Hard I know I came up with how do you can write this in an email so that it was communicated to you I don't know Ok so here's my here's my question if I could walk into Bill and Ted's time machine and go back as far as possible step out and say a word in English what word could I say that the person who is hearing me would understand exactly what it means because the same sound in meaning have been retained across time so what is the oldest word that I can say in English that the furthest possible person from a totally different type of culture like they would say I'd say the word and they'd be like. Yes I understand you don't know how they would respond because I don't know their language but they would they would know what I'm saying right and they would know what I'm saying how what is that word does that make sense yeah I think that's it I think it's great oh great. What an odd question what is the oldest English word that hasn't changed yet and I asked Jason do you have a guess oh he was like maybe something basic like a freak like something just elemental grass dirt water that's probably where it would go. RINGBACK So I just started calling around Sara can you hear me Tara lol. 1st person Hi Ok I came here was Sarah Thomas and professor of linguistics at the University of Michigan and she told me I can get you 6000 years back 1000 b.c. Ok and that's Yes which is when you had this language known as proto Indoeuropean proto wonder European you know the ultimate ancestor of English and all its relative English and all its relatives are known as Indo-European languages so proto European is like the great great great grandparents of Latin Greek German you know most languages in India all over the world thanks to colonisation and who spoke it by the way what we call the proto in the Europeans. So we're talking about like tribal forest people from the so they would have been people in Eastern Europe near the Black Sea sort of fisherman a little bit hunting let's let's go with that let's say that. And so how long was this again 6000 years and I think my best guess for word that would have been understood way back. Is the word is and why did she think that was the oldest one so the way that she was thinking about it was certain consonants like key and k. Over 6000 years changed a lot but with like 6 didn't change very much it's just hung around but there tell me that the way you would have pronounced it is is a ski s.-t. That's not the say it's not the sail I know I know it's not the same. RINGBACK Though it kept calling around on your show my name scribbled on got ahold of another linguist so you know university and I work on language change and language documentation and things like that Ok great and so my question and she was like Ok how about of word for me. Yep it's simple it's elemental and it turns out that 6000 years ago me in pro in the European was there and then no I know. RINGBACK So. Next up is Robert Hey Robert can you hear me Robert linguist at the University of Toronto when you hear me I said Yes I'm here you know Ok you're here you know and Robert's word was sacked as a c-K. You know combine the whole thing then which would have been pronounced socket. RINGBACK Brought up another guy do you mind just introducing yourself right my name is your slugger much of or slobber Gorbachev's linguist at the University of Chicago I came up with a few words that really have not changed that much so the English words $36.00 Eat an apple Yes And so what would those like proto Indoeuropean pronunciations be yeah they're basically the same so for example 3 is and 6 is whack and Apple is. Easy and now none of them yeah well maybe the answer is there is no word to survive so they're just going to get as close as they can well this is. The fancy way that well I can answer your question exactly but I can get under the under the cloud that covers this subject which is a not super satisfying right I know what I want isn't as a very precise you know literally the exact same word and so I thought like well maybe I can't go back 6000 years but I can go back like 600 years or something right and so how's it going going wonderfully and I got in touch with this guy Andrew Raven professor of English at the University of Louisville He's an expert in the Anglo-Saxon world literature and law of the period in England pretty much between 51066 very modern Now Ok What's what's the word Yeah well so I asked Andrew don't get what I was thinking my initial thought was over word must be an old English word like so much of our language obviously comes from Old English the 1000 most common words in modern English Wellfleet 80 percent or so come to us directly from Old English so I thought gee it has to be old English but then I started thinking what if. Not that what if it were something all the way back with Kroto Indo-European No no we do already done that to me at Syria because Andrew went about this a different way. He the way it was thinking about this is he was looking for an English word that sounds the same or really similar in a bunch of other Indo-European languages because he could find that word that was shared amongst these languages that it would it would mean that they were all holding on to something from proto European and I remember that one of the things that many think the European