Making the Hippo Dance

Summary

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Radiolab: “Making the Hippo Dance”

Date: September 9, 2008
Hosts: Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich
Event: Live at the Koshland Science Museum, Washington D.C.

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Episode Overview

In “Making the Hippo Dance,” Radiolab hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich offer a behind-the-scenes look at how they take dense, sometimes inaccessible scientific ideas and transform them into lively, engaging stories for the public. Recorded in front of a live audience, the episode is a playful and candid workshop—demonstrating the show's creative process, their storytelling techniques, and the delightful struggles of making complex science dance like a hippo in ballet shoes.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Challenge: Making Dense Science Accessible

• The Hippo Analogy: They describe dense scientific language as a “heavy hippo” and their job as making the hippo pirouette—making heavy subjects light and elegant.

  • “It’s like heavy like a hippo, which is a wonderful animal, but heavy. And so I think one of our goals is to take the hippo and strap on some ballet shoes and make it do a pirouette.” —Jad Abumrad [02:44]

• The DAF Genes Example:

  • Cynthia Kenyon’s work with C. Elegans worms—a story about genes (DAF2, DAF16) involved in aging—serves as the episode’s test case for science communication.
  • After listening to her technical explanation, Jad and Robert dissect how to make such content connect.

Memorable Quotes:

• “Her verbs are very, very useful to me. It’s these nouns… DAF, DAF2, DAF16.” —Robert Krulwich [04:22]
• “We stole the nouns, replaced them with our own, and we amped up the verbs.” —Jad Abumrad [04:40]

2. Storytelling Tools: Metaphor, Music, and Moment

• Enriching Language:

  • Anthropomorphizing genes (e.g., calling DAF2 the “Grim Reaper gene” and DAF16 the “Fountain of Youth gene”) to clarify and engage.
  • “By damaging this gene, Cynthia and her team essentially are taking the Grim Reaper and knocking his knees out. Stop that.” —Robert Krulwich [05:24]

• How Far Can You Simplify?

  • They wrestle with how much to “embroider” stories for clarity and engagement without sacrificing scientific accuracy.
  • “You sort of... we watch each other’s eyeballs to see, like, when have we come to the very, very, very edge of acceptable stupidity.” —Robert Krulwich [07:24]

3. The Power of Sound: Using Music & “Painterly” Audio

• Fireflies in Sync:
  • Mathematician Steve Strogatz’s evocative story of fireflies flashing in harmony in Thailand is presented as raw tape, then replayed with rich sound design.
  • The hosts debate whether adding music and sound “enhances” or distracts from the story’s natural magic.

Memorable Sequence:

• “Picture it. There’s a riverbank in Thailand, in the remote part of the jungle. You’re in a canoe slipping down the river. There’s no sound of anything... and you just see, with thousands of lights on and then off, all in sync.” —Steve Strogatz (voiced by Announcer) [09:33]
• “There is something about just the box... you get this strange crazy quilt of just, of raw ingredients just in the sound... gradations and variety in... the sound of voices.” —Robert Krulwich [12:05]

4. Staying Personal & Playful: “Permanent Third Gradeness”

• The Third Grade Principle:

  • Most people’s love for science peaks in childhood; Radiolab aims to rekindle that sense of wonder and ownership by keeping things tactile, playful, and accessible.
  • “We live in a state of permanent third gradeness. In the sense we want this to be something that feels like it’s yours again.” —Jad Abumrad [14:56]

• Making Science an Adventure:

  • Using the sound of knocking, arrival, and “walking into the story” to invite listeners into the narrative as fellow explorers.
  • “The most important sound in all of Radiolab is that sound of knocking on the door... It’s the sound of discovery. It’s a way of inviting.” —Jad Abumrad [15:29]

5. “Be the Experiment”: Testing Ideas in the Real World

• The Laughter Experiment:
  • Inspired by a scientist’s claim that laughter is contagious, Jad and Robert attempt to start a laughter chain reaction on the NYC subway—repeatedly failing, then finally succeeding with a twist.
  • Unbeknownst to them, their colleagues prepped the subway car ahead of time, so their “experiment” worked only because of intervention, not innate contagiousness.
  • Jad: “The place went crazy. I was so frightened.” [22:31]
  • Robert: “It’s like being with too many clowns coming out of the little Volkswagen... I just thought, oh my god, I’ve just gone into hell.” [23:02]
  • Takeaway: Sometimes, to make good radio (or science), you have to “make it up”—or at least, fudge the experimental setup for the sake of the story.

