Speaker 1: Have you ever thought about how incredibly complex I spit is.
Speaker 1: It may only be water, but just aliva isn't simple.
Speaker 1: That remaining one holds incredibly meaningful information that could change everything.
Speaker 1: And I'm not just talking about your family treat Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Barrett to day Thurston. And on this season of
Speaker 1: Spit and I Heart Radio Podcast with twenty three and Me,
Speaker 1: we explore how DNA isn't just about ancestry, it can
Speaker 1: also be key to understanding your health. Hello, and welcome back.
Speaker 1: History is beautiful, brutal, and often ridiculous. You don't think so,
Speaker 1: talk to the host of our next episode, Ben Bowling
Speaker 1: and Noel Brown. Ben and Noel are the hosts of
Speaker 1: the crazy, fun and informative podcast Ridiculous History, where each
Speaker 1: week they dive into some of the weirdest stories from
Speaker 1: across the span of human civilization. That's a lot of
Speaker 1: raw material. In this episode, Ben and Nol set out
Speaker 1: to unravel the history of genetic research, which surprisingly traces
Speaker 1: all the way back to the year five thousand BC.
Speaker 1: Back then, back in the day, humans were practicing something
Speaker 1: called selective breeding and early acknowledgment of genetic traits and
Speaker 1: a willingness to isolate and express them, whether it was
Speaker 1: growing crops, breeding livestock, or breeding humans. Now, what started
Speaker 1: as more of a philosophical question what makes you you?
Speaker 1: What makes me me? Led to a fascinating and yes,
Speaker 1: sometimes ridiculous history of an incredible scientific achievement. So when
Speaker 1: the guys took a twenty three in me test, they
Speaker 1: got them thinking. Nowadays, it's easier than ever to learn
Speaker 1: more about your past and possible future. Through the power
Speaker 1: of genetic testing, we have the power to unlock information
Speaker 1: on our ancestry, traits, and health, just to name a few.
Speaker 1: But how did this world changing science evolved from the
Speaker 1: work of ancient philosophers and Augustinian friars all the way
Speaker 1: to the cutting edge innovations of the modern day. Let's
Speaker 1: listen in as the guys present their research, along with
Speaker 1: their own personal experiences with twenty three and me, what
Speaker 1: they learned about their health, and what the report tells
Speaker 1: them about their own Ridiculous history. Ridiculous History is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Welcome back to the show,
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1: Uh Let's give a shout out to our one and
Speaker 1: only demand the myth jen super producer Mr Max Williams,
Speaker 1: and they called me Ben Uh joined as always with
Speaker 1: Mr Noel Brown. Uh Noel. We like like most people,
Speaker 1: we like to think of ourselves as fairly distinct here
Speaker 1: in the in the mass of humanity, right. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we're special boys. There we go, there we go. We uh. We,
Speaker 1: like many other people throughout ancient history to the modern day,
Speaker 1: have spent a lot of time wondering where we came from,
Speaker 1: wondering about our origins as individuals. And like many people,
Speaker 1: you know, we we know a little bit about our ancestry.
Speaker 1: We don't know everything, however, and that's why we were
Speaker 1: interested to team up with twenty three and Me. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: you know, it's easier than ever to learn about your
Speaker 1: past through the power of genetic testing, and no I
Speaker 1: have to ask and Max you as well. Growing up,
Speaker 1: did you, guys ever have a member of your family
Speaker 1: who was like obsessed with their genealogy? I didn't really personally,
Speaker 1: and in fact, it wasn't until uh no spoilers yet,
Speaker 1: but that I took the twenty three and Me a
Speaker 1: test that I really had much sense of my heritage
Speaker 1: at all. So this was super eye opening and fascinating
Speaker 1: process for me. Um. But no, I definitely am aware
Speaker 1: of folks that take that very seriously and kind of
Speaker 1: consider themselves like armchair you know, genealogists or anthropologists or
Speaker 1: what have you. But there was really nobody in my
Speaker 1: family that that much mentioned it when I was growing up.
Speaker 1: How about you, guys. Yeah, I actually have a pretty
Speaker 1: extensive story about this one. It's uh so, my paternal grandfather,
Speaker 1: to my great grandfather and my dad's side of the family,
Speaker 1: he was adopted in the early nineteen hundreds and they
Speaker 1: lost all of his adoption papers, so there was really
Speaker 1: like no idea where that'side of my family came from.
Speaker 1: It's just been kind of things. So my aunt has
Speaker 1: been spending with the last no joke, like thirty plus
Speaker 1: years just trying to dig up some and like she
Speaker 1: recently did a test like this and it's got like
Speaker 1: some more answers, but it's been up. It's been like
Speaker 1: a kind of like a lifelong pursuit of hers right there. Wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had I had something similar because of the controversy
Speaker 1: surrounding my paternal line, the Malungeon side of my family.
Speaker 1: Uh So, there were times where people were actively hiding there. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess they're perceived membership of that group and as
Speaker 1: a result, they're hiding some of their genealogy. But of
Speaker 1: course as time went on, people became less hesitant, you
Speaker 1: know about acknowledging the past and the truth. And now
Speaker 1: here in two it is easier than ever for people to,
Speaker 1: as we said, learn more about what led to you
Speaker 1: being here a fellow ridiculous historian listening to this show today.
Speaker 1: But today's question, how did the world changing science of
Speaker 1: genetic testing and our concepts of DNA? How did they
Speaker 1: evolve from the word of ancient philosophers and Augustinian friars
Speaker 1: all the way to these cutting edge innovations. In today's show,
Speaker 1: we're going to unravel some of the history of genetic research,
Speaker 1: and along the way we might share some of our
Speaker 1: own personal experiences. Because spoiler folks, uh Noel and I
Speaker 1: each took some test with twenty three and me, Uh Noel,
Speaker 1: I believe this was your second test with the group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, uh And let me tell you a lot
Speaker 1: of things have changed for the better. It was probably
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago that I took the test
Speaker 1: previously and the one that we took for this episode.
Speaker 1: This partnership just had way more granular information, including stuff
Speaker 1: about potential health risks, markers that are contained you know,
Speaker 1: within my genetic code, our genetic code, your genetic code, um,
Speaker 1: that can give you indications as to whether you're predisposed
Speaker 1: to certain medical conditions. So it was very very illuminating me.
