Science Vs - Nightmare on Science Street

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

Today, we’re sharing a collection of spooky science stories. You’ll hear about a nightmare in the ocean, a nightmare on land, and even a nightmare … IN YOUR MIND. We talk to scientists including marine biologist, Dr. Olga Shpak and malacologist Jaynee Kim. Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/3O4Ag22  See the video Olga’s team shot of killer whales attacking a bowhead here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OskmkWV0Ypk  This episode was produced by Wendy Zukerman, Michelle Dang, Meryl Horn, Ilya Kolmanovsky, and Rose Rimler. Extra help from Courtney Gilbert. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Wendy Zukerman is the Executive Producer. Fact checking by Diane Kelly. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Emma Munger, Bobby Lord and SoWylie. Our amazing Barbershop Quartet is Bobby Lord, Peter Leonard and Austin Mitchell. Thanks to the researchers we got in touch with for this episode, including Katharina Lüth and Dr. David Wyler. Special thanks to everyone who helped us this season!! Rasha Aridi, Nick DelRose, Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, Jack Weinstein, Chris Suter, Ingrid Gilbert, Kayla Stokes, Lonnie Ro, Wade and Christabel Nsiah Buadi, The Zukerman Family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet. Today is our last episode of the season. That's right, you'll have to get your kicks on Route 66 from now on. But to send you off, we've got a banger of an episode as we take a stroll down Nightmare on Science Street. Okay. It's a dark and foggy night. And you're lost.

There's no way out of this podcast. Except, of course, my way. Mwah! For this episode, the team here at Science Versus is bringing you a collection of tales that we've gathered from the scary side of town. We've got it all. There's a nightmare in the ocean, a nightmare on land,

a nightmare in the ocean. A nightmare on land. A nightmare in your mind. There are stories of facing foes. Taming terrors. There's even an adorable Labrador. A puppy. So spark up your Bunsen burners and step with me into the shadows. Nightmare on Science Street is coming up. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations.

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And what do they think? I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. Welcome back. All right. So listen closely. Our first tale about a nightmare on Science Street comes from producer Meryl Horne. It's a story of someone who tries to escape from a world of nightmares with only the power of her mind. Meryl takes it from here. So I want you to meet Julia. She's German, and by day, she lives a pretty wholesome life.

She loves to garden and hike, and she teaches yoga. But at night, things get darker. As long as I can remember, even when I was a teenager or younger as a kid, I've had nightmares. She doesn't really get recurring nightmares. Every time it'll be something different. Sometimes it's just a creepy dream.

And sometimes I would just like dream of someone that I hardly know standing naked beside my bed eating fish and chips or something like that, like covering me in tomato sauce. And it would be just really nonsense dreams that are kind of uncomfortable because you don't want to be covered in tomato sauce in your bed by a person you don't know. But sometimes it's less tomato sauce and more blood. Julia's gone through phases where every night for weeks she'd have these horrible dreams. So it would just be any kind of violence you can think of. My parents having their head cut off in front of me

and me watching, not being able to do anything. Sometimes a bad thing would happen and then I would be the violent person, like killing someone with a knife or something like that. I'm often surprised by how much violence my brain can make up. How does it affect you the next day? Sometimes I would just wake up being all shaky or being completely wet in my face because I've been crying for a long time while dreaming.

Oh my gosh. But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that I would be still kind of anxious because there's so much emotion in the dream and I would like carry them throughout the day just having this feeling of the world is bad and cruel and horrible things exist. For a lot of people who get nightmares it's related to post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. There's also been an uptick in nightmares during the pandemic. But for Julia, who's had them for ages and doesn't

have PTSD, she doesn't know where her nightmares come from. And actually, nobody really knows. Scientists have been arguing about why people get dreams for decades. Freud was like, maybe dreams are a portal to the unconscious, and that umbrella in your dreams, it's a penis. And others are like, we've got it. Our brains are computers and our dreams are just noise, like a static that flickers at night. But the thing that makes sense to Julia is this idea that dreams just pluck out things from our daily lives

because she's noticed that her brain just tends to latch on to any little hint of violence that she sees. If I watch a movie with someone being beaten up, I will pretty, it's pretty likely that I will have that dream. So that I stopped quite early, like I haven't watched violent movies in 10 years, probably. Yeah, no stranger things for her. And this helped a little, but it didn't really stop the nightmares. One day, a few years ago, she was telling her friend about all of this,

and this friend was actually a grad student in neuroscience. And she told Julia, Did you know there's a therapy to cure you from nightmares? And I was like, what? Are you serious? I've never heard of this, but this sounds exactly like what I need. The therapy that Julia's friend told her about is based on this wild idea that's been around since at least the 80s, that you can change what you dream about when you're asleep by changing what you think about when you're awake. It's called imagery rehearsal therapy. So this is what Julia had to do. Her therapist told her, step one, pick a nightmare.

