Waiting for Brockovich | 4

Summary

Hysterical: Episode 4 – Waiting for Brockovich

Host: Dan Tabersky
Release Date: July 29, 2024

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1. Introduction to Leroy's Medical Mystery

Dan Tabersky opens the episode by delving into the perplexing case of a mysterious illness affecting a group of high school girls in Leroy, New York. The host sets the stage by questioning whether the symptoms are due to environmental toxins, such as contaminated water or chemicals within the school, or if they stem from psychological factors like mass hysteria.

Notable Quote:

"What is causing their sudden, often violent symptoms? Is there something in the water or inside the school? Or is it 'all in their head?'"
— Dan Tabersky [02:00]

2. Historical Context: The 1970 Train Derailment and TCE Spill

The episode provides historical context by recounting a significant environmental disaster that occurred in December 1970. A Lehigh Valley train derailed, releasing 2 tons of cyanide crystals and 35,000 gallons of trichloroethane (TCE) into the groundwater. This incident laid the foundation for the ongoing environmental concerns in Leroy.

Notable Quote:

"Trichloroethylene is a degreasing solvent used in manufacturing. 35,000 gallons of it went into the ground that night and into the groundwater, and it's still there."
— Dan Tabersky [04:52]

3. Environmental Concerns: Natural Gas Wells on School Property

Bob Bocock, a water supply expert, investigates the presence of six natural gas wells on the high school property—a highly unusual and concerning finding. The wells were initially justified as a means to offset heating costs, but their existence raised red flags about potential chemical exposure and environmental safety.

Notable Quote:

"Six natural gas wells on school property? One is about as dumb as it gets. Six is just kind of pathetically stupid."
— Bob Bocock [20:32]

4. Erin Brockovich's Intervention

The nationally renowned environmentalist Erin Brockovich steps into the Leroy case, bringing significant attention and resources to investigate the mysterious illnesses. Brockovich's involvement leads to increased media presence and heightened scrutiny of the environmental factors at play.

Notable Quote:

"Erin Brockovich sent a team ahead to make sure it's legit. You stick your number two on them, the one who does all the work and gets none of the glory."
— Dan Tabersky [11:01]

5. Bob Bocock's Investigation

Bob Bocock arrives in Leroy skeptical of the reports, initially doubting that the girls are faking their symptoms. However, after witnessing the genuine distress of the affected girls, his perspective shifts. Bocock conducts thorough investigations, including soil and water sampling, uncovering ongoing environmental hazards like leaking fracking wells and residual contamination from the 1970 derailment.

Notable Quote:

"I sat in the room with these kids. They couldn't fake that. Whether it was chemically induced or psychologically induced, they were not faking."
— Bob Bocock [19:58]

6. Comparison to Love Canal

The episode draws parallels between Leroy and the infamous Love Canal disaster of the 1970s. Like Love Canal, Leroy experienced severe environmental contamination leading to widespread health issues, primarily affecting children. The community's struggle for recognition and remediation mirrors that of Love Canal’s residents.

Notable Quote:

"Locals have been raised on stories of Love Canal, a catastrophic toxic waste scandal from the 1970s. It was only 50 miles from Leroy."
— Dan Tabersky [14:02]

7. Impact of Erin Brockovich's Team on the Situation

Erin Brockovich’s team intensifies the investigation, leading to increased community activism and media coverage. However, this heightened focus also exacerbates the perceived severity of the outbreak, contributing to heightened anxiety and possibly intensifying the symptoms experienced by the afflicted girls.

Notable Quote:

"In the week after Erin Brockovich. There's 11 exacerbations the following week."
— Dr. Drew Pinsky [34:20]

8. Medical Perspective: Dr. McVig's Analysis

Dr. McVig, a neurologist, provides a medical perspective, initially supporting the theory of mass psychogenic illness. Her analysis tracks the correlation between increased media attention and the worsening of symptoms, suggesting that the stress and anxiety generated by the investigations may be aggravating the girls' conditions.

Notable Quote:

"So we had to map all of that against the big upheavals in the brouhaha... to see how her patients fared afterwards."
— Dr. Drew Pinsky [33:42]

9. The Role of Mass Hysteria and Community Response

The episode explores the concept of mass hysteria, where collective anxiety and fear can manifest as physical symptoms. Leroy's tight-knit community dynamics, combined with historical mistrust of authorities—as seen in the Love Canal aftermath—create a fertile ground for such psychological phenomena.

Notable Quote:

"Hysteria is a tricky word... it's the perplexing battery of symptoms where mind and body seem to meet the medical definition of the unknown."
— Dan Tabersky [30:02]

10. Conclusion: Unresolved Questions and Future Directions

Despite extensive investigations, the Leroy case remains unresolved. Environmental tests failed to conclusively link the symptoms to specific toxins, leaving the community grappling with uncertainty. The episode suggests that both environmental and psychological factors may be intertwined, complicating the search for definitive answers.

