The Show for May 25, 2026: Revisiting some of our favorite science stories from the past year

Mosquitos are finding a way to survive the Phoenix’s extreme heat. How much of a threat is West Nile in the desert? Plus, we’ll hear from a Vatican astronomer with ties to Arizona.

Transcript

MARK BRODIE: Hi, I'm Mark Brodie, co-host of The Show, an original production from KJZZ. Every weekday we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at theshow.kjzz.org. Here's today's episode.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It's The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I'm Mark Brodie. On today's Memorial Day edition of The Show, we're revisiting some of our favorite science stories from the past year. We'll discuss what dogs can teach us about Valley fever and how scientists are studying the oil that's still leaking from the USS Arizona, sunk in 1941.

But first, the State Health Department says there are around 100 human cases of West Nile virus reported each year. Maricopa and Pima counties report the highest number of those cases. New research from ASU finds there are more mosquitoes here now than in the past, although climate change may have an impact on their population.

Kelsey Lyberger is an assistant professor in ASU's College of Integrative Sciences and Arts where she studies the ecology of mosquitoes. And when she came by the studio to talk about her new work, she told me when she started at ASU, she was surprised by how much of a threat West Nile is in the desert.

KELSEY LYBERGER: Thinking about the distribution of some of these vectors and mosquitoes in general, they like it warm and they like it wet. But Phoenix is so hot in the summer, I was surprised they could persist through that heat.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so how are they doing it? Because as you say, Phoenix is pretty darn hot, especially in the summer.

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah, and the interesting part about how they're doing that is that I think it depends on what species you're talking about. We have multiple species here in the area and, for some of them, they are finding these little microhabitats, often that we are creating, where it's a little bit cooler and it's wetter — whether that's from irrigation or as we just got some rainfall.

MARK BRODIE: So, could this be the kind of thing where, like in somebody's backyard you have, you know, maybe a flower pot that's empty, that has some water and it's maybe in the shade, so it's out of direct sun. Is that the kind of microhabitat you're talking about?

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah. So that would be a perfect habitat. For example, a species called Aedes aegypti, they love those human-made containers.

But we also have species like Culex, which are the main vectors of West Nile virus. And they're breeding in slightly more organically-rich water. And so they're finding storm drains that maybe have backed up a little bit or, for example, in this study that I've been working on over the summer, we went to a bunch of nurseries where they're ... healthily watering some trees.

And another big one here that I'm not sure I would have thought of beforehand is empty swimming pools. So people maybe take off for the hot summers and leave their pools, maybe drain them, but then they fill again if we get rainfall. And they love breeding in there. And you can imagine a swimming pool full of mosquitoes certainly breeds a lot.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, that's a lot of space. I mean, that could probably lead to a lot of mosquitoes and potentially a lot of illness.

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah, and the swimming pool mosquitoes are one of those vectors for West Nile virus. ... The county vector control guys around here are doing their best and they have a huge investment in setting traps, monitoring the situation both in terms of mosquito abundance, but also that they test them — the mosquitoes themselves — to see if they're carrying the virus. And if, kind of, any thresholds are hit, they're going to go out and do something about it.

MARK BRODIE: How big of a temperature difference do you find that the mosquitoes need from sort of, you know, maybe the high temperature at Sky Harbor, to where it is a better place for them to breed? Are we talking just a couple of degrees or does it have to be more than that to make it ideal conditions for them?

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah. So a place like Sky Harbor can record temperatures of like 120, whereas the limits for these mosquitoes, they can't survive beyond something like 110. ... And so we're finding these mosquitoes are in places easily 10 to 15 degrees cooler than a weather station might report.

MARK BRODIE: But even 110 degrees, I mean, during, you know, let's say July or August, a good part of the Valley, if not all of it, is routinely above 110. And yet, as you're finding, these mosquitoes are still breeding.

