Elixir of Life Podcast AUDIO (Listen/Play)
The Elixir of Life transcript
(June 6, 2025 Podcast)
Doctor and special correspondent Avir Mitra takes Lulu on an epic journey live on stage at a little basement club called Caveat, here in New York. Starting with an ingredient in breastmilk that babies can’t digest, a global hunt that takes us from Bangladesh to the Mennonite communities here in the US, we discover an ancient symbiotic relationship that might be on the verge of disappearing. So sip a vicarious cocktail, settle in, and explore the surprising ways our bodies forge deep, invisible connections that shape our lives.
This live show is part of a series we are doing with Avir that we are calling “Viscera.” Each event is a conversation that takes the audience on a journey into a quirk or question or mystery inside of us, and gives them a visceral experience with the viscera of us. The previous installment of the series, was called “How to Save a Life.”
Special thanks to Tim Brown, David Mills, Carlito Lebrilla, Bethany Henrik, Danielle Lemay, Katie Hinde, Jennifer Smilowitz, Angela Zivkovic, Daniela Barile, Mark Underwood.
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by Avir Mitra
with help from Anisa Vietze
Original music from Dylan Keefe
Sound design contributed by Dylan Keefe, Iván Barenboim
Fact-checking by Natalie Middleton.
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[RADIOLAB INTRO]
LULU MILLER: Latif?
LATIF NASSER: Yeah? Lulu?
LULU: [laughs] So I have a special treat for you today.
LATIF: Okay.
LULU: Recently I got to do a live show. It was in a little club in New York City called Caveat.
LATIF: Oh, I’ve always wanted to go there! Yeah.
LULU: It’s really cute. It’s got, like, a cabaret underground vibe.
LATIF: Are you finally singing? I feel like you’ve been just waiting to get out there and sing.
LULU: You know, I did not sing in this show at all. But there were live musicians, including Dylan Keefe on upright bass, our director of sound design.
LULU: Okay, thank you all for coming out. Thank you kindly.
LULU: And a rock star of sorts.
LULU: Without further ado, Avir Mitra. Can we get some bring-on music?
LATIF: Ooh, Avir!
LULU: Yeah. So as you know, Avir Mitra is our ER doctor, special correspondent.
LATIF: Mm-hmm.
LULU: Who has done some of the most beloved medical mystery tales on the show.
LATIF: So many vultures, plane crashes.
LULU: Mm-hmm. Easter Island dirt.
LATIF: That’s right. Yeah.
LULU: And he had another one in store that he told on stage that night. Truly an odyssey. Takes us all over the globe. We blow by the Mennonite community, we go to Gambia, we go back into deep evolutionary time to stage a reunion, a physical reunion with what Avir calls humanity’s oldest friend.
LATIF: Hmm!
LULU: And he kicked off the whole thing with a bottle full of white liquid.
AVIR MITRA: We’re talking about the magical substance that is breast milk.
[cheers]
LULU: And because, as you know, I recently had a baby, the breast milk was provided by me.
LULU: I have an eight month old. I am breastfeeding. I also use formula. This is not—this is not—we’re not here to say one or the other is better. But instead …
LULU: And so we just kind of held it up to the spotlight, everyone was looking at it. And Avir kicked the whole thing off with just a simple question.
AVIR: Here, I guess I’m gonna throw it to the crowd. Like, if we just had to name the components of breast milk—and I’m gonna take one off the table. We know that it’s 87 percent water. Okay, fine. That’s easy. But the solid part. Like, name some things. What’s in breast milk?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Vodka.
AVIR: Vodka?
LULU: [laughs] Depending on the mother’s night.
AVIR: Yeah. Yeah, right.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Fat.
AVIR: Fat.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Sugar.
AVIR: Sugar. Proteins, hormones. Calcium.
LULU: Calcium.
AVIR: You guys are right. I mean, everything you’re saying is right. But there is something that we’ve missed. It’s called human milk oligosaccharides. And what’s crazy is it’s actually the third-largest compound in breast milk, way above protein. So, you know, you have lactose.
LULU: Oh!
AVIR: That’s the sugar that someone mentioned. You have lipids. That’s fat. And then you have these HMOs, and they are strange.
LATIF: Wait. HMOs?
LULU: [laughs] Yeah, it’s not your healthcare—health insurance organization.
LATIF: Oh.
LULU: They are—they’re actually sugars, but as Avir told us, they are totally different than normal sugars. And they form into these kind of gorgeous but strange elaborate shapes.
AVIR: Branches and chains and ferns and weird shapes.
LULU: And they are—they are not found anywhere else in nature, just in human breast milk.
LATIF: Weird!
LULU: In fact, Avir calls them “alien sugars.”
LATIF: And that’s the number three ingredient in breast milk, alien sugar?
LULU: The third biggest, yeah.
AVIR: You can’t get them at the local grocery store. And what’s crazy about it is humans can’t digest this stuff at all. Like, literally no human being can do anything with these sugars. And no one ever really thought to ask, like, what’s going on, really, until a scientist by the name of Bruce German came along and basically just asked this simple question: Why? Why would a mother who’s got very precious, limited calories, why would that mother literally dissolve her own body, taking all these precious nutrients and calories to make milk that needs to feed this baby, why would the mom make these sugars that no baby can use? Why? So this is around 2005. Bruce is having these thoughts, and this is the era, sort of, of the microbiome, where we’re all thinking about the microbiome. And it’s this idea that, like, we’re basically human suits covered in bacteria, filled with bacteria.
LULU: [laughs]
AVIR: You know? And so he has this hunch that’s basically like, okay, well, if we can’t use it maybe there’s a bacteria that can.
LULU: In where?
AVIR: That lives inside of a baby. You know, maybe there’s a bacteria that lives in the baby.
LULU: All right. That would make sense. Like, food for our baby bacteria.
AVIR: Right.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: So they design an experiment basically taking an agar plate where bacteria like to grow.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: So they decide, “Okay, we’ll take the agar plate, sprinkle the alien sugars on a plate, and throw a bacteria in there and see if it grows.”
