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Speaker 1: Hello there, friends. Heads up.

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Speaker 2: As I'm sure you can tell from the title of

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Speaker 2: today's show, we're talking about the birds and the bees again,

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Speaker 2: so keep that in mind as you decide whether or

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Speaker 2: not you want to listen to this with your kids.

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Speaker 1: Also, today, when we.

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Speaker 2: Use the word sex, we're specifically referring to gametic sex,

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Speaker 2: which is to say, we're talking about whether or not

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Speaker 2: a person produces sperm or eggs.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let's get started.

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Speaker 2: About two three hundred years ago, Aristotle postulated that babies

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Speaker 2: come from a mixture of male semen and female blood

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Speaker 2: that mix together in the uterus. To explain how this

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Speaker 2: mixture of fluids turned into either a boy or a

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Speaker 2: girl child, Aristotle pointed to heat. You see, he argued,

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Speaker 2: all embryos start by developing into boys, but if not

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Speaker 2: enough heat is present, then that development will stop and

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Speaker 2: you'll get a girl instead. Five hundred years later, and

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Speaker 2: we still still hadn't made loads of progress. Gallon, a

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Speaker 2: famous Greek physician and philosopher, had a much better sense

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Speaker 2: of human anatomy, but.

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Speaker 1: Was still focused on this heat thing.

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Speaker 2: Ovaries, he argued, were actually just testes that hadn't experienced

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Speaker 2: enough heat to make it through the journey to the

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Speaker 2: outside of the body. By the early nineteen hundreds, we

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Speaker 2: had learned a lot. Gregor Mandel had done his experiments

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Speaker 2: in pea plants, so we knew that traits could be

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Speaker 2: inherited from parents, and we were starting to get an

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Speaker 2: inkling of where the blueprints for that inheritance were being stored.

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Speaker 2: We had seen chromosomes inside of cells, but had not

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Speaker 2: yet tied those chromosomes to the inheritance of specific traits,

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Speaker 2: and this is where Netti Stevens comes in. Nettie, a

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Speaker 2: rare PhD holding woman scientist at the start of the

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Speaker 2: twentieth century, peered into the cells of insects and made

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Speaker 2: an exciting discovery. One pair of chromosomes were different sizes.

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Speaker 2: If you got the smaller chromosome, you were a male,

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Speaker 2: If you got the bigger of the pair, you were

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Speaker 2: a female. Not only had she discovered what went on

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Speaker 2: to be called the X and the Y chromosomes, but

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Speaker 2: this was the first time a particular trait had been

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Speaker 2: tied to a particular chromosome. Today we talk more about

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Speaker 2: Nettie Stevens's life and how she came to make this

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Speaker 2: amazing discovery. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

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Speaker 3: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm very

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Speaker 3: excited to get into the messy questions of biology.

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Speaker 1: I'm Kelly Waider Smith.

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Speaker 2: I'm a biologist, and wow, these questions really can get

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Speaker 2: very messy. There's a lot we haven't figured out here.

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Speaker 2: But I'm excited to talk about the early studying of

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Speaker 2: how we determine if you end up making sperm or eggs.

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Speaker 3: Messy questions, messy answers, messy methid. That's what biology is

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Speaker 3: all about. Getting gooey with it.

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Speaker 1: I like the getting gooey with it part.

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Speaker 2: I don't know about the messy methods, but I'll let

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Speaker 2: that slide.

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Speaker 3: I didn't mean sloppy. I mean that sometimes you literally

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Speaker 3: get gooey. I mean you come home goo all over yourself, right,

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Speaker 3: You're standing in a dumpster full of goo.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: No.

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Speaker 2: There have been a couple instances where I've been like,

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Speaker 2: how did I get fish guts in my hair? And

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Speaker 2: I discovered it later in the day and Zach was

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Speaker 2: just absolutely appalled, and yeah, gud, you marrying a biologist

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Speaker 2: is really gross stuff.

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Speaker 3: I think it's underappreciated out there by the general public.

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Speaker 3: How much the methods and the day to day work

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Speaker 3: decides where you end up in science, because you know, like,

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Speaker 3: you're interested in the questions of biology, but I'm imagining

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Speaker 3: you're not answering the deep questions of biology every day.

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Speaker 3: Mostly you're having fun working with fish guts or whatever,

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Speaker 3: And so you got to enjoy that bit. And you know,

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Speaker 3: I spend most of my time writing programs on the computer,

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Speaker 3: and I enjoy that bit. So it's like, you know,

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Speaker 3: what kind of messying is do you like? Determines what

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Speaker 3: kind of science you do. Probably more than your inherent

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Speaker 3: curiosity about.

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Speaker 2: The universe, absolutely, And I don't necessarily know that. We

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Speaker 2: tell students that enough. Like when I introduced students to

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Speaker 2: working with me when I was a grad student, I

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Speaker 2: mentored like a bunch of undergrads, and I'd be like,

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Speaker 2: look straight up, a bunch of your time is going

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Speaker 2: to be spent in a room that smells awful, like

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Speaker 2: a combination of dead fish and formuline, or like staring

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Speaker 2: and trying to count tiny little items under a microscope.

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Speaker 2: And if you care about the question, you will love

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Speaker 2: every second of that. But if you don't care about

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Speaker 2: the question, you should find a different feel because you're

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Speaker 2: going to be miserable. And some of them dropped out

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Speaker 2: not that long after, but it's good to find out

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Speaker 2: early do you like that kind of stuff or do

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Speaker 2: you not?

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Speaker 3: And sometimes you can care about the question but just

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Speaker 3: not really enjoy the day to day work of it.

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Speaker 3: You know. My first experiences in research were like plasma physics,

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Speaker 3: and I was like, hey, I'm gonna figure out fusion

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Speaker 3: and save the world. And I definitely still care about that,

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Speaker 3: but I find vacuum systems and plasma machines annoying and

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Speaker 3: I did not have a good time that summer. Thank

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Speaker 3: you to those physicists out there who entered me that summer,

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Speaker 3: but I was deeply bored.

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Speaker 2: You really got to try this stuff out when you're

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Speaker 2: an undergrad as much as possible. Like I thought I

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Speaker 2: was gonna love molecular work because it would be like

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Speaker 2: an episode of like CSI. You know, where they're in

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Speaker 2: the like fancy labs and they're pipe heetting to find

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Speaker 2: amazing answers. And I hate pipetting. I'm miserable at it.

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Speaker 2: My hand's hurt, they get tight. I overthink everything doesn't

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Speaker 2: matter how great the music I'm listening to as well,

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Speaker 2: I'm doing it like I cannot get through it, and

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Speaker 2: so I just I stopped doing molecular work.

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Speaker 3: Wait, but do you actually musical montage your way to

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Speaker 3: an answer? Sometimes you're like, I'm gonna jam through this.

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Speaker 3: Let's put on the music and dot dot dot there

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Speaker 3: we are. I love when they do that in TV shows.

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Speaker 2: Someone told me like, look, you're overthinking it. If you

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Speaker 2: just flow, it'll be fine. So pick some music you

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Speaker 2: can flow to. And I lost like a thousand dollars

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Speaker 2: because I messed up a bunch of kids because I have.

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Speaker 1: To do more than just flow. I'm not a person

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Speaker 1: who flows.

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Speaker 5: I guess.

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Speaker 2: But you know, this is a good intro actually, perhaps

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Speaker 2: even accidental, because the woman that we're talking about today,

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Speaker 2: there were maybe fifty or more species of insects where

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Speaker 2: she went through and she like crushed cells, stained cells,

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Speaker 2: and watched different stages as they divided to produce sperm.

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Speaker 2: And I read one of her papers and it had

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Speaker 2: something like two hundred and fifty plates where she had

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Speaker 2: like very carefully drawn what was happening with chromosomes and

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Speaker 2: these various stages that must have taken many, many hours

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Speaker 2: and been incredibly tedious work and counting to track all

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Speaker 2: the chromosomes and how they were matching up with one another,

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Speaker 2: and you know, the patients that it must have taken

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Speaker 2: to even just like extract the game meets out of

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Speaker 2: like a tiny cricket so that you can look at

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Speaker 2: them like that takes a lot of skill. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: she really persisted through a lot of what would have

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Speaker 2: been very boring work to many of us.

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Speaker 1: Maybe she loved it.

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Speaker 2: I don't know, but I looked at the plates and

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Speaker 2: I immediately was like, WHOA.

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Speaker 1: I would have been way too bored to do this.

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Speaker 3: Maybe she was jamming to the hip music of the

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Speaker 3: day the whole time, right, sort of like a lost

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Speaker 3: question in history, what music did famous scientists listen to

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Speaker 3: while they did all their important work?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? Did we have records in the early nineteen hundreds.

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Speaker 5: We must have, right, Yeah, I think we did for.

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Speaker 1: Sure, jamming to some record.

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Speaker 5: Nice.

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Speaker 2: I like the idea that that's what was happening. Too

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Speaker 2: bad she couldn't listen to our podcast.

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Speaker 3: Somebody out there write a book about the history of

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Speaker 3: music listened to by scientists.

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Speaker 1: I don't know.

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Speaker 2: If that sound career advice, I don't know how big

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Speaker 2: the audience is for that book.

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Speaker 3: I want to read that book, so I don't care

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Speaker 3: if somebody out there write it.

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Speaker 1: Okay, great, sounds good.

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Speaker 3: Today we're not talking about music, but we are talking

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Speaker 3: about pioneering scientists who made incredible discoveries that influence the

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Speaker 3: way we think about big, important questions in our life.

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Speaker 3: In this case, big important, messy biological questions.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and we're specifically focusing on scientists that most people

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Speaker 2: have never heard of, despite the fact that they made

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Speaker 2: absolutely profound discoveries about the way that life works. And

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Speaker 2: so we pose to our our audience the question what

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Speaker 2: was Nettie Stevens's big biological discovery? And if you want

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Speaker 2: to answer our questions, contact us at questions at Danielankelly

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Speaker 2: dot org and we'll add you to the list and

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Speaker 2: we'll send you our question before an episode and you

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Speaker 2: can give us your best guess. All right, let's hear

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Speaker 2: what our audience came up.

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Speaker 1: With this time.

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Speaker 4: Nettie Stephens discovered that as long as radioactivity is negligent

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Speaker 4: a cell, your mechanism will be able to achieve spasis

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Speaker 4: for a nominal period or duration of time.

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Speaker 5: I'll be honest, I've never heard of Nettie Stevens.

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Speaker 3: Well, this one's short. I have no idea.

