Allergic To Cats? There's Hope Yet!

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Katie Wu is a cat person. She has two of them: twin boys named Calvin and Hobbes. But up until grad school, she couldn't be anywhere close to a cat without her throat tightening and her nose clogging up. In a stroke of luck, Katie's cat allergy suddenly disappeared. The reasons for her night-and-day immune overhaul remain a mystery.

In this episode, Katie walks host Aaron Scott through the dynamic world of allergies and what it reveals about our immune systems. Calvin and Hobbes make cameo appearances.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
0:06.2	The nervous one is closed by, but one second.
0:10.6	Oh, can you mail again?
0:16.4	Kati Wu is a cat person.
0:18.1	She is twin tabby brothers Calvin and Hobbs.
0:21.2	The mowing you heard came from Hobbs.
0:24.2	Hobbs is a zoom enthusiast but nothing else.
0:29.7	He is afraid of food, human beings, other cats, heavy steps, vacuum cleaners, wind and
0:41.5	foil.
0:42.5	He likes having his teeth rubbed, so I'm doing that to calm him down.
0:46.1	Kati loves her boys.
0:48.7	But she wasn't always a feline mother of two.
0:51.4	In fact, this wasn't a situation she ever saw herself in at all.
0:56.2	If we put me 10 years ago into this exact room, it would be a catastrophe.
1:04.2	Tell us about it.
1:05.2	What would happen?
1:06.2	Oh, I missed that pun.
1:09.2	Okay.
1:10.2	Yeah, so basically for the first, I'd say 20 years of my life, I wouldn't say deathly
1:20.5	allergic to cats, but whatever is one tier below deathly allergic to cats, I'd walk into
1:25.9	a room either where there were cats or where cats had recently been or as dissently as
1:31.5	months ago and my body could tell.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.