Vintage Antivaxxers, Horror Flick Psychology, Robin-Eating Bats

Coltan Scrivner joins the show to talk about the strange empathy of horror movie enjoyers. Plus, Sara Kiley talks about bats dogfighting and devouring birds, and Rachel delves into the bizarre history of the first anti-vax movement. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tweet at us⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to learn more about all of our stories! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to Jess' Twitch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to all of Jess' content: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.jesscapricorn.com/⁠⁠⁠ -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Jess Boddy: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Popular Science: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/PopSci⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Theme music by Billy Cadden: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy? You might be dehydrated. Whether it's hot yoga, over 100 degree weather, or too much sun. Gator Light, with a specialized blend of five electrolytes, was scientifically designed to help move fluids into the body faster for rapid rehydration. Shop now at retailers nationwide. Gator Light: Hydrates Faster Than Water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon Fall Drop because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's Fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 1:33Rachel Feltman?

  At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of Popular Science.

• 1:52Rachel Feltman?

  I'm Rachel Feltman.

• 1:54Rachel Feltman?

  I'm Sarah Kylie Watson.

• 1:56Speaker 05

  I'm Colton Scriffner.

• 1:57Rachel Feltman?

  Colton, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you.

• 2:00Speaker 05

  Thank you. Happy to be here.

• 2:02Rachel Feltman?

  Would you tell our listeners a little bit about your research and your new book?

• 2:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I study morbid curiosity and why people are interested in things that sometimes scare them, or disgust them, or repulse them. So why are we sometimes drawn to that when we don't want to be? Why are we sometimes drawn to that and we choose to be? And what does it mean for our psychology, our mental health, and just our general well-being if we are drawn to these kinds of things? And I cover all of that and more in my new book, Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away.

• 2:35Rachel Feltman?

  Awesome. Yeah, very relevant to listeners of this show. Certainly, not every episode is morbid, using that broad definition, but we have plenty where listeners are like, "Ah, I can't believe, I can't believe I just listened to that and also enjoyed it." So, really excited to have you on. So, on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story that we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, etc. Decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then, once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Sarah Kiley, what's your tease?

• 3:16Speaker 06

  Okay, so I have a very morbid, actually, and kind of sad Batman and Robin natural history story.

• 3:28Rachel Feltman?

  Great. We've had a lot of, we've been talking a lot about bats and other so-called vermin recently on Weirdest Thing. So, it's just, tis the season. We're recording this and actually on Halloween, so happy belated to everyone listening.

• 3:44Speaker 06

  To all who celebrate.

• 3:45Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah. My tease is that I'm gonna talk about the, the original anti-vax movement, which at least had really interesting propaganda art. They had that going for them. Colton, what's your tease?

• 4:00Speaker 05

  I think I could share with you guys some fun findings about horror fans and empathy.

• 4:05Rachel Feltman?

  Ooh! I love that. Can't wait. Incredible. Sarah Kylie, why don't you kick us off with Batman and Robin?

• 4:12Speaker 06

  Okay. Yeah, this one, this is a wild ride. Yeah. So to start with, yeah, bats are one of the creatures we often associate with spookier seasons. And now it's starting to get dark at 4:30 in the Netherlands. So I'm like, I'm definitely in a spookier mood. And bats are really, really fascinating. There, I think they make up like 20% of like species, or at least of mammals on earth or something. There, there's a lot more bats than we think about. And, and before we get into like my bat fact, I have a couple like mini facts to warm everybody up because there's just so much great stuff to talk about bats. So the, the first one is that the Mexican free tailed bat can fly up to 100 miles per hour, which makes it the fastest mammal on earth. Like, very cool.

• 4:57Rachel Feltman?

  Pretty fast.

• 4:58Speaker 06

  It's pretty fast.

• 4:59Speaker 05

  You say 100, you say 100 miles per hour?

• 5:00Speaker 06

  Yeah. So they're like out there zooming. And also, in general, bats are the only mammals that fly like other flying things, like flying squirrels and lemurs. They're like gliding. They're not really sure flying. So bats are really special for that anyway. And then this other one, which is like a, like a steal it for whoever's listening that may join this podcast. I didn't have time to make this my weirdest thing, but it was the weirdest thing that I found in the finding of this weirdest thing. But apparently bat poop is like this amazing fertilizer that's really full of nitrogen and phosphorus. In fact, there's a story I, I always find these weird stories from like local magazines from like 2006, but it's this like Texas magazine. And apparently in the 1800s, chemists were like discovering that the same concentrated nitrates

• 5:44Speaker 06

  in guano, which is bat poop, could be used to manufacture gunpowder. So this doubled its value and bat caves were raided for like the bat poop during the Civil War.

• 5:54Rachel Feltman?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 5:56Speaker 06

  And apparently like this bat scientist in this story from 20 years ago, says that guano was the biggest mineral export in Texas before oil was discovered. So, so that one, if someone doesn't steal that, I might be back to review that one later.

• 6:10Rachel Feltman?

  I also feel like there's real opportunity there for like a Civil War era. Like vampire or zombie movie where the, the, it starts with somebody trying to raid a bat cave.

• 6:21Speaker 05

  Literally.

• 6:22Rachel Feltman?

  Water gunpowder.

• 6:23Speaker 05

  Maybe we're, we're farming, we're farming the vampires, keeping them as bats. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:27Speaker 06

  Historical fantasy people, you have heard it here. Please go write your, your 12 part series. But yeah, so we love bats. Bats are awesome. And while we're talking about flying, bats also are interesting because they're this like group of animals that eat a whole bunch of different things. Most bats are insectivores, which means they like eat beetles and moths and mosquitoes. Apparently some bats can have like hundreds or even like a thousand mosquitoes an hour, which like, where are they when I need them? Where are they when I'm getting eaten alive? I don't know. And then there's the sweet tooth bats who like, they like fruits and seeds and pollen and they'll steal like a sip of sugar water from the hummingbird feeder.

