Advertise on podcast: Tiny Vampires

Happy Halloween everyone!! And welcome to the Tiny Vampires Agoraphobia special. Every year I put together a story written from an insect’s perspective. This year is a horror story from the deadliest war in history and even though it is obviously a work of fiction, the facts are true. So even though we’re just having a little festive fun, you’ll still get your dose of insect science you come to count on from Tiny Vampires. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The CDC has a catalog of 537 viruses that are transmitted by insects or 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.