Medical Media Mixer: The Perfect Cocktail

On Oct. 16, 2010, Rutgers defensive tackle Eric LeGrand made a kickoff-coverage tackle against Army and didn't get up. He'd fractured his C3 and C4 vertebrae, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down, and his mother was told he had a 0% to 5% chance of walking again. The next day, he mouthed three words to her: "I'll be back." This week, over a Cold Fashioned — a coffee-forward Old Fashioned that nods to LeGrand Coffee House and his Kentucky straight bourbon — we trace his story from the field to the ventilator to the sideline, then go deep on spinal cord injury itself: why "C3, 4, 5 keeps the diaphragm alive," the autonomic complications most people have never heard of, what the ASIA scale really predicts, and how rehab and neuroplasticity shift the odds. We close with the research horizon, from riluzole and anti-Nogo-A antibodies to epidural spinal cord stimulation that has helped completely paralyzed patients stand and step again.

Tonight's Cocktail

Media Referenced This Episode

Eric LeGrand

Medical References

Emerging Therapies and Neuromodulation

In 2019, Olympic dressage trainer Michael Barisone shot his student Lauren Kanarek at his Hawthorne Hill farm in Long Valley, New Jersey. In 2022, a jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. Inspired by Netflix's "Untold: The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill," Tara and Nicole explain what the insanity defense actually means medically and legally. They cover how states define legal insanity, why the defense succeeds far less often than people think, and why "not guilty" doesn't mean walking free. The hosts also revisit the cases that shaped public perception: Lorena Bobbitt, John Hinckley Jr. and Andrea Yates. They also touch on Lindsay Clancy, whose postpartum psychosis defense ended in a mistrial last month. Grab a Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity cocktail and join us for this one.

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This week, we're pouring "The Ebola" — a five-spirit pitcher pour that's not for the faint of heart — and revisiting Wolfgang Petersen's 1995 thriller Outbreak, starring Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and Morgan Freeman, as our jumping-off point for a real deep dive into Ebola virus disease. We trace the virus from its 1976 discovery near the Ebola River through the devastating 2013–2016 West Africa outbreak, and walk through how it actually spreads, what it does to the body, how it's diagnosed, and the treatments and vaccine that have genuinely changed the odds of survival in the last decade. We also round up a few other Ebola-adjacent films and documentaries worth knowing about — including one we went looking for and simply couldn't find streaming in the U.S.

Sources & further reading

Medical & scientific references

This week, Tara and Nicole dig into the psychology of stalking — starting with the Hulu docuseries Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror, which follows a woman held captive in a soundproof box by the man who pursued her for more than a decadebefore she found a way to escape and had to decide whether to pursue lesser charges or fight for full justice against her captor. They trace the same fixation across pop culture — Netflix's Baby Reindeer, the 2007 documentary Crazy Love, Netflix's You, and the 2025 film Obsession — before pulling back to the clinical picture: what stalking actually looks like, how often it happens, and why it's so often minimized. On the medical side, they break down the CDC's data on stalking as a public health issue, including how common covert surveillance tactics like tracking and monitoring really are, and the mental health toll on survivors — PTSD, hopelessness, anxiety. They also revisit the 1989 murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, whose case helped create the first U.S. anti-stalking laws, and close with the real story behind Baby Reindeer as told by creator Richard Gadd. Cocktail this week: The Celery Stalker. hulu

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September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and this week on Medical Media Mixer, Tara and Nicole are raising a glass — and raising awareness — with a deep dive into one of the most extraordinary stories in modern medicine. Anchored to physician assistant, astronaut, and osteosarcoma survivor Hayley Arceneaux's memoir Wild Ride: A Memoir of I.V. Drips and Rocket Ships, this episode covers Hayley's diagnosis at age 10, the year of chemotherapy and bone-replacement surgery that followed, and the life-changing decision she made from her hospital bed at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital: to come back someday and take care of kids like her. She kept that promise, became a PA at St. Jude, and then — in January 2021 — got a call that would take her further than she ever imagined. This week, Tara and Nicole unpack the data behind childhood cancer, break down osteosarcoma from a clinical perspective, and explore what it means to survive, to thrive, and to orbit the Earth at 357 miles up with a metal rod in your leg. And yes — there's a cocktail.

THE BOOK

Wild Ride: A Memoir of I.V. Drips and Rocket Ships — Hayley Arceneaux (Convergent Books, 2022)

Wild Ride Adapted for Young Readers (2023)

Astronaut Hayley's Brave Adventure — Picture Book (2025)

THE DOCUMENTARY

Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space — Netflix (2021)

HAYLEY ARCENEAUX

hayleyarceneaux.com

@hayleyarc on Instagram

AAPA: Reaching New Heights — From Cancer Survivor to the First PA in Space (2021)

St. Jude: Women Who Inspire — Hayley Arceneaux

CHILDHOOD CANCER STATISTICS

Cancer Statistics, 2025. Siegel RL et al. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. 2025;75(1):10-45.