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah. So that really touches on a couple of things that I want to do with my research, which is that right now, a lot of the kind of science of the temperature limits of mosquitoes is considered in terms of a single number: What is their thermal maximum? What's that one hot temperature? But really, survival at those temperatures is a function of time.

So we might hit 110 for a few hours, but then at night you're going to have reprieve from that. It's going to drop down. And so really, you touch on what I'm hoping to do in the lab next, which is test for how long can they withstand these really hot temperatures?

MARK BRODIE: I mean, do you think it's possible — and not that anybody is hoping for Phoenix to get hotter — but if it does, could we kind of heat our way out of a disease like West Nile virus?

KELSEY LYBERGER: That would be awesome if it happened, but I'm guessing not. I am guessing, for the most part, it's here to stay, because these mosquitoes are great at finding the habitats that we create for them to mitigate that heat. And it doesn't take much for them to successfully breed, emerge as these adults and females looking for a blood meal.

And to add on to that, which is that West Nile virus itself has to replicate inside the mosquito and that that process is temperature sensitive. So as you heat the outside air, the virus can replicate more quickly inside the mosquito, and that means transmission could happen even faster.

MARK BRODIE: I wonder if that also means transmission could potentially happen later in the season here than it would maybe somewhere on the East Coast when it starts to cool off a little bit. And yet, we're still getting a little bit of rain, you know, there might be some sort of latent moisture around.

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah, definitely. I could see warming leading to a longer West Nile virus season, and in fact, even on the East Coast, a recent study came out saying that's exactly what they're seeing, is a longer season with warmer temperatures.

MARK BRODIE: How, ideally, would you like this research to be used — either by vector control folks or anybody else?

KELSEY LYBERGER: Yeah ... part of the goal of this is to better understand the thermal limits of these mosquitoes. To answer questions about are going to be changes in seasonality, in the abundance of the mosquitoes, or year-to-year variation?And so, how vector control can use that and make different decisions about how they operate, I leave that to them. And I try to provide them the scientific basis on which they can make those decisions.

Same thing for public health agencies. They might be interested in knowing whether that potential season for West Nile virus is going to increase.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Kelsey Lyberger, an assistant professor in ASU's College of Integrative Sciences and Arts. Kelsey, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

KELSEY LYBERGER: Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: Across the ocean, overlooking an idyllic lake away from the lights of Rome, the Vatican, the seat of the Catholic Church, runs an observatory to study the cosmos. And this might very well lead to an obvious question: What is the Vatican doing with an observatory?

CHRIS CORBALLY: So I do wear robes, celebrate mass, and, you know, baptize babies. So that's all part of it because I'm a priest in the Jesuit order. But, as you say, I'm also a scientist. When I finished my doctorate, which was in astronomy, the then director Father George Coyne said, “now Chris, where would you like to be based? Castle Gandolfo or in Tucson?” It was a no-brainer, Tucson, of course.

And in my first year, so springtime of my first year, the University of Arizona made its first new generation telescope mirror. So the mirror is the heart of telescopes which catch the light from the heavens and then sort of reflect it up and etc. So, that mirror was offered to the Vatican Observatory to make into a telescope. It still goes by its project name, which is Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope. And so a very exciting project, I knew little about engineering, and I joined the team to make the telescope. Very exciting.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So you've been there for 40 years, right? Tell us a little bit about what you study. Like, what do you look at when you look through that telescope?

CHRIS CORBALLY: So when I looked through that I was doing on Kit Peak, I look at the rainbows or spectra of stars. So you can obviously see them directly and see their light, but just as the sun has a rainbow, so each star has a rainbow as well. And if you look at it in detail, it's not so much the colors that you see, but the lack of them.

Well, the outer atmosphere of the sun is cooler than the center, and that absorbs light that is coming from the interior of the star. And how much is absorbed and which elements are doing the absorbing tells you about, I'd say the personality of the star.

LAUREN GILGER: So, you have to explain what that means, like, what do you mean when you say a personality of a star? Give us an example of one that interests you.

