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One man secretly hands off more and more of his life to an AI voice clone.

Today, we feature veteran journalist Evan Ratliff who - for his new podcast Shell Game - decided to slowly replace himself bit by bit with an AI voice clone, to see how far he could actually take it. Could it do the mundane phone calls he’d prefer to skip? Could it get legal advice for him? Could it go to therapy for him? Could it parent his kids? Evan feeds his bot the most intimate details about his life, and lets the bot loose in high-stakes situations at home and at work. Which bizarro version of him will show up? The desperately-agreeable conversationalist, the crank-yanking prank caller, the glitched out stranger who sounds like he’s in the middle of a mental breakdown, or someone else entirely? Will people believe it’s really him? And how will they act if they don’t? A gonzo journalistic experiment for the age of AI, that’s funny and eerie all at the same time.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Evan Ratliff
Produced by - Evan Ratliff and Simon Adler
Fact-checking by - Emily Krieger

EPISODE CITATIONS:
Audio:
If you want to listen to more of Evan’s Shell Game, you can do so here, https://www.shellgame.co/

Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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A photograph illustration of a man with his face slightly off and electronics revealed within.

# included[].attributes.show-tease
Investigating a strange world.

# included[].attributes.tease
One man secretly hands off more and more of his life to an AI voice clone.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].lede
Soren Wheeler is the Executive Editor at Radiolab, where he plays a variety of roles, including producer, editor, and reporter. He also oversees the development of future content. Before coming to radio, Soren spent 10 years working with science teachers and writing about how kids learn science. He was a project coordinator at the Association for the Advancement of Science, where he co-authored the book Atlas of Science Literacy. He then went on to get a Master’s degree in science writing at Johns Hopkins University. Soren has won awards for production on radio pieces about coincidence and statistics, the periodic table, and the story of a woman waking up from a coma.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].bio
Tracie Hunte is a correspondent for The Experiment. She’s previously worked at Radiolab and as a producer in the WNYC newsroom.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].lede
Rachael is a producer for Radiolab. She started on the show’s Special Projects Unit, where she worked on Radiolab Presents: Gonads and Radiolab Presents: G. Now she mostly spends her time writing about herself in the third person, or trying to craft a masterful pun that makes everyone roll their eyes. Before joining Radiolab, she studied food science and worked as a cheese curd flipper, pastry chef, and egg scrambler. She also spent some time hanging out at NPR, Politico, and Slate.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].lede
Matt started at Radiolab as an intern. Now he works here as a Senior Producer. Around and in-between those two things, he lived in Minnesota, attended school in Arizona, tried to find himself, lived in Washington D.C., learned radio from Rob Rosenthal at the Salt Institute for Documentaries Studies, hung around This American Life, was awarded the Above the Fray fellowship to report in Uganda, and had a metal plate screwed into his wrist.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].lede
Annie grew up in Dunrobin, Ontario, headed east for school and ended up in St. John's, Newfoundland. It was there that she fell under the patient mentorship of Chris Brookes at Battery Radio who taught her about sound and tape. She furthered her studies in radio at the Transom Story Workshop and then, under a series of confounding and improbable events, she ended up at Radiolab. She loves it here. When she's not cutting tape she likes to be outside.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].lede
Soren Wheeler is the Executive Editor at Radiolab, where he plays a variety of roles, including producer, editor, and reporter. He also oversees the development of future content. Before coming to radio, Soren spent 10 years working with science teachers and writing about how kids learn science. He was a project coordinator at the Association for the Advancement of Science, where he co-authored the book Atlas of Science Literacy. He then went on to get a Master’s degree in science writing at Johns Hopkins University. Soren has won awards for production on radio pieces about coincidence and statistics, the periodic table, and the story of a woman waking up from a coma.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].bio
Tracie Hunte is a correspondent for The Experiment. She’s previously worked at Radiolab and as a producer in the WNYC newsroom.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].lede
Rachael is a producer for Radiolab. She started on the show’s Special Projects Unit, where she worked on Radiolab Presents: Gonads and Radiolab Presents: G. Now she mostly spends her time writing about herself in the third person, or trying to craft a masterful pun that makes everyone roll their eyes. Before joining Radiolab, she studied food science and worked as a cheese curd flipper, pastry chef, and egg scrambler. She also spent some time hanging out at NPR, Politico, and Slate.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].lede
Matt started at Radiolab as an intern. Now he works here as a Senior Producer. Around and in-between those two things, he lived in Minnesota, attended school in Arizona, tried to find himself, lived in Washington D.C., learned radio from Rob Rosenthal at the Salt Institute for Documentaries Studies, hung around This American Life, was awarded the Above the Fray fellowship to report in Uganda, and had a metal plate screwed into his wrist.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].lede
Annie grew up in Dunrobin, Ontario, headed east for school and ended up in St. John's, Newfoundland. It was there that she fell under the patient mentorship of Chris Brookes at Battery Radio who taught her about sound and tape. She furthered her studies in radio at the Transom Story Workshop and then, under a series of confounding and improbable events, she ended up at Radiolab. She loves it here. When she's not cutting tape she likes to be outside.

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First aired back in 2017, here’s a show of questions and, sometimes, answers. Cause we get a lot of questions. Like, A LOT of questions. Tiny questions, big questions, short questions, long questions. Weird questions. Poop questions. We get them all.

And over the years, as more and more of these questions arrived in our inbox, what happened was, guiltily, we put them off to the side, in a bucket of sorts, where they just sat around unanswered. But now we’re dumping the bucket out.

Today, our producers pick up a few of the questions that spilled out of that bucket, and venture out into the great unknown to find answers to some of life's greatest mysteries: coincidences; miracles; life; death; fate; will; and, of course, poop.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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I tiny cow flouting on top of a full glass of milk.

# included[].attributes.show-tease
Investigating a strange world.

# included[].attributes.tease
Here at the show, we get A LOT of questions—tiny questions, big questions, weird questions, poop questions. Today, we’re dumping the bucket out.

# included[].attributes.transcript
LATIF NASSER: Hey, it's Latif. Before we get to today's episode, I wanted to play for you just a tiny bit of a chat that I had with our executive editor Soren Wheeler because I have this kind of burning question that I wanted to ask him. And it actually ended up inspiring why we decided to play this episode for you today.

SOREN WHEELER: All right.

LATIF: Okay.

SOREN: Why are we really here?

LATIF: Okay, I wanted to bring you here today because you are one of the few people at this show who has been around for longer than I have.

SOREN: [laughs]

LATIF: You started as an intern in what year, Soren?

SOREN: 2007?

LATIF: 2007.

SOREN: Yeah.

LATIF: Do you know how many episodes of Radiolab you have worked on?

SOREN: Uh, it's gotta be north of 400.

LATIF: No!

SOREN: Not that I totally, you know, made or—but, you know, that I had something to do with.

LATIF: Wait, how many—how many shows have we even made?

SOREN: Oh, probably ...

LATIF: As a show? How many episodes?

SOREN: I think probably around 500 or something, you know?

LATIF: Wow! Okay.

SOREN: But I mean, sometimes there was, like, a rerun with an update or ...

LATIF: Right. Right. And of those, you've worked on the preponderance.

SOREN: Is this some preamble to you suggesting that it's time for me to leave the show?

LATIF: Yeah, it's time for you to move on. This is a coup. This is a coup.

SOREN: You've all gotten together and decided, you know ...

LATIF: No, but, like, so my question for you, put simply, is: why do you stick around?

SOREN: [laughs]

LATIF: After so long? Do you still get joy from doing this? And where does that joy comes from?

SOREN: Where does the joy? [laughs] I mean, I guess it does feel like we kind of get to do anything.

LATIF: Hmm.

SOREN: Like, so many shows are, you know, kind of have to be in a box, like crime or sports or this or that. But, you know, for us it could be—we get to do, like—I don't know, hockey and then some weird, thorny legal issue, and then black holes and then, like, academic publishing.

LATIF: [laughs]

SOREN: But actually, the thing that keeps you going, the real joy, like, week to week is that for each and every one of those things, there's always something you didn't know or didn't understand. Like, or you thought you knew and then you realized you didn't. Or you'd never even thought you wanted to know something and then all of a sudden you do. Like, sometimes thinking back over the last 17 years, it just feels like a fever dream of questions. Like ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: She swam up right next to me, and then came up and looked directly at me.]

SOREN: Like, can a whale say thank you?

LATIF: Right. Right.

SOREN: Or how can your mom also be your aunt?

LATIF: [laughs]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Do you enjoy your bowel movements?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: No.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Have you ever thought about killing yourself?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: No.]

SOREN: Do we lie to ourselves?

[ARCHIVE CLIP: [laughing] Why were you laughing?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I don't know!]

SOREN: Can animals laugh? Where does morality come from? Why is there this group of butterflies that are thriving in an artillery range? What makes someone successful? Why can't you sell your blood? Could we ever cheat death? Why do vegetables spark in a microwave? Can you think without words? Why do we sleep?

[ARCHIVE CLIP: How can you be a scientist and not know the answer to that?]

SOREN: Does time slow down when you're falling? Can we make a living thing? Can babies do math? Was Darwin wrong? Eels? And how fast can you play Beethoven's full symphony?

LATIF: [laughs] Wow! Those are a lot of questions that are ...

SOREN: Why was Ted Kaczynski so angry?

LATIF: Oh, you're still going? All right, okay. Keep going.

SOREN: I don't know. You could. You could keep going.

LATIF: You could.

SOREN: And that does feel really good to think about all the different things that there's already a Radiolab for, you know?

LATIF: Also, to me it's like, it's actually a fun challenge to find, like, little nooks and crannies where it's like, "Oh, we've never even gone—we've never even gone close to this before."

SOREN: Yeah. And sometimes, you know, the answer comes—you just keep wondering things, the answer comes from somebody on staff, or you get a pitch that has a new question in it that you've never thought of before. Although I have to say, like, one of my favorite things was there was a moment where we were all sitting around and realized, you know, we're asking all these questions, or we're always looking for questions but, like, people are always actually asking us questions, too.

LATIF: Yeah.

SOREN: And so we're just, like—looked in the email inbox and were kind of like, "Oh my God, there's a treasure trove."

LATIF: There are some weird ones. Yeah.

SOREN: Yeah.

LATIF: There's some great ones.

SOREN: So, like, I think it was, like, 10 years ago, we did a thing where we were like, let's just take those questions and make a show, and just take all these listener questions and just hit go. And we've actually done several of these now. We call them, like, our stupid question shows, but I think that first one was, like, 10 years ago or something like that. And it's just there's something about those shows that's really fun. I mean, they're listener questions, which is cool.

LATIF: Right.

SOREN: But it's also just like, it just hits the spirit of what we do in some kind of other way. And I don't know, those are some of my favorite shows.

LATIF: Yeah, I agree.

LATIF: Okay. So right after having that conversation with Soren, it was like, okay, we need to play our original stupid questions episode. We call them internally stupid questions, but it's like a tongue-in-cheek thing. We don't actually call it that. The episode was called "Big Little Questions." Before we get to that, I just wanted to say something that maybe you're tired of hearing, but it's true, is the reason we keep saying it. We are an independent, non-profit show. For us to keep doing what we do, to keep asking these questions that seem small but are actually big, we need help. We need your help. We need your support. And the best way to do that is to become a member of The Lab. The way to do that is go to Radiolab.org/join. If you do that, as a member, you will get a bunch of great stuff. You will listen to the show with no ads. We actually put up a bunch of bonus content for our members, including, you know, extra little conversations, nuggets that sort of fell out. If you sign up before the end of the month, we have a very special gift for you. Everyone on staff is pretty excited about it. I'm not gonna tell you what it is—yet, but for now, enjoy this romp of listener questions. "Big Little Questions." Have fun!

[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab.

ROBERT: And today ...

[phone ringing]

ROBERT: ... we're going to hit the phones.

MARK MORRISON: Hello?

JAD: Hi, can I speak to Mark?

JAD: Starting with this guy, Mark Morrison.

MARK MORRISON: This is me.

JAD: Hey Mark, this is Jad calling from Radiolab.

MARK MORRISON: Hey Jad, good to hear ya.

JAD: [laughs]

JAD: Got a hold of him at his home in Olympia, Washington.

MARK MORRISON: I'm hanging out on the front porch. The kids are running around, so you might hear some traffic.

JAD: Okay, gotcha. All right, maybe we should just jump in, and you should just tell me the story.

MARK MORRISON: Okay, so I was DJing a wedding out in Lacey, which is the next town over. It was a hot, like, late spring, kind of, feeling like summer kinda day. And we were in a little rented facility that had, like, windows on all sides. And then all of the sudden the power starts flickering, and it starts raining really hard.

JAD: Okay.

MARK MORRISON: Then trees are falling over. The wind is gusting, and it—the sky turns to night.

JAD: Whoa!

MARK MORRISON: And this is like 3:30 in the afternoon.

JAD: So Mark takes off, goes back home.

MARK MORRISON: My in-laws are visiting, in town to hang out with the new baby, and we open up the curtains, turned off all the lights, and we're just kind of marveling at the insane power of this storm that's happening. My wife is sitting on the couch. My two-year-old is watching Charlie Brown or something on the iPad. And then all of the sudden, there's just a loud snap, like the sound of a whip cracking or like a two-by-four being snapped in half. And about a foot and a half to two feet in front of my face, right next to my mother-in-law and the baby, there's a little sphere of light, white light. Just a little orb, the size of like maybe an orange or a grapefruit, kind of blurry edges around it, floating in midair, as bright as, like, the sun. Like the bright—it lit up the entire room.

JAD: Whoa!

MARK MORRISON: We all screamed. [laughs]

JAD: [laughs]

MARK MORRISON: Everybody in the room in unison.

JAD: And Mark says this sun orb just sort of hovered in front of his face.

MARK MORRISON: Kind of going whom, whom, whom, for maybe a second.

JAD: When all of the sudden—poof! It was gone.

MARK MORRISON: Yeah.

JAD: That's some X-Files [bleep] right there.

MARK MORRISON: Yeah. None of us had any idea what the heck happened.

JAD: Well, did you go around the room, being like, "Did you guys see that? Did you see that?"

MARK MORRISON: Yeah. Everybody saw it. Everybody saw it. My mother-in-law thought that I had, like, taken some kind of, like, fireworks and thrown it up in the air. [laughs]

JAD: [laughs]

MARK MORRISON: She's like, "What did you do?" I'm like, "I didn't do anything." So what I did was I started trying to Google it, and there's—you know, I mean, imagine trying to Google that. You're not gonna find anything. [laughs]

JAD: What—what did you type into Google?

MARK MORRISON: Sphere of light floating indoors. [laughs]

JAD: [laughs]

MARK MORRISON: I didn't—I didn't get very far. Yeah. But I just—I just wanted to get to the bottom of it.

JAD: And so what Mark did is he sat down on a computer, and he typed up this email, basically saying ...

MARK MORRISON: Like, what the hell is this thing?

JAD: And then he sent that email into the void.

ROBERT: Which would be us. [laughs]

JAD: Which would be us.

ROBERT: We are the void. Yes. [laughs]

JAD: To our email inbox. And, you know, it sat around for a while, because we tend to get these kinds of questions ...

ROBERT: A lot.

TRACIE HUNTE: Are there more stars in the universe or grains of sand on Earth?

JAD: A lot a lot.

TRACIE: Is it cleaner beneath the sticker of the apple?

JAD: Why do some birds walk and others hop?

TRACIE: How do fish hear?

JAD: Why are horses special?

ROBERT: We get things like ...

TRACIE: What's up with traffic jams?

JAD: Random questions like...

SOREN: If helium is a finite resource, why are we wasting it on balloons?

ROBERT: A lot of poop questions.

TRACIE: Why is different animal's poop shaped differently?

JAD: Yep, a lot of poop.

TRACIE: What happens when you flush a toilet on the equator?

JAD: And they just sort of pile up. We sort of put them in this bucket.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: And then feel guilty about not answering them. And over the years ...

ROBERT: Well, they keep coming, so the bucket gets fuller and fuller.

JAD: And fuller!

ROBERT: So finally, today we decided okay, lets just dump the bucket out.

[phone rings]

JAD: And so we're gonna try and answer some of these questions today. A bunch of us.

[phone rings]

MARTIN UMAN: Hello?

JAD: Beginning with the question about the orb.

JAD: Can I speak to Martin, please?

MARTIN UMAN: You're talking to him.

JAD: Trying to answer Mark's question, I called up a guy named Martin Uman.

MARTIN UMAN: Professor of electrical and computer engineering, University of Florida.

JAD: Thank you. Is this still a good time to chat?

MARTIN UMAN: It's about the only time, because I've gotta go to dinner in about 10 minutes.

JAD: All right. Excellent. So we'll just jump right in.

MARTIN UMAN: All right. How long we gonna talk?

JAD: So I told Martin the story of thunderstorm—boom!—glowing orb—poof!—glowing orb gone.

MARTIN UMAN: Yeah.

JAD: So maybe I'll just put the most basic question to you: like, what is that?

MARTIN UMAN: Well, that observation is not uncommon, and it's called—generally called ball lightning.

JAD: Ball lightning?

MARTIN UMAN: Yeah. That's what it's called.

JAD: And according to Martin, ball lightning is timeless.

MARTIN UMAN: Ancient Greeks described exactly this same thing, and in 19th century and 18th century, they used to commonly come down the chimney, come out the fireplace.

JAD: Oh, wow!

JAD: But now, says Martin, we are living in an electronic world, and so these balls of lightning ...

MARTIN UMAN: Sometimes come out of a wall socket, sometimes out of a telephone.

JAD: Huh.

MARTIN UMAN: And they happen in airplanes. They happen in submarines.

JAD: Whoa! That actually—that's been reported?

MARTIN UMAN: Yeah. Lightning strikes outside an airplane, and a ball comes through the windshield and floats down the whole plane.

JAD: What? If I'm in that plane, I'm thinking ...

MARTIN UMAN: You're gonna hope you have your diaper on, right?

JAD: [laughs]

MARTIN UMAN: Wear your Depends.

JAD: [laughs]

MARTIN UMAN: Any time you've got electrical stuff going on, you can make a ball of fire like that.

JAD: So do we know anything about what causes—what it is exactly? Is it just another form of lightning that somehow manages to ball itself up and hang around?

MARTIN UMAN: Well, probably.

JAD: Martin is actually one of the few people who has studied ball lightning in the lab. He actually got funded by DARPA to try and figure out how it works. Wasn't quite able to. He says what's likely happening is that when a bolt of lighting strikes, it might hit something.

MARTIN UMAN: Soil, water, tree.

JAD: Whatever it is, some substance ...

MARTIN UMAN: Gets lit up and somehow forms itself into a sphere, like a balloon or a bubble, or something.

JAD: Like,if you imagine lightning hits some dust, shocks the dust, changes its chemistry so that it forms some kind of spherical scaffolding, and then the lightning sticks to the scaffolding or something?

MARTIN UMAN: Maybe that's what's happening, but you can't prove it. I mean, there's some theory which indicates that that might happen, but if you go into the laboratory and you try to make it, you can't make it. So you can't prove it. And if you get a book on ball lightning, or you get my book and look at the chapter on ball lightning, you'll see probably a list of 50 different theories that people have come up with.

JAD: Huh!

MARTIN UMAN: From all the way to black holes, and discontinuities in time-space, and things that are just, you know, completely almost out of this world. So they remain a mystery, but a well-observed mystery.

JAD: Hmm.

MARTIN UMAN: Did you know that people don't have any good math for how lightning gets started in a cloud?

JAD: Really? I didn't know that.

MARTIN UMAN: We don't know how—what—how lightning can get started. It shouldn't be able to.

JAD: It shouldn't? Really? Based on what? The math says there's not enough ...

MARTIN UMAN: Based on all the measurements that have been made of the conditions in clouds.

JAD: Huh! So you're saying ...

MARTIN UMAN: The world is full of things that aren't understood. Almost nothing is understood.

JAD: [laughs]

MARTIN UMAN: We're floundering around.

JAD: [laughs] Does—do you find yourself thinking about ball lightning, and then suddenly you're just tiptoeing into an existential crisis ...

MARTIN UMAN: [laughs]

JAD: ... about how little we know of the world?

MARTIN UMAN: Well, how I make my living is trying to uncover little—little more bits by little more bits, but yeah, there's lots that isn't known about everything.

ROBERT: Next up, producer Tracie Hunte goes on a field trip to some very hallowed ground.

TRACIE: Man, I think I've finally reached the library.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: The New York Public Library ...]

ROBERT: The New York Public Library.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Within its white marble walls is stored the sum of man's wisdom.]

ROBERT: Which, in its glory days ...

TRACIE: Okay, so right here in the grand hall, there's, like, beautiful chandeliers all over the place, these gorgeous columns.

ROBERT: ... was filled with ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Seven floors of stacks.]

ROBERT: ... millions of books.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: In every field of human endeavor.]

ROBERT: Row, upon row, upon row of shelves.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Eighty miles of shelves, close to 50 centuries of human thinking and experience.]

ROBERT: And every year, millions of visitors like Tracie would walk through these hallowed halls ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Each has a question.]

ROBERT: ... with questions fueled by curiosity, the desire for truth, for knowledge, for wisdom, people trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe.

TRACIE: I came here to ask them a question about catnip.

JAD: Catnip? [laughs]

TRACIE: Yes, catnip.

JAD: Why? Why catnip?

TRACIE: Oh, and I should back up. So we actually got, like, 500 questions from our listeners, so I thought it might be a good idea to take some of them to the library.

TRACIE: Hi, Rosa?

TRACIE: So I met up with this woman.

ROSA LI: It's nice to meet you.

TRACIE: I'm Tracie. Nice to meet you, Rosa.

TRACIE: And she walked me into this office. There's about, like, I don't know, 12 people sitting at their desks.

TRACIE: Why don't you just introduce yourself?

ROSA LI: Okay, sure. So my name is Rosa LI. I manage Ask NYPL, and I've been in this department for about five years.

ROBERT: Ask NY-what?

TRACIE: Ask NYPL. It's (917) ASK-NYPL. I'm putting the phone number out there. And if you call them and you ask them a question, it's their job to answer it.

ROSA LI: Yes. So we are like a call center, so our typical day starts with questions.

TRACIE: Like, in your typical day, how many phone calls do you get?

ROSA LI: Typical day about 150-200.

TRACIE: And Rosa was telling me that most of the questions they get are ...

ROSA LI: What will the weather be like this weekend?

TRACIE: ... very boring.

ROSA LI: Hey, my library card expired or I want to renew this book.

TRACIE: But, you know, also they get some weird ones.

ROSA LI: We take them all.

TRACIE: Yeah. So I got a list right here, and in the past they've gotten things like, "What kind of apple did Eve eat?", "Is it proper to go alone to Reno to get a divorce?", "Any statistics on the life span of the abandoned woman?", "Do camels have to be licensed in India?", "What is the natural enemy of the duck?", "Can I get a book telling me how to be mistress of ceremonies at a musical orgy?", "What does it mean when you dreamed you're being chased by an elephant?"

ROBERT: And do they answer all those?

TRACIE: They'll try to.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: So, you know, I was maybe a little dismissive for a few of them. I mean, all the questions, of course, are very important. We welcome all questions, please.

TRACIE: This, by the way, is Bernard.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: Bernard Van Maarseveen.

TRACIE: He has been working for Ask NYPL since about 2001. And so the question—like, he did answer my catnip question, which is ...

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: Do large feline species, like tigers and lions, have the same reaction to catnip as domestic cats? Yes.

TRACIE: Yes. All cats like catnip!

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: Apparently tigers, at least.

TRACIE: But, you know, I had all these questions, so I actually had them pick one that they thought was super interesting.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: Yeah.

TRACIE: Which one did you pick to answer?

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: Let me get the exact wording on it.

TRACIE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: So yeah, so here we go. "Could you play a meaningful game of Frisbee on the surface of Mars?"

TRACIE: Yeah.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: And ...

TRACIE: Yeah, I really liked that one.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: Yeah, that was a good one.

TRACIE: [laughs]

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: And I think the word that makes it, like, just really shine is ...

TRACIE: "Meaningful."

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: ... "meaningful."

TRACIE: So the first thing he does ...

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: You want to get me kinda doing some—some searching, you know, back of the envelope kind of stuff here?

TRACIE: And he—I guess I was a little disappointed that we didn't bust out any, like, books.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: I'm just looking up Frisbee aerodynamics.

TRACIE: He literally just turned to his computer and started Googling.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: How does a Frisbee behave here on Earth? The spin of the Frisbee, of course the lift, drag ...

TRACIE: So he looks all that stuff up.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: Let's see.

TRACIE: Then he looked up, like, aerodynamics ...

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: On Mars.

TRACIE: ... on Mars.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: It's very thin, the air there, so ...

TRACIE: Because the air is so thin on Mars, you wouldn't get that spinning, lifting thing that you always get with Frisbees.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: It might not have the same sort of hovering effect that a Frisbee does here on Earth. It probably would be more like just throwing a ball.

TRACIE: It would just go—frumph.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: Ten feet away, 15 feet away.

JAD: I don't think that that counts as a meaningful game of Frisbee.

TRACIE: But, you know, you could still throw it back and forth. [laughs]

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: But meaningful? [laughs]

TRACIE: Well ...

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: To me, the question is, like, you're playing Frisbee on Mars. I mean, that's just inherently ...

TRACIE: So it's already—it's already meaningful.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: ... meaningful.

TRACIE: Okay.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: You know, growing up, I remember seeing, you know, rebroadcasts of, you know, like the astronauts on the moon ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alan Shepard: Houston, while you’re looking that up, you might recognize what I have in my hand is the ...]

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: Playing golf.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alan Shepard: ... handle for the contingency sample return; it just so happens to have a genuine six iron on the bottom of it. In my left hand, I have a little white pellet that's familiar to millions of Americans. I'll drop it down.]

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: And I'm sure that they were not playing, like, you know, PGA golf.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alan Shepard: I'm going to try a little sand-trap shot here.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Edgar Mitchell: You got more dirt than ball that time.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alan Shepard: Got more dirt than ball. Here we go again.]

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: They were just, you know, amateur duffers, but ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alan Shepard: Here we go.]

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: ... they were golfing on the moon.

TRACIE: [laughs]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alan Shepard: Straight as a die. One more. Miles and miles and miles.]

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: I mean, to me that's pretty great.

TRACIE: That's pretty—that's pretty impressive.

BERNARD VAN MAARSEVEEN: So the venue kind of makes the whole endeavor meaningful, I think, in its way.

ROBERT: Thanks to producer Tracie.

TRACIE: Wait. I actually did ask them my dragons question.

ROBERT: Oh. Oh, well then next up, Tracie Hunte and dragons.

CHRISTINA HARDQUIST: Hi, this is Christina.

TRACIE: Hi, this is Tracie. Hi. This is Tracie.

CHRISTINA HARDQUIST: Oh, hey. Hey. Oh, you called me back.

TRACIE: This question is from Christina Hardquist.

CHRISTINA HARDQUIST: I'm native of Novato.

TRACIE: Out in Northern California.

CHRISTINA HARDQUIST: And I was born and raised here, so yeah, love this place.

TRACIE: And you—and what was your question to us, if you remember what it was, roughly?

CHRISTINA HARDQUIST: Yeah, so I came across this article about these creatures called olms, that I guess were being, you know, washed out of these caves in Eastern Europe.

TRACIE: What are they called?

CHRISTINA HARDQUIST: Olms, O-L-M. These sort of like blind, cave-dwelling amphibians. They're totally white. Their skin is translucent, very, like, other-worldly. And the article touched on the idea that, you know, folklore thought that these little creatures were actually like dragon babies being pushed out of—of these caves where these huge dragons lived. So I started digging into it a little bit, and of course you can only find so much on the internet, but there was this idea of dragons being a sort of like a universal myth across, you know, different disparate cultures. And ...

TRACIE: Christina started to wonder why it seemed that so many cultures all over the world all had myths about dragons.

CHRISTINA HARDQUIST: What is about, like, humans that cause them to believe in these, like, huge, scary, fire-breathing animals?

JAD: Is that true that cultures all over the world have dragons?

TRACIE: Well, sorta. You have the Northern European dragon that we're all familiar with.

ROBERT: Uh-huh.

TRACIE: Then there's the Chinese dragon, which is a little different. It doesn't have wings. It doesn't breathe fire. Then there's other dragon-looking sorta things. The Nanabolele.

ROBERT: The Nanabolele.

TRACIE: Among the Basotho people of Southern Africa. There's the Amaru associated with the Incan empire.

ADRIENNE MAYOR: Yeah, I think there's no doubt that we have fabulous, awesome creatures like dragons in almost every culture in the world.

TRACIE: So this is Adrienne Mayor.

ADRIENNE MAYOR: I'm a research scholar in the classics department at Stanford, and I'm most interested in is what sorts of things found in nature might have led pre-scientific people to believe that dragons or monsters or other fantastic creatures really existed, at least in the past or even maybe in the present.

TRACIE: Adrienne actually wrote a book called The First Fossil Hunters that lays out this theory that a lot of these stories were actually based on people finding old, you know, fossils and bones.

ADRIENNE MAYOR: Fossil bones, or teeth or claws or footprints embedded in stone.

ROBERT: So they'd see a set of old bones that they couldn't explain with any modern creatures, so the creature they go to is this dragon-shaped thing?

TRACIE: Yes, but ...

ADRIENNE MAYOR: I do want to point out, though, that we can never know for certain which comes first: the observations of mysterious traces of unknown animals or the stories of dragons. We don't know which comes first.

TRACIE: She says it could be that the story about the dragon was already there, and then when they found some bones, they just sort of applied those bones to the dragon myth.

JAD: Well, if—if the dragon came before the bones, where did it come from?

TRACIE: Well, there's another theory.

ADRIENNE MAYOR: Some scholars have said they're like monsters of the id. They arise from ancient memories of very real predators that were faced by our ancestors

TRACIE: Basically, dragons are composites of these creatures that used to eat us and hunt us and kill us, like crocodiles.

ADRIENNE MAYOR: Saber-tooth tigers and ...

TRACIE: Lions.

ADRIENNE MAYOR: ... cave bears, gigantic serpents.

TRACIE: Snakes.

ADRIENNE MAYOR: Pythons

TRACIE: Condors.

ADRIENNE MAYOR: Giant raptors.

TRACIE: So you can take, like, the scaly skin of the crocodile, the claws of the saber-tooth tiger, and its saber teeth, the wings of these raptors, put them all together ...

ROBERT: Oh, so this is all the old terrors rolled into one. Like—boom! Together.

TRACIE: Yeah. They tap into all those fears that already—are already inside of us. In theory.

ROBERT: I'm gonna go for that one.

JAD: Yeah, I like that. That works. That feels like an answer.

PAULA FAIRFIELD: Well, you know, like, they're very powerful. I mean, they could be very scary, they could be very destructive. But what's kind of magical in Game Of Thrones is that the intimate scenes also melt your heart and bring you closer to these creatures that should be, you know, burning your face off.

TRACIE: Okay, so I should admit that I actually just used this whole dragon thing to talk to this lady from Game Of Thrones.

ROBERT: This whole thing was ...

JAD: [laughs]

TRACIE: Her name is Paula Fairfield, and she makes all the dragon noises for Game Of Thrones.

JAD: Oh, she makes dragons?

TRACIE: Right.

ROBERT: Well, what did you ask her, I guess is the real question. What did you want to know?

TRACIE: Well, I wanted to know—like, I wanted to know, like, how does she make these sounds? And it was really interesting because, you know, we're talking a little bit about, you know, how dragons are composite creatures.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

TRACIE: And she basically uses composites to make these noises.

PAULA FAIRFIELD: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I absolutely ...

TRACIE: She takes the noises from birds.

PAULA FAIRFIELD: Screechy, shrieky bird sounds.

TRACIE: Insects.

PAULA FAIRFIELD: Different kinds of reptilian recordings and stuff.

JAD: Is it always the scary animals?

TRACIE: Well, it depends on what dragon that she—you know, which of the dragons that she's trying to actually create a performance for.

PAULA FAIRFIELD: I have sounds I might choose simply by certain personality traits that I might want to push forward. So in the case of Drogon ...

TRACIE: So on the show, there's Daenerys, who's this dragon queen. And she has three dragons, and one of them is named Drogon.

PAULA FAIRFIELD: And she named that dragon after Khal Drogo, her hot late husband. [laughs]

TRACIE: [laughs]

PAULA FAIRFIELD: So Drogon is like her lover.

TRACIE: He kind of has, like, a very affectionate and sensual relationship with her.

PAULA FAIRFIELD: He's whistling at her all the time. He's looking at her butt and goin', "Ooh baby!" [laughs]

TRACIE: And so in order to kind of push forward this sort of like, dragon sexual tension, I guess, she uses the sounds of ...

PAULA FAIRFIELD: Two giant tortoises, you know, mating.

JAD: Oh, that's...

ROBERT: Giant tortoises.

JAD: Wow!

ROBERT: What does that sound like?

TRACIE: Well, you know. I'll just play it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Tortoises mating]

JAD: Whoa!

ROBERT: Oh.

PAULA FAIRFIELD: But the groan of the male actually became—with some work and, you know, adjustments and stuff, became the source, the basis for Drogon's purr with her.

TRACIE: With Daenerys.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Game of Thrones: Drogon, we need to return! My people need me.]

PAULA FAIRFIELD: The funny thing about the purr with Drogon was watching people watch it and giggling when they heard it, but not really knowing why. To me, it's because it had that essence, that kind of sensual, sexual essence, that purr. So yeah, yeah, I use from all kinds of things, and, you know, I also used for dragonfly wings to make that kind of funny flutter of the thorns as it's moving, like especially on the end of his tail this year. As he moved through there was like a chitter, and that was like dragonfly wings.

JAD: Dragonfly wings?

TRACIE: Yeah.

ROBERT: Really?

TRACIE: I was wondering if you ever had a question about dragons that you would like to have answered?

PAULA FAIRFIELD: You know, no, it's curious because I think the thing that differentiates the dragons from creatures and makes them slightly otherworldly is the fire thing. Where did the idea for that come along?

JAD: That's a good question.

ROBERT: Yeah, where did that come from?

ADRIENNE MAYOR: Well, there are many theories about that.

TRACIE: Actually, I threw that question back to Adrienne Mayor.

ADRIENNE MAYOR: The one that I like is connected to the devastating weapon called Greek Fire.

TRACIE: Which was this unquenchable fire.

ADRIENNE MAYOR: It can't be put out by water. In fact, it burns in water, and so it was a naval weapon. And I believe that scholars have found that some of the nozzles for blasting Greek Fire were shaped like dragons, so that the boat looked like it had a dragon on board breathing fire at the enemy ships.

JAD: Oh, that's so cool! Wow!

ADRIENNE MAYOR: And just stories of they had dragons that breathed fire would make it back to—to Northern Europe. That's the best theory I've heard.

JAD: Oh, that's interesting. So it's like if the dragon is a composite of all the things, creatures that have scared us, now we're a part of that composite.

ROBERT: Our technology becomes part of the creature that frightens us.

JAD: Thanks Tracie.

TRACIE: You're welcome!

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Who is ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: What is ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: What is ah, ah ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Um, what is ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Huh.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Who is ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Hmm.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Anything coming to mind?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: What is a ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Say something. Hurry.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: It's a fedora.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Should have known that.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: You should have known that. All right we're gonna take a break.]

LATIF: Hey, this is Latif again. If you are enjoying this Radiolab questions hour, I got something to tell you, which is that we have a new t-shirt that is available to new members of The Lab, which is our membership program. And it says—get ready for it, drum roll, "There's A Radiolab For That." The great thing about the t-shirt—here, bear with me for a second—is that look, if you invest in the show, you get the t-shirt, right? But it also helps us make more shows, which makes the t-shirt more true. Huh? Following me?

LATIF: So please, invest in the future of the show, invest in the future of your own shirt. You can check out the t-shirt design, pick your favorite color and become a Lab member at Radiolab.org/join. That's Radiolab.org/join. In the meantime, we'll be back with the rest of the "Big Little Questions" show right after this short break.

JAD: Jad.

ROBERT: Robert.

JAD: Radiolab.

ROBERT: And we are back.

JAD: With more questions. Next one comes from producer Rachael Cusick.

RACHAEL CUSICK: So this question comes from Liam Humburger from Denver, Colorado.

LIAM HUMBERGER: I was browsing memes on my Instagram feed, and there was this scene where the picture was of the husband and wife trying to go to sleep. The wife was looking away, and she was, like, looking irritated, and then the husband was looking, like, just kind of confused on the opposite side of the bed. And the caption was her, "He's probably thinking of other girls," and then him, "I wonder if I've ever bought milk from the same cow twice."

ROBERT: What'd he say?

JAD: I wonder what?

RACHAEL: Yeah, so he said, "I wonder if I've ever bought milk from the same cow twice." So if I go to the store, I buy a gallon of milk, and then I go back maybe a week later, I get another gallon of milk, what are the odds that the same cow is in both of those gallons of milk?

ROBERT: I see.

ART BENJAMIN: I would say the answer is almost certainly yes. A hundred percent.

RACHAEL: That's Art Benjamin. He's a math professor.

ART BENJAMIN: At Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, and I'm also a mathemagician.

JAD: And how is he so sure it's 100 percent?

RACHAEL: Well, according to Art Benjamin, it all comes down to ...

ART BENJAMIN: Probability, statistics, and dare I say, calculus.

RACHAEL: [laughs]

RACHAEL: So take a farm like Dale's here ...

DALE MATTOON: Okay, here we go. My name is Dale Mattoon, Pine Hollow Dairy.

RACHAEL: Dale has about a thousand cows, and 20 at a time, these cows walk into a milking parlor. They line up. It looks like a wishbone.

DALE MATTOON: All day and all night long.

RACHAEL: And they get hooked up with these black rubber hoses.

DALE MATTOON: The air you're hearing every once in a while is the guy putting the machine on a cow, and he hits the button that turns on the vacuum, and then he ...

RACHAEL: Pumps the milk out of their udders into this big hose along the bottom of the floor.

DALE MATTOON: Running through the hose down into this line.

RACHAEL: And it's meeting up with the milk from the other cows. And then it goes from that room into another room where it gets cooled down.

DALE MATTOON: This is the milk out. Put your hand on this pipe.

RACHAEL: Oh my gosh, it's cold! There's condensation on it.

DALE MATTOON: It's very cold.

RACHAEL: Once it's cooled down, it goes into this rocket ship-looking thing outside called a 'milk silo,' where all the milk from Dale's farm is just hanging out together. The silo gets filled up and up and up until it's full.

DALE MATTOON: We're sending out over 8,000 gallons of milk a day on a tractor trailer.

RACHAEL: This truck comes along, picks up that milk. And it stops at another farm, and another farm, and another farm until the truck is full.

DALE MATTOON: Right full.

RACHAEL: It goes to the processing plant. And once you're at the processing plant, all that milk is just mixed around even more with milk from all the cows in the region. And ...

ART BENJAMIN: On a second look, I still have my back of the envelope that had the calculation here.

RACHAEL: ... here's where the math comes in.

ART BENJAMIN: There are about 90,000 drops of milk in a gallon, and—oh, I don't know, 100,000 cows who are contributing to a particular processing plant.

RACHAEL: When you run the odds a drop of milk from any one cow getting into any particular gallon ...

ART BENJAMIN: It's probably the case every gallon of milk contains most of those cows contributing.

RACHAEL: And here's the thing: in one drop of milk you could probably have a bunch of different milk molecules from a bunch of different cows.

ART BENJAMIN: And so one glass of milk might have thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of different cow molecules in my glass of milk.

RACHAEL: Wow, that's crazy! Oh my gosh!

ART BENJAMIN: [laughs]

RACHAEL: So going back to Liam's original question, Art's argument is that when you're drinking a glass of milk, there's, like, so many different bits of milk from so many different cows ...

ART BENJAMIN: That it's probably the case that after just two glasses of milk, you're almost certain to have a cow that was represented in both of them.

RACHAEL: So you're bound to run into at least a little bit of one of those 100,000 cows again.

ART BENJAMIN: The point being that every glass of milk has thousands and thousands of different cows contributing to it.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: A little bit of 10,000 cows in every glass. Wow!

ROBERT: In every glass of milk.

RACHAEL: [laughs]

JAD: I love that!

ROBERT: I don't know that I do.

JAD: No, it's great. It's like you're enjoying the collective efforts of this entire species almost.

RACHAEL: [laughs]

ROBERT: No. No, I think it should be the product of one or two cows that you can picture in your head and maybe pat on the nose.

RACHAEL: [laughs]

ROBERT: "Thank you," you could say.

RACHAEL: Yeah, I don't know. I'm with both of you. I feel like it weirds me out, but I also think it's kind of cool at the same time.

JAD: Well, you know, but come to think of it, what happens if you drink a glass of milk in New York, get on a plane, fly to Atlanta, then have another glass of milk. Are you getting the same 10,000 in each glass, or are they a different 10,000?

RACHAEL: Yeah, so I tried calling around a little bit to answer that question, and it seems like no one really wants to pay to ship milk that far, and so basically, a different processing plant might mean a whole different group of cows.

JAD: Oh!

ROBERT: Oh!

RACHAEL: Yeah. If you really want to figure exactly which plant your milk is coming from, you can go to WhereIsMyMilkFrom.com

ROBERT: Really?

RACHAEL: Yeah. And you input the little code on the top of your carton, and see how often that number comes up again. Each processing plant has its own code.

JAD: Thank you, Rachel.

RACHAEL: Thank you! And just a big thanks to dairy farmer Dale Mattoon over at Pine Hollow Dairy.

RACHAEL: Are you a big milk drinker?

DALE MATTOON: Oh, yeah.

RACHAEL: How often do you drink milk?

DALE MATTOON: Oh well, I have it on my cereal in the morning, and I have a glass or two for lunch and a glass or two for dinner. Probably two glasses each meal. If I don't drink milk, I don't feel good. Like, if I go away on vacation, and a lot of times you go ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: The cow gives milk, cartons and cartons of milk.]

[phone ringing]

MATT KIELTY: It's ringing.

MATT: All right, this next one came from a couple.

MARIE: Hello?

MATT: A married couple.

MATT: Hello, is this Marie?

MARIE: Yep.

MATT: This is Matt Kielty calling from Radiolab. How are you?

MARIE: I'm good, thanks. I have you on speakerphone, and Zack is right here.

MATT: Oh, hey Zack.

ZACK: Hi Matt.

MATT: How's it going?

MARIE: Good.

ZACK: Good.

MATT: So Zack and Marie, it was years ago actually, they sent us an email about what I think is like one of the most confounding, perplexing, mysterious devices that you can find inside of anybody's home.

MATT: Okay, so the microwave. I guess what I was wondering is how—one, why were you microwaving peppers? And two, do you remember the moment this happened?

MARIE: Oh, I know what it is. I know exactly what happened. So ...

MATT: Okay, so quick scene set. Portland, Maine. A kitchen around dinner time.

ZACK: I think we were, like, cooking a tomato sauce.

MATT: Zack was on bell pepper duty.

MARIE: Trying to take a shortcut: stick them in the microwave to make them a little warm or soft or something. And I said, "Oh Zack, don't put those in the microwave. They'll spark."

MATT: And Zack was just like ...

ZACK: Hmm.

MARIE: "You're crazy." [laughs]

ZACK: Hogwash. I don't believe you at all. And ...

MATT: Marie's like, "No, no, no."

MARIE: I remember seeing it as a kid.

MATT: She said there was a couple times her mom put some peppers in a microwave and they sparked.

MARIE: Yes.

ZACK: My first thought was that ...

MARIE: My memory was wrong.

ZACK: That's what I thought was that your memory was wrong.

MATT: Like, there must have been a piece of metal in the microwave. You just don't remember that.

ZACK: And that's what was sparking out, because vegetables wouldn't do that.

MATT: And this is going back and forth, and yes and no, and sparks and nothing until ...

ZACK: I think it was like we have the ability to find this out, and prove that it's wrong.

MATT: So that was like five years ago in the past, so we decided that we would actually do our own experiment in the present to get to the bottom of this. Do green peppers spark in the microwave?

[car drives past]

MATT: Maserati.

MATT: First things first, I actually went and bought a microwave.

MAN: [laughs] Hey, how's it going?

MATT: Off a guy on Craigslist.

MATT: Yeah, so fifty bucks?

MAN: Fifty bucks.

MATT: Fifty bucks. All right.

MAN: All gravy.

MATT: Then carried it, like ...

MATT: Ugh! All right.

MATT: ... eight blocks back to work.

MATT: Holy [bleep].

MATT: Also, bought a bunch of groceries because we were gonna do more than just the peppers test, and for reasons I'd rather not get into, I decided not to start with the peppers.

