Transcript
010: Samantha Nixon

Theresa Christine: Welcome to The Wild and Curious Podcast, a show that's part travel, 

Suzanne Schmedding: Part feminism, 

TC: And completely inspired by extraordinary women worldwide. I'm Theresa Christine 

SS: And I'm Suzanne Schmedding.

TC: We're talking with someone today who used to be very afraid of spiders she was actually an arachnophope, like, in the technical sense. And she's no longer afraid of spiders, and now uses them in her work which is pretty badass, if I may say so myself.

SS: I like how you're being hesitant about it, like, 'badass?' The spiders can get you which, you know, I understand is, is very, is a very scary thought because, I feel afraid of spiders. 

TC: Yeah?

SS: Yeah! You know, they're, they're creepy and crawly and they can bite you and HAVE before.

TC: They have? 

SS: Yeah! Yeah, I've got a spider bite scar. No big deal. I'm pretty tough. How do you feel about spiders?

TC: Mixed! It depends on the spider. I'm very much, like, sometimes I'll see one and I'll be like, get on your way little guy, just get on your way. And then other times I'll see one and I'll be like, 'You and me...are NOT friends.' So it just all depends! And, I think it depends on my moods, I'm just, I'm so flighty. So really, like, every day is different. But I, I don't, I think I've been been bitten by a spider once, but I don't have a scar, so that's pretty crazy that you had a scar. It must have swelled up and been insane. 

SS: Yeah, it was, it was pretty gross.

TC: Nice. 

SS: Yeah. Like, I get, I get such a gory pleasure from thinking about like, all the pus that was drained from my back.

TC: Suzanne, you're gonna, you're bringin' all the boys to the yard with this conversation.

SS: I know! It's like, when you compare that, like, with how I dance on the dance floor, like, I'm a catch.

TC: Our guest today is Samantha Nixon, a final year PhD student at the Institute for Molecular Bio-Science, the University of Queensland and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. 

SS: Her research harnesses the unique chemistries in spider venoms to develop medicines against blood sucking worms.

Samantha Nixon: It's really funny that I ended up in this space because I was clinically arachnophobic, as in, I could not even go out and hang up my washing because there would be spiders on the clothesline. I would shake and I would have panic attacks. And I just happened to be going to a lecture, a bio-chemistry lecture where, my now supervisor was talking about how we can use spider venoms, and they're filled with all these amazing neurotoxins. But if you look at individual neurotoxins, then we can shut down the parts of the brain involved in epilepsy or chronic pain. And I thought that that was just the coolest idea I had ever heard. I had this, this kind of interest in the back of my mind about using the natural world to make new medicines. And I thought if you can take a deadly spider and somehow turn it into something that can help people then that's something I want to be involved in. And the other part was, I really wanted to challenge myself to get over my fear. So when I joined the lab, I actually put my hand up to take care of the spiders because, through the exposure therapy and also naming them, I was able to educate myself and get over my fear.

SS: Oh, yeah, I think I remember reading that. Didn't you name one of them Beyonce?

SN: Yes.

TC: You can't be scared of a spider named Beyonce. 

SN: Exactly. And I also had Whitney Houston, Whitney Houston turned out to be a male tarantula. So I had to rename him Houston. Currently, I have Lizzo the Tarantula, and I have Tiana the Golden Huntsman, and I have Bertie the Funnel-web. And, so I give them kind of cutesy names because it helps to make me less scared of them, and then when I do education and outreach, it also helps other people go, 'Oh, well if you've named it Bertie, how bad can it be?'

TC: That's really impressive because from an American like, from a person in the United States, our idea of the spiders in Australia, is that they are so frightening and enormous and like the pictures I've seen of spiders in Australia are insane.

SN: Yeah, we definitely have some impressive species here. But the thing with spiders is most of them are actually not dangerous to people at all. There's over 50,000 species around the world, and less than 0.5% of those are actually dangerous to people. And that's really just the Redbacks, or you would call them Black Widows. Funnel-web Spiders, Brazilian Wandering Spiders, and the Brown Recluse. And of course, in Australia, we have Redbacks and Funnel-webs, so we have the Sydney funnel-web, which is considered the most dangerous spider in the world. But actually, since the development of anti-venom in the 1980s, there haven't been any deaths. And do you know how many deaths that were recorded before the development of anti-venom, do you want to take a guess?

TC: Ooh my gosh... 

