00:00:00
Hey weirdos. I'm Ash. >> And I'm Elena. >> And this is Mor. >> This is Morbid. >> Yeah.
00:00:21
>> Are you correcting me? >> Yeah. >> What? Are you correcting me? >> Yeah. >> It's Morin. Beyond.
00:00:26
>> It's Morbid. >> He said, "No, it's just [ __ ] Morbid." I'm like over tired today.
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>> I know. I can You're You're a little a little off. Feels. >> No, I'm like I'm happy. I'm just I did
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so many social things this weekend. And I'm usually not like that social of a gal.
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>> Yeah. >> And I social Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday. And then >> you social close to the sun.
00:00:48
>> Yeah. I didn't feel well when I woke up this morning because my body said, "What
00:00:51
the [ __ ] were you doing this weekend?" I >> said, "Calm down." >> My body said, "Lie down." And I said, "I
00:00:56
have to go to work." I must record. >> I have to. >> Um, yeah. I didn't I didn't do a crazy
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amount of socializing. >> No, we did your birthday dinner. >> A birthday dinner. Surprise birthday
00:01:08
dinner. >> I John was planning that for like weeks and I worked with you that whole day and
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I literally as I was leaving almost went, "All right, see you tonight." And then I could have ruined the whole
00:01:20
thing, but I didn't >> cuz I had no idea cuz I got sick on my birthday. >> So apparently
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scheduled for that weekend but had to be pushed. >> It was the day that I forced you to go
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to urgent care. >> Yeah. >> And I was like, guess we're not going to dinner tonight
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>> cuz you're going to urgent care. >> Exactly. You will be at urgent care >> probably for a while.
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>> But yeah, so that was great. >> It was really sweet. John had like this whole menu put together
00:01:46
>> and he wrote witches never age. >> Yeah. He's such a sweetie. >> And Elena thought I did that. I said I
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didn't even do that. >> I did. And then John was like no I did. >> I said I just texted a few people and
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said can you make it? >> Can you make it? Can you come since we've had to change it 100 times?
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>> Yeah. >> No, it was great. It was wonderful. It was exactly what I wanted. >> I'm glad.
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>> My favorite restaurant >> with your favorite people. >> With my favorite people.
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>> Most of them. Most of them. >> Yeah. With some of my favorite people. >> Yeah.
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>> I will say. >> Yeah. >> Um but yeah. So, you know, I think I'm 2026. >> I'm liking it.
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>> Feels like a time. >> I'm loving it so far. >> I'm loving it. 2026. I'm just trying to h Oh, I have a hack
00:02:28
for all of you. >> Tell me. Have you sent this to me yet? >> I have not. So, I wanted This is a hack
00:02:34
for everybody in the room and listening >> cuz I've tried it. I wanted to try it a
00:02:38
few times to see if it actually made a difference. >> So, I've been trying to slowly wake up
00:02:42
earlier. Um because, you know, you fall out of it during the holidays and all that [ __ ] Everything gets all
00:02:48
>> fully out of it. So, I've been trying to wake up even earlier because I like to
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wake up before the house wakes up so I can have my quiet time, get some [ __ ] done. And now when I wake up, I got
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myself I got it on Amazon. It's just like a Bluetooth speaker that looks like an oldtimey radio.
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>> Mhm. >> And I play slow Gatsby-esque jazzonic >> while I make my coffee, while I open the
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shades. >> Listen to you. while I get stuff ready for breakfast. I play slow Gatsbyesque
00:03:23
jazz. That's >> I made a playlist. >> I don't do that in the morning. I do that at night when I cook dinner.
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>> See, I recommend it for a lot of times. >> Yeah, I love it for dinner because it's
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like your day is slowing down. You're unwinding. It kind of like romanticizes your dinner making.
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>> That is exactly what I was going to say. It I've been you. So, I started doing
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that and it re What a nice way to wake up cuz you're not listening to someone talk at you. I love a podcast.
00:03:51
>> I love it. >> I do too. >> But sometimes when I first wake up, >> I need like a moment before any voices
00:03:58
are really like telling me things. >> Yeah. >> And so this is like no voices until they
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start singing about some love or something. >> There you go. And but it's like I don't
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it just like eases you into the day and it makes it feel a little more like special and like romanticized waking up
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like when you open the shades and everything. You feel like you're making your coffee. It's a little more of an
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event. >> Yeah. >> And when you I'm telling you, >> get an old timey blue radio looking
00:04:29
Bluetooth speaker >> and then you're really in it >> and that [ __ ] will change your life cuz
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you put it in the kitchen. >> Yeah. Yeah. So when you turn it on, it feels like it's coming out of an old
00:04:37
timey radio and you just feel like you're transported. >> It feels like the 50s, but like you can
00:04:41
have a credit card. >> And also, if you're meal planning or you're like cooking dinner, you're
00:04:47
getting lunches ready for the kids, put on some slow oldtimey jazz. And I'm telling you, it'll romanticize the
00:04:53
moment. >> And I even pour like whatever I'm drinking into like a pretty glass. >> Yes, me too.
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>> Because that especially when I'm cooking dinner, >> use the pretty glasses. Use the pretty
00:05:03
glasses. >> Yeah. One thing I'm doing this year that I've been seeing everywhere and I'll
00:05:08
even I'll post my my playlist that I made for slow time because I was very serious about the ones that I picked cuz
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I didn't want any like outliers here. I wanted >> strictly slow oldtimey Gatsbyes jazz.
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>> Is that what did you name the playlist? I think I literally time you got to let
00:05:25
me get I'm gonna see what I named it because I'll I'll I'll uh put it up on my Instagram for anybody who feels like
00:05:32
they >> Alena's Rex. >> It's called Morning Soft Gatsby Jazz. >> Oh, [ __ ] Love it.
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>> A little uh It hits a little harder. >> It does. It does. And it it's only got a
00:05:43
few songs on it, but that's enough cuz it's just for little things that you're doing.
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>> It's just for the morning. >> Yeah. Use the fancy glass. Wear the fancy thing. Yeah, because you might,
00:05:53
you know what? If you're dead tomorrow and you didn't wear the fancy thing tomorrow,
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>> don't save [ __ ] What are you saving it for? >> Don't save it. Every day is a [ __ ]
00:06:02
event. All right. We live in a hellscape. Let's just Every day is a goddamn event that you get, you get
00:06:10
excited for. So, let's make everything romantic and a big deal >> and hot. >> It really does change things when you
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romanticizing little moments. Yeah, >> if you can bring yourself to slowly do it, I promise you it'll make a
00:06:24
difference. >> Yeah, it does. >> And you don't have to do anything crazy. Just little little things.
