S03E53 - A History of Vampires

Transcript by REV
Announcer (00:07):
Monster House presents.
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It’s actually quite unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
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A giant hairy creature, part Inness, a 24 mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands of Scotland, a creature known as the Lochness
Blake Smith (00:51):
Monster talk. Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I’m Blake Smith.
Karen Stollznow (00:59):
And I’m Karen Stollznow
Blake Smith (01:01):
Here at Monster Talk Manner. Every day is part of the spooky season, but even we can’t deny that. As autumn rolls in and the leaves turn, blood stain red and the pumpkin spice begins to fill our veins. We do get a bit excited. Speaking of blood, looks like we’re going to be focusing on our favorite blood sucking creatures from legend and lore this year, starting with this very informative discussion with today’s guest. Nick Groom is a professor of literature in English at the University of Macau and previously held positions at the universities of Bristol at Stanford, university of Chicago, and at Exeter. And he’s the author of the Vampire, A New History from Yale University Press among many others. Join us now as we discuss the history of vampires on Monster. Do
Karen Stollznow (01:53):
Welcome to the show, professor Nick Groom.
Nick Groom (01:56):
Thank you. Very good to be here.
Karen Stollznow (01:59):
So I’ll have to give a little bit of background story on how I found you. We have a number of vampire related projects, which are going on at the moment. So I think the Halloween season is going to be very vampire oriented for our show. That’s a big topic for our listeners. They love this subject. And I was watching a number of videos on vampires on YouTube in particular, let’s Talk Religion and Esoterica, and they kept mentioning you and they kept mentioning your book, the Vampire, a New History, and people are saying this is the definitive book on vampire history. And so unfortunately Blake and I haven’t had time to read all of the book yet, but we both have copies and we know our listeners are going to really love this book. And so I wanted to bring you on the show. You’re known as the Prof of Goth, and you’re a professor of literature in English at the University of Macau, are you not? That’s
Nick Groom (03:00):
Correct, yes.
Karen Stollznow (03:01):
Great. Well, thank you so much for joining us. And yeah, we just wanted to talk about vampires, I guess in a general way with you. And I’m just wondering, there are quite a few books on the topic. It’s very popular. So what inspired you to tackle the topic of vampires and how is your book different to the others out there?
Nick Groom (03:22):
Yeah, thank you, Karen. That’s a fair question. I came to vampires through an interest, obviously in the Gothic. I wrote a book called A Very Short Introduction to the Gothic, and that was based on some research I did right at the beginning of my career in which I realized that there was actually a history to the Gothic before gothic literature. So the Gothic was a thing in architecture, obviously, but also in politics more than a hundred years before we get to the Gothic novel. And I got very interested in that early history. In fact, even before the first gothic novel has been published, you have people say, we’ve had enough of the gothic. We don’t want any more gothic, let’s move on from it. So not realizing that it was about to explode and become this abiding form. So I then wrote an essay about the early history of vampires, and that got me very interested in what vampires are really doing, how they’re being represented and figured and used in the early period in the 18th century rather than the whole Dracula and post Dracula vampire. And again, it is a very interesting history. So my book is really looking at vampires mainly from the 18th century up to Dracula. And then everything changes with Dracula,
(04:58):
But there’s a very rich history which only gets into literature and culture fairly late. So vampires are being discussed by medical researchers, by philosophers, by theologians, by political scientists, and it takes nearly a hundred years before the vampire is then taken up by literature. So that’s the first thing about the book. The second thing is this, I focus on when vampires are called vampires. It’s not a history of every blood sucker across the globe. I mean, that would be a huge and impossible project because every civilization probably has had blood suckers at some points in their sort of superstitious or mythological history. So I focus on the moment where vampires are called vampires, and that happens at a very specific moment, happens in 1725, and that’s when researchers from the Habsburg Empire and medical team go and investigate why corpses are being exhumed and staked in at the borders of the empire in Serbia. And that’s when the word is first used, and that’s the beginning of the whole western and then global fascination with vampires as vampires rather than just as blood sucking monsters.
