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