6. Audience Q&A & Reflections

• On Radiolab’s Layered Introduction:
  • Jad admits he, too, is “a bit annoyed by it,” and explains its origin as a kind of “palate cleanser,” signaling listeners that the show will break the rules. [25:08]
• What to Put on the Voyager Record:
  • The hosts muse playfully: classical music (Bach, Beethoven), “babies laughing of multiple species,” and the idea that Voyager is more for us than for aliens.
  • “No one’s gonna find the record. It’s not for the aliens. It’s for us. It’s a gesture, you know.” —Jad Abumrad [27:31]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “One of our goals is to take the hippo and strap on some ballet shoes and make it do a pirouette.” —Jad [02:44]
• “By damaging this gene, Cynthia and her team essentially are taking the Grim Reaper and knocking his knees out. Stop that.” —Robert [05:24]
• “We stole the nouns, replaced them with our own, and we amped up the verbs.” —Jad [04:40]
• “You get this strange crazy quilt of just, of raw ingredients just in the sound... gradations and variety in... the sound of voices.” —Robert [12:05]
• “We live in a state of permanent third gradeness.” —Jad [14:56]
• “The most important sound in all of Radiolab is that sound of knocking on the door... It’s the sound of discovery.” —Jad [15:29]
• “The place went crazy. I was so frightened.” —Jad, after the laughter experiment [22:31]
• “No one’s gonna find the record. It’s not for the aliens. It’s for us.” —Jad [27:31]

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Key Timestamps

• 02:44 — The Hippo Analogy: Making heavy science do ballet
• 03:18–06:49 — Explaining genetics: The “Grim Reaper” and “Fountain of Youth” genes
• 07:10 — Debating the line between simplification and accuracy
• 08:36–12:05 — Fireflies, painterly audio, and use of music vs. pure tape
• 13:14–15:29 — The “permanent third grade” approach and the importance of personal engagement
• 17:16–23:23 — The subway laughter experiment and its unexpected conclusion
• 24:56–26:10 — Audience Q&A: The Radiolab introduction and its rationale
• 27:05–28:46 — What would the hosts send on the Voyager record?

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Episode Tone & Style

Engaging, self-deprecating, gently humorous, and deeply curious; Jad and Robert banter warmly, question their own methods, and invite the audience along for the ride—making transparency about their “messy” process the very heart of the episode. Their delight in experimenting, arguing, failing, and surprising themselves is infectious throughout.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode is a joyful dissection of Radiolab's audio alchemy—how meticulous technique, playful language, and a willingness to embrace both stupidity and wonder make even the heaviest hippo of science leap and twirl for listeners of all ages.

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Transcript

[Jad Abumrad]

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[Jad Abumrad]

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[Robert Krulwich]

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[Announcer]

You're listening to Radiolab, the podcast from.

[Jad Abumrad]

New York Public Radio. Public Radio WNYC.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

And npr.

[Jad Abumrad]

Three, two, one. Hello, I'm Jad Abumra.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab, the podcast, and we're working busily on season five. We thought while we do that we would bring you a little extra as an extra. Yeah, a little extra.

[Robert Krulwich]

So we very recently went to the Koshland Science Museum run by the National Academy of sciences in Washington D.C. to talk to an audience. Not. Well, there were a bunch of scientists there, but they weren't all scientists.

[Jad Abumrad]

No, they were mostly just. Just people.

[Robert Krulwich]

And we asked those just people to consider three very puzzling radio questions that we have every time we put our show together. So here is that conversation.

