Alive and Well | 5
41:11 Share

Wondering plus subscribers can binge all episodes of historical, early and ad free join wondering plus in the wonders APP or on apple podcasts.

Previously on historical. So just got got crazy. So people start passing out, start passing out, right.

Basically before you came, the E, P, A, in the york's state department of health said, we did test on the school grounds, everything. Why was that not good? Could we have made IT worse? We right not to really.

We just built to school and building was on six ranking. What 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 that seems to unlocking what exactly is going on in me, right? So our account right now, if you're keeping score at the peak of the outbreak in february of two thousand and twelve, is seventeen girls who came down with mysterious systems. Well, sixteen girls and one thirty six year old woman.

But IT wasn't really sixteen girls in one thirty six year old woman. IT was sixteen girls, one thirty six year old woman and one boy. And the boy was the one that no one believed.

I remember that, like that week, I want to really blow up because so many girls, that was when when you got up at twelve, thirty girls. And the one guy that said he had IT, but everybody thought he was faking.

so I don't know.

Here's Jessica, the senior J I think name he was an og guy .

was her .

boy who had IT. Yes, I know he was one of the ones that I think was faking IT.

And here's Emily, an eighth greater in the marching band.

A 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 who kept going speaking, he's speaking.

He's the only boy speaking. And I was like, do we know ee's mom cafe why they saying he was faking?

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 to, and I just randomly in the middle of everything.

you know what they were, just like what his text were.

His were physical, all like all his head stuff. IT was all head stuff.

nothing else. Where is no probably in jail?

Hey, it's dantin sy, can. Yeah, sorry about that. There was me working.

Jason is not in jail. You're .

working right now. What do you do? I grave that I deliver mulgrave. L and two people today.

Jason lives far away from the, we tracked him down in the acidic northwest. He was in the middle of a shift.

I I most like, have to the end degree right now. I'm working and talking. You are eating what? You eating a rap. My wife made me chicky. I about IT in two thousand .

and twelve. 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 stoping its way through .

the row when he started doing the next thing did you did that is felt in voluntary IT felt like ah IT felt like, oh, very much really IT almost like a muscle. Sam is the bad way I can describe that I should not have. Jason had a rough go .

of IT while he was at very 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 take started happening, you you told that teachers, the school nurse, your faster parents. Like, how did you? I know my faster parent, my Foster mother in particular, legitimately said that I was taking ah shit.

And I mean, honestly, me and her never saw eye eye from day one. I Foster dad a lot more. I mean, yeah, i'm sceptical, but i'm not gonna call you a liar. If is there anybody who believed you, do you remember anybody at a teacher, a director? Anybody know but even the the other world, like 电话 after I started being affected or even， yeah, you're foolish shit if you weren't taking, why are you the only guy so even the girls do that, which you got 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 believe you 啊？ So I was the only guy. And why? I mean, some vertical plant IT makes thinking back on IT now, giving the only guy that will affect IT if IT does weight highbrow, even to me, right? You got almost twenty people affected.

And one, the guy, I can see how IT seems SHE. 我在 what I am， I guess, technically one world behind. It's wild. How quickly we try to .

draw boundaries around the unknown, how quickly we create the categories, who 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 interest 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 or faded into the background as more pressing dramas and dramas pushed to the four of his brain. There's an up to rest away in the present. So how much use welling .

on the past? So but that's IT it's like run time. But I just I just anted to find out the things that like I was saying that like if this was conversion disorder, he does happen mostly to women, but IT does happen to guys all the time. Like anything like if you conversion disorder shit, like stress, the psychology of the definitional conversion disorder stress and.

In the next couple of episodes, we are going to stretch the boundaries a little of how we understand mass eugenic illness, where IT rears its head. And why will start today by looking at another mysterious outbreak. This one isn't for ten 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 in 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 dana burki from wondering and pine up on street studios. This is history episode five, alive and well.

People thought I was impossible to build a firm lifted booty and flattening trinkl ebs at the same time, but we've cracked the code. I'm carl, the CEO of body. That's body with an I.

