Speaker 1: Mother Knows Death Presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy
Speaker 1: on our podcast on Mother Knows Death and in the
Speaker 1: Gross Room, we've recently been talking about a lot of
Speaker 1: stories where there have been people who have been poisoning
Speaker 1: their loved ones. So I thought it would be great
Speaker 1: today if we talk to author Lisa Peren and she
Speaker 1: is the author of the League of Lady Poisoners. Welcome Lisa,
Speaker 1: thanks for being here today.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you. That's my pleasure.
Speaker 1: So Lisa's book is really awesome and we'll get into
Speaker 1: it a little bit more later, but it takes us
Speaker 1: on a journey through the history of poison and the
Speaker 1: women who use them to kill. So for any true
Speaker 1: crime junkie, it is a really awesome book. In the book,
Speaker 1: you say that there's the thought of poisoning makes you paranoid,
Speaker 1: which it does to me as well. And I don't
Speaker 1: think that people really think about it. But so many
Speaker 1: times a day or even a week, you eat prepared food,
Speaker 1: even if it's just going to the store to get
Speaker 1: coffee or fast food, and it's not really on anybody's
Speaker 1: mind usually that how vulnerable that we are all the
Speaker 1: time when someone else a stranger especially is making food
Speaker 1: for us or in some of these cases.
Speaker 3: A loved one.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to before we get started, I wanted
Speaker 1: to tell you a story of how I kind of
Speaker 1: always have that on my mind because something like this
Speaker 1: happened to me. Oh so I had like a friend,
Speaker 1: I want to say friend because she wasn't really a
Speaker 1: friend anymore and she was a little crazy. But back
Speaker 1: in the day, she was making these like weed edibles
Speaker 1: that before you could buy them, yes, And she had
Speaker 1: made me a cookie and I took it from her
Speaker 1: because she was a really she was a really good baker,
Speaker 1: and I just was like, oh cool.
Speaker 3: I'll try it. You bake really well.
Speaker 1: And it made me so sick, like I was convinced
Speaker 1: that I was poisoned, seriously, Like I had to call
Speaker 1: my husband and Tom to come home from work because
Speaker 1: I was I was shaking and just it was bad.
Speaker 1: And I'm still not convinced that it was weed, but
Speaker 1: that yeah, it's not. So that was like the first
Speaker 1: time that I thought, well, you really have to be
Speaker 1: careful of like people could just do that that quick
Speaker 1: to you because you let your guard down with food
Speaker 1: and stuff and after you were researching this book. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you did it change your perspective on this from how
Speaker 1: you felt before versus now.
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And I'm so sorry that happened to you. That
Speaker 4: sounds really scary and alarming.
Speaker 1: It's kind of It was really scary at the time,
Speaker 1: but it's like a hilarious story to tell now, especially
Speaker 1: because I me and my husband come home.
Speaker 3: From work in it.
Speaker 4: He was so mad, you ate a cookie. Yeah, no,
Speaker 4: that's that's amazing. And yeah, I will say it definitely
Speaker 4: opened my eyes. And I think I say this in
Speaker 4: my introduction for the book, that it made me paranoid
Speaker 4: and new and interesting ways. I think there is a
Speaker 4: lot of implicit trust just built into our system, Like
Speaker 4: I don't think many of us would think anything of
Speaker 4: a cookie a friend made for us, And part of
Speaker 4: me wants to say we shouldn't. We shouldn't trust most people,
Speaker 4: and most things are inherently good and you know, don't
Speaker 4: have a nefarious intent behind them. But it was definitely
Speaker 4: a sobering reminder for me that right we don't really
Speaker 4: know the story of who handled this, where it came from.
Speaker 4: I will say it's impacted me more now that I'm
Speaker 4: becoming The Poison Lady, which was not necessarily what I
Speaker 4: said out to do. And I wrote this book and
Speaker 4: now folks are like, oh, we can't invite you to
Speaker 4: our dinner party, or oh, don't eat that Lisa made it.
Speaker 3: Oh that's great.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's definitely it's and it makes me think
Speaker 4: a lot more about like the vulnerability when we eat
Speaker 4: and drink something we didn't prepare ourselves in new ways.
Speaker 4: I'm definitely aware of it in ways I never thought.
Speaker 4: I never even considered it before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And it and another scary thing too, is that it
Speaker 1: doesn't even have to be intentional.
Speaker 3: Oh it could it.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, if you've been hearing on the
Speaker 1: news lately that they're like children have been getting lead
Speaker 1: poisoning from the apple sauce pouches hearts, and it's just
Speaker 1: like you just don't you don't ever know, like and
Speaker 1: you're given this to your kid. It came from a factory.
Speaker 1: They don't know if it's like from a cinnamon or something.
Speaker 1: But it's no joke, right.
Speaker 4: Actually, I was thinking a lot about accidental poisonings, and
Speaker 4: that's actually something that comes up quite a lot in
Speaker 4: my research. Some of the worst, most large scale poisonings
Speaker 4: have been pure accidents or you know, some kind of
Speaker 4: something that happened in the factory. There was sort of
Speaker 4: a famous one in nineteenth century England called the Bradford
Speaker 4: Street Sweets poisoning, where there were two bags and one
Speaker 4: was sugar and one was arsenic and they looked the same,
Speaker 4: and I believe and this whole company made these sweets
Speaker 4: with unfortunately with the arsenic on accident and a large
Speaker 4: number of people because this was like a street vendor
Speaker 4: selling candy, became sick and it was a total accident.
Speaker 4: So yes, there's the intentional ones and these the accidental ones.
Speaker 2: Oh so they're they're both worth keeping in mind.
Speaker 1: This actually makes me think of my second story of
Speaker 1: when I was a most accidental.
Speaker 2: Oh no, it's where you have more than one.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's this is like another one that sucked
Speaker 1: at the time. But my friend and I were at
Speaker 1: a really good restaurant in Philly, like one of the
Speaker 1: higher end ones, and we got some fancy dessert and
Speaker 1: you know that sometimes they'll like put lavender in something
Speaker 1: and me too, so and and like my my husband
Speaker 1: hates it because he thinks like it tastes like Soapuch.
Speaker 2: I knew that he was going to say that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a lot of people think it tastes like soap,
Speaker 1: but I don't.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: But I'm eating this dessert with my friend. We were
Speaker 1: sharing it and it came out and it had you
Speaker 1: know how sometimes they make like sugar sculptures and stuff.
Speaker 3: It did have like a little bit of a weird
Speaker 3: machine to it.
