Today you’ll learn about how doctors are successfully using double lung transplants for cancer patients, how blue whale behavior changes with environmental conditions, and how the history of the polygraph machine may have been based on a lie.
Today you’ll learn about how doctors are successfully using double lung transplants for cancer patients, how blue whale behavior changes with environmental conditions, and how the history of the polygraph machine may have been based on a lie.
Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/double-lung-transplant-blue-whale-behavior-lie-detector
Double Lung Transplant
Blue Whale Behavior
Lie Detector
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[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today you’ll learn about how doctors are successfully using double lung transplants for lung cancer patients, how blue whale behavior changes with environmental conditions, and how the history of the polygraph machine may have been based on a lie.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Fifty-five year old Al Khoury of Chicago was losing his battle with stage 4 lung cancer, and doctors had just told him to spend time with his loved ones, because he only had a few months left, at most. But he wasn’t ready to give up. He convinced his doctors to try a novel new therapy, and guess what…
NATE: It worked?
CALLI: Today, he’s alive and well.
NATE: So…how did they do it? What’s this new therapy?
CALLI: It’s actually a procedure that’s been around for a long time, it’s just that doctors didn’t think it could work for lung cancer like this. Believe it or not, the treatment that made Al Khoury cancer free…was a double lung transplant.
NATE: That seems so obvious. To treat some other cancers - like breast cancer - they often remove the cancer, right? Like, why wouldn’t they have tried that before with the lungs?
CALLI: It’s a great question, and to understand it, you need to know a little bit about lung cancer. But first and foremost, you’re not going to make it too long without lungs, so simply removing two cancerous lungs isn’t a solution.
NATE: Right. Good point.
CALLI: And it’s been fairly common to replace a single lung at a time with lung cancer patients, but with that comes huge risks. Cancer cells in the lung you keep can infect the new lung, of course.
NATE: That would be a waste.
CALLI: Right. And what’s worse, the incision from surgery can actually let cancer cells seep into the bloodstream, which could cause it to spread, leaving the patient in worse shape than they started in.
NATE: So if an incision from a single lung transplant can let cancer into the bloodstream, wouldn't that also happen in a double lung transplant? Sounds like it could be an even bigger problem in a double?
CALLI: That is exactly why this approach had never been tried before, and it is where Covid comes in.
NATE: Covid?
CALLI: During the pandemic, doctors attempted double-lung transplants as a last ditch effort to save patients dying from Covid. The risk was the same here - diseased, bacteria-filled lungs could easily spread infection or disease to the rest of the body. But in the case of Covid, they honed their technique and learned that it was possible to do without spreading disease to the rest of the body. The first double lung transplants for Covid patients were done at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. And guess where Al Khouri was seeking treatment?
NATE: No way. Northwestern Medicine in Chicago?
CALLI: Yep. Al Khouri heard about the transplants and made his case to Dr. Ankit Bharat, the chief of thoracic surgery and the director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute, who led the team that performed the transplants on Covid patients. Dr. Bharat agreed to give it a try. Al is now cancer-free, living a relatively normal life. And Dr. Bharat has performed the surgery again on another patient, and plans to continue this treatment for other patients like Al and track their progress so that other hospitals can soon carry out the treatment, as well.
NATE: So…is lung cancer…solved?
CALLI: Not quite. In order to qualify for this, the cancer has to be totally confined to the lungs. If it has already spread, this procedure won’t add significantly to life expectancy. And the patient has to be healthy enough to survive surgery and to handle the immunosuppressive therapies that come after a transplant.
NATE: But that’s still amazing progress.
CALLI: Dr. Bharat says that even if they can give a few patients a new life, it’s a profound improvement.
NATE: So something good actually came from Covid.
CALLI: I don’t want to give Covid credit. Let’s agree to just say something good came from the doctors who treated Covid.
NATE: Deal.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: For years, it’s been hypothesized that whales found in a region near New Zealand were… a little different than other whales. But now, we know they definitely are… because they told us themselves.
CALLI: I know we talked about how we’re developing new ways to communicate directly with plants and animals recently, but has there been some kind of breakthrough between then and now I’m not aware of? How did they tell us themselves?
NATE: Through whalesong! Which as we’ve discussed before is the sound whales make to communicate. Back in 2013, there was a theory that there was a blue whale feeding ground in the South Taranaki Bight, which is a stretch of sea between New Zealand’s north and south islands. And in 2018, it was confirmed - along with the fact that the blue whale population here was genetically different from other blue whales. But there was something interesting the researchers noticed that they couldn’t quite explain: when and why the whales were communicating.
CALLI: What do you mean?
NATE: Their whalesong patterns, as well as how intensely the blue whales spoke, changed from season to season and whenever their environmental conditions changed. For example, during one particular underwater heatwave, the whales made less calls related to feeding, which maybe meant that the conditions weren’t right to forage for food right then. But what was also interesting was that these whales stayed in the region year-round. This made the team studying the whales consider an interesting question: what are these whales up to all year?
CALLI: Ooh ok that’s actually fun. What did they find?
