Hysterical - Alive and Well | 5

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

The mystery illness in LeRoy has a new victim: a boy. Across the world, curiously similar patterns emerge in a more recent outbreak affecting hundreds of CIA officers and diplomats. Could the cases be more connected than they appear?Listen to Hysterical on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting https://wondery.com/links/hysterical/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Previously on Hysterical. So it just got crazy because... So people start passing out. People start passing out right and left. Basically, before you came, the EPA and the New York State Department of Health said that we did tests on the school grounds. And there's nothing.

Right. Why was that not good enough for you? You know, could we have made it worse? We tried not to. Really? We just built a school and we're building it on sex fracking? What? Like, that makes no sense.

Okay, here's the situation. I lied about something. It's a minor lie. An omission, really. But the more I think about it, the more important it seems to unlocking what exactly is going on in Leroy. So our account right now, if you're keeping score, at the peak of the outbreak in February 2012

is 17 girls who came down with the mysterious symptoms. Well, 16 girls and one 36-year-old woman. But it wasn't really 16 girls and one 36-year-old woman. It was 16 girls, one 36-year-old woman, and one boy. And the boy was the one that no one believed. I remember that like that week is when it really blew up because so many girls. That was when we got up to like 12, 13 girls and then the one guy that said he had it, but everybody thought he was faking. So I don't know. Here's Jessica, a senior. Jason, I think was his name. He was an odd guy.

Was there a boy who had it? Yes and no. He was one of the ones that I think was faking it. And here's Emily, an eighth grader in the marching band. I don't know for sure. I don't want to say one way or the other, but the whole collective, everybody agreed he was faking it. Why?

Because that's just who he was. Everybody kept going, he's faking agreed he was faking it. Why? Because that's just who he was. Everybody kept going, he's faking, he's faking, he's the only boy, he's faking. And I was like, do we know? Emily's mom, Kathy. Why were they all saying he was faking it? I think maybe he, I mean, he was kind of a strange character to begin with. He would do anything to get attention. And this was the big thing.

And he was sort of the new kid. And he started doing it just randomly, in the middle of everything. Do you remember what they were? Just like, what his tics were? His were physical. All his head stuff. It was all head stuff. Nothing else. Where is he now? Probably in jail. Hey, it's Dan Taberski. Can you hear me?

Oh, sorry. Yeah, sorry about that. Bear with me. I'm currently working. Jason is not in jail. You're working right now? What do you do? I drive dump trucks.

I deliver mulch and gravel and all that to people. Oh, nice. Today, Jason lives far away from Leroy. We tracked him down in the Pacific Northwest. He was in the middle of a shift. Oh, yeah, I'm multitasking to the nth degree right now. I'm working, I'm talking to you, I'm eating. What are you eating? A wrap my wife made me.

Oh, that's fun. I can't tell if it's chicken or turkey. I know it's bird, but that's about it. In 2012, Jason was a junior. He played tuba in the marching band. Jason was one of the last at the high school to come down with the symptoms. On the tail end of the medical mystery that had been stomping its way through Leroy. When you started doing the next thing, it felt involuntary. It felt like... Yeah.

Oh, very much so. Really? It was almost like a muscle spasm, is the best way I can describe it. Oh, I should not have gone there. Jason had a rough go of it while he was at Leroy High, beyond the outbreak. He was in the foster system at the time and had recently been sent to live with a new foster family. When the tic started happening, you told what, teachers, the school nurse, your foster parents?

Like, how did you? I told my foster parents. My foster mother, in particular, legitimately said that I was faking. Oh, shit. I mean, honestly, me and her never saw eye to eye from day one. My foster dad, I mean, he was a lot more on the, I mean, yeah, I'm skeptical, but I'm not going to call you a liar. Is there anybody who believed you? Do you remember anybody?

A teacher? A doctor? Anybody? Honestly, no. Like, even the other girls that I did talk to after I started being affected were even, yeah, you're full of shit. Or if you weren't faking, why are you the only guy? So even the girls who had it, once you got it, they didn't believe you.

