April 5, 2023 • 9 mins
It's been all over the news, Beethoven's DNA has revealed some interesting things about his health.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and this is short stuff, a pretty interesting
one that comes from our friends at How Stuff Works,
I believe, specifically from Robert Attenborough. Yeah, and lots of
other places. Because this I just saw this all over
the news last week. The story of Beethoven's DNA has
(00:25):
been researched, and it just I don't know, it's like
it hit the news cycle and I saw it in
a bunch of places. I mean, I can understand why.
It's very very fascinating, more fascinating than it appears on
the surface. And the surface is Beethoven was fairly famous
for suffering from a lot of terrible health maladies for
(00:45):
many years late in his life until his death, very
most famously his hearing loss, which is just fascinating that
he was still able to compose with hearing loss. That's
just insane. Yeah, But people, some people are very much
fast sinated with Beethoven, even more than other people. And
one of those people is Justin Beg who is a
student of biological anthropology at UC Santa Cruz and also
(01:09):
an enormous Beethoven enthusiast. And he said Hey, I want
to put my two things together and figure out what
the heck was going on with Beethoven's body. Yeah, and
now we back up a little bit and talk a
little bit about DNA and the challenges of taking DNA
from a dead person to figure anything out. It's it's
(01:30):
not that easy. DNA from a live human is much
easier to work with in sequence, but if you're trying
to get good DNA from a body, you're gonna want
teeth ideally, or the petris bone in the skull, which
we did not have from Beethoven. But during Beethoven's day,
(01:50):
collecting locks from brilliant people's hair was a thing, and
so by virtue of that, it turns out there were
quite a few samples of Beethoven's locks around the world,
and they ended up with what they thought was eight
of them. Yes, Tristan beg had eight that he was
able to access. None of them had roots, which was
(02:13):
made the whole thing much more difficult. If you have
a root, you got a much better chance of extracting
a whole genome from it, right. Yeah, But plucking a
whole handful of hair from Beethoven said was not allowed
Beethoven did not want that to happen. He said, sure,
you can use some old timey scissors on me, or
maybe even a sharp knife, and I'll sit here and
let you do it. But I do not pluck my hair.
(02:36):
So that meant that the DNA in there in this
hair was composed of short, broken fragments. But Tristan Beg
is such a Beethoven enthusiast and such a student of
biological anthropology that he said, I don't care. I'm going
to piece together different fragments of DNA from these hair samples,
from each hair sample to create basically as close to
(02:59):
a net profile as I possibly can for each of
the eight locks of hairs. And he did it. That's right.
I was so trying to come up with a joke
about plucking hair, and what do you think? I am
a harpsichord player. And then I tried to think of
a like maybe Bach or somebody I couldn't remember who
(03:20):
was most notable for their harpsichord work. And then I
thought maybe Beethoven had some harpsichord stuff, and I bailed,
But I was just in my head that entire time.
Oh man, you missed some great stuff. Men. All apologies
all to think of a joke that I missed the
opportunity of, but at least you got to explain it,
all right. So the big reveal is is that he
(03:40):
ended up with two locks of hair that had with
DNA sampling where they were like, all right, it's western
central Europe. We got great providence records, yeah, going back
to yeah, going back to the early nineteenth century. So
these two, we feel really good about three more that
(04:01):
are genetically identical to those, So that's also probably Beethoven.
And this is pretty good providence records, So we think
these are for sure Beethoven's. But the other three are
problematic because one is a woman, so that's somebody got
you know, probably paid way too much money for fake
Beethoven locks. Yeah, and then another is a little side note.
(04:26):
Beethoven would probably be mad about that, because there are
no side notes. Each notice as important as the last. Yes,
the notes that I wrote. But the side note is
that that lock, it turns out, had been previously used
to conclude that Beethoven had lead poisoning, and it turns
out that probably wasn't even Beethoven's hair, right, So the
(04:49):
upshot of the whole thing is is that he had
on his hands now five locks of hair genetically identical
to one another, two of which were basically one percent
guaranteed Beethoven's because they had Providence records. So as he
had five locks of Beethoven's hair to work with. So
I say, Chuck, that that is a great point to
(05:10):
take our ad break. Let's do it all right. So
(05:38):
here we are with Beethoven's hair. And they did some
research on his DNA and they came back with some
pretty interesting results, one of which and they kind of
figured this, but they were like, all right, his hearing
loss wasn't genetic. It rarely is genetic anyway when you
have adult onset hearing loss. So they kind of figured
(05:59):
that was coming and that was kind of proved out.
But they said, he does have poopy pants a lot. Yeah,
he suffers from GI issues, and he has liver disease
or had liver disease. Yeah. So they could not find
anything that they could connect to the GI problems. It
sounds like he just had some bad clams that stayed
(06:20):
with him or some sort of bad luck. But it
wasn't a genetic thing. But the thing that they did
connect to his genetics. His genes were his liver issues. Yeah,
apparently he suffered from pretty bad cerrosis. It looks like
(06:40):
they know from just sort of historical record that he
did have attacks of jaundice, a pretty clear issue with
your liver going on. Yeah, but they actually found genetic proof.
