Rat lungworm (featuring Dr. Chelsea Wood)

Daniel and Kelly chat with Dr. Chelsea Wood about rat lungworm - a particularly unpleasant nematode parasite that is spreading way outside of its native range. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Daniel Whiteson?

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• 0:05Speaker 01

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• 0:55Speaker 03

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• 1:05Speaker 04

  My name is Jessa. One of the things I love the most about working for United Healthcare is that everybody matters. Every moment matters. There's a person behind every problem. I care because it's what I was put on this earth to do.

• 1:21Speaker 05

  I'm Ben, and I work at United Healthcare. I am just one piece of a larger puzzle, but every piece matters. It's more than just work. We want to make the healthcare system better for everyone. I care because I want to make a difference. That's what committed to care means to me.

• 1:35Kelly Weinersmith?

  Howdy, extraordinaries. Today, we are talking about a somewhat unpleasant parasite. And it's not just because I have a morbid fascination with parasites. We had a couple listener requests to talk about rat lungworm in particular. And this is a parasite that is spreading in its range, and it's an important human health concern. And I think more of us should be aware of it. So that's why we're talking about it today. Thanks.

• 2:07Kelly Weinersmith?

  Trade and travel are transporting organisms all over the world. Here in Virginia, on my walk today, I came across a variety of different species that are native to Asia and are just absolutely ubiquitous on my property. For example, we have the tree of heaven. We have Japanese stilt grass. And recently, we've acquired the spotted lanternfly. And don't get me wrong, no doubt, people in Asia can rattle off a list of American species that now dominate their landscape as well. This goes both ways. And it's Kelly talking here, so you've got to know that I'm going to be bringing it back to parasites. Trade and travel are moving parasites around as well. In my area, the local cattle folks are struggling with what to do about the invasive Asian longhorn tick.

• 2:52Kelly Weinersmith?

  And on today's show, we're talking about a parasite that's spreading far and wide and poses a risk to human health in particular. That parasite is a nematode known as rat lungworm. And we have parasite expert Dr. Chelsea Wood on the show today to tell us all about it. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Invaded Universe.

• 3:24Daniel Whiteson?

  Hi, I'm Daniel. I study particles and aliens, and my favorite parasite is no parasite.

• 3:30Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, I mean, I do have a favorite parasite, but my favorite parasite in people is no parasite. I'll give you that.

• 3:38Daniel Whiteson?

  All right. Thank you. We can agree on that at least.

• 3:41Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes, yes. Oh, and I'm Kelly, Kelly Weinersmith, who usually loves parasites, but the parasite we're talking about today, I'm not a huge fan of.

• 3:51Daniel Whiteson?

  It's hard to be a fan of this one, especially if you like salads or California or both.

• 3:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's right. That's right. And this is a parasite that, you know, like, it's been on my radar because we grow leafy greens in Virginia on our farm. And every time I see a slug or a snail, I think to myself, how much longer before I might have to worry that one of those slugs or the snails could be Transmitting a parasite to me, and in particular, this rat lungworm parasite. But the real reason we're talking about it today is because we have two different listeners who have asked about this parasite. One of them is a man named Scott, who's been working on trying to get people in Hawaii more aware of the presence of this parasite, because it's pretty common there.

• 4:32Daniel Whiteson?

  Good on you, Scott.

• 4:33Kelly Weinersmith?

  Good on you, Scott. And another is Paul from New Hampshire, who is generally interested in slugs and snails.

• 4:39Daniel Whiteson?

  As one is.

• 4:41Kelly Weinersmith?

  As one is. Well, and as y'all will notice throughout like about a month long period, I've been sort of sprinkling in slug and snail stories. But at the end of a listener question request, Scott mentioned, and you know, there are probably some interesting parasites in snails and slugs like rat lungworm. And so as part of my quest to answer Paul's question, we've got a whole episode on rat lungworm today. And at the end, we're going to give Scott some time to tell us about what he's been working on in terms of trying to get the word out about this parasite.

• 5:14Daniel Whiteson?

  And this is really valuable. I had never even heard of rat lungworm until today. So despite my cringing on today's episode, I do think it is valuable to learn all about this. Plus, of course, there are fascinating scientific mysteries for those scientists among us who enjoy studying human misery.

• 5:31Kelly Weinersmith?

  I don't know if we enjoy studying human misery, but would like to understand and alleviate human misery. But so on today's show, we are bringing my roommate from grad school onto the show. We didn't live together for all of grad school, but some of it. And she has ended up being like an absolute superstar in the world of parasitology. And so I was like, you know what? We of course have to have Chelsea on to tell everybody about rat lungworm.

• 5:58Daniel Whiteson?

  And you should hear the admiration in her voice when she describes these terrible creatures.

• 6:03Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, let's jump right in. Dr. Chelsea Wood is an associate professor in the School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences at the University of Washington. Her research program explores the ecology of infectious disease in a changing world. And we would run out of time if I went through all of her honors, so I'll just pick two. She's been named a Sloan Research Fellow and a Cavley Fellow. She is also the author of a kid's book for kids ages eight to 12 on parasites. That's right, you can get kids books about parasites. And the book is called Power to the Parasites: Everything You Ever Never Wanted to Know About the Creepy Crawlys Hidden in Your Home, Your Food, Your Pets, and Maybe Even in You. And she has an adult

• 6:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  book about parasites, which sounds a little dirtier than I meant it to, a book about parasites that's not meant for children, that's coming out early next year through Basic Books Hachette. So, welcome, Chelsea.

• 6:56Speaker 07

  Thank you, Kelly, and thank you, Daniel, for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you.

• 7:00Daniel Whiteson?

  Are your books about explaining parasites, or are they about inducing nightmares?

• 7:05Speaker 07

  A little bit from column A, a little bit from column B. The hope is that the nightmares turn into dreams. I love parasites, just like Kelly. And the goal of the books is to help people get to know them face to face, the way that we know them.

• 7:21Kelly Weinersmith?

  And so I would love for you to explain how you became a person who will say the words, "I love parasites," unironically, like, without having been, you know, dropped on your head multiple times. Help the audience understand me better by explaining how you got here.