Blake Smith (06:31):
That is fascinating to me. So you’ve got a folklore vampire and there’s a transition that happens after Dracula. So I know we’re going to want to talk about that because I’ve been doing a lot of research on werewolves and there’s sort of a similar thing that happens where you have the folklore werewolf and then it’s kind of late, honestly. You get an early 20th century sort of rise in the werewolf short story, and then ultimately you get the Wolfman, and that sort of cements the pop culture version of the werewolf. I can’t really think of a comparable werewolf novel to Dracula that there was never a book so much as, but the movie really did that sort of job. So in doing this book though, you had to go back and do research. So how did you approach the research for the book? What sort of resources did you use? Because it seems like you’re tackling both a sort of literary view and also a historical view.
Nick Groom (07:32):
Yes, but I was very surprised how late the vampire gets into literature. So focusing on the 18th century, that’s where I began my career as an academic was looking at 18th century literature. I realized that the vampires were being referred to in all sorts of ways. So it’s used as a way of criticizing politicians, financiers, even people like book setters. So it becomes a general term of condemnation and criticism for those who are exploiting others. And you end up with a very rich history about how the vampire is being really deployed by these commentators, whether it’s talking about allies of political power in Eastern Europe, whether it’s criticizing investors who are speculating, whether it’s criticizing landlords. For example, the British in Ireland are called vampires for their landlords policies. The British in America, they’re called vampires for taxing without allowing political representation. So I got very interested in that and just trace the history of the word.
(09:00):
And it’s not really until you get to the beginning of the 19th century, that’s nearly a hundred years before Dracula that people start introducing the vampire as a figure into literature. And that happens as a passing reference in a number of poems. Then poems begin to concentrate on the vampire, and then the vampire becomes a character. In 1819, John William Polidori publishes a short story called The Vampire, and that focuses on the vampire being this sort of sentient, independent, malicious, manipulative aristocrat. And that’s a game changer that really opens the gates for all sorts of writers to use the vampire as this character in a whole range of different stories. And so leading up to Dracula, we have, we’ve already got a vampire craze, we’ve got vampires being represented in all sorts of different ways and stories now, mainly in short stories, but also in poems, and it’s still being used in political commentary, in theological debate. And so you get a very rich and diverse culture, all sorts of different vampires before we get them to Dracula.
Karen Stollznow (10:34):
Well, you’ve said so many interesting things just then, so many things I want to unpack, but one of them is you mentioned Polidori, and I’ve heard that he stole the story from Lord Byron or took part of the story from Lord Byron. What’s the truth there underpinning that?
Nick Groom (10:55):
That’s a very good question, and in fact, it’s something on which I’ve actually rewritten the history of the Pori vampire. What happens is that Byron Lord Byron romantic poets had already mentioned vampires in one of his poems in the shower, and he refers to vampires occasionally in his verse. He actually describes the Liberty Royal family as Vampiric.
(11:26):
Oh,
(11:27):
Famously, he spent the summer of 1816 in a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The weather in Britain was terrible. In fact, the weather across the whole, the world was terrible because there’d been a volcanic eruption the year before that put ash into the atmosphere.
Blake Smith (11:47):
Oh yeah.
Nick Groom (11:48):
So that’s Mount Tambore probably familiar with that. So Byron goes to Switzerland thinking that things will be better there. Of course, things are no better there. He travels there with his servant, but also with John William Polidori, who’s his physician. So Polidori occupies this ambiguous position. He’s both a friend of Byron, but also is working for him. And while they’re there, they’re visited by Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin, who later becomes Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein and her half sister Claire Claremont. And they spend the summer of 1816 in this villa telling ghost stories to each other. Now, Byron suggests that having competition to writes ghost stories, and that’s where Frankenstein comes from.