CHRIS CORBALLY: Well, it's surface temperature, how well packed it is, so what we call the surface gravity. So what's the gravity on the surface of a star? So that's really saying how, how big the thing is. And then it's composition, does it have the same kind of abundance of elements as our sun does? That's kind of the personality and the, you know, stars, most of them will fit quite happily, 90%, maybe be more fit nicely into slots, but then there will be ones that don't fit. Then there'll be ones that don't fit, so there we call them peculiar stars. Now we may call people peculiar, but all fascinating as some peculiar stars.

LAUREN GILGER: What do you love about it?

CHRIS CORBALLY: Well, I love, I find spectra beautiful, you know, I don't see them in color. I see them in, as it were, black and white initially when I was using photographic plates to take the spectra of stars, but now it's digital on the screen, so it's wiggles up and down in intensity and in, as it were, color or wavelength is the other dimension.

LAUREN GILGER: So, I want to talk about the other kind of overarching question that probably looms over a lot of the work that you do and a lot of the questions people have about it, right? Like, just as most people wouldn't assume that a priest is also an astronomer, I'm guessing most people would assume that religion and science conflict, right? Like, that religion even denies science most of the time, or the other way around. Do you see that?

CHRIS CORBALLY: I suppose the short answer is no, of course not. Our understanding that we gain of our universe, through science, is very much part of the overall truth, and if you like, you know, God is the truth with a capital T, and we have lots of truths with smaller T’s in all kind of branches that kind of bring together and are part of that overall whole big truth.

LAUREN GILGER: Are there times though when these things butt up against each other, for you? Like when you cannot explain a religious belief with science, like a miracle or, you know, people know Jesus was supposed to have walked on water, right? Like, how do you kind of answer those questions?

CHRIS CORBALLY: By saying there beyond science, precisely a miracle is something that science cannot explain. A healing is often the thing that's a miracle that's needed before the Catholic Church will declare someone a Saint, so a healing that cannot be explained by the doctors is a miracle. And these seem to happen, you know, and, and you can't explain it, the known medicine won't explain it.

LAUREN GILGER: Are there examples like that in the astronomy world, things that you cannot explain and you might attribute to the divine?

CHRIS CORBALLY: I don't think so. I think there's a scientific explanation, and people may or may not believe that explanation, but you know there is one. Part of the problem in the Bible was when the passage was saying, “well, the sun went backwards.” Well, you can't explain that. What actually was experienced at the time, and that's something we don't know.

LAUREN GILGER: It's interesting to me that you keep saying, you know, “we just don't know,” or “this is something we cannot explain,” because to the outsider, at least, to someone who's not a scientist, right? Like that's the whole point of science is, to be able to explain those things to create the hypotheses and test it and say this is the answer. It sounds like, as a priest and a scientist, right, like you are willing to allow that to be unanswerable sometimes.

CHRIS CORBALLY: Yeah, well, the same is true in science, you know, it was put to me by good scientists, under whom I studied, that in science, you're always asking questions and what you're doing is asking better questions. So, we're asking the same kind of questions to people from, you know, decades, centuries, whatever ago but we’re asking better questions now.

LAUREN GILGER: Let me ask you lastly, I wonder this because of the work that you described that you do and the beauty of it and the beauty that you see in it. Are there moments that you have when you're looking at those spectra, when you feel that connection between the cosmos and the divine that you talked about?

CHRIS CORBALLY: Same as anyone away from cities, when the moon is not bright in the sky and it's so it's really dark sky. The wonder gets, even to an astronomer, just the beauty of the heavens. Now again, astronomer have better questions about those stars to ask and more thing to wonder, you know, on the distances and the times involved and the energies involved in it all. But it's the same wonder there.

