How to Be a Better Human

Interview: The razor-thin line between contagion and connection w/ Dan Taberski | from TED Health

30 min
Dec 29, 20255 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Dan Taberski explores mass psychogenic illness through the 2011 outbreak of unexplained neurological symptoms among girls at a high school in LeRoy, New York, examining how stress, social connection, and the stories we tell about illness shape physical health outcomes. The episode investigates the thin line between contagion and connection, revealing how psychological and emotional experiences can spread through groups and manifest as real physical symptoms.

Insights
  • Mass psychogenic illness is a real medical phenomenon where physical symptoms spread through social groups without organic medical causes, often emerging during periods of collective stress or trauma
  • Gender bias in medicine persists: women's health concerns are historically dismissed as 'hysteria,' making it harder for female patients to be taken seriously by healthcare providers
  • The mind-body connection is more powerful than commonly acknowledged; fear and collective anxiety can trigger genuine physical symptoms that spread contagiously through connected groups
  • Diagnosis of mass psychogenic illness requires humility and uncertainty; premature diagnosis can invalidate patients' experiences, so experts often wait until outbreaks subside to confirm
  • Empathetic listening and storytelling are diagnostic tools; understanding patients' lived experiences and the social context of symptoms matters as much as clinical testing
Trends
Growing recognition of psychosomatic illness in medical practice and the need to integrate psychological and social factors into diagnostic frameworksIncreased scrutiny of gender bias in healthcare and how women's symptoms are systematically underestimated or attributed to psychological causesRise of mass anxiety events triggered by media coverage and information spread (e.g., post-9/11 anthrax fears, fentanyl panic among police)Emergence of new diagnostic challenges in the digital age where body camera footage and social media can amplify psychogenic contagionShift toward narrative medicine and patient-centered care that prioritizes listening and empathy over purely biomedical explanationsRecognition that stress points and social fissures in society are predictive of where mass psychogenic illness outbreaks will occurReframing of 'hysteria' as a legitimate health phenomenon worthy of scientific study rather than dismissal as purely psychological or fabricated
Topics
Mass Psychogenic Illness (Mass Hysteria)Mind-Body Connection in MedicineGender Bias in HealthcarePsychosomatic Symptoms and ContagionHavana SyndromeFentanyl Panic Among Police OfficersPost-9/11 Mystery Rash OutbreakDiagnostic Uncertainty in MedicineStress and Trauma as Health TriggersSocial Connection and Illness SpreadNarrative Medicine and Patient StorytellingTourette Syndrome and Symptom AmplificationMedical Gaslighting of WomenFear-Based Health ContagionEmpathy as a Diagnostic Tool
People
Dan Taberski
Podcast documentarian and creator of 'Hysterical' series; explored mass psychogenic illness outbreak in LeRoy, NY
Dr. Shoshana Ungerlider
Host of TED Health podcast; conducted interview with Dan Taberski about mass hysteria and health storytelling
Quotes
"The line between contagion and connection is a thin one. Sometimes it's hardly there at all."
Dan Taberski
"I don't know how to believe that. Not just I don't believe that. I don't know how to believe it."
Jessica (LeRoy student)
"It's a really hard thing to wrap your mind around so I get why it's really challenging to sort of acknowledge it."
Dan Taberski
"I'm comfortable with just hearing what people think happened to them without me having to say that's right or wrong."
Dan Taberski
"Sitting down and talking to people with empathy and an open heart and open mind to find out what they think happened to them and hear why I feel like is enough."
