Introducing: Origin Stories

Summary

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Podcast Summary: We Came to the Forest – Introducing: Origin Stories

Podcast: We Came to the Forest
Host: Matt Sher (Origin Stories, Campside Media, Wondery)
Guest: Dan Tabursky (host, Hysterical)
Date: September 10, 2025

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Episode Overview

This special episode serves as a crossover introduction to Origin Stories, in which host Matt Sher explores the genesis of acclaimed creative projects with leading podcasters, writers, and directors. The featured segment is a deep, candid interview with Dan Tabursky, known for his narrative podcasting style and celebrated series Hysterical. Together, Sher and Tabursky discuss the creative process behind Hysterical, Tabursky's career transition from television to podcasts, the challenge of reporting on complex subjects such as mass psychogenic illness, and what it really takes to make award-winning audio storytelling.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Introduction to Origin Stories and Dan Tabursky's Work

Timestamps:

• [00:02]–[01:17]: Matt Sher introduces his new podcast and guest lineup.

• [01:24]–[04:11]: Summary of the Hysterical podcast and Tabursky's career trajectory.

• Matt Sher discusses the purpose of Origin Stories: “Intimate and incisive, instructive and eye-opening. Origin Stories is the ultimate podcast for anyone curious about the workings of the creative mind.” ([00:13])

• Dan Tabursky is introduced as a pioneer of narrative podcasting, known for Finding Richard Simmons, 9/12, The Line, and Hysterical, the latter recently awarded Podcast of the Year at the Ambies and a Pulitzer finalist.

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2. Dan Tabursky’s Path to Podcasting

Timestamps:

• [04:17]–[05:55]

• Tabursky’s background: Started in television (NBC News, The Daily Show), ran a production company making comedy and game shows.

• Turning point: “The industry evolved...I kind of didn’t want to make what TV people wanted to make anymore, and TV people didn’t really want to make what I wanted to make anymore.” ([04:56])

• He made a short documentary, then attempted one on Richard Simmons, which turned into his breakthrough podcast.

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3. Translating TV Skills to Audio & Developing a Distinctive Voice

Timestamps:

• [05:58]–[07:16]

• Writing in others’ voices, getting comfortable on mic, and the value of “scratch track” work at The Daily Show.

• Tabursky’s defining style: "I've always been a little too familiar with people, and sometimes that can backfire. But also, sometimes it makes people really comfortable, especially when we've only got an hour or two and we're trying to get somewhere interesting.” ([07:16])

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4. Thematic Threads Across Projects

Timestamps:

• [07:57]–[09:18]

• Tabursky's subjects often touch on navigating large, uncontrollable systems—be they media, law enforcement, or public health:

  • “What does it feel like to end up on the show Cops?...These people don't have any way to sort of navigate the larger system...those are sort of the themes that I find myself coming up against.” ([08:34])

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5. The Genesis of Hysterical and Mass Psychogenic Illness

Timestamps:

• [09:20]–[11:22]

• Initial interest stemmed from researching Havana Syndrome; questions about belief and legitimacy of certain illnesses led him to the Leroy High School case.

• Tabursky on challenging both journalistic ethics and empathy:

  • “It feels so wrong to look somebody in the face who's ill and say, are you sure this isn't a mass psychogenic illness?...I didn't want to make people feel dumb...But I did think it was interesting that reporters were having a hard time even asking the questions.” ([09:49])

• Discussion on the tensions between medical skepticism, women not being believed, and real suffering:

  • “It is 100% real...But just that where those symptoms would be coming from might not have an organic cause...your experience is valid, but there are other things to consider in terms of you getting better.” ([11:22])

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6. Pre-Production & Pitching Process

Timestamps:

• [12:15]–[14:36]

• Research-heavy approach, informal early interviews, intense selectivity in pitching only projects he wants to make.

• Collaboration with Pineapple Street Media for development, then to distributors like Wondery.

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7. Navigating the Podcast Industry & Project Selection

Timestamps:

• [14:37]–[16:31]

• Tabursky’s disinterest in true crime, yet notes the mysterious symptoms in Hysterical carry a “true crime” style hook:

  • “When you think about 19 girls all coming down with Tourette syndrome at one high school...it might as well be true crime in terms of just...a mystery that really goes.” ([14:50])

• The importance of starting reporting before official greenlights; treating all projects as worthwhile even if not immediately commissioned.

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8. Field Recording, Collaboration, and Experience

Timestamps:

• [16:31]–[17:23]

• Prefers traveling and working with producers: “I like having a producer. I like having somebody to talk to and work with, somebody else to go through the experience with you. Because I think that's what podcasts are.” ([16:48])

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9. Story Structure & “The Open”

Timestamps:

• [17:23]–[20:00]

• Challenges of crafting story openings; Tabursky never knows the opening in advance:

  • “God, no, no, no, I would never. No, I never know where it’s gonna start.” ([18:18])

• He relies on collaborative input and iteration, noting that the cold open for Hysterical was not his idea.

