're nine, it's like a whole, right? Everything is so much meldable. Yeah, you have that whole neuroplasticity or whatever. And I really liked it. I didn't start going to piano lessons until maybe a year or two after that. For me, it was just constant discovery. Like you said, it was a way to process my world. I think I blew past the it's hard part until I got into having to study classical music. Then it was like, this sucks. Yeah, this is hard. It gets real hard. Yeah, and I wasn't a great student, but I did what I had to to learn how to navigate the piano and read and do all that stuff. But it was always just a safe haven for me.

It worked out.

Yeah, I think.

Yeah, we're all thankful for that.

It's been the only real job I've had to have my whole life, which is a really a huge gift. I mean, I'm always wondering when the bottom will drop. But yeah, so far, so good. Yeah.

Well, you've been making music since 1998? Yeah. Well, I mean, since you were a kid, but officially.

Yeah. So Something Corporate, which was my official second high school band, throughout my junior senior high school continued to get bigger, and I skipped college and focused on that. Miraculously, we got signed when I was 18. That's incredible. That was the beginning of all of it. So something corporate did really well, and we toured a ton and put out records. Then I've hopped from about every 10 years or so start a new project because I am restless, I guess you could say. Yeah, it's been a journey for sure. And I've had good fans who are willing to follow me through multiple name changes. Here we are.

Here we are. Something corporate was my thing in high school. Really?

I love that.

16-year-old Elaina. Yeah, 16-year-old Elaina was at every show, every single show.

I think that's how we connected was because I started having fans message me on Instagram. You got mentioned on the Morbit It's so funny to think about. The first one, I was like, oh, that's cool. Then I saw another few roll through, and then I was like, who are these people? I'm like, we should reach out to these women. They keep talking about us. It seems like they're pretty popular. Then we met at the What was it, Road Runner Show? Yeah, it was like a Road Runner Show. On the corporate reunion. Yeah.

Thanks to Connor.

Yes. Yes. Ciao down. Connor forever.

Connor's a good man. He's a very good man. My tour manager, he's our Gen Z holding down. We I like to bring young bucks into the mix and bring them up. That's always been a part of our mission. And Connor rose the ranks from content to now he's tour managing me.

He's a good representation of Gen Z. He is.

He is. He's the representation. I hate the whole kids these days philosophy. I really like it. To me, I feel like it's such a sign of you're not actually paying attention. And I've had my whole perception of the Gen Z universe reshaped by Connor and his people and people we've brought into our camp. I love that. I'm like, these guys are actually hard workers and super fun and very fashionable.

They are.

Yeah, very fashionable. I'm a huge fan.

You got to meet the right Gen Zs. I'm a millennial, so I border.

She's on the cusp.

I like to say I'm a millennial because Gen Z gets a lot of hate.

What's funny is I always rejected the fact that I was a millennial because I graduated in 2000 and we didn't have a qualification. We were just in this nether group between Gen X and whatever was coming next. Then I think by the time I was 30, then they started calling us millennials, and I was like, I denounced this. No, I wasn't. Yeah, I don't like this qualification. I I worked at Hollywood Video in high school, like RIP video stores.

Guys, that's where you could rent movies and bring them home.

That was where you could rent VHS tapes and also DVDs. My favorite job ever. I to make, we would be able to pick what could be on the screen, and I would make everybody play this one DVD. And it was like drive through records.

Oh, yeah. I remember it well.

And I would make them play it just so we could have the something corporate performance. That's amazing. I love that. Over and over.

I had many of my friends were Blockbuster video employees, and we used to go hang out at Blockbuster on the weekends because they would just, they'd smoke weed in the back. We're proper degenerate Blockbuster employee managerial staff. Yes, I do. I miss the Blockbuster. It's such a good vibe. Yeah, it's a good vibe.

It really is. That's one thing I wish I experienced. I remember Blockbuster a little bit from being five and six, but beyond that, no.

I mean, the truth is the new model is working better. Oftentimes, there were no videos available at the podcast. Very true. But it was a fun snapshot. It's just the environment. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like a cozy vibe. I love it. Well, going back to the music, how would you say your relationship with music has changed and evolved throughout the years that you've been doing it?

I mean, look, I think you're an author, so you know it's like you start by writing because it's just like a reflex and it's this exploratory thing. And I think the biggest shift is that you have to continue to find ways to explore and make it fresh and make it exciting. So I've changed processes over the years. I think when some of that like, Oh, I just have to be sitting at the piano all day. And now I have a family and I spend a lot a time on the road. I do little tricks to reengage myself in the writing process. I'll write with other people that I'm really excited about. I try and always surround myself with writers that are both older and younger than me. Just I love having people in the room that are still in that phase of writing where they're hyper creative and just super hungry, and it keeps me hungry. I think that's changed. Then what you write about changes, Yeah, of course. As you get to certain stages of life and the questions are changing about what is relevant or what's important to you, you have to find new ways in to discuss those things.

I feel like changing projects for me has been a part of that. It's like something corporate was very much about all of the things that you encounter in high school and coming of age. Intense emotions. Yeah. It's a lot of makeups and breakups. I think our industry, the music business is fueled on a lot of that. As somebody who wants to write and perform and do this till the day I die, I've had to shift my thinking. A lot of Jack's Manican was... I got sick when I was in the middle of that project. I had cancer, and I was a cancer survivor. I was like, How do you write about that? Then shifting into this next phase, a lot of it's been about keeping my edge while maintaining a family and a life and and how to look after my kid and those questions that come with fatherhood and trying to stay creative. I think those are big parts of how I shift and try and stay creative.

I love that. It's cool because you can look back on every stage of your life and there's a song for it or an album for it, really.

Yeah, totally. I think, too, I've tried really hard because a lot of my fans have grown up with me. Rather than making the mistake, I think a lot of people do as they get older their artistic processes or trying to recreate their youth and still sing about those things. I think the challenge for me is, how do I really talk about what's relevant to me now and put that in a pop song. That can be tricky. But I think if you strike on something that's universal, it applies backwards and forwards. I want people who've been with me for a really long time to be like, Oh, he's talking to an experience that I'm having right now because we're a similar age and going through similar things in life. But also, if I do it well, you could be 15 and pick up that record and it will land. Most of the artists I was listening to when I was 15 were much older than I was, and somehow those songs were still connected.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, that's what you just said. People who have listened to you have grown up with you now. It's funny because when we went to the Something Corporate concert where we met, it was funny to look around and see. I was like, oh, it's just a bunch of moms and dads being just transporting back into something corporate days. But it's fun because it's like, we've been able to relate to you in the music the entire way through. You can feel the shifts, but they're so smooth because you're going, we're going into that phase, so we're going to go in there together. It's just been really nice. Last night, we were talking about Bluey, and I was like, well, we're just parents now together.

