Measles and Misconduct

Measles ramps up in Pennsylvania; RFK Jr. interferes with public health reporting; Dan Arielly’s fraud expands - he’s never faced scrutiny like Jason Arday faced; Lindsay Clancy trial drags on; Fake NFL player arrested

• Daejon Love charged by DOJ
• One hour of Daejon Love videos
• A parody by KevOnStage
• A parody by Camo
• A parody by Been Dat
• A parody by Anthony Adams, a former NFL player
• A parody by comedian Michael Blackson

Measles

• Pennsylvania Department of Health data and guidance
• RFK Jr asks for measles deaths not to be counted
• CDC Measles Data (Aug 30, 2026 excludes deaths in Penn)
• The Measles-Stricken Mother Who Lost Her Newborn Son

Misconduct

• Data Colada has multiple posts dissecting Ariely’s research. Parts 138 and 139 are the ones on procrastination we discussed in detail in this episode. Part 98 is about the study on honesty.
• Ariely’s friendship with Epstein
• Arghavan has videos about all of these scandals (and the allegations against Francesca Gino) on her Work/Med Culture playlist on Tik Tok

Other News:

• Gloria Steinem obituary
• Lawsuit against xAI/Grok
• 7th Circuit Court decision on AI-generated CSAM
• Latest on Lindsay Clancy trial deliberations

💊Take Two and Call Me in the Morning💊

• Duck Tales a cappella
• Healing Together with Introspective Spaces
• The Joint Medical Program

Thanks for listening to The Present Illness! 

Follow us on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube @ThePresentIllness

Credits

• Production by Arghavan Salles & Alyssa Burgart
• Editing by Alyssa Burgart
• Music by Joseph Uphoff
• Social Media by Arghavan Salles

Don’t take medical advice from random people on a podcast. This show is for informational purposes, is meant to be fun, and is certainly not medical advice. Please, take your medical questions to a qualified professional. Nothing we say represents our employers or anyone else. 

