The razor-thin line between contagion and connection | Dan Taberski

Summary

Episode Summary: The Razor-Thin Line Between Contagion and Connection | Dan Taberski

In this compelling episode of TED Talks Daily, host Dan Taberski delves into the intriguing phenomenon of mass psychogenic illness, exploring its manifestations, causes, and the delicate balance between contagion and human connection.

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The Leroy, New York Outbreak (03:50 - 07:22)

Dan Taberski begins by recounting a mysterious incident that occurred in Leroy, New York in 2011. A sudden outbreak of Tourette-like symptoms swept through Leroy Junior Senior High School, exclusively affecting female students.

• Initial Cases: The first signs emerged when a cheerleader began exhibiting severe stuttering, which quickly escalated into head tics, facial twitches, and involuntary vocalizations typically associated with Tourette Syndrome. Within weeks, the number of affected students doubled into the teens, sparking widespread concern and speculation.

• Community Reactions: Initially, there was skepticism and disbelief among students and staff. Jessica, a senior at the time, described the early dismissals, saying:

  "At first it was whispers. It was like, oh, it's this one girl. Like, we don't know what's going on, like, blah, blah, blah." [04:58]

• Investigation and Diagnosis: Extensive investigations ruled out physical causes such as Lyme disease, heavy metal poisoning, and environmental toxins. Ultimately, medical authorities diagnosed the outbreak as mass psychogenic illness (mass hysteria). This conclusion was met with disbelief by the affected students, including Emily:

  "She basically said, oh, well, it's all in your head, you're fine... I thought, that's bullshit. I don't believe that." [07:10]

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Understanding Mass Psychogenic Illness (07:22 - 10:54)

Taberski provides a thorough explanation of mass psychogenic illness, emphasizing its complex interplay between psychological, social, and cultural factors.

• Definition and Characteristics: Mass psychogenic illness involves the rapid spread of genuine physical symptoms among a group without an identifiable organic cause. These symptoms often correlate with the social connections among the affected individuals, such as classmates or coworkers.

• Historical Context: The phenomenon isn't new. Historical examples include behaviors exhibited by nuns in medieval European convents and the infamous Salem witch trials, which many now interpret as manifestations of mass hysteria.

• Modern Examples: Taberski cites the 2001 mystery rash outbreak in U.S. grade schools, which coincided with heightened fears post-9/11. Additionally, he highlights the Havana Syndrome, a series of unexplained neurological symptoms reported by diplomats, which some experts believe to be a form of mass psychogenic illness.

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The Fentanyl Contagion Among Police Officers (10:54 - 14:48)

Drawing parallels to the Leroy incident, Taberski discusses a contemporary case involving police officers experiencing symptoms attributed to fentanyl exposure.

• Reported Cases: Police body cam footage revealed officers exhibiting signs such as tingling, slurred speech, and loss of coordination. Despite 332 reported cases, toxicology reports confirmed fentanyl presence in only one case, which remains unverified.

• Psychogenic Factors: The American Society of Medical Toxicology suggests that accidental overdoses from mere proximity to fentanyl are nearly impossible. The phenomenon is likely a mass psychogenic response, exacerbated by police body cams capturing and potentially perpetuating the symptoms.

• Mechanism of Spread: Unlike traditional mass hysteria, the digital age introduces new vectors for contagion. Body cam videos serve as visual triggers, amplifying the spread of symptoms through constant exposure.

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Personal Stories and the Thin Line Between Contagion and Connection (14:48 - 16:08)

Taberski returns to personal narratives to illustrate the profound effects of mass psychogenic illness on individuals.

• Rose's Experience: Unlike her peers at Leroy, Rose, who has had Tourette's since childhood, did not develop the outbreak's symptoms. However, living among peers who tic amplified her own symptoms, leading to severe self-injury:

  "My tic was literally to, like, punch myself right here in the face over and over and over..." [14:37]

• Jessica's Transformation: After the outbreak, Jessica found solace and connection by volunteering at a Tourette Syndrome camp. Here, the shared experience of tics fosters a sense of community and understanding:

  "So I always have to take like the day after camp off. Cause I'll come home with God knows what... But it's like the best feeling ever." [15:36]

• Blurring Boundaries: The episode underscores how mass psychogenic illness not only spreads symptoms but also deepens human connections, making the distinction between contagion and connection almost imperceptible.