MATT: Baby carrots.

ANNIE MCEWEN: Baby carrots or just little carrots?

MATT: Yeah.

MATT: Producer Annie McEwen

ANNIE: I used to work in a kitchen.

MATT: Really?

ANNIE: Yeah.

MATT: Couldn't tell.

ANNIE: [laughs]

MATT: Carrots. Okay.

MATT: And as the great Ronco says of infomercial fame ...

ANNIE: I don't know who the great Ronco is. Great Ronco?

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Set it and forget it!]

MATT: All right, two minutes. Let's see what happens.

ANNIE: Okay.

MATT: And then all of a sudden ...

ANNIE: My God!

MATT: ... this little yellow spark just shot out from one of our slices of carrots.

ANNIE: [laughs] That was crazy. This little spark. Oh yeah, there!

MATT: You see another one?

ANNIE: Yeah. I just saw a little flash. Wow, a little tiny spark!

MATT: Mmm, carrots!

ANNIE: Mmm, carrots! Okay, next.

MATT: Kale.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Set it and forget it!]

MATT: This is where it gets a little crazy, because the kale ...

MATT: Oh!

ANNIE: There!

MATT: Same thing.

ANNIE: What?

MATT: Boom boom boom.

MATT: Sparks.

ANNIE: It's smoke. It's—there's smoke. Let's stop it. There's smoke, I smell smoke! Smell that. Jesus.

MATT: Delicioso!

ANNIE: That is smoke.

MATT: We're gonna try blueberries.

ANNIE: Ready? Set it ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: And forget it!]

MATT: Whoa!

ANNIE: Whoa, it's hot!

MATT: We started to draw a bit of a crowd in the studio.

MAN: Why was electricity coming out of the blueberry?

MATT: Up next ...

ANNIE: Grapes, grapitos.

MATT: Grapes.

ANNIE: Grapatitis, grapaninis.

MATT: Ready?

ANNIE: Ready.

MATT: Time cook.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Set it and forget it!]

ANNIE: Whoa, my God! Look at it go!

MATT: All right, what's up next?

ANNIE: Okay, jumbo franks.

MATT: I got turkey franks. Set it.

ANNIE: Spread it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: And forget it!]

ANNIE: Oh! Oh, I saw one! Oh my gosh!

MATT: Okay, pepper.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Set it and forget it!]

ANNIE: Oh, whoa!

MATT: Okay, both red and green bell peppers. Green was crazy.

MATT: Yay, peppers!

[applause]

MATT: We also threw in some diced-up tomatoes, pears, decorative gourd.

ANNIE: [singing] Are we gonna get fired for this?

MATT: And also ...

MATT: Whoa!

MATT: ... a Flaming Lips CD.

MATT: There we go! Who needs fireworks when you got a CD in the—this is crazy!

MATT: Stop, stop. Everyone stop.

ANNIE: Yeah, because I don't wanna—yeah, is it gonna—it looks like it was on fire.

WOMAN: Is it smoky in here?

ANNIE: Yes, it's definitely smoking.

MATT: Whoa, that smells really bad. All right, let's take a break.

ANNIE: Yeah, we want to keep this door open.

MATT: What did you say to Marie after the peppers sparked in the microwave?

ZACK: I think I was—I don't know, I was probably speechless.

MARIE: [laughs]

ZACK: I was, "Can't believe that you're right about this."

MATT: And Marie, did you say anything in return?

MARIE: Probably something to the effect of, "I told you so."

MATT: So peppers spark in the microwave. That was settled, but then there was the debate about ...

ZACK: Marie doesn't believe my understanding of how microwaves work.

MATT: Why?

ZACK: Maybe it's just that pepper has a lot of moisture in it?

MATT: Zack means you put the pepper in the microwave, all that water gets really hot.

ZACK: The skin acts as, like, tinder, and that lights on fire quickly.

MATT: But Marie ...

MARIE: We always have peppers in house, and I think that the green ones taste a little bit metallic.

MATT: To her it's like, maybe these peppers just have, like, some little bit of metal in there that's sparking.

MARIE: Yeah. So is your next step to find the appropriate scientist?

MATT: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm definitely gonna try and put this case to bed.

MAN: Yeah, just give us one moment.

MATT: So I ended up tracking down this woman.

MATT: Is it Caroline or Carolyn? Is it ...

CAROLINE ROSS: It's Caroline.

MATT: Caroline, okay.

MATT: Her name is Caroline Ross.

CAROLINE ROSS: I'm a professor in the department of material science and engineering at MIT.

MATT: An experienced microwaver?

CAROLINE ROSS: I've done it with roast potatoes.

MATT: Oh, you've seen sparks.

CAROLINE ROSS: Yeah, I've seen sparks from roast potatoes.

MATT: Huh. All right. So yeah, maybe we should just like ...

MATT: So I asked her, in the case of the peppers or, you know, the roast potatoes, or the grapes, like all the different food that we tried, like, what happens in a microwave that makes the food just go, like—blrrrp?

CAROLINE ROSS: Right.

MATT: So let's say I got some pieces of pepper, put them in the microwave. I press start. Like, what—what happens next?

CAROLINE ROSS: Okay, so there is a gadget in the microwave oven that produces the microwaves. It's called a magnetron, and it's an interesting thing in itself.

MATT: Okay, quick side note: it's basically like this hunk of metal that makes the microwaves, but Caroline told me this really cool thing, which is it actually used to be used in World War II for radar.

CAROLINE ROSS: That was in the' 40's. And in 1945, there was an engineer at Raytheon who was working on these devices, and he found that some candy bar he had in his pocket got hot.

MATT: He's like, "Oh, this cooks food." And so eventually, a magnatron got thrown inside of a metal box, and thus was born the microwave.

CAROLINE ROSS: So it's an interesting thing in itself, but it produces a beam of microwaves, and they bounce around inside the microwave oven, moving at the speed of light.

MATT: And what are they—are they pounding into the pepper? Or maybe they not pound but, like, shooting into the pepper?

CAROLINE ROSS: They're being absorbed.

MATT: Absorbed.

CAROLINE ROSS: Yeah, they're being absorbed. And these microwaves, they are the right kind of frequency to cause the molecules in food to oscillate back and forth.

MATT: Oh!

CAROLINE ROSS: You put a pepper in there, so the pepper's got a lot of water in it. It's got other things as well. And those molecules start absorbing the microwaves and dancing back and forth, and hitting each other, and heating up. And then that bit gets even hotter and even hotter, and eventually, it could burst into flames.

MATT: But that is not what we're seeing with our pepper or any of the food in the microwave.

JAD: It's not.

MATT: No, because as Caroline explained to me, a flame is very different than a spark.

CAROLINE ROSS: So one thing to keep in mind is that the pepper is fairly conductive. It's got all this water in it. We know that water can conduct electricity.

MATT: Mm-hmm.

CAROLINE ROSS: And the water isn't pure. It has a lot of salts dissolved in it.

MATT: Ah, okay.

CAROLINE ROSS: Minerals, things like that. In that sense, it's a little bit like a piece of metal. Metal, as we know, absorbs microwave energy rather well.

MATT: As we all know.

CAROLINE ROSS: Yes. [laughs] So ...

MATT: Okay, let's say you get these pieces of pepper in a microwave, and they're, you know, heating up. Now the thing is, the microwave, like the wave itself ...

CAROLINE ROSS: It has an electric field, which oscillates back and forth at rather a high frequency.

MATT: So when these microwaves shoot into these pieces of pepper, what happens is this electricity starts ...

CAROLINE ROSS: Swishing back and forth ...

MATT: ... through the bits of pepper.

CAROLINE ROSS: So there's a current flowing.

MATT: And as more microwaves are absorbed into these bits of pepper ...

CAROLINE ROSS: You can get quite big currents.

MATT: Currents so big that they create electric field around the food.

CAROLINE ROSS: And that electric field builds up and up and up, and eventually, it's big enough to cause the air to glow around the food.

MATT: Because now there's actually electricity coursing through the air.

CAROLINE ROSS: Like a florescent light bulb.

MATT: And Caroline says at this point you can start to see ...

CAROLINE ROSS: These glowing balls of gas floating.

MATT: It's actually the air turning into plasma. Now back in the center of the microwave are little bits of pepper where there is still this electrical current ...

CAROLINE ROSS: Swishing back and forth through those bits of pepper. And if you have sharp corners ...

MATT: Like the actual corner of a pepper, or even on the skin, like these tiny microscopic little points, the electricity in the pepper, the electricity in the air ...

CAROLINE ROSS: Can get concentrated at those sharp corners like a lightning rod.

MATT: And at those corners, the electricity will just build and build and build, until ...

ANNIE: Whoa!

CAROLINE ROSS: You get a mini lightning bolt.

ANNIE: Why? Why? Why?

MATT: And then Caroline said that everything in the microwave just sort of calms down.

CAROLINE ROSS: Until the electric field builds up again, and it does it all over, letting loose these mini lightning bolts. So it's a very dynamic process. You've got things being ionized. You've got things recombining. You've got charge flowing. You've got light being emitted. Things get hot. There's a big current flowing, all for that tiny fraction of a second. A lot of quantum physics in there.

MATT: [laughs]

CAROLINE ROSS: [laughs]

MATT: And then we hear a little ding!

CAROLINE ROSS: Yep.

MATT: And then ...

CAROLINE ROSS: We're done.

MATT: And then we're done. But ...

MATT: I just had one last job to do.

MATT: How you two doing?

MARIE: We're good.

ZACK: Good.

MATT: Okay. All right, so I think ...

MATT: Called up Zack and Marie. Told them everything I learned about their sparking pepper, and that even though both of them didn't have the exact theory, like Zack was right, water's an important part. And Marie was, you know, kind of on with something with this metal thing.

MARIE: Yep.

MATT: It feels like it's almost like a little bit like a marriage of sorts, pardon the pun, between both your ideas that kind of is what is happening inside this black box.

ZACK: Right.

MATT: So yeah.

ZACK: So I think we were—we had some of the elements there.

MATT: Yeah. Yeah.

ZACK: Yeah.

MATT: So that's—that's about it.

MARIE: Okay.

ZACK: Excellent.

MATT: Oh, there was one thing that I actually thought was kind of interesting in all these questions we were getting in, there was this tiny little pattern of married couples sending us in ...

MARIE: [laughs]

MATT: ... arguments that they got in. There was one couple that was, like—they were arguing about the nutritional value of microwaving a potato.

MARIE: [laughs]

MATT: There was another couple that sent in a very long email about how they'd been debating about how we perceive color.

MARIE: We've actually had a similar dispute.

ZACK: Yeah, that's true.

MATT: Oh. Over color?

MARIE: It was the couch?

ZACK: Oh, yeah.

MATT: [laughs]

MARIE: There was a couch that we had. It was some sort of, like, drab tone that I thought was green and you thought was brown.

ZACK: Gray. I was ...

MARIE: Gray. Okay.

ZACK: Yeah. I think I—yeah, we had that couch for, like, between different houses and different combinations for probably, like, five or six years, and maybe seven years, ten years? And ...

MARIE: Put a lot of life in it.

ZACK: And I was—yeah, I always thought it was gray, and still do. But apparently, you and your sister thought it was green. We, like, lived together for years, and just never realized you're seeing something completely differently. [laughs] I'm like, "What do you mean our green couch? I had no idea we even have a green couch."

ROBERT: Producer Matt Kielty.

MAN: Why do humans have two feet?

WOMAN: When are we gonna be able to fax a pencil?

[indistinct questions]

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Danielle, and I'm in beautiful Grover, Vermont, and here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Valentina Powers, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

-30-

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New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].lede
Becca is a producer for Radiolab. She was born and raised in the Bay Area, where she graduated without honors from UC Berkeley. There, she studied cognitive science, worked on a documentary film, and obsessed over Mad Men. Before entering the world of radio, she worked in film production at Pixar Animation Studios. She spends much of her free time (and occupied time, frankly) thinking about her next meal.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].bio
Originally from Cali, Colombia, Maria Paz Gutiérrez became a radio producer by chance.

While at a bar in Montevideo, Uruguay,  she met a long-time public radio producer who asked her, “what’s your thing?” Her “thing,” Maria Paz explained, was sound. By then, she had spent several years working for her college radio station, WPRK. First, as a DJ and, eventually, as the station’s manager. That encounter, and the question that came from it, led her to apply for an internship at NPR.

Months later, Maria Paz arrived in Washington, D.C. to intern for the TED Radio Hour. She went on to work as a producer for shows like All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Code Switch, and Planet Money.

These days, Maria Paz is an Associate Producer for Radiolab and she still can’t believe that it all began in a bar.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].lede
Originally from Cali, Colombia, Maria Paz Gutiérrez became a radio producer by chance.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].bio
Pat started out at the show in 2010 as a production assistant, became a producer, and spent about five years on staff making stories about all kinds of things, from a brain tumor that may have turned a man into a pedophile to the greatest comeback in the history of basketball to the reason 90 percent of humanity is right handed. He left for a few years to edit Pop-Up Magazine, the world’s first “live magazine;” host a podcast at Gimlet Media called Undone; and help create the Peabody Award-winning podcast Uncivil with Jack Hitt and Chenjerai Kumanyika.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].lede
Pat’s delighted to be back at his radio birthplace.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].lede
Becca is a producer for Radiolab. She was born and raised in the Bay Area, where she graduated without honors from UC Berkeley. There, she studied cognitive science, worked on a documentary film, and obsessed over Mad Men. Before entering the world of radio, she worked in film production at Pixar Animation Studios. She spends much of her free time (and occupied time, frankly) thinking about her next meal.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].bio
Originally from Cali, Colombia, Maria Paz Gutiérrez became a radio producer by chance.

While at a bar in Montevideo, Uruguay,  she met a long-time public radio producer who asked her, “what’s your thing?” Her “thing,” Maria Paz explained, was sound. By then, she had spent several years working for her college radio station, WPRK. First, as a DJ and, eventually, as the station’s manager. That encounter, and the question that came from it, led her to apply for an internship at NPR.

Months later, Maria Paz arrived in Washington, D.C. to intern for the TED Radio Hour. She went on to work as a producer for shows like All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Code Switch, and Planet Money.

These days, Maria Paz is an Associate Producer for Radiolab and she still can’t believe that it all began in a bar.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].lede
Originally from Cali, Colombia, Maria Paz Gutiérrez became a radio producer by chance.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].bio
Pat started out at the show in 2010 as a production assistant, became a producer, and spent about five years on staff making stories about all kinds of things, from a brain tumor that may have turned a man into a pedophile to the greatest comeback in the history of basketball to the reason 90 percent of humanity is right handed. He left for a few years to edit Pop-Up Magazine, the world’s first “live magazine;” host a podcast at Gimlet Media called Undone; and help create the Peabody Award-winning podcast Uncivil with Jack Hitt and Chenjerai Kumanyika.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].lede
Pat’s delighted to be back at his radio birthplace.

# included[].attributes.body
February, 1976. A flight out of California turned catastrophic when it crashed into a farm in rural Nebraska. What happened that night at the local hospital, and crucially, what went wrong, would inspire a global sea-change in how emergency rooms operate and fundamentally alter the way doctors think in a crisis.

Special thanks to Jody and Jay Upright, Heather Talbott, Dr. Ron Simon, Dr. John Sutyak, Dr. Paul Collicott, Irvene Hughe, Maimonides Medical Center, Karl Sukhia and Vanya Zvonar.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by -  Avir Mitra
with help from - Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sarah Qari, Becca Bressler, Suzie Lechtenberg, Heather Radke and Ana Gonzalez
Produced by - Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Becca Bressler and Pat Walters
with help from - Ana González
Original music and sound design contributed by - Maria Paz Gutiérrez and Jeremy Bloom
with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom
Fact-checking by - Diane Kelly
and Edited by - Becca Bressler and Pat Walters

Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

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Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

# included[].attributes.image-main.alt-text
A small plane flying over a silhouette of a cornstalk under a full moon. 

# included[].attributes.show-tease
Investigating a strange world.

# included[].attributes.tease
How a plane crash in Nebraska gave us the modern ER.

# included[].attributes.transcript
LATIF NASSER: Quick warning: this episode features some quite gruesome and gory injuries. If you're sensitive to that sort of thing or are listening with someone who is, keep in mind you might want to skip this one.

[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LULU MILLER: So is today a day off? Are you working later?

AVIR MITRA: I'm working overnight tonight.

LULU: Oh, man!

AVIR: I work at midnight. [laughs]

LATIF: Whoa.

LULU: Hey, I'm Lulu Miller.

LATIF: I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab.

LULU: What are the tides bringing into the ER right now?

AVIR: Oh man. I mean, it'll be like everyone thinking they're dying but it's allergies.

LULU: Okay.

AVIR: "But no, this never happens to me." I'm like, "I'm pretty sure this does happen to you."

LATIF: Today, we're here with our ER doctor correspondent, Avir Mitra. And this time he's got a story for us from the trauma bay.

AVIR: Yeah. So, you know, in the ER, I guess I'm lucky or cursed enough to see all sorts of crazy things.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir Mitra: All right, let's move him.]

AVIR: You know, it's like everything from appendicitis to strokes to broken bones. But sometimes ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir Mitra: On your count.]

AVIR: ... it's like a trauma.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: One, two, three.]

AVIR: Like, something really bad just happens to a person out of nowhere.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir Mitra: How's the airway?]

AVIR: Like a gunshot wound.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: Airway looks clear.]

AVIR: Drowning, stabbing, car crash. And all of a sudden ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Avir Mitra: What do you want to do?]

AVIR: ... their life is in the balance.

LULU: Oof!

AVIR: So as you can imagine, when a trauma happens, your job is to act quickly. You have to think quickly. You have to get very focused very quickly.

LATIF: Yeah.

AVIR: Because my job in that situation is to keep that patient alive and stabilize them, get them to the point where we can send them to the surgeon where they can get fixed up.

LULU: Hmm. Okay.

AVIR: And at this point, I feel like I can do a pretty good job of that. But that was definitely not always the case for me. I still remember one of my first trauma cases, where it was a guy who just drank too much. You know, this is in New York, and he was walking to catch the subway, tripped, fell onto the subway tracks, and got hit by a train.

LATIF: Oh my God!

AVIR: Yeah. So, like, we get the call. Ambulance brings this guy in, and his feet are in a bag. Like, his feet are separate from him, in a bag.

LULU: Oh my God!

AVIR: And he's got a head injury. Bring him onto the gurney. And I'm just—like, I can't get over the fact that there are these feet in a bag, you know? And I'm looking at all the wrong things. Like, I remember looking at his fingernails and just being like, "Oh, his hands kind of look like mine," you know? And just all these thoughts are racing through my mind. None of them are useful. And I just froze.

LATIF: Hmm.

AVIR: And I just have a ton of memories like this, you know, during my training. But the truth is, I've gotten to the point where I'm pretty good at this. Like, I can save a life in a trauma situation and it's because of this different way of thinking. It's the way that we've all learned in the trauma bay how to think. And it's pretty counterintuitive. When I looked into it, it sort of all originates from this one kind of insane story.

LULU: Interesting! There's a story waiting in that—that change?

AVIR: There's a story.

LULU: Okay.

AVIR: It starts with this guy. Name's Jim Steiner. This is in February of 1976. Jim's a doctor. He's not just any doctor. He's kind of a big deal. He's an orthopedic surgeon. He works at this big hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska.

LULU: Okay.

AVIR: And him and his family, they're heading back from this wedding that they were just at in California. So it's him, his wife Charlene, and he's got four kids: Chris, Kim, Rick and Randy.

RANDY STEINER: I remember it was a really nice day, completely clear. You know, in California, that's a really nice time of the year.

AVIR: This is Randy. He was seven at the time.

RANDY STEINER: We got to the airport, and we'd just stand around and talk and watch the planes come and go. You know, little airplanes coming and landing. I wish that I could just have a Polaroid of that moment because it was the last time we were ever gonna have a moment like that. At any rate ...

AVIR: Eventually they get on this little six-seater plane.

RANDY STEINER: The B55 Beechcraft Baron.

AVIR: And Jim's up in the cockpit because he's actually an amateur pilot.

LULU: Whoa!

AVIR: Yeah. So he's flying them home to Nebraska.

RANDY STEINER: My dad did all his checks. He got the weather report, contacted the FAA and gave them a flight plan. And we took off and headed east.

AVIR: So they fly through New Mexico. They go through Kansas.

RANDY STEINER: And I just spent my time looking at the world below.

AVIR: And as they're coming into Nebraska, all of a sudden a pretty unexpected cloud cover just appeared and kind of started to engulf the plane.

LULU: Oh, no!

AVIR: So now it's foggy, and Jim really can't see anything.

RANDY STEINER: It was getting near six o'clock at this point in time, so the sun was going down.

AVIR: And it's just getting darker and darker, and the air pressure is changing around him.

RANDY STEINER: My dad had started to get a bad feeling, and he decided that he was going to go under the clouds and, you know, make sure that he had visual with the ground.

AVIR: He was trying to get to about 500 feet to sort of orient himself. But it turns out his altimeter, which is telling you how high or low you are, is getting thrown off.

RANDY STEINER: So he thought he was flying 500 feet above the ground. He was flying about 50 feet above the ground.

LATIF: [gasps] Oh, no!

RANDY STEINER: Yeah, and he was—we were moving at almost 200 miles an hour. God, probably less than 30 seconds later, the plane went right through two large pine trees. And then all of a sudden everything stopped.

AVIR: The plane had crashed into the middle of this huge 100-acre cornfield in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska.

LATIF: Oh!

AVIR: So Jim gets knocked out.

RANDY STEINER: He had a broken rib. He—you know, he had a hole in his face. His eye was completely swollen shut.

AVIR: And when he comes to, he starts looking around. And he looks to his right. And Charlene is just not there.

LULU: Wait—meaning ...?

AVIR: She's like—she's nowhere to be—like, that part of the plane is gone.

LATIF: Oh, no!

AVIR: He looks behind him. He sees that all the kids are alive, but they've got all these different injuries.

RANDY STEINER: My whole scalp was ripped back all the way to my skull, and my sister had a big chunk out of her face.

AVIR: And three of them—Randy, Rick and Kim—are knocked out. They're unconscious.

LULU: [gasps]

AVIR: So Jim just snapped into doctor mode. He pulled his kids out of the plane and set them on the ground.

RANDY STEINER: He did a quick assessment of us there.

AVIR: Randy had this huge gash on the back of his leg.

RANDY STEINER: So he went and pulled out a bunch of suitcases to get clothes out of so he could fashion a tourniquet.

AVIR: And once Jim got their wounds under control, he went looking for Charlene.

RANDY STEINER: Shouted for her, and was looking for her. And he'd walked about 25 feet before he found her. And she was dead.

LATIF: Oh!

RANDY STEINER: She didn't suffer, for whatever that's worth.

LULU: Oh my God!

AVIR: Yeah. And as far the kids go, it was pretty clear, like, if he didn't get them to a hospital, they were gonna die too.

RANDY STEINER: Yeah.

AVIR: So Jim's out there with these kids for eight hours.

LATIF: Eight hours?

RANDY STEINER: Eight hours.

AVIR: You've got to remember, this is the '70s, so there's no cell phones, there's no GPS. It's so foggy, he can't even see anything. And it's freezing cold, so he's covering them with clothes to keep them warm.

RANDY STEINER: My dad was getting pretty frustrated because he really couldn't believe that nobody knew we were missing. But eventually, as the fog began to lift and the clouds began to lift, all of a sudden this moon came out.

AVIR: And so Jim could see what's around him.

RANDY STEINER: He could see the treeline we came from. He could see the field rolling out from around him.

AVIR: And he decides to go looking for the nearest road.

RANDY STEINER: Try and get us some help.

AVIR: Eventually, he finds this road that's, like, less than a mile away. He flags down this car with a couple guys in it. They pick up the kids, and they make their way to the closest hospital.

RANDY STEINER: In a little town called Hebron, about five miles down the road.

AVIR: So finally, after being, like, stranded for hours, they arrive at this hospital.

LATIF: Oh, thank God!

AVIR: Well, you would think so, but the reason I'm actually telling you this story is because of what happened next at that hospital.

RANDY STEINER: When we pulled into the parking lot, the guys who were in the car with us jumped out and ran to the front door of the hospital.

AVIR: And the front door is locked.

LULU: Oh, my God!

AVIR: So they're banging on the door. And they see a couple of nurses inside.

RANDY STEINER: One of the nurses walked up to the front door.

AVIR: And she's like, "The hospital is closed. Sorry, we can't let you in because there's no doctor here."

LATIF: But Jim's a doctor!

AVIR: Yeah, exactly. And Jim is, like, in disbelief.

RANDY STEINER: From his experience, you know, at the hospital in Lincoln General, it was 24-hour access there. They would have had a whole army of people showing up to—to stabilize us, to get us in there.

AVIR: And so Jim Steiner, he just walks up and smashes his hand into the glass door, leaving this, like, blood-soaked palm print. And he says something like, "The doctor is here!"

RANDY STEINER: "Open this door."

AVIR: So they unlock the door.

RANDY STEINER: My father kind of just burst in.

AVIR: They page a couple doctors and nurses. And in the meantime, Jim just takes charge.

RANDY STEINER: He had to get the—the gurneys out into the parking lot and start getting us loaded on there, and then getting us wheeled into the hospital.

HELEN BOWMAN: The one boy, the oldest boy, he was conscious. He had a broken arm and he could talk. Now the other three, they were unconscious. They had dried blood on them. They were cold.

AVIR: This is Helen Bowman, a nurse called in that night.

HELEN BOWMAN: I had seen a lot of nasty cases, but this was the worst.

RANDY STEINER: Yeah. So my dad was doing the initial assessment on us. He was trying to get the nurses to help with taking vitals.

AVIR: Eventually, two doctors showed up on the scene.

RANDY STEINER: Dr. Penry and Dr. Bunting showed up.

AVIR: And so Jim's like, "Okay, great."

RANDY STEINER: He got a sense of comfort from them saying, "Okay, we'll start handling ..." Since there were two doctors it would be a little easier to triage and to start working on a treatment plan.

AVIR: But Jim wasn't exactly letting go of the reins. From his perspective ...

RANDY STEINER: They were really just running around like chickens with their head cut off.

AVIR: They seemed completely overwhelmed by this situation.

HELEN BOWMAN: It was chaos. It was just total chaos.

AVIR: I mean, Jim wasn't making their jobs easy.

HELEN BOWMAN: He was very agitated.

RANDY STEINER: He started taking—yelling, barking out orders.

AVIR: But that's because these doctors and nurses, they didn't know how to handle all these injuries.

RANDY STEINER: One of the nurses had gone out and gotten a suture kit to start stitching up the back of my leg. My dad freaked out. He said, "You know, that's—this is gonna require surgery to close. You can't just come in here and suture this up."

AVIR: And it wasn't just that they didn't know how to treat these kids, they didn't know who to treat first.

RANDY STEINER: Basically, if it looked bad, that's what they started on. You know, they saw that I had a—a six-inch section of my scalp pulled back, and that my sister had blood all over her face and she had a cut over her eye.

AVIR: So they were focused on them. But all the while, Rick, who wasn't covered in blood ...

RANDY STEINER: He had the most serious injury.

AVIR: He was drifting in and out of consciousness, and sort of like thrashing around and, like, Jim knew that this must mean that he had a pretty serious head injury.

RANDY STEINER: And knowing what he knew about head and neck injuries and how they worked together, he wanted to get head and neck x-rays right away.

AVIR: But after, like, pushing and pushing and pushing them to do the x-rays ...

RANDY STEINER: All they did was x-ray the skull. My dad asked him about the x-ray of the neck. The doctor just blew it off. He said, "I see no reason to do that."

AVIR: And at that point, Jim just broke.

RANDY STEINER: That's when my dad said, "You people don't know what you're doing. You leave us alone. You are no longer caring for my family. You've got to get us to Lincoln. You've got to get us to Lincoln General."

AVIR: So after all this stuff, a helicopter lands in the parking lot of this small hospital. They get the family onto the helicopter, fly them over to Lincoln General.

RANDY STEINER: They got us into ambulances and took us to the emergency room at Lincoln General Hospital.

AVIR: When they get there, like, a dozen doctors descend on the family.

RANDY STEINER: The beehive got hit, and everybody jumped into action and started taking care of us. And I was going to go to surgery.

AVIR: And at this point, you know, Jim is seeing his close co-workers and they're like, "Jim, get on the bed." You know, "We're putting you under. Like, goodbye," you know? And he's—finally lets go of the reins and becomes the patient.

RANDY STEINER: He did and, you know, he managed to calm down. We were all in the same room.

AVIR: Three of the kids were still in comas.

RANDY STEINER: I was in a coma for three days, Kim and Rick were in a coma for seven.

AVIR: But eventually they all woke up and they all survived.

LULU: Aww.

LATIF: Wow!

LULU: Okay, that's great.

AVIR: Yeah. So the family returned to their lives. They try to move on from this insane tragedy.

RANDY STEINER: I was dealing with a lot of stuff. Obviously, the death of my mother. You know, my brother Rick had a fairly slow recovery. But even more, my dad was very lonely. He had four kids that he was now raising on his own. He still had an incredible amount of guilt.

AVIR: I mean, I never got to talk to Jim about any of this. He passed away this year, but according to Randy, he just became totally obsessed with what went wrong in the ER in Hebron that day.

RANDY STEINER: He spent a lot of time complaining about it and saying, "I don't get this. How could this happen? It's 1976 and we're still dealing with—with hospitals that have no idea how to handle, you know, a mass casualty event?" And not even a really significant mass casualty event. There were five of us.

AVIR: The thing is, angry as he was, Jim knew it wasn't actually the fault of the doctors or the nurses there.

RANDY STEINER: As he thought about it, he knew they were competent. He knew they weren't yokels. You know, it's not the people.

AVIR: It's just that they weren't trained to deal with emergencies like this, which are completely different from someone coming into the ER with a stomach ache or eye infection. Like, the second a trauma comes in, you're already behind the eight ball. You're already behind this flaming blaze. You have to act fast to save their life. And how fast, or even what to do in these emergencies, it wasn't really known. Like, at the time in the mid-'70s, emergency medicine was a new field. There weren't a lot of specialists.

SHARON HENRY: Yeah, so the people who staffed emergency departments in rural parts of the country were usually family physicians or general practitioners.

AVIR: This is Dr. Sharon Henry. She's a professor of trauma surgery at Shock Trauma in Baltimore.

SHARON HENRY: You know, as long as you had completed medical school and perhaps an internship, you were qualified to work in an emergency department.

AVIR: And even in the big-city hospitals with ER specialists, like, a lot of the doctors were really just figuring it out on the fly.

RON CRAIG: Correct. I didn't have any training. I learned what I learned in the ER. It's whatever rolled through the ER doors.

AVIR: So this is Ron Craig. He worked with Jim at Lincoln General.

RON CRAIG: I worked in Lincoln General Hospital's emergency room for three years.

AVIR: And he wasn't just a colleague. Like, he knew Jim. They went to church together, they were friends. So he was one of the people that Jim was talking to about all of this all the time.

RON CRAIG: One day Jim Steiner was in the doctor's lounge with me and he was complaining rather loudly about the state of affairs in rural hospitals when it comes to trauma.

RANDY STEINER: And that was the point where Ron Craig came to it and said, "Steiner, why don't you stop bitching about it and do something?"

RON CRAIG: I apparently said something to the effect of, "Put your money where your mouth is," or "Put up and shut up."

AVIR: And what Jim did next, with Ron's help, would change the ways ERs work across the world, and kind of rewire my brain in ways that I'm still trying to understand.

LATIF: That's after the break. Stick with us.

LULU: Lulu.

LATIF: Latif.

LULU: Radiolab.

LATIF: Okay, so where were we?

AVIR: So where we left off, Jim's been complaining about, like, how bad the care was in this small emergency room. And his buddy Ron's like, "Okay, let's do something about it." So the two of them start meeting up.

RON CRAIG: In my dining room.

RANDY STEINER: For a couple of hours.

AVIR: Randy Steiner again.

RANDY STEINER: Just to talk about it.

AVIR: And they're like, okay, so one of the things that makes trauma so hard is that it can involve all different types of injuries. And even just one gunshot, right? It could cause internal bleeding, a broken bone, damage to your lung, your liver, your spine. So which one do you deal with first, and how do you deal with it? Like, each of those injuries requires a different specialist doctor. So Jim and Ron start by calling all those different kinds of doctors.

SHARON HENRY: Experts.

AVIR: This is Dr. Henry again.

SHARON HENRY: Let's go to the thoracic surgeons.

AVIR: Asking them, "How do we deal with your part of it? Like, take the internal bleeding. Like, what's the first thing we do to save someone from that?"

RANDY STEINER: What did you do to treat that?

RON CRAIG: And I just took notes.

AVIR: Then they go to a heart doctor.

SHARON HENRY: Yeah, the heart's kind of important.

AVIR: And say, "Okay, if the bullet went through the heart, like, what do we do first for that?"

RANDY STEINER: "This is what I did in this case. This worked. That patient lived. This patient dies."

RON CRAIG: So what went wrong there? What should we do differently?

AVIR: They called lung doctors.

SHARON HENRY: Orthopedists.

AVIR: Neurologists.

SHARON HENRY: Neurosurgeons.

AVIR: And asked them, "Like, if the bullet went through the part of the body you specialize in, what's the first thing you would do to save this person's life?"

RON CRAIG: We got information from whoever we could get information from.

AVIR: And then Jim and Ron add it all up.

RON CRAIG: Spread out our ideas on paper.

AVIR: They're trying to figure out, like, okay, do we deal with the bleeding first or the lung puncture or the stomach injury? And, you know, they're not just doing this for gunshots. Like, they're doing this for every kind of trauma that you can imagine. So they're thinking about car crashes. Like, someone stuck in a burning house. A drowning. Someone falling out of a window. Figuring out how you respond to all these different injuries, and what order you need to respond to them in, like, to save someone's life.

RON CRAIG: You got it.

AVIR: And what emerged was a process that looked like it could kind of work for every different kind of trauma. A plan that ...

RON CRAIG: Doctors can apply to almost any situation.

LATIF: So what—what was the plan?

LULU: How do you universally approach all potential chaos itself as it impacts the body?

AVIR: The answer I'm almost, like, embarrassed to say it because you're gonna be like, "And?"

LATIF: [laughs]

AVIR: Like, it's basically something called the ABCs.

LULU: The ABCs.

AVIR: Yeah. So they got the idea from these cardiac surgeons who had been developing a process for how to save someone, you know, if their heart stopped.

LULU: Okay.

AVIR: And it's basically like a mnemonic, like A-B-C-D-E. Each of those letters sort of stands for a different step you would take when you first receive a trauma patient.

RON CRAIG: The ABCs of what you have to do to stabilize this patient while you get further help.

LATIF: Huh. Okay, so what do they stand for?

AVIR: A is for "airway," B is for "breathing," C is for "circulation," D is for "disability," and E is for "exposure."

LATIF: Okay, and what does this actually look like? Like, give me an example.

AVIR: Okay, so let's say you have a patient who was just in a car accident. And they roll in on the stretcher, so there's blood everywhere. They're screaming. Maybe their leg is broken and twisted back in a weird direction. But according to this game plan that Jim and Ron just wrote, you don't worry about any of that. All you do is think, "A."

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Airway.]

AVIR: And basically, that means you can just go up to them, look at their mouth and look in there. Is there blood in there? Is there a tooth in there? You know, you need to make sure that there's an open tube from the world to their lungs. And if not, you need to suction things out or put a breathing tube down. That's all you worry about first.

RON CRAIG: Simply because, if you don't breathe, you don't live.

AVIR: After you've done the airway, then you can move to "B."

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Breathing.]

AVIR: So B is like a verb. Now that you have a tube open where oxygen can get from the air to the lungs, now you've got to make sure the lungs are going in and out and breathing. That's where you listen to the lungs. You decide, "Okay, is there a collapsed lung?" If there's a collapsed lung, you poke a hole in the chest, put a chest tube in to suck the lung back open. Now that you have, like, an open tube that's bringing oxygen to your lungs, and you have lungs that are working, that are taking oxygen, putting it into the blood, now let's, like, stop the blood from pouring out of you.

RON CRAIG: That's step C.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Circulation.]

AVIR: You think about blood and heart. So okay, if someone's bleeding, stop the bleeding.

LULU: Got it.

AVIR: So then you stop the bleeding. Then D ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Disability.]

AVIR: ... is disability.

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: Which is essentially a bad name for, like, a quick assessment of is there any brain or spinal damage here?

LULU: Ah!

AVIR: So the doctor's gonna check your pupils to see are they reacting properly? They're gonna put a finger in your butt to see if you have, like, good rectal tone. Like, is your spinal cord working? Last one is E.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Exposure.]

AVIR: So you take scissors, and we cut off all their clothes and we look at their entire body.

LULU: And are you mostly looking for cuts and bruises? Anything else?

AVIR: Holes. Big—I mean, you'd be amazed at all the things you can find. And I should say, these ABCs, they're supposed to happen in that exact order and pretty damn quick. Like, 60 seconds per letter at most.

LULU: Oof!

AVIR: You know, you just have to bang through these things.

LATIF: Hmm.

AVIR: Now Jim and Ron realize that a lot of these small-town docs weren't necessarily gonna know how to do a lot of this stuff. So in addition to coming up with the ABCs, they also developed, like, this crash course in trauma life support.

RANDY STEINER: They were gonna take these doctors from these rural settings and train them on every step of the process.

AVIR: They called it ATLS—advanced trauma life support. And they held the first class in February of 1978 in a little town called Auburn, Nebraska.

RANDY STEINER: Not knowing for sure if it was even gonna work.

AVIR: They explained the ABCs, and then dove right into practicing how to deal with each one. Eventually, the class would expand to include these lifelike simulations with dummies and fake blood, and sometimes even actors playing the injured patients.

LATIF: Huh!

AVIR: And the class was profoundly strange for these doctors, not just because of the simulations, because of the way that it made them think. It was kind of the opposite of what they'd learned in medical school.

LATIF: What do you mean?

AVIR: Well, think about the doctors you see on television. Like, picture an episode of House, you know, a patient comes in, you talk to the patient, you get the whole story and then you do this long physical exam.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, House: Roll over.]

AVIR: You check this for these heart sounds. You listen to their stomach.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, House: Any idea what's wrong with her?]

AVIR: You ask questions.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, House: What is that?]

AVIR: Did the patient have any rashes? Yeah. Okay, now let's come up with a list of all the things it could be.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, House: It could be adrenal gland disorders, blood issues, anaphylaxis.]

AVIR: And once you make the diagnosis, then you create a treatment plan.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, House: I'm starting you on a cocktail of STD meds.]

AVIR: Jim and Ron are basically like, "To hell with all of that. Like, forget about the tests, forget about questions. This is the plan. It's called ABCDE. You just start doing it."

LULU: Huh! And let the complexities go.

AVIR: Yeah!

LULU: Forget nuance. Go!

AVIR: Yeah. And because the class was so strange, it was so different from what doctors were used to, they really weren't sure how it was gonna be received at all. But the first group liked it, so they were like, "Okay, let's try this again."

RON CRAIG: We rounded up our instructors.

AVIR: Held the next class in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

RON CRAIG: They showed up.

AVIR: Those docs also loved it. And throughout the rest of 1978 and '79, they kept holding more classes around Nebraska, and they're finding this groundswell of support. All these doctors are like, "Thank God we have a plan. Like, something that tells us how to deal with these incredibly stressful situations." And then finally in 1980, just a few years after Jim and Ron invented ATLS, it went mainstream.

SHARON HENRY: It was adopted by the American College of Surgeons.

AVIR: And since then, it's just spread everywhere.

SHARON HENRY: Canada.

AVIR: Most parts of Europe.

SHARON HENRY: Mexico.

AVIR: The Middle East.

RON CRAIG: We intended for this to be a program for primary caregivers in small towns, but it obviously grew beyond that.

AVIR: And now today, over 1.5 million doctors have been trained in ATLS, and every year 50,000 more get the training.

LULU: Wow!

AVIR: And so anyone who's a surgeon or an emergency medicine doc gets this training. So I got the training.

LATIF: Okay. So, like, and it works.

AVIR: Yeah.

LATIF: Do—do we know how well it works?

AVIR: I mean, like, outcomes today in trauma are way better than they were in 1976. You know, like, you are much more likely to survive today, and that's definitely in part due to ATLS.

LULU: I mean, how many lives do you think it's saved?

AVIR: So it is like a hard thing to study, right? Like, no one was studying this when they rolled it out, and now once people know how to do this, you can't exactly make them forget. Like, you can't take it back, you know?

LULU: [laughs] Yeah. It's like in the water. Yeah.

AVIR: It's in the water now. But there have been studies, you know, when they roll this out to a new country that show that survival rates increase from 32 percent to 67 percent.

LATIF: Wow!

AVIR: And basically ...

LULU: Sorry, does it become mandatory?

AVIR: Yes. To become an ER physician, you have to get this training.

LULU: Okay.

AVIR: And you need that. I think you need that because when a trauma patient comes in, it can be like, the ultimate overwhelm.

LULU: Right.

AVIR: I'm—when you—when there's two—it's almost like looking at the solar eclipse. Like, I can't look at that. If I try to look at the whole thing, the whole sun, I'm gonna get burned. So I'm only gonna look at a small piece at a time. So I'm gonna look at A and I'm gonna allow myself to see all the horrors of A. And I'm gonna make a few key decisions and do things, then I'm gonna stop looking at A and open my mind to B.

LULU: Yeah.

AVIR: And then there, I get to look at a few things, make a few decisions, then I stop thinking. I'm on the letter C. Let's go. You know, it's almost like putting blinders on, you know?

LATIF: Yeah.

LULU: Mm-hmm.

LATIF: Wait. Okay, so, like—so A, B, C, D, E—like, imagine someone comes in with, like, a gunshot wound or something and they're, like, bleeding out and you're like, "Oh, let me look at the airway," when you're, like—clearly the bleeding out is the problem, though.

AVIR: Yeah.

LATIF: But you—but—but even if you have a sense like that, you don't skip.

AVIR: You don't skip.

LULU: Wow. Really? Do you ever skip?

AVIR: You're not supposed to skip.

LATIF: It feels—it feels—as you describe it like that, it feels very robotic.

AVIR: Very robotic.

LULU: Mm-hmm.

REUBEN STRAYER: Yeah, following step-by-step instructions like a robot.

AVIR: Okay, so I called up this guy, Dr. Reuben Strayer.

REUBEN STRAYER: Hi, I'm Reuben. I'm an emergency doc at the largest hospital in Brooklyn, Maimonides Medical Center.

AVIR: Reuben's worked in a lot of different trauma centers over the years, and he thinks that ATLS has gotten a little too rigid.

REUBEN STRAYER: Yeah. And when we apply a rigid structure in the evaluation of care, sometimes we end up with thoughtless care.

AVIR: Like for instance, often someone might come into the ER after a car accident, but they just happen to have a sprained ankle. And the doctors will run the full ATLS on them.

REUBEN STRAYER: Everyone's getting a finger in their bum.

AVIR: They're getting their clothes cut off. And a lot of doctors these days will just give people a full body CAT scan.

REUBEN STRAYER: It's a CAT scan that includes the head, the neck, the chest and the pelvis.

AVIR: Now Reuben would agree that, like, in serious traumas, you know, like someone's feet are coming in a bag, yeah, the ABCs are crucial.

REUBEN STRAYER: I'm more on board with following an algorithm if the algorithm compels you to act.

AVIR: But even then, you know, there are still some downsides. Like, he's seen how ATLS can kind of put you on autopilot. It puts this distance between the doctor and the patient.

REUBEN STRAYER: Yes. And I have colleagues that for example, I think they would be the first to say, "I don't really want to get too deeply involved in thinking about this—about this trauma patient. I just want to go through the algorithm and move on."

AVIR: And I love my job. Like, I love working with patients. But I do experience this going through the ABCs. It's almost like this technical video game. "Okay, I'm intubating. I'm gonna put this scope in here, and the first thing I'm gonna see is this. I'm gonna travel here. I'm gonna see this. I'm gonna make a left turn. I'm gonna expose this. I'm gonna move my hand like this." So it becomes very technical because you're not seeing them as a person. You're seeing it as, like, a body part.

AVIR: And when you're treating them, you know, you kind of want to be in that mode. It helps you stay focused. But it can be really tricky because once you've stabilized the situation, you need to become a human again. And that's just as hard, honestly. Like, sometimes you'll be talking with another doctor in the room and just talking shop in this almost robotic way, right? And the family is like, "Did you just say, like, if we don't do this, my brother is gonna die?" And it's, like, "Oh yeah, I did say that." Like, I probably shouldn't say it like that. You know what I mean? So it can be hard sometimes to snap in and out of this way of thinking.

