The Dirty Drug and the Ice Cream Tub

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

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

4.6 • 43.5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2021

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode, a tale of a wonder drug that will make you wonder about way more than just drugs.

Doctor-reporter Avir Mitra follows the epic and fantastical journey of a molecule dug out of a distant patch of dirt that would go on to make billions of dollars, prolong millions of lives, and teach us something fundamental we didn’t know about ourselves. Along the way, he meets a geriatric mouse named Ike, an immigrant dad who’s a little bit cool sometimes, a prophetic dream that prompts a thousand-mile journey, an ice cream container that may or may not be an accessory to international drug smuggling, and - most important of all - an obscure protein that’s calling the shots in every one of your cells RIGHT NOW.

This episode was reported by Avir Mitra and was produced by Sarah Qari, Pat Walters, Suzie Lechtenberg, with help from Carin Leong and Rachael Cusick.

Special thanks to Richard Miller, Stuart Schreiber, Joanne Van Tilburg, and Bethany Halford.

Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate. **This episode was taped prior to the news that David Sabatini was fired from The Howard Hughes Medical Institute and prior to his resignation from the Whitehead Institute. More information about Sabatini’s alleged misconduct and the investigation into his behavior can be found here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, I'm Lative Nasr, this is Radio Lab, and this week our story comes from
0:24.2	a viewer, a viewer after a stint as a Radio Lab intern and then as an international rock star
0:37.1	became an emergency room doctor actually during the height of the pandemic.
0:44.3	He brought us a grip and portrait of his ER under siege.
0:56.0	Today's story is not about COVID, it's a lot less scary, a lot more fantastical.
1:03.9	It's about dirt, dueling statues, and a secret molecule that stops time.
1:14.2	It's about the same thing as the other.
1:21.6	So a lot of times I'll be working in the ER and we have so many meds going into somebody,
1:28.6	so many different drugs going through an IV and sometimes I just step back and I think
1:34.2	where did these come from?
1:36.4	How did this drug end up here in my hands going into this patient?
1:41.2	It's like a relay race and this baton has been passed forward and forward and I'm the
1:47.0	last guy and I'm putting it into the patient, but I don't really even know how far back
1:53.4	did this baton go?
1:55.5	So sometimes I go home and at night I'll look it up and most times honestly it's just
2:00.6	whatever, but recently I was looking into one of the drugs that we see pretty often in
2:05.7	all these different contexts in the hospital and ever since I looked it up I've been obsessed.
2:11.6	I think it has the craziest back story I've ever heard for a drug.
2:15.3	All right, we are recording.
2:17.4	Okay, so it starts with this guy named Ajay.
2:20.0	My name is Ajay Segal and the last name you could pronounce it, Segal, Segal, Segal.
2:25.3	So back in 1982.
	...

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