Navigating Healthcare, Travel, and Choices: A Conversation with Emily Scott
Older & Wilder
GGW Media
4.8 • 619 Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2026
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Two Dusty Travelers: COVID Front Lines, L&D Mistrust, and Choosing a Childfree Life
Joy and Claire hosts Emily Scott (Two Dusty Travelers), an RN known for caring for the first diagnosed hospitalized COVID patient in the U.S., to discuss how her platform evolved beyond “the COVID lady” and how politics and misinformation have fueled distrust in healthcare. Emily, now a labor and delivery nurse with a background in peace studies and global health work in East Africa, describes rising patient suspicion since 2020, including refusal of newborn hepatitis B vaccination, vitamin K, and other standard care, and notes anti-vax sentiment even among some nurses. They discuss the difficulty of changing minds at scale versus through long one-on-one conversations, the pressures and taboos around being childfree by choice and parental regret, and gaps in pain management for IUD insertion. Emily shares hope as sustained effort plus balance, and highlights Tanzania as a favorite destination, inviting interest in her group trips and naming Namibia as a future goal.
02:37 Politics and Online Unfollows
03:54 From Global Health to L&D
05:10 Mistrust in Healthcare Now
06:43 Newborn Shots and Misinformation
08:07 Wild Hospital Stories
12:06 Anti Vax Nurses and Vaccine Clinics
13:55 Bridging the Gap with Skeptics
16:41 Childfree by Choice Conversation
25:09 Pressure, Regret, and Nuance
28:51 Sliding Doors and What Ifs
33:19 Childfree Without Shame
33:44 TikTok Narratives and Stigma
34:46 Pop Culture and TV Time
35:43 Why Romance Feels Safe
37:49 Spicy Talk and Sex Ed Gaps
38:50 IUD Pain Control Reality
44:17 Labor Stories and Trusting Bodies
45:23 Home Birth vs Hospital Birth
49:21 Hope and Fighting Burnout
54:27 East Africa Travel Plans
57:05 Wrap Up and Where to Find Us
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome back everybody to Older and Wilder with Joy and Claire. |
| 0:11.9 | Hi, everybody. |
| 0:13.5 | What day is it? |
| 0:14.3 | I don't know. |
| 0:15.0 | You know what? |
| 0:15.3 | We got some news that I'm not going to talk about this week. |
| 0:18.0 | Everyone who has been watching social media about JT and I will update everyone on next week. But this week, we have a guest. And I'm not going to talk about this week. Everyone who has been watching social media about JT, and I will |
| 0:21.5 | update everyone on next week. But this week, we have a guest. And I'm actually so glad because I'm just |
| 0:26.9 | not ready to talk about that stuff yet. So welcome to the show, Emily Scott, from one of the accounts |
| 0:33.8 | that I've been following for, I don't know, since 2020, I feel like you came on the |
| 0:38.1 | scene for me in 2020 when the pandemic hit and I was like so thirsty for people to just be like, |
| 0:44.2 | what is happening? You're a, you work in the medical field, you're an RN. Anyway, your account, |
| 0:50.2 | so people who don't know is too dusty travelers, two Travelers.com. You have a substock. You have |
| 0:55.0 | wonderful things to talk about, but we want to just talk about many things today just because |
| 1:00.4 | that is what we do. So, Emily, can you just do a brief bio for our listeners who may not know you? |
| 1:06.4 | Yeah. I'm Emily. Like you said, my Instagram, which is how most people know me now, is two dusty travelers because originally my husband and I had it to just like you share our travels. |
| 1:17.6 | And then most people know me and found me in 2020 because I happened to care for the first diagnosed, hospitalized COVID patient in the U.S. |
| 1:26.6 | So I just started talking about it. |
| 1:28.5 | And like you said, no one knew what the hell was going on. |
| 1:31.8 | So I was like, you know, one of the people talking about it. |
| 1:34.6 | So a lot of new people came to me then. |
| 1:36.9 | And then the cool people have stuck around since I started became what like kind of |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from GGW Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of GGW Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.