Episode 47: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the Ups and Downs of Ayahuasca

Summary

Podcast Summary: The New Yorker Radio Hour, Episode 47: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the Ups and Downs of Ayahuasca
Airdate: September 9, 2016
Host: David Remnick
A co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

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Overview

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour explores modern cultural, political, and personal issues through a series of in-depth conversations and storytelling segments. The episode's centerpiece is a probing interview with basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, discussing race, sports, activism, and his new book. The episode also features a moving profile of filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, an immersive first-person account of taking ayahuasca, and reflections on Chinese history, urban ants, and contemporary mindfulness. The tone is reflective, witty, earnest, and occasionally irreverent.

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1. Poetry for Modern Mindfulness: Jenny Allen’s Odes to Everyday Life

• [00:41–02:59]
  • Jenny Allen recites whimsical poems about everyday moments with self-effacing humor and insight, setting a thoughtful tone.
  • Topics include the confusion of modern suburban life and the perils (and pettiness) of office politics and cinema-going.
  • Notable quote: “If I have done so now, here in the parking lot of Stop and Shop, may I smile with self compassion and not curse my cluelessness, as the cars where I live are all Subarus and all the same model and all the same Jasmine green. A bewildering forest of Foresters.” (Jenny Allen, 00:41)

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2. In Conversation: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Sports, Race, and Social Justice

• [03:20–16:33]
  • DNC Appearance and Racial Politics
    • Kareem recalls his speech at the Democratic National Convention and discusses why this particular political moment drew him out.
    • “I wanted to go this year because I thought that whatever happens in this election will be very important for our country.” (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 04:38)
  • The Resurgence of Racism and Xenophobia
    • Discusses the rise in racial tensions and xenophobia, attributing some of it to demographic shifts and heightened visibility due to technology.
    • “A lot of people are noticing a change in our country…seeing that change taking place and not being able to do anything has made a lot of people uptight. And I think Donald Trump recognized that and decided to take advantage of it.” (05:36)
  • 1968 Olympics and the Price of Protest
    • Kareem reflects on skipping the Olympic Games in protest, the resulting criticism, and his thoughts on activism in sports today.
  • Education and Mediocrity
    • Concerns about America’s declining education standards; cites underinvestment in schools as a root problem.
    • “We become too comfortable with mediocrity.” (07:43)
  • Role Models and Burdens of Representation
    • Discusses the complexities of being seen as a “role model” and the problem with equating individual success with nationwide equality.
    • “Sometimes it feels as if you’re more the source of false hope and crushed dreams.” (David Remnick quoting Abdul-Jabbar, 08:25)
  • Paying College Athletes
    • Strong criticism of NCAA hypocrisy and the exploitation of student-athletes.
    • “If the amateur experience was supposed to be so important, why aren’t the coaches participating in it? They’re taking home millions.” (Kareem, 11:12)
    • Recounts personal experience with ticket scalping during college, underscoring the lack of financial support for athletes.
  • Health, Retirement, the NFL’s Dangers
    • Kareem expresses concerns about concussions and health issues in football.
    • “I don’t know if it is, because I think the concussions are inevitable.” (13:28)
    • Touches on the physical toll of professional athletics even after retirement.
  • Transition from Sports to Writing
    • Discusses how writing offered fulfillment and discusses the pressure of public attention.
    • “I wanted the opportunity to excel, but… it was also a lot of pressure.” (16:09)

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3. Kirsten Johnson & Tad Friend: Storytelling Through the Camera’s Eye

• [17:08–30:21]
  • An Artist’s Approach
    • Staff writer Tad Friend and filmmaker Kirsten Johnson discuss her film “Cameraperson,” a collage of personal and professional moments.
  • Visual Instinct and Empathy
    • Kirsten describes how her intuition and attraction to certain visuals guide her work. Her filmmaking is deeply empathetic.
    • “A lot of times it’s just what I’m attracted to… something happening with the interaction between his pants, these blue seats, the sky that just told a story of blue…” (Kirsten Johnson, 20:10)
    • On feeling responsible for her subject’s portrayal: “The footage absolutely shows how much I love my mother… and yet it is also absolutely a betrayal of her.” (24:18)
  • Making Darkness Visible
    • Johnson reflects on how trauma and loss are ever-present, shaping the stories she captures.
    • “Death and destruction is in the world. There’s invisible evidence of it in many places in the world. Sort of like trauma.” (Kirsten Johnson, 26:14)
  • Technique and Perspective
    • Demonstrates the craft of framing people—how choices in camera work parallel choices in narrative writing.
    • “You saw how suddenly all the different lens lengths changed the story completely. And did you see how beautiful she was in the close up?” (Kirsten Johnson, 29:36)

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4. Chinese History, Childhood, and Fables: With Jiang Fan

• [30:21–34:33]
  • Jiang Fan, former fact-checker turned writer, discusses a documentary about Wu Zetian and the parallels between powerful women throughout history and the present election cycle.
  • Shares a formative Chinese fable (Mr. Dong Guo and the Wolf) that shapes perceptions of trust, compassion, and national identity in China.
  • “The wolf has often been used as a metaphor for the US, for Japan, for the Dalai Lama… but the Chinese lesson to themselves is that ultimately they have their own agenda. And if the Chinese do not arm and protect themselves, they will be eaten by the wolf.” (Jiang Fan, 33:05)

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5. Ayahuasca: The Allure and Reality of Psychedelic Medicine

• [34:38–48:51]
  • Michael Pollan Article and New Trends
    • David Remnick introduces the topic of ayahuasca and recent research into its therapeutic promise.
  • Ari (Ariel) Levy’s Reporter's Journey
    • Ari shares her preparation for and experience with an ayahuasca ceremony in Brooklyn.
    • “If I took this drug, I would puke my guts out and possibly experience my own death.” (Aria Levy, 36:02)
  • Interview: Dennis McKenna, Ethnobotanist
    • McKenna recounts his long history with ayahuasca, the science behind how it works, and its therapeutic potential.
    • “What’s emerged for me as important is its potential therapeutic effects—treating intractable depression, PTSD, certain kinds of addictions… possibly OCD.” (Dennis McKenna, 39:10)
    • On prohibition: “Legislators, who are usually misinformed about almost everything, decided, oh, this is a great threat, and we have to ban it.” (Dennis McKenna, 39:49)
    • Contrasts 'bad trips' and their value: “The dark experiences are often the most useful because you can get deeply into some of these conflicted places.” (Dennis McKenna, 42:28)
  • Ari’s Ceremony Experience
    • Describes a chaotic, emotional, messy ayahuasca group session—vomiting, tears, catharsis, and self-discovery.
    • “As the vomit is pouring over my body, I’m thinking to myself, in a second, I am gonna be irate and disgusted. But it never came. I was not irate. I was not disgusted. I was amused. That was my ayahuasca trip.” (Aria Levy, 48:13)
  • Neuroscience Insights
    • Explains the “default mode network” and how ayahuasca mimics effects of deep meditation.
    • “Maybe it worked on me by shutting down my default mode network.” (Aria Levy, 45:50)

