Return of Alpha Gal

**Lulu Miller** (0:00)
Hello, it's Lulu.

**Lulu Miller** (0:01)
It's summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, which means the ticks, the ticks are out.
And also the barbecues are out, you know, hot dogs, hamburgers, ticks and burning meat, which made me think of today's episode, which combines the two into a wildly eerie, scary, but perhaps hopeful, ethically complex tale. It's one of my all time favorite Radiolabs, and we're going to play it for you today. It is 10 years old, but lucky for you. It has a pretty thrilling scientific update at the end. So here we go. Wait, wait, you're listening. Okay.

**Lulu Miller** (0:44)
You're listening to Radiolab. Radiolab.

**Peter Smith** (0:48)
From WNYC.

**Lulu Miller** (0:52)
Rewind.

**Amy Pearl** (0:59)
Good. Okay.

**Dan Pashman** (1:04)
Is your mic on?

**Amy Pearl** (1:05)
Yeah. I'm getting, this is making me nervous.
Maybe I should get my EpiPen.

**Dan Pashman** (1:11)
Are you allergic to radio greatness?

**Amy Pearl** (1:14)
Not that I know of. I haven't been really exposed to it yet. Anyway, let's go.

**Dan Pashman** (1:19)
Are we rolling? We're good? We're going? We are rolling. Okay.

**Robert Krollwitz** (1:24)
I'm Robert Krollwitz. This is Radiolab. And today we're going to begin with a conversation between Dan Pashman, host of a podcast here at WNYC called The Sporkful. It's about food and Amy Pearl.

**Dan Pashman** (1:36)
Amy.

**Amy Pearl** (1:36)
Yes.

**Robert Krollwitz** (1:37)
A digital producer here at the station who likes food. And the conversation they had was about something that happened to Amy which she never expected, certainly didn't want, and yet it could happen to any of us at any time.

**Dan Pashman** (1:51)
So years ago before any of this happened to you, just tell me what was your relationship with meat?

**Amy Pearl** (1:57)
My relationship with meat. Yeah. Well, you know how when you're little and your mom is like, you can have any special dinner for your birthday? My dinner was meatballs. And she was like, except meatballs, they're so hard to make, so it was pot roast.
And then Peter Luger, you know Peter Luger's.

**Dan Pashman** (2:16)
Famous steakhouse in Brooklyn.

**Amy Pearl** (2:17)
Yeah.
I used to go there quite often and I lived there, and I have a Peter Luger credit card. So.

**Dan Pashman** (2:23)
Are those hard to get?

**Amy Pearl** (2:25)
You know, I don't know how they give them out, and nobody seems to have one. I don't think they give them out anymore. But I mean, I was very into Peter Luger. I was living in Williamsburg, and it just, it opened at like one o'clock every day, and you could just walk in at one. They had an amazing bar. There's no tablecloths on the table. These old German waiters. They bring out your porterhouse for three. They put a little plate upside down, and then put the big platter on top of it, so it's tilted and all the juice runs to the end. And then they have the special double spoon thing that they somehow scoop juice onto your steak. And so good.
And also the smell of burning fat from a hamburger.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:08)
What about hot dogs?

**Amy Pearl** (3:10)
Oh my god, I love hot dogs so much. When you bite into them, and they're like clack, and have a snap. And having a weenie roast out in the open air, it's just like, oh god, it's so good.
Anyway, I was always very into meat. What changed? Oh my god, it was terrible. It was, what happened was, I was having this beautiful, it was springtime, I was having a beautiful leg of lamb with some neighbors, and we like put it on the grill, and it was just a delicious, beautiful dinner. And I had served with it some ramps that I foraged in my mom's yard.

**Robert Krollwitz** (3:50)
A ramp, by the way, is just a wild onion.

**Amy Pearl** (3:52)
And so we had this delicious meal, and then I went home, and I was going to sleep at midnight a few hours later, and I just felt weird. I was like, God, something's wrong. I feel really anxious, something's wrong with me. And I went in the bathroom, and I look in the mirror, and my face was all weird looking, and I kept laying down, and be like, I'll just sleep it off, whatever it is. But every time I lay down, I felt like I was gonna faint, and I was like, prop myself up, and I was like, oh, God, I was having terrible stomach cramps, and just like a weird feeling of impending doom. But just like anybody, I'm just like, just get a good night's sleep, this will pass. I like splash a little water on my face. I mean, I don't know what made me think this, but I thought maybe a snail, a tiny snail was on one of the ramps that I ate, and it was poisoning me somehow. You know, snails, I mean, they're probably poisonous.