This, Again

Mallory Faust

You may think you know these stories, but not like this. This, Again is where historical disasters, delusions, downfalls, and déjà vu collide with human psychology. From palace scandals, space shuttle explosions, nightclub fires to witch trials, host Mallory Faust takes the moments in history you thought you understood and reveals the blind spots, egos, and eerie echoes you missed. It’s darkly funny, sharp, and empathetic - and it just might change how you see the past repeating in real time.

  1. 23 Jul

    Elvis Presley, Jackie Robinson & Mary Tyler Moore | What Makes a Cultural Catalyst?

    Today, Elvis Presley is the King of Rock and Roll. Jackie Robinson has an entire day dedicated to him across Major League Baseball. Mary Tyler Moore is remembered as one of the most influential women in television history. But before they became icons, they became arguments. In this episode, we explore what these three remarkably different people shared and why their stories followed such a similar path. Along the way, we'll examine the psychology behind cultural change, why societies often resist new ideas before eventually embracing them, and how a single visible person can accelerate that process. Because history isn't just shaped by the people who change culture. It's also shaped by the culture that decides, often reluctantly, it's ready to change. Attribution Notes: Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow. If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow Follow This, Again on Instagram: @thisagainshow This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust.  Sources and Further Reading:  Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.” International Organization 52, no. 4 (Autumn 1998): 887–917. https://doi.org/10.1162/002081898550789 Armstrong, Jennifer Keishin. “Two Men and an Independent Woman.” Television Academy, April 23, 2014. Accessed July, 2026. https://www.televisionacademy.com/features/news/features/two-men-and-independent-woman. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. “Table 2. Employment Status of the Civilian Noninstitutional Population 16 Years and Over by Sex, 1970–2008 Annual Averages.” In Women in the Labor Force: A Databook, 2009 Edition. Accessed June, 2026. https://www.bls.gov/cps/wlftable2.htm. Jost, John T. A Theory of System Justification. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv13qfw6w. Jost, John T., Mahzarin R. Banaji, and Brian A. Nosek. “A Decade of System Justification Theory: Accumulated Evidence of Conscious and Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo.” Political Psychology 25, no. 6 (2004): 881–919. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00402.x. Kuran, Timur, and Cass R. Sunstein. “Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation.” Stanford Law Review 51, no. 4 (April 1999): 683–768. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229439. Library of Congress. “Breaking the Color Line: 1940 to 1946.” In Baseball, the Color Line, and Jackie Robinson. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/collections/jackie-robinson-baseball/articles-and-essays/baseball-the-color-line-and-jackie-robinson/1940-to-1946/. Library of Congress. “‘The Jackie Robinson Story.’” In Baseball, the Color Line, and Jackie Robinson. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/collections/jackie-robinson-baseball/articles-and-essays/baseball-the-color-line-and-jackie-robinson/the-jackie-robinson-story. Major League Baseball. “Jackie Robinson Day.” MLB Together. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.mlb.com/mlb-together/jackie-robinson-day. Moore, Mary Tyler. Interview by Diane Werts. The Interviews: An Oral History of Television. Television Academy Foundation, October 23, 1997. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/mary-tyler-moore. Moore, Mary Tyler. “Mary Tyler Moore: The ‘Fresh Air’ Interview.” Interview by Terry Gross. Fresh Air. Rebroadcast by WUNC, May 26, 2023. https://www.wunc.org/2023-05-26/mary-tyler-moore-the-fresh-air-interview. National Park Service. “Guide to National Historic Landmarks by State: Tennessee.” Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalhistoriclandmarks/guide.htm. PBS. “Elvis Presley.” Culture Shock: Flashpoints—Music and Dance. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/flashpoints/music/elvis.html. Television Academy. “Foundation Archive: Mary Tyler Moore.” Emmy Magazine, May 17, 2017. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.televisionacademy.com/features/emmy-magazine/articles/foundation-archive-mary-tyler-moore. Zajonc, Robert B. “Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 9, no. 2, pt. 2 (1968): 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025848.

