===TRANSCRIPT START=== Astonishing Legends Network.

Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here. But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

Hey everybody, welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And this week, it's starting to feel like summer. The temperatures are rising, the sun is out late, and something terrifying is lurking out there in the lakes, rivers, streams, pools, parks and ponds that we are cooling off in. This creature is over a billion years old. You can't see it, you can't touch it, you can't taste it, and you can't hear it. It's as deadly as anything we've ever discussed on this show. It can and will kill you before you even know you've encountered it. That's right, we are taking a look at the oft-requested, super-feared, microscopic nightmare known as the brain-eating amoeba. So sit back and relax, preferably with a piping hot glass of freshly boiled tap water, because we are about to melt your minds.

What are we scared? When are we? All the time. Now it is time for...

It's time for Scared All The Time. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. I am so psyched for this episode this week. It really is one that we've had requested a number of times from a lot of people. And it's a really interesting subject, I think, that is sensationalized every year. And we are here to sensationalize it even more.

Hell yeah.

And that of course is brain-eating amoeba. Now, what's really exciting is that today, we get to announce the beginning of something that we've been planning for a long time. And by a long time, I mean, approximately a week.

No.

We are doing.

We've been working on this longer.

We've been working on it longer than that. But we today are announcing Scared All The Times Summer of Fear.

Summer of Fear, baby, starts today.

Summer of Fear starts today. What that is, is all summer long, we are doing summer-based fears for you beautiful people as you get out of school, as you hit the beach, as you stay up late, as you have the summer of your lives.

And I think a lot of you are probably, if you listen to the show a lot, are probably thinking, that's got to include Ed taking his shirt off, right? No, we're not even touching that. That's gonna be the season 10 finale or something.

In fact, Ed can't take his shirt off because today he wore a tank top when he went on a hike and he got so badly burned, I don't think he's gonna be able to lift his arms over his head for the next couple of days.

I'm fucked, guys. I should never have gone outside. I should never have worn a tank.

Yeah. And that was just the beginning of the debacles you found yourself in today, Ed. But we'll leave the rest of the debacles off the show.

Yeah. So anyway, Summer of Fear is here. It started in real life. It started on the show too.

Yeah. And so starting on the show today, you've got Brain-Aid and Amoeba. Then tomorrow at the $10 Patreon level, we are offering a Scared All The Time summer movie preview, which is Ed and I talking about the movies that we're most excited about this summer, it seemed like you guys really loved Fang Boys. I was super jealous because I wasn't even a part of Fang Boys. So I said, Ed, we have to do another one. So we did another one.

Now you're gonna see why Chris wasn't a part of it. It was really because of his baby. But when you hear how long he talks about shit, you're gonna be like, I either love this or please let the baby cry and take him away. It was crazy. I wasn't even prepared for what this is. It ended up being pretty fun, but you'll see.

So we've got the summer movie preview and again at the $10 level from here on out, as we'll get to in a moment, we're going to be offering these sort of pop culture discussions on a semi-regular basis. So keep an eye out for those. And then May 31st, the third day in a row of Scared All The Time treats that you're getting. If you are a Patreon member, you're getting Scared All The Time live this May 31st. Then for the rest of the summer, you've got June 12th, shark attacks with our boys in Cryptid Cocktail Party. June 26th, we're doing an episode on fireworks.

Guests to be announced.

Yeah, July 10th, we're doing roller coasters with Catherine Corcoran, who is one of the actresses from Terrifier and just a great all-around person and friend. Then July 24th, we're doing road trips with our friends in Let's Get Haunted. Then August 7th, we're doing a summer camp episode with Perplexity, a mystery podcast. And then August 21st, we are facing the end of the summer with a back to school episode. Now, between all of those, those come out every other week, we have a second show that we've started. Those of you who are on the Patreon, you already know this, but we have New Fear Unlocked, which is our second show. And that is going to fill the gaps every other week between our main episodes.

And we even got more crazy shit. You're probably thinking, wow, that's a lot of bonus stuff. That's a lot of crazy bonus stuff. I'd love to do it, but you know what? One of my big fears this summer, one of my, I've been thinking about it a lot, is fear of a recession. I would love to help you guys out on Patreon, but everything's at uncertain times. Well, we thought about you guys, because you guys are us guys. So we're starting our official fear of a recession pricing on Patreon, which means that now for as little as Five Bones, you never have to miss anything Scared All The Time related. Five Bones gets you new fear unlocked. Five Bone gets you, well, it gets you new fear unlocked.

Yeah.

Ten Bones gets you new fear unlocked, and it gets you any pop culture shows we do, and it gets you the live stream that we do every fucking month. Then 25 Bones remains, you're a producer on the show, you get buttons homemade by me, you're the best people we know. All that shit is awesome. But more importantly, now for as little as Five Bones, you get something from Scared All The Time every fucking week.

That's right.

I think that's cool.

It is cool.

We're not like those shows who are like, give us your money, and then you hear from them in three months. No, every week, you will have something from Scared All The Time. So don't you fucking want that?

He says extremely aggressively. No, no, no, I think this this new pricing is going to be great. I think we're going to bring a lot more people into the Patreon fold. And we really do. It is such an incredible thing that so many of you have been able to support us so far. It really, you guys, I think we've said this before, but you guys keep the lights on around here. And it's, we can't thank you enough. So if you are able to support the show, every dollar does go directly to literally making the show. Making the show.

And on our end, we do try and like kind of make it worth your while, bang for your buck, so.

Yeah, so if you can support it, incredible. We thank you so much. If you can't, we love you guys anyway. Tell a friend, spread the word. The summer of fear is upon us.

Yeah, summer of fear begins now and you can check out all of our socials. We'll have the full calendar pinned. You can see all the stuff. It's broken down by where you can find it and when it comes out. And we have even more guests. We're trying to jump on board. So, yeah, we're really excited about it. And I think that excitement you might hear in a second in this episode, because it's fucked up thing, guys. I will not be seeing any of you at large bodies of water, probably. So let's hit fucking go on that. So you guys know what I'm talking about.

So, Ed, second only perhaps to flesh eating bacteria, the brain eating amoeba seems to be a mainstay in our listeners fear house, fear, fear map. OK, what have you?

Sure. Yeah.

We get asked about these little fucking guys all the time. And because my brain is melting for a thousand other reasons, I always forget to write an episode about them.

Yeah, I see that come through a lot. I see it come through all the fucking time. Like we've on all of our different socials, we've had whatever the fuck you said it was at the beginning.

Brain eating amoeba. Do you have one right now?

I think I do. But everything you had said in the cold open prior to saying the words brain eating, I said brain eating amoebas. I thought it was going to be one of those things that go up your pee hole when you're like in like South America or whatever. But then you said brain eating amoeba.

No, that those those are probably the little little fish, penis monsters, the little fish. Yeah, they're they're on the fear list for sure. We'll hit them some day. But no, this is a much more common, well, that might not be true. I don't actually know anything about the little penis fish.

I think it's one in four people get them there, so it's pretty common.

Yeah. This is a much more commonly requested fear at least. It is something that comes up in the news every summer. Somebody ends up with one of these. It's usually very tragic. And so I went out and learned everything I could about these cursed little freaks so we could prepare for the summer that we are in the middle of or is racing towards us depending on when this comes out and where in the world you live. So before we take a deep dive, let's play Ed, what do you know about this topic? So Ed, what do you know about brain eating amoebas?

Nothing.

You've never had someone or known someone who's had one?

No, never had one. If I knew anyone who had them, they kept it a secret or the amoeba made them forget they had it. I've never heard of this in my life until people started emailing us and posting on our socials like every fucking day, brain eating amoebas, brain eating amoebas.

That's crazy.

My eyes literally got big when you were like, every summer, okay, well not my eyes, one eyebrow raised. I was like, every summer, now my brain was going through like, is it in fireworks? Like, what the fuck? I was like, why is it every summer?

That would be a good super villain plan to release brain eating amoebas in fireworks during a 4th of July.

That is a great plan.

It wouldn't, as we'll learn, it wouldn't work very well. But in theory, it's kind of a cool idea. I have in the notes here, Ed will try to make a stretch to connect brain eating amoebas to his own life. I'll ask him to do more. He can't or won't. Okay, great. Off to a good start as always.

I didn't even do, I didn't try to connect it.

