Small Potatoes

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Speaker 12 Heads up, today's show does include a couple of curse words.

Speaker 13 So anyway, here we go.

Speaker 14 Wait, you're listening.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 10 You're listening

Speaker 10 to Radio Lab.

Speaker 15 Lab. Radio Lab.
From

Speaker 16 WNYC.

Speaker 17 I got my potato.

Speaker 17 Uh.

Speaker 17 And I'm looking at it and I'm holding it.

Speaker 17 Maybe it should hold potatoes more.

Speaker 17 It's,

Speaker 17 you know, it's a potato. It's washed.
I think it's a yellow potato.

Speaker 17 It's washed. It's not dirty.
It's a little dirty. It's kind of baffling to actually think about a potato.
This could.

Speaker 17 Yeah, what do you say about a potato?

Speaker 1 Hey, I'm Lativ Nasser.

Speaker 19 And I'm Lila Miller.

Speaker 1 And this is Radio Lab.

Speaker 1 And today's episode is sort of a gauntlet thrown by our friend, our collaborator, our contributing editor.

Speaker 21 Okay, guys.

Speaker 22 Had their rad key.

Speaker 21 Okay, okay.

Speaker 15 Okay, okay.

Speaker 23 So I'm just going to tell you guys, this is some kind of experiment.

Speaker 21 It could be a failure.

Speaker 22 And then we just end and go have a lunch, okay?

Speaker 1 I love it. It's not worth doing if there's not a potential for failure.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 23 Well, I appreciate that, you too.

Speaker 24 But in any case,

Speaker 23 hi, I'm in my pajamas.

Speaker 25 The person who's maybe like the embodiment of this experiment is this woman named Claire Dolan.

Speaker 26 I'm just staring because I don't know how to make coffee.

Speaker 27 Oh, here.

Speaker 25 So, Claire is an ICU nurse up in like super rural Vermont.

Speaker 28 How was your shift?

Speaker 26 My shift was busy and long.

Speaker 19 So, we sent this really great producer named Erica Heilman, who lives near Claire, to go and talk to her.

Speaker 29 Okay.

Speaker 23 Because

Speaker 25 right on Claire's property,

Speaker 25 there's this place that ever since I first heard about it, I've been kind of obsessed with it.

Speaker 22 You grab that from a ring.

Speaker 23 It's this big old barn.

Speaker 26 This is a shitty-ass barn that was thrown up in the 1970s or 80s.

Speaker 25 It's got this old tin roof.

Speaker 26 Healing paint and falling off clabberts and boards. But inside, here we are at the entrance to the permanent collection.

Speaker 24 Hanging on these pristine white walls, under glass, on top of pedestals, are matchboxes.

Speaker 29 These ordinary

Speaker 26 pinwheel, tiny, tiny bells,

Speaker 26 dust and lint. I would say it's more lint than dust.

Speaker 29 Everyday things.

Speaker 26 Many pulleys arranged together in a block and tackle. Keys.
An old thread spool.

Speaker 9 Paper clips.

Speaker 33 Grocery cart.

Speaker 26 All part of what Claire calls the museum of everyday life. Wagon wheels, wheelbarrow.

Speaker 21 I mean, but is it really a museum?

Speaker 35 Yeah, it's like a real museum.

Speaker 37 Like, she's got a permanent collection and she's got like rotating exhibits that change every year.

Speaker 25 And then she just like puts a ton of thought into these things.

Speaker 24 Like, for example.

Speaker 27 The elegance of these furniture legs.

Speaker 19 She uses this like translucent gallery wire to hang furniture legs so that they look almost kind of creepily human.

Speaker 30 Like they're showing off their legs.

Speaker 39 and waiting for someone to notice.

Speaker 25 Or she'll light something.

Speaker 23 These are gerbil wheels.

Speaker 15 Hamster wheels. Hamster wheels.

Speaker 24 In such a way that it just grabs your eye.

Speaker 25 Just exhibit magic.

Speaker 22 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 25 And hundreds of people come every year to see this museum in a barn.

Speaker 27 And like I know people who drive up from New York City like seven hours and they, you know, they leave their homes full of just ordinary objects to drive up to rural Vermont to see a barn full of everyday objects.

Speaker 21 Why would people do that?

Speaker 1 Why would they like leave their house full of paperclips to have to drive hours to go see a barn full of paperclips?

Speaker 19 I mean, it's a reasonable question.

Speaker 23 But I think it's because through her displays, you know, she has these like, you know, she has like wall labels full of beautiful text that like describes the history of an object or tells the story of a really specific object

Speaker 27 or an anecdote about the object.

Speaker 23 And she's able to show you that there's just more to that thing

Speaker 26 than

Speaker 26 you would think.

Speaker 33 But, like, how does she do that with a with a bell or a box of matches?

Speaker 42 Well, I think of them as like she kind of did it while we were sitting in the studio together.

Speaker 24 She just pointed at this cup, this little paper cup that we were both drinking out of.

Speaker 26 Like, if you think of the cup, right?

Speaker 26 It's an object that is made for the human hand. It echoes the shape of how your hand wants to curve around, and

Speaker 26 it has this incredible affordance of ministering to your thirst, right? Like you're able to drink things because you have a cup.

Speaker 44 But it also has this elegant form, right?

Speaker 26 Like the interplay of positive and negative space. And then, you know, you think, okay, drinking out of a cup, how consequential is that?

Speaker 26 But, you know, I work in an intensive care unit in this little regional hospital in Vermont. And, you know, I can't tell you, like,

Speaker 21 for

Speaker 26 someone who swallowing has been impossible or not allowed, you know, to finally, like, the moment that they can grip a cup and take a drink is a profound experience and like a really important moment.

Speaker 25 Right, even though it's someone just sipping from a boring paper cup.

Speaker 26 Yeah, it's a dumb little cup.

Speaker 25 All right, so I wanted to start with Claire because she kind of hits on this thing that I've just been kind of obsessed about for, I don't know, like maybe the last couple of years even.