It's wild. I think it's a task, but I think it's a worthy one. I'm super reverent of the fact that there are people who I've been seeing at shows since they were high school, middle-aged kids coming out to see me. When I was not much older than them, I was 18 or 19, but it felt like a world apart, right? When you're grown and then you have a kid in the audience. Now we're orbiting the same life trajectries. I want to make music for those people who have been in those rooms, and I want them to have songs that they can connect to at this stage of wherever they're at.

You're killing it.

No, thank you. I try really hard.

And it trickles down because there was three generations of us at that show because it was Elaina, me, and my little cousin. So it's like, I started listening to you when I was six. Because I was like, you're listening. And then still do. And my cousin's three, singing like, I woke up in a car. So it does trickle down.

Yeah. Well, the shows I went to when I was... The first shows I was going to, a lot of them were bands. My brothers and sisters, three of them are 10, 12 years older than I am. I went to see R. E. M. When I was in the seventh grade or whatever. I love that. I became a huge Tom Petty fan. And going to those shows, seeing the young people that were picking up heartbreakers to me, to people my brothers and sisters aged as an older, in a dream world, that's really what you want. You want to see people across generations connecting to what do. That's the fight I'm in every day is just to make sure that it spreads to as many people across generations as possible. It works.

It does. You're doing it. It's working. My youngest is obsessed with Happy, the new single. I love that. She was like, Wait a second. He sings Happy? I was like, Yup. She's five, so you're hitting all the edges.

That's the deal.

Yeah, that's what we want.

Well, finally, to transition us into our world of morbid and macabre, you have a song with your band, Something Corporate. It called Me and the Moon. Yes.

It's one of my favorites.

It's a little more eerie and haunting. It's not the typical style for you. Tell us a little bit about where the idea for that song came from, how it came to be.

We put out the first something for a record, I I think a lot of that music was really reflective of our high school, post-high school journey, because a lot of those songs were written in that time. That was the first record we went out and toured the world with and got it noticed for. Then By that point that I was coming back to write those songs for North, I was just in a much different headspace, and it was like, I wanted to do something moodier. It was like the first time I was living in Jordan Pundik from New Found Glory. I was living in his guest room. It was the first time I lived away from my parents. I had all this freedom just to sit in a room and write all day. I would be lying to say I wasn't smoking a ton of weed at at that point and just playing the piano and just trying to find new cords and new chord shapes and progressions. I got to this piano figure that plays under the verses of that song, which I was like, this is so cool. It felt like something really new for me.

The first words that showed up were, it's a good year for a murder.

That's so good.

It's such a good opening line. I remember even in that moment being like, oh, this is going to land pretty interesting. You're like, this is different. I'm like, Punkrat Princess to Let's talk about murder. But I was just in love with it. It wrote itself, the verse wrote itself, and it became about this idea of a suburban mother finally reaching her breaking point with her husband.

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I grew up in an amazing house.

By the time I was in high school, it was a house full of women. It was my sister and my mom and me. My mom never tried to kill my dad, so there's none of that. There's none of that. Dispel that more right now. But I think I could relate to the angst of that, just having been... My mom and I were super close growing up. It was like, originally it was a courtroom drama. The chorus was all about what happens after the the murder, and then it didn't fit right. A little bit down. Me and the band were on tour in... We were in Amsterdam, I think, or something like that. Or no, maybe... We were in Leeds and ended up meeting up with a couple of the drive-through bands and went on a very wild, psychedelic journey. I remember I was following the moon all night by myself through Leeds, England. I was like, I was certain I was calling me. I won't paint the details of what led me to that moment. But I remember just going like, I just want to go see where this moon is at. I just followed it through the streets.

It was you and the moon. Yeah, totally. Until I ended up locked in a hotel bath. Bathroom, and I had this piece of paper and I just wrote, It's me and the moon. Oh, my God, stop. That's amazing. The handwriting was cursive and just like... Super whimsical. Writing the words was actually a part of the journey. I woke up with that piece of paper and I ended up on a stage sound checking, and I finished the song on stage, and I just wrote the chorus to the rest of the song that day. Wow. Yeah, it's been one of my favorites forever. The fact that fans followed us into that phase was such a huge thing because I was like, Are they going to hate me for taking this hard left turn into 6/8 murder mystery song? It was welcome. That's very good. But yeah, that song was a journey from start to finish. Still, I think, is a high watermark for something corporate catalog for sure.

Definitely. I remember hearing that song for the first time and being like, What It was like, Excuse me?

It was definitely a challenge to fans to be like, Do you want to go here? But it gave me a lot of hope for the future, too. That it was like, Okay, cool. I can stretch out and people will take a chance and follow us.

If we'll go with you for murder, the sky's the limit. The sky's the limit. You're good.

It's such a great song. Thank you so much.

I think now we can go into dancing plagues. Yes.

You know, quite the transition.

Because This is music, dancing. You do a lot of dancing on stage. I love to dance. It's part of the whole thing. We're going to talk about dancing plagues, and we're also going to talk about a couple of nunneries that just had some stuff going on that I thought was pretty hysteria. I love that. It's I'm where we're going here.

I was raised a Catholic, so I'm all for getting into the nun phase of this. Let's do this.

We're going to start way back. This was on Christmas Eve in 1021 CE.

Oh, shit.

Way back. This That is where it begins. So this small German town called Kolbicht. I looked up all these pronunciations, so don't come for me.

No, you always kill the pronunciations. I try. In a good way.

Sometimes I kill it the other way. So 18 of the town's residents gathered outside of the church and started dancing. Just started dancing and carrying on with wild abandon. The noise from these dancers made it impossible for the priest to deliver Mass. So he went outside and he started to reprimand the group, and they were just seeming completely oblivious to him. It wasn't like they were ignoring him. They just didn't even know he was there. Just kept going. Rather than heed the priest's words, which at that time people would heed that priest's words, they just continued dancing and clapping and leaping. They were forming what would later be documented to be called a Ringdance of Sin.

