Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we've got
Speaker 1: a couple of days off coming up, so we are
Speaker 1: running a vault episode today. This episode originally aired on
Speaker 1: September and Rob this was an interview that you did. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is an interview with the Bill shut author of
Speaker 1: Pump A Natural History of the Heart, about the evolution
Speaker 1: of the heart and the history of humanity's attempt attempts
Speaker 1: to understand the heart. So it's a really fun chat.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the episode we actually discussed
Speaker 1: monsters a little bit. We talked about the Thing from
Speaker 1: Another World. Oh, I can see because of the day
Speaker 1: this would have been right and the edge of October
Speaker 1: last year, wasn't it, Yeah, but it it was. It was.
Speaker 1: It was weird because it was just after we had
Speaker 1: watched The Thing from Another World for Weirdout Cinema. But
Speaker 1: I just organically asked him. I was like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: you you obviously about you know, vampires and so forth,
Speaker 1: and you're very interested in sort of monstrous aspects of
Speaker 1: anatomy and in the biological world. Do you have a
Speaker 1: favorite monster movie? And he said, Oh, without a doubt,
Speaker 1: it's the thing from another world. So we chatted about
Speaker 1: about it a little bit and it was pretty fun
Speaker 1: all right. Anyway, we hope you enjoyed the episode Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb, and my co host Joe McCormick
Speaker 1: is away from the virtual workspace today, so it's just me,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to be joined by vertebrate zoologist and
Speaker 1: author Bill shut So. Bill is the author of two
Speaker 1: previous nonfiction books, There's Dark Banquet Blood and The Curious
Speaker 1: Lives of Blood Feeding Creatures. I know for a fact
Speaker 1: that I've I've mentioned that book on the show before.
Speaker 1: He also wrote Cannibalism, A Perfectly Natural History. His latest
Speaker 1: book is Pump, A Natural History of the Heart, which
Speaker 1: is out right now and hard back, as an e
Speaker 1: book and also as an audio book. Now, we're mostly
Speaker 1: going to be talking about the weird and wonderful evolution
Speaker 1: of the heart, as well as humanity's attempt to understand
Speaker 1: it through history. But as always I have to stress
Speaker 1: that the book itself, pump Uh in this case goes
Speaker 1: into far greater detail and includes so many more wonderful examples. UH.
Speaker 1: Case in point, we don't get into the horseshoe crab
Speaker 1: at all or blood transfusions, but there are great chapters
Speaker 1: in the book on these topics. Is a great read
Speaker 1: and I highly recommend it. So let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: jump into the interview. And hey, towards the end, we're
Speaker 1: actually going to chat a little bit about horror movies.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna spoil which one, but it just happens
Speaker 1: to be a film that I watched for the first
Speaker 1: time in recent weeks, so this was this is quite enjoyable.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, Bill, would you mind introducing yourself
Speaker 1: to our audience. Hi, Yeah, I'm nice to be here.
Speaker 1: My name is Bill shut and I am a vertebrate
Speaker 1: zoologist and recently took an early retirement from Long Island University,
Speaker 1: where I taught for over twenty years. I taught anatomy
Speaker 1: and physiology to courses and evolution and dinosaurs, and my
Speaker 1: research interests for the past thirty years or so have
Speaker 1: centered around bats and UH, and within the four plus
Speaker 1: species of bats, I specialized on the three vampire bats
Speaker 1: and m so that sort of led to my first
Speaker 1: book after writing a bunch of scientific papers, and that
Speaker 1: was Dark Banquet, Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood
Speaker 1: Feeding Creatures. And I followed that up with a book
Speaker 1: on cannibalism called Cannibalism of Perfectly Natural History. And so
Speaker 1: here I am now having written a book on the heart,
Speaker 1: and that is Pump, A Natural History of the Heart.
Speaker 1: When did you know this is going to be your
Speaker 1: next book? Did you just seem like the next logical
Speaker 1: step or was there something in particular? Yeah, it really
Speaker 1: didn't seem like the first the next logical step because
Speaker 1: of the top that I had covered initially. We're more
Speaker 1: macabre and and um, you know, you go from vampiresm
Speaker 1: to cannibalism into the heart and that's sort of there's
Speaker 1: sort of a jump there. And and really what I
Speaker 1: was lucky enough with the first two books to sort
Speaker 1: of find a niche between the sensationalized sort of garbage
Speaker 1: e stuff on the on one side and on the
Speaker 1: other side is sort of academic material that nobody would
Speaker 1: read unless you were studying those topics. And so I
Speaker 1: so so I I sort of fit myself into the
Speaker 1: into the middle of that, and I've always been interested
Speaker 1: in taking complex or misunderstood concepts and demystifying them, putting
Speaker 1: a zoological slant on them, making it humorous, entertaining, and
Speaker 1: not using a whole lot of jargon, and and then
Speaker 1: going off on sort of side trips where I got
Speaker 1: to discuss what I thought and what I believe are
Speaker 1: important topics, whether it's history or or or or or biology.