languages together similar words for Bob are. Though Latin pop her old English as bad or more. German back there. And in many also realize that mother German Polish is the same way fairly consistent so he went to his dictionary of european a looked up father and mother and they're not quite the same mother is something like mother and father is something like Potter but what he did find is that in the dictionary right under the words mother and father were the 2 other words Mama and Papa Mama and Papa Mama and Papa Mama and Papa So yeah it was almost you know almost certainly if we got into a time machine and went back to Eastern Europe back on the Black Sea in the 4th millennium b.c. And we said Mama or papa they would have understood us. That's just a little who. God are you raining on my mind. Of course when I think of it myself of course it would be yeah sure sure it's like baby's 1st words obviously but the thing that did surprise me that I thought was really cool in talking to Andrew is that the words Mama and Papa occur in virtually every language so obviously all the languages that come from proto. To European and French Norwegian Latin mamma an Italian pop us or a post grandfather but also you'll see similar some patterns in Chinese mama and Baba in Korean oppa like it's not just Indo-European languages the sounds show up in Swahili in Eskimo in Hebrew Arabic the technical term for this is there when we stick universals they just go right across the board so you just came up with an answer that's like there for everybody yeah you find these sounds in a vast majority of languages and why use that because you know Andrew Andrew says that no one's really quite sure it may be that the m. Sound because it only involves the lips and the vocal chords same for pop of the piece ound is just the ticket easy for babies it's been guessed that perhaps the lip movements involved in saying mama are similar to with movements involved in latching onto woman's breasts. Ultimately we don't really know why really the babies know but they're not telling. But you know with the very fact that the 1st words we learn to say is babies are also the oldest words that's actually a really what we thought. They called Jason to tell him what I learned is that is that where they come from are we saying mama and papa because those are sounds babies can make yes the easiest sounds they can make it big Zachary That's awesome. That's really awesome you know it's what's so cool is that I was thinking at 1st about basic trees and stuff but this is this but actually that wasn't basic enough the most basic thing is the. First relationship that you can understand and the 1st sound that you can make about it. That's the most basic it gets. Bressler. And Kilty produced that story with her. What's funny is that most the time I feel like Dad comes 1st for some reason does it yeah shouldn't Why no I mean it's always a great it's always like at this classic moment of offense where the mom's like what you saw there Him 1st this is what having me was that she was like oh you got really mentioned really you're going to go to him 1st not to the person who birthed you and who is feeding you. And as I did. When I look to you for that and then I was a sheepish prize like he doesn't know what he's saying. Any a let's go to break. Yes let's shall let's do the show let's do that let's shall. 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Dot org And thank you. Jad Robert Radiolab So we're going to continue and I will cavalcade of questions and answers and the next one up comes from producer Pat Walters Hello Emily are you there I'm here already so a few months ago I called this tree Scientists time Emily burns and I'm the science director for Save the redwoods league Ok I have so many questions about trees for you. But I really just had one question so I I read this little tiny article in the spring I think which had a fact in it that really shocked me in the fact was that redwood trees have 12 times as much d.n.a. As humans like Is that true well it looks like it is turning out to be 8 times bigger than the human genome Ok So 12 is close a little over estimated maybe is not a reliable source but the idea of these trees would have so much more d.n.a. That us just kind of like twisted my brain up in 7 different ways it's pretty crazy because you usually think of genes as having something to do with complexity Exactly so if you're Mozart. When you're a tall tree like who's going to have the most genes right like a redwood tree is basically just a big pine tree. So like what is the all that extra d.n.a. Even doing well I'm not a geneticist yet. First conservation but one thing Emily was able to tell me is that I was missing the forest for the trees so to speak and why is that well so I mean he told me that coast Redwood while it does have a very large genome there are tons of things that have way more d.n.a. That us kind of my valley. You just gotta know how to ask just do it like a rundown Ok all right yeah I can do that so an onion has 5 times as much and. There are some salamanders with 40 times as much already tough Wow I've got a list here things like one fish is lungfish a cockroach a new. Lobster lobster just lies at the bottom of the cold sea in the most sense even worse because at the top of the list