Meryl Horne

So there is, you know, the thinking is that if the full moon really is making people act more recklessly, then maybe we'll, like, see evidence for that in how busy ERs are.

And, I mean, there is just a long history of people thinking that this kind of thing is true.

You can see it in our language, like the word lunatic that comes from the moon.

Right.

And so to find out if this is real, I talked to another Wendy, Wendy Coates.

Is that going to be confusing for you?

No, it'll make me feel right at home.

Well, she's been an emergency medicine physician for over three decades, and she published one of the first studies on this question of whether ERs are more busy on full moons.

Okay.

It came out a few decades ago.

Great.

So I got in touch.

Whoa.

So it all started when she was just an intern at a major trauma center in Pittsburgh.

And she said that pretty quickly she started hearing about this idea that things might get busier when there's a full moon.

Are you the coyote?

But those are during a new moon.

We have to rebrand the coyote.

Corals don't make any noise.

Well, so then she decides to do like a proper study on this.