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This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, Bradley Cooper

0:45

talks with me about his lifelong dream of

0:47

conducting an orchestra, which he does

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in the new film, Maestro. That's

0:51

the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen

0:54

to podcasts. Hello, I'm Lulu Miller.

0:57

If you joined

0:57

us last week, you met the hidden body part stowing away inside

0:59

your body. And

1:02

today we have another hidden story about

1:07

life and non-life,

1:08

and

1:11

how the line in between

1:12

them is way blurrier than we might think. We

1:14

are talking about viruses today. This

1:17

episode is a rewind, but it's

1:19

a lovely one. It's called Shrink. And what

1:21

I love about Shrink is that and

1:24

what I love about it is not just

1:26

that it busts a binary

1:29

between life and non-life that

1:31

I always thought was hard and fast, but also

1:33

that as you listen, it

1:36

really feels, at least to me, like

1:38

Robert Krowich and Jad Abumrad,

1:40

OG hosts, that they kind of shrink

1:43

down into these little boys

1:46

who are so giddy with questions for

1:49

Carl Zimmer. It's like, I picture

1:51

them like two little boys at Santa's knee,

1:54

just taking in the knowledge. And

1:57

it's a really raw, lovely glimpse, I think,

1:59

at what this.

1:59

show does best when it

2:02

does its best, which is to make space for

2:04

questions and for real listening. So

2:07

I hope you enjoy this kind of giddy romp

2:09

through the evolution of life and

2:12

non-life and all the places

2:14

where that line blurs out a bit.

2:18

Here we go. Wait, wait, you're listening.

2:20

Okay. You're

2:24

listening to Radiolab from WNYC. See?

2:32

Yeah. Read Y. Come

2:34

on. Totally. You guys can't

2:37

say. We won't talk to you about three. Okay.

2:41

Okay. Okay. Let's

2:43

do that. Let's do that. We have to keep

2:45

up with this. Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Jad

2:48

Abumrod. We're a little unorthodox today, at least for us.

2:51

If you've listened to the show in the last 10

2:54

years or so, however long we've been doing this, you

2:56

understand that we like to edit,

2:58

right? We like a good edit or 70.

3:01

But today I want to play you something that

3:04

has almost no edits at all.

3:06

It's just a conversation, which

3:07

is, of course, the foundation of what we do, these

3:10

long rambling, occasionally

3:14

profane, error-strewn

3:16

conversations that we then edit into something coherent.

3:19

But today I

3:20

want to show you the messiness. No edits. This

3:23

is a

3:24

chunk of a conversation with science writer

3:26

Carl Zimmer. He came and sat down with

3:28

us a while back, and we talked for

3:31

four hours. Two of those hours became

3:33

the basis for the CRISPR

3:35

podcast that was a few podcasts ago. This was

3:37

about Gene Edding. But then we kept on going

3:39

for another two hours, and he told us this

3:42

story, actually two stories, but we're only going to play one,

3:45

that I thought was really cool. It's

3:48

about this new way of looking at life.

3:50

Is this a long story, a medium story, or a short

3:53

story? We can get through

3:55

this a lot faster than CRISPR. I

3:58

really like CRISPR, by the way.

5:26

I'm

6:00

going to answer them questions. So viruses, they don't have a wall

6:02

around them in the way that cells

6:04

are walls essentially, are walled

6:06

off areas? They might

6:08

have a protein shell.

6:11

And so when the flu

6:13

virus goes into a cell, that protein

6:16

shell kind of

6:17

breaks open and the genes and

6:19

proteins inside come out. They do have containers

6:22

that contain them for a while, I see.

6:24

Well, isn't that one of the, somebody who

6:27

had a list of rules that make you alive

6:29

and what wasn't a container was one of those rules? I,

6:32

I, I don't know. But yeah, they don't do

6:34

the energy, but they have the container at least. Right. So

6:37

the problem with viruses is that they have some of the things

6:39

that we think are essential for life, but

6:42

not quite all of them. So it's

6:45

been convenient just to say viruses are not alive.

6:47

Put them over there because they don't have everything that

6:49

cells your life has. So we'll

6:52

just say they're not alive. Okay. They're

6:54

just viruses. Gotcha. And then? So

6:57

then what happened is that there was a scientist

6:59

named Timothy Robophom in

7:02

England who was investigating a... Timothy

7:05

Robophom? Timothy Robophom. That's

7:07

a good English name. And Robophom was

7:10

a... Timothy Robophom was, was

7:12

working in Bradford City in England

7:15

and he was

7:18

looking at the kinds of bacteria

7:21

that might be growing in a hospital.

7:26

You know, like they were having some problems

7:28

with pneumonia outbreaks and so on. And he was like, okay,

7:30

what's growing around here? And

7:33

so he went to a sort of a cooling

7:35

tower for water on top

7:37

of the hospital and he took a sample and he

7:40

went and put it under his microscope and he's like,

7:43

some interesting bacteria here. Oh, here's a very

7:46

interesting bacteria that doesn't really look

7:48

like anything I've seen before. This

7:51

guy would just kind of crawl around to weird

7:53

places and just snatch little snippets

7:55

of scum or what would he... Yeah.

7:58

What was he? What was his job? He's a microbiologist.

