How Gene Editing Works

With the discovery of a surprising immune response in E coli bacteria, we are facing a new era of freedom from genetic mutations that lead to disease by simply and precisely editing our genes. But there is also a potential dark side to gene editing.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode of Stuff you Should Know is brought to
you by square Space. Whether you need a landing page,
a beautiful gallery, a professional blog, or an online store,
it's all possible with a square Space website. And right now,
listeners to Stuff you Should Know can start a free
trial today. Just go to squarespace dot com and enter
the offer code stuff and you'll get ten percent off
your first purchase. Squarespace set your website apart. Welcome to

(00:25):
you Stuff you Should Know friendhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. Did you see that squirreled
W Chuck Bryant picture. Yeah, it's pretty great. Big thanks

(00:48):
to Sally Ridge, illustrator Drawer of Things, who made this
one of We used to get a lot of fan
ar't have you noticed we don't get that much anymore.
Everybody take this for grana. Uh maybe no, we get
jingles now. Yeah, we get all kinds of cool stuff,
But we just used to get a ton of fan art,
and this is like one of the more delightful pieces
of pan art we've ever gotten. We posted it on

(01:10):
our Instagram actually yeah, and Facebook, So thank you Sally
for that and go to Sally rich dot net to
see her work. Uh and I'm a little squirrel, I'm
a weasel, which I don't know what to make of. Ye,
I'm just going with it. It's cute. I first saw
that too, and I was like, h r. It was
like if it was a weasel in the skunk could
be like, I really have to think it, think it through.

(01:31):
But you as a squirrel, you have a little beard
even too, it's pretty cute. It is very cute. Um,
so Chuck. We say all that to say, have you
ever seen a gene a grown gene naked? Can you?
Can you keep up with jeans and DNA and all
that nuclear tides? Do you remember this stuff? A little bit?
I had to go back and brush up on a little.

(01:53):
If you have a primer, feel free, because I have
a bit of a primer. I'll probably screwed up royally. Well.
I was gonna say, an alternate title for this show
could be called, um, how the crisper gene editing works?
Uh A, k A, what's gonna mess up? Yeah, it's
it's kind of I mean, it's sort of simple, but
it also is a little minded thing. It's simple. If

(02:13):
you are a geneticist, it's it's almost like laughably scarily simple.
But um, two people like us, it's it's like sure, um,
all right, well let's go back. Let's talk a little
bit about genes first, right to a little weasel in
a squirrel. So if you if you go into one
of those squirrels cells and you go into the nucleus

(02:33):
of the cell, you're gonna find a pair of chromosomes, right,
And these chromosomes are made up of DNA, and the
DNA itself is made up of nucleotide pairs. What is it?
G A t TC Is that right? Um? Add nine
goes to oh who is it? Yeah? Add nine goes

(02:55):
to thymine and guanine goes to cytoscene. Right, Okay, so
you got attica. Yes, And when you put these these
amino acids together, you have what are called nucleotide based
pairs and they make up d N A. Now, if
you take a strand of DNA, this thing from um
it's like a Stanford site for dummies. So it really
spoke to me. But it said it said that if

(03:16):
you could stretch out your d NA, it would be
like six ft long. Did you know that in the
nucleus of a cell. I thought you were about to
say it would be the exact exact height that you are.
That would be pretty neatly in my mind would have
been blown. Yeah, that would be something else. Wow, maybe
it is because I'm about six ft Because supposedly your
wingspan is a fingertip to fingertip is the same as

(03:39):
your height. I've heard that before. That's not true, though,
because some people have larger wingspans than others than their height,
like proportionately. I got you anyway, go ahead. So it's
just a dirty lie, I think. So. Huh. Well, if
you take this DNA right and you look at it,
you can see that there's different sequences and along this

(03:59):
these this very long six ft strand of d N A,
these sequences are broken down into what are called genes, right,
And so a gene is really just a string of
nucleotide base pairs that create or lead to the production
of a specific protein. And you say, okay, well, great protein,

