Lindsay Patterson

The Act of Killing

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 11:42:00 -0400

I usually stay away from films with violent words in their titles. I’m sensitive to violence in movies, and I spend all violent scenes covering my ears with my hands and staring stoically at a point somewhere beyond my right shoulder. But last night, something told me to make an exception for The Act of Killing, a documentary showing at SXSW this week.

That “something” was the endorsement of both Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, documentary superstars who I’d like to imagine summering at each others’ houses, and the intriguing description. It’s about the perpetrators of the genocide in Indonesia in 1965-66 getting together to make a fictional movie celebrating and glamorizing their past. They were “movie house gangsters” who took tickets at the cinema, got inspired by the violence in Hollywood movies, and aspired to be even more sadistic than what they saw on screen. One million people were killed in the genocide, and the main character claimed to be responsible for a thousand of those deaths.

The director, Joshua Oppenheimer, introduced the movie. “I won’t tell you to enjoy it,” he said. Awkwardly, the festival organizer came on right after him, told us there would be a Q&A later, and said, “Enjoy the film” as if there was no other way to close it out before the lights went down. Then the Alamo had a threatening message about not texting talking instagramming sexting etc, and the movie’s opening credits were disturbed by a waitress loudly asking our neighbors if they wanted parmesan on their popcorn.

What followed was an intense and powerful film about the state of Indonesian politics and how the killers are dealing with the past. The situation in Indonesia is as if the Nazis won and stayed in Germany, and celebrated their crimes and continued to act like gangsters with total impunity. In one scene, the Vice President of Indonesia gives a speech in front of the paramilitary and says, “We need our gangsters!” In another, the gangsters who are making the movie go on a national talk show, and the host congratulates them for creating a more humane and efficient way of exterminating people, as if Oprah was telling about a woman’s journey to her best life.

Those scenes felt surreal. They’re just so outside the realm of imagination, and also, it’s crazy that such an alternate reality could exist and that I was totally unaware of it. The movie-making scenes were equally crazy, starting one of the gangsters dressed up in drag with a Buddha belly and I’m still not sure why.

But the movie was really about the main character, Anwar, trying to exorcise the demons that haunted him from the genocide. In the first scene the director shot with him, he danced on the rooftop where he said he tortured and killed so many. Throughout the movie, he goes deeper into dealing with the morality of what he did - even though everyone around him glorifies his actions. In one scene, in which he says he understands how the people he killed felt being tortured after acting it out, the director calls him out from behind the camera. “No, you don’t know how they felt,” he says. “Because you knew it was a film and they knew they were about to die.”

After the film, the director did a quick Q&A and explained that although he was no longer welcome in Indonesia (the paramilitary tweeted that if he went back, the film should be called “The Act of Being Killed” which Oppenheimer thought was very clever, but scary), the film had changed the conversation about the genocide. People were actually able to speak out, whereas there had been total silence and intimidation before. He had started making films about the survivors and victims, but found filming stunted by the military. A neighbor suggested that he go and film with the killers. He interviewed 40 of them before he found Anwar, and shot him dancing on the roof.

After we were hustled out of the theater, we spent another half hour huddled in a small circle around the director, talking about the film. This is the kind of thing I love about South By. The thing that struck me about him was that this guy had already done a life’s work: Making a film that made a difference. For me, that’s what the point of art should be. Usually art aims on a small and vague scale of difference making (“start a conversation about…” or “make people think differently…” or “shock”) but The Act of Killing aimed for an overpopulated country with huge problems in the present and past, and made a difference there. That’s incredible; that’s inspiring to me.

The other thing, as an aspiring documentary maker myself, was that the film didn’t always look great. I’m so used to seeing these crisp and visually rich films shot with DSLRs on up. I just took a class on digital filmmaking that focused mostly on shooting narrative films where shots and lights are pre-arranged, and was frustrated by how the documentary I shot was often rough and shaky (I really would have liked a dolly walking alongside my character!). But in The Act of Killing, all scenes shot at night or in low light looked grainy or noisy, and some scenes were out of focus. And that was okay, because the story was just so captivating. I get caught up so often in how things look and it’s a reminder that the most important thing is story. And sound.