Dan Taberski
Full Transcript
Hi, it's Kate Thonton from White Wine Question Time and I'm thrilled to say we're being sponsored by Boots. Did you know that Boots Pharmacists can diagnose, provide advice and treatment on everyday common health concerns? I'm talking sinusitis, rashes, sore throats, uti eyes, even advice on sleep routine and minor aches and pains. Simply walk in and speak to a pharmacist, no appointment needed. For advice and treatment, you're never too far from a Boots Pharmacist. Just walk in at your local Boots today. You already know Amazon for its selection, convenience and value. Now, bring those same benefits to your business, with Amazon Business. It's everything you love about Amazon, with business-specific features built for your organisation. Access millions of products from top brands and discover quantity discounts to help you buy smarter. Take control of your purchasing and streamline how you buy. Get started with a free account. Visit amazon.co.uk slash radio. Hey everyone, Chris Duffy here. Today, we are sharing an episode of a podcast that we think you are going to love. This has been hand-picked by the TED staff and we think that as a how to be a better human listener, you are going to come away with a fresh idea and a totally new perspective. So, enjoy this episode and head to the link in the description afterwards to hear even more. This is TED Health, a podcast from TED, and I'm your host, Dr. Shoshana Ungerlider. I've spent enough time in hospitals to know that not every mystery ends up with a diagnosis, and not every symptom fits neatly into a chart. That's where Dan Tabersky comes in. You might know him as the sharp, funny mind behind some of the most unexpected podcasts out there, like Missing Richard Simmons and Running from Cops. His latest series, Historical, dives into one of the most perplexing medical stories in recent history. In 2011, in Lee Rowan, New York, a group of girls began showing concerning symptoms, but no one could figure out why. What starts in a high school becomes a case study in stress, stigma, and the very real ways our bodies respond to the world around us. In his 2025 TED Talk, Dan draws on extensive research and intimate interviews with the people involved to explore the root of mass hysteria, and what it reveals about the line between illness and belonging. What happens when the very thing that makes us sick is also what connects us. Then stick around after the talk for my conversation with Dan, where we explore what happens when medicine runs up against emotion, and why telling better stories about health might be one of the most powerful tools we have. But first, a quick break to hear from our sponsors. And now, Dan Tabersky takes the TED stage. I make audio documentaries, and I recently spent some time in a town called Lee Rowan, New York. It's a town about 50 miles outside of Buffalo. It's a small town. It's claimed to famous 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 Lee Rowan. A student at Lee Rowan, you're seeing your high school. A cheerleader. She wakes up from a nap with a stutter, like a severe stammer, trouble-speaking. I'm pretty soon that turns into head ticks and facial twitches. And then blurting out sounds and words. Symptoms that you'd associate with, something like Turet 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 an eighth grade at the time of the outbreak. 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. Jessica was a senior at the time. And I remember thinking like, were they making it all? Like, what is going on? Like, people thought they were faking it. Yeah, I thought they would might be faking it. And then my friend came to school the one day and I was like, 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? 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. I remember hearing at some point since it was all girls, it must be a bad batch of tampons. The tampon theory does not pan out. In fact, none of them do. After a month's 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. She basically said, oh, well, it's all in your head, you're fine. How are you as a medical professional going to look your patient in the eye and be like, you're fine? Stop thinking about you're fine. You're fine. And 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. I thought that's bullshit. I don't believe that. Seeing all these girls, they're not making it up. 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. 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-secogenic 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 lamp, 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 content. In middle ages, there were several cases reported in Europe in convent, 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 a witch's assailant, right? Perhaps the arch-typical women being hysterical. Many now believe that that was a mass-secogenic 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 students to students 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. A test 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-Native Lunar rash was a mass-secogenic illness. A real physical expression of the collective anxiety of those kids were feeling at the time. It's actually why I don't even care for the phrase mass-secogenic 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 a mass-secogenic 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 please 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. 