[Jad Abumrad]

So we figure since this is a science place, you guys are probably science inclined folk. We would talk about some of the troubles that we run into when we talk about science or try to problems like density, like unfriendliness of ideas. But they're great ideas. But how do you somehow make them friendly to people who maybe don't like or don't know that they like science? So we're going to kind of go through some of our favorite problem solving techniques.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, we have hurdles. The most obvious hurdle is when you step into a room to have a conversation with someone who is smart, knowledgeable, very knowledgeable actually, and articulate. And they start talking and you think in the back of your mind, uh.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, and they write papers like, which is going to be the subject of our first clip. Selective silencing of cell communication and how it influences anterior posterior pattern formation and C. Elegans, which is a heavy collection of words. Yeah, it's like heavy like a. Like a hippo, which is a wonderful animal but Heavy. And so I think one of our goals is to take the hippo and strap on some ballet shoes and make it do a pirouette.

[Robert Krulwich]

So here is an example. What you're going to hear is a woman named Cynthia Kenyon, brilliant scientist. She's talking about a little worm that she has figured out. She's done something to the worm that allows the worm to live longer than the worm would ordinarily live. Not just a little longer, but like, twice as long. So just imagine that you're the one holding the mic, and this is what you hear.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

The DAF16 gene makes a protein called the DAF16 protein. And that protein binds to the DNA where other genes are, and it activates a whole bunch of other genes. So the way it works is that the hormone binds to the Daf2 receptor, and when that happens, Daf2 receptor kind of squashes the activity of Daf16. It turns it down. Okay? So Daf16 can't bind to its genes in the DNA and make them more active. Okay? So when you come along with a mutation or some other way and you inhibit the activity of the receptor, now you liberate DAF 16. It's free, it springs into action, and it activates about 100 genes in the DNA. And these hundred genes each do a little tiny good thing for the cell.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, so you're sitting there going, oh, yeah, I see. As if you know what she's saying.

[Robert Krulwich]

No, I do know what she's saying, but it's interesting. Like you're scanning somebody talking like that. And, you know, you're hearing the right. You're hearing squish. I think she said squish. I think she said spring. Liberate.

[Jad Abumrad]

She said liberate.

[Robert Krulwich]

Liberate. Yeah. So her verbs, or her verbs are very, very useful to me. It's these nouns.

[Jad Abumrad]

Daft.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

Deft two, daft 16.

[Robert Krulwich]

So what do you do with a thing like that? What we've done here is we've used the verbs. We're happy with the verbs, but we've amplified and accessorized the nouns. I think.

[Jad Abumrad]

No, I think it's the other way around, actually. We stole the nouns, replaced them with our own, and we amped up the verbs.

[Robert Krulwich]

No, no. We took the nouns and we made them much more colorful. Anthropomorphized them, gave them character. Rich, rich storytelling.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now we're on the same page.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, here's what we do.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

When we make a mutation in the DAF2 gene, we damage it. It actually causes it not to work as well. So that actually is kind of profound. That tells you right away that the worm has a gene in it that's shortening the worm's lifespan, which is why.

[Robert Krulwich]

She calls it the Grim Reaper gene.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

The Grim Reaper gene.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's the gene that makes you die.

[Jad Abumrad]

If you're a worm.

[Robert Krulwich]

Right. So by damaging this gene, Cynthia and her team essentially are taking the Grim Reaper and knocking his knees out. Stop that.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

Okay, so the question is, what exactly is the Daft2 doing to make the cell age more quickly?

[Robert Krulwich]

Here is where the story gets a little weird.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

Well, we found another gene.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hello.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

Whose name is also DAF, but it's a different DAF. It's called DAF16.

[Jad Abumrad]

DAF16.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

And this is a gene whose normal function is to keep you young. It's like a fountain of youth gene.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. So wait, there was a Grim Reaper gene before.

[Robert Krulwich]

Right.

[Jad Abumrad]

And now there's a fountain of youth genes.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's what she discovered. And inside the worms, these genes are struggling with each other. Here's how it works. When. When a worm ages, normally, the DAF2.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

Receptor, DAF2, kind of squashes the activity of DAF16. It turns it down.

