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SPEAKER_12: Listener supported. WNYC Studios. Crack cocaine plagued the United States for more than a decade. This week on Notes from America, author Donovan Ramsey explains how the myths of crack prolonged a disastrous era and shaped millions of lives. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_16: Oh, wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radiolab.
SPEAKER_13: Radiolab. From WNYC. If you want to get grosser, I can always get
SPEAKER_04: grosser. Oh, I'm ready to get gross. I'm ready to get gross. Let's talk about this stuff.
SPEAKER_08: Hey, I'm Lulu Miller. And this is Latif Nasser.
SPEAKER_04: This is Radiolab. And today I've got kind of a personal story for you. But okay. So the baseline here is that I'm, I'm like, thankfully, I'm a healthy person. Like I have no preexisting conditions. I don't smoke. I don't drink. Nothing like that. I am and have been for like the vast majority of my life, like very lucky that I'm not going away. And then about 10 months ago, I started noticing blood in my poop.
SPEAKER_04: Okay. Like it wasn't painful or anything. It didn't feel any different. It was just like a shocking red alarm, red alert. This is blood.
SPEAKER_08: And was it just the once? No, no, no. It was multiple times. It was
SPEAKER_04: every day. Yeah. And, and, and I was like, this is weird and it's just not going away. And so I was like, I should, I should talk to somebody. So I go to a doctor, eventually get referred to another doctor. I, they go, they put me under, I get a colonoscopy. And basically as I was coming out of the sedation, she came to me, the doctor, and she was like, okay, so you have Crohn's disease. Wow. That day.
SPEAKER_04: He's like right away. She was like, this looks like textbook case.
SPEAKER_12: And so I, like I knew enough that it's like, okay, this is an autoimmune disease.
SPEAKER_03: Of the gut, right? Yeah. It's like the immune system is attacking
SPEAKER_04: the digestive system. And, and the main symptom is usually pooping all the time. But I wasn't experiencing that. So my doctor, she basically gave me this low dose steroid, one pill a day. And she was like, okay, let's see how this goes. And pretty quick, it was not going well. So like I was pooping like five times a day, 10 times a day. You know, in like eighties movies of like kids at camp and then they give the camp counselor laxatives and then the camp counselor has to like run to the thing. And that's what I was pooping like.
SPEAKER_08: And is it, are you in pain at this point? It wasn't really painful so much. It was like,
SPEAKER_04: it was frustrating and exhausting. Like it just shut down my life. Anything I wanted to do, if I wanted to work, if I wanted to take care of my kids, like I just couldn't do it. And as you well know, I get like worked up and really excited about a certain topic and I'll be like researching a thing and working on a thing. I'll be so excited about it. I want to do nothing but live and eat and sleep and breathe that thing and dream that thing. Yeah. Text about that thing and call people about that thing. Yes. Right. And I do this
SPEAKER_04: all the time, but especially when things in my life get hard, like it's a, it's a coping mechanism for me. And, um, at this moment in my life, you know, in this particular hard time, the thing that I was obsessed with, the random thing I got fixated on was Neanderthals. Why Neanderthals? Okay. So, so when I say the word Neanderthals, you're probably picturing in your head, like a cave person, strong but dumb and hunched over human ancestor. Right. Yeah. But it turns out in the last 10 to 15 years, we've realized that Neanderthals were actually super sophisticated, way more intelligent and capable than we thought even artistic. Like they're, they were this bizarro version of us that we knew and coexisted with for thousands of years. So to me, I see them as this long lost sibling, like that, that can
SPEAKER_04: tell us so much about ourselves and also about like, what is even possible in the world? So I was like, so I was like so excited about Neanderthals and I was just like trying to read about them, trying to read about them. And then I kept having to go to the bathroom. And at that point, I was like spending most of the day on the toilet. So I was like, while I'm here, I'm, I'm doing this anyway. So I like to end the with one point. So I'm going to be talking to you today about some of the topics that came up in my thesis.
SPEAKER_14: I was on the toilet, on the phone. I was watching this lecture from 2018.
SPEAKER_04: I hope you enjoy.