Speaker 25 It kind of started at the beginning of the pandemic where I would call this friend of mine up and I would leave her these voice messages or I'd talk to her on the phone and I'd just be like, oh my God, I bought the wrong light bulbs and they're so fluorescent and I just wish I had those ones that are so nice and warm.

Speaker 41 Or I would just be like, I just can't believe I have to do the dishes again.

Speaker 25 But then also, you know, like this maybe more delightful version of the same thing, like the little curl on the back of my daughter's hair that's only going to be there for two weeks before it kind of turns into something else.

Speaker 50 Riveting, riveting stuff, Radky.

Speaker 23 And of course, it was not riveting, especially considering what was actually happening in the world, which was that there was this like massive pandemic and tons of people were sick and dying.

Speaker 25 And so, when I talked to her about those things, I had this kind of bit of shame about it because they're so fundamentally small.

Speaker 33 In proportion to the world, in proportion to the world.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 23 I would always say, sort of guiltily, these are such small potatoes.

Speaker 25 But at the same time, you know, if you really think about it, most of our lives are actually just made up of these, you know, these small potatoes, like going to the dry cleaner or eating a ham sandwich or whatever.

Speaker 23 And I think that there's something kind of important about just how massive a part of these our lives these things are.

Speaker 35 And so,

Speaker 48 taking a cue from Claire, I want to do a whole show about ordinary everyday things that make up so much of our lives.

Speaker 1 This sounds like a terrible idea. This sounds like the most boring episode.

Speaker 19 No, it's not going to be boring.

Speaker 42 Or it's not, the goal isn't to be boring.

Speaker 31 It's that.

Speaker 1 So, it'll just incidentally be boring?

Speaker 10 No, it's not going to be boring at all.

Speaker 29 I think it's it's it's sort of a challenge because the truth is that you guys are kind of obsessed with big stories, you know, submarines, and death and wars and Arctic seals or whatever.

Speaker 30 And

Speaker 49 I guess I want to see what happens.

Speaker 25 What we're missing really when we only look at these kind of big grandstand, you know, like marquee parts of the world.

Speaker 1 I feel like you're asking us to commit a cardinal sin. Like it's like literally every story finding, storytelling impulse we have is to go big, big, big.

Speaker 42 Yeah, but what's more fun than committing a sin?

Speaker 32 Okay, so I was.

Speaker 25 So I have a series of stories for you today about people wrestling with the routine, the ordinary, the seemingly boring stuff of life, and finding out what you can see when you look hard at something that we just generally overlook.

Speaker 17 Including it's nice to have potatoes.

Speaker 24 A man who's been asked to just look at a potato.

Speaker 17 In terms of what it actually looks like, you don't really often think of what a potato looks like.

Speaker 6 Without knowing why.

Speaker 21 Oh, God.

Speaker 12 But hey, we are really leaning into the premise.

Speaker 19 All right, so I'm glad you guys are all the way in and super excited about this.

Speaker 37 I wouldn't go that far, but all right.

Speaker 53 We're here. We're here.

Speaker 37 You have to be here.

Speaker 10 Continuing to be here. Yeah.
All right.

Speaker 38 So,

Speaker 31 again, kind of inspired by Claire.

Speaker 25 I thought we could kind of go through this like we're in a museum. So it's like a set of exhibits or maybe, if you please, a platter of small potatoes

Speaker 30 Okay.

Speaker 25 And I thought I would have you kind of read each title of each piece like it's the, you know, like a

Speaker 22 placard.

Speaker 27 The wall text. Okay.

Speaker 21 Great. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 22 Yep, sure.

Speaker 54 Exhibit one.

Speaker 55 First early potato. Achine Lenon, Alexandrien Poussin, Artisa Jean, Aspazi.

Speaker 12 The light at the end of the tube.

Speaker 24 Okay, so this one comes from our producer, Matt Kilty.

Speaker 38 So, let's go. Alright.

Speaker 16 We begin at sunrise.

Speaker 53 Okay.

Speaker 24 Sunrise.

Speaker 22 Matt, I know when you wake up.

Speaker 32 It's not sunrise.

Speaker 1 Okay, fine.

Speaker 16 Mid-morning.

Speaker 46 How about? We're up.

Speaker 16 I spend way too much time looking at Twitter on my phone. In bed.
In bed.

Speaker 16 I'm going to eventually get up, open the blinds, whisk away the shades, throw them open. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 the day begins. Go make coffee.
Love that part of the morning. The best.

Speaker 25 Alright, and are you in your like pajamas?

Speaker 47 Eh, depends. But okay.

Speaker 16 Make some oatmeal, do a little bit of reading, go to the bathroom, open the tiny little medicine cabinet,

Speaker 16 and

Speaker 56 Matthew.

Speaker 56 We have a problem

Speaker 16 staring me in the face.

Speaker 56 Look at the tube, Matthew. Is look at it.

Speaker 16 Okay, so we got an extremely flat, shriveled, flaccid, crinkled tube of toothpaste.

Speaker 11 And it's just like,

Speaker 11 okay.

Speaker 34 Crud.

Speaker 57 Here we are again.

Speaker 42 Again.

Speaker 16 Yeah, yeah, it's the moment that we all have to face where the toothpaste tube is out of toothpaste.

Speaker 19 Yeah, and that's a real bummer because it feels great to brush your teeth.

Speaker 27 It does feel nice to brush your teeth.

Speaker 36 And also, we all need to because we're humans living in society.

Speaker 16 It's an essential part of American life.

Speaker 16 So, okay, so this is the thing that I wanted to explore with you today, which is

Speaker 16 that moment, that small potato, of when

Speaker 16 you are holding an empty tube of toothpaste because it looks empty, but is it empty? That is the question, Heather.

Speaker 16 Because even though it looks like you might not have any toothpaste, I think we all know there's some toothpaste in there.

Speaker 16 And thus begins

Speaker 16 a journey.

Speaker 56 Day one.

Speaker 56 What will we do?

Speaker 16 Okay, so you you got your empty tube.

Speaker 16 And unless you're one of those people who's like stocked up with toothpaste, and the moment something gets a little bit challenging in your life, God forbid there's a little bit of a hurdle in front of you.