[Robert Krulwich]

Silence. And so the worm ages. Okay.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

So when you come along and you inhibit the activity of the DAF2 receptor.

[Robert Krulwich]

Ouch.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

Now you liberate DAF16. It's free. It springs into action, and it activates about 100 genes.

[Jad Abumrad]

1, 2, 3.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

In the DNA go. These hundred genes each do a little tiny good thing for the cell. And altogether, it makes the cell live twice as long.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, there you go.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah. Now, the question is. And, you know, we come. I come out of National Public Radio. He comes out of sort of wnyc. So we come out of a sort of strong journalism tradition. You can't do any of these things in a newsroom for one of the issues here is how much should you embroider?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. It's also. I mean, the question, I think also is, how stupid do you want to be?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

You know, I mean, this is something that we always argue about because there are. I mean, there's a thousand things we left out. And if pure, scientists would be very upset perhaps sometimes at all of the things that we didn't say here.

[Robert Krulwich]

On the other hand, it is not an. And I speak from the television tradition where stupid is our middle name. We. I mean, I have been in network television for so long that if anything gets a little too complicated, I instantly turn to him and said, no, just cut it. Just get Rid of it. Just get rid of it. Because we don't have to go there. And then we just save ourselves all the sweat and all the bother. So what you do is you sort of. We watch each other's eyeballs to see, like, when have we come to the very, very, very edge of acceptable stupidity? Just. And repetition.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

And then that's where we rest. Well, that is the second technique we.

[Jad Abumrad]

Want to get to. Yeah, we want to talk about music. Wanted to sort of talk a bit about how we use the music and what are the principles that guide those choices. And to do that, I wanted to play a clip again. This is raw tape of a very interesting guy, a mathematician that we really like. We talk to a lot. His name is Steve Strogatz, who we were talking to him about. I forget what. And he just told us this thing about fireflies. So this is the raw tape here.

[Announcer]

Not here, but in Southeast Asia, in Malaysia or Thailand, there are enormous congregations of fireflies along riverbanks. I mean, picture it. There's a riverbank in Thailand in the remote part of the jungle. You're in a canoe slipping down the river. There's no sound of anything. Maybe the occasional exotic jungle bird or something. And you're looking and you just see. I mean, I can't do it. It's radio, but you see, with thousands of lights on and then off, all in sync.

[Jad Abumrad]

So that's a little clip of tape that I remember when he said that, we kind of looked at each other like, ooh, that's kind of interesting. We can work with that.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's also very painterly. You get the whole idea, you know, you're on a river, you know, you're seeing things. So there's no particular reason to add anything.

[Jad Abumrad]

However, here's that same clip of tape all gussied up. Here's what we did with it.

[Announcer]

Picture it. There's a riverbank in Thailand, in the remote part of the jungle. You're in a canoe slipping down the river. There's no sound of anything. Maybe the occasional exotic jungle bird or something. And you're looking and you just see.

[Robert Krulwich]

Whoop, whoops.

[Announcer]

With thousands of lights on and then off, all in sync.

[Robert Krulwich]

Imagine all the trees, as far as you can see, are all brilliantly lit and then totally dark. Brilliantly lit, total darkness.

[Jad Abumrad]

All of them in sync.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah. And no Westerner had ever seen this site. There was folklore, there was stories about it, but nobody'd gone in and photographed and captured samples.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, not until 1965.

[Announcer]

This was done by John Buck. John Buck B U C K one of the great researchers.

[Robert Krulwich]

According to the records.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm 92.

[Announcer]

Buck and his wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth Masked Buck went to Thailand and captured bags full of male fireflies.

[Robert Krulwich]

You could just reach up and shake the branches and fireflies rained down and.

[Announcer]

Brought them back to their hotel room.

[Robert Krulwich]

And we turned off the lights, we.

[Announcer]

Turned them loose and saw that the fireflies flitted around on the walls and ceiling.