Speaker 1: So when I was starting to think about what I
Speaker 1: wanted to write from from my third nonfiction book, um
Speaker 1: my editors at Algonquin and my agent all suggested that
Speaker 1: I possibly look for something a bit more mainstream, and
Speaker 1: they gave me a short list, and and one of
Speaker 1: the things that I've did some preliminary research on was
Speaker 1: the Heart. And I gotta say, initially, I thought this
Speaker 1: has got to have been done before, because there are
Speaker 1: hundreds of books. This topic is, you know, so widespread
Speaker 1: and popular, and I was really surprised to find that
Speaker 1: that that there was this space for the type of
Speaker 1: book that I wanted to write, where you move through
Speaker 1: the animal kingdom, you tell these interesting stories based on animals,
Speaker 1: and then you move into humans, go into myths and
Speaker 1: the history of of a particular topic. UM, and then
Speaker 1: UM sort of grab interesting stories about medicine past, present,
Speaker 1: and future. And so I was really surprised, to tell
Speaker 1: you the truth, that there was so much there and
Speaker 1: a lot of it was really strange enough to satisfy
Speaker 1: that part of me. And I've always been into um
Speaker 1: horror movies and and books, and so I always had
Speaker 1: this kind of like weird bent as far as that
Speaker 1: stuff went. So UM. Once I figured out that that
Speaker 1: that there was enough interesting material they had to satisfy
Speaker 1: myself and and I think my readers that then it
Speaker 1: was a done deal that I was going to work
Speaker 1: on the heart. So the heart, especially from the human perspective,
Speaker 1: takes on all of this additional symbolic weight, and you
Speaker 1: do you discuss this in the book. But but stripping
Speaker 1: away all of that, what what is a heart and
Speaker 1: why did it become necessary from an evolutionary perspective? Good question.
Speaker 1: Let me lead off by saying that there are all
Speaker 1: sorts of different things that you might call a heart,
Speaker 1: where some people might not consider it to be a
Speaker 1: heart because it doesn't have a specific lining that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Um. But a hard is really a pump,
Speaker 1: a muscular pump. So we're talking about uh involuntary muscle,
Speaker 1: so it's not under your conscious control. And when it contracts,
Speaker 1: it sends a fluid either blood or if you're an insect,
Speaker 1: hem a lymph around the body and there and what
Speaker 1: it's doing, and there's there's variation here as well, is
Speaker 1: it's carrying oxygen um to the body, and it's carrying
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide to a place where you can be eliminated.
Speaker 1: By the same token, it's carrying nutrients that are either
Speaker 1: absorbed through the digestive track wool to the body and
Speaker 1: getting rid of waste products that are produced by the body.
Speaker 1: So it's a way to move that fluid around and
Speaker 1: to move around those substances. Now that is not a problem.
Speaker 1: If you're really really tiny, you don't need to have
Speaker 1: a special circulatory system because those those materials that I
Speaker 1: just mentioned that they just diffuse in and out of
Speaker 1: your cell. If you're a single celled organism, or if
Speaker 1: you're really flat like a tape worm, then then that
Speaker 1: material just moves from a high concentration to a low concentration.
Speaker 1: So just for as an example, um, if if a
Speaker 1: single celled organism is surrounded by water, and that water
Speaker 1: has got more oxygen in it then is inside that cell.
Speaker 1: Then the oxygen is going to go from high concentration
Speaker 1: outside the cell right through the cell membrane into the
Speaker 1: cell itself. And and that's how that material moves. It
Speaker 1: just goes high concentrations are low. That works great if
Speaker 1: you're tiny or or or flat, and it doesn't work
Speaker 1: at all if you have any kind of size, because
Speaker 1: it's very difficult and and and diffusion doesn't work efficiently.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about an organism with made of millions
Speaker 1: of cells and thousands of cell layers thick, the fusion
Speaker 1: just doesn't work, or it works, but it works really slowly.
Speaker 1: So millions and millions of years ago, probably half a
Speaker 1: billion years ago, in order four creatures to get larger,
Speaker 1: they had to evolve systems that allowed those materials to
Speaker 1: move in and out and within the body. That had
Speaker 1: to take place, and so what evolved with these systems
Speaker 1: of tubes and pumps to to help distribute that liquid,
Speaker 1: which became the carrier for oxygen and nutrients and waste
Speaker 1: and carbon dioxide. Um So, so it was in a
Speaker 1: sense organisms couldn't evolve to be as complex as they
Speaker 1: are now, um, if they didn't have this transportation system
Speaker 1: evolving inside them. I have to say I really loved
Speaker 1: the evolutionary journey you take us on in the book. UM.
