00:00:21:27 - 00:00:24:10 Folk a night. 00:00:24:10 - 00:00:26:21 Welcome. Welcome to Fabric of Folklore. 00:00:26:21 - 00:00:30:09 My name is Vanessa y Rogers, and I'm your host. 00:00:30:21 - 00:00:35:07 And in this podcast, we don't just look in the wardrobe. 00:00:35:12 - 00:00:37:13 We don't just look at the coats in the wardrobe. 00:00:37:13 - 00:00:41:12 But we throw them back and walk into the magical world 00:00:41:12 - 00:00:45:28 behind the coats, hat into the snowy world of folklore. 00:00:45:28 - 00:00:47:24 So we really dig deep. 00:00:47:24 - 00:00:52:06 We really like to understand the history and the culture behind the stories, 00:00:52:06 - 00:00:56:12 behind the legends, behind our traditions, so that we have a better understanding 00:00:56:20 - 00:01:01:04 of our world and of our connections to one another. 00:01:01:12 - 00:01:05:07 And it helps us to inform ourselves of 00:01:06:14 - 00:01:11:21 where, why we're doing different things, why we celebrate these traditions 00:01:11:21 - 00:01:16:15 in these ways, or why we tell this story in this particular manner. 00:01:17:01 - 00:01:22:18 So I think that this is such an important topic that we are covering. And 00:01:23:20 - 00:01:25:22 if this sounds like a fantastic 00:01:25:22 - 00:01:28:27 podcast, please hit that subscribe button right now. 00:01:29:10 - 00:01:32:29 And we have a fantastic show for you today. 00:01:33:06 - 00:01:36:27 We're diving into the fascinating world of folklore and medicine, 00:01:36:28 - 00:01:41:06 specifically contagion and contamination, where we will discuss 00:01:41:06 - 00:01:44:07 legends and narratives, including vampires, zombies 00:01:44:07 - 00:01:47:10 and the Slenderman and other legends where you're talking with Dr. 00:01:47:10 - 00:01:50:21 Andrea Kidder about her research into folklore legends 00:01:51:00 - 00:01:54:15 and how they intersect with public health and how folklorists 00:01:54:15 - 00:01:59:08 are uniquely positioned to help fill in the gaps in the medical sphere 00:01:59:08 - 00:02:03:13 in regards to contagion and public health and vaccine. Dr. 00:02:03:13 - 00:02:05:11 Andrew Kidd is a folklorist 00:02:05:11 - 00:02:09:00 with a specialty in medicine, belief and the supernatural. 00:02:09:15 - 00:02:13:15 Her current research includes vaccines, pandemic illness, contagion 00:02:13:15 - 00:02:15:18 and contamination, and she's been awarded 00:02:15:18 - 00:02:19:01 several accolades, including for her most recent book, The Kiss of Death, 00:02:19:11 - 00:02:23:12 Contagion and Contamination of Folklore, including the Chicago Folklore Prize, 00:02:23:23 - 00:02:27:24 Best Book of Folklore scholarship for that year, which I think was 2020. 00:02:28:12 - 00:02:31:12 And she is currently a professor at East Carolina University. 00:02:31:12 - 00:02:33:06 So thank you so much for joining us. 00:02:33:06 - 00:02:35:07 I'm so excited about this story today. 00:02:35:07 - 00:02:36:02 Thanks for having me. 00:02:36:02 - 00:02:38:00 I'm really happy to be here. 00:02:38:00 - 00:02:41:21 So I always like to ask our guests basically their origin story. 00:02:42:05 - 00:02:45:21 Help us to understand how you got into folklore 00:02:45:21 - 00:02:50:11 and then how you got into the realm of of medicine in folklore. 00:02:51:21 - 00:02:54:20 Yeah, that's a it's a great, great place to start. 00:02:54:20 - 00:02:58:08 So I think there was like early indicators that I was going to be a folklorist. 00:02:59:24 - 00:03:02:24 So like retrospectively looking back, I was like, 00:03:03:03 - 00:03:05:21 yeah, my, my, I was obsessed 00:03:05:21 - 00:03:08:21 with so many things like ghost stories. 00:03:08:29 - 00:03:12:19 And I think my family let me read Poltergeist like, a dozen times. 00:03:14:00 - 00:03:16:02 And I was just Ghostbusters to 00:03:16:02 - 00:03:19:02 that was another big like thing for me as a kid. 00:03:19:07 - 00:03:19:26 So yeah 00:03:19:26 - 00:03:21:26 and I would, I would go to the library, I would take out 00:03:21:26 - 00:03:24:26 all the books on mythology and all that. 00:03:24:26 - 00:03:27:26 So I think there were some early indicators, but 00:03:28:04 - 00:03:31:12 I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do when I got to college. 00:03:31:12 - 00:03:34:14 So I started out as a history major because I like stories. 00:03:34:25 - 00:03:35:22 And I like history. 00:03:35:22 - 00:03:36:15 And I knew that. 00:03:36:15 - 00:03:39:13 So yeah, I started out as history. 00:03:39:13 - 00:03:43:09 And then I was, you know, I really like the oral history part of it. 00:03:43:09 - 00:03:48:08 But then I kind of at the time in history it was oral 00:03:48:08 - 00:03:51:08 history was great if it collaborated with what people already knew. 00:03:51:18 - 00:03:53:23 So it wasn't used as its own form of evidence. 00:03:53:23 - 00:03:56:23 And I thought, Oh, that's, that's kind of not right to me. 00:03:56:28 - 00:04:01:15 So anyway, I was I had graduated and I was taking a couple of classes 00:04:01:15 - 00:04:02:21 just for fun, 00:04:02:21 - 00:04:04:15 and I ended up talking to this grad student 00:04:04:15 - 00:04:06:03 and I was like, These are all the things I like. 00:04:06:03 - 00:04:08:12 And he was like, You should be a folklorist. 00:04:08:12 - 00:04:09:20 And I was like, Oh, what? 00:04:10:20 - 00:04:11:29 I never heard of it. 00:04:11:29 - 00:04:14:11 I did not know anything about it. 00:04:14:11 - 00:04:17:01 And he's like, Yeah, this is like, you should go home and look into it. 00:04:17:01 - 00:04:18:14 And I went home and looked into it 00:04:18:14 - 00:04:21:03 and like immediately started applying for programs. 00:04:21:03 - 00:04:22:09 So I was like, Yep, this is it. 00:04:22:09 - 00:04:25:09 This is exactly what I want to do. 00:04:25:28 - 00:04:28:05 I'm sorry. 00:04:28:05 - 00:04:29:12 I'm sorry. 00:04:29:12 - 00:04:31:24 I'm still getting over something here. 00:04:31:24 - 00:04:34:28 It's it's one of those things where I think, like, 00:04:35:27 - 00:04:39:06 it makes perfect sense now, but at the time I just had no idea 00:04:39:06 - 00:04:42:20 what I wanted to do, and I was like, Is this is this even a thing? 00:04:43:11 - 00:04:45:10 But yeah, I found that it was a thing. 00:04:45:10 - 00:04:48:24 So I, you know, I did my masters at Western Kentucky, 00:04:49:19 - 00:04:51:18 and then I went on to do my Ph.D. 00:04:51:18 - 00:04:53:28 at Memorial University in Newfoundland. 00:04:53:28 - 00:04:55:29 So, so that's what I ended up doing. 00:04:55:29 - 00:05:00:01 And then I got a job in Newfoundland where it's New Zealand, it's off the east 00:05:00:01 - 00:05:01:06 coast of Canada. So it's an 00:05:02:08 - 00:05:04:29 okay, great folklore program. 00:05:04:29 - 00:05:07:29 So everybody should go. 00:05:08:13 - 00:05:09:12 It's also beautiful. 00:05:09:12 - 00:05:10:22 Like Newfoundland is amazing. 00:05:10:22 - 00:05:14:17 It has like icebergs and whales and it's just like the whole place is magical. 00:05:14:18 - 00:05:17:03 Like, I got how I felt. 00:05:17:03 - 00:05:21:03 Like I had moved to like some sort of, like, magical fairy realm 00:05:22:08 - 00:05:24:07 like this on the ocean. 00:05:24:07 - 00:05:27:18 And there was like, it was just yeah, it was insane 00:05:27:18 - 00:05:30:18 when I got there and I was just like, So is it freezing there? 00:05:30:24 - 00:05:32:15 Is it is it really cold? 00:05:32:15 - 00:05:34:15 It's really bad. 00:05:34:15 - 00:05:38:22 It's coastal cities, sometimes coastal cities are a little bit more temperate. 00:05:39:07 - 00:05:40:04 They are, yeah. 00:05:40:04 - 00:05:42:21 And this is one of those places where it snows a lot. 00:05:42:21 - 00:05:45:12 Like, I'm not going to say it doesn't smoke, 00:05:45:12 - 00:05:48:24 but it's always just like in the winter, it's like right around freezing. 00:05:49:03 - 00:05:50:13 It doesn't like get super. 00:05:50:13 - 00:05:53:15 Oh, yeah, Yeah. So it's manageable. 00:05:54:04 - 00:05:54:27 Yeah. Yeah. 00:05:54:27 - 00:05:55:20 I lived in Pittsburgh. 00:05:55:20 - 00:05:58:01 I got colder there, so. 00:05:58:01 - 00:06:00:09 So it's pretty manageable because of the the airflow. 00:06:00:09 - 00:06:01:26 But it does snow a lot. 00:06:01:26 - 00:06:06:16 But it's, it's just Yeah, it's this amazing, just incredible place. 00:06:06:16 - 00:06:08:27 I absolutely loved living there. 00:06:08:27 - 00:06:10:15 I would move back in a heartbeat if I could. 00:06:12:06 - 00:06:12:18 Yeah. 00:06:12:18 - 00:06:13:19 So it was 00:06:13:19 - 00:06:17:11 great to be able to study folklore and like such an amazing setting to so well. 00:06:17:11 - 00:06:19:21 And I think folklore is kind of in its own bubble. 00:06:19:21 - 00:06:23:18 I never, I have a, a degree, communication degree 00:06:23:18 - 00:06:25:02 and then I have a master's in business 00:06:25:02 - 00:06:29:11 and I had never heard of the term folklore until I started this podcast. 00:06:29:17 - 00:06:31:12 And so I started researching folklore. 00:06:31:12 - 00:06:34:13 And so and it I feel like it's 00:06:35:03 - 00:06:38:03 an, an area that I am very much interested in. 00:06:38:03 - 00:06:41:03 And so it's fascinating that so many people, 00:06:41:03 - 00:06:45:09 a lot of the folklore that I have come on, they had never heard the term either. 00:06:45:09 - 00:06:46:12 So it's just interesting. 00:06:46:12 - 00:06:48:09 It's just kind of like in its own little bubble 00:06:48:09 - 00:06:51:23 that not a lot of outsiders know about. 00:06:52:06 - 00:06:55:06 But it's it's a fascinating realm of topic. 00:06:55:14 - 00:06:58:15 Yeah. And it's it is So I love it so much. 00:06:59:14 - 00:06:59:29 I'm so 00:06:59:29 - 00:07:03:00 happy to talk about it because Yeah, was exactly like 00:07:03:00 - 00:07:08:03 I'd be doing that stuff even if I wasn't a PhD in it or a professional, I would be. 00:07:08:10 - 00:07:10:14 I probably still be doing all this stuff anyway. 00:07:10:14 - 00:07:13:14 So I think so. 00:07:13:15 - 00:07:17:11 So when did the medicine part come into your your research? 00:07:17:12 - 00:07:20:00 When did that start to become your focus? 00:07:20:00 - 00:07:22:02 Yeah, you know, it was always kind of there 00:07:22:02 - 00:07:25:29 because I was always really interested in medicine and, you know, 00:07:26:01 - 00:07:28:21 I was especially interested in 00:07:28:21 - 00:07:32:00 urban legend and how urban legend affects medical decision making. 00:07:32:10 - 00:07:33:04 I was I news. 00:07:33:04 - 00:07:36:04 There are so many stories and I thought, oh, my gosh, you know, we 00:07:36:04 - 00:07:39:21 we treat people in so many different ways based off the stories that we hear. 00:07:40:01 - 00:07:41:16 And that's especially true in medicine. 00:07:41:16 - 00:07:44:21 But then we also make decisions for our own bodies about these stories 00:07:44:24 - 00:07:47:07 that we here, too. So I thought, Oh, that's fascinating. 00:07:47:07 - 00:07:50:17 And I was really interested in how, you know, you can present people 00:07:50:17 - 00:07:54:03 with the same information and people will make totally different decisions. 00:07:54:03 - 00:07:55:26 And I was like, Why is that? 00:07:55:26 - 00:07:59:16 You know, like, why are some of us like really into, 00:07:59:25 - 00:08:02:25 you know, we want the numbers and the facts and other people are more 00:08:03:04 - 00:08:06:02 in tune with stories or some people like both, 00:08:06:02 - 00:08:08:04 you know, like why does that happen that way? Like what? 00:08:08:04 - 00:08:11:24 How do our brains work that make us, you know, want these things? 00:08:12:03 - 00:08:13:17 So I thought that was really fascinating. 00:08:13:17 - 00:08:17:28 And I thought it was so interesting to me that so many people were making like, 00:08:17:29 - 00:08:20:28 like real decisions about their own health 00:08:20:28 - 00:08:24:25 based off of information that just they just heard somewhere. 00:08:24:25 - 00:08:26:19 And like some of it is true and some of it's not. 00:08:26:19 - 00:08:26:28 And like, 00:08:26:28 - 00:08:30:18 that's a good thing to know about folklore is sometimes folklore is, you know, it's 00:08:30:19 - 00:08:32:12 not automatically false because it's folklore. 00:08:32:12 - 00:08:34:08 It's like it can be true. 00:08:34:08 - 00:08:36:18 So it was so interesting to hear. 00:08:36:18 - 00:08:38:16 They are like, well, I heard from this person 00:08:38:16 - 00:08:40:12 that they had this really bad time with this, 00:08:40:12 - 00:08:42:13 you know, one surgery or something like that. 00:08:42:13 - 00:08:43:18 So I'll never do that. 00:08:43:18 - 00:08:46:07 And it's like, Well, yeah, but that was like one instance. 00:08:46:07 - 00:08:48:13 It goes to the evidence. 00:08:48:13 - 00:08:51:13 And so it was like, it's really interesting what sways people. 00:08:51:24 - 00:08:53:21 And so I was really fascinated about that. 00:08:53:21 - 00:08:57:17 And like, even what, what caused me to make different medical decisions. 00:08:58:04 - 00:09:01:20 So like, why was I okay with some things and not okay with other things and, 00:09:01:20 - 00:09:05:00 and so like that that really I don't know, that really fascinated me. 00:09:05:00 - 00:09:08:00 And I guess it still does because it's tough studying. 00:09:08:13 - 00:09:09:27 I haven't figured it out so 00:09:11:13 - 00:09:11:20 well. 00:09:11:20 - 00:09:15:14 And this came up for me a lot because I had given birth in a hospital 00:09:15:14 - 00:09:19:26 and I before when I was pregnant, I kept hearing all these stories 00:09:19:26 - 00:09:23:02 about how the United States, for an industrialized countries, 00:09:23:13 - 00:09:26:03 has one of the highest maternal death rate. 00:09:26:03 - 00:09:29:04 And they kept talking about the reasons behind that. 00:09:29:04 - 00:09:32:19 And one of it was that the medical community there are all these 00:09:32:19 - 00:09:36:02 beliefs, misunderstandings, especially around 00:09:36:04 - 00:09:39:04 the minority and minority women, 00:09:39:08 - 00:09:43:10 about how they feel about pain and how they're not believed as much. 00:09:43:17 - 00:09:48:29 And that there's this these stories going around in the doctor community 00:09:49:21 - 00:09:54:18 that really affect this high rate of maternal deaths, 00:09:54:26 - 00:09:59:09 which is just mind boggling to me because we have great medical schools 00:09:59:09 - 00:10:02:09 and it's just and facilities and it 00:10:02:14 - 00:10:05:07 I just don't understand how this can happen. 00:10:05:07 - 00:10:05:19 Yeah. 00:10:05:19 - 00:10:09:08 And it's so interesting to see and there's been so many studies 00:10:09:08 - 00:10:12:09 just study after study, not only on that, but on other things, too. 00:10:12:17 - 00:10:15:17 Like I know there was one study that came out that said 00:10:15:19 - 00:10:20:19 that when it comes to understanding menopause, doctors actually rely more on 00:10:20:19 - 00:10:24:18 what their mothers experience was like than what the actual medicine is like. 00:10:24:24 - 00:10:26:22 So they're they're like they're believable. 00:10:26:22 - 00:10:30:14 Like how much they believe a woman when she's talking about her symptoms. 00:10:30:28 - 00:10:34:00 Yeah, totally depends on what their mother's experience was. 00:10:34:12 - 00:10:38:09 And like, that was like I was just sitting there like, that's mind blowing. 00:10:38:09 - 00:10:41:11 Like, you knew of all people know the science, right? 00:10:41:11 - 00:10:43:09 Like, yeah, actually medical training 00:10:43:09 - 00:10:46:27 and but that's so true, especially when you're looking at maternal health care. 00:10:47:07 - 00:10:50:24 There are so many things out there that people just don't understand 00:10:50:24 - 00:10:55:08 and they're leaning in to these ideas that are just simply not true 00:10:55:08 - 00:10:58:28 and based off of like really old ideas 00:10:58:28 - 00:11:01:28 do, especially when you're talking about like the perception of pain. 00:11:02:01 - 00:11:04:23 I mean, that was that was something that was said 00:11:04:23 - 00:11:07:06 when people were enslaved, right? 00:11:07:06 - 00:11:07:23 That it was 00:11:07:23 - 00:11:09:27 this was okay to do because they didn't feel pain 00:11:09:27 - 00:11:11:23 in the same way that white people did. 00:11:11:23 - 00:11:14:24 And it's just like, oh, I just actualization 00:11:14:24 - 00:11:17:12 for why you can you can hurt someone. 00:11:17:12 - 00:11:18:07 Exactly. 00:11:18:07 - 00:11:20:21 And so much of that is based off of that. 00:11:20:21 - 00:11:23:00 And I was actually I was having this whole discussion 00:11:23:00 - 00:11:24:20 the other day with with a friend. 00:11:24:20 - 00:11:29:06 She was having some some surgery done and they were 00:11:29:06 - 00:11:31:13 the doctor was talking about like, oh, you know, 00:11:31:13 - 00:11:33:19 I have to get these these angles on your face. 00:11:33:19 - 00:11:36:19 Correct. For, you know, for certain things. 