Everybody's Got One

Speaker 1 WNYC Studios is supported by BILT.

Speaker 2 Nobody wants to pay rent, but if you have to, BILT makes it more worthwhile.

Speaker 2 By paying rent through BILT, you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, a future rent payment, your next lift ride, and more. But it doesn't stop there.

Speaker 2 You can dine out at your favorite local restaurants and earn additional points, get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios, and enjoy exclusive experiences just for BILT members every month.

Speaker 2 Earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by going to joinbuilt.com/slash WNYC. That's j-o-in-n-b-i-l-t.com slash wnyc.

Speaker 1 WNYC Studios is supported by AT ⁇ T, offering a guarantee covering both wireless and fiber internet service that is all about having your back. Staying connected matters.

Speaker 1 That's why AT ⁇ T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right. That's the AT ⁇ T guarantee.
Visit ATT.com slash guarantee to learn more. Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 1 Visit ATT.com slash guarantee for details. AT ⁇ T, connecting changes everything.

Speaker 3 Radiolab is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game?

Speaker 3 Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at progressive.com.

Speaker 3 Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states.

Speaker 4 Wait, you're listening.

Speaker 5 You're listening

Speaker 5 to Radio Lab.

Speaker 5 Radio Lab from

Speaker 6 WNYC.

Speaker 5 Oh my god. Oh wow.
Oh my gosh. Really similar.

Speaker 8 Hey, I'm Lulu Miller.

Speaker 9 And I'm Molly Webster.

Speaker 8 This is Radiolab. And today, it's like red velvet bread.

Speaker 10 Look at that.

Speaker 5 It does look like a loaf of bread.

Speaker 8 We are dredging up an episode from the archives. It's called Everybody's Got One.
And I really love this story so very much.

Speaker 5 I hope you enjoy.

Speaker 8 A round loaf of homemade bread. With veins.

Speaker 5 That's purple and red.

Speaker 9 We have a story about a thing.

Speaker 5 But also, like blood blood sausage bread.

Speaker 9 A thing that we've all had at some point.

Speaker 5 It is patty-like. Yeah, it's something that's but most of us

Speaker 9 We never even knew it

Speaker 8 and it comes to us from our contributing editor Heather Radke.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm not even on staff and I wish you were producer Becca Bressler. Well, I think I think I can

Speaker 5 take it. Okay

Speaker 5 I was thinking about getting pregnant and I started to do a bunch of research

Speaker 5 And, you know, pregnancy is this thing, at least for me, where I was like, I know about that. You know, I took like 14 years of sex ed in my public high school.
But

Speaker 5 I'll just say, the more I learn about it, the more I realize how little I know and maybe like how little anyone knows about pregnancy.

Speaker 5 And one of the very first things I discovered was that when you're pregnant, you don't just grow a baby, you grow an entirely new organ.

Speaker 5 Let me turn it down. Your whole life, you've got your heart, your lungs, your bone, your skin, your eyes, etc.

Speaker 4 So this is the main hospital.

Speaker 5 But then all of a sudden during pregnancy,

Speaker 5 a whole new organ shows up.

Speaker 4 Here is our cabinet of placentas.

Speaker 5 And that organ is the placenta.

Speaker 4 Whole placentas, pieces of placentas.

Speaker 5 I had heard of the placenta before, but I really didn't know anything about it.

Speaker 4 It's called the afterbirth for a reason. It's an afterthought that no one thinks about.

Speaker 5 I think I thought a thing a lot of people think, which is that the baby grows inside the placenta.

Speaker 9 I definitely thought balloon baby was inside of.

Speaker 8 I mean, okay, I was pregnant and I think I thought it was just like extra lining on my uterus, but it's not.

Speaker 5 It's not even yours.

Speaker 4 The placenta belongs to the embryo, to the fetus, to the baby.

Speaker 5 Huh. So it's actually grown by the fetus, which means that every single one of us has had a placenta.

Speaker 4 I was kind of like you. I literally had no idea what it did, what its purpose was.

Speaker 5 This is Harvey. Harvey Klein.

Speaker 10 He studies the placenta.

Speaker 4 MD, PhD, physician scientist at Yale University.

Speaker 10 Where he has a cabinet of placentas.

Speaker 4 We're sort of running out of room.