Speaker 16 You just throw away your toothpaste for the rest of us, at least those of us who aren't using those stupid little clips with our toothpaste tubes. For the rest of us,

Speaker 56 opportunity knocks. Go ahead.

Speaker 56 Open the door. I'm gonna get it.
I'm gonna get that toothpaste.

Speaker 56 Oh, God.

Speaker 16 So you start pushing. Pushing it forward.

Speaker 8 Okay, here we go.

Speaker 16 With your fingers, wherever you can, pushing towards the top.

Speaker 5 I've got to start rolling it from the bottom here.

Speaker 17 You roll the toothpaste.

Speaker 16 Tiny, tight turns.

Speaker 47 I use the.

Speaker 31 You don't use the counter as part of this?

Speaker 37 No.

Speaker 34 Just these hands.

Speaker 16 After like a couple minutes.

Speaker 34 Oh, God.

Speaker 16 You do get to the point where

Speaker 16 you've done all you can do. I'm going to put my thumb right near the cap.
I'm going to push.

Speaker 48 And then.

Speaker 11 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 16 All of a sudden, you can see, like, there's this big, like,

Speaker 16 gush of toothpaste.

Speaker 34 No, pow.

Speaker 16 And it is one of life's little tiny joys, a little delight.

Speaker 25 Right, because you're kind of getting something from nothing.

Speaker 16 Yeah, it's like water from a stone, which

Speaker 16 this is the thing, and I don't think people realize this, is once you've taken that step,

Speaker 16 you can actually go so much further.

Speaker 42 Like to the grocery store to buy a new tooth of toothpaste.

Speaker 1 Shut up, Heather.

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 16 You can get to.

Speaker 16 I don't even know if I know how to actually describe it exactly, but have you seen... Have you ever seen that episode of Seinfeld?

Speaker 14 It looks like we're going to need some gas. Oh.

Speaker 16 Where Kramer's test driving a car and he's in the car with the salesperson.

Speaker 14 How much gas do you think is in there right now?

Speaker 17 Well, it's on E.

Speaker 16 They're running out of gas, which in and of itself is like a total small potato.

Speaker 10 And have you ever been completely below the slash?

Speaker 16 They decide they're going to see how long they can go on empty.

Speaker 48 Oh, I've never felt so alive.

Speaker 16 Basically, they're going to try and glimpse at what empty truly means.

Speaker 16 And so, what I am proposing to you, Heather, is to join me on this near empty tube of toothpaste and to see what's on the other side.

Speaker 24 But don't we know what's on the other side of empty?

Speaker 16 You might think you do, but until you actually make that trip...

Speaker 21 Yeah, you're right. All right, I guess.

Speaker 34 You have no idea.

Speaker 16 And so...

Speaker 56 Day two.

Speaker 56 Aren't we a happy little boy?

Speaker 16 Get back on top, baby. Plenty of paste.
You gotta be a little frugal.

Speaker 51 Oh, God, that was too much.

Speaker 16 But mostly. Day three.

Speaker 16 It's a thrill a minute. Day four.

Speaker 56 Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 There's so much too fast.

Speaker 56 Day five.

Speaker 56 Day six.

Speaker 16 Bless the witch.

Speaker 53 Seven. Oh, yeah.
Eight.

Speaker 5 Pop it open. Day nine.

Speaker 2 This is gonna be

Speaker 2 getting low. Oh god

Speaker 39 Let's give it a shove

Speaker 42 All right, I'm just gonna point out that from this is where I quit

Speaker 16 For what it's worth like you like you've already gotten a new tube by this point.

Speaker 24 I've bought a new toothpaste.

Speaker 16 Yeah, but you don't have to buy a new tube. But my toothbrush I haven't to because it's obviously it's because I forget.

Speaker 16 I just I forget. I don't remember.
I don't think about brushing my teeth until I have to brush my teeth. But probably in part because you're done.
There's still toothpaste there.

Speaker 16 And sure, it's getting harder. It's getting tougher to get the toothpaste out.

Speaker 19 This is where you separate the boys from the men.

Speaker 16 This is where you actually cross the threshold. This is where you...
you enter into a new realm of empty.

Speaker 16 What's on the other side of the dividing line of what you thought was empty and this new empty?

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 21 Well,

Speaker 2 day 10.

Speaker 16 There is greater pain.

Speaker 16 There's also day 11.

Speaker 34 Oh my god, I love it.

Speaker 1 Greater pleasure.

Speaker 56 The twelfth day.

Speaker 56 The thirteenth. If I can just get the tooth.

Speaker 16 There's ingenuity.

Speaker 9 Get the bristles in to the nozzle.

Speaker 16 Craftiness, cleverness. The mastery of tools, Heather, is what lies beyond.

Speaker 56 Day 14.

Speaker 39 Confronting Confronting

Speaker 22 the toothpaste

Speaker 22 again.

Speaker 16 It turns into kind of a nightmare. And then eventually...

Speaker 56 Day 15.

Speaker 42 Well, eventually you run out of tooth.

Speaker 16 Eventually there's nothing left.

Speaker 16 And for me, that is when

Speaker 16 I take the toothpaste tube

Speaker 16 and I take a pair of scissors and I cut the tube open.

Speaker 22 Open it up.

Speaker 16 Take the toothbrush, open up.

Speaker 16 And then you can put your you put your brush into the inside of the tube and you can kind of scrape up whatever little tiny bit of toothpaste is still kind of caked on the walls okay

Speaker 16 it's like you've eaten the chicken and now you're sucking on the bones yeah you're like pulling out the marrow and yeah that's it

Speaker 25 And does that, how does that, I mean, having never experienced it myself, is that a moment of satisfaction or is it a little bit of a letdown?

Speaker 19 Well, it's like, it's a little embarrassing.

Speaker 21 Why?

Speaker 16 Because I mostly just can't remember to buy toothpaste because I'm a child. But I don't know.
It's also like, it feels like an honorary death.

Speaker 16 The tube is finished. It has been fully sacrificed.
And that's it.