You know, when I'm looking at spectra, I'm kind of finding out what God knows about this particular star. Now, God knows in a different way than we do. I might call it, you know, classify it as such and such as this is a star like our sun, and God's knowledge is different from ours, but it's God's star, and I'm enjoying finding out about it. And ... as it's said, you know, same and different as God knows and understands this star.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. We'll leave it there. That is Father Chris Corbally with the Vatican Observatory in Tucson joining us. Father Corbally, thank you so much for coming on The Show. I really appreciate it.

CHRIS CORBALLY: Most welcome. I'm delighted to talk with you.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It's The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Mark Brodie. Coming up, would you let a venomous snake bite you?

TIM FRIDDE: It's basically like a bee sting. But the difference is, a bee sting only has like one or two milligrams, and snakes can have upwards of 4 to 500 milligrams, sometimes more.

MARK BRODIE: We'll hear from a man who's been bitten more than 200 times for the sake of science.

But first, Arizona health officials reported more than 14,700 cases of Valley fever in 2024. It's a lung infection caused by a fungus that grows in the soil and is most common in Arizona, California, and other parts of the southwestern U.S. But new research suggests dogs may be able to help give us a better sense of how prevalent the disease actually is.

Jane Sykes is a professor of small animal internal medicine at the University of California, Davis. When we spoke, I asked her what this research says about what dogs can tell us about Valley fever that we don't already know.

JANE SYKES: Yeah. So, as you may be aware, Valley fever is a disease that's considered to be emerging in people. And certainly concerns about changes in our climate and contributing to increasing Valley fever in people. And so there's been a lot of concern, and certainly some modeling efforts to suggest that, by 2035, even as much as half of the Western United States may have Valley fever.

And, unfortunately, currently, the reporting of Valley fever is not required for all states and people. And so we have states that we know that are endemic for the fungus — like Texas, for example, where there's no reporting information available. Whereas with dogs, you know, we have been able to collect the results of antibody tests, serology tests — which is the main way the disease is diagnosed in dogs — that have been archived at this very, narrow set of laboratories that actually performs this specialized testing. And so that's allowed us to capture results for dogs right across the entire country, including in these states that don't report human disease. And so we've been able to get really good information from hundreds of thousands of dog test results from these regions. And because dogs don't travel as much as people — actually, even if we were able to get that information for people, it would be more complicated by travel than it is in dogs.

MARK BRODIE: So basically what you're saying is we have better information on how many dogs have Valley fever and where they are than we do for humans.

JANE SYKES: Exactly, that's right.

MARK BRODIE: So, how are we able to use that? Like, are you able to look at the results from dogs and say, “OK, there's X number in, say, Texas. So, we can maybe extrapolate that out and say there might be X number of human cases in that state.”

JANE SYKES: Exactly. And, and so one of the findings from our study is that, where we do know human disease happens — like in California and Arizona, where there is quite good reporting information for people — we were able to compare the results of the dog test results to human reported data, and show that there was a very strong correlation between those case numbers. And we normalize the dog data to population, so per 10,000 households. The other thing that makes dog information useful is that there are a lot of dogs in the United States. And, you know, it's now estimated that about 45% of U.S. households have at least one dog. So, when, when we were able to use the households as a denominator, you know, that helps to control for population numbers. And very close correlation between case numbers in people in California and in Arizona, which suggests that probably is the same for other states, where we don't have human information. And, so, our future work is looking at those areas where we don't have information in humans and trying to extrapolate as to what's likely based on the dog data.

MARK BRODIE: How reliable do you think that might be able to be in places like, maybe, Texas or Oregon or Washington State, where there have started to be more cases of Valley fever? Like, do you think you'll be able to look at the number of dogs and maybe have to increase the number of dogs that are tested in those places to try to get a gauge of what the human situation might be?

