Everybody's Got One

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Speaker 4 You're listening

Speaker 4 to Radiolab

Speaker 4 from

Speaker 7 WNYC.

Speaker 4 Oh, wow. Oh, wow.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 9 Hey, I'm Lulu Miller.

Speaker 10 And I'm Molly Webster. This is Radiolab.

Speaker 12 And today, it's like red velvet bread. Look at that.

Speaker 13 It does look like a loaf of bread.

Speaker 11 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 14 I hope you enjoy. A round loaf of homemade bread.

Speaker 11 With veins

Speaker 13 that's purple and red.

Speaker 15 We have a story about a thing.

Speaker 13 But also like blood sausage bread.

Speaker 10 A thing that we've all had at some point.

Speaker 7 It is patty-like. Yeah, it's okay.

Speaker 16 But most of us,

Speaker 14 we never even knew it

Speaker 11 and it comes to us from our contributing editor Heather Radke.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I'm not even on staff and I wish you were producer Becca Pressler.

Speaker 16 Well, I think I think I can

Speaker 4 take it.

Speaker 19 Okay, um, I was thinking about getting pregnant, and I started to do a bunch of research.

Speaker 20 And, you know, pregnancy is this thing, at least for me, where I was like, I know about that.

Speaker 17 You know, I took like 14 years of sex ed in in my public high school.

Speaker 21 But 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 21 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.

Speaker 9 Your whole life, you've got your heart, your lungs, your bone, your skin, your eyes, et cetera.

Speaker 17 So, this is the main hospital, but then all of a sudden during pregnancy,

Speaker 17 a whole new organ shows up.

Speaker 6 Here is our cabinet of placentas.

Speaker 20 And that organ is the placenta.

Speaker 6 Whole placentas, pieces of placentas.

Speaker 23 I had heard of the placenta before, but I really didn't know anything about it.

Speaker 6 It's called the afterbirth for a reason. It's an afterthought that no one thinks about.

Speaker 17 I think I thought a thing a lot of people think, which is that the baby grows inside the placenta.

Speaker 15 I definitely thought balloon baby was inside of.

Speaker 11 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 23 It's not even yours.

Speaker 6 The placenta belongs to the embryo, to the fetus, to the baby.

Speaker 4 Huh.

Speaker 14 So it's actually grown by the fetus, which means that every single one of us has had a placenta.

Speaker 17 I was kind of like you.

Speaker 6 I literally had no idea what it did, what its purpose was.

Speaker 26 This is Harvey.

Speaker 6 Harvey Klein.

Speaker 12 He studies the placenta.

Speaker 6 MD, PhD, physician scientist at Yale University.

Speaker 12 Where he has a cabinet of placentas.

Speaker 6 We're sort of running out of room.

Speaker 26 Which we visited.

Speaker 5 We'll come back to that.

Speaker 6 Kristen, I think we need another cabinet.

Speaker 12 But before we do.

Speaker 14 I'm interested in how you got interested in the placenta. Presumably it wasn't because you got pregnant.

Speaker 5 Serendipity.

Speaker 12 So about 40 years ago, Harvey's just gotten out of medical school.

Speaker 6 And I'm now a resident at University of Pennsylvania, and I'm in a laboratory.

Speaker 12 Studying ovaries.

Speaker 6 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 12 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 6 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 6 visual things, I think, is what interests me in general. And so I took a picture of the gradient and I asked Jerry, who is running the lab, I said, Jerry, would you mind if I looked at what they are?

Speaker 6 He said, sure, go for it. And what Harvey saw was something that no one had ever seen before.

Speaker 12 He saw these cells, sort of a bubbling cauldron of cells.

Speaker 6 They were like amoeba later he'd make movies of them 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 they were growing very aggressively in a way that surprised him i said that is super cool

Speaker 6 what's going on here

Speaker 14 eventually he figured out that what he was looking at were stem cells, placental stem cells.

Speaker 7 And over the next few decades, he and a bunch of of other scientists would start to piece together the story of the placenta.

Speaker 12 And that's the story we're going to tell you.

Speaker 13 Cool. Okay, I'm so excited.

Speaker 11 Educate me on this organ I have had and know nothing about.

Speaker 4 All right.

Speaker 14 So before we start, we just want to say a note on the word mother.

Speaker 18 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 18 And so we're using it in addition to more inclusive language like pregnant person and parent.

Speaker 13 Got it.

Speaker 6 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 23 And then it divides.

Speaker 4 Divides into two and then four.

Speaker 17 Eight. And 16, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 6 By the time it gets to about 32, the cluster of cells sort of forms into two layers. It's like a tennis ball now.