Transcript

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0:05

Hey there, fellow nerds. Welcome back to another episode of The Present Illness, the podcast where two physicians try to make sense of a world that is febrile and definitely underdiagnosed. I'm Arga Von Salles, a surgeon scientist, and your friendly neighborhood doom scroller in residence. I'm Alyssa Burgart, an anesthesiologist and bioethicist who tracks news and health law like their EKGs, full of spikes and surprises. The present illness is where we dig into public health, politics, culture and ethics with a scalpel in one hand and a meme in the other. As a notory listeners, we often talk about tough topics. So if you need to take a break, we totally get it. Absolutely. we want to give a big thank you to everyone who's listening or watching wherever you're finding us.~ and we want to send some extra love to our subscribers and followers on the various podcasts. I also want to extend a special warm welcome to anyone who is stumbling in from the Dejan Love Fiasco. Who is Dejaan? I am not stubbling in from that. Who is Dejaon Love? Yeah, I don't know that anybody really knows. We don't even know if that's his real name.~ but this is a man, it is It's a great name, if it is. it is a great name. This is a man who has for years been masquerading as a 49ers football player and he's been using that identity, not a specific, not another person. He's not been impersonating some. He's just been telling people that he himself is a 49ers football player, and he has been using that. To scam women out of large amounts of money. So they know of the government knows of at least 26 women who cumulatively have given him over $1.3 million. he has a partner in crime, by the way, some poor 18-year-old kid that somehow he hooked up with, I don't know, who was supposedly serving as a quote unquote financial advisor and was part of the scam. And so When you're going to an eighteen year old for your financial advice, that's that's a red flag. Yeah, but you know, there's no shortage of red flags in this story. And part of the reason I wanted to talk about it is it's obviously terrible what's what happened to these women. And people have found a lot of comedy in this man because he, for reasons that are hard to understand,~ chose to film himself repeatedly with, you know, two, three five-minute rants that he would send these women. So they would like send him a text, you know, asking how he's doing or an update or whatever, and then he would reply with this video. And so there are women, even not those 26 women, other women he tried to do this to,~ women all over who have videos of this man on their phone that he sent them talking about, I mean, all sorts of things. So you want to talk about red flags. So he says that he's from a very wealthy family in Switzerland. Okay, this is a this is a black American, born and raised black American man. And he says that he's from a very wealthy family of like investors and real real estate people, whatever in in Switzerland. At one point he he screen records himself supposedly logging into a Swiss bank to demonstrate the millions of dollars he has across multiple accounts in this Swiss bank account. And that was all faked, it turns out, right? ~ he one of my favorite things is where he talks to one of the women about his family's investments. And I just want to play like just a very short clip of this for you. We have shares in three Gucci stores. We are the share holder, the majority shareholder of three Gucci stores here in America. One is in Dallas, one is in South Beast Miami, Florida, and the third is in Manhattan on Sax Fifth Avenue. Did you catch that? The third is in Manhattan on Sax Fifth Avenue. The street is Fifth Avenue. Sax Fifth Avenue is a store. Sus is the store on But he says the Gucci on Sacks Fifth Avenue because he doesn't he doesn't know he's talking about. ~ So and wait if so wait wait where is this person physically located? Hard to know. ~ I think he was in California at least some of this time. In some of these videos, he talks about how he might be signing with the Rams. He he lists like multiple properties that he supposedly owns. But then when he's filming these videos, he's like in the place that he is inhabiting does not seem particularly and Sure. ~ I mean he must have some sort of like compelling albeit weird personality. But did none of these ladies think I should Google this guy? So this is the best part. I'm so glad you asked.~ maybe not the best part, but it's also pretty amazing. He has ~ built his whole social media around, like his own personal social media, around being a 49ers player. So apparently, when they Googled him, the AI summary would say that he was a 49ers player. Now, there are some women, right? There's lots of women he tried to scam who were not scammed by him because they were like, this is weird. Why does he why he sending me videos talking for minutes about things I didn't Right. So that's the other thing. He would like volunteer all this information about his wealth. And like one of the videos he's he's in somebody's closet, maybe it's his, I don't know. But pointing out different pairs of shoes that he has and how expensive they all are.~ you know, trying to like prove his wealth. But okay, let me tell you what also is really funny. This man would take his 49ers helmet everywhere. Like he there are photos of him. Wearing and and he would wear 49ers gear everywhere too. So he'll be wearing like a red 49ers shirt, holding his helmet at a restaurant. He went to get a haircut, or actually, I can't remember something done to his hair at a hair salon, and he had like messaged them in advance. So he has sent many DMs. I can't I don't even know how many, because every day I see new screenshots of DMs of this man contacting businesses saying, I'm a 49. 49ers player, I'd love to collab with you. Okay, like some restaurant called Papa Smash. He was like, serve me food, I'll introduce you to the team, whatever. T-shirts, jerseys, like make me t-shirts and jerseys, and I'll get the team on board, whatever. These poor small businesses he scammed too, mind you. Like, not just these women. Anyway, so he there's you know, these DMs that he sent this hair salon about how he needed to get his hair done. He heard they were really great. And there's a picture of him with them holding his helmet at that hair salon. Why do you need your helmet? At the hair salon. There's video of him that he's posted on the beach. On the beach, wearing no shirt and his helmet. His 49ers helmet. Because that's a normal thing to do. Anyway. I mean safety first, I guess. Think, you know, I think how he got people right is that he projected this wealth. There's even a video of him signing a contract, supposedly. You know, like he's sitting with a packet of papers that he's through, and the person filming like, well, who'd you decide to sign with? And he's like, Niners all the way, you know. Like, I mean, this was an elaborate scam that went on for years. but the reason I I wanted to bring it up is obviously again, it's terrible what and what happened to these women is terrible and they deserve justice. And he really has provided comedic gold for a lot of parts of the internet. So there are people, you know, mm pointing out the absurdity of what it was to be him. They're like sitting in their car with full ~ you know protective gear and a helmet and everything, ~ talking about how they've been recruited by the The guy was never drafted, right? So he has a whole story about why he was never drafted. He's not on any official roster, he whole story about why he's not listed on a Frosters it to your question of like, did people not look into it? Yeah, people did look into this, but he had an answer for everything. but really the videos are ~ are the funniest. And there's so many, you know, we talk a lot about the ways that humanity lets us down, but people are really so funny and so creative.~ and every day I just see new ways that people are making fun of this man.~ and and the lies that he fed people like without blinking an eye about like how much wealth he supposedly had. Because on the in the one sentence he's like, I have millions of dollars. And the other he's like, So how much money do you have in your bank account? I just need to make sure that we're aligned. And also if you could just send me three thousand dollars today, you know, I'll get you back. The Tinder swindler. This reminds me of who was that mm no, but I was also thinking about the the that woman who wore the weird glasses who defrauded a bunch of people. Anna Anna Anna Delvey Delvey? Rem Develny? I don't remember. Something like that. ~ This sounds like her. You're right, actually, it's not dissimilar. Anna Delvey was her name. ~ not dissimilar to that.