SPEAKER_04: And this scientist from South Africa named Dr. Karen Warren. She's basically talking about our ancestral story. You may have learned it in like a biology or anthropology class. Basically what happens is we're all evolving in Africa. What happens then is that about
SPEAKER_14: one point five to two million years ago, Homo erectus, Homo erectus, this ancestor of ours.
SPEAKER_04: Some of them leave Africa, which leads to an evolutionary split. The ones who left for Europe and Asia, those ones become Neanderthals while the ones that stayed in Africa eventually become us Homo sapiens. Fast forward a million years. The Homo sapiens, some of us leave Africa. We reunite in Europe with our long lost Neanderthal cousins, and ultimately we kill some of them out, compete some of them. And also we have sex with them.
SPEAKER_14: So there was a big party and there was a lot of kissing cousins back in the day.
SPEAKER_04: Before we potentially helped drive them extinct, we were we were we were actively getting it on with them. And as the video explained, this interspecies lovemaking is actually how we got to the humans that most of us are today, Homo sapiens with just a few Neanderthal genes in us.
SPEAKER_08: This is a moment to tell you I got like on 23andMe. I'm like as high Neanderthal as like a human can get. I'm like, really? Yeah.
SPEAKER_16: Huh. OK, so I'm sitting on toilet watching this talk. Talk ends Q&A in the Q&A. There's
SPEAKER_04: one thing she says, sort of totally offhand, that completely catches me off guard in this lecture, which is that she says that those Neanderthal genes still affect our lives. And one example is there are a lot of autoimmune disease genes, a lot of immune immunity genes
SPEAKER_14: in general. We got several autoimmune diseases from Neanderthal genes.
SPEAKER_04: So I was like, what? So then I just opened a new little browser window and I Googled Crohn's disease, Neanderthals. And there were all of these articles saying, yes, we got Crohn's disease from having sex with Neanderthals. And I just burst out laughing. It just felt absurd. Like, well, how could that possibly like how could two humanish creatures that had sex a hundred thousand years ago, like I'm on the toilet now because of that? Like, like, how does that make any sense? You know, because of a clandestine interspecies love
SPEAKER_08: affair. Right. Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, what are the odds? Right. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08: So anyway, so I'm reading about this and as I'm reading all this, like my situation is
SPEAKER_04: getting worse and worse and worse. I was pooping like 15, 20, 25, even 30 times a day. It was getting like urgent multiple times. I pooped my pants. It was getting painful. I was not able to take care of my kids, which I felt so bad about because my wife was taking care of the kids alone. I couldn't sleep because I just keep waking up having to poop. And then I was waking her up, too. And then and then after several nights of that, there was just one night where I was just curled up on the bathroom floor and I was just like, I surrender. So my wife just dropped me at the ER and I just checked myself in. OK, so I'm at the
SPEAKER_02: L.A. County hospital. Check myself in at like 6, 7 a.m. something like that. And started
SPEAKER_04: recording little voice memos.
SPEAKER_04: This is a public hospital. So low ceilings, harsh lighting. There were a lot of people there who are in way worse shape than I was. People with drug problems, people living on the street, immigrants who had literally just come over the border. So when you put it in the abdomen, they didn't have enough beds because of covid.
SPEAKER_09: Fine. So it sort of got stuck in the ER, you know, which is fine. It was no one's fault.
SPEAKER_04: It just meant I didn't have a bathroom.
SPEAKER_17: So in my bed feeling the pinch here in my stomach. So I'm just going to go every time I had to go to the bathroom.
SPEAKER_04: Basically, I had to like sprint down the hall to the bathroom, to the public bathroom, knock on the door and I had to be like, oh, my God, please, is there anybody in there? OK, nobody in here. And then I would go in the bathroom.
SPEAKER_03: And I had to do this over and over and over and over and over and over again for a day. And then another day and I was just so desperate to think about anything but pooping.
SPEAKER_04: So I just was obsessively reading on my phone about the weird genetic legacy of Neanderthals. OK, that's on brand. And I found that there were all these other diseases that scholars were speculating that we got from Neanderthals. Other autoimmune diseases, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, which my mom has, type two diabetes. Another thing, they did a study of hospitalized covid patients. If you inherited this one snippet from Neanderthals, it doubles or in some cases quadruples their risk of, you know, like basically going to the ICU and or dying.