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10. Narrative Drive: Questions, Mystery, and Depth

Timestamps:

• [20:05]–[22:43]

• The dual engines: surface mystery (“What’s happening to the girls?”) and philosophical dilemma (“What do you do when people say it’s all in your head?”):

  • “The second more philosophical question is what do you do when people tell you it's all your head? That was sort of the thing that really drove me.” ([21:17])

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11. Writing Process: Visual Tools & Outlining

Timestamps:

• [23:17]–[24:58]

• Uses a combination of index cards, outlines, mind maps, drawings: “I think you need to handle a story over and over and over and over...Just keep picking it up and putting it down.” ([23:28])

• Preparation is key, but flexibility enters as reporting unfolds.

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12. Interview Philosophy: Seeking Wisdom Over Soundbites

Timestamps:

• [25:13]–[25:49]

• Looks for insight and subjective meaning:

  • “I'm not looking for somebody to retell the story. I'm looking for people to...how did they put it in their lives? What was that experience like as a person?” ([25:13])

• Prioritizes good experience for subjects—no mechanical “line readings.”

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13. Scripting and Editing: Tape-Driven Narrative

Timestamps:

• [26:15]–[27:34]

• Organizes by listening to all potential tape, pulling notable moments, and writing narration around those:

  • “It’s easy to write to somebody saying something really interesting that's hard to get to than it is to just say what it is I wanted them to say in the first place.” ([26:26])

• Difference with print: in audio, the tape is the skeleton, writing is connective tissue.

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14. Balancing Multiple Characters and Perspectives

Timestamps:

• [28:13]–[29:42]

• Structural challenge: avoiding repetition by not needing every subject's full testimony; focusing on a few representative voices.

• “You can only lock onto a couple of their stories.” ([29:16])

• His approach values individual engagement over recitation of facts: “I like the people. I do like the people that I'm talking to. And the point…is to learn something about them and then get the information. It's like a two step thing.” ([29:42])

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15. The Toll of Creative Work & Recognition

Timestamps:

• [30:04]–[33:22]

• Admits to deep focus and occasional burnout:

  • “Right now. Right now. I am in it. I'm like so mad and so...I'm blocked. I'm just trying to write and it's not coming and it's very frustrating.” ([30:56])

• On awards and recognition:

  • “It's all great. It can be really lonely work. And it's really nice when you're like, oh, my God, somebody listened to it and actually had something to say about it.” ([32:19])
  • Pulitzer recognition was “life-defining...just unbelievably strange and just wonderful and intimidating.” ([33:07])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the core of great podcasting:
  • “It's a much larger sort of conception process. I don't pitch easily...If you don't want to make it, there's no point in doing it.” ([13:32], [22:53])
• On the story engine:
  • “The question of what is happening to the girls...it might as well be true crime in terms of just. It just has a mystery that really goes...” ([14:50])
• On interviewing:
  • “I'm not looking for somebody to retell the story. I'm looking for people to tell me, give me something that...how did they put it in their lives?” ([25:13])
• On the writing process and struggle:
  • “I'm literally like, I'm stuck. Like, I have…I'm filled with anger and just frustration.” ([18:50], [30:59])
  • “I've been doing this long enough to know that something will happen that will alleviate the pain that I'm in right now.” ([31:21])
• On recognition and creative motivation:
  • “A lot of it's just a function of making my next project possible…Any recognition goes into, like, somebody else giving me another chance to do it and allowing me a little breathing room to sort of make it happen.” ([32:19])
  • “Pulitzer like that, to me, just feels, like unbelievably strange and just wonderful and intimidating and life-defining, right?” ([33:07])

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Additional Insights

• Tabursky values collaboration but also deeply internalizes each project, at times to the point of creative overload.
• His process is tactile and iterative—cards, boards, diagrams, scripting, tape review—a mosaic of methods, not strictly linear.
• He continually stresses respect—for his subjects, for the integrity of their stories, and for the listening audience.
• Recognition matters emotionally and practically (“gives me another chance to do it”), but storytelling is always at the core.

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For listeners and creators alike, this episode delivers a nuanced, engaging look behind the scenes of top-tier narrative podcasting—with honest wisdom about the art, craft, and internal dramas of making audio that matters.

