Jad Abumrad

Now, Rupa had never spoken to a parent of any of her samples.

So when she got that email and she was sitting at her computer and she read the email from the company that provided her the sample saying the mother of this sample wants to get in contact with you.

And they ended up eventually talking on the phone.

Like almost by wishing for it, she had made it happen.

Eventually, Sarah and Ross visited Arupa's lab.

She gave them a tour, and she showed them Thomas' retina.

Tiny little vials, maybe a third the size of your pinky, filled with frozen liquid.

Sarah says that throughout the whole process,

you know, of losing a child and then seeing him reclaimed bit by bit by all of these different people.

Yeah.

Big thanks to Michael Vitez for his reporting and to Damio Marchetti for production support and to Latif Nasser for all that help with research.

I'm Jad Abumrad.

I'm Robert Krolwich.

Thanks for listening.

Well, it's great to be here, and that means a lot, Terry.

Thank you.

I mean, early on, what he would do is he would build a loop slowly.

You know, he would bring in the bass, and then he'd bring in the congas, and then he'd bring in the shaker, and then he'd bring in the rhythm guitars, and sometimes there were three or four rhythm guitars, 30 different people on stage, and he would build the loop very, very slowly.

And as a listener, it can be quite monotonous, but then there's this moment where you stop wanting it to change and you just give in and suddenly you fall out of time.

And you could be listening for four minutes or four hours, you don't know.