This Podcast Will Kill You - Ep 32 Ask the Erins

Episode Date: July 23, 2019

What exactly is disease ecology anyway? How did  TPWKY come to be? How do we come up with our quarantinis? What’s our favorite pathogen? In this very special episode, you get to hear exactly what you’ve been asking for -- literally. Today we answer listener questions and don’t hold anything back. From what are the effects of climate change on vector-borne disease to what we were like at age nine, you asked and we answered! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Val, bad pun. Outdo it with Intuit QuickBooks. Feature availability varies by product. Hi. Hi. I'm Aaron Welsh. And I'm Aaron Allman Updike. And this is, this podcast will kill you.

Ask us things. Yes, we have a very special edition this week. We, a couple weeks ago, or a few episodes ago, anyway, It's like a while ago now. A while ago. We asked you all to send us your questions about anything and everything. And wow, did you do that? It was incredible.

We got hundreds of questions. Excellent questions. It was super fun to read through. Yeah, it's going to be great. I'm excited. Yeah. Unfortunately, we won't be able to answer all however many hundreds of questions we got. Not today. Yeah, today anyway, but we have selected sort of a variety. Yes. A little buffet of

different options. Yeah, we tried to like mix it up, throw in them at you in a randomish order. Yeah, we're going to see how this goes. I think I think I'm a little nervous about it. Me too. I'm really nervous. Okay. Well, yeah, to calm our nerves, just kidding. Terrible idea to do that, We are starting with our quarantini and placebo-rida this week. So, Erin, what are you drinking? I'm drinking. Oh, Passion Fruit LaCroix. Is that how you're supposed to say?

This is not an ad. Oh, I should say. Generic passion fruit flavored sparkling water. There we go. And I am drinking Cloudberry Cizan. Ooh, that sounds really tasty. It's really tasty. We didn't plan a specific quarantini this week because we wanted to just sort of go with the flow.

Yeah. So pull up your favorite, Bev. Yeah. And drink that while you listen. Is your favorite Bev a generic sparkling water passion fruit flavor? These days, it's like the most exciting beverage that I drink. So. Yeah.

Well, okay. But, you know, it's a good choice, I would say, if you're on the Plyssie Burita train. Yeah. There we go. There we go. Oh, okay. Okay. So should we, should we jump in?

I think so. I don't, I don't think we ever have any real business to cover, do we? No, we never do. We never do. I think that's okay. I think that's great. So let's jump in with our first question. Okay.

Speaking of quarantinis. So our first question comes from Paisley, who asked, how do you come up with quarantinis and what essential liquors or liqueurs would you recommend for a budget mixologist? Such a fun question. And we also got a related question, which we will answer probably in this immediately after this, whether either of us were ever bartenders. Yeah. Ooh. So how do we come up with our quarantinies? That's kind of a pretty random process usually.

Oh my gosh. Usually sometimes there's a guiding force. Like with burning love, which was the one for our gonorrhea episode, we knew that we wanted to have something that was like burning or hot or spicy. Something spicy. Yeah. And then we kind of just went from there. Yeah. I think sometimes we come up with the name first and then the name sort of guides us, like what types of liquors should there be in a drink of this name? But a lot of times we're just like, what liquor do we think matches with gonorrhea? Yeah, or what do I not need to go to the store to get? That too. That's very real. Out of sheer laziness. What do I have in my pantry? Which is then given birth to a lot of these simple syrups that we've incorporated, which is fun. Yeah, simple syrups we've learned are a great way to add more flavor and pizzazz to your drinks without having to spend a bunch of money on these fancy liqueurs that you would

use like one time. Right. And so that kind of goes into that second question is what liquors or liqueurs would we recommend for someone who's wanting to stay on a budget because talk about an expensive hobby and also unhealthy. Very expensive and unhealthy hobby. I would say, I think that we looked into this once. There was like a bartender Bible that I got from the library. And it's like definitely bitters. Bitters for sure. Essential. A whiskey of some kind, like a mild whiskey probably would be the best.

And I feel like sweet vermouth was on there. I think a sweet vermouth was on there. And I think you have to have tequila on your bar cart. Maybe that's a personal opinion. Okay. So let's say that I moved to Finland and I went to, for instance, just a random example, throwing it out there. and I had to go and stock an entire liquor cabinet.

What would I get? What did you get? Probably vodka, whiskey. I got some vodka. I got whiskey. I got gin. I didn't get rum, but that's just a personal choice. I think eventually I got rum.

Sweet vermouth, campari, bitters. Yeah. And then as long as you have lemon juice and lime juice or citrus juices that you can have on hand, you can make a ton of drinks with just those items and then some kind of simple syrup. So for that, you just need sugar and water. Yeah. You can do so much with, like, the amount you can do with simple syrup and club soda is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Fun question. And neither of us have been bartenders. No. We were, we did discuss, I have dated a bartender. And my husband was once a bartender. So I think, yeah. We've had exposure to the biz. Oh, that's fun. Okay, the next question.

This is very cute. How did we meet? asks Hannah and Rachel. How did we meet? Okay. So here's what I remember. Tell me. I was in my office on campus, which I was the only person in that office. And I loved it because there was that nuclear fallout sign on the door like from the actual 1960s and 70s. Yeah. And, uh, and I was there working on a Friday and you knocked on the door and said, hi, is this, are you Aaron? And I, and then from that point out, I was like, oh, great, there's a this is the, this is the other Aaron that I've been promised. And I, and I, I think it was a couple hours from five, which was when the grad student happy hour started. So I said, you should come and we'll hang out. And that was it. Yeah. Yeah, that was the rest is history pretty much.

Yeah. I remember it very similarly. We were in the same lab. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we did our PhDs in the same lab. But yeah, the very first time we met you, you didn't just say, oh, you should come. You said, oh, there's happy hour. You're coming. That sounds like me. Yeah. You're like, here's where it is. Here's what time. I'll introduce you to. everybody. It was fantastic. It was great. Yeah. And then we pretty much had like that, that first semester even became almost instant best friends. We had at least one dance movie marathon night. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. In my old, very crappy apartment. That was, yeah. I think that's when I was still living in that, in that house with like 14 other people or 13 other people.

That's why we did it at my apartment. That's exactly why. Yeah. You're exactly right. That's exactly right. Okay. Going off the rails here. This is fun.

Okay. This is fun. Okay. I'm feeling less nervous. Yeah, me too. Good. Oh, but then here comes this question. Oh, gosh.

So someone who is a PhD candidate in medieval studies asked, what role do you see the humanities and social sciences playing in fields like epidemiology, medicine, and other areas of scientific research? Gosh, we went from like, I can do this to like have. Yeah. Talk about that's like the full roller coaster of a PhD. Yeah, that's so true. That is a great question though. Yeah.

This is a great question. Yeah. I feel like the humanities and social sciences are super important in fields like medicine and science. And I think they're often overlooked and not taught in schools as much. And so I think that's one of the things I really love about what we get to do in this podcast is try and incorporate a little bit of that and humanize a lot of the biology and medicine. Yeah, I agree. And I think that lately there has been more of a trend or more of a push towards integrating these seemingly disparate fields in specific social science research with hardcore ecology or epidemiology.

I think bridging those gaps and actually having people talk to one another, not only can you allow for more information to be exchanged, but you also have different perspectives, and that's really valuable. When you ask somebody who's in social sciences or humanities, what do you see as the most interesting question or the challenges to do research in this area? You're going to get a very different answer than you would if you ask someone in medicine or epidemiology. Although the trend is in that direction, I think that the world would benefit greatly from even more connectivity between those fields. Very well said.

I agree entirely. Okay, here's an easier question. Oh, good. Multiple people wanted to know. Kiriana, Justin, Megan, they all want to know how do we record in two different locations? Two different locations. Hmm.

Hmm. Okay. Well, I am currently in Finland, and it is around 10 p.m. And it's late, but it's still very bright outside. So the joys of summer, legitimate joy. It's wonderful. And you're in Illinois. And so what we do is this is just kind of a logistical answer to this question, but we both have Skype.

So we're looking at each other's faces while we're doing this. And we both are recording on microphones on our individual computers. And then we will align the tracks in an audio. editing software, and then we'll go from there. Yeah. Yeah, we found that that's the way that makes it sound the most, like we get the best sound quality when we each record ourselves separately and mix it together.

So, yeah. It took a little bit of trying, but I think it's, I think it's all right. It's not quite as much fun when I only see your face on a computer screen, but, you know, it does a trick. Okay. We got several questions along these lines. So I don't know if I have a few of the names written down, but in general, basically, break down for the audience what degrees we have. And then after that, what we currently do for our work.

Do you want to go first or do you want me to go first? You go first. Okay. So I did my undergrad degrees, bachelors, in aquatic biology and global studies. so not disease related. And then I did a master's in epidemiology. And then my PhD in entomology, where I studied Shagas disease. And I'm working on my MD.

