Like, mine are bigger, you know." JAD: I find myself thinking like, Okay, I know these kids have their genes half from me, half from my wife. Meaning that they had less incidence of heart disease? PAT: Did that scare you at all? People can't just will themselves into a more perfect form. That's how I've always looked at it. LYNN PALTROW: Tell me what your image of a drug-using pregnant woman is. Could you just tell us what you are doing now? CARL ZIMMER: She carries your kids for nine months and you're like, "That poor male toad.". [ARCHIVAL CLIP, Jad Abumrad: Well lets lets read the book first. ROBERT: And this idea won him a lot of fans, including, not surprisingly, the Soviets. You mean, if you had a starving grandfather, you would be a healthier boy for the because you had a starving grandfather? [laughs] Can you say, "Never, ever?" So yeah, she keeps me busy. Thats just the cold logic of Darwinian evolution. I don't know where she gets that from. Inheritance, what you can move on to the next generation and what you can't. Instead of dying at 40, I'd live to 70? When you explore what makes people tick or how the universe . Anyways, God bless you. CARL ZIMMER: Kammerer puts on a suit and he walks off into the mountains SAM KEAN: Outside Vienna on a Rocky mountain trail. To build these terrariums and aquariums and stock them with animals. Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. One parent stretching isnt going to do anything, see thats the bummer of Darwinian evolution. ROBERT: Which turn out to be an interesting thing to look at it because the people in verkalix who were farming SAM KEAN: Trying to eke a living out of the soil. ROBERT: And it just so happens this town is a perfect place to dig. It's writer, Sam Kean again, and here's, he says, what you need to know about the midwife toad. JAD: So then over the next 70 some odd years, Lamarck basically became the poster boy for, like, the big dumb idea, the idea that you want to believe in but that you know isn't true. SAM KEAN: In a little community called verkalix. It's just a mind crushing tedium. JAD: [expletive] That was awesome. And, I mean, I have straight A's and I'm making it work. PAT: Yeah. All right, I'll get in the water." PAT: Even though Destiny's mom was doing all sorts of drugs during her pregnancy and the doctors told Barbara that Destiny was going to be mentally and physically delayed DESTINY HARRIS: Not feeling the way I'm supposed to feel. Birth mother's name was actually the same as me, so, Barbara. "She's born and tested positive for PCP crack and heroin." BARBARA HARRIS: A couple of days later, I had already bonded with her so much, it was as if I gave birth to her. So we're going to leave you with a story from our producer, Pat Walters, about one woman's radical A few months ago, Pat made his way down in North Carolina, to a small suburb outside of Charlotte to visit this family. DESTINY HARRIS: Oh my goodness. LULU: In a very real way, weve been thinking a lot about inheritance. Actually, the idea itself is pretty old. I mean, they didn't have porridge. I just got custody of my eight-year-old son. I have to be creative.". OLOV BYGREN: Well, for cardiovascular disease JAD: Olov told us, take heart disease. ROBERT: Because there is more data, more information about the people of verkalix, going farther back into the past than you can find almost anywhere else on Earth. JAD: Look, in the end, what do I know? She and I snuck away from the children into her office. DESTINY HARRIS: Yes. PAT: And that number, by the way, has grown a lot. In this episode, originally aired in 2012, we put nature and nurture on a collision course and discover how outside forces can find a way inside us, and change not just our hearts and minds, but the basic biological blueprint that we pass on to future generations._Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab today. These women don't just have one and two babies. You can't change your DNA. So that was just funny to me. How much of you will echo into the future and how much of you won't? JAD: His big idea, as you might know, is that what a person does in their lifetime could be directly passed to their kids. They all go down to the DNA, surround that methyl and just, pow! In just two generations, these toads seem to have done something that should have taken, I don't know, 50, 100 generations? Covid has disrupted the most basic routines of our days and nights. SAM KEAN: That was the implication, except Kammerer tried to defend himself by saying CARL ZIMMER: "Do you think I'm a Dummkopf, or an idiot, because that's what I would have to be if I left a forgery with ink standing around openly in the laboratory where so many of my enemies would have entry?". JAD: I got to say this is spooky. He'd fall asleep and just wake up