And if you want to lose weight while you build a firm around booty and flat tide ABS even that lower pooch, you need to start the eighty obsession, fitness and eating program on monday, eighty workouts shot in real time cycle training with the cast as they make gress day by day, crazy booty gains flat, tight ABS. We tested IT, improved IT, and now it's your turn. No subscription needed.

You can get this in home program for less than a dollar or workout an own permanent digital access. But here's the thing. We're inviting you to get eighty obsession by friday, so you can start on monday.

And if you don't see results in your butt and apps in the first thirty days, you get your money back, no questions asked. So get eighty day obsession by friday. So you can start on monday. Go to eighty day obsession dot com. That's eighty day obsession dot com.

Why get all your holiday decorations delivered red to install ard? Because maybe you only buy two weeks but have twelve windows. Or maybe your tidal er got very eager with the advent calendar or maybe the infatuation snowman didn't make IT to the snowstorm or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason this season, instincts here for host and the whole holiday hall get decorations from the home deep c and more through installed and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees in terms apply.

It's a Sunny winter day in northern Virginia, just outside dc. My prester Henry and I have just arrived the door of a modest home on a quiet street in an unassuming neighborhood, in other words, crawling with fires. I've never been in A C A Operative .

hospital basement .

in their basement. Yeah, what about corporate? Well, then what is IT about a finished basement .

that makes me .

want to wrestle? Anyway, now is not the time I worked in dc for, yeah, but the right house ministration.

But you remember them because I joined the agcy and ninety three.

And one of the guy on memory landing IT with is mark palomar opeless. The agency he joined in ninety three was the C. I. A markers, the form of ahead of clandestine Operations for europe and uraso.

If IT was an arms, Morgan, but we used to go to the big hunt all the time.

remember that? I think so. Yeah, the big hunt, oh, I remember the big hunt who doesn't love a bar with a name that sounds filthy. The drunker .

you get.

It's funny.

You're one.

Really, really. I want to make a clear that mark wasn't just pushing pencils at the CIA and has twenty six years there. He was Operational in some really dangerous places. But in two thousand and seventeen, mark began experiencing strange symptoms that no one could seem to explain.

So know, I think I was. I can't remember the exactly I think was december fifty, two thousand and seventeen um early on in the trip I woke up the in a moscow hotel. IT was a five star hotel two blocks in the embassy. Of course we had surveilLance in the whole time. Other russians were following is everywhere, but I was nothing unexpected, nothing unusual, just what they do .

to all americans .

are but with video, audio, everything is just what they do is this is nothing ah but so I woke up in the you know early on on 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 spending wildly. I had a splitting headache.

I had ten nights, which is, you know, ring in my ears. I felt I was going to be physically sick, you know, from lots of different, no or offices. And I knew something was really wrong with scary.

And for mark, with the job, he had to say, something is scary. Is saying a bunch i've been .

through this was this know, a really scary moment, because there was is almost a total loss of control. It's not being hung over. It's literally, yeah, that the room is literally spinning.

It's it's a very, and if extremely, to goes freaky. So I was like, what the hell happened? My first thought is that, you know, perhaps its 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 he was that night of the night after we're sitting at the push in cafe, which is a famous restaurant in moscow. And another vertical attack happened just, I don't know where, and I thought I was going to pass out right there.

This, he thinks to himself, is not food poisoning. He leaves moscow, and next 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 start having just incredible cog difficulties with brain fog. And so I went to the agency dockers. I said, he, you, this is 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 acknowledged that he sick at all .

because the agency wouldn't help. And I went, I went to probably fifteen, twenty different doctors on my own, whether it's an infectious disease specialist. I was in neurology gist. I went to allergists tons of pain, dox 点 shots， P, R, P of regeneration therapy where they they actually take blood out, they spend IT. And I injected back in you, and all sorts of craze of nothing worked.

This goes on for months.

At this point. I ve disputing my grains in the back of my head that every day, five years later, have never gone to way. I ve had headache day for for five, a headache at now heading.

absolutely. It's never gone to wait for five years. And it's amazing. I don't have a dict personality. In this sense. I should be an alcoholic or addicted to oppos because it's just you want something to pain. I was just in constant pain all the time and that physically .

