The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – 99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them by Ashely Alker M.D.

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them by Ashely Alker M.D. https://www.amazon.com/99-Ways-Die-Avoid-Them/dp/1250359643 Aalkermd.com An illuminating, hilarious, and practical guide to 99 of the most terrifying ways to die and how to avoid them from an emergency medicine doctor. Dr. Ashely Alker is a self-described death escapologist―or, in more familiar terms, an emergency medicine doctor. She has seen it all, from flesh-eating bacteria to the work of a serial killer to the more mundane but no less deadly, and her work outwitting the end has uniquely prepared her to write this book. Dr. Alker manages to shock readers while making them laugh, educating them on how to outsmart a wide range of deadly situations and conditions. Many of the chapters include stories from her experiences in life and medicine, at times heartwarming, others heartbreaking. Sections include explorations of sex, poison, drugs, biological warfare, disease, animals, crime, the elements, and much more. An Anthony Bourdain-style greatest hits tour of death, 99 Ways to Die is entertaining while it informs. Full of valuable advice and wild stories, this riveting read might just save your life.

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the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. Chris Foss won on the TikTok. Do you know that 99% of the time I make up the ramble? Something like that. I don't know. I got 99 ways on my brain here. We're going to be talking to a wonderful young lady about her new book.

It is entitled, 99 Ways to Die and How to Avoid That. So this might be an important show for you to watch. Because if you're not here tomorrow, we're going to be like, hey, he didn't listen to the show. He didn't avoid the 99 ways to die. Ashley Alker, the doctor who's going to be on the show with us. We're going to be talking to real doctors for a change. I know other podcasts, they like to talk to quacky people. We like to talk to real doctors and people who are certified in knowing what they're doing.

It's kind of a weird thing we have about facts and stuff in this, in the stilio. So we're going to get into it with Ashley. and talk about her insights and all that good stuff. Welcome to the show. Dr. Ashley, how are you? Thanks for having me. I'm pretty good. Thanks for coming.

And do you want me to call you a doctor during the show or Ashley? You can call me Ashley. There's some doctors don't like to be called doctor during the show. They're like, give me a break. I think you're afraid I'm going to ask you if this is infected or not. That's my favorite doctor joke. Yeah, medical advice. We get hit up for that a lot.

But this is this green thing on my arm look infected? did. Anyway, so Ashley, you're an emergency medical physician on a mission to improve public health. What? Well, you study at Harvard of public health's multinational institute in Cyprus where she lived near the United Nations Green Zone, worked in humanitarian affairs at the unit for the rehabilitation of victims of torture. So husbands, ex-husbands. After graduating for Georgia University of Medicine, she said, served as a health care advisor for a U.S. Congressman. Wow. During residency and emergency medicine at the University of California, she became a technical consultant medical screenwriter,

improving, well, she was in California, right? Improving medical accuracy on over 20 shows, TV, film, and Netflix, Hulu, Disney, and her nonprofit, meaningful media will get into as well. So welcome the show, Dr. Alker. Give us dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs?

I am on all social media platforms as A-A-L-K-E-R-A-E-L-K-R-A-L-K-R-M-D, so that's pretty easy. And then I have a website for me and for my nonprofit. So my website is Ashley Alker-M-D.com and that first name is spelled A-S-H-E-L-Y.

And then My Meaningful Media. org is the nonprofit. Oh, well, I think that's cool. You were on these, you were doing these TV shows. To make sure they're accurate and medical accuracy. You know, the TV shows always like to use that. What's that one crutch they use where you could knock people out?

And then they're going to be fine with no brain damage afterwards. But somehow, you know, the guy can always get away by knocking someone out or whatever. And you're like, I don't think it works that way. I don't think you live through that, right? That and all like the shots in the neck with like an immediate, you know, we have things that can immediately paralyze you, but you're going to stop breathing. You know, all these sedatives that work like within seconds by like shooting them into tissue. It's basically like, you know, there's, there's worse things than that, though.

Some of it's, you know, poetic license maybe to fit a storyline, but other things perpetuate misinformation for generations. Like you can't sleep after a concussion and doctors search for bullets and you wake up after CPR. Those are the types of things we got to fix. I'll bet you have some interesting conversations on the set about that, right? maybe some arguments with the producer where you're like, well, I understand, you know, the poetic license you're trying to make here, but, you know, reality is reality. I don't know.

I've been pretty lucky because the people who, you know, take the time to talk to experts about this stuff and understand the value of the passive health education we can get in TV and film, those people are pretty dedicated to, you know, creating a story around the science because they know that it makes better television. So for instance, one of the last shows that I worked on was with J.J. Abrams and his, like, wonderful production crew. And he is somebody who seems to be very dedicated to creating a story around the science and using what we have to build the science fiction portion. And I think that that's why people connect with the work so well. I mean, you see it right now on the pit, right? Like the medical accuracy on that show is one of the reasons people are so invested is they

see it. And even if you don't know the medicine, you can feel that it's, it's like real life. So I've gotten to work on a lot of cool shows. I did The Act Handmaids Tale, Station 19, Bull. I did a Netflix movie that was pretty popular. I'm trying to remember the name of, but I've done a lot of stuff. Most of it was actually not medical television shows, but just medical components of shows. Oh. You know, it, I think there's some real truth to that, Because when you see something in movies that's a little too outlandish, maybe I'm just old and jaded. But when you see something that's too outlandish, medical-wise, or just about anything else in a movie, you kind of go, it kind of breaks the fourth wall. Because you kind of go, nah, that doesn't fly.

No, I'm not a doctor either. But even with the science stuff, right? So, like, one of the reasons I think Jurassic Park did so well, which was written by Michael Crane, who was a doctor, the reason that I think it did so, well was because it was just on the edge of what we thought was possible. And now we're doing some of these things. I mean, they're trying to bring back the woolly mammoth. So hopefully we like learned from the movie about dinosaurs, but we're not like great at learning from our mistakes, even our theoretical mistakes. So I don't know, we might see some T-Rexes walking around soon. The one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history.