SS: Two hundred thousand. Six hundred thousand. A million!

SN: Thirteen. So, spiders really have this kind of bad reputation that they really don't deserve. You know, compared to cars and all these other things that we do in our daily life. They're really not that big of a threat to us.

SS: So...less than a million.

SN:Yes. Yeah, compared to snake bite, which still kills thousands of people every year.

SS: Gotcha. 

TC: Oh boy. So, you take this venom from the spiders...Like, how do you...is the proper like, it's not milking, like how do you get venom from a spider

SN: Yeah, we do call it milking!

TC: Really?!

SN: Yeah!

TC: Oh, so then, how do you milk a spider?

SN: Very carefully, is the short way. It's sort of similar to how you get venom from a snake, but we're working with obviously a small animal. So, the thing with spiders is they don't want to give up their venom if they don't have to. It takes a lot of energy for them to produce it, and they need it for predation, so hunting down their prey, and also to defend themselves. So basically, what we do is we pick the spider up by the cephalothorax, so that's basically the back of the head, and we'll position them over a little tube wrapped in plastic, and we get the spider to bite down, and then we give them a very small electric shock to the muscles over the venom gland. And that makes those muscles squeeze the venom through the fangs into the tube. But you only get a couple of tiny, tiny drops. So we have to collect from a lot of spiders to have enough venom. So one of the things that we do is we usually work with tarantulas because bigger spider means more venom.

SS: Oh my gosh. And this venom, it's, I mean, you're working right now on a project, of working on a parasite that's affecting a huge population of sheep in Australia. Is that correct?

SN: Correct. Yeah, so my current PhD is all about harnessing the molecules within spider venoms to make new medicines against parasites. And the parasite that I'm mostly focused on is called the Barber's Pole Worm. And this is a really, really serious parasite, particularly for the Austrailian sheep industry. These kinds of worms cost our industry over 450 million dollars every year. Just like bacteria, they become resistant to the drugs that we use to treat them. And we actually have resistance to all available drug classes. So we really need to find new drugs to protect the sheep and also Australian farmers. And from that work, I was really the first person to actually look at venoms against, against these kinds of parasites, and nobody thought it would work. But we were actually able to identify quite a few molecules with potential against the sheep parasites. So then I thought, 'Can we apply those discoveries to human parasites, to cattle parasites, cats and dogs?' So then I started this kind of international collaboration across Europe in the US where we were looking at venoms against the major parasites of veterinary medicine and human medicine. So parasites really are still one of the biggest problems in both of those fields. And actually, of the neglected tropical diseases, most are caused by paracites. So we have the world's largest venom collection here at the University of Queensland. And we were able to use our collection against malaria, blood flukes, which are horrible worms that live inside the blood vessels of the intestines and the bladder, and also hookworms as well. And we found venoms that were able to kill every single parasite that we tried. 

TC: Oh, wow. 

SS: Yeah,

TC: That is, that must be so satisfying, especially since you are truly like the first person who was thinking of doing something like this.

SN: Yeah, so I mean, people had sort of looked at venoms against malaria a little bit in the past, but no one had tried them against parasitic worms. And parasitic worms are actually the biggest group of the parasitic infections for, particularly, our animals. So they're a huge problem for cats, dogs, cattle, and sheep. And they kind of get ignored because they just it's something that you know, it's just not as visible. People know about cancer, people know about dementia, but they don't know that there are hundreds of millions of people still affected by parasitic worms. And because, we just don't have that visibility, there's not that support for that research. And I guess that's probably why people hadn't had the opportunity to look at this before.

TC: So when you talk about the visibility, and you know, the work that you're doing is incredibly valuable and helping the community, how are you communicating to people, you know, spiders are friends, like, what are ways that you're engaging with people so that they appreciate spiders more?

SN: Yeah, this is a really important area for me personally, because I also never imagined myself as a scientist. I had never, never met a scientist. I just didn't know that that was even a real profession that I could do after school. So I do a lot of work going out to schools and talking about my research, and showing kids that actually you can pursue that level of biology or that fascination with space. And I also do a lot of work on television. So I particularly focus on children's television and showcasing the spiders because I think kids are really where you can inspire that curiosity, right? Like, I think most kids love going out into the garden and seeing what bugs are out there. And if you can talk to them at that age and say, actually, you know, you don't have to be scared of spiders. That's where you can make a real impact. And then more broadly, to try to talk to I guess, adults about the implications of my work. I do some radio work here in Australia, I write articles in plain English, that are accessible to the public, and I particularly do a lot of rural focused media work, so I try to talk to more of those country publications, because that's where our sheep farmers are, and I want to open up that dialogue.