JANE SYKES: Yeah, and interestingly, in Washington, before human cases were recognized in Washington state, the Washington State Disease … Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory noted that there had been cases in dogs and also a horse in Washington before disease was recognized in people. And they now have a requirement, the state requirement, for reporting of animal cases. And, you know, when we looked at our data, there were a number of states that seemed to have really quite a higher incidence of dog disease when compared with other states that probably had, you know, kind of low incidence of disease because of travel. You know, states like, East Coast states, where we really know the fungus isn't present. But there were some Western states that had really a huge jump in incidents relative to those other states where we really don't think the fungus exists. And some of those states were states that we really don't recognize as being endemic for Valley fever in humans at this point in time. And I think that's a sign that the fungus is present in those locations.

MARK BRODIE: That's interesting. So it's possible that Valley fever might be more widespread than we think it is, and the way we might be able to figure that out is through dog infections.

JANE SYKES: Exactly, yeah. So, states like Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon all had, you know, these higher incidences that might be a sign that the disease is occurring in people in those regions, not as a result of travel to endemic states.

MARK BRODIE: So, I know that one of the issues with Valley fever, especially as it relates to humans, is that there are some number of doctors who just don't know to even look for it or test for it because … a lot of people can have it and never, it never manifests itself. They never show symptoms, anything like that. Is that also the case with dogs? Like, are vets ready and knowledgeable enough to test for it if they know a dog is from a particular area and maybe has particular symptoms?

JANE SYKES: Yeah … we have the same problems for dogs as as existing people, and it is underrecognized in some parts of the country. And sometimes I get calls from veterinarians working in Florida, for example, who have just diagnosed the disease in a dog that's been traveling to Arizona. So, there are some vets that are aware of it, and some that are not. And, unfortunately, we do see cases referred to us here at UC Davis, oftentimes that have been treated with antibacterial drugs, antibiotics, when they need anti-fungals. Because no one's thinking about Valley fever. So, this is a really good opportunity to increase awareness of the disease and have people be looking out for it in these states where we think it might be present.

MARK BRODIE: So, I would imagine then that for someone who does the kind of work that you do, having a more accurate gauge of how many dogs and people are actually infected with Valley fever would probably be pretty helpful.

JANE SYKES: Very much so. Yes. Yes. And the other thing about dogs that we've found is that one of the risk factors for Valley fever in dogs is digging in the dirt. And, you know, dogs have this tendency to dig. It brings them very close to the soil. And so it means that they're … often getting infected, and more susceptible to infection maybe than people in the same region. And so that makes them good what we call sentinels for the disease. Kind of like the canary in the coal mine, if you will.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, that is really interesting. All right. That is Jane Sykes, a professor of small animal internal medicine at the University of California, Davis. Jane, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

JANE SYKES: Thank you so much for this opportunity.

MARK BRODIE: It's been nearly 85 years since Pearl Harbor was attacked and the USS Arizona was sunk on December 7, 1941, on a day that President Franklin D. Roosevelt said would live in infamy. And it turns out the ship has been leaking oil since that time. New research details those small leaks and what scientists have been able to learn from them.

Chris Reddy is a scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod. I spoke with him more about the work he's been doing at the site of the USS Arizona, and we started the conversation with whether or not it's surprising to hear that this number of years after it was sunk, the ship is still leaking oil.

CHRIS REDDY: Yeah, I mean, so the USS Arizona was sunk on Dec. 7, 1941, by the Japanese when they attacked Pearl Harbor, and 1,177 souls were lost. And from all accounts, oil has been leaking from that ship since then, and now it's part of a memorial.

Best estimates are about 1 gallon a day to 2 gallons a day but there were 1.6 million gallons on the ship. It got filled up, unfortunately, the day before the attack, so I had a full load, and best estimates are that there's probably about 600,000 gallons still on the ship.

MARK BRODIE: Wow. And how does that oil now compare to the makeup that it had in 1941?

CHRIS REDDY: Oh yeah, that's why I go to work every day. So thanks for asking that, Mark. Yeah, because, you know, I'm always curious about how nature responds to uninvited guests, because that oil in that tank, you know, nature is trying to figure out a way to push back on it or if it's even getting released.