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 owning this one specific pre-existing social group. Police officers, male police officers incidentally. The phenomenon that many people believe is a mass psychogenic illness. What they're particularly mind-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's 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 reached 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, it 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 begun from the high school. Almost. Mirror Rose, she was one of the tampon theory. Rose never caught those Tourettes like symptoms that ripped through the high school so severely. Because Rose already had Tourettes. She has since she was three. I mean, I had always had very prominent ticks. From the time I was diagnosed, like I had facial twitches, I would go through a spurts where I would be throwing things. I was always very loud. Like I always have very loud vocal ticks. You will always hear me. Everybody always knows who I am. Unfortunately for Rose, when people with tick disorders are around other people who tick, both people tend to tick more severely. So you can imagine when 19 other girls are walking the halls ticking, Rose's ticks got worse. Much much worse. So I had a tick where I would punch myself right here in the face over and over and over and over and over and over and like I- And your chin, that was your tick. My tick was literally to like cold cock myself. I have permanent damage in my right eye because my other tick was to punch myself in the eye. I was literally beating the shit out of myself. Rose had a really difficult year to say the least. But it was somebody she told me about her life now that struck me about this idea of contagion and connection. So like I volunteer to ret syndrome camp every summer, right? Wow. Yeah. And I love it. It is one of the best things I do with my life every year. It's so amazing. But we all tick so much more because we're all ticking. Does that feel good or bad? Oh, I love it. That Rose's Tourette's camp when the contagion comes on, they let it happen. They don't hold back. 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 ticks. They're literally sharing in 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. 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 the it's the it's the but it's like the best feeling ever. It is the best feeling ever. The line between contagion and connection is a thin one. Sometimes it's hardly there at all. Thank you. The world moves fast. You work day, even faster, pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 co-pilot is your AI assistant for work built into word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft 365 apps you use helping you quickly, right? Analyze, create, and summarize. So you can cut through clutter and clear path to your best work. Learn more at Microsoft.com slash M365 co-pilot. That's after this mother's day even though this may be on the menu. Oh, thanks kids. Scrambled eggs with sprinkles and a pickled onion. Oh, my favourite. You can still serve up something she'll really love. By cooking up a feast with our easy, extra tasty roast in the bag large chicken, was £6.22, now only £5. That's really spoiling mum. That's a surprise. Selected stores subject to availability offer ends 80th of March, makes glued asterisk press and small stores the aster.com slash small stores. This is your business. This is your business super spends with a half-of-zero accounting software! Software. These are your customers paying you. These are your customers having more ways to pay you with the help of zero counting software This is your business supercharged with the help of zero happy you saw your cash flow by giving your customers more ways to pay So now you can focus on making your business food Supercharged your business today with the help of zero That was Dan Tversky at the Ted conference in 2025 in Vancouver Now I'm excited to share my interview with Dan about the making of hysterical and how the stories we tell about illness matter Just as much as the data beyond a strange illness we talk about how listening with empathy might be the most important diagnostic tool of all Dan Tversky welcome to Ted help thanks for having me. Yeah So as a filmmaker and a journalist what drew you to the story of the girls in Lee were in New York and Did you realize at the time that you were stepping into something with such deep cultural and health implications? I mean originally I was interested in the idea of Havana syndrome I was reading a lot about Havana syndrome and how people were coming down with this mystery illness and nobody sort of knew the cause And a lot of people were suggesting or speculating that it was some sort of attack by a weapon from Russia that was infecting these people's minds But people were very very uncomfortable even counting and seeing the idea that it might be a mass-negative illness that it might be what they used to call a Mass hysteria And I just thought it was very interesting that people just didn't want to talk about that So in the process of researching that I came across what happened to the girls in Lee Roy in New York I liked the combination there of taking one story of mass hysteria that's all girls all young girls The sort of traditional thing that women have been called hysterical for centuries and then sort of pairing that with Havana syndrome which is happening to mostly men I just thought that was an interesting thing Yeah, so Dan you've said that events like the story at the heart of hysterical tend to emerge during times of intense stress or pressure Based on what you uncovered how do stories