Endless Thread - Introducing ICYMI: "How a Substack Revived the Dracula Fandom"

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

This episode is brought to you by Slate's ICYMI podcast. Co-hosts Rachelle Hampton and Candice Lim talk to writer Cyrena Touros about Dracula Daily, a newsletter that emails bite-sized passages from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel to more than 235,000 readers. As an epistolary novel, Dracula is broken into letters written between May and November. Dracula Daily emails those letters to readers, who have now created a book club-like fandom rife with memes and sidebars about a guy stuck in a vampire’s castle.

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If you, like us, are in the midst of a serious Halloween hangover, eating all the candies or, in my case, stealing candy from my children, we've got a bit of a Halloween hangover episode for you. It comes from I see why am I, see why am I, The Slate Podcast, which is made by Rachel Hampton and Candice Lim, woo-woo, former Endless Thread intern who has gone on to do bigger and better things as a co-host of this show. And, yeah, we're excited to introduce this show to you.

It is an episode today about the return of vampire fandom via internet communities. Also, a show that I love from Netflix, Transylvania, gets a shout out. We think you'll like this show. We hope you'll listen. And check it out. We'll see you next week. I'm Candace Lim. And I'm Rachel Hampton and you're listening to I see why I'm mine. In case you missed it. Slate's podcast about internet culture. How are we feeling this post-long weekend workday, as the Brits call it, a bank hol-as-a-week-day? I'm not going to lie, it was stressful, babes.

We should probably acknowledge that if you happen to be, you know, online or just paying any attention this weekend, it might have been a bit stressful. The news this week was not great. There are some pretty fucking horrific conflicts happening right now. And it's a lot. It's stressful. And we're not going to talk about it on this podcast because if there's a few things I'm not, one of them is not a lawyer. And the other one is not an expert in international conflict. But we are experts in nonsense.

So, Candice, I wanted to catch up with you and ask, how was your weekend? What'd you get up to? What'd you watch that wasn't your Instagram feed? Yeah, I watched two movies. One's an oldie, one's a newbie. The first one is overboard. It's that movie with Anna Ferris and Eugenio Derbez.

And it's like a reboot of the Goldie Hawn Kurt Russell one. Basically, Eugenio de Brez plays like this billionaire on a yacht. Ana Ferris plays a cleaning lady. who comes to help him clean the yacht, he falls over, gets amnesia. And she's like, I'm going to pretend that we're married and basically take advantage of that. And it was actually kind of funny. It was supposed to be a comedy. And I think it was.

And, you know, I watched the whole thing. I would say shining light. Josh Sigara from the other two, he's in this movie. And he was killing it. So that's one movie I watched. The second one was Fair Play. It's on Netflix. It stars The Girlie from Bridgerton, Phoebe.

Oh, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And it's basically about two people. They work at the same place. They have a secret relationship. She gets promoted. He does not. And he says, oop. And then the movie kind of takes on from there.

And I watched this movie because I will be on Pop Culture Happy Hour this Friday to talk about it. But that's kind of what I would. was watching this weekend. What about you, Rachel? Those sound great. I was watching something that I will not be going up, Pop Culture Happy Hour to talk about, but I will be forcing all of you to hear me talk about, which is Castlevania. What is this? I've never heard of this. Tell me more. Okay, so it is unfortunately named because it is based off a video game that is called Castlevania. But don't let that stop you. The first series has four seasons. It's this anime.

It's very good. Richard Armitage voices one of the characters. But it's about a vampire by the name of Vlad Dracula, Teppez. And he falls in love with this human woman who's like a scientist and a healer. And she wants to learn as much as possible to kind of help heal humanity. So she basically walks into Dracula's castle, which is very steampunk. It's giving house moving castle. And it's like, I heard you know some things about science.

Those bitches out there in the village, they don't know shit about science. You're going to teach me about science. And he's like, you know what? I like you. Okay. And he teaches her, but he also learns how to love and to find value in humanity. But then Lisa is burned at the stake as a witch because she learned too much science. Oh.

And basically Dracula's like, I really only fucked with humanity because of her. And now you killed her. So I'm going to kill all of you. in Wallachia, which I just learned is a real place. It's like the historical and geographical region of Romania, which makes sense because it's Dracula. So it's this kind of really well-drawn-out story, both narratively and visually, of what grief does to us.