So I don't have a real job. I'm still a student forever. I think that that's a pretty real job. You work all the time. It's true. It's true. So right now I'm in my clinical years of my medical school degree. I've got two years left.

Wish me luck, everyone. Luck. What about you? Okay. So it's funny. We've always talked about how we're basically the same person. Yes. So we do have some parallel shared history there in some way.

I have a Bachelor's of Science in Biology. I have a Master's of Science in Epidemiology. And my PhD was in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology. And right now, I am a. postdoctoral researcher in Finland. We're researching questions looking at the role of different wildlife species in disease transmission. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty wonderful. Okay, the next question. I like this question. This is fun. Is from Micah, who asked, how much do you know about what the other Erin is going to be talking about? This is a great question. It's such a good question. It's a great question.

we know very, very little. Like, and we do this on purpose. We learned, I think, I think it was when we recorded the very first episode and I was researching it and I couldn't stop talking to you about it before we recorded. And then we were both like, wait a second, we need to stop talking about this and capture this. Like, we should be recording. First of all, that's like twice the amount of work.

If I have to learn the biology of something on my own, mm-mm. I don't want to learn the history. That's why that's why you do it. And so, yeah, so that it's, it is, we do go into it blind. And yes, there are some things, of course, that that we might know more about than others, but there are so many other things always that we're each going to learn. Yeah. I think that's, we decided to do that because we wanted for this podcast to be conversational and, and relax. And I think that's one of the things that keeps it that way is that, that, We get to learn what you guys are learning at the same time, which is really, really fun. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not lying when I say, what? Some people think I'm faking it. I'm just dumb.

We're not faking it. I'm a terrible actress, so. Really? Okay. Okay. All right. This, I am so excited to read this email. This email was so cute that we wanted to read it out specifically.

specifically. Yeah. Okay, here we go. This email has been dictated by nine-year-old Autumn with help from six-year-old read. I'm dead already. Yes, I know, I know. Dear Aaron's, your podcast is so good, I want to listen to it every night, even if I get scared, like with the yellow fever episode. Oh, I like that you tell the history and biology of dangerous pathogens. Please do another crossover episode with indefensive plants. You're welcome. And maybe an episode about strep throat. That would be a great idea.

Definitely on our list. I want to know if you go to your local library to find information because my mom is a teacher of librarians and we love the library. Yes, I love to go to my local library. The library is my happy place. Like I am, I'm not lying that one of my favorite memories of during my PhD and, in Illinois is when it would snow in the winter on a weekend and I would wake up and the ground everywhere would be covered with fresh snow and I would put on my boots and grab my jacket and

walk however long it was to the library and just grab a book and start reading and just sit there for hours. Yeah, we love libraries. They're fantastic. We love libraries. Okay, but there's more here. There's more. How old are you? This is from Reed, who's the six-year-old. and also what were you like when you were nine? So I can see how we can see how old we are, right?

That's fine. Sure. I'm 31 now. Just turned. I'm 32. Oh. And what were we like when we were nine? I was very nerdy.

Tell me more about that. Well, okay. So when I was nine, I think was when we moved from San Diego to Irvine. and so I didn't have a lot of friends, obviously. Like I moved to a brand new school and stuff like that. And one of my mom's favorite stories to tell about me when I was nine and a budding Hufflepuff is that my mom was asking the teacher like, oh, how is Aaron doing? You know, is she settling in okay?

And the teacher was like, yeah, you know, about a week after she started, we had, what do you call it, student council elections, and Aaron decided to run. Wow, I'm not surprised. I lost, you guys. But I was like, yeah, sure, that sounds cool. I would do student council. I'll run for, that's the kind of kid I was when I was nine. Just like no concept of the fact that I had no friends at this new school.

What did you do after school? What kind of things did you do? I don't know. I have such a bad memory. I can't remember. I made a good friend as soon as we moved there, Darren, shout out. So I probably just hung out with her and her sister all the time, did whatever they wanted to do. What were you like when you were nine? Would we have been friends? Yes. Yeah, we would have been friends, of course. Also, it's really funny. I didn't know that that's when you moved from San Diego to Irvine. That's around when I moved from Florida to Kentucky. Oh, okay. You're like nine in fourth grade, right? That's a very. That's a really. about right? Yeah, that was right before fourth grade. I started fourth grade and in Kentucky.

We moved in the middle of the fourth grade year. Oh. Wow. We are, we are even more the same person than we previously realized. How fun. Let's see, though. When I was nine, I was, I mean, I was reading all the time. That was actually when I first really, I think, fell in love with reading books, like reading fiction books. My fourth grade teacher gave me, Mrs. Larison, gave me animorphs and The Hobbit. And both of those, so it's already shaping my very, very nerdy personality. And that's when I was like, wow, you can really, there's a whole world that you can just lose yourself in. And it was really wonderful. I spent a lot of time outside. I was always running through the woods, running at playing soccer constantly. We built like a,

I remember that year we built a haunted trail in the woods of Kentucky. It was moving from Florida to Kentucky wasn't that traumatic for me. I think I was excited because my favorite summer holidays, we would go to Western North Carolina and the Smokies. And I would just spend the whole time playing in creeks and catching fireflies and running around. Catching hookworm. And so to be in Kentucky and hookworm. And so to be in Kentucky and get to be outside all the time was amazing. I still remember that the magic of like you mean that there's, I can just run around here.

Oh, that's so cute, baby Aaron. So a nerdy, a nerdy kid that just ran around outside. I bet we would have had fun together. Definitely. Okay. this is a fun also autumn reid and their mom christie thank you so much that was the cutest email yeah you loved it um the next question from jen easy peas are you a cat or a dog person oh this is a really challenge just kidding i'm a dog person if there was ever any doubt erin welsh is not a cat person

I'm formally declaring for dogs right now. I love both cats and dogs. I don't want to declare for one or the other because I love them both. I can see. Yeah, playing both sides, keeping everyone happy. Hefflepuff! That's what, you know. But I was on an episode of the percast, so I feel like that gives me some cat person

cred. You know what I mean? Sure. I don't know. I feel like it does. I thought I wasn't a cat person enough to be on it, but I felt very at home there. I think I just, I would like to say I had a horrible experience with a cat growing up. Our family cat was pure evil.

And I'm sure that even people who are cat people can acknowledge that some cats can be pure evil. So I have some. I mean. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But I could go into all of the merits of dogs, but I won't. I hope save it for another episode. Yeah.

Okay. This question from Jenna is, what is your favorite part of making the podcast? Oh, that's a good question. My absolute favorite part? I feel like I have a lot of favorite parts. Do you have one specific good answer for this? No, I feel like I don't have a good answer for any of these. I feel like my favorite part that I wasn't expecting.

How about that? Sure. Is how positive and amazing the feedback has been. I love hearing from people that love this podcast. It's still so overwhelming to me to think that people are voluntarily listening to us talk and enjoying it. And then telling their friends about it, that's the thing that really I was telling my husband today, actually, how much that blows my mind, like on Twitter, to see people recommend. us to their friends, the way that I recommend podcasts that I listen to to friends, it's really overwhelmingly exciting. That's, I think, one of my favorite things I didn't ever expect to happen.

Yeah. It's very surreal. Like, I look at those comments and I think, oh, that's happening to someone else. That's not me. That's not us. No. But I think one of my favorite parts of making the podcast is recording the podcast. So there are so many things that go into. Exactly. Well, there are so many things that go into the prep to make the episode and then to edit it and to, you know, add music and then to find the social media images that we put on there

and all these things. But I think that it's such a huge payoff to actually sit down and record and tell that story and sort of have that like, because it is like, it is, we're just nerding out over diseases. And that's true. Fun. It's just fun. I can't believe that we like get to do this, I think.

Yeah. So all of it is amazing. Agreed. Next question from Shannon is what is your go-to drink when you order something? I have an immediate answer for this question. Oh, give it to me then. Okay. Well, I have two answers.

one I would say is for winter months. That would be an old-fashioned, preferably made with Woodford Reserve. Once again, not an ad. Just one of my personal favorites, Rowan Creek. There are some great bourbons out there. But yeah, old reliable Woodford. And then I think my other absolute favorite is gin and tonic. Classics. I don't have a go-to drink, I think. I've always wanted to have a go-to. to drink, but I've never really fallen so deeply in love with one thing that I could just order that. I will say that since I haven't been drinking for many months, the thing I miss the most is tequila. Hmm. And rosé. Hanging out with you at your house when we'd be like, let's make something, it was often a Manhattan. I do love Manhattons. I love Manhattans.