Step two, flip the script. Rewrite your nightmare into a happier story. And then step three, you tell yourself that happier version of your dream over and over again while you're awake. So first, Julia picked out a nightmare that she's had. In the dream, Julia and her best friend were walking along this city in southern Spain. There are beautiful old houses, balconies, orange trees. But then things take a turn. Bombs would drop on the buildings next to us, and there were just many many many people on the street like being hurt and yeah we were just running randomly around and trying to escape but couldn't. So in her nightmare this little city turned into a war zone that Julia and her friend were trapped in. But then Julia reimagined it changing up the story entirely. Her therapist told her to include lots of little sensory details,

smells and tastes. So here's what she came up with. It started the same, walking in the city in Spain. Instead of bumps dropping, it would be us just walking around and then going further, hiking to a beautiful park, sitting down, smelling some flowers, looking at the trees. There would be warm wind in my face. I think we got some mangoes, some fresh mangoes, and kids would be playing on the street.

Julia typed up this nice version of the dream, printed it out, and then she read it to herself every afternoon for a couple of weeks. So for around 20 minutes every day, she'd picture this beautiful story really vividly. Her therapist told her that by running through this nice dream over and over again, she could maybe retrain her brain. But even though she was doing this day after day, she didn't really think it could work. I honestly have to say I didn't really believe in this. I thought it just sounds too simple for such a big thing. Then I thought, it can't be true. It can't work. No way. But weirdly, her nightmares started dropping off right away. On most nights, she'd go to bed and no bombs. After that, for a really long time, I didn't have any nightmares.

So yeah, this worked for other bad dreams too, not just that one in Spain that she had practiced on. That training had taught her brain that she wasn't powerless against her nightmares. She could get out of them. And she was running wild with this new superpower. It was really fascinating because I still had the beginnings of nightmares. So I would still like walk down an empty street at night and someone would be following me. But then after doing this therapy, the dream would turn into something nice. So I could really like watch my brain

turning the beginning of a nightmare into a good story. And then it would end like the person just running because he needs to catch a bus or because I lost something and he wants to bring it to me or something like that. Zooming out, psychologists have been studying this kind of therapy that Julia got to work out how effective it is. Some studies, like one that tried it on Vietnam war vets, found that it didn't work at all. But then other studies are finding that it really works, helping like 70% of people who do it. We're still figuring out what's going on here.

But for Julia, it's been about four years since she did the therapy. And she still occasionally gets nightmares, but she feels better knowing that if they ever got really bad again, she has a way out. I'm still really surprised this works. And I was like telling all my friends like, do you have nightmares? Did you know there's a cure? I also on the other side have really, really beautiful dreams sometimes. Oh really? Like what?

Just like walking around the forest and being the happiest person in the world. I really often dream about being madly in love. Really? Recently I had a dream. It was not a special dream, just walking around somewhere. But then there would be really loud music of the Backstreet Boys and everyone would be dancing. And then I woke up and I was just like,

what, did I really just have a dream with Backstreet Boys and dancing and having a lot of fun. And so Wendy, Julia was like, when I dream, I want it that-a-way. That-a-way. Yeah. Can you tell me why? Because they were so nice. No, it's part of the Backstreet Boys. Tell me why? Because they were so nice. No, it's part of the backstory, boys.

Tell me why. Ain't nothing but a heartbeat. Right, exactly. Thanks, Meryl. Our second story for today takes us far away from the nightmares in our head, but to a scientist who's living inside a nightmare. This story came to us from producer Ilya Komanovsky, and he told us about this amazing scientist that you're going to hear from. So late one evening, me and Ilya called her up.

