Women's Patience/Patients & Hippocratic Medicine w/ Dr Christie Vogler (Part 2)
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Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby! And I am your host, Liv, here with the second half of what began last week, my conversation with returning guest Dr. Christy Vogler about the history of women's health. So this episode is really, really interesting. I think it's also very enjoyable just to

Fortunately, because Christy and I get along so well and it makes talking about a subject that is so utterly terrible and close to home right now, you know, entertaining instead of just depressing. We do try to keep it. I mean, you know, my version of light is just like be dark, but like sarcastically. So we, you know.

We try to keep it light as much as possible. But we are looking at this history, the history of Hippocratic medicine and sort of how it has gone since. I won't try to get into it too much. This episode is long enough, but it's really interesting and it couldn't be more important than now. So I hope you listen. I hope you like it. And please check out more from Christy.

And know that Christie's wonderfully fun podcast, Movies We Dig, is joining the Memory Collective. We have, there's lots going on, more official announcements still to come. There's just too many things going on. If you were over on social media too, or Instagram rather, you might have seen that I announced that I'm writing a children's retelling of The Odyssey for

for DK children's books. I am, I am so excited. Um, but that's all to say, you know, just, just a lot in the works. Um, but Christie's podcast movies we dig is officially joining the memory collective. You can listen to them wherever you get your podcasts. They are awesome and fun and lighter in a way that, uh, you know, this show isn't always so, so give them a listen as well.

And in the meantime, just sit back and enjoy more reasons to be righteously angry with the system so that we can all just burn it to the ground. Conversations. Women's Patience with Dr. Christy Vogler.

I was like, I don't fully remember where we left off, but I have a feeling that Christy is so organized. She's going to know exactly. I highlighted in green. I'm like, this is where. Oh, I love it. I love it. Well, I, to the listeners, we had to record this in two chunks, which is the first time I've done that for the show because we just had so much to say. And we're like, okay, no, no, let's just pause and come back next week and do a ton more. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and as I pointed out, it's like I'm covering so much material. I feel like I'm oversimplifying things. Like, you know, Hippocratic medicine is the foundation of Western medicine. Like there's something good there because we've been doing it for so long. But I feel like I'm kind of focusing on so many negative aspects. But it's like I had 15 weeks to teach this before. And now I'm like...

hours and also still gonna be like one of the longest I mean it's probably gonna be four and the longest I've done and still not enough because there's so much yeah there's always more to learn and I you know I was actually getting worried because it was like man this feels like such basic information I'm putting out there but I loved like your responses are just like no I've never heard that and that's fascinating I'm like oh yeah I once upon a time too

found this information out and was like horrified. Yes. That happens with so many of my guests. And I love that. Like, yeah, it becomes like somewhat normal to you as a researcher. And it can be easy to forget that like this is information that other people like, oh, my God, that's so cool. Thank you for telling me. And then it'll like stay in their mind, you know, and keep going from there. But what you said about Hippocratic.

It's so, it's interesting. And I think that great way to like transition us like back straight back in, because I think it's really, I mean, I don't know. It's so interesting to hear all of these like origins of Western medicine type stuff. And like, yeah, you know, it definitely would have had a lot of value that we kept, but I also think there's something, and maybe this is just where I'm at in the world slash obviously it is because everything's on fire, but, and I've become like,

crazy anti-colonialist and anti-capitalist over the last few years. But like, it just makes me think, you know, every time we hear stuff like this where it's like, oh yeah, it's flawed, but it's the foundation. It's what we've been doing. And it's like, why as the West, because I want to specify, this is such a Western thing that like, why are we so obsessed with ensuring that everything remains the

the same like there is innovation but it's innovation that always remains in the overarching structure you know it's like i keep harping on democracy which i recognize is like a problematic thing to be complaining so much about but i also think that that's part of the propaganda against us this idea that like if you speak out about the structure of democracy as it currently stands like you're somehow again you're that you're like for totalitarianism and i'm like

I'm pro the idea of democracy of like rule by the people, but the way that we have it now in the West, particularly in our two countries is not the rule of the people. It is an oligarchy in the form in like putting on like the hat of democracy because it, we don't all equal. I mean, especially in the States with gerrymandering and all of this, we don't all have an equal vote. And I somehow have already turned this into an empty Western rant, but like, but the, but the Hippocratic of it all just reminds me like,

Yeah, like, obviously there is some good that it is. It did give us Western medicine and that is great. But like, what is it about these things that like don't allow us to go and look back? And it's like it is the patriarchal structure overall because we don't. Yeah, if we were to go back and rewrite, you know, these origins of Western med, the the origins of democracy, like if we were to go back and rewrite those things now in line with the current.

world, that would be a threat to the patriarchy. And so we're not allowed to even talk about there being an option of rule of the people outside of the form of democracy as it currently stands, or we're not allowed to, we're not, we can't talk about like a medical structure outside of the Hippocratic system.

even though the Hippocratic structure was based on the idea that women are just wrong men. But like, but if we were to examine that structure as a whole, we would be forced to break down the patriarchy and they won't allow that. And so here we are. Yeah. Yeah. And there, there are definitely medical practitioners that say healthcare is a social justice issue for all of these reasons. And I, I vividly remember a conversation I had with a student about, you know,

at the end of the day it's like it's an androcentric view of health and medicine right absolutely and in some ways that simplifies it because the human body is fascinating and there's so many parts that we're still like if you think about just being able to examine the brain um and how recent of a development that is if you kept medicine to one standard body there'd still be so much to figure out yeah and this conversation i remember with the student was just kind of like

This idea of opening up more diverse opinions and and he was an older student I had, and it was a good conversation because he points out it's like I just feel like all they do is just bring problems without solutions. And the counter to that is because that is what it seems like right it's like we're just highlighting more and more issues that exist. Yes.

But the problem is those problems have never gone acknowledged. And until you acknowledge a problem exists, you can't even talk about solutions. No, exactly. We have to highlight that these are issues because like there isn't a solution. Like when you are talking about something so overarching and so structural, like so complex.

enormous in terms of the breadth of like the history of this issue. You can't just be like, well, here's the solution because the solution is a complete structural change. It is the dismantling of the capitalist patriarchy as it currently stands. And if we're to go and be like, well, here are all the problems. The solution is,

all of you men have to step the fuck back and look like look critically at this like you can't just be like that's the solution even though that's the solution but it reminds me of like

How, you know, in Western medicine too, it not only is androcentric, but it is also, you know, was developed exclusively with like the white people in mind, like quote unquote white, because it's broad. But it reminds me of how like, you know, particularly North America and obviously like worse in the States is.

black women die in childbirth. Like, I don't even know what the statistics are, but they're horrifying. And like more than white women, because all of the medicine has been based around not only white people, because I think that if, if even if all of it had been based on white people and just generally like, just as a, as a like test,

testing, that would still be a problem, but it would not even be as big a problem as it is, which is that the idea was that black people like didn't feel pain the same way. So they didn't treat them the same way. Like those kinds of structural things exist in how we founded Western medicine. And so to look at something like that, where it is,

On its face, like only about white men and everyone who is not a white man is suffering under this medical system. Like, obviously, the solution is only to dismantle it and put it back together in a different way. But that's true of the whole patriarchy. Anyway. And just to highlight that, like that goes back to, you know, these four humors are associated with particular colors, red, yellow, choleric, hang on, black bile, which one am I missing?

I'm missing one more. Red, yellow, black, black. Something blue? Is it white? It might be white. Like phlegm or pus or something? Yes. Yes. So white. Okay. And as I mentioned, it's like Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, who we never problematically hear about in our textbooks when we learn about the advancements of science and everything. He did that to humans. And he literally is like red is native indigenous people. Black is...

Yellow is Asian. White. And then he said they're different species so that you can then go into these experimentations saying that like a certain race of individuals can handle pain differently. There we go. Yeah. Than this one can. Yeah. That's horrifying. Horrifying. Like that's, yeah. And I just, it's so, it's so hard to have these conversations when you know that the

That there is an entire group of people who don't see this as a problem or don't see it as a like patriarchal structural problem. Like they're, you know, like the colorblind people, the, you know, those white people who just head in the sands, like pull up your bootstraps or like, you know,

sorry this is i don't i don't mean this to become so political but obviously also i'm me but like it you know we're seeing right now all of the dei stuff coming away like being repealed and people are talking about like oh no they'll have to work on their merits and it's like it was never about merits obviously obviously who just got cabinet positions in our government yes it was never about merits the reason why i saw akilah hughes

I posted this somewhere. I saw it on Instagram, but it was like a screenshot of like Twitter or some threads or I don't know. It was text. But it was I want to attribute it to Akilah Hughes because it was so it was so formative. Like she was just saying like it wasn't DEI wasn't created, you know, to just.

diversify for the sake of diversifying. DEI was created because the white people in charge were always hiring their underqualified white friends. It's not about merit. It's about like,

I mean, what's the it's I just want to keep saying oligarchy. And I know in this case, it's not it. But like, you know, it's the nepotism. It was created to just allow other people to have a chance to use their merits to be selected based on their merits. Like, but white people are so threatened by that.

that it's like because they are i mean i i say why people are threatened and i mean it like as if like because they're you know it's all in their heads but also like they should be fucking threatened we do not have any inherent like abilities more than anyone else and if that means that you're not going to get the job because somebody else has fucking merit like get out i don't know i just i'm just turning in this episode into yelling i know i

I know. That's what's hard. Medicine is political. Well, and when we're recording this and like, it's just, I feel like I can't. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And we'll get into more politics later. I wanted to highlight like a couple of things to like get us back. Perfect. It's been 11 minutes of me just screaming about the patriarchy.

