Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. This week we talked about
Speaker 1: rabies because Wow, I needed to know more than I
Speaker 1: knew about whether everybody got their rabies profyle axes after
Speaker 1: being bitten by the Capitol Hill fox. Right. Um, something
Speaker 1: I learned, Like to me, it is obvious knowledge that
Speaker 1: rabies is deadly, and that if you are bitten by
Speaker 1: a wild animal, particularly if you're bitten by a wild
Speaker 1: animal that seems to be behaving strangely, or if you're
Speaker 1: bitten by a bat, but other situations too, like you
Speaker 1: need to go to a doctor, you're probably gonna need
Speaker 1: to get rabies profyl access. Like this is not a
Speaker 1: thing that has any level of question or doubt or uncertainty.
Speaker 1: In my mind, some of the people who died of
Speaker 1: rabies in the United States just didn't know that being
Speaker 1: bitten by a bat needed medical attention. Um. Bad bites
Speaker 1: can also be really small and hard to detect, so
Speaker 1: that is a factor too. But like in those particular cases,
Speaker 1: it does seem like the people knew they had been
Speaker 1: bitten but just didn't think anything of it. Um. And
Speaker 1: then there was one person among those five who did
Speaker 1: receive rabies profylaxis but had like an underlying immune system disorder.
Speaker 1: That meant that it was one of the rare cases
Speaker 1: where that prophylaxis does not work. I decided maybe the
Speaker 1: reason I know this so intrinsically is because I was
Speaker 1: raised in the country by an anxious person. Uh. That
Speaker 1: taught me a whole lot about not touching bats, and
Speaker 1: not petting straight dogs, and not trying to pet wild animals,
Speaker 1: not just because of rabies. There are many good reasons
Speaker 1: not to try to pet wild animals. Right. We had
Speaker 1: a farm when I was young, and so I kind
Speaker 1: of got the like, if you see a dog or
Speaker 1: other animal that seems to be wandering around or is
Speaker 1: aggressive towards any of the animals you know as ours,
Speaker 1: please tell us immediately. Like I kind of got it
Speaker 1: that way well. And also um, through through the popular culture,
Speaker 1: such as Disney's Old Yeller. See I UM when you
Speaker 1: said the popular culture, I actually got excited because, uh,
Speaker 1: my two favorite animation shows, Home Movies, which is defunct
Speaker 1: and Bob's Burgers have covered rabies and Home Movies has
Speaker 1: a fabulous rap about Louis Pasteurs. So this episode was
Speaker 1: like me holding back the whole time. Oh yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I thought about talking more about the rabies than popular culture,
Speaker 1: but there, I mean, there is just so much of it.
Speaker 1: It would honestly be a whole other thing, because like yeller, uh,
Speaker 1: there's that the sea and to Kill a mocking Bird.
Speaker 1: There's the entirety of coujo. Like, yeah, it just goes
Speaker 1: on and on and on and on. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: my my immediate references are a little lighter, right, because
Speaker 1: Linda Belcher watches the raccoons in the alley behind the
Speaker 1: burger joint and has names for them like little King
Speaker 1: trash Mouth and El Diablo and um. At one point,
Speaker 1: one of them is in the house. I don't know.
Speaker 1: They're harboring a fugitive for reasons that I won't go into,
Speaker 1: but um, and they're trying to make sure the kids
Speaker 1: don't know there's a raccoon in the house because they
Speaker 1: get the kids to get bit and Linda says babies
Speaker 1: getting rabies. Um. And it makes me laugh every time
Speaker 1: because John Roberts is a genius. Yeah, I've never read
Speaker 1: or watched Kujo, but like, I still know that it's
Speaker 1: about a big rabbit dog, big rabbit dog. Like it's
Speaker 1: clearly it's right there altogether. Um, you were going to
Speaker 1: tell a bad story. Oh so I feel like I
Speaker 1: have been throwing my uh east mother under the bus
Speaker 1: a few times lately on behind the scenes. But this
Speaker 1: is another one. Because she was an anxious person and
Speaker 1: uh my parents had a pool. Uh they put it
Speaker 1: in after I moved away. But like my mom would
Speaker 1: love to as anybody would, particularly in the evenings, go
Speaker 1: would just kind of like lye and float in the pool.
Speaker 1: But bats realized that there was a pool there, and
Speaker 1: they would buzz the pool and like take a drink
Speaker 1: of water as they flew over, which I thought was amazing.