I am i'm assuming that you're feeling mentally terrible and emotionally river.

the whole thing, I was a mess.

Eventually, mark becomes eligible to retire from laney. He grabs the chance, feeling that he can 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, remember a good friend of mine who was really sick now, and he still inside the building, but he came to me, he said, hey, I just got back from a trip overseas. Something happened and and I think what happened to you happened to me. And that's what started the string of other cases.

He 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 two thousand and sixteen. 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 them by a variety of systems like noja, fatigue, vertigo.

Soon, a CIA doctor arrives in cuba to look into the matter. On the first night there, he says he too wakes up to a strange town, 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 to two thousand seventeen, 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 attack and toward an attack, experts hypotheses, 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 our advice to quote, get off the x to get away from the sound as quickly as possible. In december of two thousand and seventeen, the first victim outside of ana falls ill that happens in moscow to mark polymer ables tests will eventually show signs of a mild traumatic brain injury. Pretty soon he's joined by others at embassies in viana in belgrade.

In in twenty twenty, a national security council staff were suffers an attack outside the White house. So now it's happening domestically. By the beginning of twenty twenty two, what started in havana, cuba, has spread to over a thousand cases of the mystery illness on every content except antarctica.

I've clients from N, S, A, state department, commerce department, U, S, A, I, D, F, B, I dia, N, C, I.

A, dia is defense intelligence agency. I had to look that one up. The man speaking is another mark.

Mark is aid. He's the attorney representing mark palomar, apple less and others sickened by having as ndr me. How many .

almost two dozen never take the .

big question. Of course, what is causing these unexplained symptoms? Is this in attack? Or is something else going on? Some other kind of contagion, maybe psychological, some sort of diplomatic burnout.

If you are A C, I, A case officer, you are generally the best of the best. These are high, high performers. These are people who will work seventy, eighty hours a week. These are people who will stay up for forty two hours in a time to do their job, who will sacrifice their personal life for their professional life, and then always setting to just dynamically change to where they can get out of bed, out of the blue.

Something happened. Why do you think you have A, T, B.

I from what happened in moscow?

Mark power apps, what do you think .

happened to moscow? So you know, there's kind of knowing the russians. Um I think that was some type of direct energy attack or IT was a deliberate you know offensive weapon. There was no doubt my mind that something happened absolutely zero doubt the symptoms are consistent .

and just something happened .

that I was an attack clearly .

yeah and the difference between, say, burn out and an attack, it's more than just semantics. IT raises the stakes pretty frequently high.

like in the CIA there in astor's, putting their head in the sand.

A turney Marks eight 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 don't know.

And some of .

that I can do that.

Yes.

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 if the domestic incidents are legitimately foreign power, attacking americans is an act of war. IT is an ought act of war.

So those are the facts of havana's 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 poem apples does not want to hear IT.

S, C knows these aren't the sounds of holiday gifting. Oh, oh, okay, thank you. Well, they're not the sounds you are hoping for.

You want squeals of delight like this and spontaneously written songs of joy. I am so happy. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. To give those, make everyone on your list feel heard with gifts like personalized jewelry, custom art work, vintage pieces and home decor for original gifts that say, I get you, S C has IT auto ables .

best of twenty twenty four pigs are here. Discover the years top audio books, podcasts and originals and all your favorite generals, from memories and size I to mysteries and thrills. Auto security list in every category is the best way to hear.

Twenty twenty four is best in the audio entertainment, like a stunning new forecast production of George orwell's one thousand nine hundred eighty four heart felt memories like supreme court justice catania Brown Jackson s lovely one, the year's best fiction like the women by Christian hanna and possible average brilliantly SUV sive James. Another worthwhile listen is amy and terrorist, thrilling and twisting who done IT listen for the lie. This laughed loud funny tale follows Lucy, a woman who needs declare her own name after a true crime podcast, decides to probe into the worst night of her life. When SHE conveniently can't remember audible. There's more to imagine when you listen, go to audible, that comes slash, wondering pod, and discover all the year's best waiting for you.

