Chapter 1: Who are the key scientists behind discovering life in extreme heat?
Hi, how you doing? How are you?
Is a scientist maimed.
Long time no talk.
Hudson Freeze. Dr. Freeze. You know, there have been a lot of comments on that. What's Freeze doing working on hot stuff, right?
Anyway. So the story that I brought Hud here to tell actually happened at the beginning of his career 60 years ago or something. But I've been thinking about this story a lot in the last couple months. Because, I don't know, every time, you know, like just a new headline comes out, which is like funding cuts to the National Science Foundation or National Institutes of Health or NASA.
Yeah. Just the sort of gutting, the avalanche of cuts to publicly funded science and basic research that we are witnessing right now.
Yeah. I guess maybe for now it's enough to say that Hudson Freeze's story, it kind of feels to me like a parable for the moment we are in right now. Okay, so let's just start way at the beginning. How did you get involved in any of this?
Well, let's see. I was born in a small railroad town in Indiana. And as a junior in high school, I spent some time at Indiana University. It's thrilling, you know, for somebody who hasn't seen more than a two-story building before. This was a big deal. And I met faculty people there.
Hud says he actually did a science project while he was there.
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Chapter 2: What was the scientific consensus about life above 73℃ before this discovery?
Multiplying COVID RNA so it was detectable.
Okay, this is, it's almost eerie that, like, these hot worms led us to COVID tests.
Yeah, and it's hard to know how many more people would have died without them.
Totally.
Now, obviously, the development of PCR was not just Carey. It was this huge team effort. But in 1993... Dr. Carey Mullis, I now ask you to receive the Nobel Prize from the hands of His Majesty the King. Carey Mullis wins the Nobel Prize.
And the critical component is the TAC polymerase.
And, you know, I did ask Hudson Freeze, like, are you, like, bitter that you didn't win the Nobel Prize?
But that isn't why you do the science, right?
Right.
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