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Speaker 6: Did Nettie Stevens invent the Nettie pot that allows you

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Speaker 6: to irrigate the biological war zone happening in your sinus

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Speaker 6: cavity as long as you hold your head at the

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Speaker 6: proper angle. Otherwise you end up with a salty, slimy

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Speaker 6: soup for lunch.

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Speaker 7: My completely uninspired guess is that she discovered that the

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Speaker 7: Lockness monster is real.

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Speaker 2: All right, So to be clear, despite the profound confidence

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Speaker 2: that we're hearing in that very first explanation, that is

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Speaker 2: not correct, is.

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Speaker 3: That totally manufactured or is that somebody else?

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Speaker 4: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: No, no, that's totally manufactured hero and made some sort

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Speaker 2: of joke about like, you know, the more confident you

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Speaker 2: sound something like that.

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Speaker 3: So that sounds like a chat GEPT answer, right, total

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Speaker 3: confidence and total nonsense.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes chat GPT gets it right, but yes, often it's hallucinating,

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Speaker 2: which this listener was perhaps also doing. She's not associated

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Speaker 2: with the Nettie Pot. And then we had two listeners

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Speaker 2: who had never heard of her.

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Speaker 3: Well, it sounds like there's a lot of folks out

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Speaker 3: there who need to know more about Nettie Stevens and

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Speaker 3: what she contributed to our understanding of the biological world.

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Speaker 3: So let's go, let's find out. Let's hear all about

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Speaker 3: Nettie Stephens. So Kellie telling us who was Attie Stevens.

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Speaker 2: And I'll do my best to sound confidence so that

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Speaker 2: even if I'm wrong, everyone will believe it.

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Speaker 3: Well, I'm pretty sure you're not an AI. I mean,

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Speaker 3: I've known you long enough. I think I would have

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Speaker 3: figured it out by now.

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Speaker 2: All right, AI is getting pretty good, all right, So

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Speaker 2: Nettie and Maria Stevenson. She was born in eighteen sixty

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Speaker 2: one in Vermont, and she was born to like a

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Speaker 2: middle class family, and unfortunately her mom died.

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Speaker 1: When she was pretty young.

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Speaker 2: But she was lucky that she had a father who

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Speaker 2: really wanted to invest in his daughter's education, and she

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Speaker 2: also had a sister, and so he sent them to school.

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Speaker 2: They went to west Ford Academy and she studied to

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Speaker 2: be a teacher.

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Speaker 3: Is this something that was unusual at the time, Like,

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Speaker 3: did most women go to school? Did most folks living

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Speaker 3: in middle class Vermont go to school? Or was it

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Speaker 3: unusual for them to go.

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Speaker 2: It was pretty unusual. So training to be a teacher

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Speaker 2: wasn't super unusual. Training to be a scientist definitely was,

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Speaker 2: but it was still fairly unusual. And so she leveraged

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Speaker 2: this early education as a teacher so that through various

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Speaker 2: points in her life she could teach for a while

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Speaker 2: to save up money so that she could afford to

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Speaker 2: follow her dream, which was to become a scientist. And

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Speaker 2: so she would teach for a while save up money,

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Speaker 2: and at one point, after saving her money, in eighteen

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Speaker 2: ninety six, she started at a new school that you know,

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Speaker 2: maybe you hadn't heard of, called Leland Stanford Junior University.

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Speaker 2: It ends up becoming Stanford and she gets a bachelor's

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Speaker 2: and a master's there.

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Speaker 3: Wow, And how many women are attending Stanford in the

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Speaker 3: late eighteen hundreds.

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Speaker 1: Not many.

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Speaker 2: I don't know the exact number, but there were not many.

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Speaker 2: And as you'll see, like at one point when she

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Speaker 2: gets recognized for her amazing contributions, she's on a list

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Speaker 2: of the top one thousand men in science. Oh so,

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Speaker 2: and she was one of eighteen women on that list.

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Speaker 2: So to sort of give you some sense of how

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Speaker 2: many famous women's scientists there were at the time, there

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Speaker 2: were eighteen women who broke into this list of one thousand,

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Speaker 2: and this was towards the end of her career.

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Speaker 3: And did she also get married, didn't have a family,

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Speaker 3: or did she have to choose between those paths.

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Speaker 2: So I wasn't able to find a lot of personal

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Speaker 2: information about Nettie. I haven't been able to find a

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Speaker 2: biography that people wrote about her, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia,

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Speaker 2: everywhere you go, they pretty much say the same things.

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Speaker 2: I found a couple scientific papers talking about her early

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Speaker 2: life and contributions, and they all just sort of like

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Speaker 2: list off the same facts.

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Speaker 3: Sounds like someone who needs to do a deep dive

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Speaker 3: and write a book about Nettie Stevens. We're like both

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Speaker 3: projects out the wazoo on this episode today.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, and she was connecting with a lot of major

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Speaker 2: players in the field at the time, and so I

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Speaker 2: think there'd be a lot of interesting information to go on.

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Speaker 2: And maybe like the letters of her advisor, who was

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Speaker 2: ended up being a famous scientist, we'll talk about him,

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Speaker 2: like might have mentioned enough where he could get some

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Speaker 2: more personal details. But anyway, there weren't a lot of

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Speaker 2: personal details, but No, she did not end up getting

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Speaker 2: married or having kids, and she ended up being buried

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Speaker 2: with her dad and her sister. So science was her

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Speaker 2: life as far as I was.

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Speaker 1: Able to tell.

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Speaker 2: Married to biology, maybe she had some great hobbies and

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Speaker 2: had some really cute dogs, but we don't really know.

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Speaker 3: Well, it sounds like she had a really fulfilling and

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Speaker 3: satisfying life, So go Nettie.

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Speaker 1: Yes, no, absolutely so.

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Speaker 2: Early in her career she identifies two new species of ciliates,

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Speaker 2: but she ends up wanting to study more sort of

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Speaker 2: genetic based stuff.

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Speaker 3: What's a ciliat?

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Speaker 2: Sorry, these are tiny little u carryouts and ciliats are

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Speaker 2: like little hairs that they have on the outside of them,

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Speaker 2: and so these hairs sort of are moving frantically to

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Speaker 2: get them from place to place, and they are teeny

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Speaker 2: tiny little things. And she's managed to find two new species.

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Speaker 3: And how exciting is that to find two new species

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Speaker 3: of silias? Is that the kind of thing that we

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Speaker 3: do every day because there's the zillions of them like beetles,

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Speaker 3: or is it like a big breakthrough or what do

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Speaker 3: you learn when you name two new species of ciliates.

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Speaker 2: There's a lot of cillios to name a new species,

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Speaker 2: especially today, requires a lot of like precise measurements and

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Speaker 2: studying the ecology of the animal and coming up with

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Speaker 2: an argument about why it's different than anything that's been

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Speaker 2: identified before. So it's really good practice for very careful

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Speaker 2: measurements of different sort of like organ parts and getting

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Speaker 2: really good at sort of like drawing things and tracking

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Speaker 2: sizes and having a good eye for what's different between things.

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Speaker 2: And so that was probably a really great skill for her.

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Speaker 2: But I don't think anyone's ever won a Nobel for

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Speaker 2: identifying a new ciliot.

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Speaker 3: Unfortunately, it would be pretty silly to win a Nobel

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Speaker 3: Prize for ciliots.

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Speaker 1: I don't know about.

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Speaker 2: Oh silly, it's ah, maybe I am an ai not

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Speaker 2: getting the jokes.

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Speaker 3: Well, you know, I often am criticizing biology as like

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Speaker 3: just being botany, because I feel like the interesting bit

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Speaker 3: of science is not let's go out and describe what

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Speaker 3: we see in the world, But it's the part where

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Speaker 3: we harmonize it, We put it in context, we understand

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Speaker 3: the differences, the distinctions, what those trends mean, right, not

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Speaker 3: just like, hey, here's a list of all the different

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Speaker 3: silly bits in the world, and we call them ciliots,

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Speaker 3: you know, And we do this in particle physics also, right,

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Speaker 3: we have all these particles. We don't understand them, but

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Speaker 3: we want to or we're asking those questions like why

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Speaker 3: do we have an electron amuant and a taw. So

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Speaker 3: when somebody makes a new species, is it always interesting

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Speaker 3: just having seen it or is it only because it

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Speaker 3: raises these questions about evolution and the context in history.

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Speaker 1: I think it's both.

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Speaker 2: And actually I feel like right now, especially in my field,

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Speaker 2: it's underappreciated when you describe a new species because there

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Speaker 2: is such an emphasis on like how does this fit

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Speaker 2: into bigger theories?

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Speaker 1: And like that's the kind of stuff that gets to

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Speaker 1: an NSF grant.

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Speaker 2: And to be honest, I feel like we are racing

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Speaker 2: way ahead on the theory and not stopping to do

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Speaker 2: enough cataloging so that you actually have the data you

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Speaker 2: need to test these theories.

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Speaker 1: We should have a.

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Speaker 2: Whole episode on that. But we're getting off topic, all right.

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Speaker 2: I would argue that both of those things, the cataloging

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Speaker 2: and the big theories, you can't do one well without

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Speaker 2: the other.

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Speaker 1: They're built critical.

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Speaker 3: You need botany and philosophy to come together in harmony.

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Speaker 3: All right, But let's get back on track with Nettie.

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Speaker 3: So she's discovered two new silly kinds of sili. It's

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Speaker 3: what happens to her next.

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Speaker 2: She saves up some money again, and then she ends

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Speaker 2: up going to get her PhD at Brinmar.

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Speaker 3: And she's saving up money because she's paying to do this,

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Speaker 3: so she's like paying for her education.

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Speaker 2: I think she probably had to pay for things like

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Speaker 2: her housing. I don't know what kind of fellowship they

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Speaker 2: offered her, but I do know that when she got there,

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Speaker 2: she was an absolute rock star. And she got the

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Speaker 2: Brandmar President's European Fellowship, so she got to go to

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Speaker 2: Naples to work with this famous guy doing genetics work

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Speaker 2: at the time. So she was like an absolute rock star.

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Speaker 2: And she wraps up her PhD. And this is when

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Speaker 2: stuff really starts going. So she starts getting interested in

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Speaker 2: whether or not chromosomes are what determines if you end

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Speaker 2: up making sperm or eggs, and she gets a big

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Speaker 2: grant to answer this question. And when we come back

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Speaker 2: from the break, we're going to talk about what the

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Speaker 2: prevailing theories at the time are for what gives you

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Speaker 2: boys and what gives you girls.

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Speaker 1: All right, we're back.

