[00:00:00] “Decompose” Theme Music

[00:00:05] Anne Chappelle:  We’ve been doing Adverse Reactions, and this is what our 

[00:00:08] David Faulkner: Fourth

[00:00:09] Anne Chappelle:  Fourth

[00:00:09] David Faulkner: Season

[00:00:10] Anne Chappelle:  Season

[00:00:11] David Faulkner: Amazing. 

[00:00:11] Anne Chappelle:  So, David, do we have a theme? 

[00:00:13] David Faulkner: Everything is so much more complicated and interesting and more interconnected than we ever think it’s going to be. 

[00:00:22] Anne Chappelle:  We’ve really kind of strayed from traditional toxicology in this season.

[00:00:28] David Faulkner: It’s true. We have been expanding the reach of what most people think of as toxicology because one of the things I love about this discipline is that it is a necessarily applied science and that means it touches basically everything—all the other sciences.

[00:00:44] Anne Chappelle: Have a listen. 

[00:00:45] “Decompose” Theme Music

[00:00:51] David Faulkner: Bill Sullivan helps us learn to live with zombie parasites.

[00:00:56] Bill Sullivan: Very few people know about toxoplasma, but billions, literally billions, of people have this parasite in their head, and they don’t even know about it. We have upwards of 4,000 cases of congenital toxoplasmosis in the United States alone every year, and the number of spontaneous abortion caused by toxoplasma may even be higher.

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[00:01:23] Anne Chappelle: Bill Sullivan is Showalter Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology, Toxicology, Microbiology, Immunology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. His research is centered on infectious disease and anti-infective agents, and we’re very excited to talk to him about that today. But also Bill has participated in some very interesting science communication activities, and we really also want to spend some time with Bill talking about his experiences there and what drew him to that. We have a whole, wonderful list of questions, so welcome to the show, Bill.

[00:02:03] Bill Sullivan: Well, It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me on. I’m excited.

[00:02:06] David Faulkner: Bill, brainworms are all the rage right now—this might be dating the show from when we record it—but how did you get into brainworms before they were cool? 

[00:02:14] Bill Sullivan: That’s the funny thing. I’m not a brainworm researcher, but it’s interesting to know that whenever some kind of gross thing comes out in pop culture—whether it be brain-eating amoeba, brainworms, parasites, and poop—I’m the guy people think of and they called me up to learn a little more about it. Lots of different pathogens can get into the brain, and …

[00:02:40] David Faulkner: Horrifying.

[00:02:41] Bill Sullivan: It is horrifying because that’s the center of our self and can potentially change personality and behavior and lead to very nasty things like seizures, loss of memory, confusion. All sorts of crazy things can happen.

[00:02:56] Anne Chappelle: We’ve all been taught that the blood-brain barriers … I guess we’re saying it’s not so good anymore, or does it sneak around?

[00:03:03] Bill Sullivan: Getting drugs into the brain is a formidable challenge because of this blood-brain barrier, but a multitude of parasites can do it with ease. In the case of Toxoplasma gondii, this is the single-celled protozoan parasite that I’ve been working on for 30 years to this day. That’s a parasite that notoriously gets into the brain, and because it does, it’s very difficult to treat. In fact, there is no cure for that stage of the parasite. Brainworms can do the same thing, and viruses are very small, so they can penetrate and infect the brain as well. I mean, it’s a great fortress—don’t get me wrong—but it’s not impenetrable.

[00:03:42] David Faulkner: I know that there is some general pop culture knowledge around toxoplasmosis and cats. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? 

[00:03:51] Bill Sullivan: One of the most fascinating elements of this Toxoplasma gondii parasite. When I started studying this parasite as a graduate student, we were primarily doing so because it’s a clinically relevant pathogen. HIV was a monster at the time, and antiretrovirals were not fully developed and approved yet. So many AIDS patients were actually dying of toxoplasma infections, and this was unheard of prior to AIDS becoming a thing. And the reason why is because toxoplasma is extraordinarily common in the human population, and in fact, all warm-blooded vertebrates get this parasite. It’s extraordinarily promiscuous. 

