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.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, I'm Rachel Feldman.

People are funny about snakes.

I remember being taught the rhyme,

Red touches black, you're okay Jack,

red touches yellow, you're a dead fellow in elementary school.

Never mind the fact that we absolutely did not have coral snakes in New Jersey.

My guest today has spent a lot of time exploring our cultural aversion to and fascination with snakes. Stephen S. Hall is a science

writer and the author of seven books. He's also a teacher of science communication at New York

University, Rockefeller University, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

His latest book, Slither, How Nature's Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World, is on

sale now. Thank you so much for coming into chat. I'm really looking forward to it.

My pleasure to be here. Thank you.

First question, why snakes?

There's several answers to that question. One of them is that as a kid, like many kids, I caught snakes, brought them home, put them in terrariums in the garage until my mother screamed when they would get loose and that sort of ended that experiment. I was always fascinated by them because they were so

different from other animals and also so beautiful. There was a real fascination and attraction there.

But I wasn't a herper, I didn't go out and continue to collect snakes. What I did do is become a

science writer. And probably in the 2000s and 2010s, when I was reading science

journals like science and nature, I occasionally would run across these really interesting

...