Speaker 5 Which we visited. We'll come back to that.

Speaker 4 Kristen, I think we need another cabinet.

Speaker 10 But before we do.

Speaker 5 I'm interested in how you got interested in the placenta. Presumably it wasn't because you got pregnant.

Speaker 4 Serendipity.

Speaker 10 So about 40 years ago, Harvey's just gotten out of medical school.

Speaker 4 And I'm now a resident at University of Pennsylvania, and I'm in a laboratory.

Speaker 10 Studying ovaries.

Speaker 4 And in the lab, there was somebody else who was working on the placenta. And they were chopping up the placenta and homogenizing the placenta.

Speaker 10 And these other scientists in the lab ended up with this thing called a gradient, where the different kinds of cells in the placenta were sort of separated out. They can look at them independently.

Speaker 4 And they wanted me to take a picture of the gradient. Why? Well, on the side, I'm a photographer.
I've actually done bar mitzvahs and weddings and things like that. Yeah, I love

Speaker 4 visual things, I think, is what interests me in general. And so I took a picture of the gradient and I asked Jerry, who was running the lab, I said, Jerry, would you mind if I looked at what they are?

Speaker 4 He said, sure, go for it. And what Harvey saw was something that no one had ever seen before.

Speaker 10 He saw these cells, sort of a bubbling cauldron of cells.

Speaker 4 They were like amoeba.

Speaker 10 Later, he'd make movies of them.

Speaker 4 They started moving around and then they came together, they aggregated, then the membranes broke down and they fused to make these multinucleated giant cells.

Speaker 10 They were growing

Speaker 10 very aggressively in a way that surprised him.

Speaker 4 I said, that is super cool.

Speaker 4 What's going on here?

Speaker 5 Eventually, he figured out that what he was looking at were stem cells, placental stem cells.

Speaker 5 And over the next few decades, he and a bunch of other scientists would start to piece together the story of the placenta.

Speaker 10 And that's the story we're going to tell you.

Speaker 5 Cool. Okay, I'm so excited.

Speaker 8 Educate me on this organ I have had and know nothing about.

Speaker 5 All right, so before we start, we just want to say a note on the word mother.

Speaker 5 Not everyone who gets pregnant or has a baby identifies as a mother, but it's a word a lot of people use when talking about pregnancy, including some of our sources.

Speaker 5 And so we're using it in addition to more inclusive language like pregnant person and parent. Got it.

Speaker 4 So let's start from the beginning. You have an egg, and then if there's sperm around, the sperm will fertilize that egg.

Speaker 5 And then it divides.

Speaker 4 Divides into two.

Speaker 5 And then four. Eight.
And 16, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 4 By the time it gets to about 32.

Speaker 5 The cluster of cells sort of forms into two layers.

Speaker 4 It's like a tennis ball now.

Speaker 5 There's a little cluster of cells on the inside.

Speaker 4 That will become the embryo. That will become the fetus.
That will become the baby, those little inside group of cells. But the cells on the outside, those cells will become the placenta.

Speaker 5 So from the very first few days of pregnancy, these placental cells are wrapped around what's going to become the embryo, like a little blanket.

Speaker 5 And as Harvey explained all this to us, and he walked us deeper into the story of the placenta, we started to see that pregnancy isn't a peaceful nursery rhyme kind of a story about a pregnant person nurturing a fetus until it becomes a cute little baby.

Speaker 5 It's actually more like a struggle and not like a calm college debate.

Speaker 5 It's like a cage match, like a knockdown, drag out boxing match, or a tiny war, maybe even.

Speaker 5 On one side is the pregnant person and on the other side is the fetus

Speaker 5 and in the middle or maybe not like actually in the middle more like actually like in the corner rubbing the shoulders of the fetus

Speaker 5 is

Speaker 5 the placenta.

Speaker 4 So what happens?

Speaker 10 Well okay so Harvey says the first thing you have to understand is that that tiny embryo with its little baby placenta cells wrapped around it like a blanket? It is not welcome in the mother's body.

Speaker 4 From the mother's point of view, this is immunologically foreign.

Speaker 10 You know, the pregnancy is a little bit genetically the mom,

Speaker 11 but also

Speaker 10 a little bit the dad.