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Transcript

[Matt Sher]

Hey listeners. Matt here, the host of We Came to the Forest. Have you ever wondered exactly how your favorite movie or book or podcast or TV series got made? I have, and in my new podcast, Origin Stories, I'm talking to a range of writers and directors about how they made their best known works. Nothing is off the table. Not the frustrations and the joys, not the setbacks and the successes. Intimate and incisive, Instruct and eye opening. Origin Stories is the ultimate podcast for anyone curious about the workings of the creative mind. Among the guests appearing in the early episodes are Noah Hawley, the showrunner of the FX series Alien Earth Stephanie Fu, the author of the New York Times best selling memoir what My Bones Know, John Hoffman, the creator of Only Murders in the Building, and Patrick Radden Keefe, the New Yorker staff writer. In the episode I'm about to play you, I sit down with Dan Tabursky, the host of a different wondery show, Hysterical. Stay tuned afterwards for more info on Origin Stories.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Campsite Media.

[Matt Sher]

It starts with a teenage girl. Her eyes twitch, her head jerks. Then comes the stutter, followed by full on vocal outbursts.

[Dan Tabursky]

I pass out again at the homecoming dance. That's awesome, right?

[Matt Sher]

At first it seems random. Is this a prank or something?

[Dan Tabursky]

I just said, what do you think? Do you think she's faking? And she's like, I don't know.

[Matt Sher]

But then another girl comes down with.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

The same symptoms and another and another and another. I felt like Linda Blair in the Exorcist.

[Matt Sher]

As it turns out, all these girls go to the same school in the same town. Leroy New York, a quiet place that quickly becomes the center of a strange mystery.

[Dan Tabursky]

These kids are just totally normal and.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Then next thing you know, they're going blah. And their arms are swinging.

[Matt Sher]

Doctors don't seem to have answers. Theories are thrown around. Is it something in the air? The water? Some kind of environmental toxin?

[Dan Tabursky]

Leroy was the new Dateline and everyone.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Was trying to solve the murder.

[Matt Sher]

More than a decade after the outbreak emerges, journalist Dan Tabursky goes to Leroy to get answers, which become the basis of his award winning podcast, Hysterical. That's this week on Origin Stories. Welcome back to Origin Stories. Dan Taburski is one of the best known podcasters working today. Starting with his debut, Finding Richard Simmons, Dan pioneered a narrative style that's both funny and wise, propulsive and also extremely human. His respect for and interest in his subjects is intrinsic to everything he does. From 9 12, his exploration of the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, to the Line, a show about the infamous Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was accused and convicted of fatally stabbing a prisoner of war. Today we're talking to Dan about his most recent project, Hysterical, which explores the outbreak in a small New York town of a strange nerve disorder affecting local teenagers. For good reason. Hysterical is highly laureled. It was named Podcast of the Year at the Ambies, sort of the Oscars of the podcast industry, and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Dan, thanks so much for doing this.

[Dan Tabursky]

My pleasure. I'm happy to be here.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Usually when we start with these interviews, I start with the kernel of the idea, which I do wanna get to. But I also want to get to a little bit of your backstory. Cause it often feels to me like Dan Tabursky arrived fully formed in the podcast world. And this is like the Dan Tabursky sound. And you've been podcasting your entire life. But you weren't right. If I have this right, you came to podcasting from film.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah, and barely that. I had been making TV for a long time. I was at NBC News for three years, and then I was at the Daily show for a while. I was a producer there. And then I started my own production company in 2003 with a partner. And we made comedy shows and game shows and kid shows and silly stuff. And most of it was sort of nonfiction but television oriented. And that was great. I loved it. But it got to the point where the industry evolved, where I kind of didn't want to make what TV people wanted to make anymore, and TV people didn't really want to make what I wanted to make anymore. And so it was just sort of like me trying to figure out how to sort of go forward. I wanted to direct documentary films, like, just get out of television. I wanted to be the director, I wanted to be the voice. I wanted to be sort of my own ideas. And then I made a documentary short to see if I could actually do it, which went great. It was really, really hard. But it got into a bunch of festivals and sort of introduced me to that world. And then I was trying to make a documentary about Richard Simmons and that turned into a podcast. And then I've just been hyper focused on podcasts ever since. I still theoretically want to make films, but they're harder to make, harder to get funded, and they're also quite so. I'm always sort of starting from, like, trying to meet a person and like takes like five years. And so my failure rate is quite high with the starting documentary films. But that's okay. I like it. That's how I got into podcasts.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Do you think when you're looking back at how you got into audio, do you feel like the skills you picked up along the way at the Daily show, for example, when you're doing different kinds of writing, did it translate to audio?

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah, for sure. It all did. Especially being the Daily Show, I was a producer for the Correspondents, so I would travel around with the Correspondents, like Stephen Carrill and Steve Colbert and Lauren Webman and all those really interesting people and funny, and I would direct their shoots and then I would write the segments for them. And so I learned how to write in other people's voices. I got a lot of experience doing that. And also doing scratch track, which, believe it or not, was actually really helpful. Years and years of doing scratch track for other people. And there's basically two ways to do scratch track. You can either phone it in and read it super monotone because you're embarrassed to try to pretend that you're the person whose voice is really going to be there, or you can just fucking do it and do it like they might do it and, like, try to read it with their intonation. And that's how I would do it. And I think it gets you used to hearing your own voice and not being too worried about it.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

It seems to me it also creates this level of comfort that you have on the microphone that is conversational, but also journalistic and authoritative. You've got a very unique ability to speak to people like you are conversing with them, but it doesn't feel forced in any way, which is a really hard thing to do.

