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- [00:00]
Dan Taburski
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 audio 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.
- [00:58]
Emily
I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop around. She's like, I can't.
- [01:06]
Rose
My eighth or ninth day straight ticking and doesn't stop.
- [01:10]
Dan Taburski
That's when things got scary for everybody.
- [01:12]
Emily
She basically said, oh, well, it's all in your head. You're fine.
- [01:15]
Rose
Am I going crazy? Is this really happening?
- [01:18]
Kathy
That just does not fit. That doesn't land with me. That is not it. I know it's not.
- [01:27]
Dan Taburski
We broached the following question briefly at the very beginning of this series, but I feel like now, this being our final episode, we have enough background knowledge to actually hazard a guess. The Waldorf Jell O salad. Is it a salad or is it a dessert? No, seriously. In the original Joys of Jell o Cookbook from 1963, which I own. Shut up. The Waldorf salad is made with lemon or mixed fruit or orange. Pineapple Jello sounds like dessert. And it's got apples in it and walnuts in it. Dessert. But it also has celery in it and vinegar. Salad. It also upsettingly has mayonnaise on it. Salad. But the recipe says the mayo is optional. Dessert. In the end, of course, it's salad. It's dessert. It's neither. It's both. Honestly, it's dealer's choice. Such states of in betweenness work for something like jello. The stakes are gloriously low. But when a mystery illness is tearing through your town, settling on labels and definitions takes on a little more import. We're not just trying to categorize our lives here. We're looking to stop this thing from spreading and we're looking for a cure. But how do you solve a mystery illness that no one can agree on. On today's episode, this is how it ends and also, in a way, how it never will. I'm Dan Taburski from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. This is the conclusion of Hysterical episode seven. We're Gucci.
- [03:27]
Scott Galloway
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- [04:30]
Dan Taburski
You were made to be rechargeable. We were made to package flights, hotels, and hammocks for less Expedia. Made to travel.
- [04:48]
Emily
I think I was one of the youngest girls in the whole, like, group of everybody and everything.
- [04:53]
Dan Taburski
You all know Emily. Emily was in eighth grade and in the marching band when this all happened and her tics started. Hers were mostly a big jerk of the head and arm.
- [05:02]
Emily
So I kind of felt alone for the most part because, like, all the other girls were like, they were friends with each other and like, they knew each other and everything. And I was like, oh, I'm kind of alone in this. But, like, I know I'm not alone, but I'm alone in this.
- [05:15]
Dan Taburski
Did you think that this is how you were gonna be forever now?
- [05:18]
Emily
Oh, yeah, Absolutely. I'd walk home from school and I'd be like, man, I'm never gonna be able to drive. Cause I'm doing this.
- [05:25]
Dr. Trifaletti
The thing that struck me was just that there was no buildup to her having tics. It was just like instant. It was like a switch had been flipped.
- [05:34]
Dan Taburski
Remember Emily's mom, Kathy, was weirded out by the fact that almost everyone was going to the same doctors, the ones at Dent Neurologic Institute nearby. She wasn't totally opposed to the idea of conversion disorder. She wasn't like anything but that. But there were so many voices and so many theories, she didn't know who to believe.
- [05:52]
Emily
Kathy's 13 year old daughter Emily started.
- [05:55]
Dr. Trifaletti
To tic just two weeks ago.
- [05:57]
Dan Taburski
So they did the TV thing, looking for answers. That way they explored different doctors, different natural remedies were prescribed, even a juice.
- [06:05]
Dr. Trifaletti
So, I mean, it was juice, it was 100% natural. And we thought, it can't hurt.
- [06:10]
Emily
I still crave that juice. Not gonna lie, it was really good.
- [06:12]
Dan Taburski
You crave it.
- [06:13]
Emily
Oh, all the tastes, good.
- [06:15]
Dan Taburski
Didn't do much, but they kept trying.
- [06:17]
Emily
There was never. There was no, like, right thing to do. It was just, let's try this. All right, that didn't work. Let's try this. That didn't work. Let's try this.
- [06:27]
Dan Taburski
Until eventually.
- [06:29]
Emily
Ding, ding, ding. We got a winner.
- [06:33]
Dr. Trifaletti
Through this little network of all the parents talking to each other, I got connected with the mother of one of the girls. She said, we got in contact with this doctor from New Jersey, New York City area.
- [06:47]
Dan Taburski
This is Dr. Truffletti.