You didn't, you didn't even try what I hoped for.

No, man, I try, I'm slippery like that.

It's all good. You never know which way Ed's going to go. To be fair, I don't have a good connection to these little microscopic monsters either. And that's probably for the best because according to the CDC, while there were 164 reported cases of brain eating amoeba infections in the US between 1962 and 2023, there were only four survivors. So, maybe we have known someone who got a brain eating amoeba. It's just someone who stopped texting us one day.

Yeah.

We figured, well, that's the end of that friendship.

I mean, it could be a lot more people who never even know that's what did it.

Yeah, just gone. Probably not though because it is only 164 people. I think in the United States, it was only 164 people.

Still, that's why I'm so shocked that you're like every summer, the scourge of...

Well, there have been, I think as we will get into actually closer to the end of the episode, there are reasons, shockingly, related to climate change that these are on the uptick. But also, I think it was one of those things that once it got into the news cycle a few years back, they're always looking for it. It's like shark attacks now. They're pretty rare, but once it's that season, everyone's on alert for a story to put out there.

Look, you say barracuda? Everyone goes, huh? What? You say brain-eating amoeba on 4th of July weekend? We're in trouble. I fucked that whole line up, but didn't have a lot of time to think about it.

Well, let's start with the basics. What is a brain-eating amoeba? Because it sounds pretty bad. I picture a little single-celled organism with rows of sharp teeth and an endless hunger for brains. And that's almost half right. According to a water safety website, IWC Innovations, quote, an amoeba is a single-celled organism that belongs to the group of organisms known as protozoa. Typically, amoebas are found in freshwater environments, but some species inhabit saltwater soil and even man-made water systems. Amoebas are distinguished by their amorphous shape. So if you're picturing this in your head, if you haven't ever seen a picture of amoeba, you have. You just maybe don't know it. They're the little, they look like a little splat with a bunch of usually tiny little legs around them. They're a weird squiggly shape, microscopic.

Yeah, we all saw them in school.

Yes, we all saw them in school.

There's no version you weren't shown one in school. And if you live in LA., you know the word amoeba.

Yes.

It's ever present.

Yes. Unlike most cells which have a fixed shape, amoebas constantly change their form, which is why every time you see a picture of one, it looks like a little splat. Their flexibility is due to their gel-like cytoplasm, which enables them to move and ingest food through a process called phagocytosis. And these things are tiny. They're just 8 micrometers to 15 micrometers in size, depending on their life stage and the environment that they're in. To give you a sense of how small that is, a hare is 40 to 50 micrometers wide. So we're talking one-tenth the width of a hare.

That honestly seems bigger than I thought they'd be.

True. I guess if you think about it, you could almost imagine what one-fifth the width of a hare would be.

Yeah.

So it does seem bigger than you'd think.

Seems big. It seems like are there amoebas in my hair? You know what I mean? I felt something.

If you feel amoebas in your hair, you probably need to wash your hair.

Yeah, it might just be.

That's a lot of amoebas.

A living dandruff. I do find it funny that every word you said describing amoeba, like I got taken back to that like black countertop desk in like the science classroom of like a public school. And I do hope some children are listening to the beginning of this episode so that they can be like, boring. Like they know, they know all of this. It's like so fresh in their brain. Like for us, we're like, what the fuck is that again? But if like a fifth grader is listening, they're going to be like, yeah, mom, that's what amoebas are. They're fucking amorbous blobs.

Well, I got to say, there's a lot of science class in this episode because amoebas are fascinating creatures, even the ones that don't eat your brain. So buckle up because you're going to be seeing visions of little microscopes and slides dancing in your head throughout this entire episode.

I love it. That's going to put your kids to sleep for sure.

Yeah. And then they're going to fucking die from getting a brain eating amoeba because they didn't pay attention during Scared All The Time class.

So well, the kid isn't.

Wake them up.

Wake them up.

The kid's going to die. A lot of the people.

I understand everybody dies who gets them, but I don't know why they are being punished for not listening to the episode. And the smiteful god that is Chris has declared, he's decreed.

This is all very important. So I think it's important to note, because I think some people get them confused, that amoebas are not bacteria. They are both single-celled and they both can cause disease. But bacteria are prokaryotes, meaning they lack a defied nucleus and other membrane-bound organelles. Amoebas, on the other hand, are eukaryotes. And this is definitely biology class, prokaryotes and eukaryotes.

Where's your lab coat? I'm on camera with you. I want a little lab coat on your... I have a lab coat here.

Well...

From like a Halloween costume from like 10 years ago.

We should have put them on.

That says CBS iLab. It was from some sort of like CBS promotional thing for one of their marketing departments. It's not even from a hospital or anything.

We should have dressed up mad doctor style. That would have been good for this episode.

If we were Let's Get Haunted, we would have thought ahead.

I know. They're always so prepared. So amoebas, on the other hand, are eukaryotes, which means they have a well-defined nucleus and are much more complex on a cellular level. Interestingly, or I think interestingly, there is one type of headline-making bacteria that has a unique relationship with amoebas. The Legionella bacteria, which causes Legionnaires' disease.

Hey, my favorite disease to say.

Okay, so here's a disease that Ed does know something about.

No, I don't, because every time I use it, people say I'm using it wrong. Every single time. It's just my favorite, you know, series of words to say.

What do you think Legionnaires' disease is?

I thought and probably continue to think that you get Legionnaires' disease from standing water, which I am certain at this point is not true.

Okay.

But that's how I always use it. That's how I always, like the bit I always use is that you're gonna get Legionnaires' disease from that.

The bit you always use.

Pretty regularly.

Ed's go-to joke at parties. Oh boy, don't drink the punch, we're all gonna get Legionnaires' disease.

Yeah, cause that punch has been sitting out.

I think it's like a pneumonia. I mean, I'm making fun of you, but I don't actually, I think it's like a pneumonia type disease. And I think you get it through, it comes through, I feel like, here's where I'm gonna be maybe totally wrong. I think it's the sort of thing that people get at like conventions when they, like it comes through vents. Like it gets rooms full of people sick at conventions is how I think of it.

This is like, do you remember that show from a million years ago? And I think they tried rebooting it, like a who am I type panel show where they give you like three people and it's like, I created a comic book or whatever. And you have to guess at which of those three people is lying and like which one is actually that person. I feel like no one is guessing Legionnaires' disease correct on that like panel of three diseases sitting there. And you're like, I don't know, Vance? That doesn't sound like Legionnaires.

Another show I would like to see is us just being doctors and being like, oh shit, this guy's got, I don't know, cancer or possibly Legionnaires' disease. I don't know the difference.

Yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, we took three podcasts who regularly talk about science and put them in to see if they've learned enough from doing the show to do the job.

Yeah, exactly.

We're in last place in every category. Literally, we're doing so bad.

The insurance premiums on that show would be too high to ever produce it. Everyone would die.

Well, do you remember the Albert Brooks short they did for SNL in the 70s? That's like, he just wants to be a doctor. He just wants to try doing heart surgery or whatever. He's trying to find places that will let him do it, like sign whatever waivers.

Well, that's us. We're coming to your town to do a little on the road heart surgery from what we half remember from reading on the internet.

The only way to cure Legionnaires is to remove the heart. We know this.

It's true. To be true. Yes, we've learned this through science.

Yep.

But anyway, okay, so here's what's really interesting about Legionnaires' disease and the Legionella bacteria, which also, while we're on the subject of misremembered and things about Legionnaires' disease, I always assumed Legionnaires' disease was named after like-

Like the Foreign Legion.

Yeah, the French Foreign Legion or something. No, it's named after the Legionella bacteria, which I guess could be named after the French Foreign Legion. I don't know. I didn't research that part. So kids stay in school. In aquatic environments, amoebas provide a protective habitat for Legionella, shielding them from the environment while allowing them to replicate within the amoebas' cysts. And this relationship is crucial for the bacteria's survival because it enhances their resistance to disinfection methods and facilitates their transmission to human hosts. So essentially, Legionella bacteria uses amoebas as an actual shield so it could grow and spread. So thanks for nothing on that one, amoebas.

Or we're sorry, amoebas. It sounds like your life sucks being used as a human shield all the time.

True.

Where's your empathy? Where's your fucking amoeba empathy, Chris?

I know, you said it earlier. I'm in self-righteous god mode today, so.

That's true.

