I'm Alan Alder, and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

When you talk to anybody who does research with snakes, they'll tell you that they do have personalities,

and there are certain species and individuals that tend to be crankier. anybody who does research with snakes, they'll tell you that they do have personalities,

and there are certain species and individuals that tend to be crankier or a little bit more temperamental, others that seem a little bit more chill, if you will.

You know, again, people who deal with snakes all the time, they always say that, yes,

they definitely have personalities and different temperaments.

That's Stephen Hall. With just one of the many surprising facts about snakes, he discovered

while he was researching his new book, Slither, How Nature's Most Maligned Creatures Aluminate

Our World. There are also revelations about snake snake sex, their amazing feats of digestion,

that flickering tongue, their contribution to a medicine that saved countless human lives,

and why slithering is one of their secrets to success. Stephen's book and our conversation

goes pretty far in convincing me that snakes deserve

our respect and not just our dread. Well, I'm really impressed you've set yourself a huge

task as a communicator to help fix the PR problem that snakes have, and you really went for it in the title of the book,

Sliver, because even the way they move is a derogatory word for us. But you do a heck of a job in making

them seem like fellow creatures we don't have to be so fearful of. But most of us are. Do you remember your first encounter with a snake?

I do. I was a preteen in Michigan, and I took a herpetology class, and we're on a field trip,

and a ribbon snake just bolted across my path as we were walking in a group through this wetlands. Before I had time to think about it,

I just dove down and grabbed it. And then I had a snake in my hand, and I had to deal with the

sensation of a, it wasn't slithering because I was holding it. It was just this incredible life

force. It's a very slender snake, but you felt this muscular activity

and the rapidity of its movement through the grass there. It just left a lasting impression.

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