Detective Stories

Summary

Radiolab
Episode: Detective Stories
Date: September 10, 2007
Hosts: Jad Abumrad, Robert Krulwich
Producers: WNYC Studios

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Overview

"Detective Stories" explores how clues to the past—hidden in garbage dumps, obscure letters, and even our own DNA—can uncover remarkable human stories and rewrite our histories. Radiolab’s hosts guide listeners through three investigative journeys: unearthing ancient papyri in Egypt, reconstructing the life of a mysterious woman from discarded letters, and tracing the genetic footprint of Genghis Khan across continents. Each story reveals how remnants of human life, often overlooked, can become unexpected time capsules, shaping our understanding of history, identity, and memory.

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Segment 1: Garbage as a Time Capsule

[00:10 — 19:00]

Key Points

• Setting the Scene:
  Jad Abumrad takes listeners to Staten Island’s Fresh Kills landfill with Chief Dennis Diggins from the NYC Department of Sanitation, highlighting the site’s 50 years of accumulated trash—“one big time capsule.” [02:40]

  “All these mounds are getting wrapped in plastic and covered with grass…But underneath it all, the garbage will still be here. Fifty years of trash waiting patiently until someone comes to look for it. And someone always does.” (Jad, 01:42)

• Garbage Archaeology:
  Fresh Kills once received 11,000 tons of rubbish a day. Diggins describes past archaeological work, including a ten-year-old hot dog found perfectly preserved in the landfill. [02:14]

  “How do I say it right?” (Jad, 02:04)
  “Archaeological garbage man…came up with a hot dog, landfill, ten years previously.” (Chief Dennis Diggins, 02:14–02:18)

• Ancient Garbage in Egypt:
  The story transitions to Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, 1898. Two Oxford archaeologists, Grenfell and Hunt, discovered a thousand years’ worth of undisturbed trash mounds containing vast quantities of ancient pottery, textiles, everyday objects—and, crucially, papyrus fragments.
  [03:56]

• The Papyrus Mother Lode:
  Dirk Obink, Oxford scholar, recounts their discovery—over 700 boxes’ worth of papyri, many still being studied today (covering only ~1% so far). Inside: everything from lost sayings of Jesus to works of Homer and common documents.
  [06:09–08:34]

  “It may take another ten centuries to get through the rest.” (Jad, 08:11)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Recognizably a hot dog. That’s amazing. And disgusting.” (Jad & Diggins, 02:25)

• “This is what 2,000-year-old paper sounds like.” (Jad, 06:40)

Timestamps

• 00:10 — Standing atop Fresh Kills landfill
• 02:14 — Ten-year-old hot dog found
• 03:56 — Discovery at Oxyrhynchus
• 06:09 — Boxes of papyri in Oxford

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Segment 2: Greatest Hits from Ancient Garbage

[10:00 — 19:00]

Key Points

• The Challenges:
  Most papyri are fragmentary, like “conglomerations of corn flakes.” Piecing together and reading them may take centuries.
  [07:46–08:59]

• Top Three Finds:
  Jad shares his “Ancient Garbage Greatest Hits:”

  1. 666 or 616?
     The earliest known New Testament fragment reveals the “Number of the Beast” as 616, not 666.

     “But in fact, Chi Yoda Sigma don’t say 666… 616 may be the original.” (Jad and Dirk, 12:26)

  2. Homeric Contradictions:
     Infrared technology recovers an ancient poem by Archilochus retelling the Trojan War—not as a tale of heroic last stands, but celebrating strategic retreat:

     “We turned our backs to flee quickly, and that’s okay. He actually celebrated it as something he was proud of...Sometimes you had to run and it was okay.” (Dirk Obink, 15:22)

  3. Everyday Papyrus: Erotic Literature:
     Among the fragments: ancient Greek “filthy satire”—suggesting the popularity of racy stories even 2,000 years ago.

     “What do you think people in the first century were reading? ... That’s what they were reading.” (Jad, 16:27)

Timestamps

• 10:00 — Restoration process in Oxford
• 11:12 — Ancient fragment with “666”—or “616”
• 14:18 — Archilochus’ version of the Trojan War
• 16:27 — Ancient erotic literature found among papyri

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Segment 3: The Mystery of Ella Chase

[20:58 — 42:25]

Key Points

• Finding Ella Chase:
  Reporter Laura Starcheski investigates a box of old letters discovered by Eric Gordon on the side of Highway 101—a serendipitous find triggered by stopping to look at a goat standing on a cow.
  [23:24]

  “We sit in the truck for a minute watching this cow…The goat kind of shifts…balancing.” (Eric Gordon, 24:06)

• Letters from the Past:
  Over 300 letters addressed to Ella Chase, spanning the 1890s–1950s, offer glimpses into her relationships. Many WWII soldiers, unrelated to her, wrote to “Mom”—suggesting she became a kind of surrogate mother to young men far from home or family. [26:38–27:45]

  “Well, Mom, I hope you don’t mind me calling you this because you were just a mother to me.” (Letter from W. Murphy, 27:06)

• Detective Work and Dead Ends:
  Laura and genealogist Marina Cole track census records, archival documents, and cemetery records, gradually reconstructing Ella’s life—a divorce trial splashed across newspapers, a husband’s tragic death, and her eventual burial with her parents.
  [32:41–36:52]

• Closure & Coincidence:
  The letters had been accidentally lost by Ella's grandson Bob while driving down Highway 101—a chain of accidents leading to their discovery. Eric and Bob reconnect through Laura, exchanging more family mementos and closing an accidental circle.
  [39:02–41:00]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “She became this matriarch to all of these men in the war.” (Laura, 27:57)
• “If there’s no one to take them over, I want to live with them as a mystery.” (Eric, 38:33)
• “Bob passes by…the box flies out…a couple hours later, this goat jumps on a cow’s back and causes these two people to stop and get the letters.” (Jad, 41:00)

Timestamps

• 23:24 — Goat-on-cow encounter
• 26:02 — Discovery of letters to Ella Chase
• 29:00 — Students create “ghost biographies” for Ella
• 32:41 — Visit to original house & cemetery
• 36:52 — Finding Ella’s grave
• 39:02 — Grandson Bob’s accidental loss of letters

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Segment 4: Genghis Khan and the Genetics of Conquest

[44:52 — 60:52]

Key Points

• Tracking Ancestry with DNA:
  DNA is not only for crime but also for tracing deep lineage. The Y chromosome—passed unchanged from father to son save for rare mutations—serves as a genetic time capsule.
  [45:39–47:12]

• Expedition into Central Asia:
  Geneticist Spencer Wells and team collect blood samples across Asia. In the lab, Tatiana Zerjal finds a startling pattern: a massive number of men from disparate Asian populations share a recent male ancestor (~1,000 years ago).
  [47:39–50:35]

• Connecting the Dots—To Genghis Khan:
  Geographic mapping of the “mutation” aligns precisely with the spread of the Mongol Empire; historical records parallel the scientific findings.
  [51:44–53:02]

  “I said to him, you know, Chris, I think I found Genghis Khan.” (Tatiana, 52:14)

• Genghis Khan’s Legacy:
  The genetic lineage matches historical accounts of Genghis’s vast progeny—one of the most prolific biological “fathers” in human history, with an estimated 16 million male descendants alive today.
  [54:47]

• Cultural Resonance and Commercial DNA Tests:
  The public’s fascination: DNA tests for “Genghis Khan ancestry” become popular (and lucrative), though the only way to absolutely confirm is to locate and test Genghis Khan’s actual remains. Adventurers and scientists continue the search—in vain, so far—but even without the definitive body, the genetic evidence tells a powerful story.