00:11:36:19 - 00:11:40:26 And when she actually looked into the research on that, the angles on the face 00:11:40:26 - 00:11:45:04 that he perceived as correct were someone that was like involved in eugenics 00:11:45:12 - 00:11:49:13 and was saying that like the Caucasian form is the perfect form. 00:11:49:13 - 00:11:54:18 And and with like, you know, like was relying on urination and they had no idea. 00:11:54:18 - 00:11:55:04 That's the 00:11:55:04 - 00:11:58:28 the worst part is the doctor had no idea that's what that was based off of. 00:11:58:28 - 00:12:01:20 That was just what he was taught and was like, oh, okay. 00:12:01:20 - 00:12:03:26 Like this is, you know, this is the stuff you do. 00:12:03:26 - 00:12:04:15 You want to make sure 00:12:04:15 - 00:12:08:08 that the face looks natural after, you know, a facial reconstruction. 00:12:08:20 - 00:12:12:27 And and it was like, no, this stuff is so much based on this this, 00:12:12:27 - 00:12:16:04 you know, this doctor from even know how many years ago 00:12:16:14 - 00:12:20:08 that, you know, was completely relying on, you know, Caucasians 00:12:20:08 - 00:12:21:21 as being the perfect human form. 00:12:21:21 - 00:12:26:17 And it's like right, like, oh, you know, that's my mind. 00:12:26:17 - 00:12:29:11 And I was like, oh, gosh. And like and he had no idea she told them. 00:12:29:11 - 00:12:31:19 And he was like, I had no idea. 00:12:31:19 - 00:12:33:02 And even he was shocked by it. 00:12:33:02 - 00:12:35:19 So I think too, that like, things get taught to you 00:12:35:19 - 00:12:37:29 and you don't know the cultural history of it as well. 00:12:37:29 - 00:12:41:10 And so that, you know, sometimes you don't know that these actually came 00:12:41:10 - 00:12:45:20 from people who were, you know, functioning under this idea of, 00:12:46:10 - 00:12:50:17 you know, one race being superior or horrible ideas. 00:12:51:03 - 00:12:52:15 But there's so much out there 00:12:52:15 - 00:12:56:02 that still influenced by that, and I think we forget that. 00:12:56:12 - 00:12:59:21 And so, yeah, these little things throughout health care and 00:13:00:12 - 00:13:04:14 and yeah the maternal pain thing again there was a study that was done 00:13:04:14 - 00:13:08:27 I think only a couple of years ago and, and they asked medical students 00:13:09:21 - 00:13:12:10 how many of them believed that 00:13:12:10 - 00:13:15:18 especially black women have less pain. 00:13:15:24 - 00:13:17:18 And it was like 70%. 00:13:17:18 - 00:13:20:12 And I was just like overwhelmed by this number. 00:13:20:12 - 00:13:24:04 So it's like, how are we how are we not how we would not gotten rid of that. 00:13:24:24 - 00:13:28:08 Yeah, and it is in their medical textbooks. 00:13:28:08 - 00:13:31:24 How aware of that even coming from are they just telling stories 00:13:31:24 - 00:13:33:22 within their own classrooms? Like how does that 00:13:34:22 - 00:13:37:23 how is that infiltrating and fascinating. 00:13:38:07 - 00:13:38:25 It is. 00:13:38:25 - 00:13:43:09 And there's this this really great anthropologist named Emily Martin. 00:13:43:09 - 00:13:46:14 And she had done a lot of work, like in the nineties on this stuff. 00:13:47:03 - 00:13:50:12 And what she actually studied was grand Rounds. 00:13:50:12 - 00:13:54:09 So it's like when the doctors present cases to each other and they kind of like 00:13:54:17 - 00:13:57:01 talk through and they learn from each other. 00:13:57:01 - 00:14:00:01 And but one of the things she noticed in Grand Rounds is even 00:14:00:01 - 00:14:03:01 if you're a person of color or you're a woman, 00:14:03:01 - 00:14:07:05 you still describe things as using the white male body as the ideal body. 00:14:08:04 - 00:14:09:26 Wow. And it didn't matter. 00:14:09:26 - 00:14:13:26 It did not matter because all that stuff is so indoctrinated, ingrained to. 00:14:13:27 - 00:14:14:10 Yeah. 00:14:14:10 - 00:14:18:29 Into what they were learning that even if you weren't the ideal body, 00:14:18:29 - 00:14:23:00 you still compared it to their perception of the ideal body, which is white male. 00:14:23:18 - 00:14:24:15 So yeah. 00:14:24:15 - 00:14:27:07 And that was just like, Oh my gosh, how is that? 00:14:27:07 - 00:14:30:02 How is that even for people of color and for women? 00:14:30:02 - 00:14:33:04 But it's because it is, you know, it's an indoctrination. 00:14:33:04 - 00:14:36:12 It's a it gets ingrained into the the way that you're taught 00:14:36:28 - 00:14:39:21 in school for a really long time. 00:14:39:21 - 00:14:42:29 And so there's right to be for that to be reinforced. 00:14:42:29 - 00:14:46:26 So, yeah, it's really shocking, like how many times that comes up. 00:14:48:00 - 00:14:50:24 And I think it's started to be brought to light a little bit more. 00:14:50:24 - 00:14:55:05 I've read a couple of books recently that were historical fictions, 00:14:55:11 - 00:14:58:01 like the book, what was it? 00:14:58:01 - 00:15:02:16 The book Woman of Troublesome Creek and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, 00:15:02:16 - 00:15:06:11 both kind of brought to light some of that systematic racism. 00:15:06:11 - 00:15:09:17 But I definitely think that it is a topic that really needs 00:15:09:17 - 00:15:13:15 to be brought more into focus into the medical world. 00:15:13:28 - 00:15:15:00 Yeah, absolutely. 00:15:15:00 - 00:15:18:02 And that's that's something we should be talking about, medicalized sexism 00:15:18:02 - 00:15:22:16 and medicalized racism all the time because it happens over and over. 00:15:22:16 - 00:15:23:24 And sometimes we don't even 00:15:23:24 - 00:15:26:20 like a lot of doctors don't even realize they're doing it. 00:15:26:20 - 00:15:30:08 So it's you know, it's something we actually have to point out to them 00:15:30:08 - 00:15:33:08 and say, like, maybe you need to look at how 00:15:33:09 - 00:15:37:19 we can talk to women about their pain and believe it if they're in pain, you know? 00:15:38:00 - 00:15:41:01 So like, how many of you are like, how many times do you give an MRI to a guy 00:15:41:02 - 00:15:43:00 that you don't give to a woman? Right. 00:15:43:00 - 00:15:45:16 Right. Like that kind of right. 00:15:45:16 - 00:15:48:24 And those are things that statistics can can root out 00:15:49:04 - 00:15:53:11 and help us to see what stories are actually infiltrating 00:15:53:19 - 00:15:55:27 because, you know, people don't really understand. 00:15:55:27 - 00:15:58:12 They don't know because, you know, a lot of culture is 00:15:58:12 - 00:16:02:08 just like we said, it is so ingrained that we don't even know it. 00:16:02:09 - 00:16:03:18 It's happening. 00:16:03:18 - 00:16:04:25 Yeah, absolutely. 00:16:04:25 - 00:16:06:21 And I think because you've heard a story 00:16:06:21 - 00:16:09:14 so many times, you don't question it, right? 00:16:09:14 - 00:16:13:27 When I was first doing my research for my dissertation, I actually found 00:16:13:27 - 00:16:17:10 this legend in Newfoundland that I started calling the doctor from Toronto. 00:16:17:23 - 00:16:22:22 And it was a story about a family that had come into the hospital 00:16:22:22 - 00:16:23:20 for some other reason. 00:16:23:20 - 00:16:25:25 It was like something like the kid had a fall or something, 00:16:25:25 - 00:16:27:19 but they brought their child into the hospital 00:16:27:19 - 00:16:30:18 for not an infectious disease or anything like that. 00:16:30:18 - 00:16:33:23 And so it is usually like a broken bone, something silly like that. 00:16:34:18 - 00:16:38:15 And the doctor finds out that the child is not vaccinated 00:16:38:20 - 00:16:42:22 and they actually call Child Protective Services and say that this is 00:16:43:01 - 00:16:46:01 you know, this is like the level that they take it to. 00:16:46:03 - 00:16:49:15 And so many of the people in Newfoundland, the doctors in Newfoundland 00:16:49:19 - 00:16:52:18 that told and retold the story over and over again 00:16:52:18 - 00:16:55:17 were sort of telling it in this way, like, but we're not like that. 00:16:55:17 - 00:16:57:03 Like, that's that's people in Toronto. 00:16:57:03 - 00:16:58:13 So it was also a commentary 00:16:58:13 - 00:17:01:20 on like the different parts of Canada and how they feel about each other. 00:17:02:05 - 00:17:06:02 But it was also this idea too, that like this is important and like in 00:17:06:02 - 00:17:10:00 other places, this could happen to you, so you better get your kid vaccinated. 00:17:10:00 - 00:17:13:18 So it wasn't just this like you should do it for medical reasons. 00:17:13:18 - 00:17:17:05 You should do it right so that your child is if the government doesn't take them. 00:17:17:12 - 00:17:17:27 Yeah. 00:17:17:27 - 00:17:20:27 And I mean, that's like a big threat if you really think about it. 00:17:20:27 - 00:17:21:05 Yeah. 00:17:21:05 - 00:17:24:05 Like the threat of having your child taken away is terrifying. 00:17:24:12 - 00:17:27:23 And so this was a story that even there they'd be like, Well, I won't do this. 00:17:27:23 - 00:17:29:02 It was still like this. 00:17:29:02 - 00:17:31:14 A little bit of a threat. Still there. 00:17:31:14 - 00:17:34:20 And it was so funny because I tried to track this down 00:17:34:20 - 00:17:37:05 to just find out like, how did this story start? 00:17:37:05 - 00:17:39:00 And every time I'd find somebody, they'd be like, 00:17:39:00 - 00:17:40:24 Oh yeah, I heard it from one of my professors 00:17:40:24 - 00:17:42:09 and then I'd like track down that professor. 00:17:42:09 - 00:17:42:21 And he's like, Well, 00:17:42:21 - 00:17:46:12 I heard it from one of my professors and I'm like, Yeah, how old is the story? 00:17:47:11 - 00:17:50:03 And it was like, I was like, I thought, Oh, it's got to be new enough. 00:17:50:03 - 00:17:53:07 Maybe I can track down some origins or at least get back 00:17:53:07 - 00:17:57:08 to like some kind of place where a lot of people heard it couldn't couldn't do it. 00:17:57:08 - 00:17:59:19 Just like most folklore, you can never find the origin. 00:17:59:19 - 00:18:02:18 So what do you call that in folklore? 00:18:02:18 - 00:18:05:00 Cause like in medicine, you call that patient zero, right? 00:18:05:00 - 00:18:07:14 Like the origin of of medicine. 00:18:07:14 - 00:18:10:24 What do you call it in folklore, You know, it doesn't happen very often. 00:18:10:24 - 00:18:14:02 So I don't know if we have a term I wish it would actually do. 00:18:14:19 - 00:18:18:00 So. Like a lot of times, especially in the past when we were trying 00:18:18:00 - 00:18:22:20 to to figure that out, a lot of people would call that the Earth story. 00:18:22:20 - 00:18:24:19 So you are after the first city. 00:18:25:18 - 00:18:26:06 And and then 00:18:26:06 - 00:18:29:06 we found that there's like there's no way to really find it. 00:18:29:19 - 00:18:31:05 So that was like especially when you're talking 00:18:31:05 - 00:18:32:29 about something that's been around for a long time 00:18:32:29 - 00:18:34:09 now, the Internet's a bit different. 00:18:34:09 - 00:18:36:23 Like we can actually track things on the Internet. 00:18:36:23 - 00:18:40:18 So like I can tell you the exact post that started the Slenderman story, 00:18:40:28 - 00:18:45:16 but I can't necessarily tell you anything that's a bit older than that. 00:18:45:16 - 00:18:48:26 So because there's, you know, there's always this idea to even if we find it 00:18:48:26 - 00:18:51:28 in print, it's probably been in oral circulation before that. 00:18:52:06 - 00:18:52:19 Right. Right. 00:18:52:19 - 00:18:56:07 And then trying to figure out when that started, it's like, oh, God. 00:18:56:18 - 00:18:58:20 And then finding out if that's continuous, right? 00:18:58:20 - 00:19:01:20 Because sometimes things die out and then they come back. 00:19:01:20 - 00:19:04:14 And it's not that they've been told in between, it's 00:19:04:14 - 00:19:07:12 just that it totally died out. But we thought of it again. Right, right. 00:19:07:12 - 00:19:11:00 So there's you know, there's ways to kind of see how these things change, too. 00:19:11:00 - 00:19:14:25 And so, like, things like jokes will change to like different people. 00:19:14:25 - 00:19:18:12 So like, you know, like when I was a kid, it might have been a michael Jackson 00:19:18:12 - 00:19:21:24 joke, but it now it might be somebody else that they tell the joke about. 00:19:21:24 - 00:19:22:20 So, yeah. 00:19:22:20 - 00:19:24:18 So you celebrities change in your jokes, 00:19:24:18 - 00:19:26:11 your you know, those kind of things change. 00:19:26:11 - 00:19:29:11 So that's also hard to track then, too, because it's like, well, 00:19:29:19 - 00:19:31:26 maybe the story wasn't told about a doctor in Toronto. 00:19:31:26 - 00:19:33:27 Maybe it was told about a doctor someplace else. 00:19:33:27 - 00:19:38:18 And yes, so then it becomes really hard to find out where does this thing exist, 00:19:38:21 - 00:19:42:16 especially, like I said, with the oral tradition, there's no evidence, right? 00:19:42:16 - 00:19:44:00 There's no like printed form. 00:19:44:00 - 00:19:48:12 So we can go back to forms like how far back does it go before that? 00:19:48:29 - 00:19:49:09 Right? 00:19:49:09 - 00:19:52:07 And you can't track down dead people and you can't interview them. 00:19:52:07 - 00:19:54:08 And so we stop. Actually, 00:19:55:21 - 00:19:57:27 that would be a really interesting study, though. 00:19:57:27 - 00:19:59:23 If we could figure that out, that'd be great. 00:19:59:23 - 00:20:01:22 Yeah. 00:20:01:22 - 00:20:05:21 When you when you're able to start talking to Ghost, that's that's the key, right? 00:20:06:00 - 00:20:07:13 That Absolutely. 00:20:07:13 - 00:20:08:15 That would be really hilarious. 00:20:08:15 - 00:20:10:25 I could just see, like, maybe like pulling out a Ouija board 00:20:10:25 - 00:20:13:25 or something and being like, All right, we're going to we're going to track this. 00:20:15:08 - 00:20:18:12 There is no glass and mediums come together. 00:20:19:03 - 00:20:22:03 We're going to work together and 00:20:22:20 - 00:20:24:25 so when did the subject of content 00:20:24:25 - 00:20:28:28 contagion and contamination start to really fuel your interest? 00:20:29:17 - 00:20:32:29 Yeah, it's kind of accidentally. 00:20:34:03 - 00:20:38:07 I realized I was I was looking at all the different, like sort of presentations 00:20:38:07 - 00:20:41:08 and things that I was publishing and like the stuff I was interested in. 00:20:41:22 - 00:20:45:10 And I was like, Oh God, there's has to be some kind of thread here. 00:20:45:23 - 00:20:46:21 Like, What am I doing? 00:20:46:21 - 00:20:49:18 Like, there has to be something that's common. 00:20:49:18 - 00:20:52:17 And I was sitting there thinking about like, how, 00:20:52:17 - 00:20:54:29 what is the common thread in, in my work? 00:20:54:29 - 00:20:58:11 And then it just kind of hit me like I was like one of those shower moments, 00:20:58:11 - 00:21:01:05 like one day where I was like in the shower and I was like, 00:21:01:05 - 00:21:03:18 Oh, it's all about contagion and contamination. 00:21:03:18 - 00:21:05:28 That's everything I do is about that. 00:21:05:28 - 00:21:08:26 And I was like, Oh, okay, now that makes sense because I was, 00:21:08:26 - 00:21:10:07 you know, I think about Slenderman. 00:21:10:07 - 00:21:11:21 I was thinking about, 00:21:11:21 - 00:21:14:28 you know, I was teaching these classes on like zombies and vampires. 00:21:15:07 - 00:21:18:09 I was, you know, working with with vaccines and medicine. 00:21:18:09 - 00:21:21:09 I was like, okay, something has to bring all these things together. 00:21:21:24 - 00:21:23:16 And I was like, okay, that's what it is. 00:21:23:16 - 00:21:24:09 Like, that's the 00:21:24:09 - 00:21:28:15 that's the underlying thing that's happening here is that everything 00:21:28:15 - 00:21:33:15 I'm doing is talking about that idea of being contaminated or being contagious. 00:21:33:15 - 00:21:38:12 And yeah, so that was it took me a little while to get there, but I did. 00:21:38:24 - 00:21:41:24 And it's so funny because when I put the kiss of death together, 00:21:42:04 - 00:21:45:06 I remember like applying for this grant to try to get like a little bit 00:21:45:21 - 00:21:47:02 of like course release. 00:21:47:02 - 00:21:48:23 So I had some time to write 00:21:48:23 - 00:21:51:18 and everybody was like, This is super interesting, 00:21:51:18 - 00:21:53:24 but there's no way she can bring this all together. 00:21:53:24 - 00:21:55:28 And I was like, Challenge accepted, you know? 00:21:57:17 - 00:21:59:05 I'm like, I know. 00:21:59:05 - 00:22:00:09 I'm like, What? 00:22:00:09 - 00:22:03:10 I'm like, I know it's all up here right now, but it is up here. 00:22:03:10 - 00:22:04:23 I know how it all 00:22:04:23 - 00:22:08:01 all connects and I'm glad I made it all connect in the book, hopefully. 