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How Snake Handlers Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by square Space. Start
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Speaker 1: ten percent off squar Space. Set your website apart. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to you Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works
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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
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Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
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Speaker 1: And my hair is now a fourth character. Laughed at
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Speaker 1: my hair. Everybody, Well, if my beard can be the
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Speaker 1: fourth character, your hair could be the fifth. Oh really, yeah,
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Speaker 1: we need Actually, Jerry's got great hair. She does have
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Speaker 1: nice hair, stylish salt and pepper, Amy Goodman level tasteful
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Speaker 1: salt and pepper. I'm not sure what that means, Amy
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Speaker 1: Goodman from Democracy Now, it's very tasteful salt and pepper hair.
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Speaker 1: Maybe that's the thing. It is clearly between Jerry and
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Speaker 1: Amy Goodman. It's the thing that beats shoe polish black. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: you know, like trickling down your forehead. Yeah, but what
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Speaker 1: makes you happy? You know? Well, sure, if you don't,
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Speaker 1: whatever makes you feel good, Yeah, I should, Uh, I
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Speaker 1: should get some of that beer. Blackener and coming into
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Speaker 1: Clyde Drexeler. Wow, I think I'm gonna have to check
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Speaker 1: this out. It's him. And who was the one? I
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Speaker 1: think Keith Hernandez. I was gonna say the one that
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Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome. I'm brushing my teeth with this stuff now.
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Speaker 1: My lifestyle is improved for the better. Pretty neat. Thank
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Speaker 1: you dudes. Uh So, I was just discussing before we
2:21
Speaker 1: record it. I said, it's going to be hard to
2:23
Speaker 1: record a show on snake handling, and I'm talking about
2:28
Speaker 1: the religious aspect of it without sort of like I
2:33
Speaker 1: fear for their safety. And I want to say you
2:36
Speaker 1: people are crazy. A lot of people do, but um,
2:39
Speaker 1: we have a long standing tradition of like to each
2:41
Speaker 1: their own. I just you know, I hate seeing people
2:44
Speaker 1: die from doing something completely preventable. Yeah, you definitely do.
2:49
Speaker 1: But handling rattlesnakes and kissing them on the face. From
2:52
Speaker 1: from what I've seen of this or from what I've researched,
2:55
Speaker 1: I've not actually seen somebody handle snakes in person. Um,
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Speaker 1: but from what I've researched, the people who handle snakes
3:03
Speaker 1: are doing it through total and complete faith. And uh,
3:10
Speaker 1: there's even if you did judge them, I think it
3:13
Speaker 1: kind of rolls off their back quite a bit. So
3:15
Speaker 1: it's not so much judgment. It's just like, no, it's not.
3:20
Speaker 1: I'm telling you this is what is it my opinion,
3:24
Speaker 1: and I'm judging your opinion. Oh that's what you meant
3:27
Speaker 1: by its judgment? No, Okay, now it's not judgment. I
3:30
Speaker 1: just I hate see people get hurt, Nina, uh and die.
3:34
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen somebody handle snakes? You had a
3:36
Speaker 1: religious upbringing, Well, yeah, this is rare though. This is Yeah,
3:41
Speaker 1: it is Appalachian foothills stuffy, I know, but I mean
3:45
Speaker 1: like Atlanta. We're in Georgia. I didn't know if you
3:48
Speaker 1: ever took like a field trip or something like there.
3:51
Speaker 1: You know that's you have no idea how church works
3:54
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of field trips. No, I
3:56
Speaker 1: got you. In fact, you don't go to other churches.
4:00
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to do that. Oh really, yeah, he
4:03
Speaker 1: stay at your own church. You don't go and field
4:06
Speaker 1: trips to other churches? Are there like inner faith banquets
4:09
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Yeah, we had a field day right,
4:13
Speaker 1: all the churches in the county. No, I suppose other
4:18
Speaker 1: churches get together with as suppose to. Some gett together
4:21
Speaker 1: with other churches. But that wasn't my experience. Typically frowned
4:24
Speaker 1: on in New York. You just keep it in the house.
4:25
Speaker 1: Although we would go to the big youth conferences, all
4:29
Speaker 1: sorts of youth groups together. That's the field trip. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I'll just kids thrown in the big gymnasiums, struggling to
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Speaker 1: fight their hormonal urges, going you believe what? So, No,
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Speaker 1: I've never done it. I didn't ask if you've done it,
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Speaker 1: I need. I've never witnessed it. I've never been anywhere
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Speaker 1: near it. Okay, although I I have a strange feeling, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: that it's possible we've both been near it just from
4:53
Speaker 1: living in Georgia all these years without knowing it. Because yeah,
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Speaker 1: people who handle snakes um religious. It's actually called um
5:02
Speaker 1: holiness serpent handling. Is that correct? Uh? Yeah, they say
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Speaker 1: serpent instead of snake. Yeah, and it has to be
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Speaker 1: a venomous snake to be considered a serpent. But for
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Speaker 1: holiness serpent handling um. Until two thousand and fourteen, it was.
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Speaker 1: They kept a pretty tight lid on it for many,
5:21
Speaker 1: many decades. Who the the handlers, Yeah, the people who, um,
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Speaker 1: who practice this as part of their religious beliefs. Yeah,
5:28
Speaker 1: and I think still even most of them are pretty
5:31
Speaker 1: media shy. You'll see the occasional interview when someone dies,
5:36
Speaker 1: they'll go knocking on the doors and they'll give an
5:38
Speaker 1: interview to explain like why they do what they do.
5:40
Speaker 1: But of course there was a TV show which really,
5:43
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you're clearly not media show if
5:45
Speaker 1: you're doing a reality show. No, it's it was called
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Speaker 1: Snake Salvation and sorry not two fourteen, but two thirteen
5:51
Speaker 1: it was on nat g O and it was all
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Speaker 1: about snake handling for religious reasons, and um, one of
5:59
Speaker 1: the main eyes on the show ended up dying. He
6:01
Speaker 1: didn't die on the show, but he died the next
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Speaker 1: year from a rattlesnake bite after it went off the air. Yeah,
6:08
Speaker 1: it was only on for one season. But his name
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Speaker 1: was Pasty pastor Jamie Coots, and he and another guy
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Speaker 1: UM named I believe Steven Amblen are They are holiness
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Speaker 1: serpent handlers who believe in kind of bringing it out
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Speaker 1: of the shadows and into the Christian mainstream. Good luck. Yeah,
6:29
Speaker 1: if you're if you're at all interested in that concept,
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Speaker 1: you should read even unto Death. It was in the
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Speaker 1: Chettanooga Free Press. It's a pretty good examination of that
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Speaker 1: whole movement and those guys in particular. I guess we
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Speaker 1: should talk a little bit about other kinds of snake
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Speaker 1: handling first though, Yeah, because when you see snake hangler,
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Speaker 1: I'm sure when people saw this the title of this episode,
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Speaker 1: they just assumed we were talking strictly about um religious
6:54
Speaker 1: snake handling. Now like other people handle snakes as well,
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Speaker 1: non religious things. Yeah, they're called herpetologists or some of
7:03
Speaker 1: them are. These are actually people who study snakes and
7:07
Speaker 1: amphibians reptiles, and we talked about them on our Snake
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Speaker 1: Show and I think we dispelled a lot of rumors,
7:13
Speaker 1: uh not rumors, but myths on the Snake Show, which
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Speaker 1: come into play when handling snakes, namely that they aren't
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Speaker 1: out to kill you. Um, but we'll get to that later.
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Speaker 1: But people display snakes, well, there's a few different categories
7:27
Speaker 1: of people who handle snakes. There's people who display them
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Speaker 1: Like you drive through Florida, you might see like a
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Speaker 1: snake and gator farm where they do snake shows. And
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Speaker 1: there's a really famous guy we'll talk about a little
7:38
Speaker 1: more in depth named Bill Host who is like the
7:41
Speaker 1: man when it comes to that boy, let's see yea uh.
