0:00

This. Episode is brought to you by

0:02

Progressive Insurance. Whether. You love true

0:04

crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news.

0:06

You call the shots on what's in

0:08

your podcast. Q: And guess what?

0:10

Now you can call them on your auto

0:12

insurance to with the name your price tool

0:14

from Progressive. It works just the way it

0:16

sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want

0:18

to pay for car insurance and they'll show

0:20

you coverage options that fit your budget. Get.

0:23

Your quote today it progressive.com to

0:25

join the over twenty eight million

0:27

drivers who trust Progressive Progressive Casualty

0:29

Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and

0:31

coverage match limited by state law.

0:34

A on lot of Nasr today. I'm

0:36

going to play you and All the

0:38

episode that I reported way back in

0:41

Twenty Fifteen. It's got science. It's gotten

0:43

miracles. It's God Vikings. It's got a

0:45

potentially hazardous kitchen experiment performed by senior

0:47

producer Mack Guilty and I. And.

0:50

What I really love about

0:53

this episode is how it

0:55

makes you see progress, not

0:57

as a straight line. Not

1:00

as I'm not even as a line at all. Sometimes

1:02

it's it's actually a circle. I swear, it'll make

1:05

sense of the end of the episode. I.

1:07

Now present to you staffer treat you right

1:10

way you with. Your

1:17

than listening to radio Lab. Radio

1:20

from W and Weiss

1:22

hey. Why?

1:28

Gay. I'm Jetta Rod, I'm Robert Krulwich

1:30

says Radio Lab And today, well today

1:33

it's the story of an axe wielding

1:35

none coming through a window to smack

1:37

some staphylococcus and take you back to

1:39

the future. Exactly the story goes that

1:42

make any sense I don't Well, I

1:44

will. Okay well the story goes that

1:46

do boards both my producer lot of

1:48

Nasr. And here's part one. So.

1:52

The way the story goes starts

1:54

in Nineteen Twenty Eight. nineteen

1:57

twenty eight alexander fleming the store

1:59

goes, who knows if it's apocryphal

2:01

or not, is growing Staph. Staphylococcus,

2:05

in his lab. That's Maren McKenna, she's

2:07

a science writer, and Staph is a

2:09

bacterium. It lives on our skin,

2:11

and it especially likes parts of

2:13

the body that are warm

2:16

and damp. So it likes to

2:18

be just up our noses or... On our genitals, or

2:20

in our armpits, places like that.

2:22

And generally, it's no big deal.

2:24

Doesn't really do us any harm, but

2:27

if it gets into a scratch or

2:29

a cut and makes its way inside

2:31

our bodies, Staph goes from

2:33

being this benign companion

2:35

to being potentially deadly.

2:39

Anyway, London, 1928. Fleming

2:42

is growing Staph in his

2:44

lab, in these little petri

2:46

dishes, and he was a

2:48

slob, basically. And he goes

2:51

on a vacation, leaves his petri

2:54

dishes, covered in bacteria, just

2:56

around, leaves his window open.

2:59

And something blows across

3:01

his lab plate. Some tiny little

3:03

speck of a thing just floats in through the

3:06

window and comes to arrest on one of those

3:08

petri dishes. And so a few weeks later... Fleming,

3:10

finally, back from vacation. He

3:12

needs to use those lab plates again, and he

3:14

and his assistant go to clean them off. I

3:18

mean, you'd imagine that he would seed some

3:20

real lush, nice,

3:23

furry lawn

3:25

of Staph just overflowing

3:28

right out of the plate. Because it's been sitting there for so long. It's been

3:30

a staff party. But on one of

3:32

the plates that they pick up, they realize that it's

3:37

almost polka dot. It's got little dead zones

3:39

all over it. Little patches where

3:42

the Staph is dead. Dead

3:45

patches. So something blew through

3:47

the window, landed in the dish,

3:49

and starts killing the bacteria. Yeah,

3:52

and so when Fleming looks down

3:54

at his plate, he sees that

3:56

at the center of these, you

3:58

know, Staph dead zones... Uh,

4:00

there's a tiny speck of

4:02

natural mold. Oh, mold. And

4:05

they realize that that mold is expressing a

4:07

compound that is killing the staff around it.

4:10

It's like emanating rays of death. What was

4:12

the compound? That compound was called... Henestan.