  “Does that really mean anything definitively? … The only way you ever know for sure is you gotta go to the body, pluck some DNA from the body. See if it matches the mutation. So you gotta find Genghis Khan’s body.” (Jad & Robert, 56:14)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “In all of time…he may be the most successful biological father in human history.” (Jad, 54:47)
• “I never thought there would have been that interest [in DNA testing for Genghis Khan].” (Restaurant owner at ‘Shish,’ 56:07)
• “The neat thing about all these tales is…there are clues about the past everywhere.” (Robert, 60:39)

Timestamps

• 45:39 — Introduction to Y chromosome and DNA inheritance
• 47:43 — Spencer Wells’ expedition in Asia
• 51:44 — Map of genetic findings matches Mongol Empire
• 52:14 — “I think I found Genghis Khan.”
• 54:47 — Genghis Khan as “most successful biological father”
• 56:14 — The need for Genghis’s body for confirmation

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Closing Thoughts

Radiolab’s “Detective Stories” uses curiosity-driven investigation and inventive storytelling to show how everyday refuse, accidental finds, and genetic markers hold the power to unravel mysteries, rewrite facts, and forge new connections with the past. Whether combing landfills, deciphering boxes of old letters, or mapping humanity’s genes, each tale reminds us that the traces we leave behind are never truly lost, and sometimes, the most profound clues to our origins are hiding in plain sight.

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Essential Timestamps Guide

| Segment/Theme | Timestamp | |----------------------------------|---------------| | Fresh Kills as Time Capsule | 00:10–03:00 | | Oxyrhynchus Papyrus Discovery | 03:56–08:59 | | Ancient Garbage “Greatest Hits” | 10:00–16:27 | | Eric Gordon & Ella Chase Letters | 23:24–41:00 | | Genghis Khan’s Genetic Legacy | 44:52–60:52 |

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “This is one big time capsule.” (Chief Dennis Diggins, 02:41)
• “We pulled out the lost sayings of Jesus…almost 2,000 years old.” (Dirk Obink, 05:08)
• “If there’s no one to take them over, I want to live with them as a mystery.” (Eric Gordon, 38:33)
• “I think I found Genghis Khan.” (Tatiana Zerjal, 52:14)
• “You pluck the piece of paper and Jesus is talking to you. There are clues about the past everywhere.” (Robert, 60:39)

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Listeners come away reminded that detective work doesn’t happen only in laboratories and archives—it happens wherever curiosity meets the ordinary, and the past waits, hidden, in the most unexpected places.

Transcript

[A]

Do you want to get out?

[B]

Is this us? Yeah, this is us.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad. Since our program today deals with stumbling upon the past in unlikely places, we thought we'd begin this part of the show. Well, not in a place we'd normally visit. So I feel like we're standing on top of a mountain. But how high up are we? Right here?

[D]

I believe we're about 180.

[B]

This, by the way, is Chief Dennis Diggins. I'm an assistant chief in the New.

[D]

York City Department of Sanitation.

[B]

And when he says 180, he means feet.

[D]

About 180ft high.

[B]

That's about 18 stories, correct? 18 stories up into the Staten island sky. That's where we're standing. Where we're standing a hill, basically, like a big dirt hill. And at a glance, you'd never know that this hill was made from anything other than dirt. What did this used to be? Unless, of course, you dug about a few feet down. This is all garbage underneath us. Up Until March of 2001, we were taking in all of New York City's garbage. All the burros were coming here.

[D]

All the burros were coming here. So we were probably taking in, on.

[B]

Average, 11,000 tons a day. 11,000 tons a day. That's. What does 11,000 tons look like?

[D]

That's a lot of garbage.

[B]

Fresh Kills used to be the biggest dump on the planet, but that's all in the past. With a little engineering help, it's going to be a great park. Absolutely. This will be a park. Just look at how much property you have. All these mounds are getting wrapped in plastic and covered with grass. And there'll be a restaurant. I can almost imagine that. Even a golf course. Yeah, I would love to be the.

[D]

First one to tee off on that.

[B]

But underneath it all, the garbage will still be here. 50 years of trash waiting patiently until someone comes to look for it. And someone always does.

[D]

I know years ago, there was a garb. An archeot.

[B]

How do I say it right?

[D]

Archaeological garbage man that came here and.

[B]

He did some core sampling, meaning with a special tool, this guy bored a hole deep into the center of the mound.

[D]

Actually came up with a hot Dog Landfill.

[B]

10 years previously. Are you kidding me? Hot dog that was 10 years old.

[E]

And it was still a hot dog.

[B]

Still a hot dog. Recognizably a hot dog.

[D]

Recognizably a hot dog. So that's.

[B]

That's amazing. And disgusting.

[D]

I still like hot dogs, so I'll eat them.

[B]

But David, seriously, do you ever consider the history that's contained in this. In this big chunk of garbage?

[D]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Well, this is one big time capsule.

[D]

Time capsule. Time capsule, time capsule. Time capsule, time capsule, time capsule, time capsule, time capsule, time capsule, time gap.

[B]

You can stop saying that now, thank you. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[D]

I'm Robert Krilich.

[B]

This is Radiolab, a series about science and discovery. And that is exactly what we have for you today.

[D]

Three detective stories, and each one begins.

[B]

With a rather peculiar clue, clues that lead you back into the past. And now that we've got that phrase in our minds, and garbage as well, let's go to a different part of the world and get things started for real. To a different time also. 1898. Egypt. Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. You with me?

[D]

Where is Oxyrhynchus?

[B]

Egypt? Yeah, it's in the south, in the desert. South of Cairo, I think. And let me show you a picture, actually. You see the desert?

[D]

Oh, yeah. It's a big flat, sort of sandy place. And who is this guy?

[B]

Well, you should see two guys. They're two Oxford archaeologists.

[D]

Yeah, with a pith helmet and sort of standing high on a mound looking down.

[B]

One guy is on top of the mound, the other guy is toward the bottom. That's Grenfell and Hunt, two Oxford archaeologists. They were in Egypt in 1898 looking for treasure, and they find those sand.

[D]

Dunes, which don't look quite like the other sand dunes.

[B]

Really? Yeah, they're sort of strange and irregularly shaped, which is why when they saw those sand dunes that you're looking at, they hired a team of workers and they started to dig. And they immediately began to find things.

[F]

Huge quantity of pottery, clothes, shoes, baskets, rope.

[B]

That's Dirk Obink, a scholar from Oxford. He tells the story of what they found. What they found was basically the mother.

[F]

Lode, a huge circle of rubbish mounds, over 20 of them, that were completely undisturbed.

[B]

This was no piddly little trash heap that was 50 years old, like you might find in Staten Island. These mounds were really old.

[F]

These were rubbish mounds that had built up over the course of ten centuries.

[B]

Ten centuries of trash.

[D]

That's a thousand years of trash.

[B]

Yeah. And that included a lot of ancient paper. That's what they were really interested in, any scraps or scrolls they could find.