00:22:08:15 - 00:22:12:23 But do you have an entire floor filled with, like, 00:22:13:18 - 00:22:18:07 strings and ropes and yarn trying to connect things to one another? 00:22:18:12 - 00:22:22:15 It's not that far off, but yeah, sure, definitely Documents. 00:22:22:15 - 00:22:26:03 And there was writing and there was like there was a little like sometimes 00:22:26:10 - 00:22:27:05 when I'm writing too, 00:22:27:05 - 00:22:30:08 I like I get to a point where I'm like, I cannot look at a screen anymore. 00:22:30:14 - 00:22:31:20 So I print everything out 00:22:31:20 - 00:22:35:29 and then I literally cut and paste like, I get it and I like tape it all together. 00:22:35:29 - 00:22:38:21 And I'm like, Okay, yeah, this works, you know? 00:22:38:21 - 00:22:42:18 So it was a little bit like, but maybe, maybe I need the red strings. 00:22:42:18 - 00:22:45:13 Maybe that would be better. Yeah. Like the FBI do 00:22:46:21 - 00:22:47:18 that. 00:22:47:18 - 00:22:49:11 I think the theory too. 00:22:49:11 - 00:22:51:04 So, you know, why not? 00:22:51:04 - 00:22:53:09 Why not? 00:22:53:09 - 00:22:56:02 So this book came out right around 00:22:56:02 - 00:23:00:02 when the pandemic was happening, but you started it beforehand. 00:23:00:04 - 00:23:00:19 Yeah. 00:23:00:19 - 00:23:03:19 How how far in advance did you start this book? 00:23:04:01 - 00:23:08:20 I probably started writing it in like 2015, I think, And 00:23:08:27 - 00:23:12:15 and so, yeah, and it came out October of 2019. 00:23:12:27 - 00:23:17:22 And yeah, that was I mean, I couldn't have time to that 00:23:18:12 - 00:23:20:02 if I tried in a million years. 00:23:20:02 - 00:23:22:15 But it is kind of funny though, because like I tell people, 00:23:22:15 - 00:23:25:15 I've had a, a pandemic, 00:23:25:20 - 00:23:28:14 like what happens if we have a pandemic 00:23:28:14 - 00:23:31:14 on my syllabus since 2009, right? 00:23:32:21 - 00:23:36:12 So I've been like I've been kind of knowing that a pandemic was coming. 00:23:36:12 - 00:23:38:27 We were we're overdue for a one and Right. 00:23:38:27 - 00:23:43:00 Epidemiologists have been saying for decades that we were do 00:23:43:00 - 00:23:48:16 we were right for a pandemic, and it just had not occurred for so long. 00:23:49:23 - 00:23:50:07 Yeah. 00:23:50:07 - 00:23:52:24 And it just it we were so overdue for one. 00:23:52:24 - 00:23:54:12 So I was like, oh, it's going to happen. 00:23:54:12 - 00:23:56:03 So, yeah, I had a statement on my syllabus. 00:23:56:03 - 00:23:57:29 It's like and it said to you, it said like, 00:23:57:29 - 00:24:01:10 because I live in North Carolina, it says, like in case of hurricane pandemic, 00:24:01:14 - 00:24:04:14 I was like hurricane more likely, but endemic. 00:24:06:06 - 00:24:08:14 Well, at one point I had heard this. 00:24:08:14 - 00:24:13:00 The CDC actually has a zombie contingency plan, but they don't actually 00:24:13:00 - 00:24:17:28 believe that, you know, zombies in the that people dying come back. 00:24:17:28 - 00:24:21:03 But, you know, something similar and, you know, 00:24:21:06 - 00:24:24:21 where people are not themselves in 00:24:25:04 - 00:24:28:03 is something that you've seen or studied. 00:24:28:03 - 00:24:30:13 Yeah, actually, I wrote a little bit about it 00:24:30:13 - 00:24:32:27 because I thought it was so interesting that they and they 00:24:32:27 - 00:24:35:27 they kind of did it as like a joke, like a Halloween. 00:24:36:03 - 00:24:39:03 I can't remember if it was Halloween or April Fools that they did it for. 00:24:39:09 - 00:24:42:07 And but they were like, you know, But at the same time, 00:24:42:07 - 00:24:45:05 this is all useful information for any emergency. Right. 00:24:45:05 - 00:24:48:05 But we're going to do like how to survive a zombie apocalypse. 00:24:48:12 - 00:24:51:11 They actually tried to follow up with a vampire one, 00:24:51:11 - 00:24:52:26 and I think it was vampire nutrition. 00:24:52:26 - 00:24:55:24 I can't remember, but it was not as popular. 00:24:55:24 - 00:24:57:23 But the apocalypse one was. 00:24:58:24 - 00:25:00:00 And yeah, I thought it was 00:25:00:00 - 00:25:03:00 actually it was a really creative way to get people's attention right, 00:25:03:08 - 00:25:06:09 because stuff that they were talking about is good in any emergency. 00:25:07:00 - 00:25:09:23 But yeah, it was really interesting to see that they had done 00:25:09:23 - 00:25:12:23 this kind of like tongue in cheek like, Ha ha is not funny. 00:25:13:00 - 00:25:16:03 Yeah, like a lot of people were like, took it kind of seriously 00:25:16:03 - 00:25:19:21 and they were like, Oh my God, the CDC put out a zombie pandemic. 00:25:19:21 - 00:25:21:21 Like, like, what are we going to do? 00:25:21:21 - 00:25:24:21 It's like, probably going to be fine 00:25:25:09 - 00:25:26:21 now. It makes me want to read it now. 00:25:26:21 - 00:25:29:16 I never actually read it, but now I want to know. 00:25:29:16 - 00:25:31:21 It's pretty good. 00:25:31:21 - 00:25:34:21 Well, a look at a link up on our website 00:25:35:02 - 00:25:37:15 that way that people can can access it. 00:25:37:15 - 00:25:40:19 Maybe if we can get a link to the vampire one too as well. 00:25:40:19 - 00:25:41:24 Yeah, that would be good. 00:25:42:23 - 00:25:45:13 So did you see any historical similarities 00:25:45:13 - 00:25:48:17 between past epidemics or pandemics 00:25:48:26 - 00:25:51:29 that we saw and in this most recent one? 00:25:52:10 - 00:25:53:22 Yeah, absolutely. 00:25:53:22 - 00:25:58:19 And you know, I think probably that the two that kind of came up 00:25:58:19 - 00:26:03:05 a lot were HIV AIDS and the 00:26:03:05 - 00:26:06:05 the 1918 what's usually called the Spanish flu. 00:26:06:16 - 00:26:11:03 Um, and, and those two I definitely saw some similarities between those of 00:26:11:03 - 00:26:14:03 somebody that, you know, kind of looked at both of those and studied them. 00:26:15:01 - 00:26:17:24 And I think actually it was really interesting because at first 00:26:17:24 - 00:26:21:08 when I started thinking about HIV AIDS, I was like, 00:26:22:09 - 00:26:25:22 you know, this is like, is this something that is good? 00:26:25:22 - 00:26:27:01 Is it a good comparison? 00:26:27:01 - 00:26:29:18 And it really is for so many reasons. 00:26:29:18 - 00:26:32:28 And a lot of them have to do with stigma and and that 00:26:33:18 - 00:26:36:12 that idea of patient zero and blame. 00:26:36:12 - 00:26:39:26 And so there was so much there about if you don't 00:26:40:02 - 00:26:41:17 and so much is the whole reason 00:26:41:17 - 00:26:45:21 these stories exist is so that we can feel like if I just don't do 00:26:45:21 - 00:26:50:14 these things that that patient zero did or that that person did, then I'm safe. 00:26:50:16 - 00:26:53:02 Right. And and that sense of control. 00:26:53:02 - 00:26:55:19 Yeah, a sense of control and some comfort. 00:26:55:19 - 00:26:58:11 So it was, you know, especially HIV aids in the US, 00:26:58:11 - 00:27:01:15 it was like, okay, well, I'm not gay, so I'm fine. 00:27:01:15 - 00:27:03:06 And it's like, no, you're not. 00:27:03:06 - 00:27:05:12 You know, like, that's not exactly, you know, 00:27:05:12 - 00:27:07:06 there's a whole bunch of other reasons. 00:27:07:06 - 00:27:10:10 There's a whole other different ways that this spreads, 00:27:10:29 - 00:27:14:11 which is really interesting too, because if you go to a place like Africa, 00:27:14:16 - 00:27:16:07 it was much it spread much faster 00:27:16:07 - 00:27:19:07 in heterosexual couples, whereas it was different in the U.S. 00:27:19:09 - 00:27:22:08 So depending on where you are to you like what stories you heard, 00:27:22:08 - 00:27:25:02 they may have reflected you or they may not. 00:27:25:02 - 00:27:28:02 So but there's so many people that went, you know, and they looked at 00:27:28:03 - 00:27:29:23 especially Gatlin, the guy. 00:27:29:23 - 00:27:32:22 So he was the patient zero for HIV. 00:27:32:22 - 00:27:34:15 And they looked at his lifestyle. 00:27:34:15 - 00:27:35:15 They looked at his job. 00:27:35:15 - 00:27:37:23 He was a flight attendant 00:27:37:23 - 00:27:40:19 and they made assumptions about 00:27:40:19 - 00:27:44:04 what his activities were, what he was doing, and said 00:27:44:04 - 00:27:47:04 to themselves, well, I just won't do that, and then I'll be fine. 00:27:47:12 - 00:27:48:12 But it's like that. 00:27:48:12 - 00:27:50:12 Actually, none of that was true, right? 00:27:50:12 - 00:27:53:17 Like it was a very well crafted and created narrative. 00:27:53:28 - 00:27:56:22 And that was actually created it wasn't even created by somebody 00:27:56:22 - 00:28:00:05 that was in like the CDC or anything like that. 00:28:00:05 - 00:28:01:20 It was created by an author. 00:28:01:20 - 00:28:04:25 And so it was just an individual person who was like, Yeah, 00:28:04:25 - 00:28:08:21 this guy seems like the prototypical HIV patient. 00:28:08:21 - 00:28:10:15 I'm going to call him patient zero. 00:28:10:15 - 00:28:13:15 And so many people thought that he was and he really wasn't. 00:28:13:18 - 00:28:18:09 And so his name and his reputation was really just destroyed because of. 00:28:18:09 - 00:28:19:12 Yeah. 00:28:19:12 - 00:28:21:11 And I you know, I still think about that. 00:28:21:11 - 00:28:24:01 And I think even to you of like people like 00:28:24:01 - 00:28:27:01 Mary Mallon, who we usually refer to as Typhoid Mary, 00:28:27:18 - 00:28:30:22 you know, she was somebody that just was, you know, 00:28:30:22 - 00:28:34:14 she was just a working class person that was just trying to make money. 00:28:34:14 - 00:28:36:19 And they kept telling her, like, don't do the job. 00:28:36:19 - 00:28:39:19 The only job you have to do the thing you're good at. 00:28:39:19 - 00:28:42:04 Don't do that anymore. 00:28:42:04 - 00:28:45:01 I would give no other options on how to make money. 00:28:45:01 - 00:28:45:22 Right. 00:28:45:22 - 00:28:48:02 So, like, you're supposed to survive, right? 00:28:48:02 - 00:28:50:21 People don't care about that kind of stuff when they do this. 00:28:50:21 - 00:28:53:24 But I mean, she ended up dying in isolation 00:28:54:11 - 00:28:58:10 because she was eventually placed basically in containment 00:28:58:17 - 00:29:01:17 for the kind of her life, which is just tragic. 00:29:01:24 - 00:29:04:24 So, so many of these people, you know, when we look at this in the blame, 00:29:04:27 - 00:29:09:25 you know, there's so much that happens to those individuals and it's really sad. 00:29:10:11 - 00:29:11:10 Yeah. 00:29:11:10 - 00:29:14:26 And so we saw did we see that in in COVID 19 00:29:14:26 - 00:29:18:26 was I don't remember any story that around like a patient zero. 00:29:19:17 - 00:29:21:05 No, we didn't do it to individuals. 00:29:21:05 - 00:29:22:24 We did it to groups, though. 00:29:22:24 - 00:29:23:17 So. Right. 00:29:23:17 - 00:29:26:02 Because I feel like China got blamed for it. 00:29:26:02 - 00:29:27:25 I mean, I got blamed for a lot. 00:29:27:25 - 00:29:29:02 That was a big part of it. 00:29:29:02 - 00:29:31:14 And it was a lot of it was surrounding 00:29:31:14 - 00:29:32:23 especially and this is one of the things 00:29:32:23 - 00:29:34:15 we love to do, especially in urban legends. 00:29:34:15 - 00:29:36:08 It's talk about what people eat. 00:29:36:08 - 00:29:40:15 And and that was a big part of the whole Wuhan wet market idea. 00:29:40:15 - 00:29:43:20 And of course, that like even that term is terrible. 00:29:44:07 - 00:29:46:28 And I get that it's like the translation and it works. 00:29:46:28 - 00:29:50:05 But a wet market is just a farmer's market, right? 00:29:50:12 - 00:29:53:04 And like, we're having a different idea. 00:29:53:04 - 00:29:56:21 If somebody would have said the Wuhan farmers market versus 00:29:56:27 - 00:30:00:12 the wet market, right, like when I was in my head 00:30:00:12 - 00:30:03:12 that it was a seafood market, but it's a farmer's market. 00:30:03:21 - 00:30:06:10 It's they have perishable goods, which I mean, I go to farmers 00:30:06:10 - 00:30:08:06 markets that have perishable goods, too. 00:30:08:06 - 00:30:11:03 And that's just the difference in China between a dry market and a wet 00:30:11:03 - 00:30:14:03 market is are it perishable? 00:30:14:08 - 00:30:19:06 So and like I've gone and bought me at a farmer's market, Rachel, we all do this. 00:30:19:06 - 00:30:21:28 I bought eggs. I buy, you know, perishable goods. 00:30:21:28 - 00:30:25:29 And so that's all this was to was a market that had perishable goods 00:30:26:20 - 00:30:29:24 and, you know, at at the beginning there is this idea that 00:30:30:03 - 00:30:33:26 it was related to bats and then people immediately went to not our close 00:30:33:26 - 00:30:36:26 contact with bats, which is what it actually is, but 00:30:36:27 - 00:30:40:06 people were eating bats and like that sounds gross, right? 00:30:41:01 - 00:30:43:12 Bats is like being a good food to eat. 00:30:43:12 - 00:30:46:00 And I mean, there are people in the world that eat it 00:30:46:00 - 00:30:49:20 in some places it is still eaten the same way that there are places 00:30:49:20 - 00:30:55:00 in the US that we eat squirrel, you know, I mean, we eat all kinds of of wildlife, 00:30:55:09 - 00:30:58:09 but we just decide which ones are gross and which ones are hurt. 00:30:58:28 - 00:30:59:05 Yeah. 00:30:59:05 - 00:31:02:05 And it was so funny too, because so many of the especially the 00:31:02:10 - 00:31:05:25 there's a particular picture that everyone had and it was like this 00:31:06:01 - 00:31:06:26 it looks like a bowl 00:31:06:26 - 00:31:09:26 of almost like one ton soup with like a little bat on the edge. 00:31:10:18 - 00:31:13:20 And every time I see this picture, it makes me laugh because it's like 00:31:13:20 - 00:31:18:21 the bat's like a garnish on it, like it's the most ridiculous picture. 00:31:19:11 - 00:31:21:07 And it just like, I'm like, I'm sorry. 00:31:21:07 - 00:31:23:15 I don't think you'd like if you're having bat soup, 00:31:23:15 - 00:31:25:09 you would put, like, the bat in the soup. 00:31:25:09 - 00:31:27:24 You wouldn't just really not. No, no. 00:31:27:24 - 00:31:31:10 It's like it just also you'd probably eat a bigger bat, right? 00:31:31:10 - 00:31:33:19 Oh, yeah. That's like little tiny bat. 00:31:33:19 - 00:31:37:03 I would, I Yeah, I guarantee I, 00:31:37:03 - 00:31:41:00 I lived in South Korea for a while, and I remember one time there was 00:31:41:06 - 00:31:45:23 I went to this restaurant and we just had, you know, a beef dish. 00:31:45:23 - 00:31:47:19 But at one point I, we were walking out, 00:31:47:19 - 00:31:51:07 there were Koreans having the soup and I was like, That smells so good. 00:31:51:07 - 00:31:52:17 What is that? 00:31:52:17 - 00:31:57:15 And they all started laughing and my Korean friends translated that 00:31:57:15 - 00:32:03:16 it was dog soup because Koreans eat most primarily meals for really sakes. 00:32:03:16 - 00:32:04:27 They they eat dog. 00:32:04:27 - 00:32:10:12 And so, like, I was horrified because it's not typical in America. 00:32:11:16 - 00:32:14:02 And so they all thought it was hilarious. 00:32:14:02 - 00:32:17:06 My reaction to this delicious smelling soup. 00:32:17:24 - 00:32:22:29 Yeah, I was appalled that I thought that this soup smelled delicious, though. 00:32:23:02 - 00:32:27:03 But I can guarantee that there was no advertising of a dog. 00:32:27:16 - 00:32:30:09 No. That next to it, like, you know, 00:32:30:09 - 00:32:33:10 it's like, you know, it's just so funny. 00:32:33:10 - 00:32:36:18 And I think that too, because I've actually been to Wuhan, 00:32:36:18 - 00:32:39:04 I've been to China and I've been to the wet market. 00:32:39:04 - 00:32:40:25 So I knew exactly what it looked like. 00:32:40:25 - 00:32:42:14 But it was it was really funny 00:32:42:14 - 00:32:45:23 because like speaking to that, I remember when I was in China, 00:32:46:13 - 00:32:49:29 they were asking like we were at dinner and they're like, Do you want to eat? 00:32:49:29 - 00:32:53:12 And I was, you know, I was kind of going through, you know what, this is fine. 00:32:53:12 - 00:32:54:11 This is fine. 00:32:54:11 - 00:32:57:03 And they were like, Do you do you want to try donkey? 00:32:57:03 - 00:32:59:09 And I was like, Yeah, sure. 00:32:59:09 - 00:33:00:24 If you guys want donkey, we can have donkey. 00:33:00:24 - 00:33:03:09 Like, I'm I'm open to trying things. 00:33:03:09 - 00:33:06:01 I was like, you know, maybe it's great. I don't know. 00:33:06:01 - 00:33:07:27 They went to the table and I had them. 00:33:07:27 - 00:33:10:12 It was fine and I noticed nobody else. 00:33:11:18 - 00:33:13:01 And I was like, You guys 00:33:13:01 - 00:33:16:01 not going to have you this are like, Oh God, no, we would never eat that. 00:33:16:10 - 00:33:19:10 And I got to tell me, like, 00:33:20:19 - 00:33:23:01 Why did you order me? 00:33:23:01 - 00:33:26:14 Like, typically, like it wasn't like on my bucket list to eat a donkey, 00:33:26:22 - 00:33:29:26 but, you know, and they're like, Oh God, no, that's disgusting. 