4:18

The first true antibiotic. Infectious diseases that

4:20

had been killing people for as long

4:22

as we had been people suddenly could

4:24

be stopped. And it just blew in

4:26

through the window? That is

4:29

the story that's always been told. However it

4:31

got there, it was amazing. It was a

4:33

miracle. It was called a

4:35

miracle drug, right? I mean, it was just... It

4:37

really was a moment when the world changed.

4:40

When Fleming was put on the cover of

4:42

Time magazine. This is 1944, height of

4:44

World War II. It was a picture of

4:46

his face and the banner on the

4:48

cover said, his penicillin

4:51

will save more lives

4:53

than war can spend. And

5:03

this is, I had no

5:05

idea about this, virtually at

5:07

the exact same time when Fleming's

5:09

face is on the cover of

5:11

Time magazine, like two months later,

5:13

this Stanford researcher publishes that he

5:16

has found five different strains of

5:18

staff that do not

5:20

respond to penicillin. Really?

5:22

Yeah. This is happening while he's on

5:24

the cover? Virtually the exact same

5:26

moment. It's the first sign that

5:29

staff has responded to the

5:31

penicillin in the world by

5:34

developing resistance. It's almost like, is

5:36

that producer, Stonewall Wheeler? The era

5:38

of penicillin was over before it began.

5:40

Almost before it began. Before it's even released

5:43

to the general public. Wow. And

5:45

that penicillin resistant staff

5:48

moves across the globe. And

5:51

in 1957, in Cleveland, some scientists gather

5:53

together. And they are in a panic.

5:56

They have no idea why they've

5:58

lost the antibiotic miracle. So quickly.

6:00

So scientists across the globe put their brains

6:02

together and try to come up with a

6:04

new drug. The next amazing thing. And

6:07

in 1960 they get it. Methicillin. And

6:11

it worked. For about 11

6:13

months. 11 months? And

6:17

so we started this arms race.

6:19

There was a bug and then there was a

6:21

drug that took care of it and then there was a better bug.

6:23

Drug bug, drug bug. Right, exactly. Actually

6:25

found this list. Do you want to

6:28

hear it? Yeah. So streptomycin, 1943, resistance

6:30

1948. Methicillin,

6:33

1960, resistance 1961. Clindamycin,

6:36

1969, resistance 1970. You

6:41

can think of it as sleep frog or you can

6:43

think of it as a game of whack-a-mole. Ampicillin, 1961,

6:45

then 1973. So

6:48

that's a little. Carbonicillin released 1964, resistance 1970.

6:52

They're getting better. They're getting better. There

6:54

were always more drugs. Drug

6:56

development was doing really well for a really

6:58

long time. Hypericillin introduced 1980, resistance

7:01

1981. But

7:04

after the year 2000, drug companies begin

7:06

to realize it's not really in their

7:08

best interest to make antibiotics anymore.

7:11

And the end I have on this list is Linizolid,

7:14

which is introduced 2000, resistance 2002.

7:18

Wow. There are a few more but you get

7:20

the idea. Antibiotic approvals, the entry of

7:22

new drugs to the market, just kind of

7:24

fell off a cliff. Why? Well,

7:27

it takes 10 years and a billion dollars to get to

7:29

the point where the drug is marketable. But as soon as

7:31

you get the drug on the market, the resistance clock

7:33

is running. So you probably

7:35

won't make your money back. And

7:38

as you probably heard, we now have

7:40

these situations. Frightening new warning

7:42

from the Centers for Disease Control about

7:44

the spread of a string of germs

7:47

where literally nothing works. So-called superbugs are

7:49

now turning up in hospitals and the

7:51

patient dies. There

7:53

are now bugs that can resist all

7:55

of our drugs. I have seen physicians

7:57

break down weeping over this. not

8:00

the way that medicine is supposed to

8:03

fail anymore, but it does. I

8:05

mean, I

8:07

know that possibly the origin story of

8:10

penicillin is apocryphal. So this is all

8:12

a little suspect, but just to enjoy

8:14

imaginings for a moment, it just seems

8:16

like if that happened, let's just open

8:18

up a bunch more windows. Something

8:21

ought to blow in. But we could

8:23

wait a long time, right? We had staff had

8:25

been around for millennia

8:27

before 1928. But

8:31

you know, the whole reason that I wanted

8:33

to do this story is because kind of

8:36

there is a new window. It's a different

8:38

kind of window though. Not a window, nexus

8:40

and petri dishes? Not a window, nexus and

8:42

petri dishes, kind of a window nexus and

8:44

petri dishes, but a totally different kind of

8:46

window. What kind of window is it? Well,

8:48

I'm about to tell you that. Is something

8:50

blowing into the window? Yeah, but

8:53

it's not mold. It's way more fun than mold.