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Speaker 2: So let's take a bit of a historical perspective to

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Speaker 2: figure out where we are. After Nettie Stevens has finished

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Speaker 2: her PhD. So she finished her pe in nineteen oh three,

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Speaker 2: so over two hundred years earlier. Anton von Layan Hook

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Speaker 2: had looked at his sperm underneath the microscope and the

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Speaker 2: sperm of dogs also, so we knew sperms existed for

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Speaker 2: over two hundred years.

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Speaker 3: And Lewin Hook is the guy who discovered the cell originally, right,

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Speaker 3: he's like first dude to look in detail at microscopic biology.

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Speaker 2: Von Leaywin Hook was not the first one to see cells.

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Speaker 2: That was Robert Hook. Von Luayne Hook saw little organisms

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Speaker 2: in pond water. He called them animacules, and he also

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Speaker 2: did a lot of exploring for little animacules in on

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Speaker 2: and from his body. So he was the first one

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Speaker 2: to observe sperm.

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Speaker 3: I love the word animacules.

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Speaker 1: That's awesome it is, and it's also cute and I.

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Speaker 3: Like kees exactly like little tiny animals. How nice? Yeah,

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Speaker 3: So was he surprised to discover like wiggly things in

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Speaker 3: his semen?

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Speaker 4: Like?

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Speaker 3: Is this a big shock to him? Or was he

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Speaker 3: looking for that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he was a little bit surprised, and

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Speaker 2: there was some question about whether or not that was

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Speaker 2: like cantam nation and the like fluid around the sperm

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Speaker 2: is what was actually important for making babies, And so

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Speaker 2: I think he was surprised and he wrote it up,

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Speaker 2: sent it to the Royal Society and turned out, yeah,

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Speaker 2: that those sperm are important in making.

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Speaker 5: Babies, all right, cool, And.

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Speaker 2: Then about one hundred and fifty years later we have

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Speaker 2: the first description of mammalian eggs. So for a while,

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Speaker 2: actually we use these phrases male sperm and female sperm,

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Speaker 2: and the idea was that out of the ovaries came

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Speaker 2: sort of the female equivalent of sperm. And it took

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Speaker 2: a while before someone actually observed eggs. I think they

404
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Speaker 2: had dissected a rabbit to see eggs for the first time.

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Speaker 2: But so by about eighteen twenty five, we have seen eggs,

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Speaker 2: we have seen sperm.

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Speaker 3: And how do you know what an egg is that

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Speaker 3: he recognized it, say like, oh, this is obviously the

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Speaker 3: counterpart to the sperm, like it's in just another cell

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Speaker 3: in the body.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question, because it would be another

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Speaker 2: fifty years before we saw the fusion of sperm and

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Speaker 2: egg to come together to produce like an embryo. But

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Speaker 2: I think that it was a series of experiments that

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Speaker 2: were done on rabbits where they were sort of dissected

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Speaker 2: at different times, and they observed like the same kind

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Speaker 2: of cell sort of moving out of the ovaries and

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Speaker 2: into the uterus. And I think that that's what they

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Speaker 2: when they were like, Okay, we don't have female semen.

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Speaker 2: We've got this little thing that like makes a journey

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Speaker 2: from the ovary into the uterus.

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Speaker 1: And I think that they had seen bird.

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Speaker 2: Eggs, which sort of gave them like this egg sort

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Speaker 2: of idea. I believe that that's the history of how

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Speaker 2: we observed eggs.

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Speaker 3: And that sort of the broader context, Like people are

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Speaker 3: wondering how sex works and how you end up with

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Speaker 3: boys or girls, and there's already this prevailing concept that

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Speaker 3: it could be determined by something like microscopic You know,

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Speaker 3: where are we in like relation to germ theory in

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Speaker 3: this idea that like there are tiny invisible bits in

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Speaker 3: biology that could have big macroscopic impact.

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Speaker 2: So I think the prevailing theory is that, like, yes,

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Speaker 2: these things can come together and they can be important

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Speaker 2: in the production of offspring, but how does that end

436
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Speaker 2: up as a boy or a girl is still an

437
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Speaker 2: open question, and so one of the theories from like

438
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Speaker 2: seventeen forty eight, there was this book by a French

439
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Speaker 2: anatomist whose last name was Kuteau, and the book was

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Speaker 2: called The Art of Having Boys, because obviously that's.

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Speaker 1: What you'd want to be doing.

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Speaker 2: And the idea was that sex organs come in pairs,

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Speaker 2: so males have two testes, females have two ovaries, and

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Speaker 2: so it must be that one testee is important for

445
00:20:24,119 --> 00:20:27,840
Speaker 2: making males and one makes females, and they hang at

446
00:20:27,880 --> 00:20:29,760
Speaker 2: different heights, and so you should be able to figure

447
00:20:29,760 --> 00:20:32,400
Speaker 2: out which one makes boys and which one makes girls.

448
00:20:32,760 --> 00:20:36,760
Speaker 3: And so this is also very logical and also off base.

449
00:20:37,840 --> 00:20:40,360
Speaker 2: Well that this book actually went through four editions, which

450
00:20:40,400 --> 00:20:42,600
Speaker 2: is more editions than my book has gone through, so

451
00:20:42,680 --> 00:20:45,200
Speaker 2: this was apparently better than anything I've done in my life.

452
00:20:45,320 --> 00:20:48,760
Speaker 2: So he actually proposed that if you want boys, you

453
00:20:48,760 --> 00:20:51,000
Speaker 2: could figure out which testes makes boys and which one

454
00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:53,000
Speaker 2: makes girls, and you could remove the one that makes

455
00:20:53,040 --> 00:20:54,040
Speaker 2: girls to make sure.

456
00:20:53,880 --> 00:20:54,600
Speaker 1: You make boys.

457
00:20:55,560 --> 00:20:58,360
Speaker 2: But for the more timid he notes that since there's

458
00:20:58,400 --> 00:21:01,600
Speaker 2: one ovary that makes girls, and one ovary that makes boys.

459
00:21:01,640 --> 00:21:04,280
Speaker 2: You could instead just have the woman lay on one side,

460
00:21:04,680 --> 00:21:07,359
Speaker 2: so gravity will send the sperm to the ovary to

461
00:21:07,400 --> 00:21:08,400
Speaker 2: get the child you want.

462
00:21:08,600 --> 00:21:12,360
Speaker 1: Wow, So none of this works. Don't trust best selling authors.

463
00:21:13,200 --> 00:21:16,160
Speaker 3: That's a more general, long standing lesson. Yeah, so people

464
00:21:16,240 --> 00:21:19,119
Speaker 3: understand it's something microscopic, but we want to understand the

465
00:21:19,200 --> 00:21:22,360
Speaker 3: more detailed mechanism, and that's what people are using microscopes

466
00:21:22,440 --> 00:21:23,520
Speaker 3: and dissecting stuff.

467
00:21:23,640 --> 00:21:25,640
Speaker 2: Yes, right, And while we're on the topic of what

468
00:21:26,280 --> 00:21:30,080
Speaker 2: ends up giving you boy and girl babies as classically defined.

469
00:21:30,119 --> 00:21:33,280
Speaker 2: At the time, nutrition was another popular idea, and so

470
00:21:33,320 --> 00:21:36,359
Speaker 2: the idea was that if you are under fed, you'll

471
00:21:36,359 --> 00:21:39,280
Speaker 2: produce boys. And I think the argument there is that

472
00:21:39,400 --> 00:21:42,679
Speaker 2: sperm they're like smaller and they're chasing to get to

473
00:21:42,720 --> 00:21:46,120
Speaker 2: the bigger eggs and so if you're not eating enough,

474
00:21:46,119 --> 00:21:48,560
Speaker 2: you produce these smaller sperm things.

475
00:21:48,680 --> 00:21:49,879
Speaker 1: And it's confusing.

476
00:21:50,119 --> 00:21:51,920
Speaker 3: Man. If we had social media back then, there would

477
00:21:51,920 --> 00:21:54,240
Speaker 3: been lots of crazy influencers telling people how to have

478
00:21:54,280 --> 00:21:55,000
Speaker 3: boys or girls.

479
00:21:55,359 --> 00:21:56,400
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, so many.

480
00:21:56,400 --> 00:21:58,520
Speaker 2: But you know, to be fair, so like in the

481
00:21:58,560 --> 00:22:01,640
Speaker 2: animal Kingdom, whether are not you get an individual who

482
00:22:01,640 --> 00:22:04,720
Speaker 2: produces eggs, an individual who produces sperm or an individual

483
00:22:04,760 --> 00:22:09,159
Speaker 2: who produces both. So hermaphrodites of different types is actually

484
00:22:09,640 --> 00:22:14,480
Speaker 2: very complicated, and so this idea for nutrition wasn't completely crazy.

485
00:22:14,520 --> 00:22:16,719
Speaker 2: So like they had taken a bunch of sheep and

486
00:22:16,760 --> 00:22:20,800
Speaker 2: they malnourished some and they overfed others, and they ended

487
00:22:20,880 --> 00:22:25,679
Speaker 2: up with sixty percent female offspring and forty percent males.

488
00:22:25,840 --> 00:22:28,240
Speaker 2: And then there were some what they called lower vertebrates

489
00:22:28,520 --> 00:22:31,040
Speaker 2: where they did these experiments and the effects were even

490
00:22:31,080 --> 00:22:31,800
Speaker 2: more pronounced.

491
00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:34,320
Speaker 1: And so there are some species where nutrition sort of.

492
00:22:34,240 --> 00:22:36,080
Speaker 2: Plays a role in whether or not you're more likely

493
00:22:36,119 --> 00:22:38,919
Speaker 2: to get offspring that make sperm or offspring that make eggs.

494
00:22:39,280 --> 00:22:41,640
Speaker 2: And so they had made some observations that were consistent

495
00:22:41,680 --> 00:22:43,800
Speaker 2: with this idea, but it just turns out that's not

496
00:22:43,880 --> 00:22:45,879
Speaker 2: how most things work, and of course that's not how

497
00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:46,680
Speaker 2: humans work.

498
00:22:46,520 --> 00:22:50,200
Speaker 3: All right, So Lowen Hook sees the sperm people discover eggs.

499
00:22:50,680 --> 00:22:53,840
Speaker 3: Kutou writes a nonsense book about the art of having boys.

500
00:22:54,119 --> 00:22:57,960
Speaker 3: It's understood to be very complicated. How did Nettie get involved,

501
00:22:58,000 --> 00:22:59,800
Speaker 3: what was her interest and what did she.

