Noble Blood - Murder, Madness, and Eric XIV

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

Throughout history, there have been stories of royals going mad. But very few kings have committed murder in their fits of insanity.Support Noble Blood:— Bonus episodes and scripts on Patreon— Merch!— Pre-order Dana's book, Anatomy: A Love Story— Sign up to join Dana on the Mary Shelley Pilgrimage in April Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong,

dance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Before we begin on the podcast today, just a quick note of housekeeping. If you want to support the show, we're over on Patreon. Patreon.com slash nobleblood Tales, where I release episode scripts and where I do miniseries discussing mostly fictitious television shows based on royals. Right now I'm going through the old CW show Rain episode by episode. So join the Patreon if that interests you. We also have merch at the website dFTBA.com.

We're selling pins, mugs. We had toots. They might have sold out, but all that's very exciting. And then one more announcement. I am leading a pilgrimage to England this April. through this amazing company called Common Grounds. And it's a pilgrimage where we're talking about Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, which I'm just like absolutely thrilled to.

There's a link in the episode description if you're interested. I think there might still be a few slots left. So if you're interested in joining me and traveling throughout England and talking about Mary Shelley and Frankenstein this spring, yeah, look into that. I think that'll be really exciting. So without further ado, here's the episode. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio,

and Grimmin Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion is advised. It was a spring morning when a stranger appeared, straggling out of the woods on the outskirts of the small Swedish village of Odensala. The man was filthy, wearing peasant clothes that fit poorly. They looked borrowed or stolen. Still, even though the man looked like a beggar, there was something familiar in his countenance,

his blue eyes, his long red blonde beard. A whisper carried itself through Odensala faster than a horse could run. This stranger wasn't a vagabond or a peasant. He was King Eric XIV, the King of Sweden. Eric had been missing for three days, ever since he ran off into the woods after what had happened at Uppsala Castle. Had the king been raving like a madman? man lost in the woods for three days straight? Or had he disguised himself as a peasant on purpose, trying to invent a new life for himself? For years, there had been rumors that the king's behavior was verging on erratic, that he was prone to mental instability. But in May of 1567, those rumors would reach a crisis point. King Eric would stain his soul with murder, and there

be no coming back for him. Somehow, word got to the capital that the king had appeared in Odensala, and the king was brought back to Stockholm, where he was bathed, stripped out of his rough peasant clothing, and redressed in the finery befitting of a monarch. He still wasn't talking much sense. His servants and advisors were scared to speak with him. Instead, they brought in his stepmother and then his mistress to help soothe him, to try to get him to explain what had happened. All Eric could do was beg for forgiveness. Please, please forgive me, he said over and over again. Heads of state cause people's deaths all the time.

Wars are fought in their names, sentences carried out for their justice. But those deaths are indirect. In his madness, King Eric. Eric would go one step further. He had imprisoned a group of nobles, a powerful rival family, on largely false charges, but merely containing them wouldn't soothe the nagging voice in Eric's head, the paranoia and fear that had calcified into a cancer. On May 24, 1567, Eric went into the cell where the nobleman Neal's store was being cut. Neal's was on his knees in prayer already. King Eric the 14th raised a dagger and stabbed him.

And then Eric went to the next cell over, where Niels' father was imprisoned. Eric raised the knife again and brought it down, whispering the entire time, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. The trope of royal madness is common and recurring, both in history and in popular culture. Mad seems to be one of those words that's used like, eccentric, to provide a euphemistic sheen to mental illness when someone is wealthy or powerful. Princess Alexandra of Bavaria believed she had swallowed a grand piano made of glass, and that it remained intact inside her, threatening to shatter at any moment.