~ but I thought of the Tinder Swindler. Like people pretending pretending to be real, but my cash is all tied up because of my bank accounts, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. it's all very complicated. Yeah, yeah. You wouldn't understand. But I just need this money right now. And then it'll it'll come back to well, he had one ~ video where he's explaining to a woman about how he's going to put her money into what did he call it? An expedited account. What's an expedited account? He was gonna put her money in this expedited account and it was going to build equity and momentum. You know, like Straight to the stars, folks. he just used a lot of big words. Anyway, ~ I will I will put a link ~ to to some of the amusing videos. It's ~ the audacity, right? That's the that's the thing that's really~ compelling about this story. It's the number of the lies, the breadth of the lies, the commitment to the lies, The commitment to the lie. you know, across many different platforms and ways of communicating into different groups of people. and ~ you know, it's remarkable. In the worst way, but it is remarkable. Well, I will look forward to being amused. And also when something comes up about this person in my algorithm, I will now have the context to truly appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I hope I hope some of these women are able to get their money back. yeah. The other thing I was gonna say, the person that I thought of is the Tinder Swindler, who is a guy who, and there's a whole like Netflix documentary about him, but he similar vibe. He would tell people women, he had like his private jet, he had to go to this place, he had to go do that, but he would ~ string along all these women and then tell them, like you said, like my money's tied up in this. But actually his big scam that he ran over and over again was that like somebody had robbed him. at like gunpoint or whatever. And he even had ~ visits. Well, he had photographic evidence supporting a visit to like the hospital a cut on his head and all this stuff.~ and and that he was being ~ what's the word? Like they were asking him for money. He was being ransomed and they need they wanted like, you know, whatever large sum of money and he couldn't get it to them because his money was tied up in this, that, and the other. And so could they send him like whatever exorbitant amount of money And we like tens of thousands of dollars these women would give him~ because they cared for him and whatever and that he was gonna pay them back. But then, you know, soon enough they never heard from him again. Anyway, ~ that's what that was what I was stumbling in from is video after video after video about Dayson love. Well and you know what I like is ~ you know, it's clearly provided you with a great deal of amusement, and that's important these days. You know, we need to really harvest our amusement. Hang on to it. Hang on to it. I agree. And making fun of a terrible person I think is a great way to have fun.~ man. anyway, so today we're gonna talk about measles and we're gonna talk about the latest in research fraud, right, Yeah. Oof. with Dan Arielly at Duke. I want to talk about measles, and we've obviously talked about measles on the show many times because there's Right. so much measles right now in America.~ Well, and if you had told like a younger me, like a twenty-five year old me, that one day I would be thinking and talking about measles all the time, I would have been like, Why? You know, what's sad is like I am not surprised at all. I am not surprised at all. I was living in Los Angeles when I was kind of like in my transition of leaving California and going to Chicago for school when ~ the anti-vax movement like really took off.~ So for example, when you know Jenny McCarthy really became I mean, she her career was like not really happening anymore. She'd like had a kid, she wasn't really working as a playmate anymore, but she became a national sensation because of her anti-vaccine advocacy. Mm-hmm. And I remember as a medical student being like, things could get real bad. Mm. But it was also at the time something where, you know. Crunchy people didn't vaccinate to the point where, like, you know, I'm kind of crunchy. So, like some of my friends in medical school school were like, but you'll vaccinate your kids, right? And I was like, Yes, of course. What are you talking about? Of course I will.~ but ~ yeah, so I'm I'm not surprised by that. And in 2019 is when ~ there was, you know, several big cases. Well, there were several major outbreaks leading up to that. And so in 2019, I thought I was gonna spend all of 2020 talking about the Because I thought that, you know, the rise of anti-vaccination sentiment was getting really high.~ more and more families opting out of vaccination. And then COVID came and it gave us a totally different disease and a totally different ~ vaccine for people to really latch onto. And one of the things that happened when I think with a transition from it being just about kind of moms and measles, which is how it gets framed a lot of the times. Is that in COVID there was so much ~ right wing radicalization around vaccination and obviously everything we've seen with Fauci that's now being like relitigated and all of that. So Well not only that, but real quick on that note, it's it was so severe, it is has been so severe that even when Dolly died last literally Mm-hmm. there were people saying that she died because she had been vaccinated in twenty twenty and or twenty twenty one, sorry. And one person was like it's just so absurd. Healthy eighty year olds don't just drop dead. It was like I'm sorry, what what planet do these people live on? I don't know, but they're so committed to the bit, you know, you kinda have to admire that I guess. But anyway, back to measles. I mean We digress. Okay. I want to talk about measles, and I want to talk about measles specifically this week in Pennsylvania. So the news this week is out of Pennsylvania, it's actually started last week. Very unfortunate. There's been a really rapidly accelerating measles outbreak in Pennsylvania, specifically ~ Lancaster County, but it's now spread across almost the entire state.~ And unfortunately, the announcement was made on August 25th that two people have died in in Pennsylvania from the measles, and at least and one of those per people is an infant. So infants cannot be vaccinated against measles. They have to wait till they're older and tur for it to be safe. So for example, when everyone in the household is vaccinated, that's a way to protect a child baby from getting really sick from the measles. And Children who are under five, which we've talked about before as well, are particularly at risk for some of s really severe complications from measles. measles is no joke, it's one of the most contagious diseases on the country in in the world, which is why vaccination has been so effective. So when you have a disease like that where it can spread for a whole month, it's really important that we have as much protection as possible. No. because it lingers in the air for so long. So, terrible, terrible ~ situation in Pennsylvania. The public health officials in Pennsylvania appropriately are not releasing any other personal information about the people who died ~ out of out of respect for those families. But do you know who's not having a respectful response to the measles in Pennsylvania? You're gonna be shocked. It's RFK Jr. I won't, Yeah, I can only guess. Wow. I know. I know, I know that that was whoa, surprise. ~ I had a patient the other day who asked me if I hated RFK Jr. And this like right as I was about to give this person anesthesia. And I was I was I was like, wow, I don't want to have this conversation right now. Mm, mm. I said I was worried for everyone's safety because I wanted everyone to be safe, including this patient. Best I Yeah, yeah, of course. could do. Mm-hmm. Well done.~ anyway, so in this situation, you know, Kennedy has I mean Kennedy lied recently ~ in a testimony about, no, I didn't go to Samoa to stop people from getting vaccinated, blah, blah, blah. And of course he did.~ Yeah, and there were new documents ~ that just came to light showing that he had correctly communicated that he was going to be going there to talk about the V measles vaccine. And this is as as you said, something he's denied many times, including under oath. Correct. So ~ RFK doesn't like it that people die of diseases that we purposefully choose not to protect them from, or that for decades we, I mean him, have discouraged people from getting protected by. So it's very inconvenient for him, as ~ you know, the head of HHS to have children, little innocent children, dying of the measles. So It's inconvenient, but it's also exactly what he wants. It just makes me so mad. I'm so mad all the time. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. so the the things that co that Kennedy has, the complaints that he has used. So some of these people will not be shocked are a rehashing of messages that he really perfected during COVID. So Mm-hmm. he immediately after the announcement out of Pennsylvania spoke up to try to cast doubt on these deaths and like, Mm-hmm. well, are we sure that those are like really from from the measles? And so he will call it the COVID playbook.