I mean, I'm all here for screaming at the patriarchy because what else can you do at some point? So last time I mentioned that a lot of my research was based on Vivian Newton's work. The other work I wanted to mention today, and this is a, I think this just got published last year. It's the work of Christy Upson-Seya, Heidi Marks, and Jared Secord, which is medicine, health, and healing in the ancient Mediterranean. So when I start talking about women's health here, I'm

working from them quite a bit because they, it's so weird because like I've never been in certain conversations with people. But when you're like,

seeing your research or words in someone else's book, you're like, I should get to know you. So you're quoted in there? I'm not. No, I just like feel like I... Oh, yeah. No, no, yeah. I get it. To some extent. Like, yeah, in terms of what you research so deeply. Yeah. Yeah. So which, you know, happens because a lot of people are involved in the study of medicine and

yeah go make some new friends yeah we should totally be friends i that's why when i listened to you talk um with helen king and i'm like she was so like she was in my dissertation i was so excited and oh my also she was like the nicest person like we had so much fun if you sent her an email i'm willing to bet she'd be like let's chat about stuff i can cut that out if you want but like generally oh my god yeah but i will say she was the nicest person that was such a fun episode mikaela and i were like mikaela was on that one but not

in it. And oh my God, she, no, we were just like losing our minds. It was so great. So, so where we, so last episode was mostly just Hippocratic medicine. How did it come about? Who's Hippocrates? What has it done to us in the meantime? And the kind of question I was ending on is, okay, if Hippocratic medicine is androcentric and it's,

basically treats women as inferior bodies to men. Why would obviously we should use it to build our entire Western structure. I'm sorry. It's just that you say that stuff again. And I think I just want to scream into the abyss. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. Women are the wrong bodies. And, and like the, like what makes them so different from men is their uterus, which apparently just wanders around in the body. And that seems silly, but,

to think about but like one of the major reasons medicine could just assume that for the longest time is there was this huge taboo against actually doing human dissection so like even even like opening up a corpse you hear later in later centuries of like grave robbing and taking the corpses to medical schools yeah that does not happen under the greeks

They're like, no, no, we still, we might say there's a rational explanation for illness, but nobody wants to be haunted. Like that. No one wants that. Do you think it was like, so I think about haunting for sure, which I love that for them, but also like, I think, I feel like it was also that pollution, right? Like not wanting to dissect a body because they would dissect human or not humans. They would dissect animals or they perform vivisections, which is live dissections of animals and,

A lot of people benefited from either working in the military. So the Roman military developed what might be considered the first like hospital system in the Western world because they just they had a bunch of people who were injured and sick all the time. So you would have doctors who get to do surgery there. Galen worked as the doctor for a gladiator school.

for a period of time. So he got to learn a lot about like muscles and things like that from that experience. So, but that was the closest you could get is someone else cut up the body and you get a, get a little gander before you sew them back up. Yeah. And I imagine they weren't doing that to women in most cases, because I mean, if there, if it is primarily on like sort of a military, a military kind of purpose, they're not, they're not seeing where the womb is because they're not allowing women in those spaces. Yeah.

They're just continuing to assume it's wandering around. There's the assumption there. And then, you know, if you have like a prolapsed uterus, which might be one of the most common things you would come across in a woman that you would get to see. It's like, well, obviously the uterus just moved somewhere it's not supposed to be. Right. And so like, you know, what they could observe is in part like.

Yeah, confirming something. Confirming, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, the question is, like, you know, if folk medicine was a major competition for Hippocratic medicine and it was gender, like, that was a space that women could operate in, why would some women then choose to become medica? Why would they choose to train in Hippocratic medicine? And, like, to me, that's a really interesting question. It's like, why do you choose to work with the system that is

Subjugating you and dehumanizing you to a certain extent. I mean, isn't that the question? It really is, right? It is a big, enormous question. Screams at all of the white women. Yeah.

I mean, us being some of them, but Jesus. You know, it's the same idea of like people who want to get into the system because they want to change it from within. That's another possibility. Whether or not that is workable, that's a whole other matter. But like, you know, there can be different reasons for doing so. So, yeah.

So as I mentioned last time, a major problem for women in medicine is the uterus. The solution to that problem is sex and pregnancy. And I'm pulling out another book because it's just...

When you lay out the logic of it, you're like, how does that make any sense that that would be a cure in Hippocratic medicine? And I'm going back to Plagorn's book, Unwell Women, and she just lays it out really well. On the Greek island of Kos, many centuries... This is just an anecdote that she made up herself.

A girl was taken ill. At first she felt strangely weak, her chest heavy and tight. Soon she began to shiver with fever. Pain gripped her heart. Terrifying hallucinations swarmed her mind. She was found wandering the streets so consumed by heat and hurt that she wanted to end her life. Throwing herself down a well or hanging from a tree by a noose would have been pleasant compared to the torment that wracked her body and mind. So that was an assumption is that like the wandering womb could like cause a young girl to go so mad that

She would unalive herself, basically. Right. Her father called for the physician, a man trained in the arts of healing. The physician had seen this illness before in girls who had started to menstruate but hadn't yet married. As they developed into puberty, their plentiful female blood had been used up by growing. So, like, they have so much blood in their body, but you're growing, so you don't have a surplus of it. Plentiful female blood. Plentiful. Plentiful.

Once they had grown into women, all that extra blood accumulated in their wombs, ready to spill out every month. All physicians knew that this was how the female body stayed healthy. This girl was drowning in her own blood. It had no way to flow out, so it had traveled from her womb back through her veins, inflaming her heart and poisoning her senses. The physician urged the girl's father to marry her off without delay. Intercourse would open her body so her blood would flow out, and pregnancy would make her healthy. And, like...

It's horrifying, but you see kind of the weird, strange logic behind it when you can't fully understand what menstruation is and that that's not the cause. That hurts more than most. Just the imagining of what that ends up looking like. I mean, it's like saying that rape would solve her problems. That's essentially what they're saying. You know what? It makes me want to rethink...

certain mythological things you know like I think so much about the women that Zeus you know assaulted impregnated all of these different things and those stories go down and down and down and

And like, you know, there are so many things to break down about like what that is saying about a culture. But that feels like one of those things of like, well, don't worry, like a god will come down and fuck it out of you. Yeah. Yeah. It's I that's just kind of scary that that like that's secure. And that's what you know, that ends up becoming some of

The logic in marrying girls off young too, right? Like, yeah, too much older men in their lives and you don't get to really have a childhood as a result because not only is this being reinforced culturally you're now reinforcing this through medical literature. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's like... It's medically, like, recommended assault, essentially. Like, it's like, yeah, they can say marry off, but this girl is, like, fucking 13 or some shit, and she is being, quote-unquote, married off. That's... It's forced rape. It's literally forced rape to heal what is almost certainly, like, you know, like, PMS-related fucking depression. Like, straight up PMDD. Like...

Yeah, this woman is suffering from extreme PMDD and they're like, fuck it out of her.

Yeah, and the alternatives weren't much better. Surprise! Yeah, so the Hippocratic author, there is a book called The Diseases of Women, posits that women are susceptible to ailments of, so another word for wandering room is uterine suffocation. And so a number of treatments would be prescribed for these ailments. You would have purgatives that were either ingested or delivered through suppositories.

that would provoke the expulsion of an overabundant humor. So if you were very unlucky, they were trying to repel the womb.

So they would have women inhale foul smells or ingest a repulsive drink. Sometimes it was nicer. Sometimes they would lure the womb with good smells. But this involved the process of fumigation, where you would smoke out a woman's vagina with sweet-smelling fragrances or inserting pleasant-smelling pessaries, like...

Okay, not a fun solution there. Other treatments, because again, a lot of it's associated with too much blood, included cupping, bloodletting, bathing, herbal douches, massage, including digital palpation of the vagina. No wonder you have all of these later Roman men being like, I think they're going to try and poison me and steal my wife. And binding the women's midsection.

So those were the alternatives to, you know what, just make sure she's having enough sex and gets pregnant. Because according to ancient medical writers, that was the most effective treatment. Ugh. Like I... I just... Sorry. I'm so horrified. Yeah. And so...

So this is what kind of we've been talking about. And Ups and Saya, Marx and Secord kind of point this out, too, that historians notice how ancient gynecology buttress the interests of elite men and the state. So first, it entrenches men's superior status by grounding gender hierarchy in anatomical distinctions. And then this later goes into race as well, as we talked about. Yeah.

And then second, the dominant treatment for women's illness, especially pregnancy and childbirth, ultimately served the reproductive interests of elite households who wanted to pass on their family name and wealth to heirs, while also serving the reproductive interests of the state, which was continually dealing with population shortages. And so that's why you see things now like white replacement theory and low birth rates being a major concern in some nation states and why...

They are creating laws that instead of supporting women and giving them social safety nets that make them feel safe in producing more children, they're just like, no, we're just going to force you to have more children and not provide those safety nets. I hear stuff like this and then I think back to the volume of people over the eight years that I've been doing this show who...

I mean, and also, like, this is true for the whole of our fucking world. But, like, the people who say that the patriarchy isn't a thing or that it's, like, an excuse. And it's like, are you fucking... Are you just not paying attention? Like, are you... Do you just have your eyes closed? Like, what are you fucking thinking? Like, this is literally...

I mean, everything we talk about all the time, like I mean, my entire career, I think, is based around like looking at the origins and evidence of the patriarchal structure and how oppressive and dangerous it is. And just like you're saying, like this began in these worlds where they could oppress women. And then as soon as.

these notions of race hierarchy were even like beginning to be imagined they were like great we can use this also to oppress people who we don't see as appealing this is like tangentially related but it's a thing i learned recently and i just want to say it here but um

The country that I'm not going to say its name, but, you know, the one that's currently committing genocide, according to all of the necessary international courts.

