What are the consequences when humans start playing with life? The human imagination has always dreamed up fantastic creatures, but now biotechnology is making it easier and easier for us to actually create forms of life that have never existed before. In this episode Radio Lab looks at the uneasy marriage between biology and engineering, and asks what counts as “natural?”
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36 Comments
I and at least a dozen friends of mine love the show. Thank you for all the hard work that goes into it. One teeny request: that bit during the intro, “You’re listening to Radio Lab, the Podcast, from New York Public Radio…” spoken by all different voices? That’s cool. BUT. That part when the guy saying WNYC gets stretched to sound like, “douuuuble yooou ennnn why (WHY!!!???) seeeeeeeeeeeeee….” is the only part that’s ever sucked. We gotta pop our our earbuds for that moment. Any plans to change the intro?
I’ve never been listening to radio from the US. But this is really good. The way it’s cut together is really cool! I have never heard a Swedish radio show like this (yes I’m from Sweden).
I never saw life the way this podcast is describing it’s amazing.
A most thought-provoking epsiode—it is fascinating to know what can be done. Thank you Robert Krulwich for finally being able to eloquently express your concerns about the unintended consequences of bioengineering by the end of the show.
Congratulations on another captivating episode! I couldn’t help but ponder what Will Wright, maker of the Sims games and the upcoming Spore, could do to explore some of the ideas presented in (So-Called) Life.
I almost said “No!” out loud when Jad says “well that’s about all the time we have…”
I wish I was rich so I could maybe bribe another hour per episode out of you….
This episode was fantastic. and Fantastic!
thank you.
@#1 — I LOVE the guy with the stretched out voice … I picture him stoned out of his mind.
Radiolab: This show was AWESOME (yes, Krulwich, AWESOME).
I really hope someone somewhere is working on creating an organism that can break down plastics. The plastics we create have an effectively limitless life. Every piece of plastic or styrofoam made since its invention that hasn’t been burned still exists in our environment. All those toys you had as a kid, every bottle from every soda or water you drank, every polyester shirt, every button, everything—it’s all still out there. And we’re making trillions of tons of the stuff each year.
about time this got posted I missed it when it aired…. A MONTH AGO!
I have followed Krulwich since Nova Science Now! More Radiolab Episodes!
P.S. Bring the show to Chicago sometime please.
Another great episode from radio lab! Thank you all so much, always a perfect selection of music combined with awesome content. And yes keep the stretched out voice…
I got to geek it up with my fellow biology lab-mates at tea time, talking chimeras and all the biotech you guys brought up on this show. Yea Radiolab!
Good news first: Unbeleviably great show as per usual, y’all have catapulted to the top of my entertainment list. Bad news: I agree with Jess about the sound morphing, it really gets on the nerves. And to boot, the whole ‘voice mail’ recreation sound effect for your credits makes them nearly untintelligible. You can’t possibly want us not to hear the names of everyone who works on the show, or at least to strain to hear them. A little less voice morphing effects, the material is cool enough. Even worse, the only person to like the effect is a stoner (Houston, posted 4/8), that should say something even more.
My thoughts on this show… The piece about the twin lady was amazing. My husband listened to it with amazement with me. It brings up many questions about nature vs. nurture. Although, I was thinking, “How do we know that the part that is in the blood and the part in the uterus and the part in the brain (the emotional part)?” it would be interesting to know which parts belonged to which twin. Especially it would be interesting if the part that genetically birthed the kids and the part that emotionally raised the kids were two separate people it might tell us something about how much the kids genetically inherited vs. the upbringing of the mom. It seems that the two siblings living in the body of the mom would be closely related genetically as any siblings are.
Some of the other stuff from the show is really quite terrifying. All that mixing of species is scary and I agree with Robert about the reasons why. I find myself agreeing with Robert quite a bit which is a little scary to me… LOL.
I kept thinking that it reminded me of some weird X-Files episode but in real life. How can we possibly regulate it and keep the world safe from the genetic engineering that could potentially create all kinds of problems, some of which could not be imagined in the most brilliant minds?
This is an awesome podcast. I love it(obviously. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be here). There is nothing wrong with these podcasts. They are pretty much the highlight of my month(apparently I have an uneventful life).
WE WANT GEET PHOTOS!
or geep. um……whoops….
Truly a fantastic episode, one of the best and most intriguing you’ve ever done. This should be submitted to SPJ’s Sigma Delta Chi Awards.
You want geep photos? Check out Lee Silver’s online essay about animal chimeras. It’s got a great one. http://www.scientificblogging.com/lee_silver/human_animal_chimeras_from_mythology_to_biotechnology
Otherwise, google “geep.” The images are plentiful.