arguably the organism with the most d.n.a. In the world 50 times more d.n.a. Than a human is. Not. Looking little Japanese flower that's deeply strange and I know it's puzzling this by the way is biologist Ryan Gregory professor at the University of 12 in Canada and my area of study is why certain salamanders have 40 times more d.n.a. Then you and I do in mind told me like no one knows exactly why that's the case well that's why I still have a job is because this is something we're trying to figure out but according to Ryan here's what we do know so in your genome and I say yours I mean that and mine to you on that on a single Us take the human genome your genome is about one and a half to 2 percent genes only about one to 2 percent of your d.n.a. Is involved in making the stuff that makes up you that's the stuff we call genes now there's another couple percent that we now think are there to turn those genes on and off which is important but the vast majority of your d.n.a. Is kind of accumulated detritus could be a gene that sort of mutates and degrades and no longer works it might be random redundant copies of other d.n.a. For example it might be 80808088 1000000 times some of it is bits of virus that became essentially stuck in the genome and so now they're passed on from parent to offspring but the key thing is that all these little random bits of d.n.a. They're just sort of hanging around they're not really doing anything which Ryan says is how you can end up with a huge genome even though you're just a tree or a frog or a worm or even a single cell that's right but if they're not doing anything to help me why well that they would be doing things to help themselves help them see. So it's a little bit like if you think about the bacteria in your gut most of them are probably just there because you're a nice warm bag of nutrients that is a great place to live if you're a bacterium that would be kind of the same sort of thing that might be happening in the genome which is but they're not like Alive right like they're well or are they I don't well I don't I don't know I think it depends a lot on your definition of alive so I mean are viruses alive that that's a philosophical question that is pretty difficult but the shift that you have to kind of make in thinking about the genome is less that it's it's basically the recipe for making you or the blueprint for a human or any of those kinds of things and think of it. Almost more like a little ecosystem a jungle with all kinds of different entities doing their own thing. But. The one thing that they all do is use us to make copies of themselves so in this vast ecosystem in some part of your d.n.a. You get some ancient priors that just keeps copying itself a little further down the line. Another one doing the same thing. And then in some other part of your d.n.a. 808-080-8080 extension 8080 got this really weird chunk just copying itself again and again and again and again eat almost every look you have these bits of d.n.a. Just copying themselves over and over again and filling up your cells with useless d.n.a. It's like a hitchhiker gets into your car and you turn around and suddenly is that of Fred there's now Fred and Fred Yeah and then turn around again this Fred and Fred and Fred right I mean Fred and Fred and Fred and Fred and that's pretty much how you end up with these super huge genomes and sometimes that can be a problem Ok So Ryan told me about this particular salamander certain group of salamanders called little glossy new is part of a very large family of salamanders that live all over the western half of North America and I'm in their village in the u.s. At some point a long long time ago something happened in the environment that made the sound menders get littler which is fine except for this one problem they have big genomes and the more d.n.a. There is the bigger the cell is so more d.n.a. Bigger cells because all the d.n.a. Has to go in the nucleus of every single cell so as the sound in a shaking smaller and smaller and smaller their bodies are getting smaller and their heads are getting smaller but because they have these huge genomes they tend to have big neurons and now you're trying to cram a whole bunch of big neurons into a tiny little skull Well you're not going to fit as many and so relative to other salamanders that haven't miniaturized their. Vision starts to degrade slightly their ability to look around in the world and distinguish like what's an insect and what's a leaf gets worse until they can't do the kind of visual predation that you normally see in their closer relatives and instead they've shifted to being lie in wait predators basically having a huge genome made the sound enters get down. And I couldn't help but think about you know like all the extra stuff you accumulate so full of stuff it's almost hard to get in and close the door behind you but like my partner and I have the storage closet that's just packed with crap a watering can a broom and a car battery Hile button down shirts want a little bit too small once it's kind of boring it is very uncomfortable getting rid of it a lot of it I don't even know why we haven't and there's like a 3 and a half foot tall roll of brown paper several unfinished art projects are in a break. On top of that is a flower pot or air conditioners Oh there's