There's more evidence for big foot in the tube camera than there is of microwave attacks.

Heads up, sarcastic sociologist.

come in in hot space. Elian would be more applausive.

This is doctor robbert bartholo, the bookie eco wrote on mass psychogenic illness has been sitting on my desk for over a year, much like because it's too big to move you could think of about in the hoods. And with IT so committed is heat to cataloging ing. The thousand year raped eet of massive ia.

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 twenty twenty, barthou co wrote another book, this one a much slimmer and Frankly, much angry, your book debunking vana syndrome as massive area.

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 summer to you that that so 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, rain damage. That's not mass, this theory, but that's not what happened if you.

in fact, much of the evidence that was leaked in the first few weeks of panic over havanas ndr me 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 on the objective of hearing tests, only two had hearing loss, both of whom had preexisting hearing loss before they went to cuba.

Same with the so called the maculate concussions, that early reporting on brain anonymous, like changes in the brain's White matter upon closer look, or maybe not so unusual. In one study done on twenty one have ana victims.

Three people had White matter track changes. Two or mild one was moderate. If you walk down the streets of sleepy hello this morning, you would find a similar Price dump.

And nih study would later show that as a group, there is little difference in the brain structure or function of the havana sync me victims compared to their colleagues, without sometimes. And then there is that sound, the ones some victims say accompany the onset of symptoms, potentially the sound of the weapon itself. Entomologists trained 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.

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. Fathom suggest instead that there were 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 in attack, all the ruminating in the media about this new mysterious weapon, all the warnings about the tail tail 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 entire world was darting, whether amErica could even be trusted anymore at all. But family believes IT all helps Foster fear of an attack strong enough to trick the mind into creating the physical symptoms in the body, or to coral 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 sixty ninety. Back then, IT was triggered by the fear of which is, and demons here, this was triggered red by the fear of some type of sonic, and then later, microwave weapon.

From bartholemy use point of view, the whole thing tracks with a similar pattern. Two other outbreaks, outbreaks like the one in luri outbreaks, which at first gLance might seem like totally different animals. We've got physiological, often neurological symptoms like vertical migrants, hearing loss.

We've got the lack of any provable organic cost to the symptoms. We've got symptoms that are not only spreading, but spreading almost exclusively in a preexisting social group, in this case, american foreign workers. One big wrinkle though, the victims here, it's got to be said or not, teenage girls there, guys like mark polo robles.

you know, it's i'm not the tougher guy in the world, but i've been an embassy is that were attacked by terrorist groups. You know i've been know for years in iraq and afanassy out.

Whatever your opinions about what they do and how some of the afflicted are serious warriors, they don't have come to stress. They dole IT out. They're trying to have deep walls of grit to call upon.

They neutral ized things. I've talked to some C, I, A officers and 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 that's wrong. That's wrong. He's start to bother.

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 have ana syndrome, whether it's what happened in libery hysteria, a is alive and well.

Know, all i'll say on this issue is the idea that this is somehow psychogenic master steria. I mean, that just doesn't apply to me and just in some of my other colleagues. I mean, because I wasn't thinking of this, how can be mask on a trip?

I'm not worried. I'm not stressed. I'm not scared.

I'm not thin. You've have vanny syndrome. How is this? And what happened to me?

You know, psychogenic, that does. How is IT master stereo? That makes no sense to me.

to a fair point at the initial answer of his symptoms, why would he have been worried about havana syndrome? He was only happening in havana at the time. He thousands of miles away in moscow.

The cases I know is just doesn't make any sense. So I just think we have to be really careful. And then then I think it's it's it's it's really difficult for some of the victims because again, then you turn into the and I was abducted by an alien and that, you know, i'll start fighting someone when I say that to me is so for you.

functional disorder or psychological illness is the same as saying that you were abducted .

only because that makes no sense.

Hey, that's the second time someone brought up aliens. The first .

space aliens would be more applausive then a microwave attack.

