Plague, polio, and poison ivy, oh my! ‘This Podcast Will Kill You’ is all things deadly diseases
Besides having one of the coolest freaking names for a podcast, “This Podcast Will Kill You” is top-tier edu-tainment. Our hosts, who are also ecologists and epidemiologists, Erin Welsh and Erin Allmann Updyke, take listeners on a journey through the world of infectious diseases – from chicken pox to dysentery.
“This Podcast Will Kill You” has recorded over 100 episodes, although their numbering system does make it look like less. Not that we can fault them: in March 2020 they took a break from their regularly scheduled programming to record a multi-chapter series on the COVID-19 pandemic. While early episodes of this podcast were just about 60 minutes long, episodes nowadays are averaging more around two hours.
Even if you don’t find yourself interested on the state of our world, the two Erins just might change your mind. Through stories from history, personal tales, and a whole lot of science, these two are making disease as fun as it can possibly be.
They’ve covered the classics like the bubonic plague, polio, yellow fever, and ebola, some lesser known bad boys like MRSA, Giardia, and chytridiomycosis (a wildlife disease), and other topics pertaining to health and infectious diseases. They had a two-part vaccine series way back in 2019, talking about the road to developing vaccines and how they work, along with covering the anti-vaccine movement that’s actually been working for quite some time. They even got Bill Nye the Science Guy on those episodes to talk about it.
They have talked about past pandemics and epidemics like HIV and AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhea, and even the silent doozy that is Lyme Disease. They recently discussed anthrax and its fascinating evolution from an agricultural disease to a weapon of bioterrorism. The disease has a long and multifaceted history, and they are talking about it all, including the infamous anthrax mail attacks in 2001.
With the help of doctors, researchers, epidemiologists, the occasional veterinarian, and more, “This Podcast Will Kill You” is looking at all sorts of problems that plague humans. They dive into non-infectious diseases and topics like diabetes and alcohol/alcoholism, mercury poisoning, organ transplantation, poison ivy, and much more. They also continue to add on to their COVID-19 series, discussing not only the virus as we continue to learn more about it, but talking the disparities in the people who are getting it, economic impacts, frontline mental health, even conservation in pandemics.
Be sure to check out Exactly Right‘s “This Podcast Will Kill You,” if not just for the thrill of surviving a podcast so ominous.
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