8:56

It carries an axe. How about that? So it's

8:59

a person? Maybe. I

9:01

don't know what I'm referring

9:03

to anymore. Radiolab

9:07

is supported by BetterHelp. Whether it's already

9:09

2am on a fun night out, graduation

9:12

time, a new year, we can find

9:14

ourselves wishing we had more time, wondering

9:16

where it all went. But

9:18

there's a question. If we were magically

9:20

given that time back, what would we

9:22

do with it? Perhaps you'd spend more

9:24

time with a friend that you've lost

9:26

touch with, or petting your dog, or

9:28

just noticing the sweetness of doing nothing.

9:31

The best way to let those special things into your

9:33

life is to know what's important to you so that

9:35

you can make it a priority going forward. A

9:37

therapist can guide you through the process of

9:39

defining your values and understanding your priorities so

9:41

you know what things you can spend your

9:43

time on that will really fulfill you. BetterHelp

9:46

offers convenient, affordable online therapy that comes to

9:49

you. Start the process in

9:51

minutes and switch therapists anytime. Learn how

9:53

to make time for what makes you

9:55

happy with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/Radiolab today to

9:57

get 10% off your phone. first

10:00

month. That's better help.

10:03

help.com/radio lab. Hello,

10:05

I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robin Ince and this

10:08

is the Infinite Monkey Cage trailer for our

10:10

brand new series. We've got mummies, we've got

10:12

magic, we've got asteroids. Mummies, magic and asteroids.

10:15

What's the link? That it was an asteroid

10:17

that magically went over the world that led

10:19

to Imhotep the mummy coming back to life.

10:21

That's correct. I thought it would be. We're

10:24

as scientific as ever. But the most important

10:26

thing to know is that we are going

10:28

to deal with the biggest scientific question we

10:31

finally ask. What is better? Cats or dogs?

10:33

Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Uh,

10:37

part two? Yeah. Okay. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm

10:39

Robert Krolwich. This is radio lab. We're ready now

10:41

for part two. Now, remember when part one ended,

10:43

there was a window open and something was going

10:46

to come through. We don't know what. We know

10:48

it's not mold. Yeah, we know it's not mold.

10:50

So whatever it is, whatever it was, whatever it

10:52

will be, we will hear about it now from

10:54

our reporter. A lot of NASA. Well,

10:57

actually, there is this story about these

10:59

two women who did open a window

11:01

to an

11:04

alien and distant land. And

11:08

actually, in a way, it's a

11:10

story about reimagining the past. But

11:12

to me, it's a story about

11:14

a friendship. Hey, everybody. Hello again.

11:16

Hello again. It's a story about

11:18

an unlikely friendship. It's

11:21

a buddy film. It's a buddy. Yeah, it's a

11:23

buddy movie. Okay. So yeah, tell it to maybe

11:25

just walk us through it. Right. So you have.

11:28

Hello, I'm Dr. Christina Lee. Christina.

11:30

And I'm an associate professor in

11:32

Viking Studies at the School of

11:34

English at the University of Nottingham.

11:36

She's a historian. And then you

11:38

also have. Hi, I'm Freya Harrison.

11:41

Freya. I'm a research fellow in

11:43

the Center for Biomolecular Sciences at

11:45

the University of Nottingham. And Freya

11:47

is a microbiologist. She studies

11:49

bacteria. We'll start with her. Okay,

11:52

so most of my work is about

11:54

sort of looking at how bacteria evolve

11:56

during very, very long lived infections.

11:58

But. My

12:02

big hobby is Anglo-Saxon Viking

12:04

reenactment. So

12:06

I have purely amateur interest in

12:09

history and mainly in

12:11

dressing up as a warrior and

12:14

going to fight club every Wednesday night and learning to

12:16

use the weapons. So

12:19

this is actually not Freya's group,

12:21

this is a group in New Jersey,

12:23

but basically they do the same thing.