(04:20):
we eat that it's steak done. No. Proteins do way
more than that. They're involved in just about every part
of your body, from like the building box of cells
to chewing to blinking, the thinking like, proteins are very
very important, and your proteins are expressed through your genes. Okay,

(04:41):
I think I got that fairly right. Every once in
a while, this code, especially when a cell divides and
the d n A that was in the original cell
is copied for to the new cell, that translation can
go a little bit wrong, and so all of a sudden,
along these billions of base hairs, there's a there's a

(05:01):
there's a mistranslation, and what you have then is a mutation.
For the most part, mutations are not problems. As a
matter of fact, Um, any one of us has something
like an estimated five to ten mutations deadly mutations in
our genes right now. But we only have one copy.
And there are very few diseases that you only need

(05:22):
one copy of a genetic defect for, right, So we're
basically fine. If you get two pairs of mutated problematic genes,
then you can have a disease. And there's a lot
of diseases that are genetic in origin. Everything from um
cystic fibrosis to cancer is the result of a gene

(05:43):
that's mutated and gone Haywire. The whole point of everything
I just said is that we from the dawn of humanity,
even before then, ever since we were little amiba, have
been subject to the ms and the vagaries of genetic mutations.
Sometimes they help us, sometimes they do nothing, sometimes they

(06:06):
create disease. But as of two thousand twelve, we are
technically leaving the thumb of genetic mutations tyranny potentially, yeah,
through Crisper Jean editing. Yeah. It's it's pretty remarkable, it

(06:26):
really is. It's very tough. I know, I say this
a lot. I think I said it's tough to underestimate
the craze of super balls or something stupid like that.
It's really tough to overstate how much the Crisper gene
editing um technique could change humanity in the world. If
everything goes well, hopefully within the next decade we'll see

(06:51):
real human trials for some of these applications. That's the hope. Yeah. Uh,
and it may happen because this is one of the
most heavily funded arms of scientific health medicinal research out
there right now. It's also one of the newest too,
and it's already one of the most heavily funded because

(07:11):
it's it's showing that much promise, Like everybody keeps looking
into it more and more and more, and they're like
every every time they look at it where they're like,
it's like we just unlocked a secret of life. Yeah,
we just figured it out, and we can make so
much money on it. So let's start a company and
invest a lot of money in its research. Alright. So

(07:31):
crisper c R I s p R all capitalized stands
for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, which is why
they called it crisper, because that is a mouthful. And
unless you're a geneticist, like you said that, probably those
string of words together probably just make your head spin, right,

(07:52):
but if you if you take them in separate. And
I watched this video. I can't remember who did it,
but I'll post it on the podcast page, this Ted Talk. No,
it wasn't a Ted Talk. It was by a dude.
Oh um, oh, what's Bozeman Science? It was a Bozeman
science video. It was really good Bozeman Montana. It was

(08:13):
just Bozeman science. So now there's a Bozeman Montana and
a Bozeman Science But anyway, the guy on the video said,
just kind of take it separately, and it's actually to
two parts. You've got the short palindromic repeats are the thing,
and the clustered regularly inner space then kind of describes

(08:34):
what that thing is. Right, So the short palindromic repeats
is what you need to focus on the start. But
let's back up a little bit. Let's talk a little
bit about genetically modifying things. Uh, we've been doing this
for a while. Everyone knows about Dolly the sheep and
cloning and genetically modified fruits and vegetables. Um, even selective

(08:57):
breeding is a is a type of genetic model application.
Sure you know. So it's nothing new, it's been going
on for a while. But um, in the early two thousand's,
there was a discovery of an enzyme. We'll not discovery
the enzyme, but a discovery of how to use an
enzyme called zinc finger nucleaise And what that would do
is replace, it would delete and replace very specific bad