- [06:49]
Dr. Trifaletti
This is Dr. Trifaletti.
- [06:50]
Dan Taburski
Dr. Rosario Trifaletti is a pediatric neurologist.
- [06:54]
Dr. Trifaletti
And they said, well, he's an expert on pandas.
- [06:58]
Dan Taburski
Pandas? P A N D A S. Pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with strep. With pandas, a child develops psychological and neurological symptoms after a lingering strep infection. Symptoms that can include obsessive compulsive behaviors and tourette, like tics. It's rare and was only identified as an illness in 1998. So still a lot of unknowns about pandas, but this new doctor seemed confident that it might be a match.
- [07:29]
Dr. Trifaletti
He's willing to travel here to Leroy to see these girls free of charge. And I thought, well, what's it gonna hurt? It's another doctor. It's another opinion. Let's go for it.
- [07:41]
Rose
Local neurologists who've seen the Leroy teens believe they are suffering from conversion disorder, a psychological condition. Another specialist disagrees, and he has traveled to test the high schoolers for a bacterial infection.
- [07:56]
Dan Taburski
So in late January, at the height of the outbreak and the day after Bob Bocock and Team Brockovich exploded into town, Dr. Trifaletti arrives. They probably pass each other in the street. And he meets with nine of the affected kids and their families, including Kathy.
- [08:12]
Dr. Trifaletti
He kind of sat with us all together in a big group and was explaining what pandas is, why he thinks maybe there's a good connection there. He says, and I'd also like to do blood tests if you all agree to it, you know. And I was like, okay, makes sense to me. Blood test sounds like a good idea. If there's no infection in her bloodstream, then we can say, yeah, it's conversion disorder. If there is an infection, then we can say it's something, you know. So I was like, let's test her. And I think it was maybe less than a week later we got the results back that Emily had evidence of walking pneumonia.
- [09:00]
Dan Taburski
Trifaletti makes a public announcement. He says he has found elevated levels of strep antibodies in five out of the eight girls tested. And he found elevated levels of mycoplasma pneumonia antibodies in seven of the eight girls. He couldn't quite call it pandas. PANDAS is related to strep. And they found more than that. So based on his findings, Triphaletti announces that he is ready to give this mystery illness a name. Leroy Syndrome. Then he begins treatment.
- [09:31]
Dr. Trifaletti
And it was steroid anti inflammatory, which was ibuprofen. And I believe there was something to treat the infection.
- [09:42]
Dan Taburski
Like antibiotic.
- [09:43]
Dr. Trifaletti
Like an antibiotic. And I don't remember 100% on that one, but I remember it was heavy on the ibuprofen and the, and the steroid was one of those ones where you start heavy and taper off. And it took her 11 days and the symptoms were gone.
- [10:09]
Dan Taburski
No more sudden head jerks, no more flailing arms, no more ticks.
- [10:14]
Dr. Trifaletti
And I thought, okay, when? How? What else? There's the proof, there's my evidence. To me that was just like, I closed the book on it. This is what it was.
- [10:38]
Dan Taburski
But let's take a beat for a minute. Does all this make sense? After all this time and all this grief, could it really be that simple? So PANDAS does not square with you?
- [10:48]
Dr. McVig
It didn't pan out for my patients.
- [10:50]
Dan Taburski
Yeah. Dr. McVig, the neurologist at Dent, had already seen 14 of the affected girls and she says that she had already ruled out pandas.
- [10:59]
Dr. McVig
Now I can't speak of the four that I didn't see. But when you look at the literature and you compare it to evidence based medicine, absolutely did not fit with pandas. Those patients did not.
- [11:13]
Dan Taburski
Here's the first, the presence of strep antibodies in and of itself doesn't mean pandas. In fact, test any random group of kids for strep or other lingering bacterial infections and as many as half or more are going to come up with elevated levels, especially during winter, especially in a Place like Leroy, where snowfall gets measured in feet and keeps everyone inside and germy for months. Also, unlike conversion disorder, PANDAS is a disorder that appears overwhelmingly in boys, not girls. Also, PANDAS is a pediatric disorder. It happens to children. All the known affected people in Leroy were past that stage. They were teenagers and a woman in her 30s. Also, pandas is not contagious. So is this the correct diagnosis for what's happening in Leroy? A non contagious, very rare disorder that occurs mostly in prepubescent boys, even, let's say it's pandas.