There probably we go around around. So let's get into your book, 99 ways to die and how to avoid them. And my first question is, who hurt you? No, I'm just kidding. Give us an overview of your book, please. Yeah, so 99 ways to die and more importantly, how to avoid them, is basically a Anthony Bourdain-style tour of 99 diseases that you don't have to die from because you can use the science and medicine to fight against these things and make sure that they're not your cause of death. It talks about like the policy, the, you know, the politics, the history, the culture, the sociology and the science of the diseases. And it does it in a way that, you know, ventures to be entertaining, engaging, captivating,

so that it's not just dry nonfiction. And it's written very distinctly as well into these very short chapters so that you can pick it up, put it down, jump to something that interests you. You don't have to read it all at once. But nonetheless, there's life-saving information in every chapter you read. The life-saving, you know, maybe you need to give this to the local news stations, They like to lead it, bleed it. So they're always like, there's like, hangnails, how you could be dying of one right now,

you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. And tune in at 11, you're like, well, we better find out what's going on with that. But yeah, it's always good to avoid ways to die. I've kind of found that in living. Why only 99 ways? Did it just, was it catchy, like 99 beers on the wall or something? Yeah, so I have more.

and I wrote more. Eventually, your editor is like, please stop writing the book is long enough. You have to stop. So 99 is kind of where the sweet spot was. He told me that we were good. You got a whole series. 99 more ways to die. 99 more ways again to die. How many, how many, is there a number on how many ways to die or is it pretty much? You know what? I've never ventured to like calculate that. I'm wondering if someone has. I mean, it might be infinite depending on. unlike the minutia you get down to. But, you know, point being is that we've come a long way, right? You know, recently life expectancy took a little drop due to some very specific reasons. But in general, our life expectancy has, you know, doubled in the last, you know, 100, 200 years. And so sometimes tripled depending on what numbers you're looking at. So, you know, we have huge advantages over the generations before us due to science and technology, due to refrigeration and vaccines and healthcare. And so I think that we forget how lucky we are to be in the stage in history that we're in.

And we also take the science and medicine for granted and maybe ignore it in some ways because we think that, you know, if you never experience something, you kind of think that it's gone. And one thing, you know, that people, the very first chapter of the book is left, And people look at that and they're like, oh, leprosy's gone. I'm like, no, leprosies in 120 countries, including the United States. Yeah, we just closed our last leper colony in Hawaii. But that being said, we, you know, they still, the armadillos of, you know, Texas and, you know, the southern United States carry leprosy and have caused some resurgence down there. So leprosy is something that is very much among us still. It's just something that we've learned to treat.

and we know more about now. We know that it's not as contagious as we thought it was. There's a genetic predisposition to being able to contract leprosy and that it is something that is treatable. So because of that, it's not the same disease anymore, right? It's not a life sentence. It's not a death sentence. And additionally, I think that we forget that science did that for us, right? We just take that for granted. Oh, it's gone. It's not gone. We just, it's not the same disease anymore because it's not something that you have to die from. And we do that in a lot of spaces. For instance, strep throat, people, everybody, you know, knows what strep throat is,

but nobody's afraid of it. And the reason you're not afraid of it is because of antibiotics, because strep throat that is untreated causes rheumatic fever and scarlet fever and neck abscesses. And people, especially children, died of this in very large numbers in the past. But, you know, you don't think about that because you don't have to because medicine has come in and change that perception of that disease to be no big deal. And, you know, one place where that's really obvious are the vaccine preventable diseases. Isn't it wild that things are making a search back? Like, like measles are coming back now, I think polio and crap because people aren't

taking their vaccines. Yes. So, I mean, I think this is a huge problem within the United States for multiple reasons. The first being that we don't understand the pain that we're not in. So you've never seen any of these diseases before. You don't know what they can do. And they're diseases that killed, you know, millions and millions of specifically children. They did a, the Lancet had an article that basically looked at the projected numbers over the past 50 years. And vaccines worldwide have saved 156 million people. And 101 of those were infants like children. That's six people. That's six people a minute for 50 years. Yeah.

You know, it's something that we don't understand. And death isn't the worst thing that can happen to you from these diseases. They cause blindness and cephalitis, which is brain inflammation. They cause miscarriage. The diseases that are targeted with vaccines were targeted for very specific reasons. They're very contagious and they're very deadly. And they cause a lot of morbidity as well. So, I mean, I think that, you know, we think, oh, it's weird that they're coming back.

but we also have to understand how vaccines work. And we heard a lot of this during the pandemic, but herd immunity is very important, especially in protecting our young that can't yet be vaccinated, our very young, our infants, right? So things like measles and whooping cough that kill babies, if you are not vaccinated, you are the reason that those babies are getting sick.

So, you know, that's important. It's about empathy and community and caring about other people. And why do you think we've lost that in the society. You know, we saw, like, during COVID, we saw kind of a start to come together. There was this thing where we were parking outside of hospitals,

honking and bringing food and, and celebrating nurses. And it was a real quick minute. And I, it was endearing to watch. I was like, what, there's whole people in the parking lot, honking for the nurses, and supporting them and stuff.

And then, and then it went really dark. I think there's a certain person, we can blame for that, but who tried to deny it. But why do you think we have this trouble with empathy? I mean, you mentioned that we, since we don't experience it, we don't maybe understand or have his empathy as much. But didn't we used to be a country that had fucking empathy that cared? I mean, we fought whole world wars to save people that really we didn't have to save.