• 7:38Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I don't think anyone's born a parasitologist. It's not like something kids dream about doing when they're very little. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a marine biologist. I wanted to swim with whales and dolphins, naturally. Lots of people do.

• 7:53Kelly Weinersmith?

  Naturally.

• 7:54Speaker 07

  And I went to college with that intention and got through a lot of my bachelor's degree planning on being a dolphin trainer or whale scientist when I grew up. And then I tried to do research while I was an undergraduate, and I was in a college that didn't have a lot of marine biology. And by didn't have a lot of marine biology, I mean it had no marine biology. Not, not the best career choice for someone who was bound and determined to be a marine biologist, but I made the best of it. And I worked in an engineering lab. I, I studied Lake Zoplaington for a while. I ground up bark beetles. It was all fun,

• 8:34Speaker 07

  but I wanted the dolphins. And so I asked my academic advisor to set me up with an internship anywhere in the world with any marine biologist she knew. And she happened to connect me with a person who used to be her office mate, who was a marine biologist, but also studied parasites.

• 8:51Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh.

• 8:52Speaker 07

  Yes. I went into his lab, just like totally grossed out, pretty disappointed that I was going to be working on worms instead of dolphins, but like a little marine biology mercenary, wanting to get my foot in the door. And I, I worked for him for a quarter and I fell in love. I found that the trematodes, the flatworms that I was working on were just so fascinating. And it took me a little while to kind of like change course, to like re-envision what my future would be without snuggling dolphins. But now I get to snuggle worms, which is way better.

• 9:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  Way better. I mean, they don't smell good, but, but like dolphins don't smell great either.

• 9:33Speaker 07

  No, they don't. They smell terrible.

• 9:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 9:37Daniel Whiteson?

  But was your initial attraction to whales and dolphins because of their like dignity and their grace and the idea of like swimming alongside of them? Or was it about the research questions? And, or did you then discover like, wow, I want to swim alongside worms? Or worms have a grace all of their own? I mean, is this a change in, in you? Or is this a change in what you were looking for?

• 9:59Speaker 07

  When I was interested in marine mammals, it was about wanting to swim with them. It wasn't about the research questions. And, you know, like, like with any scientist, you go through phases of development.

• 10:12Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 10:12Speaker 07

  And your interests mature and change and you become less attracted to the superficial beauty of an organism and more attracted to the interesting questions that you have about what that organism is up to in nature. And so I underwent that evolution. And as I did, realized that the questions that were really exciting to me were not about whales and dolphins, but what lives inside of them.

• 10:39Daniel Whiteson?

  And you could also swim with dolphins and whales without being a marine biologist, right?

• 10:43Speaker 07

  You sure can.

• 10:46Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, but they don't like it if in the middle of those like experiences that you pay a bunch of money for, you like then open the dolphin up to check its parasites. You know, they frown on that. So Chelsea and I don't go to places like that probably very often.

• 10:58Speaker 07

  Or not allowed.

• 10:59Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, no. So I might, my, I had a similar trajectory, but it was charismatic African mega fauna that I wanted to study, but instead parasites.

• 11:08Speaker 07

  Way better.

• 11:09Kelly Weinersmith?

  Way better, way better. Well, we've had quite a few listeners ask about rat lungworm. And I was like, all right, I could cover that, but I know Chelsea has like amazing stories about rat lungworm. So she's got to be the one who does it for us. And so rat lungworm it is. Let's start with like, what kind of animal is rat lungworm?

• 11:30Speaker 07

  Rat lungworm, its scientific name is Angiostrangulus cantonensis, and it is a nematode, a roundworm. It's parasitic and it normally cycles between snails and slugs and rodents, but it can get into people and that's where the trouble starts.

• 11:47Daniel Whiteson?

  So how big is this thing? Are we talking like a super tiny little worm or like a, some mega worm?

• 11:53Speaker 07

  Depends on the life stage. The nematodes go through a series of molts from, you know, juveniles or larvae into adults. The larvae are super tiny. You can only see them under a microscope. The adults are quite big. You'll find them, you know, if you dissect an infected mouse, for example, you'll find them either in the brain tissues or in the lungs and they are easily visible to the naked eye, like about the length of a thumbnail.

• 12:20Daniel Whiteson?

  Yikes.

• 12:21Kelly Weinersmith?

  How do you feel when you see that?

• 12:23Speaker 07

  The first time I saw rat lungworm larvae, it was like a moment in my parasitology career because I, I've seen a lot of worms under the microscope, you know, I've dissected snails and fish and all kinds of different vertebrates and like I've, I've seen a lot of stuff. But I have never seen so many larvae as the rat lungworm larvae we pulled out of some snails and slugs in Honolulu a couple of years ago. It was just hundreds of thousands of tiny roiling larvae under the microscope. You could roll the stage in any direction and you'd be going for like what felt like

• 13:06Speaker 07

  miles and miles, a carpet of baby nematodes. It was

• 13:11Daniel Whiteson?

  Cue the nightmares.

• 13:13Speaker 07

  It was staggering. I actually did dream about them for a couple of days after I saw them.

• 13:20Daniel Whiteson?

  And why are they called rat lungworm? Are they found in the lungs of rats? So you're talking about snails and slugs here. So I'm confused.

• 13:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, they have a really interesting life cycle. Their larval stages are in snails and slugs. The snails and slugs get eaten by rodents and the larvae, which are now in the rodent's gut, bust through the lining of the gut and find their way into the central nervous system of the rat or mouse.

• 13:45Daniel Whiteson?

  What does that feel like, do you think?

• 13:46Speaker 07

  Bad, not good.

• 13:51Kelly Weinersmith?

  Straight into the point. I like it.

• 13:53Speaker 07

  If it's anything like what humans experience, probably like fever flu-like symptoms as the worms are migrating from the gut into the central nervous system. But then, once they're in the central nervous system, they ride up the spinal column and into the brain and then they start literally consuming the brain tissue of the rodent host.

• 14:15Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, boy.

• 14:16Speaker 07

  Burrowing holes, burrowing tunnels through the brain tissue. And they get fat on this brain tissue. Obviously, brain is really nutritious. So as a parasite, it's a smart place to go.