12:25

Hundreds of people go out into some

12:27

field with some dulled weapons. They have

12:29

everything from swords, spears, axes, and

12:31

they give each other a jolly

12:33

good bashing and have a good

12:36

time. I

12:39

only mention this because it actually plays

12:41

into the story. Well, it was

12:43

really nice for the coincidence really. 2012,

12:46

a few years after finishing her

12:48

doctorate, Freya goes off to work at the University

12:50

of Nottingham. Nottingham is one

12:52

of the places in the UK, not

12:55

only for microbiology, but for Anglo-Saxon and

12:57

Viking history. And

12:59

she goes there to study microbes, but she

13:01

figures, hey, why not while I'm here, brush

13:03

up on my old English? With

13:07

her, I studied some

13:09

old English to a level where I could

13:11

sort of read and speak a little bit.

13:13

But she figured, hey, she could be better. And

13:18

if she did, she would get deeper into

13:20

the whole reenactment thing. So

13:23

I rather cheekily emailed the School of English's

13:25

old English reading group. That's where she

13:28

met Christina, the historian. At

13:30

one point, Christina, the historian, asks Freya,

13:32

like, what do you do? And

13:35

Freya said, you know, my day job

13:37

is that I'm a microbiologist, but on evenings and

13:39

weekends, I'm a history nerd.

13:42

And Christina said the moment she heard that, I just kind of

13:44

thought, I found my kindred spirit here. Because

13:48

she was like, wow, I'm like your

13:50

mirror image because I'm a historian by

13:52

day, but by night, I'm a microbiology

13:54

nerd. I've been interested in

13:56

infectious disease for quite a long

13:58

time, which... I don't

14:01

find any kind of friends in my department.

14:03

She told me she's the kind of person who would watch

14:06

Ebola coverage on the news and not be

14:08

able to stop watching. So eventually

14:11

they start talking about historical

14:13

diseases. So how would people

14:16

back then have treated something

14:18

like, you know, Ebola? Freya

14:20

is especially interested in this

14:22

because she, for her historical

14:24

reenactment, is developing this nun character who goes

14:26

off and heals people. But anyway, so they're

14:29

talking back and forth and then to cut

14:31

a long story short, they

14:33

find themselves both interested in

14:35

this one particular book.

14:38

It's known as Bald's Leech Book. This is about

14:40

1100 years old. What's it called?

14:43

Bald's what? Bald's Leech Book. It

14:45

has nothing to do with no hair.

14:47

Oh. Even though it just spits.

14:49

Is it B-A-L-D? It is indeed. And

14:53

leech, like a leech, like a little

14:55

worm that grabs onto your blood? No.

14:58

The ones from the Old English were Leech,

15:00

which is actually a healer or a doctor.

15:02

So the little squiggly animals are called leeches

15:04

because they're medicinal, not the other way around.

15:07

Oh. So the doctor wasn't named for the leech, the

15:09

leech was named for the doctor. Exactly, yeah. And

15:12

Bald is a man, the guy who wrote the

15:14

book? We think it's a guy. We think

15:16

it's a guy's name. And what is this book?

15:18

So it's kind of like this old healer's handbook.

15:21

It's filled with these potions and cures. The

15:23

original manuscript is in the British Library. Locked away.

15:26

21st century, very kind people

15:28

have digitized the original Old English text

15:30

and put it online. So Christina and

15:32

Freya bring it up and they start going through all

15:35

the remedies. And

15:37

it describes to you remedies for

15:39

stuff that is a little bit

15:41

different. You know, things like... Tone

15:43

deo vor. Tone mano. A

15:46

possession by the devil. Which according to

15:48

this leech book, the remedy for someone who

15:50

is possessed by the devil is you pure

15:52

drank el lutre. Make this kind of like

15:54

fowl brew. Make them drink it and it'll

15:56

make them vomit out the devil. And

15:59

then there's a... Another remedy for warts.

16:05

And all I'm going to say about

16:07

that one is that it involves hound

16:09

urine and mouth blood. And then things

16:11

like... How

16:14

shall we say, make your husband more

16:17

physically attentive? Or less

16:19

physically attentive, whichever direction you

16:21

need to moderate it. Pig's blood

16:23

I hope, or toad blood. Drink on

16:25

neacht nestia. Actually it's just you boil

16:27

a plant in some water and give

16:30

it to the guy. Oh. Yeah. Anyway.

16:33

So Fray and Christina are going through

16:35

this leech book. Looking for some kind

16:37

of wound. Something that was clearly an

16:40

infection. Some puffy... uh...