(09:22):
genes that would make you get a disease, let's say. Right.
So it was a huge finding but really expensive. Yeah,
they were about five thousand dollars a piece, and they
didn't work every time for sure, and um, they were
just difficult to manufacture, difficult to understand, difficult to implement.
But they did do something pretty amazing, which was they

(09:44):
went in removed a gene from a strip of DNA
and could replace it with another gene that you wanted.
The thing is, it was just tough to use, basically,
So there was a big breakthrough, but it wasn't a
sweeping breakthrough because it was it was fragile and difficult
and expensive. That's right. Uh, fast forward to well, I

(10:05):
guess let's go back in time rather seven. Uh, sophomore
in high school. George Brett was the man. Yeah, sure
he was. Uh. John Cusack started say anything in seven
maybe something around there. I think that was eighty nine ish.
No singles was like no singles is definitely in the nineties,

(10:29):
because I was I think it's like ninety I'm gonna
go with one, all right, while you look that up.
So nine eight seven is when the word crisper first
appears in a journal article because the scientists said, you
know what, we found this thing in E. Coal i
these short repeats. What year was it? Uh? These short

(10:51):
repeats and the E. Coli bacteria UM of d n
A and that's weird. There should not be repeats of
DNA and this bacteria. So it was noteworthy. Yeah, it's
like what is that, right, it's a little weird. So
they took note, and I guess just say anything came
out and they decided to watch Cameron Crow movies for
the next decade. As they got bad, they started watching

(11:14):
singles and UM. In twelve is when Crisper and this
is just a few short years ago, is when Crisper
really came on the scene. Uh. And that's when all
this money started pouring into the research. And it's like
advanced light years in the last four years, right. And
the big, the big difference between what happened in seven
what happened in two dozen twelve is that they figured

(11:36):
out what these um short palindromic repeats were. Right, you
have these little strips of d n A in E.
Coli And then they found out later on you can
find it in most bacteria, if not at all. These
short little strips seemed to be separating out these these
what seemed to be like random strings of DNA, but

(11:57):
they separated them out in a red alert interspersed manner. Right,
So they looked at the little bits of random DNA
and they realized that it matched viral DNA, and they
totally weird, Yeah, because they're like, well, wait, this is
a bacteria. What is viral DNA doing in here? And
someone I'm not exactly sure who's just Eugene Conan was

(12:21):
a paradigm changing giant is the unsung hero in this.
Coonan said, you know what I think is going on.
I think what we're seeing here is essentially a database
that a bacteria houses in its own DNA where when
it's invaded by a virus, it captures that viruses DNA

(12:42):
or RNA, snips up some of it and stores it in.
It's the in this um genetic database, so that when
it sees that again, it will recognize the virus and
can attack it. Yeah, it's a it's a genetic adaptation
present and is not all bacteria, but in any bacteria
cells to help it survive, because the bacteria has like

(13:05):
a few minutes once it starts to get attacked by
a virus to live, right, Okay, so it's part of
its immune system, right, this database of what's called crisper. Yeah,
then there's another thing that they figured out about bacteria
that's associated with the Crisper database. In any given bacteria
and a bacteria that has it, it's called CAST nine.

(13:25):
It's Crisper associated um enzymes. I think C A S nine.
It's a it's a protein. It's an RNA guided enzyme
in protein, right, and it has this really neat function.
It goes to a virus or viral DNA or viral RNA,
and it captures it. It unzips it, which is not

(13:45):
everything can do that now, and then it also precisely
snips it and then delivers that snip to the bacteria's
Crisper database for storage. Yeah, so what you have is
a it's an it's an edit as a p posed
to like we've been working with working with genetic addition
and transfer for years, like treating people with transferring into

(14:09):
like bone marrow. Let's say, but this is an actual edit,
like they like in it in this article, even though
our own article never mentioned CAST nine, which is like,
I can't even believe you can't really have one with
the other. It was weird, but uh, this CAST nine
is literally they liken it to an assassin like that
comes in very surgically with a pair of scissors, very

