Selects: What Is Collective Hysteria?

The advent of nuclear weapons and the Cold War kicked off a craze in the US for building rec rooms with foot-thick reinforced walls and outfitted with survival rations and board games. Would they work? Probably not. Find out (but not really) in this classic episode.See omnystudio ...  Show more

Throughout the history of the world, there have been many cases of what is known as collective hysteria - groups of people, usually young women, who all exhibit the same physical symptoms of non-existent conditions. Is it psychosomatic? Is it group think?See omnystudio.com/listen ...  Show more

Nuns meowing like cats. School girls laughing uncontrollably. People dancing in the streets until they die from exhaustion. Cristen and Caroline dig into the fascinating history of mass hysterias, why some think it's on the rise today and how it seems to affect more girls and ...

Throughout time and across cultures, orgasms in women have been the source of confusion, fear and fascination. Anney and Samantha pull back the curtain on the science of women's orgasms, the whys of faking, and (mis)perceptions around them, doing some myth-busting along the wa ...

Can a psychological illness become contagious? Many experts believe that in rare cases a phenomenon known as a "mass psychogenic illness" can break out in a population. Can this strange quirk of group psychology help us understand the Salem Witch Crisis of 1692? The community had ...  Show more

What exactly is a sociopath, and why are women with antisocial personality disorder rare? In this classic episode, Cristen and Caroline confront the clinical realities of sociopathy and why it's become pop culture's favorite character flaw.