Speaker 1: The last one was great too, but it really feels
Speaker 1: like they've added a lot more bang for the buck
Speaker 1: and a lot more features, a lot more results that
Speaker 1: are very meaningful. Not to mention, um, I believe Ben,
Speaker 1: you and I have some interesting kind of shared results
Speaker 1: that we will also say for the end. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you might be surprised by how this sort of technology
Speaker 1: can connect you with people you never imagine yourself connected with.
Speaker 1: But let's let's start there, right, What makes you you? Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's the lay of the last. People are asking
Speaker 1: what makes me me? What makes you you? Well before
Speaker 1: the concept of microscopes, well before DNA was even a thing.
Speaker 1: The history of this, like the the ancestry of ancestry
Speaker 1: research and d NA starts all the way back in
Speaker 1: like five thousand b C, which I think might surprise
Speaker 1: a lot of people, Oh for sure. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it was really more of a philosophical question
Speaker 1: for a long long time. I mean, there was certainly
Speaker 1: observations made towards various traits and things that family members possessed,
Speaker 1: but the whole idea of like who who am I,
Speaker 1: where do I connect in the universe and you know,
Speaker 1: life and all of that was much more of a
Speaker 1: of a philosophical question. But you're right then as early
Speaker 1: as five thousand b c. E UM humans were practicing
Speaker 1: something called selective breeding. So there was an acknowledgment of like, okay,
Speaker 1: how do we isolate these traits and figure out how
Speaker 1: to express them, whether it be livestock or or crops
Speaker 1: or what have you, or even you know, humans, There
Speaker 1: was a certain amount of selective breeding that came with
Speaker 1: like in breeding, uh, and you know, the idea of
Speaker 1: maintaining a bloodline. And as we know that, there were
Speaker 1: some pretty catastrophic consequences to those um activities. But you know,
Speaker 1: their head was kind of in the right place. They
Speaker 1: just really didn't quite know what they were doing, but
Speaker 1: they definitely did when it came to the livestock and
Speaker 1: the crops to make more robust crops and more hearty livestock. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a k A. The reason you have things like corn,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, the reason you have domesticated
Speaker 1: crops as they're called. And there's something really interesting about that.
Speaker 1: I can't remember who I was speaking to, but we
Speaker 1: were talking about the old question what is the most
Speaker 1: successful form of life on the planet. And you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people would just say humans. But if
Speaker 1: you think about it, the idea of wheat being domesticated
Speaker 1: or corn being domesticated, it sounds like humans won that game.
Speaker 1: But if you look at it from the perspective of
Speaker 1: the plant, they kind of one because now they're spread
Speaker 1: across the planet. I thought that was kind of trippy. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I actually heard an interview with an entomologist who specifically
Speaker 1: um focuses on flies. UM and flies. He believes we're
Speaker 1: one of the most successful species in the history of
Speaker 1: the world because of their ability to kind of bob
Speaker 1: and weave and and and dodge things and just you know,
Speaker 1: they're one of the most successful aerialists on the planet.
Speaker 1: And also they essentially feed on dead stuff, which there's
Speaker 1: always gonna be plenty of. Also, I believe they've been around,
Speaker 1: uh much longer than humans. So while we may be
Speaker 1: successful and good at, like, you know, making stuff and
Speaker 1: figuring things out, it's all kind of self serving and
Speaker 1: in the end of the day, we're only really a
Speaker 1: blip in the historical record. Oh yeah, we're like a
Speaker 1: fad to crocodiles, you know what I mean, We're like
Speaker 1: POGs to crocodiles and alligators. But but you were you
Speaker 1: a pog guy? Were you a pargman? No? I had
Speaker 1: some POGs, but I wouldn't say I was a parkman.
Speaker 1: I just I had enough to play the game, and
Speaker 1: then I didn't get super into the game. I actually
Speaker 1: like the art more. That's right. I barely understood how
Speaker 1: the game was play. I just know there were slammers
Speaker 1: and they were the POGs, and I mean it was
Speaker 1: kind of like Tiddley winks you want other people's POGs
Speaker 1: by slam in them in a stack. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. We're not here to talk about pole.
Speaker 1: We are here to talk about is Pangenesis. Yes, let's
Speaker 1: talk about a little bit about the great philosophers you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. So let's go to Aristotle Aristotle is one
Speaker 1: of the first people on record who said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I wonder if traits acquired throughout an organism's lifetime can
Speaker 1: be transmitted to their offspring. Essentially, and not to be
Speaker 1: too to gruesome here, folks, but essentially, the question is
Speaker 1: if I took five people and I cut off a
Speaker 1: different finger on each one of their right hands, would
Speaker 1: their children also be missing the same finger when they
Speaker 1: were born because that trait was acquired during that person's
Speaker 1: unfortunate lifetime. He's kind of added to this guessing game
Speaker 1: with this theory the way you just mentioned Pangenesis, which
Speaker 1: sort of just scribes how these traits could be passed
Speaker 1: on through particles called give us, which sort of encapsulated
Speaker 1: the traits and then allowed them to be transmitted to
Speaker 1: reproductive cells. And then he also thought about what he
Speaker 1: called the form giving principle, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff you're gonna hear from these ancient thinkers, by the way,
Speaker 1: is in principle not super duper far off. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: believed in something called the form giving principle that was
Speaker 1: a property of an organism that was able to be
Speaker 1: transmitted through bodily fluid specifically semen, which he believed was
Speaker 1: kind of like blood, but a more pure form of
Speaker 1: the stuff. And also we believed that the mother's minstreul
Speaker 1: blood was another one of these UH form giving fluids.
Speaker 1: He believed that this interacted in the womb to direct
Speaker 1: uh the early development of an organism. M M. So again,
Speaker 1: you can you can see where UH, someone working with
Speaker 1: the technology at the time could have reasonably started making
Speaker 1: these suppositions. But Pythagoras, Aristotle, they weren't the only folks
Speaker 1: who were thinking through this. Hippocrates and Epicurus also had
Speaker 1: their own takes on the idea of heredity. Heredity is
Speaker 1: just the passing on of traits from parents to offspring,
Speaker 1: whether that's through sexual reproduction or through a sexual reproduction.
