Regina G. Barber

Carmen Nenglu's that paleontologist.

He's at the University of California, Riverside, and he says trying to trace how far back parasites popped up is hard work.

They're rare to find in fossils.

Among other things, they tend to be made of only soft tissue that doesn't preserve well in rock.

Sometimes researchers get clues that only give a small portion of the whole mystery.

And like the world's greatest detective, Batman, karma had to deal with a mysterious character.

But in this case, it was a fossil that nobody could figure out.

They did have a name for it, though.

The Riddler.

Like the Batman villain.

Karma's detective skills even helped a mystery outside of his specialty.

A few years ago, while at the University of Toronto, he stumbled upon some fossils that he suspected could be a rare first.

At first, his colleagues didn't think he was onto something.

Then after looking deeper into specimens from the same dig site, they realized...

Hey, short wavers.

That's Danielle DeKarl, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto.

Regina Barber here.

Together with her and Karma on today's show, we get into an ancient haunt, parasites.

We talk about what the Riddler tells us about the power of parasites through the ages and why breakthroughs in our fossil record may be tucked away in a basement.

If you're looking for a free, quick way to support us, I have an answer.

I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

Right now, on the app or platform where you're listening, leave us a rating or a review.

All right, for the lowdown on these creepies, these parasites this Halloween season, our dynamic duo is Carmen Nenglu and Danielle DeCarl.

It really helps new listeners find our show.

Danielle, let's start with the basics.

What are the qualifications for being a parasite?

And we really do read what people write.

Yeah.

OK, so I've heard of a few kinds of parasite fossils, like the ones that live on other organisms and steal their food.

Like AndyM144, who at the end of last month said, I always learn so much from this podcast and I love to share the fun facts I learn with people I know.

Like what kinds of parasites can be found in these fossil records?

So, Karma, I want to talk about the Riddler, this mystery you solve.

Like, take me back.

You're looking at all these images of ancient mollusks, basically with question marks on them.

And you're like, I have no idea what this is.

I mean, which is so cool.

And it makes it a kind of aquatic worm called a spionid.

So in the study, you said that this also shows the behavior of this really old spionid or parasitic worm.

And to actually show behavior in fossils is really, really rare.

What do you mean by that?

Like, how are you seeing the behavior of these parasitic worms on ancient mollusks?

Thanks, Andy.

And everyone else listening, embrace your inner Andy.

Now that you've figured out that the riddler, it's an ancient parasite, what else can that tell us?

While you're listening, take a second, leave us a review, and share us with your friends.

Now that we know more about this ancestor, how can that help us understanding that parasite now?

Because they basically still exist in our ocean today.

Yeah, and Danielle, you helped Karma on some other research.

We're talking about, again, this mystery you found, this really rare fossil, this clue to, like, leech evolution.

And normally when we think about leeches, we think they are parasites, right?

Okay, on to our show.

But your study...

is kind of unique, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what's fun is like this fossil wasn't hidden away or newly unearthed.

You both found out it existed from a published paper about a fossil site in Wisconsin.

Yeah.

And Karma, how did you feel when they rejected you like that?

How did you all confirm?

Like what was the process in being like, yes, this is the first leech fossil, leech fossil?

Parasites scare me.

I think of cordyceps, the parasitic fungus that inspired the video game-turned-TV series The Last of Us, the one that in real life bursts out of the head of ants and controls them when they're dead.

So Karma, you were right.

Like, do you feel vindicated?

Like, in the end, it was a different fossil, but your suspicion of these things being leeches, you're right.

Daniel, what does this tell us about modern-day leeches, that now we have a fossil record?

Or I think of people finding a tapeworm in their bodies after eating raw meat.

I've been covering paleontology stories for a couple of years now.

And one of the things that always sticks with me is just how many fossils are just sitting around.

Daniel, I'm going to ask you first, like, how do you see the fossil record and like of many animals or anything kind of changing in the future with so much data not even looked at yet?

Those have haunted me since childhood.

And even more unsettling, I was reminded recently by a paleontologist that parasites have been around a lot longer than I had thought.

I love that.

I'm so glad I asked you that question.

Karma, what do you think?

Wow.

Thank you, Danielle.

Thank you, Karma, for coming to talk to me.

This has been amazing.

Oh, likewise.

This has been really fun.

This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by showrunner Rebecca Ramirez.

Tyler Jones checked the facts, and Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer.

Beth Donovan is our vice president of podcasting.

I'm Regina Barber.

Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Yeah.

So the rate of smoking cigarettes has declined since the 1960s.

That's when Congress required warnings on cigarette boxes.

