Devin Katayama
speaker
83 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Devin Katayama’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Fast forward a couple of decades. It's the early 1900s. The now famous Metchenkoff set out to pioneer the study of aging and cure it. He wants people to be able to live happy and healthy until they're ready to die.
By now, he's a superstar at the Pasteur Institute, which was one of the most prestigious science facilities in the world at the time. It's sort of a scientist's dream. He has lab assistants, facilities, all the resources he could imagine at his fingertips. And he gets to work.
There are mice and rats and geese and cats and dogs. There's this 87-year-old turtle and a 70-year-old parrot.
And that's just the beginning. He starts pulling out hair from an old Great Dane, from a co-worker, and then from his own head to figure out why it's turning gray. And remember, he's a renowned immunologist with kind of a savior complex. So he's also spreading the gospel to everyone he knows.
Okay, so maybe he's not like the most fun guy to have around, but this is the beginning of the science of aging, of gerontology, which, by the way, was a term that Metchnikoff coined in 1903. And science is all about making mistakes, so you can find that one thing that works. And as he's conducting all these experiments, he zeroes in on this one idea, that the body was being poisoned.
Specifically, the large intestine.
The idea that something bad was happening in the intestines is one that dates back thousands of years, so this wasn't necessarily a new idea. But in the late 19th century, it was making a comeback because science was making new links to germs and disease.
Then one day, he has a breakthrough.
Remember, Metchikov is obsessed with centenarians. And there were newspaper articles backing up this idea that people in this region of Bulgaria were living a long time. And so he had to know. Why? Yogurt. Yogurt.
Metchnikoff had to tell everyone. It's 1904, Paris. A crowded lecture hall at the Society of French Agriculturalists. The famous Eli Metchnikoff is the guest speaker.
And he starts by getting up there and rattling off some pretty dark ideas.
He claimed they were more likely to commit suicide or be murdered.
He also repeated, without evidence, by the way, that some cultures killed and ate their women.
Metchnikoff is straddling the line between serious science and being a salesman because he's still trying to sell the world on science. So he's playing to his audience, stoking the fears of aging that are growing at the time and then saying, hey, don't worry. Science has the solution.
And then Metchnikov lays down his science.
And he says, if we can find a way to prolong that decay in our intestines, then maybe we can prolong it in the rest of our bodies.
That one lecture, Luba says, started a global yogurt trend that still exists today.
Much later, we'd find out that yogurt was probably not the only reason people in that region of Bulgaria lived so long. But it didn't really matter. Pharmacies started stocking yogurt. Doctors recommended it to patients. People used it as a disinfectant or preparation for surgery, even to treat some diseases. This stuff was all over the place.
Yeah, Danone yogurt.
Even breakfast cereal pioneer John Harvey Kellogg reached out to Metchnikoff. His face was everywhere.
Showing 41–60 of 83 · page 3 of 5
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