But I also am just like those are the things I know how to make very easily. So sometimes when I go to a bar, I get very nervous. So I just order like a Manhattan or an old-fashioned because I know what that is. And I know I can order it because I get nervous about looking stupid. It's true. I don't know what to say to that. I also love a boulevardia. I will say that was a fave.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a whole world. drinks out there. There is. On that note, perhaps it's time for a quick break. Yes. Go make yourself a custom quarantini. Your favorite version. Dinner shows up every night, whether you're prepared for it or not. And with Blue Apron, you won't need to panic order takeout again. Blue Apron meals are designed by chefs and arrive with pre-portioned ingredients so there's no meal planning and no extra grocery trip. There, assemble and bake meals take about five minutes of hands-on prep.

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And as I was going through these questions, I also found another one that was similar along the same vein, which is how do you navigate a friendship with an anti-vax friend? These are very good questions and different. They're really difficult questions. Do you have a good answer? Again, you ask me if I have a good answer. Of course I don't have a good answer. I can put together an answer. Do you have a good answer? I don't have a good answer except I do think it's important to keep in mind that yelling at people has pretty much never solved anything ever. But it's hard, I think, to not let your own frustrations when, you know, when you have friends or family members maybe who are being, are not willing to listen to reason sometimes. I think it can be really difficult, but as much as you can, I think trying to maintain communication can be really helpful because maybe someday you would be able to have a conversation. with someone like that where you could at least present your side of the information in a way that's not judgmental and then maybe someday they might listen.

Yeah. It's hard. I mean, I think it's especially hard because you have to make this judgment call of whether the energy that you're putting into this, both emotional energy and just the time and effort into talking to this person and trying to convince them that you're not in the pocket of big pharma or that vaccines truly work and are safe, it's some people are more vaccine hesitant than they are anti-vax, for instance. Yeah. And so identifying those people and maintaining this space where you can talk about it in a way that's like comfort, like comforting or comfortable,

that's, that's really important. And maybe sometimes they just want someone. to listen to what they have to say and say, like, are my concerns valid? And sometimes, like, yeah, maybe, like, of course you're concerned for your child. You're concerned about whatever. But sometimes they're looking for validation. And if you don't provide that, that can be difficult to talk with them. You know, I think that everyone has a duty, I feel, to at least try. once, then it becomes more of a judgment call of, is this actually making any progress? And I think that this is a bigger picture thing that I'm about to say. But in this political climate where we tend to make our own bubbles, that's that isolation there,

that complete lack of connect between one group and another group that is not necessarily progress. I don't know how progress is going. to be made, but I feel like maintaining that bubble or that echo chamber isn't the way. You know, a piece of advice I heard, so this is not my advice, but I thought that this was a really good piece of advice when I heard it, was that sometimes there might be people in your life who are kind of distant friends or friends of friends or, you know, distant relations or something that you know have a stance that's maybe very, very out there. and you know that if you tried to talk to them, they would never listen to you because who are you to them?

You are a distant friend or you don't know them very well, but maybe you know someone who knows them better. And so sometimes talking to people that you are closer with who maybe just don't feel comfortable talking about these issues and helping to educate them so that they could be better intermediates between you and the person who's farther away from you, but maybe also far they. down the spectrum of anti-vaccine. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think it's empowering people with knowledge and information who may not necessarily feel inclined to go out and pass along that message, maybe. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. Well, the next question is a fun one.

Are humans reservoir hosts for any diseases that infect animals? This question from Jen. And yes, humans are. Yeah. I think we talk more often about diseases that spill over from animals into humans, right? Zoonotic diseases. But there are a number of different diseases that humans are sort of the more definitive host that we can also give to animals. Things like tuberculosis you can spread both ways.

Yep. Even influenza you can give to your dog. Yeah. And we see that going back and forth between a lot of different animals. There's a lot of other ones. This is the only question where I looked up to be able to have an answer for because I liked the question, but I was like, oh, I can't name a bunch of diseases off the top of my head. Mumps, salmonella. Well, these are fun.

Gerardia? Oh, my gosh. Gerardia. Well, that makes sense. Parasite. Yeah. It goes both ways. Probably the list is probably a lot shorter for a couple of reasons.

One is because humans will interact with all different kinds of animals, like a high number of humans will interact with many different kinds of animals in ways that might make exposure more likely, like such as slaughtering an animal, you know? But I think that the number, the proportion of animals that will interact with humans of a particular species is a lot lower. And so that's maybe one of the reasons why that other kind of spillover is less common. And I think in addition, it's probably just a lack of knowledge about wildlife diseases.

TOTES. I think that's very accurate. It probably happens a lot more often than we're even aware of. Oh, yeah. I'm sure that the diversity of parasites and pathogens and animals is incredibly high, that we just don't have any idea. Yeah. So. Fun.

Don't cough on your dog or share poop. Yeah. Also, don't let them lick your face when you're sick. Yeah, you can get them sick. Yeah. Liz A. asked, what did you want to be when you were little? Oh, gosh. I wanted to be a lot of different things, I think.

I definitely wanted to be a vet, I'm pretty sure at some point. We are the same person. I wanted to be Bill Nye, the science guy. That was probably my number one most long-lasting. I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted, yeah. Bill Nye the Science Guy, it's who I wanted to be. I wanted to be a vet and then Jeff Corwin.

So we are the same person, which is slightly. God, that's funny. Yeah. God, I love Jeff Corwin. I mean, I also loved Steve Irwin, but for some, summaries that I love, like Jeff Corwin is what I taped, like I taped on VHS. I feel like he's the dorkier version, so I feel like it was just your, no, I mean, I love Jeff Corwin also, but it's, you know.

He did have like the worst joke sometimes and it was just so corny and I loved it. I've genuinely loved it. It's fantastic. Oh, my God. Okay. The next question is from Amy, who asked, how do you find your references? Google. Well, yes and no.

Sometimes it's a lot easier than other times. Sometimes there's a book about preons. Sometimes there's a book about whatever. I go to Google Scholar and I look for certain keywords. Another resource that I have actually used, and I will freely admit to this, is Wikipedia, the citations in the Wikipedia article. That has been varyingly helpful, depending on what I'm researching. But a lot of it is Google and a lot of it is sort of having a bank of books that are more encyclopedic in nature.

And then I just kind of do down the rabbit hole reference tracking. Yeah. Yeah, I also start often with Wikipedia. there's no there's no shame in doing that Wikipedia has a lot of great sources you just have to then go one step further in finding where they found their information from I also heavily use the CDC and WHO websites and then Google Scholar that's where I get all of my that's where I get most of my info yeah Google Scholar for those who might not be familiar is where you can find peer-reviewed literature so primary literature sources about various pretty much every topic ever It doesn't necessarily mean that everything that's on Google Scholar is peer reviewed.

No, it does not. But for ones where you see a lot of citations, that is more than likely going to be peer reviewed. Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

I have a question about antibiotics. Okay. It's a more specific question. Here we go. All right. So why do we need antibiotics for infections that we've had. before. Okay.

Before you answer that question, because I think you'll do a better job answering it than I will. There's a correction. And so I want to quickly make this correction. And so the person that wrote this in, I really appreciate them sending this because this is sort of a throwaway comment that I made about positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement. And I used it incorrectly. So here's what they said.

Towards the end of, so this is in the first vaccine episode, towards the end, we were talking about Australia and the utilization of positive reinforcement for vaccination. You guys got that term right, but when you were talking about how if you're not up to debt on vaccinations, people would show up, that is actually type 1 or positive punishment as opposed to negative reinforcement. So both positive and negative reinforcement, they go on to say, will increase the likelihood of someone engaging in a particular behavior. Positive just means presenting something to bring about or affect a behavior. Conversely, negative means removing something to affect a behavior. So with regards to vaccinations, positively reinforcing someone for getting vaccinated would be something like giving them $100 after they receive the vaccination. And an example of negatively reinforcing someone would be, if you're being super annoying

to them asking them every minute, why aren't you getting vaccinated? and then stop contingent upon them receiving the vaccination. So you would be removing, i.e. negatively reinforcing the annoying stimulus of bombarding them with questions. So thank you very much for sending that correction. I learned a lot and I will try very hard to incorporate that into my language, my vocabulary. Yeah. Yeah, we're definitely not experts on a lot of things.