Speaker 1: And I ate it, and I was like, this tastes
Speaker 1: like soap.
Speaker 2: Like it did taste like soap. Yes, literally, like.
Speaker 1: Like don like a spoonful of down dischittution or something.
Speaker 1: And and yeah, sure enough, we returned it to the
Speaker 1: kitchen and and it was they had mistakenly like put
Speaker 1: it instead of a honey drizzle.
Speaker 3: Oh like whatever, And yeah, wow.
Speaker 1: And like the story that you're talking about that happened
Speaker 1: a long time ago, with the arsenic and the sugar
Speaker 1: being mixed. There's there's like really stringent rules as things
Speaker 1: being labeled correctly, yes, and not being stored anywhere near each.
Speaker 2: Other, because that happened exactly.
Speaker 4: And unfortunately some of these terrible accidents do lead to
Speaker 4: well unfortunately they lead to these kind of new legalities
Speaker 4: and new provisions that protect people because we don't want
Speaker 4: that to happen again. That was awful, And now it's
Speaker 4: like things do need to be really clearly labeled, and
Speaker 4: you wouldn't keep a serious poison in the same place
Speaker 4: where you're keeping the ingredients for cooking or baking.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately, the way we get there is because it
Speaker 2: has to happen, and then we learn, and then we
Speaker 2: learned from it.
Speaker 4: But I'm so sorry about the dish soap and the cookie.
Speaker 2: Oh whatever. I'm alive to talk though, to tell the tale.
Speaker 1: So do you have now that you've written this book,
Speaker 1: do you have people like coming up to you all
Speaker 1: the time and telling you stories like this? Do you
Speaker 1: have any good stories to share?
Speaker 3: As far as that goes.
Speaker 4: I will say that is one of the weird things
Speaker 4: people reach out to me now to tell me, like, oh,
Speaker 4: my grandmother poisoned a guy, or like, we'll send me
Speaker 4: the newspaper clipping and like look in like the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 4: my grandma poisoned my grandpa.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh my, I don't know if I'm
Speaker 2: the person who should be telling that too, but that's
Speaker 2: quite a story. Yeah, I think it isn't been.
Speaker 4: For the record, I don't want to scare your listeners
Speaker 4: too much. Poisoning is a pretty rare crime as far
Speaker 4: as crimes go, but I think I was surprised at
Speaker 4: how often it did come up and that people did
Speaker 4: have a connection. Oh I did know someone who that
Speaker 4: happened too. So yeah, people are definitely starting to reach
Speaker 4: out to me as my reputation as the Poisoned Lady
Speaker 4: continues to grow.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's cool though. I think that's like a
Speaker 1: good reputation. So obviously you're a true crime junkie, and what, like,
Speaker 1: what was it about this crime of poisoning versus any
Speaker 1: other crime that you were so intrigued by that you
Speaker 1: wanted to write a.
Speaker 3: Book about it.
Speaker 4: That's such a great question. I think there's so many
Speaker 4: I'm like you said, I'm a true crime junkie. I
Speaker 4: listened to Dateline, to like Fall Asleep, and I listened
Speaker 4: to a lot of wonderful true crime podcasts. But I
Speaker 4: think there's something about poisoning that is different for me
Speaker 4: than any other type of specifically of murder, because it's
Speaker 4: just not as physical, it's not as violent, it's not
Speaker 4: as gruesome.
Speaker 2: I think there is this weird disconnect.
Speaker 4: You can be you can poison someone and not be
Speaker 4: in the room, not be in this state, not be
Speaker 4: in the country. Like there's a weird distance that I
Speaker 4: find really fascinating about it. And specifically what intrigued me
Speaker 4: the most was the connection to women as the practitioners
Speaker 4: of it. Whereas when we think of murder, and rightly so,
Speaker 4: we tend to think of male criminals. And that's because
Speaker 4: like something incredible like ninety percent of all homicides worldwide
Speaker 4: are committed by men. But there is this sort of
Speaker 4: sociological we have this connection where we think of poisoning
Speaker 4: as something that women do, and that it's more duplicitous
Speaker 4: because women may not have necessarily, you know, they not
Speaker 4: want to strangle or stab or something that's much more
Speaker 4: visceral and much more physical. But it's sort of this
Speaker 4: just a drop Like I have this image of like
Speaker 4: just like a dainty drop out of like a ring
Speaker 4: with a hollow like container, and you just drop it in.
Speaker 4: And there's there's something so fascinating about that story to me.
Speaker 4: And then there's a story that we've been told and
Speaker 4: that we see a lot in fiction and in TV
Speaker 4: and movies, and and then there is the reality, which
Speaker 4: is actually not always the same thing and not always
Speaker 4: lined up. But I think poison, to me was a
Speaker 4: really interesting weapon, and I was really fascinated by who
Speaker 4: we associate those crimes with and then why.
Speaker 1: That's that's cool because I think that in forensics especially,
Speaker 1: and this could be with homicides, suicides, accidents, everything, there
Speaker 1: is a big discrepancy between male and female and like
Speaker 1: what like females don't tend to shoot themselves in the
Speaker 1: face or something like that, just because there's like all
Speaker 1: these like little cool things. So I definitely respect that
Speaker 1: that's what got you into it, because it is really intriguing.
Speaker 1: Some of the news stories that we've covered recently on
Speaker 1: my podcast have have been really and in on my website,
Speaker 1: the Grosser Room. One particular one that has been horrendous
Speaker 1: that has to do with poisonings. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: you heard of this one, but there was a couple
Speaker 1: that were living in Utah and the wife had poisoned
Speaker 1: her husband with fentanyl put it in his mosque amnole,
Speaker 1: And that's like whatever that itself Isn't that Isn't that horrendous,
Speaker 1: but the facts afterwards that come up about things that
Speaker 1: she was searching on the computer. But on top of that,
Speaker 1: it within a year after she murdered her husband and
Speaker 1: the father of her children, she decided to write a
Speaker 1: children's book with her children about dealing with the death
Speaker 1: of a parent.
Speaker 4: Yes, I did several people send me this r believe me, Like, yeah, exactly, yes, And.
Speaker 1: That's what I was wondering with your research, Like, obviously,
Speaker 1: anytime you kill somebody, it's not cool, but but like,
Speaker 1: have you did you come across one case that you
Speaker 1: were like, man, that was really messed up.
Speaker 3: That person's like sick.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, yes, definitely.
