A Venomous Conversation with Dr. Spencer Greene - A Toxic Tooth & Claw Interview

Wes and Mike are joined by a leading member of the toxicology community; one Dr. Spencer Greene. Jeff hops in on the back end of the episode to help round things out with some fun venom-related categories. Watch here: https://youtu.be/aAJ1m_DkLpo ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social: Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Wes Larson?

  All of you Tooth and Claw listeners know I love a good story and that's why I want to tell you about What Was That Like? What does it feel like to get hit by a car while you're biking, or be attacked by an alligator, or learn that your spouse hired someone to kill you? If those are the kind of stories you find interesting, then What Was That Like? is the podcast for you. What Was That Like? is filled with real stories about the most surreal experiences of people's lives. On each episode, a guest comes on and tells about the time they found themselves in some kind of extreme situation. It could be an animal attack. Hello, Tooth and Claw listeners. A plane crash, winning the showcase on The Price is Right, one of my personal dreams, and more. The show brings you tons of completely surreal, completely true stories, all told through the lens of the person who actually

• 0:44Wes Larson?

  experienced it. Check out some of these topics that I know will be especially interesting to you Tooth and Claw listeners. Episode 178, John was attacked by a tiger. A guy in Russia who was attacked by a tiger and only had a road flare to defend himself. Or episode 41, Lauren was attacked by a monkey, a primate specialist who was working with howler monkeys, and ended up having a pretty crazy experience with one of them. So if you want to hear some unbelievable and inspiring firsthand stories, I invite you to check out What Was That Like? Every story is verified, so you know even the most bizarre tales are someone's reality. Listen to What Was That Like? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the app you're using right now.

• 1:36Wes Larson?

  All right, everyone. Welcome back to Tooth and Claw Podcast. Jeff is actually on a little trip right now, so this is gonna be a Wes and Mike episode. Dad's gone, but we have a special episode. Last week, we talked about Synanon, the cult that actually used a rattlesnake as a weapon to attack someone that, I guess, a detractor, someone that was fighting them. And they used a southern Pacific rattlesnake, which we talked about at length last week. And as I was researching that episode, I realized there's a lot that I don't know about Venom. Venom is very complicated.

• 2:10Wes Larson?

  And we've given some basics on it, but I wanted to learn more. So we reached out to Dr. Spencer Green. He is Director of Toxicology at HCA Houston Healthcare Kingwood and has a lot of experience in venom. So Spence, Dr. Spencer Green, we welcome you to Tooth and Claw.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Thanks. Very happy to be here.

• 2:31Wes Larson?

  Yeah. And it sounds like you've done a lot of different shows, a lot of different podcasts and interviews and whatnot. So this is not your first rodeo when it comes to talking about venom.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  My first today, but yes.

• 2:43Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Okay. We can claim that much. You can put at the end of your credential list, appeared on Tooth and Claw podcast. I think that's a marquee staple.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  That's how you attract the ladies. Yes.

• 2:54Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I was wondering if you could just tell us to open up with a bit about your background and how you came to specialize in toxicology and specifically in venom.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, it's kind of a crazy story. So, you know, until I was five, I wanted to be an ice hockey player. That would not have worked out so well. But when I turned five, I wanted to be a doctor and specifically, and I had no idea why, I wanted to be an ophthalmologist. And that lasted through high school. And then at some points, I was like, oh, considering other specialties, but then I became a paramedic. So when I applied to medical school, I figured I would do emergency medicine with the ultimate goal of being a medical director for an EMS agency or whatever. And I went to med school, you know, for pretty much the entire time there, like, yes, emergency medicine. And then I went down to Vanderbilt, to Nashville, for my emergency medicine residency program. And I got involved with the local EMS stuff. I was doing

• 3:48Speaker 01

  some teaching at the university and the paramedic program. But then a few months into my residency, I met Donna Seeger, who was our toxicologist. And at the time, she was already like world renowned. She was the president of the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology. And I realized that she had this whole body of knowledge that most doctors never learn, you know, all sorts of obscure things, all sorts of poisons and side effects of drugs and plants and mushrooms and snakes and other animals and occupational exposures. And I loved everything about tox, but nothing.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Specific about tox. So when residency was over, I had an option. I had a military obligation to fill. And I could have done that right away, or I could have done my toxicology fellowship. And I chose to do my military obligation, just to get it over with. So I went up to Wright Patterson, of course, based Wright State University. And I started teaching toxicology for the residency program. I basically started out a few weeks ahead of the residence. But over the course of three years, I learned a lot. And again, I loved everything about tox, but nothing in particular. Well, during my time on active duty, I got deployed to Iraq. And I was with a special unit, and I can tell you more in 2031, when my 25 year non-disclosure statement expires.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  But I didn't do a lot of medicine there. I had a lot of downtime, like a lot of downtime. I think I saw 10 patients in 140 days-ish. But um, one day I found a snake on our property, a saw scaled viper. And I had multiple epiphanies. One, it was really hot in Iraq and I really liked the hot weather. And I was really fascinated with the snakes and the other local fauna. And I'm like, you know, I need to do my fellowship somewhere where I can learn all this stuff. So I did my fellowship in Phoenix, which historically treats among the most bites in the country. And you know, that was the rest, you know, I I fell in love with snake bites and human monster venomations and spider bites and scorpion stings. And you know, that's what I do primarily now. And if someone had told me 25 years ago,

• 5:43Speaker 01

  that this Jew from Long Island would be like famous for treating snake bites in Texas, I would have assumed they were doing drugs. But yeah.

• 5:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah, you know, it's funny that you say that. I'm, so I'm a wildlife biologist. I work primarily with bears. And I actually initially thought I was going to go into optometry. So I kind of had a similar track into getting into where I got into. That's fascinating. And saw scaled vipers.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  I did, but married an optometrist, so you know, I got that going for me.

• 6:11Wes Larson?

  Oh, okay. Perfect. Saw scaled vipers, they're one of the more, like, some of the more bites in the world come from that snake, right?

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I heard one time, and I don't know if this is still true, I don't know if it was ever accurate, but I heard at one time that they're responsible for more deaths than any other species. Because there are so many of them, and they're often in places where people can't get medical care.

• 6:30Wes Larson?

  Okay, because they're found throughout Africa, throughout a lot of different places.

• 6:34Mike Smith?

  So I actually had a couple of brothers who served in the Marines who also deployed Iraq, Afghanistan. Is that, was that like, something that people were schooled on to be wary of the danger of snakes, or was that just?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  No, and to be honest, I only saw one in my entire time there.

• 6:49Mike Smith?

  Oh, okay, wow.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  So, I mean, maybe some people who were in different parts. I was in Balad, so we didn't really have a lot of animals.

• 6:57Wes Larson?

  Okay, so, something we talk about a lot on the podcast when we're talking about venomous snakes, is, you know, some basic information about the way that different types of venom in snakes work. And I know the three types that we brought up the most are hemotoxic, myotoxic, neurotoxic venoms. And I was wondering if you could give us just kind of a 101 explanation of how those three types of venom actually work.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Now, technically, myotoxic would be a fourth one, because the most common is actually cytotoxic.

• 7:31Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Especially people who are familiar with the bites in the US. Most of our bites are cytotoxic, and oftentimes they are exclusively cytotoxic. So that means tissue injury, tissue swelling, sometimes tissue necrosis, which could be superficial, or it could be full thickness. But cytotoxic means it's tissue injury. Cytotoxic means cell, but it's tissue damage. Hematologic toxicity can mean a few things. You know, sometimes people get bit and they're exposed to hemotoxic venoms or venom components that make them unlikely or unable to coagulate, or somehow interferes with their platelets, so they're at risk for bleeding. But hemotoxic venoms can also include things that cause you to clot, and in sometimes you get both

• 8:13Speaker 01

  effects. So you consume all your clotting factors, so then you bleed because you have nothing remaining. So hemotoxic could be you bleed, or you get clotting. Or both cytotoxics tissue injury then neurotoxic means it it affects your nerves and sometimes that's isolated to you know abnormal sensations what we call parasthesias or if they're painful dysthesias the more worrisome neurotoxic manifestations include objective weakness which might be confined to like your eyes your throat where you know you can't open your eyes or your eyelids drag or you can't swallow you know the worst manifestations would be skeletal and respiratory muscle paralysis then myotoxic you know you get muscle damage which may

• 8:57Speaker 01

  not correlate to the amount of local tissue injury so sometimes the tissue doesn't look that bad but then there's you know lab evidence of serious muscle breakdown which can result in weakness as well

• 9:08Wes Larson?

