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Previously on Hysterical.

I felt like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. I remember exactly, like, getting out and just like, standing there staring at the cameras, like, holy shit. Like, what the hell is going on? There's just a history in the US.

Of women being dismissed by doctors. Hysteria.

It's all in your head.

Oh, my gosh. You're exaggerating.

There is something actually happening to their bodies, something I believe is coming from the outside, the environment, somehow.

I could live with conversion disorder. I could not live with the environment did it to me. That, to me, was terminal.

You say Leroy or Leroy.

That's the great debate of Genesee county or even of Leroy.

I know you can't believe I'm still talking about the freaking name thing, right? But you should know that I have uncovered pertinent information. It came up when I was shooting the shit with local Leroy gadfly Cn Barrons. His ancestors have lived around here since the 17 hundreds. Plat, flannel shirt, skull cap, biker bar, mustache.

Also say Leroy. I think it sounds a little better. But even there, I guess half the people say Leroy and the other half say Leroy.

So turns out this isn't just a Leroy Leroy thing. This whole area is riddled with weird pronunciations.

People constantly call Burgeon Bergen.

Oh, you pronounce it Bergen?

Yes. And then there's Avon, which is often pronounced Avon.

Yeah. You guys are getting them all wrong.

We have Charlotte.

No way.

Yeah.

