Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year, and UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare Annual Enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th.
If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage. It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit uhcmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives. Hello. This is Hey Dude Shoes. This is an ad. But not for your ears, for your feet.
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Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. And you can check out our podcast by subscribing on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Up next, a story from our Faith in Action series where we share with you the stories of people of faith living it out in the public square.
Today's story comes to us from the little town of Noel, Missouri, where there's a church that has an unexpected amount of immigrants attending. Here's Pastor Josh Manning and his wife Lauren with the story. My name is Josh Manning and Lauren, you want to dive in? OK, so yeah, Josh and I have been married nearly 20 years.
So we're coming along. I did 20 years at Wal-Mart. I was an assistant manager and so you worked crazy hours.
I mean, you know, 15 days in a row at times. I remember doing that, you know, 12 hour shifts, a lot of those kind of things. He was at Wal-Mart constantly.
We lived an hour away from the Walmart in which he worked. And so for a lot of years there, we were you know, that's that's all we were doing is I was I was bringing home a paycheck and Lauren was at home and was never quite fulfilled. I just never had this feeling that we were doing what God called us to do. He always said, God has something for us. God's going to do something with us.
And I thought, what does that mean? We have little kids. We had twins. And two years later, I had another baby. So we had three kids under three. I was 28 trying to homeschool three kids as they grew and Josh not being around and trying to be in church and do the right things.
It was a difficult season. We decided through. Well, God decided that it was time for us to do something and follow the Great Commission. And so at the time, our pastor was, I would consider a Great Commission preacher. He was about sending. He was about missions. And I had never really truly heard a pastor that was so clear and direct.
I don't know. It clicked with us. I think it clicked around the same time. When you agree, Josh?
Absolutely. It was like, whoa, we had we were watching him, his preaching. We were watching a young family from our church sell everything they owned and move to Peru and the jungles.
They'd set up little churches down the Amazon River and he'd ride this little boat down the Amazon River and disciple the pastors there. And this was a family our age. It just just blew us away. And when we got to that church, that family had just left. So we we didn't even see them and didn't know them, but knew their story because the whole church was talking about it. And that was hugely impactful.
The other thing was Lauren made me go to see David Platt speak. And I didn't know anything about this guy, but he was talking about the concept of just going. That is the concept of the gospel is as you hear the truth and then you go and tell the truth.
I mean, that's the basic premise. And so it impacted us greatly. And so those two and then our faithful teaching of a very good pastor, those three just really just pushed us in that position. We didn't know where we were going to go, but we knew that we were going to share the gospel.
Whatever, whatever means that we had, we were going to do so as boldly and loudly as what we what we could possibly do. And we found out there was a church in Noel, Missouri, that the pastor had left, thrown up his hands in disgust and ran screaming, as many other pastors had there, to be blunt. What the main industry is in the entire county and in that town is the poultry industry. And so what happened was is, of course, you had these these farmers, small time farmers that can have the chicken houses.
But to have workers in a very rural county to be able to work the plants, they just there isn't any. And so probably about twenty five years ago, 30 years ago in that ballpark, Hispanic population started to move in. And then relatively more recent times, we started to get refugees from all over the world. Noel has an extremely diverse population. There's 30 nations of birth in a town, 2000 people. There's 10 languages that in my estimation are large enough to have a church functioning. And so you have a large number of these refugee population, limited English skills. And so it's a very challenging place to present the gospel.
But in some ways, it's served up for you in a silver platter because you know where to go to catch these people. You know what I'm saying? So I became pastor of a church that had two primary languages, English speaking, of course. It's called Corinne. They come from Myanmar. It was also called Burma. You may have heard that they've had been in civil war for it's like the longest running civil war. Yeah. It's World War Two.
Yeah. They've been in civil war. When we found out they were from Burma, we referred to them as the Burmese people. And that is not something you should do because the Burmese government attacks these little... Josh can explain this better. These little ethnic tribes.