- [12:14]
Dr. McVig
Why is it all young, healthy, previously healthy girls? They don't have autoimmune disorders. They don't have a weakened immune system for all of them to have it concurrently at the same time in the same school. That's just logically like, let's just think about these people.
- [12:33]
Dan Taburski
Eventually, Triphaletti says he treated six of the girls based on his diagnosis, and he says all six saw improvement. Emily is cured completely. So here's the big if Triphaletti's diagnosis is wrong, why would the treatment for it work? Well, some people suspect. Okay, I suspect, I suspect that what Triphaletti has to offer isn't necessarily the right answer, but something may be just as useful an answer that's easier to believe in.
- [13:06]
Kathy
You know, when something makes aha, it makes sense.
- [13:10]
Dan Taburski
Like, this is Alicia. You remember her? She was one of the satellite cases that had popped up after she and her softball team passed through Leroy and she came down with symptoms. Alicia too, went to see Dr. Trifaletti.
- [13:22]
Kathy
See, I might not. I'm the same way with movies. I might not remember lines or scenes perfectly or I have an awful memory, but I remember how things feel. That's like what I go by, like how I felt on the inside. That's what I can remember.
- [13:35]
Dan Taburski
And when she saw Trifa Letti, I.
- [13:38]
Kathy
Just remember feeling a little more at ease just in his presence. I just felt a little bit more at ease and heard. And I was maybe optimistic too, that he would have more answers, which he did.
- [13:51]
Dr. Trifaletti
I feel like he almost was like the voice of reason sometimes, you know?
- [13:56]
Dan Taburski
Kathy describes a similar feeling.
- [13:58]
Dr. Trifaletti
Just what he said, just to me, it made sense. It just felt like an answer and a possibility. And if nothing else, I was like, at least it's somebody who seems sincere and just for the fact that he traveled here, he's doing it free of charge. That spoke to me. That was like telling me that, hey, this is somebody who at least seems concerned for their well being.
- [14:29]
Dan Taburski
So did anybody suggest that it was the placebo effect, that they had treated the pandas with these things? But because she believed in it, she got better.
- [14:42]
Dr. Trifaletti
We did follow up blood work a few months later, and it showed no infection in the blood. And I was like, okay, so no infection in her blood, no ticks. I see that as a connection. And there was just a lot of people that still insisted, no, it's conversion disorder. And I said, I've got my answer. Like, it worked, so I'm not gonna dig anymore.
- [15:15]
Dan Taburski
And even Dr. McVig acknowledges the diagnosis that she is offering. Conversion disorder is almost more confusing than no answer at all. She says she saw this play out in one of the families who resisted conversion disorder, who really just didn't want to hear it.
- [15:30]
Dr. McVig
So this family wanted there to be something more other than this is an emotional, social, emotional issue. And we need to do some internal introspection and calming and relaxation techniques. And felt like I was hokey and, you know, that this wasn't genuine on my end. And there must be something medically or someone to blame or someone to sue. It's a hard thing to look at self. It's harder than blaming others.
- [15:56]
Dan Taburski
I do have to say, it does strike me as something that I can relate to. Like to go to the doctor and you're having these things happen to you, and for the doctor to look at you and just be like, look at self. Like, that's hard to hear because that's just more fucking work.
- [16:10]
Dr. McVig
And you're a teenager too.
- [16:11]
Dan Taburski
Yeah.
- [16:11]
Dr. McVig
Because that's just like a nightmare.
- [16:13]
Dan Taburski
Who wants to look at themselves when they're 16?
- [16:15]
Dr. McVig
When I was 16, I don't know if I had the. I don't know if I had the capacity to look at myself.
- [16:22]
Dan Taburski
Tonight we have some news. Tell it, Dr. Drew. Some of the girls apparently have gotten better over the past three weeks. Some did have antibiotics. And the question is to what extent that they played a role here? Or was this a placebo or something else? And perhaps what Tripholetti was really offering was an off ramp from all the craziness that had come to surround the mystery. We tried to ask Trifaletti about all this. He and his office told us multiple times he won't talk about what happened in Leroy, even though it's gotta be said, headlines about his involvement are still splashed all over his website.
- [16:59]
Dr. Trifaletti
And I understand conversion disorder worked. It was accurate for those other girls that it worked for as long as they were satisfied with that answer. I didn't. That's fine. That's fine for them. And then there was still the group that legitimately had this pandas like infection and it was just happened to be this terrible perfect storm of a situation. You know, they were in a little terrarium together and this is what happened.
