[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LATIF NASSER: If you wanna get grosser, I can always get grosser.

LULU MILLER: Oh, I'm ready to get gross.

LATIF: Okay.

LULU: I'm ready to get gross. Let's talk about this stuff.

LULU: Hey, I'm Lulu Miller.

LATIF: And this is Latif Nasser.

LULU: This is Radiolab. 

LATIF: And today, I’ve got sort of a personal story for you.

LATIF: But okay. So the—the baseline here is that I'm, like, thankfully—I'm a healthy person.

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: Like, I have no pre-existing conditions. I don't smoke. I don't drink. Nothing like that. I am and have been for, like, the vast majority of my life, like, very lucky in that way.

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: And then, about ten months ago, I started noticing blood in my poop.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: Like, it wasn't painful or anything. It didn't feel any different. It was just like a shocking red alarm, red alert. This is blood.

LULU: And was it just the once?

LATIF: No, no, no. It was multiple—it was every day. Yeah. And—and I was like, "This is weird, and it's just not going away." And so I was like, "Yeah, I should talk to somebody." So I go to a doctor. Eventually, get referred to another doctor. I—They go—They put me under. Do a colonoscopy, and basically, as I was coming out of the sedation, she came to me—the doctor—and she was like, "Okay, so you have Crohn's disease."

LULU: Wow! That day?

LATIF: Like, right away. She was like, "This looks like a textbook case."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: If someone you know is suffering from Crohn's disease ...]

LATIF: And so, like, I knew enough that it's like, okay. This is an autoimmune disease.

LULU: Of the gut, right?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: With moderate to severe Crohn’s…]

LATIF: Yeah. It's like the immune system is—is attacking the digestive system. And the main symptom is usually pooping all the time. But I wasn't experiencing that, so my doctor—she—she basically gave me this low dose steroid—one pill a day—and she was like, "Okay. Let's see how this goes." And pretty quick, it wasn't going well. [LATIF makes farting noises—pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft]

LULU: Ugh!

LATIF: So, like, I was pooping, like, five times a day—10 times a day.

LULU: Awww!

LATIF: You know in, like, '80s movies of, like, kids at camp, and then they give the camp counselor laxatives, and then the camp counselor has to, like, run to the thing and ...

LULU: Like run to the—Yeah.

LATIF: That's what I was pooping like.

LULU: And is it—are you in pain at this point?

LATIF: It wasn't really painful so much, it was ... frustrating and exhausting. It just shut down my life. Anything I wanted to do— If I wanted to work, if I wanted to take care of my kids—like, I just couldn't do it. And as you well know, I get, like, worked up and really excited about a certain topic, and I'll be like researching a thing and working on a thing and I'll be so excited about it, I'll want to do nothing but live and eat and sleep and breathe that thing. And dream that thing.

LULU: Yeah, and text about that thing and call people about that thing—yeah…

LATIF: Right. And I do this all the time, but especially when things in my life get hard. Like, it's a coping mechanism for me. And at this moment in my life, in this particular hard time, the thing I was obsessed with was ...the random thing I got fixated on was… Neanderthals.

LULU: Hmm. Why Neanderthals?

LATIF: Okay so when I say Neandrethals, you’re probably picturing in your head like a cave person—strong but dumb and hunched over human ancestor, right?

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: But it turns out in the last ten to fifteen years we’ve realized that Neandrathals were actually super sophisticated. Way more intelligent and capable than we thought—even artistic. 

LULU: Huh. 

LATIF: Like—They’re like—they were this bizarro version of us that we knew and co-existed with for thousands of years. So to me I see them as this long lost sibling that can tell us so much about ourselves and also about what is even possible in the world. So I was— like so— so excited about Neanderthals and I was like trying to read about them and trying to read about them and I kept having to go to the bathroom. At that point I was spending most of the day on the toilet so I was like while I’m here I’m doing this anyway. So there was this one point ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: So I'm gonna be talking to you today about some of the topics that came up in my thesis.]

LATIF: I was on the toilet, on the phone. I was watching this lecture from 2018.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: … that I hope you enjoy.]

LATIF: And this scientist from South Africa named Dr. Karen Warren she's basically talking about our ancestral story. You may have learned it in a biology or an anthropology class. Basically, what happens is we're all evolving in Africa. What happens then is that ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: About 1.5 to 2 million years ago, Homo erectus ...]

LATIF: Homo erectus—this ancestor of ours—some of them leave Africa, which leads to an evolutionary split. The ones who left for Europe and Asia—those ones become Neanderthals. While the ones that stayed in Africa eventually become us—Homo sapiens. Fast-forward a million years ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Humans left Africa.]