LULU: If you eat it, you’ll proliferate. If you don’t, you’re gonna die.
AVIR: Exactly.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: Yeah, you got it.
LULU: All right.
AVIR: So they throw some bacteria—you know, take a common bacteria that lives in the gut, throw it on there, throw some HMOs. It dies, doesn’t work, no luck.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: Try another one, no luck. Try a third one, no luck.
LULU: Okay, how long is this taking?
AVIR: Well, so a year goes by.
LULU: Yep.
AVIR: Bruce and his team are, like, begging, borrowing, stealing, to get, like, any breast milk that they can. You know, begging on the street. Like, “Can I get some?”
LULU: [laughs]
AVIR: You know, it’s not working. A year goes by. Two years go by.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: And finally on the third year—boom. They find something.
[suspenseful music]
AVIR: That was perfect.
LULU: Ooh!
AVIR: Wow. Why do we prep for these podcasts? We could just do this.
LULU: I know. Let’s just always do that. Okay.
AVIR: Okay, so they find something that’s growing. You could see all this white stuff is bacteria that’s growing.
LULU: At this point Avir shows us a picture of a plate with all this bacteria growing on it.
AVIR: Because they put it under a microscope, and it looks very strange.
LULU: Ooh!
LULU: If you zoom in on this picture, this collection of squiggles …
AVIR: Zoom in a little more.
LULU: It’s beautiful!
LULU: … becomes …
AVIR: Zoom in a little more.
LULU: … these individual little …
AVIR: A little more.
LULU: … Y shapes.
LULU: And so this is the bacteria that likes to eat the weird alien sugar in the breast milk?
AVIR: Exactly. And so it turns out this bacteria is called Bifidobacterium infantis.
LATIF: Bifidobacterium infantis. Never heard of it.
LULU: Mm-hmm. Yeah, we can just call it ‘Bifid’ for short. It is shaped like a Y, and with one of the little spires kind of bent over like a little puppy dog ear. It’s kinda cute. Anyway, this was the only bacteria they could find that actually ate those alien sugars in breast milk.
LATIF: Huh!
AVIR: Yeah. So, yeah.
LULU: Okay, so does that mean this is in my baby’s belly?
AVIR: Well, that’s the next question. Exactly right. So you have found, out of the thousands of bacteria, you found one that can eat these sugars. That’s crazy enough.
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: Because, like, you know, we don’t—we can’t eat them, but it has all the genes and all the enzymes to eat these sugars that we make that we can’t eat. It’s just weird, right?
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: So you would think okay, this—this should be in some babies’ guts.
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: And so the way to look for that is, you know, when you have bacteria in your gut, you’re gonna poop out some of that bacteria. So you really gotta get into poop. You know, that’s where this story is going. And so basically from there, Bruce and his team need to start collecting dirty diapers, you know? Which I don’t know if that’s an upgrade from begging for milk, but that’s where they’re at.
[laughter]
AVIR: So Bruce is working at UC Davis. He’s around getting his friends and neighbors and strangers on the street to give him their dirty diapers. “Let’s culture it. Let’s see if we can find some Bifid in there.”
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: But no, he can’t find any Bifid in any—in any of these diapers.
LULU: They’re just not—so that theory’s gone?
AVIR: Well, it might just be where they’re located, you know? So they realize they need
to sort of expand the search. And that’s where this idea starts, what I call the amazing global baby diaper hunt.
LULU: [laughs] Okay.
AVIR: So it turns out that the Gates Foundation, for some reason, has collected stool samples from all over the planet. I’m not sure why, but don’t tell Elon Musk about this please.
LULU: Basic science! You never know!
AVIR: So they have just baby poop, like—like, just lining their walls, I guess. I don’t know.
LULU: Just libraries of poop.
AVIR: Just libraries of poop from all over the world.
LULU: Okay. Yeah.
AVIR: So Bruce calls them, you know, sets up a meeting and says, “Can I get some of this? Let me get some of this poop!” So yeah, they set up a deal where he’s gonna—they’re gonna send him poop from all over the world. And they’re gonna look all over the place. So they look. They start looking at poop in Denmark.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: And no Bifid.
AVIR: Okay.
AVIR: Scandinavia, Switzerland. No—no Bifid.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: But then they get to Gambia.
LULU: Huh!
AVIR: Bifid. It’s there in the poop. Cambodia, it’s there. Rural China, Bangladesh. They have Bifid.
LULU: Huh!
AVIR: Weirdly, the only people in the US? Mennonites.
LULU: Mennonites have the Bifid? The babies have it?
AVIR: Very strange.
LULU: Why some places and not others?
AVIR: Well, that’s the question. At this time, they don’t really know why here, why not there?
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: It’s a mystery. I mean, it certainly could be—you know, maybe this bacteria survives in a certain climate. Maybe it’s genetic differences, maybe it’s lifestyle differences. It’s an open question.
LULU: Okay. Does he have any guesses of—like, there’s obviously some bacteria we
like that are great for gut health, some we don’t want. Is it—does he have any
sense of what it’s actually doing?
AVIR: Right. That’s the next question is Bruce and the team, guy by the name of David Mills, all these amazing scientists want to figure out, what is this bacteria doing?
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: So what they do is they do another experiment. They basically take some cells from the gut which you can take. You can culture them and you can put them on a plate. And when you put gut cells on a plate, they actually automatically form themselves into a wall. And so it’s kind of cool because, you know, gut cells, what they’re supposed to do is basically form a wall, and anything you eat or drink has to basically go through those cells to get to your body. So it wants to make sure all the food is the right food. It’s all broken down properly. All the good stuff comes in, all the bad stuff stays out. That’s what the gut cells do. So they form into this wall. A gut’s being formed in a petri dish. They throw some Bifidobacterium on the petri dish and see what happens.
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: And right away they notice that the bacteria are able to sort of latch onto the walls of the gut, just, like, hang there like mountain climbers. And they start proliferating really fast and basically coating the whole wall.