Speaker 1: I think back to your your your book on vampires
Speaker 1: and blood drinking and the evolution of bats, and in
Speaker 1: a way, it's like, we kind of think, we already
Speaker 1: feel like the destination there is weird enough, so we
Speaker 1: expect the journey to be weird. Um And with the heart,
Speaker 1: it's easy to take it for granted. But it's such
Speaker 1: a weird and wonderful evolutionary journey you describe. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Now, I love how you explain that we
Speaker 1: have to get away from the human centric view that
Speaker 1: the human heart is is like the pinnacle of design
Speaker 1: or anything of that nature, you know, the the ultimate
Speaker 1: In um An evolution, you describe a number of of
Speaker 1: wonderful um and if I guess from the human perspective,
Speaker 1: strange hearts in the book. If you were to play favorites,
Speaker 1: which non human heart in the book impressed you the most, UM,
Speaker 1: probably the blue whale heart, for for reasons that that
Speaker 1: might not be readily apparent. And and so in the
Speaker 1: prologue in the first chapter, I detailed the um the
Speaker 1: adventure that my friends up at the Royal Ontario Museum
Speaker 1: in Toronto took when when unfortunately, nine blue whales died
Speaker 1: on the ice up in Canada, and usually these whales
Speaker 1: sink and uh and three of them didn't. They washed
Speaker 1: the shore on in these remote spots, and and and
Speaker 1: these guys went in there and and and recovered one
Speaker 1: of the hearts. And the reason they did this is
Speaker 1: because you know, they were mammalogists, and they kept hearing
Speaker 1: this question from folks about what's the largest heart in
Speaker 1: the world. Well, blue whale heart, how big is it?
Speaker 1: They really didn't know. Well, it's probably as big as
Speaker 1: an su they but so so when they got the
Speaker 1: chance to go get one, they did it. And it
Speaker 1: took five years, which I and heavy construction equipment to
Speaker 1: get to move these things around. There were four of
Speaker 1: them inside the whale, pushing the heart out through the ribs.
Speaker 1: And when the thing was when when they finally got
Speaker 1: it on the ground, it when I looked at the
Speaker 1: pictures of it, reminds me of like a four hundred
Speaker 1: pounds soup dumpling. It did not look like a heart
Speaker 1: that you might get it, uh, you know what a
Speaker 1: butcher's for example. UM. And so there was so many
Speaker 1: strange things about the heart, and one of them was
Speaker 1: was this shape that it took because it we we
Speaker 1: think that it's able to collapse on the high pressure
Speaker 1: when they die, so we would They don't know, but
Speaker 1: this is what they hypothesized. The other thing is that
Speaker 1: it was a lot smaller than they thought it was
Speaker 1: gonna be. Now, this is the largest heart in the world,
Speaker 1: Yes it is, but maybe it's the size of a
Speaker 1: golf cart rather than an suv. And and that question
Speaker 1: became really interesting to them and to myself. And and
Speaker 1: what it boils down to is if you were to
Speaker 1: look at the heart of a humming bird, for example,
Speaker 1: and this is an anim mold that can can can
Speaker 1: beat its wings eight hundred times a minute. To do that,
Speaker 1: it takes muscle and you know, it takes nutrients, It
Speaker 1: takes oxygen, produces carbon dioxides. So there's gotta be this
Speaker 1: massive amount of blood flowing into those flight muscles in
Speaker 1: order to do that. Um. One thing you can do
Speaker 1: is have your heart beat as really fast, and hummingbird
Speaker 1: heart can beat twelve hundred beats per minute, and that
Speaker 1: is probably about the physical limit that a heart can beat.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about phil empty relax and then this
Speaker 1: whole thing taking place again twelve hundred times a minute
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. So so as a as a mechanical device,
Speaker 1: it's probably about topped doubt right there. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you can go any and beat any quicker than that.
Speaker 1: The only other way to get more blood to these muscles,
Speaker 1: these wing muscles is to have a larger heart. So
Speaker 1: because of that, um, humming berries have a heart that's
Speaker 1: four or five times larger relative to their body size
Speaker 1: than a blue whale heart, whose heart maybe beats ten
Speaker 1: fifteen times a minute, and it doesn't have that high
Speaker 1: metabolic demand that the little guys like hummingbirds and shrews
Speaker 1: might have. That that to me was you know, that
Speaker 1: was probably the most interesting. But you know, there was
Speaker 1: this long list that I had to sort of picture
Speaker 1: before I figured out how to answer that one. But
Speaker 1: but blue whale hearts and they are on display as
Speaker 1: far as gone through this plastination process. If you've ever
Speaker 1: seen the body's exhibit, it's like these guys with their
Speaker 1: cadavers who are posed and strange position drug dribbling the
Speaker 1: basketball with no skin, which is trying to avoid that. Um.
Speaker 1: So so this, this this plastinated blue whale heart is
Speaker 1: now back on display at the wrong and that got a.
Speaker 1: They have an interesting exhibit on the whales and they
Speaker 1: so they pulled this thing back out of storage and
Speaker 1: it's just fantastic, awesome. I I'd love to see that someday.
Speaker 1: And there's of course an illustration in the Book of
Speaker 1: Youth setting beside it like that than now on a
Speaker 1: similar no, you know, thinking back to you know, getting
Speaker 1: away from the human centric view of the heart, you
Speaker 1: stress that we also have to realize that the organ
Speaker 1: systems in the body don't function like separate chapters in
Speaker 1: a textbook. And uh that I found this really eye opening.