8:01

Oh, of course. So, you know,

8:03

it would be good to know. Like I mean... Is

8:05

that what microbiologists do? They just go scrape little

8:07

bits of rock or water towers. They

8:10

search the world. Yeah. I mean,

8:12

microbes are everywhere. So microbiologists go everywhere to find

8:14

microbes. So they're even, you know, in a water

8:16

tower on a hospital. Was he in

8:18

a kind of an investigatory

8:21

role? He was trying to help them

8:23

figure out which bacteria are making

8:25

people sick. That was one

8:27

of the hopes. But, you know, he was thinking

8:30

of doing a survey because, you know, there are diseases like

8:32

Legionnaire's disease which can,

8:35

you know, grow in these sort of

8:37

containers of water. You know,

8:39

that's... There's some concern about that. So, you

8:41

know, better to get to know what's growing. So

8:46

he's particularly taken by one thing

8:50

that he assumes is bacteria and it's got

8:52

a kind of interesting kind of roundish shape.

8:55

And he call it... And when bacteria are

8:58

around, you can call them cochae or cochus.

9:01

So he names this Bradford Caucus.

9:04

He

9:04

gives it a name. That's why the Caucus name

9:06

comes up. It's referring to the shape.

9:08

Like Streptococcus? Is

9:11

it because it's round? I

9:14

did not know that. The things you learned.

9:16

Talk to Carl Zimmer. You learned. My

9:18

God. Okay. So

9:21

he's

9:23

trying to study this thing and he's trying to... So

9:26

when you're a microbiologist, the way you study bacteria is you get

9:28

them to grow. And he can't get this to

9:30

grow. He's feeding at things and it's like, it's

9:32

not growing. Why is it not growing? I can't

9:34

figure it out. And eventually,

9:38

you know, he just hits a wall.

9:42

And unfortunately, his

9:45

lab got shut down. And

9:49

so he basically said, okay, I

9:51

don't want to throw

9:53

this stuff out. So I'm going to give

9:55

it to some of my colleagues in France. growing?

10:00

Yeah, so he gave it to a scientist named Bernard

10:03

Lascola

10:04

and his colleagues

10:07

and they kind of put him... Bernard Lascola.

10:10

And he just says, he just sets

10:12

it aside for a while and doesn't, you know, it's just

10:15

more bacteria, you know, and it's

10:18

for some reason he decided to,

10:21

you know, take a look at this Bradford caucus, you

10:23

know, like what was this thing that Robotham

10:26

was talking about. So he looks

10:28

at it and he says, okay, this

10:30

is the size of bacteria

10:34

but it looks like a gigantic

10:37

virus. Hmm. What

10:40

is a gigantic virus? It's usually very small.

10:43

Exactly. So bacteria to a virus

10:45

is like... Like hundreds

10:47

of times bigger. Hundreds of times, okay. So

10:49

it's the Queen Mary to a small

10:52

thingy. So he looked up close and he was like, what

10:55

is this thing? This doesn't look right. This,

10:57

this, if I didn't know better, I'd say

10:59

this is, this was a virus. He's saying this

11:01

based on its internal orientation?

11:04

Its appearance. It's because it had the protein

11:07

thingy and stuff. So a lot

11:09

of viruses, they have a shell made

11:11

of protein and the shell is kind

11:14

of composed of plates. So it's kind of

11:16

looks like a soccer ball. Ah. Hmm.

11:19

So it's a very distinctive look. Okay. And

11:21

it looked like that. Didn't look

11:23

like bacteria. Oh, interesting.

11:26

It's like, wait a minute. Could this be

11:28

a virus? So this would be like, maybe

11:30

like finding an enormous soccer ball in

11:33

the woods. Yes. So he

11:35

found the leviathan equivalent of

11:37

a virus. Right. It didn't

11:39

make sense. It was, it was kind of crazy

11:42

in that microscopic realm to say maybe

11:44

this is a virus. Wait. So didn't, so

11:47

Brad Mumford, what's his name again? Timothy

11:49

Robotham. Robotham didn't

11:52

have this realization? Nope. He

11:54

hadn't looked at it closely enough. He looked

11:56

at it, but he just didn't somehow

11:58

put that this is a virus. It didn't click

12:00

for it. It was a Tuesday, you know? Wednesday

12:03

is fire. That's a virus day. And this

12:05

was Tuesday. And it's

12:08

likely that other people were looking at these same

12:10

things in years before. I'm thinking they

12:12

were bacteria, not realizing. Here's

12:15

something the size of bacteria. Well,

12:18

in fairness, because viruses are always

12:20

small, then you wouldn't think a

12:22

big thing would be a virus. So viruses

12:26

are always small in the sense that they

12:29

were discovered because they were small. So

12:32

basically what scientists did was they discovered

12:34

viruses by filtering fluid

12:36

from a sick plant or a sick animal

12:39

through a filter, porcelain, actually. And

12:41

it was so small that anything

12:43

the size of bacteria got trapped in the porcelain

12:46

and anything smaller came out. And

12:49

lo and behold, they could find things that could cause

12:51

sickness in that fluid that pass

12:53

through the filter. Well, so the discovery

12:56

of viruses meant that it was innately small

12:58

because that's how you filtered for them. That's what they

13:00

were looking for. That's interesting. So

13:02

there were probably generations of scientists who were

13:04

looking in through microscopes, saw some

13:06

interesting round thing, and assumed it was bacteria,

13:09

and it was probably a virus. What the fuck is

13:11

this giant, giant leviathan

13:14

virus? I assume that was his

13:16

question. Well, I mean, first

13:19

he had to really establish that it was. And

13:21

so what happened was that he

13:23

looked very closely at it and kind of

13:26

worked out its chemistry. And

13:28

the more he looked at it, the more it looked

13:31

like a virus. He started actually

13:34

looking at it's DNA, which hadn't been possible

13:36

before. It turned out that it's

13:38

DNA resembled the

13:40

DNA of viruses and not of any known bacteria.

