Transcript

The Age of Aquaticus | Radiolab Podcast

From Radiolab · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 43 min · 7,588 words · 63 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "The Age of Aquaticus | Radiolab Podcast", an episode of Radiolab published December 13, 2025 (43 min, about 7,588 words). It mentions 129 people, works and ideas, including Kary Mullis, Thermus aquaticus, Thermus aquaticus, TAQ, PCR.

What this episode is about

The content delves into the career of scientist Hudson Freeze, reflecting on a significant moment from 60 years ago that resonates with contemporary challenges facing publicly-funded science, including budget cuts to major research institutions like the National Science Foundation and NASA. It explores the interplay between personal experiences in science and the broader implications of funding decisions on research and innovation today.

Key takeaways

  • Dr. Freeze scours hot springs, seeking life that scoffs at boiling; irony heats up research funding debate.
  • Mating microbes were the bait; hunting Yellowstone’s micro-life boiled into a scientific triumph.
  • Hud's journey from Mars dreams to molten microbe sleuthing mirrors the educational odyssey.
  • Hud mistook mountains for clouds; science offers endless surprises, especially to small-town adventurers.
  • The lab looked like Unabomber's den; remarkable science thrives in unexpected, spartan hideaways.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Hudson Freeze, Dr. Thomas Brock, Indiana University, hot springs
  2. – 10:00: Hudson Freeze, Indiana University, Billings, Montana, hot springs
  3. – 15:00: Hudson Freeze, Golden Goose Award, TAQ, Thermus aquaticus
  4. – 20:00: Kary Mullis, Thermus aquaticus, Radiolab, Cetus
  5. – 25:00: polymerase, Kary Mullis, TAQ, Thermus aquaticus
  6. – 30:00: Hudson Freeze, Kary Mullis, Thermus aquaticus, genetic diseases
  7. – 35:00: Carl Zimmer, Center for Disease Control, Hudson Freeze, Dr. Thomas Brock
  8. – 40:00: Carl Zimmer, Hudson Freeze, National Institute of Health, Berkeley
  9. – 43:01: Hudson Freeze, Radiolab, Alex Neason, Emily Krieger

Notable quotes from "The Age of Aquaticus | Radiolab Podcast"

  • HUDSON FREEZE: I came back to Indiana University, and I was able to get in the bacteriology department. LATIF: And he really wanted to work with one scientist named Dr. Thomas…
    about Dr. Thomas Brock · at
  • HUDSON FREEZE: TAQ. LATIF: TAQ is short for Thermus aquaticus.
    about TAQ · at
  • HUDSON FREEZE: Well, who cares? So... LATIF: And so they preserved a sample of TAQ, and they just put it in a kind of like a library of microbes.
    about Hudson Freeze · at
  • LATIF: We're still in the late 1960s, only now I want to tell you about a guy called Kary Mullis.
    about Kary Mullis · at
  • HUDSON FREEZE: Thermus aquaticus. LULU: Oh! So he's through the card catalog, 90 Celsius. LATIF: Yeah. And as Hudson Freeze explained to us, Thermus aquaticus has its own…
    about Thermus aquaticus · at
  • [ARCHIVE CLIP: This process has been hailed as one of the monumental scientific techniques of the 20th century. Why?] LATIF: Because PCR made it so much easier and faster to read DNA. Suddenly, scientists everywhere start using it.
    about Thermus aquaticus · at
  • [ARCHIVE CLIP: There's something called a PCR.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: At the moment, we're using something called a PCR test.] LATIF: The PCR test is the very same PCR that we used…
    about PCR · at
  • Who I actually collaborated with to do a YouTube video about this topic. They even go into how post-Nobel Kary Mullis went totally off the deep end and lost all his scientific…
    about Radiolab · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Kary Mullis — Person · Referenced inventor / Historical figure · 11 mentions · first at
    Inventor of PCR (conceptualized the polymerase chain reaction) and Nobel laureate; central to the narrative of how TAQ polymerase enabled practical PCR.
  • Thermus aquaticus — Person · Referenced organism (mis-typed as person in input) · 8 mentions · first at
    The thermophilic bacterium (TAQ) discovered in Yellowstone whose polymerase (Taq polymerase) tolerates high temperatures and enabled PCR.
  • Hudson Freeze — Person · Main guest / Primary researcher referenced · 37 mentions · first at
    Primary interview subject who collected Thermus aquaticus samples in Yellowstone; his work supplied TAQ polymerase that enabled PCR.
  • Dr. Thomas Brock — Person · Referenced researcher / Mentor · 4 mentions · first at
    Professor who led the Yellowstone hot-springs expeditions and supervised Hudson Freeze; co-author in discovery of Thermus aquaticus.
  • Carl Zimmer — Person · Referenced expert / Commentator · 13 mentions · first at
    Science writer used to contextualize current cuts to public science funding and relate the TAQ/PCR story to broader public funding issues.
    CARL ZIMMER: Honestly, you could hand out a Golden Goose Award every day. pretty much anything that is some kind of technology making life better in some way, it all started in basic science. LATIF:.
  • Thomas Brock (died 2021) — Person · Referenced researcher / Deceased · 1 mention · first at
    Same as Thomas Brock entry: professor and co-discoverer of Thermus aquaticus; noted as deceased in episode.
    LULU: Okay. LATIF: Okay. So that's our episode for today. Big thank you, of course, to Hudson Freeze and our little friend Thermus aquaticus. We didn't say this earlier, but…
  • Michael Crichton — Person · Referenced author (inspiration) · 2 mentions · first at
    Author of Jurassic Park, which was inspired in part by early DNA/PCR work on ancient samples.
    LULU: Okay. LATIF: And accounts vary a little bit, but the story goes that the novelist Michael Crichton heard about that.
  • Latif Nasser — Person · 3 mentions · first at
    LATIF NASSER: Hey, how you doing? LULU: All right. It's freezing in here, so I have on a winter hat and a blanket. LATIF: Well you're in luck because we're actually headed somewhere hot. LULU: Okay.
  • Lula Miller — Person · 2 mentions · first at
    Oh wait you re listening okay all right okay all right you re listening to Radiolab from w n y c LULU MILLER: Hey!
  • Sarah Qari — Person · 2 mentions · first at
    Go into how post-Nobel Kary Mullis went totally off the deep end and lost all his scientific credibility. Check out that on YouTube. LULU: This episode was reported by Latif…
  • Alex Neason — Person · 2 mentions · first at
    Credibility. Check out that on YouTube. LULU: This episode was reported by Latif Nasser and Maria Paz Guti rrez. It was produced by Maria Paz Guti rrez and Sarah Qari. Edited…
  • Jeremy Bloom — Person · 2 mentions · first at
    Credibility. Check out that on YouTube. LULU: This episode was reported by Latif Nasser and Maria Paz Guti rrez. It was produced by Maria Paz Guti rrez and Sarah Qari. Edited…
  • Emily Krieger — Person · 2 mentions · first at
    And our fact-checker on this one was Emily Krieger. That's it. Thank you so much for listening. See you next week. LATIF: Catch you next week.
  • Ted Kaczynski — Person · 1 mention · first at
    LATIF: HUDSON FREEZE: It looked more where Ted Kaczynski might hang out. LATIF: HUDSON FREEZE: LATIF: Like a shack kind of thing. HUDSON FREEZE: It was a shack. Yeah.
  • His Majesty the King — Person · 1 mention · first at
    LATIF: Now obviously, the development of PCR was not just Kary, it was this huge team effort. But in 1993... [ARCHIVE CLIP: Dr. Kary Mullis, I now ask you to receive the Nobel Prize from the hands of His Majesty the King.].
  • Berkeley paleobiologist — Person · 1 mention · first at
    LULU: -? LATIF:... a Berkeley paleobiologist started using PCR to find DNA in ancient weevils. LULU: Okay?
  • Michael Crichton — Person · 1 mention · first at
    LULU: Okay. LATIF: And accounts vary a little bit, but the story goes that the novelist Michael Crichton heard about that.
  • Erin Heath — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Also to her team: Erin Heath, Valeria Sabate, Gwendolyn Bogard, Meredith Asbury and Megan Cantwell at AAAS for being a tremendous help this episode, and for administering the…
  • Gwendolyn Bogard — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Also to her team: Erin Heath, Valeria Sabate, Gwendolyn Bogard, Meredith Asbury and Megan Cantwell at AAAS for being a tremendous help this episode, and for administering the…
  • Megan Cantwell — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Also to her team: Erin Heath, Valeria Sabate, Gwendolyn Bogard, Meredith Asbury and Megan Cantwell at AAAS for being a tremendous help this episode, and for administering the…
  • Meredith Asbury — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Also to her team: Erin Heath, Valeria Sabate, Gwendolyn Bogard, Meredith Asbury and Megan Cantwell at AAAS for being a tremendous help this episode, and for administering the…
  • Valeria Sabate — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Also to her team: Erin Heath, Valeria Sabate, Gwendolyn Bogard, Meredith Asbury and Megan Cantwell at AAAS for being a tremendous help this episode, and for administering the…
  • Derek Muller — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Also to her team: Erin Heath, Valeria Sabate, Gwendolyn Bogard, Meredith Asbury and Megan Cantwell at AAAS for being a tremendous help this episode, and for administering the…
  • Priya Ramachandran DeSousa — Person · 1 mention · first at
    [LISTENER: Hi, I'm Priya Ramachandran DeSousa, and I'm from Finland. And here are the staff credits.
  • Jad Abumrad — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff…
  • Soren Wheeler — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff…
  • Dylan Keefe — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff…
  • Becca Bressler — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff…
  • David Gebel — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff…
  • Simon Adler — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff…
  • W. Harry Fortuna — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff…
  • Annie McEwen — Person · 1 mention · first at
    And Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel…
  • Matt Kielty — Person · 1 mention · first at
    And Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel…
  • Sarah Sandbach — Person · 1 mention · first at
    And Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel…
  • Sindhu Gnanasambandan — Person · 1 mention · first at
    And Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel…
  • Anisa Vietze — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Guti rrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Sarah…
  • Arianne Wack — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Guti rrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Sarah…
  • Diane Kelly — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Guti rrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Sarah…
  • Molly Webster — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Guti rrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Sarah…
  • Pat Walters — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Guti rrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Sarah…

