May 8, 2021 • 54 mins
Snake handling ranges from professional snake milkers for antivenin to religious handlers who tend to get bitten and sometimes die from it. Either way, it can be a dangerous business. Learn all about snake handling in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's s
Y s K Selects, I've chosen How Snake Handlers Work.
It's a really truly fascinating episode that you might have overlooked.
And you know, we talk a lot about Christian snake handling,
but we also talk about people who handle snakes for
fun or because it's their job. There's a lot of
people who handle snakes weirdly. So kick back and enjoy
(00:24):
this episode from May of two thousand and sixteen, How
Sneake Handlers Work. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
(00:46):
there's Jerry over there. And my hair is now a
fourth character. Laughed at my hair. Everybody, Well, its my
beard can be the fourth character. Your hair could be
the fifth. Oh really, yeah, we need Actually, Jerry's got
great hair. She does have nice here stylish salt and
pepper Amy Goodman level tasteful salt and pepper. I'm not
(01:12):
sure what that means, Amy Goodman from Democracy. Now it's
very tasteful salt and pepper hair. Maybe that's the thing.
It is clearly between Jerry and Amy Goodman. It's the
thing that beats shoe polished black. Yeah, you know, like
trickling down your forehead. Yeah, but do what makes you happy?
(01:32):
You know? Well sure if you don't, whatever makes you
feel good, Yeah I should, Uh, I should get some
of that beer blacken her and coming into my beard
and come in with like that jet black Beard and
Clyde Drexeler will show up at your house. Urge you one.
But isn't he in the ads? Yeah? Really? Former Portland Trailblazer. Great, Yeah,
(01:56):
I'm pretty sure it's Clyde Drexler. Wow, I think that
did you picked this out? It's him? And who was
the one? I think Keith Hernandez. I was gonna say
the one that Kramer spit on or that got spit
that spit on Kramer. I think it's Keith Hernandez and
Clyde Drexler in the just for Men commercial. Well, those
are freed package are just for men coming our way now,
(02:19):
which we should say thanks again again to Crown Royal. Man,
you say you like Crown Royal, they send you something,
you say, you drank it, and they send you more.
I know, it's pretty awesome. I'm brushing my teeth with
this stuff. Now my lifestyle is improved for the better.
Pretty neat. Thank you dudes. Uh So, I was just
(02:39):
discussing before we record it. I said, it's going to
be hard to record a show on snake handling, and
I'm talking about the religious aspect of it without sort
of like I fear for their safety. And I want
to say, you people are crazy. A lot of people do,
but um, we have a long standing tradition of like
(03:00):
to each their own. I just you know, I hate
seeing people die from doing something completely preventable. Yeah, you
definitely do. But handling rattlesnakes and kissing them on the face.
From from what I've seen of this or from what
I've researched, I've not actually seen somebody handle snakes in person. Um,
but from what I've researched, the people who handle snakes
(03:22):
are doing it through total and complete faith. And uh
there's even if you did judge them, I think it
kind of rolls off their back quite a bit. So
it's not so much judgment. It's just like, no, it's
not I'm telling you, this is this? What is it?
My opinion, and I'm judging your opinion. Oh that's what
(03:46):
you meant by its judgment. No, okay, now it's not judgment.
I just I hate seeing people get hurt, Nina, uh
and die. Have you ever seen somebody handle snakes? I
had a religious upbringing. Well, yeah, this is rare though.
This is yeah, it is Appalachian foothills stuff. Yeah, I know,
but I mean, like Atlanta, we're in Georgia. I didn't
(04:07):
know if you ever took like a field trip or
something there. That's you have no idea how church works
that there are a lot of field trips. In fact,
you don't go to other churches. You're not supposed to
do that. Oh really, yeah, he stay at your own church.
You don't go on field trips to other churches. Aren't
there like inter faith banquets and stuff like that. Yeah,
(04:30):
we had a field day all right, with all the
churches in the county. Now, I suppose other churches get
together with as suppose to him getting together with other churches.
But that wasn't my experience. Typically frowned on in New York.
But you just keep it in the house. Although we
would go to the big youth conferences all sorts of
youth groups together. That's the field trip. Yeah, I'll just
(04:51):
kids thrown in the big gymnasiums, struggling to fight their
hormonal urges, going you believe what? So No, I've never
done it. I didn't ask if you've done it. I
need I've never witnessed it. I've never been anywhere near it. Okay,
although I I have a strange feeling, Chuck, that it's
possible we've both been near it, just from living in
(05:12):
Georgia all these years, you think without knowing it. Because yeah,
people who handle snakes UM religiously. It's actually called um
holiness serpent handling. Is that correct? Uh? Yeah, they say
serpent instead of snake. Yeah, and it has to be
a venomous snake to be considered a serpent. But for
(05:32):
holiness serpent handling UM. Until two thousand fourteen, it was.
They kept a pretty tight lid on it for many,
many decades. Who the handlers, Yeah, the people who um
who practice this as part of their religious beliefs. Yeah,
and I think still even most of them are pretty
media shy. You'll see the occasional interview. When someone dies,
(05:55):
they'll go knocking on the doors and they'll give an
interview to explain like why they do what they do.
But of so, it was that TV show, which really,
I mean, you know you're clearly not media show if
you're doing a reality show. No, it's It was called
Snake Salvation and sorry not two four two thirteen. It
was on nat g O and it was all about
snake handling for religious reasons. And um, one of the
(06:18):
main guys on the show ended up dying. He didn't
die on the show, but he died the next year
from a rattlesnake bite after it went off the air. Yeah,
it was only on for one season. But his name
was Pasty Pastor Jamie Coots, and he and another guy
um named I believe Steven Amblen are They are holiness
serpent handlers who believe in kind of bringing it out
(06:43):
of the shadows and into the Christian mainstream. Good luck. Yeah,
if you're if you're at all interested in that concept,
you should read even on to Death. It was in
the Chattanooga Free Press. It's a pretty good examination of
that whole movement and those guys in particular. I guess
we should talk a little little bit about other kinds
of snake handling first though, Yeah, because when you see
(07:05):
snake hangler, I'm sure when people saw this the title
of this episode, they just assume we're talking strictly about um,
really is a snake handling now, like other people handle
snakes as well, like professional non religious settings. They're called
herpetologists or some of them are. These are actually people
who study snakes and amphibians, reptiles, and we talked about
(07:28):
them on our Snake Show, and I think we dispelled
a lot of rumors, uh, not rumors, but myths on
the Snake Show which come into play when handling snakes,
namely that they aren't out to kill you. Um, But
we'll get to that later. But people display snakes, well,
there's a few different categories of people who handle snakes.
There's people who display them Like you drive through Florida,
(07:51):
you might see like a snake and gator farm where
they do snake shows. And there's a really famous guy
we'll talk about a little more in depth named Bill
Host who was like the man when it comes to that,
let's see. Yeah, uh, And then there are um, there
are people, there are snake milkers. Of course, there's veterinarians
who care for your snakes. Yeah, which I mean they
(08:12):
have to handle snakes. Um, there's also rescuing and recovery people.
Who gets a snake in my basement? Right? A guy
will show up and um, most likely he's professionally trained.
At the very least, you would hope that he has
a tremendous amount of experience in handling snakes. Yeah. And
they will show up and you'll say how much does
it cost to get the snake out of my basement?
(08:34):
And they'll say how much you got? I'd like to
see your last three bank account statements please, Um. And
in those cases they will probably you'll probably see what's
called an extension tool. Um, if you've ever seen those tongs?
Are those long uh they call it a snake cook
sort of a just a long metal not a PROD
(08:55):
because they're not product. Senior adults use it to grab
can ends off of the high shelves in their homes. Yeah,
it's like that sort of I haven't seen them that
actually flex and grab. Yeah. Okay, if you get some money,
you're gonna spend it on that. The ones i've seen
are just have a flat uh you know, it's a
(09:16):
long pole and then it has like an L shaped uh,
you know, at a right angle flat piece coming off
that they pin the snake with. UM. I've read this
thing about handling snakes safely for like just normal people
or people who are starting out in the rescue and
recovery business. UM, And you can use just about anything.
The key is extension. You want to put distance between
(09:41):
you and the snake. And I want to say, as
a legal disclaimer, I'm not at all advising anybody to
handle a snake, but what I read was that you
want to put as much distance as possible. So if
you have a garden tool and a long one, use that.
But you also would want to use say you have
a hope, you would want to turn your whole upside
(10:02):
down and use these just the wooden end to manipulate
the snake because you don't want to hurt the snake.
I just want to get rid of it, right. I
relocated a snake from my backyard a couple of years ago.
What did you use? I use my hands. Oh my god.
It wasn't big. It was, but it wasn't small. So
how did you describe this interaction? UM? I was cutting
(10:27):
the grass and I saw the snake. It was about
a foot long. Did you positively identify it as non
lethal or non venomous? Yeah, it was pretty Yeah, it
was definitely not well. Actually, it had the markings where
it could have been a copper head. It wasn't just
just like a green snake, right, So you took a
shot of whiskey and approached it. I approached it, and
I did use an implement to um pin it, but
(10:51):
I can't remember what I used. It was something, you know,
blunt and soft. It wasn't, you know, an accent, you know,
head right, because like you said, it was in the
cinder block. You're dropping, Like what did I use? It was?
I can't remember. Let's just say like a wooden paddle.
It might have been a piece of wood actually. And
(11:11):
then I did like I saw in the TV shows.
I grabbed it behind the you know, right behind its head,
got a good hold of it and picked it up
and it wrapped around my wrist and I went and
then I ran across the street like pee wee herman.
Then threw it in the wood. Didn't throw it. I
laid it down in the woods, put it into the wood,
(11:34):
and it was great. I think it was a successful
catch and release. It sounds like it you weren't bitten. Yeah,
and I don't. I don't. I'm sure I didn't hurt
the snake. Good. Yeah, that sounds pretty successful. What I
was reading in this one um article was that you
most snakes if you just approached them calmly. Um, and
(11:57):
I guess smoothly is a good way to put it. Sure,
don't lunge at the snake, right, and also don't be like,
oh my god, oh we're good. Right, just kind of
come at the snake and pick it up like it's
just a stick in your yard. It's probably not going
to strike you, supposedly according to this website, of which
I have no affiliation whatsoever. Yeah, and I'm not my story.
(12:17):
Please do not take that as a That was probably
pretty dumb for me to do that. Yeah, you know,
and even if it's non I didn't want it. I
don't want to get bitten by a snake. I don't
care if it's venomous or not. One of my biggest
fears is seeing a snake attach its mouth to my body.
It frightens me. Well, I have to say. Also, this
(12:38):
site put pretty plainly, do not ever touch a snake
that you haven't positively identified as non venomous, because yeah,
I mean if you you could have easily been bitten
and lost your hand or whatever it was, well, no,
I could have get in the hospital pretty quickly. Yeah,
I mean if you're you know, anti, then it works
(12:59):
apparently a hundred percent of the time if it's gotten
to in a timely manner. Yes, and for the pedants
out there, we will say anti venom and anti venom
because both are acceptable. Yes, they are alright, So chuck,
let's take a break right here. Huh it sounds good. Okay.