  Okay so as I've kind of done you know again a base level of research into these different types of venom and the and the types of snakes that that have them it does seem like I tend to see that the neurotoxic ones are the ones that tend to be the most complicated when it comes to a treatment perspective am I am I wrong in that is it are there ones that are more dangerous than others when it comes to venom types

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Certainly neurotoxic are challenging but you know what I hear a lot about and what I see on occasion you know I practice in Southeast Texas so I have primarily copperheads and cottonmouths but when I was in Arizona and when I get called about bites from other parts of the country some of the most challenging ones are actually the hematologic toxicities so we see severe thrombocytopenia with timber rattlesnakes for example and you know there's no really effective treatment and then you mentioned Southern Pacific Southern Pacifics can certainly be neurotoxic but they're also often characterized by you know bleeding and thrombocytopenia low platelets that we just can't treat so I think those might be really difficult as well but yeah you know the the most dreaded complications

• 10:14Speaker 01

  from some of our big bad pit vipers include you know neurotoxic for example the Mojave in California is you know famous so I did a study a few years ago showing that it's not nearly as common as people have been led to believe and it's often much more mild than people have been led to believe you know a bite from a Mojave in California is not a death sentence for example You're not more likely than not going to end up on a ventilator, you know, it's a possibility, but it's not likely.

• 10:39Wes Larson?

  And there, I mean, there's hundreds of people that get bit by venomous snakes every year in the US.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Thousands.

• 10:44Wes Larson?

  Thousands, thousands, okay.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's five to 10,000 every year.

• 10:48Wes Larson?

  And how many fatalities do we see on average in the US from, from snakebite?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  I actually know this really well because I wrote the paper looking at this a few years ago.

• 10:56Wes Larson?

  Amazing, yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  We looked at a 20-year period from 1989 to 2018 and we found an average of 3.4 fatalities per year.

• 11:04Wes Larson?

  Okay, so yeah, pretty, pretty low, especially compared to other countries.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:09Wes Larson?

  Extremely low.

• 11:10Mike Smith?

  Are you, I assume you've probably had cases where you're tending to bite victims who have unfortunately passed away? Is that something that you've dealt with?

• 11:19Speaker 01

  No, knock on wood, I have never had a snakebite fatality. I've had some patients with some bad outcomes, like one had a stroke while I was in the hospital. And recently, in a neighboring hospital in my town, it wasn't my hospital, but a neighboring hospital had a fatality just exactly a month ago. Uh, no, a month and a day ago. So, but no, in, in the 1,500, 2,000 patients I've treated, I have never fortunately had a fatality.

• 11:42Wes Larson?

  So I have to imagine that's a combo in the US of like, of access to really good anti-venom and then also not having access to some of these more dangerous types of snakes, like, you know, spectacled cobras, Russells vipers, those kind of snakes that are responsible for a lot of deaths.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Right, so there's a number of factors, you know, even our most dangerous snakes, you know, I, I like to gauge, you know, snake danger, if you will, by the untreated lethality rate, meaning what's the likelihood they're going to die if they never seek medical attention? And for some of our pit vipers, you know, it's anywhere from 20 to 40%, like Mojave's is about 30 to 40%, tiger rattlesnakes up there, whereas like the western dimeback, eastern dimeback is closer to 10 to 20%, and the timber rattlesnake's 10%. On the other hand, like copper is less than 1%. So, part of the reason we have so few fatalities fortunately is because the snakes, like you said, on average, aren't as bad as some of the ones found in other parts of the world. The people who do die. They either die in the first few minutes because of a systemic envenomation,

• 12:47Speaker 01

  or rarely from anaphylaxis, but that requires prior sensitization to snake venoms. Or they die usually after about 24 hours because of multi-organ failure because they were, you know, just had a severe envenomation and they were under resuscitated or whatever. And then, of course, some people don't seek medical attention. It was interesting, in our paper, on our fatalities paper, every death in Kentucky, I think it was, and I think one other state, maybe Georgia, it was a religious leader who was handling a snake who got bitten and then did not immediately or at all seek medical attention.

• 13:18Wes Larson?

  Makes sense, yeah. That'll do it.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:22Wes Larson?

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• 14:07Wes Larson?

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• 14:52Jeff Larson?

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• 15:32Jeff Larson?

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• 16:12Jeff Larson?

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• 16:20Wes Larson?

  Okay, that's really interesting. Yeah, so I guess a quick aside question too that I have is, I've heard a lot of different pronunciations for antivenom. I've heard antivenine, antivenin, antivenom. What's the proper way to say that?

• 16:34Speaker 01

  So two of them are acceptable. You know, antivenin is what was originally used because it was derived from the French. And then antivenom is what is preferred. According to the World Health Organization, in English speaking countries, the preferred term is antivenom. Antivenin is fine. It drives me nuts when people say antivenine. Be sound.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Obnoxious, and I know they don't mean to be, but it's wrong. And the thing I hate even more is when people are typing it and they put a hyphen in the middle. That drives me nuts. There's no hyphen in antivenom.

• 17:05Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  But yeah, the World Health Organization says antivenom. Now, interestingly, the Associated Press prefers antivenin. Either one's fine, just don't frickin' hyphenate it.

• 17:14Wes Larson?

  Okay, deal. Yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  And no antivenin, that's just, yeah.

• 17:19Wes Larson?

  I was saying antivenine for a hot minute and I was feeling very annoying, so I'm glad you said that it is.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  I hear that.

• 17:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 17:27Mike Smith?

  Wes did self-correct, though, so, yeah. He didn't need any, any outside influence to change course on that one.

• 17:33Wes Larson?

  So I guess then, you know, where you specialize in the southeast, but you have this body of knowledge about snakes within the United States. Which species that, that people might come into contact with in the United States, would you consider the most dangerous venomous, venomous species?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  So the most dangerous is probably the mahogany. Now, you know, people have looked at the LD50s of different snake venoms. And I think most people think the tiger rattlesnake has the most potent venom. But potency, while important, is actually less important than the total volume delivered. You know, it's the volume that determines the badness the most. And the combination of the potency and the volume of the mahogany rattlesnake makes it the most dangerous. Now, you'll hear something say, oh, the most dangerous snake is the one that bit you. You know, that's a nice little cliche, but it's stupid. Um, the most dangerous one, the one that's most likely to kill you, is the mahogany rattlesnake.

• 18:30Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  And I want to point out, people always talk about coral snakes, you know, cousins of the cobra, they'll kill ya. Yeah, no, there's never been a death from the Arizona coral snake. There's no documented human fatalities from the Texas coral snake. And the last death from an eastern coral snake was in 2006. It was a drunk guy who did not seek medical attention. And there's been fewer than five in the last 100 years. So coral snakes are not the most dangerous, not even close.

• 18:54Wes Larson?

  And, and I think I understand why, and that's because for a coral snake to really, you know, deliver a lot of venom, it really needs to chew on you. It's not like a striking snake, like a rattlesnake.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  So they don't deliver venom as efficiently as pit vipers. Pit vipers are like, you know, the apex venom delivers. It's like, but it's a myth that coral snakes have to chew. They absolutely do not have to chew, but they have small fixed front fangs and they're not as efficient. But the other thing is, even though the venom might be potent, they don't deliver a lot of venom.

• 19:25Wes Larson?

