The razor-thin line between contagion and connection | Dan Taberski (re-release)

Host Elise Hu introduces Dan Taberski, an audio documentarian who investigated a 2011 outbreak at LeRoy Junior-Senior High School in LeRoy, New York, a small town about 50 miles outside Buffalo and the birthplace of Jell-O. At the beginning of the school year, one cheerleader woke from a nap with a severe stammer. Within days, she developed head tics, facial twitches, and involuntary sounds and words resembling Tourette syndrome. Within weeks, other students developed the same symptoms, apparently going from normal to severe “from zero to 60 overnight.” Rose, who was in eighth grade, remembers the symptoms first being whispered about as an isolated case before the number of affected students doubled and tripled. Jessica, a senior, initially wondered whether the girls were faking it, until a friend arrived at school stuttering, twitching, and crying and could not stop. The cases soon reached double digits, all among girls at the high school. Authorities tested for Lyme disease, heavy metals, unsafe water, poor air quality, mold, and other possible environmental causes. Rumors spread, including a theory that a bad batch of tampons was responsible, but none of the proposed physical causes held up.

After a month-long investigation, the state, school board, and involved doctors concluded that the outbreak was mass psychogenic illness, also called mass hysteria. Emily, who developed symptoms in eighth grade, recalls her doctor telling her that it was “all in your head” and that she was fine. She objected that a medical professional could not simply look at a patient and tell her to stop thinking about symptoms. The diagnosis was especially difficult to accept given the long history of dismissing women’s illnesses: Taberski notes that “hysteria” comes from the Greek word for uterus and that doctors once blamed a wandering womb for unexplained problems. Jessica responded, “I don’t know how to believe that,” rather than merely saying she did not believe it. Taberski says that is precisely the idea people should learn to believe: mass hysteria is rare but real. He defines mass psychogenic illness as the rapid spread of genuine physical symptoms without an identifiable organic cause—for example, a limp despite a normal X-ray or neurological symptoms without abnormalities on an MRI. The symptoms are not imagined or deliberately faked, but they spread through socially connected groups such as schools, factories, or convents.

Taberski explains that mass psychogenic illness usually emerges where people are closely connected and under some shared or underlying stress. He cites reports from medieval convents, including an episode in which one nun supposedly began meowing uncontrollably and other nuns followed. He also says many people now interpret the Salem witch trials as a mass psychogenic illness rather than simply a story of women being irrational. He describes a 2001 mystery rash that appeared in dozens of schools and affected hundreds of students. The rash seemed to spread during the school day, often disappeared when a child went home, and returned the next day. Tests found no bacteria, virus, or toxic exposure. Because the first cases appeared the day news broke that a Florida man had been diagnosed with anthrax—weeks after anthrax-laced envelopes began appearing after September 11—epidemiologists have suggested that fear of toxic exposure produced a real physical expression of collective anxiety. Taberski prefers the blunt phrase “mass hysteria” because the phenomenon is not only medical or psychological; it is also social and cultural. He says it occurs at “the fissures of society,” or points of intense cultural stress, and is not limited to women. Havana syndrome is offered as another case that some observers interpret as mass psychogenic illness.

The talk then turns to police reports of accidental fentanyl poisoning. Taberski plays body-camera recordings in which officers say they feel strange, report tingling or tangled legs, or worry that they have been exposed after encountering fentanyl. He and his team tracked 332 alleged cases among police officers in the field, involving symptoms such as passing out, tingling, and rapid heart rate. Yet, as far as they could determine, only one case had a toxicology report showing fentanyl in the officer’s system, and even that case, at an Alaska state prison, had not been independently confirmed. The American Society of Medical Toxicology says it is nearly impossible to overdose through this kind of casual contact. The symptoms also do not appear to affect doctors and nurses who handle fentanyl in hospitals or people who regularly abuse the drug; they occur primarily within a specific social group, particularly male police officers. Taberski argues that this is a mass psychogenic illness with a contemporary amplification mechanism. These events traditionally spread through “line of sight,” as people observe someone else’s symptoms. Police body cameras now record each suspected exposure, and the footage can be viewed by other officers, potentially producing more fear, symptoms, and videos in a self-reinforcing cycle.

Taberski says the LeRoy outbreak followed a familiar pattern: it arrived suddenly, caused considerable disruption, and largely faded by the time summer began. There is no certain answer for why it happened there, but some of the affected girls were dealing with private traumatic circumstances that may have increased their susceptibility. The outbreak itself also created additional stress and trauma, while the pressures of being an American teenage girl formed part of the surrounding environment. Nineteen girls at the high school eventually developed symptoms, and all were connected in some way. Several played on the same soccer team, several shared a particular art class, and two were best friends. Rose did not develop the outbreak’s Tourette-like symptoms because she had already been diagnosed with Tourette syndrome at age three. She normally experienced facial twitches, loud vocal tics, throwing-related tics, and other prominent movements. When people with tic disorders are around others who tic, however, both people can tic more severely. During the outbreak, Rose repeatedly punched herself in the face and eye, leaving permanent damage in her right eye.

Rose later tells Taberski that she volunteers each summer at a Tourette syndrome camp and considers it one of the best things she does. The campers’ tics intensify because everyone around them is ticcing, but she says she loves the experience. At camp, participants do not suppress the symptoms; they allow them to happen because being with people who understand them makes the experience worthwhile. Rose even describes “tic shopping,” the community’s term for unconsciously picking up other people’s tics and sharing them back and forth. She expects to come home with unfamiliar tics and takes the following day off, but calls it “the best feeling ever.” Taberski uses Rose’s experience to complicate the idea of contagion. In LeRoy, shared symptoms were frightening and disruptive, but in a supportive community the same kind of social transmission can produce recognition, relief, and connection. He closes by saying that the line between contagion and connection is “razor-thin,” sometimes so thin that it is barely visible. The episode is a re-release of Taberski’s TED Talk, originally published in June 2025, and Hu identifies it as part of a TED Talks Daily Halloween playlist about strange and unsettling discoveries.