Exactly. We've heard from several of the girls and parents about how their symptoms were real, that they were actually happening, and the frustration they felt at not being believed. So it's hard not to see the irony. How prone everyone seemed, perhaps without even realizing it, to then do the same to the next person down the line. Why don't you think they believed you? Honestly, I was the only guy. And wow.

I mean, from a logical standpoint, it makes sense. Thinking back on it now, me being the only guy that was affected, it does raise eyebrows. Even to me. Really? You got almost 20 people affected and one to the guy. I can see how it seems fishy, we'll say. Wow. How are you doing on time there, Jason?

Give me one second. I am, I guess, technically one load behind. Can I borrow you for like five minutes? Sure. It's wild how quickly we try to draw boundaries around the unknown. How quickly we create the categories. Who's sick and who isn't? Who's vulnerable?

Who gets embraced? Who gets exiled? What membership in the club might mean, even when it's a club full of people suffering from an illness they can't explain. I didn't talk too long with Jason. He doesn't remember much about the outbreak. His symptoms, for the most part, faded away't remember much about the outbreak. His symptoms for the most part faded away, or faded into the background, as more pressing dramas and traumas pushed to the fore of his brain. There's enough to wrestle with in the present, so not much use in dwelling

on the past. Sorry about that. That's all right. It sounds like you're running out of time. But I just wanted to finish what I was saying. I was saying that, like, if this was conversion disorder, it does happen mostly to women, but it does happen to guys all the time. Really? Conversion disorder? Sure. Like, stress is psychological. The definition of conversion disorder is stress and trauma. In the next couple episodes, we are going to stretch the boundaries a little of how we understand mass psychogenic illness, where it rears its head, and why.

We'll start today by looking at another mysterious outbreak. This one isn't from 10 years ago, and it's not happening to teenage girls. In fact, the circumstances of the two cases couldn't be more different, really. But when you put them next to each other, some patterns emerge, and some surprises, and some conclusions that challenge a lot of our assumptions about who exactly is vulnerable to this kind of thing. I'm Dan Taberski from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios this is Hysterical

Episode 5 Alive and Well Buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List a cache of chilling documents To be continued... to warn those who lives were in danger. Follow Kill List on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Hello, Matt and Alice here, the hosts of Wondery's podcast, British Scandal. Our latest series, Peru 2, begins on the sandy shores of Ibiza. Michaela McCollum should have been having the summer of her dreams,

but it all went wrong when she met the gorgeous Davy in a bar. I think less holiday romance, more recruitment for a drug cartel. She agreed to team up with another young Brit, fly to Spain to collect a drugs package, then head straight back. However, only at 30,000 feet does Michaela realise she's not on the way to Spain, she's heading for Peru. And when they get there, they find out it's not a small drugs package, but 11 kilograms of cocaine. The summer holiday turns into a spell in a Peruvian prison and a story that becomes an international media sensation.

To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. It's a sunny winter day in northern Virginia, just outside D.C. My producer Henry and I have just arrived at the door of a modest home on a quiet street in an unassuming neighborhood. In other words, crawling with spies. I've never been in a CIA operative's house before. In their basement. In their basement, yeah.

Wall-to-wall carpeting. Well done. What is it about a finished basement that makes me want to wrestle? Anyway, now is not the time. What's that? I finished basement that makes me want to wrestle? Anyway, now is not the time. What's that? I worked in D.C. for two years. Yeah, my first job out of college was at the White House.

Okay, there you go. At the Clinton administration, but it was... All right, so you remember then, because I joined the agency in 93. The guy I'm memory landing it with is Mark Palomaropoulos. The agency he joined in 93 was the CIA. Mark is the former head of clandestine operations for Europe and Eurasia. It was in Adams Morgan, but we used to go to the Big Hunt all the time. Do you remember that bar? I think so, yeah. The Big Hunt? Oh, I remember the Big Hunt. Who doesn't love a bar with a name that sounds filthier the drunker you get? It's funny when you're 21. Great chicken wings there.