So go see The Act of Killing when you can. It’s being distributed by Drafthouse Films here in town, so it should be getting showings across the US.

Also, I’m having my first premiere today, at SXSW! A short documentary I made last year with Robert Melton won the City of Austin film contest and is being shown in a showcase at the Carver Center. It gives me a little bit of street cred, I hope.

My Mars Curiosity story on Studio 360

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 00:05:00 -0500

My latest story for Studio 360 has taken me a while to share, but that is because there’s so much to say about it. This story had a story from start to finish.

It began when I started emailing a few of my favorite artistically-minded scientist types searching for ideas for a new pitch to Studio 360. My former neighbor Zack Booth Simpson, who was actually a subject for a previous story, told me to take a look at the Mars Curiosity animation. He said he couldn’t stop watching it.

As I say in the story, I am not crazy about space. But this video blew me away. My editor was interested, and I set to finding out who was responsible. The trail led to Kevin Lane, the owner of a small animation studio in Burbank, California.

The most awesome part of the story comes next: I flew out to LA to visit the studio and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is responsible for all unmanned space missions and arguably my favorite NASA base. (I also learned that JPL is not really NASA, just contracted to NASA, and they are quite sensitive about that.)

I came away with SO MUCH GOOD TAPE. I think you have to be a producer to know how that feels. You record data into your little box and you feel like you would find gold inside if you opened it up.

Doug Ellison, the visual producer at JPL, was so incredibly animated and knew how to turn a phrase about space travel like no other. (“A GIANT MARTIAN BACKPACK!”) Tom Rivellini, one of the EDL scientists, was remarkably down-to-earth (pun) about the realities of getting to Mars. (Although I can still hear him chewing his strawberry Twizzlers as he talks.) And Kevin and his team of animators talked to me for two hours about the ins and outs of animating, and off camera told me some absolutely crazy tales about the animation industry. (Involving hookers and blow and outsourcing to Chinese animation students who worked for free.)

Sadly, the hookers and blow studio boss story was off the record and the whole thing had to fit into eight minutes. My editor, David Krasnow, was wonderful to work with as always and made taking those moments of genius out a little less painful, because he is always right.

This story also brought about two of the more surreal moments of my life: The first, being caught stealing electricity from a stranger’s garage as a car was pulling in. My phone was dead after a day of traveling and JPL and I couldn’t find the house where I was staying. Luckily the owner of the car was understanding and let me charge up from his own iPhone cord.

The second, trying to calm a young suicidal driver that I stopped for as I was biking to KUT to voice this story. I don’t want to go in detail, but it was really intense and traumatic and I burst into tears as soon as I saw the studio engineer. One of the things I’m most proud of about this story is pulling it together and sounding normal.

Holidays with Reflect & Record

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:29:21 -0500

There are radio stories in the pipeline, but my work with Reflect & Record has been occupying a front space in my mind. The holidays are a great time to promise that projects will be done, and thus I have been in a mad multimedia production dash.

I’m really excited to share those projects, but I’ve just sent them out and want to give the families a chance to spend some time with them. In the meantime, I’m totally in love with these vintage Christmas cards I received as part of a family documentary project I’m working on. Arriving at the beginning of December, they might be responsible for how much I’m anticipating Christmas this year. That, and the fact that we’re not traveling.

I’m very excited to share my first story for a Marketplace...

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 10:30:57 -0500

I’m very excited to share my first story for a Marketplace program. I pitched this back in the summer not long after Plug & Play opened. Plug & Play combines co-working with childcare (they call it a “work-life balance”) so that parents who work freelance or part-time have a more flexible childcare option.

I learned a lot while reporting this story.

1. Childcare is crazy expensive.

2. It is an unrealistic expectation to think that you can work from home and look after a child at the same time.

3. This type of business should be everywhere.

4. Mothers are willing to give up major bucks in their careers to spend more time with their kids.

My favorite part was observing Lauren Walz, the mother in the story, as she tried to work with her daughter nearby. It was a bit of a setup, but it played out as Lauren promised me it would: Nora was not happy with her mom’s attention being on the Mac. Mac needed to be stopped. Nora first tried to pull out the thumb drive. Then she put her hands on the keyboard as her mom typed. Then, she finally just tried to close the laptop. It was a pretty effective strategy, and a little scary. I’ve heard a lot of talk about women having it all, or not having it all. But I hadn’t connected it to the idea that kids are the ones that do not want moms to have it all. I thought it was like, a societal construct. But Nora really did not like to see her mom at work, and would love to end her career aspirations. I wonder, is this how it is with all toddlers?