LATIF: The homo sapiens, some of us leave Africa, we reunite in Europe with our long lost Neanderthal cousins, and ultimately we kill some of them, out-compete some of them ... and also ... we—we have sex with them. 

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: So there was a big party, and there was a lot of kissing cousins back in the day.]

LATIF: Before we potentially helped drive them extinct we were—we were actively getting it on with them. And as the video explained, this interspecies lovemaking is actually how you got to the humans we are today: Homo sapiens with just a few Neanderthal genes in us.

 

LULU: I feel like this is the moment to tell you I got, like, on 23 and Me, as you can probably tell from my kind of big, big manly chin and my significant forehead, I am, like, as high a Neanderthal as, like, a human can get. I'm like a ...

LATIF: Really?

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: Huh? Okay so, I’m sitting on this toilet, watching this talk. Talk ends, Q&A. In the Q&A, there’s one thing she says…

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: The question then becomes …]

LATIF: ... sort of totally offhand, that completely catches me off guard in this lecture, which is that she says that those Neanderthal genes still affect our lives. And one example is ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: There's a lot of autoimmune disease genes, a lot of immune—immunity genes in general.]

LATIF: We got several autoimmune diseases from Neanderthal genes. So I was like, "What?" So then I just opened a new little browser window, and I Googled "Crohn's disease, Neanderthals." And there were all of these articles saying, yes, we got Crohn's disease from having sex with Neanderthals. And I just burst out laughing. It just felt absurd.

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: Like—like how could that possibly—like, how could two human-ish creatures that had sex 100,000 years ago, like, I'm on the toilet now because of that? Like—like how does that make any sense, you know?

LULU: Because of a clandestine, interspecies love affair.

LATIF: Right. Right.

LULU: [Pfffft] Like ...

LATIF: Yeah, exactly. Like who—what—what are the odds, right?

LULU: Yeah, yeah.

LATIF: So anyways, okay, so—so I'm reading about this, and as I'm reading all this, like, my situation is getting worse and worse and worse. I was pooping, like, 15, 20, 25, even 30 times a day.

LULU: Damn!

LATIF: It was getting, like, urgent multiple times. I pooped my pants. It was getting painful. Like—like, I was not able to take care of my kids, which I felt so bad about because, my wife was taking care of the kids alone. I couldn’t sleep, because I’d just keep waking up having to poop and I was waking her up too. And then after several nights of that there was one night where I was, like, curled up on the bathroom floor and I was just like "I surrender."

[Swinging door opens. Sounds of a hospital]

LATIF: So my wife just dropped me at the ER, and I just checked myself in.

LATIF: Okay, so I'm at the LA County Hospital. Checked myself in at, like, 6:00? 7:00 a.m.? Something like that.

LATIF: And started recording little, like, voice memos.

LATIF: I'm gonna kind of document it. I don't know if it's just for me or if it's for a story or something.

LATIF: This is a public hospital, so low ceilings, harsh lighting. There were a lot of people there who were in way worse shape than I was. Homeless people, drug addicts, immigrants who had literally just come over the border.

[Nurses speaking in the background.]

LATIF: They didn't have enough beds because of COVID.

[Sound of curtain moving along track]

NURSE: Do you want the curtain closed or like that?

LATIF: This is fine.

LATIF: So I sorta got stuck in the ER, which is fine. It was nobody’s fault. It just meant I didn't have a bathroom.

LULU: Huh.

LATIF: So ...

LATIF: Okay. In my bed, feeling the pinch here in my stomach. So I'm just gonna go.

LATIF: Every time I had to go to the bathroom, basically I had to, like, sprint down the hall to the bathroom, to the public bathroom, knock on the door. [knock on door] And I had to be like, "Oh my God, please. Is there anybody in there?"

LATIF: Okay, now I'm going in here.

LATIF: And then I would go in the bathroom.

[Door locks. Toilet flushes.]

LATIF: And I had to do this ...

LATIF: Sorry, there's someone in here.

LATIF: ... over ...

LATIF: This always happens.

LATIF ... and over ...

LATIF: Deja vu. I was literally just here.

LATIF: ... and over ...

LATIF: [groans]

LATIF: ... and over ...

LATIF: I'm just so tired of this.

LATIF: ... and over again. For a day, and then another day. And I was just so desperate to think about anything but pooping. So I just was obsessively reading on my phone about the weird genetic legacy of Neanderthals.

LULU: [laughs] Okay, that's—that's on brand.