(13:34):
Did I say how how far a snake can strike? No?
Do you know? Uh? But this is what I've got
from the same the same place that said just go
smoothly and casually up to a snake, introduce yourself. Uh.
It says that any snake greater than four ft can
typically strike about one third to one half the distance
of its body length. That's a good rule of thumb. Yeah. Um,
(13:57):
a snake between one and three feet can strike about
out one half to two thirds its body length, and
then a snake underfoot can usually strike about its whole
body length. Okay, I would take all those numbers and
double them. It's probably a good idea, just to be safe. Yeah,
of course I'm the guy who you know picked up
maybe a copper head, right man, that scary stuff. You
(14:19):
do the same thing. You don't want to pay a guy?
Um uh you probably I would do with this with
this site. What this site was saying was made a
lot of sense to me, is like take a take
a garbage can, tip it over on its side, take
a shovel, use the wooden end of it, the handle it,
and just kind of get it into the can, turn
it over, put like something on top of the can
(14:40):
and then call somebody. Or you could take the candy
um like the woods or something that That's probably what
I should have done. In retrospect, I was feeling brave.
It was like those shots of whiskey, Like I watched
enough Nature TV. All right, I know how this is done. Um.
So the last thing that I think we didn't mention
is snake milkers, which snake venom is very valuable. Um
(15:06):
one gram. What you do is you freeze dry it
into a powder. After you get the liquid, and you
sell it to research labs big money. Yeah, one gram
a freeze dried venom from an exotic snake is can
go up to five grand, but it might take a
hundred milkings to get that much. So do the math. Yeah,
(15:27):
is it worth it, especially if you love hanging out
with snakes and it's a legit job. You can make
you know, bucks a month or more as a snake
milker easily, depending on how many snakes you have. That's right. Um.
So there are a lot of people that handle snakes,
but all of them, well, I should say all of
the people who professionally handle snakes have a rule of thumb,
(15:50):
which is don't get hurt, don't be stupid, because there
are two ways that snakes can typically get you Venomous
snakes obviously injected venom, and that's why people milk snakes
is to get that venom so that they can create
anti venom um so that your life can be saved
if you end up getting bit by a snake. Right, um,
(16:12):
and venom is pretty nasty stuff. I think we did
one on like what's the most poisonous animal in the world?
That sounds familiar, and we talked a lot about venom,
but it's worth revisiting. Basically, depending on the venom that
you're injected with. It can cause tissue damage wherever it's spread.
And by tissue damage, I mean just completely wipe out
(16:33):
your tissue. And if that is blood vessels, your blood
vessels bleed and you start bleeding internally. If it's a
your liver or your heart, those things start bleeding internally
and end up shutting down. You can have multi system,
multi organ failure, paralysis, respiratory um distress, all sorts of
horrible stuff. If it's on a limb or digit, you
(16:54):
might lose that even if you get the anti venomom
time exactly because it's so thoroughly destroys the issue, right,
that's right. And it causes a lot of pain too.
Like I was reading about the Texas coral snake, it
actually has this um molecule that opens your the gates
to your pain receptors and just hold them open so
(17:17):
that you're just feeling excruciating, unremitting pain. So it's bad stuff.
So you don't want to get bitten by a snake.
You also don't want to mess around with constrictors either,
because they will mess you up as well. Yeah, they will,
I guess, wrap around you and then suffocates, you break
your back, stop your heart. It's big enough. Bad news,
(17:40):
bad news. So snakes can be dangerous is the point. Yes,
but again not to feed into that anti snake I'm
not trying to start a whacking no. Um. So getting
back to the milkers, Oh yes, sorry, they are what's
called free handlers. They don't use You would think like
(18:03):
they should just wear anti snake gloves. Um, But you
need to really feel the snake. Um. I read an
interview with a guy that milked snakes for living and
he's like, no, you gotta feel with your skin. The
snakes are really fast, and you know you have to
react and adjust to every little movement they make. And
(18:24):
even wearing a glove, even a thin glove, I think
glove wouldn't help anyway, but a chain mail glove, kevlar
glove would not. You wouldn't be able to feel what's
going on anyway. Incidentally, like crush the snake's head. They're
not exactly made of kevlar themselves, that's true. So when
you're milking a snake, when you're free handling it, you
basically want to hold it the way you did behind
(18:45):
the head, right where the jaws meet using your thumb
and fore finger. Yes, that is correct, and that does
two things. That keeps the head um from turning on you.
And um, it puts your fingers on the in your
thumb on those venom glands, which is what they you know,
they just kind of massage it. Uh. You can also
(19:06):
use electric stimulant, electrical stimulation, but the traditional way is
to just just get a little squeeze and it'll milk
those little glands. Right. But first, before you start squeezing,
you want to basically take the fangs, the front fang.
You're not like spraying her on the room into your hand.
You put their fangs through a membrane on that's pulled
(19:30):
over a jar, and then the venom just pumps out
of the fangs into the jar. It's really neat looking.
It is looking. It is man agreed. Uh. And they
recommend that if you are milking, if you're a professional milker,
you should have a little buddy with you. Okay, something
goes wrong. It's not a solo job. Really, anytime you're
(19:50):
handling a snake, there should be more than one person. Um, well,
you know I didn't that should have called Emily outside.
But she wouldn't let me pick up this snake. I
had to keep it quiet. I think I walked up
to and it's like, look at this, Yeah, I'm not mistaken. Um.
And they say for constrictors, they have a little handy
(20:12):
chart as well, for at least one person for every
five feet of snake, unless it's an anaconda or reticulated
python in case. In that case, you want every three
feet of snake. Those are very heavy snakes. Females can
get up to like two hundred pounds. Which I saw
(20:34):
the jackass bit the other day again where um, I
think it might have been in a sequel where they
put it's a python or anaconda and one of those
uh pits of a little red balls that kids jump
in and they, you know, Johnny Knoxville and the gang
get in there, and this thing bites. This huge thing
(20:54):
bites Johnny Knoxville like two or three times. And thing's
got the head the size of a baseball, and it
sounds like a jackass bit. Hey, hey to Lance Bangs, Yeah,
speaking of jackass. Yeah, he was one of the filmmakers
behind that, and we had dinner with him in Portland,
very pleasant dinner. So Hello, Lance, if you're out there listening. Um,
(21:17):
I can't believe that they did that. Anyway, it was
it was and he kept getting back in, he kept
getting bit he's bleeding, and he keeps getting back in.
I don't know why this isn't ringing a bell. I'm
sure I've seen Jackass two a bunch of times, you know,
plus Chuck. You also want somebody around any time you're
handling a snake, whether it's a python or a venomu
snak or any sneak, really, because you want somebody to
(21:38):
call nine one one if something goes wrong, if you
want somebody to be able to drive you to the
hospital if something goes wrong, or um, if a python
is trying to get around you, they can keep the
tail from fully wrapping around. Um. There's a lot of
stuff that an extra person can do, and things go
really horribly awry when that doesn't happen. There was actually
(22:00):
a very famous case not too many years ago of
the Venezuelan zookeeper. I think it was Venezuela, wasn't it.
I remember? Um? Who was I think a grad student
working as a zookeeper and he or she went into
a into a I guess a python's cage, a ten
(22:23):
foot Burmese python cage alone during the night shift, and
they found probably just to get something or to give
it some food, just something. I'm sure it was something
mundane and totally not worth losing your life over. And
they found the person the next morning like half swallowed
by the python. Oh my lord, Um, which is so
(22:45):
you always want somebody around? Um? Well, should we get
into the uh the religious nick handling? Yeah for sure,
all right, well you said it, dude, It's called holiness
serpent handling. And we actually you might think like, oh,
they've done this for millennia um, or at least since
(23:05):
you know, the seventeen eighteen hundreds. No, nope, we have
a definitive start date nineteen ten in Tennessee the Dolly
Pond Church of God in birch Wood, there was a
preacher named George Hensley, and the legend is that he
was having a faith crisis and was reading Mark from
(23:28):
the Bible sixteen eighteen. Thou shalt take up serpents, and
if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.
That was a good Appalachian preacher um. And so he
supposedly turned in, saw a snake there and said, I'm
gonna take this quite literally. The Bible says to take
(23:49):
up snakes, so I'm gonna pick it up. And he
picked it up, and the snake didn't bite him, and
he said, well, there goes my crisis of faith. That's right.
And apparently George Hensley didn't start out a preacher. He
started out an alcoholic who had trouble keeping work. And
once this happened to him, he found his religious calling
and became a preacher in the Pentecostal tradition. And he
(24:11):
actually helped establish this separate group that's kind of within
the Pentecostal religion. Um. But the Church of God of
Science following is essentially the sect that he helped found. Yeah.
These are subsets of subsets, subsets of Christianity. Yeah. And
so Hensley's whole philosophy was you read the Bible plainly,
(24:32):
is how he put it, which means, if it says
you pick up snakes, you pick up snakes. It's God's
command to you. If it says you can drink only
any deadly thing and it will not harm you, you're
supposed to do that. Um. All churches are independent so
you decide whether women can wear pants or not at
your church. Um. And it was about as simple as that,
(24:54):
and it actually took off and became very popular throughout Appalachia.
From the nine Team Tends till about the nineteen forties,
there was I think thousands of people who went to
these um church of God with signs following churches. Yeah,
and Hinsley, for his own records, said that he survived
more than four hundred bytes until nineteen fifty five. He
(25:17):
was in Florida and an abandoned I don't know if
it was abandoned, but it was a blacksmith shop and
he was doing a demonstration and I guess holding a
little uh religious service and um he got bitten and
refused treatment because that's part of the deal is they
leave it up to you. Like Coots us on an
(25:39):
interview with him, and he said, if someone gets bitten,
I call the paramedics, have them come down. And then
I say, well, now you have a choice. You can
either do as God commands and refuse treatment and he'll
heal you if you should be healed, and if it's
your time to die, it's your time to die. Or
you can say I'd like treatment please, UM. But in
(26:00):
the tradition of you know, a true believer, Hensley said, no,
I don't want treatment, and he died the next morning,
but he survived a bunch of other bites. Like he
said says, although I lived by the snake, died by
the snake is probably a pretty good UM motto. A
lot of people think that UM holding a serpent handlers
(26:22):
are either worship the snakes because they do keep them
in in cages on the altar during services UM, or
that they UM they're doing this as a as a
show of faith to basically show, look at how how
how much I believe in God. Apparently this is definitively
(26:42):
not the case. When UM holding a serpent handlers pick
up snakes and this still goes on like there are
still churches throughout Appalachia, apparently from Ohio to Florida UM
where hundreds, if not a few thousand people UH do
this go to the services UM when they do it.