The primary amoeba we're concerned with today is Negleria fowleri, which typically feeds on bacteria and other detritus, but in certain cases can make its way into your skull and feed on your brain instead, which can cause a quote, extremely rare, sudden, severe, and almost always fatal brain infection known as Negleria isis or primary amoebic meningina cephalitis.

Not any better.

Or PAM for short.

Okay, at least it became an acronym.

We'll be calling it PAM.

Yes.

Because I'm not saying any of those words again.

And if we have any listeners named PAM, we apologize in advance.

PAM is going to be the new Karen. They cause fatal brain infections.

No, I think when someone gets PAM, they become a Karen.

That's true. That's more scientifically accurate.

Well, I guess based on your, they become a corpse, but you know what I mean. You understand the bit.

Negliria faleri belongs to one of the oldest lineages of life on earth. So while the specific species of amoeba is relatively new in evolutionary terms, its broader family has likely existed for over a billion years, which is way before we had animals and really way before we even had plants on planet earth. This amoeba is part of the primitive branch of eukaryotes that split from other forms of complex life early in the earth's history. Genetic studies of another amoeba, Nagleria gruberi, which is a non-pathogenic cousin of Nagleria fowleri, culleri, mylesi.

Shit, dude. Now we're totally lost. So we have two different types of amoebas from a long time ago. That's all we need to know.

Yes. And the grubby one is a non-diseased cousin of the fowl one. And studying them reveals that the new brain-eating one retains features from some of its earliest eukaryotic ancestors, including the rare ability to switch between amoeboid movement, which is the sort of, you know, shape-shifting, blobby, little splat moving, and flagella-based swimming, which we'll talk more about in a minute. But it's those little tails you see, like sperm have flagella.

Like on a tadpole, sperm slash tadpoles.

Yeah. This unusual adaptability suggests that the Negleria lineage has changed very little since the dawn of complex cellular life, and it's actually kind of a microbial living fossil, which I think almost makes it a cryptid. I mean, I guess we know about it, but it's like a coelacanth of amoebas.

God, Chris's pants got a little tighter.

When I read that it was a living fossil, I was like, whoa, holy shit, that's cool. Like, you know, that might mean, it made me think all the cryptids that we're looking for are like big, obvious ones, but maybe there's some microscopic cryptids that exist out there in the world that are these ancient forms of primordial life. Who knows?

You better get Felix a magnifying glass, get his ass out in the fucking yard.

Get him out there to start looking around, see what he can find. While the genus itself is ancient, the deadly form that we know as Negleria Felleri probably evolved much more recently, again, in Earth terms, meaning the last tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. Scientists think that it may have developed its pathogenic traits as a response to environmental pressures, perhaps adapting to infect mammals opportunistically in warm freshwater habitats. So in that sense, this amoeba is both a relic of Earth's very, very deep past and a very modern threat in the sense that it's an ancient organism that evolved just enough to become lethal to us.

But why does it fucking care? Like, why does it long to infect? Leave us alone. Just be whatever you were doing before we got around. Do that again.

Well, so studies suggest, I actually am about to answer your question because that's what I was wondering, it's like, what benefit or like what, why is this amoeba particularly attracted to the human brain? It doesn't seem like it's-

They can't take us over as a host.

Yeah, exactly. So scientists aren't a thousand percent on this. They're still studying it. But studies suggest that these amoebas make their way to the brain because they are attracted to the chemicals that nerve cells use to communicate with one another. So, and we'll get into this a little more detail in a second, but the only way you can get infected by this thing is it has to be forced up through your nose. And once they go in through your nose, they travel through your olfactory nerve searching for more of those chemicals that the nerve cells are using to communicate with one another up through into the frontal lobe of the brain.

I feel like our noses should be closed. This is ridiculous. That's how mummies that were made, they took the brains out through the nose, which I'm sure some amoebas watched and were like, that's a great fucking way in. But I'm just like, I don't know, I feel like at this point, we should close our noses up, right? This is too vulnerable. Our brains right there, apparently.

That's the next evolutionary. Well, yeah, I mean, isn't that the whole, there's like the, that like kung fu death strike, like the open palm whack that you can shove the nose bone up into the brain.

Oh my God.

You're right, man. Noses got to go.

Cocaine's right there. It's quickly, it works so quickly probably because it goes straight to the brain.

Let's jot that down as a button of the month. Noses got to go.

Yeah, that seems. Somebody email us. I won't remember to jot it down. Do me a favor.

You guys know here at Scared All The Time, we like to take a minute and sometimes let you know some of the podcasts that we are listening to, a little peek behind the curtain, if you will. And today we wanted to do just that. We wanted to give you a heads up about a show that we love called Expanded Perspectives. If you or someone you know is interested in the paranormal, lost civilizations, time slips, UFOs, ghosts, modern or ancient mysteries, or even cryptozoology, then you gotta check these guys out. I'm sure if you're listening to this show and you're listening to us chop it up about some things that are very similar, you probably love that stuff too. So it's hosted by these two guys, Kyle and Cam, they're lifelong friends and they present a sort of similar open-minded approach to what we do to strange and unusual events. Each and every episode they explore a new topic. This show sounds great, the research is spot on, and they have a lot of tantalizing firsthand accounts from really surprised eyewitnesses. So just a couple of the episodes that they've done that rock, they've done Nightmares at Sea, which you guys are always asking us for, Tales of the Afterlife. Tales spelled T-A-I-L-S because these are true stories of ghost pets. They did an episode called My Uncle the Werewolf that I haven't listened to, but I need to dig up out of the catalog because it sounds like a really terrible uncle. From ancient copper mines in Michigan, alien abductions to sightings of Bigfoot, Kyle and Cam explore all this stuff in a fun and entertaining way. They bring light to local legends from around the world, strange encounters with otherworldly monsters, and discoveries of ancient artifacts found in impossible locations. Whether it's listener stories that have been sent in or interviews with authors and researchers, listening will likely expand your perspective. If you're interested in these topics, just go wherever you get your podcasts. Wherever you listen to this, they've got expanded perspectives. So go, Sally Forth, expand your perspective. So we don't know a ton about this amoeba, even though they've been around for a billion years. This specific kind has only been around for probably hundreds of thousands of years, but we haven't been studying them for very long because the first recognized human infection caused by a Negleria Fowleri amoeba wasn't documented until 1965, when an Australian pathologist named Dr. Malcolm Fowler investigated a series of unexplained deaths in children who developed severe meningitis-like symptoms after swimming in warm, fresh water. During the autopsies of these bodies, he found amoeba in their brain tissue. And these amoeba were unlike the ones normally associated with intestinal infections, which is a commonly caused amoebic infection. And their aggressive invasion of the brain tissue indicated that there was something different going on here. So in 1966, which was a year after he examined these children, Dr. Fowler collaborated with a guy named RF. Carter to isolate and identify the amoeba from the infected brain tissue. And they named it Negleria Fowleri in 1970. Fowleri being a nod to Dr. Fowler, who I guess has the dubious distinction of having this often child-killing, brain-eating amoeba named after him.

Yeah, I was thinking that too. I was like, I just call it anything. I don't give it to the internet to fucking do. It would be named like Bodie McBoatface, and no one would be afraid of it.

Exactly. Or Hitler. Hitler fell, Nagleria Hitleri. But yeah, it's a weird thing where I feel like scientists, I guess, they don't, when it comes to having something named after you, it is such a huge honor because it does mean that you become part of the scientific body of knowledge in a very meaningful way. So I guess maybe they don't necessarily, and especially if you're a microbiologist or whatever, it's not that you don't care what it does, but you're fascinated by the amoeba itself.

And your life is probably annoying and everyone hates you at parties, and so at least you get to have one good thing to come out of this career path.

Yeah, someone's like, I named my kid after my father, and he's like, yeah, I named a brain-eating amoeba after myself. How's that? That's pretty cool, right? No sir.

Also, yeah, I had to do work to fucking name the amoeba. You just had to fuck someone.

Well, I mean, it's a... I'm trying to think. Michael Crichton, I know, got a dinosaur named after him for Jurassic Park. There's a Crichton... I don't know if it's Crichton-saurus or... It's kind of an ankylosaur type dinosaur.

Well, even that's... He still had to put the work in. It's not like he bought a star.

