For thousands of years Egypt, India, China, the Middle East, Europe, and the US, one after another all saw leeches as the answer to their problems. They were exercisers of demons, relievers of pain, bringers of balance, and a source of income. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Tiny Vampires

Episode 45: Our shared history with leeches

Anyone growing up in the United States during the 1950s or 60s has memories of chasing trucks down the road as they doused the neighborhood in a mosquito-killing fog. The story of that fog is part of the broader epic of the insecticide DDT. With a cast ranging from Dr. Suess, the entire population of Naples, peregrine falcons, to a trendy shade of green. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 44: Poison of the Past

Blood is vital, transporting hormones, nutrients, and oxygen, and removing waste products but for all its complexity some animals see it simply as food. While we grow up learning to protect our precious fluid from blood-suckers like vampire bats, leeches, and bed bugs they don’t have a monopoly on their gory craving. Unexpected animals from snails to birds to moths have come to join the feast.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 43: Unexpected Vampires

Join me and more than 40 of your other favorite independent podcasters at the Intelligent Speech Conference. Get 10% off your ticket price when you use the offer code  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Invitation: Intelligent Speech Conference -online-

When we call mosquitoes “the deadliest animals on earth” we aren’t just talking about human deaths. Mosquitoes have played a major role in Hawaii’s infamous designation as the endangered species capital of the world.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 42: Malaria Islands

We all believe that we have the capacity to completely change ourselves, but at what cost?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Halloween Special: Gutted

An entirely new perspective on the infamous black death.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Halloween Special: Yersinia pestis

We’ll kick-off this Halloween special with “The Passenger” a tale of control, desire, and the monster within.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Halloween Special: The Passenger

Most of the time when we get sick we expect to suffer through it and end up rewarded with immunity to disease, or at least the knowledge that it won’t hit so hard if you get it a second time. A bout with the Dengue virus, also known as break-bone fever, is very different. It can actually increase the chance that a second encounter with the virus will end in hemorrhagic fever.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 41: So Much Worse The Second Time Around

The African continent was declared polio-free just a couple of days ago, which means that we are, once again, coming close to eradicating it from the globe. Yet, in 2014 children started to go limp, losing control over their arms and legs over the course of weeks, this polio-like condition is called Acute Flaccid Myelitis. Since then, there has been a larger and larger outbreak of the condition every other year, and that’s not the only strange thing about it.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 40: The emergence of a new kind of childhood paralysis

The CDC has a catalog of 537 viruses that are transmitted by insects are their relatives around the world. This number can be overwhelming and scary but the more we learn about the world of obscure viruses the better we’re equipped to fight them.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 39: The world of obscure mosquito-borne viruses

The symbol for medicine, a serpent wrapped around a staff, is displayed on everything from the World Health Organization logo to your doctor’s name tag, depicts the treatment of a single disease, the removal of a Guinea Worm from the patient by slowly wrapping it around a stick over the course of days. This disease is famous for another reason, it is about to be the second disease eradicated from the face of the earth.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 38: Guinea Worms and Human Nature

A truck slowly drives by your house at night with a cloud of fog coming out from behind it. It might seem creepy but that fog is effectively synthetic chrysanthemums water that is engineered to target mosquitoes based on their flight patterns.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 37: What are those fog trucks spraying?

Bloodsuckers can be hijacked by viruses and parasites, but some ticks are lethal all on their own. The Australian Paralysis tick paralyzes 10 thousand dogs and cats a year. We didn’t know how their venom worked until some researchers squirted some mouthwash on some ticks and made a discovery.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 36: How could one tiny tick paralyze a person?

Author and fly researcher Dr. Erica McAlister helps bust myths about mosquitoes and other flies   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 35: Busting Myths about Flies

Ever wonder how we genetically modify mosquitoes? Curious about the parasites? Have questions about how tick bites cause meat allergies? Tiny Vampires is a show about insects that transmit disease and the scientists that are fighting them. Each episode is guided by questions sent in by listeners. The question is answered with background information and the story of how scientists were able to shine a light on that particular mystery.

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Tiny Vampires

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