another backpack box I remember when I was in my twenty's and like everything I owned fit in a couple of suitcases I was late agile Freeney but now Tupperware bucket full of paint charcoal I'm used fabric I have so much of this stuff at least you don't have a closet in which shoes replicate themselves over and over again but honestly sometimes it feels that way and you know I want to complain and I feel very lucky to have all of these possessions but sometimes the pile up starts to feel like a bird it does it actually feels like a bird like I feel like I'm going down the Salamander road just getting bigger dumber slower bigger and Dumber and slower but there are definitely surprises but then I talk to scientists or Carl Zimmer and he made me feel a little bit better about all the extra. Junk in my closet. In myself literally none of us would be here if not for that one gene because he says there's one little bit of d.n.a. That climbed out of the junk closet and made all of us possible what is it well you've actually heard about it before really special about mammals is that female mammals or at least placental mammals carry young around inside the body David Quammen told us about it in a piece we did a while ago called infective heredity and it's basically this gene that makes a protein which helps make some cells these very special layers of cells in placenta cells that let it grab onto the mothers and pull nutrients in to feed the embryo it carries nutrients in it protects the fetus from the mother's immune system and now when we talk to David about it and how did we get that good idea we got that good idea from a virus we're sort of amazed that this gene had come from a virus but what I learned from Carl is that this little Gene sat in the junk closet of our d.n.a. For millions of years doing nothing making little copies of itself not helping me at all until suddenly millions of years later there's a mutation and that little useless strip of d.n.a. Got repurposed co-opted it took on a new job for us that amazing and now we've evolved a dependence on it so that we have to. Be Us without it it's got to pick a picture frame. Guitar case. You never know if there are no better take the motto of this room it's like you never know how this is what is this piece of the drafting table that. Where's the traffic to. Do we bring it back to pins. Within the texture and. Then you have. Ok we have one more big little question for you but 1st we're going to take a break and we want to urge you if you are enjoying this program and if you enjoy the other programs you hear on the station Please consider helping us out supporting public radio and make a support 10 Jubal with a financial donation keep listening to find out now how you can help support this station you can support the station by giving us a call at 719-473-4801 or opening a browser clicking on orgy and hitting that donate button in the top right hand corner of the screen it's easy it just takes a couple of seconds and you'll know you've done your part to support programs like the ones like the one that you are listening to right now on k. Or c c Again that number 719-473-4801. Orgy I'm Kyle Cunningham being joined in the studio by Jeannette home and Jeanette I think you've got a stack of pledge forms here to think people it's been a it's been a crazy morning so far so the good news is that this stack of pledge forms seems to be growing and the bad news is it's going to take us the rest of our shift to thank all of these people so but that's not a bad thing is it want to say things to Suzanne Amanda Stephanie and Shara all taking advantage of our promotion this morning thank you very much for joining us here at 91.5 r.c.c. That's right I'd like to think Valerie from Albert Colorado. Pam from Looks like Colorado Springs and Elise also from Colorado Springs also to Peggy from Colorado Springs just too many people to think this morning thank you all so much for contributing to public radio this morning add your voice to the mix. Name on the radio thanks on the radio and do your part to support public radio in southern Colorado please give us a call 719-473-4801 or online at k. Or c. C dot org I think something that that we kind of proved this morning with with our dollar a month pledge promotion was that I think often people have this notion that that the amount that they could give won't matter because it's not big enough well really what matters is your support and what matters is all of us coming together to share the cost so there is no amount too small and we've seen evidence of that with the so many platforms that we have in the studio right now thank you for helping us this morning the contributions of any amount are important because the listener support not federal tax dollars make up the largest and most reliable source of our funding your contribution makes care c.-c. a Vital and independent source for news information and entertainment no matter the amount your gift to care c.c. Makes a big difference give us a call and make your pledge this afternoon 719-473-4801 or care c c dot org That's right Jeanette 719-473-4801 or the numbers to call or you can go online to care org And you know something that our listeners may not know is that Carrie when you when you when you contribute to care see see your money goes in a lot of different directions it goes to the nuts and bolts of the actual radio infrastructure you know microphones soundboards screens things that you need to actually run a radio station of course it also goes towards personnel but it also goes towards most of it in fact goes towards the programming that you hear on carry Sisi to the tune of about $400000.00 a year. 