They found particular variant two copies of the p and
p LA three gene linked to cirrhosis, and then single
copies of two variants of a gene that causes hemochromatosis nice,
(07:05):
another liver condition. And then they also found a little
surprise and that I don't think they even knew about
this at all until then, that he had hepatitis B. Yes,
at the very least in the final months of his life,
possibly before. The thing is is that's not scandalous. A
lot of people in Europe had he be at the time.
(07:26):
Another thing that a lot of people did at the
time was drink lots and lots of booze by today's standards,
And they'd long been question about whether Beethoven's jaundice was
brought on by liver disease brought on by excessive drinking.
And apparently there's even you know, record that mentions he
liked to drink, but it was not clear how much
he liked to drink and if he liked to drink
(07:47):
more than the average person. So apparently Tristan Beg went
one step further, examined records as closely as they could,
and said, I think he just drank like a normal amount, Like, yeah,
it'd be a lot today, but that's not what causes
liver problems. It was genetic, right, pretty interesting stuff. Have
(08:07):
you ever seen Immortal Beloved the Beethoven movie Gary Oldman? No,
and I have not. It was good. I think I
think it was nineties. I want to say it was nineties.
It was good. I enjoyed it. But when's the last
time you saw the professional with Gary Oldman? That's been
a while. I saw it a month ago. It's good,
(08:30):
but it holds up even better than it was back. Yeah,
it's amazing. And Natalie Portman being twelve like out acts
everybody else on the screen. It's nuts man that she's great.
That whole movie is just so good. Leon Um. The
Immortal Beloved is good, it's not. It's not Amadeus level Um,
as evidence by the fact that it didn't like clean
(08:51):
up at the Academy Awards. But it was pretty good.
So just remind me Amadeus was played by the guy
who who was in Animal House, right, Yeah, okay, I
wanted to Abraham. Yeah if Murray Abraham was was Salieri? Right?
And boy boy, that was good. I want to see
that again soon. That's a good one. I've not ever
seen it. I never got around to it. Hmm. I'm
(09:14):
a Dais is good. It's worth a look if you
ever get a hanker. And for nineteen I think that
was eighties biopic, Yes for sure, because the theme song
rock Me I'm a Dais hit the charts in the
eighties like Wildfires. Well that's it for short stuff, everybody.
If you wanted to know more about Beethoven, you couldn't possibly.
(09:37):
Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and this is short stuff, a pretty interesting
one that comes from our friends at How Stuff Works,
I believe, specifically from Robert Attenborough. Yeah, and lots of
other places. Because this I just saw this all over
the news last week. The story of Beethoven's DNA has
(00:25):
been researched, and it just I don't know, it's like
it hit the news cycle and I saw it in
a bunch of places. I mean, I can understand why.
It's very very fascinating, more fascinating than it appears on
the surface. And the surface is Beethoven was fairly famous
for suffering from a lot of terrible health maladies for
(00:45):
many years late in his life until his death, very
most famously his hearing loss, which is just fascinating that
he was still able to compose with hearing loss. That's
just insane. Yeah, But people, some people are very much
fast sinated with Beethoven, even more than other people. And
one of those people is Justin Beg who is a
student of biological anthropology at UC Santa Cruz and also
(01:09):
an enormous Beethoven enthusiast. And he said Hey, I want
to put my two things together and figure out what
the heck was going on with Beethoven's body. Yeah, and
now we back up a little bit and talk a
little bit about DNA and the challenges of taking DNA
from a dead person to figure anything out. It's it's
(01:30):
not that easy. DNA from a live human is much
easier to work with in sequence, but if you're trying
to get good DNA from a body, you're gonna want
teeth ideally, or the petris bone in the skull, which
we did not have from Beethoven. But during Beethoven's day,
(01:50):
collecting locks from brilliant people's hair was a thing, and
so by virtue of that, it turns out there were
quite a few samples of Beethoven's locks around the world,
and they ended up with what they thought was eight
of them. Yes, Tristan beg had eight that he was
able to access. None of them had roots, which was
(02:13):
made the whole thing much more difficult. If you have
a root, you got a much better chance of extracting
a whole genome from it, right. Yeah, But plucking a
whole handful of hair from Beethoven said was not allowed
Beethoven did not want that to happen. He said, sure,
you can use some old timey scissors on me, or
maybe even a sharp knife, and I'll sit here and
let you do it. But I do not pluck my hair.
(02:36):
So that meant that the DNA in there in this
hair was composed of short, broken fragments. But Tristan Beg
is such a Beethoven enthusiast and such a student of
biological anthropology that he said, I don't care. I'm going
to piece together different fragments of DNA from these hair samples,
from each hair sample to create basically as close to
(02:59):
a net profile as I possibly can for each of
the eight locks of hairs. And he did it. That's right.