- [17:43]
Dan Taburski
So in the end, it's mass psychogenic illness and it's Leroy syndrome. It's a salad and a dessert. It's neither, it's both, it's dealer's choice. But are we satisfied to just Waldorf Jell O salad this thing and call it a day? Not quite yet. There's one more Leroy girl I want you to hear from. This person never made it into any of the news reports. You never saw her face on tv. She never even caught the Tourette's like symptoms that had spread through the high school so ferociously because this person had already been dealing with Tourette's syndrome itself for years. And she ended up in the center of it all.
- [18:41]
Marge
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- [19:38]
Dan Taburski
Swisher and I'm Scott Galloway. And we want to tell you about Pivot, our twice weekly podcast.
- [19:43]
Scott Galloway
That's right, Kara.
- [19:44]
Dan Taburski
What a thrill. It's a chance for us to break down all the big things happening in tech, business and politics. Yes, and I keep you in check so people can make it through each episode. Whether it's digging into constant changes in the world of AI and social media or trying to keep up with whatever the Elon is doing. We're here to give you our take on all of that. Every Tuesday and Friday morning, we drop a new episode about some of the major stories of the moment. And Scott is a prediction machine gazing into his crystal ball to tell you about where it's all heading that's right. So if that sounds like a good time for you especially. Mr. That's right. You can follow us on your favorite podcast app to get new episodes every week.
- [20:21]
Rose
Boom.
- [20:32]
Dan Taburski
You know, in the days of the witch trials, they, too had a way to solve an unsolvable mystery. An AB test that gave an answer every time. When someone was accused of being a witch, and the question was, is she or isn't she? Some places would use a test called Swimming the witch, and it's simple. They would tie you up and throw you in a pond. If you float, you're a witch. If you sink, you're not a witch. You are tied up at the bottom of a pond now, but no one thinks you're a witch. Swimming a witch was effective not because it gave a rational answer. It is, of course, craziness. But it did give them an answer. No in between. And it gave a town someone to pin all this unpleasantness on some poor, buoyant witch who they'd pull out of the water and perhaps hang on a hilltop nearby. There's at least one human instinct we can all recognize. When it's too difficult to sit with the unanswerable, the next best thing is finding someone to blame.
- [21:31]
Rose
I was first diagnosed when I was about 8 years old. I had started this weird facial twitch thing. And, you know, we went to the doctor, and she looked at me and she's like, yep, that's tress. Let's send you to neuro.
- [21:45]
Dan Taburski
This is Rose.
- [21:46]
Rose
But looking back at it now, knowing that information, we can notice tics that I had as young as, like, 2 and 3 years old.
- [21:54]
Dan Taburski
The development of Rosa's tics as a kid came gradually. It's a common marker for Tourette's syndrome as opposed to the sudden onset of the mystery illness in Leroy. Other differences. You've got to have multiple tics for at least a year for it to be considered Tourette's. Also, Tourette's occurs overwhelmingly in boys rather than girls, but not for Rose. In 2011, she had just entered eighth grade at Leroy High School.
- [22:19]
Rose
I mean, I had always had very prominent tics from the time I was diagnosed. Like, I had facial twitches. I would go through spurts where I would be throwing things. I was always very loud. Like, I always have very loud vocal tics. You will always hear me. Everybody always knows who I am.
- [22:32]
Dan Taburski
Can I ask you, how disruptive did you feel like, when you say you were taking a test and you'd, like, throw a pencil? Like, did it feel like you Were getting in other people's way.
- [22:44]
Rose
I wasn't worried about being the weird kid that needed extra testing. I wasn't worried about being the weird kid on meds. Like, everybody's a weird kid for some reason. That was just my thing. And I was fine with that.
- [22:56]
Dan Taburski
But then the arrival of the mystery illness, or as Rose might have called it, attack of the clones.
- [23:03]
Rose
Like, I can remember sitting in school and someone looked at me and was like, oh, did you hear? Like, so and so caught your tics? And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, I was just confused. I'm like, dude, how? What? Like, what do you mean somebody caught my what?
- [23:21]
Dan Taburski
In fact, you can't actually catch Tourette's. It's not that kind of disorder.