Oh, obsessed.

Which I love.

I want in. Where do we sign up for the Ringdance of Sin?

So according to the legend, the priest, who was very angry, very incensed about the interruption and disrespect, quite frankly, cursed them all to dance for the entire year, and none of them were able to regain control of their bodies until the following Christmas.

What?

Wait, the priest did this? Which I didn't realize priests could curse people.

So he insisted that they keep going because they had even started.

He was like, Oh, you want to dance? You're going to dance yourself. You're going to dance yourself. You're going to dance until next Christmas. Yeah. And they did. And by the time the curse was ended, the group was exhausted and reportedly fell into a deep sleep, and a lot of them never woke up from that deep sleep.

So they died.

So he just straight up killed someone. Okay, priest.

Can I ask practical questions about food and bathroom? None of that.

None of that. In fact, many of these dancing plagues, food, bathroom breaks, sleep, don't happen. Not necessary. They just dance through it, and that's how most of them die. Wow. There's deaths that come out of these.

Are they just peeing all over themselves?

Probably. It's probably... It's reckless. Rancid. Whatever is happening there is a lot.

So some people live for a year doing this?

I guess so. Or they would join, I think, maybe. Others would join. So given I don't know how old the story is. Obviously, I'm sure there's been some embellishments. But according to historian John Waller, there was nothing in the story that medieval people found hard to believe, to be quite honest.

They were like, Yeah, whatever. They were like, Yeah, people probably would dance themselves for a year to death.

Because it was a society that was very accustomed to assigning supernatural explanations to literally anything they couldn't understand. The idea of such crazy behavior being the result of a curse from a holy man was like, Yeah, obviously. That's what happened. Why not? As he points out, plenty of sources indicate that this obscure chronicler may have embellished a real event. There was truth to this. Basically, the details might have been a a little bit exaggerated, but that manic and uncontrollable dance that they were doing probably happened because it has happened. This was the beginning of like, dancing plagues being documented. Now, 200 years later, in a German town of Erfurt, looked it up, a similarly crazy and bizarre outbreak of dancing mania broke out in 1247. So this time, at least 200 people are said to have gathered on a bridge It was over the Moselle River in Maastricht, where they danced until the bridge collapsed. Stop it. And all of them died.

Said, Rocket till the wheels fall off. They did. And then they died. That was it.

Bridge collapsed, Everyone died. That was it. Then there's... So that happened.

How long were they up there for, does it say?

It doesn't say how long, but I feel like it probably wasn't that long because 200 people on a bridge. I don't think the structural integrity of bridges in 1247 was something of note. Not quite the same as. I'm assuming they all just went down. But there is a second version of this story. So there is a little wiggle room. So this one, in this version of the story, the same thing happened, except everyone didn't die. People died, but there were survivors. People say that some of those survivors were taken to a nearby chapel. Where they kept dancing. This nearby chapel was dedicated to Saint Vitus, or Vitus, excuse me. Where these people received treatment for their, quote unquote, mania, and many of them were restored to full health. They said they went to this specific chapel, and that's what cured them.

And they never danced again.

Never danced again.

A flash mob gone wrong.

I've gone horribly wrong. And then a chapel was able to heal any of the survivors. And St. Vitus comes up a few times.

What's St. Vitus, the Saint of?

Apparently, he has something to do with dance. He has something to do with it, and he is able to... He gets brought up a lot because the dancing madness actually gets translated into being called St. Vitus Dance.

Oh, nice.

Is he a patron saint of anything?

Hold on. Let's look.

Wait a second. I'm excited for this. Because he comes up a lot.

He's the patron saint of Standing Still.

Of Chillin. Of Chillin.

So his name is sometimes rendered Guy or Guido, was a Christian martyr, I know, from Sicily. I know. His surviving Noography?

Obviously.

Yeah, that is pure legend, blah, blah, blah. I don't know if he's a Patron Saint.

He's the Patron Saint of dance. I think we can all agree. Let's go with that.

Yeah, exactly.

You'll take one. Yeah.

It is also led to Vitus being considered the Patron Saint of dancers and entertainers in general. He is also said to protect against lightning strikes, animal attacks, and oversleeping.

That's sick of him. Yeah, I appreciate that.

He does not guide me. I'm oversleeping all the time.

He didn't help the first group that slept until they died. No, exactly.

He didn't help them. Now, it's from this second telling of that story that the affliction got the name Corosania, which is Greek, and it translates to dancing madness. Now, it's more well known as Saint Vitus Dance. So he gets to be named in the affliction. That's fun. Now, over time, the terminology would change a little bit, but the behavior would end up being called choria, which is an actual disorder. It's incorrectly really that, referred to as that. Because this disorder, choria, is a disorder of the central nervous system that causes irregular brief jerking moments, movements, but it's not dancing.

They meant koreo.

Yeah, it's just They meant chorio, and then chorio is not that.

It's not hanging with your homies on a bridge, you're dating until it falls down. No.

If you ever hear somebody say it, you correct them if you ever hear them saying it. Okay. I'm sure it comes up a lot. All the time.

It's very common in my bit.

It comes up on the road a lot. These two early examples were contained to Germany. But a similar form of hysteria that had similar symptoms to it was known as Tarentism. It emerged in the 13th century in Italy. And according to Robert Bartholomew, which I am obsessed with the name Bartholomew. Same.

I love it a lot.

Why isn't it used anymore? I don't know. He said, People sleep or awake would suddenly jump up feeling an acute pain like the sting of a bee. Some saw the spider, others did not. But they knew that it must be from the tarantula.

Like capital T, the spider?

The spider.

Okay. Not a spider. No.

The spider. The only spider. The only spider. They ran out of the house into the street to the marketplace, dancing in great excitement. Soon they were joined who, like them, had been bitten or by people who had been stung in previous years, for the disease was never quite cured. The poison remained in the body and reactivated every year in the heat of the summer.

What?

I love it.

This is amazing.

I wish this still happened.

I feel like it probably does. Maybe we just don't hear about it. Let's make it happen. Let's make it. Flash mobs are actually this.

Yeah, pretty much.

They've all been bitten.

They have by the Spider. And it happens in the heat. I like that it reactivates in the heat of the summer. Yeah. Summer, we're going to get crazy.

Let's party. Yeah. Makes sense.