16:42

something. We could clearly say

16:44

that's bacterial. And eventually they find

16:46

an entry... Where at the end

16:48

of the recipe it says in Old English... Sibet

16:52

stelachdom. Sibet

16:54

stelachdom. The best

16:56

medicine. The best medicine. Yeah,

16:59

move over laughter. Yeah. And we

17:01

thought, how can we not try this one? What

17:04

was the best medicine for? So

17:06

it said it was for a lump in the

17:08

eye. It's actually called wen in Old English. These

17:10

days if you get a... of course that could

17:12

be something like a wart, right? But

17:15

there is a suggestion by archaeologists

17:17

that eye infection was rife amongst

17:20

the Anglo-Saxons because you lived in

17:22

buildings where you had smoke going

17:25

on. You lived crammed together. So

17:27

it could also be a sty.

17:30

What is a sty? It's an infection of

17:32

an eyelash follicle. You rub it and it

17:34

itches and then it gets swollen. Yeah, and it

17:36

causes quite a nasty red lump. It's a sty

17:38

in your eye. A sty in your eye.

17:40

Now it just so happens that the bacteria

17:43

that causes the sty in your eye is...

17:45

Stelachocosauria staph. Oh, the same stuff

17:47

as the Mr. Window Man, Penicillin Man. Exactly.

17:50

And we just thought, wouldn't it be nice to

17:52

have a bit of spare time and add a

17:54

couple of hundred quid to buy the ingredients and

17:56

just give this a go? Yes! Let's give it

17:58

a try. You know, why

18:00

the hell not? And matter of fact, Look

18:03

at this place! We thought that too.

18:06

Studio. Not bad at all. Recently, producer Matt

18:08

Kielty and I went to my tiny apartment

18:11

in the city, and we tried to cook

18:13

it up too. Are you ready to cook?

18:15

Oh, I'm ready to cook. I've

18:17

got this recipe here if you'd like to. Yeah, yeah,

18:20

yeah, please read it. Go for it. Okay, it goes

18:22

like this. Weird. I see. I

18:24

see all of our... We... One

18:26

year named Croplia. That's the first line of the

18:28

recipe, and right off the bat for Christina and

18:30

Freya, there's a problem. That first ingredient...

18:32

The word cropliach. Cropliach. Cropliach.

18:35

Christina said it was quite difficult to

18:37

translate, and nobody quite knows, you know, what it

18:39

is. But luckily... Just a couple words over, with

18:42

a clue. Then garlic. Amazing. The second

18:44

ingredient... Garlic. Which is an

18:46

allium species, and cropliach. We know this

18:49

was another allium, that's what the dictionary

18:51

of Old English tells us. So

18:53

they figured probably what they were dealing with was an onion,

18:55

or a leek. But we didn't know which one. So

18:58

we thought, okay, we'll try one that has onion, and

19:00

one that has leek. But yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm

19:02

fair enough. Now... The

19:04

recipe doesn't cover this, but we did it

19:06

anyway. Um... Peel the onion. Chop it

19:08

up. The same for

19:10

the garlic. And the recipe doesn't tell you

19:13

how much. It just tells you

19:15

equal amounts off. So you take

19:17

out the measuring cups, you measure out equal amounts.

19:19

Yeah, equal amounts... Into

19:21

the pestle. And then after that... Okay, it

19:23

says... The

19:25

B... ...to Somne.

19:27

Pounded well together. Okay.

19:29

Excuse me, really pounded.

19:32

And pounded Freya did. Yeah,

19:34

yeah, so lots of time

19:37

with the water and pestle. Muscles

19:39

built up from wielding a sword for pounding

19:41

the ingredients. Look, it's starting to be more

19:43

of a must. Third ingredient? The next one

19:45

was definitely something you wouldn't have knocking around

19:47

in your kitchen. And the fayar, yes. Yeah,

19:49

and the bayar and fayla. Oxgore. Oxgore. Bovine

19:52

bile from a cow's gallbladder. What, are you

19:54

going to have to kill the cow and

19:56

then go regen? No, it's actually a

19:58

very standard ingredient in microbiology. biology lab,

20:01

Ox bile. Today in 2015 you can but should not

20:03

just buy it on the internet. Here we go, here

20:05

we go. And so you take the Ox bile, add

20:08

it to the onion and garlic. And then the fourth

20:10

ingredient, yay name a ween. Wine. Wine time. Red wine,

20:13

white wine, what are we talking about here?