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Speaker 1: And then there are um, there are people. There are
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Speaker 1: snake milkers. Of course, there's veterinarians who care for your snakes. Yeah,
7:53
Speaker 1: which I mean they have to handle snakes. Um. There's
7:56
Speaker 1: also rescuing recovery people who come gets a snake in
8:00
Speaker 1: my basement, right, a guy will show up and um,
8:04
Speaker 1: most likely he's professionally trained at the very least you
8:07
Speaker 1: would hope that he has a tremendous amount of experience
8:10
Speaker 1: in handling snakes. Yeah, and they will show up and
8:12
Speaker 1: you'll say how much does it cost to get the
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Speaker 1: snake out of my basement? And they'll say how much
8:16
Speaker 1: you got? I'd like to see your last three bank
8:19
Speaker 1: account statement please. Um. And in those cases they will
8:23
Speaker 1: probably you'll probably see what's called an extension tool. Um.
8:26
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen those tongs or those long uh,
8:30
Speaker 1: they call it a snake cook sort of a just
8:34
Speaker 1: a long metal not a prode because they're not product.
8:39
Speaker 1: Senior adults use it to grab cans off of the
8:42
Speaker 1: high shelves in their homes. Yeah, it's like that sort of.
8:46
Speaker 1: I haven't seen them that actually flex and grab. Yeah. Okay,
8:52
Speaker 1: if you got some money, you're gonna spend it on that.
8:55
Speaker 1: The ones i've seen are just have a flat uh
8:57
Speaker 1: you know, it's a long pole and then it has
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Speaker 1: like an L shaped uh you know, at a right
9:01
Speaker 1: angle flat piece coming off that they pin the snake with. Um.
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Speaker 1: I've read this thing about handling snakes safely for like
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Speaker 1: just normal people or people who are starting out in
9:13
Speaker 1: the rescue and recovery business. Um. And you can use
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Speaker 1: just about anything. The key is extension. You want to
9:20
Speaker 1: put distance between you and the snake. And I want
9:23
Speaker 1: to say, as a legal disclaimer, I'm not at all
9:26
Speaker 1: advising anybody to handle a snake. But what I read
9:31
Speaker 1: was that you want to put as much distance as possible.
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Speaker 1: So if you have a garden tool and a long one,
9:37
Speaker 1: use that. But you also would want to use let's
9:41
Speaker 1: say you have a hope, you would want to turn
9:43
Speaker 1: your hole upside down and use these, just the wooden
9:47
Speaker 1: end to manipulate the snake, because you don't want to
9:49
Speaker 1: hurt the snake. I just want to get rid of it. Right.
9:52
Speaker 1: I relocated a snake from my backyard a couple of
9:55
Speaker 1: years ago. What did you use? Use my hands? Oh
9:58
Speaker 1: my god, it wasn't big. It was, but it wasn't small.
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Speaker 1: So how did you describe this interaction? Um, I was
10:08
Speaker 1: cutting the grass and I saw the snake. It was
10:10
Speaker 1: about a foot long. Did you positively identify it as
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Speaker 1: non lethal or non venomous? Yeah? It was pretty Yeah,
10:16
Speaker 1: it was definitely not well. Actually, it had the markings
10:19
Speaker 1: where it could have been a copper head. It wasn't
10:22
Speaker 1: just just like a green snake. Right, So he took
10:24
Speaker 1: a shot of whiskey and approached it. I approached it,
10:27
Speaker 1: and I did use an implement to um pin it,
10:32
Speaker 1: but I can't remember what I used. It was something,
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Speaker 1: you know, blunt and soft. It wasn't you know, an accent,
10:38
Speaker 1: you know head because like you said, it was you dropping.
10:43
Speaker 1: What did I use it was? I can't remember. Let's
10:47
Speaker 1: just say like a wooden paddle. It might have been
10:51
Speaker 1: a piece of wood actually. And then I did like
10:54
Speaker 1: I saw on the TV shows. I grabbed it behind
10:56
Speaker 1: the you know, right behind its head, got a good
10:59
Speaker 1: hold bit and picked it up and it wrapped around
11:02
Speaker 1: my wrist and I went and then I ran across
11:06
Speaker 1: the street like pee wee Herman through it in the wood.
11:10
Speaker 1: Didn't throw it. I've laid it down in the woods,
11:13
Speaker 1: into the wood, and it was great. I think it
11:16
Speaker 1: was a successful catch and release. It sounds like it
11:19
Speaker 1: you weren't bitten, Yeah, and I don't. I don't. I'm
11:23
Speaker 1: sure I didn't hurt the snake. Good. Yeah, that sounds
11:25
Speaker 1: pretty successful. What I was reading in this one UM
11:28
Speaker 1: article was that you most snakes if you just approached
11:33
Speaker 1: them calmly. Um, And I guess smoothly is a good
11:39
Speaker 1: way to put it. Sure, don't lunge at the snake, right,
11:42
Speaker 1: and also don't be like, oh my god, oh we're
11:44
Speaker 1: go ahead, right, just kind of come out the snake
11:46
Speaker 1: and pick it up like it's just a stick in
11:49
Speaker 1: your yard. It's probably not going to strike you, supposedly
11:53
Speaker 1: according to this website of which I have no affiliation whatsoever. Yeah,
11:57
Speaker 1: and I'm not my story. Please do not take that
11:59
Speaker 1: as that was probably pretty dumb for me to do that. Yeah,
12:04
Speaker 1: you know, and even if it's non I didn't want it.
12:07
Speaker 1: I don't want to get bitten by a snake. I
12:09
Speaker 1: don't care if it's venomous or not. One of my
12:12
Speaker 1: biggest fears is seeing a snake attach its mouth to
12:16
Speaker 1: my body. It frightens me. Well, I have to say, also,
12:19
Speaker 1: this site put pretty plainly, do not ever touch a
12:23
Speaker 1: snake that you haven't positively identified as non venomous, because yeah,
12:29
Speaker 1: I mean, if you you could have easily been bitten
12:31
Speaker 1: and lost your hand or whatever it was. Well, now
12:34
Speaker 1: I could have getten the hospital pretty quickly. Yeah, I mean,
12:37
Speaker 1: if you're you know, anti vennon works apparently of the
12:42
Speaker 1: time if it's gotten to in a timely manner. Yes,
12:46
Speaker 1: and for the pedants out there, we will say anti
12:49
Speaker 1: venom and anti venom because both are acceptable. Yes, they
12:52
Speaker 1: are alright, So chuck, let's take a break right here.
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Speaker 1: Huh it sounds good. Okay, did I say how how
13:17
Speaker 1: far a snake can strike? No? Do you know? Uh?
13:20
Speaker 1: But this is what I've got from the same the
13:22
Speaker 1: same place that said just go smoothly and casually to
13:26
Speaker 1: a snake, introduce yourself. Uh. It says that any snake
13:29
Speaker 1: greater than four ft can typically strike about one third
13:33
Speaker 1: to one half the distance of its body length. That's
13:36
Speaker 1: a good rule of thumb. Yeah. Um, A snake between
13:39
Speaker 1: one and three ft can strike about one half to
13:42
Speaker 1: two thirds its body length, and then a snake underfoot
13:45
Speaker 1: can usually strike about its whole body length. Okay, I
13:49
Speaker 1: would take all those numbers and double them. That's probably
13:51
Speaker 1: a good idea, just to be safe. Yeah. Of course,
13:54
Speaker 1: I'm the guy who you know picked up maybe a
13:56
Speaker 1: copper head, right man, that's scary stuff. You do the
14:00
Speaker 1: same thing. You don't want to pay a guy? Um? Uh,
14:04
Speaker 1: you probably I would do with this With this site,
14:07
Speaker 1: what this site was saying was made a lot of
14:09
Speaker 1: sense to me. Is like take a take a garbage can,
14:12
Speaker 1: tip it over on its side, take a shovel, use
14:15
Speaker 1: the wooden end of it, the handle it and just
14:17
Speaker 1: kind of get it into the can, turn it over,
14:20
Speaker 1: put like something on top of the can and then
14:22
Speaker 1: call somebody. Or you could take the candy, um like
14:26
Speaker 1: the woods or something that That's probably what I should
14:28
Speaker 1: have done. In retrospect, I was feeling brave, like those
14:32
Speaker 1: shots of whiskey, Like I watched enough Nature TV. All right,
14:35
Speaker 1: I know how this is done. Um. So the last
14:38
Speaker 1: thing that I think we didn't mention is snake milkers,
14:43
Speaker 1: which snake venom is very valuable. Um one gram. What
14:49
Speaker 1: you do is you freeze dry it into a powder.