Books & papers

  • Jurassic Park — Book · 2 mentions · first at
    HUDSON FREEZE: That, if I had to pick anything, is really the sort of lesson of this. Life will exist anywhere where there's nutrients. It will go anyplace where it can find…
  • Friday's Elk — Book · 1 mention · first at
    To somebody whose voice you probably recognize. CARL ZIMMER: My name's Carl Zimmer. And I'm a columnist at the New York Times. LULU: He has been watching all the cuts really closely, detailing it in his newsletter called Friday's Elk.

Companies & orgs

  • National Science Foundation — Company · Referenced funding agency · 2 mentions · first at
    Cited as an agency at risk of substantial cuts that would impact basic science funding and long-term research like the TAQ story exemplifies.
    To tell actually happened at the beginning of his career, 60 years ago or something. But I've been thinking about this story a lot in the last couple months because I don't…
  • National Institute of Health — Company · Referenced funding agency / Employer · 2 mentions · first at
    Referenced as suffering layoffs and grant cancellations affecting biomedical research programs.
    LULU: Half? CARL ZIMMER: And the Department of Health and Human Services... LULU: That's the department that houses the National Institutes of Health. CARL ZIMMER: Ten thousand…
  • Cetus — Company · Company / Employer · 1 mention · first at
    Biotech startup where Kary Mullis worked; Cetus teams developed PCR methods and commercialized molecular biology products in that era.
    LATIF: They have this hunch that decoding DNA is gonna unlock lots of secrets about the human body. [ARCHIVE CLIP: The answers lie within these long, thin, twisted strands.]…
  • Indiana University — Company · Research institution · 3 mentions · first at
    Where Hudson Freeze studied and where initial research on Thermus aquaticus was conducted.
    HUDSON FREEZE: I came back to Indiana University, and I was able to get in the bacteriology department. LATIF: And he really wanted to work with one scientist named Dr. Thomas…
  • NASA — Company · Referenced agency / Funding target · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as one of the government agencies facing proposed budget cuts in the episode's discussion of threats to public basic research funding.
    CARL ZIMMER: For example, the Trump administration has put forward a budget in which NASA's science budget would be cut in half. LATIF: Whoa!
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — Company · Referenced agency / Funding casualty · 1 mention · first at
    Cited as an agency losing expert staff (e.g., lead poisoning experts) due to cuts mentioned in the episode.
    To understand the threats to human health of pollutants. There are movements to have all one thousand of them laid off. The EPA will not have a research science staff if this…
  • Center for Disease Control — Company · Referenced organization · 2 mentions · first at
    Mentioned in the context of funding cuts and layoffs affecting public health research.
    To understand the threats to human health of pollutants. There are movements to have all one thousand of them laid off. The EPA will not have a research science staff if this…
  • EPA — Company · Referenced agency / Funding casualty · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as at risk of losing its research science staff under proposed cuts.
    CARL ZIMMER: Shut down. The EPA. At the EPA, they have research scientists who do science to understand the threats to human health of pollutants. There are movements to have…
  • New York Times — Company · Referenced organization · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as the employer of Carl Zimmer, who discusses the impact of funding cuts on science.
    A thing that we are in danger of losing. LULU: Yeah. So to kind of bring this story, to connect it to the avalanche of cuts coming to publicly-funded science, we turned to…
  • Colombia University — Company · Referenced organization · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned in the context of research programs being shut down due to funding cuts.
    Universities are suddenly having billions of dollars of research suddenly pulled. there was a big diabetes program. There was at Columbia there was a program on, studying chronic fatigue. These have been going on for years. They're gone.
  • Radiolab — Company · 5 mentions · first at
    Oh wait you re listening okay all right okay all right you re listening to Radiolab from w n y c LULU MILLER: Hey!
  • Golden Goose Award — Company · 4 mentions · first at
    Patrol. If I sign up for, Scientific American for six years at this bargain rate, I'm gonna get a, something in the mail. LATIF: But what it was, it turns out, was something called the Golden Goose Award. LULU: Oh, Golden Goose!
  • bacteriology department — Company · 1 mention · first at
    HUDSON FREEZE: I came back to Indiana University, and I was able to get in the bacteriology department. LATIF: And he really wanted to work with one scientist named Dr. Thomas…
  • microbiology department — Company · 1 mention · first at
    LATIF: HUDSON FREEZE:... of the microbiology department. So anyway... LATIF: Day after day, he's tending these little vials, always checking on them. HUDSON FREEZE: Always…
  • UC Berkeley — Company · 1 mention · first at
    LULU: Okay. LATIF: He's a PhD student in biochemistry at UC-Berkeley. But instead of being in a lab, he seems to prefer studying biochemistry by synthesizing his own LSD. LULU: Okay!
  • 23andMe — Company · 1 mention · first at
    [ARCHIVE CLIP: And sickle cell disease.] LATIF: Determining ancestry. think of, 23andMe, Ancestry.com, all of that. The whole industry.
  • Ancestry.com — Company · 1 mention · first at
    [ARCHIVE CLIP: And sickle cell disease.] LATIF: Determining ancestry. think of, 23andMe, Ancestry.com, all of that. The whole industry.
  • Nature — Company · 1 mention · first at
    CARL ZIMMER: there was a poll that Nature did recently. They asked hundreds of scientists about, what effect all of this chaos is having on them, and their thoughts about their…
  • Veritasium — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Also to her team: Erin Heath, Valeria Sabate, Gwendolyn Bogard, Meredith Asbury and Megan Cantwell at AAAS for being a tremendous help this episode, and for administering the…
  • AAAS — Company · 1 mention
  • WNYC — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