13:45

It didn't have,

13:47

it actually didn't have the equipment

13:50

for making fuel inside of it. And

13:53

then the real kicker was that he

13:55

found out how to grow it. What he had to do was he

13:57

had to stick this thing inside.

14:00

side of amoeba and

14:02

then out of the amoeba would come more

14:06

Bradford caucus. Just like a virus.

14:09

Exactly like a virus. So you need to change the name from

14:11

Bradford caucus to something else. Right.

14:14

So they named it Mimi virus. Mimi

14:17

virus? Mm-hmm. Because they were in France

14:19

and Mimi is in the French

14:22

opera. Because it was a mimic. It

14:24

was mimicking. It was a mimic. Yeah.

14:27

Interesting. Mimi. Mimi.

14:30

Mimi. Is that like a French word for mik? I

14:33

think they just took the beginning of mimic

14:35

and added it to virus. Mimi

14:37

virus. Very nice. I guess it's the same

14:39

thing twice. Mimi. It's like mimic.

14:42

Yeah. Okay. I

14:44

get it. Interesting. Yeah. So

14:47

this was really bizarre when they published their

14:49

report on this in 2003 and then people really

14:52

scratched their head because remember, ordinary

14:55

viruses have maybe 10 genes. This

14:58

one had a 1018 genes in it. Wow.

15:04

When you have 10 genes, those are the genes that

15:06

tell you have a protein capsule and so you

15:08

can swim through the thing. So when you land

15:11

on a cell, you can burrow in and then

15:13

explode and then make babies.

15:15

There's not much to being a virus.

15:17

You just need a few genes for that. Why

15:20

would you need a thousand, what did you say? Does

15:22

this thing have particular talents that the other viruses

15:24

didn't have? Yes. Maybe it

15:27

was like... It does. Okay.

15:30

Well, so one thing that's really interesting is what happens when

15:32

it goes inside its host and

15:34

amoeba.

15:36

It goes in

15:38

but instead of kind of shedding

15:41

off that protein code and just spilling out its

15:43

contents, it actually goes in and

15:46

stays as it was.

15:49

You mean it stays in

15:51

a container and everything just sort of... Yeah.

15:54

It's called a virus factory. It just

15:56

sits inside there. It's this thing they call

15:58

the virus factory. And it basically

16:00

is able to, things,

16:05

you know, components come into it, and then

16:08

it just sort of has enzymes

16:10

that can refashion them, and

16:13

then they outcome the components

16:15

for new gyro- Or it doesn't have to go into the nucleus of

16:17

the already existent cell? No, it just floats

16:19

in there. Oh, interesting. So it,

16:22

what does it do? Like open

16:24

a portal and it sucks up some stuff? Yeah, it

16:26

has this beautiful sort of, they call it a

16:28

stargate. Because it's shaped

16:30

like, it's a doorway shaped like a star, and things

16:33

come in, and

16:36

then out another stargate, these

16:38

sort of manufactured things come out, and

16:41

then in the cell they assemble

16:43

into new giant viruses. So

16:45

it spits out the raw materials and then

16:47

self-assemble into a giant leviathan? No,

16:50

baby giant leviathans, which then, how do they get out

16:52

of the, do they explode through the surface

16:54

of the cell? Yeah, they just blow out, yeah. That's

16:57

like a totally, that's a totally different thing

16:59

than a virus. Yeah, I thought normally viruses just

17:01

go into the machine that's already there, because they're

17:03

parasites. They just use the living things. Yeah,

17:06

this thing is, I have a weird

17:09

kind of respect

17:11

for this thing. Oh yeah, it's amazing. And

17:13

you know, one of the amazing things about it is that

17:15

it can get its

17:18

own viruses. Because

17:20

there are- Really? Yes. So

17:22

there are viruses and viruses. These things

17:25

are called virophages, and they actually

17:27

go into the virus factory and

17:29

hijack it. Oh, interesting. And instead, outcome

17:31

virophages. Oh, wow. Oh yeah,

17:33

as soon as you have a virus factory, that's what a virus

17:36

wants. Now the virus has its

17:38

own virus factory, well, it's gonna get- Viralized.

17:41

It's gonna get infected, viralized by the other viruses. Right.

17:44

Weird. Yeah, weird is the right word, I

17:46

think. Right, now in 2003, you could say, well,

17:49

this is one weird virus. But the

17:52

scientist said, well, I wonder what

17:54

else there is. Well,

17:57

did that create a basic? So they said, okay, we

17:59

got all this- extra genetic power,

18:02

but doing this sort of special

18:05

circus act here. It's building its own factory

18:08

and it's just behaving differently from it.