Speaker 1: And it's weird because hippocrates theory is sort of is
Speaker 1: kind of similar to Darwin's later ideas that involved hereditary
Speaker 1: material collecting from throughout the body. But again, one thing
Speaker 1: we wanna be careful of here is we want to
Speaker 1: avoid just focusing on the ancient Western philosophers, because people
Speaker 1: in India and China we're thinking about this too, that's right,
Speaker 1: And the Sharraka Samita that was written or at least
Speaker 1: a distributed around three Ancient Indian medical writers observed the
Speaker 1: characteristics of the child were determined by what they saw
Speaker 1: as four distinct factors, the first being those from the
Speaker 1: mother's reproductive material, second from the father's sperm, and the
Speaker 1: third from the diet of the pregnant mother. Uh, and
Speaker 1: the fourth being those accompanying the soul. So, while there
Speaker 1: were some of these do feel pretty connected to modern
Speaker 1: scientific understanding of reproduction, that fourth one kind of imparts
Speaker 1: a more religious characteristic as well. Yeah, yeah, one through
Speaker 1: three you cannot along home going, okay, uh huh sure.
Speaker 1: And then number four is where we see just how
Speaker 1: how inextricably intertwined. Uh, the ideas of religion were with
Speaker 1: the ideas of medicine. You know, it's funny, but the
Speaker 1: idea of things becoming attached to the soul as it
Speaker 1: enters the fetus, what does that remind you of? Uh? Oh, scientology.
Speaker 1: I was thinking cloud Atlas reincarnation, but yeah, well those
Speaker 1: are all kind of in the same wheelhouse. But I
Speaker 1: mean it's the idea of like negative things becoming attached
Speaker 1: to the soul from birth to carry the follow you
Speaker 1: along for the rest of your life and cause you
Speaker 1: to you to develop all kinds of problems that that
Speaker 1: just reminds me of that that concept within scientology, not
Speaker 1: that l. Ron Hubbard was anything but original, you know. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: I walked around the corner for that for that slight this.
Speaker 1: But let's jump around in time, Like when you hear this,
Speaker 1: when you thought about this episode right as you tuned in,
Speaker 1: you were probably thinking of Charles Darwin and his famous
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine banger on the Origin of Species full
Speaker 1: title on the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Speaker 1: Selection or the preservation and favored races and the struggle
Speaker 1: for life. We'll get to that in a second. Darwin
Speaker 1: is a recurring guests on our show. But if we're
Speaker 1: talking about genetic research and we're talking about the full
Speaker 1: scope of this, you can kind of divide it into
Speaker 1: two broad eras all the stuff before a guy named
Speaker 1: Gregor Johann Mendel, and all this stuff after this Friar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Modern genetics really started with the work of
Speaker 1: this man who was an Augustinian Friar. He was really
Speaker 1: into the idea of propagating pea plants, like you know,
Speaker 1: like English little green peas. When he published his work
Speaker 1: specifically on the reproductive qualities of these little fellas in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six, he established the theory of Mendelian inheritance UM.
Speaker 1: He became the first person to lay out a scientific
Speaker 1: and mathematically founded uh science of genetics, even before it
Speaker 1: was even called that. And this is legit. You can
Speaker 1: find it in his Encyclopedia Britannic Entry, which personally I
Speaker 1: thought did a good job of breaking it down in
Speaker 1: an understandable way. So let's get in the nuts and bolts.
Speaker 1: Strap in for some math. Don't worry, we're gonna. We're gonna.
Speaker 1: We'll be right there with you. Try to make it easy. Okay,
Speaker 1: matth mass me up. Then let's math up. So the
Speaker 1: reason Mindel wants to study the p plant, the edible
Speaker 1: p or pisso sativum, is because it had a lot
Speaker 1: of distinct varieties. It was easy to control, you know,
Speaker 1: like easy to grow, but then also easy to control
Speaker 1: how the plants pollinate. And there was a high proportion
Speaker 1: of successful seed germin nations, which means you know, it
Speaker 1: was uh. If you were making something new or trying
Speaker 1: to attract something, you had a higher than average likelihood
Speaker 1: of that plant actually growing to pass the seed stage.
Speaker 1: So he tested UH for for about two years, from
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty four to fifty six. He tested thirty four
Speaker 1: different varieties for what he called the constancy of their traits.
Speaker 1: And when he wanted to see how these things transmitted,
Speaker 1: he chose seven traits that he thought were expressed in
Speaker 1: a distinctive manner. And it's stuff that's like a lot
Speaker 1: of it's stuff that's visually apparent to him. So stuff
Speaker 1: like tall plants and short plants. What colors are their seeds?
Speaker 1: Green or yellow? So he referred to these kind of
Speaker 1: alternate versions UM as contrasted characters. UH. He also referred
Speaker 1: to them as character pairs UM. And you know, this
Speaker 1: is very similar to what we talked about in ancient times,
Speaker 1: the idea of kind of cross breeding different things to
Speaker 1: create a strengthened single traits. He would cross varieties that
Speaker 1: were the same except for one trait. So, for example,
Speaker 1: tall my be crossed with short UM and then there
Speaker 1: would become a generation of hybrids, which he referred to
Speaker 1: as f one. That generation would display the character of
Speaker 1: one variety but not that of the other. UH. And
Speaker 1: he believed, or at least using terms that he developed,
Speaker 1: one of the characters was dominant and the other one
Speaker 1: was recessive. This this, this checks out with what we
Speaker 1: know today right in terms of like eye color and
Speaker 1: all of that stuff. We have more into that in
Speaker 1: a bit, but he was definitely barking up the right
Speaker 1: genetic tree. So in the offspring that he raised from
Speaker 1: all of these crossed hybrids, which he referred to as
Speaker 1: second generation or F two, he would see the recessive
Speaker 1: trade appearing. And then he noted that entirely third of
Speaker 1: them had the original heritable traits while two thirds were
Speaker 1: of that hybrid arrangements you know, or rather you know,
Speaker 1: presented the more of the hybrid kind of qualities. So
Speaker 1: he yeah, maybe, man, what don't you you you kind
Speaker 1: of did the research on the math here, So why
Speaker 1: don't you take us home here with like kind of
Speaker 1: the solution. Oh for sure. So this goes to uh
Speaker 1: Gregor's major discovery. He says, Look, after I've read these
Speaker 1: successive generations of plants, just as you describe, Noel, I'm
Speaker 1: seeing by the time I get to the descendants of
Speaker 1: the dominant group that I can rewrite that three to
Speaker 1: one ratio. You know that kind of dominant to recessive
Speaker 1: appearance ratio. I can rewrite it to one to two
Speaker 1: to one, and by this we mean fifty percent of
Speaker 1: that second generation we're true breeding. Fifty percent we're still hybrid.