So let us know when we get things like that wrong. That was great. Okay, so why do we need antibiotics for infections that we've had before? This is a good question. And we had a couple similar ones, too, about like what, this touches on the idea of what a strain is, what a strain of a pathogen is. So for some pathogens, they have a lot of variation. So even though they have a lot of variation in the proteins on their surface that our immune system responds to. And so even though we've been exposed to them in the past and we've mounted an immune response,

the next time that we're exposed, it's a slightly different bacteria. Or in some cases, like with influenza, a slightly different virus. So we're not completely immune, even though we've been exposed to, say, strep pneumonia before. There are like hundreds and hundreds of different strains, different. They just look a little bit different on the outside. So our body doesn't recognize them precisely, which means that we're not able to fight off the infection completely. Does that, is that a good answer? Makes sense to me. Oh, good. Great job. Great job. Okay. Oh, this is fun. Elin or Ellen, perhaps, I might have pronounced it wrong, wants to know, do you prefer lab work or field work? Field work. That was easy for you. That was easy. Fieldwork.

is my lifeblood. I could do field work in just forever and ever and ever. I prefer neither. I'm a little bit burnt out on research at the moment. Maybe ask me again in a couple of years. I'm enjoying clinical work right now. How about that? During your PhD, what did you like more? Gosh, I don't know. I don't know, Aaron. I liked parts of the field work. I liked parts of the fieldwork. Our fieldwork was, it was had a lot of challenges to it. I think I would have liked it a lot more if I wasn't alone doing it. You had helpers. Yeah, but you know, all of the coordination and all of the things that go into fieldwork are not my favorite. But lab work can get quite tedious. But then it's also, you sometimes get like automatic results, which is very exciting because it's satisfying. Like at the end of the day, you know that you've done all of this. So I don't know. They both. I, I, enjoy them both in small quantities.

I think, I mean, I definitely, I enjoy lab work, and I prefer lab and fieldwork to grant writing, for example. Big time. Yeah. But, yeah, lab work does get tedious. But I also love it because you just pop in some earbuds and listen to some podcasts or music or books on tape. But, yeah, field work is, I could do it forever. That's where your heart and soul is.

It is. Okay. So we have a question from someone who, so we asked everyone to send their question and also say whether they cared about if their name was said on air. Yeah. And this person said, you have my permission and I dare you. Because their name, Greg, their last name is very difficult to pronounce. And I don't know if I'm going to touch. Oh, Greg. You got us. We're not going to touch your last name, Greg. Yeah. But we'll read your question. We will. Greg would love to know how someone can still be symptomatic, but no longer contagious. So how are these guidelines established? That's a fun question. It is a fun question. I don't know if there's a specific way that the guidelines are established necessarily, but it is going to vary for every disease. And it's a essentially just dependent on how long you are shedding that virus or bacteria. So for some infections like influenza, you are shedding a high amount of virus before you ever begin to show symptoms. And then the majority of the symptoms that you see are not necessarily from the virus itself, but from your body fighting off that infection. So then towards the end of when you're feeling

sick, though you might still be feeling cruddy, you're not shedding the virus. And so then you're no longer contagious. Does that make sense? It makes sense to me. I wonder if it's like the number of viral particles that is like used to or that is able to cause an infection in another person or like the bacterial load or something like that. And it probably also depends too on whether the symptoms that you're seeing are from the infection itself or from your body fighting off the infection. right? Because if something, something like diarrhea, if you're still actively having diarrhea with something like Gerardia, then you're still pooping out active parasite. So then you're still

infectious the whole time that you have that diarrhea. But with something else like flu, where you're just maybe, you know, having a residual cough, that might just be from all of the immune cells that have sort of built up in your system, even though your body has fought off the viral infection such that you're not shedding active virus when you cough. Right. Your body's just recovering from the infection. Yeah. I wonder how much person-to-person variation there is in that.

I bet there's tons. Hmm. Yeah. That's a fun question though, Greg. Yes, thanks, Greg. Do you remember in succession when he says cousin Greg in the best way ever? When is that show coming back? I think September.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Next question. President Greg.

Next question is what is the role of climate change in infectious disease? Oh, this is a really, really easy one to answer. It's going to be a very short answer. Okay. Just kidding. I actually, I am going to keep it very short. But because the answer is very complex and very, very, very, very, very. varied. So one thing is certain, and that is that climate change will impact infectious diseases.

I can give you a few different instances or a few different examples of how it might do that. I think primarily when people think of climate change and infectious disease, they think of it in terms of vector-borne diseases. So those are ones that are transmitted by arthropod vectors, such as ticks or mosquitoes. And that's because as climate change happens, the environment is going to change, and that will change the distribution or the seasonality of these different insect or arthropod life cycles. So, for instance, something like Lyme disease, as things get warmer, that might make the tick more able that transmits it more able to live at higher latitudes or even in higher altitudes, depending on where you are. And then there's things,

like just seasonality and impacting the amount of humidity that you have. And it's no matter what disease system you're working on, no matter what geography you're researching in, this is going to be a very complex question and a very complex answer even. The answer is typically it depends. Even if you say something like Lyme disease, what is going to happen with Lyme disease and climate change? depends on where you are, depends on what animals are around you. And that's the beauty of ecology and also sort of the difficulty in trying to predict or alleviate some of the negative effects of climate change on infectious diseases. And then there's the whole landscape change and urbanization.

And that's a whole other bag of fleas that I won't go into. Great answer, Erin. Fabulous job. Thank you. Okay. A bunch of people asked a question, and I'll name a few of them. So we have Claire and Emily and Maggie, another Aaron, Andrew, Justin, Sarah, McKenna, Scarlett, Jesse, etc., etc. Lily, we have a bunch of people who asked us, how did we get into epidemiology, and what steps are necessary to become an epidemiologist?

So like how did we get interested in epidemiology in studying it? Yeah, sure. I have an easy answer for this one. Oh, good. So I, in undergrad, wanted to be a shark biologist. That was my goal in life. And it wasn't until I took a ecological parasitology class that I became interested in disease. And it was kind of a life-changing moment for me in terms of, I just,

soon as I started learning about these parasites and how complex their life cycles were and the impact that they have on people, I was completely hooked and knew that I had to study something about disease and parasites. So that was what sort of sparked it for me. And I went to Armand Kuros, who taught that class. And I said, help me. What do I do with my life? I'm about to graduate. And I need to change everything about what I want to do. And he was like, don't worry about it. go get your master's in public health. And so that's what I did. Yeah.

Yeah. I wish I could have taken that class. It was a great class. Yeah. I got interested because I kind of went a roundabout way. I started out majoring my undergrad in nursing and had to take a microbiology class for that in my second year. And it was an 8 a.m. class, which was horrible. for me. I am not an early riser, as you can tell, maybe from our late recording sessions.

But I found myself going to it, riding my bike to it every single Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and not wanting to miss it because I thought it was so exciting and so thrilling. And I thought, oh, this might be what I need to do instead. So I switched my major to biology, looked at some independent research. projects that I could do at cold call or cold email to someone working in the plague and a plague lab and I thought people work on plague this is what this is so exciting and then I became one of the people working on plague and it was so exciting and and to be a complete full nerd as I was working on these play I was working primarily on surface proteins on the plague bacterium but I was

still sort of feeling like okay I'm working on this and amazingly cool bacterium, but what, like, there's more here. What's the story here? So then I read a bunch of books on the plague and found myself much more fascinated by the overall pattern and impact of the disease then on the individual proteins. So then I decided to take a year off and then work and then applied to epidemiology. And then disease ecology kind of of happened because when I was doing my master's, one of my advisors who was a biologist, was asked me or kind of like looked at me sideways and was like, you know that a lot of the things that you're writing about in your thesis are ecology questions, right? I was like,

what? No. I thought it was epidemiology. And he's like, you might want to look at ecology grad programs. I was like, oh, okay. I don't think I've heard that part of the story before. That's really cool. I was clueless. So, yeah. Oh, so, okay, so what steps are necessary to become an epidemiologist? Well, I feel I've never actually worked as an epidemiologist, so I don't know how to answer this question fully.

Yeah. I think there are many different pathways that you. can, in which you can do epidemiology or public health or things related to disease period. Yeah. And I think the first step would be to identify the things that interest you the most or the things when you envision yourself doing epidemiology, what is it that feels the most exciting to you? Or what is it that you are envisioning doing?

If it's something like field work where you're going out to investigate an outbreak, then maybe you want to go to a school of public health and get a PhD or an MD in infectious disease. If it's something like statistics, then maybe you want to look at biostatistics programs. If it's something like wildlife disease, you could look at veterinary programs or disease ecology programs or a combination of all of these. If it's like policy, you could look at policy programs. I think that that's one of the beauties of public health as a field is that there's so many different avenues that you can get there. And it's just sort of finding out what you like to do, want to do. So talk to people who do these things.

Yeah. I think it never hurts to email. Like if you find actually something we had to do in our first semester of grad school here. I remember this. Yeah. It's a, it's a use. exercise, what we had to do was find somebody with a job that we wanted. So find a job that you think you want and look up their CV. And sometimes they might not have it online. So maybe you email them and you

ask, could I have a copy of your CV? And they might just give it to you or they might have it on their website already. And then you can see what do they do to get to the position that they're in. And then that can help guide you in figuring out what you might need to do to get to that position someday. Erin, can I reveal what yours was? Because I remember this. Yeah, you can reveal it. So Aaron Almanup Dyke over here decided that

she would download and print out and bring to class the, was it the Surgeon General? Yes, the United States. Surgeon General CV. That's who CV I brought in. Our advisor was like, um, So he asked if I was serious or if I misunderstood the prompt or if we needed to have a really serious discussion about how high I wanted to aim.