- [23:25]
Rose
So, yeah, like, Tourette's in itself is not contagious. Like, I have two brothers. Neither of them are ticcing. I'm not. Like, I don't need to be quarantined in a little bubble. Like, I work around people's food every day. Nobody else has Tourette's. Like, we're Gucci. But, like, Tourette's can be suggestive in the sense that when you're around other people that tic, you tend to tic more.
- [23:43]
Dan Taburski
That's when Rose says she became the target as the obvious source for all of it.
- [23:48]
Rose
Cause that was it. Immediately. Immediately it was, you're contagious and all this stuff. Like, right from day one.
- [23:56]
Dan Taburski
Who was saying that?
- [23:57]
Rose
I mean, at first it was the kids. It started with just the kids. It was, oh, you're contagious. Oh, she caught it from you. Oh, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I'm just trying to go to school, dude. But, like, nobody stood up and was like, hey, this isn't their fault. Don't blame them. Like, not once did an adult say, that's not how that works. This isn't their fault. Leave them alone. People were, like, yelling at me in grocery stores. Like, and again, I'm 14. Grown ass men would walk up to me and scream at me for causing this in the middle of a grocery store. Like, wow.
- [24:32]
Dan Taburski
And then there was the hoard.
- [24:34]
Rose
Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder.
- [24:37]
Dan Taburski
Cameras and reporters everywhere and approaching the girls outside the school.
- [24:41]
Rose
And I just kept being like, this is not me. Like, I am not a part of this. Leave me alone. Like, the only thing I could really tell them was that I had Tourette's and it wasn't contagious. And I Didn't know what was going on. And then they'd leave me alone after that because, oh, you're not a medical mystery. That's not what we want. Like, no, literally, that's what it was. As soon as I was like, I have a real answer for you, they were like, no, we're done. We're good.
- [25:05]
Dan Taburski
And at the same time, the stress of it all is making Rosa's Tourette's tics worse. Much, much worse.
- [25:13]
Rose
So I had a tic where I would punch myself right here in the face over and over and over, over. And, like, I.
- [25:18]
Dan Taburski
And your chin. That was your tic.
- [25:19]
Rose
My tic was literally to, like, cold cock myself. And, like, with force. Not just, like, with force. So I had fractured part of my jawline and another one of my tics. I have permanent damage in my right eye. Cause my other tic was to punch myself in the eye. I was literally beating the shit out of myself.
- [25:35]
Dan Taburski
Rose developed a kicking tic that was so severe, she began coming to school in a wheelchair.
- [25:41]
Rose
I had a tic for a little bit where I would slam my head off the table. I had to get sent home one day with, like, a goose egg on my forehead, because I would just, like, bang my head on the table. And I was going through that while all of this was going on, while all of the other tic stuff was happening, that was all starting for me.
- [25:59]
Dan Taburski
And that's when Rose says that the school took action.
- [26:02]
Rose
And so the school was like, well, none of these other girls tick when Rose isn't around. Cause she's not there to start it. So they pulled me out of all my classes, and I was doing all of my classes in the sound booth for the auditorium. Like, it was like this little, like, closet, like, thing. And we'd go to my class, I'd get my classwork, and then I'd go sit there and do my classwork so that none of the other girls could hear me.
- [26:27]
Dan Taburski
So you would go get your classwork, and then you would go sit in a soundproof audio booth. Yes.
- [26:31]
Rose
Yep. Yep.
- [26:32]
Dan Taburski
And do your work.
- [26:33]
Rose
Yes. I was like, you guys are alienating me for something I've been diagnosed with, something you know about. And I don't have what they have, and I haven't caused what they have. You know, I remember being told, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. And right now, you are the few. I was told that by an adult at Leroy Central School District. And I just remember, okay, all right. That. That sucks. I Guess. Like, that sucks.
- [27:07]
Dan Taburski
What do you do with that?
- [27:09]
Rose
You go home and cry about it and then go to school the next day. You know, I took that one on the chin. I just kind of said, you know what? Okay, heard, wow.
- [27:25]
Dan Taburski
Needs of the many, needs of the few. You know who coined that phrase? Karl Marx? Fdr. You proceed from a false assumption. I'm a Vulcan. It was motherfucking Spock to James T. Kirk on the Starship Enterprise as Star Trek, the Wrath of Khan. In any case, were I to invoke logic, logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. It's a harsh logic, but, hey, Spock's a harsh guy with harsh bangs. But more than that, he's a logic guy. He's the logic guy. That's his whole bit. But is that the logic we're going with in this situation? The one girl who actually has a diagnosis, a diagnosis that isn't mass psychogenic illness, and she's the one we put in the audio booth all day, the de facto padded cell? Is logic even the thing to be grasping for here at all? Did it feel like mass hysteria?
