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If you want to get grosser, I can always get grosser. Oh, I'm ready to get gross. I'm ready to get gross. Let's talk about this stuff. Hey, I'm Lulu Miller. And this is Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab. And today, I've got kind of a personal story for you. But okay, so the baseline here is that I'm like...
Thankfully, I'm a healthy person. Like I have no preexisting conditions. I don't smoke. I don't drink. Nothing like that. I am and have been for like the vast majority of my life, like very lucky that way. Yeah. And then about 10 months ago, I started noticing blood in my poop. Okay. Like it wasn't painful or anything. It didn't feel any different. It was just like
a shocking red alarm red alert this is blood and was it just the once no no it was multiple it was every day yeah and and and i was like this is weird and it's just not going away um and so i was like yeah i should i should talk to somebody um so i go to a doctor um eventually get referred to another doctor uh i they go they put me under i get a colonoscopy and and basically i
As I was coming out of the sedation, she came to me, the doctor, and she was like, okay, so you have Crohn's disease.
Wow, that day. He's like right away. She was like, this looks like textbook case. Someone you know is suffering from Crohn's disease. And so I knew enough that it's like, OK, this is an autoimmune disease. Of the gut, right? With moderate to severe Crohn's. Yeah, it's like the immune system is attacking the digestive system. And the main symptom is usually pooping all the time.
But I wasn't experiencing that. So my doctor, she basically gave me this low dose steroid, one pill a day. And she was like, OK, let's see how this goes. And pretty quick, it was not going well.
So like I was pooping like five times a day, 10 times a day. You know, in like 80s movies of like kids at camp and then they give the camp counselor laxatives and then the camp counselor has to like run to the thing. And that's what I was pooping like. And is it, are you in pain at this point? Yeah.
it wasn't really painful so much. It was like, it was frustrating and exhausting. Like it just shut down my life. Anything I wanted to do, if I wanted to work, if I wanted to take care of my kids, like I just couldn't do it. And as you well know, I get like worked up and really excited about a certain topic and I'll be like researching a thing and working on a thing. I'll be so excited about it. I want to do nothing but
Live and eat and sleep and breathe that thing and dream that thing. Yeah, text about that thing and call people about that thing. Yeah. Right. And I do this all the time, but especially when things in my life get hard, like it's a coping mechanism for me. And at this moment in my life, you know, in this particular hard time, the thing that I was obsessed with, the random thing I got fixated on was Neanderthals.
Hmm. Why Neanderthals? Okay, so when I say the word Neanderthals, you're probably picturing in your head like a cave person, strong but dumb and hunched over human ancestor, right? Yeah. Yeah.
But it turns out in the last 10 to 15 years, we've realized that Neanderthals were actually super sophisticated, way more intelligent and capable than we thought, even artistic. Like they were this bizarro version of us that we knew and coexisted with for thousands of years. So to me, I see them as this long lost sibling like that that can tell us so much about
about ourselves and also about like what is even possible in the world so I was like so excited about Neanderthals and I was just like trying to read about them trying to read about them and then I kept having to go to the bathroom and at that point I was like spending most of the day on the toilet so I was like while I'm here I'm doing this anyway applause
So I like to end the results with one point. So I'm going to be talking to you today about some of the topics that came up in my thesis. I was on the toilet, on the phone. I was watching this lecture from 2018. That I hope you enjoy. And this scientist from South Africa named Dr. Karen Warren. She's basically talking about our ancestral story. You may have learned it in like a biology or anthropology class. Basically what happens is.
We're all evolving in Africa. What happens then is that... About 1.5 to 2 million years ago, Homo erectus... Homo erectus, this ancestor of ours, some of them leave Africa, which leads to an evolutionary split.
The ones who left for Europe and Asia, those ones become Neanderthals. While the ones that stayed in Africa eventually become us, Homo sapiens. Fast forward a million years. Humans left Africa. The Homo sapiens, some of us leave Africa. We reunite in Europe with our long lost Neanderthal cousins. And ultimately we kill some of them, out-compete some of them. And also we have sex with them.
So there was a big party and there was a lot of kissing cousins back in the day.
Before we potentially helped drive them extinct, we were actively getting it on with them. And as the video explained, this interspecies lovemaking is actually how we got to the humans that most of us are today. Homo sapiens with just a few Neanderthal genes in us. I feel like this is a moment to tell you I got like on 23andMe, I'm like as high Neanderthal as like a human can get. Really? Yeah. Huh.