• 7:09Speaker 06

  So I think that's just very cute. And then we have spooky bats, the vampire bats who, there's only three species of those, but they're all in South America and they like, they don't bite people. They bite cows and sheep and stuff. And they, they, they're tiny little amounts most of the time, like two teaspoons a day of blood.

• 7:24Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, they're very demure.

• 7:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's like just a little kiss. Like I don't, vampire seems a little harsh for, for what they're doing here. Honestly, like I, I think I'd rather a bat bite me for a little bit than a mosquito. You know what? I'm just pro bat at this point.

• 7:37Rachel Feltman?

  Just make sure you go get your shots.

• 7:39Speaker 06

  Exactly. Which, go get their shots. Another moral of my, my story so far. Lots of information. But yeah, but then there's other bats that like eat whatever, like birds, fish, frogs, lizards, unlucky other bats, you name it. So yeah, so this flying weird little mammal can, depending on who they are, eat whatever. So they're very diverse in all sorts of things. And today we're talking about the greater Noctual Bat, which is this tree dwelling creature. It's got a wingspan of 16 to 18 inches. It lives all across Europe, but it's like mostly in the Iberian Peninsula to like the Bosporus region of Turkey. And its highest concentration is in the southwest of Spain. And they're the biggest bats in Europe.

• 8:22Speaker 06

  They're definitely not like the biggest bats ever. They're pretty, they're, they're about, they're a little bit smaller than like a vampire bat. We'll get more into it in a minute, but they're, they're really cute. Their faces just look like a bunch of mushrooms. Like their ears are just like very mushroomy and like they have these pointy teeth. But I was looking at all these pictures of them today and they're kind of like. They're like, kind of like dorky, like they look like when my dog's teeth get stuck on her lips. That is like the energy that they, these bats give. They have these little snouts that are like a little like pug or a little Shar Pei. I think they're really cute, but I also like, I, I love little freaky animals. So take it with a grain of salt. You might not think they're that cute, but anyway, it was believed that these bats,

• 9:03Speaker 06

  like a lot of other bats, were mostly munching on insects and all of this. They're like little beetle guys, but scientists uncovered some feathers in bird DNA in their poops because bat poop is so important. We should all apparently be scooping that up. But yeah, so they're like, okay, what, what is going on here? These, these little bats are eating birds. And even though these bats are, yeah, big for Europe, they're smaller than vampire bats that we mentioned earlier. And then when you think of like giant bats, like the giant golden crowned flying fox in the Philippines, like those guys, and they eat fruit. That are, are little like fruit eaters. They're four times the size of these European bats. So in terms of bats, big for Europe, not that impressive if you're in the Philippines. But, but scientists have wondered for a while, like how these birds, or not birds, how these bats

• 9:49Speaker 06

  have managed to eat birds, considering like they weigh 50 grams and like these birds that they're supposedly eating are like half of their body weight. Uh, lucky for us and for bat scientists, there's one particular bat that told us exactly how it's done and they published their findings earlier this month in Science. So back a couple of years ago, the spring of 2023, researchers in Spain put these little like sensor backpacks on a handful of ba- bats in the Doñana National Park in Andalucía. So the European bat is like the perfect size for a backpack because a lot of bats are too little for us to really track them and see what's going on. But these guys are, they can, they can manage. And basically one of the authors mentioned in Scientific

• 10:33Speaker 06

  American that these sensors, like it, it's so great because it feels like you're almost flying alongside the bat. So it's not visual, but it is sound and you can see how high up and where they go. So it's pretty magical because we have, bats are a little bit mysterious. And so one day, there, these researchers are researching and they get a little alert that One of their bats, a little, it's a lady bat. So Batman is probably a little bit of a, a little bit of a stretch, but you'll see. But yeah, one of them had returned home after a very exciting meal. And so the sensor's audio picked up enough sound that the researchers were really able to get like a vivid story of what happened. And so it starts like this. We have little Miss Bat who's flying along as bats do.

• 11:17Speaker 06

  And she spots a robin 4,000 feet up in the air. So that's like where birds fly to avoid being eaten by falcons and like other stuff. So like they're up there and it's just a little robin, a little songbird. And the bird was as surprised as the rest of us when the bat climbed to these heights and descended rapidly to capture it mid-flight, which another one of the others described it as like a dogfight. Like it was rough. And we have the sound, we have the sound recording to listen to. So I'll share that so that people who go to the website can see or listen to this. But it's, if you have the stomach for it, it's fascinating. It's like this creepy silence as the bat like sneaks up. And this is happening in like the dead of night.

• 12:02Speaker 06

  The bat is echolocating. Like it's, it's, this isn't, if you're just a bird, you're out of luck. But yeah, the bat kind of creeps up. And then there's like this initial like chomp, basically where it's like the attack begins and the bird starts just chirping like crazy. And then briefly you have a second really where the bird is like, I'm getting away. And then for the next 3,000 feet of just like straight descending and plummeting to the earth, there's this like battle to the death marked by like more and more frantic chirping. And then at the end, there's just bat noises. So now we're like a thousand feet off the ground and it's like.

• 12:45Speaker 06

  Oh, and so rest in peace to the robin. But yeah, so the story for the bat like doesn't end there. Neither does the recording because for 23 solid minutes, this bat just keeps like flying around, echolocating all over the sky while eating the bird. That's again, half of its body weight.

• 13:05Rachel Feltman?

  It's kind of

• 13:05Speaker 05

  Is it carrying the bird with him?