Yeah. Yeah, they come in and attack them so their own country will fight against them. So they are very proud to be Corinne and they have a Buddhist background. They have a Christian heritage. So there's there's kind of a hodgepodge of religions within the Corinne people. But they come to our church.
Groups of them come faithfully and we get to preach the gospel and share Jews with them. And so not all of the adults necessarily know English in our church. So we we have a translator and he's not necessarily a Christian. He's not necessarily Buddhist either.
He's kind of a mix of different religions. But we use the kids and as translators for the parents so we can get to know the parents through the kids. And God's blessed this beyond our wildest dreams. Now it's four years later.
There are five independent services operating in our building. We have service, you know, all day long from 10 in the morning till nine at night, frequently on Sunday in five separate languages and attempting to start services in other languages as well. And we still have no idea what we're doing, but God continues to bless it despite our our idiocy. And you've been listening to Josh and Lauren Manning, heeding the call and following their heart and following their God and doing essentially a turnaround. When we come back, more of this remarkable story here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country. Stories from our big cities and small towns.
But we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to our American stories dot com and click the donate button.
Go to our American stories dot com and give. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious, and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try all free clear mega packs. All free clear mega packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All free clear mega packs are also 100 percent free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs, which my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes. Just know that all free clear mega packs.
They have your back. Purchase all free clear mega packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. Hey, you guys, this is Tori and Jenny with the 9 0 2 1 OMG podcast. We have such a special episode brought to you by nerd tech O.D.T. We recorded it at I heart radio's 10th pole event, Wango Tango. Did you know that nerd tech O.D.T. Remedia pants.
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and I was present and had an amazing time. Here's a little glimpse of our conversation with some of our closest friends. This episode was brought to you by nerd tech O.D.T. Remedia pants. Seventy five milligrams life with migraine attacks can mean missing out on big moments with friends and family. But thankfully, nerd tech O.D.T.
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Helping people live healthier lives. And we return to our American stories and Pastor Josh Manning and his wife Lauren's story of operating a church in the small town of Knoll, Missouri, where many immigrants call home and call his church home. In fact, Josh has five different services in five different languages at his church using interpreters to spread the gospel in the process. But why did these immigrants, especially the Karen people from Myanmar, start attending Knoll Community Baptist Church?
Let's continue with the story. So we don't have a whole lot of prior information, but one little segment we do know is that a gentleman that we just love and such a gracious man named Mike Brown. He saw the refugees coming into the town. He saw the changing demographics. He saw the potential and he saw, you know what, the nations are coming to us. Let's reach out to the nations.
Let's not sit here in fear and get to know them. And so he went to I think he just randomly went to the Karen housing, if I understand right. They were all sleeping on the ground.
They had no furniture. So Mike talked to the people at the church at that time and said, let's buy mattresses for every Karen family. And so the church did. And they made a relationship with them and they started going fishing together. They started hanging out.
And little by little, they started populating the church. And then before long, a translator was needed because the sermon became bilingual. And so our translator, Yehman, who stepped up and became the translator, he's also the liaison at Tyson for the Karen people. So he translates for a living.
He's excellent, excellent at it. And my Neso, the father of my translator, Yehmanu, this guy is just the American dream on steroids. So my Neso gets captured by the Burmese army, him and seven or six other men, seven men total. And he was given the job of walking in front of the army to set off land mines. And so he's captured. Yehmanu is just a baby, if I understand right at that point. So he's away from home.
He's a long ways away. After about a year, there's only him and one other guy left. They were in a tiger pit at night and they overheard that they were going to get executed the next morning. So my Neso gets out of the tiger pit, runs through the jungle, comes back to the family. They're reunited and they are out of there. So it takes quite a bit of time through very, very rugged terrain till they arrive in a refugee camp in Thailand.