It just closed. I saw it. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I want to make it clear that Mark wasn't just pushing pencils at the CIA. In his 26 years there, he was operational in some really dangerous places. But in 2017, Mark began experiencing strange symptoms that no one could seem to explain. So, you know, I think it was, I can't remember the exact date. I think it was December 5th, 2017. Early on in the trip, I woke up in the

middle of the night in a Moscow hotel. It was a five-star hotel, two blocks from the embassy. Of course, we had surveillance the whole time there. The Russians were following us everywhere, but it was nothing unexpected, nothing unusual. It's just what they do to all Americans. Are you assuming your room is bugged? Video, audio, everything. It's just what they do. This americans are you assuming your room is bugged with video audio everything well it's just what they do it's this is nothing uh but so i woke up in the you know early on in the trip to a start i don't recall hearing anything but i woke up with an incredible case of vertigo you know the room was spinning wildly i had a splitting headache i had tinnitus which is you know ringing in my ears i felt i was going to be physically sick

you know from lots of different orifices. And I knew something was really wrong. It was scary. And for Mark, with the job he had, to say something is scary is saying a bunch. So I've been through a lot. This was a really scary moment because there was almost a total loss of control. It's not being hung over. It's literally, yeah, the room is literally spinning. It's a very extreme vertigo. It's freaky. So I was like, what the hell happened? My first thought is that, you know, perhaps it's food poisoning.

After a few hours, the worst of it passes. The next morning, he's still a little shaky, but goes back to work. And it was that night or the night after we're sitting at the Pushkin Cafe, which is a famous restaurant in Moscow. And another vertigo attack happened. Just out of nowhere. And I thought I was going to pass out right there. This, he thinks to himself, is not food poisoning.

He leaves Moscow and makes it back to the States. But it only gets worse. Things start going south. I'd lost my long distance vision. Couldn't drive. And I started having just incredible cognitive difficulties with brain fog. And so I went to the agency doctors, and I said, hey, you know, something's really not right. Something bad happened on the trip to Moscow.

Mark goes to the doctors at the CIA, but they don't offer much, he says, in the way of answers, or even acknowledging that he's sick at all. Because the agency wouldn't help, and I went to probably 15, 20 different doctors on my own, whether it's an infectious disease specialist, obviously a neurologist. I went to allergists, tons of pain docs. I've had all sorts of steroid shots. I've had what's called PRP. It's this plasma kind of regenerative therapy where they actually take blood out, they spin it, and they inject it back in you. I mean, all sorts of crazy stuff. Nothing worked. This goes on for months. At this point, I have these splitting migraines in the back of my head that, you know, to this day, five years later, have never gone away.

I've had a headache every day for five. I have a headache right now. You have a headache right now? Absolutely. It's never gone away for five years. I mean, it's amazing I don't have an addictive personality in this sense. I should be an alcoholic or addicted to opioids. Because it's just, you know, you want something to ease the pain.

I was just in constant pain all the time. That's physically, I mean, I'm assuming that you're feeling mentally and emotionally. Terrible. The whole thing, I was a mess. Eventually, Mark becomes eligible to retire from Langley. He grabs the chance, feeling that he can't continue like this much longer. But just as he's calling it quits, another piece of the chance, feeling that he can't continue like this much longer. But just as he's calling it quits, another piece of the puzzle, the medical mystery about what was happening to his body and why, pops into place. As I was walking out the door, I remember a good friend of mine who is

really sick now, and he's still inside the building. But he came to me and he said, hey, I just got back from a trip overseas. Something happened. And I think what happened to you happened to me. And that's what started this string of other cases. You may have heard of Havana syndrome at some point over the last several years. Named that because the first known cases were in Havana, Cuba in 2016. The first victims are diplomats and CIA officers working at the American embassy there, which had just reopened. They complained of a strange, sudden sound in their ears and pulsating pressure in their head,

followed then by a variety of symptoms like nausea, fatigue, vertigo. Soon, a CIA doctor arrives in Cuba to look into the matter. On his first night there, he says he too wakes up to a strange sound, and he comes down with the same symptoms he had arrived to investigate. CBS News was the first to report the State Department is investigating what it calls incidents causing physical symptoms. The story of the mystery illness breaks wide in August of 2017. A report gets leaked that appears to show some of the victims had suffered concussion-like brain injuries despite no outward signs of physical damage. Some begin calling it the immaculate concussion. The ongoing investigation is pointing to high-tech sonic technology.