And Ilya tells the story from here. Dr. Olga Shpak studies bowhead whales out in the far east of Russia, in the Ohotsk Sea. And these bowheads were heavily hunted, and by 1960s, they almost died out. So Olga has been studying the ones that are left, trying to count them, to see how many bowhead whales there are.

But she told me if you or I would see a bullhead breaching the water, you'd forget about science and be awestruck just by its sheer size. So this is a huge, huge animal. Imagine a large bus. Books say they reach 100 tons. It's like a dozen elephants. And Olga takes biopsies of these giants so she can ultimately ID each and every one of them. That means her day would begin with her jumping in this small inflatable boat with a crossbow. So yes, we do it, and we do it with a crossbow. We shoot an arrow with a special tip, with a biopsy tip, and the arrow penetrates the skin, but only the skin. And the arrow falls off, pulling off a teeny bit of the whale's skin. And then Olga goes in her

little boat to collect it. So by now you should know two things. Olga is a badass who uses a crossbow for her research, and bowhead whales are some of the biggest and sturdiest whales in the world. It was hard to imagine how any animal could kill one, you know, other than humans. But then, several years ago, Olga saw a bowhead whale get attacked in this really gruesome way.

And at the time, she didn't know any researchers who had documented this before. So it all started in the summer of 2015. Olga is in her small inflatable boat in the Ahotsk Sea. The water is calm and blue. She and her colleague see a beautiful bowhead whale and move in close to get a biopsy. But then they see a family of killer whales. Five or six of them, it's hard to tell.

And you need to know that this bowhead, although it's just an adolescent, Killer whales. Five or six of them. It's hard to tell. And you need to know that this bowhead, although it's just an adolescent, is much bigger than these killer whales. Several times heavier. So it doesn't seem like the bowhead should be in trouble. But then suddenly, Olga notices that one of the killer whales is accelerating and it's heading straight for the bowhead. Huge, huge, huge speed.

It rams into the whale. It's amazing. And they keep doing this time after time after time. They're moving with such speed that every time they ram into the bowhead, they flip over its giant body. And Olga realizes that they're ramming the whale at one specific place, the ribs, right behind the front flipper.

It looks like they're trying to break the whale's ribs and puncture its lungs. And they do it. It's like you have no doubt that the ribs are broken. The whale was spitting out blood from its nostrils. The whale is fiercely trying to protect itself. And the only thing the bowhead whale can protect itself with is the huge and powerful tail. So the bowhead whale is thrashing its tail around, trying to whack the little bastards out of the way. Blood and blubber start seeping from the wounds.

Yeah, of course we see the blood. I mean, when we are, if like sometimes we were like 40 meters away, of course we see the blood, like the entire boat is covered with blubber. The killer whales keep ramming into the ribs of the bowhead and when the whale is weak, they start biting it and pushing the whale down to drown it. The whale is losing massive amounts of blood and is having trouble breathing. And that's it. The hunt was successful. When the whale is dead and they started to eat it, they tear the whale apart. They tear the jaw, they eat the tongue,

and feast on it for several hours. What does it feel like being in the middle of all that? Exciting. Exciting? Yes, it looks terrible, but just imagine how much adrenaline you get when you see this. I mean, no matter how terrible it looks, it's nature. It's very powerful.

As a scientist, I must say it was exciting. Indigenous people in the Arctic knew that the killer whales could take down bowheads. And now, Olga's team had filmed it so the world could see. But when you see it, you don't think that you're the first team of scientists that it's happening. You're just totally immersed in the situation. I'm just thinking, I don't think much. You have too many things to do. So you're busy and excited and busy and excited. When Olga told Wendy and me this whole saga of the whale attack, it was late where she was, past midnight. So, hold on, I lost my thought.

It's, uh, Ilya. I can't pronounce it, okay. You're doing great. Yeah, just... The Zoom cut out entirely at one point. Yeah, Olga, can you hear us Olga and I talked to Wendy about Olga but yeah she looks very tired I mean I haven't seen her in like a month or so she's much much more tired so I can only imagine what she's been through during that month.