(12:40):
Now, Byron himself starts telling a story, writes half of it down, and then just finishes the rest of its really by the fireside and Polidori writes a different story called ESUs Burke told, which is later published anyway, then they split at the end of the summer Polidori travels and eventually returns to England. Now my reading of what happens next, although Polidori’s own account differs, but I’ve gone back through letters and unpublished material, so this is really the correct story Polidori becomes very friendly with the publisher, Henry Coburn and sets up a sort of a whole strategy to publish a number of works. Coburn’s particularly interested in the time that’s poly historically, Byron, because Byron’s a sort of super celebrity. Everybody wants to know every little detail, every incident of Byron’s life,
Blake Smith (13:46):
Mad, bad and dangerous to know if memory serves.
Nick Groom (13:49):
Absolutely. Lady Caroline Lamb described him, but he was an object of extraordinary fascination for the reading public. Now at the beginning of 1819, a translation of the German writer Gier, a translation of his poem, the Bride of Corinth, which is about a vampire, is published in a rival magazine. And I think what happens next is that Henry Henry Cobin, the publisher and his editor Arik Watts, and talking to Paula Dory, and I said, didn’t you mention that Byron was telling a vampire story? And Paula Dory then writes his own version of that story. Now it’s based on a memory that he has from some two and a half years earlier. So not really very similar to what we know of Byron’s story,
(14:50):
But he writes his own version. He’s very careful to say that this is inspired by Byron’s own version. It is not my original work. However, it then publishes being bylaw Byron. So then there’s a scandal. Byron is extremely annoyed, all of Byron, his friends are, and it really, ultimately, Paula Dory of course, is also very upset about it because it’s not how he presented it and it eventually destroys his literary career. But that’s the story. The vampire, I’d say it’s 70% Po Dora’s work probably 20% of the work of his editor, Arik Watts, 10% Byron. And this route then runs on for months and months, and it continues to be published as being bylaw. Byron, in fact, to go back to the German poet, Gier said, oh, it’s the best thing that Byron’s ever written. Love it. Those commentations disagree. But that’s the beginning of vampire literature in Britain and also in fact in North America, because within weeks there’s an American story called the Black Vampire, which is published as a sort of direct response to Podo is,
Blake Smith (16:17):
Wow, that’s fast. So how has the vampire evolved over time? In my head, I have this sort of picture of the vampire in folklore as being very monstrous, but in these stories, they take on more human characteristics in a way that doesn’t seem to be part of the folklore, if I’m reading it right.
Nick Groom (16:37):
Yeah, that’s very interesting, Blake. Certainly the way that that historians have thought about the vampire developing has always been, well, they start off as East European peasants. They’re more like zombies. They shamble out of the grave and go and murder their nearest and dearest and that then it is not until hoori turns the vampire into an aristocrat that they become much more cultured and sort of these thinking creatures. And that’s not true. The minutes that the vampire emerges from Eastern Europe, it’s being described as running across the whole social spectrum to the very first discussion of vampires in a British, in the British press compares them with corrupt aristocrats, royal pretenders, favorites of the king parasites, in other words. So they’re immediately seen as running all the way up a social scale, and that’s consistent throughout the 18th century. So vampires, as I said, are seen as finances. They’re seen as being entrepreneurs. They’re seen as being offices in the army. They’re seen as being c clergymen, even I think it’s in Poland, one of the royal princesses is described as a vampire.
Blake Smith (18:22):
I’m a little curious though, I mean I could see where this would have appeal in the 18 hundreds, but the idea of some rapacious parasitic person who seems to have high status but really contributes nothing to society and merely drains it, that has no relevance today, does it?
Karen Stollznow (18:40):
I know where you’re going. It’s absolutely every
Nick Groom (18:44):
Relevance. I think what I’m trying to say is that they run across the whole sort of social spectrum, but they’re also very diverse, particularly when you get to the 19th century after Polidori’s story, the vampire isn’t fixed, it doesn’t become this sort of decayed aristocrat doesn’t become settled and static as the old order. You get a whole range of vampires that are from the Middle Ages in Irish history, vampires that are very contemporary, very medical. There’re women living in isolation are very socially mobile. They are occupied every particular position. So don’t, they’re not a settled version. There’s not like a static version. You can imagine a vampire in all sorts of different situations. And that’s what really excites storytellers. I think it excites short story writers and novelists to really imagine the vampire occupying these different places and reacting and interacting with people in a whole variety of different ways. So it does become a figure that isn’t defined by specific characteristics. Those just gradually become associated with the creature. It’s something which I call a thought experiment. It’s very good to think about the nature of what it is to be human, how humans can relate to other species questions about the spread of disease and contagion, questions about mortality and immortality. It becomes a very useful lightning rod if you like, to try to make sense of some of the big questions about, say, human development, human identity or the nature of
(21:00):
Being.