Notable Quote:

"Nine times out of 10, I actually have a result that I can report. Leroy was one of those few instances where I spent months down there and never resolved or had a complete conclusion as to what happened."
— Bob Bocock [30:56]

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Final Thoughts:
Episode 4 of Hysterical, titled "Waiting for Brockovich," masterfully intertwines environmental investigation with psychological analysis, presenting a multifaceted view of the medical mystery in Leroy, New York. Through interviews, expert insights, and historical comparisons, the episode challenges listeners to consider the complex interplay between external toxins and internal psychological responses in understanding community-wide health crises.

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Stay Tuned:
The episode concludes by hinting at further investigations into similar cases of unexplained illnesses and the pervasive fear of being dismissed or labeled as hysterical. Listeners are encouraged to continue following the series for deeper insights into the mysteries of mass hysteria and environmental health.

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For more information and to listen to the full episode, visit the Hysterical page on the Wondery App or your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Dan Tabursky]

Wondery subscribers can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad free. Join Wonder in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Hey, everyone, it's Dan. I have an exciting announcement to share with everyone. Hysterical has been named the Apple Podcast's show of the Year. It's a recognition given to just one show that demonstrates quality and innovation in podcasting. The editors over at Apple Podcasts called our show an impeccably crafted and creatively structured investigation that sets a new standard for immersive audience experiences. And if you can't tell by the sound of my voice, I'm blushing. We really are so honored and so appreciative for the recognition and that you are here to listen to the show that we're really proud of. Thanks for listening. Now onto the show. Previously on Hysterical.

[Jessica]

I felt like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. I remember exactly, like, getting out and just, like, standing there staring at the cameras, like, holy shit. Like, what the hell is going on?

[Dan Tabursky]

There's just a history in the US of women being dismissed by doctors. Hysteria. It's all in your head. Oh, my gosh, you're exaggerating.

[Bob Bocock]

There is something actually happening to their bodies. Something I believe is coming from the outside. The environment, somehow.

[Jessica]

I could live with conversion disorder. I could not live with the environment did it to me. That, to me, was terminal.

[Dan Tabursky]

You say Leroy or Leroy.

[Local Resident]

That's the great debate of Genesee County. Or even of Leroy.

[Dan Tabursky]

I know you can't believe I'm still talking about the freaking name thing, right? But you should know that I have uncovered pertinent information. It came up when I was shooting the shit with local Leroy. Gadfly. C.N. barrons. His ancestors have lived around here since the 1700s. Plaid flannel shirt, skull cap, biker bar mustache.

[Local Resident]

All of us say Le Roi. I think it sounds a little better, but even there, I guess half the people say Leroy and the other half say Leroy.

[Dan Tabursky]

So turns out this isn't just a Leroy Leroy thing. This whole area is riddled with weird pronunciations.

[Local Resident]

People constantly call Bergen. Bergen.

[Dan Tabursky]

Oh, you pronounce it Burgeon.

[Local Resident]

Yes. And then there's Avon, which is often pronounced Avon.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah, you guys are getting them all wrong.

[Local Resident]

We have Charlotte.

[Dan Tabursky]

No way. Yeah, that is Charlotte is clearly Charlotte. Charlotte. That's amazing. There's something to this. The names around here. But put a pin in that for now, because I met Barron's here at the side of the road, a couple of miles from the high school for a different reason. Last time, you'll recall, after Several weeks of tests, tests on the girls, some tests on the school grounds. State and school officials came to believe that this whole thing was a mass psychogenic illness, a mass hysteria, and that nothing else made sense. Until, that is, someone slipped a document and a note under the doormat of one of the affected families. The details of how this went down are sketchy. The note was anonymous and we still know nothing about the messenger. Except they clearly had a sense for the drama of the moment. But the note said, basically, if you're looking for the cause of the outbreak, go back farther. Go back to something that happened 40 years ago, to an event that was huge at the time, but that everyone seems to have forgotten. And it led investigators here, where Barron's has brought us today.

[Local Resident]

This is Gulf Road, Machana Leroy, over in the area where the stone quarries are. I think this is where the Lehigh Valley tracks actually traversed Golf Road here.

[Dan Tabursky]

It's a big cleared section of land squared off and leveled and covered in gray gravel. There are some not very effective markers posted to keep people off the ground. How did you know that it was here?

[Local Resident]

Well, I think mutual aid was called to it. So we heard the sirens go off.

[Dan Tabursky]

Oh, you remember it happening?

[Local Resident]

Yeah, it was December 6, 1970.