502
00:22:59,720 --> 00:23:03,679
Speaker 2: Cant Taking a very slight step back in like eighteen

503
00:23:03,720 --> 00:23:06,240
Speaker 2: sixty five, Gregor Mendel did his pa experiments that you

504
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:07,840
Speaker 2: might have learned about in high school, but it was

505
00:23:07,880 --> 00:23:10,560
Speaker 2: a long time ago for me at least. So essentially,

506
00:23:10,640 --> 00:23:12,919
Speaker 2: he did all these crosses of pea experiments, and he

507
00:23:12,960 --> 00:23:16,240
Speaker 2: discovered that the traits in the like BABP plants were

508
00:23:16,240 --> 00:23:20,080
Speaker 2: being inherited from the parents, but it wasn't clear what

509
00:23:20,359 --> 00:23:24,040
Speaker 2: material was passing that information from one generation to another.

510
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:27,880
Speaker 2: So he made these amazing contributions to science which were

511
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:31,399
Speaker 2: promptly forgotten about, and nobody looked at it like I

512
00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:34,280
Speaker 2: think literally, so a long time ago, when books would

513
00:23:34,280 --> 00:23:37,280
Speaker 2: be printed, sometimes you'd have to separate pages with like

514
00:23:37,320 --> 00:23:39,240
Speaker 2: a little knife because of the way they were printed.

515
00:23:39,680 --> 00:23:44,040
Speaker 2: And so Darwin had Mendel's book on his bookshelf. But

516
00:23:44,119 --> 00:23:47,040
Speaker 2: the story, and maybe this is apocryphal, but I've been

517
00:23:47,040 --> 00:23:48,520
Speaker 2: told it like five or six times, so I'm gonna

518
00:23:48,520 --> 00:23:51,119
Speaker 2: go ahead and share it, was that he hadn't actually

519
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:54,680
Speaker 2: opened up the pages in his book where he would

520
00:23:54,680 --> 00:23:56,760
Speaker 2: have learned about this inheritance stuff, So he could have

521
00:23:56,840 --> 00:23:59,280
Speaker 2: learned about it, but he didn't. But anyway, okay, Gregor

522
00:23:59,320 --> 00:24:01,800
Speaker 2: Mendel does this inhered and stuff. Everybody forgets about it

523
00:24:02,080 --> 00:24:05,960
Speaker 2: around eighteen seventy, we first see genetic material, so it's

524
00:24:05,960 --> 00:24:09,199
Speaker 2: called nucleon. We don't really know what it does, but

525
00:24:09,280 --> 00:24:11,960
Speaker 2: we've now seen genetic material.

526
00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:14,719
Speaker 3: Meaning that we've gone now insize cell. So not just

527
00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:16,879
Speaker 3: like here's a sperm, but we're like digging into the

528
00:24:16,920 --> 00:24:19,960
Speaker 3: cell and finding the bits that carry that information.

529
00:24:20,359 --> 00:24:21,640
Speaker 1: Yes, yep, exactly.

530
00:24:21,720 --> 00:24:24,520
Speaker 2: But then by the early twentieth century, so around nineteen hundred,

531
00:24:24,840 --> 00:24:28,040
Speaker 2: Mendel is rediscovered by a bunch of scientists and we're like,

532
00:24:28,080 --> 00:24:30,960
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, okay, traits are inherited from parents. We

533
00:24:30,960 --> 00:24:33,560
Speaker 2: have good evidence for that, but what are the blueprints

534
00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:36,440
Speaker 2: that are transmitting this information? And so now you can

535
00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:39,480
Speaker 2: combine the fact that you've seen this stuff inside of

536
00:24:39,520 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 2: cells and that feels like maybe that's the stuff that

537
00:24:41,680 --> 00:24:44,359
Speaker 2: transmits the information. And so now people are starting to

538
00:24:44,400 --> 00:24:48,399
Speaker 2: dig into that. And so this is the scientific background

539
00:24:48,560 --> 00:24:52,800
Speaker 2: of where Nettie Stevens jumps in. So in eighteen ninety one,

540
00:24:52,880 --> 00:24:56,199
Speaker 2: Herman Vaughn Hanking, he's studying chromosomes. He's noticing that they

541
00:24:56,240 --> 00:24:58,880
Speaker 2: almost always pair up, but he notices that there's this

542
00:24:58,920 --> 00:25:01,400
Speaker 2: one thing that doesn't hair up, and he calls it

543
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:04,600
Speaker 2: the X element. But he doesn't know what it does.

544
00:25:04,760 --> 00:25:08,560
Speaker 2: And this is before the nineteen hundreds when Gregor Mandel

545
00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:11,320
Speaker 2: had been sort of rediscovered and his works had been rediscovered,

546
00:25:11,320 --> 00:25:13,720
Speaker 2: so people at that time weren't really trying to connect

547
00:25:14,080 --> 00:25:16,399
Speaker 2: the stuff that was in the cell to traits that

548
00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:19,560
Speaker 2: got inherited across generations. So he's just like, oh, there's

549
00:25:19,560 --> 00:25:21,199
Speaker 2: this thing and it kind of acts different than the

550
00:25:21,240 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 2: other stuff, and he calls it the X element. About

551
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:28,080
Speaker 2: ten years later, Clarence McClung notices the same thing, and

552
00:25:28,119 --> 00:25:31,399
Speaker 2: he changes from the like super X many awesome sounding

553
00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:36,960
Speaker 2: X element to the accessory chromosome, which is a boring

554
00:25:37,520 --> 00:25:38,920
Speaker 2: which is so boring.

555
00:25:39,119 --> 00:25:42,439
Speaker 3: It still has X in the title, right, eccessory chromosome.

556
00:25:43,320 --> 00:25:45,160
Speaker 1: I think we got to talk about your spelling.

557
00:25:50,080 --> 00:25:55,280
Speaker 2: But in nineteen oh two he notices this accessory chromosome

558
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:58,520
Speaker 2: and he says, okay, look, it doesn't seem like all

559
00:25:58,560 --> 00:26:02,480
Speaker 2: of the sperm cell are getting it, and so maybe

560
00:26:02,520 --> 00:26:05,320
Speaker 2: this is important in determining who becomes a male and

561
00:26:05,320 --> 00:26:07,880
Speaker 2: who becomes a female, because that's the most obvious difference

562
00:26:07,920 --> 00:26:11,080
Speaker 2: between the organisms that he's studying, his male and female traits.

563
00:26:11,520 --> 00:26:14,719
Speaker 1: And he postulates incorrectly.

564
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:18,040
Speaker 2: That the males are the one who gets this extra

565
00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 2: accessory chromosome. It increases the metabolism of the organism who

566
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:24,919
Speaker 2: gets it, and that's how you get males.

567
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:27,879
Speaker 3: So he's right on the edge of discovering this, but

568
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:30,160
Speaker 3: he gets it like basically exactly backwards.

569
00:26:30,560 --> 00:26:31,000
Speaker 1: That's right.

570
00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 2: But you know, I think so often when you study

571
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 2: the story of how a scientific discovery comes along, what

572
00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:38,800
Speaker 2: you want is like one person who out of the

573
00:26:38,800 --> 00:26:40,360
Speaker 2: blue came up with the idea, because.

574
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:41,240
Speaker 1: That makes for a better story.

575
00:26:41,520 --> 00:26:44,359
Speaker 2: But no, this just like almost all science, is like

576
00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:47,120
Speaker 2: a community sort of moving towards an answer, and there's

577
00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:50,919
Speaker 2: multiple players sort of along the journey. So McClung is

578
00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:53,360
Speaker 2: getting really close, but he gets it in reverse.

579
00:26:54,520 --> 00:26:56,399
Speaker 3: I think that's almost always the case. Like if you

580
00:26:56,440 --> 00:26:59,440
Speaker 3: go back and understand like Einstein's work, you see how

581
00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 3: many pieces he has pulled together from other folks, and

582
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:05,320
Speaker 3: you see other people publishing the same idea like weeks

583
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:08,879
Speaker 3: after him, done independently. Like it's almost always the case

584
00:27:09,359 --> 00:27:12,600
Speaker 3: that science flows as a wave and there's somebody surfing

585
00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:14,280
Speaker 3: at the very edge of it, and we like to

586
00:27:14,320 --> 00:27:16,800
Speaker 3: write those dramatic stories. It's like single genius in the

587
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:19,760
Speaker 3: dark with a candle, you know, and a blanket to

588
00:27:19,800 --> 00:27:22,359
Speaker 3: ward off the Scottish cold. But more often it's a

589
00:27:22,359 --> 00:27:23,320
Speaker 3: big community effort.

590
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 1: Yeah.

591
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 2: I think that wave is often made of many, many

592
00:27:25,960 --> 00:27:28,600
Speaker 2: colleagues who are holding that person up and pushing them forward.

593
00:27:28,760 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 2: It's not just one person. And that ends up being

594
00:27:31,880 --> 00:27:35,320
Speaker 2: the case here too. So Nettie Stevens after her PhD,

595
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:38,399
Speaker 2: she got this big grant to study how those chromosomes

596
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:41,720
Speaker 2: might determine the sex of individuals, and in nineteen oh

597
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:46,919
Speaker 2: five she publishes her seminal study, Studies in Spermatogenesis. And

598
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:48,560
Speaker 2: what she did was she looked at a bunch of

599
00:27:48,600 --> 00:27:50,600
Speaker 2: different kinds of insects. So she looked at a species

600
00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:54,880
Speaker 2: of termites, a species of sand crickets, croton bugs, and

601
00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:58,639
Speaker 2: crucially she looks at meal worm beetles and what she

602
00:27:58,680 --> 00:27:59,760
Speaker 2: does for each of them. And this is what we

603
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:01,720
Speaker 2: were talking about earlier. I said there were two hundred

604
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:05,359
Speaker 2: plates where it was meticulously documenting where the chromosomes were

605
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:07,320
Speaker 2: going over time and what was happening. And she was

606
00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:11,600
Speaker 2: counting all the chromosomes. So she notes accessory chromosomes in

607
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:13,920
Speaker 2: some of the species that she's looking at. But when

608
00:28:13,960 --> 00:28:17,160
Speaker 2: she gets to the mealworm beetle, She's like, Okay, when

609
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:19,440
Speaker 2: you pair up the chromosomes, there is a pair where

610
00:28:19,440 --> 00:28:23,199
Speaker 2: you have a big chromosome and a little chromosome. And

611
00:28:23,440 --> 00:28:26,560
Speaker 2: I think that the individuals who get the little chromosome

612
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:28,520
Speaker 2: become the males, and the ones that get the big

613
00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:31,000
Speaker 2: chromosome become the females. And part of why I think

614
00:28:31,040 --> 00:28:33,680
Speaker 2: that is because when you look inside the adult cells,

615
00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:36,360
Speaker 2: forget the sperm, let's look at adults. In those adults,

616
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:39,120
Speaker 2: the males have that little chromosome and the females have

617
00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 2: that big chromosome. So that must be the thing that

618
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 2: determines sex. And getting that big X that makes you

619
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:47,480
Speaker 2: a female. McClung said, it made you a male, but

620
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:48,800
Speaker 2: that makes you a female.