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6. The Secret Life of Urban Ants with Amy Savage

• [49:12–53:59]
  • Amy Savage, Rutgers biologist, describes field studies of ants in urban environments and how their foraging changes due to city life.
  • “In street medians on Broadway, over 90% of them went for fats, which wasn’t at all what we were expecting. But the same species living in forests and parks in Manhattan went for sugars.” (Amy Savage, 51:51)
  • Talks about how human ‘litter’ changes ant behavior and ecology, highlighting unexamined connections between our lives and urban wildlife.
  • “If you feed ants lots of carbohydrates, then they eat insects more quickly. They’re more voracious towards insects.” (Amy Savage, 53:06)

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7. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on role models:
  “Although you are proof it can be done, like a happy lottery winner waving a million dollar ticket, the odds are so astronomically against others that it sometimes feels as if you’re more the source of false hope and crushed dreams.” (08:25)
• Dennis McKenna on psychedelic prohibition:
  “Legislators, who are usually misinformed about almost everything, decided, oh, this is a great threat, and we have to ban it.” (39:49)
• Aria Levy after ayahuasca:
  “I used to be disgusted, but now I’m so amused.” (48:37)
• Kirsten Johnson on capturing the invisible:
  “Death and destruction is in the world. There’s invisible evidence of it in many places… trauma… the film, for me, is acknowledging my mother’s loss… we all suffer these sort of fundamental traumas…” (26:14)

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8. Segment Timestamps (for Easy Navigation)

• Poetry for Modern Mindfulness: 00:41–02:59
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Activism, Sports, and Society: 03:20–16:33
• Kirsten Johnson: “Cameraperson” & The Ethics of Filming: 17:08–30:21
• Jiang Fan on Wu Zetian & Chinese Fables: 30:21–34:33
• Ayahuasca Special – Ari Levy and Dennis McKenna: 34:38–48:51
• Ants in the City – Amy Savage: 49:12–53:59

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9. Closing Thoughts

This episode weaves together reflections on mindfulness, personal transformation, the burdens and rewards of public life, the hidden worlds of city ants, and the ethical complexities of storytelling. It’s anchored by curiosity, skepticism, and the search for meaning in both the extraordinary and the mundane.

Listeners seeking depth, humor, and new perspectives on culture, wellness, and history will find much to savor in this wide-ranging hour.

Transcript

[Aria Levy]

Floor 38.

[Amy Savage]

It's very exciting to be having a.

[David Remnick]

Conversation with someone when they have that revelation.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Maybe looking at this case could be an interesting process.

[Aria Levy]

Okay, from one World Trade center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio.

[David Remnick]

Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios.

[Aria Levy]

And the New Yorker.

[Jenny Allen]

Driving the Car Getting into my car, I vow that I will drive with mindful care and caution if in fact this is my vehicle, for I often step into someone else's car by accident if I have done so now, here in the parking lot of Stop and Shop. May I smile with self compassion and not curse my cluelessness as the cars where I live are all Subarus and all the same model and all the same Jasmine green. A bewildering forest of foresters.

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. And now, Poetry for Modern Mindfulness.

[Jenny Allen]

Going to the movies, Taking my seat in the movie theater. I am excited to be here and offer my heartfelt hope that it is not a film like Carol. Beautiful, but so boring. I love the period costumes but wearied of the endless shots of the movie stars gazing soulfully at each other or staring into space like mute people. I love talking to you, one of the women says to the other in one scene, which is strange because they hardly talked at all. May this be a movie with more dialogue and fewer close ups and way better sex scenes. At the workplace today, I vow to regard my co workers serenely, with loving kindness and without judgment. This one who appears not to bathe and has a pungent odor. That one who leads the email clique trash talking. The rest of us are merely creatures caught in Dhaka or suffering. May they one day be made whole and not so messed up or at least be transferred to another department.

[David Remnick]

Poetry from Modern Mindfulness by the writer and performer Jenny Allen. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour and I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining me. If this was re entry week for you, for school, for work, I hope you survived it. Now back to business.

[Jenny Allen]

Please welcome Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

[David Remnick]

At the Democratic National Convention this summer, the towering vision of Kareem Abdul Jabbar took to the stage and lent his support to the Democratic Party and its nominee.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

I'm Michael Jordan and I'm here with Hillary. I said that because I know that Donald Trump couldn't tell the difference.

[David Remnick]

Michael Jordan aside, and forget LeBron James and Steph Curry. Kareem Abdul Jabbar is still arguably the most dominant player in the history of college and professional basketball. In 20 years with the NBA, he became the all time leading scorer. And since he retired in 1989, nobody has broken his record, not even MJ. But Abdul Jabbar's so called retirement has also been kind of remarkable in its way. He set his mind to becoming a writer. He's the author of books ranging from memoir to African American history to a kind of Sherlock Holmes reboot called Mycroft Holmes. His latest book is called Writings on the Searching for a New Equality Beyond Black and White. The essays share his ideas of right and wrong, his love of history, and recently he told me why he chose this year to appear at a political convention for, for the very first time.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Well, I've been invited before, but I never really had the inclination to go. And I wanted to go this year because I thought that whatever happens in this election will be very important for our country. And I wanted to take part and, you know, say whatever it was that I had to say.

[David Remnick]

You didn't feel that way before?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

No, I didn't think it was that crucial. But given all of the manifestations of racism and xenophobia and just a whole lot of tension and hatred going back and forth, I felt that this year is crucial.

[David Remnick]

Why do you think this is going on now? We've gone through now and maybe it's because of the advent of videotape and iPhones, because these incidents have been going on, God knows, for decades. But why do you think these police shootings, these manifestations of racism and xenophobia have come to this fever pitch in the last X months?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Well, I think that a lot of people are noticing a change in our country. We have a black president. More and more of the population are people of color. Seeing that change taking place and not being able to do anything has made a lot of people uptight. And I think Donald Trump recognized that and decided to take advantage of it.