[Robert Krulwich]

They flew back and forth, flashing randomly.

[Jad Abumrad]

Elizabeth lay on the floor of the room. I was just tired. John stayed awake and he was the one who saw.

[Announcer]

Within a few minutes, little groups, duos and trios formed and after a while, fourth one would join in.

[Robert Krulwich]

They got closer and closer together and.

[Announcer]

Then finally they were synchronized. The whole room was blinking in perfect harmony.

[Robert Krulwich]

He was excited the next morning when he told me about it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Twenty years later, John Buck is still asking this question.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, what is going on?

[Jad Abumrad]

Today on Radiolab, we will do as Steve urges and step away from the individual to find mystery, beauty and order in the group. So there's a real question that I want to ask. Do all the noises and the bleeps enhance what Steve Strogatz, the story he told us, or does it rob it in some sort of way? I don't know.

[Robert Krulwich]

I have a prejudice just because of my sheer awe of some of the deep musicality of things, things like that. This is Jad's territory, so he's not allowed to say, but there is something about just the bucks. For example, you hear first of all a string of voices. So you hear Robert's voice, you hear Jad's voice. Those are sort of radio y voices. And then you hear Steve Strogatz's voice, which is a rich voice. And then these two fabulously strange people, one of whom sounds like he's just basically made of sawdust. And I don't know what's with Mrs. Buck, she seems to be hanging upside down or whatever. But when you pick those things, so you get, ah, and you get this strange crazy quilt of just, of raw ingredients just in the sound. And you know, a lot of people would listen to the box and say, well, we can't use them. They're a little hard to hear, a little hard to understand. But this isn't that. This is a guy who just jumps in with both feet and gets happy that we're going to get gradations and variety in. And that's just the sound of voices. Let's talk about something else.

[Jad Abumrad]

How about the problem of being in the tech. So what have we done? We've done. What was our first one? We did analogies. Metaphor number two is music and stuff. Music and stuff. Number three, be personal, be third grade. Let me explain what I mean. So the National Science foundation and other people have done a lot of surveys to see how people feel about science. And when they ask people, how do you feel about science? They will say, yeah, you know, I sort of like science, it's okay. But then if you ask the question, have you ever liked science? Well, they say, yeah, you know, when I was in third grade, I loved it because we would do these experiments that involved, you know, the absorbency of paper towels and boiling eggs. And it was amazing. It was so much fun. It was like something right in front of me. And it was me. I could do it.

[Robert Krulwich]

And then came the Krebs cycle.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes, yes. Somewhere along the way that Jo gets drained away, probably by the corruption, right? Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

So all over in a plot that was probably hatched in some dark cave somewhere not too far from Osama bin Laden, there was a meeting of science teachers from the ninth grade who decided that they would take the simply interesting business of swallowing something and having the banana finally get down so it can actually feed each individual cell. Each cell goes, oh, thank you very much. I'm going to eat a banana. This turned into a championship memorization contest in which you had to learn cycles within cycles, within cycles within cycles within cycles. And why, why, why? Here's why. Because the 9th grade teacher wanted to say, actually, thank you very much, Danny, Sheila and Freddy, you are the scientists. The other 37 of you can go home now.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes. And in an interest to invite those other 37 back in, we take a decidedly anti Krebs, anti Krebsian approach. And we live in a state of permanent third gradeness. In the sense we want this to be something that feels like it's yours again. And so the ways that we do that just sort of subtly are when Robert and I go and talk to somebody, we always use the sound of us walking in the door, knocking on the door. It's like the most important sound in all of Radiolab is that sound of knocking on the door.

[Robert Krulwich]

I don't know why exactly. Why is that?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, it's because it's the sound of discovery. It's like it's a way of inviting.