  • Thermus aquaticus — Product · Case study · 4 mentions · first at
    A microorganism discovered in Yellowstone's hot springs that led to the development of PCR technology.
  • PCR — Product · Case study / Core technique · 1 mention · first at
    Central technical product/process discussed — the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is the laboratory method that transformed DNA detection and diagnostics, including COVID testing.
  • NASA Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope — Product · Example of endangered science project · 1 mention · first at
    Cited as a major NASA science project threatened by proposed budget cuts; used to exemplify the stakes of defunding.
    This is all the stuff that you read about in the newspapers what do we discover on Mars? Or there is a space telescope called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It is…
  • microscope — Product · 1 mention · first at
    And I thought, Oh my God, maybe this is it. LATIF: So he takes a look under a microscope, and what he sees are these little worms, kind of like cut-up spaghetti. HUDSON FREEZE: Just floating around in there.
  • PCR test — Product · 1 mention · first at
    [ARCHIVE CLIP: There's something called a PCR.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: At the moment, we're using something called a PCR test.] LATIF: The PCR test is the very same PCR that we used…
  • Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope — Product · 1 mention · first at
    This is all the stuff that you read about in the newspapers what do we discover on Mars? Or there is a space telescope called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It is…
  • coronavirus vaccine — Product · 1 mention · first at
    LULU: And in one example, Carl told us about a group of scientists who've been working over the last several years. CARL ZIMMER: Trying to make a coronavirus vaccine that is…
  • antivirals — Product · 1 mention · first at
    LATIF: Wow! CARL ZIMMER: There are projects looking for antivirals for a range of different viruses that might start the next pandemic. That's been canceled too, and those…
  • amber — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

  • TAQ — Concept · Key concept / Component · 4 mentions · first at
    Short name for Thermus aquaticus; often used to refer specifically to Taq polymerase enzyme crucial for thermal cycling in PCR.
  • polymerase — Concept · 6 mentions · first at
    LULU: Huh! LATIF: And he notices this one part of the DNA zipper, like the slider, the thing that zips the DNA teeth together, is this enzyme called a polymerase. And he…
  • hot springs — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    HUDSON FREEZE: And so anyway, I go down to see him thinking I'm gonna work on mating types. And he says, Well, we're not working on mating types anymore, but we are going to…
  • proteins — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    LULU: LATIF: But they got their samples, they took them back to their little shack lab. And what they'd do is they would add these radioactive chemicals that would react with stuff in the sample, whatever proteins or sugars or whatever.
  • Thermus aquaticus — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    LATIF: We're not gonna do that. HUDSON FREEZE: Can't name them after people anymore. LATIF: We are gonna call it Thermus aquaticus.
  • TAQ polymerase — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    The card catalog, 90 Celsius. LATIF: Yeah. And as Hudson Freeze explained to us, Thermus aquaticus has its own polymerase. HUDSON FREEZE: As you might call it, TAQ polymerase.…
  • DNA Xerox machine — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    LATIF: Well, I think that's fine. I think that's fine. the only thing you need to know is he has this vision for a machine that's kind of like a DNA Xerox machine.
  • genetic diseases — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    LATIF: Like diagnosing genetic diseases. [ARCHIVE CLIP: Diseases, including cystic fibrosis.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: Things like HIV detection.].
  • mating types in yeast — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    The bacteriology department. LATIF: And he really wanted to work with one scientist named Dr. Thomas Brock. HUDSON FREEZE: I'd heard him give a lecture before about mating…
  • radioactive chemicals — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    LULU: LATIF: But they got their samples, they took them back to their little shack lab. And what they'd do is they would add these radioactive chemicals that would react with stuff in the sample, whatever proteins or sugars or whatever.
  • Hudsoni freeziensis — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    My God. I am the first person in the world ever to see this. The next day, I'm telling everybody in the lab about it. I'm telling Tom Brock, and one of the one of the guys in…
  • enzymes — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    HUDSON FREEZE: And that's why we can't go out and, sit at 180, because our proteins fall apart, our enzymes fall apart. LATIF: But TAQ has evolved proteins and enzymes that are…
  • fundamental research — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    HUDSON FREEZE: It has no use. It has absolutely no use. it's curiosity. it's science for science's sake, it's fundamental research. That's the way science goes.
  • snail sex — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Of the government funding of basic scientific research. And, there were, headlines all the time about, We're wasting money spending funding a study about snail sex, or whatever. Whatever it was. LULU: Yeah. Yeah.
  • biochemistry — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    LULU: Okay. LATIF: He's a PhD student in biochemistry at UC-Berkeley. But instead of being in a lab, he seems to prefer studying biochemistry by synthesizing his own LSD. LULU: Okay!
  • Deoxyribonucleic acid — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    [ARCHIVE CLIP: DNA.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: Deoxyribonucleic acid. The essence of life.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: The stuff of which all life is made.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: The key we've been looking for.].
  • base pairs — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Because remember, DNA is it's made up of matching base pairs. Cs go with Gs, As go with Ts. Right?
  • Polymerase chain reaction — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    LULU: Whoa! LATIF: And so the process that they invent, it's called... HUDSON FREEZE: Polymerase chain reaction, or PCR.
  • cystic fibrosis — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    LATIF: Like diagnosing genetic diseases. [ARCHIVE CLIP: Diseases, including cystic fibrosis.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: Things like HIV detection.].
  • HIV detection — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    LATIF: Like diagnosing genetic diseases. [ARCHIVE CLIP: Diseases, including cystic fibrosis.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: Things like HIV detection.].
  • sickle cell disease — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    [ARCHIVE CLIP: And sickle cell disease.] LATIF: Determining ancestry. think of, 23andMe, Ancestry.com, all of that. The whole industry.
  • forensic DNA testing — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    LATIF: We have... [ARCHIVE CLIP: Forensic DNA testing to identify the suspect's DNA.] LATIF:... the whole world of forensics, solving crimes with DNA evidence. Or... [ARCHIVE…
  • Neanderthal — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    His body identified using DNA evidence.] LATIF: Also another thing, this whole renaissance in learning about human origins. [ARCHIVE CLIP: Homo sapiens picked up some of the…
  • diabetes program — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Universities are suddenly having billions of dollars of research suddenly pulled. there was a big diabetes program. There was at Columbia there was a program on, studying chronic fatigue. These have been going on for years. They're gone.
  • climate science program — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    LATIF: That's absurd. CARL ZIMMER: And the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's climate science program, that is being proposed to be shut down. Just shut down. LATIF: Fully? Fully?
  • pollutants — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    CARL ZIMMER: Shut down. The EPA. At the EPA, they have research scientists who do science to understand the threats to human health of pollutants. There are movements to have…
  • lead poisoning — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    One thousand of them laid off. The EPA will not have a research science staff if this follows through. the Centers for Disease Control, for example. The Centers for Disease…
  • tuberculosis — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Be able to write up their results. you may not find out what they've done. There are just too many to choose from. I've been talking with a researcher who has, a massive…
  • weevils — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    LULU: -? LATIF:... a Berkeley paleobiologist started using PCR to find DNA in ancient weevils. LULU: Okay?
  • license plate on the interstate from the moon (analogy) — Concept · 1 mention
  • scientific consensus that nothing could live above 73 Celsius (163 Fahrenheit) — Concept · 1 mention
  • TAQ — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

  • Golden Goose Award — Event · Event / Award recognition · 5 mentions · first at
    Award given to apparently 'odd' basic research that later yields substantial societal benefit; Hudson Freeze and Thomas Brock (TAQ) won in 2013.
    LATIF: That's why Hudson Freeze and Thomas Brock, they won the Golden Goose Award in 2013.
  • Berkeley — Place · Setting / Historical location · 2 mentions · first at
    UC Berkeley is where Kary Mullis studied and where some of the early history in the story occurs.
    LATIF: And jump instead to Berkeley, California. LULU: All right.
  • Yellowstone National Park — Place · 1 mention · first at
    College, you're gonna be a hit. LATIF: HUDSON FREEZE: And so anyway, I go down to see him thinking I'm gonna work on mating types. And he says, Well, we're not working on…
  • Garrett, Indiana — Place · 1 mention · first at
    LATIF: So he hops on a train. HUDSON FREEZE: I got on in Garrett, Indiana, and then went through Chicago. That's where I picked up the train that went non stop.
  • the Dakotas — Place · 1 mention · first at
    LATIF: Through the farmlands of Wisconsin, into the plains of the Dakotas.
  • Billings, Montana — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Like mountains that you see in the cowboy shows. I was just I was really thrilled to be able to see this kind of stuff. Oh, I'm really getting out there! So it was just a great…
  • West Yellowstone — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Like mountains that you see in the cowboy shows. I was just I was really thrilled to be able to see this kind of stuff. Oh, I'm really getting out there! So it was just a great…
  • Mushroom Spring — Place · 1 mention · first at
    HUDSON FREEZE: Mushroom Spring. LATIF: At the center is a pool of water.
  • September 19, 1966 — Place · 1 mention · first at
    And then on the fourth, maybe fifth day, September 19, 1966...
  • the Capitol — Place · 1 mention · first at
    [ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz Guti rrez: Hi!] LATIF: In this big fancy building near the Capitol. [ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz Guti rrez: So I'm asking people what they're wearing. What…
  • Berkeley, California — Place · 1 mention · first at
    LATIF: And jump instead to Berkeley, California. LULU: All right.
  • Mendocino County — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Died back in 2019, but while he was alive, he did a bunch of interviews where he talks about this moment. [ARCHIVE CLIP, Kary Mullis: I was driving to the little cabin I have…
  • Milwaukee — Place · 1 mention · first at
    One thousand of them laid off. The EPA will not have a research science staff if this follows through. the Centers for Disease Control, for example. The Centers for Disease…