[David Remnick]

As the world existed in 1967, 68, and in the wake of Muhammad Ali's refusal to serve in the military, you decided not to participate in the Olympic Games, Right? The Olympic Games just finished. Would you have played in the Olympics as the world is now in 2016, do you think?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

I probably would have. You know, there was a lot less incentive for me to forego the Olympics. And you're subsequent to 1968.

[David Remnick]

What kind of price did you pay for not playing in the Olympics?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Well, I got criticized a lot, but fortunately for me, I had another year of college ball to play and the American basketball team won the gold medal in 1968. So nobody can blame me on the fact that they didn't win and I just moved on.

[David Remnick]

Now, in your book, you try to come to grips with and begin a chapter with a wonderful quote from James. The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose. You grew up in Inwood.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Yep.

[David Remnick]

And Inwood is by far not the poorest place in New York City. But you're cheek by jowl with it. You grew up aware of poverty and people with nothing to lose.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Yeah.

[David Remnick]

What is your sense of things now when you go back to your old neighborhood, when you go back when you were in the inner city in LA or New York or anywhere else, that there are more people with nothing to lose than when you started out?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Well, I think it's unfortunate because America was going in the other direction. And I think that.

[David Remnick]

In a positive direction.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

In a positive direction. And I think that we become too comfortable with mediocrity. American school kids now no longer lead the world in most academic disciplines. And that was the case for the longest time. And I think that's a direct failure of our school system. And our school system is failing because we don't want to spend the money to pay the teachers to do the great job that they did for so long. All of a sudden it's okay that, you know, people aren't given the opportunity to get a first rate education and go on to college. It's these kind of issues that really bother me. And it's what I'm talking about in my book.

[David Remnick]

In the opening of the new book, you write about being a black role model, about the frustration in, quote, knowing that although you are proof it can be done, like a happy lottery winner waving a million dollar ticket, the odds are so astronomically against others that it sometimes feels as if you're more the source of false hope and crushed dreams.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

That is a problem, you know, because black Americans who are able to overcome the odds and do well and be successful, people point to them as an example as to, well, why aren't all black people that successful?

[David Remnick]

Did you carry that heavily when you came into prominence? Which was really early. I remember, you know, as a kid hearing about you, even as a high school player, did you carry that weight very heavily?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

I didn't carry it at all.

[David Remnick]

Never.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

I was going to do the best I could do, no matter what. I got to give my grandmother credit for that. You know, she was very much an advocate for education and discipline. And she felt that if you got an education and had some discipline, you could achieve anything. And I have to agree with her.

[David Remnick]

So at no point in college or as a pro player did you feel the burden of being a role model. You just felt the burden of doing your best as a ballplayer.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Yeah, doing my best and maintaining my grades. Getting out of school, that was very important to me.

[David Remnick]

I want to get a sense of how you think about contemporary athletics today. You raised the question of paying college athletes. Nowhere in the world that I know of, nowhere is college athletics what it is in the United States, either as a business or as an obsession. You go to Europe and start talking about, you know, the Fighting Gamecocks of this one or the Spartans of here. They just have no idea what you're talking about here. You think the system ought to be changed radically?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Well, I think that the people who perform, the college athletes who perform, they are exploited. College athletics generates billions of dollars in revenue and the college athletes don't get to share in that. People that run the NC2A have million dollar salaries. Really?

[David Remnick]

You say nothing of the coaches?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Oh, the coaches are doing great. So I think that that's wrong. And some of that incredible amount of money should go to the athletes just to make their lives easier. I'm not saying that they have to be made wealthy, but they should not have to worry about insurance. They should not have to worry about getting hurt and losing their scholarship.

[David Remnick]

That argument comes up against the traditional argument of you would lose the amateur experience, you would lose the college experience. You think that's a kind of construction of hypocrisy?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Of course it's hypocritical. If the amateur experience was supposed to be so important, why aren't the coaches participating in it? They're taking home millions of dollars a.

[David Remnick]

Year in salary and in sneaker contracts and all the rest.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Contracts, all those things. They're doing great, the athletes. If you get hurt and can't play again, that's it. That's it. And that's a terrible example of exploiting someone.

[David Remnick]

Did you feel this way when you were 18, 19 years old?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Yeah, I did. That's because one of the people that I got to know at UCLA explained it to me. He said, who was that? His name was Sam Gilbert. He was a businessman who befriended me. He scalped my tickets, which enabled me to have a few coins in my pocket.

[David Remnick]

Now, if you had gotten caught for him scalping your tickets, you would have gotten in hot water.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

No, I might have, yeah. Yeah. And he didn't care, you know, he felt that we should get some type of compensation for what we were doing. We were winning the NC2A every year. If you make it possible for the athletes to have a car and be able to take their girl out every so often, I think it would be a lot different and the complaint wouldn't be so extreme.

[David Remnick]

Now I wonder, are you a football fan?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Yes.

[David Remnick]

Do you have any problems with football? You watch football. You now know even more than we ever have.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Concussion system.

[David Remnick]

Concussions. And people who, if they play even a modestly long career, can barely get out of a chair. A lot of them.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

I know a lot of those guys. A number of my friends that play professional football are dead. A couple of them died this year. You know, who's that? Ken Stabler. Jack Tatum's dead. A lot of guys on the Raiders, you know, I knew. But John Matuszak, he was a big fan of mine when I was in Milwaukee, and then, you know, he went to Iowa and then played for the Raiders. To see these guys die like that, I think those guys didn't understand what they were doing to themselves. Now that they have an understanding of.

[David Remnick]

It, what can be done? Is football a fixable sport?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

I don't know if it is, because I think the concussions are inevitable.

[David Remnick]

Cause what occurs to me is that pro football or NBA to the side and pop music to the side. Pro football is probably the most popular entertainment in the United States. Certainly the super bowl is the highest rated of anything. And if pro football is unfixable in medical terms, you're going to start seeing more and more kids not playing it. In the same way that boxing became a kind of marginal part of American pop culture, that pro football and college football may one day not exist.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Well, I'm sure if it doesn't exist in the future, it'll be for good reasons.

[David Remnick]

Is there too much money at stake, do you think, for it to be fixed?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

I think the money is going to make it a lot harder to fix. But what they've learned about the concussion issue, I think really will make it at least a little bit more humane.

[David Remnick]

I read a pretty scary article in ESPN Magazine in which Larry Bird was talking about the health issues that come to men of a certain height. I think a number of former NBA centers have died in the last several years.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Nate Thurman, Darrell Dawkins, Moses Malone. I could go on.