What happened to us or did something happen to us? I guess maybe. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good question, probably better answered by a historian than me, but I guess my opinion on it is just that it seems like in our country these days we have empathy until it affects or infringes upon something that could be like a personal right at this point. So like we're all happy cheering for the front care line workers, but when we have to wear a mask and can't travel and have to stay home, then it becomes a problem and we no longer, you know, we no longer want to give up any of our rights in order to protect or help other people. And I don't know, I don't know why that happened. I think it's

sad. I don't think that it's a majority of Americans. I think that, you know, I'm hoping it's a minority, but we seem lost. And vaccines are extremely good example of this of how we just don't seem as a country to be like cohesive and understanding. And I mean, we don't live in a vacuum. Everyone just like looks at America like, oh, you know, autism's on the rise. It must be vaccines. You know, the rest of the world vaccinates, right? You can look other places and see that this is not, you know, this is not the case. And, you know, another problem is just medical misinformation is rampant and a source, I think, of a lot of loss of empathy because we're both overexposed and lied to a lot on the internet and, you know, all forms of media. And so I think that that in itself

causes the trust issue. And, and then, you know, people stop caring. So that's, I think that's what's part of it. Maybe, maybe it's because we're just deluged with so much crap on the internet, like you say, that we're just desensitized. It's desensitized. I mean, you know, there's things that I've seen on the internet that I really wish I hadn't ever seen. And it kind of desensitizes you in a way. You know, I've had people bring me, you know, stuff like, oh, look at this, dude, you know, falls on onto a train tracks to commit suicide. And you're like, dude, I really don't want to see that, man.

And, but after a while, it's, I mean, it's just, it's like, I don't know, it's a 24-7 horror show, really on the internet these days. And I think we've become so desensitized, a lot of stuff. or dismissive of it. Like, well, I don't know that's really happening. I mean, that's kind of, there's so many, there's so much fakeness on the internet too. You know, you have people that will do stunts that are fake. And so some people probably look at it and just kind of question the reality of it.

But, I mean, you know, whether in a, in a disease like COVID and everything else, you know, it's, it's real life. And maybe we can't discern from real life and what's fake. anymore. Maybe that's the problem. I don't know. I think, yeah, I think that's got to be part of it, right? So what we're seeing on the internet, especially as far as medical misinformation, I think it starts to confound even our reality that we see every day. Like, we can see things happen and it can be something that we even experience in part by ourselves, like ourselves, and we still question like validity of it, I think. And I mean, that I think mostly started

during the pandemic. And a big part of that was just the advent of social media and that, five-second news cycle and how fast medical misinformation spread on the internet. And we've gotten to the point where people have trouble understanding and knowing who to trust. And credentialing is, you know, credentialing is something that people start to question because there are charlatans out there. But additionally, the people that we are listening to are just sometimes people with the most followers, but, you know, have no reason to be, you know, followed for that type of advice. So, for instance, you know, you have people on the internet telling you to drink raw milk and, you know, put honey and baby formula. And these are people who are like selling themselves as like naturopaths or something along

those lines. But all of those things can kill you. Like honey below under the age of one for a child can cause botulism. You know, raw milk. Yes. Yeah. It's in the book. I didn't know that. That's why we got to read the book. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's a reason we don't do that. There's a reason we don't give children under the age of one water diluted formula. It can cause hyponotremia, which is low sodium and the blood causes brain swelling, seizure, and death. It's crap. You know, there's reasons for all these things, and they're very specific and medical. And, you know, I think the medical community doesn't do a great job of explaining these things, which is in part

why I ventured to write the book, is because we have to find ways to reach people and meet them where they are with the information in a language they understand. Like the word hyponotremia is completely useless, right? It's just not part of the English language. It's a medical word. But when you tell somebody, hey, you're running a marathon today. If you drink straight water, you could have a seizure, make sure you have water with electrolytes. That's understandable and something they can remember. And when you tell them, hey, did you know this happened to Brooke Shields? She drank too much water and had a seizure because she didn't drink water with electrolytes in it. That's a story they can remember. You know, if you can try and meet people where they are with this information

and the stories, I think we can do better at fighting the medical misinformation out there, which is mostly just sensationalized and, you know, it has gotten to the point where it's just so like outlandish that it is desensitizing us, which is a scary thing, especially with the advent of AI and what's coming next for us. Yeah. I mean, who knows what AI is going to leash on us, maybe they're going to maybe make their own plague or something again. I don't know.

I don't trust those AI folks. Yeah. But 99 ways to do that. die. Was there any stories in the book that kind of shocked you or stood out to you or do you have any favorite ways to die? Yeah, I mean, I would prefer to, you know, avoid all the ways in the book, if possible. But there are some interesting stories in there. A lot of them are from, you know, the hospital and my work abroad in medicine. I've worked in Madrid and France and Morocco and Cyprus and Honduras in Tanzania and, you know, across several continents in health care and public health.

So there's a lot of interesting stories about diseases that we don't see as frequently in the United States. And there's also things that, you know, for whatever reason, America's very interested in serial killers. And I had the unfortunate experience of mating one. So that story is in the book. And it's pretty interesting, especially because serial killers aren't really who we think they are. I think that television sells them as these kind of, you know, brilliant, evil people, but really they're just kind of narcissists and they're not, their IQs aren't higher than anyone else. They're not geniuses. They're just sociopaths. So, you know, that chapter is interesting. And then there's stuff that you find everywhere that might be really rare, but it's super avoidable.

So brain eating amoeba, you don't have to get that. They live in hot water, hot springs. And every once in a while, we have issues with them in netty pots. As long as you're keeping your head above water in hot springs and using a netty pot with sterilized water, you're not going to get this disease. And it is 100% fatal, but very rare. So there's a whole variety of things in there from, you know, lightning to different modes of transportation, such as, you know, motorcycles and ATVs. And then, of course, you know, bacterial diseases, vaccine preventable diseases. And there's an entire chapter on sex as well, which is an important way to avoid dying. Wait, I can, I can die from sex. Oh, yes.

What? Yeah, I mean, there's a chapter on butt stuff. now. There's all these things we just need to avoid and are pretty easily avoidable. I mean, most people don't know you can die from STDs. Oh, really? Well, yeah, I think it's great. Well, yeah, I mean, that one's easy, but like gonorrhea and chlamydia can even kill you. Yeah.

I heard recently somebody had penicillin resistant gonorrhea. Gonorrhea is on the watch list for the CDC for the amount of resistance. It's developed, unfortunately. So we only have one class of antibiotics that treats it at this point. So the next generation could be in a bit more trouble. So it's an important disease to treat and is very treatable right now. So in getting tested is easy. It's just peeing in a cup.