LULU: Yeah. I mean, it makes me think about—well, just in general—like, I feel like a booster for nuance and complexity. And talking about medicine in general, I think we want our doctors to be really thinking about nuance and being human and being attuned. But then there is—like, except maybe in trauma when, like, the clock is running and actual instincts might get in the way. Like, I really see its value.

AVIR: I was gonna say, like, you know, we want our doctors to be human, but maybe in this case, when there's, like, some unimaginable trauma going on, it's nice to dehumanize a little.

LATIF: Yeah, but, like, to me, the fundamental irony of this story is that the guy who figured out how to roboticize yourself, like, that kind of came out of the most human, the most messy, the most emotional situation you could possibly, you know, engineer.

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: There's a kind of a very funny irony there.

AVIR: Yeah. But if you think about it, like, so much of those emotions and all the messiness of that night really happened because there was no system.

LULU: Hmm.

LATIF: Yeah.

AVIR: Like, I wish Jim, I wish all the doctors there had something like ATLS that night to help them.

LULU: Yeah.

AVIR: You know, in the way that it helps me. To me it's like there's this sort of—it's like you can never control the outcome. You know, you just can't. And if you try—I think that's—I think that's where I messed up as a human but also as an early doctor, whereas it's like, if something goes right, like, I'm great. If something goes wrong, I'm terrible. But I'm still the same me, and sometimes things go great, sometimes things go terrible. Sometimes patients die. But with ATLS, even if the person dies, you can say, "I followed the process." And the chips will fall where they will. And that'll be happy or sad but—but at least I can sleep at night, you know?

LATIF: This episode was reported by Avir Mitra, with help from Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sarah Qari, Becca Bressler, Suzie Lechtenberg, Heather Radke and Ana González. It was produced by Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Becca Bressler and Pat Walters, with help from Ana González. Original music and sound design contributed by Maria Paz Gutiérrez and Jeremy Bloom, with mixing help from Jeremy Bloom. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly, and edited by Becca Bressler and Pat Walters. Special thanks to John Sutyak and Brian Zinck and why not, to every ER doctor everywhere. That's it for us. We'll catch you next time.

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Danielle, and I'm in beautiful Glover, Vermont. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Valentina Powers, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

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Today Explained, Vox Media Network

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Today Explained, Vox Media Network

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Given that we’re all gearing up for the Presidential race, and how gun rights and regulations are almost always centerstage during these times. Today, we’re re-releasing a More Perfect episode that aired just after the October 2017 Las Vegas shooting. It is an episode that attempts to make sense of our country’s fraught relationship with the Second Amendment.

For nearly 200 years of our nation’s history, the Second Amendment was an all-but-forgotten rule about the importance of militias. But in the 1960s and 70s, a movement emerged — led by Black Panthers and a recently-repositioned NRA — that insisted owning a firearm was the right of each and every American. So began a constitutional debate that only the Supreme Court could solve. That didn’t happen until 2008, when a Washington, D.C. security guard named Dick Heller made a compelling case.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon.

Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

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Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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Investigating a strange world.

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In 2008, the Supreme Court stepped in to settle our fight over the Second Amendment’s meaning. They did. And they didn’t.

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LATIF NASSER: Hey, everyone, it's Latif. So we are coming up on the American presidential election. The Democrats have picked their choice for VP, Governor Tim Walz, who is an interesting guy for several reasons, but one of them has to do with guns. He is a proud gun owner. He won the congressional sharpshooting contest about 15 years ago when he was in Congress. The NRA gave him an A rating as a politician. They endorsed him as a Democrat over his Republican challenger. He was even one of Guns & Ammo magazine's top 20 politicians.

LATIF: But then he did a complete 180. He donated all the money he got from the NRA to veterans' charities. He was one of the co-sponsors of the House assault weapons ban legislation in 2018. As governor of Minnesota, he passed some of the strictest gun control laws in the entire nation, leading to the NRA giving him an F because, as they have put it in one of their publications, quote, "He has treated a basic human freedom, a right solidified in our founding document by the Second Amendment, as a politically inconvenient position for him."

LATIF: So Tim Walz's stance on the Second Amendment, not to mention every other politician running's stance on the Second Amendment, if you live in this country, especially if you live in a swing state, you're just gonna keep hearing it over and over and over. And given how frequently mass shootings are happening in this country, we figured it was a good time, maybe better time than usual, to replay an episode from our sister show, More Perfect from 2017. In it, our former producer Sean Rameswaram, whose voice you may recognize from Vox's podcast Today Explained, Sean goes deep, word by word, even into the grammar of the Second Amendment, trying to understand why this amendment even exists. I mean, like, was this really the second thing they thought to amend in the Constitution? Anyway, it's my pleasure to be your ticket to The Gun Show.

[RADIOLAB INTRO]

SEAN RAMESWARAM: I think we should start with one of the most confusing sentences in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

JAD ABUMRAD: Not "We the people."

SEAN: Not that one. No, I got a different one. "A well-regulated militia, comma, being necessary to the security of a free state, comma, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, comma, shall not be infringed."

JAD: Say it one more time. Say—I'm sorry.

SEAN: Okay. From the top.

JAD: And do it—do it with the commas again.

SEAN: Sure. "A well-regulated militia, comma, being necessary to the security of a free state, comma, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, totally unnecessary comma, shall not be infringed.

ADAM WINKLER: Is that the one that's about guns?

SEAN: Adam Winkler, who wrote the book on the Second Amendment. And that book is called Gunfight.

JAD: He's a journalist?

SEAN: He's a professor of law ...

ADAM WINKLER: At UCLA.

SEAN: He said ...

ADAM WINKLER: It's almost as if James Madison, the author of the amendment, had just discovered this wonderful new thing, the comma, and wanted to put it in there as many times as possible.

SEAN: Which is like a nerdy, professorial joke. But like, seriously, what is it? And, like, it had to be this one? Couldn't it have been the amendment about, like, quartering soldiers in your house that was really confusing?

JAD: Yeah.

SEAN: No, it's the one about guns that they made, like, just indecipherable.

ADAM WINKLER: And ever since, generations of Americans have been confused by the language of the Second Amendment.

SEAN: So when this thing was written, we had just fought this war with the British, this Revolutionary War. And they tried to win it right from the get-go by coming for our guns. So these new states are looking at this new federal government, they're going, like, "Meh, we don't know if we want to trust you quite yet." So there's this Second Amendment that says, "You guys can fight back."

JAD: Like, the feds aren't gonna disarm you. You can—your militias can keep your guns.

SEAN: That's, I think, what we agree on. But then after that, you just look at the sentence, then it's not just the commas that are confusing. If you look at the sentence as a whole ...

ADAM WINKLER: The pieces don't seem to fit together.

SEAN: ... there's some noun confusion. I mean, it's obvious that the sentence is about someone's right to bear arms, but who? Who gets that right? At the beginning of the sentence you get ...

ADAM WINKLER: A well-regulated militia.

SEAN: The militia. States have a right to form militias, to assemble groups of people. And those people gotta have their guns. That's easy enough. But then later in the sentence, there's ...

ADAM WINKLER: Comma, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, comma, shall not be infringed.

SEAN: The people. Which people? Those people over there in the militia? All people? If you mean all people, why did you say militia? It's like the first clause seems to point to some sort of collective right to bear arms, and the second clause seems to point to some individual right to bear arms.

JILL LEPORE: Like, this is supposed to be a popularly ratified document. It's actually not that easy to read. It's really not that easy to read. And it's not—it wasn't that easy to read then.

SEAN: This is Jill Lepore.

JILL LEPORE: A staff writer at the New Yorker magazine.

SEAN: She's also a professor of American history.

JILL LEPORE: I study the 18th century. I'm really trained as a 17th- and 18th-century American political historian.

SEAN: And Jill says from the beginning, when people thought about the Second Amendment, they tended to just focus on the first part.

JILL LEPORE: That the primary motivation for the amendment is about militias.

ADAM WINKLER: A well-regulated militia.

SEAN: That this confusing sentence was widely read as this collective militia right, not an individual one.

JILL LEPORE: And this truth that the Second Amendment in fact guarantees the right of an individual to bear arms, and that the government, federal government ...

SEAN: Can't limit that.

JILL LEPORE: In any fashion.

SEAN: Jill says that just didn't exist.

JILL LEPORE: It wasn't a thing.

STEPHEN HALBROOK: I disagree with the way you've characterized that, although what you said is stated in the media frequently.

SEAN: This is Stephen Halbrook. He's represented the NRA in several cases.

STEPHEN HALBROOK: I've written several books on Second Amendment issues.

SEAN: He actually thinks A) the sentence is just fine as is.

STEPHEN HALBROOK: I don't think it's complicated at all.

SEAN: B) the framers were thinking about an individual right to bear arms.

STEPHEN HALBROOK: The Second Amendment refers to the right of the people to keep and bear arms. First Amendment refers to the right of the people peaceably to assemble. I mean, who is that? It's individuals. They're not some kind of collective that doesn't exist in reality.

JAD: So which—which was it?

SEAN: That's—that's a really good question, Jad. I mean, it's a complicated one too. What I can tell you is that, you know, people I spoke to for the story said at least in the 20th century when the—when the Second Amendment was taught in law schools, it was taught as this—it was taught as this sort of antiquated, outdated thing that had to do with militias, not so much individual rights.

JAD: Hmm.

SEAN: But Jill Lepore, Stephen Halbrook, and their respective sides, something they can both agree on is that this super-sacred Second Amendment, this third rail of our American politics today, that just was not a thing. It was not like that.

JILL LEPORE: It was utterly ignored.

SEAN: People ignored this amendment.

STEPHEN HALBROOK: When I was an undergraduate, undergrad at Florida State University, I went to the Florida Supreme Court and started looking up law review articles on constitutional law issues. And I found that there was hardly anything written about the Second Amendment.

JILL LEPORE: No one ever wrote about it. Except for the Third Amendment, there was no amendment that was less written about, less legislated, less debated, less a subject of Supreme Court conversation than the Second Amendment.

SEAN: Don't get me wrong. This is not to say people didn't think about guns. People had guns, states regulated guns. But for most of our history, the Second Amendment it was like—it was like sort of the runt of the Bill of Rights litter. Like, no one argued about it.

JILL LEPORE: It's a striking thing to think about.

SEAN: There was no fight. No fight.

JILL LEPORE: How surprising that is, given its centrality to our political conversation today. What a extraordinary transformation.

SEAN: Because there was this window of time where all of this changes, the script just flips. There's 200 years of everything being chill, and then suddenly you get this.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Charlton Heston: I want to say those fighting words: from my cold dead hands!]

SEAN: So basically in a flash, the Second Amendment goes from being ignored to being ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: You will not disarm me!]

SEAN: ... explosive, to being radioactive. And in the process, we start to read the thing totally differently. All of a sudden, it's this hotly debated thing that's got nothing to do with that first part and everything to do with the second part.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Donald Trump: If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks.]

SEAN: Everything to do with my personal right. And me.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Donald Trump: Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don't know. But ...]

SEAN: And what I want to know is, how did that happen? How did we start reading the Second Amendment the way we do now? And what I found out is that, in the modern history of the gun rights movement and—and how we read the Second Amendment can be boiled down to these three totally unrelated, disjointed-seeming, revolutionary events.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Am I under arrest? Am I under arrest?]

SEAN: One, an invasion in Sacramento.

STEPHEN HALBROOK: Then I'll be damned. Let me—what in the hell ...

SEAN: Two, a revolt in Cincinnati.

STEPHEN HALBROOK: ... credential do you have to tell me I'm wrong?

SEAN: And finally ...

DICK HELLER: Bam!

SEAN: Number three, a reckoning at the Supreme Court of the United States.

DICK HELLER: Unbelievable. What is that sound? Can you imagine that?

JAD: So you're gonna tell me the story in three chapters?

SEAN: Yeah.

[MORE PERFECT INTRO]

NARRATOR: Chapter 1. The Invasion.

BOBBY SEALE: I'm a carpenter. I'm a builder. I'm a stand-up comedian. Jazz drummer. Structure repairman of high-performance aircraft. I did electromagnetic field blacklight non-destruct testing for the Gemini missile program, and I'm an expert shot with guns. I was an expert shot with guns when I was 12 years old. I was raised a hunter and a fisherman besides being a carpenter and a builder. When I'm 12 years old, my father buys me a high-powered rifle. Hollow-tip ammo. I can knock an elephant down with that shit. You see what I'm getting at?

SEAN: Can I get you to tell me—we got to start at some point. Can I have you tell me just your name and who—where we are and who you are? Is that cool? Can we do that first?

BOBBY SEALE: [laughs] Is that cool?

SEAN: I know it seems pretty obvious.

BOBBY SEALE: My name is Bobby Seale. I created the Black Panther Party. I'm the founding chairman and National Organizer of the Black Panther Party.

SEAN: And where are we standing right now?

BOBBY SEALE: We're in Oakland, California.

JAD: The Black Panthers?

SEAN: Yeah. So this transition from the militia to the individual, my right to bear arms, you could argue that that whole individual gun rights movement started in the 1960s with the Black Panthers in Oakland.

JILL LEPORE: It's an unlikely and kind of surprising origin for what's known as the individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment.

BOBBY SEALE: We were a different breed here. I mean, we some well-read guys, we knew our shit. We knew our history.

SEAN: Just to give some context. This is 1966. It's been an exceptionally bad time for race relations all over the country.

[NEWS CLIP: More than 1,500 people were in the streets.]

SEAN: Protesters are being beaten at sit-ins. There's attack dogs and hoses. And in particular ...

[NEWS CLIP: Relations between police and Negroes throughout the country are getting worse.]

SEAN: ... there was major tension between the Black community and the police.

[NEWS CLIP: One of the cities most troubled by animosity between police and Negroes is Oakland, California.]

ADAM WINKLER: In the late '60s, there were several high-profile incidents of officers shooting unarmed Black men.

BOBBY SEALE: This is what was happening, you know? And what we did is that, yeah, we took a position.

SEAN: October, 1966. Bobby Seale and his friend Huey P. Newton, they start this organization called the Black Panthers.

BOBBY SEALE: Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.

SEAN: Now Huey, Bobby's co-founder ...

BOBBY SEALE: Huey was two years in law school.

SEAN: He was going to the University of San Francisco's School of Law, and one day he's sitting there as you do in law school, thinking about the law, thinking about Malcolm X, thinking about what he can do in Oakland. And it hits him.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Huey P. Newton: The Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the citizen a right to bear arms on public property.]

ADAM WINKLER: That they could argue that the Second Amendment gave them a right to have a gun.

BOBBY SEALE: He said that's our constitutional, democratic, civil human right.

JAD: And no one had ever said that before?

ADAM WINKLER: Well, there's always been those who claim that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to bear arms.

SEAN: But Adam Winkler says people who argued that were in the minority. They weren't taken too seriously. This was one of the first times that the individual rights reading was forced into the mainstream, because coming out of law school class, Huey tells Bobby if we have a right to bear arms, we individuals?

BOBBY SEALE: Then we can patrol the police, observe the police. Telling me—I says, "You talking about patrolling the police? What legal—you in law school, so what legal status do we have?"

SEAN: Huey pointed to that second half of the Second Amendment.

BOBBY SEALE: The right of the people to bear arms. To possess and bear arms, okay?

SEAN: He also pointed to a California state law that said you could carry a gun as long as it wasn't concealed.

BOBBY SEALE: If the gun is not concealed, it's not illegal. So ...

ADAM WINKLER: The Black Panthers started policing the police.

BOBBY SEALE: And we did.

ADAM WINKLER: They would go out in armed patrols and follow police cars.

BOBBY SEALE: On 7th Street.

SEAN: Bobby told me about the first time they did it.

BOBBY SEALE: In West Oakland, California, a nightlife district.

SEAN: He says it was a weekend night, a police officer had pulled over some guy. And they started watching from down the street, and a crowd starts to gather.

SEAN: And is Huey holding a gun?

BOBBY SEALE: Yes, he's holding a shotgun.

SEAN: What kind of gun is it?

BOBBY SEALE: It's a shotgun. A shotgun that I bought him. That gun you see in his hand, it's a high-standard gun. It cost $89 or $79. I bought the damn gun. I says, "Here, Huey. You got your shotgun now."

SEAN: So you got this white cop on one side of the street.

BOBBY SEALE: Arresting somebody.

SEAN: And on the other side of the street, you got a dozen Black guys holding shotguns.

BOBBY SEALE: Strictly for observation. We was standing in a line. I had everybody standing in a line.

SEAN: He told me the moment the cop noticed. He immediately stopped what he was doing with the guy he had pulled over and walked over to them and said ...

BOBBY SEALE: "You have no right to observe me!" And Huey says, "No, California State Supreme Court ruling states that every citizen has the right to stand and observe a police officer carrying out their duty as long as they stand a reasonable distance away. A reasonable distance constitutes eight to ten feet. I'm standing approximately 20 feet from you and I'll observe you whether you like it or not." He said, "Man, what kind of Negroes are these? Let me see that gun." "No. You cannot touch my weapon." The cop says, "Are you a Marxist?" And Huey said, "Are you a fascist?" "Are you a Marxist?" "Are you a fascist?" Then the cop said, "Well, I asked you first." And Huey saying, "I asked you second. Are you a fascist?" So I mean, it's like a standoff.

SEAN: And this is where the dominoes start to fall. The standoff resolved itself peacefully, but the cops in Oakland are not happy. And they—they immediately start running this up the chain.

BOBBY SEALE: Next thing we know ...

[NEWS CLIP: We've got to protect society from nuts with guns.]

[NEWS CLIP: And I think we should act and we intend to act.]

BOBBY SEALE: Mulford, State Assemblyman Mulford who represented Oakland is trying to put a bill in to stop the Black Panthers.

[NEWS CLIP: It's my intention to make it a misdemeanor to have loaded rifles and shotguns and weapons in public places.]

SEAN: So this bill, the Mulford Act, is up for debate at the California state capitol in Sacramento. And Bobby Seale decides the Panthers should be there for the debate and that they should take their guns.

BOBBY SEALE: I took a delegation, an armed delegation to the California State Legislature, May 2, 1967. I had six women and 24 males.

SEAN: And how many guns?

BOBBY SEALE: 23 guns.

SEAN: And were they loaded?

BOBBY SEALE: Yes.

SEAN: So they roll up to the assembly in Sacramento. And guess who happens to be waiting for them right there on the front lawn of the assembly?

JAD: What are we talking—what year are we talking now?

SEAN: Guess who's governor?

JAD: I don't know. Who was the governor?

SEAN: Guy by the name of ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Win one for the Gipper.]

[NEWS CLIP: Mr. Ronald Reagan.]

BOBBY SEALE: I went up there. When we got there, Ronald Reagan happened to be on the front lawn.

JAD: Reagan?

SEAN: Reagan.

BOBBY SEALE: I did not know he was going to be there on the front lawn.

SEAN: That's insane!

BOBBY SEALE: And he was on the front lawn talking to 200 Future Leaders of America.

SEAN: Kids?

BOBBY SEALE: Kids.

SEAN: So you got Ronald Reagan.

BOBBY SEALE: He's 50-60 feet from us.

SEAN: And a bunch of white kids.

BOBBY SEALE: 10, 11, 12.

SEAN: Hanging out on the front lawn of the—of the State Building in Sacramento. And this is the 1960s. This would be insane now.

BOBBY SEALE: But some of the kids saw us with our shotguns on our shoulders.

SEAN: And he says some of the kids ...

BOBBY SEALE: Come running over where we are. They thought we were a gun club of some kind. And then the press followed.

SEAN: So Reagan's like, "What's going on?" The press is like, "What's going on?" And Bobby Seale ...

BOBBY SEALE: I says, "I'm gonna read a statement."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bobby Seale: The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense calls upon the American people in general ...]

BOBBY SEALE: And that's when I read the statement.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bobby Seale: ... and the Black people in particular, to take careful note of the racist California Legislature, which is now considering legislation aimed at keeping the Black people disarmed and powerless at the very same time racist police agencies throughout the country are intensifying the terror, brutality, murder and repression of Black people.]

BOBBY SEALE: Et cetera.

SEAN: And he says while he was reading that ...

BOBBY SEALE: Uniformed Capitol guards come running out ...

SEAN: Grab Ronald Reagan ...

BOBBY SEALE: Took him in the opposite direction from us, away from the kids, okay? And so we decided to go inside, because the assembly was in session at the time. Next thing I know, we're all loading on three elevators. Here is shotgun rifles pointing up, cameras in the—and it's crowded. Body-touching-body crowded.

SEAN: And when they got off the elevator, he asked someone which way to the spectator section so the Panthers could watch the legislature debate the bill.

BOBBY SEALE: Somebody says, "This way to the right." And so I walk into this door. And as I walk into the door, the president pro tempore in the State Assembly—we're on the actual floor of the Senate. This is not the goddamn spectator section. I said, "Come on. Get the hell out of here, man. We in the wrong goddamn place."

JAD: Wait. They walked into the state capitol with—with shotguns?

SEAN: Yeah.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Am I under arrest? Am I under arrest?]

SEAN: And then all hell breaks loose.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Am I under arrest? Take your hands off me if I'm not under arrest. I'm telling you to take your hands off me.]

BOBBY SEALE: I turn around and I see State assemblymen, white State assemblymen ducking down behind their desks.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: If I'm under arrest I'll come. If I'm not, don't put your hands on me.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Is this the way the racist government works? Don't let a man exercise his constitutional rights?]

SEAN: You can point to this forgotten, unknown moment here in the State Building in Sacramento as, like, the game changer for the conversation about guns in America. Because suddenly overnight ...

BOBBY SEALE: We were on the front pages of newspapers around the world. We were a ragtag organization with this profound international notoriety.

SEAN: But in being introduced to the world, you had a lot of people going, "Wait, what? Like, there's a bunch of Black men rolling around with guns?"

JAD: Walking into the Capitol Building?

SEAN: When there's kids around?

SEAN: What came of that—that protest?

BOBBY SEALE: By the end of that month, the Mulford Act passed. The law said no one could carry a loaded weapon inside city limits within 150 feet of public property.

SEAN: This was directed at the Black Panthers?

BOBBY SEALE: We know it was.

SEAN: Now people have all kinds of opinions about the Black Panthers and what they did, particularly after Huey Newton ...

NEWS CLIP: The shooting happened at 5:00 am.]

SEAN: ... later that same year was arrested for shooting and killing a cop.

[NEWS CLIP: A pool of blood marks the spot where 23-year-old officer John Frey was found fatally wounded.]

SEAN: The case was eventually dismissed, but what seems clear is that the Black Panthers' decision to use the Second Amendment to arm themselves, to show up armed at the state capitol in California ...

ADAM WINKLER: Inspired a vigorous backlash.

[NEWS CLIP: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover today asserted that the Black Panthers represent the greatest internal threat to the nation.]

ADAM WINKLER: Americans thought a revolution was about to break out right here at home. This led to a whole new wave of gun control laws.

SEAN: In California, but also federal gun control.

ADAM WINKLER: Many of which seemed to be targeted towards African Americans, rather than just reducing gun violence.

SEAN: Suddenly, America was like, "We've gotta get guns off the streets."

ADAM WINKLER: But the irony was that even though those laws were designed to disarm left-leaning Black radicals, many white rural conservatives thought that they were next, that government was going to take their guns next.

SEAN: Every action creates a reaction. And at the same time that this Panthers thing is hitting front pages of newspapers around the world, you've got assassinations, you've got race riots, you've got Vietnam protests. All of a sudden, everyone's clamoring for gun control. Democrats and Republicans. In fact ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ronald Reagan: There is absolutely no reason why out on the street today a civilian should be carrying a loaded weapon.]

JAD: Reagan?

SEAN: Reagan. That was the exact same day as the Black Panthers showed up at the state capitol in Sacramento with their shotguns.

JAD: So Reagan, Reagan was into gun control.

SEAN: Reagan's got his fingerprints all over this thing. What's happening here is the Black Panthers show up in the capital, Sacramento, and Ronald Reagan reacts. They create some gun control. Then there's even more gun control, even federal gun control. And a lot of people are sitting at home watching this and they start to get very upset. Which brings us to ...

NARRATOR: Chapter 2. The Revolt.

JOHN AQUILINO: And I'm sitting there going, "You know, we can't allow this to happen."

JOSEPH TYRO: No. No.

JOHN AQUILINO: I can buy the damn pistol that I want to buy.

SEAN: These two guys, John Aquilino ...

JOHN AQUILINO: I live in Rockport, Texas.

SEAN: ... Joseph Tyro ...

JOSEPH TYRO: Buffalo, New York.

SEAN: They get us there. And they've both been into guns pretty much their entire lives.

JOSEPH TYRO: My father was a veteran of World War I. Did some recreational shooting with my mother.

JOHN AQUILINO: I used to love to go to the amusement park and spend all day shooting the .22s at little things that moved in the shooting gallery.

SEAN: But neither one of them was particularly hardcore about their gun beliefs until around the time the Black Panthers came along.

JOHN AQUILINO: You mean the fact that here are a bunch of people who were slightly darker complected than New England Ivy League grads running around with firearms? Did that scare people? Hell, yes!

SEAN: Did it scare you?

JOHN AQUILINO: No, it didn't scare me.

SEAN: John told me, Joe as well, that it wasn't the Panthers themselves that were the problem.

JOHN AQUILINO: I don't like anybody that tells me I can't do something.

SEAN: It was all the gun control laws that came in the wake of the Panthers.

JOSEPH TYRO: When the Gun Control Act was passed in 1968 ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Lyndon Johnson: Today we begin to disarm the criminals and the careless and the insane.]

JOSEPH TYRO: A lot of things disappeared that I had been used to.

SEAN: Joe says he starts to see gun shops in his neighborhood close, like the furniture store in Buffalo that used to have ...

JOSEPH TYRO: A shotgun for $5.

SEAN: They stop selling them. And he says that just really bothered him because the reason you have a gun is for protection.

JAD: Yeah.

JOSEPH TYRO: It's like another form of insurance.

SEAN: Which wasn't an abstract idea for him. Buffalo in the '60s and '70s, not the safest place in the world. His house was even broken into.

JOSEPH TYRO: I could only describe it as a home invasion. I mean, these guys actually battered their way through two doors.

SEAN: Joe says he and his wife and his dog huddled in one room with a gun while these two guys stormed through his house and robbed him.

JOSEPH TYRO: I think they grabbed my wife's purse, maybe some other money, and they left. I mean, by the time the police got there they were gone.

SEAN: Joe's whole relationship with firearms is sort of predicated upon that, this idea that it's for self-defense. And here he's got people breaking into his house. He's got the cops not being there for him. He's got the government trying to take his gun away. So what do you do? You join the NRA.

JOSEPH TYRO: Then I joined to fight this gun control stuff.

SEAN: But this came at a moment where the NRA was at this crossroads unlike any it had seen before or since. Back when Joe joined in the early '70s ...

ADAM WINKLER: The NRA was not the die-hard supporter of gun rights that we know today.

SEAN: Because according to Adam Winkler it was never meant to be.

ADAM WINKLER: The idea behind the NRA ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Marksmanship continues to be fundamental right down to this day.]

ADAM WINKLER: ... was to increase civilian marksmanship training so that the next time there's a war Americans would be capable of fighting it.

SEAN: And, you know, you don't hear much about the NRA's founders ...

ADAM WINKLER: But the NRA was formed in the 1870s right after the Civil War by a reporter for the New York Times who thought that the Union soldiers had been so ineffective in the Civil War because they were not familiar with firearms.

JAD: Really?

SEAN: Yeah. For, like, a hundred years their main focus was, like, teaching Boy Scouts how to shoot straight.

ADAM WINKLER: Not the Second Amendment.

SEAN: And apparently ...

ADAM WINKLER: If you go back through issues of American Rifleman in the '40s and '50s ...

SEAN: It's like the NRA's version of Playboy. Guns instead of girls.

ADAM WINKLER: You'll be amazed that you can't find a single mention of the Second Amendment anywhere in those magazines.

SEAN: The NRA at that point was sort of like a gun trade group. They were not super political, and—and the people who ran it ...

JOSEPH TYRO: They were hunters. Gentlemen hunters.

SEAN: They were just like these wealthy businessmen who liked to hunt, according to Joe.

JOSEPH TYRO: Rich guys who, you know, they were hobbyists.

SEAN: But you had all these people coming in, like Joe and like John ...

ADAM WINKLER: Who were convinced that guns weren't about shooting ducks. They were about ...

JOSEPH TYRO: Self-defense.

ADAM WINKLER: Protecting yourself against criminals in a time of starkly rising crime rates.

SEAN: And this would lead to this straight-up head-on collision at the NRA. Now right when Joe and John joined the NRA, the organization had just for the first time sort of set up this lobbying arm.

JOHN AQUILINO: Yeah. It was the brand new Institute for Legislative Action.

SEAN: John actually got hired to work there in 1976.

JOSEPH TYRO: And the Institute for Legislative Action was supposed to fight for gun rights on Capitol Hill.

SEAN: That's what they both wanted it to do.

JOHN AQUILINO: But let's put it this way. We were the—if you would, the bastard stepchildren of the National Rifle Association.

SEAN: Really?

JOHN AQUILINO: Yeah. When the Institute for Legislative Action was formed ...

SEAN: In 1975.

JOHN AQUILINO: The NRA refused the Institute any office space in the building.

SEAN: In the mid-'70s, the part of the NRA that lobbied politicians had to rent office space from the hotel next door to the NRA.

JOHN AQUILINO: I mean, it was crazy. And then ...

SEAN: Right after he was hired ...

JOHN AQUILINO: ... 78 people fired. Very interestingly.

JOSEPH TYRO: There was a big firing and then there was word that the NRA wanted to move, leave Washington, DC.

SEAN: Sell the headquarters there.

JOHN AQUILINO: And move to Colorado Springs.

SEAN: What's in Colorado Springs?

JOHN AQUILINO: Well, the Olympic Camp. They were gonna move the headquarters and put it near this—the Olympic sports training group, so that they could then start writing all the magazines about all the Olympic sports.

JOSEPH TYRO: They really didn't know what the hell they were doing.

JOHN AQUILINO: They wanted to turn the NRA from an organization of firearms owners to a publishing company.

JOSEPH TYRO: They wanted to get out of the politics business.

SEAN: The older guard didn't seem to have the stomach for whatever gunfight some members wanted to have.

ADAM WINKLER: They were very moderate.

SEAN: They thought, like, "Maybe we should try and kind of get out of this whole gun business thing."

JOHN AQUILINO: Well hey, not just kind of getting out.

SEAN: John says there was even a moment when a report surfaced that suggested ...

JOHN AQUILINO: That we should change the name of the association.

SEAN: Really?

JOHN AQUILINO: Yeah. They were gonna take 'Rifle' out.

SEAN: Tell me more. Tell me everything.

JOHN AQUILINO: There would be no NRA.

SEAN: Do you remember what any of those proposed names were?

JOHN AQUILINO: No.

SEAN: But they were considering at least taking 'rifle' out.

JOHN AQUILINO: Oh, yeah.

SEAN: Huh.

JOHN AQUILINO: Yeah. And it—it bridled. I mean ...

JOSEPH TYRO: I was just so pissed off. And that's when the seeds of revolt were planted.

SEAN: A few months later ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I'd like to call to order the 129th-annual members meeting.]

SEAN: This is from one of those meetings.

JOHN AQUILINO: Cincinnati, Ohio. 1977.

JOSEPH TYRO: The annual NRA meeting of members.

JOHN AQUILINO: I think it was May, but I'm not sure.

JOSEPH TYRO: May 22.

JOHN AQUILINO: They had a big auditorium.

JOSEPH TYRO: The Cincinnati Convention Center.

JOHN AQUILINO: A thousand people showed up.

JOSEPH TYRO: Somewhere between a thousand and 1,500.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Ladies and gentlemen ...]

SEAN: Now prior to this big meeting, there had been little meetings.

JOSEPH TYRO: Secret meetings.

SEAN: Joe and a few other guys ...

JOHN AQUILINO: From Illinois ...

JOSEPH TYRO: Texas, Arizona.

SEAN: They'd been going back and forth.

JOSEPH TYRO: By phone, by mail.

SEAN: One point they even met up.

JOSEPH TYRO: In a motel in Florence, Kentucky.

SEAN: And they decided to form a small but fierce faction within the NRA.

SEAN: And your secret group, did you—did you have a name? Did you call it something?

JOHN AQUILINO: We were called the Federation For the NRA.

JOSEPH TYRO: Called ourselves that. The Federation For the NRA.

SEAN: And this tiny group planned a coup.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Honorary life members ...]

JOHN AQUILINO: It was a hot, steamy night in Cincinnati.

SEAN: The Federation members were all wearing buttons that said 'National Rifle Association' with the word 'Rifle' underlined.

JOHN AQUILINO: We wore orange hats.

JOSEPH TYRO: We had walkie-talkies to connect with each other.

SEAN: How many people were there?

JOSEPH TYRO: Somewhere between 10 and 15 of us.

SEAN: And they spread out through the crowd.

SEAN: So how does the meeting start? Do you remember?

JOHN AQUILINO: Well, basically, you know, they did all the niceties.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I pledge allegiance to the flag ...]

SEAN: Pledge of Allegiance.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Would you bow your heads with me please?]

SEAN: Opening prayer.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Lord, you are awesome in my ...]

JOSEPH TYRO: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Let's do a little business. There are four microphones on the floor. If there are any items you'd like placed on the—on this agenda, now is the time to add them.]

SEAN: When it came time for the members' part of the meeting where members submit proposals which happens in, like, this super parliamentary sort of way. This guy ...

JOHN AQUILINO: Neil Knox.

SEAN: He was part of their group.

JOHN AQUILINO: He kind of bull rushed the microphone, and he said, "The gathered members have a list of bylaws that they would like to have voted on."

SEAN: Translation. We've got these 15 demands.

JOSEPH TYRO: These 15 demands. I'm not sure if that's more or less than Martin Luther.

SEAN: The demands are basically, number one: we demand that the NRA not move its headquarters.

JOSEPH TYRO: Cancel that.

SEAN: We demand the Institute for Legislative Action, which you want to kill, should have more power.

JOHN AQUILINO: Hell, yes. Hell, yes.

SEAN: And we demand that the current NRA leadership be replaced.

JOHN AQUILINO: We wanted to take over.

SEAN: So the Federation guys making all these demands ...

JOSEPH TYRO: What was crazy was that the—the leadership of the NRA ...

SEAN: That was running the meeting ...

JOSEPH TYRO: They just sat there. They were, like, dumbfounded. But ...

SEAN: Every time the Federation guy would make a motion ...

JOSEPH TYRO: Judge Porter would say ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: The agenda. Are there seconds?]

JOSEPH TYRO: You know, do I have a second?

[ARCHIVE CLIP: There are many—okay, the motion has been made.]

SEAN: And then the floor debate would begin. People would start to speak for and against each amendment. The Federation members would use their walkie-talkies to coordinate who spoke at what microphone.

SEAN: How many votes did you need that day?

JOSEPH TYRO: I think at least 600 votes.

SEAN: And how many votes did you think you had? If you needed 600 or so, how many did you think ...

JOHN AQUILINO: We hadn't the slightest idea.

JOSEPH TYRO: Going in, we anticipated 50-50 support.

SEAN: So as each of the 15 amendments are being debated, the insurrectionists are running around in their orange caps with their walkie-talkies trying to rally support from everyone.

JOSEPH TYRO: That discussion, debate lasted eight hours.

SEAN: It went from 7:00 pm.

JOSEPH TYRO: Until close to four o'clock in the morning.

JAD: 4:00 am?

SEAN: Yeah.

JOHN AQUILINO: And nobody left. They were all there.

JOSEPH TYRO: There were tense moments. I mean, we really didn't know whether we could pull this off.

SEAN: But Joe says one of the big turning points is when a guy named Bob Kukla gets up to the mic. He was at the time the head of the Institute for Legislative Action. He gets up to the mic.

JOSEPH TYRO: And he played a tape.

SEAN: You remember cassette tapes, right? This was one that Bob Kukla secretly recorded.

JOSEPH TYRO: I don't know how he did it.

SEAN: But what you hear on this tape is Bob Kukla talking to his bosses at the NRA, and they're yelling at him.

JOSEPH TYRO: Berating him for going to war every time somebody talks about gun control.

SEAN: They're basically like, "Bob, shut up!"

SEAN: He had the tape there and he played it over the ...

JOSEPH TYRO: He played it—yeah, right. And of course, that electrified the audience.

JOHN AQUILINO: You could actually hear people gasping.

SEAN: So the rank and file was audibly ...

JOSEPH TYRO: This was—this was evidence that the other side was going to deep-six the gun control fight.

SEAN: These people on the tape, they're all in the room.

JOHN AQUILINO: Oh, yeah, they're—they're sitting next to him at the table.

SEAN: Over the course of this one nine-hour meeting on a hot steamy night in Cincinnati, every single one of those 15 proposals was passed.

JOHN AQUILINO: We stopped the building in Colorado.

SEAN: Ensured the NRA wouldn't change its name. They fired the leadership.

JOHN AQUILINO: You know, just like the political savants that figured that Hillary's gonna get the presidency, they just absolutely took it in their shorts.

SEAN: And maybe the biggest change, the most important change was that the Institute for Legislative Action, this political lobbying arm of the NRA, it was given the keys to the car. They were not the bastard stepchild anymore. They were the NRA.

JOSEPH TYRO: You know what? We won.

ADAM WINKLER: They had essentially staged a coup.

JOHN AQUILINO: What do they call 1776? It's the same thing.

ADAM WINKLER: And when the sun rose the very next day, the NRA had a whole new board committed to a new no-compromises view of the Second Amendment, in which individuals have a right not only to have a gun but to have almost any gun that they want, and have as many of them as they want, and can take those guns almost any place they want. American gun politics literally changed overnight.

SEAN: And just shortly after this coup, the NRA bolts this abridged version of the Second Amendment right on the wall, front and center in its headquarters.

ADAM WINKLER: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

SEAN: Nice, clean, totally uncomplicated sentence.

ADAM WINKLER: Conveniently left out was the part that talked about a well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state.

SEAN: I asked John, like, what about the militia part of the sentence? Why doesn't the NRA ever talk about that?

JOHN AQUILINO: The militia? Okay, now you're getting me back to asking you if—and Sean, I love you dearly, trust me. But it's only been in the last, what, 30 years that—if you'll pardon the expression—the bullshit media has turned the militia into a four-letter word. The militia is you and me, Sean.

SEAN: Post-coup, the NRA took a very hard line on gun control, and became an irrepressible political force in America.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Friend and foe agree the NRA's power to scare congressmen lies in its ability to mobilize its members in any congressional district at the touch of a computer button.]

SEAN: They start pouring millions of dollars into lobbying, and just a few years after that Cincinnati revolt, the NRA endorses its first presidential candidate.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ronald Reagan: The Constitution does not say that government shall decree the right to keep and bear arms.]

JAD: Reagan?

SEAN: Reagan.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ronald Reagan: The Constitution says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.]

SEAN: At this point, everyone and their uncle leaves out the militia part of the Second Amendment, which is why Americans eventually start to forget that the militia clause or whatever you want to call it even exists.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ronald Reagan: I wish I'd saved that and said it last.]

JILL LEPORE: One of the things that most surprised me when I was doing this research ...

SEAN: This is Jill Lepore again.

JILL LEPORE: I think by the 1990s, the new interpretation of the Second Amendment had so penetrated popular opinion that people were more familiar with the Second Amendment than with the First by 1991. The First Amendment! That eclipse really kind of shocks me.

SEAN: But even if—even if the Panthers and the President and the American people are all down to sort of forget about this militia clause of the Second Amendment, it didn't mean a lot without the courts. And the courts, particularly the Supreme Court, weren't buying it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court from 1969 to 1986.]

JILL LEPORE: Warren Burger. I think he's on giving a television interview, and he says that this new interpretation of the Second Amendment was ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Warren Burger: One of the greatest pieces of fraud.]

JILL LEPORE: One of the greatest pieces of fraud. I repeat: the word fraud ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Warren Burger: ... on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.]

SEAN: And this was a Republican appointed by Richard Nixon, no?

JILL LEPORE: Yeah. Yeah.

SEAN: Yeah, so the Supreme Court obviously not dying to have this conversation at the moment. But it's not just the Supreme Court, if you look at the federal courts, the entire federal court system in America, there has not once in our history at this point over 200 years been a single instance of some gun law, some state local gun law getting up to a court and the court going, "You know what? You can't do this. It violates the Second Amendment." That's just not even happening.

JAD: Really?

SEAN: Not even ...

JAD: There wasn't a Second Amendment smackdown anywhere in federal court?

SEAN: This isn't—this isn't a thing.

JAD: Wow!

SEAN: And getting the Supreme Court to weigh in on it? That doesn't even look like it could be a thing. It doesn't even look like much more than a fantasy until ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: For gun owners there are few names that have become synonymous with protecting our rights. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome a true patriot, Dick Heller.]

SEAN: Dick Heller showed up.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dick Heller: Freedom! Freedom! Let's hear it! Freedom!]

SEAN: And changed everything.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dick Heller: Well, hello freedom lovers everywhere out there. Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Let's hear it! Wow!]

JAD: More Perfect will continue in a moment.

SANDY LEVINSON: Heller, in 2008 revives the Second Amendment. Or you could even say breathes life into the Second Amendment, because the Second Amendment had never been taken truly seriously by federal courts until 2008.

JAD: That's Sandy Levinson, professor at the University of Texas law school. This is More Perfect. I'm Jad Abumrad here with Sean Rameswaram. All right, so Sean ...

SEAN: Jad.

JAD: It's—I guess now it's time for Chapter 3, Dick Heller, right?

SEAN: Yeah, we're gonna get to Dick, but first here's what's going on in America. The Second Amendment has become one of those issues that can get you elected. Academics have begun to have a vigorous debate about its meaning. But the Supreme Court is still staying out of it. They're leaving this up to the states which already have all sorts of gun laws of their own to deal with. But then ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: December 12, 2000, Republican George W. Bush becomes president-elect after a divided US Supreme Court effectively halts recounts in Florida's contested presidential vote tally.]

SEAN: But then George W. Bush is elected. The NRA likes George W. Bush.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, George W. Bush: The National Rifle Association ...]

SEAN: And he likes them.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, George W. Bush: ... has a proud history of protecting the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.]

ADAM WINKLER: And in 2001, the Bush Administration declared that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to own guns.

SEAN: UCLA law professor Adam Winkler again.

ADAM WINKLER: A right that was not limited, as most courts had held, to service in the militia.

SEAN: And almost right after he gets into office, Bush's Attorney General ...

ADAM WINKLER: John Ashcroft put out a letter.

SEAN: This public letter to the NRA ...

ADAM WINKLER: Announcing that the Department of Justice had adopted a new interpretation of the Second Amendment.

SEAN: And then ...

ADAM WINKLER: Right around the same time as the Bush Administration memo came out, a court in Texas ruled that the Second Amendment did protect an individual right to bear arms.

SEAN: And that was a first. It's a big deal. Before this, all the decisions had kind of veered in the other direction.

ADAM WINKLER: And because of that court ruling and John Ashcroft's letter, these three libertarian lawyers, Alan Gura ...

ALAN GURA: Constitutional attorney.

ADAM WINKLER: Bob Levy ...

BOB LEVY: I chair the board at the Cato Institute.

ADAM WINKLER: And Clark Neily.

SEAN: He's at Cato too.

ADAM WINKLER: Thought the timing was right.

BOB LEVY: We thought that it was a good time for some litigation.

SEAN: Now one thing you need to know about these guys is that they weren't necessarily doing it for the guns.

ADAM WINKLER: They had no association with the NRA or the gun rights movement.

SEAN: For them, it was more about getting the government to back off.

ALAN GURA: In our country, when the government wants to restrict our liberty, it is incumbent on the government to make the case for it. It's incumbent on the government to say, "Here's why you shouldn't be permitted to exercise that right."

SEAN: So that was their angle.

JAD: That's—that is interesting. I've always wondered why the gun rights movement has become such a proxy war for, like, anti-government-ism.

SEAN: Yeah. Well I mean, if you think about it, and this is something Professor Sandy Levinson told me, is that sort of embedded in this amendment is the very idea that you can take up arms ...

SANDY LEVINSON: Against a government ...

SEAN: ... to protect yourself and your fellow man from tyranny.