No, I'm saying, there's other people... Oh, you know who else got something? I forget what it was, but Gary Larson, the cartoonist who made The Far Side. His cartoons are so popular in the scientific community that he got... What did he get named after him?

I hope it's cow-based.

Was it a bug?

Well, he had some mosquito material too, I guess you're right.

I know. Okay, so he came up with the term thagomizer for Astegosaurus' tail. And I believe that that is now the official accepted scientific terminology for Astegosaurus' tail.

Oh, wow.

Is a thagomizer.

I'm sure Douglas Adams has some shit named after him.

Probably. Okay, so Gary Larson has several insect species named after him, including a louse called Strygophilus garylarsoni and a beetle named Gary Larsonus. So there you go.

Pretty fun.

Yeah.

Is he still with us?

I think so. He hasn't done cartooning in a while, but I'm pretty sure he's still alive.

He spends all his time naming insects.

Well, he doesn't name the insects.

I don't know. Maybe they call them. I don't know. I don't know what kind of calls people get. It's three in the morning somewhere and fucking Buenos Aires, and they're like, Gary, we got an insect. We're fighting over what to call it. You're the only expert on the naming insect spectrum or whatever. I'm not saying this is what's happening. It's just trying to fill time.

Ed, you don't have to fill time because what we're going to talk about next is one of those...

Is what people are going to turn the episode off anyway with.

No, no, no. Kids, don't turn the episode off. You need to know this.

You need to explain to your parents what we're talking about.

Oh, shoot. Actually, I was skipping ahead. This is not one of the most important segments, so you can skip like five minutes if you want. This part's just interesting. I think to fully understand how a brain-eating amoeba kills, we do have to take a quick detour more deeply into biology class and discuss the three life stages of the amoeba, the cyst, flagellate and trophozoite stage.

Hate the name of all three of those.

Why do you hate the name? Should they have been named after Gary Larson?

Yeah.

Well, the reason that this is important is because only one of the three life stages is actually when the amoeba is dangerous, but they're all important to understanding how the amoeba spreads and causes the deaths that it can cause. So the cyst stage is basically like hibernation, which is part of why these amoebas can spread all over and last for so long in so many different conditions. Because when environmental conditions are unfavorable for amoeba life, if the water is too cold or if it dries up, the amoeba forms a protective cyst and becomes dormant and inactive. The cyst creates a thick outer wall and the amoeba is able to survive harsh conditions and when the conditions improve, the cyst can ex-cyst, which is kind of a confusing term.

Yeah.

Sounds like ex-cis.

That's what I thought you said.

No, the cyst can ex-cyst and release a new trophozoite, which is the most dangerous stage of the amoeba. But between the cyst stage and the trophozoite stage is the flagellate stage. The flagellate stage is when the conditions are suitable to life for an amoeba, but they're less favorable. So the temperature changes or the water gets too hot or too cold. The amoeba can transition into a temporary flagellate form, which means they can grow those little whip-like structures that help them move around. And this particular form of the amoeba is not capable of causing infection, but when conditions become more favorable and it doesn't need to move around as much, it will revert back to the most deadly stage, which is the trophozoite stage, which is the active feeding stage of the amoeba and the form responsible for causing infections. So trophozoites move using pseudopadia.

This is the final form, the trophy, the trophy wife or whatever, the final form.

This is the final form, and it moves by creating temporary projections of the cell membrane, which is essentially just, if you picture the amoeba as a splat, you can kind of see it move where like one edge sort of stretches out and pulls the rest behind it. That's the trophozoite stage, is the amoeba moves around that way. And as it does, it will feed on bacteria and other microscopic organisms.

But is that the same way it moves in the cyst form?

No, so in the cyst form, it doesn't move at all. It just sort of hunkers down.

Okay, gotcha. Okay, so it goes cyst, which is like a boulders over there. And then the second one, the fart one, flatulation or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That one's, it's got a tail all of a sudden and it's scooting. And then for some reason, I feel like its next evolutionary step is a step backwards in some ways. I feel like losing a tail to go dragging yourself across the ground with one long arm is like kind of backwards, but whatever.

Sort of. But I think from, as I understand it, the flagellate stage is really just focused on movement. So the idea is like things are going wrong around me and I got to get out of here. So it grows the little flagellates so that it can scoot to wherever it needs to scoot. If it needs to scoot lower to get away from high temperatures, or if it needs to do whatever else an amoeba does. I don't know. I'm not a fucking amoeba scientist.

Yeah, it's true. It's becoming more and more evident every minute of this.

I tricked everybody from the beginning.

I keep thinking that this is... I mean, you didn't watch a lot of anime growing up. So I watched anime religiously and now it's popular and I'm like, fucking kids. And I never watched Pokemon or anything. Even that was a little after me. But I'm saying both Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z villains, there's always an evolutionary stage aspect. Like you'll be in a fight and you'll be like, oh, this is going not great, but now I've figured it out. And then they'll just be like, well, now I'm going to my stage two where they'll physically change and be stronger.

Right.

And be like, oh no, just when we caught up. Now they're stronger. And I keep thinking at this whole time that, you know, they got all that from amoeba work, you know, we wouldn't have anime without amoebas.

Probably not. Can't spell anime without an amoeba.

That's true.

So yes, the trophozoite stage is the dangerous stage when it loses its flagella and is able to consume again, which is when it becomes dangerous, if it is introduced to the olfactory nerve and gets this amoeba into your brain. If that happens, Discover Magazine tells us that, quote, it does to your brain tissue what it would otherwise be doing to all the lake detritus. It dissolves the proteins and liquefies the adjacent area as it advances and multiplies in your brain. If the name brain-eating amoeba seems a little sensationalist, this situation is pretty sensational. It might even be more accurate to call it a brain liquefying amoeba. So that's the visual that you can go with here, is your brain just slowly being dissolved.

But also I heard you say it sounded like that they multiply, they're multiplying during this too. They're liquefying, but also they're like splitting and becoming more than one.

Yeah, it's not just one amoeba that'll eat your whole brain. They multiply and grow and spread.

Oh, nothing you can do then. You're fucked, you're fucked.

Pretty much. And the reason that you're fucked really is it because of the actual liquefaction. It's the swelling that happens in your brain in reaction to the liquefaction that actually kills you. Which if this is in your brain, I'm not sure you really care about the distinction, but there is a distinction. It doesn't actually melt your brain out of your head. Your brain swells and that causes the death.

Sure.

Now, what's important to know and to remember, because this is a Scared All The Time safety tip, the brain eating amoeba is only deadly when forced up through your nose. It can't enter through breaks in the skin, and if you drink it, your digestive system destroys it. The other good news for anyone going for a swim this summer is that it can't survive in salt water. So if you're going to the beach, you are safe. From amoebas. You still have to worry about sharks and drowning and your bathing suit falling off if you stand up too fast.

Or a dog pulling your bathing suit off, like that ad we've looked at our whole lives. For sunblock, sun tan, I actually don't know what that's for.

Yeah, it's a sunscreen. The urban legend is that that's Jodie Foster as the baby.

Why leave her alone?

I don't know if it's true.

Why is it always Jodie Foster, that poor person? It's like so crazy. Why is there always some sort of creep angle with young Jodie Foster?

I don't know. Ask John Hinckley. I'm sure he has his reasons. Anyway, so it's if you're hitting anywhere with fresh water that's where you need to worry. Brain eating amoeba can be found almost anywhere there is warm, fresh water in bodies as diverse as lakes, rivers, hot springs, warm water discharged from industrial or power plants. Although I don't know why you'd be swimming in those.

I mean, if you're in New Jersey, you might just be swimming in those.

That's true. They can be found in geothermal well water, soil, pipes connected to tap water, and even poorly maintained or minimally colonnaded swimming pools with residual chlorine levels that dip too low.

Got a chlorine the fuck out of those pools now, now that I know about brain eating.

If someone says, is this enough chlorine for your swimming pool? You say no.

I want to walk out of there burned, feeling weird.

Yeah. The statistics for who is most at risk for infection are kind of interesting in that over 60% of US cases are in children 13 or younger, and about 80% of cases are in males. So it's not at all clear whether children or males are more susceptible to the amoeba, or what I think is probably more likely, young males are more likely to be rolling around in industrial plant discharge or whatever.

I mean, there's that, but I think also if it's, you're picking your nose. Like little boys are always picking their noses.

That's true.

So they're jamming shit up their nose.