00:33:29:26 - 00:33:30:11 We wouldn't eat. 00:33:30:11 - 00:33:33:11 That was like, God, when you told me, you know? 00:33:33:16 - 00:33:34:29 But it's it's so funny. 00:33:34:29 - 00:33:37:29 Like, what is disgusting versus not disgusting to us? 00:33:37:29 - 00:33:39:00 That's right. 00:33:39:00 - 00:33:41:14 And sometimes it's necessity to people eat things 00:33:41:14 - 00:33:43:06 because there's nothing else available. Right. 00:33:43:06 - 00:33:45:10 And that's, you know, that's unfortunate. 00:33:45:10 - 00:33:48:19 But, you know, that can also be a part of of that. 00:33:48:19 - 00:33:49:00 Right. 00:33:49:00 - 00:33:51:24 This is there's also a class issue here, too. 00:33:51:24 - 00:33:54:13 So yeah, when I saw that stuff about that soup and the wet 00:33:54:13 - 00:33:57:23 market, I was just like, Oh, no, here we go. 00:33:57:23 - 00:34:01:14 You know, like it's classic urban legend stuff, right? 00:34:01:18 - 00:34:04:18 Kentucky Fried Rat, all those things all over again. 00:34:04:19 - 00:34:07:27 And this idea that people that are foreigners 00:34:07:27 - 00:34:11:21 or people that are not like us, weird things and that's 00:34:11:21 - 00:34:14:27 gross and disgusting, which then reflects on them as being gross 00:34:14:27 - 00:34:16:29 and disgusting when we all eat weird stuff. 00:34:16:29 - 00:34:20:21 Like, I think about that, like we cowls, we eat squirrels, 00:34:21:08 - 00:34:22:28 all kinds of weird stuff 00:34:22:28 - 00:34:23:13 that I'm sure 00:34:23:13 - 00:34:26:20 people in other places are like, Oh my God, I can't believe they eat that. 00:34:26:20 - 00:34:28:29 And we are doing it. 00:34:28:29 - 00:34:31:22 So yeah, I think about that a lot. 00:34:31:22 - 00:34:34:23 But yeah, that was one of the first big things I noticed. 00:34:34:23 - 00:34:38:15 And then of course, like a lot of the, a lot of the 00:34:38:20 - 00:34:41:20 because we have new information and it shifts to the raccoon dogs 00:34:42:02 - 00:34:44:15 and then everybody's like, Oh my God, who's eating raccoon dogs? 00:34:44:15 - 00:34:47:03 And it's like, Oh my gosh, they're mostly used for fur. 00:34:47:03 - 00:34:49:03 So they would have been their. 00:34:49:03 - 00:34:50:16 Do people eat them? Absolutely. 00:34:50:16 - 00:34:53:16 Probably somewhere and probably had desperation. 00:34:53:16 - 00:34:57:03 I don't know what they taste like, but people were like freaking out about it. 00:34:57:03 - 00:34:58:05 And I was like, Oh, well, 00:34:58:05 - 00:35:02:24 why do we always go back to eating instead of, Yeah, living next to right? 00:35:02:24 - 00:35:04:00 And that's what it is like. 00:35:04:00 - 00:35:08:07 This is, this is jump species because of our close contact. 00:35:08:16 - 00:35:12:06 And the more that we do things like deforest areas, 00:35:12:06 - 00:35:15:09 the more these things are going to come in, more close contact with us. 00:35:15:09 - 00:35:17:21 So like, I have rats in my backyard, right? 00:35:17:21 - 00:35:20:24 Like that's that's just normal for where I live. 00:35:21:01 - 00:35:21:29 We have lots of bats. 00:35:21:29 - 00:35:23:11 I put up a bat house for them 00:35:23:11 - 00:35:25:20 because I want to encourage them because they eat mosquitoes. 00:35:25:20 - 00:35:27:10 Yeah, that's great. Yeah. 00:35:27:10 - 00:35:30:04 I won't back to my right. Not like. 00:35:30:04 - 00:35:30:13 Yeah. 00:35:30:13 - 00:35:34:13 So, I mean, it's not like this thing could happen here too, right? 00:35:34:13 - 00:35:37:13 Because we're in close contact with animals as well. 00:35:37:18 - 00:35:42:21 I live in an area that has a lot of pig farms and stuff happens, right? 00:35:42:21 - 00:35:45:27 And we all know that if you live on a farm or anything like that, 00:35:45:27 - 00:35:50:01 you know about this stuff, you know, But these diseases, they can jump species. 00:35:50:10 - 00:35:53:12 And our big concern, of course, is when it goes from 00:35:53:12 - 00:35:56:00 I mean, when it goes from animal to human concerning, 00:35:56:00 - 00:35:59:06 but when it goes from human to human, that's when we've got a problem, right? 00:35:59:12 - 00:35:59:25 Yeah. 00:35:59:25 - 00:36:01:03 So that happens all the time. 00:36:01:03 - 00:36:05:21 And, and all of our common diseases are from animals, like the flu is from birds. 00:36:06:12 - 00:36:09:05 I always love when people say avian flu because it's like, yeah, that's, 00:36:09:05 - 00:36:10:13 that's pretty much most of them. 00:36:10:13 - 00:36:13:09 So it's not just birds, but there are other types of flu too as well. 00:36:13:09 - 00:36:14:22 There's swine flu and other kinds. 00:36:14:22 - 00:36:17:03 But but yeah that that idea that 00:36:18:12 - 00:36:19:02 you know, that this 00:36:19:02 - 00:36:22:02 is is something that happens in other places 00:36:22:12 - 00:36:25:24 or has happened because of a lab leak, probably not true. 00:36:25:25 - 00:36:28:15 You know, it's just just our close relationship. 00:36:28:15 - 00:36:29:06 Right. 00:36:29:06 - 00:36:34:02 So did you see any legends that came back to life from other epidemic times? 00:36:34:15 - 00:36:37:15 Yeah, I'd love to hear some of those. 00:36:37:24 - 00:36:38:05 Yeah. 00:36:38:05 - 00:36:40:04 And this actually goes back to the 1918 one. 00:36:40:04 - 00:36:43:03 So there are people protesting masks in 1918. 00:36:43:03 - 00:36:44:07 Yes, I was. 00:36:44:07 - 00:36:46:27 I remember reading about that. 00:36:46:27 - 00:36:48:03 So that was a big one. 00:36:48:03 - 00:36:51:19 I mean, so that coming back with the idea that masks don't work, 00:36:52:07 - 00:36:56:02 which I've heard in other places as well at different times 00:36:56:08 - 00:36:59:08 that actually came too during the SA's epidemic. 00:36:59:24 - 00:37:04:05 So yeah, so that was more localized epidemic, not a pandemic. 00:37:04:24 - 00:37:07:18 But yeah, there were top people talking about how masks don't work. 00:37:08:20 - 00:37:11:17 anti-Asian hate towards that one as well, 00:37:11:17 - 00:37:15:07 especially because a lot of it had to do with a specific area in Toronto. 00:37:15:29 - 00:37:18:16 So there was there was so much associated with that. 00:37:18:16 - 00:37:20:04 So I saw that kind of coming back. 00:37:20:04 - 00:37:23:21 The idea that mask don't work or they're ineffective in some sort of way. 00:37:24:22 - 00:37:29:01 All of the stuff too, about, if you like, if you're tough enough 00:37:29:01 - 00:37:32:01 or if you're like healthy enough, you can overcome this. 00:37:32:15 - 00:37:34:24 You know, you don't you have your immune system. 00:37:34:24 - 00:37:35:18 It'll be fine. 00:37:35:18 - 00:37:39:18 And like, not only is that like just awful 00:37:39:18 - 00:37:44:13 for people who have medical conditions or are immunocompromised 00:37:44:13 - 00:37:46:02 in some way, it's just terrible to tell them 00:37:46:02 - 00:37:48:11 that they're like not tough enough or something like that. 00:37:48:11 - 00:37:49:22 That's ridiculous. 00:37:49:22 - 00:37:52:06 But but it also affects healthy people, Right? 00:37:52:06 - 00:37:55:24 And and so it wasn't that, you know, you would be fine 00:37:55:24 - 00:37:58:15 a lot of people who were very healthy were not fine. 00:37:58:15 - 00:37:58:24 Right? 00:37:58:24 - 00:38:00:12 They got COVID 00:38:00:12 - 00:38:03:24 and they died and or they got COVID and they had really bad reactions. 00:38:04:13 - 00:38:07:24 And that was, you know, we've seen that coming out, too, with long COVID, 00:38:08:11 - 00:38:10:15 where the most of the people who have had long COVID, 00:38:10:15 - 00:38:13:27 they tend to be women, but they tend to be people who are active, right? 00:38:13:27 - 00:38:17:28 So it's not that these were immuno compromised people, that they had any sort 00:38:17:28 - 00:38:22:15 of health conditions, then they were completely healthy people 00:38:23:03 - 00:38:27:03 that that, you know, unfortunately developed long COVID in the long run. 00:38:27:23 - 00:38:29:29 So, you know, there's so many things there you see. 00:38:29:29 - 00:38:33:02 So those kind of stories came back to those stories 00:38:33:02 - 00:38:36:27 about what we eat, the stories on who to blame, college students 00:38:36:27 - 00:38:40:19 or another group we like to blame as well, who they had big parties. 00:38:40:19 - 00:38:42:28 So any kind of Superspreader event, 00:38:42:28 - 00:38:46:07 I think our new patient zero was the super spreader event. 00:38:47:00 - 00:38:51:25 So, you know, weddings, funerals, graduations, big events like that. 00:38:52:27 - 00:38:54:08 And I always talk about the college. 00:38:54:08 - 00:38:59:09 Student one because that actually happened here so that when the news came out 00:38:59:09 - 00:39:03:26 that there was this big 400 person college party that was out here 00:39:04:15 - 00:39:08:22 at the University that I teach here, I was like, Oh, no, we're in the news. 00:39:08:22 - 00:39:10:09 And not for a good reason. 00:39:10:09 - 00:39:10:27 Yeah. 00:39:10:27 - 00:39:14:09 I mean, that's what happens, though, when you bring people together 00:39:14:09 - 00:39:16:07 who haven't seen other people in a long time. 00:39:16:07 - 00:39:17:23 Of course, they were going to have a party 00:39:17:23 - 00:39:20:27 and has gone to a party that has gotten out of hand. 00:39:20:27 - 00:39:21:07 Right. 00:39:21:07 - 00:39:23:13 Like I have been to that party where it was supposed to be 00:39:23:13 - 00:39:24:09 just a couple of people. 00:39:24:09 - 00:39:25:24 Then all of a sudden, like more and more people 00:39:25:24 - 00:39:29:00 just keep showing up and you're like, Oh, it's that kind of party like. 00:39:29:29 - 00:39:31:04 So parties get out of hand. 00:39:31:04 - 00:39:32:05 Like that just happens. 00:39:32:05 - 00:39:35:02 Especially people just start inviting people. 00:39:35:02 - 00:39:36:00 Yeah, exactly. 00:39:36:00 - 00:39:38:05 Somebody else calls and says, Hey, there's a lot of people over 00:39:38:05 - 00:39:39:28 and yeah, all these people end up showing up. 00:39:39:28 - 00:39:42:02 And I think that's exactly what happened. 00:39:42:02 - 00:39:44:25 And, and it was, it was, you know, all this blame 00:39:44:25 - 00:39:48:03 on the students and not on the people who brought them back. 00:39:48:12 - 00:39:48:21 Right. 00:39:48:21 - 00:39:51:26 They just did what people do, especially young people do. 00:39:51:26 - 00:39:54:13 When you bring them to like when you put them all together. 00:39:54:13 - 00:39:56:23 Yeah, of course they're going to hang out and have fun. 00:39:56:23 - 00:40:00:00 So. Yeah, but and then, you know, we blame the students instead of blaming 00:40:00:00 - 00:40:03:18 the people who brought them and put them in that situation, 00:40:04:06 - 00:40:06:17 which I thought was, was kind of cruel to do. 00:40:07:21 - 00:40:07:29 Yeah. 00:40:07:29 - 00:40:09:06 And then, and then we, you know, 00:40:09:06 - 00:40:12:00 let them get all good in committee and sent them back home. 00:40:12:00 - 00:40:14:15 So that was a whole other issue. 00:40:14:15 - 00:40:16:24 I'm not happy about that. 00:40:16:24 - 00:40:19:27 Do you see differences in the legends in different countries 00:40:20:14 - 00:40:22:15 or in different places? 00:40:22:15 - 00:40:24:23 Yeah, absolutely. 00:40:24:23 - 00:40:28:22 One of my favorites is the origin legend and how it works out in different places. 00:40:29:18 - 00:40:33:11 So in it was really interesting cause I had a friend in Hong Kong 00:40:33:21 - 00:40:35:05 at the beginning of the pandemic 00:40:35:05 - 00:40:39:05 and she was telling me some of the stories she was hearing and a lot of 00:40:39:05 - 00:40:43:11 what was being said and places in Hong Kong was that it was a lab leak 00:40:43:22 - 00:40:47:01 or it was something that the Chinese created to to take out America. 00:40:47:01 - 00:40:50:23 But instead of doing it successfully, that they had like, messed up somehow, 00:40:50:23 - 00:40:51:16 like somebody had like, 00:40:51:16 - 00:40:55:05 dropped the bottle or like, yeah, the thing that happened, that one. 00:40:55:12 - 00:40:57:29 Yeah, I think I heard that one. Yeah. 00:40:57:29 - 00:41:02:13 And then in China they were people saying that it was the American military 00:41:02:13 - 00:41:03:21 that did it 00:41:03:21 - 00:41:06:23 and they had this really specific, it was like two men and one woman 00:41:07:01 - 00:41:10:16 that they purposefully infected that were military personnel 00:41:10:16 - 00:41:13:16 and then sent them out to the Wuhan wet market. 00:41:13:20 - 00:41:15:25 And that was the rumor that had gone on in 00:41:15:25 - 00:41:19:21 China, was that that it was an intentional spread by the US government 00:41:20:25 - 00:41:21:13 to China. 00:41:21:13 - 00:41:22:19 Look bad. 00:41:22:19 - 00:41:25:08 So yeah, so there was a lot of different ones there. 00:41:25:08 - 00:41:28:23 And then like the reason, like I remember reading this one from 00:41:29:12 - 00:41:32:20 a Ukrainian research center that was talking about how 00:41:33:11 - 00:41:37:08 this was like the the EU trying to get back at the UK for Brexit. 00:41:38:14 - 00:41:40:29 And I just not heard that because of course I would. 00:41:40:29 - 00:41:41:26 I live in the U.S. 00:41:41:26 - 00:41:44:07 So yeah, so it's like so different. 00:41:44:07 - 00:41:47:04 And then the other like there was other ones where it was like 00:41:47:04 - 00:41:47:29 it was everywhere. 00:41:47:29 - 00:41:48:17 It's like, Oh, 00:41:48:17 - 00:41:50:12 they're just doing this to sell vaccines 00:41:50:12 - 00:41:53:01 or they're doing this as population control 00:41:53:01 - 00:41:56:29 and so they don't have to pay like as much Social Security or stuff. 00:41:57:08 - 00:41:59:21 And you're like, Oh my gosh, this is weird. 00:41:59:21 - 00:42:02:22 But we have some of the same ones everywhere, but then others like. 00:42:03:00 - 00:42:05:20 So those little details were different, but then other legends 00:42:05:20 - 00:42:09:12 were only in certain places and they just didn't go anywhere else. 00:42:09:12 - 00:42:14:07 And yeah, so it was interesting to kind of see what was sort of 00:42:15:08 - 00:42:17:06 like a version of it was everywhere. 00:42:17:06 - 00:42:18:25 And of course with like different details. 00:42:18:25 - 00:42:21:15 But yeah, it really kind of stuck. 00:42:21:15 - 00:42:22:10 That was pretty easy. 00:42:22:10 - 00:42:26:29 Like, you know, I feel like as we become more ingrained 00:42:26:29 - 00:42:30:20 in this information culture, there's a lot more distrust of governments. 00:42:31:03 - 00:42:35:20 Did the legend seem to change to reflect that it was? 00:42:36:10 - 00:42:38:25 Was there this distrust of governments 00:42:38:25 - 00:42:41:25 during these other past epidemics as well? 00:42:42:04 - 00:42:43:13 Yeah, there was. 00:42:43:13 - 00:42:46:08 There was definitely like this idea that the government is controlling 00:42:46:08 - 00:42:49:19 too much, that they should leave this up to individuals. 00:42:50:09 - 00:42:51:22 So that was definitely there. 00:42:51:22 - 00:42:53:12 And it's actually really fascinating. 00:42:53:12 - 00:42:56:12 If you look at the like the history of vaccination, 00:42:56:14 - 00:43:00:17 the arguments are almost identical against vaccination. 00:43:01:05 - 00:43:03:15 It's all stuff like it's against God's will. 00:43:03:15 - 00:43:05:26 It's, you know, we're contaminating our bodies 00:43:05:26 - 00:43:09:11 by putting in these animal elements like it's the same since Edward Jenner. 00:43:10:04 - 00:43:11:08 Right. 00:43:11:08 - 00:43:14:11 And that blows my mind that we're still doing the same arguments. 00:43:15:02 - 00:43:18:02 And like, there's a little bit of tweak here and there, but 00:43:18:22 - 00:43:22:07 it's it's still that, you know, instead of against God, it's against nature. 00:43:22:07 - 00:43:25:29 You know, instead of, you know, there's like these little tiny changes. 00:43:25:29 - 00:43:28:06 But yeah, we've been seeing the same kind of stuff, 00:43:28:06 - 00:43:31:06 especially about vaccination and since it was invented. 00:43:31:24 - 00:43:35:03 So those arguments just keep happening over and over again. 00:43:35:03 - 00:43:38:03 And so it comes in waves and different ways. 00:43:38:08 - 00:43:39:09 Yeah, it does. 00:43:39:09 - 00:43:43:23 And, and we also see too, that like a lot of places that had 00:43:44:02 - 00:43:47:08 because I mean, you know, sometimes sometimes things happen, right? 