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>> Do you know what I've been doing? I'm a nighttime shower girly most of the time.
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Sometime Well, sometimes I do the morning, but lately I've just been doing it at night
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>> and I turn off all the lights lately and I put in my candle warmer and I play spa
00:06:41
music. >> Yeah. And that is a nice way to end you because you go from this soft jazz, soft
00:06:47
nighttime jazz of dinner with your fancy drink and then you get into the shower and you're spaing and actually my aura
00:06:55
ring has told me like whatever the [ __ ] you're doing, keep it up. >> Really? >> Yeah. Because it's like my heart rate is
00:07:00
better at night or something. >> [ __ ] >> Like they're like did you do something
00:07:04
before bed last night going on? >> Yeah. I'm like killing it. >> Yeah. So see little little tips.
00:07:11
>> Yep. That's how you should do your day >> because I think everybody needs little
00:07:15
tips right now on how to be happy and fancy free >> like ease into the new year >> and I'm I'm trying so I'm going to share
00:07:22
whatever works for me. >> We're out here. >> Um but yeah, so that's my thing. >> Cool.
00:07:26
>> Um but you know speaking of Gatsby jazz, we're going to be in the early 1900s
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during this. >> Perfect. Um from Gatsby jazz >> to an epidemic. >> Great. Uh, so
00:07:40
we This is an interesting one. It's This is a little different. Okay. It's not true crime, but it's
00:07:49
interesting history and like bizarre history and it's got a mystery with it. Oo, I love history.
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>> History and mystery. You know, listen to you over there romanticizing your topics.
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>> That's right. Um this I think this one's really this one fascinated me cuz this
00:08:05
particular illness we're um it was once called the sleeping sickness. >> Uh it has a lot of wild symptoms that
00:08:13
come along with it. Um like I'll mention at some point one of it is like just to
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really like lead you in here. Um one of the symptoms that would happen is like you would go catatonic and then your
00:08:24
face would freeze in a look of horror. >> Oh my god. and just freeze and you couldn't It was like the ring how they
00:08:30
look like like your face would just be stuck that way >> or like um Harry Potter in the Chamber
00:08:35
of Secrets. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Like that was real. >> Damn. >> Yeah. So, let's get into it.
00:08:40
>> Tell me everything. >> Let's get into it. I think this was also called like um and we'll mention it
00:08:45
again. It was called different things when it first came up because people didn't know what the [ __ ] this was and
00:08:51
still don't really understand what it was or is. And at one point I think it was called like um the grandmother like
00:08:58
the nona because it was like >> that's it. She's just the grandmother >> because it was like a sleeping disease
00:09:03
like it was it's so crazy. >> She's been stricken with the grandmother >> with the grandmother.
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>> She has the nona >> the nona. So let's begin in 1916 shall we? >> Let's do it.
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>> So there was you know a war was raging across Europe and Dr. Constantine vonamo
00:09:21
>> him. >> Yep. Another van. >> Love a van. got some vons. >> Do I love this bomb?
00:09:25
>> He had become pretty used to treating men with a variety of maladies at his psychiatric clinic at the University of
00:09:31
Vienna. It was a pretty normal thing at this point because there was a war raging.
00:09:35
>> Yeah. >> The war really ushered in a new era of technological advances in weaponry. Uh
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and this these weapons that were now being like advancing so far were capable of causing mass destruction and also
00:09:47
leaving witnesses to that destruction super psychologically damaged in their wake. Like
00:09:54
>> there was just there was a whole new host of issues that people were dealing with and as a result vono and medical
00:10:00
professionals like him really came to know and recognized the symptoms of you know delirium, shell shock, PTSD. These
00:10:08
were all very common in soldiers that they were seeing. >> Yeah. >> Several years into the war, Dr. Von
00:10:13
Economo had become accustomed to seeing all manner of not just psychological illnesses, but injuries like physical
00:10:20
injuries. Um, you know, they were coming from like the horrific effects of mustard gas, of chlorine gas, you know,
00:10:28
disfiguring damage from artillery shells. It was really bad. >> Yeah. But the cases that really
00:10:33
interested him the most were the epidemic illnesses like typhus, chalera, influenza because there weren't just
00:10:41
physical dangers of battle or psychological dangers. The conditions on the actual battlefield like the cold,
00:10:48
the wet, the dirty, >> the wet, >> you know, and the conditions of the soldiers themselves being malnourished,
00:10:56
highly stressed, mostly injured, dealing with all this [ __ ] It was ideal for contracting and spreading a lot of
00:11:04
infectious diseases. >> Makes sense. >> Uh though these illnesses weren't as obvious, they were definitely not less
00:11:10
devastating among the soldiers and they spread like wildfire. >> Well, because they're in such close
00:11:16
quarters. >> Oh yeah. And they're just on Yeah. They're on top of each other and they're
00:11:19
all just being like switched out all the time. Yeah. >> And the entire wings of hospitals would
00:11:24
be dedicated to their treatment at times. Now, we're talking today about a disease that's called encphilitis
00:11:32
lethargica. >> Okay? >> Uh it's kind of unknown where it first appeared. The epidemic of the early 20th
00:11:40
century is thought to have started in 1915 Romania, but more recent studies of this disease have thought that like
00:11:48
maybe something called the English sweats it was referred to. Okay. >> Uh might have been similar to this and
00:11:55
maybe that was the first thought of it like sight of it or whatever. But it's really hard to pinpoint because as we'll
00:12:02
come to see during this, >> this has so many varying symptoms and they're so weird. Like they're strange
00:12:08
symptoms >> and they never It like doesn't hit two people the same way. Okay. >> It's very strange.
00:12:14
>> Kind of sounds like co. >> It is. It's really scary. Now, the first documented cases of the disease appeared
00:12:19
in 1916 at Vonomo's clinic in Vienna and at the Paris clinic of Dr. Renee Crus. At Crusete's clinic, men started
00:12:28
arriving from the front lines with just a variety of symptoms that >> they were easily identifiable, but they
00:12:35
didn't really comprise together like a single diagnosis. >> Okay. >> Uh by themselves, you could be like,
00:12:41
okay, that's that, that's that. But altogether, it was like, what the [ __ ] is this?
00:12:45
>> According to author Molly Caldwell Crosby, quote, some had fever, others did not. Most complained of headache and
00:12:52
nausea. Strangest of all was how much these soldiers slept. Now it makes sense that a person who
00:12:59
gets, you know, the flu or a flu-l like thing as these guys were would probably,
00:13:04
you know, want to and need to sleep for longer periods than someone who's healthy.