I saw someone talking about how in, I think it was like the 80s, maybe, you know, that country's only been around since 1948. So we can't go that far back. But there was a period where they were getting a lot of immigrants from Africa. Yeah.

And it's important that I, you know, state this part, but they were Jewish, right? Like that, that is a requirement. They, so they were Jewish. They were falling into the categories necessary, but they were black because they were coming from Africa. And a lot of Western cultures don't like to understand that those things have spread. And that like, obviously, especially with a religion as ancient as Judaism. And this is where I talked about Judaism as a lovely ancient religion, like it's,

Obviously, obviously there are people are everywhere. And that's why this country is really not about Judaism, but about apartheid, because they secretly.

they sterilized all of these women through like requiring vaccinations in order for them to emigrate to the country where you know they're supposed to be able to go because of their birthright and they sterilize them because sure they in order to uphold their apartheid regime like they have to accept those people because otherwise it doesn't make any sense because it still doesn't make any sense but they're not going to let them reproduce there right and it's like

That's a problem a lot. It all just leads into eugenics. The phrase is, I've been using it a lot and it has come up a lot lately, but none of us are free until all of us are free. This is all interconnected. The history, the oppression, the resistance. The one thing I like to point out is when it comes to

Bodily autonomy as it relates to abortion rights is like, especially when I'm talking to people who are, you know, they wouldn't practice abortion themselves. They wouldn't choose that for their family or they might view themselves as libertarian. It's like the minute you let your institution, your state government say when you can't have an abortion.

you also allow them the power to decide when they can force an abortion on you. Yeah, yeah. And we have done that in the United States. In fact, there was, during the child separation policy, there was a doctor who just went down and examined women, and when they went under, he literally gave them hysterectomies. Oh, my God. Without their knowledge. Yeah, yeah. Like, that is the real danger. It's like the loss of bodily autonomy in this one regard, right?

means that the government can control your bodily autonomy in whatever way they see fit. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, forced sterilization in the Western world is an incredibly common thing in our history. Like, and again, like this is something that I mean, you see it in headlines again with that country all the time. Like if you're looking in the right places, you can see that. Oh, I recently saw that they they they

newspaper in that country, they released a report of like it was a survey of people who I think it was like 70% called immigrants from Africa. Again, immigrants which do technically fit into the apartheid structure but also don't clearly. 70% called them a cancer. The word was cancer. Yeah.

And it's like we, yeah, if we, I just don't even know what to say. It's just so far- Medical terms are commonly used to- Oh God, yeah. I'm glad I said that. Jesus. So our president's latest statement of cleaning out Gaza has these connotations of sanitation. Medical terminology is commonly used to, again, dehumanize because then you have to identify something as-

harmful, polluting, dirty. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's all Nazi talk, right? It's all Nazi talk. It's all medical talk too, which is a serious thing. Yeah. But I mean, that's what I, yeah, that's the missing piece in my sentence is that like, cause the Nazis did all of this. The Nazis did medical tests, the Nazis, you know, you know, I just, apropos of nothing, absolutely out of nowhere. But the use of the term Asperger's to describe a subsection of autism is coming from a Nazi doctor,

That name is a Nazi term and it was intentionally created to separate autistic people from those with high need requirements and those with low and give them this out, this thing that made them special and different and,

And just have somebody use that term to describe themselves whilst explaining that they didn't do a Nazi salute. Like it just doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. So. So, yeah. Are you ready to have your mind blown some more? Oh, I don't know.

I'm sorry if I will inevitably derail everything you have to tell me with my horror. No, as you should, because all of this will just make us angry. And my hopes is in making us angry, we will respond in a way that will make helpful changes. Because, again, health care is a social justice issue, and we should treat it as such. Absolutely. So...

I tentatively have titled this as like women's patience with Hippocratic medicine, right? When you are being patient, what does that usually mean you are experiencing in a moment? You're waiting. What? You're waiting. Waiting? Is it just waiting? Oh, God. I know you're getting somewhere. Like imagine if you're trying to be patient with a customer. Right. Yeah. No, you're yeah, you're waiting, but you're waiting in a way that is like

Yeah. Oh, suffering. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, good one. So this blew my mind to, like, realize coming again from Ups and Saya and et al.'s work is –

Hang on, I must find it to make sure I'm saying it. The ancient physicians prized patients who showed proper submission to and reverence for the expertise of physicians, as well as patients who mustered the courage and fortitude necessary to endure painful or distasteful medical treatments, the worst of which, again, seemed to be reserved for women. Because if you also think about the ultimate cure being pregnancy,

Women's mortality rates in the ancient world are not great. No, I bet. So your cure could be a death sentence. That, I mean, yeah, I'll just be horrified forever. But that sentence really hits home what we were talking about earlier with the way that we in the West treat Black people and the way that doctors up to this day in a lot of cases have been taught that they have a higher pain tolerance. Mm-hmm.

And I just like it, it really boggles the mind to, to be able to like think something like that without any kind of logical thing in the back of your head being like, that doesn't make any sense. And through basic common knowledge of history, I can tell you exactly where that idea came from and how terrible it is. And it's quite literally that these patients, and I say this because of the way you use that word, but like,

black people as patients were enslaved, they were forced to bear pain. That doesn't mean they don't feel it like us. It was forced upon them. And then the white people forcing them into pain and submission were like, Oh, look, they can handle it. Let's write it into the medical books that black people can handle pain differently. Like, are you fucking high? Yeah.

Yep. And that goes back into the thing of, like, assuming races have, like, a difference... They are a different human species because...

That's just it. Black women were attributed of having super bodies that could tolerate pain. And therefore, you do all of your experimental. Exactly. That's why. Because they were forced to have experiments done on them. And they didn't die. Like, are you kidding? Yeah. In fact, Dr. I'm pretty sure it's Sims is his name, who's considered the father of gynecology. Great. But we love him. Yeah.

Yeah. His development of gynecology was not even through honoring slaves. He just went down to the South and rented women. Fuck off. Holy shit. Not only were the ones being treated by him and experimented on, they also worked for him at the same time. So they became trained in the same procedures. And most of them are unnamed. They don't go. They aren't credited as the mothers of gynecology. Of course.

So, yeah.

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Like, well, at least that I don't like I just I. Yeah. Yeah. So I get it. So our word for patient comes from the Latin patins, meaning one who suffers, one who endures suffering with forbearance and courage and one who is submissive.

And this is the only time that moments like this are when I wish we did a video just so that people can see because I don't sometimes I am horrified into silence and then I have to like say this because my face is showing way too much and I just like.

I hate everything. And I think I just have to say this out loud because it's occurring to me in this moment. But like, sometimes I feel especially on this show that like, I must get annoying because all I do now is like educate people on how terrible everything is and was and has been and still is.

And I think like, oh gosh, I must be obnoxious. It must be exhausting for people listening to me. And then I just have to remind myself, it's exhausting being me in this way where like, I don't want to make it about myself, but I mean it in that like,

I love this job. I love that I get to learn all of this stuff. And I'm sure it sounds so over the top because I'm calm. And I mean, I mean this with my friends, too, because I'm just always talking about the horrors of the world. And I think I need to remind myself to be kind in that, like, the reason I am doing that is because I have built a career on educating people on the horrors of the world, which means that I am forced to.

to live in it in a way that most people are not. It's like every week I talk to somebody and every week, especially right now, like, I mean, I tend to try to make it educational in that like social justice kind of like just doing good for the world kind of way. And I want the show to be educational in that way more and more. But it also means that I then have to learn literally everything fucking horrible that's happened in the past 3000 years. And I'm just noticing how much of a toll it actually takes on me.

brain yeah yeah no i so so hopefully i'm gonna put a fun spin on it because earlier i asked like these women right how are these why are these women claiming this term claiming this particular medical knowledge yeah and then you know the one thing i've always liked is that women no matter what have figured out ways to subvert the system yeah right yeah so um we're fucking smart

Yeah. So my thought was like, oh, a good patient is submissive. Does that mean a man would be submissive to a female doctor? How does that work? I'm willing to bet that's not what it means. But you have to... But technically, yeah, technically. Technically, that's what it means, right? But in practice...

So I, you know, going back to Agnodike's story in particular, just to highlight this whole mess, there's a line. Can you remind us what that? Yeah. So Agnodike is the story of a woman in Athens and it's done by Hygienus and his fabuli. So it's an etiological story, meaning like it's an origin for something. I'm

not sure exactly what because historically there is no law that ever prohibited women from becoming doctors as far as we're aware but it basically says like women couldn't be doctors and all of these it acknowledged like all these women were dying of childbirth and hygienist uses this line the ancients didn't have obstetricians and as a result women because of modesty perished

And Agnodike saw this. She dressed up as a boy, went and trained with a very famous actual historically known physician who worked in Alexandria and is thought to have authored one of the first texts on gynecology. Came back, went to treat the first woman she came in contact with. The woman refused because she didn't want to see a doctor to see her body.

So she revealed herself to be a woman and she's like, okay, cool. And then all the other doctors were getting mad at Agnodike being like, she must be doing something because all of the women are asking for her or asking for him to treat them. So she gets brought in front of the court being like, oh, you must be like a charlatan or a fake. It's like, well, no, like they want me because I'm a woman and she has to reveal herself again in front of the court of men. Oh my God. It's like another...

What's her name? Frini. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the. Well, she's a fraud, so she should she should like get a punishment anyway. And the women of Athens banded together, came and tell the men. Oh, gosh, do I have it? Yes. The leading women came to the court and said, you are not husbands, but enemies because you condemn her who discovered safety for us.