And it's called tarentism. And it's most often girls and young women are afflicted, probably because they're like, Hysteria, am I right? This is so crazy.

I'm so random. Yeah.

And that's when it got labeled hysteria, when they were like, Oh, girls and young women get it? Yeah. Hysteria. Like the dancing plagues, there was no identifying reliable cause of the tarantism because a tarantula bite doesn't cause this. So there's no reason for this. But they just believed it to be a mass psychogenic illness, which is even scarier.

Yeah, a little bit.

It's probably just a reaction to the times.

That's what- Everyone's probably bored. In the end, that is what it feels like it is.

We feel depressed. Now it's time to wild out. Dance.

It's like a better version of the witch trials. Yeah.

Like a way better version.

A much I think it's way better.

The early instances of the dancing plagues were pretty limited in size and scope, and they were, again, limited to specific locations. But then came 1374, you all. An outbreak of dancing mania started in a German city of Aachen, I believe it is, and it eventually spread to other cities outside of Germany. So it's happening. Dancing everywhere.

Were they all happening at the same time? Was it like- Some of them were, and then some of them would start at the end of the next one, and it was just like a continuous thing.

Like a wave. Yeah, like a wave in a stadium. The outbreak of 1374, sometimes referred to as St. John's Dance, began like the others. It was like a small group forming a circle in the town square, starting to dance with each other. But the thing that keeps happening with these is they start to dance and it's fine. Then they get more frenzied, and it just loses all control. They lose control of their senses. They don't care who's near them. They are like, whirling around, looking like they're in a state of just like, ecstasy. It's like a train. It's like a rave. Like a straight up rave.

I was at a show last year. It feels similar.

You're like, I had this.

That was it.

Some would dance for hours, some would dance for days at a time, not stopping. Not stopping to eat, drink, sleep, piss, anything.

There it is.

Yeah, there we go. When they did finally stop, the dancers all spoke of some undeniable compulsion to dance. Then they would complain of extreme oppression and groaned as if in the agonies of death.

What?

Then they would groan until they were swathed in clothes, breath bound tightly around their waist What?

Well, I feel like they probably were aching from dancing. You ever take a Zumba class? It's a lot. It is.

You need one of those little roller ball things? Yeah. Just get it all out. Or that little machine we have that can hit Oh, I love that thing. A tight muscle out? Yeah. So a short time later, the dancer's pain would subside because they would get the roller ball or do what they needed to do.

When they finished Zumba.

And they remained pain free until the next compulsion came over them. And then it would keep happening. They would go through periods of time where they were fine, and then they just start dancing a fool again. Oh, no.

Did they say they enjoyed the dancing when they were doing it?

I think they were in a trance. I don't think they could even remember. They didn't know. They just felt the pain afterwards, which sucks. But within a few weeks, that plague, the St. John's Dance Plague, had spread to Liege, Utrecht, and Tongres.

Those places.

Those places. In Then further out to towns in Belgium and the Netherlands. Wow. And according to one account, they danced together ceaslessly for hours or days and in wild delirium. The dancers collapsed and fell to the ground exhausted, groaning and sighing as if in the agonies of death. And many later claimed that they had seen... This is literally my favorite thing I've ever heard, by the way. I'm so excited. Many of them claimed that they had seen the walls of heaven split open and that Jesus and the Virgin Mary had appeared before them.

Were they dancing? Were Jesus and Mary dancing? That would be fun.

I cannot say. I cannot say.

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I'm John Robbins, and joining me on How Do You Cope this week is Sophie Willam.

I remember reading all this stuff and thinking, There's no way I'm going to be okay. Look at this. I'm a mess. I'm not what I thought I was. I thought I was going to be this success. Actually here, I'm being told I'm not going to be that.

That's How Do You Cope with me, John Robbins.

Find us wherever you get your podcasts.

But the walls of heaven split open during this dancing session.

You just have to dance your way into heaven. You do.

I feel like that's actually probably true. Yeah. It seems like a reaction to whatever their whatever their religious- Being oppressed by. They're like, Okay, we have to chill, but if we just go freak out, we can claim we're seeing heaven.

They're like, God, it's a It's a gorgeous path. They're like, Jesus and Mary are over here.

They came in like, let's go.

They're joining the Ring of Sin, whatever it was.

It'd be fun if the priest joined in at that point. They're like, Is this how we do it?

That's how fun Mass.

Jesus and Mary are here, you said?

For the next A hundred years, people in Germany and surrounding countries would periodically fall into these transes and manias.

A hundred years?

Yeah. In 1491, this is literally my favorite thing ever, by the way. In 1491, several residents of a nunnery, here we in the Hapsberg Neverlands were overcome with the compulsion to dance. But this time, it wasn't just dancing. So there were some that just were getting their groove on. And then they would also be accompanied by instances of none Hold on to your habits. They would climb trees and behave like cats. And they would all miaow together.

What the fuck? Rad. I love this.

I hate that this wasn't on film.

Climbing up the tree.

Just climbing in a full What habit. That's all I'm thinking of is full nun gear. Just lifting up trees and climbing.

What the fuck?

I love it. Also in this delirium, it gets racy because they would sexually proposition the priest.

Good. Iconic.

Then it got better because the priests were like, no, no. And they would call exorcist to be like, clearly this demon's afoot. When the exorcist would come, the nuns would sexually proposition the exorcist. Stop. I'm obsessed with it. I don't know why I love it so much. Let them live. Let them live. Like the people in 11th century Germany, the nun's affliction was believed to be a curse, obviously, brought by Saint Bidas. It was apparently supposed to be in response to the supposed moral laxity and split from the church of the period.

So they were like- Now we've got our answer.

Here it comes. So that's what that... I guess other supernatural suspects in the case that were brought up were St. John the Baptist, demons as a whole. Of course. Any demon will do.

The hierarchy of demons.

And Satan himself.

Oh, shit.

Which apparently some of the nuns, while they were sexually propositioning the priests and the exorcists, this and not getting any... They were getting pushback. They were like, Well, that's fine, because I have also fucked Satan. They were literally being like- The nuns would say that? Yeah, they were literally... I don't... Probably not like that. Not exactly like that. They probably had a nun way of saying it.

Maybe.

They've had relations with the devil, basically. Wow. Yeah, so they were claiming it. Like, Let's go, girls.

When it was over, were they allowed to stay in the nunery or were they exiled?

That's a great question. I don't think they were exiled.