(27:03):
They don't do it at every service necessarily, but when
they do do it, it's because they believe they have
just been commanded by God to show their obedience to
God by picking up a serpent and handling it. And
when they do it, it's apparently they just enter into
um immediate religious ecstasy. Yeah, it's like they kind of
(27:24):
jump up and down and maybe speaking tongues and sort
of a trance like state. Uh. I guess we haven't
even really described it. I assume most people have seen
this at some point. Look up a YouTube video. Um,
they're not holding the snake by the back of the head.
They are literally just sometimes there are five and six
snakes and they're just holding them. Man, They're kissing them
(27:45):
on the face, they're rubbing them on their face. They
wear them like crowns. They'll throw them over their shoulders. Um, yeah,
they're they're The big difference between religious snake handlers and
professional snake handlers is that religious snake handlers go to
zero zero degree to establish any kind of safety precautions.
(28:06):
That's entirely uh ant athetical to the point. Yeah, they
don't have anti venom shots standing by in a medical kit.
No they don't. That's one. There's a hundred things that
are different. But sure, I know what you mean. And
so this whole thing was very popular, um among the
Appalachians for a good twenty thirty years and then the
(28:28):
forties there was a rash of people who died after
being bitten, and all of a sudden, the outside world
started to look in and say, what are you guys doing?
And the authorities were like, well, we don't think you
should be able to do that. I started to try
to pass laws, but none of them. There actually are
laws that and indirectly prevent people from doing this, and
(28:49):
there's actually some that directly prevent them, I guess in
every Appalachian state except for West Virginia, but they're very
rarely enforced because of religious liberties, right, yeah, religious freedoms. Yeah. Um,
there have been some raids, uh, notably actually Coots Place.
Coots Place sounds like a sitcom hanging with Mr Coot.
(29:12):
Coots Church was rated as a part of a series
of stings in two thousand eight under the code name
twice Shy. Really yeah, you're kidding me that they did there?
Um in one church they confiscated a d twenty five
snakes and may ten arrest and then it coots Um Church.
I think they got about seventy five snakes and arrested
(29:33):
a few others including him. But um, I don't think
they stay in jail very long. Um, I can't imagine
what the penalty is. Well, the grand juries typically refused
to indict them. Oh really, they just say they might
be charged with him, they might be haulled to jail,
but they there's no indictment that's handed down, so they
don't go to trial. But they confiscate the snakes at least. Yeah,
(29:53):
usually because Um, in Tennessee, for example, it's illegal to
keep venomous snakes, and snakes that they're using are very venomous.
Their deadly cotton mouths, rattlesnakes, um, all sorts of very deadly,
venomous snakes. So they're breaking the law just by having
the snakes. But again, um, they're typically left alone as
(30:15):
far as the courts are concerned. And the reason why
you're saying at the beginning of this episode, that's hard
to not just be like stop. Um, I think the
reason why I don't have that much trouble with this
I came to see it differently after doing research on it.
There they have more a's involved with this stuff, so
(30:39):
more eels more. No. I thought they handled those two
because never require like an aquarium and nobody wants that. Um,
they they have just kind of rules around the whole
thing where you don't go handle a serpent unless you
feel like you have been commanded by God to go
do that right then, and you're you're imbued with the
(31:00):
Holy Spirit which is protecting you, right then, there's no
pressure whatsoever to go do that. There's actually um discouragement
to do it for any kind of show of faith
or anything like that. Um and then children are are
banned from doing it. They're not allowed to handle the
snakes were fine with it, Yeah, in the same way
(31:20):
that like, you're free to walk into traffic if you want.
I find it even less harmful than that, because you're
endangering the other driver's life. If your hand you're walking
into traffic, somebody might steer into somebody else to get
around you. This is you and a snake. Yeah, I
do have issues with how the snakes are treated. Well,
that's one of my other big problems. So let's we'll
(31:41):
we'll get into that. We gotta take a break. Okay, Chuck,
(32:03):
we're back. What's the problem. What's your beef? Well, over
the years, let's get into some numbers, um and and
about a hundred years, they estimate about a hundred people
have died from doing it. And if you look at
the numbers and the number of people handling snakes, it's, uh,
(32:24):
you think there'll be a lot more people dying from
snake bites. Pretty pretty surprising, especially considering that most of
them do refuse medical treatment after being bitten. They still recover. Correct,
that is unusual, it's remarkable, it is uh. MPR did
a story on this in two thousand and some snake experts,
herpetologists started coming out of the woodwork, specifically the Kentucky Reptiles,
(32:48):
who has been sort of investigating this on their own
for years, and they said, you know what, there's a
lot of things going on here. Um that it's sort
of a rigging of the stacking of the deck. Stacking
of the deck and the humans favor. For one, these
snakes are mistreated, which is one reason I have a
problem with it. By all accounts from their investigations, they
(33:11):
saw crowded cages, they were dirty, There was no fecal
matter in the cage, which looked like they weren't being fed. Uh.
They asked Coots about that and he said, well, I,
um my, my my rat connection went away, rat hook,
my my mouse and rat hook up disappeared on me,
(33:32):
and he says, besides they won't eat. Uh, they won't
eat anyway, I think was his quote, which I don't
understand what that means, because snakes eat, they want to eat.
That sounds like something someone says when they're like pulling
their collar away from them. Uh. And he said as
they asked him how long is snakes lived, and he
said on average three or four months. The reptiles Zoo
(33:54):
and Kentucky said snake should lived in it's twenty years. Wow,
he said, they live on average two or four months. Yeah,
they're being mistreated. So because of this mistreatment, these hungry snakes.
There's a lot of things that happen once you have
a hungry snake, and one is they are less likely
to strike if they're unhealthy. Yeah. What else, when they
do strike, they're less likely to inject venom, So it's
(34:16):
gonna be it's likelier to be a dry strike, I think,
or dry strikes. But that's just under normal circumstances. Really,
if it's if it's a malnourished and less fed or
um underwatered snake, it's probably even higher. Higher incidents of
dry strikes than that. Okay, the venom apparently isn't as
(34:37):
potent if it's an unhealthy snake. Um. In two thousand thirteen,
they rated a church in Tennessee. I think that's Andrew
Hamblin's like you were talking about. Yeah, I think I
may have said as his first name incorrectly before, but yeah,
that's who I was talking about. Uh. And they confiscated
fifty three snakes that most of them died within months.
(34:58):
They were all unhealthy. And so basically you've got these
malnourished snakes that you know, even when they do get bitten,
they're maybe even not getting any venom or less potent venom. Right,
So it's yeah, it's rigged in a certain way. Plus
also this article points out, um it was a Julia
Layton joint. She points out that it's also possible that
(35:20):
those of us here on the outside, and maybe even
the holiness serpent handlers, overestimate just how aggressive snakes actually
are by nature. Yeah, like you were saying, if you're
handling them gently, they're not gonna strike you if they
especially if they don't feel threatened. If there's like, oh,
that's just a religious person right there, and they're in
the throes of religious ecstasy. I'll just ride it out.
(35:43):
I've been wanting to be gently shaped for a while,
so let's see where this goes. Plus a lot of
these snakes are raised in captivity, and snake experts will
tell you if you raise a snake in captivity, it's
less likely to strike at you because they don't fear
you as they should. Right. Plus, snakes don't typically speaking
(36:05):
from an evolutionary standpoint, it doesn't make any sense for
a snake to be like, yeah, I'm gonna strike you
thing that is way bigger than I am that I
don't prey upon. Naturally, I'm going to deliver all of
my venom because the venom they need it to actually eat,
they need it for prey. Right, And a snake wouldn't
know this, but natural selection would have figured it out
(36:26):
by now that if a snake is striking something like
a hippo that's coming at it and delivers all of
its venom um, that hippo is still going to stomp
the snake before the venom actually has any effect on it. Yeah,
and you've lost all your venom, and to you know,
you can regenerate it. But you know, it's not like immediate, right,
So it doesn't in a in an evolutionary natural selection standpoint,
(36:49):
it doesn't really make sense for a snake to strike
and deliver a full venom fight, correct, right. Yeah, So
you have all this stuff together and suddenly the street
of snake handling still is. It becomes a little clear.
It makes a little more sense how people are surviving,
but it's still remarkable that they aren't. They that more
(37:11):
people don't die considering how often these snakes are handled. Yeah,
and if you if you look at interviews with Coots
on the YouTube, he'll he'll pick up his uh chunk
of rotted finger that he keeps and show you. He'll say,
look this. You know, my wife had to cut it
off at the mid knuckle with rose pruners. That was
(37:33):
a different guy. That was Bill Host. Well, no Coots,
it happened to him too. Oh really rose pruners again. Yeah.
Like he literally held up his finger and showed it
to the lady on CNN. She was like, yeah, like
you kept that thing. Yeah, well, Bill Host's wife cut
his off with rose pruners. I think digits falling off
as the snake handler is pretty common. I don't think
it's like, no, that was that one guy. Um, so yeah,
(37:56):
I don't know. I mean, there you go. I'm against
it because they're mistreating snakes. Yeah, I have that. That's
my issue with it too, And so it's other than that.
I'm like, you want to do it, it's your thing. Yeah,
it's just one of those rare instances where you are again,
aside from the treatment of the snake, you're not harming
anybody but yourself. Yeah, there's almost no other instance that's
(38:20):
just like that, you know what I mean. I guess
I'm getting to be a libertarian. So let's talk about
Bill host Man, because that guy deserves maybe even his
own podcast one day. Yeah, this dude is something else. Um, well,
where do you start with him? He was well as
a kid, he had a dream. Two. He was always
(38:44):
obsessed with snakes, and he had a dream to one
day have a a snakehouse open to the public where
he could educate people. And he was an educator. He
wasn't He wasn't a religious snake handler. We should point
that out up front. He was a self trained scientist. Yeah,
for sure. It's a good way to say it. Thank
you so little kid has a dream and he grows
(39:04):
up and makes that dream a reality and really believed,
like really believed in his heart and and through experimentation,
that snake venom could be very beneficial to a human. Yeah,
he was actually um after the Miami Serpentarium, which is
his famous place that he opened, was in full swing
(39:25):
by this By the late seventies, he was in clinical
trials using snake venom to help cure things like Parkinson's
in multiple sclerosis with a doctor and the FDA actually
came in and shut them down because they were they
were basically doing human experimentation that was unsanctioned, but we
were seeing results from what I understand. Yeah, apparently he
(39:47):
was seeing results with his polio work earlier when Jonah
Saulk invented the vaccine, and he was like, man, I
guess it's great that it's cured, but I wish it
could have been mean snakes. So this dude started self immunizing.
In He injected one part cape cobra venom with one
thousand parts sailine solution into his forearm and started gradually
(40:12):
increasing the amount of venom he would inject into his
own body, and within a couple of decades he was
injecting every day a cocktail of thirty two different snakes
and reptile's venoms, which is a process called mythrid it
mythrid it ism. Yeah, methrid it is, methrid it issm
methrid Ityse was this famous um I can't remember. He
(40:34):
was an ancient king and he developed a tolerance to
poison because he was so afraid of being poisoned. So
he would drink a little bit, right, and this is
it's so now anybody who does it, it's it's methrid
it ism, And that's what he was doing. So he
actually did this for such a long time that his
blood itself became anti venom, and it actually saved twenty
(40:58):
one people's lives. Yeah, he would he would draw pints
of blood from his body to keep on hand, and
he literally several times flew all around the world with
his blood to give it to people to save them. Yeah.