• 14:27Daniel Whiteson?

  Sorry, obviously, brain is really nutritious? This is not obvious to me. What is nutritious about the brain?

• 14:33Speaker 07

  Lots of protein, lots of fats, the things that parasites are looking for. And once they've finished maturing inside the brain, they will then migrate down into the lungs of the rodent host because they can't just hang out in one rodent for the rest of their lives. They need to get their babies into the outside world. So they have their larvae in the lungs of the rodent host. The rodent then coughs the larvae up. Swallows them down, passages them through the gut tract, and the larvae come out in rat poop, which is eaten by snails or slugs, thus completing the life cycle.

• 15:12Daniel Whiteson?

  Now I want something to crawl through my brain and eat the parts of it that remember this conversation, so I don't have nightmares about it later.

• 15:20Kelly Weinersmith?

  And is it bad for the snails and the slugs too? Because it sounds like it's pretty miserable for the rats.

• 15:25Speaker 07

  Great question. I don't know if anyone's ever tackled that. Rat liver worm is a pretty understudied parasite, especially with respect to its impact on human hosts. I'm not aware of any studies that have looked at what impact parasitic infection has on the snails. People are too busy worrying about what's happened into the vertebrates.

• 15:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay, do they get like castrated like with the trematodes? Or we have no idea?

• 15:48Speaker 07

  I don't, they're not a castrating parasite.

• 15:50Daniel Whiteson?

  And so you're describing a life cycle with slugs and snails, and then rats where they have this horrible thing that goes in their brain, and then in their lungs, they cough it up, and then it forces them to swallow it. Nightmare. But it can also happen in humans, right? Is there a sort of similar life cycle there? Just go through the human brain and into the human lungs?

• 16:05Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 16:05Daniel Whiteson?

  Different trajectory?

• 16:06Speaker 07

  Yeah. People accidentally, or sometimes purposefully, eat snails and slugs. It's easier than you think, because these snails and slugs can be super tiny, and kale has lots of little crevices in it.

• 16:20Daniel Whiteson?

  Right.

• 16:21Speaker 07

  So if you're, if you accidentally eat one of these snails or slugs, winds up in your gut, busts through the gut wall, gets into the central nervous system, up to the brain, and then it burrows lots of tunnels. We don't think that the parasite is capable of maturing in a human host. So we think that it either does not, or it has trouble getting from the brain to the lungs. But that's kind of irrelevant from the perspective of the patient, because the real impact of infection is on having a worm tunneling through your brain. So people who are infected will start by experiencing flulike symptoms. That's when the worms are moving from the gut into the central nervous system. And that's the only moment when the disease is treatable.

• 17:03Speaker 07

  You can get those worms with an anti-parasitic drug at that stage before it gets into what we call the immune privileged site of the central nervous system. Getting drugs into the central nervous system is really difficult. And so treating the worms, once they get in there, is essentially, we can only deal with the symptoms. We can't actually kill them. So flulike symptoms, as you enter this two-week period when the worms are moving from the gut into the central nervous system, and then literally any symptom that can be produced by the brain can be produced by these worms, depending on what they decide to eat as they're up in your brain case. People describe feeling like their body's full of electricity.

• 17:44Speaker 07

  They describe not being able to wear clothes because just the touch of fabric on their skin is painful. They will say that they feel like they're being stabbed, or frozen, or burned. And there is literally nothing that doctors can do for those patients, other than try to manage the inflammation that the worms are causing.

• 18:04Daniel Whiteson?

  Doesn't it ever do anything good? I mean, brains could also make you feel good. Is there nobody out there who's just like constantly experiencing ice cream or something?

• 18:13Speaker 07

  I am not aware of any reports of people constantly experiencing ice cream.

• 18:20Kelly Weinersmith?

  I like your optimism, though, Daniel.

• 18:22Daniel Whiteson?

  I'm struggling here, man. This is nightmare material.

• 18:25Kelly Weinersmith?

  I kind of wish we could release your video, because the series of faces that you're making as the episode goes on is pretty fantastic. But so, so the doctors can't do anything. How long does the parasite live? How long does this go on?

• 18:38Speaker 07

  We know in rats, the parasite can live for years. We don't know for sure what goes on in people. Typically, the initial period of severe neurological problems.

• 18:50Speaker 07

  Can last for weeks to months and sometimes the lingering effects go on for years. Sometimes people die. That's rare, but it does happen. I have a friend here in Seattle who had rat lung worms. She contracted it on a vacation on the big island of Hawaii. And she got sick within days of eating a veggie wrap, which is how she thinks she was infected. And it took her a couple of weeks to get diagnosed. And then she was incapacitated by her infection for months.

• 19:21Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow.

• 19:22Speaker 07

  She lost her ability to speak and understand speech. Her vision was affected, her motor skills were affected. She used a walker for a period of time. And it took her years of physical therapy and steroids and other drugs to come back to some semblance of normal. And very luckily, she is healthy and healed now. But she was infected years ago and it took her years to recover. And that's, it seems to be pretty typical.

• 19:52Daniel Whiteson?

  And when you say recover, the brain doesn't like repair those holes. You're talking about like retraining yourself to learn those skills again?

• 20:00Speaker 07

  I'm not sure about the neurobiology of the healing process. I don't think those, those holes get filled in. I do think you retrain yourself to use the neurons and synapses that remain. But you'd have to ask a neurologist about the details.

• 20:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  How do we figure out if somebody is infected? Is it like brain scans or blood tests? Yeah. How do you figure that out?

• 20:24Speaker 07

  A definitive diagnosis can only be reached with a spinal tap and then identification of the worms in the cerebrospinal fluid. Spinal taps are not fun. They are procedures that doctors really hesitate to perform unless they're in really exigent circumstances. And even then you got to get the worms in the CSF in order to know for sure. Other indicators are the proportion of eosinophils in the cerebrospinal fluid, the immune cells that respond to parasitic infection. And that's the only way that you know for sure. Sure. It's a challenging disease to diagnose because it looks like flu in

• 21:05Speaker 07

  the period when it's treatable. And after that, your only option is to perform a spinal tap. Doctors don't have a lot of good training on rat lungworm, and so many patients go completely undiagnosed and might never know why they're suffering from neurological symptoms.

