Podcast - Adam Savage Project

The Scariest Episode Yet – Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project – 10/30/18

Very special guest Joe DeRisi joins Adam and Will this week for a stimulating conversation on his work in molecular biology. And it ends up being possibly our scariest episode yet. Happy Halloween, everyone!

Comments (43)

43 thoughts on “The Scariest Episode Yet – Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project – 10/30/18

  1. This WAS terrifying! I have never felt more Data-

    DATA: Yes. That is it. I hate it.
    LA FORGE: Data, I think the chip is working.
    DATA: Yes. I hate this! It is revolting!
    GUINAN: Another round?
    DATA: Please.

    I really hope you have Joe DeRisi on again!

  2. I could listen to this all day. The only thing truly infectious about this podcast was the enthusiasm for investigation and analysis.

  3. This was a wonderful surprise.

    Thank you for sharing, Joe, and I’m hoping we’ll see you back on the show again!

  4. Well done. Loved it. Would like more. I think this should tell the team they can do compelling S___M as well as they already do _TEA_

  5. Wow, this was perfect for Halloween! An absolute TREAT of an episode! So fantastically interesting and a great storyteller! Please bring him back again.

  6. Some of this needs to be made into a movie! Or at least a shirt… “We’re gonna need a bigger sequence bejeezuser”

    Joe is great, please have him on again!

  7. Fun fact: the BSL-4 lab that Joe mentions at USAMRIID carries the nickname “the slammer”, and is where Adam’s friend Penn Jillette got the name for his former Las Vegas home.

  8. had a wonderful time listening to the pod cast. I might be awake til morning working about the virus/bugs and other scary shit in my body that I dont know about. HELP!!!!!!!!!!

  9. Absolutely riveting . . . this topic and others like it –
    from my personal point of view – are so completely embedded in the charter that is
    Tested. Best Halloween in years. Bravo, eight thumbs up.

  10. This was a great podcast. i think what was the best was that we were learning right along with Adam and Will. It was a shared experience. Joe was the instructor and we are all the willing audience.

  11. Little did I know that pet boas have such darling names……

    The science was wonderful but slightly scary. The story had a disturbing trend – the physician uses what the medical literature predicts is the most likely reason for the problem. Months and lots of money later, the patient is still ill. Enters the molecular biologist who sequences the B-J out of a sample, find the solution, the patient is saved.

    I am guessing (I am a doctor but not an MD), that the medical literature is good at predicting most ailments but a special set of problems exists that are best left to checking out the DNA under the hood. Are the two methods treated as substitutes in the field of medicine? If the literature fails, the physician goes with using DNA. If so, as a consumer of health services, I am scared.

  12. I suspect the issue is scaling. In the US for example, you have say, a hundred million people going to the doctor or a hospital every year for non-trauma reasons. And out of those, the vast, vast majority are cured using minimum resources, effort and time using the hypothesis-based approach.

    Spending a thousand dollars sequencing their DNA to identify their specific virus or bacteria ahead of treatment would be exponentially more expensive than the current paradigm.

    If you’ve watched a lot of medicine-focused tv-shows, you might have picked up on the saying “Horses, not Zebras”? Basically, if it is in the US, and leaves hoof-prints, it is significantly more likely to be a horse than a Zebra, so you base treatment on it being a horse and see if the patient gets better. Basically an ungulate version of Occam’s Razor. Yes, there are a set of problems that look significantly like a “horse” but turn out to be a giraffe, and for those, DNA is probably a lot better than hoping House MD is available to assist.

    There is also the element of time. For a lot of conditions, progression is so fast that you don’t even have the 24 hours required to do the DNA sequencing, never mind the time to analyse the results and begin treatment. So, you treat for the horse-scenario and hope the patient lives.

    Once the technology becomes fast and cheap enough, it’ll likely take a much larger role in initial diagnosis, but for now, humans still outperform it in practice.

  13. I listened to this podcast and was hooked from minute 1. These stories were amazing, engaging and merely scratch the surface of what’s out there. Please invite him back to continue the horror story that is the world we live in.

  14. As a scientist. I have to say I absolutely LOVED this episode. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make Joe a regular guest. Absolute fantastic episode.

  15. Best episode yet! Please have Joe back on. I was late for a meeting, because I didn’t want to stop the podcast!

  16. That was a great, interesting episode. Please have this guy on again, and maybe I can finally forget about the episode with Tom Sachs.

  17. I watched the podcast again and one thing that I just realized is that both times I heard Joe say “pork tapeworm”, I knew exactly what it was. Been from an undeveloped country, this is the kind of thing they teach us in school. I think I was 13, or near that age, maybe younger, when I first heard about it.

    Sewerage system is still largely neglected in huge areas of Brazil, so teaching about tênia and cisticercose is a matter of public health, not just a scary story.

    Fantastic episode. Joe should be a regular!

  18. That was engaging, entertaining and terrifying all in one podcast. I’m with everyone else wanting Joe to come back. I also think Joe could have his own podcast, his enthusiasm and story telling make him a great communicator.

  19. see! You need an intuition genius to diagnose these in America. That’s a good thing, I guess. Less tapeworm is better…

  20. Long time listener – just joined to post: FANTASTIC episode. I was laughing so much I had to restart the episode so my son could listen with me. Laugh, laugh, cringe. Cringe, cringe, laugh. When’s the good part? LOL Thank you.

  21. Maybe I’m just using the site wrong, but where are the links and show notes? So much good info.

    After searching, I found some good info but I’m sure there’s an obvious show notes page or something that I’m overlooking…. Has to be a 50 foot sign apparently.

    https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2015/09/131516/next-gen-genomic-tests-identify-brain-eating-amoeba

    https://www.czbiohub.org/

    https://www.chanzuckerberg.com/newsroom/chan-zuckerberg-biohub-and-chan-zuckerberg-initiative-announce-first-of-its-kind-idseq-platform-and-service-to-enable-real-time-global-disease-surveillance-and-prevention

    https://idseq.net/

    https://github.com/chanzuckerberg/idseq-web

  22. Most fascinating tested podcast to date. Awesome. You got to get Joe back. And I’m not usually that interested in bio stuff. Nice job. Thanks.

  23. This was a great podcast! I really enjoyed it. 😃

    Adam, the next time my produce farm gets drifted by Roundup (or something else), killing all of my plants and leaves my trees with spotted leaves from Roundup damage, because the field next to me is spraying it’s GMO Roundup-Ready crops, I now know that I am just part of the “GMO Fearmongering.” Your world saving GMOs have lead to a massive amount of chemicals being used in farming, and none of these farmers using them are trained to use them safely. There are rows of 80+-year-old trees that are now dying from spray drift, the wildlife is now living and eating these contaminated plants and crops….. It’s a shame the “GMO Fearmongers” weren’t able to stop this, GMOs are not good and I wonder how many trees, aminals, and people will die before we realize it.

    I am tired of breathing chemical spays in the air.

    P.S.
    Notice how much of the wild plum bush is dead, this was taken from my front door.

  24. In the podcast you mention it’s possible to get a grant for the sequencing equipment and system access, but I can’t find any more details.

    What’s the link for the grant application and requirements?

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