Okay.

But perhaps they were. I feel like when you said you fucked the devil, I feel like that's your time to step out.

Skirt out, yeah. I don't think they're going to find a new path in life.

I don't think you get like, This is one strike, that thing. Now, in the 15th century in German, this is another nunnery because this is awesome. One nun started biting the others.

Was she dancing first or she just started eating?

No dancing involved.

Was she one of the cat nuns?

She was not one of the cat nuns. This is a different nunnery. She starts biting the other nuns. Then they were all like, Wow, that sucks. Don't do that. Then after a while- Direct quote. Yeah, they were like, Wow. Direct quote on the record. That sucks. Stop doing that. Then one of them was like, Well, I guess I'll just bite you back, which I get her. I get her. If she's still biting you- Don't bite me. Bite her back. And one of them bit her back, and then they all started biting each other. And then they were just rapidly biting it. All of them just started biting each other, biting the priests. Again, they brought the priests.

This is not a sanitary time. It's never a good time to bite anybody, but that's bad.

No. That's bad. Are they still dancing while they're biting? That's the question.

I feel like dancing may not have been a part of this one. It might have just been a biting scenario, but it would be really funny to think of them dancing and biting. Get their groove on. She's And every once in a while, the beat drops and they bite someone. The beat drops. Yeah. So then word spread about this affliction because people were like, Whoa, have you heard of this?

These nuns go crazy.

And the affliction started spreading.

The biting one. Yeah.

Now the biting one's going. We got a lot going on. Apparently, nunries in Saxenburg and Brandenburg, Holland, now even Rome. Whoa. All biting each other and biting the priests.

And meowing.

And meowing. There was meowing as well. Awesome. And it only stopped And this is literally documented. It says it only stopped because they got exhausted.

Exhausted of biting each other?

They just got tired. At some point, you're going to get tired. I mean, yeah.

I wonder how long.

I know. How long can you bite someone?

I don't know.

Write in. More of the podcast at gmail.

Com.

Yeah, let us know. Do an experiment. Wouldn't it be great if after this airs, these plagues begin spreading all over again?

Exactly. It pops imagine. We're responsible. Now, by far, One of the most notorious of the dancing plagues occurred in Strasbourg, France, in July 15, 18. This is the one that a lot of people know about. The event began pretty innocuously. It was just a single, older woman just going into the streets, into the city center. Her name was Frau Trofeya. Love it. I think is what I say it. That's how I say it. She just walked out and she was like, let's do this. And she just started dancing. She said, let's dance. Let's go. She used to David Bowie before David Bowie.

That's where David Bowie came from.

He came from a dancing plate.

A nunnery of dancing. Yeah, a dancing plague in a nunnery.

Canon. That is where David Bowie came from. He came from a dancing plague. It was Frau. So By mid-august, and she wouldn't stop, of course, because that's how these work.

She had a plague.

She had a plague. By mid-august, hundreds of people had joined her in the town square.

Again, a foshmob.

All of them uncontrollable. And like the previous ones, the dancers in Strasberg never stopped to eat, never stopped to drink, sleep, nothing. Not long after the mania began, quote, as many as 15 people a day dropped dead.

Oh, my God. What a way to go out, though.

I I mean, there are a lot of ways you could die back then, but it seems like dancing would have been one of the better ones. I would choose that.

It's like real plague or dancing plague. Yeah, dance, baby. I'm picking dancing plague. And they just kept going. So people would be dropping dead, and they were still dancing. It's not like they stopped and were like, pause, let's get this one out. No, they just danced. People dropping.

Wow.

Yeah. And unlike many of the earlier dancing plagues, which were recounted a lot, they change over time, like folklore. This one, this particular one in 1518, was very well documented. It's a real event that is very documented. It's appeared in everything from historical text, news accounts, church and medical documents. It's in a lot of things. And according to many of these documents, the woman who started the plague was brought to a church devoted to... Can we guess?

St. Vincent.

St. Vitus. Oh, Vitus, my bad. Maybe St. Vincent, too. Mixed up my states. Who knows? A few days after she started dancing, she was brought to a church devoted to him, and she was cured, apparently.

This is while the other people are still dancing. They're still going. They're like, You started this. We're going to take care of you, but we're going to let the others go.

They're trying to chop the head off the snake and see if it all falls.

Maybe if she stops.

Yeah, maybe if Frau stops. No, they all just kept going. Because in the days after that, others started joining more even. As soon as her absence was felt, they were like, We need to beef this up. Let's get more people in here. Let's dance for her. So in order to curtail the mania, the city forbade musicians to perform publicly. Oh, boo. Which like... That sucks. Lame. Yeah. Kind of a killjoy. And eventually started taking the dancers one by one to the St. Vitus Church to get treatment. No matter how quickly they removed the dancers off the streets to St. Vitus's Church there, they were just replaced by new dancers. People would just show up.

It's like one leaves, five more come.

Yeah, they had alternates.

See, they had to cancel the musicians because they're like, This is easy for us. We could just go and we already have an audience.

Yeah, let's go. I know. They were like, We can really get big here. This is our spot. They're like running around the dancers being like, Listen to my demo. Get a record deal out here. Now, in the decades and centuries that followed this, dancing plagues continued across Europe with significant events occurring in the 16th and 17th centuries in Switzerland and Italy. And there hasn't been a really documented case It's a dancing media in a lot of centuries. But Tarentism, which is thought to be similar, has been documented in Italy as recently as the 1950s. Oh, shit.

So remind me, Tarentism, it isn't dancing, but it's It is dancing.

It is. Yeah. It is dancing, but it's a little different because they claim it's from a spider.

Okay.

You get bit by a torrential, which I didn't even know they had torrentials in Italy. That was news to me.

I don't think I knew that either.

I don't know where I thought What torancias were?

Australia.

I think everything is Australia.

I can attest to Joshua tree.

Oh, my God.

They're there, too. There was actually the last Jacks Manican record we almost named Torrentula Mating Season because we actually We rented a house in Joshua tree during tarantula mating season, and they were everywhere. That's so exciting. I don't care for spiders, but big ones I care for less. Yeah, way less. If you ever want to go get some tarantism, I That's where I went. I went to Joshua tree around October, November.

So they were in the house?

I wish I could find this video because there's a video of me and two of my bandmates running around the house screaming in a high pitch, like trying to chase a tarantula out of the house.

How big?