LULU: Whoa! So this Y-shaped bacteria that likes alien sugars with enough time will—it’s almost like wallpaper on the inside of the baby’s gut?
AVIR: Yeah, exactly. It’s like wallpaper on the walls.
LULU: Okay. So I guess I ask again, is this a good—is this a good thing?
AVIR: Right. We don’t know, like, if it’s good or not.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: So to answer that …
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: I gotta tell you a story.
LULU: Okay. I love a story.
AVIR: All right, so Dylan—guys, I’m gonna need a little bit of, like—rogue, don’t try this at home—just don’t try this type of stuff at home.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: So our story centers around Dr. Shara Sheldon, who at the time is a PhD student, okay? Now she’s studying this stuff. She goes to a lecture where Bruce is talking about these results, and it sticks in the back of her mind. Meanwhile, her father is a professor at the vet school, and he works at a lab—like, at the—not at a lab at a barn that’s raising these thoroughbred horses.
LULU: Ooh. Okay!
AVIR: So thoroughbred horses, if you don’t know, you know, those are those really expensive horses that—you know, they eat way better food than you and I.
LULU: [laughs] Yeah.
AVIR: Their lives are definitely more valuable than ours.
LULU: For sure.
AVIR: Like, these are expensive …
LULU: Fine. Yeah. Okay.
AVIR: But there’s a problem at the barn. Every new foal that’s being born to these horses, after a few days is getting diarrhea, fevers, and then dying.
LULU: Oh!
AVIR: Yeah. And that’s sad because we like horses, but also sad because they’re losing, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars every time this happens.
LULU: On every foal. Okay. Okay.
AVIR: And the problem is next week there’s gonna be, like, 20 more foals being born.
LULU: Oh, no!
AVIR: And yeah, so basically what they do is they find out what’s going on, and it turns out these horses are infested with, like, one of the worst diarrheal bacteria that we have. And if anyone works—does anyone work in healthcare or anything like that? I mean, what’s the one bacteria—diarrheal illness that we don’t want to deal with?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: C. diff.
AVIR: C. diff, exactly.
LULU: C. diff.
AVIR: You know it. Once you’ve smelled C. diff once you’ll never forget. I mean …
LULU: Avir showed a picture of C. diff that was right behind us on stage.
LULU: Okay, it looks like a dynamite stick, like, exploding corn dog situation.
AVIR: Yes, the corn dog dynamite stick. This bacteria is terrible.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: Like, you can’t—if you spray this with antiseptic, if you spray it with Purell, like, it won’t die. Like, this thing doesn’t die.
LULU: Yikes!
AVIR: It’s really hard—needs very strong antibiotics.
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: It kills people all the time.
LULU: Oh, no!
AVIR: We see this every time in the hospital. And it was killing these horses, so these foals infested with C. diff. The dad, who’s the professor who works there, is talking to his daughter about it and commiserating. And the daughter goes, “Wait, like, I just heard a lecture by this guy, Bruce German.”
LULU: Oh, no.
AVIR: “And he was talking about this bacteria that coats the walls. Like, let’s give this to the horses.”
[laughter]
AVIR: So—so the dad goes, “Yeah. I mean, let’s try it.” So they take the bacteria from Bruce, they culture it, they mix it up with some milk.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: And then when the foal is just born, they squirt it into the foal’s mouth.
LULU: Like with a little baby bottle?
AVIR: Yeah, a little baby—squirt it in.
LULU: Hope for the best, it’s only $100,000 on the line.
AVIR: Right.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: And lo and behold, what happens is sure enough, 20 foals are born, none of them get C. diff, all of them do fine.
LULU: Whoa!
AVIR: Incredible.
LULU: We—go—can we get a round of applause for Shara?
AVIR: Rebel science.
LULU: Again, don’t try it at home. Like, clinical trials are good, but ingenuity, okay.
AVIR: So I want to play my interview with her, because I wish I could tell you the story stopped there, but it continues on.
LULU: Oh.
AVIR: All right. Let’s see.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Shara Sheldon: I was like, “Good job, brain, for remembering the random lecture with Bruce German.”]
LULU: So in the room we’re actually now watching a video of the interview where you can see Shara on the left—put together, short dark hair. And Avir on the right is, like, kinda sweaty and, like, was just saving lives, maybe.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir: There are so many random lectures I had in med school that I will never remember. Like, I don’t know how you did that.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Shara Sheldon: I loved it, though. I thought it was the neatest thing. I don’t know.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir: Okay, so that’s an amazing story, but I know that the story doesn’t end there. What happens next?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Shara Sheldon: So time goes on. I’m still doing my PhD, and got married, got pregnant, and then I had my baby—healthy baby. Everything’s going great and then the change comes. And we started dealing with a lot of gas, a lot of crying. Just—like, he looked like he was in pain. We were trying everything for the gas—the little gas drops that are natural, the bicycle kicks, all kinds of things. So I just was getting quite desperate to find something that would work. And we kind of hit the breaking point when my husband was out of town. And so I’m alone with the baby, and it was so bad. He was up, like, all night, just in pain, gassy. And I was like, “This is not going to work.” And I said, “We need something.” And so I remembered the Bifidobacterium. And I said, “I’m going to email Bruce.” And so I sent a desperate email saying, “Please, please, I know you have some of this Bifidobacterium still. Like, I’d really like to try it.”]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir: Okay, and so does he email back? Like, does he take a week to email back?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Shara Sheldon: He got back to me right away, and he said, “You can drive up and get it.” And I loaded up in the car, drove to Davis, and went in. And we got, like, a little bag, just a brown paper bag, with samples in there and this syringe.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir: No way. What, they’re in, like, little vials or something, or like …?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Shara Sheldon: No, they’re in little sachets. Like a little rectangular packet that you, like, can rip across and pour out.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir: Oh. Okay, yeah, I got it.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Shara Sheldon: So, I was like …]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir: Like a bag of drugs, basically.]