- [28:30]
Rose
It makes sense to me. It makes sense to me. I don't think like, I know I wasn't contagious. I know it wasn't bad tampons. I know it wasn't yucky water, but I didn't necessarily know what it was. And I knew that it wasn't my job or problem to figure out. And I knew that the reason everything was such a shit show was because everybody decided they were a detective and tried to figure it out instead of letting the people that knew what they were doing try and handle it. You know, had everyone stepped away from the beginning and let the professionals tried to figure this out, I don't think it would have gotten as bad as it did.
- [29:03]
Dan Taburski
It's probably the most frustrating paradox about massive psychogenic illness. It seems the harder we try to figure it out, the reporters, the soil tests, the town meetings, the pontificating, the Brockoviching, the worse the outbreak gets. I'm not sure there's a way around it. If I were a parent, I'm sure I'd be ransacking the Mayo Clinic looking for an answer. But it really does seem to be the thing that puts the hysteria in mass hysteria. We tried to talk to the school about what happened to Ruth and about any of how they reacted when the mystery illness showed up in Leroy. They declined. And so in terms of what the truth of what happened 10 years ago. You're still not sure?
- [29:51]
Rose
I'm not and I don't ask. It is. It was. It's done.
- [30:15]
Dan Taburski
Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog. I kind of get why they used to blame witchcraft for events like the one that happened in Li Rui. It's contagious, it's unexplainable, and it's scary as hell. All things that bring out the worst in us. It feeds off our attention, and yet it's totally impossible to ignore. It's not hard to imagine some witch behind a tree laughing her ass off, which, frankly, we would have had coming after the whole pond thing. But there's another quality to it. It's one that's hard to acknowledge when we're in the throes of an outbreak. But when the stakes are a bit lower, it's easier to spot.
- [30:56]
Dr. Trifaletti
Bonjour, tous nos ami, Quais merci.
- [31:02]
Dan Taburski
Anyone speak French? No worries. What's about to happen runs deeper than language. It's a French talk show. Candy colored set, studio audience, perky host, panel of guests, and the topic of today's show. People with unusual laughs like that one. Everyone on the panel has some sort of bizarre laugh. There's another one unleashed by a panelist after hearing that weird one before it. And maybe you can guess how all this is going to evolve. People have genuinely lost control. Even the host is helpless. I still laugh every time I watch it across time and space and screens. Maybe you're laughing too. A contagion of all the meanings of the word we've explored, this is my favorite hysterical yet. How the contagion here is almost magical. Even if we can't quite fathom why our minds tether themselves together like this and why it feels so good. I've come to see that it's no less magical when instead of a laugh, it's a symptom, a distress call of sorts, sent out by one person and picked up by another, who doesn't just mimic it, but experiences it themselves. And then another and another. A human chain connecting each to something larger. A couple years ago, at a sheep farm in Inner Mongolia, several sheep begin doing something strange. They begin walking in a circle, not walking around the edges of their pen so that it looks like a circle. They're actually walking in a perfect circle. And they don't stop. Soon they're joined by more sheep and more sheep till there are hundreds of them circling like pilgrims around a holy shrine for 12 days straight. Experts have theories as to why. But no, Pat answers. It's a mystery. In 1987, a female orca is spotted off the coast of Washington State, swimming around with a dead salmon on her head, wearing it like a hat. Why? You'd have to ask her. But soon the behavior spreads to other orcas in her pod and to other whales in other pods nearby, all swimming around wearing fish like hats. It goes on like this for about six weeks, and then they all just stop. No more salmon hats. No one knows why. These kinds of things, these uncanny unexplainable connections, they occur in the natural world all the time, and we are part of that natural world. And apologies to Spock, but forcing rationality can sometimes be the most irrational thing to do.
- [34:11]
Rose
So, like, I volunteer at a Tourette syndrome camp every summer, right?
- [34:15]
Dan Taburski
Wow.
- [34:15]
Rose
Yeah. And I love it. It is one of the best things I do with my life.