Speaker 1: Um you know, because I think to my own self
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, well, that's exactly how I think about it.
Speaker 1: I think of those clear overlays and anatomy books, and
Speaker 1: I think, Okay, this system, this system, um, and I
Speaker 1: fall into that trap of thinking about my own body
Speaker 1: that way. Can you can you get into this a
Speaker 1: little bit? Because I found this a rather insightful part
Speaker 1: of the book. Sure as I might have mentioned. I
Speaker 1: taught anatomy and physiology for for about two decades and
Speaker 1: and and one of the things that I stressed in
Speaker 1: my students this is an extremely complex uh of course
Speaker 1: too semester course that I taught with a lot of
Speaker 1: difficult concepts. And I think that that that the people
Speaker 1: fall into this trap, especially students, of thinking that Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm taking an exam, I'm studying circulatory system, and now
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take an exam and then I can forget
Speaker 1: that stuff before I get out to my car after
Speaker 1: the exam is over. And and that's just not the
Speaker 1: case with when you talk about anatomy. So, for example,
Speaker 1: in my mind, there's no way to separate the circulatory
Speaker 1: system from the respiratory system, because if you're going to
Speaker 1: begin you know, we talked about the fact that one
Speaker 1: of the things that the hearts and circulatory systems too,
Speaker 1: is this circulate blood that carries oxygen. Well, how do
Speaker 1: you get that oxygen. That's the role of the respiratory system.
Speaker 1: And then at a microscopic level, the circulatory system and
Speaker 1: the respiratory system come into contact and there's this transfer
Speaker 1: of either carbon dioxide from the circulatory system to the
Speaker 1: respiratory system or oxygen from the respiratory system to the
Speaker 1: circulatory system, and then we breathe out and the whole
Speaker 1: thing starts again. So so I always stress the fact
Speaker 1: that you can't that you really can't understand one without
Speaker 1: putting it into into the cons texts of the other.
Speaker 1: And then you go into things like, well, how do
Speaker 1: how do these muscles contract? Well, that's tied into the
Speaker 1: nervous system as well. My students would laugh at me
Speaker 1: because this is something that I've just stressed over and
Speaker 1: over again, that they have to think of this as
Speaker 1: something other than a chapters in a book. I love that,
Speaker 1: Like I say, I feel like, even though I don't have,
Speaker 1: you know, this kind of anatomy background, I still flash
Speaker 1: back to those anatomy books from like high school and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and and think of myself as decided that way. Now
Speaker 1: in the book, you also get into the history of
Speaker 1: humanity's understanding of the heart, and h I you stressed
Speaker 1: this in the book, and I realize our our understanding
Speaker 1: of this is imperfect. But can you talk about what
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians seem to understand about the actual functionality
Speaker 1: of the heart and heart related pathologies. Yeah, well, well
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians, and so we're talking say from from
Speaker 1: what I have restort something like fift undred and fifty
Speaker 1: BC e so that would be the Egyptian Book of
Speaker 1: the Heart, which is written on papyrus and hieroglyphics, and
Speaker 1: and it appears to some translators that the Egyptians knew
Speaker 1: quite a bit about heart attacks and aneurysms. And you've
Speaker 1: got to be careful there because these translations from papyrus
Speaker 1: um to English or to whatever language you might be using,
Speaker 1: you've got to be careful because that it's it's not precise.
Speaker 1: They had a different way of thinking back then and there,
Speaker 1: and and our translations of ancient works you always have
Speaker 1: to sort of be careful about what you're about, what
Speaker 1: about what you're stating as a as a fact, what
Speaker 1: we do we we are more sure that the Egyptian
Speaker 1: physicians believe that at the heart was was the center
Speaker 1: of of things like emotion or what we would call
Speaker 1: the soul. And then on a on a physiological level,
Speaker 1: and this is this got picked up by the Greeks,
Speaker 1: that that that there were really two circulatory systems that venus,
Speaker 1: blood was completely different than arterial blood, which was actually
Speaker 1: air and so um. So it was initially thought by
Speaker 1: these guys that and and then passed onto the to
Speaker 1: the to the Greeks, and then and then the Romans
Speaker 1: who disproved the air part um that that the venus
Speaker 1: blood derived from the liver uh and and some of
Speaker 1: it seeped across into the into the left side uh
Speaker 1: and that mixed with air, and there was this magical
Speaker 1: material called numa in the air and and and so
Speaker 1: they got a lot wrong. Um. Not that's not to
Speaker 1: sort of mock them, because they were working with you know,
Speaker 1: zero instrumentation and things that we take for granted nowadays. Um.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately that got picked up. The that that the
Speaker 1: idea of cardiocentrism and and and also their their ideas
Speaker 1: about um about the circulatory system were picked up by
Speaker 1: the by the Greeks because Egyptian medicine, that that type
Speaker 1: of information was held in high esteem by by the Greeks.