00:43:47:16 - 00:43:50:12 Things like the Cutter incident, which is where in the 00:43:50:12 - 00:43:55:06 I think was the 1950s they when they were manufacturing the polio vaccine, 00:43:55:06 - 00:43:58:21 it was not properly attenuated, it wasn't properly killed. 00:43:59:14 - 00:44:03:12 And it actually ended up infecting children instead of preventing it 00:44:04:12 - 00:44:07:13 because it wasn't a lie vaccine that with the live vaccine 00:44:07:13 - 00:44:10:13 and it was supposed to be killed and it it turned out to be life. 00:44:10:19 - 00:44:13:19 And yeah, so this is kind of old school 00:44:13:23 - 00:44:16:23 vaccine manufacturing technique now that we have it's so different. 00:44:17:05 - 00:44:21:09 But yeah, so in some children got infected and and some children died 00:44:21:27 - 00:44:24:29 and in that area that so that happened in California 00:44:25:07 - 00:44:30:00 and in that area like that story and those the influence of that stayed 00:44:30:00 - 00:44:31:23 in the cultural memory. Right. 00:44:31:23 - 00:44:34:14 So these places where have had things like this bad 00:44:34:14 - 00:44:37:25 happen have stronger anti-vaccination movements. 00:44:37:25 - 00:44:41:10 But of course now with the Internet, everything everywhere. 00:44:41:10 - 00:44:41:21 Right. 00:44:41:21 - 00:44:45:18 And and you can you can kind of get that information 00:44:45:18 - 00:44:48:08 even when you're just looking for like just basic information 00:44:48:08 - 00:44:50:28 about like vaccination or diseases or things like that. 00:44:50:28 - 00:44:55:18 You can find so much bad information, which is so sad. 00:44:55:20 - 00:44:58:18 And the worst part is, is when they actually like 00:44:58:18 - 00:45:01:06 they try to like actually do beside or something like that. 00:45:01:06 - 00:45:04:27 So it looks exactly like real information, right. 00:45:05:05 - 00:45:07:17 You know, and that's just it's so detrimental 00:45:07:17 - 00:45:11:02 because not everybody's necessarily looking at like the exact 00:45:11:21 - 00:45:14:05 web address or anything like that. 00:45:14:05 - 00:45:15:00 They're just it. 00:45:15:00 - 00:45:18:25 Well, it looks like because there was one I know not that long ago, there was one 00:45:18:25 - 00:45:25:06 that somebody had had basically done a mirror image of ABC's website. 00:45:25:06 - 00:45:29:13 And it was if you looked at the tag, it was like ABC got something else 00:45:29:24 - 00:45:31:03 instead of. Yeah. 00:45:31:03 - 00:45:34:03 And, and so many people fell for it 00:45:34:11 - 00:45:36:25 and it was just because they, they made it 00:45:36:25 - 00:45:40:28 look exactly like that website and have all this false information. 00:45:41:06 - 00:45:44:03 So like finding stuff on the internet can be really, really difficult. 00:45:44:03 - 00:45:45:09 I mean we've all done it 00:45:45:09 - 00:45:49:23 and we've all find stuff and it's so hard sometimes to find good information. 00:45:49:23 - 00:45:52:26 So that just that's kind of the new part to all of this. 00:45:52:26 - 00:45:55:20 And people hear those stories as well. 00:45:55:20 - 00:45:56:09 Yeah, 00:45:56:09 - 00:45:59:24 one of the things I always look for is are they telling two sides of the story? 00:46:00:00 - 00:46:03:00 Because I find a lot of the anti-vax rhetoric 00:46:03:00 - 00:46:07:26 just has one side and they don't they don't talk about, 00:46:08:05 - 00:46:11:05 you know, the risks and benefits and 00:46:11:05 - 00:46:14:07 and so there's always kind of like a trigger for me 00:46:14:27 - 00:46:18:19 if you're not explaining this other side of the story, then 00:46:19:10 - 00:46:22:11 then I don't know that I can really believe this information. 00:46:22:16 - 00:46:22:28 Yeah. 00:46:22:28 - 00:46:26:18 And I think that's a great way to look at it, is to see, like, 00:46:26:19 - 00:46:28:20 are we getting both sides of the story here? 00:46:28:20 - 00:46:30:18 Is this being covered? 00:46:30:18 - 00:46:33:07 And some people, you know, have argued against giving 00:46:33:07 - 00:46:36:03 the anti-vaccination movement any kind of voice. 00:46:36:03 - 00:46:40:08 But I think like looking at real concerns of people, I think that's important 00:46:40:24 - 00:46:42:18 because, you know, and I've kind of started 00:46:42:18 - 00:46:45:18 I've shifted kind of my thinking a little bit on this during COVID 00:46:45:22 - 00:46:49:04 and I kind of think about it now is like the vaccine hesitant versus 00:46:49:04 - 00:46:50:07 like I started 00:46:50:07 - 00:46:53:07 calling them the vaccine hostile, like these people will never accept it. 00:46:53:08 - 00:46:56:06 Like they are just totally against vaccination. 00:46:56:06 - 00:47:00:06 But there's so many people in that hesitant area that 00:47:00:06 - 00:47:03:11 that it would be so great if they could find really good 00:47:03:11 - 00:47:06:20 information and information they can trust. 00:47:06:20 - 00:47:08:12 But it's so hard to do that. 00:47:08:12 - 00:47:12:00 And and I think for me, I think that's the key 00:47:13:00 - 00:47:15:06 where I feel like our mindset 00:47:15:06 - 00:47:18:21 has moved because, you know, there's a lot of information 00:47:18:21 - 00:47:24:17 about big Pharma out there and reasons why you can't trust those these corporations 00:47:24:17 - 00:47:28:21 that are creating these vaccines, which seems incredibly reasonable. 00:47:28:29 - 00:47:29:19 Right. 00:47:29:19 - 00:47:32:29 And and so like this, this general 00:47:33:09 - 00:47:40:00 degrading of trust, I think is really harmful for this arena. 00:47:40:19 - 00:47:42:19 Yeah, it is so harmful. 00:47:42:19 - 00:47:47:12 And, you know, it's yeah, it could be really upsetting too, 00:47:47:12 - 00:47:49:29 because people are really, 00:47:49:29 - 00:47:54:29 you know, they're marketing and they're they're making money off of people's fear 00:47:55:09 - 00:47:59:00 and and people's real desire for real information. 00:47:59:00 - 00:48:01:14 And that just kind of breaks my heart 00:48:01:14 - 00:48:04:15 because it's, it's parents that are a lot of times not always. 00:48:04:15 - 00:48:06:09 It could be us, too, right? 00:48:06:09 - 00:48:11:17 We're looking for information and, you know, we want something that's balanced. 00:48:11:17 - 00:48:13:13 We want something that's good. 00:48:13:13 - 00:48:14:23 And I think that's fine. 00:48:14:23 - 00:48:16:18 Like you can give somebody that extra information. 00:48:16:18 - 00:48:18:00 So here's all the benefits. 00:48:18:00 - 00:48:19:24 Yeah, sometimes bad things happen. 00:48:19:24 - 00:48:22:28 You know, we're not saying that they don't, but here's the risk. 00:48:23:12 - 00:48:25:21 And like, let's talk about that risk benefit. 00:48:25:21 - 00:48:27:08 And, you know, and I think in 00:48:27:08 - 00:48:31:06 so many ways, too, it's hard for parents to think of especially children 00:48:31:18 - 00:48:32:29 and like what they're going to like, 00:48:32:29 - 00:48:35:29 what they're going to be when they grow up, the things they might do. 00:48:35:29 - 00:48:38:15 And this especially is true of like the HPV vaccine. 00:48:39:27 - 00:48:42:03 You know, parents are like they don't want to think, 00:48:42:03 - 00:48:44:12 especially if they're like tiny, tiny baby 00:48:44:12 - 00:48:47:29 as being like someone that's going to have sex some day or something like that. 00:48:47:29 - 00:48:49:20 Right. Parents don't want to think about that. 00:48:49:20 - 00:48:51:10 They want to think about their kids growing up. 00:48:51:10 - 00:48:54:00 And so when they're like, offered some of these vaccines, 00:48:54:00 - 00:48:55:24 they're like, well, my child's never going to do that. 00:48:55:24 - 00:49:00:17 And it's like, Yeah, well, you're going to probably have sex at some point. 00:49:01:14 - 00:49:03:24 I know you want that for them, but 00:49:03:24 - 00:49:06:26 it also is like, you know, it's always in this really negative way. 00:49:06:26 - 00:49:09:14 And I think we should think about it in positive ways, too, that like, 00:49:09:14 - 00:49:10:21 you need to get your, you know, 00:49:10:21 - 00:49:13:21 the full set of vaccines for your kids because maybe they'll join the peace. 00:49:13:28 - 00:49:14:11 Right. 00:49:14:11 - 00:49:16:01 And they need to and they're going into places 00:49:16:01 - 00:49:19:04 where, you know, some of these diseases are more common or, 00:49:19:11 - 00:49:22:07 you know, maybe your child is going to do these amazing things 00:49:22:07 - 00:49:25:07 and they might need these vaccines because of that. 00:49:25:10 - 00:49:27:16 But instead, it's always in this like 00:49:27:16 - 00:49:30:16 this negative way, like my child's going to be an IV drug user or something. 00:49:30:16 - 00:49:32:10 They're like, No, it's not that. 00:49:32:10 - 00:49:33:27 It's a lot of other, too. 00:49:33:27 - 00:49:35:12 And like, think about it in those terms. 00:49:35:12 - 00:49:38:17 Like, yes, you know, I want my child to be protected from cancer. 00:49:38:17 - 00:49:41:27 I want my child to have be able 00:49:41:27 - 00:49:44:28 to travel and, you know, not have to worry about this stuff. 00:49:45:18 - 00:49:46:20 Yeah, it is. 00:49:46:20 - 00:49:47:05 I think yeah, 00:49:47:05 - 00:49:51:01 we think about it too many times, too, that that vaccines have a negative effect. 00:49:51:08 - 00:49:53:19 And that's in part to you because we never see the positive effects. 00:49:53:19 - 00:49:56:27 Like I don't know how many times I haven't gotten COVID right now. 00:49:56:27 - 00:49:58:27 I just know about the two times I got it. 00:49:58:27 - 00:49:59:11 But like, 00:49:59:11 - 00:50:02:05 I probably didn't get it a whole bunch of times 00:50:02:05 - 00:50:04:23 because of my vaccine, but I have no idea, right? 00:50:04:23 - 00:50:05:09 Yeah. 00:50:05:09 - 00:50:09:25 It's sad that, like, it's hard to know the benefit when you don't see it and. 00:50:09:28 - 00:50:10:11 Right. 00:50:11:14 - 00:50:13:16 Yeah, I heard that argument as well. 00:50:13:16 - 00:50:15:00 We used for the EPA. 00:50:15:00 - 00:50:18:23 The Environmental Protection Agency has done too good of a job of 00:50:19:02 - 00:50:22:19 of protecting things so that people do realize 00:50:22:19 - 00:50:26:22 what it looks like prior to the EPA's creation. 00:50:26:24 - 00:50:28:05 Yeah. 00:50:28:05 - 00:50:31:06 And so I think that the same is true of vaccines, right? 00:50:31:06 - 00:50:34:12 We don't know how scary vaccine 00:50:34:27 - 00:50:39:00 diseases were and how many people died of these 00:50:39:18 - 00:50:43:15 these horrible, horrible illnesses prior to these vaccines. 00:50:43:15 - 00:50:48:06 And so they've kind of done their job so well that we we don't have a, 00:50:48:18 - 00:50:52:19 you know, a cultural history of reminder of it. 00:50:52:27 - 00:50:54:17 I think you're right. You're 100% right. 00:50:54:17 - 00:50:57:21 And even stories like I mean, I think about like people 00:50:57:21 - 00:51:01:01 who got polio where we're alive and polio happened. 00:51:01:09 - 00:51:03:09 I mean, that was my grandmother's generation. 00:51:03:09 - 00:51:04:24 And they're you know, they're gone. 00:51:04:24 - 00:51:06:18 You know, they're dying off or they're gone. 00:51:06:18 - 00:51:07:09 And like, 00:51:07:09 - 00:51:11:13 my mom was vaccinated when she was a kid and she doesn't even really remember it. 00:51:12:03 - 00:51:13:22 So she has no like 00:51:13:22 - 00:51:17:02 my mother's generation doesn't have any memory of of having polio. 00:51:17:21 - 00:51:20:28 So, like, what happens when we start to lose that 00:51:20:28 - 00:51:23:28 cultural memory about what the diseases were like? 00:51:24:13 - 00:51:27:08 And this is actually one of those stories that always gets told, 00:51:27:08 - 00:51:30:25 especially to med students and everything to there's always a story about 00:51:31:15 - 00:51:34:27 how someone comes in with something and no one can diagnose it. 00:51:35:03 - 00:51:37:29 And then like one of the old, old doctors that like, should've 00:51:37:29 - 00:51:42:09 retired a long time ago, like comes in and says, Oh, that's whooping cough. 00:51:42:09 - 00:51:44:07 How do you guys not know what whooping cough sounds like? 00:51:44:07 - 00:51:46:19 It's because they've never heard it. 00:51:46:19 - 00:51:49:15 So so the idea is that, you know, 00:51:49:15 - 00:51:53:25 these things are kind of dying out and, you know, we're going to forget. 00:51:53:25 - 00:51:56:26 And I mean, I think in part and this is, you know, 00:51:56:26 - 00:51:59:02 I always kind of thought that people needed to see an illness 00:51:59:02 - 00:52:00:22 in order to understand and then COVID happened. 00:52:00:22 - 00:52:02:06 And I'm like, oh, maybe not. 00:52:02:06 - 00:52:04:17 So maybe my theory was wrong. 00:52:04:17 - 00:52:07:06 But no, I think it's still like it's a little bit right, 00:52:07:06 - 00:52:10:27 because I think when people actually had it happen to them 00:52:11:07 - 00:52:15:07 or they had to have someone they love, that changed their mind. 00:52:15:18 - 00:52:18:12 And I heard a lot of people say that, like, I really didn't believe 00:52:18:12 - 00:52:22:12 COVID was that bad until I got it or I didn't believe it was that bad 00:52:22:12 - 00:52:25:24 until my mom got really sick or something like that. 00:52:25:24 - 00:52:28:06 So I think it's a little evidence. Yeah. 00:52:28:06 - 00:52:30:25 And it does it really affects us 00:52:30:25 - 00:52:33:12 because we I think when we hear that when we hear a statistic, 00:52:33:12 - 00:52:36:29 we never think of ourselves as being the one in a million or whatever. 00:52:37:05 - 00:52:39:27 We always think of ourselves in terms of story. 00:52:39:27 - 00:52:43:14 And, you know, if I can hear about your mom got sick, 00:52:43:14 - 00:52:46:14 I immediately think, Oh my God, what would I do if my mom got sick? 00:52:46:16 - 00:52:50:02 Like, I immediately internalize that, which I do with a number 00:52:50:02 - 00:52:51:19 or a statistic, right? 00:52:51:19 - 00:52:52:20 That's the story. 00:52:52:20 - 00:52:56:21 I'm like, Oh, how how awful would I feel if that happened to me? 00:52:57:01 - 00:52:57:12 Right? 00:52:57:12 - 00:52:59:04 Or how bad would I feel 00:52:59:04 - 00:53:02:04 or what if I felt and this is something I kept thinking to myself 00:53:02:14 - 00:53:06:01 every time I'd like is of course, we all took risks during the pandemic, 00:53:06:01 - 00:53:07:11 and every time I'm 00:53:07:11 - 00:53:10:15 thinking about taking a risk I'd be like, But how bad would you feel 00:53:10:26 - 00:53:13:25 if you felt like a whole bunch of people by accident 00:53:13:25 - 00:53:15:04 and like, you might not even know? 00:53:15:04 - 00:53:19:16 Or maybe you would and like, you know, you have think about these things 00:53:19:29 - 00:53:23:07 in those questions because it wasn't just about us. 00:53:23:07 - 00:53:25:24 And I think that was also hard. 00:53:27:13 - 00:53:30:08 I don't want to say it like in a negative way that's also hard for Americans. 00:53:30:08 - 00:53:32:27 But we're very good at like short term things. 00:53:32:27 - 00:53:35:27 We're not good like long, sustainable things. 00:53:36:00 - 00:53:38:03 Yeah, that's true. 00:53:38:03 - 00:53:41:21 And so it was hard for us to stay inside for a long time 00:53:42:01 - 00:53:47:09 or wear a mask for long periods of time, because that's just not what we do. 00:53:48:00 - 00:53:50:11 And I keep hoping these things become more normalized. 00:53:50:11 - 00:53:53:02 I hate the term normal, but like I'll use it here, 00:53:53:02 - 00:53:55:15 but like, I hope that's become more common 00:53:55:15 - 00:53:59:04 because like I have decided like, yeah, you know, every time I get sick, 00:53:59:04 - 00:54:03:23 I'm going to wear a mask because why would I want to get other people sick? 00:54:04:26 - 00:54:07:23 Or what is very normalized in Asia. 00:54:07:23 - 00:54:12:26 I remember seeing this in in Asia and thinking that was a strange thing. 00:54:13:02 - 00:54:16:29 But yeah, I think I think it'll become a little bit more common here. 00:54:17:01 - 00:54:22:07 You see people also putting them on when they have colds and things sometimes. 00:54:22:07 - 00:54:24:03 Yeah. Yeah. And I'm 00:54:25:06 - 00:54:27:22 sorry, you know, it sucks wearing a mask when you're coughing. 00:54:27:22 - 00:54:29:20 It does 00:54:29:20 - 00:54:32:02 speed things even worse. 00:54:32:02 - 00:54:33:16 But yeah, it's so true. 00:54:33:16 - 00:54:35:24 And I actually I said to my husband the other day, 00:54:35:24 - 00:54:39:06 I was like, you know, I don't know if I'm ever going to get like on public 00:54:39:06 - 00:54:42:06 transportation without a mask, 00:54:42:07 - 00:54:45:03 like, or like, you know, on a plane or anything like that. 00:54:45:03 - 00:54:47:23 Because, you know, I would always go to these conferences 00:54:47:23 - 00:54:50:25 or we go on vacation and I always get sick, like always. 