Charlotte is clearly Charlotte. Charlotte. That's amazing. There's something to this, the names around here. But put a pin in that for now because I met Barron's here at the side of the road a couple of miles from the high school for a different reason. Last time, youll recall, after several weeks of tests, tests on the girls, some tests on the school grounds, state and school officials came to believe that this whole thing was a mass psychogenic illness, a mass hysteria, and that nothing else madeborn with rare birth defects. I have children who grew up in the area who are reporting to me they had bone cancer at the age of ten. I have people reporting to me that their two and a half year olds have tick like syndrome.I'm going to stop you because we can't substantiate any of this, but we get the idea.Hi there. I'm Erin Brockovich and I just finished the doctor Drew show.This is , doing some extra behind the scenes content for the show and what is to come next.We have a team going out there that's going to be doing a site assessment. They're going to be meeting with the families. They're going to go to the original derailment site. We're going to be getting more eye accounts and documentation of the spill, how far the plume has gone.Now, there might have been a time where Erin herself would have just shown up in Leroy, but when you get high profile like that, you don't just go somewhere anymore. You send people ahead to make sure it's legit. You stick your number two on them, the one who does all the work and gets none of the glory. Before you get Erin Brockovich, what you get is Bob Bacock.The film about her is about 99% accurate.Bob Bacock is a water supply expert and Brockovich's longtime partner in investigations, like the one they were about to embark on in Leroy.But I'm not the batshit crazy one. Aaron's the batshit crazy one.They've also clearly got the same, shall we say, casual sense of workplace decorum.Okay. She gets on these things and she's like, oh, Bob, this is just me and my stick to itiveness. Or, you know, I've got a feeling here and, you know, I'm always right. And I'm like, shut up, bitch. I know you're right. Will you just leave me alone and makes it a wash. She pops up again the following week in Berlin, promoting her next movie appearance about safe drinking water. Were you afraid that you were making it worse? Were you getting that criticism?Both. Both did something good come out of it from an environmental investigator's perspective. Yeah. I got the tce site cleaned up. That had been neglected for probably the better part of 20 years. Did the fact that I came to town and found a environmental things of concern exacerbate or contribute further to the psychological impacts to these kids? Did it validate their feelings? Could have, you know, could we have made it worse? We tried not to.Eesh. This is awkward. Can I see those statistics?Yeah.Because in fact, doctor McVig has been looking into that very question. So they're not in steps and she's collected the data somewhere in those drawers. That suggests team Brockovich actually may have demonstrably made things worse.So this is an actual statistical analysis because it's very hard to do correlational stuff. And we had to go back through.McVIG and her team, went back and tracked every time a patient had what she calls an exacerbation, like a trip to the emergency room or a dramatic worsening in the severity of symptoms, any serious flare up in her patients. And then she mapped all of that against the big upheavals in the brouhaha, the Today show appearances, the contentious town hall meetings, and team Brockovich parachuting into the mystery, all to see how her patients fared afterwards.And then Erin Brockovich comes into town and there were eleven exacerbations. So now the tics start to get worse again. Now we have sinkable episodes, now we have a lot of non epileptic seizures.It was the worst stretch by far of the outbreak in Leroy. This is in the week after Aaron Brockovich.The following week.There's eleven exacerbations. The following week. And in the following two years after the New York Times, there's only five. I don't mean to make this a knock against Brockovich or Babcock, or demanding answers, or the press and the cameras, or Doctor Drew. Well, maybe Doctor Drew, but it's not a knock against the hysteria that grew around the hysteria. And that is because of the third meaning of the word.Being hysterical will not do you any good.We're gonna just be hysterical.We're gonna have to, you know, ask.You to leave without being so hysterical every night.It's a fire.No, I'm not hysterical. I'm trying to tell you this as calmly as I know how.This hysterical is the one they hurl when they want to diminish you, when they want to make you seem like you're reacting over nothing. Or if it's something, then you're way overreacting.I was sort of a regular housewife buying the american dream in 1978.There was a series of interviews done a while back about Love Canal, the toxic waste disaster in western New York. The interviews are with Lois Gibbs, the local mom