I think most people think there's some like swab or something that happens. But it's just, you just pee in a cup and that's it. We do that on Friday's around here at the office. Yeah, it's easy, pizy, right? I mean, we just be in the cup. We don't really do anything with it. Yeah, fair enough. It's a, I don't know, I'm just, I'm not going to expand on that joke. It's just gross.

So anyway, yeah, I mean, I'm going to have to find out. I don't want to die during sex. That's my, that's one of my favorite things, eh? Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, something that, like I said, all these things are very avoidable. So it's, it's not something you have to die from. Yeah. So if you buy the books, folks, you can at least, you can at least cut out 99 ways to die. And then you have to wait for the second book to come out for 99 more, however this works. with Ashley. I'll keep going.

You can make it all series, man. I'm sure there's a, what was that? What's that movie? They've had about six or seven of them. And they're just all sorts of ways that it's like fatal, fatal destiny or something. Oh, a final destination. Is that way? Yeah, that is that I think scarred my generation.

Anytime you're behind a truck with like logs on it, everyone always takes a picture and is like, am I going to die? That is not in the book. Driving is in the book, but there's no logs in the book as far as I can. So that parts. It might be book two or three, maybe. Yeah. We'll get into more television. They didn't consult me for that film.

I was too young and not a doctor. They did do some promotion around, I think, the latest movie where they drove trucks around a final destination on the side of it with logs. Oh, that's just mean. Now you're targeting us. But again, good marketing. I mean, I do feel like that's one of the things that we're missing in public health these days is better marketing so people can kind of, you know, that's why I did the television stuff and wrote the book. It's just like I feel like we need to find ways to be more engaging because misinformation on the internet and, you know, this type of stuff is just so engaging. That's why people, MIT actually did a study on this. And specifically during the pandemic, misinformation moves six times faster than the truth. And it's, and it's, It's just because it was more interesting to people because it was made up and it was often novel and it just got more clicks.

And that perpetuates itself in the algorithm. So you know, you got to be better. Isn't it interesting of some of the dumbest people think that that uniqueness that you described there is makes it more truthful. Like the weirdness of the lie means the special, it's kind of like the speciality of the lie makes. it more real. Yeah, like you haven't heard it before. So we have, I haven't thought about this. So maybe it's something that could be. Yeah, I'm not sure why that is, but it's definitely something that's true, because they've seen it in studies that basically if it's something you haven't heard before, it is more likely to captivate you and then kind of entrap you. So sometimes they'll take that

spin. Like I said, I've got people that will send me their algorithm and their posts. And they'll be like some of the most quackiest shit. Like, you can solve cancer with honey. Just smear honey on your cancer and you'll be fine. And there'll be some quirkiness. Like, you know, make sure you only use a teaspoon. And they're like, well, they wouldn't be that exact

with the description if it wasn't true. And you're like, and I think probably the main factor in this week and we can rack up to the Dunning Kruger disease, Dunning Kruger. That's in the book. Oh, is it really?

Yeah, it is. It's an important. It's like knowing where the gas pedal is and not the break, right? So you see that the Dunning Kruger effect when people learn, right? So they learn and they start to get just enough information that they're comfortable. And once people are comfortable with the information, most people will stop learning. Most people don't become experts and spend tens of thousands of hours on something, right? Because it becomes redundant and boring and you start to think, oh, I already know this.

But the problem is, is that point where people are comfortable, and stop, that's the point where you start to test the reality and start to understand fallacies in the argument. You start to understand the other sides of the argument. You start to test it. And that's science, right, is when we start testing our truths. And so the Dunning Kruger effect is something that's greatly exploited by the internet because they get just enough information and get you just to the point where you feel comfortable. And that's when they sell you something. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's when we see the life coaches at 20 years old. I'm a life coach now.

You're fucking 20. Give it a minute. If you had no idea how much you don't know, I'm 58. And the amount of stuff that I don't know, and I know a lot is infinite. It's, you know, what is it? We only use like 5% of our brains. And I think that's the smartest people. I don't know.

I've been on Twitter lately. I'm not sure we're breaking 1% really. It kind of, what's the, we talked before the show, too. too about the, there was a book called The Death of Expertise. And it seems like with the advent of bloggers and everybody who claims that they're, you know, the smartest person in the world on any given subject. But no one, you know, no one went to school for it, you know. Like I say, we see this a lot with the coaching community, you know.

There's lots of coaches I found that professed to be hugely successful that I found are living out of their cars and dead broke. and they always won on the show too. Yeah, I don't know why that is. I mean, I think that, and we see that a lot even in the medical community. So a lot of these doctors who end up being like very successful in some realms, if you go look at their credentials, they haven't finished medical school. They didn't finish residency.

I'm like, you didn't even become a practicing board certified physician. And that's fine if you're going to go write television like Michael Creighton. But if you're going to be in politics, or you're going to be selling medicine, like a very specific doctor who was recently in the news, you know, maybe finish. Because medical school is definitely the beginning of that Dunning Kruger effect.

Medical school is where you become comfortable with the information, and residency is where you test it. So if you're not going to finish, don't be a doctor. That's not for the, that's not what our profession is about. You need to practice if you're going to be out there selling information to people. But more importantly,

if you're going to be out there selling products to people. I don't know. I just don't think that that's good for the patients or the community. And a lot of times those people at the end of the day end up being charlatans. So, you know, I have trouble trusting them. What? How would you not trust the charlatans? Yeah.

And it seems like, you know, I mean, we've been tempted by it too. You know, we've been on YouTube for 18 years. We've been podcasting for 16. You know, the clickbait era, now it's the short eras of the short. videos and you know you can't get any freaking good information in there you know it's it's the same as like watching the news you know uh 90 ways or you know they're like uh how to die from hangnails at tune in 11 to find out how your family can not die from hang nails today do you have a hangnail you could die from it tune in 11 yeah and uh yeah and then they spent like three minutes covering

that you might you could die you know you can die from anything i think at this point you could watching the news, I think. Anyway, I'm just making up stuff, folks, don't write. You're saying conspiracy theories, Chris. But I think you're right. I think that, you know, unfortunately that hook and that marketing and that sense that the sensationalization of news and media has become so prevalent that now, you know, my, I'm not trying to scare you in my book. There's nothing to be afraid about in this book. This is all preventable stuff. There's nothing really sensationalized in here. It's just the information. and in some ways I tried to make it entertaining because it's nonfiction and that can be dry.

