Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and I'm Aaron Olman Updyke.
Speaker 3: And this is this podcast will kill.
Speaker 2: You ask us things.
Speaker 3: Yes, we have a very special edition this week. We
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks ago, or a few episodes ago, anyway,
Speaker 3: it's like a while ago. Now, a while ago. We
Speaker 3: asked you all to send us your questions about anything
Speaker 3: and everything, and wow, did you do that? It was
Speaker 3: it was incredible. We got hundreds of questions. Excellent questions
Speaker 3: they were. It was super fun to read through. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be it's gonna be great.
Speaker 2: I'm excited.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Unfortunately we won't be able to answer all. However,
Speaker 3: many hundreds of questions we got. Not but yeah today anyway,
Speaker 3: but we have selected sort of a variety, yes, a
Speaker 3: little buffet of different options.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we tried to like mix it up, throwing them
Speaker 2: at you in a random ish shorder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're gonna see how this goes. I think I
Speaker 3: think I'm a little nervous about it. Me too, I'm
Speaker 3: really sure. Okay, well, uh yeah, to calm our nerves.
Speaker 3: Just kidding, terrible idea to do that. We are starting
Speaker 3: with our quarantine and plussy burta this week. So, Aaron,
Speaker 3: what are you drinking?
Speaker 2: I'm drinking, Oh, passion fruit La Croix. That not a mad,
Speaker 2: This is.
Speaker 3: Not a mad.
Speaker 2: Oh, I should say generic passion fruit flavored sparkling water.
Speaker 3: There we go, and I am drinking cloudberry sayson Ooh
Speaker 3: that sounds really tasty. It's really tasty. We didn't plan
Speaker 3: a specific quarantini this week because we wanted to just
Speaker 3: sort of go with the flow.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so pull up your favorite bev yeah and
Speaker 2: drink that while you listen.
Speaker 3: Is your favorite bev A? I mean generic sparkling water passion.
Speaker 2: Fruit flag These days, it's like the most exciting beverage
Speaker 2: that I drink.
Speaker 3: So well, okay, but you know it's.
Speaker 2: A it's a good choice. I would say, if you're
Speaker 2: on the Plassy Burta train. Yeah, there we go, There
Speaker 2: we go. Oh okay, okay, So should we uh?
Speaker 3: Should we jump in? I think so? I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't think we ever have any real business to cover,
Speaker 2: do we?
Speaker 3: No, we never do, we never do. I think that's okay,
Speaker 3: and I think that's great.
Speaker 2: So let's jump in with our first question. Okay, speaking
Speaker 2: of quarantinies.
Speaker 3: So our first question comes from Paisley, who asked how
Speaker 3: do you come up with quarantinies and what essential liquors
Speaker 3: or liqueurs would you recommend for a budget mixologist? Such
Speaker 3: a fun question, and we also got a related question
Speaker 3: which we will answer probably in this immediately after this,
Speaker 3: whether whether either of us were ever bartenders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ooh, so how do we come up with our quarantinies?
Speaker 2: That's kind of a kind of a pretty random process.
Speaker 3: Usually, oh my gosh. Usually sometimes there's a guiding force,
Speaker 3: like with Burning Love, which was the one for our
Speaker 3: gonerhea episode, we knew that we wanted to have something
Speaker 3: that was like burning right or hot or spicy, something spicy, yeah,
Speaker 3: and then we kind of just went from there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we come up with the name first, and then
Speaker 2: the name sort of guides us, like what types of
Speaker 2: liquors should there be in a drink of this name?
Speaker 2: But a lot of times we're just like, what liquor
Speaker 2: do we think matches with gonorrhea?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Or what do I not need to go to
Speaker 3: the store to get that too?
Speaker 2: That's very real.
Speaker 3: Out of sheer laziness, what do I have in my pantry?
Speaker 3: Which is then given birth to a lot of these
Speaker 3: simple syrups that we've incorporated, which is fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, simple syrups we've learned are a great way to
Speaker 2: add more flavor and pizzazz to your drinks without having
Speaker 2: to spend a bunch of money on these fancy liqueurs
Speaker 2: that you would use like one time.
Speaker 3: Right, And so that kind of goes into that second
Speaker 3: question is what lick or the cores would we recommend
Speaker 3: for someone who's wanting to stay on a budget, because
Speaker 3: talk about an expensive hobby and also unhealthy.
Speaker 2: Very expensive and unhealthy hobby.
Speaker 3: I would say I think that we looked into this once.
Speaker 3: There was like a bartender Bible that I got from
Speaker 3: the library, and it's like, uh, definitely bitters, bitters for sure.
Speaker 3: Essential a whiskey of some kind, like a mild whiskey
Speaker 3: probably would be the best. And uh, I feel like
Speaker 3: sweet remouth was on there.
Speaker 2: I think a sweet vermouth was on there. And I
Speaker 2: think I think you have to have tequila on your barcart.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's a personal opinion.
Speaker 3: Okay, So let's say let's say that I moved to
Speaker 3: Finland and I went to for instance, just a random
Speaker 3: example throwing it out there, and I had to go
Speaker 3: and stock an entire liquor cabinet. What would I get?
Speaker 3: What did you get?
Speaker 2: Probably vodka, whiskey.
Speaker 3: I got some vodka, I got whiskey, I got gin.
Speaker 3: I didn't get rum, but that's just a personal choice. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think eventually I got rum, sweet vermooth, campari bitters. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then as long as you have lemon juice and
Speaker 2: lime juice or citrus juices that you can have on hand,
Speaker 2: you can make a ton of drinks with just those items,
Speaker 2: and then some kind of simple syrup.
Speaker 3: So for that you just need sugar.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Water. Yeah, you can do so much with the amount
Speaker 3: you can do with with simple syrup and club soda.
Speaker 2: Yes, is amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, fun question.
Speaker 2: And neither of us have been bartenders.
Speaker 3: No, we were. We did discuss. I have dated a bartender.
Speaker 2: And my husband was once a bartender.
Speaker 3: So I think we've had exposure to the biz. Oh
Speaker 3: that's fun.
Speaker 2: Okay. The next question, this is very cute. How did
Speaker 2: we meet? Ask Hannah and Rachel?
Speaker 3: How did we meet? Okay, so here's what I remember.
Speaker 3: Tell me, I was in my office on campus, which
Speaker 3: I was the only person in that office, and I
Speaker 3: loved it because there was that nuclear fall sign on
Speaker 3: the door, like from the actual nineteen sixties and seventies. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 3: And I was there working on a Friday and you
Speaker 3: knocked on the door and said, Hi, is this are
Speaker 3: you Aaron and I And then from that point I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, great, there's this is the this is
Speaker 3: the other Aaron that I've been promised. And I think
Speaker 3: it was a couple hours from five, which was when
Speaker 3: the grad student happy hour started. So I said you
Speaker 3: should come and we'll hang out. And that was yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that was the rest is history. Pretty much. I met
Speaker 3: because we were in the same lab, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so we did our PhDs in the same
Speaker 2: but yeah, the very first time we met you, you
Speaker 2: didn't just say, oh you should come. You said, oh,
Speaker 2: there's happy hour, you're coming.
Speaker 3: That sounds lucky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, You're like, here's where it is, here's what time.
Speaker 2: I'll introduce you to everybody. It was fantastic, It was great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then we pretty much had like that that
Speaker 3: first semester, even became almost instant best friends. We had
Speaker 3: at least one dance movie marathon night. Oh yes, oh.
Speaker 2: Yes, in my old, very crappy apartment.
Speaker 3: That was yeah, I think that's when I was still
Speaker 3: living in that in that house with like fourteen other
Speaker 3: people or sixteen other people.
Speaker 2: That's why we did it at my apartment. Yeah's exactly why.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're exactly right, that's exactly right. Okay, going off
Speaker 3: of the rails here. This is fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, this is fun. Okay, I'm feeling less nervous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too. Good. Oh but then here comes this question.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, so someone who is a peach decandidate in
Speaker 3: medieval studies asked, what role do you see the humanities
Speaker 3: and social science is playing in fields like epidemiology, medicine,
Speaker 3: and other areas of scientific research.
Speaker 2: Gosh, we went from like I can do this to.
Speaker 3: Like have talk about that's like the full roller coaster
Speaker 3: of a PhD.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so true. This is a great question though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I feel like the humanities and social sciences are super
Speaker 2: important in fields like medicine and science, and I think
Speaker 2: they're often overlooked and not taught in schools as much.
Speaker 2: And so I think that's one of the things I
Speaker 2: really love about what we get to do in this
Speaker 2: podcast is try and incorporate a little bit of that
Speaker 2: and like humanize a lot of the biology and medicine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, and I think that lately there has
Speaker 3: been more of a trend, or more of a push
Speaker 3: towards integrating these seemingly disparate fields in specific social science
Speaker 3: research with hardcore ecology or epidemiology. I think bridging those
Speaker 3: gaps and actually having people talk to one another not
Speaker 3: only can you allow for more information to be exchanged,
Speaker 3: but you also have different perspectives, and that's really valuable.
Speaker 3: When you ask somebody who's in social sciences or humanities,
Speaker 3: what do you see as the most interesting question or
Speaker 3: the challenges to do research in this area, You're going
Speaker 3: to get a very different answer than you would if
Speaker 3: you ask someone in medicine or epidemiology. Although the trend
Speaker 3: is in that direction, I think that the world would
Speaker 3: benefit greatly from even more connectivity between those fields.
Speaker 2: Very well said, I agree entirely.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's an easier question. Multiple people wanted to know
Speaker 2: Kyriana justin Meghan. They all want to know, how do
Speaker 2: we record into different locations?
Speaker 3: Two different locations? Hmmmm? Okay, Well, I am currently in
Speaker 3: Finland and it is around ten pm and it's late,
Speaker 3: but it's still very bright outside. So the joys of
Speaker 3: summer legitimate joy. It's wonderful and you're in Illinois. And
Speaker 3: so what we do is, this is just kind of
Speaker 3: a logistical answer to this question. But we both have Skype,
Speaker 3: so we're looking at each other's faces while we're doing this,
Speaker 3: and we both are recording on microphones on our individual computers,
Speaker 3: and then we will align the tracks in a on
Speaker 3: audio editing software and then we'll go from there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we found that that's the way that makes it
Speaker 2: sound the most, Like we get the best sound quality
Speaker 2: when we each record ourselves separately and mix it together.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it took a little bit of trying, but
Speaker 3: I think it's yeah, it's all right.
Speaker 2: It's not quite as much fun when I only see
Speaker 2: your face on a computer screen, but definitely it does
Speaker 2: that track me.
Speaker 3: Okay. We got several questions along these lines, so I
Speaker 3: don't know if I have a few of the names
Speaker 3: written down, but in general, basically break down for the
Speaker 3: audience what degrees we have, and then after that what
Speaker 3: we currently do for our work.
Speaker 2: Do you want to go first or do you want
Speaker 2: me to go first?
Speaker 3: You go first?
Speaker 2: Okay, So I did my undergrad degrees bachelors in aquatic
Speaker 2: biology and global studies, so not disease related. And then
Speaker 2: I did a master's in epidemiology, and then my PhD
Speaker 2: in entomology where I studied Shagas disease. And I'm working
Speaker 2: on my MD. So I don't have a real job.
Speaker 2: I'm still a student forever.
Speaker 3: I think that that's a pretty real job you get
Speaker 3: all the time.
Speaker 2: It's true, it's true. So right now I'm in my
Speaker 2: clinical years of my medical school degree. I've got two
Speaker 2: years left. Hah, wish me luck everyone luck?
Speaker 3: What about you? Oh? Okay, So it's funny. We've always
Speaker 3: talked about how we're basically the same person. Yes, so
Speaker 3: we do have some parallel shared history there in some way.
Speaker 3: I have a bachelor's of science and biology. I have
Speaker 3: a master's of science in epidemiology, and my PhD was
Speaker 3: in ecology, evolution and conservation biology. And right now I
Speaker 3: am a postdoctoral researcher in Finland. We're researching questions looking
Speaker 3: at the role of different wildlife species in disease transmission. Awesome, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's pretty wonderful.
Speaker 2: Okay, the next question. I like this question.
Speaker 3: This is fun.
