Sleepless in South Sudan

Summary

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Radiolab: "Sleepless in South Sudan"

Podcast: Radiolab (WNYC Studios)
Hosts: Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich
Storyteller: Carl Zimmer
Date: October 31, 2011
Episode Runtime: ~24 min

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Episode Overview

This episode of Radiolab departs from its usual mix of science and investigative reporting to focus on a deeply personal story told by science writer Carl Zimmer. Set against the backdrop of war-torn South Sudan in the late 1990s, Zimmer explores the intersection of science, mortality, and personal grief. Through vivid storytelling and moments of existential reflection, the episode discusses how encounters with disease and death, both in Africa and at home, changed Zimmer’s outlook on life, loss, and the drive to live.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Arrival in South Sudan & Dangers of Disease

• [02:34-06:50] Carl Zimmer’s Voice
  • Zimmer wakes in South Sudan during a civil war—despite not being near a frontline, the region teems with dangers.
  • Disease Threats:
    • Sleeping sickness from tsetse flies (deadly without treatment, and treatment itself is "basically arsenic").
    • Guinea worm infestation ("grows inside you, causes blisters, only relief comes from water, spreading more larvae").
    • Malaria described as “the worst malaria in the world”—can quickly kill if untreated.
  • Quote ([03:43]):

    “There were so many ways to get sick… You actually really couldn’t get sick anywhere else in the world.”

  • Zimmer admits to being a hypochondriac: “Every time I got a fever, I was sure it was going to be meningitis...” ([05:30])

2. Personal Backstory: Loss of Esther

• [07:50-10:22]
  • Zimmer recounts his early journalism career: unfulfilled, searching for meaning.
  • Explains relationship with Esther—from high school sweethearts to facing her surprising diagnosis of rare pancreatic cancer in their 20s.
  • Quote ([09:23]):

    “You don’t think about cancer when you’re mid-20s… and so as a result, this cancer had moved really fast and spread very far by the time it was detected.”

  • The couple fights the illness optimistically but Esther dies within months.
  • Grief lingers, coloring Zimmer’s return to work and everyday experiences.

3. Coping, Hypochondria, and Obsession with Science

• [10:22-12:50]
  • Zimmer finds himself obsessed with hidden dangers—symptoms, diseases—which leads him to repeatedly request medical tests.
  • Grapples with the fear of mortality, feeling as though everyone is obliviously “walking on a thin sheet of glass.”
  • Quote ([12:28]):

    “I was so dissatisfied. I was in perfect health, and it was terrible.”

4. Discovering Beauty and Meaning in Biology

• [11:10-12:15]
  • Finds solace in scientific investigation—writing about the “complicated and incredibly beautiful” nature of water molecules.
  • Draws an analogy between scientific discovery and reconnecting with an old friend.
  • Quote ([11:28]):

    “Those water molecules… in a weird way, have been waiting all this time for us to understand them and to get to know them.”

5. Evolution, Metamorphosis, and Grief

• [13:00-14:43]
  • Turns to the study of evolution and transformation as a way of finding new meaning—cites Ovid’s Metamorphosis.
  • Finds comfort in the idea that suffering can yield "something beautiful" through change.
  • Quote ([14:38]):

    "So these sailors are horrified to watch their hands disappearing… And I was reading that, and I would think, you know, I’ve seen that kind of change myself in my own life."

6. Return to Africa: Seeking Parasites

• [15:00-19:30]
  • Zimmer becomes fascinated—almost reverent—about parasites, calling himself “an aficionado of the strangest, most extreme parasites.”
  • Describes making trips to Africa in search of stories about parasitic diseases.
  • Memorable moments:
    • Learning about Loa Loa—the worm you can see crawl across your eyeball ([17:37]).
    • The suspense of entering South Sudan without stamped passports, “going off the grid” ([18:55]).

7. A Second Life and Acceptance

• [20:05-21:30]
  • Zimmer reflects on his life after returning from South Sudan: new love, two daughters, an enduring sense of awe and gratitude.
  • Recognizes that threats—parasites, disease, mortality—are not banishable but can be lived with.
  • Quote ([20:47]):

    “You can never get away from them totally… But I don’t go to places like South Sudan anymore, mainly for their sake.”

8. Epilogue: The Drive to Live

• [21:40-23:25]
  • Zimmer recalls the panic of seeing holes in his mosquito net under the South Sudanese moonlight: “There are holes in it. I could see them in the moonlight. And I was—I could feel this kind of panic coming up…”
  • Describes a voice within resisting resignation to death—“that was myself… There was this drive that I felt. I was not going to just fall asleep again.”
  • Quote ([23:03]):

    “We live. We keep living. If death comes into the neighborhood, we’re going to fight it. And that is true. That’s a rule. And it’s real. It’s as real as those water molecules floating in space for billions of years.”

