Meet the Placenta | Radiolab Podcast
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- Опубликовано: 1 сен 2021
- From the Radiolab podcast: Meet the placenta, the womb mate we’ve all had, but barely know, and why it's essential for our survival.
We all think we know the story of pregnancy. Sperm meets egg, followed by nine months of nurturing, nesting, and quiet incubation. But this story isn’t the nursery rhyme we think it is. In a way, it’s a struggle, almost like a tiny war. And right on the front lines of that battle is another major player on the stage of pregnancy that not a single person on the planet would be here without. An entirely new organ: the placenta.
In this episode we take you on a journey through the 270-day life of this weird, squishy, gelatinous orb, and discover that it is so much more than an organ. It’s a foreign invader. A piece of meat. A friend and parent. And it’s perhaps the most essential piece in the survival of our kind.
This episode was reported by Heather Radke and Becca Bressler, and produced by Becca Bressler and Pat Walters, with help from Matt Kielty and Maria Paz Gutierrez. Additional reporting by Molly Webster.
Special thanks to Diana Bianchi, Julia Katz, Sam Behjati, Celia Bardwell-Jones, Mathilde Cohen, Hannah Ingraham, Pip Lipkin, and Molly Fassler.
Illustration by Hallye Webb.
Video produced by Kim Nowacki & Sahar Baharloo.
This episode of Radiolab was originally published on podcast platforms with the title "Everybody’s Got One."
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Amazing story but the cherry on top was the toddlers voice taking us out!
This is an extraordinary story. I always thought of my fetus as a well loved parasite, same as I was. This is full circle. 🙏🏿
"Well-loved parasite" - very well put! :D
Nice!! I know much more about placentas than I did for the past 68 years before today, and I've even grown one of my own before, too. It was lucky for me that I got in the car to pick up burritos a short time ago and heard the opening part of the program on NPR, because this was very interesting!
Yeah in all those birthing scenes from movies and tv they never show a placenta! I've had 4 babies but I never really knew much about the placentas. My Dr asked if they could keep one for research and I signed it away, but I never had any idea what all it could be used for, let alone all that it does. Truly fascinating!
Oh that is interesting. I had a baby in the later 1980s, and I sort of had a vague idea that the purpose of a placenta was to somehow assist in feeding the baby and disposing of waste through blood circulation, but had no idea what it looked like and I was curious. I figured that realistically the nice, neat diagram drawings I'd seen weren't doing them any justice. I might still not know (until google came along, of course), but after my baby was out and I'd seen him briefly, and then they got the placenta and they were both whisked away in different directions, I asked if I could see the placenta. After a minute a nurse brought it over to me so I could take a look. I wonder too, what sort of research your Doctor (or whoever it was designated for) might have performed with yours.
What an extraordinary story you have told! Helps me feel amazed and grateful that I even exist. It is amazing to think of all that has happened so we can exist as we do. We are part of something so great, terrible and beautiful at the same time. :-)
This was a fascinating story. I just heard it December 2023.
Hey, Radiolab, thanks for this episode!
This is to say the least fascinating I've listened to it twice. It's a shame more people didn't listen to this.
i'll never get tired of hating the radiolab intro.
“Pregnant person” such a tragedy.
See so many placentas working in the lab. We will let you take them home directly from the hospital. Once it gets to the lab, it has formalin on it and you cannot take that home as it is a hazard. Yes, bury it. Do not eat it! Gross.
Pregnant person? Really? That show as gone woke, bring back Jadd ans Robert! Save the podcast!🎉