Speaker 4: And I will say one of the things I really
Speaker 4: wanted to focus on in this book was sort of
Speaker 4: the nuance of it all and really look at the
Speaker 4: culture context. And I think that there's some stories that
Speaker 4: are more sympathetic than others, where you might understand like, wow,
Speaker 4: this was a woman who was in a really impossible
Speaker 4: or abusive situation and she was acting out of desperation.
Speaker 4: But then on the other side, there are definitely the
Speaker 4: ones who are like, Nope, that was a monster. That
Speaker 4: was a monster behaving monstrously and yeah, And I think
Speaker 4: one of the things that I talk about is that
Speaker 4: we don't associate these crimes, you know, violent crimes with women,
Speaker 4: but women are still capable of it. And unfortunately, there's
Speaker 4: some women in this book that really exemplify that.
Speaker 2: What it made me think of, though, is not the.
Speaker 4: Most messed up one, but I have a case in
Speaker 4: this book of a woman in Argentina whose name was
Speaker 4: Ya Morano, and just the seeking of attention for it afterwards,
Speaker 4: like with writing that children's picture book and like putting
Speaker 4: their grief out there in a very public way, Like
Speaker 4: she poisoned three of her friends for money and they died,
Speaker 4: and afterwards she became this big TV celebrity and made
Speaker 4: all of these appearances on TV shows in Argentina. My
Speaker 4: favorite was there was a cooking show where the cost
Speaker 4: famously ate a piece of cake that she made, like
Speaker 4: on live on TV. And I'm just like, this's just
Speaker 4: so fascinating to me, like the crime and sometimes what
Speaker 4: the behavior is afterwards and how that transforms. And I
Speaker 4: was just thinking of that, like the children's picture booked
Speaker 4: when you said that, but in terms of one that's
Speaker 4: just like absolutely like heinous. I think The first one
Speaker 4: that comes to my mind is Bella Ganeth, who is
Speaker 4: a woman in like the Victorian era in Indiana, And
Speaker 4: there's a lot more to her story, but I'll just
Speaker 4: summarize really briefly. Who basically put out an ad in
Speaker 4: the newspaper like a wealthy widow seeks a husband and
Speaker 4: plan of adjoining fortunes. My favorite line the whole thing
Speaker 4: is triflers need not apply, which I want to have
Speaker 4: embroidered on a pillow and just having like the front
Speaker 4: of my home. Triflers need not apply. And she basically
Speaker 4: sort of was reaching out to these lonely men who
Speaker 4: were looking for companionship, which is not unlike what we
Speaker 4: still experience today with a lot of these dates eating
Speaker 4: scams and catfishing. And she told them to come to
Speaker 4: her home in Indiana, tell no one where they were going,
Speaker 4: and to see their life savings, into their undergarments, bring
Speaker 4: everything they had. They were going to live this beautiful
Speaker 4: life together. And she just murdered all of them and
Speaker 4: and like buried them in her hog lot on her farm,
Speaker 4: poison them and then bludgeon them and then forgive me,
Speaker 4: it's gruesome, cut them into pieces, and yeah, and then
Speaker 4: buried them. And the best part, and my best, I
Speaker 4: mean most awful part of this story is that in
Speaker 4: the end, when she was close to getting caught, she
Speaker 4: set the whole barn on fire that she lived in
Speaker 4: with her children. And there's a big mystery of if
Speaker 4: she escaped or if she went down with the fire,
Speaker 4: and I won't spoil that for you all, but yeah,
Speaker 4: that's that's one that just sticks in my memories.
Speaker 2: You can't dream that up. Truth is stranger than fiction.
Speaker 2: It's just unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's how I feel with this this particular case.
Speaker 1: It's like she was she was due to close on
Speaker 1: a house the day after she poisoned him, and she did.
Speaker 1: Could you imagine like someone that you love in your
Speaker 1: family dying and just being like, yeah, well I have
Speaker 1: this booked tomorrow, I have to go. And then she
Speaker 1: had a party to celebrate the closing of the house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that tells you a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's it's just and and I just hate in
Speaker 1: the news they have to be like, well, she hasn't
Speaker 1: been convicted yet, and I'm like, come on, what else
Speaker 1: could this be.
Speaker 4: Let's no, Sometimes the facts speak for themselves and the
Speaker 4: behavior that's so interesting right to going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had it on the agenda, so I'm still
Speaker 2: gonna do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. All right.
Speaker 1: So another case that we talked about, and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've heard about this one too, because all your
Speaker 1: friends are sending these cases all the time now. But
Speaker 1: exactly there was a this is actually a man, believe
Speaker 1: it or not, there was there was a couple in
Speaker 1: the news this year of men poisoning their wives. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this was a Mayo clinic pharmacist. So he was
Speaker 1: not only a man, but he was also a poison specialist.
Speaker 1: He specialized in poison and he went through a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble of researching certain kinds of drugs that would
Speaker 1: never really be shown up on routine toxicology, and he
Speaker 1: chose the gout medication and yeah, exactly. And afterwards it
Speaker 1: was like it was found that he was looking up
Speaker 1: like what dose would be lethal with her weight and
Speaker 1: everything like that. But did you in all the cases
Speaker 1: that you researched, and it doesn't even have to be ones,
Speaker 1: because obviously you probably left a lot out of the
Speaker 1: book too, but did you have any cases that came
Speaker 1: up that it was a person that was like a
Speaker 1: specialist in whatever they used to poison someone with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally, And I will just clarify quickly, and I
Speaker 4: think this was sort of the things shift in my
Speaker 4: research is that it's really not true that women poison
Speaker 4: people more than men, actually, because men commit murder so
Speaker 4: much more than women do. They use every weapon, including poison,
Speaker 4: more often than women. So it's that at first I went, oh, no,
Speaker 4: my thesis, and then I realized, oh, it's actually really
Speaker 4: much more interesting to explore this if there isn't as
Speaker 4: much truth to it.
Speaker 2: So yes, you'll definitely see cases.
Speaker 4: Of men doing it, also for the same reasons we
Speaker 4: ascribed it to women, because it's something that's easier to
Speaker 4: get away with. Potentially you could pass it off as
Speaker 4: natural causes or diseases. You don't have to have the
Speaker 4: same physical connection to harming a person. You can sort
Speaker 4: of disconnect from it in your mind. But yes, in
Speaker 4: terms of are there specialists whoever take advantage of their
Speaker 4: skills and specialty. Absolutely, there's a whole genre of murderers.