But the reason that I wrote a book and didn't do it as a influencer on Twitter or whatever is because I thought that it would be more meaningful to have something written down in a form that can't be changed where you can look at the information and you can trust it in a way because it's not something that can be changed like the internet, right? I can't delete it. I can't go back and edit it. I can't, you know, it's not something that's there and then gone tomorrow. I wanted to create something that was kind of a reference of source that you could trust and to kind of build that trust in a way that was more concrete in a world that is, you know, five seconds here and then gone, especially with information that's life saving. I don't think that's the way we should be getting it. So I tried to do it in a way that was slower and more, more permanent so that it starts to help build more trust than, you know, the way that we're doing it elsewhere, which is, you know, kind of a flurry of misinformation on the internet. I don't know how anyone gets through it these days. Yeah. And I mean, it's all about hype and about, about noise and attention. And it seems like, you know, I mean, we've often said, you know, my favorite quote from Ron Brown is, is it Ron Brown? The comedian? Something Brown. Ron White. I always get that wrong. Run right. You know, the one thing about you can't fix stupid, stupid is forever.

You know, you can. I hope that's not true. You can fix people of plastic surgery, you know, he tells the story about how my wife can get implants. She can get lip filler. You know, she can get anything she wants. But the one thing you can't fix is stupid. Stupid is forever. And it seems to be true because I keep trying to make people smarter. And there's some people are just relentlessly like, no, I really want to be my stupid. And it's really comfortable here. You know, like, you know, there are books. You agreed?

How come you never did? You know, one thing you mentioned, you mentioned something earlier back in our conversation that kind of gave me some ideas. You said something in effect of maybe what we need is, you know, we need a better promotion or hype of, you know, real medical information. So maybe we need to have some fun. Maybe we need to hire like the Shamwow guy. Maybe we need to hire, who's that one guy, Billy? What's his face? Who used to do the, or Ron Pompeii and, I can't remember the other.

The QVC sellers and the people who are like, we need Billy Mays to take this over with this co-caut habit and oxyclean. And we just need to, we just need to take it like, you should rename, you should redo a book and call it 99 fun ways to die. I don't know. I can't. People are so afraid of death. I don't know.

I'd have to like really think about that. I mean, I don't know if there are any fun ways. There's definitely ways people prefer to die, but most people want to die like of age in their sleep, which, you know, I don't know if that's fun, but painless. Maybe that's a great way to die. But I think you're right. I think like, you know, we need the sham wow type of like entertainment in our medicine. I think some people are catching on to that. So like one thing that, you know, a lot of people are watching right now is the pit.

And, you know, that is the dramatization of my job every day. But they do a great job of pulling physicians in and having them work on the set and on the show. There's Joe Sachs is an emergency medicine physician. He's a writer-producer on the show. And they create, you know, basically a reality based off the medicine. They start at the medicine and they work outwards with the story. And people get it. People, people are responding.

to it because they can see that it feels real, even if they themselves don't know the science and the medicine. And I think that's the important thing that we're missing here is that we can be more entertaining and meet people where they are with the information. But it is hard to get above the noise. But I think it's something that we have to learn how to do as humans, especially as we start letting artificial intelligence take over, you know, the internet. Because it is addictive. We've seen that, right? We've seen the rabbit holes. We understand. how people can kind of get stuck for hours watching TikTok and YouTube and kind of consuming things that, you know, make us, you know, for lack of a better way to say this, stupider, right?

It's trying to drown you in misinformation in some situations. So, you know, things like the pit that kind of rise above and do it right and still are entertaining people. I think that's where it's at. And, you know, maybe we all need a little sham while. Who knows? I think we need Billy Mays. Like Billy Mays should have sold the COVID vaccine.

I don't remember if he was a line back then. But, you know, we should have him selling the COVID vaccine. Get your shot now. If you get one, today, you'll get a follow up later. I know. I think they did use, because they used Elvis for polio. He got back on TV. Yeah, he got, I think it was the.

See, we're doing it all wrong. Yeah, I mean, they so. And Elvis is still alive, too. according to, you know, the internet and magazine. Yeah, so probably because he's got the polio vaccine. The banana, the banana sandwich that they said he choked on and died from. That, that's actually a form of penicillin. Most people don't know that.

See, what are I doing? I'm just making, just making a bullshit on this show. No misinformation. Chris, come on. But no, I think we need a sham-wow, Billy Mays type guy. Can we get a guy who has a Coke-head problem on the thing to do this? I'm hoping that the book does it without the, there is cocaine in the book, though. Okay, you can die from cocaine?

Yeah, it's in the book. You guys know we could die from that shit that goes on in Friday? Oh, I'm just kidding. We don't, don't do that. There's lots of, there's a drug chapter in the book, and it talks about all of them. Just, yeah, yeah, just to like give people the information. I mean, I rather you not take them. They cause lots of problems, you know, both financially.

and health. And embarrassing sometimes. And social. Yeah. So dancing on the tables. I'm, I'm hoping that the book does a little shamwowing. Like,

I'm hoping that the book is, you know, entertaining in a way that, like, grips people because, you know, the subjects that I picked in there, I picked for those reasons.

Not only are they avoidable, but most people find, you know, MDMA interesting. Like, you know, how can you die from this? You know, let's avoid it.