- [34:19]
Dan Taburski
Case in point, Rose every year.
- [34:22]
Rose
It's so amazing. But we all tic so much more because we're all ticcing.
- [34:27]
Dan Taburski
Does that feel good or bad?
- [34:28]
Rose
Oh, I love it.
- [34:29]
Dan Taburski
Like we said, Tourette's is suggestive. One ticking person being around another can make the symptoms worse for both. Now imagine dozens and dozens of them.
- [34:40]
Rose
Like, I. You know when you go to camp and all these kids, like, a lot of times it's the first time they're around somebody else that has it, and so they just go ham. And it's the funniest thing, but the other.
- [34:49]
Dan Taburski
But instead of resisting, they just let it happen. They don't hold back.
- [34:53]
Rose
It is so worth every second of it because you are having the best time that you are around your people. And the other thing is, there's something called tick shopping. That's the actual name for it. And you can pick up other people's tics.
- [35:05]
Dan Taburski
They're not just aggravating each other's symptoms, they are sharing them, passing them back and forth unconsciously. There's still so much about Tourette's that's unknown, but these kids are able to revel in the mystery of it, even if only for one humid, buggy, wonderful weekend in the summer.
- [35:24]
Rose
So I always have to take, like, the day after camp off because I'll come home with God knows what takes, doing what. Like, it's. It's the. It's the. But it's like the best feeling ever. It is the best feeling ever.
- [35:39]
Dan Taburski
The line between contagion and connection is a thin one, sometimes barely there at all. Eventually, the mystery illness in Leroy followed the pattern of many mass psychogenic Illnesses over the centuries. It flared up, it caused havoc, and it faded away. It died down in part, it seems, because the attention died down. The TV appearances dried up, the camera crews tiptoed away, the headlines got smaller, almost starving hysteria from getting the attention it needs to survive. At the height of it, Dr. McVig and her colleagues even asked the TV stations to stop showing video of the girls taking on the air, because that was potentially how it was spreading. A couple local stations actually did. Dr. Drew did not. And in the spring, many of the affected kids began to improve, some with Dr. Trifaletti, more with Dr. McVig.
- [36:43]
Dr. McVig
So the. The kids that started to get better, There were some that got better right away and honestly did not want to be involved with anything at all. Like, they were out. They were done respectfully.
- [36:55]
Dan Taburski
Did it get did. I wonder if the. If the media, if the craziness actually were just like, you know what? I'm out, I'm fine, I'm out, I feel better.
- [37:01]
Dr. McVig
They did, and there was a handful that had happened.
- [37:04]
Dan Taburski
As time passed, it also became clear that in some of the individual cases, there seemed to be more stress and trauma than many of the girls had been willing to let on, especially on national tv.
- [37:16]
Dr. McVig
And there was a lot of stuff that evolved at that point in time that was not revealed to me about stressors that they had in their life that now the event was, quote, unquote, over or ending, that they actually felt like they had internal permission to tell me, oh, by the way, you know, I was struggling with my sexual identity, or, oh, by the way, I had this internal family conflict, or, oh, by the way, this happened at school and someone accused me of this. And it was pretty profound. And, you know, it was like, wow, that would have helped me, in the middle of this crisis to understand where you're coming from.
- [37:51]
Dan Taburski
Even Dr. Trifaletti, the pandas doctor from New Jersey, even he was surprised when told by Times reporter Susan Dominus about some of these traumatic situations. Trifaletti said, quote, geez, I didn't realize the extent. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. It's hard to distinguish between the drug and the placebo effect. As far as what I believe happened, I believe it's impossible to say what each individual girl experienced. Each one really did have their own symptoms, their own comorbidities, their own aggravating circumstances. But as a group, as a town, as a collective, I think it was mass hysteria, a mass psychogenic illness, and among the rarest of kinds to affect so many with such prominent symptoms for such a sustained period of time. That's not an accusation. It's an acknowledgment that, yes, something truly scary happened in Leroy New York, but also something truly remarkable. By the time graduation arrived and summer break was upon finally, the sickness was all but gone from leroy Junior Senior High School. The yearbook makes no mention of how jacked that whole year had become. And that letterboard sign in town at the church that just a few months earlier read, we're praying for our leroy High School girls, its letters got rearranged. Now it said, leroy still a great place to live. How are you doing now?
- [39:24]
Emily
Better. I feel. Oh, yeah, Yeah, I feel better.