[Robert Krulwich]

Can I come into your room? That's not a discovery.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, it's the sound of saying, rather than a scientist at a podium, it's a scientist who is in A space that we can go visit and have an adventure with.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay, so then we have one other objection that regularly gets thrown at us all the time, mostly by. There's a guy at NPR named Robert Smith, excellent, excellent reporter, who will lean over what I'm doing all the time and say, so, what's it with you? What's it with you? I said, why? He goes, everybody else here goes out into the world, and if you're going to interview a cat, you go find a cat. You make up a cat. Why can't you just go find the world as it lays? Why does everything have to be built from the bottom up? I said, it doesn't have to be. That's not. Well, now that you mention it, there is a tendency we have because we enjoy, frankly, the craftsmanship and the artistry of doing this.

[Jad Abumrad]

But I mean, his criticism of us is that we always sort of make it up. And he was like, why do you always have to make it up? Why don't you just go have an adventure? Don't make up an adventure. Just have one. So we thought, well, that's kind of a good idea.

[Robert Krulwich]

Not like it hadn't occurred to us before.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, you know, I mean, it's a show about science, but why not just be the science in a pseudo science y kind of way? Be the experiment, in other words.

[Robert Krulwich]

So, you know, try this at home.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes.

[Robert Krulwich]

What a mistake.

[Announcer]

It's a great thing.

[Robert Krulwich]

Again, what a terrible mistake.

[Jad Abumrad]

We bumped into a really interesting opportunity in our latest season in the Laughter Show. We were talking to a laugh scientist, and he told Robert something that Robert didn't quite buy, which led us to have certain ideas. Well, here's the raw tape.

[Robert Krulwich]

Laughter causes laughter. You can throw the joke away. Laughter causes laughter. Well, to really prove that, you'd have to give a record in which somebody laughs and then somebody else laughs, and then you laugh and then someone else laughs and nothing's going on except the laugh. Yeah. So you can't get a laugh going from nothing if it's not. Well, actually, you can't.

[Jad Abumrad]

So he claims.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, I just thought that was ridiculous. I mean, I think you have to start with something. Someone has to fall down on a banana peel or something. But he pointed out, and this is true, that a lot of laughter is. Hey, you want to go get a sandwich? Okay. There's a lot of social laughter. It isn't having to do with funny. I said, no, but I mean, I'm talking about laughter. Laughter. You think you can get laughter, laughter going from just Laughter.

[Jad Abumrad]

And he said it's his idea that there are certain laughs that have a kind of biologically contagious property, and that if you laugh in a certain way, other people in the room can't help but laugh.

[Robert Krulwich]

So we thought, hmm, why don't we try this?

[Jad Abumrad]

So if he's right, theoretically, Robert and I should be able to go up to Union Square, get into a crowded subway train, and just start laughing. And through the sheer verve of our laughter, that laughter should spread.

[Robert Krulwich]

This was our experimental design, was that I would walk in. We four of us prepared, two of us had tape recorders and recording equipment. They surreptitiously would enter the otherwise crowded Manhattan subway.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is rush hour.

[Robert Krulwich]

Then Jad and I would enter from a different door and put ourselves within the reach of the microphones, which would be invisible to most people on the subway.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes. Here's how it sounded.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay, here we are.

[Jad Abumrad]

Union Square experiment is about to begin.

[Robert Krulwich]

We enter the train. I show him a book I put. We start to laugh. No.

[Jad Abumrad]

Some more. Our foreheads are getting very hot. No, nothing, nothing. And we tried it. We tried it over and over and over and over. All right, this is take seven. We're on a downtown city sixth train. And we were starting to be like we were the crazy people in subway. And it wasn't simply that we were not amusing to them. They began to hate us and look at us like we were lepers, and it just was not working at all. And we did this pretty much all day because we were like, we are going to crack this one.

[Robert Krulwich]

Which maybe, you know, we could have. We could have discovered that we have just proven Professor Provine wrong and laughter does not. But, no, for some reason, we felt that we ought to do what he thought we could have done had we only done it, quote, right, whatever that was.

[Jad Abumrad]

So here's what happened. Final trip of the day. We get this notion that, okay, well, it hasn't worked the first 11 times, so maybe it'll work this final time. If. Maybe the problem is that we have these two people with us. Lulu Miller, Orion McManus, who are the recorders. And they kind of enter the train with us surreptitiously and sit and try and be invisible. But they've got these big machines with them. Yeah. So. So maybe it's the machines are throwing the whole experiment off.