Yeah. Yeah, I think if you hire Billy Mace, a guy, well, the Shamwell guy's still alive. Evidently, he's going to run for office because nothing qualifies you for government in this era. Then, I don't know, being some hawker of crap on the air. Of something. Yeah, I know. Unfortunately, I'm hoping we recover. You know, I can see it with Shamwell towels wiping down his congressional seat.

whatever. But yeah, let's talk. I was trying to set this up for a lead into your nonprofit if you want to give us a plug on that. Oh yeah. So meaningful media I started several years ago and it's a nonprofit that tries to avoid medical misinformation by connecting people who are credentialed public health professionals with creators, whether that be people who are writers, people in the news, people in television, producers, or just people on social media that are trying to get medically accurate and scientifically accurate public health messages across. And it was created kind of in the light of the pandemic understanding how far behind we are and how far ahead the medical information pushers are. And my hope is that if we can start making these messages more interesting and

attainable, that the accuracy will win out because that's what's going to save people. Accuracy and truth. But you know, you're right. Like with abortion, they say one of the problems is when I was young in the 70s and the 60s, you would see women flooding ER rooms with, you know, they'd either done some sort of back alley, you know, seedy dude or whatever, some back alley abortion, or they had self, they tried to self-induced one. you know, bleach and all sorts of horrible things that would do to their bodies that would have

extensive, you know, damage research. And so we were seeing these, these women fill the ERs in the 60s and 70s, or 60s, I guess, when was it past? 68, 72, Fro versus Wade. But now we don't see that anymore. And so now abortion and, and those sort of things, you know, now that we don't see measles. When I grew up, there was still a lot of measles running around. I mean, everybody in my school almost, well, not almost everybody. I think I avoided measles, but I did get chicken pox. It might have been chicken pox. Yeah, chicken pox was everywhere. Yeah, it wasn't measles. But there were, there was still a lot of people when I was young that had measles. I mean, there's a lot of people that got them. I was like, holy shit, you know, and, you know, I was in the, what, this early 70s.

And, you know, we go take the, we go, you know, we, you know, we in these big lines and go get their vaccine shots and everybody would do it. It was, like you say, herd immunity. We were all kind of understood that, you know, the way to kill this off. But, you know, this whole thing of just being desensitized and not knowing what to believe. I think that's part of it, too. There's so much bullshit being fed to us. People don't want to believe. Well, and we scare people too, right? We tell people like, you know, the misinformation about autism, it continues to this day. Like, at first it was mercury. Mercury has been removed from vaccine. So now it's aluminum. You can't just change the argument to fit whatever you want, you know?

There has been no link between autism and vaccines. Autism is a very complicated, multifactorial genetic disorder. And, you know, people basically, and sometimes one person messaged me, because the antifactors have found my book and have come for me. And, you know, you're being paid by biopharma. I'm like, I haven't made any money from this book, first of all, let alone biopharma. No one's paid me anything. I am trying to help people understand the science.

and the medicine and the diseases that they haven't seen before and why it's important for them to, you know, be vaccinated against these things. You know, these people have kind of found my platforms and are starting to argue with me on there. I don't argue with people online because you don't want to change. You're just trying to create more misinformation. There's no, you're not actually arguing because you are concerned about the subject or understand the subject. So I don't fight with people on the internet. But the point being, is that there's just so much we can do better to get people the right information. You know, when it comes to things like abortion, most people, especially when, you know,

the overturning of this, the Roe v. Wade stuff in certain states, people don't understand ectopic pregnancies. People don't understand how difficult and the dangerous and life-threatening pregnancy is, which is a chapter in my book. You know, there are hundreds of ways to die specifically just from being pregnant, from preeclampsia to postpartum, cardiomy myopathy, increase pulmonary embolisms, there are types of cancer that you can only get by being pregnant. So, yeah, we just don't tell women any of them. I didn't even know that. Wow.

He doesn't care about them, you know, they're like, you go be pregnant, we're not going to pay you, there's no child care, you know, we don't understand why there's a wage gap. I'm like, only half of us have to create the entirety of our society. You don't understand why there's a wage gap. Yeah, so there's a chapter in there because women should understand what they're doing and the dangers of being pregnant. and I actually became pregnant while writing this book. Oh, really?

Chapter while I was pregnant. Because, and I made the decision for my family. I made, well, I knew it all before, but I made that decision informed. I knew the dangers that there were being. I knew what an amniotic fluid embolism was. I wanted to be pregnant. I wanted to risk my life. I wanted to have a child with my husband.

Those are decisions that every woman should be able to make, because pregnancy is far more dangerous than having a medical. safe abortion, especially early, which is just a pill. You know, these are things that our society, we have to do better at educating people on this stuff, because it's hard for

them to make informed good decisions when they don't have the right information. And part of that is our fault as a public health institution. Our country is not doing a good job at getting the people information in ways that they can understand it. And that's what the book is. And that's what

I do for television, and that's what my nonprofit it does, and I'm trying my best to get people that information so they can make the right decisions for themselves. You know, like I say, I mean, when I was young, I knew people that had measles. I don't, I think I, I don't know if I know anybody had polio, but it was the 70s, so I think that polio was still winding down, but we were still all vaccinating. We all kind of understood, you know, even though, you know, I didn't really know anybody or anyone close to me. I don't know.

I don't remember the 70s much. I'm old. You know, you just kind of knew. You were just like, hey, help people out. It's interesting that people attack you. You're a licensed provider. You went to college and school. And, of course, you're always learning and researching as a medical professional.

And it's funny, they don't, they don't ask you questions at first. Like, oh, what is your, what is your background of study? What is your licensing? They just attack you. And, you know, it's amazing to me when I see people send me stuff. And I'm like, does that person have a degree in that? Did they go to college? Are they just, oh, they're a podcaster who worked at McDonald's last week?

And now they're a podcaster? Oh, great. Yeah. It's really, you know, I question everything. I don't do it just as a matter of fact, well, we should question everything, like some sort of conspiracy nutfall. But, you know, I try to understand things. Maybe it's the better way to put it.

Well, and I think that's an important place to start, right? Look at where you're getting your information from. What is their credentialing? do what does this person have to gain by selling you false information? Are they selling a supplement that they promise is going to clear your chronic Lyme? You know, what is it that they're doing that like for me, I don't get anything by, you know, you getting a vaccine other than like living in a safer society, I suppose. But like I don't make any money. I don't, as an emergency medicine doctor, you can choose to go to the cath lab to unclog your heart attack or you can not. And

as a human being, I would be sad if you chose not to, you know, get saved by the science and the medicine, but I don't get paid more. I don't gain anything by these decisions. I give you the information and you make the decisions. You know, I think making sure you're trying to find people that aren't selling you something that benefits them is very important. But you also have to recognize in this day and age, some people are just asking for your time and attention, especially on like social media or in government. Just just paying attention to the misinformation. is sometimes what they're selling because they're trying to popularize themselves. So that's pretty important to recognize.