621
00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:51,080
Speaker 3: And is this what Needdie was studying? What she was

622
00:28:51,160 --> 00:28:53,600
Speaker 3: like out to figure out? How did she get interested

623
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 3: in this question?

624
00:28:54,760 --> 00:28:56,800
Speaker 1: This was what she set out to discover.

625
00:28:56,920 --> 00:28:58,680
Speaker 2: I think you know she was a person who was

626
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:02,920
Speaker 2: good at looking at tiny little things and making measurements

627
00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:05,040
Speaker 2: and observations on tiny little things, and she was getting

628
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:08,840
Speaker 2: interested in genetics because this field was burgeoning and becoming exciting.

629
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:11,440
Speaker 2: While she was working on her PhD. So like, while

630
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:13,400
Speaker 2: she was working on her PhD, this was the time

631
00:29:13,440 --> 00:29:18,000
Speaker 2: when Mendel's rules were being rediscovered concurrent with our discovery

632
00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:21,120
Speaker 2: of some genetic material. So trying to tie those things

633
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 2: together became something she was interested in. And actually her

634
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:28,880
Speaker 2: PhD advisor ended up becoming a gigantic name. He's considered

635
00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:31,120
Speaker 2: one of the fathers of modern genetics. So he ended

636
00:29:31,200 --> 00:29:36,520
Speaker 2: up ultimately establishing like drosophla as a major organism used

637
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:38,360
Speaker 2: for lab work, and he connected a bunch of different

638
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 2: chromosomes to different traits, and so I think it was

639
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:42,960
Speaker 2: sort of like in the air, and she came from

640
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:45,120
Speaker 2: a lab that was sort of interested in these sorts

641
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 2: of questions.

642
00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 3: Well, so this must have been a huge discovery for her,

643
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 3: like to see such a clear answer to this question

644
00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 3: that's on everybody's minds.

645
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:56,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, that's totally true. It should have been a

646
00:29:56,840 --> 00:30:00,080
Speaker 2: super big deal. It happened concurrent though, in this the

647
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 2: same year that she published this, Edmund Beecher Wilson, who

648
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:07,680
Speaker 2: was another geneticist who's farther along in his career. He

649
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:11,120
Speaker 2: was looking at a different insects species. He was looking

650
00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 2: at the accessory chromosomes and he also said, hey, accessory chromosomes.

651
00:30:16,160 --> 00:30:18,640
Speaker 2: These are what makes males and females, and the female

652
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 2: is the one.

653
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 1: That gets the X.

654
00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:23,440
Speaker 2: So he came up with the same discovery in the

655
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:28,479
Speaker 2: same year. His paper got published a few months before hers.

656
00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 2: Oh no, I know, but they had been talking to

657
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:34,800
Speaker 2: each other, and so he references in an updated version

658
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 2: of his paper. He references that, like, hey, Neddie Stevens

659
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:40,840
Speaker 2: found the same thing, and actually she found this little

660
00:30:40,840 --> 00:30:43,040
Speaker 2: why thing, And so I believe they had been looking

661
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 2: at insects that had slightly different systems for sex determination.

662
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:49,640
Speaker 2: So in some cases males had the Y and in

663
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 2: some cases males were made by simply not getting anything.

664
00:30:53,200 --> 00:30:55,160
Speaker 2: So the females got the extra X and the males

665
00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 2: got nothing. They were just sort of missing that information.

666
00:30:58,040 --> 00:30:59,720
Speaker 2: And so they had both come up with this at

667
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:02,160
Speaker 2: the same time. They were both it sounds to me

668
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:05,920
Speaker 2: like respectfully communicating their results to one another, and they

669
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:08,320
Speaker 2: just happened to submit And his came out a little

670
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:12,000
Speaker 2: bit before hers, but she's largely credited with being much clearer.

671
00:31:12,680 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 2: And she went ahead and took that extra step and

672
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:18,280
Speaker 2: looked in the cells of the adults and was like, okay,

673
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:20,160
Speaker 2: this thing that we're seeing in the sperm plays out

674
00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:22,160
Speaker 2: in the adults. The adult males have the Y and

675
00:31:22,200 --> 00:31:25,840
Speaker 2: the adult females have the X. But I don't actually

676
00:31:25,840 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 2: feel like it's worth trying to decide, like whose words

677
00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 2: were more firm than another, Like, I know we want

678
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 2: one person to be out ahead of the other, but

679
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:37,120
Speaker 2: like they both did really good work, yeah, around the

680
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 2: same time, and this is how science works, and you know,

681
00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 2: joint credit seems reasonable to me.

682
00:31:42,800 --> 00:31:44,959
Speaker 3: To me, the issue of these priority disputes is not

683
00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:48,560
Speaker 3: who sent in their paper first or who took longer

684
00:31:48,600 --> 00:31:50,959
Speaker 3: in review and got it published first. It's just like,

685
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:54,760
Speaker 3: was the work independent? Because if you read somebody else's

686
00:31:54,800 --> 00:31:57,280
Speaker 3: paper and then publish based on that, then you shouldn't

687
00:31:57,320 --> 00:31:59,480
Speaker 3: get credit for their discovery because you're building on top

688
00:31:59,520 --> 00:32:01,240
Speaker 3: of it. But if you figured it out in your

689
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:05,120
Speaker 3: own dank Scottish laboratory, you know, then you figured it

690
00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:06,960
Speaker 3: out on your own and if it's in parallel, you

691
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:09,400
Speaker 3: should both get credit. It doesn't matter if you published

692
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:12,120
Speaker 3: six months earlier or six months later. It's an independent

693
00:32:12,360 --> 00:32:13,040
Speaker 3: piece of work.

694
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:16,080
Speaker 2: I agree, But I mean in the way that human

695
00:32:16,320 --> 00:32:20,200
Speaker 2: stories always go. You know, people were talking to each other,

696
00:32:20,280 --> 00:32:23,720
Speaker 2: and Wilson had been at Bryn Marr right before she

697
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:27,200
Speaker 2: got there, and her PhD advisor kept collaborating with Wilson,

698
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 2: and so like, this is a question they all wanted

699
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 2: to have answered, So they were all kind of working

700
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:33,000
Speaker 2: on it concurrently, and so there was a lot of

701
00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 2: discussion between them. Nettie made this really nice, really clear observation.

702
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:40,719
Speaker 2: Wilson also made some great clear observations. So I mean,

703
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:43,920
Speaker 2: to me, it would be great if Nettie Stevens and

704
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:47,480
Speaker 2: Wilson were both known for the discovery of sex chromosomes.

705
00:32:47,560 --> 00:32:48,720
Speaker 2: But you know who got the credit.

706
00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:51,000
Speaker 3: I'm guessing it's not Natie Stevens because I'd never heard

707
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 3: of her and neither had the listeners. So then is

708
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 3: it Wilson?

709
00:32:54,200 --> 00:33:00,560
Speaker 1: No, it's Thomas Hunt Morgan. And after the break we'll.

710
00:33:00,400 --> 00:33:18,360
Speaker 8: Talk about why.

711
00:33:19,080 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 3: All right, we are back from the break, and Kelly

712
00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 3: just dropped a big bomb on us bringing in a

713
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,760
Speaker 3: dark horse. Kelly, you can't just bring in a new

714
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:29,440
Speaker 3: character and act three without laying the pipe in act one.

715
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 3: I mean, don't you have you taken screenwriting? One oh one?

716
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 3: Who is this Thomas Hunt Morgan fellow? And why does

717
00:33:35,160 --> 00:33:38,600
Speaker 3: he get the credit for Wilson and Stevens independent work.

718
00:33:38,920 --> 00:33:40,760
Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to try to not have my feelings

719
00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 2: hurt too much because I had mentioned Thomas Hunt Morgan earlier.

720
00:33:44,760 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 5: Oh no, a couple of.

721
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:47,840
Speaker 2: Times, but you know, we were throwing a lot of

722
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:49,360
Speaker 2: names around, so maybe it didn't stick.

723
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:51,200
Speaker 1: But he was her PhD advisor.

724
00:33:51,400 --> 00:33:53,880
Speaker 3: So Morgan is Steven's PhD advisor?

725
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:55,920
Speaker 5: Yes, oh nice.

726
00:33:56,040 --> 00:33:58,480
Speaker 3: No, I totally take it back. You absolutely did lay

727
00:33:58,480 --> 00:34:01,560
Speaker 3: the groundwork, but like an excellent novel, I overlooked the

728
00:34:01,600 --> 00:34:02,480
Speaker 3: important clues.

729
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 2: Oh man, maybe I'm the next Agatha Christian exactly.

730
00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:10,359
Speaker 3: So is just the standard case of PhD advisor gets

731
00:34:10,400 --> 00:34:12,759
Speaker 3: credits for grad student work? Is their gender stuff at

732
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:13,239
Speaker 3: play here?

733
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:16,160
Speaker 2: There's definitely sexism at play here. First of all, it's

734
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:19,080
Speaker 2: kind of ironic because Morgan, at the time that Wilson

735
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:22,840
Speaker 2: and Stevens published their result, he was like, not super

736
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:25,480
Speaker 2: sure about this sex chromosome thing. He was like, well,

737
00:34:25,520 --> 00:34:27,000
Speaker 2: maybe that's not how it works.

738
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:27,839
Speaker 1: He still needed to.

739
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:30,960
Speaker 2: Be convinced at the time these results came out. But

740
00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:34,360
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh six there was a conference and both

741
00:34:34,560 --> 00:34:38,359
Speaker 2: Morgan and Wilson were invited to give talks about their

742
00:34:38,400 --> 00:34:41,160
Speaker 2: theories of how sex is determined. So how you end

743
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:42,880
Speaker 2: up with individuals that make sperman and how you might

744
00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:46,200
Speaker 2: end up with individuals that make eggs. But Stevens was

745
00:34:46,280 --> 00:34:47,480
Speaker 2: not invited.

746
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:49,680
Speaker 3: And is Wilson already like a professor and Stevens is

747
00:34:49,719 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 3: a grad student? Is that how it works?

