It's not good to live in your head is basically what I've learned from my time as being a love-sick nerd.

We've got to find that magazine. It's got to be in here somewhere, right? This place is like a candy store for nerds.

I'm Tricia Bobita. I'm Greta Johnson.

And this is The Nerdette Podcast.

This week, a conversation with Pulitzer Prize winning author, Deborah Blum.

She's a science journalist who's also a poisons nerd.

And we'll hear your voicemails dedicating songs to the nerdy loves of your life.

But first, for this Valentine's Day episode, we're going to check in with our movie nerd friend, Joe Uchall.

Joe interviewed some horror filmmakers, and turns out there's more romance in those slasher films

than we originally thought.

I went and talked to two groups of screenwriters.

One of them were adorable and married.

They would hate being called adorable.

John and Lottie Knowles, who wrote a movie called Chastity Bites, which is about the real-life 16th century blood countess, Elizabeth Bathory, who used to bathe in the blood of virgins to stay eternally young. You didn't think there was something spooky about that woman? No, she's foreign. They're more elegant and cultured and stuff.

If she was alive and still teaching abstinence-only education in New Mexico.

It's a pretty amazing premise, I gotta say.

He directs and she writes,

There is perfect for each other, Ziegfried and Roy.

Well, I think the real story here is that we are two nerds in love

who like making horror movies together. Yeah, exactly. So does a husband and wife team

that makes horror movies together like Valentine's Day? We hate Valentine's Day. They hate it.

They can list all kinds of horror movies, which have very, very important, sturdy romances to them.

...