screaming. Although, you know, sometimes that your grandfather's suffering helps you. And she's a complete nut. There were four girls and Barbara and Destiny told me that a few years ago they found three of them and they all either were in college or had finished college. It's only the mechanisms are not so clear. FRANCES CHAMPAGNE: He had no idea about DNA. My name is Jean Kean. I just got custody of my eight-year-old son. I just didn't think. Its gonna get messy. Because the truth is, you have no idea how these kids are going to turn out. Meet Jeremiah! Because we had already had to upgrade from a car to a van, from a condo to a home. Brain disease. PAT: Because she says as soon as she saw Destiny BARBARA HARRIS: Sat her on my lap, with her little dress on and her little curly hair. Oh, that's a lot of potatoes. It's a small forest area, very beautiful. So some scientists began to ask Kammerer if they could look at his toads. And I packed up my stuff, it's pretty much done. ROBERT: Although, you know, sometimes that your grandfather's suffering helps you. And Barbara and Destiny walked me out to my car. But, this hour were gonna fight this sort of sad sack feeling of inevitability and impotence. JAD: Most toads, he says, love to stay in the water. [chuckles]. FRANCES CHAMPAGNE: There's a normal distribution, right? BARBARA HARRIS: I'm not saying that these women are dogs but they're not acting any more responsible than a dog in heat. And she says oftentimes the women who want help have a really hard time finding it. PAT: That's really impressive. We are working to provide transcripts for as much of our programming as we can over time. Riksarkivet. JEAN KEAN: My name is Jean Kean. PAT: Barbara has this drawer in her desk. So she told me Barbara had another baby and Did we want it? It's off-limits. My situation turned out positive. Thyroid hormones then get into the brain and they turn on certain neural chemical signals. PAT: And she told Barbara, "There's something you need to know about this baby.". But a few of us make a habit of it. Accuracy and availability may vary. I got these genes from somewhere, but I kind of feel like she was a surrogate, like she carried me for my real mom. Radiolab is a radio program produced by WNYC, a public radio station in New York City, and broadcast on public radio stations in the United States. They have six, seven, eight, ten, fourteen.]. LULU: Yeah, thats it. JAD: And what about the four kids that weren't raised with Barbara? That the licking is changing the baby's DNA? Everybody we talked to seems to think there's something really interesting going on here. JAD: Anyhow, so you got this guy, Paul Kammerer, who's good with animals. Destiny says before she was born, her mom had four other girls. Radiolab is an outstanding radio show broadcast out of New York City on WNYC. Were just talking about toad, I thought. Listen Jan 20, 2023 I mean, were not gonna do that ourselves. Because when a woman uses heroin while she's pregnant, the fetus gets hooked on it too. That, in a sort of ass backward way was Michael's question. Yeah, there you go. You're slippery, partner's slippery. On the one hand, she says, immediately, cheques started arriving. They would experience these wild changes from harvest to harvest. She was thinking BARBARA HARRIS: "Everybody's motivated by money., BARBARA HARRIS: Can I offer these women money to use birth control? The authoritative record of programming is the audio record. Is that a genetic hatred of whistling that I just had? JAD: What you see in the records, is that one year PEJK MALINOVSKI: 100 liters. [ARCHIVAL Clip, Panel: Well, I mean, Hitler thought that if you were Jewish, that you had given up the right to be a mother and hed sterilize people as well. And youre saying that part of the DNA is covered up? JAD: What happens, it'll get stuck to one little part of the DNA and now that little bit of DNA FRANCES CHAMPAGNE: Is very difficult to get at. JAD: In those books you can read everything about the citizens of verkalix, going back hundreds of years. That is a bad way to start a kid's life but that's just the beginning of the kid's life. You know what they're going to go do with that money. If you were a great rat mommy, what would you be doing with your rat baby? But if you've got a mom who licks you. If you're a starving boy between 9 to 12 years old, now it doesn't matter a whole lot what happens to you after this, your grandchildren will have one-quarter the risk of heart disease. ], [ARCHIVAL CLIP, BARBARA HARRIS: That's their choice, but the babies don't have a choice.]