Then the Athenians amended the law so that freeborn women, not slaves apparently, could learn the art of medicine. Don't be crazy. And I'm like, collective action on top of it? Huzzah. Like...

I wish that was – it's so hard because that's such a – that's a lovely story. I wish it wasn't written 400 to 500 years after classical Athens or, like, after – I guess it would have only a couple hundred years if we're talking Alexandria being trained. But, like, you know, like, I wish that was a story from Athens and not Hygienus' Fabulae. I know. I know.

But, you know, it's such an interesting story because, again, it's going back to this point, like women are dying because of modesty. What do we mean by modesty? It is this social cultural idea that, again, the patriarchy has placed on women to behave a certain way so that the men know for sure that the children are theirs. Yeah.

Yeah, that's all it is. Like the whole women staying at home, doing housework at its core is literally entirely just so men can be certain who their child is. And everything comes back to women, men being afraid of the womb and

And now like I can't unsee that. I don't like it's literally everything is about them. They're either afraid of the womb as the capabilities of the uterus and the body to create life. They are afraid of that or they are afraid of women they can't have sex with. Like that's like 90 percent of monsters in Greek mythology is just women. Men can't fuck.

And yeah, like keeping them at home. It's the same thing. They're literally just afraid of the lack of control they have and the entire patriarchal structure under which we live is this perpetual grasp for control. And here's a woman, a mythological woman, we could even say, who's just like, you know what? I'm going to do something.

For womankind. So that maybe less of them will die. And it's definitely the way that hygienist tells the story. It's like, she's not just showing up to like women who are going through childbirth. Like it's explained the doctors are upset because the women are going to agnodice with all their ills. Yeah.

And like they even posit that the women are making up their illnesses so that they could, I don't know, hook up with this doctor or something. Okay. This is a question I have for you, Christy. That's really for all the men who listen to my show and the men who listen to my show and actually take this stuff in. I fucking love you. Thank you. And I want you to hear this question. Christy, how many times do you think in your life have you talked to another woman and it has been about whether or not the doctor you get to see has been female?

For like any reason. Oh. Like how often do you think you mention or think about whether a doctor is female? All the time. I'm literally looking for a doctor right now. Literally all the time. Because they listen more to us. They don't. Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting because I compare my experience like...

of my own health with my mom's. And I've been very fortunate in that for the most part, I've always had women doctors. And the few times I've had men doctors, whether it be like a therapist or just like a general practitioner or, you know, someone at the

It always has made me feel not necessarily uncomfortable, but not fully taken care of, like not fully heard. And I've been really fortunate because I've had some health issues in the past that were handled in a way that I felt understood. And then I've listened to my mom's stories. You know, she gave birth and she's told me of experiences. I'm sorry, mom. I'm sharing these stories, but I don't think you care too much. She when she was pregnant with my brother, I was a cesarean because I

umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck and chest so like i couldn't be born the natural way my brother was late and my mom didn't want to go through the excruciating experience of hours of labor and she's just like yeah i'm just gonna do another cesarean and her doctor kept trying to convince her it's like i don't want to rob you of the experience of child like natural childbirth yeah

Yes. So there's that. The other one out in the end. Sorry. Oh, she got a cesarean. Fuck. Yeah. My mom. My mom. Good. The other one is something that she experienced as a young woman that I also experienced. And I had this doctor. So I ended up with I do have a tumor in one of my breasts, but it's not it's not cancerous.

But I was 20 when my female doctor pointed this, like, hey, you got a lump here. We're going to have to, like, look into it, all of this. And I was freaking out because I'm 20. I'm immortal at that point. Like, what? Yeah. And then I talked to my mom. She's like, oh, yeah, I had a bunch of those and they were all removed. And my doctor told me it's because I waited so late to have children. Fuck.

And my mom had me at 29, which was probably late for the time, right? My mom was 30 and I often thought she was older. But like, I honestly actually have heard like most of my friends have older parents than me. So like even that, like 29 being late. My mom's 29. I got the same information.

So it was the same thing. At 20. Are you telling me at 20 I've waited too long to have children? Like, that's transitive logic happening there. But, like, that's not what my doctor is saying to me. But that is, you know, a difference of 30 years of what doctors are saying to women. Yeah. In the 20th century. Yeah. Like...

Yeah, I mean, I hear horror stories all the time of like, you know, I don't want kids and I would love to get that fully handled so I don't have to just like even deal with any of the trouble. But like I, the horror stories I've heard of women who have tried to like, yeah, it's just horrifying. Well, and so that, I forgot to bring it up, that anecdote that Clay Gorn of the young woman is,

And the explanation is like, oh, women need to menstruate regularly to get rid of the excess blood because excess blood in the body makes you sick. I remember asking my class. It was great. I love my like history of medicine class because we had what I called difficult conversations based on Eidolon articles and stuff. So we I would have a class full of 20 year old men and women.

and everywhere in between talking about menstruation, which was fascinating. Like it was really cool. And kudos to like some of my male students in the class who were like, therefore they're like, yeah, we'll make this happen. But I remember you have to give that kudos just to say that, because I agree. Like I was, I was about to be like, oh yeah, good for them. And then I'm like, oh,

my god it's such basic fucking stuff like they they do not deserve like props but also like i understand yeah in a lot of it was just kind of acknowledging like yeah the fact that we got separated at health class and this stuff wasn't talked about as if it was taboo as if it wasn't something that more than half the population experienced and which applies to the whole population exactly guess what you're not getting created without these issues well i asked all of them

including the young women in my class, do women need to menstruate in order to be healthy? And this was with like a knowledge of like IUDs can actually stop menstruation, right? Yeah. Perfectly fine. Yeah. It's not a big fucking deal. It's not. I had young women being like, well, yeah, I think you do because it cleans out. Oh, wow. And I'm like, these ideas are still sitting in the back of our heads. Yeah. Yeah.

And, and this is why we have to talk about it. This is why we have to be open about it and not be taboo. And I, you know, that was the other part of like another discussion was that scene from HBO's Rome where like, everyone's just watching trepanation happen. Right. And like, on the one hand, we feel horrified at the thought of a craftsperson has to show off his skill in front of the public. Yeah.

Because it's like, I don't know if I want a crowd of people watching as like my head's getting drilled into or for the sake of modesty, other body parts being revealed. Yeah. But on the reverse, the idea of a privacy between a singular doctor and a patient leads to these issues of like the doctor for the women's Olympic gymnastics team.

Who just gets to assault a woman after woman after woman because privacy. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how I got on that tangent. But no, but yeah, no, I mean, I guess I asked you about women doctors because it is something that we think about all the time about whether or not a doctor we're going to see is a man or a woman and how that will affect women.

the treatment that we get. Like I, just because we're on this realm of like, I think, especially when it comes to female anatomy type stuff, like, yeah, we need to be talking about it more and more. I am 36 and just get found out that I get the joy of going through very early perimenopause, which is like so fun. And it also even just perimenopause as a concept is,

has only very recently been talked about. And it affects like every single thing about your hormones and your body. And I'm 36 and I get to have like these pre-menopausal experiences that like literally no one talks about. The only reason I got any kind of real help is because I went to see a female naturopath who was like, yeah, it's early, but like you show these signs, try this, you know? And also can I say like,

And I mean, the Canadian healthcare system is free, but doesn't really exist. So yeah, like I can't access like a regular doctor because I'm not allowed to pay for it, but also they won't give me one. So we're doing great as a country. I'm glad we're not going bankrupt, would like to have access to a doctor. But, you know, so I saw this naturopath and the...

she prescribed me an herbal supplement because I, it's too early for anything harder than that. I agree. You know, I don't want to actually fuck with my hormones. I'm very young still. Um,

But the herb that she prescribed, we call it now, we call it chase tree. And I Googled, do you know it? No. Okay. I am anticipating based on all of my research. I love it. So I was simultaneously like, so I've been writing a novel and I've been, I'm an enormous nerd, obviously. So everything I include, I've been trying to find like, you know,

you know, mythological connections, origins, whatever. Like I want to use as much like deep mythological and ancient Greek knowledge in this novel as I can, despite it being really smutty. But I was Googling the ancient Greek words for lavender and rosemary, just like completely separately. Yeah. And I was finding like, oh yeah, you know, all these connections, lavender, rosemary. And then I found basically this herb,

It's in the same family. It was sacred to Hera and the women took it for all of their like menstrual needs and menopausal stuff. And that is quite literally just the modern name of it. Now we call it chase tree or Vivex or something. There's like different names in,

It's all in that same family. It's literally sacred to Hera because of women's health. And I get to take it today. And I think that it says so much about folk medicine. Yeah. One, because that's literally the only way that this herb is still being passed down as this option. But also how little we have done experimentally in terms of like actually solving these problems with modern medicine. Like we are.

we are still relying on folk medicine for a lot of women's health stuff. Yeah. Not necessarily because it works best, but because it is, we're not doing the work to give us medical advancements in that field. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, like it's,

And one of the main reasons I posit, like my imagining of a Medica going into the field, I made a little novella about her, was that if she is of like free person status or like a former slave, it's like I imagine like her mother having been a slave.

doesn't actually have own, like, I don't want to say ownership, but like she doesn't have control over her daughter. Yeah. Right. Um, something can happen to her daughter. Um, and that's true of like all slave mothers is like your child can be taken away from you at any moment because they're not yours. Yeah. And having then to have the power to

Because you can't also, without bodily autonomy, you can't say no to sex. You can't say no to someone forcing you to have sex. Especially when they are prescribing sex for your issues. Yeah. So the easiest way to subvert that is...

folk medicine, the knowledge of what plants can do. And it's really interesting. I learned this from Deirdre Cooper Owen's book, Medical Bondage. Oh my God, good title. It's a great book. I highly recommend it as well. I'll be reading an excerpt from that at some point too.