And so we don't know what that oil looked like on Dec. 7, but we have a pretty good idea. And I would say that surprisingly, the oil has not changed that much in 80 years. Some microbes have eaten a little of it, but I can tell you, I've worked on other oil spills where we have seen more degradation in six weeks than the 80 years that we see, at the USS Arizona.

MARK BRODIE: Wow, why do you think that is?

CHRIS REDDY: Well, it's about packaging, which is that all that oil in the USS Arizona is still pretty tight in the tanks. And it's not very well aerated, so you know, think about a fish tank where you have to bubble in oxygen that helps keep the ecosystem going. There's not a lot of oxygen there. The water is not always getting refreshed.

You think about it, that oil is stored really deep in the bowels, and it's leaking out a little, but it's not a great place for the microbes to want to eat. And so the end result is that they have relatively fresh oil 80 years later.

MARK BRODIE: It sounds like it's almost more pure than what it would have been, maybe had there been a bigger leak or had there been maybe a bigger hole in the ship or something.

CHRIS REDDY: Absolutely, absolutely. You know, this is an unusual occurrence. There's 5,000 World War II shipwrecks. And, you know, the key thing is they all have some fraction of oil on it, and it's not an if but a when all these oil starts to release. Some are already, you know, the USS Arizona is only 1 gallon a day, and it is of no concern in the big picture.

I wouldn't think about trying to remove that oil. It's a national shrine. I think it has the shrine and the significance of that supersedes this relatively small volume of oil, but what it does do is it does give us a snapshot of what oil looks like after 80 years, at least in one location, and it's surprising. It's surprising how a well-packaged, well-built ship like the USS Arizona has not corroded enough so that you have much attack on the oil in these tanks.

MARK BRODIE: So does that tell you then that shipbuilders of today should be looking at the USS Arizona to try to determine how to build their ships in the hopefully unlikely event that they sink or otherwise like are in a position where their oil might leak?

CHRIS REDDY: You know, I'm not a metallurgist or a marine architecture person, but I do think we wanna celebrate that the corrosion, resilience of the USS Arizona is certainly good news. But the value of the USS Arizona is that it is a living laboratory. That allows us to understand what happens to oil 80 years later.

There are 5,000 other wrecks thrown in the Atlantic and Pacific, and we're constantly trying to assess the threat of oil that releases from them. But for the most part, we haven't analyzed the oil from those wrecks. It's hard to get at, and so we're trying to plan for a problem, but we don't have all the data in hand.

And that's where the USS Arizona comes in play because we at least know where the oil came from, we know when it was sunk, we know where it's been, and so at least gives us a little bit of a toehold into what we might be expecting in the future.

MARK BRODIE: So do you anticipate then that what you learned from the USS Arizona will be most helpful in dealing with other shipwrecks from many decades ago, as opposed to oil spills maybe more recently?

CHRIS REDDY: Absolutely. I can tell you right now that the value that we have gotten from studying the USS Arizona is paving the way for having a better understanding of oil that's releasing at what they call Iron Bottom Sound, which is from about 100 ships or about 60 Japanese ships and 40 or 50 American ships are sunk as part of the Battle of Guadalcanal. And so we're using that information to help understand ongoing leaks that are happening from Japanese or American ships there.

MARK BRODIE: Is there any reason to believe that the conditions on the USS Arizona will change either the condition of the oil or the rate at which it's spilling out?

CHRIS REDDY: Well, you know, that's an active project. The National Park Service oversees the USS Arizona memorial and a larger part of a memorial at Pearl Harbor. And they're actively studying the corrosion there.

You know, it's hard to predict moving forward. I tend to think that a lot of the oil is below the mud line, which is buried below. And that's kind of good news because when you get deep into mud, there's not much oxygen, and so there isn't any rust going on. And so I'm pretty hopeful based on the data we have in hand that, you know, it's pretty secure for the time being, to the point where I would say that no plans should need to be done in the near future to try to think about removing the oil.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting, and I would imagine if you had to do that, that would be quite a sensitive project given the nature of the USS Arizona and as you say that the memorial that it includes.