Speaker 1: Up from their Hypocrates and Aristotle wrote about about the
Speaker 1: heart and the circulatory system, they stayed with this sort
Speaker 1: of cardiocentric view that that that that that the heart
Speaker 1: was the center of things like that like the mind
Speaker 1: and intellect, and they really thought of it the way
Speaker 1: we now think of the nervous system. Um. So at
Speaker 1: the same time, now artists are jumping into play and
Speaker 1: their writing and uh, it's poetry and and and there
Speaker 1: are there's all sorts of plays and and and this
Speaker 1: idea that the heart is the seat of emotion became
Speaker 1: entrenched with artists and it's still there um and and
Speaker 1: then passed on to the Romans. And that when things
Speaker 1: take a downturn because of because of somebody who must
Speaker 1: have been brilliant at the time, Galen. But uh, but
Speaker 1: that was that was problematic as as we might talk
Speaker 1: about event. Yeah, my next question concerns that because because Galen,
Speaker 1: of course is always this important figure that that we
Speaker 1: have to bring up and we discuss uh in anatomical
Speaker 1: history and the advancement of anatomical knowledge. But as you
Speaker 1: discussed in the in the book, in many ways that
Speaker 1: you put Western medicine back um d years tell us
Speaker 1: about this. Yeah. So, so Galen was a Roman surgeon
Speaker 1: and uh, and he got to travel to um to
Speaker 1: to to Egypt and picked up methodology UM and then
Speaker 1: um worked in the gladiatorial school as a physician and
Speaker 1: and began to study anatomy. But there was a it
Speaker 1: was it was outlawed to to actually work on human cadaver.
Speaker 1: So a lot of what he interpreted about the human
Speaker 1: body came through dissections of things like apes or dogs
Speaker 1: or pigs, and and he wrote a lot and and
Speaker 1: and some of the material, the three million words that
Speaker 1: were eventually recovered, may have been written by his followers
Speaker 1: years later, maybe even after Galen died. But the thing
Speaker 1: is that he um, he got a lot wrong. So
Speaker 1: this was all taking place in the second century c
Speaker 1: e and um after Rome fell hundreds of years later.
Speaker 1: Galen's work was not was not initially translated into Latin,
Speaker 1: which was the language of sciences back back then, and
Speaker 1: so it sat around untranslated and and was not translated
Speaker 1: until the early Middle Ages, and it was translated by Christians.
Speaker 1: They were Syrians, and so when they translated Galen's work,
Speaker 1: they did it into Arabic, and they put their Christian
Speaker 1: slant on that translation. Now, that work that had been
Speaker 1: translated into Arabic was eventually translated into Latin, and it
Speaker 1: reflected that Christian slant that the Syrian translators had put
Speaker 1: on it. And and the problem was is that that
Speaker 1: looked great to the leaders of the church and and
Speaker 1: that you know that we're talking about so the European
Speaker 1: Church and the Western Church, and so they looked at
Speaker 1: it and said, well, this material is divinely inspired. And
Speaker 1: so it became in a sense the rule of law
Speaker 1: that that you had to follow in a lockstep fashion
Speaker 1: Galen's teachings and so I for a fifteen hundred years
Speaker 1: it was pretty much voting to do research and and
Speaker 1: and so. Um. So medicine stagnated and that became really
Speaker 1: and that was really problematic because so much of what
Speaker 1: of what was practiced was wronging this whole idea of
Speaker 1: the four humors, you have to lead people to balance
Speaker 1: these four substances, one of them didn't exist. Um So
Speaker 1: that was a real that was really troublesome and you
Speaker 1: and that continued in some ways right up until the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century. They're still bleeding people. So so that
Speaker 1: was that was a bit problematic. Yeah, And like you
Speaker 1: put it in the book, speaking of the humors, that
Speaker 1: you know, we still talk about people being melancholy, So
Speaker 1: we still have the linguistic legacy of of that system. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank Now skipping ahead more into the present and looking
Speaker 1: ahead to the future, you describe some amazing advances and
Speaker 1: medical science in the book. You get into what you
Speaker 1: get into the history of blood transfusion to where we
Speaker 1: are now. You you just got some hard transplants. How
Speaker 1: far are we away from what we I guess sometimes
Speaker 1: roughly referred to as as lab grown hearts. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is to me, this was one of the most
Speaker 1: amazing things because I got to go to Harvard and
Speaker 1: and meet with a researcher by the name of Harold,
Speaker 1: and he is he is aware of the fact that
Speaker 1: that there's a real problem with with with people on
Speaker 1: waiting lists for organs and and and and thousands of
Speaker 1: people die every year, not necessarily waiting for hearts, but
Speaker 1: waiting for liver is waiting for kidneys, um, and and
Speaker 1: and so um. What he's trying to do is take
Speaker 1: a very different approach. The reasons why the people wind
Speaker 1: up dying on a waiting list is because you have
Speaker 1: to have the right type tissue type, blood type. You've
Speaker 1: got to be able to move this thing maybe across
Speaker 1: the country, um, keep it refrigerated, and and so that's
Speaker 1: often times a crapshoot whether that's going to work out
Speaker 1: for somebody. So what he's done is, and and this
Speaker 1: is preliminary, he's taken to daver hearts and put them
Speaker 1: through in a sense of de turgent rents. And that
Speaker 1: de turgent doesn't wash away the dirt. It washes away
Speaker 1: the cells in the heart that your body would reject
Speaker 1: were you to take up that hard and transplanted. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about the muscle fibers and and other associated cells.
