Facts, jokes, and more from the Internet’s leading comedy website, Cracked.com. Every week, host Alex Schmidt brings together comedians, authors, scientists, and Cracked staffers, to celebrate the awesome truth that being alive is more interesting than people think it is. Fill your week and your brain with hilarious, mind-blowing revelations that’ll make you the most interesting person in every room you’re in.
Stop me if you've heard this one before: a charismatic populist leader rises to power by warning of immigrants who are are "filthy" and "bring disease." It's no coincidence the greatest deplorable leaders through the ages use the same coded language to talk about people who are "other."
It's psychology. Quite understandably, it's human nature to fear disease. It's why rats are icky to us and I ceremonially burn my clothes after I go to Disneyland. But if you know what you're looking for, you'll see how diseases are are framed as exotic and foreign as an excuse to gang up on different nationalities: SARS, ban Chinese people; Ebola, ban everybody from Africa; sickness in general, build that wall.
On this week's podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by Cracked executive editor Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) to talk about how this weird germ theory controls how you think about everything.
Footnotes: https://goo.gl/zSd56T