Speaker 1: In a in a way, he was. He finally he
Speaker 1: was arriving at an understanding of what we call dominant
Speaker 1: and recessive genes today. This major discovery probably wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been made by his predecessors because they didn't grow statistically
Speaker 1: significant populations of testing material, which is a very cold
Speaker 1: way to say living things, and they didn't follow the
Speaker 1: individual characters or characteristics separately to establish their relationships to
Speaker 1: each other overall. So this is big, big stuff, right,
Speaker 1: this is world changing stuff. He publishes it, and everyone
Speaker 1: ignores him. Everyone sort of ignores him. It comes out
Speaker 1: in like a not very well known scientific journal. Most
Speaker 1: of the scientific community at large isn't aware of it.
Speaker 1: And if you're talking about heredity at this time, you
Speaker 1: are much more likely to be in a slaughter or
Speaker 1: a cafe talking about Darwin's hot button theory of evolution
Speaker 1: by natural selection. And uh he also Darwin, we should say,
Speaker 1: wasn't super perfect aside from his culinary taste, which we're
Speaker 1: ambitious check out weird historical flexes uh to learn more.
Speaker 1: He uh, he had a theory that not all his
Speaker 1: theories widely accepted. His own theory of heredity, which she
Speaker 1: had called pancha out assists as well, and just didn't
Speaker 1: really didn't really fly. Uh. So to find the next
Speaker 1: part of the story, we have to fast forward to
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty three. Let's just remember that, I mean, reading
Speaker 1: through this now and talking about this now, we're so
Speaker 1: many echoes of what we know to have been determined
Speaker 1: to be true and accurate. So it's just like, well,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't people pay attention to this? But at the
Speaker 1: time it was like very out there right, like it
Speaker 1: would not have been connecting with like the sort of
Speaker 1: traditional scientific thought of the time. And it's just one
Speaker 1: guy kind of like breeding pea plants and and espousing
Speaker 1: these kind of like whacka doo notions of traits and
Speaker 1: qualities in offspring, So would not have been like an
Speaker 1: easy cell necessarily which you write them. If we pressed
Speaker 1: the fast forward button into eighteen eighty three, who got
Speaker 1: a man named August Weissman who was an evolutionary biologist
Speaker 1: from Germany who was making waves by breeding mice after
Speaker 1: are chopping off their tails like three blind mice style.
Speaker 1: But presumably you know, for science, for science little yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he uh. He did this for reasons, as he assured
Speaker 1: the mice police. Uh. Mainly, even though this sounds ghoulish,
Speaker 1: there was something important to it. He wanted to disprove
Speaker 1: this popular idea of lamarchism, the concept, like we said,
Speaker 1: similar to the ancient philosophy concept that physical characteristics of
Speaker 1: apparent organism can be carried through to the offspring. So
Speaker 1: when mice with amputated tales gave birth to mice with
Speaker 1: absolutely normal tales, they proved a crucial point. So we
Speaker 1: don't the names of those mice are lost to history,
Speaker 1: but thank you, now we we do know a very
Speaker 1: interesting field that's more in the realm of psychology today. Epogenetics,
Speaker 1: the idea that trauma can be um, you know, carried
Speaker 1: or passed down through generations. So in theory, the trauma
Speaker 1: of having their tails chopped off could have been you know,
Speaker 1: carried to their offspring. Yeah. That's a great point, man,
Speaker 1: because epigenetics is the study of the way gene expression
Speaker 1: has changed, like what is more active in your genetic
Speaker 1: code instead of like your actual genes getting altered. There's
Speaker 1: a great study about starvation and World War two that
Speaker 1: goes to this. Epigenetics is like still very much the
Speaker 1: forefront of genetic science today. Yeah, that is a good point.
Speaker 1: Maybe the mice were traumatized, certainly possible. Um, but let's
Speaker 1: get into some more breakthroughs. Here are some names that
Speaker 1: might ring a bell, Watson and Cricky. There's like a
Speaker 1: biopic about these guys. I think Jeff Goldbloom played Watson
Speaker 1: or Craig. I can't remember which Gary played both of them.
Speaker 1: Maybe certainly possible, yeah, or like, yeah, Daniel de Lewis
Speaker 1: played every character in the whole movie. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they are you know those names like leave it if
Speaker 1: you don't know exactly what they did because they are, uh,
Speaker 1: the American biologists that are largely created Well, they are
Speaker 1: credited with discovering DNA in the nineteen fifties. But you know,
Speaker 1: as is off of the case with science though, timing
Speaker 1: is everything. Who's first to market with something it is
Speaker 1: not necessarily the same as like who actually discovered the things.
Speaker 1: So DNA was in fact first identified in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, eighteen sixty nine to be precise, by a
Speaker 1: Swiss chemist named Friedrich U. Mascher. But again, Watson and
Speaker 1: Crick are the names that you probably think of when
Speaker 1: you think of of d N A and and DNA
Speaker 1: sequencing and all of that. Also, to jump in here
Speaker 1: real quick, the name of it is the Race for
Speaker 1: the Double Helix who aired September fourteenth, seven aired, So
Speaker 1: it was a TV movie, Yeah, and it had Jeff
Speaker 1: Goldbloom as Jim Wasson, Tim Pigott Smith as Frances Crick,
Speaker 1: Alan Howard as Maurice Wilkins, and Julie Stevenson as Rosalind Franklin.
Speaker 1: Here in a little yes, hit the sound cue just
Speaker 1: right now. Awesome, Thanks Max, and thanks Matt Frederick. So
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Those guys are super famous, and rightly so.
