At 25, Hannah’s life begins falling apart. An anonymous intruder has made her phone her enemy. Aided by the technology we all rely on, this intruder is watching Hannah, threatening her, even pretending to be her. Feeling increasingly unsafe, Hannah goes to the police, but they can’t stop it. Worse, they don’t even recognise it for what it is: stalking. Hannah doesn’t know for sure who is behind it all, but she suspects an older man she met more than two years earlier at London Fashion Week. Initially, he claimed to have been hacked. Even today, he disputes stalking her. To make sense of what’s happening Hannah turns to a woman she’s known since she was seven years-old, and who also happens to be an investigative journalist. Together with her “ex-step mum” Carole Cadwalladr, they set out to piece together something the police couldn’t: the true identity of Hannah’s stalker. Doing so means untangling a web of deception spanning continents. On her suspected stalker’s trail, Hannah realises nothing about them is as she first thought.
Named 2025 Ambies© Podcast of the Year, Hysterical investigates a mysterious illness that spreads among a group of high school girls in upstate New York. What is causing their sudden, often violent symptoms? Is there something in the water or inside the school? Or is it “all in their head?” The series examines the outbreak in LeRoy, NY, believed by some to be the most severe case of mass hysteria since the Salem Witch Trials. In his search for answers, Dan Taberski (9/12, Missing Richard Simmons, Running from Cops) explores other seemingly inexplicable events of the last few years – CIA officers being crippled with nausea and vertigo; cops OD'ing from exposure to fentanyl – and discovers they’re far more connected than we realize.
From Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, this 7-part series forces us to grapple with the mysteries of our own minds, and reckon with a contagion that we thought was long dead, but may be the defining disorder of our time.
Binge all episodes of Hysterical exclusively and ad-free, right now on Wondery+. Start your free trial in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or by visiting wondery.com/links/hysterical/ now.
How does creativity benefit our lives as grown-ups?
I'm Claire, and I re-found my creativity after a time of almost crippling anxiety. Now I want to share the stories of other people who have found or re-found their creativity as adults, and hopefully inspire many more grown-ups to get creative.
I chat with my guests about their childhood experiences of creativity and the arts, how they came to the creative practices they now love, the barriers they had to overcome to start their creative re-awakening, and how what they do now benefits their whole lives.