But she talks about how, like, there was folk knowledge that the cotton trees in Africa worked as contraceptives in a certain way. Like, you can consume it. It would help prevent pregnancy. And so, like, masters in southern parts of the United States, like, assumed that women were trying to end their pregnancies with, like, you know, drinking turpentine and things like that.

The women just chewed on the roots of the cotton plants they were forced to grow. Yeah. And pick. And that worked to a certain extent. You know, it wasn't 100% effective. But it was just one way of subverting this power is this long history of folk medical knowledge. Yeah. Well, that is... Yeah, I mean...

It's how women have done that for so long and I can only imagine how much more like necessary and valued it became when it when it came to, you know, the slave trade. I don't have a better there's there must be a better way of phrasing that now.

Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's really interesting. And so, yeah, I was going back to agnodice and I'm like, OK, if this is an etiological story, what is it's or like what is it the origin of exactly? Like, why did hygienists feel the need to tell this story?

And I, you know, I wondered if it's in part like this weird reaction to Hippocratic medicine and women's health because they're saying like, well, actually women are dying. And until there's more women in the field of Hippocratic medicine, like women are going to continue to die. They're going to continue to be harmed. Right.

Um, and Nautic reasserts women's authority, at least when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth, even though her story suggests like she's helping with all sorts of illnesses that women are experiencing. Um,

And in some cases, being a woman could increase the likelihood of a patient submitting to their care. Like, again, like, yeah, a woman straight up refused the care of all the other doctors until like Nautic revealed she was a fellow woman. I mean, yeah, if a if a scary looking dude is making me submit for something and he is. Oh, my God. Yeah.

And modesty tells you you shouldn't be allowing a man, a man not of your husband or household digitally massaging your vagina. Right. Like, yeah, probably shouldn't let that happen. Otherwise you're going to face sociocultural punishments for that. So like women were left in such a terrible position with the introduction of Hippocratic medicine and just male practitioners. Like,

Maybe they are developing things that would be helpful to women, but they're contending with these other cultural ideas that still put them at risk at the end of the day. Yeah. So, yeah. And I'm just trying to make sure I'm hitting...

Yeah. So Newton brings up this question where one drew the line between a Maya and a mediciner is the term he used was a personal one since there were no laws that defined either profession. Again, there's no board certification that you are this or this. It is almost choosing the title for yourself and why you make that choice. The more difficult question is whether

medical attention by women like Fenn Ostrate is another female medical practitioner that's mentioned was solely given to women, children and members of her household or whether a male might seek her out. Like that's kind of the question, right? Like ultimately you have to submit information

to the care of someone you might view as inferior, which is like a mind-boggling question of like, yeah, would men do that? I'm sure female doctors find that today all the fucking time. Like, I'm sure the stories are horrifying of men who won't listen to them. Or if it's your aunt, who you've known all your life, who's your doctor? Like, exactly as Amelia Hilaria and, oh gosh, who wrote, Sonia's parent, Talia,

Loved his maternal aunt who was a doctor. Cared for me like a mother. I bet you he listened to her. Yeah. Yeah.

Because why not? Yeah. She's someone you trust. Exactly. Whereas like, yeah. And that for women getting that rank of someone people trust is like steps and steps and steps higher than a man, you know, like the assumption is that this doctor is someone you can trust because he's a man and he's a doctor. Yeah. But for a woman, a doctor, like,

Yeah, she has to, like, have all of these extra things in order to be trustworthy or, yeah. And at the end, it's, like, the Romans didn't trust the Greek doctors for other reasons. They're foreign. They're often of lower status. Like, that's where identity becomes such an interesting aspect of this title, right? Of, like, okay, you can claim this title. Anyone can claim this title. That doesn't dictate how good your practice is or who you get to practice on. Yeah.

So much of the rest of your social identity does impact that. Yeah. And so...

you know, there's later Roman Hellenistic evidence that suggests some women also treated men, although social pressures and expectations would have restricted any services to only a few men. Again, it feels likely like particularly family men would respond well to that. But this is also most of our evidence comes from urban spaces, right? If there's only one person in your entire town,

Yeah. Who knows how to like stitch you up or, you know, what routes to take to deal with pain.

or a headache or whatever, you don't care if they're male or female. A majority of the time, that's the only choice you have available to you. It's a good reminder of how much our knowledge of the ancient world is based in those urban spaces. But so specifically often, like, you know, obviously I think in ancient Greek and I, you know, so often it's like everything we know is from Athens. And so, you know, for all I can point out these,

horrifying structural issues of the patriarchy, you know, and they are valid. Like it is so nice to,

To imagine that there were so many smaller towns, city-states, whatever, that didn't have the breadth of Athens and didn't have the longevity. Or their stories didn't get passed down because of all of those things. And how many women were doing awesome things outside of a place like Athens and Rome, which were both so, so structurally patriarchal and so intentionally oppressive of women. Yeah.

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Yeah. It's nice to be like, oh, I bet you they were off doing cool stuff in other places. For sure. Like, that's why, you know, it seems so much more reasonable in my sight of central Sicily to be like, sure, a woman's practicing medicine here. Why not? Absolutely. It's literally like even in Sicilian standards, it's remote. Yeah. It's not on the coast. It's up in the mountains. Who are you going to turn to? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So Upsensea, Marks, and Secord, they write, in antiquity, there's a recognition that patients had power and agency, whether in their ability to provide home health care, so you could provide your own medicine, their process for choosing and hiring a physician, or their acquiescence or disobedience to the physician's instructions. And I think that's something else that is kind of important to highlight is that

patients themselves have agency in how much they're willing to submit to a doctor. And, you know, again, with the example of Nassar and the women's gymnastics team, it's like,

Medicine has been put on a pedestal more recently that people are more willing to give into this authority of this institution in ways that can actually be detrimental to their health. In fact, another common issue that many people experience is like if they know they are

fall into a category of the BMI scale that puts them at overweight or obese, then very often that was all their doctor will focus on instead of like actually just understanding the symptoms you're experiencing in that moment. So what you can do is when a nurse asks you to step on a scale, you can refuse to do that. You can refuse to provide that information and be like, I don't want that to be a factor of consideration.

for my visit today yeah because also like we're speaking generally here but i mean i think that the the issue this issue is very very focused on women the the weight loss it's a constant like you see like tiktoks all the time people just been oh have you thought of a losing weight like oh my arm is swollen from this crazy wound and the doctor but my

losing weight like it's yeah it's fucking horrifying well and that's the same thing that like people are cautioning now because women are always asked like when was your last one was yes period and now they can use that you can refuse to give that information if again it's not the reason that you are coming in for the concern of today yeah yeah

So, like, and I think sometimes we forget that if, like, we are asked a question, we assume it's knowledge that our doctor needs. And that's not to say it's, like, weight is important in considerations of, like, how much medication you need. Absolutely. Yeah. It's important in ways, but... So, it's, like, you have to be aware and balance that. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like it's not ever necessary information. And same with when was your last period. But...

Like, yeah, it's likely not necessary information and it's one of those things that just gets asked. Yeah. Or like a lot of people assume is like, are you pregnant? And they can't trust when you say no. Yeah. Like more often than not, you're forced to be tested if you're pregnant or not. Because again, pregnancy is also a strong consideration in how your doctor will treat you. Yeah. Yeah. For so many reasons. Yeah. Yeah.

So the fun thing, too, is like often it's not just the individual who gets to make these decisions, these health care decisions, right? It's not a private interaction like we imagine a doctor's office today. The patient, their family and friends and even the household might be involved. Like, you know, rich households might bring in their slaves and like, hey, I don't remember what I ate this week. What was on the menu? And like so you might have different people in the household contributing to the diagnosis. Yeah.

of an individual patient, they're also often involved in the care. It's really interesting that certain letters we get from the Roman, like Roman men, that shows just how much caring for a friend who is ill is actually really a big deal that isn't given to slaves. Even though there's a sense of pollution, although there's the sense of danger of taking care of an ill person, a good friend is going to be at your bedside.

Yeah. Which is which is cool to think about. Again, it's like this empowering aspect of being a patient like you don't have to suffer. Yeah. In a in a I don't know, sanitized medical space like care can look very different. Can I make another connection to that?

The downfall of capitalism. So, yeah. I mean, one of the reasons why something like that sounds quite foreign to us today is because an enormous part of the function of capitalism requires us to not be together and not be a community. It requires us to be separated. It's why they don't love mass transit. It's why there are always all of these ways to...

make it still about like oh you're still driving yourself all alone and it's why like the sprawl is and like the lack of walkable cities in north america like all of that is by design to keep us from forming close communities because that is the only way that capitalism and consumerism can

control us is if we are lacking in those communities. Like if I saw something today where, you know,

If we can remain so consumed by consumerism, by individuality, by all of these things that are about raising us as an individual above a collective community, if that is all we as people are concerned with, that is how the ruling class remains happy because we are not paying attention to anything else. And...

they can go on live TV and do Nazi salutes because we are more concerned with, you know, whether we have the newest Stanley cup. That's so a dated reference because I don't have one. And also, I try not to be in that, that level of the consumerist capitalism. So, but you know, it, it,

Yeah, like that is a huge part of it. And it's why this nice thing of like, oh, they know that was like a thing that you did as a community. Like, that's why that sounds so foreign to us, because capitalism requires that to be foreign to us in order to continue to maintain control. Yeah.