[David Remnick]

And what does that tell you when you talk to doctors? What is that all about?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that a lot of guys, once they've stopped their professional career, they stop going to see doctors and don't see these things creeping.

[David Remnick]

Up on them because athletes think of.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Themselves as so perfectly attuned to everything and able to perform at a higher level. So their health must be okay.

[David Remnick]

Did you relish retirement or did you fear it? Was it a difficult transition?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

I kind of relished retirement. It gave me a chance to get close to my children and getting over the burnout that took me about three or four years. Then I got interested in writing again and realized that I had to do.

[David Remnick]

Something for the crazy obsession writing.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

But it's fun and I wanted to do it.

[David Remnick]

Is there anything as satisfying after you retired? Is there anything that can match athletic either achievement or triumph?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

I think there probably are things that can match it, but it's really tough. It's, it's great. And the whole nation watches you and you have fans and friends all over the country.

[David Remnick]

But that's something that always seemed you had a certain ambivalence about the whole nation watching you.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Yeah, I did. You know, I wanted the opportunity to excel, but I also felt that it was also a lot of pressure. But, you know, I was able to handle the pressure and do well, I'll say.

[David Remnick]

So. Kareem, thank you very much.

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

Well, it's been great talking with you.

[David Remnick]

Kareem Abdul Jabbar, writer and master of the skyhook. His new book, co authored by Raymond Obsfeld, is called Writings on the Wall. You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Coming up this hour, a cinematographer makes a movie about herself. An Ariel Levy volunteer psychedelics reporter talks about taking drugs on the job. But it's okay because I don't think the experience was all that much fun.

[Aria Levy]

This girl leans over and lets loose the Victoria Falls of vomit all over me. All over me. I am covered.

[David Remnick]

You'll want to stick around for that vomit. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Kirsten Johnson is a filmmaker and cinematographer who specializes in documentaries with a distinctly left leaning politics. She's worked on Citizen 4, the film about Edward Snowden and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9 11. Her latest project is something very, very different. It's much more personal and it's called Cameraperson. It's about her, about Kirsten Johnson and she met up with Tad Friend, a staff writer at the magazine. Tad, so you spent some time together with her recently. What did you do?

[Tad Friend]

I did. We went out on the east river ferry on an extremely hot afternoon and she spent a fair amount of time Complaining about how hot it was in a very cheerful way. She's quite tall. She's nearly 6 foot 2. And she's sort of appealingly clumsy, as she acknowledges. And she manages to somehow see what's going on around you. And I felt it was great to go with her just as someone who also was interested in trying to figure out groups of people or individuals and to sort of look, try to borrow her eye, in a sense, and see how she frames things and where she looks to catch a moment or a scene or a dynamic. And it was really sort of professionally interesting, as well as the fact that I just, like, liked her company because she's totally charming.

[David Remnick]

Tell me about the film.

[Tad Friend]

The film is sort of an amazing collection of outtakes from the movies she's made over the years, many of them having to do with massacres and genocide, which sounds very depressing. But then they're intermixed with very personal film, sort of home movies, actually. She took it home with her mother, who has Alzheimer's, kind of looking over her shoulder and seeming surprised and bewildered by who this person is with a camera and why she's filming her.

[David Remnick]

Does the film begin to make any narrative sense at all?

[Tad Friend]

It makes a narrative sense in the sense that you begin to weave together in your own head a narration of who this cinematographer is. I think when we're watching documentaries, we rarely think about who shot this film. And does she eat yogurt and does she have a dog or a cat? You just are interested in the people in the frame. But the way in which it's shot suddenly makes you very curious about who she is. And you begin to feel, like, the intense human connection that she has with the people she's seeing and her sense of curiosity and warmth. And her camera becomes almost like an infrared camera, really. It follows people around and you sense that she has an instinct for who the person is who is most alive at any given moment in the frame.

[Kirsten Johnson]

So I like that.

[Tad Friend]

So one thing I was curious about is like.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Oh, sorry.

[Tad Friend]

Do you feel like you. When you say earlier you were looking for shots? Yeah, like what? And what is it? Just a sort of instinctive thing. Oh, that's a shot. What elements need to be present for you to think that's a shot?

[Kirsten Johnson]

Well, I mean, a lot of times it's just what I'm attracted to. Like, I was. He's gone now, but there was a man who had these amazing jeans that were all shades of blue and very strange, and they were. There was something happening with the interaction between his pants, these blue seats, the sky that just told a story of blue to me that I wanted to film. And it had nothing to do with my, you know, mission.

[Tad Friend]

Well, and that's one of the things actually I really loved about the film was how I think of film as visual. But actually I felt like in this movie you got a sense of emotionally what it was like to be that person, whoever it was, you're clearly like, you know, not just there to shoot this person from a neutral standpoint, but to say, you know, you know, I have a camera, but I'm here. We're having a human interaction.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Yeah. And I mean, I think the other thing, a lot of times pointing a camera at a person, you know, we can say it gives them a voice or gives them a chance to speak, but a lot of times I think it can feel really isolating to be alone on the other side of a camera. So, you know, that's the kind of thing that never makes it into movies. The things that you're saying to people to try to, you know, help somebody feel better in a moment when they feel terrible. Basically, yeah.

[Tad Friend]

The moment in the film there are many, but the one that particularly comes to mind is when you're talking to someone who's getting an abortion in Alabama. And I think, I believe it's you who says that we've all had unplanned pregnancies.

[Amy Savage]

I don't really think I can do a second child, not by myself. That's why I just feel like a bad person, a bad female, because I let it happen the second time and I told myself not to do it, but it happened anyways.

[Tad Friend]

Okay.

[Kirsten Johnson]

The only rule I'm gonna give you is you may not say, I'm not a good person anymore, because that is not the case. An unintended pregnancy is an unintended pregnancy.

[David Remnick]

That's all it is.

[Kirsten Johnson]

That's all it is.

[Tad Friend]

So no more.

[Amy Savage]

Okay?

[David Remnick]

Okay.

[Kirsten Johnson]

I'm not kidding. Yeah, me too. As a porter.

[Amy Savage]

And it makes everybody cry, number one. And it's also happened to all of us.

[Kirsten Johnson]

We've all had unintended pregnancies.

[David Remnick]

So she's not a cinematographer, she's not a filmmaker who wants to hide. She's like Dion Arbus, who wanted her subjects to be engaged with her in some way.