[laughter]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Shara Sheldon: Yeah. You know, you’re using stuff that’s being tested for research, so it’s not very pretty.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir: Right.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Shara Sheldon: I get home, I’m very excited to try this. I grab one of the little sachet packets out, and I open it and I see there’s, like, a powder in there. It had kind of an interesting odor, I noticed. And then I mix it in with the breast milk and then suck it up in the syringe. And then my mom helps me hold Connor and we hold his head and we put the syringe into his mouth, squirt it in. So we did that. And they said, “Just do one dose a day.” So, you know, I’m sitting there with baited breath, waiting to see if anything happens, watching him like a hawk. We didn’t really see any changes right away, so I was a little disappointed because you’re desperate at this point, right? I want results. I’m so tired.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir: Right.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Shara Sheldon: And it took two days. So—and then it worked.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir: Oh, wow. Okay. What do you mean it worked? Like …?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Shara Sheldon: It—the change was just so drastic. It was like a switch had clicked. And he just was so much happier. He was sleeping. He wouldn’t have the gas constantly, and just seemed so much more relaxed. And I just—I was like, “This is working.” And this is exactly what was missing from his microbiota.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir: Well, you know, the scientist in me has to ask, like, you know, could this have just been a coincidence, you know, like, or placebo effect? You know, obviously you really wanted to see some results. Like, how do you know—how do you know for sure that this did that?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Shara Sheldon: I would be doing the same thing, right? “Oh, this is just a placebo.” But the amount of dirty diapers had been very consistent. I had been keeping track because I love data and I’m a nerd, so I was keeping track of all of these things. And to go from, like, that eight to eleven down to two, I knew it was doing something.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir: Wow, that’s—I gotta say—I mean like, was there ever a part of you that felt, like, afraid to essentially be, like, experimenting on your firstborn child? Or did you just feel that confident?]
[laughter]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Shara Sheldon: I mean, I felt really confident with it. And there’s a small part of you that’s like, “Oh yeah, I’m giving this novel thing to my baby.” But when I saw all the benefit, it was like, “This is right, and it’s working and everything’s good.” But it is scary.]
LULU: Oh, wow! As a—I just have to say, is there any other, like, better image of sleep deprivation than, like, “This thing smelled a little weird, but let’s put it down.” Wow! Okay, go Shara. I mean, what—okay, but to follow up on your—your question there, like, do we know what it—like, is there still a chance that could have been placebo? Do we have any clue about what’s actually happening at the cellular level? Like, what is going on?
AVIR: Yeah, so Bruce sort of made a deal with Shara. Like, “I’ll give you the bacteria, you give me his diapers.”
LULU: [laughs] Okay.
AVIR: Common theme we’re seeing emerge here. So that’s what he does. He sort of collects Connor’s diapers—and a bunch of other kids’ too—and he’s sort of seeing what’s going on. “Let’s check the microbiome, let’s check the stool, see what’s happening.”
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: Let’s look for a subtle change, like a change of five, ten percent in your microbiome, I mean, that’s huge.
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: But what he finds is actually Connor’s diapers went from having zero Bifidobacterium to being 80 percent Bifidobacterium.
LULU: Whoa!
AVIR: And this is, like, insane, because, you know, it’s not—we’re not even—this isn’t normal microbiome stuff. This isn’t, like, diverse ecosystem. This is just like domination by one bacterium.
LULU: It’s like a monoculture in there.
AVIR: Yeah, exactly.
LULU: It’s all Bifid. Wow!
AVIR: Yeah. Okay, so they notice that, and that’s interesting. Another thing they notice as well, is just like babies eat and they poop, well, these bacterias are eating these alien sugars and they have to poop, too.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: But what they’re seeing is the poop that these bacteria are creating are acid. So they’re creating acidic poop. And the thing is bacteria can’t really grow that well in acid, so acid prevents bacteria—most bacteria from growing.
LULU: Oh!
AVIR: And it turns out that Bifidobacterium is totally chilling in the acid, but the idea is it may be keeping other bacteria away.
LATIF: Okay. Can I—can I just make sure I understand what’s going on?
LULU: Absolutely.
LATIF: Okay, so Bifid is the thing that eats the weird sugar in breast milk.
LULU: Mm-hmm.
LATIF: And if you put it in a baby’s gut it’ll receive that sugar, it’ll eat the sugar, it’ll bloom and it’ll wallpaper the gut, but also it’ll, like, edge out all the other bacteria.
LULU: With its acid poop, yes.
LATIF: With its acid. Right.
LULU: Bully wallpaper, kind of. [laughs]
LATIF: Okay. And the idea is that the bully wallpaper is what helped Shara’s baby have less gas and less pooping pain or whatever?
LULU: Yeah. I mean, we don’t know what was happening inside Shara’s baby for sure, but that is exactly Bruce German’s theory. And, you know, Avir pointed out there’s a lot of situations, especially in a newly-developing baby gut, that if the wrong kinds of bacteria get in there it can release toxins and poke holes in the gut wall.
AVIR: And allow things to pass through. Instead of going through the cells, they sort of go in between the cells and around the cells. So bacteria can get in, toxins can get in, undigested food particles can get in.
LULU: Ugh!
AVIR: And that’s called “leaky gut.”
LATIF: Leaky gut.
LULU: Yeah. And according to Avir, that can cause a lot more problems than just gas pain or diarrhea.
AVIR: And for this baby that just got an immune system, like, two months ago, it’s trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and it gets very overwhelmed and confused. It gets inflamed. The immune system is hyperactivated, and it causes a lot—you know, it can cause a lot of problems.
LULU: So Bruce’s theory is that, you know, going back to Bifid coating the walls of the gut …
AVIR: When Bifidobacterium’s here, the Bifidobacterium sticks to the walls, prevents any other bacteria from coming there, so that basically nothing bad gets into the body.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: And the immune system can actually, like, learn and do its thing.
LATIF: And to be clear, so this is a bacteria that most babies, especially here in the US right now do not have.
LULU: Exactly. And what’s wild is that you can actually see the disappearance over time, because if you look back over time at poop samples from across the world—which there are—one of Bruce’s grad students at the time actually did this, Bethany Henrich, she looked at the historical data and found that baby poop back in the early 1900s, it used to be way more acidic, like, everywhere.