Speaker 2: Is from Micah who asked, how much do you know
Speaker 2: about what the other Aaron is going to be talking about?
Speaker 3: This is a great question. It's such a good question question.
Speaker 3: We know very very little, like and we do this
Speaker 3: on purpose. We learned I think. I think it was
Speaker 3: when we recorded the very first episode and I was
Speaker 3: researching it and I couldn't stop talking to you about
Speaker 3: it before we recorded, and then we were both like,
Speaker 3: wait a second, we need to stop talking about this
Speaker 3: and capture this, like we should be recording. First of all,
Speaker 3: that's like twice the amount of work if I have
Speaker 3: to learn the biology of something on my own, I
Speaker 3: don't want to learn the history.
Speaker 2: That's why. That's why you do it.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, so that's it is we do go
Speaker 3: into a blonde and yes, there are some things, of
Speaker 3: course that that we might know more about than others,
Speaker 3: but there are so many other things always that that
Speaker 3: we're each going to learn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's we decided to do that because
Speaker 2: we wanted for this podcast to be conversational and relax
Speaker 2: and I think that's one of the things that keeps
Speaker 2: it that way, is that we get to learn what
Speaker 2: you guys are learning at the same time, which is
Speaker 2: really really fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm not lying when I say what some
Speaker 2: people think I'm faking it.
Speaker 3: I'm not dumb. We're not faking it. I'm a terrible actress.
Speaker 3: So really, okay, okay, all right this. I am so
Speaker 3: excited to read this email. This email was so cute
Speaker 3: that we wanted to read it out specifically. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: here we go. This email has been dictated by nine
Speaker 3: year old Autumn with help from six year old.
Speaker 2: Read I'm dead already, Yes, I know, I know.
Speaker 3: Dear Eron's. Your podcast is so good. I want to
Speaker 3: listen to it every night, even if I get scared,
Speaker 3: Like with the yellow fever episode. I like that you
Speaker 3: tell the history and biology of dangerous pathogens. Please do
Speaker 3: another crossover episode with indefensive plants. You're welcome, and maybe
Speaker 3: an episode about strep throat. That would be a great idea.
Speaker 3: Definitely on our list. I want to know if you
Speaker 3: go to your local library to find information, because my
Speaker 3: mom is a teacher of librarians and we love the library. Yes,
Speaker 3: I love to go to my local library. The library
Speaker 3: is my happy place. Like am I'm not lying that
Speaker 3: one of my favorite memories of during my PhD in
Speaker 3: Illinois is when it would snow in the winter on
Speaker 3: a weekend and I would wake up and the ground
Speaker 3: everywhere would be covered with fresh snow, and I would
Speaker 3: put on my boots and grab my jacket and walk
Speaker 3: however long it was, to the library and just grab
Speaker 3: a book and start reading and just sit there for hours.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we love libraries. They're fantastic libraries.
Speaker 3: Okay, but there's more here, and there's more. How old
Speaker 3: are you? This is from Reid, who's the six year old?
Speaker 3: And also what were you like when you were not?
Speaker 2: So I can say how we can say how old
Speaker 2: we are? Right, that's fine. Sure, I'm thirty one now
Speaker 2: just turned.
Speaker 3: I'm thirty two.
Speaker 2: Oh and what were we like when we were nine?
Speaker 2: I was very nerdy?
Speaker 3: Tell me more about that.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so when I was nine, I think was
Speaker 2: when we moved from San Diego to Irvine, and so
Speaker 2: I didn't have a lot of friends obviously, like I
Speaker 2: moved to a brand new school and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And one of my mom's.
Speaker 2: Favorite stories to tell about me when I was nine
Speaker 2: and a budding hufflepuff is that my mom was asking
Speaker 2: the teacher like, oh, how is Aaron doing? You know,
Speaker 2: is she settling it?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: And the teacher was like, yeah, you know. About a
Speaker 2: week after she started, we had uh, what do you
Speaker 2: call it? Student council elections, and Aaron decided to run.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: I am not surprised I lost to you guys, but
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, sure, that sounds cool.
Speaker 3: I would do student council.
Speaker 2: I'll run for That's the kind of kid I was
Speaker 2: when I was nine, just like no concept of the
Speaker 2: fact that I had no friends at this new school.
Speaker 3: What did you do after school? What kind of what
Speaker 3: kind of things did you do?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I have such a bad memory. I
Speaker 2: can't remember. I made a good friend as soon as
Speaker 2: we moved there, Darren shout out. So I probably just
Speaker 2: hung out with her and her sister all the time,
Speaker 2: did whatever they wanted to do. What were you like
Speaker 2: when you were nine? Would we have been friends?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, we would have been friends of course. Also,
Speaker 3: it's really funny, I didn't know that that's when you
Speaker 3: moved from San Diego to irvine' that's around when I
Speaker 3: moved from Florida to Kentucky.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, you're like nine, and fourth grade. Right, that's
Speaker 2: about right.
Speaker 3: That was right before fourth grade. I started fourth grade
Speaker 3: and in Kentucky we.
Speaker 2: Moved in the middle of the fourth grade year.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, we are we are even more the same
Speaker 3: person than previously realized. How fun. Let's see though, when
Speaker 3: I was nine, I was I mean, I was reading
Speaker 3: all the time. That was actually when I first really,
Speaker 3: I think, fell in love with reading books, like reading
Speaker 3: fiction books. My fourth grade teacher gave me, Missus Larson
Speaker 3: gave me Animorphs and The Hobbit and both of that.
Speaker 3: So it's already shaping shaping my very very nerdy personality.
Speaker 3: And that's when I was like, wow, you can really
Speaker 3: there's a whole world that you can just lose yourself in,
Speaker 3: and it was really wonderful. I spent a lot of
Speaker 3: time outside. I was always running through the woods, running
Speaker 3: at playing soccer constantly. We built like a I remember
Speaker 3: that year we built a haunted trail in the woods
Speaker 3: of Kentucky. It was moving from Florida to Kentucky. Wasn't
Speaker 3: that traumatic for me? I think I was excited because
Speaker 3: my favorite summer holidays we would go to western North
Speaker 3: Carolina and the Smokies and I would just spend the
Speaker 3: whole time playing in creeks and catching fireflies and running
Speaker 3: around and so to be in Kentucky and hookwork and
Speaker 3: so to be in Kentucky and get to be outside
Speaker 3: all the time was amazing. I still remember that the
Speaker 3: magic of like you mean that there's I can just
Speaker 3: run around here.
Speaker 2: Still, that's so cute, baby, Aaron.
Speaker 3: So a nerdy, nerdy kid that just ran around outside.
Speaker 2: I bet we would have had fun together.
Speaker 3: Definitely.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is the fun. Also, Autumn Read and their
Speaker 2: mom Christy, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: That was the cutest email. Yeah, you loved it.
Speaker 2: The next question from jin easy peas are you a
Speaker 2: cat or dog person?
Speaker 3: Oh, this is a really challenge. Just kidding, I'm a
Speaker 3: dog person.
Speaker 2: If there was ever any doubt, Aaron Welsh is not
Speaker 2: a cat person.
Speaker 3: I'm formally declaring for dogs right now.
Speaker 2: I love both cats and dogs. I don't want to
Speaker 2: declare for one or the other because I love them both.
Speaker 3: I can see, yeah, play on both sides. Keep it
Speaker 3: everyone happy. That heffle puff, that's what you know.
Speaker 2: But I was on an episode of the per Cast,
Speaker 2: so I feel like that gives me some cat person
Speaker 2: cred you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Sure, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I feel like it does. I thought I wasn't a
Speaker 2: cat person enough to be on it, but I felt
Speaker 2: very at home there, so.
Speaker 3: I think I just I would like to say I
Speaker 3: had a horrible experience with a cat growing up. Our
Speaker 3: family cat was was pure evil, and I'm sure that
Speaker 3: even people who are cat people can't acknowledge that some
Speaker 3: cats can be pure evil.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I have dogs too, I mean, oh, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3: But I could go into all of the merits of dogs,
Speaker 3: but I won't. I will save it for another episode. Yeah, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 3: This question from Jenna is what is your favorite part
Speaker 3: of making the podcast? Oh?
Speaker 2: That's a good question. My absolute favorite part. I feel
Speaker 2: like I have a lot of favorite parts. Do you
Speaker 2: have one specific good answer for this?
Speaker 3: No, I feel like I don't have a good answer
Speaker 3: for any of these.
Speaker 2: I feel like my favorite part that I wasn't expecting.
Speaker 3: How about that? Sure?
Speaker 2: Is how positive and amazing the feedback has been. I
Speaker 2: love hearing from people that love this podcast. It's still
Speaker 2: so overwhelming to me to think that people are voluntarily
Speaker 2: listening to us talk and enjoying it, and then telling
Speaker 2: them are friends about it.
Speaker 3: That's the thing that.
Speaker 2: Really I was telling my husband today, actually, how much
Speaker 2: that blows my mind, Like on Twitter, to see people
Speaker 2: recommending us to their friends the way that I recommend
Speaker 2: podcasts that I listen to friends. That's it's really overwhelmingly exciting.
Speaker 2: That's I think one of my favorite things. I didn't
Speaker 2: ever expect to happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very surreal. Like I look at those those
Speaker 3: comments and I think, oh, that's happening to someone else,
Speaker 3: that's not me, that's not us. No h But I
Speaker 3: think I think one of my favorite parts of making
Speaker 3: the podcast is recording the podcast. So there are so
Speaker 3: many things that you love that go into exactly well,
Speaker 3: there are so many things that go into the prep
Speaker 3: to make the episode and then to edit it and
Speaker 3: to you know, add music, and then to find this
Speaker 3: the social media images that we put on there and
Speaker 3: that all these things. But I think that it's such
Speaker 3: a huge payoff to act actually sit down and record
Speaker 3: and tell that story and sort of have that like
Speaker 3: because it is like it is, we're just nerding out
Speaker 3: over diseases, and that's true fun. It's really fun. I
Speaker 3: can't believe that we'd like get to do this, I know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so all of it is amazing. Agreed.
Speaker 2: Next question from Shannon is what is your go to
Speaker 2: drink when you order something.
Speaker 3: I have an immediate answer for this question. Give it
Speaker 3: to me then, Okay, well I have two answers. One
Speaker 3: I would say is for winter months, that would be
Speaker 3: an old fashioned preferably made with Woodford Reserve. Once again,
Speaker 3: not an ad, just one of my personal favorites, Rowan Creek.
Speaker 3: There are some great bourbons out there, so but yeah,
Speaker 3: old reliable Woodford. And then I think my other absolute
Speaker 3: favorite is Gen and Tonic Classics.
Speaker 2: I don't have a go to drink. I think I've
Speaker 2: always wanted to have a go to drink, but I've
Speaker 2: never really fallen so deeply in love with one thing
Speaker 2: that I could just order that. I will say that
Speaker 2: since I haven't been drinking for many months, the thing
Speaker 2: I miss the most is tequila.
Speaker 3: And Rose, hanging out with you at your house. When
Speaker 3: we'd be like, let's make something, it was often a
Speaker 3: Manhattan I.
Speaker 2: Do love Manhattan's. I love Manhattan's, but I also am
Speaker 2: just like those are the things I know how to
Speaker 2: make very easily. So sometimes when I go to a bar,
Speaker 2: I get very nervous, so I just order like a
Speaker 2: Manhattan or an Old Fashioned because I know what that
Speaker 2: is and I know I can order it. Because I
Speaker 2: get nervous about looking stupid.
Speaker 1: I don't know that.
Speaker 2: I also love a boulevardia. I will say that.
Speaker 3: Was a oh yeah, a fave.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: There's a whole world of drink out there.
Speaker 2: On that note, perhaps it's time for a quick break.
Speaker 3: Yes, go make yourself a custom quarantine.
Speaker 2: Your favorite version, and we're back. We're back, Okay.
Speaker 3: So I have a question from Lindsay who asked how
Speaker 3: do you deal with people who accuse you of being
Speaker 3: in the pocket of big farmer or whatever? And as
Speaker 3: I was going through these questions, I also found another
Speaker 3: one that was similar along the same vein, which is
Speaker 3: how do you navigate a friendship with an anti vax friend.
Speaker 3: These are very good questions and difficult ones, really difficult questions.