Yeah. None of what we spoke about so far was anywhere near a nightmare for Olga. She's a scientist, and she was excited to be in the middle of killer whales doing their kill. But now she's living her worst nightmare. Olga is Ukrainian. She's from Kharkiv, a large Ukrainian city near the Russian border. And for months now, it's been under heavy attack by Russia. A few days before the war began in February, Olga was in Russia, in Moscow. That's where she worked at a scientific institute, and that's where she studied

the whales for years. When she got back on the Zoom, we stopped talking about the whales and started talking about what's been happening. So I lived and worked in Russia, and I loved my work. I loved people I worked with in Russia. And then in late February, I just started to worry that, I mean, I started to worry about the situation. I just started to worry and I started to go crazy. And on February 23, I came to Kharkov to be with my mom

if something happens. We had a wonderful family night. And then we all woke up at five in the morning. On February 24. What woke you up? My brother's call. He woke up because of bonding. And he called me immediately to say the war started.

Like, he woke me up with the words, the war started. And this is when everything changed. And now, Olga is a volunteer in Kharkiv, organizing food and medicine, anything she can. Like, a couple of weeks ago, a friend of Olga's came to her. He brought pizzas. He brought a full car of pizzas. And he calls me and he says,

like, I have a full car of pizzas, but I will only give them to children. So your task is to find a place where about 40, 50 children are concentrated. I'm like, okay. So she asked around and found out that lots of kids were hiding inside the metro station, like in a bomb shelter. So me and him, we together came down to that metro station. We were giving out pizzas to children.

That was such a touching event. Because first of all, when we came down there, we found children playing football underground. They had their new normal. And it's amazing. It's amazing to see this adaptation. Screaming, playing. As soon as the word pizza was pronounced, they were like ants. They started to come from all the places.

But Olga says this was a rare moment of joy. Most days, it's just horrific. There's so many people being killed. You just can't imagine what's happening here. It's too devastating. To just distract yourself or have you ever in the last months now been thinking about, like, whales in your old work or you just can't? Honestly, honestly, honestly, no.

To be honest, I get so tired. Like, I simply, like, my colleagues still send me emails and the work hasn't stopped i i just uh i'm in wales like there is no seriously there's no space for wales like besides i don't think that the whales will feel worse without me at least for a couple of months so they can they can survive just fine uh everything changed in my life on February 24. So I hope to be back to science. But to be honest, now I'm not even sure I will be. And I definitely don't know when I will be.

Since we spoke, Kharkiv has continued to be hit by Russian rockets. And just a few days ago, Olga buried her first family member. Her cousin Anna was born the same year as Olga, and she died on the battlefield in Ukraine. And no one knows when this nightmare

will end. Ilya Komanovsky is a science journalist from Russia. When the war started, he fled the country. He hosts his own podcast called Naked Mole Rat, which is in Russian. After the break, a stranger in leopard print confronts an adorable puppy and things go sideways fast.

Welcome back. We have one final tale to spin for you. And for this, we're going to talk to my mother-in-law. Hello. Hi, Margot. Hi, Wendy. This is Margot, and we're here to talk about something that happened to her dog. They both live in Sydney, Australia, and Margot told me about the first day that she picked up a little Luna from a batch of golden Labrador pups. And that was just gorgeous.

There were all these beautiful roly-poly golden darlings, indistinguishable. She took puppy Luna home and Luna did as puppies do. Oh, she really liked chasing balls. Classic. It's a classic. Yeah, it is. And, yeah, just hang out with you and be charming. It's so cute. Very cute.

Luna quickly became part of the pack, following Margot and the family around everywhere, carrying her little teddy in her mouth as she went. She loved to romp and play outside. But then, one day, she started acting a little bit odd. Like, there's this ramp into the backyard at Margot's place. But Luna didn't want to walk down it. It just seemed really odd that she wouldn't go down. She seemed a little bit weak in the back of legs

maybe. And then, spunky little Luna lost all her spark. Her tail stopped wagging. I thought this is really serious. So Margot took Luna to the vet and at first they said we can't see anything wrong just keep an eye on her. So Margot did and Luna got worse. She took her back to the vet, to a different doctor. She had some suspicions and she gave Luna a very thorough examination and prodded around on her joints in her spine and hips and she said, I think it might be rat lungworm. Rat lungworm.

That's what I said. Had you ever heard of rat lungworm before? No, I was really horrified. What? It sounded so horrible. Rat lungworm. It's a small, clear, parasitic worm. But it got into puppy Luna.