like this reflect the emotional and psychological strain that people, especially young people, are living with today For the most part when a mass-negative illness happens there's very often An underlying stress or trauma that's impacting the people who are experiencing the symptoms very often It's something that everybody is sharing can also be something that's very private and that that somebody is Experiencing themselves Personally, but when something like these symptoms and this contagion comes along Their stress or trauma sort of makes them more susceptible to it for sure I want to ask you about something you mentioned before about historical patterns You mentioned Havana syndrome. Maybe you can share a little bit more about Havana syndrome for people who don't have an Havana syndrome is something that is impacting American foreign workers. It has been since about 2016 It involves symptoms like ringing the ears neurological symptoms nausea vomiting just general illness vertigo Like neurological symptoms and it began in Cuba and at the Cuban Embassy when it was reopened in 2016 and there was a belief or a feeling that it may be coming from the Russians which have a habit of harassing foreign workers in countries like Cuba and as more people kept getting it the contagion that the sort of theory of that that it was a Russian weapon just grew and grew and yet there's no evidence of it It's just a theory. There's nobody's been able to prove anything that has anything to do with some sort of weapon Just mean it's not But I just think it's worth considering that it could be a mass-eggogenic illness as well Yeah So there's also the fascinating case of the fentanyl panic in the series and to me This panic among police officers was one of the more startling points of hysterical What do you think it says about fear and misinformation and the ability to shape the way our bodies respond even when there's no actual physical threat? The story behind fentanyl overdoses among criminal justice workers mostly police officers is that When police officers are finding fentanyl on the scene the existence of it on the scene is causing people to have An overdose reaction tinkling rapid heart rate passing out and it happens over and over to police officers And there's police body cams that show this happening We are actually able to track 32 cases of police officers overdosing with just incidental contact to fentanyl However, it's almost impossible to overdose that way And so it begs the question what are these police officers reacting to and it raises a question of if it's part of the fear and stress of the fentanyl crisis right now That's helping create this sort of contagion among them Yeah, so this made me think about Who gets taken seriously when they say something is wrong one of the most powerful threads in your series is how Gender plays into these stories you touched on that especially in how symptoms and women and girls are often dismissed misunderstood and sometimes even mocked What did you come to understand about how gender influences the way illness is perceived and talked? Yeah, I mean well that's the the root of hysteria hysteria the root of the word is Greek for uterus for centuries doctors or physicians or what they call Physicians at the time would blame the wandering womb like literally the womb wandering out of woman's body that was causing all these medical problems That's how they would explain things they basically didn't understand I mean hysteria has been targeted at women for centuries and it's obviously still a huge problem in terms of being taken seriously in in medical situations I think what I came to understand Is that there are ways of looking at how women tend to be more susceptible to mass psychogenic illness Which is a fact it is true with nobody knows why that you look at it less as an issue of gender and more just as something that's happening to humans And it just happens to be happening to mostly women at the time And so that the women are actually standing in for the larger world and what impacts both women and men So actually what we were trying to do is look at it in a less gendered way and use the experiences of women not just to helping explain The experiences of other women but to use those experiences of those women to explain everybody's experience If that makes any sense I don't have access to that interiority and to what the experience is that they were going through of being female and enduring what they were enduring But I actually kind of liked that treating the justice people who were having an experience and trying to figure out how their experience reflects what happens to the rest of us Not just women The idea of not taking women's medical issues seriously or blaming them on some sort of unseen hysteria Is still a problem for women when they go and just talk to doctors and feel like they're not quite being heard Oh absolutely as you know tons of data to support that and especially for women of color But I will also say that you know the doctors in leoroid the main doctor was woman In general, it's hard to hear when somebody tells you that something you're experiencing is not just medical That also might be psychological or social. It's a hard thing to hear from a woman or a man So Dan part of what makes this series so compelling to me is how it challenges the idea That the mind and body are separate through your reporting. How did you see that line blur and Why do you think we're still so uncomfortable with the idea that our minds and our bodies are deeply connected? Because you can't see