[Dan Tabursky]

A lot of that is, I think, personality. I've always been a little too familiar with people, and sometimes that can backfire. But also, sometimes it makes people really uncomfortable, especially in situations where, you know, we've only got an hour or two and we're trying to get somewhere interesting. And I usually feel pretty comfortable just cutting right to the chase.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

I was talking to an editor recently who was like, oh, you know, journalists are all generally pretty nice to hang out with because they have to talk to people all day. I was like, you'd be surprised.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah, you'd be super surprised at how really rigid people can be with their conversation and, like, really wanting to run through questions. It's never been me, sort of personally, but I also have never found that super successful as a methodology.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

We had a recent guest on who is a New Yorker writer who covers all sorts of different topics. Just a real generalist. And it made me think of you to a certain extent. I mean, he's bounced all over the place. He described it a little bit as, like, taking a bunch of College 101 classes. But you look back, so you got Richard Simmons, you've got running from the cops, you've got the Y2K, you've got the 911 show, you've got the line. Do you see, like, when you're looking back over these last few years, the connective tissue between these projects, or do they exist as disparate things that, you know, there's no thematic connection between them?

[Dan Tabursky]

I'm an American, I'm a New Yorker. And so I think a lot of the things that I talk about are about what it is like to be an American in the 21st century, as vague as that sounds. Like all the sort of disappointments of it and all the sort of possibilities of it, and navigating, like, large systems, like, every. All this. All the things I've been interested in, like, what does it feel like to end up on the show Cops? Like, you're in this part of a system that you. You can't control at all. Or what is it like to be somebody who was working with Richard Simmons and then he disappeared? These people don't have any way to sort of navigate the sort of larger system of fame and friendship. And so it's just what it feels like to be sort of lost in that. Those are sort of the themes that I find myself coming up against with hysterical.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

This is a case that's a few years old. It didn't happen. Right as you guys were getting ready to lurch into production. Do you remember encountering it? Was it through a news headline? Did someone send you something about the cases?

[Dan Tabursky]

I vaguely remember when it happened. It more came about because I had been looking into Havana Syndrome, which is that sort of neurological illness that is affecting American foreign service workers, like CIA and diplomats and everybody in the government, all the lawyers, all the people they were interviewing, all the journalists, everybody was leaning towards that it's some sort of mysterious Russian weapon that's injuring the brains of these American foreign workers. Whereas one of the real plausible explanations was that it was a mass psychogenic illness. It was mass hysteria, but nobody was able to talk about it because it feels so wrong to look somebody in the face who's ill and say, are you sure this isn't a mass psychogenic illness? And I just thought that dynamic was really interesting, not because I was looking to sort of like, fuck all you, you know, military guys. You're not Sick. I didn't want to make people feel dumb. I didn't want to make people feel that their illness wasn't valid. But I did think it was interesting that reporters were having a hard time even asking the questions because it just felt so personally confronting to ask somebody who's ill if they're not ill in the way they think they are. And so that led me to looking for instances of mass psychogenic illness. And it immediately got me to the girls in Leroy High School. And to me that was amazing. I love that. It was. On the one hand it's like CAA officers. On the other hand it's like teenage girls. And I was like, oh, this makes sense.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Yeah. And it feels like it does tap into a lot of larger conversations that are happening. I thought about long term Lyme disease, for example, when I was listening to the show there. A lot of women have written essays recently about not being believed, about certain illnesses that they actually had and being dismissed as it's all in your head. And there is this strange tension even in the medical community where it's like, well, maybe you're making this up, right?

[Dan Tabursky]

Not making it up, but like that. Maybe it's because it is real. It is 100% real. It is happening. It is a physical thing. You cannot control it. What's happening to these girls, twitches, head jerks, like blurting out sounds and words. It was a real thing. But just that where those symptoms would be coming from might not have an organic cause, that it might be more psychological, that it might be more the unconscious. It's a hard thing to accept because it is so true that women's medical experiences are so often dismissed. I mean, it's just like the oldest story in the fucking world, right? And yet here's the story that really does fly in the face of the idea that like, I get to define my own medical experience. I get to define what's happening to me and how there are medical situations where actually that's not quite what we need to be doing. Your experience is valid, but there are other things to consider in terms of you getting better. And I just think that tension is really. It was an interesting place to sit for so many months.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Do you do pre reporting before you start to flesh out a pitch? I guess this presupposes that you write up a pitch document. But when you're thinking about a story like this, do you interview folks first? Do you read articles first? What's your process there?