• 13:07Speaker 06

  Oh, I have details. You'll see. Just wait, there's more to come. But I mean, for for a visual, that's like if I was like jogging up a mountain and grabbed a mountain goat and just started eating it while running. Like, I'm not a big person, but that's like half of your body weight. Yeah, and we know, we know it took that long because you can hear the chewing noises for those 23 minutes on the recording. Yeah, and yeah, that's, that's super fun. And yeah, it's not an easy feat. And so there's another like little creepy tidbit or fascinating tidbit creepy and fascinating. But prior to this, the researchers had been gathering up severed songbird wings because they suspected, hey, like maybe this is part of the puzzle. They stuck them in the freezer and then they do what scientists do, which is analyze them

• 13:51Speaker 06

  using x rays and they do the DNA analysis. And they discovered that the bats are like biting the wings off and then just throwing them into the abyss like while they're doing this eat and fly extravaganza. And so like after, after the wing removal, which like, I don't know, the, the wings are kind of like as a chicken wing person, I'm like, you guys are missing out on an opportunity. But anyway, they stretch the membrane behind their hind legs and make this little pouch to have some like in-flight snacking support. So again, like we don't, we didn't get to see this. This was just a sound. So please, whatever you're envisioning is about as much as any of us know.

• 14:30Rachel Feltman?

  But yeah, I would see, I can see how that would make the bird more portable. Not, yeah, doesn't take off that much weight, but makes it a little

• 14:37Speaker 06

  Then it's more of a chicken nugget

• 14:39Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 14:40Speaker 06

  Situation versus a full, but I mean, you would have to ask the bat. But yeah, I, so the story got like a ton of news coverage, which is, I always love when that happens because then the study authors are like saying a bunch of stuff to everybody. And if you just go digging around and You'll find like really great quotes because they just start saying stuff. And one of my favorite quotes is from Laura Stidsholt, who is one of the authors. And she told The Guardian, "From a human perspective, I didn't feel very good about it. But on the other hand, the bat is a rare, a very rare species, and it isn't doing very well in Southern Europe due to droughts and wildfires. So we want the species to have a good meal." Which is about how I feel about like nature in general.

• 15:22Speaker 06

  This definitely doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside, but like, it is what it is.

• 15:30Speaker 06

  And it is true, like this particular bat is a threatened species and it's one of the rarest in Europe as well. And it's got this fragmented distribution like a lot of species. And it's like, it's already a small part of the world. Like we say, oh, it's all across Europe, but Europe's little. And in that small area of the world where they roost, the deforestation and the tree disease and the climate change is making it life harder for these guys. And like, no matter how murderous their bird catching habits are, like that sucks. Like to have your habitat be just divvied up. And yeah, they really, these bats really like to roost in like these tree holes that are in old growth forests, which are again, like, pretty much in trouble everywhere. Like the old trees are really struggling out here.

• 16:14Speaker 06

  And while lots of people are fascinated by bats, we don't know a ton about them, especially in terms of conservation. I found this big review of basically all the climate change bat information from 2022. Apparently like lesser than half of these studies published concrete evidence for bat responses to climate change. And like, over a third of the studied bat species, the evidence is only like a predictive species distribution model. So this is where the bats are probably going. And only a tiny proportion of, I think it's like 400 bat species, and I think there's more than 1,000 bat species out there. But they basically like, only, only a tiny amount were studied using long-term or experimental approaches.

• 16:56Speaker 06

  And on top of all of that, it's the bats that are looked at are typically in Europe, North America, and Australia. And of course, that's not, bats are pretty much everywhere. So it's a little bit of a bummer, but. All in all, as in many stories that I tell on this podcast, there is a bad guy and it's human-induced climate change. But yeah, why this bat devised this like metal way of catching and eating prey in the air? We don't, we don't really know if it's a climate change thing, or if they've been doing this forever, because this is the first time that anybody's captured any of this going on. And who knows, we may never get to capture it again. I mean, if I get to hear this again, that's fine. I will listen to it again. But yeah, it just shows again, like animals, animals will go pretty far

• 17:39Speaker 06

  to survive, including 4,000 feet in the air. That, that is my, my sad story about bat, Batwoman and Robin.

• 17:51Rachel Feltman?

  Wow. I remember when this study came out and I, I didn't read any of the articles about it, because it was just during a busy week, but I definitely assumed it was like a big, big bat just swooped in. So this was way more interesting than I expected.

• 18:07Speaker 06

  A tough little scary bat.

• 18:09Rachel Feltman?

  Yes.

• 18:10Speaker 06

  A little Spanish bat. Very fun.

• 18:14Rachel Feltman?

  All right, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with some more facts.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 18:53Speaker 07

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy? You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 19:23Speaker 08

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's fall drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy-to-layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon Fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on lululemon.com now.

• 19:58Rachel Feltman?

  Okay, we're back. And I'm going to talk about something scary in a very different way, which is the very first anti-vax movement. I should start by saying that I first learned about this from a 2021 article in Public Domain Review by Erica X. Eisen. I love Public Domain Review. It's one of my favorite sort of like starting points for weirdest thing facts. But I think it's a website not a lot of people are aware of if you're not the kind of person who reads historical academic papers. Yeah, they also have fun stuff. They know how to have fun over at Public Domain Review. Go check it out. So I talked on a previous episode, probably back during peak lockdown, about the general history of vaccination, which started with inoculation for smallpox.

• 20:39Rachel Feltman?

  But just to give a really quick overview, smallpox is the only human disease we've fully eradicated. It is the vaccine origin story and success story. And it used to be one of the deadliest human diseases. It killed one in three people it infected. And it left, like most survivors, with some combination of permanent disabilities, health conditions, and disfigurement. And Egyptian mummies show us that it existed at least as early as 1350 BCE, if not before. So before we had vaccination as we know it, we had variolation, which was the transfer of a little bit of material from a smallpox sore into a healthy human in one way or another to offer them some amount of protection from the disease. And that may have taken place as early as 200 B.C.

• 21:24Rachel Feltman?