~ and so he accused the governor of Pennsylvania of using the COVID playbook, which when he says that, he's saying, you're blaming the death on the measles, but they actually died of pneumonia. You know, and this is exactly what happened when we had ~ another child die in in Texas last year, or was that two years ago? I forget exactly what month that child, Mm. Yeah. unfortunately, Daisy, had passed away. ~ but of course. The measles makes people super, super sick. And so it causes multiple problems in people's bodies. And so the idea that the measles like it causes the disease. So the idea that then they die of the subsequent cause you know, anyway, just it just makes me I mean, like we know, just to use your pneumonia example, we know that that is a common complication of measles. So if Mm-hmm. if anyone gets measles, they have pneumonia, the pneumonia is what ends up killing them. It was the measles that gave them the mo pneumonia that killed them. It wasn't like pneumonia out of nowhere. It's it's it's measles pneumonia. Yeah. Exactly. Just like it was COVID pneumonia that would turn people's lungs into Swiss Exactly. And this whole like, did they die with or of is a ridiculous distinction in many cases because they're just trying to cover up the fact that it was Yes. measles now or at that time COVID that was the cause. And so, and so for example, like there are some diseases, like, for example, like prostate cancer. A lot of people who are quite old might have prostate cancer, but it's not what they die of. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like they die with, again, because they don't have a particularly aggressive form, they just happen to have it, or people who have, you know, other again, like other tumors that are not particularly aggressive and they die. while they have that, but it's not the primary re you know, they die of heart failure or they die of something else that's a and a truly independent Mm. condition. But ~ but you know when you are a healthy child or whatever, a child with any sort of a condition and you get the measles and you get really sick and you get hospitalized and then you're in the ICU and then you die, the causal you know connections pretty pretty tight.~ Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. and so putting this like Immense scrutiny. Trying to minimize the importance of these deaths and the critical importance of using the fact that these children have died, the fact that so many people have been hospitalized, not only in Pennsylvania, but obviously across the country. This is an opportunity to help educate people on the importance of getting vaccinated with the MMR. Mm-hmm. And, you know, not this nonsense that we heard a couple of weeks ago about like, we're gonna separate all the things. No, that's not happening. Just get vaccinated so that your children Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. can. can like we're not supposed to outlive our children. There this is we are not supposed to do this. And anyway. I am infuriated. At RFK for this ridiculous behavior. He is also claiming that Pennsylvania refused to cooperate with, Mm-hmm. you know, ~ the federal government was trying to control the outbreak, and you know, Pennsylvania didn't want to cooperate. I don't buy it. Yeah. And what will come as a surprise to no one? Our concerns about Dr. Erica Schwartz continu, you know. We've gotten our first major highlight of what we're gonna get out of her. So just on September 1st, earlier this week,~ he directed her to exclude these two deaths from the weekly measles report. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They're not listed. And they did. She did. Hooray. Yeah. They're not included. They're not part of like the measles counts. I mean, for for measles illness they may be, but not for the deaths in this country because they're refusing to accept I mean, he in that long post, RFK Jr. accused Pennsylvania officials of fabricating deaths. You know, it's one of those like every accusation is a confession. Maybe he would do that, but like normal people who work in public health are not doing that. You mean you mean like when the FDA was claiming that ten kids died of the COVID vaccine and then had like, Right. Exactly. no evidence? Exactly. ~ and did you see the article? And not for lack of looking. yeah, they tried and then like months later they're like, yeah, we never did find any evidence of that. So did you see this article that came out in The Atlantic where they talked to the family of the newborn who passed away? No, I saw the title, but I haven't read it. So basically, ~ this reporter went out there and met with ~ the main person I saw reported on was the father, but basically talking about the family's experience. And I think it's important for folks to know that this family didn't oppose vaccines. They didn't believe conspiracy theories, they're not maha, whatever. They just never got vaccinated. Well, the father himself was vaccinated, but no one else in the family was. and what happened was then the wife, the mother was pregnant, and this outbreak happened. And they were all very worried about her and the pregnancy. But because the measle vaccine is contraindicated during pregnancy, she couldn't do much about it. and so they were just hoping to, you know, stay safe somehow. And I will say that measles is, I mean, sorry, masks can prevent transmission or reduce the risk of if someone else is in a situation like that. But anyway, so ~ they just kind of honestly hoped and prayed that she would but their kids got sick and then she got sick, and so then when she delivered the baby, the baby had congenital measles and passed away. So horrible. And this is part of the thing about herd immunity, because I have people in my comments all the time talking about ~ why why they should have to care about anyone else. Like they can just do what they want with their body and we can do what we want with our bodies. And that's Why should we have to care about anyone else? Because that is the nature of humanity that we should care about each other Yeah. Yeah. That's not really a value in community. ~ gosh. that seems to have transmitted to everyone. But unfortunately. But anyway, so but but I my response is usually, well, it's not just affecting you though. That choice isn't just affecting you in the same way that drunk driving doesn't affect you. Yeah, you can choose to drink and you can choose to get in a car, but there's a reason that's illegal because it puts other people at risk. And it's the same here. We have so many people who can't get vaccinated.~ Well new newborns and and this is are not vaccinated, people with immunodeficiencies can be vaccinated but not have a proper immune response. So it doesn't provide them protection. People who are on chemotherapy, et cetera. And so all of those people, pregnant people, rely on herd immunity. And that doesn't exist in this particular county where I think the vaccination rate is somewhere around 25%. And so this was preventable. Her illness was preventable. The the congenital measles was preventable. The ~ Father believes, the family believes that the baby died because of measles. Measles is listed as a contributing factor on the death certificate for this baby. Yet the Secretary of Health and Human Services is out there accusing officials of fabricating deaths. And the CDC director has chosen not to acknowledge these deaths in the weekly report on measles. And all that will do is, as you said, further the idea that, like, Maybe measles didn't have anything to do with it, also make people think that measles is less serious than it is, and therefore discourage people from getting vaccinated. And what a real public health response would look like in an outbreak like this, where we've got hundreds of cases. Last I checked, it was somewhere around 500 cases. You might have more updated numbers, and almost a hundred hospitalized. What we need is a strong campaign about the efficacy of vaccination, not people saying this never even happened. or trying to ~ muster like to have this fight with local public health officials who would have no reason to be lying about anything. I mean, do you know it's just really perverse for that for It's it's infuriating. It's infuriating. RFK Jr. to have taken over the apparatus of federal response to these kinds of outbreaks and in this really disgusting way that's only going to serve to put more people at risk, to have more children harmed, more people harmed, is the exact opposite of what someone who cares about the health of people in this country would do. Yeah, and people who like say they care about the health and well-being of children in particular. Mm-hmm. yeah, and so for you know, the other thing too that you talking about that congenital case really reminds me of also is like every every person who has to study for their medical exams, like if you want to get a license to practice medicine in America, you have to know what a torch infection torch infections are. It's T-O-R-C-H. And these are the infections that are can be really dangerous if you contract them while you're pregnant because they cause really they're that cause really terrible congenital illness. And so measles is actually the O. It's in the other category. the T is toxoplasmosis, which people have to worry about getting, especially from cats. ~ rubella, congenital rubella is awful. And I will be honest with you, like rubella, there's always circulating rubella. and With people not getting the MMR vaccine, measles, mumps, and rubella, the risk of having an increased amount of congenital rubella is also going up. we Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. are fortunate right now to not be in a rubella outbreak, but it's only a matter of time.