Karen Stollznow (21:05):
And so Nick, you’ve touched upon some of the, that you researched some of the underlying medical explanations for the real life cases of vampires. Could you go into a little bit more detail about that? I’ve heard people attributing VAMs to things like TB consumption, tuberculosis or rabies or other diseases. Can you talk to that a little bit for us?
Nick Groom (21:32):
Yeah, sure. So vampires are usually associated with sudden outbreaks of fatal disease, and that sort of seems to be one of the reasons for the development of the legends and stories concerning the creature. So you’ve got to remember that the 18th and the first half of the 19th century people did not understand how diseases were spread. So particularly in the case of really profoundly unpleasant and fatal diseases such as cholera, they were absolutely terrifying. They spread with this awful rapidity. They reduced victims to abject to an abject states very, very swiftly. So they were incomprehensible. So in fact, the supernatural explanation was as reasonable as any explanation. And it’s only by the middle of the 19th century, Dr. John Snow investigates the spread of cholera in London begins to understand how it’s actually spread. But before then, vampire is pretty much as good an explanation as anything is.
(22:55):
You’re talking about a time when people thought that disease could be spread by words. If you actually heard somebody who was infected, if you heard them speak, they could infect you by sight. If an infected person looked at you, they could infect you. So doctors would actually blindfold their patients so they couldn’t be seen by them. So there’s a real sort of uncomprehending fear about the spread of fatal disease and vampires become part of that. They become scapegoats, if you like. And the interesting thing is this whole sort of medical dimension then survives throughout 19th century vampire stories that you very often have doctors as key personnel in the stories who are trying to analyze Vampirism, trying to explain it. And that then moves into areas such as psychology and psychiatry as well, when we get to people believing that they’re vampires are acting in vampiric ways.
Blake Smith (24:09):
So this is a weird question, but I think modern audiences tend to think of vampires as sort of suave and powerful and sexy monsters. But in Dracula, there’s sort of a xenophobia at play that might be lost on modern readers. And I’m wondering, do you think Stoker intended that xenophobia or did he want the monster to be sexy, or is that a modern thing that’s been tacked on? Would he even recognize what people have done with vampires? Do you think?
Nick Groom (24:37):
That’s very interesting. I mean, certainly Paul Dora’s vampire from 1819 is seen as being ruthlessly is a ruthless sexual predator Lord ribbon in that story. But the actual sexual side of the vampire is something which is a much more 20th century. I think that although you certainly get seductive vampires in the 19th century, something which I should really emphasize is that most vampires that appear in literature in the 19th century in Britain and North America are female. So the whole idea of the male vampire, it’s certainly something that runs through Paula Dory, a book called Vanney the Vampire in Dracula. But
(25:26):
Most vampires of that period are female vampires like Carmilla. Right, exactly. And then Carmilla, the Vampire is extremely seductive, very sensual, very erotic, and there are a number of follow-up stories to that in which vampires become these very sexually alluring female female figures. So certainly Brown Stoker would’ve been aware of that tradition, and he spent seven years researching vampires before he wrote Dracula. The main thing about the 19th century vampire is not that it’s sectionalized, but that it’s about fears of consumption because we’re dealing in a very capitalist consumer commercial society in which there’s a great deal of debate about the exploitation of the laboring classes. In fact, Karl Marx uses vampire imagery a lot in his work and about responsibility to the poor and so forth about people being turned into objects. And there’s no more terrifying way of being turned into an object than being turned into nutrition, being turned into food for another creature, this sort of semi human creature.
