Coltan Scrivner

We're super social creatures.

Most things that happen to us because other people make them happen or are involved in the event.

So, of course, we have a bias for thinking like a bad thing happened.

Probably a person was involved or some kind of person like thing was involved.

Sometimes that's God.

Sometimes that's witches.

Sometimes in modern times, it's aliens.

Oftentimes it's ghosts or ancient ancestors or spirits or demons or whatever you want to call it.

Always some kind of thing that you can't see.

that is really powerful and malicious.

And that just happens to often take the form of a witch who has curses.

I give an example in the book of, Gottlieb was her name.

She's an anthropologist and she was in Papua New Guinea or somewhere and there was a really bad outbreak of guinea worm.

And guinea worm is a really nasty parasite you can get from nasty drinking water.

And she knew that there was a guinea worm outbreak, so she was boiling her water to kill the parasites, kill the eggs, kill whatever, right?

And she was trying to convince the people she was studying, like, hey, you should boil your water because there's an outbreak of guinea worms.

And they look in the water and they go, I don't see any worms in there.

And she says, well, they're microscopic.

You can't see them.

And they're like, how do you know they're there then?