who raised hell at the center of it.It wasn't until I picked up the newspaper one day and it talked about 20,000 tons of chemicals underneath the 99th street school and leaking out into the homes.And Gibbs tells the story of when she first brought her concerns to the school and how hard it was to get them to take her seriously.And so I went to the school board and said, can you move Michael out of the school? By then, he was in kindergarten, 1978. And they said, no, we cannot. Because if we move, Michael gives because of the potential threat, we have to move all 407 children. We're not going to do that. We're not closing the school because of one irate, hysterical housewife.They called Lois Gibbs hysterical, too, to shut her up. But Lois Gibbs didn't shut up.All I want to know is why.And she helped cause what I'm sure felt like mass hysteria over the chemicals in the ground beneath their feet.You are gonna pay. Cause those who do wrong pay, sweetie.And Lois Gibbs was right. In 2004, after 25 years of cleanup and remediation, the EPA finally removed love canal from its listen of worst unresolved environmental disasters in the country. The Leroy train derailment is still on that list. So, what do you think? Are we ready to call it? We know its not a virus, and now we know its not toxins. At least as far as anyone can prove. So unless the bad tampon theory makes a comeback, I guess what happens next is that everyone in Leroy accepts mass hysteria in a warm, town wide embrace as the answer to their medical mystery. Yeah, fat chance. Thats not how this story ends. But before it does end, before we come to our grand, unifying theory of what happened in Leroy, New York, youre going to want to hear from this guy that we talked to in northern Virginia.The idea that this is somehow psychogenic, psychosomatic mass hysteria. I mean, that just doesnt apply to me.And youre definitely going to want to hear whats happening to this woman in Highland County, Ohio. People are just so tired of being called liars that they dont want to talk about anymore. And before you try and say whats happening in any of these places, youre first going to have to come to terms with one indelible and fairly nauseating fact. Whatever is happening to these people, you are not immune to it. No one is. And that's next time on hysterical. I've never been in a CIA operative's house before.In their basement.In their basement? Yeah.You know, the room was spinning wildly. I had a splitting headache. I had tinnitus, which is, you know, ringing in my ears. And I knew something was really wrong. It was scary. Hysteria is alive and well.So for you, functional disorder or psychogenic illness is the same as saying that you were abducted by an alien cause.It makes no sense.The human mind is a very powerful thing. Follow hysterical on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad free right now by joining Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@wondery.com. survey. And if you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to us@wondery.com.Tips.Hysterical is a production of wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Our lead producer is Henry Milovsky. Our associate producer is Marie Alexa Kavanaugh producer Sophie Bridges managing producer Erin Kelly senior producer Lena Mastizi additional production by Zandra Ellen. Diane Hansen is our editor. Our executive editor is Joel Lovelace. Fact checking by Natsume Ajisaka mixing by Hannah's brown our head of sound and engineering is Raj Makhija. Original music composed and performed by Dina Maccabee Legal Services for Pineapple street from crystal Tupia for wondery. Our senior producers are Lizzie Bassett and Claire Chambers, coordinating producer Mariah Gossett. Senior managing producer Callum plews. Hysterical is is written and executive produced by me. I'm Dan Tabirsky. Our executive producers for Pineapple street are Max Linsky, Henry Milovsky, Asha Saluja, and Jenna Weiss Berman. Executive producers for Wondery are Morgan Jones, Marshall Louie, and Jen Sargent. Thanks for listening.What if your partner developed 21 new identities? Or you discovered that your friend who helped you through the darkest times was actually a conniving con artist? Or what if you began seeing demons everywhere, inhabiting people around you, including your son, what would you do? I'm Whit Missseldine, the creator of this is actually happening, a podcast that brings you extraordinary true stories of life changing events told by the people who lived them. In our newest season, youll hear even more intimate first person accounts of how regular people have overcome remarkable circumstances, like the man who went to jail for 17 years for accidentally shooting the person who tried to save his life. To a close friend of the infamous scam artist Amanda Riley. These haunting accounts sound like Hollywood movies, but I assure you this is actually happening. Follow this is actually happening on the wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts and you can listen to this is actually happening ad free on Wondery Plus.