I mean, bigger than my hand. No. Yeah, they're huge. No.

I just start crying and never stop.

No. I don't cry easily. No, you don't. I would start sobbing uncontrollably if I saw a tarantula.

Yeah, 100 %.

I cry easily. In my house, I'd never sleep in there again.

It's my understanding they're not that... I don't know that the big ones are that bad.

No, I don't think they really do much.

Yeah, But they don't look like anything you want to spend time with. It's unfortunate for them.

I know. I feel like up close, aren't they really cute? Their faces?

Their faces are cute. With a magnifying boss. I'm not getting up close.

I never found them cute.

You're like, me? Is it actually no? It's not my thing.

In Australia, the Huntsman spiders. My TikTok has figured out that I hate them, but that I will watch your whole video about one. So it just keeps giving me Huntsman spider videos. And apparently you can hear Huntsman's walking down the hall. They're so big. And I was like, that's all I need to know. I can't ever go to Australia. Not for me. Ever. I die. And people have house huntsmen's where they're just like, oh, that's just like Leroy. No. The Sunsman. He just lives here. He takes care of the bugs. I'm like, who takes care of him, though?

Like, who? He's lawless.

You're like, he takes care of the mosquitoes. I'm like, what?

I'd rather get fit by a mosquito than live with Leroy.

You can't look like that. No. I can't. I cannot. So, yeah, if you ever want that, go to Joshua tree, apparently during their mating season. Now, people obviously blamed all these manias on either the spider or the civil and other supernatural shit for all the dancing plagues. But lots of religious intervention was obviously brought in to treat them, exorcisms and the like. And in cases where the dancers, this is interesting because this is very regional. So it's like they would do these things where it's like the treatments for it were very regional to what they were thinking or believing in that place. But when the dancers were foreign, not of that area, the regional cultural differences It did uphold the belief in demonic possession. So it would always go back to demonic possession. But according to Robert Bartholomew, quote, The behavior of these dancers was described as strange because while exhibiting actions that part of the Christian tradition, other elements were foreign. And he points to one account that says, In their songs, they uttered the names of devils never before heard of this strange sect.

How would you know what they were?

It's like, What? How do you know they're devils, too? Maybe they're gods. Maybe they're angels. Yeah. Maybe they're friends.

Well, if you're dancing, the devil has to be a part of it. Obviously. Several devils have to be a part of it.

Now, demonic possession was really the main suspect in the beginning. But in later plagues, the cause of the mania would often be attributed because obviously we hear it in the nunnery, it would be attributed to immorality and sin, particularly those in which the dances were overtly sexual or predominantly performed by-Women. Women. One description read, They indulged in disgraceful immodesty for many women during the shameful dance and mock bridal singing, bared their bosoms while others of their own accord offered their virtue. Oh, honey. So now these ladies are out there just being like, Coming in.

It's brewing in the streets.

Show an ankle. Damn. Show an ankle.

What is offered their virtue, though? What is the- That's what I want there. Literally show an ankle. They showed their shoulder or something.

It's like, Do you want to hold my hand and dance? They're like, Holy shit.

You got to get inside, girls. You got to a nunnery where you can start meowing and propositioning priests. Yeah.

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Terms of Conditions apply. Now, in later years, such as the dancing plague in Strasberg, like the really famous one, the events were frequently attributed to madness and hysteria as a whole, especially when they were begun, again, by girls or women. Historian John Waller says that there is considerable evidence that suggests the dancing plagues and the possession epidemics of Europe's nunneries were, in fact, classic instances of a very different phenomenon, mass psychogenic illness, which is way scarier to me.

Yeah, I don't love that.

If you're telling me the devil came and made me dance, I'm like, okay. That's fun. That happens. But mass psychogenic illness? What is that?

What's the definition of psychogenic illness?

So that's It's really where the term mass hysteria comes from, where they can't pinpoint it. In the Salem witch trials, they tried to blame it on ergot poisoning, like fungus on the wheat, essentially. It causes some food poisoning that leads to this wild illness that everybody just... Like psychosis.

You're hallucinating or something.

Yeah. I think it's groupthink. I think it's really just you've seen instances of it where you can get people to do insane things if you just make it a group effort.

And again, there wasn't a lot to do back then.

There certainly wasn't. Why not dance? Yeah, there really wasn't. And in the majority of cases of dancing plagues, we were touching upon this before, the years immediately preceding the events were usually pretty harsh. There was famine, natural disasters, social and political upheaval. In the case of Strasberg, there was a little thing called the Black Plague that was right before it. So it It can be viewed as an extreme reaction of stress relief, a reaction to trauma.

It's a trauma reaction.

We're all going to start dancing soon.

You can play the piano or you can start dancing uncontrollably for years at a time. Yeah. Whatever works for you. Whatever you feel. Report back. Let us know. But yeah, that's my little... Massisteria. My dance into...

And this is what the movie Footloose was based on.

Exactly. That's what I was thinking the entire time. That's the mic drop at the end in that, friends. But yeah, so If you start dancing in the streets, people might start joining you and then you could all die together.

Yeah. Don't take it to a bridge.

There's that. Yeah. Don't do that. Avoid bridges.

Yeah. 12th century bridges are not the place to go. No. Okay, so my question is, Did men ever participate in the dancing place? They did.

They did. Yeah, they did. That's what makes it so funny. They're like, Well, women started it. Yeah, we just got blamed.

Shut up.

I don't even think it was always women who started it. I think it was just like there was a lot of women Yeah, especially in that era, they were like, We'll blame the ladies. It's either the devil, ladies, or a combination of both. Then in the nunneries, obviously, it was all ladies. And the devil. And the devil. Yeah, of course. They were having relations with the devil.

Was there any documentation of whether or not they were having fun?

Oh, they were having fun.

I feel like we need to document it. It feels pretty awesome, to be honest.

They were sliving.

Especially in the nunnery scenario, I'm like, I think they just got bored. And then they were like, Let's see what we can get out of these priests.

Let's climb a tree.

Let's break some vows. I'm sure there were some hot priests back then, so they were probably like, Let's see if we can break some vows. Stroke the ego a little But when that didn't work, they were like, Bring on the exorcist. Let's see.

Have a little fun. Yeah.

And then they just gave it up.

Well, it's an easy out, too. It's like we can just claim that we were possessed, but we're having a great time and there will be some recourse. We'll get back to normal eventually. But you know what? We'll have our memories.