Yeah, there are times I like would tell my students like, man, doesn't that sound nice? Wouldn't it be nice if we went back to some of these practices that are thousands of years old? Because at the end of the day, yeah, a lot of it is the community aspect of like being willing to take care of each other. Yeah. Because that's what medicine is at the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Or that's what it should be. Yeah. And Galen's pretty great. Galen gives us some different stories where like we learn how patient, family and friends can push back when they disagree with the physician's judgment or if they're unhappy with the care given to their loved ones. Because at the end of the day, a patient decides if you're an actual doctor or not. They decide if you get paid or not at the end of the day. So Galen tells a story of a patient who agreed to comply to like one of his instructions. But as soon as he left,

The patient and his friends erupted in laughter and disdain with no intention of following his directions. And a lot of medical techs complain about patients just not listening to physicians. So, again, the whole rise of Hippocratic medicine is in part to just legitimize them, to give them authority and, you know, disparage their competition. Like that's a constant fight they're having to fight.

have patients listen to them yeah um and so you saw the example from domina i sent you that clip that one was so interesting it's so good because it it's a great it's like you have augustus's entire family sitting around him ex-wife daughter heir apparent wife

And the most of Augusta's family has hired Musa, this Greek doctor who's like the best physician in Rome. And Livia has her own personal like she was a this character was a former slave to Livia trained in, again, what we might consider more like pharmacology, folk medicine medicine.

but like just as very knowledgeable right and uh she was freed but she still works for Livia in this patron-client relationship and and Musa and Livia's Antigone thank you and Antigone have two very different ideas of how to treat Augustus who's severing with a fever from the plague and you just see this fight break out and you know it's not just the considerations of like

the professional training of each individual, but also the fact that like Livia at this point in time has accusations of poison floating around because her first husband died very mysteriously.

Right. And that is that is something the Romans are always concerned with is like doctors can poison you. You don't know what they're giving you. And so there's all of this knowledge and these family dynamics that are dictating how Augustus's fever is going to be treated in this instance. I do love, though, that they have the doctor, the man going, no, he needs to remain hot. He can't be cool.

cool don't open a window and then this woman who is I mean she's a Greek name but I imagine that she's played by a black woman I'm imagining she's like probably unfortunately like was like taken by a slave as a slave by the Greeks given a Greek name and then to the Romans horrifying but I do love that that the implication of her as a black woman like in this space so interesting and

The way she's then like, no, like, cool him. He's burning alive. And they're like, no, no. Yeah. Let him burn. Yank.

Yeah. And, you know, that's again, I hear that about fevers now of, you know, a fever isn't necessarily you don't necessarily want to get rid of a natural fever because that is your body fighting off infection of some kind. But at a certain point when your fever gets too high and you're having febrile seizures and things like that, then you want to bring the temperature down. And so it's also this interesting mix of like cure of opposites versus cure of

Yeah. Playing out. So I love that scene. I'm so excited when I got to see it. Yeah. But we don't actually get scenes like that from the ancient world. We just can imagine it. Yeah. So just to the listeners, I will link to that video because it is a really great scene and it's cut together well. So it's like four minutes and you just get to see the sort of what's happening there. Did you do that? No.

No, it's someone else had it. Kudos to whoever that was. Thank you for doing that. I used it in the conference presentation. Amazing. I was like, this is perfect. I can see if I'm curious if Christy did it herself. Yeah. And so like we don't necessarily have a scenario like that.

recorded in ancient history, but again, going to Deirdre Cooper-Owen's book, Medical Bondage, Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, she does have a story that really highlights how medical care is

community practice, and it's a consideration of multiple identities. So she gives a story, an anecdote that provides this into the question of identity and authority. And it tells the story of a former slave and midwife by the name of Mildred Graves.

So this is from her book. While enslaved, she labored for decades as a nurse and midwife in Hanover, Virginia, for her owner, Mr. Tinsley. Graves serviced both Black and white women because of her reputation as an exemplary accoucheur and doctoring woman. She remembered a particularly traumatic episode when her owner sent her to assist Mrs. Leak, a pregnant white patient who was experiencing a protracted labor. A

Upon reaching Leak, Graves encountered two doctors from Richmond there to assist with the child's delivery. The doctors informed Graves that they were unable to help Leak. So this is what Graves supposedly said. Graves responded, I could bring her around. As the Bond woman later recalled, the doctors laugh at me and say, get back, Darkie. We mean business and don't want any witch doctors or hoodoo stuff.

Leake, however, so the woman who's pregnant, insisted that Graves deliver her baby, and the midwife did so successfully. And the doctors, in the end, the doctors who had ridiculed her ended up offering her praise for the successful delivery. Well, of course, they do after the fact, because then they try to make it seem like they were fucking keen on it the whole time. Yeah.

Men love to take credit after the fact. And I just love, like, here is this entire history once again of framing women's healthcare practices as something witchy or hoodoo. Yeah, doctoring woman. Instead of just fucking doctor. Like, are we kidding? Yeah. Yeah. Ugh. And, but what I love is, like, Mrs. Leak said, like, you...

dumb asses can't do anything. Let her in. She is known in my community of helping women. And, and, you know, that's also further supported by her, her former master who, you know, sends her out into the community and be like, Hey,

My former slave knows what she's doing. Oh, is she freed at this point? She is free. Okay. Yeah. But she still has this interesting patron client, which makes sense, right? Like how do you, just because you're free, if there's no social structure that allows you to make money, you kind of have to, that's a common problem that even Roman slaves is like, you can't just leave. You are dependent on social networks for a living.

So that's, you know, you have the authority of a former male slave owner sending out one of his laborers. And so you have kind of the authority of that. But you also have the decision of the patient herself saying like, hey, you can do anything. Let her in and help me.

And like, I just love that there actually exists this perfect anecdote of like how identity and community all play into these decisions of like how we receive health care. And we know that that one's true. Like that one happened. Yeah. Yeah. That's it's yeah, it's so interesting. It's good that it's interesting alongside being so horrifying. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So I what my most recent paper was going on. It's like, OK, if people are going to listen to a female doctor because they you know, they don't always listen to male doctors as they're quick to point out. It's like, man, a good patient just shuts up and takes it, whatever we tell them to do.

So, you know, what do women have to do in order to be viewed as authorities. So one is practicing like a man like actually knowing Hippocratic medicine seems to be an aspect.

And so based on medical writers like Serenus, women who practice medicine are also encouraged to have or exhibit manly qualities that include endurance, rationality, and the equanimity of men. I loved that quote. It's like, whatever that means. Yeah. Yeah. But on the flip side, what probably makes...

women appealing as doctors is this maternal aspect because that's something I see a lot in both the literature with Venus as a mother taking care of Aeneas of Amelia Hilaria helping take care of her nephew we see this in epigraphs as well of like women are very maternal and caring like that is viewed as already feminine in nature and so

We actually have this quote from the Hippocrates opera of the Corpus Medicorum, which is just basically Latin words to say, yeah, the Greek medicals, the Greek texts we have on medicine. We get the following recommendations of, you know, how you should take.

be treating your patients. For there's not much difference between medicine and wisdom, and in fact, everything in medicine pertains to elements in wisdom. It possesses freedom from greed, reverence, a sense of shame, modesty and dress, good repute, judgment, conviction, quiet, cleanliness, thoughtfulness, knowledge of the things that are useful and necessary for life. The

The absence of impurity, freedom from superstition, and divine dignity for the features they have in the face of licentiousness, quackery, greed, lust, thievery, and shamelessness. So this is what they're saying is like, this is what makes for a good doctor. And later on, we also get dictate what this is how they say doctors should interact with their patients.

dictate what must be done in a friendly and gentle way while turning the person away from their circumstances. At the same time, rebuke sharply and strictly with attention and care, soften what details you must while revealing nothing of what will happen next or what threatens them. For because of this, namely because of the disclosure just mentioned of what threatens or what will be next, many people have taken a poor turn.

They're just explaining bedside manner. And it sounds like a parent-child relationship, right? Like soften what you can so they're not scared, but be firm enough that they'll follow your directions. Yeah, they do it. Yeah. That's interesting. And, you know, that just makes me think that that's kind of right up a mother, right? A mother of a household running a household. That's what she does every day. And she kind of already has those qualities. Yeah.

In that role. So it can translate, you know, the doctors are here saying that, yeah, that should translate really well to how doctors interact with their patients. Duh. Like, yeah. And I love how this like, but they must be rash. Like there's this sense of like, but what that's, what's interesting about the epigraphs is like these women who are named Medica. And especially if their epigraphs are written by men, like husbands or wives,

or some other members is like despite your sex despite your gender you actually practice medicine really well like you're practicing it in this male way that we find acceptable yeah so like even when they acknowledge these like kind of feminine aspects that would do really well that would like really behoove uh which is the word i've been jokingly using a lot it would really behoove the doctors um like they can't they still have to be like but

Keep it manly because rationale is manly. Keep the male energy up. Yeah. And meanwhile, the male energy that they explain is just like human energy. Right. But they're like, no, no, this is the man's. You can't get too lady about it. Not too many hugs. Yeah. Yeah. And so so so practices medicine like a man has these maternal qualities. And the last big one is chase. Like.

It's really interesting that that becomes a major factor. So physicians in the Roman period, again, were often susceptible to accusations of licentiousness and they're hitting on the women apparently. How am I not surprised? But why would they be as concerned with medica? Like, are you worried about women doing that too? Right.

Maybe they are. Maybe the men are friends. I mean, they're very afraid of sexual women, so I would not be surprised. They are very. But like with female patients, are they? I don't know. Oh, yeah. Right. So one reason may be due to rational medicine's attempt to denigrate other health care practices. So like folk medicine being associated with women and then gets associated with witchcraft as a result. Yeah.