Speaker 20 There's a little cluster of cells on the inside.

Speaker 6 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 18 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 27 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 16 It's actually more like a struggle and not like a calm college debate.

Speaker 21 It's like a cage match, like a knockdown drag out boxing match or a tiny war maybe even.

Speaker 23 On one side is the pregnant person and on the other side is the fetus.

Speaker 21 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 25 is

Speaker 26 the placenta.

Speaker 6 So what happens? Well.

Speaker 12 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 6 From the mother's point of view, this is immunologically foreign.

Speaker 12 You know, the pregnancy is a little bit genetically the mom,

Speaker 12 but also

Speaker 12 a little bit the dad. Exactly.
Which, for the mother's body, is not normal.

Speaker 6 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 29 Right, because not-self shouldn't be there. Not-self is a virus, not-self is a bacteria.

Speaker 12 Melissa Wilson, geneticist at Arizona State.

Speaker 29 We need to get rid of not-self.

Speaker 6 It's a foreign invader.

Speaker 12 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 6 So that's definitely a problem.

Speaker 9 But...

Speaker 23 Before the mother's body even has a chance to attack the embryo, the placenta blanket hides it.

Speaker 6 The placenta is going to become invisible to the mother. What?

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 6 The mother literally doesn't even see that the pregnancy is there.

Speaker 11 Mom's still at the bar.

Speaker 23 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 7 But then...

Speaker 6 The next problem that the placenta faces is nutrition.

Speaker 27 The embryo gets hungry, and the placenta is like, I gotta feed this thing.

Speaker 23 And this is when the battle lines really start to get drawn.

Speaker 14 Because essentially, this war between the placenta and the pregnant person is a war that's about

Speaker 4 food.

Speaker 19 The placenta, Harvey says, has one mission.

Speaker 6 To make the biggest baby possible, to suck as much nutrients out of the mother as possible.

Speaker 26 And the pregnant person's mission, not to die.

Speaker 12 So the placenta is in the uterus looking around for food. And it does this thing.

Speaker 12 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 6 HCG.

Speaker 12 It happens to be the hormone that activates pregnancy tests.

Speaker 6 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 8 Wait.

Speaker 4 Like, no.

Speaker 6 The vitality you get from milk lasts far longer than energy from other drinks. The lining of the uterus makes milk for the embryo.

Speaker 11 Time to get back to the refill.

Speaker 25 That is wild.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 12 But this milk is like a snack for the placenta. What it really needs is blood.
So at this point, about two weeks into the pregnancy, The placenta goes on the offensive.

Speaker 12 By now, it's actually latched latched onto the side of the uterus.

Speaker 29 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 6 Into the blood vessels and attack the walls to open them up.

Speaker 29 Like, eh, I'm gonna suck all your nutrients from you.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 26 uh-uh. The uterus stops them.

Speaker 6 Basically, putting up a brick wall, very dense tissue.

Speaker 23 To block those claws from getting in.

Speaker 6 Now, the placenta doesn't give up easily.

Speaker 26 It keeps digging.

Speaker 23 But then the uterus blocks it.

Speaker 12 And what you start to see is this push and pull where the placenta keeps digging, digging, digging.

Speaker 6 We're talking pretty aggressive here.

Speaker 23 And the uterus keeps blocking it, blocking, blocking it.

Speaker 11 Wait, wait, wait. Can I just ask, like,

Speaker 11 isn't this like, isn't our whole point

Speaker 11 to carry on? Like, isn't that what evolution has built us to do? Why would this moment where it's about to happen be so combative?

Speaker 20 It's a really good question, and we will get to it after the break.

Speaker 15 Lulu. Molly.
Heather. Becca.

Speaker 9 Radiolab.

Speaker 11 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 11 And what we were just getting around to was why.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 18 So, you all actually already answered this question on the show.

Speaker 31 Oh,

Speaker 31 this came as a total shock to me because, after all, the thing that so basically the story we told then is that before placentas,

Speaker 14 all animals that would become mammals laid eggs.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 31 But then long, long ago, some ancient mammal ancestor got a virus, got a damned moment.

Speaker 18 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 14 And this was a huge advantage because it made it possible possible for the blood of the mother to actually feed the fetus. So it could get tons more nutrients.

Speaker 7 It wasn't limited to just like whatever yolk was inside the egg from the beginning.

Speaker 29 And the individual was so reproductively successful that it spread across all Eutherian mammals.

Speaker 19 Geneticist Melissa Wilson again.

Speaker 16 That's mind-blowing.