18:10

So maybe it just needs all those genes to do this

18:12

special thing it's doing. The problem was that

18:14

when they looked at these, you know, 2018 genes, most of them didn't

18:18

match anything anyone had found before. These

18:22

are new genes. Genes, yeah, that you couldn't even

18:24

guess at what they were at. This has got to be

18:26

from like, this is like an alien. This is from Saturn,

18:28

this thing. Is that where you're driving

18:30

with the story? Not quite, but

18:33

kind of. So what do you think? So

18:35

they look at all the genes, they look at the

18:37

chemistry of life as it's known and

18:39

they don't find any matches for this little thing, this

18:41

big thing? For most of the genes, they couldn't

18:43

find a match. You

18:46

know, you can look at, I mean... Oh, that's a double mystery. Like,

18:48

what is it? What is this? And where does

18:50

it come from? Because it doesn't seem to have

18:52

the smell of Earth life.

18:55

Yeah, except that it uses DNA.

18:57

I mean, it uses protein. It uses our

18:59

chemistry, but it's doing

19:02

something weird. And

19:04

so these scientists said, well, okay,

19:06

they looked in an English hospital,

19:09

you know, water cooling tower.

19:11

Let's go look at one here in France.

19:13

And so they looked and they found another giant

19:15

virus, which is even bigger than the one that they'd

19:18

already found. Where was it in the hospital in France? In the

19:20

conditioning tower? In the cooling tower? It was in another cooling

19:23

tower. Jesus, this is like a cooling tower

19:25

phenomenon. Yeah, rooftop biology.

19:28

Well, it's... Excitement galore. It's

19:30

more like the drunk looking for the keys under

19:32

the lamppost, you know. It's

19:34

like, you know that... Oh, because it's wherever

19:36

you look there. We know that there was giant

19:39

viruses found in one water

19:41

tower. So let's go look in another water tower.

19:43

Like that's our safest bet. And hey, look,

19:46

we found an even bigger one, you

19:48

know, which they... Which

19:51

had... An even bigger one? It was even bigger,

19:53

yeah. So it had 1018 genes. It had 1059 genes.

19:58

So they named this one mamavirus. Mimi's

20:02

first cousin, Mama. Did Mama

20:04

do things in the cells that Mimi didn't

20:06

do? Did it also build a factory? Yeah,

20:09

it was making a virus factory.

20:12

So there's a common theme here with these two... now

20:14

you have two giant viruses doing the same thing.

20:17

Didn't this the whole Stargate and everything? Yeah.

20:20

What's weird is that the Mama virus

20:23

has a bunch of genes that Mimi virus doesn't

20:25

have. And

20:27

again, don't match anything that... So

20:29

they don't know what these extra ones do? Some

20:32

of them look like they're involved in

20:35

building proteins, which doesn't make

20:37

any sense because viruses are not supposed to do that.

20:41

So this is all completely confusing.

20:44

But then they say, okay,

20:47

maybe we need to kind of get away from the whole water

20:49

tower thing and widen our

20:51

little... Where would you go? Like, the

20:53

opposite of a water tower would be like the bottom

20:56

of a well? Or do you go to a library

20:59

and look in the interior of old parchment

21:01

books?

21:01

No, you start looking

21:03

at places like you look

21:06

in the ocean or you look in sediment

21:09

or you look inside animals

21:12

or you look in the soil.

21:15

And they start

21:17

finding giant viruses

21:20

over and over and over again. Really? In

21:22

all those places? Soil inside

21:24

of animals, like in animal tummies or something?

21:27

Yeah. So they

21:29

went to... These

21:31

researchers went to Brazil and

21:34

said, let's go look at animals and see if we

21:36

can find giant viruses. And they found

21:38

a new species in cows and they found

21:41

a new species living inside of a monkey. And

21:44

these were... Were they finding giant or giant

21:46

viruses? Yeah. I mean, the numbers of

21:48

genes were going up and up and up. They would

21:51

keep finding new record breakers. So

21:53

the biggest one right now is

21:56

called megavirus. That's

22:01

the summer movie. Mega virus. I

22:04

mean, there's, you know. Bigger than Mimi and bigger

22:06

than Mama. Mega

22:10

in a world. In a world. You

22:12

got it. That's right. It's like the

22:14

truckasaurus. You know, like this is like, I'm wondering

22:16

what they're going to do as they keep

22:18

finding bigger ones because you keep having to

22:21

find superlatives for these things. Well, where

22:23

was Mega found? What was it? Mega

22:26

I believe was found in the ocean. And how many

22:28

genes does Mega have? Mega has 1,120

22:31

genes. Oh, okay.

22:34

So we're... But it's

22:36

not actually the biggest... So it has

22:38

the most genes, but it's not actually the physically

22:41

the biggest

22:42

giant virus. Which was... So

22:45

this one is called a Pandora

22:47

virus. We found

22:49

it in a box. Let me guess. In

22:51

a sealed box and then they opened it and oh

22:54

my gosh. Well, it has

22:56

this bizarre shape like an urn.

22:58

Which is completely nuts.

23:01

There's no urn shaped virus. It's

23:04

crazy. And the

23:07

urn, did that remind somebody of

23:09

the myth of what Pandora's

23:11

box was actually an urn? Oh, it was.