SANDY LEVINSON: On the far right, or occasionally on the far left you find people who are willing to say this, that this is really what's terrific about the Second Amendment. But mainstream conservatives and mainstream liberals are not very happy with those arguments. They are embarrassed by them. And so mainstream conservatives want to talk about self-defense against burglars, and mainstream liberals want to talk about how the Second Amendment protects state-organized militias and almost nothing else.

SEAN: Anyway, getting back to the story, these three libertarian lawyers, they decide to put together a case. And their idea was to target this really restrictive gun law in DC.

ALAN GURA: All handguns were banned. You could own a shotgun or a rifle, but the law specifically made it illegal to ever put a round in the chamber, even in self-defense. So there was—there's really—we described it as a ban on all functional firearms.

SEAN: But in order to challenge that law, they needed to find a plaintiff.

JAD: Interesting. How do you find a plaintiff? You look for somebody who got robbed? What do you do?

BOB LEVY: Well, we can actually instigate litigation. We can take out a full-page ad in the New York Times saying, "You want to vindicate your Second Amendment rights? Give us a ring."

ALAN GURA: We just essentially got the word out. Talked to, I would say, between two and three dozen people.

BOB LEVY: They all had really interesting stories.

SEAN: They found a guy who was gay.

ALAN GURA: Gentleman named Tom Palmer.

SEAN: Who had previously been assaulted when he lived in California because he was gay.

ALAN GURA: Was almost murdered by a skinhead mob.

BOB LEVY: Homophobic thugs.

SEAN: And he wanted a gun to protect himself.

ALAN GURA: Our lead plaintiff was an African-American woman named Shelley Parker.

SEAN: She was trying to protect herself against local drug dealers, and the cops actually told her she should get a gun, which was illegal.

JAD: Weird.

SEAN: So they had this whole group.

BOB LEVY: So we ended up with three men, three women, mid-20s to their early-60s. Four of them were white, two of them were African American.

SEAN: And the problem they ran into was that all of these super sympathetic plaintiffs didn't have this very special thing they needed to bring a case.

ALAN GURA: Standing.

SEAN: Standing.

ALAN GURA: Which is just a legal term meaning they didn't have a sufficient grievance to be in court.

SEAN: Like, if you're gonna bring a case ...

BOB LEVY: You have to show that you've been actually harmed by not being able to get a gun.

SEAN: You have to show some physical concrete proof that harm has been done, that you've been denied a gun. And none of the plaintiffs had that. Except for one guy.

SEAN: Dick?

DICK HELLER: Are you Sean?

SEAN: I am. That's me. Great to meet you.

DICK HELLER: And you.

SEAN: Dick Heller.

SEAN: And what does your hat say?

DICK HELLER: Sean, this is my favorite hat. Make America Free Again.

SEAN: So he actually gets paid by the Freedom.

JAD: [laughs]

DICK HELLER: With a big Western handgun in the center.

SEAN: And it looks like you drew a trigger on there. Is that what you did?

DICK HELLER: Well, it was missing the trigger, so we had to update it.

SEAN: Who's we?

DICK HELLER: Me.

SEAN: Okay.

SEAN: I met Dick right outside the Supreme Court, the building where he became famous. He's a slim 75-year-old white guy, sports glasses that look straight out of the '70s.

DICK HELLER: Got a situation here. You want to cross?

SEAN: Sure. What's the situation?

DICK HELLER: The anti-Trump protesters are here.

SEAN: I actually happened to meet him in DC the day after Trump won the election.

DICK HELLER: They hate freedom, apparently.

[crowd chanting]

SEAN: The President-elect was visiting the White House. There were protesters everywhere.

DICK HELLER: Pull out your knife. Not my president. They're anti-Trump protesters. Don't you like freedom?

[crowd chanting]

DICK HELLER: What about freedom? What about freedom?

SEAN: Most of the protesters that were passing us were white, but just as a few young Black men pass us by, he says ...

DICK HELLER: See you on the plantation!

PROTESTER: Love trumps hate.

DICK HELLER: Freedom! Freedom!

SEAN: See you on the plantation.

DICK HELLER: Yeah.

SEAN: Why'd you say that?

DICK HELLER: We—in Washington, we call it 'the government plantation.'

SEAN: You didn't mean you kids are about to be slaves or something? Because that's how I interpreted it.

DICK HELLER: Well, yeah. The more power government has, the less freedom you have. The closer you get to ball and chain of a plantation. There's a pretty good place to eat right there if you're here for a couple of days. Have you been in there?

SEAN: I have not.

DICK HELLER: Yeah, pretty good.

SEAN: Okay. Hyatt Regency, this is good for you? We can do this?

DICK HELLER: Sure. Yeah.

SEAN: Great.

SEAN: We ended up talking at the Hyatt, which is just down the street from the Supreme Court. And—and Dick explained to me that his journey with guns, like John and Joe, began pretty casually. Like, 1976, he's living in DC. And one day he's sitting at home.

DICK HELLER: I was watching my hero Matt Dillon, Gunsmoke.

SEAN: Different Matt Dillon.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Gunsmoke: Marshall? You ain't going nowhere.]

DICK HELLER: And he had this long-barreled handgun. I was about 30 years old and I figured, "Golly, I should own my first gun." So I went and bought my—what I call my Matt Dillon special. High-standard .22 revolver, Matt Dillon Buntline. And it was just I live in America. We're a cowboy society, I should have a cowboy gun. And it was just nothing, no really deep thought to it.

SEAN: But then just a few months after he got that gun ...

DICK HELLER: In October of 1976 ...

SEAN: A trend that started with the Mulford Act and the Black Panthers back in Sacramento hits Washington, DC.

DICK HELLER: DC gun control regulations outlawed firearms ownership.

SEAN: You get that gun law which outlawed all handguns.

DICK HELLER: So I had some choices. I could turn it into the government. Not gonna happen. I can throw it in the dipsy dumpster. Not gonna happen. Or there was another option. I could go to jail. Not gonna happen.

SEAN: Eventually, he decides on option D: give the gun to his brother.

DICK HELLER: Well, my brother lived in Maryland, so that made it very convenient.

SEAN: Did you just go visit your gun in Maryland? What did you do?

DICK HELLER: Yes. I would go visit and caress and use my gun.

SEAN: What did you use it for?

DICK HELLER: Target practice, of course.

SEAN: Dick made his gun visitation situation sound functional, but I think like any long-distance relationship it mostly sucked, because more and more he didn't feel safe where he lived.

DICK HELLER: I lived about 10 blocks from the Capitol building, right across the street from the number one most infamous drug dealer den in the city called Kentucky Courts. Every night at 2:00 am, the chief drug dealer would fire a nine-millimeter into the air, empty the clip, and that was the signal every night at two o'clock that drug dealing was over for the day.

SEAN: It's clear that living through the crack epidemic in DC really shaped a lot of Dick's views on guns. So in the years after the handgun ban, Dick starts the very long process of finding a way to get his gun back to DC. And he eventually even quits his desk job to pursue getting his gun back full time.

DICK HELLER: I'm all over Capitol Hill, and I see security guards have guns. Well golly! Why can't I be a security guard? Golly! Maybe that would help me have a gun that I can't have on my own. Golly! Let's see how easy or not easy this is. Golly! One step leads to another.

SEAN: Golly! Just like that, Dick was able to have a gun in DC, but only during the day and only while he was working.

DICK HELLER: Like Barney Fife, at the end of my shift I have to turn in my gun and my bullet.

SEAN: And they kept it there?

DICK HELLER: And they kept it on site in the safe, yes.

SEAN: He finally starts looking for some help, some legal help.

DICK HELLER: But I knew Washington because I lived here, and I'd gone to some think tanks, Cato and Heritage and some others. I knew they existed.

SEAN: And right around the time Dick's out there looking for some help, turns out these lawyers are out there looking for some Dick.

DICK HELLER: [laughs] No. No.

SEAN: He wasn't their ideal, sympathetic guy.

DICK HELLER: I was told repeatedly, and it was in print, that I was the worst choice.

BOB LEVY: It was less than optimal.

SEAN: You know, because of that plantation thing he said, or he would always talk smack about the federal government in interviews.

DICK HELLER: One day Clark Neily put a note in my hand and said, "Dick Heller, this is what you say: 'I just wanted a gun to protect my house.' Shut up."

SEAN: So he wasn't their favorite plaintiff, but ...

ALAN GURA: Dick did one thing that no one else had done, which is besides just wanting an illegal handgun in DC, he actually filled out an application to register a gun that he already possessed again in Virginia, and had that application denied.

SEAN: And he had this denial slip or whatever it's called. He like, literally had this physical proof of his grievance. And this simple, technical, arbitrary, little stupid piece of paper gave him what's known as standing to bring the case.

ALAN GURA: Dick Heller ended up being kind of last man standing. That was nothing to do—that was not our choice.

SEAN: Regardless, he became their guy, and these three lawyers, they take the case to the DC court.

ALAN GURA: And the judge after inspecting it said the case can go forward. Magic moment.

[NEWS CLIP: The Supreme Court is entering the debate over the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Today's case has aroused huge interest among citizens and politicians alike, and it has divided even the President and Vice President.]

NARRATOR: Chapter 3. The Reckoning

SEAN: March 18, 2008.

ADAM WINKLER: The day the Heller case was argued at the Supreme Court, everyone understood how high the stakes were. Outside in front of the Supreme Court protesters by the hundreds were marching and chanting in favor of gun rights and in favor of gun control. Journalists from all over the world descended upon the Supreme Court that day. And inside the Supreme Court House ...

DICK HELLER: Not a creature was stirring ...

SEAN: Not even a mouse.

DICK HELLER: You coulda heard a mouse, I say. And everybody is just quiet, and you can hear your heart beating. And suddenly, bam! And then "Oyez, oyez, oyez," the clerk yelled at the top of his lungs. And then there's this strange sound. What can that be? It was the swishing of the robes of the justices as they ascended the steps to the bench. Unbelievable!

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Supreme Court: We will hear argument today in case 07290, District of Columbia versus Heller.]

SEAN: This was the first time in our history the Supreme Court would directly try to figure out what the Second Amendment means.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Supreme Court: Mr. Dellinger.]

SEAN: And immediately ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Walter Dellinger: Good morning, Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court.]

SEAN: ... DC's lawyer, Walter Dellinger, gets up and jumps right into it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Walter Dellinger: The Second Amendment was a direct response ...]

SEAN: And he sort of begins with this central question. Like, what was James Madison thinking when he wrote this super confusing sentence, like, 200 years ago? Was he thinking about the individual people and their right to own a gun? Or was he thinking about the collective right of the militia to own a gun?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Walter Dellinger: And the first text to consider is the phrase, "Protecting a right to keep and bear arms."]

SEAN: And he says that if you look at the phrase ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Walter Dellinger: The phrase, "Keep and bear arms."]

SEAN: ... how it was used at the time ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Walter Dellinger: Every person who used the phrase "bear arms," used it to refer to the use of arms in connection with militia service.]

SEAN: Dellinger says that if you look at some of Madison's rough drafts of the Second Amendment, it's pretty clear that when he says people have a right to bear arms, all he really means is, like, report for duty.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Walter Dellinger: Even if the language of keeping and bearing arms were ambiguous, the Amendment's first clause confirms that the right is militia-related.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Chief Justice John Roberts: If you're right, Mr. Dellinger ...]

SEAN: Chief Justice Roberts jumps in and is like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Chief Justice John Roberts: Why would they say the right of the people to keep arms ...]

SEAN: If they meant just the people in the state militias ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Chief Justice John Roberts: Why wouldn't they say state militias have the right to keep arms?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Walter Dellinger: Mr. Chief Justice, I believe that the phrase "the people" and the phrase "the militia" were really in sync with each other. The Federalist Farmer uses the phrase, "The people are the militia. The militia are the people."]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Chief Justice John Roberts: If that's right, doesn't that cut against you? If the militia included all the people, it includes all the people.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Walter Dellinger: Yes, I do believe it includes all the people.]

SEAN: At this point everyone sort of jumps in. A bunch of justices start interrupting each other. It's kind of like a scrum. And they're all trying to figure out okay, so when Madison wrote the phrase ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Walter Dellinger: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.]

SEAN: ... like, who were the people he was talking about?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Thinking of "the people." What those words meant.]

SEAN: Was the people just the militia, or everyone, all the people? What is the relationship between the second part of the sentence, the people part, and the first part of the sentence, the militia part?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Walter Dellinger: Verdugo-Urquidez]

SEAN: They go into, like ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Walter Dellinger: Blackstonian common law right ...]

SEAN: Common law.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Antonin Scalia: Scottish Highlanders.]

SEAN: Scottish Highlanders for some reason. At one point ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Anthony Kennedy: Well, the subject is "arms" in both clauses ...]

SEAN: ... they even sort of start to diagram Madison's sentence.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Walter Dellinger: I think, as this Court ...]

SEAN: And the net result, according to Adam Winkler, was the four liberals ...

ADAM WINKLER: Stevens, Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg.

SEAN: Seemed to want to emphasize the militia part of the sentence. And then you had the four conservative justices.

ADAM WINKLER: Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts.

SEAN: Who seemed to want to emphasize the people part of the sentence. The second part.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Antonin Scalia: Of course, I don't see how there's any—any contradiction.]

SEAN: And Team People's team captain, the quarterback, the first chair that day was without a doubt Justice Antonin Scalia.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Antonin Scalia: Why isn't it perfectly plausible, indeed reasonable, to assume that since the framers knew that the way militias were destroyed by tyrants in the past was not by passing a law against militias, but by taking away the people's weapons?]

ADAM WINKLER: Justice Scalia, of course, was a very conservative Justice.

JOAN BISKUPIC: Grew up in Queens.

SEAN: This is Joan Biskupic.

JOAN BISKUPIC: Long-time reporter covering the Supreme Court.

SEAN: She's also written a biography of Justice Scalia.

JOAN BISKUPIC: He was an avid hunter, and he grew up at a time when young men were trained in firearms in high school.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Marksmanship has played a vital role in our country.]

ADAM WINKLER: Even from the time he was a kid at school in Queens, he said he used to carry his gun for rifle practice at school on the subways of New York.

JOAN BISKUPIC: Can you imagine doing that today in New York City?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Antonin Scalia: You're being unrealistic in thinking that the second clause is not broader than the first. The principal purpose here is the militia. The second clause goes beyond the militia and says the right of the people to keep and bear arms.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice David Souter: Then why have the first clause? I mean, what's it doing—I mean what help is it going to be?]

SEAN: What you hear throughout the arguments is that Scalia is very, very forwardly pressing the sort of individual rights argument.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Antonin Scalia: It speaks of the right of the people.]

SEAN: And justices like David Souter ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice David Souter: the kind of the militaries ...]

SEAN: Are arguing back saying, "What about the collective? The militia?" This goes on for well over an hour, the justices sort of grilling the lawyers, arguing amongst themselves, everybody trying to figure out what was in James Madison's head. Until finally, Justice Breyer, one of the liberal justices is like ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Stephen Breyer: You're saying that this is unreasonable ...]

SEAN: ... "Hold the phone!"

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Stephen Breyer: That really is my question.]

SEAN: "Forget what Madison intended. There is no way for us to know. Let's talk about now. Let's talk about gun violence. This sentence was most definitely written about muskets. What about handguns and assault rifles? What is reasonable now?"

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Stephen Breyer: 80,000 to 100,000 people every year in the United States are either killed or wounded in gun-related homicides or crimes or accidents. Or suicides, but suicides are more questionable. That's why I say 80,000 to 100,000. Now in light of that, why isn't a ban on handguns a reasonable or a proportionate response on behalf of the District of Columbia?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alan Gura: Because, your honor, for the same reason it was offered by numerous military officers at the highest levels of the US military at all branches of service writing in two briefs, they agree with us that the handgun ban serves to weaken America's military preparedness because ...]

SEAN: Alan Gura basically argues when you take away people's guns, they're gonna be less prepared if and when they enlist in the Army. To which Justice Breyer's like, "They can still practice shooting ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Stephen Breyer: ... with their rifles.]

SEAN: Which weren't banned in DC.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Stephen Breyer: They can go to gun ranges I guess, in neighboring states. But does that make it unreasonable for a city with a very high crime rate? Assuming that the objective is what the military people say, to keep us ready for the draft if necessary. Is it unreasonable for a city with that high crime rate to say, "No handguns here."]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Antonin Scalia: You want to say yes.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Stephen Breyer: Now why?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Antonin Scalia: That's your answer.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Stephen Breyer: Well, you want to say yes, that's correct. But I want to hear what the reasoning is, because there is a big crime problem. I'm simply getting you to focus on that.]

SEAN: That, by the way, was Justice Scalia telling Alan Gura how to answer Justice Breyer's question.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alan Gura: The answer is yes, as Justice Scalia noted. And it's unreasonable, and it actually fails any standard of review that might be offered under such a construction of the individual right because proficiency with handguns ...]

SEAN: Anyway, the oral arguments last 97 minutes—far longer than most other cases. And going into the arguments ...

ADAM WINKLER: Many Supreme Court watchers figured the case would be a close 5-4 decision. And it could go either way.

SEAN: And as with all of these close cases ...

ADAM WINKLER: The question was what would Anthony Kennedy, the swing Justice, do? As in so many issues in America, it comes down to what does Anthony Kennedy believe? So at the oral argument, and I had the good fortune to be at the oral argument in the Heller case, everyone was looking to hear what would he say about the Second Amendment? His was really the vote that counted. And the very first comment he made ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Anthony Kennedy: It had nothing to do with the concern of the remote settler to defend himself and his family against hostile Indian tribes and outlaws, wolves and bears and grizzlies and things like that?]

SEAN: One of the first things he said was about bears. Like, not bear arms, but grizzly bears. And the point Kennedy was trying to make was clear: don't you think the framers had other reasons that they wanted people to have guns other than just being in a militia? Like, what about people being in their homes and just needing to defend themselves?

DICK HELLER: And that's when I silently screamed at the top of my lungs so nobody could hear me. Yes! We win! Dot-dot-dot something.

[NEWS CLIP: We return now to the historic Supreme Court decision handed down this morning.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Anthony Kennedy: Justice Scalia has our opinion this morning in case 07290, District of Columbia versus Heller.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Antonin Scalia: We hold that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to have and use arms for self-defense in the home, and that the district's handgun ban as well as its requirement that firearms in the home be rendered inoperative violates that right.]

JOAN BISKUPIC: It was a groundbreaking reading of the Second Amendment. Scalia minimized that clause referring to a well-regulated militia, and put the stress on the second clause that referred to the right of the people.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Antonin Scalia: The people will not be deprived of the right to keep and bear arms.]

SEAN: This was as good as it got for him on the bench.

JOAN BISKUPIC: I think so.

SEAN: RIP the militia clause. December 15, 1791, to June 26, 2008. A pretty good run, if I'm being honest. For the first time in the history of these United States, the courts definitively declared that the Second Amendment gives every American the right to a gun for self-defense.

DICK HELLER: It was a—it was a great day for freedom in America. It was a great day for the Constitution. A great day for citizens. It was a great day for gun owners. It was a great day for fearful people.

SEAN: Of course, not everyone agreed.

JACK RAKOVE: I mean, to me that's a travesty.

SEAN: This is Jack Rakove.

JACK RAKOVE: Professor of history and political science at Stanford University.

SEAN: He filed a brief for the court, and he says Scalia's reading of the history is just wrong.

JACK RAKOVE: The Second Amendment was not about individual right.

SEAN: You could argue that we shouldn't even be talking about history.

JACK RAKOVE: Because the nature of firearms has changed so radically from the 18th century to our own time.

SEAN: And that ultimately—and here he echoed Justice Stevens in his dissent.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice John Paul Stevens: The court has decided to enter today into a political thicket.]

JACK RAKOVE: I think it's all politics, to be honest. I mean, I don't really believe in constitutional law anymore. I think constitutional law is a fiction. You know, it's become so highly politicized in so many areas. I think constitutional law is bunk.

SEAN: Wow!

JACK RAKOVE: I just—you know, I'm a historian, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't have any professional stake in defending the judiciary.

SEAN: But—there's a very big but.

JOAN BISKUPIC: We did have a major caveat.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Antonin Scalia: The next section of our opinion points out that like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.]

JOAN BISKUPIC: He said like all rights, it's not absolute.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Antonin Scalia: It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.]

JOAN BISKUPIC: Which is very important to keep in mind.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Justice Antonin Scalia: Our opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.]

SEAN: And this is another thing that we tend to forget. The decision says every individual has a right to bear arms, but most interestingly, like, the decision also says of course, we need gun control. The word 'Heller' has come to represent, like, Second Amendment rights. Like, are you for Heller or are you against Heller? Even though being for Heller is being for gun control.

JAD: That's confusing.

SEAN: Yeah, it is. I mean, after all this time, it's still just totally confusing. You have a right to a gun, but the government has a right to regulate it. Dick Heller gets his gun back in DC, but DC still also has all sorts of gun regulations. And you see the same pattern all over the country. Some states are lenient, some are super strict, and both approaches seem to comply with Heller. In a way, the Heller decision is just like all those commas and clauses that we started with in James Madison's sentence. It's this confusing declaration that leaves the door wide open for interpretation—which obviously sucks. We could have used a little more clarity on how to live with this Second Amendment right to bear arms. But that door being open, it gives us an opportunity, I think. An opportunity to get it right, to fix it. And it seems like now would be a pretty good time.

JAD: Our story was produced by Sean Rameswaram. Adam Wilnkler's book, which a lot of our research was drawn from, is called Gunfight. More Perfect is produced by me, Jad Abumrad, Jenny Lawton, Julia Longoria, Kelly Prime, Sean Rameswaram, Alex Overington, Sarah Qari and Suzie Lechtenberg.

JENNY LAWTON: With Elie Mystal, Cristian Farias, Linda Hirshman, David Gebel and Michelle Harris. Supreme Court audio is from Oyez, a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell. Leadership support for More Perfect is provided by the Joyce Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation.

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Emma and I live in Portland, Maine. Here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Valentina Powers, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

-30-

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New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].lede
Molly Webster is our Senior Correspondent at Radiolab.

After completing a degree in biology, Molly pursued science journalism, writing for outlets such as Scientific American and National Geographic Adventure. Her ability to comprehend and totally immerse herself in complicated issues has helped Radiolab investigate international surrogacy, the price of a human life, and one very special jar. She has adapted her audio and written work for the stage, performing in theaters from BAM to TED.

A frequent guest host on Radiolab, she developed, produced, and hosted our first-ever special series, Gonads - a critically acclaimed podcast and live event series about the parts of us that make more of us.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].bio
Sindhu Gnanasambandan is joining Radiolab as a producer after spending the last couple years making audio series at The New York Times (Odessa, Rabbit-hole, The Jungle Prince). Before that, she interned at Gimlet Media's StartUp Podcast and NPR's Planet Money, and spent many hours sitting and staring at a wall at a Soto Zen Buddhist commune.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].lede
former Radiolab intern

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].lede
Molly Webster is our Senior Correspondent at Radiolab.

After completing a degree in biology, Molly pursued science journalism, writing for outlets such as Scientific American and National Geographic Adventure. Her ability to comprehend and totally immerse herself in complicated issues has helped Radiolab investigate international surrogacy, the price of a human life, and one very special jar. She has adapted her audio and written work for the stage, performing in theaters from BAM to TED.

A frequent guest host on Radiolab, she developed, produced, and hosted our first-ever special series, Gonads - a critically acclaimed podcast and live event series about the parts of us that make more of us.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].bio
Sindhu Gnanasambandan is joining Radiolab as a producer after spending the last couple years making audio series at The New York Times (Odessa, Rabbit-hole, The Jungle Prince). Before that, she interned at Gimlet Media's StartUp Podcast and NPR's Planet Money, and spent many hours sitting and staring at a wall at a Soto Zen Buddhist commune.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].lede
former Radiolab intern

# included[].attributes.body
Two scenes. In the first, a doctor gets a call: the hospital she works at is having an outbreak of unknown origin, in the middle of the worst wildfire season on record. In the second, an ecologist stands in a forest, watching it burn. Through very different circumstances, they both find themselves asking the same question: is there something in the smoke? This question will bring them together, and reveal—to all of us—a world we never saw before.

This is the first episode in an ongoing series hosted by Molly Webster, in conversation with scientists and science-y people, doing work at the furthest edges of what we know. More to come!

Special thanks to Leda Kobziar, at the University of Idaho, and Naomi Hauser, at the University of California, Davis. Plus, James and Shelby Kaemmerer, and Paula and John Troche.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

EPISODE CREDITS:
Hosted and Reported by - Molly Webster
Produced by - Sindhu Gnanasambandan
Fact-checking by - Diane A. Kelly
and Edited by  - Pat Walters

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Articles -

And lastly, wanna learn more about bacteria in snow-making machines – check out this New York Times article (https://zpr.io/t6HKi7HMuHMZ), or this science-explainer (https://zpr.io/VygRVBb5vspq)!

Scientific Papers -

Read Leda’s paper on microbes in smoke (https://zpr.io/d3JVm7gEf2dc)!

For more details on the outbreak at Naomi’s hospital, you can check out this abstract of her findings (https://zpr.io/DGgS9UCFicpJ).

Leda was inspired to stick petri dishes into smoke after reading a science research paper written by a father-daughter team, as part of a high school science project in Texas. Go read it (https://zpr.io/D3LVMy2raLr9)!

Audio -

For further fungal listening, Radiolab and Molly have covered fungus and hospital outbreaks (https://radiolab.org/podcast/fungus-amungus) before (plus: dinosuars!), in our episode Fungus Amungus.

You can also listen to Super Cool (https://radiolab.org/podcast/super-cool-2017), a Radiolab episode about wild horses, microbes, and things freezing instantaneously. (It’s seriously one of Molly’s favorite Radiolab episodes and it has a moment of such SPONTANEOUS joy, she re-plays it at least once a year to smile.)

Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

# included[].attributes.show-tease
Investigating a strange world.

# included[].attributes.tease
Wildfires, a mysterious outbreak, and a question: is there something in the smoke? 

# included[].attributes.transcript
[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LATIF NASSER: Hey, it's Latif. This is Radiolab. I just wanted to come in at the top of this episode here quick to say that our senior correspondent Molly Webster is gonna be hosting and reporting this episode. And not only that, she's gonna be doing that for a few episodes here and there over the next couple months. And what she's gonna be bringing you—well, internally we've been calling them "Molly's hot tub convos with scientists." They are not actually happening in hot tubs, but they will be more—kind of more conversational than our typical episodes, a little less edited. Our irrepressibly curious Molly will be on one side, and then on the other side will be a scientist or scientists who are on the edge of something totally new, something with real human stakes, but also something that transcends us humans, revealing something deeper and richer about—about our entire universe.

LATIF: Yeah, so that's it. I'll let Molly take it from here.

LEDA KOBZIAR: [singing in Ukrainian] So people will start, one after another. Groups will start round after round, and you just keep going until the fire is lit.

MOLLY WEBSTER: And what does it mean? Like, what do the words say?

LEDA KOBZIAR: "The fire is burning, the fire is burning. This group of people are singing."

MOLLY: Hey, I'm Molly Webster, and I'm your host today. I want to tell you a story that involves two people on the opposite ends of the same mystery.

MOLLY: The first person is Leda Kobziar. You just heard from her singing. She is a scientist who studies fire, wildfires, in the remote back country of places like Idaho and Utah. The second person in our mystery is a doctor, Naomi Hauser, and she works at a very busy hospital in California.

MOLLY: There's a world in which they never should have met each other, but this is a story in which opposites are standing side by side. There's big things next to small things and visible things next to invisible things. And for us, our story starts one day four years ago when Naomi, who is an infectious disease doctor, got a strange call.

NAOMI HAUSER: We got a call in infection prevention that there were an unusual number of mold infections, and they were all burn patients.

MOLLY: So—wow, a person can grow mold on them?

NAOMI HAUSER: Yeah, from different places in their bodies. So sometimes in their blood, sometimes, like, in their tissue. People who have, like, skin injuries like burn patients, they can actually get mold sitting on the tissue where the skin has been lost. So it might look kind of yellowish and can be kind of fluffy sometimes.

MOLLY: Whoa! So the patients that you got called about, did you say they were all burn patients?

NAOMI HAUSER: They were, yeah.

MOLLY: How many were there?

NAOMI HAUSER: So it doesn't sound like a lot, but it was about six in a month.

MOLLY: Okay.

NAOMI HAUSER: Which normally you might see one in a month, or less.

MOLLY: Hmm. Okay.

NAOMI HAUSER: And they were all different molds.

MOLLY: So each person had a different fungus?

NAOMI HAUSER: Some people had more than one.

MOLLY: Whoa! Okay.

NAOMI HAUSER: And it just didn't make sense, because normally when you see an outbreak in a hospital, like, say there's contaminated equipment or something like that, you would see that everyone has the same infection. But this was weird, because everyone had different infections.

MOLLY: Huh. So they come to you. They're all different molds. Like, their question is: is the hospital infected?

NAOMI HAUSER: Yeah. Because we have to know so that we can fix it. And so we had to go through all the normal steps, like, look for that moldy sink or that moldy towel that somehow fell behind something and, you know, wasn't cleaned up, or something like that. We couldn't find anything. So then we had to keep looking.

MOLLY: Okay.

NAOMI HAUSER: You think about, like, how else can things get into this patient's room? We climbed into the ceiling to look at the air filters. [laughs]

MOLLY: By 'we' do you mean 'I?' You did? [laughs]

NAOMI HAUSER: Yeah. It was me and some of the environmental services people. We got into the kind of in-between floors in the ceiling ...

MOLLY: Wow.

NAOMI HAUSER: ... to look at the air filter system, to make sure that was working. And what we learned was that the air filters were getting so overwhelmed by the wildfire smoke that they were just black. And the motors were shaking.

MOLLY: Oh my gosh!

NAOMI HAUSER: Which was totally unexpected, because we had never really had a wildfire season that bad before.

MOLLY: Huh.

NAOMI HAUSER: So then I thought: could this have something to do with it?

MOLLY: Hmm.

NAOMI HAUSER: That was 2020. I was riding my bike to work then, and I would wipe my bike seat off before I sat on it.

MOLLY: From ash?

NAOMI HAUSER: Yeah, from ash. Yeah. I had to wear an N95 on my bike. And you would go outside, and everything was yellow, kind of—yellowish gray.

MOLLY: Like, in a movie about an apocalyptic disaster.

NAOMI HAUSER: It felt like that. It looked like that and it felt like that. I mean, the wildfires were not in Sacramento, where I live and work, but the smoke travels.

MOLLY: Hmm.

NAOMI HAUSER: So when I saw the filter, what we actually did after that was we tested the air for fungal spores inside the unit to see if they had been getting in. So far, indoors, it's just as clean as we hoped.

MOLLY: Okay.

NAOMI HAUSER: So could they have been carried to the patients through smoke before they came into the hospital?

MOLLY: Meaning, like, people could be exposed before they even walk in the door?

NAOMI HAUSER: Yeah.

MOLLY: Hmm.

NAOMI HAUSER: So then that's when I thought I should start looking into this question: is there stuff in smoke that can cause infections?

LEDA KOBZIAR: [singing in Ukrainian] I was born to Ukrainian immigrants who immigrated after World War II. As Ukrainian-American kids, we all grew up at Ukrainian scouting camps, and we learned to survive in the woods, and we learned to use plants, how to build traps for trapping small animals, how to collect water, learn to build fires and control and use fire. You know, we'd always sing a song to make the fire light. The song is—is really about celebrating fire.

MOLLY: Can you just introduce yourself to me on tape?

LEDA KOBZIAR: I'm Leda Kobziar.

MOLLY: Kob—Kobziar.

LEDA KOBZIAR: That's perfect.

MOLLY: Okay, great.

LEDA KOBZIAR: I would call myself a fire ecologist.

MOLLY: Okay. Tell me, like, what a fire ecologist does day to day.

LEDA KOBZIAR: Well, I guess I would first say that it's different for every fire ecologist. Myself, I've really been interested in fire effects on plants, and the soils that are the foundation for plants.

MOLLY: So then how did the—like, you got to studying smoke. How did that happen?

LEDA KOBZIAR: I guess I could tell you the whole origin story if you want to hear it.

MOLLY: Yeah! [laughs]

LEDA KOBZIAR: [laughs] Okay. Yeah, it was a Friday.

MOLLY: You know the day? Oh, I love that!

LEDA KOBZIAR: That's because I taught fire ecology every Friday, and every Friday that the weather conditions were right, we would conduct prescribed burns on our school forest at the University of Florida. So you spend a lot of time standing around the fire just kind of looking at it, the same way you do with a campfire.

MOLLY: What a fun class!

LEDA KOBZIAR: Oh, it was such a fun class, yeah. I would watch the fire, and I would focus on what it was doing to the plants, how quickly it was burning them, which ones were burning completely. Which ones, you know, appeared to be emitting volatile oils on their surface leaves.

MOLLY: [laughs] I love this! You can see an oil.

LEDA KOBZIAR: Exactly.

MOLLY: I don't know how one sees that.

LEDA KOBZIAR: Well, they're amazing plants that are, you know, evolved to burn. They do what we call 'glass up.' Basically, the volatile oils in the plants get moved to the surface of the plant, and then it combusts.

MOLLY: Oh my gosh! Okay, so there's lots to stare at when a burn is happening.

LEDA KOBZIAR: Yeah. And you stand downwind of the fire because that's the way that the fire is gonna spread. So I was watching the smoke. It was kind of pooling under some of the slash pine trees that we were burning under. Enjoying watching the saw palmetto glass up, and I started thinking about an article that my friend sent me, and that article was about how microbes, bacteria in particular, were being added to snow-making machines.

MOLLY: Hmm.

LEDA KOBZIAR: It was completely new to me. I had absolutely no idea that bacteria would help the formation of snow or clouds or anything. And then I was looking at the smoke and thinking about when smoke mixes with water vapor, it creates an incredibly, incredibly opaque fog. And I wondered if there were bacteria in it.

MOLLY: In smoke?

LEDA KOBZIAR: Yeah.

MOLLY: Meaning if bacteria can help make snow and is in snow, could bacteria be in smoke, helping to make fog?

LEDA KOBZIAR: Exactly. And we were heading out on a prescribed burn the next week, and so we created an experiment, and found a graduate student who really needed a project and had, I think, a month or two to finish her thesis. And she worked to design a sampling mechanism that would allow us to hold up Petri dishes to the fires that we were burning on Fridays. So we suspended the Petri dishes, and had teams of students at different distances from the fire and downwind in the smoke. And then another team that was upwind, so they were in conditions that weren't receiving smoke. And we took those Petri dishes and incubated them and grew whatever we could grow on them.

MOLLY: Did you grow stuff?

LEDA KOBZIAR: Yeah, we grew hundreds and hundreds of colonies. And ...

MOLLY: You grew hundreds and hundreds of stuff from smoke?

LEDA KOBZIAR: Yeah. Yeah. And it grew fast, and it was both bacteria and fungi.

MOLLY: You're saying it so casually but, like, I had no—so in smoke there's living bacteria?

LEDA KOBZIAR: There is living bacteria in smoke. Yep, absolutely. And in comparison to what we saw in the ambient air, the air that wasn't affected by smoke, it was about an order of magnitude difference.

MOLLY: What is an order of magnitude?

LEDA KOBZIAR: Like, times 10.

MOLLY: There's that much more stuff floating in the smoke as just normal air?

LEDA KOBZIAR: Yes. At least.

MOLLY: Whoa!

LEDA KOBZIAR: Yeah. And now I know that that number is probably bigger. [laughs]

MOLLY: But what do you think the number is now?

LEDA KOBZIAR: Somewhere between, I don't know, 20 and 100 times as many.

MOLLY: There could be a hundred times as much stuff in smoky air as in non-smoke? Alive stuff.

LEDA KOBZIAR: Potentially, yeah.

MOLLY: What was growing? What—what bacteria? What fungi?

LEDA KOBZIAR: A lot of different—fusarium, cryptococcus, aureobasidium, alternaria, cladosporium, malassezia. What else have we found? Thousands at this point. [laughs]

MOLLY: Thousands?

LEDA KOBZIAR: Yeah.

MOLLY: How? How is bacteria and fungi not devoured in the fire? And I just have—I just don't even understand how it's even still in a bacteria form, let alone still living. Because I think fire: hot, burn, done.

LEDA KOBZIAR: Right. Yeah. And it certainly is hot, but ...

MOLLY: Thank you for that validation. [laughs]

LEDA KOBZIAR: So there is just—there's a lot of variability in what's happening at every scale in a fire. You know, there might be a little depression in the earth where the air temperature is a little bit cooler, and then nothing in that little depression burns. And, you know, you can consider that as a type of fire refugia.

MOLLY: Wow! Okay.

LEDA KOBZIAR: So it's just more variable than we think.

MOLLY: Even though you're surrounded by hotness, you don't necessarily, as a living being, have to burn?

LEDA KOBZIAR: Exactly. You know, you can get entire branches, tops of trees or even whole trees that get swept up into the uplift of the winds that are created by the fire. You know, there is just a tremendous amount of energy in some of these really large wildfires.

MOLLY: Wow!

LEDA KOBZIAR: So think about a little piece of plant material burning. So that little piece of ...

MOLLY: And can we say it's like a—can we say it's like a leaf? Can we make it, like, a little more friendly?

LEDA KOBZIAR: Sure. It's a—it's a happy little leaf from an aspen tree.

MOLLY: Oh—love! Okay.

LEDA KOBZIAR: And so that little piece of leaf that's left over, just like the little pieces of wood and things that you find in your campfire at the end of the fire, that little piece of leaf gets picked up in those winds. It becomes part of the smoke column. And on that little piece of leaf there are bacteria and fungi that live. Once the outer part of that leaf is consumed in fire, then the inner part of that leaf is now exposed.

MOLLY: It's like the roof on its house just got ripped off.

LEDA KOBZIAR: Yeah, exactly.

MOLLY: And now it can get sucked out like in Twister.

LEDA KOBZIAR: Exactly. [laughs] If you think of it in the context of ecological work that fire is doing, what it's essentially doing is giving these organisms a way to get away from the fire. Maybe fire is a new kind of vector for dispersal. And I think that's what, you know, I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about.

MOLLY: Whoa! And did you, like, take your news to people? Were you like, "Oh my God, we developed these Petri dishes that we grew all this stuff on that came out of smoke." And people thought, "Why didn't I do that?" Or, "You're wrong," or, "I'm bored." Like, what was the reaction of the people around you as you brought this news?

LEDA KOBZIAR: You know, I think a lot of people thought it was kind of cool, but didn't really think about the implications.

MOLLY: I'm just thinking about Naomi—Naomi Hauser and her work, thinking about fungal infections in specifically burn patients.

LEDA KOBZIAR: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

MOLLY: What ended up happening to those patients, to the six?

NAOMI HAUSER: Three patients died in the hospital.

MOLLY: From the mold, not the burns.

NAOMI HAUSER: So the factors that most determine mortality in burn patients are age and burn size. And the larger the burn size, the higher the risk is of getting an infection, and especially a fungal or mold infection. We can't say for sure that those infections came from the wildfires, but we can say that it correlated.

MOLLY: Wow.

NAOMI HAUSER: Yeah. The thing is there are so many questions we don't have answered about wildfire smoke that I think we need to answer.

MOLLY: What are ones you're thinking of?

NAOMI HAUSER: Well, I mean, what—what I'm—what I'm really worried about is how infectious are these organisms?

MOLLY: Hmm.

NAOMI HAUSER: How many are there, and where are they going? Because I want to know. I think, you know, for my patients and for myself, I want to know, are these infections that I should expect to see? And as we have more exposure, should we expect to see them in people we don't typically expect to see them in? You know, can they start showing up in healthy people because we're just covered in more of it than we were before?

MOLLY: Hmm. So last summer, Canadian wildfires sweep into New York City. Or, like, the smoke, the smoke of the Canadian wildfires kind of settles over New York City, settles over most of the Midwest. Am I in that moment being—is Canadian fungus, like, raining down on me? Canadian bacteria? Is it landing in my garden? Am I snuffing it into my nose?

LEDA KOBZIAR: I don't know. You know, I imagine that some of it is, but we really don't know at this point how much. I mean, I think from the very beginning when I told people about this work, that pretty much is the first question, you know, is what does it mean for human health? And so then, you know, I look back at the list of fungi that we sequenced from a given smoke sample, and I see that there are three on the list that are human pathogens. And the connection is made. It doesn't mean that they were necessarily living, or that there was enough of them to cause an infection in a person, but they're there. And, you know, our team is one of the few that are looking into these questions, and I feel like it is our responsibility to address that question. So I'm definitely interested in that, but I'm equally interested in the role in biodiversity, and basically the biological or ecological repercussions of the spread of these organisms.

MOLLY: Leda and her colleagues have seen things that are scary for humans and things that are scary for animals. But they've seen way more of other things like bacteria that love nitrogen and help trees grow. A type of fungus that helps things break down on the forest floor, like dead plants and animal bones. Bacteria that keep the oceans healthy, and fungus whose cousin is used to make antibiotics, and others who love salt and heat. It's all up there, floating in the smoke.

LEDA KOBZIAR: This is just a very—a very new and different way of looking at what smoke is. To think of smoke as essentially having life in it or being alive in a way, I think really changes the way that we think about the perimeter of a fire. You know, it is no longer just affecting the life within it. It's also potentially transporting life across long distances.

MOLLY: This episode was reported by me, Molly Webster. It was produced by Sindhu Gnanasambandan and edited by Pat Walters. There was production help by me and Timmy Broderick, our once and former intern. Thank you so much to Leda Kobziar and Naomi Hauser. I did want to give a shout-out to Leda's original research when she first started sticking Petri dishes near the flaming front. That work was inspired by a paper by a father-daughter team that was originally for a high school science project. You can find that paper on our website, or you can just google "Mims and Mims and microbes," and your eyes will be further opened.

MOLLY: If you like hearing about fungus, things that could be in the world, that can get inside our bodies, then you should go check out another episode I did for Radiolab called "Fungus Amungus." If you don't like listening to those things, then maybe don't go check it out. And lastly, we've got a newsletter. It's always been fun, it's getting more fun. You should go sign up for it. Go to Radiolab.org/newsletter, and it'll land in your inbox soon.

MOLLY: Okay, thanks so much for listening and see you later.

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Emma and I live in Portland, Maine. Here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Valentina Powers, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

-30-

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# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].shows[].about.body
The booze-filled, drug-addled, technicolor roller coaster that is Mad Men will finally end its epic, seven-year run in just eight short weeks. Relive the highs and lows, the affairs and the sudden deaths, the lies and the cold hard truths, in this short-run podcast series. Host Ellen Horne will be talking to writers, historians, psychoanalysts and her fellow show fanatics about what Mad Men means and where it’s headed.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].shows[].description
The booze-filled, drug-addled, technicolor roller coaster that is Mad Men will finally end its epic, seven-year run in just eight short weeks. Relive the highs and lows, the affairs and the sudden deaths, the lies and the cold hard truths, in this short-run podcast series. Host Ellen Horne will be talking to writers, historians, psychoanalysts and her fellow show fanatics about what Mad Men means and where it’s headed.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].shows[].featured.image-main.caption
Mad Men on AMC, created by Matthew Weiner

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].shows[].featured.title
The Mad Men Finale We Needed, But Didn’t Deserve

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].shows[].featured.tease
While we at the Mad Men Pre-Game Show are loath to Monday- (or Friday-) morning quarterback the show's final episode, we’d like to humbly point out what we got right.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].shows[].sidebar-chunks[].content
Donate to our show

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].shows[].tease
The booze-filled, drug-addled, technicolor roller coaster that is Mad Men will finally end its epic, seven-year run in just eight short weeks. Relive the highs and lows, the affairs and the sudden deaths, the lies and the cold hard truths, in this short-run podcast series. Host Ellen Horne will be talking to writers, historians, psychoanalysts and her fellow show fanatics about what Mad Men means and where it’s headed.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].bio
Kara Oehler is a public radio producer, media artist and interactive documentarian. Her work with longtime collaborator Ann Heppermann has been featured on national and international public radio shows such as NPR’s RadioLab, Morning Edition and Hearing Voices, APM’s Weekend America and Marketplace, and WBEZ’s Chicago Matters. She has won Peabody, RTNDA Edward R. Murrow, NFCB Golden Reel, PRNDI, Associated Press, and Third Coast International Audio Festival (TCIAF) awards, and been exhibited at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), UnionDocs, among other venues. Kara is co-creator of Mapping Main Street, a collaborative documentary media project funded by MQ2. She is an instructor with the UnionDocs Collaborative, a new program for non-fiction media research and group production. Kara is also a transmission artist with free103point9.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].shows[].about.body
The booze-filled, drug-addled, technicolor roller coaster that is Mad Men will finally end its epic, seven-year run in just eight short weeks. Relive the highs and lows, the affairs and the sudden deaths, the lies and the cold hard truths, in this short-run podcast series. Host Ellen Horne will be talking to writers, historians, psychoanalysts and her fellow show fanatics about what Mad Men means and where it’s headed.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].shows[].description
The booze-filled, drug-addled, technicolor roller coaster that is Mad Men will finally end its epic, seven-year run in just eight short weeks. Relive the highs and lows, the affairs and the sudden deaths, the lies and the cold hard truths, in this short-run podcast series. Host Ellen Horne will be talking to writers, historians, psychoanalysts and her fellow show fanatics about what Mad Men means and where it’s headed.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].shows[].featured.image-main.caption
Mad Men on AMC, created by Matthew Weiner

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].shows[].featured.title
The Mad Men Finale We Needed, But Didn’t Deserve

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].shows[].featured.tease
While we at the Mad Men Pre-Game Show are loath to Monday- (or Friday-) morning quarterback the show's final episode, we’d like to humbly point out what we got right.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].shows[].sidebar-chunks[].content
Donate to our show

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].shows[].tease
The booze-filled, drug-addled, technicolor roller coaster that is Mad Men will finally end its epic, seven-year run in just eight short weeks. Relive the highs and lows, the affairs and the sudden deaths, the lies and the cold hard truths, in this short-run podcast series. Host Ellen Horne will be talking to writers, historians, psychoanalysts and her fellow show fanatics about what Mad Men means and where it’s headed.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].bio
Kara Oehler is a public radio producer, media artist and interactive documentarian. Her work with longtime collaborator Ann Heppermann has been featured on national and international public radio shows such as NPR’s RadioLab, Morning Edition and Hearing Voices, APM’s Weekend America and Marketplace, and WBEZ’s Chicago Matters. She has won Peabody, RTNDA Edward R. Murrow, NFCB Golden Reel, PRNDI, Associated Press, and Third Coast International Audio Festival (TCIAF) awards, and been exhibited at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), UnionDocs, among other venues. Kara is co-creator of Mapping Main Street, a collaborative documentary media project funded by MQ2. She is an instructor with the UnionDocs Collaborative, a new program for non-fiction media research and group production. Kara is also a transmission artist with free103point9.