  Got it. Great. So another question I had here, we've covered some basic safety information in our episodes about venom snakes. The point that I've really tried to drive home is that you hear a lot of information about things you can do if you're bitten, but really the two most important things from what I've read is that, you know, you get your keys and your phone. You call for medical attention and you get to medical attention as quickly as possible. Everything else is kind of window dressing. I'm curious if there's anything you want to add to that, if there's any, any other information.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  So, I mean, everything you said is just right, although I would point out that I don't encourage snakebite victims to drive themselves. Uh, maybe call an Uber or call somebody else. But yeah, basically get to medical attention and in the interim, don't do anything stupid. You know, things that have been proposed in the past to treat snakebites range from useless at best to harmful at worst. So many things that were once recommended should not be done. You know, one of the worst ones is a tourniquet. You know, tourniquets are great if you have life threatening bleeding, but cutting off the arterial blood supply to an avenged limb is just gonna, you know, condemn it to more tissue injury and maybe entire tissue loss. Cutting and sucking is stupid. It doesn't work. And, you know, in,

• 20:43Speaker 01

  first of all, you're introducing mouth flora into something that's not usually going to get infected and cutting into something is just gonna make something worse. But the funny thing is, you know, you can't actually remove venom with suction, whether it's your mouth or using one of those extraction devices. But if you could theoretically, if you had a lesion in your mouth, you could absorb that venom. And, you know, personally, the people I've seen try to do this cutting and sucking are the ones who are likely to have lesions in their mouths. So take that for what it's worth. So, you know, the extraction devices don't work, you know, the best editorial ever, or best titled editorial ever, came out in 2004, February 2004, my friend Sean Bush, wrote an editorial in Annals of Emergency Medicine, it said, "Extraction devices don't remove venom, they just suck." And it's true, these things don't help. Nothing helps, you know, using electricity.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  I hear so many people say, "Oh, you know, venom is protein, I want to denature the protein." You know what else is protein? People. You don't want to denature the people. I mean, I know it's cool in a Tarantino sort of way to hook your friends up to a car battery, but it's stupid. You know, if you're lucky, you'll just burn them, otherwise you'll kill them. And then ice. So this is the challenging one. My friends, I have a lot of friends who've been bitten, they tell me ice makes them feel better. But the problem is, we know that prolonged ice is absolutely harmful to the tissue. It's reasonable to do five minutes on, 10 minutes off. What I see so often though is either with the victims, or like EMS or whatever, they'll just throw the ice pack on and leave it there. And that's harmful. If you can do just a few minutes on, a longer period off, that's okay. But yeah, in general, the pre-hospital stuff is just not going to help. Get to the right place.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  And don't do anything stupid.

• 22:15Mike Smith?

  Is, so the right place, I would assume, like, the best ideal circumstance would be to get to somewhere with a toxicologist like yourself? Is it reasonable to expect any major health organization, or maybe not even major, but like, anywhere you go, will they have someone that you think will be fully capable of dealing with the situation or not?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Not at all. So, and that's a great question, you know, I'm in Houston, which is one of the biggest cities in the country, and there's a whole bunch of hospitals here. And I don't want to throw my colleagues under the bus, but I'm going to. Frankly, most of them around here suck. They are terrible. You know, most hospitals have antivenom, but what I'm constantly telling people is that it takes more than antivenom. It takes someone who knows when and how to use it, and what else to do, and what else not to do, and how long to watch the patients. You know, I'm involved with a group on Facebook called National Snakebite Support, and every day, every single day, we hear about patients who were watched for two hours, and then discharged without any labs, and then they come in the next day with their, you know, entire limbs swollen.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  You know, blistering with their, you know, labs all abnormal. So many places are so bad at this. So no, you want to go to a place with an expert. And, you know, most hospitals aren't going to have a toxicologist. There's only about 600 of us in the country and we're not evenly distributed. There's entire states without toxicologists. And interestingly, some of the toxicologists in the Northeast have never been to snakebite. So, you know, they have some rudimentary training in fellowship, but they don't have any experience. Conversely, you don't have to be a toxicologist. You know, one of the nation's experts on snakebites is Chuck Gerardo out of Duke. He's not a toxicologist, but there's no one in the galaxy who knows more about copper red bites than he does. So you want to identify beforehand where are the places where they have knowledgeable people?

• 24:00Speaker 01

  And, you know, the skills to manage the entire bite.

• 24:04Wes Larson?

  So in like a hypothetical situation, if you can't end up somewhere in the ideal place to get it treated, what would you advise patients to do in that circumstance to kind of like vouch for themselves? To make sure they're getting the best treatment?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  You know, there's all these guidelines that are readily available online. You know, the most famous is the Unified Algorithm, which came out in 2011. And there's a current, you know, there's a new version that's currently undergoing the peer review process. I'm one of the authors of that one. And, you know, we emphasize certain things, including watching bites for a minimum of eight hours, even if they have no symptoms, and if they have any symptoms, 12 to 24 hours. And, and having a low threshold to treat with antivenom. So there's the Unified Algorithm, there's the American Academy of Emergency Medicine Guidelines. There's the Wilderness Medicine Guidelines. We have a new version coming out later this year as well, and I'm one of the authors of that. And I authored the American Academy of Emergency Medicine Guidelines. There are things online that people can see what should happen.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  You know, people have to advocate for themselves because oftentimes their treating physician might not be familiar with snakebites.

• 25:03Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  So.

• 25:05Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we did an interview of a girl who had been bitten, I think by a southern Pacific. She was in Joshua Tree. And she went to the hospital and they just did not give her enough antivenom and then wanted to do a fasciotomy. And she found like a Facebook group that was advocating for, you know, her advocating for herself and had listened to the podcast. Cast too and really pushed for more anti venom and they ended up giving it to her and she recovered. But I almost had to do a fasciotomy, which would have been, you know, a very kind of, I don't know too much about what a fasciotomy entails, but I know it was a lot more than she wanted to do. So.

• 25:44Mike Smith?

  Or needed. Yeah.

• 25:45Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Well, that's good to know. And I'm glad, I'm glad we talked about that because I do want our listeners to advocate for themselves if they are ever bitten. Hopefully they aren't.

• 25:55Wes Larson?

  Thanks for asking that, Mike. We had a couple of other questions here. I'm curious, just what's your favorite venomous snake?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Um, well, hopefully my mom won't watch this podcast because she doesn't know about this, but the white lip tree viper is, is my favorite.

• 26:08Mike Smith?

  Blur it out for you.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  The, the white lip tree viper is my favorite snake in the world. Um, so primorusus abo labris, but I also love corals. You know, my favorite native snake is definitely the Texas coral snake.

• 26:20Wes Larson?

  Cool. White lip tree vipers there in Komodo? Is that, is that that one?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  They are in Thailand.

• 26:25Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  They're responsible for almost all the significant venomations in Thailand.

• 26:30Wes Larson?

  All right.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  There's other primorusus species throughout the Southeast.

• 26:34Wes Larson?

  Yeah. When it comes to snakes around the world, what do you think is the snake that you would least want to get bit by?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  So it's really funny. We talk about this a lot. Certain snakes I wouldn't want to get bit by in certain locations, but I'd be fine in other locations. For example, in Africa, I wouldn't want to be bit by a mamba because I'm likely so far from definitive medical care that there's a good chance I'll die.

• 27:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  But, you know, I had a friend get bitten by a black mamba a few years ago in Houston and he was 30 minutes away from the hospital. That's great. He went home the day, you know, two days later. In fact, he could have gone home the next day, but we kept him just for observation. And that was after he was on the ventilator for a day. I'd rather get bit by a mamba in the United States than a rattlesnake. Because after 24 hours, I'm going to be fine from the mamba bites, but I might have significant tissue injury for days to weeks after the rattlesnake bite. But if I'm in Africa, I'd rather have a bunch of tissue injury than be dead.

• 27:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  So it really depends on where I am. Obviously, some of the Australian snakes are really potent. You know, the Malaysian blue coral snake can be really painful. It can cause significant skeletal risk for muscle paralysis. Okay.

• 27:45Mike Smith?

  I've heard, and maybe this is a myth you can help dispel if it's in your wheelhouse, but I've always heard, I'm a diver, so I spend time in the water. That sea snakes are often more venomous than terrestrial. Is that true?

• 27:56Speaker 01

  So they have really potent venom, but it's really hard to get bitten by one of those. You basically have to go up to it. You know, stick your hand in its mouth and squeeze its head. They have no desire to bite you. They know they're not going to eat you.

• 28:10Mike Smith?

  Good to know.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  So you really have to make an effort to get bitten by a sea snake. But yes, their venoms are potent. But there's not a lot of venom, and more importantly, they have no desire to just, you know,

• 28:21Mike Smith?

  Okay.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  inject you with that venom.

• 28:24Mike Smith?

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• 29:09Mike Smith?

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• 29:44Wes Larson?

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• 30:26Wes Larson?

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• 31:10Wes Larson?

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• 31:13Mike Smith?