[F]

And one of the first ones that they pulled out of the ground was lost sayings of Jesus.

[A]

What?

[F]

That was the first one that they pulled out of the ground.

[E]

He who knows the all but fails.

[D]

To know himself lacks everything. If they say to you, whence have you come?

[B]

Okay, forget the 10 year old hot dog here.

[D]

Tell them we have come from the light.

[B]

We have sayings of Jesus which have not been seen, read or even heard about for almost 2,000 years.

[F]

A long list of sayings that are not in the canonical books of the Bible.

[D]

He who seeks, let him not cease seeking until he finds.

[B]

This is a different Jesus than the one in the Bible. It's almost Eastern in tone. He says, heaven is here.

[D]

The kingdom of the Father is spread.

[B]

Out upon the earth. It's all around us and men do not see it. If we just opened our eyes.

[F]

It's a papyrus that today is known as the Loggia fragment.

[B]

There it was buried in the trash.

[D]

Wow.

[B]

Anyhow, the team pulled as much paper as they could from the mounds, separated out all the shoes and stuff and just took the paper.

[F]

And then they packed those up into hundreds of boxes and shipped them back here to Oxford. This is the Sackler Library in Oxford. And we're still today, 107 years later. We're going upstairs now. We're still today, opening those boxes, pulling out the fragments, piecing them back together and deciphering them.

[B]

This is what 2000 year old paper sounds like. Sounds just like paper and it looks like dried leaves. Not really much to look at or listen to. But knowing that it's 2000 years old and theoretically could have been written on by Jesus himself, well, that makes it a little more special, which is why we visited Oxford, England, where the dump now lives, packed away in 700 boxes.

[F]

This box that contains about 600 unpublished papyri.

[B]

Nick Ganis, one of the collection's curators, popped one open for us.

[D]

Just opening an official document sometime early in the 4th century.

[F]

Of course, it's full of holes, probably.

[D]

Caused by little worms.

[B]

And there's the sad part. There are enough secrets in these boxes to rewrite the past.

[D]

The problem is much of this is hopelessly fragmented.

[B]

Reading it is almost impossible.

[F]

Some of the smaller fragments, if you see lots of them that look like.

[D]

Conglomeration of corn flakes.

[F]

There will be.

[D]

A few hundred years before even the most substantial of these fragments come to light.

[F]

We're talking about the reconstruction of works, the work on which is beyond the scale of a single human lifetime.

[B]

Way beyond. In the past 170 years, the Oxford team has worked their way through a whopping 1% of the collection. It may take another 10 centuries to get through the rest. Here's how it usually goes, Nick Scours the boxes. Each day finds a new scrap, tiny little scrap. Brings it into the lab for cleaning.

[E]

What I do now is I remove.

[D]

Some ancient mud with the help of a brush.

[B]

Here he wipes ancient mud from a torn page of Homer's Iliad. After it's mud free, each piece is cataloged in the computer for various features.

[F]

Like type of handwriting, size and style.

[B]

And if the piece seems to match other pieces, Dirk and maybe a grad student spread them all out on a long wooden table. And basically from there, it's a classic jigsaw puff.

[F]

How about this one? Doesn't it look like these might be the line beginnings of they move one here.

[D]

I think that that looks like a promising match.

[B]

See if the words match up because.

[F]

They seem to line up pretty exactly with the lines of the larger fragment.

[B]

It may take five minutes, it may take five years, it may take five lifetimes, but eventually they will have, well, not the whole story, not even a page of the whole story, but something.

[E]

I've put the papyrus under an electronic microscope.

[B]

Maybe just a few Greek words from the deep past.

[D]

But we're missing a bit from the upper right corner.

[F]

Sometimes a sentence breaks off just when you need it to tell you what you need to know. We have to be satisfied with knowing a little rather than a lot.

[D]

Make sure I understand. This is each of these fragments just a teeny like is it to be.

[B]

Or it's more like two.

[D]

Oh, it's that small.

[B]

Some of them are tiny. Tiny. I mean, there's about a half a million in total.

[D]

Half a million.

[B]

And they've only got through about 5,000.

[D]

Well, do you have in your own list of things, like a sort of favorite hits list?

[B]

I do, I do. I've narrowed it down to my top three.

[D]

Oh, okay.

[B]

My top three. Ancient Garbage Greatest hits, if you will, which was difficult. But here are three that are really interesting.

[D]

First number three.

[B]

Ancient Garbage Greatest hits number three. You being a death metal fan, I'm sure are familiar with these three inauspicious numbers.

[D]

Absolutely. 666. Sign of the beast.

[B]

Right. Just to explain that the number of the beast, 666, is what you use to either summon the beast or to keep the beast away, because you can't say his name directly. That would be bad. All this comes from the New Testament.

[F]

Okay.

[B]

Dirk showed me a piece of papyrus that he found in the dump. It's about the size of your palm. So what are we looking at? This looks like there's maybe 30 letters. A copy of precisely that passage in the New Testament where the number is stated.

[D]

Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast. For it is a human number. Its number is 666.

[F]

666, which was the traditional number of the beast.

[B]

Now, here's the thing. This little scrap of papyrus that Dirk turned up is the earliest known copy that we have of that passage he showed me. Can you point to the letters again and show me? These three numbers are smack in the center of the papyrus.

[F]

Three Greek letters.

[B]

Sigma, Chi Yoda sigma. Chi Yoda Sigma should say 666, right?

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

But in fact, Chi Yoda Sigma don't say 666.

[D]

They don't. What do they say?

[B]

Six six, one six, one six.

[F]

No, instead of 666.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Does that mean all the Bibles are wrong?

[B]

Or maybe. I mean, all we really know is that the number of the beast had versions and that 616 may be the original.

[D]

Wow.

[B]

How long does it take this to filter into the King James Bible or something like that?

[F]

Oh, no. It will appear in the next standard edition of the New Testament in a note on that page representing it as a viable variant that has now appeared in a papyrus text.

[D]

Do biblical scholars accept this?

[B]

They do.

[D]

Oh. So you should just probably be very careful about 6 blank 6. If you weren't worrying about the beast.

[B]

Well, you should probably change your tattoo.

[C]

Shh.

[B]

All right, let's move on to number two. Garbage. Greatest hits. Number two. Hey, did you see the movie Troy?

[D]

Yes.

[B]

You remember this scene, Hector?

[D]

Big, bold, muscular men fighting. Big, bold, muscular fights with big, bold, muscular enemies. Hector, I know the film, and I know how big, bold and muscular it was. Hector, what did your scrap tell you?

[B]

Well, the papyri folks recently. This is big news in the world of the papyrologists. They got their hands on this special camera.

[D]

So we have this digital setup here. A camera on a. On a sort of easel.

[B]

This camera uses infrared filters to photograph text that's so faded that you can't really see it with the naked eye.

[D]

Take a quite a long exposure.

[B]

In any case, the first thing that they read with that camera is a.

[F]

Poem about the Trojan War, the new poem of Archilochus. This poem, Argeon effabesa paluan straton hoidento.

[B]

Comes from the 600s.

[D]

Oh, it's not Homer. It's Archilochus version.