And apparently, and I think nine he was bit by
a Pakistani pit viper and he didn't have any anti
venom and the White House used back channels to get
(41:20):
their hands on some from Ron heard about and saved
his life. Yeah, pretty pretty neat stuff. Uh he um.
He has this famous quote, I could become a poster
boy for the benefits of venom if I lived to
be one hundred I'll really make the point. And he
lived to be one hundred one years old with snake
venom pumping through his blood all day long. Yeah. And
(41:41):
there's a really neat um discussion about this guy in
a larger article called the Mathridityes of Fondue lock Um.
I can't remember the guy who wrote it. It's a
really great article tweeted out or something, um, but it
has some some stuff about Bell Hasten it. But it's
also about this other dude named Kim Freed who in
(42:02):
the article he takes four venomous snake bites in forty
eight hours, although the whole things about whether or not
he can live through five. But he's been doing the
same thing. Yeah. So the Serpentarium in Miami closed in
four because and I saw that the accident was in
(42:22):
nineteen seventy seven, so I'm not sure why it took
seven years to uh to close. But a six year
old boy had crocodiles and other stuff right at the place.
Six year old boy fell into the croc pit and
was mauled, and it really, uh obviously disturbed Bill because
he wasn't a bad guy. He wasn't you know. He
(42:42):
tore him up and he shot this crocodile nine times
with the lugar pistol um, and I guess seven years later,
decided to close it. Apparently the dad didn't blame Bill,
which is remarkable for the accident, which I just thought
was strange. If he took safety precautions and the kid
(43:08):
went around him, then yeah, maybe, so it's not that
dude's fault. Either way, it's horrible and tragic. Yeah, and
he he ended up closing the serpentarium as a result
of it, although I didn't realize it was seven years
later too. But he kept his um milking operation going.
That's right in his own self injection routine, and he did.
(43:28):
He flew to Venezuela once into the Amazon to deliver
some of his own blood to save a boy's life,
and he was made an honorary citizen of Venezuela as
a result. That is so cool, Yeah, pretty amazing. He
claims he had never been sick a day in his life,
didn't take never had the cold, never had the flu
didn't take aspirin um. In this article that you sent
(43:49):
says he was unusually youthful looking. I don't know. I
looked at pictures he I don't know if he looked
a hundred, but I don't know about unusually youthful looking. Right,
Maybe so he had a glow about him, Yeah, glow
from venom. I'm gonna start shooting that stuff, I guess.
Oh yeah, No, I'm gonna stay away from it and
(44:10):
just be fascinated by the whole concept. Alrighty did anything else?
I got nothing else? I don't either. If you want
to know more about snake handling, you can type those
words in the search bar how stuff works dot com.
And since I said that, it's time for oh, you
know what, it's time for Facebook questions. All right. So
(44:31):
what we do here, uh is when listener males have
dried up a little bit, we put it out to
the people on Facebook to send in questions and we'll
answer over the next two episodes as many as we
can that aren't dumb. And it's sort of a rapid
fire thing starting now. I'm like Billy on the street.
(44:53):
Who Billy on the street. Billy Eigner no great TV show.
Oh go yeah, yeah, yeah, I haven't seen it, but
I'm aware of it. It's wonderful. Let's start with Griggs Dorkin,
Good old Griggs Doorkin. Yes. He says, if you woke
up to find that you would replace the character in
a movie, you know, well, what movie and character would
(45:14):
it be? And how would you handle the circumstances differently?
Answer is a really good question. I feel like Josh
has probably had an answer to this for years. For
the Shining wink Emoticon. You spell out wink emoticon or
did it just print out like that? I don't know.
I'm not sure, but no, he's spelled it out. I
had my answered easy, John Rambo, And what would you
(45:37):
do differently? Would you just immediately surrender? I would have.
In the very beginning of First Blood when he drives
him across the bridge and says keep going that way,
I would have just kept going that way instead of
turning around and going back into the town the end,
John Rambo, that would be a boring movie. Well, it
would be very short to be a short gun, John Rambo. Hitchhiker,
(45:58):
that's a good one. Yeah, what about you, I'll have
to think about that, all right, And hey Storkin, we'll
see in Denver, buddy, all right, smile emoticon. This is
from Jamie Whittaker. H Josh always refers to his favorite book. Josh,
you want to say it, Foe, that's right, but I'm
usually driving and I never take it down. I can't remember,
(46:18):
so he says it's eighteen something. It's not right, Chuck,
what is your number one recommendation? Um? I don't know
if I have a favorite book, but I always recommend
the book middle Sex, just because it's one of the
great books that I've read. Jeffrey Eugene, I think that's right.
(46:42):
He wrote. Uh, well, he's written a lot of great books,
but Middlesex is wonderful, so great, great all around book. Yep, Okay,
nice one man. Uh, let's see. Trey mclamb has a
great question, how different would our health be if we
could sleep every day until we wake up? Natural? Really is,
if alarm clocks were never invented. I would guess we'd
(47:03):
all be a lot more mellow. We get less done, sure,
but we'd be more mellow like our five day weekend.
Remember that episode. I do I think that kind of
dovetails with that quite a bit, just kind of doing
what you do. There's your answer, good one. I don't
know about that. There's a good question. Terrible answer. Uh,
(47:26):
Sam Horne, you've been dropping hintsive late about live shows overseas.
Would love to see you in the UK. We have
loads of stuff you should now terrible, Uh Sam. We're
hoping to come to the UK this summer. We're working
on it hard. We're working on it. It may or
may not pan out because planning shows overseas is uh
you know, can be challenging. Yeah, you have to take
(47:47):
a citizenship test. Did you know that? I didn't know that.
It's weird. So we're trying and listen up for updates
on that front. Okay, let's see. Uh. Just Riddell says,
I listened to your color podcast Color with a You,
and Chuck mentioned he might have a color deficiency. I'd
like to hear a podcast about color blindness and color deficiencies.
(48:11):
Please smile emoticon. I think people are putting this in.
It's typing it out when in print it's got to
be maybe what's the question that wasn't a question? All
was a nope? Okay and good one. Uh, chuck. Well,
they say, Josh diego Leal, how's the property squatting coming along?
That was me, Um, I haven't heard anything from a
(48:33):
few years. Uh, and I have anything about Hippie Rob.
I'm still squatting everybody. It's working out great. Uh And
as far as we know, UM, we don't own the
property yet, but we think the county might. And there's
really I don't think we're in any danger of losing
it anytime soon. It's not your next door neighbor, back
back neighbor, now behind neighbor, whatever. So yeah, the county.
(48:57):
I don't know if you'll ever be able to own
it then, even through adverse possession, maybe not. But I
don't think there's anything that can do with it. It's
such a small strip, so I think we're good. Are
they gonna start parking like a tar truck back there,
County Lan? What about Hippie Rob? Any updates are John
should be Rob will forever live forever in the ether? Uh?
(49:17):
Claire Doll Dolby to Alby Dolby, I'd say Dolby too. Normally,
h if you could revisit an episode and do it
differently slash better, which one the Sun not a bad idea,
then I would definitely like another track. Um, every once
in a while, I can't think of him. I mean
(49:39):
we've done like eight hundred plus episodes. Every once in
a while, I will leave here and I say it
every time I feel that way, I'll be like that
one just wasn't as good because it could have been.
And it's always something that's like really important, Like the
topic is really important to me, so I'll like overthink
it and it always pans out fine. But I can't.
(50:00):
I can't think of any that I would just like
to go back and do over again. Yeah, my thoughts.
You just kind of let you know, even if I'm
a little disappointed, it is what it is. Yeah, that's
a philosophy, you know, I guess it is. It's a
boring philosophy. Um, Dan Floyd, are we ever going to
get a how Jerry works episode? Nope. Jerry doesn't want
(50:25):
people to know how she works. She operates in stealth
and secret. Yeah, the c I A and she may
or may not exist. Uh. Larry Tiffany says, what evidence
would we see if the flood epic of Noah's Ark
We're indeed true? Well, Larry, we've got something for you, buddy.
It's a whole episode on Noah's Ark in the Flood.
That's pretty pretty good one, if I remember correctly, I
(50:47):
have no recollection. That's a good one. Okay, how about
one more reach Luke Vissering, have you ever been told
the topic is off limits? No, we have not. That
we are lucky and that we are free to program
our own content, and are all the various bosses and
(51:07):
company owners we've had over the years, I've always steered
clear of that, which were very thankful for. Yeah, we
self regulated. One more. Josh Robinson asks Josh and Chuck,
why do you hate the nineties? Why do you hate
my childhood? Will the nineties? I'm yeah, I think the
nineties were like okay, I just don't think that they were.
(51:30):
I don't think they produced that much great stuff. Everything
just had this kind of superficialness to it. I felt like, boy,
I love the nineties. The nineties was my twenties in
my college then beloved very much to me, and things
were great in the nineties in a lot of ways.
Are you nostalgizing right now? No, though we had a
(51:51):
ban on that. No, I love the nineties, great great music,
great culture. See I think the music things where I
have the issue. I wouldn't say it was great great music.
There was some good music. I don't dispute that, but
I think there's a lot of really bad music. That's
every generation, not necessarily. I knew you're going to say that,
(52:13):
and I was prepared to respond, and it is as follows.
Look at the eighties, right, A lot of bad music,
a lot of great music, but there was a lot
more good listenable music, Like think of all the one
hit wonders in the eighties. There were a lot a
lot of singles that were pretty good and listenable even
(52:33):
at the time, not just in retrospect. In the nineties,
there was a lot a lot of stuff on the
radio was awful. Yeah, yeah, like Nirvana and stuff like that. No,
I mean again, there was some like good stuff, and
there were plenty of good bands, but for the most part,
it felt like there was just a lot of really
bad stuff too. I'll go back to the spin doctors again.
(52:55):
I think that is the emblem of nine the nineties. Yeah,
spin doctors. They were huge for a little while, and
then I think that also carried into the early two
thousand's with with a lot of the terrible nous to interest,
and it's like there just seemed to be And I
know the eighties were super vapid, very shallow, but almost
(53:17):
to a cartoonish degree. The nineties were unaware of its superficiality.
It felt like like it was trying really hard to
not be superficial, but it was failing at it. I
think I reject the notion that a lot of one
hit wonders equals good, not good better. I got three
(53:38):
words for you walking on Sunshine. That was Katrine in
the way, So it was wrong that, Well, maybe we
just have different tastes. Maybe, so sorry, let's end this now.
And don't it feel good? Yeah? Yes it does, Chuck.
So that was Facebook Questions Part one. Part one I
was sales, Never do that again. If you want to
(53:59):
get in touch of this, you can join us on Facebook,
dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. We're also on
Twitter at s y s K podcast. You can send
us an email to stuff Podcast at house stuff Works
dot com, and as always, join us at home on
the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts, My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
(54:20):
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's s
Y s K Selects, I've chosen How Snake Handlers Work.