When we, or some other animal, get the parasite, our immune system controls it pretty well. Same for most animals. So you really don’t even get all that sick. Most people never even realize they got a toxoplasma infection. The immune system will control it, but it won’t eliminate it. It forms these dormant cysts in the brain, and there can be dozens to hundreds, maybe thousands, of these cysts inside of neurons, which are your brain cells. So, literally, inside of your brain cells and just sitting there for the rest of your life. 

We can use drugs, antifolates primarily, to control the growing form of the parasite, so when there’s an acute infection, we can get it under control with drugs, but those folates don’t penetrate the brain very well. And they don’t seem to have appreciable activity against the insisted form, which is pretty metabolically inert. So, it’s a real challenge to cure. 

The danger is that if your immune system deteriorates because of HIV, maybe cancer chemotherapy, organ transplantation, anytime the immune system is suppressed to a significant degree, these toxoplasma cysts in the brain can reactivate, and when they do, the parasite starts growing really fast, and its source of food is your brain. So, it’ll literally eat through brain tissue until medications or the immune system comes back up and puts it back into its dormant stage. So, it could be potentially life threatening for those reasons.

[00:06:10] David Faulkner: So, these are little zombie parasite things.

[00:06:12] Bill Sullivan: Yeah, yeah. I’m glad you mentioned that because that was what was so cool in the ‘90s. People were starting to develop mouse models to study this parasite so that we can develop better drugs or understand why it insists in the brain So, these mouse models were being developed, and lo and behold, when people infected mice with toxoplasma, it mimics human infection in that the mice get a little scruffy at about day seven, they won’t eat, but then, they recover very quickly, get their appetite back. They’re grooming once again, and they look pretty fine. They don’t look sick at all. You could never tell them apart, but they start behaving very oddly. Here are these mice that look healthy on the outside, but we know they have thousands of parasite cysts in their brain, just like an infected human would—and they’re not acting right. They’re hypermodal. They are bouncing off the walls of the cage. But the most remarkable thing is they’re unafraid of stimuli that would make an uninfected mouse run for the hills, and one of those stimuli includes the smell of cat urine. 

So, this is where it gets really interesting because the cat is what we call the definitive host of this parasite. The cat is the only organism on the planet where the parasite can undergo the sexual stage of its lifecycle. So, if you’re a parasite, like any other living creature, your main goal in life is to have sex, and it can only do that in the gut of a cat. And when that happens, the infected cat will expel oocysts into the environment for about two weeks. And we’re talking about billions of them shed. They’re very sturdy, very stable parasite eggs, if you will. They contaminate the food and water chain, and that’s how this parasite gets around. All the other animals get infected with toxoplasma. They are what we call dead-end hosts, just like humans are. And even though the parasite won’t make them really sick, it’ll insist all throughout their tissues. So, if we eat raw or undercooked meat, we can get the parasite that way and that’s thought to be just as common as picking it up from the cat. 

So, there’s many different multiple routes of transmission. This parasite has infected one third of the human population, and you can imagine that you have that many number of people being infected what if this parasite is doing something to our brains like it is very well-documented to do so in rodents? There’s been some correlations produced. One of the most common that you’ll see is that people who are carrying these toxoplasma cysts in their head have a higher propensity to develop neuropsychoses like schizophrenia. Other correlations are rage disorder, impulsive gambling. You see a lot of these behaviors that are consistent with risk taking, just like we do with the rodents. So, there’s some very eerie parallels into what this parasite might be doing to a mammalian brain, including the human brain. So that’s why we find it an endlessly fascinating parasite to work on and study.

[00:09:20] Anne Chappelle: Well, I remember being scared of it because they always tell pregnant women, “You can’t scoop cat litter,” and I used that excuse for many years beyond my fertility years as, “Oh no, I cannot scoop the cat litter.” 