(14:29):
specifically removes ideally just that part. Yeah, the bad part.
So we'll talk a little more about this. We get
to take a break though, everybody. We're getting a little
work though, So Chuck, you you're calling the cast the

(15:02):
Crisper cast nine system, which is basically what it is,
a an assassin for bacteria, right, it goes after the
viruses cuts him up. Somebody figured out along the line
that you can take this natural bacterial immune response and
sick it on not just viruses, but other stuff, not

(15:25):
just somebody. Cal Berkeley scientist Jennifer Doodna. Yeah, she's gonna
win a she's gonna win a Nobel Prize one day.
She's totally up for it. She will and and I
would advise if anyone is into Ted Talks to watch
her Ted Talk on this. Yeah. It's really good. Yeah. So, um,
she is a Juda Dowdna. Uh well, I said Dudna,

(15:48):
but we'll go with down okay, one of those. Um.
She she was the first to suggest that you can
use this natural system to edit jeans and other things things.
And I think they started out in very simple organisms,
but what they found over time. Is that this seems

(16:09):
to be universal that as long as something has DNA
you can use the Crisper cast nine system on it
to edit genes. Yeah to uh. She likened it to
fixing a typo or she said it was like a
genetic vaccination card that yourself can have. Yeah, So it
goes in, it snips out the bad part, and sometimes

(16:32):
it just joins from there and just repairs it. But
other times it sticks uh, something else in it joins it. Right,
So depends Yeah, it depends on the system that you're using.
Like you can you can just stick a Crisper cast
nine thing, So you you give it a You basically
give this bacterial immune response a little piece of the

(16:56):
gene that you want edited, and it says, exam is
it just like it would if if it were in
a bacteria and it were being invaded by a virus.
So it examines this gene and says, Okay, this is
what I need to go find, And it goes and
finds it on a strand of DNA. And this thing
doesn't care what DNA it's looking at. It's just doing
its thing right, So if you stick it on any DNA,

(17:18):
it's going to go find that sequence, that genetic sequence
on whatever DNA it's exposed to, and then it's going
to un zip it. It's going to cut it out,
and then one thing you can do is just say
done and done, and then the DNA is going to
repair itself. But what you've just done is removed that
whole sequence of nucleotide base pairs that makes up a gene,

(17:39):
and so when it's fuses back together, it's going to
be missing that gene. So you can delete a gene
is what that's called, or you can add a third
component to and say, here's what you're looking for, here's
the here's the guide RNA that you want to go find.
Um use the cast nine system to go cut it out,

(17:59):
un zip and cut it out, and then replace it
with this. Here's some blueprints for what you should install
in the in the place of the gene you just
edited out, so you can delete and then now add
whatever gene you want. And what they found, this incredibly
mind bobbling, chuck, is that you can take a gene
from a different organism and put it into another organism.

(18:24):
You can basically just copy and paste and cut and
paste DNA and that's what this system is allowing people
to do. So what does all this mean. It means
you could potentially remove a gene for blindness, You could
remove a gene for cystic fibrosis and repair. Uh. Well,
we'll talk about HIV a little bit more in a minute. Um,

(18:47):
you could create more disease resistant crops. Uh. You could
create a bioweapon that could wipe out a species. I
mean there are bad applications as well. Well. The people
have talked about that. And remember was zekea virus? Like
people are saying, well, let's just get mosquitoes to to
stop reproducing and then that'll stop the spread of zecra virus.