What were we thinking? Anyways, hopefully that's helpful advice. Yeah, I think in general, undergrad career could be something like biology, statistics, math, chemistry. And then, you know, I also don't want to discount things like social sciences. Yeah, anthropology or humanities. Yeah, anthropology, sociology, psychology, psychology, art even. I mean, the need for graphical design in getting like infographics,

particularly to people that where literacy or regions where literacy might be quite low, that's huge. I mean, there's so many different ways to be involved in public health. If you want to study, if you want to do epidemiology, in the strictest definition of the word, then you would want to choose probably a more, quote, hard science undergraduate degree and then sort of go down, go down those steps. But, you know, look at job boards and say, is that a job that I would want to do? Find people who have that job, talk to them. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's good advice. Okay. This is a fun next question that a number

of people asked Alec, Marcelline, Lizzie, Jennifer, they all want to know, probably more people, too, that I forgot to write down. What is our favorite disease or parasite or infection? And why? This is so hard because I feel like I have been fascinated by every single one of them. What if I answered what I think you would say and you answered what you think I would say and then we say whether we're right or wrong? Okay. Ooh. That's fun. Yeah.

I would think if I just guessed what yours would be. Are we talking just real quick? Are we talking ones that we have covered on the show so far or anything? Oh, I just was thinking just in general. Okay. Okay. But I think one of your top favorite. is the plague. Of course. Yes. Yeah. But why would I find it the most intriguing? Oh, I think that you love

how huge it is and how huge of an impact and how you can see the impact that it's had across all of humanity and what a massive, massive disease it has been and how interesting it is biologically on top of that. Yeah. I think that's a pretty good answer. What's mine? I think. I think, think yours is schisticeomyasis. Yeah, I think it probably is. I think that you have answered that for this before, for this question before or a similar question. Yeah. Because of the, there's something that's very intriguing or fascinating about a multi-host parasite. Yeah. It was also one of my first, it was the hook lecture in the parasitology class that I took. So it has a special place in my heart. Just as plague and I. Yeah. Your first love is.

You know, exception. All those things, yeah. Oh, that was fun. That was fun. Yeah, thanks for all those, everyone who asked that question. Yeah. Okay, so Danielle asked, you asked Dr. Hottas, if he could snap his fingers and instantly have a new vaccine for a disease that doesn't

currently have one, what would he choose? So they would like to know which we would choose. Oh, gosh. This is hard. This is very hard. I can think of three that come to mind immediately. Okay. What are they? Malaria.

What about the new malaria? Yeah, I just don't, I mean, I don't know that much about it. So if I could snap my fingers and know that it works, that would be awesome. HIV and universal influenza. I think malaria was one of my gut ones too and then also gut parasites, were we parasites. Yeah. So that would be, I think, if I could do one that hit like roundworm, hookworm, and whipworm. That's good.

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Contact dealer for details. Offer ends 3-2. Welcome back. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to this episode of. Anyways, I'm not going to do that voice forever. Okay.

Next question. This is a fun question. that we got from a number of different people. Stephanie, Tyler, Kendall, and a few others. What career options are there for epidemiologists? Good question. Many different career options. And, you know, one of the things that came to mind as we were putting this episode together is that we really need to put together an episode that is just about epidemiology or infectious disease or whatever as a career. Yeah. We really want to bring in people who actually do varied,

who have varied careers in epidemiology or disease ecology or medicine and have them talk to you about their experiences, what their path was like, what advice that they have. Because there are so many different things that you can do with a public health degree or with any other kinds of degrees in public health. Yeah. And so to answer the question of what career operative options are there for epidemiologists? I mean, the short answer is many different things. Tons. Yeah, we got in general a lot of questions asking for sort of advice on, you know, how to find careers or what to do for careers and what kinds of options are available. And we've only done what we've done so far. So we don't have answers to all of those questions. So we are

planning for our next season to put together an episode where we interview people who have all kinds of different careers and had all kinds of different pathways that they took getting to those careers. So hopefully that'll be able to answer a lot more of these types of questions more specifically. Yeah. But I would say to not leave you hope like so completely unsatisfied, as an epidemiologist, you could be, as I mentioned, somewhere out there in the field looking for spillover events, looking for outbreaks, investigating whether there are a higher number of brain tumors at this one production factory than there should be, as expected due to chance. Or you could be someone who works through long-term data that's been collected for years and

years and years and says, oh, you know what, there is a risk between working the night shift and having higher rates of a certain type of cancer or whatever it is. Yeah. Or there could be someone who is more about initiating science communication programs or saying, let's have a tick van, as they do here in Finland. A tick van? Yeah, yeah, they have like a tick van. And it's informational tick van. And they also have, they provide the tick-borne encephalitis vaccine.

Oh, that's so cool. Which is really cool. So we saw it once when we were doing field work down south. Oh, that's so fun. really cool. But yeah, so that would be something that an epidemiologist could be involved in depending on your training and your interest and skills. There's also a lot of opportunities for things like policy advocates. So depending on what you focus on with a public health type degree, there's a lot of need for people to do policy, whether it's policy research or policy advocacy, writing

policies, working with lawmakers, all that kind of stuff. So there's a huge range within public health of the kinds of jobs that you could potentially have. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Cool. We have gotten, in addition to this question, which I'm going to read to you, we've gotten a lot of responses from people in general about saying like, oh, I did so poorly in science during high school or during college that I thought this isn't for me.

I can't do this. I'm, this is not the right fit. But then not at the same time, really having still. an interest in it and so one of the questions that we got from several people was how performance in certain courses affected both our decisions for what to study and then also whether it's worth it to try to do something that you're interested in if you don't feel like you are performing well that's a difficult question these are difficult yeah difficult questions I think

I mean, for me, I think one of the reasons that I'm still in school is because school is a thing that I am good at. So I just stay in it forever and ever. But I do think that grad school is a lot different than most other school. So even if you think, oh, I didn't do well in these classes in high school or in college, grad school, whether it's a master's or a PhD, is really nothing like those schools. schools. And so I think just because you maybe didn't do well in a classroom setting doesn't mean that you couldn't do well in a research setting if that's something that you're interested in pursuing. Yeah. I mean, I do think that that's part of it. Like there are certain science courses

that made me feel I don't belong here and also certain times during my PhD when I thought, oh, I don't belong here. Most of my PhD. And so I think I do think that anyone can do science if they want to do it, if they're really driven to do it. But there are also sometimes science, and I think this is very context dependent. It depends on how it's taught in that certain school. Maybe you're stuck with a really lousy teacher who doesn't quite care enough or lacks the skills to teach it in a certain way that's accessible.

But then there's also, even if you love it so much, is it worth it to be so miserable during your undergrad, for instance, or is there a way that you can incorporate your interest in science or in diseases or medicine in a career that's not necessarily focused on learning some of the skills that you may not be interested in learning? Yeah. I'll second your statement that grad school research is a lot different. then undergraduate. So I think that, yeah, it's definitely a rule that if you succeeded in something at undergraduate, you might not succeed as well in grad school and that same field. And vice versa. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Cool. Cool. So the next question, we got a couple of questions similar to this. This is a fun one. So I'll read this one from Lisa. She asked, how do we manage being full.

time grad students or in this age now postdoc and student and creating the podcast. How do we? Yeah. She asked, are we wizards? We're not wizards. I wish we were wizards. That would make it easy. If we had a time turner like Hermione, that would make this a lot easier.

Yeah. Oh my God. You know what I think about that, like not infrequently. I didn't know that. Also, before I answer this question, I want to say, Lisa, I definitely remember meeting you at E-E-I-D a couple years ago, and it was really nice. She mentioned that we had this, that I gave her this zine, the zine that my older sister made of my research, and it's one of my favorite possessions.

It's super cool. Maybe I'll put it up on the website or something. You should, because it's really cute. But then, Carrie, make one for me, too. I know. Carrie. Carrie. Okay.

Anyway. Anyways, are we wizards? How do we manage our time? We are not wizards. No. Definitely time management, as this is going to sound so cliche, it's an ongoing struggle. You constantly have to work on it, constantly have to learn how to do it.