[B]

No, it's precisely not Homer, because whereas the Homeric version, the Brad Pitt version, it goes, you know, Greeks Invade. Troy falls. Hurrah. This version goes, greeks invade, get their butts kicked, then run, run like sissies.

[F]

So it completely turns the Homeric account on its head.

[D]

Wait, wait, wait.

[G]

So this guy.

[D]

This was written at the same time as Homer?

[B]

A little bit later, but in response to Homer.

[F]

Oh, and the Greek goes like this.

[B]

Here, listen.

[F]

One doesn't have to call it weakness and cowardice, having to retreat. No, there does exist a proper time for flight.

[B]

See, Homer's notion was that, like, the hero stands and fights to the end, but this poet was saying, you know what? We ran away.

[F]

We turned our backs to flee quickly, and that's okay. He actually celebrated it as something that he was proud of because sometimes you had to turn and run.

[D]

Running away is a good thing.

[B]

Running away is a good thing.

[D]

That's a good one.

[B]

See, what's interesting about the past you find in the trash is that it's messy. It's complicated. There's not just a story, you know, there's contradictions to that story, competing accounts of that story, which can be disconcerting. I mean, you know, who wants to have different Bibles floating around? That could be weird for people. But to me, to know that way back when, even then, there were different ideas about what it means to be a hero. That I find comforting. Which brings us to my first choice and last, but hardly ancient Garbage. Greatest hit number. Well, the greatest hit. What do you think people in the first century were reading?

[D]

What do I think they were reading?

[B]

What do you think they were really reading?

[F]

Okay, when the. When the text starts, she's saying, oh, I'm terribly on fire. And that goes in Greek. Deinos phlegomai realma me, AKA dia se. The translation, uh. Oh, it's thick and big as a roof beam.

[D]

Oh, no, you can't.

[F]

And then she goes on. Mene catamaicra Porn.

[B]

That's what they were reading. This filthy satire turned up enough times in this and other dumps for Dirk to suspect that it may have been a best seller.

[D]

So there was more than one version of this?

[B]

It appeared over and over and over.

[F]

I'm burning. I'm on fire. I'm terribly on fire. A stream runs over me. Do you understand? And I'm being a bit.

[A]

You are listening to Radio Lab.

[B]

From New York Public Radio.

[D]

W N Y, C, npr.

[B]

Wait, what?

[A]

What?

[F]

Keep listening.

[D]

Okay.

[G]

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[A]

Radiolab.

[G]

Radiolab is supported by Rippling Finance. Teams often spend weeks chasing receipts, reconciling spreadsheets and fixing errors across disconnected spend tools. This can be frustrating, and that's not software as a service. That's sad software as a disservice. If you've been thinking about replacing stitched together tech stacks with one platform for all departments, Rippling can help. Rippling is a unified platform for global hr, payroll, IT and finance, helping people replace their mess of cobbled together tools with one system designed to help give leaders clarity, speed and control. By uniting employees, teams and departments in one system, Rippling works to remove the bottlenecks, busy work and silos in business software. With Rippling you can choose to run hr, IT and finance operations as one, or pick and choose the products that best fill the gaps. Right now you can get 6 months free when you go to rippling.com Radiolab learn more at R I P P L-I-N-G.com Radiolab terms and conditions apply. Radiolab is supported by Planet Visionaries, the podcast created in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. The show is hosted by Alex Honnold, who you may recognize from Free Solo, where he climbed El Capitan without ropes. Now he's turning his focus to the biggest challenge of all protecting the only planet we've got. Every episode brings you stories that prove climate optimism isn't naive, it's a strategy. The episodes span the globe, from Arctic scientists and Amazon forest guardians to entrepreneurs reimagining fashion and food systems. You'll hear from explorers, scientists, activists and storytellers who are who are working to reshape the future in practical, human ways. In one episode, Alex sits down with wildlife photographer Bertie Gregory to discuss how animals can teach humans resiliency, empathy and hope in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Check out Planet Visionaries Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[D]

How does the brain process memories? Why is AI a solution and A.

[B]

Problem for our climate.

[D]

What is leadership in 2025 and beyond? The TED Radio Hour explores the biggest.

[B]

Questions and the most complicated ideas of.

[D]

Our time with the world's greatest thinkers. Listen now to the TED Radio Hour.

[B]

From N. This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[D]

And I'm Robert Grillwich.

[B]

Our show today is about finding clues to the past in the weirdest places. And there is no weirder place to find the past than in the story you're about to hear. Comes to us from Laura Staracheski, who herself likes to get into old things.

[A]

My mom kind of fostered that. Like, when we were little, one of our outings that we would do would be to go to this toxic dump near my house where I grew up. It's like on top of a mountain. They sealed off this mountain and they made all the people move off of it. So you're just walking along a trail and then you see all these old abandoned houses full of stuff. So we would go into the houses and we'd find pay stubs, we'd find dishes, we'd find paintings, and we'd try and figure out why. Like, even though we knew really why the people had left, we would try and make up other stories about why they left. Like, maybe they were fighting in the middle of dinner and they just had to leave all their dishes on the table and.

[B]

All right, fast forward many years. Laura is in New York, and one day she gets a call from her sister who tells her, I just heard the most amazing story. I was at my writing class and the teacher told us this story. You should call him Eric Gordon is his name. Take your tape recorder over to his office in Manhattan, make him tell it to you. So that's what she did.

[A]

I just said at first, you know, I just want to record you telling the story.

[B]

Hey, how you doing? Look here.

[A]

How's it going? How he had found all these letters and photos and created a character. I had no idea that I would become so involved. Okay, so do you want to talk about that day that the story took place?

[B]

Sure. That day.

[E]

Let me see if I can put myself back in that day. So I was living in Oakland at.

[A]

The time, this is about 1994, and.

[E]

Decided to go on a weekend camping trip with a friend. And we're driving south on Route 101 through the Central part of the state, and my friend starts to frantically shout, look, look. And she's pointing out to this field. She can't even get the words out. She's Saying, look, look. And she's shouting.

[A]

So he tries to look.

[E]

I turn my head very quickly, and.

[A]

He can't see because his view is blocked by an overpass or a hill. And he just has no idea what she's talking about.

[E]

And she is stuttering her words, and she says theirs, and she's still stuttering. There's a goat standing on a cow's.

[A]

Back in that field.

[B]

A what?

[A]

A goat standing on top of a cow.

[B]

A goat standing on top of a cow.

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

And, you know, of course, my reaction is, that's absurd. And she's saying, pull this truck over. Pull over. And she's getting really angry. And I said, I'm not backing up three quarters of a mile on 101.

[A]

So they argue for a little while, and Eric finally relents. Twenty minutes later, they arrive back at the field.

[E]

So we pull over, and she just gets the hugest grin on her face. There is, in fact, a goat standing.

[A]

On a cow's back still there.

[E]

We sit in the truck for a minute watching this cow who's close enough to the fence that we got a very good view of it. And every time he takes a step to graze, the goat kind of shifts from side to side, balancing.

[A]

So they're kind of this unit.

[E]

I mean, really amazing. You actually could see the goat's hoofs kind of bunch up in the cow's skin. And we get out of the truck.

[A]

They slowly get out of the truck to get a better look.

[E]

And right as I shut the door.

[A]

The goat jumps off.

[E]

The goat jumps off. And, you know, we're standing there kind of dumbfounded. We move up to the. To the fence.