Speaker 4: And I'm sure you've come across this before, sort of
Speaker 4: the angels of mercy, which is folks who are specifically
Speaker 4: in the medical profession, who use their access to medications
Speaker 4: and to vulnerable patients.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, one of my friends what great Friends at
Speaker 1: Amy Locker, and she's from the Netflix series.
Speaker 3: The Good Nurse.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, I like that's her life
Speaker 1: story that she one of her friends was poisoning his patients.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, it's nuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: And I have a few of those, specifically in the book,
Speaker 4: where it's someone who is in the medical profession or
Speaker 4: in a caregiving situation to an older person because they
Speaker 4: have access to medications and we're just in a situation
Speaker 4: of inherent trust with our doctors and caregivers. We assume
Speaker 4: if a doctor handed me something to drink this, I
Speaker 4: would say, okay, you know, I don't think I would
Speaker 4: actually guess it. And unfortunately that can give people who
Speaker 4: have nefarious intention a really dangerous opportunity to enact scary things.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Wait, I have a really funny well you might think
Speaker 1: this is funny, but my speaking of men poisoning, So
Speaker 1: there was another case last year or too of a
Speaker 1: dentist who used arsenic actually to poison his wife. But
Speaker 1: in both cases, that one and the Mayo clinic pharmacists.
Speaker 1: They both used smoothies to poison their wives.
Speaker 2: Smoothie quite smoothie.
Speaker 1: Oh, And I was joking around with my husband and
Speaker 1: I was like, you know what, I would be so
Speaker 1: suspicious if you handed me a smoothie, if you could
Speaker 1: even figure out, like where the blender was in our
Speaker 1: house and how to put the ingredients together to even
Speaker 1: make me a smoothie, I would be like, what's up
Speaker 1: with this?
Speaker 2: Where did you find that?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: So that so one of the last cases that you
Speaker 1: presented in the book was in nineteen fifty five, and
Speaker 1: obviously there has been like evolution in poisonings because now
Speaker 1: every single case that I've spoke about today and that
Speaker 1: ones that have been happening over the past couple of years,
Speaker 1: there's like associated Google searches. Yes, And I love how
Speaker 1: in the book you mentioned that your Google searches are
Speaker 1: probably like major oh suspicious.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure the FBI is like aware of me.
Speaker 4: I had to search like which is the worst poison
Speaker 4: how do you where does it come from?
Speaker 2: How do you get it?
Speaker 4: And I'm like I know that, like some FBI agent
Speaker 4: is like, oh, we need to watch this one.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean obviously, like I write about murders and near death
Speaker 1: like all the time in my Google searches. Like sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, these people are going to
Speaker 1: be like what, like what is this girl looking up?
Speaker 3: But mine are so bad for so many years that
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: I know, I want to Google like this is research
Speaker 2: for a book.
Speaker 4: FBI agent, please please take me off your watch list,
Speaker 4: Like I'm yeah, I have a law abiding citizen.
Speaker 2: I try really hard every day.
Speaker 3: That's so great. I love that.
Speaker 1: Another thing that I loved in your book was how
Speaker 1: you mentioned that the only difference between like medicine and
Speaker 1: poison is the dose. Yes, I say that all the time,
Speaker 1: but yeah, like I've been saying that all the time
Speaker 1: about alcohol.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, that's the same thing.
Speaker 1: You just are kind of like slowly poisoning you to
Speaker 1: the point where you feel a buzz. But that's what
Speaker 1: you're doing, is kind of slowly just poisoning yourself.
Speaker 2: It's true. I low dose.
Speaker 4: No, I think about that often the same the very
Speaker 4: same ingredient or chemical in a certain small controlled dose
Speaker 4: can be a valuable medication that can really help people
Speaker 4: and save lives. The same exact thing in a larger
Speaker 4: dose can be a poison and can kill a person.
Speaker 4: It's it's a really sobering reminder about quantity. Like is
Speaker 4: that a small amount of alcohol or reasonable amount of
Speaker 4: alcohol can be you know, a fun or safe way
Speaker 4: to wind down in the evening. But too much and
Speaker 4: that's alcohol poisoning. And that's true with anything. That was
Speaker 4: the other surprising thing. You can poison yourself with anything.
Speaker 4: It's not easy. But if you ate like six thousand
Speaker 4: bananas in one sitting, you might get like potassium poisoning. Like,
Speaker 4: you can overdo anything. So all things in moderation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, except barsenic, babe.
Speaker 4: No, except arsenic, not in any quantity, please exactly.
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Speaker 1: dot com slash book for more information. All right, so
Speaker 1: let's talk about about you a little bit.
Speaker 2: Sure more you.
Speaker 1: So you're not you're not a toxicologist, You're not a
Speaker 1: forensic scientist or anything. So what what is it that?
Speaker 1: How did you get into this field?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: No, I'm like, I'm not a criminal psychologist. I'm not
Speaker 4: a forensic scientist. I'm just a weirdo who find this
Speaker 4: stuff really really fascinating. And I happen to be an illustrator.
Speaker 1: You're an artist by profession, really right, And I love
Speaker 1: your art. Your your book is is so beautiful.
Speaker 3: And like, so I love it.
Speaker 1: I actually wanted to ask you, like, are you planning
Speaker 1: on making like merch and stickers from it?
Speaker 3: Because you probably should.
Speaker 1: I because every person that I've shown the book to
Speaker 1: is love thinks it's awesome.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this was this was sort of my magnum opus
Speaker 4: of like my dream project. I realized I usually do
Speaker 4: book covers. I'm a like primary in my freelance work.
Speaker 4: I'm a book cover illustrator, and I do other things
Speaker 4: like products and advertising and editorial and institutional work as well,
Speaker 4: but I'm primarily in books. But this was my first
Speaker 4: chance to like make my my own book, like create
Speaker 4: the cover and all the interior illustrations for a book
Speaker 4: I researched and wrote and illustrated, so like I knew,
Speaker 4: I wanted to go all out, go big or go home,
Speaker 4: and especially on the cover. Having done maybe thirty covers
Speaker 4: for other books, I was like, everyone was.
Speaker 2: Like, what are you gonna do for your cover? And
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't know, but it's got to
Speaker 2: be big. But I gotta go hard on this.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I am an illustrator and I'm a professor
Speaker 4: of illustration of an art college in Maryland where I
Speaker 4: live and where I teach. I feel like I lost
Speaker 4: sight of the question on that one.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I just I want to I'm really
Speaker 1: curious about it. I wanted to know what the process
Speaker 1: was like. So when you when you went and kind
Speaker 1: of pitched this book or whatever where you you were
Speaker 1: always like, I'm doing all the drawings in it too,
Speaker 1: that was that was your thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I actually feel like I sort of came into this.