And so at the beginning when we started this podcast, it was very poorly managed time-wise. Very poorly. My research suffered. I think I can say that. for both of us. Yes. Yes. And so now it's, we've fallen into a bit more of a routine. It's a lot of work. I would say a lot of weekends. At least one full weekend day is typically dedicated to doing something of the podcast. And I would say four or five week nights. I'm doing something related to it several hours. Yeah. It's just practice. Yeah. I think the biggest things that

we've had to learn how to do is balance at all. And yeah, like Erin said, we didn't used to be very good at it, which is why we had such a long hiatus between season one and season two, because we had to finish our actual piece. Actually finish. But we have gotten a bit better at it, but it is still something that we continually have to work on. And so sometimes things slip by the wayside, whether that's our social media. Sorry, guys, sometimes. doesn't get all of our attention or whatever else it is sometimes things there are ebbs and flows but we also just don't really have lives outside of work and the podcast yeah but i think that there's a lot of things that at the beginning took a lot of time like the editing learning how

to just do the editing editing editing used to take a lot longer and so as you get more efficient in all of these different areas, things just get a little bit more streamlined. Yeah. And something that we try, because we were friends before we started this podcast, and our goal is to maintain being friends throughout it. So that's something that we also work on pretty hard is just maintaining communication between the two of us, so that if one of us is super busy, the other one tries to pick up the slack and vice versa and just sort of having communication.

So I think we wouldn't be able to do this without a partner. No. Yeah. That's been. That's for sure. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So on that note of time management and so on, advice for someone considering a PhD in any field.

What kind of advice do we have to offer? Don't do it. Just kidding. Oh, boy. Come on. I can't say that. Do we have to answer this question, Aaron? Yes.

I would say, wherever you're applying, talk to your potential advisor a lot beforehand and talk to other students in their lab because PhDs are very challenging and very long and your advisor can kind of make or break the experience. I would agree with that. And I would also say that I feel like we were so incredibly fortunate to have basically the world's best advisor.

Brian, shout out. He'll never hear this. He'll never hear this. That's okay. But there are things that you want to look out for and there are definitely some red flags. Like if there's a grad student who says, don't come here, that's an obvious red flag. Yes. Because the point is, this is going to be, for a PhD, depending on your field, this could be anywhere from four to seven years of your life where you are essentially, yeah, you are essentially married to this person, you're a PhD advisor.

And you have to be able to get along and work well together if you don't want to have a completely miserable existence. Yeah. Because grad school is hard enough as it is. without having a terrible advisor on top of that. Also look at the atmosphere within the department. That's really huge. Do the professors interact with one another? Are they friends?

Or is it highly competitive both amongst the professors and among the grad students? Right. Are you guaranteed funding? Yes. That's major. If you're not guaranteed funding, bye-bye. Peace out. For a PhD, yeah.

There are differences between choosing between different programs and then choosing between going to grad school or not going to grad school. And so... That's a harder question. That's a harder question. If your only reason is I don't know what else to do, don't go. Don't do it. No.

For me, the only thing that kept me going through the hardest parts of my PhD is that I came into it wanting to do a very specific thing. And even though at this point, I don't know that that's what I want to do with my life anymore, I came in with a goal. And so for me, I think that was essential because I was like, I'm doing this for a reason. So I think knowing what you want to do with the PhD, even if it's not precise, knowing that you need it to get you to the next stage, I think is really, really helpful. Yeah. And I think that, again, Googling jobs, like going to any job website and typing in something that you think you might.

be interested in or if you know someone that has a job that you would want to do, see what kind of qualifications you need. Do you need a PhD? Because if not, the field is increasingly competitive. And I feel like we're both sounding very negative on this question, but it is because it's a massive undertaking. And it is the grad school culture or expectations are not always the kindest to your mental health. Yeah. And to time management and to personal life, a division between personal life and work life becomes, yeah, it's, it's tough. That being said, it is an incredible experience. Some of it is really wonderful. Erin is looking at me very doubtfully right now. Very doubtfully. But the community, I would be,

We were, again, very fortunate with having an incredible community as well with our International Secret Wine Society. Yes. Shout out to everyone there. We couldn't have done it alone. That's the thing is that you're at least in the trenches with a bunch of other people. I don't know if that's comforting or not, but. It was for me. Yeah.

And then, in my case, you get to do field work and be in beautiful places. Yeah. So. Well, let's move on to more. happy things. Yeah. Like this wonderful question from Paul, I like this question. Okay, tell me.

So they asked how we got interested in things that will kill us, which we kind of have talked about how we got interested in epidemiology. But the part of the question that I really like is they ask, we often sound in admiration of how ingenious viruses and bacteria are, but we clearly love vaccines. And so they're asking, are we on the side of vaccines or on the side of the viruses and bacteria? Well, Paul. Whose side are we on? All right, Paul, let me give it to you straight.

I will personally say I'm on the side of vaccines and medical technology. And I'm also on the side of just straight up evolution. I think that when we talk about how ingenious viruses and bacteria and parasites are and how incredible it is, the hookworm life cycle is, what did we call it? We called it like aspirational. Yes. And I mean, it is. Like the fact that that exists is, it's so, I mean, unbelievable is not a good enough word for it.

No, it's incredible. It's so beautiful to see that evolution has led to the existence of these parasitic life. life forms that have these unimaginably complex life cycles. And I do, yeah, I mean, I can hear the admiration coming out. But I am, I will say ultimately, yes, on the side of also human ingenuity and technological advancement. Yeah. I feel like the way Dr. Who feels about it, I feel like he has equal admiration for a lot of life forms and just maybe loves humans just a tiny bit more to where you want to see them succeed. Yeah, you have to, I think, have a good, healthy dose of respect and fear for these guys,

these viruses and bacteria and pathogens. Yeah, they're all just trying to make their living the same way that we are, you know? Yeah. So it's, yeah, I agree on the side of evolution, but also medical technology at the same time. We can love both, Paul. Yeah, Paul. Come on. Don't put us in this corner here.

Yeah. That was fun. Okay. Miley asked, if you could shrink yourself down and get injected into an infected person to see a disease at work, what disease would you want to see in action and why? This is a very fun question. Also, to come on the heels of the other, I didn't do that on purpose. in ordering these.

That's good. Yeah. I think I'd want to see one of these really complex life cycle diseases, for sure. I'd want to see schistosomyasis or, no, I probably would want to follow something like schistow because I'd want to follow it all the way through all of its hosts. Oh, my gosh, can you even imagine? It would be like Osmosis Jones, but biologically accurate. Yes.

Oh, that would be amazing. Let's magic school bus it. Yes. Oh, yeah. That sounds great. Hmm. New TV show idea. I think my first instinct was something similar, like hookworm.

Yeah. I mean, just because I want to go through the whole lungs and et cetera, et cetera. But I also would love to cross the blood-brain barrier with rabies and say, or like cortisps. be like, what is actually happening here? Corticeps would be maybe what I want. Corticeps, I'd like to ask, I'd like to be able to talk to the fungus and be like, listen, can we, what's going on here, man? Oh, man. Oh, man.

Oh, that would be so cool. What a fun question. I, yeah. Okay, next one. Ready. Okay. Someone who is a part-time lecturer of writing and literature asked us, when we look at writing, fiction and nonfiction that focuses on epidemics or is about pathogens or uses epidemics as like a plot

point. What do we think is the underlying narrative that's often being told? I feel like you can answer this one much better than I can. I love this question. This is going to sound super dorky. I would love to take a class on this particular topic. I wonder if they teach it. Maybe on disease, like disease in fiction. Yeah. be so cool in having this type of question on a, I don't know, quiz or exam or something. Oh, my God. You sound so nerdy right now. No, I'm just really nerdy.

But I think that the narrative that I can immediately think of off the top of my head maybe is a fresh start. So what do humans do with a fresh start and what aspects of humanity will prevail? Is it going to be positive aspects? Is it going to be this survival, this teamwork, this let's group together? Or is it going to be an individual, how much evil can one person do to bring down this newly created society that? Yeah. But it's never the disease itself.

No, it's never the disease itself. It's never about. And it's always, I think there is, it comes down more to society. but also individual choice. So like with the girl with all the gifts, which is sort of a blend between infectious disease and zombies, it is about these individual choices and how our morality or philosophies have to shift

as our worldview is completely shattered from the wiping out of humanity or whatever else. I mean, I love it. I love it. I think it's it is all just staging a, a morality play or a humanity play. What does humanity really do in times of trouble? Yeah. Okay. Our next question is about, this goes right on the heels of this, nicely. What is your favorite book about diseases, fiction or nonfiction?

Erin, you shouldn't have read this question because you are going to have a better answer for it. Because you read way more books than me. But honestly, I'm going on good reads right now. to our to try and find your answer from Goodreads. Yeah, I'm going to Goodreads. These books will kill you. Well, you just said The Girl with All the Gifts, and I had forgotten about that. I think the problem is I have a terrible memory.

So I forget when I've read a book that I enjoyed, but I loved The Girl with All the Gifts. That's a very fun one. I'm reading a book right now that's not about disease, but it's about death, and I love it. What's it called? It's called Working Stiff. It's by a forensic pathologist. It's fantastic. That sounds good.

Oh, I love it. What about Andromeda Strain? You read that. I never did. I watched that movie. I've never read it. Oh, okay. Okay.