It's a really truly fascinating episode that you might have overlooked.
And you know, we talk a lot about Christian snake handling,
but we also talk about people who handle snakes for
fun or because it's their job. There's a lot of
people who handle snakes weirdly. So kick back and enjoy
(00:24):
this episode from May of two thousand and sixteen, How
Sneake Handlers Work. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
(00:46):
there's Jerry over there. And my hair is now a
fourth character. Laughed at my hair. Everybody, Well, its my
beard can be the fourth character. Your hair could be
the fifth. Oh really, yeah, we need Actually, Jerry's got
great hair. She does have nice here stylish salt and
pepper Amy Goodman level tasteful salt and pepper. I'm not
(01:12):
sure what that means, Amy Goodman from Democracy. Now it's
very tasteful salt and pepper hair. Maybe that's the thing.
It is clearly between Jerry and Amy Goodman. It's the
thing that beats shoe polished black. Yeah, you know, like
trickling down your forehead. Yeah, but do what makes you happy?
(01:32):
You know? Well sure if you don't, whatever makes you
feel good, Yeah I should, Uh, I should get some
of that beer blacken her and coming into my beard
and come in with like that jet black Beard and
Clyde Drexeler will show up at your house. Urge you one.
But isn't he in the ads? Yeah? Really? Former Portland Trailblazer. Great, Yeah,
(01:56):
I'm pretty sure it's Clyde Drexler. Wow, I think that
did you picked this out? It's him? And who was
the one? I think Keith Hernandez. I was gonna say
the one that Kramer spit on or that got spit
that spit on Kramer. I think it's Keith Hernandez and
Clyde Drexler in the just for Men commercial. Well, those
are freed package are just for men coming our way now,
(02:19):
which we should say thanks again again to Crown Royal. Man,
you say you like Crown Royal, they send you something,
you say, you drank it, and they send you more.
I know, it's pretty awesome. I'm brushing my teeth with
this stuff. Now my lifestyle is improved for the better.
Pretty neat. Thank you dudes. Uh So, I was just
(02:39):
discussing before we record it. I said, it's going to
be hard to record a show on snake handling, and
I'm talking about the religious aspect of it without sort
of like I fear for their safety. And I want
to say, you people are crazy. A lot of people do,
but um, we have a long standing tradition of like
(03:00):
to each their own. I just you know, I hate
seeing people die from doing something completely preventable. Yeah, you
definitely do. But handling rattlesnakes and kissing them on the face.
From from what I've seen of this or from what
I've researched, I've not actually seen somebody handle snakes in person. Um,
but from what I've researched, the people who handle snakes
(03:22):
are doing it through total and complete faith. And uh
there's even if you did judge them, I think it
kind of rolls off their back quite a bit. So
it's not so much judgment. It's just like, no, it's
not I'm telling you, this is this? What is it?
My opinion, and I'm judging your opinion. Oh that's what
(03:46):
you meant by its judgment. No, okay, now it's not judgment.
I just I hate seeing people get hurt, Nina, uh
and die. Have you ever seen somebody handle snakes? I
had a religious upbringing. Well, yeah, this is rare though.
This is yeah, it is Appalachian foothills stuff. Yeah, I know,
but I mean, like Atlanta, we're in Georgia. I didn't
(04:07):
know if you ever took like a field trip or
something there. That's you have no idea how church works
that there are a lot of field trips. In fact,
you don't go to other churches. You're not supposed to
do that. Oh really, yeah, he stay at your own church.
You don't go on field trips to other churches. Aren't
there like inter faith banquets and stuff like that. Yeah,
(04:30):
we had a field day all right, with all the
churches in the county. Now, I suppose other churches get
together with as suppose to him getting together with other churches.
But that wasn't my experience. Typically frowned on in New York.
But you just keep it in the house. Although we
would go to the big youth conferences all sorts of
youth groups together. That's the field trip. Yeah, I'll just
(04:51):
kids thrown in the big gymnasiums, struggling to fight their
hormonal urges, going you believe what? So No, I've never
done it. I didn't ask if you've done it. I
need I've never witnessed it. I've never been anywhere near it. Okay,
although I I have a strange feeling, Chuck, that it's
possible we've both been near it, just from living in
(05:12):
Georgia all these years, you think without knowing it. Because yeah,
people who handle snakes UM religiously. It's actually called um
holiness serpent handling. Is that correct? Uh? Yeah, they say
serpent instead of snake. Yeah, and it has to be
a venomous snake to be considered a serpent. But for
(05:32):
holiness serpent handling UM. Until two thousand fourteen, it was.
They kept a pretty tight lid on it for many,
many decades. Who the handlers, Yeah, the people who um
who practice this as part of their religious beliefs. Yeah,
and I think still even most of them are pretty
media shy. You'll see the occasional interview. When someone dies,
(05:55):
they'll go knocking on the doors and they'll give an
interview to explain like why they do what they do.
But of so, it was that TV show, which really,
I mean, you know you're clearly not media show if
you're doing a reality show. No, it's It was called
Snake Salvation and sorry not two four two thirteen. It
was on nat g O and it was all about
snake handling for religious reasons. And um, one of the
(06:18):
main guys on the show ended up dying. He didn't
die on the show, but he died the next year
from a rattlesnake bite after it went off the air. Yeah,
it was only on for one season. But his name
was Pasty Pastor Jamie Coots, and he and another guy
um named I believe Steven Amblen are They are holiness
serpent handlers who believe in kind of bringing it out
(06:43):
of the shadows and into the Christian mainstream. Good luck. Yeah,
if you're if you're at all interested in that concept,
you should read even on to Death. It was in
the Chattanooga Free Press. It's a pretty good examination of
that whole movement and those guys in particular. I guess
we should talk a little little bit about other kinds
of snake handling first though, Yeah, because when you see
(07:05):
snake hangler, I'm sure when people saw this the title
of this episode, they just assume we're talking strictly about um,
really is a snake handling now, like other people handle
snakes as well, like professional non religious settings. They're called
herpetologists or some of them are. These are actually people
who study snakes and amphibians, reptiles, and we talked about
(07:28):
them on our Snake Show, and I think we dispelled
a lot of rumors, uh, not rumors, but myths on
the Snake Show which come into play when handling snakes,
namely that they aren't out to kill you. Um, But
we'll get to that later. But people display snakes, well,
there's a few different categories of people who handle snakes.
There's people who display them Like you drive through Florida,
(07:51):
you might see like a snake and gator farm where
they do snake shows. And there's a really famous guy
we'll talk about a little more in depth named Bill
Host who was like the man when it comes to that,
let's see. Yeah, uh, And then there are um, there
are people, there are snake milkers. Of course, there's veterinarians
who care for your snakes. Yeah, which I mean they
(08:12):
have to handle snakes. Um, there's also rescuing and recovery people.
Who gets a snake in my basement? Right? A guy
will show up and um, most likely he's professionally trained.
At the very least, you would hope that he has
a tremendous amount of experience in handling snakes. Yeah. And
they will show up and you'll say how much does
it cost to get the snake out of my basement?
(08:34):
And they'll say how much you got? I'd like to
see your last three bank account statements please, Um. And
in those cases they will probably you'll probably see what's
called an extension tool. Um, if you've ever seen those tongs?
Are those long uh they call it a snake cook
sort of a just a long metal not a PROD
(08:55):
because they're not product. Senior adults use it to grab
can ends off of the high shelves in their homes. Yeah,
it's like that sort of I haven't seen them that
actually flex and grab. Yeah. Okay, if you get some money,
you're gonna spend it on that. The ones i've seen
are just have a flat uh you know, it's a
(09:16):
long pole and then it has like an L shaped uh,
you know, at a right angle flat piece coming off
that they pin the snake with. UM. I've read this
thing about handling snakes safely for like just normal people
or people who are starting out in the rescue and
recovery business. UM, And you can use just about anything.
The key is extension. You want to put distance between
(09:41):
you and the snake. And I want to say, as
a legal disclaimer, I'm not at all advising anybody to
handle a snake, but what I read was that you
want to put as much distance as possible. So if
you have a garden tool and a long one, use that.
But you also would want to use say you have
a hope, you would want to turn your whole upside
(10:02):
down and use these just the wooden end to manipulate
the snake because you don't want to hurt the snake.
I just want to get rid of it, right. I
relocated a snake from my backyard a couple of years ago.
What did you use? I use my hands. Oh my god.
It wasn't big. It was, but it wasn't small. So
how did you describe this interaction? UM? I was cutting
(10:27):
the grass and I saw the snake. It was about
a foot long. Did you positively identify it as non
lethal or non venomous? Yeah, it was pretty Yeah, it
was definitely not well. Actually, it had the markings where
it could have been a copper head. It wasn't just
just like a green snake, right, So you took a
shot of whiskey and approached it. I approached it, and
I did use an implement to um pin it, but
(10:51):
I can't remember what I used. It was something, you know,
blunt and soft. It wasn't, you know, an accent, you know,
head right, because like you said, it was in the
cinder block. You're dropping, Like what did I use? It was?
I can't remember. Let's just say like a wooden paddle.
It might have been a piece of wood actually. And
(11:11):
then I did like I saw in the TV shows.
I grabbed it behind the you know, right behind its head,
got a good hold of it and picked it up
and it wrapped around my wrist and I went and
then I ran across the street like pee wee herman.
Then threw it in the wood. Didn't throw it. I
laid it down in the woods, put it into the wood,
(11:34):
and it was great. I think it was a successful
catch and release. It sounds like it you weren't bitten. Yeah,
and I don't. I don't. I'm sure I didn't hurt
the snake. Good. Yeah, that sounds pretty successful. What I
was reading in this one um article was that you
most snakes if you just approached them calmly. Um, and
(11:57):
I guess smoothly is a good way to put it. Sure,
don't lunge at the snake, right, and also don't be like,
oh my god, oh we're good. Right, just kind of
come at the snake and pick it up like it's
just a stick in your yard. It's probably not going
to strike you, supposedly according to this website, of which
I have no affiliation whatsoever. Yeah, and I'm not my story.
(12:17):
Please do not take that as a That was probably
pretty dumb for me to do that. Yeah, you know,
and even if it's non I didn't want it. I
don't want to get bitten by a snake. I don't
care if it's venomous or not. One of my biggest
fears is seeing a snake attach its mouth to my body.
It frightens me. Well, I have to say. Also, this
(12:38):
site put pretty plainly, do not ever touch a snake
that you haven't positively identified as non venomous, because yeah,
I mean if you you could have easily been bitten
and lost your hand or whatever it was, well, no,
I could have get in the hospital pretty quickly. Yeah,
I mean if you're you know, anti, then it works
(12:59):
apparently a hundred percent of the time if it's gotten
to in a timely manner. Yes, and for the pedants
out there, we will say anti venom and anti venom
because both are acceptable. Yes, they are alright, So chuck,
let's take a break right here. Huh it sounds good. Okay.