Okay, so I'm sitting on toilet watching this talk. Talk ends, Q&A. In the Q&A, there's one thing she says. The question then becomes... Sort of totally offhand that completely catches me off guard in this lecture, which is that she says that those Neanderthal genes still affect our lives. And one example is... There are a lot of autoimmune disease genes, a lot of immunity genes in general. We got several autoimmune diseases from Neanderthal genes. Mm-hmm.
So I was like, what? So then I just opened a new little browser window and I googled Crohn's disease Neanderthals. And there were all of these articles saying, yes, we got Crohn's disease from having sex with Neanderthals. And I just burst out laughing. It just felt absurd. Like, well, how could that possibly... Like, how could...
two human-ish creatures that had sex 100,000 years ago, like, I'm on the toilet now because of that? Like, how does that make any sense, you know? Because of a clandestine interspecies love affair. Right, right.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like what are the odds, right? Yeah, yeah. So anyways, okay, so I'm reading about this and as I'm reading all this, like my situation is getting worse and worse and worse. I was pooping like 15, 20, 25, even 30 times a day.
Damn. It was getting like urgent multiple times. I pooped my pants. It was getting painful. I was not able to take care of my kids, which I felt so bad about because my wife was taking care of the kids alone. I couldn't sleep because I just keep waking up having to poop. And then I was waking her up too. And then after several nights of that, there was just one night where I was just curled up on the bathroom floor and I was just like...
I surrender. So my wife just dropped me at the ER and I just checked myself in. Okay, so I'm at the LA County Hospital. Checked myself in at like 6, 7 a.m., something like that. And started recording little, you know, voice memos.
I don't know if it's just for me or if it's for a story or something. This is a public hospital, so low ceilings, harsh lighting. There were a lot of people there who are in way worse shape than I was.
People with drug problems, people living on the street, immigrants who would literally just come over the border. They didn't have enough beds because of COVID. So he sort of got stuck in the ER, which is fine, it was nobody's fault. Okay. Okay.
It just meant I didn't have a bathroom. Huh. So... Okay, in my bed, feeling the pinch here in my stomach, so I'm just gonna go. Every time I had to go to the bathroom, I basically had to, like, sprint down the hall to the bathroom, to the public bathroom, knock on the door, and I had to be like, oh my god, please, is there anybody in there? Okay. And then I would go in the bathroom.
and i had to do this over and over over and over and over again for a day and then another day and i was just so desperate to think about anything but pooping so i just
was obsessively reading on my phone about the weird genetic legacy of Neanderthals. Okay, that's on brand. And I found that there were all these other diseases that scholars were speculating that we got from Neanderthals. Other autoimmune diseases, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, which my mom has, type 2 diabetes. Another thing, they did a study of hospitalized COVID patients
If you inherited this one snippet from Neanderthals, it doubles or in some cases quadruples their risk of, you know, like basically going to the ICU and or dying.
Oh, my God. Yeah. And in that hospital bed, I just had this image in my mind. Like, for the last few days, I just keep imagining these, like, tiny little Neanderthals. Of tiny Neanderthals. And in their hands were these tiny little obsidian hand axes. And they're just, like, in the folds of my guts. Just, like, stabbing me and drawing these little droplets of blood out of me. These little...
Cave people. Like, it was like my brother, my long-lost brother was, like, stabbing me in the back, but, like, not the back, the gut. And they go to sleep at night and they take shifts and in the morning they're all just, like, hacking away at my little guts. I was like, oh, it felt so clear to me. I was like, this is...
This is their vengeance. Like, like we exterminated them. We killed them. We genocided them. And now they are coming for us. They are coming for all of us. And they're coming for me in this hospital bed in particular. And they're not going to stop until they ruin my life. Yeah. So that's what I'm thinking about a lot.
After a quick break, Latif keeps digging into the story of his long-lost brothers, the Neanderthals, and discovers a whole other side to them.
Hey, everyone. Just wanted to let you know if you are a butterfly or mantis shrimp member of the lab, you're going to get some bonus content on Wednesday at 10 a.m. Next Wednesday. I don't want to spoil what it is. It is related to this episode. And it's it's.
Something I recorded during one of the toughest moments of my hospital stay. So be on the lookout next Wednesday, 10 a.m. If you're not a member of the lab, you can subscribe at radiolab.org slash join. Thanks.
Dental One Associates, redefine what it means to visit the dentist. Get top quality personalized support from committed experts that prioritize the well-being and satisfaction of you and your family. Care is centered on a highly personalized treatment plan backed by the trust and support of long-lasting relationships. Find out how you can make an appointment for a custom smile design experience by visiting doa-seriousxm.com.