[A]

And just believe it or not, the story gets weirder.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah. So Eric and his friend are standing totally still, hoping that if they just wait, maybe the goat will jump back onto the cow. And all of a sudden, Eric's friend notices something at her feet.

[E]

She bends down and picks up a letter. A letter right in front of the fence. And it's old, and it's kind of.

[A]

Like 50 years old.

[E]

Crisp, brown. Then we looked at the postmarket. It was 1952. I open this thing up and read it, and it's almost about nothing. My dear, I wrote you a card after receiving the first one. See, some of these are so tough to read. So I look down on the ground, and there's another letter. I've been slowly getting on my feet again. And another ED is so much better. Looks like that's her loop to F. And another Albertine sings very well indeed, since you asked. They were blown literally in this line down the side of the highway. And we looked at each other and frantically started gathering these letters, filling our arms with them. Letters from the 1920s. I see a 1937 postmark. And then she shouts from a couple feet away, 1897, 1890. I'm gathering, my arms are getting full. I run to the truck and grab a garbage bag and I start filling it up. And then I start to notice Ella Chase. Ella Chase. Ella Chase. Ella Chase. These letters are all written to the same woman.

[A]

Over 300 letters all written to one woman, Ella Chase.

[E]

You know, forget the goat and the cow. Now we're standing in the middle of somebody's whole life correspondence spread out on the side of Highway 101. And we just read and we read and we read into the night. Let me see if I can find this a really.

[A]

So that day back in 1994 began a 12 year obsession with Ella Chase. These letters are maybe Eric's favorite thing in the whole world. He keeps them in this big archival box and it's closet.

[E]

Now what's really interesting is there are a ton of letters that are written to her as mother or mom.

[A]

And first thing Eric pulls out is this big stack of letters written to Ella during World War II.

[E]

Probably have 40 letters from boys in the Navy to Ella Chase with that read by censor stamp on the letter where they're calling her mom. I'll read you one. And this is one that I.

[B]

April.

[E]

2, 1941, from a GI named W. Murphy. And he writes, well, Mom, I hope you don't mind me calling you this because you were swallowed just a mother to me. And I hope I can be seeing you again.

[D]

And keep writing to me, if you will.

[B]

I sure enjoyed hearing from you. Hope you received the letter that I wrote a few days ago.

[D]

But mail is a little slow going and coming out here I'm feeling fine, only a little tired.

[B]

But that's nothing unusual as we are pretty busy all the time. Well, Ma, I better close and say.

[D]

A prayer for me if you will.

[B]

And God bless you. Love, W. Murphy. August 3, 1945. Somewhere Dear mom, were these her kids?

[A]

No, they're not her kids. They're boys, 18, 20 years old, who were so attached to her just by writing to her that they started to call her mom. And there were like 40 of these.

[E]

Letters and a number of them, from what I can tell in the letters, have never actually met her. So she became this matriarch to all of these men in the war.

[A]

I had never seen anything like that before.

[D]

Yeah.

[E]

There's so much something like this.

[A]

I was just amazed by the reach of her personality. You know, he showed me dozens of letters thanking her.

[E]

You look at this. I am so very grateful.

[A]

Thank you for what you did for my husband.

[B]

He is.

[A]

Thank you for changing the way that I think about my life.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

And these seem to be from people who I'd only met her once.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

The reverence that people just speak to her and, you know, I can't figure out when she was married. I can't figure out where she was married. She ran for political office. I mean, this is a fascinating woman. She ran for political office in the 1940s, but I don't know what office.

[A]

And that's where the story ends.

[B]

That's where the story ends, yeah. What do you mean?

[A]

Eric has never tried to find out anything more. Remember how I told you he was a teacher before?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He started bringing all these letters into his classroom and ended up designing this whole curriculum around them.

[E]

I collaborated with the history teacher. The kids would each get a photograph. They'd have to put it in a plastic sleeve. Each one of the kids, whenever they handled them, had to put on surgical gloves. In history, the students would research that time period, and then ultimately they'd bring that work back to my classroom, my English classroom, and they would start writing historical fiction.

[A]

Eric would ask each student to create a ghost biography of Ella Chase.

[E]

This woman, it's history.

[A]

Using her letters as a springboard.

[E]

And some of the, you know, some of the pieces were wonderful. He just. Incredible.

[A]

He even had them title their papers My Ella.

[E]

That's what's been much more meaningful to me.

[A]

So the way Eric sees it, the real Ella was abandoned and he's given her new life.

[E]

You know, I feel like a guardian of this person. Moment on the Earth.

[D]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is a three pointed announcement for flight number 169 to San Jose, California.

[A]

So here's the thing. I was already going to California to visit a friend, and I couldn't leave things the way they were. Like the whole time, when I would look at these letters and look at the pictures, I would feel like there's more here.

[D]

Approximately five hours and 56 minutes.

[A]

How did someone who reached out to all these people end up with their life on the side of the highway? I really wanted to know. Do you want to see some of this stuff? Because I brought it. You brought some? I knew I'd need Help. So I contacted this friend of a friend, Marina Cole. She's this amateur expert in genealogical research. And I showed her the letters.

[B]

Wait, you had the letters? Did Eric give them to you?

[A]

Yeah. Even though he was convinced that they were abandoned, he told me, you know.

[E]

I would love to find family. That this would truly mean something to Dear Mom.

[A]

It's not her son. It's one of these letters from the World War II soldiers who all called her Mom. Oh, wow. As soon as I started showing Marina the letters, her face kind of. Wow. She is amazing. The first thing we decided to do was to go to a historical society. This woman, and we know that she lived in Lomita Park. Since this is for Daly City, I assume. I went back and looked at census records to find out a little bit more about her. We found out that Ella had two granddaughters who were still alive. So we sent letters to her granddaughters, but they'd Never respond. Day 2. Stay straight and go onto Napa Valley Highway. My idea, my fantasy this whole time has been, we'll go to her house. The address that's on the letters. Well, it's worth a shot.

[D]

Yeah, why not?

[A]

Maybe bring one of the letters. It was a single story house, little rose garden. I think houses have a strong history. Someone there will be able to tell us something about her. Are they coming or they don't know? No answer. So we tried a neighbor.

[D]

What is it you want?

[B]

Hi.

[A]

I'm sorry to bother you. I'm looking to find information about a woman I have no idea.

[D]

We're new here in Napa.

[A]

Okay, well, thank you so much.

[B]

Ugh.

[A]

The missing husband. I can't find anything on him at all. He's a complete mystery. I mean, there were a lot of unanswered questions. So we knew that we had to find Ella's obituary. Day three. The Napa Public Library. We're in front of the microfiche and we're scrolling through dates. That's August 22nd. This was kind of our last hope. Look, the death notice comes up on the screen. Chase in Napa. Monday, July 4, 1955. We scan it as fast as we can for any new name that we haven't seen before. Rexford C. Green.

[C]

Millbra.

[A]

Almost right away, we notice Robert. Robert Lyly. That's a grandson. There was a grandson. A grandson. We had never seen this name before he was listed.

[D]

Hi, this is Bob.

[A]

Hi, this is Carol.

[D]

We're either down at the store getting some milk or we don't know where I am or we're somewhere.