~ the C intortious cytomegalovirus or CMV, and the H is herpes simplex virus. So it's just when you can prevent. Truly horrible things from happening to people, we should do those things. Like Especially when they're easy and they're low cost Easy. They're safe. and they're safe. I will say what I read, I can't remember if it was in that article or another one, but what I read was that there are actually a lot of people in that area vaccinated now, despite Yeah. our federal response being like maybe the worst it could be.~ but people in that general area seem to be more similar to this family where they just like maybe didn't do it and now are Yeah. are more motivated to do it. So that's that's great. Yeah. I was happy to see that. Yeah, and you were asking me earlier about cases.~ so last year with the last time we talked,~ the numbers were lower, they're bigger now.~ so in 2025, ~ the the grand total of cases was 2289. We have totally blown past that this year. It is only September and we are up to 2903 cases in the CDC data set.~ it's across Lots of ages, 20% of them are kids under five,~ almost 50% are in people age five to 19, and then the remainder are in people who are over 20. 94% of cases are in people who are unvaccinated, 3% in people with one MMR dose, and 3% in people with two MMR doses. the hospitalization rate is up to 8%. It was 11% last year.~ and Last year in 2025, we had three deaths. And in 2026, we have an asterisk on the CDC data. It says this week's measles outbreak update will not include the two measles associated deaths reported by Pennsylvania Department of Health on August 25th, while the CDC reviews additional information regarding the circumstances and causes of death. Now I will tell you part of what is so abnormal, like this is not. a normal Right. response. Like the way that they've written it makes it sound like, we are just a measured and responsible group of people. But those three deaths that happened before, it doesn't take much to confirm a measles death. It really doesn't. Mm. Yeah. It's not and you're exactly right. It's not standard to be like acting like you need to investigate. And the whole reason they're doing that is because they're arguing with the Pennsylvania officials, but that is not normal or typical. Usually the CDC will take the word of local public health officials and move forward. ~ Yeah, because they're tracking the outbreak and they're in touch with the hospitals. And it's like, it's so So for example, so for example, just for those three deaths that we had in 2025, one of those deaths was unconfirmed. I mean, the death was confirmed, but the association with measles was unconfirmed for some time because that was a person who actually was they they were found dead, and it did take time to determine the cause of death. So for example, the data last year for a For a brief period of time, for I believe a few weeks, said two with an asterisk, because they were investigating that death because officials also weren't sure. Exactly, because the local officials didn't know.~ Correct. just for folks listening, the numbers I was talking about earlier were for Pennsylvania specifically, the 500-ish sure. I I cases and the almost a hundred hospitalizations. Yes. That is there's~ so been ninety-one people have required hospitalization so far, and they're over five hundred cases or five hundred and forty cases across Yeah, I mean twenty-eight counties. all of that. All of that was preventable.~ anyway, it's just very sad to see. Depressing. Yeah, would you like to talk about something else depressing? You know, somebody was asking me recently, like, what's your podcast about? And I was like, I don't know, imagine like the worst news possible, but you got it filtered through two people that you were like, I could be friends with them. I like that. I hope that's true for our audience.~ That's what people keep telling me. They're like, yeah, I don't want the news if it's not packaged with ~ you know, some doctor laughs. Yeah, well we do try. ~ I thought what we could talk about the other topic is as I mentioned earlier, ~ developments around research fraud. So I don't know if you know Dan Arielli. He's a very famous but yeah, no, I mean not personally. Yeah, yeah, I don't know him personally, but but like know of him. yeah. But no, this this He's a case has been going on a long time. Well, yeah, so this is a man who, just for folks who don't know, he's a behavioral scientist who ~ is very, very well known. Yeah. I would say that he's famous.~ Media Darling, Dan Arielli. also that he had he had a column in the Wall Street Journal for 10 years that was called Ask Arielli. ~ he I I first came into or knew of him when a friend of mine had recommended like something, I can't remember if it was a podcast or something by him. And then I found this was years ago, and I found a course that he had on Coursera. And so I actually took his course, which I, Mm-hmm. to be fair, thought was pretty good. It was very interesting. ~ and then I kind of like vaguely followed his career over time because you know my PhD is in social psychology, so much closer to that work than it is to, you know, medical research. Anyway, so a few years back, ~ there was a paper that he had written that was called into question. The paper was published in 2012, and it is worth noting that. He studies a big part of his research has been studying honesty and integrity.~ Which is what makes it so especially galling. it sure is. I mean, his he has a book that he published called The Honest Truth about Dishonesty. And ~ this paper that I'm talking about was really all about honesty. It was called signing at the beginning makes ethics salient and decreases dishonest self-reports in comparison to signing at the end.~ and so that paper was already retracted several years back. About three years ago, ~ Almost exactly actually it was August of 2023. This group called Data Collada, who ~ are yeah. are researchers who basically look into kind of suspicious research. They had a series of blog posts about that paper and then also some other papers that so that paper, one of the co-authors was a woman named Francesca Gino, who I don't think we've talked about on this podcast. And then they had multiple other posts about her other work. That was not related to him. Now, her work also centered around honesty and integrity. She had a book that I was very well aware of that was called Rebel Talent. It was all about like disrupting workplaces.~ she's a very interesting ~ person. She was a professor at Harvard. So when this all happened in 2023, she was placed first on administrative leave, and then Harvard actually revoked her tenure for the first time they've done since the 1940s. In the meantime, nothing really was happening to Arieli. So Arieli is still, as of today, a professor at Duke. And again, that paper that I just read you the title of that was about honesty had been retracted because of the irregularities. And basically it was they were trying to show that like if you their hypothesis was that if you signed that you were going to be honest before you shared information, that you would be more likely to be honest than if you signed at the end. Like you shared the information, you answered questions, whatever, and then you signed. That you would be less honest.~ and we don't need to go into the details. I I do have videos I can share of like how they figured out that those data did not seem accurate. But so that was in the past. Then a few days back, Data Colada posted another story or blog post about a different paper of RELE's that is looking at procrastination. It's called Procrastination, Deadlines and Performance, Self-Control by Pre-commitment. It's important to note that also. Has been retracted as of this week.~ But that manuscript was looking at whether people's quality of work was worse if they procrastinated. So they ~ asked people to complete three tasks and they were editing tasks, like finding mistakes in these documents. And there were three conditions. So one condition was that students could assign their own deadlines for the three different tasks. Another condition was that. They were given evenly spaced deadlines. So there were three tasks, but like this one is due this day, this one is due this day, this one is due this day. And the third condition was like the procrastination condition, where they were just given one deadline at the end. You just have to finish all three by the end. And what they basically found in the paper, supposedly, was that those in that condition where they only had one deadline at the end found fewer mistakes, right? So their performance was not as good. Now at that time, so that was published in two thousand two. Around that time, a few years later, some other folks were interested in the study and had asked for the raw data and actually were able to get it, which is interesting. But then they kind of didn't end up doing anything with it. They that group has now published an attempt at replicating that study, and they weren't able to replicate the findings.