As much as the world loves sarcastic c usial logic, i'm not sure the mildly insulting certainty approach is super helpful here. Because while the attack by aliens might be more likely than a microbe weapon for doctor by foamy, for polar opposite the one who is sick in this situation, it's massively that feels like the off the wall option and neither were budge in their beliefs. Heels have been doug in now.

They both don't want to know what they know. They don't wanna 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, the kind you you have, the floridian culture.

oh, people lie down.

Yes, yet some people like them.

I stayed right side up from my entire conversation with doctor Patricia gary. Vj SHE says a psychoanalyst. He is written extensively on massive ia, including cases in the U.

S. Military in one thousand nine hundred and fifties. I'm here in her office and philothea A G of which lives now. But the accent is all, when is aris a city known for having more psychoanalysts per capita than anywhere else in the world? And we like .

to image that we are always in control of herself. I think what hysteria al does is maybe the humbling realization, and we are not in control.

Listen to the way that gary v. SHE talks about history to a real specific tone.

this is the amazing quality of the rest is a revalued character, and said that does not want to accept the constraints imposed by society.

HystErica is rebellious. Hysteria won't accept constraints of society. Gravity talks about hysteria, like as a person, like the contagion itself is alive, like it's screwing with us.

I am really i'm full of admission that you are not the in this because you say it's release like a panda ora books.

seria I know no, I tend to be attracted .

to this thing.

There's something profoundly good zy about even having this conversation about massara at all because if you're doing IT honestly and forthrightly, if IT requires you to look in the eye of a person who sick a CIA officer or a senior at libya 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 him minuted, they're they're a historic, but nobody wants to hear that.

This is said, nobody wants to hear, but maybe they they want to be heard and that would be my position.

They want to be heard the for doctor gar of V I. The point isn't to be bunker is the debating what's a sterile and what's not. Rather, it's more than just about the attention we give IT to really hear what hystErica has to say.

He still has that great character. IT changes IT in the way, follows the times, and at times he could be taken as a sort of social battle meter.

a social parameter, meaning if it's happening, it's often bigger than just the medical symptoms of the people experiencing IT. Here's an example. In one thousand nine, fourteen, less than a year into world war one, soldiers began returning from the front with you busted unusual symptoms, disses, severe tremors, headaches, strange gates and limbs.

The symptoms seem to occur after soldiers were exposed to the noise and impact of shelling, a close proxim ity and combat that began calling the condition shell shock, believing that the force of the blasts had caused injury to the brain. But as the war war 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 approximate to exploding bombs, the proximity to the horns of war period.

Soldiers would come back with impaired speech, with mutism, with blinds, with paralysis. There is 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 technological destructive war that the world has ever seen.

The history person may not know why they're having the symptoms, but there is conceal truth in them.

The historic is essentially saying, with the language of history, that something is not .

right exactly, and as many different personal level as a social level at the political level. So each individual case contains multitudes to, but a phrasing point.

On some level, the systems of any mass psychogenic illness aren't just about the person exhibiting the symptoms, not just medical. It's social, it's cultural about all of us.

I can not, but be grateful to historically and and take hystErica seriously and give IT back its dignity, I think, is the best answer you could give to history. Shut up if you don't have anything worthy to say, but listen, because that listen could be illuminating.

But I have the kind of friend, right? So some of these pictures, I think I can't really, there's a last stuff. There's some some tragedy up on the top right. There's the coffins coming back on the U. S.

Force plan from coast back in mark parm ablishn basement. He's got a whole wall with the momentous of a quarter century .

career with a mean. He printed out .

picture with a caption that says, america, we will kill you when you're sleep on Christmas.

Sorry, I thought was really well.

It's funny if you see that it's washington general washington war on Christmas journey point in the war. That's funny when you're forty nine. But most of the things on march .

wall aren't funny at all. Commander of our own, all the afghan unit who was killed the next day. Oh my god, he was a great man. And then here's you know, on this side is some of the awards i've received.

medals are displayed .

in a glass capture. There's some great things that we did and then there's some things where there is some some awful consequence of some Operation. So I don't really brag about this stuff.

but this is this.

this is not just one or two and several four intelligence metals.