And researchers have found that people are more likely to try to quit smoking when they're under 40.

Yeah, Michaela and her team looked at survey data of over 9,000 smokers from 12 different countries for almost two decades.

Half of them quit smoking and the other half continued.

And the survey included cognitive test participants took over the years.

And what the results showed is that people who quit smoking in middle age or even older age scored better than those who never quit.

And so, Michaela, she wasn't surprised that quitting smoking would help the brain, too.

So it's not an overly surprising result, but it's surprising in that we didn't see that the effect kind of weakened with age.

Meaning quitting at any age seems to show a benefit.

Now, Michaela points out that the study can't definitively say good cognitive scores mean

like a lower risk of dementia.

But I talked to a physician who didn't work on the study, Neil Benowitz, and he's very optimistic about the findings, saying that cognitive tests are good predictors of dementia later on.

Hey, short wavers.

And as the weeks go by, the fetus can hear the sounds of the person carrying them.

Here's how Melissa Scala put it.

Regina Barber here.

She's at Lucille Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford.

And Emily Kwong.

Yeah, so preemie babies, those are born before 37 weeks.

With our biweekly science news roundup, this time featuring, and this is what I always say because it's true, the legendary Mary Louise Kelly of all things considered.

They're at a higher risk for delays in language development.

Among very preterm babies, up to one-third can have problems with reading or speaking later on.

So Melissa and her colleagues tried an intervention using sound.

Sound.

Oh, I know.

Yeah.

So it did help, like compared to the control group who didn't get the recordings.

The babies in the intervention group had more mature white matter in key language areas of the brain.

And the researchers published these results in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience this week.

Welcome to the show again.

And research like this has changed preemie care at the hospital.

They now give all preemie parents free books to read and the chance to record their voices.

And all this caught the attention of zoologist Michael Granatoski at the University of Tennessee.

He studies how animals evolve their movements.

And in his scientific opinion.

Well, that's where this mystery comes in, right?

Like Michael was seeing posts on social media where people were guessing it could be a squirrel because it was next to a tree.

And he thought.

Science is amazing, right?

So they collected pictures of the rat hole from the Internet since the actual imprint was actually removed last year.

And using these pictures, they took a bunch of like body measurements and they compared these measurements to taxidermied animals from the American Museum of Natural History.

From rats and squirrels to mice and muskrats.

And they ran a bunch of statistics and they found.

It was a squirrel.

Yeah, there is science.

There's something to take away here.

So other scientists we talked to say it's like a really clever way of highlighting how science is done.

And Michael hopes it will encourage more people to explore the natural world.

Yes.

And we love when you come on the show.

It's true.

I'll come back anytime.

You can hear more of Mary Louise Kelly on Consider This, NPR's afternoon podcast about what the news means for you.

This episode was produced by Kai McNamee and Burleigh McCoy.

It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Christopher Intagliata.

Tyler Jones checked the facts.

The audio engineer was Simon Laszlo Janssen.

I'm Emily Kwong.

And I'm Regina Barber.

Thank you for listening to Shorewave, the science podcast from NPR.

And THC, we should say, is short for tetrahydrocannabinol, the chemical responsible for most of cannabis's psychological effects.

So in a feature article Teresa wrote for Undark.org, she explains that the cannabis plant is good at sucking up things from the environment.

Research has shown it could be a tool for environmental cleanup of pesticides and heavy metals.

But this special quality can also bring downsides.

Today on the show, how patchy weed regulations have failed to keep up with consumption, and how it could be harming people's health.

I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Shortwave, a science podcast from NPR.

We're talking to independent health and science journalist Teresa Carr about patchy weed regulations across the U.S.

We also have our own pharmaceuticals correspondent who's reported on this topic as well, Sydney Lupkin.

Hey, Sydney.

Hey.

So, Sydney, like marijuana is now legal in some form in many states.

What's the difference on how weed is regulated versus like how pharmaceuticals are regulated in the U.S.

?

Yeah.

I mean, this brings us back to Teresa, the story in Oklahoma with Summer and Charles.

You know, they got their weed tested and you said that they found mold, they found other things.

Was it that weed that was causing their health issues?

And this wasn't just a one-time thing in Oklahoma.

You wrote in your article about a testing lab manager, Jeffrey Havard, who tested 20 off-the-shelf marijuana joints there.

So what did he find when he did all that testing?

So, Teresa, does that mean that like the state's regulatory system for weed in that case failed?

Okay.

So you reported on how people who produce the weed have to arrange their own testing.

Like, how has that affected the industry?

You also looked at Oregon's regulations.