(26:56):
So I think that the fear is very much to do with do with that rather than to do with the sexually charismatic vampire or even to do with xenophobia. As you just mentioned, the xenophobic issue with Dracula is more to do with attitudes towards Eastern Europe. Some critics have suggested that it’s about colonized people striking back at the homeland. In other words, those on the fringes of the British empire returning as monsters to attack Britain. That’s not really the case because Dracula is very clearly in Eastern Europe in Sylvania. He’s had a long history. He, he’s, he’s well Aiken nobility part of orthodox Christianity there. So it’s really about removed fears. It’s not so much about those home fears about the return of the oppress. It’s thinking more generally about the nature of difference and the threats that a more global political situation might pose to the home country. When Dracula does get to Britain, I mean, among many other things, which I think it’s always worth rereading directly, it has so much in it. It’s a very unexpected book. You invest in real estate.
Blake Smith (28:46):
Yes, he does.
Nick Groom (28:48):
So’s very, very good at that. In fact, at one point, I think Jonathan Harkey said that he would make a good solicitor, he’d make a good lawyer because he knows all about things like international trade, import duty, but most importantly about how to manage contracts. And he buys the biggest house he can, which is as close to bucking palace as it can be. So if he really wants to get to the heart of power. So he’s more like an invading force. He’s trying to influence and disrupt British politics, I think. So if it is xenophobic, it is more to do with the fear of invasion from another power. But then of course, he remains very solitary. He has very few allies. He’s a lone wolf, he’s got renfield and he’s got the brides of Dracula, but most of the time he’s working alone. So he’s more like a sort of terrorist assassin, I think, than he is representing a whole nation.
Karen Stollznow (29:59):
Well, yeah, that’s just such a fascinating answer, and I think I want to go a little bit more lighthearted than xenophobia. So I think a lot of people associate vampires with blood and blood sucking. But in your book, you talk about some unexpected things. You link vampires to potatoes and pumpkins and watermelons. Can you tell us a little bit about what these fruits and vegetables had to do with vampires?
Nick Groom (30:33):
Certainly Easter, European superstition links, vam purism to, but basically to decay. So if you leave something like a pumpkin for more than I think 10 days, they say that it will turn vampire. In other words, it’s going to go up and bite you. But it does. I mean, it’s absolutely true. I mean, I’ve left a pumpkin for 10 days after Halloween and does something to a vampire and my children will.
(31:07):
The point I making about the potato has actually been confirmed since I wrote the book in a strange way. I got interested in how we use images from the natural world and the difference between bread and potatoes. Carbohydrates and bread is made from wheats and golden wheat, which is outside of the sunshine, but potatoes are underground and they have a particular look to them. They’re white, they’re shriveled, they’re like some depictions of vampires. In fact, there is a German short story that was then translated into English, which is included in the next book that I’m doing, which confirms that it says, yeah, vampires are like root vegetables. They live under the grounds, they’re shriveled, they’ve got unknown properties rather unexpectedly. That rather sort of frivolous comparison has been confirmed. But there’s a more serious side to it though, which is that Bram Stoker is Anglo-Irish.
(32:19):
And one of the things that I think Dracula is about, is about the way that the Irish are treated by the British and a Protestant ascendancy and absentee landlords, and that covers things like the great famine that was caused by potato bite and ensuing problems, terrible health problems in Ireland. And so the idea of this terror emerging from the ground, in other words, diseased potatoes, which means you’re not going to be able to eat, I think is more serious this soon. You’ve also touched on something else, which you said you wanted to lighten the mood. There’s not a great deal of vampire comic literature in the 19th century except on the stage where vampires are used in very sort lighthearted performances. They’re used in sort of burlesque, in fares, in pantomimes. So there was at the same time, this comic tradition, and that gets into a very interesting story by somebody called Sabin Bearing Gult.
Blake Smith (33:39):
Ooh, I know his work. He wrote one of the definitive books on werewolves. Yeah,
Nick Groom (33:43):
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Which is Stoker. So he wrote the book of werewolves. He wrote a story called Ry of Qua about a vampire, and when Dracula was published, it was compared with a number of works including Marjorie of Que. So Dracula is definitely in that context, and Marjorie of Cue is a comic vampire story. It’s got a very serious sort of edge to it. It’s a very interesting short story that I’d recommend of your listeners to read, but it also has this sense of humor that runs through it. It’s really a cross between early folk horror and vampire comedy.