[Dan Tabursky]

Behrens was in 10th grade when it happened.

[Local Resident]

Somewhere around 3:30 in the morning, a Lehigh Valley train, I think there were 25 cars on it, derailed and emptied 2 tons of cyanide crystals and 30 to 35,000 gallons of trichloroethane salt. I mean, everybody knew what cyanide was. Nobody knew what trichloroethane was.

[Dan Tabursky]

Trichloroethylene is a degreasing solvent used in manufacturing. 35,000 gallons of it went into the ground that night and into the groundwater, and it's still there. Long term exposure to TCE has been known to cause dizziness, nausea, headaches, liver damage, several forms of cancer and neurological complications. What is in the water in Leroy, New York? And if poisons are bubbling up from the ground beneath your feet, why would you ever believe the people telling you it's all in your head? I'm Dan Tabursky from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. This is hysterical. Episode 4 Waiting for Brockovich.

[Erin Brockovich]

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[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

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[Dan Tabursky]

Picture, if you will, in your mind's eye, Oscar winner and Hollywood icon, Julia Roberts. Okay, now picture her teeth. They're incredible, right? And that smile. As someone with a gap in his teeth the width of a Jenga block, it's Julia and that grin. Who are my shining stars of dental perfection? And that's why it's kind of funny to me that in the role she won the Oscar for, she barely cracks a smile. Cause in that movie, she was playing Erin Brockovich. And Erin Brockovich is not a big laugher. Oh, see, now that pisses me off.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

We have more than 400 plaintiffs, and let's be honest, we all know they're more out there.

[Dan Tabursky]

The movie tells Brockovich's journey as a struggling single mom and file clerk who follows a hunch and discovers a huge corporation, pge, has poisoned the groundwater in Hinckley, California, leading to sickness, death and dozens of families in the town.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Take out your calculator and you multiply.

[Dan Tabursky]

That number by 100. Anything less than that is a waste of our time. The reason it works as a movie is is because Brockovich is a little bit toxic herself, but in a fun way. Like this. I'm not talking to you, bitch. Or like this.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

That's all you got, lady.

[Dan Tabursky]

Two wrong feet in fucking ugly shoes. It is a great movie and it Made the real Brockovich famous for her effectiveness at exposing toxic spill scandals and uncovering coverups and for her truly godlike levels of self confidence. This is from her own website, verbatim. Say the name Erin Brockovich and you think strong, tough, stubborn and sexy. Erin is all that and definitely more. She's a modern day David who loves a good brawl with today's Goliaths. She thrives on being the voice for those who don't know how to yell. She's a rebel, she's a fighter. She's a mother, she's a woman. She's you and me. In late January, Brockovich appears on Dr. Drew Pinsky's Headline News Show. Dr. Drew, by now is gaga over the Leroy story.

[Marge]

Big surprise if somebody maybe 10 years ago or back actually when I watched Julia Roberts playing you in the theaters asked me what I'd probably be doing in 2012. Probably the very last thing on my list would have been teaming up with Erin Brockovich to evaluate a medical mystery in substate New York.

[Dr. McVig]

I wouldn't have put that high on my list. Your bubble here, doctor.

[Dan Tabursky]

And it's here Brockovich announces that she is cannonballing into the fray.

[Dr. McVig]

Very quickly. Just to share with you what people are reporting to me from the area.

[Dan Tabursky]

When word of her interest in the story got out, the tips from Leroy came rolling in. Brockovich herself says she got thousands about the 1970 train derailment, other suspected toxins, and a stream of disturbing health problems that people fear those toxins are causing.

[Dr. McVig]

I have people reporting to me who grew up in the area whose sons were born with rare birth defects. I have children who grew up in the area who are reporting to me they had bone cancer at the age of 10. I have people reporting to me that their two and a half year olds have tick like syndrome.

[Marge]

Stop you because we can't substantiate any of this, but we get the idea.

[Dr. McVig]

Hi there. I'm Erin Brockovich and I just finished the Dr. Drew show.

[Dan Tabursky]

This is her backstage, that Dr. Drew appearance, doing some extra behind the scenes content for the show.

[Dr. McVig]

And what is to come next. We have a team going out there that's going to be doing a site assessment. They're going to be meeting with the families. They're going to go to the original derailment site. We're going to be getting more eye accounts and documentation of the spill, how far the plume has gone.

[Dan Tabursky]

Now, there might have been a time where Erin herself would have just shown up in Leroy, but when you get high Profile like that, you don't just go somewhere anymore. You send people ahead to make sure it's legit. You stick your number two on them, the one who does all the work and gets none of the glory. Before you get Erin Brockovich, what you get is Bob Bocock.

[Bob Bocock]

The film about her is about 99% accurate.