Once they're there, you basically have a 500 acre area or however large it is kind of fenced off. Yehmanu described it as on your third offense leaving this area, you were shot on sight. It was illegal to learn the local language. You had limited opportunity, limited educational opportunities, limited everything. You were just there gathering dust in a handmade hut.
Anyway, over time they get to the opportunity to come to the United States and they do so. So this guy came to the United States and Nolans are a midwest relatively poor place itself. You got really just one main road going through town. Half the businesses are shuttered. We're losing our bank. We just had to go pick up the safe deposit box for the church.
Yeh, because the bank is even leaving town. And what he has done to this family is extraordinary. His kids are going to college. They have aspirations of being doctors and lawyers and all those kinds of things.
And they are smart enough they're going to accomplish it. He purchased a house. He's going to pay it off in three years after purchase.
Put significant bulk down in cash because he saved up enough money to do it. Now they have trucks and cars and they become U.S. citizens and they do all these kind of things that you wouldn't hope in your wildest dreams that someone would do coming to the United States. It's just a condition where the gospel is in action and every Sunday he's going to bring his family to church.
Now he's a guy that's probably my age or older. Learning the English language is going to be a challenge. And so there's five in which it's preached in every Sunday. Spanish, English, Chuuk, Marshall Islands, and Karen. But there are going to be just like in my service, you're going to have one person who speaks a different dialect of Karen that's not preached in.
I think Nine Nations of Birth is my record for our service. And we're talking like 60 people. And it's a challenge just because even if you can communicate, even through a child to an adult and back and forth, you miss enough nuances that some of this stuff ends up being confusion.
You have very different views on how time works. And so my job is kind of like be the central hub and make sure there's not like two services trying to do the same different things in the same spot at the same time. Being flexible. Yeah, you just have to be insanely flexible and very comfortable with not knowing what you're doing next week. These cultures, honestly, I swear they decide five minutes before they're doing it and they organize 100 people meeting the church building.
And you don't know what to expect. I was thinking of Gospel Day. So we had just been introduced to the Marshall Islands folks. So we didn't know this group very well and they'd been there a few weeks and it was late evening, six, seven, eight, nine. Anyway, we look out and I think Claire, our daughter, was the first to say, Mom, there is a six foot boat, sailboat.
Yeah, I don't know. There's a sailing ship. There's a sailing ship replica being pushed into the gym. We're talking like Christopher Columbus would have ridden that kind of wooden sailing boat.
Yes, a replica. And they got it inside the gym and they pushed it in. And we're looking at Facebook Live. It's like, what have we allowed? And we're looking at members of the church and they're all like dancing around this wooden boat. And we're like, what is happening? And this is like 10, 11 at night. It was late or early.
It was late. And the neighbors, I think, oh my goodness, these neighbors are going to shoot us. What is happening?
The music is so loud. Didn't know what in tarnation was happening. Turns out it's called Gospel Day and what they do is they celebrate when the missionaries first came to their island. And how they do that is they bring a replica of the wooden sailing ship that came to their island. They fill it full of food and toiletries and stuff like that for the needy in their community to pass out. And they dance and sing. And it's the most beautiful gospel centric, wonderful thing ever.
But what it looks like is if you're the pastor of the church in the parsonage, is you got a hundred plus people dancing around the gym playing music really, really loud. And, you know, up till midnight, you know, and on a school night. You know what I'm saying?
You know what makes you got school the next morning. And so that's the type of life where you have to be very, very, very, very, very flexible. Very. Yes. One more very.
Yes. Biggest thing I've learned is I'm never going back to how I worshiped God before. I'm not. Being a follower of Christ means that it permeates every aspect of how you live your life as you prepare for the next. The only reason that at the moment of salvation, you're not whisked away to heaven at that moment is because we have a job to do. And that's to teach others about Christ. And we should be busying about with that responsibility.
And this dynamic of what we have just here in our backyard is one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done in my life. Just the absolute honor to be able to preach Christ in this environment is something I've never had before. And I'm not going back to worshiping God where I sit on a pew at this time on Sunday.