[Dan Tabursky]

I do a lot of reading, a lot of reading. And then I'll start having conversations with people, usually informal conversations. I might record them just in case something happens. But it's just usually something that I set up. Like I sort of do the reporting on it, just kind of see what the world is like. But I do a ton of reading and ideating and sort of thinking and outlining and putting the story together in my head and almost more importantly, putting other stories together with that story. Because very often what happens in the projects that I do is it's not just one story, it's all these other stories orbiting around it that sort of make something make sense together. And so it's a much larger sort of conception process. I don't pitch easily. It takes me a while and I don't pitch 10 things. I usually pitch one or two and they're things that I want to make. I'm serious. I hope that can be felt by the people I'm pitching to. And also it prevents me from getting in a situation where a pitch is bought. And then I got to fucking make a show I don't want to make, which is I've been in that situation and that's the worst. So I really like to know and feel super internal confidence that like, one way or the other, this show is going to be really interesting and it's.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Worth the risk of making so these shows. A lot of your most recent shows were done through Pineapple and then Wondery was the distributor. Is it a two step dance? Do you talk to your folks at Pineapple and say, this is what I want to do and then you go to Wondery with it?

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah. So my deal is with Pineapple Street. I have a first look deal with them. So I'll tell them what I'm interested in doing and then I'll work with Henry Malawski and Joel Lovell there, producer and editor respectively, who I've done most of my projects with. And we'll keep working on it. And so it's always something that's sort of percolating in the back and we might be reading books or like sending each other slacks about this thing we found that sort of makes sense for the story. And then things will be happening in the news. Like it really needs time to just sort of like be in the backgr. And then together we'll pitch it to other places.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

What kind of questions did people ask you at the Pineapple level and at the Wondery level when you were thinking about this show when you were in the early stages or maybe in the pitching stages, hearing you describe it of course, makes it all come alive, but on the surface, it takes a little to convey how much you could get out of a topic like this. So were there a lot of conversations back and forth?

[Dan Tabursky]

Why? Really? Really? I think it's like fucking, like, I hear it, I'm like mass hysteria, mass psychotherapy.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

I take your point, but let me be more specific. I'm thinking about the current podcast landscape where it's like, you know, it's true crime driven to a large extent.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah, I don't do true crime, so I mean, that's sort of already there. I'm not geared towards true crime, so it's not what you're gonna end up getting from me. I think this is one of the easier stories to sort of wrap your head around, personally, when you think about 19 girls all coming down with Tourette syndrome at one high school and trying to figure out what the fuck is happening to these girls. And, you know, that it took like nine months to figure out. And like, I just, I just feel like that question of what is happening to the girls when. Leroy New York it might as well be true crime in terms of just. It just has a mystery that really goes and that I really felt. I think people were certainly like, weird that like, why do you, middle aged white guy, want to do a story about these high school girls? But that's not my problem.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

That wasn't the kind of question I was thinking about, to be clear.

[Dan Tabursky]

No, but. No, no, no, but I do think it's an interesting question and you need to sort of think about that, like, why am I interested in this? But like, you get past that and explain why it's interesting and people will make exceptions. Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Once you get the official green light and you're moving forward to report, do you break the reporting into trips, Dan, or do you try to get everything done in one fell swoop over a couple of weeks?

[Dan Tabursky]

I'm already reporting by the time I get the green light. And so the green light is important, but there has been a vibe with how we work, which I think is really useful. And it feels like a luxury, even though it's probably more work. At least in my head we're making this whether or not it gets greenlit. And so I'm reporting this over the next few months, like back and forth and thinking and writing and talking to people in interviews. And when the green light comes, it's important, but. But it's less important than you'd think.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Do you record your own interviews, Dan, or do you travel with Henry you said his name was.

[Dan Tabursky]

Right. Henry Malofsky was the producer on Missing Richard Simmons. And now he's the executive producer for all these projects. And then there's a producer. And so it would either be Henry or the producer.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Go together.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah, I like to go with somebody. Sometimes I do it by myself, and then I'll just record things on my phone because I don't even know this is gonna turn into anything. And I don't wanna give people more work, but I'm kind of just pursuing a thrib. Sometimes I'll do that myself. But I like having a producer. I like having somebody to talk to and work with somebody else to go through the experience with you. Because I think that's what podcasts are. I think they work best when you treat them like an experience and you're trying to tell people what that experience was like. So there's something about another person being with you that makes the whole thing more of something that happened that you can then retell, if that makes any sense.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

It makes perfect sense. Yeah. I think that's why the best podcasts are quest narratives of one kind or another, where you're inviting someone along. I think about this an ungodly, probably unhealthy amount, which is the beginning of stories and the opening of stories. And I'm always really curious to hear from people, whether it was a cold open or a lead to a magazine story or a first chapter was something that occurred to them right away as soon as they experienced it or saw it, or whether it was something that came along later. In this case of hysterical, it's you sort of watching a girl. Cause we can't see her, but it is a video, and she's having all these tics. And you're translating for us as if we're sitting next to you in the room, what's happening. And it's like we feel your surprise and incredulousness and curiosity. Did you know right away that that's where it would start?