NATE: Since the whales lived in the area year-round, a team led by associate professor Leigh Torres of Oregon State University placed five hydrophones, which are a kind of underwater microphone, in the South Taranaki Bight back in January 2016. They kept them recording semi-continuously until February 2018. When I say semi-continuously, I mean there were a few gaps when they had to gather data, but otherwise, it was recording non-stop.
CALLI: I know that whalesong in itself is pretty complex so how are they even able to know what it is the whales are singing about?
NATE: Well, there are a lot of different types of sounds a whale makes, and those sounds are broken down into subcategories with labels like A, B, C, D, and so on that are linked to their behavior. Most of the other whale sounds are what we consider “whalesong”: 15 to 20 seconds of a single call or phrase. What I wanna highlight here is that the researchers found that the whales’ D calls were related to upwelling in the spring and summer.
CALLI: Hold on. Two questions. First, what are D calls?
NATE: The D call usually lasts less than five seconds, so much shorter than the examples I just talking about, and it’s believed to be some kind of social call between two or more whales.
CALLI: Whales Talking: the Oscar crossover movie I never knew I needed. Alright, second question: what is upwelling?
NATE: Upwelling is when cooler water from deeper down gets pushed up toward the surface; it’s nutrient-rich, inspiring krill to gather together, which blue whales will then feast on. These whales’ D calls were way more intense whenever upwelling was strong, which happened more commonly in the spring and summer. Those recordings ALSO showed that the whales’ more complex songs, which are made by males whenever they’re… feeling a little frisky, followed a seasonal pattern. Only, unlike the D calls, the breeding calls were made most often during the fall.
CALLI: Okay! What does all that mean for the whales?
NATE: All the evidence pulled from the hydrophone, especially the evidence relating to them breeding, could actually influence their national threat classification status. See, blue whales are the largest of all whales. You can find them in practically every ocean across the world except the Arctic. As we’ve talked about before, their populations were practically decimated by commercial whaling, and today, they’re listed as an endangered species under the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species. But another thing to keep in mind is that THESE specific blue whales aren’t technically considered threatened under the IUCN’s Red List; they’re considered Data Deficient, which means there isn’t enough information for a proper assessment of conservation status. What these findings suggest is that the whales’ status could change, which would change how these communities are monitored and supported. There’s just one problem.
CALLI: Of course there is. What’s that?
NATE: There’s not actually any evidence of blue whales breeding out in the wild. Torres says that’s hard to observe directly, which can make finding this evidence a little challenging. But that being said, she says the increase in whalesong associated with mating is a HUGE indication that this could change. It’s also a foundation for the next set of questions this team are looking into; questions like, how do changing ocean conditions and human activity in the area impact the New Zealand blue whales? Hopefully, this research will reinforce the need for the blue whales to be constantly monitored - so we can ensure they have long, happy lives.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: If I were to hook you up to a polygraph right now… would you be able to honestly tell me you’re having a good time hanging out with me?
NATE: You don’t need to give me a lie detector test. Look me in the eyes and I’ll tell you: absolutely not.
CALLI: Hey!
NATE: No, I’m kidding, of course I’m having a blast right now!
CALLI: Okay, thank you, good! Because it turns out that even if I hooked you up to a polygraph, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t even work the way you think it might.
NATE: The lie detector doesn’t work?! But it’s the thing all criminals are most scared of in movies! …are you telling me movies would lie to me about lies???
CALLI: I hate to break it to you, but the movies lied, Nate. This comes from a study by reporter Amit Katwala for the website Wired, who recently wrote a book called “Tremors in the Blood” that focuses on the history of the polygraph test’s earliest days - and how it came to exist in the first place.
NATE: The answer’s pretty obvious on WHY law enforcement would want a device that can tell whether a criminal is telling the truth or not, but how did the test come to exist in the first place?
CALLI: Back in the 1920s, a 29-year-old cop from Berkeley named John Larson came across a research paper by a Harvard psych major named William Moulton Marston, who had developed a new method to figure out whether somebody was lying or not by measuring a person’s vitals. Marston’s theory came about when he noticed his peers’ heart rate and blood pressure rose anytime he asked them to tell a lie on purpose. Larson told the Berkeley police chief, August Vollmer, about this study, and Vollmer tasked him with expanding the Marston method into something a bit more objective.
NATE: Objective how?
CALLI: Marston’s rudimentary lie detector was literally just a blood pressure cuff and a stopwatch. Vollmer wanted something that actually recorded the suspect’s emotions, so that the recording could later be used as evidence of guilt. Larson got to work, and a few weeks later he brought Vollmer his device: the “cardio-pneumo-psychograph,” later shortened to the polygraph test, or what you’ve been calling the lie detector test. How the first polygraph worked was that Larson would wrap up a suspect’s arm and chest with a number of rubber tubes, which would swell up and contract based on how fast the suspect’s heart was beating. Those movements would then inspire two pens to make scratch marks on a scrolling piece of paper to measure the suspect’s heart rate.
NATE: Kinda surprising that this still sounds a lot like a modern polygraph test.