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Concluding Insights (16:08 - 16:22)

Taberski wraps up by reflecting on the intricate relationship between societal stressors and the emergence of mass psychogenic phenomena. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing and understanding these occurrences as they reveal the profound ways in which humans are interconnected.

"The line between contagion and connection is a thin one. Sometimes it's hardly there at all." [16:08]

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Key Takeaways

• Mass Psychogenic Illness is Real: Despite skepticism, mass hysteria is a documented phenomenon with historical and modern instances.

• Social Connectivity Drives Spread: The interconnectedness of individuals, whether in schools, workplaces, or other communities, facilitates the rapid transmission of psychogenic symptoms.

• Modern Technology Influences Phenomena: Tools like police body cams can inadvertently propagate mass psychogenic responses by providing constant visual stimuli.

• Personal Trauma and Collective Stress: Underlying individual traumas and societal stressors often underpin outbreaks of mass psychogenic illness, highlighting the need for supportive environments.

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This episode provides a nuanced exploration of how stress, trauma, and human connection can give rise to collective psychological phenomena, offering listeners a deep understanding of the fragile boundary between contagion and connection.

Transcript

[Dan Taburski]

Foreign.

[Elise Hu]

You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host Elise Hu. Today we start with a fascinating story about a group of high school girls in Leroy, New York who in 2011 all suddenly developed ticks like those present with torture Tourette Syndrome. In his Talk documentary, podcaster Dan Tabursky shares his findings after investigating this case for the award winning podcast Hysterical, exploring what this disorder reveals about the power of stress and trauma and why the notion of mass hysteria isn't just for the history books. It still happens. Please note that this episode contains mature language.

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[Dan Taburski]

I make audio documentaries and I recently spent some time in a town called Leroy, New York. It's a town about 50 miles outside of Buffalo. It's a small town. Its claim to fame is that it's the birthplace of jello. There's a museum and everything. Anyway, in 2011, at the beginning of the school year, something strange happened in Leroy. A student at Leroy Junior Senior High School, A cheerleader. She wakes up from a nap with a stutter, like a severe stammer, trouble speaking. Pretty soon, that turns into head tics and facial twitches and then blurting out sounds and words. Symptoms that you would associate with something like Tourette's syndrome. A couple weeks later, while she's dealing with that, another student at the school comes down with the same symptoms. Ticks, spasms, barks, blurting out sounds and words. It happens from zero to 60 overnight, out of nowhere. Then it happens to another student and then two more. This is Rose. Rose was in eighth grade at the time of the outbreak.

[Jessica]

At first it was whispers. It was like, oh, it's this one girl. Like, we don't know what's going on, like, blah, blah, blah. And the next thing I know, it's like doubling and tripling. And it's all these girls.

[Dan Taburski]

Jessica was a senior at the time.

[Emily]

And I remember thinking, like, were they making it up? Like, what is going on? Like, people thought they were faking it. Yeah, everybody thought they might be faking it. And then my friend came to school the one day and I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering super bad. I'm like, what are you doing? Like, stop fucking around. Like, why are you talking like that? She's like, I can't. She's like twitching. She's like crying at that point, like just trying to get out her words. And I'm like, holy shit, this is real. Like what happened?

[Dan Taburski]

Within weeks, the case count hits double digits. All at the high school, all girls. An investigation begins. They test for Lyme disease, they test for heavy metals in the blood. Back at the school, they test for the water safety, they test for the air quality, they test for mold. And the only thing spreading faster than the contagion are the theories about what's causing it.

[Jessica]

I remember hearing at some point, since it was all girls, it must be a bad batch of tampons.

[Dan Taburski]

The tampon theory does not pan out. In fact, none of them do. After a months long investigation, the state and the school board and the doctors involved, they come up with what they think is the answer. The outbreak ripping through the high school is a mass psychogenic illness, otherwise known as mass hysteria. Emily was in eighth grade when she came down with the symptoms herself. This is what her doctor told her.

