GETTING CURIOUS | Are Parasites Out To Get Us? with Dr. Sebastian Lourido

Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness

Sony Music

Science, Self-improvement, Comedy, Education, Society & Culture

4.9 • 21.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 July 2023

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Parasites are everywhere: in our bodies, in our water, even in our cats’ litter boxes. Are they agents of chaos—or just misunderstood? This week, Dr. Sebastian Lourido joins Jonathan to discuss the epic world of parasites, from pinworms to toxoplasma gondii to, yes, humans. Parasites! They’re everything, everywhere, all at once. Dr. Sebastian Lourido is an Associate Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Lourido grew up in Colombia before attending Tulane University, where he earned degrees in Art and Biology. He then worked with Arturo Zychlinsky, at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, before pursuing his Ph.D. at Washington University with L. David Sibley. In 2012, in lieu of traditional postdoctoral training, Lourido started his own lab as a Whitehead Fellow studying the molecular hallmarks of apicomplexan parasitism through proteomics and functional genomics. Lourido was recruited to his present position in 2017 where he continues his research and co-teaches courses in Microbial Pathogenesis and Cell Biology. You can follow Dr. Lourido and the Lourido Lab on Twitter @LouridoLab, @WhiteheadInst and @MITBiology. For more information, check out the websites for the Lourido Lab and Whitehead Institute. Curious for more? Check out these episodes from the archive: Are Mushrooms Truly Magic? How Does Dust Impact Earth’s Climate? When Viruses Spread, Who’s Most Vulnerable? Can You Say Cheese? Follow us on Instagram @CuriousWithJVN to join the conversation. Jonathan is on Instagram @JVN. Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com. Find books from Getting Curious guests at bookshop.org/shop/curiouswithjvn. Our executive producer is Erica Getto. Our producer is Chris McClure. Our associate producer is Allison Weiss. Our engineer is Nathanael McClure. Production support from Julie Carrillo. Our theme music is “Freak” by QUIÑ; for more, head to TheQuinCat.com. Curious about bringing your brand to life on the show? Email [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Getting Curious
0:06.1	Getting Curious This is Jonathan Van Ness and every week I sit down for a gorgeous conversation with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious. We've explored viruses
0:14.6	fungi and bacteria on this show and now we're turning our attention to parasites.
0:19.1	Welcome to getting curious. Sebastian Laredo is an associate professor of biology at the
0:24.7	Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Whitehead Institute for
0:29.1	Biomedical Research. He researches deadly parasites and exposes their vulnerabilities.
0:34.3	Welcome Sebastian, how are you?
0:36.3	I'm great, so glad you could have me here.
0:39.1	Okay, so let's start with the basics.
0:41.4	A what are parasites?
0:44.0	It's a really interesting way to start because I think we have so many different possible answers.
0:49.9	I think you've talked about many other infectious diseases and viruses and
0:54.2	bacteria and in some kind of general concept those are parasites because
0:58.2	anything that lives on or in us can be defined as a parasite.
1:03.2	However, in medical terms, we usually use the concept
1:06.8	in a kind of different way,
1:08.8	and we rule out some of those other groups.
1:11.5	We rule out the bacteria, we rule out the viruses, we actually
1:15.5	place the fungi kind of on their own category, you treat them with different kind of medicines,
1:20.8	and then we keep everything that's left.
1:22.9	So it's a little bit this catch-all group of organisms
1:26.2	that infect us in very different ways.
	...

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