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Outside/In

Dr. Percy & the Magic Soybean

Outside/In

NHPR

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

4.71.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2016

⏱️ 36 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s not surprising that many of the medicines we use today are derived from plants. The surprising part is how similar the molecular components of plants are to the building blocks of our own human, mammalian bodies. This week we dive head first into a vat of soybean oil with Dr. Percy Julian who, against all odds, became one of the most prominent chemists of his time and whose work paved the way for the birth control pill. Plus, why the cone snail and its deadly neurotoxin just might be the key to a pain free future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm ready. Okay, good. Do you know what we're talking about? No, no idea. Do you know anything about cone snails?

0:06.2

So cone snails are a genus of about 700 meat-eating mollus.

0:15.0

They eat meat?

0:17.0

Yeah, but we'll get to that in a minute.

0:19.0

They're sea snails and they range from less than an inch long to about nine inches so they can get pretty big.

0:25.0

These organisms live on or in coral reefs.

0:29.0

And their shells are super cool looking.

0:31.0

They're like little works of art.

0:33.0

We've got all sorts of different patterns, colors, stripes, polka dots.

0:37.0

One species shell from Conis, set of newly,

0:41.0

which is known as the matchless cone because of its matchless beauty.

0:44.4

It's sold in Holland in 1796 at an auction.

0:48.1

And at this auction, the same time, there was a Vermeer painting.

0:51.1

The cone snail shell went for more than five times as money Gilders as the Vermeer.

0:57.0

And this, by the way, is a guy named Ari Bernstein. He's a pediatrician and associate director of the Center for Health and the Global

1:04.4

Environment at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

1:08.4

We have to start a campaign for like title shortening. They got to cut that back.

1:12.0

Anyway, when I was talking to

1:14.4

Ari he posed this very fascinating question.

1:17.1

Uh, cone snails, uh, as I mentioned are meat-eating mulics. So how does a snail that's as slow as a proverbial snail catch a fish?

1:27.0

Fish?

1:30.0

Yeah, yeah, cone snails have these long sort of trunk-like snouts and inside there's a teeny harpoon

...

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