And I never finished the Stephen King one that everyone loves. Oh, my God, me either. I feel like the worst person about it. I know, I know. I remember reading it for ages in my hammock in Panama. Yep. And I just never made it through. Okay.

So I think I would say one of my favorites is blindness, which is not really about disease, but it is about an epidemic of blindness that happens. And this is a fiction. Fiction. Oh, it's so beautiful. And there's another, there's a sequel that I haven't read called Sight or Seeing or something by Jose Saramago. If you don't know yet about our good.

reads list. Aaron puts so many good books on it. And then you guys can also add your own favorite books. So we can all have our favorite fiction and nonfiction disease books in one place. It's called These Books Will Kill You. Yes. It's great. It's a really fun resource for me because I get to look and see what else is here. And I think that nonfiction might be the family that couldn't sleep. That was just a really fun, very well-written book. Not awakenings. But I don't know. Awakenings.

I mean, everything. It's so hard. Like, that is much more difficult for me to choose, is the nonfiction, I think. Yeah. There's a lot of good ones. Okay. Next question. From Kaz.

Ooh, okay. Advice for avoiding academic research burnout. Uh-oh. Also, isn't this the person who said they work as a quality control chemist in a brewery? Cass, we're going to hit you up. Yeah, we are. No, seriously. I want to go to your brewery. That sounds awesome. Academic research burnout.

This is a big topic that I think we talk a lot about. Luckily, people are talking about it a lot more these days and not just ignoring it like it isn't a real thing. So that's a first step, I think, that recognizing that burnout is very real and a lot of people experience it. I think, I don't know, trying to find ways to take time for yourself and doing things that you actually enjoy and not falling into the trap of thinking that you have to be working 100% of the time. Yeah. I think is the biggest thing because people fall into that trap because that's very much the

academia mindset. And it's not true. It doesn't make you a better academic if you work 24 hours a day. If you want to, fine, that's cool too. But if you don't, which most humans don't, that's fine and that's normal. Yeah. I think it's very difficult to have strict advice on how not to burn out because I think having, yeah, your advice of making sure that you have personal time is huge. But there are ways that the culture can really seep into your life in negative ways.

So like this constant comparison where there is this imposter syndrome. Like the imposter syndrome then also plays into constantly comparing your own achievements to everyone else around you. And like, oh, well, do I know R well enough? Can I ever know R well enough? Did I have enough papers this year? Did I have enough grant money this year? that person was here at the lab before I arrived and they're still here when I'm leaving. I'm not here long enough.

All of these questions are constantly, or at least in my case, we're circulating a lot and never quite feeling good enough or capable enough or worthy or whatever else. And that emotional exhaustion really plays into burnout. I think being aware of some of these things is, good at least so you can prepare yourself. I think the other thing is having a support group, like a community of friends, to talk about it with or talk about other things. So you know what? We need to just have a night where we just watch dance movie montages. And drink whiskey. Just kidding. We don't. Rare. Yeah. But choosing a grad school track or a grad school strategy is important.

So if you don't want to be an R1 researcher, you may not have to do the types of things that an R1 researcher is going to do during their PhD. And so if you don't need to get all of those NSF grants, then don't kill yourself doing it, you know? Yeah. So Kaz also asked if it was weird to be a 29-year-old grad student and how do you work up the nerves to not have your voice shake. I think those are fun questions. Those are fun questions. It's not weird to be a 29-year-old grad student. We were.

Yeah. Yeah. It's very not weird. And even if you're starting out, like, no, there are definitely, that's still not weird. There are definitely people that I knew that were that age or older when they started. For sure. That's the great thing about grad school. It's like everyone.

Yeah. How do we not have our voice shake while defending? My voice does shake still when I. Yeah, mine does. When I present. My key is I never use the laser pointer. Yes. Because then no one can see your hands shaking.

Yeah. Smart art. Pro tip. Yep. I think that also what goes through my head frequently is something that our advisor said to us frequently as a way to encourage us. And he would always say, no one knows your research better than you do. No one else in the world.

And that was a good reminder. Yeah. Because when you're defending your dissertation, you are. are full of like, well, I was full of self-doubt. I was like, I'm probably going to fail this, whatever. I'll be the first person. And no, and it's, and so hearing that little voice in my head say, you know this. This is what you have lived the past five, six years.

So, yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Okay. Shelly asked, what exactly is a disease ecologist? and how do you interact with different medical professionals and scientists? Well, I feel like you are a disease ecologist today, so I feel like you should tackle this one.

Oh, my gosh. I feel like I've been talking so much. That's what we do on our podcast. So I think in general, also you are a disease ecologist. This is ridiculous. But a disease ecologist is someone who studies disease. and the interaction with the environment. And that has, it's a relatively new field.

It's definitely emerging. And that, for the most part, has centered around infectious diseases. So whether, how climate change impacts the spread of Lyme disease would be one example of disease ecology. Basically, the environment is part of the, is part of what you're looking at in your research. Yeah. And I think in terms of how disease ecologists interact. with other scientists and medical professionals.

One of the cool things about disease ecology because it's a newish field is that there is a lot of collaboration across disciplines. So between epidemiologists and more microbiologists and disease ecologists, there's a lot of room for collaboration to be able to ask really big picture questions, which is very exciting. Yeah. So whether that means collaborating on big research grants, where people apply for grants like all together a whole bunch of people or just sharing information at what do you call them conferences symposia wow okay you've been out of grad school too long yeah yeah one whole year

anyways yeah shrea asked this is fun what would we name our quarantini bar oh shrea I don't know. What about, I don't know. I'm trying to think of like quippy little things, and the only thing I can come up with is the hot zone, but I feel like that would be. It's been taken, maybe. It's been taken.

Let's see, maybe BSL4. BSL4. That's funny. Maybe. Can you tell who comes up with most of our quarantini names, guys? It's not me. Just containment or like, yeah. We should work on this.

We're not opening a bar anytime soon, clearly, because we don't have a name for it. Oh, I would love that, though. That would be a fun business venture. Yeah. All right. So somebody asked, is there a biological component that allows some people to contract a disease and be able to survive? or and does a particular disease always work the same way biologically in each person who contracts it? And if not, why not?

This is a good question. This is a hard question because we don't really know enough about human biology and disease to have a good answer for it. There definitely are components of a human's immune system that vary from person to person. person that are going to affect whether or not you get sick if you are exposed to a disease. If you do get sick, how sick are you going to get? And how likely is it that you're going to die? So there are a lot, there is a lot of variation among people in terms of how robust your immune response is and how likely it is that you're going to die from a disease.

There's not like a single gene that we know of or anything that controls all of this. It's very sort of multifactorial. And that actually kind of plays into a question that a lot of people asked about why not everyone develops immunity when you give them a vaccine. And it's just honestly because there's so much variation in individual immune responses. Yeah. I feel like that's not a satisfying answer. Sorry.

Well, it's better than I could do. Okay. This one's a bit easier. Jennifer asked, what has been our favorite course that we've taken through all of school? Do you have a favorite? Yeah, I think I do actually. And it's going to sound pandering. Okay.

But it's the truth. It's this course that I took in the final year of my undergrad, and I had like a space where I needed to just put an elective. or something. And so I was like, okay, well, let's go for a one or 200 level course. I don't want to have to try too hard. And I was always interested in history. So I was just sort of skimming the course catalogs back when there were physical copies of course catalogs. And there was a course called the history of science and technology since the Industrial Revolution. I've heard you mention this course. Yes. And this course was the first time where my brain,

opened up to the way that you could link these events, these historical events and these technological achievements and sort of broaden the context of your perspective of history. It's not just about, I think that the example that I use when I, because I've thought about this course and talked about this course a lot, and the example that I remember for the first time my mind going, oh my God, what? is the development of a clock technology or keeping time technology and how crucial that was for navigational purposes and how that changed the entire course of humanity. And it was just this, it was this beautiful course.

We went all the way through. We read this amazing book about the atom bomb. I learned so much and I think very fondly. and also this course was taught entirely on overhead projector in 2009 is when I took it. Wow. And for a course that had the history of science and technology as like the title, the person who taught it was completely technologically not very skilled. It was beautiful. I don't know if, I wonder if it's still taught.

It was at the University of Kentucky. Oh, man. I loved it. That's a good. What about you? Mine was, without a doubt, the ecological parasitology class that I took. If you are a student at UCSB, go gauchos, absolutely you should take it. Everyone should take it.

It was a completely life-changing class. It was, and I remember talking with Armand Curis who teaches, or at that time who taught the class, he might not still, I'm not sure. And jokingly asking him what classes of his I should take because he taught a whole number. And he got very, very serious and said, one in ten students' lives are changed by the parasitology class. And I was like, okay, that's funny. And it was totally true for me. Like, I was the one in ten.