what's going on on your mind and that's really frustrating to have to take some things That it feels a little bit more like fit when somebody tells you like some of this is happening in your head Some of this is the not just what's happening physically or again, again, it's in your body It's a relationship between what you're thinking and what you're feeling in your unconscious And your body and that's just it feels like magic It's just a really hard thing to wrap your mind around so I get why it's really challenging to sort of acknowledge it I totally get the And I do think some of the things that we believe originate in the mind then manifest right in the body And so there there's certainly that deep connection But we're just I think scratching the surface in science and medicine of like exactly what that is. Yeah, for sure for sure The world moves fast you work day even faster pitching products drafting reports analyzing data Microsoft 365 co-pilot is your AI assistant for work built into word excel powerpoint and other Microsoft 365 apps you use helping you quickly write analyze create and summarize So you can cut through clutter and clear path to your best work learn more at Microsoft.com slash M365 co-pilot At new balance We believe if you run You're a runner However you choose to do it Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way You're free to discover your way And that's what running's all about Run your way at newbalance.com slash running That has to this mother's day go from oh look down and if you see my lovely card They've really captured my face Especially my three eyes to something she's gonna really love with a box of 24 for Rera Roshay for only 6 pound 50 and the bottle of Louisville Fontaine champagne rolled back from 22 pounds to just 10 pounds That's really spoiling mum that's as the price selected stores subject to availability champagne 75 CL offers End 15th March makes glued as their express and small stores see as the comm slash small stores And for the girls in lee Roy the mind body connection seemed to Ripple through the group They weren't just dealing with a medical mystery. They were also navigating you mentioned personal trauma And shared stress What did you learn about how anxiety or emotional pain can spread within a group Not just within one person. I learned that I can spread within a group and not just one person Yeah, the sort of contagion of it It's also helpful to see does a form of connection Because it doesn't just spread randomly it spreads among people who are already in a pre-existing social group So you wouldn't just randomly catch it you catch it because you sort of know the person and you see the symptoms and you're sort of internalizing Yourself it's complicated It really is now I'm curious were there any other instances of this kind of Mass anxiety or emotional pain that you uncovered or came to mind when you saw this playing out either in your own life for You know, and I know we talked about Havana syndrome, but anything. Yeah, I mean bigger small I mean, there's you know, even just smaller things like there was a mystery rash among grade schoolers in America It was hundreds of cases over dozens of Schools and I think at least 15 states This isn't in the fall of 2001 there was a mystery rash and the kids would go to school They would get this rash on their arms or face the legs and it would spread from student to student But very often they would go home and the rash would disappear and then they would go back to school Very often the rash would reappear and begin spreading all over again They tested for toxins they tested the water they tested for viruses for arterios trying to fear what would be causing this rash And in fact, it sounds like many epidemiologists believe now that it was Basically a fear of toxic exposure that they were worried about and the first case of this mystery rash happened on the same day That the news announced a man in Florida had been diagnosed with anthrax Because they had been showing up in mailboxes around the country as sort of terrorism a few weeks after not 11 And so the belief is that these students were reacting to the sort of fear of the toxic exposure and that was the sort of genesis Of the mystery rash So it's amazing in the big and small ways that psychogenic illness can really just pop up and just like break out Wild and and was something so complex It sounds like experts have had struggles trying to make sense of it Were there moments in your reporting where even experts weren't quite sure what to make of what was happening No one's ever quite sure which is what's so interesting about because even when it's happening It's really hard to make a diagnosis of mass psychogenic illness as it's happening because first of all you're diagnosing a group So you're already like reducing people's not just a person but to a group and that can be dicey when you're diagnosing But also everybody's experience is different So some people do have comorbidities that can increase their chances of having these symptoms or some people are having specific traumas That are making their susceptibility worse And so it works as a diagnosis on a group and it works as a diagnosis in a hole It gets more complicated when you get from person to person So it looks somebody in the face and say what you're having as a mass psychogenic illness because you can never be sure And not being sure is important because what you do need to make sure is that it's not something else organic That's happening that you're just ignoring because you say it's on your head