Speaker 5 Exactly.

Speaker 10 Which, for the mother's body, is not normal.

Speaker 4 If we took a piece of tissue from whoever the father was of a pregnancy and put it into the mother, she would reject it.

Speaker 12 Right, because not-self shouldn't be there. Not-self is a virus, not-self is a bacteria.

Speaker 10 Melissa Wilson, geneticist at Arizona State.

Speaker 12 We need to get rid of not-self.

Speaker 4 It's a foreign invader.

Speaker 10 And so, if an embryo just waltzes into a uterus one day without a little placenta blanket around it, the mother's body would gather up a squad of white blood cells, send them out to find it, shred it apart, and kill it.

Speaker 4 So, that's definitely a problem.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 before the mother's body even has a chance to attack the embryo, the placenta blanket hides it.

Speaker 4 The placenta is going to become invisible to the mother. What?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 The mother literally doesn't even see that the pregnancy is there.

Speaker 5 Mom's still at the bar.

Speaker 5 She sure is. Okay, so for the first week or so of the pregnancy, the placenta is pretty much just hiding the embryo from the mother.

Speaker 5 But then...

Speaker 4 The next problem that the placenta faces is nutrition.

Speaker 5 The embryo gets hungry and the placenta is like, I gotta feed this thing. And this is when the battle lines really start to get drawn.

Speaker 5 Because essentially this war between the placenta and the pregnant person is a war that's about

Speaker 5 food.

Speaker 5 The placenta, Harvey says, has one mission.

Speaker 4 To make the biggest baby possible, to suck as much nutrients out of the mother as possible.

Speaker 5 And the pregnant person's mission?

Speaker 4 Not to die.

Speaker 10 So the placenta is in the uterus looking around for food. And it does this thing.

Speaker 10 Something kind of tricky. Something that, when we heard about it, actually feels like it's skipping ahead nine months.
Harvey says it produces this hormone.

Speaker 4 HCG.

Speaker 10 Happens to be the hormone that activates pregnancy tests, but one of its other jobs is that it causes the lining of the uterus to secrete a protein that our friend harvey likens to milk

Speaker 7 wait

Speaker 4 like no the vitality you get from milk lasts far longer than energy from other drinks the lining of the uterus makes milk for the embryo time to get back to the refill that is wild

Speaker 5 yeah

Speaker 10 But this milk is like a snack for the placenta. What it really needs is blood.

Speaker 10 So at this point, about two weeks into the pregnancy, the placenta goes on the offensive.

Speaker 10 By now, it's actually latched onto the side of the uterus.

Speaker 12 And at this point, the placenta forms tendrils, like long, skinny claws that actually try to invade in up through the uterus into the maternal body.

Speaker 4 Into the blood vessels and attack the walls to open them up.

Speaker 12 Like, eh, I'm going to suck all your nutrients from you.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 uh-uh. The uterus stops them.

Speaker 4 Basically, putting up a brick wall, very dense tissue.

Speaker 5 To block those claws from getting in.

Speaker 4 Now the placenta doesn't give up easily. It keeps digging.

Speaker 5 But then the uterus blocks it.

Speaker 10 And what you start to see is this push and pull where the placenta keeps digging, digging, digging.

Speaker 4 We're talking pretty aggressive here.

Speaker 5 And the uterus keeps blocking it, blocking, blocking it.

Speaker 8 Wait, wait, wait. Can I just ask, like, what? Isn't this like, isn't our whole point to carry on? Like, isn't that what evolution has built us to do?

Speaker 8 Why would this moment where it's about to happen be so combative?

Speaker 5 It's a really good question, and we will get to it after the break.

Speaker 9 Hey, I'm Molly Webster, and this is an ad by BetterHelp. So it happens every year.

Speaker 9 The seasons are changing, the days are getting shorter, and basically, once it becomes dark outside of my window, I feel like the rest of the world disappears, and I'm just alone, and there's nothing left to do but watch television.

Speaker 9 This November, BetterHelp is asking everyone to reach out to our people. That could be your family, your friends, your neighbors, and to resist this call of the cocoon.

Speaker 9 And yeah, reaching out can take some courage. I've got text messages from January I haven't responded to.
And you know what? I'm gonna write them back right now. Hi.
Sorry, I've been missing.