Media & podcasts

  • Radiolab — Media · Host · 5 mentions · first at
    The podcast where this story was told, focusing on science and curiosity.
  • Jurassic Park — Media · Cultural reference · 2 mentions · first at
    Referenced as being inspired by early PCR work detecting ancient DNA in amber, illustrating PCR's cultural impact.
    LULU: Okay. LATIF: And accounts vary a little bit, but the story goes that the novelist Michael Crichton heard about that.

Sponsors

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    Anisa Vietze, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.] [LISTENER: Hi, I'm Arturo calling from New…
  • John Templeton Foundation — Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
    Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.] [LISTENER: Hi, I'm Arturo calling from New York City. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and…
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    Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.] [LISTENER: Hi, I'm Arturo calling from New York City. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and…
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    Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.] [LISTENER: Hi, I'm Arturo calling from New York City. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and…
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Full transcript with timestamps

oh wait you re listening okay all right okay all right you re listening to Radiolab Radiolab from w n y c LULU MILLER: Hey! LATIF NASSER: Hey, how you doing? LULU: All right. It's freezing in here, so I have on a winter hat and a blanket. LATIF: Well you're in luck because we're actually headed somewhere hot. LULU: Okay. LATIF: Extremely hot. LULU: I can't wait. LATIF: And our guide there, ironically enough... HUDSON FREEZE: Hi. LATIF: Hey! Hud, how you doing? HUDSON FREEZE: Latif, how are you? LATIF: is a scientist named... LULU: Mm-hmm?

LATIF:... Hudson Freeze. LULU: Oh! HUDSON FREEZE: LATIF: Dr. Freeze. HUDSON FREEZE: Oh, there have been a lot of comments on that. "What's Freeze doing working on hot stuff?" Right? Anyways... LATIF: So this story that I brought Hud here to tell actually happened at the beginning of his career, 60 years ago or something. But I've been thinking about this story a lot in the last couple months because I don't know. Every time, you know, like, just a new headline comes out which is like, "Funding Cuts to the National Science Foundation," or National Institutes for Health or NASA. LULU: Yeah. Just the sort of gutting, the avalanche of cuts to publicly-funded science and basic research that we are witnessing right now?

LATIF: Yeah. And I guess maybe for now it's enough to just say that Hudson Freeze's story, it kind of feels to me like a parable for the moment we are in right now. LATIF: Okay, so let's just start way at the beginning. How did you get involved in any of this? HUDSON FREEZE: Well, let's see. I was born in a small railroad town in Indiana. And as a junior in high school, I spent some time at Indiana University. It's thrilling, you know, for somebody who hasn't seen more than a two-storey building before this, this was a big deal. And I met faculty people there, and...

LATIF: Hud says he actually did a science project while he was there about what it would take for a microbe to survive on Mars. And he says he just fell in love with the university, with the science he was learning there. And so when he graduated from high school... HUDSON FREEZE: I came back to Indiana University, and I was able to get in the bacteriology department. LATIF: And he really wanted to work with one scientist named Dr. Thomas Brock. HUDSON FREEZE: I'd heard him give a lecture before about mating types in yeast. And, you know, anytime you're talking about mating types in college, you know, you're gonna be a hit. LATIF: HUDSON FREEZE: And so anyway, I go down to see him thinking I'm gonna work on mating types. And he says, "Well, we're not working on mating types anymore, but we are going to Yellowstone National Park to look into hot springs for bacteria." LATIF: So at the time, the scientific consensus

was that nothing could live above 73 Celsius, 163 Fahrenheit. It was seen as kind of an upper limit on life. LULU: Burn, boil, shred itself to death. LATIF: Yeah, but Thomas Brock had recently vacationed in Yellowstone, and he had seen these hot springs where boiling hot water comes up from the interior of the Earth. And he knew that if you go to these hot springs. you see around the edges where the water cools down, there's stuff alive there. LULU: Like what? Like mosses and... LATIF: Like algae, bacteria, little spider mites. Stuff like that. LULU: Okay.

LATIF: And he thought maybe this could be a place where he could find some little microbe that is defying that limit of life. HUDSON FREEZE: That's right. And so he had a small relatively small grant in basic science. LATIF: A grant of $80,000 from the US government. HUDSON FREEZE: To go out and see what he could find. LATIF: And he's like, "Hey, Hud. Would you like to go to Yellowstone?" LULU: Ooh! HUDSON FREEZE: And I thought, "That's perfect. You know, what I'd done before was Mars, and it's cold there. And now I'm gonna go to the complete opposite; I'm gonna go where it's boiling hot." LATIF: And also, for a, you know, small-town kind form Indiana, like, this seemed like a great adventure.

HUDSON FREEZE: Because I had never been west of Chicago. LATIF: So he hops on a train. HUDSON FREEZE: I got on in Garrett, Indiana, and then went through Chicago. That's where I picked up the train that went non stop. LATIF: Through the farmlands of Wisconsin, into the plains of the Dakotas. HUDSON FREEZE: Twenty-some hours altogether. LATIF: And he was like this doe-eyed kid just looking out the window. HUDSON FREEZE: A lot of the Midwest is pretty flat. LATIF: But then as he crossed into Montana... HUDSON FREEZE: And I looked. Looked up and I said, "Boy, those are funny-looking clouds.

Oh my God. Those are not clouds, man. They're mountains. They're real mountains." It's just like mountains that you see in the cowboy shows. You know, I mean, I was just I was really thrilled to be able to see this kind of stuff. Oh, I'm really getting out there! So I mean, it was it was just a great trip. So I get off in Billings, Montana, and take a bus to West Yellowstone. That's where the lab was set up in this little cabin. You know, a kitchen and sort of a living room. But it was sparse. You know, you wouldn't advertise it as a lab these days.

LATIF: Hmm. HUDSON FREEZE: It looked more like, you know, where Ted Kaczynski might hang out. LATIF: HUDSON FREEZE: LATIF: Like a shack kind of thing. HUDSON FREEZE: It was a shack. Yeah. LATIF: Anyway, Brock and his crew... HUDSON FREEZE: You know, we'd get get going at about seven o'clock, something like that. LATIF: They'd drive into the park, and then hike several miles up to these very remote hot springs. Have you ever seen those pictures of, like or have you ever visited? LULU: No, I haven't. I haven't. I've never gone I'd love to. LATIF: I should send you a picture here. Do you want to see? LULU: Yeah, please. Oh, I'd love to.

LATIF: Okay. LULU: Oh, I haven't seen that. Wow! So we've got yeah, we've got it looks almost just like this, like, unicorn eye, dazzling blue rimmed with yellow, rimmed with oranges and reds. HUDSON FREEZE: Yeah, you'd start out more yellow-ish, and then the orange would start coming through. Anyways, it's just beautiful. LATIF: And there was one hot spring in particular that Brock and his team got interested in. HUDSON FREEZE: Mushroom Spring. LATIF: At the center is a pool of water. HUDSON FREEZE: It's about 30 feet across. LATIF: The water at the center can reach 70 Celsius, 160 Fahrenheit. HUDSON FREEZE: Steam coming off of it every direction. LATIF: Surrounded by light gray rock and dead trees. And so they'd walk up to the edge of this pool, trying to get as close to it as they could. And... HUDSON FREEZE: We would take these glass slides that had nothing on them, put them in the spring, so if there were any organisms

that were bubbling up out of the interior of the Earth, they might be able to attach. LATIF: Trawling, basically. Trawling for life. And the water's so hot, that if they happened to fall into the spring... HUDSON FREEZE: Oh, adios. Yeah. LATIF: Luckily, no scientists were harmed in the doing of this research. LULU: LATIF: But they got their samples, they took them back to their little shack lab. And what they'd do is they would add these radioactive chemicals that would react with stuff in the sample, whatever proteins or sugars or whatever.