    Elvis Presley, Jackie Robinson & Mary Tyler Moore | What Makes a Cultural Catalyst?

  2. 3 Jul

    Pulling Back the Curtain: The American Revolution

    In this episode of This, Again, we pull back the curtain on the hidden infrastructure that made American independence possible. From communication networks and local committees to supply chains, intelligence operations, diplomacy, and the ordinary people whose names rarely appear in history books, we explore how a revolution was held together long before it was won. Because history remembers the cannon fire. But the real miracle may be that the cannonballs showed up at all. Attribution Notes: Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow. If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow Follow This, Again on Instagram: @thisagainshow This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust.  Primary Sources Founders Online. National Archives and University of Virginia Press. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://founders.archives.gov/. Commager, Henry Steele, and Richard B. Morris, eds. The Spirit of 'Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995. Boyle, Joseph Lee. Writings from the Valley Forge Encampment of the Continental Army: December 19, 1777–June 19, 1778. 2 vols. Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 2001. Bray, Robert C., and Paul E. Bushnell, eds. Diary of a Common Soldier in the American Revolution, 1775–1783: An Annotated Edition of the Military Journal of Jeremiah Greenman. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Secondary Sources Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967. Breen, T. H. The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Chernow, Ron. Washington: A Life. New York: Penguin Press, 2010. Ferling, John. Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. Raphael, Ray. A People's History of the American Revolution. New York: New Press, 2001. Rose, Alexander. Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring. New York: Bantam Books, 2006. Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. Kathleen DuVal, Independence: The Revolutionary War in the Lives of Ordinary Americans, 1763–1789 (2024). Government and Archival Resources Founders Online. National Archives and University of Virginia Press. https://founders.archives.gov/. Library of Congress. "American Revolution: A Resource Guide." https://www.loc.gov/collections/. National Archives. "The Declaration of Independence." https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration. National Park Service. "Valley Forge National Historical Park." https://www.nps.gov/vafo/. National Park Service. "Yorktown Battlefield." https://www.nps.gov/colo/. Central Intelligence Agency. Intelligence in the War of Independence. Center for the Study of Intelligence. Intelligence in the War of Independence - CIA.

    Pulling Back the Curtain: The American Revolution

  3. 19 Jun

    Who Gets to be Believed? The Navy Surgeon Who Wasn't, The Forgotten Fossil Hunter, and The Man Who Discovered Hand-Washing

    Who gets to be believed? A fake doctor performs surgery without a medical degree. A fossil hunter makes discoveries that reshape science but struggles to be taken seriously. A physician uncovers a lifesaving medical practice, only to be ignored by much of the medical establishment. This week, we explore the strange and often uncomfortable gap between expertise and credibility. Why do some people earn trust they haven't earned, while others struggle to be heard despite being right? From impostors and overlooked experts to the psychology of authority itself, this episode examines how humans decide who deserves to be believed. Attribution Notes: Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow. If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow Follow This, Again on Instagram: @thisagainshow This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust.  Semmelweis, Ignaz. The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever. Translated by K. Codell Carter. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983 (original publication 1861). Carter, K. Codell. Childbed Fever: A Scientific Biography of Ignaz Semmelweis. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995. Nuland, Sherwin B. The Doctors' Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignác Semmelweis. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. Semmelweis, Ignaz. The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever. Translated by K. Codell Carter. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. Best, M., and D. Neuhauser. "Ignaz Semmelweis and the Birth of Infection Control." Quality and Safety in Health Care 13, no. 3 (2004): 233–234. https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/13/3/233 Nuland, Sherwin B. The Doctors' Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignác Semmelweis. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. Carter, K. Codell. Childbed Fever: A Scientific Biography of Ignnaz Semmelweis. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995. Gillispie, Charles Coulston, ed. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 12. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975. Entry: "Semmelweis, Ignaz Philipp." Emling, Shelley. The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Torrens, Hugh. Mary Anning of Lyme Regis: Fossilist. Bournemouth: British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1995. Goodhue, Thomas W. Fossil Hunter: The Life and Times of Mary Anning (1799–1847). Bethesda, MD: Academica Press, 2004. Crichton, Robert. The Great Impostor. New York: Random House, 1959.