Speaker 3: Do you have a good answer? Again, you asked me
Speaker 3: if I have a good answer. Of course I don't
Speaker 3: have a good answer. I can put together and answer,
Speaker 3: do you have a good answer?
Speaker 2: I don't have a good answer, except I do think
Speaker 2: it's important to keep in mind that yelling at people
Speaker 2: has pretty much never solved anything ever. Yeah, but it's hard,
Speaker 2: I think to not let your own frustrations when you know,
Speaker 2: when you have friends or family members maybe who are
Speaker 2: being or not willing to listen to reason. Sometimes I
Speaker 2: think it's it can be really difficult, But as much
Speaker 2: as you can, I think trying to maintain communication can
Speaker 2: be really helpful because maybe someday you would be able
Speaker 2: to have a conversation with someone like that where you
Speaker 2: can at least present your side of the information in
Speaker 2: a way that's not judgmental, and then maybe someday they
Speaker 2: might listen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard, I mean I think I think it's
Speaker 3: it's especially hard because you have to make this judgment
Speaker 3: call of whether the energy that you're putting into this,
Speaker 3: both both emotional energy and the just the time and
Speaker 3: effort into talking to this person and trying to convince
Speaker 3: them that you're not in the pocket of big pharma,
Speaker 3: or that vaccines truly work and are safe. It's some
Speaker 3: people are more vaccine hesitant than they are anti vacs,
Speaker 3: for instance. Yeah, and so identifying those people and maintaining
Speaker 3: this space where you can talk about it in a
Speaker 3: way that's like comfort, like comforting or comfortable. That's that's
Speaker 3: really important. And maybe sometimes they just want someone to
Speaker 3: listen to what they have to say and say like
Speaker 3: are my concerns valid? And sometimes like yeah, maybe, like
Speaker 3: of course you're concerned for your child, you're concerned about whatever.
Speaker 3: But sometimes they're looking for validation, and if you don't
Speaker 3: provide that, that can be difficult to talk with them.
Speaker 3: You know. I think that everyone has a duty I
Speaker 3: feel to at least try. Yeah. Once then it becomes
Speaker 3: more of a judgment call of is this actually making
Speaker 3: any progress? And I think that this is a bigger
Speaker 3: picture thing that I'm about to say. But in this
Speaker 3: political climate where we tend to make our own bubbles,
Speaker 3: that's that isolation there, that complete lack of connect between
Speaker 3: one group and another group. That is not necessarily progress.
Speaker 3: I don't know how progress is going to be made,
Speaker 3: but I like maintaining that bubble or that echo chamber
Speaker 3: isn't the way.
Speaker 2: You know, a piece of advice I heard, So this
Speaker 2: is not my advice, but I thought that this was
Speaker 2: a really good piece of advice when I heard it.
Speaker 2: Was that sometimes there might be people in your life
Speaker 2: who are kind of distant friends or friends of friends,
Speaker 2: or you know, distant relations or something that you know
Speaker 2: have a stance that's maybe very very out there, and
Speaker 2: you know that if you tried to talk to them,
Speaker 2: they would never listen to you, because who are you
Speaker 2: to them? You are a distant friend, or you don't
Speaker 2: know them very well, but maybe you know someone who
Speaker 2: knows them better. And so sometimes talking to people that
Speaker 2: you are closer with who maybe just don't feel comfortable
Speaker 2: talking about these issues and helping to educate them so
Speaker 2: that they could be better intermediates between you and the
Speaker 2: person who's farther away from you, but maybe also farther
Speaker 2: down the spectrum of anti vas vaccine.
Speaker 3: Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think it's. I think it's empowering people with knowledge
Speaker 3: and information who may not necessarily feel inclined to go
Speaker 3: out and pass along that message. Maybe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. All right.
Speaker 2: Well, the next question is a fun one. Are humans
Speaker 2: reservoir hosts for any diseases that infect animals?
Speaker 3: It's questions from gen and yes, humans are. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think we talk more often about diseases that spill
Speaker 2: over from animals into humans, right, Zoonotic diseases, But there
Speaker 2: are a number of different diseases that humans are sort
Speaker 2: of the more definitive hosts that we can also give
Speaker 2: to animals. Things like tuberculosis you can.
Speaker 3: Spread both ways.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Even influenza you can give to your dog. We see
Speaker 2: that going back and forth between a lot of different animals.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of other ones. This is the only
Speaker 2: question where I looked up to be able to have
Speaker 2: an answer for, because I liked the question, but I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, I can't name a bunch of diseases
Speaker 2: off the top of my head. Mumps, salmonella, these are fun. Girardia,
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, gerard Yeah that makes sense. Paras, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it goes both ways.
Speaker 3: Probably the list is probably a lot shorter for a
Speaker 3: couple of reasons. One is because humans will interact with
Speaker 3: all different kinds of animals, Like a high number of
Speaker 3: humans will interact with many different kinds of animals in
Speaker 3: ways that might make exposure more likely, like such as
Speaker 3: slaughtering an animal. You know. But I think that the
Speaker 3: number the proportion of animals that will interact with humans
Speaker 3: of a particular species is a lot lower, And so
Speaker 3: that's maybe one of the reasons why that other kind
Speaker 3: of spillover is less common. And I think in addition,
Speaker 3: it's probably just a lack of knowledge about wildlife diseases tots.
Speaker 2: I think that's very accurate, that it probably happens a
Speaker 2: lot more often than we're even aware of.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'm sure that the diversity of parasites and
Speaker 3: pathogens and animals is incredibly high that we just don't
Speaker 3: have any idea. Yeah, so fun.
Speaker 2: Don't cough on your dog or share poop.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also, don't let them lick your face when you're sick. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can get them sick. Yeah. Liz A asked what
Speaker 3: did you want to be when you were little?
Speaker 2: Oh, gosh, I wanted to be a lot of different things.
Speaker 2: I think I definitely wanted to be a vet. I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure at some point I wanted to be Bill Ny,
Speaker 2: the science guy. That was probably my number one was
Speaker 2: long lasting. I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't Bill Ny, the science Guid's who I wanted
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, I wanted to be a vet and then Jeff Corwin.
Speaker 2: So we are the same person, which is slightly God,
Speaker 2: that's funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, God, I love Jeff Corwin. I mean I also
Speaker 3: loved Steve Irwin, but for some reason I loved like
Speaker 3: Jeff Corwin is what I taped like I taped on VHS.
Speaker 2: I feel like he's the dorkier version, so I feel
Speaker 2: like it was just your No. I mean I loved
Speaker 2: Jeff Crown also, but it's you know, he did have like.
Speaker 3: The worst joke sometimes and it was just so corny,
Speaker 3: and I loved it. I've genuinely loved it.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Okay.
Speaker 2: The next question is from Amy, who asked.
Speaker 3: How do you find your references.
Speaker 2: Google?
Speaker 3: Well, yes and no. Sometimes it's a lot easier than
Speaker 3: other times. Yea, sometimes there's a book about preons, sometimes
Speaker 3: there's a book about whatever. I go to Google scholar
Speaker 3: and I look for certain keywords. Another resource that I
Speaker 3: have actually used, and I will freely admit to this
Speaker 3: is Wikipedia. The citations in the Wikipedia article. That has
Speaker 3: been varyingly helpful depending on what I'm researching. But a
Speaker 3: lot of it is Google, and a lot of it
Speaker 3: is sort of having a bank of books that have
Speaker 3: are more encyclopedic in nature, and then I just kind
Speaker 3: of do down the rabbit hole reference tracking. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also start often with Wikipedia. There's no shame
Speaker 2: in doing that. Wikipedia has a lot of great sources.
Speaker 2: You just have to then go one step further in
Speaker 2: finding where they found their information from. I also heavily
Speaker 2: use the CDC and who websites and then Google scholar.
Speaker 2: That's where I get all of my That's where I
Speaker 2: get most of my info.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Google Scholar, for those who might not be familiar, is
Speaker 2: where you can find peer reviewed literature. So primary literature
Speaker 2: sources about various pretty much every topic.
Speaker 3: Ever, it doesn't necessarily mean that everything that's on Google scholar.
Speaker 2: Is peer reviewed, No, it does not, but for.
Speaker 3: Ones where you see a lot of citations, that is
Speaker 3: more than likely going to be peer reviewed. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, Okay, Okay, I have.
Speaker 3: A question about antibiotics. Okay, some more specific question here
Speaker 3: we go, all right, why so why do we need
Speaker 3: antibiotics for infections that we've had before? Okay, before you
Speaker 3: answer that question, because I think you'll do a better
Speaker 3: job answering it than I will. There's there's a correction,
Speaker 3: and so I want to quickly make this correct. And
Speaker 3: so the person that wrote this in I really appreciate
Speaker 3: them setting this because this was sort of a throwaway
Speaker 3: comment that I made about positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement,
Speaker 3: and I used it incorrectly. So here's what they said
Speaker 3: towards the end of So this is in the first
Speaker 3: vaccine episode. Towards the end, we were talking about Australia
Speaker 3: and the utilization of positive reinforcement for vaccination. You guys
Speaker 3: got that term right, but when you were talking about
Speaker 3: how if you're not up to date on vaccinations, people
Speaker 3: would show up. That is actually type one or positive punishment,
Speaker 3: as opposed to negative reinforcement. So both positive and negative reinforcement,
Speaker 3: they go on to say, will increase the likelihood of
Speaker 3: someone engaging in a particular behavior. Positive just means presenting
Speaker 3: something to bring about or affect a behavior. Conversely, negative
Speaker 3: means removing something to affect a behavior. So, with regards
Speaker 3: to vaccinations, positively reinforcing someone forgetting vaccinated, we would be
Speaker 3: something like giving them one hundred dollars after they received
Speaker 3: the vaccination. And an example of negatively reinforcing someone would
Speaker 3: be if you're being super annoying to them, asking them
Speaker 3: every minute, why aren't you getting vaccinated? And then stop
Speaker 3: contingent upon them receiving the vaccination, So you would be
Speaker 3: removing i e. Negatively reinforcing the annoying stimulus of bombard
Speaker 3: of bombarding them with questions. So thank you very much
Speaker 3: for sending that that correction. I learned a lot and
Speaker 3: I will try very hard to incorporate that into my language,
Speaker 3: my vocabulary.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, yeah, we're definitely not experts on a lot
Speaker 2: of things, so let us know when we get things
Speaker 2: like that wrong.
Speaker 3: Thats great, Okay, So why do we need antibiotics for
Speaker 3: infections that we've had before?
Speaker 2: This is a good question and we had a couple
Speaker 2: of similar ones too, about like what this touches on
Speaker 2: the idea of what a strain is, what a strain
Speaker 2: of a pathogen is. So for some pathogens, they have
Speaker 2: a lot of variation. So even though they have a
Speaker 2: lot of variation in the proteins on their surface that
Speaker 2: our immune system responds to, and so even though we've
Speaker 2: been exposed to them in the past and we've mounted
Speaker 2: an immune response, the next time that we're exposed it's
Speaker 2: a slightly different bacteria or in some cases, like with influenza,
Speaker 2: a slightly different virus. So we're not completely immune. Even
Speaker 2: though we've been exposed to say, strep pneumonia before. There
Speaker 2: are like hundreds and hundreds of different strains different. They
Speaker 2: just look a little bit different on the outside, so
Speaker 2: our body doesn't recognize them precisely, which means that we're
Speaker 2: not able to fight off the infection completely. Does that?
Speaker 3: Is that a good answer? Makes sense to me? Oh? Good,
Speaker 3: great job, great job.
Speaker 2: Okay, Oh this is fun, Elin or Ellen. Perhaps I
Speaker 2: might have pronounced it wrong.
Speaker 3: Wants to know.
Speaker 2: Do you prefer lab work or field work? Field work
Speaker 2: that was easy for you?
Speaker 3: That was easy. Field work is my lifeblood. I could
Speaker 3: do field work and just forever and ever and ever.
Speaker 2: I prefer neither. I'm a little bit burnt out on
Speaker 2: research at the moment. Maybe ask me again in a
Speaker 2: couple of years. Okay, I'm enjoying clinical work right now.
Speaker 2: How about that during your PhD?
Speaker 3: What did you like more? Gosh, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Aaron, I liked parts of the field work.
