Short Wave - Our favorite brains, including Einstein's stolen one

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

At Short Wave, we love a good brain. Which is why we’ve had a lot of conversations over the years with NPR’s neuroscience reporter, Jon Hamilton. Jon’s been writing about brains for over 15 years, from tiny brain organoids that grow in a dish, to fruit fly brains, mouse brains and some really memorable human brains. But Jon is retiring, so today on the show he joins us to share the most memorable brains he’s come across in the past couple of decades. Interested in more brain science? Email us your question at [e-mail] to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, short waver is Regina Barbara here. And at Shortwave, we love us some brains, which is why we've had a lot of conversations over the years with NPR's neuroscience reporter, John Hamilton. John is retiring. So today he's going to tell us about some of the most memorable brains he's come across, excluding mine, in the past couple decades. Hey, John. Hey, Gina and Gina's brain. I am calling this episode my favorite brain.

And I'm guessing there's a lot. I mean, you've been on the brain science beat for 15 years. Is that right? Yeah, at least that long. It's so many brains, right? I have reported on those tiny brain organoids that grow in a dish. Those are my favorite. Fruit fly brains, mouse brains, artificial brains, and some really memorable human brains.

Let me give you an example. So back in 2015, I did a story about a man who was missing a part of the brain called the cerebellum. Okay. I think I know what it is, but just to remind me, what is the cerebellum? It's this structure at the base of the brain that's about the size of your fist. It contains more than half of all the neurons that a typical person has. And it is absolutely critical to passing a roadside sobriety test. Okay. Why is that?

Because the cerebellum is what lets you balance on one foot or keep your eyes on a moving target. Like, say, hypothetically, the pen that a police officer is moving from side to side in front of you. And alcohol pretty much disables the cerebellum. Okay, that's good to know. I think I knew that, actually. The guy did the story about Jonathan Kelleher. He never had a working cerebellum in the first place. So did that mean he had problems with balance and coordination? He did, but he also had problems with all these other brain functions that turn out to rely on the cerebellum. So you have like speech and language. And you can hear that in this clip of Jonathan.

He was in his 30s when I spoke with him, and he was telling me why he likes to socialize so much. One of the reasons I have such a huge connection with people, because I need them to help me learn stuff, because why read a book or why do anything when you can be social and talk to people? And, yeah. I mean, we're all in that word together. It is hard not to love this guy, right? But you can hear in his speech cadences, it's a bit odd, and his thoughts can be a little disjointed. And scientists told me that's because it turns out that the cerebellum does a lot more than coordinate movement.

It also coordinates everything from information to emotion in the brain. Wow. Okay. Today on the show, a tour of some of the remarks. remarkable brains John has reported on over the years. Including Albert Einstein, which Gina, you probably know, was stolen after he died. I didn't know that at all. And now you do. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. All right, John, before we move on to any other brains, what was it that led you to the story about a guy without a cerebellum?

The short answer is that a scientist at Harvard named Dr. Dr. Jeremy Schmaman had been studying Jonathan. He introduced me to him. But the real reason, the deeper reason, was that for decades, the cerebellum was kind of dismissed as not being that interesting. Really? Yeah. Jeremy once told me the cerebellum was like the Rodney danger field of the brain because he got no respect. Oh, I miss him. And Jonathan, because he didn't have a cerebellum, he offered this way to show why this part of the brain matters so much. Wow. Okay. So now I want to hear about like Einstein's brain. First of all, who stole it?

And I'm guessing I know why, but like tell me the story. It was stolen by the pathologist who did the autopsy on Einstein. Oh, no. Did they lose their job? He did. Okay. But the reason he did this was that he wanted to find out why it was that Einstein's brain had made him such a genius. This is very creepy, actually.

what exactly happened? Okay, here's the scene. It's 1955, Princeton, New Jersey. Einstein has just died, and all these people start showing up, you know, to pay homage. Meanwhile, the pathologist, I mentioned, Dr. Thomas Harvey, he's doing the autopsy, which included removing Einstein's brain. So I talked about this with a guy named Michael Patternity. He wrote a book about what happened next. It was like the death of the prophet.

And so it got a little bit crazy. And out of that complete sort of melee of the moment, he made off with the brain. And it was under somewhat, you know, dubious circumstances. Yeah. But wait, wait, Gina, it gets weirder. The good doctor, he did lose his job over this. Right. But somehow he held on to the stolen brain.

And over the decades, he would send bits of it to very scientific. to see if they could figure out what made Einstein's brain so special. I'm going to guess they didn't find anything. Well, most of the examinations concluded that the bits of Einstein's brain looked, you know, pretty ordinary. Yeah. But in the 1980s, a scientist at UC Berkeley got some samples. I should mention they arrived in the mail in a mayonnaise jar. That is so awful.

It's almost like mean to his memory in a mayonnaise jar. It's just beyond strength. Yeah. Anyway, this scientist, whose name was Marion Diamond, found that the samples had a surprising number of cells called astrocytes. Okay. And that was interesting because astrocytes are not neurons. You know, neurons are the brain cells we associate with thinking and genius and everything.

Instead, these are a type of cell that scientists have kind of dismissed as, you know, just help her cells. They pick up after neurons that are doing all the important stuff. I like the name astrocytes because it makes me think of a cell. astronomy, which makes you think of like, you know, astrophysics and general relativity. And that is how they got their name. Really? Yeah, they look like stars.