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• 32:33Mike Smith?

  your free sample pack with any Element purchase at drinklmnt.com/tooth. Be sure to try the new Element Sparkling, a bold 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. That leads really well into my next question, which I'm curious, in your opinion, worldwide, which species of venomous snake would you consider the most dangerous? So that's including the whole package, like willingness to bite, venom load, venom toxicity, everything.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  So we're not talking about like access to care in something, just the snake itself?

• 33:06Mike Smith?

  Yeah, in a vacuum, you know, not access to care, just you're in a room with the snake. Which one do you least want in that room with you?

• 33:13Speaker 01

  I mean, classically, the answer is the Taipan, but you know, the Gaboon Viper has a huge fangs, delivers a lot of venom. That's bad. Saw scales, again, account for a lot. Russell's Viper is pretty bad. Boomblang, you know, bleed to death. So.

• 33:31Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Okay. So those are some of your, your top picks. Okay. I know when we talked about Russell's Vipers, there was some really interesting stuff about like reverse puberty, reverse puberty, a few like weird things that they can do to your hormones and whatnot when you're bitten by a Russell's Viper. Have you heard anything about that?

• 33:50Speaker 01

  A little bit. I'll be honest, I'm not as familiar with them as with some other species, you know?

• 33:54Mike Smith?

  Yeah, that, that makes sense where you're based out of Houston, too.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny, I do treat a lot of non-native bites because in Texas, you can own whatever you want, but I've never known, I've never treated anyone with a Russell's Viper. So I'm more familiar with various cobras and mambas and such.

• 34:08Wes Larson?

  Yeah, they're not a big collector snake either. So that makes sense.

• 34:12Mike Smith?

  Do you?

• 34:12Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 34:13Mike Smith?

  Uh, maybe this isn't even a logical question. It's just something that came to mind, but if a snake, a venomous snake bit another venomous snake, even of the same species, are they like resistant or immune to the toxins passed on from the others?

• 34:28Speaker 01

  So it's funny, some are, some aren't. It kind of depends on the species and it comes from the species. You know, and then of course, some species have greater resistance to certain, even some non venomous snakes have some resistance to venom, you know, from certain species. And then non snakes have varying degrees of resistance, you know? People are always asking, you know, why aren't we making antivenoms from opossums? Cause they have, you know, they're immune to snake venom. They're not so much immune as they're highly resistant, but commercially we have not used opossums to make antivenom.

• 35:02Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 35:02Mike Smith?

  Interesting.

• 35:03Wes Larson?

  I had no idea that opossums were like.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's some people doing some really good work looking into it and, and maybe someday, someday, maybe we'll have some products derived from opossums as a result, but.

• 35:14Mike Smith?

  Okay. Oh, that's actually something I wanted to ask about because obviously, and for good reason, there's a lot of negative association with like invenamation, venom, toxins, et cetera. But I also know that a lot of those same venoms are used in research and development of like new therapies and treatments and stuff. Do you have, is that part of your world at all is like contributing to the positive contributions that venom can have to the world at large? Or is that something you're knowledgeable about what's going on?

• 35:45Speaker 01

  I was, I mishap. So you said how venoms are beneficial? Is that what you asked?

• 35:49Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I know. Just some of them can be used for like therapies and.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. So one of the most commonly prescribed class of drugs for hypertension are ACE inhibitors. The original ACE inhibitor, Capticrol, came from the jararaca, Batschur's jararaca. So that's a huge thing.

• 36:07Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  There are some, you know, antiplatelet medications used for cardiac patients that have derived from snakes. Uh, and then beyond snakes, you know, what's huge right now, you know, Ozempic and similar drugs, these are all GLP agonists. The original Mac Daddy GLP agonist was Exenatide, which comes from the Gila monster, which incidentally was responsible for the absolute worst invenamation I've ever seen. And then beyond that, yeah, I'll tell you about that in a second if you want.

• 36:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  And then there's a medicine we use for people with chronic pain. It's given intrathecaally. And it's called zirconotide and it comes from cone snails. Yeah, there are literally dozens of venoms that are being used in varying degrees. You know, some are on the market, some are being studied. You know, people have looked at contortifoxin from copperheads as a treatment for breast cancer. So there's a whole bunch of stuff that's already out there or in the works and some of those may pan out.

• 37:00Wes Larson?

  Another reason to like snakes, right?

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:03Wes Larson?

  Go snakes. I knew about the hila monster ozenpic connection, but now that you brought it up, I'm very curious to hear about this hila monster envenomation.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Now I published a ton, you know, 15 years ago, I was not good about doing that scholarly activity stuff that I regret it because this would have been like the best case report ever. So there's this guy, he had had six previous snake envenomations. He had lost his, one of his thumbs to a snake envenomation. And he woke up one morning in southern Arizona and he decided, well, first he had, you know, his typical breakfast of two pitchers of beer. Then he decided he wanted to be a pirate. I can tell you, there's a conspicuous absence of parrots in southern Arizona. So instead of putting a parrot on his shoulder, he put a hila monster, which shortly thereafter bit him on the neck.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Went to the first hospital, he had massive airway swelling, you know, his blood pressure plummeted and he had horrible diarrhea, which is redundant because there's no good diarrhea. And, and they gave him everything and they, you know, they forced a tube down his throat. And, you know, they gave him all sorts of meds and treatments and they flew him to us. He actually arrived about 10 minutes after a woman who had had a rattlesnake bite and she was stable. And I said something to her that I've said to none of my thousand bite victims before or since. I said, excuse me, I want to go see somebody more interesting. And this guy, he looked like the Michelin man. He was so edeminitous. And they forced a tiny tube down his throat. We actually switched it out and he stayed on the ventilator for eight days. Because he was that sick. Yeah.

• 38:34Wes Larson?

  That's crazy. And their, their whole system of, of venom delivery is, is completely different.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  It is. It's much more rudimentary. You know, it just basically the, the venom travels in the grooves of their teeth and they really have, they, you know, they clamp on. And sometimes it's really difficult to remove the hila monster from the victim.

• 38:53Wes Larson?

  So I know in like in other lizards, they think now and you know, venom experts like yourself or whoever think that maybe some of the varnids, monitor lizards, whatnot, might have like a rudimentary type of venom as well. Okay.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I lectured on this in Denver in 2023. Yeah, in 2023, I talked about venomous lizards of the of North America. So I focused on human monsters and beetle lizards, but I did spend five minutes because you know, it's going to come up. Is the Komodo dragon venomous or not? And some people say yes, some people say no. I say it is not.

• 39:31Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Well, it depends on how you define venom. You know, if you use a very loose definition, then they are, but then so are humans because we have components in our saliva that aid in digestion. So if you if you divine venom very loosely, then yeah, they are, but so are we. If you use a more narrow definition of venom, then humans are not, and nor are Komodo dragons.

• 39:52Wes Larson?

  Okay. That's good to know. I'm glad I'm glad you answered that because even when I did hours of research into that and I couldn't find what I considered like a straight answer on that.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say they're not. I know I have some colleagues who say they are. They're wrong. It's okay.

• 40:07Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 40:10Wes Larson?

  Appreciate that. All right. I got one or two other questions for you. We tend to talk about movies a lot, even though we're a wildlife podcast. I'm curious if there's any snake bite scene in a movie that stands out for you, like a favorite snake bite scene from a movie.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Well, I would naturally, I have to address snakes on a plane.

• 40:32Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  It's it's an entertaining movie. It is a ridiculous movie. It's nonsensical from start to finish. So it's frustrating from a toxic toxicology standpoint for so many reasons, not the least of which they got a herpetologist, not a toxicologist. You know, herpetologists don't treat people.

• 40:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  People we treat herpetologists. But yeah, that movie is insane. But yeah, I saw that question. I'm wondering, are there any scenes I really like? Now, everyone asked me about Lonesome Dove. I have not seen Lonesome Dove, so I can't comment on other than, yes, I know someone died. It was a bunch of cotton mats, I guess. But I've never actually seen the movie. But literally, someone asked me about this yesterday while I was working out. You know, my favorite movie that has anything, anything to do with the snake, my favorite movie of all time is actually Escape from New York. And of course, the protagonist is Snake Fliskin. He's got a Cobra tattoo.

• 41:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we'll accept that answer.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's my favorite movie. And it's funny because I've actually, you know, when I'm having some of my delusions of grandeur, I actually sometimes think of myself as Nate Pliskin because, you know, he's got a bad eye and I'm mostly blind on my left eye. He has a snake tattoo. I've got a snake tattoo. For part of the movie, he walks with a limp. Before I had back surgery, I walked with a limp, you know.