    Who Gets to be Believed? The Navy Surgeon Who Wasn't, The Forgotten Fossil Hunter, and The Man Who Discovered Hand-Washing

  4. 10 Jun

    Assassinations and Accessibility: Mckinley, JFK, Reagan, & Shinzo Abe

    After every assassination, the same questions seem to follow. How did this happen? Why wasn't it prevented? What warning signs did people miss? From William McKinley in 1901 to John F. Kennedy in 1963, Ronald Reagan in 1981, and Shinzo Abe in 2022, each attack exposed vulnerabilities that suddenly seemed obvious in hindsight. Security systems changed. Procedures evolved. New lessons were learned. But what if the deeper story isn't about the attacks themselves? In this episode, we explore how societies learn from catastrophe, why institutions often become experts at preventing the last disaster, and what psychologists call the availability heuristic: our tendency to focus on the risks we can easily imagine while overlooking the ones we can't. Because the future rarely arrives in the form we expect. And sometimes the most important blind spots are hiding inside assumptions that feel perfectly reasonable today. Attribution Notes: Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow. If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow Follow This, Again on Instagram: @thisagainshow This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust.  Sources and Further Reading: William McKinley Merry, Robert W. President McKinley: Architect of the American Century. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017. Library of Congress – William McKinley Papers https://www.loc.gov/collections/william-mckinley-papers/about-this-collection/ Miller, Scott. The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century. New York: Random House, 2011. John F. Kennedy Blaine, Gerald, and Lisa McCubbin. The Kennedy Detail: JFK's Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence. New York: Gallery Books, 2010. President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964. National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report Ronald Reagan Wilber, Del Quentin. Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan. New York: Henry Holt, 2011. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum https://www.reaganlibrary.gov Shinzo Abe BBC News – Shinzo Abe assassination coverage https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62089486 https://www.bbc.com/news/62095447 National Police Agency of Japan https://www.npa.go.jp/english/ Psychology, Risk & Organizational Learning Availability Heuristic Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. "Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability." Cognitive Psychology 5, no. 2 (1973): 207–232. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(73)90033-9 High Reliability Organizations Weick, Karl E., and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe. Managing the Unexpected: Sustained Performance in a Complex World. 3rd ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2015. Publisher: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119175834?msockid=205e866215186a7d34b4951214346b54 Normal Accident Theory Perrow, Charles. Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7srgf Organizational Failure & Challenger Vaughan, Diane. The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo22781921.html Horizon Scanning & Future Risk National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Enhancing Horizon Scanning and Foresight Capacity of the Federal Government. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2020. Free Full Report: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25729/enhancing-horizon-scanning-and-foresight-capacity-of-the-federal-government Black Swan Events Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. 2nd ed. New York: Random House, 2010. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/176226/the-black-swan-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb/

    Assassinations and Accessibility: Mckinley, JFK, Reagan, & Shinzo Abe

  5. 21 May

    Pocahontas, Galileo, and Isaac Newton: Why We Change the Stories (1600s)