00:13:09
>> But there was something like very unnerving about these particular patients. Not just the amount of time
00:13:14
that they were sleeping, but also the way that they looked. >> Okay. >> Uh Crosby said it would have seemed
00:13:20
almost serene at first. their blank expressionless faces free of terror and pain. But over time, they would fall
00:13:28
asleep and stay that way for days or sometimes weeks. >> What the [ __ ] >> And then sometimes they would never wake
00:13:34
up. >> Oh, >> yeah. >> Now, in Vienna, Dr. Vono was seeing like a similar strange combination of
00:13:42
symptoms in his own patients that were coming from the front lines, like soldiers. In January 1917, a man arrived
00:13:48
at the clinic complaining of exhaustion, confusion, and headaches. And he sat in
00:13:53
front of the doctor and he said that he was like, as he sat in front of him, he was struggling not just to stay upright,
00:14:00
but just to stay awake. He like couldn't even stay awake to sit and talk to him.
00:14:03
>> Wow. >> He slumped in his chair. His head was like loling around from side to side.
00:14:08
And he numerous times completely nodded off while he was talking to the doctor. And he said every time the man fell
00:14:16
asleep, Vonamo could rouse him, but never to full consciousness. He said he was more like someone who had been woken
00:14:23
from a deep sleep and is only vaguely aware that they're no longer sleeping. >> Oh, that's weird.
00:14:28
>> And by that point, Vonicano had seen this type of exhaustion in, you know, a small number of patients who again had
00:14:34
come from the front lines of war. >> But this person was a civilian. >> Oh. >> So now he's like, now we're spreading.
00:14:41
>> Yeah. So the early cases documented by Vonamo and Cru were baffling both of them. This illness was seemed to have
00:14:50
like similarities to influenza which was very rampant at the time but it lacked a
00:14:55
lot of the defining characteristics of flu and more strange was the fact that among the small number of people who did
00:15:02
present with encphilitis lethargica there was again just the widest variety of symptoms. The best Von Economo could
00:15:10
tell was that they appeared to be suffering from encphilitis, which is swelling of the brain tissue,
00:15:15
>> but there was no explanation for that swelling. Like there was no evidence of
00:15:19
head trauma, no other injury that could really account for it. >> And also, while some of the symptoms
00:15:25
matched a typical case of encphilitis, which is like fever, headaches, confusion,
00:15:30
>> there were others that were not associated with encphilitis at all. >> Weird.
00:15:34
>> Yeah. So, as the weeks go by, Von Economos started noticing new symptoms in his patients, including one epidemic
00:15:42
of hiccuping that resulted in one death. >> Wait, they heard that correct? An epidemic of hiccuping
00:15:51
>> where one person died. >> What the [ __ ] >> Yeah. >> Of They died of hiccuping.
00:15:58
>> Yeah. Which sounds like the worst kind of death imaginable. >> Yeah. Yeah. Think of how awful it is
00:16:04
when you start getting the hiccups and you're like hiccup and you're like, "Fuck, get it gone." Like I'm like,
00:16:10
"Give me honey. Someone scare me. I'm holding my breath. Holy shit." >> Like that's awful.
00:16:16
>> Yeah, I know. It's It's the worst. Well, and then other patients started exhibiting even stranger symptoms like
00:16:22
compulsive verbal ticks, uncontrollable blinking, involuntary muscle twitching, uncontrolled salivation,
00:16:31
>> and a small number of people who quote froze still in a catatonic state. It was
00:16:37
like the disease was developing new symptoms as it progressed. Yeah. >> But with no explanation whatsoever. And
00:16:43
while these patients had a lot of symptoms in common, the only symptom shared by all of them was hyperomnia.
00:16:49
>> Okay. >> So other than that, it was like they all had hyperomnia. The rest of them
00:16:55
>> skew, >> but then they had a ton of [ __ ] that was just outside. >> Now in time, Vonamo and Crus had not
00:17:03
compared notes at this point because they're two different places. They recognized a pattern in the clinical
00:17:08
presentation of encphilitis lethargica. Like the more common form of you know encphilitis, the disease affected
00:17:15
patients in two phases. It was acute and a chronic phase. The acute phase you know that had dramatic symptoms like
00:17:22
excessive sleep, uh eye twitching, movement disorders. Those common symptoms though were often accompanied
00:17:28
by less common symptoms. And these less common symptoms almost felt like they like came and went dayto day. Like they
00:17:37
kind of appeared one day and went the other. And yeah, for obvious reasons, the chronic phase of the disease took a
00:17:43
lot longer to identify and could present months or even years later. And they would sometimes u present in the form of
00:17:50
parkinsonian like signs. >> Oh >> yeah. So at their respective clinics, both doctors are just like diving and
00:17:58
pouring into medical literature just trying to find anything that could figure out because they're also having
00:18:03
trouble treating these people too, >> right? >> Uh just finding anything that resembled
00:18:07
what they were seeing in, you know, first in soldiers returning from the front lines and then in civilians. But
00:18:12
Von Economo recalled hearing stories of a similar plague that had affected parts
00:18:17
of Italy in the late 19th century. According to the stories, apparently peasants in a small village in rural
00:18:24
Italy started falling into comaike sleep and a lot of them never woke up and those who did wake up were not the same
00:18:32
as they were from before. >> Oh. >> Um these these people called the disease Lona, the grandmother.
00:18:38
>> Lona. >> Lona. >> But I >> I don't think I'll ever be over a disease being called the grand
00:18:44
>> the grandmother. >> That sounds like a horror movie. >> The grandmother. >> The grandma. But in the surrounding
00:18:49
towns and villages, those who had symptoms were referred to as the living dead. >> Oh, spooky.
00:18:55
>> According to Crosby, this was the first time that doctors had considered whether
00:18:58
the strange sleeping sickness could be related to the outbreak of influenza that was occurring at the time.
00:19:04
>> Okay. Now based on those theories, Von Economos started developing his own theory that these strange symptoms he
00:19:11
was seeing in his encphilitis lethargica patients could maybe be a reaction to exposure to influenza.
00:19:19
>> Right. Uh in April 1917, he gathered all his notes and observation and published
00:19:24
a manuscript appropriately titled Encphilitis Lethargica. Coincidentally, just a and this is total coincidence.
00:19:31
Just a few days later, Renee Crus published his own paper on the case in Paris. Yeah. Like they were both like on
00:19:38
the case. >> Yeah. >> These two manuscripts were f the first to formally identify the disease. But in
00:19:44
the decade or so after that, roughly 9,000 papers on the subject would be published in various places, all
00:19:51
theorizing what could be the cause, but absolutely no one being able to figure out the cure, the treatment, or really
00:19:58
nailing down the cause. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Despite the horrific toll that this is taking on the patient's
00:20:05
encphilitis lethargica is taking on a patient's brain and body, it would eventually lead to some pretty
00:20:10
groundbreaking discoveries about the function of the brain in general. Cuz remember, we're in the early 1900s.