LATIF: Whoa! It’s just been subtly changing all this time?
LULU: Yeah, over the last hundred years. In places like the US, it started trending over to neutral.
AVIR: There’s this very clear line, and it’s showing that basically our baby’s poop used to be acidic to a pH of five, which is acidic.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: And it’s slowly been working its way up to neutral. And it’s like this very clear thing if you map it out.
LULU: Huh! And again, you said the Bifid makes the acidic poop, so watching it get less acidic, is that like watching a disappearance?
AVIR: Exactly.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: At this point, Bruce and the team is sort of being like, “Wait, this is a sign. This is the marker of Bifid, and it’s going away.”
LULU: Huh.
AVIR: That’s what they see.
LATIF: Wow, this feels—you’re making me, like, miss this thing. Like, I feel like we should get it back.
LULU: Yeah, well that is where we are going next in the show. First we’re gonna take a brief intermission, but when we come back we will not only address that, we’re gonna have special guests live on stage, we’re gonna hear about cease and desist orders from the FDA coming down to doctors, and we’re gonna be doing some real life I guess you could call it experimentation on the audience.
LATIF: On babies?
LULU: Not babies. On adults in the bar.
LATIF: [laughs] Okay.
LULU: Stick with us!
LULU: Okay.
LATIF: Okay. Latif.
LULU: Lulu.
LATIF: Radiolab.
LULU: We are back, playing the live show I did with Avir Mitra, telling the story of this baby gut bacterium that seems to be protecting the baby’s gut. And we didn’t delve into this much, but feeding the baby’s gut cells, keeping them going strong, but also appears to be disappearing from our species all over. And according to Bruce German, our main scientist, it is time to bring Bifid back.
AVIR: At this point, Bruce goes from being, like, just a normal scientist—show up to work, do your research—to becoming like a borderline evangelist.
LULU: [laughs] Okay.
AVIR: Like, he—you know, his daughters won’t take him to the family dinners because this is, like, all he talks about. He told me that.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: You know, he’s like, he sees a baby in a stroller across the street, he’s gonna, like, sprint over to the baby, throw some Bifidobacterium at them. And he actually mortgages his house and gets his co-workers to do the same. They sell the boat, do all these things to start their own startup to sell Bifidobacterium.
LULU: Whoa!
AVIR: Right.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: Which you can buy and which we may or may not have …
LULU: Ooh!
AVIR: … for you to try.
LULU: And this is just like he’s selling bacteria in a jar?
AVIR: Bacteria in a jar.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: Yeah.
LULU: Okay, now at this point in the show, I just need to pop out and say Avir told a story that honestly I have not been able to shake since that night. And it’s kind of like the story of Shara and her baby, but on steroids. And it starts when Bruce and his team connect with a guy named Brian Scadalini.
AVIR: Brian Scadalini is an MD/PhD, and he’s a neonatologist who works at OHSU in Portland. So he’s working there, and as a neonatologist, it’s a beautiful thing because you get to see these little tiny preemies grow into, like, full-fledged adults. But there is one thing that’s, like, the worst thing that happens in NICUs, and basically that’s this.
LULU: So Avir was showing us this picture. It’s like a CT scan kind of thing, and you can sort of tell that it’s like this scan of a gut, but it seems to be, like, almost ballooned out.
AVIR: So what we’re looking at is a preemie’s belly.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: And it’s filled with gas, it’s very distended. And this baby’s not doing well. This is called “necrotizing enterocolitis,” also known as NEC. And basically what’s going on is, like, a bacteria, an adult bacteria has somehow made its way into the baby’s gut, has sort of bloomed and taken over, and is, like, completely destroying the gut wall, producing all this gas and all these bad things.
LULU: Huh. That looks painful, scary. I mean …
AVIR: Very scary.
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: Yeah. I mean, when I was a resident, I rotated in NICUs, and it’s terrifying, because these preemies can go from being normal, and then overnight they can totally crash and get this. And the mortality is very high once they get this.
LULU: Oh yikes!
AVIR: So Brian gets sort of wind of this bacteria, and they both have this thought, “Well, maybe we could try Bifidobacterium.”
LULU: In—in the preemies?
AVIR: In the preemies.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: He gets some of the Bifidobacterium from Bruce and the team and the company, and he just starts giving this to the babies.
LULU: Without checking with parents or …
AVIR: Right. Pretty much like, “This is on formulary now. We’re gonna give it to them.”
LULU: I’m having mixed emotions about this idea. But …
AVIR: Sure.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: Yeah, I agree.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: And, you know, you gotta think he’s not just waiting until they get NEC to give it to them. He’s giving it to all the preemies, like even the ones that would be fine without it.
LULU: It’s like a preventative measure.
AVIR: Preventative. Exactly, preventative.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: And lo and behold, he finds that the incidents of NEC goes from 11 percent down to 2 percent.
LULU: It was actually 2.7 percent.
AVIR: Insane!
LULU: That’s huge.
AVIR: Yeah.
LULU: Okay.
[applause]
AVIR: And this goes on for years.
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: There is, in fact, years that go by that they don’t see a single incidence of this.
LULU: Of NEC in the NICU?
AVIR: Right. In the NICU. He publishes about it, gains some momentum.
LULU: And he’s sprinkling Bifid this whole time?
AVIR: Yeah, just sprinkling.
LULU: Okay. Okay.
AVIR: This was in—well, he’s—we’ll get to that. So he does this and yeah, he finds that it’s working. Other NICUs are starting to take this up.
LULU: Okay.
AVIR: So anyway, I’ve been talking about Brian enough. I want to bring Brian up himself. So Brian, if you’re here, let’s bring you up.
LULU: All right. Let’s get some play-on music. Come on down!
AVIR: Thank you, Brian.
BRIAN SCADALINI: Hi everybody.
AVIR: You just flew in today, just landed.
BRIAN SCADALINI: I did.