748
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:55,120
Speaker 2: Wilson is already a professor, Stevens has finished her PhD,

749
00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 2: but she's in a part of her career where she's

750
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:01,160
Speaker 2: having trouble getting the professorship that she deserves. Right, So

751
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:05,719
Speaker 2: actually it will take five maybe seven years for her

752
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:09,320
Speaker 2: to finally get offered a professorship. So she gets offered

753
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:12,799
Speaker 2: a post doc at Carnegie Institute, Washington, and then she

754
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:15,800
Speaker 2: gets to go back to Brent Mahr as a research associate,

755
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:19,160
Speaker 2: but she doesn't get a faculty position. A couple years later,

756
00:35:19,239 --> 00:35:22,279
Speaker 2: they offer her that faculty position, but before she can

757
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:24,400
Speaker 2: accept it, she dies of breast cancer.

758
00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:29,080
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, all right, So before we dig into that, Tragy,

759
00:35:29,160 --> 00:35:30,879
Speaker 3: let's go back to the conference you were talking about

760
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 3: where her advisor Morgan and her sometimes friendly rival Wilson

761
00:35:34,760 --> 00:35:38,360
Speaker 3: both get offered big talks to give their theories of

762
00:35:38,400 --> 00:35:42,080
Speaker 3: sex determination. But she doesn't, and she's also the most

763
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:43,160
Speaker 3: junior person of the.

764
00:35:43,120 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 2: Three, right right, and dying early is actually part of

765
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:46,759
Speaker 2: the story here.

766
00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:47,400
Speaker 3: Oh wow.

767
00:35:47,560 --> 00:35:50,200
Speaker 2: Wilson and Morgan both go on to become even more

768
00:35:50,239 --> 00:35:54,760
Speaker 2: well known scientists. Morgan in particular ends up doing amazing

769
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:59,719
Speaker 2: work on fruitflies, attributing particular genes to particular traits in

770
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 2: these fruitflies. And when Stevens dies, Morgan writes her obituary.

771
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:06,839
Speaker 3: Oh wow, he.

772
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:10,399
Speaker 2: Writes her obituary in science and he doesn't get all

773
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:11,000
Speaker 2: of it right.

774
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:16,120
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, this is like a Morgan character assassination here.

775
00:36:16,160 --> 00:36:17,400
Speaker 3: I feel like we need to have somebody from the

776
00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:21,000
Speaker 3: Morgan estate onto. But some of this like equal time.

777
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, so let's take a step back here.

778
00:36:22,719 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 2: He was the advisor for Women Scientist, which was very

779
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:29,360
Speaker 2: progressive at the time. I think maybe he wasn't being

780
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:32,440
Speaker 2: aggressive here, but let's dig in a little bit. So

781
00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:38,560
Speaker 2: in the obituary he says that Steven's confirmed McClung's hypothesis.

782
00:36:38,560 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 2: And you might remember that McClung was the guy who

783
00:36:40,520 --> 00:36:44,839
Speaker 2: was like, X makes males and he got it exactly wrong.

784
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:47,640
Speaker 2: So she didn't confirm his hypothesis.

785
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:48,719
Speaker 3: She flipped it on its head.

786
00:36:49,200 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 2: She flipped it on his head and then did a

787
00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:53,480
Speaker 2: bunch of extra work to make a much more sound argument.

788
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:56,759
Speaker 2: And so here her contributions are getting sort of obscured.

789
00:36:56,840 --> 00:37:00,080
Speaker 2: So she's already getting cut out of the conversation. Her

790
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:04,000
Speaker 2: contributions are not being attributed correctly in her obituary.

791
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:06,919
Speaker 3: But Morgan must have known, right, I mean, obviously, he's

792
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 3: like a big man in his field. He was her advisor.

793
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:11,399
Speaker 3: He's right there, he understands all this stuff. He must

794
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:13,040
Speaker 3: have known what he was doing. Is is there anybody to

795
00:37:13,040 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 3: see this other than being an intentional obscuring of her

796
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 3: name and deflating of her credit.

797
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:19,480
Speaker 1: I think that's probably what happened.

798
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:22,880
Speaker 2: Maybe we should get somebody who's like a Morgan expert

799
00:37:22,880 --> 00:37:24,480
Speaker 2: on and maybe they can say, like, oh, this was

800
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:27,440
Speaker 2: during a period where he was drinking too much and

801
00:37:27,480 --> 00:37:30,799
Speaker 2: he was just sloppy and something like that. I don't know,

802
00:37:30,840 --> 00:37:32,840
Speaker 2: Maybe there's a nicer way to look at it. But

803
00:37:33,120 --> 00:37:35,239
Speaker 2: I had a PhD student and they died and I

804
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:37,840
Speaker 2: was writing their obituary, and especially if they were like

805
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:40,319
Speaker 2: one of the first women in their field, I feel

806
00:37:40,400 --> 00:37:42,560
Speaker 2: like I would be very careful about how I wrote

807
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:47,120
Speaker 2: that obituary. But so he either was sloppy or he was,

808
00:37:47,440 --> 00:37:48,960
Speaker 2: you know, being dishonest.

809
00:37:49,160 --> 00:37:52,000
Speaker 3: But there is a long history of PhD advisors taking

810
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 3: credit for graduate student work, and especially when it's a

811
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:59,160
Speaker 3: male advisor and a female student. And they have lots

812
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:02,000
Speaker 3: of examples of like a man winning the Nobel Prize

813
00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:04,759
Speaker 3: for work done by their female graduate student. So it's

814
00:38:04,800 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 3: definitely not just biology, and at the time I think

815
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:09,480
Speaker 3: it was very common, unfortunately, right.

816
00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:12,000
Speaker 2: And here's another piece of evidence that sort of builds on,

817
00:38:12,239 --> 00:38:14,880
Speaker 2: you know, the argument that you just made. Morgan eventually

818
00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:18,680
Speaker 2: writes a textbook called The Mechanisms of Genetics, and he

819
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:22,000
Speaker 2: talks about the work that Stevens and Wilson did, but

820
00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 2: he doesn't mention I don't think he mentions either of

821
00:38:25,040 --> 00:38:28,040
Speaker 2: their names, but he definitely doesn't mention her name, oh Man.

822
00:38:28,239 --> 00:38:30,440
Speaker 2: And the way that he wrote it was right before

823
00:38:30,600 --> 00:38:33,840
Speaker 2: he talked about the contributions that he made to the field,

824
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:36,719
Speaker 2: and when you read it, you could be forgiven for

825
00:38:36,800 --> 00:38:39,680
Speaker 2: thinking that he was on that you know, whole section

826
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:41,200
Speaker 2: just describing his contribution.

827
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:42,000
Speaker 5: Oh Man.

828
00:38:42,840 --> 00:38:44,799
Speaker 3: Not a fan of Morgan over here, I'm.

829
00:38:44,719 --> 00:38:47,960
Speaker 2: Feeling a little grumpy about Morgan too, and in nineteen

830
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:50,080
Speaker 2: thirty three he goes on to get a Nobel Prize,

831
00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:53,000
Speaker 2: not for the discovery of sex determination, but just for

832
00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:57,600
Speaker 2: his general work in genetics, and so over time she's

833
00:38:57,640 --> 00:38:59,400
Speaker 2: just sort of been forgotten. And so a lot of

834
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:04,080
Speaker 2: people forget about both Wilson and Stevens because Morgan became

835
00:39:04,280 --> 00:39:06,759
Speaker 2: such a hot shot, and a lot of people read

836
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:09,360
Speaker 2: this textbook, and I think a lot of them just inferred, oh, okay,

837
00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:11,680
Speaker 2: Morgan was the one who figured that out too, And

838
00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:15,239
Speaker 2: so over time, Stevens has been forgotten, and so has

839
00:39:15,239 --> 00:39:17,879
Speaker 2: Wilson relative to Morgan, and Morgan has gotten a bunch

840
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:18,320
Speaker 2: of the credit.

841
00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:20,479
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people don't appreciate how much

842
00:39:20,760 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 3: campaigning and politicking there is in getting a Nobel Prize.

843
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:25,920
Speaker 3: Like it's not just you do a bunch of good

844
00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:29,520
Speaker 3: science and then you're recognized. It's not some like pure meritocracy.

845
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:32,239
Speaker 3: You know, there's a lot of behind the scenes campaigning

846
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:34,439
Speaker 3: like this person should get the credit, and this person

847
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:36,680
Speaker 3: should get the credit, and this is really important. Like

848
00:39:36,719 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 3: the folks who get the Nobel Prize are the ones

849
00:39:38,520 --> 00:39:41,840
Speaker 3: who bubble up to the top of that campaign and

850
00:39:41,920 --> 00:39:45,440
Speaker 3: every year. There's lots of arguments and discussion, and so

851
00:39:45,560 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 3: wrangling your way into the textbooks and getting the story

852
00:39:48,200 --> 00:39:50,800
Speaker 3: told a certain way is definitely a good way to

853
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:53,399
Speaker 3: lay the groundwork for later getting the Nobel Prize. So

854
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:55,320
Speaker 3: I don't know that that's what Morgan was doing, and

855
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:59,040
Speaker 3: Nobel prizes were definitely a newer thing back then, but

856
00:39:59,239 --> 00:40:01,759
Speaker 3: you know, writing your into the history of science is

857
00:40:01,960 --> 00:40:03,000
Speaker 3: not a new game.

858
00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:07,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, unfortunately, and I think often women aren't playing the game,

859
00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:09,920
Speaker 2: or aren't in a position where they can play the

860
00:40:09,920 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 2: game the same way.

861
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:13,880
Speaker 3: I saw this happening like in person. When we discovered

862
00:40:13,880 --> 00:40:16,040
Speaker 3: that the Higgs boson, we knew that somebody was going

863
00:40:16,040 --> 00:40:17,840
Speaker 3: to get the Novel Prize for it, and all of

864
00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:20,040
Speaker 3: a sudden, there were lots of theorists giving talks about

865
00:40:20,080 --> 00:40:23,200
Speaker 3: their contribution to Higgs theory and the role they played

866
00:40:23,800 --> 00:40:27,120
Speaker 3: in bringing it to the discovery because everybody knew it

867
00:40:27,160 --> 00:40:29,319
Speaker 3: could be shared between three people, and Higgs was getting it,

868
00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:31,439
Speaker 3: but who else was going to get it? So there's

869
00:40:31,480 --> 00:40:33,760
Speaker 3: a lot of campaigning, a lot of talks on that topic,

870
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:36,680
Speaker 3: the history of those discoveries, and it was very clear

871
00:40:36,719 --> 00:40:37,440
Speaker 3: what was happening.