[A]

Bye. Hi, this is a message for Robert Liley. My name is Laura Starcheski. I'm a reporter, and I'm doing a story about a woman who I believe is your grandmother. Her name was Ella. I wanted to hear of her. I wanted a voice. Marina returned to Los Altos to get back to her life. And I waited. One day passed, then another. I didn't get a call back from him. Day six. It was Marina. Marina. She hadn't been able to stop researching.

[C]

It's really sad. What is it?

[A]

Well, in 1938, she filed for divorce. And there's a series of articles where he denies that they were married. Really?

[G]

She pleaded with me to marry her.

[D]

Ella did. But we couldn't get along and I refused to do it.

[A]

She was desperate for money.

[B]

She needed to sell the house.

[A]

She couldn't do that without divorcing her husband.

[G]

Trial of sensational I'm not married case expected in June.

[A]

It went on for like a year. The huge headlines. Ella said they were married. Bellman, her husband says that they never were. Ella couldn't produce a marriage certificate. And then finally, the whole thing ended with her just sitting in the courtroom, refusing to answer questions.

[D]

Ella, a Chase of Lomita park, still adamant and defiant, but this time alone.

[G]

Steadfastly refused to answer questions.

[B]

And then.

[A]

And that really wasn't the worst of it. And then I found this really sad article from a few years later.

[G]

Christmas 1942.

[D]

Death took no holiday.

[G]

On Christmas Eve, Bellman Chase wandered along. Dimmed out south of Market. He had been drinking heavily. He was separated from his wife and family. Perhaps he was trying to erase thoughts.

[D]

That come to men at such times.

[G]

Christmas day, sprawled on his back on a sidewalk, he died. The warm sun shone clear on the fractured nose and the blue bruise on his chin. Looks like the bum is dead, someone.

[D]

Said a couple days later. It says that his body was.

[A]

Was left unclaimed in the morgue. And they were not able to locate his estranged wife. Really? It suddenly made sense. It was right after that that she started writing to World War II soldiers. She probably needed them as much as they needed her. Day. Holy Cross Cemetery in South San Francisco. Oh, look, look. Wow.

[B]

Bravo.

[A]

That's a nice headstone. It is a really nice headstone. It was gray and unpolished. And she was buried with her mother and father. I wish I'd brought flowers. I know. Could go pick some flowers right over there.

[C]

We could. Yeah, let's do that.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

On our final approach, please make sure your Seat bags and trays are in their upright and locked positions.

[A]

As soon as I got back, I went to Eric's office.

[B]

Hey, how you doing? Look here.

[A]

I had all these newspaper clippings in my bag, and I was ready to sew him.

[B]

How were you feeling at the this point?

[A]

I was feeling a little nervous. Yeah. Some of it is kind of sad, and I just want to make sure that you're ready for that. It's not necessarily positive enlightenment about her family. So let me get it out. As I'm taking the stuff out of my backpack, He stops me right before I hand it to him.

[E]

There's a part of me that's not sure that I want to see it. Yeah, I think if there's no one that would receive these artifacts ultimately or that would have some sort of connection and appreciation to them, I'm not sure I want to see it.

[A]

You don't want to know any of it.

[E]

I don't. If there's no one to take them over, I want to live with them as a mystery.

[A]

I couldn't blame Eric. I was even a little bit jealous of him at that point because he got to choose whether or not to look at this stuff.

[B]

So what then?

[A]

I went home. But as soon as I got home, there was a message on my answering machine.

[D]

This message is for Laura. My name is Bob, grandson of Ella Chase. And he called and left a message for me to try and get a hold of you regarding some pictures and letters and stuff that was found along the roadside. I think I can help fill in the pieces to the puzzle because they probably came out of my truck. On the way from San Jose to Southern California.

[A]

I have some pretty big news for you. As soon as I got home after I talked to you on Friday, I got a message from Ella's grandson. He's the one who dropped the box.

[D]

During the course of driving down Highway 101. Taking these boxes home in the back of my pickup that several of them.

[A]

Blew out, and he tried to pull over and get it.

[D]

I stopped alongside the road. My wife was with me, and we picked up everything we could see.

[A]

But as soon as he started to collect it, the California Highway Patrol pulled over and told him that he had to keep going.

[D]

They were going to give me a.

[A]

Ticket for littering because the stuff scattered.

[D]

Everywhere, because the stuff was just blowing everywhere.

[A]

And he has a whole bunch of boxes like the one that fell off.

[D]

I'm still going through this stuff, and it's been 12, 13 years now.

[E]

I love. He actually found who dropped this stuff? And did he sound sad about it? What was his reaction?

[A]

He just seemed happy. Go lucky about it. He was like, I think I can solve your mystery because I dropped when I was talking to Bob. I told him about Eric, of course, and I told him how much Eric cared about all this stuff, and he was really relieved. He didn't think it was weird at all. He just was glad that someone had cherished this stuff. And he came up with the idea right away of sending Eric kind of a replacement.

[D]

I have another group of pictures.

[A]

Eric sent Bob all of Ella's stuff. Bob sent Eric this mystery box full of photos that he couldn't explain.

[B]

I still can't get over the timing, though. Like, okay, so Bob passes by in the truck. The box flies out, and then what? Like a couple hours later, this goat jumps on a cow's back and causes these two people to stop and get the letters, basically. Do you think the goat on a cow was a sign?

[A]

What do you mean?

[B]

From Zeus saying, stop, Eric, stop.

[A]

I think you could tell it that way. But goats like to stand on top of cows.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah. Goats like to stand on top of anything high. If there's a fence, they'll jump on top of it. If there's a house, they'll try and climb it. That's what goats do, don't you think?

[B]

So how do you know all this?

[A]

I've seen goats. You know, my mom used to send me up the road to buy eggs from this woman who had all these goats. And they had a little goat shack. And all the goats would be clustered on top of the goat shack, although they had a whole yard full of scraggly grass to graze in.

[B]

Did you ever say to Eric, eric, goats just kind of like to do this?

[A]

No, I never said that to him. I mean, okay, goats like to stand on tall things. But since when does a cow not care? The goat's not extraordinary. It's the cow.

[B]

It's a nonchalant cow.

[A]

Yes.

[G]

Hmm.

[B]

Laura Starcheski is a producer. She lives in New York.

[D]

A nonchalant cow. Well, I hope you'll stay with us. Our next detective story begins with a drop of blood. And from the blood, we discover 16 and a half million baby boys.

[B]

This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumran. Robert Crowicz and I will continue in a moment.

[D]

You're listening to Radiolab from New York Public Radio.

[B]

Public Radio, W A N Y C and npr.

[G]

Radiolab is supported by rippling finance Teams often spend weeks chasing receipts reconciling spreadsheets and fixing errors across disconnected spend tools. This can be frustrating. And that's not software as a service, that's sad software as a disservice. If you've been thinking about replacing stitched together tech stacks with one platform for all departments, Rippling can help. Rippling is a unified platform for global hr, payroll, IT and finance, helping people replace their mess of cobbled together tools with one system. Designed to help give leaders clarity, speed and control. By uniting employees, teams and departments in one system, Rippling works to remove the bottlenecks, busywork and silos in business software. With Rippling, you can choose to run hr, IT and finance operations as one, or pick and choose the products that best fill the gaps. Right now you can get 6 months free when you go to rippling.com Radiolab learn more at r-ip p l-I n g.com Radiolab terms and conditions apply. Radiolab is supported by Planet Visionaries, the podcast created in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Stay tuned for a trailer and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[D]

I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honl Foundation. I wanted to let you know about a brand new season of the Planet Visionaries podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. This is the podcast exploring bold ideas and big solutions from the people leading the way in conservation. Join me in conversation with the likes of climate champion Mark Ruffalo, Biologists and Friends, photographer Christina Mittermeier, and one of the most successful conservationists of our time, Chris Tompkins. Join us on Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[D]

And I'm Robert Krulwich.

