Vampire Panic

Come celebrate our newest Distillations podcast season, American Vice. From cigarettes to alcohol to fireworks, this season is all about our relationship with risk, how science plays a role in it, and how it has shaped the American experience. To do it, we're partnering with our ...  Show more

Many of us have heard of Long COVID, but few of us understand the depth and breadth of the diagnosis or the history leading up to it. We talk with medical anthropologist Emily Mendenhall about her book on invisible illnesses and what happens when medical symptoms are hard to expl ...  Show more

In the winter of 1892, the quiet town of Exeter, Rhode Island, became the stage for one of New England’s most infamous cases of vampire panic. Tuberculosis, then called “consumption”, was killing families one by one, and superstition filled the gaps science couldn’t explain. When ...  Show more

Today, in honor of Halloween weekend, we're revisiting an episode about vampirism. Starting in the late 1700s and, small rural communities in New England were sometimes stricken with a panicked fear that the dead were feeding off the living.

Bloodsucking fiends appear in the folklore of every culture on the planet. But for some, they were more than just horror stories. Today’s story comes from early 18th-century Europe. A doctor tries in vain to save lives, while a monster waits in the shadows… determined to see him ...  Show more