  It's a little flaky exactly when it started. And it did work in that if you get exposed to a little bit of smallpox and you don't get super sick and you don't die, you'll then have protection from getting smallpox later. But as you might imagine, with a method of primitive inoculation, where you're literally just taking stuff from a sick person and exposing another person to it, You very often just caught smallpox.

• 21:51Speaker 05

  That's just called getting, that's called getting sick, I think.

• 21:53Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. It really, I think, varied a lot depending on your baseline health, the method of exposure. It was really a crapshoot. For example, written accounts in the mid 1500s describe variolation that was used in China that they called insufflation. And with that, they would dry up smallpox scabs, grind them up and blow them up your nose. No. Obviously, it does not sound great, but was probably, I think was probably one of the more successful forms of this because it wasn't just literally taking like fresh smallpox ooze and giving you a cut and putting it in.

• 22:32Speaker 05

  So far, scarier, scarier, scarier than the bat story.

• 22:35Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, I guess I, I guess I should have said this is actually a very scary story. And yeah, by the 18th century, this kind of stuff was happening all over the world. And the way people wrote about it suggested it dated back at least hundreds of years, if not more. And then in 1798, Edward Jenner, who I think was actually from an area with a lot of cows, but he definitely, he had heard rumors about humans catching cowpox, which is related to smallpox, but it's in cows. And then crucially, not getting smallpox later when everybody else was getting smallpox. So he was like, that's interesting. And he used material from a milkmaid's cowpox sore to inoculate a young boy.

• 23:20Rachel Feltman?

  The boy got a little bit sick for a few days, quickly got better, did not get smallpox. And then later was very clearly immune to smallpox. And so that was huge success. And cowpox is like, it doesn't look nice, but it's very different from smallpox. It's similar lesions, but they would tend to stay isolated to the hands of the milkmaid, which were obviously exposed when they were actually milking the udders. And they wouldn't really get sick. They would just have, it was basically like a dermatological condition that looked nasty. And then they were fine. So this was in contrast to that early sort of form of pseudo immunization was like very clearly, there was a huge benefit at a pretty low risk.

• 24:02Rachel Feltman?

  And in fact, Jenner named this therapy vaccination for the Latin word for cow, vaca. So it all goes back to cows. It always does. But keep in mind that Pester wouldn't even propose germ theory for more than half a century. And research on antibodies wouldn't start until the 1900s. So even though there was very clear, like visible common sense evidence that this was working. It wasn't like we had anything close to a clear mechanism for how it worked.

• 24:36Speaker 05

  Did they have like speculation at that time?

• 24:38Rachel Feltman?

  I I haven't. That's not something I've done a bunch of research into. But what I have seen, it was just like common sense, look at what is going on with the milkmaids. And you can kind of wrap your head around like a very vague, hand wavy, common sense version of it where it's cowpox is clearly not as bad as smallpox, but it does look a little bit like smallpox. So maybe there's like some kind of, but the theory of disease was still mostly miasma, which is like bad air. So you're like.

• 25:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think if I was, if I was living at that time, I would be a little skeptical if somebody was like, yes, let me inject you with some of this cowpox.

• 25:17Rachel Feltman?

  Exactly. Yes.

• 25:19Speaker 05

  I understand that.

• 25:20Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, exactly. And so unsurprisingly, there was a lot of room for skepticism. And members of parliament, members of the clergy, and even some doctors became really vocal, became really vocally against vaccination. Though members of all of those groups also existed in the very pro vaccine camp. But anyway, it basically boiled down to why would you inject a human with something that came from a sick, filthy animal? That's gross and maybe dot, dot, dot satanic. And as is the case with modern health misinformation, there's very clearly a combination of people who have earnest, really heartfelt concerns and people who have an agenda, which I'll get into a little bit later.

• 26:05Speaker 05

  Against against big cow.

• 26:07Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Rachel Feltman?

  There was kind of an agenda against Big Cow in a way, but I'll get to that later. I mentioned in my first tease, I think, that they had, they did have some fascinating propaganda art. There were a lot of, you know, this era, the late 1700s into the 1800s, really peak political cartoon era, in my opinion, just some great etchings that you can go back and look at. People were absolutely vicious. There's one that's in the Welcome collection that's from 1800. It shows a diseased woman turning into a mermaid. What? Being pulled in a cart by a physician riding a cow and an apothecary dude holding a syringe up.

• 26:51Rachel Feltman?

  And this grotesque procession is scaring children. And that was supposed to be like, look, next scenes. There's another etching where Jenner himself is seen with a giant check in his back pocket, because he did get an award from the government for figuring out how to keep people from getting smallpox.

• 27:09Speaker 05

  They had checks back then? That was a thing?

• 27:11Rachel Feltman?

  I get, maybe it was like some kind of note, money note, but it was described in the museum description as a check. I don't know. It looked like a piece of paper to me, but he had a sign of money in his pocket. And he also had horns and a tail. And in the etching, he's dumping baskets full of human babies into a cow's mouth. The cow is then pooping out little human cow hybrids that are being shuffled into a wagon.

• 27:40Speaker 05

  Is this still the time where people hadn't figured out how to draw babies yet? And they look like little miniature adults?

• 27:45Rachel Feltman?

  No, these were proportional babies, I would say. They weren't scary medieval adult babies.

• 27:50Speaker 05

  Around that time that we just discovered how to make babies in art.

• 27:53Rachel Feltman?

  That's why I don't like medieval art. It's a real problem. There's so many, just like men who are tiny, who are baby sized.

• 27:59Speaker 05

  Tiny men.

• 28:01Rachel Feltman?

  And then, yeah, there are anti-vaccine crusaders approaching to fight them in the distance. You'll also see in a lot of these cartoons, a lot of comparisons to the golden calf, which is the idol that Moses's followers made to worship while he was up on Mount Sinai, getting the 10 commandments. And they were like, what now? We're in the desert. We might as well. Let's make a god. And then many references to like, it's a literal mark of the beast. You're getting stuff from a beast and it marks your arm. They had pretty good PR.

