Are we yes? Where are we here? Why are we here not entirely clear? We are misfits

grossed into existence by random chance with no hints at all as to how we're supposed

to make sense of it all. It's immensely bizarre. Here we are.

Hello everybody and welcome to the here we are podcast today. I'm at the University

of Tennessee Knoxville. I'm in the beautiful UT Gardens talking with my guest today. Becky

Trout Fricksell is joining me Becky. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for inviting

me Shane. Tell us about your background and what you do.

So I'm a medical veterinary entomologist here at the University of Tennessee and that's

a lot of works. But what it basically means is I study mosquitoes, ticks and flies and

the different pathogens that they may transmit to humans and non-human animals.

So how did you get into that? That's a lot. It's a lot. Not only are those really interesting

insects, but they're really when you bring disease and pathogens into the equation, it's a very

salient, interesting topic and something that we all have to think about when we're at

hikes or hanging out outside. Yeah, so I will be honest and say that when I was little

I was not passionate about insects like most entomologists are. I didn't even know what

an entomologist was, but I was an undergraduate student and living in Kentucky at the time

when there were a bunch of horses that were dying and we couldn't figure out what was happening

and they were always showing up on the news and it just happened to be that a little caterpillar

had a bacteria on the hair of it and horses were consuming this caterpillar and that

basically enhanced immune response and a bunch of horses died because they were consuming caterpillars

and I just thought that was super wicked cool and that was it. Shortly after that, West Nile virus

started and I was in. Fascinating. It is people that study viruses are always in such

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