JOE ROGAN: Millions of these blood sucking parasites lived, fed, multiplied, and died within the guts of up to 40% of the population stretching from South Eastern Texas to West Virginia

Hookworms you say? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/XJ7KbKSEbZ

— Wejolyn 🇺🇸 (@Wejolyn) July 11, 2024

Could parasites be the shadowy hands that pull the strings of life? We explore nature's moochers, with tales of lethargic farmers, zombie cockroaches, and even mind-controlled humans (kinda, maybe). And we examine claims that some parasites may actually be good for you. Carl Zimmer, science writer on parasites, Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures, 2001.  

Rogan explains that, 

Millions of these blood-sucking parasites lived, fed, multiplied, and died within the guts of up to 40% of the population stretching from South Eastern Texas to West Virginia.  Hookworms stymied development throughout the region and bred stereotypes about lazy moronic Southerners. 

The 1990 movie, Tremors, was about giant worms living in the desert.  The conflict ends when Kevin Bacon's character devises a plan to have the worm exit through a cliff, dramatically analogous to a bowel movement. 

The narrator from To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout, describes Walter Cunningham this way, 

Walter Cunningham’s face told everybody in the first grade he had hookworms. His absence of shoes told us how he got them. People caught hookworms going barefooted in barnyards and hog wallows.