23:14

Okay. Oh, I see. Why did it be

23:16

called Pandora's box then? God, that's a very learned... It didn't make

23:18

you happy. Because you love where

23:20

they found it. Where did they find it? So

23:22

what they did was these Russian

23:25

scientists, they were collaborating with dug

23:27

up frozen tundra that

23:30

had been frozen for 30,000 years. And

23:32

they said, let's thaw this out and see what's

23:35

in there. What kind of things have been asleep

23:37

for 30,000 years? It sounds like the beginning

23:39

of a sci-fi movie right there. Among

23:42

other things they found... The frozen land.

23:45

They found Pandora virus. Not

23:49

only did they find it, but when they let

23:51

it warm up a bit and then they

23:55

gave it some amoeba to check out, they... It

23:57

did its thing? They did its thing. How

24:00

much bigger, if the first

24:03

giant virus you introduced it to was like

24:06

an elephant-sized mouse, compared

24:11

to that elephant-sized mouse, how much bigger is this

24:13

one? Maybe

24:15

it's more specific than it might be. I

24:17

need to look at the numbers, but you're

24:20

kind of going from, I don't know, elephants to dinosaurs.

24:23

You're getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We're

24:25

now talking about, you know, Pandora virus

24:28

is bigger than a lot of bacteria. So,

24:31

wait a second. These things are now being

24:33

found everywhere you look? They

24:37

are incredibly common. They've

24:40

even been able to get giant viruses

24:42

out of people.

24:43

Really?

24:45

Yeah. Where do you find

24:47

them in the person? In our intestines or something?

24:50

I believe they found one sample

24:53

in somebody's lungs and

24:55

another sample was found in someone's

24:58

blood. But it's really hard

25:00

to tell whether they're actually

25:02

like actively invading us and

25:04

making us sick. You know, maybe

25:06

instead of invading amoebas, they can invade

25:09

human cells. Because amoeba

25:11

and human cells are surprisingly similar. Or

25:14

is it just kind of along for the ride with some amoeba

25:17

that infect us? Or

25:19

does it kind of drift in and when people are sick,

25:22

their defenses are down? So, we don't

25:24

know if giant viruses have anything to do

25:26

with human disease. But... It's

25:29

a category problem here. If

25:32

you've got a giant virus

25:34

that's virus-like in its general

25:38

shell, but it's making proteins,

25:41

it's got a bunch of genes that

25:43

viruses don't have, you're already bigger

25:45

than some bacteria. Shouldn't we call it as its

25:47

own separate thing at this point? That's

25:50

what people are arguing about right

25:52

now. Do we keep

25:55

that line between viruses and cellular

25:57

life and just put the giant viruses with the viruses?

26:00

Or do we kind of blur the

26:02

line a bit? This feels like it's on its way

26:04

from one category to the other. So that's one

26:06

of the big questions is like, what way

26:08

did this thing go in evolution? What

26:11

does that mean? Well, how do you get

26:13

a giant virus? Like, how do you? How

26:15

do you? Well, that so...

26:18

We'll get to the potential answer

26:20

to that question, which I think is totally

26:22

fascinating,

26:23

after the break.

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28:40

Hey, Chad here, Radiolab.

28:43

So we're gonna return to our conversation with science

28:45

writer Carl Zimmer. It's an unedited

28:47

conversation. And we were

28:49

talking about giant viruses

28:52

and what they can teach us about life.

28:54

Which really starts with a simpler question of like where the

28:56

hell did they come from?

28:58

How do you get a giant virus? How do

29:00

you? How do you? Well, so

29:03

one clue comes from those

29:05

genes. So now that they're finding more and more

29:07

of these giant viruses, they're

29:10

finding enough variety of them. They can

29:12

look for some common

29:14

genes that they share, some common mutations

29:17

in genes. And they're finding actually that it looks

29:20

like giant viruses might actually belong to one

29:23

lineage. Oh, interesting. Oh, so

29:25

they're cousins. They have a common ancestor? Yeah.

29:28

So it's a tribe of a certain. Right. And if

29:30

that's true, it could be an incredibly

29:33

old tribe. These

29:35

giant viruses could be a lineage conceivably

29:38

that goes all the way back to

29:40

the early stages of life. The

29:42

dawn of time. In a

29:44

world. In a world. It's

29:47

really old? Like back to the very

29:49

beginning of life on Earth? To

29:51

that era, yeah, yeah. I mean,

29:54

maybe when cellular life was

29:56

getting started. But the question is, well, what were

29:58

the giant viruses like then? Now,

30:00

some people have said, well, no, giant viruses

30:03

actually started out as teeny tiny viruses and they've

30:05

just been like gathering

30:07

up new genes through time and

30:10

just been getting bigger and bigger and bigger. But

30:13

a number of the people who actually studied giant viruses

30:16

and have really helped us to understand

30:19

the most, they're saying, no, we don't

30:21

think so. We actually think that

30:24

these things started out as

30:27

cellular life. They were cells.

30:30

They were full-blown cells. Oh,

30:32

you mean they were from the other side of the road? They

30:34

were cellular life. And then

30:36

they switched sides? Yeah. They

30:39

changed teams. Yeah. They

30:41

changed. How? No, I can't have

30:43

a plant that becomes an animal. So

30:46

they started off as what we would call

30:48

creatures. And

30:51

then they started out truly alive.

30:53

Like freestanding out

30:55

there in the air or the water or the

30:58

ground? Yeah. Just some free-living

31:00

microbe.