~ and so that work, the replication attempt, is has now been published. And then in the blog post, the data colada folks go through some. Very like unusual things in this manuscript. So for example, they asked students how much or the participants how much they doing this work, like the editing. And then a separate question was how interested they were in doing the editing. Now you might think that those are, I mean, it would be natural to think those are correlated, right? Like you like something, you're interested in it, you're interested in it, you like it. Those should be highly correlated.~ and what they found in the replication study is that indeed, yeah, they were. Highly correlated, but not in the study that Arielli had published. There was really like no correlation between liking and being interested, which seems kind of funny. Like, why would that be the case? They also found multiple just other things that that were hard to explain. So basically they had distributions, right? Like any data set you have distributions of data, and they have like the number of corrections. made by people in these different conditions. And so one of their findings was comparing those in the condition where they had the one deadline at the end versus the evenly spaced deadlines. And the distributions don't overlap almost at all, which is weird. In a natural T explain explain to people what distribution means in this context though. So like the number of ~ people who found whichever number of cor who made whatever number of corrections. So you might have two people who found like 20 corrections, maybe five people who found 22 c corrections, you know, so on. So like how many corrections, how many people found how many different numbers of corrections? You would expect that there would be that because you're you're sampling from the same population of participants, that There would be some overlap between You would expect that people in one group would have like some people in that one group would get between two and five corrections. You would expect to find a similar distribution in this other group. I see what you're saying. No, like it let's assume there's a difference. Let's assume that their hypothesis is correct, that people who have an evenly spaced ~ deadlines who have evenly spaced deadlines will find more mistakes than the people who have the procrastination setting with the one deadline at the end. You would still think that you would find some in the procrastination ~ condition who would have. say like let's just pick a number 30 corrections, 35 corrections, 25 corrections. That's the person with ADHD. They're running only on anxiety, caffeine. That's it. Yeah. And even if the mean for that for the people in that condition is lower, you would expect that there the people in the other condition where they have the evenly spaced deadlines, that there would also be some people who had found 30 mistakes or 35 mistakes, maybe even 25 mistakes. Do you see what I'm saying? Sure. But I see. So they're so so the problem is that they had it was almost like they were com two completely different groups of people with absolutely Correct. Correct. Correct. no similarities whatsoever. Got it. And that is strange. ~ and they found an effect size in this study, which is like a measure of how different these groups are of two point five. Two point five is huge. A large effect size in a social science context, really in any context, is like zero point eight. That would be really large. Nothing I have ever done has had an effect size of zero point eight. And they found an effect size of 2.5, which is part of what like that's what happens when you have totally different distributions, like totally different means for these groups that like have no overlap whatsoever. It is theoretically possible, which is a little bit like weird. Then there's like the actual data when they looked at the ~ data set in the condition where it's that procrastination condition. What they found was that there were pairs of data. So subject one and subject 11. Had the same number of corrections for all three documents. Subjects two and twelve, subjects three and thirteen, subjects four and fourteen. Like they just took an entire group and just copy pasted it so that they had double the number of responses. Something. Something. I mean, but you shouldn't have like the there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine pairs in that condition that have the exact same number of corrections for all three documents that they edited. Seems weird. Seems not normal.~ and then the and then the last thing I'll say for that part is that. They ask people how much time they spent on the task. And most people will estimate, right? Like for something like this, if they asked you, you'd be like, I don't know, 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. You wouldn't be like 17 minutes, right? ~ and what they have in that data set is these very precise measures. So they ask people to estimate, and then they have like 12 minutes, 14 minutes. That's not kind of typical human behavior, and that's also not what was seen in the replication study, where most people tended to round to the nearest five or 10 minutes. So anyway, there's just all these like things about that study that are hard to explain like by chance alone. Did you see ~ the Duke Chronicle? you know, obviously it's done a bunch of reporting on him because he works there. And the title Mm-hmm. is quote, insane data. Duke Professor Yeah wait. Dan Arieli accused of additional research fraud. Yes, I need to explain that one. So that's from the second post. So this post, what what I was just talking about was a post that came out earlier. that was the other study? Well, it's actually the same paper, but two studies within the same paper. I see. So ~ the the things I just explained were in the first post that came out earlier this week. And then there was another post that came out yesterday. This one is actually wild, and that's why they said insane data. So basically, what they have is again, it's part of the same paper. So it's still the same idea about procrastination and quality of work. But what they found here was that ~ well, what's actually really interesting from like if you care about like academics is that they had an older version of the paper that they found that had been posted on some website. Okay. So they found an earlier version. The other co-authors, there were two authors on this paper, Ariele and then this more senior person who from the beginning had said even years ago in the early 2000s that he did not have the data. Ariele had the data. ~ so this other person. They asked him if he had the reviewer comments. And believe it or not, he had the reviewer comments from like 2002. That's important. Yeah. Academic hoarding really helpful sometimes. Excellent record keeping, sir.~ so one of the things that they were looking at was in the final published paper was Among the students, remember there's that condition where students could decide what their deadlines were going to be for all three tasks. Like they could choose to have one deadline for themselves, they could choose to space, they could do whatever they want, right? So what they did was they compared, because you would think if I was a student in that condition or participant in that condition, and I gave myself evenly spaced out deadlines, then my performance should be similar to the condition where the professor gave me evenly spaced out deadlines, right? Mm-hmm. Or If I gave myself just one deadline and said, you know what, I'm just gonna get them all done by like whatever date, then my performance should be similar to those in the condition where they were given one deadline at the end, right? It's like a pretty simple concept. And in the paper that was published, that is what they showed. But because they had the original data, remember I told you they had requested the data back in the 2000s. They could look at the raw scores for each of these participants. And there are different components to these scores. So what they found was that if you just took the average of these different components of the scores, for 13 of the participants, that wasn't the score that was recorded in the spreadsheet. Like the spreadsheet had columns, right? Like we we teach a class together, like you have score for this thing, score for this thing, score for this thing, overall score, right? Also, like, you know, if you've ever seen an Excel spreadsheet, like the you know, they're supposed to be tidy and you can Yeah. add things up. Yeah, you should be able to see the formula that was used to generate that There was no formula. Anyway, so for thirteen of the forty-nine data points, the number that was in I'm sorry, thirteen, thirteen of forty nine. Cool. Cool. Yeah, I know we can talk about that. Anyway, so 13 of the 49 data points, the number that was in like the overall score column did not match what the average of the other three scores was. So isn't that interesting? Okay, so what if you replace the scores that are in the spreadsheet with the actual average for those 13 students? Well, now you have a different story. You don't