Baby Blue Blood Drive

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Science, Natural Sciences, History, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6 • 43.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2022

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is an episode that first aired in 2018 and then again in the thick of the pandemic in 2020. Why? Because though Horseshoe crabs are not much to look at, beneath their unassuming catcher’s-mitt shell, they harbor a half-billion-year-old secret: a superpower that helped them outlive the dinosaurs, survive all the Earth’s mass extinctions, and was essential in the development of the COVID vaccines. And what is that secret superpower? Their blood. Their baby blue blood. And it’s so miraculous that for decades, it hasn’t just been saving their butts, it’s been saving ours too.

But that all might be about to change.

Follow us as we follow these ancient critters - from a raunchy beach orgy to a marine blood drive to the most secluded waterslide - and learn a thing or two from them about how much we depend on nature and how much it depends on us.

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Citations:

Alexis Madrigal, "The Blood Harvest" in The Atlantic, and Sarah Zhang's recent follow up in The Atlantic, "The Last Days of the Blue Blood Harvest"

Deborah Cramer, The Narrow Edge

Deborah Cramer, "Inside the Biomedical Revolution to Save Horseshoe Crabs" in Audubon Magazine

Richard Fortey, Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms

Ian Frazier, "Blue Bloods" in The New Yorker

Lulu Miller's short story, "Me and Jane" in Catapult Magazine

Jerry Gault, "The Most Noble Fishing There Is" in Charles River's Eureka Magazine

or check out Glenn Gauvry's horseshoe crab research database

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Wait, you're listening to radio lab radio from W and Y
0:17.0	Hello, I'm Lulu. This is radio lab if I could give a time person of the year award to somebody
0:24.5	It would be the COVID-19 vaccine and I know the vaccine is in a person, but what I'm deciding the person of the year
0:30.8	It can be a vaccine and I would award it and I would put it on the cover of all the mess in the world
0:35.7	I think it is pretty clear that the vaccine has done unthinkable good and by now
0:41.0	You probably know a little bit about the story of how it was developed
0:44.9	But what you might not know is the role that an ordinary crustacean the American horseshoe crab played in its development and also in modern medicine as a whole
0:56.5	So today we are going to bring you a story that we first aired four years ago and then updated in the summer of 2020
1:03.4	It's about the unexpected influence horseshoe crabs have on science and society as well as what their future looks like
1:11.1	It is also the first story that Lottah and I ever reported together and it's beachy. We head to the beach. So we hope you enjoy
1:18.5	Here it is. Hey, I'm Chad. I'm Rod. I'm Robert Kloich. Oh
1:26.0	Yeah, you're down 13 you're gonna see this you're gonna see the store on the right hand side you'll see liquor store on the right hand side
1:32.3	You can make it you're gonna make a left that's barris actually this barris beach in this
1:36.6	Oh, it's called Bower's Beach is reporter Lottah from now. Okay. Okay. Okay. You don't want to go to
1:40.4	Okay, so
1:43.1	Three years ago
1:45.1	Three years four years ago. I taking the bus down to Delaware and I stayed in this crappy hotel and then woke up
1:53.7	Super early like 5 a.m. Still dark out to hop in this cap
1:59.6	You have got me really excited
2:02.8	I just started working at radio lab. This is like my first first time I'd been sent out to like to just go out and get tape
2:09.2	You talk to anybody. They'll take anybody lives on that beach will be glad to talk to awesome awesome and the whole reason
2:16.1	Why I I was headed down to this beach was to record myself
	...

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