Interview: The razor-thin line between contagion and connection | Dan Taberski

TED Health

TED

Health & Fitness, Fitness, Shoshana Ungerleider, Medicine, How To Be Healthier, Ted Shoshana, Ted Talks Health

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After a mysterious wave of tics and twitches swept through a small-town high school in New York, documentary podcaster Dan Taberski set out to investigate what was really happening. Drawing on extensive research and intimate interviews with the people involved, he explores the roots 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?

After the talk, Shoshana interviews Dan on how his research into the mysterious Havana Syndrome leads to his unearthing of a similar mass hysteria in Le Roy, New York. They also discuss how storytelling can reshape discourse surrounding medicine and what happens when the person experiencing an illness feels unheard and unsupported by the very medical professionals supposed to care for them?

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Transcript

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