(13:34):
Did I say how how far a snake can strike? No?
Do you know? Uh? But this is what I've got
from the same the same place that said just go
smoothly and casually up to a snake, introduce yourself. Uh.
It says that any snake greater than four ft can
typically strike about one third to one half the distance
of its body length. That's a good rule of thumb. Yeah. Um,
(13:57):
a snake between one and three feet can strike about
out one half to two thirds its body length, and
then a snake underfoot can usually strike about its whole
body length. Okay, I would take all those numbers and
double them. It's probably a good idea, just to be safe. Yeah,
of course I'm the guy who you know picked up
maybe a copper head, right man, that scary stuff. You
(14:19):
do the same thing. You don't want to pay a guy?
Um uh you probably I would do with this with
this site. What this site was saying was made a
lot of sense to me, is like take a take
a garbage can, tip it over on its side, take
a shovel, use the wooden end of it, the handle it,
and just kind of get it into the can, turn
it over, put like something on top of the can
(14:40):
and then call somebody. Or you could take the candy
um like the woods or something that That's probably what
I should have done. In retrospect, I was feeling brave.
It was like those shots of whiskey, Like I watched
enough Nature TV. All right, I know how this is done. Um.
So the last thing that I think we didn't mention
is snake milkers, which snake venom is very valuable. Um
(15:06):
one gram. What you do is you freeze dry it
into a powder. After you get the liquid, and you
sell it to research labs big money. Yeah, one gram
a freeze dried venom from an exotic snake is can
go up to five grand, but it might take a
hundred milkings to get that much. So do the math. Yeah,
(15:27):
is it worth it, especially if you love hanging out
with snakes and it's a legit job. You can make
you know, bucks a month or more as a snake
milker easily, depending on how many snakes you have. That's right. Um.
So there are a lot of people that handle snakes,
but all of them, well, I should say all of
the people who professionally handle snakes have a rule of thumb,
(15:50):
which is don't get hurt, don't be stupid, because there
are two ways that snakes can typically get you Venomous
snakes obviously injected venom, and that's why people milk snakes
is to get that venom so that they can create
anti venom um so that your life can be saved
if you end up getting bit by a snake. Right, um,
(16:12):
and venom is pretty nasty stuff. I think we did
one on like what's the most poisonous animal in the world?
That sounds familiar, and we talked a lot about venom,
but it's worth revisiting. Basically, depending on the venom that
you're injected with. It can cause tissue damage wherever it's spread.
And by tissue damage, I mean just completely wipe out
(16:33):
your tissue. And if that is blood vessels, your blood
vessels bleed and you start bleeding internally. If it's a
your liver or your heart, those things start bleeding internally
and end up shutting down. You can have multi system,
multi organ failure, paralysis, respiratory um distress, all sorts of
horrible stuff. If it's on a limb or digit, you
(16:54):
might lose that even if you get the anti venomom
time exactly because it's so thoroughly destroys the issue, right,
that's right. And it causes a lot of pain too.
Like I was reading about the Texas coral snake, it
actually has this um molecule that opens your the gates
to your pain receptors and just hold them open so
(17:17):
that you're just feeling excruciating, unremitting pain. So it's bad stuff.
So you don't want to get bitten by a snake.
You also don't want to mess around with constrictors either,
because they will mess you up as well. Yeah, they will,
I guess, wrap around you and then suffocates, you break
your back, stop your heart. It's big enough. Bad news,
(17:40):
bad news. So snakes can be dangerous is the point. Yes,
but again not to feed into that anti snake I'm
not trying to start a whacking no. Um. So getting
back to the milkers, Oh yes, sorry, they are what's
called free handlers. They don't use You would think like
(18:03):
they should just wear anti snake gloves. Um, But you
need to really feel the snake. Um. I read an
interview with a guy that milked snakes for living and
he's like, no, you gotta feel with your skin. The
snakes are really fast, and you know you have to
react and adjust to every little movement they make. And
(18:24):
even wearing a glove, even a thin glove, I think
glove wouldn't help anyway, but a chain mail glove, kevlar
glove would not. You wouldn't be able to feel what's
going on anyway. Incidentally, like crush the snake's head. They're
not exactly made of kevlar themselves, that's true. So when
you're milking a snake, when you're free handling it, you
basically want to hold it the way you did behind
(18:45):
the head, right where the jaws meet using your thumb
and fore finger. Yes, that is correct, and that does
two things. That keeps the head um from turning on you.
And um, it puts your fingers on the in your
thumb on those venom glands, which is what they you know,
they just kind of massage it. Uh. You can also
(19:06):
use electric stimulant, electrical stimulation, but the traditional way is
to just just get a little squeeze and it'll milk
those little glands. Right. But first, before you start squeezing,
you want to basically take the fangs, the front fang.
You're not like spraying her on the room into your hand.
You put their fangs through a membrane on that's pulled
(19:30):
over a jar, and then the venom just pumps out
of the fangs into the jar. It's really neat looking.
It is looking. It is man agreed. Uh. And they
recommend that if you are milking, if you're a professional milker,
you should have a little buddy with you. Okay, something
goes wrong. It's not a solo job. Really, anytime you're
(19:50):
handling a snake, there should be more than one person. Um, well,
you know I didn't that should have called Emily outside.
But she wouldn't let me pick up this snake. I
had to keep it quiet. I think I walked up
to and it's like, look at this, Yeah, I'm not mistaken. Um.
And they say for constrictors, they have a little handy
(20:12):
chart as well, for at least one person for every
five feet of snake, unless it's an anaconda or reticulated
python in case. In that case, you want every three
feet of snake. Those are very heavy snakes. Females can
get up to like two hundred pounds. Which I saw
(20:34):
the jackass bit the other day again where um, I
think it might have been in a sequel where they
put it's a python or anaconda and one of those
uh pits of a little red balls that kids jump
in and they, you know, Johnny Knoxville and the gang
get in there, and this thing bites. This huge thing
(20:54):
bites Johnny Knoxville like two or three times. And thing's
got the head the size of a baseball, and it
sounds like a jackass bit. Hey, hey to Lance Bangs, Yeah,
speaking of jackass. Yeah, he was one of the filmmakers
behind that, and we had dinner with him in Portland,
very pleasant dinner. So Hello, Lance, if you're out there listening. Um,
(21:17):
I can't believe that they did that. Anyway, it was
it was and he kept getting back in, he kept
getting bit he's bleeding, and he keeps getting back in.
I don't know why this isn't ringing a bell. I'm
sure I've seen Jackass two a bunch of times, you know,
plus Chuck. You also want somebody around any time you're
handling a snake, whether it's a python or a venomu
snak or any sneak, really, because you want somebody to
(21:38):
call nine one one if something goes wrong, if you
want somebody to be able to drive you to the
hospital if something goes wrong, or um, if a python
is trying to get around you, they can keep the
tail from fully wrapping around. Um. There's a lot of
stuff that an extra person can do, and things go
really horribly awry when that doesn't happen. There was actually
(22:00):
a very famous case not too many years ago of
the Venezuelan zookeeper. I think it was Venezuela, wasn't it.
I remember? Um? Who was I think a grad student
working as a zookeeper and he or she went into
a into a I guess a python's cage, a ten
(22:23):
foot Burmese python cage alone during the night shift, and
they found probably just to get something or to give
it some food, just something. I'm sure it was something
mundane and totally not worth losing your life over. And
they found the person the next morning like half swallowed
by the python. Oh my lord, Um, which is so
(22:45):
you always want somebody around? Um? Well, should we get
into the uh the religious nick handling? Yeah for sure,
all right, well you said it, dude, It's called holiness
serpent handling. And we actually you might think like, oh,
they've done this for millennia um, or at least since
(23:05):
you know, the seventeen eighteen hundreds. No, nope, we have
a definitive start date nineteen ten in Tennessee the Dolly
Pond Church of God in birch Wood, there was a
preacher named George Hensley, and the legend is that he
was having a faith crisis and was reading Mark from
(23:28):
the Bible sixteen eighteen. Thou shalt take up serpents, and
if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.
That was a good Appalachian preacher um. And so he
supposedly turned in, saw a snake there and said, I'm
gonna take this quite literally. The Bible says to take
(23:49):
up snakes, so I'm gonna pick it up. And he
picked it up, and the snake didn't bite him, and
he said, well, there goes my crisis of faith. That's right.
And apparently George Hensley didn't start out a preacher. He
started out an alcoholic who had trouble keeping work. And
once this happened to him, he found his religious calling
and became a preacher in the Pentecostal tradition. And he
(24:11):
actually helped establish this separate group that's kind of within
the Pentecostal religion. Um. But the Church of God of
Science following is essentially the sect that he helped found. Yeah.
These are subsets of subsets, subsets of Christianity. Yeah. And
so Hensley's whole philosophy was you read the Bible plainly,
(24:32):
is how he put it, which means, if it says
you pick up snakes, you pick up snakes. It's God's
command to you. If it says you can drink only
any deadly thing and it will not harm you, you're
supposed to do that. Um. All churches are independent so
you decide whether women can wear pants or not at
your church. Um. And it was about as simple as that,
(24:54):
and it actually took off and became very popular throughout Appalachia.
From the nine Team Tends till about the nineteen forties,
there was I think thousands of people who went to
these um church of God with signs following churches. Yeah,
and Hinsley, for his own records, said that he survived
more than four hundred bytes until nineteen fifty five. He
(25:17):
was in Florida and an abandoned I don't know if
it was abandoned, but it was a blacksmith shop and
he was doing a demonstration and I guess holding a
little uh religious service and um he got bitten and
refused treatment because that's part of the deal is they
leave it up to you. Like Coots us on an
(25:39):
interview with him, and he said, if someone gets bitten,
I call the paramedics, have them come down. And then
I say, well, now you have a choice. You can
either do as God commands and refuse treatment and he'll
heal you if you should be healed, and if it's
your time to die, it's your time to die. Or
you can say I'd like treatment please, UM. But in
(26:00):
the tradition of you know, a true believer, Hensley said, no,
I don't want treatment, and he died the next morning,
but he survived a bunch of other bites. Like he
said says, although I lived by the snake, died by
the snake is probably a pretty good UM motto. A
lot of people think that UM holding a serpent handlers
(26:22):
are either worship the snakes because they do keep them
in in cages on the altar during services UM, or
that they UM they're doing this as a as a
show of faith to basically show, look at how how
how much I believe in God. Apparently this is definitively
(26:42):
not the case. When UM holding a serpent handlers pick
up snakes and this still goes on like there are
still churches throughout Appalachia, apparently from Ohio to Florida UM
where hundreds, if not a few thousand people UH do
this go to the services UM when they do it.
(27:03):
They don't do it at every service necessarily, but when
they do do it, it's because they believe they have
just been commanded by God to show their obedience to
God by picking up a serpent and handling it. And
when they do it, it's apparently they just enter into
um immediate religious ecstasy. Yeah, it's like they kind of
(27:24):
jump up and down and maybe speaking tongues and sort
of a trance like state. Uh. I guess we haven't
even really described it. I assume most people have seen
this at some point. Look up a YouTube video. Um,
they're not holding the snake by the back of the head.