I can't say if mark parliament of this is the victim of a mass psychogenic illness or not. And that's not just my fact checker, not zoom, making sure I cover my ass. I really don't know. There are some cases, dozens of them, that still have not been explained, a new support 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 ta 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 tormal that might boil over into physical symptoms.

The distinguishing tells the metal is the agency's .

second highest toward, and do you know? 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 all kita in the taliban that's IT. There was simple, pure um and we're really good at IT and then I have to come back and to be a Normal human after that saw perfect examples when the shrinks that want to read come up to and they say you have any regrets for the stuff you've done and everyone is like fuck now not at all want to talk like this and stop my when my wife here's IT later she's like you .

sound like a lenity IT is a weird vibe I think you do sound like A A little .

bit we were killing people who are trying to kill americans. Sorry, just fine and know so I mean, i'm sure a psychiatrist, you will say, okay, you know, you should actually need a lot erp y basement, not mild world. That was just fine with that.

To listen to remember havana syndrome, that mysterious thing were these diplomats. And two months after my conversation with mark paramos is 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 have an syndrome. Well, today we are now learning that one thing has been ruled out about what happened.

And the report investigated around a thousand cases of anne rome since two thousand six. 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, a vana in drome is almost certainly not caused by a neurological attack from a foreign adversary.

There I was gone. Are you feeling actually .

feeling okay? I just, I mean, the heads come and go. So 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 who's coming?

Yeah I mean, everybody in washing to know this was coming and and bill burns, the C. I director, called me as well before the report. So was, you know, because I think you knew that you know this would have set a lot of us was a lot just and and I think for a lot of the victims there was a bit of a good pinch.

But not surprisingly, hystErica loves a twist.

Um now where all of this doesn't make any sense, which just fundamentally where doesn't make sense since we talk less and I I have received to vanna compensation, which is they finally did I did. That's a huge development.

Most of after years of victims pressing for acknowledged, president biden signed the havana act into law. The havana in havana act is an acronym, and it's a telling one hava 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, D, O, D. And the same entities are actually compensating us from enduring the line of duty.

How do you say that? But at the same time says nothing is just to tive. And you know, you can have at both ways how?

How are these two things true at once? I don't get that. Know, my daughter who can cut, know, just graduate college, you know, SHE scratching her head and he said, dad, how? How do you get money for what happened, but then they're calling you didn't happen. So that's a health of question.

IT is out of the question isn't IT how can it's totally masses steria and it's not master steria both be true and not just for havana syndrome, for the outbreak and levi and for the increasing number of historical situations. That is, one expert put IT to me are exposing the fires in society. Well, next time we're gonna al deep writing to one of those fissures 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 is just won't die.

And then back to library .

and the appearance of a mysterious physician. And this doctor, new jersey.

a lot of these kids are saying .

they're getting Better from his treatment where they try to have IT both ways to.

The symptoms were gone.

and I thought, okay, there's the proof. There's my evidence to me, this is what I was that's coming up on hysterically.

Follow hysterically on the wondering APP amazon music or whether you get your podcasts. You can bge all episodes ly and add free right now by joining wondering plus in the wondering APP or on apple podcast before you go tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondering dot com slash survey. And if you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to us at wander dotcom slash tips.

Hysterically is a production of wondering and pinup street studios. Our lead producer is hendering milosch. Our associate producer is my ecco cavin, a producer sophie bridges, managing producer aron Kelly, senior producer lenna C.

C. Additional production by SAndra Allen. Diane anton is our editor. Our executive editor is joe level that checking by not sumi arg sa mixing by hand as Brown. Our head of sound and engineering is rage marker original music composed and performed by dina makey legal services for pineal street from Christal tupia.

For wondering, our senior producers are lizy basket and clear chAmbers coordinating producer maria gossip senior managing producer colum clues historical is written and executive produced by me on down to bursa. Our executive producers for a pineapple street are maxi kit and remastered asia solution and geneva burman executive producer is for wondering are Morgan Jones, martial lewi and gene sergeant? Thanks for this one.