SPEAKER_08: Oh, my God. Yeah, and and in that hospital bed, I just I just had this image in my mind for the last
SPEAKER_04: few days. I just keep imagining these like tiny little Neanderthals of tiny Neanderthals.
SPEAKER_04: And in their hands were these tiny little obsidian hand axes. And they're just like in the folds of my guts, just like stabbing me and drawing these little droplets of blood out of me, these little cave people like it was like my like my
SPEAKER_04: brother, my long lost brother was like stabbing me in the back, but like not the back of the gut. And they go to sleep at night and they take shifts.
SPEAKER_02: And in the morning, they're all just like hacking away at my little guts.
SPEAKER_04: I was like, oh, it felt so clear to me. I was like, this is this is their vengeance. Like like we exterminated them. We killed them. We genocided them. And now they are coming for us. They are coming for all of us and they're coming for me in this hospital bed in particular. And they're not going to stop until they ruin my life. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about a lot.
SPEAKER_08: After a quick break, Latif keeps digging into the story of his long lost brothers, the Neanderthals, and discovers a whole other side to them. Hey, everyone, just wanted to let you know, if you are a butterfly or mantis member of
SPEAKER_04: the lab, you're going to get some bonus content on Wednesday at 10 a.m. next Wednesday. I don't want to spoil what it is. It is related to this episode. And it's it's something I recorded during one of the toughest moments of my hospital stay. So be on the lookout next Wednesday, 10 a.m. If you're not a member of the lab, you can subscribe at radiolab.org slash join. Thanks. Lulu here.
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SPEAKER_09: After but her emails became shorthand in 2016 for the media's deep focus on Hillary Clinton's server hygiene at the expense of policy issues, is history repeating itself?
SPEAKER_11: You can almost see an equation again, I would say, led by the times in Biden being old with Donald Trump being under dozens of felony indictments.
SPEAKER_09: Listen to On the Media from WNYC. Find On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_04: Lulu, Lutthuf, Radiolab. So after a couple of days in the E.R., I got some good news.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, we're good to go whenever you are. What's the address? Fifteen hundred San Pablo. They actually found a bed for me.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah. And they told you about where we're going, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I got transferred.
SPEAKER_04: I basically went from a public hospital that was a really, really, you know, resource strapped, desperate place to a very right across the street, wealthy hospital. It's like a police hotel.
SPEAKER_02: Where I had my own room. I have a window and a big suite with a couch and a bunch of chairs and art on the walls. And oh, my God. A bathroom, a private bathroom with a shower. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: I have never been so excited to see a toilet in my life. Oh, this is luxurious. Jubilation. My doctor is here, so it's going to be a lot easier.
SPEAKER_02: I think hopefully. Yeah, it feels like I'm on vacation or something. It's like a crappy vacation because I'm my body is miserable. But there's art on the walls, I guess.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: It was like a like a like a huge breakthrough. They gave me all these IV steroids and just like big gun biologic drug also through an IV. And basically between the combo of that, I all of a sudden like got some hours at night to sleep. And then also at that point, my wife brought my computer. And so then I was like, you could step up your research. I could step up my research game. So I was like, I think we're we're all good poking around. And then I came across an article co-written by this guy. I'm Amr Gokhciman.
SPEAKER_15: I work on evolutionary genomics. And in it, he argued, did we get Crohn's disease from Neanderthals?
SPEAKER_04: No. No? The Neanderthals aren't entirely to blame. Huh.
SPEAKER_15: It seems to me that Crohn's disease is actually older than Neanderthals, older than humans. That Crohn's disease, or at least some genetic variations predisposing us to it, developed
SPEAKER_04: all the way back in Homo erectus. The Homo erectus group in Africa before, you know, they were spread across the world.
SPEAKER_08: Oh, wait. So this kind of contradicts what the other scientists found?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, this kind of confused me, too. But they actually don't contradict. So it turns out for diseases complicated as Crohn's, there are actually multiple parts of the genome that contribute to it. Some of those did come from sex with Neanderthals. But a lot also came from before, you know, we or they even existed. And for that reason, Omar says, it's more accurate to say that we share Crohn's disease
SPEAKER_15: with Neanderthals, part of our legacy in a way. So I was kind of back to square one, right?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah. But also, I felt like with all of that interspecies sex happening, they must have given us something, right?