[Robert Krulwich]

I don't know.

[Jad Abumrad]

So we sent them ahead.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

And figured they would ride the train uptown. We would get on as if we don't know them.

[Robert Krulwich]

So we were like, several stops ahead of them. So they we would enter and no one would make the connection between the, the microphone bearing twosome and us. We have no relation to them at all. This was going to make the entire place scream with laughter. We felt.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes, exactly. Unbeknownst to us, however, Lulu and Orion hatched a devilish plan.

[Robert Krulwich]

Good afternoon, New Yorkers. I have a quick question. I'm hoping everyone here can help me out a little bit this afternoon. I have a bet with my bosses who are going to get on at the next train and they don't think.

[Jad Abumrad]

That it's to going possible to get.

[Robert Krulwich]

An entire subway car full of people to laugh. They think people are too, you know, uptight. They don't want to have fun. Something like that. So do you think you guys can help me out with this? The next, the next stop they're gonna get on two guys, all right. And they're gonna start laughing.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right.

[Robert Krulwich]

And we're just gonna kind of like chuckle and then we're gonna see if we get the whole train to just be roaring.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can we do that? Yeah. All right, guys. Can you guys hang on?

[Robert Krulwich]

There were kids on this train. There were nuns on this train. It was like a whole schmear of people on this train.

[Jad Abumrad]

We had no idea that this was happening. We were standing on the platform expecting yet another failure. And here's what happens. This is the train arriving. Okay, Here comes the 6 train. Take 12. Get on the train again.

[Robert Krulwich]

I take out a book. I point the book to the Jamstar. Excuses for the humorous interaction. We start to laugh. In a moment, The place went crazy. I was so frightened.

[Jad Abumrad]

I tell you, it was the most terrifying thing we've ever experienced, bar none. Because to go from nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then to go to everything, it was. We ran out of the tray. We were frightened. This is actually our reaction afterwards.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh my God. It's like being with too many clowns coming out of the little Volkswagen. You know, 50 of them laughing. Wait a second.

[Jad Abumrad]

That made my day.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, no, not me. I. I just thought, oh my God, I've just gone into hell. Why? I don't know. Because it was too big. It was too big.

[Jad Abumrad]

It was so instinct too.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes. That was very serious.

[Jad Abumrad]

So I don't know what lesson to draw from that really.

[Robert Krulwich]

Make it up. That's what the lesson is. Make it up.

[Jad Abumrad]

Or leave the science to the professionals. Yeah, or leave the science to the professionals.

[Robert Krulwich]

So I guess the other thing that we'll finish and you can ask questions if you want, is that we Try to hope that maybe that the surprise and the kind of frankly just delight of having a conversation together is somehow an ingredient that other people. If you turn on the radio, you turn on your ipod or whatever and you hear this, that you kind of. There's an image I have from the New Yorker, I think, or from someone who a kid learned how to read and got very, very excited about buy books. She was maybe 4 or 5 years old, and she just loved books. Maybe 3, 4 years old. And one day her mother walked in and found the little girl standing on the picture book with her toes kind of trying to curl. And the mother said, what are you trying to do? And the kid said, I'm trying to get in the book. And I was kind of hoping that, among other things, that this program would create a sense of just happy exploration, that people, when they hear it, would just want to take off their socks and their toes and try to get in the book.

[Jad Abumrad]

So, in any case, I mean, do you guys have any questions?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, that's our presentation, more or less, so we can go to questions. Yeah, why don't you go to this person here in the green and then we'll. I just wanted you to speak a.

[Announcer]

Little bit about the introduction, which, you know, obviously has layers and time shifting.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm getting old enough that I find that a little annoying. And yc, you know.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, that. Yeah, it's weird. There's been a lot of emails about that recently. Did you send us an email? You know, I'm a bit annoyed by it, too, frankly. I want to change it, but I made all of those in one feverish night about four years ago, and it's time for another one.