And so trying to get your information from somebody that you trust, like your primary care doctor or somebody you have a relationship with when it comes to that, like, medical information, I think is really important to kind of ground yourself and anchor yourself in a reality that you can, you know, that has validity and can be verified and somebody that you, you know, not somebody from the internet, please. You know, and you spoke on intent. That's one of the things I have a conversation with people, send me bat shittery. And I go, look at the intent.

Can you not see them in the first five seconds of the video, the guy's hawking, I don't know, his own private line of vitamins or, you know, they have these things now where you can white label a vitamins or protein or, you know, just about anything for the most part. And so you pay some company that ships it. packages that puts your label name on it. And suddenly you're professional because you're selling, I don't know, you're hawking medical crap. And so you'll see these people.

And I'm like, you know, the people send me the, you know, the doomsday videos of like the world's ending tomorrow, you know, that kind of crap. But by the way, you can build, you can buy our survivor line of, you know, food you can store in your basement that will go bad in a year. I've seen that movie. My dad used to buy like all this, all this, the end of the world shit. And it would always go bad. And, you know, the rats would be in the wheat and all that shit.

And we're just like, you want us to eat that? When the world goes bad, I'm going to work hard to make sure it doesn't. But yeah, there's, there's, it's just amazing what people can't see the intent of the message. What is being, what, what is someone selling and why are they selling it to you? And what's their motivation doing that to you? If a doctor tells me, you know, don't stick your hand in the blender, Chris, I don't question his credentials and go like, what, how are you making money at this? What is your, what is your ankle? But also like, I'm happy to provide my credentials.

And that's important too, right? Like, I finished undergrad. I went to graduate school. I then went to medical school. And then I went to residency. And I have to take boards every five years. So I am somebody who at least is being vetted and, like, put in the time to have the scientific information and to understand the medicine and to be able to translate it to you.

You know, so I think it's important to recognize, like, the difference between me and somebody who dropped out of medical school. Like, it's not the same thing. It's, you shouldn't, you should know who's giving you in the information and you should know, you have a right to know their background. Because I think that's a big part of it, too. People sell themselves as, you know, I'm a doctor. And it's like, okay, are you a veterinarian?

Are you an NP that did a research, you know, a nurse practitioner that did a research degree? Are you a naturopath? Are you a chiropractor? Are you, you know, are you a physician that just finished medical school and didn't finish residency? So I think that it's hard because we aren't really upfront with these types of things, with the community. And I think that's one of the places to start is to be honest with people where the

information's coming from. So they can start filtering through some of it because it's only. going to get harder as technology continues to expand and we can continue to get our information from social media. Yeah, yeah. We got to, we're going to start, I don't know, reading books and educating ourselves more. It's almost like what they're doing is they're just trying to come up with ways to waste as much time on the internet and calling out real data to just avoid reading books. Because this is usually the conversation I have with people that send me stuff. I go, I go, Are you reading any books lately on how to understand what you're sharing?

Because then you wouldn't share what you're sharing if you read a book. Yeah. And I think books are like, they are grounding, right? Like that's why I did this not on the internet and not on television. Like it is something that is like a physical thing that, you know, cannot be easily changed. And I think getting your information and knowledge from something that's been vetted in that way, I think it's a great place to start. And, you know, I, and unfortunately, we don't read a lot of books in America. And so finding ways to reach people with this information is so important. And I, you know, we have to try and get people back into reading, especially the younger generations, which is why you'll notice the book chapters are very, very short. I like wrote it with the TikTok generation in mind, like, hey, maybe you might be interested in this as well. Like the older generations definitely can read longer chapters, etc. But I tried to pare it down to, you know, just a. couple pages per topic so that people that are younger that might not have the same

attention spans because of the way that we're bringing people up in media these days, they can engage with it as well. And so that's the hope. It's just really about meeting people where they are with life-saving information and trying to maybe make them laugh and maybe make them remember some things through stories. Make them remember and learn. Learn people. It's really important. And also just, you know, what does somebody angle? You know, I grew up in the 70s when they were starting the subconscious advertising, you know, where they would have sex written in smoke of the cigarette ad or whatever it was, you know, or, you know, the giant nose on the camel that clearly looks like body part. You know, they were starting to do all that.

And then the advertising community said, hey, whoa, this is, we're messing with people a little bit too much here. So they kind of agreed to cut all that out. But I saw the effects of that. And it really had an impact on me when I was, you know, I would go look up the ads and you'd see the subliminal messages that were in them. And I was like, holy crap, man, you got to really be smart on this world because you can get played. And, you know, now, you know, when it's always amazing to me, you see people hawking misinformation on the internet. And then they're like, and by the way, I also sell the thing that can fix the bullshit that I just made up. And you're like, okay, well.

Yeah. And they target certain populations. So one thing I talk about in the book is chronic Lyme. And chronic Lyme is, first of all, doesn't exist. There is an post-inflammatory disease that the infectious disease society has showed that after Lyme, some people have an inflammatory response. And those people will have maybe effects usually for about a year and then it goes away by itself. But, you know, a lot of these people are people that are in the Hamptons.

Connecticut and they have a lot of money and they're movie stars. So what, you know, medical charlatans have done have created chronic Lyme. They do a blood test that they know is like a blood test that basically shows that you've had Lyme before. So anyone who's ever had Lyme before is going to have a positive immunoglobulin. One of them is going to be positive for Lyme because it just shows that you've had the disease. Just like, for instance, if you've had a vaccine or any other disease, you know, any type of long-standing immunity is going to produce this blood test result that's going to be positive. But they use that blood test result to be like, oh, look, you've, you know, had Lyme, you probably have chronic Lyme. Let me treat you with

whatever infusions or whatever very expensive health care that is generally not covered by insurance, and I'll fix this for you because nobody else can fix it. And they're taking advantage of people who have real health care problems and are looking for an answer, and they're basically selling them snake oil. And a lot of these people would get better on their own if it is a post-inflammatory response to Lyme, and they don't have to do the things that are, you know, being sold to them. But, you know, they basically picked this population because this population generally tends to have a lot of money. Like, you'll see, you know, movie stars. I think Justin Bieber was diagnosed with it, And somebody else recently that's very famous was in the news about it.