I'm Maria Konnikova. And I'm Nate Silver. And our new podcast, Risky Business, is a show about making better decisions. We're both journalists whom we light as poker players, and that's the lens we're going to use to approach this entire show. We're going to be discussing everything from high-stakes poker to personal questions. Like whether I should call a plumber or fix my shower myself. And of course, we'll be talking about the election, too. Listen to Risky Business wherever you get your podcasts.
Lulu. Latif. Radiolab. So, after a couple of days in the ER, I got some good news. Yeah, we're good to go whenever you are. What's that guys?
They actually found a bed for me. I got transferred. I basically went from a public hospital that was a really, really, you know, resource-strapped, desperate place to a very right-across-the-street, wealthy hospital. It's like a palatial hotel. Where I had my own room. I have a window and a big suite with a couch and a bunch of chairs and...
Art on the walls and oh my god. A bathroom, a private bathroom with a shower. I have never been so excited to see a toilet in my life. Oh this is luxurious. Jubilation. My doctor is here so this is gonna be a lot easier I think hopefully. Yeah feels like I am on vacation or something. It's like a crappy vacation because my body is miserable.
But there's art on the walls, I guess. Yeah. It was like a huge breakthrough. They gave me all these IV steroids and this like big gun biologic drug, also through an IV. And basically between the combo of that, I all of a sudden like got some hours at night to sleep.
And then also at that point, my wife brought my computer. And so then I was like, you could step up your research. I could step up my research game. So I was like, I think we're we're all good poking around. And then I came across an article co-written by this guy. I'm Amar Gokchuman. I work on evolutionary genomics. And in it, he argued, did we get Crohn's disease from Neanderthals?
No. No? The Neanderthals aren't entirely to blame. Huh. It seems to me that Crohn's disease is actually older than Neanderthals, older than humans. That Crohn's disease, or at least some genetic variations predisposing us to it, developed all the way back in Homo erectus. The Homo erectus group in Africa before, you know, they were spread across the world. Oh, wait, so this...
kind of contradicts what the other scientists found? Yeah, this kind of confused me too. But they actually don't contradict. So it turns out for a disease as complicated as Crohn's, there are actually multiple parts of the genome that contribute to it. Some of those did come from sex with Neanderthals, but a lot also came from before, you know, we or they even existed. And for that reason, Omer says, It's more accurate to say that we share Crohn's disease with Neanderthals, part of our legacy in a way.
So I was kind of back to square one, right? Yeah. But also I felt like with all of that interspecies sex happening, they must have given us something, right? I'm just watching your need to have a research question. Yeah, that's probably it. Because otherwise you're alone in a hospital room wondering about the rest of your life. Right. But I have this question. Great question. What do you find? Okay. I find myself reading about this one particular Neanderthal skeleton.
That they found. The so-called old man of Shanidar. Shanidar I. This is Penny Spikens. Professor of the Archaeology of Human Origins, University of York. And as she told me... So this is in Iraq. The Kurdistan region of Iraq. Yeah. And he's really, really remarkable because he's someone who...
suffered a series of injuries, perhaps in something like a rock fall, we just don't know, has a one withered arm, one damaged leg, probable blindness in one eye, and partially deaf. Like this is someone who would not have been able to...
provide for himself, he should have been dead shortly after these injuries. But based on the condition of his body and the condition of these wounds, this is an individual who lived for sort of 10, 15 years after those injuries. So they must have been looked after by others. Other Neanderthals.
So just imagine like in your you're in a small tribe of people, like maybe 10 to 12 people. This guy can't leave the cave every morning to go get food. Right. Right.
But like this guy also can't defend himself if a cave lion or something comes up and tries to attack him. So someone actually has to stay behind with him to take care of him constantly. Not just for a short time, for actually a really extended period of time. So it's really quite a sort of profound thing, really. And while this old man of Shanidar is an exceptional example of this...
He's not unique. Most of the Neanderthals we find have got some injuries or illnesses that they've largely survived. We have more and better evidence for Neanderthals healing each other than we do for modern humans at the same time.
And like, I was learning this in a hospital bed where I was being cared for. Like, honest to God, like genuinely well cared for. By total strangers.
Even that first hospital where I was stuck in the ER, they gave me great care too. Do you want me to bring you anything? No, I'm okay. Oh, thank you. I'm okay. You can take another bath. Oh yeah, that's funny. That's funny. Trying to bathe me up, huh? Thank you.