[00:09:36] Bill Sullivan: I’m glad you brought up the pregnant women issue. I neglected to mention that, and it’s an important point. Toxoplasma is one of the few pathogens that can cross the placenta. So, we talked about the blood-brain barrier. The placenta barrier is arguably even stronger, but toxoplasma can plow right through it and either cause a miscarriage or devastating birth defects in the fetus. 

So, that is why you’re told when you’re pregnant to avoid cleaning the litter box or even doing things like gardening or playing in the sandbox. Anywhere a cat might have defecated, pregnant women will want to avoid or take extra precautions because that would be a high opportunity for toxoplasma infection. And if that occurs during pregnancy for the first time—I should add if the woman was previously exposed and has antibodies to toxoplasma already, it’s really not a significant danger—but if you become infected for the first time during pregnancy, that’s when it can be a very serious condition.

[00:10:39] Anne Chappelle: Can you tell if you’ve got these parasites in your brain and whether they are dead or not?

[00:10:45] Bill Sullivan: There are blood tests for toxoplasma. You can measure both IgG and IgM, which will give you a readout as to whether you are currently infected or may have been infected at some point in the past, and in fact, many countries screen pregnant women …

[00:11:03] Anne Chappelle: Really?

[00:11:04] Bill Sullivan: … during pregnancy for this parasite because if they zero convert during pregnancy, we throw drugs at it right away, and it can minimize the chances of spontaneous abortion, and it will certainly minimize the severity of the disease in a congenitally infected infant. We don’t do that in the United States, and I’m constantly befuddled by that.

[00:11:26] David Faulkner: That’s really interesting. I know that for COVID there have been interesting strategies of monitoring waste streams, waste effluent, and that sort of thing. Is this a sort of parasite that could be monitored in a similar way to maybe gauge the number of infections in a given area?

[00:11:42] Bill Sullivan: It certainly could, but you don’t know if those infections are coming, where they’re coming from. Could just be like cat runoff. There’s a lot of feral cats in certain regions.

And in fact, where you see feral cat problems is usually where you see outbreaks of toxoplasma in the wild, and this is where things get a little ethically interesting as well because a lot of people don’t want to do anything about the feral cat problem. Some people don’t call it a problem. But then again, you have toxoplasma infecting large groups of cats, spewing billions and billions of oocysts into the environment on a daily basis. Those oocysts are getting into oceans; saltwater doesn’t kill them. So, now we have species of endangered dolphins, sea otters succumbing to toxoplasma infection because they’re eating the shellfish that contain trapped toxoplasma oocysts in very high concentrations, and these endangered species are dying off. So, what do we do? Do we finally get a handle on the feral cat problem and start euthanizing some of those cats, or do we let an endangered species die off? 

[00:12:53] David Faulkner: Wow. There’s this pathway by which uncontrolled spread of feral cats can lead to extinction of endangered species. That is quite an ecological journey, and if a person is not necessarily super well-versed in science, I could see where that could be a challenging leap for them.

So, this kind of gets into the science communication end of things. Can you tell us a bit about your history with science communication? 

[00:13:20] Bill Sullivan: That’s a great segue into the other major thing I try to do in my professor position is communicate some of this medical and health information to people, for obvious reasons, for their own health care but also to other individuals who may be in positions where they can avert some of these ecological disasters or at least get the people who need to be talking into a dialogue so that they might be able to formulate a path forward that is going to satisfy everyone to the largest extent possible. 

Very few people know about toxoplasma, but billions, literally billions, of people have this parasite in their head and they don’t even know about it. We have upwards of 4,000 cases of congenital toxoplasmosis in the United States alone every year, and the number of spontaneous abortion caused by toxoplasma may even be higher. We can’t track that number. I’ve been trying to push for prenatal testing for a while now, and it’s just surprisingly hard to get traction on this—even when the newer studies coming out that show testing can be done for almost $4 a pop. 

[00:14:28] David Faulkner: Wow.

[00:14:29] Bill Sullivan: I mean, it’s not that expensive. Yes, it’s a rare disease. Okay, 4,000 cases out of millions of pregnancy deliveries every year, but get to know the parents of a congenitally infected infant. Imagine yourself in those shoes and then being told the severity of this could have been prevented if you had known three, four months ago you could have started drugs while the baby was still in utero. Why are we not doing this? France, Austria, other countries have been doing this for 30 years.