Almost immediately, government explanations point away from a virus or a toxin and toward an attack. Experts hypothesize some sort of sonic or microwave weapon is responsible that targets individuals, somehow damaging the brain without leaving a mark on the body. Then the Associated Press receives a tip, a leaked audio file, sounds captured in Havana. This is the sound some diplomats say they heard just before the onset of symptoms. Now, embassy officials are briefed on the sound to look out for, and are advised to, quote, get off the X to get away from the sound as quickly as possible. In December of 2017, the first victim outside Havana falls ill. It happens in Moscow,

to Mark Polymaropoulos. Tests will eventually show signs of a mild traumatic brain injury. Pretty soon, he's joined by others at embassies in Vienna, in Belgrade, in Guangzhou. In 2020, a National Security Council staffer suffers an attack outside the White House, so now it's happening domestically. By the beginning of 2022, what started in Havana, Cuba has spread to over a thousand cases of the mystery illness on every continent except Antarctica. I have clients from NSA, State Department, Commerce Department, USAID, FBI, DIA, and CIA. DIA is Defense Intelligence Agency. I had to look that one up.

The man speaking is another Mark, Mark Zaid. He's the attorney representing Mark Polymeropoulos and others sickened by Havana syndrome. Wow. How many? Almost two dozen, give or take. Wow. The big question, of course, what is causing these unexplained symptoms? Is this an attack or is something else going on?

Some other kind of contagion, maybe psychological, some sort of diplomatic burnout. If you are a CIA case officer, you are generally the best of the best. These are high, high performers. These are people who will work 70, 80 hours a week. These are people who will stay up for 42 hours in a time to do their job, who will sacrifice their personal life for their professional life. And then all of a sudden to just dynamically change to where they can't get out of bed, out of the blue, something happened.

Why do you think you have a TBI? From what happened in Moscow. Mark Palomaropoulos, what do you think happened in Moscow? So, you know, there's, and kind of knowing the Russians, I think it was some type of directed energy attack, or it was a deliberate offensive weapon. There was no doubt in my mind that something happened. Absolutely zero doubt. The symptoms are consistent.

And it's not just something happened, that it was an attack. Clearly, yeah. And the difference between, say, burnout and an attack, it's more than just semantics. It raises the stakes pretty freaking high. I'll liken the CIA to they're an ostrich putting their head in the sand. Attorney Mark Zaid again. They don't want to know. If they know, they don't want to tell people. And if they don't know, they don't want to know basically what they know they'll know. And some of it I can understand. Say that again. They don't want to know what they know they don't want to know.

Meaning, if the domestic incidents are legit, if the international incidents are legit, but more so if the domestic incidents are legitimately foreign power attacking Americans. It's an act of war. It is an outright act of war. So those are the facts of Havana syndrome, or one version of them, from someone who has it, from someone who is not just sick, but actively suffering.

But there is another version. And Mark Polymeropoulos does not want to hear it. I'm Ellis Jones. And I'm Colin Murray. And this is Everything to Play for, the show that takes you inside the greatest sports stories of all time. Our latest two-part series tells the story of a legend, a man who changed football

in this country. It's Brian Clough. We'll be talking about the footballing miracle he achieved, winning back-to-back European Cups with Nottingham Forest and, of course, his unforgettable one-liners. They won it all by cheating! And I can't wait for this one. We can't discuss Brian Clough

without talking about his partnership with Peter Taylor and we'll be telling some of our favourite Clough anecdotes. I'll also be making a bold statement that this will never

happen again. Me working with Ellis will never happen again that's for sure. Follow everything to play for in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can binge seasons early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus. The leaves drift to the ground, the wind rises. Pull up a chair by our fire and listen to stories from the darker side of the past. I'm Maddy. And I'm Anthony. And on our podcast, After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal, we tell stories of villages and the death of queens. Of Tudor ghosts that will not sleep and of murder among gravestones.