Charles IV in France was said to have suffered from the glass delusion as well, believing that his own body parts were made of glass instead of flesh. The stories of madness are seemingly endless, and I've covered a fair share of them on this podcast already. There's George III in England who babbled for days straight. Ludwig II in the hills of southern Germany, who spoke to portraits as though they were his dining companions. Carlotta, the ill-fated Empress of Mexico,

and of course there's the Spanish princess known to popular history predominantly as Hwana La Loka. Inbreeding is a favorite armchair explanation for the prevalence of royal madness, that the family trees of Europe were so entangled that mental illness, as a genetic trait, spun its way around royal families the same way the prominent Habsburg Chin did,

or the way hemophilia would after Queen Victoria. A few writers throughout history have suggested that it actually might be the pressures and privileges of being a royal itself that causes a mind to teeter away from sanity. It's a theory, and not a very scientific one, mind you, known as Caesar Madness, the notion that unchecked power could give rise to paranoia and megalomania. But whatever the cause of the madness to come, there weren't any clues that it would emerge at all when Eric was a young prince. Eric was the oldest son of King Gustav I, sometimes known as Gustav Vasa. In many ways, Gustavasa is considered to be the father of modern Sweden.

It was under his authority that Sweden broke from the Catholic Church and began to establish itself in earnest as a Protestant power. Eric was an excellent student, a quick study in languages, history, and math. His mother had died when he was still an infant, and his father had two more sons, John and Charles, by his second wife. Eric would be tutored alongside his younger brother, John, the pair of them wheedling each other, trying to show off for their esteemed tutor, the French Calvinist scholar Dionysus Bioras. In addition to the basic school subjects that one might have expected a young prince to study, Eric also learned astrology, a fundamental tool in any monarch's arsenal in the 16th century

when it came to trying to predict the future. There was one astrological prediction that stuck with Eric for his entire life, that he would be undone by a fair-headed man, a worrying prediction, and also not a very specific one, considering that our young prince was living in Sweden, where fair-headed men are pretty much a crona a dozen. The sense that his crown might be taken away from him was the central concern in Eric's life. One of the most important things he could do in terms of solidifying his power was making an advantageous marriage. Eric set his sights on Queen Elizabeth I in England.

His requests for her hand in marriage were numerous. He started before she even ascended to the throne, back when she was just the sister of the Catholic Queen Mary. But then he continued asking after Elizabeth became a Queen of England in her own right. Eric sent multiple envoys to Elizabeth, and he sent along a beautiful, full-length portrait of himself wearing a dashing orange outfit that I imagine he believed would send Elizabeth. Swooning. After two unsuccessful ambassador missions to secure the marriage, Eric sent his younger half-brother, John, a Duke, to England to plead his case in person. Elizabeth had been stringing Eric along in the most polite terms, never outright rejecting him just in case his proposal might serve a useful purpose when it came to leverage later on.

But eventually, even diplomatic Elizabeth had to be straightforward, writing perhaps one of the most scorchingly devastating letters in history. Translated from the Latin, it reads, A letter truly yours, both in the writing and sentiment, was given to us on 30th December by your very dear brother, the Duke of Finland. And while we perceive, therefore in, the zeal and love of your mind towards us is not diminished, yet in part we are grieved, that we cannot gratify your serene highness with the same kind of affection. And that indeed does not happen because we

doubt in any way of your love and honor, but as often we have testified both in words and in writing, that we have never yet conceived a feeling of that kind of affection towards anyone. We therefore beg, Your Serene Highness, again and again, that you be pleased to set a limit to your love, that it advance not beyond the laws of friendship for the present, nor disregard them in the future. I have always given both to your brother, who is a most excellent prince and deservedly very dear to us, and also to your ambassador likewise, the same answer with scarcely any variation of the world. words, that we do not conceive in our heart to take a husband, but highly commend the single life, and hope that your serene highness will not longer spend time in waiting for us.