• 28:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, these are actually pretty, you know what, like the anti-vaxers today could probably use a little creative oomph from these guys.

• 28:41Rachel Feltman?

  Meanwhile, I did see one pro-vax cartoon that featured like a milkmaid in the back saying, surely the disorder of the cow is preferable to that of the ass, which

• 28:52Speaker 06

  That's a little cheeky. Okay, girl.

• 28:56Rachel Feltman?

  So William Rowley was a major figure in this anti-vax movement. And he put out anti-vax pamphlets, spreading a lot of disinformation. I say disinfo and not misinfo because he was definitely one of those people who did have an agenda. He and some other prominent anti-vax physicians had previously been making a lot of their money traveling around doing traditional variulations. And those were, of course, much more dangerous, much less effective, but took a lot of work from a doctor walking around stabbing people with smallpox needles. And so he and a few other people had a vested interest in being like, no, what Jenner is

• 29:36Rachel Feltman?

  doing is stupid. We should go back to what we did before. And his first, the first edition of his pamphlet showed children literally taking on bovine facial characteristics, like giant eyes and swollen faces. There's this boy with big reddish spots that kind of look like cow print. He also had children covered in sores, which of course, kind of similar to some of the stuff we see with, with anti-vax misinformation. Now, a kid covered in sores is what happens when they get smallpox, not what happens when they get vaccinated for smallpox. He warned of, quote, beastly and evil diseases. Then he put out a second edition of his pamphlet featuring an elderly woman named Ann Davis. We don't know if she actually

• 30:18Rachel Feltman?

  existed, but he claimed she died soon after being inoculated, perhaps because she was an elderly woman. But first, she sprouted horns, he said.

• 30:27Rachel Feltman?

  And there was a lot of this, a lot of the rumors around this were like, it will turn you into a cow. You will be a cow. And people were like, sounds bad. We shouldn't do that. Benjamin Mosley, who was another big smallpox vaccine hater, he invoked the image of bestiality with this zinger. He was like, who knows also, but that the human character may undergo strange mutations from quadrupedant sympathy and that some modern pacifé may rival the fables of old. Pacifé, for folks who don't remember, is the woman from the Greek myth, the queen of Crete, who gave birth to the Minotaur after Poseidon made her really horny for a bull.

• 31:10Rachel Feltman?

  What is up with us and cows? Like, oh my lord. And like, the conversation did evolve because this anti-smallpox vaccine contingent persisted as the decades went on. This guy, W. Halkett, who was the associate of the Medical Reform Society, in 1870, he wrote a pamphlet called, this is all the title, "Compulsory Vaccination!" exclamation point, exclamation point, "A Crime Against Nature!" exclamation point, exclamation point, "An Outrage Upon Society!" double exclamation point, "A Livel Upon the Wisdom and Goodness of the Creator, a Medical Delusion, a Legislative Blunder, and a Dark Blot Upon Our Civilization." Okay, Shakespeare.

• 31:54Rachel Feltman?

  He didn't keep up with the whole turning into a demon cow thing, probably because germ theory was on the come up and he was like, mm, maybe, maybe we will figure out a reason why this works. But he did say it made kids weird. It reminds us of some modern arguments. He, he was like, "We talk about mental horns and cloven hooves, but they're a metaphor for the insurmountable stupidity that has been observed in some children from the time they were vaccinated, no symptom of which appeared prior to that time." There was also this comment, this like meme of a kid who literally started acting like a cow. So people shifted away from, "It will literally give you horns" to like, "It'll make you cowish." But...

• 32:42Rachel Feltman?

  All of the skepticism really started expanding in the mid 1800s, which might surprise you, given that we were like figuring out more science. But it was because in England, Parliament started passing laws to make vaccination compulsory and to provide it for free to the poor. So the compulsory nature, you can understand why people did not take that well. And there were some really complicated socioeconomic dynamics happening there. There were fines that you could get hit with if you didn't let your kids get vaccinated. And so that really riled people up, understandably, because there was a huge wealth gap.

• 33:26Rachel Feltman?

  And if you were rich, you could just ignore these mandates. And if you weren't rich, they could ruin you. There were instances of people like having their belongings auctioned off because they couldn't pay the fines. So again, like, I can totally get why people did not love that. And the other thing is that the vaccination that was free got very conflated with something called the New Poor Law of 1834, which is like when you, when you look at Edwardian and Victorian and Georgian media about England and people talk about the poor houses and the workhouses. This is where that came from, because basically there was this big push to be like, if you can't pay your bills, your only choice is to go to the workhouse.

• 34:11Rachel Feltman?

  We'll keep you from dying, but it means you have to go live in a workhouse and basically be slave labor. So not great social welfare systems. And people understandably did not like that and did not like the threat of the poorhouse. And they, and what happened is that a lot of this seemed sort of like agents who were responsible for enforcing that law were the people going around running the free vaccination programs.

• 34:39Speaker 06

  Great.

• 34:39Rachel Feltman?

  And rumors started spreading to, first of all, they were like, we hate those guys. We don't want them. But then rumors started spreading that if you accepted free vaccination, that that counted as receiving poor relief, which meant you would be classed as a pauper. So you would lose your right to vote, get sent to a poorhouse, which was not true. But it makes sense that people were nervous about that. The other thing about this time that I think is really interesting and does have a potential lesson for us today is that Yes, smallpox vaccinations, even as they existed in the 1800s, were incredibly vital. Like, smallpox was still killing loads of people at that time and burning through cities.

• 35:22Rachel Feltman?

  And the vaccinations really did work, but they also weren't being implemented entirely safely, especially when it came to the free vaccination programs for the poor. Apparently, there were a lot of, initially, a lot of, like, untrained people doing these procedures, and they would just be out in the open in, like, filthy cities where there was tons of disease. And the way vaccination worked for a long time is that you would do a, like, chain of transmission. Somebody who had been inoculated with cowpox would then be used as the source for the next person who got vaccinated. I talked about the horrible history of children being basically used as smallpox vaccine fridges for long voyages on a previous episode.