Speaker 13 Because it made it possible to actually make a baby with a big giant brain, like a human being or a dolphin.

Speaker 30 And that was great.

Speaker 25 But it also had this downside.

Speaker 29 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 14 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 12 And this fight

Speaker 12 is just getting started. Week five goes by, then week six, week seven.
The embryo is growing eyes, ears, bones.

Speaker 6 It has a heart, kidneys, liver.

Speaker 12 Meanwhile, the placenta is digging, digging, digging, trying to get to the blood to get this thing more nutrients. But the placenta just can't break through.

Speaker 6 It's just like, hey, I need to be growing. I need more nutrients for my passenger, the fetus.

Speaker 26 And the uterus just says,

Speaker 21 nope,

Speaker 12 get out.

Speaker 6 But the placenta has a couple tricks up its sleeve.

Speaker 12 Specifically, one trick called PP13. It's a protein that Harvey says creates a diversion.

Speaker 6 Here's an analogy. If we wanted to rob a bank, I don't want the police to be near there.

Speaker 6 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 12 So in the world of Harvey's

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 6 And there, the PP-13 attracts the entire police force, SWAT team, everybody of the mother's immune system.

Speaker 12 And while the whole police force is over there dealing with the PP-13, the placenta's digging claws bust

Speaker 29 through through.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 6 blood fountains into the placenta.

Speaker 6 It's bathed in all these nutrients and goes, buffet time. Let me see what I need.

Speaker 23 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 6 And that fetus is demanding more and more horsepower, more and more nutrients to actually grow.

Speaker 6 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 6 And 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 6 So I, the placenta, can suck up those nutrients.

Speaker 21 And all the while, the placenta is gobbling up more and more of the mother's blood.

Speaker 6 And by the third trimester, Harvey says, 20 to 25% of all the blood flow of the mother is going into the the placenta.

Speaker 23 And this is where things can get dangerous for the mother.

Speaker 6 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 6 And this is a condition we call preeclampsia.

Speaker 17 Preeclampsia is very, very scary.

Speaker 19 And it's basically when the mother's blood pressure spikes so high that she can actually die.

Speaker 4 Whoa.

Speaker 14 And it's really serious. It's one of the leading causes of maternal death.

Speaker 18 And 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 12 And this can also go wrong in the other direction.

Speaker 6 Mom, of course, doesn't want to die. She doesn't want the fetus to take all of her nutrients.

Speaker 6 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 12 But if neither side wins the war, then after nine months, give or take a few weeks, poof,

Speaker 12 you have a baby.

Speaker 9 And poof is exactly what it feels like.

Speaker 23 But the placenta is still in there.

Speaker 23 And so the placenta actually also kind of has to be born.

Speaker 30 I'm getting the sense that the placenta may be underneath this blue cover.

Speaker 12 Is that right?

Speaker 6 Good guess.

Speaker 23 So we didn't actually see anyone give birth to a placenta.

Speaker 19 But Harvey did show us one in his lab.

Speaker 5 All right, are we ready for the moment?

Speaker 4 Harvey grabs the blue cloth and he pulls it back.

Speaker 13 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 6 And this is the placenta, which is in the standard Ziploc bag. That's what it's in right now.

Speaker 13 Oh my god. I mean it looks so it looks very organy.

Speaker 32 It's kind of bloody isn't it?

Speaker 12 It's so bloody.

Speaker 6 And so I'm gonna open the Ziploc bag.

Speaker 6 Oh my god.

Speaker 9 It's so bag-like.

Speaker 13 It's sort of bluer than I thought.

Speaker 5 It also kind of looks like raw meat.

Speaker 12 Like you were making a hamburger or something.

Speaker 20 It is raw meat. It is raw meat.

Speaker 18 So I'm gonna pick it up and see how heavy it is.

Speaker 14 So I grabbed the placenta.

Speaker 28 It's kind of heavy.

Speaker 2 Like what?

Speaker 6 Like a normal term placenta is about 550 grams, which is just about a pound. It's about eight to nine inches in diameter.

Speaker 19 About as wide as a volleyball.

Speaker 4 It's really weird. It's okay.

Speaker 13 First of all, it's cold.

Speaker 28 Maybe slimy is the word. And

Speaker 30 it's got

Speaker 30 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 4 It feels sort of like crazy.

Speaker 12 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 6 I think this is another miracle.

Speaker 6 So the baby goes first and the uterus is elastic and has, you know, muscle.

Speaker 6 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 6 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 18 And they do.

Speaker 12 Like immediately, there's this river of blood fountaining into the placenta that just shuts off.

