Our favorite brains, including Einstein's stolen one

Summary

Podcast Summary: Short Wave – "Our favorite brains, including Einstein's stolen one"

NPR | Hosted by Regina Barber, featuring John Hamilton
Date: July 15, 2026
Duration: ~15 minutes

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Overview

In this special Short Wave episode, host Regina Barber sits down with retiring NPR neuroscience reporter John Hamilton for a whirlwind tour of the most fascinating brains he’s covered over his 15-year career. Their lively conversation highlights the diversity, ingenuity, and even the oddities of brains—from humans missing key regions to famous historical figures and tool-using animals. It’s a light-hearted yet insightful homage to the marvels of neuroscience and the stories behind some of science's greatest mysteries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Wonders of the Cerebellum

• Story of Jonathan Kelleher

  • Topic intro ([00:52])
    • Hamilton recounts his reporting on Jonathan Kelleher, a man born without a functional cerebellum—a region critical for coordination, balance, and more.
  • What is the cerebellum? ([01:21])
    • Hamilton explains, “It’s this structure at the base of the brain... more than half of all the neurons that a typical person has, and it is absolutely critical to passing a roadside sobriety test.”
  • Beyond Balance ([02:02])
    • Jonathan’s deficits weren’t limited to movement: “He also had problems with all these other brain functions that turn out to rely on the cerebellum... speech and language...”
    • (Quote from Jonathan [02:22]):

      “Because why read a book or why do anything when you can be social and talk to people and stuff... we’re all in that world together.”

    • Hamilton notes, “You can hear in his speech cadences, it’s a bit odd. And his thoughts can be a little disjointed... the cerebellum does a lot more than coordinate movement. It also coordinates everything from information to emotion in the brain.” ([02:59])

• The Cerebellum's "No Respect" ([04:54])

  • Hamilton shares: “Jeremy [Schmaman, Harvard] once told me, the cerebellum was like the Rodney Dangerfield of the brain because it got no respect.”

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2. The Curious Case of Einstein's Stolen Brain

• How it Happened ([05:20])
  • Hamilton explains that Dr. Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who performed Einstein’s autopsy in 1955, removed and kept the brain, hoping to unlock the genius's secrets.
  • “He did lose his job over this. But somehow he held onto the stolen brain. And over the decades, he would send bits of it to various scientists...” ([06:14])
• Odd Storage Methods ([06:50])
  • Regina reacts to the fact that pieces were shipped in a mayonnaise jar:

    “That is so awful, it’s almost like mean to his memory.”

• Scientific Findings ([07:07])
  • Marion Diamond (UC Berkeley) received samples and found a greater-than-expected number of astrocytes (supportive glial cells) rather than more neurons.
  • Hamilton:

    “These are a type of cell that scientists have kind of dismissed as just helper cells. They pick up after neurons doing all the important stuff.”

  • On astrocytes:

    “Over time, brain scientists have realized that astrocytes and other so-called glial cells... actually do play a big role in all these higher brain functions, perhaps even including the ability to develop a theory of relativity.” ([07:53])

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3. Animal Brains and Tool Use

• Challenging Human Exceptionalism ([08:23])
  • Hamilton highlights how animals such as chimpanzees, crows, and octopuses display tool use once thought unique to humans.
  • “For centuries, scientists have been pointing to behaviors they say are unique to humans. And then, of course, they find out that some animal actually does the same thing.”
• Orangutan Anecdote at the Zoo ([09:21])
  • Hamilton recounts observing an orangutan named Kenobi at the Indianapolis Zoo use a branch to reach for his microphone.
    • Rob Shoemaker [09:20]:

      “She’s making a reaching tool to try and get your microphone.”

    • [10:35] “Now she’s gone and got a much bigger, stronger tool to come get the microphone. So you cannot have it. Good job with your tool. Thank you for that.”

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4. Neurodiversity: The Autistic Brain

• Dax Daxer’s Perspective ([11:17])
  • Hamilton shares the story of Dax Daxer, an autistic college student in Ohio who likens their social experience to that of a “space alien.”
    • Dax [11:59]:

      “I’ve seen them help people who are hurt. I’ve seen them draw together networks of people to make the world better... It’s really very amazing to be able to do that.”