00:20:17
>> Um, so though he couldn't examine the brains of his patients directly, at least not while they're alive.
00:20:22
>> Yeah. Vonimo theorized that patients with encphilitis lethargica had been infected with some kind of virus that
00:20:29
only affected one part of the brain. >> Okay. >> As a result, he would eventually
00:20:34
establish that the affected region, the hypothalamus, was responsible because we
00:20:39
didn't know what the parts of the brain were responsible for at this point. But he was able to like go backwards and
00:20:44
figure out that the hypothalamus is responsible for among other things regulating sleep, body temperature,
00:20:50
thirst, and hunger and so on. So boom, that's groundbreaking. >> Yeah, that's big.
00:20:55
>> While this is now considered pretty basic information in neurology at least. >> Yeah,
00:20:59
>> it was a really remarkable discovery in this day. >> And more importantly, at least for
00:21:05
Vonicamo and the other doctors studying this disease, it narrowed down the affected area and helped them to rule
00:21:11
out other illnesses and potential causes of mystery illnesses. The problem though
00:21:16
is that by the end of the decade, encphilitis lethargica was no longer just affecting soldiers returning from
00:21:23
war. But even more alarming was the fact that cases were popping up outside of Paris in Vienna. Now the disease was
00:21:29
spreading faster than they expected and they had no way of stopping it or even slowing it down because they didn't know
00:21:34
what the [ __ ] it was. >> Right. So what do you like what precautions do you even put into place?
00:21:38
So as the war raged across Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa, troops continued being moved in and out of
00:21:44
those regions by the thousands. As men men were injured or killed, they would be removed from battle and replaced with
00:21:50
healthy soldiers, and the war would continue. Now, in the context of a battle, that's obviously a necessity,
00:21:57
but it never occurred to anyone in charge that by moving so many people in and out of these places, they were
00:22:02
creating the perfect environment for this virus to spread. >> Yeah. Now, just as the first patients
00:22:08
showed up at the Vonamo and Crochet clinics after being taken off the front lines, other soldiers were cycled off
00:22:14
the battlefield and sent to hospitals and clinics in their respective home countries. When the war ended in in
00:22:21
November 1918, the vast majority who survived were shipped home, bringing with them the germs that they picked up
00:22:28
while serving. >> Oh, man. And it was probably just like popping off all over those ships. Now
00:22:32
between 1917 and 1930 nearly 1 million people contracted encphilitis lethargica and of those roughly half died as a
00:22:41
result of their symptoms. >> Jesus. >> Now those numbers are small relative to other pandemics and epidemics. Um but
00:22:50
for a remarkably bizarre and mysterious illness, it's pretty surprising that in sephilitis lethargica, the epidemic has
00:22:56
never really had like a big it's like a footnote. Yeah. >> In medical history. Like it's crazy.
00:23:02
>> Well, and at the same time, it was probably hard to diagnose, too. So, who's to who really knows how many
00:23:07
people did die of that? We just didn't know >> exactly. Now, one reason for that status
00:23:12
is the fact that among the germs passed around the world following the end of World War I was the Spanish flu.
00:23:18
>> Yeah. >> A virus that raged for more than two years and killed an estimated 50 million
00:23:23
people worldwide. As Molly Caldwell Crosby Crosby said, "In Europe and elsewhere, few people worried about the
00:23:30
littleknown epidemic of sleep. They were preoccupied with the rapidly spreading,
00:23:34
extremely virulent influenza breaking out among troops in Europe and the United States, which makes sense."
00:23:40
>> Yeah, it does. >> Now, by 1918, encphilitis lethargica had made its way to England, where it proved
00:23:45
just as perplexing and unable to be defined as it had been when it first appeared in France and Italy. Among the
00:23:53
first cases reported came from physician Dr. AJ Hall, who by that time had already heard of this disease. And what
00:24:00
struck Hall as unusual was that his patient, who was a young boy, did not seem really exhausted or even sleepy,
00:24:07
but he was experiencing a level of muscle weakness that left him unable to lift an arm or leg off the bed.
00:24:13
>> Damn. >> Yeah, >> that's intense. >> So, his body was tired. >> Yeah. This was similar to the first
00:24:18
civilian to visit Vonamo's clinic who was unable to hold himself up in the chair and keep his head up for any ex
00:24:25
like period of time. >> Yeah. >> Now soon other cases of encphilitis lethargica started showing up at Hall's
00:24:31
clinic and they arrived with symptoms of the flu which was rampant at the time but then a short time later the symptoms
00:24:37
would progress and that's when we'd see all the strange encphilitis lethargic symptoms. all suffered from profound
00:24:45
lethargy and hyperomnia which appeared to affect most patients more severely during the day.
00:24:51
>> Um, interesting. >> Crosby wrote, "It was as if their sleep cycle was turned around. They stayed in
00:24:56
the sleepy stuper all day and became delirious at night." >> Oh. >> And by that time, one or more common
00:25:02
symptoms seemed in patients in the UK was a tendency to mumble or ramble incoherently like they were talking in
00:25:10
their sleep. >> Ew, that's so spooky. It's the spookiest illness. >> I don't like that. As the numbers of
00:25:15
infected were growing, more unnerving symptoms started coming out, too. Patients would fall asleep with their
00:25:21
eyes wide open. >> No. Shut the [ __ ] up. >> Wide open. Unmoving, staring blankly
00:25:26
into the distance. >> No. >> Others got facial hypertonia, a type of muscle rigidity that left their faces
00:25:33
twisted and fixed in a masklike expression of horror. >> Ew. >> Yeah. There were other extreme though
00:25:40
much less common symptoms semen patients as more cases kept popping up and in Hall's clinic many patients who would be
00:25:48
in a stuper like state during the day would come out of that state in the evening and be in a state of euphoria
00:25:54
causing them to talk incessantly or wise around in their beds. >> What the [ __ ]
00:26:01
>> Like what makes you think of Nancy at the end of the craft? >> Yes, that's immediately what I thought
00:26:04
of. >> They gave me the gift. And in one case, a young boy was described as quote
00:26:10
leaping from all fours into the air like the mechanical toys sold on the London streets called jumping beetles.
