Everybody welcome to the show talking about amphibians today real fun one a couple quick notes a couple things we forgot to mention one thing to clear up my guest afterwards love scientist listen to this guy so he was in his head

asked how many amphibians species there were in the world he thinks you might have mentioned eight thousand says wrote me afterwards so the estimates probably more like six thousand this is why I love scientists guys my brain will just run away with anything there cautious specific people that that value accuracy if you hear me in future episodes like telling another guest how many

amphibian species there are I promise you myself conscious I'm just I'm going to throw a little razzle dazzle on there I'm going to say like nine thousand I might bump it up like sixteen thousand amphibian species on earth but gotta know accurate number around six thousand all right so second more importantly we didn't mention forgot to mention that they are holding the

at the the University of Tennessee in Knoxville the first global amphibian and reptile and disease conference in Knoxville August 4 through 10 links in the bio and on YouTube et cetera there's also a Twitter

g-a-r-d2022 that you can go to I put them under my follow me on Twitter if you go on my list I have all of my past guests on there if you ever want to see what my guests are tweeting about usually it's stuff way more interesting than anything I bug myself down with tweeting about and so guys it's you know you hear

something like first global amphibian reptile and disease conference and a lot of people are just simply not going to be answering you know there's a there you're probably not going to need to rush to get tickets you go out on the street you ask the average person something that they

would like to learn more about or one of their biggest interests in life probably reptile disease isn't going to show up on there and what's special about this show is I always get the

opportunity to hear about amazing things I would have had no idea that I that could possibly be so interesting could possibly say so much

about also the human experience in the world but more generally this isn't a clickbait podcast we don't dive I don't do episodes about whatever drama was going on with someone wearing this and that on whatever red carpet it's not you know we don't we don't do the kind of general

gossip or like the political feuding of like what politician is doing this for the midterm and you listen to this and you go oh my gosh now I know something I got to hear about lizards

I got to hear about ecosystems I got to hear about things that I wouldn't have known would actually impact my life

and I could have instead been spending all of that time watching cable news or getting myself worked up about

whatever the fad of the day is that's circulating around that's just the most important issue that everyone needs to talk about around the water cooler and so things like this might just surprise you

so um so check it out if you want it happened to be a nut in Knoxville but either way you're going to really enjoy this episode who doesn't want to hear about critters that can just regenerate limbs and all sorts of weird kind of ways of living that are seemingly so foreign to the human experience

but something that also does impact us things that we can have as pets stuff like that really cool episode so enjoy

hello everybody and welcome to the here we are podcast we have once again um kind of brought to you by the one health initiative we have another uh terrific guest from the university of Tennessee in Knoxville professor of wetland and disease ecology Matt Gray is joining us today Matt how you doing

yeah how are you doing I'm terrific so can you uh I always like to just because if I try to you do you ever go to um see someone presented to give a talk and someone reads their entire bio and it's it sounds very contrived and they're screwing up things and they're the I avoid that by just having my guests introduce themselves

to me and the audience so why don't you do uh well I can tell the listeners a bit about yourself in your background

sure yeah so um my name is Matt Gray and I'm a professor at the university of Tennessee I'm the associate director of the center for wildlife health here and I also lead the amphibian disease laboratory

um I've been at UT since 2004 so go rocky top prior to UT um I grew up in Michigan and I went to Michigan state to my bachelor's there

and then what came down to the south to the SEC went to Mississippi state for my masters uh spent a couple of years down in Puerto Rico hanging out on the beach and studying wetland ecology and amphibians and then I went out to the high plains of Texas where there were very

few trees and very few hills and studied amphibians out in the plyalake wetlands out there in a very different landscape for my PhD

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