Witches are often portrayed as obsessed with things of the body. They are driven largely by bodily lust, like Apuleius' Meroe and Pamphyliae and Photis. So, like, yes, women can be hypersexualized. Furthermore, the witch's lust is considered so overpowering that it can cause male impotence. So, yes, can be dangerous to their male patients.

As such, a female medical practitioner, especially when versed in folk remedies, could be just as dangerous to her patient as a male counterpart. Claiming chastity is one way a significant aspect of appearing professional. There's another interesting consideration, though, of why maybe chasteness was an important quality that women had to exude. And it's the fact that a lot of them are of former slave status. So...

At least that's true in Western Rome. Yeah. As a slave, even with specialized skill, a medica would have the stigma of being sexually available. Right. And her chastity would easily come into question. Legally, the former owner, now patron, no longer had the right of life and death over an ex-slave, nor could they claim total control of an ex-slave's labor and goods. Right.

But the relationship between former slave and master shaped the freed slaves behavior to the patrons advantage. What is evident, however, is that freed women were no longer obligated to provide sexual services to their former master as a form of opera. It's like this weird requirement that you give some labor to your former slave master.

Oh my god. I know. Sorry, there's so much happening in there. But if you think about it, right? If a lot of these women are freed persons or of slave status, there is an assumption of sexual availability. Yeah, oh yeah, no. I mean, it was more when you... I didn't... The sort of like, oh, they also have to perform labor for their ex-master despite being quote-unquote free. But that's not...

that's not doesn't have to be the sex though so yeah at least not and that that is put legally like that is something that women legally are no longer obligated once they are considered a roman citizen they have legal protections for that great the bar is low bar is low um good yay

Yeah. But even if that is the case, the stigma of the medic's former slave status could impact her reputation as a professional medical practitioner. Well, as you know, also, having too much sex makes you less smart. That's just a fact. For ladies only. That's true. Everything in moderation. Excuse me, for ladies. No, the men. Everything in moderation. At least that applies to men, too. Men who have too much sex with women. Like, what are you on, man? Yeah.

You like your wife a little too much there, sir. Imagine if we stigmatized men for having too much sex. We try and it doesn't work. No, because they've done too much damage on the other side. Yeah. And also because we're not doing it seriously because it doesn't fucking matter. Right.

Yeah. Well, so there's something interesting that we see with the medical profession. So remember how I mentioned earlier that a lot of freed slaves often maintain a patron-client relationship with their former slave master because that is the social network they have access to that allows them to make an income now that they've been freed. There's not really any other social safety nets for them. It's really interesting to note that medical practitioners –

what we see in the epigraphic evidence tend to leave the households in which they were formerly enslaved. Interesting. Possibly, and you know, this is just my hypothesis, possibly they're doing that to get away from this reputation of being sexually available. They're promoting this chaste aspect, which is very important to doctors because the biggest insult thrown at them is they're sleeping with the women and killing the men with poison. Right.

So, I mean, that's I thought that was just a really interesting pattern. Yeah. This comes from Sandra Joshel. She knows that of 14 inscriptions that name an upper class employer or household, none of the freedmen's former servitude or familia. Five were nurses, six were doctors, and the other three were a cook, a procurator or manager and an architect. So like we don't have a lot of examples, but the ones we do predominantly are in the healthcare

care profession. Yeah, that's interesting. It makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I so that's why women are always kind of have these qualities when you look at their epigraphs, if they're practicing medica. Those are kind of the ones they highlight a majority of the time. Sometimes if they're usually of slave status, they will literally just have their name and their profession and who they belonged to. So that might suggest they weren't as

I mean, you know, they weren't, they didn't necessarily receive freed status, so they didn't have a lot of money. They didn't get a lot of prestige, but they're still present and someone acknowledged them. That was an important part of who they were. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. So, yeah. I just for like a slightly lighter, because I, in hearing all of this talk about, you know, the, just the freed status, because I think it's also, yeah.

It's really important to remember that because I think we have this idea that freedom was freedom because they called it that. But it reminds me of another place where freedom is valued and yet where nobody is really particularly free. I wonder where that would be. You definitely don't live there, just in case I'm not being obvious enough. I live in the state of denial. Yeah. Yeah. You know, freedom! But what does that actually mean? Exactly. But no, I think it's a really good reminder just...

just generally like outside of the medica aspect of like what it meant to be quote-unquote freed um then and now uh yeah it's really interesting and um but the sorry i realized the original thought of this was uh it just brings me back to having read um the wolf den trilogy ellen harper's yeah and i think she handled that in such an interesting way where you got to kind of

see what that looked like because you know spoiler but not really because it's just the first of three books but like

the main character is freed from, like, sex work, from prostitution in ancient Pompeii. And you get to look at what that looks like and how she kind of ends up becoming a slave or a master herself. And also, like, is still beholden to these people. And it's just like a really, it's an interesting kind of examination of that without

I don't want to say without all the darkness because like also it's literally the prostitution in Pompeii. I've read the first book. It's dark. Yeah. Oh, have you not read the second one? The second one? Well, all three are great. Elodie is freaking lovely. The first one is dark. Exactly. Which is but my brain is going to the second two, which get lighter, but are just still really interesting. But yeah, the trilogy generally is a really, really interesting kind of examination on Roman slavery and also Roman culture.

you know freed people um and and the status that they held because it certainly it wasn't like they just were freed and then became equals much like um the states much like the american slavery um which i just yeah yeah you know but oh but oh it's it's we don't need dei because everyone's the same colorblind

Yeah. Well, sorry. No, no. I just, yeah, we're going to keep coming back to it. Like that's the reality. And, uh, I, I'm, I'm, I'm at my conclusion. My conclusion is not sure, but I'm at my conclusion.

So in conclusion, why should you care about Hippocrates and Hippocratic medicine? Eleanor Claegorne, again, her book Unwell Women, the transmission of ancient Greek medical ideas about women's defective bodies and delirious temperaments meant that the Middle Ages continued to be dominated by the dimmest views of female biology. In the coming centuries, as...

as new learning was layered upon the old, the punitive and oppressive mythologies of the wandering womb would continue to shape attitudes towards women's susceptibility to illness, their bodies, and their lives. Just as the development of medicine and healthcare sits at the heart of social progress,

It all it has always been deeply political, too, which is, I think, what we've been saying this entire time. I don't know. I don't know that I've been commenting on politics. Not at all. Not at all. No. And, you know, just to highlight some more of the politics. Also, well, I'll come back to this in a moment. I one thing I learned teaching the history of medicine.

Hippocrates was in fact written about as part of the original Roe versus Wade Supreme Court decision. And there's an article in Eidolon by Tara Mulder that investigates this fully because one of the Hippocratic oaths lines says, I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan. And similarly, I will not give a woman a necessary to cause an abortion because

And the reason it got brought up in Roe versus Wade was just one of the guys was asking. Hang on, make sure. Did I have that down? Basically, he was just asking us like, huh, why were they so concerned with it way back then? And he quotes a different scholar that interprets that line, because as I have talked about, Hippocrates probably didn't author the oath because he was practicing law.

teaching people medicine for money and not keeping it in the family. Yeah. And he wasn't writing it down in that way. He was just doing it. Yeah. And so he talks about how this might be, it was most definitely preserved, but like it represents other ideas and natural philosophy and Pythagorean Pythagoreanism, right?

Something along those lines. So all of that is documented in the original Roe versus Wade decision and had some impact on that decision. I would posit also that's like maybe that was included in the Hippocratic Oath because it was one instance where male doctors were recognizing we shouldn't mess with that.

We should leave that to the women. Because as Agnodike's story told us, it's like women were dying in childbirth, especially when male doctors were involved. So maybe it wasn't so much a prohibition against life. It was just an acknowledgement of like, maybe we leave this one to the ladies. Maybe it's up to the person whose body it is. Yeah.

to determine what goes on with around in from that fucking body maybe we don't need maybe we just let people decide what their bodies do and do not do because it has nothing to do with the state yeah and anyway abortion is health care abortion is health care abortion is health care yes

And, you know, why do we still care that Hippocratic medicine was androcentric from the gecko? As of July 2024, an article from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released an article titled Significant Lack of Data and Research on Chronic Conditions Affecting Women is Hindering Diagnosis, Treatment and Prevention. Report Calls for Enhanced NIH Research Effort.

And what has happened in the last week? All NIH research has been paused. All grants in the United States have been paused. People, not just women, people aren't receiving cancer treatment because they're in part of cancer treatment experimental programs. Because...

We have now found a problem. Women are absent from medical knowledge and we need to be funding and putting money into learning about them to improve the system. And it took only 2,800 years. Yeah. And it's still not happening. And it's, it's, it is, it was started there. There was a great medical social justice movement to get more women included, to get other women,

marginalized populations more included in studies and it's coming to a standstill now i mean i also know yeah like um they've also paused uh notifying uh or like the i don't i assume it would be cdc but i feel like it yeah cdc communications right cdc communications with bird flu going around well and tuberculosis is overtaking kansas yeah tuberculosis yep yep

So that's one side of the problem, right? Like the actual funding needed to make a more holistic healthcare practice is paused for who knows how long. Yeah, well, when you keep filling your cabinet with white Christian nationalists... Mm-hmm.

The other side of it is my own research into women's experience with ancient healthcare practices. The work of all of these people I've been quoting would not be possible without research and scholarship developed through critical race theory, gender studies, queer theory, and disability studies. Trump has ordered the ending of DEI programs for agencies and stakeholders, but that will translate into any institution receiving federal funding. Mm-hmm.

So, in anticipation of this, my alma mater, the University of Iowa, planned to close its 50-year-old Department of Gender, Women, Sexuality Studies and Department of American Studies, both of which are replete with the kinds of courses and content that have been the recent target of Republican regent and lawmaker Ayer.