    This week on This, Again, we look at three figures from the 1600s whose stories became cleaner, simpler, and easier to pass down over time: Galileo Galilei Pocahontas Isaac Newton Galileo becomes the ultimate symbol of science versus religion, even though the reality was tangled up in politics, ego, public pressure, and institutional instability. Pocahontas becomes a romantic bridge between worlds, despite the fact that much of her life survives only through English interpretation, political messaging, and a story later generations softened into something easier to emotionally live with. Newton becomes the image of effortless genius, reduced to an apple falling from a tree, while the obsessive, competitive, deeply complicated person underneath that myth slowly fades into the background. But this episode isn’t really about “debunking” history. It’s about asking why stories evolve this way in the first place. Do we simplify history because we’re trying to manipulate people? Or because human beings naturally remember stories better when they feel emotionally organized and easy to carry forward? And at what point does simplification stop being an introduction… and quietly become the final version? This episode explores historiography, memory, narrative psychology, and the uncomfortable reality that most of us were probably taught the first layer of history… without ever being brought back for the second one. Attribution Notes: Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow. If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow Follow This, Again on Instagram: @thisagainshow This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust.  Galileo Galileo Galilei. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Translated by Stillman Drake. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft1t1nb0d5&chunk.id=d0e180&brand=ucpress Galileo Galilei. The Essential Galileo. Edited and translated by Maurice A. Finocchiaro. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2008. https://hackettpublishing.com/the-essential-galileo Finocchiaro, Maurice A. Retrying Galileo, 1633–1992. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. https://www.ucpress.edu/books/retrying-galileo/paper  Heilbron, J. L. Galileo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Galileo - John L. Heilbron - Oxford University Press Vatican Observatory. “The Galileo Affair.” https://www.vaticanobservatory.org/education/the-galileo-affair/ Pocahontas John Smith. The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624). https://archive.org/details/generallhistorie00smit  Camilla Townsend. Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809077380/pocahontasandthepowhatandilemma National Park Service. “Pocahontas.” Jamestown Colonial National Historical Park. https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/pocahontas-her-life-and-legend.htm Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Pocahontas.” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pocahontas-Powhatan-woman  Helen C. Rountree. Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/2782/ William Apess. A Son of the Forest and Other Writings. Edited by Barry O’Connell. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. https://www.umasspress.com/9781558491076/a-son-of-the-forest-and-other-writings/ Newton Isaac Newton. The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Translated by I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520088177/the-principia  Richard S. Westfall. Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/never-at-rest/45515EFB2D1A3B1D8764A3558D3A4E4B  Patricia Fara. Newton: The Making of Genius. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. https://cup.columbia.edu/book/newton/9780231128063 The Royal Society. “Newton and Leibniz: The Calculus Controversy.” https://royalsociety.org/blog/2015/02/newton-leibniz-calculus-dispute/  Gleick, James. Isaac Newton. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/295742/isaac-newton-by-james-gleick/   Historiography / Philosophy / Historical Memory E. H. Carr. What Is History? New York: Vintage Books, 1961. https://archive.org/details/whatishistory00ehca  Hayden White. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/metahistory  Michel Foucault. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. https://monoskop.org/images/5/5d/Foucault_Michel_Power_Knowledge_Selected_Interviews_and_Other_Writings_1972-1977.pdf Jerome Bruner. The Process of Education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960. https://archive.org/details/processofeducati00brun Jerome Bruner. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. https://archive.org/details/actualmindspossi00brun

    Pocahontas, Galileo, and Isaac Newton: Why We Change the Stories (1600s)

  6. 7 May

    Going Undercover: The People Who Entered and Exposed the Psychiatric System

    What would it take to be labeled insane? In 1887, Nellie Bly checked herself into a New York asylum to find out. She got in with surprising ease. Getting out was something else entirely. Nearly a century later, David Rosenhan ran an experiment to see if anything had changed. Healthy people walked into psychiatric hospitals, claimed to hear a single voice, and were admitted. Once inside, they acted completely normal. It didn’t matter. This episode follows both investigations from the inside and looks at what they revealed about how systems make decisions and why those decisions are so difficult to reverse. Attribution Notes: Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow. If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow   Follow This, Again on Instagram: @thisagainshow   This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust.  Bly, Nellie. Ten Days in a Mad-House. New York: Ian L. Munro, 1887. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59899 Rosenhan, D. L. “On Being Sane in Insane Places.” Science 179, no. 4070 (1973): 250–258. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1735662 Grob, Gerald N. The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America’s Mentally Ill. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. Scull, Andrew. Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Spitzer, Robert L. “On Pseudoscience in Science, Logic in Remission, and Psychiatric Diagnosis: A Critique of Rosenhan’s ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places.’” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 84, no. 5 (1975): 442–452. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1976-00177-001 Zimbardo, Philip G. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. New York: Random House, 2007. Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1906. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/140 Griffin, John Howard. Black Like Me. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.