Speaker 4: So during the worst days of the pandemic, when we
Speaker 4: were all quarantining, I finally had the time to work
Speaker 4: on a personal project and the like energy and enthusiasm
Speaker 4: to do it, which those things never line up. You
Speaker 4: either have the idea no time, or the time and
Speaker 4: no idea. And a friend of mine had sent me
Speaker 4: an article on Julia Tofana, which was a seventeenth century
Speaker 4: woman who sold poison to women in abusive relationships in Italy.
Speaker 4: And the headline for this article was something incredible and
Speaker 4: it was like woman confesses that her poison was used
Speaker 4: to kill six thousand men in Renaissance Italy. And I
Speaker 4: was like, Wow, that's amazing. Why don't we all know that?
Speaker 4: Why are we all talking about that? And because I'm
Speaker 4: an artist and an illustrator, my way to engage with
Speaker 4: this was I did a whole bunch of research about her,
Speaker 4: and I realized there was no existing portrait of her,
Speaker 4: and I was like, oh, and they always used these
Speaker 4: images from like paintings that were often done in the
Speaker 4: Victorian era, but there were always of like women from
Speaker 4: the medieval world. And she didn't live in the medieval world.
Speaker 4: She lived in Renaissance Italy. And so I said, oh, well,
Speaker 4: I'm going to do some visual research. I want to
Speaker 4: make a portrait of what I think she might have
Speaker 4: looked like. And I sort of found this format where
Speaker 4: I drew her in the middle and then I hand
Speaker 4: lettered her name on the top and then had a
Speaker 4: summary of kind of her story on the bottom. And
Speaker 4: I really enjoyed doing it as a personal project, and
Speaker 4: I wondered, are there more.
Speaker 2: Stories like this?
Speaker 4: And I started researching other women who had connections to
Speaker 4: poison and it began as an illustration series, and I
Speaker 4: didn't know it was going to be a book or
Speaker 4: anything bigger at the time. But then when I had
Speaker 4: about three or four of these illustrations, I realized, I
Speaker 4: think I have a pitch for something, and I reached
Speaker 4: out to an editor who I was like, I dreamed
Speaker 4: of working with, and I was like, this is a
Speaker 4: I'm going to go out on a limb here and
Speaker 4: see what happens.
Speaker 2: And she just responded really well.
Speaker 4: And one of the conversations we had early on was
Speaker 4: do I just want to illustrate it, and should I
Speaker 4: work with an author who has more experience with this,
Speaker 4: or do I want to write it myself? And I
Speaker 4: I have an English degree from a long time ago,
Speaker 4: and I love research and I love true crime.
Speaker 2: And my colleagues are like, do it, you can do it.
Speaker 4: And yeah, it was the hardest, the most rewarding project
Speaker 4: I've ever worked on. And I think it really is
Speaker 4: my baby because I got to do every part of it,
Speaker 4: from the research to the writing, to the illustrating, to
Speaker 4: the cover and now all the fun stuff afterwards. It's
Speaker 4: been just an amazing journey for me. But yeah, it
Speaker 4: was definitely something where I was like, I almost talked myself.
Speaker 2: Out of it.
Speaker 4: I was like, I can't do that, but I'm really
Speaker 4: really glad. But it was definitely a learning curve. I
Speaker 4: had to slow down and really like learn how to
Speaker 4: do the research correctly and like how to find credible
Speaker 4: sources and then just how to organize how to tackle
Speaker 4: such a large project. It took me about three years
Speaker 4: from start to finish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it shows it's really awesome. I love
Speaker 1: how you dedicated the book to your parents. Yes, that
Speaker 1: was so great, and yeah, for those of you who
Speaker 1: haven't read it yet, it just said something like to
Speaker 1: my parents who thought that my first book was going
Speaker 1: to be a children's book or something like that, like
Speaker 1: it's it's just great and then and then like the
Speaker 1: opposite is, oh no, I'm just writing about a book
Speaker 1: about women who kill people, Like well, sorry, mom, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it's but I'm sure they're like, they're so super proud
Speaker 1: of you.
Speaker 3: They probably think it's like so cool, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they've been really excited about it too.
Speaker 4: But my mom, I cannot tell you all many times
Speaker 4: my mom said to me, I really wanted your first
Speaker 4: book to be like a nice children's picture book.
Speaker 2: And she's still like, you could still do it.
Speaker 4: You could come back from this, you could still do
Speaker 4: a nice children's picture book. And I'm like, I think
Speaker 4: I'm on a journey now, and it's it's taking me
Speaker 4: somewhere darker and weirder and somewhere so much that's so
Speaker 4: interesting to me. So and again, a lot of illustrated
Speaker 4: books are for children, so I sort of like I
Speaker 4: have an idea for an.
Speaker 2: Illustrated book, but it's for adults. It's for like true
Speaker 2: crime obsessed adults.
Speaker 4: Like I like, so it's definitely sort of an interesting like, well,
Speaker 4: they even let me do this, and I got very
Speaker 4: lucky that I had a publisher and an editor who
Speaker 4: was like really down to let me try it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm sure they're happy that with their decision.
Speaker 1: I can let you do it because it's because it's
Speaker 1: it's great. I love it so much.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: That means so much to me.
Speaker 1: So speaking of like this, then now your career is
Speaker 1: kind of taking a different turn than you probably thought
Speaker 1: even five years ago. So are you gonna Are you
Speaker 1: going to continue with this on this path?
Speaker 2: I think so? I think, Yeah, life's funny.
Speaker 4: I don't know if I ever couldn't dreamed that this
Speaker 4: is where I was going to be, like you said
Speaker 4: five years ago, but I'm I'm really grateful for it.
Speaker 2: I think this is like my dream.
Speaker 4: Like if I could talk to little Lisa from like
Speaker 4: middle or high school, and I would tell her you're
Speaker 4: like writing and illustrating about like really weird history and
Speaker 4: true crime and fascinating topics, I think I'd be like
Speaker 4: just over the moon excited and so happy about that.
Speaker 4: And I yes, I actually just spoke with my editor
Speaker 4: last night and we're working on plans to discuss what
Speaker 4: the next book is going to be. So and I
Speaker 4: won't reveal anything just yet because we're figuring it out.
