The victim would start to drag her body across the floor. She'd start

crawling around on her hands and knees, maybe barking. I mean, this is just like how people with kids dance at weddings, you know?

Stop. As always, I'm lucky as the devil to be joined by Sarah Marshall, host of the podcasts,

you're wrong about and you are good.

For this two-part episode, I'm telling Sarah

about a mysterious, confounding, centuries-long phenomenon. a called a dance mania.

Tarentism took root in southern Italy in the middle ages,

where supposedly the bite of a local spider would cause extremely bizarre symptoms and the only cure was to dance for

hours or even days lest the spider's venom kill the afflicted.

Not only that, but the dance itself seemed to be contagious.

And every summer, the region was totally taken over by these strange spider spells and songs.

Was it all truly a reaction to the venom?

Was it a religious possession? a archaic cults secret rituals.

We'll try to figure it all out on this two-part series

about Tarentism.

I'm your host, Chelsea Weber Smith Smith and this is American Hysteria.

Hello Sarah, I am as always just thrilled to the bones to have you on the show.

Ooh yes I'm thrilled to all my little foot bones. Wow that's special.

Half of our bones are in our feet. That's why it's so

important that we wear supportive shoes, which I learned at Disneyland with you

last year. And you've never gone back. You've been a dad's shoe ever since.

Yeah, well, sometimes I put on a pair of vans

...