31:01

And then that could be... Well, then

31:04

why would you go demote yourself? This

31:06

is your problem with parasites. You keep

31:09

saying mean things about parasites. Well,

31:12

how many of them have even talked about parasites? And have

31:14

I taught you nothing? If

31:16

I had a choice between being a...

31:20

having my own integrity and choosing to make

31:22

a living on my own or to suck

31:24

off you, I would just live on my own.

31:27

Excuse me for... I know you like

31:29

parasites, but honestly... Could you not use

31:31

that path as it didn't really record equally?

31:34

It's already been cut. Thank you. So,

31:38

wait a second. So, according to this

31:40

theory, you have a microbe... It stands true nevertheless.

31:43

We have a microbe that is doing its

31:46

thing and then something

31:48

happens. Okay, but... What is the something?

31:51

It becomes a parasite. It

31:53

becomes a parasite. Or at least, you know,

31:55

maybe a symbiont. Here, basically what it does

31:58

is it starts living inside...

32:00

Another cell you need gives

32:02

up its integrity as an as a as a free

32:06

Life form a freestanding life.

32:08

We just so we understand what that means that means

32:11

that

32:11

it's got a shell It's got a border.

32:13

It's making its own energy. It's

32:15

Replicating in the way that at the beginning at

32:18

the beginning at the beginning it can make its own energy

32:20

It can grow it can divide and you can do

32:22

all the things that living things do yeah, and then for some

32:24

reason it chooses to

32:27

require

32:28

Some other creatures existence for

32:30

its own it has it has to become

32:34

Dependent on some other organism for

32:36

its very very exist. Well, let's flip

32:38

it the other way and say it discovers a

32:41

wonderful new home inside

32:43

of another cell It

32:46

comes in and like just like I love leaving

32:48

my Park Avenue apartment for a dark cave

32:51

You an exciting opportunity No,

32:53

no, no, no, no, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

32:55

oh, like imagine imagine like you Listen,

32:58

let's imagine you're like Bear Grylls. Okay. Let's

33:00

imagine you are like hiking

33:03

around and killing your own food.

33:05

Okay, I

33:06

Let's let's try to picture this. Okay, Robert

33:11

You're you're gutting your deer you're starting

33:13

your own fires You're going on and on and

33:15

on and you do that for like a few years

33:17

and then and you're walking through the jungle

33:20

I'm very very skinny Not

33:23

going well, so Robert Krowich

33:25

that the Haggard hunter And

33:28

let's say you're doing this in Minnesota. All right, so it's like cold.

33:30

Okay,

33:31

and then suddenly like

33:34

You you there's a break in the forest

33:36

and you come across a giant Mansion

33:39

and you're like, what is this place and you open the door

33:41

and inside There's

33:44

like conveyor belts with ice

33:46

cream and steak And

33:49

you know and and there are slippers waiting

33:51

for you and you know anything

33:53

you need it It's somebody else

33:55

is taking care of it. There is one thing you left out

33:57

when I walk into this magical kingdom

33:59

It doesn't let me out. I

34:02

can't leave ever again because

34:04

I have become so dependent on its

34:06

natural wonders that I lose my

34:09

independence, my integrity, and the

34:11

very very thing that I walked in with

34:13

is now gone. We did literally

34:15

have this conversation a few years ago. We did, it's true.

34:18

We did and I did point out to you at

34:20

the time that you are quite

34:22

dependent on other

34:24

species. Do you

34:26

want me to bring it out? No, no,

34:28

no, no, no, no. I

34:31

will just say see episode 32. Trans

34:36

eyes will roll right out of there. So

34:39

like becoming, being

34:41

able to take advantage of

34:43

another cell,

34:46

evolutionarily speaking, is

34:48

a great way to go. Because

34:50

you have all these things taken care

34:52

of for you. Now, according

34:56

to this theory, these mysterious

34:59

ancient microbes started

35:02

going into these cells and reproducing

35:05

there and then going out again and

35:07

then finding another host cell to infect. Were

35:10

they making, like, were they making

35:12

their hosts sick? Probably,

35:15

yeah. Probably. Yeah, because giant viruses

35:17

are not good to get. Well, see this is,

35:19

this complicates your mansion metaphor just

35:21

a tiny bit. Because what it means is that

35:23

you go in the conveyor belt and you're feeding yourself and

35:26

having a good time, but then your filth starts to muck

35:28

up the place and it starts to collapse from within.

35:30

That doesn't sound so nice. To strain the metaphor a bit.

35:32

Go boy, go boy. Robert

35:35

Prolet. No, don't be referring to me. That was

35:37

for him. Okay, I'm just trying to

35:39

understand. So, so you, you

35:41

spend some time in this wonderful mansion. You,

35:44

you rest, it's warm, it's comfortable, so on. You,

35:46

you, you eat. You fill it with

35:48

your filth. You start a family,

35:50

you know, and then all of a sudden

35:53

you and your descendants,

35:55

you know, leave the mansion. The

35:57

mansion just collapses.

35:59

From all the damage you did to it. But

36:02

you know, actually you see in the distance there's another

36:04

mansion. Let's just go over there. Now you feel rested

36:07

and ready and like, yeah, all we got to do is get

36:09

over there. So let's just go there. We

36:11

don't have to stop

36:12

to kill a deer. We just go

36:13

to that next mansion. The ice cream

36:15

is waiting. I still got to walk, so I need

36:18

my legs, so to speak, to get to the next

36:20

mansion. But I don't need the powerful

36:22

muscles that I would have needed to kill

36:24

the deer. I can let go of those. You

36:27

don't even need the knowledge

36:30

of how to kill a deer. You

36:33

need to be blind, dumb, and fat.