• 36:06Rachel Feltman?

  But that meant that, like, the way this worked is that you would kind of, like, take your baby to just, like, the town square, and they'd be like, "Well, we have a knife and a baby, and we're gonna poke that baby and then poke your baby." Yay! So, just the unsanitary, public, untrained nature of it meant that it wasn't uncommon for an infant to get some kind of other illness that the other baby happened to have, or a bacterial infection. And then, of course... Gangrene or something. Yeah, and given the times, that would be really serious, and the kid could even die. And it still, it seems like, on the whole, it saved a ton of lives that they were doing this, because smallpox was so deadly.

• 36:50Rachel Feltman?

  But it was, like, not fake that your kid could end up worse for wear because some random dude was poking them with a dirty knife. And there were laws passed during the 1800s to try to address this. It's not the public health experts didn't see that this was a problem. They started enforcing training and supervision and regulation to make sure that things were being done. In a more clean, sane way, though, of course, that was all still by 19th century standards. You know, it's still, still probably wasn't amazing. And yeah, I read, I was reading one paper that I'll link to on popside.com/ weird.

• 37:32Rachel Feltman?

  That was like, that's an important thing for us to remember in talking about how we discuss and study actual vaccine risks, because there are side effects to some vaccines, generally very rare, especially the ones that have any chance of being serious. But we're really not good at talking about them, because vaccines are so important to keeping the world population healthy, that there is definitely this aversion to talking about the very rare cases where a vaccine can harm you. And I was, I've been thinking about this a lot, because there was recently a, the very

• 38:12Rachel Feltman?

  biased new vaccine panel at the, associated with the CDC, had a presentation by a CDC researcher about febrile seizures tied to, I think, the MMR vaccine, but maybe one of the other childhood vaccines, chickenpox, chickenpox. Anyway, febrile seizures, they're scary for parents. It's when a child has a seizure and a fever. I had one as a kid. They're almost never a serious medical problem. And they can also just happen because they're sick and they have a fever and they tend to happen around the same age that you get vaccinated for chickenpox. So it's, first of all, hard to actually prove that every time this happens, it's from the vaccine.

• 38:55Rachel Feltman?

  But what was interesting is that the, the takeaway of this expert's presentation was like, yes, there's a connection and let me show you how the numbers show it's not dangerous and that connection is nothing compared to how many children it protects. But the takeaway from this panel, because, because it's not really about the information being presented, the takeaway from this panel was like, look, there's a scientist saying that it causes seizures. I don't have the answer for how we get better at discussing these things, but we very clearly do need to get better at discussing. And I think the parallel is really interesting where these were these very poor people in England who had valid concerns with the free public health programs being offered to them

• 39:40Rachel Feltman?

  and the potential risks to their children. And today, just in case anyone listening is not aware, that is, nobody is is sticking your kid with a dirty needle in the middle of a tenebrous house in in London in the 1800s. That is not the situation. We like, it's understandable that the idea of accepting risk is on some level a personal choice. This paper I started talking about, the researcher starts off by listing a bunch of scary side effects and they're like, is this a vaccine? No, this is ibuprofen, which many people choose to take very often. But vaccines are this really specific case where it's like, yeah, you can choose what

• 40:25Rachel Feltman?

  to put into your body. Except vaccines are kind of the only thing that if you choose not to put into your body, you're putting lots of other people at risk. So we're just, we really haven't figured out how to talk about this, even though hundreds of years have gone by. But important takeaway, smallpox was eradicated in 1980. And that's huge. It's the only thing we've ever done that for. And there there are two repositories of smallpox, one in the US and one in Russia. There are periodically intense debates about why we still have them and whether we should just destroy them. On the one side, people are like, every once in a while, we catch somebody making a little bit of smallpox somewhere.

• 41:05Rachel Feltman?

  And what if somebody makes a bioweapon or something gets out or a similar disease breaks out and having this little bit of smallpox for research will be really important. And the other, on the other hand, people are like, unforced error, what if the smallpox gets out? Get rid of it. So that's, that's a story for another day. But the point is, despite all of the fear mongering about turning children into cows, Jenner's research really did change the world and that's cool. And I highly recommend checking out the political cartoon about the risks of becoming bovine adjacent. Nice.

• 41:46Speaker 05

  This episode brought to you by Big Cow.

• 41:48Rachel Feltman?

  Big Cow. All right, we're going to take one more break and then we'll be back with one more fact.

• 41:58Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 42:29Speaker 07

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy? You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 43:03Rachel Feltman?

  Okay, we're back. And Colton, tell me more about horror movies and empathy. Two things that I love.

• 43:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, two things that I think most people should love to some extent. So you might think if somebody enjoys watching a movie where there's a lot of suffering and blood and gore and scary things, that maybe they're lacking a little bit of empathy or maybe they're something maybe a little wrong if they enjoy that. I think that's a intuitive, an intuitive thing to think, right? And I can sympathize with that. But it turns out if you actually look into the literature of, do people who like scary things, do they have, for example, low levels of empathy or compassion? Are they just adrenaline junkies who are looking to get a rush? The answer is kind of surprising. So. If we start back in like the 1980s, right?