- [39:28]
Dan Taburski
Emily's symptoms went away, but the memory of them and of that time still looms large in her mind. You ever tic? No.
- [39:37]
Emily
And I think. I think about it. I'm like, I do. Because I still think about it to this day. I'm like, this just, like, came and went. Almost like a season, basically. Like a.
- [39:48]
Dan Taburski
Like.
- [39:48]
Emily
Almost like a Netflix season. Like, you got nine episodes. Here you go. Run with it. How come I still don't do this? Like, what did we do? Like, how am I. Am I fixed? Am I gonna. Something gonna happen? I'm gonna hear some noise, and that's gonna set me off, or it's just so.
- [40:06]
Kathy
Still kind of like, question mark number one. I don't have conversion disorder. I never did.
- [40:13]
Dan Taburski
Alicia also refused rejected conversion disorder. She accepted Trifaletti's diagnosis, but only as one part of a larger series of health problems that she was dealing with. Last year, she got her master's in social work and now advocates for kids with autism.
- [40:29]
Kathy
I absolutely love it.
- [40:30]
Dan Taburski
Really? Oh, yeah.
- [40:31]
Kathy
Because they're another population that's often dismissed and not heard and not advocated for and don't get the services and treatment that they deserve.
- [40:39]
Rose
People ask me all the time. They're like, well, do you wish you didn't have it? And I'm like, I can't fathom that. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [40:46]
Dan Taburski
Rose, of course, never had it at all, but she still has Tourette's, and she's still mostly okay with it.
- [40:52]
Rose
Like, are there times where I could wish I could just shut the hell up? Like, yeah. Do I miss a movie theater? Absolutely. But, like, I think I'm good. Like. Cause it would just feel funny. It would just be weird to just be still and quiet. I can't. It doesn't. Doesn't click in my head.
- [41:09]
Dan Taburski
Rose still sees Dr. McVig to help manage it.
- [41:12]
Rose
And it's just so funny now to be on the adult side of it, but still seeing her to be able to look back and be like, bro, that was some shit. Like, you know.
- [41:24]
Dan Taburski
In the end, the only person we talked to who really embraced conversion disorder, Marge, the 36 year old nurse and mother.
- [41:33]
Rose
I went through the cognitive behavior therapy and I did the work and I saw her three times a week for what felt like forever.
- [41:42]
Dan Taburski
It always does. And as for why it's more common among women than men, I don't know.
- [41:49]
Rose
Why it's mostly women, but it's why are there more male serial killers than female serial killers?
- [41:58]
Dan Taburski
Well, shit. Marge left her job in healthcare and now works in sales online. She sells, appropriately enough, vibrators.
- [42:09]
Rose
It's not just vibrators. I'm telling you, we have an excellent line of bath products. You are beautiful from morning to night.
- [42:19]
Dr. McVig
I will give you.
- [42:20]
Rose
I will give you my card.
- [42:23]
Dan Taburski
That's nice to hear.
- [42:24]
Rose
How else can I help out hysterical women other than selling them a great vibrator?
- [42:45]
Dan Taburski
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 survey@wondery.com survey and if you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to us@wondery.com tips Hysterical is a production of Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Our lead producer is Henry Malofsky. Our associate producer is Marie Alexa Kavanaugh. Producer, Sophie Bridges. Managing producer, Erin Kelly. Senior producer, Lena Matsis. Additional production by Zandra Ellen. Diane Hodson is our editor. Our executive editor is Joel Lovell. 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 creative, Crystal Tupia for Wondery, our senior producers are Lizzie Bassett and Claire Chambers. Coordinating producer, Mariah Gossett. Senior managing producer, Callum Plews. Special thanks to Elliot Adler, Pedro Alvira, Robert Bartholomew, Keona Barnwell, J.N. barry, Grace Cohen Chen, Ryan Feldman, Bari Finkel, Ben Goldberg, Mark Hallett, Courtney Harrell, Jonathan Mink, Marina Pais, Jennifer Sanchez, Michaela Squire, Virginia Swenson, Charlie Tarr and to cnn Hysterical is written and executive produced by me. I'm Dan Taburski. Our executive producers for Pineapple street are Max Linsky, Henry Malavsky Asha Saludja and Jenna Weiss Berman. Executive producers for Wondery are Morgan Jones, Marshall Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent. Thanks for listening.
- [44:54]
Cara Swisher
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