00:26:17
>> What? >> Yeah. He said, "I feel better." >> Yep. They would just jump at night. You
00:26:22
jump around on all fours. >> That's literally you when you feel like a millisecond better and the doctors are
00:26:27
like, "No, you still are safe. Lay down. >> Get it together." >> It's true. Now, for some, the exhaustion
00:26:34
rendered them unaware of their more physical symptoms because they were so tired they couldn't really experience
00:26:38
any of the other stuff. >> Well, they just like weren't with it. >> Yeah. For others, like the boy leaping
00:26:43
from all fours, the symptoms were terrifying to say the very least. >> Yeah. >> Uh worse than the presentation of the
00:26:49
symptoms was the fact that doctors who encountered the disease in their patients couldn't do really [ __ ] for
00:26:56
them. >> Yeah. Well, because they just don't know what to treat. >> Yeah. By the end of 1918, the first year
00:27:01
the disease appeared in England, there were more than 500 cases. And in the months that followed, the number
00:27:06
doubled. In January 1919, towns and cities across England started posting notices in the papers, informing
00:27:13
residents that one or more cases had been documented in their area and urging anyone with symptoms to report their
00:27:19
case. >> They said, "Lay, motherfuckers." Uh, one notice said, "In view of the serious
00:27:24
nature of the disease and the difficulties attending their treatment and presentation, it is highly important
00:27:29
that notice be sent to the medical officer of health in every case without delay." Now, in the early months of
00:27:35
1919, as British physicians were just grappling with this mysterious illness, cases of this illness began appearing in
00:27:43
the United States. In New York, several cases appeared in large clusters and among groups with social connections,
00:27:51
>> giving doctors the first clue that whatever was causing this, it appeared to be spread through close contact.
00:27:56
>> Yeah. >> In response, they began investigating the commonalities among the affected
00:28:00
individuals, including their living conditions, shared food, water sources, and any kinship relations between those
00:28:07
showing symptoms. Now, among the first patients documented in that phase was a 16-year-old girl identified as Ruth.
00:28:15
That winter, she was brought to the Manhattan clinic of Dr. Frederick Tney, one of the city's most well-known
00:28:21
neurologists. When Tney was first informed of this new patient, all he was told was that she had fallen asleep and
00:28:27
wouldn't wake up. >> Jesus. By that time, Tney had already read the medical literature coming from
00:28:32
the doctors in Europe and believed he had already seen a few mild cases of sleeping sickness. So when Ruth's
00:28:38
parents described her symptoms, he was like, "She got encphilitis lethargica." >> He says, "She has the grandma."
00:28:45
>> The grandma, >> the nona, >> the nona. According to Ruth's parents, she had returned home from work one
00:28:50
afternoon about a week after Christmas, and began complaining, and this is the strangest beginning to this. She started
00:28:56
complaining of a sharp pain in one of her fingers. Random >> that had come on suddenly.
00:29:01
>> What? Within hours, the pain had spread up her arm and into her shoulder, causing numbness that would eventually
00:29:08
lead to paralysis. >> Ew. By the next day, Ruth had become irrationally fearful and started lashing
00:29:15
out violently at her parents. >> Oh my god. >> Like she would nash her teeth and and
00:29:21
like thrash wildly. >> The [ __ ] >> She's 16. >> Yeah. >> To the point that she had to be sedated
00:29:27
and restrained. She was like a wild animal, they said. >> Thank god. A short time later, she fell
00:29:32
asleep and could not be roused. >> By the time Dr. Tney was called, she had been asleep for 2 months.
00:29:39
>> Why did it take so long to call Dr. Tney? >> Cuz I guess she was at a different
00:29:43
hospital. She was She had a feeding tube and an IV drip to keep her nourished. >> Two months.
00:29:48
>> Two months sleeping. >> Damn. Well, back to that finger thing. It's actually like that's crazy. That's
00:29:54
how I That's how my COVID started. The first I've only had it once. >> Your finger hurt?
00:29:58
>> No, it's similar though. My elbow was like, and it's like joint pain, but my elbow was so sore. And I remember saying
00:30:05
to Drew, I was like, "Oh my god, my elbow is so sore right now." >> That's so bizarre.
00:30:09
>> And then the rest of my body started hurting. And I was like, "Do I have CO?"
00:30:13
>> But it started in my elbow. >> Wow. >> Isn't that weird? But weird. When I looked it up, I it was like, yeah, like
00:30:19
joint pain. Like it makes sense. But it was one specific elbow hurts. >> Yeah. It was weird.
00:30:24
>> And Ruth was like, "My finger hurts." >> Yeah. I mean, the finger is like even
00:30:26
stranger. >> That's crazy. >> Yeah. So, among the things that puzzled Tney the most was the fact that although
00:30:32
she appeared to be asleep, this is even weirder. >> She was able to respond to simple
00:30:37
commands. >> Well, that's like when we were talking about um comas recently, like how we how
00:30:43
we don't have a lot of understanding about that, >> but she was like someone in a trance. He
00:30:48
said like her eyes and mouth were closed, but she was able to respond to simple prompts from the doctor. When
00:30:54
Tney asked Ruth to shift her body from one side of the bed to the other, she did it.
00:30:58
>> So she could still hear >> with difficulty, but she did it. >> Okay. >> By that time, she had developed the
00:31:03
additional symptom of hypertonia, which caused the muscles in her arms and legs to become rigid and stuck in what was
00:31:10
surely uncomfortable positions for hours. >> I was going to say that must be so painful
00:31:15
>> and just stuck. >> Yeah. >> According to Crosby, when Tney move tried to move her from the bed, she
00:31:21
began to tremble. It started with a hand or arm and then spread until her entire
00:31:26
body was convulsing in a rabbit-like twitch. >> Oh my god. >> Like so many other doctors around the
00:31:31
world, Tney had come to recognize the symptoms of encphilitis lethargia. The nona
00:31:37
>> the grandma >> but was at a loss for how to treat it. That's the worst part of this.
00:31:40
>> Oh, you do. >> In the end, his recommendations were just basically ways to make Ruth more
00:31:45
physically comfortable. >> Yeah, that makes sense. But he was forced to tell her parents that as of
00:31:49
that time there was no treatment or cure and that their doctor was their daughter
00:31:53
was likely to stay in that state >> forever. >> In fact, a few days later, Ruth's
00:31:58
temperature spiked to 107° and she died. >> Oh my god, that's awful. >> What a horrific.