Speaker 9 How are you?

Speaker 9 Why don't we all do this sooner? Therapy is the same way. BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step.

Speaker 9 You just fill out a short questionnaire and they find a licensed therapist who they think you'll like. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash radiolab.

Speaker 9 That's better H-E-L-P

Speaker 9 dot com slash radiolab.

Speaker 3 Radiolab is supported by Planet Visionaries, the podcast created in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Stay tuned for a trailer and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 13 I'm Alex Honnell, professional rock climber and founder of the Honel Foundation.

Speaker 13 I wanted to let you know about a brand new season of the Planet Visionaries podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative.

Speaker 13 This is the podcast exploring bold ideas and big solutions from the people leading the way in conservation.

Speaker 13 Join me in conversation with the likes of climate champion Mark Ruffalo, biologist and photographer Christina Mittermeyer, and one of the most successful conservationists of our time, Chris Tompkins.

Speaker 13 Join us on Planet Visionaries, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3 Radiolab is supported by the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit transforming America's love of nature into action for our forests.

Speaker 3 Did you know that national forests provide clean drinking water to one in three Americans?

Speaker 3 And that national forests and grasslands cover nearly 10% of the U.S., hosting 150,000 miles of trails and and providing habitat for over 3,000 species of plants and animals.

Speaker 3 The National Forest Foundation supports the places where we come alive, keeping the trails, rivers, and forests we love healthy.

Speaker 3 Last year, they planted 5.3 million trees and advanced over 300 projects to protect nature and communities nationwide.

Speaker 3 Their work creates lasting impact by restoring forests and watersheds, strengthening wildfire resilience, and expanding recreation access for generations to come. And when forests struggle, so do we.

Speaker 3 The water in our taps, the air we breathe, and the trails that connect us all. Learn how you can help at nationalforests.org.

Speaker 3 Radiolab is supported by the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit transforming America's love of nature into action for our forests.

Speaker 3 Did you know that national forests provide clean drinking water to one in three Americans? And when forests struggle, So do we.

Speaker 3 The National Forest Foundation creates lasting impact by restoring forests and watersheds, strengthening wildfire resilience, and expanding recreation access for all.

Speaker 3 Last year, they planted 5.3 million trees and led over 300 projects to protect nature and communities nationwide. Learn more at nationalforests.org slash radiolab.

Speaker 1 WNYC Studios is supported by Apple TV.

Speaker 14 It's 1972. A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes.
Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 14 All they have left is a life raft and each other. This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive, hosted by me, Becky Milligan.

Speaker 14 Listen to Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House. Follow and listen on Apple podcasts.

Speaker 9 Lulu, Molly, Heather, Becca, Radiolab.

Speaker 8 Today we are telling the story of the placenta, a story which has revealed to us just how much pregnancy itself is like a war between the fetus and the parent's body.

Speaker 8 And what we were just getting around to was why.

Speaker 5 Right. So you all actually already answered this question on the show.

Speaker 4 Oh. Rob this came as a total shock to me because after all, the thing that...

Speaker 5 So basically the story we told then is that before placentas,

Speaker 5 all animals that would become mammals laid eggs

Speaker 5 and an egg is a special little thing it's a self-contained little package where the fetus has everything it needs to eat until it's ready to hatch and all of its waste products stay inside the egg and nothing comes in and nothing goes out until the animal is ready to leave its egg but then long long ago some ancient mammal ancestor got a virus got a virus infected an ancient proto-mammal and changed its DNA so that eventually, many generations later, the eggshell transformed from a hard shell that exists outside the body to a sort of permeable layer that exists inside the body, which then becomes the placenta.

Speaker 5 And this was a huge advantage because it made it possible for the blood of the mother to actually feed the fetus. So it could get tons more nutrients.

Speaker 5 It wasn't limited to just like whatever yolk was inside the egg from the beginning.

Speaker 12 And the individual was so reproductively successful that it spread across all Eutherian mammals.

Speaker 5 Geneticist Melissa Wilson again. That's mind-blowing.
Because it made it possible to actually make a baby with a big giant brain.

Speaker 5 Like a human being or a dolphin. And that was great.

Speaker 5 But it also had this downside.