(19:07):
What they're talking about is using gene editing. Yeah, and
if you watch that uh ted talk from Jennifer down
she says, slow we need to slow it down. And um,
she and her I don't know she was partnered. She
said she co invented. I don't know if it was
Coonan or not, but whoever her partner and crime here

(19:28):
is I was a French, a French um researcher. So
it wasn't Emmanuel something I can't remember last name. So
she said they basically called for a moratorium for now
and said everyone just stopped for a minute. Yeah, and
everybody's like, well, how much money is There's a lot
of money at stakes, so we'll see where that goes.
But she she did call for a pause, is what

(19:50):
she called it. UM, so they could kind of set
up some guidelines on how to use and not misuse
this technology. Yeah. And the reason why UM, I mean,
I salute her for that. That's a big deal. But
that's a big problem that we're facing in this world
is that our technology is starting to outpace our understanding
of all of the things that can do. And then

(20:13):
in addition to that, it's becoming much more democratized to
where people can get their hands on incredibly advanced technology
UM in the comforts of their own home. And this
is a really good example of that because the Crisper
system you can send off for on the internet for
anywhere from like thirty bucks to seventy five bucks, and
you will have a bacteria that you can introduce your

(20:37):
guide RNA too or your host RNA too, and and
basically airstolize it and expose it to a mouse, and
that bacteria will go in and edit that mouse's Janes,
and you can do this if you know what you're
doing with a relatively clunky setup at your in your
home and in the So like the idea that we

(20:59):
need to stop in and talk about what direction we
should go with this or what restrictions we should place
on it. I think that's a fantastic idea. Well, yeah,
because we all we did a show on Designer Children.
Uh jeez, was it before two thousand twelve? I don't know.
I would guess it came out of this because I
don't remember. I don't remember talking about the crisper jine
in that episode, but that's potentially one of the applications

(21:21):
is I don't want my child to have Huntington's disease,
and it's in there, so let's take it out. Oh
I also want my kid to be tall and have
blue eyes. Yeah, it gets a little dicey, it does.
Um Designer Humans, Well, just go back and listen of
that episode. It's fun fraught with complications. You start to

(21:44):
run into the idea of like genetic or eugenics. Well, yeah,
they have and they have nuts because obviously not everyone
could afford to do something like that, So then you
have you know, the wealthy uber races even taller and
blonder than ever, right exactly. But then they've also decided
that tall and blond is the ideal, So then they
start like editing people's jeans who aren't tall and blond,

(22:07):
and then all of a sudden, you have nothing but
tall and blonde people. Right, Like you said, I've never
even seen that movie. What's a good one? Is it? Really? Yeah? Man,
they're like a you know, a thinking person's reindeer game
sci fi. You bring that movie up way too much. Um,
just a thinking person's sci fi future movie. Have you

(22:29):
seen Equilibrium with Christian Bale? No? I haven't either. It's
got like three stars on Netflix, and that's not enough
for me to pull the trigger on I've never heard
of that, which is a bad sign. It seems like
it's from about the same time as Gadica make me
a little earlier. But it's Christian Bale. He's good. Yeah,
it's a little crazy, he's still good. We're done, you

(22:51):
and me. He's never gonna live that. What a great tirade.
He did it right before we shot our TV show too,
so like we walked around on set like say and
that all that was a running joke that was fun. Uh,
you want to take another break. Let's take a break
and we'll talk about kind of where we are right
now and and what some people think about his future.

(23:32):
All right, Chuck. So obviously we're on the verge of
UM great designer children like probably next week, right. I
don't think it's that quick, No, But I did read
this article because this sounded too good to be true
when I was reading it. It's like, Man, the Christopher gene.
That's it's going to solve everything from food shortage to
every disease known demand like cancer. Right. Cancer, Cancer is

(23:55):
basically the result of UM something called the P fifty
three protein not being expressed by a gene. And the
P fifty three protein goes in and says, hey, I
think you're a tumor. You stop multiplying. And if that,
if that protein is not there to tell the cell
to stop multiplying, it keeps multiplying, and all of a sudden,
you got a tumor, a k A cancer. Right, So

(24:17):
you could go in and and just edit that gene
to make sure the P fifty three UM protein is expressed. Bam,
you just cured cancer on the genetic level. So yes,
it could just improve the world. Correct sir, So I
read this article, I was all excited, um, and you
should still be excited. This isn't a complete poopoo, but