• 21:22Kelly Weinersmith?

  And so where is this thing native? And how big of a problem is it in its native range?

• 21:27Speaker 07

  It is native to East and Southeast Asia. It was first described from China in the 30s. And while that's its native range, it is now broadly distributed across the world. It's been introduced.

• 21:42Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, no.

• 21:43Speaker 07

  Sorry. Sorry to record.

• 21:46Daniel Whiteson?

  We're going to end with some good news in this episode, right? Right?

• 21:50Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's not what happens when you talk to parasitologists. Set your expectations low.

• 21:58Speaker 07

  It's now, it's present all throughout the Equatorial Pacific. It's in Hawaii. Obviously, it was first reported there in 1961. And we know it's been there since 1959 because that is when one very sick man wound up in Hawaii's state mental facility. And he had rat lungworm and was the first patient described from Hawaii. It's also in parts of Europe, Jamaica, South Africa, Brazil. It's been reported from the southeastern US, and there have been human cases from the southeastern US. And just a couple of months ago, it was reported for the first time in zoo animals in San Diego.

• 22:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  No.

• 22:41Speaker 07

  So now it's in California.

• 22:42Daniel Whiteson?

  What? The last line of defense has been breached, people.

• 22:46Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's right. All right, let's, let's take a break. And when we get back, we'll talk a little bit about how this parasite is getting from place to place.

• 23:12Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay, and we're back. Daniel and I took a little bit of time to try to get that yuck out, and we are doing our best to not make, yeah, we're doing our best to not make too many faces, as Chelsea describes this. So the people who live in Hawaii must be particularly frustrated to have this parasite, because they also didn't originally have rats, right? And so like, how much of this system has been introduced into Hawaii? And like, how did it get there?

• 23:37Speaker 07

  Almost all of it.

• 23:38Kelly Weinersmith?

  Ah.

• 23:39Speaker 07

  Rodents are not native to Hawaii. The Polynesian rat was introduced by Polynesian voyagers about 1,100 years ago. And then European colonists introduced the black rat, Norway rat, and house mouse. So those rodents are now all extremely common across the Hawaiian Islands. Most of the snails and slugs that are host to rat lungworm are also non-native to Hawaii.

• 24:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, come on.

• 24:07Speaker 07

  And the worm itself is non-native. Yeah, it is an entirely novel ecosystem that's been assembled to support the transmission of this parasite.

• 24:17Daniel Whiteson?

  You said it was first described in the 30s, but it must have been around a long time, right?

• 24:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, this worm isn't new. It has evolved from a large tree of other nematodes. And while we obviously don't want to be infected by it, it is natural and normal in East and Southeast Asia. What's not natural or normal is the fact that it's now been imported into ecosystems all around the world.

• 24:43Kelly Weinersmith?

  And so if you live in Southeast Asia, are people just regularly getting, like, is it as big a problem in its native range as it is in like Hawaii, for example?

• 24:54Speaker 07

  It doesn't appear to be, and this is a frontier area of research. So this is something that we still have some uncertainty about. We think that early life exposure to the worms protects against catastrophic infection later in life. Oh. So people who have no exposure to rat lung worm and then suddenly get a big dose of it are the ones who are winding up with really severe neurological problems. But this is an emerging area of research and that's not a solidified hypothesis yet.

• 25:27Daniel Whiteson?

  How would that work? Your immune system is somehow trained and then when they're burrowing through your body, looking for the brain, they get attacked by the immune system?

• 25:35Speaker 07

  Precisely.

• 25:36Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, wow.

• 25:37Kelly Weinersmith?

  Gosh, so I can imagine maybe one day there'd be like a vaccine before you go to Hawaii or a vaccine for everybody living in Hawaii, which would at least make it less bad.

• 25:46Speaker 07

  If we could develop a vaccine against a worm.

• 25:48Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, right, which we haven't done yet, right? I know they're working on it for hookworm, but we've not had any success, right?

• 25:54Speaker 07

  Not yet.

• 25:55Daniel Whiteson?

  But remind me, and I know we did a whole episode on why it's hard to get vaccines for parasites, but this is something where your immune system can be trained to respond. What's the challenge in developing the vaccine?

• 26:06Speaker 07

  Okay, I don't develop vaccines, so I'm way out of my depth here and Kelly, you should step in and correct me. My understanding is that worms are so closely related to us that biochemically, we have so many similarities that the things that hurt them also hurt us. And that's why it's just logistically much more challenging to develop a vaccine without unacceptable side effects for a worm relative to something like a virus.

• 26:31Kelly Weinersmith?

  We had John Hauden on the show and he talked about this for like an hour and he said a lot of what you said. He also said that part of the problem is just that like worms are really big and like nematodes, for example, the outside of them has this like, you know, hard outer coating. And so it's hard for the immune system to do much of anything to them. And so you have to try to find a way to like, I don't know, get inside of the nematode and then attack it from within. And it's just really complicated for lots of reasons.

• 26:56Daniel Whiteson?

  But the immune system knows how to do it because in Southeast Asia, people who are exposed as children have protection. I'm just reaching here for some optimism. Help me out.

• 27:07Kelly Weinersmith?

  Let's go with maybe, which is about as, does that seem reasonable, Chelsea?

• 27:11Speaker 07

  The solution to worms is more worms.

• 27:15Daniel Whiteson?

  What?

• 27:15Kelly Weinersmith?

  No.

• 27:16Daniel Whiteson?

  We need more worms to eat these worms? Is that what you're saying?

• 27:19Speaker 07

  No, more worms for us earlier in life to provide immune protection against later catastrophic infection. I'm not actually advocating for this, by the way. No one go out and get worms.

• 27:30Daniel Whiteson?

  Do not take medical advice from this show, but maybe take your baby to Hawaii.

• 27:35Kelly Weinersmith?

  So, so how is this changing the lives of people who live in Hawaii? Like, has it changed their diet? Like, what is, yeah, what's, what are their lives like?