Speaker 2: I liked I liked parts of the field work. Our
Speaker 2: field work was it has had a lot of challenges
Speaker 2: to it. I think I would have liked it a
Speaker 2: lot more if I wasn't alone doing it, you had helpers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but you know, all of the coordination and all of
Speaker 2: the things that go into field work are not my favorite.
Speaker 2: But lab work can get quite tedious, and it's also
Speaker 2: you sometimes get like automatic results, which is very exciting
Speaker 2: because it's satisfying, like at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: you know that you've done all of this. So I
Speaker 2: don't know, they both. I enjoy them both in small quantities.
Speaker 3: I think. I mean, I definitely I enjoy lab work,
Speaker 3: and I prefer lab and field work to grant writing
Speaker 3: for example, big time. Yeah, but leeah, lab work does
Speaker 3: get tedious, but I also love it. She just pop
Speaker 3: in some some earbuds and listen to some podcasts or
Speaker 3: music or books on tape. But yeah, field work is
Speaker 3: I could. That's where your soul is. It is it is. Okay,
Speaker 3: So we have a question from someone who so we
Speaker 3: asked everyone to send their question and also say whether
Speaker 3: they cared about if their name was said on air. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and this person said, you have my permission, and I
Speaker 3: dare you because their name Greg, their last name is
Speaker 3: very difficult to pronounce, and I don't know if I'm
Speaker 3: going to touch it.
Speaker 2: Oh, Greg, Greg got us. We're not going to touch
Speaker 2: your last name, Greg, Yeah, but we'll read your question.
Speaker 3: We will. Greg would love to know how someone can
Speaker 3: still be symptomatic but no longer contagious. So how are
Speaker 3: these guidelines established? That's a fun question. It is a
Speaker 3: fun question.
Speaker 2: I don't know if there's a specific way that the
Speaker 2: guidelines are established necessarily, but it is going to vary
Speaker 2: for every disease, and it's essentially just dependent on how
Speaker 2: long you are shedding that virus or bacteria. So for
Speaker 2: some infections, like influenza, you are shedding a high amount
Speaker 2: of virus before you ever begin to show symptoms, and
Speaker 2: then the majority of the symptoms that you see are
Speaker 2: not necessarily from the virus itself, but from your body
Speaker 2: fighting off that infection. So then towards the end of
Speaker 2: when you're feeling sick, though you might still be feeling creddy,
Speaker 2: you're not shedding the virus, and so then you're no
Speaker 2: longer contagious.
Speaker 3: Does that make sense? That makes sense to me. I
Speaker 3: wonder if it's like the number of viral particles that
Speaker 3: is like used to or that is able to cause
Speaker 3: an infection in another person, or like the bacterial load
Speaker 3: or something like that.
Speaker 2: And it probably also depends too on whether the symptoms
Speaker 2: that you're seeing are from the infection itself or from
Speaker 2: your body fighting off the infection, right, because if something
Speaker 2: like diarrhea, if you're still actively having diarrhea with something
Speaker 2: like girardia, then you're still pooping out active parasite, so
Speaker 2: then you're still infectious the whole time that you have
Speaker 2: that diarrhea. But with something else like flu where you're
Speaker 2: just maybe you know, having a residual cough that might
Speaker 2: just be from all of the immune cells that have
Speaker 2: sort of built up in your system even though you've
Speaker 2: your body has fought off the viral infections such that
Speaker 2: you're not shedding active virus when you cough.
Speaker 3: Your body or to the end recovering from the infection. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I wonder how much person to person variation there is.
Speaker 2: But there's tons. Yeah, that's a fun question though, Greg.
Speaker 3: Yes, thanks Greg.
Speaker 2: Do you remember in in Succession when he says cousin
Speaker 2: Greg in the best way ever?
Speaker 3: When is that show coming back?
Speaker 2: I think September? Okay, okay, okay, this is cousin Greg.
Speaker 2: Next question is what is the role of climate change?
Speaker 3: In infectious disease. Oh, this is really really easy one
Speaker 3: to answer. It's it's going to be a very short answer.
Speaker 3: Just kidding, I'm actually I am going to keep it
Speaker 3: very short, but because the answer is very complex and
Speaker 3: very varied. So one thing is certain, and that is
Speaker 3: that climate change will impact infectious diseases. I can give
Speaker 3: you a few different instances or a few different examples
Speaker 3: of how it might do that. I think primarily when
Speaker 3: people think of climate change and infectious disease, they think
Speaker 3: of it in terms of vector born diseases. So those
Speaker 3: are ones that are transmitted by arthropod vectors such as
Speaker 3: ticks or mosquitoes. And that's because as climate change happens,
Speaker 3: the environment is going to change, and that will change
Speaker 3: the distribution or the seasonality of these different insect or
Speaker 3: arthropod life cycles. So, for instance, something like lime disease,
Speaker 3: as things get warmer, that might make the tick more
Speaker 3: able that transmit it, that transmits it more able to
Speaker 3: live at higher latitudes or and higher altitudes depending on
Speaker 3: where you are. And then there's things like just seasonality
Speaker 3: and impacting the amount of humidity that you have. And
Speaker 3: it's no matter what disease system you're working on. No
Speaker 3: matter what geography you're researching in, this is going to
Speaker 3: be a very complex question and a very complex answer.
Speaker 3: Even the answer is typically it depends even if you
Speaker 3: say something like lime disease, what is going to happen
Speaker 3: with lime disease and climate change depends on where you are,
Speaker 3: depends on what animals are around you. And that's the
Speaker 3: beauty of ecology and also sort of the difficulty in
Speaker 3: trying to predict or alleviate some of the negative effects
Speaker 3: of climate change on infectious diseases. And then there's the
Speaker 3: whole landscape change and urbanization, and that's a whole nother
Speaker 3: bag of fleas that I won't go into.
Speaker 2: Great answer, Aaron, thanks job, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Okay, a bunch of people I asked a question and
Speaker 3: I'll name a few of them. So we have Claire
Speaker 3: and Emily and Maggie another Aaron, Andrew, Justin, Sarah McKenna, Scarlet, Jesse, etcetera, etcetera. Lily,
Speaker 3: we have a bunch of people who asked us how
Speaker 3: did we get into epidemiology and what steps are necessary
Speaker 3: to become an epidemiologist?
Speaker 2: Oh, so, like, how did we get interested in epidemiology. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: I have an easy answer for this one.
Speaker 3: You're good.
Speaker 2: So I in undergrad wanted to be a shark biologist.
Speaker 2: That was my goal in life. And it wasn't until
Speaker 2: I took an ecological parasitology class that I became interested
Speaker 2: in disease. And it was kind of a life changeing
Speaker 2: moment for me in terms of as soon as I
Speaker 2: started learning about these parasites and how complex their life
Speaker 2: cycles were and the impact that they have on people,
Speaker 2: I was completely hooked and knew that I had to
Speaker 2: study something about disease and parasites. So that was what
Speaker 2: sort of sparked it for me. And I went to
Speaker 2: armand Curus, who taught that class, and I said, help me,
Speaker 2: what do I do with my life. I'm about to
Speaker 2: graduate and I need to change everything about what I
Speaker 2: want to do. And he was like, don't worry about it,
Speaker 2: go get your master's in public health.
Speaker 3: And so that's what I did. Yeah. Yeah, I wish
Speaker 3: I could have taken that class. I was a great class. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I got interested because I kind of went a roundabout way.
Speaker 3: I started out majoring my undergrad in nursing and had
Speaker 3: to take a microbiology class for that in this my
Speaker 3: second year, and it was an eight day class, which
Speaker 3: was horrible for me. I'm not an early riser, as
Speaker 3: you can tell maybe from our late recording sessions. But
Speaker 3: I found myself going to it, riding my bike to
Speaker 3: it every single Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and not wanting to
Speaker 3: miss it because I thought it was so exciting and
Speaker 3: so thrilling, and I thought, Oho, this might be what
Speaker 3: I need to do instead. So I switched my major
Speaker 3: to biology, looked at some independent research projects that I
Speaker 3: could do a cold call or cold emailed someone working
Speaker 3: in the plague and a plague lab, and I thought,
Speaker 3: people work on plague is what? This is so exciting?
Speaker 3: And then I became one of the people working on
Speaker 3: plague and it was so exciting and to be a
Speaker 3: complete full nerd. As I was working on these play
Speaker 3: I was working primarily on surface proteins on the plague bacterium,
Speaker 3: but I was still sort of feeling like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: working on this amazingly cool bacterium, but what what Like,
Speaker 3: there's there's more here, what's the story here? So then
Speaker 3: I read a bunch of books on the plague and
Speaker 3: found myself much more fascinated by the overall pattern and
Speaker 3: impact of the disease than on the individual proteins. So
Speaker 3: then I decided to take a year off and then
Speaker 3: work and then and then applied to epidemiology, and then
Speaker 3: disease ecology kind of happened because when I was doing
Speaker 3: my master's, one of my advisors, who was a biologist,
Speaker 3: was asked me or kind of like looked at me
Speaker 3: sideways and was like, you know that a lot of
Speaker 3: the things that you're writing about in your thesis are
Speaker 3: ecology questions, right. I was like, what, No, I thought
Speaker 3: it was epidemiology, and he's like, you might want to
Speaker 3: look at ecology grad programs. I was like, oh, okay.
Speaker 2: I don't think i've heard that part of the story before.
Speaker 2: That's really cool.
Speaker 3: I was clueless, So yeah, oh so okay, So what
Speaker 3: steps are necessary to become an epidemiologist?
Speaker 2: Well, I feel I've never actually worked as an epidemiologist,
Speaker 2: so I don't know how to answer this question fully.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think there are many different pathways that you
Speaker 3: can in which you can do epidemiology or public health
Speaker 3: or things related to disease period. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 3: the first step would be to identify the things that
Speaker 3: interest you the most, or the things when you envision
Speaker 3: yourself doing epidemiology, What is it that feels the most
Speaker 3: exciting to you, or what is it that you are
Speaker 3: envisioning doing. If it's something like field work where you're
Speaker 3: going out to investigate an outbreak, then maybe you want
Speaker 3: to go to a school of public health and get
Speaker 3: a PhD or an MD in infectious disease. If it's
Speaker 3: something like statistics, then maybe you want to look at
Speaker 3: biostatistics programs. If it's something like wildlife disease, you could
Speaker 3: look at veterinary programs, or disease ecology programs, or a
Speaker 3: combination of all of these. If it's like policy, you
Speaker 3: could look at policy programs. I think that that's one
Speaker 3: of the beauties of public health as a field, is
Speaker 3: that there's so many different avenues that you can get there,
Speaker 3: and it's just sort of finding out what you like
Speaker 3: to do want to do, so talk to people who
Speaker 3: do these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it never hurts to email. Like if
Speaker 2: you find actually something we had to do in our
Speaker 2: first semester of grad school.
Speaker 3: Here, remember this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a useful exercise what we had to do
Speaker 2: was find somebody with a job that we wanted. So
Speaker 2: find a job that you think you want and look.
Speaker 3: Up their CV.
Speaker 2: And sometimes they might not have it online, so maybe
Speaker 2: you email them and you ask, could I have a
Speaker 2: copy of your CV, and they might just give it
Speaker 2: to you, or they might have it on their website already,
Speaker 2: and then you can see what do they do to
Speaker 2: get to the position that they're in, and then that
Speaker 2: can help guide you in figuring out what you might
Speaker 2: need to do to get to that position someday.
Speaker 3: Aaron, can I reveal what yours was? Because I remember this, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can reveal. Aaron Almanepdyke over here decided that she
Speaker 3: would download and print out and bring to class the
Speaker 3: Was it the Surgeon General? Yes, the United States Surgeon
Speaker 3: General CV.
Speaker 2: That's whose CV I brought in.
Speaker 3: Our advisor was like, so yes, He asked if I was.
Speaker 2: Serious or if I misunderstood the prompt or if we
Speaker 2: needed to have a really serious discussion about how high
Speaker 2: I wanted to aim? What were we thinking? Anyways, Hopefully
Speaker 2: that's helpful advice.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think in general, undergrad career could be something
Speaker 3: like biology, statistics, math, chemistry, and then you know I
Speaker 3: also don't want to discount things like social sciences.