Speaker 56 But remember, my sweet child, with death comes life.

Speaker 18 Thanks so much.

Speaker 16 So, day 16. I go to the store.

Speaker 19 Are you like a cinnamon guy?

Speaker 16 I prefer the mints.

Speaker 25 Winter mint, peppermint.

Speaker 16 Yeah, spearmint.

Speaker 19 And then you come home.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and I do always love the packaging. I love the box, the rectangular long box.

Speaker 25 It's very satisfying.

Speaker 16 Popping it open.

Speaker 11 And then

Speaker 16 getting to hold a big fat tube of toothpaste.

Speaker 16 You grab your brush, you got your new tube.

Speaker 25 Okay. It's nice and plump.

Speaker 16 Yeah, like a fat little pillow.

Speaker 30 All right.

Speaker 11 Okay, here we go. Wait.

Speaker 24 Given everything that happened, is there any part of you that feels compelled to sort of ration it out? To take, to only take a little?

Speaker 21 Oh, God, no.

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 16 No, it's just like,

Speaker 48 the bounty is there. Exactly.

Speaker 16 But I do feel like underneath all of it, there is

Speaker 10 this

Speaker 16 sadness.

Speaker 52 Hmm.

Speaker 25 Well, what's sad about it?

Speaker 16 Well, it's just like, it's like the routine of it all. Of where, where you're like caught in this weird dance with a tube of toothpaste.
That's a part of a routine of brushing your teeth.

Speaker 16 It's like one of the many other routines that make up your daily life

Speaker 16 that feel like you have no choice in them. They just exist.
And I don't know.

Speaker 16 You feel like Sisyphus or something with the boulder just pushing the boulder over and over and over again.

Speaker 16 And the fact that that's what so much, I think, I feel like so much of your life is that, that's what feels

Speaker 16 so sad. Right, right.

Speaker 29 It's like you could measure life in empty tubes of toothpaste or piles of dust that you swept up.

Speaker 25 And that feels like

Speaker 37 not a very satisfying way to measure a life.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 56 Push the boulder.

Speaker 56 Squeeze the tube.

Speaker 56 Push the boulder.

Speaker 56 Squeeze the tube.

Speaker 56 Push the boulder.

Speaker 56 Squeeze

Speaker 56 the tube.

Speaker 17 Yeah, what do you say about a potato?

Speaker 24 All right, so this is Jim McEwen, the brother of our producer Annie McEwen.

Speaker 27 And this is day five

Speaker 25 with his potato.

Speaker 17 It's a very it's a handsome shape. Feels good in your hand.
It's got a nice weight. It's got little dimples, little imperfections.
It's maybe it's an oblong shape, ombloid,

Speaker 17 oblong, kind of looks like a mango. All in all, a pleasing thing to hold.

Speaker 17 Not a very interesting thing to look at for too long but it just feels nice in your hand knowing that potatoes have sustained us for so long and continue to do so

Speaker 17 I hope this helps let me know what else I should be saying

Speaker 6 we got

Speaker 17 we made it across the border with the potato undeclared day 11 with the potato now in

Speaker 1 where are we New York State with the potato when we return a man and his potato on an epic journey.

Speaker 12 And also, potatoes on a beach, potatoes by the billions, and potatoes on a grave. If that appeals,

Speaker 50 stick with us.

Speaker 50 Great.

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Speaker 17 The potato has made it to Florida.

Speaker 1 The humidity here is

Speaker 17 hard on the potato.

Speaker 29 Day 12 with the potato.

Speaker 17 It's looking more weathered, wrinkled, squishy.

Speaker 17 The top is dented more. It's losing color.
It really looks like an old person.

Speaker 17 Hello, it's potato night. It's happy Valentine's Day potato.

Speaker 29 Day 14 with the potato.

Speaker 17 I've been telling uh people about my potato. They're always surprised and I say uh you wouldn't understand, really.

Speaker 17 It is a

Speaker 21 you know,

Speaker 2 it's a

Speaker 17 my friend.

Speaker 40 Okay, Lulu, Lotif, Radio Lab, we are back with Heather Radke and her collection of small potatoes that she is force-feeding us.

Speaker 53 Come on.

Speaker 37 No, we're only kidding.

Speaker 12 We are happily walking through this museum, considering the unconsidered.

Speaker 12 That's right. And so, okay, what's next? What's our next exhibition?

Speaker 1 I'm curious to see what you're going to serve up.

Speaker 21 That's the mode. That's the mode.

Speaker 22 All right. Okay.

Speaker 44 All right. Next up.

Speaker 27 Do you want to read the placard? The exhibit text.

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 12 Exhibit two.

Speaker 55 Caesar, Calgary, Castelline, Santos, Ceres, Charlotte.

Speaker 12 The whole potato in a grain of sand.

Speaker 44 Hello. Hello.

Speaker 10 How are you doing? I'm good.

Speaker 15 Good. How are you?

Speaker 19 So this small potato

Speaker 25 comes to us from this guy named Ian.

Speaker 62 My name's Ian Chillog.

Speaker 62 What else do you want to know?

Speaker 23 Well, maybe.

Speaker 25 And I reached out to him because he makes this podcast that gets at the same small potatoes question, but in a totally different way.

Speaker 23 So

Speaker 62 I make a show called Everything is Alive, in which I interview inanimate objects.

Speaker 20 Well, let's just start, Settle in, have you introduce yourself for us.

Speaker 63 My name is Lewis, and I am a can of GoToCola.

Speaker 16 That's a store brand.

Speaker 63 Go to G-O-2

Speaker 15 Cola.

Speaker 24 So every episode, Ian invites an actor to come on the show.

Speaker 9 My name is Dennis. I'm a pillow, obviously.

Speaker 25 And just be an ordinary, everyday thing.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 44 Like a chainsaw, lamppost, or a towel, pencil, or a toaster.

Speaker 64 My name is Emmy. I'm a pregnancy test.

Speaker 19 And he just kind of interviews them about their lives.

Speaker 64 I know that eventually, if everything goes according to plan, I'm going to get peed on.