• 27:45Speaker 07

  Well, public health outreach about rat lungworm is pretty minimal in Hawaii. So a lot of people are totally unaware that it's being transmitted locally, that it's a risk. There's a tremendous amount of agriculture locally in Hawaii, because otherwise, food needs to transit over these huge distances in order to reach the Hawaiian Islands. So there's lots of lettuce and kale and other leafy greens being grown locally that people are eating without any awareness that there could be snails or slugs that represent a risk to them. That's a problem. People who are aware are trying to be careful, but there's only so much you can do. And actually, I met one patient who is also a professor at the University of Hawaii Manoa. She's an ecologist.

• 28:28Speaker 07

  She was aware of rat lungworm when she went to a farmer's market and bought kale. And she washed it very thoroughly. And nonetheless, she was infected and nearly died of her infection, was hospitalized for a month and still suffers the after effects of her infection.

• 28:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  Wow.

• 28:44Speaker 07

  So people try, but there are limits. You can't check every kale crevice. There's no way to ensure that your leafy greens are completely safe.

• 28:55Daniel Whiteson?

  What if we irradiate the kale? Particle physics to the rescue.

• 29:00Speaker 07

  I'll leave that to you, Daniel. That can be your next project.

• 29:03Daniel Whiteson?

  Bring your salad to the Large Hadron Collider, and I will kill those worms.

• 29:09Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, and you mentioned, you know, like someone had a veggie wrap. And in some writing of yours that I'm familiar with, that folks can find in early 2027, like you mentioned that you can get it in a smoothie, like, you know, you put like kale in a smoothie, you don't even think about it. And now you've got parasites that way. Like, there's so many different routes that you might not even think about to get it, which is why none of us are gonna sleep tonight.

• 29:33Daniel Whiteson?

  And why we're never getting kale advertisers after this episode.

• 29:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's right. Big kale is gonna shun us. Okay, so you went to Hawaii to meet people who study this and to like, sort of find out what it's like for people in Hawaii. And so you and I, when we used to be roommates, we'd go out for sushi and you would eat all kinds of sushi, right? And so you don't seem like a kind of person who is worried about parasites in their food, although I know sushi is usually frozen beforehand. But like, did this change your eating habits when you were in an area where you knew that it was?

• 30:08Speaker 07

  100%. There's a big difference between going out for sushi and eating a salad in Hawaii. Rat lungworm is a catastrophic infection, potentially life-ending, certainly life-altering. It is not a parasite that I would touch with a 10-foot pole. It's very, very dangerous. And probably, you know, of all the parasites that I have encountered in my career, the one I'd least like to be infected with myself.

• 30:36Daniel Whiteson?

  You have a ranking of like, most to least?

• 30:38Speaker 07

  I sure do.

• 30:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  Where is Loa Loa?

• 30:42Speaker 07

  I would 100% take Loa Loa, absolutely.

• 30:46Daniel Whiteson?

  Wait, what's a Loa Loa?

• 30:48Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, that was on, we did the list of the three parasites that creep Kelly out the most. And Loa Loa was on there because it moves around the inside of your eye and people can see it moving in your eye. And I thought that was pretty gross.

• 31:01Daniel Whiteson?

  But that sounds cool to you, Chelsea?

• 31:03Speaker 07

  It's gross for sure, but it's really low pathogenicity. You know, there's very few effects of being infected with Loa Loa. And then you get to like, have a little pet that you keep with you all the time.

• 31:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  You're never alone, never alone. So what do we know about how this parasite gets from one place to another? Like, do we know how it got to Hawaii or how it got to Louisiana?

• 31:29Speaker 07

  We have no idea how it got to Hawaii, which is a question that I find really interesting because there are several very different potential answers. It seems pretty likely that it could have arrived from Southeast Asia during World War II or the Korean War because there was a tremendous amount of movement of material between those regions. And we know that rodents came and went. It's also possible that snails and slugs came and went and things like tires or vehicles that were being moved from one place to the next. So that's really reasonable. But it's also entirely possible that the parasite arrived with Polynesian rats when they were introduced 1,100 years ago by Polynesian voyagers.

• 32:12Speaker 07

  So those are two, two very different answers to that question. And I find it really interesting that we don't know how it arrived, given how much impact it's had and how that information would really help us better understand how to move materials responsibly across the face of the earth moving forward, given that we don't want rat lungworm to continue to expand in its range.

• 32:37Daniel Whiteson?

  Can I ask a question about that comment you made? You said that Polynesians introduced Polynesian rats. Were the Polynesian ships large enough for the rats to hide on them?

• 32:46Speaker 07

  Apparently so.

• 32:47Daniel Whiteson?

  Or was this intentional?

• 32:48Speaker 07

  That I don't, I don't know whether it was intentional or not, but I've always just assumed that they were stowaways, like in any other ship.

• 32:55Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow.

• 32:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  Because in Moana, it's just a raft. That's why it's confusing.

• 33:01Daniel Whiteson?

  Kelly's revealing the depth of my research on this topic, yes. I've actually had rats in the home, so thank you very much. I have a little bit of experience. I'm grateful they didn't have rat lungworm, though.

• 33:12Speaker 07

  Hopefully.

• 33:14Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah. So, so now when you travel to other parts of the world, like, I don't, it's in Louisiana and Florida, for example, do you, like, are you totally off salads now, is what I'm asking? Like, how, how do you, how do you balance this risk when you go from place to place?

• 33:30Speaker 07

  I'm really, really careful about fresh leafy greens when I travel in a place that has rat lungworm. I did not eat anything green while I was in Hawaii. The only exception is I was hanging out with Rob Kawi, who's a malacologist, a snail researcher at the University of Hawaii, and one of the folks there who's studying rat lungworm. And he had my husband and me over for dinner one night and served us a salad. And I looked at him and I was like, you have to be joking. I am literally here to study rat lungworm with you. Like, there's no way you're feeding me this right now. And he's like, no, no, no, it's totally, it's fine. I know that this lettuce came from California, so I know

• 34:13Speaker 07

  that it's safe. So you can eat it and it's okay. And so I was like, all right, you're the expert. Put some salad on my plate, pass it down the table to another dinner guest, Vernon Anzdel, who's a physician and rat lungworm expert in Hawaii, based in Honolulu. And he took that bowl and passed it right on down the table without giving himself any salad. And I just, I like, was internally panicking. I didn't want to be rude and not eat the salad, so I ate it.