How? Well, the vet told Margot that Luna probably ate something that was infested with these parasites. And immediately an image popped into Margot's head. It was just a few days before little Luna got sick. Margot had stepped out into the yard. And I saw her little puppy Luna and she was chewing something and I saw half a slug on the grass and I thought, oh, she's eating a slug and thought nothing of it. They're called leopard slugs and they have

like this leopard pattern sometimes on all of them and sometimes from the waist down. It's like a little dress. Leopard pants. And these leopard slugs are actually an invasive species that came to Australia from Europe and they could be massive, like eight inches long. Margot says it's about the size of a fat asparagus. Oh, goodness.

So when Luna ate half, that's quite a lot of the slug. Yeah. And I had no idea this was a risk to her. And it was a risk because hiding in the little pants of that slug was this rat lungworm parasite, which ended up wreaking all kinds of havoc on Luna. So what did her symptoms become? Oh, she got really weak.

She could barely walk. She was very, very floppy and incontinent. It was heartbreaking. It was about two weeks of 24-hour nursing her. One of us slept with her in the night and, yeah, poor little thing, she was so sick. Luna became paralysed from her waist down. And so we wanted to know why.

Like, what's the science behind this freaky parasite? So for now, we're going to leave little Luna, and spoiler alert, she's going to be okay. And producer Michelle Dang is going to get to the bottom of this rat lungworm. Yeah, all these ideas were swirling around. Rat, lung, worm, but then also slugs? It was like someone was picking a bunch of words out of a hat.

And I was super curious. What were these things doing to Luna? So I found a scientist who's an expert on both these parasites and slugs. And right away, she blew my mind. Slugs are in fact snails. They're just different degrees of this shell-lessness. So there are some snails that have no shell, and then there are also snails that have internal shells.

This is Janie Kim. She works at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu in malacology, which includes snails and slugs. And yeah, only once in a blue moon will you hear a malacologist like Janie say the word slug. It just slips out sometimes, but yeah. Okay, so let's get to the stuff of nightmares. The little rat lungworm parasites lurking inside the slug, which ended up in Luna. The first thing you need to know is that from the parasite's perspective, Luna was actually an accident. The parasite did not want to end up there. To explain why, let's rewind the clock. Back to our slimy guy exploring Margo's backyard.

Luna! This time, instead of Luna eating the slug, let's imagine that a rat ate that slug up. The parasite has a happy little life cycle inside this rat. It actually makes babies that will hatch inside the rat's lungs. And the larvae are coughed up by the rat and are swallowed and excreted in the feces of the rat. Wait, wait, let me back you up too. Did you say that the rat coughs up the parasite? Yes.

It's kind of gross. It's like it has something in its throat, right, or in its lungs. So it's like coughing that up. Yeah, the rat coughs the parasite up, just enough to be swallowed. And then they get pooped out into a fresh turd, which the slug comes along and eats. And to a slug, this turd is a tasty treat. A lot of snails are detritivores, so they're like the garbage men of the forest, I guess. So they'll eat like leaf litter and things on the ground and decaying plants and also poop. So the slug eats the poop because that's what they do. They clean up the forest floors.

And oddly, the parasite also needs the slug for its life cycle. It grows up there, you know, graduates from parasite high school. And Janice found that slugs can get pretty infested with these parasites. We found that there could be up to millions, millions of parasites in a single specimen. Wow, that is a lot. Yeah. And when we found that out, it was just like, oh my goodness, this could be really bad for somebody if they ate this. Really bad for somebody or somebody's dog like Luna. While rats seem to tolerate this parasite pretty well, possibly because they evolve side by side, when dogs get infected,

they can get really sick. The parasite can travel into their central nervous system and get stuck there. For reasons that scientists don't fully understand, the parasite can't complete its life cycle. So one by one, the parasites just die. And when the parasites die, it can cause an immune reaction, and that can lead to swelling and inflammation in the brain. This is what was happening to Luna. The parasite caused inflammation in her nervous system, which made it hard to walk. That could be what made her all floppy. And this can happen in humans too. Sometimes people eat raw or undercooked slugs and get sick.