• 43:53Speaker 05

  So this is when psych was just starting to look at horror movies and empathy, right? This is around the time that a lot of movies started being put on VHS. They were coming inside the homes. People were a little concerned. What happens if my kid catches Friday the 13th on TV or something? And there were a couple of studies in the 1980s that were done on empathy and horror films and enjoying horror films. And these were synthesized, I think in 2000, I want to say 2005. It's around that time, in a meta-analysis. So this meta-analysis just gathered all the studies they could find on horror fans or horror enjoyment and empathy. And it's a big, long paper because it includes a lot of other things. But if you look at their results for the meta-analysis, you would come away thinking,

• 44:38Speaker 05

  okay, horror fans do have low empathy because that's how it's mentioned in the abstract. So if you actually dig into that paper, there's a couple of interesting things that you'll find. So one of them is that there were only six studies that looked at empathy and horror fandom. Not nothing, but small if you're going to make a wide, sweeping claim about somebody's mental state. And what's more interesting is that only two of those studies actually had significant results. And so if you look at those two studies and say, okay, in the cases where they actually found that enjoying horror was related to low empathy, what did they test? What was the method? What did they use? It turns out that those two studies might have been slightly biased in how they Uh oh. tested that claim.

• 45:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, you know, meta-analysis are great. That's like our gold standard in science for what is the current truth. But they're only as good as the studies they summarize. So if they're summarizing studies that have some methodological flaws, then you're just summarizing poor information. And I don't think they did this intentionally. I think it's just the fact that there weren't a lot of studies on this and what they had was maybe a little bit flawed. So these two studies, one of them, for its like measure, like the way it operationalized being a horror fan was, they showed people a short clip of a brutal murder with no resolution. Oh. Right? So like a kill scene, like a 20 or 30 second kill scene in a horror movie. The other one showed a terrible scene of torture from a film, again with no resolution, so these short clips.

• 46:07Speaker 05

  And the authors, to their credit of this meta-analysis, noted that these were unusual ways to measure horror fandom.

• 46:14Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 46:15Speaker 05

  You know, maybe it does not represent-

• 46:16Rachel Feltman?

  Did you enjoy a Serbian film?

• 46:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, not only that.

• 46:19Rachel Feltman?

  Go figure.

• 46:20Speaker 05

  Did you enjoy like, a specific scene of a Serbian film? Because you know, horror movies are, they give you this mixed emotional range of things. When you're watching it, sometimes you feel joy, sometimes you feel fear, sometimes you feel suspense, there's a lot of things going on. So if you chop it into little bits and you show someone one scene and you say, "How much did you enjoy that scene?", it may not tell you much about people who enjoy the movie as a whole or the story as a whole. So for example, if you show someone a scene of torture or brutal murder with no resolution and you say, "How much did you enjoy that?", you might be tapping into something like sadism and maybe not horror fandom. The analogy that came to mind for me would be like, if I show you a scene from a rom-com and it's the breakup scene.

• 47:00Rachel Feltman?

  Oh.

• 47:01Speaker 05

  And I say, "How much did you like that scene?", the people who say yes probably aren't necessarily rom-com fans. They maybe just are a little bit sadistic.

• 47:08Rachel Feltman?

  They're going through a breakup, they're having a hard time.

• 47:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, but that's an important part of the story, but it's maybe not the part that you would ask, "Do you enjoy that?", and then expand that. I thought that was kind of interesting. And then, you know, I have some studies on empathy that show the opposite of what this meta-analysis has shown. Turns out if you recruit hundreds of people and you give them standardized measures of cognitive empathy, so like your ability to take the perspective of another person. If Rachel says, "Oh man, I've had this, I've had a tough day, all these things have gone wrong", we can take her perspective, we can understand that, right? That's cognitive empathy. Now, affective empathy is similar, but it's more about feeling what another person feels. So if your mom is crying, it may not matter why your mom is crying,

• 47:53Speaker 05

  you're probably going to feel a little sad because your mom is crying, right? That would be affective empathy. And then there's a third trait that seems like it would be important, which is compassion. So this is caring about another person's wellbeing, right? So you have taking their perspective, feeling what they feel and caring about how they're doing. And those things are all related. They make us good, cooperative, pro-social creatures. But they are distinct and you can measure them distinctly in even an FMRI. You can measure them distinctly in psychological instruments. And so if you just recruit hundreds of people and you give them those three psychological instruments to see how they score, and then you ask them, what kind of movies do you like? Do you like romance movies, drama movies, horror movies, thriller movies, action movies?

• 48:36Speaker 05

  What you find is that people who really like horror movies score just like people who really dislike horror movies in affective empathy. So they feel emotions just like anyone else. What's really interesting is that when you get to cognitive empathy and compassion, they actually score a bit higher.

• 48:51Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 48:52Speaker 05

  So they're actually a little bit better at taking the perspective of another person. And they're a little bit more caring about another person's wellbeing.

• 49:00Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 49:00Speaker 05

  And you can take that further and you can say, okay, that's just people reporting, I like horror movies or I like action movies or whatever. But what about actual engagement? What if you watch a lot of horror movies? Does that actually affect it? And so if you give people, in this case, it was 50 horror films, like the 50 greatest horror films. And you just say, of these 50 films, just put a check mark next to the ones that you've seen, right? A nice measure of horror engagement. And then you give them those same empathy questionnaires, cognitive of cognitive empathy and affective empathy and compassion. You find the same thing. So affective empathy looks just the same, even if you've seen all 50 or if you've only seen one. Cognitive empathy and compassion, in some cases, a bit higher. And I even broke, this was even broken down by, by sub-genres. So it didn't matter if it was a ghost movie that you enjoyed the most,

• 49:45Speaker 05

  or maybe psychological thrillers, or even like gory slasher films. You were really good at taking the perspective of another person. And I thought that was interesting because it's a little counterintuitive. But if you think about what a horror movie is, maybe it starts to make sense. So at its core, a movie or a story about someone who's very vulnerable and who's being pursued, attacked, chased by someone or something that is much more powerful than them. It's kind of this like power imbalance in horror that doesn't really exist in other genres. And so in order to actually enjoy a horror movie, in order to feel scared by it, which is what most people want to get out of a horror movie. If you go to the theater and you watch a scary movie and it doesn't scare you at all, you're probably thinking you didn't get your money's worth.