20:15

This is the thing, so we had quite a

20:17

discussion about what type of wine should we use

20:19

and we don't know really did they have red

20:21

wine, did they have white wine, what was the

20:23

alcohol content, but I did a bit of detective

20:25

work. And she figured out that the

20:28

monastery where this leech book was written, well

20:30

they she figured out where their vineyard was.

20:32

And just down the road there's this modern organic vineyard.

20:34

So they used that wine. I

20:39

just want to point out how difficult it is to

20:41

find English wine, we had to use Italian but... Once

20:46

you get all that stuff together

20:48

you're under the final ingredient. The

20:50

fifth ingredient was actually that you're specifically told

20:52

that you have to mix these ingredients together

20:55

in a broth or a bronze pot.

20:58

I don't have one. So we had to sort

21:00

of add pieces of you know of copper that

21:03

would have been available to people at the time.

21:05

So they had to do some research but they figured

21:07

out that the copper of today that is most like

21:09

the copper of a millennium ago was

21:11

actually cartridge breast which is what's used

21:14

as standard in plumbing fittings. Do

21:16

we actually use pennies? Do I stir

21:18

it? I think I stir it. It's

21:20

like a world's worst cooking show. It

21:23

looks and smells like quite a nice quite

21:26

a nice summer soup.

21:30

Clearly we botched

21:32

this whole thing. And finally...

21:38

So we're gonna cover it. Okay we're covering it. The directions

21:40

say we have to let the whole thing sit for a

21:42

while. It has to be stored for nine days and

21:44

nights. Okay.

21:48

That's it. One day

21:50

goes my two days three four

21:52

five six seven eight nine nine

21:56

days later. Alright here we

21:58

go. You ready? Alright, here we

22:00

go. And...

22:08

Then you have to strain it through a cloth. The

22:11

liquid that comes off, you apply to the

22:13

person's eye. Or the liquid. Yeah,

22:18

with a feather. Now,

22:22

clearly we didn't have any staff to try

22:24

this out on, but Freya in her lab,

22:26

she made these mock wounds. With these

22:28

little plugs of collagen, so it's a bit like jelly.

22:32

Basically it's like a goopy substance made to

22:34

be kind of like a flesh wound. And

22:36

we infect these wounds with bacteria, with the staff. Then

22:39

they put this thousand year old recipe that had been

22:41

standing there for nine days, they put it

22:43

on the bacteria that was in the fake

22:45

wound. Which obviously we didn't

22:47

think this was going to work. No, we

22:50

thought, you know, given the ingredients we

22:52

might see some small killing effect on the

22:54

bacteria, but it won't be anything to write home about. They

22:57

thought maybe it'd kill 10%, 20% of the bacteria, but then when they came

22:59

back the next day... It

23:03

was a staff massacre. It went on

23:05

a rampage. It went on a staff

23:07

rampage. It was killing,

23:09

you know, 99.9999% of these bacterial cells. Yeah,

23:16

first we thought we'd made some sort of

23:18

mistake, and this was some kind of fluke,

23:20

you know, we'd accidentally mixed up our plates

23:23

or mislabeled something. So

23:25

they run the entire experiment again. They grab the

23:27

ingredients, mash them up, put them on some bacteria,

23:30

and it happens again. It just absolutely

23:32

wiped out the bacteria and you could take it. And

23:35

they tried a third time and a

23:37

fourth and a fifth, and it worked

23:40

every time. And this is just something

23:42

you really don't see in your career

23:44

as a microbiologist. And

23:46

eventually they escalated from just

23:48

regular staff to the Mersa,

23:52

to the methicillin resistant staff. And this is

23:54

one of the bad ones. 1000

24:00

people are dying of community-based MRSA

24:02

every year. This one is very

24:04

dangerous. So Christina and Freya, they

24:07

sent some of Bald's Brew to

24:09

one of their collaborators in the States.

