The Dancing Plague of 1518

In the summer of 1518, a woman in Strasbourg stepped into the street and started to dance—and couldn’t stop. Within weeks, hundreds were thrashing, leaping and collapsing beside her, some reportedly dancing themselves to death. In this episode, we zoom in on the strange "dancing plague" that gripped a Renaissance city: what witnesses said they saw, how the authorities tried to deal with it (including hiring musicians and building stages), and why so many people joined in.

Along the way, we pick apart the leading theories, from cursed saints and poisoned bread to mass psychogenic illness and explore what this eerie outbreak reveals about life, belief and stress in a city on the edge.