Return of Alpha Gal

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

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

4.6 • 43.5K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2021

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tuck your napkin under your chin. We’re about to serve up a tale of love, loss, and lamb chops - with a side of genetic modification.

Several years ago we told a story about Amy Pearl. For as long as she could remember, Amy loved meat in all its glorious cuts and marbled flavors. And then one day, for seemingly no reason, her body wouldn’t tolerate it. No steaks. No brisket. No weenies. It made no sense: why couldn’t she eat something that she had routinely enjoyed for decades?

It turned out Amy was not alone. And the answer to her mysterious allergy involved maps, a dancing lone star tick, and a very particular sugar called Alpha Gal.

In this update, we discover that our troubles with Alpha Gal go way beyond food. We go to NYU Langone Health hospital to see the second ever transplant of a kidney from a pig into a human, talk to some people at Revivicor, the company that bred the pig in question, and go back to Amy to find out what she thinks about this brave new world.

The original episode was reported by Latif Nasser, and produced by Annie McEwen and Matt Kielty. Sound design and scoring from Dylan Keefe, Annie McEwen, and Matt Kielty. Mix by Dylan Keefe with Arianne Wack.

The update was reported and produced by Sarah Qari. It was sound designed, scored, and mixed by Jeremy Bloom.

Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm gonna try it and be messy.
0:03.0	You wanna start Big Kahuna?
0:04.6	By that you mean Lutth.
0:05.6	I meant the old soul, the old, the old, the old, the old, the old.
0:11.2	The old Kahuna?
0:12.2	Sure I can start us off.
0:13.2	Hey everybody, Chad here with Lulu and Lutthif and we just wanted to let you know about
0:18.5	a thing that just happened.
0:20.0	We just launched this thing called the Lab, not Radio Lab because that's been around
0:24.0	for almost 20 years.
0:25.3	But the Lab is a new membership experience from our team.
0:30.6	You get a lot of great stuff including and especially the opportunity to get more access
0:37.6	to us, to the show, to all the stuff that we love so much.
0:42.7	And you can listen to it add free.
0:45.7	But then you get more original work.
0:48.2	You get bonus content.
0:50.1	There's gonna be bonus content from Mix Tape in the member feed this very week.
0:54.3	I think we have a lot of great special extra interviews on the history of the...
0:58.9	Walkman.
0:59.9	I don't know why you'd be listening to Nintendo in your walkman.
1:05.3	So yeah, so depending on how generous you're feeling or how much of a peak you wanna get
1:10.6	behind the scenes, there's swag that you can actually get that is great, that is hot,
	...

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