[Dan Tabursky]

God, no. No, no, no. I would never. No, I never know where it's gonna start.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Interesting. You're one of the few people have said that. Okay, now you need to.

[Dan Tabursky]

What is everybody else saying?

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Most people are like. And I'm the same way. I'm like, I know what it is from the beginning. As soon as I hear it, I'm like. For a magazine story, I'm like, oh, that's my lead.

[Dan Tabursky]

Amazing.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

And that's why I like this question, because I don't know where that comes from. I Don't know. And when I fight against it, I'm always wrong. When I try to do something else later, I overrule my instinct.

[Dan Tabursky]

I don't know. The open I've written for a show first has ever been the open that I've kept. Wow. I certainly don't write episode one first. I usually, like, write three or four on the one I'm doing now. I wrote three first and then two, and now I'm working on one, but I can't finish one, so I'm moving to four. I can't get it. I'm stuck. I'm literally like, I'm stuck. Like, I have. I don't have writer's block, but I'm fucking. Like. I'm filled with anger and just frustration. So, no, I never have the open or it's. Somebody has an idea. I work with a couple producers, an editor. I want to hear what they think, too. We're all sort of having these conversations, and so I don't really put that pressure on myself for that to be my idea. It can be somebody else's idea. And as a matter of fact, the open for Hysterical was not my idea. That was somebody else's idea that I liked.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

The great strength of this cold open for Hysterical is how straightforward it leads you to the questions that the listener might have or that you have. Because it's literally, like, you talk a little bit, we watch a little bit of the video, and then it's basically you saying, you know, what the hell is going on here? Which has such a propulsive effect. Right. It works, right? It's very functional. I'm making it sound like it's not art, too. It is, but it's very, like, it works.

[Dan Tabursky]

I'm glad. That's great. I love to hear that. The first episode is called Outbreak, and that's what I wanted it to be. I wanted it to be my version of the movie Contagion, where something's happening and it's spreading and nobody knows what it is. And it's not a joke. It's real. I just wanted to give that feeling of what it felt like for one girl to have these weird symptoms and then another, and then, like, two more. And then they're all coming to the doctor's office. And then people are walking down the hallway at the school, and the band teacher's like, there's girls meowing outside. And then one student's talking about how the person sitting next to her got it, and then she woke up and she had it. I just wanted it to be that. That sort of disbelief and feel like, what would you do if you were like 12 years old and this started happening to you? So starting with the Doctor was just like, here's how the story unfolds. It's got a lot of hippy, dippy, weird inside your mind shit. But it's also got a real epidemiological side to it where you're trying to solve a mystery.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

I mean, that is at root of why true crime works, right? It's that there's one big question, why did something happen? Or how did it happen? And then everything else that you get in between is in service of that, or it's entertainment or it's part of the bigger whole. But it's like that engine that's pushing people forward.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah, it's really helpful to have stories like that. I don't think you always need it. I think people stress that too much, especially with stuff like true crime for like hysterical. We were trying to figure out, like, what is happening to the girls in leroy New York. But the other question was, what happens when people tell you it's all in your head? And so, yes, the beats of the story about what happened to the girls in leroy New York is important. I know it is a mystery, a factual mystery. But it's. The second more philosophical question is what do you do when people tell you it's all your head? That was sort of the thing that really drove me and gave me a reason to be asking people questions about it. I feel like you need a reason to be asking people questions about something that already happened as opposed to just having them retell it. Don't walk into somebody's house and just make them retell some shitty thing that happened to them.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

No, I feel like, yeah.

[Dan Tabursky]

And so having that second question really sort of gives me something to talk to them about.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

You're almost defining what makes a good show good in true crime or not. It has the. A structure that people can latch onto instinctively because they've watched Law and Order before and they know what an investigation looks like, so they're wired in. But then there's something running under it, which usually tends to be a thematic or philosophical question. It's when one of those is subtracted or it's when it becomes just a TikTok of something that.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah, after a while it's just a bunch of nouns.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

And verbs, but people like it. There are people who just will like, continue to listen to those over and over again. My friend calls it folding laundry podcasts.

[Dan Tabursky]

I'LL buy that. It's certainly not fun to make for me. It's not what I'm looking to make. And if you don't want to make it, there's no point in doing it. Literally no point in doing it. I get why people listen to it. People listen to a lot of weird stuff. I don't understand the sort of joy of making it.