[B]

Today on our program, stories about stumbling onto the past and finding surprises, strange things. Which brings us to DNA. DNA is used to track crimes. This we know from police dramas like csi. Far less glamorously, but no less interestingly, historians and geneticists use DNA to go way back in time and answer basic questions about who we are and where we came from. And that is an unlikely development if you think about it.

[D]

Yeah, because usually when you know if someone has sex with someone else, the DNA gets mixed. So the DNA is always changing from one generation to the next.

[B]

If it's always getting jumbled up, one would think it would be hard to keep track of across time.

[D]

Yeah, but.

[B]

And here's what you need to know for our next segment. There are patches of DNA which don't change The Y chromosome is one of these places. This is the chromosome that men have that women don't have. And when a father has a son, he gives his son an exact copy of his Y chromosome, sort of like a Xerox machine. Then when, many years later, the boy has a boy of his own, same thing happens. An exact copy of the Y on and on and on down the mail line. Now, here's where it gets interesting. Every so often, the cellular Xerox makes a mistake, a tiny mistake. Sort of like at work when you, you know, put the paper on the copier and the copy it spits back out at you, has a little smudge on it, a little speck, maybe some dust got in there, who knows? It's not a big deal. I mean, you can still read the text. But this new smudgy copy is, in its way, unique. It's no longer just a copy because it's got that speck on it. This is where the analogy breaks down a bit. Granted, because a paper with a spec is not a very interesting thing, but a Y chromosome with a mutation is useful because geneticists can look at that little speck, that little mutation on the Y, and say, that right there, that came from one man somewhere in time. It's a clue. And since they know that little mutation will get copied and copied and copied, they know that everyone else who shows up with it is descended from that man.

[D]

Now, this principle that a particular mutation on the Y chromosome comes from an individual back in time brings us to a story that I want to tell you. Once upon a time, a group of scientists led by this guy. Yeah, I am Spencer Wells. I'm a population geneticist, got into a Land Rover and headed off to Asia on what they call a blood sampling tour. We set off in April of 1998 on a six month odyssey. And it was literally four guys. It wasn't just four guys.

[C]

So my name is Tatiana Zeria. I'm an Italian researcher.

[D]

Yeah, she flew over for about three weeks.

[C]

I joined them in Tashkent.

[D]

She came with us to Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, taking samples in the Caucasus, in the mountains, the Altai Mountains, driving all over.

[C]

Central Asia, spending 10 hours in the Caucasus. We're going from place to place, sleeping, like in 10.

[D]

And we sampled about a thousand people.

[C]

It was really an adventure.

[D]

So here's what they do. Each village they'd come to, they'd find out who was in charge, and then they'd sit down with him or her.

[C]

Describe the project in simple terms, basically.

[D]

Make sure that we had permission to do the sample. It's kind of an intimate thing they're asking for here. So they'd have to do a little wooing. Usually a beverage was served, not alcohol, not coffee.

[C]

A kind of milk that comes from horses but is a fermented milk. I couldn't spit it out because they were offering it to me and they were all smiling. So I really kind of swallowed it and went away before.

[D]

So over this middle concoction, they'd say to the chief, okay, we're here to tell your story, the history of your people, your family. Because by looking closely at the DNA in an ordinary blood sample, we can discover where your ancestors came from, where they went, who they conquered, who conquered them. We can go back hundreds of generations and typically most people would willingly give us blood samples.

[B]

What were they looking for exactly? Or I guess what did they expect to find?

[D]

Well, this same group had done this in Europe, and when they did it in Europe, when they took blood from people, they found lots and lots of very distinct separate families with very separate ancestors.

[B]

That makes sense.

[D]

That's what they were expecting to find in Asia, but that's not what they found in any case. Spencer gives Tatiana a batch of the DNA samples, almost 2,000 samples. She goes back to her lab in London and the goal again was very kind of open ended. What are the genetic patterns in Central Asia? Tatiana gets all her DNA, lays it out and begins to investigate. And right away something's a little odd.

[C]

Very, very odd. I really thought to have made a mistake.

[D]

In sample after sample after sample, she could see a specific mutation.

[C]

And we knew that everybody that present that mutation come from one individual sometimes.

[D]

In the past, meaning all those modern Asian guys from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and Mongolia and China, people who came from very different ancient tribes and should have only the most distant family connections. Weirdly, they shared a fairly recent great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparent. No one had ever seen anything like this before.

[C]

No, never.

[D]

She asked for her boss to come in. I'm Chris Tyler Smith. And she showed him the data.

[F]

As soon as we saw that, we.

[D]

Knew that that couldn't happen by chance alone. So the first thing she wanted to know was when did this mysterious person, when did he live?

[C]

So using some statistical programs, she plugged.

[D]

The data into a computer program and asked it to count backwards to the first moment when the mutation appeared.

[C]

And the program saving roughly 1,000 years.

[D]

A thousand years ago, give or take 200 years, this person lived. Now this is interesting. If you were alive a thousand years Ago, and you had a son, and that son had a son and so forth. You would have right now about 800 living descendants. This person, whoever he was, has right.

[C]

Now like 16 millions of men.

[D]

16 million descendants?

[C]

Yeah. It's a lot.

[D]

Yes, absolutely. Now, here's where it gets interesting. Tatiana got herself a map.

[C]

Yeah, I had the map of the region, and I spread on a map the frequency of this lineage.

[D]

She began putting pins wherever she saw heavy concentrations of the mutation. She put a pin in Mongolia, China, Siberia, Siberia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan. And then she stood back and looked at this map. These pins spread all across Asia. And she's like, now wait a second.

[C]

Suddenly, I realized that the spread of this lineage was perfectly matching the spread of the Mongol Empire.

[D]

As soon as she saw it, they.

[B]

Went to Chris and Tatiana said.

[C]

I said to him, you know, Chris, I think I found Genghis Khan.

[D]

Genghis K. Now, that's pretty interesting.

[C]

I knew just what I studied when I was at high school, so I didn't really know much about it.

[D]

But she knew the basics. In the 13th century, Genghis Khan united the tribes of Mongolia into a massive army.

[C]

And they rode west, literally killing thousands and thousands of men. So that means removing competitors. If you kill a man, you kill, in a sense, a chromosomal lineage.

[D]

And then with all those men and their Y chromosomes out of the way, Genghis forced himself. I mean, this is. He's the conqueror, so this is what he gets. The women having no choice in the matter, because that was his privilege in those days.

[C]

He was the one picking up the youngest women and keeping them for himself.

[E]

Genghis undoubtedly had a number of quite.