Many thanks to David Shaw for being a fantastic and fun editor, Ashley Milne-Tyte for sharing the secrets of how to pitch Marketplace, and Amy Braden for helping me get connected and patience while this story waited for airtime.

Why Austin doesn't have a subway, for StateImpact Texas

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:52:00 -0500

The city of Austin is digging a subway-sized tunnel through downtown. The limestone foundation rock is the ideal material for tunneling, so why not a subway for Austin?

Well, there are a lot of reasons why not. I go through them in my most recent story that aired on KUT:

Waller Tunnel Has Some Thinking Subway

This story was produced with StateImpact Texas, a collaboration between Texas public radio stations and NPR. Essentially, that means that this story looks wider than Austin, up to Dallas, where they are decades ahead with public transportation.

Here’s the full text writeup I did for the StateImpact site:

Why Texas Doesn’t Have Subways

That title isn’t technically correct. Dallas has the only subway in all of the Southwest. The only reason it exists is because it would be a bigger headache, or impossible, to get right of way through the neighborhoods that a new light rail line would have gone through on a route that parallels one of the city’s biggest commuter roadways.

The bottom line is that it’s pretty much light rail or bust. And for all Austin’s talk of being the most progressive city in Texas, it’s behind the curve on public transportation.

I love public transportation stories, so this was really interesting for me, even though I knew coming into it that cost is the biggest issue. The best part was talking to Rob Spillar, the director of the city’s Transportation department. After our interview, he spent a half hour talking about future plans and challenges for public transportation in Austin. I wish I had recorded it!

But I love interviews like that - when you realize your interview subject loves talking about what they do so much, they grab ahold of an interested listener, and you get to learn so much more than you came for.

Radio reporting without a laptop

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 15:38:35 -0500

Radio reporting without a laptop:

This reporter claims to have handed in his laptop and uses only an iPhone and iPad for reporting and editing.

I have heard of this extreme behavior before, and I could not possibly get on board. I think it’s fine for down and dirty, super quick turnaround news reporting, but you’re inevitably sacrificing quality of sound and any suaveness of craft.

He’s basically using the pre-installed voice memo app and SoundCloud to send in audio for the newsroom to put together his pieces.

I just don’t know why anyone would go actually want to turn their laptop in. That stuff is still useful!

Out Of The Ashes Of Dead Trees - Andrew Sullivan

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:57:00 -0400

Out Of The Ashes Of Dead Trees - Andrew Sullivan:

Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish wrote this great piece about the future of magazines.

One day, we’ll see movies with people reading magazines and newspapers on paper and chuckle. Part of me has come to see physical magazines and newspapers as, at this point, absurd. They are like Wile E Coyote suspended three feet over a cliff for a few seconds. They’re still there; but there’s nothing underneath; and the plunge is vast and steep.

It sounds harsh. But without even realizing it, I’ve come to the same view. I said I’d never give up the feeling of a book in my hand, the satisfaction of turning a page in a newspaper, admiring the layout of a magazine.

I remember where I was standing when I said this, my senior year of college: The office where we were laying out a print magazine.

But technology has a way of reducing our ideals to nostalgia. I got a Kindle as an un-asked for gift, and now when I read a physical book, I wonder why I can’t pull up the meaning of a word on the page itself.

In a personal last stand for physical media, I ordered a subscription to the Sunday Times, during Labor Day weekend. It hasn’t come yet. Apparently, it’s a huge hassle to get a carrier to deliver it to my house. (Andrew Sullivan mentions delivery problems too, NYT, stop whining about the death of print and get it together!) I’ve called or emailed five times now, and I want to cancel my subscription. I tried! and was defeated by print itself.

Sullivan sees the future of magazines as existing only in extremes: High-end luxury product, or low-end grocery line tabloid. I think that’s realistic. But it assumes that everyone in the mid-range (those who would read Newsweek, for example) has access to a tablet reader. That our lives are filled with increasing amounts of physical technology. I feel like I’m already there, living in the future.