36:36

That's where you end up. So

36:38

these things... And destructive. These

36:41

things get rid of these genes.

36:46

And how does that happen? Just

36:49

a random mutation comes along and just cuts out

36:51

a bit of DNA. Oh, because it doesn't need them. You're

36:53

fine. Yeah. You're like, okay.

36:56

Is it a moment where, oh, there goes

36:58

a big chunk of me. Yeah. I don't

37:00

need that. That's a regular kind of mutation. That

37:03

happens all the time. Really? Oh,

37:05

yeah. But then your successor

37:08

being just travels a little bit

37:10

lighter and is able to succeed just as well.

37:12

Right. So

37:16

if we are born with

37:18

a part of our DNA that's deleted that

37:20

had some hemoglobin genes

37:23

in it, like, good night. Like,

37:25

that's bad. But if

37:29

you cut out a gene that

37:31

this giant virus no longer needs because

37:34

it's got everything supplied to it in its

37:37

host, fine. So let's chuck

37:39

that. Chuck it out. So you have this... So

37:41

the idea is that these viruses,

37:44

they're giant viruses, but they've actually

37:46

been shrinking.

37:48

And at

37:50

a...how fast does a giant...like, imagining

37:53

back in the beginning, there

37:55

was not... It's

37:58

silly. No, in the beginning... cellular being.

38:00

Oh, a cellular being. Right. Okay, so

38:03

the cellular being. Cellular being. With

38:05

all of our privileges and joys of

38:07

independent life. Size-wise,

38:10

it's a blimp. It's a massive thing.

38:13

And then suddenly it starts to shrink bit by

38:15

bit, by bit, by bit. At

38:17

what rate does it start to shrink and shed

38:19

itself? Well,

38:21

it could be that these

38:24

giant viruses we're finding, that

38:27

these giant viruses that scientists are finding,

38:29

could be shrinking very, very, very slowly.

38:32

It could be that

38:37

there are other viruses that

38:39

made this transition that shrank faster.

38:42

So

38:42

maybe,

38:43

maybe... It's

38:46

a race to the bottom. Maybe

38:48

some tiny viruses are just former

38:51

giant viruses that

38:53

just shrank really fast. Race to

38:55

the bottom. It's such a different way of thinking about

38:57

life. You generally assume,

39:01

being a multicellular organism yourself, that

39:04

little things in some deep

39:07

sense, though you're not supposed to say this, want

39:10

to be big things. You don't want to say this. I know. I

39:12

know. But most people, unlike

39:15

you, asshole, most

39:17

people think that it's better... That I want

39:19

in the podcast. It's better

39:22

to be more complex than to be simple.

39:24

But here, you're talking about a different

39:26

voyage altogether. It might just work out

39:28

for you to be simple rather than complex.

39:32

Well, given

39:34

that viruses are insanely

39:37

abundant on this planet, there are, by

39:39

some estimates, 10 to

39:42

the 31st power of viruses on Earth. Think

39:45

about that. It's a one with 31 zeros after

39:47

it.

39:50

It's

39:52

inconceivable how many viruses there

39:54

are on Earth. It's their world. So apparently,

39:56

nature has not agreed

39:59

read with you. But

40:02

you know, it is interesting like thinking

40:04

about how life

40:05

gets smaller and

40:08

simpler. This is interesting,

40:10

yeah. If it's true that this trajectory

40:13

is as common as

40:15

you say, that things start out sometimes,

40:18

start out big and then learn to live

40:20

inside other things and then the process gets smaller and

40:22

smaller and smaller and this is actually maybe what

40:25

happens to a lot of viruses, not just some viruses.

40:28

In a way, it gives the virus an honorable history.

40:33

I don't know why I feel that way. This

40:35

boy isn't going to sign up for that. No, he's not going to sign up for that.

40:37

And I don't. It's okay. Well,

40:40

an honorable history, but then, I mean, it

40:42

abandoned its free living

40:44

past, right? It did. It gave into

40:46

the temptations of the mansion full of

40:49

steak and ice cream. It's true, but I've

40:51

always assumed, and this is not

40:55

something one should assume, that viruses were

40:57

a kind of proto-organism. They

40:59

were somehow at the beginning of something and they

41:02

never quite got going. Yeah. But

41:04

you're actually saying that these viruses are in

41:07

a way at the end, not at the end, but

41:09

they're at the, I don't know how to

41:11

quite use the words that I want to use. They

41:14

feel somehow at the end of something, not at the beginning.

41:17

Like you just took what I considered to

41:19

be the beginning and you've now made

41:21

it an end. An end. An

41:24

end. And that's interesting. I never, I think that's- Yeah, that's

41:26

very interesting. Yeah. Very

41:28

interesting. So life can go in different directions. And

41:32

how far can that reverse journey

41:35

go? I mean, can you go from like, how

41:37

big did that, was it ever like a turtle

41:40

with things or

41:43

no, like a giant dinosaur? No? No.

