I breathe you in and keep you forever

July 17, 2012 9:06 PM

There was an article/NPR story from a couple years ago that described findings that we incorporate ALL things we take in into our bodies.

The story had a romantic (or creepy, depending on your take on it) overtone to it suggesting that we carry residue of all those we have breathed deep of for the rest of our lives. I'm now trying to find that story and google-fu is not working. Help?

posted by ilikecookies to Grab Bag (6 answers total)

I haven't heard it myself, but it sounds like the kind of thing that might be on Radiolab. Have you tried their archive?
posted by Perodicticus potto at 5:39 AM on July 18, 2012

This is probably not it, but is related. "...if you take a deep breath right now, at least one of the molecules entering your lungs literally came from Caesar's last breath."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:31 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

It's not this is it?

http://www.tingroom.com/print_58413.html
posted by commitment at 6:56 AM on July 18, 2012

Response by poster: Commitment and Mr. Know-it-some, neither of those are quite right bit combined do convey most of the sentiment. I may be misremembering, but I could swear that there was talk about kissing.
posted by ilikecookies at 1:14 PM on July 18, 2012

Best answer: Faith, Madness, and Spontaneous Human Combustion by Gerald Callahan touches on this. It's been several years, but I think I remember it being kind of an odd read, as the author has degrees in (if I recall) poetry and biology - it goes back and forth between fairly hard science and something more prose like.

It definitely had parts about how people we're close to end up in our immune systems, and things like that.
posted by unsound at 10:58 PM on July 18, 2012

Here he is on Science Friday five years ago.
posted by unsound at 11:32 PM on July 18, 2012