  • Concludes by emphasizing the vitality of that drive—a universal force.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the pervasiveness of hidden dangers:

  “There are so many ways to get sick and so many ways you could get sick in South Sudan that you actually really couldn’t get sick anywhere else in the world.” —Carl Zimmer ([03:43])

• On grief:

  “After a few months, she died, and I lived. So I went away for a few months, and then I came back, and I came back to my job, and I was writing about science, and it was different.” —Carl Zimmer ([10:13])

• On the beauty of discovery:

  “Those water molecules… in a weird way, have been waiting all this time for us to understand them and to get to know them.” —Carl Zimmer ([11:28])

• On transformation and loss:

  “So these sailors are horrified to watch their hands disappearing and turning into just flippers… And I was reading that, and I would think, you know, I’ve seen that kind of change myself in my own life.” —Carl Zimmer ([14:38])

• On the persistence of mortality and awe:

  “You can never get away from them totally… We are human. But I don’t go to places like South Sudan anymore, mainly for their sake.” —Carl Zimmer ([20:47])

• On the innate drive to survive:

  “We live. We keep living. If death comes into the neighborhood, we’re going to fight it. And that is true. That’s a rule. And it’s real. It’s as real as those water molecules floating in space for billions of years.” —Carl Zimmer ([23:03])

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Major Segments & Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|---------------------------------------------------| | 01:27 | Introduction to the story and Carl Zimmer | | 02:34 | Waking in South Sudan—diseases and threats | | 07:50 | Carl’s career start and meeting Esther | | 09:23 | Esther’s illness, diagnosis, and passing | | 10:22 | Returning to science writing, hypochondria | | 11:28 | The allure of water molecules, finding meaning | | 13:00 | Evolution, Metamorphosis and transformation | | 15:00 | Fascination with parasites, decision to return | | 17:37 | Loa Loa—seeing parasites firsthand | | 18:55 | Entering South Sudan without stamped passports | | 20:05 | Life after: new family, lingering anxiety | | 21:40 | Night panic, voice of resistance | | 23:03 | Universal will to live summarized | | 23:57 | Closing remarks and credits |

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Tone and Storytelling Style

Carl Zimmer’s storytelling is candid, humble, and gently philosophical, blending self-deprecating humor with deep vulnerability. The narrative evokes both the visceral fears of illness and the wonder of scientific discovery, with a recurring motif: the persistence of life in the face of inevitable death. The tone is reflective, at times melancholy, but ultimately grounded in gratitude and an acceptance of life’s drive to endure.

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Final Thoughts

"Sleepless in South Sudan" pushes Radiolab beyond its usual investigative storytelling into the realm of personal revelation. Through Carl Zimmer’s journey—from grief and hypochondria to wonder, family, and acceptance—the episode finds surprising warmth and beauty in life’s fragility. It is an ode to science, curiosity, and the enduring human spirit.

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Transcript

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[Radiolab Host/Announcer]

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[Jad Abumrad]

Okay.

[Radiolab Host/Announcer]

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You're listening to Radiolab, Radio Lab shorts from WNYC and npr.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krilwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab, the podcast. And today on the podcast, something a little different.

[Radiolab Host/Announcer]

We say that often. We do.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is more different than our usual different.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. This comes from our friend Carl Zimmer, who's been on the show a bunch of times, helping us untangle some complicated scientific things.

[Robert Krulwich]

This time we find him not in our normal area. In our show, he's in the basement of a bar, which is in Brooklyn, New York, to untangle really kind of a very personal question in his mind. I want to give it away.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's right. Carl told this particular story for a group called Story Collider, which has people come on stage, tell live stories about.

[Robert Krulwich]

Science and the fellow you're going to hear introducing Carl. This is Ben Lilly.

[Radiolab Host/Announcer]

Welcome to the stage. Carl Zimmer he's the co founder.

[Robert Krulwich]

Co founder of Story Collider.