. Kalia came too. Baby, be careful. Maybe more. Live shows were first offered in 2008. What do I know? He thought it worked with humans, too. Professional authors can write an essay in 3 hours, if there is a certain volume, but it must be borne in mind that with such a service the price will be the highest. Because, you know, that Ive got these two kids, right? She'll be two in January. JAD: And looking at these swings in fortune, Olov realized what he had here was JAD: Because with all this data, he and his team could follow families forward in time, through the generations. To any drug-addicted woman who will agree to have no more babies. PAT: As Barbara made the rounds on the daytime talk shows, the reaction was split right down the middle. As a parent, you are a tiny blip in a very, very, long story. Here, Kammerer's was saying, "You can do this even on a physical level.". PAT: She did. ROBERT: Frankly, this makes being 9, 10, 11, 12 like a rather crucial. Okay, I'm here. Here, Kammerer's was saying, "You can do this even on a physical level.". Stick around. OLOV BYGREN: Looking for patterns in cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, and such. Started with the tongue. And I think that no, I didn't plan on it but I wouldn't take her back for anything because she made me better. That is impossible, so far as we know, but there seems to be this layer on top of the genes. This is nice and quiet. CARL ZIMMER: Yeah. I wonder. It takes a while. We neuter them.". Like, "How did this happen? MICHAEL MEANEY: Kick off certain hormonal systems. Well, I just want to eliminate drug-addicted babies from being born. Just don't have any more children because, at that point, I didn't really know any of them. Okay, so lets get going and stick with your boy, Lamarck, just for a sec. A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. ROBERT: Instead of dying at 40, I'd live to 70? I went to the hospital and picked him up. Telling some genes to turn off now, other genes to turn on. That's what good rat mothers do, they lick their babies a lot. But this stuff you're telling me about Sweden feels very grim in a certain way. I'm Sam Kean's dad. PAT: And by this point, she's 37 years old. And Destiny was in the other room, sleeping or something, I'm not sure. They didn't have grains. But she says, you can tell right away, just by looking, that some rat moms don't lick their kids a lot. PAT: Right away, people accused her of targeting women at their weakest moment and enabling their drug abuse. And rewrite the so-called rules of genetics. We'll just be honest. All jokes aside. JAD: Even if it helps, it's horrifying. Because we had already had to upgrade from a car to a van, from a condo to a home. How much of you will echo into the future and how much of you won't? All of our writers are dedicated to their job and do their best to produce all types of academic papers of superior quality. It seemed to have been passed down for multiple generations. DESTINY HARRIS: No, she was an oops kid. Its something I still think about all the time. Its something I still think about all the time. CARL ZIMMER: And he says, "This isn't a nuptial pad, it looks darkened but that's just ink.". But I'm going to give them a basin of water. Copyright 2022 New York Public Radio. That was amazing. And were trying to think about how do we keep it the same in a lot of ways, but also how do we let it grow into something beyond what it was originally built to be. PAT: The question that was stuck in my head right then was, "If you could choose between being born knowing that your life might end up like that and not like it is now, or not been born at all, what would you have done?". JAD: So now, the genes can make the proteins that make the rats a good mom? He actually named his daughter Lacerta, which is a genus of lizard. PEJK MALINOVSKI: Here we have how much they harvested. That was it. Were there any consequences? We have experts even in very specific fields of study, so you will definitely find a writer who can manage your order. I just didn't think. Once a kid is born, their genetic fate is pretty much sealed. What can't you? Tell me what your image of a drug-using pregnant woman is. So this whole debate, two totally different ways of seeing life. And you have to bear in mind that at this point, it only had one hand left. FRANCES CHAMPAGNE: Not usually because it upsets people and I'm Canadian. SAM KEAN: He was known for going around and giving, what he called, his big show lectures, where he would wow whole audiences of people. Look, in the end, what do I know? In those books you can read everything about the citizens of verkalix, going back hundreds of years. JAD: No, not brain cells. Enhancing public understanding of science and technology Yeah, we're exploring questions of lwhat can you pass down to your kids and their kids? It goes back to the 1800s. I think that's where Lamarck's ideas can be woven in and make some sense. You can't change your DNA. Because there is more data, more information about the people of verkalix, going farther back into the past than you can find almost anywhere else on Earth. Yes, she has the same name as me. You picked him up right from the hospital? Radiolab is a radio program broadcast on public radio stations in the United States, and a podcast available internationally, both produced by WNYC.Hosted by Latif Nasser and Lulu Miller, each episode focuses on a topic of a scientific and philosophical nature, through stories, interviews, and thought experiments.. Radiolab's broadcast edition airs as an hour-long program each week while the . [ARCHIVAL CLIP, Jad Abumrad: Do you see the owl?]