Speaker 2: I mean anthropology or humanities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anthropology, sociology, psychology, art, even I mean the need
Speaker 3: for graphical design in getting like infographics, particularly to people
Speaker 3: that where literacy or regions where literacy might be quite low.
Speaker 3: That's huge. I mean, there are so many different ways
Speaker 3: to be involved in public health. If you want to study,
Speaker 3: if you want to do epidemiology in the strictest definition
Speaker 3: of the of the word, then you would want to
Speaker 3: choose probably a more quote hard science undergraduate degree and
Speaker 3: then sort of go down, go down those steps. But
Speaker 3: you know, look at job boards and say, is that
Speaker 3: a job that I would want to do? Find people
Speaker 3: who have that job, talk to them. Yeah, stuff like that.
Speaker 3: I think that's good advice.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is a fun next question that a number
Speaker 2: of people asked Alec, Marcelline, Lizzie, Jennifer. They all want
Speaker 2: to know probably more people too than I. Forgot to
Speaker 2: write down what is our favorite disease or parasite or
Speaker 2: infection and why?
Speaker 3: Ah, this is so hard because I feel like I
Speaker 3: have be I've been fascinated by every single one of them.
Speaker 2: What if I answered what I think you would say,
Speaker 2: and you answered what you think I would say, and
Speaker 2: then we say whether we're right or wrong. Okay ooh
Speaker 2: that's fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would think if I just guessed what yours
Speaker 2: would be.
Speaker 3: Are we talking just real quick? Are we talking ones
Speaker 3: that we have covered on the show so far? Or
Speaker 3: I just was thinking just in general? Okay, okay, But.
Speaker 2: I think one of your top favorites is the plague
Speaker 2: of course, yes, yeah.
Speaker 3: But why would I find it the most intriguing?
Speaker 2: Oh? I think that you love how huge it is
Speaker 2: and how huge of an impact and how you can
Speaker 2: see the impact that it's had across all of humanity
Speaker 2: and what a massive, massive disease it has been, and
Speaker 2: how interesting it is biologically on top of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a pretty good answer. What's mine?
Speaker 3: I think yours is just a semiasis?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it probably is.
Speaker 3: I think that you have answered that for this before,
Speaker 3: for this question before, or a similar question. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: of the there's something that's very intriguing or fascinating about
Speaker 3: a multi host parasite. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was also one of my first It was the
Speaker 2: hook lecture in the parasitology class that I take.
Speaker 3: So it. It has a special place in my heart,
Speaker 3: just as plague and plague and I.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your first love is you know, et cetera, all
Speaker 2: those things.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh that was fun. That was fun. Yeah, thanks for
Speaker 3: all those everyone who asked that question. Yeah, okay, so
Speaker 3: Danielle asked. You asked doctor Hotez if he could snap
Speaker 3: his fingers and instantly have a new vaccine for a
Speaker 3: disease that doesn't currently have one, what would he choose?
Speaker 3: So they would like to know which we would choose.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, this is hard. This is very hard. I
Speaker 2: can think of three that come to mind immediately.
Speaker 3: Okay, what are they? Malaria? What about the the new malaria?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just don't I mean, I don't know that
Speaker 2: much about it. So if I could snap my fingers
Speaker 2: and know that it works, that'd be awesome. HIV and
Speaker 2: universal influenza.
Speaker 3: Mmmm. I think malaria was one of my gut yeah
Speaker 3: ones too, and then also gut parasites were we parasites,
Speaker 3: So that would be I think my if I could
Speaker 3: do one that that hit like round worm, hookworm, and whipworm,
Speaker 3: that's good.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a good question.
Speaker 3: Should we be a question?
Speaker 2: Take another quick break let's do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, welcome back, Hello, Hello, and welcome back to this
Speaker 1: episode of Anyways.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do that voice forever. Okay.
Speaker 2: Next question, This is a fun question that we got
Speaker 2: from a number of different people. Stephanie Tyler Kendall and
Speaker 2: a few others. What career options are there for epidemiologists?
Speaker 3: Good question, Many different career options. And you know, one
Speaker 3: of the things that came to mind as we were
Speaker 3: putting this episode together is that we really need to
Speaker 3: put together an episode that is just about epidemiology or
Speaker 3: infectious disease or whatever as a career. Yeah, you really
Speaker 3: want to bring in people who actually do varied who
Speaker 3: have varied careers in epidemiology or disease ecology or medicine,
Speaker 3: and have them talk to you about their experiences, what
Speaker 3: their path was like, what advice that they have, because
Speaker 3: there are so many different things that you can do
Speaker 3: with a public health degree or with any other kinds
Speaker 3: of degrees in public health. Yeah, and so to answer
Speaker 3: the question of what career options are there for epidemiologists,
Speaker 3: I mean the short answer is many different things. Tons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got in general a lot of questions asking
Speaker 2: for sort of advice on you know, how to find
Speaker 2: careers or what to do for careers and what kinds
Speaker 2: of options are available, And we've only done what we've
Speaker 2: done so far, so we don't have answers to all
Speaker 2: of those questions. So we are planning for our next
Speaker 2: season to put together an episode where we interview people
Speaker 2: who have all kinds of different careers and had all
Speaker 2: kinds of different pathways that they took getting.
Speaker 3: To those careers.
Speaker 2: So hopefully that'll be able to answer a lot more
Speaker 2: of these types of questions more specifically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I would say to not leave you, hope
Speaker 3: so completely unsatisfied. As an epidemiologist. You could be, as
Speaker 3: I mentioned, somewhere out there in the field, looking for
Speaker 3: spillover events, looking for outbreaks, investigating whether there are a
Speaker 3: higher number of brain tumors at this one production factory
Speaker 3: than there should be as expected due to chance. Or
Speaker 3: you could be someone who works through long term data
Speaker 3: that's been collected for years and years and years and says, oh,
Speaker 3: you know what, there is a risk between working the
Speaker 3: night shift and having higher rates of a certain type
Speaker 3: of cancer or whatever it is. Or there could be
Speaker 3: someone who is more about initiating science communication programs, or
Speaker 3: saying let's have a tick van as they do here
Speaker 3: in Finland a van. Yeah, yeah, they have a like
Speaker 3: a tick van and it's informational tikvan and they also
Speaker 3: have they provide the tickboard encephalitis vaccine. Oh that's so cool,
Speaker 3: which is really cool. So we saw it once when
Speaker 3: we were doing field work down south, so it was
Speaker 3: so fun, really cool. But yeah, so that would be
Speaker 3: something that an epidemiologists could be involved in, depending on
Speaker 3: your training and your interest and skills.
Speaker 2: There's also a lot of opportunities for things like policy advocates.
Speaker 2: So depending on what you focus on with a public
Speaker 2: health type degree, there's a lot of need for people
Speaker 2: to do policy, whether it's policy research or policy advocacy,
Speaker 2: writing policies, working with lawmakers, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So there's a huge range within public health of the
Speaker 2: kinds of jobs that you could potentially have.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, yeah. Cool. Have gotten in addition to this question,
Speaker 3: which I'm gonna read to you, we've gotten a lot
Speaker 3: of responses from people in general about saying like, oh,
Speaker 3: I did so poorly in science during high school or
Speaker 3: during college that I thought this isn't for me, I
Speaker 3: can't do this, this is not the right fit, but
Speaker 3: then at the same time really having still an interest
Speaker 3: in it. And so one of the questions that we
Speaker 3: got from several people was how performance in certain courses
Speaker 3: affected both our decisions for what to study and then
Speaker 3: also whether it's worth it to try to do something
Speaker 3: that you're interested in if you don't feel like you
Speaker 3: are performing well. That's a difficult question. These are difficult, Yeah,
Speaker 3: difficult questions, I think.
Speaker 2: I mean, for me, I think one of the reasons
Speaker 2: that I'm still in school is because school is a
Speaker 2: thing that I am good at, so I just stay
Speaker 2: in it forever and ever. But I do think that
Speaker 2: grad school is a lot different than most other school.
Speaker 2: So even if you think, oh, I didn't do well
Speaker 2: in these classes in high school or in college, grad school,
Speaker 2: whether it's a master's or a PhD, is really nothing.
Speaker 3: Like those schools.
Speaker 2: And so I think just because you maybe didn't do
Speaker 2: well in a classroom setting doesn't mean that you couldn't
Speaker 2: do well in a research setting if that's something that
Speaker 2: you're interested in pursuing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I do think that that's that's part
Speaker 3: of it. Like, there are certain science courses that made
Speaker 3: me feel I don't belong here, and also certain times
Speaker 3: during my PHDU and I thought, oh, I don't belong
Speaker 3: here most of my PhD. And so I think I
Speaker 3: do think that any one can do science if they
Speaker 3: want to do it, if they're really driven to do it.
Speaker 3: But there are also sometimes science and I think this
Speaker 3: is very context dependent. It depends on how it's taught
Speaker 3: in that certain school. Maybe you're stuck with a really
Speaker 3: lousy teacher who doesn't quite care enough or lacks the
Speaker 3: skills to teach it in a certain way that's accessible.
Speaker 3: But then there's also even if you love it so much,
Speaker 3: is it worth it to be so miserable during your
Speaker 3: undergrad for instance, Or is there a way that you
Speaker 3: can incorporate your interest in science or in diseases or
Speaker 3: medicine in a career that's not necessarily focused on learning
Speaker 3: some of the skills that you may not be interested
Speaker 3: in learning. I'll second your statement that grad school research
Speaker 3: is a lot different than undergraduate So I think that, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's definitely a rule that if you succeeded in something
Speaker 3: at undergraduate, you might not succeed as well in grad school.
Speaker 3: And that same fields and vice versa. Yeah, yeah, all right,
Speaker 3: cool cool.
Speaker 2: So the next question, we got a couple of questions
Speaker 2: similar to this. This is a fun one, so I'll
Speaker 2: read this one from Lisa. She asked, how do we
Speaker 2: manage being full time grad students or in this age
Speaker 2: now postdoc and student and creating the podcast?
Speaker 3: How do we?
Speaker 2: Yeah? She asked, are we wizards? We're not wizards?
Speaker 3: Oh I wish we were wizards.
Speaker 2: That would make it easy. If we had a time
Speaker 2: turner like hermione, that would make this a lot easier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh my god, you know I think about that,
Speaker 3: like not infrequently. I didn't know that. Also, before I
Speaker 3: answer this question, I want to say, Lisa, I definitely
Speaker 3: remember meeting you at the Idea a couple of years ago,
Speaker 3: and it is really nice. She is mentioned that we
Speaker 3: had this that I gave her. This your zine, the
Speaker 3: zine that my my older sister made of my research,
Speaker 3: and it's one of my favorite possessions. It's super cool.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'll put it up on the website or something.
Speaker 2: You should, because it's really he should. But then Carrie
Speaker 2: make one for me too, I.
Speaker 3: Know, Carrie, Carrie.
Speaker 2: Okay, Anyway, anyways, are we wizards, how do we manage
Speaker 2: our time?
Speaker 3: We are not wizards. Definitely, time management, As this is
Speaker 3: going to sound so cliche, it's an ongoing struggle. You
Speaker 3: constantly have to work on it, constantly have to learn
Speaker 3: how to how to do it. And so at the beginning,
Speaker 3: when we started this podcast, it was very poorly managed
Speaker 3: time wise, very poorly. My research suffered. I think I
Speaker 3: can say that for both of us. Yes, yes, and
Speaker 3: and so now now it's we've fallen into a bit
Speaker 3: more of a routine. It's a lot of work. I
Speaker 3: would say a lot of weekends, at least one full
Speaker 3: weekend day is typically dedicated to doing something of the podcast,
Speaker 3: and I would say four or five weeknights, I'm doing
Speaker 3: something related to it several hours. Yeah, it's just practice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the biggest things that we've had to
Speaker 2: learn how to do is balance it all. And yeah,
Speaker 2: like Aaron said, we didn't used to be very good
Speaker 2: at it, which is why we had such a long
Speaker 2: hiatus between season one and season two because we had
Speaker 2: to finish our actual actually finish. But we have gotten
Speaker 2: a bit better at it, but it is still something
Speaker 2: that we continually have to work on and so sometimes
Speaker 2: things slip by the wayside, whether that's our social media
Speaker 2: sorry guys, sometimes doesn't get all of our attention, or
Speaker 2: you know, whatever else it is. Sometimes things there are
Speaker 2: ebbs and flows. But we also just don't really have
Speaker 2: lives outside of work and the podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think that there's a lot of things
Speaker 3: that at the beginning took a lot of time, like
Speaker 3: the editing, learning how to just do the editing. Editing
Speaker 3: needs to take a lot longer, and so as you
Speaker 3: get more efficient in all of these different areas, things
Speaker 3: just get a little bit more streamlined. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And something that we try because we were friends before
Speaker 2: we started this podcast, and our goal is to maintain
Speaker 2: being friends throughout it. So that's something that we also
Speaker 2: work on pretty hard, is just maintaining communication between the
Speaker 2: two of us, so that if one of us is
Speaker 2: super busy, the other one tries to pick up the
Speaker 2: slack and vice versa and just sort of having communication.