[Radiolab Host/Announcer]

So in 1997, I woke up in the middle of the night in South Sudan. I at the time, South Sudan was not its own country. It is an independent country. Just recently, when I was there, it was in the middle of a civil war. Now, South Sudan as a territory is about the size of Texas. And I was not near the front lines, so it's not as if I had to worry about getting shot by somebody from the other side. But there were plenty of things to be very worried about. So, for example, if you were walking around outside and there was a plane coming overhead, you never quite knew if it was a plane that came from Khartoum that had a bomb and was looking for a place to drop it. And they liked to drop it on places like hospitals, which is where I was at. And if the bombs didn't get you, there were lots of other things that could, little invisible things that could get. You see, because South Sudan at the time was probably the best place in the world to get sick. There were so many ways to get sick and so many ways you could get sick in South Sudan that you actually really couldn't get sick anywhere else in the world. So, for example, there are flies buzzing around called tsetse flies, and they might bite you and they might put a little single celled parasite into you and you would get sleeping sickness. You can't really get sleeping sickness much of anyplace else. And if you didn't get medical attention, you would die. It's one of those diseases where there's no escape clause. You will die if you don't get medicine. And in that case, the medicine that you would get was basically arsenic. So neither alternative is really attractive. Then maybe you would drink some unfiltered water and you might swallow a guinea worm. So you might swallow some invisible larvae. It would get into your stomach and say, well, this is where I belong. It would grow, it would burrow out of, out of your intestinal wall. It would wander around in your abdomen. It might meet up with a guinea worm of the opposite sex and they would mate and the female would develop eggs. Yeah, you know where this is going. She gets to be about 2ft long. She says it's time to bring forth a new generation of guinea worms. What shall I do? I'm going to crawl down this person's leg and I'm going to create a blister. I'm going to poke up on the skin, create a blister which the only way to relieve it is to splash water on it. And with every splash of water, the guinea worm will surge out eggs that will go into another pond and carry on the generation of guinea worms. So you might want to just pull on this thing to get the thing out. But of course, you just pull part of it, and the rest would die. And you would have about maybe a foot of dead worm in your leg, and you would probably have an immune reaction that would kill you. There were things you could get sick of that had no name. You might survive, you might not. And of course, there were the good old standard ways to get sick. I mean, there was malaria. You can get malaria lots of places. But the people at this medical center, they were. A lot of them were American doctors who kind of go from crisis to crisis. And they would talk about the malaria in South Sudan and say, this is amazing malaria. This is like the worst malaria in the world. This is the kind of malaria you don't just get a fever and get kind of achy and get over it. You go straight to your brain. You go crazy. And if you don't get a plane, a whole plane to get you out of there and maybe to Nairobi, you're going to die. Now, something to bear in mind is that I'm not a doctor. In fact, at this point, I was kind of a hypochondriac. And so the thing is that, like, you know, every time I got a fever, I'm sure it was going to be meningitis or if I got a pain in my side, I was sure it was going to turn into a tumor. And so there I am, you know, looking up in the moonlight, the mosquito netting above my head, and I'm seeing holes in it. I'm thinking, what am I doing here? This is the kind of trouble that writing about science can get you into. I started as a science writer, actually as a copy editor. I got a job at a magazine. It was basically to pay the bills. I was a copy editor. I wasn't very good at it. I would let commas go through, which you're not supposed to do as a copy editor, as real copy editors will tell you. My boss took pity on me and let me fact check some things. And I got to write some short pieces, just about all sorts of different things. A moon of Saturn or a beetle that produced a green glow. And it was all interesting, but it didn't feel particularly important to me. You know, I was always writing, and I felt like when I grow up, I'm going To be a writer, But I wasn't really sure what I was going to be writing about. And so I got this job, and it paid the bills, and it was fine. And eventually I would figure things out, I hoped. Now, at the time, I was dating a woman named Esther. And so Esther and I had met in high school, and she was tough, and she was funny, and she wasn't quite sure what she was going to do with her life when she grew up. And we managed to continue to date through college. And then after college, she really wanted to do something, and again, she wasn't sure what. So she applied for the peace corps, and she got in, and eventually she was assigned to Africa. But the whole process takes an incredibly long time to actually even leave the United States. So by the time she left, I was already working at this job, and I was already starting to write about science. So she went to Rwanda, and as it happens, with a lot of people at peace corps, she burned out. So within a year, she was back home. But she had gotten the bug. She wanted to get back to Africa. She wanted to be back there in a meaningful way. And so she thought that a meaningful way to be there would to go as a journalist, to be a foreign correspondent. So she applied to journalism school, and she went to Columbia. So Columbia was hard, naturally, but after a while, other things became to be hard. So, for example, waking up in the morning was hard, and after a while, eating was hard, and after a while, walking up the stairs to our apartment was hard. And she was asking, what's going on? So she went to her doctor, and the doctor said, something's wrong. And eventually it was determined that she had a rare form of cancer that starts in the pancreas. Now, you don't think about cancer when you're mid-20s. You don't think of rare forms in the pancreas in your mid-20s. And so, as a result, this cancer had moved really fast and spread very far by the time it was detected. Now, she and I, you know, being in our mid-20s, we just thought, well, we're going to fight this, as if somehow our thoughts could vaporize cancer cells. And our doctor kind of went along with that, I think, because he probably felt that maybe that's the best way that people in their mid-20s should deal with something like this to prepare for a life that they're not going to have. So after a few months, she died, and I lived. So I went away for a few months, and then I came back, and I came back to my job, and I was writing about science, and it was different. So, for example, I wrote a story about water, just about water. And yet it was quite mesmerizing to me. This was a story just about sort of how water molecules kind of interact. They're kind of like dancers at a dance party, party in a crowded club. And, you know, the molecules sort of join together and then pull apart. They form clusters that dissolve again. And it's incredibly complicated and incredibly beautiful. And it's water. It's water that we've all grown up with, looking at in a glass or what have you. And those water molecules, in a weird way, have been waiting all this time for us to understand them and to get to know them. And I felt in talking to these scientists, that, in a way, water was like this old friend. So, you know how, like, with an old friend, you know, you haven't seen them for a long time and you take up right where you left off. Well, these water molecules were just floating around for billions of years, just waiting for us to learn about them. And we could go away and we could come back, and maybe some scientists have found something else interesting about water. And we would just take off where we left off, and all the attention that we paid to the water would be repaid with beauty. So at the same time, I looked at sort of all of us and human life, and I felt like.