born with rare birth defects. I have children who grew up in the area who are reporting to me they had bone cancer at the age of ten. I have people reporting to me that their two and a half year olds have tick like syndrome.

I'm going to stop you because we can't substantiate any of this, but we get the idea.

Hi there. I'm Erin Brockovich and I just finished the doctor Drew show.

This is , doing some extra behind the scenes content for the show and what is to come next.

We have a team going out there that's going to be doing a site assessment. They're going to be meeting with the families. They're going to go to the original derailment site. We're going to be getting more eye accounts and documentation of the spill, how far the plume has gone.

Now, there might have been a time where Erin herself would have just shown up in Leroy, but when you get high profile like that, you don't just go somewhere anymore. You send people ahead to make sure it's legit. You stick your number two on them, the one who does all the work and gets none of the glory. Before you get Erin Brockovich, what you get is Bob Bacock.

The film about her is about 99% accurate.

Bob Bacock is a water supply expert and Brockovich's longtime partner in investigations, like the one they were about to embark on in Leroy.

But I'm not the batshit crazy one. Aaron's the batshit crazy one.

They've also clearly got the same, shall we say, casual sense of workplace decorum.

Okay. She gets on these things and she's like, oh, Bob, this is just me and my stick to itiveness. Or, you know, I've got a feeling here and, you know, I'm always right. And I'm like, shut up, bitch. I know you're right. Will you just leave me alone and makes it a wash. She pops up again the following week in Berlin, promoting her next movie appearance about safe drinking water. Were you afraid that you were making it worse? Were you getting that criticism?Both. Both did something good come out of it from an environmental investigator's perspective. Yeah. I got the tce site cleaned up. That had been neglected for probably the better part of 20 years. Did the fact that I came to town and found a environmental things of concern exacerbate or contribute further to the psychological impacts to these kids? Did it validate their feelings? Could have, you know, could we have made it worse? We tried not to.Eesh. This is awkward. Can I see those statistics?Yeah.Because in fact, doctor McVig has been looking into that very question. So they're not in steps and she's collected the data somewhere in those drawers. That suggests team Brockovich actually may have demonstrably made things worse.So this is an actual statistical analysis because it's very hard to do correlational stuff. And we had to go back through.McVIG and her team, went back and tracked every time a patient had what she calls an exacerbation, like a trip to the emergency room or a dramatic worsening in the severity of symptoms, any serious flare up in her patients. And then she mapped all of that against the big upheavals in the brouhaha, the Today show appearances, the contentious town hall meetings, and team Brockovich parachuting into the mystery, all to see how her patients fared afterwards.And then Erin Brockovich comes into town and there were eleven exacerbations. So now the tics start to get worse again. Now we have sinkable episodes, now we have a lot of non epileptic seizures.It was the worst stretch by far of the outbreak in Leroy. This is in the week after Aaron Brockovich.The following week.There's eleven exacerbations. The following week. And in the following two years after the New York Times, there's only five. I don't mean to make this a knock against Brockovich or Babcock, or demanding answers, or the press and the cameras, or Doctor Drew. Well, maybe Doctor Drew, but it's not a knock against the hysteria that grew around the hysteria. And that is because of the third meaning of the word.Being hysterical will not do you any good.We're gonna just be hysterical.We're gonna have to, you know, ask.You to leave without being so hysterical every night.It's a fire.No, I'm not hysterical. I'm trying to tell you this as calmly as I know how.This hysterical is the one they hurl when they want to diminish you, when they want to make you seem like you're reacting over nothing. Or if it's something, then you're way overreacting.I was sort of a regular housewife buying the american dream in 1978.There was a series of interviews done a while back about Love Canal, the toxic waste disaster in western New York. The interviews are with Lois Gibbs, the local mom who raised hell at the center of it.It wasn't until I picked up the newspaper one day and it talked about 20,000 tons of chemicals underneath the 99th street school and leaking out into the homes.And Gibbs tells the story of when she first brought her concerns to the school and how hard it was to get them to take her seriously.And so I went to the school board and said, can you move Michael out of the school? By then, he was in kindergarten, 1978. And they said, no, we cannot. Because if we move, Michael gives because of the potential threat, we have to move all 407 children. We're not going to do that. We're not closing the school because of one irate, hysterical housewife.They called Lois Gibbs hysterical, too, to shut her up. But Lois Gibbs didn't shut up.All I want to know is why.And she helped cause what I'm sure felt like mass hysteria over the chemicals in the ground beneath their feet.You are gonna pay. Cause those who do wrong pay, sweetie.And Lois Gibbs was right. In 2004, after 25 years of cleanup and remediation, the EPA finally removed love canal from its listen of worst unresolved environmental disasters in the country. The Leroy train derailment is still on that list. So, what do you think? Are we ready to call it? We know its not a virus, and now we know its not toxins. At least as far as anyone can prove. So unless the bad tampon theory makes a comeback, I guess what happens next is that everyone in Leroy accepts mass hysteria in a warm, town wide embrace as the answer to their medical mystery. Yeah, fat chance. Thats not how this story ends. But before it does end, before we come to our grand, unifying theory of what happened in Leroy, New York, youre going to want to hear from this guy that we talked to in northern Virginia.The idea that this is somehow psychogenic, psychosomatic mass hysteria. I mean, that just doesnt apply to me.And youre definitely going to want to hear whats happening to this woman in Highland County, Ohio. People are just so tired of being called liars that they dont want to talk about anymore. And before you try and say whats happening in any of these places, youre first going to have to come to terms with one indelible and fairly nauseating fact. Whatever is happening to these people, you are not immune to it. No one is. And that's next time on hysterical. I've never been in a CIA operative's house before.In their basement.In their basement? Yeah.You know, the room was spinning wildly. I had a splitting headache. I had tinnitus, which is, you know, ringing in my ears. And I knew something was really wrong. It was scary. Hysteria is alive and well.So for you, functional disorder or psychogenic illness is the same as saying that you were abducted by an alien cause.It makes no sense.The human mind is a very powerful thing. Follow hysterical on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad free right now by joining Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@wondery.com. survey. And if you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to us@wondery.com.Tips.Hysterical is a production of wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Our lead producer is Henry Milovsky. Our associate producer is Marie Alexa Kavanaugh producer Sophie Bridges managing producer Erin Kelly senior producer Lena Mastizi additional production by Zandra Ellen. Diane Hansen is our editor. Our executive editor is Joel Lovelace. Fact checking by Natsume Ajisaka mixing by Hannah's brown our head of sound and engineering is Raj Makhija. Original music composed and performed by Dina Maccabee Legal Services for Pineapple street from crystal Tupia for wondery. Our senior producers are Lizzie Bassett and Claire Chambers, coordinating producer Mariah Gossett. Senior managing producer Callum plews. Hysterical is is written and executive produced by me. I'm Dan Tabirsky. Our executive producers for Pineapple street are Max Linsky, Henry Milovsky, Asha Saluja, and Jenna Weiss Berman. Executive producers for Wondery are Morgan Jones, Marshall Louie, and Jen Sargent. Thanks for listening.What if your partner developed 21 new identities? Or you discovered that your friend who helped you through the darkest times was actually a conniving con artist? Or what if you began seeing demons everywhere, inhabiting people around you, including your son, what would you do? I'm Whit Missseldine, the creator of this is actually happening, a podcast that brings you extraordinary true stories of life changing events told by the people who lived them. In our newest season, youll hear even more intimate first person accounts of how regular people have overcome remarkable circumstances, like the man who went to jail for 17 years for accidentally shooting the person who tried to save his life. To a close friend of the infamous scam artist Amanda Riley. These haunting accounts sound like Hollywood movies, but I assure you this is actually happening. Follow this is actually happening on the wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts and you can listen to this is actually happening ad free on Wondery Plus.