Of course, Elizabeth referring to herself as we and us is a prime example of using the royal we. She's only referring to herself. But even after this letter, Eric still wasn't deterred. He decided to make the arrangements to go visit England in person himself. Surely if Elizabeth saw him, his handsome long beard in the Swedish style, his excellent fashion, surely then she would understand just how excellent of a match the pair of them would make. Luckily for Elizabeth, Eric's plans were curtailed. As he was making final arrangements to travel to England, Eric's father died, which meant that he, Eric, was now the king of Sweden. Eric took the regnal name Eric the 14th, even though there had not been 13 previous king

Erics of Sweden. He took that number from the semi-fictitious history of Sweden, written by Olaus Magnus, which traced the glorious Swedish monarchy back to Magog, the grandson of Noah. So, as you can imagine, it's closer to mythology than fact. But it's great PR, not to be just the seventh, Eric, as was more likely, but the 14th, merely the next in a long and illustrious lineage. One of his first moves as the newly crowned King Eric the 14th was to summon representatives of all of the estates of Sweden together in a rickstag, a legislative body almost, like a parliament. The purpose of Eric's political move was simple, to curtail the authority of

his two half-brothers, the royal dukes, and to minimize the role of the nobility altogether. Instead of surrounding himself with the usual cadre of nobleman, Eric selected one man, a commoner named Gorin person, who would go on to become his closest advisor, and, some would argue, the Machiavellian political presence behind Eric's entombed. higher reign. Eric had some reason to be suspicious of nobleman. His half-brother John had married a Polish princess without Eric's permission, which gave John powerful leverage. That was the sort of thing that could give someone the power to overthrow Eric. And to make matters worse for the king, he was still unmarried. Though he had a number of illegitimate children by mistresses,

bastards did no good when it came to having an heir to the throne. It makes a monarch all the more unstable if he can't establish a clear-cut dynasty. Eric tried proposing, not just to Queen Elizabeth, but to princesses and queens all over Europe, including to Elizabeth's rival and cousin Mary Queen of Scots, all to no avail. The only woman that Eric seemed to be able to establish any real relationship with was a Swedish commoner, a woman named Karen Man's daughter. Karen was the daughter of a corporal, and the way the legend goes, she was selling nuts in a Christmas marketplace when the king, strolling through town, saw her and couldn't look away. The selling nuts in a marketplace story is almost certainly fictitious. More grounded sources say that she was a servant in the household of the king's favorite court musician, and that she was serving the king as a waitress while he was drinking with his friend.

But however they met, the king was besotted. She became the king's mistress and was granted a room at court, a significant wardrobe, and servants. It was a small scandal, the king making such a show about a woman with such little pedigree. She must be a witch, people said around the palace. How else could you explain how entranced the king seemed by her all of a sudden? According to one story, Karen Mann's daughter was actually engaged to another man before she caught the king's eye. She wisely dumped her fiancé, but he reappeared, sneaking into the palace after Karen was elevated to her new chambers.

He begged her to come run away with him. The ex-fiancee was caught and brought before the king, who sentenced him to be executed. But even if Karen made the king incredibly jealous, when they were together, she seemed to bring out the best in him. him, calming him down, grounding him. I've noticed that people tend to write about Eric like he's King Kong. In one famous portrait of the King and Karen, she's an angelic figure with long blonde hair wearing a white dress leaning over Eric's right shoulder, while the scheming Goran person hovers over the king's left shoulder, a symbolic angel and devil of the king's decision-making. It was around this time in 1563 that the king's mental illness began to become more pronounced.

He would make arbitrary decisions, snap at people, become randomly violent. And this period was marked by a profound paranoia that the nobles were plotting against him, especially the nobles in the powerful Sturr family. The Stur family patriarch was a man named Svante Stenstrandt, door. His wife, Martha, was the sister of the king's second wife, the mother of Eric's half-brothers. And apologies in advance for this incredibly confusing family tree, Martha was also the aunt of the former king's third wife, which, if you're constructing the mental nap in your head, means that, yes, the king married a woman who died, married another woman who died, and then married

that second woman's niece. The details of the family tree don't matter as much as the larger fact that the Stour family was powerful and deeply entrenched in Swedish nobility. And Svante's oldest son, Niels, was their shining golden boy. The golden boy part was literal.