[Tad Friend]

I think in this movie you get that sense. But as I said, many of the shots were outtakes from other directors movies, but she makes them the centerpiece of her film. And you feel like in her film, yes, she absolutely wants to Connect with the audience. And when you finally see a glimpse of her in the mirror near the end, it's incredibly moving because you think you're seeing a glimpse of her in the mirror as her mother, who has Alzheimer's, is brushing her hair on camera. And her mother is not quite sure who this person is, but she knows she should be tender toward her. And we feel the same way.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Who's this guy? Who's that guy?

[Amy Savage]

That's who I married.

[Kirsten Johnson]

That's who you married?

[Amy Savage]

Uh huh.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Who is he to me? You know him too? I know him too. I've known him all my life. No kidding? Yeah. I'm serious. And look, here's me. It's a teeny tiny baby with that little smile, right? That's that little smile.

[Amy Savage]

I do.

[Kirsten Johnson]

How's it go?

[Amy Savage]

Wait, let me, show me, show me. How is it?

[Kirsten Johnson]

I like to smile without opening my mouth, right? Yes.

[Amy Savage]

That's a nice little baby, not a cute little baby.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Don't take a picture when your hair is messed up. Can you fix it?

[David Remnick]

There we go.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Oh yeah, that's looking good.

[Amy Savage]

You getting me?

[Kirsten Johnson]

Trying to get you.

[Amy Savage]

That's good. You're helping me.

[David Remnick]

Yeah.

[Tad Friend]

There's footage of your mom with Alzheimer's and very sort of personal up close footage. And then also with your dad and your two kids. How did you decide to include that more private material?

[Kirsten Johnson]

Well, I mean, one of the things that I struggle with a lot is how in quotes, easy it is for us to ask people we don't know about some of the most terrible things that they have experienced and then to use that footage in films. And I knew in the case of my mother that she's a woman who never really wanted to be filmed and very much cared about her own self presentation in the world. And she would have never, I mean, when she got diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she didn't want anybody to know about it. She wanted to hide it. She would never have wanted footage of her with Alzheimer's to be the footage of her that exists in the world. And so for me, it embodies this idea of betrayal that is deeply complex. Right. I mean, I think that footage absolutely shows how much I love my mother and what a loving and gentle relationship existed. And yet it is also absolutely a betrayal of her. You know, the first time I looked at it again, I couldn't believe how much it brought her back to me. And I was like, I was so grateful I had filmed it. Even though like all of these questions aside, right? And all of the emotion really was in it. And it felt very clear to me that I must use it.

[Tad Friend]

Right. And I guess the thing that's interesting. Another thing that's interesting about the movie is the sense that you could get to the bottom of all these stories if you could stay, but that sometimes there's not enough time. People go away.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Yeah. I mean, you miss it.

[Tad Friend]

But also people die. And so much of the film is about places that. Where horrible, atrocious things occurred and people got massacred. Like, that's the sort of thing you explicitly show us in the middle of the film, is like, whether or not you planned it, you were drawn to places of death and destruction.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Well, I mean, I think one of the things that I've come to realize over time, not necessarily that I'm drawn to death and destruction, but that death and destruction is in the world. And there's invisible evidence of it in many places in the world. Sort of like trauma. And, you know, in some ways, the film, for me, is acknowledging my mother's loss and acknowledging that we all, as human beings, we lose people we love. So we all suffer these sort of fundamental traumas. Yeah. That we carry with us as part of being human. And. And the evidence of that in people's bodies, in spaces. I think I became very interested in how I could translate the invisibility of what had transpired.

[Tad Friend]

Making darkness visible, in a sense.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Tad Friend]

I told her. You know, like, I have tried tremendous envy for any documentary filmmaker because I always feel like it takes me so long. And maybe you feel the same way as a writer to say he was a withered old man who was picking up a pen with a grimace and then a flash of lightning crossed the sky. But meanwhile. And you're doing all this sort of laborious setting up, and in a documentary, it's all there, visible within half a second. Once I got that grievance out of the way, I actually learned there was a. When we came off the ferry at the 34th Street Pier, she was focusing on a nurse who was taking a nap on a bench.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Vision thing. Like, I want to know the story of that woman right there. It looks to me like she's a nurse who just got off her shift, probably at Bellevue. That's right around the corner from here and is sleeping there. So if I walk around, I could confirm that's a nurse's uniform.

[Tad Friend]

And she filmed her from afar. And there was a fence in the foreground and a fence in the background behind the nurse. So actually, the way she filmed it, it looked like A kind of green fish caught in a net.

[Kirsten Johnson]

But the shot's one thing. If you frame it within all of the webbing. Right. You have no idea where she is or if she's suspended in something. And then if I shot it wider like that with my more context, you understand a little bit more where she is. Right. Excuse us.

[Amy Savage]

Are you sleeping?

[Kirsten Johnson]

Oh, just taking a nap on my break. That's what we were just wondering, are you. Are you a nurse? Yeah. Just break time. Where do you work? At nyu. At nyu. Which department do you work on? Postpartum. Yeah. Oh, go back to.

[Dennis McKenna]

No, I just.

[Amy Savage]

I just take it. Time out on the grapes.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Enjoy.

[Aria Levy]

Peaceful.

[Kirsten Johnson]

So.

[Tad Friend]

So there you go.

[Kirsten Johnson]

There you go.

[Tad Friend]

Mostly confirmed.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Yeah, mostly confirmed.

[Tad Friend]

Except for the belv.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Right? Yeah.

[Tad Friend]

Well, close.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Close postpartum. Yeah, could be. Could be depressing as the case may be. Could be. Could be joyful too. Yeah. Yeah.

[Tad Friend]

And you had no idea who this person was? Was it even a person? It was just sort of a symbol. And then she showed, you know, you come around the corner and it begins to make a little bit more sense. And you go in for the close up and you see the person.

[Kirsten Johnson]

But you saw how suddenly all the different lens lengths changed the story completely. And did you see how beautiful she was in the close up? When I got over to here, that told a totally different story than from the other angles. Yeah.

[Tad Friend]

And showed you how much of any kind of storytelling is where you choose to focus and how you choose to frame things.

[David Remnick]

And you don't think in writing too that's the case.

[Tad Friend]

I totally think that's the case. I just think how nice to be able to do it, you know, simply by turning your hand a little bit on your shoulder rather than having to gin up paragraphs.

[David Remnick]

God, we writers are always complaining.

[Tad Friend]

We are. That's what we do.

[David Remnick]

Tad, thank you very much.

[Tad Friend]

Thank you.

