Hysterical

Psychogenic illness is fascinating. Mass psychogenic illness is even more interesting. Such was the case in Leroy, NY when a whole group of high school girls started having Tourette’s-like symptoms out of seemingly nowhere. It was all over the news back in 2011 and then, just as quickly, it vanished. Dismissed as conversion disorder (which essentially means manifesting/converting a psychological disorder or condition into a physical one), every attempt to figure out why these girls experienced this sudden onset of tics and vocalizations from environment to chemical was ruled out. So, what the hell?

Dan Taberski hosts this exploration into the Leroy situation, along with the closely related Havana Syndrome and what it means to have your intentions and honesty challenged. Or if being diagnosed with conversion disorder is truly just an easy way for everyone to call you a faker, or is an honest-to-goodness psychological condition. Through interviews with folks from Leroy, including some of the affected girls and some others who seemingly suffered from this outbreak who weren’t part of the core cohort, Taberski applies an even hand in his research and discovery of what was what. And, honestly, it wasn’t what I expected. I went in thinking this would be a dismantling of the mass psychogenic illness theory. That he would talk to these women and others and they would continually insist there was some environmental issue. Or some physical reason for their symptoms. And he certainly does go down that road. There were some real red herrings on that front, including a covered-up chemical spill near the school, some really bizarre ground water issues and various other things that certainly pointed that way. I didn’t recall this being a thing, but even environmental crusader, Erin Brockovich, showed up in town with her scientist insisting the key was an environmental issue. Which turned out to be a typical case of confirmation bias. You’re an environmentalist who attributed every issue to the environment and when your bias is disproven you fade back into the background.

Taberski is a terrific host. I think he also hosted the Running From Cops podcast I listened to a while back. His style is conversational and not overly stiff or serious the way some podcasters and journalists can be. There’s a buoyancy to his approach that is super-approachable, but also lends the sensitive subject matter just the right amount of an empathetic voice without tipping over into his own biases. Mostly he manages to illuminate the very real existence of conversion disorder and a conclusion that it can apply in many different cases. From high school girls to hardened CIA operatives in Cuba and Russia. A thing that both he and we are definitely led to believe from the beginning is kind of a kooky and dismissive diagnosis. But as evidence unfolds and Taberski talks to more and more experts about the situation — and the girls’ symptoms seemingly vanish as the focus on the situation fades — it becomes more and more likely that this is the answer after all. Mass psychogenic illness. Not physical, but psychological. It’s really amazing what our minds can conjure when given the right conditions.

Ultimately it’s a well-told story about human frailty and the power of suggestion. As well as how perspective and time can affect a narrative. The question that I kept thinking about in this day and age of huge peaks and deep valleys in the news cycle is what this 2011 story would have looked like in 2024. When the exposure of the goings on wouldn’t have to rely on the local and national news, Dr. Phil and Dr. Drew’s programs. Where every affected person could have TikTok’d their own story and the whole thing could have gone viral amongst their peers. Would this mass psychogenic illness have spread far and wide? Would a group of high schoolers in Dallas see this going on in upstate New York and started to also feel funny and amass Tourette’s? Was it mostly confined to this one area because the exposure was relatively limited by geography and distribution? What does the future of this type of thing hold, if anything? And why, unlike these girls, whose symptoms seem to have disappeared, do the serious government people wrapped up in Havana Syndrome — which itself was attributed to the same diagnosis — have, in a bunch of cases, ongoing, chronic issues? It’s all really interesting and still a bit mysterious, but this is what makes for a good podcast, after all.