Speaker 12 This wonky interaction between the pregnant individual and the placenta. Because the placenta is not the DNA of the pregnant individual.
The placenta is the DNA of the offspring.

Speaker 5 Okay, and this is how we've ended up four weeks into what's basically a war between the mother and the placenta, with the placenta trying to suck blood out of the mother and the mother basically trying to box it out.

Speaker 10 And this fight

Speaker 10 is just getting started. Week five goes by, then week six, week seven, the embryo is growing eyes, ears, bones.

Speaker 4 It has a heart, kidneys, liver.

Speaker 10 Meanwhile, the placenta is digging, digging, digging, trying trying to get to the blood to get this thing more nutrients. But the placenta just can't break through.

Speaker 10 It's just like, hey, I need to be growing.

Speaker 4 I need more nutrients for my passenger, the fetus.

Speaker 5 And the uterus just says,

Speaker 10 nope, get out.

Speaker 4 But the placenta has a couple tricks up its sleeve. Specifically, one trick called PP13.

Speaker 10 It's a protein. that Harvey says creates a diversion.

Speaker 4 Here's an analogy. If we wanted to rob a bank, I don't want the police to be near there.

Speaker 4 So what I'm going to do is blow up a grocery store, wait for all the police to sort of go around the grocery store, and while they're busy doing that, I'm going to sneak into the bank.

Speaker 10 So in the world of Harvey's

Speaker 10 analogy here, PP-13 is blowing up the grocery store. The placenta produces it.
It goes off to some other part of the uterus that the placenta isn't trying to invade. And there...

Speaker 4 The PP-13 attracts the entire police force, SWAT team, everybody of the mother's immune system.

Speaker 10 And while the whole police force is over there dealing with the PP-13, the placenta's digging claws bust

Speaker 12 through.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 4 blood fountains into the placenta.

Speaker 4 It's bathed in all these nutrients and goes, buffet time. Let me see what I need.

Speaker 5 As the mother's blood starts rushing into the placenta, the fetus just starts growing and growing. It's the size of a grapefruit by week 15, a pineapple by 24, a watermelon by 36.

Speaker 4 And that fetus is demanding more and more horsepower, more and more nutrients to actually grow.

Speaker 5 So the placenta starts releasing more and more of this hormone called human placental lactogen, which sort of hijacks the mother's digestive system.

Speaker 4 It says, okay, you're eating, I get that, but none of that actually is for you. You're not going to get to store it.
All those nutrients are going to stay in your blood.

Speaker 4 So I, the placenta, can suck up those nutrients.

Speaker 5 And all the while, the placenta is gobbling up more and more of the mother's blood.

Speaker 4 And by the third trimester, Harvey says, 20 to 25% of all the blood flow of the mother is going into the placenta.

Speaker 5 And this is where things can get dangerous for the mother.

Speaker 4 If the placenta and the fetus together say, hey, I'm not getting enough blood, I'm just going to force her body to start pumping more blood into me, into the fountaining system.

Speaker 4 And this is a condition we call preeclampsia.

Speaker 5 Preeclampsia is very, very scary. And it's basically when the mother's blood pressure spikes so high that she can actually die.
Whoa. And it's really serious.

Speaker 5 It's one of the leading causes of maternal death. And

Speaker 5 I think it's easy to sort of think like blood, high blood pressure, you know, not such a big deal, but it's actually the placenta, you know, sucking so much blood out of the mother's body that she can't continue to survive.

Speaker 10 And this can also go wrong in the other direction.

Speaker 4 Mom, of course, doesn't want to die. She doesn't want the fetus to take all of her nutrients.

Speaker 4 But if she is successful and wins the battle, if you will, the placenta is too small, the fetus is too small, and the pregnancy may not survive.

Speaker 10 But if neither side wins the war, then after nine months, give give or take a few weeks, poof!

Speaker 10 You have a baby.

Speaker 5 And poof is exactly what it feels like.

Speaker 5 But the placenta is still in there.

Speaker 5 And so the placenta actually also kind of has to be born. I'm getting the sense that the placenta may be underneath this blue cover.

Speaker 10 Is that right?

Speaker 4 Good guess.

Speaker 5 So, we didn't actually see anyone give birth to a placenta, but Harvey did show us one in his lab.