[David Remnick]

Kirsten Johnson's new film is called Camera Person. She spoke with the New Yorker's Tad Friend. I'm here with my colleague Jiang Fan, who for years was a fact checker and now she's been writing about China and Chinese American life for us. And as I do every week or every so often, drop in on some colleagues and see what they're reading or listening to. And Jiang, what's on your mind?

[Jiang Fan]

So there's documentary on Amazon prime on the only Chinese woman to have ruled the Chinese empire.

[David Remnick]

What's the documentary called?

[Jiang Fan]

It's called Emperor Wu Zetian in Tang Dynasty. And I've been thinking about her a lot recently as we are in our own election season and clearly Hillary comes to mind. You know, compared to Wu Zetian, Hillary is rural, you know, just a complete saint. This is Wu Zetian. It's rumored to have killed off three of her kids. And this is a story, perhaps not for kids, but to one of her consorts, she chopped off both legs and arms and pickled her in a vat of Chinese wine.

[David Remnick]

And this, I don't think Hillary's done that. Not yet. Not yet. But if she gets really pissed off.

[Jiang Fan]

There might be a possible. But even in times and cultures as disparate, I think it's helpful to examine how women living in a patriarchal society are subjected to a particular kind of evaluation.

[David Remnick]

Okay, what's next on your list?

[Jiang Fan]

Oh, this one. Okay. So I recently had the occasion to digitalize my cassette collection before they completely disappeared, disintegrated. And the only existing cassette of myself from childhood was one that my mother made when I was 3. And I spent 45 minutes retelling a single story.

[David Remnick]

First of all, I gotta hear it. I want to hear Giant 3. It's amazing. You have this.

[Jiang Fan]

So the story is an ancient Chinese fable. It's called Mr. Dong Guo Dong Guo Xian Sheng, and it is available in English translation online. But to give you, you know, the quick and dirty version is about a Chinese scholar who is walking in the forest when he comes upon a wolf who's being hunted. The scholar takes pity on the wolf. Stuff wolf in his book bag. The wolf then tries to eat the scholar. A farmer comes along that saves the scholar and shows him that compassion isn't always the ultimate solution. And this story, I think, has really shaped contemporary Chinese political discourse and thinking. The wolf has often been used as a metaphor for the us, For Japan, for the Dalai Lama, as the four that tries to disguise itself as one of benevolence. But the Chinese lesson to themselves is that ultimately they have their own agenda. And if the Chinese do not arm and protect themselves, they will be eaten by the wolf.

[David Remnick]

Your voice has changed, Jiang.

[Jiang Fan]

How's her Chinese?

[David Remnick]

Yeah, Chinese.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Excellent, Excellent.

[David Remnick]

Never been better, Jiang, thank you very much.

[Jiang Fan]

That was a pleasure.

[David Remnick]

Staff writer Jiang Fan. You can find everything she's written for the new [e-mail] including a great piece on the children of the ultra rich Chinese families living the high life in Vancouver. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Last year, the New Yorker published a big story by Michael Pollan. On the use of hallucinogens to treat PTSD or the anxiety in terminally ill patients. In fact, there's been a lot of research in recent years about the positive effects of a plant based concoction called ayahuasca. For anyone who remembers a time when your parents might have told you that those kind of drugs will fry your brain, it's almost hard to believe. So when staff writer Aria Levy pitched me a story about ayahuasca, I said, why not? Ari, you just finished writing this piece on ayahuasca, and better you than me. Tell me about your experience.

[Aria Levy]

You know, one of the things I always try to do when I pitch you a story is emphasize the unpleasant aspects. Like if I'm doing a story in Italy, I try to talk about how it's gonna be hot and grimy and not.

[David Remnick]

Yeah, I never believe it, though.

[Aria Levy]

Well, so this one was a home run because I knew I had something really true I could tell you, which was that if I took this drug, I would puke my guts out and possibly experience my own death. That's what people said would happen. So I was prepared for an epic experience because people, people on ayahuasca report that they're in touch with the essence of pain. And they say that, you know, they see the inside of their own coffins and it's all just epically horrible. But then when it's over, they many, many people, and there's neurological science to back this up that say that the trip mimics the effects of years of meditation, right? So I thought, okay, I'm in.

[David Remnick]

Ari, you spoke to somebody named Dennis McKenna at the University of Minnesota. Tell me about him.

[Aria Levy]

He has been an ayahuasca enthusiast since his 20s when he went with his brother, Terrence McKenna, who's a sort of psychedelic folk hero. They went to Peru in search of ayahuasca, following in the footsteps of Timothy Leary, and they found it. And he studied a group of long term ayahuasca users in Brazil. He did an experimen on 15 guys who'd been using ayahuasca for 10 years or longer to see what effect it had on their brain. McKenna's one of the leading experts on ayahuasca in the world. He's been studying it for 30 years. Dennis, maybe you could tell us about what first got you interested in ayahuasca. Why did you and your brother Terrence go on this quest when you were so young? What attracted you to the medicine?

[Dennis McKenna]

My brother and I were children of the 60s we were interested in psychedelic experiences and trad. In their traditional context of use. In 1971, we actually went in search of a different hallucinogen used by the Watoto because we had heard that it was an orally active form of dmt.

[Aria Levy]

We should just tell our listeners that DMT is dimethyltryptamine, which is the psychoactive substance in ayahuasca.

[Dennis McKenna]

That's right. And DMT by itself is not orally active. It's destroyed by enzymes in the gut. But when you make ayahuasca, you mix it with a different plant that contains inhibitors of those enzymes. So it's rendered orally active, and instead of lasting only about 10 or 15 minutes, it stretches out to about four to six hours.

[Aria Levy]

And you and Terrence, like so many other members of your generation, were interested in these psychedelic experiences, not as something to do for fun. I mean, you thought you were involved in mind expansion and figuring out sort of the great mysteries of the cosmos. I mean, that was the ethos at the time with these. Right.

[Dennis McKenna]

Yes. Among certain groups and that, you know, back in the day, that was. Right. We were interested in exploring the limits of consciousness. But as I have worked with ayahuasca over really closer to 45 years, I'm still interested in that. But what's emerged for me as important is it's its potential therapeutic effects in.

[Aria Levy]

Terms of treating what sorts of conditions?

[Dennis McKenna]

Many possible conditions, such as intractable depression, ptsd, certain kinds of addictions, possibly ocd. All of the symptoms that other people, you know, that the psychedelic research community is investigating for other psychedelics, such as psilocybin.