LATIF: And I found that there were all these other diseases that scholars were speculating that we got from Neanderthals—other autoimmune diseases: psoriasis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, which my mom has. Type II Diabetes. Oh! Another thing? They did a study of hospitalized COVID patients—if you inherited this one snippet from Neanderthals, it doubles or in some cases quadruples their risk of, you know, like, basically going to the ICU and/or dying.

LULU: Oh my god.

LATIF: Yep. And in that hospital bed, I just had this image in my mind ...

LATIF: Okay, so for the last few days, I just keep imagining these, like, tiny little Neanderthals.

LATIF: ... of tiny Neanderthals, and in their hands were these tiny little obsidian hand axes.

LATIF: And they're just, like, in the folds of my guts.

LATIF: Just like stabbing me and drawing these little droplets of blood out of me.

LATIF: All these little cave people.

LATIF: Like, it was like my—my brother, my long lost brother was, like, stabbing me in the back, but like, not the back, the gut.

LATIF: And they go to sleep at night, and they take shifts, and in the morning they're all just, like, hacking away at my little guts.

LATIF: I was like, "Oh!" It felt so clear to me. I was like, "This is—this is their vengeance!" Like—like, we exterminated them, we killed them, we genocided them, and now they are coming for us. They are coming for all of us and they're coming for me in particular in this hospital bed. And they’re not going to stop until they ruin my life.

LATIF: So that's what I'm thinking about a lot.

LULU: After a quick break, Latif keeps digging into this story of his long-lost brothers, the Neandrathals and discovers a whole other side to them. 

LULU: Lulu.

LATIF: Latif.

LULU: Radiolab.

LATIF: So after a couple days in the ER, I got some good news.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, ambulance driver: Yeah, we're good to go whenever you are.

ambulance attendant: What's the address?

ambulance driver: 1500 San Pablo.]

LATIF: They actually found a bed for me.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, ambulance driver: Yeah. And they told you about where we're going, right?

ARCHIVE CLIP, Latif: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.]

LATIF: I got transferred. I basically went from a public hospital that was a really, really, you know, resource-strapped, desperate place, to a very—right across the street—wealthy hospital.

LATIF: It's like a palatial hotel.

LATIF: Where I had my own room.

LATIF: I have a window and a big, big suite with a couch and a bunch of chairs and art on the walls. And oh my God, a bathroom. A private bathroom with a shower. Yeah.

LATIF: I have never been so excited to see a toilet in my life.

LATIF: Oh, this is just luxurious!

LATIF: Jubilation.

LATIF: My doctor's here, so it's gonna be a lot easier, I think. Hopefully. Yeah, feels like I'm on vacation or something. It's like a crappy vacation because I'm—my body is miserable, but—but there's art on the walls, I guess. Yeah.

LATIF: It was like a—like I—it was like a huge breakthrough. They gave me all these IV steroids and this, like, big gun biologic drug also through an IV. And basically, between the combo of that, I all of a sudden, like, got some hours at night to sleep. And then also at that point, my wife had brought my computer, and so then I was like ...

LULU: [laughs] Stepped up your research game?

LATIF: I could step up my research game. So I was like ...

OMER GOKCUMEN: I think we're—we're all good.

LATIF: Poking around, and I came across an article by this guy.

OMER GOKCUMEN: I'm Omer Gukcumen. I work on evolutionary genomics.

LATIF: And in it, he argued ...

LATIF: Did we get Crohn's disease from Neanderthals?

OMER GOKCUMEN: No?

LATIF: No.

LATIF: The Neanderthals probably aren't to blame.

LULU: Huh.

OMER GOKCUMEN: It seems to me that Crohn's disease is actually older than Neanderthals, older than humans.

LATIF: That Crohn's disease, or at least this genetic variation predisposing you to it developed all the way back in Homo erectus.

OMER GOKCUMEN: The homo erectus group in Africa before, you know, they were spread across the world.

LULU: Oh! Wait, so this kind of contradicts what the other scientists found.

LATIF: Well, not exactly. It turns out for a disease as complicated as Crohn's, there are actually multiple parts of the genome that contribute to it. Some of those did come with sex with Neanderthals, but a lot also came from before we—or they—ever existed. And for that reason, Omer says ...

OMER GOKCUMEN: It's more accurate to say that we share Crohn's disease with Neanderthals. Part of our legacy, in a way.

LATIF: So I was kind of back to square one, right?

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: But also, you know, like, I felt like, with all that interspecies sex happening, like, they must have given us something. Like, and—and I kinda started to wonder, like, I don't know. Did they give us anything good? You know, like, it wasn't just they didn't give me my terrible disease. Like, did they give us something helpful?