Yes, this is a diagnosis of exclusion is what we call that Yeah, it's hard to make and it's not necessarily advised to make it until it's Almost over Until after the fact so that you're not sort of reducing anybody's experience just as they're just like it's all on your head Did you as a journalist navigate that uncertainty Without jumping to conclusions or like how did that play out for you? I'm comfortable with just hearing what people think happened to them without me having to say that's right or wrong All the people involved in what happened in Leroy has their own opinion about what it was Not everybody thinks it was a mass psychogenic illness not by a long shot But it's not for me to say that they're right or wrong It's just when we're looking at from a 30,000-foot level to sort of acknowledge that it's among the possibilities And that it's not necessarily a bad thing It's kind of a beautiful mystery once you can step away from the immediacy of the actual symptoms like it's wild that we're so connected So I want to zoom out a bit as someone who works in media. How do you think Storytelling can help Re-shape how we talk about Complicated or misunderstood health experiences. I just think sitting down and talking to people with empathy and an open heart and open mind to find out What they think happened to them and hear why I feel like is enough of a reason and I actually don't really go into it Trying to sort of change this policy or make people think a certain way I'm just trying to present the complexity that I think exists and have that be enough I think no answer or a complicated answer is the most interesting answer It's so cool how you are able to show up with so much Curiosity I try I try it's hard. I'm not looking for an answer I'm not looking for somebody to tell me what their experience was and fill a hole That that I've already carved out in my head for what I think happened to them like if you really let people say what they experienced And like tell it to you as an experience and just like won't it? That like like people really will tell you a lot and that's very often enough And me having to make larger meaning and results out of it. I don't take that upon myself I like when it happens, but it's not my responsibility And finally for our listeners who might be grappling with their own uncertainty or fear Historical is about so much more than one small town or one diagnosis What do you hope people take away about how we respond to things we don't fully understand especially when it comes to our health Fear and the stories that we tell ourselves in the process of talking about mass hysteria There's a lot of different definitions for hysterical But of course my favorite one is hysterical laughter. It's the condific historical That you see somebody laughing and you can't help but laugh yourself and it's fun to think about But it's uncontrollable you are having a contagious experience and that contagion is really a reflection of your connection to other people And to just be able to sit in that and just be wowed by it. I think it's part of the point I love that good. I think it's so interesting just that I don't know what's happening, but we're connected and it's a wild place to look at the world from Yeah, Dan Tversky. Thank you so much. Happy being here. Thanks for having me. Yeah That was my conversation with Dan Tversky at the Ted conference in 2025 Dan's award-winning podcast hysterical is available wherever you get your podcasts And that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening Ted Health is a podcast from Ted and I'd love to hear your thoughts about this episode Send me a message on Instagram at Shoshana MD This episode was produced by me Shoshana Ungerlider and Jess Shane edited by Alejandro Salazar and fact checked by Vanessa Garcia Woodworth Special thanks to Maria Lajas Faraday Grange, Daniela Balerizo, Constanza Gallardo, Tansaka Sangmarniwang and Roxanne Highlash The world moves fast you work day even faster pitching products drafting reports analyzing data Microsoft 365 co-pilot is your AI assistant for work built into word excel PowerPoint and other Microsoft 365 apps you use Helping you quickly right analyze create and summarize So you can cut through clutter and clear path to your best work Learn more at Microsoft.com slash and 365 co-pilot At New Balance We believe if you run You're a runner however you choose to do it Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way You're free to discover your way And that's what running's all about Run your way At NewBalance.com slash running That's as to this mother's day go from oh look down and if you see my lovely card They've really captured my face especially my three eyes To something she's going to really love with a box of 24 for Rero Roshay for only £6.50 And a bottle of Louis Vell Fontaine champagne rolled back from £22 to just £10 That's really spoiling mum that's as the price Selected stores subject to availability champagne 75 CL offers end 15th March Make exclude azure express and small stores see azda.com slash small stores This is your business This is your business supercharged with the help of zero accounting software These are your numbers These are your numbers sorted with the help of zero accounting software This is you This is you taking business we want with the help of zero accounting software This is your business supercharged with the help of zero and having your numbers sorted all at the same time So you can finally focus on taking business where you want to Supercharge your business today with the help of zero