00:54:50:25 - 00:54:53:20 And it's like, I don't know if my body was just like, oh, it's time to relax. 00:54:53:20 - 00:54:54:27 Let's get sick. 00:54:54:27 - 00:54:57:05 Or if I got exposed to something. 00:54:57:05 - 00:54:58:14 But I'm like, Yeah, yeah. 00:54:58:14 - 00:55:01:05 It's like all the time now because, you know, 00:55:01:05 - 00:55:04:05 I haven't other than I did have COVID twice 00:55:04:20 - 00:55:09:00 and I just very had bronchitis, but I haven't been sick other than that. 00:55:09:00 - 00:55:11:21 And that's been great, right? 00:55:11:21 - 00:55:16:11 And, and I actually found it pretty useful during allergy season too. So 00:55:17:23 - 00:55:18:12 like, instead 00:55:18:12 - 00:55:22:03 of there's really bad, bad pollen in eastern North Carolina. 00:55:22:08 - 00:55:25:08 And I was like, well, if I just put my mask on, maybe it'll help. 00:55:27:12 - 00:55:28:05 Well, maybe it will. 00:55:28:05 - 00:55:29:08 Some of it it will help. 00:55:29:08 - 00:55:31:27 But some of that, you know, why not? 00:55:31:27 - 00:55:32:12 Yeah. So. 00:55:32:12 - 00:55:33:09 So it would be great 00:55:33:09 - 00:55:36:18 if these things become common or staying home when you're sick. 00:55:36:26 - 00:55:39:08 I would love that That became a thing. 00:55:39:08 - 00:55:40:18 Americans can't do that. 00:55:40:18 - 00:55:45:20 Although now that we can, at least some people are able to work from home. 00:55:45:26 - 00:55:49:12 At least there's that ability to, you know, 00:55:49:26 - 00:55:52:21 although a lot of companies are trying to bring people 00:55:52:21 - 00:55:56:09 back into the offices and reverse that that trend. 00:55:56:13 - 00:56:00:00 But I think that, you know, the trend is still going to have some 00:56:00:20 - 00:56:04:11 retroactive effect so that people can do work at home, 00:56:04:11 - 00:56:06:01 especially when they're sick, 00:56:06:01 - 00:56:08:09 you know, But really, people shouldn't be working with their sick. 00:56:08:09 - 00:56:09:19 That's just an American thing. 00:56:09:19 - 00:56:13:22 We have our work ethic where you just have to power through. 00:56:14:03 - 00:56:17:13 Yeah, just just suck it up and keep going and suck it up. 00:56:17:13 - 00:56:19:04 But that's not good for us. 00:56:19:04 - 00:56:21:06 Like, so then you're were sick longer, right? 00:56:21:06 - 00:56:23:03 And yes, and that's not good for us. 00:56:23:03 - 00:56:24:08 We really should. 00:56:24:08 - 00:56:27:09 We should have the the ability to take that rest. 00:56:27:16 - 00:56:29:12 But a lot of people don't because of their jobs. 00:56:29:12 - 00:56:33:00 They're worried about getting fired or, you know, all that kind of stuff. 00:56:33:23 - 00:56:37:20 And it's like when I think about that, I'm like, yeah, I like I'm a professor. 00:56:37:22 - 00:56:40:22 It's not like anybody can, like, wander in and teach my class for me, right? 00:56:41:02 - 00:56:42:23 But I can put it mine, right? 00:56:42:23 - 00:56:46:02 And if I get sick, I going to be like, Okay, guys, we're doing it online today. 00:56:46:02 - 00:56:48:05 I have and I've done that a few times now. 00:56:48:05 - 00:56:50:09 Yeah, It's like, you know, I've gotten sick. 00:56:50:09 - 00:56:51:04 We're going to meet online. 00:56:51:04 - 00:56:53:28 I don't want to get you guys sick, so. Yeah, yeah. 00:56:53:28 - 00:56:56:15 And I've I've even gotten my students occasionally. 00:56:56:15 - 00:56:59:01 Not always, but occasionally I'm like, Hey, just wear a mask. 00:56:59:01 - 00:57:00:22 If you get sick and you still want to come to class. 00:57:00:22 - 00:57:03:04 But I'll also I'll record it. 00:57:03:04 - 00:57:07:10 And like I will give you like, you know, if you go it Iran Yeah, 00:57:07:10 - 00:57:09:28 you can watch your back. That's fine. 00:57:09:28 - 00:57:10:06 Yeah. 00:57:10:06 - 00:57:11:07 So I think there's we're, 00:57:11:07 - 00:57:14:15 we're really learning different ways that we can do things. 00:57:14:15 - 00:57:18:18 And I hope so too, because I also think about like stuff like that, 00:57:18:18 - 00:57:21:25 but also for, for people with disabilities, 00:57:22:14 - 00:57:25:08 some of them can't participate the same way 00:57:25:08 - 00:57:28:15 that the rest of us can and going out into the world. 00:57:28:15 - 00:57:33:07 And this really made things accessible when we were all stuck at home. 00:57:34:00 - 00:57:35:18 We all learned about accessibility. 00:57:35:18 - 00:57:39:07 And, you know, we found that this is cool, 00:57:39:07 - 00:57:42:10 like why don't we have more museums that have virtual tours? 00:57:42:10 - 00:57:45:10 Or why don't it like, why can't we do more of these virtual things? 00:57:46:01 - 00:57:49:03 But then we've like now we've kind of stopped doing that and I think, Oh, 00:57:49:03 - 00:57:52:27 that's so sad because for a while we were all on the same level, right? 00:57:52:27 - 00:57:55:17 We were all able to access things 00:57:55:17 - 00:57:58:12 the way that that people with disabilities often have to. 00:57:58:12 - 00:58:01:14 And and that's so deeply unfair now. 00:58:01:14 - 00:58:04:08 But we've kind of gotten back to they were like, oh, sorry, bye. 00:58:04:08 - 00:58:05:15 And we've gone back. 00:58:05:15 - 00:58:09:02 I think we should really be thinking about that for that more inclusive. 00:58:10:12 - 00:58:10:26 Yeah. 00:58:10:26 - 00:58:16:14 And I've taught in a online master's program for Oh God, like 13 years now. 00:58:16:24 - 00:58:21:21 And it's so great to teach in an online program because my students can work. 00:58:22:04 - 00:58:23:28 You know, I've also had students 00:58:23:28 - 00:58:27:27 who were disabled who are been like, Yeah, I can't I can't come to 00:58:28:06 - 00:58:31:26 I can't come to campus, but I can do this class online. 00:58:31:26 - 00:58:33:19 And I'm like, Oh, that's amazing, you know? 00:58:33:19 - 00:58:35:14 So I wish, yeah, yeah, I wish we could. 00:58:35:14 - 00:58:39:06 We could like how to get the best of both worlds in these situations. 00:58:39:06 - 00:58:42:07 And I don't know, I hope that's where we're headed, but we'll see. 00:58:42:21 - 00:58:44:18 We'll see. Yeah. 00:58:44:18 - 00:58:47:04 So let's get into some of the legends from your book. 00:58:47:04 - 00:58:49:28 You mentioned zombies, vampires, 00:58:49:28 - 00:58:53:14 Slenderman, the The kiss of death I want to hear about. Oh, 00:58:54:17 - 00:58:56:03 yeah. 00:58:56:03 - 00:58:58:06 So yeah, the 00:58:58:06 - 00:59:00:27 yeah, I've always had a you know, I've always really liked 00:59:00:27 - 00:59:02:20 vampires zombie stuff. 00:59:02:20 - 00:59:03:16 I can't help it. 00:59:03:16 - 00:59:05:12 It's just like a personal thing. 00:59:05:12 - 00:59:10:01 Yeah, I'm a little tired of of the, like, the vampires we've been seeing lately. 00:59:10:01 - 00:59:13:10 I went some, like, gross old school vampires, but 00:59:14:21 - 00:59:17:10 yeah, I know the human ones. 00:59:17:10 - 00:59:18:02 I don't want to. 00:59:18:02 - 00:59:19:26 I want sexy vampires. I want, like. 00:59:19:26 - 00:59:22:26 Like old vampires, you know, like, let's stop with the sexy vampires. 00:59:23:02 - 00:59:24:00 I get. I get. 00:59:24:00 - 00:59:27:05 They're attractive, but, like, I'm over it, So. 00:59:28:04 - 00:59:30:27 And then I was like, Oh, God, Someone try to make zombies sexy. 00:59:30:27 - 00:59:33:12 I'm like, Let's no, let's not leave them. 00:59:33:12 - 00:59:34:17 You know? 00:59:34:17 - 00:59:38:15 But yeah, I've always I like I love monsters. 00:59:38:15 - 00:59:39:25 I've always loved monsters. 00:59:39:25 - 00:59:44:21 And, and so, yeah, I really enjoy like, thinking about that 00:59:45:01 - 00:59:48:19 and for me to thinking about contagion and contamination with these 00:59:48:19 - 00:59:50:17 especially vampires and zombies 00:59:50:17 - 00:59:54:14 is that idea that it's our loved one, but they've been changed somehow, right? 00:59:54:14 - 00:59:57:18 Like they're they look human, but they're not right. 00:59:58:04 - 01:00:01:25 And that kind of linking back to that idea of the asymptomatic carrier, 01:00:01:25 - 01:00:03:02 which we saw in COVID. 01:00:04:01 - 01:00:05:20 Little did I know we were going to see that. 01:00:05:20 - 01:00:07:11 No, but but there it was. 01:00:07:11 - 01:00:09:21 But that idea that that things that look 01:00:09:21 - 01:00:13:12 human to us that aren't is very scary. 01:00:13:12 - 01:00:14:24 It's one of our scariest things. 01:00:14:24 - 01:00:17:09 It's like that idea that there's like a sleeper cell 01:00:17:09 - 01:00:19:13 or something like that happening. Yeah. 01:00:19:13 - 01:00:21:20 And we see this with disease as well. 01:00:21:20 - 01:00:26:23 So the people who are asymptomatic carriers, they appear to be fine. 01:00:27:00 - 01:00:30:18 They're not visibly sick, but they have the virus 01:00:30:18 - 01:00:34:05 or they have whatever it is, they have ism or whatever. 01:00:34:25 - 01:00:38:03 And so that idea is so scary to us, I think, 01:00:38:03 - 01:00:40:19 because we can't tell just by looking at them. 01:00:40:19 - 01:00:43:29 And a lot of especially if you look at like the older legends 01:00:43:29 - 01:00:48:03 and the older even movies about vampires and zombies, so much of it was xenophobic. 01:00:48:03 - 01:00:51:03 It was like, Oh no, it's the suave outsider. 01:00:51:18 - 01:00:55:26 It's the it's the sexy vampire because it's like the the you know, 01:00:56:02 - 01:00:57:17 a lot of those were done during a time 01:00:57:17 - 01:01:00:17 when a lot of Eastern European immigrants were coming into places. 01:01:00:29 - 01:01:04:07 And this idea that that your 01:01:04:07 - 01:01:07:20 your virginal white woman was going to sleep with these 01:01:08:20 - 01:01:10:27 men was just horrifying to people. 01:01:10:27 - 01:01:13:15 And so, you know, it goes back again. 01:01:13:15 - 01:01:16:07 So when things go back to stuff that's racist, it's really sad. 01:01:16:07 - 01:01:20:18 But it does it goes back to this this sort of racist idea that these women 01:01:20:18 - 01:01:24:10 are going to be led away by these people who look human but aren't. 01:01:24:10 - 01:01:27:10 And it's like, no, they're just immigrants, you know? 01:01:27:14 - 01:01:29:00 Yeah, ridiculous. 01:01:29:00 - 01:01:32:00 But yeah, so there's there's so many stories about that. 01:01:32:15 - 01:01:34:22 And we've been telling these stories for a long time. 01:01:34:22 - 01:01:39:21 And and, you know, if you look at like especially the original vampire narrative, 01:01:40:00 - 01:01:42:28 especially if you look at like the old Eastern European folklore, 01:01:42:28 - 01:01:45:18 so much of it, if you look at the list of things 01:01:45:18 - 01:01:48:18 that can make you a vampire, it's things like, 01:01:49:12 - 01:01:52:22 you know, if your property isn't settled before you die. 01:01:52:22 - 01:01:56:14 So it's like get your affairs in order If your 01:01:57:01 - 01:02:00:01 if you mourn too long or too little. 01:02:00:01 - 01:02:04:00 So a few more too much or too too little, that person could turn into a vampire. 01:02:04:00 - 01:02:08:03 So it's also like social norms about grieving and like, you know, you know, 01:02:08:18 - 01:02:11:20 and it was considered usually a year and a day was like that 01:02:11:21 - 01:02:13:13 what you're supposed to grieve. 01:02:13:13 - 01:02:18:23 So, like, you can't carry too much, you can't do too little or else vampire 01:02:19:27 - 01:02:21:00 leaving. 01:02:21:00 - 01:02:24:00 One of the things was if animals jump over the corpse 01:02:24:22 - 01:02:27:23 and like to me that's just like, that's probably just like good 01:02:27:29 - 01:02:31:04 corpse care practice, you know, I don't leave it. 01:02:31:04 - 01:02:34:29 Some place for animals can jump over it like, Yeah, someplace 01:02:34:29 - 01:02:39:00 safe, bury it, you know, or burn it or do something with it immediately. 01:02:39:00 - 01:02:40:17 Like, don't just let it sit out. 01:02:40:17 - 01:02:43:18 And so, so many of these things are like rules of, 01:02:43:27 - 01:02:46:27 you know, some of them are social rules or social norms, 01:02:46:28 - 01:02:49:15 and other things are like good public health, 01:02:49:15 - 01:02:52:28 like, yeah, this kind of stuff are like telling you to get your affairs in order. 01:02:53:04 - 01:02:55:29 So, so much of that was like about teaching people like, 01:02:55:29 - 01:02:59:09 this is what you have to do or else you'll turn into a vampire. 01:02:59:21 - 01:03:02:28 So that seems like the worst case scenario, right? 01:03:03:06 - 01:03:05:19 Yeah. You won't just die. You'll turn into a vampire. 01:03:07:13 - 01:03:08:14 So yeah. 01:03:08:14 - 01:03:11:14 So some of these stories, I think, are there for that, 01:03:11:24 - 01:03:13:23 you know, that maintenance of culture, right? 01:03:13:23 - 01:03:17:01 And and to keep social norms and, and sometimes for like things 01:03:17:01 - 01:03:18:11 like public health. Right. 01:03:18:11 - 01:03:21:06 So all of these stories kind of remind you of that. 01:03:21:06 - 01:03:24:25 And I think that that especially the vampire narrative has changed so much 01:03:25:03 - 01:03:28:28 from being about that to being more about, hey, look, 01:03:29:04 - 01:03:32:18 because so much of the stuff right now, especially with like the romantic vampire 01:03:33:00 - 01:03:37:05 is it's about a woman falling in love with the vampire 01:03:37:05 - 01:03:41:12 and then proving to everybody else that he is also at least human in some way. 01:03:41:25 - 01:03:42:18 Right? Right. 01:03:42:18 - 01:03:45:07 So to me, that's an acceptance of outsiders. 01:03:45:07 - 01:03:47:15 And like, that's a good narrative. Like, yeah, let's keep going. 01:03:47:15 - 01:03:48:14 That that narrative. 01:03:48:14 - 01:03:50:19 Like I said, though, I'm still a little bored of it. But, 01:03:51:29 - 01:03:52:26 but as 01:03:52:26 - 01:03:55:25 a narrative, you know, it's a it's actually a pretty positive one. 01:03:55:25 - 01:03:57:00 It's the Yeah, yeah. 01:03:57:00 - 01:03:57:16 At first 01:03:57:16 - 01:03:59:12 everybody's not going to accept them, but eventually 01:03:59:12 - 01:04:01:12 you're going to win them over and it's going to be okay 01:04:01:12 - 01:04:04:12 and your family will come back to loving you and all that kind of stuff. 01:04:04:19 - 01:04:08:03 And so it turns into this just totally different narrative where 01:04:08:25 - 01:04:11:10 weirdly, women are in charge 01:04:11:10 - 01:04:15:00 of making these big changes in society, which is also kind of interesting 01:04:15:09 - 01:04:17:14 if you think of things like the women's March. 01:04:17:14 - 01:04:20:14 So. So yeah, I think there is there's some, 01:04:20:19 - 01:04:22:28 some of those changes in narrative are good. 01:04:22:28 - 01:04:26:00 You know, like they're actually much more positive than they've been in the past. 01:04:26:24 - 01:04:29:28 And then the if you get into things like Slenderman, oh my gosh, 01:04:30:11 - 01:04:33:25 we are still afraid of teenage girls, which is what I think. 01:04:33:25 - 01:04:36:07 So the Slenderman narrative is about. 01:04:36:07 - 01:04:39:17 So I don't know that the legend of Slender Man can. 01:04:39:17 - 01:04:41:18 You can. Yeah. 01:04:41:18 - 01:04:42:00 Yeah. 01:04:42:00 - 01:04:46:24 So the sort of shirt version of it is we can actually track it. 01:04:46:24 - 01:04:52:08 Like I mentioned to 2009, there was a it was on the Something Ortho forum that 01:04:52:27 - 01:04:56:02 a poster there was like a challenge that was put out 01:04:56:02 - 01:04:57:28 that was like make something creepy. 01:04:57:28 - 01:05:00:25 So somebody created two photoshops 01:05:00:25 - 01:05:06:21 of a big tall guy with no face in a black suit and put like a couple 01:05:06:21 - 01:05:11:03 of little lines of text that were kind of creepy and people just ran with it. 01:05:11:11 - 01:05:13:18 They absolutely loved it. They thought it was amazing. 01:05:13:18 - 01:05:17:00 So more and more people started creating Slenderman or telling stories 01:05:17:00 - 01:05:22:06 about Slenderman or, you know, making fan fiction or fan art about it. 01:05:22:25 - 01:05:27:02 But the thing that kind of really pushed it sort of out of the Internet and into 01:05:27:23 - 01:05:31:06 more everyday life, although the Internet is everyday life at this point, 01:05:31:17 - 01:05:35:23 but kind of took it out of that screen and put it into, you know, not screen, 01:05:36:22 - 01:05:37:06 not screen 01:05:37:06 - 01:05:40:06 part of our everyday life, that little tiny part. 01:05:40:09 - 01:05:42:17 Right? It 01:05:42:17 - 01:05:44:20 was there was a couple of girls 01:05:44:20 - 01:05:49:24 in Wisconsin who believed in the narrative and they ended up 01:05:49:24 - 01:05:53:25 stabbing their friend over Slenderman to gain Slender Man's favor. 