Yeah, that's true. I think to get it really up there far enough, it usually comes from, you jump into the water and the water forcefully, boom, straight up your nose, that kind of thing. I think that's more the force it needs to get up in there.

Can amoebas live on cocaine? Can they survive on the lunar surface that is a grain of cocaine? If so, we're in real trouble.

So, let's say you head down to the lake to do a little water skiing with the boys or whatever, and you face plant over and over again into that warm water, probably because you're completely unathletic and water skiing is way harder than you thought it would be.

It's way hard.

If that water is teeming with brain eating amoeba, you are about to have a bad time. This is how it would break down. It might take one to 12 days, usually no more than five. But by the time you notice anything's wrong, the amoeba entering in your brain will feel like a dull headache. It won't be a bad one, just a heavy pressure behind your eyes while you're probably trying to Google, why do my eyes hurt after swimming? And hoping WebMD says allergies. A lot of people, especially those who spent time out in the sun, at the lake or a pool recently, might assume that it's some kind of just dehydration or heat stroke, pop some Advil, lie down. But by that first night, things are going to get worse. The headache will be so bad you can't sleep. There's a fever now. You're sweating through your sheets. When you wake up, your neck is stiff, your back is sore, your sinuses burn like they've been scalded from the inside out. That'll be day two of having a brain-eating amoeba eating your brain.

Sure.

You'll have intense nausea. The lights are too bright. The headache feels like an entire knife in your skull. You won't be able to stand up because your balance is shot. Things look weird. They're slightly dragging behind where they should be. Sounds echo in your ears. Then there's the hallucinations. At first, they're pretty subtle. You might hear your name whispered from the other room, but no one's there. You might see shadows moving in your peripheral vision. If you're lucky, maybe the hat man pays you a visit before you start forgetting words. Your speech slurs. You'll try to call for help, but you'll probably forget why you picked up the phone. On day three, your temperature spikes to over 104 degrees. The nausea escalates to unstoppable vomiting. Your body shakes uncontrollably. You're not entirely conscious anymore. You'll drift in and out. And when you are awake, you're probably screaming. Not because of pain, though this is incredibly painful, but because something in your brain feels wrong. By now, the amoeba has multiplied and is chainsawing through your cerebral cortex, destroying all the tissue that controls your memory, your emotions, your ability to recognize your own reflection. If you're able to make it to a hospital, the medical staff will do everything they can to stabilize you, but they're probably going to be confused because this presents a lot like meningitis. They'll do a spinal tap and your cerebrospinal fluid will be cloudy, just like meningitis. Eventually, someone will probably, these days, think to test for Nuglaria Fowleri.

Yeah, Dr. House, MD.

Dr. House, yeah.

But not until the third act.

And by the time the results come back, Dr. House may be a little bit too late because by day four, you'll be in a coma. Your brain will be swollen beyond recovery. You might be being kept alive by machines, but your brain is already gone and it's only a matter of time until your heart stops. Luckily, the CDC does have a few cutting edge suggestions for how to protect yourself against such a horrific death. The first is simple but no fun. They warned that people should always assume there's a risk for infection when entering warm, fresh water. Quote, the only sure way to prevent an infection is to avoid water related activities in warm, fresh water. Yes, especially during summer months.

Got a bubble boy that ass.

Got a bubble boy that ass.

Hey, wasn't bubble boy fucking John Travolta? In the movie, the original bubble boy movie?

Oh, the original bubble boy was John Travolta. Yeah, the 2001 remake was Jake Gyllenhaal.

Yes, the only reason I bring it up is original bubble boy, John Travolta. John Travolta also famously played a character that coined the term up your nose with the rubber hose. Just seems like a lot of nose. I don't know, I just had a Travolta moment.

Was that in Battlefield Earth?

No, it's fucking Welcome Back Cotter.

Oh.

Vinny Barbarino, his character from Welcome Back Cotter.

I know Vinny Barbarino. I don't know any Vinny Barbarino quotes.

Up your nose with the rubber hose.

I thought we were going to have a new Mandela effect, and you were going to be like, John Travolta famously died from a brain-eating amoeba.

No.

I was going to be like, oh God.

I don't think Scientology lets you die from that.

No.

But this is what you were hoping for in the beginning, the like Ed stretches to find comparisons to things in his fucking, his amoeba-filled brain.

Okay, so the Travolta of it all keeps getting better and better because Ed just remembered that his ridiculous character in the film Battlefield Earth wore this nose clip-looking thing. Was it to keep out amoebas? We'll probably never know. Neither of the boys have it in them to sit through that piece of shit again.

So I don't know if all of a sudden I just thought of John Travolta, Bubble Boy, Up Your Nose with a Rubber Hose.

Well, you better not be putting any warm fresh water up your nose with a rubber hose because-

Well isn't that what fucking neti pots are? You're always like-

Yes, we're gonna get to those a little bit.

Okay, got you, sure.

But yeah, neti pots are a death sentence if you're not careful.

Oh shit, man. All right, go ahead, continue.

So yeah, the easiest way to make sure you never get a brain eating amoeba is to never go in warm fresh water during the summer, which sucks, but it depends what your degree of risk here is.

I mean, the highest risk for me would be taking off my shirt. So I'm not going in, it's fine.

Health officials in Florida go a step further, which is crazy because health officials in Florida rarely do anything. So you know, you got to take this seriously. They warned that people should also try not to let water into their nose while bathing, showering or washing their face.

Okay, what's going on with the water coming out of the pipes in Florida?

They recommend keeping plastic or inflatable pools clean by emptying, scrubbing and letting them dry after each use and disinfecting swimming pools with chlorine before and during use. So, jump in that pool with a big old bucket of chlorine.

Hey, Timmy, when you're done pouring all the chlorine in, that's going to become a beautiful flotation device.

Yeah.

So, there you go. It's safe on all measures.

Health officials in Florida finally warned not to let kids play with hoses or sprinklers unsupervised.

Up your nose with a rubber fucking hose, bro.

Short of spraying it up your nose, supervised or not, the amoeba can get up there. And they should also avoid slip and slides or other activities where it's hard to prevent water from getting in the nose. So, that's a pretty strict and severe set of rules.

And that's from Florida proper. That's not the CDC. That's like Florida's division of no fun.

Yeah. This is the real Florida project right here. It's keeping people from having brain eating amoebas. If you insist on playing chicken with death in Florida or elsewhere, there are a few other safety measures to keep in mind. One thing you can do is hold your nose or wear a nose clip if you are jumping or diving into fresh water. Keep your head above water in hot springs, which is another one of those.

Yeah. Why are you going under?

Why would you put your head under water in a hot spring? That sounds...

Seems crazy.

I've never been in a natural hot spring, so maybe they're not that hot, but I feel like I wouldn't put my head underwater in a hot tub probably.

I don't think I have either. I don't think I... There's nothing to see down there.

There's nothing to see. And you're gonna... The skin on your face is sensitive. You're gonna get boiled up like a lobster. Don't dig in shallow water, because the amoeba is more likely to live in the silt along the bottom of a shallow pond. And finally, use distilled or boiled tap water when rinsing your sinuses or cleaning your nasal passages.

That's the neti pot rule.

Neti pot. You could also use a special water filter labeled NSF 53 or NSF 58, which I think stands for Not Safe for Fowleri, designed to remove germs. Then, make sure both your hands and the device are clean and completely dry and follow the manufacturer's directions for use. Afterwards, wash the device, dry the inside with a paper towel, and let it air dry before you use it again. So basically, you could use these special water filters and clean them 24 hours a day, it sounds like. So, I don't know how helpful they really are. No. But that last bit, cleaning things, drying it, letting it air dry before we use it again, if that sounds familiar as a safety tip, it's probably because one of the ways brain and the amoeba scares tend to pop off, other than young kids meeting horrible deaths, which we'll talk more about in a little bit.

Oh, good.

Our stories of the dreaded infected Nettie Pot, which I have here in my notes, ask Ed if he's familiar with Nettie Pots, we already know he is.

I've used them.

He's used them.

I think they're very helpful, but I also, I have run out of the, I have definitely run out of the little saline solution things that they come with, and I'm just like fuck it. Straight from the tap to my nose.

Oh, boy.

I didn't boil nothing. I didn't fucking, I didn't use distilled water. I was like, I can't add extra steps to this. I'm sick.