[Dan Tabursky]

Bob Bocock is a water supply expert and Brockovich's longtime partner in investigations like the one they were about to embark on in Leroy.

[Bob Bocock]

But I'm not the batshit crazy one. Aaron's the batshit crazy one.

[Dan Tabursky]

They've also clearly got the same, shall we say, casual sense of workplace decorum.

[Bob Bocock]

Okay? She gets on these things and she's like, oh, Bob, this is just me and my. Stick to it. Iveness. Or, you know, I've got a feeling here, and you know, I'm always right, and I'm like, shut up, bitch. I know you're right. Will you just leave me alone and let me figure this out?

[Dan Tabursky]

Their staff meetings must be so uncomfortable at that time.

[Bob Bocock]

She hated my guts for the first 10 years. She was very protective of the work she had done.

[Dan Tabursky]

She hated your guts for how long?

[Bob Bocock]

About 10 years.

[Dan Tabursky]

That's a long time.

[Bob Bocock]

We've been together for 30. More than 30.

[Dan Tabursky]

But all the salty talk aside, Bob clearly believes in her.

[Bob Bocock]

You know, she's the one that went out there and pulled the frogs out of the ponds and tested the pools and worked with the people and really found out what was going on. And me, as a scientist, was, you know, skeptical of her application of innuendo to certain aspects of things. But damn it, she's right all the time. She gets a feeling about something, and. And she's usually right. I mean, look at the Leroy case, for instance. You know, would I have participated in something like that? No. But she kept hounding me, something's wrong here. Something's not right.

[Dan Tabursky]

How much TCE did that chemical spill leave behind in the soil and the water? What about those fracking wells over by the high school? The EPA was still trying to clean up the old chemical factory just eight miles from the school, where industrial waste had found its way into the ground. And even Jell O. And the stories of how the creek and town would change color depending on what flavor they were cranking out at the jello factory that day. To be clear, these toxic fears aren't just a town's imagination getting away from them. The precedent around here is real. Too real.

[Bob Bocock]

For several years, chemicals have been seeping into the basements of a number of houses.

[Dan Tabursky]

No case, however, has received more attention than the waste site at Love Canal.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Love Canal, one of the worst environmental disasters in American history.

[Dan Tabursky]

Locals have been raised on stories of Love Canal, a catastrophic toxic waste scandal from the 1970s. It happened just 50 miles from Leroy, and for what it's worth, about three miles from the house my mom grew up in. The sickest part of the joke is in the name Love Canal. It sounds sweet until you learn that the canal in question was where chemical companies had dumped tens of thousands of tons of toxic waste for years in the 30s and 40s. In the 50s, the Canal and all the crap in it was quietly covered over, and a modest neighborhood of 800 or so ranch style homes was built alongside it. By the 70s, reports of sickness began to spread. Asthma, epilepsy, birth defects, miscarriage. Here's a local on the news at the time. Her son is sick.

[Jessica]

Her son is sick. How many more kids have to be sick?

[Dan Tabursky]

How many more kids have to die? We're not gonna let it happen. It was the parents in the neighborhood, the moms especially, who got loud and raised the alarm that something was wrong.

[Jessica]

The women told us the state office had dismissed their studies connecting the pathways of old stream beds and increased health problems as useless housewife data.

[Dan Tabursky]

A local mom named Lois Gibbs helped lead the charge.

[Jessica]

I'm not a scientist. I am a housewife, as I've seen quoted in the paper many times.

[Dan Tabursky]

Before it was over, at least 20 neighborhood kids had cancer and almost 1,000 people were evacuated off the land. We lived in that house. We lived there for two years. We bought that house. Nobody told us this was happening, man. Nothing. What are you gonna do for my kids? What are you gonna do? Nothing.

[Jessica]

Our county representatives who are supposed to support us. Well, the nation's looking at you, and you look like damn fools and murderers.

[Dan Tabursky]

The memory of Love Canal was looming large in Leroy.

[Bob Bocock]

It was one of the mothers of one of the impacted young ladies who started writing errand. We're not sure what's going on. This is what's happening in our town. Can you take a look at it? It was primarily aunts, mothers, grandmothers and their daughters.

[Dan Tabursky]

That's interesting in terms of the. Not just people who are suffering, having symptoms, but people who are problem solving.

[Bob Bocock]

Right, right, right.

[Dan Tabursky]

Is that common with Erin Brockovich?

[Bob Bocock]

Yeah. There is a woman to woman woman power kind of aspect associated with that. And initially there's the oh, shit. And we got Bob, you know.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah, totally.

[Bob Bocock]

I still suffer from that.

[Dan Tabursky]

Poor Bob.

