Brain Balls
Radiolab9 Tammi

Brain Balls

When neuroscientist Madeline Lancaster was a brand new postdoc, she accidentally used an expired protein gel in a lab experiment and noticed something weird. The stem cells she was trying to grow in a dish were self-assembling. The result? Madeline was the first person ever to grow what she called a “cerebral organoid,” a tiny, 3D version of a human brain the size of a peppercorn.

In about a decade, these mini human brain balls were everywhere. They were revealing bombshell secrets about how our brains develop in the womb, helping treat advanced cancer patients, being implanted into animals, even playing the video game Pong. But what are they? Are these brain balls capable of sensing, feeling, learning, being? Are they tiny, trapped humans? And if they were, how would we know?

Special thanks to Lynn Levy, Jason Yamada-Hanff, David Fajgenbaum, Andrew Verstein, Anne Hamilton, Christopher Mason, Madeline Mason-Moriarty, the team at the Boston Museum of Science, and Howard Fine, Stefano Cirigliano, and the team at Weill-Cornell.

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Latif Nasser
with help from - Mona Madgavkar
Produced by - Annie McEwen, Mona Madgavkar, and Pat Walters
with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom
Fact-checking by - Natalie Middleton and Rebecca Rand
and Edited by - Alex Neason and Pat Walters

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Videos -

Articles -


Books -
Carl Zimmer Life’s Edge: The Search for What it Means to be Alive (https://carlzimmer.com/books/lifes-edge/)



Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(653)

Stranger in Paradise

Stranger in Paradise

Back in 1911, a box with a dead raccoon in it showed up in Washington D.C., at the office of Gerrit S. Miller. After pulling it out and inspecting it, he realized this raccoon was from the Caribbean i...

27 Tammi 201743min

Radiolab Presents: On the Media: Busted, America's Poverty Myths

Radiolab Presents: On the Media: Busted, America's Poverty Myths

We love to share great radio, even if we didn’t make it. Today, On the Media’s Brooke Gladstone tells Jad and Robert about a mammoth project they launched to take a critical look at the tales we tell ...

18 Tammi 201733min

Lose Lose

Lose Lose

No matter what sport you play, the object of the game is to win. And that’s hard enough to do. But we found a match where four top athletes had to do the opposite in one of the most high profile match...

30 Joulu 201625min

It's Not Us, It's You

It's Not Us, It's You

It’s the end of the year, and the entire Radiolab team is starting to take stock and come up for air. We're excited about how much ground we've covered - stories about college debaters and figure skat...

16 Joulu 201659min

Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - Object Anyway

Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - Object Anyway

At the trial of James Batson in 1982, the prosecution eliminated all the black jurors from the jury pool. Batson objected, setting off a complicated discussion about jury selection that would make its...

22 Marras 201650min

One Vote

One Vote

Come election season, it's easy to get cynical. Why cast a ballot if your single measly vote can't possibly change anything? In our first-ever election special, we set off to find a single vote that m...

7 Marras 201648min

Alpha Gal

Alpha Gal

Tuck your napkin under your chin.  We’re about to serve up a tale of love, loss, and lamb chops.  For as long as she can remember, Amy Pearl has loved meat in all its glorious cuts and marbled flavors...

27 Loka 201634min

Seneca, Nebraska

Seneca, Nebraska

Back in 2014 the town of Seneca, Nebraska was deeply divided. How divided? They were so fed up with each other that some citizens began circulating a petition that proposed a radical solution. If a ma...

12 Loka 201629min

Suosittua kategoriassa Tiede

rss-mita-tulisi-tietaa
rss-poliisin-mieli
tiedekulma-podcast
utelias-mieli
rss-duodecim-lehti
rss-totuuden-liepeilla
university-of-eastern-finland
docemilia
filocast-filosofian-perusteet
rss-bios-podcast
rss-duokkari-ekstra
rss-laakaripodi
rss-astetta-parempi-elama-podcast
rss-tiedetta-vai-tarinaa
rss-ilmasto-kriisissa
rss-ylistys-elaimille