Nealz had light blonde hair. Eric had never forgotten the prediction that he would be usurped by a blonde man. He became convinced that it was Neal's. In 1566, Eric had Nails arrested and accused of treason for a vague and all but made-up claim that he was, quote, neglecting his duties by not having some peasants properly working at the Fortress Port of Varen. Niels was forced to stand trial before the High Court, and, with Gore-on person standing as chief prosecutor, Niels was found guilty and sentenced to death. Sentencing him to death sounds a little bit more dramatic than it actually was. When Eric became king, he replaced most of the nobles on the High Court with commoners who were loyal to him,

and of course he installed his right-hand man, Goran Person, as chief prosecutor. In the five years between 1562 and 1567, the High Court sentenced over 300 people to death. But almost every one of those sentences were commons. Mute it. Torture was only allowed to be used on people who were already sentenced to death. So that sentence was something of a loophole. Sentencing someone to death meant that you could torture them to get whatever information you wanted out of them, and then you would naturally commute the sentence. So Niels-Tur's sentence of death was almost immediately reduced to merely humiliation. Neil's was forced to wear a crown made of straw, and he was paraded through the streets of Stockholm in a broken-down carriage so that passers-by could shout and throw things at him.

During his procession, Neal's was still bleeding from torture. The idea, insofar as King Eric had an idea, was to so humiliate Neal's door that no one would ever see Neal's as a plausible rival again. and Niels would also serve as an example to the other nobles you might want to undermine the king. The idea backfired completely. Neil Stor's punishment only further reminded the nobles how irrational and arbitrary the king could be. It united the nobles against him. The king probably sensed that the Stor family was whispering and having secret meetings behind his back. At one point, the king sent Neil Stour,

post-humiliation, to try to negotiate a marriage treaty with Princess Renata of Lorraine. Like all of the kings would be marriages, it failed, but the king got wind that maybe Niels had sabotaged him on purpose. And so, gathering evidence against the nobles, the king announced that there was going to be a Rikstad in Uppsala, which, naturally all of the nobles would have to attend. As they were making their way from Stockholm to Uppsala, Eric invited several prominent nobles to join him at Svartjo Castle. They came expecting to be hosted by the king in his court. Instead, it was in ambush.

The nobles were arrested and tried before the high court. Those who fell for the trap were Neil Stour's brother, Eric Stor, Niels' father, Svante Stor, Abraham Stenbuck, Stenbanner, Ivor Iverson, and Sten Erickson. The Reichstag was postponed. The ambush noblemen were sentenced to death and sent to be imprisoned at Uppsala Castle. A few days later, Neil Stour was arrested in Lorraine and brought to Uppsala Castle to join his brother and father.

The delayed Reichstag eventually assembled, although for obvious reasons, it included a smaller representative of nobles than normal. Eric was planning on getting the Reichstag to discuss the sentencing of the accused nobles, but when he stood up to speak before the assembly, he realized he had lost the notes he had prepared for his speech. Fumbling, he wasn't able to speak at all. Meanwhile, Svante's wife, Martha, the sister of the former queen, was desperate to try to figure out how to get her family out of this terrible, unjust situation.

She and her daughter Anna came to Sfarcia to try to get an audience with the king, but they were turned away, not just rejected, but placed under house arrest with guards in the nearby village. Martha kept trying to figure out what was going on. She begged Karen Mann's daughter, the voice of reason in the king's ear, to intervene on her behalf, to ask the king to release the stores who hadn't done anything wrong. Martha eventually made her way to Uppsala Castle. and met with Karen, who was able to offer her reassurances that Eric promised her that he wouldn't hurt the prisoners.