# included[].attributes.body
We had a question back in 2007 about a thing every creature on the planet does—from giant humpback whales to teeny fruit flies. Why do we all sleep? What does it do for us, and what happens when we go without? We take a peek at iguanas sleeping with one eye open, get in bed with a pair of sleep-deprived new parents, and eavesdrop on the uneasy dreams of rats.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

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# included[].attributes.show-tease
Investigating a strange world.

# included[].attributes.tease
Birds do it, bees do it ... yet science still can't answer the basic question: why do we sleep?

# included[].attributes.transcript
LATIF NASSER: Hey, I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab. This week, I'm reupping an episode from 2007, you know, which was like the very early days of our show, about a fundamental mystery that now, like, almost 20 years later is still just as fundamental and just as mysterious as it was then. It is a fundamental mystery that takes up about a third of your life—and actually probably more, considering how much you crave it when you can't get it, but then paradoxically put it off when you can. Anyway, I'm not gonna say any more because I don't want to step on the original episode intro, which is just adorable. So here you are, drift off with our emeritus hosts Jad and Robert.

[RADIOLAB INTRO]

HANNAH PALIN: I just thought I'd see if I could get the sound of babies sleeping.

JAD ABUMRAD: This is Radiolab. Today's program is about sleep. I don't have to tell you how good sleep is. You do it yourself every night—or you try. And how wonderful when it actually works, when you can close your eyes and forget the day, and just drift off into oblivion like a little baby. But let's suppose that you are a little baby, this little baby, and you grew up to become a scientist, like one of the scientists we'll hear from in this program. And you decide to ask what should be the dumbest question ever: why do we sleep? And not just us.

SCIENTIST: Well, pretty much everything sleeps.

SCIENTIST: As far as we know, all mammals do it. All birds.

SCIENTIST: Bees, locusts, cockroaches, crayfish ...

SCIENTIST: Reptiles, insects.

SCIENTIST: Scorpions.

SCIENTIST: Everything that's been studied has something that looks like sleep.

SCIENTIST: It's a mystery. Most things we sort of know what they are for, and also how they work. But sleep is really in your face. I mean, everybody does it. You do it from the cradle to the grave. You can't help doing it, because if you try to stay awake, you know, at some point it's irrepressible. And we don't know why. That's a shameful state of affairs. How can you be a scientist in the 21st century and not know the answer to that?

ROBERT KRULWICH: There you go. Okay. [laughs]

ROBERT: That's a pretty good way to begin, you know?

JAD: With shame?

ROBERT: Yeah, yeah. Today on Radiolab, we're gonna try to correct this shameful state of affairs when it comes to the subject of sleep.

JAD: We'll talk with people who can help us understand what it's for.

ROBERT: Why we do it.

JAD: And what happens when we don't.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: Stay with us.

JAD: For centuries, people thought that sleep was kind of the opposite of being awake.

ROBERT: It's reasonable, one would think.

JAD: Sure. Because during the day, you're doing all these things, you're having all these thoughts and feelings. At night, you just lie there very, very still. In fact, like, sometimes a bomb could go off and you wouldn't wake up.

ROBERT: I can hardly wake up even in a fire. [laughs] I don't know why! No, I'm a really heavy sleeper. I'm a very, very heavy sleeper.

JAD: The point is, if all you've got are your eyes to go on, sleep can seem like being—well ...

ROBERT: Like being off.

JAD: Yeah, like off-ness.

ROBERT: Right.

JAD: Or worse.

CARLOS SCHENCK: Well, both Shakespeare and Cervantes referred to sleep as 'death.'

JAD: That's Dr. Carlos Schenck. He wrote a great book about sleep called Paradox Lost.

CARLOS SCHENCK: We go to bed every night. We die every night, and then we wake up in the morning and we're alive again. And that was the prevailing theory for centuries.

JAD: For Dr. Schenck, the awakening to just how wrong Shakespeare and Cervantes were about sleep came one day while he was sitting in class for med school.

CARLOS SCHENCK: My first year at medical school ...

JAD: This was back in 1972.

CARLOS SCHENCK: ... we had an emeritus professor who actually was a Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Eccles. Sir John Carew Eccles from Australia.

JAD: Here's what happened. This esteemed lecturer walks into class.

ROBERT: Uh-huh.

JAD: Pops a cassette into the tape deck, hits play, and out comes this sound.

CARLOS SCHENCK: Well, the sound was puh puh puh puh puh puh. Or—wait a second, let me get it right. Oh, here we go. [sound of a pen striking a glass]. And multiply this by a hundred.

JAD: This, the professor announced, is the sound of a cat's brain while asleep.

ROBERT: My God!

JAD: Schenck almost fell out of his seat.

CARLOS SCHENCK: This is the brain during sleep? Making these really rapid, high-pitched, multiple sounds. That just blew us away. It wasn't just ...

JAD: Clearly, while that cat was curled up in its little kitty basket, its brain was very, very alive, much more than anyone expected. And this is still a weird revelation. Like, take my cat, Sammy.

JAD: Sammy.

JAD: All right? [cat purring] This is the sound of my cat, Sammy sleeping. To think that while Sammy is sitting on my lap, totally out, there's a circus happening in his brain. What's going on in there? If you can imagine back in the '70s, this was a paradigm shift. People were suddenly like, "Oh my God, if we're gonna figure out anything about sleep, we have to ask the brain."

JOHN LESKU: And this is the room where we do all of our surgeries.

JAD: And luckily, that's easily done—if you're willing to get your hands dirty.

JOHN LESKU: Okay, so the first step is you have to make an incision on top of the animal's head. When you've done that, we drill holes through the animal's skull, and then you insert your electrodes.

JAD: Then you've got ...

JOHN LESKU: And that's simply it.

JAD: ... a little window into their brain. You could see right there on the screen, you could see the brain waves.

ROBERT: Wait a second. Are you out of your mind? Did you just put a hole into a kitten's head?

JAD: No, that wasn't my cat! C'mon!

ROBERT: So what was it we were doing there?

JAD: What you just heard was a mock surgery to an iguana, actually.

ROBERT: [laughs] Even an iguana. I mean, it's not a nice thing to do.

JAD: Look, look, look. The animal was not harmed.

JOHN LESKU: Within 20 minutes of coming out of the anesthetic, the animal is moving around, it's eating, it's climbing and it's basking. It might seem like a rather invasive procedure, but in actuality, it's not too bad at all.

JAD: Yeah. And that, by the way, is John Lesku. He's a graduate student at the Ecology Department ...

JOHN LESKU: At Indiana State University.

JAD: Which is where we are. John gave our reporter, Kara Oehler ...

KARA OEHLER: Testing.

JAD: ... a tour of the lab.

JOHN LESKU: There are big boys here, and they all have nice hats.

JAD: Showed her the iguanas.

KARA: These guys are a little frightening to me. They're pretty huge.

JAD: They're like four feet long, head to tail.

ROBERT: Oh, I didn't know that.

JAD: I mean, they look like baby alligators.

JOHN LESKU: Pick that one up.

JAD: And John measures their brain waves at night to see what happens in their head as they sleep. In a way, it's a continuation of that cat experiment that Dr. Schenck just told us about, except what they're looking for is much more peculiar than could ever happen in a cat—or in us.

ROBERT: What is that?

JAD: Well, let me put it to you as a puzzle, okay?

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Forget iguanas. Dolphins, right? Dolphins.

ROBERT: Yep.

JAD: How is it that a dolphin in the ocean, or even, say, the dolphins that you might find at Six Flags in New Jersey. They have two.

MEGAN TUTERA: Cody is our 10-year-old Atlantic bottlenose dolphin. His buddy Avalon, is 12 years old.

JAD: And that's their trainer, Megan Tutera. Avir Mitra is holding the mic. Anyhow, here's the puzzle—and we asked Megan about this. How is that her two dolphins, Cody and Avalon, can successfully sleep given the inherent challenges of being a dolphin?

ROBERT: I don't—what are the challenges of a dolphin?

JAD: Well, they have significant challenges, my friend. First, they've gotta breathe.

MEGAN TUTERA: They're not—they're conscious breathers. They're not unconscious breathers. So they have to think about breathing.

JAD: Making matters worse, dolphins are not fish, so they have to breathe air. Which means they have to constantly, consciously, come up to the service to breathe air every few minutes. So you can imagine what would happen if they decided to go unconscious for a while.

ROBERT: They would drown.

JAD: Right. And yet they do manage to sleep. A lot.

ROBERT: How long?

JAD: Eight hours a day. Like us.

ROBERT: Really?

JAD: Yeah, eight hours.

ROBERT: But how?

JAD: That's the puzzle.

MEGAN TUTERA: What happens is they do what we call logging. It's when they rest on the surface of the water. You know when a log floats down a river, it just floats?

AVIR MITRA: Uh-huh.

MEGAN TUTERA: That's exactly what they look like. And they rest half their brain at a time.

AVIR: Half their brain is asleep?

MEGAN TUTERA: Half their brain is asleep at a time.

JAD: That is nature's solution: to cut the dolphin brain in half.

ROBERT: You mean literally in half?

JAD: Literally in half, so that one half can snooze while the other half keeps the dolphin swimming and surfacing.

ROBERT: Wow!

JAD: Just enough to breathe. From the outside, you can't really tell what's happening. It just looks like the dolphin is sort of awake, but a little out of it.

MEGAN TUTERA: Well, it's almost like the state of when you're falling asleep, but if something happened, you'd wake right up. So they're in that state all the time.

STEVEN LIMA: This little guy can be characterized as groggy.

JAD: That's Steve Lima. He runs one of the labs back in Indiana.

STEVEN LIMA: They're sort of awake and they're sort of asleep, and it's just a way of staying awake enough.

JAD: And again, it's easy to miss, but if you look inside that groggy dolphin's brain at what the brainwaves are doing ...

STEVEN LIMA: It's exquisitely obvious.

JAD: It's clear as day.

STEVEN LIMA: A six year old could figure it out. One half of the brain has these beautiful slow waves like a sine curve, and the other one's just jagging all over the place.

AVIR: Awesome! Oh, those are beautiful!

ROBERT: Wow, that is amazing!

JAD: Yeah, it's called unihemispheric sleep. That's what the guys at Indiana State are really interested in because—and here's the next surprise, it seems to go way beyond dolphins.

JOHN LESKU: Oh yeah. The aquatic mammals like whales, seals and sea lions.

JAD: John says that all of the marine mammals that have been studied seem to do it too.

JOHN LESKU: Recently walruses, they all are found to engage in unihemispheric sleep as well.

JAD: And now the Indiana team led by this guy ...

CHARLES AMLANER: I'm Charles Amlaner, chair of the Department of Ecology and Organismal Biology.

JAD: ... they have found this weird split-brain behavior in creatures of the air.

ROBERT: Oh!

CHARLES AMLANER: Okay, let me just back up a little bit and describe this experiment.

JAD: Charlie and his student had been at the park one day and they noticed something.

CHARLES AMLANER: We observed that ducks ...

JAD: Ducks.

CHARLES AMLANER: ... sometimes will get together into groups.

JAD: Like, on a log. Four ducks will get together and snooze in a neat little line.

CHARLES AMLANER: And the birds that were sitting in the middle of that line tended to be sleeping with both eyes closed. The birds that were sitting on the outside of that row tended to look a little bit more wary.

JAD: The inevitable question ...

CHARLES AMLANER: What's going on here?

JAD: ... led to a very simple experiment.

CHARLES AMLANER: We put four birds in a row.

JAD: Four mallard ducks, this time in a lab. And they watched them sleep.

CHARLES AMLANER: The two birds in the center of this row slept with both eyes closed. The birds on the outer edges, both left and right, slept with one eye closed and one eye opened.

JAD: One more time.

CHARLES AMLANER: Slept with one eye closed and one eye opened.

JAD: It's just like in that song. You know that Metallica song?

ROBERT: [laughs] I missed it.

JAD: It's a good one.

ROBERT: But I knew they were all botanists.

JAD: It's true! You know, no one knows this, but that song is really about adaptive sleeping behavior in ducks.

CHARLES AMLANER: The outer eye, the eye that was faced away from the group, the eye that was facing towards where potential predators might come from, that stayed open.

JAD: At this point, Charlie had a pretty good idea of what was going on, because he knew that inside bird brains, each eye is attached to the opposite hemisphere.

CHARLES AMLANER: The left eye is attached to the right hemisphere, the right eye is attached to the left hemisphere.

JAD: So his team implanted some electrodes to measure what the duck brains were doing and—voila! Like the dolphins, the ducks too were sleeping one half of their brain at a time.

CHARLES AMLANER: The bird could simultaneously sleep and be awake.

JAD: Not only that—here's the cool part—after a few hours ...

CHARLES AMLANER: What happened was is that the birds that were on the outer edge, then would rotate.

JAD: Stand up, turn around.

CHARLES AMLANER: 180 degrees.

JAD: And then sit back down.

CHARLES AMLANER: And the other eye would then get some sleep, and consequently the opposite hemisphere would get some sleep.

JOHN LESKU: When we saw that we said "Oh yeah, that's good!"

JAD: Good, because right there in the ducks was a perfect illustration of what these guys think it's all about: you gotta sleep, for whatever reason.

ROBERT: Right.

JAD: But sleep is dangerous. That's the headline. For dolphins, the main danger is drowning, you know?

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: For ducks ...

ROBERT: Getting eaten.

JAD: Exactly. Ducks have to sleep, but how can they when lurking in the darkness are foxes and wolves and a hundred other eaters of ducks?

JOHN LESKU: Do you like snakes?

KARA: I don't know. Not really.

JOHN LESKU: What?

KARA: I don't dislike snakes.

JOHN LESKU: He's a good man. He's a good man.

KARA: Mm-hmm.

JAD: In another nifty experiment, John took the resident snake, Monty ...

JOHN LESKU: This is Monty.

KARA: Hi.

JAD: Big snake.

JOHN LESKU: He is, what, about a four-foot-long python.

JAD: And at night ...

JOHN LESKU: You're so cute!

KARA: [laughs]

JAD: ... John brought Monty the python into the room where his iguanas sleep.

JOHN LESKU: And he terrifies them.

ROBERT: Really?

JAD: Well I mean, Monty was in a cage, so he couldn't really hurt the iguanas. But as soon as that snake appeared, all the lizards popped one eye open.

ROBERT: [laughs] I bet they did!

JAD: Pop, pop, pop, pop! And they trained that open eye right on Monty the snake.

STEVEN LIMA: Put a big snake in the room, and they'll watch it with one eye all night.

JAD: That's Steve Lima again.

STEVEN LIMA: They don't like these snakes, that's for sure. And I mean, we moved the snake from the room the next day and they're still looking for it the next night or two.

JAD: So they keep one eye trained on that door for a few more days?

STEVEN LIMA: About two or three days, then they go back to regular sleep.

ROBERT: So what does this all mean?

JAD: Well, think about this. Okay, all the sea mammals, they do it.

ROBERT: Right.

JAD: Well, at least the ones that have been studied. All the flying creatures, they do it. The reptiles seem to do it too. Who does that leave?

ROBERT: You mean who's left not sleeping with half a brain on and the other half a brain off?

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: Um ...

JAD: Us!

ROBERT: Really?

JAD: We may be the strange ones.

JOHN LESKU: Well, it is sort of strange in that terrestrial mammals can't do it. Terrestrial mammals just for some reason have lost the ability to do this.

JAD: Not all mammals, says John. The terrestrial mammals. The ones that live on land.

ROBERT: Ah.

JAD: And here's his theory: sometime, long ago, our scaly ancestor wandered up on the land and thought, "I think I'll dig a hole. Yeah, I'm gonna dig a hole." And the hole was dark and it was safe, and for the first time in millions of years of evolution, that little creature closed both eyes. Ahh! And so we lost it.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: Totally speculative theory, of course, but the basic idea, though, is if you are protected and safe, you can afford to close both eyes, conk out completely. And that simple idea of safety, that explains—well, these guys think, almost everything: where you sleep, how you sleep, how long you sleep, it all boils down to two words.

STEVEN LIMA: Predation risk.

JOHN LESKU: Predation risk.

CHARLES AMLANER: Predation risk.

JAD: Which is really just a fancy way of saying ...

CHARLES AMLANER: Generally speaking, just your risk of being killed.

JAD: Your risk of being eaten. Now what does this have to do with us? Here we are, top of the food chain, in our warm beds.

CARLOS SCHENCK: Nice warm bed.

JAD: A locked door.

CARLOS SCHENCK: A locked door. Covers.

JAD: Maybe a nice neighborhood.

CARLOS SCHENCK: A good police force looking after you at night time. And you live in a country that has a very secure living environment.

JAD: You would think that this whole predation risk idea has nothing to do with us. Well?

CARLOS SCHENCK: Well, there's a few studies that have looked at, say, sleep patterns where people are sleeping in novel environments.

ROBERT: What's a novel environment? What does he mean?

JAD: Well, like a hotel.

ROBERT: Oh.

JAD: That first night at a hotel, why is it no one can sleep well that first night at a hotel?

CARLOS SCHENCK: On your first night of sleeping in a hotel room, you generally have less REM sleep and less deep, slow wave sleep relative to sleeping in your house.

JAD: I suffer from that myself, I don't sleep well in hotel rooms. Especially if it was just one night per place or something, my sleep is terrible.

CARLOS SCHENCK: There are some folk that actually hypothesize there are certain predator relays in the brain, and that these circuits remain active at all times.

JAD: Now what if that's true that we all have, buried deep in our reptile brain, a sort of predator alert system? Perhaps in some of us, it's a little too sensitive.

CARLOS SCHENCK: Okay, we're in the sleep lab at the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorder Center—Mission Control, we call it. We're viewing the typical sleep terror episode. This little girl who is five years old would engage in these sleep terror episodes every single night.

JAD: That's Dr. Carlos Schenck, who we heard from before. We're in Minnesota now at the Hennepin County Sleep Center ...

CARLOS SCHENCK: Here in the sleep lab ...

JAD: Where he works. We're standing in front of a grainy, black-and-white video of a little girl in her PJs, screaming.

CARLOS SCHENCK: So look at the time.

JAD: Dr. Schenck discovered an odd category of sleep disorders called 'parasomnias,' which is why we came to talk to him. 'Para' means around, 'somnia' means sleep. Around sleep. This might be the human analog to the ducks: people whose brains never quite shut off completely during sleep.

CARLOS SCHENCK: Well, this guy is interesting. He has seizures. No, no, no, he doesn't. Wait a second.

JAD: He showed us tape after tape.

CARLOS SCHENCK: We're viewing a man who we very affectionately call Santa Claus.

JAD: On the screen, a large guy thrashes back and forth.

CARLOS SCHENCK: His legs are moving. He's going back and forth from his side to his back.

JAD: And then suddenly, he starts to ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. Ho, ho, ho.]

ROBERT: Is this real?

JAD: Yeah. This guy is in and out of sleep. He has no idea what he's doing. One of the interesting things Dr. Schenck noticed when he first began to diagnose parasomnias in the early '80s is that while they were in that kind of liminal space around sleep, a huge percentage of the patients would have these visceral dreams of being attacked.

CARLOS SCHENCK: The common theme is a menace is posed from nowhere, coming out of nowhere. It's an immediate threat that you just can't ignore. Let's put it that way. You have to either fight it or run away from it.

MARTIN SABELLE: The dreams can be very violent.

JAD: This is Martin Sabelle, age 88. He's another of Dr. Schenck's patients.

MARTIN SABELLE: I remember someone coming up the stairway.

JAD: In Martin's case, the attackers never had a face. Sometimes it was a bear.

MARTIN SABELLE: And I was gonna fight with him.

GERTRUDE SABELLE: He'd yell at them, "Get out of here!"

JAD: That's Martin's wife, Gertrude.

GERTRUDE SABELLE: "Scram!" He was always trying to protect me.

MARTIN SABELLE: Yeah, I would have black and blue bruises on my arms and hands because I was hitting the headboard.

CARLOS SCHENCK: Not infrequently, the man is dreaming, in bed with his wife, that he is fighting to defend her from an attacker, when in fact, he's beating her up.

GERTRUDE SABELLE: One night I was sleeping, and all of a sudden he's got his hands tightly around my throat. I'm petrified. "Quit, Mart! You're dreaming. You're hurting me."

MARTIN SABELLE: She says, "Martin, you're dreaming."

JAD: Gertrude and Martin Sabelle are still married, believe it or not, after 57 years. Though she did force him to sell his guns.

GERTRUDE SABELLE: He has never been happy about that.

MARTIN SABELLE: Well, they were quite valuable.

ROBERT: So you're suggesting then, that all these people, and the iguanas and the ducks and the dolphins all have a portion of their brain which is wary in the night?

JAD: That's what I'm hinting at. I don't want to go any stronger than hint at, but there seems to be something in us that's always watching out, always wary.

ROBERT: Bottom line here, though, is that sleep for all creatures is a dangerous thing, and a few unfortunate people are still awake to that fact.

JAD: That's right. Before we go to break, I just wanna thank Ann Hepperman for her excellent reporting in Minnesota, and also before her, Kara Oehler. And to remind you to stay with us because we're gonna turn our attention shortly from danger to deprivation. Radiolab will continue in a moment.

JAD: This is Radiolab. You are Robert Krulwich.

ROBERT: Robert Krulwich. It's my name. And you're ...

JAD: Jad Abumrad. And today, our topic on Radiolab is sleep.

ROBERT: Yep. It is something that all of us do. We can't help but do it. It's dangerous to do.

JAD: It's so good!

ROBERT: It's so good. and it's universal.

STEVEN LIMA: Think about it. You know, sleep is dangerous. And if sleep could have been circumvented in some way, natural selection probably would have found a way to do it.

JAD: That's Steve Lima again from Indiana State University.

STEVEN LIMA: Because it would be such a great idea to not sleep.

JAD: Don't I know it.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: But there are times when you just can't sleep. Maybe you're one of the 35 million Americans—I am—who has chronic insomnia.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: You just can't sleep. You don't know why. It just doesn't happen. Or maybe you do it to yourself, and you pull all-nighters for school, or you have to drive long distances. Or—and here's what we want to turn our attention to next—maybe it is done to you.

ROBERT: Hmm.

JAD: That's the case with producer Hannah Palin. She kept this audio diary of her own experiment with sleep deprivation.

[baby crying]

JAD: She has an 18-month-old son.

HANNAH: It's 2:54 for the record. Today was my first day back at work. We were discussing budgets. I just—I just—I couldn't even articulate what it was that I was seeing on my computer screen and try to communicate that to the curator that I work for. The words didn't come. [whispers] Lie down on me. Instead of saying, "Well, Nicolette. I believe that that choice was made because—" no, no. All that came out was like, honey buckets. I mean, nothing. Nothing would come out. There's just no brain cells, really. Darn, I almost had him asleep there. So anyway, that was my first day back at work.

[baby screaming]

HANNAH: 2:47. Dominic will not sleep. I don't know why. And I'm trying to get him to sleep and kind of at my wits end. Oh God, this just sucks. Totally sucks. Here's the funny thing. Everybody has a theory. And I was talking to my sister-in-law tonight, and her theory is that he's not getting enough milk because milk has some agent in it that would help him sleep. And he doesn't like milk. It's true. Other people say, "Oh, if you just would exercise him. If he just gets fresh air and exercise, he'll sleep all night." "If you just let him cry, he would sleep all night." "If you just would do whatever it is we're not doing, he would sleep all night."

[baby crying]

HANNAH: And there's this feeling like—there's a feeling like I am doing it all wrong, and that I'm a failure as a parent, and I don't know how to do this. Come here, sweetie. Come. Come on. Come on. Come on.

HANNAH: So anyway, I needed to record just one thing really quickly, and that is that yesterday and today, I've been struck by—I've been struck by these waves of satisfaction and delight with being alive in this amazing landscape with a funny kid. Mountains and water, and I don't know, maybe it's just getting a little more sleep in the last couple of days, but I suddenly feel like, wow, I'm so lucky. Okay, I've gotta take my kid to play now. Here we go! [singing] Do you know the muffin man? The muffin man.

HANNAH: Okay, that whole I'm loving life? Yeah, that's all gone now, and it's pretty much because Dominic won't take a nap. Well, he came home from the beach, which I thought would wear him out. Then we sat down and read some stories, which for some reason—and I realized that an element to the sleep deprivation and an element to this whole thing is that I get angry from having my own needs subverted to the needs of this little tiny person, which, when you're not sleep deprived, is not a big deal.

DOMINIC: I tired.

HANNAH: I'm tired.

DOMINIC: I'm tired.

HANNAH: I don't want to wish a minute of Dominic's childhood away because it's so precious to me. But damn, I am looking forward to that moment when I'm able to say, "Honey, time to go to sleep," and he does it. Tired? Not tired?

DOMINIC: Just talk.

HANNAH: Close your eyes, bug. Close your eyes. There's my personal take on what it's like to be sleepy and to crave sleep as much as you crave water or breath. I crave it!

JAD: [whispers] Thanks to Hannah Palin. And her son Dominic, and her husband Steve. I know. Poor Hannah.

ROBERT: But there is a science question lurking in the background, which is when—you know, when Hannah was so tired, why does she feel that way? You know what ...

JAD: Because she's—she hasn't been sleeping.

ROBERT: Well yeah, but what makes her—you know, what is the essence of tiredness?

JAD: Lack of sleep. Hello?

ROBERT: No, chemically. I'm asking you chemically, what is happening to her? If you were way down in her cells, could you see something tired-like going on? That's what I mean.

JAD: That's a good question, actually.

ROBERT: Good. I'm glad you think so. Because I know a guy who has a theory about this.

ALLAN PACK: Did you see Tiger yesterday?

ROBERT: Tiger Woods?

ALLAN PACK: He's just unbelievable. He had the best round of anybody. I mean, the guy is unbelievable!

ROBERT: This is Dr. Allan Pack, and in addition to being a rabid golf fan, he's also a rabid—can you be a rabid biologist?

JAD: [laughs] Sure.

ROBERT: At the University of Pennsylvania, he's been looking at sleep down at the cellular level. And one thing that he's found over and over and over ...

ALLAN PACK: And that's been shown in mouse, it's been shown in rat, it's been shown in fruit fly.

ROBERT: ... is that inside certain cells in all those different animals, when they're sleep-deprived ...

ALLAN PACK: Eventually what happens is you don't get proteins properly folded.

JAD: Excuse me?

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: Proteins properly folded?

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

ALLAN PACK: A phenomenon called the unfolded protein response.

JAD: What on Earth does that mean? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

ROBERT: You're asking why do you need proteins to properly fold?

JAD: Yeah, I guess that's what I'm asking.

ROBERT: Well, you're made of proteins. Proteins are the essence of you, so if your proteins are misshapen, if they're not folded properly ...

ALLAN PACK: If you don't fold the proteins properly, they don't have the right three-dimensional structure, and as a result, they start accumulating inside the cell. And then these different unfolded proteins can aggregate together and form clumps. Clumps inside the cell and essentially clog it up. And it's really quite toxic to cells.

ROBERT: Clumpiness equals tiredness would be his formula. But remember when Hannah was so exhausted?

JAD: Yeah.

HANNAH: God, this just sucks.

ROBERT: Well, because she hasn't slept much ...

HANNAH: Totally sucks.

ROBERT: ... inside her cells, lots of these valuable little proteins have not folded properly. That, he thinks, is the consequence of not having enough sleep. So maybe what's going on is the cells can't do their business quite as well and things start to break down, and that adds up across the whole of your body to a feeling of [yawns]. But when she gets the sleep, remember when she's so happy?

JAD: Yeah.

HANNAH: I suddenly feel like, wow!

ROBERT: Because of the sleep ...

HANNAH: I'm so lucky.

ROBERT: ... a group of cleaner uppers have gone through her cells, removed the toxic and misshapen proteins, so that in effect, sleep is the best housemaid you've ever had in the hotel of you. And this idea, the idea of sleep as a cleaner upper, might even explain one of the most basic things about us as humans: how we learn. That's the notion of Doctor Giulio Tononi.

ELLEN HORNE: Testing, testing, testing.

ROBERT: And my producer Ellen Horne and I went to visit him at his offices in Madison, Wisconsin.

ROBERT: What are we expecting? What does he look like? We don't know what he looks like.

ELLEN: A football player.

ROBERT: A football player.

ELLEN: But like a quarterback or a tight end. Not like a linebacker.

ROBERT: Not like a linebacker. So big, but not overwhelming?

ELLEN: Yeah.

ROBERT: Yeah. How do you even know that?

ELLEN: Website. See, but I was totally wrong.

ROBERT: [laughs]

ROBERT: Now to be fair, he is a very attractive guy. He has sandy blond hair and glasses. He's actually more the sensitive guy intellectual than a linebacker.

ROBERT: Yeah, introduce yourself.

GIULIO TONONI: I'm Giulio Tononi. I am a professor of psychiatry here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

ROBERT: But when it comes to the subject of sleep, which is his specialty, he takes sleep very seriously.

ROBERT: What got you interested in sleep?

GIULIO TONONI: Sleep is the annihilation of consciousness. So it's a terrible time in which everything disappears—the universe and yourself with it. I think if people didn't sleep and didn't have the unconsciousness of sleep, they possibly wouldn't even realize that consciousness is an enormous gift.

ROBERT: So being awake then is wonderful, but it's what happens when you're asleep, he says, that's what allows you to make very important connections in your life. And he noticed this first when he was connecting with, I believe it was a guitar, just playing music.

GIULIO TONONI: I used to play, for instance. I played classical guitar. I'm sure many people who play musical instruments know that you may train and train and train on a piece during the day and you get better, for sure, but you're never perfect. And then you sleep over it. The next day you wake up, you play it again, and now it's smooth, and, you know, it flows beautifully.

ROBERT: That happened to you?

GIULIO TONONI: It happened to me. It happens to lots of people.

ROB CHRISTIANSEN: That happened to me all the time. I discovered that sometimes if I worked on a piece and put it away, went to bed and got some rest, I had it better learned than if I stayed up all night cramming.

JAD: Yeah.

JEANNINE DUFREE: Definitely. There's one story, and I hadn't thought about this for a long time, but—well, first of all, Rob and I play in a band together.

ROB CHRISTIANSEN: The band is called the Sisterhood of Convoluted Thinkers.

JEANNINE DUFREE: And we switch instruments, like, a lot.

ROB CHRISTIANSEN: She's usually the bass player.

JEANNINE DUFREE: I was gonna play drums.

ROB CHRISTIANSEN: So she had to learn how to play drums.

JEANNINE DUFREE: So we rented a cabin.

ROB CHRISTIANSEN: We went somewhere to rehearse. And at night, she was really just kind of practicing and practicing and trying to get this rhythm.

JEANNINE DUFREE: This one particular beat. Like, I worked on it, like, a lot. I just keep going and going.

ROB CHRISTIANSEN: I remember playing that one thing again and again and again.

JEANNINE DUFREE: Yeah. And I finally just gave up and went to sleep. And the next morning I got up and went, like, straight to the kit. And I just played it, like, immediately.

ROB CHRISTIANSEN: The butt hit the stool and she was gone.

JEANNINE DUFREE: Ba-da-da-da-da-da.

ROB CHRISTIANSEN: She could just do it.

JEANNINE DUFREE: I thought it was magic. You could just learn stuff in your sleep.

ROBERT: So wait, so in the middle of the night, somehow the things that your fingers did repeatedly, and the notes that you were using to propel your fingers, all those things somehow got into—got more—got better learned. So you learned overnight, or you—I mean, what does that have to do with—you remember better in the morning?

GIULIO TONONI: What happens is that the next day you're a bit better off. What happened during the night to make you better off? This is up for contention.

ROBERT: Tononi's contention is that sleep helps you remember by forgetting.

JAD: Uh, I don't know what that means.

ROBERT: [laughs] Let me explain to you what he's saying. He says there's a limited amount of space in your brain.

GIULIO TONONI: The real estate in the brain is pretty limited.

ROBERT: Limited amount.

JAD: That makes sense. It's a small little guy up there.

ROBERT: Yep. And yet every experience you have during the day ...

GIULIO TONONI: Is gonna take away some space.

ROBERT: ... uses up a little of what you got.

GIULIO TONONI: When you are awake, inevitably you learn, whether you want it or not. You are going around talking to me, having breakfast, going to work.

ROBERT: Then yakking on the phone with your friends, talking to your mom.

JAD: Very different from the friends.

ROBERT: Then going home, taking a bath.

JAD: Gotta take a bath? Yeah, I get it. I get it.

ROBERT: Everything you do during the day, every thought you think, no matter how small, it all causes your brain to form new connections.

ROBERT: This conversation as we're having it, is reshaping my brain.

GIULIO TONONI: Yeah.

ROBERT: Little pathways are forming that weren't there before I sat down.

GIULIO TONONI: Exactly. Whether we recognize it or not, lots of things are going to change your brain by the end of the waking day.

ROBERT: So if in the middle of the afternoon, you sit down with your guitar and you practice the guitar intently, those two hours, you're also making connections. And because you're concentrating, maybe you're making more connections than usual. These are guitar connections. And all those synaptic connections made during the day, one and the other upon the other, by the time you're ready for sleep at the end of the day, up in your head, it's a giant, unruly mess.

GIULIO TONONI: And that is where we think sleep kicks in.

ROBERT: Well, I'm gonna guess here, but I think you think that sleep is a garbage detail? It comes in and says, "Okay, you're done. You're done. You're done."

GIULIO TONONI: It's actually even simpler than that.

ROBERT: According to Tononi, there's not really a janitor who comes in and decides, "Okay, you have to leave. You get to stay." Nothing like that. Instead, he says, what happens ...

GIULIO TONONI: We think that during sleep, waves ...

ROBERT: Waves of electrical activity, kind of like a late evening bath, wash over your head. They start at the back of your head and they move to the front.

GIULIO TONONI: These waves are called slow oscillations.

ROBERT: And over the course of the night ...

GIULIO TONONI: One thousand times a night.

ROBERT: ... those waves wash through all the experiences of your day, all the little synaptic connections that you made all day long. And every one of those connections ...

GIULIO TONONI: All of them.

ROBERT: ... gets just a little bit softer.

GIULIO TONONI: They get weaker. Progressively, gracefully, they get weaker.

ROBERT: Even, he says, the things you want to hold onto, like the guitar.

ROBERT: Wait a second, wait a second. You were the one who said you learned how to play the instrument in the afternoon. You went to sleep and you played the instrument better in the morning.

GIULIO TONONI: Yeah.

ROBERT: Why would you wake up the next morning playing better? You should play more weakly, with less confidence and less memory. Because after all, you've just given the whole place a bath.

GIULIO TONONI: It's all relative, sir.

ROBERT: What he means by relative is this. That mess of new connections in your head?

JAD: Yeah?

ROBERT: Some of those connections are softer, some of those connections were louder. The random things you ordered for lunch, they're softer.

JAD: Okay.

ROBERT: But the guitar, because you spent so much time thinking about guitar technique, you spent so much energy on it, that's louder. So we're just measuring connections here. Now imagine that sleep is a big volume knob. So listen to what happens when you lower the volume on the whole day, lower and lower and lower. Now you hear how the softer stuff just falls away, you can't hear it anymore?

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: But the guitar, while it's getting softer too, because it was so loud to begin with, now it stands out a bit more clearly, no?

JAD: Yeah!

GIULIO TONONI: The signal, the synapses that have survived reasonably well are heard better because the background has become more silent.

ROBERT: So your ability to play the guitar better the next morning is not because you've learned skills overnight that you didn't have before, it's because all the other stuff taking up your brain has gone down in volume, and you're left with, relatively speaking, a better guitar fingering technique.

GIULIO TONONI: You put your finger on it.

ROBERT: [laughs]

ROBERT: So Mr. Tononi feels that sleep is a little bit like wind and rain, like the process of erosion. At the end of the day—or rather at the beginning of the morning—the things left standing are the things you need to know.

JAD: This is Radiolab. I'm Jad.

ROBERT: And I'm Robert.

JAD: And today's program is about sleep.

ROBERT: As in the kind of sleep where you perchance to dream.

JAD: Exactly. Did you know that story about the benzene molecule?

ROBERT: No.

JAD: Speaking of dreams.

ROBERT: No.

JAD: Well, here ...

ROBERT: The benzene mol ...

JAD: 1865. German chemist is trying to figure out the shape of this molecule, benzene. He knows it has a certain amount of one kind of atom and a certain amount of another, but it can't figure out how they all link up.

ROBERT: Right?

JAD: And he's tortured by this problem. Goes to sleep.

ROBERT: Yeah?

JAD: Has a dream of a snake biting its tail. Wakes up. Bolts right up, and says, "It's a ring. It's a ring!"

ROBERT: [laughs] Do you believe that?

JAD: I want to.

ROBERT: Well, yeah.

JAD: I mean, don't get me wrong. I hate it when people tell me their dreams. Hate it. I want to stab my eye with a fork, frankly, when people tell me their dreams. I don't know why. It just drives me ...

ROBERT: Well, I'm never gonna tell you about my dreams again.

JAD: Good.

ROBERT: [laughs] But, you know, you're not alone, because for a long time scientists have avoided studying dreams, because they think they're so random and meaningless and unstudyable.

JAD: Right.

ROBERT: But we did meet a guy ...

BOB STICKGOLD: I'm Bob Stickgold. S-T-I-C-K-G-O-L-D. I'm an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

ROBERT: ... who found an interesting way to ask the question ...

BOB STICKGOLD: Why do we dream? Simple question, very hard answer.

ROBERT: Robert Stickgold was one of the first modern scientists to take dreams seriously. And for him, it actually began kind of by accident.

BOB STICKGOLD: I had been up in Vermont with my family. We had gone and climbed Camel's Hump, one of the higher easy-to-climb mountains in Vermont. We'd gone at eight in the morning, we were back at two in the afternoon.

ROBERT: And for that whole day, he'd been up climbing on the rocks, gripping them with his hands, really climbing. Later that night ...

BOB STICKGOLD: I lie down. I close my eyes. I can feel the rocks under my hands. And I sort of startle up and I say, "Whoa, that's really bizarre!" It wasn't like I was thinking about it. I was there. I could feel the rock. I'd been off the mountain for eight hours. Nothing like that had happened. I lie down in bed for three minutes, starting to go to sleep and boom, it's there. And I tried again and I fell asleep. Two hours later, I wake up, have to go to the bathroom. I go to the bathroom. I come back, and I say, "That was way cool. I have to try that again." And I cannot get it back. What happened in those two hours to those memories that they won't intrude anymore?

BOB STICKGOLD: And then I started talking to friends, and they say, "Oh, try canoeing." Or someone else says "Try—try whitewater rafting if you want to get that." And someone else says, "Oh, hello! Take organic chemistry. And you go to bed at night, and all you see are these bloody molecules rotating in front of your eyes." Those daytime activities are affecting your dreams.

ROBERT: And that got him thinking: what exactly is the connection between what you do during the day, and what you dream at night?

JAD: What are the rules of that? He figured all right, well this replay is kind of interesting. Maybe I'll test it. But how? If I get some subjects together, what could I have them do during the day that would reliably end up in their dream?

ROBERT: Well, you can't have them all go for a hike.

JAD: Mm-mm.

BOB STICKGOLD: And I'm probably not gonna get permission to take them whitewater rafting.

JAD: Too expensive.

ROBERT: So what could he do?

BOB STICKGOLD: Sort of sat fallow for a year. And I was moaning to some of my students about how I can't think of how to do this, and someone says "Tetris." And somebody else says, "Absolutely." And I said, "What? What?" They said, "Well, don't you play Tetris?" And I say yes. Well, when you start playing Tetris, turns out when you start playing Tetris, you go to bed at night, you lie down in bed and you see Tetris pieces falling down in front of your eyes.

ROBERT: Sure.

JAD: Oh, yeah.

BOB STICKGOLD: You knew that?

JAD: Absolutely.

ROBERT: In front of your eyeballs.

BOB STICKGOLD: You guys both know that?

JAD: Oh, yeah.

BOB STICKGOLD: I got a cover of Science magazine for the first published paper on dreaming in 40 years because I discovered that, and everybody already knew it!

ROBERT: [laughs]

ROBERT: It was that simple. He got a bunch of people, put them in a room, had them play Tetris. Later that night, they woke up, and 60 percent of them were dreaming of Tetris. 60 percent!

JAD: How do you know that? I mean, just from their reports?

BOB STICKGOLD: They report. As they're falling asleep, we're monitoring them, electrophysiologically. And as they start to drift off to sleep, "Please report now."

JAD: This Tetris observation was a pretty good start in terms of getting at that question.

BOB STICKGOLD: Why do we dream?

JAD: Why do we dream? How does it work? What if, as a next step, instead of having the people report their own dreams, waking them up and doing that whole thing, what if instead, you could cut the person out of the equation entirely and go right to the source, to the dream directly?

MATT WILSON: Matt Wilson. I'm a researcher here at MIT, and I'm a neuroscientist studying learning and memory.

JAD: That's what Matt Wilson does. He takes us to the Dream Lab.

MATT WILSON: So when we first come in, what we see is this bank of monitors.

JAD: 13 monitors, all in a row.

MATT WILSON: Each monitor displaying ongoing activity in the brain, with little panels, each panel showing these ...

JAD: It's like the Kennedy Space Center, really. All the monitors have data just flashing all over them—graphs and squiggly lines and numbers. It's not immediately clear where all this information is coming from, but if you peek around the back, you'll see that all the computer wires go to one box, which then connects to a cable, which then goes up to the ceiling, over to a wall, and down into the head—into the head!—of one tiny rat.

MATT WILSON: Here he is.

JAD: He's just kind of hanging out in his own little basket.

MATT WILSON: You see him just resting.

JAD: Is that the little guy himself?

MATT WILSON: Yeah, that's him.

JAD: He looks pretty normal, except for this cable coming out of his skull. And the cable is basically a microphone, or a bunch of them, which Matt uses to eavesdrop on the brain cells inside the rat's head as they chitchat. And this is what that sounds like ...

[scratching, popping sounds]

MATT WILSON: You can hear this kind of snap-crackle-pop sound. These are individual cells that are firing.

JAD: Like right there. One of those.

MATT WILSON: And that kind of whooshing sound ...

JAD: Uh-huh?

MATT WILSON: I can tell this animal's sitting, resting quietly.

JAD: Amazingly, he says this while he has his back to the animal. He is so fluent with the Morse code language of the rat's brain cells, he doesn't even have to actually look at the animal to know what it's doing. He can just instantly decode all of that snapping.

ROBERT: Hmm.