Speaker 15 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 25 The conversations are pretty much totally improvised. Ian takes it really seriously and the actor takes it really seriously.

Speaker 25 And so there's this feeling as you're listening that you're actually hearing a very personal interview between a great interviewer and like a stapler.

Speaker 62 Like I'll occasionally be talking to an object and I'll realize that the whole time I had a question question in my head that I didn't ask because I was afraid of offending the object.

Speaker 62 You know, like the same anxiety you have when you're interviewing a human.

Speaker 65 Okay, so here's what we're going to do.

Speaker 25 I took this one particular episode that Ian did, which I really love, and I'm going to play you some of that show where you'll hear Ian interviewing this thing,

Speaker 36 and then you'll also hear me talking to the person that he got to play that thing.

Speaker 21 It's a potato, right? It's got to be a potato.

Speaker 23 It's not a potato Okay.

Speaker 27 About what it was like to be a thing.

Speaker 21 All right.

Speaker 21 Cool. Okay.
So here we go.

Speaker 18 My name is Chioki, and I am a grain of sand.

Speaker 20 And tell me a little bit about sort of where you spend your days right now.

Speaker 18 Right now, I am in an aquarium

Speaker 18 in some dude's.

Speaker 46 house.

Speaker 18 There's a couple fish.

Speaker 46 I think they're goldfish.

Speaker 25 So what did you do to prep?

Speaker 18 Ian is anti-prep. He was like, don't research sand.

Speaker 25 Okay, so that's Chioki Iansen, the human.

Speaker 21 And I was like, bet, let's go.

Speaker 25 He's the director of the Community Media Center at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Speaker 23 And am I right that you're also like the voice of NPR or something?

Speaker 18 Oh, yeah, I'm the voice of underwriting for NPR.

Speaker 21 So you like read the ads?

Speaker 18 Support for NPR comes from NPR stations.

Speaker 23 Oh, nice. Yeah.

Speaker 19 Sounds familiar. Anyway, he's also a philosopher.

Speaker 37 Yeah.

Speaker 24 He studied philosophy and he spent most of his career teaching philosophy.

Speaker 18 Mostly German idealism and Afrikaner philosophy.

Speaker 25 So when Ian called him up to see if he wanted to be a grain of sand, Shioki was pretty psyched because he had an idea about sand that came from his years as a philosopher.

Speaker 18 Yes. Yeah.
So it's like, I wanted to take really seriously the notion of a grain of sand having its own existence and subjectivity

Speaker 38 do you know how old you are

Speaker 18 not exactly no

Speaker 18 i think it probably would amount to

Speaker 18 somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of years

Speaker 18 like i mean i wasn't always sand right like there was a time when i was a boulder yeah yeah

Speaker 18 so you know like

Speaker 18 do you know about the myth of Sisyphus?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 18 Yeah, that's um, that's a funny one to me because Sisyphus is

Speaker 18 cursed to roll this boulder up the hill for eternity. But really, the boulder would eventually erode.
I mean, a hundred thousand years or so, it would be like a little pebble.

Speaker 21 Like,

Speaker 18 just like stick it out. Sisyphus, you'll be done in no time, you know?

Speaker 20 Eventually, it's just going to be sand.

Speaker 22 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 46 And in addition, the hill will also erode.

Speaker 18 And so, you know, Sisyphus, after some time, would have a flat plane instead of a hill and maybe like a marble instead of a boulder.

Speaker 20 So, yeah, so he's cursed for eternity, but really it's, he just needs to get through, I don't know, 50,000 years or something.

Speaker 18 Yeah, like he should really stick to it,

Speaker 18 and then that'll show the the gods.

Speaker 20 It's funny to think about a man serving out his eternal curse. And what it is, is

Speaker 20 very easily pushing a marble along the ground.

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 20 It ultimately ends up worse for the boulder than for Sisyphus.

Speaker 4 Oh, for sure.

Speaker 20 The boulder is destroyed while Sisyphus lives on for eternity.

Speaker 18 See what I mean? And yeah, and like, and is Dizzy the whole time? I don't know. And how good is, like, and how good is Sisyphus in conversation?

Speaker 31 So when I was talking to Chioke, I was really curious if, having spent so much time as sand, if he had a new perspective on sand, but actually he was like, no, not at all.

Speaker 18 I mean, I think it's more like I think about people differently. Oh.
The entire existence of the grain of sand is perceiving things thinking things.

Speaker 18 And so it's what it's doing really is working to understand humanity.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I mean, I think that if there's one

Speaker 18 difference between

Speaker 18 them and I

Speaker 18 sorry, I'm just I'm having trouble with the

Speaker 18 pronouns. You know, we're doing this interview and I'm a grain of sand.

Speaker 18 Yeah. But that's not really,

Speaker 18 that's not really the way that I would think of myself. I think normally I would just say we are sand.

Speaker 46 Okay.

Speaker 18 So so you see that there's the kind of mass noun thing happening. And it's weird to talk to you because you don't have a mass noun thing or you don't seem to have a mass noun arrangement.

Speaker 18 So you say of yourself yourself that you're a

Speaker 18 person, right?

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 20 Yeah, I would say I am a person.

Speaker 18 So like, why aren't you a grain of person?

Speaker 16 Like,

Speaker 20 why do I not consider myself as like a

Speaker 18 fraction of all of humanity? Yeah, like that, that makes more sense.

Speaker 53 Yeah.

Speaker 18 It just seems to me like if you recognize the degree to which you owed your existence to other people, you might also be nicer to other people.

Speaker 20 Yeah, I read this thing that there are seven quintillion, 500 quadrillion grains of sand in the world.

Speaker 21 So,

Speaker 62 like, all of that

Speaker 20 you consider as you.

Speaker 18 I mean, I'm not saying there's a psychic connection or whatever. I'm just saying that when I think of what I am, I am the sand.

Speaker 18 in the aquarium or we are the sand. And when I'm on a beach, we are the sand on the beach.

Speaker 20 I have to say, I find the beach, at least just like

Speaker 20 sitting on the beach, boring.