HUDSON FREEZE: Yeah. LATIF: And that would be a sign of something living in there. HUDSON FREEZE: And we actually proved that the material was actually alive. LATIF: But what they still didn't know was if the living things in there had come from the center of the springs, or, you know, if it had fallen from the outside, or what exactly it was. So they took the samples back to Indiana University, and it was Hud's job to see if the samples they got could really grow and thrive in super hot temperatures. HUDSON FREEZE: Yeah. Yeah. So I had a whole series of different tubes at different temperatures.

LATIF: So now Hud's got all these samples, and they're sitting in all these hot water baths on all these burners so that each one is set to a different temperature. So starting maybe a little cool, getting hotter. Eventually going past that supposed limit that is too hot for anything to be alive. HUDSON FREEZE: So every day I would go in there and I'd look to see if there was anything that looked like it might be growing. LATIF: But he has to keep refilling these hot water baths. HUDSON FREEZE: The darn things could run dry. LULU: Because the water keeps burning up.

LATIF: Because the water keeps boiling off. HUDSON FREEZE: Running up the electric bill... LATIF: HUDSON FREEZE:... of the microbiology department. So anyway... LATIF: Day after day, he's tending these little vials, always checking on them. HUDSON FREEZE: Always looking for change in the soup. If bacteria were growing, it would be cloudy. It might even start to smell a little bit. LATIF: He's waiting. He's waiting. The liquid is clear. Day one, he's waiting. Day two, he's waiting. He's waiting a couple days. HUDSON FREEZE: I couldn't find anything.

And then on the fourth, maybe fifth day, September 19, 1966... LATIF: He picks up one of the vials. HUDSON FREEZE: I just tapped it with my finger, and there was all this swirly stuff that came up. I mean, it looked like it looked like diamonds kind of running around. It was like, "Whoosh!" all around inside the tube. And I thought, "Oh my God, maybe this is it." LATIF: So he takes a look under a microscope, and what he sees are these little worms, kind of like cut-up spaghetti. HUDSON FREEZE: Just floating around in there.

LULU: And they're moving? LATIF: And they're moving. Yeah, they're alive. HUDSON FREEZE: At almost boiling water. LATIF: You know, according to the current thinking, like, nothing should be able to live in here. But they were growing, they were reproducing, they were making more of them. LULU: They were, like, proliferating. LATIF: They're thriving. HUDSON FREEZE: Yeah, I said I said, "Oh, my God. I am the first person in the world ever to see this." The next day, I'm telling everybody in the lab about it. I'm telling Tom Brock, and one of the one of the guys in the lab says, "Well, I think we ought to call it Hudsoni freeziensis." LATIF: Hey!

HUDSON FREEZE: Hey! LATIF: You could have had a you could have had a species named after you. HUDSON FREEZE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. LATIF: But then Brock was like... HUDSON FREEZE: "Oh, no, no, no." LATIF: "We're not gonna do that." HUDSON FREEZE: "Can't name them after people anymore." LATIF: "We are gonna call it Thermus aquaticus." LULU: Thermus aquaticus. LATIF: Thermus aquaticus. HUDSON FREEZE: TAQ. LATIF: TAQ is short for Thermus aquaticus. LULU: Hot water? LATIF: Hot water. It literally just means hot water. HUDSON FREEZE: I'm going around the lab singing, "It's the dawning of the age of aquaticus, age of aquaticus."

LULU: I like it. It's simple. It's clear. LATIF: [singing] Aquaticus! LULU: How do they I mean, how do they do it? How do they live in this temperature that kills so many so much else? LATIF: Well, so usually in hot water, the water molecules are just jostling around so much. HUDSON FREEZE: And that's why we can't go out and, you know, sit at 180, because our proteins fall apart, our enzymes fall apart. LATIF: But TAQ has evolved proteins and enzymes that are more tightly structured. HUDSON FREEZE: That's right. They can survive without falling apart. LATIF: Which beyond being a cool trick, opens up a door that life can do a whole new thing. Like, there's a whole new superpower that we didn't even know about.

LULU: Which does open up, like, could there be life on Mars? Could there be life in lava? LATIF: That's it. That's it. LULU: Could there be life in these places we thought were inhospitable? LATIF: That's right. HUDSON FREEZE: Yeah. You know, this was the thing that led us to say, "Well, what if you go down 5,000 feet under the sea where we know there are volcanoes down there? Boy, I'll bet nothing lives down there." Well, yes, it does. LULU: Wow! It just makes me think, like, man, life is tough! LATIF: Yeah. LULU: Evolution has diversified its portfolio, and you know what? If humans do stink it up and climate change it all the way to boiling, like, it's gonna be fine. We won't be around, but it'll... LATIF: Life will be fine. We may not be fine, but life will be fine. Right. HUDSON FREEZE: Yeah. Life will still continue to exist as long as you have liquid water. LATIF: Hmm.

HUDSON FREEZE: That, if I had to pick anything, is really the sort of lesson of this. Life will exist anywhere where there's nutrients. It will go anyplace where it can find energy, to use energy to grow. I'm gonna quote Jeff Goldblum here. [ARCHIVE CLIP, Jurassic Park: Life finds a way.] HUDSON FREEZE: "Life finds a way." LATIF: So I was like, "Oh my God, this is amazing. Like, was this on the cover of Time magazine?" LULU: Yeah. HUDSON FREEZE: Yeah. LULU: Yeah. LATIF: And he's like, "No." HUDSON FREEZE: It has no use. It has absolutely no use. You know, it's curiosity. I mean, it's science for science's sake, it's fundamental research. That's the way science goes.

LATIF: And the rest of the world, the non-scientist world, was just like... HUDSON FREEZE: "Well, who cares?" So... LATIF: And so they preserved a sample of TAQ, and they just put it in a kind of like a library of microbes. HUDSON FREEZE: Yeah, yeah. It's a germ library. Beyond that, we we didn't think about it. LATIF: They moved on to other things. And then 50 or so years later, Hudson is sitting at his desk and he gets a call. HUDSON FREEZE: He said, "This is [garbled]." Like this. And I want to talk to you about a science prize." And I thought, "Oh my God, it's the prize patrol. If I sign up for, you know, Scientific American for six years at this bargain rate, I'm gonna get a, you know, something in the mail." LATIF: But what it was, it turns out, was something called the Golden Goose Award. LULU: Oh, Golden Goose!

[ARCHIVE CLIP, announcer: Thank you for joining us for the 11th annual Golden Goose Awards ceremony.] LATIF: Right. Okay, so you remember we did an episode about it couple years back. [ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz Guti rrez: Okay, there's a map...] LATIF: We even sent one of our producers, Maria Paz Guti rrez, to cover it, like, in red carpet. LULU: Check out the scientists' outfits. LATIF: Right. Right. [ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz Guti rrez: Is this event a big deal?] [ARCHIVE CLIP, audience member: It's the Emmys of science.] LATIF: It was held in Washington, DC.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz Guti rrez: Hi!] LATIF: In this big fancy building near the Capitol. [ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz Guti rrez: So I'm asking people what they're wearing. What are you wearing?] [ARCHIVE CLIP, audience member: That's a good question. I am wearing a suit. It's like mostly blue, but then there's this subtle, light blue. It's pretty funky.] [ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz Guti rrez: It's a statement.] [ARCHIVE CLIP, audience member: With this window pane? Hello?] LATIF: But anyway basically, it was an award created back in the '80s, 1980s, when Congress was ridiculing a lot of the government funding of basic scientific research. And, you know, there were, like, headlines all the time about, like, "We're wasting money spending you know, funding a study about snail sex," or whatever. Whatever it was. LULU: Yeah. Yeah.

LATIF: And then the Golden Goose Award was sort of this tongue-in-cheek, nerdy response in the form of an award that goes to research that is funded by the government that sounds dumb or sounds useless, sounds absurd, but then turns out to completely change the world. LULU: Right. LATIF: So now, Hud is getting a call from them saying TAQ deserves this award. LULU: The hot worms? But how? I thought they how did how did that research change the world? I thought they were sitting standing on the shelf. LATIF: Well, that is exactly what I'm gonna tell you after the break.