AVIR: So you had this really incredible result when you studied Bifidobacterium. I mean, truly incredible, and it seemed like it was spreading. But I guess I wanted to ask you, like, what happened next?
BRIAN SCADALINI: Well as—as Avir was saying, for years our incidents of necrotizing enterocolitis was quite low. And so we started in 2018 to answer that question, and then we had to stop in 2023.
AVIR: Tell me about that.
BRIAN SCADALINI: So for years, even well before me, neonatal intensive care units throughout the world, in Europe and in Australia, almost every premature baby gets a probiotic, gets a bacteria that is like this, including this one, Bifidobacterium infantis, to prevent necrotizing enterocolitis. So I wasn’t as crazy as it might have sounded to start using it in our NICU.
AVIR: A little crazy. A little crazy.
BRIAN SCADALINI: But we were the first ones to use it alone. So our team decided this bacteria makes sense because of its symbiosis with milk, and so we thought we should use this to prevent necrotizing enterocolitis. But what happened, as you might expect, whenever you introduce a bacterium into somebody, whether it’s us or babies, and especially babies with an immature immune system, there is a risk that it will find its way into their bloodstream.
BRIAN SCADALINI: Now if you ask me if I’m gonna choose between a pathogen and Bifidobacterium infantis, which has no antibiotic resistance, and is meant to be in milk or in the gut to metabolize HMOs—which cannot be metabolized by us, remember that—I will choose B. infantis. And so unfortunately, some babies got B. infantis in their bloodstream and had positive blood cultures, meaning that when they looked ill, they had a blood—a sample of blood taken and then was grown to see if the infantis was there.
BRIAN SCADALINI: I might add that other bacteria that have been used as probiotics have also found their way into the bloodstream. The FDA knew that NICUs throughout the United States were using this to prevent necrotizing enterocolitis, and decided with the instance of a bloodstream infection, that all the NICUs in the United States needed to stop using probiotics to prevent necrotizing enterocolitis. This is essentially what’s like a cease-and-desist letter. You can read this letter and see there isn’t a risk department in a hospital that’s gonna continue to use this with the FDA saying, “You shall not use this without an investigational new drug status.”
AVIR: So you get this letter, and I imagine you have some complicated feelings, because it’s like—I don’t know, we could understand where the FDA is coming from.
LULU: I’m a little onside FDA.
AVIR: But at the same time, you’re working hands on with these babies and you’re seeing amazing results. So, like, what’s going through your mind?
BRIAN SCADALINI: The first was, “Oh, crap,” but a stronger word than that, because in the risk-benefit, we saw necrotizing enterocolitis, we’d get two or three babies die per year, and for several years, no baby that was born in our hospital died from necrotizing enterocolitis. So on one hand, I felt like babies were going to die now. I—I hate this disease, I can’t tell you how much I hate this disease, and I hate seeing babies die in four hours, six hours, they’re dead. And the impact it has on their parents, versus a rare risk like this. So that was going through my mind. But on the other hand, it was sort of like what you were talking about Lulu. It was sort of like, well, we were using something to treat, prevent or mitigate a disease, which is a drug. And therefore I see the FDA’s point. So I was of split minds.
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: What happened once you removed this bacteria?
BRIAN SCADALINI: Unfortunately, we are working on reporting this, but our necrotizing enterocolitis rate has come right back to where it was before, in fact, probably a little bit higher than it was before.
AVIR: So I guess where do you go from here? What are you trying to do now?
BRIAN SCADALINI: Well, we suspect this is happening throughout the United States, so we hope to be one of the first to report this. But since that time, we’ve been working with the FDA to try to have this become a drug, which is not the most simple pathway, and costs a lot of money to develop a drug. Investors are scared of premature babies. They’re afraid of pediatrics in general, and they’re really afraid of preterm babies, and so it’s a struggle to try to make this continue to move forward. And the only thing that keeps the folks who work on it working on it as a large team is the fact that at least in our hands it works.
AVIR: Okay, Brian, stay here on stage. Thanks, Brian, for being here.
LULU: Yeah.
[applause]
AVIR: Okay, so just to advance the story from here, Brian gets this result. Bruce has this company. He still really believes in it, but unfortunately his company sort of now has a scarlet A, and they have to sort of short sell to stay afloat. And so they lose—Bruce and his team sort of lose stake in the company. They’re still—you know, he still has his job. He’s not, like, on the streets, but things aren’t looking too good. So—but Bruce still—and I’ve spoken to Bruce for hours. He’s still positive about it, he’s still hopeful. And so anyway, I’ve been gatekeeping this guy Bruce long enough. Let’s bring him up to the stage, Bruce German.
LULU: Bruce!
AVIR: Hi.
LULU: Okay, Bruce, I’ve got a question. Going all the way back to that global poop hunt—I don’t know if that’s what you called it in your papers, but our shorthand—do we have any clue, like, why in the places like Denmark and most of the US, except the Mennonite communities and Switzerland—like, why—where was the Bifid going? Why did we lose it if it seems like it is such a harmonious thing in a baby gut?
BRUCE GERMAN: First I should say that—that this is the work of literally over a hundred people for 20 years. And I know I’m obviously distractingly tall and good-looking.
LULU: [laughs]
BRUCE GERMAN: But really, it’s this diversity of scientists from around the campus of UC-Davis who have brought this science forward. And that’s one of the critical questions where you need multiple disciplines. Because it’s a mutualism, what we would call a synergy. Oligosaccharides don’t do much by themselves. The baby poops them out. Bifidobacterium infantis doesn’t do much all by itself. The baby poops it out. But you put them together and that’s the magic, and away it goes. But babies are born sterile.
LULU: Completely? No microbiome in there?
BRUCE GERMAN: They’re sterile. Mother, you are keeping your baby sterile.
LULU: Huh!
BRUCE GERMAN: But needless to say, the minute they’re born, they are being inoculated from bacteria all over.
LULU: Wow.
BRUCE GERMAN: If there is no Bifidobacteria infantis in their environment, they cannot get Bifidobacteria infantis.
LULU: Hmm.