Like Dracula and Lisa's son, whose half-human half-vampire, ends up fighting his father to save humanity. It's honestly really good, and the main characters are hot in the way that cartoon can be. Amazing. But I'm talking about this now. Now, because there's a second series in the Castlevania Universe that I found out not from Netflix, despite the fact that I watched the first version. I found out about it from Twitter.

I saw a tweet from Olufemi Othiwa, one of my absolute favorites, like, leftist writers and thinkers. He wrote this book called Leek Capture. He's just incredibly smart. But he tweeted, okay, the new Castlevania series doesn't just have the occasional reference to the Haitian Revolution. There's voodoo superpowers. your ruba cosmology, colored abolitionism, and a maroon enclave subplot? Which of you black lefties wrote this? Come clean and receive your flowers?

Obviously, I saw this tweet and was like, I love the first series of Castlevania. I'm definitely going to love this one. It's called Castlevania Nocturne. It takes place during the French Revolution, so they're trying to both overthrow the bourgeoisie and the vampire Messiah. So basically, 10 out of 10 recommend both the original. Castlevania series and this one. And I find this apt not just because I love this show and vampires, but because today our episode is actually about Dracula, specifically Dracula Daily,

a substack that takes the 1897 book written by Bram Stoker and basically sends them out in little lines and paragraphs that get sent to more than 235,000 subscribers. And I'm fascinated by this because I've never read Dracula, but apparently Dracula is kind of written like a journal. And it's about a guy named Jonathan Harker who writes letters and notes about going to Transylvania, hanging out with Dracula, running around his castle like a tomb reader. And in the book, Jonathan writes these letters from May 3 to November 7th. So fast forward to 2021, a year that I like to avoid remembering it possible. But Matt Kirkland is reading this book, was 11-year-old daughter. And he gets this idea to basically break up the novel, reading a passage each day, in correspondence with the date of the letters in the book.

And Matt does this very 2021 thing of using substack to make this happen. So he turns this into a newsletter called Dracula Daily where he basically just sends you an email that matches the dated passage from the book. And at first, it's just like a cute project. You know, Matt's just some web designer from Kansas. But the side project, you know, that first year it gets like 165,000 subscribers. And then the following year, it multiplies into 230,000 subscribers. And that is because this kind of fan community of subscribers was meeting up on Twitter and Tumblr and TikTok to have side discussions about this newsletter. It was kind of like an online book club with memes and fan fiction.

And the key to this substack's success is probably just like how short the bites are because, you know, you can like process and analyze and stay on track with 230,000 other people who are doing the exact same thing. And Dracula Daily, by the way, still going on at this moment so you can still subscribe to the substack and get emails from this random guy named Jonathan Harker. But we're talking about this because I wonder if this could be like the future of book clubs, you know, parsing them out. a little bites via newsletter and like using this staggered close reading method to build an actual fandom that's kind of just surrounding a substack. Mm-hmm. And I want to get into that and more. But first we're going to take a short break.

When we come back, we're going to talk to writer and critics, Serena Torres, about her love for Dracula Daily and why this might be the past and future of publishing. Hey, y'all. Hope you're enjoying today's show. This is your first time listening to ICYYY. My mind and welcome. We're thrilled to have you here in case you missed it. Our show comes out twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

You are currently listening to the Wednesday episode. So make sure you never miss an episode like this past Wednesdays, which was all about the ethics of gossiping online. We then gossip ourselves about a wild story featuring a life coach, say yes to the dress, and alleged fraud. You don't want to miss it. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully, make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. wherever you get your podcast. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions,

the creative studio from WBUR's business partnerships team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org. Creative Studio. So today we're going to talk about something spooky, but we're going to make it AP English

literature and composition vibes, okay? Yes, we are here to talk about Dracula Daily, which is a substack that takes the 1897 book Dracula by Bram Stoker, and sends it out via email in these little bite-sized chunks. The substack right now has over 235,000 subscribers, and today we're going to talk to one of subscribers. Taking us to Transylvania and back is writer and critics Serena Torres. Hi, Farina. Hey, what's up? Oh my gosh. Serena, we got to get some stuff out of the way first because guess what? It's your first time on the show. So we have to haze you. We have to haze you into the I-C-Y-My universe, aka the ICU. So Serena, what is your first internet memory? I feel like I want to divide it up