Folks, this podcast is going to be done by October. Ed's going to melt his brains out.

I mean, I stopped using them pretty much around the time we started doing flesh eating bacteria.

Yeah, so. Well, Ed, would you like to describe to the listener what a neti pot is if they are unfamiliar?

Oh yeah, it's like a little teapot looking thing that you jam one end up a nostril and kind of like tilt your head over the sink and basically pour, in my case, dirty tap water, but basically pour what they tell you to pour into one nostril and it kind of goes through the whole little system there, the canal system and it comes out the other nostril and it's supposed to clear out your sinuses or your, I don't know, goop, but also apparently it's a fuck it. There is an off ramp to the brain there, I didn't know.

Well, it's, you can, I think by dumping that neti pot straight into your nose, you're getting that water very close to your olfactory nerve, which is basically the main highway to your frontal lobe should an amoeba try to hitch a ride.

Yeah, so I didn't know about all that amoeba. I didn't know amoebas were up to no good under my car like Cape Fear or whatever, like trying to ride the water to my brain.

Doing the pull-ups in the prison cell to get out.

Exactly. We'll see if that guy who made us that AI thing will replicate this story.

Cape Fear with a little amoeba.

A little amoeba. Maybe my description says I'm using it wrong or whatever, but that's kind of how I've always used it. You kind of dump it in one side, comes out the other. It's gross and it feels weird, but I don't mind it.

I think that's pretty accurate. Neti pots have been around for more than 5,000 years, actually. They are an integral part of yoga traditions. Ancient masters would teach their students a variety of Neti practices from Sutra Neti, which is nasal cleansing with a string, which I don't understand.

That's some David Blaine shit.

That's some David Blaine. That's a magic trick is what you're doing there. So yeah, you could be a real David Blaine and clean your nose with a string somehow if you're a real master, I guess. But there's also a technique called Jala Neti that flushes water, milk, ghee and other liquids through the nasal passages to prepare the body and mind for meditation. The development of the Neti pot and the coinage of that term came much later with the introduction of the first mass market Neti pot to the West in 1972. And when Oprah covered the Neti pot on her show in 2007 and again in 2009, it made the Neti pot popular among not only natural health buffs, but also everyday Americans. Anyway, as their popularity rose, so did brain eating amoeba infections in people who didn't clean their Neti pots as thoroughly as they should. And I feel like we still hear these stories once a year, every other year.

Could have been me.

Could have been Ed, probably will be Ed, eventually.

No, I told you I've stopped. It stopped.

He stopped using the Neti pot. Worryingly, as if you weren't worried enough at this point in the episode, scientists are adding an additional amoeba to worry about. An article from CBS published just last year in March 2024 says that in addition to Naegleria faleri infecting people's brains through nasal rinsing, they've discovered another microscopic parasite starting to cause problems, acanthamoeba. Acanthamoeba causes a different kind of illness, but is still dangerous with an 85% fatality rate in reported cases, which is way less than the nearly 100% fatality rate of the brain-eating amoeba. But these guys are even more common than the brain-eating amoeba.

So I could have got that.

You could have this. The CDC says most people will be exposed to acanthamoeba during their lifetime. This amoeba is found in soil and dust, as well as fresh water and salt water. It can be found in swimming pools, hot tubs, humidifiers, and in heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. Research has also indicated that this amoeba is common in tap water. A study done in Ohio in the 1990s found more than half of tap water samples studied contained the amoeba in similar microorganisms. Quote, it's very likely that we're all exposed to acanthamoeba all the time, says the CDC's Dr. Julia Haston. Luckily, most people exposed to acanthamoeba won't get sick because their immune systems tend to make quick work of it. The problem is for the immunocompromised, the elderly, it can cause serious infections of the brain, skin, eyes and sinuses. And unlike its deadlier cousin, acanthamoeba can, remember this, acanthamoeba, acanthamoeba can infect parts of the body through cuts or skin wounds or from being inhaled into the lungs or nostrils.

Okay, so they're definitely better at what they do.

Definitely better at what they do. It can also get into your eyes through contact lens use.

Oh, that's what you have.

I have contacts, yeah. It can cause keratitis and blind you.

Bro, switch to glasses.

No, I had glasses for a long time and I just, I don't know, I never really liked them. I don't really like contacts either. I should just take my eyes out.

Gotta get your eyes out of you, buddy.

Well, US health officials have identified about 180 infections from the single celled acanthamoeba since the first one was diagnosed in 1956. In the vast majority of cases, researchers don't know exactly how people became infected. In reviewing cases in recent decades, CDC researchers increasingly received information that a number of the patients had done nasal rinsing. The new study focused on 10 patients who fell ill between 1994 and 2022, three of whom died. Researchers again say they can't be sure how they were infected, but they noted that all had weakened immune systems and practiced nasal rinsing. So you've got two amoeba to worry about and probably some others that aren't even on my radar yet because maybe they're less dangerous but can still fuck your nose up. That's true. Good luck with all that. I don't know, I'm never using a neti pot. I'm going to use the string method.

I do like the neti pot until I found out it's a guaranteed killer of men, of humans. I did, I think the results, I really enjoyed the results versus other things you can do, I guess. But yeah, it's got to go. It's got to go. I have to ceremoniously burn it in the yard.

Please do.

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With all that in mind, Ed, I think it's time to take a dive into some of the real-life horror stories that have befallen victims of these amoebas. For our own sanity's sake, we'll focus on survivors, because there is a lot to learn from their trauma, and I think we won't feel as bad about telling these stories because they lived.

I imagine the stories could end up kind of repetitive, so we probably won't do 100 of them. There's only so many ways you can die from an amoeba.

Yeah, and it's all pretty horrible, but basically the same. The odds of surviving one of these infections again, real grim, less than 2% chance of survival, and these survivors are only here thanks to a combination of rapid diagnosis, experimental treatments and aggressive medical intervention. So the most famous survivor of the brain-eating amoeba is a girl, now a woman, named Kali Hardig. In 2013, Kali was 12 years old. She was living in Arkansas, and she gave an interview to People Magazine in 2024, where she describes what this was like in her own words. So she says, I had been swimming all summer long at this same location, which first of all, girl, name the location, call out culture. I think we need to know where the fuck this was. It doesn't need to be a mystery. You're not protecting anyone.

There should be fucking yellow police tape around it.

Yeah, but sign up. That day, I accidentally fell into the water while playing and water went up my nose. I didn't seem to notice anything that day, just that when we got home, I had a slight headache, and mom told me to go to sleep, that I'd been in the sun and that I needed sleep, so I went to bed. The next morning, the headache was worse, so mom told me to go back to sleep for a while, and she would check on me soon. When she came back, my headache had gotten tremendously worse, and I also had a very high fever. If I remember correctly, it was like 104.3. So mom moved me out into the couch where she gave me Motrin, and I immediately started projectile vomiting.

Oh no.

If my mom would not have been there to help hold my head up, I would have died right then and there, because I had no strength to lift my head to keep from aspirating on the vomit. My mom knew when I couldn't hold my head up to puke, and my eyes were rolling back in my head because I was so out of it.

It was time to walk it off.

Yeah, it was time to go back to sleep, and we'll check on you in a little bit.

Give you a second Motrin.

God bless this woman. When it's condensed like this, it is like, God, take, something's wrong with your girl. But I mean, I don't know how many times when I was a kid, I think my mom kind of had the like, yeah, sleep it off. And I do the same thing now when I feel sick, or my wife, or my friends a lot of times, like, I'm always like, give it a day or two. The problem here is you don't really have a day or two.

Yeah, yeah.

That's part of what's so scary about it, is like by the time you realize something's really wrong, it's probably too late.

Yeah, but I kind of look at it like appendicitis or like a kidney stone or something where you're like, this is, I've lived to this point, that person lived at least 12 years, but it's like, I have lived every single day and have not had a pain so acute. So she's like, my brain is on fire. Then maybe it's a little different than like, I don't know, I have like a brain freeze or I have a little bit of a headache. And now, I mean, projectile vomiting, forget it. If your kid turned into a fucking exorcist, you got to call a doctor or a priest at this point.