This is one of those things where I hope just getting the word out about toxoplasma, whether it be in a fun way by virtue of the zombie parasite phenomenon. That’s still a great springboard to talk about the very real problem of congenital toxoplasmosis and the very real problem of ecological consequences if we don’t get a handle on the feral cat situation. And toxoplasma is one of the major sources of food poisoning in the US every year. 

[00:15:30] Anne Chappelle: Really?

[00:15:31] Bill Sullivan: Mostly from people who hunt wild game and then don’t cook the meat thoroughly. You usually hear outbreaks associated with venison, for example, and shellfish, as I alluded to earlier, can be a major source of the oocysts. And if people consume raw oysters, for example, that could be another source of infection. 

[00:15:51] Anne Chappelle: They’re so good. 

[00:15:52] Bill Sullivan: I probably just ruined your weekend, but …

[00:15:55] Anne Chappelle: I just had some the other day. 

[00:15:58] David Faulkner: I’ve been vindicated. Vindicated. My lifelong antipathy towards oysters and raw oysters in particular is finally justified.

[00:16:07] Anne Chappelle: No, no, no, no, no, no. 

[00:16:09] Bill Sullivan: And that’s an element of science communication that we grapple with sometimes: You have to share inconvenient truths, unpleasant facts with some people. So, for Anne, if I tell her that, “Yeah, eating raw oysters is a really bad idea. You know, you could really be putting yourself in harm’s way.” She might not talk to me for a while because all I do is tell her that what she’s doing is not good for her.

That’s the double-edged sword of science communication. You go into this with the good intentions of trying to help people, prevent them from pain and suffering, maybe even death, but you also are telling them things that they might not want to hear. You’re disrupting one of the major joys they get out of their diet, or you’re telling them that your gas guzzling car is bad for the environment: “But I really like driving this car.” This is across the board. You tell them that they need this vaccination: “Oh, I don’t want to get another shot.” 

And science and medical information is not always easy to communicate depending on the nature of your audience. You’re talking about pretty complex principles and concepts that have taken me years, decades to learn, and I still don’t understand some of it. I’ve been trying to find as Anne knows—and we’ve worked together on this—formulas or approaches that work better in order to capture people’s attention or be more persuasive than scientists who are just condescending and authoritative and “Do as I say. I know better than you.” And I don’t think that approach is very helpful

[00:17:38] Anne Chappelle: So how do you educate without making the person feel bad or guilty or like a small child. How do you bridge that fine line of not lording, but I’m trying to find the right way to say it …

[00:17:52] Bill Sullivan: You don’t want to come off sounding like a jerk.

[00:17:54] Anne Chappelle: Yes.

[00:17:55] Bill Sullivan: And a lot of scientists do this because we tend to be very analytical people. So, we will throw an avalanche of data charts and graphs, scientific papers at people and think that solves the problem. For a very minor subset of people that might actually work, I don’t dismiss it, but a lot of people it’s just too much to digest. And if you overwhelm them with information, that’s going to be a turnoff as well. So unfortunately, Anne, I don’t think there’s like a one-stop-shop solution for your excellent question. There are many different approaches, and you got to do the homework or make the effort to feel that person or that audience out and try to calculate what method is going to work best based on the feedback they’re giving you. 

[00:18:44] David Faulkner: So how do we as educators, as researchers, as concerned members of the human race, how do we break through that fog of chaos, of distraction, of appeals to emotion? Is that a thing that we can even do in a meaningful way? I know it’s important, and I think it’s important that we try, but how do we motivate ourselves to jump into that cesspit because I’ve done this online and boy does it get gnarly fast in that media.