(24:39):
this was just like this week. Uh, the gene editor
Cristoper won't fully fix sick people anytime soon. And here's why. Um.
So this lady, Jocelyn Kaiser sort of throws a bit
of a wet blanket on it, um, but not completely there.
She's just sort of like, there's still a ways to go.
So here's one of the things, um, most diseases apparently,

(25:02):
uh like cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy um, where gene correction
is already kind of a thing, like where they require
gene correction. Um. Basically, what she's saying is it has
to be done in a living person. Like you can't
extract the cells and do it and then put the
cells back in like they currently do with gene transfer,

(25:24):
because uh, not enough of the cells will survive apparently.
So that's one of the roadblocks right now. You need
to treat the cells inside the body. Well, one thing
I have challenge, one thing I wondered maybe this this
um lady talks about it. But how do you how
do you direct the the Crisper CAST nine system to

(25:45):
the right cell? She just said it's I mean, in
her ted talk, she doesn't get super specific. She says,
it's an RNA guided protein. Um, that's what I ran
across too. I didn't run acress anybody said, oh well
this is how did that look for that too? I
think it will just call it the magic of science. Um. Yeah,

(26:06):
but I mean it's it's very precise though. You know,
it's not like they just throw it in there and
see what happens. So there there's something guiding it. Um.
It's a safety risk right now because when this this
Crisper cleaves it off with the scissors. Uh, it is
in a very specific location. But they don't know yet
if it could potentially, because once you've created these things,

(26:27):
you deliver it through a viral vector. It's in there
and this cast nine is going to keep replicating itself
for forever. So they don't know if fifteen years down
the line, if the thing starts cleaving causing cancer basically.
But what they think now is they haven't seen that yet.
So it's just like, let's keep an eye out for
this so it's not like the worst news ever, but

(26:49):
so far these mice are doing well and that's not happening. Well.
This is like a very hot topic in bioethics as well,
and one of the things that people I'm sure like
um Dubner are um pressing for is figuring out how
to reverse engineer the stuff or reverse the effects of it,
to engineer it so it stops after a while, so

(27:09):
that if it it like if you did introduce it
into a wild population, it wouldn't just wipe that population
off the face of the earth. It would eventually slow.
Well that's exactly what they're hoping to do, is that
CAST nine will eventually stop doing it thing there's you
can hope in one hand and then figure it out scientifically.
And they're trying to figure it out. Okay, yeah, I

(27:31):
thought you were saying, like yeah, they just oh no, no, no,
that that they know that's an issue, and that's one
of the like roadblocks are trying to overcome. One of
the other things is the CAST nine um it's a
process that it can only be active when the cells
are like dividing actively dividing, and apparently that's just not
you know, the liver, you're stem cells, your eyes, your blood.

(27:54):
It's not always actively dividing. So they're trying to work
around that. Basically every limitation they found so far, they're saying,
it's not a it's not a deal Breaker's not a
deal breaker. Yeah, we think we can figure something out
to work around it. I'm sure they will. So that's
the good news. It's just too it seems to be

(28:15):
working too well, and it's just too easy to do.
There's this there's not just gonna like leave it on
the table. Well, no way. I couldn't get around the
liver cells not replicating. Uh. And then you know, we
mentioned HIV earlier. This article needs updating in our on
our site because it said that it kind of overcame HIV. Uh,

(28:36):
but that's not true. Now apparently HIV defeated the efforts
Christoper right now, but again they said that this isn't
this doesn't mean it's over. Um, we think we can
overcome this as well, and that eventually could be a
cure for HIV. So right now, and they said they

(28:57):
weren't too surprised because HIV. To go back and listen
to our episode on that it is a tough tough
cookie cookie and UM has a knack for mutating and
replicating in the face of all kinds of drugs. But
they think if they use those drugs along with this,
maybe that could be an alternative. UM. Yeah, I mean