[Aria Levy]

Gotcha. Now, let's talk for a second, if we could, about the process of hallucinogens sort of falling out of fashion, you know, in the culture, but also in the research community. And then them coming back, a renewed interest in them as a scientific and cultural community.

[Dennis McKenna]

Well, you know, hallucinogens, particularly lsd. I prefer the term psychedelics, but hallucinogens were very much at the center of the counterculture, the hippies and all this. And it was a time of social turmoil, and there was a lot of alarm, you know, that LSD was somehow fomenting that, and it dropped into our society like a bomb. And we had no tradition about using these things. The indigenous people did, but our society certainly didn't. So a lot of people became alarmed, and the legislators and usually misinformed politicians, who are usually misinformed about almost everything, decided, oh, this is a great threat, and we have to ban it. So they banned it. That was unfortunate because at the time there was a lot of fairly good work going on with LSD with respect to treating certain things, especially addictions, alcoholism and that sort of thing. There was a body of work. LSD was very active, investigated. But when they banned it, all of the research pretty well shut down, except non human research. It was still possible to work with animals and so on.

[Aria Levy]

And what brought it back? What was the catalyst for bringing it back?

[Dennis McKenna]

Well, I think partly people had experiences. They encountered indigenous use of these plant teachers and they had meaningful experiences themselves. And then, I mean, certainly I would have to credit Terrence, because even through this period, he was still taught talking about it. He refused to stop talking about it.

[Aria Levy]

Right. What I hear from people who are interested in taking ayahuasca is that they think it can treat the human condition, that they think it can help them access a kind of peace with the things that ail all of us.

[Dennis McKenna]

Right, Yes, I would agree with that. I had a friend of mine, close friend, who came a few years ago to my retreat. She had a very rough time. You know, every session she was plunged into the darkness and facing all these demons, you know.

[Aria Levy]

Suffering.

[Dennis McKenna]

Yeah, suffering. And she said afterwards, that was the most horrible experience of my life. Three weeks later, she wrote me and she said, that was the best thing that ever happened to me. So there you go.

[Aria Levy]

Ayahuasca is Dickensian, isn't it? It's the best of times, it's the worst of times.

[Dennis McKenna]

It's all about what you do with the experience.

[Aria Levy]

Sure.

[Dennis McKenna]

You have to go into it with a clear eye, what you expect, why? And realize it won't all be fuzzy bunnies. There will be some rough times. But the dark experiences are often, you know, the most useful because you can get deeply into some of these conflicted places.

[David Remnick]

So, Ari, Dennis McKenna is somebody who's been involved in this research for decades, but there are now ayahuasca circles or ceremonies going on all over the place. It's become an incredible trend. You've even compared it to kale. God forbid. You had an experience with it in New York. I'd love to know more about it.

[Aria Levy]

You know, I was scared because you gotta pay to play. I mean, the purging, as they call vomiting in plant medicine patois, is the least of it. I mean, I think what people are fearful of are these incredibly intense encounters with the swamp of your soul. So I went to this yoga studio in Brooklyn and, you know, there was all these. It was all women. This yoga studio where we're doing the ayahuasca, it's all very secret. Cause of course it's illegal, and I'm ready to rock. And, you know, there's a lot of preparation. You don't eat sugar or salt or meat or alcohol or coffee for two weeks in advance. You don't have sex. You clean out. So we're sitting there, and the shaman, Little Owl, starts playing her flutes. And one by one, we go up and she presents.

[David Remnick]

I'm sorry, Little Owl is playing a flute?

[Aria Levy]

Yeah. And then she hands you this Dixie cup, and, you know, I wish it was tea. It's not tea. It's like a cup of mud. It's like a really thick substance that smells.

[David Remnick]

Is it hot?

[Aria Levy]

No, it's room temp.

[David Remnick]

What does it taste like?

[Aria Levy]

It tastes like someone has already thrown it up.

[David Remnick]

God, you're making this better and better. Okay, so you drink this substance, and how long does it take before you start to feel a little buzz or whatever?

[Aria Levy]

Okay. So very soon thereafter, epic stuff is starting to happen. Like, very, very quickly. People start barfing. People start crying at first a little, and it's mellow. And then like, really epic sobbing. A young woman on the other side of the room starts yelling, like, at the top of her lungs. And it starts with, I've eaten so many animals. I loved them. And we're all sort of giggling a little, you know, like, that's a little thing that's happening. But it gets weirder and weirder. The one who's up on her feet is yelling and screaming and sex animals. I want to eat sex.

[David Remnick]

So at this point, you're not angry at me at any point for sending you to this assignment, are you, David Remnick?

[Aria Levy]

I'm not angry at you, David Remnick. But I am, as such, starting to be, to feel a hostility in general towards all this.

[David Remnick]

To the Enterprise.

[Aria Levy]

To the Enterprise. I'm starting to think, jesus, this is mayhem. It's not working on me. So I'm sitting there and I'm having these negative thoughts, and then I start thinking, you know what? What am I talking about? This is not a bad experience. This is hilarious.

[David Remnick]

Like, compared to what I was at the Bourne movie, having a great old time. How good an experience was it?

[Aria Levy]

Well, maybe it was the ayahuasca. Maybe. Maybe it didn't work on me in the sense of giving me hallucinations and making me see my own death, which, in retrospect, you know, I'm kind of okay with. Maybe it worked on me by Shutting down my default mode network, which is what neurobiologists say ayahuasca does, which is to say it's just.

[David Remnick]

What's a default mode network? Explain that.

[Aria Levy]

It's the part of your brain that is firing when you're not focused on a task. And it's the part of your brain you're endeavoring to quiet when you meditate. And experienced meditators are able to do this. And ayahuasca mimics the effect of years of meditation. So the part of your brain that's obsessing about the past, mulling the present, anxious about the future, just adding things up, calculating.

[David Remnick]

Calculating like thinking?

[Aria Levy]

Yeah.

[David Remnick]

Like being a sentient being?

[Aria Levy]

No. Well, not quite. Because the thalamus, which is one of the parts of the brain that governs awareness, is triggering. So you're not unconscious, you're aware. But you have an opportunity to have parts of your brain communicate with each other that don't usually get to talk because they're busy doing the default mode network work. That's the theory. So I switched gears. Then at that moment, the girl next to me, who's probably 25, says, Help, help. And I am feeling like I have sort of reached enlightenment. So I, of course, say, I'm gonna help you. So I just start talking her down. I just say, look, you're not going crazy or on drugs. Focus on your breath. Sit up, you know, da, da, da, da. And little owl has started singing, you are the shaman in your life. And I'm thinking, you know what? I am the shaman in my life, and a downright decent one. I'm coming, girl, right down. And she's saying, you know, don't stop. Don't stop talking. Don't let go of my hand. I'm calming her right down. I feel really good. And at the moment, at the sort of peak of my sense of satisfaction with my shamanism, this girl leans over and lets loose the Victoria Falls of vomit all over me. All over me. I am covered in vomit. And this is the. But this is the interesting ayahuasca moment, right?