JAD: Kind of like that guy in The Matrix, the bald guy.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, The Matrix: I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead.]

JAD: Just by listening, Matt knows when the animal is sitting, he knows when it is sleeping, he knows when it's running around in a maze, he even can tell which direction it's running.

MATT WILSON: It just happened that as we were studying these patterns while the animal ran around, after the experiments, the animals would—they would get tired, they would go to sleep. I would be there in the room, but I would continue to listen to the activity.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Wilson: Notice how it's gotten silent?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jad: Yeah.]

MATT WILSON: I began to notice that when the animals were asleep, the brain cells weren't just firing randomly. In fact, when animals would go into REM sleep ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Wilson: So now he is, in fact, going into REM right now.]

MATT WILSON: ... the pattern of activity that you could hear ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Matt Wilson: Notice that it's not these whooshes anymore.]

MATT WILSON: ... sounded very much like the pattern that the animal had just been running through. In fact, if you weren't watching the animal, you would think, "Oh, the animal has gotten up and is running around again." But then you turn and you look and you see the animal is asleep.

JAD: He checked the data, and it wasn't simply that the rat was running around in its mind while its body was asleep, it seemed to be running a specific route—the same route, in fact, that it had run earlier in the day.

ROBERT: The same sequence, same order, same everything?

MATT WILSON: Yes.

JAD: It was rerunning its maze step for step. So then he asked the next question.

MATT WILSON: Are they seeing the things that they saw while they were awake? We can actually look into these questions as a rat.

ROBERT: And? [laughs]

MATT WILSON: So the answer is we see evidence of replay in basically all of the parts of the brain that we have looked in.

JAD: They see the maze that they ran through? The very same maze?

MATT WILSON: Yes, they see the maze.

JAD: So that is dreaming, in a sense.

MATT WILSON: Well ...

JAD: They are ...

MATT WILSON: ... how do we define dreaming? So ...

JAD: Sounds like dreaming to me. I mean, I don't know. But the question remains: why would the rat or any creature do this? And so Matt came up with a simple next experiment. He decided to give the rat two mazes.

ROBERT: What would that do to its dreams of the night, or whatever you want to call them?

MATT WILSON: If they run on maze number one and then on maze number two, we see them running maze one and maze two together in a way that they did not experience when they were awake.

ROBERT: Oh!

JAD: Oh, so it's like a remix.

MATT WILSON: Exactly.

JAD: A new pattern that includes part of maze one and part of maze two.

MATT WILSON: Precisely.

JAD: Turns out that when the rat had more than one maze in its memory, it began to invent completely new mazes.

MATT WILSON: This gives us the thought that sleep is this unique opportunity to basically run through events, to put them together in ways that may not have occurred while the animals were awake. And that's what learning really is. Learning is about synthesis, about taking things that were apparently unrelated and figuring out the connection, that is figuring out the rules, the hidden rule, the undiscovered rules that will allow us to create something new.

BOB STICKGOLD: I think dreaming is a time when we try out possibilities that in waking we might not feel were worth trying. And when it really works, it can be profoundly important.

ROBERT: If Robert Stickgold is right, then how does this solving the problem thing, how does it work? How does the brain decide what to put into a dream and what to leave out of the dream?

BOB STICKGOLD: One of the interesting things about dreams is that people don't have dreams where they're word processing, where they're surfing the 'net. These things that they spent huge amounts of their day doing don't get into their dreams.

JAD: But somehow Tetris gets in there every time.

ROBERT: Every time!

JAD: And why would that be?

ROBERT: Well, he has a hunch.

JAD: Which he's actually exploring with a completely different video game.

BOB STICKGOLD: We've moved to a game called Alpine Racer, which we bought out of an arcade.

JAD: Which he showed us. Took us down the hall to the game room.

BOB STICKGOLD: Here we are.

ROBERT: And there in the corner, it stood.

JAD: Mockingly!

JAD: Oh, wow! It's a full-body game.

BOB STICKGOLD: Please step up.

ROBERT: I stepped up to the game. Got on the platform.

BOB STICKGOLD: It's still warming up.

ROBERT: And then I set off down a virtual mountain.

ROBERT: All right, I'm going downhill. I'm also a girl. I'm also avoiding the skis. Make a nice little turn there. Careful of the wall. Straight down ahead, and down we go. Oh, no the tree! [yells] We're not gonna go through the tunnel. This is a—ow! Oh, that hurt! [laughs]

ROBERT: As you can hear, this game was really stressful.

JAD: Yes.

ROBERT: Which is by design. Robert Stickgold has the theory that as you go through your day, your brain is constantly keeping track of emotions. That's the thing: emotional content. Like when you run into a virtual tree, for example, your brain is gonna flag that stuff.

BOB STICKGOLD: It's gonna flag that it's important.

ROBERT: It says, "Ooh, I need to remember this so I can work on it later. I'm gonna put a sticky on this one."

BOB STICKGOLD: So if it puts a sticky on everything that's hard during the day, then all the brain has to do when it's creating a dream is go and grab stickies.

ROBERT: Oh, and then I died! But I died nice.

BOB STICKGOLD: Just for the record, you got further than Jad on your first try.

JAD: Wow! Wow! It's like "Aaaah" and it's over. [laughs]

ROBERT: [laughs] Could you say that again?

JAD: Well, so you have people play Alpine Racer for 45-minute bursts throughout the day. What happens next? You wake them up?

BOB STICKGOLD: We monitor their brain activity. And just as they're falling asleep, within the first two minutes after they fall asleep, we'll wake them up.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, loudspeaker voice: Please report now.]

BOB STICKGOLD: There's a microphone right next to them on their bed, and they just report what was going through their minds.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: I was just thinking about skiing.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Skiing.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Skiing.]

BOB STICKGOLD: And we get on the first night up to 40 percent of all the reports being about skiing.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: And the game that I've been playing.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Alpine Ski Racer, I guess.]

BOB STICKGOLD: 40 percent. Almost half of them. And that's right up there with what I would expect to see after trauma where something has been labeled so intensely that the brain says, "Okay, it's obvious what's on the agenda for tonight."

JAD: Stickgold thinks he's seeing the outline of the dream-making process here. It starts really simply at the very beginning of sleep. Like, right after you fall asleep?

ROBERT: Hmm.

JAD: With the replay. This, he suspects, is just the brain emptying out its stickies.

ROBERT: Things that really intrigued me during the day, that I felt during the day.

JAD: Yeah. But ...

BOB STICKGOLD: What happens if we let the people go to sleep, sleep two hours like I did in that very first time after climbing the mountain, wake them up after two hours of sleep?

ROBERT: Because remember, he couldn't get back the memory of the rocks after he'd spent two hours asleep.

JAD: That's right. And what he's found is that if you fast-forward two hours into the dream ...

BOB STICKGOLD: Get almost no reports of skiing at all.

JAD: ... the replay seems to dissolve into a remix.

BOB STICKGOLD: We start getting reports like, "Oh, I dreamt I was sliding down a hill."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Like I'm going downhill.]

BOB STICKGOLD: "Just rolling down a hill."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Downward motion.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: I was thinking about—I was about to say downhill banana.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: I was thinking about skateboarding.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: I was thinking about ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: I was thinking about a bunch of bananas.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Doing yoga on a ski slope.]

BOB STICKGOLD: Someone else had a dream that they were rushing through a forest with their body incredibly stiff and their legs not moving at all, as if they were on a conveyor belt.

JAD: It's like as the dream goes on, the brain is starting to free associate. "What do I have in my past that has anything to do with mountains, anything to do with crashing or skiing, anything at all that can help me?"

BOB STICKGOLD: What do I have in all my memories—in my case from the last 60 years—that fits associatively, thematically?

JAD: And the result? Well, it might seem random—it is—but every so often, he says, you come up with the right answer.

BOB STICKGOLD: So now we get to your dreams of people discovering the structure of benzene. Kekulé was his name.

JAD: Kekulé, actually, was his name.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: August Kekulé.

ROBERT: That's close.

JAD: He was a German guy I talked about earlier who had a dream of a snake eating its tail, and realized from that dream that the shape of the benzene molecule is a ring. I don't know if that dream is true, but maybe that is, in fact, the point of dreaming. It's this time when you shut off the outside, turn inside, take the problems that you've got and start to really work on them. Pull them apart, make connections that you wouldn't normally make during the day.

ROBERT: However, have you ever wondered why it would be necessary when solving problems like this to dream so vividly?

JAD: Hmm.

ROBERT: Are you at all puzzled by the super-duper Technicolor, extraordinarily cinematic quality of some of these things? Because If it were just an everyday brain function to sort of make sense of the world and allow you to make new connections, you really wouldn't need quite the movie quality.

BOB STICKGOLD: So when we talk about dreams, what seems to come into dreams are memories, concepts, relationships, associations that have a strong emotional flavor. And I'm guessing from the data need a full-blown orchestration to be properly processed. And it is, it's Technicolor. The colors are overwhelming, almost.

JAD: So if I hear you right, what you're saying to Robert's question about why are the dreams so vivid is that I don't know, but maybe the vividness helps?

BOB STICKGOLD: That whole long answer is what a Harvard professor says instead of saying "I don't know."

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: [laughs]

LATIF: All right. That's all we got for today. If you'd like to learn anything more about what you heard in today's show, please visit Radiolab.org.

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Suneen, and I'm from Oakland, California. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Valentina Powers, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Erica in Yonkers. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

-30-

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.

# included[].attributes.body
High above the banks of the Mississippi River, a nest holds the secret life of one of America’s most patriotic creatures. Their story puzzles scientists, reinforces Indigenous wisdom, and wows audiences—all thanks to a park ranger named Ed and a well-placed webcam. If you want to spoil the mystery, here ya go: it’s a bald eagle. Actually, it’s three bald eagles. A mama bird and daddies make a home together for over a decade and give new meaning to our national symbol.

Learn about the storytellers, listen to music, and dig deeper into the stories you hear on Terrestrials with activities you can do at home or in the classroom on our website, Terrestrialspodcast.org.

Watch “I Wanna Hear the Eagle” and find even MORE original Terrestrials fun on our YouTube.

And badger us on Social Media: @radiolab and #TerrestrialsPodcast.

Special thanks to Abigail Miller, Laurel Braitman, Stan Bousson, Molly Webster and Maria Paz Gutiérrez.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

EPISODE CREDITS:

Reported by - Ana González and Lulu Miller
with help from - Alan Goffinski
Produced by - Ana González, Alan Goffinski, and Lulu Miller
with help from - Suzie Lechtenberg, Sarah Sandbach, Natalia Ramirez, and Sarita Bhatt
Original music and sound design contributed by - Alan Goffinski and Mira Burt-Wintonick
with mixing help from - Joe Plourde and Jeremy Bloom
Fact-checking by - Diane Kelly
and Edited by  - Mira Burt-Wintonick

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Videos -
Check out The Trio Bald Eagle Nest Cam yourself!

Did you know it’s illegal to keep a bald eagle feather? Learn more in this AWESOME short video about the National Eagle Repository.

Articles -
An interview with Nataanii Means in Native Maxx Magazine

The funny history of how the bald eagle became America’s national symbol

An article called “Dirty Birds” about what it’s actually like to live with America’s national symbol.

Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Draw:
Journey up into the clouds like an eagle with a special drawing prompt made by artist Wendy Mac and the DrawTogether team that will get you thinking about the weather (both inside and out).

Play 🎶:
Learn how to play the chords to the song “I WANT TO HEAR THE EAGLE.”

Do:
Get crafty with a fun activity sheet!

This week’s storytellers are Ed Britton and Nataanii Means.

Our advisors are Theanne Griffith, Aliyah Elijah, Dominique Shabazz, Liza Steinberg-Demby and Tara Welty.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

# included[].attributes.image-main.alt-text
A woman standing on a branch watching three eagles in flight.

# included[].attributes.show-tease
Investigating a strange world.

# included[].attributes.tease
Look up in the sky! It is something that scientists thought could never happen.

# included[].attributes.transcript
[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LULU MILLER: Three, two, one.

NATAANII MEANS: Imagine your skin turned to feathers.

LULU: Long, dark brown feathers. And your arms stretched to over twice the size of your body, and catch the wind.

NATAANII MEANS: And you're higher than the airplanes.

LULU: You're soaring through the clouds.

NATAANII MEANS: And you're feeling the cold air go through your feathers.

LULU: Suddenly, you start dive bombing down, down.

NATAANII MEANS: And you drag your wings along the water of the lake.

LULU: Your feet curl and grow talons. And you—fwoop!—catch a fish, which you then devour with your ...

ED BRITTON: Very sharp beak.

LULU: On your very white head.

ED BRITTON: You are a bald eagle now!

NATAANII MEANS: In our language, we say "wambli."

LATIF NASSER: Uh, I think I might be in the wrong room here.

LULU: [laughs] You are not. Latif, you're not. You're not in the wrong room.

LATIF: What was that? Yeah.

LULU: That was the first minute of an episode of Terrestrials.

LATIF: Okay.

LULU: Which is Radiolab's family-friendly nature show.

LATIF: I've heard of it.

LULU: Uh-huh.

LATIF: So welcome to—say I'm Latif Nasser.

LULU: I'm Lulu Miller.

LATIF: This is Radiolab. Yeah.

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: Keep going.

LULU: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm bringing you one of these today. We're gonna play one today because I'm here to announce we are rebooting the Radiolab for Kids feed.

LATIF: Ba-ba-da-ba!

LULU: Ba-da-da! It is every two weeks there's gonna be a new episode. We've got brand new Terrestrials episodes coming in about a month.

LATIF: Ba-ba-da-ba!

LULU: [laughs] But whenever you go in there, you will get some family-friendly nature content. And we're gonna keep this going all over the year. I'll be doing little intros, and we've kind of curated it to feel like a nature walk, so, like, whichever episode you pick, you're—it's a trailhead, and you go down this nature walk and you encounter something wild about the world. And yes, it is a family-friendly show, but we also think there's stuff in there for anyone. And so, you know, if you like nature, if you don't mind the occasional singing from me and our team. [laughs]

LATIF: Which we here in the main Radiolab feed, we work hard to protect you from, listener.

LULU: Yeah. [laughs] But if you want a glimpse of what it's all about, go check it out! Go see if it's for you. It might not be, but go check it out. And I'm really excited about it. I'm really excited about it.

LATIF: Right.

LULU: Anyway, and then I chose this episode of all of them because it's about the bald eagle because we are just kicking off the summer Olympics and if you look closely on those Team USA uniforms, on some of them you will see the bald eagle.

LATIF: No kidding!

LULU: Mm-hmm! Our national mascot, our national symbol.

LATIF: Which uniforms?

LULU: Okay. So this year, the men's gymnastics unitard.

LATIF: Okay.

LULU: For the finals event has some shimmery eagle feathers. The mens skateboarders, they are rocking the eagle ...

LATIF: Unitards?

LULU: ... on a few of their jerseys. No, they've got more t-shirts, they've got some tanks. The eagle appears in different forms.

LATIF: All right. All right.

LULU: So it's there. And I just thought, as we, you know, go forth with these athletic chests competing in the world, emblazoned with the eagle, it might be nice to hear a story that lets us see another side of our national mascot. It's a story that takes you into the wild and shows you a kind of deeper scientific truth about the bald eagle than at least I ever realized. And it has a really neat kind of animal encounter of people witnessing something that scientists thought could not happen in nature. So yeah, so that's the episode we're gonna do.

LATIF: I can vouch it's a great episode. Yeah, anything else you wanna say before we start?

LULU: It's called "The Trio" over on the Terrestrials feed, but I will give you the insider knowledge that we wanted to call it "The Treesome." [laughs] Which is a—which is a pun that we opted not to make.

LATIF: It felt too racy?

LULU: A little too racy. And our producer Ana González came up with that, so in my heart it's called "The Treesome," so let's call it "The Treesome" today.

LATIF: Okay. Great. All right.

LULU: All right. So here we go. Picking back up with the moment I force on all unsuspecting guests.

LULU: All right! Now is the time when I make you sing the theme song with me.

ED BRITTON: Oh, let's do it!

LULU: [singing] Terrestrials, Terrestrials! We are not the worst, we're the ...

ED BRITTON: Oh, the best!

LULU: Best-rials! Yeah, you got it!

LULU: Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness waiting right here on Earth, and sometimes break out into song.

[Theme song: There's so much to discover when you fly real high. Terrestrials, Terrestrials.]

LULU: [singing] So reach out your wings and ride the sky! Terrestrials, Terrestrials!

LULU: Good voices not required. I am your host, Lulu Miller, joined as always by my songbud ...

ALAN GOFFINSKI: Tweet tweet!

LULU: ... Alan!

ALAN: Hello!

LULU: And today we are talking about the bald eagle!

LULU: That's right! America's national symbol. You'll find it on quarters and dollar bills and presidential flags and military insignias. This glowering bird of prey with an intimidating brow bone, razor-sharp beak and terrifying talons meant to convey to the world a ferocious fight to the death: independence.

LULU: But today we've got a story about a man who looked up into the trees and saw something that suggests we may have this big birdie kind of wrong.

ED BRITTON: Yeah! Well, glad to connect! [laughs]

LULU: This is our guy in question, Ed.

ED BRITTON: Ed Britton.

LULU: He is a wildlife biologist who works for the government, helping to protect a stretch of forest alongside the Mississippi River in Illinois. And one chilly day in January of 2013, he was patrolling the banks near this part of the river where the water rushes over a huge dam, almost like a waterfall.

ED BRITTON: That water is busting over that dam.

LULU: And so are fish. Which means at the bottom of that waterfall, uh ...

ED BRITTON: All the fish, they're either stunned or they're dead.

LULU: Ugh!

ED BRITTON: And that attracts hundreds of bald eagles.

LULU: Huh!

ED BRITTON: There's so much food there, it's all you can eat.

LULU: And that January day, Ed looks up into the trees above the dam and sees something ...

ED BRITTON: Strange!

LULU: It looks like there are three bald eagles sitting together near one nest.

ED BRITTON: Yes.

LULU: And to Ed's eye, it appears to be one female and ...

ED BRITTON: Two males.

LULU: But he thought there was no way that could be, because everything he'd learned in his scientific training said that if you were to put two males nearby each other ...

ED BRITTON: There's gonna be trouble.

LULU: They were said to squawk and claw so viciously, it sometimes resulted in death.

ED BRITTON: That's how territorial they are.

LULU: Wow!

LULU: And this reputation for do-or-die aggression is one of the main reasons the Founding Fathers chose the bald eagle as America's national symbol, back in 1782.

NATAANII MEANS: I think maybe the first Europeans that came here seen the power of eagles.

LULU: That's Nataanii Means, a hip-hop artist who's Indigenous. And he says that his ancestors from the Oglala Lakota and Diné tribes had admired the bald eagle long before the Founding Fathers showed up.

NATAANII MEANS: The eagle, to us, is very sacred.

LULU: Though for slightly different reasons.

NATAANII MEANS: It's the highest in the sky. It's the closest to Creator.

LULU: It was seen as a messenger between worlds, and a healer.

NATAANII MEANS: We carried eagle feathers that can help in healing ceremonies. They take a lot of our illnesses away.

LULU: Now the Founding Fathers weren't as focused on the potential healing in the feathers as they were in the potential fight in the talons. So they began carving images of the bird on swords and battleships to warn the world that they were not afraid to fight to the death to protect their newly-claimed territory.

ED BRITTON: So they were up in a tree about 100 feet high.

LULU: So back to Ed, squinting up at what seemed to be two male bald eagles and a female cozying up together, he just couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.

ED BRITTON: It's so difficult because that nest is so high up.

LULU: And then the nesting season ends, the birds fly away, and he figures that's probably it.

ED BRITTON: Mm-hmm.

LULU: Except the next year, he swears he sees the trio again. And the next year?

ED BRITTON: Again!

LULU: Now people didn't always believe Ed when he told them what he was seeing. But then, in 2016, this trio of bald eagles happened to flutter down and begin nesting in a tree that was next to a webcam.

NELL: I just thought that cam was so unique!

LULU: This is Nell, a webcam watcher from Jacksonville, Florida.

NELL: You know, because eagles don't usually—three's company.

LULU: [laughs]

LULU: And in an instant, there was no more doubt. The three ferocious birds of prey were living peacefully as a trio!

CHRISTINE: I think people were just coming together over that fact that it was something different.

LULU: Another cam watcher, Christine from New Hampshire.

CHRISTINE: It was great to be able to look in on it and say, "Wow, what the heck's going on now?" You know?

LULU: It was quickly confirmed that it was indeed two males and a female.

ED BRITTON: The female's bigger.

LULU: Huh!

ED BRITTON: You know, she's several pounds bigger. I call her the Boss. [laughs]

LULU: Webcam viewers named her ...

NELL: Hope.

LULU: And they named the males ...

ED BRITTON: Valor One.

LULU: And ...

ED BRITTON: Valor Two.

LULU: "Valor" meaning, like, courage?

ED BRITTON: Yes. Uh-huh.

LULU: How do you tell the males apart?

ED BRITTON: You know, we don't like to body shame them, but they call Valor One "Skinny Legs."

LULU: [laughs] Okay. Does Valor Two have any look?

ED BRITTON: He has a dark spot in his eye, and it's very unique.

LULU: Ooh!

LULU: Thousands of people started tuning in ...

NELL: I had them on my computer from the time I turned the computer on to the time I turned the computer off.

LULU: ... watching in crystal-clear detail this thing that scientists—and patriots—thought could never happen.

LULU: I mean, did you ever see it where all three of them were, like, snuggled into the nest together at the same time?

ED BRITTON: Oh, yes. Yes, absolutely.

LULU: Yeah?

ED BRITTON: Oh yes. Yep.

LULU: Wow!

LULU: By day they took turns tidying the nest, bringing one another food.

ED BRITTON: Mostly fish, but we also saw ducks.

LULU: Whole ducks?

ED BRITTON: Yup! We saw parts of deer.

LULU: Hmm!

LULU: And after many cold winter nights keeping each other warm in that nest, come February, three white eggs appeared—doot doot doot. Would they hatch? Find out after this short break.

LATIF: Latif.

LULU: Lulu.

LATIF: Radi-back with The Terrestrials story on bald eagles on Radiolab.

LULU: Yes. Okay, so now it is early spring in Illinois, and up about a hundred feet in a nest, three bald eagle parents have just welcomed on camera, for all the world to see—crack, crack, crack—three baby eaglets!

CHRISTINE: You know, they were so tiny. Oh my—and so adorable!

ED BRITTON: Yes, indeed! [laughs]

LULU: And as biologist Ed watches these three parents caring for their babies, two of them standing guard while one goes off to hunt, all six of the birds nuzzling down in the nest at night ...

ED BRITTON: They were the happiest family.

LULU: ... he starts thinking about why this unusual trio actually makes sense. Because see, Hope had been trying to make a family for years before she linked up with the two daddies. And this is a little sad, but she had a hard time. Her babies sometimes got cold or fell out of the nest when she was away hunting, and they didn't always make it.

ED BRITTON: Yeah. It was awfully sad.

LULU: And those losses were huge, because bald eagles had been endangered—almost extinct—so every birth mattered.

ED BRITTON: Where I grew up in southern Illinois, we never saw bald eagles. That was back in the '40s and the '50s. I'm—I'm elderly. [laughs]

LULU: Humans had almost wiped out bald eagles from hunting them, cutting down their forests, using chemicals. But as Ed grew up, he was a part of the group of people who tried everything they could think of to save bald eagles: they protected forests and banned hunting of bald eagles, and stopped using chemicals that harmed them. But, looking up at the trees, he realized it was like this trio of eagles had come up with a brilliant technique all of their own.

CHRISTINE: To be able to witness it, that's the miracle. You know, it doesn't have to be a traditional family for it to work!

LULU: And by June, as the forest turned soft with green leaves, one by one, each of the three eaglets, with newly lanky wings, tested the air and leapt away.

ALAN: [singing] So long mom and dad and dad, I've had a blast. Now I'm leaving this nest. So long mom and dad and dad. It's been real, it's been fun, but now I gotta run! And by run I mean fly, so I'm saying goodbye. Gonna start a new life full of wild excitement and danger!

LULU: Danger! Year after year, those three parents stay together, fledging more and more eaglets, and in the process challenging scientists' notions about what a natural family looks like. Until one cold evening in March, Hope screams out.

NELL: Eagles, when they alert, they have a certain call to one another.

LULU: That's webcam watcher Nell again.

NELL: I saw Hope looking up into the sky, and you could see she was tracking. And then she started doing her alert call to her partners to come, you know—to come see what's going on.

LULU: And what's going on is that two stranger eagles were dive bombing the nest, attacking Hope and her two newest babies.

ED BRITTON: Our phone lines light up.

LULU: With people saying ...

ED BRITTON: "Oh my gosh, something terrible has just happened! You've gotta get out there and do something."

LULU: Ed flips on his live feed of the cam and sees ...

ED BRITTON: A very large bird, which we believed to be a female, was on the back of Hope.

LULU: Her talons were digging into Hope's shoulders.

CHRISTINE: There's no dads on the nest.

LULU: The dads are both down on the ground, fighting off the other invading eagle.

CHRISTINE: The two babies, they didn't look good.

LULU: They looked scared of this huge eagle attacking their mom.

NELL: I wanted to reach through the computer monitor and grab that other eagle, is what I wanted to do.

ED BRITTON: And they struggled for over an hour.

NELL: The last thing I saw was Hope and her going off the nest. They just—they basically dragged one another off one side of the nest and went down to the ground.

LULU: Ed and his team rush out into the forest to search around on the ground for Hope. But meanwhile, up in that nest, those babies are all alone.

CHRISTINE: It looked like they hadn't been fed for a while. They were ragged, they were weak.

LULU: And then suddenly—doo doo doo doo!

NELL: I saw the dads taking over, Valor One and Valor Two, like little troopers!

LULU: The dads fly back up into the nest to defend their babies.

CHRISTINE: It was such a relief that they were there.

LULU: But right on their tails are the two invading eagles. They return and they keep attacking.

ED BRITTON: They wanted to kill everything up there and take the nest over.

LULU: The sun rises, and the attackers keep at it for days, weeks! But those dads?

CHRISTINE: They just defended that nest with their lives, not caring what happened to them, but caring for those little baby eaglets.

LULU: Oh!

ED BRITTON: And the two dads, Valor One and Valor Two, valiantly, very valiantly, fought off this pair of eagles.

LULU: Wow!

ED BRITTON: And after about three weeks, the attacks finally ended.

LULU: Hope was never seen again. Nobody's sure exactly what happened to her, but those two dads stayed with their babies. As the air grew warm, as yellow and purple flowers began poking their way up through the dirt, and kids began fishing on the Mississippi River, the dads kept watch over their chicks, bringing them food and keeping them warm at night. Until finally, come June ...

ED BRITTON: The two chicks ended up growing and leaving the nest. It was extremely happy. Yes, indeed. We gave them the Greatest Dads Award of the Year.

LULU: Ed says he was totally shocked by how things unfolded, by how caring and collaborative the two dads were together.

ED BRITTON: And this is just one incredible survival story that I would've never fathomed in my career.

NATAANII MEANS: There's a lot that people don't know about eagles.

LULU: This is Nataanii again.

NATAANII MEANS: They're very compassionate.

LULU: And what Ed learned from watching the trio, Nataanii learned from his family and culture.

NATAANII MEANS: The first time I saw an eagle, he was huge, man. Huge! I went home and I told my dad, you know, "Hey, I seen an eagle today." And then he sat me down and he said, "When an eagle chooses a mate, they're together for life. They're always taking care of the family."

LULU: It was then that Nataanii first learned about the bald eagle's softer side, how the creature isn't only about fighting.

NATAANII MEANS: But it's also a symbol of love and relationship.

LULU: And that's why in the Lakota Tradition, you can earn a bald eagle feather if you do something particularly caring.

NATAANII MEANS: It could be a lot of things, you know, it could be, you know, being a social worker or a nurse that saves lives. Just anything. Anything you do that's selfless and not for yourself, but for the people, so that people may live.

LULU: Nataanii gets some eagle feathers out that he got from different ceremonies, and begins brushing them over his face.

NATAANII MEANS: [laughs] Feels good. Gives me chills.

LULU: And he tells me about a really bad day a few years back when he just felt lonely, like no one cared about him.

NATAANII MEANS: I was sitting right here in this spot. There was a bunch of eagle feathers sitting right here. I was like, "I got eagle feathers protecting me. These eagle feathers, protecting me, protecting ..."

LULU: A song started coming to him.

NATAANII MEANS: So then I just started writing, and it just came out.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nataanii Means: Yeah, I got these eagle feathers protecting me. I got these eagle feathers ...]

LULU: He said that when he thinks about how these creatures behave in myths and the wild ...

NATAANII MEANS: When I fan myself off—when I—when I bring these over my face, you know, it's like I feel a connection to these birds. And this might sound funny, it might sound off, but I feel a connection to my ancestors. I do! Like, I don't have to be lost because I feel love.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nataanii Means: I got these eagle feathers protecting me. Yeah, I got these eagle feathers ...]

LULU: When I tell him the story of how caring those dads in the trio were observed to be, he's not surprised.

NATAANII MEANS: Oh no, yeah. Science—science is catching up to Indigenous philosophies for sure. [laughs]

LULU: Now as for the end of our eagle story, when a trio loses one of its members, that's it for the trio, right?

ED BRITTON: Oh no! No. [laughs]

LULU: Because it turned out that the next fall, the two dads returned with a new female!

ED BRITTON: And we—we were just going, "How did you do that?"

LULU: [laughs] So if I went right now, like, could I—could I peek?

ED BRITTON: You sure could. Yup.

LULU: I pull up the live feed of the nest.

LULU: So I'm looking at it right now. So I see this—it's winter, so it's a tree without leaves. And there are all these ...

LULU: And some four years later, that new trio is still together. As Ed and I talked, we could see them up there in the nest together.

LULU: And I see the white head and the yellow beak of an eagle.

ED BRITTON: She—she's just laying eggs.

LULU: Wow!

LULU: All told, the two dads have lived together in a trio for about a decade, fledged about 20 eaglets, and been a part of the story that—along with some human help—brought the number of bald eagles back from near-extinction and got them off the endangered species list.

ED BRITTON: [laughs] Yeah. I look at this as probably one of the greatest wildlife success stories that we've ever had in the United States.

LULU: And as for that trio being an outlier? Is that the only trio of bald eagles there is?

CRYSTAL SLUSHER: It is not.

LULU: That's Crystal Slusher. She works for the American Eagle Foundation. And in her spare time, she's an amateur birder.

LULU: Do you have a pair of binoculars around your neck?

CRYSTAL SLUSHER: I carry a pair of binoculars in my car.

LULU: Well, one day about four years ago, Crystal was out fishing with her husband.

CRYSTAL SLUSHER: In Dandridge, Tennessee.

LULU: On a lake.

CRYSTAL SLUSHER: I knew about a nest there prior to going fishing, and I—I've checked it out a couple of times and I never really saw anything abnormal. But the day that I was out there, I saw three eagles perched together.

LULU: And they seemed calm, almost familiar with each other. And when she got a better look through her binocs, it looked to her like ...

CRYSTAL SLUSHER: Two males and one female.

LULU: ... another trio! And while Crystal says ...

CRYSTAL SLUSHER: They're not really famous. You know, they're certainly not the Valor One, Valor Two.

LULU: Level of celebrity? [laughs]

CRYSTAL SLUSHER: Right!

LULU: She says they do have their own local fans who have photographed them and named the female "Bandit." And she hopes one day they too can get a webcam.

LULU: And so those two trios, that's it, though, right? That we know about?

CRYSTAL SLUSHER: Oh, definitely not. There were some observed in Alaska in 1977, in Minnesota in 1983.

ED BRITTON: There is a trio in New York.

CRYSTAL SLUSHER: And then California in 1992.

ED BRITTON: There's one in Arkansas.

LULU: Both Crystal and Ed, after first learning about their trios, started geeking out on research and found, buried in the footnotes of science books and history books, these occasional sightings of other bald eagle trios. And they realized that maybe this quote-unquote 'cooperative nesting,' as the scientists call it, was not as uncommon as they thought.

ED BRITTON: I think we'd probably be amazed if we really knew all of the unique things that happened with wildlife, because we just don't know the secrets in their life.

LULU: Ed says this whole experience really flipped his understanding of bald eagles. Helped him to see that in a certain way, he had been blinded by the eagle on the quarter, blinded by the story of the bird as a ferocious and independent being.

LULU: Would you ever call what—what's happening between these birds "love?"

ED BRITTON: Absolutely. Absolutely.

LULU: Oh, you would?

ED BRITTON: Oh, absolutely.

LULU: You would?

ED BRITTON: Yes, indeed.

LULU: You don't shy away from that—that word?

ED BRITTON: Not whatsoever.

LULU: Between animals?

ED BRITTON: No. No. It's family bonding, and that happens. You know, love is family. I see nothing wrong with saying "loving animals."

LULU: All right. Thanks so much, Ed.

LULU: Oh no. Songbud's got a mohawk and an electric guitar.

[ALAN: [singing] I wanna hear the eagle! Now multiply that by three-gle! Yeah, I wanna hear the eagle! Now I wanna hear all three-gle!]

[ALAN: [singing] I know it's not only me-gle. I'm sure you agree-gle. Would be awesome to see-gle. All them up in a tree-gle, or in the sky flying free-gle. So I'm down on my knee-gle.]

[ALAN: [singing] I'm begging and plea-gle. I wanna hear the eagles. Not a hunting beagle. Not a manatee-gle. Yeah, I wanna hear the eagles!]

[ALAN: [singing] I wanna hear the eagle! Now multiply that by three-gle! I wanna hear the eagle! Now I wanna hear all three-gle!]

LULU: Alan Goffinski, everyone!

LULU: Terrestrials was created by me, Lulu Miller, with WNYC Studios. It is produced by the very talon-ted—like talons? Talons? Ana González and Alan Goffinski and me, with help from Suzie Lechtenberg, Sarah Sandbach, Natalia Ramirez, Miriam Barnard, Joe Plourde, Diane Kelly and Sarita Bhatt. Sound design and additional editorial guidance by Mira Burt-Wintonic.

LULU: And that's it! You should stop listening. Why are you still listening? Who listens to ...

LULU: Oh! What's that?

BADGER: Excuse me, I have a question.

BADGER: Me too.

BADGER: Me three.

BADGER: Me four.

LULU: The badgers! They're listeners with badgering questions for the expert.

LULU: Are you ready?

ED BRITTON: Yep!

HUXLEY: Hi! My name is Huxley, and I'm seven years old. And my question is: why don't bald eagles have butts?

ED BRITTON: Well, they—they do have butts. I've seen many bald eagle butts. [laughs]

LULU: [laughs] Okay.

ED BRITTON: I'm not proud of that, but I have seen many bald eagle butts.

CYAN: Hi! My name is Cyan, and I'm 12. My question is: What is an average wingspan of an eagle?

ED BRITTON: Eight feet.

LULU: Whew! That's like a person and a half.

ED BRITTON: Yeah.

WOODY: My name is Woody, and I am six years old. Can I have a pet bald eagle?

ED BRITTON: Only if it's a stuffed animal! [laughs]

JAMIE LEE CURTIS: Hi, it's Jamie Lee Curtis. What is the strangest thing you've ever seen on the webcam?

ED BRITTON: We got these little mice that run around.

LULU: Okay?

ED BRITTON: And they just aggravate the heck out of the eagles. [laughs]

LULU: Wait. There's actual mice—are up there?

ED BRITTON: There's mice in the nest. Yes.

LULU: But why don't the eagles eat them?

ED BRITTON: They're too fast!

LULU: Why would a mouse live up there of all places? That feels so dangerous!

ED BRITTON: There's lots of food up there. It's kind of like a hide-and-seek game, I think, for the mice.

LULU: Man!

ED BRITTON: I think they enjoy it.

LULU: You—you've buried the lede. Maybe the story here to tell is about those mice!

LULU: Gonna leave it there, with the world's most brazen mice that choose to live inside a bald eagle nest and not tell you the super gross thing that because eagles don't have teeth, they—slurp!—slurp down the creatures they eat whole, and then spit out the bones, hair and scales in a lovely pellet. And some people even theorize they swallow rocks to use as gross rock teeth inside their gizzards to help them with the chewing. Not gonna tell you that 'cause I'm nice!

LATIF: Reminding you if you want to hear more Terrestrials episodes or Radiolabs about nature, head on over to the Radiolab For Kids feed. We have a lot of stuff there, and more stuff coming this fall.

LULU: And finally, if there are any teachers out there, we have worked with educators and PBS Learning Media to make free classroom handouts—activities, discussion prompts, really fun activities that all actually accord with national curriculum standards on science literacy. We have them for grades K through eight. Totally free. You can find them on our website, RadiolabForKids.org.

LATIF: Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, the Kalliopeia Foundation and the Templeton Foundation. Thank you so much!

LULU: All right!

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Rhianne, and I'm from Donegal in Ireland. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Valentina Powers, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, my name's Michael Smith. I'm calling from Pennington, New Jersey. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

-30-

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].bio
Latif Nasser is co-host of the award-winning WNYC Studios show Radiolab, where he has reported stories on everything from snowflake photography to medieval robots to a polar bear who liked to have sex with grizzly bears. Earlier this year, he hosted the miniseries The Other Latif, about his Moroccan namesake who happens to be Detainee 244 at Guantanamo Bay.

In addition to his work in audio, Latif is the host and executive producer of the Netflix science documentary series, Connected.  He has also given two TED talks, and written for the Boston Globe Ideas section. He has a PhD from Harvard's History of Science department.

Follow Latif on Twitter.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].lede
Latif Nasser is co-host of the award-winning WNYC Studios show Radiolab.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].shows[].about.body
About Radiolab

Radiolab is on a curiosity bender. We ask deep questions and use investigative journalism to get the answers. A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. The show is known for innovative sound design, smashing information into music. It is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser.

Radiolab is available on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check your local station for airtimes. It's also available via the CBC, ABC, and the BBC.

Follow Radiolab on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Contact Radiolab using this form.

Apply to become a Radiolab intern!

Embed the Radiolab widget on your blog or website.

All press inquiries may be directed to Jennifer Houlihan Roussel at (646) 829-4497.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].shows[].about.people[].image.alt-text
Producer Sarah Qari, smiling and standing proudly in the foreground of a field of sunflowers.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].shows[].description
About Radiolab

Radiolab is on a curiosity bender. We ask deep questions and use investigative journalism to get the answers. A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. The show is known for innovative sound design, smashing information into music. It is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser.

Radiolab is available on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check your local station for airtimes. It's also available via the CBC, ABC, and the BBC.

Follow Radiolab on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Contact Radiolab using this form.

Apply to become a Radiolab intern!

Embed the Radiolab widget on your blog or website.

All press inquiries may be directed to Jennifer Houlihan Roussel at (646) 829-4497.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].shows[].tease
Investigating a strange world.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].lede
Annie grew up in Dunrobin, Ontario, headed east for school and ended up in St. John's, Newfoundland. It was there that she fell under the patient mentorship of Chris Brookes at Battery Radio who taught her about sound and tape. She furthered her studies in radio at the Transom Story Workshop and then, under a series of confounding and improbable events, she ended up at Radiolab. She loves it here. When she's not cutting tape she likes to be outside.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].lede
Matt started at Radiolab as an intern. Now he works here as a Senior Producer. Around and in-between those two things, he lived in Minnesota, attended school in Arizona, tried to find himself, lived in Washington D.C., learned radio from Rob Rosenthal at the Salt Institute for Documentaries Studies, hung around This American Life, was awarded the Above the Fray fellowship to report in Uganda, and had a metal plate screwed into his wrist.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].bio
Latif Nasser is co-host of the award-winning WNYC Studios show Radiolab, where he has reported stories on everything from snowflake photography to medieval robots to a polar bear who liked to have sex with grizzly bears. Earlier this year, he hosted the miniseries The Other Latif, about his Moroccan namesake who happens to be Detainee 244 at Guantanamo Bay.

In addition to his work in audio, Latif is the host and executive producer of the Netflix science documentary series, Connected.  He has also given two TED talks, and written for the Boston Globe Ideas section. He has a PhD from Harvard's History of Science department.

Follow Latif on Twitter.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].lede
Latif Nasser is co-host of the award-winning WNYC Studios show Radiolab.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].shows[].about.body
About Radiolab

Radiolab is on a curiosity bender. We ask deep questions and use investigative journalism to get the answers. A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. The show is known for innovative sound design, smashing information into music. It is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser.

Radiolab is available on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check your local station for airtimes. It's also available via the CBC, ABC, and the BBC.

Follow Radiolab on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Contact Radiolab using this form.

Apply to become a Radiolab intern!

Embed the Radiolab widget on your blog or website.

All press inquiries may be directed to Jennifer Houlihan Roussel at (646) 829-4497.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].shows[].about.people[].image.alt-text
Producer Sarah Qari, smiling and standing proudly in the foreground of a field of sunflowers.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].shows[].description
About Radiolab

Radiolab is on a curiosity bender. We ask deep questions and use investigative journalism to get the answers. A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. The show is known for innovative sound design, smashing information into music. It is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser.

Radiolab is available on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check your local station for airtimes. It's also available via the CBC, ABC, and the BBC.

Follow Radiolab on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Contact Radiolab using this form.

Apply to become a Radiolab intern!

Embed the Radiolab widget on your blog or website.

All press inquiries may be directed to Jennifer Houlihan Roussel at (646) 829-4497.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].shows[].tease
Investigating a strange world.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].lede
Annie grew up in Dunrobin, Ontario, headed east for school and ended up in St. John's, Newfoundland. It was there that she fell under the patient mentorship of Chris Brookes at Battery Radio who taught her about sound and tape. She furthered her studies in radio at the Transom Story Workshop and then, under a series of confounding and improbable events, she ended up at Radiolab. She loves it here. When she's not cutting tape she likes to be outside.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].lede
Matt started at Radiolab as an intern. Now he works here as a Senior Producer. Around and in-between those two things, he lived in Minnesota, attended school in Arizona, tried to find himself, lived in Washington D.C., learned radio from Rob Rosenthal at the Salt Institute for Documentaries Studies, hung around This American Life, was awarded the Above the Fray fellowship to report in Uganda, and had a metal plate screwed into his wrist.

# included[].attributes.body
To celebrate the imminent start of the Summer Olympic Games in Paris, France, we have an episode originally reported in 2016. No matter what sport you play, the object of the game is to win. And that’s hard enough to do, but we found a match where four top athletes had to do the opposite in one of the most high-profile matches of their careers. Thanks to a quirk in the tournament rules, their best shot at winning was … to lose.

This week, in honor of the 2024 Summer Olympics, we scrutinize the most paradoxical and upside down badminton match of all time—a match that dumbfounded spectators, officials, and even the players themselves. And it got us to wondering: what would sports look like if everyone played to lose?

Special thanks to Aparna Nancherla, Mark Phelan, Yuni Kartika, Greysia Polii, Joy Le Li, Mikyoung Kim, Stan Bischof, Vincent Liew, Kota Morikowa, Christ de Roij and Haeryun Kang.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

# included[].attributes.image-main.alt-text
A black and white image of a woman playing badminton.

# included[].attributes.show-tease
Investigating a strange world.

# included[].attributes.tease
This episode we look at a high-profile sporting event where, thanks to a quirk in the tournament rules, the best shot at winning was … to lose.

# included[].attributes.transcript
[RADIOLAB INTRO]

ROBERT KRULWICH: Hi, I'm Robert Krulwich.

LATIF: And I'm Latif Nasser.

ROBERT: This is Radiolab. And today we're going to do something completely upside down.

LATIF: And inside out.

ROBERT: Yes.

LATIF: It's a sports story.

ROBERT: Sort of, but like none you've ever heard, and therefore, we found a reporter who is a sports reporter like none you've ever heard.

LATIF: Yeah.

MIKE PESCA: I've been to a gym lately.

LATIF: Mike Pesca. He's the host of The Gist podcast, put out by Slate. Formerly of NPR, still sometimes works with NPR. And now he's here telling this story to us.

MIKE PESCA: Yeah.

LATIF: And how did you even first hear about this? Were you covering it?

MIKE PESCA: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Renée Montagne: This is Morning Edition from NPR News. I'm Renée Montagne.]

MIKE PESCA: I was covering the 2012 Olympics for NPR.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Renée Montagne: Good morning.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Mike Pesca: Hello!]

MIKE PESCA: And ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I declare open the games of London.]