And then at the minute that this clock strikes noon, I'm out of there going to the restaurant and I've done my duty for the week. That's not going to be the way we're going to live our life. It doesn't mean that I'll be pastor of this church till the day I die.
I may very well be that. But whatever we do, we're going to follow Christ in every aspect that we can do. And a great job by Monty Montgomery on the production. By the way, I love the line that Josh said, the nations are coming to us. Let's not live in fear. Let's get to know and serve these people. Our faith and action story.
So many great stories in this great country of people of all faiths serving their God here on our American story. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious, and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try all free clear mega packs. All free clear mega packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All free clear mega packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs, which my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that all free clear mega packs, they have your back.
Purchase all free clear mega packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. Such an exciting event like Wango Tango. It's true. I had one that night and I took my NURTEC ODT and I was present and had an amazing time. Here's a little glimpse of our conversation with some of our closest friends. This episode was brought to you by NURTEC ODT Remedapants 75 milligrams. Life with migraine attacks can mean missing out on big moments with friends and family.
But thankfully NURTEC ODT Remedapants 75 milligrams is the only medication that is proven to treat a migraine attack and prevent episodic migraines in adults. So lively events like Wango Tango don't have to be missed. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year and UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th.
If you're working past age 65 you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage. It can seem confusing but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives.
This is Our American Stories and now it's time for another story from one of the Smith twins. We previously told their story of how they navigated through ethical dilemmas and built an over billion dollar business. Here's Sean talking about what he thought about wealth, money and success when he was young. I'm a little embarrassed to say that, you know, I think it's very easy for people at that age to keep score by economic ways. And so when I was that age, goals all centered around economics, you know, because it was just an easy measurement.
You know, score a basket, you get two points, you know, score a goal, you get a point. You know, so if you are successful in business, you measure it by an economic gain. So I didn't set out, you know, in high school or in college to say, hey, you know, I want to try to make other people successful or, you know, I want to try to help a group of needy people in their pursuit of their passion or activity. It was really, it was self focused. It was how can I measure success? I can measure economically. And where did I want to be on the economic spectrum? And so I knew what those goals were. And I knew that that was probably not going to get me there by working for somebody else.
To be totally candid with you, it was a very self focused, very monetary focused number. And so I knew that for me to get to a certain goal by 30, I had to work for myself. And that goal was to be a millionaire, as defined as having a million dollars in a bank account. So not soft, you know, like I wanted to be a millionaire by age 30. And I knew that it would be hard if I just tried to save to get to a million by age 30 because with taxes and all that, that would mean I'd have to make millions after taxes. So I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I knew that the way to get to be a millionaire by age 30 would be is to set out and do something on my own. And, you know, fortunately, we blew through our numbers.
And then so you reset, you just reset the number. And I had someone speak to a group of executives at one point, and it was it was a really interesting eye opener for me. And the person was speaking about scorekeeping. And there's, you know, I'm a big believer there's three types of people. There's people that live in the future. There's people that live in the now. And there's people that live in the past. And so the people live in the past view their best days as something that happened in history.
So they were the high school star quarterback or they were the superstar in college or the most popular in college. But whatever they were, you know, the best at, they believe that's what defines them and that that has passed them by. Then you have people that are in the now and they just really are in the moment. So, you know, they're not always looking at their phone. They're present with you. They see the leaves blowing. They see the weather.
They're very, very aware of not only themselves, but their surroundings. And there's people in the future. And those people are always looking forward to something that's going to happen. And so when you look at these three people, these three types of people, I'm a big believer that the people that are in the now are people that are very happy because they're present. The people in the past, I don't say they're miserable, but they are the least happy because they view their history as being their most defining moment or their most promising moments. The people in the future are close to the people in the now because most people are living in the future are hopeful of something. Not a lot of people that are living in the future are like worried about the future. They're really typically hopeful, like, you know, there's something I'm excited about. And so I tend to be a future type living person.