. JAD: Yes. VERONICA ZIMMER: My name is Veronica Zimmer. SAM KEAN: And he would basically turn the heat way, way up in these aquariums until they had to go underwater. JAD: His reputation was that he could get inside the mind of, say, a salamander and know just what it wanted to eat. OLOV BYGREN: They didn't have grains. Theyd basically starve. There was a newspaper called The Daily Express and they have these headlines that come out. When Kammerer published his results initially, a bunch of scientists immediately began to say CARL ZIMMER: "Wait a minute, hold on here, it would be nice if life was like that but life isn't like that. BARBARA HARRIS: Saying the mother had given birth to a baby girl, did we want her? Radiolab: From Tree to Shining Tree LISTEN Three guests: Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest ecology and teacher at the University of British Columbia, Jennifer Frazer, a science writer that has a blog called The Artful Amoeba, and Roy Halling, a mycologist. MICHAEL MEANEY: That's it. I was just pissed at what they have done to my children. CARL ZIMMER: I know what I'll do, I'm going to set up a terrarium for them and I'm going to make it hot, really uncomfortably hot. BARBARA HARRIS: And when I found out the bill didn't pass, I just thought, "I have to come up with something else. PAT: Just a little. I wouldn't want to put it up to chance, because what kind of life is that? JAD: Famine again, and these changes would just bounce back and forth. I make a difference to her. In pictures, he has that, you know, that crazy Einstein fuzzy hair thing. To her, I matter. The event that really sets this story in motion, the set of events, happened a few months after Barbara had brought Destiny home. That's how we ended up with four of them. My home village was 10 miles North of polar circle. LULU: In a very real way, we've been thinking a lot about inheritance. But, I said this to Lynn, "Despite all the things that trouble me about Barbara's program, I feel like what she's trying to do is to stop a kid from getting born into a childhood that's going to suck.". ], [ARCHIVAL CLIP, BARBARA HARRIS: I'm going to go out into the streets and offer addicted women money to use birth control. You feel kind of hemmed in by what your grandfather did? Were just talking about toad, I thought. She's 22 now and she's never even met her birth mom. ROBERT: Which, when you think about it, it has a very Lamarckian flavor. Kalia came too. Big questions are. BARBARA HARRIS: "I want to thank you for your support and kindness as always." And to believe anything else, that's naive. A couple of days later, I had already bonded with her so much, it was as if I gave birth to her. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. You're not leaving this hospital unless you have long-term birth control.". I make a difference to her. This is Radiolab. DESTINY HARRIS: As you can see, I like to talk. Heart disease. So he's got to live his life as a toad with all this baggage on him? And Barbara found herself returning to a thought she'd kind of always had. In pictures, he has that, you know, that crazy Einstein fuzzy hair thing. And the incredible thing is, those marks stick around. When rats have more of this protein, they will act more motherly. They both say that they actually often forget that they're not biologically related. DESTINY HARRIS: Our staff includes Alan Horn, Soren Wheeler, Pat Walters DESTINY HARRIS: With help from Matt Kielty, Chris [unintelligible 01:04:17], PAT'S DAD: And Kenny [unintelligible 01:04:18], PAT: Special thanks to Martin [unintelligible 01:04:21]. That's my little girl. JAD: See, this is the story of science that doesn't get told. Push yourself and you got it.". And if you haven't, you can choose to have an IUD, or an implant put in which will last for several years. [ARCHIVAL CLIP, Jad Abumrad: Whats this letter right here? I mean, for one thing, Barbara's white and Destiny's black. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. I'm Sam Kean's dad. JAD: Just to be sure, we asked Frances Champagne what she thinks of this data. 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