I am curious about a quick reference made to cows which would produce “human blood.” Is this blood that would be taken directly from cows to be used by humans or is this regular cow blood manipulated to produce a “blood product” that could be used by humans? My husband works for a company that is making a “blood product” which can be used by humans, from cows blood. Genetically the cow hasn’t been manipulated at all. It’s in the processing of the blood that biochemistry comes into play.
I love the show.
This is my all time favorite radio show and I love it. But I was wondering if you could post the names of the songs you use on the show after the brake.
I’ve been a fan of the show but this time I stopped right in the middle. I found that I could not finish listening the show it was to painful. It bothers me when humans start to play God, because we are capable of destroying nature e.g. global warming etc. The world we live in is not perfect but it works, if we don’t abuse it we can live reasonably happy so why bother messing with it. I’m not a luddite but this is definitely taking science to an extreme and it can only mean unpleasant results.
In response to Jess who hates the “douuuuble yooou ennnn why (WHY!!!???) seeeeeeeeeeeeee…” bit during the intro…
I love that bit! It is an exact copy of the sounds I sometimes hear in my head. Sometimes if I am concentrating hard I will repeat a phrase to myself, to the point that it sounds like garbled, slowed-down sounds that are pained and confused, but also vital.
Hearing that intro is always the first of the many delights I experience in hearing Radiolab.
After listening to this episode, I happened to come across some information on Portugese Man O’ Wars, which are a type of siphonophore. They are a group of organisms (if I’m not mistaken) that live together and perform different functions in what seems to be an ultra symbiotic relationship. I thought it would be an interesting addition to the topic of evolutionary progress/ competition that was brushed upon in this episode.
Am I the only one who wants to know where the Bioengineers song comes from? Was it written and recorded especially for the show?
I always pictured the annoucer voice in the beginning as done like that scene from the first Matrix movie where Neo gets sucked into the mirror, it’s kind of surreal and I always liked it.
Hate to disagree with Robert Krulwich, but he’s wrong about evolution as he states it in this show. There never was a “half-chimp/half-human.” Evolution is descent with modification: i.e. subgroups within groups. Modern chimps are of course our cousins, not our ancestors, but the point is deeper than that.
If we substitute “ape” for “chimp” we might get a clearer picture of the problem. Consider a “half-ape/half-human.” Something is fishy with that too. And what’s fishy is that, as we know, humans are apes: everything that makes apes distinct from other primates is found in humans. So talking about a “half-ape/half-human” is really more like saying that something is a “half-bird/half-chicken” or a “half-mammal/half-dog.”
The reason all of this is so confusing is that the basic system of taxonomy, which was set up prior to evolution, is static and primarily built to classify existing, modern species. But the history of life is much bigger than just the present day, and the classifications have a branching unity that simple static names cannot capture.
But consider for a second a human being. We are not only still apes, 100% ape, but we are also “still” 100% primate. And 100% mammal. And 100% amniote. And 100% tetrapod. And 100% eukaryote! This can sound crazy to anyone who thinks of evolution as one thing changing into another, but the key is that all of these categories are not simply larger and larger categories: they are our history as well.
This is why, when creationists insist that we never see fruit flies or dogs becoming something “else” they don’t know how right they are. All the descendants of fruit flies will be fruit flies. All the descendants of dogs will be dogs. Not because they won’t change into new species as well, but because they will still group together under those terms against all other living things. The unique history that was the lineage of fruit flies will ALWAYS be their lineage. “Fruit fly” will still describe what they are, how they are all like each other and unlike anything else.
Hopefully this is all making sense: it’s a weird concept for some people to grasp. Our taxonomic way of naming things is like only being able to see 2d in a 3d world.
Consider: even long extinct creatures like dinosaurs are given species names. But in a way, this is like saying that dinosaurs, and everything else we name in this manner, all exists in one time period, an nothing is the descendant of anything else. In reality, there is a “species” of now extinct dinosaur that is the ancestor of all birds. That’s an entire CLASS (made up of many species of many genuses or many families, of many orders) of animals all tucked away beneath and inside that single “species” of dinosaur that is the ancestor of all of them.
I thoroughly enjoyed “(So-called) Life.”
If Jad and Robert were to make an expanded version of the broadcast…
Jad and Robert might have discussed all of the chimera that occur when two species are penned together in captivity. The fact that the following species would not usually, freely reproduce in the wild helps to confirm our definition of species, but each is biologically possible. Because they are biologically possible, they help to demonstrate that the whole concept of “species” is a human construct and does not represent the fluid and dynamic way that is nature. Examples of chimera:
Mules and hinnies (depending on which parent is the donkey and which is the horse). These offspring are of course, sterile because of a chromosome number mismatch but the following may not be sterile.
Wolphins (Bottlenose dolphins and pseudorcas)
Ligers or tigons (again,depending on which parent belongs to which species, tiger or lion)
Zorse (horse and zebra)
Dog-wolf hybrids
There are more, but point made.