Speaker 1: But there's more to their story. A lot of people,
Speaker 1: probably ourselves included at some point, have made the mistake
Speaker 1: and thought those guys discovered DNA by themselves in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. This is not the case in reality. Instead,
Speaker 1: DNA was first identified all the way back in the
Speaker 1: late eighteen sixties. In eighteen sixty nine by a Swiss
Speaker 1: chemist named Friedrich Myischer. He wanted to figure out what
Speaker 1: made white blood cells. White blood cells, so you know
Speaker 1: those that are part of the body immune system, and
Speaker 1: his main source of those cells was kind of kind
Speaker 1: of growsy, kind of gnarly. He got most of these
Speaker 1: white blood cells for his research from pus coded bandages
Speaker 1: that from a clinic. So, um, you can't do that today.
Speaker 1: That is wild plus coded bandages. That's a metal band
Speaker 1: if I ever heard one, or at the very least
Speaker 1: a song. Yeah, that's pretty pretty gross. Uh. So, he
Speaker 1: noticed that when you added acid to a solution of
Speaker 1: those cells, that a substance separated out from the solution,
Speaker 1: and that substance was able to be dissolved again in
Speaker 1: an alkali solution. So in investigating that solution, he discovered
Speaker 1: that it had some pretty unusual properties. It was different
Speaker 1: from other proteins that he'd looked into before that he
Speaker 1: was you know, much more familiar with through his past research.
Speaker 1: And my Share called this substance nucleon because he believed
Speaker 1: that it had like you know, leached out from the
Speaker 1: nucleus of the cell um, which you know at this point,
Speaker 1: that was something that people understood the nucleus of the salad,
Speaker 1: just the makeup of the atom and the cell, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So Maisha had discovered essentially the basis for for all
Speaker 1: of life, the molecular basis DNA. And then he decided,
Speaker 1: how how am I going to figure out how to
Speaker 1: pull this out in its purest form? Yeah? And he
Speaker 1: you know, he didn't know that exactly what he had discovered,
Speaker 1: but he discovered it. And then in the decades after
Speaker 1: his discovery, we see this cavalcade of breakthroughs by many
Speaker 1: other researchers, other scientists, people like Phoebus Levine and Irwin
Speaker 1: Chargeth carry out these research efforts to learn more about
Speaker 1: the DNA molecule, including its primary chemical components and the
Speaker 1: ways those components work together. We actually get Philoettomalogy nerds
Speaker 1: the name DNA from a biochemist named Albrick Coastal in
Speaker 1: good old Albrick, who I'll call Al identified nucleon as
Speaker 1: a nuclear Yeah, yeah, if he'll be my bodyguard. So
Speaker 1: he provided the present chemical name dexo ribon nucleic acid DNA,
Speaker 1: and then he also went on for extra credit to
Speaker 1: isolate the five nucleotide bases that are the building blocks
Speaker 1: of DNA and are in a First we have at anine,
Speaker 1: then we have a Sias scene, then we have guanine,
Speaker 1: thymine and Eura sill. Yeah, not to do much too
Speaker 1: much p humor, but eur a sill feels like you
Speaker 1: get ripped off, like you know, diuretic of some kind. Yes,
Speaker 1: with a bunch of fine prints at the very end
Speaker 1: of the commercial. Right, So there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a bitter sweet note to greg Or Mendel's story. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until nineteen sixteen, years after his death in eighty
Speaker 1: four that he finally got his due. Three separate botanist
Speaker 1: Hugo de Vrais, Carl Corren's Eric van Scherbak, all of
Speaker 1: them independently rediscovered the work of this obscure Augustinian Friar,
Speaker 1: and with the new breakthroughs in the understanding of cells
Speaker 1: and chromosomes, they were able to kind of ground his
Speaker 1: weird p plant experiments, and so people were able to say, again,
Speaker 1: the guy never lived to see it, but people were
Speaker 1: able to say, Wow, he was really onto something. And
Speaker 1: then in nineteen o two, just a few years later,
Speaker 1: things kick up another notch. A scientist in Walter Sutton says, Hey,
Speaker 1: the segregation of chromosomes during the process of neosis are
Speaker 1: pretty much exactly like the segregation pattern that this friar predicted.
Speaker 1: Oh and people weren't calling them jeans yet. That still
Speaker 1: hasn't happened. No, No, it definitely wasn't. That didn't happen
Speaker 1: until nineteen o nine, when a guy by the name
Speaker 1: of Wilhelm Johansen came up with it. He coined it.
Speaker 1: He used it to describe the Mindelian unit of of
Speaker 1: of reproduction. He also used the terms genotype and phenotype
Speaker 1: to separate the genetic traits of an individual um and
Speaker 1: the way it ultimately came to look. So, as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, here is a list, a kind of
Speaker 1: a quick hit list of other notable breakthroughs of the time.
Speaker 1: Don only just round robin these ben yes. So. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, a guy named Thomas Hunt Morgan, along with
Speaker 1: his students, used fruit flies to show the chromosomes carry jeans.
Speaker 1: They also discover what called genetic linkage. In George Beatle
Speaker 1: and Edward Tatum's experiments on the red bread mold um
Speaker 1: known as Neurospora crassa, also be a good name for
Speaker 1: a metal man um show that genes act by regulating
Speaker 1: distinct chemical events. They actually proposed the two fellows that
Speaker 1: each gene directs the formation of a single enzyme. And
Speaker 1: then in ninety three, again just a few years later,
Speaker 1: William Askedbury, who is a scientist from Britain, gets the
Speaker 1: first X ray diffraction pattern of DNA and it shows
Speaker 1: that DNA must have a regular periodic structure. This leads
Speaker 1: him to say that, hey, maybe nucleotide bases are stacked
Speaker 1: on top of each other, but what's DNA actually made of?