Speaker 1: And so what's left is this ghost white framework of
Speaker 1: the heart. So now you've got something that that that
Speaker 1: looks like a heart but really has no other cells
Speaker 1: besides the connective tissue cells, which your body is not
Speaker 1: going to reject. Okay, So now what he's done is,
Speaker 1: and this science does exist, he will take a sample
Speaker 1: a biopsy or a sample of skin cells from the
Speaker 1: person who's going to receive the heart, the recipient and
Speaker 1: and and so so we're not talking about something deep
Speaker 1: in the body. This is this just comes right from
Speaker 1: your skin. These these cells are called fiber blasts. The
Speaker 1: science now exists convert those fiber blasts into stem cells
Speaker 1: and stem cells depending on how the body stimulates them
Speaker 1: can be converted into any type of cell. Now, so
Speaker 1: what they are able to do now still is to
Speaker 1: take these stem cells and stemmy like them to become
Speaker 1: muscle cells. And so his idea now is to take
Speaker 1: these muscle cells and embed them, seed them, as it were,
Speaker 1: onto this heart, to this framework, and grow a heart
Speaker 1: that is a match for this recipient. And and and
Speaker 1: it won't reject the recipient won't reject that that heart.
Speaker 1: The immune system won't won't find it to be a
Speaker 1: foreign cells or foreign tissue because it actually is derived
Speaker 1: from the cells of that recipient. So when I asked
Speaker 1: them how long do you think this is going to
Speaker 1: take until it becomes commonplace? He said ten years. That's
Speaker 1: his hope. So I said, well, so, so how does
Speaker 1: that work? He said, Well, somebody comes in with a
Speaker 1: heart problem, they need a heart transplant. You take a
Speaker 1: sample from them, you do what I just described about
Speaker 1: how you change them into stem cells. You take a
Speaker 1: cadab or heart, you embed it, and then you do
Speaker 1: this transplant and the person is you know, is up
Speaker 1: and walking in a day or two. Well, it's really
Speaker 1: exciting to match getting to that point. And uh, and
Speaker 1: like I said in the book, you know, there's this
Speaker 1: this wonderful evolutionary journey you take us on. I love
Speaker 1: the journey through our our attempts to scientifically and I
Speaker 1: guess culturally understand what the heart is. Uh. Now I
Speaker 1: have to ask, we're getting since we're getting into October here,
Speaker 1: your previous books have dealt with vampires and cannibals. Um,
Speaker 1: now we do doing with the heart and blood. And
Speaker 1: I'm to understand you're working on a book about teeth.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask, what what what is your
Speaker 1: favorite movie Monster? Without a doubt it is the original,
Speaker 1: So the nineteen fifty one version of the thing. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: with um James Arness who's in gun Smoke in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and I guess early seventies playing this uh
Speaker 1: walking carrot who lands crash lands in the Arctic, and
Speaker 1: how it's recovered by this research group and what happens
Speaker 1: when when it gets thought out by mistake. I just
Speaker 1: think it has The movie has everything to me. Um
Speaker 1: it is, it's got a great mood, it has wonderful
Speaker 1: that as a wonderful soundtrack. It's one of the first
Speaker 1: films ever that has overlapping dialogue. So when you hear
Speaker 1: these these soldiers and these scientists and conversation, they're not
Speaker 1: waiting for someone else to stop talking before they before
Speaker 1: they talk. So this old has to do with the director,
Speaker 1: Howard Hawks and it's just to me is is a
Speaker 1: perfect film and stands up. Um even today, A lot
Speaker 1: of people are in love with the John Carpenter two movie,
Speaker 1: which is a gore fest good movie, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: but um but I don't think that it that it Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's it's it's it's quite as as
Speaker 1: a much of a classic as as as the original.
Speaker 1: I have to agree with you about the the the
Speaker 1: original holding up so well. I happen to just watched
Speaker 1: it for the first time a week or two ago,
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, the I totally agree on the dialogue.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's snappy and and real and so many
Speaker 1: of the secret I feel like there there were those
Speaker 1: promo images of James R. Ness as the monster, and
Speaker 1: especially for people who came up uh you know, post Carpenter,
Speaker 1: we kind of looked at that and we're like, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't want to maybe don't want to see
Speaker 1: a movie with this old fashioned looking monster, but the
Speaker 1: way it shot in the film is so impressive, and
Speaker 1: you have that that really frightening sequence with the fire.