• 41:42Wes Larson?

  You're the same person. It's crazy.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  And it takes place in New York. I'm from New York, but the film was actually filmed primarily in St. Louis where I went to college. So I'm like, this is my cinematic spirit animal.

• 41:52Wes Larson?

  There you go. I like it. Well, I got one more. And then, Mike, if you have anything else you can ask too. But, uh, you know, we, again, on Tooth and Claw, we like to educate people about potentially dangerous wildlife because often we learn that, you know, it's human error that leads to these interactions, negative interactions, not so much the animal being aggressive or anything. And I think with snakes, that's especially true. Often people we've learned are bitten on the hands because they're trying to handle the snake. And a lot of these snakes even give us a physical warning before they bite us. So I'm just curious if you have anything you'd like to say to advocate for the the general role of snakes and their ecosystems and why they're important. Yeah.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Okay. And I want to address two things. So snakes are important, even beyond what we've already talked about, how, you know, they contribute to various, you know, medicinals and of course, antivenom, which is, you know, made by making antibodies to the snake venom. You know, they have an important role in the ecosystem. You know, they're great for vermin control and of course, rats might spread diseases through the things that are on them. So they have an important role. But honestly, even if they didn't, so what? There's a lot of people I consider useless, but we're not, you know, actively trying to remove them from society, you know? They had, they belong here, you know, they have a right to be here. But that said, they're also, you know, beautiful creatures who are part of the ecosystem, even if they didn't directly benefit us, but they do because of the medicinals. But I want to point out, there's so much misinformation about how bites happen.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Most bites do not happen following intentional interaction. Multiple studies, including two I've been involved with, found that it's between like ten and twenty percent that result from people intentionally messing with the snake. You know, the one, the study you published, I think in two thousand and thirteen, we found that only nineteen percent were the result of intentional interaction. Most people get bitten by the snake when they're not aware of it. And I have a paper coming out in a little while that looks at how bites happen at different times of the day. And we found, you know, at least in southeast Texas, a lot of the bites in the morning were people sticking their hands where they can't see it, whether they were gardening or, you know, reading meters, stuff like that. And at night, a lot of the bites were to the lower extremity because they were walking outside in the dark, wearing either no shoes or inappropriate shoes, and then they step on or near the snake.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  You know, the, the number of bites that are, that come from people grabbing the snake on purpose, like, you know, whether they're wearing it, it's, it's minimal. Now, that's not true for coral snakes. To get bitten by a coral snake, usually you have to mess with it. I've only had three coral snake bites that were the result of bad luck. The rest were people messing with the snake. Now, sometimes it was good intentioned messing, like there was a kid who was trying to save the coral snake from the road and he got bitten in the process. Um, another time, there was a kid who was camping and the, the leader of the camping trip told him it was actually a safe snake to pick up, so he picked it up and it was a coral snake, so he misidentified it. But yeah, in general, most bites happen when people are unaware of the snake. So, the advice I'd give people is, you know, wear appropriate footwear, especially outside at night,

• 44:47Speaker 01

  and never stick your hand in a place you can't see where snakes live. Like where, where I live, there are no venomous snakes. In, in my neighborhood, there are no venomous snakes, so I can go stick my hands, feet wherever. But if you're in a place where there's snakes, always be aware of where your hands and feet are, especially, and use flashlights, wear appropriate footwear.

• 45:03Wes Larson?

  That's great, thank you. I, I'm glad, I'm glad I asked you that question because I think a lot of the stuff I'd read online said that, you know, it was people messing with snakes, so it's good to talk to an expert, but...

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we, you know, like I said, we had a paper that showed nineteen percent were intentional. Uh, my colleagues from University of Arizona, using a completely different data set, it was like twelve point six percent. And, you know, using the North American Snake Bite Registry, the updated data, I think it's something like fourteen point five percent. So really, it's a minority of people who are messing with the snake. Now, people who have multiple bites in their, in their lifetimes, they're usually messing with the snake. And that's the paper I'm working on today, actually, and the presentation I'm doing on Venom Week. But yeah.

• 45:39Wes Larson?

  Amazing. Or if it's a hea monster, or a coral snake, or something like that, you're probably messing with it.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

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• 46:17Wes Larson?

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• 47:00Wes Larson?

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• 47:40Wes Larson?

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• 47:51Wes Larson?

  Mike, do you have anything you want to ask before we let Spence go?

• 47:55Mike Smith?

  I think the one thing that's gone unanswered is, have you ever been envenomated yourself?

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Not yet. Just a matter of time. So, almost twice. Back on election night 2008, I was talking to a friend while walking outside of my car. I had just driven down from Phoenix to Tucson to interview for my job at University of Arizona. And while walking outside in the parking lot of Bearford, I almost stepped on a juvenile western diamondback rattlesnake. And then one time, I was taking care of a kid with a snake bite, and they had brought in the dead copperhead. So I was carrying it around, showing people. And that dead copperhead started thrashing about because it was less dead than I realized. So, so I have not been envenomed yet. You know, the odds are better than 50% that I will at some point because I go looking for snakes and I'm blind in one eye. But, um, but yeah, as of right now, I've only had bites from non-venomous snakes.

• 48:42Wes Larson?

  All right. Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna knock on wood for you.

• 48:44Mike Smith?

  The old princess bride, almost nearly dead, or whatever it is. I love that snakes can do that. Just keep living even when they're not. It's awesome.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:53Wes Larson?

  All right. Well, we appreciate your time. If, if we ever have like some unanswered question, I may email you and ask you just so we're not ever spreading any false information. But, um, thank you so much for talking to us, Dr.

• 49:05Mike Smith?

  Thank you, Spence.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

• 49:08Wes Larson?

  All right. We'll see you later. All right. So for the back half of this episode, we have another special guest. Uh, we're here joined by Jeff Larson, podcaster extraordinaire. Jeff, welcome to Tooth and Claw.

• 49:20Jeff Larson?

  Thank you. Yeah, Wes said that that last interview was a little too intelligent for me. He didn't think I could hang, but he said I could come do the pop culture stuff still.

• 49:33Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Now that we're going to talk about stupid shit, Jeff's welcome back.

• 49:38Jeff Larson?

  He's like, you're perfect for this second part, Jeff.

• 49:42Wes Larson?

  All right. Well, we just talked to a venom expert, Dr. Spencer Green, who is a toxicologist. Uh, great conversation, really fun. I learned a lot of things from him and I learned we'd been saying some stuff wrong. So Jeff, just so you know, more people are bitten by snakes just because of like surprise encounters than people that are handling them. Which we had said that a lot of snake, most snake bites come from people like trying to mess with snakes. So we got that wrong.

• 50:09Jeff Larson?

  I knew that.

• 50:09Wes Larson?

  And then, you knew that. Okay. I should have had you interview this guy.

• 50:15Wes Larson?

  And then also, he doesn't think Komodo dragons have venom. And he's like, an expert on that, so.

• 50:20Jeff Larson?

  Oh, nice. What do they have?

• 50:22Wes Larson?

  Uh, they have like, proteins in their saliva that some people think are venom, but he said if they have venom, then we have venom. So maybe we have venom.

• 50:31Mike Smith?

  Really gross spit, basically.

• 50:32Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Anyway, it was a good conversation. Um, but let's move on to our categories. Our first one is one I came up with. It is, I want you guys to rank Venom. The, uh, like anti-hero, or would you say he's a villain? I think he's a villain. Rank Venom among the Spider-Man villains.

• 50:51Mike Smith?

  Well, he's not cooler than Green Goblin. I know that for much.

• 50:54Wes Larson?

  Yeah, well, let's hear where he is in your ranking then, Mike.

• 50:57Mike Smith?

  Two, I guess. Well, who else are we even talking about?

• 51:01Wes Larson?

  Let's do...

• 51:02Mike Smith?

  Green Goblin is number one.

• 51:04Wes Larson?

  Green Goblin's your first?

• 51:06Mike Smith?

  Yeah, how about that?

• 51:07Wes Larson?

  Alright. I actually wrote mine down and ranked them, because I, you know, did the assignment. So, I went with Carnage number one. Venom number two, because I just liked how Carnage is like, essentially Venom, but a lot more destructive. Green Goblin was three. Lizard was my fourth. Uh, I really just like a big lizard as a, as a Venom.