Not making a living as an independent producer

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 14:05:33 -0400

Not making a living as an independent producer:

My friend Ashley Milne-Tyte’s recent blog post has been attracting attention in public radio circles in the past week or so. It addresses, straight-on, what is almost a taboo subject: The fact that you can’t make a living as an independent producer.

I’m secretly proud to have contributed (via Facebook chat) what has become the catchphrase of the post: It’s radio’s dirty little secret.

The post was triggered by Ashley’s experience at the Third Coast Audio Festival, a bi-annual conference that celebrates independently produced work, and where many people from the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) meet up.

I found it hard to sit there applauding at the idea that AIR has so many more members, when a lot of these members will be 20-somethings who will find it very hard to make anything more than $200-$700 a story, depending on the outlet and the ‘tier’ of pay the outlet decides the producer deserves.

If you do the math (and I don’t, both because I’m scared of numbers and the results of said math), you might end up making minimum wage or less on a radio story. That’s because it’s the nature of us public radio folks to make the best work we can, regardless of pay. You can’t charge for getting an interview that wasn’t originally discussed, or invoice extra for a second edit on your story. Or you might end up making nothing, like Ashley does on her high quality podcast, The Broad Experience.

I’ve been complacent about pay. For me, making radio is a luxury. I knew when I left my steady radio job that freelancing alone wasn’t going to pay the bills. I once accepted $200 for an 8 minute story just because I’d wanted to do the story for so long. There’s a priceless value for me in reporting a story and getting it on air.

But I do wonder why we’re not more up front about the fact that it doesn’t pay very well. In a way, it’s the same ethical dilemma all across journalism: Should we tell j-school students that they probably won’t find a newspaper job? That more likely, they’ll be blogging on a crappy website for nickels? It’s not such a bright and shiny future if you aren’t willing to be creative about it. I feel lucky to have found life stories, and learned not to put all my career eggs in one shrinking basket.

Shooting family interviews in New Orleans

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:11:00 -0400

Last week I flew out to New Orleans with a light HD camcorder and a 60 lb bag of lighting equipment on my shoulder. I was shooting my first family history documentary - four interviews that I’ll weave together to tell the story of a wonderful Southern family living in an idyllic Southern town.

One of my unexpected favorite parts of the interview was this reading. One of the interviewees had stumbled on a church program that focused on the importance of family stories. She thought it was akin to divine intervention.

Linda Smith Reading from Reflect & Record on Vimeo.

As you can see, the interviews can get very emotional. I’m tearing up behind the camera. Each interview is fascinating and beautiful. It’s a rare opportunity to reflect - with seriousness and intention - on the meaning of time gone by.

It’s a real privilege to be a part of moments like these, and in some ways, responsible for bringing them about.

* The above video is completely unedited. It will get nicer with editing!

**Also, re: heavy and huge lighting equipment bag: Fly Southwest! Tell them when you check in that you’re with media or a commercial filmmaking company, and you can preboard so your precious gear does not get checked.

Tasered youth fare as well as adults, new research says

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 09:34:43 -0400

Tasered youth fare as well as adults, new research says:

This press release headline first caught my eye because I thought it read, “Tasered youth fare well as adults”, which implied that tasering a youth teaches them an effective and valuable lesson.

What it really means to say is that tasering a youth is not a big deal and no one should complain about being tasered (“Don’t tase me, bro!”). The study looked at 100 adolescents who had been tased - a group which turns out to be older and larger, more similar in physiology to adults than children. They found only 20 mild injuries, most of which were puncture wounds from the weapon’s probes. That sounds like it kinda hurts. But they also found that there weren’t any heart problems associated with getting tased, which was backed up by an earlier study with volunteer police officers. Who volunteered to get tased.

I don’t know. Getting tased still sounds unpleasant. Although, as the press release concludes, it’s obviously safer than getting assaulted with a baton, fists, or firearms.

It’s finally here! The human cheese is here! For the past...

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 16:27:00 -0400

It’s finally here! The human cheese is here!

For the past six months, when people ask “What are you working on?” I have to explain what “human cheese” is. Hearing the reaction to that phrase never got old.