LULU: I'm just watching your need to have a research question. [laughs]

LATIF: Yeah, that's probably it. That’s probably it. That’s probably it.

LULU: [laughs] Because otherwise you're alone in a hospital room wondering about the rest of your life.

LATIF: Right. But I have this question—this question. Like, did they give us anything good?

LULU: Great question. What do you find?

LATIF: Okay. I find myself reading about this one particular Neanderthal skeleton that they found, the so-called Old Man of Shanidar.

PENNY SPIKINS: Shanidar 1.

LATIF: This is Penny Spikins.

PENNY SPIKINS: Professor of the archaeology of human origins, University of York.

LATIF: And as she told me …

PENNY SPIKINS: So this is in Iraq.

LATIF: The Kurdistan region of Iraq.

PENNY SPIKINS: Yeah. And he's really, really remarkable because he's someone who suffered a series of injuries, perhaps in something like a rock fall, we just don't know. Has a—one withered arm and one damaged leg, probable blindness in one eye, and partially deaf.

LATIF: Like, this is someone who would not have been able to provide for himself. He should have been dead shortly after these injuries.

PENNY SPIKINS: But ...

LATIF: Based on the condition of his body and the condition of these wounds …

PENNY SPIKINS: This is an individual who lived for sort of 10, 15 years after those injuries. So he must have been looked after by others.

LATIF: Other neanderthals. So imagine you are in a small tribe of people. Maybe ten to twelve people. This guy can’t leave the cave every morning to go get food, right? But like this guy also can’t defend himself if a cave lion or something comes up and tries to attack him. So someone actually has to stay behind with him to take care of him constantly.

PENNY SPIKINS: Not just for a short time, but for actually a really extended period of time. So it's really quite a sort of profound thing, really.

LATIF: And while this Old Man of Shanidar is an exceptional example of this, he's not unique.

PENNY SPIKINS: Most of the Neanderthals we find have got some injuries or illnesses that they've largely survived.

[Sounds from the hospital]

LATIF: We have more and better evidence for Neanderthals healing each other than we do for modern humans at the same time. 

[Machine beeps. Nurse speaks in background]

LATIF: And, like, I was learning this like, in a hospital bed where I was being cared for ...

NURSE: How's everything? Good?

LATIF: Everything's going good. How are you?

NURSE: Fine, thank you.

LATIF: Like, honest to God, like, genuinely well cared for.

NURSE: Do you feel anything else? Any discomfort? 

NURSE: Okay, then so I'll bring you some stuff. Some sponges, like soap…

LATIF: Okay, great.

LATIF: By total strangers. Even that first hospital where I was stuck in the ER for a couple days, they gave me great care too!

NURSE: Do you want me to bring you anything? 

LATIF: No, not at all. 

NURSE: Ice? A snack? 

LATIF: Aww. Thank you. No. I'm okay. 

NURSE: [inaudible]

LATIF: Oh, yeah, that's funny. That's funny. Trying to fatten me up, huh? Okay, great. Great.

NURSE: Take care, Latif.

LATIF: Like I had this vision-  just like I had the vision before of this Neanderthal knifing me and I was like wait what if it’s the opposite? What if we instead—what if they gave us the idea of healthcare and even more deeply compassion and empathy like what if Neanderthals gave us our humanity?

LULU: I love that idea. Is that—is that something other people are— would agree with you on?

LATIF: Well okay so I ran it by Penny.

PENNY SPIKINS: Good question, that’s a really good question. Well we don’t know.

LATIF: She was basically like there’s literally no way to know. 

PENNY SPIKINS: We do have evidence for modern humans being cared for. It's not that they weren't caring for them. It's just slightly more patchy evidence.

LATIF: Largely because the modern human fossil record is a lot—is kind of worse and in a way it makes sense if you think about it. Like Neanderthal remains, right, because Neanderthals were basically in Europe mostly there’s more universities and archaeologists and things like that in Europe who go out looking for these things.

PENNY SPIKINS: So we don't know. I mean, that's part of the frustrating thing about the archaeological path: having these little insights, you know, these little, little vignettes of what's happening, but then losing quite a large part of it as well.

LULU: Ah, so beautiful thought but maybe not truthy.

LATIF: Okay it feels like a stretch because it is a stretch because we don’t have the fossil records to prove it. But, but, but, it's not—there is at least one thing that Penny sort of— a crumb that Penny threw me that I think still holds.

LULU: You’re hanging on, you are hanging on. Okay. Okay. What is it?

LATIF: Yes, which is this: in a cave in Northwestern Spain, they found the 48,000-year-old remains of this Neanderthal called El Sidrón One, and in the mouth of this Neanderthal there were two things that were notable. One was a dental abscess that looked very painful.