into sections if you'll indulge me. Absolutely. Because I feel like my first memory on the internet is like writing a first grade report on an animal. And I hear that this is like a very common assignment. You know, I was like on them blogs, looking up manatee facts. So that's my first internet memory. But I do feel like I divide it into sections of like, then I think about my first social internet memory, which is about fandom. And then I think about my first social media memory, which is totally different. You know, I am on like Gen Z millennial cusp, and I like to divide that by, did you have a smartphone in high school or not? And did you have social media profiles in high school or not? Because I think that is more informed by, like, you know, wealth and

privilege and connections. And, you know, so like my older two siblings went off to college without a smartphone. My younger brother had a smartphone all of college. I got mine in the middle of my junior year. And it was crazy because I felt like my social life, like, was flipped overnight where suddenly, you know, everybody wanted to hang out. Everybody had your contact information. Everybody, you know, invited you to the things that people took Instagram photos at versus previously. You're like, people are talking about something, but they won't say what it is. And then they're like, oh, well, we were just, you know, it was something somebody said on Instagram. And you're like, well, could you tell me? And it was always like, uh, well, you wouldn't get it.

And I feel like that part hasn't changed. It's been a decade. And it's still. very hard to describe to somebody who's not online, what is happening online, and especially it's very hard to describe an event online if you were not there in the way that it makes sense to another person. You know, I'm just thinking about, like, trying to describe to my mom last year when Spitgate was happening in September at the Venice Film Festival, which is like one of the best days on the internet in the last five years. And she was just like, I don't get why this is so funny to you. And I'm like, you had to be there. I'm sorry, you had to be there. How do you not know what's so funny about Harry's Stiles allegedly spitting on Chris Pine in Venice.

So we're here to talk about Dracula Daily. I want to hear how did you first hear about Dracula Daily? And what prompted you to put your little email address in and hit subscribe to this newsletter? I'm a proud and continuous Tumblr active user. And so in April of last year 2022, somebody was just like, hey, did you see that there's this like newsletter and they'll send you an email update every day from the book Dracula. Like, wouldn't that be funny? We should all sign up. And I think crucially, the person had excerpted an entry from the end of May where it was describing Dracula, like crawling down the wall like

a lizard. Yeah. Which was so funny. And I was like, wait, what? And it also, it didn't hurt that starting in 2019, I told myself every fall I would read a novel of Gothic literature or a horror novel. And so in 2019, I read Jane Eyre. In 2020, I read Wuthering Heights. In 2021, I'm pretty sure I didn't read anything. So I was, like, feeling especially guilty come that April that I hadn't done my assignment. And so I was like, oh, well, here's a way to keep myself accountable. And I'll get the email every single day. And it'll be way easier to just read a bite-sized chunk every day over the course of six months. This is a book from 18907. It is under public domain, which means that the copyright has lapsed. You can republish, create new works. You can base it on the story of the characters. That's

probably why the guy behind this. Matt Kirkland can probably keep putting out these emails, but, Serena, in your perspective, you know, what makes Dracula the novel ripe for something like these little daily email snippets? Well, it's like in the format itself, because Dracula is an epistolary novel, which means it's composed of like letters between characters, like telegrams, like newspaper entries. And so the novel is dated. Each of the chapters has you know, like May 25th, June 1st, you know, June 22nd, whatever. And so I think it does lend itself to being put into chronological order. And I think it changes a lot about the way you read it. I read it for the first time via Dracula Daily. And I was so surprised by the way that it just

seemed like a comedy, which is not how I expected it to unfold. And I do think like, you know, it adds to the suspense too, like the beginning of the novel, Jonathan Harker, who's one of our protagonists. He's going to Transylvania. He's going to Dracula's castle. He has no idea what he's in for. And then because we're getting entries every single day, we go for like two or three weeks without hearing from him. And we're like, what the heck is going on in that castle? So it's suspenseful. But then also, I think the way it was originally published is that Dracula is this unknown. Like, you know, that's kind of the main crux of the novel is like, who is this guy, what's going on, like, what's happening to these characters who are starting to have health issues and who are like sleepwalking at night?

Like, what is that? Versus, like, we as modern readers know what Dracula's whole deal is. And so instead, we kind of see these intermediary bits where he's like traveling on a boat to get to England and he's like picking off the crew one by one. And, you know, we see all of the ways that Dracula's schemes are failing him. He's like not actually very smart. So we see him like trying to hypnotize a wolf to go like after Lucy and break into her house. And we get an entry from a newspaper like interviewing the zookeeper.