They are literally just sometimes there are five and six
snakes and they're just holding them. Man, They're kissing them
(27:45):
on the face, they're rubbing them on their face. They
wear them like crowns. They'll throw them over their shoulders. Um, yeah,
they're they're The big difference between religious snake handlers and
professional snake handlers is that religious snake handlers go to
zero zero degree to establish any kind of safety precautions.
(28:06):
That's entirely uh ant athetical to the point. Yeah, they
don't have anti venom shots standing by in a medical kit.
No they don't. That's one. There's a hundred things that
are different. But sure, I know what you mean. And
so this whole thing was very popular, um among the
Appalachians for a good twenty thirty years and then the
(28:28):
forties there was a rash of people who died after
being bitten, and all of a sudden, the outside world
started to look in and say, what are you guys doing?
And the authorities were like, well, we don't think you
should be able to do that. I started to try
to pass laws, but none of them. There actually are
laws that and indirectly prevent people from doing this, and
(28:49):
there's actually some that directly prevent them, I guess in
every Appalachian state except for West Virginia, but they're very
rarely enforced because of religious liberties, right, yeah, religious freedoms. Yeah. Um,
there have been some raids, uh, notably actually Coots Place.
Coots Place sounds like a sitcom hanging with Mr Coot.
(29:12):
Coots Church was rated as a part of a series
of stings in two thousand eight under the code name
twice Shy. Really yeah, you're kidding me that they did there?
Um in one church they confiscated a d twenty five
snakes and may ten arrest and then it coots Um Church.
I think they got about seventy five snakes and arrested
(29:33):
a few others including him. But um, I don't think
they stay in jail very long. Um, I can't imagine
what the penalty is. Well, the grand juries typically refused
to indict them. Oh really, they just say they might
be charged with him, they might be haulled to jail,
but they there's no indictment that's handed down, so they
don't go to trial. But they confiscate the snakes at least. Yeah,
(29:53):
usually because Um, in Tennessee, for example, it's illegal to
keep venomous snakes, and snakes that they're using are very venomous.
Their deadly cotton mouths, rattlesnakes, um, all sorts of very deadly,
venomous snakes. So they're breaking the law just by having
the snakes. But again, um, they're typically left alone as
(30:15):
far as the courts are concerned. And the reason why
you're saying at the beginning of this episode, that's hard
to not just be like stop. Um, I think the
reason why I don't have that much trouble with this
I came to see it differently after doing research on it.
There they have more a's involved with this stuff, so
(30:39):
more eels more. No. I thought they handled those two
because never require like an aquarium and nobody wants that. Um,
they they have just kind of rules around the whole
thing where you don't go handle a serpent unless you
feel like you have been commanded by God to go
do that right then, and you're you're imbued with the
(31:00):
Holy Spirit which is protecting you, right then, there's no
pressure whatsoever to go do that. There's actually um discouragement
to do it for any kind of show of faith
or anything like that. Um and then children are are
banned from doing it. They're not allowed to handle the
snakes were fine with it, Yeah, in the same way
(31:20):
that like, you're free to walk into traffic if you want.
I find it even less harmful than that, because you're
endangering the other driver's life. If your hand you're walking
into traffic, somebody might steer into somebody else to get
around you. This is you and a snake. Yeah, I
do have issues with how the snakes are treated. Well,
that's one of my other big problems. So let's we'll
(31:41):
we'll get into that. We gotta take a break. Okay, Chuck,
(32:03):
we're back. What's the problem. What's your beef? Well, over
the years, let's get into some numbers, um and and
about a hundred years, they estimate about a hundred people
have died from doing it. And if you look at
the numbers and the number of people handling snakes, it's, uh,
(32:24):
you think there'll be a lot more people dying from
snake bites. Pretty pretty surprising, especially considering that most of
them do refuse medical treatment after being bitten. They still recover. Correct,
that is unusual, it's remarkable, it is uh. MPR did
a story on this in two thousand and some snake experts,
herpetologists started coming out of the woodwork, specifically the Kentucky Reptiles,
(32:48):
who has been sort of investigating this on their own
for years, and they said, you know what, there's a
lot of things going on here. Um that it's sort
of a rigging of the stacking of the deck. Stacking
of the deck and the humans favor. For one, these
snakes are mistreated, which is one reason I have a
problem with it. By all accounts from their investigations, they
(33:11):
saw crowded cages, they were dirty, There was no fecal
matter in the cage, which looked like they weren't being fed. Uh.
They asked Coots about that and he said, well, I,
um my, my my rat connection went away, rat hook,
my my mouse and rat hook up disappeared on me,
(33:32):
and he says, besides they won't eat. Uh, they won't
eat anyway, I think was his quote, which I don't
understand what that means, because snakes eat, they want to eat.
That sounds like something someone says when they're like pulling
their collar away from them. Uh. And he said as
they asked him how long is snakes lived, and he
said on average three or four months. The reptiles Zoo
(33:54):
and Kentucky said snake should lived in it's twenty years. Wow,
he said, they live on average two or four months. Yeah,
they're being mistreated. So because of this mistreatment, these hungry snakes.
There's a lot of things that happen once you have
a hungry snake, and one is they are less likely
to strike if they're unhealthy. Yeah. What else, when they
do strike, they're less likely to inject venom, So it's
(34:16):
gonna be it's likelier to be a dry strike, I think,
or dry strikes. But that's just under normal circumstances. Really,
if it's if it's a malnourished and less fed or
um underwatered snake, it's probably even higher. Higher incidents of
dry strikes than that. Okay, the venom apparently isn't as
(34:37):
potent if it's an unhealthy snake. Um. In two thousand thirteen,
they rated a church in Tennessee. I think that's Andrew
Hamblin's like you were talking about. Yeah, I think I
may have said as his first name incorrectly before, but yeah,
that's who I was talking about. Uh. And they confiscated
fifty three snakes that most of them died within months.
(34:58):
They were all unhealthy. And so basically you've got these
malnourished snakes that you know, even when they do get bitten,
they're maybe even not getting any venom or less potent venom. Right,
So it's yeah, it's rigged in a certain way. Plus
also this article points out, um it was a Julia
Layton joint. She points out that it's also possible that
(35:20):
those of us here on the outside, and maybe even
the holiness serpent handlers, overestimate just how aggressive snakes actually
are by nature. Yeah, like you were saying, if you're
handling them gently, they're not gonna strike you if they
especially if they don't feel threatened. If there's like, oh,
that's just a religious person right there, and they're in
the throes of religious ecstasy. I'll just ride it out.
(35:43):
I've been wanting to be gently shaped for a while,
so let's see where this goes. Plus a lot of
these snakes are raised in captivity, and snake experts will
tell you if you raise a snake in captivity, it's
less likely to strike at you because they don't fear
you as they should. Right. Plus, snakes don't typically speaking
(36:05):
from an evolutionary standpoint, it doesn't make any sense for
a snake to be like, yeah, I'm gonna strike you
thing that is way bigger than I am that I
don't prey upon. Naturally, I'm going to deliver all of
my venom because the venom they need it to actually eat,
they need it for prey. Right, And a snake wouldn't
know this, but natural selection would have figured it out
(36:26):
by now that if a snake is striking something like
a hippo that's coming at it and delivers all of
its venom um, that hippo is still going to stomp
the snake before the venom actually has any effect on it. Yeah,
and you've lost all your venom, and to you know,
you can regenerate it. But you know, it's not like immediate, right,
So it doesn't in a in an evolutionary natural selection standpoint,
(36:49):
it doesn't really make sense for a snake to strike
and deliver a full venom fight, correct, right. Yeah, So
you have all this stuff together and suddenly the street
of snake handling still is. It becomes a little clear.
It makes a little more sense how people are surviving,
but it's still remarkable that they aren't. They that more
(37:11):
people don't die considering how often these snakes are handled. Yeah,
and if you if you look at interviews with Coots
on the YouTube, he'll he'll pick up his uh chunk
of rotted finger that he keeps and show you. He'll say,
look this. You know, my wife had to cut it
off at the mid knuckle with rose pruners. That was
(37:33):
a different guy. That was Bill Host. Well, no Coots,
it happened to him too. Oh really rose pruners again. Yeah.
Like he literally held up his finger and showed it
to the lady on CNN. She was like, yeah, like
you kept that thing. Yeah, well, Bill Host's wife cut
his off with rose pruners. I think digits falling off
as the snake handler is pretty common. I don't think
it's like, no, that was that one guy. Um, so yeah,
(37:56):
I don't know. I mean, there you go. I'm against
it because they're mistreating snakes. Yeah, I have that. That's
my issue with it too, And so it's other than that.
I'm like, you want to do it, it's your thing. Yeah,
it's just one of those rare instances where you are again,
aside from the treatment of the snake, you're not harming
anybody but yourself. Yeah, there's almost no other instance that's
(38:20):
just like that, you know what I mean. I guess
I'm getting to be a libertarian. So let's talk about
Bill host Man, because that guy deserves maybe even his
own podcast one day. Yeah, this dude is something else. Um, well,
where do you start with him? He was well as
a kid, he had a dream. Two. He was always
(38:44):
obsessed with snakes, and he had a dream to one
day have a a snakehouse open to the public where
he could educate people. And he was an educator. He
wasn't He wasn't a religious snake handler. We should point
that out up front. He was a self trained scientist. Yeah,
for sure. It's a good way to say it. Thank
you so little kid has a dream and he grows
(39:04):
up and makes that dream a reality and really believed,
like really believed in his heart and and through experimentation,
that snake venom could be very beneficial to a human. Yeah,
he was actually um after the Miami Serpentarium, which is
his famous place that he opened, was in full swing
(39:25):
by this By the late seventies, he was in clinical
trials using snake venom to help cure things like Parkinson's
in multiple sclerosis with a doctor and the FDA actually
came in and shut them down because they were they
were basically doing human experimentation that was unsanctioned, but we
were seeing results from what I understand. Yeah, apparently he
(39:47):
was seeing results with his polio work earlier when Jonah
Saulk invented the vaccine, and he was like, man, I
guess it's great that it's cured, but I wish it
could have been mean snakes. So this dude started self immunizing.
In He injected one part cape cobra venom with one
thousand parts sailine solution into his forearm and started gradually
(40:12):
increasing the amount of venom he would inject into his
own body, and within a couple of decades he was
injecting every day a cocktail of thirty two different snakes
and reptile's venoms, which is a process called mythrid it
mythrid it ism. Yeah, methrid it is, methrid it issm
methrid Ityse was this famous um I can't remember. He
(40:34):
was an ancient king and he developed a tolerance to
poison because he was so afraid of being poisoned. So
he would drink a little bit, right, and this is
it's so now anybody who does it, it's it's methrid
it ism, And that's what he was doing. So he
actually did this for such a long time that his
blood itself became anti venom, and it actually saved twenty
(40:58):
one people's lives. Yeah, he would he would draw pints
of blood from his body to keep on hand, and
he literally several times flew all around the world with
his blood to give it to people to save them. Yeah.