Speaker 4: But I'm really excited for this development. But I'm still
Speaker 4: going to keep doing book covers and teaching and all
Speaker 4: the other stuff that I love doing too. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I think this is like a really lovely next and
Speaker 4: forgive the pardon the pun, a next chapter for me
Speaker 4: is going to be more in sort of writing and
Speaker 4: creating my own books.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's it's cool because it's the book is
Speaker 1: so beautiful and I could see there being multiple different
Speaker 1: versions that you could kind of line up on your
Speaker 1: bookshelf and it looks really pretty. But then you know,
Speaker 1: you have guests over and they pick it up and
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's I like it.
Speaker 1: So much because it's the same kind of vibe that
Speaker 1: I wanted to have with my book, that like, it
Speaker 1: looks really pretty and then when you open it, you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is like really horrendous person you're
Speaker 1: looking at.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I love.
Speaker 4: That juxtaposition of something beautiful next to something really dark.
Speaker 4: I think that's very compelling and enchanting, and I think
Speaker 4: it also shows the nuance that many things are both.
Speaker 4: They're good and bad. There's light and darkness in most things.
Speaker 4: And I definitely wanted to create a book that was
Speaker 4: sort of not just not just something that would be
Speaker 4: interesting to read and to look at it internally, but
Speaker 4: I wanted it to be like an art object that
Speaker 4: people would want to display and have out in their
Speaker 4: homes and be really excited, like, oh my gosh, this
Speaker 4: looks so cool next to my candlesticks or this little
Speaker 4: vial that I collected, and it's for our own little person.
Speaker 4: I'm looking at your bookshelf behind you, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: that is the dream. Like, that's exactly where I wanted
Speaker 4: that book to live.
Speaker 2: It looks so at home.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, it looks great. It looks great living on
Speaker 1: my shelf. It's just like and when people come over,
Speaker 1: they just look at it and they're like.
Speaker 2: Oh, what's this.
Speaker 3: This is really cool?
Speaker 2: Thank you. And I think that's the power of book covers.
Speaker 4: Like I said, I've been in book covers a long time,
Speaker 4: and I don't believe that people don't judge a book
Speaker 4: that way. I think that's a silly expression. I think
Speaker 4: that expression relates to lots of people. We shouldn't judge
Speaker 4: people by their outward experiences or outward uh what I
Speaker 4: want to say, by their outward Uh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just like the presentation they're putting out there, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want.
Speaker 2: To thank you, but books we totally do well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because who's going to pick it up off the
Speaker 1: shelf if it's not It's not like drawling you in.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Oh. I believe that.
Speaker 1: One of the one of the coolest parts of the
Speaker 1: book was that which was a little unexpected to me
Speaker 1: that I didn't think that I was going to find
Speaker 1: in the book reading it was that it was not
Speaker 1: only a history lesson on poisoning, obviously, but it was
Speaker 1: also kind of an introduction to the history of forensics
Speaker 1: and toxicology. Absolutely, I didn't really expect that you were
Speaker 1: going to touch on that in the book, but it was.
Speaker 1: It was really cool how that came about and how
Speaker 1: you had You were talking about one of the women.
Speaker 3: Who were convicted of murder.
Speaker 1: She was considered to be maybe one of the first
Speaker 1: people convicted of murder due to forensic toxicology, which is
Speaker 1: so cool, and that was back in like eighteen forty
Speaker 1: or something, And I just wanted to know if you
Speaker 1: had any other unexpected things that you came across when
Speaker 1: you were researching all of these people that were doing
Speaker 1: these crimes.
Speaker 4: No. I think that's such a wonderful point, and I
Speaker 4: think in this story the scientists end up really being
Speaker 4: the heroes in some of these cases, because, like you said,
Speaker 4: there really wasn't forensic toxicology really wasn't a field within
Speaker 4: science and within a detective investigation until the nineteenth century,
Speaker 4: we had really limited ways to like we could think
Speaker 4: a person probably poisoned someone. But I always thought this
Speaker 4: was so fascinating. There was no way to really prove
Speaker 4: it scientifically. And the case that you're talking about is
Speaker 4: Marie LeFarge, who was the first woman convicted on forensic
Speaker 4: toxicological evidence because of this innovation by James Marsh called
Speaker 4: the Marsh test, which was able to prove the presence
Speaker 4: of arsenic and even to minute amounts in bodies tissues
Speaker 4: post mortem. And before that, they're really that didn't really exist,
Speaker 4: and that scientist had actually been on a previous case
Speaker 4: where he was even though he found evidence of arsenic
Speaker 4: in a man's tissues, it had like disappeared by the
Speaker 4: time it came to present that evidence in court, and
Speaker 4: in that time period they needed to see it to
Speaker 4: believe it, and that person got was proven innocent and
Speaker 4: got away with it and later confessed I did it,
Speaker 4: ha ha, I got away with it, and he said,
Speaker 4: I got to.
Speaker 2: Invent a better test for arsenic. We can't.
Speaker 4: We can't let this continue to happen. So it really
Speaker 4: is the scientists, I think, who end up curving up
Speaker 4: this space, specifically in the arsenic murders. You don't really
Speaker 4: hear that too much anymore. Oh, I guess the occasional
Speaker 4: smoothie arsenic murder, but because now it's so easy to
Speaker 4: test for it, right before that there really wasn't. And
Speaker 4: I was reading about what the best system they had
Speaker 4: for I'm sorry because I'm an animal lover, so I
Speaker 4: don't like this is they would feed the meal that
Speaker 4: they believed made that person sick to an animal to
Speaker 4: see what happened, and that was like that was their
Speaker 4: best scientific thing that they had. And even before that,
Speaker 4: I think the like the test in like goodness, maybe
Speaker 4: the thirteen or fourteen hundreds. Well, so you had to
Speaker 4: throw the food in the fire and if it smelled
Speaker 4: like garlic.
Speaker 2: Then they believed it was arsenic.
Speaker 4: Like there just really wasn't a credible scientific system for this.
Speaker 4: So the scientists end up really having a large impact
Speaker 4: on how criminals used these poisons because, like you said, now,
Speaker 4: what they're doing is they have to research what poisons
Speaker 4: are not often searched for, oh, when they're doing these
Speaker 4: post mortem exams, because we've come so far with toxicology
Speaker 4: and you can't just poison someone with arsenic anymore because
Speaker 4: they're going to test for that.
Speaker 2: So I think that that is so interesting.
Speaker 4: And Marie LeFarge, I think it was just bad timing
Speaker 4: for her that she got caught. She was the first
Speaker 4: one to get caught that way, and she might have
Speaker 4: gotten away with it if she'd.