01:05:53:25 - 01:05:56:13 And that's kind of what pushed it into the limelight. 01:05:56:13 - 01:06:00:11 And there was no part of the narrative that necessarily said 01:06:00:11 - 01:06:03:02 that you had to kill people for Slenderman or anything like that. 01:06:03:02 - 01:06:05:14 This was that Asian. 01:06:05:14 - 01:06:08:14 And and so that really kind of pushed it into that, 01:06:08:19 - 01:06:11:07 like I said, into kind of the public sphere. 01:06:11:07 - 01:06:15:04 So then everybody was talking about it and every was freaking out that their kids 01:06:15:04 - 01:06:16:25 were going to get into Slenderman and not understand 01:06:16:25 - 01:06:19:03 the difference between reality and fiction. 01:06:19:03 - 01:06:22:03 And it was really this this one case 01:06:22:19 - 01:06:25:05 and and it was it was a very serious case. 01:06:25:05 - 01:06:28:05 The little girl that got I think she was stabbed 17 times. 01:06:28:07 - 01:06:29:00 She lived. 01:06:29:00 - 01:06:31:13 She is you know, I don't want to say she's fine. 01:06:31:13 - 01:06:33:17 I'm sure she still has a lot of trauma associated with it, 01:06:33:17 - 01:06:36:17 but she is physically okay, as far as I know. 01:06:37:03 - 01:06:39:25 The other two, the two girls who were participated in the stabbing, 01:06:39:25 - 01:06:43:05 I think are still in jail, although they were I think, into 01:06:44:15 - 01:06:47:04 mental health care facilities. 01:06:47:04 - 01:06:51:13 But it was it was such a big deal because everybody kind of brought back 01:06:51:13 - 01:06:55:15 all those ideas of kids don't realize what's real 01:06:55:15 - 01:06:58:15 and what's not real and Internet is bad. 01:06:58:15 - 01:07:00:08 And it's like, now the Internet's a tool. 01:07:00:08 - 01:07:02:27 How we use it is good or bad, right? 01:07:02:27 - 01:07:05:05 So there's all this stuff out there about Slenderman. 01:07:05:05 - 01:07:07:00 And of course, when when parents hate 01:07:07:00 - 01:07:09:09 something that makes kids all the more interested in it. 01:07:09:09 - 01:07:13:27 So there was this sort of rise again in people participating in this narrative. 01:07:14:16 - 01:07:17:11 So it turned out to be really interesting, 01:07:17:11 - 01:07:20:12 especially watching it happen over time. 01:07:20:20 - 01:07:23:21 And it's interesting to to think of time as a concept in these things. 01:07:23:21 - 01:07:26:08 So I sat and watched it all as an adult. 01:07:26:08 - 01:07:29:26 But like a lot of my students remember Slenderman from when they were a kid 01:07:29:26 - 01:07:32:26 and remember hearing a story about it, not seeing it online. 01:07:33:11 - 01:07:37:17 So for them, it's oral culture and it was a playground game. 01:07:37:17 - 01:07:41:20 It was things like that or something they did at sleepovers. 01:07:42:11 - 01:07:45:09 Yeah, But for me, it's something that's like completely Internet. 01:07:45:09 - 01:07:49:26 So so it's interesting to kind of see how because of age and time, 01:07:50:18 - 01:07:53:03 it could be different things for different people. 01:07:53:03 - 01:07:54:21 So that was really interesting. 01:07:54:21 - 01:07:57:21 And I decided I had this idea. 01:07:58:03 - 01:08:00:09 I was like, Huh, there's all this like this, 01:08:00:09 - 01:08:03:29 all these things that like a list of things that, you know, 01:08:04:09 - 01:08:07:12 when you've had, like when you've been in contact with Slenderman 01:08:07:22 - 01:08:08:28 and they came across and like people 01:08:08:28 - 01:08:11:22 are actually referring to it as slender sickness. 01:08:11:22 - 01:08:16:08 And I was like, Well, what if I treat that as an actual condition? 01:08:16:17 - 01:08:19:10 What are the symptoms of slender sickness? 01:08:19:10 - 01:08:22:28 And so I made a list and then started looking at the list 01:08:22:28 - 01:08:26:21 and trying to figure out, okay, well, what matches this that we already know about? 01:08:27:01 - 01:08:31:01 And it turned out that the symptoms of slender sickness are almost identical. 01:08:31:19 - 01:08:35:28 The list of characteristics you'll notice in your children 01:08:35:28 - 01:08:36:26 if they're being bullied. 01:08:38:05 - 01:08:39:03 And I was like, 01:08:39:03 - 01:08:42:03 Oh, whoa, wait, what's going on here? 01:08:42:24 - 01:08:46:01 And then the more I kind of delve into that, the more I saw 01:08:46:04 - 01:08:49:04 that there were so many people 01:08:49:17 - 01:08:53:05 thinking of Slenderman, this particular moment in those terms, 01:08:53:05 - 01:08:57:25 like he was something that could help you, or you would have these sort of 01:08:57:25 - 01:09:02:01 like revenge fantasies about Slenderman killing off your bullies, 01:09:02:18 - 01:09:03:11 but you didn't do it. 01:09:03:11 - 01:09:04:12 It was Slenderman, right. 01:09:04:12 - 01:09:06:21 So that's out of your control. 01:09:06:21 - 01:09:09:21 And and like having like and it was mostly 01:09:09:28 - 01:09:12:28 at least people that were presenting as young women 01:09:13:18 - 01:09:18:19 having like, writing this fanfic about Slenderman killed my bully. 01:09:18:19 - 01:09:19:29 Slenderman beat up my bullies. 01:09:19:29 - 01:09:24:18 Slenderman took me away from my situation, and now my life is better. 01:09:24:25 - 01:09:27:02 And in some ways, some of them would like go on to say, 01:09:27:02 - 01:09:30:02 But it's actually not because it's Slenderman, but other ones 01:09:30:04 - 01:09:32:28 didn't say that they were like, Slenderman is. 01:09:32:28 - 01:09:35:11 And now my life is a little ambiguous. 01:09:35:11 - 01:09:39:24 If he was a villain or a superhero, this is very ambiguous. 01:09:39:24 - 01:09:44:05 So he was he was really framed originally as a villain, right? 01:09:44:05 - 01:09:44:29 He was, yeah. 01:09:44:29 - 01:09:46:07 And some places, too. 01:09:46:07 - 01:09:47:13 He wasn't even a villain. 01:09:47:13 - 01:09:49:19 He was more kind of like Mothman, where you're like, 01:09:49:19 - 01:09:51:10 he just shows up and bad stuff. 01:09:51:10 - 01:09:54:00 Like, he's like a harbinger of bad things, right? 01:09:54:00 - 01:09:55:27 Like he shows up like, Oh, no, bad. 01:09:55:27 - 01:09:57:05 This stuff is going to happen. 01:09:57:05 - 01:10:00:21 And so so for some people it was like that other people, he kind of turned into 01:10:00:21 - 01:10:04:07 this thing that would attack people or come after them. 01:10:04:07 - 01:10:06:22 But for a lot of people it was it was more about 01:10:07:27 - 01:10:08:13 this idea, 01:10:08:13 - 01:10:11:13 this uncanny thing that was frightening. 01:10:11:15 - 01:10:12:22 And there was there was also 01:10:12:22 - 01:10:16:15 the other part of Slenderman, too, is there is there's no way to repel him. 01:10:16:15 - 01:10:18:03 There's no way to get rid of him. 01:10:18:03 - 01:10:22:25 There's no way to do anything about it, which is a lot like bullying. 01:10:22:25 - 01:10:25:04 Right? Like, what are you going to do about it? Right. 01:10:25:04 - 01:10:28:04 And it was you know, and it was so many, especially, 01:10:28:24 - 01:10:33:14 like I said, like teenagers talking about this and having this issue 01:10:34:13 - 01:10:37:20 and not seeing a way out of it like there was nothing 01:10:37:20 - 01:10:40:29 that their parents do, like adults were completely ineffective. 01:10:41:20 - 01:10:43:28 It was only Slenderman that could help them. 01:10:43:28 - 01:10:47:18 And it was so wild to kind of read that and kind of realize 01:10:47:22 - 01:10:50:22 that that's for some people what was happening. 01:10:50:28 - 01:10:52:15 And it was it wasn't universal. 01:10:52:15 - 01:10:53:21 It's not like everybody who told us 01:10:53:21 - 01:10:56:21 Letterman's story was being bullied, but a lot of people. 01:10:56:25 - 01:11:00:07 And and it became this other way of talking about 01:11:00:07 - 01:11:02:04 especially cyberbullying and that online. 01:11:02:04 - 01:11:03:10 Yeah. 01:11:03:10 - 01:11:05:27 Yeah. Is that what you're seeing now? Yeah. 01:11:05:27 - 01:11:08:27 It's so frightening to me as a parent. 01:11:09:00 - 01:11:11:11 I can only imagine. Yeah, because it is. 01:11:12:18 - 01:11:13:23 And that was part of Slenderman. 01:11:13:23 - 01:11:15:11 Like Slenderman was always there. 01:11:15:11 - 01:11:16:24 Like that was just part of it. 01:11:16:24 - 01:11:19:25 Like to me, I saw that clear thing of like, you know, 01:11:19:25 - 01:11:23:11 when, like when I was growing up, if you are bullied that you just go home. 01:11:23:11 - 01:11:23:25 Right? 01:11:23:25 - 01:11:26:25 And like, at least in my home, you were hopefully safe unless you were, 01:11:26:29 - 01:11:28:24 of course, being bullied home. 01:11:28:24 - 01:11:32:03 But for like if you were being bullied at school, there was there was an escape. 01:11:32:03 - 01:11:33:23 Right. You knew it was going to happen again tomorrow. 01:11:33:23 - 01:11:36:09 And that sucks. But like, at least you could get away from it. 01:11:36:09 - 01:11:40:04 But with cyber bullying, there's it's always going like Slenderman. 01:11:40:04 - 01:11:42:27 It just keeps going and there's no escape from it. 01:11:42:27 - 01:11:46:15 And so I saw that like that clear thing that was happening that they saw 01:11:46:15 - 01:11:49:15 both of these things in way is it's something you can't escape. 01:11:50:06 - 01:11:54:01 So I was like, oh, wow, this is this is disturbing and wild. 01:11:54:28 - 01:11:58:26 And yeah, it was it was a really interesting to kind of realize. 01:11:58:26 - 01:12:00:13 And that's that's what I did. 01:12:00:13 - 01:12:02:19 I just kind of sat down and went, okay, 01:12:02:19 - 01:12:04:19 you know, they're giving a list of symptoms. 01:12:04:19 - 01:12:08:18 What the what does this match in the nine supernatural world? 01:12:09:00 - 01:12:11:20 And it yeah, it gave me a pretty big insight. 01:12:11:20 - 01:12:12:25 So. Wow. Yeah. 01:12:12:25 - 01:12:16:10 So I'd like to see other people do that with other things. 01:12:16:10 - 01:12:20:15 I'm not sure what yet, but I think I think a place to do that. 01:12:21:03 - 01:12:23:25 But yeah, and then for other people, Slenderman was like this. 01:12:23:25 - 01:12:27:07 I mean, they made fun of them and he was like this, like silly figure. 01:12:27:07 - 01:12:30:13 And people are dressing up as him for Halloween and, you know, 01:12:30:13 - 01:12:31:15 there's all this different stuff. 01:12:31:15 - 01:12:33:00 And then eventually there was a movie made. 01:12:33:00 - 01:12:35:18 And I feel like after that, nobody was interested anymore. 01:12:37:01 - 01:12:38:23 We're like, No, that really? 01:12:38:23 - 01:12:39:23 Yeah. Yeah. 01:12:39:23 - 01:12:42:27 There was a actually there was like a movie that didn't use 01:12:42:27 - 01:12:46:08 the word Slenderman because they actually copyrighted it at one point. 01:12:46:13 - 01:12:49:09 And then there was a movie that used Slenderman to 01:12:49:09 - 01:12:53:02 and there's been other sort of like parodies and like offshoots. 01:12:53:02 - 01:12:54:05 It's like it's not Slenderman. 01:12:54:05 - 01:12:57:05 It just happens to look exactly like him and 01:12:57:18 - 01:12:59:21 that kind of stuff that have kind of come out. 01:12:59:21 - 01:13:01:28 But I feel like there was like a couple of movies like that. 01:13:01:28 - 01:13:04:19 And then it's just like people are like, now we're done. 01:13:04:19 - 01:13:07:11 And yeah, yeah, it's run its course 01:13:07:11 - 01:13:10:28 for the time being and then maybe it'll come back at a certain point. 01:13:10:28 - 01:13:12:13 Come change. 01:13:12:13 - 01:13:16:27 Yeah, it's sort of like the clown thing that we had going on for a while 01:13:19:00 - 01:13:19:20 for everywhere. 01:13:19:20 - 01:13:22:20 And then they disappeared again and Yeah, so. 01:13:22:21 - 01:13:23:21 Yeah. 01:13:23:21 - 01:13:26:23 What about the Kiss of Death, the title of your, your book. 01:13:26:29 - 01:13:27:28 Yeah. 01:13:27:28 - 01:13:30:27 So this was a set of legends. 01:13:30:27 - 01:13:33:28 I started realizing I was reading all these legends about 01:13:34:24 - 01:13:38:23 people who would die after being kissed and I was like, 01:13:38:23 - 01:13:40:15 Some of these stories seem alike, 01:13:40:15 - 01:13:42:19 but then other ones are just like, nothing like this. 01:13:42:19 - 01:13:46:11 So I was like, Yeah, I'm going to sit down and start looking at, you know, 01:13:47:11 - 01:13:51:01 like any that has a kiss in it and then somebody dies or almost dies. 01:13:51:16 - 01:13:54:01 And I started putting all this together in like a chart 01:13:54:01 - 01:13:55:18 because there's so many of them. 01:13:55:18 - 01:13:58:26 Like, it took me a while to like, Oh my, oh my God, what have I done? 01:13:59:17 - 01:14:01:06 It's like that moment. Yeah. 01:14:01:06 - 01:14:03:11 So I started collecting all these different narratives and like, 01:14:03:11 - 01:14:05:25 looking for them in books and in archives. 01:14:05:25 - 01:14:09:20 And I brought together all of and again, put them in a chart like this is, 01:14:09:20 - 01:14:10:15 this is what I do. 01:14:10:15 - 01:14:14:08 I put things in a chart and I started dividing them up by different things. 01:14:14:08 - 01:14:16:00 And I thought, Oh my gosh, 01:14:16:00 - 01:14:19:10 the thing I notice that even some of these stories were vastly different. 01:14:20:21 - 01:14:23:04 It seemed like if you were kissed by somebody 01:14:23:04 - 01:14:26:17 that you cared about or loved, you were definitely dying. 01:14:28:08 - 01:14:29:24 If you were kissed by somebody 01:14:29:24 - 01:14:32:24 that maybe you just met or, you know, 01:14:32:24 - 01:14:38:00 something that wasn't like as as intimate, you probably weren't going to die. 01:14:38:00 - 01:14:39:04 So it's like the closer 01:14:39:04 - 01:14:42:21 you were to them, there's like a sliding scale of like that. 01:14:43:06 - 01:14:45:19 And it seemed like the closer you were to the like, to the person, 01:14:45:19 - 01:14:48:16 the more you cared about them, the more likely they were to die. 01:14:48:16 - 01:14:51:17 And I was just like, This is weird, what's going on here? 01:14:51:29 - 01:14:53:06 And so I started to kind of like 01:14:53:06 - 01:14:57:14 look at these legends more and more, look at the details of them and, you know, 01:14:57:14 - 01:15:02:11 so many of them were interesting because they were sort of tales of warning 01:15:03:17 - 01:15:06:21 and like reminders of things, especially like the more modern 01:15:06:21 - 01:15:09:22 versions of them, which was like there was one in particular 01:15:09:22 - 01:15:14:10 about a parent who kisses their baby that was like just born baby. 01:15:14:29 - 01:15:18:20 And they actually have an active case of herpes simplex. 01:15:18:20 - 01:15:21:13 So like on their mouth or something like that transfer 01:15:21:13 - 01:15:23:12 and it gets transferred to the baby and the baby dies 01:15:23:12 - 01:15:26:12 because the baby is too young to kind of deal with it. 01:15:26:17 - 01:15:28:28 Or and there's been other ones too, where like the child's 01:15:28:28 - 01:15:31:28 been a little bit older, same thing kind of happens 01:15:32:00 - 01:15:35:02 and it's always a parent or grandparent or something like that. 01:15:35:10 - 01:15:36:29 And so that was one that was really common. 01:15:36:29 - 01:15:40:04 But one of the the ones that I really thought was interesting, 01:15:40:15 - 01:15:44:21 it was actually based off of this real case of this woman. 01:15:44:21 - 01:15:47:21 She was I think she was in Quebec, 01:15:48:14 - 01:15:50:24 but her name was Christina the Forge. 01:15:50:24 - 01:15:54:01 And she had died of anaphylactic shock 01:15:55:13 - 01:15:56:26 from and they 01:15:56:26 - 01:16:00:10 they believed it was from a kiss from her boyfriend 01:16:00:10 - 01:16:03:17 who had just eaten a peanut butter sandwich before she had gotten there. 01:16:04:02 - 01:16:07:02 And she was allergic to peanuts. 01:16:07:02 - 01:16:11:26 And they they thought that it was because of the that that's what she died of. 01:16:12:09 - 01:16:14:24 And from that from that. 01:16:14:24 - 01:16:17:28 And it was really interesting because I had heard this story 01:16:18:10 - 01:16:21:03 and I had kind of like, oh, wow, okay. 01:16:21:03 - 01:16:22:22 Yeah, that's something to think about like that. 01:16:22:22 - 01:16:25:27 You can you can pass the proteins from like peanuts 01:16:25:27 - 01:16:29:05 or something like that along to somebody else via a kiss. 01:16:29:18 - 01:16:30:09 And like, 01:16:30:09 - 01:16:32:04 you know, when a lot of other people were reading about that, 01:16:32:04 - 01:16:35:01 they were thinking like, oh, okay, this is like a really small town. 01:16:35:01 - 01:16:38:01 Maybe the the coroner didn't get the diagnosis right. 01:16:38:14 - 01:16:40:12 It's unlikely that that could happen. 