LULU: Hmm! LATIF: Okay. LULU: Lulu. LATIF: Latif. LULU: Radiolab. Hot worms. LATIF: And the place where the hot worms went next, which nobody could have ever predicted, only really happened because of a drug-induced biological fever dream. LULU: What? LATIF: And that's the story I'm gonna tell you now. LULU: Okay! LATIF: So maybe no surprise, we're gonna leave Indiana. LULU: Mm-hmm. LATIF: And jump instead to Berkeley, California. LULU: All right. LATIF: We're still in the late 1960s, only now I want to tell you about a guy called Kary Mullis.

LULU: Okay. LATIF: He's a PhD student in biochemistry at UC-Berkeley. But instead of being in a lab, he seems to prefer studying biochemistry by synthesizing his own LSD. LULU: Okay! LATIF: He's literally famous on campus for doing this. Anyway, so he gets his degree, gets a job in a biolab, but then he just hates, like, how many mice they kill all the time. And then he gets a job in a cafe. He's like he's like this floating guy. LULU: Yeah. LATIF: Until one day he's working in the coffee shop, and a customer is like, "Aren't you that guy who used to make your own LSD?" And they get to talking, and eventually this guy offers Kary a job.

LULU: Whoa! LATIF: At this biotech startup called Cetus. LULU: Okay. LATIF: Now just to give you a sense, at this point, we're in the late '70s. [ARCHIVE CLIP: Today, science is on the threshold of a new era.] LATIF: And the thing that scientists everywhere, especially the scientists at Cetus are obsessed with, is... [ARCHIVE CLIP: DNA.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: DNA.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: Deoxyribonucleic acid. The essence of life.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: The stuff of which all life is made.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: The key we've been looking for.]

LATIF: They have this hunch that decoding DNA is gonna unlock lots of secrets about the human body. [ARCHIVE CLIP: The answers lie within these long, thin, twisted strands.] LATIF: And Cetus, the company where Kary Mullis got his job, they want to be on the cutting edge of this. And so they have teams of scientists trying to figure out how to read DNA. LULU: Okay. LATIF: And their main problem at the time is that reading DNA is extremely, extremely hard. The whole process of trying to read or even just find and isolate, like, microscopically tiny little molecules of DNA, it was so inefficient that it was a non-starter. It was not feasible at all.

LULU: Hmm. LATIF: And so scientists at Cetus were scratching their heads, trying to find a better way to do this. LULU: Got it. LATIF: Now Kary Mullis, he was not doing any of that. LULU: Oh. LATIF: He was stuck doing very slow, very repetitive, boring lab work. But one day he's out on a drive after work. [ARCHIVE CLIP, Kary Mullis: I was driving along one night.] LATIF: Kary Mullis actually died back in 2019, but while he was alive, he did a bunch of interviews where he talks about this moment. [ARCHIVE CLIP, Kary Mullis: I was driving to the little cabin I have in Mendocino County.] LATIF: Driving through the mountains on these windy, steep roads. It's super dark. [ARCHIVE CLIP, Kary Mullis: It was really late at night.] LATIF: And in his mind, he's turning over the problems of reading DNA. The way that he described it, he's like, trying to read a piece of DNA at that time was like trying to find a license plate...

LULU: Yeah? LATIF:... on the interstate... LULU: Uh-huh? LATIF:... in the middle of the night... LULU: Right. LATIF:... from the moon. LULU: Okay. LATIF: And then you still have to read it. LULU: So just impossible. LATIF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all of his colleagues are focused on basically devising a more powerful, more precise telescope to spot the DNA. And he's thinking, like... [ARCHIVE CLIP, Kary Mullis: How do you fix this thing? I mean, what would you do?] LATIF: When all of a sudden, he sees DNA everywhere. Blue and pink strands of DNA just floating in front of him as he was driving, like through the windshield. LULU: Whoa!

LATIF: As he said it, they "injected themselves somewhere between the mountain road and my eyes." He hadn't done any LSD that night allegedly but he said that he had done it so many times that he could almost get his mind there without having to take it. LULU: Hmm. LATIF: I mean, who knows? But, like, it's almost like he's imagining himself riding a piece of DNA. LULU: LATIF: And then he has this thought that just snaps him right out of it. Everyone's working on a better and better telescope from the moon, right? LULU: Mm-hmm. Right. LATIF: What if instead you futz with the license plate? LULU: Huh.

LATIF: Like, what if you can make copies of the license plate? [ARCHIVE CLIP, Kary Mullis: And copy the copies? And then copy the copies? So you'd go from having one copy of it to two, to four, to eight, to sixteen, to thirty-two, to sixty-four, to a hundred and twenty-eight, on up to a million if you've done it 20 times, and a billion if you've done it 30 times.] LATIF: A billion of them. It's as if the whole planet Earth now is covered in the license plate that you wanted to see. And all of a sudden it's gonna be way easier... LULU: To find it.

LATIF: Yeah. And therefore to read it. LULU: Okay, interesting. I don't quite get how having a billion copies would make you see it better, but... LATIF: Well, I think that's fine. I think that's fine. Like, the only thing you need to know is he has this vision for a machine that's kind of like a DNA Xerox machine. LULU: Okay. LATIF: And he's like he's like, "This is it!" Like, he talks about he had, like, deoxyribo-nuclear bombs going off in his head as he's driving, like, a eureka kind of a moment. LULU: Eureka. Yeah. Okay.

LATIF: He literally stops the car. He, like, looks in the glove compartment and he, like, finds an old receipt, and he's, like, writing things down on the back of it, kind of thing. LULU: Oh, my gosh. Okay. LATIF: So he takes his idea into work, and everyone thinks it's really stupid. LULU: Oh, no! Why? LATIF: I think it's because it's such a simple idea, they're like, "Of course it's not gonna work." but also, Kary, he sucks. LULU: Oh! LATIF: Basically, he sucks. He takes things very personally. He gets into fights with colleagues at work all the time, literally a fist fight at one point. Allegedly one day he brings a gun to work and threatens somebody. LULU: Okay, so this Xerox machine idea is coming in from Kary, so... LATIF: Yeah, Kary. Right. But the thing is, Kary's sort of already working out in his head how this DNA Xerox machine theoretically would work.

LULU: Hmm. LATIF: So you have a piece of DNA. LULU: Mm-hmm? LATIF: Imagine, like, a long zipper. Because remember, DNA is it's made up of matching base pairs. Cs go with Gs, As go with Ts. Right? LULU: Mm-hmm? LATIF: And they're all zipped together. LULU: Right. LATIF: Now in order to copy it, first you have to unzip it. Unzip it, so now you have two halves of it, right? LULU: Yeah. LATIF: Then basically, you find new base pairs to match up with each side of the zipper. LULU: Oh, yeah. Right. LATIF: For every G, you find a C. For every A you find a T.

LULU: Right. LATIF: You can kind of perfectly recreate the other half. LULU: Right. LATIF: And then it's like you can zip it up with a new zipper, right? LULU: Right. Right. LATIF: Okay, then do it again. Unzip, and then copy both. LULU: Okay. LATIF: And then you keep doing that over and over. Zip, unzip. Zip, unzip. You do that 30 times, you have a billion zippers, whereas you just started with one. LULU: Clever. LATIF: By this point he managed to convince his boss who has assigned people by force to work with him. And they keep trying it and trying it. They're working on it for months, and they keep failing.

One of the problems is to unzip it, for whatever chemical reason, the temperature needs to be really high. LULU: Okay. LATIF: And then to rezip it, the temperature needs to be lowered by a lot. LULU: Huh! LATIF: And he notices this one part of the DNA zipper, like the slider, the thing that zips the DNA teeth together, is this enzyme called a polymerase. And he notices that any time he raises the temperature too high, the polymerase falls apart. LULU: Hmm! LATIF: Without getting too in the weeds here, the polymerase is a protein. And typically, if proteins get too hot, they just sort of disintegrate. And so Kary and his team were like, "Oh, if only there was a polymerase somewhere that could live at this high temperature." So then someone from their team went to this library, this microbe library.