have the story that they told in the manuscript. But if you replace those 13 scores in the way that they seem to have done, which was that they inflated the number of corrections, well, they inflated the score for the students in the evenly spaced out deadline condition. So of the 13 that were like not calculated the way you would expect them to be, some of them were in the evenly spaced out deadline condition. And for them, all of their scores were higher. Than what would have been calculated. So they just cooked the books. And then for the students who were in the you know one deadline at the end condition, or that they had assigned themselves one deadline at the almost all of them had lower numbers of corrections, except for one. And so why is that one? Why would they not have fixed that one? Well, one of the interesting things about having that previous paper is that they could compare the means. Well, they could compare the T tests and the P-scores, but the T statistics specifically. from the two versions of the paper, because they have the older version and they have the newer version. And they could replicate both of those T statistics based on whether you use the actual average score that you would calculate just directly from the Excel versus these replaced scores. Yeah. And remember, I told you about the reviewer comments. So the reviewer comments showed that one of the reviewers said, hey, you need to do this specific analysis. Because if your finding is accurate, that the evenly spaced deadlines people will perform better, then you should be able to see that in the students who self-assigned evenly spaced deadlines. And so that's why none of that was in the original version. That specific analysis was not in the original version of the paper, but it was requested by the reviewer. And it very much looks like the way that request was fulfilled was by manipulating the data so that it would. line up with what was in the rest of the paper. Yeah. So I just want to point out that this is a white person, a very well-known, very influential white researcher. We talked a few weeks ago about Professor Jason Arday, Mm. a black man who was a professor at Cambridge. Mm. We talked about the fact that there were literally hundreds of articles written about him. In the matter of a couple of weeks. Mm-hmm. And just in case folks didn't listen to that episode, the allegations were plagiarism, not research fabrication. His university, where he got his PhD, had already investigated and found no evidence of The other allegations were about whether he ~ was truthful about his personal life and the number of miles he ran and you know those kinds of things, how much money he raised for charity. Now, I think most rational people. Would say, hey, like a researcher who studies honesty seems to have fabricated data. Maybe we should be thinking about this very seriously. And yet his center was not shut down until February of this year, despite many years. And where are the hundreds of articles? Like, unless you are kind of deep into academic Twitter, you probably didn't even hear about this stuff that happened with Data Collada this week. And I reassert what I said at the time, which was the reason that there was so much attention paid to Jason Arday, was that he dared to have been a black man in academia. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And when we have a white person, all those people who were all over my comments talking, plagiarism is so important. This is so very serious. How could you write this off? This is critical. Obviously, that's why we needed hard hundreds of articles. Where are they? Because I can tell you where they're not. They're not on any of my comments about Dan Arielli or any of my videos about Dan Arielli. They're not in there demanding his resignation. They're not in there demanding an explanation, an investigation, nothing. In fact, Nature, right? Very famous influential journal. Nature published an editorial that simply said that we should, well, the title I should say, said that we should reflect. On what happened with Jason R. Day. And this was posted on Twitter, and that's pretty much all it said is like this, we should be reflecting on this. There are hundreds, literally hundreds of comments, people of people insulting Jason R. Day, who is no longer with us, and nature talking about how this institution has failed and they need to shut their whatever, you know, like nature is a DEI shill, like all sorts of things. It was disgusting. And that people still have energy for that. Lots of energy for that. No energy for Dan Ariely. Nobody cares. I mean, I shouldn't say nobody. Some of us obviously care. But the asymmetry in the response is exactly what And it's mm-hmm. we were talking about when we talked about the tragedy of what happened to Professor Arday. mean, and the other thing is like, you know, Jason Arday was not some like super famous person, you know, and one of the things that has consistently struck me about and again, Dan Ariele has been this these accusations are not new. He every time there's a story in the news about Dan Ariely, and there are never as many as there have been about Jason Arday,~ it's all just more fraud allegations and yet Duke has not gotten rid of him. No, and one last thing I should add that is not a research misconduct issue, but he's in the Epstein files over 600 times. He yeah, he met with Epstein multiple times. It's documented in their conversations.~ he promised to get Epstein tickets to a TED event because it was the event was sold out. They met at each of their homes.~ at one point Arielli says to to Epstein something about wanting to meet that redhead that Epstein had introduced him to. She seemed very, very smart and whatever, whatever. So Epstein was introducing him to people. Do you see what I'm saying? Like there are people who pretend to care about pedophilia, who pretend to care about sexual violence, who pretend to care about academics. But really only if it's a marginalized person who they can blame it all on. it will not surprise you to know that Elon Musk was one of the many people under that nature post ~ being upset at the journal for~ gross. God, why does that guy have like why does he have so much time on his hands? Anything. He just doesn't do anything except complain about like his plight Just he's like he's like as a poor white man. America's number one internet troll. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I don't know I don't know how to describe he anyway, we don't want to get all waylaid about Elon Musk. But anyway, I I think academic integrity matters. I, you know, I'm all for people running appropriate investigations, making sure that data integrity is is secured and ~ I don't care what the person looks like who we're having a conversation about, but it's clear. With the response from the media and the response to people online to this story about Dan Ariel, just weeks after everyone was like, my god, like it's so important. And just weeks later, no, it's not important to you when it's like a very influential, well-established, famous white guy at Duke. It only mattered to you when it was someone who you didn't think deserved to be in academia because of the color of his skin. And and that and again, to be clear, for folks who missed that episode, I mean that was explicit. Nathan Kaufness, who kind of got that ~ witch hunt Mm. going. Like he's very explicit about believing that black people are not as smart as white people. and in fact there are many people still talking about how the real problem was that Cambridge let that guy be there in the first place. It's their fault because they elevated him to this status that he should never have had. So I just want to be clear that I'm not making that up. Like that is explicitly Mm-hmm. stated by many people involved in that story. And I would love to see them have some energy for this story, which has like some legs to it, I would say, you know? We have multiple people retracted and I mean, it's like real, real bad fraud and it's been going on for years. It's been known for years. And it Yes, allegedly. is I yeah. I mean, again, this is not new news.~ That's right. there's newer news about it. but yeah, I mean I agree. I I don't know. I will tell I will say and I'll I'll use RELE's ~ you know, name of his paper. The honest truth about dishonesty. Well, I I have this wild idea that when we do research, we should do it. Honestly. Yes. I guess it's I should be to be to be thorough.~ he did put out a statement on his website and on his LinkedIn about how he really just doesn't remember anything about what happened to this So he's not able to recreate anything. And so whoops. Basically. How convenient. Isn't it? Very much so. I think that this points to a a a broader issue that we are aware of in academia, which is that the pressure to produce ~ does incentivize this kind of behavior.