Exactly. You could just leave the nunnery by saying, You fucked the devil. It's really a way out, actually.

The easiest way to leave the nunnery, I would say. That's how I get out of most social situations. Exactly. If I don't want to be there.

Sorry, I can't make it tonight.

Book signing is not going to work tonight. I slept with the devil.

I fucked the devil.

I got to go. My bad.

I love it.

All right. Well, this is a weird shift now, but we're going to play some Would You Rather.

Please say it's dancing-play related. It's not even dancing-play related. Would You Rather.

It's not I've been dancing plate related.

Would you rather fuck the devil?

Climb the tree and miaow.

I should have put some of those in there. Yeah. But you can both answer because I didn't read these to you. Okay. Would you guys rather be haunted by a ghost that only you can see or hear whispers that no one else can hear.

I'm going with the ghost. There's something about whispering that nobody can hear that feels really... Ominous. At least they can be like, Oh, there's my friend, the ghost. Hopefully, is it a friendly ghost? Do we know? We don't know. It's up in the air.

It's up to you.

It's your ghost.

In general, I'd rather be able to see it. If it's just whispering, that's another level for me.

That'll drive you mad, I feel. That's how I feel. I would definitely rather ghost because whispering I am very... You know.

You have misophonia.

I get very annoyed with certain sounds over and over again, so that would piss me off. It's hard to eat lunch in here.

I would just be like, Shut up. Whispering's on your list.

Constant whispering, I think, would make me crazy. Yeah.

I'm pretty sure. I think it would a lot of people crazy, misophonie or not.

But seeing a ghost every now and then would just be like, Oh, hey. You never feel alone.

Yeah, there you go. Perfect.

You could tell them the big events in your life.

Just call my imaginary friend.

Yeah.

Just be like, Hey, you're here. Let me tell you something cool that happened today.

I think I agree with you guys. I take the ghost. All right. Number two, would you rather live in a house that rearranges itself every night or in one where the doors occasionally lead to other dimensions? Oh, two. Other dimensions? Yeah. Why?

Rearranges Rearranging my house every night would send me into orbit. I just... No. I'm a comfort creature. You are. That would annoy the... And I'm a control freak. Waking up to having my house rearranged every morning would not be good. With no sign off. But another dimension, let's go.

Yeah, I'm there with you. I'm very type A, and things are where they need to be. And they're staying. And they're not moving. Don't touch them. And also, let's see what's in the other dimensions. I'm curious.

I'm going house, rearrange because I can put it back. I don't know what these other dimensions have in them.

What if there's nuns meowing and trying to fuck priests?

What if I fall in and I can't get back into my house to rearrange my furniture?

You can't rearrange it every day because it's going to get rearrange that night.

Yeah, that's true. That's a lot of work.

I know, but dimensions are scary.

It's bad to your floors.

It is bad to your floors. That's real.

If it's a really good interior designer who's re-arranging the house, maybe it's a different story.

This is my scenario. It is.

I got it like, Oh, that's a really nice new configuration of the living room furniture. Yeah.

That helped the feng shui. Excited to see what you do tomorrow. No, still, even that wouldn't work for me. I'm too much of a control freak.

I'm sticking with it.

I believe in you. I back it.

All right, number three, would you rather live in a world where every book you open transports you into its story or where every movie you watch traps you inside its universe until the movie ends? It's the same thing.

Yeah, I I think the longer trip in the book is probably less of a vibe. It depends on the book, I suppose. I can handle two hours in another world pretty easily. That's true. You'll go movie. I've worked my way up with psychedelics, and this is actually something that I- You're like, I don't know. You're like, You know what? Yeah, I know I can handle that, but I'm a slow reader.

We must start in this world. Every time I read a book, I'm always take me with you. That's how I feel. I just want to jump into the book, but now I'm thinking about it and I'm like, That's true. That would be a long, long time.

Well, and with some of the books that you all are reading for this podcast, I would imagine those are not worlds that you want to spend a lot of time in. No.

I'd like to pick and choose which books.

Definitely choosing the books. If I'm jumping into every book I read, then that's a problem for everybody.

Same thing with movies because we watch fucked up movies a lot. I don't want to go in some of them.

That's true.

It's a hard choice.

I'm going to go with yours, The time crunch is it. If I know I have a finite time, that'll make me feel better. I like an out.

Yeah, I get that. I was thinking story because when you're reading, you're making your own visuals. It would be cool to see that. I haven't done psychedelic, so that would be my way of doing it.

That's the surprise for this episode. I brought some here.

I'm totally kidding.

Don't get the wrong idea. These are occasional.

Don't worry, everybody.

If you're like, It's fine, don't worry.

Yeah, that's a hard one. I think the only... Because, again, I've always wanted to jump into a book. I love books. But again, it's the time. I get that. Because I'm also that way with everybody who listens knows I'm not good in social situations. You Sure. Going out, but add a social situation out. I always like to know there's an end. I need an end to it. So, yeah, I think the movie.

Yeah, I get that. Because then you can pick hour and a half, two hours.

Yeah, I'm not going to jump into a Harry Potter movie. Yeah, I'm not jumping into a Harry Potter.

You're only watching short films from here on out.

Exactly.

I probably would jump into a Harry Potter movie, actually. Depending on. That sounds awesome.

Which one?

I jump in all of them. Let's go. Yeah, I love that. So yeah, definitely. That cemented it for me.

All right. Last one. Would you rather live in a world where night never falls? So it's basically just eternal daytime or an eternal night where you would never witness the sun again?

Obviously, daytime.

Nighttime.

I had a feeling you would go that way.

Yeah, nighttime for sure.

I need the sun. I need the sun.

It's the California in you.

Well, yeah. Well, I was born out here. I actually was born in Massachusetts and moved across the country. But getting to California Now it's like, when I tour in the wintertime, it's not good for me. If it's dark for a long time, I lose my mind.

And we brought you at the perfect time.

It was sunny this morning.

A little bit.

When it glistines in the snow, so it's pretty- It does it spot me.

I had an amazing walk this morning. I was like, I didn't feel cold. I went and got coffee. I was like, okay, this was... Because you told me, you prepared me. You're like, there's no sun out here. I was like, I can handle that for two days. But two days is my limit.

And the sun was like, I'll come out for you. Yeah.

Just, Welcome to Boston.