Like his wolf is sad and like acting strangely like what's going on with that. So I just thought it was like so much funnier than I expected it to be versus I think, you know, when you read it the way it was published. I think, you know, the themes are more present on fear of the other and the way that medical science was operating in the Victorian era. I just laughed out loud quite often on the daily reading the newsletter. It's so interesting that you're talking about the way that reading this in this specific format changed the way that you engage with it because it reminds me almost of the way that we engage with classic literature and we're actually learning it in school, which is that very rarely are we told to just kind of read an entire book by ourselves and sit with our thoughts.

It's like, here are all these questions. Did you see this was funny? Did you get the specific part? And it's really kind of interesting that a newsletter did that. Yeah, you know, it really made me think about like the modern media landscape and the way that we, our consumption habits are now based on this like, you know, the Netflix drop of like everything comes at once. And it made me think about like the way that there was so much more time to to analyze and

theorize when episodes were dropping weekly and you had time to spend a whole week thinking about like, what's going to happen to my characters next? You know, what fanfic can I write between these two episodes? And here we know exactly what the big plot twist is and it still works because that's like the tension of good storytelling. Right. And that so many genres like mystery and horror and, you know, tragedy rely on us knowing how it ends and still wanting to experience the narrative start to finish, which is just like asynchronous with the predominant mode of modern storytelling of the last decade in this like anti-spoiler culture of the MCU. And, you know, I think it was really great to have a novel that I got small sections of every day,

whether that was like three sentences or, you know, like 10,000 words. And that was the only bit they wanted me to sit with that day. And so I think you do pull out funnier bits of the text because you're reading closer than you would if you were like, you know, trying to binge Dracula in five days. Yeah. And I find that so interesting because I wonder what the modern day draw of an 1897 book is. You know, The New York Times, they did a story about Dracula Daily. And they spoke to an English literature PhD candidate who kind of said that the book is kind of about Dracula having intense loneliness and a desire to rejoin humanity.

And knowing that Matt started Dracula Daily in 2021, you know, this is during the pandemic. We were still quarantining. We were waiting for the vaccine to hit. You know, this environment seems relatable for that premise. And Dracula is, I don't know, he just kind of seems like the, the Etessa Mosheg of his era. And so I wanted to ask, do you think that these themes, you know, the loneliness, the isolation and Dracula Daily as a concept? Like, do you think they can still hit in 2023, you know, years after the book and a few years after the substack came out? Yeah, I think it reminds me of the way that How to Lose the Timor blew up earlier this summer.

Because the Twitter account, I think, who had the screen named Bigelis Dickalus. Oh, yeah. He had recommended the book. And I think people treated that as kind of an anomaly. And I think it is not anomalous whatsoever. You know, it was a case of like, look how powerful fandom can be when organically activated. And then also this idea that like this guy had built up this following for having good taste and that there was kind of this domino effect of, you know, people trusted his taste so they wanted

to buy the book. You know, people from his fandom trusted his taste so they wanted to buy the book. And then people from similar fandoms to the trigon fandom like Modausia or, you know, interview with the vampire were like, oh, it seems like all of these guys who were. watch shows like mine, want to read this book, I'll read it too. And then I think the third thing is that people just still want communal experiences. That's like why I got online 15 years ago, is that I wanted to find people like me and connect with them and, you know, have experiences with people who had things I had in common with. And I think we still see that most visibly in like sports fandom

or Marvel fandom or political fandom, if you want to call it fandom, where there's like an NFL game that people tune into every week or there's a movie that people want to go to see. But if you're a reader, and you like books, it's like harder to find that sort of event for people to rally around. Right. And so I feel like Dracula Daily was so popular because it created an event. It created this like accountability structure of like, you don't have to do any work. You just sign up and the email comes to you. Dracula is such a rich text because you could read so many different interpretations of it.

