Special Episode: Dr. Olivia Weisser & The Dreaded Pox
This Podcast Will Kill You
Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 17.7K Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
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Summary
In a time when smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, and typhus ran rampant through the streets of London, there was another disease that instilled even more fear than these other killers: syphilis. So feared and so stigmatized was syphilis that it was sometimes called “the secret disease.” A diagnosis would not only sentence you to a drawn-out and painful illness possibly resulting in death, it also labeled you as an outcast and not fit for polite company. Skyrocketing infection rates drove a corresponding rise in syphilis “cures” and an increasingly desperate public. In this TPWKY book club episode, Dr. Olivia Weisser, associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston joins me to discuss her recent book The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London. She transports readers to the hidden shops and stalls that promised a remedy to this feared disease, to the courthouses where a syphilis infection was an important piece of evidence, and to the country houses that held recipe books for those who could not purchase a cure. Tune in for a fascinating glimpse into a time and place where morality, sex, and disease were so strongly entangled.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is exactly right. |
| 0:06.9 | Hey, it's Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Disgraceland, I tell stories from the dark side of the music business. |
| 0:13.2 | And I'm thrilled to announce that now, Disgraceland and its celebrity spin-off, Hollywoodland, |
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| 0:37.0 | disgrace land in hollywood land on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you're now on exactly right. Listen to Discraceland in Hollywoodland |
| 0:38.6 | on the IHeart Radio app, |
| 0:40.2 | Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:43.7 | You know, The |
| 0:57.0 | The Hi, I'm Erin Welsh, and this is This Podcast Will Kill You. |
| 1:31.8 | Welcome to the TPWKY Book Club, a series where I invite authors of popular science and medicine books to the show to chat with me about their latest work. |
| 1:43.6 | It's been such a fun series to put together, |
| 1:46.9 | really making my inner bookworm so happy, and we've covered some great topics over the years. |
| 1:53.7 | If you'd like to see what we've featured in the past or get a peek at some of the books that |
| 1:58.6 | we're planning to feature in the future, head on over |
| 2:01.5 | to our website. This podcast will kill you.com. There, in addition to finding all sorts of goodies |
| 2:07.9 | from transcripts to sources, you'll find a link to our bookshop.org affiliate page under the extras tab. |
| 2:15.3 | On Bookshop, you'll see a bunch of TPWKY related book lists, including |
| 2:20.9 | one for this book club, as well as the kids' book club, put together by Aaron Updike and posted |
| 2:26.7 | on our socials. So if you're not following us there already, you should be. As always, |
| 2:32.4 | we love hearing from you all about these book club episodes and about |
... |
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