Speaker 1: I think it totally holds up. Or when that door
Speaker 1: opens and it's standing on the other side of the
Speaker 1: door and it's just like slams the door frame. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: the well, I think it's very it's really funny. Um
Speaker 1: and and it affected me so much that when I
Speaker 1: started to write fiction, and I've written three novels, I've
Speaker 1: based the characters in those novels on the characters in
Speaker 1: The Thing and especially the original, but but certainly some
Speaker 1: of the characters in the Uh. You know, when I
Speaker 1: was looking for for a name of a character, i'd
Speaker 1: i'd go looking in in those movies, especially McCready. Who's
Speaker 1: Who's the hero in? In these three nine zero technical
Speaker 1: no thrillers that that I wrote with my co author Finch,
Speaker 1: I have to ask how old were you when you
Speaker 1: first saw The Thing? From an edit world? Young? Um?
Speaker 1: My parents, you know, back back when I was a
Speaker 1: little kid, we went to the drive in every week.
Speaker 1: Now that that movie is older than I am, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's actually seventy years old this year and so
Speaker 1: I probably was five six years old, and uh, you
Speaker 1: know that type of of of film. And I've always
Speaker 1: been a huge film buff. And when I'm writing my
Speaker 1: my novels, I'm thinking about these big cinematic scenes and
Speaker 1: and and I think that when when I write nonfiction,
Speaker 1: I'm able to go back. So I opened up the
Speaker 1: you know, cannibalism with with the story of a vent
Speaker 1: gain who was who was who was really the cannibal murderer.
Speaker 1: That that the that the that the Bates character or
Speaker 1: in Psycho was based on. You know, Alfred Hitchcock just
Speaker 1: took this real event and and got rid of the
Speaker 1: cannibalism aspect, uh and and kept the mother obsession aspect
Speaker 1: of it. And so that to me is that's another
Speaker 1: perfect film that there are. There's about five of them,
Speaker 1: Psycho being one, and and and the Original Thing being another.
Speaker 1: In the Original the Thing, it also is more of
Speaker 1: a blood drinker. It is more of a vampire. Do
Speaker 1: you think that had any any impact on your eventual
Speaker 1: study of vampire bats? Uh? You know, I wish I
Speaker 1: could say, because that sounds so cool, that connects, But
Speaker 1: you know, I don't. But I've been into into vampire
Speaker 1: movies as well. You know, I've been into the original
Speaker 1: Dracula and and then the hammer versions that came out
Speaker 1: in the in the sixties and seventies. So so I
Speaker 1: guess I'd always been intrigued by by blood feeding. But
Speaker 1: when when I started the study bats, that was my
Speaker 1: first semester as a PhD student at cornell Um, I've
Speaker 1: always been into strange animals and and and I've always
Speaker 1: kept a lot of animals as pets. When I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I had a monkey. That's how different things
Speaker 1: were back then. Every snake, every type of lizard, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever you could could find in a pet shop or
Speaker 1: collect under a rock or drag out of a log um.
Speaker 1: So so I'd always been into sort of offbeat type creatures.
Speaker 1: And and so when I started to work on bats,
Speaker 1: it probably took me abat five minutes to decide that
Speaker 1: within these fourteen hundred species that I wanted to work on,
Speaker 1: the three vampires. And I just lucked out because in
Speaker 1: the early nineties of what it was known and the
Speaker 1: literature about vampire bats was known about the common vampire bat,
Speaker 1: and the other two were open books. So that allowed
Speaker 1: me to go in and do research on these because
Speaker 1: and I was really lucky because a lot of not
Speaker 1: wen't say a lot a number of really important, um
Speaker 1: influential back biologists took me aside and said, you know,
Speaker 1: bill a vampire, about as a vampire, about as a vampire,
Speaker 1: but you're not gonna see differences. And I was fresh
Speaker 1: out of classes, thinking it doesn't that doesn't make sense,
Speaker 1: because if you have two animals that do the same
Speaker 1: thing and they live in the same place, then then
Speaker 1: then either one of them is going to adapt a
Speaker 1: different behavior, or it's going to migrate, or it's going
Speaker 1: to go extinct. And so when so this this this
Speaker 1: little biologist Arthur Greenholfen Museum and Natural History, which I've
Speaker 1: been lucky enough to be there since the early nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties as well, took me aside and said, Candy got something,
Speaker 1: so shut up down, don't do it, um. And from
Speaker 1: there I was able to look at all these differences
Speaker 1: that were clearly apparent once we started looking at them,
Speaker 1: and just to sort of put a shout out there.
Speaker 1: It's not that people didn't know about it, because when
Speaker 1: I went down to places like Trinidad, they knew from
Speaker 1: the start that there were these huge differences. One of
Speaker 1: them fed on birds, the other one is on the
Speaker 1: ground and feeding on cows and pigs. Um. And they
Speaker 1: knew about it, they just weren't publishing. And so I've
Speaker 1: made it a point to to bring these guys on
Speaker 1: as co authors and bring them up and make sure
Speaker 1: that they came to conferences and and got to do that.