[00:19:22] Bill Sullivan: It can go south pretty quickly, so you gotta be careful who and when you engage. You want to focus your time and energy on the people who actually could be converted. That’s where your priorities lie because just looking at it from a numbers perspective, you’ll be far more effective in pulling over more people who are closer to the evidence end of the spectrum than those who are further away. The ones who are further away obviously take a lot more effort, a lot more time and can be very, very frustrating. I share in your frustration sometimes, and I also share your concerns about the disinformation and misinformation machinery that is out there right now working against science and health and expertise. That’s a very real problem, and no one’s got an easy fix for that because with the advent of the internet all sorts of information can be quote, “Confirmed online” and give you the false impression that some kind of wackadoodle theory is actually correct—or at least has a lot of adherence. 

So, there’s a couple approaches you can take if you want to try to do something about that. And I applaud anybody who tries because if we don’t make an effort to do something about it, we’ve lost the battle. We’ve caved to misinformation, and things will fall into chaos and anarchy. Having those sorts of nightmares is inspirational enough to stay involved in the thick of this fight. I don’t think ignoring it’s an option. It’s not gonna go away. If anything, it’s just gonna get worse.

To your earlier point, I think the onus is on us as scientists, medical healthcare professionals, physicians; we gotta get out there and make our voice heard in a way that doesn’t come across as offensive or condescending. There’s many ways to do that. 

Another important element that I think is at the crux of the misinformation crisis is trust. If people trusted experts at the get go, they would look at these figures who are propagating disinformation as a bunch of loons. We don’t engender enough trust, and part of their weaponry is to denigrate expertise. So, your expertise may actually work against you. When I encounter those sorts of problems, I put my Professor hat to one side and just get to know that person. I don’t even go into a persuasive mode anymore. I don’t try to tell them they’re wrong about this or they should be doing that. Before you go there, you build this bond of trust, and you get them to realize, “Hey, this guy is a scientist or a physician, but we actually have a lot in common. Our kids enjoy the same things. We both like ’80s music, for example. We are both outdoors people.” So, you connect with them on some other level, and you’ll be surprised at how magically they start to listen and give you more credence just because you took the time and effort to establish a little bit of a connection first. I’ve found that to be really effective. 

[00:22:20] David Faulkner: It is fascinating to figure out what do people believe and how did they get there, and so I think there’s a lot of value in asking, “What is it exactly that you’re thinking is going on here? Why are you opposed to this, or why do you think that thing?” And there is a utility in asking questions of people instead of being the one who is the one with all the answers. Taking that interest and expressing that curiosity because then it’s not a lecture, it’s a conversation.

[00:22:48] Bill Sullivan: Exactly. You shift away from talking—“I want to be right. I want to convince you”—to listening: “I want to understand your argument. I want to understand the experiences that you’ve had that lead you to believe X while I believe Y.” That’s a really great approach. 

And in fact, I had these three Cs that I would propagate as a method when you run into problems with science communication. The first C is curious. You get curious as to why you believe something and they believe otherwise. You stay compassionate. You try to get to understand that person’s life experiences and how it led them to a different viewpoint. And then the third C is civility, so no matter what differences arise or how much you want to jump in and argue otherwise, you maintain an atmosphere of civility. And at the end of all that, yes, you might not convince people to come to your side. I mean, that would be kind of miraculous if they did, especially if it’s just one encounter. Like you said, it takes life experience in order for people to really come around and see things differently. But if you maintain that environment of compassion and civility, you at least communicate to that person that you’re a scientist or a doctor who is pretty cool: “I can trust you. You really heard me. You let me speak my mind. You sought to understand, and you never insulted me. You never offended me for having the beliefs I had.” Cause how unfair would that be? A person forms their beliefs based on the experiences they’ve had, which are largely outside of our control, so to yell at them for their beliefs is like yelling at them for what language they inherited. And a lot of scientists and medical professionals lose sight of that.