Speaker 20 Do you find it boring?

Speaker 18 Yeah, so I don't really experience boredom.

Speaker 18 All of my existence is observation and reflection, so I'm never bored.

Speaker 18 Wow. Yeah, I mean, I've noticed that humans have a kind of problem with,

Speaker 18 well, I say a problem with boredom. They have a problem with time,

Speaker 18 right? Because

Speaker 18 it seems to me that boredom reveals a fundamental anxiety that many humans have about their lives in the first place.

Speaker 18 A constant kind of question as to where is this going?

Speaker 18 What should I be doing? And so then there's not really a willingness to kind of sit and just be,

Speaker 18 which

Speaker 18 I recommend. You should really try it sometime.

Speaker 20 Do you want to just do you want to try it? Do you want to just sit and be right now?

Speaker 18 Oh man, that sounds great. Let's do it.

Speaker 20 I have to say I'm already starting to feel uncomfortable.

Speaker 18 I think this is great.

Speaker 56 Like sands through the hourglass,

Speaker 56 so are

Speaker 56 the days of our lives.

Speaker 17 I'm in the Fort Myers, Florida airport, and I went through security.

Speaker 29 Day 15 with the potato.

Speaker 17 And they checked my bag, and he went right for the potato, and he took it out. He looked at me and said, It's a potato.
And then the nice man gave me back my bag with the potato.

Speaker 17 And now we go to Chicago and then to Ottawa. So then the customs,

Speaker 17 that's the last leg is the toughest one, but we made it through with a nice man saying it's a potato.

Speaker 1 So that was Okay.

Speaker 17 Potato

Speaker 17 back on home soil here. Let's go.
You can't have my potato as my, you can try, but you can't take it.

Speaker 17 Potato lives on.

Speaker 1 Okay, all right. Next to okay, exhibit number three.

Speaker 1 One billion years of solitude.

Speaker 1 Take that, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Speaker 25 Okay, so for this one, reporter Rachel Kusick is going to take us from a grain of sand to a pile of rocks.

Speaker 44 A big old pile of rocks.

Speaker 14 Rocks from between about 1 billion and 1.7 billion years ago.

Speaker 69 But also the man who uncovered their secret.

Speaker 14 My name's Roger Buick. I'm a earth scientist and an astrobiologist.

Speaker 10 All right.

Speaker 66 Okay, Roger, I'm so excited.

Speaker 49 These days, Roger is a very accomplished professor over at the University of Washington.

Speaker 70 But when he started studying these rocks, he was kind of like a baby scientist.

Speaker 14 Yes, it was after I'd finished a PhD, but before I ever got a university job. So my future career hinged on finding something interesting in these rocks.

Speaker 43 Were you just hoping that this might be a big break or something?

Speaker 21 I certainly was.

Speaker 14 Yes, it was a very poorly known time in Earth history. And I was hoping to find earlier evidence of animal life, earlier evidence of complex multicellular life.

Speaker 29 And so I started out.

Speaker 44 But first, Roger had to get the rocks that were that age, which just so happened to be deep in the Australian Outback.

Speaker 14 Yeah, that's right. I spent months in the desert with a field hand.

Speaker 14 We would walk out every day up to 20 miles in 95 degree heat in gorges and slot canyons with sledgehammers and chisels to break the rocks up.

Speaker 70 So how big of a rock do you end up with?

Speaker 14 Fist-sized chunks, carrying them on our backs all the way back to our base camp, bag them up, put a number on them and ship them back to America.

Speaker 14 Anything alive would have been microscopic. So you need to analyse the rocks closely back in the lab.

Speaker 69 So he has to get them back to Harvard, which is where he worked.

Speaker 43 And once he has them there, he has to take each one of these rocks.

Speaker 14 And cut it into little slices so you can shine light through this thin sliver of rock. And then you can look at it under a microscope, see if there's any little single-celled fossils in the rock.

Speaker 44 So Roger is staring into this microscope day after day, rock by rock, slice by slice.

Speaker 14 Hoping to discover something unexpected, something novel, something weird.

Speaker 43 So how long are you looking into the microscope looking for something weird?

Speaker 14 Two years.

Speaker 44 Two years? You spent two years looking into the microscope?

Speaker 53 We collected a lot of rocks.

Speaker 43 And after two whole years, 600-something whatever days.

Speaker 14 I discovered

Speaker 34 nothing. Oh, my God.

Speaker 10 Found nothing.

Speaker 70 He realized this entire period of Earth's history.

Speaker 14 It was supremely uninteresting.

Speaker 69 As far as you could tell, there were no great events, no dramatic evolution of life, no ice ages, no giant volcanoes, no shift in the chemical composition of the sea or the air.

Speaker 66 For close on a billion years, nothing happened.

Speaker 69 But inspired by his work, this has now become a famous period in time in Earth's history.

Speaker 70 It's called the boring billion.

Speaker 43 I think I have a hard time wrapping my brain around what a billion years would have felt like.

Speaker 8 A billion years is an incomprehensibly long time.

Speaker 14 Imagine it. It's a year and then a billion of them.

Speaker 8 It's incomprehensible.

Speaker 70 It almost makes me angry then that you're like just giving it, you have like the largest frame that you could possibly be looking into and there's nothing there.

Speaker 42 Like that just feels maddening to me.

Speaker 14 Well, it's strange. You know, the rest of Earth history seems to have been dynamic and full of change.
The atmosphere got oxygen in it.

Speaker 14 There were snowball earth events when the Earth froze over completely several times. Radical originations and extinctions of organisms.
Lots changed fast.

Speaker 14 But the rocks I was looking at seemed to record none of that.

Speaker 14 There were bacterial communities in the ocean.

Speaker 14 The only life on land at that time would have been a little layer of cells in damp places.

Speaker 14 But the climate, the chemistry of the oceans, the activities of life are all interacting with each other and stabilizing each other for close on a billion years.

Speaker 14 It's uncanny.

Speaker 69 I think what's so cool to think about is like When you think of the history of life on Earth, you just kind of imagine like conflict and change and like things that struggled and things that fought.