But the king's promise didn't seem to mean much. The king began acting erratically, stalking up and down the hallways of Uppsala Castle where the prisoners were being kept, sometimes seeming angry, sometimes apologizing. At one point, the king entered Svante's door's cell, where he fell to his knees, begging for Svante's forgiveness. I promise, the king said, this will all be handled and there will be a full reconciliation. There wasn't. On May 24, 1567, in what might be characterized as a manic state, the king ran into the chamber where they were keeping Niels Sturr. The king had a dagger drawn. When he saw Niels, he shouted, So there thou art thou traitor. Allegedly, Niels was reading a prayer book at the time. He had only moments from when he saw the king coming at him to proclaim his

innocence, to pray for forgiveness, but the king ignored him. King Eric stabbed Neil's door until he was dead. Eric's hand still shaking, still covered in blood, but still gripping the knife, Eric stood and went next door, into the room where Svante's door, Niels' father, was imprisoned. The king fell to his knees before the man for the second time, while Svante slowly absorbed what had happened. The shouting he had heard, the king before him covered in blood, the knife. I'm sorry, the king said, I'm so sorry, but I can never expect you to be able to forgive me for killing your son. And then, before Svante could react, King Eric stabbed him as well. Leaving the room, Eric let the bloody dagger fall to his side, but he

kept it in his hand. He turned to the head guard, a royal provost marshal. Kill all of the other prisoners, he ordered, except Herr Sten. The guards obliged. Niels and Svante Stor were already dead, but the guards killed the remaining noblemen imprisoned in Uppsala Castle. Two men were spared, Sten Axelson and Sten Erickson, because they were both named Sten, and none of the guards were sure which of them the king. had been referring to. The king wandered outside the castle, still manic, covered in blood, holding the dagger. His old tutor, Dionysus Baris, found him and tried to calm the king down. But the king was long gone. He shoved off his tutor. Kill him too, he said to the guards,

and they obliged. From there, the king wandered into the woods, where he disappeared for three days, only to reappear later, dressed as a peasant in a nearby village. The guards at Uppsala were ordered to keep the deaths a secret, and so they still stood guard and still received food deliveries and gifts from the prisoners' families, as if there were still men in the cells. It's likely that the Rikstadgan session didn't know on May 27th, when Goran person arranged for them to sign to the fact the nobles had been traitors and should be sentenced to death, that they were all already dead. Person was covering the king's tracks, retroactively turning the murders into executions. After the king was brought back to Stockholm,

no one dared speak to him or hold an audience with him. It was only the king's final stepmother, his father's third wife, who was brave enough to approach him. She was the first person to be granted an audience. Upon seeing the dowager queen, The cousin of several of the men who had been killed, Eric fell to his knees and wept. He begged her for forgiveness and began working with her immediately on establishing some sort of settlement for the families of the men. The two stents who had been spared were released, and Svante's wife, Martha, soon arrived to help negotiate the reconciliation. The king agreed that there had been a, quote, venomous person who had advised him to do the execution. meaning, really, they were all the fault of Goran Person.

That would be enough later on for the senators who would later be appointed to hold power as Eric's faculties continued to slip. Goran person would be arrested and found guilty of percolation and perjury, although the senators wouldn't execute him. They would merely imprison him in case the king recovered his sentences. But for the time being, Eric was still the king, and whether it was madness or love, he turned all of his attention to his mistress, Karen Mann's daughter, doing everything he could to marry her legitimately and to legitimize the two children that he already had by her, even though she was a full commoner. The two were married Morgan-Adically in secret, December 29, 1567, and then married officially in the next year. Karen had warned the Dowager Queen

that Eric was planning on killing his two stepbrothers, the dukes, and perhaps wisely they both stayed away from the wedding. But Eric and his half-brother John were able to reconcile. Eric forgave him for any past transgressions as long as he recognized that the marriage between the king and Karen was fully legitimate and as long as John honored their son Gustavus as the next king. John agreed, although I wonder if an eye roll was implicit. The king's attempts to legitimize his commoner wife,

