Meryl Horne

And I even found this one reference from the 1800s where a scientist said that rhesus monkeys were at their most fertile during full moons.

So there are like all these ways that the moon is affecting animals.

Yeah, yeah.

So researchers have actually looked into this.

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?