MIKE PESCA: The stories of the Olympics. You try to find your own stories that are obscure, but if there was a big story, you chase it. So in those Olympics ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Renée Montagne: So for you, what were the most notable achievements in the first week of the games?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Mike Pesca: Well ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: It's history of the best kind.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Mike Pesca: ... Michael Phelps breaking the all-time record, obviously]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: So in over 100 years, nobody's won as many medals at the Olympic Games.]

MIKE PESCA: And everyone knew that ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: On their way ...]

MIKE PESCA: ... Bolt ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: And here comes Usain Bolt!]

MIKE PESCA: ... and his record-setting quest in the 100 would be huge.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Oh, he's retained his title in the most emphatic way. Brilliant, brilliant!]

MIKE PESCA: But then this badminton story pops up, and everyone rushes to figure out what the heck's going on with badminton.

LATIF: Because the 2012 London Olympics' badminton tournament just it took this somewhat obscure sport and it morphed it into this bizarro thought experiment about competition and integrity and what it means to win.

ROBERT: Okay.

MIKE PESCA: But mostly, I think that the players ...

LATIF: But to be fair, Mike, he jumped on this story for very personal reasons.

MIKE PESCA: As a New Yorker, I say a lot of words and they're mispronounced, and the NPR audience would jump on them. But I always can say the "N" in badminton and get a lot of plaudits. So, I'm attracted to badminton.

LATIF: Oh!

ROBERT: But what's the wrong way to say badminton?

MIKE PESCA: Most people say, "bad-mitten."

LATIF: "Bad-mitten."

ROBERT: "Bad-mitten."

LATIF: Like you're talking to some handwear in wintertime.

MIKE PESCA: Yeah. Like you're chastising a playful cat.

LATIF: Right.

MIKE PESCA: "Bad, mitten! Bad!"

ROBERT: I see.

LATIF: And then also, you know, you and I probably think of badminton as this backyard, fun, silly game. But according to Mike ...

MIKE PESCA: No!

LATIF: ... this is anything but.

MIKE PESCA: It has nothing to do with the badminton you play in your backyard. It's much faster than you think it would possibly look.

LATIF: You get these players ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Wow, what a shot!]

LATIF: ... flying all over the court. Stretching, reaching, diving.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: How on Earth?]

MIKE PESCA: The skill of the competitors is, you know, readily apparent.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: This is pulsating badminton!]

MIKE PESCA: A shuttlecock is a funny thing, and perhaps not as impressive a thing as a tennis ball, but it looks, you know, a lot like tennis. And there's a lot of tension.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Severe pressure!]

MIKE PESCA: And there's a lot of grunting. and it totally seems like every bit of a legitimate and highly-skilled sport.

LATIF: Wait. I'm gonna start. Okay, so Robert?

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

LATIF: If you haven't seen this yet, but I would like to show you something. Okay, this is an ad.

ROBERT: [laughs]

LATIF: Yeah, this—okay. This is the game that is at the center of this whole story.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Women's doubles group A.]

LATIF: Women's doubles badminton. It is not a medal round. It's in the group play stage. There's a huge crowd here. Like, the place is packed.

ROBERT: Yeah.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Please welcome, representing the People's Republic of China, Wang Xiaoli and Yu Yang.]

LATIF: So these two teams come out. You got China.

ROBERT: Yellow and red uniforms, yellow shoes.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: And their opponents. Representing the Republic ...]

LATIF: Versus Korea.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm. Purple and white.

LATIF: Yeah. And let's just skip ahead here.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Kim Ha-na, Jung Kyung-eun.]

LATIF: All right, so here we go. Game on. This is the first serve.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: So the Korean pair ...]

LATIF: Korean serve. So the Korean player flicks her wrist, the shuttlecock goes over the net. China returns.

ROBERT: Hmm. Right into the net.

LATIF: That was it. That was the whole thing.

ROBERT: Oh, that was just a bloop.

LATIF: All right. So Korea, second serve. And Chinese return. And same thing happens.

ROBERT: And they hit the net again.

LATIF: Yeah. So the service is turned over. Now the Chinese are serving.

ROBERT: Okay.

LATIF: China, Korea, China.

ROBERT: Into the net again!

LATIF: Yeah.

ROBERT: This is not exactly scintillating, I just gotta tell you. This is like ...

LATIF: Okay. Well, just watch this next point. So the Korean player serves it.

ROBERT: Yeah.

LATIF: It sails over the net. And then it goes, goes, goes, goes, goes, and the Chinese player clearly is right there. She has it. She then winds up just a slight bit, like, you can see it's like she has this deep, ingrained muscle memory from years of doing this. She winds up, she's about to hit it and then she stops. And the shuttlecock just plunks onto the floor inbounds, point to Korea. And then, tellingly, she looks back at the back corner of the court where her coach is sitting.

ROBERT: Ah. They both are!

LATIF: Yeah.

ROBERT: This is a fix. They're fixing this, like ...

LATIF: Well ...

ROBERT: This is ...

LATIF: Yes. But ...

MIKE PESCA: There have been plenty of occasions where one side wants to lose, and it ain't hard to lose. And the more important thing is it ain't hard to get away with it.

LATIF: Usually you wouldn't even notice it.

MIKE PESCA: You know, it's the difference between a couple serves over the line, a couple balls into the net. But ...

LATIF: In this case, as the match goes on, you start to realize ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Very lethargic start from the Koreans.]

LATIF: ... the Korean players seem to be trying to lose, too!

[ARCHIVE CLIP: They're serving faults!]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: True. Yes.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: They're serving ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: They're trying to get them to rally, of course. But ...]

ROBERT: Why would everybody be trying to lose? Like, both sides?

LATIF: Well, it's actually a strategy. Because the way the tournament is laid out, both these teams are gonna be moving on to the medal rounds. But whoever wins this game is gonna have to play another Chinese team, a really strong team.

ROBERT: I see.

LATIF: And whoever loses is gonna play a way easier Danish team.

ROBERT: Ah!

LATIF: So both teams are hoping to lose.

MIKE PESCA: Yeah. And it is the rare instance where you have both sides incentivized to lose that you get something that should be scored by Spike Jones. It's a little bit of a prisoner's dilemma, right? Either side could lose, but when both want to lose ...

LATIF: It becomes this surreal waiting game.

MIKE PESCA: Right.

LATIF: You know, who's gonna crack first and score a point?

MIKE PESCA: And so ...

LATIF: You got the best players in the world who just start hitting the shuttlecock out of bounds. [ARCHIVE CLIP: They're serving fault after fault.]

MIKE PESCA: Faulting on purpose, and ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: They're just hitting the ball straight in the net.]

MIKE PESCA: ... hitting the shuttlecock into the net.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I'm sorry. You know, it's blindingly obvious what's going on.]

MIKE PESCA: And, you know ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: They're both trying to lose.]

LATIF: Sometimes they hit it below the net.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: And that is unforgivable.]

LATIF: They're hitting it straight into the ground.

MIKE PESCA: All but tripping over their own shoelaces purposefully.

LATIF: Until what you get is ...

ROBERT: Serve. Uh-oh, into the net.

LATIF: ... point ...

ROBERT: Serve ...

LATIF: ... after point of just terrible badminton. And it just devolves into this absurd, repetitive crazy-making lose-a-thon.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: This is an absolute disgrace.]

ROBERT: It's so obviously lame. I mean, this is not—this is not sport. This is ...

LATIF: But it is kind of a sport because—and this is why I really love it—at a certain point, these two teams have to start competing with each other to lose.

ROBERT: What?

LATIF: Let me play you this point. So China serves it, Korea hits it back. But it's going way out of bounds. Now in a normal world, China would obviously let that fall so that they could take the point, but they lunge to save it, right? And they're hitting it back. Now Korea then, they are like, "No, no, no. You know what? We're pretty sure we want it out of bounds." They hit in the opposite direction even further out of bounds. So now China goes to save it once again, but they don't get there in time. So the point goes to China, which China actually didn't want, and the Koreans wanted the whole time.

ROBERT: So what are you saying then? Is it ...

LATIF: Well, it's like—it's like they invented a whole new sport, which is the exact opposite of badminton. It is—it is photo-negative badminton. But then, towards the end of the first set ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: From the referee, has been pulled forth.]

LATIF: ... out comes the referee.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: And here comes Torsten Berg.]

TORSTEN BERG: Hello, Torsten speaking.

LATIF: Hi! How are you?

LATIF: Torsten Berg was the head Olympic badminton referee who got that call.

TORSTEN BERG: And I also heard the spectators' boos. So I went to watch. It looked pretty awful. This was not right.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: The referee is pulling the players together.]

TORSTEN BERG: And told them that they were not playing seriously, and they were making a very serious mistake. And they played stupid and said, "No, we're playing. We're trying our best."

JUNG KYUNG-EUN: [speaking Korean]

LATIF: We were actually able to get in touch with three of the four players in that match. Both Korean players ...

JUNG KYUNG-EUN: [speaking Korean]

LATIF: ... Jung Kyung-eun, and ...

KIM HA-NA: [speaking Korean]

LATIF: ... Kim Ha-na. And also, one of the Chinese players.

WANG XIAOLI: [speaking Mandarin]

LATIF: Wang Xiaoli. And ...

WANG XIAOLI: [speaking Mandarin]

LATIF: And Wang Xiaoli told me they were trying to lose in that match.

WANG XIAOLI: [through interpreter] But what we didn't expect is South Korea would do the same thing.

WANG XIAOLI: [speaking Mandarin]

LATIF: And as for the Koreans, Jung Kyung-eun said that they too were trying to lose, at least during certain moments in the game. But when the crowd started to boo ...

KIM HA-NA: [speaking Korean]

LATIF: ... and the ref came out, her partner Kim Ha-na said that ...

KIM HA-NA: [through interpreter] I was surprised and embarrassed.]

LATIF: ... they were just scared.

KIM HA-NA: [through interpreter] We just wanted to get out of the court as soon as possible.

KIM HA-NA: [speaking Korean]

LATIF: So Torsten walks off the court.

TORSTEN BERG: They went on court again.

LATIF: And then the second serve after Torsten walks off the court, nothing but net.

TORSTEN BERG: [sighs]

LATIF: So for the next few points ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: [boos]]

LATIF: ... it does not get much better.

TORSTEN BERG: No, it didn't look like world-class badminton at all.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: No, no, no.]

LATIF: So the set comes to an end. Korea wins the set. And while the players are waiting on the sidelines ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Here comes the tournament referee again.]

LATIF: ... Torsten comes back onto the court. He walks up to the players and he pulls out of his pocket almost subtly and shows to the players this black card.

TORSTEN BERG: The black card, which means disqualification.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: This is absolutely extraordinary. He has given both teams a black card. Or has he threatened them with a black card? I'm really not terribly sure. The players have returned to court.]

TORSTEN BERG: It was now that they should play or they would be in deep [bleep]. Sorry, maybe I shouldn't say ...

ROBERT: No, no, no. The black card says that pretty clearly.

TORSTEN BERG: The black card. The black card was out, and I was ...

LATIF: The [bleep] card.

TORSTEN BERG: I told them in very clear words and very seriously that in order to help themselves, they better play now.

JUNG KYUNG-EUN: [speaking Korean]

LATIF: The Korean player, Jung Kyung-eun ...

JUNG KYUNG-EUN: [speaking Korean]

LATIF: ... said that she turned to her partner ...

JUNG KYUNG-EUN: [through interpreter] And I told her, they are them and we are we. So let's just play and do our best.

LATIF: The second set starts, and pretty quick ...

WANG XIAOLI: [speaking Mandarin]

LATIF: ... China's Wang Xiaoli told me ...

JUNG KYUNG-EUN: [through interpreter] Both sides changed a little bit.

TORSTEN BERG: Instead of just serving into the net ...

LATIF: Things start to get better.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: A rally.]

TORSTEN BERG: ... they would get the rally going.

LATIF: But then as the points kept coming, you started to notice, like ...

TORSTEN BERG: They were playing very slowly.

LATIF: ... there's something still really off here.

TORSTEN BERG: They were not hitting the board very hard.

WANG XIAOLI: [speaking Mandarin]

LATIF: Now the Korean team wouldn't admit this, but Wang Xiaoli said that both teams ...

WANG XIAOLI: [through interpreter] Didn't change the basic fact.

LATIF: ... were still trying to lose.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: [boos.]]

LATIF: Which I have to say is exactly what it looks like when you watch it, because for the rest of the match you get a bunch of these points where, like—where just they'll lob it super high, you know, as if to say, "Hey, smash it down on us. Take your point." Or they will, you know, hit it out of bounds and then facepalm. Just, you know, practice their swing after they missed one just to say, "Oh, you know, my mechanics are off. I just gotta just practice this a few more times." Because it's like we've entered a whole third iteration of this game where it's like, they're not just trying to lose, they're trying to ...

ROBERT: Cover up badminton.

LATIF: Cover up badminton. You're trying to lose, but you're trying to look like you're trying to win.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: [boos.] There goes the crowd.]

ROBERT: I don't think they're fooling anybody here. No, no.

LATIF: So finally, after 20 long minutes of this, the Korean team loses the match by winning it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Tonight has left me with a very nasty taste in the mouth. Tonight was not sport. It was a disgrace. Good night.]

KIM HA-NA: [speaking Korean]

LATIF: So all four players walked off the court, and Kim Ha-na told me ...

KIM HA-NA: [through interpreter] It was not a pleasant winning at all.

LATIF: ... that her parents were in the audience that day. And afterwards they asked her, "What happened?"

KIM HA-NA: [through interpreter] What happened? And why—why do you have to get the boos from the audience and et cetera? And I was—I was sad and felt defeated. So I didn't even want to talk to my mom. So I remember just going—went to the hotel and had rest.

KIM HA-NA: [speaking Korean]

TORSTEN BERG: And the next morning at eight o'clock, all four pairs in fact were disqualified according to the disciplinary regulations of the Badminton World Federation.

LATIF: Which has a rule on the books that you can be disqualified for failing to use your best efforts.

TORSTEN BERG: And the same evening they were on the plane home.

LATIF: They were just thrown out of the Olympics.

[NEWS CLIP: A scandal at the Olympics.]

[NEWS CLIP: This whole to-do about the badminton players.]

[NEWS CLIP: Everyone was talking about some losers.]

[NEWS CLIP: Shuttlecocks were going out.]

[NEWS CLIP: To be tapping the shuttlecock into the net.]

[NEWS CLIP: Like a five-year-old at a backyard picnic.]

[NEWS CLIP: It was downright humiliating.]

TORSTEN BERG: It was just sad that they were committing suicide in that tournament.

WANG XIAOLI: [through interpreter] After that time, the punishment hit me quite hard. I was very sad and I felt helpless.

KIM HA-NA: [through interpreter] I was perplexed, and didn't know what happened. We just cried.

ROBERT: This doesn't sound like it's getting any better.

LATIF: No, but there's still more after the break.

ROBERT: Okay.

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Naila from Hamburg, Germany. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.]

ROBERT: We're back. I'm Robert Krulwich.

LATIF: And I'm Latif Nasser.

ROBERT: This is Radiolab.

LATIF: And when we left off, the Korean and Chinese women's badminton teams had just been disqualified, kicked out of the Olympics.

ROBERT: So what—so then what happened to the—were the players, like—what happened to them?

LATIF: Well, all four of them did keep playing badminton professionally after this. Jung Kyung-eun from Korea even went on to win the bronze in Rio. But at the time, this was a brutal punishment for all of them.

ROBERT: Well, but, you know, they did something wrong. This wasn't right. Right?

MIKE PESCA: I—you know, I don't even—I question whether it's even unethical. I think it's ethical, in a way, what they did.

LATIF: Really? What the players did?

MIKE PESCA: I do. I think it's ethical.

LATIF: How so?

MIKE PESCA: Okay, so is the definition of ethics in sports to win? Sure. Without cheating, yes. Does that mean to win every point? No, not necessarily. You know, in baseball, there's the thing called the intentional walk.

LATIF: Sure.

MIKE PESCA: In football, a team will take a safety instead of punting and letting the other team score a touchdown. So this is a calculation where a point here or there is not as important as the whole, and the whole is the game. So okay, let's move back. Let's pan out a little more. I think an individual game is often lost. Look, we're not gonna put our good starter here, we're going to manage the lineup. Because the goal is to win the championship. And the thing to remember about these players is if what we want is players who are hyper competitive and actually want to win at all costs, that's exactly why they were losing so badly, because they wanted to win the overall championship at all costs. And the Badminton Federation had a set of rules that all but guaranteed that this would happen.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN: Well, yeah. I mean, it's stupid to have an event where people are trying to lose if that event is a sporting event. Especially at the apex of—you know, the only time people care about badminton. It seems really dumb ...

LATIF: So this is Chuck Klosterman. We called him in because he writes a lot about sports, and also because he wrote The Ethicist column for the New York Times Magazine.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN: Now is this a—some kind of tragedy? Well, it's not. I guess unless badminton is really important to you, then it probably is.

LATIF: Well in this case, I think the thing that people got really upset about is this—is this idea of the Olympic ideal.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, athlete: In the name of all the competitors, I promise that we shall take part in the Olympic Games.]

LATIF: The athletes' oath.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, athlete: In the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of the sport and the honor of our teams.]

LATIF: To transcend, the—in the way that as a superb athlete you're transcending your humanity, but then also as, like, this representative of your country. And to—I think it did poke a lot of people. Like, a lot of people did seemingly get kind of upset about it.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN: Well, yeah. I mean, for some reason it is disturbing to see athletes failing on purpose.

LATIF: Hmm.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN: That just—it seems to kind of like tap into some, like ...

LATIF: It feels immoral, somehow.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Tonight has left me with a very nasty taste.]

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN: Yes. Like—like, I don't know if not trying in a sporting event is a moral question, but it feels that way when you see it happen.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: That is unforgivable.]

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN: Here again, one of the interesting things about sports is that we watch these adults playing multimillion-dollar games, but they're the same games that, like, a six year old or seven year old plays. So when you have a seven-year-old kid, you would say, "It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it doesn't matter what happens, just play hard. You don't have to succeed, it's the trying that matters." So when you see people at the highest level not trying, there's—it almost sort of wrecks the entire idea of why we play sports at all. You know, why if you're at a playground and two kids race across the playground to see who can get to the swing faster or whatever, like, that's a biological thing. Maybe we are biologically driven to compete. So that's the baseline expectation of what we have of these badminton players. That they will try to compete, you know?

ROBERT: But it seems to me there's an opportunity here for true athleticism in a kind of topsy-turvy way.

LATIF: Flip it and reverse it.

ROBERT: Flip it and reverse it and see if you can do that as well as you do the other one.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN: I mean, sports only work one way, though.

LATIF: [laughs]

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN: They don't work both ways. I mean, it would—it would be like going to your wife and saying, like, "Okay, you say you really love me? Prove it by hating me in a creative way."

LATIF: [laughs]

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN: Or to go to a great piano player and say, like, "If you're so awesome at playing piano, bang your fist against the keys in a way that I will be—you know, I will be sickened by it." Yeah.

ROBERT: But wait. But if we take it out of matters of the heart and put it back on the field, what would be the most radical solution that you could imagine if your desire was to convincingly and astonishingly athletically lose?

LATIF: Yeah.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN: I suppose if they were both trying to do it in the most convincing way, it would be. That was not really the case here.

LATIF: [laughs]

MIKE PESCA: Like I say, they never confronted it. How do you lose on purpose if the other side's also trying to lose on purpose? And I'm trying to think, there are some sports—so in football—let's say in American football, let's say both sides wanted to lose. Well, here's how the sport would go. You can't make the other team score, but you can score a safety on yourself. So the quarterback would get the ball and start running towards his own end zone. And then there'll be a jail break by the defense to tackle the quarterback before he got ...

ROBERT: [laughs] Yeah.

MIKE PESCA: Baseball is hard. You could hit the batter. That would be—that would be an interesting game.

LATIF: Yeah. What ...

MIKE PESCA: What about darts? Instead of aiming at the dartboard, just turning around and aiming at your opponent?

ROBERT: [laughs]

LATIF: That's also—that's like the baseball strategy a little bit.

MIKE PESCA: How about the sport of bodybuilding? Think about the implications of ...

LATIF: Bodybuilding! I would win that!

MIKE PESCA: ... who would be the worst.

LATIF: I would win that!

MIKE PESCA: Would you?

LATIF: I think I would win that.

MIKE PESCA: I see like a Will Ferrell movie out of this.

ROBERT: Yes. That's what I was thinking, the loser.

LATIF: Yes, the loser.

MIKE PESCA: We get to a point, our team, "All right, this is what we need. You gotta go out there and lose."

LATIF: No, and then there's a loser on the other team who's also very happy to lose. And ...

MIKE PESCA: Yeah, and the two losers are eyeing each other down the line.

ROBERT: Two losers.

MIKE PESCA: Yeah.

LATIF: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then ...

ROBERT: You can hear more of Mike Pesca on his podcast, The Gist. More of Chuck Klosterman in his latest book, But What If We're Wrong? Big thanks to all the players who talked to us, and to those who helped us get those interviews: Joy Le Li, Mikyoung Kim, Yuni Kartika.

LATIF: Thanks to Aparna Nancherla, who came in and helped us puzzle this whole match out. And in addition, a special thanks to Greysia Polii. Greysia was on the Indonesian badminton team in those same Olympics, and an hour after the match we featured, she faced off against a different Korean team. All four players in that match were also disqualified for not using their best efforts to win. She really helped us understand what it was like to be in that situation.

ROBERT: This story was produced by Matt Kielty and Annie McEwen and Latif Nasser. I'm Robert Krulwich.

LATIF: And I'm Latif Nasser.

ROBERT: And I guess that ends the game at this point.

[ANSWERING MACHINE: To go to the next message, press 6.]

[MIKE PESCA: Hi, it's Mike. I'm gonna do this. It's possible that even though it's the fifth time I've said 'David Gebel' wrong, but I'm gonna do it once and I'm gonna do it with an intro of myself and here goes. Hi, this is Mike Pesca here to tell you that Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Soren Wheeler is senior editor. Jamie York is our senior producer. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Brenna Farrell, David Gebel, Matt Kielty, Robert Krulwich, Annie McEwen, Latif Nasser, Malissa O'Donnell, Arianne Wack and Molly Webster. With help from Tracie Hunte, Nigar Farrell—no, Nigar Fatali, Phoebe Wang, Katie Ferguson, Alexandra Leigh Young, W. Harry Fortuna and Percia Verlin. Our fact-checkers are Eva Dasher and Michelle Harris. Thanks for listening.]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: End of message.]

MIKE PESCA: Here's an idea I have. There's an old riddle and it goes like this: a king talks to his two sons, two princes, and he says, "Here's what we're gonna do. Get those horses out of the stable. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to jump on your horses and ride to the city gate. Whichever horse gets to the city gate last, you're gonna inherit the fortune." Maybe he was a crazy king. So the two princes look at each other.

LATIF: Oh, man!

MIKE PESCA: They both think. And then they jump on the horses and they ride as fast as they can. Why?

LATIF: I don't know.

ROBERT: To reign in their horses at the very last minute, jump off the horses and say "Whoa!" And then wait until the other one—I don't know.

LATIF: Are they—are they planning on just—just removing a section of the gate and then just smashing it up against the other horse?

MIKE PESCA: Yeah! No. That's terrible!

LATIF: No. Okay.

MIKE PESCA: You'll like the answer.

ROBERT: What is the answer?

MIKE PESCA: They jumped on each other's horse.

LATIF: Ah!

MIKE PESCA: They jumped on the other brother's horse. Maybe ...

ROBERT: Wait, let me just think about that.

LATIF: Wow! That was fun! That was great!

ROBERT: They jumped on the other's horse? Of course!

MIKE PESCA: He said whichever horse gets there last, so ...

-30-

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New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.

# included[].attributes.appearances.producers[].lede
Soren Wheeler is the Executive Editor at Radiolab, where he plays a variety of roles, including producer, editor, and reporter. He also oversees the development of future content. Before coming to radio, Soren spent 10 years working with science teachers and writing about how kids learn science. He was a project coordinator at the Association for the Advancement of Science, where he co-authored the book Atlas of Science Literacy. He then went on to get a Master’s degree in science writing at Johns Hopkins University. Soren has won awards for production on radio pieces about coincidence and statistics, the periodic table, and the story of a woman waking up from a coma.

# included[].attributes.appearances.shows[].lede
Soren Wheeler is the Executive Editor at Radiolab, where he plays a variety of roles, including producer, editor, and reporter. He also oversees the development of future content. Before coming to radio, Soren spent 10 years working with science teachers and writing about how kids learn science. He was a project coordinator at the Association for the Advancement of Science, where he co-authored the book Atlas of Science Literacy. He then went on to get a Master’s degree in science writing at Johns Hopkins University. Soren has won awards for production on radio pieces about coincidence and statistics, the periodic table, and the story of a woman waking up from a coma.

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We get it … the world feels too bleak and too big for you to make a difference. But there is one thing—one simple tangible thing—you can do to make all the difference in the world to someone, possibly even a loved one, at arguably the worst moment of their life.

Statistics show that one out of every five people on Earth will die of heart failure. Cardiac arrests can happen anywhere, anytime—in your bed, on the street, on your honeymoon. And every minute that passes after your heart stops beating, your chances of surviving drop dramatically. For all the strides modern medicine has made in treating heart conditions, the ambulance still doesn’t always make it in time. The only person who can keep you alive during those crucial first few minutes is a stranger, a neighbor, your partner, anyone nearby willing to perform CPR. Yet most of us don’t do anything.

Join Radiolab host Latif Nasser, ER doctor and Radiolab contributor Avir Mitra, and TikTok stars Dr. and Lady Glaucomflecken, as we discover the fascinating science of cardiac arrest, hear a true and harrowing story of a near-death experience, and hunt down the best place to die (hint … it’s not a hospital). Plus, with the help of the American Red Cross and the Bee Gees, you—yes you—will learn how to do hands-only CPR!

Special thanks to Will and Kristin Flanary, of course. Check out the Glaucomfleken's own podcast “Knock Knock, Hi!” (KKH Pod), the Greene Space here at WNYC’s home in New York: first of all Jennifer Sendrow, who really made it happen and helped us make it work at basically every stage of the process ... and the rest of the Greene Space crew: Carlos Cruz Figueroa, Chase Culpon, Ricardo Fernández, Jessica Lowery, Skye Pallo Ross, Eric Weber, Ryan Andrew Wilde and Andrew Yanchyshyn.

Also, thank you to the Red Cross for helping us make this happen and providing the CPR dummies, and all the people we had there doing the training: Ashley London, Jeanette Nicosia, Charlene Yung, Jacob Stebel, Tye Morales, Anna Stacy and Aditya Shekhar.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Avir Mitra
with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom
And Fact-checking by - Natalie Middleton

Videos:
Check out the whole show in its full glory at the website for WNYC’s Greene Space: https://www.thegreenespace.org/

Will Flannery’s Youtube channel, Dr. Glaucomflecken: https://www.youtube.com/@DGlaucomflecken

Music:
The perfect playlist for a CPR Emergency

Classes:
If you’d like to sign up to learn CPR and get certified, the Red Cross provides classes all across the country and online. Just go to https://www.redcross.org/take-a-class, to learn more.

Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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An illustration of an anatomical heart with an assortment of flowers coming out of it.

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Investigating a strange world.

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What would you do if someone’s heart stopped right in front of you?

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[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LULU MILLER: I'm Lulu Miller.

LATIF NASSER: And I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab.

LULU: How do we—how should we start?

LATIF: I mean, you probably should lead with the big news from yourself.

LULU: [laughs] Okay. The big news, which I actually just found out, is particularly big. I am very, very pregnant. I have an extra-big baby inside, I just found out at the doctor. Which means I will be one, sort of disappearing from the regular rhythm here for a little bit—although we've preloaded some things. I'll pop in and out.

LATIF: Mm-hmm.

LATIF: But also it means that I am past my fly safe date, so I'm not allowed to fly anywhere.

LATIF: Right.

LULU: But you just ...

LATIF: I flew.

LULU: You flew, and you got to do an event with our resident ER doctor correspondent, Avir Mitra.

LATIF: Yeah.

LULU: And I truly know nothing, except that I had total FOMO and authentic jealousy because you're both so shiny and fun onstage. But we're gonna get to hear about it now, right?

LATIF: Right. Okay, so let me—let me set the stage a little bit. So the place we performed at was our kind of—WNYC's very own live space called the Greene Space.

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: Hello, hello. Welcome everybody! I am your friendly neighborhood Radiolab host, Latif Nasser.

LATIF: And basically what this came out of—okay, so you people probably remember the stories that Avir has done on this show. He did one about this mysterious epidemic of vultures dying. He did one about this miracle drug that they took out of the soil.

LULU: Rapamycin.

LATIF: Yeah.

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: So he's done all these great stories, right? But he came to me with this idea of something kind of different.

LATIF: Avir has been able to convince me, and hopefully with some special guest friends we have, he's gonna be able to convince all of you that not only does he make saving a life look easy, that actually in this one particular way, it actually kind of is easy.

LATIF: Basically he wanted to take on, in a sort of a straight-ahead, practical way, one particular topic, and show how in this one case, all of us—including you, Lulu, including you, listener—how you can be the difference between life and death.

LULU: Like, a thing you could actually do?

LATIF: It's a thing you could actually do to save a life.

LULU: Ooh! Okay!

LATIF: Okay. So you ready?

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: Here we go.

LATIF: So is everybody excited?

[applause]

LATIF: Please welcome to the stage Avir Mitra.

AVIR MITRA: Thank you, guys.

LATIF: All right, what are we gonna do?

AVIR: Just get going?

LATIF: Let's get going.

AVIR: Well, I guess I was kind of hoping we could start with a little story.

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: Does that sound good?

LATIF: Sounds great.

AVIR: So the story goes, you know, I had—there was a patient. She was a 78-year-old woman, coming in from Jersey. It was her birthday. Her family took her to see a Broadway show. Husband's with her, some kids, some grandkids. And, you know, while they're waiting in line, she sort of collapses. The family responds immediately. Like, they lay her flat, okay? They start fanning her. Someone calls 911. Literally in under a minute they call 911. Ambulance comes in record time, and the EMS finds that she's actually in cardiac arrest. So she's in cardiac arrest. She comes to the hospital, and that's where I get involved in the story, because I'm the resident there. And so I'm like a second-year resident, which means I'm sort of—I know some things and I'm cocky about it, but I don't know what I don't know, type of thing.

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: So I'm seeing this patient come in. It's cardiac arrest and I, like, know my algorithms and I'm like, "Ooh, I got this!" So we start doing everything. We're doing chest compressions, we start IV, we put a line into her shin so we can put synthetic adrenaline in there. We're shocking the heart. You know, we're putting her on a ventilator. We're doing all these things. We're working on the heart for, like, at least 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes.

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: So I'm there and I'm just, like, so eager about it. So we shock the heart, we look with an ultrasound. It's not beating. Shock it again, shock it again, and eventually all of a sudden, boom! Just like that, the heart restarts, blood pressure is normal. All of a sudden, all these vital signs that were all beeping at me start—start looking great. And so I was super-excited. The family's all around me. They're crying. And now they're crying. I tell them, "She's back." And they're crying, like, tears of joy.

LATIF: Wow!

AVIR: They're like, "Wow. Amazing." So the next step is now she's more stable, so now we have to bring her to get a CAT scan. So ...

LATIF: So Avir had brought some visuals with him, and at this point he showed us a slide of a CAT scan of a healthy brain.

AVIR: This is kind of what a good CAT scan of a brain would look like. I know it's hard to see, but it's, like, a cross-section of a brain, okay?

LATIF: Kind of looks like how you would picture a healthy brain with, you know, folds and everything.

LULU: Mm-hmm.

AVIR: Got these nice, black ventricles in the middle. You have all this nice brain matter there. To me this is a beautiful picture. I don't know if you guys feel that way. But what I saw next was this.

LATIF: Then he showed us the CAT scan of the brain of this patient—Avir calls her Mrs. W. And this is what he saw in that moment.

AVIR: And this sort of made my heart sink into my stomach.

LATIF: It's just a blob. It's just a gray blob.

AVIR: What I'm seeing here is that this brain is dead, completely dead.

LATIF: Oh my God.

AVIR: And I guess in my eagerness to sort of be the guy who knows what to do, I just sort of didn't even think about this. And now I have to go out and, you know, talk to the family. And it was—I just wanted to disappear. It was like a terrible, terrible moment for the family, and now I'm part of it. So I had to tell them, and I felt terrible, because now I have to tell this family that, "Actually, your grandmom is brain dead," and now I had to sort of make them withdraw life support. And, you know—and I felt like I wanted to save her life, and what I ended up doing was making her sort of die twice.

LATIF: Oof! Well, how did the family take it?

AVIR: They were very gracious about it. They were very nice. They were kind. They were like, "You did everything you could." But it just sort of shook me out of this sort of immature kind of cockiness I had in the emergency department at the time.

LATIF: Right.

AVIR: So that—that sort of stuck with me forever, I guess. I think about that case a lot.

LATIF: But, like, what went wrong? Like, why did it—like, yeah, did you do something wrong? Like, what happened?

AVIR: Right. Well, let's table that, because if we do a good job tonight, I think by the end, you guys will know exactly what went wrong there.

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: So we'll get there. But yeah, I guess that's sort of the impetus for why I wanted to do this show. Because, you know, I was thinking in our society we worry about so many things. You know, we wake up in the morning, start doom scrolling. And we worry about—you know, we're worried about climate change, we're worried about gun control, we're worried about terrorism. But, like, really the reality is the majority of human beings die because of heart problems. It's not sexy, but it's just true. Like, this is—across the world.

LATIF: So at this point we're all looking at a graph of the leading causes of death worldwide. So, like, all—of all the deaths that happen on planet Earth, and number one is heart disease and heart failure. The number two is not even close.

AVIR: Far and away—like, down here we have terrorism.

LATIF: Wow. Yeah.

AVIR: We have all climate change. I'm not putting any of these things down. Like, they're real. But fires, suicides, murders, HIV is somewhere on this list. But cardiovascular disease, it's just insane.

LATIF: Wow! We should, like, allocate government budgets based on this ...

AVIR: Right.

LATIF: ... graph. Okay. Anyway, yeah. Right.

AVIR: But we do it based on what's scariest-looking, you know?

LATIF: Right.

AVIR: And in America it's a little better. It's only just one in three people will die of heart problems, so I don't know if you guys want—you know, look to your right and to your left, figure out which of the three of you is dying from your heart. It's one of—one of the three.

LATIF: I'm just glad there's only two of us onstage.

AVIR: Right. So okay—so, when hearts do stop, you know, if the heart stops, and eventually when it stops, it can happen slowly or quickly, right? So if your heart starts to die slowly, that's good in a way, because at least you can, you know, get your way to a hospital, see a doctor, make an appointment.

LATIF: When you say "slowly," like, how slowly are you talking about?

AVIR: I mean, I'm saying, like, it's almost like if you're driving a car and the "check engine" light comes on. Like, you know you need to take it into the shop but, like, you can wait a couple of hours or maybe you can wait a couple of days.

LATIF: Right. Okay. All right.

AVIR: But sometimes your heart stops quickly. Like, one minute it's working, the next second it stops working. And when that happens, we call that cardiac arrest, basically. Your heart arrested. And the thing about a heart stopping is basically that means you're dead. So, like, when we pronounce a death, we'll listen with a stethoscope to the heart. I'm sure you've seen that on TV and stuff. But actually, this idea that a dead heart is a dead person kind of goes back as long as humans have been around. This is gonna sound weird, but I was just reading Gilgamesh for some reason. Great book. I don't know.

LATIF: How do you have time to read? I don't get it!

AVIR: Okay, audiobook. It was an audiobook.

LATIF: Okay, all right. All right.

AVIR: An audiobook of Gilgamesh.

LATIF: All right.

AVIR: I highly recommend it. Gilgamesh, it turns out, is the oldest story that we know. It's, like, the first written story. And even in Gilgamesh, they sort of reference—they say, "What is this—" you know, someone dies in the story. "What is this sleep which has seized you? You have turned dark and do not hear me. He touched his heart, but it beat no longer." So even then, I was listening to it and I was like, "Oh, wow!" Even then, 4,000 years ago, they knew that when someone doesn't have a heartbeat, they're dead. And as long as humans have known that, we've been trying to restart hearts.

AVIR: So there's this—sort of been this practice of, like, reanimation, bringing a heart back from the dead, that we've been working on for thousands of years. The oldest reference is actually—and we don't have to read the whole quote, but is in the Old Testament here. There's actually this guy, Elisha—Elisha? Does anyone know how to—Elisha? Okay, so this guy—what was he, a prophet or a—he's a prophet. So he did this thing. So there's this story of when he goes into someone's house, a boy's house. And he goes and he sees that he's dead, so he goes and closes the door behind him, prays, and then lays on top of the boy, puts his lips on the boy's lips, eyes to eyes, and just lays on him.

LATIF: Whoa!

AVIR: And then the body—the boy's body grows warm. The boy sneezes and comes back to life.

LATIF: He sneezes?

AVIR: Yeah.

LATIF: Wow!

AVIR: I mean, okay, I didn't—I didn't learn this technique in medical school.

[laughter]

LATIF: [laughs] Okay. All right. Yeah.

AVIR: But I guess—I mean, in the Old Testament they say it worked.

LATIF: Huh!

AVIR: So who knows if this really happened? I don't know. Do you think it really happened?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It says that he was alone with the boy in the room?

AVIR: Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: With—the door is shut. So who knows?

[laughter]

LATIF: Oh boy!

AVIR: True New York skeptic right there.

LATIF: [laughs]

AVIR: All right. Yeah, so that. So who knows? But in the modern era we've been trying to do this for a long time. Actually, I don't know if any of you guys have seen this picture.

LATIF: So this is like a—it's a drawing, like, an old drawing you'd see in, like, an old medical atlas or something.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: There's someone lying on the ground naked on their side.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: And then there's someone else sitting over top of that person.

AVIR: And this guy puts a tube up this person's rectum.

LATIF: Does he know you can't really get to the heart from there?

AVIR: You know, I'm not sure what they're thinking.

[laughter]

AVIR: But he takes a big drag of a cigarette or a cigar ...

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: ... and blows the tobacco smoke into the rectum. This was called a "tobacco smoke enema." And it was ...

LATIF: What's the logic here? Like, why do they think this is ...

AVIR: All right, I did spend some time trying to put myself in this guy's shoes.

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: And the best I could come up with is nicotine is kind of a stimulant.

LATIF: Okay?

AVIR: And the rectum has a lot of tissue. So maybe just blowing a bunch of nicotine in a bunch of tissue was thought to work, you know?

LATIF: Great. Sure.

AVIR: But, you know, no surprise to anybody here, it didn't really work. Actually, the phrase, "blowing smoke up your ass?"

LATIF: Right.

AVIR: That's where that came from.

LATIF: Right. And from the guy next to him, when he's like, "This is working, right?" He's like, "Yeah, for sure it's working."

[laughter]

AVIR: Yeah. After a couple of centuries—or, you know, a couple of decades of this, it just became, "Yeah, blowing smoke up my ass. I get it." But we've tried other things even more recently. You know, so like all things that I love in science, an answer kind of came from probably the most bizarre place that you could ever think of.

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: This guy, Rudolf Boehm. He's a German guy.

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: And this is 1878. So this guy is a pharmacologist, and he's studying chloroform.

LATIF: I mean, this is the guy with a big bushy beard. This is kind of the guy that you'd sort of expect.

AVIR: Yeah. And I don't know why they invented chloroform, but he was experimenting on it. And the way he would experiment on it is to take cute cats ...

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: ... and chloroform them. I know.

LATIF: Just for fun.

AVIR: Just for—I mean, today, he would be labeled a sociopath.

LATIF: Okay. All right. Okay. Okay.

AVIR: But you could do that back then. So he would just kill these cats, or he would chloroform them. And the thing about chloroform is if you don't use enough, it really doesn't do anything, if you use too much it kills the person. You know, you gotta get that happy medium.

LATIF: Right.

AVIR: And so—I don't know if this is true, but this is what I think. He was spending too much money getting all these cats. You know, he kept killing cats. So he's, like, trying to figure out, "How can I, like, you know, work on my budget, here?"

LATIF: He's trying to reduce, reuse, recycle, kind of thing.

[laughter]

AVIR: Exactly.

LATIF: Right. Okay.

AVIR: So what he sort of by doing this over and over again realizes is that if he chloroforms his cats too much, he can start—sort of start squeezing the cat's chest for a few minutes and then the cat would survive.

LATIF: Wow. And that's the guy. That's the guy.

AVIR: And this is the guy.

LATIF: This is how he figured this out.

AVIR: So that happened. He publishes this. And then lo and behold, 20 years later, a young surgery resident is in the hospital. One of his patients dies, and he somehow heard about this and just tries it on a patient.

LATIF: This is in Germany again?

AVIR: No. This is in—I think this was in the US.

LATIF: Okay, yeah.

AVIR: So he—or maybe England. I can't remember where it was. But this is 20 years later, so early 1900s. He just randomly tries it on a patient and lo and behold it works.

LATIF: Wow!

AVIR: So these are the first times that we were able to bring people back from the dead. And since then, we've progressed a very extremely long way. Now we have so many ways to do it, we almost take it for granted.

LATIF: Right.

AVIR: You know, we can shock people back into a normal rhythm, we can give super-strong medicines. We even have machines that will pump for the heart when the heart can't pump.

LATIF: Hmm!

AVIR: I mean, it's—we're so used to it, honestly, that in the OR and places, people will induce cardiac arrest just to test the heart so that they know what causes it to bring it back on certain patients.

LATIF: Wow! It's, like, such a—like, it's now like a standard miracle. Like, it's like—an expected thing that we're totally fine with.

AVIR: It's like—yeah, yeah, cardiac arrest, let's bring him back. So I have a little video here that I think is cool. I don't know if you guys will think it's cool, but this is a heart—oh, we got the music too. So this is them in the OR in a—and this is a normal heart that's beating in a weird rhythm, and all of a sudden it goes into cardiac arrest. You'll see right here, they induce cardiac arrest. Now the heart is dead. It's dying as we speak.

LATIF: Wow.

AVIR: Okay? And then you hear a shock charging. They shock the heart and now it's back.

LATIF: Whoa!

AVIR: And you can hear it by the way they're casually playing Bon Jovi in the background ...

LATIF: This guy's living on a prayer. I mean, it does feel like ...

[laughter]

AVIR: [laughs] I couldn't have said it better myself. But basically it's, like, standard. This is no big deal, right?

LATIF: Right. Right. Right.

AVIR: So you would think at this point cardiac arrest would be, like, no—no big deal. Like, you go into cardiac arrest, we got you.

LATIF: Right.

AVIR: Unfortunately, that's just not the case.

LATIF: Turns out that if you suffer cardiac arrest outside of a hospital, on average, your chance of surviving, of living, is eight percent.

LULU: Eight percent?

LATIF: Yeah.

AVIR: Eight percent. Which—look at that another way. If you—if your heart stops quickly anywhere in the world outside of a hospital, you basically have a ninety-two percent chance of just dying then and there, right?

LATIF: Wow.

AVIR: And that means that, like—I don't know, it's like you never had a chance to see a nurse, see a doctor. It's like you had died a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago. It's really no different.

LATIF: But is that ...

AVIR: That's how a lot of people are still dying.

LATIF: But is that a thing—is that just a thing about the heart? Like, the heart is—it can only be revived eight percent of the time or something?

AVIR: Right. Yeah, exactly. You could think, you know, is there something inherent to the heart—eight percent? It turns out no, because it turns out there is a place in the world where you can have a cardiac arrest and you'd have, like, much better outcomes. So I don't know, do you want to take a guess where it is?

LATIF: Like, what's the ideal place to have a cardiac arrest?

AVIR: Yeah, maybe we should ask—like, do you guys have any ...

LATIF: Okay, any guesses?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: The hospital?

LATIF: Hospital.

AVIR: Hospital.

LATIF: Where was that? I would think, like, a nursing home, maybe?

AVIR: Nursing home?

LATIF: Anywhere else? Just name places. Who knows?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Denmark.

LATIF: What's that?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Denmark.

LATIF: Denmark, okay. That's fun.

AVIR: Denmark!

LATIF: The gym, maybe?

AVIR: He knows something. Okay, so I'm going to shatter all your ...

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: ... beliefs. The best place to have a heart attack is a casino.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: What?

AVIR: Yes.

LATIF: And why is that?

AVIR: So, you know, it turns out that it's the perfect practice space for cardiac arrest. You have a lot of older, elderly people ...

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: Right? At a casino.

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: They periodically lose a lot of money and get very stressed.

LATIF: Yeah. No kidding. Right.

AVIR: And they often manage that stress by doing potentially unhealthy things like smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol.