LULU: Ow, okay.

LATIF: And the other thing was tartar buildup.

LULU: Like calcified, like fossilized tooth gunk?

LATIF: Yeah exactly. Tooth gunk.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: And from that, these archeologists, they basically excavated this tartar and they were able to figure out that this Neanderthal was eating poplar leaves, which are bitter-tasting leaves with no nutritional value.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: Why? Why would this Neanderthal be eating poplar leaves? Because poplar leaves contain salicylic acid which is the active ingredient in Aspirin.

LULU: Do humans have poplar leaves in their teeth?

LATIF: So we don’t have any other evidence. It’s very hard to find evidence but we don’t have any other evidence of humans using aspirin basically, at this same time. And Penny says, look like that makes total sense. Neanderthals, they were in Europe way longer than we were. They knew the plants, they would have figured out how to use those plants to help them.

PENNY SPIKINS: And modern humans coming in wouldn’t have known where to find painkillers.

LATIF: Right.

PENNY SPIKINS: They wouldn’t have known where to find the antibiotics. They wouldn't have necessarily known how to make a splint or whatever they were using. So I'm sure they learned from each other. Modern humans may well have been quite dependent in some ways.

LULU: Okay so they didn’t give us necessarily our compassion, our hospitals, or our humanity.

LATIF: We can't say that. We can't say any of that. Even though I feel it in my heart, we can't say any of that. But what we can say is maybe they gave us Aspirin.

LULU: Maybe they gave us relief from pain?

LATIF: Yeah.

PENNY SPIKINS: So there is that sense, isn’t there, that maybe if you are going to be ill maybe you might be better amongst the Neanderthals.

LATIF: [laughs]

PENNY SPIKINS: My goodness me. 

LULU: So wait. First of all, I mean, we've been talking for a long time. Are you okay? Do you need a bathroom? You don't have to fake it. You could just go

LATIF: To quote my doctor, um Dr. Odufalu, who is awesome, I am quote, “basically in remission.” So I’m in—I am back to normal. I am in fighting shape—podcasting shape as they call it.

LATIF: Okay they just told me I am good to go. So I am disconnecting my heart monitor here.

LATIF: Yeah but I’m doing alright, I’m doing alright.

LULU: Less time researching from the toilet?

LATIF: Less time researching from the toilet. Still, if I’m being honest I’m still researching from the toilet. 

LULU: I mean, me too. Aren’t we all?

LATIF: Thanks so much, Andre. I really appreciate it, man.

NURSE: Oh hey! You going home? 

LATIF: Yeah, I'm going home. 

NURSE: Nice! Nice! 

NURSE: Take care, okay?

LATIF: Yeah, thank you. Thanks again, everybody. I really, really appreciate it.

LULU: Radiolab’s Latif Nasser. This episode was produced by Simon Adler.

LATIF: Ainara Sistiaga, Carl Zimmer, Carly Mensch, my GI Doctor Florence Damilola Odufalu and her entire team, the staff at LA County-USC Medical Center and Keck USC hospitals—really everyone who worked at both of those hospitals—and of course, thank you to the Neanderthals. 

LULU: And before we go if you liked this investigation into Latif’s gut and deep history, our colleagues at WNYC have a brand new investigative podcast out. It is about New Jersey and crime and a murder mystery—a potential political murder mystery. It is hosted and reported by WNYC Senior Reporter Nancy Solomon, and I have to say it's really good. I'm addicted. It's called Dead End, it's from WNYC, and I'll play you a short clip 

[CLIP, Dead End, 911 operator: 911 Where's your emergency?

Unknown: Meadow Run Drive in Skillman, New Jersey.

Narrator: In September 2014, a crime on a suburban cul de sac shocks New Jersey's political world. 

News anchor: The mystery deepens over the death of John and Joyce Sheridan, a prominent New Jersey couple with powerful connections and close friends of Governor Chris Christie.]

LULU: Portoraly methodical and human. I think it's a podcast you would like if you are curious about our world and the nefarious forces controlling it. Again, that's Dead End. Find it wherever you get podcasts. 

MICHAEL SCHNEIDER: My name is Michael Schneider, and I'm calling in from Kansas City, Missouri. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co hosts. Suzie Lechtenberg is our executive producer. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachael Cusick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Anna Rascouët-Paz, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. With help from Carolyn McCusker and Bowen Wang. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Adam Przybyl. Thank you.

BETH: Hi, this is Beth from San Francisco. Leadership Support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Assignments Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

 

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