    • Dax shares the beauty of a unique perspective:

      “I wonder what it is like to be one of a unit of two. I don’t know. But then again, they’ll never know some of the beautiful things I see. The tiny little patterns on a leaf or the intricacies of a circuit or learning a new fact and almost squealing in joy because it’s so beautiful.” ([12:46])

  • Hamilton: “You can see why Dax is one of my favorite brains of all time.” ([13:18])

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5. The Mystery of the Fruit Fly Brain

• The Brain John Hamilton Would Most Like to Understand ([13:35])
  • Hamilton expresses fascination with the fruit fly brain:
    • “It’s a tiny, tiny brain, but it can navigate in three dimensions better than the most advanced computers that Tesla has ever made.”
    • “How is that, right? That’s the question I’d really like to know.” ([14:05])

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “The cerebellum was like the Rodney Dangerfield of the brain because it got no respect.”
  — John Hamilton ([04:55])

• “Why read a book or why do anything when you can be social and talk to people and stuff... we’re all in that world together.”
  — Jonathan Kelleher ([02:22])

• “That is so awful, it’s almost like mean to his memory. Like in a mayonnaise jar.”
  — Regina Barber ([06:58])

• “Over time, brain scientists have realized that astrocytes and other so-called glial cells... actually do play a big role in all these higher brain functions.”
  — John Hamilton ([07:53])

• “It’s really very amazing to be able to do that.”
  — Dax Daxer ([12:10])

• “It’s a tiny, tiny brain, but it can navigate in three dimensions better than the most advanced computers that Tesla has ever made.”
  — John Hamilton ([14:05])

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Important Timestamps

• [00:52] – Introduction to memorable brains
• [01:21] – What is the cerebellum?
• [02:22] – Jonathan Kelleher’s perspective
• [04:54] – A dismissed brain region gets respect
• [05:20] – Einstein’s brain is stolen
• [06:50] – Einstein’s brain shipped in a mayonnaise jar, astrocyte findings
• [08:23] – Animal tool use breaks human monopoly
• [09:21] – Orangutan uses tool at the zoo
• [11:17] – The autistic brain: Dax Daxer’s story
• [13:35] – Mystery and marvel of the fruit fly brain

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Tone & Style

The episode is accessible, curious, and warm, blending awe with playful curiosity. Hamilton is both encyclopedia and raconteur, and Regina matches his energy with genuine astonishment and humor.

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Conclusion

This episode spotlights the remarkable diversity in the animal kingdom’s brains—human and otherwise—and ends with an open question about the astounding complexity and capabilities of the brain, even in a tiny fruit fly. It’s a fitting sendoff for a reporter who spent a career championing the mysteries and marvels of the mind.

Transcript

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[Regina Barber]

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwavers. Regina Barber here. And at Shortwave, we love us some brains, which is why we've had a lot of conversations over the years with NPR's neuroscience reporter Jon Hamilton. John is retiring, so today he's gonna tell us about some of the most memorable brains he's come across, excluding mine, in the past couple decades. Hey, John.

[John Hamilton]

Hey. Gina and Gina's brain. I am calling this episode my Favorite Brains.

[Regina Barber]

And I'm guessing there's a lot. I mean, you've been on the brain science beat for 15 years, is that right?

[John Hamilton]

Yeah. At least that long. There's so many brains. Right. I have reported on those tiny brain organoids that grow in a dish. Those are my favorite fruit fly brains, mouse brains, artificial brains, and some really memorable human brains. Let me give you an example. So back in 2015, I did a story about a man who was missing a part of the brain called the cerebellum.

[Regina Barber]

Okay, I think I know what it is. But just to remind me, what is the cerebellum?

[John Hamilton]

It's this structure at the base of the brain that's about the size of your fist. It contains more than half of all the neurons that a typical person has, and it is absolutely critical to passing a roadside sobriety test.

[Regina Barber]

Okay, why is that?

[John Hamilton]

Because the cerebellum is what lets you balance on one foot or keep your eyes on a moving target, like, say, hypothetically, the pen that a police officer is moving from side to side in front of you. And alcohol pretty much disables the cerebellum.

[Regina Barber]

Okay, that's good to know. I think I knew that. Actually.

[John Hamilton]

The guy did the story about Jonathan Kelleher. He never had a working cerebellum in the first place.

[Regina Barber]

So did that mean he had problems with balance and coordination?

[John Hamilton]

He did, but he also had problems with all these other brain functions that turn out to rely on the cerebellum. So you have, like, speech and language, and you can hear that in this clip of Jonathan. He was in his 30s when I spoke with him, and he was telling me why he likes to socialize so much. One of the reasons I have such a huge connection with people, because I need them to help me learn stuff. Because why read a book or why do anything when you can be social and talk to People and stuff. Yeah. I mean, we're all in that world together. It is hard not to love this guy. Right? But you can hear in his speech cadences, it's a bit odd. And his thoughts can be a little disjointed. And scientists told me that's because it turns out that the cerebellum does a lot more than coordinate movement. It also coordinates everything from information to emotion in the brain.

[Regina Barber]

Wow. Okay. Today on the show, a tour of some of the remarkable brains John has

[John Hamilton]

reported on over the years, including Albert Einstein's, which, Gina, you probably know was stolen after he.

[Regina Barber]

I didn't know that at all.

[John Hamilton]

And now you do.

[Regina Barber]

You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from npr.