I was so trying to come up with a joke
about plucking hair, and what do you think? I am
a harpsichord player. And then I tried to think of
a like maybe Bach or somebody I couldn't remember who
(03:20):
was most notable for their harpsichord work. And then I
thought maybe Beethoven had some harpsichord stuff, and I bailed,
But I was just in my head that entire time.
Oh man, you missed some great stuff. Men. All apologies
all to think of a joke that I missed the
opportunity of, but at least you got to explain it,
all right. So the big reveal is is that he
(03:40):
ended up with two locks of hair that had with
DNA sampling where they were like, all right, it's western
central Europe. We got great providence records, yeah, going back
to yeah, going back to the early nineteenth century. So
these two, we feel really good about three more that
(04:01):
are genetically identical to those, So that's also probably Beethoven.
And this is pretty good providence records, So we think
these are for sure Beethoven's. But the other three are
problematic because one is a woman, so that's somebody got
you know, probably paid way too much money for fake
Beethoven locks. Yeah, and then another is a little side note.
(04:26):
Beethoven would probably be mad about that, because there are
no side notes. Each notice as important as the last. Yes,
the notes that I wrote. But the side note is
that that lock, it turns out, had been previously used
to conclude that Beethoven had lead poisoning, and it turns
out that probably wasn't even Beethoven's hair, right, So the
(04:49):
upshot of the whole thing is is that he had
on his hands now five locks of hair genetically identical
to one another, two of which were basically one percent
guaranteed Beethoven's because they had Providence records. So as he
had five locks of Beethoven's hair to work with. So
I say, Chuck, that that is a great point to
(05:10):
take our ad break. Let's do it all right. So
(05:38):
here we are with Beethoven's hair. And they did some
research on his DNA and they came back with some
pretty interesting results, one of which and they kind of
figured this, but they were like, all right, his hearing
loss wasn't genetic. It rarely is genetic anyway when you
have adult onset hearing loss. So they kind of figured
(05:59):
that was coming and that was kind of proved out.
But they said, he does have poopy pants a lot. Yeah,
he suffers from GI issues, and he has liver disease
or had liver disease. Yeah. So they could not find
anything that they could connect to the GI problems. It
sounds like he just had some bad clams that stayed
(06:20):
with him or some sort of bad luck. But it
wasn't a genetic thing. But the thing that they did
connect to his genetics. His genes were his liver issues. Yeah,
apparently he suffered from pretty bad cerrosis. It looks like
(06:40):
they know from just sort of historical record that he
did have attacks of jaundice, a pretty clear issue with
your liver going on. Yeah, but they actually found genetic proof.
They found particular variant two copies of the p and
p LA three gene linked to cirrhosis, and then single
copies of two variants of a gene that causes hemochromatosis nice,
(07:05):
another liver condition. And then they also found a little
surprise and that I don't think they even knew about
this at all until then, that he had hepatitis B. Yes,
at the very least in the final months of his life,
possibly before. The thing is is that's not scandalous. A
lot of people in Europe had he be at the time.
(07:26):
Another thing that a lot of people did at the
time was drink lots and lots of booze by today's standards,
And they'd long been question about whether Beethoven's jaundice was
brought on by liver disease brought on by excessive drinking.
And apparently there's even you know, record that mentions he
liked to drink, but it was not clear how much
he liked to drink and if he liked to drink
(07:47):
more than the average person. So apparently Tristan Beg went
one step further, examined records as closely as they could,
and said, I think he just drank like a normal amount, Like, yeah,
it'd be a lot today, but that's not what causes
liver problems. It was genetic, right, pretty interesting stuff. Have
(08:07):
you ever seen Immortal Beloved the Beethoven movie Gary Oldman? No,
and I have not. It was good. I think I
think it was nineties. I want to say it was nineties.
It was good. I enjoyed it. But when's the last
time you saw the professional with Gary Oldman? That's been
a while. I saw it a month ago. It's good,
(08:30):
but it holds up even better than it was back. Yeah,
it's amazing. And Natalie Portman being twelve like out acts
everybody else on the screen. It's nuts man that she's great.
That whole movie is just so good. Leon Um. The
Immortal Beloved is good, it's not. It's not Amadeus level Um,
as evidence by the fact that it didn't like clean
(08:51):
up at the Academy Awards. But it was pretty good.
So just remind me Amadeus was played by the guy
who who was in Animal House, right, Yeah, okay, I
wanted to Abraham. Yeah if Murray Abraham was was Salieri? Right?
And boy boy, that was good. I want to see
that again soon. That's a good one. I've not ever
seen it. I never got around to it. Hmm. I'm
(09:14):
a Dais is good. It's worth a look if you
ever get a hanker. And for nineteen I think that
was eighties biopic, Yes for sure, because the theme song
rock Me I'm a Dais hit the charts in the
eighties like Wildfires. Well that's it for short stuff, everybody.
If you wanted to know more about Beethoven, you couldn't possibly.
(09:37):
Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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