Hysterical | Wondery
The Third Information Crisis by Naomi Alderman (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Jon Holmes Says the C-Word (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Mass hysteria seems to be out of fashion these days. When I was young it was a hot topic (perhaps because we all studied The Crucible at school). Not so much now; it’s been replaced with going viral, or supporting the England men’s football team. Anyhow, we have a more medically correct name for it today: mass psychogenic illness.
Mass psychogenic illness starts with conversion disorder, whereby an individual displays physical symptoms that have no explanation. A limp, a tic, a faint, a seizure: a real thing that’s happening, but without an obvious reason for it. But if more than one person experiences a similar thing, then conversion disorder can become something else too. “Each individual case is independent,” says Dr Jennifer McVige, in new podcast series Hysterical. “But when you mush them all together and they all have the same symptoms and they all know each other, then it’s a mass psychogenic event.”
In Hysterical, the mass psychogenic event in question involves teenage girls at Le Roy high school in upstate New York in 2011. At least, it starts with them. They suddenly start tic-ing and shouting, making noises and twitching, almost as if they have Tourette’s. And no one knows why. Government health inspectors insist it’s nothing to do with Le Roy’s environment, even though the local river sometimes runs a weird colour, a legacy of the enormous former Jell-o plant in town. Doctors won’t breach patient confidentiality, so can’t inform parents about other children who are experiencing the same symptoms. Town meetings are called and the locals told nothing very much at all. The phenomenon is simultaneously hugely public and strangely secret.
It’s a fascinating story, and host Dan Taberski makes it more so. He’s a podcast veteran (Missing Richard Simmons; The Line; 9/12) and an immensely enjoyable presenter, charming his interviewees and us listeners alike. It’s Taberski who moulds this slight story into something gripping and bingeable: clear, intriguing and fun (even for the girls who were involved, some of whom are interviewed). Taberski makes Hysterical just skip along, and he takes you along for the ride.
Another great communicator is Naomi Alderman. The award-winning author of The Power has a lovely turn of phrase, but what she’s really good at is giving an oversight, a larger understanding of the world. And in The Third Information Crisis, her series of five short essays for Radio 4, broadcast daily last week, she used this macro approach to reveal genuine insights into how we live now. Plus, somehow she made it thrilling. Not a word wasted, every sentence utterly clear, each thought marshalled and illustrated through examples. You know how the best writers pinpoint something you’ve felt for ages but haven’t been able to articulate? This series is like that, every minute.
Alderman’s subject is our epoch. What is the age we are living in? As she says at the start: “If you knew you were living through a time called the Industrial Revolution, that would clue you into some possibilities and pitfalls.” Same, she suggests, for “the Reign of Terror” during the French Revolution. Right now, she suggests, we’re living through an age of information crisis; and, because it’s a crisis, we’re feeling a little upset. Still, there have been a couple of previous information crises: specifically, when we invented writing and when we invented the printing press. This is the third.
Enormously well-read, Alderman draws on historians and novelists to highlight parallels between our own time and what happened previously. At one point she explains how writing led to a democratisation of society, but also a devaluation of old people, and the logic is so simple that you genuinely find yourself thinking, Aha! She brings up familiar scenarios – describing how we use Google, or social media – deftly inserts a soupçon of history, and makes everything clearer. It’s so good. She should give Radio 4’s next Reith Lectures.
And, yep, one more great communicator, comedian Jon Holmes, who in recent years has largely been hidden away behind his multi-award-winning Radio 4 satirical mashup The Skewer. But for his new Radio 4 show, Jon Holmes Says the C-Word, he gets personal. Holmes was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2023 – he’s now clear – and found himself searching out podcasts that might help him through it. “Straight-talking accounts… honest conversations, the sort you’d have in the pub if you were talking about films or football instead of cancer,” he says. But he couldn’t find any. What he wanted was a “men talk cancer” podcast, and now he’s made one.
In last week’s opening episode, he talked to several people who have undergone cancer treatment: Stephen Fry, Matt Forde, Mike Peters (lead singer of the Alarm) – and Eric Idle, who was very funny and, because of this, oddly moving. Idle had pancreatic cancer, which “there was about a 4 or 5% chance of surviving”. He too is clear now; like Fry and Holmes, he was diagnosed early, and that made the difference. Weirdly, years previously, Idle had been writing a show (yet to be made) called Death: The Musical, and had asked his doctor what illness will kill you the quickest. “And he said, easy: pancreatic cancer.” So when he was diagnosed, said Idle, he burst out laughing. Not usually a laughing matter, of course, but Holmes and his fellow cancer survivors make it so.