BRUCE GERMAN: If mothers can’t breastfeed, then they don’t get the oligosaccharides. They don’t survive. No Bifidobacteria in the baby.
LULU: No fish food for the bacteria.
BRUCE GERMAN: No. Nothing. If the mother gets antibiotics, kills Bifidobacteria, and that mother will never have Bifidobacteria again, unless she somehow gets re-inoculated. One step in any of those directions ends the story, and it’s been happening over a century. Mothers are losing the ability to pass on the bacteria.
AVIR: You know, you—another part of this is formula doesn’t have these alien sugars.
BRUCE GERMAN: No.
AVIR: And it’s not able to feed these bacteria, so the bacteria get starved. And I will say, you won’t admit this but, you know, part of his evangelism was that he would email all the formula makers, and be like, “Can I meet with you?” And he would get some meetings with these formula makers. And my impression was they were sort of like, “Thank you, sir. Here’s security, please leave.”
[laughter]
AVIR: I’m exaggerating. But lo and behold, a few years ago, all the major formula makers have added these alien sugars into the formula. I’m crediting you with that.
BRUCE GERMAN: I mean, it turns out that there are dozens.
LULU: That’s great. That’s great!
[applause]
BRUCE GERMAN: There are dozens of different oligosaccharides. And so far, industrially they can only make a couple. And you need a lot. Remember you pointed out there’s more of this than protein. Evolution is saying it’s as important to feed the bacteria in the baby as the baby.
AVIR: Right.
BRUCE GERMAN: So—so we need to get a lot more.
AVIR: Okay. Well, I think one question I had is sort of, you know, you look at the pH changing and the poops changing over the centuries. Like, I can’t help but think this correlates so well with the rise of, like, childhood autoimmune diseases and, like, these chronic diseases. I just wanted to—is there something there?
BRUCE GERMAN: Yeah, we’ve been studying that, and the strength of the immune system is it’s so personal. The benefit of that is your immune system can learn to attack diseases your parents never had. There’s a flaw—is your immune system has to develop, be educated in the first few weeks of life. And the immune system is basically located in your gut, for sort of obvious reasons. It’s paying attention to the environment through the bacteria. If the bacteria are appropriate—Bifidobacterium infantis—then it’s clear that the immune system is developing appropriately. But if the gut is full of inappropriate bacteria, now the immune system is being miseducated. The result of that is, with Bifidobacterium infantis, it’s clear, it’s an intelligent immune system. If it doesn’t, then it’s not an intelligent immune system.
AVIR: What does that mean, “intelligent immune system?”
BRUCE GERMAN: It makes mistakes. So an immune system can make two kinds of mistakes. It can say, “There is danger. Don’t worry about it.” The other kind of mistake is, “It’s perfectly benign. I should attack it as if it was dangerous.” And that’s what—autoimmune disease. When someone doesn’t have Bifidobacterium infantis, their immune system is not developing appropriately. That means it’s greater risk. Doesn’t mean they’re gonna get autoimmune disease but they’re at greater risk of having it. We now have very convincing data that a part of the problem with autoimmune disease is the bacteria in your gut in this early developmental stage—and lo and behold, throughout human history, Bifidobacterium infantis, that’s been the one. It’s been predicted that if we had not found it, it would probably have been extinct within the next generation. It wouldn’t have been findable at all in—in a few years.
AVIR: You know, I just think it’s crazy that there’s this, like, Y-shaped bacteria, right? That no one ever paid attention to, that we almost wiped off the face of the Earth by accident, that basically has this completely symbiotic relationship with us. I mean, like, you know, we—obviously in school we learn about, like, the birds and the bees and pollination and coral and algae. But, like, who knew that, like, our babies have symbiotic relationships with this random bacteria? Like that’s Sylvie. That’s Lulu’s baby.
LULU: My baby.
AVIR: Like, Sylvie is a symbiote with these bacteria. I mean, it’s blowing my mind. And if you really think back, like, if you really go back in time, let’s go back 500,000 years, which is when we broke off to become human. Bruce was telling me, if you go back, you know, to trace the genetic lineage of Bifidobacterium infantis, it broke off from its predecessor at exactly the same time. Which to me is crazy, because that means, like, we have literally co-evolved with this bacteria. I mean, like, come on! Like, this is our best friend. This is, like, our oldest and best friend that we’ve ever had.
LULU: Okay Avir, can we—can we—sorry, can we scratch the emo music? Okay, I mean, you—you put a picture of my baby up, and it’s a beautiful thought but we’re tell—you’ve gathered, like, a sad story here. I mean, Brian was shut down, the study was shut down, who knows how long—if it’s ever gonna go. I mean, Bruce is eloquent, but his business sounds kind of on the rocks.
[laughter]
LULU: And I feel like—and then, even if we could get it back, there are all kinds of parents who can’t breastfeed for different reasons—economic reasons, body reasons, whatever it may be. So, like, aren’t we just being kept away from this majestic, beautiful friend? Aren’t we just—isn’t this just sad? And we’re doomed to be unhealthy?
BRUCE GERMAN: Got it. At this point in time, no.
LULU: Okay.
BRUCE GERMAN: If you look back at the history of scientific discoveries, especially related to health, they’re always turbulent. This is a fundamentally different way of thinking. It’s now been shown that babies with Bifidobacterium infantis respond better to a vaccine than babies who haven’t. So that’s not just protection, that’s enhancing health in ways we didn’t even think about before. If you look back how science moves, it’s moving inexorably forward. It’s just a matter of time.
LULU: Okay, this guy can milk hope out of any situation, I guess.
[laughter]
AVIR: Another pun. Well, I guess with that, you know, we only have one thing left to do, honestly, is we have the Bifidobacterium here. We’re gonna try some.
LULU: Yeah.
AVIR: No pressure obviously, but if you guys want to try some we can all cheers to Bifid together. Just talk to your bartender. They’re gonna be bringing them out.
LULU: Okay we’re gonna start passing it. Raise your hand if you want it. Once again, you do not have to. Radiolab doesn’t necessarily condone it.