872
00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:39,480
Speaker 2: I think one day we should talk about your research

873
00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:41,640
Speaker 2: in particular. But were you one of those people who

874
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:44,560
Speaker 2: could have campaigned? Were you around during the HAGS time?

875
00:40:46,120 --> 00:40:47,839
Speaker 3: I mean I was on one of the teams. But

876
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:50,319
Speaker 3: one question in the air was were they going to

877
00:40:50,320 --> 00:40:52,560
Speaker 3: give it to theorists who came up with the idea

878
00:40:52,760 --> 00:40:56,120
Speaker 3: or to experimentalists who discovered it or both. In the end,

879
00:40:56,160 --> 00:40:59,279
Speaker 3: they gave it just to theorists, which is still sort

880
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:02,480
Speaker 3: of controversial. And if they had given it to experimentalists,

881
00:41:02,680 --> 00:41:05,000
Speaker 3: probably they would have only given it to the heads

882
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:07,960
Speaker 3: of the experiments because the experiments have five thousand people

883
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:11,000
Speaker 3: on it and you can't give them all the Nobel Prize.

884
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:13,319
Speaker 3: That might be one reason why they only gave it

885
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:16,680
Speaker 3: to a theorist, because how do you decide which experimentalist

886
00:41:16,719 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 3: do give it to? Sort of a frock question. But yeah,

887
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:22,760
Speaker 3: I contributed, I was on those papers. I was there.

888
00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:23,880
Speaker 1: Oh that's exciting.

889
00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:25,719
Speaker 3: Though I don't think I deserve a Nobel Prize for

890
00:41:25,920 --> 00:41:28,719
Speaker 3: my contribution. I'm not going to be campaigning for that.

891
00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:31,600
Speaker 3: But it was fascinating to see the human side of it,

892
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 3: to see people actively out there arguing that they deserve

893
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:37,920
Speaker 3: the Nobel Prize. And I know that that was influential.

894
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:40,600
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that is an interesting insight I don't think

895
00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:43,360
Speaker 2: I had on my radar. Yeah, okay, that's sort of

896
00:41:43,400 --> 00:41:44,880
Speaker 2: like the history there. But one of the things that

897
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:48,040
Speaker 2: I wanted to talk about briefly is how different this

898
00:41:48,080 --> 00:41:51,480
Speaker 2: story could have been if it wasn't the case that

899
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:57,239
Speaker 2: why chromosomes are a different shape, and so maybe it

900
00:41:57,239 --> 00:41:58,680
Speaker 2: would have ended up with the same thing, because there

901
00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:01,400
Speaker 2: were some males who justs weren't getting anything, you know,

902
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:03,520
Speaker 2: they weren't getting like a paired chromosome at all, and

903
00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:04,640
Speaker 2: that's how they became the males.

904
00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:06,600
Speaker 1: But why chromosomes.

905
00:42:06,680 --> 00:42:10,520
Speaker 2: It turns out, over time they tend to degrade, and

906
00:42:10,600 --> 00:42:14,320
Speaker 2: so the idea is that most chromosomes often swap material

907
00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:18,120
Speaker 2: at the beginning of myosis. And this process of swapping

908
00:42:18,200 --> 00:42:20,960
Speaker 2: allows you to get rid of genes that have kind

909
00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:23,560
Speaker 2: of gotten messed up or they've gotten some bad mutations.

910
00:42:24,040 --> 00:42:26,919
Speaker 2: But if you have this part of a chromosome that's

911
00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:29,680
Speaker 2: now controlling you know, for example, say it has the

912
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:34,000
Speaker 2: code for making testes and for a beard and for

913
00:42:34,120 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 2: a vast deference, you don't want to be swapping that

914
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:42,080
Speaker 2: and risk getting those male related genes onto the female

915
00:42:42,120 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 2: related chromosome, so they stop doing that recombination. But that

916
00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:49,279
Speaker 2: means that anything else that's also on that chromosome that

917
00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 2: doesn't have anything to do with maleness has now not

918
00:42:51,719 --> 00:42:55,560
Speaker 2: getting sort of like rejuvenated or removed by this crossing

919
00:42:55,640 --> 00:42:58,839
Speaker 2: over process. And so over time those genes, as they

920
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:01,120
Speaker 2: get messed up, we think they sort of like they

921
00:43:01,160 --> 00:43:03,560
Speaker 2: fall off because you're not using them anymore. And every

922
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:06,200
Speaker 2: once in a while chromosomes sort of lose bits, and

923
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:08,640
Speaker 2: sometimes that's a problem, sometimes it's not. But over time,

924
00:43:09,040 --> 00:43:12,919
Speaker 2: the Y chromosome tends to degenerate, and you also see

925
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 2: this in birds. It's a different chromosome. The males have

926
00:43:15,640 --> 00:43:18,759
Speaker 2: Z and Z and the females have Z and W,

927
00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:22,200
Speaker 2: and that W chromosome is the one that has started

928
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:25,480
Speaker 2: to degenerate, so it's also started to lose things. So

929
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:28,960
Speaker 2: this observation, like, it seems to me that the reason

930
00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:32,160
Speaker 2: we started with sex was because of this weird way

931
00:43:32,200 --> 00:43:34,560
Speaker 2: that these chromosomes sort of change shape over time. And

932
00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:36,520
Speaker 2: if you hadn't had that clue that these things are

933
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:38,839
Speaker 2: different shapes, it would have been much harder to make

934
00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:41,280
Speaker 2: this observation. And I don't know that just seemed interesting

935
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:42,840
Speaker 2: to me while I was going through this research.

936
00:43:43,000 --> 00:43:45,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's sort of macroscopic. I mean, you're zooming in,

937
00:43:45,719 --> 00:43:48,239
Speaker 3: you're using the microscope, but you don't need to look

938
00:43:48,239 --> 00:43:50,799
Speaker 3: at the actual genome and decode it and like see

939
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:53,600
Speaker 3: the structure of DNA to see that there's something different

940
00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 3: between the X and the Y, even just under a microscope.

941
00:43:56,800 --> 00:43:58,640
Speaker 2: And the other thing that's kind of amazing is that

942
00:43:58,840 --> 00:44:02,160
Speaker 2: they were able to figure out anything out because the

943
00:44:02,200 --> 00:44:04,120
Speaker 2: way that whether or not you get an individual that

944
00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:07,440
Speaker 2: produces sperm or eggs or produces both, if they're hermaphrodites,

945
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:10,680
Speaker 2: like the various mechanisms through which those things come about

946
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:15,000
Speaker 2: are super varied. Like reptiles, it does depend on temperature.

947
00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 2: And then in the birds, they've got like the opposite,

948
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:19,760
Speaker 2: like we just talked about. The females are the ones

949
00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 2: that have the different kinds of chromosomes. And you get

950
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:26,160
Speaker 2: some animals that are sequential hermaphrodites. They've got all the

951
00:44:26,480 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 2: genetic code that you need to make either decision, and

952
00:44:28,680 --> 00:44:31,440
Speaker 2: they can switch between what sets of code they're using.

953
00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:34,920
Speaker 2: And while I was reading about sex determination stuff, there

954
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:39,040
Speaker 2: were papers that had titles like sex, chromosome evolution. So

955
00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:43,120
Speaker 2: many exceptions to the rules. It's like, there are just

956
00:44:43,160 --> 00:44:44,920
Speaker 2: so many different ways that this all works out. It's

957
00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:46,800
Speaker 2: kind of amazing we were able to get a foothold,

958
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:47,759
Speaker 2: but we did.

959
00:44:48,160 --> 00:44:51,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's incredible. Everything is messy. It's incredible. You can

960
00:44:51,200 --> 00:44:53,800
Speaker 3: tell any story. What do we know about the history

961
00:44:53,840 --> 00:44:56,920
Speaker 3: of this? You're talking about how over time these degrades.

962
00:44:57,320 --> 00:45:01,520
Speaker 3: What is the history and the evolution of sex in biology? Like,

963
00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:05,280
Speaker 3: do we know when things went from asexual to having

964
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 3: two genders?

965
00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:09,759
Speaker 2: So I think that there were a number of different transitions.

966
00:45:10,280 --> 00:45:12,239
Speaker 2: And I am absolutely not an expert in this. This

967
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:14,000
Speaker 2: would be a whole topic on its own, I think,

968
00:45:14,120 --> 00:45:17,080
Speaker 2: But from my reading, what I think I was picking

969
00:45:17,120 --> 00:45:20,120
Speaker 2: up was that often when you end up with a transition,

970
00:45:20,400 --> 00:45:22,360
Speaker 2: and you end up with offspring that either just have

971
00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:26,080
Speaker 2: eggs or just make sperm, that usually starts from a

972
00:45:26,080 --> 00:45:29,640
Speaker 2: hermaphroditic ancestor, so you have the code to do both,

973
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 2: and then in some individuals, the set of codes for

974
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:35,799
Speaker 2: male traits is turned off, and for some individuals the

975
00:45:35,840 --> 00:45:38,520
Speaker 2: set of codes for female traits gets turned off, and

976
00:45:38,560 --> 00:45:41,600
Speaker 2: you end up producing individuals that can no longer produce

977
00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:44,840
Speaker 2: both sperm and eggs. They produce only sperm or eggs,

978
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 2: and why that would be beneficial to lose that ability

979
00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:51,920
Speaker 2: to do both is maybe a little bit unclear. I

980
00:45:51,960 --> 00:45:55,280
Speaker 2: think one of the leading hypotheses is that there's often

981
00:45:55,320 --> 00:45:59,400
Speaker 2: not a benefit to reproducing with yourself, So hermaphrodites can

982
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:03,000
Speaker 2: often mix their own sperm and eggs to produce offspring.

983
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:06,680
Speaker 2: But in an evolutionary sense, the extra genetic diversity that

984
00:46:06,719 --> 00:46:10,120
Speaker 2: you get by mating with individuals other than yourself has

985
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:12,600
Speaker 2: a huge payoff in terms of being able to like

986
00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:15,319
Speaker 2: stay ahead of parasitic infections and stuff. Yeah, and so

987
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:19,120
Speaker 2: I think there's selective pressure for forcing an individual to

988
00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:22,719
Speaker 2: mate with other individuals, whereas if you're aromaphroditic, maybe you're like, oh,

989
00:46:22,760 --> 00:46:23,920
Speaker 2: it's easier to just mate with me.

990
00:46:26,400 --> 00:46:27,239
Speaker 1: We've all been there.

991
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:29,560
Speaker 3: I'm going to stay in. It's Friday night and I'm tired.

992
00:46:30,040 --> 00:46:33,360
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. And that's where the show gots

993
00:46:33,400 --> 00:46:34,439
Speaker 1: not appropriate for kids.

