Hello, and welcome to the very first episode of Alley Ward.

I'm clearly Alley Ward.

I'm very, very excited that this is finally up.

I've been working on this for so long, like the better part of a year, just to put out

the first few episodes.

And I've wanted to do something where I explore all these different allergies for over a

decade.

I came across this list of allergies, all these obscure ones.

And I just thought like, who does this stuff?

Who studies it?

Why do they study it?

Like, what happened to spark their obsession with this?

There's got to be something.

So the list was Volcanology.

And I thought, who studies volcanoes and why?

And so I sent out some emails and I just kept hitting like cul-de-sacs where I couldn't

find anyone to interview.

And I thought I'll find a volcanologist later.

And a few weeks later, I happened to be at one of those dinner parties where you're socially

just completely out of your league.

I think I brought a dip that wasn't vegan when I was supposed to bring something vegan.

And people were talking about art films from the 70s and Romanian philosophers I was unaware

...