• 51:29Jeff Larson?

  Uh, he's maybe my number one.

• 51:31Wes Larson?

  Villain, yeah.

• 51:32Jeff Larson?

  His whole goal is just to make people reptiles.

• 51:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah, turn everyone into lizards.

• 51:40Jeff Larson?

  That's like his whole mission is, he thinks that humans need to evolve into lizard.

• 51:47Mike Smith?

  That's great. He's my number, he's my new number one. I'll go with the big rhino guy too, in front of Venom.

• 51:52Wes Larson?

  Just a rhinoceros.

• 51:53Mike Smith?

  He just turns into a rhino, and that's sweet.

• 51:55Wes Larson?

  Just so everyone knows, Mike and Jeff are sharing a mic right now, because they're both in a mic. Yeah, and Mike's being cautious.

• 52:02Jeff Larson?

  I feel like I'm doing a good job, but I don't know what Mike's doing. You're like afraid of...

• 52:06Wes Larson?

  You have to lean in.

• 52:07Jeff Larson?

  Just look at me when you talk.

• 52:09Wes Larson?

  Okay, let's go like, like this, Jeff. I also had, I had Doc Ock in my list. I think of all the like Tobey Maguire villains, he was my favorite. And then, um, in the cartoons, Morbius was my favorite, but not in the live action ones.

• 52:25Jeff Larson?

  It's morphin' time.

• 52:27Mike Smith?

  It's more, more bin time.

• 52:29Wes Larson?

  Morbin time. Yeah.

• 52:31Mike Smith?

  He's gonna morb.

• 52:32Wes Larson?

  Do you know where Venom falls in your list? You kind of got invited to the categories last minute, so.

• 52:37Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. Um, I never thought Green Goblin was cool. Why, why do you think Green Goblin's cool?

• 52:42Mike Smith?

  Mostly because of Willem Dafoe.

• 52:44Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 52:44Mike Smith?

  I'm not really like a big Spider-Man guy. I don't know anything really outside the context of mostly the Tobey Maguire movies.

• 52:50Wes Larson?

  All right. I'm a big Spider-Man guy. I watch the cartoon a lot.

• 52:53Jeff Larson?

  I would probably put him third. I'd go the lizard guy, then Doc Ock, and then Venom. Venom's just not, I don't really know Venom's goal.

• 53:05Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it's a symbiote. You know, it's trying to like take over a new planet, but Venom kind of fights it and makes it just kind of like a fun superpower. But yeah, I think Venom's a great villain. I don't like him as much when he's like a hero. So that's where.

• 53:19Jeff Larson?

  It would have been fun to have like the Venom and the, the Tom Hardy and the, what's the Spider-Man, or Tom Holland? Like a crossover, the Toms.

• 53:29Wes Larson?

  Tom squared, yeah.

• 53:30Jeff Larson?

  Get your Professor Tom Smith in there too.

• 53:35Wes Larson?

  All right. Mike, you had a good category about Venomous and poisons. You want to ask your question?

• 53:40Mike Smith?

  Oh, yeah. So toxicology, it's not all just about Venom, it turns out. Toxinology especially, that's a new word I learned. So would you rather be poisonous or venomous? Which, what would you, what would you want? And how would you want to deliver your load? Yeah, I think that's what they, the word they use.

• 53:59Wes Larson?

  I think I'd rather be poisonous because I feel like if you're poisonous, you're only delivering your load if you're like being attacked, you know? You don't ever have to be the, the aggressor. And I think that's how I'd want it. I think I just want people to know like, oh, I can't do anything to that guy because it might hurt me. Well, I guess that can be Venom though, too. I'm gonna take that back. I think I'd rather be Venom.

• 54:22Jeff Larson?

  You would describe all that.

• 54:24Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I'd rather be venomous because you have to like get eaten to be poisonous usually or like through their skin. So yeah, I'd rather be venomous.

• 54:32Jeff Larson?

  Black widows are venom or poisonous.

• 54:35Wes Larson?

  Venomous.

• 54:35Jeff Larson?

  Black widows are venom.

• 54:36Wes Larson?

  Venom's always injected.

• 54:38Jeff Larson?

  Like a tree frog or something is poisonous.

• 54:40Wes Larson?

  Like a dart, a poison dart frog or like a puffer fish is poisonous. Something you either eat or that is absorbed through your skin is going to be poison. Venom is always injected, so it's bitten or a barb. And I think if I'm venomous, I want a barb. I want to have like a sting ring.

• 54:58Jeff Larson?

  Argument for poisonous even, Mike?

• 55:00Mike Smith?

  No, not really. Well, so poison, can you like control it? Because it feels like if you just eat, like lick a poison dart frog, you're going to get a little poisoned, right?

• 55:10Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 55:10Mike Smith?

  So like you're, there's no hugging or kissing or anything.

• 55:13Wes Larson?

  It depends on, it depends on the species, like a, like a puffer fish. You could like lick and you'd be fine, but you can't eat them.

• 55:21Mike Smith?

  Good to know.

• 55:21Wes Larson?

  But like. A dart frog you can't lick because their, their poison is excreted through their skin. So it just depends on the species. So you could be poisonous and excrete it through your skin. But I think I'm going to be venomous and I'm going to have a barb that like if I can like, you know, have that barb shoot out and inject if I need it to.

• 55:43Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I want to be venomous and I want it to be just like my pinky finger. And I can inject venom because I feel like I won't have too many. I'll for sure have some accidental invanations, you know? But at least my other fingers are longer. So I have to be like, to get my pinky finger to inject someone, it's more deliberate, you know? If it is like your biggest finger, then you're going to be accidentally invanimating everyone.

• 56:12Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 56:13Jeff Larson?

  Maybe I'll wear a glove a lot of the time.

• 56:15Wes Larson?

  Ooh, like Rogue.

• 56:16Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, or OJ.

• 56:18Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Did you wear them all?

• 56:20Mike Smith?

  I'm gonna go teeth, fangs, delivery. Cause you can control when it comes out and when it doesn't, right?

• 56:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 56:27Mike Smith?

  You probably leak a little bit though, so you probably taste just a faint hint of venom. Everything you're eating, maybe not.

• 56:34Wes Larson?

  I mean, this is a hypothetical, so we can control that, right?

• 56:39Mike Smith?

  I should have set the rules up a little stricter, huh?

• 56:42Wes Larson?

  All right, I like those answers. Let's move on. So another one we had was if you had, so Dr. Green Spence really specialized in his career. You know, venoms, and it seemed like snakes were really like his real bread and butter. So if you guys had to specialize in your career, you can either say podcasting or any career or job that you've held in the past in a very substantial way. If you had to specialize, what would you want to do? I'll go first. So if I could specialize in any aspect of bear biology, I would really just want to dive into attacks. That's kind of what Tom did in a way. I just think they're the most interesting part. I guess in a way, it's kind of what I'm doing.

• 57:24Wes Larson?

  But if I could just be like the guy in the world for bear attacks, that would be my dream when it comes to bear biology.

• 57:33Jeff Larson?

  You like bear attacks?

• 57:34Wes Larson?

  I just think they're really interesting and it'd be cool to be like the guy that everyone consults when they need some information about.

• 57:41Mike Smith?

  Do you wish there were more?

• 57:43Wes Larson?

  I don't, but I do think they're very fascinating.

• 57:46Mike Smith?

  Really?

• 57:49Wes Larson?

  What's your guys' answer?

• 57:50Jeff Larson?

  I'd do podcasting still where I'm at, but like I'd want to be like the huge guys, you know? And be able to influence who becomes president.

• 58:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 58:01Jeff Larson?

  I think that'd be cool.

• 58:02Wes Larson?

  All right. Yeah, so your specialization is just being the most popular podcaster.

• 58:08Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 58:09Wes Larson?

  All right.

• 58:09Mike Smith?

  With audio production, I want to be the guy that like tapes wires to informants and stuff that like sneaks into meetings.

• 58:16Jeff Larson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:17Wes Larson?

  That's good.

• 58:18Mike Smith?

  That's my role.

• 58:19Jeff Larson?

  What's that documentary about the like killer who like was had a hot mic when he was peeing? And he's like, you did do it. The jinx.

