In 1518, a woman stepped into the street — and couldn’t stop dancing.
In this episode of Why This Exists, we unpack the Dancing Plague of 1518, why hundreds of people in Strasbourg danced for weeks without rest, and how fear, famine, and belief turned panic into a deadly social contagion.
Along the way, we’ll explore how stress can hijack the human body — and why this bizarre medieval disaster still feels unsettlingly familiar today.