• 50:29Speaker 05

  But if it scares you a little bit, right? That's what you're looking for is that little bit of fright. In order for it to be scary, you have to actually empathize with the vulnerable person in the story, right? So if you're a psychopath and you're going in there and you have no empathy for the vulnerable person, for the protagonist, the victim, it's not going to be scary to you, right? It's not going to be interesting to you and you're probably not going to like it. You're probably not going to be a horror fan. That kind of leads into this interesting question of then are horror fans really these like hardened adrenaline junkies, sensation sinking people that we, again intuitively, it would make sense, right? Yeah, somebody who likes a good thrill, maybe that's who wants to go watch a horror movie, wants to go to a haunted house on Halloween or something like that.

• 51:14Speaker 05

  But it turns out that a lot of horror fans are actually a little bit higher in anxiety than the average population. Huh. So they're actually a little bit more scaredy cats, which raises an interesting question of why would you go watch this thing that you know scares you? And it turns out that many people who seek out these sort of scary play experiences, again, whether it's a horror novel, whether it's going to a haunted house on Halloween or watching horror movies, it turns out that many of them get, what they get from a horror movie or a horror book or something like that is a feeling of overcoming their fear. So it's not the fear itself that they're actually chasing. They do want to experience fear, but not for that feeling necessarily. It's for the ability to experience that safely and practice overcoming it.

• 51:59Speaker 05

  And it feels good to overcome a challenge, right? To be presented with something that you can overcome. And horror movies do that really well with emotions that we tend to avoid in real life, like anxiety and fear. So yeah, I think there are a lot of things in psychology where

• 52:14Speaker 05

  It's intuitive to believe, oh, horror fans probably are low in empathy, or maybe they're adrenaline junkies. But it's important, I think, to test those intuitions because many times they come back not only not being true, but maybe even being the inverse of what we originally believed.

• 52:28Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, totally. Something I've been thinking about a lot recently with like horror discourse is that I see like a contingent of horror fans who are like, everything's about trauma now. Like, why can't we just have good old fashion? And I'm like, no, I think if you look at the history of horror as a genre, it was actually more of a blip that we had the like hostile saw, which like, I don't have a problem with.

• 52:54Speaker 05

  Which is its own form of trauma.

• 52:56Rachel Feltman?

  It's all trauma. But there's like, where's the straightforward blood and guts? Why does everything have to be about childhood trauma? I'm like, what do you think Gothic horror was about? Everything was...

• 53:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's in, that's in horror's DNA.

• 53:12Speaker 05

  That's always been a part of it. Yeah, I think that's part of the draw to it, right? That's part of the, again, part of the intrigue is that it's really the only genre that deals with these really difficult existential sort of narratives, right? Death and loss and grief and in ways that other, other genres just don't deal in quite as much.

• 53:28Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah.

• 53:29Speaker 05

  It's the only way for us to safely explore scenarios of what would happen if this took place.

• 53:34Rachel Feltman?

  Totally. I recently wasn't feeling well and I was like, I want to watch something familiar and comforting, like Event Horizon. And it did make me feel better. It was great.

• 53:42Speaker 05

  Like a movie where, what is like a portal to hell opens up on a spaceship that's lost in outer space.

• 53:49Rachel Feltman?

  Somebody survives.

• 53:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:51Speaker 06

  That's me with Midsummer. If I'm having a bad day, I'm like, okay, old people need to jump off a cliff. Sorry, spoilers.

• 54:00Speaker 06

  We've gone the last eight years.

• 54:01Rachel Feltman?

  If you don't know that about Midsummer.

• 54:02Speaker 06

  Sorry, guys.

• 54:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, big, big plot twist there.

• 54:07Rachel Feltman?

  Or maybe not. I don't know. Watch it, guys. You'll enjoy it if you have empathy.

• 54:12Speaker 05

  You'll still, you will still be surprised.

• 54:14Rachel Feltman?

  There's more in store for you in Midsummer. This is also, this is not related to the topic itself, but I'm realizing I've never plugged my good friend's horror movie that's available on Tubi, First Time Caller. And if you're listening to this and you're like, I don't know if I like horror because I like, don't want to be like, jump scared. It's purely psychological. It's like a sort of a one act. It's a dude in a room doing a Joe Rogan type radio show as a very unlikely apocalypse starts to unfold. It's really good. Mike Flanagan loved it. Loved a great review for it on Letterboxd. And it's free on Tubi, so you should check it out. First Time Caller.

• 54:51Speaker 05

  When was it, when was it, when did it come out?

• 54:53Rachel Feltman?

  Like, three years ago? I think two, three years ago.

• 54:55Speaker 05

  Okay, so fairly recent.

• 54:56Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 05

  I'll have to check that out.

• 54:57Rachel Feltman?

  Yeah, starring and directed by my good friend Abe Goldfarb. But, anyway, love horror. Love talking to you about your research, always, Colton. Would you remind our listeners what your book is called so they can go find it?

• 55:10Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah. So, Morbidly Curious, A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away. And it should be available at your local bookstore, or Barnes & Noble, or Amazon, or wherever you, wherever you buy books. And it's, just goes through the, the reasons why we're morbidly curious, why we're drawn to things like horror movies and true crime, or even cases where we don't want to actually see it, like maybe a car wreck on the side of the road. Why do we, why do we do that? And then the kind of the second half of the book is, what does that say about us? I have a chapter on empathy and a chapter on anxiety and a chapter on kids. Like, should you let your kids engage in scary play? And is it good for them or bad for them? And, yeah, I think, I think it'll put a lot of people at ease, both the people who are morbidly curious and the people who aren't, but have maybe a friend or a family member who is, and they've always wondered why they love

• 55:53Speaker 05

  Halloween so much, or why they are always on Tubi streaming horror movies.

• 55:58Rachel Feltman?

  The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Feltman, along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at weirdest underscore thing. Thanks for listening, weirdos.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop, because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.