And, you know, they have real symptoms and a real, you know, some, a real disease going on. But they're, you know, being sold this like chronic Lyme myth that they have this chronic infection, which is not the case. Rather, it's, you know, post-inflammatory and something that should just get better on its own, which should cost you nothing. Yeah. Yeah. And I think sadly, some sometimes people hear about bad. things. Maybe some medical doctors do. And that ends up tainting their whole opinion of the whole medicine or doctor community. I remember there was the one guy, I think he was up in Portland. He had this concept that he called the Widowmaker where he would, he would, I don't know, whatever they do. He'd basically figure out that you had a bad artery line into your heart or whatever it's called.

Clearly I'm not a doctor. But if, but if you do want to, If you don't want advice on that, you can buy my elixir. No, I'm just kidding. You know, I'm good to think of it. It sounds like he was telling people they had like L.A.D. lesion. So they said, he said you're going to have a heart attack. And then what happened?

And then he would go in and put in stints, I think, or do something. He would call, he would call the bad line, the widow maker. He goes, oh, you got a widow maker. And that was kind of a selling point because you tell people they got a widow maker, you know, especially if they're a husband, they're like. Yeah. I should get this procedure done. And there was no blockage?

Well, he was, I think sometimes there was, but he kind of started using it for like everything. He was like the biggest income doctor at that hospital and region. Oh, gosh. So he got flagged and they figured it out. I'm sorry, I should say. The biggest money maker. And so the hospital's sitting there going, you know, we're bathing in money. He was bathing in money.

and they were finding that there were people he said had a widow maker that maybe they did maybe they didn't yeah oh that's disturbing yeah so they've you know but you know you hear stories like that and people go oh the whole medical communiques every doctor is in the bag for well and the problem with that is there is some there is a lesion that is in coronary your arteries so your coronary arteries bring blood to the heart and a blockage of one of those arteries is a heart attack. And there is a blockage of one of those arteries that's called a widow maker. That's a real thing. So he was using something that was real and maybe being, you know.

Yeah. I mean, so there's definitely, there's bad people everywhere, you know, which is why you have to find your people and find a primary care doctor that you trust, find, you know, a medical community, a people that you can kind of ground yourself in that are credentialed, that you can trust. So don't get medical information online. And I mean, it's good that doctors are vetted and that, you know, we have licensing because we can't go online and lie to you if we have a license without having, you know, getting our license revoked. So there is, remember that there are repercussions for people who are licensed, which is important, right?

Because if you're, you know, a ballerina who runs a farm and you're selling raw milk and you give everyone listeria, you can't, you're not going to lose your license. Like, you might get in trouble for poisoning everyone. but like you're not there's nothing to lose there you know so that's the problem is like you got to make sure that you're getting your information from somebody who has to be responsible for the information they're giving you yeah and it's it's and measure their intent you know if a doctor just tells me like I say don't stick your hand in a blender I'm not going to sit there and be like ah you're who's paying you big form I'm going to go do it right now just to show you I'm like, maybe just don't.

I'm going to make a YouTube video of it. I'm sure I'll go viral too because it's going to be the dumbest thing I've ever done. Anyway, thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it, Ashley. Give us your final pitch out to people who order up your book and dot coms where they can find you on the interwhips. Yeah, so the book is available wherever books are sold. That includes all independent book stores that, you know, have purchased the book. You can get it online, Barnes & Noble's, etc.

It could be, you know, purchased anywhere. I'm online at A. Alker MD. That's my handle on all platforms. And, you know, I hope you take time to read the book. I hope it entertains you and teaches you something that could save your life. Well, thank you very much, Ashley. Hey, was the 99th Way to Die? Piss off Ashley.

That was the 100th. They took it out. That was the 100th. He took it out. I'll give you a shirt and say, like, hey, I read 99 ways to die. Don't mess with me. people know not to mess with me don't mess with you doctors we need doctors too they're real important at least licensed doctors for that matter make sure they're licensed i can't tell you how many

quacks that i've seen on like tic-tok for the longest time and have been like i don't know about this guy and then somebody will do one of those out out of them videos and find out they're not licensed and stuff and you're like real they've been like their license has been taken away they don't have a job like look at look these people up please protect you know you know what is funny is, and I can probably say we've had at least one or two people on the show, they've done this, but this is how I kind of found out that there's doctors, including psychologists and doctor doctors, that can lose their license, but they can go be international or national coaches because coaching falls outside of the purview of medical licensing.

And so, well, a lot of times a doctor, you know, they're locally licensed, right? You have to be licensed per state or something like that, I think. But as a coach, you can just, you know, you're not bound by that licensing. And I've seen some things like that where I'm just like, wait, you had your license removed in Mississippi. Don't let them coach you. Now you know, you're a coach? No, no. But doctors have a license taken away.

I got tells you some things right there. Yeah, yeah. Don't listen to them. That's not the person you want coaching you. Be careful, folks. And avoid podcasts that promote this sort of shit. I would just be disgusted if I ever had somebody on the show that just sold total bullshit. And we try and push back. We try and correct on the show. Somebody says something that's completely that shittery. We go, wait, wait, wait, wait, no, you're on Google and here's some data. We try and set the record straight if somebody tries to shovel something. They find it really quick. They can't shovel it on the show on the show. Anyway, thank you, Ashley, for coming. Order up the book, folks. find books are sold. 99 ways to die and how to avoid them.

The 100th way is piss me off. January 13th, 2026 just came out so you can order it wherever fine books are sold. It's getting all the great reviews there. It's got 4.5 stars on the Amazon there and 4.2 on Goodreads. So it's getting really popular. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe and read books on how to avoid dying. Remember, stupidity also kills. So avoid that as well.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain lead.

All right, Ashley, great show. Good stuff there.