Oh, cool. Okay. So these helper cells, these astrocytes, is that what people think made Einstein a genius? That is a question that's probably never going to be resolved. Yeah. But over time, brain scientists have realized that astrocytes and other so-called glial cells, you know, the ones that are not neurons, they actually do play a big role in all these higher brain functions, perhaps even including the ability to develop a theory of relativity. I love a good underdog story. That's why, you know, I love the Padres.

Have you ever come across another underdog brain story in all of your reporting? I do too. So here's another one for you. It's about animal brains, which really don't get enough credit, in my humble opinion. So for centuries, scientists have been pointing to behaviors, they say, are unique to humans. And then, of course, they find out that some animal actually does the same thing. So for example, you know, there was a time they thought that only a human brain could make and use tools. Right. Then along comes Jane Goodall in the 1960s, and she's found a chimp named David Greybeard who caught termites by making this sort of fishing pole out of twigs. Yeah, and then crows, right? Crows, right. Crows make hooks to catch insects and octopuses carry around two halves of a coconut shell, put them together when they need shelter. There are lots of examples.

I mean, that sounds like all these animals are pretty intelligence. They have pretty big brains like humans. I mean, have you ever had a chance to see any animal making a tool? That only happened once. It was in 2011. I went to the Indianapolis Zoo to meet with an evolutionary biologist there. The name is Rob Shoemaker. And he had just co-authored a book called Animal Tool Behavior. Right. And we had this. You're a good guesser, Gina. So as we're walking around the zoo, we had this moment. I was interviewing him outside the orangutan enclosure.

And let me play you just a little bit of the radio story I did about this. You do have to not go up too closely because they can reach out pretty far and they'll take your equipment. Of course they would. So, and your wallet. Several of the zoo's orangutans make it clear they'd like to have the microphone I'm carrying. Shoemaker tells a female named Canobi that she can touch it. Nice soft microphone cover on that, but you cannot have the whole thing. When I move beyond her reach, Canobi fetches a small tree branch.

You're seeing Canobi right now, there's some tool manufacturer. She's making a reaching tool to try and get your microphone. Canobi breaks off one fork of the branch, so it will fit through the mesh around the enclosure. But the branch still isn't long enough, and she's determined. Not too surprising. She now has a much bigger, stronger tool to come get the microphone. So she's gotten a full branch now. And this reaching tool gets the job done. So there you go.

So she's doing her best to draw the mic in. Cano, we're not, I'm sorry, you cannot have it. Good job with you, Chul. Thank you for the, thank you for the, we got to publish that. Oh, wow. Now she's gone and got a much bigger, stronger brain. So we're going to leave now. She, like, had your number. She's like, I'm going to get your mic. Yeah, I mean, you're not supposed to become part of the story, but it just happened. Have you got time for just one more story about a remarkable brain, Gina?

I have all the time in the world for you, John. Let's do this. All right. So I want to tell a story about an autistic brain. It belongs to a person named Dax Daxer, who was a person named Daxer who was a person. a college student in Ohio when we spoke. I think that was in 2010. And Dax told me they felt like a space alien, you know, because they, it sort of landed on Earth and was trying to make sense of all these neurotypical behaviors you see in college, dating, making eye contact, getting together to watch the TV show Friends, which is a big thing at that time. So as a result, Dax had all these remarkable insights into typical humans and how we are hardwired to socialize and cooperate.

I've seen them help people who are hurt. I've seen them draw together networks of people to make the world better. I've seen them connect different sorts of minds so that we could all communicate and live in a single society. I know you take it for granted, but it's really very amazing to be able to do that. I should mention that life was not easy for Dax. I mean, Dax experienced a lot of sadness and isolation living among all these neurotypicals on a college campus. And there was this sort of longing that Dax had to be part of, you know, the social brain club. But Dax also realized that an autistic brain can really be extraordinary in its own way. I wonder what it is like to be one of a unit of two. I don't know.

But then again, they'll never know some of the beautiful things I see. The tiny little patterns on a leaf or the intricacies of a circuit or learning a new fact and almost squealing in joy because it's so beautiful. This is beautiful. It is. Like their interpretation is beautiful. And you can see why Dax is one of my favorite brains of all time. Oh. So, John, we've talked about the cerebellum. We've talked about Einstein's brain. We've talked about animals using tools. What brain would you really like to understand?

I would be most curious about understanding a fruit fly brain. Really? I mean, they're getting close to understanding a fruit fly brain. Isn't that the point? They've done what they call the connectome. So all the connections in a fruit fly brain. But that's not the same as understanding precisely how it's able to do. do the amazing things that it can do. It's a tiny, tiny brain. But it can navigate in three dimensions better than the most advanced computers that Tesla has ever made. So how is that? Right. That's the question I'd really like to know. Wow. John, thank you so much for all of this amazing reporting you've done for so many years and coming on the show. We have loved every minute. Jenny, you are so welcome, and I just want to say thanks to all of the amazing brains that make Shortwave.

Because our brains are basically the same. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by a showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. And so did John. The audio engineer was Casey Lee. I'm Regina Barber. And I'm John Hamilton. Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.