And apparently, and I think nine he was bit by
a Pakistani pit viper and he didn't have any anti
venom and the White House used back channels to get
(41:20):
their hands on some from Ron heard about and saved
his life. Yeah, pretty pretty neat stuff. Uh he um.
He has this famous quote, I could become a poster
boy for the benefits of venom if I lived to
be one hundred I'll really make the point. And he
lived to be one hundred one years old with snake
venom pumping through his blood all day long. Yeah. And
(41:41):
there's a really neat um discussion about this guy in
a larger article called the Mathridityes of Fondue lock Um.
I can't remember the guy who wrote it. It's a
really great article tweeted out or something, um, but it
has some some stuff about Bell Hasten it. But it's
also about this other dude named Kim Freed who in
(42:02):
the article he takes four venomous snake bites in forty
eight hours, although the whole things about whether or not
he can live through five. But he's been doing the
same thing. Yeah. So the Serpentarium in Miami closed in
four because and I saw that the accident was in
(42:22):
nineteen seventy seven, so I'm not sure why it took
seven years to uh to close. But a six year
old boy had crocodiles and other stuff right at the place.
Six year old boy fell into the croc pit and
was mauled, and it really, uh obviously disturbed Bill because
he wasn't a bad guy. He wasn't you know. He
(42:42):
tore him up and he shot this crocodile nine times
with the lugar pistol um, and I guess seven years later,
decided to close it. Apparently the dad didn't blame Bill,
which is remarkable for the accident, which I just thought
was strange. If he took safety precautions and the kid
(43:08):
went around him, then yeah, maybe, so it's not that
dude's fault. Either way, it's horrible and tragic. Yeah, and
he he ended up closing the serpentarium as a result
of it, although I didn't realize it was seven years
later too. But he kept his um milking operation going.
That's right in his own self injection routine, and he did.
(43:28):
He flew to Venezuela once into the Amazon to deliver
some of his own blood to save a boy's life,
and he was made an honorary citizen of Venezuela as
a result. That is so cool, Yeah, pretty amazing. He
claims he had never been sick a day in his life,
didn't take never had the cold, never had the flu
didn't take aspirin um. In this article that you sent
(43:49):
says he was unusually youthful looking. I don't know. I
looked at pictures he I don't know if he looked
a hundred, but I don't know about unusually youthful looking. Right,
Maybe so he had a glow about him, Yeah, glow
from venom. I'm gonna start shooting that stuff, I guess.
Oh yeah, No, I'm gonna stay away from it and
(44:10):
just be fascinated by the whole concept. Alrighty did anything else?
I got nothing else? I don't either. If you want
to know more about snake handling, you can type those
words in the search bar how stuff works dot com.
And since I said that, it's time for oh, you
know what, it's time for Facebook questions. All right. So
(44:31):
what we do here, uh is when listener males have
dried up a little bit, we put it out to
the people on Facebook to send in questions and we'll
answer over the next two episodes as many as we
can that aren't dumb. And it's sort of a rapid
fire thing starting now. I'm like Billy on the street.
(44:53):
Who Billy on the street. Billy Eigner no great TV show.
Oh go yeah, yeah, yeah, I haven't seen it, but
I'm aware of it. It's wonderful. Let's start with Griggs Dorkin,
Good old Griggs Doorkin. Yes. He says, if you woke
up to find that you would replace the character in
a movie, you know, well, what movie and character would
(45:14):
it be? And how would you handle the circumstances differently?
Answer is a really good question. I feel like Josh
has probably had an answer to this for years. For
the Shining wink Emoticon. You spell out wink emoticon or
did it just print out like that? I don't know.
I'm not sure, but no, he's spelled it out. I
had my answered easy, John Rambo, And what would you
(45:37):
do differently? Would you just immediately surrender? I would have.
In the very beginning of First Blood when he drives
him across the bridge and says keep going that way,
I would have just kept going that way instead of
turning around and going back into the town the end,
John Rambo, that would be a boring movie. Well, it
would be very short to be a short gun, John Rambo. Hitchhiker,
(45:58):
that's a good one. Yeah, what about you, I'll have
to think about that, all right, And hey Storkin, we'll
see in Denver, buddy, all right, smile emoticon. This is
from Jamie Whittaker. H Josh always refers to his favorite book. Josh,
you want to say it, Foe, that's right, but I'm
usually driving and I never take it down. I can't remember,
(46:18):
so he says it's eighteen something. It's not right, Chuck,
what is your number one recommendation? Um? I don't know
if I have a favorite book, but I always recommend
the book middle Sex, just because it's one of the
great books that I've read. Jeffrey Eugene, I think that's right.
(46:42):
He wrote. Uh, well, he's written a lot of great books,
but Middlesex is wonderful, so great, great all around book. Yep, Okay,
nice one man. Uh, let's see. Trey mclamb has a
great question, how different would our health be if we
could sleep every day until we wake up? Natural? Really is,
if alarm clocks were never invented. I would guess we'd
(47:03):
all be a lot more mellow. We get less done, sure,
but we'd be more mellow like our five day weekend.
Remember that episode. I do I think that kind of
dovetails with that quite a bit, just kind of doing
what you do. There's your answer, good one. I don't
know about that. There's a good question. Terrible answer. Uh,
(47:26):
Sam Horne, you've been dropping hintsive late about live shows overseas.
Would love to see you in the UK. We have
loads of stuff you should now terrible, Uh Sam. We're
hoping to come to the UK this summer. We're working
on it hard. We're working on it. It may or
may not pan out because planning shows overseas is uh
you know, can be challenging. Yeah, you have to take
(47:47):
a citizenship test. Did you know that? I didn't know that.
It's weird. So we're trying and listen up for updates
on that front. Okay, let's see. Uh. Just Riddell says,
I listened to your color podcast Color with a You,
and Chuck mentioned he might have a color deficiency. I'd
like to hear a podcast about color blindness and color deficiencies.
(48:11):
Please smile emoticon. I think people are putting this in.
It's typing it out when in print it's got to
be maybe what's the question that wasn't a question? All
was a nope? Okay and good one. Uh, chuck. Well,
they say, Josh diego Leal, how's the property squatting coming along?
That was me, Um, I haven't heard anything from a
(48:33):
few years. Uh, and I have anything about Hippie Rob.
I'm still squatting everybody. It's working out great. Uh And
as far as we know, UM, we don't own the
property yet, but we think the county might. And there's
really I don't think we're in any danger of losing
it anytime soon. It's not your next door neighbor, back
back neighbor, now behind neighbor, whatever. So yeah, the county.
(48:57):
I don't know if you'll ever be able to own
it then, even through adverse possession, maybe not. But I
don't think there's anything that can do with it. It's
such a small strip, so I think we're good. Are
they gonna start parking like a tar truck back there,
County Lan? What about Hippie Rob? Any updates are John
should be Rob will forever live forever in the ether? Uh?
(49:17):
Claire Doll Dolby to Alby Dolby, I'd say Dolby too. Normally,
h if you could revisit an episode and do it
differently slash better, which one the Sun not a bad idea,
then I would definitely like another track. Um, every once
in a while, I can't think of him. I mean
(49:39):
we've done like eight hundred plus episodes. Every once in
a while, I will leave here and I say it
every time I feel that way, I'll be like that
one just wasn't as good because it could have been.
And it's always something that's like really important, Like the
topic is really important to me, so I'll like overthink
it and it always pans out fine. But I can't.
(50:00):
I can't think of any that I would just like
to go back and do over again. Yeah, my thoughts.
You just kind of let you know, even if I'm
a little disappointed, it is what it is. Yeah, that's
a philosophy, you know, I guess it is. It's a
boring philosophy. Um, Dan Floyd, are we ever going to
get a how Jerry works episode? Nope. Jerry doesn't want
(50:25):
people to know how she works. She operates in stealth
and secret. Yeah, the c I A and she may
or may not exist. Uh. Larry Tiffany says, what evidence
would we see if the flood epic of Noah's Ark
We're indeed true? Well, Larry, we've got something for you, buddy.
It's a whole episode on Noah's Ark in the Flood.
That's pretty pretty good one, if I remember correctly, I
(50:47):
have no recollection. That's a good one. Okay, how about
one more reach Luke Vissering, have you ever been told
the topic is off limits? No, we have not. That
we are lucky and that we are free to program
our own content, and are all the various bosses and
(51:07):
company owners we've had over the years, I've always steered
clear of that, which were very thankful for. Yeah, we
self regulated. One more. Josh Robinson asks Josh and Chuck,
why do you hate the nineties? Why do you hate
my childhood? Will the nineties? I'm yeah, I think the
nineties were like okay, I just don't think that they were.
(51:30):
I don't think they produced that much great stuff. Everything
just had this kind of superficialness to it. I felt like, boy,
I love the nineties. The nineties was my twenties in
my college then beloved very much to me, and things
were great in the nineties in a lot of ways.
Are you nostalgizing right now? No, though we had a
(51:51):
ban on that. No, I love the nineties, great great music,
great culture. See I think the music things where I
have the issue. I wouldn't say it was great great music.
There was some good music. I don't dispute that, but
I think there's a lot of really bad music. That's
every generation, not necessarily. I knew you're going to say that,
(52:13):
and I was prepared to respond, and it is as follows.
Look at the eighties, right, A lot of bad music,
a lot of great music, but there was a lot
more good listenable music, Like think of all the one
hit wonders in the eighties. There were a lot a
lot of singles that were pretty good and listenable even
(52:33):
at the time, not just in retrospect. In the nineties,
there was a lot a lot of stuff on the
radio was awful. Yeah, yeah, like Nirvana and stuff like that. No,
I mean again, there was some like good stuff, and
there were plenty of good bands, but for the most part,
it felt like there was just a lot of really
bad stuff too. I'll go back to the spin doctors again.
(52:55):
I think that is the emblem of nine the nineties. Yeah,
spin doctors. They were huge for a little while, and
then I think that also carried into the early two
thousand's with with a lot of the terrible nous to interest,
and it's like there just seemed to be And I
know the eighties were super vapid, very shallow, but almost
(53:17):
to a cartoonish degree. The nineties were unaware of its superficiality.
It felt like like it was trying really hard to
not be superficial, but it was failing at it. I
think I reject the notion that a lot of one
hit wonders equals good, not good better. I got three
(53:38):
words for you walking on Sunshine. That was Katrine in
the way, So it was wrong that, Well, maybe we
just have different tastes. Maybe, so sorry, let's end this now.
And don't it feel good? Yeah? Yes it does, Chuck.
So that was Facebook Questions Part one. Part one I
was sales, Never do that again. If you want to
(53:59):
get in touch of this, you can join us on Facebook,
dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. We're also on
Twitter at s y s K podcast. You can send
us an email to stuff Podcast at house stuff Works
dot com, and as always, join us at home on
the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts, My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
(54:20):
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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