• 34:42Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh.

• 34:43Speaker 07

  And then I didn't sleep for a couple of days after that.

• 34:46Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 34:46Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 34:47Speaker 07

  So, anyway, I'm very careful about green things when I'm in Hawaii, except for when Rob tricks me into eating a salad.

• 34:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  Not cool.

• 34:57Speaker 07

  Not cool.

• 34:57Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow, you're peer pressured into parasite roulette there. That's terrifying.

• 35:02Speaker 07

  And then, you know, in the southeastern US, Yeah, I avoid leafy greens, especially local ones. The reality is that the vast majority of salad that is eaten in North America comes from the Central Valley of California. So, so far, that's safe. And that means that salads that you eat anywhere in North America are probably from California and therefore safe. But to me, it's, you know, I'll gamble with a lot of different parasites. I eat sushi because I don't care if I get sushi worm. It's fine. It's worth it to me to eat sushi.

• 35:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  Might even be kind of awesome.

• 35:38Speaker 07

  Might even be kind of awesome.

• 35:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  I mean, if you could collect it somehow. Eric, sorry, maybe not. Maybe it's just me speaking alone here.

• 35:45Speaker 07

  No, no, you're not at all. I, I mean, anosacidosis, which is sushi worm disease, not fun. Vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain. In really severe cases, you're hospitalized and they have to do an endoscopy to actually visualize and remove the worm. Would that be cool?

• 36:04Daniel Whiteson?

  No.

• 36:04Speaker 07

  I wouldn't enjoy it in the moment. Would I love to have a picture of a worm from my own gut?

• 36:11Daniel Whiteson?

  Also, no.

• 36:12Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yep.

• 36:13Speaker 07

  Not gonna lie, it would be pretty amazing.

• 36:15Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, that would be pretty cool.

• 36:16Daniel Whiteson?

  No, it would not be pretty amazing. Wow, this is a real litmus test for people's personality.

• 36:21Kelly Weinersmith?

  I think I'd rather have a tapeworm, though.

• 36:23Speaker 07

  Absolutely.

• 36:23Kelly Weinersmith?

  Like that, I'd rather collect a tapeworm.

• 36:25Speaker 07

  No question.

• 36:26Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay, so, so you don't worry about salads? Because most of the salads have come from central California. But you pay attention to where you're going? And you change your behavior accordingly? Would that be a reasonable summary?

• 36:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, I don't eat salad in Hawaii. I wouldn't eat leafy greens that are uncooked in East or Southeast Asia. And I'd be cognizant of it in the southeastern US, where salads are most likely sourced from California, but could be from local greens.

• 36:53Daniel Whiteson?

  So you're saying if somebody served you two salads, one grown in California and one grown in Virginia, you would eat the California salad?

• 36:59Speaker 07

  So far, Virginia is okay.

• 37:01Daniel Whiteson?

  Hmm.

• 37:02Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, so Daniel and I have a California versus Virginia thing going on. And he was trying to catch you there.

• 37:07Daniel Whiteson?

  Trying to score a point here, yeah.

• 37:09Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, yeah. Okay, so. It's called rat lungworm, but you've already mentioned that it can get into mice. And now we know it can get into people. So as it gets introduced throughout the world, are there other animal brains it's eating? Like, other than humans and mice and rats? Like, how bad is this for, like, the rest of the ecosystem?

• 37:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, any mammal can be infected and suffer some of the same effects as people and rats. In Hawaii, there are lots of veterinary reports of paralyzed dogs who experience that paralysis as a result of rat lungworm infection. Horses, too. And often, our reports of rat lungworm from the continental US are from zoo animals. And that's because they're highly observed by really well-trained veterinarians. And they're bored. And so if a snail or a slug comes into their enclosure, they're likely to eat it, touch it, mouth it, and become infected themselves. The reports from California

• 38:12Speaker 07

  that came out of San Diego recently were from zoo animals.

• 38:16Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right, well, let's take a break. Bit of a palate cleanser again. And when we get back, we'll do our best to see if we can find some sort of positive angle to end on for Daniel. And we'll see where that gets us.

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• 41:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  And we're back. We're talking about the spread of rat lungworm. And so, Chelsea, you said something about how if we knew how it got from place to place, there would be something we could do about it. Are there inroads for ways we can keep it from spreading to places that it hasn't gotten to yet?

• 41:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, so we've talked about war and how war moves materials over these large spans of space and can bring animals that are from one place to another. What we haven't talked about yet is trade, and the trade in horticultural products is thought to be one of the pathways by which the worm has made it into the southeastern U.S. Trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants come in soil, snails and slugs can be in soil, and that is one pathway by which the parasite is transported from one part of the world to another. The trade in horticultural products is regulated, and of course, people are trying to prevent

• 42:20Speaker 07

  the spread of invasive snails and slugs themselves, but our screening procedures are not perfect. Better protections on how biological materials are moved across national boundaries would reduce the likelihood that the worm is going to make it into new places.

• 42:39Daniel Whiteson?

  But if you can't even rinse, kill, and inspect it in your own sink and be confident that there's nothing in there, how could inspectors check every plant?

• 42:48Speaker 07

  I don't think they can.

• 42:49Daniel Whiteson?

  Okay.

• 42:50Kelly Weinersmith?

  And once it gets established somewhere, is there any hope of kicking it out?

• 42:56Speaker 07

  It depends on where you are. Eradicating rats and mice is famously difficult.

• 43:02Daniel Whiteson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:03Speaker 07

  Not possible except in small areas or on small islands. There are some islands where rats have been introduced and later eradicated. It costs a ton of money and it takes a ton of effort, but it is possible. But if we're talking like an area of a large landmass, getting rid of rats or mice or snails or slugs is really just not practical. The best intervention is to make sure that people are taking measures to protect themselves and that the food supply is protected.

• 43:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay.

• 43:38Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, that was the most positive we were able to come up with.

• 43:40Speaker 07

  Sorry, guys. I am not a beam of light here.