makes it a wash. She pops up again the following week in Berlin, promoting her next movie appearance about safe drinking water. Were you afraid that you were making it worse? Were you getting that criticism?

Both. Both did something good come out of it from an environmental investigator's perspective. Yeah. I got the tce site cleaned up. That had been neglected for probably the better part of 20 years. Did the fact that I came to town and found a environmental things of concern exacerbate or contribute further to the psychological impacts to these kids? Did it validate their feelings? Could have, you know, could we have made it worse? We tried not to.

Eesh. This is awkward. Can I see those statistics?

Yeah.

Because in fact, doctor McVig has been looking into that very question. So they're not in steps and she's collected the data somewhere in those drawers. That suggests team Brockovich actually may have demonstrably made things worse.

So this is an actual statistical analysis because it's very hard to do correlational stuff. And we had to go back through.

McVIG and her team, went back and tracked every time a patient had what she calls an exacerbation, like a trip to the emergency room or a dramatic worsening in the severity of symptoms, any serious flare up in her patients. And then she mapped all of that against the big upheavals in the brouhaha, the Today show appearances, the contentious town hall meetings, and team Brockovich parachuting into the mystery, all to see how her patients fared afterwards.

And then Erin Brockovich comes into town and there were eleven exacerbations. So now the tics start to get worse again. Now we have sinkable episodes, now we have a lot of non epileptic seizures.

It was the worst stretch by far of the outbreak in Leroy. This is in the week after Aaron Brockovich.

The following week.

There's eleven exacerbations. The following week. And in the following two years after the New York Times, there's only five. I don't mean to make this a knock against Brockovich or Babcock, or demanding answers, or the press and the cameras, or Doctor Drew. Well, maybe Doctor Drew, but it's not a knock against the hysteria that grew around the hysteria. And that is because of the third meaning of the word.

Being hysterical will not do you any good.

We're gonna just be hysterical.

We're gonna have to, you know, ask.

You to leave without being so hysterical every night.

It's a fire.

No, I'm not hysterical. I'm trying to tell you this as calmly as I know how.

This hysterical is the one they hurl when they want to diminish you, when they want to make you seem like you're reacting over nothing. Or if it's something, then you're way overreacting.

I was sort of a regular housewife buying the american dream in 1978.

There was a series of interviews done a while back about Love Canal, the toxic waste disaster in western New York. The interviews are with Lois Gibbs, the local mom who raised hell at the center of it.

It wasn't until I picked up the newspaper one day and it talked about 20,000 tons of chemicals underneath the 99th street school and leaking out into the homes.