Speaker 1: But my mom would shriek, Like the shriek was more
Speaker 1: dangerous than the bats because it was like a tense
Speaker 1: And so I think about bats buzzing the pool and
Speaker 1: to get their water while she floated and her just
Speaker 1: losing her mind. When I was in high school, I
Speaker 1: was in a drum and bugle corps and we would
Speaker 1: be rehearsing outdoors in the summertime basically until it got
Speaker 1: dark and so we would be doing like our final
Speaker 1: run throughs of the whole show in the approaching twilight hours,
Speaker 1: and there was a bat roost somewhere on the campus
Speaker 1: where we were living and rehearsing, and as the sun
Speaker 1: started to go down, the bats would come out and
Speaker 1: they would fly around and you know, start they would
Speaker 1: basically be eating all the mosquitoes, which I was appreciative of,
Speaker 1: um and like that was I was. I always liked
Speaker 1: watching when the bats came out. But on the occasion
Speaker 1: when I have been somewhere where a bat is not
Speaker 1: supposed to be and there's a bat there, Like I
Speaker 1: remember one time also in high school, we were in
Speaker 1: a parking garage in downtown Winston, sale of North Carolina,
Speaker 1: and there was a bat on the floor and I
Speaker 1: was like, do not go near that. That is a problem, right,
Speaker 1: Well that's why, right A lot of bat rescue groups
Speaker 1: are like forever trying to post on social media like
Speaker 1: here's what to do if you see about on the ground.
Speaker 1: Probably not what your instinct is yet, don't Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's always tricky. Baths are very cool, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them are very cute, but in a whole lot
Speaker 1: of the world. There is also just like a small
Speaker 1: percentage of them have endemic rabies and like so just
Speaker 1: don't don't mess with them. Yeah, I um. I will
Speaker 1: tell a slightly horrifying story, okay, which is relayed to
Speaker 1: me by a former veterinarian that I used to have,
Speaker 1: who was telling me that a person had come to
Speaker 1: the clinic and like with a raccoon and had that
Speaker 1: she had found Oh it gets so much worse. Um,
Speaker 1: but thank goodness, that veterinarian is amazing. Um. And basically
Speaker 1: it was like the veterinarian was like, hey, we're not
Speaker 1: licensed to treat wild animals here, like we can't do
Speaker 1: this week. Um. But then like this woman is losing
Speaker 1: her mind and she's like you have to save it.
Speaker 1: My bed is like I think it's probably rabbit, and
Speaker 1: we're not you know, like we can call somebody and
Speaker 1: we can get to taken care of, but like not
Speaker 1: in this clinic. And then she found out that while
Speaker 1: this woman was ranting and having her moment in the
Speaker 1: vet clinic, her toddler child was in the car and
Speaker 1: the raccoon had ridden in its lap to the thing.
Speaker 1: And so my vet was like, I'm gonna call doctors nearby, Like,
Speaker 1: we're going to find an urgent care that can handle
Speaker 1: this right away. Yeah, if a person has a bite,
Speaker 1: I mean the bite itself can obviously be like a
Speaker 1: problem like that needs to be handled. But as far
Speaker 1: as the rabies profil axis, like that's an urgent matter,
Speaker 1: but not something that needs to happen right that second,
Speaker 1: which is good because sometimes even in places that have
Speaker 1: really robust medical systems, there's just not a lot of it.
Speaker 1: Same thing with snake bite. Uh, snake bite treatment and
Speaker 1: rabies treatment can both be incredibly expensive, even if you
Speaker 1: have insurance. In the United States. Um, I know somebody
Speaker 1: that got bitten by venomous snake and the bill they
Speaker 1: received was a five digit number. Um, which I will do.
Speaker 1: I hate all that. Oh yes, I was just gonna
Speaker 1: say that is a whole Pandora's bow thing. Um. But
Speaker 1: like some of it is is just because while there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people that get rabies pro flaxis
Speaker 1: every year, it's that it's not used as much as
Speaker 1: other drugs, and that it can be tricky to find
Speaker 1: a place that's equipped and knows what to do, and
Speaker 1: and all of that depending on exactly where you live. Um.