LATIF: Wait, you had the Bifid there? Was it—was it alive?
LULU: Yeah, it was the real stuff. It’ll bloom if you drink it. It was like in these little bags. It’s kind of this—just like the smelly powders that Shara had.
LATIF: Wow! What did it smell like?
LULU: It was like fishtank-lite?
LATIF: [laughs]
LULU: You know?
LATIF: Sure!
LULU: And we mixed it in with some water, and handed out shots.
LATIF: Oh, wow!
LULU: To anyone who wanted. And while we were handing out these little shot cups, I made the band jam out along with …
LULU: And I think we need to bring in an instrument that has never been played on Radiolab ever before. Hold on. Can you mic me? Okay.
LULU: … my breastbone.
LATIF: Wow!
LULU: Okay. So, okay.
AVIR: Breastbone remix.
LULU: Come forward.
LULU: It was not hooked up. It was not all the way hooked up.
LATIF: You weren’t pumping.
LULU: I wasn’t actually pumping milk.
AVIR: It’s very goth—industrial goth vibe.
LULU: Yeah, it’s a little steampunk. Oh my God, this sound, again and again. Why capitalism, why?
AVIR: Don’t drink it yet. We’re gonna drink it together. We’re gonna drink it together.
LULU: We’re gonna do it together.
LATIF: Did people want it, actually?
LULU: A lot of people. Yeah, I think most people did it.
AVIR: Turn that music down. All right, cheers, everyone.
LULU: Cheers! Okay, we really do it? Okay.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: What did we actually drink just now?
LULU: Straight up bacteria. Who just asked? Yeah, you just ingested, like—I don’t know—is it powder? Dried bacteria? It’s those little Y-shapes. What did we drink, Bruce?
BRUCE GERMAN: Yeah, Bifidobacterium longum, subspecies infantis.
LULU: Okay.
LULU: Like, as I drank this stuff down, I thought about how we were all in the room at that moment literally physically reuniting with this bacteria that we have been with for so long, that we might be starting to lose. But the more I started thinking about that whole chain of things that Bifid do in a baby’s body, I realized I actually had one last question for Bruce.
LULU: So this is sort of an emotional question, but in this moment of breastfeeding, which I have found to be one of the most, like, connecting experiences of my life, you’re saying what’s happening is the baby, which used to be inside me is learning—it’s building itself away from me, from other things. Like, it’s actually a physiological moment of a wall being built of disconnection.
BRUCE GERMAN: [laughs] Well, it’s true, but …
LULU: Okay.
[laughter]
BRUCE GERMAN: But you’re paying forward so that that infant can be successful. The genius of milk is we tended to think milk is protective. Of course. Darwin, survival. It’s more than that. Evolution is driving not just survival, it’s success lifelong. What you’re doing is providing the means for your baby to be successful its whole life.
LULU: Yeah, blah blah blah. Give ’em roots and wings so they can fly away. I only heard the first part, I’m sad. Go evolution. Okay.
LATIF: Well, despite your sadness, that story was great. That was a really fun event. I never heard any of that. Thank you for playing it for us. And thank you also to Avir and to Bifid.
LULU: Yes. And, you know, I should say this was not our first live show that we have done with Avir. You, of course, did one last summer called “How to Save a Life.”
LATIF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the CPR one.
LULU: Mm-hmm.
LATIF: And we—that was also a blast. It also ended with music. We had the entire audience learning how to do CPR at the end to the perfect beats per minute of “Stayin’ Alive.”
LULU: Mm-hmm. They’ve been really, really fun, and we are thinking of these live shows with Avir as a series that we’re calling Viscera.
LATIF: Mm-hmm.
LULU: Because every story is about something going on in your body, in your viscera, and it will have some kind of visceral experience.
LATIF: Yeah, so if you do—if you do have a body, want to learn more about it, keep an eye out. We’ll, like—maybe we’re coming to a city near you.
LULU: Yup!
LATIF: And last thing, thanks, Lulu. We gotta do the thanks.
LULU: No, we already did them on stage.
LULU: Okay. Well, it is time now …
LATIF: All right, no problem. Okay, my work day is done.
LULU: [laughs]
LULU: As someone once said, if you want to hide a piece of information, put it in the credits to a podcast, because no one will listen. And yet you’re all stuck here! So okay, so huge thank you—he’s not even on here, but to Avir Mitra for bringing us this story.
[applause]
LULU: To Bruce German, to Brian Scadalini, right here on stage, too. Shara Sheldon and all her hijinks. To our musicians, Dylan Keefe and Ivan Baren. Biggest thank you to the Radiolab team lurking in the background. Stand up. Harry Fortuna, Sarah Sandbach, Soren Wheeler, Pat Walters, Anisa Vietze, Jeremy Bloom and George Wellington.
LULU: Speaking of Radiolab, I would like two OG members, Robert Krulwich and Ellen Horne to stand up—our original executive producer. They are here. We love you. None of us would be here without you. Everybody here at Caveat, thank you for bringing us here. Tip your waiters, order more drinks. We would love to come back. And finally, of course, to our Radiolab members who sat—there are people watching us on a screen. Hi! In fact, they’re still there. Thanks. You make everything we do possible. And now, Avir, you have a couple, and I need someone else to read the very last thing. We need a listener. Anyone? An audience member willing to—okay, come on down.
AVIR: So, quick thank-yous. This story actually came to me from a Radiolab listener named Tim Brown. So cool. So thanks to him for sharing this story. David Mills, Carlito Lebrilla, Bethany Henrik, Danielle Lemay, Katie Hinde, Jennifer Smilowitz, Angela Zivkovic, Daniela Barile and Mark Underwood—all the scientists involved in this research that I wasn’t able to shout out before.
LISTENER: Hi. I’m Alexa Petrie and I’m from Halifax, Nova Scotia and here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Anisa Vietze, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.
[applause]
LULU: Well done! Thank you all!
AVIR: Thank you so much!
LULU: Have a great night!
[LISTENER: Hi, this is Laura calling from Cleveland, Ohio. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]
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