[Robert Krulwich]

But, I mean, what does he have in mind? Yeah, what did he have in mind? Who knows what he had in mind? It has strange people going. It seems to be some combination of vomit and.

[Jad Abumrad]

I don't really know. I mean, I had everybody read the same little block of text on a metronome, so they were all reading it in the same tempo. And then you just kind of like, you take the syllables and all mash it up. And it seemed like the right thing to do. Do at the time. I don't know. And, I mean, it does make a certain statement that. Okay, you just heard All Things Considered right now, the rules don't apply. So it's like a palate cleanser in a way. It's like the cracker before the next wine. So it has that effect, which is useful.

[Robert Krulwich]

What time is this supposed to end at 8.

[Jad Abumrad]

Or we have a clock that's counting down right there.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

My favorite episode was the one with the.

[Jad Abumrad]

The Voyager and, you know, Andy Joy and Carl Sagan, that thing. And I listened to the things that you guys put on the web with, you know, Philip Glass and Alice Waters, all those things. So I feel like you guys have this really interesting amount of insight from doing this show.

[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

What would you guys put on the Voyager?

[Robert Krulwich]

The Voyager is a. Is an inter.

[Jad Abumrad]

1977. Carl Sagan and his wife and a few others were charged with making sort of a mixtape of the human experience, putting it on a gold record, sending it out into space so that billions of years from now, an alien would find it somehow play the record and maybe know about us on some level.

[Robert Krulwich]

And attack planet Earth and attack.

[Jad Abumrad]

What would I. That's a really good question. I would put.

[Robert Krulwich]

See, I'm not so sure that I want to say hello. So that's what I mean. Maybe.

[Jad Abumrad]

Are you really scared of it?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, there's a guy who wrote Guns Steel and. Yes, Jared Diamond. So. Jared Diamond. I happened to talk to him about something else, and he said, you know, that Voyager thing was the most dangerous act that humanity has ever made.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's just silly, though.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, I know he's silly, but he's interested in collapse. This is a man who's not what we'd call an optimist.

[Jad Abumrad]

No one's gonna find the record. It's not for the aliens. It's for us. It's a gesture, you know, it's. It's as much about what we want to say about ourselves. The alien can't play the record. It's just not gonna. It's not gonna work.

[Robert Krulwich]

What do you mean, alien can't play the record? The alien, presumably, is a very sophisticated being.

[Jad Abumrad]

There was one particular Bach cello piece I would put on. That's the only one I can think of definitively at this moment. Come on, say one.

[Robert Krulwich]

I might. A Broadway show, too. No, no, I wouldn't. Food, glorious food from Oliver. No, I would put it. I think I would put babies laughing of multiple species. I mean, if they do laugh, I would just put the cries of babies. No, not the sad. The happy cries of baby. Oh, Beethoven. You got. Beethoven's so easy. It's like a lazy answer. But good question. Yes. Yeah, that's a good place.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, it's a good place to end. I want to just say thank you to the Kashon for having us in the Keck and WAMU for the invite and National Public Radio and WNYC and the National Science Foundation. I was told someone from there might be in the house.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yay. Thank you for you and all your money.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thank you for supporting us. Thank you, thank you, thank you for making this happen. And while we are spreading thanks around, I want to thank you for listening. That was our conversation, Robert and I, at the Koshland Science Museum. And if you have any to say or.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, because these are questions that we pose to the audience and you know, if you have an opinion about our production techniques, how we amend or don't amend conversation, any of the ideas brought up here, if they make you curious, we'd be very curious to hear what you're thinking.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's right. Email [e-mail] and Radiolab is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the National Science Foundation. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krylwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thank you for listening.

[Announcer]

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[Jad Abumrad]

I kind of say my first concert ever was for cows. I would climb up to the top of the barn and just perform. Now I still do that listening to Apple music, which I get through my Sapphire Reserve card. And when moo can sound very close to boo, it toughens a girl up.

[Announcer]

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[Scientist/Guest Speaker]

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