Speaker 4 All right, are we ready for the moment?

Speaker 5 Harvey grabs the blue cloth and he pulls it back. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 4 And this is the placenta, which is in the standard Ziploc bag. That's what it's in right now.

Speaker 5 Oh, my God. I mean, it looks so, it looks very organy.

Speaker 6 It's kind of bloody, isn't it?

Speaker 10 It's so bloody.

Speaker 4 And so, I'm gonna open the Ziploc bag.

Speaker 5 it's so bag like it's sort of bluer than I thought

Speaker 5 it also kind of looks like raw meat like you were making a hamburger or something it is raw meat

Speaker 5 so I'm gonna pick it up and see how heavy it is so I grabbed the placenta it's kind of heavy like what like a normal term placenta is about 550 grams which is just about a pound it's about eight to nine inches in diameter about as wide as a volleyball

Speaker 5 It's really weird. It's for okay, first of all, it's cold.

Speaker 5 Maybe slimy is the word. And it's, it's got, um,

Speaker 5 it's got a lot of texture when you're in the beefy part. You can feel what I imagine are the veins, and it has like, it's not all one texture.
It's all, it's like hard in spots and soft in spots.

Speaker 5 It feels sort of like crazy.

Speaker 10 And then Harvey told us how the placenta, this little alien invader and all its thirsty veins and tendrils and hooks, how it leaves the body.

Speaker 4 I think this is another miracle.

Speaker 10 So the baby goes first and the uterus is elastic and has, you know, muscle.

Speaker 4 So it contracts down and it's that contracting down that actually shears the placenta off, the lining of the uterus, and the placenta gets delivered.

Speaker 4 And then all those blood vessels that have been supplying blood to the placenta for all those weeks and months have to close down.

Speaker 10 And they do. Like immediately, there's this river of blood fountaining into the placenta that just shuts off.

Speaker 5 And what's kind of cool is that it leaves no scar. It's like one of the only things like this in the body, maybe the only thing like this, where something sort of gets sheared off and there's no

Speaker 5 like no mark remains.

Speaker 9 Oh, that just makes me think that while from the outside it feels

Speaker 9 like such a push and pull and like they're competing against each other, that like in the scarlessness, there is like a camaraderie and a peace of sorts.

Speaker 10 Yeah, in some sense, I think of it as like the OG parent for the baby.

Speaker 10 It's one mission is to help that embryo grow into a healthy fetus and deliver a baby and it's has this it's developed this sort of like incredible way of somehow making sure all of its needs are met it in such a selfless sort of way

Speaker 10 that i i i've started seeing it as the as the first parent

Speaker 5 Yeah, I don't know. It's sort of, I feel almost like I'm going to cry.
It feels sort of like, here's this thing. This is somebody's baby's life

Speaker 5 thing. I don't know.

Speaker 8 But so, okay, placenta

Speaker 8 comes out.

Speaker 8 It releases. It leaves no trace.
It leaves no scar.

Speaker 8 It knows it's time to let those grappling hooks go. Comes out.

Speaker 8 And then what's the end? of the journey.

Speaker 10 I mean, I guess it goes in the garbage most of the time. I feel really sad that I can't meet mine.
I think once you know all that it's done for you, I just wish I could meet it.

Speaker 5 And thank it?

Speaker 5 Yeah, and hold it.

Speaker 4 Placenta for making me survive and be alive.

Speaker 5 Put it in my closet, I don't know.

Speaker 5 But also, a lot of people don't throw it away.

Speaker 7 Only recently are we beginning to see that scientific discourse is taking the placenta seriously.

Speaker 5 This is Tina Delisle. She's a professor of history at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and she's writing a book about the placenta.

Speaker 7 Indigenous people were understanding the placenta for a long time.

Speaker 5 She explained to us that this dawning we were having, that the placenta is kind of like a parent, it's something that a lot of people had already been thinking about the placenta for a really long time.

Speaker 7 In native cultures, the placenta is a friend, a companion, grandmother. And when when you think about the placenta that way, as a relation, they're going to treat it very differently.

Speaker 7 And that explains why, throughout a lot of Native cultures, the emphasis is on proper burial of the placenta.

Speaker 10 Tina explained that you see this practice of burying the placenta all over the world.