[Matt Sher]

Welcome back to Origin Stories. Today we're talking to Dan Tabursky, the host of the podcast Hysterical.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

When you are sitting down to block all of this out, do you use index cards? Are you a corkboard person? Do you have a living Google document that you're updating? What does your document look like?

[Dan Tabursky]

All of it. I used to like cards more, but the pandemic ruined it because it's hard to be in the room with people. And I like them so much that I've worked out systems where I do have zooms and I have an extra camera trained on my board, and I'll be doing the board while other people tell me to move things, just because I like that physical process. I have outlines. I have mind maps. I have a notebook full of drawings of the structure. I think you need to handle a story over and over and over and over and over, over, over again. Like, just keep picking it up and putting it down. Part of that is just, like, familiarity with the story and the ideas in it, so that when you're really cooking that, it's just all in your head. It's all in there somewhere.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Yeah. I got into an argument recently with someone who was like, you got to outline. You got to know where everything is ahead of time. And then I was thinking over here that my life is just sheer unadulterated chaos. Because I once read this EL Doctorow quote where it was like, you're just like a car with one headlight on, and you're just going. You're just following the headlight through the darkness, which is my preferred method. But it made me feel really bad.

[Dan Tabursky]

When he was like, you gotta have an outline. I mean, I'm all for outlines. I love outlines, but I think outlines is like step one. I like outline. I like structure. I like graphs. I like charts. I like color. I really like to visualize what I'm doing. I prepare a lot for the conversations I have with people. I do a lot of preparation. It's just. I think the key is just when you start, you start.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

I was thinking of it with the interview style, because it's true. You could be too rigid with an interview And I think part of what people are hearing, or what I hearing is you are letting people speak on their own terms. You want certain information from them, but you're allowing them to speak to you how they want to speak to you.

[Dan Tabursky]

People have real wisdom about their own experience. What I'm often looking for is not. I don't know if this is a conscious thing, but I think this is how it turns out that I'm not looking for somebody to retell the story. I'm looking for people to sort of tell me, give me something that what did they get from it? Like, how did they put it in their lives? Like, what was that experience like as a person? And people. Very often people have thought about it. It's sort of a fool's errand to go into these situations thinking that you know what you want them to say, because you don't. And it's also just. It would be so boring if you did.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

It would be boring. It would be boring for them.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah, for sure. I'm very conscious of making it a good experience for the people that I'm talking to. Like, I want them to get something out of it. And I think if they are getting something out of it, you can hear it in what they're saying. And I feel like that tends to be what makes a successful conversation. I'm not going to ask them to repeat things. I'm not going to. Can you answer this in form of a sentence instead of a question? I'm not doing that shit. Because you're not sort of respecting the fact that they're here to like to do something too. And it's not to do line reads.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

When you get to the actual scripting phase. Are you working in a Google Doc? Are you working with purely tape and you're literally narrating into it? What do those scripts look like for you?

[Dan Tabursky]

I use Google Docs. I'll go episode by episode and I'll listen to all the tape that I think will be in that episode. Then I'll pull out all the interesting things that were said and then I'll sort of look at them and see how they want to be arranged. It's easy to write to somebody saying something really interesting that's hard to get to than it is to just say what it is I wanted them to say in the first place. And so if somebody has said something interesting or we've had an interesting back and forth, writing to that moment or those moments is usually what helps me sort of put together the structure and decide where things need to be said.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

This is the single biggest difference between print journalism and audio journalism. When you watch people trying to make the transition, and it's always when they stumble trying to do what you just described, which is when you're writing in print, you're framing the thing first with your own writing, and then the quotes are dropped in later. But the most successful audio, the tape, comes first, and you're figuring out a way in and out of it, because that's what happened.

[Dan Tabursky]

The conversation was is what happened. And now I'm trying to tell you the story of what happened. What actually happened is the most important stuff, if that makes any sense.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

It's also that it's serving a different function in audio tape or quotes or whatever. With audio, it's letting you feel what a person is like. And with print, it's literally just an information conveyance device. Right.

[Dan Tabursky]

A lot of that has to do with who are you talking to. A lot of it just goes into the choice of who you choose to talk to. Like, are you talking to the expert, or are you talking to the guy who works at the Wawa, saw the thing happened, and has something interesting to say that you haven't heard in a podcast before? You just have the most opportunity to show who you are by who you choose to talk to and how you treat them.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

I want you to talk me through what would have been the biggest structural hurdle or the thing that would have scared the shit out of me with this if I was setting out to report it. You have a situation where a bunch of girls experience similar versions of the same phenomenon at more or less the same time, and you want to be able to tell all their stories, but you don't want to repeat the same story over and over again. So you wouldn't want episode one to be girl one explaining her symptoms and how it happened, Episode two being exactly the same. Episode three being exactly the same. This is what, when I was listening to it, I was like, wow, he figured out a really elegant way around this, because it could have been a pitfall, right?

