Best Of: Clarence Thomas' Rise To Power / The Rise In Allergies

00:01: From WHY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Dave Davies.

00:07: Today the inside story of Clarence Thomas' path to power. As controversy swirls around

00:12: revelations of gifts to Thomas, we'll speak with award-winning filmmaker Michael Kirk,

00:17: director and producer of the frontline documentary Clarence and Jenny Thomas, Politics, Power

00:23: and the Supreme Court. Also, if it seems like your seasonal allergies are getting worse

00:29: over time, you're probably not wrong. Today writer and medical anthropologist Theresa McFail

00:35: tells us that allergies have risen dramatically in recent years, both in the US and around the world.

00:41: Her new book is allergic, our irritated bodies in a changing world.

00:49: And Jazz Critic Kevin Whitehead reviews Arturo O'Farrill's new album, Legacy's.

00:59: That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

01:03: This is Fresh Air Weekend, I'm Dave Davies.

01:06: US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is the most senior member of the conservative supermajority that now dominates the court.

01:14: him a level of influence he'd never seen in his 32 years as an associate justice.

01:19: But controversy has swirled around Thomas, and his wife Jenny in recent weeks, with

01:23: revelations by the investigative news site ProPublica that a conservative Texas billionaire has

01:29: lavish Thomas with expensive vacations and other financial benefits for many years, benefits

01:34: that were never reported on Thomas' financial disclosure forms.

01:39: Those benefits included trips on private jets and a luxury yacht, the purchase of and renovations

01:45: to the home Clarence Thomas' mother lives in, and private school tuition for a grand nephew of Clarence Thomas.

01:51: Our guest today is veteran filmmaker Michael Kirk, who is the director of co-writer and

01:56: co-producer of a new frontline documentary about the lives and formative influences on

02:01: Clarence and Jenny Thomas and their path to power in Washington.

02:06: Colonel Kirk was the original senior producer of the PBS Frontline documentary series in the 1980s.

02:11: He's written and directed more than 100 hours of frontline documentaries and is won

02:16: for Peabody Awards, for DuPont Columbia Awards, two George Polk Awards and 16 Emmy Awards.

02:23: His new documentary titled Clarence and Jenny Thomas, Politics, Power and the Supreme Court

02:29: is available to stream for free on YouTube, Frontlines, website, and in the PBS app.

02:35: Michael Kirk, welcome back to Fresh Air.

02:38: It's great to be here Dave, thanks for having me.

02:40: So let's talk about the early life of Clarence Thomas.

02:43: It's hard to witness the hardship that he suffered as a child and not have some sympathy for him.

02:51: He was born in Penn Point, Georgia.

02:53: Tell us about the community and his relationship with his family in those early years.

02:58: One point is on the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia, this is Savannah, Georgia in the 1950s,

03:07: as Clarence is growing up, very Jim Crow South, very racist undercurrents in everything Clarence

03:17: would have done coming from pinpoint into Savannah or even in pinpoint, which was largely

03:23: fishing village. The vast majority of people there are black. They speak a kind of dialect of

03:31: of people who were slaves that had slavery imposed on them all those generations ago.

03:39: And it's a kind of dialect called Gici Gula Gici. And it has a little bit of a French flavor,

03:46: were almost like Creole down in Louisiana.

03:50: He lived about the worst kind of life.

03:52: You could imagine for a little kid, even in that time, poverty, a father who was gone,

04:00: so a fatherless life, mother barely scraping by,

04:05: not even really in lots of ways.

04:08: And Clarence and his little brother were

04:10: that lived in just the way Clarence describes it

04:13: in his book, which we use sections from.

04:15: It's just horrible, no running water, no toilet in the place they lived.

04:23: And on top of the Jim Crow parts of the white racism,

04:27: there was also, as we discovered, kind of to my surprise,

04:32: this idea that his friends talk about the idea of racism inside the black community

04:37: as being even more corrosive than white racism on the streets of Savannah,

04:43: because you could avoid it if you didn't go into Semana.

04:46: But in your neighborhood, if you were very black,

04:50: and as he describes himself with a broad nose

04:54: and curly hair, you were subject to failing

04:58: what they called the Brown bag test.

05:02: And the kids just mocked him with the cruelest insult

05:04: they could come up with, which was ABC,

05:08: America's blackest child.

05:10: So at some point you report that his mom gave the boys up.

05:14: She simply couldn't manage it.

05:16: And they went to live with their grandfather also in Savannah,

05:20: who was less poor, but it was a hard life in other ways.

05:24: Tell us about that.

05:27: Her father was a tough guy,

05:31: also carried a lot of the racism about the internal racism

05:37: inside the black world of Savannah and pinpoint.

05:42: Ran of fuel oil business, and I think ice and coal kind of business,

05:47: where in the summer you deliver ice and in the winter you deliver fuel oil

05:51: in a kind of old truck, and he made a pretty good living compared to a lot of

05:57: other people. As I say, very opinionated, strong Catholic, stern Catholic,

06:05: didn't want the boys, didn't want his daughter to bring the boys there, but his wife at

06:10: the time, not Clarence's mom's mother or their natural, their biological grandmother.

06:18: But that woman that was married to Clarence's grandfather really wanted the kids and they

06:24: gave them something the kids had never really had.

06:27: Running water, they could take a bath, they could use a toilet, and they could go to public

06:32: school in the neighborhood. So had to do a lot of work for his grandfather, had to tow

06:37: the line, but at the same time had at least the basics of what the rest of us would recognize

06:45: as a life and a lifestyle that involved food and sleep and shelter and, if not love.

06:51: So he ends up going to a high school seminary where he lived in a dormitory where there were

06:58: two black students, the rest of them were white. He was had ambitions to become a priest, was that the plan?

07:05: Well, the nuns were the ones who thought they saw that spark. One of the things I learned

07:11: from going to Catholic school and being from a Catholic family in a kind of rural area

07:15: was every family was looking for a vocation in their family. You'd pray, in my family,

07:20: pray after dinner for a vocation among my brothers and me. And in Clarence's world, the nuns

07:28: were looking for the first black priest for Savannah. And Clarence got the seal of approval from

07:37: Sister Mary, Virgillius, and others. This was going to be, and they told him this, and they told

07:42: everybody this. This was going to be the first black priest, and his name was going to be Clarence Thomas.

07:49: And so living in this dormitory with a bunch of white boys, it's kind of an unusual arrangement for kids back in the 50s.

07:58: What was that experience like for him?

08:01: He had never really been around white people in this way in the sense that you're sleeping

08:07: in a room with 20 others or 15 others or maybe more.

08:13: together, hang it around. Clarence didn't exactly have a plethora of social skills.

08:23: And was mocked and ridiculed. And all you have to do is look closely at the pictures that we've

08:30: found of him in classes and at the seminary and as a little child. And he has this

08:37: look, some of it is from that dialect accent he had, some of it is because he's the only black student

08:44: there, and this is the racist deep south in the late 1950s or early 60s, all the way through that

08:56: very, the rise of the civil rights movement in the south. All of that is happening around him,

09:03: and Clarence is not smiling in virtually any of those pictures.

09:06: And he is the subject of derision and mocking and taunts at night.

09:12: Clarence smiles so we can see you.

09:16: Certainly didn't surprise me to hear the darkest racial names you could imagine

09:20: called out to him all night long to keep him awake.

09:24: And then there was one critical moment when Clarence knew,

09:28: Okay, I've got to get out of here.

09:31: And that was the assassination, the murder of Martin Luther King.

09:35: When he heard white seminarian say,

09:39: King had not been murdered, had not died yet.

09:43: And the seminarians said,

09:45: I hope the SOB dies.

09:47: And for Clarence, that was the high school student clearance, that was the final straw.

09:54: So he left the seminary and went back

09:56: who lived with his grandfather who did not particularly welcome that decision.

10:01: He basically told them to go back out the door.

10:04: He was not welcome there.

10:06: His feelings and his, I think, probably, I hate to get it in his grandfather's head, but

10:12: I others talk about it in a way that it was that he was so proud that Clarence might

10:18: end up being the black priest of Savannah.

10:21: And when Clarence didn't cut it, that was against the rules as far as his grandfather was concerned.

10:27: You always cut it when the going gets rough, the rough get going, the tough gets going or whatever the saying is.

10:34: That was certainly the way he felt.

10:36: And he felt that Clarence had betrayed him.

10:40: And basically he said to Clarence, you're going to end up just like your no good father.

10:46: You're no good at school.

10:48: You can't finish anything.

10:50: out and go out and feel what it's like to be out in the world alone. And so, you know,

10:56: in his teens, Clarence Thomas can't live with his mom and his out on his own to find

11:03: ways to make a living, to eat, to find a meal, to find a flush toilet again. All the things

11:09: that Clarence Thomas had become kind of used to. He now had to start over. It was back

11:16: could see Rowan. He was a teenager and his grandfather and he never really mended that breach after that.

11:24: We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Michael Kirk.

11:28: He is an award-winning filmmaker, his documentary, Clarence and Jenny Thomas, Politics Power

11:33: and the Supreme Court, is available for streaming on YouTube, Frontlines, Website and in the

11:38: PBS app. We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. I'm Dave Davies, and this

11:43: his fresh air weekend. Our guest is veteran filmmaker Michael Kirk, whose latest work is a

11:49: PBS frontline documentary about the lives and influences on US Supreme Court justice Clarence

11:55: Thomas and his wife Jenny, a conservative political activist. So Clarence Thomas eventually gets

12:03: a scholarship to Holy Cross College in Massachusetts. And there he becomes a militant activist. I mean,

12:13: he was very, very troubled by the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, which occurred a few months

12:18: after the assassination of Martin Luther King. What shape did his activism take?

12:27: So here's a guy who never really has hung out with a group of like-minded, maybe even

12:35: open-minded, black kids his age, and he goes off to Holy Cross, and there's 2,000 white kids,

12:43: all Catholics and 28 black students, the first kind of real class or among the first classes

12:51: of affirmative action class at Holy Cross that it was an idea sort of sweeping the country at

12:57: the time. This is 1968, 1969. Clarence sees the explosion in the streets, the fights that are

13:05: happening about the war and Vietnam, the fights that are happening around the civil rights crisis,

13:11: the murders of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and he there he is living with all these

13:18: other angry and frustrated, self-described angry and frustrated black men, through

13:27: our form, whom we've interviewed. And in that process, clearance really finds an identity.

13:35: And the identity is the Black Panther movement.

13:40: He adopts the clothing, hairstyle,

13:43: the combat boots, the military style, uniform,

13:48: the wears of beret, and finds an idol.

13:53: And the idol turns out to be Malcolm X.

13:56: And it is Malcolm's speeches,

14:00: Malcolm's arguments for separatism.

14:04: Malcolm's stride and strength that Clarence is drawn to, the way he tells the story or the way

14:14: people who know him tell the story is that Clarence decides to memorize many of Malcolm's

14:21: speeches and is himself a sort of self-styled campus radical.

14:29: believing, I think, that there was a way to fix the world that he had, we would find

14:36: acceptance in the anti-war and pro-civil rights movements.

14:44: In his junior year at Holy Cross, Clarence Thomas went to a protest in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

14:50: where Harvard students were protesting at the time.

14:54: It got pretty lively.

14:56: What happened and what was the effect?

14:59: He and some of his friends from their group at Holy Cross drove the 40 miles down to Harvard

15:07: Square.

15:09: I drank a lot of beer.

15:11: I joined a march.

15:12: There's 31 colleges in New York cities and Massachusetts.

15:16: And there are a lot of people on the streets that night marching toward Harvard Square from Boston Common.

15:23: And it all got out of control.

15:25: There was glass broke, then arguments with the police, then tear gas, then the usual

15:33: malaise, but much on a much larger scale than anybody expected that it had happened certainly previously.

15:39: And while those kind of things were breaking out every night, Clarence leaves Cambridge

15:44: four in the morning, gets back to campus and has a kind of epiphany where he says to

15:50: himself, at least in his book, this is what he reports, he says to himself, why was I doing that?

15:57: What was I doing? I came so close to being arrested. I think 40 students had been arrested, so

16:03: close to ruining my life, and for what? So he has this kind of crisis. And instead of becoming more

16:14: radicalized. He decides to shed the panther, the uniform, put on a coat and tie at times.

16:22: You could find clearance in the library, not on the streets or anything like that. And he finishes

16:35: college near the top of his class with a 3.75 grade point. He's obviously a super bright guy.

16:43: He applies himself and it does very, very well and manages to graduate from all across the first

16:53: person in his family to do so. And his grandfather, of course, does not come to the ceremony.

16:59: That's a pretty radical turn to go from somebody who's wearing, you know,

17:03: fatigues and army books and has a poster of Malcolm X in his room to buckling down and being a more conventional student.

17:12: Did you talk to folks or did you get insights from Thomas' book about whether he changed

17:18: his thinking about the United States and race relations and, you know, the big issues that had radicalist item?

17:28: And people we talk to, one of them, a friend of Clarence Thomas, Glenn Lowry, also a black

17:35: academic and a very well-known speaker and a conservative black man, Glenn Lowry.

17:44: One of the things that Glenn says is it's very hard to fix an ideology to Clarence Thomas

17:49: and it was equally hard then or this is just another great example of it.

17:55: It's almost an ideology-free zone around him.

17:58: If you go back if you're a filmmaker or a biographer or a friend and you go back and

18:04: look at Clarence Thomas' things he said and things he acted on, looking for a political hints of a political ideology.

18:15: It is very, very, very complicated and not strongly articulated by Thomas.

18:23: In terms of why did he move away from the idea of separatism and other stalwart phrases

18:31: or longstanding phrases of a lot of the black radicals at the time, he was there, but

18:38: not really there, thinking about it, defending it, but not really.

18:42: But one thing was becoming obvious, he was not happy about the implications of affirmative action.

18:49: And it was among the first times that he would, of course,

18:54: throughout his life be a recipient, a beneficiary

18:58: of what became known as affirmative action,

19:00: but at the time he was the first strong feelings of, do I belong here?

19:06: Why am I here?

19:07: Am I here for merit or am I here only because I'm black?

19:10: And if so, will I spend the rest of my life

19:12: with an asterisk next to my name that says, early beneficiary of affirmative action.

19:19: So his objection to affirmative action was that he was perceived as someone who didn't earn his way, right?

19:26: That he was getting preferential treatment.

19:29: Even though he demonstrated that he had earned his way with his grades and his hard work,

19:34: so you can posit a theory that he decides, I'm going to go ahead and make contribution

19:39: after the so-called riot in Harvard Square,

19:44: is it possible that he went back to school and said to himself,

19:49: I, you know, that was a no-win deal for me.

19:53: I want to make my name, I want to make a contribution,

19:56: I want to do something, and I want to prove that I belong in this world.

20:01: And I think that is a sort of strain of Clarence Thomas,

20:04: which is an ambition that grows out of such a strong desire

20:11: to find acceptance and to, in a way,

20:15: a live down the challenge his grandfather gave him

20:18: when he said, you're just like you're no good dad,

20:20: you're never going to amount to anything.

20:23: I think if there was an ideology for Clarence Thomas

20:26: around that time, it might not be political,

20:28: but it certainly was a mixture of ambition and revenge.

20:35: So clearance Thomas gets a scholarship to Yale Law School

20:39: and elite institution with a lot of very strong traditions,

20:43: one of very, you know, a smattering of black students there.

20:47: How does he fit in?

20:48: What is life like for him?

20:50: I think he really is surprised that,

20:53: I mean, he thinks what he's good at is a ticket to ride.

20:57: You get a law degree from Yale, you're going to become a big time lawyer in New York City

21:02: on Wall Street and make a lot of money.

21:05: That was his ambition, that was his reason for doing it, and that was his expectation.

21:11: He was surprised by what it was like to be there.

21:14: You're surrounded by him.

21:15: He's one of his married student housing, roommate, was John Bolton, Bill and Hillary Clinton

21:21: or one class ahead of him, but in a lot of his classes.

21:24: As Bolton tells us, it was a place where people expected to run the world someday and they

21:29: were just there, gathering whatever they needed to do that.

21:33: Well, that was certainly not the case for Clarence Thomas.

21:36: And he was heartbroken when he discovered, once again, so obviously to him that the students

21:44: did not believe that he belonged there because of affirmative action.

21:49: And in some cases, even the professors thought he was getting a free pass.

21:54: He basically never talked in classes or anything like that.

21:58: He was in some form of shell shock during his years at Yale Law School.

22:05: And at the end, when folks were getting invitations to join as associates in big law firms,

22:14: he didn't get offers and you report that he kept these rejection letters.

22:19: What is kind of a motivation?

22:22: Exactly.

22:23: I mean, even today, this is a man who, for whom revenge is one response to the lack of acceptance of him and his efforts.

22:34: So yes, when he doesn't, he arrives at what he thinks of as the pinnacle.

22:38: He graduates from Yale Law School and he realizes it's not going to yield.

22:44: kind of a job that he had aspirations for. He says he has the degree, the A.O. Law School

22:50: degree, framed with a 10 cent price, one of those stickers that says 10 cents, and he

22:56: stuck it on the diploma frame and said, that's basically what that A.O. Law School degree was worth to me.

23:05: Well, Michael Kirk, thank you so much for speaking with us.

23:09: My pleasure, Dave. Thank you.

23:12: Kirk is an award-winning filmmaker. His documentary Clarence and Jenny Thomas,

23:16: Politics Power and the Supreme Court, is available to stream for free on YouTube,

23:21: Frontlines, website, and in the PBS app.

23:30: Cuban Mexican American Arturo O'Farrell has led New York's acclaimed Afro Latin

23:34: jazz orchestra for two decades. Before that, he'd run the Latin big band of his father,

23:40: composer Chico O'Farrow. Back when Arturo started out, he just wanted to be a jazz pianist.

23:46: Jazz Critic Kevin Whitehead says his album puts piano in the foreground.

24:20: Arturo O'Farrill, on the 1935 tune obsession, written by the great Puerto Rican Balero

24:26: composer Pedro Flores while he was living in New York.

24:30: On one level, O'Farrill's new trio and solo album Legacies is about intersections of jazz

24:35: and Latin Caribbean music that reached back nearly a century.

24:39: Like so many before him, the pianist steers between formal Cuban dance syncopations and

24:45: and jazz's spontaneous liberties with the beat.

25:27: The honest Arturo O'Farrell with his son, Zacko Farrell, on drums, who, like his father, caught the jazz bug early.

25:34: When Arturo was 19, composer Carla Blay heard him playing a bargag and drafted him into her 1980s big band.

25:41: He plays one of her elegantly simple ballads from that period.

25:45: Norwegian title translates as, development song.

26:18: Arturo O'Farrell shows commendable restraint there, but he goes the other way, playing

26:34: Philonius Monk's Well-You-Needin' does a solo.

26:38: Monk was a less-is-more type guy, but his interpreters don't have to be.

26:42: O'Farrell is an orchestra leader.

26:44: He likes big gestures and a busy sound.

26:47: But sometimes, who gets so swept up in the moment, he forgets to come up for air.

26:52: non-horned players need to take breath pauses.

27:29: Arturo O'Farrow balances freedom and discipline, covering a 1951 tune where pianist Bud Powell

27:36: made his Afro Cuban influences clear, from Max Rocha's Cal Bell to its Spanish title,

27:42: Un Poco Local.

27:44: O'Farrow really flies on his version.

27:46: All that history he knows doesn't weigh him down.

27:49: Liani Mateo is on bass.

27:51: She also plays in Arturo's Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra.

28:42: Here are there on the solo pieces, Arturo O'Faro nods to Jelly Roll Morton, who encouraged

28:47: Latin influences and jazz, and hints at Limber, Early Jazz, Stripeyano.

28:53: of the solo ballads is pure emotion by Arturo's band leader father Chico O'Farrell.

28:59: So counting drummer Zach, three generations of O'Farrells are represented on the album

29:04: Legacy's. Reminding us what tradition is at heart. Our ongoing conversation with those

29:11: who came before us and those who come after.

29:47: Kevin Whitehead is the author of the book Play the Way You Feel, the essential guide to jazz stories on film.

29:54: He reviewed legacies, the new album by Arturo O'Farell.

29:58: Coming up, we talk about allergies with medical anthropologist Theresa McFail.

30:03: Her new book is A Lurgic, our irritated bodies in a changing world.

30:08: I'm Dave Davies and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

30:12: Hey, this is Seth Kelly, producer at Fresh Air.

30:14: And this is Molly C.V. Nesbert, digital producer at Fresh Air.

30:17: We co-write the weekly Fresh Air newsletter.

30:20: It's recaps of the week, staff recommendations, gems from the archive,

30:24: and a glimpse of who's coming on the show soon, all in one place.

30:27: It's also a fun peak behind the scenes, what goes into the producing and editing of the interviews,

30:32: and a chance to meet the people who make Fresh Air.

30:34: You can subscribe by going to WHYY.org slash fresh air.

30:38: You'll hear from us soon, now back to the show.

30:42: When my guest, author and medical anthropologist Theresa McPhale

30:46: finished researching and writing her new book, she made some lifestyle changes.

30:51: She stopped taking daily showers and changing her sheets

30:54: as often, along with eating more natural food

30:56: and making sure to get enough sleep and exercise.

30:59: Her book is about allergies, which

31:02: a growing challenge for humanity as our environment changes.

31:07: In the US, nut allergies in children, hospital admissions for asthma, and prescriptions for

31:12: epipens which treat extreme allergic reactions have all tripled in recent years.

31:18: Estimates are that 30-40% of the world's population now have some form of allergy.

31:23: Some allergic reactions are anusense, the congestion and burning eyes that come with a high

31:28: pollen count, and some are deadly, like anaphylaxis that can follow a bee sting, something McFail has had

31:35: personal experience with in her own family. There are allergies to airborne irritants, food allergies,

31:41: and skin allergies. McFail found the causes of allergies to be complex and often misunderstood.

31:48: For decades, they were thought to mainly afflict people who were nervous, anxious, or temperamental.

31:53: While there's new science on the causes of allergic reactions, effective treatments are

31:57: hard to come by and expensive when one shows promise.

32:02: Theresa McFail is an associate professor of science and technology studies at Stevens

32:06: Institute of Technology in New Jersey.

32:09: She researches and writes about global health, biomedicine, and disease.

32:13: She holds a PhD in medical anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco.

32:21: Her new book is allergic, our irritated bodies in a changing world.

32:26: Theresa McFail, welcome to Fresh Air.

32:29: Hi, thanks for having me.

32:31: Speaking generally, allergic reactions are a product of our immune system, right?

32:37: I mean, what do we know about why our immune system, which protects us from disease, sometimes

32:43: reacts to bodies in a way that gives us these troubling symptoms?

32:49: It's a really interesting question.

32:51: I think a lot of people in general are confused about what an allergy really is.

32:58: And what sensitivity is or an intolerance is.

33:03: And the basic difference is that your body can react to a whole host of things and the symptoms can be similar.

33:10: But with an allergy, it's really triggering your immune system itself.

33:16: So your immune cells, there are billions in your body, they're reacting to foreign objects that it comes into contact with.

33:26: So that can be anything from a tree pollen to a dust mite.

33:31: And their jobs are basically, we've heard that they're like police officers.

33:35: I prefer to think of them as bouncers or curators.

33:40: job is to kind of scan the crowd and make split-second decisions about whether or not that thing is

33:49: okay to hang out or can become a part of us in the case of food or needs to go in the case of a virus.

33:56: And then what happens when pollen comes in, for example, or ragweed?

34:02: The way I like to think of it is an allergic reaction is usually driven by a class of antibodies called IgE.

34:09: And if you think of, we usually hear about T cells, which those are the police officers of our body.

34:16: They're constantly circulating and finding things in our body that shouldn't be there.

34:22: So if a T cell comes in to contact with an oak pollen say, and it says, you know, I don't like the looks of this.

34:28: It's got to go.

34:29: It gives that information to a class of cells called B cells and think of them as nightclub managers.

34:37: in your body, on the street, that the T-cell is patrolling.

34:42: And he shows a picture of this oak pollen and says,

34:45: hey, I really don't like this guy.

34:47: If you see him, you gotta let me know.

34:50: Let's contact some people.

34:51: We gotta get it out.

34:52: And so these B-cells who are like these nightclub managers, basically they go to IG.

34:58: They produce cells called IgE or little proteins,

35:01: Y-shaped proteins.

35:03: And those are like the bouncers.

35:05: But if you like to think of this metaphor as in,

35:07: like every IgE is unique to the perp.

35:11: So at the nightclub entrance, you've got a bouncer there ready to spot Oak Pollen,

35:17: but you've got 50 bouncers at the door, all looking for specific things.

35:23: And so when they see it or something similar to it, they send out the signal.

35:30: So they alert all of the other immune cells

35:33: that something's up, you gotta come and take care of this guy.

35:37: So that's basically going on in your body all the time.

35:40: So the things can either stay,

35:42: have a great dance party in the club

35:44: with all of your cells or they've gotta go.

35:47: But you can already see the problems

35:50: because say there's a guy who's six two with brown hair,

35:54: he might look similar to something else

35:57: and that anybody is still gonna react to it.

36:00: So that's why you get a lot of people

36:02: allergic to one tree nut will be allergic to all of them. If that makes sense, it's because of the

36:07: similarities in their protein. And once the bouncers take action, then we have a rumble and your

36:14: eye water and use these or your skin breaks out or something worse. Yeah, it's not a very fun night

36:19: club to be in after that. There are interesting theories that help or that may help explain why we

36:27: We see so many more allergies in the United States and around the world.

36:31: One of them you say is the hygiene hypothesis.

36:34: We're just too darn clean.

36:36: What's going on here?

36:38: Right.

36:40: The hygiene hypothesis, if you've heard about it, you've probably heard that we don't let kids eat enough dirt.

36:47: They don't play in enough dirt.

36:48: They're not around enough germs.

36:51: And that's part of it.

36:52: So what ended up happening is in the 1970s, this British researcher did a meta-data study.

36:59: So he kind of looked at all the factors involved in developing an allergy.

37:05: And what he found was that in families that had multiple children, you tended to have

37:10: the youngest children had much lower rates of allergic disease.

37:16: And so he posited that that was probably because they had older siblings who got sick a lot.

37:24: And so they would bring home all of these bacteria and viruses and the little list ones

37:30: would be exposed to a whole bevy of things that maybe the oldest didn't have the same exposures to.

37:37: And so that there was something about this.

37:39: There was something about being the youngest that was protective.

37:43: And in fact, we have seen that people who send their children to daycare centers, there's

37:51: something about being in a daycare center that is also protective.

37:55: And it's probably the same theory that you're just getting exposed to more germs on a day-to-day

38:01: basis and that at a young age, that's actually helpful because it helps to train your immune system.

38:09: And so it's not going to be over sensitive when the kid gets a little bit older.

38:14: Yeah, this is interesting.

38:15: So our immune system kind of needs to learn the neighborhood.

38:18: It needs to, I mean, to distinguish, get to know the various antigens and either how

38:25: to handle them or how not to worry about them.

38:28: I don't know what happens here exactly.

38:30: Yeah, that's exactly the theory.

38:34: It's basically to go back to the the bouncer and the police officer.

38:38: You're absolutely right.

38:39: It's getting familiar with everything in your neighborhood.

38:44: So it's your body learning, oh Bob just lives down this street.

38:48: He's fine.

38:49: I don't have to worry about Bob.

38:52: And if you get that training prior to the age of three, there's something that happens in early childhood development.

38:59: By around three, your immune system is kind of set up and it's very hard to change it after that point. is very malleable before that point,

39:10: which is why early exposures to things seems to be so protective.

39:14: So the landmark study is that support the hygiene hypothesis

39:19: were done actually in Switzerland and Germany,

39:22: where they found that children who were regularly exposed to dust in animal barns.

39:29: And it's interesting because the animals seem to be a key component.

39:33: So if you're living on a farm with livestock,

39:36: You tend and and your baby,

39:38: and you're being carried by your mom

39:39: in and out of this barn where there are pigs

39:41: and cows and ducks and dogs and whatever.

39:44: You tend to have very low rates of sensitization

39:49: and allergic response in those adults once they grow up.

39:54: So there's something happening.

39:55: And so the theory is, it could be anything.

39:59: It could be the allergens in the air mixed

40:01: with certain types of bacteria that would be in a barn. but the animals do seem key.

40:08: And I will say that if you grow up with a dog in particular, dogs seem to be protective.

40:13: So people who grow up in a household with a dog

40:16: also tend to have a slightly lower rate of allergies

40:20: than people who grow up in a household without pets.

40:23: Right, but you want that dog when the kids are little, right?

40:26: Right.

40:27: I want to talk a little about treatments.

40:30: You say the most common treatment for typical respiratory allergens is simply avoidance, right?

40:36: Keep an eye on the pollen count, try and avoid it.

40:41: Beyond that, you say, thorough household cleaning

40:44: is something that is done, washing all of the bedding,

40:47: some showering as soon as you come home

40:50: on a day when the pollen count is high.

40:53: That would seem to contradict the earlier advice about tolerating the microbes around us. the microbes around us.

41:02: Right, but if you wash right when you come in

41:07: during the pollen season, you're getting the pollen off of your body.

41:10: You're basically coated in pollen.

41:12: If I take a walk through Central Park right now

41:15: and I come in, I'm coated in multitudes of pollen.

41:19: So just getting that off of you,

41:20: if you happen to be pollen allergic is a great idea.

41:25: The treatments that we have for allergy are not great until recently.

41:31: They've been the same for approximately 200 years.

41:36: There hasn't been much advancement in allergy treatments.

41:42: And avoidance or stopping the reaction

41:45: before it even starts is the gold standard.

41:48: So, but that's increasingly difficult,

41:50: like where are you supposed to go if you're allergic to tree pollen?

41:54: I mean, I guess you could move to the desert,

41:56: but even as I discovered when I was researching this book,

42:00: the desert, they have their own problems right now.

42:02: I mean, Bermuda grasses and certain trees that we've imported into the desert.

42:07: So there really isn't anywhere to go

42:10: to escape some of our allergy problems or allergens.

42:15: Yeah, plus we love trees.

42:16: You know, you know, you're just...

42:17: Yeah, exactly.

42:19: I know I don't want to sound like I'm down with trees.

42:22: Love trees.

42:23: Somebody pointed out that that that in some cases,

42:26: municipalities when they import and plant trees

42:29: will plant all do I have this right?

42:31: All male trees and this can create a problem.

42:34: Are you aware of this?

42:35: Yes.

42:36: So because female trees, they tend to be messier.

42:43: So they have seeds falling and things like that.

42:47: So they're harder to clean up after.

42:49: And so for years it was thought, oh, well, let's just

42:51: the trees that don't have that problem, except that they're pumping out pollen to pollinate

42:56: the female trees. So you accidentally got this imbalance of pollen producing trees that I'm

43:07: not actually sure. One of the most interesting things is that I couldn't get anyone from any

43:12: parks department to talk to me. Because I wanted to know, do you still plant the same way? Like,

43:18: like if you're planting trees now, I constantly am seeing new trees being planted in my neighborhood

43:24: and I want to know, are these trees that produce a lot of pollen?

43:28: Like have you thought about that and I couldn't get anyone on the phone?

43:31: So I have no idea if we're still making the same mistakes.

43:34: Probably yes.

43:37: A few other things I wanted to get to.

43:40: You know, seasonal allergies can be annoying.

43:44: Are there long-term effects from dealing with them

43:47: or treating them, you know, you're in, you're out?

43:50: Yeah, one of the most interesting things

43:53: when I was researching this book is,

43:55: so I would ask to talk to regular people

43:59: about their allergies and everyone initially was like,

44:03: why do you want to talk to me about my hay fever?

44:05: That's so weird.

44:07: And I was like, well, I want to understand how you live your life with it.

44:12: And it was almost like being a priest because once they got talking,

44:17: it was like I was in a confessional booth.

44:20: And these things really do affect the quality of people's lives.

44:25: That is something that I absolutely learned

44:28: in the five years I was researching this book.

44:31: It doesn't matter if it's a mild allergy to a severe allergy.

44:36: Everyone's basic quality of life suffers when they have an allergy.

44:41: You're spending, first of all, you're spending a lot of money on treatments.

44:45: So you're taking Zer attack or whatever you're taking, you're anti-histamines, you're buying

44:50: them, you're taking them on a regular basis, you're buying air purifiers, you're doing all of these things.

44:56: You're buying allergy free foods, if you've got food allergies, you're spending a lot of money.

45:02: The second thing is, you just don't feel well.

45:05: You don't feel at your best.

45:08: So most people with mild allergies don't sleep well.

45:13: So their sleep is affected, which means they're not as productive.

45:17: Their mental health suffers, like most people with moderate allergy have some form of depression or anxiety.

45:26: We can say that that's correlation and not causation, but if you're constantly lacking sleep and

45:32: you're constantly not feeling your best, that it takes a toll after a certain amount

45:38: of time. And does it grind down the body in any way physical, physically or do absolutely?

45:48: I mean, people that have allergies, seasonal allergies, especially, you're more likely to

45:55: get sick because think of it as say you're at a gate at Yankee Stadium and you're immune

46:02: cells like we're back to the bouncers. The bouncers are there, everybody's there trying

46:06: to stop viruses from coming in. If you're being, if millions of opal and particles are trying

46:15: to come in and you're dealing with them, are you really going to spot the SARS-CoV-Virus

46:22: when it comes in? No. Your immune system is distracted. It can only do so much. And so

46:28: If it's busy responding to one thing, it could lead to you missing something else.

46:35: So we really want healthy immune systems.

46:39: That being said, I will say a little positive.

46:42: There's not much positive here.

46:45: I wanted the things I'm really aware of is when I talk.

46:48: It can sound pretty depressing.

46:51: But people with allergies, actually you should feel happy because your immune systems are

46:56: strong and functioning. And it turns out that people with allergies actually can have lower

47:04: levels of certain cancers like leomas, partially because your immune system is so strong and

47:12: it's on the alert. So there's downsides, but there's a small upside.

47:17: Well, Theresa McFail, thank you so much for speaking with us.

47:20: Thank you. I've enjoyed it.

47:23: Theresa McFaillth is a medical anthropologist who writes about global health, biomedicine, and disease.

47:29: Her new book is A Lurgic, our irritated bodies in a changing world.

47:35: Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Theresa Madden.

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48:03: For Terry Gross and Freshers co-host Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.