[Bob Bocock]

Exactly. Our big story this Morning. Nationally known environmentalist Aaron Brockovich sent a team to Leroy yesterday to dig for answers about a mysterious medical condition there. But not everyone is happy about it.

[Dan Tabursky]

Bob Bocock sets out for the center of the storm.

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[Bob Bocock]

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[Dan Tabursky]

Leroy. New York, late January. Fifteen cases of the sickness now confirmed. One to three inches of snow expected. The media hoard now includes camera crews from Sweden and Japan. The New York Times is on the ground knocking on doors, and the local paper does a poll. Two thirds of respondents say they don't believe the high school is looking out for the best interest of the kids. Here's Jessica, a senior.

[Jessica]

Yeah, I mean, at that point I was scared to go to school, but I was more scared of like, not going and missing something. And like, I felt like we were, like something was being hid from us. That's just how they made it seem.

[Dan Tabursky]

Were you getting into the drama of it as well, like a teenager would?

[Jessica]

Absolutely. I was absolutely like, I love a mystery too. So, like, trying to get to the bottom of it. That was like my bread and butter. It was like what I lived for.

[Dan Tabursky]

I must have been, I don't want to say fun, but I can see.

[Jessica]

Yeah, it almost was like fun in a way because it was so exciting. Like nothing ever happens in this sleepy little town. And now we wrote our national news story Like Erin Brockovich is coming. It was crazy.

[Dan Tabursky]

When Bob Bocock arrives in Leroy, he starts by meeting with the affected girls and their families.

[Bob Bocock]

I was very skeptical when I first showed up because I had seen the news reports, you know, and I was like. I didn't understand it.

[Dan Tabursky]

You thought they were faking?

[Bob Bocock]

Oh, yeah.

[Dan Tabursky]

Wow.

[Bob Bocock]

Oh, yeah. I thought Aaron was full of shit. I thought this was insane. I thought this was crazy. What the hell am I doing?

[Dan Tabursky]

And what changed your mind?

[Bob Bocock]

I sat in the room with these kids. They couldn't. You can't fake that shit. You could not fake that they were inflicting excruciating pain upon themselves. Whether it was chemically induced, whether it was psychologically induced. They were not faking. You couldn't fake that.

[Dan Tabursky]

Bob heads to the high school.

[Bob Bocock]

First thing I chased down for like a week was the natural gas wells on the school property.

[Dan Tabursky]

Is it unusual to have a natural gas well on school properties? Yes.

[Bob Bocock]

Why would you.

[Dan Tabursky]

Is it unusual to have six natural gas wells on school property?

[Bob Bocock]

Six. One is about as dumb as it gets. Six is just kind of pathetically stupid.

[Dan Tabursky]

At six different locations around the school, caged natural gas wells stand sentinel, including one right out front where a statue of Millard Fillmore or some other historical rando would normally be. Just kind of hiding in plain sight.

[Jessica]

No, we did not know that.

[Dan Tabursky]

Here's Jessica again.

[Jessica]

I know my mom was big on that one, too. She thought for sure that had something to do with it. She was super angry to find that out. She's like, really? We just built a school and we're building it on six? Fragging? What? Like that makes no sense.

[Dan Tabursky]

It makes a little sense. The revenue from the wells helped the school offset the cost of heating the building. Fracking forces natural gas out of the ground by shooting chemicals into the ground. What happens to those chemicals once they're in the ground is the highly controversial question. Environmentalists had already been pushing the state to ban fracking altogether. Nationally known environmentalist Erin Brockovich sent an investigative team to the school grounds Saturday morning. But when Bob shows up, news cameras in tow and shovel in hand to take soil samples around the wellheads.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

According to the school district, Brockovich's team.

[Dan Tabursky]

Never asked permission to take samples on school property. Sounds like they thought maybe the batshit crazy one is Bob. But after being denied access to school.

[Bob Bocock]

Grounds, Bocock remained skeptical. I will tell you that usually in settings or situations like this, when I'm confronted by officials barring access to. To something, they usually have something to hide.

[Dan Tabursky]

It would soon come out that there had recently been leaks in two of the wells, releasing pools of brine near one of the athletic fields, burning grass and killing trees. Right next to where the cheerleaders cheer and the marching band plays.

[Bob Bocock]

Oh, shit. Having those natural gas wells on my football field is not a really fucking smart thing to do, now is it?

[Dan Tabursky]

And if it burns grass and kills trees, what does it do to teenage girls?

[Bob Bocock]

After taking some water samples at nearby residences, Bocock headed to the derailment site, where in 1970, over 30,000 gallons of the toxic solvent TCE spilled after a train went off the tracks.