14:51
Speaker 1: After you get the liquid, and you sell it to
14:53
Speaker 1: research labs. Big money, Yeah, one graham. A freeze dried
14:58
Speaker 1: venom from an exotic snake is can go up to
15:01
Speaker 1: five grand, but it might take a hundred milkings to
15:04
Speaker 1: get that much. So do the math. Yeah, is it
15:09
Speaker 1: worth it? Especially if you love hanging out with snakes
15:12
Speaker 1: and it's a legit job. You can make you know,
15:16
Speaker 1: bucks a month or more as a snake milker easily
15:19
Speaker 1: depending on how many snakes you have that's right. Um.
15:22
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of people that handle snakes,
15:26
Speaker 1: but all of them, well, I should say all of
15:28
Speaker 1: the people who professionally handle snakes have a rule of thumb,
15:31
Speaker 1: which is don't get hurt, don't be stupid, because there
15:36
Speaker 1: are two ways that snakes can typically get you. Venomous
15:39
Speaker 1: snakes obviously inject venom, and that's why people milk snakes
15:44
Speaker 1: is to get that venom so that they can create
15:46
Speaker 1: anti venom um so that your life can be saved
15:50
Speaker 1: if you end up getting bit by a snake, right, um,
15:53
Speaker 1: and venom is pretty nasty stuff. I think we did
15:55
Speaker 1: one on like what's the most poisonous animal in the world?
16:00
Speaker 1: That sounds familiar yea, And we talked a lot about venom,
16:03
Speaker 1: but it's worth revisiting. Basically, depending on the venom that
16:06
Speaker 1: you're injected with, it can cause tissue damage wherever it's spread.
16:11
Speaker 1: And by tissue damage, I mean just completely wipe out
16:14
Speaker 1: your tissue. And if that is blood vessels, your blood
16:17
Speaker 1: vessels bleed and you start bleeding internally. If it's a
16:20
Speaker 1: your liver or your heart, those things start bleeding internally
16:23
Speaker 1: and end up shutting down. You can have multi system,
16:26
Speaker 1: multi organ failure, paralysis, respiratory um distress, all sorts of
16:32
Speaker 1: horrible stuff. If it's on a limb or digit, you
16:35
Speaker 1: might lose that even if you get the anti venom
16:38
Speaker 1: time exactly because it's so thoroughly destroys the tissue right,
16:42
Speaker 1: and it causes a lot of pain too. Like I
16:44
Speaker 1: was reading about the Texas coral snake, it actually has
16:48
Speaker 1: this um molecule that opens your the gates to your
16:54
Speaker 1: pain receptors and just hold them open so that you're
16:58
Speaker 1: just feeling excruciated, eating unremitting pain. So it's bad stuff.
17:03
Speaker 1: So you don't want to get bitten by a snake.
17:05
Speaker 1: You also don't want to mess around with constrictors either,
17:08
Speaker 1: because they will mess you up as well. Yeah uh
17:11
Speaker 1: they will, I guess, wrap around you and then suffocates you,
17:17
Speaker 1: break your back, stop your heart. It's big enough. Sure,
17:21
Speaker 1: bad news, bad news. So snakes can be dangerous, is
17:24
Speaker 1: the point. Yes, but again, not to feed into that
17:28
Speaker 1: anti snake. I'm not trying to start a whacking. No. Um.
17:36
Speaker 1: So getting back to the milkers, Oh yes, sorry, they
17:40
Speaker 1: are what's called free handlers. They don't use you would
17:44
Speaker 1: think like they should just wear anti snake gloves. Um,
17:48
Speaker 1: but you need to really feel the snake. Um. I
17:51
Speaker 1: read an interview with the guy that milks snakes for
17:53
Speaker 1: living and he's like, no, you gotta feel with your skin.
17:58
Speaker 1: The snakes are really fast, and you know, you have
18:01
Speaker 1: to react and adjust to every little movement they make.
18:05
Speaker 1: And even wearing a glove, even a thin glove, I
18:07
Speaker 1: think club wouldn't help anyway, but a chain mail glove
18:10
Speaker 1: or kevlar glove would not. You wouldn't be able to
18:12
Speaker 1: feel what's going on anyway. Incidentally, like crush the snake's head.
18:17
Speaker 1: They're not exactly made of kevlar themselves. That's true. So
18:20
Speaker 1: when you're milking a snake, when you're free handling it,
18:23
Speaker 1: you basically want to hold it the way you did
18:26
Speaker 1: behind the head, right where the jaws meet, using your
18:29
Speaker 1: thumb and fore finger. Yes, that is correct, and that
18:33
Speaker 1: does two things. That keeps the head um from turning
18:37
Speaker 1: on you. And um, it puts your fingers on the
18:41
Speaker 1: in your thumb on those venom glands, which is what
18:44
Speaker 1: they you know, they just kind of massage it. Uh.
18:47
Speaker 1: You can also use electric stimulus electrical stimulation, but the
18:52
Speaker 1: traditional way is to just just get a little squeeze
18:55
Speaker 1: and it'll milk those little glands. Right, But first before
18:58
Speaker 1: you start squeezing, you want to basically we take the
19:00
Speaker 1: fangs the front. Yeah, you're not like spraying her on
19:04
Speaker 1: the room into your hand. You put their fangs through
19:09
Speaker 1: a membrane on that's pulled over a jar, and then
19:13
Speaker 1: the venom just pumps out of the fangs into the jar. Yeah.
19:16
Speaker 1: It's really neat looking. It is looking. It is man agreed. Uh.
19:22
Speaker 1: And they recommend that if you are milking, if you're
19:24
Speaker 1: a professional milker, you should have a little buddy with you. Okay,
19:28
Speaker 1: something goes wrong. It's not a solo job. Really, anytime
19:31
Speaker 1: you're handling a snake, there should be more than one person. Um. Well,
19:37
Speaker 1: you know I didn't. That should have called Emily outside,
19:39
Speaker 1: but she wouldn't let me pick up the snake. I
19:42
Speaker 1: had to keep it quiet. I think I walked up
19:45
Speaker 1: to hers like, look at this. Yeah, if I'm not mistaken. Um.
19:49
Speaker 1: And they say for constrictors, they have a little handy
19:53
Speaker 1: chart as well for at least one person for every
19:57
Speaker 1: five feet of snake, unless it's an anaconda or reticulated
20:03
Speaker 1: python in case in that case, you want every three
20:05
Speaker 1: feet of snake because those are very heavy snakes. Females
20:10
Speaker 1: can get up to like two hundred pounds, which is
20:15
Speaker 1: I saw the Jackass bit the other day again where um,
20:18
Speaker 1: I think it might have been in a sequel where
20:21
Speaker 1: they put it's a python or anaconda and one of
20:25
Speaker 1: those uh pits of a little red balls that kids
20:28
Speaker 1: jump in and they, you know, Johnny Knoxville and the
20:31
Speaker 1: gang get in there, and this thing bites. This huge
20:35
Speaker 1: thing bites Johnny Knoxville like two or three times. And
20:40
Speaker 1: thing's got the head the size of a baseball, and
20:42
Speaker 1: it sounds like a Jackass bit. Hey, hey to Lance Banks, Yeah,
20:47
Speaker 1: speaking of Jackass. Yeah, he was one of the filmmakers
20:50
Speaker 1: behind that, and we had dinner with him in Portland,
20:53
Speaker 1: very pleasant dinner. So hello Lance, if you're out there listening. Um,
20:58
Speaker 1: I can't believe that they did that in it was
21:00
Speaker 1: it was And he kept getting back in, he kept
21:02
Speaker 1: getting bit. He's bleeding and he keeps getting back in.
