Time heals all wounds

Outside/In

NHPR

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

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Did you know that some species of worms can be cut into multiple pieces and each piece will make a new worm? Some can even make a whole new brain. Wild, right? While not all forms of healing are quite as miraculous as this, the body’s ability to repair itself is pretty darned cool. So today, we’re answering your questions about healing. Like… Why do we pick at scabs? Why do animals lick their wounds? How does breath work affect the nervous system? What's the best outdoor activity to help heal from heartbreak? For our next Outside/Inbox roundup, we’re looking for questions all about love! From what happens in our bodies when we fall in and out of love, to whether animals fall in love. Send us your questions by recording yourself on a voice memo, and emailing that to us at outsidein@nhpr.org. Or you can call our hotline: 844-GO-OTTER. Featuring Mansi Srivastava, Mona Gohara, Susan Taylor, Henk Brand, Jane Sykes, Aditi Garg, Carolina Estêvão, and Sandra Langeslag. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, this is Outside In A Show Where Curiosity in the Natural World Collide.
0:03.9	I'm Nate Hedgy with producer Felix Poon in the recording studio.
0:07.2	Hey, Felix.
0:08.2	Hey, Nate.
0:09.2	So to kick things off, I want to ask you, did you ever dissect a frog in high school?
0:14.7	Yeah, I can remember the smell.
0:16.7	It was like the smell of formaldehyde, and they would be all rubbery and slick.
0:22.2	Just, ugh.
0:24.3	Yeah, so not your thing, but I spoke to someone named Moncey Shavastava, who's a lot more comfortable with dissection.
0:32.5	She spent her college years in the early 2000s cutting up animals for science.
0:36.9	And back in those times, people didn't have a lot of tools, right? No fancy CRISPR and whatnot.
0:43.1	But you could take a razor blade and cut things up. So you could cut up embryos, you could cut up
0:47.3	animals. But Monty had a very specific focus to her studies. And there was this very special
0:52.6	thing that these organisms would do after she cut
0:56.2	them up. I did work on worms that you could cut up and watch them regrow, which was pretty
1:02.9	amazing. So not only would they survive getting cut in half, but they would actually
1:09.5	regenerate.
1:15.7	That's so wild. I wonder if she could like see it in real time. I'm sure not. You're like,
1:18.8	oh my gosh, little bottom half of that worm's coming back.
1:25.1	So Monzi Shavastava is a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University,
1:29.7	and she studies regeneration. And Monzi says there are lots of animals that have this ability, most iconically, lizards, starfish, worms. The one she studies is called the
1:36.4	three-banded panther worm. You can cut them into multiple pieces. Each piece will make a new worm,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NHPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NHPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.