• 58:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 58:29Jeff Larson?

  You could do that.

• 58:30Mike Smith?

  That's me.

• 58:31Wes Larson?

  It'd be, that'd be an interesting job too, because if they did get caught and like killed, you would just kind of be like, whoops.

• 58:38Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I mean, like in Blowout, you've seen the John Travolta movie Blowout?

• 58:42Wes Larson?

  I don't think so.

• 58:44Mike Smith?

  He gets, I shouldn't spoil anything then, but it's great. You gotta watch that.

• 58:48Wes Larson?

  Good one. Alright. These days it's

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• 59:20Wes Larson?

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• 1:00:48Wes Larson?

  Again, that's allermi.com and use promo code TOOTH for 60% off. Make sure you use our promo code TOOTH so that they know that we sent you. That's A L L E R M I dot com promo code TOOTH. Okay, let's see what else we got here. Three bands you're currently into. I'm just curious what music you guys are listening to right now.

• 1:01:11Mike Smith?

  So for me, whenever I travel, I always listen to L1011. They're an instrumental duo. They make the pretty prolific and they just have the perfect vibe for me to like, have something really, really cool to listen to, but also I don't need to be, it doesn't demand my attention, you know, it's just like comfortable music to drift off to sleep to on planes. I'm really into Panic at the Disco, specifically their second album, Pretty Odd. It's their best by far and maybe their only good one. That's not true. I'm not going to be that much of a hater. They have great music, but that, that band, that album is like Beatles worship almost, and I love the Beatles.

• 1:01:50Wes Larson?

  Brendan Urie?

• 1:01:51Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Yeah. And then a Japanese artist named Fuji Kaze that one of our listeners turned me on to in India. Thank you, Sarah. Really, really beautiful, soulful music and I've been listening to that guy a lot.

• 1:02:05Jeff Larson?

  Go ahead, Wes. I don't have much on this.

• 1:02:08Wes Larson?

  Okay. The three I picked were Bruncho, which is Jesse's favorite band right now. They've, they're kind of one of those bands that continually, continually is evolving. And they just released an album that's just really, really good. I like every track on it. Jesse loves every track on it. I really like them. Brent, our cousin Brent, recently told me to listen to the Lambreni Girls, which is a punk band. I forget where they're from, somewhere in the UK, but really liked them. It's kind of very high intensity, fun punk music. Shout out Brent, a great guy, cousin Brent. And then I also kind of was late to the party, but recently got into Sabrina Carpenter.

• 1:02:51Wes Larson?

  Really liked the song Espresso. Been listening to that one a lot. And I think it's just kind of fun, poppy, summer music. Which I'm in.

• 1:02:58Jeff Larson?

  You know what's good with her?

• 1:03:00Wes Larson?

  What?

• 1:03:00Jeff Larson?

  Her like, social media clips and music videos and stuff.

• 1:03:05Wes Larson?

  Yeah?

• 1:03:05Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I'm a big fan.

• 1:03:07Wes Larson?

  You're a big fan of watching those? Yeah.

• 1:03:09Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Wes Larson?

  Sure, yeah, I'm a fan of that. So those are my three. And then just a quick shout out, PUP, which is a band I brought up a lot on the podcast. Kind of a modern punk band, uh, that plays really, I think, great music. They just released a new album today, May 1st, or May 2nd, whatever today is. So check that out.

• 1:03:28Jeff Larson?

  What if it sucks? You haven't even heard it yet.

• 1:03:30Wes Larson?

  I've listened to part of it and I liked it. And I have enough faith in that band that people like it, so.

• 1:03:35Jeff Larson?

  What if like the second half of it's just like, climate change isn't real?

• 1:03:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Then I'm sorry I recommended it, but I really doubt that's what they're saying.

• 1:03:45Jeff Larson?

  I have a bad habit right now of like, when a popular artist gets into controversy, I start listening to their stuff. When Kanye was going at Pete Davidson, I did a deep dive on Kanye music and got really into Kanye. And recently with Zach Bryan. And like the Brianna Chicken Fry stuff. I just started listening to Zach Bryan. He's probably my favorite country singer. Like, he's really good.

• 1:04:11Wes Larson?

  I hope Kanye's a recent star.

• 1:04:12Jeff Larson?

  Nothing comes out horrific about it.

• 1:04:15Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:17Mike Smith?

  Jeff's the kind of guy that separates art from artists.

• 1:04:20Jeff Larson?

  But I am. But we almost had the Northern Lights here in Missoula last night. And it got me thinking about when I did see the Northern Lights at my parents' house in Missoula. And it was like, maybe the most beautiful thing I've ever seen is the entire sky. And that night I was just like, sitting in our driveway with like a sleeping bag or something, waiting for him. And I was listening to Incubus Make Yourself on repeat. So I was thinking about that the other night and wanting to re-listen to it. I also remember Wes was watching a movie. I was like, walked in and I was like, hey, you should really come look outside for a second. He's like, Jeff, I'm watching a movie. He had no confidence in me at that time, period.

• 1:05:03Wes Larson?

  But I did go outside.

• 1:05:05Jeff Larson?

  I had to come back in like two more times and be like, Wes, I insist.

• 1:05:12Wes Larson?

  All right. Okay, let's do a couple of questions from patrons. This one is very topical. This is from Hannah. Hannah says, I live in the O'Kagan Valley in Bridge, Columbia, Canada. We get a lot of rattlesnakes in the summer. I usually catch them with a PVC pipe and rope and move them away. But my cats seem to think that the rattle is a toy. One got bit last year and survived. My question is, is there anything I can do to deter the snakes? I've weed whacked as much as I can, but I live in the woods. Thanks for your insight. First of all, I would encourage you probably not to catch them. Maybe to have someone remove them or to do whatever you can to avoid handling the snakes. But it sounds like you have a decent tactic for it.

• 1:05:56Wes Larson?

  I would just say, probably should say, don't handle them if you can avoid it. And then as far as creating less habitat for them, you're on the right track. Getting rid of weeds, getting rid of any kind of clutter that they can hide in is the main thing. So you want to decrease any hiding spaces for those rattlesnakes on your property. So if you have like piles of rocks or wood or anything big and flat that they can hide under.

• 1:06:20Jeff Larson?

  A big cave.

• 1:06:21Wes Larson?

  A big cave. If you have any caves on your property, you might want to get rid of those. But yeah, it's just trying to decrease things that might be attractive to them. That also includes rodents. So if you have lots of rodents, if there's any way for you to decrease the amount of rodents in an ethical way, that'd be great. And then you can also just put up like simple barriers. Small fences and stuff can be enough to keep rattlesnakes off of your property. So the main thing I would encourage though with this question and not to get on my soapbox too much, is keep your cats inside. Cats kill an insane number of birds every year. They kill a lot of reptiles. They are the world's most invasive animal as far as damage done to native wildlife.

• 1:07:05Wes Larson?

  So keeping your cat inside is the main thing I would recommend. All right, let's do another one. I was wondering, this one is from Lauren. Lauren says, I was wondering if you could pick a catchphrase, what each of you would choose, either for yourself or for each other.

• 1:07:21Jeff Larson?

  I like the one in Inglourious Basterds. That's a bingo.

• 1:07:25Wes Larson?

  That's a bingo. Is that for you or is that for one of us?

• 1:07:30Jeff Larson?

  That's a question you have to give us beforehand.

• 1:07:34Mike Smith?

  That's real tough.

• 1:07:35Jeff Larson?

  It's a good question. It's just I need to think about it for like at least one minute.

• 1:07:41Wes Larson?

  All right. Um, I accidentally, well, I deleted it already because I always delete them after I ask them. Yeah.

• 1:07:47Jeff Larson?

  You deleted that question already?

• 1:07:49Wes Larson?

  Yeah. After, right after I ask them, I always delete them or else I forget.

• 1:07:52Jeff Larson?

  Wow.

• 1:07:53Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Mike Smith?

  Do a Ctrl Z.

• 1:07:55Jeff Larson?

  Way too fast.

• 1:07:56Wes Larson?

  Yeah, sorry. Okay, let's move on then. We'll just cut that. Bill, you can cut that question and I'll try.

• 1:08:02Jeff Larson?

  I kinda like how that went.

• 1:08:04Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Wes Larson?

  This one's from Connie. Connie has two questions. First of all, your favorite movie soundtrack? We'll answer that one first and we'll get to the second question. Favorite movie soundtrack?

