In 2011, just after the start of the school year, more than a dozen teenage girls came down with a strange illness. The symptoms were curious: stuttering, motor tics, vocal outbursts, even passing out. The cause was unclear. But it turned out they were all attending the same high school in LeRoy, a town in New York State.
This outbreak – its path of contagion, investigations into its source, its victims and the likely truth behind it – is the subject of Hysterical, a new offering from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios hosted by Dan Taberski.
Taberski, a former White House adviser and producer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, grew up not far from LeRoy. Before the mysterious outbreak, this small town in western New York was mainly famous for inventing jello, the wobbly, gelatinous sugar vehicle we know better as jelly, in 1897, and for a 1970 incident in which a train derailed and toxic chemicals spilled out, seeping into the ground and contaminating the water supply.
But LeRoy catapulted back into the news in 2011 as the mysterious illness spread, starting with a few girls and ultimately extending to at least 18 known cases. Medical professionals ran tests, the New York State department of health was called out, Erin Brockovich got involved, and the girls – bright, articulate, clearly suffering – were trotted out on television shows with the stated aim of shedding light on the mystery.
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Taberski follows many of the leads introduced at the time and talks to dozens of those involved: the doctors, the patients, the parents, the teachers. He explains the environmental theories – remember that toxic chemical spill? – and looks at the historical context for the ultimate diagnosis: conversion disorder, formerly known as hysteria. In other words, investigators did not ultimately find, or at least reveal, any physiological root for these illnesses. They ruled out a virus and environmental causes. The individuals were diagnosed with conversion disorder, but all these conversion disorders added together? That’s mass psychogenic illness – or, in loaded laymen’s terms, mass hysteria.
Every answer begs a new question, propelling this knotty tale along
As a middle-aged man, Taberski taking on the subject of hysteria was a risky move, but he brings a curiosity and an empathy to the subject that acknowledge the gendered history of such diagnoses while allowing for the possibility that it may still apply here. He talks to many of those who were struck, including two people who bucked the trend: a woman who was in her 30s when she began to show symptoms, and a boy who was at the time the only male sufferer.
Taberski helps illuminate each perspective, inviting the listeners to shift their own understanding as the vantage point changes from patient to doctor to teacher to scientist to parent. Were patients refusing to believe something about their illness because they did not want to admit it could have a psychological origin? Were the officials charged with leading the investigation hiding things from those affected?
[ The risk of contracting mass hysteria is much higher than coronavirusOpens in new window ]
Every answer begs a new question, propelling this knotty tale along, with Taberski bringing levity and a facility with language while beating a path towards some kind of answer. And while he leaves space for multiple truths, he doesn’t pull back from voicing his own conclusions on the matter.
Taberski has a theory about what happened the girls in LeRoy, an answer formed over seven episodes of his own and others’ investigations. But the value in Hysterical is in its willingness to ask, to grapple with and, ultimately, to live with questions.