[Jad Abumrad]

How.

[Radiolab Host/Announcer]

Is it that we can all be walking around just pretending that we are going to die? You know, that maybe tomorrow you'll get a diagnosis and that's it. No, we're all going to die. And so I felt like somehow like, you know, we were walking, all of us were like walking on a thin sheet of glass with cracks in it. And I was the only one that noticed. And I could look down, I could see the people on the other side that my doctor at the time, I was actually friends with. And he was incredibly patient with me because he understood what sort of, you know, my frame of mind. And I would go to him and I would say, all right, I don't want you to give me. I want you to test my heart. I want you to test my blood. I want you to test this and test that, test that. I was sure that if we ran enough tests that I would find out that there was something wrong with me because I had to be right. And so he would run test after test after test, which was totally uncalled for, and it all came back negative. And I was so dissatisfied. I was in perfect health, and it was terrible. So I Think through that kind of experience. I ended up writing a lot about evolution because here was a process where life and life turning into death could actually not just end in death, but lead to something and you could produce new things. So my first book, which came out a few years after Esther died, was about evolution, and it was about these big transitions, these transformations. You know, fish coming on land and then some mammals going into the water, becoming dolphins and whales. And there was a certain kind of joy and melancholy in writing about it. I found this passage from the Metamorphosis by Ovid that made the opening to the book. And the story is that. So the Metamorphosis is full of all sorts of changes, a lot of which are very agonizing to the people who are going through those changes. They don't like it, and yet something beautiful comes out of it. So, for example, the God Bacchus is kidnapped by some people on a ship, and he's going to take vengeance on them. And so these sailors are horrified to watch their hands disappearing and turning into just flippers, and their nose stretches out into a hook and their voice disappears and they're flailing around and they just leap into the water and they become the dolphins. And I was reading that, and I would think, you know, I've seen that kind of change myself in my own life. After that book, I was casting around for another idea, and I thought, well, I'll write about parasites. And, you know, at the time, it just sort of seemed like, oh, that'd be cool. When I look back at it, I think there's something more going on there. I mean, I became a real aficionado of the strangest, most extreme parasites out there. I mean, we're talking about wasps that perform brain surgery on cockroaches and then lay their eggs inside of them. And the cockroaches are alive as the wasp is growing inside them. Or, you know, an ant that climbs up to the top of a flower, and then a giant stalk of fungus comes out of its head and showers down on the ants below, sowing death. And I suppose I just felt like, well, you know, if we're. Hey, if we're all going to die, you might as well look at the most amazing ways that that happens in the natural world. So I started to travel around and look for parasites. And I wanted to go to a place where I could see parasites making life difficult for people. It wasn't quite sure how to do it. I had an old, really good friend who was living in Nairobi at the time. So I went and visited him and his wife, and I would make little forays to try to find a story for my book. And I just sort of end up with a lot of dead ends. And I was thinking, you know, I'm going to go home and I'm going to have nothing. It's going to be a real bummer. But my friend sort of by chance said, hey, you know what? There's this medical organization. They're dealing with a sleeping sickness epidemic in South Sudan, which is actually right across the border from Kenya. And they're looking, you know, they would like to invite some journalists to come and see what they're up to. And to me, this was. I don't know, this was like the invitation to the Oscars or something. I mean, I was thinking of all the things that I could see there that I just read about. I mean, I could see them. So, for example, there's something called Loa Loa. I don't know if any of you heard of it. So it's a. It's a worm, if I remember correctly. It's transmitted by a mosquito. So you see a mosquito buzzing around, you think, oh, God, I hope it doesn't have loa loa. And I hope it's not going to bite me, because what happens is it bites you. Loa loa gets into your system and it starts sort of crawling around. And it likes to crawl around in connective tissue. And one of the places where you have connective tissue is in the surface of your eyes. So people who get loa loa will say that they can actually see the parasite crawling across their