Jad and Robert might also have mentioned that technically, when a pig heart valve(porcine valve) is implanted into a human heart, the human becomes a chimera. The porcine valve has been treated however in a way that eliminates its “pigginess,” thereby limiting host-graft rejection
There was a mention of Carl Woese in the broadcas. He is a major hero for me and I wish that it might have been mentioned that his discovery in about 1977, turned the biological science world upside down. Before his discovery all life could be divided into either prokaryotes and eukaryotes. The prokaryotes consisted of bacteria. Eukaryotes were everything else (including us). His discovery added a whole new category of life: archaebacteria. This third category of life includes a variety of extremophile organisms which are able to thrive in environments which previously were thought to be too hostile to support life. Extremes of temperatures, toxic chemicals, salinity etc… His discovery opens the door to discovering life forms in or on the moons of Jupiter for example. I didn’t know that Carl Woesse was still actively working.
Jad and Robert might also have mentioned the current use of organisms for bioremediation. These organisms can remove heavy metals and other elementals from contaminated soil or they can detoxify other pollutants. I’m thinking that bio-engineering will likely solve both our energy problems and our problems with increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. On the topic of bioremediation, I thank Anonymous above for her comments on plastics. There is a floating mass of plastic the size of Texas out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (gyre). This horror is not only working its damage when a variety of sea life consume it, the plastic is also concentrating a whole variety of toxic chemicals that become a part of the food web that we depend on.
Jad and Robert might have discussed that many cells (including our own) are actually chimera themselves. Many scientist believe that organelles known as chlorplasts and mitochondria are actually organisms that were captured and utilized by other cells. Perhaps you may have heard of “mitochondrial DNA” which reflects the foreign source of this organelle, an organelle aka “the powerhouse of the cell.”
Jad and Robert might also have mentioned that bacteria of different species continue to share genetic material (although I am not sure if it is because their membranes are leaky). This sharing from one species to another contributes to the bacterial resistance to antibiotics which we are seeing. Research “plasmids” if you are interested.
I am intrigued by the Portuguese Man-of-war. I have read the same thing and I thank Tim Atkinson for reminding me of it. Have I not also read that the modern banana is a chimera which cannot be propagated by seed but only by its root structures (corms)?
I know that some are concerned that we are “playing god” when we bioengineer. From my perspective, current techniques are not substantially much different from the way in which previous generations of humans encouraged the diminutive ancestoral species of corn (and many other species we eat) into the food source it is today.
Thanks for reading. I hope you found this submission helpful and I look forward to any response. (My background: I’m a retired physician assistant, currently teaching science at the middle school level).
Spyder
Another great episode! I loved it. It gave me so much to think about.
Best wishes from the ever expanding Slovenia fanbase,
Ales
I think the intro sound collage is kind of sloppy, especially considering the high quality of sound editing in the rest of the show. Digital “artifacts” always sound bad to me–not rough it a good way.
Thanks for the continued discussion about the Life show! to #26 (Bryce)– The Bio-engineer Anthem was made by they very talented Mammalian Pituitary Band which is:
Shane Winter - Composer / Arranger
Josh Kurz - Lyrics/Vocals
Jason Major - Vocals
Wendy Roderweiss - Vocals
Natasha Bayus - 100% Real french horn
Here’s their website: http://www.highermammals.com
At roughly 17:00 you mention “if you believe in evolution”… I would HOPE that the biologists and scientists participating would believe in a core biological process such as evolution. THAT should be a given. Touch up the language… you’re making me cringe.
Yay Ben! I and another listener have posted the same comment on the show comment page. This is not just borderline, it’s wrong, and wrong in a harmful way, as it is the same sort argument made by creationists to denounce Darwinism. We do not descend from chimps: we share a recent common ancestor with chimps, hence our genetic similarity.
Another thang… there’s a confusion between chimeras and hybrids. If I understand the show, chimeras have certain organs that originated in different embryonic cells. Hybrids have a single type embryonic cell, whose genes come from each parent. That’s like any other sexual creature. But it also explains why hybrids would tend to be sterile: to be fertile, the various genes would have to be sufficiently compatible to allow for fertilization and gestation. For chimeras, the problem is totally different: the reproductive system comes from a single viable set of genes.
About Karen: did she get her kidney transplant?
Bad and Marc (again, sorry had to repeat my reponse here too),
You are quite right about the evolution comment. Unfortunate that I let this slip by. Lee Silver did try to correct Robert by noting that humans developed slowly over millions of years from a chimp-like ancestor, and at each step along the way the offspring were similar to their parents … but we cut him a bit short and Robert’s comment was still off the mark.
Thanks for catching this and keeping us on our toes.
Cheers,
Soren.
my friends who introduced me to radio lab described is as “a brain message!” its seems to be so.. i love the sounds of brad and marc and the information is great!!!