    Going Undercover: The People Who Entered and Exposed the Psychiatric System

  7. 23 Apr

    Mass Hysteria Through History: Laughter Epidemic, Dancing Plague, and Tik Tok Tics

    In 1962, a group of schoolgirls in Tanganyika began laughing and could not stop. The episode spread to multiple schools, eventually forcing closures and affecting hundreds of students. More than four centuries earlier, in 1518, residents of Strasbourg took to the streets and danced for days at a time. Contemporary accounts describe exhaustion, collapse, and a response from local authorities shaped by the medical beliefs of the time. During the industrial era in Europe and the United States, physicians documented similar patterns in factories and schools. Groups of workers developed symptoms such as fainting, tremors, and nausea without a clear environmental or biological cause. In that same year, 1962, a U.S. textile factory experienced what became known as the June Bug Epidemic. Workers reported being bitten by an unseen insect. Investigations found no physical cause, but the symptoms spread through proximity and shared interpretation. More recently, clinicians have documented a rise in rapid-onset tic-like behaviors in adolescents, many of whom were exposed to similar content online. This episode looks at these cases side by side, not as isolated events, but as examples of a recurring pattern. Under certain conditions, behavior, emotion, and even physical symptoms can move through groups in ways that feel personal, but are not entirely individual. Attribution Notes: Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow. If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow   Follow This, Again on Instagram: @thisagainshow   This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust.    Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic (1962) Rankin, A. M., and P. J. Philip. “An Epidemic of Laughing in the Bukoba District of Tanganyika.” Central African Journal of Medicine, 1963. https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA00089176_6171 Hempelmann, Christian F. “The Laughter Epidemic of 1962: A Study of Collective Behavior.” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 2007. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/HUMOR.2007.003/html Dancing Plague of Strasbourg (1518) A Time to Dance, a Time to Die Waller, John. A Time to Dance, a Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518. Icon Books, 2008. Waller, John. “A Forgotten Plague: Making Sense of Dancing Mania.” The Lancet, 2009. A forgotten plague: making sense of dancing mania - The Lancet Backman, E. Louis. Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine. Routledge, 1952. Religious dances : in the Christian church and in popular medicine : Backman, E. Louis (Eugène Louis), 1883-1965, author : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Industrial Era / Factory & School Outbreaks Bartholomew, Robert E., and Simon Wessely. “Protean Nature of Mass Sociogenic Illness: From Possession to Mass Hysteria.” British Journal of Psychiatry, 2002. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/protean-nature-of-mass-sociogenic-illness/ Micale, Mark S. Approaching Hysteria: Disease and Its Interpretations. Princeton University Press, 1995. Robinson, Harriet Hanson. Loom and Spindle: Or Life Among the Early Mill Girls. 1898. Loom and Spindle : Harriet H. Robinson : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive June Bug Epidemic (1962, United States) Kerckhoff, Alan C., and Kurt W. Back. “The June Bug Epidemic: A Study of Hysterical Contagion.” Journal of Social Psychology, 1968. (Accessible summary of case) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3588562/ Modern Case: Functional Tic-Like Behaviors (COVID Era) Pringsheim, Tamara, et al. “Rapid Onset Functional Tic-Like Behaviors in Young Females During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Movement Disorders, 2021. https://movementdisorders.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mds.28778 Müller-Vahl, Kirsten R., et al. “Increase of Functional Tic-Like Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” European Journal of Neurology, 2022. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ene.15263 Paulus, Walter, et al. “Functional Movement Disorders: Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Journal of Neurology, 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00415-021-10578-7 Tourette Association of America. “Rising Incidence of Functional Tic-Like Behaviors.” https://tourette.org/rising-incidence-of-functional-tic-like-behaviors/ Psychology & Mechanism (Supporting Framework) Hatfield, Elaine, John T. Cacioppo, and Richard L. Rapson. Emotional Contagion. Cambridge University Press, 1994. Engert, Veronika, et al. “Stress Contagion in Humans: Empathic Stress Induction.” The Contagiousness of Stress: How It Affects Our Brains and Bodies - ScienceDirect Rizzolatti, Giacomo, and Laila Craighero. “The Mirror-Neuron System.” Annual Review of Neuroscience, 2004. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.neuro.27.070203.144230 Provine, Robert R. “Yawning as a Stereotyped Action Pattern.” Ethology, 1986. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-0310.1986.tb00611.x