Speaker 2: So I think we wouldn't be able to do this
Speaker 2: without a partner.
Speaker 3: So no, that's been that's for sure. Yeah, Okay, okay,
Speaker 3: So on that note of time management and so on,
Speaker 3: Advice for someone considering a PhD in any field. What
Speaker 3: kind of advice do we have to offer? Don't do
Speaker 3: it just kidding?
Speaker 2: Oh boy, I can't say that. Oh do we have
Speaker 2: to answer this question? Arin, Yes, I would say, wherever
Speaker 2: you're applying, talk to your potential advisor a lot beforehand,
Speaker 2: and talk to other students in their lab because PhDs
Speaker 2: are very challenging and very long, and your advisor can
Speaker 2: kind of make or break the experience.
Speaker 3: I would agree with that, and I would also say
Speaker 3: that I feel like we were so incredibly fortunate to
Speaker 3: have basically the world's best advisor. Brian che You'll never
Speaker 3: hear this. You'll never hear this, that's okay, But there
Speaker 3: are things that you want to look out for, and
Speaker 3: there are definitely some red flags, like if there's a
Speaker 3: grad student who says, don't come here, that's an obvious
Speaker 3: red flag. Yes, because the point is this is going
Speaker 3: to be for a PhD. Depending on your field, this
Speaker 3: could be anywhere from four to seven years of your
Speaker 3: life where you are essentially yeah, you are essentially married
Speaker 3: to this person. You're a PhD advisor, and you have
Speaker 3: to be able to get along and work well together
Speaker 3: if you don't want to have a completely miserable existence. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because grad school is hard enough as it is without
Speaker 3: having a terrible advisor on top of that. Also, look
Speaker 3: at the atmosphere within the department. That's really huge. Do
Speaker 3: the professors interact with one another? Are they friends or
Speaker 3: is it highly competitive both amongst the professors and among
Speaker 3: the grad students. Are you guaranteed funding? Yes? If you're
Speaker 3: not guaranteed funding, bye bye piece PhD. Yeah, there are
Speaker 3: differences between loo choosing between different programs and then choosing
Speaker 3: between going to grad school or not going.
Speaker 2: To grad school, and so harder question.
Speaker 3: That's a harder question if your only reason is I
Speaker 3: don't know what else to do, don't go, don't do it.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: For me, the only thing that kept me going through
Speaker 2: the hardest parts of my PhD is that I came
Speaker 2: into it wanting to do a very specific thing. And
Speaker 2: even though at this point I don't know that that's
Speaker 2: what I want to do with my life anymore, I
Speaker 2: came in with a goal and so for me, I
Speaker 2: think that was essential because I was like, I'm doing
Speaker 2: this for a reason. So I think knowing what you
Speaker 2: want to do with the PhD, even if it's not
Speaker 2: precise knowing that you need it to get you to
Speaker 2: the next stage, I think is really really helpful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that again googling jobs, like going
Speaker 3: to any any job website and typing in something that
Speaker 3: you think you might be interested in, or if you
Speaker 3: know someone that has a job that you would want
Speaker 3: to do, see what kind of qualifications you need. Do
Speaker 3: you need a PhD? Because if not, the field is
Speaker 3: increasingly competitive. And I feel like we're both sounding very
Speaker 3: negative on this on this question, but it is because
Speaker 3: it's a massive undertaking, and it is the grad school
Speaker 3: culture or expectations are not always the kindest to your
Speaker 3: mental health. Yeah, and to time management and to personal life.
Speaker 3: A division between personal life and work life becomes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's tough. That being said, it is an
Speaker 3: incredible experience. Uh, some of it is really wonderful. Aaron's
Speaker 3: looking at me very doubt right now, very doubtfully. But
Speaker 3: the community, I mean, we were again very fortunate with
Speaker 3: having an incredible community as well with with our International
Speaker 3: Secret Wine Society. Yes, shout out to everyone there.
Speaker 2: We couldn't have done it alone.
Speaker 3: We could not. That's the thing is that you're at
Speaker 3: least in the trenches with a bunch of other people.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's comforting or not, but it
Speaker 3: was for me. Yeah, and then for in my case,
Speaker 3: you get to do field work and be in beautiful
Speaker 3: places if yeah, so well not anyway, move on to
Speaker 3: more happy things. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like this wonderful question from Paul. I like this question.
Speaker 3: Okay, tell me so.
Speaker 2: They asked how we got interested in things that will
Speaker 2: kill us, which we kind of have talked about how
Speaker 2: we got interested in eptymiology. But the part of the
Speaker 2: question that I really like is they ask we often
Speaker 2: sound in admiration of how ingenious viruses and bacteria are,
Speaker 2: but we clearly love vaccines. Uh, And so they're asking,
Speaker 2: are we on the side of vaccines or on the
Speaker 2: side of the viruses and bacteria?
Speaker 3: Well, Paul, whose side are we on?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 3: Paul, let me give it to you straight. I will
Speaker 3: personally say I'm on the side of vaccines and medical technology,
Speaker 3: and I'm also on the side of just straight up evolution.
Speaker 3: I think that when we talk about how ingenious viruses
Speaker 3: and bacteria and parasites are and how incredible it is,
Speaker 3: the hookworm life cycle is what did we call it?
Speaker 3: We called it like aspirational, Yes, and I mean it
Speaker 3: is like the fact that that exists is on it's so,
Speaker 3: I mean, unbelievable is not a good enough word for it.
Speaker 2: Like, no, it's incredible.
Speaker 4: It's so beautiful to see that evolution has has led
Speaker 4: to the existence of these parasitic life forms that have
Speaker 4: these unimaginably complex life cycles.
Speaker 3: And I do yeah, I mean I can hear the
Speaker 3: admiration coming out, but I am I will say ultimately
Speaker 3: yes on the side of also human ingenuity and technological advancement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like the way doctor who feels about it,
Speaker 2: I feel like he has equal admiration for a lot
Speaker 2: of life forms and just maybe loves humans just a
Speaker 2: tiny bit more to where you want to see them succeed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you have to, I think, have a good healthy
Speaker 5: dose of respect and fear for these guys, these viruses
Speaker 5: and bacteria, pathogens.
Speaker 3: So yeah, they're all.
Speaker 2: Just trying to make their living the same way that
Speaker 2: we are, you know.
Speaker 3: So it's yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: On the side of evolution, but also medical technology.
Speaker 3: The tie we can love both. Paul. Yeah, Paul, come on,
Speaker 3: don't put us, don't put us in this corner here Yeah,
Speaker 3: that was fun. Okay. Miley asked if you could shrink
Speaker 3: yourself down and get injected into an infected person to
Speaker 3: see a disease at work, what disease would you want
Speaker 3: to see an action and why?
Speaker 2: This is a very fun question. Also to come on
Speaker 2: the heels of the other I didn't do that on
Speaker 2: purpose in ordering these.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I'd want to see one of these
Speaker 2: really complex life cycle diseases.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 2: I'd want to see schistasimiasis or No, I probably would
Speaker 2: want to follow something like shisto because I'd want to
Speaker 2: follow it all the way through all of its hosts.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, can you even imagine? It would be
Speaker 3: like osmosis Jones? But yes, biologically accurate?
Speaker 2: Yes, Oh that would be amazing. Let's magic school bus it?
Speaker 3: Yes? Oh yeah that sounds great. HM new TV show idea.
Speaker 3: I think I think my my first instinct was something
Speaker 3: similar like hookworm. Yeah, I mean just because I want
Speaker 3: to go through the whole lungs and etcetera. But I
Speaker 3: also would love to cross the blood brain barrier with
Speaker 3: rabies and say or or like cordyceps, be like, what
Speaker 3: is actually happening here?
Speaker 2: I'd like to ask. I'd like to be able to
Speaker 2: talk to the fungus and be like, listen, can we
Speaker 2: what's going on here?
Speaker 3: Man? Oh man, oh man?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: That would be so cool. What a fun question. I yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: next one ready. Someone who is a part time lecturer
Speaker 2: of writing and literature asked us, when we look at writing,
Speaker 2: both fiction and nonfiction that focuses on epidemics or is
Speaker 2: about pathogens, or uses epidemics as like a plot point,
Speaker 2: what do we think is the underlying narrative that's often
Speaker 2: being told. I feel like you can answer this one
Speaker 2: much better than I can.
Speaker 3: I love this question. This is gonna sound super dorky.
Speaker 3: I would love to take a class on this particular topic.
Speaker 2: I wonder if they teach it.
Speaker 3: Maybe on disease, Like disease in fiction would be so
Speaker 3: cool in having this type of question on a I
Speaker 3: don't know, quiz or exam or something. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: he sounds so nerdy right now. I'm just really nerdy.
Speaker 3: But I think that the narrative that I can immediately
Speaker 3: think of off the top of my head maybe is a
Speaker 3: fresh start. So what do humans do with a fresh start?
Speaker 3: And what aspects of humanity the will prevail. Is it
Speaker 3: going to be positive aspects? Is it going to be
Speaker 3: this survival, this teamwork, let's group together, or is it
Speaker 3: going to be an individual How much evil can one
Speaker 3: person do to bring down this newly created society?
Speaker 2: That Yeah, but it's never the disease itself.
Speaker 3: It's no, it's never the disease itself. It's never about
Speaker 3: and it's always I think there is. It comes down
Speaker 3: more to society, but also individual choice. So like with
Speaker 3: the Girl with All the Gifts, which is sort of
Speaker 3: a blend between infectious disease and zombies, it is about
Speaker 3: these individual choices and how our morality or philosophies have
Speaker 3: to shifts as our worldview is completely shattered from the
Speaker 3: wiping out of humanity or whatever else. I mean, I
Speaker 3: love it. I love it. I think it's it is
Speaker 3: all just staging a morality play or a humanity play.
Speaker 3: What does humanity really do in times of trouble? Yeah? Okay.
Speaker 3: Our next question is about this goes right on the
Speaker 3: heels of this nicely. What is your favorite book about diseases?
Speaker 3: Fiction or nonfiction?
Speaker 2: Aaron, you shouldn't have read this question because you are
Speaker 2: going to have a better answer for it, because you
Speaker 2: read way more books than me.
Speaker 3: But honestly, I'm going on Goodreads right now to.
Speaker 2: Our to try and find your answer. From Goodreads.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to good Reads. These books will kill you.
Speaker 2: Well, you just said The Girl with all the Gifts,
Speaker 2: and I had forgotten about that. I think the problem
Speaker 2: is I have a terrible memory, so I forget when
Speaker 2: I've read a book that I enjoyed. But I loved
Speaker 2: The Girl.
Speaker 3: With all the Gifts. That's a very fun one.
Speaker 2: I'm reading a book right now that's not about disease,
Speaker 2: but it's about death.
Speaker 3: And I love it. What's it called.
Speaker 2: It's called Working Stiff. It's by a forensic pathologist. It's fantastic.
Speaker 3: That sounds good.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love it.
Speaker 3: What about Andromeda Strain? You read that?
Speaker 2: I never did.
Speaker 3: I watched that movie. I've never read it. Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: And I never finished the Stephen King one that everyone loves.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, me either. I feel like the worst
Speaker 3: person about it.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: I remember reading it for ages in my hammock in Panama.
Speaker 2: Yep, and I just never made it through.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I think I would say one of my
Speaker 3: favorites is Blindness, which is not really about disease, but
Speaker 3: it is about an epidemic of blindness that happens.