01:16:40:12 - 01:16:41:29 It's more likely that she probably 01:16:41:29 - 01:16:44:29 it was contaminated surface or something along those lines. 01:16:45:07 - 01:16:49:23 But this whole story got really, really intense about this girl. 01:16:50:21 - 01:16:51:12 And and 01:16:51:12 - 01:16:55:14 it was so interesting, too, because she was she almost became like 01:16:55:14 - 01:16:59:12 a kind of patient zero for this because she's sort of blamed for this. 01:16:59:21 - 01:17:04:25 And a lot of what was said about her is that when went into anaphylactic shock, 01:17:04:25 - 01:17:06:26 I think it was three in the morning, and they were like, well, 01:17:06:26 - 01:17:09:26 what was she doing at her boyfriend's house at three in the morning? 01:17:09:28 - 01:17:11:21 So then it became this whole thing that like, well, 01:17:11:21 - 01:17:14:26 maybe it wasn't from the kids maybe it was from semen or from something. 01:17:15:01 - 01:17:15:22 Yeah. 01:17:15:22 - 01:17:19:13 And you know, and so there was all this like slut shaming that started happening 01:17:19:13 - 01:17:22:08 for this poor woman and all this other stuff. 01:17:22:08 - 01:17:23:21 And it was like, oh, my gosh, you know, 01:17:23:21 - 01:17:26:21 why are we reacting like this to the story? 01:17:26:21 - 01:17:27:28 And it's a part again. 01:17:27:28 - 01:17:30:25 So if I just don't do that, then I'm protected, right? 01:17:30:25 - 01:17:32:05 I think then it started to morph 01:17:32:05 - 01:17:35:29 into this story where her name got dropped entirely from it. 01:17:36:00 - 01:17:39:00 It was just a woman that this happened to. 01:17:39:01 - 01:17:40:08 So she she like this 01:17:40:08 - 01:17:43:21 very real story about this person sort of turned into a legend. 01:17:44:11 - 01:17:47:12 And now if you look it up, it's it's almost hard to find her name. 01:17:47:12 - 01:17:48:27 You can find things. 01:17:48:27 - 01:17:51:25 And a lot of people called it the peanut butter kiss. 01:17:51:25 - 01:17:54:14 So you can find things about the peanut butter kiss 01:17:54:14 - 01:17:57:28 and especially on like allergy forums and like places like that. 01:17:58:19 - 01:18:02:00 But you don't see so much about her as a person. 01:18:02:00 - 01:18:03:18 And we see that a lot with Legend 01:18:03:18 - 01:18:06:21 where it's not a specific person that's identified anymore. 01:18:06:21 - 01:18:11:10 It just becomes this woman or this person that this happened to. 01:18:11:10 - 01:18:16:21 And that's so that legendary process is already happened to this this poor woman 01:18:17:10 - 01:18:19:16 and even some of the like where this all first came out, 01:18:19:16 - 01:18:21:08 there were no pictures of her, anything like that. 01:18:21:08 - 01:18:23:08 And I've even seen pictures associated with her. 01:18:23:08 - 01:18:26:08 Now I'm like, I don't think that's her. 01:18:26:12 - 01:18:26:22 Okay. 01:18:26:22 - 01:18:30:13 This was a generic like, you know, young woman picture. 01:18:30:13 - 01:18:34:15 And now I've seen different ones and I'm like, I don't even think this is her. 01:18:34:15 - 01:18:37:18 But people are using the picture to kind of give it some credit. 01:18:37:24 - 01:18:40:16 It's like, look, it's real. Here she is, you know, right. 01:18:40:16 - 01:18:43:07 Like that sort of legendary status. 01:18:43:07 - 01:18:47:01 So, yeah, it was really interesting to watch kind of a live action 01:18:47:19 - 01:18:51:16 being kind of divorced of her name and more legend. 01:18:52:06 - 01:18:54:27 And so how it's told is is really interesting. 01:18:54:27 - 01:18:57:27 And we still don't really know the truth of what happened to her. 01:18:58:16 - 01:18:58:25 Right. 01:18:58:25 - 01:18:59:29 You know, it could have been 01:18:59:29 - 01:19:03:00 ad because she also had asthma, so it could have been an asthma attack as well. 01:19:03:23 - 01:19:06:23 But, you know, it looks like she couldn't breathe. 01:19:06:26 - 01:19:09:27 So anaphylactic that an asthma attack would look pretty similar. 01:19:10:15 - 01:19:11:21 So it's you know, 01:19:11:21 - 01:19:14:21 we still don't know the truth of it, but there's been a lot of studies done 01:19:14:21 - 01:19:18:14 that show that, yeah, like peanut proteins can be still there. 01:19:19:24 - 01:19:22:00 So it's possible that other common allergens 01:19:22:00 - 01:19:25:20 could have done this, but it's like it's so rare that it probably never happened. 01:19:26:08 - 01:19:27:11 But yeah, again, it was most 01:19:27:11 - 01:19:30:11 likely like a contaminated surface, something like that. 01:19:30:13 - 01:19:33:13 But yeah, there's, there's so many other 01:19:33:27 - 01:19:35:01 ways to think about this. 01:19:35:01 - 01:19:39:14 And again, so many times in urban legends, women get blamed for something. 01:19:39:14 - 01:19:42:19 Yeah, you know, they're either they're out too late, 01:19:42:19 - 01:19:46:06 they're doing something they shouldn't be doing all that they ask for it. 01:19:46:16 - 01:19:47:03 Yeah. 01:19:47:03 - 01:19:49:25 Yeah, that, you know, So same kind of there. 01:19:49:25 - 01:19:51:01 So it really was interesting 01:19:51:01 - 01:19:54:01 how this, this real case kind of turned into this legend. 01:19:55:05 - 01:19:57:17 And it's so we're running we're running late on time. 01:19:57:17 - 01:20:01:08 So I want to I really want to ask what where do you feel like 01:20:01:09 - 01:20:04:12 so horse can fill in the gaps in public health? 01:20:04:25 - 01:20:05:10 Oh, yeah. 01:20:05:10 - 01:20:08:10 Where do you see like your role 01:20:08:21 - 01:20:11:15 or other folklorist role in in helping 01:20:12:14 - 01:20:13:22 public health messaging? 01:20:13:22 - 01:20:17:05 Yeah, I think that's a great question because there's so many places we could 01:20:17:11 - 01:20:20:07 we could jump in and like, what are the ones I told people 01:20:20:07 - 01:20:23:21 during the pandemic, I was like, Fogler should be there contact tracing 01:20:24:02 - 01:20:26:23 because we understand network and we understand how people interact. 01:20:26:23 - 01:20:28:02 So it's like we all need it. 01:20:28:02 - 01:20:30:07 Like if don't have a job, go be a contact tracing right now 01:20:30:07 - 01:20:33:07 if you're your folklorist, because we're going to be great at that. 01:20:33:21 - 01:20:35:25 And some people actually took me up on that and they did 01:20:35:25 - 01:20:37:02 and they were great at it. 01:20:37:02 - 01:20:40:26 So I think we understand how people move and how stories get around 01:20:41:03 - 01:20:43:28 and how stories get around is very, very similar 01:20:43:28 - 01:20:47:04 to how viruses get around right face to face contact. 01:20:47:12 - 01:20:51:19 Having that, you know, that that that spread that can really happen. 01:20:51:26 - 01:20:55:12 But also understanding how people move and how they relate to each other 01:20:55:12 - 01:20:57:26 and how it's impossible to keep people apart. Right. 01:20:57:26 - 01:21:00:06 They're Going to find some way to get together. 01:21:00:06 - 01:21:03:18 But not only like watching that, but also suggesting like, 01:21:03:18 - 01:21:06:09 okay, so you can't get together in person. 01:21:06:09 - 01:21:10:08 Like, here's how you can do something else that'll make you feel 01:21:10:08 - 01:21:13:08 like you're close to these people, but not actually with them. 01:21:13:21 - 01:21:16:21 So like, you know, suggesting those like the zoom 01:21:17:01 - 01:21:19:20 happy hours that we all went to and that kind of stuff. 01:21:19:20 - 01:21:19:26 Yeah, 01:21:20:25 - 01:21:21:16 but I think we're 01:21:21:16 - 01:21:24:16 also really good for because we know these stories, 01:21:24:16 - 01:21:27:27 we know the structure and the format, we know the common things that happen. 01:21:27:28 - 01:21:30:27 And all of that makes us really good at 01:21:30:27 - 01:21:34:04 identifying these things before they happen. 01:21:34:13 - 01:21:37:09 So I actually I put out a video 01:21:37:09 - 01:21:39:12 gosh, I think it was like 01:21:39:12 - 01:21:42:12 early March or mid-March 01:21:42:12 - 01:21:45:12 of 2020, about like the kind of things we were going to see. 01:21:45:13 - 01:21:49:24 And yeah it was it turned out to be like the details were different. 01:21:49:24 - 01:21:54:05 But yeah, it was the same stuff, Like it's, oh, it's going to be patient zero. 01:21:54:09 - 01:21:57:03 We're going to see Blaine. We're going to see like all these things. 01:21:57:03 - 01:21:59:28 So you know what the narratives are going to look like. 01:21:59:28 - 01:22:03:05 You can help make sure that the bad narratives 01:22:03:13 - 01:22:06:13 don't get out there or like, or at least change them in some way 01:22:06:13 - 01:22:10:10 or you can, like, address those things before they come up, right? 01:22:10:10 - 01:22:12:15 So you put out information. 01:22:12:15 - 01:22:14:19 There's a little bit of a risk there, of course, too, 01:22:14:19 - 01:22:17:01 because we don't want to introduce information that people haven't thought of 01:22:17:01 - 01:22:18:16 and then give them a new thing they'll be afraid of. 01:22:18:16 - 01:22:20:00 Yes, let's do that. 01:22:20:00 - 01:22:22:20 But there's two ways to respond to that and talk about 01:22:22:20 - 01:22:23:28 and talk to people about like, 01:22:23:28 - 01:22:27:28 okay, when you hear something like this, like look for these things, right? 01:22:27:28 - 01:22:29:15 Like stuff like 01:22:29:15 - 01:22:32:05 make sure they're showing, like you said, like both sides of the story. 01:22:32:05 - 01:22:34:26 Like, oh, who does it? Like, who are they talking about? 01:22:34:26 - 01:22:36:29 Can you find the version of this? 01:22:36:29 - 01:22:37:22 Can you, 01:22:37:22 - 01:22:41:19 like, look at other places on the Internet and anybody already debunked this? 01:22:41:19 - 01:22:43:22 Like, you know, like look for that kind of stuff. 01:22:43:22 - 01:22:44:21 So I think, yeah, 01:22:44:21 - 01:22:48:14 like knowing these kinds of narratives, like folklorists do, we can really jump in 01:22:48:14 - 01:22:53:06 and say like, okay, here's here's what's going to happen from a rumor standpoint. 01:22:53:28 - 01:22:55:15 Let's let's work on that. 01:22:55:15 - 01:22:57:27 Let's talk about ways to counteract that. 01:22:57:27 - 01:23:02:21 Let's talk about ways that we can hopefully make this work in our favor 01:23:02:28 - 01:23:07:24 or the fabric of health so that that we can influence this in a good way. 01:23:07:24 - 01:23:09:27 So I think, yeah, that's part of it. 01:23:09:27 - 01:23:12:27 We also we work with communities and every community is going to have 01:23:12:27 - 01:23:16:06 a different response to something like this happen, right? 01:23:16:06 - 01:23:17:16 Because they have different concerns. 01:23:17:16 - 01:23:18:18 Yeah, exactly. 01:23:18:18 - 01:23:22:02 So like a big like wide spread like all Americans. 01:23:22:02 - 01:23:24:27 Here's your public health message. It's not going to work. Right? 01:23:24:27 - 01:23:28:23 You have to individualize it to community if you want it to be really specific. 01:23:29:11 - 01:23:31:26 So, you know, you can get local communities 01:23:31:26 - 01:23:34:18 involved and say like, well, this is what I've been hearing. 01:23:34:18 - 01:23:35:04 Okay, great. 01:23:35:04 - 01:23:38:10 Well, let's tweak this public health campaign for your area. 01:23:38:17 - 01:23:38:26 Right. 01:23:38:26 - 01:23:40:24 And I think that, you know and understand 01:23:40:24 - 01:23:44:21 that are part of what people are afraid of and what their concerns are, 01:23:45:00 - 01:23:47:05 because the concerns were different in different places. 01:23:47:05 - 01:23:48:00 Right. 01:23:48:00 - 01:23:51:26 So, yeah, we can we can kind of come in and help with that and help them 01:23:51:26 - 01:23:56:03 find like people in, the community that that are really good for this. 01:23:56:14 - 01:23:58:06 I was really 01:23:58:06 - 01:24:01:19 I was looking at ways to kind of help during all of of the COVID pandemic. 01:24:01:28 - 01:24:04:24 And one of the things I actually found that was really 01:24:04:24 - 01:24:06:12 something that happened by accident, and I thought, 01:24:06:12 - 01:24:08:12 oh my gosh, why didn't they think of this earlier? 01:24:08:12 - 01:24:10:29 Is restaurants, 01:24:10:29 - 01:24:14:00 especially if you're talking about ethnic restaurants in a community 01:24:14:01 - 01:24:17:29 that has like maybe just a small amount of people from that group 01:24:18:12 - 01:24:21:04 that can be like a meeting place, like for them, like 01:24:21:04 - 01:24:24:10 or it could be some place like a church or could be whatever, whatever 01:24:24:16 - 01:24:27:15 the place places that people meet, going 01:24:27:15 - 01:24:30:15 to those places and talking to them. 01:24:30:15 - 01:24:34:23 So I have a situation where I to a particular restaurant all the time, 01:24:35:12 - 01:24:38:25 the owner knew me and was like, Hey, you know a lot about this stuff. 01:24:38:25 - 01:24:41:08 Like what? What do you think about the COVID vaccine? 01:24:41:08 - 01:24:43:04 And I was like, Well, I'm I got it. 01:24:43:04 - 01:24:46:02 Like, you know, I think it's a good idea, Like, let's do this. 01:24:46:02 - 01:24:49:16 And since I was trusted by this trusted member of the community, 01:24:49:25 - 01:24:53:29 then he was able to tell a whole bunch of other people like, Hey, you know, 01:24:53:29 - 01:24:56:29 I know somebody that says it's fine and I really trust them. 01:24:57:05 - 01:25:00:18 And because people trusted him, then yeah, spread right? 01:25:00:18 - 01:25:05:20 So positive things can spread to so like of those places in the community 01:25:05:20 - 01:25:11:06 where you can you can kind of say, hey, you trust me and other people trust 01:25:11:07 - 01:25:15:26 you like let's do when I talk about it and then you can spread this information. 01:25:16:14 - 01:25:17:20 So yeah, that kind of stuff. 01:25:17:20 - 01:25:19:05 I think that's another place we can come in. 01:25:19:05 - 01:25:22:29 But there's like a million other ideas, like, Right, Yeah Yeah. 01:25:23:10 - 01:25:23:21 You know. 01:25:24:22 - 01:25:26:00 Well, this is so much fun. 01:25:26:00 - 01:25:27:24 I'm. I'm so glad we had you on. 01:25:27:24 - 01:25:30:15 And I feel like, I mean, I had. 01:25:30:15 - 01:25:35:18 I only got through like, I don't know, five of my 12 lessons, so. 01:25:36:00 - 01:25:36:07 Well, 01:25:36:07 - 01:25:36:17 we may 01:25:36:17 - 01:25:40:10 have to bring you on at a later date and we can we can discuss different 01:25:40:10 - 01:25:41:17 angles that right. 01:25:41:17 - 01:25:44:15 So you taking the time? Yeah, of course. 01:25:44:15 - 01:25:47:15 And and thank you for the Knights 01:25:47:15 - 01:25:50:26 for joining us on this wild medical ride. 01:25:51:14 - 01:25:54:28 We will be linking everything that we discussed her book and also 01:25:55:14 - 01:25:59:16 maybe that the video that you made in the beginning and some of the 01:26:00:04 - 01:26:01:15 there was there something else 01:26:01:15 - 01:26:05:14 we'll have to think about all the things that we'll link on our website 01:26:05:14 - 01:26:09:29 which is w WW dot fabric of folklore dot com and you can find everything there. 01:26:10:05 - 01:26:13:17 So what legends how you heard about our narratives 01:26:13:17 - 01:26:20:05 have you heard prior to this this conversation around the pandemic 01:26:20:05 - 01:26:24:13 or around medical the medical field we'd love to hear from you. 01:26:24:28 - 01:26:29:07 We have a Facebook page specifically set up so that people 01:26:29:07 - 01:26:34:19 can have these conversations and that's the fabric of folklore at community. 01:26:34:19 - 01:26:38:08 So this is where we invite you to have conversations and tell us 01:26:38:08 - 01:26:43:15 your thoughts about our podcast and and what you want to hear about as well. 01:26:44:01 - 01:26:46:02 So please definitely find us there. 01:26:46:02 - 01:26:47:27 We're also on Twitter and Instagram. 01:26:47:27 - 01:26:49:20 I just made a Twitter 01:26:51:03 - 01:26:54:24 site because several of our guests are primarily live on Twitter. 01:26:54:24 - 01:26:57:24 I believe that's where you live as well on Twitter. 01:26:59:09 - 01:27:00:10 So thanks so much. 01:27:00:10 - 01:27:04:12 And one of the best ways that you can help a burgeoning podcast 01:27:04:12 - 01:27:08:12 like ourselves is to like, comment, share, share with your friends, 01:27:08:12 - 01:27:11:24 give us reviews, give us all of the stars, and give us a review. 01:27:11:24 - 01:27:16:05 If you give us a review, I will shout out your name on our podcast. 01:27:16:14 - 01:27:21:06 So definitely write us the reviews and get to hear your name. 01:27:22:12 - 01:27:26:03 So thanks so much for unraveling the mysteries of folklore with us. 01:27:26:03 - 01:27:28:14 And then till next time, keep the folk alive.