4/19  Ally Kelly Enya

5/3 Amber Orico Will ChloeSu

5/10  Elva Joan Kaia

5/17 Sunny Kristine Jasmine + Ally

5/24  Jeff Peggy Vivianne Byun

5/31  Judy Rita Amy Virginia

6/7  Doris Lynn Nancy + Sunny

6/14 Marvin Henry Chloe Annie Megan Oscar Morgan

6/21  final exam

6/28 interview

There are a number of patterns to be found in the transcripts. For example, most had read something about a supposed Jewish global conspiracy or heard about it from friends or family. A female engineer who grew up in a Turkish family in Germany said, "People talk about it, that the world is governed by some families, about 120 families. They are Jewish and that they control the government, more or less. All these diseases, bacteria, that are being spread everywhere in the world here, supposedly also come from there, that means the whole system in the world! I do think that Jews very, very much manipulate the world and also control it."

The people he spoke with seldom referred to the Koran or religious questions. For most of them, the Middle East was much more important.

One of the stories they told Ranan mirrored the plot of the Iranian TV show "Zahra's Blue Eyes," in which a leading Israeli politician has a Palestinian girl kidnapped to have her blue eyes transplanted into his blind son. The Palestinian territories' ambassador to the United States, Riyad Mansour, made a similar claim in 2015. He wrote to the UN secretary-general that Israel was organ-harvesting Palestinians who had been killed and that "bodies were returned with missing corneas and other organs."

One of Ranan's interview subjects was firmly convinced that organ theft was really happening. He said he had received reports from his own family. "Do you really think that my parents, my aunt and uncle, who experienced this, my mother-in-law, all of my relatives, do you really think they are lying to me?" he asked. He even claimed to have personally seen people who had had "their innards cut out."

The central subject in his conversations, Ranan writes, was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many of his interview subjects, he argues, said "Jew" when they meant "Israeli." As Ranan puts it, "When someone is shouting 'Jew, Jew, cowardly pig' at a protest in reaction to an Israeli bombing of Gaza, they aren't referring to London or New York Jews, but Israelis. That doesn't make it more pleasant for spectators and it is especially hard for Jews to bear."

Speaking in Berlin, Ranan repeatedly returns to this thought. "I don't claim there are no anti-Semites, I'm only saying that there needs to be some differentiation."

The cliché that Jews own German discount supermarket chain Aldi or drugstore Rossmann is clearly an anti-Semitic one. But it shouldn't be conflated with criticism of Israel's occupation policy. Many Muslims stand in solidarity with the Palestinians. "That is a real fight between neighbors," Ranan says. "I don't want to trivialize it, but if a million Danes came to Argentina to live, an anti-Danish movement would arise. Danish flags would be burned. One needs to see it that way."

A Winding Biography

Ranan isn't a hardliner. He actually seeks to develop a better understanding of his interview partners. Maybe it's connected to his unconventional background. Ranan is an Israeli, German and British citizen. He was born David Abraham Thomas Rosenzweig in Tel Aviv in 1946. His parents came from Germany. He claims they weren't passionate Zionists when they fled to the British Mandate for Palestine in 1933.

'We strongly urge everyone not to use synthetic cannabinoids'

The department "is continuing to work with local health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with other partners, to try to identify common products," Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said in a statement Monday.

"Without more information, IDPH does not know how much contaminated product is circulating or where," he said. "We strongly urge everyone not to use synthetic cannabinoids."

Synthetic cannabinoids, sometimes called "synthetic marijuana" or fake weed, are human-made chemicals that can be either sprayed on dried, shredded plant material and smoked, or sold as liquids to then be vaporized and inhaled in e-cigarettes or other devices.

"There's no such thing as one synthetic cannabinoid. There's hundreds of them, in fact, and even in the setting of this outbreak when we've been interviewing our cases, we've heard of dozens of names that these are going under," Arwady said.

Although these mind-altering chemicals are called cannabinoids, since they are designed to be similar to chemicals found in the marijuana plant, their actual impacts on the brain and body are much more powerful and can include side effects different from those of marijuana.

"They're synthetic, so they're all made in labs. They don't start like a plant like marijuana does," Arwady said.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2016 found that one of these chemically altered synthetic cannabinoids was 85 times as potent as tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the mind-altering chemical in marijuana.

These products can be toxic, and people who smoke them also can react with rapid heart rate, vomiting, agitation, confusion and hallucinations, according to the CDC. So why would anyone use them?

A few reasons might be that they are easily accessible. They are sold in convenience stores, gas stations, drug paraphernalia shops, novelty stores and even online. And they cost about $10 a packet, Arwady said.

"They also don't show up in urine drug screening in the way that regular marijuana would," she said. "So perhaps somebody who would use marijuana but is concerned about needing to take a drug test for work, for example, might think this is a safe alternative, but it's really not a safe alternative even at the best of times and especially not right now."

The federal government has banned many specific synthetic cannabinoids, and many state and local governments have passed laws targeting other dangerous synthetic cannabinoids.

However, makers of synthetic cannabinoids try to get around those laws by creating products with different ingredients and labeling them "not safe for human consumption" when they may appear like a type of incense or potpourri, according to the CDC.

"They're not regulated," Arwady said.

"The folks who are working to make these in the labs might know the chemicals that have been deemed technically illegal," she said. "They can make small changes in the molecules of what they're making in the lab and try to skirt that illegality."

3 arrested in connection with Illinois outbreak

The US Attorney's Office charged three men with federal drug offenses, accusing them of conspiring to sell synthetic cannabinoids at a Chicago convenience store, in connection with some of the cases.

"We've had to be a little bit creative with the ways that we've gone about identifying patients, making sure we're getting messaging to physicians, and then working with our partners on the law enforcement side to make sure that they're doing what they can to work on the supply side," Arwady said.

When it comes to synthetic cannabinoids, "what we want is for people to absolutely not use them," she said.