Speaker 69 And there's just something weirdly comforting about knowing that for a billion years,

Speaker 43 Earth was like,

Speaker 44 it's okay.

Speaker 9 We don't have to change anything.

Speaker 10 Like, let's just keep things the way they are.

Speaker 37 It's kind of working right now.

Speaker 14 And that is remarkable in a way.

Speaker 49 Do you ever feel guilty for calling it dull or boring when you look back on that paper?

Speaker 14 No, not a shred of guilt. I feel no remorse.
And let's say this: I don't work on that interval of Earth history anymore.

Speaker 53 I've had enough.

Speaker 14 I work on much older rocks now.

Speaker 14 And I'm also an astrobiologist. So I also ponder questions about is there life elsewhere in the universe?

Speaker 49 Kind of like that boring stuff that you were working on earlier.

Speaker 53 Well,

Speaker 8 the universe is vast,

Speaker 14 and

Speaker 14 boredom may be a feature of life in the universe.

Speaker 53 We don't know.

Speaker 14 Maybe that's exciting.

Speaker 12 All right, we got to take a quick break and we'll be back in just a billion years.

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Speaker 17 Annie, I have my potato again.

Speaker 35 Day 25 with the potato.

Speaker 17 Tonight with the potato.

Speaker 11 Ah,

Speaker 17 the potato is getting old, older every day. It's drying.
It's parched. It has little barnacles on it.

Speaker 17 I still do like the shape.

Speaker 1 I feel

Speaker 17 that I enjoy the simplicity of it and it's sort of a comfortable feeling because the potato, I don't have to explain myself to it and it's fine with me, I think.

Speaker 17 But I think we understand each other. We don't really have to

Speaker 17 say anything sometimes.

Speaker 17 But

Speaker 17 it is sad the potato won't always be here.

Speaker 17 Sad it can't always be this way.

Speaker 17 but it is hanging in there pretty good

Speaker 17 okay bye

Speaker 1 all right luluff radio lab we are back with contributing editor heather radke taking us to starchy places we would not otherwise have gone ourselves and i'm actually sort of surprising myself to the degree that i'm enjoying it well i only have one more so i'm so glad that you got a little bit on board at least here at the end I'm on board.

Speaker 1 I'm on board. The

Speaker 1 Potato Express here.

Speaker 21 Okay.

Speaker 25 So I'm going to say this is a pretty potato-y potato.

Speaker 27 So if you can just read our last exhibit text here.

Speaker 23 Okay.

Speaker 38 Exhibit four,

Speaker 21 potato c'est moi.

Speaker 1 I feel like I need to read that in a Miss Piggy voice.

Speaker 21 Do it, please do.

Speaker 46 Yeah, okay, hold on, wait, let me.

Speaker 30 Exhibit number four

Speaker 1 okay that i was not oh i can do better

Speaker 1 i could do better

Speaker 57 a friend of mine on my way here when i was talking to me guys you should introduce yourself as the spud stud i'm like i'm sure they're gonna love that we do love that we love it okay so for this next story heather actually uh let me join in on the conversation with this guy here my name is matt severson I'm the director of the Margaret Herrick Library.

Speaker 10 The Academy Awards Library. Yes.

Speaker 57 Also, thank you.

Speaker 27 Have you ever gotten to touch an Oscar?

Speaker 57 All the time, actually.

Speaker 42 Okay.

Speaker 42 Okay.

Speaker 54 Do you get to like, have you ever gone?

Speaker 57 Many, many times.

Speaker 13 Okay.

Speaker 27 Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.

Speaker 12 Love it. Back to small potatoes.

Speaker 32 Okay, right.

Speaker 50 So I invited Matt to talk to us today, not about the Oscars or some super famous red carpet star,

Speaker 24 but instead about a lesser-known but truly brilliant filmmaker

Speaker 29 named Agnes Varda.

Speaker 57 That's our lady.

Speaker 25 Varda was a filmmaker and a photographer and an artist, and she died just a few years ago.

Speaker 57 I believe she was 90 years old when she passed away.

Speaker 25 She's known for being an important part of this French film movement in the 60s

Speaker 24 that brought the cameras out of the glossy film studios and into the streets with real people doing real things.

Speaker 25 And that had a huge influence on the way movies are made around the world today.

Speaker 25 But the thing I'm going to tell you about happened much later in her career.

Speaker 25 In 2000, when she was in her 70s, she made this film called The Gleaners and I.

Speaker 57 It was a documentary about the French tradition of gleaning, which is the act of salvaging what other people have discarded.

Speaker 25 And during the course of the film, Farda also looks at herself, her own aging body.

Speaker 25 The camera focuses on the white roots of her hair

Speaker 57 and on her hand, which is wrinkled,

Speaker 57 has sunspots.

Speaker 25 And the most famous scene in the film happens in a field where there's been a potato harvest.

Speaker 57 There's all these potatoes that are in the dirt, which aren't good enough and are there to kind of rot.

Speaker 25 And Varda is standing there watching as this man roots through the left-behind potatoes, looking for the the ones that are still good.

Speaker 57 And he picks one up

Speaker 72 in the shape of a heart.

Speaker 25 It's yellowish-brown and dirty, and it's big.

Speaker 24 And she kind of cries out. She's like,

Speaker 24 Give me the heart.

Speaker 25 And she looks at it.

Speaker 25 She puts it in her bag and she starts looking in the dirt, sort of digging through the dirt for other heart-shaped potatoes. And she films her hands reaching out for them and picking them up.

Speaker 73 And I met, if I could say, heart-shaped potatoes.

Speaker 73 And then I took them home. I found them beautiful.

Speaker 25 Here she is talking about it in a lecture years later.

Speaker 73 And this is the cheapest and the most modest vegetable.

Speaker 73 And its shapes

Speaker 73 gave us a message.

Speaker 23 It was this discarded object.

Speaker 25 It was worth nothing. But the shape invited her to keep looking at it and to think about what it made her feel.

Speaker 73 And that heart-shaped potatoes became important.

Speaker 29 After that film came out, Varda just kept looking at potatoes and thinking about potatoes.