[Dan Tabursky]

When you read the reports of that TCE spill, 35,000 gallons of it, the initial cleanup in 1970, it sounds more like an initial tidying. After that, the railroad shut down in 76 and the tracks were yanked out. By the 90s, sky high TCE levels had been discovered in dozens of private wells near the crash site. Now the EPA was assuring parents that the TCE plume still in the ground had not made it as far as the school, less than three miles away. When Bob showed up to check out the derailment site in person, it was being devoured by a jungle of tree sized weeds.

[Bob Bocock]

Almost like that scene in Tarzan where they pull back the bushes and you see the lost city.

[Dan Tabursky]

Only what Bob sees are rows and rows of 55 gallon drums, over 200 of them, holding contaminated soil from the spill site still there and falling apart.

[Bob Bocock]

Somebody went out and then left all the contamination there, and the barrels rusted out and it leaked all right back into the environment. So they're probably still cleaning it up, you know, 50 years later.

[Dan Tabursky]

Standing in front of a sign saying Danger hazardous materials, Bocock gives a warning.

[Bob Bocock]

You have a sign like that and 55 gallon drums rotting away, leaking material out into the environment right now. Draw your own conclusion.

[Dan Tabursky]

While all this is happening, around the time Bob came to Leroy and Brockovich, fever was at its pitch. Something else starts happening. The symptoms in many of the girls are getting visibly worse.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

It all starts to evolve.

[Dan Tabursky]

Here's Dr. McVig, the neurologist. @ this point, she's seen almost two thirds of the known afflicted. She still believes it's a mass psychogenic illness.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

So it just got. It got crazy because first everyone starts with tics. And so we're managing these tics and we were worried about motor issues. Then it turns into which I think is so interesting, syncopal events. So now we're passing out. So syncope is when we pass out near syncope Is when I feel like I'm going down and I feel dizzy. But syncope is actually the act of passing out.

[Dan Tabursky]

So people start passing out, start passing.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Out right and left. Now we're passing out.

[Dan Tabursky]

And remember, Dr. McVig is not some hardened veteran. She hasn't even sat for her boards yet. How are you feeling during all this?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

It was a very challenging time in my life. Like, I lost 10 pounds. My kids thought I was going to be arrested and taken away because there were news vehicles that would follow me home from work. I was a little traumatized by it, I'll be honest. And also, I was very protective of the kids too, because I did not want anything. I did not want to be the cause of anyone having a problem. This is not a case. This is a person. This is a human. I know their dog's name. I know their family. I know their parents. You know, like, these are babies. This could be my baby.

[Bob Bocock]

Did you ever see the clip where one of the girls and I were on Anderson Cooper and she had an episode right in the middle of the show?

[Dan Tabursky]

No. Thank you very much. Anderson Cooper has sort of a daytime talk show back then. Studio audience, the whole thing. He hosts an episode hashing out the medical mystery and Bob is on it talking about all the toxins. Also joining him on the panel was Marge, the 36 year old nurse with symptoms. There's also another girl there that you might remember. It's like this electrical tingling feeling that never goes away. Hey. The girl from YouTube who had been looking for help. Even though she lives a couple hours from Leroy, she too was now fully embroiled in the mania. She's the one who had a seizure on tv.

[Bob Bocock]

She went into a full on epileptic fit on the stage. I mean, it was on the ground screaming. It was scary. And we went to commercial break right then and there. They called in a doctor. I mean, it was horrible.

[Dan Tabursky]

We tried to get a copy of that moment in the episode. The company wouldn't release it. But according to someone who worked at the show at the time, the last thing the viewers at home heard before cutting to commercial was an off camera voice yelling code blue.

[Marge]

Whoops. Was having a little bit of reaction there. Are you okay?

[Dan Tabursky]

Something similar had already happened on Dr. Drew with a different affected girl that time. However, when the seizure starts, instead of cutting away to commercial.

[Marge]

Let's get back to this. I'd like to go back to her so I can see what's going on here. Please help me. Control room.

[Dan Tabursky]

They cut back and we See the mom leaning over her daughter, who's on the floor seizing just out of frame.

[Marge]

Are you all right, Mom? What's going on there?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

She's not. She's having a seizure.

[Dan Tabursky]

And it doesn't seem to occur to anyone to maybe point the cameras in a different direction for a minute.

[Marge]

Is your airway okay? Do we need to call paramedics?

[Jessica]

Yes, you call them paramedics.

[Dr. McVig]

They okay?

[Dan Tabursky]

No, they.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Nothing.

[Jessica]

It's okay.

[Dan Tabursky]

It's okay.

[Bob Bocock]

I'm pissed.

[Dan Tabursky]

This is ridiculous. We've been waiting months. We come down here and you tell us CDC this, that, and it takes months, years. The school calls another town meeting in the auditorium.

[Bob Bocock]

Love Canal took years.