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[Regina Barber]

All right, John, before we move on to any other brains, what was it that led you to the story about a guy without a cerebellum?

[John Hamilton]

The short answer is that a scientist at Harvard named Dr. Jeremy Schmaman had been studying Jonathan. He introduced me to him. But the. The deeper reason was that for decades, the cerebellum was kind of dismissed as not being that interesting.

[Regina Barber]

Really?

[John Hamilton]

Yeah. Jeremy once told me the cerebellum was like the Rodney Dangerfield of the brain because he got no respect.

[Regina Barber]

Oh, I miss him.

[John Hamilton]

And Jonathan, because he didn't have a cerebellum, he offered this way to show why this part of the brain matters so much.

[Regina Barber]

Wow. Okay, so now I want to hear about, like, Einstein's brain. First of all, who stole it? And I'm guessing I know why. But, like, tell me the story.

[John Hamilton]

It was stolen by the pathologist who did the autopsy on Einstein?

[Regina Barber]

Oh, no. Did they lose their job?

[John Hamilton]

He did.

[Regina Barber]

Okay.

[John Hamilton]

But the reason he did this was that he wanted to find out why it was that Einstein's brain had made him such a genius.

[Regina Barber]

This is very creepy, actually. What exactly happened?

[John Hamilton]

Okay, here's the scene. It's 1955, Princeton, New Jersey. Einstein has just died. And all these people start showing up, you know, to pay homage. Meanwhile, the pathologist I mentioned, Dr. Thomas Harvey, he's doing the autopsy, which included removing Einstein's brain. So I talked about this with a guy named Michael Paternity. He wrote a book about what happened next. It was like the death of the prophet. And so it got a little bit crazy. And out of that complete sort of melee of the moment, he made off with the brain. And it was under somewhat, you know, dubious circumstances. Yeah, but wait, wait, Gina. It gets weirder. The good doctor, he did lose his job over this. But somehow he held onto the stolen brain. And over the decades, he would send bits of it to various scientists to see if they could figure out what made Einstein's brain so special.

[Regina Barber]

I'm going to guess they didn't find anything.

[John Hamilton]

Well, most of the examinations concluded that the bits of Einstein's brain look, you know, pretty ordinary.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah.

[John Hamilton]

But in the 1980s, a scientist at UC Berkeley got some samples. I should mention, they arrived in the mail in a mayonnaise jar.

[Regina Barber]

That is so awful, it's almost like mean to his memory. Like in a mayonnaise jar.

[John Hamilton]

It's just beyond strange.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah.

[Zoo Staff/Other Interviewees]

Okay.

[John Hamilton]

Anyway, this scientist, whose name was Marion diamond, found that the samples had a surprising number of cells called astrocytes. And that was interesting because astrocytes are not neurons. You know, neurons are the brain cells we associate with thinking and genius and everything. Instead, these are a type of cell that scientists have kind of dismissed as, you know, just helper cells. They pick up after neurons that are doing all the important stuff.

[Regina Barber]

I like the name astrocytes because it makes me think of astronomy, which makes me think of, like, you know, astrophysics

[John Hamilton]

and general relativity and that their name, they look really. Yeah, they look like stars.

[Dax Daxer]

Oh, cool.

[Regina Barber]

Okay, so these helper cells, these astrocytes, is that what people think made Einstein a genius?

[John Hamilton]

That is a question that's probably never going to be resolved. But over time, brain scientists have realized that astrocytes and other so called glial cells, you know, the ones that are not neurons, they actually do play a big role in all these higher brain functions, perhaps even including the ability to develop a theory of relat.

[Regina Barber]

I Love a good underdog story. That's why, you know, I love the Padres. Have you ever come across another underdog brain story in all of your reporting?

[John Hamilton]

I do, too. So here's another one for you. It's about animal brains, which really don't get enough credit, in my humble opinion. So for centuries, scientists have been pointing to behaviors they say are unique to humans. And then, of course, they find out that some animal actually does the same thing. So, for example, you know, there was a time they thought that only a human brain could make and use tools.

[Regina Barber]

Right.

[John Hamilton]

Then along comes Jane goodall in the 1960s, and she's found a chimp named David Graybeard who caught termites by making this sort of fishing pole out of twigs.

[Zoo Staff/Other Interviewees]

Yeah.

[Regina Barber]

And then crows.

[John Hamilton]

Right, Crows. Right. Crows make hooks to catch insects, and octopuses carry around two halves of a coconut shell, put them together when they need shelter. There are lots of examples.

[Regina Barber]

I mean, that sounds like all these animals are pretty intelligent. They have pretty like, big brains, like humans. I mean, have you ever had a chance to see any animal making a tool?

[John Hamilton]

That only happened once. It was in 2011. I went to the Indianapolis Zoo to meet with an evolutionary biologist there. His name is Rob Shoemaker, and he had just co authored a book called Animal Tool Behavior.