So when I had this speaker speaking at one point and they were talking about the scorekeepers in society, which are those that measure success by a score, those people are typically not very happy because they always raise the scoreboard. And I saw myself doing that a little bit. So my goal, I want to be a millionaire by age 30. I kind of flew through that. I'm like, wow, I should reset that goal a little higher.
Blew through that. I'll just reset that goal a little bit higher. At what point is a high enough? You know, so I said this makes no sense for me to measure success by an economic advantage or an economic score. I should be measuring how I live my life differently. And so at one point in my life, I thought my goal is I'm going to be on the Forbes 400 list. That was really important to me. I still believe I could get there if I totally focused on it. But does that matter to me?
Not so much. What matters more to me is, is, is, you know, am I leaving a legacy that's really important for those around me? And if all I'm focused on is, is the next score, the next financial objective, I guarantee I'm not going to be on my deathbed going, you know, I wish I would have just pushed a little harder and made a little more at the expense of how much it cost me. So in my 20s, my brother and I didn't take vacations like vacations. They didn't help my score like a vacation. And I was not working, which meant I was spending, which meant I wasn't saving, which meant I wasn't going to make a million by 30. So, you know, raising the scoreboards is fine as long as you have a balance. So for me, the scoreboard wasn't just all about the economics.
And that probably didn't hit me until I started having kids, started building a family. And even a little later than that, probably when I hit, caught maybe 40 years old and I started asking myself, what is this all about? Am I working for myself? Am I working for some kind of title? Am I working for some type of recognition? Or am I really working for a purpose?
And then what is that purpose? And that's where we spend our time, who we spend it with, and then what impact is it having? Our legacy is not what I die with. My legacy is how are my kids going to behave as good citizens with a purpose, not a self-fulfilling purpose, but a purpose that is driven around a God-centered life. And then not just them, but can we impact their kids and then their kids?
So can we continue to pass down from generation to generation a vision for the family, a purpose and a value that further enrich themselves and enrich others? And if you can have impact on folks that don't otherwise have the environments that we're growing up in, and my kids don't worry about whether or not they are going to have lunch today. My kids don't worry about whether or not they have internet to do school. They worry about whether or not they have internet to do gaming. That's a totally different environment.
So when I hear that, you're worried about the speed of your internet so you can stream as fast as you can on a game. And other kids are trying to figure out where are they going to go to bed at night or if they're going to have web communication so they can deal with online schooling. I want our kids to keep those things in perspective.
And a special thanks to Joey and Alex for their work on that piece and a thanks to Sean Smith for sharing his story. And you know, that's what happens in life, folks, that word success. It can define you or you can define it. And you're better off defining the word you and your marriage mate or you and your business partner. Because in the end, it'll end up being money or some other status benchmark and you'll end up miserable.
It's just a guarantee you'll end up miserable. And we love to tell stories because that's how we walk into these problems and these conundrums in our life is how do we define these words? You can look at a guy driving in a really fancy car and think, what a lucky SOB.
But he may be just wanting to drive that car straight off a bridge. And by the way, the brothers do their charitable work and investing together and have formed a group to do that called Castellan. They're interested in working with families as well, other families.
And you can check them out at castellangroup.com. Sean Smith's story, a story about success and its meaning here on our American story. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious, and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try all free clear mega packs. All free clear mega packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All free clear mega packs are also 100 percent free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs, which my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes. Just know that all free clear mega packs.
They have your back. Purchase all free clear mega packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. Hey, you guys, this is Tori and Jenny with the 9 0 2 1 OMG podcast. We have such a special episode brought to you by nerd tech ODT. We recorded it at I heart radio's 10th pole event, Wango Tango. Did you know that nerd tech ODT remejipants, 75 milligrams can help migraine sufferers still attend such an exciting event like Wango Tango?