[Emily]

She basically said, oh, well, it's all in your head, you're fine. How are you, as a medical professional gonna look your patient in the eye and be like, you're fine. Stop thinking about you're fine, you're fine.

[Dan Taburski]

She should be skeptical, right? Especially because she's a woman. Even the word hysteria has its roots in the Greek for uterus. For centuries, doctors would blame the wandering womb for all sorts of problems that women were having with their bodies without really understanding what it was medically. Back in Leroy, this is how Jessica reacted to the diagnosis.

[Emily]

I thought, that's bullshit. I don't believe that. Seeing all these girls, they're not making it up. And I just don't believe that. That's the thing. After all of this, that's all it is. I just don't know how to believe that.

[Dan Taburski]

I love that I don't know how to believe that. Not just I don't believe that, I don't know how to believe it. Here's what I've come to believe. I think we all need to start learning how to believe in mass hysteria. Because while it is very rare, it is also very real. So say neurologists, psychoanalysts, sociologists. So says the nih. And it's a very specific type of contagion that says a lot about how we're connected as people. Mass psychogenic illness is the rapid spread of real physical symptoms from one person to the other. But those symptoms don't seem to have any organic cause. So you've got a limb, but your x ray is normal. Or you've got neurological symptoms, but your mri doesn't show anything. Medically, these symptoms shouldn't be happening. But then they begin to spread from person to person. But it's not random. The spread of the contagion Tends to be a function of how connected the victims are to each other. So students at a small town high school or workers on a factory floor, or even nuns in a convent. In the middle ages, There were several cases reported in Europe in convents, including one extended case in France Where a nun supposedly began meowing uncontrollably, Only to have that symptom spread to the rest of the nuns in the convent. And then, of course, there's the witches of Salem, right? Perhaps the archetypical women being hysterical. Many now believe that that was a mass psychogenic illness. Why does it happen? There's usually some sort of underlying stress or trauma Affecting the people involved. Like, for example, in the fall of 2001, when a mystery rash Broke out in grade schools around the country, at least dozens and dozens of schools, Hundreds of students affected. The rash would pass from student to student during the day in the school, but then often disappear when the kid went home at night. And then it would reappear the next day and begin spreading all over again. Tests showed no bacteria, no virus, no toxic exposure that would explain It Turns out what may have been happening Is that it was fear of toxic exposure that caused the contagion. In fact, the mystery rash Began on the very day that the news reported that a man in florida had been diagnosed with anthrax Just weeks after they began appearing in envelopes after September 11th in people's mailboxes. Many epidemiologists now believe that the post 911 rash was a mass psychogenic illness, A real physical expression of the collective anxiety those kids were feeling at the time. It's actually why I don't even care for the phrase mass psychogenic illness. It's more polite, perhaps, but it's mass hysteria that really gets the messiness of it. It's not just medical. It's not just psychological. It's social. It's cultural. It's about all of us. And it's not just women. You may have heard of Havana syndrome. That's the neurological medical mystery Affecting foreign workers in the United States and in Canada. Many people believe that that is mass psychogenic illness. And these things don't just happen anywhere. They tend to happen at the stress points in the Culture, or as one expert put it to me, they tend to happen in the fissures of society. I want to play you some more tape. These are all taken from police body cams of police officers in the field. In each instance, the police officer has just come into contact with the street drug Fentanyl. I feel weird, man, because he said he's floating. His legs are tingling. Slurring. My toes are tingling.

[Elise Hu]

He had fentanyl.

[Jessica]

He had fentanyl.

[Dan Taburski]

We good? We good? You're good for me. You're good. He's breathing. Hey, stay with me, okay? It's foreign officer. Possible exposure to fentanyl or something.

[Rose]

I'm getting my.