Speaker 23 And what's kind of cool is that it leaves no scar.

Speaker 21 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 21 like no mark remains.

Speaker 15 Oh, that just makes me think that while from the outside it feels

Speaker 10 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 a peace of sorts.

Speaker 12 Yeah, in some sense, I think of it as like the OG parent for the baby. Its one mission is to help that embryo grow into a healthy fetus and deliver a baby.

Speaker 12 And it has this, it's developed this sort of like incredible way of somehow making sure all of its needs are met

Speaker 12 in such a selfless sort of way

Speaker 12 that I've started seeing it as the as the first parent.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 4 I feel almost like I'm gonna cry. It feels sort of like, here's this thing.
This was somebody's baby's life

Speaker 5 thing. I don't know.

Speaker 11 But so, okay, placenta

Speaker 11 comes out. It releases, it leaves no trace, it leaves no scar.
It knows to, it knows, it knows it's time to let those grappling hooks go, comes out.

Speaker 11 And then, what's the end of the journey?

Speaker 12 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 2 And thank it?

Speaker 9 Yeah, and hold it.

Speaker 6 Santa, for making me survive and be alive.

Speaker 4 Put it in my closet.

Speaker 12 I don't know.

Speaker 23 But also, a lot of people don't throw it away.

Speaker 8 Only recently are we beginning to see that scientific discourse is taking the placenta seriously.

Speaker 19 This is Tina Delisle.

Speaker 23 She's a professor of history at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and she's writing a book about the placenta.

Speaker 8 Indigenous people were understanding the placenta for a long time.

Speaker 23 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 8 In Native cultures, the placenta is a friend, a companion, grandmother.

Speaker 19 And when you think about the placenta that way.

Speaker 8 As a relation, they're going to treat it very differently. And that explains why throughout a lot of Native cultures, the emphasis is on proper burial of the placenta.

Speaker 12 Tina explained that you see this practice of burying the placenta all over the world.

Speaker 8 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 12 For Chamorros, the indigenous people of Guam.

Speaker 8 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 8 It was a way of protecting children into adulthood.

Speaker 22 Huh.

Speaker 14 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 8 Yeah, but also for the well-being of the land, because when you plant the placenta, it connects people to place.

Speaker 8 The idea is that if someone moves away, they always remember my placenta is buried there and they they will take care of that land.

Speaker 12 Did you bury your kids' placentas?

Speaker 8 No. I had inquired about the possibility of taking home the placenta.

Speaker 12 This was 2006. Tina was living in Michigan.

Speaker 8 When I was there, I was told that, and when I say there, this is when, you know, in the middle of labor, and I was told that they wouldn't let me take home my baby's placenta.

Speaker 12 And why is that? Like, why, why wouldn't they let you take that?

Speaker 8 Because of the law. And I was told that I'd have to go to court to get that.
It would be really difficult.

Speaker 12 How did that make you feel when you heard that?

Speaker 8 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 8 my baby's placenta with, right?

Speaker 19 But things have changed some since Tina gave birth in 2006.

Speaker 14 In states like Hawaii and Texas and Oregon, now you can legally take your baby's placenta home with you.

Speaker 8 The only consolation I had really was maybe this will be different next time around for my daughters.

Speaker 8 And this placenta was delivered yesterday?

Speaker 6 Monday, actually, Monday late afternoon.

Speaker 4 Wow, yes.

Speaker 6 So there's a little cute baby someplace who is happy and alive because of this placenta.

Speaker 12 We got to send that family this podcast. I'm sure we can't know who who they are, HIPAA.

Speaker 13 We can't know who they are.

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

Speaker 4 But let's thank them anyway.

Speaker 13 Thank you.

Speaker 4 More spiritual way.

Speaker 6 Yes, we will thank them spiritually.

Speaker 11 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 11 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 11 Thanks to the placentas of all the people who made this program. Thanks for building such talented humans.
And finally, to the placenta

Speaker 14 that made you, listener.

Speaker 11 Thanks for making such a dorky human who likes our program.

Speaker 14 Really appreciate it.

Speaker 33 Hi, I'm Parisa, and I'm from Ottawa, Canada. And here are the staff credits.
Radio Lab was created by Jad Abu Murad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts.

Speaker 33 Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W.

Speaker 33 Harry Fertuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyana Sambandam, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Kari, Sarah Sandbach, Anissa Vitza, Arian Wax, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster.

Speaker 33 Our fact trackers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Speaker 34 Hi, this is Evan. I'm calling from Menlo Park, California.

Speaker 34 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 32 Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P.

Speaker 34 Sloan Foundation.

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