It's true. I had one that night and I took my nerd tech ODT and I was present and had an amazing time. Here's a little glimpse of our conversation with some of our closest friends. This episode was brought to you by nerd tech ODT remejipants, 75 milligrams. Life with migraine attacks can mean missing out on big moments with friends and family.
But thankfully, nerd tech ODT remejipants, 75 milligrams is the only medication that is proven to treat a migraine attack and prevent episodic migraines in adults. So lively events like Wango Tango don't have to be missed. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year, and UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th.
If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage. It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives. And we're back with our American stories. Up next, Madison brings us a story from Nathaniel Frank. Nathaniel is the CEO and founder of mToxins Venom Lab, which extracts high volumes of snake and scorpion venom for the production of anti-venom.
Here's Nathaniel with the story of how he got involved in his unique career. So I grew up in northeastern Wisconsin, and about six years old, I became just obsessed with reptiles. And that was because a neighbor had given me an old Peterson's field guide.
And I would flip through it and go out and try to find all the animals that were in our region that were in there. And it just started a lifelong passion for these animals. In those field guides as a child, there were pictures of a type of snake called a coral snake that absolutely fascinated me. And I always said, one day I'm going to work with them. In about 2011, I started keeping coral snakes, and I was keeping a type of coral snake that was incredibly rare.
I was the only one keeping them in the United States at the time. And a scientist from Australia had seen that on Facebook and said, can you provide me some samples of that venom? It was really learning under fire, which I would never recommend to anyone. But a gentleman who had been producing venom since the 60s kind of took me under his wing and worked with me on safety and what I needed to do to be able to do that. And we did, and it led to a very successful scientific publication.
Then the question was, what else can you provide me? So it turned into providing venom from 100 different species at one time, and it grew very quickly. And that led into providing venom to pharmaceutical companies. And that's now our main source of revenue, providing venoms for Asia, the Middle East, South America, and all of Africa.
The process is really quite simple, and it's been done the same way for a very long time. You take a sterile vessel, you put a membrane over the top that the animal can bite into. And from there, we grab and restrain the animal. Now, a snake is at its most desperate situation when you're grabbing it. Typically, their first instinct is to flee. One of their last instincts is to use their venom. So we try to be gentle, and some of them are intelligent enough to know that the process is happening. So a lot of them know what to expect, and we try to condition them by, they give their venom, they get fed right after.
So it's almost like a reward. So they bite naturally into the vessel and release their venom. And from there, it goes into a purification process, and then it's turned into a freeze-dried powder.
And that's how the scientists around the world and the pharmaceutical companies use it. M-Toxins Venom Lab opened in 2011, and in its beginning years, it was very small. Almost no one in the community even knew it was there. But in 2016, M-Toxins became a high-production facility and gained a lot more attention.
It's become an enormous success with the community. We're treated with the utmost level of respect by the city and by its residents. We have a very serious level of preparedness here with the fire department, with the police department.
The local hospitals know us. Our state's poison control knows us. Because if you can imagine Wisconsin poison control getting a call that someone's been bitten by a black mamba or a king cobra, the first thing to do is roll your eyes and assume it's not anything like that. So one day, I was extracting from several black mambas, and I rest a finger on their nose.
So I had that animal in my hand. I'm pressing on its nose, and I lifted the animal before I lifted my finger, and I actually lacerated my finger with the snake's fang. So any time that you believe you've been snake-bitten, you know, the first rule is get to the hospital as quickly as possible.
And of course, we have the antivenin on hand. But basically, I waited to see because that animal had just released its venom. Did I get any venom in my system?
Am I okay? Well, then I started to lose control of my tongue, and my eyelids and eyes were drooping. I was salivating, and so then we got to the hospital.