Speaker 2: And this is a fiction fiction.
Speaker 3: Oh it's so beautiful. And there's another there's a sequel
Speaker 3: that I haven't read, called Sight or Seeing or something
Speaker 3: by jose Santamago.
Speaker 2: If you don't know yet about our good Reads list,
Speaker 2: Aaron puts so many good books on it. And then
Speaker 2: you guys can also add your own favorite books.
Speaker 3: So yeah, we can all.
Speaker 2: Have our favorite fiction and nonfiction disease books in one place.
Speaker 2: It's called These Books Will Kill You.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's great. It's really fun resource for me because
Speaker 3: I get to look and see what else is here.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and I think the nonfiction might be The
Speaker 3: Family that Couldn't Sleep. That was just a really fun,
Speaker 3: very well written book. Not Awakened, but I don't know Awakenings.
Speaker 3: I mean everything. It's so hard like that is that
Speaker 3: is much more difficult for me to choose? Is the nonfiction?
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, there's a lot of good ones.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Next question from kaz Ooh, okay. Advice for avoiding academic
Speaker 2: research burnout earh. Also, isn't this the person who said
Speaker 2: they work as a quality control chemistroom Caz, we're going
Speaker 2: to hit you up. Yeah we are, No, seriously, I
Speaker 2: want to go to your brewery.
Speaker 3: That sounds awesome.
Speaker 2: Academic research burnout This is a big topic that I
Speaker 2: think we talk a lot about. Luckily, people are talking
Speaker 2: about it a lot more these days and not just
Speaker 2: ignoring it like it isn't a real thing. So that's
Speaker 2: a first step. I think that recognizing that burnout is
Speaker 2: very real and a lot of people experience it. I think,
Speaker 2: I don't know, trying to find ways to take time
Speaker 2: for yourself and doing things that you actually enjoy and
Speaker 2: not falling into the trap of thinking that you have
Speaker 2: to be working one hundred percent of the time, I
Speaker 2: think is the biggest thing because people people fall into
Speaker 2: that trap because that's very much the academia mindset, and
Speaker 2: it's not true. It doesn't make you a better academic
Speaker 2: if you work twenty four hours a day. If you
Speaker 2: want to, fine, that's cool too. But if you don't,
Speaker 2: which most humans don't, that's fine and that's normal. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it's very difficult to have strict advice on
Speaker 3: how not to burn out because I think having, yeah,
Speaker 3: your advice of making sure that you have personal time
Speaker 3: is huge, but there are ways that the culture can
Speaker 3: really seep into your life and negative ways. So like
Speaker 3: this constant comparison where there is this impostor syndrome, Like
Speaker 3: the imposter syndrome then also plays into constantly comparing your
Speaker 3: own achievements to everyone else around you, and like, oh,
Speaker 3: well do I know R well enough? Can I ever
Speaker 3: know R well enough? Did I have enough papers this year?
Speaker 3: Did I have enough grant money this year? That person
Speaker 3: was here at the lab before I arrived, and they're
Speaker 3: still here when I'm leaving. I'm not here long enough.
Speaker 3: Like all of these questions are constantly at least in
Speaker 3: my case, we're circulating a lot and never quite feeling
Speaker 3: good enough or capable enough, or worthy or whatever else,
Speaker 3: and that emotional exhaustion really plays into burnout. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think being aware of some of these things is good
Speaker 3: at least so you can prepare yourself. I think the
Speaker 3: other thing is having a support group, like a community
Speaker 3: of friends to talk about it with or talk about
Speaker 3: other things. So you know what, we need to just
Speaker 3: have a night where we just watch dance movie montages.
Speaker 3: As we mentioned, drink a whiskey to not be free.
Speaker 3: We don't rare, Yeah, but choosing a grad school track
Speaker 3: or a grad school strategy is important. So if you
Speaker 3: don't want to be an R one researcher, you may
Speaker 3: not have to do the types of things that an
Speaker 3: R one researcher is going to do during their PhD.
Speaker 3: And so if you don't need to get all of
Speaker 3: those NSF grants, then don't kill yourself doing it, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Kaz also asked if it was weird to be
Speaker 3: a twenty nine year old grad student and how you
Speaker 3: work up the nerves to not have your voice shake.
Speaker 2: I think those are fun questions. Those are fun questions.
Speaker 2: It's not weird to be a twenty nine year old
Speaker 2: grad student. We were, Yeah, yeah, it's very.
Speaker 3: And even if you're starting out like no, there are
Speaker 3: definitely this is still not weird. There are definitely people
Speaker 3: that I knew that were that age or older or
Speaker 3: when it started. For sure.
Speaker 2: That's the great thing about grad school. It's like everyone, Yeah,
Speaker 2: how do we not have our voice shake?
Speaker 3: While defending?
Speaker 2: My voice does shake?
Speaker 3: Still?
Speaker 2: When I mind does? When I present my key? Is
Speaker 2: I never use the laser pointer? Yes, because then no
Speaker 2: one can see your hands shaking. Yeah, smart pro tip.
Speaker 3: Yep. I think that. Also, what goes through my head
Speaker 3: frequently is something that our advisor said to us frequently
Speaker 3: as a way to encourage us, and he's he would
Speaker 3: always say, no one knows your research better than you do,
Speaker 3: no one else in the world, and that was that
Speaker 3: was a good reminder. Yeah, because when you're defending your dissertation,
Speaker 3: you are full of like, well I was full of
Speaker 3: self doubt. I was like, I'm probably gonna fail this whatever,
Speaker 3: I'll be the first person and no, and it's and
Speaker 3: so having hearing that, that little voice in my head say,
Speaker 3: you know this, this is what you have lived the
Speaker 3: past five six years.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, cool, okay, okay.
Speaker 3: Shelley asked what exactly is a disease ecologist and how
Speaker 3: do you interact with different medical professionals and scientists.
Speaker 2: Well, I feel like you're you are a disease ecologist today,
Speaker 2: so I feel like you should tackle this one.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I feel like I've been talking so much.
Speaker 2: That's what we do on our podcast.
Speaker 3: So I think in general, also, you are a disease ecologists.
Speaker 3: This is ridiculous, but a disease ecologist is someone who
Speaker 3: studies disease and the interaction with the environment, and that
Speaker 3: has it's a relatively new field, it's definitely emerging, and
Speaker 3: that for the most part has centered around infectious diseases.
Speaker 3: So whether how climate change impacts the spread of lyme
Speaker 3: disease would be one example of doing disease ecology. Basically,
Speaker 3: the environment is part of the of is part of
Speaker 3: what you're looking at in your research.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think in terms of how disease ecologists
Speaker 2: interact with other scientists and medical professionals that one of
Speaker 2: the cool things about disease ecology, because it's a newish field,
Speaker 2: is that there is a lot of collaboration across disciplines.
Speaker 2: So between epidemiologists and more microbiologists and disease ecologists, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of room for collaboration to be able to
Speaker 2: ask really big picture questions, which is very exciting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, whether that means collaborating on big research grants where
Speaker 2: people apply for grants like all together a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of people, or just sharing information at what do you
Speaker 2: call them?
Speaker 3: Wow, Okay, you've been out of grad school too long?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, one whole year anyways, Yeah, Shrea asked, this
Speaker 2: is fun. What would we name our quarantini bar?
Speaker 3: Oh? Shrea? I don't know what about? I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think of like quippy little things, and
Speaker 3: the only thing I can come up with is the
Speaker 3: hot zone. But I feel like that would be.
Speaker 2: It's been taken.
Speaker 3: Maybe taken. Let's see, maybe BSL four.
Speaker 2: BSL four, that's funny. Maybe can you tell who comes
Speaker 2: up with most of our quarantine names?
Speaker 3: Guys? If not me, huh, just containment or like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we should work on this.
Speaker 2: We're not opening a bar anytime soon, clearly because we
Speaker 2: don't have a name for it. Oh.
Speaker 3: I would love that though. That would be a fun
Speaker 3: business adventure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right. So somebody asked, is there a biological component that
Speaker 3: allows some people to contract disease and be able to
Speaker 3: survive or and does a particular disease always work the
Speaker 3: same way biologically in each person who contracts it, and
Speaker 3: if not, why not? This is a good question.
Speaker 2: This is a hard question because we don't really know
Speaker 2: enough about human biology and disease to have.
Speaker 3: A good answer for it.
Speaker 2: There definitely are components of a human's immune system that
Speaker 2: vary from person to person that are going to affect
Speaker 2: whether or not you get sick. If you are exposed
Speaker 2: to a disease, If you do get sick, how sick
Speaker 2: are you going to get? And how likely is it
Speaker 2: that you're going to die? So there are a lot
Speaker 2: there is a lot of variation among people in terms
Speaker 2: of how robust your immune response is and how likely
Speaker 2: it is that you're going to die from a disease.
Speaker 2: There's not like a single gene that we know of
Speaker 2: or anything that controls all of this. It's very sort
Speaker 2: of multifactorial. And that actually kind of plays into a
Speaker 2: lot of question that a lot of people asked about
Speaker 2: whether why not everyone develops immunity when you give them
Speaker 2: a vaccine And it's just, honestly, because there's so much
Speaker 2: variation in individual immune responses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like that's not a satisfying answer. Sorry,
Speaker 3: Well it's better than I could do.
Speaker 2: Okay, this one's a bit easier. Jennifer asked, what has
Speaker 2: been our favorite course that we've taken through all of school?
Speaker 3: Do you have a favorite? Yeah? I think I do, actually,
Speaker 3: and it's going to sound pandering, okay, but it's the truth.
Speaker 3: It's this course that I took in the final year
Speaker 3: of my undergrad and I had like a space where
Speaker 3: I needed to just put an elective or something, and
Speaker 3: so I was like, Okay, well, let's go for a
Speaker 3: one or two hundred level course. I don't want to
Speaker 3: have to try too hard. And I was always interested
Speaker 3: in history, so I just sort of skimming the course
Speaker 3: catalog back when there were physical copies of course catalogs,
Speaker 3: and there was a course called the Street of Science
Speaker 3: and Technology since the Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 2: M I've heard you mention this course, yes, And.
Speaker 3: This course was the first time where my brain opened
Speaker 3: up to the way that you could link these events,
Speaker 3: these historical events and these techno technological achievements and sort
Speaker 3: of broaden the context of your perspective of history. It's
Speaker 3: not just about I think that the example that I
Speaker 3: use when I when I because I thought about this
Speaker 3: course and talked about this course a lot, and the
Speaker 3: example that I remember for the first time my mind going,
Speaker 3: oh my god, what is the the development of a
Speaker 3: clock technology or keeping time technology, and how crucial that
Speaker 3: was for navigational purposes and how that changed the entire
Speaker 3: course of humanity. And it was it's just this. It
Speaker 3: was this beautiful course we went all the way through.
Speaker 3: We read the this amazing book about the Adam Baum.
Speaker 3: I learned so much and I think very fondly. And
Speaker 3: also this course was taught entirely on overhead projector in
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine is when I took it. Wow
Speaker 3: and for a course that had the history's history of
Speaker 3: science and technology as like the title, the person who
Speaker 3: taught it was completely technologically not very skilled. It was beautiful.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I wonder if it's still taught.
Speaker 3: It was at the University of Kentucky. Man, I loved it.
Speaker 3: That's a good what about you?
Speaker 2: Mine was, without a doubt, the ecological parasitology class that
Speaker 2: I took. If you are a student at UCSB, go
Speaker 2: Gaucho's absolutely you should take it. Everyone should take it.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: It was a completely life changing class.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: And I remember talking with Arman, who teaches or at
Speaker 2: that time, who taught the class. He might not still,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, and jokingly asking him what classes of
Speaker 2: his I should take because he taught a whole number,
Speaker 2: and he got very very serious and said, one in
Speaker 2: ten students' lives are changed by the parasitology class. And
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, that's funny, and it was totally
Speaker 2: true for me, Like I was the one in ten.
Speaker 2: I wonder how he gathered that statistic, but a hundred
Speaker 2: made it up after several classes of wine.
Speaker 3: I oh, yeah, no it was. But yeah, that was ugh.
Speaker 2: I love that class.
Speaker 3: Okay, So Daniella asked, what are your lab or field confessions?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 3: What are the worst, dumbest, weirdest whatever things that you
Speaker 3: did while working in the lab or field? Oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: where do I even begin?