Speaker 1: There were people who got very upset about the Capitol
Speaker 1: Hill fox being euthanized. They could test it. We talked
Speaker 1: to the episode like that's the most the most reliable
Speaker 1: tests involved looking directly at the brain. Um. And then
Speaker 1: it's babies also have to be euthanized, and I think
Speaker 1: people were upset about that also, But like they had
Speaker 1: been exposed to their rabid mother, so like if they
Speaker 1: were not already developing rabies, they likely would have. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, a lot of raccoon rabies in the
Speaker 1: United States. A lot of bats also, indeed, But again,
Speaker 1: most of these things if you leave them alone, do
Speaker 1: call animal control if you notice a confused, seeming or
Speaker 1: aggressive animal that is not behaving correctly. But yeah, yeah, again,
Speaker 1: I am pretty sure that it is the most effective
Speaker 1: vaccine that we have. Is the the rabies proofyl axis
Speaker 1: a nearly one of effectiveness at keeping a person from
Speaker 1: developing rabies after they've been bitten or otherwise exposed. So anyway, uh,
Speaker 1: I think at one point I said I was not
Speaker 1: going to do any more episodes of disease eradications because
Speaker 1: we were going to run out of them. But boy,
Speaker 1: I would like it if we eradicated rabies, especially eradicated
Speaker 1: rabies in land animals, both for the greater ecosystem because
Speaker 1: a lot of those exposures come from land animals, and
Speaker 1: also the deaths to people. Yes, this week on the show,
Speaker 1: we talked about some prison escapes. We sure did, yeah,
Speaker 1: in an episode that was um inspired by a visit
Speaker 1: to the Eastern State Penitentiary. And now at that at
Speaker 1: this point, I don't remember exactly what year that happened.
Speaker 1: It was before the pandemic um and I was not
Speaker 1: sure what it was going to be like to go
Speaker 1: and visit it. I had some trepidations about it because
Speaker 1: there are some buildings that used to be prisons that
Speaker 1: now have been put to us. Is that just kind
Speaker 1: of make me uncomfortable because it's like, especially when we're
Speaker 1: talking about prisons that were built, you know in the
Speaker 1: seventeenth or eighteenth or nineteenth centuries or whatever, Like, there's
Speaker 1: a lot happening in prisons now today that is inherently
Speaker 1: cruel and inhumane, and that was even more so in
Speaker 1: a lot of the prisons in the past. Like there's
Speaker 1: just a lot of history there. Uh So, for example,
Speaker 1: when what used to be a prison is now a
Speaker 1: luxury hotel. I'm kind of like, I feel a little
Speaker 1: weird about that. And it was like I didn't really know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't really know what the historic site of the
Speaker 1: Eastern State Penitentiary was going to be like, but I
Speaker 1: did know that they have hatted houses and things there
Speaker 1: as as fundraisers, and I was like, I don't know
Speaker 1: how this is gonna feel. But what the prison or
Speaker 1: what the What the Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site has
Speaker 1: really been focused on for the last few years is
Speaker 1: like criminal justice and criminal justice reform. So there are
Speaker 1: a lot of exhibits there that are about things like
Speaker 1: how many people that the United States in prisons compared
Speaker 1: to other countries, which is disproportionately an enormous number of people. UM.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of stuff there, like a lot
Speaker 1: of exhibits that are about um conditions at the prison today.
Speaker 1: There are things that are like things from people who
Speaker 1: were housed there that were written in their own words.
Speaker 1: There's just a lot of stuff that's sort of about
Speaker 1: thinking about what incarceration means and what it has meant.
Speaker 1: And so after going there, I was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: did not I did not need to feel potentially icky,
Speaker 1: like I did the time I met some friends for
Speaker 1: a cocktail and it turned out to be at the
Speaker 1: luxury hotel that used to be a prison, and I
Speaker 1: was like, yikes, feel some yikes ways about this prison hotel.