Okay, great. Like I had this vision, just like I had the vision before of like these Neanderthals like knifing me. I was like, no, no, no, wait, what if it's the opposite? Like what if we instead, what if they gave us the idea of healthcare and even more deeply like compassion and empathy? Like what if Neanderthals gave us our humanity? I love that idea. Is that something other people are...
would agree with you on? Well, so I ran it by Penny. Good question. That's a really good question. Well, we don't know. She was basically like, there's literally no way to know. We do have evidence for modern humans being cared for. It's not that they weren't caring for them. It's just slightly more patchy evidence. Largely because the modern human fossil record is a lot
is kind of worse. And in a way, it makes sense if you think about it. So like Neanderthal remains, right? Because Neanderthals were basically in Europe, mostly. There's more universities and archaeologists and things like that in Europe who go out looking for these things. So we don't know. I mean, that's part of the frustrating thing about the archaeological past, having these little insights, you know, these little, little vignettes of what's happening, but then losing quite a large part of it as well.
So beautiful thought, but maybe not truthy. OK, it feels like a stretch because it is a stretch because we don't have the fossil record to prove it. But but but but it's not there. There is at least one thing that Penny sort of a crumb that Penny threw me that I think still you're hanging.
on. You're hanging on. Okay. Yes. What is it? Which is this. In a cave in northwestern Spain, they found the 49,000-year-old remains of this Neanderthal called El Cidrone 1. In the mouth of this Neanderthal were two things that were notable. One was a dental abscess that looked very painful. Ow. Okay. And
The other thing was tartar buildup. Calcified, like fossilized, like tooth gunk. Yeah, exactly. Tooth gunk. OK. And from that, these archaeologists, they basically like excavated this like tartar and were able to figure out that this Neanderthal was eating poplar leaves, which are bitter tasting leaves with no nutritional value whatsoever.
Okay. Why? Why would this Neanderthal be eating poplar leaves? Because poplar leaves contain salicylic acid, which is the active ingredient in aspirin. Do humans have poplar leaves in their teeth?
So we don't have any other evidence. It's very hard to find evidence, but we don't have any other evidence of humans using aspirin, basically, at the same time. And Penny says, look, that makes total sense. Neanderthals, they were in Europe for way longer than we were. They knew the plants. They would have figured out some ways to use those plants to help them. And modern humans coming in won't have known where to find plants.
painkillers. They won't have known where to find the antibiotics. They won't necessarily have known, you know, how to make a splint or whatever they were using. So I'm sure they learn from each other. Modern humans may well have been quite dependent in some ways.
So, okay, so they didn't give us necessarily our compassion, our hospitals, or our humanity. We can't say that. We can't say any of that, even though I feel it in my heart. We can't say any of that. But what we can say is maybe they gave us aspirin. Maybe they gave us relief from pain. Yeah. So there is that sense, isn't there, that maybe if you're going to be ill, you might be better off amongst the Neanderthals. My goodness me. ♪
So wait, first of all, I mean, we've been talking for a long time. Are you okay? Do you need a bathroom? You don't have to fake it. You can just go. To quote my doctor, Dr. Odufalu, who's awesome, I am, quote, basically in remission. So I'm back to normal. I'm in fighting shape, podcasting shape, as they call it.
Okay, they just told me that I am good to go. So I'm like disconnecting my heart monitor here. Yeah, but I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. Less time researching from the toilet. Less time researching from the toilet. Still, if I'm being honest, I'm still researching from the toilet. I mean, me too. Aren't we all? Thanks so much, Andrew. I really appreciate it, man. Yeah, I'm going home. Yeah, thank you.
Thanks again, everybody. I really, really appreciate it. Thanks so much, Andrew. I really appreciate it, man. Yeah, I'm going home. Yeah, thank you. Thanks again, everybody. I really, really appreciate it. Radio Labs, Latif Nasser. This episode was produced by Simon Adler.
Special thanks to Ainara Sistiaga, Carl Zimmer, Carly Mensch, my GI doctor, Florence Damilola-Odufalu, and her entire team. The staff at LA County USC Medical Center and Keck USC Hospitals. Really everyone who worked at both of those hospitals. And, of course, thank you to the Neanderthals. And before we go, if you liked this investigation...
into Blachev's gut and deep history. Our colleagues at WNYC have a brand new investigative podcast out. It is about New Jersey and crime and a murder mystery, a potential political murder mystery. It is hosted and reported by WNYC's senior reporter, Nancy Solomon, and
I have to say, it's really good. I'm addicted. It's called Dead End. It's from WNYC. And I'll play you a short clip.
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portorally methodical and human. I think it's a podcast you would like if you are curious about our world and the nefarious forces controlling it. Again, that's Dead End. Find it wherever you get podcasts.
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