Global Burden of Cancer in Children and Adolescents, 1990–2023. GBD 2023 Childhood Cancer Collaborators. The Lancet. 2026;407(10536):1360-1373.

Trends in Childhood and Adolescent Cancer Incidence, 2001–2022. Shiels MS et al. Cancer Discovery. 2026;16(4):686-696.

SURVIVORSHIP & LATE EFFECTS

Clinical Care for People Who Survive Childhood Cancer: A Review. Bhatia S et al. JAMA. 2023;330(12):1175-1186.

Cardiovascular Toxicity in Patients Treated for Childhood Cancer. Ryan TD et al. Circulation. 2025;151(15):e926-e943.

Cancer Treatment and Survivorship Statistics, 2025. Wagle NS et al. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. 2025;75(4):308-340.

OSTEOSARCOMA

Osteosarcoma Survivor Story — Hayley Arceneaux (Osteosarcoma Institute)

NCCN Pediatric Soft Tissue Sarcoma Guidelines

SUPPORT & RESOURCES

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital — stjude.org

American Childhood Cancer Organization — acco.org

Children's Oncology Group — childrensoncologygroup.org

We're revisiting Episode 12 with fresh, urgent context: On Sept. 10, 2026, the CDC issued a Health Alert Network advisory warning of a nationwide increase in rabies exposures and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) administration errors. Rabies vaccine use is up an estimated 33% year-over-year and rabies immunoglobulin use is up 76%, with at least eight state health departments reporting mistakes in how PEP is being given — including wrong injection sites and missed or unnecessary immunoglobulin doses. We also cover a real-world example of exactly this kind of mass-exposure event: In late August, North Carolina health officials confirmed rabies in four baby goats from Farm Adventures, a mobile petting zoo that visited 10 public events across six counties, including a back-to-school bash and an assisted living facility, before the exposure was caught.

Rabies is nearly 100% fatal once symptoms appear but fully preventable with timely, correctly administered PEP — which is why we're topping off this episode with what's changed.

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In 1964, a New York Times headline claimed 38 witnesses watched Kitty Genovese be stabbed to death in Kew Gardens, Queens, and did nothing — a story so shocking it launched decades of research into what psychologists now call the bystander effect. This week, Tara and Nicole dig into how much of that famous account was actually true. The 2015 documentary The Witness, directed by James Solomon and narrated by Kitty's brother Bill Genovese, dismantles the "38 witnesses" myth: there weren't 38 eyewitnesses, there were two attacks rather than three, at least one call to police was made during the assault, and a neighbor, Sophie Farrar, rushed to hold Kitty as she was dying. From there, the episode traces the real science Darley and Latané built off the (exaggerated) case — diffusion of responsibility, pluralistic ignorance, and why groups notice and react to emergencies more slowly than individuals do — plus how the effect shows up in later cases like the death of Wang Yue in China and ABC's What Would You Do? Along the way: Good Samaritan laws, what altruism research says actually predicts who helps, and why a story doesn't have to be fully accurate to change an entire field of psychology.

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This week, we're leaving the ER and heading upstairs — to the NICU. We're joined by Tara’s sister Kristin, doctorally prepared neonatal nurse practitioner, to break down ER Season 10, Episode 12 and Grey's Anatomy's NICU storylines, then get into the real clinical science behind what those shows depict. We cover congenital heart disease and coarctation of the aorta, extreme prematurity, hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy and therapeutic hypothermia, and what it actually looks like when a family decides to let go. The cocktail is The Tiny Fighter — gin, lemon, simple syrup, and bitters. Small but mighty, just like the patients.

Sources

This week we're diving into the unsettling world of parasomnias — sleep paralysis, night terrors, sleepwalking, sexsomnia, sleep eating, and sleep talking — using Inception and the 2015 documentary The Nightmare as our jumping-off point. We break down what's actually happening in the brain during these episodes, why sleep paralysis so often comes paired with terrifying hallucinations (hello, incubus and succubus folklore), and how conditions like exploding head syndrome, hypnic jerks, and nightmare disorder differ from garden-variety bad dreams. Pour yourself a Hypnagogic Highball and settle in — just maybe don't listen to this one right before bed.

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This week on Medical Media Mixer, we sit down with Paula Crichton De Alba, director of the 2024 short horror film The English Rose, to explore one of history’s most disturbing intersections: the toxic beauty rituals of Victorian women. From arsenic complexion wafers sold in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue, to lead face paint that cracked if you smiled, to mercury eyelash treatments recommended in Harper’s Bazaar, to belladonna eye drops that caused blindness — Victorian women were literally dying for beauty. PA-C Tara Prisco breaks down the clinical toxicology of arsenic, lead, and mercury poisoning: epidemiology, symptoms, testing, and treatment. Dr. Nicole Peniston brings the psychological lens, exploring the harm loops, impossible beauty standards, and the question that anchors the whole episode: has anything really changed? Cocktail recipes drop every weekend on our socials. New episodes every Monday.

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