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: So cardiac arrests happen a lot at casinos, and everybody there is on camera, and everybody in—who works there, like the dealers, you know, everybody, they're all trained in CPR.

LATIF: Ah.

AVIR: So as a result, the arrest—the survival rates of cardiac arrest in casinos is actually 53 percent.

LATIF: No!

AVIR: It's unreal.

LATIF: We'll save your life but take your shirt.

AVIR: Yeah.

LATIF: Yeah. Wow!

AVIR: Sorry, residents. It's not where we work. It's not.

LATIF: Yeah. Wow!

AVIR: Yeah, so to me that's saying, like, you know, we can do something. If we could do CPR, we can really increase these numbers.

LATIF: Because the reason the survival rate is so good in the casinos is because there's someone right there, right in that moment, doing CPR, getting that heart beating right away.

AVIR: It really comes down to time. So this is a survival curve.

LATIF: Okay, so another graph here.

LULU: Mm-hmm.

LATIF: So okay, along the side it's survival percentage.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: Right? Zero at the bottom, a hundred at the top.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: And then on the bottom you have, like, minutes.

AVIR: And at time zero, that's like when your heart stops. And you can see every minute that passes, your chances of coming back just exponentially decreases. So, you know, think about in New York City, we have, like, the—there's an ambulance on every corner, as you guys know. It keeps you up all night. And the average response time in New York City is five minutes and fifty-three seconds. And that's great.

LATIF: That's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good.

AVIR: That's great. But look at where that puts you on this graph.

LATIF: Oh yeah, not—not good. Not so good.

AVIR: Yeah, not so good. You're at, like, between 10 and 20 percent. You're probably at, like, 15 percent chance of survival, right off the bat.

LATIF: Wow!

AVIR: Now picture—you know, I don't know, picture you're in Nebraska or somewhere else, where a good time would be 30 minutes.

LATIF: Right.

AVIR: So that's the problem, right? And just to put this in context, like, cardiac arrest in the US happens 1,000 times every day.

LATIF: No!

AVIR: Yeah. So this is, like, dismal to me, right? Like, you have a 92 percent chance of staying dead, it's happening a thousand times a day.

LATIF: Right.

AVIR: And survival is not great.

LATIF: And Avir's point was, like, given that graph, the real problem is that when this happens outside of a hospital, there's just not enough time, right? The key is the person or people who are right there with them at that very moment on the sidewalk or in the house or the restaurant or whatever, the only way to nudge that number is for those people to do something.

AVIR: We have to squeeze the heart. We have to compress that heart. So it's actually very simple—don't let anyone make this complicated. You have a heart sandwiched between two bones. You have a breast bone up top, and you have vertebrae below it. And all you're basically doing is just sandwiching the heart between those two bones and manually pumping it.

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: You know, and you can't do it forever, but this actually works. Is it fixing the problem? This is where a lot of people get confused. Is it fixing the heart? No. Is it just pumping the blood around to sort of buy you time? Yes, that's exactly what it's doing.

LATIF: Got it.

AVIR: Now all of a sudden, your survival goes down much more gently. You're buying yourself time for someone to come in and do something about it.

LATIF: Right.

AVIR: So I guess that brings us to, like, the real question is, you know, what would you do in this situation, you know? That's the question. Because the truth is, like, when this happens out in the world, a lot of us just freeze.

LATIF: Right.

AVIR: You know? And I can't help. I'll be at work, you know? You'll be in the recording studio.

LATIF: Right.

AVIR: So it really just comes down to you guys, right? Like, what would you do? Really put yourself in that situation, because it sounds good on paper but, like, imagine you're just walking down the street and someone collapses, or you're with someone and they collapse.

LATIF: So what would you do, Lulu?

LULU: If I saw someone collapse?

LATIF: Yeah.

LULU: I mean, I would call 911, I would say, "Does anyone know here—does anyone else here know what to do?"

LATIF: Yeah.

LULU: And, I mean, I'd be really scared to do the wrong thing.

LATIF: Yeah.

LULU: And I'm probably so frozen, I'm probably just calling 911, and waiting and hoping and searching for someone who knows what to do.

LATIF: Yeah. And I mean, that's fair, right? Because most of us haven't taken a CPR course, it's a little bit scary, feels maybe dangerous.

LULU: Right.

LATIF: But here's the thing about this whole event that actually felt really new, and actually shook me, right? Okay, so because according to Avir, there is a new way of thinking about and doing CPR that is completely changing the game. And when we come back from break, we are going to have a couple of very special guests come up to the stage and tell a story that is on the one hand completely heroic, but at the same time when you hear it you realize just actually how easy stepping up to a moment like that can be.

LULU: Hmm!

LATIF: So just stick around. We'll be right back.

LATIF: Latif.

LULU: Lulu.

LATIF: And we are back from break, where Avir and I were on stage in New York City. We are now about to bring up on stage a couple, they're called the Glaucomfleckens.

LULU: Glaucomflecken?

LATIF: They are ...

LULU: Is that their last name?

LATIF: No.

LULU: Oh.

LATIF: It's sort of their, like, nom de TikTok.

LULU: [laughs] Okay.

AVIR: We're bringing Will Flanary and his wife Kristin Flanary out to talk to us. Now I know about him because of this guy's TikTok channel. He makes comedy videos for healthcare professionals that literally are—like, spread like wildfire. So this guy is, like, literally the Elvis of medical comedy, I swear. I mean, he's—he's amazing. So I want to bring up Will Flanary and his wife, Kristin Flanary.

[applause]

LATIF: Yeah!

WILL FLANARY: Thank you.

LATIF: Okay.

WILL FLANARY: Thank you very much.

[laughter]

WILL FLANARY: Hi, everyone.

[audience, "Hi!"]

WILL FLANARY: So yes, I am an internet comedian ophthalmologist, which I swear is a real job that—I made it up, but it's still a real job. If you don't know what an ophthalmologist is, though, I am an eye surgeon. So that means I went to med school, and I learned everything there is to learn about the human body, the entire human body. And then I said, "I don't want to do any of that." It's like, "I'll just devote my career to the eyeball." And so now I'm a practicing ophthalmologist, and Kristen has been with me since the beginning. We ...

KRISITN FLANARY: Not since birth. We're not siblings.

WILL FLANARY: Not too far after. We met in college, and I went on to med school, Kristin went on to grad school. We were at Dartmouth. But our story really starts in—well, it starts a long time ago, but we're gonna go to 2020. The pandemic hit, and when the lockdown occurred, my practice shut down, so I couldn't see any patients. So I had all this free time on my hands. I did start making TikToks around that time. But there were also—there were a few times where I honestly thought I might get redeployed to the hospital to help out. And do you know how bad a public health emergency has to be for someone in the ICU to be like, "Are there any ophthalmologists we could get up here?"

[laughter]

WILL FLANARY: Now fortunately, it didn't happen. Like, there were plenty of more qualified people than an eye doctor to go help out. But I had all this free time on my hands, making all these videos, trying to do virtual ophthalmology, which is as hard as it sounds. And then on Mother's Day in 2020, we had a wonderful day. We were at my in-law's house. We had a nice meal out in the backyard.

KRISITN FLANARY: Social distancing with my parents. It was very weird but it was nice.

WILL FLANARY: We had a water balloon fight in the backyard. And that day, Kristin took a lot of photos. And those were almost the last photos that were ever taken of me, because later that night, I had a cardiac arrest in my sleep.

KRISITN FLANARY: At around 4:45 in the morning, I woke up to him making some very strange sounds. Fortunately, they were loud and I'm a mom, so I'm a light sleeper. All you moms know exactly what I'm talking about. And I woke up, and I thought he was snoring. I was still really groggy. I'm not in medicine. I studied cognitive neuroscience and then education and marketing and basically everything but medicine. Bodies are gross.

KRISITN FLANARY: And so I thought he was snoring. I did the thing that you do, you know, like, "Ah, quit it, you're waking me up!" And, like, tried to get him to turn over and stop snoring, but he wasn't responding. And he was—just something about how he wasn't responding kind of raised a red flag, like, whoa, that's weird! And I couldn't put my finger on why, but it just didn't seem right. And so I tried a little bit harder. Still nothing.

KRISITN FLANARY: And so then I started to get a little freaked out, and so I started kind of slapping his face a little bit and yelling his name. And then he still wasn't responding. And I had no idea what was happening, but I knew this isn't right. This is very bad. And so I just did the only thing I could think of to do, which was I called 911.

KRISITN FLANARY: And it was the most bizarre period of time in my whole life. I sort of—part of me—part of my brain was, like, in the moment and just, like, really focused on, like, what needs to happen, and just, like, in emergency mode. And then another part was just sort of—it was almost an out-of-body experience. Like, I wasn't the one dying, but I was the one having an out-of-body experience, just sort of watching myself and this scene unfolding and just feeling like, "What?" You know, like, this is just so wrong. He went to bed perfectly healthy. I take that back. You were not perfectly healthy. He had survived testicular cancer two times before that. So, like, he's used up three of his nine lives so far, but hopefully ...

WILL FLANARY: I had a little bout of cancer a couple times.

KRISITN FLANARY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that wasn't anything. You know, we had moved ...

WILL FLANARY: I was fine.

KRISITN FLANARY: ... past that. He had been completely healthy, cleared, all these things. And it just seemed so wrong that anything would be wrong with him. He doesn't have a family history of any cardiovascular incidents, really. He didn't have a personal history. So it was just the most bizarre thing. And I was leaning my head over his chest as I was calling 911, and I was sort of noticing—like, I don't hear anything. There's no heart beating in here. But it was just kind of like, "Huh! That's interesting." [laughs]

KRISITN FLANARY: I couldn't really fully process that at that time, but I remember taking note of that. And so then the dispatcher came on, and they asked what the emergency was, and I said, "My husband won't wake up." And the dispatcher asked me what I have since learned—I did not know this at the time, but I have since learned there's only two questions that you need to know the answer to to know that it's time for CPR. And that's: is he responding to you? And of course, the answer was no. And is he breathing 'normally?' And that word 'normally' is very important because I would have said, "Yes, he's breathing." In fact, I think I did say, "Yeah, he was breathing kind of. Like, taking these weird gasps, and then he would stop for a bit, and then he started breathing again."

KRISITN FLANARY: I've learned since then that's called 'agonal respiration.' It's the body's last ditch, unsuccessful attempts at breathing in air, but it's not real breath. And so that second question: is he breathing normally? The answer to that was no. So because he was not responding and he was not breathing normally, she said, "I'm gonna walk you through CPR." And I said, "What?"

[laughter]

KRISITN FLANARY: It didn't make any sense, but I just said, "Okay." And I followed her instructions, and she told me—she asked me if I could move him off the bed. We were in bed—it was the middle of the night—and so I said, "Well, I can't move him." I don't know, you know, if anyone's just listening to this, you can't see this, but I have heels on. He's got a good 13 inches on me and probably 100 pounds.

KRISITN FLANARY: And more than that, I had had neck surgery four months prior that I was still recovering from. And I said, "I can't move him off the bed." And she said, "Okay, if you can't move him, we're just gonna do it where it is." And I'm so glad I did not know this at the time, but that was bad! That was—you need a hard surface. Preferably, if you can get the person to a hard surface, do that. But I could not. And so thankfully, we do have a very firm mattress thanks to my neck. So that was good. But I did—she told me, you know, put—put your hands on his chest. Lace your fingers together, put your hands on his chest, in the center of his chest, between his nipples and just push hard and fast. And she just counted with me—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Just over and over and over and over for 10 straight minutes.

KRISITN FLANARY: It was May of 2020, and we lived not far from the station that responded to my 911 call. But they were in full hazmat gear. They had hoods, shields, the whole suit, gloves, everything. And so they had to wait outside of our door, put all the gear on, and then try to get in the door, which turned out to be locked, and so they had to kick it down.

WILL FLANARY: I've never been so happy to have structural damage to our house.

KRISITN FLANARY: That's right. I will take it any day, if that's what it means. And so they finally, you know, were able to do all of that. But in the meantime, that was 10 minutes of looking over my husband and the father of my two children, who were eight and five at the time, and were asleep in the very next room. And I was thinking, "They cannot come in here. They cannot come in here." Because I didn't want them to see what I was seeing, because you can never unsee that. And they were so young. And I was watching him turn blue and then purple. He stopped making those noises eventually, and by the time EMS arrived, he was gray. And I saw them take him off the bed, carry him downstairs, and lay him down on the hardwood floor and hook a bunch of things up to him. And, you know, I may not have medical training, but I have watched television.

[laughter]

KRISITN FLANARY: And I heard things that should be beeping. I knew this. They were making a flat, solid sound and a flat line. And I knew what that meant. And so I turned around—I remember this really distinctly, unfortunately. I turned around to go back up the stairs because I wanted to check to make sure that the children were still in their beds and weren't trying to come out. And I didn't want to see what I knew was about to happen, because I saw them take out the paddles. And I—as I went up the stairs, before I could even get halfway up, I heard them deliver that first shock. And I heard the way that his 6'4", all arms and legs body just slammed against our hardwood floor in a really unnatural, weird way.

KRISITN FLANARY: And from there, I just went up. And I was trying to figure out anything useful that I might be able to do, or just a thing to keep busy, to keep from breaking down. And so I packed him a hospital bag, and I called into his clinic to tell them, "I don't think he'll be in today. You might want to reschedule his patients." And I called both of our sets of parents. And, you know, during that time, some of the paramedics, one of them was coming up and down the stairs and giving me updates, and he told me that what had happened was Will's heart had gone into ventricular defibrillat—no, ventricular fibrillation. Did I get that right? Okay. Which is what you saw on the screen, where when they stop the heart, it just sort of shakes like this, but it doesn't actually pump any blood anywhere.

KRISITN FLANARY: And the sounds that I had heard were those agonal respirations, and that meant that his heart had stopped. And—but thankfully, they were able to get his heartbeat back after they shocked him five times. They didn't give up on him, and their hoods and shields were fogging up, and they would have to switch off. And it was such an effort and a team effort to get him back, and they didn't give up on him. And they did get his heartbeat back, and they took him to the hospital. And I went into my children's bedroom, and I asked them what they would like for breakfast.

WILL FLANARY: Just to put a little bit of a different context on that from a healthcare professional, 10 minutes of chest compressions, that's an eternity. Like, two minutes you're supposed to pass off to somebody else because it's so hard to continue doing effective chest compressions after two minutes. And even I know that as an ophthalmologist, and so I still don't know how she did 10 minutes.

KRISITN FLANARY: Oh, I know. We had just gotten a mortgage, and we had two young children. You were not getting out that easily.

[laughter]

WILL FLANARY: That's why.

KRISITN FLANARY: Come back here, sir!

[laughter]

WILL FLANARY: And so they took me to the hospital, and from my perspective, you know, I went to bed one night, I woke up in the ICU two days later. I didn't have any underwear on. I didn't know what the hell was going on. And I had all the testing done in the world. And we still, to this day, don't know what caused my cardiac arrest, which is not unusual for young people that have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Often we don't have a good answer for why it happens.

WILL FLANARY: And, you know, as a—as a physician, I never once thought to myself—like, when this happened, I had been a physician for like, seven years. I never once thought, "Hey, maybe my wife should know how to do CPR, any of my family members, because if something happens, I'm usually there. I'll be the one to help."

KRISITN FLANARY: We never thought about it happening to him.

WILL FLANARY: Yeah. I was the one that needed it. And I'm sure those of you here who know CPR probably have a family or friend who doesn't. And we need to support people who do it. And so we want to thank you all for being here and listening to our story. So thank you all.

LATIF: Please thank the Glaucomfleckens.

[applause]

KRISITN FLANARY: Thank you.

LATIF: Thank you so much.

KRISITN FLANARY: Thank you.

LATIF: Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing with us.

WILL FLANARY: Thank you for having us.

LATIF: Thank you so much for sharing with us.

WILL FLANARY: Thank you everybody.

KRISITN FLANARY: Thank you.

LATIF: And I'm gonna bring back out Avir.

AVIR: Thank you, guys. So what you just heard is literally an eight percent type of outcome. That is very rare, what you just heard.

LATIF: But, Avir says, the reason it did go well, it did become an eight percent outcome is because of what Kristin did. Like, her—those 10 minutes of keeping that heart going while she waited for the EMTs to show up, like, that was the crucial first step that made it possible to bring Will back and to bring him back without any brain damage.

LULU: I'm thinking about the—the weird restraints about not jumping in to do a thing.

LATIF: Oh, right right right.

LULU: And I do feel like—didn't Radiolab once even do a show where doctors themselves were like, "I wouldn't want a stranger doing CPR on me because ..."

LATIF: Yeah.

LULU: Because of the potential risks. Which again, wouldn't be necessarily everyone's call, but that there were a bunch of doctors who were ...

LATIF: Right right right right. So there's that episode. I've heard it recently. It's called "The Bitter End."

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: Totally holds up. Everyone should listen to it.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: But it's slightly different, what they were talking about.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: What they were talking about was—those were doctors talking about let's say you're already in bad shape and something goes wrong. And if you do it in that sort of sense, or even if you do it—if you do it late, if you're waiting a lot of minutes and then—and then you start doing it ...

LULU: Mm-hmm.

LATIF: ... that's when it leads to way worse outcomes. So it does have some risk, but Avir's point is like ...

AVIR: You know, there are, you know, downsides to it. And you gotta think about it this way. Like, out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, you want to do CPR to bridge that person to get to a hospital. So for me, if it's out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, like, I want CPR done to at least get me to a hospital, and then if they think there's nothing that could be done, fine, you know?

LATIF: So at this point the conversation sort of turned back to, like, the reasons why people don't step in to do CPR.

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: And, you know, they've done studies on this. You know, people are afraid you're doing something wrong, maybe they're afraid of getting sued. But one of the other big fears is the fear of infection.

LULU: Right.

LATIF: Of putting your mouth on someone else's mouth, like a stranger's mouth, right?

AVIR: That brings us to what Will and Kristin were talking about, which is sort of a new form of CPR that's trying to make things a lot simpler, and it's just hands-only CPR. So normally, you know, CPR, it's like 30 compressions, two breaths.

LATIF: Yeah. That's all I remember from learning it in high school or whatever. It's like—yeah, it's like counting the breaths and counting the pumps.

AVIR: Which, like, I can't even—I do this for a living, and I don't understand. I don't know where those numbers came from. And like you said, you gotta take a class. You know, it's expensive. You gotta get a card. Like, we don't have time for that. So what they sort of invented—because they knew no one was really doing CPR—is hands-only CPR, where it's literally just push hard and fast on the chest. That's it.

LULU: Oh!

LATIF: No breathing necessary.

LULU: You don't gotta do any lip-to-lip, mouth-to-mouth action.

LATIF: None of that. None of that.

LULU: Just push. Okay. Huh!

AVIR: And they were saying, "Well, maybe—" they thought maybe this will do. You know, it won't be as good, but maybe it'll be something. And actually, when they found out—they have been studying it now for a couple years, head-to-head trials, this is producing the same outcomes as the big fancy CPR, just pushing hard on the chest.

LULU: Whoa! Really?

LATIF: Yeah, the breath counting, all that stuff. Forget all that. Just literally pump pump pump pump pump pump pump.

AVIR: And the reason is, you know, when you're pushing on someone's chest, you're kind of squeezing their lungs a little bit. You know, you're getting a little bit of everything.

LULU: And that feels a little less scary to do.

LATIF: Way less scary.

AVIR: So hands-only CPR. That's kind of where we're gonna be at because I want to teach you guys how to do hands-only CPR. So if we can have Al come up, we ...

[applause]

AVIR: Yeah, give it up for Al.

LATIF: From the Red Cross, everybody!

AVIR: They're from the Red Cross. They sponsored this. They're bringing all these amazing dummies. So we're gonna show you guys how to do hands-only CPR right now. So what you—why don't you—what do you want to tell them?

AL: I want to basically demonstrate CPR.

LATIF: Yeah.

AL: Hands-only CPR and give them step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

AVIR: All right, so you demonstrate. So you're gonna put one hand over the other, okay? Do it in the middle of the chest, and then you're just gonna push hard and fast down on the chest. You want to go about two inches. It's harder than it is on the movies, but you can see that right there. That's good CPR. Another thing to notice is he's not moving his arms because that—you could do it. It's just tiring. So what he's doing is sort of moving his hips like this. Use your hips as a fulcrum and go up and down like—just like that. Does that make sense? Awesome. All right. Thank you, Al. Basically, you just do that.

[applause]

LATIF: Whoo! Whoo! All right. Okay. Yeah.

AVIR: Should we take some questions?

LATIF: Yeah. Are there any questions, or should we just, like, jump into it? Do we have any questions?

LATIF: So at this point we took a couple of questions from the audience. But we were basically like, you know, "Now is the time. The show is basically over. Everybody's gonna stand up, we're all gonna practice this. We're all gonna train on how to do hands-only CPR."

LATIF: If you're game, we want all of you to try it.

AVIR: Yeah. So let's have people come up. And I just want to say that, you know, my thinking about this is like, for all the modern medicine we have, at the end of the day, when it comes to this, all we really have is each other. So I—that's why I feel very strongly about this. We gotta help each other out. So come on up.

[applause]

LATIF: All right, everybody come on. Yeah, let's do it.

LATIF: And it was awesome. Like, we got a heart-shaped disco ball down.

LULU: Oh, that's great!

LATIF: So it turns out the right beat for doing CPR is between 100 and 120 beats per minute. And it just so happens that the song "Stayin' Alive' by the Bee Gees is 103 beats per minute.

LULU: Yeah, right!

LATIF: Which is kind of perfect.

LULU: I can't act surprised because I learned this at Radiolab, and I will never forget it. It's so good. It's so good.

LATIF: But it turns out it's not just "Staying Alive."

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: There's a whole playlist on Spotify that has songs that are at that exact beat, and it's called "CPR Jams."

LULU: [laughs] That's great. What else is on there?

LATIF: Here, let me look. Okay, there's, like, three Usher songs on here.

LULU: Okay, which ones?

LATIF: "Yeah!," "Burn" and "Caught Up." "Crazy in Love" by Beyoncé.

LULU: Oh, "Crazy in Love" is?

LATIF: "Crazy in Love." "Baby Don't Lie" by Gwen Stefani.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: "Hold On" by Wilson Phillips. "Hold On" feels like that's right.

LULU: [singing] Hold on for 10 more minutes.

LATIF: "Texas Hold 'Em" by Beyoncé. That's a new one.

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: "Could You Be Loved?" Bob Marley and the Wailers.

LULU: [singing] Could you be loved?

LATIF: "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," Whitney Houston.

LULU: [singing] I wanna sing with somebody ...

LATIF: "Jolene."

LULU: [singing] Jolene, Jolene ...

LATIF: "Just Want to Have Fun," Cyndi Lauper. Justin Timberlake, "Rock Your Body," because he's—I mean, what you're doing is you're rocking a body.

LULU: You sure are.

LATIF: "Never Gonna Give You Up," Rick Astley.

LULU: Oh, the Rickroll song is?

LATIF: The Rickroll song.

LULU: [laughs] Okay that's the one I think I might, like, channel.

LATIF: Yeah, that one almost feels earlier, yeah. "Take a Chance On Me" by Abba.

LULU: Man, wow! Well, thank you, Latif. Thank you, Avir. Yeah, I feel empowered to just use my hands. Hands-only. This is great.

LATIF: And if anyone does save a life after—because of hearing this ...

LULU: Tell us.

LATIF: Let us know.

LULU: Radiolab@wnyc.org. Let us know.

LATIF: Yeah. Okay.

LULU: Cool. That was great, Latif. Thank you.

LATIF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And big, big thanks to Will and Kristin Flanary, aka the Glaucomfleckens. You can check them out on their podcast, "Knock Knock, Hi!" And they're actually going on a live tour starting in August. And if you go see that you can hear more details about their story. It's called—of course it is—"Wife and Death." Thanks to the Greene Space here at WNYC's home in New York City. First of all to Jennifer Sendrow, who helped us make it work at basically every stage of the process, as well as the rest of the Greene Space crew: Carlos Cruz Figueroa, Chase Culpon, Ricardo Fernandez, Jessica Lowry, Skye Pallo Ross, Eric Webber, Ryan Andrew Wilde and Andrew Yanchyshyn. And also thank you to the Red Cross for helping us make this happen and providing the CPR dummies. And to all the CPR trainers we had: Ashley London, Jeannette Nicosia, Charlene Young, Jacob Stable, Ty Morales, Anna Stacy and Adithya Shankar. And by the way, you can see a video of the entire live show in its raw form on the Greene Space website, TheGreeneSpace.org—'Greene' is G-R-E-E-N-E. Where you can also check out all the other awesome live events happening at WNYC.

LULU: All right.

LATIF: That's it.

LULU: That'll do it.

LATIF: Yeah. [singing] Take a chance on me. Take a chance, take a chance, take a chance. Yeah, okay.

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Rhianne, and I'm from Donegal in Ireland. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Valentina Powers, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

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First aired back in 2013, we originally released this episode to celebrate the 80th birthday of one of our favorite human beings, Oliver Sacks. To celebrate, his good friend, and our former co-host Rober Krulwich, asks the good doctor to look back, and explain how thousands of worms and a motorbike accident led to a brilliant writing career.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon.

Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

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Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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A photographed portrait of Dr. Oliver Sacks.

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Investigating a strange world.

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Radiolab wishes Oliver Sacks a happy birthday.

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[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LATIF NASSER: Hey, I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab. This week would have been the 91st birthday of a person who I think it's fair to say is one of the show's all-time favorite human beings, the late neurologist and science writer Dr. Oliver Sacks. We had spoken to Oliver Sacks many, many times on this show, and his essays about his patients, most famously Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, they are a model for what we like to do around here—the mix of science and heart and curiosity.

LATIF: So today what we're gonna do for you is to play you a conversation that one of our other all-time beloved humans, Robert Krulwich, had with Dr. Sacks about a decade ago. Dr. Sacks is just turning 80 years old at the time, so to celebrate, Krulwich sat down with him and had him explain how thousands of worms and a motorbike accident led to his brilliant career as a writer.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I asked him, would you mind sitting down and talking to me about how you got started? And he said, "Well, all right. The truth is, though, my start wasn't all that easy. In fact, it was kind of rough."

OLIVER SACKS: I came to New York in '65.

ROBERT: He wasn't planning to write essays about science. Not at all.

OLIVER SACKS: I wanted to be a real scientist.

ROBERT: The kind that does experiments in a lab. And he had a research position at Einstein Medical Center in the Bronx, working with ...

OLIVER SACKS: Worms.

ROBERT: Earthworms?

OLIVER SACKS: Right, earthworms.

ROBERT: Oh!

OLIVER SACKS: I'm afraid I committed a sort of genocide of worms from the front garden at Einstein. I collected them by the hundred and by the thousand.

ROBERT: How many altogether?

OLIVER SACKS: Tens of thousands.

ROBERT: The thing about worms is when you give them a little poke, you give them a little—ergh, they have ...

OLIVER SACKS: Very quick reactions, startle reactions when they curl up.

ROBERT: They react faster than people do. And he wondered well, why? So he decided to focus on the wrappers that surround their nerve cells, which are made from a very thin substance called ...

OLIVER SACKS: Myelin.

ROBERT: So thin you have to peel it off really delicately.

OLIVER SACKS: One is looking for a little amount of myelin in their giant nerve fibers, maybe a thousandth of the weight of each worm.

ROBERT: So you're digging up—you're digging up lots of earthworms. But how did they die?

OLIVER SACKS: Well, I don't want to be pressed on that point.

ROBERT: [laughs] Oh, come on! Give me a little ...

OLIVER SACKS: We sort of anesthetized them, and put them out.

ROBERT: Until very gradually, he accumulated a precious ball of myelin that he could then take to a laboratory to experiment with. Of course, like any good scientist, he also took notes.

OLIVER SACKS: I kept fairly detailed notes in a huge green notebook, my lab notebook. At that time, I lived here in the West Village. I had a motorbike, and I went in daily to Einstein in the Bronx. I sometimes took the book home at night to ponder over. But one morning, when I was in a bit of a hurry, I failed to secure it properly to the motorbike. And when I was on the Cross Bronx Thruway, the notebook broke loose and fell off the bike.

ROBERT: Oy!

OLIVER SACKS: I got to the edge of the road and put my bike on the stand. I could see the book in the middle of the crowded Cross Bronx, being really ...

ROBERT: The Cross Bronx Expressway can get very, very busy.

OLIVER SACKS: Very busy, very crowded, very fast. Very callous drivers who, instead of respecting this notebook, this holy notebook of mine, were tearing it sheet from sheet. On two occasions, I made little sallies to try and get into the traffic, but this would have been fatal. And so I lost my notebook.

ROBERT: And therefore, all the data that you had.

OLIVER SACKS: Collected nine months data in it. But I consoled myself that at least I had the sample, and I could continue the work.

ROBERT: With his little ball of precious myelin.

OLIVER SACKS: And sort of make further results. Although then there was another and even worse accident.

ROBERT: [laughs]

OLIVER SACKS: Which is I lost the specimen of myelin, which I spent nine months getting. And ...

ROBERT: You mean, the thing that you pulled out of all these many animals?

OLIVER SACKS: Yes. It's like ...

ROBERT: How did you lose it?

OLIVER SACKS: I don't know what happened to it. I'm afraid I am a loser. And then the powers that be got together, and basically in a very kind but firm way, they said, "Sacks, you're a menace. Go see patients. You'll do less harm."

ROBERT: So no more lab work for you.

OLIVER SACKS: No more lab work for me. And ...

ROBERT: The rest is history.

OLIVER SACKS: And the rest is history.

ROBERT: So now instead of a scientist in a lab, Oliver is assigned to what's basically a nursing home.

OLIVER SACKS: The original name had been the Beth Abraham Home for Incurables.

ROBERT: Now it was just Beth Abraham Hospital up in the Bronx.

OLIVER SACKS: Some of my contemporaries said, "You know, this is the sticks. No ambitious doctor would—you know, would work in a place like this." But I found it perfectly to my liking because I could spend a great deal of time with patients.

ROBERT: Though on the day that he arrived, as he stepped into the lobby, he looked around for the first time, and he thought to himself, like, what is going on here? Because everywhere he looked, he saw people ...

OLIVER SACKS: Some in chairs, some standing.

ROBERT: ... totally still, like, frozen. And though he didn't know this yet, these folks would become yet another accident—or maybe I should call it a collision—between Oliver and the science community, one that would be much more painful than getting exiled from the lab. But this time, he would stand his ground and he'd fight.

OLIVER SACKS: Yes, right.

ROBERT: Oliver's frozen patients had gotten sick back in the 1930s from a fever called encephalitis lethargica. They'd survived the disease, but it left them, as one doctor put it ...

OLIVER SACKS: As extinct volcanoes, in whom there was very little behavior and very little sign of mind of an interior.

ROBERT: They'd been stuck at Beth Abraham ever since.

OLIVER SACKS: And it seemed in 1966, when I went there, that there was no hope or no future for them.

ROBERT: But then, one year into his new job, a paper came out that said large doses of a chemical called L-DOPA ...

OLIVER SACKS: L-DOPA, levodihydroxyphenylaniline.

ROBERT: ... seemed to help Parkinsonians unfreeze a little bit. And Sacks thought, "Well, who knows? Maybe they could help my patients."

OLIVER SACKS: It was a hunch.

ROBERT: So he wrote the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington asking for a supply of L-DOPA so he could run a study. If you've seen the movie, you know what happens next.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Awakenings: Dr. Sayer?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Awakenings: What is it?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Awakenings: It's a [bleep] miracle!]

ROBERT: For the patients with L-DOPA, the changes were, to put it mildly, dramatic.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Awakenings: Where are my glasses?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Awakenings: They're on your face.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Awakenings: Oh, thank you.]

ROBERT: Can you describe just a little bit what you were seeing?

OLIVER SACKS: Well, I was seeing people become alert, attentive to their surroundings, able to move and able to feel in a way they hadn't been able to for sometimes decades.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Awakenings: Anthony, how are you?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Awakenings: Great, Vince. How are you?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Awakenings: Great, too.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Awakenings: [laughs] All right, Vince!]

ROBERT: Some of these changes Oliver could see and measure, but to get a fuller sense of what was happening, he wondered what was it like on the inside to suddenly walk and talk and feel after so long?

OLIVER SACKS: "Wonderful. Wonderful."

ROBERT: Said a patient he called Hester, who in one weekend burst out of a 30-year silence.

OLIVER SACKS: "I'm a new person. I feel it. I feel it inside. I'm a brand new person. I feel so much. I can't tell you what I feel."

ROBERT: He gave his patients diaries, and he told them, "Well, tell me what you're feeling and experiencing." Again, here's Hester.

OLIVER SACKS: "I feel very good. My speech is getting louder and clearer. My hands and fingers move more freely. I can even take the paper off a piece of candy, which I haven't done for years." The following day, she wrote, "Anyone who reads this diary will have to excuse my spelling and my writing. They must remember that I haven't done any writing for years and years." And to this she added very poignantly, "I would like to express my feelings fully. It is so long since I had any feelings. I can't find the words for my feelings. I would like to have a dictionary to find words for my feelings."

ROBERT: The government, of course, wanted to know what had happened as well. And they asked Oliver to report what he'd observed on what were called ...

OLIVER SACKS: Rating forms.

ROBERT: Basically, they were charts. So if a patient shook less, Oliver was to mark that change, checking a box.

OLIVER SACKS: On a seven-point scale.

ROBERT: So if his shakes went from a six to a four then, you know, just check the box. Numbers were key.

OLIVER SACKS: That was what they expected, what they demanded.

ROBERT: And that was enough for them?

OLIVER SACKS: That would have been enough for them.

ROBERT: But not for Oliver. He had seen so much that wouldn't even begin to fit on a seven-point inventory. He said, "I'm not doing this."

OLIVER SACKS: And I then stopped keeping these rubbishy inventories.

ROBERT: [laughs]

ROBERT: Because they didn't say enough. But as a researcher, as a scientist, he still had to report what had happened. Which was a problem, because in the 1960s, medical journals had an attitude about clinical studies. They also wanted numbers and patterns and data. They wanted things that you could measure. They didn't want stories.

OLIVER SACKS: Phenomena, phenomenological description, if you want to put it this way, had been largely displaced by laboratory tests of one sort and another. And that these ...

ROBERT: Meaning adjectives and adjectives, and what it was by numbers?

OLIVER SACKS: Well, that the urea was so and so, the chest X-ray so and so. And the more human sorts of description had become rarer.

ROBERT: A hundred years earlier in the 1870s, doctors did quote patients and did describe scenes in their clinical studies.

OLIVER SACKS: Many of the 19th-century accounts are vivid and descriptive.

ROBERT: But as medical machines got better, numbers became more reliable, gradually pushing out description—with one very singular exception. His name was ...

OLIVER SACKS: A.R. Luria.

ROBERT: Doctor A.R. Luria was a neurologist living in Moscow in the 1960s. He still did case studies the old-fashioned way. One of his accounts of a man with a remarkable memory was startlingly vivid.

OLIVER SACKS: Yes. So much so that I read the first 20 pages of this thinking it was a novel.

ROBERT: Huh!

OLIVER SACKS: And I then realized that it was a case history, but the most extraordinary and detailed I had ever read. But a case history which did not shy away from the human aspects and the pathos and drama. And then in 1967, I read a book ...

ROBERT: Also by Doctor Luria.

OLIVER SACKS: ... called Human Brain and Psychological Processes. And ...

ROBERT: And this is the book you are holding in your hand.

OLIVER SACKS: The book I'm holding at the moment, or I should say another copy of the book. When I read the book, I got appalled or frightened and awed by its power and its depth and its narrative sweetness.

ROBERT: "Wait a second," Oliver thought, "This man is doing exactly what I want to do." And suddenly, he was jealous and maybe more than a little competitive, because this guy was doing it so well.

OLIVER SACKS: And I thought, "This man has seen it all, he's writing, has thought it all out in detail. Sooner or later, he will see and think and write everything I can. Therefore, there will be no place for me in the world. Luria will have done it all." And I tore this copy in two.

ROBERT: I hope you owned this book, it wasn't a library book.

OLIVER SACKS: Well, it was indeed a library book. And I explained to the librarian at Einstein, I didn't say that I destroyed the book. I said, "Most unfortunately, I lost the book. But here is a new copy." And I got another new copy for myself, which I'm holding at the moment.

ROBERT: Ah.

ROBERT: And so, both frightened and boosted by Luria's example, Oliver Sacks sits down and he writes his manuscript for Awakenings. And following Luria's example, he wrote it as vividly as he possibly could, with quotes, with scenes, with emotions. The book came out in 1974. And what happened?

OLIVER SACKS: Well, when Awakenings was published, many essayists and poets and others liked it very much. Auden said he thought it a masterpiece.

ROBERT: That's W.H. Auden, the great poet.

OLIVER SACKS: And it was selected as book of the year by five writers. On the other hand, there were no medical reviews, whatever.

ROBERT: None?

OLIVER SACKS: None.

ROBERT: Well, to be fair, one small journal ran an editorial ...

OLIVER SACKS: Saying that among the most surprising things the previous year were the appearance of this extraordinary book and, quote, "the strange mutism," unquote, of the profession.

ROBERT: The strange M-U-T-I-S-M.

OLIVER SACKS: Yes, the strange mutism.

ROBERT: As in silence?

OLIVER SACKS: Yes, as in silence.

ROBERT: This isn't science, some neurologists said, this is anecdote. Awakenings is not useful, it's overwritten. Where's the data, and what is Sacks doing? The attacks got personal.

OLIVER SACKS: One of the most painful was from a man who said, "Sacks is a doctor who mistook his patients for a literary career."

ROBERT: Ooh!

ROBERT: The science community almost unanimously ignored Awakenings. But in the middle of this quiet, out of the blue, a letter arrived at Oliver's house.

OLIVER SACKS: From Moscow. It excited me. It had beautiful handwriting, done obviously, with a fountain pen.

ROBERT: He opened it and it was from the man himself, A.R. Luria. And it turns out Luria not only liked Awakenings, he liked exactly what the other neurologists didn't like.

OLIVER SACKS: He said, "The art of description common to the great neurologists and psychiatrists of the 19th century is almost gone now." And he went on to say that Awakenings should be revived and with a great success.

LATIF: Okay, folks. We are going to revive to great success after this short break.

LATIF: Welcome back. We are listening to Robert Krulwich interview the late great Dr. Oliver Sacks about how he tripped and stumbled into becoming a brilliant science writer. When we left for break, Dr. Sacks had just described receiving a letter of praise from another doctor-writer, one who he very much looked up to.

ROBERT: That letter, Luria's letter, plus the response from poets and playwrights and movie makers gave Oliver the boost he needed to double down and begin writing book after book after book in his new but old style. He wrote stories about husbands who mistook their wives for hats, colorblind painters, deaf people, Touretters, autistic people, blind people. His descriptions in all these books are so full of feeling, he makes these people come alive. This is his legacy. Oliver Sacks is a great includer. And when I asked him isn't it possible that your critics were maybe a little right, that maybe you overdid it a bit in Awakenings, put in too much description? He says, no.

OLIVER SACKS: I would now say that the description was inadequate. And I think, for example, that even with ordinary Parkinson's disease, to give an adequate description of how someone with Parkinson's rises from a chair and makes his difficult way across a room may need 50 pages of very clear prose. I think that to describe a sneeze and all the feelings which may proceed and attend and succeed it would require many, many pages of lucid prose.

ROBERT: Come on. What is a regular neurologist gonna do with 50 pages about a sneeze? How's he gonna use that?

OLIVER SACKS: Well, you might indeed be able to use it. Let me give you an example.

ROBERT: No, no. 50 pages on a sneeze? You've just gone from useful to Proust. There's a line here, and you just crossed it. This is literary. This is no longer medical writing for doctors.

OLIVER SACKS: Well, I try to be, and I believe I am a good doctor. And a doctor does not just diagnose a disease. That is the least. He has to do that, but it's the least of what he does. He is also concerned with the impact of the disease on the person, their experience of it, and how they may adapt or otherwise how they may respond to treatment. So there is quite a strong individual story to be said of everyone with a disease or an injury. Or rather, you must expand the notion of medicine.

ROBERT: No, but how far do you expand it? Because you already have—you have millions of readers. Your stories have enormous influence. You're loved. The only question that dangles here is: what have you done for doctors? They're your holdouts.

OLIVER SACKS: Well, I think things have changed. At first there was this strange mutism, especially among senior doctors, though I think junior doctors might sometimes have a copy of Awakenings with a brown paper cover.

ROBERT: [laughs]

OLIVER SACKS: But now I think narrative has come back into medicine partly as a thing which is taught in medical school. I never thought of it as anything distinct from medicine, and it makes you realize that science is fun and science is play, but ...

ROBERT: Okay, so let me just do this. I have one last question. I'm still gonna be channeling your doctor critics when—this being your birthday, I feel it's something I should do. So if you were to get sick this afternoon and have to call a doctor—and we'll just say the name of this doctor happens to be Dr. Oliver Sacks. Would you trust him to fix you, or just talk about you so very beautifully, so people all over the world will know your story? Which is that Dr. Sacks best at?

OLIVER SACKS: Well, it would depend what I had.

ROBERT: [laughs]

OLIVER SACKS: I'm going to give you an example.

ROBERT: Okay. [laughs]

OLIVER SACKS: Some years ago when I was flying to California, the air hostess—the term was used then—came around at one point to get orders for breakfast. And she said, "Dr. Sacks?" And the man next to me said, "Yes."

ROBERT: [laughs]

OLIVER SACKS: And I looked around furiously. And anyhow, it turned out that he was another Dr. Sacks, in fact, a Dr. David Sacks, and he was a pulmonologist from Stanford. We got chatting a little bit until there was a call over the loudspeaker. "Is there a doctor on the plane?" And with Sacksian alacrity, the two of us got up, converged to the patient, who was a woman, obviously just coming to from an epileptic fit. And as she became clearer, we asked if she'd ever had a seizure before, and she said, "No." She was a medical technician. She knew about such things. I thought that one of her pupils was a little larger than the other. My fellow Dr. Sacks said he also thought that one of the pupils was a bit enlarged, but we weren't quite sure. We—I said, "Well, let's observe." And as we observed, the enlarged pupil enlarged more. And I looked at Dr. Sacks and Dr. Sacks looked at me and we said, "Let's go to the captain." I'm not timid when it comes to doing something for the patient.

ROBERT: What did you want to tell the captain?

OLIVER SACKS: We said to the captain, "We think this woman is bleeding in her brain, that this caused the seizure and this is also causing pressure in the head and the pupil, and she must be in neurosurgical hands as quickly as possible." The captain said, "Okay," and he emergently landed at Denver. The woman was taken off the plane, she was successfully operated on and she thanked us both. So I can be ...

ROBERT: Now which Dr. Sacks? Which of the two should get the lion's share of the credit?

OLIVER SACKS: Well, we did it together.

ROBERT: But notice that he told it fantastically!

LULU MILLER: That was the late, the great Dr. Oliver Sacks. If you're interested in reading more of his work, we recommend literally any of his books.

LATIF: Oh!

LULU: And countless essays.

LATIF: So good!

LULU: Although I really loved An Anthropologist on Mars, and then I was a sucker for his autobiography, On the Move.

LATIF: Yeah. It's also fun to read his book, Awakenings, and then watch the movie with Robin Williams playing him.

LULU: And we also—we have tons of episodes with Dr. Sacks talking about his life, his patients. Just google Radiolab and Dr. Oliver Sacks and so many will pop up. And that's it for today.

LATIF: Live your best life, and part of that obviously is tuning in again next week.

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Rhianne, and I'm from Donegal in Ireland. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Valentina Powers, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Tamara from Pasadena, California. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

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About Radiolab

Radiolab is on a curiosity bender. We ask deep questions and use investigative journalism to get the answers. A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. The show is known for innovative sound design, smashing information into music. It is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser.

Radiolab is available on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check your local station for airtimes. It's also available via the CBC, ABC, and the BBC.

Follow Radiolab on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Contact Radiolab using this form.

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All press inquiries may be directed to Jennifer Houlihan Roussel at (646) 829-4497.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

# data.attributes.about.body
About Radiolab

Radiolab is on a curiosity bender. We ask deep questions and use investigative journalism to get the answers. A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. The show is known for innovative sound design, smashing information into music. It is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser.

Radiolab is available on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check your local station for airtimes. It's also available via the CBC, ABC, and the BBC.

Follow Radiolab on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Contact Radiolab using this form.

Apply to become a Radiolab intern!

Embed the Radiolab widget on your blog or website.

All press inquiries may be directed to Jennifer Houlihan Roussel at (646) 829-4497.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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Investigating a strange world.