CALLI: To some extent; Larson’s device was VERY simple, and Amit Katwala describes it as an “ugly device…attached to a wooden board.” No matter how it looked, Larson was pretty confident that his device worked after testing it on a few colleagues, but knew the polygraph would need to be used in a REAL case to actually be put to the test. Which is where Chief Vollmer enters the scene again: he knew about a case involving a series of robberies at The University of California, Berkeley that had been going on since spring 1921. Everything from dresses to textbooks, from cash to diamond rings had been stolen. The police had identified a few suspects, many of whom were college women living on campus, but didn’t have too many promising leads to go off of… which is where the polygraph test would come in.
NATE: Interesting origin for the polygraph test. How did it go?
CALLI: It went… interestingly. Larson got all of the college women together and had them sign up for his test. He hooked each woman up to his machine in front of a judge, and then asked each woman a number of yes-or-no questions, all while recording how their bodies responded to the questions. The quiz began with a number of unrelated control questions, such as “are you feeling good today?” or “is the weather to your liking?” before he dived into questions related to the case. If you know anything about how the polygraph test works, this might sound familiar to you, since it’s still pretty close to how it works today. But things started to go a little south during Larson’s final set of questions.
NATE: What do you mean?
CALLI: He started questioning a woman named Helen Graham, who was a little older than her peers, who showed no emotion during the initial questions. Larson bluntly asked her, “Did you take [the diamond] ring?” To which Helen said no. But Larson noticed a spike in the chart, and told Graham that the test said otherwise. Graham began to panic and yell at Larson before bursting out of the chair to break the polygraph before being restrained by police. After this, Graham became the police’s main suspect. Other college students spoke about Graham’s supposedly suspicious behavior, and eventually, Graham was brought in for questioning by Larson.
NATE: What did they find?
CALLI: After a grueling 12 hour interrogation, Graham broke down in tears and admitted it was possible she took every item in her sleep, stopping just short of confessing. They held another interrogation a few days later that involved the polygraph test again, but this time, there was another officer with Larson and Graham who threatened her with prison time at San Quentin if she didn’t confess. It was only then that Graham admitted to stealing everything, offering to sign a confession under the condition that she wouldn’t be prosecuted for her crimes or named publicly. The police agreed, she signed a confession, got her demands, and the polygraph test had its first crime solved.
NATE: We know her name so I don’t know how much that demand worked out for her. Honestly, those sound like pretty heavy demands for somebody who robbed a college.
CALLI: As Larson worked more and more cases, he became horrified when he realized that any change in someone’s blood pressure doesn’t actually mean somebody's lying. It just means they’re experiencing stress - something the act of being hooked up to a lie detector is proven to trigger. And here’s the thing: after the whole ordeal, Graham dropped out of college and moved back home to her parents’ farm in Kansas, where she sent Larson a letter saying she had actually given a false confession and had been worn down by the grueling hours of interrogation.
NATE: This is an interesting story. What’s the main takeaway here, though?
CALLI: For over 100 years since this possible false confession, the polygraph test has become a staple in police stations and government buildings across the world. Since practically the start of its existence, there’s been criticism of its ineffectiveness, but the polygraph remains a go-to for everything from questioning suspected criminals to screening potential government workers, and each test has its own unique set of flaws. For instance, control questions are usually seen as being biased based on whoever is providing the test, and it’s not uncommon for suspected criminals to be “worn down,” so to speak, by marathon 12 hour or more questioning sessions.
NATE: That sounds rough. That’s also sorta weird, though. Why would we still use polygraphs if they’re not fully accurate?
CALLI: Because even if the tests are inaccurate, suspects think they are indeed accurate. There’s a good possibility that the very process of being hooked up to a lie detector test is enough to make most people tell the truth, or as we’ve seen, confess to a crime they think somebody is accusing them of doing. Nevertheless, there’s not actually a consensus right now on whether polygraph tests work or not. A study performed back in 2020 that researched a number of polygraph methods made it a point to mention that each of the studies it used for source material didn’t consider polygraphing to be scientifically reliable. So long story short, moving forward, we should trust the science we ignored 100 years ago, and maybe find an alternative to polygraphing in the field of “lie detection.”
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
CALLI: There are a ton of risks to any transplant operation, nevermind one that replaces both of a patient’s lungs. BUT doctors at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago used their time treating Covid patients to be able to eventually perform the first double lung transplant on a patient suffering from lung cancer. The procedure is still in its early stages but hopefully, as we learn more and more, there is some hope for those needing a transplant.
NATE: The New Zealand blue whale was recently discovered to be genetically different from all other blue whales - but how different? A new study out of Oregon reveals that the difference is quite stark, with the New Zealand whales living in the region year-round unlike other blue whales. This has allowed us unprecedented insight into the mating habits of the blue whale - and how they might be affected by changing marine temperatures!
CALLI: The polygraph test sure is bad at telling whether people are lying nowadays, huh? Well, fun fact: it’s ALWAYS been inaccurate. But a recent study from the website Wired has revealed that the very first polygraph confession may have been a false confession - meaning that the entire history of this machine is built on a lie that has spread all over the world. Newer research suggests finding an alternative, but that won’t take away the fact that this machine has existed for a century with no viable alternative in sight.