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C dot org The Open House going on here 912 North Weber for just about another hour and a half we have some cake to share from Little London bakery and a lot of your favorite hosts and D.J.'s are here in the studio right now giving tours of the station letting you take a look at what you're investing in when you become a member of care 912 North Weber Street still time to come down and c.s. This afternoon will be here until 2 o'clock if you can't make it in person give us a call at 473-4801 or join on line at c. C dot org listener support does more than just keep on the air your support ensures the crucial balance of funding that keeps Public Radio reliable and independent that's why we're encouraging more listeners to support cares and why we tell you that your participation in this fundraiser matters more than the amount that you choose to contribute because reliability and independence are qualities that you appreciate in this radio station become a member of cares he. Today at the amount that's comfortable for you 473-4801 or care c.c. Dot org just about an hour and a half left to come visit to see where your dollars are going meet some of your favorite hosts We hope you can join us if not please give us a call 719-473-4801 or online at k. Or c. C dot org become a member today we thank you for your support need to cost 719-473-4801 Ok ready 321 hey I'm Jad up Ron I'm rubber College Radio Lab is what we're doing yes and we are in the midst of big little question Part 3 Friends and Family Edition and. Yeah we said at the beginning that these are going to give we're going to we're going to nod to the questions we can't get out of our heads and that maybe a little bit embarrassing right and if we said that last part at the beginning but we're saying now and this next one satisfies both of those great area it comes from producer any and she delivered it to producer Matt Keelty you're going it's all right now yeah so this is a McKeown to kill to you know yeah I don't know I guess maybe we could start by. Think how would you feel if I called you a neanderthal I would feel like a dummy Yeah feels like something you said to Big Dummy and then it was how I feel. And then so if I see the word Neanderthal What do you visualize like a bigger head like a big black head and a really big barrel chest and what is that what is the person doing. Punch and stuff. And. Think what. Being around I think the image that comes to mind is something Harry or. This is Evelyn Dakota I am. In the Harvard human evolutionary biology department and like most people you know researching a topic she's got a Google alert set up for the word Neanderthal about half the time it's an actual science story about me and the other half of the time. Using the word. The Minister of Finance referred to her and I I mean Anderson. Honestly makes me angry Evelyn says this image of Neanderthals is just not quite. It needs an update yes I remember you saying last week in the phone kind of the way that we think about. If you say Thaller tall I honestly never decide what I say. But I read what I've been saying. I think I feel like a bit of a whiner when I say Neanderthal I feel like such a winners. Normally Ok. Ok so like when did the wrong image get stuck in our brains Yeah so it got stuck in our brains about 100 years ago with. This. Complete. Which is very exciting and so we took a look at the skeleton and what he sees is. Something small something curled over hunched decrepid and he interprets that and sort of famous drawing based off his interpretation turns out to look like this hunched over 8 man that is where we get our ideas about one skeleton then became what we now think of today. But it turned out that this particular skeleton actually had regular art the writing. Was Oh but he just thought that's the way it was that yeah it's like imagining an alien species coming to earth and finding that the skeleton they find that represents humanity is like an 85 year old woman like in a wheelchair or something and they're like oh everybody looks like this and so tell me a little bit about what do we know about Neanderthals Now what are the things that are. We are learning how are they a valving in our minds I would say that going from that prudish Well the mammoths primitive yet it's all Quixtar Ok a lot of scientists say. More of a sense yeah it's a different flavor. And this brings me to my question. Hey so and so are a few months back a lot of nuts are and I we were making this story about these things help to sleep there's these hybrid polar bear grizzly bears. Yes we were there and while we were hanging out in the studio to have offspring. Different I was trying to explain to you just how far evolutionarily these grizzly bear simpler bears are they branch off evolutionarily like hundreds of thousands of years ago through this analogy pretty much the same time though we broke off from the Neanderthals. Meeting