[Dan Tabursky]

This is going to take years.

[Bob Bocock]

We want to know now.

[Dan Tabursky]

What's going on?

[Bob Bocock]

What are you doing?

[Dan Tabursky]

This is just a few days after Bob Bocock began poking around. He had raised too many new questions and kicked up too much dust. And the parents are getting ready to erupt.

[Bob Bocock]

Well, I'm gonna make a statement.

[Dan Tabursky]

The crowd this time includes environmental activists from around the state, cameras from everywhere, and even a paranormal investigator has arrived to take a crack at the medical mystery. And that is when it all finally spins out of control.

[Jessica]

My daughter was a perfect attendance, ma'am. All of a sudden she's getting sent home with headaches.

[Dan Tabursky]

What are you guys doing? Do you have children?

[Jessica]

Do your children.

[Dan Tabursky]

Will you send them to this school? Absolutely. No.

[Jessica]

No.

[Dan Tabursky]

I'm done listening to you.

[Jessica]

You guys need to do something. You are not doing your job.

[Dan Tabursky]

You are not doing your job and.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Not answering the question I'm going to answer.

[Dan Tabursky]

Hysteria. It's a tricky word, isn't it? The hysteria we've been talking about so far is the medical one. An age old thing usually called by more polite terms now almost always pinned on women. But still that perplexing battery of symptoms where mind and body seem to meet the medical definition of the unknown, in a way. But there's also that other hysteria, our collective reaction to that unknown when all of our attention is on one thing, one moment, one fear, one big question, creating something huge and explosive and out of anyone's control. And it can be hard to know when you're investigating one kind of hysteria, whether or not you're unintentionally creating another. After four trips back and forth to Leroy, Bob Bocock brings his investigation to a close.

[Bob Bocock]

Nine times out of 10, I actually have a result that I can report. Leroy was one of those few instances where I literally spent months down there and never resolved or had a complete conclusion as to what happened.

[Dan Tabursky]

That suspicious brine that leaked from the fracking wells into the sports fields. It was deemed not toxic. The school was sighted but not fined. The TCE plume from the train derailment, it was still in the groundwater, but further tests showed that it had not migrated toward the school. As for the 200 disintegrating barrels of waste, the EPA would spend the next decade trying to clean up the derailment site. But they say tests showed no additional toxins seeped into the ground because of them. Basically, before you came, the EPA and the New York State Department of Health said that we did tests on the school grounds, and there's nothing. And there's nothing.

[Bob Bocock]

Right.

[Dan Tabursky]

Why was that not good enough for you?

[Bob Bocock]

Back to what I was saying earlier, where Aaron was like, no, Bob, there's something else. Just keep looking. Just keep looking.

[Dan Tabursky]

And they did find a lot of problems, but no smoking gun. Meaning the big claim made by the school and the state that there was no toxic component to the contagion. It seemed to be true. Or perhaps more accurately, no one could prove that it wasn't. In the end, Aaron Brockovich never shows in Leroy. After all that lead up, the lack of anything concrete makes it awash. She pops up again the following week in Berlin, promoting her next movie appearance about safe drinking water. Were you afraid that you were making it worse? Were you getting that criticism?

[Bob Bocock]

Both. Both. Did something good come out of it from an environmental investigator's perspective? Yeah. I got the TCE site cleaned up. That had been neglected for probably the better part of 20 years. Did the fact that I came to town and found environmental things of concern exacerbate or contribute further to the psychological impacts to these kids? Did it validate their feelings? Could have. You know, could we have made it worse? We tried not to.

[Dan Tabursky]

Eesh, this is awkward. Can I see those statistics?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Yeah.

[Dan Tabursky]

Because, in fact, Dr. McVig has been looking into that very question. So they're not in Stats, and she's collected the data somewhere in those drawers that suggests Team Brockovich actually may have demonstrably made things worse.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

So this is an actual statistical analysis because it's very hard to do correlational stuff. And we had to go back through.

[Dan Tabursky]

McVig and her team went back and tracked every time a patient had what she calls an exacerbation, like a trip to the emergency room or a dramatic worsening in the severity of symptoms, any serious flare up in her patients, and then she mapped all of that against the big upheavals in the brouhaha. The Today show appearances, the contentious town hall meetings, and Team Brockovich parachuting into the mystery, all to see how her patients fared afterwards.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

And then Erin Brockovich comes into town and there were 11 exacerbations. So now the tics start to get worse again. Now we have sinkable episodes. Now we have a lot of non epileptic seizures.

[Dan Tabursky]

It was the worst stretch by far of the outbreak in Leroy. This is in the week after Erin Brockovich.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

The following week.