Speaker 7 In various African cultures, in Native American culture, in Hawaii, French Polynesia, in Aotearoa, Tahiti, Vanuatu, and where she's from. Born and raised in Guahan, in the Marianas.

Speaker 10 For Chamorros, the indigenous people of Guam.

Speaker 7 When you bury the placenta or the Gatsung, it ensures that baby's safety. You know, even examples like when they're young and they're learning how to walk, it protects them so they don't fall down.

Speaker 7 It was a way of protecting children into adulthood.

Speaker 5 Huh. Okay, so you're saying that the placenta isn't just looking after the well-being of the child when it's in the womb, but also into adulthood.

Speaker 7 Yeah, but also for the well-being of the land, because when you plant the placenta, it connects people to place.

Speaker 7 The idea is that if someone moves away, they always remember my placenta is buried there and they will take care of that land.

Speaker 10 Did you bury your kids' placentas?

Speaker 7 No. I had inquired about the possibility of taking home the placenta.

Speaker 10 This was 2006. Tina was living in Michigan.

Speaker 7 When I was there, i was told that and when i say there this is when you know in the in in the middle of labor and i was told that they wouldn't let me take home my baby's placenta and why is that like why why wouldn't they let you because of the law and i was told that i'd have to go to court to get that it would be really difficult how did that make you feel when you heard that you know i felt really bad about that i had my partner my husband take pictures and video of the placenta right i was like okay i need something to remember

Speaker 7 my baby's placenta with, right?

Speaker 5 But things have changed some since Tina gave birth in 2006. In states like Hawaii, Texas, and Oregon, now you can legally take your baby's placenta home with you.

Speaker 7 The only consolation I had really was maybe this will be different next time around for my daughters.

Speaker 7 This placenta was delivered yesterday?

Speaker 4 Monday, actually. Monday, late afternoon.
Wow.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 4 So there's a little cute baby someplace who is happy and alive because of this placenta.

Speaker 10 We got to send that family this podcast. I'm sure we can't know who they are, HIPAA.

Speaker 5 We can't know who they are.

Speaker 6 That's part of the reason we have the placenta.

Speaker 5 But let's thank them anyway. Yes, thank you.

Speaker 4 Yes, we will thank them spiritually.

Speaker 8 This episode was reported by Heather Radke and Becca Bressler and produced by Becca Bressler and Pat Walters with help from Matt Kilty and Maria Paz Gutierrez.

Speaker 8 Special thanks to Diana Bianchi, Julia Katz, Sam Bajati, Celia Bardwell-Jones, and Hannah Ingraham. Special thanks also to my placenta for getting me here.
Thanks.

Speaker 8 Thanks to the placentas of all the people who made this program. Thanks for building such talented humans.
And finally, to the placenta

Speaker 8 that made you, listener. Thanks for making such a dorky human who likes our program.
Really appreciate it.

Speaker 15 Hi, I'm Parisa, and I'm from Ottawa, Canada. And here are the staff credits.
Radiolab was created by Jad Abu Murad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts.

Speaker 15 Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W.

Speaker 15 Harry Fertuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyana Sambandam, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Kari, Sarah Sandback, Anissa Vitsa, Arian Wax, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster.

Speaker 15 Our fact trackers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Speaker 16 Hi, this is Evan. I'm calling from Menlo Park, California.

Speaker 16 Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Speaker 17 Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P.

Speaker 16 Sloan Foundation.

Speaker 3 Radiolab is supported by Capital One. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Speaker 3 Just ask the Capital One Bank guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way.
He'd also tell you that Radio Lab is his favorite podcast, too. Aw, really? Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

Speaker 3 What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital1.com/slash bank, capital One, N-A, member, F-D-I-C.

Speaker 3 Radiolab is supported by the National Forest Foundation, a non-profit transforming America's love of nature into action for our forests.

Speaker 3 Did you know that national forests provide clean drinking water to one in three Americans? And when forests struggle, so do we.

Speaker 3 The National Forest Foundation creates lasting impact by restoring forests and watersheds, strengthening wildfire resilience, and expanding recreation access for all.

Speaker 3 Last year, they planted 5.3 million trees and led over 300 projects to protect nature and communities nationwide. Learn more at nationalforests.org/slash radiolive.