00:32:06
>> After months of living that way, you Yeah, that's so sad. >> So, as cases began spreading in the US,
00:32:12
so did anxiety and fear now about this disease. The Spanish flu epidemic had affected millions of people around the
00:32:17
US and the world, killing massive numbers of people. But influenza was something people could at least
00:32:24
understand >> like they could they could recognize influenza. You know what the flu is, you
00:32:28
know? >> Uh and also the most devastating effects of the flu affected certain populations
00:32:34
which made it less intimidating to the general public, >> right? >> And sephilitis lethargica on the other
00:32:38
hand was something [ __ ] terrifying. >> Yeah. It seemed like anybody could get it
00:32:43
>> and totally weird and bizarre and scary and horrific. >> Yeah. >> Not only were the symptoms varied across
00:32:49
patients, but they were psychologically disturbing, physically disabling, and seemingly impossible to treat. And even
00:32:56
if one did manage to survive the acute phase of illness, the chronic phase brought with it Parkinson's-like
00:33:02
symptoms that would be profoundly lifealtering at that point. >> Yeah. Which is so scary.
00:33:07
>> People lived with this forever. >> Wow. While new cases started popping up around the US with a lot of frequency
00:33:14
now, the American public looked to doctors and healthare workers to explain this scary disease that has seemed to
00:33:20
come out of [ __ ] nowhere. Yeah. >> But by that point, the predominant theory was that encphilitis lethargica
00:33:26
was somehow related to the flu epidemic that had recently gone crazy. >> Like almost like a mutated
00:33:32
>> Yeah. Like just like a pop off of it. You know what I mean? >> A pop off, >> you know, quick pop
00:33:38
off. It's like a popup version of the flu. >> Yeah. >> Since so many of the symptoms,
00:33:43
particularly the early ones, were seen in cases of the flu, like you would come in with flu-l like symptoms,
00:33:48
>> right? >> And encphilitis was caused by an infection, it seemed reasonable to
00:33:53
presume that the sleeping sickness was an after effect of the Spanish flu. Similarly, just a few years earlier, an
00:33:59
epidemic of malaria had spread across the African continent, sharing several of the more prominent symptoms seen in
00:34:06
patients with encphilitis lethargica. >> As a result, some doctors theorized that
00:34:11
the newly emerged disease could be related. >> I mean, yeah, I could see why they would
00:34:14
think that. >> Yeah. By early spring, administrators in cities across the US were forced to
00:34:20
address this growing fear. They had to talk to the public. They couldn't just let them be like,
00:34:24
>> well, because it's like, what do you do? like what precautions do you take? But
00:34:27
the worst part is they have no information. Like they have like very little information. There's this episode
00:34:32
of Spongebob where he just like is not going to go outside and he sings this song where he's like indoors.
00:34:38
Indoors. >> That's basically what they were doing. That would be me. They're just
00:34:42
doortodoor. Stay inside. >> Indoors. Now in San Francisco, the city's health department released a statement in early
00:34:52
March 1919 saying San Francisco need have no fear of the sleeping sickness. >> Don't you lie to me like that.
00:34:58
>> As an aftermath of the influenza, it is well established that the sleeping sickness is carried by the titifly and
00:35:04
occasionally by other insects found in Africa and the South. It has no direct connection with the influenza, which is
00:35:11
entirely different origin. >> That's a bitchade statement. >> That's a very [ __ ] made statement. And
00:35:17
it would turn out that San Francisco health officials were wrong on literally every point that they put in that.
00:35:23
>> Also, what's a titly? >> It's like it's like a little uh I think it's almost like a mosquito kind of
00:35:27
thing. >> Tit fly. >> Um just 4 days later, physicians in the city started reporting their first cases
00:35:33
of encphilitis lethargica. So, they were San Francisco Health were like, "It's nope, don't worry. No
00:35:40
titsy flies here. Get out of here." Nope. And then 4 days later they were like, "So my bad."
00:35:47
>> Does that sound familiar to anyone? >> No, it sounds totally foreign. I couldn't imagine.
00:35:52
>> Almost like we were told the same thing. >> It's almost like that. Um, in one case,
00:35:58
a local railroad worker, Chester Jones, came down with symptoms and slept for 10
00:36:03
days straight. >> Not Chester, >> just Chester. I would honestly he probably like loved that 10 days of
00:36:08
sleep if that was it because a railroad worker is that's >> that's a hard job. >> Yeah. During that period, Jones's
00:36:13
doctor, WB Coffee, was able to rouse him long enough to eat a small amount of food or drink water, but otherwise he
00:36:21
was out. >> Damn. >> And and this isn't like a coma. That's the thing. It's like they are sleeping
00:36:26
like straight cuz they can wake their mouth and be like, "Here, have have a piece of toast." And then they're like,
00:36:31
"All right, good night." Like back to sleep. >> It's crazy. >> Are they like I wonder if they were like
00:36:36
able to like get up to use the bathroom or >> Yeah. Or if they had to like Yeah. Now,
00:36:41
coffee said, "We have had both hiccups and the sleeping sickness among the various other effects of the influence,
00:36:47
not the hiccups." >> So, hiccups are back. >> This form of sleeping sickness is to be
00:36:51
distinguished from that which is carried by the titly and is found in the tropics. So, he's like liars.
00:36:57
>> Yeah, it's not the same. >> You guys [ __ ] up. Meanwhile, in New York, the first deaths from sleeping
00:37:02
sickness were reported, starting with steamship captain Frank Martin, who'd been diagnosed with encphilitis
00:37:08
lethargica just 5 days earlier. The rising number of deaths inspired way more fear in the public, obviously, but
00:37:15
state and local health officials were trying to minimize the danger of it. >> Um, the New York health commissioner
00:37:21
told reporters, "The symptoms of the disease are much the same as those of spring fever."
00:37:26
>> Disagree. >> Lying sacks of [ __ ] Like are you okay? >> I'm sorry. Like that's insane to do.
00:37:32
>> You just trying to piss him. >> And I love this. But just because a man feels languid, he need not jump to the
00:37:37
conclusion he has contracted sleeping sickness. >> I would jump to that conclusion.
00:37:41
>> If I felt languid, I feel like I have a sleeping sickness. Okay. Being languid
00:37:46
feels >> feel sleepy. >> A little more intense than feeling just a little sleepy.
00:37:50
>> Yeah. The [ __ ] >> Now, the willingness to disregard the dangers of encphilitis lethargic is not
00:37:55
limited to the US and Montreal. So, Canada, you are not immune to this. >> You were usually on the right side.
