Alie Ward

Thank you also to Emily White and everyone in the transcribers group making transcriptions available at alleyward.com slash ologies dash extras.

I'll link it in the show notes.

Now, if you stick around to the end of the episode, I'll tell you a secret.

This week, my friend Simone Yesch was in town, and I was telling her that I wish there was a word for when you try to improve something, but you make it way shittier.

Essentially, a word for one of those things where you want to make something good, and somehow it would have been so much better if you had just not.

In the etymology episode, I was talking to Helen Saltzman, and I pitched maybe a bon mal, like French for good, bad, or Greek, like voivlap.

Anyway,

I told Simone, I wish there was a word.

And she said, there is.

In Swedish, it's called a bear favor.

And it's from a fable about a bear trying to help someone by shooing away a fly with a boulder on their face and kills them.

So a bear favor.

Y'all, there's a word for it.

I'm thrilled.

It's very exciting.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Oh, hey, it's your mom's friend who's always vaping into his sweatshirt, Allie Ward.

In this episode, it's about putting your dukes up or curling into a ball so that you don't die, either or sometimes both.

Let's talk to an ologist I've known for years, an LA area animal icon who invited me to the lab down at California State Long Beach where they're a professor.