21:05
Speaker 1: I don't know why this isn't ringing a bell. I'm
21:07
Speaker 1: sure I've seen Jackass two a bunch of times. You know,
21:11
Speaker 1: plus Chuck, you also want somebody around any time you're
21:14
Speaker 1: handling a snake, whether it's a python or a venomu
21:16
Speaker 1: snake or any snake really, because you want somebody to
21:19
Speaker 1: call nine one one if something goes wrong. You want
21:23
Speaker 1: somebody to be able to drive you to the hospital
21:25
Speaker 1: something goes wrong, or um, if a python is trying
21:28
Speaker 1: to get around you, they can keep the tail from
21:31
Speaker 1: fully wrapping around. Um. There's a lot of stuff that
21:34
Speaker 1: an extra person can do, and things go really horribly
21:38
Speaker 1: awry when that doesn't happen. There was actually a very
21:42
Speaker 1: famous case not too many years ago of the Venezuelan zookeeper.
21:47
Speaker 1: I think it was Venezuela, wasn't it. Um? Who was
21:51
Speaker 1: I think a grad student working as a zookeeper, and
21:57
Speaker 1: he or she went into a into a I guess
22:01
Speaker 1: a python's cage, a ten foot for me's python cage
22:07
Speaker 1: alone during the night shift, and they found there, probably
22:13
Speaker 1: just to get something or to give it some food,
22:15
Speaker 1: just something. I'm sure it was something mundane and losing
22:19
Speaker 1: your life over And they found the person the next
22:21
Speaker 1: morning like half swallowed by the python. Oh my lord. Um,
22:26
Speaker 1: which is so you always want somebody around? Yeah, Um, well,
22:30
Speaker 1: should we get into the uh, the religious knack handling.
22:34
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. All right, well you said it, dude,
22:37
Speaker 1: It's called holiness serpent handling. And we actually you might
22:42
Speaker 1: think like, oh, they've done this for millennia um, or
22:46
Speaker 1: at least since you know, the seventeen eighteen hundreds. No, nope,
22:51
Speaker 1: we have a definitive start date nineteen ten in Tennessee
22:56
Speaker 1: the Dolly Pond Church of God in birch Wood, there
22:59
Speaker 1: was a pre your name George Hensley, and the legend
23:03
Speaker 1: is that he was having a faith crisis and was
23:08
Speaker 1: reading Mark from the Bible sixteen eighteen thou shalt take
23:14
Speaker 1: up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it
23:18
Speaker 1: shall not hurt them. Oh, that was a good Appalachian preacher. Um.
23:23
Speaker 1: And so he supposedly turned in saw a snake there
23:27
Speaker 1: and said, I'm gonna take this quite literally. The Bible
23:30
Speaker 1: says to take up snakes, so I'm gonna pick it up.
23:32
Speaker 1: And he picked it up and the snake didn't bite him,
23:34
Speaker 1: and he said, well, there goes my crisis of faith.
23:38
Speaker 1: And apparently George Hensley didn't start out a preacher. He
23:41
Speaker 1: started out an alcoholic who had trouble keeping work. And
23:45
Speaker 1: once this happened to him, he found his religious calling
23:48
Speaker 1: and became a preacher in the Pentecostal tradition, and he
23:53
Speaker 1: actually helped establish this separate group that's kind of within
23:58
Speaker 1: the Pentecostal religion. Um. But the Church of God of
24:01
Speaker 1: Signs Following is essentially the sect that he helped found. Yeah.
24:05
Speaker 1: These are subsets of subsets and subsets of Christianity. Yeah.
24:09
Speaker 1: And so Hensley's whole philosophy was you read the Bible plainly,
24:13
Speaker 1: is how he put it, which means, if it says
24:16
Speaker 1: you pick up snakes, you pick up snakes. It's God's
24:20
Speaker 1: command to you. If it says you can drink only
24:23
Speaker 1: any deadly thing and it will not harm you, you're
24:25
Speaker 1: supposed to do that. Um. All churches are independent, so
24:29
Speaker 1: you decide whether women can wear pants or not at
24:31
Speaker 1: your church. Um. And it was about as simple as that,
24:36
Speaker 1: and it actually took off and became very popular throughout Appalachia.
24:40
Speaker 1: From the nineteen tents till about the nineteen forties, there
24:43
Speaker 1: was I think thousands of people who went to these
24:47
Speaker 1: um Church of God with Signs Following churches. Yeah. And Hensley,
24:52
Speaker 1: for his own records said that He survived more than
24:55
Speaker 1: four hundred bytes until nineteen fifty five. He was in
24:59
Speaker 1: Florida and abandoned. I don't know if it was abandoned,
25:02
Speaker 1: but it was a blacksmith shop and he was doing
25:05
Speaker 1: a demonstration and I guess holding a little uh religious
25:10
Speaker 1: service and um he got bitten and refused treatment because
25:15
Speaker 1: that's part of the deal is they leave it up
25:18
Speaker 1: to you. Like Coots us on an interview with him,
25:22
Speaker 1: and he said, if someone gets bitten, I call the paramedics,
25:24
Speaker 1: have them come down. And then I say, well, now
25:27
Speaker 1: you have a choice. You can either too has God
25:30
Speaker 1: commands and refuse treatment and He'll heal you if you
25:34
Speaker 1: should be healed, and if it's your time to die,
25:36
Speaker 1: it's your time to die. Or you can say i'd
25:38
Speaker 1: like treatment please. UM. But in the tradition of you know,
25:43
Speaker 1: a true believer, Hensley said no, I don't want treatment.
25:47
Speaker 1: And he died the next morning. But he survived a
25:50
Speaker 1: bunch of other bites. Like he said, yeah, he says,
25:53
Speaker 1: although I lived by the snake, died by the snake
25:56
Speaker 1: is probably a pretty good UM motto. Do people think
26:00
Speaker 1: that um holding a serpent? Handlers are either worship the
26:05
Speaker 1: snakes because they do keep them in in cages on
26:08
Speaker 1: the altar during services UM or that they UM they're
26:14
Speaker 1: doing this as a as a show of faith to
26:17
Speaker 1: basically show, look at how how how much I believe
26:20
Speaker 1: in God. Apparently this is definitively not the case that
26:25
Speaker 1: when UM holding a serpent, handlers pick up snakes and
26:29
Speaker 1: this still goes on. Like there are still churches throughout
26:32
Speaker 1: Appalachia apparently from Ohio to Florida, UM, where hundreds, if
26:37
Speaker 1: not a few thousand people uh do this go to
26:41
Speaker 1: these services. UM when they do it. They don't do
26:45
Speaker 1: it at every service necessarily, but when they do do it,
26:48
Speaker 1: it's because they believe they have just been commanded by
26:51
Speaker 1: God to show their obedience to God by picking up
26:55
Speaker 1: a serpent and handling it. And when they do it,
26:58
Speaker 1: it's apparently they just enter into um immediate religious ecstasy. Yeah,
27:03
Speaker 1: it's like they kind of jump up and down and
27:06
Speaker 1: maybe speaking tongues and sort of a trance like state. Uh.
27:11
Speaker 1: I guess we haven't even really described it. I assume
27:13
Speaker 1: most people have seen this at some point. Look up
27:15
Speaker 1: a YouTube video. UM, they're not holding the snake by
27:18
Speaker 1: the back of the head and they are literally just
27:22
Speaker 1: sometimes there are five and six snakes and they're just
27:24
Speaker 1: holding them and they're kissing them on the face, they're
27:26
Speaker 1: rubbing them on their face. They wear them like crowns.
27:30
Speaker 1: They'll throw them over their shoulders. Um, yeah, they're they're.
27:34
Speaker 1: The big difference between religious snake handlers and professional snake
27:37
Speaker 1: handlers is that religious snake handlers go to zero zero
27:41
Speaker 1: degree to establish any kind of safety precautions. Right, that's
27:47
Speaker 1: entirely uh an athetical to the point. Yeah, they don't
27:50
Speaker 1: have anti venom shots standing by in a medical kit.