LULU: Okay? LATIF: And what do they find? LULU: [gasps] The hot worms! LATIF: The hot worms. HUDSON FREEZE: Thermus aquaticus. LULU: Oh! So he's like, through the card catalog, like, "Hmm. 90 Celsius." LATIF: Yeah. And as Hudson Freeze explained to us, Thermus aquaticus has its own polymerase. HUDSON FREEZE: As you might call it, TAQ polymerase. LATIF: And again, because every part of TAQ is evolved to take the heat, this polymerase, when you heat it up... HUDSON FREEZE: It can survive without falling apart. LATIF: So Kary and his team are basically like, "Oh, this is exactly the thing we were looking for."

LULU: Yeah! LATIF: And they plug it into their machine, and it basically works like a dream, as if it was made to do that. LULU: Oh my God! LATIF: Like, all of a sudden, they can add the TAQ polymerase, run this reaction to replicate the DNA over and over. And before you know it, they have a billion copies of the gene snippet they were looking for. [ARCHIVE CLIP, Kary Mullis: I think we had just finished cloning a gene at Cetus that took 40 people six months. I can do that in one afternoon by myself now.] LULU: Whoa! LATIF: And so the process that they invent, it's called... HUDSON FREEZE: Polymerase chain reaction, or PCR.

LATIF: PCR. [ARCHIVE CLIP: PCR.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: Polymerase chain reactions.] LATIF: And it completely changed everything. [ARCHIVE CLIP: This process has been hailed as one of the monumental scientific techniques of the 20th century. Why?] LATIF: Because PCR made it so much easier and faster to read DNA. Suddenly, scientists everywhere start using it. [ARCHIVE CLIP, Bill Clinton: We're here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome.] LATIF: They finally decode the human genome and all the knowledge that comes with it. And from there on out...

HUDSON FREEZE: I would say every biotechnology company in the world... LATIF:... every lab anywhere that's studying DNA... HUDSON FREEZE:... has to use PCR. LATIF: To put that a different way, every major scientific breakthrough that involves DNA in any way in the last several decades, it's all run on PCR. [ARCHIVE CLIP: Genetic markers.] LATIF: Like diagnosing genetic diseases. [ARCHIVE CLIP: Diseases, including cystic fibrosis.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: Things like HIV detection.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: And sickle cell disease.] LATIF: Determining ancestry. Like, think of, like, 23andMe, Ancestry.com, all of that. The whole industry.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: A DNA discovery helped a woman meet the little brother she never knew she had.] LATIF: We have... [ARCHIVE CLIP: Forensic DNA testing to identify the suspect's DNA.] LATIF:... the whole world of forensics, solving crimes with DNA evidence. Or... [ARCHIVE CLIP: Recent DNA evidence exonerated him.] LATIF:... proving people innocent. Even identifying bodies for things like reuniting loved ones after wars or natural disasters. Or... [ARCHIVE CLIP: Osama bin Laden is dead, his body identified using DNA evidence.] LATIF: Also another thing, this whole renaissance in learning about human origins. [ARCHIVE CLIP: Homo sapiens picked up some of the DNA from the Neanderthals.] LATIF: None of this stuff would have been possible without PCR. LULU: It's just wild! Like, as you're running through this litany, it is wild that it all runs on something that we found in these random little worms, these random little bacteria that happen to live in really hot water. This is wild!

LATIF: Crazy, right? LULU: Yeah. LATIF: Okay, and here's my favorite example. LULU: Yeah. [ARCHIVE CLIP: There's something called a PCR.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: At the moment, we're using something called a PCR test.] LATIF: The PCR test is the very same PCR that we used during the pandemic to test for COVID. [ARCHIVE CLIP: That's really the most accurate way to tell.] [ARCHIVE CLIP: The most reliable test.] LATIF: PCR was the sort of gold standard of a test. LULU: That's right! LATIF: Multiplying COVID DNA so it was detectable. LULU: Okay, this is it's almost eerie that, like, these hot worms led us to COVID tests. LATIF: Yeah. And it's hard to know how many more people would have died without them. LULU: Totally.

LATIF: Now obviously, the development of PCR was not just Kary, it was this huge team effort. But in 1993... [ARCHIVE CLIP: Dr. Kary Mullis, I now ask you to receive the Nobel Prize from the hands of His Majesty the King.] LATIF:... Kary Mullis wins the Nobel Prize. HUDSON FREEZE: And the critical component is the TAQ polymerase. LATIF: And, you know, I did ask Hudson Freeze, like... LATIF: Are you, like, bitter that you didn't win the Nobel Prize? HUDSON FREEZE: But that isn't why you do the science, right? LATIF: Right.

HUDSON FREEZE: I realized it was a critical component, and that that was sort of payoff in itself to know that my contribution really counted. LATIF: Yeah. LATIF: Like, "I had a hand in this, like, amazing, world-changing technology." MARIA PAZ GUTI RREZ: I don't know. It's kind of like if your kid is, like, Michael Jordan. LATIF: This, by the way, is Radiolab producer Maria Paz Guti rrez. MARIA PAZ: And he's, like, playing in every game. LATIF: HUDSON FREEZE: Oh God, yes. Yes. My little bug! My little bug has made it! Yeah.

LATIF: Yeah, you're the scout. You're the talent scout who saw Michael Jordan. Yeah. HUDSON FREEZE: LATIF: Today actually, Hudson Freeze works in an institute where they work on, like, rare genetic diseases, including, and especially in children. Like, they use PCR all the time at his institute to help you know, to help. Like, to literally save lives. You know, make people's lives more livable. It's really, really beautiful work. LULU: Yeah. HUDSON FREEZE: It took a long time before I was able to use TAQ and, you know, really make a difference for individuals, and keep people alive that likely would have died. It's funny how 1966 was a real turning point.

LATIF: Yeah. LATIF: I find this like a just a beautiful, beautiful story about what is life capable of? Like, what can life even do? LULU: Totally. LATIF: And in the end, like, it really became this life-changing, life-saving discovery. LULU: And in such a pure way. Like, it's like this open-ended question: Could there be life in this extremely hot place? LATIF: Yep. LULU: Let me do really good samples and, like, he did good science to find out. Yep. And then all I do is put it in a library. Like, it's there's something, like, pure on so many levels. LATIF: Yeah. Just idle curiosity paying off way more, and in ways that nobody could ever expect. LATIF: All of that came out of one $80,000 grant from the US government. LULU: Mm-hmm.

LATIF: That's why Hudson Freeze and Thomas Brock, they won the Golden Goose Award in 2013. CARL ZIMMER: Honestly, like, you could hand out a Golden Goose Award every day. You know, pretty much anything that is some kind of technology making life better in some way, it all started in basic science. LATIF: Hmm. LULU: So as we've been working on this story, Latif, you know, you mentioned at the beginning it is this sort of parable of our time. LATIF: Well, I mean, when you put it next to what is going on in the news right now, which are all of these cuts, it feels like a tale of a thing that we are in danger of losing. LULU: Yeah. So to kind of bring this story, to connect it to the avalanche of cuts coming to publicly-funded science, we turned to somebody whose voice you probably recognize. CARL ZIMMER: My name's Carl Zimmer. And I'm a columnist at the New York Times. LULU: He has been watching all the cuts

really closely, detailing it in his newsletter called Friday's Elk. CARL ZIMMER: So what I've been doing is trying to distill for myself, just summarizing what my fellow journalists have been digging up. LULU: And so we called him up to give us a more granular look at what's been frozen, what's been shut down, what's been lost. CARL ZIMMER: I don't think we know yet, honestly. There are lots of efforts to push back that are happening now. There are a number of lawsuits. There may be more lawsuits. But we don't know how judges will rule, we don't know at this point if the Trump administration is gonna really adhere to what the judges say. But I can say government scientists are getting laid off in the tens of thousands. Opportunities for young scientists are getting wiped out. Grants are being eliminated.

Universities are suddenly having billions of dollars of research suddenly pulled. You know, there was a big diabetes program. There was at Columbia there was a program on, you know, studying chronic fatigue. These have been going on for years. They're gone. LULU: No one's in those labs? Just empty? CARL ZIMMER: They're gone. They're shut down. It's things are happening on all fronts. LATIF: Carl says a lot of the cuts to scientists and basic research are coming in the form of broad cuts at government agencies. CARL ZIMMER: For example, the Trump administration has put forward a budget in which NASA's science budget would be cut in half. LATIF: Whoa!