24:12

A collaborator, Kendra Rumbaugh, in Lubbock,

24:14

in Texas. Kendra took the stuff, put

24:16

it on some MRSA bacteria, and

24:18

then a week later sent Freya and

24:20

Christina an email. And I think it

24:22

was actually a three-word response. I think she just

24:24

simply said, What the fuck? What

24:27

the fuck? Bald's

24:30

Best Medicine had just wreaked havoc

24:32

on the MRSA. It killed 90%

24:34

of them. This is

24:37

beyond our wildest dreams. Now, Freya

24:39

and Christina made very clear that this

24:42

is not yet a miracle drug. I

24:44

mean, it's not even been tested in

24:46

humans. So absolutely do not

24:49

do this at home. They don't even know if this

24:51

is safe. It might be that if you don't do

24:53

it in exactly the way we did, nasty

24:55

fungus could grow in it, give you a worse

24:57

infection. So we should

24:59

not have done this. Matt

25:02

and I, we... ...dumped

25:07

ourselves down the drain. But the thing

25:09

about this whole story that is so

25:11

intriguing and so cool to me is

25:14

this time travel thing, which is

25:16

so strange. Like, it's like the

25:19

idea that something

25:21

a thousand years ago, like

25:25

a bullet forged a thousand years ago,

25:27

we could use it now and

25:29

then it could work. That's the

25:32

time travel dimension of that is so weird to

25:34

me. It

25:40

kind of makes you think differently about... I

25:44

don't know, progress. So without

25:46

much further ado, Dr. Christina Lee

25:48

and Dr. Freya Harrison, and

25:51

they're going to talk to us about

25:53

some ancient biotics. For

25:55

example, just a few weeks ago, Freya

25:58

and Christina got up in front... of

26:00

the Royal Society of

26:02

Chemists. Thank you very much and

26:04

it is an absolute pleasure to be here.

26:07

Large hotel conference room, 100 or so people. Freya

26:10

actually got up on stage dressed as a

26:13

nun. Okay, so this is

26:15

one interpretation of what an Anglo-Saxon

26:17

scientist may have looked like. And

26:19

they presented the results. Next ingredient

26:23

is particularly... The cooking demo and then

26:25

at some point Christina said something really

26:27

interesting. She was like, okay, sure, we

26:29

want to write this off because it

26:32

has demons and dragons and elves in

26:34

it. But are we sure that we

26:36

know what they meant by those words?

26:38

Like, for example... There are remedies which

26:40

ask you to sing for

26:43

Avermarias. And we would

26:45

say, oh, that's so superstitious. This is all in their

26:47

heads. But there again, we should also remember

26:49

this is a period when people do not

26:51

have watches. You do not have your nurse,

26:53

you know, so that's got the watch. Everybody knows

26:56

the Avermaria. Everybody knows

26:58

the length of an Avermaria. So

27:00

maybe it's take this medicine and wait 20

27:02

minutes. And I know

27:05

how to standardize 20 minutes, which is... Three

27:07

Avermarias, four Avermarias. It

27:10

may appear one way and it

27:12

in fact could be a totally

27:14

different way. It suggests that in

27:17

order to time travel, you

27:19

have to somehow... God, it's like we

27:21

don't even have the language to be able to understand what they

27:23

were doing. How effective. There's a

27:26

phrase, the past is a foreign country.

27:30

We need to learn the language of

27:32

the doctors of that time. We need

27:34

to kind of be a little bit

27:37

less dismissive and

27:40

learn a little bit more, you know, from them. I

27:42

learned a bit of humility this way. But

27:45

here's the reason why this is

27:47

so confusing to me. So

27:50

1100 years is a

27:52

crazy long time for

27:54

humans and for

27:56

bacteria. That's like an exponentially

27:58

crazy long... time. So

28:01

how is it that something

28:03

that this man bald was

28:06

doing to these bacteria then, like

28:09

it's not even the same bacteria, how could

28:12

that even work? That's

28:14

an awesome question. So one thing we've got

28:16

to think about is, well, why

28:18

did these medicines drop out of use? And

28:21

maybe it's because when they were

28:23

used, the bacteria revolved resistance. But

28:26

now, a thousand years later,

28:29

when these medicines have not been used, you would expect

28:31

that resistance to be lost. This

28:33

is something that Maren McKenna mentioned to

28:36

Soren and I, that sometimes when you

28:38

take a drug out of circulation, sometimes

28:41

resistance will decline. That doesn't

28:43

always work, but sometimes resistance

28:45

does decline. So if we

28:48

had been using this compound

28:50

through the ensuing thousand

28:52

years, then maybe it wouldn't work. So

28:54

there's an interesting discovery there, like that

28:57

what worked once and then

28:59

was resisted. You give it a rest,

29:01

and it can work again, and it will

29:03

be resisted. And you put it to rest and if you

29:05

had enough different, you could

29:07

go to different places in a different path.