Because we have not had sun for weeks at this point.

Yeah, it's been dark.

Yeah. The sun doesn't like me very much. Sounds like you don't like it either. And I don't like it. We have a mutual disrespect for each other. We're too pale for the sun. Yeah, I'm way too pale for the sun. I don't do well in it.

Elaina carries around a parasol in the summer. Yeah. Really? Like a goth girl parasol.

I do not want to get burned. I don't want wrinkles. Yes.

And you're good.

We have a mutual disrespect, which became a respect.

Do you have a parasol collection?

I only have one.

You should have a collection. I know. I should. I like that idea.

I also like a big wide-brimmed hat. Yeah.

It sounds like good morbid merch I know.

The parasol. We should.

The parasol feels on brand to me.

Mikey, write that down.

Mikey's all got it.

He's already done it. I got it.

You also feel like you're in another era when you carry around a Parasol, which is fun.

I have a lot of admiration for a parasol. When I see people out doing the parasol thing, I'm like, I couldn't do it. Even when it rains, I don't carry an umbrella. I'm just like, Whatever, just get me wet. I'm fine. But the commitment to good skin. But I I love the sun too much. I'm like, I will look like a beat-up leather shoe within the next 10 years, and I'm fine with it. When I see those guys on the beach, and I'm just like, yeah, that's my future. I'm like, I did it. I'm like, Maybe you don't think this is good-looking, but I'm like, I want to just look like a shoe.

I'm going to live as a shoe.

I'm fine with it.

I don't do well in the sun either. I don't like hot. As soon as here, I don't like hot. I don't like hot. Here, it's like as soon as it gets in the '60s, I'm like, this is my perfect weather. I can live in the '60s fall all day. I like that sun. I feel like in the fall, it's like a muted sun. It has a different vibe to it. I don't know how to explain it. No, I get that. Then as soon as it gets in the summer, it's like this harsh sun that I hate the look of it. I just don't like it.

I don't know what it is. Everything's too bright for you.

Too bright.

I'm the opposite. I'll go to the desert in the middle of the summer when it's in 13 degrees, and I'll just be in heaven. That's where we depart.

We're like a little folding here.

No, I never did that. I toured with a band once. The singer actually had one of the- No way. We'll never say who. They're great, and he's great, too. But I remember walking outside and be like, that dude's doing the grandma on the porch thing with the reflector.

You see like in your face and don't think it's real.

Yeah, I was like, This is a level of commitment to tanning that I've never even imagined. But I get cold so easily I get cold very easily. Yeah, and it's my least favorite feeling is being cold.

Really? And my least favorite feeling is being hot.

Yeah. I'm like, Hot? I can handle, but not when I'm sleeping.

Oh, I have to be freezing when I'm sleeping. Me and my husband get in fights all the time. I've been turning off the heat lately. He's like, Stop doing that. It's like 60 degrees of this room out. I'm like, I am the fan going above us.

And John's like, Why? It's February. I'm like, yes.

It's the science back to that you sleep better when you're cold. It's true.

I do. It's true. Yeah. My thought process about it is that you can only take off so many layers.

Yeah, you can add so many more.

I can't peel my skin off. I could, but I'm not going to. Don't. You can put on. I mean, I guess I could. I'm an autopsy technician. I know how to flay back skin. Oh, gosh.

Could you bring yourself to do it, you think?

Absolutely not. No.

I thought you were going to say, Absolutely. I was like, whoa.

Not to myself. To a dead person, I can. Well, yeah, you have. Yeah. But I'm like, yeah. We should end there.

Just take a turn. I like it.

Wait. But you can't take off all the layers to get cool, but you can put on all the layers.

I mean, it's a sound logic. It's just when I don't follow it at all. It's okay.

We diverge here. That's fine. It's like we got the office, we have parks, we have all the things. This is where we diverge. It's okay. We'll just be friends in different continents.

I'll just stand in the middle of you. I like both.

I came to you in winter. So here we are. You We did.

That's how we know we're friends.

Exactly. That's the last one. I pick eternal night because I'm a night person, but I still like the sun, so I'd be a little bummed, I think. But I just also love the night. Well, yeah, that's how I feel.

Did you watch Is it a night country? I did.

I have not. I think I could vibe.

It was great. It was. It was really good. But even me, I was like, This is horrible. It's dark. It's dark every episode. Is it like a last day or something?

It's that part of the country that it goes a night for three months.

Oh, I think I would thrive.

I think I would do okay. Yeah.

Not me. No. I would be... It'd be over in one season from. I would have lost my mind.

There's also a reverse of that that happens where it's three months of light. That would kill me.

I've been to Alaska when it was in that period. That must be bonkers. I mean, it was hard to sleep for sure, but it was pretty cool to go outside when it was two in the morning and it's like, oh. And it's the middle of the day. Just daytime. Yeah, it would be dusky, but it was pretty cool.

I feel like that would fuck up your circadian rhythm.

It totally does. A lot. It totally does, yeah.

Definitely. The other way would, too, obviously. So That wouldn't be great.

Yeah. You got to be strong to live out there.

Damn. Do you live out there, anyone?

Write us in. Lots of emails coming in.

I know. Suddenly we're really calling for emails. I know. Well, that was fun. That was fun.

I loved that. Thanks for inviting I had a blast.

Thanks for coming. Thank you for coming on. We learned a lot. Oh, and check out the Dear Jack Foundation. If you want to say anything about that before we leave.

Yeah. I mean, so Dear Jack is a nonprofit I started years ago on the heels of my survivorship with leukemia and so we advocate for adolescent and young adults. So people 15 to 39, which is for years has been a really forgotten demographic of cancer patient and survivor. And so, yeah, we build programs for this group, specifically. We do retreats for couples that are entering survivorship, and we also do a wish-granting program for young adult cancer patients. So, yeah, please just go to dearjackfoundation. Org if you want to learn more about what we're doing, or if you happen to have a friend or be going through the cancer journey yourself. We have a lot of support services and ways to link up with you and try and make the journey easier.

Hell, yes. I love it. So go check it out. Yeah. Perfect.

And you guys, we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you- Keep it weird.

But not so weird that if you haven't already listened to something corporate Jack's Manican and Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, you don't check it out. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and odd free right now by joining WNDYRI+ in the WNDYRI app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wndyri. Com/survey. Hey, weirdos. If you guys know one thing about us, it's that we love a deep dive.

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