There have been over 2,800 documented cases around the world. And it can cause some pretty awful stuff. Vomiting, nausea, nerve damage, and paralysis. A young man from Margo's area in Australia ate a slug as a joke and was paralyzed for eight years. He ended up dying from it. And while this disease is rare, since scientists have been tracking this parasite, they're seeing it in more and more places.

Janie's worried it might get worse with climate change because the parasite seems to survive better in warmer and wetter places. Over in Australia, one paper found that they've been seeing more of this disease in dogs in the last several years, which takes us back to Luna. Like we said, the reason she was so sick was because her immune system went into overdrive, responding to all those dead parasites in her body. So the vet gave her steroids to help tamp down that immune response. And it worked.

Margot told Wendy that Luna gradually became stronger. And I knew things were really good when the tail started wagging again. Yeah. What does Luna look like now? Oh, Luna is beautiful. She's robust, cheerful, curious, lively, extremely confident, knows no fear, naughty.

But she still eats slugs. It's heartbreaking, Wendy. Really? Yeah. So Luna keeps eating. She hasn't learnt her lesson? No, because dogs don't do cause and effect really unless it's instant. And, yeah, often when she's eating something,

I want to get it out of her mouth. So, unfortunately, she's learned to swallow very quickly. If I come at her with that look, what are you eating? But I'm training her now to, if you give me that, I'll give you a better treat. Hey, Luna. I've got a biscuit. Sit. Good girl.

Wait. Luna, find it. You've found a good girl. So that's it from us. We've taken our peek down the nightmare on Science Street. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Hello, Blythe Terrell. Hello, Wendy Zuckerman.

Do, do, do. Rose Rimla's here. Hello. Hey, Meryl Horne. Hi, Wendy. Connie's here. Connie Gilbert's here Hello Hey Meryl Horne Hi Wendy Connie's here Connie Gilbert's here Hey Wendy

Where's Michelle Where's Michelle Hello Alright team It's our last citations For season 12 Dun dun dun Let's make it a goodie

How many citations In this week's episode 96 96 96 If people want to see These citations Where should week's episode? 96. 96. If people want to see these citations, where should they go? Click on the link to the script in the show notes. I like that.

That was beautiful. Michelle, on Instagram this week, what's going on? So there's going to be a really cute roly-poly Labrador. And there's also going to be some really pretty snails from Janie. They're very pretty. So if people want to see them, it's at science underscore versus. If you want to keep in touch with the show while we're out, you can tweet me at Wendy Zook. And now to finish us off, Blythe, what have we got?

You are about to hear some of our very favorite moments from this season. Enjoy. How do you feel about being my trusty sidekick? I feel emasculated. I'm smiling. I do feel some tingles. I feel really good. The closest thing I can think of is like goosebumps,

but it's not goosebumps, though. It's something different. Oh, that is who I want. Like, that's who I am. What are they saying? Happy birthday? They say, Is it, like, poop at that point, or is it something different?

It's more mushroom soup, I would say. This is the most obviously incontrovertibly deliberate fraud I've ever seen. You listen to your own podcast. Cell phone there, Wendy. You and your mum. So she was here. She definitely made her voice heard. How would she feel?

I think she'll be quite happy we're talking about her today, if you ask me. Thank you so much for listening and laughing with us. We love making the show and we couldn't do it without you. This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, Michelle Dang, Meryl Horn, Ilya Komanovsky, and Rose Rimler. Extra help from Courtney Gilbert. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. I'm the executive producer. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Emma Munger, Bobby Lord and So Wiley.

Our amazing barbershop quartet is Bobby Lord, Peter Leonard and Austin Mitchell. Also, our Neil Young impersonator from earlier this season was Bobby Lord. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go and listen to our episode about the Joe Rogan, Robert Malone interview. Thanks to all of the researchers we got in touch with for this episode, including Katerina Luth and Dr. David Wyler. And a special thanks to everyone who helped us out this season.

Rasha Aridi, Nick Delrose, Akedi Foster-Keys, Jack Weinstein, Chris Suter, Ingrid Gilbert, Kayla Stokes, Lonnie Roe Wade, Christabel N. Cia Buadi, the Zuckerman family, and Joseph LaVelle Wilson. I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and we are going to back to you in September. Hear you then. Like, rather than see you then, hear you then. Doesn't really work.