• 43:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  Neither am I.

• 43:45Daniel Whiteson?

  And I have to hammer on that a little bit. You're saying protect themselves, but again, like, what can we do to protect ourselves other than not eat salads?

• 43:53Speaker 07

  Buy lettuce from places that are safe. Californian lettuce so far is both the easiest to get and the safest. Wash all of your leafy greens extremely thoroughly. Inspect those greens very carefully. If you live in an endemic region and you're growing your own greens, what I'd recommend is like filling up a sink with water and letting the lettuce soak for an hour or so, so that any snails or slugs that are on it are dislodged and you can see them more easily. And then rinsing it really, really carefully and inspecting all the crevices. And it also means protecting kids from their own curiosity.

• 44:36Speaker 07

  A lot of pediatric rat lungworm cases in Hawaii are kids who were playing in the backyard and picked up a snail or slug, mouthed it, or even just handled it and then put their hands in their mouths. So watching over kids, especially in places where rat lungworm is known to be transmitted when they're playing in nature or in the backyard.

• 44:56Daniel Whiteson?

  So this doesn't seem very hopeful. I mean, in five years, in 20 years, in 50 years, is rat lungworm just going to be everywhere? Is carefree eating of salads just going to be a historical anecdote?

• 45:07Speaker 07

  Hmm. I might have answered this question differently a couple of months ago. It's a subtropical parasite and I would have expected it to remain only in regions that are very warm and very moist. It made sense to me that it would wind up in the southeastern US. It's like well within the bounds of the humidity and temperature that the parasite evolved in. The fact that it showed up in San Diego is upsetting.

• 45:34Daniel Whiteson?

  Yes.

• 45:35Speaker 07

  Because that is a very different. Habitat than where the parasite has been found before. And we don't know whether this is really limited or not. Like, the first report from San Diego only came in a few months ago, so we don't know the full picture yet. But the fact that it shows up in a place that seems to be outside of the envelope of environments that it's previously been known to inhabit, kind of blows up my expectations about where we should expect to see it in the future.

• 46:06Kelly Weinersmith?

  So what are the lessons from rat lungworm for what we should expect regarding other parasites spreading around the world? Like, is rat lungworm the only parasite that's spreading around the world? Or is this happening with a lot of different kinds of parasites right now?

• 46:19Speaker 07

  The answer's all over the map. You know, parasite, when we say the word parasite, we're talking about this, like, sprawling tree of life. Parasitism has evolved 223 independent times across the animal tree of life. Wow. That's 223 times when a free-living ancestor gave rise to a parasitic branch. And that means that there's this, like, crazy amount of diversity among the parasites. They're not a monolith, they're all doing different stuff. Rat lungworm is a great poster child for those parasites that are benefiting from global change. We're, like, moving stuff all around the world, and rat lungworm is the beneficiary of all of that movement.

• 47:01Speaker 07

  It's not the only one, there are lots of other parasites that are similarly well-positioned to take advantage of the fact that we've now connected these really far-flung places. But there are other parasites that are doing the exact opposite thing. We don't pay attention to them because they're not causing outbreaks, right? They're not increasing in abundance, and so we have no reason to encounter them. But they are quietly diminishing, sometimes even to extinction. And that's the other side of the coin that we never see because it doesn't affect us personally.

• 47:34Kelly Weinersmith?

  And that seems like a perfect segue into the amazing book that you wrote. Do you want to tell us a bit about it so that folks can immediately go preorder it after listening to this episode?

• 47:44Speaker 07

  If this wasn't nightmares enough.

• 47:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, there are actually a lot more nightmares in Netherworld: The Genius of Parasites, which is the book that I've been working on for the past couple of years, which is due to come out on the 16th of February 2027. Pre-orders should open in mid-June. This book is kind of the culmination of my career to date in parasitology. It's what I've learned about the future of parasitism. It's my answer to the question, is the world getting wormier or not? And yeah, the book is about how global change is influencing parasites, whether we should expect in the future more parasite outbreaks or fewer parasites in general. And the upshot is, these parasites are just so diverse, there's no reason to expect them

• 48:34Speaker 07

  all to do the same thing. And the book covers many examples of parasitic outbreaks like rat lungworm and many others. But it also looks at the other side of that coin and investigates those parasites that are diminishing even into extinction and asks the question, why? And does it matter? Should we care?

• 48:55Daniel Whiteson?

  And can we do that to rat lungworm?

• 48:59Kelly Weinersmith?

  After we wrap up this episode, folks should stay tuned because one of the listeners who've reached out to us is a man named Scott, who is actually working on trying to get people in Hawaii aware of rat lungworm. So he's like part of a group that's working on that. So we're going to give him some time to tell us about what he's been working on. But before we let you go, I want to know, what is your favorite parasite? And if it's not rat lungworm, what is the creepiest parasite?

• 49:24Speaker 07

  Oh, boy. You're like asking me to choose amongst my children.

• 49:28Kelly Weinersmith?

  I know. No, I knew it. I knew it was not an easy question. I knew.

• 49:32Speaker 07

  I really, I have a lot of favorite parasites. But the most beautiful, in my opinion, are the tapeworms in the order Trupenarinka. And I really love these worms. We come across them a lot in our coral reef fish project. We dissect lots of coral reef fishes and we find these parasites as larvae. And I love them because they are set up perfectly for a life inside of a slippery shark gut. If you imagine yourself inside a shark gut, it's dark, it's slippery. There's this never ending tide of poop that's trying to sweep you out of the gut and into the environment. And you don't want that.

• 50:14Kelly Weinersmith?

  No.

• 50:15Speaker 07

  The trupenarinks avoid that by having these like four tentacles that are on their head end, which we call a scolex. And the tentacles are retractable, so they can have them kind of like coiled up inside of their head. And whenever they wish, they can eject those tentacles. Each one is armed with thousands of backward facing hooks. So those tentacles, Daniel.

• 50:41Kelly Weinersmith?

  I, Daniel, this is so fascinating. Daniel and I are having diametric responses right now. This is.

• 50:49Daniel Whiteson?

  All right, I can handle it. I can handle it. Go ahead.