SPEAKER_08: I'm just watching your need to have a research question. Yeah, that's probably it.
SPEAKER_07: That's probably it. That's probably it.
SPEAKER_08: Because otherwise you're alone in a hospital room wondering about the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_04: Right. But I have this question.
SPEAKER_08: Great question. What do you find? OK. I find myself reading about this one particular Neanderthal skeleton that they found.
SPEAKER_04: The so-called old man of Shanidar. Shanidar one.
SPEAKER_07: This is Penny Spikens. Professor of the archaeology of human origins, University of York. And she told me. So this is in Iraq.
SPEAKER_04: The Kurdistan region of Iraq.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah. And he's really, really remarkable because he's someone who suffered a series of injuries, perhaps in something like a rock fall, we just don't know. Has a one withered arm and one damaged leg, probable blindness in one eye and partially death. Like this is someone who would not have been able to provide for himself.
SPEAKER_04: He should have been dead shortly after these injuries. But but based on the condition of his body and the condition of these wounds. This is an individual who lived for sort of 10, 15 years after those injuries.
SPEAKER_07: So it must have been looked after by others. Other Neanderthals.
SPEAKER_04: So just imagine like in your you're in a small tribe of people, like maybe 10 to 12 people, this guy can't leave the cave every morning to go get food. Right. But like this guy also can't defend himself if a cave lion or something comes up and tries to attack him. So someone actually has to stay behind with him to take care of him constantly, not just
SPEAKER_07: for a short time, for actually really extended period of time. So it's really quite a sort of profound thing, really.
SPEAKER_04: And while this old man of Shenedar is an exceptional example of this, he's not unique. Most of the Neanderthals we find have got some injuries or illnesses that they've
SPEAKER_07: largely survived.
SPEAKER_04: We have more and better evidence for Neanderthals healing each other than we do from modern humans at the same time.
SPEAKER_06: And like I was learning this in a hospital bed where I was being cared for.
SPEAKER_16: Everything's going good.
SPEAKER_05: How are you?
SPEAKER_04: Like honest to God, like genuinely well cared for. Anything else I need to come for?
SPEAKER_16: OK, then I'll bring you some stuff like bunches, like soles. OK, great. By total strangers.
SPEAKER_04: Even that first hospital where I was stuck in the ER, they gave me great care, too. Do you want me to bring you anything?
SPEAKER_16: No, I'm OK.
SPEAKER_16: I'm back.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, thank you. I'm OK. You can get a little bit more.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah, that's funny. That's funny. Trying to back me up. Huh? OK, great.
SPEAKER_04: Like I had this vision, just like I had the vision before of like this Neanderthals like knifing me. I was like, no, no, no, wait. What if it's the opposite? Like what if we instead what if they gave us the idea of health care and even more deeply, like the compassion and empathy? Like what if Neanderthals gave us our humanity?
SPEAKER_08: I love that idea. Is that is that something other people are would would agree with you on?
SPEAKER_07: Well, so OK, so I ran it by Penny. Good question. That's a really good question. Well, we don't know.
SPEAKER_04: She was basically like, there's there's there's literally no way to know. We do have evidence for modern humans being cared for.
SPEAKER_07: It's not that they weren't caring for them. It's just slightly more patchy evidence. Largely because the the modern human fossil record is a lot is kind of worse.
SPEAKER_04: And in a way, it makes sense if you think about it. So like Neanderthal remains right, because Neanderthals were basically in Europe mostly. There's more universities and archaeologists and things like that in Europe who go out looking for these things. So we don't know.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, that's part of the frustrating thing about the archaeological past, having these little insights, you know, these little little vignettes of what's happening, but then losing quite a large part of it as well. So beautiful thought, but maybe not too truthy.
SPEAKER_08: OK, it feels like a stretch because it is a stretch because we don't have the fossil record to prove it.
SPEAKER_04: But but but but it's not there. There is at least one thing that Penny sort of a crumb that Penny threw me that I think still holds. You're hanging on.
SPEAKER_08: You're hanging on. OK, yes. What is it? Which is which is this.