(29:19):
the future is bright. I think they just it's so
early in the game, is the deal. But that's why
I think a pause is a good idea. I don't
know if I've gotten that across that. I feel like, Yeah,
there's one other thing I ran across and researching, something
called a DNA drive. You can take this Crisper gene
UM Crisper cast nine system, and UM you can add

(29:43):
this other component called a DNA drive. Right, And so
this DNA drive is basically like UM. It has the
ability to during reproduction two not only take the edited gene,
or not only to edit a gene in say a
miss guito, but when that mosquito reproduces the chromosomes that

(30:04):
are contributed with the edited gene, basically, UM break the
corresponding spot on the other parents chromosomes, and then when
it repairs itself inserts the blueprints so that the edited
gene is copied. So then the offspring has both two

(30:26):
pair or one pair of the edited gene, which means
when they reproduce and they reproduce to somebody else that
has both pairs of the same gene, um their offspring
has a chance of inheriting that gene and so it
can spread through a population of mosquitoes and fix it

(30:46):
for your family, fixes it or keeps you from reproducing
or whatever. The gene is. Yes, and in a large population,
say like a big mosquito population, that means you can
spread the edited gene and like a single growing reason.
But that's one reason why people are like, we need
to figure out how to be able to turn this
off because maybe we need mosquitoes. That turns out we

(31:08):
shouldn't just wipe them off the face of the earth,
although we remember we did a show on that, and
some scientists think, no, we don't need them. Yeah, I
remember that. Are you got anything else? I got nothing else.
I'm sure we can do a follow up on this
if we want. If you want to know more about
the Crisper gene editing, sweet, you can type that word
into the search part house to works dot com and

(31:29):
insisted search parts time for listener mail. I'm gonna call
this l s D. We've got a lot of great
emails from well, I just read this from people who
use it and like it. Hey, guys, love the show,
but UH, it's been great to learn so much about
a variety of topics to and from work. I recently
listened to LSD. I got to share my story. Three

(31:51):
years ago, my father died unexpectedly a stroke, and it
took my whole family by surprise. And became very depressed
for MutS and felt like I was diving into on
autopilot and wasn't finding any enjoyment in my day to
day life. One night, I was hanging out with my
friends and was offered some LSD. I had taken some
years ago and had a wonderful experience with it, so
I thought maybe this could be helpful. Turned out to

(32:12):
be the best decision I ever made. I had several
powerful revelations about life and developed a deeper appreciation for
my friends and family and for the love that binds
us all together. Also gained a fresh perspective on how
much beauty there is in the world and how I
am a part of it. This experience really helped UH
set me back on the right path and is a
moment in my life that can point to as life changing.

(32:35):
I believe the drug has a lot of potential for
psychiatric use, can be immensely beneficial with helping people work
through serious psychological and emotional issues. I truly hope that
it is reclassified from Schedule one so it can be
further studied and seen as a medicinal aid and not
a harmful chemical. Uh. And that I'm gonna just say

(32:55):
is from anonymous because I didn't hear back whether or
not this dude wanted his name right on the air.
Thanks a lot, anonymous, anonymous man, and thanks to everybody
who sending emails like that. We heard from a lot
of people who are like, yeah, I really love acid,
you know, and you know they weren't stories from people
that hurt, like you're going to hear this man. Yeah,

(33:15):
it was like, hey, I enjoy taking LSD sometimes and
I'm a responsible, growing up adult and nothing that helps
me out. I don't think we got a single one
like that was just a jackass taking LSD, Like all
of them are very thoughtful and because that's our audience, buddy, Yeah,
full drug users, if you want to get in touch

(33:38):
with us to let us know what's just about anything.
You can tweet to us at s y s K Podcast.
You can join us on Instagram That's s y s
K Podcast as well. You can join us on Facebook
dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works
dot com and has always joined us at our home
on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For

(34:03):
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
staff works dot com. M