Speaker 2: I know, I feel like I did so many dumb
Speaker 2: things that I just don't even know what could possibly
Speaker 2: be the dumbest.
Speaker 3: I once made. So always, during my entire career, I
Speaker 3: have been terrified of making solutions in a lab yes,
Speaker 3: and having to calculate molarity and having to calculate whatever
Speaker 3: percentages and all those things scare the pants off me.
Speaker 3: I don't like it. And so this is my way
Speaker 3: of saying that making seventy percent ethanol was a challenge
Speaker 3: one weekend when I was trying to do you're laughing
Speaker 3: so harder. I was trying to do my phenal chloroform
Speaker 3: extractions right, and those things those beasts sometimes take two
Speaker 3: or they they take two days. And so I was
Speaker 3: there on a weekend doing it, just trying to finish
Speaker 3: up my stupid lab work for my PhD. And I
Speaker 3: was like, why are the pellets disappearing? Like I'm supposed
Speaker 3: to be just washing the pellets and cold seventy percent ethanol,
Speaker 3: they're disappearing. I made thirty percent ethanol. So there you
Speaker 3: have it, everyone first time admitting this.
Speaker 2: We all do dumb things.
Speaker 3: I was like, why is that this working? Luckily it
Speaker 3: was only twenty four samples and they were replaceable, but oh,
Speaker 3: I felt like such an idiot. Oh that's really I
Speaker 3: also used to go camera trapping in Panama without cel
Speaker 3: phone service.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like deep.
Speaker 3: That was insane. Yeah, yeah, that was very unsafe. I
Speaker 3: did some very unsafe field I mean, field work is
Speaker 3: a whole nother realm of of unsafe choices. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gosh, I can't even.
Speaker 3: Think of a one good story. You just didn't You
Speaker 3: never made any mistakes.
Speaker 2: No, I made so many mistakes that it's just my
Speaker 2: entire PhD.
Speaker 3: Try to think if I was there for any of them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: do you remember any of my dumb moments?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I I tried and failed a lot at building things
Speaker 2: and making things and wiring things, and.
Speaker 3: Well that's just field work. I know, it's not exciting.
Speaker 3: I don't have a good story. I got the truck
Speaker 3: stuck in a field somewhere. Oh.
Speaker 2: I did almost drive off the side of the road
Speaker 2: into someone's house one time.
Speaker 3: Oh, and I didn't know that. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 3: very narrow road.
Speaker 2: And actually twice once I almost hit someone's house and
Speaker 2: that would have been really bad. The other time it
Speaker 2: was just almost stuck in a real, really deep ditch
Speaker 2: that I was like.
Speaker 3: Oh, oh, dear, surprised ditches.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know how to turn on the four
Speaker 2: wheel drive, like how to actually engage it with those
Speaker 2: locking things on the wheels.
Speaker 3: It was the old, an old truck.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, anyways, good times. Let's move on. So,
Speaker 2: speaking of our lab and field work, tell me about
Speaker 2: your PhD work.
Speaker 3: Erin, I researched tickborne disease in Panama. So my interests
Speaker 3: were in how the density of infected ticks changed throughout
Speaker 3: the year and also across Panama, mainly looking at where
Speaker 3: the Panama Canal is and so along the Panama Canal
Speaker 3: there's this steep precipitation gradient. So at the north end
Speaker 3: of the canal, which is on the Caribbean on the
Speaker 3: Atlantic Ocean, you get a ton more rainfall than you
Speaker 3: do on the Pacific end, which is on the southern end,
Speaker 3: And there's like not very much space. It's like seventy
Speaker 3: kilometers or something like that, Like it's very very short distance.
Speaker 3: But because of that, these environmental changes across this area,
Speaker 3: you get a lot of different changes in forest structure,
Speaker 3: in daily humidity values and temperature and things like that,
Speaker 3: And so I wanted to investigate how that impacted the
Speaker 3: species that were living there when they were present during
Speaker 3: the year, and then also what pathogens they carried. And
Speaker 3: so to answer all of these questions, I also had
Speaker 3: to say, okay, well what are the animal hosts that
Speaker 3: are there? And so my fieldwork involved collecting ticks across
Speaker 3: the Panama isthmus for every week and then also setting
Speaker 3: up camera traps to see what animals were around, which
Speaker 3: was super fun. I think my favorite part just hiking
Speaker 3: around and then doing tick survival experiments. So how well
Speaker 3: dos do different tick species survive under different environmental conditions? Yeah,
Speaker 3: what about you? Aaron what did you do for your PhD?
Speaker 2: I did my PhD on shaugust disease. So shaugus is
Speaker 2: a disease will definitely cover at some point. It's a
Speaker 2: disease that it's caused by a parasite and it's transmitted
Speaker 2: by these bugs called kissing bugs, which are true bugs.
Speaker 2: And no, no one need cares about entomology.
Speaker 3: Your NERD is showing I know.
Speaker 2: So I was working also in Panama, and so I
Speaker 2: was interested in both the ecology and the epidemiology of
Speaker 2: shaugust disease, specifically looking at how risk factors vary for
Speaker 2: shaugust disease transmission across an.
Speaker 3: Urban to rural gradient.
Speaker 2: So all of my fieldwork was unlike Eron's, which was
Speaker 2: in deep deep forest, mine was in people houses and backyards.
Speaker 2: So I went door to door doing surveys and having
Speaker 2: people collect bugs that they found in their houses for
Speaker 2: me to then look at what was different among these
Speaker 2: houses across these land use gradients, to see what kinds
Speaker 2: of things might be driving bugs two people's houses, and
Speaker 2: what kinds of communities might be more at risk or
Speaker 2: less at risk for coming into contact with these bugs.
Speaker 2: And then also looking at what percentages of these bugs
Speaker 2: might be infected with the shawgus parasite versus uninfected and
Speaker 2: things like that. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fun.
Speaker 2: That's our that was our research.
Speaker 3: Did you get like a wave of anxiety from talking about.
Speaker 2: Maybe just a small one? Just makes me realize how
Speaker 2: many papers I need to work on.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I haven't touch don't even remind me.
Speaker 2: That's anyways, Shall we move on to our last question?
Speaker 3: Our last question? Ah? Yeah, okay, this is a really
Speaker 3: cute question.
Speaker 2: We actually got this from a number of different people
Speaker 2: that I'm gonna I'll read their names, but first I'll
Speaker 2: read this specific email because it's so adorable. So this
Speaker 2: email is from Stephanie, who wrote, my twelve year old daughter,
Speaker 2: Georgia would like y'all to know that she loves your
Speaker 2: podcast and is learning a lot you guys. We love
Speaker 2: that you listen to this with your kids. That's thrilling.
Speaker 3: I had no idea and it's amazing. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: Okay, So she writes, at the end of most episodes,
Speaker 2: you talk about how worried we should be about the
Speaker 2: disease that we're talking about. So Georgia would like to know,
Speaker 2: out of the diseases that we've covered, which should we
Speaker 2: be the most worried about? And we got a very
Speaker 2: similar question from also Tricia and her ten year old Poppy.
Speaker 3: Hi, Poppy, Hi, Tricia.
Speaker 2: Hi, Jenny, Julia, another Aaron karenoid je Ica. A bunch
Speaker 2: of people want to know what disease scares us the most?
Speaker 3: Ah, so Georgia, everyone great question of.
Speaker 2: The diseases that we've covered, That's an easy one for me.
Speaker 3: I think can I guess yours? Because I think it's
Speaker 3: mine too. Yeah, Influenza on, Yes, yes, influenza, So tell me,
Speaker 3: tell me why why are you the most scared or
Speaker 3: why should we be? Why should we be the most
Speaker 3: scared of influenza? Without completely going doing the entire influenza
Speaker 3: episode again.
Speaker 2: Yes, uh. Influenza is a virus that just can mutate
Speaker 2: so rapidly, can change and infect so many different animals,
Speaker 2: and then undergo these massive rearrangements that make it really
Speaker 2: difficult for us to mount a good immune response because
Speaker 2: there are so so many different strains, so many different
Speaker 2: versions of this virus floating around out there, and new
Speaker 2: ones constantly being evolved, and it is a much gnarlier
Speaker 2: pathogen than a lot of people give it credit for.
Speaker 2: It really does cause a large amount of what we
Speaker 2: call morbidity, so getting sick and mortality, dying, and then
Speaker 2: makes you susceptible because it, you know, blasts you, makes
Speaker 2: you really sick, so then you when you're sick, you're
Speaker 2: more susceptible to other infections. So that is I think
Speaker 2: why it's so scary. It's both that it does make
Speaker 2: you very sick and it can kill you, and it's
Speaker 2: really hard for us to develop a vaccine against. It's
Speaker 2: really hard for us to fight it off with our
Speaker 2: immune system. And it spreads airborne, so it's everywhere, and.
Speaker 3: It spreads before you show symptoms exactly. It's terrifying, and
Speaker 3: people don't take it seriously. Think that that's one of
Speaker 3: the things that I hear most often with people. If
Speaker 3: I'm start striking up a conversation about the vaccines and
Speaker 3: vaccine hesitancy, a lot of people are like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: vaccines are great, but the flu shot, I mean, that's
Speaker 3: no flu. The flu shot is a vaccine, and as
Speaker 3: we discussed on the Vaccine episode, it does reduce the
Speaker 3: time that you spend in a hospital it reduces the
Speaker 3: risk that you would even go into the hospital, and
Speaker 3: so it's sort of seen as like, oh, well, I
Speaker 3: got the flu, I'm going to be out for a
Speaker 3: couple of days, when it's it really I mean, it
Speaker 3: is greatly underestimated, and everyone should pick up one of
Speaker 3: the either flu by Gina Colada or The Great Influenza
Speaker 3: by John Berry to remind yourselves just how bad this
Speaker 3: pathogen is. And I mean there are things that are
Speaker 3: in researching it, things like Preon's, things like MRSA that
Speaker 3: are a lot that are terrifying to me. But influenza
Speaker 3: is the is the one, is the one that I
Speaker 3: think is the most realistic for causing, for leading to
Speaker 3: another pandemic. H We are not equipped, I agree, and
Speaker 3: maybe we could never be equipped, right, great question, Great question.
Speaker 3: Thank you Georgia and everyone else for that question, and
Speaker 3: and also thank you to every single person who wrote in.
Speaker 3: I think that this is already a very long episode
Speaker 3: and I think we have to to stop here, but
Speaker 3: but we loved reading through them, and maybe we'll do
Speaker 3: a second round of this. Yeah, that would be super fun.
Speaker 2: There we got so many good questions, and we're sorry
Speaker 2: that we can't answer every single one, but we did
Speaker 2: enjoy reading every single one, for what that's worth. So
Speaker 2: thank you for writing to us.
Speaker 3: Everyone who wrote in had some beautiful, very nice, kind
Speaker 3: sweet thing to say, and it was just it was
Speaker 3: a joy and so so as I said, so surreal. Yeah,
Speaker 3: what you want to know these things about us? You
Speaker 3: want to know what kind of cereal we would be?
Speaker 2: Oh, we didn't answer that question.
Speaker 3: We didn't answer that question. I would be crackling Oat brand.
Speaker 2: Of course you would be crackling Oat brand.
Speaker 3: It's so good.
Speaker 2: I love cereal too much to pick a crunch.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, do you know that?
Speaker 2: That's the first one I thought of? But I have
Speaker 2: no reason why. It's not my favorite cereal.
Speaker 3: I know, but that's that's what you'd be.
Speaker 2: That's the first cereal that came to mind.
Speaker 3: And how is it that that's the same one that
Speaker 3: it's brainwaves. It's brainwaves. They're traveling long distances, but they're
Speaker 3: still working.
Speaker 2: That is the most it's not even my favorite cereal.
Speaker 2: Oh that's my favorite. Okay, and episode's over. Thanks everyone,
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: We really cannot end on a higher note. Actually, no, okay, well,
Speaker 3: thank you again to everyone. Who wrote in, and also
Speaker 3: everyone listening now and any other time and forever forever,
Speaker 3: and thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for
Speaker 3: this episode in all of our episodes
Speaker 2: And until next time, wash your hands you filed the
Speaker 2: Animals U