And it's kind of a smart move. They're trying to relabel it. And so as my understanding is, it's like the courses themselves are being kept. Okay. But they're being hidden away to an extent to hopefully not be targeted. So they're creating a new school of social and cultural analysis. And it's going to include the African-American studies, American studies, gender and women's and sexuality studies, Jewish studies, Latina studies.

Native or Latina, Latino, T-Nex, whatever,

I don't mean whatever in that regard. And Native American indigenous studies, all the marginalized knowledge is just being either it's being hidden away. So it wouldn't be targeted further or where I was teaching. They're completely gone. So once I left my institution, all the minor programs I was teaching in were removed. And that include archaeology, classical studies, gender studies and medical humanities, which was

geared towards students on the medical tract so that they could learn about all of the problems historically that existed in their discipline and how they might be able to address that going forward is now gone. Well, here's the thing. It feels like the most cliche thing to say in the whole world, but it is also the most true right now, which is that those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it. But like,

We, we are watching history repeat itself right now. We are watching the devaluation of the study of history, the study of, and I, when I say history in that realm, I mean like everything you were just talking about, because all of it ultimately falls under that category. Right. I mean, basically all of like the study of arts and humanities, like we are studying the past. That's what I mean by history. We are studying the stuff that came before in all of its varied ways and

And when you do that, you inherently learn to recognize when it is repeating and they don't want that. Because if they're teaching people to recognize what a Nazi is, then when they see a man on television do a Nazi salute, they'll know what it is.

And, and, and I like, I don't even know how to finish that sentence because it's just so unbelievable that I've said it. I mean, that's, that was again, me, this conversation, cause I've been just so engrossed in it for so long. I felt like, oh man, I'm, I'm just really presenting simplified knowledge. Like there's nothing new and exciting here, but like talking to you, it's like,

Yeah, it is. Yeah. Of course it is. And it's so necessary. It's so necessary. No matter how much you think it's simplified. But I think that that's what work like this is good for. I don't want to say my show, but I do mean it in just the way of like, I'm really grateful I'm able to put these conversations out there and share them with people. So that's why that's what I mean when I say my show. Yeah.

but I think it is so important because people want to learn this. And so often they either can't, you know, study for money reasons, or now they can't study because we're not allowing them to study the past. And I think that for all, I think that it's going to affect my own personal mental health, uh, immensely. Like I don't, I just want to keep

Like, I just think we need all of this now more than ever. And we need to be talking about it. We need to be looking at these what might be simplified versions of stuff. We need to still be putting it out there because learning a simplified version of this type of history and this type of knowledge is so much better than nothing. It's so, so, so, so, so much better than not knowing at all. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, I'm very much looking forward to reading Unwell Women. Yeah. I do recommend it. What a good title. And I haven't read the whole thing yet. But what...

was blowing my mind is this over 400 page book. Only 10 are dedicated to the time period that I study. Wow. And my, I makes perfect sense because her approach to what I believe most of the chapters are is looking at medical texts. Well, if all you have to go on is the Hippocratic corpus for understanding women's health in the ancient world, you're not, you're only going to get 10 pages worth. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, and yes, I agree with you wholly. It's like what you do for your podcast is going to be so important going forward. And sadly it's early career scholars like myself no longer have the time resources or institutional support to look at other lines of evidence, for example, of women's and other marginalized bodies, healthcare experience. Like we are losing people doing this research. Um,

That's not going to stop us from trying and doing what we can to like get that information out. But it's, it's scary. And I was really thankful for the opportunity to come back and revisit this conversation because I,

I'm screaming into the void and hopefully people are listening. Thank fuck it's not a void. That is the greatest part about this show and my job and my listeners. Like, it's not a void. And thank fuck. And I, yeah, I'm so glad that people want to hear these conversations. And I mean, I'm thrilled you wanted to come back because this was amazing.

While it was one of the most depressing two episode parts I've ever recorded, it was also one of the most fun because you're a delight even when you're telling me terrible fucking things. I also taught a turning point in world history course and the theme was mass killing events. I was like, my classes were a joy.

Oh, man. But important. So important. And, like, man, one of the events I taught was Rwandan genocide. And, oh, boy, is there some stuff happening now related to that, too. It's a bonkers world out there. The West has done so much damage. And then we just sit back and we say, oh, look at all these countries. They're just making a mess of themselves. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh...

On a lighter note, on my podcast, we talk about the ancient world and pop media. Yeah. I've talked about Gladiator and apparently told a story about my knowledge of Elvish from the Fellowship of the Ring movie more than once. So check those out. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a good time, too. We have a lot of stuff related more to Greek mythology. We spent like two seasons on Rome. Yeah.

And apparently like Greek mythology is on the up and up because we covered Hades 2. Next episode coming out is on The Return. We're going to be talking about- A couple of guests from my show. A few, right? Three. Yeah. Three past guests. Yeah. And Epic the Musical. Yeah.

we covered chaos, uh, like a lot of good Greek myth content out there to, uh, explore. I think we're doing Lore Olympus at some point too. So amazing. Yeah. You guys are doing all of the, I get asked about pop culture so often and I don't,

I mean, I don't have the time, but also like I just I thrive on on the the other side of it. And I am so glad that I have like friends who have a show and I can be like, hey, go listen to these very smart people talking about this show. And also I get to go on it instead. Yes, you do. Actually doing it myself, which I love. And we're a fun bunch. Like, oh, absolutely. You guys are the best. We we come with drinks made from Liv's cocktail. Heck yeah. Okay.

And also I realize we've been talking about this and we haven't said the name of your podcast. It's Movies We Dig. Yeah, Movies We Dig. A lot more than that. We cover TV shows, Super Bowl commercials, musicals, video games. We will, strangely enough, not books.

Interesting. Apparently we ain't got time to read. But you know what? Respect. As someone who has to read also too much for their job, you can't then sit down for novels, unfortunately, much these days. Or I find I can't read much Greek mythology novels because all I do is look into the Greek mythology and history all day, every day, that then...

after like a long day or on the weekend, I'm like, I'm sorry, guys, I'm not picking up a story about myth because then my brain just turns it into work. Yep. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're covering archaeology in film this season. So I have to turn off most of the time my archaeology brain, my historian brain and my reception brain to enjoy anything. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Well, I mean, thank you, Christy, for

I mean, it really was so much fun. I was so glad. It's so funny because we planned this before we fully realized we were just like, oh, like,

yeah we're talking about i'd love to have you back on the show yeah truly it was it was so unintentional like to the listeners like we were just chatting about a bunch of other you know plans and schemes we have together and i was like well you should come back on the show because like it would be nice to also get content out of having a fun conversation with you um and then when then we then then the inauguration happened and we sat down on that friday and we both were like uh

This one's going to hit close to home. And then two hours later, we were like, actually, we need to pause and take this back up for another two hours next week. But oh my God, I'm so glad we did. This has been fucking terrifyingly insightful. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. And people who are listening, you know, you want to hear more about ancient medicine? Let Liv know. Let me know. Because there's some ideas.

I had a 19 page timeline and it wasn't enough. Yeah. Let us know. Cause we have some ideas. So, you know, we have some ideas.

Do you want to tell the listeners, you know, other than your wonderful podcast, Movies We Dig, where they might find more from you or read more? Yeah. Probably the best place to find me is on Blue Sky under the handle at Vogue Archaeology, Vogue like the magazine, dot BSky dot social. I spend the majority of my time there parading both as myself and

As movies we dig, I try to keep my the movies we dig one. We try to keep very lighthearted. So like just the pop culture stuff. If you need a a palate cleanser from doom scrolling, that's the best place to find us. Also, I've put up some of my conference presentations on YouTube under the same handle. So if you want to see a more academic, I guess, approach to this topic, you can check those out as well.

Amazing. And I'm going to try to remember to put some of those books you've been reading and recommending into the episode's description too. Yeah. I think a majority are included in the works cited. Oh, right. Of course. Yes. You have a perfect... I love it. I love it. Well, thank you again. I'm sure you'll be back. That's me saying stuff that we know the truth behind it. For sure. For sure. Thank you for having me.

Thank you all so much for listening. As always, you can find references to the books Christy has listed in the episode's description as well as a link to her podcast, Movies We Dig, which again is joining the Memory Collective Network. And still stay tuned for more on everything that is going on with that. We're building it slowly, basically just slowly.

in whatever time we can scrounge up, because we're doing it without any funding. But I think that's good. It means we can do what we want and, and really make this into something that will benefit both the creators and the educators and everyone who wants to learn and and be entertained by learning about some really important aspects of history that often are kind of

if not forgotten entirely, then told in this way that is exclusionary to so many of us. And I think we need to be, you know, rewriting that, re-understanding it from this other perspective. And so again, stay tuned for more.

so that I don't keep rambling. Let's Talk About Myths, baby, is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Penguish is the Hermes to my Olympians, the producer. She is utterly wonderful. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective network of podcasts and also just the Memory Collective. Again, stay tuned for more, but you can read some things now at collectivemem.com.

And yeah, yeah, stay tuned for more. We will have more. And sign up for our newsletter at macebaby.com slash newsletters to stay up to date on all of that, both my book announcements and the memory collective itself. I have spent every day this week with...

that on my to-do list, uh, to do this newsletter, to give you all this information. And one day I will find the time to get to it. Um, so until then you can just sign up, mythsbaby.com slash newsletter. Thank you all. I am Liv and I love this shit so much.

Even when it's horribly depressing, because if we learn about it, we can understand it, and we can hopefully find a way to stand up to the fascist governments overtaking the world. Eat the rich. Billionaires are inherently immoral. And if it looks like a Nazi salute and it smells like a Nazi salute, it's probably a Nazi salute.

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