Speaker 1: H In nineteen fifty to Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase
Speaker 1: attempt to answer this question, showing that only the DNA
Speaker 1: of a virus needs to enter or a bacterium to
Speaker 1: infect it, which gave a strong bit of support for
Speaker 1: the idea that jeans are in fact made of the stuff,
Speaker 1: the stuff DNA. Yeah, and so those are just a
Speaker 1: few of the scientists and just a few examples of
Speaker 1: the research that all went into leading to Watson and
Speaker 1: Crick Watson cricks discovery. Without the foundation provided by those folks,
Speaker 1: James D. Watson, Francis H. Crick may have never reached
Speaker 1: their groundbreaking conclusion ninety three that the DNA molecule exists
Speaker 1: in the form of a three dimensional double helix. But
Speaker 1: before we go there, let's hold up max record. Scratch
Speaker 1: the crick Watson stories told pretty often in schools, but
Speaker 1: there is another very important side to it. Enter raw
Speaker 1: Allan Franklin Raslan Franklin has entered the chat or the
Speaker 1: ring or whatever. Franklin was born in July twenty in London, um.
Speaker 1: She was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family who
Speaker 1: valued education and public service. Yeah, she was a scientist
Speaker 1: when there was a lot of discrimination against women who
Speaker 1: wanted to enter stem science, technology, engineering math. When she
Speaker 1: was just eighteen, she matriculated in the Newnham Women's College
Speaker 1: at Cambridge University, studying physics and chemistry. After Cambridge, she
Speaker 1: went to work for the British Coal Utilization Research Association
Speaker 1: and her work on the porosity of coal became her
Speaker 1: PhD thesis. As anybody who's working on a PhD or
Speaker 1: has obtained one knows, the thesis tends to be pretty
Speaker 1: specific once you get to that rarefied air. And this
Speaker 1: work allows her to travel the world as a guest speaker,
Speaker 1: she's an order a lecturer. In nine she moves to
Speaker 1: Paris where she masters X ray crystallography. This becomes her
Speaker 1: life work, and this is what leads her to make
Speaker 1: a crucial contribution to the discovery of the double helix
Speaker 1: structure of d a day. So some people think she
Speaker 1: got a raw deal out of it, A woman getting
Speaker 1: a raw deal in favor of wo men history. I
Speaker 1: don't know about that. Man, that's that seems incredulous now,
Speaker 1: it happened all the time, and I would agree, I
Speaker 1: would I would argue she definitely got a raw deal.
Speaker 1: Biographer Brenda Maddox called her the quote dark Lady of DNA,
Speaker 1: based on a pretty negative, uh sexist nickname given to
Speaker 1: her by one of her male co workers. But you know,
Speaker 1: her friends and and other colleagues believe considered her to
Speaker 1: be very kind, um and brilliant scientists. So this, this reputation,
Speaker 1: this idea, I don't know, this sort of like strikes
Speaker 1: me as sort of the character assassination. Character is that, yes,
Speaker 1: character assassination? Almost Is this the idea that like women
Speaker 1: in business or somehow like mean or like you know,
Speaker 1: not the docile creatures that men would have them be
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like it's absurd and it's
Speaker 1: based in the generations of of patriarchal uh bulb dish
Speaker 1: if you will. Yeah. So a lot of scientists thought
Speaker 1: it was challenging to work with her because she wouldn't
Speaker 1: just roll over. She was thought to be short tempered
Speaker 1: and stubborn by those dudes. So there was a lot
Speaker 1: of friction between her and a co worker named Maurice Wilkins,
Speaker 1: in particular, while she was working at King's College. They
Speaker 1: were supposed to work together to find the structure of
Speaker 1: d N A, but because they really really did not
Speaker 1: get along, they ended up working kind of in isolation.
Speaker 1: And was just fine with Franklin. She didn't need these
Speaker 1: dudes to help her. Uh. Wilkins instead went looking for
Speaker 1: company at the Cavendish Library in Cambridge, and that's where
Speaker 1: his friend Francis Crick was working with James Watson on
Speaker 1: building a model of the DNA molecule. And that's where
Speaker 1: Wilkins showed Watson and Crick some of Rosalind's work. Yeah
Speaker 1: that waited, man, I've seen this before. Okay, Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: unknown to Franklin, Watson, Creek actually kind of potentially took
Speaker 1: the stuff and ran with it. In particular, there was
Speaker 1: an artifact known as photo fifty one that was shown
Speaker 1: to Watson by Wilkins, an X ray diffraction image of
Speaker 1: a DNA molecule, and it was in fact Watson's inspiration, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to uh coin the idea of the double helix,
Speaker 1: you know, because the pattern was clearly a helix, and
Speaker 1: um using Franklin's photo along with you know, Admittedly, they
Speaker 1: did do some of their own work. Watson and Crick
Speaker 1: created their now famous model. And when I say model,
Speaker 1: we literally mean like the you know, the way it
Speaker 1: looked like a thing you could do, you see hanging
Speaker 1: in like classrooms to this day. However, until more recent times,
Speaker 1: Franklin's contribution was not acknowledged. After her death, however, Crick
Speaker 1: did uh say that her contribution had indeed been critical.
Speaker 1: But it's sort of like after her death, too little,
Speaker 1: too late, buddy, you know, now that she's gone, let
Speaker 1: me say, good job. But that's a you know, this
Speaker 1: is all a true story. Luckily, Rosalind Franklin has finally
Speaker 1: gotten her well deserved do, and the modern world has
Speaker 1: acknowledged just how much society owes her for her research.
Speaker 1: And that's a bit maybe of a diversion for some
Speaker 1: folks or a tangent, but we felt it was an
Speaker 1: incredibly crucial one, uh, And we wanted to thank the
Speaker 1: good folks over at Nature dot com for providing a
Speaker 1: lot of this information in the Rosalind Franklin biography. So
Speaker 1: in any case, that story aside, which is important. What
Speaker 1: you need to know is that Watson Crick were not
Speaker 1: the quote unquote discoverers of DNA. They were the first
Speaker 1: scientists to make an accurate description of that complex double
Speaker 1: helix structure, and their work was directly dependent on the
Speaker 1: research of numerous scientists we've named who came before them.
Speaker 1: Thanks to all this, humanity now is capable of making
Speaker 1: even greater strides and understanding the human genome and the
Speaker 1: many ways in which d n A affects you and
Speaker 1: your loved ones. This leads us to the modern age.
Speaker 1: How crazy is it? How astonishing is it that we
Speaker 1: can just spit into tube and learn so much about
Speaker 1: not just our past, but our present and our future.
