Episode
The Laughing Sickness: Medicine’s Strangest Cold Case
- Podcast
- Mysteries and Histories
- Published
- Aug 3, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1387
- Processing state
not_requested
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Summary
In the isolated highlands of Papua New Guinea, a strange and horrifying disease spread through entire villages, leaving women and children trembling, stumbling, and erupting into sudden fits of laughter before wasting away to death. For years, no one knew what was killing them, and the answer turned out to be far more disturbing than anyone expected: a fatal prion disease tied to one of the greatest human taboos.