It kind of reminds me of that meme that went around a few years ago: the blue and black dress versus the gold and white. The same photograph. Some people see blue and black; some see gold and white, and neither one of them is really wrong. They genuinely see those colors, and if you were both looking at that dress in person, you would agree as to what it is. But with the meme, you see things differently because of the way someone’s vision was wired. They see a shadow there and that distorts the colors. Two parties can be looking at the same exact piece of data, the same photograph, and see two very different things. And neither one of them is wrong based on the picture. So, what you have to do instead of insulting one another and saying, “Yes, it’s blue and black, you moron!” or “It’s yellow and gold, you idiot.” You have to say, “We see things differently. Let’s do an investigation here together. Rather than like this adversarial debate.” You combine forces and cooperate to find out what the truth is.

[00:25:33] David Faulkner: Excellent points. 

[00:25:34] Anne Chappelle: I would like to shift gears for just a minute. You wrote a book, Pleased to Meet Me. I have enough of a hard time finishing a scientific report. The last thing I want to do is write a pleasure book. So, could you tell me a little bit about how hard was it to write a book? 

[00:25:49] Bill Sullivan: Writing it was tough—don’t get me wrong—but publishing it and speaking about it and seeing some of the wonderful things that have resulted from it have been infinitely rewarding. I would always encourage people to do it if they are inspired, but I do want to add that this wasn’t something that you just wake up and do one day. 

[00:26:08] Anne Chappelle: So, tell me about the subject of the book.

[00:26:11] Bill Sullivan: The book is called Pleased to Meet Me: Genes, Germs, and the Curious Forces That Make Us Who We Are. And long story short, it’s basically a book that’s divided into nine or 10 chapters, each one exploring a different aspect of human behavior—everything from why we like certain flavors to why some people overeat to why some people get hooked on drugs and alcohol to why people fall in love with the person they love and why people gravitate towards right or left ends of the political spectrum. There’s a huge amount of biology under the hood in each one of these areas of human behavior, and we like to think that we’re in control of all of these things and my book tries to introduce the idea that we have a lot less control over our likes and dislikes and our behavior than we like to believe. But this book is trying to convey the message that this knowledge is power, and if you actually understand the biological mechanisms of drug and alcohol addiction or why some people overeat or why they find the same sex attractive when you understand the biology, I think it engenders a lot more compassion for people who are different than you—might even ignite that curiosity that we spoke about before. And it paves a way forward on how we can better treat some of the more negative aspects of behavior. A case point would be, like, the drug and alcohol addiction. A lot of emerging data is showing us that this is due to genetic mutations that create a hyperactive brain. And there can be now medications designed to calm the brain down in ways that don’t involve alcohol or other addictive substances that can make those individuals feel more normal from a attention perspective. Whereas they would turn to alcohol to calm their brain down, they can now just take a different medication that’s nonaddictive and do the same thing. Those sorts of biological understandings of behavior to me can open up entirely new avenues for treatments.

The microbiome is another big, exciting arena. That is a little more controversial, but again, emerging data is showing us that the microbiome has been associated with everything from depression to allergies to whether people relapse when they get sober. So, these bugs in our tummies may be having an influence on our personality and behavior or at least having an influence. I’m not saying they control everything—just maybe as much as heritable genes. And that is, again, something we can modify through probiotics or better food and diet, which might be more effective than pharmacological approaches. So that in a nutshell is what the book is about. Probably more than what you wanted to hear.

[00:28:50] Anne Chappelle: No, but kind of, it was a passion project, 

[00:28:52] Bill Sullivan: Well, it grew out of my work. As we mentioned earlier, I was fascinated by the effects that the toxoplasma parasite was having on rodents and in some studies humans as well. Then, I started reading about how the microbiome can have effects through the gut-brain axis. There were some personal things that happened to me or that I don’t understand that I wanted to figure out. 

I opened the book with a long screed against broccoli. I hate it. It’s a poison to me. For most of my life, a lot of my friends and family are like, “What’s wrong with you? It’s fine. It’s good for you. You should like it. You should eat it.” I put that into my mouth, and I just want to vomit. It’s just hideous to me, and I couldn’t understand why I was so unusual. And not to give too much of the book away, but it turns out I’m a super taster. Twenty-five percent of the people in the human population are super tasters. I got genetically tested, so I had the proof. I could go back and show my parents, “Look, I’m not lying to you when I don’t want to eat broccoli. Literally too bitter for my taste buds to handle. I have the genetic data to support it.” 