27:53
Speaker 1: No they don't. That's one. There's a hundred things that
27:57
Speaker 1: are different. But sure, I know what you mean. And
27:59
Speaker 1: so this whole thing was very popular, um among the
28:04
Speaker 1: Appalachians for a good twenty thirty years, and then the
28:09
Speaker 1: forties there was a rash of people who died after
28:12
Speaker 1: being bitten, and all of a sudden, the outside world
28:14
Speaker 1: started to look in and say, what are you guys doing?
28:18
Speaker 1: And the authorities were like, we don't think you should
28:21
Speaker 1: be able to do that. I started to try to
28:23
Speaker 1: pass laws, but none of them. There actually are laws
28:25
Speaker 1: that and indirectly prevent people from doing this, And there's
28:31
Speaker 1: actually some that directly prevent them, I guess in every
28:34
Speaker 1: Appalachian state except for West Virginia, but they're very rarely
28:38
Speaker 1: enforced because of religious liberties, right, yeah, religious freedoms. Um.
28:44
Speaker 1: There have been some raids, uh, notably actually Coots Place.
28:49
Speaker 1: Coots Place sounds like a sitcom, hanging with Mr Coots.
28:53
Speaker 1: Coots Church was rated as a part of a series
28:56
Speaker 1: of stings in two thousand eight under the code names
28:59
Speaker 1: twice really you're kidding me. Um. In one church they
29:06
Speaker 1: confiscated snakes and may to arrest and then it Coots
29:10
Speaker 1: Um Church. I think they got about seventy five snakes
29:14
Speaker 1: and arrested a few others, including him. But UM, I
29:18
Speaker 1: don't think they stay in jail very long. UM, I
29:21
Speaker 1: can't imagine what the penalty is. Well, the grand juries
29:24
Speaker 1: typically refused to indict them. They might be charged with him,
29:28
Speaker 1: they might be hauled to jail, but they there. There's
29:30
Speaker 1: no indictment that's handed down, so they don't go to trial.
29:33
Speaker 1: But they confiscate the snakes at least yeah, usually because um,
29:36
Speaker 1: in Tennessee, for example, it's illegal to keep venomous snakes,
29:40
Speaker 1: and the snakes that they're using are very venomous. They're
29:44
Speaker 1: deadly cotton mouths, rattlesnakes, um, all sorts of very deadly
29:49
Speaker 1: venomous snakes. So they're breaking the law just by having
29:52
Speaker 1: the snakes. But again, um, they're typically left alone as
29:56
Speaker 1: far as the courts are concerned. And the reason why
30:00
Speaker 1: you're saying at the beginning of this episode that it's
30:02
Speaker 1: hard to not just be like stop. Um, I think
30:07
Speaker 1: the reason why I don't have that much trouble with
30:09
Speaker 1: this I came to see it differently after doing research
30:13
Speaker 1: on it. There they have more a's involved with this stuff.
30:20
Speaker 1: So moray eels more. No, I thought they handled those
30:24
Speaker 1: two because never require like an aquarium and nobody wants that. Um.
30:29
Speaker 1: They they have just kind of rules around the whole
30:31
Speaker 1: thing where you don't go handle a serpent unless you
30:35
Speaker 1: feel like you have been commanded by God to go
30:37
Speaker 1: do that right then and you're you're imbued with the
30:41
Speaker 1: Holy Spirit which is protecting you right then, there's no
30:44
Speaker 1: pressure whatsoever to go do that. There's actually um discouragement
30:49
Speaker 1: to do it for any kind of show of faith
30:52
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Um. And then children are are
30:55
Speaker 1: banned from doing it. They're not allowed to handle the snakes. Yeah,
31:01
Speaker 1: in the same way that, like, you're free to walk
31:03
Speaker 1: into traffic if you want. I find it even less
31:06
Speaker 1: harmful than that, because you're endangering the other driver's life.
31:10
Speaker 1: If your hand you're walking into traffic, somebody might steer
31:12
Speaker 1: into somebody else to get around you. This is you
31:15
Speaker 1: and a snake. Yeah, I do have issues with how
31:19
Speaker 1: the snakes are treated. Well, that's one of my other
31:21
Speaker 1: big problems. So let's we'll we'll get into that. We
31:23
Speaker 1: gotta take a break. Okay, Chuck, we're back. What's the problem.
31:47
Speaker 1: What's your beef? Well, over the years, let's get into
31:51
Speaker 1: some numbers, um and and about a hundred years, they
31:56
Speaker 1: estimate about a hundred people have died from doing it.
31:59
Speaker 1: And if you look at the numbers and the number
32:02
Speaker 1: of people handling snakes, it's, uh, you think there'd be
32:06
Speaker 1: a lot more people dying from snake bites. Pretty pretty surprising,
32:10
Speaker 1: especially considering that most of them do refuse medical treatment
32:14
Speaker 1: after being bitten. They still recover. Correct, that is unusual,
32:19
Speaker 1: It's remarkable, it is uh. MPR did a story on
32:22
Speaker 1: this in two thousand thirteen, and some snake experts herpetologist
32:26
Speaker 1: started coming out of the woodwork, specifically the Kentucky reptiles,
32:29
Speaker 1: who has been sort of investigating this on their own
32:32
Speaker 1: for years, and they said, you know what, there's a
32:35
Speaker 1: lot of things going on here. Um that it's sort
32:38
Speaker 1: of a rigging of the stacking of the deck. Stacking
32:42
Speaker 1: of the deck and the humans favor for one, these
32:45
Speaker 1: snakes are mistreated, which is one reason I have a
32:48
Speaker 1: problem with it. By all accounts from their investigations, they
32:52
Speaker 1: saw crowded cages, they were dirty, there was no fecal
32:56
Speaker 1: matter in the cage, which looked like they weren't being fed. Uh.
32:59
Speaker 1: They asked Coots about that, and he said, well, I,
33:03
Speaker 1: um my, my my rat connection went away. Rat hook
33:08
Speaker 1: my my mouse and rat hook up disappeared on me.
33:13
Speaker 1: And he says, besides, they won't eat. Uh, they won't
33:16
Speaker 1: eat anyway, I think was his quote, which I don't
33:20
Speaker 1: understand what that means, because snakes eat, they want to eat.
33:23
Speaker 1: That sounds like something someone says when they're like pulling
33:25
Speaker 1: their collar away from them. Uh. And he said is.
33:29
Speaker 1: They asked him how long is snakes lived and he said,
33:32
Speaker 1: on average three or four months. The reptile Zoo in
33:35
Speaker 1: Kentucky said snake should lived into it's twenty years. Oh wow,
33:38
Speaker 1: he said they live on average three or four months. Yeah,
33:41
Speaker 1: they're being mistreated. So because of this mistreatment these hungry snakes,
33:45
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that happen once you have
33:47
Speaker 1: a hungry snake, and one is they are less likely
33:51
Speaker 1: to strike if they're unhealthy. What else, when they do strike,
33:55
Speaker 1: they're less likely to inject venom, So it's gonna be
33:58
Speaker 1: it's likelier to be a dry strike, yeah, I think,
34:01
Speaker 1: or dry strikes, but that's just under normal circumstances. Really,
34:05
Speaker 1: if it's if it's a malnourished and less fed or
34:08
Speaker 1: um underwatered snake, it's probably even higher higher incidents of
34:15
Speaker 1: dry strikes than that. The venom apparently isn't as potent
34:19
Speaker 1: if it's an unhealthy snake. Um. In two thousand thirteen,
34:24
Speaker 1: they rated a church in Tennessee. I think that's Andrew
34:27
Speaker 1: Hamblin's like you were talking about. Yeah, I think I
34:29
Speaker 1: may have said as his first name incorrectly before, but yeah,
34:33
Speaker 1: that's who I was talking about. Uh, And they confiscated
34:36
Speaker 1: fifty three snakes that most of them died within months.