TC: And you also recently had likem, 300 people messaging you about spiders because you kind of wanted to expand your collection. Right?

SN: Yeah. So earlier this year, pre-travel bans, we were looking for spiders. So I just put a little call out on Twitter, asking people in the Brisbane area of Queensland where I live, if they had any big spiders that we could come and find, collect venom from. And it ended up going international. So, it got picked up by national media here, and all of a sudden I had people messaging me from around Australia, literally hundreds of people getting on board, going out into their garden and looking at what kind of spiders are there. And I was so excited because people were telling me that they were scared of spiders, but this prompted them to go out and get over their fear because they were excited about how the spiders could help science and that was exactly what my feelings were when I started my PhD, so it was nice to have that kind of next generation, I suppose. And then even people from Texas started calling me offering to send me spiders, but obviously with biosecurity, we can't take any spiders outside of Australia. 

TC: Yeah. 

SN: But I appreciated it.

TC: Yeah, for sure! It's like you're passing the torch of arachnid appreciation. 

SN: Yeah!

TC: So you said that you never thought of yourself as a scientist, and now that you're in this space, how do you feel that the female representation in science is?

SN: I think, at so, I'm still in my PhD, I'm getting to the end. And definitely at the PhD level, we have very, very good representation of women. It's, it's pretty close to 50/50, at least in the life sciences. But the problem is, is when you get to those more senior levels, then the women rapidly drop out, right. And that's where I think we need to be, there's, there's a lot of effort about encouraging women into science. I think women are just as interested in science as boys, you know, at school level, it's just that you start to notice, like even myself at school, I was equally good at science, biology, chemistry as I was in English and languages, but I was always pushed to study languages and I was going to become a lawyer, because that's what I was encouraged to do at school. And it was only because I happened to go on a field trip and visit one of the research, science research institutes at the University of Queensland that I went, 'Hang on! I can actually do this? This is a thing?' And, you know, I sort of went in then quite naive, not realizing that there was this gap in women in STEM. And it's now that I'm getting more senior you see, you look around at who are the professors, who are the group leaders, and you can count the number of women on one hand, right? And so that's where I think the biggest gap for women in STEM is still at that senior leadership level. And there are a lot of good initiatives to try to address that. So here in Australia, we're launching the gender, gender equity program, which is about encouraging women in STEM and really supporting them through the pipeline. So that, you know, once you get your PhD, you have supported to continue on that upward trajectory. But, I think it's there's a long way to go. And obviously, it's going to take some time to see if the measures that we're putting in place now are actually going to be successful.

TC: I hope so. 

SS: Yeah. No, it is, I hope so too. But speaking of that upward trajectory, you, you won the Westpac Scholarship, and were chosen to participate in the expedition Homeward Bound.

SN: Yeah, so I won a Westpac Future Leaders Scholarship to support my PhD, which is a prestigious scholarship here in Australia for identified young leaders in science, and social change, and Asia-Pacific relations. And so basically, that gave me a really, really strong backing and financial support to go on to do the research that I'm doing now, but also for professional development. And it just so happened that I was told I won the scholarship, and then, about literally 18 hours later, I saw an email about a call for women around the world to apply to go on this expedition to Antarctica. And I thought, 'Oh, I've just won a scholarship for professional development. I think I'm going to throw my hat in the ring for this expedition.' And so that expedition was Homeward Bound and it was basically a call out for women in STEM who want to change the world. And what they were going to do to help with that was to give you a year of leadership training that culminated in a trip to Antarctica. And I think Antarctica is really important in this space, because it actually is a really good metaphor for the glass ceiling. You know, women weren't even really allowed to be scientists in Antarctica, even in the 80s, the British Antarctic Survey was saying that women weren't strong enough to cope with the conditions down there. Which is simply not true, you know, but it just highlights how recent you know, some of these barriers really, really, are.  I think a lot of people think of, you know, issues of racism and sexism as being something that happened, you know, in our grandparents generation, but it's very much still going today. And there are very obvious markers of that with the, you know, women not being allowed to go to Antarctica.