41:46

Sorry. I believe they're

41:48

called mixozoans, which

41:52

started out as free living animals

41:55

and have become parasites. And they're

41:58

just down to just a few cells. Mix

42:01

is Owen you say we're in a free-living animals You

42:03

don't mean animals in the way that animals anyone

42:05

would think of an animal like a jelly Oh look my pet

42:08

my pet. Lovely not like that. Well my pet jellyfish

42:11

really really yeah So

42:13

you're saying a jellyfish sized thing has

42:15

now reduced itself to a tiny microscopic

42:18

parasite of fish get them Don't

42:21

even say it because you can't do it if you're

42:23

that small. That's insane and

42:26

really Like going

42:28

from something you can see and would want to avoid

42:30

while swimming Down to something that you

42:32

might even just breathe in without even knowing it. Mm-hmm

42:36

Wow, you're blowing my mind

42:39

shrinking my voice it called again mixes

42:42

mixes Yeah,

42:44

how do you spell that? M-y-x-z-o-a-n.

42:48

I'm trying in my mind to construct a scenario where

42:51

we Like the mixes Owen

42:53

could begin to shed Like if

42:55

we were living inside that like not

42:57

the iPhone but the eye eye

42:59

home the eye universe Well, you know, but but

43:01

the fact is that we you know, we have Cast

43:05

aside some things, you know, what do we cast aside?

43:07

Well, we can't I mean we used to smell better I

43:09

know I know that better we used

43:11

to be able to make our own vitamin C in our own bodies

43:14

our own bodies We're vitamin C factories. Really?

43:16

Yes, what what changed that? Why

43:20

did we want to let go of that? That sounds great sunshine

43:22

vitamin C. Yeah making your own

43:25

supply vitamin C Well,

43:27

if you are sitting around

43:29

eating fruit all the time fruit, which is

43:31

loaded in vitamin C Then

43:34

if you get a mutation on

43:36

your vitamin C gene, well, you're

43:39

you're fine Cuz you're you you're getting your vitamin

43:41

C from somewhere else. You don't feel that lack,

43:44

you know You

43:46

don't start getting scurvy because you're

43:49

feeding yourself on fruit and then

43:51

that Mutated gene may then

43:53

spread out and end up being in every

43:56

member of your species which seems to happen to us I mean

43:58

you can literally like see like these we have these broken

44:00

vitamin C genes. So sometimes we

44:02

shrink too. Yeah.

44:35

Okay, so there you have it, a raw conversation

44:37

with science writer Carl Zimmer about

44:40

shrinking, shrinkage in

44:43

life. No, usually what happens in these

44:45

conversations is because

44:47

you're just talking and because you don't really have like an

44:49

encyclopedia sitting right next to you, you

44:51

get a lot of the little things wrong, little details, little

44:53

facts, names, dates, whatever and

44:56

then you fact check it later. So

44:59

in fairness to Carl, as we were fact checking, we gave

45:01

him the chance to listen back to the raw conversation.

45:04

Make a couple of amendments. This is fact

45:07

checker Carl scolding,

45:11

rambling Carl. Okay. Okay,

45:16

we were saying that this

45:18

microbiologist, Tim Robotham

45:20

took his samples to France but actually there was

45:23

another microbiologist named Richard Bertels that

45:25

did it. Gotcha. Small

45:27

but important. Sorry Richard. Our

45:29

apologies. Yeah. And mama

45:31

virus turns out to have a thousand twenty

45:33

three genes, a thousand fifty nine genes.

45:36

Apologies. Then I started talking about

45:38

megavirus. At the time in 2011, it was

45:40

indeed the biggest virus

45:43

known. One thousand, one hundred and twenty

45:45

genes. Okay. Okay. However, there

45:48

was in 2013, another

45:51

virus found called

45:54

Pandora virus. Now I was saying that this was

45:56

something found in tundra. Wrong. This

46:00

was found in the ocean. And

46:02

this virus has

46:04

a whole lot of genes. How

46:06

many? It has 2500. Whoa. I

46:12

mean that's way more than a lot of bacteria.

46:15

Also at a certain point, and we

46:17

refer to Pandora virus as being the biggest

46:19

virus in size, actually that

46:22

distinction goes to pithovirus. And

46:25

also it seems that since we talked, there's evidence that there

46:27

might actually be a couple of separate lineages

46:30

of giant viruses. One may

46:32

have evolved from big

46:34

to small as we talked about, but another one might have gone

46:36

in the usual direction from small to big. There's

46:40

one last thing that I see. So apparently,

46:43

apparently I didn't quite spell mixozoan

46:45

correctly. This

46:48

is how you spell mixozoan. M-Y-X-O-Z-O-A-N.

46:52

Apparently I missed one of those O's.

46:54

I can't remember. I

46:56

mean I'd be lying if I say I didn't think

46:58

a little bit less of you now. Okay,

47:01

extra O, back in. The

47:05

raw stupidity that

47:08

goes into radio labs. Stupid

47:10

people interviewing stupid people. About

47:16

smart things. That's funny. That's

47:18

a great tagline. Okay. That's

47:22

our new tagline. I'm Jad Apumrad. Thanks

47:24

for listening.

47:29

The Radiolab was created by Jad

47:32

Apumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler.

47:34

Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are

47:36

our co-hosts. Dylan Keith is our director

47:39

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47:41

Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca

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47:51

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47:53

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47:58

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47:59

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48:01

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48:04

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48:06

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48:10

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48:12

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48:13

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48:23

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48:27

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