Well, and what they did was call a doctor. Well, they didn't call a doctor. They went to the ER, but the ER told Kali's mom, I just had the flu because I was complaining of a sore neck, sensitivity to light, vomiting and high fever. But my mom, being who she is, kept pushing and telling them that it wasn't just the flu. Kali then goes on to say that the doctors thought she might have meningitis and they needed to take a spinal tap to be sure. Quote, to give you a better picture of how much I was out of it, they had to do my spinal tap twice because the first time they didn't get any fluid and I didn't move normally. I usually would be screaming and crying, but I was so out of it that I didn't care. Once the spinal fluid was sent down to the lab, we got the results and that's when the ER doctor took my parents into a separate room to tell them what was actually wrong with me. I had a very rare brain-eating amoeba called primary, well, the disease that it's caused is primary amoebic menagenic cephalitis.

Pam.

Pam. She had Pam.

She had Pam.

She's got Pam on the brain.

Was it Alabama?

This was Arkansas.

Arkansas, they're probably making biscuits. They probably had Pam on the baking sheet too.

Her parents were told she would not make it through the weekend and that by Sunday, I would be dead. This is her quote, I would be dead because that's how fast it moves. They didn't tell Kali that at the time. They just told her she was very sick and needed to fight. It was only later that Kali found out she'd been given a 1% survival rate and that if she did survive, she'd be in a wheelchair. According to PBS, despite the nearly impossible odds, the doctors took Kali into surgery to put a port into her head so they could administer medicine straight into her brain. They called the CDC, who had an experimental drug on hand from Germany called Miltelphazine, that was not originally created to treat this kind of meningitis cephalitis, but had been used on a previous survivor. This next part is a little medical thriller in and of itself. The CDC shipped the drug immediately, but the airline lost the shipment.

Oh my God.

Her dad quote says, you want everything to go right, of course, but people are humans. You can't scream at everybody. He is the most patient man in the world. I would have screamed at everybody. I would have, like, you have the rare life-saving drug that will save my kid with the less than 1% chance of survival rate, and you fucking lost it, like it was my skis coming back from a ski trip somewhere. Like, I don't even know how it ended up in the regular part of a plane. How is it not, like, handcuffed to a man?

Yeah, or like straight up, like, just on a helicopter directly to the next location. Like, why are you dropping that at fucking the post office?

Yeah, like intern being like, oh, I think I put it on American.

I mean, well, today, if this girl fucking, they found this today, they'd be like, oh, well, as of last month, the CDC has been closed, we don't have shipping anymore. Like, we actually, Germany doesn't give us stuff anymore. Like, best of luck.

So, the lost drug was eventually found and shipped to Little Rock. I found another source that mentioned that the head doctor actually drove to the airport to search for and retrieve the medication himself.

That's cooler, that's cooler.

That's much cooler. I don't know how true that is or if the doctor was just maybe puffed himself up a little bit. But either way, they got the Miltelphazine, it was added to Kali's drug regimen and they lowered her body temperature at that point to 93 degrees and put her in a medically induced coma where she spent 22 days.

Holy shit.

And then they reversed her coma and she spent an additional month in the hospital receiving more treatment. And then finally, after intense rehab that included everything from learning how to move and speak all over again, she made basically a full recovery.

Wow, with like a half liquid brain?

Yeah, the only thing she struggles with is occasionally blurry vision.

Wow, thank you Germany and the CDC and the US. Postal Service and everyone else. Like, holy shit.

She also, this is big of her, has returned to the water and encourages her children to swim as much as they'd like. Her only thing is you always wear a nose clip.

Nose clips are embarrassing, but they're fucking gonna save your life.

Yeah, I mean, man, if that happened to me, well, I guess if that happened to me, I would probably think there's a very low chance of it happening again. Especially if I wear a nose clip.

Yeah, but I go back to that fucking poor girl from the brain eating or flesh eating virus episode where the doctor was like, it's a million and one chance that could ever happen again. And she's like, remember, it was really sad because she was like, yeah, that's what the last thing was. So I now believe that a million and one chance is like, can happen. Yeah, like I can be the one again. So she's all PTSD'd from that, it sounded like. And this lady's definitely handled it better, but she didn't lose, well, for a while, she lost all her limbs there, but she didn't lose anything.

I mean, I think it's a great example of there's scary things in the world, but if you take proper precautions, which in this case is like an embarrassing piece of plastic on your face, you're going to be fine. So the treatment that Kali received pretty much set the standard for how to treat brain-eating amoebas, and there have been a rare handful of survivors since her case made headlines. Most recently, in 2024, a teenager in India made a recovery after his father made the connection between his symptoms and a brain-eating amoeba awareness campaign he'd seen on Facebook.

Oh, that's the first time that's ever worked out.

I think so, but I was going to say this also gives me hope. The next time we see one of these stories, it's going to be after his father listened to a brain-eating amoeba podcast episode from Scared All The Time.

Yeah, Asanashwin Legends, our fellow network show. Obviously, if you listen to the beginning of our show, you know, they kind of famously have an episode where a topic they covered actually is what got a listener's daughter diagnosed correctly for something that was weird and rare. And then once they were able to diagnose it, her life changed a lot in a really good way.

Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I forgot what it was. It was something almost paranormal, but it ended up being a medical ailment. But it was that episode or series of episodes that put it in the brain of that family to have that checked. Pretty cool.

I'm glad it was the episodes and not a neti pot that put it in the brain of that person. So, yeah, this guy's dad saw this campaign. According to the BBC, quote, Afnan Jaseem, 14, is thought to have become infected in June after he went for a swim in a local pond in the southern state of Kerala. He began experiencing symptoms five days after he'd gone for a swim and developed seizures and began complaining of severe headaches. His parents took him to the doctor, but Afnan did not improve. Luckily, his father, MK. Siddiqui.

MK. Ultra?

Yeah, MK. Siddiqui Ultra had the presence of mind to connect his son's symptoms with something he'd read on social media, which I feel like is a real hit and miss ratio of how many times you want to connect your son's symptoms to something you read on social media.

Well, that's why I shout it out. Well, that never happens.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's the inverse of how often you're going to get an amoeba. It's 99% chances the thing you read on social media is fucking made up or wrong or from some fringe community.

Yeah.

It's 1% chance of it working out for you. And so, yeah, this is so great.

Mr. Siddiqui, who is a dairy farmer, said he was reading about the effects of the Nipah virus, because a boy had recently died of it in Kerala, on social media when he chanced upon information about the deadly brain-eating amoeba. He said, I read something about seizures being caused by an infection. As soon as Afnan developed seizures, I rushed him to the local hospital. When the seizures didn't stop, he took his son to another hospital, but this one didn't have a neurologist. And finally, they went to the Baby Memorial Hospital in Kozekode, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly, where the boy was treated by Dr. Abdul Rauf, a consultant intensive care pediatrician. The disease was diagnosed within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms, Dr. Rauf told the BBC. And that's the essential part, and that's why most people don't make it, because all of the victims who have survived a brain eating amoeba have had the infection diagnosed between nine hours and five days after the symptoms appeared. But usually, because it's so rare, and it presents, it is a type of meningitis, it's not often diagnosed correctly until it's too late.

And it's invasive to do anything on. So it's like the same thing with the flesh eating bacteria thing where the guy was like, I know nobody gets this, but we got to cut this person open right now. And it's like, they're going to fall asleep and either wake up with limbs or they're not. You kind of have to be steadfast in your decision making.

The treatment here is we have to drill a port into your brain and administer medicine directly to your brain so you don't want to get this wrong.

Exactly. And like nose cavity, fucking nose hole, good enough for an amoeba, but not for medicine apparently.

Apparently not.

We got to drill your fucking head open.

We just got to start breeding the medical amoebas that can just take this straight that way.

Oh, that's a dangerous step to nanotechnology, which scares the shit out of me.

That's true. Since 1965, some 400 cases of PAM have been reported around the world, while India has had fewer than 30 cases so far. There was one additional PAM case, or two additional PAM cases in 2018 and 2020 in the same city of Kerala. Just this year, six more have been, so there were two previous cases, there have been six cases in 2024.

So it's ramping up.

It's ramping up. Of those, three died, one is in critical condition, and while Afnan has been discharged, the sixth person has also successfully responded to treatment and is recovering. Dr. Ralph says, after two deaths at our hospital, we informed the government it was a public health issue and an awareness campaign was launched. And it was that awareness campaign that Mr. Siddiqui had come across on social media.

Amazing. I love to see the numbers here on how often we would even do that.