Speaker 1: I thought they deserved. Bringing back to pump for a second,
Speaker 1: I also love the bit where you get into the
Speaker 1: the bats that hibernate uh in the in the snow. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: not a whole lot is known about them, except that
Speaker 1: there's a species of bat that lives in Japan that
Speaker 1: that that evidently hibernates in in in snow. And and
Speaker 1: so the researchers originally thought, well, this, this, and these
Speaker 1: guys in polar bears are the only the only mammals
Speaker 1: that do that, uh and so what since then, since
Speaker 1: this work was started, they figured out that polar bears
Speaker 1: might not really be card carrying hibernators because they wake
Speaker 1: up off and during in the in the winter. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it's not known if these bats are If
Speaker 1: these bats wake up in the middle of the winter
Speaker 1: or enough and they make this little with their body.
Speaker 1: Hea they carve this little cone and the snow and
Speaker 1: then the snow covers them and you don't find them
Speaker 1: until until the spring, when it's either either somebody that
Speaker 1: digs them up by mistake or or or it thaws
Speaker 1: out and you know that they're cold. They're laying there
Speaker 1: for a while, like can start to crank some some
Speaker 1: blood moving through them, and then they fly off. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that was just one of I don't know, dozens of
Speaker 1: really interesting stories that I've learned about because the learning
Speaker 1: curve was steep, which made it that much more interesting.
Speaker 1: You know. I don't go into these things as sort
Speaker 1: of experts on on the heart, for example, or cannibalism thankfully.
Speaker 1: Of course, the bats also remind me of the thing
Speaker 1: from another world, you know, the organism is suspended in
Speaker 1: the ice, which I guess drives home no matter how weird.
Speaker 1: An idea is that we dream up about an alien creature,
Speaker 1: like there's something in the natural world that is already
Speaker 1: as weird or weirder, right, oh, yeah, no doubt, and
Speaker 1: and that you know, I try to bring that out
Speaker 1: in the book as well. And and then the fun
Speaker 1: thing is to try to tie that into modern medicine.
Speaker 1: So you have uh, you know, you know, you have
Speaker 1: an aquarium fish, the zebra fish, which everybody's seen this
Speaker 1: little stripes, the horizontal stripes. It turns out that if
Speaker 1: you snipal its heart, the heart not only grows back,
Speaker 1: but it's completely functioned. Now, if you were to do that,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't really do that, and we're gladiatorial combat.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of people are upset about that.
Speaker 1: But to be serious, if if you have a part
Speaker 1: of your heart is damaged because the blood flow has
Speaker 1: been cut off to it, and and it and in
Speaker 1: a sense that tissue dies when it grows back. It's
Speaker 1: scarre tissue. It's not contractile, good function named muscle tissue.
Speaker 1: That's not the case with the zebrafish. So how do
Speaker 1: we take that? What does the zebrafish have going for
Speaker 1: it that enables it to completely repair? It's hard after
Speaker 1: being traumatically uh injured, And and how do you try
Speaker 1: in slate that into um into curing a sick heart
Speaker 1: that is undergoing a heart attack or multiple heart attacks.
Speaker 1: And there was a list of those that that I
Speaker 1: ran into. So that was kind of fun as well well. Bill,
Speaker 1: Thanks for taking time out of your day to chat
Speaker 1: with us about the book. Well, it was really good
Speaker 1: to be here, especially to talk about the thing that's
Speaker 1: a that's a new one for me, that one I
Speaker 1: haven't spoken to, have been interviewed about. So it was
Speaker 1: a real pleasure to meet you and talk with your owner.
Speaker 1: All Right, thanks again to Bill Shut for chatting with me.
Speaker 1: You can check him out online at Bill Shut dot com.
Speaker 1: That's b I L L S C h U T
Speaker 1: T dot com. Uh. That website contains links to his
Speaker 1: social media accounts as well. The website features information about
Speaker 1: his three non fiction books, That's Dark Banquet, Cannibalism, and
Speaker 1: Now Pump, as well as his three fiction books co
Speaker 1: written with J. R. Finch That's Hell's Gate, The him
Speaker 1: Alan Codex, and The Darwin Strain. I have not read
Speaker 1: these but yet, but now I'm super interested to check
Speaker 1: them out after after chatting with Bill. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: as you would like to check out other episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind where you can find them
Speaker 1: in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. On
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, we give you our core science episodes.
Speaker 1: On Monday's we do Listener mail. On Wednesday's we do
Speaker 1: an artifact short form episode. On Friday's we do a
Speaker 1: little weird how cinema You know what that is. That's
Speaker 1: our chance to kick back and discuss a weird film.
Speaker 1: And yes, as luck would have it, we very recently
Speaker 1: discussed the Thing from Another World on the show. So hey,
Speaker 1: especially after this chat with Bill, go back and listen
Speaker 1: to that episode if you haven't. Again, wonderful film. Oh
Speaker 1: and then on the on the weekends we do a
Speaker 1: little rerun that's a vault episode. Thanks as always to
Speaker 1: Seth Nicholas Johnson for producing the show and recording us
Speaker 1: here and if you would like to email us, as always,
Speaker 1: you can do so at con Thatt add Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind
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