Speaker 2: Acted even a little bit sooner.
Speaker 1: So I always think about that, like what's going to
Speaker 1: be the test in two hundred years that they look
Speaker 1: back on and say, like, do you believe people used
Speaker 1: to do this all the time and get away with
Speaker 1: Because I know people still get away with murder all
Speaker 1: the time. Just because of the way the system is.
Speaker 1: Like oh yeah, for example, at the medical examiner's office,
Speaker 1: sometimes they have so many bodies and if they have
Speaker 1: a person that comes in that died at home and
Speaker 1: is maybe older and has a giant scar on their
Speaker 1: chest that indicates they had heart surgery before, and they
Speaker 1: call their doctor and say, hey, your your patients died.
Speaker 1: Would you sign a death certificate and say they had
Speaker 1: heart disease or whatever? And he's like yeah, do doctor
Speaker 1: say like, yeah, they could have died from that because
Speaker 1: I was treating them for that. Then end of story, Right,
Speaker 1: they won't look into it further. They won't look into
Speaker 1: it further. And they do do like they do like
Speaker 1: a quick toxicology, but that's only tests for like opioids
Speaker 1: and just like cocaine.
Speaker 3: Just basic things, like three or four basic things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I just look at that and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: but how do you how do you really know that
Speaker 1: the wife wasn't just like over him and just yeah.
Speaker 4: And that's the thing, like there's this book is still
Speaker 4: the women poisoners, but just the women we know of
Speaker 4: or just the women who got caught. I think about
Speaker 4: that a lot that there's probably so many stories we
Speaker 4: don't know and we'll never know because they got away
Speaker 4: with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it's really, it's just it's really interesting,
Speaker 1: and I just I always think about that, like we're
Speaker 1: so advanced in medicine and forensics, and then you think, like,
Speaker 1: what is what is getting what's going down the line
Speaker 1: that right now we would think is completely crazy, But
Speaker 1: it's true. Why and you were saying that poisoning isn't
Speaker 1: it's definitely now is not a common cause of murdering
Speaker 1: someone at all.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's rare.
Speaker 1: But I think the three or four or five maybe
Speaker 1: stories that have happened this year are probably like one
Speaker 1: of the only ones because they get so much attention
Speaker 1: because it's so shocking that people still do that.
Speaker 4: I guess, yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's not
Speaker 4: that poisoning is a common crime. It's just a sensational crime.
Speaker 4: So when it happens, they end up, you know, in
Speaker 4: the media and really prominent.
Speaker 2: But it's not.
Speaker 4: Honestly, guns are responsible for a whole lot more violence,
Speaker 4: but we're so desensitized to that that the poisoning crimes
Speaker 4: really stand out. And that's why we end up hearing
Speaker 4: about them more and maybe we think they're more common
Speaker 4: than they are.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Feel like some of the people actually could have gotten
Speaker 1: this is when you work in like certain fields like
Speaker 1: pathology or like police are detective, you have to have
Speaker 1: some kind of like semi sick mind to think like
Speaker 1: how people do commit crimes in order to you know.
Speaker 2: You got to engineer it. How did we get here?
Speaker 2: What did they do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, like you have to try to think like them.
Speaker 1: And I look back at all of these just looking
Speaker 1: through all the case and I'm like, most of these
Speaker 1: people probably would have gotten away with this if they
Speaker 1: weren't acting so weird. And you know, like that's you're
Speaker 1: you're having like a party after your husband dies, right,
Speaker 1: so of course everyone, every normal person's gonna be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is weird, what's going on? And and then start
Speaker 1: looking at your Google searches and then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden it's like okay, but yeah, exactly, like it's It's
Speaker 1: just the whole thing of it is just very interesting
Speaker 1: to me because with a normal like at the medical
Speaker 1: examiner's office, if you if you.
Speaker 3: Die, and the normal the normal.
Speaker 1: Panel isn't going to necessarily pick up anything unless they're
Speaker 1: keyed off to check for things because they think of
Speaker 1: poisoning suspicious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that that doctor.
Speaker 1: For example, that poison his wife with the gout medication
Speaker 1: like that, that wouldn't have come up.
Speaker 2: Who would think to check for that.
Speaker 1: It's so uncommon, So it's like they almost get have
Speaker 1: the perfect idea of a crime, but then they don't,
Speaker 1: but they don't finish the job.
Speaker 2: Commit if you're gonna do the whole thing, do it
Speaker 2: right that being so flashy at the end with the parties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, or the life insurance or this, Yes, if
Speaker 1: that's any advice that we.
Speaker 2: Could give you, No, no, no, I'm not encouraging. But yeah.
Speaker 4: Actually there's stories in my book like that too. And
Speaker 4: actually the last story is one of a nurse, Jane Tappin,
Speaker 4: And one of the reasons she got away with it,
Speaker 4: and there were many, was that she used two very
Speaker 4: unusual medications.
Speaker 2: She combined atropine and.
Speaker 4: Morphine, which had really unique symptoms where they contradicted each other,
Speaker 4: like one made the pupils big and the other one
Speaker 4: made the pupil shrink, so they ended up looking normal,
Speaker 4: but the person was experiencing all these things, and nobody
Speaker 4: would test for atropine and morphine, so it was just
Speaker 4: something that she got away with for a long time
Speaker 4: because she used less conventional poisons and she was a nurse,
Speaker 4: so she had access to these chemicals.
Speaker 1: And how did she eventually get caught?
Speaker 2: She overdid it. She murdered a whole family.
Speaker 3: This is what happens.
Speaker 1: Like. It's like if you just if you just did
Speaker 1: You're like, you're a geniush right, you thought like, okay,
Speaker 1: you destrugg to do this and destrug to do this,
Speaker 1: so the body looks okay, But then you get you
Speaker 1: get like greedy and then yeah.
Speaker 4: No, it's just like I hate to say this because
Speaker 4: I'm not condoning what they did, but if you could
Speaker 4: have just quit when you were ahead, man and just
Speaker 4: walked away.
Speaker 2: But they can't.
Speaker 4: And I think it's there is a psychological component to
Speaker 4: this too. After you don't get caught, I think people
Speaker 4: get really cocky and they're like, ha ha, I'm smarter
Speaker 4: than the lam above the law.
Speaker 2: I can do whatever I want to get away with it.
Speaker 4: And then they get sloppy and that's usually their downfall exactly.
Speaker 3: That seems to be a common theme.