whom he elevated to queen with the name Caterina Magnus daughter, would be the final nail in the coffin of his reputation. Though Karen was kind and I'm sure people liked her as a person, she was a commoner, a bar wench. It was as sure a sign of lunacy as anything the king had done, trying to pass her off as a rightful queen. For her part, Karen seemed aware of the, tricky position that the king had put her in, and she was more than aware of the public's feelings

towards her. In a letter to the king's sisters, her new sisters-in-law, she referred to herself not as queen, but as Eric's, quote, chosen queen, language that couches herself with humility, a phrase that seems to imply, yes, I also know that this is a little out of the ordinary. After the wedding, Eric issued a circular to be distributed among the people, giving thanks that he had been delivered from the assaults of the devil, saying, in short, that he was no longer mad. The problem with the writing, however, was that madness was visible in every sentence. It was finally time for his brothers to depose him, which they did fairly easily.

The king won two victories against the rebels, But by September of 1568, they captured Stockholm, and King Eric surrendered both his crown and Gorin Persson. John was declared to be King John III, and he basically immediately ordered that Goran person be executed, a very slow death by torture and then eventually beheading. The former King Eric was imprisoned alongside his beloved commoner wife, Karen, in a series of castles. The only known portrait we have of Karen, the first commoner queen of Sweden, is from this period. It's a scribble of her that the king did, a sketch. While in prison, Karen and the king had two more children who died as infants in the terrible conditions of

captivity. After that, the new king kept Karen imprisoned separately to prevent her from having more children who might become a threat to the new royal line. In his diary, Aaron, Eric wrote, They took my wife from me. Eric spent two more years imprisoned alone before he died. In autopsy, centuries later, confirmed what had long been rumored. He had been poisoned by arsenic. According to legend, the arsenic came in his final meal of pea soup. In the end, it was a fair-haired man who deposed him.

His brother John was blonde. That's the sad story of Eric the 14th, King of Sweden, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear about what happened to Karen Mann's daughter and their children. You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance, and then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientists. insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation.

There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHeart Podcast presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hips since high school. Absolutely. Now a redacted amount of years later. We're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. Wider. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my

Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drink. Sidebar. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Well, they had a bogo. Well, then you got it. Do you want a white collar something here? Just hit it. Oh, what are y'all doing? Microphones? Are you making a rap album? Oh, I would.

Come on. I would buy it. Cuts through the defense like a hot knife through sponge cake. That sounds delicious. Oh, you're lucky I'm not a drug addict. You're lucky I'm not an alcoholic. You are. I'm not a killer.

I love this team, and I'm really trying to be a figure in their lives that they can rely on. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Listen to Soccer Moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. After the King's death, Karen Mann's daughter was released from imprisonment, no longer seen as any real threat. She was given an estate in Finland where she was allowed to live for the rest of her life.

And she was well liked there, making friends, especially among the peasantry. When there would be a peasant rebellion years later, they wouldn't plunder her estate. Karen and Eric's daughter, Sigrid, became a lady in waiting to the new king's daughter, her cousin, and she would eventually marry two Swedish noblemen. Karen and Eric's son, however, would have a much more challenging life. Though Sigrid had been allowed to stay with Karen in prison, their son Gustavus was taken from her, sent to be educated by Jesuits in Poland. There is only one confirmed meeting of Karen getting to see her son again.

In 1595, in Estonia, Gustavus had become a Catholic. He didn't recognize his mother, and he had forgotten how to speak Swedish. She only knew it was her son at all because she recognized his birthmarks. He was poor, wearing ragged clothes, working as a mercenary. Karen did her best to try to give her son money, to try to provide for him, to try to persuade the Swedish king to allow her son to return to his home country. But the government refused. Gustavus was banished for life.

It was too big of a risk to have the son of a deposed king in the country. Gustavus remained a vagabond, dying alone in central Russia in 1607. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz. Executive producers include Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show is produced by Rima Ilkha Ali and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noblebloodtales.com.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans.

I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. guaranteed human.