For spine-tingling history from the darker side of the past, listen to After Dark from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. There's more evidence for Bigfoot and the chupacabra than there is of microwave attacks. Heads up, sarcastic sociologists coming in hot. Space aliens would be more plausible. This is Dr. Robert Bartholomew. The book he co-wrote on mass psychogenic illness has been sitting on my desk for over a year, mostly because it's too big to move.

You could sink a body in the Hudson with it. So committed is he to cataloging the thousand-year rap sheet of mass hysteria. It's important to realize that human beings are meaning-oriented creatures. We are fallible, and we are prone to seeing things that aren't there, to hearing things that aren't there, and believing in things that never were. In 2020, Bartholomew co-wrote another book, this one a much slimmer and frankly much angrier book, debunking Havana syndrome as mass hysteria. Could be a microwave, could be a sonic weapon, could be space aliens, but we have something out there that has been documented for millennia. And I would submit to you that that's far more likely

than all these other explanations. Starting with what many had come to see as the facts of the mystery. People say to me, they say, you don't know what you're talking about. Concussion-like symptoms, white matter track changes, hearing loss, brain damage. That's not mass hysteria, but that's not what happened. In fact, much of the evidence that was leaked in those first few weeks of panic over Havana syndrome dissolved like wet sugar cubes when the actual reports and findings were released. For example, one study was reported to show major hearing loss

in a significant number of the victims. So when they interviewed the patients, they asked them, do you think you have hearing loss? About a third said they did. But when they actually gave them the objective hearing tests, only two had hearing loss, both of whom had pre-existing hearing loss before they went to Cuba. Same with the so- called immaculate concussions. That early reporting on brain anomalies, like changes in the brain's white matter, upon closer look were maybe not so unusual. In one study done on 21 Havana victims, Three people had white matter tract changes. Two were mild. One was moderate.

If you walked down the streets of Sleepy Hollow this morning, you would find a similar breakdown. An NIH study would later show that as a group, there was little difference in the brain structure or function of the Havana syndrome victims compared to their colleagues without symptoms. And then there's that sound. The one some victims say accompanied the onset of symptoms, potentially the sound of the weapon itself. Entomologists chimed in, saying that in fact, the sound was most likely an unusual breed of cricket. Fact is, as far as mainstream technology goes, there is no weapon. It doesn't exist. It's possible. There's a bunch of reporting out there that shows how it might work, or that illustrates a concept that would make it possible one day.

But no one has presented any weapon capable of causing the specific battery of symptoms described by the victims, especially one that could do so without leaving a mark on the victim's body in the process. Bartholomew suggests instead that there was something even more powerful at work than a new weapon. And that is the belief in a new weapon. Mass psychogenic illness is based on a belief. We all have beliefs. Therefore, we are all potential victims. All the politicians suggesting an attack,

all the ruminating in the media about this new mysterious weapon, all the warnings about the telltale sound and the cautionary instructions to, quote, get off the X when you hear it. And all of that in the context of these genuinely stressful and sometimes dangerous jobs, often in places like Cuba and Russia, where there was already a Cold War history of harassing U.S. foreign workers. And now, at a time when the entire world was doubting whether America could even be trusted anymore at all. Bartholomew believes it all helped foster fear of an attack strong enough to trick the mind into creating the physical symptoms in the body, or to corral symptoms from something else into confirming that you've been attacked. And sometimes belief is so strong, so real, that it can spread to the people who believe in you, like a fellow CIA officer that you've been in the trenches with, or your best friend on the cheerleading squad. Belief can make it true for them too. Just like going back to Salem in the 1690s. Back then, it was triggered by the fear of witches and demons. Here, this was triggered by the fear of some type of a similar pattern to other outbreaks. Outbreaks like the one in Leroy.

Outbreaks which at first glance might seem like totally different animals. We've got physiological, often neurological symptoms like vertigo, migraines, hearing loss. We've got the lack of any provable organic cause to those symptoms. We've got symptoms that are not only spreading, but spreading almost exclusively in a pre-existing social group, in this case, American foreign workers. One big wrinkle, though. The victims here, it's got to be said, are not teenage girls. They're guys like Mark Palomaropoulos. You know, I'm not the toughest guy in the world, but I've been in embassies that were attacked by terrorist groups.