SPEAKER_04: In a cave in northwestern Spain, they found the forty nine thousand year old remains of this Neanderthal called El Cidrone one. In the mouth of this Neanderthal were two things that were notable. One was a dental abscess that looked very painful. And the other thing was harder build up, calcified, like fossilized, like tooth gunk.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, exactly. Tooth gunk. OK. And from that, these archaeologists, they basically like excavated this like tartar and were able to figure out that this Neanderthal was eating poplar leaves, which are bitter tasting leaves with no nutritional value. OK, why? Why would this Neanderthal be eating poplar leaves? Because poplar leaves contain salicylic acid, which is the active ingredient in aspirin.
SPEAKER_08: Do humans have poplar poplar leaves in their teeth?
SPEAKER_04: So so we don't have any other evidence. It's very hard to find evidence, but we don't have any other evidence of humans using aspirin basically at the same time. And Penny says, look, that makes total sense. Neanderthals, they were in Europe for way longer than we were. They knew the plants. They would have figured out some ways to use those plants to help them. And modern humans coming in won't have known where to find painkillers.
SPEAKER_07: Right. They wouldn't have known where to find the antibiotics. They won't necessarily have known, you know, how to make a splint or whatever they were using. So I'm sure they learn from each other. Modern humans may well have been quite dependent in some ways. So, OK, so they didn't give us necessarily our compassion, our hospitals or our humanity.
SPEAKER_08: We can't say that. We can't say any of that, even though I feel it in my heart.
SPEAKER_04: We can't say any of that. But what we can say is maybe they gave us aspirin. Maybe they gave us relief from pain.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah. So there is that sense, isn't there, that maybe if you're going to be ill, you might be better off amongst the Neanderthals. My goodness me. So, wait, first of all, I mean, we've been talking for a long time.
SPEAKER_08: Are you OK? Do you need a bathroom? You don't have to fake it. You can just go.
SPEAKER_04: To quote my doctor, Dr. Odufalo, who's awesome. I am, quote, basically in remission. So I'm back to normal. I'm in fighting shape. Podcasting shape, as they call it. OK.
SPEAKER_16: They just told me that I am good to go. So I'm like disconnecting my heart monitor here.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, but I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right.
SPEAKER_08: Less time researching from the toilet.
SPEAKER_04: Less time researching from the toilet. Still, if I'm being honest, I'm still researching from the toilet.
SPEAKER_08: I mean, me too. Aren't we all? Thanks so much, Andrea. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I'm going home.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_06: Thanks again, everybody. I really, really appreciate it. Thanks so much, Andrea. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I'm going home.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_06: Thanks again, everybody. I really, really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_08: Radio Labs, Oluf Nasser. This episode was produced by Simon Adler. Special thanks to Aynara Sistiaga, Karl Zimmer, Carly Mensch, my GI doctor, Florence Dami Lola Odufallu, and her entire team.
SPEAKER_04: The staff at LA County USC Medical Center and Keck USC hospitals. Really everyone who worked at both of those hospitals. And of course, thank you to the Neanderthals. And before we go, if you liked this investigation,
SPEAKER_08: into Lutjes gut and deep history, our colleagues at WNYC have a brand new investigative podcast out. It is about New Jersey and crime and a murder mystery, a potential political murder mystery. It is hosted and reported by WNYC senior reporter Nancy Solomon. And I have to say it's really good. I'm addicted. It's called Dead End. It's from WNYC and I'll play you a short clip.
SPEAKER_08: In September 2014, a crime on a suburban cul-de-sac shocks New Jersey's political world.
SPEAKER_01: The mystery deepens over the death of John and Joyce Sheridan, a prominent New Jersey couple with powerful connections and close friends of Governor Chris Christie. Portorially methodical and human.
SPEAKER_08: I think it's a podcast you would like if you are curious about our world and the nefarious forces controlling it. Again, that's Dead End. Find it wherever you get podcasts.
SPEAKER_13: Hi, this is Beth from San Francisco.
SPEAKER_10: Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Assignments Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
SPEAKER_00: WNYC Studios is supported by On Being with Krista Tippett. I'm Krista Tippett of On Being, where we take up the big questions of meaning for this world now. In our new podcast season, we're going to have a different human conversation about AI and also the intelligence of our bodies, grief and joy, social creativity and poetry, and so much more. A conversation to live by every Thursday.