[Dan Tabursky]

There's 11 exacerbations the following week. And in the following two years after the New York Times, there's only five. I don't mean to make this a knock against Brockovich or Bocock or demanding answers or the press and the cameras or Dr. Drew. Well, maybe Dr. Drew, but it's not a knock against the hysteria that grew around the hysteria, and that is because of the third meaning of the word. Being hysterical will not do you any good if you're gonna just be hysterical. We're gonna have to, you know, ask you to leave. Stop being so hysterical every night it's a fire.

[Dr. McVig]

No, I'm not hysterical. I'm trying to tell you this as.

[Dan Tabursky]

Calmly as I know how. This hysterical is the one they hurl when they want to diminish you, when they want to make you seem like you're reacting over nothing. Or if it's something, then you're way overreacting.

[Jessica]

I was sort of a regular housewife buying the American dream in 1978.

[Dan Tabursky]

There was a series of interviews done a while back about Love Canal, the toxic waste disaster in western New York. The interviews are with Lois Gibbs, the local mom who raised hell at the center of it.

[Jessica]

It wasn't until I picked up the newspaper one day and it talked about 20,000 tons of chemicals underneath the 99th Street School and leaking out into the homes.

[Dan Tabursky]

And Gibbs tells the story of when she first brought her concerns to the school and how hard it was to get them to take her seriously.

[Jessica]

And so I went to the school board and said, can you move Michael out of the school? By then he was in kindergarten, 1978. And they said, no, we cannot, because if we move Michael Gibbs because of the potential threat, we have to move all 407 children. We're not going to do that. We're not closing a school because of one irate, hysterical housewife.

[Dan Tabursky]

They called Lois Gibbs hysterical, too, to shut her up. But Lois Gibbs didn't shut up. Lois, would you grab me first, please?

[Jessica]

I want to know why.

[Dan Tabursky]

And she helped cause what I'M sure felt like mass hysteria over the chemicals in the ground beneath their feet.

[Jessica]

You are going to pay. Because those who do wrong pay, sweetie.

[Dan Tabursky]

And Lois Gibbs was right. In 2004, after 25 years of cleanup and remediation, the EPA finally removed Love Canal from its list of worst unresolved environmental disasters in the country. The Leroy train derailment is still on that list. So what do you think? Are we ready to call it? We know it's not a virus, and now we know it's not toxins, at least as far as anyone can prove. So unless the bad tampon theory makes a comeback, I guess what happens next is that everyone in Leroy accepts mass hysteria in a warm town wide embrace as the answer to their medical mystery. Yeah, fat chance. That's not how this story ends. But before it does end, before we come to our grand unifying theory of what happened in Leroy, New York, you're going to want to hear from this guy that we talked to in Northern Virginia. The idea that this is somehow psychogenic, psychosomatic mass hysteria.

[Bob Bocock]

I mean, that just doesn't apply to me.

[Dan Tabursky]

And you are definitely going to want to hear what's happening to this woman in Highland County, Ohio. People are just so tired of being called liars that they don't even talk about anymore. And before you try and say what's happening in any of these places, you're first going to have to come to terms with one indelible and fairly nauseating fact. Whatever is happening to these people, you are not immune to it. No one is. And that's next time on Hysterical. I've never been in a CIA operative's house before. In their basement. In their basement. Yeah.

[Bob Bocock]

You know, the room was spinning wildly.

[Dan Tabursky]

I had a splitting headache. I had tinnitus, which is, you know, ringing in my ears.

[Bob Bocock]

And I knew something was really wrong. It was scary.

[Dan Tabursky]

Hysteria is alive and well. So for you, functional disorder or psychogenic illness is the same as saying that you were abducted by an alien, because it makes no sense. The human mind is a very powerful thing. Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad free right now by joining Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short [e-mail] survey. And if you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to [e-mail] tips. Hysterical is a production of Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Our lead producer is Henry Malofsky. Our associate producer is Marie Alexa Kavanagh. Producer, Sophie Bridges Managing producer Erin Kelly Senior producer, Lena Masizzi Additional production by Zandra Ellen Diane Hodson is our editor. Our executive editor is Joel Lovelace. Fact checking by Natsumi Ajisaka Mixing by Hannis Brown. Our head of sound and engineering is Raj Makhija. Original music composed and performed by Dina Maccabee Legal Services for Pineapple street from Crystal Tupia. For Wondery, our senior producers are Lizzie Bassett and Claire Chambers. Coordinating producer, Mariah Gossett Senior managing producer Callum Plews. Hysterical is written and executive produced by me. I'm Dan Taburski. Our executive producers for Pineapple street are Max Linsky, Henry Malawski, Asha Saludja and Jenna Weiss Berman. Executive producers for Wondery are Morgan Jones, Marshall Louie and Jen Sargent. Thanks for listening.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

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