[David Remnick]

Is it?

[Aria Levy]

Yeah, I think so. Because, like, when you stub your toe, like, afterwards, there's a second where you wait for the pain and you think, oh, Jesus. As the vomit is pouring over my body, I'm thinking to myself, in a second, I am gonna be irate and disgusted. But it never came. I was not irate. I was not disgusted. I was amused. That was my ayahuasca trip.

[David Remnick]

I used to be disgusted, but now I'm so Amused? Yeah. Then of an ayahuasca trip, Ari, what can I say other than and please forgive me, I do.

[Aria Levy]

David. That's how magnanimous this has made me.

[David Remnick]

Aria Levy, you can find her article the drug of choice for the age of [e-mail].

[Amy Savage]

I don't understand how anyone says they don't like ants. People start, usually they'll say, oh, ants, really? I'll say, yeah, they do all these different things. They're predators, they ranch aphids, they turn over soil. They do these crazy things with their trails.

[David Remnick]

We're going to finish up today with a trip to Camden, New Jersey to take a very close look at the ground. On a traffic island in the middle of a wide street, a biologist named Amy Savage is conducting a study of the eating habits of ants in different cities. And this is not just a one off when it comes to ants. Amy Savage is in it for the long haul.

[Amy Savage]

We do these outreach events sometimes when we're talking about ants and I see this pattern where a lot of time the adults are like, oh, I got stung by a fire ant once. So I was mowing my lawn and these ants crawled up my legs. Yeah, you just destroyed their home. And the kids, though. I was watching this ant, I dropped some ice cream and it was all over it. And then all his friends were on it. And, you know, it's like so much more of an appreciation for the natural history. So I love being a part of that and I guess I never lost it as I got older. There's some little ones right here. This might be thief ants. Those are really small. Do you see them?

[Kareem Abdul Jabbar]

No.

[Amy Savage]

There's one.

[Tad Friend]

Oh, yeah, they're very small.

[Amy Savage]

Yeah, they're tiny.

[Tad Friend]

Do you meet any people who are.

[David Remnick]

Confused about what you're doing?

[Amy Savage]

Well, I did have an experience in New Orleans. I was in the French Quarter and sitting on this upraised root of a big tree, and this guy walked up to me and he's like, that's the spot. This spot. That's where I go when I need to contemplate life. I was like, okay, cool, I'm studying ants. And so then he told me that I should be aware that they call it neutral ground. That neutral ground was haunted. So I might get visited by a spirit. But they're all friendly. It's okay.

[Tad Friend]

Did you have any spirit interactions while.

[Dennis McKenna]

You were down there?

[Amy Savage]

I didn't, but I told them. He asked me what my feelings were on paranormal activity, and I said, I don't have Any strong feelings? You know, we have a really intimate relationship with ants, even if we don't think about it very much.

[Tad Friend]

So on the medians, though, their colony is entirely self enclosed in this dirt.

[Amy Savage]

Multiple colonies.

[Kirsten Johnson]

Yeah.

[David Remnick]

So when people walking by see you guys doing the trials and ask sort.

[Dennis McKenna]

Of, what's the point of what you're doing?

[David Remnick]

How do you explain that to them?

[Amy Savage]

So I usually start with saying I'm really interested in understanding how species living in cities interact with their environment and with people. So for ants, if you put these feeding baits out, they will either go crazy for the sugar or they'll really choose the proteins. In street medians on Broadway, over 90% of them went for fats, which wasn't at all what we were expecting. But the same species living in forests and parks in Manhattan went for sugars. So now a big part of what we're doing now is trying to see if this is an urban pattern or if it's. Something's going on in New York City.

[Dennis McKenna]

What do you think it is that's going on?

[Amy Savage]

I really think it's being fat starved. I think they're not getting the sources of fat that they need. It's hard living in these urban environments. It's metabolically costly. And so they might be going for the fats because they're expending so much energy just to live in those environments.

[Tad Friend]

The idea is that they are eating.

[Dennis McKenna]

Sort of street litter and just things.

[Tad Friend]

That get dropped, whatever they can sort of get their claws on.

[Amy Savage]

Exactly. So it's really surprising to people because they think human foods are really fatty, but really what gets dropped is really carbohydrate rich, more than it is fatty. If you feed ants lots of carbohydrates, then they eat insects more quickly. They're more voracious towards insects.

[Tad Friend]

These colonies that are living in street.

[Dennis McKenna]

Medians are on one hand essentially living.

[Tad Friend]

Off of human litter, and on the other hand it's making them more aggressive.

[Amy Savage]

Exactly. Both of those things are happening and they're not totally living off human trash, but that human trash is kind of this bonanza resource. We definitely see lots of halal food. We see banana peels a lot of times in the medians. You know, Danielle did find a whole roosterie chicken, but that's not always common.

[David Remnick]

That's Amy Savage, a biologist at Rutgers University. She met up with the contributor Alex Karp. And that's about it for this week. Next week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll talk with Jill Soloway, the creator of the great hit show Transparent. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining me and have a great week.

[Aria Levy]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a.

[Tad Friend]

Co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

Our theme music was composed and performed.

[Aria Levy]

By Meryl Garbus of Toon Yards with.

[Tad Friend]

Additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. This episode was produced by Emily Botin.

[Aria Levy]

Abe Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen.

[David Remnick]

Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfiel and Steven Valentino, with help from Owen.

[Aria Levy]

Agnew, Emma Allen, Alex Barron, Becky Cooper.

[David Remnick]

Cooper Johnny, Vince Evans and Susan Morrison.

[Aria Levy]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported.

[David Remnick]

In part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.

[Jenny Allen]

Using the Phone Breathing in, I call the operator to report a suspicious voicemail from a person claiming to represent my credit card company. Then I remember that there are no operators anymore as there is no phone company. Breathing out, I use this moment of agitation to reflect on how everything changes and remind myself of other bygone things I used to complain about but now sort of Ms. Rockefeller, Republicans, airplane meals, Sonny Bono, Tom Carvel, Times Square when it was nasty, and men who leered at me on the street. On second thought, maybe not Sunny.