I wonder how he gathered that statistic. Oh, he 100% made it up. after several glasses of wine. Oh, yeah, okay. No, it was, but yeah, that was, ugh, I love that class. Okay, so Daniela asked, what are your lab or field confessions? So what are the worst, dumbest, weirdest, whatever, things that you did while working in a lab or field? Oh, my gosh.

Where do I even begin? I know. I feel like I did so many dumb. things that I just don't even know what could possibly be the dumbest. I once made. So always during my entire career, I have been terrified of making solutions in a lab. Yes. And having to calculate molarity and having to calculate whatever percentages and

all those things scare the pants off me. I don't like it. And this is my way of saying that making 70% ethanol was a challenge one weekend when I was trying to do, you're laughing so hard, Erin. I was trying to do my phenyl chloroform extractions, right? and those things, those beasts sometimes take two, or they take two days. And so I was there on a weekend doing it just trying to finish up my stupid lab work for my PhD. And I was like, why are the pellets disappearing?

Like I'm supposed to be just washing the pellets in cold 70% ethanol. They're disappearing. I made 30% ethanol. So there you have it, everyone. first time admitting this. We all do. Dumb things. I was like, why is it this working?

Luckily, it was only 24 samples and they were replaceable, but oh, I felt like such an idiot. Oh, that's really funny. I also used to go camera trapping in Panama without cell phone service. Yeah, that's just like, deep, deep. That was dumb. Yeah, that was very unsafe. I did some very unsafe. I mean, fieldwork is a whole other realm of unsafe choices.

Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, I can't even think of one good story. You just didn't, you never made any mistakes. No, I made so many mistakes that it's just my entire PhD. I think if I was there for any of them. Yeah. Do you remember any of my dumb moments?

No. Yeah, I don't know. I tried and failed a lot at building things and making things and wiring things. Well, that's just field work. I know. It's not exciting. I don't have a good story. I got the truck stuck in a field somewhere. Oh, I did almost drive off the side of the road into someone's house one time. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, it was a very narrow road and actually twice. Once I almost hit someone's house. one's house and that would have been really bad. The other time it was just almost stuck in a really, really deep ditch that I was like, oh dear, the surprise ditches. And I didn't know how to turn on the four-wheel drive, like how to actually engage it with those locking things on the wheels.

Oh, it was an old truck. Yes, yeah. Yeah. Anyways, good times. Let's move on. So speaking of our lab and field work, tell me about your PhD. work, Aaron? I researched tick-borne disease in Panama. So my interests were in how the density of infected ticks changed throughout the year and also across Panama, mainly looking at where the Panama is. And so along the Panama Canal, there's the steep precipitation gradient. So at the north end of the canal, which is on the Caribbean, on the Atlantic Ocean, you get a ton more rainfall than you do on the Pacific end, which is on the southern end. And there's like not very much space. It's like 70 kilometers or something like that. Like it's very, very short distance. But because of that,

these environmental changes across this area, you get a lot of different changes in forest structure in daily humidity values and temperature and things like that. And so I wanted to investigate how that impacted the tick species that were living there when they were present during the year and then also what pathogens they carried. And so to answer all of these questions, I also had to say, okay, well, what are the animal hosts that are there? And so my fieldwork involved collecting ticks across the Panama Isthmus for every week and then also setting up cameras. traps to see what animals were around, which was super fun. I think my favorite part, just hiking around, and then doing tick survival experiments. So how well do ticks, do different tick species survive under different environmental conditions? Yeah. And what about you,

Aaron? What did you do for your PhD? I did my PhD on Shagas disease. So Shagas is a disease will definitely cover at some point. It's a disease that it's caused by a parasite and it's transmitted by these bugs called kissing bugs, which are true bugs. And

no, no one he cares about entomology. Your nerd is showing. I know. So I was working also in Panama and so I was interested in both the ecology and the epidemiology of Shagas disease, specifically looking at how risk

factors vary for Shagas disease transmission across an urban to rural gradient. So all of my fieldwork was, unlike errands, which was in deep, deep forest, mine was in people's houses and backyards. So I went door to door doing surveys and having people collect bugs that they found in their houses for me to then look at what was different among these houses across these land use gradients to see what kinds of things might be driving bugs to people's houses and what kinds of communities might be more at risk or less at risk for coming into contact with these bugs. And then also looking at what percentages of these bugs might be infected with the Shagas Paras parasite versus uninfected and things like that. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That yeah. So that's fun.

That was our research. Did you get like a wave of anxiety from talking about? Maybe just a small one. It just makes me realize how many papers I need to work on. Oh, my gosh. I haven't touched. Don't even remind me. Anyways, shall we move on to our last question? Our last question.

Aw, yeah, okay. This is a really cute question. We actually got this from a number of different people that I'm going to, I'll read their names, but first I'll read this specific email because it's so adorable. So this email is from staff. Stephanie, who wrote, my 12-year-old daughter, Georgia, would like y'all to know that she loves your podcast and is learning a lot. You guys, we love that you listen to this with your kids.

That's thrilling. I had no idea, and it's amazing. It's my favorite. Okay. So she writes, at the end of most episodes, you talk about how worried we should be about the disease that we're talking about. So Georgia would like to know, out of the diseases that we've covered, which should we be the most worried about. And we got a very similar question from also Trisha and her 10-year-old

Poppy. Hi, Poppy. Hi, Trisha. Hi. Jenny, Julia, another Erin, caranoid, Jessica. A bunch of people want to know what disease scares us the most. Georgia. Georgia. Everyone, great question. Of the diseases that we've covered, that's an easy one. for me. I think, can I guess yours? Because I think it's mine too. Yeah. Influenza. A hundred percent. Yes. Yes. Influenza. So tell me, tell me why are you the most scared, or why should we be the most scared of influenza without completely doing the entire influenza episode again? Yes. Influenza is a virus that just can mutate so rapidly, can change and infect so many different animals and then undergo these massive rearrangements

that make it really difficult for us to mount a good immune response because there are so, so many different strains, so many different versions of this virus floating around out there and new ones constantly being evolved. And it is a much gnarlier pathogen than a lot of people give it credit for. It really does cause a large amount of what we call morbidity, so getting sick, and mortality, dying, and then makes you susceptible because it, you know, blasts you, makes you really sick, so then you, when you're sick, you're more susceptible to other infections. So that is, I think, why it's so scary. It's both that it, it does make you very sick and it can kill you, and it's really hard for us to develop a vaccine against.

It's really hard for us to fight it off with our immune system. And it spreads airborne, so it's everywhere. And it spreads before you show symptoms. Exactly. It's terrifying. And people don't take it seriously. They don't. I think that that's one of the things that I hear most often with people, if I'm striking up a conversation about vaccines and vaccine,

hesitancy. A lot of people are like, oh, well, vaccines are great, but the flu shot, I mean, that's, no, the flu shot is a vaccine. And as we discussed on the vaccine episode, it does reduce the time that you spend in a hospital. It reduces the risk that you would even go into the hospital. And so it's sort of seen as like, oh, well, I got the flu. I'm going to be out for a couple of days when it's, it really, I mean, it is greatly underestimated. And everyone should, pick up one of the, either flu by Gina Colada or the great influenza by John Barry to remind yourselves just how bad this pathogen is. Yeah.

And I mean, there are things that are, in researching it, things like Priyons. Right. Things like Mercer that are a lot, that are terrifying to me. But influenza is the one, is the one that I think is the most realistic for leading to another pandemic. We are not equipped. I agree. And maybe we could never be equipped.

Right. Great question. Great question. Thank you, Georgia and everyone else for that question. And also thank you to every single person who wrote in. I think that this is already a very long episode. I think we have to stop here. But we loved reading through the,

them and maybe we'll do a second round of this. Yeah. That would be super fun. We got so many good questions and we're sorry that we can't answer every single one. But we did enjoy reading every single one for what that's worth. So thank you for writing to us. Everyone who wrote in had some beautiful, very nice, kind, sweet thing to say. And it was just, it was a joy.

And so, so, as I said, so surreal. Yeah. What? You want to know these things about us? You want to know what kind of cereal we would be? Oh, we didn't answer that question. We didn't answer that question. I would be crackling oat brand.

Of course you would be crackling oat brand. It's so good. I love cereal too much to pick a one specific. You'd be cinnamon toast crunch. Oh my God. Do you know that that's the first one I thought of? Yeah. But I have no reason why.

It's not even my favorite cereal. I know, but that's what you'd be. The first cereal that came to mind, Erin, how is it that that's the same one that you came with? It's brainwaves. It's brainwaves. They're traveling long distances, but they're still working. That is the most, that's not even my favorite cereal.

That's my favorite. Okay. And episodes over. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. We really cannot end on a higher note, actually. No, no. Okay.

Well, thank you again to everyone who wrote in and also everyone listening now and any other time. And forever. Forever. And thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode and all of our episodes. And until next. time. Wash your hands. You filthy animals. This is Bethany Frankel from Just Be with

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