It's like kind of about the fear of the other, whether that's like Dracula representing like immigration in 19th century Britain or if that's, representing like the fear of the new woman in the Victorian era, you know, who's educated and sexually liberated and, you know, not mainly preoccupied with marriage and homebuilding. I had read that, you know, Bram Stoker had been friends with both Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde and that he was writing it at the time that Oscar Wilde was on trial for homosexuality. So there was all of this fear of, you know, same-sex deviance, if you want to call it that. And so that, you know, Dracula is almost this representation of, like, the queer person in Victorian England. And so, you know, I am also, like, a ton of queer people really drawn to horror as a genre because we see ourselves in the monster and the other, in the ostracized. And so I feel like, you know, for all of these reasons, Dracula, you know, it can resonate with how. however you feel, whatever your experience is.

Totally. And I want to get into that more. But first, we have to take a quick pause. When we come back, we're going to talk more about the queer community's reaction to Dracula Daily. And what exactly vampires have to do with the economy? We'll be back with Serena Turos after the break. And we're back. Tell me about the fandom for Dracula Daily specifically.

What is it like if I was to go on Tumblr.com. Hashtag Dracula Daily. What would I see? I feel like it's so fun to be on Tumblr, especially now I'm 27, and so I grew up on Tumblr. I've been there for 10 years. And you kind of forget that the people that you knew there when you were a teenager have also grown up and now they have careers. And potentially, a lot of them do have PhDs. And so you're like getting these like A jokes. Yes, people were joking about like in the first chapter, Jonathan Harker.

is like basically a food blogger. He's like writing about this like paprika hendel he's eating and that it's like spicy and he's like going to send the recipe home to Mina, his fiance. So people are making fun of that. People are like going out and replicating paprika handle. They're like buying out, you know, paprika at their grocery stores and they're trying to like figure out what the recipe would be like. And then there's also people who are examining it from a scholarly aspect. I feel like going on Tumblr is so cool like that where you meet all these different people who have expertise beyond your own. And yes, you get incredible jokes, incredible content. But then also you get like people who are like dropping a thesis on you. And you're like, oh, okay, cool. I didn't know that.

Like I didn't know anything about, you know, Bram Stoker's connection to Oscar Wild. And then suddenly I was like, oh my God, this like unlocks so many different avenues of thought. Let's dive into that fandom a little more. Because, you know, the New York Times brought up something about how some readers have definitely picked up on what they call, quote, a homo erotic angst in Dracula, the text itself. And so, you know, I can see how now, if you're reading that text, you pick that up, you go on Tumblr, you can, like, go there and you can talk about the queer storylines and have those discussions because I don't know if someone reading that in high school as a freshman would have been able to feel as safe bringing it up, like, in their AP English classroom. But like on Tumblr,

you can be whoever you want to be and talk about whatever paprika is you want to. And so I was kind of curious. What are your thoughts about that and that reinterpretation that people are picking up on thanks to Dracula Daily? Yeah, it's one of those things where you know intellectually as a scholar that you shouldn't read modern sexuality onto people in the past. But then also there's the Tumblr mentality where you're like, everything is fair game to interpret as queer. And so it is fun to be like, oh, this is probably just the way that women expressed affection in their letters between each other. It's one of those things we were like, uh, Is it heterosexual to think that your best friend is beautiful and sweet and perfect?

Maybe, but maybe not. Or this was the interpretation that I wouldn't have come to if I wasn't reading this online with the fandom. I kind of want to talk about the way that you're talking about engaging with the fandom and the kind of communal aspect of it. I feel like Dracula Daily has in a way created a literary monoculture in a way. You were talking about the phenomena of watching like episodic television with people rather than like the Netflix binge. And it reminds me of the way that novels used to be distributed, like serialized novels like Tale of Two Cities and in Carinina.

And so I wanted to ask you what you kind of think the benefit of staggering a novel specifically like Dracula is like this. And if maybe we should go back to publishing books like this, if perhaps like the next big epistolary novel or the next A Little Life should be published like chapter by chapter in the New Yorker for two years and the way the Anna Karenina was published over the course of two years. I think Percy Jackson fans will tell you that the cliffhanger before the mark of Athena is like a primary traumatic event.

I had fallen off before that. But I do think that like hurts so good kind of angst still exists in series where you're like waiting for the sequel. I do feel like that was such of like the beauty of reading fan fiction is like you can subscribe to a fic and you can, you know, get a little joyful email in your inbox of like, here's the next chapter. There is such a good art to the perfect cliffhanger at the end of a chapter. And, you know, that's a communal experience, too, where people are in the comments like screaming, crying, throwing up, etc.