[D]

A number of sexual partners. We wanted to just be a little careful here, so we called up an expert. Yeah, my name is Boy, a professor of Mongolian history from Columbia University. And arranged for breakfast. Can I get a couple of scrambled eggs? Yes. I have read accounts, and I don't know how real they are. Where the Mongols would come in, conquer a territory, and there was a save the pretty ones for the boss kind of rule. Is that true at all?

[E]

Yes, that's true. One story is that he was murdered.

[D]

By one of these women he had.

[E]

Sex with, that she placed a knife in her vagina, and as they were having sex, he was stabbed and killed.

[D]

Whether that's true or not, it's an interesting story. Whatever. If Genghis did have the power to command any woman he wanted, and if the dates were right for history and the places were right geographically, all the evidence points in the same direction. It looks like a duck and it.

[F]

Walks like a duck.

[D]

You know, the inference was that it was a duck. This was Genghis Khan's Y chromosome lineage. And so 23 scientists from all over the world together announced in the American Journal of Human Genetics that Genghis Khan was very. Probably the most successful biological father in human history.

[B]

In human history, yes.

[D]

Which.

[B]

In all of time.

[D]

In all of time. And the thing about this story is it really, really. It caught people's attention. Cause this is one of those things where you can actually do something about it. You can take. You know those DNA tests?

[B]

Yes, I know the DNA test. The sw. Bobby rose cheeks. Put it in a vial, send it.

[D]

Back to these companies, and they send you. They could tell you whether you have Genghis Khan's marker.

[B]

How much are these tests?

[D]

How much? About not much. Well, I don't know. It depends. 300 bucks. 300 bucks?

[B]

That's it?

[D]

That's it.

[B]

For 300 bucks, I can find out if I'm related to Genghis Khan. I bet I am.

[D]

I bet you're not.

[B]

Because his conquest routes ended sort of near Lebanon, where my folks are from.

[D]

I mean, come on. Look, it's suckers like you who were perfect marks for businesses like this. We found this restaurant in London.

[B]

Hello. Welcome to Shish. How are you?

[D]

This even called Shish?

[B]

Called. Called what?

[A]

Shish.

[D]

Yeah, Shish. Because for short for Shish kebab. They announced a major Genghis Khan promotion. 10 winners had DNA testing done in Oxford to find out if they were actually ancestors of Genghis Khan. This was very unique. And the response was just, people came, came immense. There were lines around the block. Phone call. The phones were ringing all day.

[G]

I mean, I never thought there would.

[D]

Have been that interesting. But, you see, you weren't the only one. There were a lot of people working under strange illusions like you.

[B]

Let me ask you this, though. If I. Let's say I had taken the test and came up positive, I am, so, it seems, related to Genghis Khan. Does that really mean anything definitively? I mean, is that marker for sure? Genghis Khan's marker? Do we know that?

[D]

In fact, no. The only way you ever know for sure that it's anybody's mutation is you gotta go to the body, pluck some DNA from the body, see if it matches the mutation. So you gotta find Genghis Khan's body. Yeah. That would be the ultimate proof. And by the way, there's a lot of people looking. Oh, my God found a human skull buried in the ground. I have been doing this now for going on to eight and a half years. And we dug up with some very nice fellas. So far. That guy is Maury Kravitz. This voice you hear is a direct result of screaming. For years he was a commodities trader in Chicago. Yeah, I was a warrior of the trading pits. He got just enough money. Actually, he made quite a bit of money to sponsor annual summer trips looking for Genghis Khan's corpse.

[B]

Why is he looking for Genghis Khan?

[D]

Valuables. Great wealth. Because he knows that for all the sacking and pillaging that the Mongols did back in the 1200s, to this day, not one bejeweled dagger, not one necklace, not one diamond studded tiara which could be identified from the 13th century has ever surfaced. Suggesting that it might be all under the surface of the ground somewhere. Suggesting that it all went south with the old man. So there might be two treasures here. There's the physical treasure and the biological treasure. Well, that's for the scientists. I am a different sort of Genghis Khan man. But they're not going to be able to do a proper DNA search unless a guy like me finds a tomb. Mori says if there is a treasure, he will happily hand it over to the Mongolian government. But officials are a little wary, so he continues to plead his case. Can we excavate or can't we?

[G]

Excavate?

[D]

What do you mean no? And he keeps digging up bodies, always with the same result. Well, it's not Genghis Khan. It's not Genghis Khan. The problem is nobody knows where Genghis Khan is buried. They don't even know if he was buried. They don't even know if there's any place or thing to find.

[E]

It appears unlikely.

[D]

Professor Rasabi says no. Looking for Genghis is a. I don't know. He died in 1227. And they had no tradition of tomb culture at that point. The body was just left where it lay.

[B]

So does that mean we'll never know?

[D]

There may be a way out of this. Genghis Khan, he had a grandson, Kubla Khan, the famous Emperor of China. Kubla has the same exact mutation that his grandpa had. That's the nature of this. And I think the more likely discovery will be of Kubla Khan's. Joe, why not look for Kub? Where is Kublai Khan's body? Would you guess? Well, we know it's stated in the sources that it's somewhere in Mongolia. When it is discovered, it'll be a real bonanza. So you talk to Maury, everybody. It seems to me you could get on the phone and say, you idiot, you're looking for the wrong guy. Well, I. Wait, I'm gonna cut you off. Morris Wassabi is going to say, I'm looking for the wrong guy. You know it's true. He happens to. Kubla Khan is his pick. It's his pick because he wrote a book on Kub Kublai Khan. Okay, okay. The point is, both Genghis and Kublai Khan have the same genetic marker. So if you find either one, either one will do. Pluck a hair from either guy's body, look up the DNA, and then you will know for sure if Genghis and his family not only conquered the ancient world, but fathered the modern world, one day we will know. And I guess the neat thing about all of these tales is, you know, you think when you're going to tell a story from the past that the sensible place to go is you go to the library, you go to a fossil, you go to a ruin. But the truth is, you can go anywhere. The blood coursing through your veins tells you, I have a story for you. Same with a little bit of garbage that sits next to an ancient shoe. You pluck the piece of paper and Jesus is talking to you. Literally. There are clues about the past everywhere. And if it's a knock on your door and you decide to open the door and take the a look, who knows what you will find and who knows where you will go?

[B]

By the way, the video clip used in that last segment was provided courtesy of A and E Networks. And for more information on anything you heard this hour, Visit our website, Radiolab.org.

[D]

And communicate it with us while you're there. Here's our address.

[B]

Radiolabnyc.org is our email address. I'm Jad Abumrad. Robert Krulwich and I are signing off.

[D]

Thanks for listening.

[C]

Radiolab is produced by Jake Abumrad and Helen Horn, with help from Sarah Pellegrini, Melissa Kibo, Lulu Miller, Amber Sille. How do you pronounce that one? Amber Seeley, Casey Edwards and Jed Terrace. And special thanks to Sally Herships, the New York Department of Sanitation and Chief Diggings, Nika Bodice, Marina Cole, and to me, Tatiana Tseria, Production management by Michael Elcessor, Edin Capello. Radiolab is produced by wnyc, New York Public Radio.

[B]

Bye Bye NYC now delivers breaking news, top headlines and in depth coverage from WNYC and Gothamist every morning, midday and evening. By sponsoring our programming, you'll reach a community of passionate listeners in an uncluttered audio experience. Visit sponsorship.wnyc.org to learn more.