I received four vials of antivenin and went home that evening and had dinner with my family. But that wasn't the first accident he'd had with one of the snakes. It's a little ironic and actually kind of funny, despite the severity of it, but in 2015, I was extracting venom from a snake from Africa called a stiletto snake, and we were doing these extractions to do a scientific paper that proved that there's no antivenin that can be used to treat that bite. And I had my right hand placed in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I actually accidentally pushed my finger onto its fang, and we had to take what's called the flight for life, our emergency helicopter, down to a huge hospital in the southern part of the state, and of course we knew there was nothing that could treat it, so it was all pain management for 48 hours in ICU. But it still makes me laugh, the irony that we knew we couldn't be treated, and there we are with an envenomation. We have a very strict thing that we actually, another venom producer used that we adopted, a time-safe pilot's checklist.
So we go through that checklist, but before I walk in that room, I like to remind myself that we don't want it to happen again, which it will, there will eventually be another bite, it's just the nature of the business, but to prevent that, to keep my family from having to go through it with me. This hurts a lot of people's feelings, but snakes don't have a part of the brain that shows emotion or connection. Wizards do, they become bonded to their keepers and things like that, but snakes can't do that. It's all about how tolerant is that animal being. Now, there's a lot of YouTube stars right now, people that want to be like Steve Irwin and educate, but they'll take these deadly animals and they'll handle them in a very reckless way.
Naturally, it's not a matter of if but when. They're going to get bitten, and it's going to be ugly. One of them I'm extremely close friends with, and he has a young daughter, and every time he would post a video doing something stupid with a dangerous animal, I'd send him a picture of his daughter. Because just because you have antivenom, it doesn't mean you're out of the woods. There can be lots of secondary infection. You could be bitten by one of these snakes, and it turns out you had a pre-existing condition you never knew about, and the next thing you know, you're on dialysis or you're dead.
It's not worth it, but the general public loves it because they believe they're seeing a bond between an animal and a person, and it's not scientifically possible. When you get asked, what do you do for a living, and your answer is, extract venom from deadly animals, you get a variety of reactions. A big one is, are you serious? That's one.
And why in the heck would you want to do that job? People are really interested in the back story. Nathaniel allows visitors to come in and see for themselves. We're not like any other zoo. I feel that in our educational center, that sparks a whole different level of interest and investment. From the kids that are watching us from behind the glass and stuff, it's just pure awe because these kids are nose-to-nose with cobras and mambas and rattlesnakes. What we want to see are more people working in conservation, more people studying venom to find more legitimate medicinal uses. That's kind of our goal.
Just in Africa alone, there's hundreds of thousands of bites a year. A large number of the antivenom for Africa is donated, and I've been fortunate enough to see our antivenom save people's lives over there. It's a humbling experience to be a part of and something that we're very proud of. It's what keeps us going every day.
I think if six-year-old me knew that this was the path that I was going to end up on, I don't think I would have believed myself. We just try to approach it with a great deal of humility and always remember the goal is to save people's lives, not to fill our egos or anything like that. It's just all about saving lives. And a great job on that piece by Madison. And a special thanks to Nathaniel Frank, CEO of mToxins Venom Lab. When he was six years old, he told us he was obsessed with reptiles.
He knew then that his dream would be working with these animals. We learned also snakes don't like being grabbed, and also snakes don't have emotion. But I love the incentives that Venom for Food program and how we ultimately train these snakes to basically do some good. And in the end, that's what it's all about, saving lives if you live near snakes or you're in snake country. Antivenom is at every hospital, and it literally saves lives.
The story of Nathaniel Frank, CEO of mToxins Venom Lab, here on Our American Stories. Each year, about 9% of new breast cancer cases are found in women under the age of 45. Do you know your risk? One of the first steps you can take toward understanding your risk is learning your full family history of cancer on both sides. Learn what questions you should be asking and other tips on how to manage your breast cancer risk at cdc.gov slash bring your brave.
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Whisper: medium.en / 2023-02-16 00:23:10 / 2023-02-16 00:41:19 / 18
