Interview with Annie Kelly on Vaccines, Conspiracies, & Misinformation

Decoding the Gurus

Christopher Kavanagh and Matthew Browne

Science, Leisure, Social Sciences, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2021

⏱️ 104 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dr Annie Kelly is a writer, researcher, and the British correspondent for the well and deservedly praised podcast QAnon Anonymous. Her PhD research was on digital anti-feminism and the kinds of ideas that float around certain 'tradcon', biological essentialist, or religiously motivated groups. She does research on antifeminism, new digital cultures, conspiracy theories and right wing extremism.

Prompted by the resurgence in anti-vax sentiment, Annie's been looking into the history and sociology of vaccinations, and sees lots of interesting roots and themes for understanding what's going on right now. Her new podcast, "Vaccine - The Human Story" has been digging into precisely these issues, and so we had questions for Annie, lots of questions!

The history of the germ theory of disease, the early use (and abuse) of vaccinations, and the panics, xenophobia and quack therapies - it's quite simply fascinating stuff, and we get a wonderful overview from Annie in this episode.

Annie's work at QAA and elsewhere naturally focuses more on the extreme end of the spectrum, and while pulling no punches, she approaches what can be quite disturbing and confronting topics with a humour and empathy that is incredibly authoritative and reassuring. We talk about COVID and vaccines, but so much more, like the anti-feminist ideas that float around in the hinterland between athiesm and religiosity, pick up artists converting to Orthodox Christianity, and other weirdness.

One of our most enjoyable and informative interviews - do check it out!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're going to. Hello and welcome to Dakota McGurray's the podcast where an anthropologist
0:26.5	and the psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try
0:29.9	to understand what they're talking about on map Brown and with me is the Ringo to my Paul,
0:35.6	Chris Cabernar.
0:36.6	Gator Chris.
0:37.6	Hello Matthew, how you doing?
0:40.3	I'm good, I'm good.
0:41.7	Did you like that?
0:42.4	You're comfortable with being Ringo? You're right with that, aren't you? He keeps the beat.
0:45.5	Don't get the reference map. Before my time, those names are nothing to me. Who's that?
0:50.4	What did you listen to when you were a kid then?
0:53.0	A kid, Irish rebel songs.
0:57.0	Yeah, the Dubliners.
0:59.0	No, I did listen to that kind of stuff,
1:02.0	but I was into metal.
1:05.4	Which heavy metal band did you like?
1:07.5	I liked bands like Pantera and Machine Head. I was not a slipknot fan but I was no I arrived that over okay did you like that that artist warrant he sung that song called Cherry Pie. That was really hard, gritty rock.
1:26.8	I don't even get that joke. When I'm trying to focus on work or whatever I listen to retro wave stuff.
1:38.0	What's that? It's kind of like electronic music but using like synthesizers and various signs from the Eades.
1:48.6	Okay.
1:50.6	It's weird and the thing is, it turned out that that whole genre became associated with Trump-E-style
1:58.7	fascists.
	...

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