Why did you look into that state in particular and what did you learn?

And Sydney, you visited California to see how like it was regulating its huge weed industry.

Like what's going on there?

Most people in the U.S.

So more testing might mean more recalls or more recalls may mean more contaminants.

We don't know at this point.

Let's talk about another study.

now have access to some form of legal weed.

So, Teresa and Sydney, you both talked to Maxwell Lung, assistant professor at Arizona State University, who did a study in 2022 about like that patchwork of cannabis regulations.

Sydney, what did that report find?

But depending on the state, people could potentially be exposed to hidden health risks.

Yeah.

Teresa, is there anything you want to add to that?

Science journalist Teresa Carr did a whole investigation into this.

Wow.

Okay.

Teresa, you wrote in your article about how these contaminants could affect lungs.

Like how are mold and other things affecting people's health?

I'm really interested at the intersection of science and society.

Teresa was reporting a story about medical marijuana use when she met Oklahoma resident Summer Parker.

So, Teresa, for consumers then who choose to partake, is there advice for them that you would give after doing all this reporting?

a medical marijuana sales and marketing professional who has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a disorder that affects the connective tissue and often causes serious chronic pain.

Teresa, Sydney, thank you so much for talking with me today.

This episode was produced by Burleigh McCoy, edited by Viet Le, and fact-checked by Tyler Jones.

The audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez.

Beth Donovan is our senior director.

I'm Regina Barber.

Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR.

This is an international group of researchers with the same goal, to build a cell from the bottom up, piece by biological piece.

If scientists can create cells, they can be programmed to do all sorts of things.

And scientists have touted the dream of synthetic cells as a new solution to the world's problems.

Synthetic cells could be programmed to act as part of new cancer therapies, can create new medicines easier and cheaper.

They could even be made to produce artificial photosynthesis to help with green energy projects.

And somehow, that would just be the beginning.

Synthetic biology is not a reality yet, but it's on the horizon, especially now that engineers have taken the helm.

Today on the show, DIY cells.

We dive into what it would look like to be inside of a cell.

Why scientists are bothering with making a cell from scratch.

and how engineers are leading the field.

I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to ShoreWave, the science podcast from NPR.

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Okay, Drew, before we can build a cell, we have to understand them.

And I've always had a really hard time visualizing what's happening inside of a cell.

But you have this really cool way to think of them as a building, right?

There are more cells in your body than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Yeah, scale it up.

Yeah, and just have actors doing the things inside the cell and moving things.

Our galaxy has a couple hundred billion stars, and inside me and you, each of us has around 30 trillion human cells.

It's like those terrible bookstores, you know, where they have those piles of books and you're like, get organized like that place.

30 trillion!

Cells are the fundamental building blocks of life.

Well, see, this is where we get to the next question, Kate, is that what if we could build a cell so that we could understand it better?

So, like, how would you describe the synthetic cell you're building towards?

But that doesn't mean they're simple.

Biology still doesn't have a full picture of how exactly a living cell works.

Okay, so Drew, when did the idea of building a cell, a synthetic cell, start to seem possible?

Like what's the history here?

OK, so, Kate, I was going to ask you about that.

That's more of the bottom up approach.

That's what was going on in 2010 when, like Drew just said, this group of scientists, they like, quote, built a genome from scratch and used it to control a cell.

Only the genome was synthetic, right?

Like how is build a cell, your effort different and maybe even like improving on that research?

That's Kate Ademala.

A biological engineer at the University of Minnesota, she wants to do what only nature has done.

And that's the bottom-up method.

Build a cell from scratch.

Yeah, it makes me think of the Lego movie of, like, the different lands.

Yes.

And, like, one's already built versus, like, if you just go to, like, an open area.

Or, like, in Minecraft where you go into somebody's, like, realm already that already exists versus, like, going to your realm where you can build something.

Kate's like, yes.

A synthetic cell that replicates itself, but was made in a lab.

So where is the field right now?

Like how close are you to creating synthetic life?

Yeah.

Last question.

There are many scientists that are working towards this goal, including both of you.

Why is building a cell from scratch so important?

Kate, Drew, thank you so much for talking to me today about synthetic cells.

I learned a lot.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

It was a pleasure.

Shortwavers, thank you for listening.

And if you want to help us out, follow us on the NPR app or whatever other podcasting app you use.

This episode was produced by Burleigh McCoy, edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez, and fact-checked by Tyler Jones.

The audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley.

Beth Donovan is our senior director, and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy.

I'm Regina Barber.

Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Drew Endy is an engineer at Stanford University and part of a community co-founded by Kate called Build a Cell.