Like, it's angst, but people love angst. Yeah. I want to talk about vampires. Yes. We are, I sadly think, in a post-Twilight world. And however, vampires are kind of being rebooted in mainstream media in a way. You know, for example, there's what we do in the shadows. There's interview with the vampire, very good AMC show.

Highly recommend. There's Renfield. You know, that. Nicholas Holt, Nicholas Cage film that came out in April. So not even like spooky season, but April. And during the pandemic, there was a bit of a Twilight Renaissance over on TikTok. And so I kind of wonder, is Dracula Daily writing the wave two of making vampires popular again? Like, do you have any ideas about why people in 2023 are kind of, kind of into vampires again? Yeah. I mean, I definitely think the trend started last year. I think Judy Berman, who's a reporter and writer at time,

had a piece last year about vampires in popular culture, and she was talking about that, like, vampires are just kind of recession core. Like, every time there's an economic downturn, people get really into vampires, which was true in Twilight. I think those books came out 2008, 2009. Yeah, I just feel like people put their fears and desires into them. Um, you know, when, when thinking about this, I was like, man, considering so many of them are queer now, whether that's like what we do in the shadows or like that all over sim record, I was like, maybe the real horror is the heteropatriarchy. Like, you know, now that queer people are like kind of owning vampires for themselves,

I feel like, yeah, there's just a real interest in what that narrative can mean. I wanted to ask you about Matt Kirkland, who turned Dracula Daily into a book. Like, the text from Dracula along with memes and fan art and reader commentary, it's objectively kind of funny that a book that was turned into a substack. is now a book again. Yeah. What's your take on that? I think when I first saw that, I was kind of like, well, this feels a little redundant.

I didn't know that he was going to be including commentary. And I do think he has talked about, like, when you receive an email via substack, you can reply and that person gets your response. So his experience of Dracula Daily is unique in that sense of like he had this like quarter million and subscriber base, like, reacting back to him. And so there's something really interesting there, but I don't think that necessarily the book is, like, those reactions. I did go through, like, the preview section of it, and I was like, well, this is okay.

Really, I didn't know that there's another reissue of Dracula that just came out on Restless Classics that has, like, a really fantastic introduction by Alexander Chee, which I read. and I think there is more utility in that. Like as soon as I finished reading Dracula Daily, I kind of was like, well, now I want to own a copy of the book as it was published and have a reference for the order as intended by Bram Stoker.

That's super interesting because I'm kind of the same way too where like I don't want to go forward after reading something. I want to go backwards. So like, for example, when I watched Greta Gerwig's Little Woman, I wanted to go back and read the book. And that's how I bought the book. And so that's an interesting commentary for sure. Do you have like a favorite passage from Dracula Daily?

You know, I was reading some people's papers that they had published about the different themes of Dracula. And, you know, one of them in particular referenced the English novel and introduction by Terry Eagleton. And in that book he was writing that the novel, quote, must strive for sense and unity in an age when things no longer seem to harbor any inherent meaning or value. Which I was like, whof, okay, maybe that's why people are so drawn to Dracula. But then in particular, there's a really moving passage, which is from the September 29th date. I don't know what actually chapter. That's the weird part of reading Dracula Daily is like, I could tell you what date this is from, but I don't remember what chapter it is. Right. Yeah. You know, the crew is all collected at Dr. Seward's house. You know, he's going around to treat his patients.

And this is a bit from Mina's diary. And she writes that, quote, when he had finished, he came back and sat near me reading so that I did not feel too lonely whilst I wore. worked, how good and thoughtful he is. The world seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it. And that's really the passage that I highlighted of like, you know, the world seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it, which is kind of the lesson I think of Dracula, that they do overcome this evil. You know, they work together. They, you know, they lose each other, but it like, it bonds them together. And, you know, it made me kind of hopeful. Okay, that's the show. We'll be back in your feed on Saturday, so definitely subscribe. That way, you never miss an episode. Leave us a reading and review

and Apple or Spotify and tell your friends about us. You can follow us on Twitter at ICYMI underscore pod, which is also where you can DM us your questions like, why is everyone reading Dracula right now? And you can always drop us a note at ICYMI at slate.com. I see YYMI is produced by Sarah Spragley-Ricks, Candace Slim, and me, Rachel Hampton, Daisy Rosario is our senior supervising producer, and Alicia Montgomery is Slate's Vice President of Audio. See you online. Or in Transylvania.