field of view. So this was really a place where you could see parasites. I mean, really, really see. I don't know if that meant that I wanted to get it or talk to someone and say, well, what's it like to see it? I don't know what I wanted. All I know is that very early one morning I went to this little airport in the outskirts of Nairobi with my friend. He drove me out there. And then my friend Scott said, okay, I'll see you. I got on a little plane with a couple other journalists and Arnic. It's not easy to get into South Sudan, especially back then when it was a war zone. So what you had to do is you had to fly from Nairobi to the border. And the border is like the most desolate place you can imagine. You can look for miles and see basically nothing. I think I saw a couple huts, like, in the distance. That was it. You land on one Runway, and there's another plane there. That's the plane that's going to take you to South Sudan. So I'm like, okay, I get my bag and I get out, and the other journalists are getting out. There's just like four or five of us, and there's no one else around for miles. Except this guy. I recall he was wearing, like, a Members Only jacket, and he was like the border guard. And he said, I'd like to see your passports. So, you know, you give me your passports because. Because he's supposed to stamp them and give them back to you, and then you're on your way. But going across borders in Africa is always a little sketchy. So you're nervous already because he holds your life in your hands. Maybe he wants some money or something. Well, the thing was that he couldn't stamp a visa and our passport because we weren't going to a real country. We weren't really going anywhere. We were going to this place that had really no official designation yet. So he didn't stamp our visas. He just said, I'm going to hold onto these. So he takes our passports and he just tucks them away in his Members Only jacket. And we're thinking, guess we're going. And we all got into this plane. It was a supply plane. There were some crates with medical supplies and stuff in it. And we got in, sort of buckled up along the walls of this open, open part in the back, and they closed the back of the plane, and then the plane took off and we went off the grid. So a week later, I did come back and I did get my passport. I did get back home. It's been 14 years since I got back from South Sudan. Two years after I got back, I fell in love with a woman named Grace, and we got married. We have two girls who run around in our garden. And I feel like I have been given, like, a gift. A second life, a second story. You know, we still deal with some parasites where I live. Maybe not guinea worms, but, you know, West Nile virus, Lyme disease, toxoplasma. You can never get away from them. Totally. You know, we are human. But I don't go to places like South Sudan anymore, mainly for their sake. When I was there in South Sudan, I saw a lot of things. You know, I saw people suffering beyond what I could imagine. I also saw a lot of people getting off their lives in the middle of a war zone, which was something that I didn't even think possible before then. I would see huge fields full of Gigantic termite mounds. But the thing that I actually remember most, most clearly was that night, waking up in the middle of the night and looking up in a panic at that mosquito net and thinking, there are holes in it. I could see them in the moonlight. And I was. I could feel this kind of panic coming up with me. And then another voice in me said, well, what's the big deal, all right? I mean, if you're going on and on about all gonna die and, you know, there's nothing you can do about it, and you're sure that there's. There's something just waiting for you, then why don't you just go back to sleep and just let it happen? And I could feel. I could feel this. This thing inside me. This thing inside me that was resisting that. That was me. It wasn't a parasite. That was myself. And there was this drive that I felt I was not going to just fall asleep again. You know, we all. It's a drive that we all have. You know, we live. We keep living. If death comes into the neighborhood, we're going to fight it. And that is true. That's a rule. And it's real. It's as real as those water molecules floating in space for billions of years. And that is what writing about science has given me. Thanks, Carl Zimmer, everyone.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's our podcast for today. Thanks so much for listening.

[Jad Abumrad]

And big thanks to Ben Lilly and Story Collider for letting us run that story, and of course, to Carl Zimmer.

[Robert Krulwich]

And by the way, Story Collider has its own podcast, so if you like Carl's story, there's tons of more science stories that you can enjoy over there. And the address is one word. Storycollider.org I'm Jad Abumran. I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thanks for listening.

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