34:39
Speaker 1: They were all unhealthy and so Basically, you've got these
34:43
Speaker 1: malnourished snakes that you know, even when they do get bitten,
34:47
Speaker 1: they're maybe even not getting any venom or less potent venom. Right,
34:51
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's rigged in a certain way. Plus,
34:54
Speaker 1: Also this article points out um it was a Julia
34:57
Speaker 1: Layton joint. She points out that it's also possible that
35:01
Speaker 1: those of us here on the outside, and maybe even
35:04
Speaker 1: the holiness serpent handlers, overestimate just how aggressive snakes actually
35:08
Speaker 1: are by nature. Yeah, like you were saying, if you're
35:11
Speaker 1: handling them gently, right, they're not gonna strike you. If
35:15
Speaker 1: they especially if they don't feel threatened. If there's like, oh,
35:18
Speaker 1: that's just a religious person, right and they're in they're
35:21
Speaker 1: in the throes of religious ecstasy. I'll just ride it out.
35:24
Speaker 1: I've been wanting to be gently shaped for a while,
35:28
Speaker 1: so let's see where this goes. Plus, a lot of
35:31
Speaker 1: these snakes are raised in captivity, and snake experts will
35:35
Speaker 1: tell you if you raise a snake in captivity, it's
35:37
Speaker 1: less likely to strike at you because they don't fear
35:40
Speaker 1: you as they should. Right. Plus, snakes don't typically speaking
35:46
Speaker 1: from an evolutionary standpoint, it doesn't make any sense for
35:48
Speaker 1: a snake to be like, yeah, I'm gonna strike you
35:51
Speaker 1: thing that is way bigger than I am that I
35:54
Speaker 1: don't prey upon. Naturally, I'm going to deliver all of
35:56
Speaker 1: my venom because the venom they need it to actually eat,
36:01
Speaker 1: they need it for prey, right, And the snake wouldn't
36:05
Speaker 1: know this, but natural selection would have figured it out
36:07
Speaker 1: by now that if a snake is striking something like
36:09
Speaker 1: a hippo that's coming at it and delivers all of
36:11
Speaker 1: its venom um, that hippo is still going to stomp
36:15
Speaker 1: the snake before the venom actually has any effect on it. Yeah,
36:19
Speaker 1: and you've lost all your venom, and you know you
36:21
Speaker 1: can regenerate it, but you know it's not like immediate, right,
36:25
Speaker 1: So it doesn't in a in an evolutionary natural selection standpoint,
36:30
Speaker 1: it doesn't really make sense for a snake to strike
36:32
Speaker 1: and deliver a full venom fight correct, right. Yeah, So
36:38
Speaker 1: you have all this stuff together, and suddenly the mystery
36:41
Speaker 1: of snake handling still is. It becomes a little clear.
36:45
Speaker 1: It makes a little more sense how people are surviving,
36:48
Speaker 1: but it's still remarkable that they aren't. They that more
36:52
Speaker 1: people don't die, considering how often these snakes are handled. Yeah,
36:56
Speaker 1: and if you if you look at interviews with Coots
36:59
Speaker 1: on the YouTube, he'll he'll pick up his uh chunk
37:04
Speaker 1: of rotted finger that he keeps and show you. He'll say,
37:09
Speaker 1: look this. You know, my wife had to cut it
37:11
Speaker 1: off at the mid knuckle with rose pruners. That was
37:14
Speaker 1: a different guy. That was Bill Host. Well, no Coots,
37:18
Speaker 1: it happened to him too. Oh really rose pruners again. Yeah,
37:20
Speaker 1: like he literally held up his finger and showed it
37:22
Speaker 1: to the lady on CNN. She was like, yeah, like
37:25
Speaker 1: you kept that thing. Yeah, well, Bill Host's wife cut
37:28
Speaker 1: his off with rose pruners. I think digits falling off
37:30
Speaker 1: as the snake handler is pretty common. I don't think
37:33
Speaker 1: it's like, no, that was that one guy. Um, so yeah,
37:37
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, there you go. I'm against
37:39
Speaker 1: it because they're mistreating snakes. Yeah, I have that. That's
37:42
Speaker 1: my issue with it too. And so it's other than that.
37:45
Speaker 1: I'm like, if you want to do it, it's your thing. Yeah,
37:49
Speaker 1: it's just one of those rare instances where you are
37:52
Speaker 1: it's again aside from the treatment of the snake, you're
37:55
Speaker 1: not harming anybody, but yourself. Yeah, there's almost no other
38:00
Speaker 1: instance that's just like that. You know what I mean, Right,
38:04
Speaker 1: I guess I'm getting to be a libertarian. So let's
38:09
Speaker 1: talk about Bill host Man, because that guy deserves maybe
38:12
Speaker 1: even his own podcast one day. Yeah, this dude is
38:15
Speaker 1: something else. Um, well, where do you start with him?
38:18
Speaker 1: He was well as a kid, he had a dream.
38:22
Speaker 1: Two he was always obsessed with snakes, and he had
38:26
Speaker 1: a dream to one day have a a snake house
38:30
Speaker 1: open to the public where he could educate people. And
38:33
Speaker 1: he was an educator. He wasn't He wasn't a religious
38:36
Speaker 1: snake handler. We should point that out up front. He
38:37
Speaker 1: was a self trained scientist. Yeah, for sure, that's a
38:41
Speaker 1: good way to say it. Thank you. So little kid
38:44
Speaker 1: has a dream and he grows up and makes that
38:46
Speaker 1: dream of reality and really believed, like really believed in
38:51
Speaker 1: his heart and and through experimentation, that snake venom could
38:56
Speaker 1: be very beneficial to a human. Yeah, he was actually
39:00
Speaker 1: um after the Miami Serpentarium, which is his famous place
39:04
Speaker 1: that he opened, was in full swing by this By
39:07
Speaker 1: the late seventies, he was in clinical trials using snake
39:11
Speaker 1: venom to help cure things like Parkinson's in multiple sclerosis
39:16
Speaker 1: with a doctor, and the FDA actually came in and
39:18
Speaker 1: shut them down because they were they were basically doing
39:22
Speaker 1: human experimentation that was unsanctioned, but they were seeing results
39:26
Speaker 1: from what I understand, Yeah, apparently he was seeing results
39:28
Speaker 1: with his polio work earlier when Jonah Saul invented the vaccine,
39:33
Speaker 1: and he was like, man, I guess it's great that
39:36
Speaker 1: it's cured, but I wish it could have been mean
39:38
Speaker 1: the snakes. So this dude started self immunizing in He
39:43
Speaker 1: injected one part cape cobra venom with one thousand parts
39:47
Speaker 1: sailine solution into his forearm and started gradually increasing the
39:53
Speaker 1: amount of venom he would inject into his own body,
39:56
Speaker 1: and within a couple of decades he was injecting every
40:00
Speaker 1: day a cocktail of thirty two different snakes and reptile's venom,
40:05
Speaker 1: which is a process called methrid it mythrid itism. Yeah,
40:09
Speaker 1: methrid it is methrid itism. Methrid Itse was this famous
40:12
Speaker 1: um I can't remember. He was an ancient king and
40:17
Speaker 1: he developed a tolerance to poison because he was so
40:20
Speaker 1: afraid of being poisoned, So he would drink a little
40:22
Speaker 1: bit and this is it's so now if anybody who
40:25
Speaker 1: does it, it's it's methrid. It is ism and that's
40:28
Speaker 1: what he was doing. So he actually did this for
40:32
Speaker 1: such a long time that his blood itself became anti
40:36
Speaker 1: venom and it actually saved twenty one people's lives. Yeah,
40:40
Speaker 1: he would, he would draw pints of blood from his
40:42
Speaker 1: body to keep on hand, and he literally several times
40:46
Speaker 1: flew all around the world with his blood to give
40:49
Speaker 1: it to people to save them. Yeah. And apparently, and
40:52
Speaker 1: I think nine he was bit by a Pakistani pit
40:56
Speaker 1: viper and he didn't have any anti venom and the
40:59
Speaker 1: White Hot used back channels to get their hands on
41:02
Speaker 1: some from Rondout and saved his life. Pretty pretty neat stuff,
41:08
Speaker 1: uh he Um. He has this famous quote, I could
41:11
Speaker 1: become a poster boy for the benefits of venom if
41:13
Speaker 1: I live to be one hundred, I'll really make the point.