[00:29:56] David Faulkner: Incredible.

[00:29:57] Bill Sullivan: That was really validating to me. And I thought how many other super tasters out there feel horrible at barbecues and dinners when they can’t eat some of the vegetables that everybody else is enjoying. Again, that knowledge is power. 

I started blogging about these sorts of things back in the day when blogging was still a thing. So, there are venues out there where you can start to accumulate a portfolio of work, if you will, with any luck, start accumulating an audience, and you can take that to an agent or a publisher and say, “Hey, I had a blog that was called Scope before I wrote the book. It had upwards of almost half a million followers. So … 

[00:30:29] David Faulkner: Wow.

[00:30:30] Bill Sullivan: You take that to an agent, and they’re going to get pretty excited—even if you pitch a book that doesn’t sound very exciting. So building that platform is equally important, but you got to start somewhere. Writing these columns and blogs, you can also dive into popular science magazines, write for them. You certainly got the credentials to do it. They’re hungry for content. So, give it a shot.

[00:30:51] Anne Chappelle: Yeah.

[00:30:52] David Faulkner: But something that I have been wondering about as someone who has considered writing books and has written fiction is, was there a certain point—as you said, you didn’t just write the book in a day—but was there a moment where you were like, “You know what, I am gonna write a book.” And if so, what was that? What was the catalyst for taking you from, “I have this blog that I really enjoy” to “You know what? It’s book time.”

[00:31:15] Bill Sullivan: I’ve grown up on a lot of popular science books, everything from starting with Carl Sagan and all the classics. So, I always loved reading them but I never really envisioned writing one myself because of the time constraints. But blogging was a lot easier because you can belt out a 600- to a 1,000-word piece pretty easily. It’s in your wheelhouse. You don’t have to research it much, but then, you do that for four or five years and suddenly you’ve got this huge body of work that if it has a common theme, you could remodel that into a book in fairly short order. And that’s exactly what I did. 

What gave me the spark was I was invited to speak at Pint of Science. You guys familiar with that? They come to town every now and then, and they get some speakers from a local university, and they get 15, 20 minutes to talk about their work.

[00:32:06] Anne Chappelle: Sounds like nerd night to me.

[00:32:08] David Faulkner: That is exactly what it sounds like.

[00:32:10] Bill Sullivan: Oh, it’s fantastic, and I went in there with a talk called, “It’s the end of free will as we know it, and I feel fine.”

[00:32:16] David Faulkner: Love it. 

[00:32:17] Bill Sullivan: It was a summation of some of my blog posts. There was a part about toxo and free will, a part about the microbiome and free will, a part about how you don’t get to choose your genes, but they really do dictate a lot of our personality and behavior to various extents. Someone in the audience literally asked the question, “Did I write a book about this because they wanted to learn more.” And I was like, “No.” And that really planted the seed that maybe there’s something here that is unique and I could frame. That was the real spark that gave me the motivation to go back through those blog posts, look for a common theme and try to, I wouldn’t say cheat, but try to write a book. Based on four, four-and-a-half years of work that I’ve already done. 

[00:32:57] Anne Chappelle: Sounds like a thesis.

[00:32:59] David Faulkner: I was gonna say, “That sounds like my dissertation.” 

[00:33:01] Bill Sullivan: What it turned out to be for the academics in the audience, it was like writing nine review articles; each one was a chapter. And if you can imagine writing nine review articles over the course of one or two years, it’s a lot of work but not impossible—especially if you already have a lot of the preliminary ideas down. It’s very doable, but it makes writing a second book extremely hard.

[00:33:21] David Faulkner: Right. 

[00:33:22] Bill Sullivan: Because I got nothing really to go back on. So, I’ve been writing again, a lot more posts for magazines and blogs and things like that. And who knows, maybe something will emerge out of that down the road.