• 1:08:19Mike Smith?

  The one that comes to mind, it's probably not my absolute favorite, but it's the first thing that came to mind is the one from Drive.

• 1:08:25Wes Larson?

  That's a good one.

• 1:08:26Mike Smith?

  That one film called Drive.

• 1:08:28Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:30Mike Smith?

  It's about all the information. I tried to think of names and directors. I can't think of anything. Ryan Gosling.

• 1:08:35Wes Larson?

  Nicholas Winding Refn or whatever.

• 1:08:36Mike Smith?

  Winding Refn, yeah.

• 1:08:37Wes Larson?

  Winding, yeah. Jeff, do you have a favorite movie soundtrack?

• 1:08:40Jeff Larson?

  You know what? That inspired my choice just now. I'm gonna go with Baby Driver. Like the way they incorporate the car to the music and like, I don't know, I love that soundtrack. I also want to shout out Pirates of the Caribbean though. Because that one just goes so hard. I was listening to Shane Gillis's podcast with like his person, his friend who's on tires with him. And the guy was saying he listens to Pirates of the Caribbean like pretty much exclusively in the car. And he like just daydreams about being like a hero and it was really funny.

• 1:09:16Mike Smith?

  It's a good, good idea. I gotta start trying that.

• 1:09:19Wes Larson?

  I think the one I've probably listened to the most is actually the Forrest Gump soundtrack. Cause it just kind of like spans.

• 1:09:25Mike Smith?

  There's no way that's true.

• 1:09:27Wes Larson?

  I think it is, but I.

• 1:09:29Mike Smith?

  What's, yeah, what's on it?

• 1:09:30Wes Larson?

  It's just like a bunch of really good songs from the seventies, but I'm not gonna say that's my favorite because it definitely isn't. My favorite honestly is Jurassic Park. Like I just, like, I just think it's like such an iconic one and when the movie came out, I got the tape and listened to it nonstop. So that's probably what I would pick.

• 1:09:48Mike Smith?

  That's my, I have an unpopular opinion that that's, I think that's John Williams' best soundtrack.

• 1:09:54Wes Larson?

  I would agree with you. Yeah.

• 1:09:55Mike Smith?

  I don't know. I mean, Star Wars, obviously iconic, Indiana Jones, Jaws, et cetera, but I love the Jurassic Park music.

• 1:10:02Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? That was another really good one. I like that soundtrack a lot. All right. And then Connie's second question, what kind of peanut butter did you grow up with? Smooth versus crunchy? And what peanut butter do you prefer now? I have a theory that people generally prefer the opposite kind of peanut butter that they grew up with. Hate to prove you wrong, Connie, but I grew up with smooth peanut butter and I like smooth peanut butter.

• 1:10:23Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I like my peanut butter the way I like my brains.

• 1:10:28Wes Larson?

  Smooth. No wrinkles. Mike?

• 1:10:32Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I like my peanut butter the way I like my rumble strips. All chunky. They serve as a warning to lesser people.

• 1:10:40Jeff Larson?

  What's a rumble strip?

• 1:10:41Mike Smith?

  Uh, it's the like strip on the side of the road. All chunky and making sounds when you're chewing on them.

• 1:10:47Jeff Larson?

  Those would be bad, smooth.

• 1:10:51Mike Smith?

  No, I, I'm a crunchy guy. For as long as I remember, I've always just preferred like as crunchy, chunky as possible. So. I don't know what we, I grew up with it, I guess, but only because that's what I think we all wanted from the beginning, you know? I don't know.

• 1:11:04Jeff Larson?

  I'd say like just a spoonful of peanut butter. I prefer crunchy, but the smooth is just so nice for like putting on a flat surface of something, you know?

• 1:11:15Mike Smith?

  Like a slice of bread?

• 1:11:16Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, like crunchy on a slice of bread. I'll rip that bread apart.

• 1:11:20Mike Smith?

  What other flat surfaces are you putting smooth peanut butter on?

• 1:11:23Jeff Larson?

  Uh, graham crackers and I'll put some chocolate chips on there.

• 1:11:27Mike Smith?

  Oh, that's, that's pretty smart, actually.

• 1:11:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that's my, that's my whole thing too, is like, I think smooth peanut butter is much more versatile. Like you can, it's better for like sandwiches and then like, I love to take an Oreo and dip it in some peanut butter, which I know Jeff loves to do too. And I prefer smooth to crunchy in that's, that context too. But if I'm just eating a spoonful of it, I would prefer crunchy.

• 1:11:50Jeff Larson?

  I'll also buy like very basic chocolate ice cream and then just put some smooth peanut butter on there.

• 1:11:56Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, dude.

• 1:11:57Mike Smith?

  I just like the textures.

• 1:11:59Wes Larson?

  Alright. Yeah, I'm not. I don't think you're wrong. I'm gonna do one more. This one's from Nicole. Nicole says, hey, guys, I have a question for you all. On one of my many re-listens, I heard Mike mention he loves breakfast. So what is better, sweet or savory breakfast?

• 1:12:15Mike Smith?

  Sweet.

• 1:12:16Jeff Larson?

  That's tough because I feel like the best answer is like they go really well together.

• 1:12:21Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:22Jeff Larson?

  You know, that's what makes breakfast so good.

• 1:12:24Wes Larson?

  So I don't like.

• 1:12:25Jeff Larson?

  You're making me do the Sophie's Choice right now.

• 1:12:28Wes Larson?

  Fair enough, but you have to pick one.

• 1:12:31Jeff Larson?

  And like I'll take the boy. So in this case, that would probably be savory.

• 1:12:38Wes Larson?

  Alright. I think I pick, if I have to pick one, I'm picking sweet, but I 100% agree with you, Jeff.

• 1:12:45Jeff Larson?

  I didn't the Sophie's Choice part two.

• 1:12:47Mike Smith?

  I need people to slow down and really think about what Jeff just did there for a minute. You can rewind if you need to.

• 1:12:54Jeff Larson?

  You would take the boy.

• 1:12:56Wes Larson?

  I don't remember Sophie's Choice. What, will you set it up for us real quick?

• 1:13:01Jeff Larson?

  It's like, yeah, you would not have allowed that to just happen if you knew.

• 1:13:09Jeff Larson?

  What's, what's the, she's like the most, the best actress ever. What's her name?

• 1:13:14Mike Smith?

  Street.

• 1:13:15Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, Meryl Streep. And the Nazis are making her choose. She can have either her daughter or her son. And the other one's going to a concentration camp and they make her choose on the spot.

• 1:13:29Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 1:13:31Jeff Larson?

  So.

• 1:13:31Wes Larson?

  I probably would have shut that down.

• 1:13:34Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Mike Smith?

  Too late. Keep it in, Bill.

• 1:13:36Jeff Larson?

  And she chooses the boy.

• 1:13:38Wes Larson?

  Alright.

• 1:13:40Jeff Larson?

  Spoiler.

• 1:13:41Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I'm, I, I am with you on your breakfast thing, though. I, I agree that like.

• 1:13:49Wes Larson?

  For me, the ideal breakfast incorporates like a protein, some eggs, and then something sweet too. And a nice cup of coffee. So, yeah. Alright, uh, that's gonna be it for our questions today. Uh, before we leave, Jeff, you got anything you want to add to our conversation on Venom?

• 1:14:09Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I'd just like to say, I think venom is something more consumed than injected.

• 1:14:18Wes Larson?

  You're wrong there. Never mind. I'm sorry I opened this up. Mike, did you have any other categories? No, sir. All right. Well, we'll go then. Thanks, everyone for listening. Thank you, Dr. Green, for being on our podcast. We know he's a very busy guy. Like, we were supposed to record this yesterday, and he had so many cases that he had to work on that he couldn't. So this happens a lot, a lot more than I even realized, bites from venomous snakes. So be careful out there. The season's really starting for a lot of people. Listen to what he said. Be careful about where you step, where you stick your hands, appropriate footwear in places where there might be lots of venomous snakes. And if you do get bitten, get to help as quickly as possible, and then advocate for yourself.

• 1:14:59Wes Larson?

  Make sure that you are getting the best help possible to treat your venomous snake bite. All right. We'll see you guys later.

• 1:15:07Jeff Larson?

  See you.

• 1:15:08Wes Larson?

  Bye.