00:38:02
>> Usually, we usually We're rooting for you. We're all rooting for you. >> We're rooting for you. I've never in my
00:38:06
life yelled at a girl like this. >> That's right. So, but in Montreal, healthcare workers simply took they took
00:38:12
a very dismissive approach to it. >> Canada, obviously, it was in an effort to quell public fear, but they don't
00:38:18
need like mass pandemonium. >> They didn't know enough about like how to properly inform without inciting kind
00:38:24
of thing. >> They didn't know a lot about truthtelling back then. >> It happens. One hospital worker told a
00:38:28
reporter, "This reluctance to diagnose encphilitis lethargica does not discredit the Montreal physicians in any
00:38:34
way. To determine absolutely that a patient was suffering from a new disease is extremely difficult. And in every
00:38:40
case so far, there there has been an element of doubt. >> Well, that's fair. >> So, they're being they're being much
00:38:46
more like um I would say like you know >> diplomatic about it. You know, they're
00:38:52
just they're being like >> maybe it's not cuz we don't want to. It's because it's hard to diagnose a new
00:38:57
disease, >> which does. Yeah, I get that. >> And you don't want to say something as
00:39:00
that and then be completely wrong. Yeah. >> By 1921, doctors had still not discovered a solution for this or what
00:39:08
it was, but they were managing to at least make some headway in like starting to understand it better. Not only were
00:39:15
they continuing to narrow down the areas of the brain affected by encphilitis lethargica, but they were also starting
00:39:21
to recognize earlier cases that had been diagnosed as something else. Okay? >> Because they didn't understand this
00:39:26
disease before. >> In Los Angeles, for example, one doctor described having been referred a patient
00:39:32
from quote the leading alienist in Los Angeles. >> I love when when they were called
00:39:37
alienists. Um after the young woman had been diagnosed with catatonia. >> Okay. >> He said, "I was called in after three of
00:39:45
the physicians along with their mental specialists had tried every blood test and every means of diagnosing the
00:39:52
condition for a week. In retrospect, the doctor recalled the woman had influenza
00:39:57
not long before the new symptoms came. >> Okay, >> which further supported the suspected
00:40:02
link between the two. >> Right >> now, over the course of the 1920s, physicians and specialists kept trying
00:40:08
to nail this [ __ ] down. And in 1923, for example, a study out of Europe found that out of a thousand encphilitis
00:40:15
lethargica patients evaluated, only four had a history of influenza within the previous 6 months, of which two were
00:40:23
doubtful. >> So that's not it. >> Yeah. So similarly, in a much larger study conducted at Camp Dixs in New
00:40:30
Jersey, 6,000 cases of influenza were studied and no concurrent cases of encphilitis lethargica were identified.
00:40:37
>> Wow. So, it seemed to kind of bash that link in the head. >> Definitely. >> Further complicating matters was the
00:40:43
fact that not all patients experienced the same symptoms, nor were they affected in the same ways and for the
00:40:49
same length of time. There's like no consistency. >> For instance, a middle-aged man in New
00:40:54
York might fall into a coma and die from a fever a week later, which literally happened, while a teenage girl in London
00:41:00
would experience delirium and hyperomnia that lasted for a month, then went away
00:41:04
miraculously. And there was hardly ever a clue why, >> what started it, right? >> In 1936, Joseph Langan Jr., a
00:41:12
30-year-old Illinois man, woke from an encphilitis lethargic coma after 440 days.
00:41:20
>> Oh my god. >> Shocking everyone, right? >> Just a year of your life gone. Over a
00:41:24
year of your life gone. >> Just woke up 440 days. >> He said, "All right, let's do this."
00:41:31
>> Yeah. He said, "Cool. I feel rested, so let's go." >> I wonder if he had any after effects.
00:41:35
Yeah, that that's the thing. A lot of them did and I most of the people around him thought he would
00:41:41
succumb to what they were calling the sleep of death at this point. >> Yeah. >> Now, perhaps one of the most baffling
00:41:47
things about encphilitis lethargic epidemic was that after more than a decade of crazy bizarre symptoms and a
00:41:54
lot of tragic outcomes, the disease just seemed to disappear. which is so strange because it's like
00:42:00
there weren't a lot of precautions put into place because they didn't know what precautions. So like where did it go?
00:42:07
>> According to Dr. RR Dormashkin, by 1927, the acute cases occurring in England
00:42:13
were often so mild that the acute phase would pass without much notice. But the long-term effects could often be quite
00:42:21
devastating, leaving a lot of individuals in comas for the rest of their lives. >> Oh, that's awful. While new cases of
00:42:26
encphilitis lethargica began slowing as early as the later 1920s and they were considered exceptionally rare by the
00:42:34
1930s, those who neither died nor recovered from the illness were left in like a vegetative state for the rest of
00:42:41
their they just didn't really come out of it. Even if they came out of the coma, they would be like forever
00:42:47
changed. >> Yeah. I mean, of course. >> And those who did survive were left with
00:42:51
what neurologist Oliver Saxs described as extraordinary crises. That could include the quote simultaneous virtually
00:42:58
instantaneous onset of Parkinsonism, catatonia, ticks, obsessions, and 30 or 40 other problems sometimes.
00:43:07
>> Oh my god. >> Yeah. >> It's like so that it literally robs your life. But it's like it really Yeah. Like
00:43:13
do you >> In the aftermath of this epidemic, most doctors were content to accept the
00:43:17
theory that it was related to influenza or just allow the disease to be a mystery. They were like whatever. We
00:43:23
don't know whose moving hope it doesn't happen again. >> Decades after the epidemic had ended,
00:43:28
Sax's focus was on treating those locked in the comas still by this disease in the first place.
00:43:33
>> Beginning in the 19 the late 1960s, Sax started working with encphilitis lethargic coma or catatonic patients at
00:43:41
Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx. In his experiments with the amino acid L-dopa, Sax found that many of the
00:43:49
patients suffering with the severe Parkinson's-like symptoms of encphilitis lethargica, including muscle rigidity,
00:43:55
spasms, and tremors, could find relief, like incredible relief with this. >> Although the success of L-dopa proved
00:44:03
limited and temporary at the time, ongoing research in the years since has resulted into continuing success with
00:44:09
treating people who have dealt with these long-term symptoms. >> Okay. In 2002, the last known survivor of the
00:44:17
encphilitis lethargic epidemic, Philip Leather, died in London at the age of 82.
00:44:22
>> Wow. >> He was once a child prodigy. He had incredible promise. And he contracted
00:44:28
the illness in 1931 while he was still a child. And he spent seven decades in what the press described as a quote
00:44:35
translike state. Seven decades. 70 years. He said, they said he just slowly went
00:44:42
into himself over a period of a few years. That's what his sister said. >> Now, after his death, his brain was
00:44:49
donated to the Royal London Hospital where a lot of specialists were hoping it was going to just completely unlock
00:44:54
all the secrets of the disease. But unfortunately, it didn't really shed any light.
00:44:59
>> Nothing. >> Which is like wild that there was no like hallmark thing that you could point
00:45:04
to to say this is what happened. As of today, cases occasionally pop up from time to time.