in the end in the you know the Crown Heights bar or something going on with the person and creating. A really specific. Kind of very silly but then isn't that just sort of it became kind of series is very weird but the question kind of stuck around my mind like we all with that funny image meeting in n.f.l. In a bar could you even relate to each other yeah well would we would we have anything in common are we at all similar to your question like if you met a young soul a bar what would it be like yeah like could we communicate what would it sound like . This is why I originally called Evelyn chica. To help me imagine this we can be so speculative here so you know 3 to step in here like scientists have it on your artist hat or whatever you want to do you have a product taking up my science and I will even though I don't even put that part in I will. Do you want to tell me you set the scene Ok so where are you Ok let's say I'm a jazz. The lights are like. The music is kind of like. Steamy. On the symbols take. Maybe it's raining outside or just going to ring and I'm shaking my brow. And I look around and I see like sort of a scattering of homo sapiens. Some are. Some are going through. A real living in a reality where it's like sometimes it's homo sapiens and sometimes your standard. This is a special night. I'm looking around and people. Come to rest here. On this one. But you got red hair red hair Yes Evelyn says they had red hair brown hair and most of it was on their head so they didn't really have much more body hair than us that is that much. And you playing it cool. You know how close are you and Lena cool I got like sidle up to him and slipped into the the stool next to him you know to her a little behind. The back of her treating our. Smallest chin brown eyes working our branding out. You know. Evelyn says that there's now evidence that Neanderthals use plants to make medicine or more incredibly They also looked after their sick and their elderly all such good people who now know you've got to get home care for good. And you're captivated you like this is something different but familiar. 5 word for. Any turns to me. And I'm like oh my gosh here we are. In my question. We're just looking at each other. I just wonder what's the next step talk talk. I mean this is a this is one of the great debates about whether it ends up having We don't technically know if they could talk it's really hard to tell just by looking at their d.n.a. And their skeletal remains but there's a check on all this stuff. Evelyn says that they had a variety of they're able to hunt them and. They had art Yes but you know that he can't sing and furthermore other really humans think that there's evidence of burying them. And you'd think like with all those things how could they have done it without communication that just makes me think they had language yeah yeah makes me think that. Ok so if they could talk well without sound like what with this guy at the bar what would his voice sound like oh goodness that some That's very interesting this is a human this is a human throat This is a Neanderthal there's actually this b.b.c. Documentary made back in 2005 where they tried to answer this question so I imagine that they wouldn't have subtle sounds it would be loud very loud over a very loud noises vocal coach and she is sort of interpret ing all the things that they then knew about Neanderthals bigger head bigger nasal cavity and fantastic chest and then giving direction to an actor so early so this voice that they create well let's just like bring it back into my parson and imagine I asked this man or Thall to have your number according to b.b.c. His response would have sounded something like this now speak. Now let's make a sound just let's make a huge Ah. I think. That that was the voice they came up with based on the science to yeah I mean it's but you know I thought like 14 years have passed you know probably the science is updated what is what is the better answer to that question today What is a more up to date version of this voice Dr Barney are you there yes and so I called up Dr Anna Bernie and from the Institute of Sound vibration research in the University of Southampton and she's one of the scientists that has tried to answer this question partly by focusing on this tiny little u. Shaped bone the Neanderthal hyoid bone the bone support the tongue that's right at the base of your time and anybody who reads murder mysteries will know about it because it's the one that cracks when you strangled so did everything really. So this bone is a very very important to bone for making sounds with your mouth and Neanderthal skeletons have it to you but it hasn't really been clear exactly how they used it did they use it in the same way we do so Dr Barney's team using a bigger modeling they sort of diddle a bunch of things to figure out where the higher bone probably sat in the neck of the Neanderthal gave us a slightly different shape a focal track to a modern human and so then they took that shape and they sort of digitally push something like breath through it process of wind what sounds are you going for we were interested in what are called the quantiles are. They Those are the ones if you can produce those and you've got the range of sounds that a modern human can make in terms of I