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah. You realize pretty quickly you don't need every person to testify to what the experience was like. And plus, everybody can't. I didn't talk to all the girls that were sick, not even close. Like, some of the women, we couldn't find, and a lot of them didn't want to talk. So you're not including everybody just to begin with. So I never thought that was something I could fulfill. You can only lock onto a couple of their stories.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

You're very good at not overwhelming listeners with too many names and voices at once, which is something I. It's like my pet peeve when I listen to a show and I'm being introduced to 38 different people at once and never getting to know any of them. My gut is that this probably comes from you as a person wanting to get to know people and wanting to spend time with them. Am I on the right track?

[Dan Tabursky]

I like the people. I do like the people that I'm talking to. And the point of talking to them is to learn something about them and then get the information. It's like a two step thing. And so I just think that the people and the interaction I can have with them is more interesting than most details that I could give you. That's the interesting part, is hearing people talk about their own experience.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

When you're doing a project like Hysterical, is this your sole focus for the time you're on it? Are you in development on other projects?

[Dan Tabursky]

Slowly, yeah. So when I was working on Hysterical, I was developing two other things at the same time, including the one that I knew I was gonna make next. So I wasn't really developing it, I was sort of reporting. But quietly. But for the most part, I'm focused on that one thing. You really are getting my whole self. When I'm working on a project, I'm not trying to build an empire here. I'm just trying to make the next project really good. That is my focus. So I have other things going on. Like, you know, I have a couple of art projects and a documentary. We're trying to. I'm trying to get it up and running. But those are the little things that you just focus on when you can't even look at the main thing anymore for a minute. But I'm pretty focused.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Does it ever get to that point if you're throwing yourself so deeply into something, do you ever get to a point where you're like, this is consuming me too much or.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yes. Right now. Right now.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Right now. You're in it.

[Dan Tabursky]

I am in it. I am. I'm like so mad and so I'm like blocked. I'm just trying to write and it's not coming and it's very frustrating.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Do you ever see the chart where someone's describing the creative process and they're like, this is the greatest thing ever. This is a piece of shit. This is the greatest thing ever. Maybe not. And it does, it does. Projects do work like that, don't they?

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've been Doing this long enough to know that something will happen that will alleviate the pain that I'm in right now. But it hasn't happened yet, and that's frustrating.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Hopefully, we're giving you a vacation. Maybe not. But now you're still talking about this.

[Dan Tabursky]

Oh, you think this is my vacation?

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Yeah. This isn't this vacation. The last question I had for you is about recognition on a larger level with awards and prizes. Hysterical ended up as a finalist for the Pulitzer and won all sorts of other awards. I know you're not going to say because you're an honest person that it doesn't matter, because I'm sure that it's heartening in a lot of ways. I'm wondering if it's fuel for you in any way or if it's the opposite. I mean, does recognition of that kind serve as a perpetual pool of inspiration, or does it serve as source of dread?

[Dan Tabursky]

It's all great. It can be really lonely work. And it's really nice when you're like, oh, my God, somebody listened to it and actually had something to say about it. Sometimes, like, if you win something, like, they'll write a little paragraph that goes along with it, and you're like, that is the thing. You're like, oh, my God, Somebody, like, they got it. And that's proof that they 100% listened to it, because it's like they're talking about details in there. There's something about that that's great, but a lot of it's just a function of making my next project possible. And all of these go into that bucket. Any recognition goes into, like, somebody else giving me another chance to do it and allowing me a little breathing room to sort of make it happen. Stuff like that can really help. I will say the finalists for the Pulitzer thing is unbelievable. And I think that actually has gotten into my head a little bit.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

How could I not?

[Dan Tabursky]

That was sort of a shocker and amazing and, like. Yeah, but fucking amazing. I have no chill when it comes to that. Being a finalist with Pulitzer like that, to me, just feels, like unbelievably strange and just wonderful and intimidating and life defining, right?

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

Life defining in a way. What is it? The obituary line? It's the first line of your obituary.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

The second line is, he never made a career.

[Dan Tabursky]

Just talk to Richard Simmons again. That guy who made a career, just not leaving that poor old man alone.

[Interviewer (possibly from Campsite Media)]

All right, Dan, thank you so much for doing this.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah, man. So good to talk.

[Matt Sher]

You can listen to Hysterical wherever you get your podcasts, origin stories. Is a production of Campside Media. It's hosted by me, Matthew Sher and produced by Abakara Dawn. This episode was sound designed by Garrett Tiedemann. Theme music by Doug Slaywin. Our studio engineer is Jimmy Guthrie at Arcade 160 Studios. Special thanks to Michael Canyon, Mayor at Campsite, and Chris McLeod at Blue Elevator Productions. Hey, it's Matt again. Wanted to thank you for listening to the episode and remind you that you can find origin stories wherever you get your podcasts.