00:45:10
>> [ __ ] up. Don't even tell me that. >> But they're super rare. Like exceedingly
00:45:14
rare. >> They better be. >> As for the cause of this sleeping sickness, they still don't know. To this
00:45:20
day, 2026, we still have no [ __ ] clue. >> What the [ __ ] >> How? It's no longer widely believed to
00:45:26
be related to influenza. Um >> Well, just with those studies alone. >> Yeah. It just doesn't seem to connect
00:45:32
anymore. And some neurologists believe it may be like an autoimmune response to a virus, while others think that there
00:45:40
could be environmental or infectious or viral explanations for it. But others believe that it could be there could be
00:45:48
like multiple causes for the illness. I wonder if it was like be like I wonder if the reason it's so rare now is like
00:45:56
it was like some kind of illness obviously, but it was maybe exacerbated by something that we don't intake
00:46:01
anymore. >> Like we don't do anymore. You know what I mean? >> Yeah. That's what I wonder. I wonder if
00:46:05
>> environmentally there's something >> that we've shed out of our system or shed out of our way of life that
00:46:12
>> we're no longer being exposed to. >> Yeah. >> I think that would be an interesting
00:46:17
thing to go back and look through. >> Yeah. >> Try to like work backwards that way,
00:46:22
>> right? cuz it's just but it's like what would it be that would and that would
00:46:25
affect so many people from so many like like various age ranges >> and give them so many different kinds of
00:46:31
symptoms. >> Yeah. >> Like the difference in symptoms is wild >> and it just makes me think of like the
00:46:36
Radium Girls case like how they were like painting their mouths with radium and then all that crazy [ __ ] happened.
00:46:42
>> That case will blow my mind for the rest of my life. >> No, truly it really will.
00:46:45
>> But yeah, >> but you wonder if it's something like that. If it's like this used to be in
00:46:49
like our milk or this used to be in >> a cleaning product, >> the air >> or you know these people take for a
00:46:56
cold. >> Yeah. Or like these people live near these plants that produced this. Like
00:47:01
>> I wonder >> like clothing. >> Yeah. >> Hair stuff. It could be anything. >> Yeah.
00:47:07
>> Something soap. >> But it would have to be so vastly used because so many like kids were getting
00:47:12
this and like elderly people were getting there. No like age range either. It's like everybody.
00:47:17
>> It's interesting. >> So, I feel like it has to be like a like a something you would use on your body.
00:47:22
>> Yeah. >> You know, that would be you would use on a kid and >> Yeah. Or like or like you said like a
00:47:27
cleaning product like >> that somebody might have used in their house. >> Yeah. >> I feel like we should really continue
00:47:32
looking into this though so that this doesn't happen again. >> Let's figure this out, guys.
00:47:35
>> Let's do it. >> Let's figure it out. We can do this. >> Weird things have happened where like
00:47:38
the Summerton Man case was like solved right after we covered it. >> So, maybe they'll figure it out because
00:47:42
they put it into the world. >> That'd be weird. I'm putting it into the world right now. We're going to figure
00:47:46
it out. >> I would love that. >> That'd be sick. >> That would be a big [ __ ] claim.
00:47:50
>> That would be >> And like I'm never claiming to solve anything, but I'm just saying it's weird
00:47:53
timing >> cuz there's there's a small contingent of people who get so [ __ ] angry when
00:47:57
we when we will claim that. >> Stay mad. >> Which makes me want to claim more. >> I'm I'm claiming it.
00:48:02
>> But but like I'll claim this one. >> I would totally claim this one. >> I'll claim it.
00:48:06
>> Imagine if we were right too if they were like, "Oh my god, >> it was in a cleaning product
00:48:10
>> based on the mor. It was in Clorox. Decades and decades. We never thought of this. Clorox is
00:48:18
like, "Don't." It wasn't me. >> No. Clorox didn't do it. Clorox is like, "Fuck y'all." No, it wasn't Clorox.
00:48:22
>> No, it was not Clark. I use to disinfect my entire [ __ ] home. >> Clark, we love you. Come on.
00:48:26
>> Clorox, come on the pod. You're invited. >> Oh, man. That's a crazy ass case.
00:48:32
>> Isn't that crazy? Like, this was just like >> is it's every once in a while we like to
00:48:37
throw a weird [ __ ] history thing in there, like some weird illness or something just to like shake it up a
00:48:42
little. falls under the morbid umbrella. Anything that's morbid and bizarre. >> Yeah.
00:48:47
>> Every once in a while we got to throw a curveball. And this one just like really
00:48:50
fascinating. >> Dave was fascinated by this. I was fascinated by this. Well, cuz it's just
00:48:54
so crazy that we've never figured it out. >> That's the thing. Like we figured out a
00:48:58
lot. And then it was like concurrently running when like the Spanish flu was happening. So it got kind of buried
00:49:03
under those. What if it was like man-made by like some chemist maybe >> and like got out? Who knows?
00:49:10
>> Who knows? >> Who knows? >> Not me. Not me. But yeah, if you guys ever want us to cover something that like you like
00:49:16
something similar to this that like you feel falls under the morbid umbrella, send it in to [email protected]
00:49:23
with like unconventional morbid idea. >> Yeah. >> Cuz you know, we don't do these often
00:49:28
like we try, you know, we mostly do true crime before, but every once in a while it's
00:49:33
fun to like give you guys a little like, huh, that was weird and interesting kind
00:49:37
of We could always throw it like you know we have that bonus episode to play with so we could always throw it over
00:49:41
there if it's not everybody's thing but >> so if you got weird bizarre >> history things science things medical
00:49:47
things that you you would just really love to hear a discussion about in a deep dive in throw it our way we'd love
00:49:53
to do stuff morbid finds >> yeah the more the marrier >> all right let's find a weird fact to
00:49:58
finish this off I think it's your turn >> the word pothole it's a redundant term
00:50:03
because pot comes from the middle English word pit meaning hole hole. So that a pothole is a hole hole.
00:50:09
>> A hole hole. >> A hole hole. >> I'm only going to be calling them ho ho for now on. God damn they fill in that
00:50:14
hole hole. >> God damn. In Massachusetts is full of hole holes. So >> hole holes everywhere. Whole holes in
00:50:18
your hair. >> All kinds of holes. >> I like that. That is a fun fact. >> Really sexy.
00:50:25
>> And with that, we hope you keep listening >> and we hope you >> keep it weird.
00:50:31
But not so weird that you don't keep it real sexy in here. And drive slow over holes and cover your mouth when you
00:50:37
avoid them.