Debunking the Viral TikTok: The Legendary Chinese Cemeteries of Spokane's Browne's Addition

In this episode, Liz grapples with a Spokane urban legend that recently got widespread attention thanks to a viral TikTok video, and gives the one-two punch to AI-generated answers and the content creators (can't call 'em "researchers") who rely solely on them.

The video claims that the Rosauers (a grocery store, for you non-Spokanites) in Browne's Addition was built on a Chinese cemetery. At the time of the video, there were ample resources that said otherwise, but Google Gemini's AI response promulgated the myth. Liz did over 40 hours of original research to write a fantastic article on Spokane Historical proving that the video and Gemini were wrong...which ended up getting crawled by Gemini, which used the information to correct its summary! A win for original research!

Liz starts the episode wearing her career researcher hat to talk about why you can't use AI in place of actual research (you gotta be able to cite your sources, dudes!), and also gives a short update about the recent Spokane fires. But then we dive right into the myth, and even better, the actual, factual history behind the legend. Because there were Chinese people living and working in Spokane in the late 18- and early 1900s, and they did have interesting burial practices that involved burial, disinterment a few years later, and a second burial back in China; and it's likely one, if not two of these temporary burial sites were in/near Browne's Addition. (Although, as Liz uncovers for us in the episode, neither site was where Rosauers--or any grocery store for that matter--was built.)

No one is spared in this episode, not AI, not lazy content creation, not Grocery Outlet (shout out, GrossOut), not even that really crappy intersection you gotta contend with driving out of Browne's.

Thank you for listening. Stay weird!

** A full works cited will appear in our Show Notes page, but until then all the sources are also cited on the Spokane Historical article.