You know, I've been in, you know, for years in Iraq and Afghanistan, I've been shot at a million times and rocketed. Whatever your opinions about what they do and how, some of the afflicted are serious warriors. They don't succumb to stress, they dole it out. They're trained to have deep wells of grit to call upon. They neutralize things. I've talked to some CIA officers and they have said and they will say that they're tough, they're smart, they're trained to deal with this type of stress. Is that wrong? That's wrong. That's wrong. Here's Dr. Bartholomew. We are all fallible human beings. And just because you're a CIA officer, no, you are just as prone as anyone else. The human mind is a very powerful thing, whether it's Havana syndrome,

whether it's what happened in Leroy, hysteria is alive and well. You know, all I'll say on this issue is the idea that this is somehow psychogenic, mass hysteria. I mean, that just doesn't apply to me. And some of my other colleagues. Why? I mean, because I wasn't thinking of this. How can it be? I'm in Moscow on a trip.

I'm not worried. I'm not stressed. I'm not scared. I'm not thinking of Havana syndrome. How is this and what happened to me, you know, psychogenic? How is it mass hysteria? That makes no sense to me. It's a fair point. At the initial onset of his symptoms, why would he have been worried about Havana syndrome? It was only happening in Havana at the time. He's thousands of miles away in Moscow. The cases I know, it just doesn't make any sense. So I just think we have to be really careful on that.

And I think it's, you know, it's really difficult for some of the victims. Because again, then you turn into the kind of the, you know, I was abducted by an alien. Right. And that, you know, I'll start fighting someone when they say that to me. So for you, functional disorder or psychogenic illness is the same as saying that you were abducted by an alien. Because it makes no sense. Hey, that's the second time someone brought up aliens. The first?

Space aliens would be more plausible than a microwave attack. As much as the world loves a sarcastic sociologist, I'm not sure the mildly insulting certainty approach is super helpful here. Because while an attack by aliens might be more likely than a microwave weapon for Dr. Bartholomew, for Polymeropolis, the one who's sick in this situation, it's mass hysteria that feels like the off-the-wall option. And neither will budge in their beliefs. Heels have been dug in.

Now they both don't want to know what they know they don't want to know. And I certainly don't want to know what they know they don't want to know. And I certainly don't know. So I went to someone for whom all of this is a little less fraught. Is this where you actually do analysis? Yes. Behind you, you have the Freudian couch. Oh, people lie down? Yep, some people lie down. I stayed right side up for my entire conversation with Dr. Patricia Garavici.

She's a psychoanalyst who's written extensively on mass hysteria, including cases in the U.S. military in the 1950s. I'm here in her office in Philadelphia. That's where Garavici lives now. But the accent is all Buenos Aires, a city known for having more psychoanalysts per capita than anywhere else in the world. Suck on that, Vienna. We like to imagine that we're always in control of ourselves. I think what hysteria does is maybe the humbling realization that we are not in control. Listen to the way that Garavici talks about hysteria.

It's a real specific tone. This is the amazing quality of hysteria. It's a rebellious character, I may say, that does not want to accept the constraints imposed by society. Hysteria is rebellious. Hysteria won't accept constraints of society. Garavici talks about hysteria like it's a person, like the contagion itself is alive,

like it's screwing with us. I'm really, I'm full of admiration that you're addressing this because it's really like a Pandora box, hysteria. I know, I know. I tend to be attracted to those things. That's fantastic. There's something profoundly queasy about even having this conversation about mass hysteria at all. Because if you're doing it honestly

and forthrightly, it requires you to look in the eye of a person who's sick, a CIA officer, or a senior at Leroy High School, and suggest in a way that they're not. At least not in the way that they believe they are.

Like if you tell somebody that they're hysteric, least not in the way that they believe they are. Like if you tell somebody that they're hysteric, like nobody wants to hear that. This interview said nobody wants to hear, but maybe they want to be heard. And that would be my position. They want to be heard. For Dr. Garavici, the point isn't the debunking or the debating what's hysterical and what's not. Rather, it's more just about the attention we give it, to really hear what hysteria has to say.