The short version is that Christina Agapakis, a brilliant and hip biologist (and a childhood friend of my best friend), has made cheese using human bacteria. It’s a pretty simple project actually. Most cheeses start with bacteria. Christina has just replaced the pure strains with a potpourri of bacterial communities taken from the dirtiest places on the body.

I did most of the recording at South By Southwest, where I (and a few other Austin science communicators) helped Christina set up an event called South By South Swab. It was at a popular bar called Cheer Up Charlie’s. The human cheese project started as an art/science collaboration, but Christina is now interpreting it more as a science outreach project. You can see the project at bacterially.org.

I got some awesome tape, most of which was not appropriate to put on an educational podcast (see “I’m Gonna Make Cheese Outta You”).

I also got to talk with Austin’s most famous cheesemonger, John Antonelli. The man knows a heck of a lot about cheese. If you want to know more about the science of cheese making, he recommends Harold McGee’s book, On Food and Cooking.

This was a very fun story. Many thanks to my amazing and patient editor, Mia Lobel, as well as Christina Agapakis, John Antonelli, and Joe Hanson.

[Update: This was produced for Distillations, a podcast from the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Hear the rest of the “gross foods” episode.]

Minor Mishap Marching Band on Barton Creek, for Austin Music Map

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 10:46:00 -0400

Minor Mishap Marching Band on Barton Creek, for Austin Music Map:

I’m so, so excited to share this. With the arrival of Localore’s Austin Music Map in town, I’ve had the opportunity to record some of Austin’s greatest sounds and places.

The Minor Mishap Marching Band has been one of my favorite, must-see Austin bands for a few years now. I’ve seen them start spontaneous, riotous dance parties in parking lots, parade through my neighborhood, and rise up with a big brass sound from the escalator beneath Whole Foods and proceed to march around the store. I love them. So when Delaney, the producer of Austin Music Map, asked for off-the-grid musical experiences, I pretty much called dibs on Minor Mishap. She said okay.

It was fortuitous that when Delaney asked about their next show, it was in the works to be the most ambitious Minor Mishap show yet. Twenty-five members of a brass band would be playing in canoes, underneath Barton Creek bridge, while aerialists dangled and danced over the water.

Yes, it was as amazing as it sounds. I got a front seat ride, with Datri, the ebullient band leader, in her canoe . And that was the single moment when I felt most affirmed in my career choices.

This was my first non-narrated piece, and Delaney helped with its shape and final sound. I always feel like making radio is like putting pieces of an audio puzzle together, but there’s no edges and no one picture to create. It’s a blobby and vague puzzle.

The radio story, which is hitting Morning Edition, Texas Music Matters, and All Things Considered is paired with a beautiful video by KUT’s Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon.

Storyboard

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 09:00:00 -0400

I just discovered Storyboard on Tumblr, and I am now a fan. Just look at this great video with David Remnick.

As I film mostly interviews, I like to see how filmmakers fill in the space between the interview subject. This can be quite challenging in an office setting. Luckily, the New Yorker has a vast collection of interesting covers.

Today is National HIV Testing Day. By no coincidence, today is...

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:05:12 -0400

Today is National HIV Testing Day. By no coincidence, today is also the day I had a story air on KUT about National HIV Testing Day.

The backstory is that HIV/AIDS is one of my main beats for dailyRx.com. I cover lots of awareness days (World AIDS Day, National Women & Girls HIV Awareness Day) but for this one, I decided to get in touch with a local AIDS organization, AIDS Services of Austin. They invited me to do an in-person interview - something I rarely get to do.

Their building is very hard to find. It sits behind a hurricane fence and has no sign. They explained that the lack of signage is an attempt to reduce some of the stigma of walking in to get tested for HIV.

I got a quick tour of the building. The thing that impressed me most was a photo documentary project lining the walls, of the faces of HIV/AIDS in Austin. I realized that while I could quote off any number of studies and statistics, I don’t have any stories about HIV/AIDS - what it’s like to be diagnosed, to live with the disease these days. The people in the photographs looked healthy and normal. It’s now possible to be healthy and normal with HIV.