CHRIS REDDY: This is such a non-trivial, you know, the USS Arizona is such a critical component of our national history, that we have to move. I will say though that when I first started working, on the site with the National Park Service and United States Coast Guard, one of the first things I had asked was, “is this OK?”

You know, I've been on the USS Arizona collecting samples, and, you know, it's incredibly moving. One day I was the only person on the memorial. The dock that they use to deliver 2 million visitors a year was broken, and so I was able to access it by kind of an emergency chute type ladder, and it is incredibly moving. It's probably one of the high points of my career.

But I've asked multiple times and the Park Service has spoken to when they started working on the corrosion in earnest in the ‘80s and ‘90s, they spoke to the survivors, they spoke to the survivors' families. They are supportive of the science that's being done there and they constantly try to update those folks and it's treated with tremendous respect.

MARK BRODIE: All right. Well, Chris, thank you so much for for taking the time to chat. I really appreciate it.

CHRIS CHRIS REDDY: My pleasure, Mark. Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: Chris Reddy, a scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod. Nice to talk to you. Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: More than 80,000 people globally die every year from snake bites, according to the World Health Organization. But our next guest is trying to bring that number down by using himself as a sort of test case. Tim Fridde is director of herpetology at Centivax in San Francisco, a company that develops universal vaccines. And he has allowed himself to be bitten by snakes hundreds of times. He's also injected himself with snake venom in an effort to build up antibodies that could be used to make antivenom. His case recently appeared in the journal Nature.

I spoke with Fridde and asked what prompted him to be the guy who injects himself with snake venom and allows himself to be bitten by snakes.

TIM FRIEDE: Well, I’m not the only guy. The creator of what I do with self-immunization, which is called SI, is Bill Haast. And his first injection was 1948, and he has since passed. He made it to 100 and had a great life. I had a chance to meet him back in 1999 and that kind of forever changed my life. He didn’t teach me things specifically, but he was a big inspiration for me with making a human immune to snake bite and not use a horse.

MARK BRODIE: Why is that so important to you? Like, what to you is the upside?

TIM FRIEDE: The upside is 125,000 people a year die, and I’m proud to represent humanity and give a little bit back and use my own body to be studied in the laboratory, to make a better antivenom that we have now.

MARK BRODIE: So for how long have you been doing this? When did you start?

TIM FRIEDE: I started in 2001, in March of 2001, and went all the way to 2018, in November, and then I retired from it. I pushed it really, really hard for a long time, and we didn’t have funding back at that time. So I funded myself for 18 years while raising a family, working construction, working in factories, being a pizza delivery driver, washing dishes. Because I don't have a degree, so I had to take any job I could get, and unfortunately it sucked. But while I was doing that during the day, I’d go to my lab at night and do all my stuff with my snake.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so how did you actually know what to do?

TIM FRIEDE: I didn’t because there’s no book or university that teaches you how to do this. There are books out there, but there’s nothing specific on how many milligrams to inject, how often to do it, do I have high IgG titer levels? Those are unanswered questions, they were unanswered questions, they're not now. But I just set out after I beat snakebite and sat there, it was great. I didn't have to die or use antivenom, although I did use antivenom once. I used 6 vials.

And at that point I just realized that, “How can I get this 8,000 miles away to where people die from snake bite?” And I basically represent people in the old world that are expendable.

MARK BRODIE: So I want to clarify, because you have both been bitten by snakes and injected yourself with venom. How many times have you done each of those things?

TIM FRIEDE: Two hundred bites and over 700 injections, as of 2018. I did more after that — some bites and some injections — but just for my personal, just cause I wanted to do it.

MARK BRODIE: Where did you get the venom?

TIM FRIEDE: Well, I got the venom from people in Florida that bred snakes and they ship them to me. I also get dry venom from all over the place too. I really don’t need snakes to self-immunize. I have a freezer full of venom that’s dried out, and I have enough venom in there to last me a lifetime.