    Mass Hysteria Through History: Laughter Epidemic, Dancing Plague, and Tik Tok Tics

  8. 13 Apr

    Anne Boleyn, Robert Oppenheimer, and the Price of Proximity to Power

    In May 1536, Anne Boleyn was still Queen of England. Seventeen days later, she was executed. This episode looks at how that kind of collapse is even possible. Anne’s rise wasn’t just personal. Her marriage to Henry VIII forced England to break with the Catholic Church, reshaped the law, and required oaths of loyalty across the country. By the mid-1530s, she had become tied to the most disruptive political and religious changes of the era. When pressure built around succession, legitimacy, and reform, the system didn’t slow down or reassess. It moved quickly. Charges were brought. Trials were held. Executions followed. This episode examines that moment not just as a Tudor story, but as a pattern. What happens when someone stands at the center of power and becomes the most visible part of a system under strain? To answer that, we follow the same pattern beyond Tudor England. The downfall of Thomas Cromwell shows how proximity did not protect even the people building the system. The 1954 security hearing of Robert Oppenheimer shows how removal can shift from execution to loss of access while serving a similar function. And modern corporate examples show how leadership removal can signal control even when deeper issues remain unresolved. This is not a story about whether Anne Boleyn was guilty. It is a story about how systems respond under pressure, and why the person closest to power can become the fastest way to prove that something has been done. Attribution Notes: Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow. If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow   Follow This, Again on Instagram: @thisagainshow This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust.    Ives, Eric. The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. https://archive.org/details/lifedeathofanneb00ives Bernard, G. W. Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300162455/anne-boleyn/ Weir, Alison. The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn. New York: Ballantine Books, 2009. https://groveatlantic.com/book/the-six-wives-of-henry-viii/ “Trial of Anne Boleyn (1536).” English History in Primary Sources. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/anneboleyntrial.asp “Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII.” British History Online. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/search/series/letters-papers-hen8 (Search “Anne Boleyn 1536” within this: these are actual state papers) “Eustace Chapuys Correspondence.” British History Online. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/search/series/cal-state-papers-spanish “Act in Restraint of Appeals.” https://www.british-history.ac.uk/statutes-realm/vol3/pp427-429 “Act of Supremacy.” https://www.british-history.ac.uk/statutes-realm/vol3/pp492-496 MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Thomas Cromwell: A Life. New York: Viking, 2018. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/295438/thomas-cromwell-by-diarmaid-macculloch/ MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History. New York: Penguin, 2005. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/292946/the-reformation-by-diarmaid-macculloch/ Guy, John. Thomas More. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/thomas-more-9780192854063 Bellamy, J. G. The Tudor Law of Treason. London: Routledge, 1979. https://www.routledge.com/The-Tudor-Law-of-Treason/Bellamy/p/book/9780719007804 U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer (1954) https://www.osti.gov/opennet/hearing.jsp Bird, Kai, and Martin J. Sherwin. American Prometheus. New York: Knopf, 2005. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/67852/american-prometheus-by-kai-bird-and-martin-j-sherwin/

    Anne Boleyn, Robert Oppenheimer, and the Price of Proximity to Power
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You may think you know these stories, but not like this. This, Again is where historical disasters, delusions, downfalls, and déjà vu collide with human psychology. From palace scandals, space shuttle explosions, nightclub fires to witch trials, host Mallory Faust takes the moments in history you thought you understood and reveals the blind spots, egos, and eerie echoes you missed. It’s darkly funny, sharp, and empathetic - and it just might change how you see the past repeating in real time.

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  • Creator
    Mallory Faust
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    23
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    This, Again

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