Monsters Inside Me is an American television documentary series about infectious diseases. It includes first-person interviews with people and medical professionals telling their personal stories about contracting rare diseases. Interviews with contributors are shot on location across North America. Recreations are mostly filmed in hospitals and homes in New York City.
Video Monsters Inside Me
Summary
Each episode has dramatizations that show illnesses caused by an infectious disease or medical affliction. Once the agent has been identified, their life cycles and general behaviors are illustrated. Justin Peed is the narrator, and biologist Dan Riskin explains how and why each infectious agent works inside its host. Most shows start as a commonly diagnosed disease but then transform into a different life-threatening or serious disease, which will be cured most of the time at the end. Out of the 201 cases documented on the show, only 12 of those ended in the victim dying, usually from a disease with an extremely low survival rate.
The show's first two seasons focused solely on parasites and parasitic infections, but since the third season, the show has shifted from being just about parasites to being about general infectious diseases and medical afflictions, including those caused by viruses, bacteria, fungi, and foreign objects.
The second season premiered on Wednesday June 9, 2010 and then returned for a third season on October 5, 2012. As of January 7, 2011, Monsters Inside Me was broadcast in Canada by Discovery Science. It also airs on Discovery in the UK, and broadcasts in different languages on various Discovery networks across the world.
Maps Monsters Inside Me
Episodes
Seven seasons have been produced and completed airing, while an eighth season premiered in October 2017 and is ongoing.
- Season 1, composed of 6 episodes, began airing on July 1, 2009, and ended on August 5, 2009. For the five weeks between these two dates, new episodes would air at 9/8c.
- Season 2, composed of 10 episodes, began airing on June 9, 2010, and ended on August 25, 2010. Episodes would air each Wednesday between these two dates with the exception of June 30 and July 21. The time that these episodes aired was 10/9c instead of 9/8c.
- Season 3, also composed of 10 episodes, began airing on October 5, 2012, and ended on December 7, 2012. New episodes would air at 8/7c.
- Season 4, again composed of 10 episodes, premiered on September 30, 2013, and ended on December 18, 2013. The first five episodes of this season aired between September 30-October 25 at 9/8c. The other five aired in December, with two episodes airing back-to-back on December 11 (the first aired at 8/7c and the other at 9/8c), and three episodes airing back-to-back on December 18 (the first at 8/7c, the second at 9/8c. and the third at 10/9c).
- Season 5, once again composed of 10 episodes, premiered on October 9, 2014, and ended on December 18, 2014. A new episode aired every Thursday between these two dates (except for October 30 and November 27) at 10/9c, except for December 11 which aired two new episodes back-to-back (the first at 9/8c and the second at 10/9c).
- Season 6, again composed of 10 episodes, premiered with two back-to-back episodes starting at 9/8c on October 29, 2015, and another two back-to-back episodes premiered on November 5 starting at the same time, before going back to the one-episode-per-week schedule on November 12. Four more new episodes premiered every Thursday at 10/9c between November 12-December 10, with November 26 being an exception. The ninth episode, which was a Christmas special, aired on December 17 at 9/8c. The season ended on December 22, 2015, with the season's final episode airing at 9/8c.
- Season 7, this time composed of just 7 episodes, premiered on October 6, 2016, at 10/9c, with a special episode that looks back at three cases from episodes from the past three seasons. Episodes with brand new cases started premiering on October 13 at the same time. The season ended on November 10, but will come back for a special Christmas episode on December 15.
- Season 8 was announced on March 28, 2017, and premiered with two back-to-back episodes on October 15 of the same year, shifting it's airdates for new episodes from Thursday to Sunday.
Episode list
Season 1: 2009
Season 2: 2010
Season 3: 2012
Season 4: 2013
Season 5: 2014
Season 6: 2015
Season 7: 2016
Season 8: 2017
Monsters Inside Me: Extra Deadly
Monsters Inside Me: Extra Deadly is a spin-off of Monsters Inside Me that airs alongside the original show. It features reruns of episodes from Seasons 6-onwards but adds extra onscreen trivia that appears when a condition, infection, or symptom is discussed. Aside from that, it also features onscreen trivia of various casual objects found in the episode, like when it was first invented. The spin-off started in 2016; the first season is composed of altered versions of all Season 6 episodes with added trivia, and would usually air before a brand new episode from Season 7 of the original show premiered. The second season, which started in 2017, is set to air altered versions of all Season 7 episodes and previously-aired episodes of Season 8 with added trivia, and will premiere before brand-new episodes of Season 8 of the original show premiere.
Season 1: 2016
Season 2: 2017
Reception
Mike Hale of The New York Times said that "there's science amid the frightening stories" and said that the series "really grossed him out."
Anne Louise Bannon of Common Sense Media said that "parents need to know that there is a lot of gross stuff in the series and the show has good educational content except for the tips on how to protect yourself from parasites because the information is vague".
Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times wrote "Forget 'American Horror Story.' For several years now the scariest show on television has been Animal Planet's 'Monsters Inside Me,' which recreates real cases of bizarre, life-threatening infections."
Spin-off
In 2013, a UK spin-off called Bugs, Bites & Parasites premiered on Discovery Channel UK.
References
External links
- Official website
- Monsters Inside Me on IMDb
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