Speaker 1: Like you said, no, it's come a long way since
Speaker 1: the last time you took it to To answer your question,
Speaker 1: Ben how crazy, how amazing, how insane? I would say, quite,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's remarkable, and and we're gonna get into
Speaker 1: very shortly, just how remarkable it was for the two
Speaker 1: of us, you know, as as human beings, finding things
Speaker 1: out about ourselves that we never possibly could have without
Speaker 1: decades of detective work, you know, literally digging through family
Speaker 1: heirlooms and traveling is how far medical records and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff. So in fact, this is pretty cool,
Speaker 1: Ben I believe as of today, we found out that
Speaker 1: the human genome has finally been fully sequenced. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: this news came out pretty recently. It was June seventeenth.
Speaker 1: You can find the full story on the cyberse dot com.
Speaker 1: The human genome is finally fully sequenced, it's been announced. Uh,
Speaker 1: we figured it out, folks, We got them. As John
Speaker 1: Oliver would say, the first human genome was mapped back
Speaker 1: two thousand one, is part of the Human Genome Project,
Speaker 1: but researchers knew it wasn't fully accurate. What we've done
Speaker 1: now we not just being your host, but you know,
Speaker 1: we as society, the boffins went back through and filled
Speaker 1: in all those gaps and fixed all the errors that
Speaker 1: were in the first attempt at mapping the genome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are parts of it that had previously been kind
Speaker 1: of disregarded and referred to as junk DNA because they
Speaker 1: were seen as being comparable to copying errors repeating sequences
Speaker 1: in fact that ultimately have been discovered to play a
Speaker 1: more important role in the development of some human disorders. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a really great quote from one of the researchers. Uh,
Speaker 1: just because something is repetitive doesn't imply its garbage. Evan Eichler. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a senior author of of one of the
Speaker 1: publications there, and this sequence is the most comprehensive reference
Speaker 1: mammalian reference genome ever. There are six new genome related
Speaker 1: publications that are coming out in the journal Science that
Speaker 1: will lead to an even better understanding of human evolution
Speaker 1: and the discovery of ways to treat disorders or targets
Speaker 1: that should be uh isolated to treat a variety of disorders.
Speaker 1: Were we're on the bleeding edge now. And Michael shots,
Speaker 1: a Johns Hopkins University professor of Computer science and biology,
Speaker 1: another senior author some of this research, says, quote, we
Speaker 1: always knew pieces were missing, but I don't believe any
Speaker 1: of us realized how extensive they were or how interesting
Speaker 1: they were, and segue, uh no, I think that's something
Speaker 1: we can say about our own results. So we completed
Speaker 1: a twenty three and me test. I found out that
Speaker 1: some things were pretty normal. Other things were pretty surprising,
Speaker 1: like I am genetically likely to be of average weight.
Speaker 1: That seems like a pretty normal thing. You can also
Speaker 1: see that I am not likely to be lactose intolerant.
Speaker 1: One of the big things for me was the Malungeon
Speaker 1: stuff is true. Uh, my paternal line is a pretty
Speaker 1: crazy mix of genetic spaghetti Hashkenazi, Congolese, French, British, Irish,
Speaker 1: and then like two percent other. So don't know if
Speaker 1: that's Native American or it's just what they call unassigned.
Speaker 1: At this point, well, before I get into that breakdown
Speaker 1: of mind, I just found out. I just found a
Speaker 1: really amazing new little section on the twenty three and
Speaker 1: me interface, which you get, you know, log in when
Speaker 1: you send in your tests and then using this whole
Speaker 1: like dashboard, and it's like the stuff that I keep
Speaker 1: finding that I didn't even notice that when I first looked.
Speaker 1: One of them is a button that says Neanderthal. I
Speaker 1: apparently have more Neanderthal DNA than thirty five percent of
Speaker 1: other customers. Neanderthals, of course, being prehistoric humans who interbred
Speaker 1: with modern humans before vanishing around forty thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: And this is, uh, you know, pretty amazing to me
Speaker 1: because one of the rates that I may have inherited
Speaker 1: from my Neanderthal ancestors is having a worse sense of direction.
Speaker 1: H I have an awful, awful sense of direction. If
Speaker 1: I did not have my Google Maps, I would never
Speaker 1: find my way anywhere. Uh. And that is just the fact.
Speaker 1: So now I can at least blame you know, my
Speaker 1: my my Neanderthal brethren on that. Uh. I get more,
Speaker 1: I think, than than just again, this is all rated
Speaker 1: to the average. Part of the reason these tests are
Speaker 1: more specific now is because there are more people who
Speaker 1: participated exactly. And that's the thing. Once you, you know,
Speaker 1: become a part of the twenty three and me kind
Speaker 1: of community, you are you know and and you you
Speaker 1: are able to there's boxes you can check to keep
Speaker 1: all your data private and all of that, you know,
Speaker 1: at least in terms of like, you know, having your
Speaker 1: identity associated with it. That's an important thing to consider
Speaker 1: and that is absolutely a thing that they can do,
Speaker 1: and then they do do. But my breakdown is a
Speaker 1: little bit dull, but still a lot more detailed than
Speaker 1: it was when I took it previously. When I said dull,
Speaker 1: it is mean, um, ninety eight point six percent Northwestern European,
Speaker 1: and that breaks down to sixty three percent in British
Speaker 1: and Irish. Uh. And then they go into a little
Speaker 1: more specifics with Glasgow City, the UK and County Dublin
Speaker 1: plus eighteen other regions and I've got thirty point five
Speaker 1: percent French and German and two point eight percent broadly
Speaker 1: Northwestern European with a dash of Ashga Nazi jew uh
Speaker 1: ancestry thrown in their point. Welcome, welcome, Yeah, the uh
Speaker 1: this stuff is fascinating. One one thing that we really
Speaker 1: enjoyed that uh, we just learned before we're recording this.
Speaker 1: I found a really interesting thing in the paternal Haplow
Speaker 1: group that uh lad us to one last short story.
Speaker 1: We want to tell a man named Neal of the
Speaker 1: nine hostages. We don't speak this language, so maybe mispronouncing it. Uh,
Speaker 1: here's what we found in twenty three and me quote
Speaker 1: perhaps will myth in and now of the Nine Hostages
Speaker 1: is said to have been a king of Tara, northwestern Ireland,
Speaker 1: in the late fourth century CE. His name comes from
Speaker 1: the tale of nine hostages that he held from the
Speaker 1: regions he ruled over, though the legendary stories of his
Speaker 1: life may have been invented hundreds of years after he died.