CARL ZIMMER: Which experts have described as kind of an extinction-level event for science at NASA. This is all the stuff that you read about in the newspapers like, you know, what do we discover on Mars? Or there is a space telescope called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It is built. If it gets into space, it'll be able to give us an incredible picture on the whole universe, including the evolution of galaxies, and an even better look at planets around other solar systems. Might help us find life in other solar systems. In the proposed budget, that telescope is dead. It gets no funding. LATIF: Oh my God. It's just gonna sit there and do nothing. CARL ZIMMER: Yeah. Yeah.

LATIF: That's absurd. CARL ZIMMER: And the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's climate science program, that that is being proposed to be shut down. Just shut down. LATIF: Fully? Fully? CARL ZIMMER: Shut down. The EPA. At the EPA, they have research scientists who do science to understand the threats to human health of pollutants. There are movements to have all one thousand of them laid off. The EPA will not have a research science staff if this follows through. You know, the Centers for Disease Control, for example. The Centers for Disease Control used to have an office full of experts on lead poisoning. And in fact, Milwaukee has just a lead poisoning emergency, and they would like to have CDC send their experts. There are no lead poisoning experts at the CDC. LULU: They're just gone now.

CARL ZIMMER: They've been fired. LULU: What about I mean, what about NSF, NIH? CARL ZIMMER: Yeah. NSF, their proposal is to cut it in half. LULU: Half? CARL ZIMMER: And the Department of Health and Human Services... LULU: That's the department that houses the National Institutes of Health. CARL ZIMMER: Ten thousand people have been fired. That has included lots of people involved in doing basic research on biomedicine. LULU: And in one example, Carl told us about a group of scientists who've been working over the last several years. CARL ZIMMER: Trying to make a coronavirus vaccine that is going to be able to give us some protection against other strains of COVID, or maybe some entirely new coronavirus. LATIF: Right.

CARL ZIMMER: They've made a lot of progress, and a lot of that progress came with a deeper understanding of how the immune system works. So they've learned a lot of basic science along the way, and it has been delivering a lot of promise. LATIF: Hmm. CARL ZIMMER: And that grant has just been pulled, with no explanation. That research is now over. LATIF: Wow! CARL ZIMMER: There are projects looking for antivirals for a range of different viruses that might start the next pandemic. That's been canceled too, and those scientists aren't even sure if they'll be able to write up their results. Like, you may not find out what they've done. There are just too many to choose from. I mean, I've been talking with a researcher who has, you know, a massive program on understanding tuberculosis and the immune system. You know, this is the most deadly infectious disease we have these days. It kills over a million people a year.

His grant was canceled, and honestly he's not sure why. This huge program that could, you know, give us new insights about tuberculosis and might eventually lead to new treatments is just gone. Just gone. So there are definitely, you know, very short term impacts of what this administration's doing. You know, cutting off the supply of drugs for HIV, or halting a clinical trial, potentially give a treatment for cancer. These people are in the middle of these trials and they're just stopping. So those are really short-term things. LATIF: I mean, is there some chance that businesses, like the private sector in general would come in and fund all of this like, pick it up? CARL ZIMMER: LATIF: Pick it back up? CARL ZIMMER: That's that's not great business. You'd be waiting a long time for those drug companies to pick up all that basic research that governments like the United States have been covering for decades.

LATIF: Yeah. CARL ZIMMER: And a lot of this stuff, you know, when it's dropped, it's really difficult to ever start it up again. You don't bounce back from this sort of this sort of shock to the system. LULU: And, you know, a system of searching for knowledge, there is so much that needs to be ready to go equipment, materials, administration, all the gathering up of research subjects, and then the scientists themselves. CARL ZIMMER: You know, there was a poll that Nature did recently. They asked hundreds of scientists about, you know, what effect all of this chaos is having on them, and their thoughts about their future. And 75 percent 75 percent of these American scientists said they have been thinking about maybe moving. LATIF: Hmm.

LULU: Wow. CARL ZIMMER: Other people may just leave science. LULU: Yeah. CARL ZIMMER: Thirty-five years of being a science writer, I haven't seen anything close to this. LULU: And I mean, Carl says what we are seeing right now is just uncharted territory. CARL ZIMMER: Really, I mean, at this point, I'm thinking we're well on our way to the United States losing its prime position in science. LULU: [sighs] Right. I'm just gonna put my head on the desk, and leave it here. LATIF: Wow. CARL ZIMMER: Maybe we can, you know, talk about happier things at another time, but this is what we need to be talking about now. LATIF:

Okay, Lulu. LULU: Mm-hmm? LATIF: I know we're in shambles here. LULU: Yeah? LATIF: But I kind of saved there's one extra detail from the Hudson Freeze TAQ story, knowing that we would need a pick-me-up at the end here. LULU: Okay. LATIF: Because it's, like, one of my favorite little details about this story. LULU: Please. LATIF: Well, okay. LULU: Yes. Please. LATIF: In the late 1980s... LULU: Mm-hmm? LATIF:... a Berkeley paleobiologist started using PCR to find DNA in ancient weevils. LULU: Okay? LATIF: And the ancient weevils were found in amber.

LULU: Okay. LATIF: And accounts vary a little bit, but the story goes that the novelist Michael Crichton heard about that. LULU: Yes! Oh, my God! LATIF: And he was like, "Huh, that's a great premise!" LULU: Jurassic Park! LATIF: So he wrote Jurassic Park, which is amazing because when we interviewed Hudson Freeze, his takeaway from his research was like... [ARCHIVE CLIP, Jurassic Park: Life finds a way.] LATIF: And you're like, yeah, that's from a movie that was inspired by the thing you discovered. LULU: That is incredible! LATIF: Yeah!

LULU: Full circle. LATIF: Yeah. LULU: Okay. LATIF: Okay. So that's our episode for today. Big thank you, of course, to Hudson Freeze and our little friend Thermus aquaticus. We didn't say this earlier, but his professor and co-author Thomas Brock died in 2021. And the song that Hudson Freeze sang at Thomas Brock's funeral? HUDSON FREEZE: [singing] It is the dawning of the Age of Aquaticus. Age of Aquaticus. Aquaticus! LATIF: That's right. HUDSON FREEZE: You know, something like that. You know, give me a little time to warm up, you know? Yeah, right. Anyhow... LATIF: Thank you as well to Joanne Padr n Carney.

Also to her team: Erin Heath, Valeria Sabate, Gwendolyn Bogard, Meredith Asbury and Megan Cantwell at AAAS for being a tremendous help this episode, and for administering the Golden Goose Award. Thank you as well to Gregor?avlovi? and Derek Muller and the rest of the Veritasium team, who I actually collaborated with to do a YouTube video about this topic. They even go into how post-Nobel Kary Mullis went totally off the deep end and lost all his scientific credibility. Check out that on YouTube. LULU: This episode was reported by Latif Nasser and Maria Paz Guti rrez. It was produced by Maria Paz Guti rrez and Sarah Qari. Edited by Alex Neason, with help from Sarah Qari. Music and sound design by Jeremy Bloom.

And our fact-checker on this one was Emily Krieger. That's it. Thank you so much for listening. See you next week. LATIF: Catch you next week. [LISTENER: Hi, I'm Priya Ramachandran DeSousa, and I'm from Finland. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Guti rrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Anisa Vietze, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.] [LISTENER: Hi, I'm Arturo calling from New York City. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton

Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "The Age of Aquaticus | Radiolab Podcast"?

Hudson Freeze (Guest), Carl Zimmer (Referenced expert / Commentator).

What is "The Age of Aquaticus | Radiolab Podcast" about?

The content delves into the career of scientist Hudson Freeze, reflecting on a significant moment from 60 years ago that resonates with contemporary challenges facing publicly-funded science, including budget cuts to major research institutions like the National Science Foundation and NASA. It explores the interplay between personal experiences in science and the broader implications of funding…

What is mentioned in this Radiolab episode?

129 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Kary Mullis, Thermus aquaticus, Thermus aquaticus, TAQ, PCR, Hudson Freeze. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "The Age of Aquaticus | Radiolab Podcast"?

The episode runs 43 min; the transcript is about 7,588 words in 63 timestamped sections.

More from Radiolab

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated February 9, 2026.