Hysteria has that proteic characteristic. It changes, it in a way follows the times, and at times it could be taken as a sort of social barometer. A social barometer. Meaning, if it's happening, it's often bigger than just the medical symptoms of the people experiencing it. Here's an example. In 1914, less than a year into World War I, soldiers began returning from the front with, you guessed it, unusual symptoms. Dizziness, severe tremors, headaches, strange gaits, and limps. The symptoms seemed to occur after soldiers were exposed to the noise and impact of shelling at close proximity in combat. They began calling the condition

shell shock, believing that the force of the blasts had caused injury to the brain. But as the war wore on and shell shock patients kept coming in, the doctors began to realize that many of the victims had never been anywhere near enemy shelling. It came to be understood that the symptoms were caused not just by proximity to exploding bombs, but proximity to the horrors of war, period. Soldiers would come back with impaired speech,

with mutism, with temporary blindness, with paralysis. There was one case written up in a medical journal of a soldier with paralysis in just one part of his body, the trigger finger. All physically real symptoms that spoke not just of the individual soldier, but to the world that created the situation he was in. The largest, bloodiest, most technologically destructive war that the world had ever seen. The hysteric person may not know why they're having the symptoms, but there is a concealed truth in them. That the hysteric is essentially saying, with the language of hysteria, that something is

not right. Exactly. And at many different levels, at the personal level, at the social level, at the political level. So each individual case contains multitudes, to paraphrase the poet. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

On some level, the symptoms of any mass psychogenic illness aren't just about the person exhibiting the symptoms. It's not just medical. It's social. It's cultural. It's about all of us. I cannot but be grateful to hysterics and take hysteria seriously and give it back its dignity. I think it's the best answer you could give to hysteria is just shut up if you don't have anything worthy to say, but listen, because that listen could be illuminating. So, geez, some of these pictures, I mean, I can't really, there's a lot of stuff. There's some tragedy up on the top right. Those are the coffins coming back on the U.S. Air Force plane from coast. Back in Mark Palomaropoulos' basement, he's got a whole wall with the mementos of a quarter-century career.

You guys are going to think I'm crazy with that bottom one on. It's a meme he printed out, a picture with a caption that says, America, we will kill you in your sleep on Christmas. Sorry, I thought that was really funny. Well, it's funny if you see that it's got Washington crossing the Delaware. General Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas, turning point in the war. It's funny when you're 49.

But most of the things on Mark's wall aren't funny at all. Well, that's me and our commander of our own old Afghan unit who was killed the next day. Oh, my gosh. Yep. He was a great man. Wow. And then here's, you know, on this side is some of the awards I've received. His medals are displayed in a glass cabinet.

There's some great things that we did. And then there's some things where there were some awful consequences, some operations. So I don't really brag about this stuff. This is not just one or two. It's several, four intelligence battles. I can't say if Mark Polymeropoulos is the victim of a mass psychogenic illness or not. And that's not just my fact checker Natsumi making sure I cover my ass. I really don't know.

There are some cases, dozens of them, that still have not been explained. And news reports still pop up resurrecting the possibility of Russian involvement. Never anything definitive. Never a smoking gun. But anyone looking at Havana syndrome seriously has got to concede that some sort of an attack in a small number of these cases is at least possible. That the chances may be extremely low, but they're not zero. But it's not hard to hear, listening to Mark, how his job had its own stress and trauma beyond what might be manageable for any person, a turmoil that might boil over into physical symptoms. I think the Distinguished Intelligence Medal is the agency's second highest award.

And it's also not hard to hear how the experiences he speaks of and the symptoms he describes might be about more than just him. Our job was simply to kill Al Qaeda and the Taliban. That's it. It was simple, pure, and we're really good at it. And then I have to come back and kind of be a normal human after that. So a perfect example is when the shrinks at Walter Reed come up to you and they say, do you have any regrets for the stuff you've done and everyone's like fuck no not at all when i talk like this and stuff my when my wife hears it later she's like you sound like a lunatic it is a weird vibe though i will say you do sound like a lunatic a little bit you know we were killing

people who were trying to kill americans sorry that's just fine and you know and so i mean i'm sure a psychiatrist will say okay you know you know, you actually need a lot of therapy based on that. Not my old world. I was just fine with that. So listen, do you remember Havana syndrome, that mysterious thing where these diplomats and... Two months after my conversation with Mark Palomaropoulos, the National Intelligence Council issued a report. But not just any report. It promised to be the report, the mother of all reports, the finalist word on the cause of Havana syndrome.