• 50:52Kelly Weinersmith?

  You got this, Daniel.

• 50:55Daniel Whiteson?

  It's shooting these tentacles out of its head. All right.

• 50:57Speaker 07

  It's shooting tentacles out of its head. They lay those tentacles down on the intestinal wall of the shark, dig in the hooks and then retract them back into their head so that they're firmly anchored on the shark's gut wall. And they are.

• 51:13Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's amazing.

• 51:13Speaker 07

  They're amazing. They're also just so beautiful because those tentacles are like curly queued, kind of like the illustrations in the margins of a medieval manuscript. You know, all those like really elaborate ornaments. And they've got all these hooks that refract light when you see them under a microscope. So just like imagine like a bedazzled medieval manuscript and you've got an idea of what the trupenarinks look like. They're just gorgeous. I love the thought of them swimming around with a bunch of sharks, traveling hundreds of miles with their hosts, using these incredibly like well adapted tentacles to get what they want in the world. I just, every time I see one, it's a really special moment.

• 51:55Kelly Weinersmith?

  I can imagine. I'd love to see one in person.

• 51:58Speaker 07

  Come visit.

• 51:59Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay.

• 52:00Daniel Whiteson?

  You speak of this parasite admiringly, but you also call it beautiful. Are you really thinking it's like attractive? I mean, would you like wear it as a piece of jewelry? Or are you just like impressed by its ingenuity and its ferociousness?

• 52:14Daniel Whiteson?

  She literally has one on her finger. All right. All right, there we go.

• 52:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  It's a different kind of parasite, but yes, right?

• 52:22Speaker 07

  It is. Yeah, it's

• 52:23Kelly Weinersmith?

  The haplazone?

• 52:24Speaker 07

  U diplozoan.

• 52:25Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, those are two trematodes that are permanently connected to each other.

• 52:29Daniel Whiteson?

  Nice.

• 52:30Speaker 07

  Monogenes, actually.

• 52:31Kelly Weinersmith?

  Monogenes. Oh, no, I've been embarrassed in public.

• 52:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right, but I'm feeling like we should probably not get to a creepy parasite, given Daniel's face when we were talking about the most beautiful parasite. And so I think maybe we should call it quits here and bid you farewell. Thank you so much for coming on the show. This was amazing. Folks should go out and preorder Netherworld. This episode is coming out after the pre-orders go live, so you can all go and do that right now. And when the book comes out, we will have Chelsea back to talk more about parasites and their future. Thanks for being on the show.

• 53:07Speaker 07

  Thank you so much for having me, guys. I really appreciate it.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  Hi, Daniel and Kelly. Thanks for the information on rat lungworm. It was very thorough and answered more questions than I thought I had. I've been on a diet and been told to eat more salad. Well, so much for that. Admittedly, I live in New Hampshire where the salad is likely safe, but it still gives one pause. And please, don't find a chocolate cake parasite. Anyway, thanks for the great show.

• 53:34Speaker 03

  Aloha, Kelly and Daniel. I really enjoyed listening to Dr. Woods share her knowledge of the rat lungworm parasite and the disease. It was very informative. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to share some about our efforts for disease prevention here in Hawaii. In our rural community of Hana, Maui, back in 2017, we had an outbreak of rat lungworm disease. And I have friends who are still experiencing some neurological symptoms years later, and there are still cases now and then. Through the Hawaii Farmers Union, we developed an educational outreach campaign aimed at rat lungworm disease prevention, targeting farmers and consumers.

• 54:13Speaker 03

  While all mollusks can carry RLW, in Hawaii, the most high-risk vector is called the semi slug, due in part to how its habits bring it into contact with human food sources, where it can end up hiding in a lettuce or kale. Dr. Woods mentioned there is a great need for locally grown food in Hawaii, and we want to support our local farmers. So while we don't want anyone to get rat lungworm disease, of course, we also don't want the fear of the disease to discourage people from eating locally grown produce. So we did outreach to local farms to help them reduce the risk of contamination by aggressively going after rodents on their farms, creating buffer zones around their growing areas,

• 54:56Speaker 03

  which semi-slugs don't like to cross, putting out non-toxic iron phosphate slug bait, and doing manual semi slug removal. This is especially important during the rainy season when slugs are most active. And taken together, it can have a big impact on the presence of slugs. For the consumer, no matter how much we may trust the farmer, we have to take responsibility for our own safety. Cooking or freezing kills the parasite. So for kale and other leafy greens, cooking it will prevent the disease. And if you really want raw kale smoothies, you can freeze the kale first. I do eat local salads still, but I wash every leaf of lettuce in flowing water, which will knock off the semi slug,

• 55:41Speaker 03

  and I carefully inspect them as I do. The good news, Kelly and Daniel, is that rat lungworm disease is an entirely preventable disease. By taking proactive measures where produce is grown, we can greatly reduce the risk. And by ultimately taking responsibility for our food as consumers, we can still enjoy our delicious local greens while keeping ourselves safe from this nasty nematode. As part of our outreach, we created a website with basic, clear information for farmers and consumers as well as patients. So I'd invite your listeners to visit ratlungworm.info. Again, thank you so much for spreading awareness

• 56:23Speaker 03

  about this parasite and the debilitating disease it can cause, and for giving me my chance to add two cents to Dr. Woods' excellent information.

• 56:33Daniel Whiteson?

  All of

• 56:40Daniel Whiteson?

  Thanks, everybody, for listening. Please go and do us a favor and rate the show on whatever podcast app you're using. It really helps people find us.

• 56:48Kelly Weinersmith?

  Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing Matt Kesselman.

• 56:53Daniel Whiteson?

  He really is a wizard. You can also find us online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and X, D and K Universe. Come engage with us.

• 57:03Kelly Weinersmith?

  You can email us at [email protected]. We really do want to hear from you.

• 57:08Daniel Whiteson?

  And you can find our website, www.danielandkelly.org, where you'll also find an invitation to join our Discord, where everybody comes and talks about the amazing universe.

• 57:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  And we also have the most amazing moderators. This is an iHeart Podcast. Thanks for joining us.

• 57:28Kelly Weinersmith?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.