[Dan Taburski]

You got yours out. All right, relax. You may have seen or heard footage like this in the news. It pops up all the time. Local news loves it. It makes great tape. We were able to track 332 cases of accidental fentanyl poisoning among police officers in the field. Passing out, tingling, rapid heart rate, all just because of proximity to the drug fentanyl, sometimes even just knowing its presence on the scene. But of those 332 cases that we were able to track the number of actual toxicology reports that showed fentanyl in those police officers system at the time. As far as we can tell, one at a state prison in Alaska. And even that one hasn't been independently confirmed. In fact, the American Society of Medical Toxicology says it is near impossible to overdose on fentanyl in this way. And yet it keeps happening. But it doesn't happen to doctors and nurses who handle fentanyl in hospital settings. It doesn't even really happen to fentanyl abusers who are obviously handling the drug all the time. It's only in this one specific pre existing social group. Police officers. Male police officers, incidentally. A phenomenon that many people believe is a mass psychogenic illness with a particularly modern twist. The thing about mass hysteria is that it's a line of sight thing, right? Like part of the reason you get the symptoms is because you see somebody having the symptoms themselves. But with the advent of police body cams, each psychogenic overdose also creates a video. And that video that then gets seen by other police officers, which potentially creates more psychogenic overdoses, which creates more videos. You see the problem creating perhaps the perfect vector for spread. Back in Leroy, the outbreak there followed the pattern of many mass psychogenic illnesses. It came on strong, it wreaked havoc, and it faded away. Why there, it's impossible to say for sure, but we do now know that some of the girls were Experiencing their own personal, private, traumatic situations that may have contributed to their susceptibility. And, of course, once mass hysteria sets in, it kind of brings its own stress and trauma, as does just being an American teenage girl. And today, before it was over, 19 girls at the high school came down with symptoms. All of them somehow connected to the others. Several of them were on the soccer team together. Several of them shared a very specific art class, and two of them were best friends. By the time summer break arrived, the symptoms were all but gone from the high school. Almost. Remember Rose? She was one with a tampon theory. Rose never caught those Tourette's, like, symptoms that ripped through the high school so severely. Because Rose already had Tourette's. She has since she was three.

[Jessica]

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.

[Dan Taburski]

Unfortunately for Rose, when people with tic disorders are around other people who tic, both people tend to tic more severely. So you can imagine when 19 other girls are walking the halls, ticcing, Rosa's tics got worse. Much, much worse.

[Jessica]

So I had a tic where I would punch myself right here in the face over and over and over, over and like, I.

[Dan Taburski]

And your chin. That was your chin.

[Jessica]

Like, my tic was literally to, like, cold cock myself. 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.

[Dan Taburski]

Rose had a really difficult year, to say the least. But it was something that she told me about her life now that struck me about this idea of contagion and connection.

[Jessica]

So, like, I volunteer at a Tourette syndrome camp every summer.

[Dan Taburski]

Right? Wow. Yeah.

[Jessica]

And I love it. It is one of the best things I do with my life every year. It's so am. But we all tic so much more because we're all ticking.

[Dan Taburski]

Does that feel good or bad?

[Jessica]

Oh, I love it.

[Dan Taburski]

At Rose's Tourette's camp, when the contagion comes on, they let it happen. They don't hold back.

[Jessica]

It is so worth every second of it, because you are having the best time and 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.

[Dan Taburski]

They're literally sharing their symptoms. They're passing them back and forth unconsciously. And even if just for one weird, humid, buggy weekend in the summer, they're able to revel in those symptoms and really appreciate the connection that it gives them.

[Jessica]

So I always have to take like the day after camp off. Cause I'll come home with God knows what takes doing what. Like, it's. But it's like the best feeling ever. It is the best feeling ever.

[Dan Taburski]

The line between contagion and connection is a thin one. Sometimes it's hardly there at all. Thank you.

[Elise Hu]

That was Dan Taburski speaking at TED 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out [e-mail] curationguidelines and that's it for today's show. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tonsika Sarmarnivon. It was mixed by Christopher Faizy Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Ballaraizo.

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[Elise Hu]

I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.

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[Dan Taburski]

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[Jim]

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[Dan Taburski]

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[Dan Taburski]

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[Dan Taburski]

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[Rose]

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[Dan Taburski]

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