Speaker 1: Genetic evidence suggests that the we Kneil dynasty again apologies
Speaker 1: to native speakers whose name means descendants of Neil, did
Speaker 1: in fact trace back to just one man who bore
Speaker 1: a branch of Haplow group r M two six nine.
Speaker 1: These descendants ruled to various degrees as kings of Ireland
Speaker 1: from the seventh to the eleventh century CE. I am
Speaker 1: descended from them, and just before we started to rule,
Speaker 1: we found out, Noel, you're descended from the same dude
Speaker 1: brother that's Cheered right, and that's Um again, that's that
Speaker 1: common ancestor for us goes to ten thousand year years ago.
Speaker 1: I think that must be why we haven't seen each
Speaker 1: other at the reunions. Must be it's pretty interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: There is also a lot of health data that you
Speaker 1: can clean from this twenty three and me test various
Speaker 1: variants that show up in your your you know, your
Speaker 1: genome that can point to certain risk factors, you know,
Speaker 1: for diseases. Mine was pretty solid. Didn't have anything that
Speaker 1: was outlying that should be like a watch out. I
Speaker 1: think I I'm a little bit more than averagely predisposed
Speaker 1: to age related macular degeneration, which is the most common
Speaker 1: cause of irreversible vision laws among older adults. Which is
Speaker 1: funny considering that I have really really good vision. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just as I get older, it's gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna wane on me. But everything else was pretty solid.
Speaker 1: I uh, you know that's that's funny because I have
Speaker 1: a couple of things that stood out to me as
Speaker 1: only one seemed woefully incorrect. My caffeine consumptional I am
Speaker 1: likely to consume less and no, Max, you guys know
Speaker 1: that is fundamentally untrue. I beat the odds on that
Speaker 1: one because I drink way too much coffee. But overall,
Speaker 1: this stuff was really exciting for us, and and Nol,
Speaker 1: I'd love for you to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: just how were you surprised by how much more, as
Speaker 1: you said, granular, this became in just uh, how many
Speaker 1: years has it been what's our time interval here at
Speaker 1: least four years? Um, yes, I was, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: there's even a thing with an asparagus p detection was
Speaker 1: as we know that you did the thing for for
Speaker 1: I believe the stuff of Jesus. No, maybe that was Josh,
Speaker 1: but it was one of the shows that you wrote
Speaker 1: for and worked on. All people's be smell like asparagus
Speaker 1: when they eat it, only some people can't smell it,
Speaker 1: and and under traits here there's a section for asparagus
Speaker 1: odor detection and I am listed as likely can't smell
Speaker 1: him and boy can I ever? That is so interesting.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's incredibly granular um like things like cleft
Speaker 1: chin or having dan drift. I've got a chance of
Speaker 1: getting dan drift. Early hair loss likely no hair loss, baby,
Speaker 1: I can tell you that I've got a good head
Speaker 1: of hair. Very excited. I've got a slightly higher than
Speaker 1: average odds of disliking cilantro. I know there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are probably wondering about that. I
Speaker 1: don't flush when I drink alcohol. I have the red
Speaker 1: face that happens. Uh. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff here,
Speaker 1: and I think we're both surprised by it, uh, and
Speaker 1: I'm also interested in seeing where the technology goes in
Speaker 1: the future. One of the big takeaways I learned from
Speaker 1: this is that if you take a if you take
Speaker 1: this test again, you might find even more information. Would
Speaker 1: you say that's fair? I think so. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: that's where we end today's story. We went from the
Speaker 1: ancient past all the way to two where people are
Speaker 1: still asking what makes me me? What makes you you?
Speaker 1: What can I learn about myself and apply It's not
Speaker 1: just the past but the president in the future, and
Speaker 1: with companies like twenty three and me, it's easier than
Speaker 1: ever before. So thanks thanks to the good folks, to
Speaker 1: twenty three and me, Thanks all I fellow ridiculous historians
Speaker 1: for tuning in, and thanks of course to Mr Max Williams. Max,
Speaker 1: are you gonna? Have you ever taken a DNA test?
Speaker 1: I have not taken a DNA test before, mostly because
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of paranoid about it. But know also
Speaker 1: that part about it, he's your identity, like like secret stuff.
Speaker 1: So maybe I will, you know, and find out that
Speaker 1: maybe I'm related to that same guy that y'all are
Speaker 1: all related to. And hey, if you like this episode.
Speaker 1: Why not check out some of our other fellow podcasters
Speaker 1: on the iHeart podcast network, like Many Questions with Many Driver,
Speaker 1: or Prodigy with our buddy Lollell Berlanti or a Hundred
Speaker 1: Words with Andrew Cannon Um, where they these hosts share
Speaker 1: their journeys to health discovery or you know, finding out
Speaker 1: what makes them them or we we are you you
Speaker 1: all the same stuff that we talked about from a
Speaker 1: completely different angle. You can find their episodes in the
Speaker 1: spit feed Um, which is another show hosted by a
Speaker 1: dear friend of ours, Barrett Tunda Thurston on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Yes,
Speaker 1: and of course our good pals Annie and Sam over
Speaker 1: its stuff, Mom Never Told You and waiting on reparations
Speaker 1: with our pals Dope Knife and Link What Frank Up.
Speaker 1: Thanks also to Jonathan Strickland ak the Quister, Thanks of
Speaker 1: course to Alex Williams, Christopher Hasiotis and us Jeff got
Speaker 1: absolutely and you know what, We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 1: And that's it on another dope show. Did this episode
Speaker 1: inspire you to take a closer look at your health history,
Speaker 1: your genetic makeup? Who new DNA could reveal so much
Speaker 1: about our past, while also holding the keys to certain
Speaker 1: health insights that may impact our future. I continue to
Speaker 1: be inspired by these stories, and I hope you do
Speaker 1: as well. Catch you next time. Listen to Spit, an
Speaker 1: original podcast from I Heart Radio and twenty three in
Speaker 1: the on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcast