In the 74th episode of Rabbit Hole of Research, Joe, Nick, and Georgia are joined by guest Erin C. Anthony, an evolutionary ecologist and science communicator, to continue their Spider-Man villain series with a deep dive into chimeras: part myth, part Handwavium, and recently part reality.
The crew kicks off explaining what a chimera is? And is Spider-Man one? They explore the science behind why you can’t just inject someone with scorpion DNA and call it a day, looking at you waving those hands J. Jonah Jameson.
Along the way they get into CRISPR, epigenetics, xenotransplants, and the very real, and ethically complicated, efforts to grow human organs inside animals. They also talk about the axolotl and salamander research behind limb regeneration, debate whether Frankenstein’s monster would have survived immune rejection?
They also touch on the ethics of brain chimeras, clones as organ banks, and the comic run Flowers for Rhino, a riff on Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon that asks what happens when a supervillain gets too smart for his own good.
The episode closes with the crew’s answers to the most important question of the night: if you could splice your DNA with one animal, what would it be?
Pre-Order: Touch of Noir 2027 Wall Calendar —
12 months of all-original art by Jim and Georgia; pre-orders open now, with mailing expected in September
Joe will be at Shore Leave 46 — Lancaster, PA (July 10-12, 2026)
Lancaster Wyndham Resort and Convention Center
Check out what the RHR crew is creating:
Joe:
Named by the Guild Literary Complex as one of the 35 Writers to Watch!
Red Line: Chicago Horror Stories Anthology featuring a story by Joe!
Joe’s Sci-fi physiological thriller Novel: Will You Still Love Me If I Become Someone Else?
Joe’s Rom-Com Novella: Tomorrow May Be Too Late
Essay by Joe: From Beyond Press: Specific Knowledge: Jotham Austin, II, PhD on Transformations in Fiction
Future Events to Hang with the Crew:
Podcast Cross-Appearances
Joe on GoIndieNow: 21grams with Joe Compton talking about villains.
RHR Crew on This Podcast Will Change Your Life with Ben Tanzer
Events & Conventions:
Shore Leave 46 — Lancaster, PA (July 10-12, 2026)
Lancaster Wyndham Resort and Convention Center
Dragon Con — Atlanta, GA (September 3-7, 2026) - Joe attending as Professional
It’s Science for Weirdos
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We want to Hear From You (leave a comment):
If you could splice your DNA with one animal, what would it be and why?
Would you accept a lab-grown organ grown inside a pig using your own stem cells if it meant saving your life?
Scientists have drawn a hard line at brain chimeras. Do you think that line is in the right place?
Drop your thoughts in the comments. We read them all, and your ideas often shape future episodes.
Future Episodes
Three Part Spider-Man Series continues to get ready for the new MCU Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Episode 76 – Spider-Man Villains Series 3: What His Villains Reveal About Him
Guest: Comic YouTuber, Alex Hanes (@Hanes4Heroes)
The conclusion of the Spider-Man trilogy takes a step back to ask what the science of his villains tells us about Spider-Man himself.
Episode 78 - Briar East Woods - Urban Deforestation
Guest: Anne Sedlacek
Episode 80: Magic: the Power and Cost of Magic Systems
Guest: B.L.Mostyn
Episode 82: Climate Change and Data Centers
Guest: David Pincus, PhD
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Show Notes & Fun facts
Stuff crew said they’d put in shownotes
Episode 1: Take Me Down to Electric Avenue — Frankenstein, reanimation, and the history of electrifying corpses: https://jothamaustin.substack.com/p/episode-1-take-me-down-to-electric
Episode 14: Exploring Regeneration from Wolverine and Deadpool — axolotls, salamanders, stem cells, and regeneration science: https://jothamaustin.substack.com/p/episode-14-exploring-regeneration
Episode 49: The Heart of a Superhero — with guest Dr. Rengasayee “Sai” Veeraraghavan, referenced during the heart chimera discussion: https://jothamaustin.substack.com/p/the-heart-of-a-superhero
Human cells grow in mouse embryos — Nature (June 2025): https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01898-z
Human heart grown in pig embryo — Nature (2025): https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01854-x
iNaturalist — app Erin used to track the Portland scorpion sighting:
https://www.inaturalist.org
Radiolab episodes on CRISPR — mentioned by Georgia:
CRISPR part 1 (2015)
CRISPR part 2 (2017)
Comics
Amazing Spider-Man — Scorpion origin (Issue #20, 1965)
Amazing Spider-Man — The Lizard origin (Issue #6, 1963)
Flowers for Rhino — published in Spider-Man's Tangled Web #5–6 (2001). Written by Peter Milligan with art by Duncan Fegredo, it pays homage to Daniel Keyes' sci-fi classic Flowers for Algernon
Books
Flowers for Algernon — Daniel Keyes (short story and novel)
Never Let Me Go — Kazuo Ishiguro
Scorpion House — Nancy Farmer (YA sci-fi novel)
The Island of Doctor Moreau — H.G. Wells
Movies
The Fly (1986, dir. David Cronenberg) — Jeff Goldblum
The Fly (1958) — Vincent Price original: Help Me!
Jurassic Park (1993) — Reptile DNA, should have been bird DNA.
Spider-Man: The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
They Live (1988)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
TV
X-Files — The Salamander referenced by Erin
BoJack Horseman — referenced during Minotaur discussion
Spider-Man animated series (1981) — The Lizard episode the crew watched before recording
Fun Facts to Impress Your Friends With:
Scorpions glow in the dark — and not just under a blacklight. Scorpions fluoresce blue-green under UV light, including natural moonlight. Scientists still aren’t entirely sure why. One hypothesis is that the glow helps them detect light levels. Another is that it helps them find each other.
Your body can reject your own skin — Skin grafts taken from one part of your body and moved to another can actually be rejected or fully reabsorbed. Your immune system uses a lock-and-key system of antigens on cell surfaces to identify what belongs where, and sometimes even your own tissue in the wrong location doesn’t get the key.
A rat pancreas was grown inside a mouse — Scientists knocked out the gene a mouse needs to build a pancreas, injected rat stem cells into the gap, and the rat cells built a functional pancreas inside the mouse. When transplanted into diabetic mice, it produced insulin and reversed the disease. The blood vessels threading through it were still mouse, but the organ itself was rat.
Baby humans can regrow fingertips — Very young children, within days of birth, can regenerate amputated fingertips. The ability disappears quickly as stem cells deactivate. Salamanders keep this ability their entire lives, and scientists are actively researching how to switch it back on in humans.
CRISPR won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020 — The molecular scissors technique that can clip out a region of DNA and replace it with another was awarded science’s highest honor just five years after the NIH imposed a moratorium on human-animal chimera research that relied on it. The tool and the ethics have been racing each other ever since.
Episode Highlights
00:00 — Hello From the Basement Studio
Joe, Nick, and Georgia welcome evolutionary ecologist and science teacher Erin C. Anthony, met at MarsCon in Virginia Beach.
01:46 — What Is a Chimera
Erin sets the record straight: a chimera is an organism composed of cells from two or more distinct organisms, not just DNA splicing.
03:48 — Is Spider-Man a Chimera?
Erin drops the verdict: Spider-Man is not a chimera, his radioactive spider bite is closer to a mutation than a true genetic mix.
05:48 — Jurassic Park DNA Detour
The crew questions why Jurassic Park used reptile DNA when the movie itself said birds are the closer evolutionary relatives of dinosaurs.
07:14 — Scorpion Origin Story
J. Jonah Jameson paid $10,000 in 1965 to have Mac Gargan experimentally fused with scorpion traits, because scorpions are natural predators of spiders.
09:30 — Why Adult Chimeras Fail
Erin explains why the Scorpion serum wouldn’t work on an adult: chimeric modification only really works in embryos, before cell paths are set.
10:56 — CRISPR Explained Simply
Joe breaks down CRISPR as molecular scissors that can clip out and replace regions of DNA, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
13:37 — Ethics and the Deafness Case
Erin recounts the real legal case of a deaf couple who wanted CRISPR used to give their unborn child a hearing impairment to share their cultural community.
14:27 — Minotaur Thought Experiment
The crew works through how a Minotaur would actually develop, each cell carrying both horse and human DNA, developmental signals deciding which genes to express where.
16:39 — Growing Human Organs in Pigs
Joe explains how CRISPR knocks out a pig’s organ-development gene, human stem cells fill the vacancy, and the pig’s body becomes an incubator for a human organ.
31:46 — Xenotransplants Reality Check
Erin reports on the two real pig-to-human heart transplants (2022 and 2023), the recipients survived two months and six weeks respectively.
36:09 — Clones as Organ Banks
The crew discusses Erin’s high school read Scorpion House and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, fiction that asked whether clones could ethically serve as personal organ reserves.
39:26 — Back to Spider-Man Villains
Nick steers the crew back to the rogues gallery: Tarantula, Rhino, Scorpion, some biological chimeras, some purely mechanical.
40:30 — Atomic Age Comic Science
Joe connects the radiation-and-DNA origin stories of 1960s Spider-Man villains to Cold War atomic anxiety and the dawn of genetic science.
43:22 — Heart Shock Origins
Erin notes that electromagnetic pulse revival of hearts, the science behind defibrillators, first appeared in science fiction before becoming medical reality.
43:56 — Frankenstein Electric Revival
Joe ties it back to Episode 1: Mary Shelley attended parlor events where scientists used electricity to animate corpses, inspiring Frankenstein.
45:56 — Spider-Man Lizard Science
Joe and Erin unpack the Lizard’s origin, Dr. Connors chose reptiles for limb regeneration, but lizards don’t actually regrow limbs; salamanders do.
49:10 — Stem Cells and Limb Regrowth
Erin explains that salamanders keep their stem cells active their whole lives, humans have the same genes, they’re just switched off after infancy.
53:44 — CRISPR Switches and Pathways
The crew debates whether CRISPR could flip the regeneration switch back on in adult humans, or whether the answer lies at the epigenetic level instead.
56:35 — Scorpion Venom and UV Glow
Joe reveals that scorpion venom compounds are being researched as anti-cancer, antifungal, and antiviral agents, and that scorpions fluoresce under UV light, including moonlight.
59:41 — Trench Coats and Chimeras
Doc Ock and Scorpion both hide their modifications under trench coats, a fact that sends the crew down an unexpected and spirited detour.
01:05:30 — Pick Your Animal Splice
Nick asks the big question: if you could splice your DNA with one animal, what would it be? Axolotl, mantis shrimp, pig, bald eagle, and photosynthesis all make the list.
01:09:15 — Xenografts and Farewell
Erin drops one last term, xenograft, the grafting of animal parts from one species into another.
“Stay curious, stay safe… Love Y’all!”
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