Speaker 1: Well, so you said that you're talking about doing another book. Perhaps,
Speaker 1: is there any other projects that you're working on.
Speaker 4: Oh, that's a good question. So I'm just working on
Speaker 4: some book covers right now. I'm doing a romance book
Speaker 4: cover for one. It's just really really fun, like a
Speaker 4: Regency era one. And I just finished up a book
Speaker 4: cover for like a middle grade novel about like a
Speaker 4: cool magical school or like I guess it's but not
Speaker 4: quite like Harry Potter or anything like that. They're more
Speaker 4: like like grim reapers and stuff go to this school
Speaker 4: and they all learn together, it seems. But that like, Yeah,
Speaker 4: mostly I work on book covers, and I'm working on
Speaker 4: some potential pitches for the next book, but mostly, like
Speaker 4: I said, I'm a professor and we're in finals time
Speaker 4: now for the end of the fall semester. So that's
Speaker 4: that's mostly where my head has been at.
Speaker 3: Did you ever think.
Speaker 1: About doing your book in an audiobook too? I know
Speaker 1: you want, because I feel like like I like audiobooks,
Speaker 1: but I also like to have the book too, Yes,
Speaker 1: just because the way, like my life's kind of hectic
Speaker 1: with kids and everything, like I like to just put
Speaker 1: it on and like, I feel like I could listen
Speaker 1: to a book and also clean my house or paint my.
Speaker 3: House or something.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, cleaning and painting.
Speaker 3: Is that? Is that something you ever considered?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: It never came up. I'm also a big audiobook fan.
Speaker 4: I'm listening to like two different audible books right now,
Speaker 4: and I love to listen while I'm doing usually while
Speaker 4: I'm illustrating other things like working on projects, I love
Speaker 4: to listen. It never came up for this book. I
Speaker 4: think probably because it is so ritually illustrating that it's
Speaker 4: such a visual experience too. But it's something I can
Speaker 4: mention to the editor if it's something you think folks
Speaker 4: would like and respond to, but yeah, they know.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: I definitely think so because I think that the biggest
Speaker 1: thing right now is like true Crime podcast and it's
Speaker 1: just very it's very interesting material. And I think that
Speaker 1: you have enough text in the book that it's not
Speaker 1: going to be a super huge like a huge audio book,
Speaker 1: but people would still like that too, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I definite and I and I think like most people
Speaker 1: I know like to have the book with with the
Speaker 1: audio book, So I know I understand that like it's
Speaker 1: a it's a visual book and stuff. But I just
Speaker 1: thought that that would be cool because I really like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's easier for me to listen to an audiobook and.
Speaker 4: Oh, like, totally, no, I'm also a multitasker, so I'll
Speaker 4: tell it. I'll tell my editor you said so. But yeah, Actually,
Speaker 4: when I was doing research for the book, my favorite
Speaker 4: thing to do was to get both the physical book
Speaker 4: and the audiobook, and I felt like that really helped
Speaker 4: me understand it, just to have kind of both the
Speaker 4: visual and the audio together.
Speaker 1: Me too, And you're like, I'm like a learner that
Speaker 1: does better when I hear than when I actually read,
Speaker 1: you know. But yeah, but I love the way that
Speaker 1: your book is set up because it's not it's not
Speaker 1: just like a black and white book that you're reading,
Speaker 1: because that.
Speaker 3: They're like brutal for me.
Speaker 1: But the illustrations and stuff makes it easy for people
Speaker 1: like me that aren't the best readers to read as well.
Speaker 2: That's wonderful to hear.
Speaker 4: I'm so glad because that's part of the reason why
Speaker 4: it's there is I hope to aim with the experience
Speaker 4: and to make it easier to read and move through
Speaker 4: and kind of give your eye breaks and an opportunity
Speaker 4: to sort of interpret the information in a different way
Speaker 4: besides reading. But then you get the image that sort
Speaker 4: of reflects it too. That's why I think.
Speaker 2: Picture books for adults should totally be a thing.
Speaker 1: Oh, they one hundred percent should, because I I am
Speaker 1: just like I'm always honest about this, Like I just
Speaker 1: don't like to I'm not good at reading.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I don't.
Speaker 1: If I just sat there and read a regular novel,
Speaker 1: it's very hard for me to absorb the information. But
Speaker 1: like with your book, for example, I'm a very like
Speaker 1: photogenic memory kind of thing. So when I see one
Speaker 1: of the pictures of these women that you draw, then
Speaker 1: it helps me visualize and remember what's happening throughout the book.
Speaker 2: So I like that. That's so great to hear. Thank
Speaker 2: you for sharing that with me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I think a lot a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't recognize that that people aren't the same kind of learner,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 4: Oh absolutely, Like I said, I'm a teacher, So I
Speaker 4: think about that a lot, and having multiple ways to
Speaker 4: get to learn something or have access to it, and
Speaker 4: people can kind of choose how or use both or
Speaker 4: as many as they want or need to help them
Speaker 4: sort of access and understand the information.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because when I was a kid, it was like
Speaker 1: audio books were really I mean they came on tapes, right,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, I remember, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: But they were.
Speaker 1: It was frowned upon big time when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: And now I love that, Like my kids are little
Speaker 1: and learn in school, and they are really they're like,
Speaker 1: we don't care how it gets in them as long
Speaker 1: as they're picking it up.
Speaker 4: You know, it's about the content, it's not about the vehicle.
Speaker 4: I think that's I'm really glad that that movement is
Speaker 4: happening in education because, like you said, so many people,
Speaker 4: and especially children learn in such different ways. Like why
Speaker 4: does it matter how they got the information as long
Speaker 4: as they're learning?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, I think the same way.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for being here with us today.
Speaker 1: It was really a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Oh I had so much fun. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for including me.
Speaker 3: This was a blast, awesome.
Speaker 1: Thanks, thank you, thank you for listening to mother nos death.
Speaker 1: As a reminder, my training is as a pathologist's assistant.
Speaker 1: I have a master's level education and specialize in anatomy
Speaker 1: and pathology education. I am not a doctor and I
Speaker 1: have not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or alive without
Speaker 1: the assistance of a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website,
Speaker 1: and social media accounts are designed to educate and inform
Speaker 1: people based on my experience working in pathology, so they
Speaker 1: can make healthier decisions regarding their life and well being.
Speaker 1: Always remember that science is changing every day and the
Speaker 1: opinions expressed in this episode are based on my knowledge
Speaker 1: of those subjects at the time of publication. If you
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Speaker 2: Thanks