[00:33:33] Anne Chappelle: That’s awesome. We always try to ask a couple of questions to every guest. One of my questions is, “What is the greatest adverse reaction that you’ve ever had?”

[00:33:46] Bill Sullivan: I guess I’ll go back to the cats. I had a babysitter who had all these kittens running around her house, and I loved them. I thought they were so cute. They would sit in my lap. We would cuddle up on the sofa, watch TV. A few, hours later, I’d be a sniffling, sneezing mess. As soon as I went back home to our house, the symptoms would go away. Go back to the sitter, they would come right back. We connected the dots and found out I was allergic to cats, and it’s a pretty bad one. So, that was an adverse reaction that is interesting given where I ended up in my career, working on a cat parasite. 

[00:34:24] David Faulkner: There is some irony there. This is kind of interesting given your sort of dual life as a scientist and as an author: If you were not doing what you’re doing now, what would you be doing?

[00:34:37] Bill Sullivan: I would have been a rock star. No doubt. 

[00:34:38] David Faulkner: No doubt. You had a band! 

[00:34:41] Bill Sullivan: In grad school, I had a band, and we were actually doing quite well. We put out three CDs, and we were touring up and down East Coast, mostly Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York. 

[00:34:50] Anne Chappelle: What were you called?

[00:34:51] Bill Sullivan: We were called Open Cage.

[00:34:53] Anne Chappelle: I’m gonna have to Google that right now.

[00:34:55] Bill Sullivan: We’re everywhere. We’re on Spotify, Apple Music. It’s out there everywhere. One of our CDs was called Evolve so staying true to my biological roots. That was a lot of fun, and I met a contingency of people and friends that I never would have come across in the Ivy League of Penn. It was a really cool offshoot of my daily experiences.

[00:35:20] Anne Chappelle: There you go. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for being with us.

[00:35:25] Bill Sullivan: I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my Friday. Thank you, both.

[00:35:28] David Faulkner: Thanks so much. 

[00:35:29] “Decompose” Theme Music

[00:35:36] Anne Chappelle: I’m baking up something really good for our next episode. 

[00:35:40] David Faulkner: Oh, I can’t wait to hear about it.

[00:35:42] Anne Chappelle: High intensity sweeteners with Sugar Czar Cory Scott. 

[00:35:47] David Faulkner: Sounds delicious.

[00:35:50] Corey Scott: So, you have your synthetic sweeteners, and then, you have your plant-derived sweeteners, and they all work the same way. They work the same way as sugar. They bind to sweet taste receptors in your tongue and that sends a signal to your brain that you have something sweet. There’s different regions on the sweet taste receptors that they bind to and there’s different potencies all over the place. 

[00:36:06] “Decompose” Theme Music

[00:36:09] Anne Chappelle: Thank you, all, for joining us for this episode of Adverse Reactions, presented by the Society of Toxicology. 

[00:36:17] David Faulkner: And thank you to Dave Leve at Ma3stro Studios, 

[00:36:20] Anne Chappelle: that’s Ma3stro with a three, not an E, 

[00:36:22] David Faulkner: who created and produced all the music for Adverse Reactions, including the theme song, “Decompose.” 

[00:36:29] Anne Chappelle: The viewpoints and information presented in Adverse Reactions represent those of the participating individuals. Although the Society of Toxicology holds the copyright to this production, it has, 

[00:36:40] David Faulkner: definitely, 

[00:36:41] Anne Chappelle: not vetted or reviewed the information presented herein, 

[00:36:45] David Faulkner: nor does presenting and distributing this podcast represent any proposal or endorsement of any position by the Society. 

[00:36:52] Anne Chappelle: You can find out more information about the show at adversereactionspodcast.com

[00:36:57] David Faulkner: and more information about the Society of Toxicology on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. 

[00:37:03] Anne Chappelle: I’m Anne Chappelle, 

[00:37:05] David Faulkner: and I’m David Faulkner. 

[00:37:06] Anne Chappelle: This podcast was approved by Anne’s mom.

[00:37:09] “Decompose” Theme Music

[00:37:11] End of Episode