Blake Smith (34:28):
It’s funny, this reminds me of the weirdest thing. In 1997, I took a road trip across the United States to go look at various paranormal and UFO related places because I was very curious, sort of put my feet down, and I guess it is what they now call dark tourism. But along that trip, when I got out to la, I stopped at Forest Ackerman’s house. He did famous monsters of Filmland, and he used to have a thing where you could call his house. I think his phone number is three two three Moon Fan. Now he’s passed away, so that’s not true anymore. But used to, you could call and ask if you could have a tour of his house. So I went to go tour the Acker mansion, which was just a tremendous thing for me. It was as a fan of monsters and horror. But when I got to his house, it was right after Halloween and there in front of his house before I went in and saw the armature that was using the original King Kong and all these amazing props and everything else out front, he still had his Halloween Jack-O-lantern pumpkin, and it had completely disintegrated.
(35:43):
And it reminded me it sort of collapsed like the weird masks in Halloween three. It was so cool. But I always tell my kids, pumpkins seem safe, but you got to be careful. You could get gored.
Karen Stollznow (36:02):
Oh dear.
Blake Smith (36:03):
Oh, I’m sorry. So I had to throw that out there. But as we’re winding down here, your book is primarily focused on European vampires, but here you are working in Macau, and I don’t know if those are there or not, but I know in China they have the sort of hopping vampires and all over Asia, they
Karen Stollznow (36:22):
Have
Blake Smith (36:23):
Vampire adjacent
Karen Stollznow (36:24):
Creatures, Indonesia.
Blake Smith (36:25):
Yeah. And it’s like, so what do you make of these vampire adjacent monsters? Are they really vampires or is that just Europe sort of lumping everything into a category that they’re more comfortable with?
Nick Groom (36:37):
Yeah, well, that’s a very interesting point. I’m actually involved in a debate about that at the moment. So if we’re going to call them vampires, if we’re going to say that vampires are not every sort of blood sucker, they emerged from Eastern Europe in 1725 when en enlightenment scientists encounter East European superstitions, then that theory of the vampire develops over the course of the next sort of 150 years until we get to Dracula. And then Dracula does crystallize this European vampire with aspects of North America as well. And it then takes off not only in literature, but primarily through Phil. So the 20th century film, Dracula adaptations are very, very popular and very influential. That then influences global blood suckers. So superstitions about blood suckers, whether it’s in Malaysia or in Ecuador across the world, then begin to take on or adapt some of the features, some of the characteristics of what began as a European vampire. And so I think we’re at a stage now where there’s so much interaction between cultures, there’s so much influence across these different traditions that yes, inevitably, whether it’s East Asian or South American or African vampires or blood suckers I should say, are being influenced by what at one point was just a European vampire. But you can’t really extricate that. And I think that they, in film, in literature, in Halloween costumes, they have as much validity as any other monster does.
Karen Stollznow (38:49):
Well, it’s just been delightful to talk with you, Nick, and we could really talk with you for hours and pick your brains about all the things that you know, and we’re going to have to bring you back on the show now that we’ve figured out how to work around the time zones. Sure, definitely. We have to bring you back on to talk about your other books and research, but we’ve got one final question that we want to ask you that we ask all of our guests, our signature question as we put it, and that is, what’s your favorite monster?
Nick Groom (39:20):
That’s my favorite monster. My instinct would be to say one of the Lovecraft monsters, but I think it would actually be the RO from the Lord of the Rings.
Blake Smith (39:35):
Oh, okay.
Nick Groom (39:36):
Partly because I’ve been thinking about Tolkien again recently. I’m watching The Rings of Power second season. But the interesting thing about the Balrog is that it’s the way that Tolkien represents it. It’s clearly only partly in our world. He represents it in an ambiguous way that just hints at the fact that it can’t really be described in words because the words don’t exist, and it’s also fluctuating. It’s changing. It’s not actually wholly within the physical world,
Blake Smith (40:11):
Which is a bit of crafting in itself, isn’t it?