41:16
Speaker 1: And he lived to be one hundred one years old
41:19
Speaker 1: with snake venom pumping through his blood all day long. Yeah.
41:22
Speaker 1: And there's a really neat um discussion about this guy
41:25
Speaker 1: in a larger article called the Mathridityes of Fondue lock Um.
41:29
Speaker 1: I can't remember the guy who wrote it. It's a
41:32
Speaker 1: really great article tweeted out or something, um, but it
41:36
Speaker 1: has some some stuff about Bell Hasten it. But it's
41:38
Speaker 1: also about this other dude named Tim Freed who in
41:43
Speaker 1: the article he takes four venomous snake bites in forty
41:48
Speaker 1: eight hours, although the whole things about whether or not
41:50
Speaker 1: he can live through five. But he's been doing the
41:53
Speaker 1: same thing. Yeah. So the Serpentarium in Miami closed in
41:59
Speaker 1: nineteen be four because and I saw that the accident
42:03
Speaker 1: was in nineteen seventy seven, so I'm not sure why
42:05
Speaker 1: it took seven years to uh to close. But a
42:10
Speaker 1: six year old boy had crocodiles and other stuff right
42:12
Speaker 1: at the place. Six year old boy fell into the
42:14
Speaker 1: croc pit and was mauled, and it really, uh obviously
42:19
Speaker 1: disturbed Bill because he wasn't a bad guy. He wasn't
42:23
Speaker 1: you know. He tore him up and he shot this
42:26
Speaker 1: crocodile nine times with the luger pistol um, and I
42:31
Speaker 1: guess seven years later decided to close it. Apparently the
42:35
Speaker 1: dad didn't blame Bill, which is remarkable for the accident.
42:42
Speaker 1: I just thought was strange if he took safety precautions
42:47
Speaker 1: and the kid went around him. Then yeah, maybe so
42:51
Speaker 1: it's not that dude's fault either way. It's horrible and tragic. Yeah,
42:55
Speaker 1: and he he ended up closing the serpentarium as a
42:58
Speaker 1: result of it, although I did realized it was seven
43:01
Speaker 1: years later too. But he kept his um milking operation going.
43:06
Speaker 1: That's right, in his own self injection routine, and he did.
43:09
Speaker 1: He flew to Venezuela once into the Amazon to deliver
43:13
Speaker 1: some of his own blood to save a boy's life.
43:15
Speaker 1: And he was made an honorary citizen in Venezuela as
43:18
Speaker 1: a result. That is so cool, Yeah, pretty amazing. He
43:21
Speaker 1: claims he had never been sick a day in his life,
43:24
Speaker 1: didn't take never had the cold, never had the flu,
43:27
Speaker 1: didn't take aspirin um. In this article that you sent,
43:30
Speaker 1: says he was unusually youthful looking. I don't know. I
43:34
Speaker 1: looked at pictures he I don't know if he looked
43:36
Speaker 1: a hundred, but I don't know about unusually youthful looking, right,
43:41
Speaker 1: Maybe so he had a glow about him, Yeah, glow
43:44
Speaker 1: from venom. I'm gonna start shooting that stuff, I guess,
43:47
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, No, I'm gonna stay away from it and
43:51
Speaker 1: just be fascinated by the whole concept. Alrighty you anything else?
43:57
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. I don't neither. If you want
43:59
Speaker 1: to know more about snake handling, you can type those
44:01
Speaker 1: words in the search bar how stuff works dot com.
44:03
Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's time for oh, you
44:06
Speaker 1: know what, it's time for Facebook questions. All right, So
44:12
Speaker 1: what we do here, uhs when listener males have dried
44:17
Speaker 1: up a little bit, we put it out to the
44:19
Speaker 1: people on Facebook to send in questions and we'll answer
44:22
Speaker 1: over the next two episodes as many as we can
44:25
Speaker 1: that aren't dumb. And it's sort of a rapid fire
44:29
Speaker 1: thing starting now. I'm like Billy on the Street. Who
44:35
Speaker 1: Billy on the Street, Billie Eigner, No great TV show?
44:40
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I haven't seen it, but
44:43
Speaker 1: I'm aware of it. It's wonderful. Let's start with Griggs Dorkin,
44:47
Speaker 1: good old Griggs Dorkins. Yes, he says, if you woke
44:50
Speaker 1: up to find that you had replaced a character in
44:52
Speaker 1: a movie, you know, well, what movie and character would
44:55
Speaker 1: it be? And how would you handle the circumstances differently,
44:58
Speaker 1: fans is a really good question. I feel like Josh
45:01
Speaker 1: has probably had an answer to this for years for
45:05
Speaker 1: the shining wink emoticon. You spell out wink emoticon or
45:10
Speaker 1: did it just print out like that? I don't know.
45:13
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but no, he's spelled it out. I
45:15
Speaker 1: had my answered easy, John Rambo, And what would you
45:19
Speaker 1: do differently? Would you just immediately surrender? I would have
45:22
Speaker 1: In the very beginning of First Blood when he drives
45:25
Speaker 1: him across the bridge and says keep going that way,
45:27
Speaker 1: I would have just kept going that way instead of
45:29
Speaker 1: turning around and going back into down the end. Yeah,
45:31
Speaker 1: John Rambo that would be a boring movie. Well, it
45:35
Speaker 1: would be very short. Yeah, to be a short phone,
45:37
Speaker 1: John Rambo. Hitchhiker, that's a good one. Yeah, what about you.
45:41
Speaker 1: I'll have to think about that, all right. And hey, Storkin,
45:44
Speaker 1: we'll see in Denver, buddy, all right, smile emoticon. This
45:49
Speaker 1: from Jamie Whittaker. H Josh always refers to his favorite book. Josh,
45:54
Speaker 1: you want to say it fo that's right, but I'm
45:57
Speaker 1: usually driving and I never take it down. I can't remember,
46:00
Speaker 1: so he says it's eighteen something. It's not right, Chuck,
46:05
Speaker 1: what is your number one recommendation? Um? I don't know
46:08
Speaker 1: if I have a favorite book, but I always recommend
46:11
Speaker 1: the book middle Sex just because it's one of the
46:15
Speaker 1: great books that I read. Jeffrey Eugenness, Yeah, I think
46:22
Speaker 1: that's right. He wrote. Uh well, he's written a lot
46:25
Speaker 1: of great books, but Middlesex is wonderful, so great, great
46:27
Speaker 1: all around book. Yep, Okay, nice one, man. Uh, let's see.
46:34
Speaker 1: Trey mclamb has a great question. How different would our
46:37
Speaker 1: health be if we could sleep every day until we
46:40
Speaker 1: wake up naturally? Is if alarm clocks were never invented.
46:44
Speaker 1: I would guess we'd all be a lot more mellow.
46:47
Speaker 1: We get less done, sure, but we'd be more mellow
46:50
Speaker 1: like our five day weekend. Remember that episode I do.
46:54
Speaker 1: I think that kind of dovetails with that quite a bit,
46:57
Speaker 1: just kind of doing what you do. There's your answer,
47:02
Speaker 1: good one. I don't know about that. There's a good question.
47:05
Speaker 1: Terrible answer. Uh, Sam Horne, you've been dropping hintsive late
47:09
Speaker 1: about live shows overseas. Would love to see you in
47:11
Speaker 1: the UK. We have loads of stuff you should now. Terrible,
47:17
Speaker 1: Uh Sam. We're hoping to come to the UK this summer.
47:20
Speaker 1: We're working on it hard, We're working on it it
47:22
Speaker 1: may or may not pan out because planning shows overseas
47:25
Speaker 1: is uh, you know, can be challenging. Yeah, you have
47:28
Speaker 1: to take a citizenship test. Did you know that? I
47:31
Speaker 1: didn't know that. It's weird. So we're trying and listen
47:34
Speaker 1: up for updates on that front. Okay, let's see. Uh.