~ and not to like, you know, excuse anybody. But, you know, we saw this with Marc Tessier Levine at Stanford,~ who was also accused of having fabricated data in papers. The investigation at Stanford found that it wasn't. Him who did it, but that he had created an environment in his lab that~ facilitated people doing that. And that really is a direct result of this publish or parish ethos that's in academia and Mm-hmm. the way that people value publication over anything else. And I I do actually think that that's got to be addressed if we really want to address. research misconduct, we've got to address the metrics by which we judge people's careers and what's considered to be success.~ because otherwise we're just going to keep seeing these issues. And anyway, Mm. that's that's enough about that. Absolutely. Well let's let's real quickly roll through just a handful of other news that's been going on.~ Gloria Steinem unfortunately died on well the announcement was made on September third. ~ she was really a prominent figure in second wave feminism.~ founder of Ms. Magazine. ~ did you did you wanna share a quote or anything? Yeah, it just I've ca I mean, she's had a a a whole life of noteworthy things to say, but I just wanted to share two quotes that I saw ~ pop up again today. One is women are becoming the men we wanted to marry,~ but too few men are becoming the women they wanted to marry. Mm. And the other one is ~ she was famously she n famously never had children. she said, Not everybody with a womb has to have a child. Like not everybody with voc vocal cords has to be an opera singer. It's a choice and it's a wonderful choice, but if everybody has to do it. It's no longer a choice. thank you. The there's two cases that I have well, there's one that I've been following, there's one that I've just started to follow. there are have been two major cases around child sexual abuse material, CSAM or CSAM. the Seventh Circuit just ruled last week that basically you can have AI generated child sexual abuse material if it's in your home. And if it's not of a real person, which is the dumbest thing I've ever heard, because of course all AI-generated images are based on actual real people, it's that their photographs have been put into training data sets that then get used to make images of people. So ~ the reason the other case that's relevant to this is that there is a a woman who's going by Jane Doe. Who is suing Elon Musk and his ~ Grok, you know, ex dot com company because she herself is a survivor of child sexual abuse. And she alleges that his AI chatbot, Grok, used photos of her to generate new illegal images,~ which is absolutely no surprise. and part of why this is important is that we know that Grok included. CSAM data in its generation. This was flagged very early on. And the person who was in the Seventh Circuit ~ Court of Appeals ruling, someone named ~ Andereg, he was using something called stable diffusion, which is also a text-to-image generating platform that was very popular that was also trained on the Lion 5B open large training set, which we know had. At least a thousand images of child sexual abuse material, which were used to train it. ~ so I was listen, America has a long history of laws that promote the free speech of abusers over the actual safety of actual people. And Mm-hmm. this is just one more extension of that.~ I thought it was a real unfortunate way that the judges. Interpreted what was in the case because Mm. I think that they are applying cases that were written during a time when we could not have imagined AI. so treat but treating them as the same as what's happening now is very foolish. Anyway, it's infuriating. I'm sure there'll be more to talk about.~ but the idea that AI generated abuse material doesn't hurt anybody is patently false and I Yes. And no, I a hundred percent agree. And I just want to clarify one thing for listeners, which is that taking images of real people, real children in this case, and then modifying those images continues to be That was not what Mm-hmm. was part of this ruling. So what this ~ plaintiff alleges in the XAI Grock case is different from what was discussed in the Seventh Circuit case. I none of it should be okay, but I just want to clarify that because no, Well, kind of, but but because the morphing, they specifically call out like morphing, like taking a specific image and modifying it is not what they deem to be I understand. fine if it was like in your home. And I agree with you. And people who used both stable diffusion and grok don't need to know who this woman is to say, Totally. hey, I want to find a picture of this specific person. And I know you got it somewhere in there. Like the the fact that real images have been used to train these data sets means that whether these folks, some of these images that are going to be created may actually look like real people because they're all made, absolutely. Absolutely. yeah. Yeah, no, they're both they're both inappropriate and both should explicitly be illegal, ~ but they are slightly different. Yes. But if somebody takes a picture of you or me and purse and purposefully like nudifies it or does other things like that, those things are clearly I say clearly, but this this Yeah. age of AI is pretty freaking miserable. Anyway, ~ and then the last thing that I just wanted to mention is the Clancy which we've both been, you know, painfully following. ~ as of as of today, we're recording on Thursday, September third.~ It's not clear there may be a mistrial because there's the the jury has been deadlocked now for multiple days.~ Mm-hmm. and so we're gonna see it is possible that the judge will say they can't make a decision. I don't know yet. We will see. let's do take two and call me in the morning. Yeah. I wanna share something that came across my feed that~ you know, for folks who are roughly my age, I'm 46, ~ I think will be amusing.~ I really liked it. but I think if you're and maybe maybe younger too, I don't know when this whole thing started. So who knows? Maybe it's good for everyone. I don't know. ~ but it's basically this a cappella group,~ super talented a cappella group that ~ does all sorts of things, but what I've seen is theme songs. And so this one was one that popped up on my feed that I really liked. Just made me happy. So I'm just gonna play a little bit. Here go Alright, well~ Tales. I'm gonna have to send them to my brothers. They're gonna love it. I'm gonna I'll put a I'll put the link for sure ~ into our show notes. How about you? What what do you prescribe for folks this week?~ well, one of the things I just want to tell people about the day that this show is coming out, September 4th, today's the last day to register for a program called Healing Together. It's a writing program that's done ~ through two of my friends at Introspective Spaces. I'll put a link in the show notes.~ if you're a little late, you know, send them a nice note, they might be able to get you in.~ the program starts September 14th. I've done this a number of times in the past. You get paired with a bunch of other healthcare workers.~ and you get to do some some writing together and some reflecting together. I've made some really lovely friends that I probably just wouldn't have met otherwise. so if you're a healthcare worker and you're or somebody who loves a healthcare worker, you might find that interesting.~ and then part of why I bring up their group is that last weekend they had asked me to join them at an event that they were hosting for the joint medical program at UCSF and UC Berkeley. And so I went across the bay. to Emeryville, and I got to play a song. I played Jolene by Dolly Parton~ in in celebration of her life.~ they had a whole series of physicians and other healthcare workers. There were nurses and social workers ~ who all got to meet with a bunch of new graduate medical schools from the JMP program, as well as a bunch of ~ alumni from the program. And we got to talk about the importance of art and creativity. as a sustaining part of being a clinician and that these are ways that we can help, you know, really keep ourselves alive in in, you know, hopes and dreams and that you don't have to give up every aspect of yourself and you shouldn't give up every aspect of yourself ~ just to become a doctor. So I was really pleased. I get I met so many nice people and I got to play a song, which was really, really fun. that's so awesome. I'm so glad you did that and thank you for sharing about it ~ with us. I think that's it for this week's episode. if you didn't like what you heard, this has been the Making the Argument podcast. If you liked it, don't forget to subscribe to the Present Illness. Leave us a review if you can or a rating and tell other folks to tune in as well. Follow us on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube at the Present Illness to stay on top of all of our TPI related news. We will be back next week with more headlines, hot takes, and doom scrolling, hopefully wrapped in some laughs. Until then, agitate, hydrate, take a nap, and we'll see you next time on the present illness. Production by Arghavan Salles and Alyssa Burgart, editing by Alyssa Burgart, social media by Arghavan Salles, and original music by Joseph Uphoff Don't take medical advice from random people on a podcast. This shows for informational purposes. It's meant to be fun, and it is certainly not medical advice. Please take your medical questions to a qualified professional. This podcast's our hobby, doesn't represent our employers or anyone else. Excellent.