I think a look at those faces would do more to encourage people to get tested than any statistics or awareness day. A face and a story that was just like mine would make me get tested. I haven’t been, although I would not hesitate tell you that the CDC recommends everyone between 13 - 64 be tested at least once.

Here’s my story for dailyRx, too.

Aging with HIV brings diseases of old age more quickly

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 17:55:06 -0400

Aging with HIV brings diseases of old age more quickly:

My most recent feature article for dailyRx. Interestingly, there hasn’t been a lot of regular reporting on the influence of HIV on aging. But it’s an expanding area of research and care as as people who survived the AIDS epidemic in the early 80s and 90s reach their 50s and 60s.

Doctors are seeing the traditional diseases of old age show up about 10 years earlier, on average. And their cells actually LOOK 10 years older, under the microscope. It’s not yet known why this is happening.

Interview on human cheese project

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 17:22:00 -0400

Interview on human cheese project:

I got a nice little shoutout in this interview I just stumbled across with Christina Agapakis on yourwildlife.org. I interviewed and worked with Christina on her project bacterially.org, which I prefer to call the “human cheese project” but unfortunately that is far less linkable. I’m actually supposed to be working on the script right now…. but instead I’m on tumblr.

This story about a DIY Bio lab in Houston was the result of at...

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 10:34:00 -0400

This story about a DIY Bio lab in Houston was the result of at least a year of development in my head, and then about 6 months in production.

It aired on Destination DIY, a great program out of Oregon Public Broadcasting, a few months ago.

(The delay in sharing is in keeping with the overall delayed process.)

"Dark Chocolate Prevention Strategies"

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 10:53:34 -0400

"Dark Chocolate Prevention Strategies" :

Do you think this study is sponsored by Big Chocolate?

Dark chocolate may be an inexpensive way to help prevent cardiovascular events in patients at risk for heart disease, researchers found.

A modeling study predicts that patients with metabolic syndrome who eat dark chocolate every day could have 85 fewer events per 10,000 population over 10 years, Chris Reid, PhD, of Monash University in Melbourne, and colleagues reported online in BMJ.

At a cost of only $42 per year, treatment with dark chocolate falls into an acceptable category of cost-effectiveness, at an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of $50,000 per years of life saved.

“Chocolate benefits from being by and large a pleasant, and hence sustainable, treatment option,” they wrote. “Evidence to date suggests that the chocolate would need to be dark and of at least 60% to 70% cocoa, or formulated to be enriched with polyphenols.”

Good News About Kids and Germs

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:22:20 -0400

Good News About Kids and Germs:

This is my most recent feature article for DailyRx, the health news website I write for. I think you should read it because it features an interview with one of my favorite science communicators, biologist Rob Dunn.

I think I’ve already gushed about how much I love his book, “The Wild Life of Our Bodies.” (Go read it!) One of the wildest parts (pun intended) was the section about the mysterious cause of Crohn’s disease. More and more people, primarily in developed countries, are being diagnosed with this incurable disease.

In his book, Dunn tells fascinating stories about how scientists are trying to unravel Crohn’s and how people are taking steps to treat themselves. They both have to do with germs and parasites. (I recently posted about pharmaceutical companies investing in whipworm eggs.)

Recently, studies about how it’s good to get your kid exposed to dirt, germs, and worms have been in the news. The theory is that our first-world environments have been scrubbed clean of the microbes that our bodies “learned on” and educated our immune systems about stuff that is normal and stuff that is bad.

In Crohn’s disease, the body is confused about what’s bad and attacks healthy tissue in the gut for no good reason. I keep thinking about my former neighbors’ little boy who always had a stick in his mouth and a face smeared with dirt by the time I came home from work. I’d put money on a bet that he doesn’t develop a case of inflammatory bowel disease. Anyone want to take that bet?

I would invest in this

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:17:06 -0400

I would invest in this:

Companies are springing up to sell parasites as therapy for Crohn’s disease. Right now, infecting yourself with parasites for relief from chronic diseases is mostly DIY.

Its probiotic treatment consists of “Trichuris suis ova (TSO),” or non-infectious porcine whipworm eggs, to quell inflammation and abnormal immune function that causes such autoimmune diseases as multiple sclerosis (MS), inflammatory bowel disease, and type 1 diabetes.