know it's sort of like the primary colors of the basis of speech is that right that's right yes you could think of the most as an analogous to the primary color so the idea is if they could say these 3 vowels are true they would have been physically capable of some kind of language that's right Ok And what did you find so I thought. We found a very good match and. It sounds a bit dull compared to the modern human What does it sound like. A bit more like. Oh so they're like they're as become law so they still scream and yell and like the thing in the b.b.c. When asked about that she said you know based on what we know now there's no real evidence to support that I can't see why they wouldn't have the whole range of thing up to whisper and being able to show I think Ok so let's take. One last and I think that they can Evelyn Jika I think Neanderthal women are just like who did. You know right through holy the word cloak really but I think in my head and yeah there really are it's all women Wow Ok maybe I should have maybe I should meet an e.f.l. Woman across a bar who. That's my kind of right Ok so let's return to our Neanderthal it's over this time instead of a man. All right it's a woman's. Fun character switch that's right Ok And like the b.b.c. 14 years ago I brought in a voice actors enter Clarkson Let's send up actually. To be my Neanderthal How tall are you 52 and 3 quarters perfect so beforehand that actually workshopped a couple of you know bar appropriate phrases I guess you could say within a party the sound scientist am basically like what could we have this Neanderthal say. I was thinking like. Oh you're beautiful or did it hurt when you fell from heaven that kind of thing but she had kind of a different idea and she gave me this one that's kind of weird but it really does highlight that special power has a lot of in it. What will his her for his patience so I'm standing next to this woman at the bar just imagine the sister of the other guy she's a little bit shorter she's got like brown hair the same piercing brown eyes and I just say hey. And she pauses for a moment. And then she says. The cot saw we're on the Mall. The for this thing she said. There's bad there's valves in it you've got your valve and that's leaking that's almost like it's so opaque you probably become a lean in you know it's mysterious so come here often if. I'm any. That's right my name that's my name. Can I have your number. Chrono Harvey or yeah it's 123. The year I wrote. One big thing you know it's good. Night is of no facial expression it's not a dramatic difference which I think is itself dramatic right now because. I don't know I just think it's so totally amazing how similar they are to us and like the more and more we learn about them the closer and closer they become to being our very close cousins the caught fought on the mall not only a close cousin or actually a part of us for a lot of us have literally cancer cell ancestors for a lot of us we have a 2 percent in the n.f.l. D.n.a. In us and when I spoke to another scientist right in the last month. About you know I was just asking all these scientists what would be like to meet an e.f.l. At a bar she actually had this to say what we think about you and what was around today some people that keep him close all around today because if we each carry about 2 percent of the full d.n.a. In a room about extinct expression when you consider that you can I carry is 2 percent you care. So I actually amongst humans living today we we have I mean we estimate very right now but some of the boats go up as far as 70 percent of them and so cheap within homosapien living today saying if you take all the 2 percent that are in various individual humans and Adam up you get to 70 to 70 percent of the Neanderthal walking among the ghost of a Neanderthal. That is cool I know of course so when you say you know what would happen if you met a man for my boss today it's kind of a bit of a Neanderthal there by. Some that we complain so much. All right. 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Today on Planet Money we take your food questions how do you get the best salad value at a salad bar what is going on with chocolate pies in North Korea Ok so chuckle pies figure into geopolitics because while they were popular in South Korea locks up the clip but why we don't want to give the answer away just yet Ok because the story of how choko pies get into North Korea is fascinating and you'll definitely want to stay tuned for the whole story Ok gotcha I'm Guy Raz and how I built this we're going to be the man who helped launch the organic food revolution in spite of some very vocal critics who looks to me like you're just a bunch of hippies and you're just selling food to other hippies. How do you compete with these big commercial supermarkets are going to run out of business John Maggie turned a whole foods into an organic food empire it's an hour of economics and innovation on Planet Money and how I built this from n.p.r. . The Trump administration says it will deny to would be immigrants who don't have health insurance or can't prove they can pay for medical care N.P.R.'s Dan Charles reports the new requirement is supposed to take effect in a month according to a presidential proclamation most people who are applying for immigrant visas that you.