Nick Groom (40:14):
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So I don’t think talking ever read Lovecraft. He certainly read Mr. James. James does something similar in some of his stories, but that sort of sense of uncertainty and ambiguity can be terrifying, I think, because the thing changes, as you look at it, you realize that it’s totally alien.
Blake Smith (40:38):
It is funny though, because in m Mr. James, when he leaves it ambiguous, you get the hint that it’s probably something a little bit like a hairy insect, but when Lovecraft leaves it ambiguous, it always feels like it’s a little bit vaginal. I guess they all have their own bugaboos. Right?
Karen Stollznow (41:03):
That’s a great answer and one that we haven’t heard before.
Blake Smith (41:07):
No, that’s true. You may be the first Tolkien monster we’ve had on the show in 15 years. That’s pretty surprising.
Karen Stollznow (41:16):
Well, Nick, just in closing, where can people find you and your books and your work?
Nick Groom (41:22):
Everything I’ve published is all available through a bookstore. You can find my University of Macau webpage. I’m also an honorary professor at University of Exeter, so I’ve got a couple of email addresses. Your listeners are welcome to contact me, ask me questions, disagree with me. I’m quite busy, so I can’t promise to answer everything at length, but I think it’s really important that these podcasts are two way things.
Blake Smith (41:52):
Oh, thank you. That’s wonderful. Yes, exactly. Yeah,
Nick Groom (41:56):
I think it’s really interesting what people’s responses now. I’m very happy to take things further and discuss
Blake Smith (42:02):
Things, and I’ve learned so much from our audience, and I bet you’ve probably had the same experience across your appearances. So much of human knowledge is distributed unevenly, and it is amazing when people in the audience know things that you had no idea, and it is so edifying, so I really appreciate that. That’s great.
Nick Groom (42:21):
I define smart word. That’s really lovely. Thank you.
Blake Smith (42:25):
We will put links to all that in the show notes. And golly, this was great. I look forward to finishing your book and looking at your other work as well. This is great. Well, I hope we get to talk again, but this was super fantastic fun talking with you.
Karen Stollznow (42:40):
Oh, really enjoyable. Yeah,
Blake Smith (42:43):
Lovely to speak to you. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you very much for your time, monster Talk. You’ve been listening to Monster Talk, the science show about Monsters. I’m Blake Smith.
Karen Stollznow (42:54):
And I’m Karen Stollznow.
Blake Smith (42:55):
You just heard an interview with Professor Nick Groom discussing the history of vampires. We hope you like talking blood suckers because we’ll be taking several stabs at the topic for October with grave seriousness. Be sure to check the show notes for links to Professor Groom’s work and a bunch of links to the various stories and concepts that were discussed in this conversation. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Monster Talk. Our goal here is to bring you the best in monster related content with a focus on scientific skepticism and critical thinking. If you enjoy our show and want to support our mission, start out by visiting monster talk.org/support. That’s monster talk.org/support. There you’ll find links to our Patreon page as well as a donate button. If you’d like to just make a one-time contribution, a great way to support the show is to buy books from our Amazon wishlist.
(43:52):
These are books that directly help with our monster research. We love used books very much so. Don’t feel compelled to buy new ones. And we’re also very fond of Kindle edition because of their easily searched content and without spending any money at all, you can support and raise the profile of the show by leaving a positive review at iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Positive reviews help keep us visible in iTunes, which is a great way to help us find new listeners. Finally, remember to share episodes you really like with your friends and family. You can help make Monster talk the nightlight that keeps monsters away from someone you love. Monster talk’s. Theme music is by peach stealing monkeys. Join us next week as we continue our discussion of vampires by talking about the creepy blood suckers that scared us when we were children.
Announcer (45:28):
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MonsterTalk Admin

S03E53 – A History of Vampires

MonsterTalk: The Science Show About Monsters

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