And Gibbs tells the story of when she first brought her concerns to the school and how hard it was to get them to take her seriously.

And so I went to the school board and said, can you move Michael out of the school? By then, he was in kindergarten, 1978. And they said, no, we cannot. Because if we move, Michael gives because of the potential threat, we have to move all 407 children. We're not going to do that. We're not closing the school because of one irate, hysterical housewife.

They called Lois Gibbs hysterical, too, to shut her up. But Lois Gibbs didn't shut up.

All I want to know is why.

And she helped cause what I'm sure felt like mass hysteria over the chemicals in the ground beneath their feet.

You are gonna pay. Cause those who do wrong pay, sweetie.

And Lois Gibbs was right. In 2004, after 25 years of cleanup and remediation, the EPA finally removed love canal from its listen of worst unresolved environmental disasters in the country. The Leroy train derailment is still on that list. So, what do you think? Are we ready to call it? We know its not a virus, and now we know its not toxins. At least as far as anyone can prove. So unless the bad tampon theory makes a comeback, I guess what happens next is that everyone in Leroy accepts mass hysteria in a warm, town wide embrace as the answer to their medical mystery. Yeah, fat chance. Thats not how this story ends. But before it does end, before we come to our grand, unifying theory of what happened in Leroy, New York, youre going to want to hear from this guy that we talked to in northern Virginia.

The idea that this is somehow psychogenic, psychosomatic mass hysteria. I mean, that just doesnt apply to me.

And youre definitely going to want to hear whats happening to this woman in Highland County, Ohio. People are just so tired of being called liars that they dont want to talk about anymore. And before you try and say whats happening in any of these places, youre first going to have to come to terms with one indelible and fairly nauseating fact. Whatever is happening to these people, you are not immune to it. No one is. And that's next time on hysterical. I've never been in a CIA operative's house before.

In their basement.

In their basement? Yeah.

You know, the room was spinning wildly. I had a splitting headache. I had tinnitus, which is, you know, ringing in my ears. And I knew something was really wrong. It was scary. Hysteria is alive and well.

So for you, functional disorder or psychogenic illness is the same as saying that you were abducted by an alien cause.

It makes no sense.

The human mind is a very powerful thing. Follow hysterical on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad free right now by joining Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@wondery.com. survey. And if you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to us@wondery.com.

Tips.

Hysterical is a production of wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Our lead producer is Henry Milovsky. Our associate producer is Marie Alexa Kavanaugh producer Sophie Bridges managing producer Erin Kelly senior producer Lena Mastizi additional production by Zandra Ellen. Diane Hansen is our editor. Our executive editor is Joel Lovelace. Fact checking by Natsume Ajisaka mixing by Hannah's brown our head of sound and engineering is Raj Makhija. Original music composed and performed by Dina Maccabee Legal Services for Pineapple street from crystal Tupia for wondery. Our senior producers are Lizzie Bassett and Claire Chambers, coordinating producer Mariah Gossett. Senior managing producer Callum plews. Hysterical is is written and executive produced by me. I'm Dan Tabirsky. Our executive producers for Pineapple street are Max Linsky, Henry Milovsky, Asha Saluja, and Jenna Weiss Berman. Executive producers for Wondery are Morgan Jones, Marshall Louie, and Jen Sargent. Thanks for listening.

What if your partner developed 21 new identities? Or you discovered that your friend who helped you through the darkest times was actually a conniving con artist? Or what if you began seeing demons everywhere, inhabiting people around you, including your son, what would you do? I'm Whit Missseldine, the creator of this is actually happening, a podcast that brings you extraordinary true stories of life changing events told by the people who lived them. In our newest season, youll hear even more intimate first person accounts of how regular people have overcome remarkable circumstances, like the man who went to jail for 17 years for accidentally shooting the person who tried to save his life. To a close friend of the infamous scam artist Amanda Riley. These haunting accounts sound like Hollywood movies, but I assure you this is actually happening. Follow this is actually happening on the wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts and you can listen to this is actually happening ad free on Wondery Plus.