29:09

Did you go to China, where they now

29:12

got all these people studying Chinese cures and

29:14

Arab cures? You could come up

29:17

with a rich historical

29:19

cocktail of armamentariums that will work. If

29:22

you bring them in, take them out,

29:24

bring them in, take them out. And

29:27

the whole world of the past then becomes

29:29

the fruit of your future, sort of. So

29:34

it's also like now I have suddenly an

29:36

image that it's possible that, this is Soren

29:38

Wheeler, by the way, in conversation with Maren

29:41

McKenna, that a thousand years ago, these folks

29:43

went through what we went through with penicillin

29:45

in that this guy wrote something in the

29:47

book and it's actually called The Best Medicine.

29:50

He probably got on the cover of whatever

29:52

their version of time was. He got their

29:54

Nobel Prize. And everybody celebrated. And then years

29:57

later, styes were coming back and the garlic

30:00

wine didn't work anymore and they stopped using

30:02

it and it got put

30:04

away and then here we are and

30:06

we discover it and it's been put away

30:08

long enough that like then now I'm thinking

30:11

about future some future civilization

30:13

digs up an old medical textbook that

30:15

was in some dusty whatever and discovers

30:17

penicillin and it worked. Did

30:23

I lose you on that Mary? No, no, I'm still with you.

30:25

I'm just I don't know. It just seems

30:27

like it seems like such a great hypothetical construction. I just

30:29

didn't really know what I can answer with that. Sorry.

30:35

Thank you for listening.

30:41

It's actually it's been almost a full

30:44

decade since we aired this episode and

30:46

since then Christina and Freya have published

30:48

several papers to show how this concoction

30:50

works and why. There's

30:53

not just one but multiple key

30:55

ingredients at work in their ancient

30:57

cells. They've also been collaborating

30:59

with PhD students to create a recipe that

31:01

can be turned into an actual medicine available

31:04

to folks like you and me. But

31:07

science is a slow

31:10

process and

31:12

things like logistics and funding just

31:14

make it even slower. They

31:17

are pretty hopeful that they will get

31:19

something to us before the

31:21

next one thousand years pass

31:23

by. Producer lots of

31:25

nasser with help them so in Wheeler and

31:27

produced by Matthew Kielty. Special

31:30

thanks to Sarah to Steve Diggle and to Alexandra

31:32

Ryder and Justin Park who came down from Yale

31:34

to be our old English readers to Jean Murrow

31:36

from the Gotham early music scene and to Marsha

31:38

Young on the medieval harp. Call Monroe of Tadcaster

31:40

and the rest of the Barony of Iron Bog.

31:42

Not totally sure what that is but I know

31:45

they helped us out. And I guess we should

31:47

help ourselves out. Yes, very quickly.

31:49

Up the door or through the window. I'm Janet

31:51

Murrow. I'm Robert Krowich. Thanks for listening.

31:56

Hi, I'm Alana and I'm from Queens, New York.

32:00

The lab was created by Jad Abenrad and

32:02

is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller

32:04

and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan

32:07

Keefe is our director of fan design. Our

32:10

staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy

32:12

Bloom, Becca Bresler,

32:14

Akkadu Foster-Kees, W.

32:17

Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria

32:20

Pazgoutiérrez, Cindy Njelnes

32:22

Simbundam, Matt Keelty, Annie

32:25

McEwen, Alex Neeson,

32:27

Zara Khari, Sarah Sandbach,

32:30

Arianne Wack, Pat Walters,

32:32

and Molly Webster. Our

32:35

fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily

32:38

Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi,

32:44

this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio. Leadership

32:47

support for Radiolab Science Programming is

32:49

provided by the Gordon and Betty

32:52

Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox,

32:54

a Simon's Foundation initiative, and

32:56

the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational

32:58

support for Radiolab was provided by

33:01

the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. I'm

33:07

David Remnick, and each week on the New

33:09

Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I unpack

33:11

what's happening in a very complicated world. You'll

33:14

hear from the New Yorkers award-winning reporters

33:16

and thinkers, Jelani Cobb on

33:18

Race and Justice, Jill Lepore on

33:20

American History, Vincent Cunningham and

33:23

Gia Tolentino on Culture, Bill McKibbin

33:25

on Climate Change, and many more.

33:28

To get the context behind events in the

33:30

news, listen to the New Yorker Radio

33:32

Hour, wherever you get your podcasts.