Well, today we are now learning that one thing has been ruled out about what happened. The report investigated around a thousand cases of Havana syndrome since 2016. In the end, most were ultimately judged to have some other logical explanation besides some sort of advanced weapon. For example, one outbreak at the American embassy in Syria would later be blamed on food poisoning. Only a couple dozen cases remained that still could not be explained. Mark considers himself in that group. But the report concludes Havana syndrome is almost certainly not caused by a neurological attack from a foreign adversary. Hey there, how's it going? Good, man. How are you?

How are you feeling? I'm actually feeling okay. I mean, the headaches come and go. I spoke to Mark again a few days after that report was released. Did they call you before the report came out to tell you it was coming? Yeah, I mean, everybody in Washington knew this was coming. And Bill Burns, the CIA director, called me as well before the report. So that was, you know.

Wow. Because I think he knew that, you know, this would upset a lot of us. It was a little disheartening. I think for a lot of the victims, it was a bit of a gut punch. But not surprisingly, hysteria loves a twist. Now, where all of this doesn't make any sense, just fundamentally where it doesn't make sense is, you know, since we talked last, I mean, I have received Havana Act compensation, which is a huge...

You finally did. I did. That's a huge development. Mazel tov. After years of victims pressing for acknowledgement, President Biden signed the Havana Act into law. The Havana and Havana Act is an acronym, and it's a telling one. Havana, helping American victims afflicted by neurological attacks. How do you mesh those two things together? You're saying it's nothing, yet the U.S. government, DOD, and the same entities are actually compensating us for an injury in the line of duty. How do you say that, but at the same time say it's nothing, yet the US government, DOD, and the same entities are actually compensating us for an

injury in the line of duty. How do you say that, but at the same time say it's nothing? I mean, it's just counterintuitive. And you can't have it both ways. How are these two things true at once? I don't get that. My daughter, who just graduated college, she's scratching her head and she said, Dad, how do you get money for what happened to you, but then they're telling you it didn't happen? I said, that's how do you get money for what happened to you, but then they're telling you it didn't happen? I said, that's a hell of a question. It is a hell of a question, isn't it? How can it's totally mass hysteria and it's not mass hysteria both be true. And not just for Havana syndrome, for the outbreak in Leroy, and for the increasing number of hysterical situations that, as one expert put it to me, are exposing the

fissures in society. Well, next time we're going to delve deep right into one of those fissures. And that's the last thing that I remember. Hey bro, I don't feel right. I don't feel right. I think I touched fennel. And that's the last thing that I remember. And we'll see what happens when we try to have it both ways. I mean, this myth just won't die. And then, back to Leroy and the appearance of a mysterious physician. And this doctor in New Jersey, a lot of these kids are saying they're getting better from his treatment. Where they try to have it both ways, too. The symptoms were gone.

And I thought, OK, there's the proof. There's my evidence to me. This is what it was. That's coming up on Hysterical. Thank you. at wondery.com slash survey. And if you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to us at wondery.com slash tips. Hysterical is a production of Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Our lead producer is Henry Malofsky. Our associate producer is Marie-Alexa Kavanaugh.

Producer, Sophie Bridges. Managing producer, Aaron Kelly. Senior producer, Lina Massizzi. Additional Production by Zandra Ellen. Diane Hansen is our Editor. Our Executive Editor is Joel Lovell. Fact-Checking by Natsumi Ajisaka. Mixing by Hannes Brown.

Our Head of Sound and Engineering is Raj Makija. Original Music, composed and performed by Dina McAbee. Legal Services for Pineapple Street from Crystal Tupia. Thank you. Executive produced by me, I'm Dan Taberski. Our executive producers for Pineapple Street are Max Linsky, Henry Malofsky, Asha Saluja, and Jenna Weiss-Berman. Executive producers for Wondery are Morgan Jones, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent. Thanks for listening.