Speaker 1: Let's let's go to a place that was folk entirely
Speaker 1: on dehumanizing people and enjoy a giblet, have some drinks
Speaker 1: and play Boschi or something. I don't know, And I
Speaker 1: think they are complicated. Uh, there are complicated questions about
Speaker 1: what to do with buildings that have that kind of
Speaker 1: history sometimes, but like luxury Hotel in particular is one
Speaker 1: of the weirder ones. Um So if you are in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: that is a really interesting and thought provoking place to
Speaker 1: tour and walk around. Um there was a you know,
Speaker 1: guided audio tour that you could listen to while while
Speaker 1: they're the wall around it is so enormous and imposing
Speaker 1: that the idea that anybody tunneled under even just that
Speaker 1: part of it is huge. And then the idea that
Speaker 1: the tunnel also went under pretty much the length of
Speaker 1: the exercise yard was huge tunnel. Yeah. I UM that
Speaker 1: story and most of these really sparked the imagination because
Speaker 1: of how incredibly ingenious they are. I find myself going,
Speaker 1: if only the world had worked down in a way
Speaker 1: where these people with these kinds of creative problem solving
Speaker 1: skills were somewhere else putting that to work, what could
Speaker 1: they have accomplished? But in many cases they were not
Speaker 1: afforded those opportunities, right right? Uh? You know, there's there's
Speaker 1: a whole backstory context of all of these escapes about
Speaker 1: like this, the social and economic and other issues that
Speaker 1: have fed into like the system of incarceration that exists,
Speaker 1: which is a whole separate but related issue in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, um and then connected to like to me,
Speaker 1: all the escape stories are also just like an expression
Speaker 1: of the inherent humanity of the people who have been
Speaker 1: h incarcerated. Have you been Alcatraz? I have only seen
Speaker 1: Alcatraz from the shore so um many moons ago. What
Speaker 1: year was that? Maybe? I was in San Francisco with Noll,
Speaker 1: who used to be our producer on this show, because
Speaker 1: we were working on drawing and we were doing some
Speaker 1: interviews there and we had just enough time to do
Speaker 1: like the boat ride around Alcatraz but not landing, which
Speaker 1: was very cool, but it was one of those things
Speaker 1: where like you, I had seen it from the shore,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, in my foolish way, huh, I
Speaker 1: wonder why this is so hard to escape from. It's
Speaker 1: not that far away, it looks doable. And then even
Speaker 1: when it looks very, very glassy and calm, you realize
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, like one, that those conditions can turn on
Speaker 1: a dime once you're out there in a boat, and too,
Speaker 1: like it's it looks way farther from the island to
Speaker 1: the shore than it does from the shore to the Lindy.
Speaker 1: If that makes Oh, you'd have to be like a
Speaker 1: trained athlete to really understand. Yeah, the water can also
Speaker 1: be really really cold, and and so that plays apart too. Um.
Speaker 1: I if I'm remembering rightly, you and I were on
Speaker 1: tour one time and I had we had a day
Speaker 1: off Francisco, and I d percent for sure arranged my
Speaker 1: day off to be in San Francisco. But I think
Speaker 1: what happened is I had a a travel delay that
Speaker 1: was just enough that all the things I had planned
Speaker 1: to do I no longer quite had the time to do,
Speaker 1: so instead I just walked around being a tourist. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that is when I saw it from the shore,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I had plans to maybe do
Speaker 1: the boat right around. I don't remember if I had
Speaker 1: tried to plan to get actually on the island, because
Speaker 1: I think it's a park now if I'm remembering right,
Speaker 1: that seems correct. I have not don't go out there
Speaker 1: based on what I just said, because I definitely did
Speaker 1: not look that up before saying that, Well, hopefully everyone
Speaker 1: look up such a thing before simply arrived here. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did take I took pictures of it from the
Speaker 1: shore and looked at it through one of the uh
Speaker 1: one a little binocular things that you put quarters in. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was startled at how little it is. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: I think in my head before I had ever seen
Speaker 1: it in person, which I remember the first time I
Speaker 1: saw it in person, but in my head, because I
Speaker 1: had heard it referenced in various you know, popular culture
Speaker 1: and whatnot, I just thought of it as this like
Speaker 1: huge looming structure out on an island, and no, it's
Speaker 1: a little place. Yeah. Um, I mean all of these
Speaker 1: words are relative, but it was much smaller than I anticipated. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe someday we will see so Happy Friday again. Whatever
Speaker 1: is on your plate this weekend. I hope it is
Speaker 1: as good as possible. We'll be back on Saturday for
Speaker 1: the Saturday Classic. Um, I don't think the Saturday Classic
Speaker 1: this Saturday is the John Dillinger one. I think that's
Speaker 1: the actual next Saturday, unless I have remembered the calendar wrongly.
Speaker 1: So uh, just know that if you've been looking forward
Speaker 1: to it, and we'll be back on Monday. The brand
Speaker 1: new episode Stuff You Missed in History Class is a
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.