994
00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:35,160
Speaker 7: Maybe.

995
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:38,000
Speaker 3: Well, I think about that because we talk about earliest

996
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:41,279
Speaker 3: common ancestor and how all life on Earth probably has

997
00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:44,880
Speaker 3: a single ancestor, but you know, we have gender along

998
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:46,759
Speaker 3: the line at some point, and we didn't have it

999
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:48,680
Speaker 3: early on, which means that at some point it must

1000
00:46:48,680 --> 00:46:51,319
Speaker 3: have you know, sprung up. And so it's fascinating to

1001
00:46:51,320 --> 00:46:53,319
Speaker 3: me to think about the history of this and where

1002
00:46:53,360 --> 00:46:56,400
Speaker 3: it diverges. And maybe one day we'll have the whole

1003
00:46:56,440 --> 00:46:58,400
Speaker 3: tree of life all the way back through time and

1004
00:46:58,440 --> 00:46:59,960
Speaker 3: we'll know the answers to all these questions.

1005
00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 2: Bacteria started with like conjugation, where they'd just be like

1006
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:05,080
Speaker 2: passing over small chunks of genes, and so there's been

1007
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:08,319
Speaker 2: a lot of diversity along the way. And without going

1008
00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:12,080
Speaker 2: into too long of a diatribe about definitions, because to

1009
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:14,560
Speaker 2: be honest, I'd like to check my definitions before saying

1010
00:47:14,560 --> 00:47:16,680
Speaker 2: them publicly. You know, gender, I think is often now

1011
00:47:16,719 --> 00:47:19,799
Speaker 2: thought of as being different than just do you make

1012
00:47:19,800 --> 00:47:23,239
Speaker 2: sperm or do you make eggs. It's more about the

1013
00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 2: strategy that you employ as you go through life, and

1014
00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:27,279
Speaker 2: so that's a slightly different thing. Just to get our

1015
00:47:27,360 --> 00:47:30,240
Speaker 2: terms correct. And so today we were specifically talking about

1016
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:33,200
Speaker 2: gomedic sex. So do you end up with the genetic

1017
00:47:33,239 --> 00:47:34,719
Speaker 2: code to make sperm or do you end up with

1018
00:47:34,719 --> 00:47:36,040
Speaker 2: the genetic code to make eggs?

1019
00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:39,000
Speaker 3: All right, so finish the story of Nettie Stevens for

1020
00:47:39,080 --> 00:47:41,919
Speaker 3: us tell us about how she tragically passes away.

1021
00:47:42,280 --> 00:47:45,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, so she finally gets offered that professorship at Bryn Mar,

1022
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:47,960
Speaker 2: which she quite clearly earned because two years before she

1023
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:50,319
Speaker 2: got this offer. You know, as we mentioned, she was

1024
00:47:50,360 --> 00:47:54,319
Speaker 2: listed in the one thousand Top Men of Science, so

1025
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:56,759
Speaker 2: she was again one of eighteen women. So she was

1026
00:47:56,800 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 2: clearly globally known for the work that she was doing,

1027
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:02,440
Speaker 2: and she had one ward for her work on sex chromosomes.

1028
00:48:02,719 --> 00:48:05,760
Speaker 2: So I think everybody realized that she was making big contributions.

1029
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:09,239
Speaker 2: But by the time she was ready to start that professorship,

1030
00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:12,440
Speaker 2: she died at age fifty of breast cancer. And so

1031
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:14,719
Speaker 2: who know, I mean, she still had like a prolific

1032
00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:17,160
Speaker 2: publication record up until that point. I think she had

1033
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:20,200
Speaker 2: published something like forty papers and that was.

1034
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:20,560
Speaker 1: Like, you know what.

1035
00:48:20,600 --> 00:48:23,239
Speaker 2: She got her PhD in nineteen oh three. Wow, And

1036
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:25,720
Speaker 2: so in maybe a fifteen year period if you include

1037
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:27,680
Speaker 2: when she was working on her master she managed to

1038
00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:30,520
Speaker 2: really knock out a bunch of papers, which to me

1039
00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:33,680
Speaker 2: is incredible, especially when you consider the tide that she

1040
00:48:33,760 --> 00:48:35,120
Speaker 2: was working against at the time.

1041
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:37,840
Speaker 3: This is like a Mary Currie type story. Could the

1042
00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:40,800
Speaker 3: work she was doing somehow have contributed to her breast cancer,

1043
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 3: where she using like really dangeruis chemicals and this kind

1044
00:48:44,600 --> 00:48:46,799
Speaker 3: of stuff in the lab to do her studies. Or

1045
00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:48,200
Speaker 3: is this just random and bad luck.

1046
00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:49,280
Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting.

1047
00:48:49,360 --> 00:48:52,560
Speaker 2: I didn't come across anyone who was suggesting that the

1048
00:48:52,600 --> 00:48:54,560
Speaker 2: work is what ended up killing her. She was using

1049
00:48:54,640 --> 00:48:57,480
Speaker 2: a lot of different kinds of stains, and so stains

1050
00:48:57,520 --> 00:49:00,320
Speaker 2: make it easier to see the chromosomes as they and

1051
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:02,800
Speaker 2: as they separate. I don't know if any of those

1052
00:49:02,920 --> 00:49:06,560
Speaker 2: stains were also chriscinogenic, so we're also likely to cause cancer.

1053
00:49:07,239 --> 00:49:08,799
Speaker 2: It's possible, but I don't know.

1054
00:49:09,040 --> 00:49:11,640
Speaker 3: As long as we're just listing possibilities. You know, maybe

1055
00:49:11,719 --> 00:49:18,120
Speaker 3: Morgan somehow poisoned her. Yes, let's further smirch his character anyway,

1056
00:49:18,920 --> 00:49:19,479
Speaker 3: that's right.

1057
00:49:20,160 --> 00:49:21,960
Speaker 2: I wonder if we're going to get angry emails, But

1058
00:49:22,040 --> 00:49:24,400
Speaker 2: you know, we'll invite them on the show and they

1059
00:49:24,400 --> 00:49:25,719
Speaker 2: can defend Morgan if they'd like.

1060
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:28,400
Speaker 3: That would be interesting, exactly if you are Thomas Morgan

1061
00:49:28,440 --> 00:49:30,600
Speaker 3: the fourth or whatever, and you are grippy at hearing

1062
00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:33,640
Speaker 3: your great great grandfather's characters merged right in and we

1063
00:49:33,640 --> 00:49:34,479
Speaker 3: will clear the air.

1064
00:49:34,640 --> 00:49:37,000
Speaker 2: But smirched is a great word that's not used nearly

1065
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:38,120
Speaker 2: as often as it should be.

1066
00:49:39,040 --> 00:49:40,760
Speaker 3: It feels sort of very nineteen hundreds.

1067
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:44,600
Speaker 1: I thought it was er appropriate, absolutely error appropriate.

1068
00:49:44,680 --> 00:49:48,239
Speaker 2: So anyway, reading about Nettie made me like totally appreciate

1069
00:49:49,200 --> 00:49:52,320
Speaker 2: I have had difficult sort of steps in my journey.

1070
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:54,680
Speaker 2: I did end up leaving like a master's lab because

1071
00:49:54,719 --> 00:49:57,880
Speaker 2: of sexual harassment and so like it. You know, hasn't

1072
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:00,719
Speaker 2: been one hundred percent easy, but tip to what she.

1073
00:50:00,760 --> 00:50:03,640
Speaker 1: Had to go through, then I've had an easy path.

1074
00:50:04,120 --> 00:50:05,879
Speaker 2: Anyway, It's just kind of a bummer to hear about

1075
00:50:05,880 --> 00:50:07,960
Speaker 2: a woman who was doing amazing work, and you know,

1076
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:10,200
Speaker 2: I think it would be reasonable to say that she

1077
00:50:10,239 --> 00:50:13,680
Speaker 2: and Wilson should both jointly be known for this incredible discovery.

1078
00:50:13,920 --> 00:50:14,680
Speaker 1: But you know, we.

1079
00:50:14,760 --> 00:50:17,040
Speaker 2: All think of it as Morgan's which is just a

1080
00:50:17,040 --> 00:50:18,440
Speaker 2: bummer on a lot of levels.

1081
00:50:18,680 --> 00:50:19,520
Speaker 1: So there you go.

1082
00:50:19,840 --> 00:50:23,719
Speaker 3: Here we are pushing gently back against Morgan's politicking to

1083
00:50:23,760 --> 00:50:25,600
Speaker 3: get himself in the top men of science.

1084
00:50:25,880 --> 00:50:27,719
Speaker 2: There we go, Well, he got a noble price, so

1085
00:50:27,800 --> 00:50:29,239
Speaker 2: I think he won, and we're a little too late,

1086
00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:33,360
Speaker 2: but hopefully y'all will remember the name Nettie Stevens and

1087
00:50:33,400 --> 00:50:35,440
Speaker 2: We'll go ahead and share this story with other people

1088
00:50:35,480 --> 00:50:36,319
Speaker 2: and Nettie will get.

1089
00:50:36,239 --> 00:50:37,160
Speaker 1: The credit she deserves.

1090
00:50:37,320 --> 00:50:39,319
Speaker 3: Congrats and Nittie on all of your discoveries.

1091
00:50:40,320 --> 00:50:41,040
Speaker 1: Way to Go, NTTI.

1092
00:50:48,080 --> 00:50:51,600
Speaker 2: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio.

1093
00:50:51,800 --> 00:50:54,360
Speaker 1: We would love to hear from you, We really would.

1094
00:50:54,520 --> 00:50:57,279
Speaker 3: We want to know what questions you have about this

1095
00:50:57,480 --> 00:50:59,160
Speaker 3: Extraordinary Universe.

1096
00:50:59,239 --> 00:51:02,200
Speaker 2: We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions

1097
00:51:02,239 --> 00:51:03,200
Speaker 2: for future shows.

1098
00:51:03,320 --> 00:51:05,680
Speaker 1: If you contact us, we will get back to you.

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00:51:05,880 --> 00:51:09,399
Speaker 3: We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us

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00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:12,200
Speaker 3: at Questions at Danielankelly dot.

1101
00:51:12,080 --> 00:51:13,760
Speaker 1: Org, or you can find us on social media.

1102
00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:17,680
Speaker 2: We have accounts on x, Instagram, Blue Sky and on

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00:51:17,719 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 2: all of those platforms.

1104
00:51:18,680 --> 00:51:21,640
Speaker 1: You can find us at D and K Universe.

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00:51:21,760 --> 00:51:23,239
Speaker 3: Don't be shy, write to us