MARK BRODIE: That is not something I ever thought I’d hear a human being say: “I have enough venom to last me a lifetime.”

TIM FRIEDE: Yeah, I do, I do.

MARK BRODIE: So, take me back to 2001, the first time you did this. What was going through your mind?

TIM FRIEDE: Yeah, I was scared. You know, I diluted it down 1 in 10,000 times with the Egyptian cobra venom and monocled cobra venom, and I started with that cause they were dangerous. I could get them.

And I didn't know what it was gonna be like, nobody told me what it was gonna feel like. It's basically like a bee sting. But, the difference is a bee sting only has like 1 or 2 mg. And snakes can have upwards of 400 to 500 mg, sometimes more.

So it's not just qualitative, it's quantitative. And that's the big difference. And then I just realized that all these people are dying from snake bite, and what was gonna be my next step? Which is very hard to do.

MARK BRODIE: So that first time, was that intentional or were you just sort of out and about and you got bitten by a snake?

TIM FRIEDE: No, it was intentional. Yeah, the original cobra bites were intentional. There’s two on September 12 of 2001. About half a year after I started, I took two bites in an hour. It was stupid. My mind wasn't around it. I ended up in ICU, in a coma for four days.

MARK BRODIE: Wow.

TIM FRIEDE: And that’s how I started out, is by failure. I didn’t start by any success whatsoever. There’s no way.

MARK BRODIE: Do you foresee a time when people might no longer die from snake bites?

TIM FRIEDE: They’re always gonna die, because we can’t immunize all of them. They’re not all gonna get the antivenom, and there's such an antivenom shortage right now.

I think just in Africa, they’re making 15,000 vials a year of anti venom, and they need roughly 2 million. That’s just Africa. Now, if you jump over to Asia, where 100,000 people a year die, then jump into India, where 50,000 people a year die — that’s our marketplace. We want to start there.

MARK BRODIE: Was there any point during the last couple of decades when you thought that you were not going to survive this project you were doing?

TIM FRIEDE: At least 12 times. Simply because, number one, it’s painful. I was supporting myself and the family. A couple of times, I passed out after a couple of bites and I’m like, “oh man, I’m going down.” I’ve had anaphylactic shock 12 times. So, it’s been a rough journey, and that's why a lot of people don’t do it. Because you really, really have to be focused. I mean, you can’t have a bad day.

I was dealing with death on a daily basis. And one of the reasons I was bitten so many times is I call it saddle time: The more you do it, the better you get at it. In my case, if you don’t get good at it, you’re gonna die. It doesn’t mean you have to get bit that many times, but my philosophy was the more I’m bitten, the easier it's gonna be. And that's exactly how it was.

MARK BRODIE: Have you ever been bitten by a snake when you weren’t planning on being bitten by a snake?

TIM FRIEDE: Oh yeah, I was bitten milking snakes. I’ve had them just crawl up my arm up on a hook and bite me, not all the time. Almost all my bites are self-induced. And I did that to prove a point : that I can beat snake bite. Because back in the day there were a lot of naysayers — which is fun, I love naysayers — that said I couldn’t take a bite from a black mamba, or taipan, or a cobra, or a rattlesnake or krait, you name it. And I did that.

This will hopefully be the first time in 125 years since Albert Calmette, who basically created antivenom, that we could maybe change that to make a better product and to not use horses. But to use what we can make in a lab and mass produce it in the millions, antibody-wise. I sleep good at night knowing that I used my own body, put my life on the line for people that don’t have a voice like I do.

MARK BRODIE: All right. Well, Tim, thank you so much for for taking the time to chat. I really appreciate it.

TIM FRIDDE: Oh, you bet, Mark. It was great time talking to you.

MARK BRODIE: Tim Fridde is director of herpetology at the firm Centivax.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for listening to The Show's podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by Jon Hoban. Our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram at @kjzztheshow. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

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