TC: Yeah, and it's like wild reasons. They're just, they're afraid of having women there. I went on a, an expedition cruise to Antarctica last year. And one of the, one of the presentations that they had there was just about the female presence In Antarctica, and like the lack of it for such a long time, you know?

SN: Absolutely. So getting an all women expedition together was just something that I thought was such a cool idea. And to have this incredible network of women from all different countries, I think 13 countries were represented, different career stages, different disciplines. So, you know, one of the women on my trip was a Nobel Prize winner in physics. And for me, I was actually the youngest person selected, so to be able to meet all of these incredible women and learn from the collective wisdom was such a fantastic opportunity.

TC: With, I mean, you're extraordinary, and the work that you're doing is really cool. The fact that you overcame being afraid of spiders and are now naming them Beyonce and Whitney Houston is really inspiring. So how can people support women in STEM? 

SN: I think, to support women in STEM, you can look at the women in your own network, and any of them who want to get into a STEM field or are in a STEM field, having your own family and friends support you is actually incredibly valuable because, you know, you're constantly facing job insecurity. You know, we're, we're people who go into these fields, they want to make a difference in the world and the current geopolitical climate, and this rise of kind of anti-intellectualism, anti-experts in the kind of mainstream is really, really tough. And I feel women are often subjected to that more than men when women are visible communicators. You're like, I, myself and several of my friends who are visible science communicators, you know, we get sexual harassment, we get people messaging us telling that we don't know what we're doing even though we absolutely do and we have the credentials to back it up. But, you know, Joe Smith on Twitter thinks that my hair is too blonde to be qualified to comment on spiders or, you know, someone else disagrees that like, recently, I identified a spider and I had hundreds of people contacting me saying that they disagreed with my identification. But then a man made the same identification and they accepted it. 

TC: Yeah. 

SN: And it's,

TC: You can't tell, but Suzanne and I are both shaking our heads right now

SN: So you know, when you when you see things like that play out on social media, it can actually be just very beneficial even just to throw a 'like' or a little message saying, 'Hey, I see what you're doing and I support you.' Those, you know, those little interactions really help keep you going. And if you have kids, and they want to, just encourage them to study science, you know, like If they have curiosities about dinosaurs encourage that. If they have, if they're interested in the oceans, then you know, encourage that. You don't have to be teaching them, you know, sitting them down at a chalkboard and going about mathematics. Science is all around us, and there are so many ways to be involved in it. It's really just about encouraging curiosity and passion and asking questions.

SS: That is such a wonderful way to phrase it. And I really wish my science teachers had done the same for me.

SN: Exactly. I hated science at school. I'm quite honest about that, just because it was taught badly. It was 'Read the textbook, answer these questions, do these sums.' 

SS: Right, and dissect the frogs! 

SN: Exactly. There was no encouraging, 'Well, what questions are you interested in?' You know, how to teach it, I think what's more important is actually teaching people the skills to address their own questions. So, 'Where can you find that information? How do you think about it critically?' And to me, that's what I love doing in science. is looking for new questions, new problems and then using my creativity to solve them.

SS: I loved talking to her so much. She made it really relatable and easy to understand, and I think something that resonated a lot with me was was the idea of teaching yourself to answer your own questions and being curious about the world around you and 

TC: Yeah, like having that be, having that be what leads you to discover things, because it's going to be most interesting that way. 

SS: And, and using your creativity to explore the world around you, like, I thought that was so cool. I thought that was perfectly phrased. 

TC: Also, one thing that I'm like, still fuming about is thinking about people sending her messages and being like, 'You're too blonde to be a scientist.'  I would be so mad.

SS: I know, like, all I could think was just 'EW.'

TC: Yeah, and that's the thing is like, I mean, women know that experience, but especially with someone like her who is so forward facing with her job and you know, not that she's famous, but she is in the public eye in the sense that she's done interviews and you know, writes for newspapers, 

SS: Yeah, and she's traveled all over, you know, she works with kids and education outreach programs.

TC: Yeah. And so when you are putting yourself in that space, people can be especially horrible to you, and that, that's very disappointing that she has to deal with that. So it's really cool to hear about the ways that you can help that, and like, support people and support women in STEM.

SS: If you would like to support Samantha and follow her to learn all about the cool things that she's doing, she is on both Twitter and Instagram at @Samnscience, which is s-a-m-n-s-c-i-e-n-c-e

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