Yeah, I feel like if you're diagnosing your kid off social media, it's either autism or BPD. It's not usually brain-eating amoeba.

Yeah, but I also just mean like a federally subsidized or paid for awareness campaign after two rare cases.

Yeah, they're like, hey, this is a problem. And the government immediately went, yes, that is a problem. We should let people know.

Yeah, and we'll pay for it.

So as you noted, these numbers are increasing. And that brings us to the last section of this episode, which is that the increasing number of cases in India and throughout the world kind of gives us a dire warning about the direction our planet is heading because historically, infections from brain-eating amoeba were almost exclusively confined to the warmest regions of the Southern United States, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Arkansas, but in recent years, confirmed cases have appeared as far north as Minnesota, Indiana and Maryland. A 2021 CDC review found that the northern boundary of brain-eating amoeba infections has steadily shifted over the past four decades, which is a pattern that scientists link directly to climate change, which is literally the planet is warming, the amoeba thrives in freshwater temperatures above 86 degrees Fahrenheit. What do you think is going to happen? It just needs to be a few degrees warmer. This is one of those sort of like knock-on effects of climate change that climate change isn't going to continue to hurt people necessarily because all of a sudden the entire planet is 150 degrees Fahrenheit. It's just that the water in this case is two degrees warmer during the summer than usual and now all of a sudden all these brain-eating amoeba can come out of their cysts where they've been sitting for god knows how long and go up your nose.

Sure, that's scary.

Warmer air temperatures heat lakes and rivers more quickly and for longer periods each year, which allows these populations to grow larger and survive where they previously couldn't. And at the same time, milder winters are failing to eliminate the dormant cysts that would have been killed by seasonal freezes.

Oh no, so they're sitting there with a tail going, come at me bro, when the winter comes.

Yeah.

And then the winter doesn't do enough, so then it gets a chance to turn into the third stage of Frieza or whatever where it's sucking up shit.

Frieza. In warmer waters, the amoeba transitions more readily into its deadly trophozoite stage, which is the form responsible for brain infections.

Yeah, third stage of Frieza. Yeah.

This shift is not just theoretical. In 2020, a 6-year-old boy in Texas died after exposure to amoeba-contaminated tap water that had passed through a poorly maintained municipal system. And investigations found that the treatment system at a water park and splash pad had dipped below recommended chlorine levels, which is another growing concern in hotter climates where disinfectant degrades more quickly.

Oh no, you got to hand those kids the bottles as they go down the slide.

Yeah, exactly. As freshwater systems warm, they also experience more algal blooms, biofilm buildup and bacterial growth, all of which serve as food sources and protective environments for brain-eating amoeba. Biofilms in particular provide shelter for the amoeba against disinfection and can form inside household pipes and plumbing. In extreme cases, the brain-eating amoeba has been detected in treated tap water, leading to public health authorities to now warn against using unboiled tap water for nasal rinsing, particularly in areas with aging infrastructure, which, spoiler alert, is most of the United States.

Oh yeah. Man, I was really fucking doing backflips through dangerous situations with my Nettie Pot, just raw-dogging that fucking public water.

Especially those pipes in your fucking house, man.

Oh my god, yeah. Our landlord has repeatedly not paid to fix anything here, yeah.

There is sewage in every inch of the pipes in your home. That's true.

We won't get into that. We won't get into why you know that, but yeah, it's bad. It shouldn't be going up my nose.

Yeah. Public health experts now consider the brain-eating amoeba and its relatives part of the neglected consequences of climate change. Organisms whose pathogenic potential is amplified, not just through mutation, but through ecological opportunity. As the planet warms, it is not just large-scale weather events or rising seas or temperatures that pose threats. It is also the spread of these ancient heat-adapted microorganisms into places where the human immune system is completely unprepared to face them, like your nose. Mostly just your nose.

My nose.

But that brings us to the fear tier. The fear tier air horn noise.

I won't do it. I don't have the time.

Well, Ed, you do have the time to give me a number, and that number is where on the fear tier do brain-eating amoebas sit for you this summer?

Eight?

Yeah.

Eight or nine? I mean, I feel very similar to flesh-eating bacteria where it's by no fault of your own. It's out to get you. And I stand by that girl's point of view where it's like, well, someone has to be the one and one in a million. And so, yeah, it's just it's too much of a risk. And I don't, everyone knows, I don't take my shirt off. I don't really go in water. I'm probably pretty safe from it. But I was playing real fast and loose with my nostrils and neti pots and stuff. So just one more thing where I would say I've changed the way I go about things the most from flesh-eating bacteria. And I think this will be another episode where I make little changes with that on my mind.

I agree. I might go just a little lower. I'll say like a seven or eight. Let's go a hard seven. A hard seven, here's why. I have never used a neti pot and never will. And I rarely go swimming in fresh water. I rarely go swimming in the ocean, but I rarely, rarely, rarely go swimming in fresh water. The seven though is because if I ever do go swimming in fresh water, I will probably forget to wear a nose clip. So unless I just start wearing one on a string around my neck right now, I'm never going to remember.

I think we should get some for the show. We should get a couple of ones that say Satt on it. Not for sale, not in the merch store, but you and I should get a couple just to have.

Yeah, you can't make a nose clip on that T-shirt press.

No, no, I sure can't.

We could get a 3D printer though and start 3D printing RIP God bless nose clips.

I don't know if, I think it might be too brittle, however 3D printers, because you need to be, you can't just, the nose clip I imagine has to have some flexibility or give, even when it's hard. I just don't want it to be like cutting through our fucking noses. I know we said we should lose noses, but I think cutting them off only further exposes those giant holes. True, that's true.

Well, yeah, terrifying episode. I think this is a great summer episode. This is how we celebrate the summer around here guys, brain eating amoeba and who knows what's next. I'll come up with some more summerific topics to keep you terrified.

I think either as a bonus episode, because I don't think it'll be enough for a full episode, we'll definitely or we should definitely do fucking people's hands getting blown off from fireworks, firework accidents. Because it seems like the way you opened this episode with like the scourge on the summer that is brain eating amoeba, you can really, the real scourge of the summer is firework accidents. I feel like every year from major popular athletes to fucking children, there is not a single 4th of July that goes by without news of somebody doing something stupid as shit. So that's why it might just be a bonus episode.

No, I think we could do a whole episode of firework accidents because that's one where unlike brain eating amoeba where it's basically the same thing every time, each and every firework accident is its own special snowflake of pain and horror. So I feel like we could get a whole episode out of that. And there's probably some interesting science around fireworks and which ones are more dangerous and why and unexpectedly dangerous fireworks. Because obviously like a mortar you think of and go, that's pretty dangerous firework. But I bet there's some bad sprinkler or sprinkler sparkler accidents, too.

Oh, yeah, I think there's any time you have combustible stuff, you're in trouble. Did you watch that video of kind of made the rounds recently of the different strength fireworks under a pot and the pots kept blowing higher and higher and higher. And you're like, holy shit. And it was like an M80 in the pot, like blew all the way up to the sky. And it was like, this is a whatever in the pot moved a little bit. It's an effective way to show. Yeah, we'll do fireworks for sure.

Yeah, that's great. That's a great. We'll do July. We'll look at the July calendar and figure out where.

I mean, around the fourth, it should be. Yeah, I mean, look at the calendar.

Well, I mean, I don't know where the Thursday, I don't know where the closest Thursday, but whatever the closest release date to the fourth for us is, that's where we'll.

Well, that seems like a good time to end this episode so we can run off and do that.

We're going to run off and do that right now. So, guys, thank you so much for listening. Find us everywhere. Sign up on the Patreon. Tons of great bonus stuff. We do a live show once a month. It's always a good time around here. So thanks so much for listening. Until next time, I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

The podcast is Scared All The Time, and we will see you next time. Bye-bye.

Scared All The Time is co-produced by Chris Cullari and Ed Voccola.

Written by Chris Cullari.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Vifel.

Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

And Mr. Disclaimer is ****.

And just a reminder, you can now support the podcast on Patreon. You can get all kinds of cool shit in return. Depending on the tier you choose, we'll be offering everything from ad-free episodes, producer credits, exclusive access and exclusive merch.

So go sign up for a Patreon at scaredallthetimepodcast.com.

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No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyrighted Astonishing Legends production.

Tonight, we are in this together. Together. Together.

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