[Regina Barber]

Right.

[John Hamilton]

And we.

[Regina Barber]

I know what that book's about.

[John Hamilton]

You're a good guesser, Gina. So as we're walking around the zoo, we had this moment. I was interviewing him outside the orangutan enclosure. And let me play you just a little bit of the radio story I did about this.

[Rob Shoemaker]

You do have to not go up too closely because they can reach out pretty far. And they'll take your equipment.

[John Hamilton]

Of course they would.

[Rob Shoemaker]

And your wallet, right?

[Zoo Staff/Other Interviewees]

Yes.

[John Hamilton]

Several of the zoo's orangutans make it clear they'd like to have the microphone I'm carrying. Shoemaker tells a female named Kenobi that she can touch it.

[Rob Shoemaker]

Nice soft microphone cover on that. But you cannot have the whole thing.

[John Hamilton]

When I move beyond her reach, Kenobi fetches a small tree branch.

[Rob Shoemaker]

You're seeing Kenobi right now. There's some tool manufacturers. She's making a reaching tool to try and get your microphone.

[John Hamilton]

Kenobi breaks off one fork of the branch so it will fit through the mesh around the enclosure. But the branch still isn't long enough. And she's determined.

[Rob Shoemaker]

Not too surprising. She now has a much bigger, stronger tool to come get the microphone. So she's gotten a full branch now,

[John Hamilton]

and this reaching tool gets the job done.

[Rob Shoemaker]

So there you go. So she's doing her best to draw the mic in knob. We're not. I'm sorry. You cannot. You cannot have it. Good job with you, tool. Thank you for the. Thank you for that. We got to publish that. Oh, wow. Now she's gone and got a much bigger, stronger brain. So we're gonna leave now.

[Regina Barber]

Just 15 years ago, she, like, had your number. She's like, I'm gonna get your mic.

[John Hamilton]

Yeah. I mean, you're not supposed to become part of the story, but it just happened. Have you got time for just one more story about a remarkable brain? Gina?

[Regina Barber]

I have all the time in the world for you, John. Let's do this.

[John Hamilton]

All right, so I want to tell a story about an autistic brain. It belongs to a person named Dax Daxer, who was a college student in Ohio. When we spoke, I think that was in. And Dax told me they felt like a space alien, you know, because they sort of landed on Earth and was trying to make sense of all these neurotypical behaviors you see in college. You know, dating, making eye contact, getting together to watch the TV show Friends, which was a big thing at that time. So as a result, Dax had all these remarkable insights into typical humans and how we are hardwired to socialize and cooperate.

[Dax Daxer]

I've seen them help people who are hurt. I've seen them draw together networks of people to make the world better. I've seen them connect different sorts of minds so that we could all communicate and live in a single society. I know you take it for granted, but it's really very amazing to be able to do that.

[John Hamilton]

I should mention that life was not easy for Dax. Dax experienced a lot of sadness and isolation living among all these neurotypicals on a college campus. And there was this sort of longing that Dax had to be part of, you know, the social brain club. But Dax also realized that an autistic brain can really be extraordinary in its own way.

[Dax Daxer]

I wonder what it is like to be one of a unit of two. I don't know. But then again, they'll never know. Some of the beautiful things I see. The tiny little patterns on a leaf or the intricacies of a circuit or learning a new fact and almost squealing in joy because it's so beautiful.

[Regina Barber]

This is beautiful. It is like their interpretation is beautiful.

[John Hamilton]

And you can see why. Dax is one of my favorite brains of all time.

[Regina Barber]

Aw. So, John, we've talked about the cerebellum. We've talked about, like, Einstein's brain. We've talked about animals using tools. What brain would you really like to understand?

[John Hamilton]

I would be most curious about understanding a fruit fly brain.

[Regina Barber]

Really. I mean, they're getting close to understanding a fruit fly brain.

[John Hamilton]

They've done what they call the connectome. So all the connections in a fruit fly brain, but that's not the same as understanding precisely how it's able to do the amazing things that it can do. It's a tiny, tiny brain, but it can navigate in three dimensions better than the most advanced computers that Tesla has ever made.

[Regina Barber]

Really?

[John Hamilton]

How is that? Right? That's the question I'd really like to know.

[Regina Barber]

Wow. John, thank you so much for all of this amazing reporting you've done for so many years. And coming on the show, we have loved every minute.

[John Hamilton]

Gina, you are so welcome. And I just want to say thanks to all of the amazing brains that

[Regina Barber]

make Shortwave, because our brains are basically the same. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts and so did John. The audio engineer was Kwesi Lee. I'm Regina Barber.

[John Hamilton]

And I'm John Hamilton.

[Regina Barber]

Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from npr.

[Zoo Staff/Other Interviewees]

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