47:40
Speaker 1: Just Riddell says, I listened to your color podcast Color
47:44
Speaker 1: with a You, and Chuck mentioned he might have a
47:47
Speaker 1: color deficiency. I'd like to hear a podcast about color
47:49
Speaker 1: blindness and color of deficiencies. Please smile emoticon. I think
47:55
Speaker 1: people are putting this in. It's typing it out when
47:57
Speaker 1: you print it. It's got to be maybe what's the question?
48:00
Speaker 1: Wasn't a questioned all of the Nope, okay and good one. Uh, Chuck, Well,
48:06
Speaker 1: they say, Josh diego Leal, how's the property squatting coming along?
48:11
Speaker 1: That was me, Um, I haven't heard anything from a
48:14
Speaker 1: few years. Uh, and I have anything about hippie Rob.
48:17
Speaker 1: I'm still squatting everybody. It's working out great. Uh And
48:21
Speaker 1: as far as we know, UM, we don't own the
48:24
Speaker 1: property yet, but we think the county might. And there's
48:27
Speaker 1: really I don't think we're in any danger of losing
48:29
Speaker 1: it anytime soon. It's not your next door neighbor, back
48:33
Speaker 1: back neighbor, now behind neighbor, whatever. Nope. So yeah, the County.
48:38
Speaker 1: I don't know if you'll ever be able to own
48:40
Speaker 1: it then, even through adverse possession, maybe not. But I
48:43
Speaker 1: don't think there's anything that can do with it. It's
48:45
Speaker 1: such a small strip. So I think we're good. Are
48:47
Speaker 1: they gonna start parking like a tar truck back there?
48:51
Speaker 1: County Land? What about Hippie rob? Any updates there? John
48:54
Speaker 1: should be Robb will forever live forever in the ether? Uh?
48:58
Speaker 1: Claire Dalt Dolby to Alby, I'd say Dolby too. Normally, Uh,
49:06
Speaker 1: if you could revisit an episode and do it differently,
49:08
Speaker 1: slash better? Which one the sun? Not a bad idea,
49:13
Speaker 1: and I would definitely like another track. Um. Every once
49:18
Speaker 1: in a while, I can't think of him. I mean
49:20
Speaker 1: we've done like eight hundred plus episodes. Every once in
49:23
Speaker 1: a while I will leave here and I say it
49:26
Speaker 1: every time I feel that way, I'll be like that
49:29
Speaker 1: one just wasn't as good because it could have been.
49:32
Speaker 1: And it's always something that's like really important, like the
49:35
Speaker 1: topic is really important to me so I like overthink
49:38
Speaker 1: it and it always pans out fine, but I can't.
49:42
Speaker 1: I can't think of any that I would just like
49:44
Speaker 1: to go back and get over again. Yeah, I thought
49:47
Speaker 1: you just kind of let you know, even if I'm
49:49
Speaker 1: a little disappointed, it is what it is. Yeah, that's
49:52
Speaker 1: a philosophy, you know, I guess it is. Yeah, it's
49:55
Speaker 1: a boring philosophy. Um, they and Floyd, are we ever
50:00
Speaker 1: going to get a how Jerry works episode? Nope, Jerry
50:06
Speaker 1: doesn't want people to know how she works. She operates
50:08
Speaker 1: in stealth and secret. Yeah. The c I A and
50:11
Speaker 1: she may or may not exist. Uh. Larry Tiffany says,
50:15
Speaker 1: what evidence will we see if the flood epic of
50:18
Speaker 1: Noah's Ark were indeed true? Well, Larry, we've got something
50:21
Speaker 1: for you, buddy. It's a whole episode on Noah's Ark
50:24
Speaker 1: in the flood. It was pretty pretty good one if
50:27
Speaker 1: I remember correctly. I have no recollection. That's good. Okay,
50:31
Speaker 1: how about one more each? Luke vis Ring, have you
50:34
Speaker 1: ever been told the topic is off limits? No, we
50:39
Speaker 1: have not. That we are very lucky and that we
50:41
Speaker 1: are free to program our own content, and are all
50:47
Speaker 1: the various bosses and company owners we've had over the years,
50:50
Speaker 1: I've always steered clear of that, which were very thankful for. Yeah,
50:54
Speaker 1: we self regulated. One more. Josh Robinson asks Johns and
50:59
Speaker 1: Chuck why do you hate the nineties? Why do you
51:01
Speaker 1: hate my childhood? I love the nineties. I'm yeah. I
51:06
Speaker 1: think the nineties were like okay, and I just don't
51:09
Speaker 1: think that they were. I don't think they produced that
51:12
Speaker 1: much great stuff. Everything just had this kind of superficialness
51:16
Speaker 1: to it. I felt like, well, I love the nineties.
51:19
Speaker 1: The nineties was my twenties in my college. The beloved
51:23
Speaker 1: very much to me, and things were great in the
51:25
Speaker 1: nineties in a lot of ways. Are you nostalgizing right now? No,
51:31
Speaker 1: I thought we had a band on that. No. I
51:34
Speaker 1: love the nineties. Great, great music, great culture. See. I
51:40
Speaker 1: think the music thing is where I have the issue.
51:42
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it was great great music. There is
51:45
Speaker 1: some good music. I don't dispute that, but I think
51:49
Speaker 1: there's a lot of really bad music. That's every generation,
51:52
Speaker 1: not necessarily. I knew you were going to say that,
51:54
Speaker 1: and I was prepared to respond, and it is as follows.
51:57
Speaker 1: Look at the eighties, right, Okay, A lot of bad music,
52:00
Speaker 1: a lot of great music, but there was a lot
52:03
Speaker 1: more good listenable music, Like think of all the one
52:08
Speaker 1: hit wonders in the eighties. There were a lot a
52:11
Speaker 1: lot of singles that were pretty good and listenable even
52:14
Speaker 1: at the time, not just in retrospect. In the nineties,
52:18
Speaker 1: there was a lot a lot of stuff on the
52:20
Speaker 1: radio was awful. Yeah, yeah, like Nirvana and stuff like that. No,
52:26
Speaker 1: I mean again, there was some like good stuff, and
52:28
Speaker 1: there were plenty of good bands, but for the most
52:31
Speaker 1: part it felt like there was just a lot of
52:33
Speaker 1: really bad stuff too. I'll go back to the spin
52:35
Speaker 1: doctors again. I think that is the emblem of the nineties.
52:42
Speaker 1: Spin doctors. They were huge for a little while, and
52:46
Speaker 1: then I think that also carried into the early two
52:48
Speaker 1: thousand's with with a lot of the terrible nous, too interesting,
52:52
Speaker 1: and it's like there just seemed to be and I
52:55
Speaker 1: know the eighties were super vapid, very shallow, but almost
52:58
Speaker 1: to a cartoonist to the nineties were unaware of its superficiality.
53:04
Speaker 1: It felt like like it was trying really hard to
53:07
Speaker 1: not be superficial, but it was failing at it. I
53:11
Speaker 1: think I reject the notion that a lot of one
53:13
Speaker 1: hit wonders equals good not good better. I got three
53:19
Speaker 1: words for you walking on sunshine. That was Katrine in
53:23
Speaker 1: the way. So that was wrong with that? Well maybe
53:25
Speaker 1: we just have different tastes maybe, so sorry, let's send
53:28
Speaker 1: this now and don't it feel good? Yeah? Yes it does, chuck.
53:33
Speaker 1: So that was Facebook Questions, Part one, Part one I
53:36
Speaker 1: was sales. Never do that again. If you want to
53:40
Speaker 1: get in touch of this, you can join us on
53:41
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. We're also
53:44
Speaker 1: on Twitter at s y s K podcast. You can
53:46
Speaker 1: send us an email to Stuff Podcast that House, Stuffworks
53:49
Speaker 1: dot com, and as always, join us at at Home
53:51
Speaker 1: on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
53:58
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
54:00
Speaker 1: staff works dot com. H m hm