Speaker 19 And three years later,

Speaker 25 at the Venice Biennale, one of the most important contemporary art shows in the world.

Speaker 42 Yeah.

Speaker 29 Varda is invited to do an art installation there.

Speaker 25 And you know, artists are always doing weird, provoking, disturbing art experiences that are making you think about God or the environment or death or whatever.

Speaker 18 Right.

Speaker 29 But Varda just shows up with a bunch of potatoes.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 57 The name of her exhibit is Pata Tutopia, essentially potato utopia. She took about 1,500 pounds of potatoes and put them on the floor.
And then there's also a video installation on the wall.

Speaker 24 Three different screens showing a close-up of a potato, a far away shot of a potato, a slow pan across a pile of old, wrinkly, heart-shaped potatoes growing these long white roots.

Speaker 19 And they look kind of almost like gross or bizarre and also kind of beautiful, but they're almost not even identifiable as potatoes.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 25 But really, the crown jewel of this exhibit was actually, it's actually, well, Lulu's never seen these pictures, so maybe we should just Google Agnes Varda, Venice, Biennale.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 27 Yes, okay.

Speaker 24 Because mingling amongst all these like well-dressed, arty people with their sunglasses.

Speaker 40 I got there. Okay.

Speaker 32 Okay.

Speaker 15 All right.

Speaker 42 So Lily, why don't you tell us what you see?

Speaker 65 Okay.

Speaker 65 Okay.

Speaker 10 I see

Speaker 13 an older woman.

Speaker 42 She's got like grayish hair and some purple in it.

Speaker 27 It's like a short blunt cut kind of.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 27 she is in a giant potato costume. It's very...

Speaker 58 It looks really like a potato.

Speaker 27 And all you can really see is her head and her little hands poking out of it, kind of going like jazz hands, almost like, here I am.

Speaker 58 And it's just, it is the color of a potato. There's creases, there's crinkles, and she is just a sweet, she looks like a sweet old lady in a potato.

Speaker 57 And in the potato costume is an audio rig. And so coming out of the potato costume,

Speaker 57 is her speaking all the names of

Speaker 57 dozens and dozens of different types of potatoes.

Speaker 41 So, just listing kinds of potatoes in French?

Speaker 57 In French, in French.

Speaker 22 Oh, this is

Speaker 40 very surreal and wonderful, but

Speaker 31 what is it actually about for her?

Speaker 57 I have a quote, actually.

Speaker 57 She said, Utopia is the the belief that by filming an old rotten potato, you can express the beauty of the world.

Speaker 57 And looking at the potato is like looking at a face, at how different each person is, and giving everyone the right to be themselves, to look beautiful in my camera.

Speaker 21 That's very touching. It is.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 25 I mean, I think what Varda was doing, or kind of at least how people reacted to what she was doing,

Speaker 25 she was looking at the potato and she was sort of never not looking at it.

Speaker 24 She would look and look and look and look at it from all these different angles and look at a bunch of them and look at an old one and look at one that was rotten.

Speaker 25 And in this way, it was giving people permission. And not maybe it's more than permission.
It's like it was saying,

Speaker 25 you should do this.

Speaker 24 You should look at these things that we overlook.

Speaker 25 And you should look for a long time and you should see what is there.

Speaker 24 And if you do that, you're going to find a kind of endlessness.

Speaker 74 We have to give our affection to what is robust, what is unknown, what is not taken seriously.

Speaker 25 And, you know, I think that that mode of being, it was very powerful for a lot of people.

Speaker 25 People began sending her heart-shaped potatoes in the mail. They would leave heart-shaped potatoes on her windowsill.

Speaker 74 And ten years later, I still

Speaker 74 get in my mailbox heart-shaped potatoes. Some people dropped one with a name or nothing.
They know that I love them. So

Speaker 74 be ready to send me a potato.

Speaker 47 For the rest of her life, people regularly just gave her heart-shaped potatoes.

Speaker 25 And when she died, people placed heart-shaped potatoes on her grave, and they still do, even today.

Speaker 12 Did you put a potato on her grave?

Speaker 57 I did put a potato on her grave.

Speaker 33 Yeah, as you were talking, I was full screen staring at a photo of one of these old heart-shaped potatoes.

Speaker 41 And it is very, like...

Speaker 60 It's such a tender feeling.

Speaker 33 I mean, the skin of this potato looks, and I was holding my hand up next to it.

Speaker 33 My increasingly truly wrinkled hand, I just crossed 40, all the things, you know, the wrinkles in the potato are so similar to human skin wrinkles, like very, very just something similar geometrically is going on.

Speaker 33 And

Speaker 33 it is powerful to think like that is, that is worthy of attention, that is not a thing to be hidden, that is, that is worthy of affection, affection for her, for the potato.

Speaker 33 And like, at least for me, the chord at striking is like, there's affection worthy here of these objects of which you might be one.

Speaker 17 Hello, it's potato night.

Speaker 24 Day 40 with the potato.

Speaker 17 I've heard it might be the last one,

Speaker 17 and uh,

Speaker 17 I don't think I feel very good about that. I think the potato is doing just fine.

Speaker 2 Uh,

Speaker 17 so I am holding the potato, I already feel better.

Speaker 17 It was

Speaker 17 a rough weekend, but not for the potato.

Speaker 17 I'm looking at it.

Speaker 17 I'm looking very close. Very close.

Speaker 53 It's shrunk.

Speaker 17 It's lost weight.

Speaker 16 Yeah, it's getting old.

Speaker 17 Still got its nice...

Speaker 6 What's that color?

Speaker 17 You know like a very pleasing tawny yellow like a like um

Speaker 17 Hayfield in the fall after the hay's been pulled off of it just where your eye can rest that type of color

Speaker 17 It's beautiful in its way

Speaker 17 Yeah, there's there's nothing wrong with it

Speaker 17 It's just if we could all be what we are, like how the potato is a potato,

Speaker 17 that would be really good.

Speaker 17 It's a very interesting experiment. I'm emotional about the potato tonight.
It's a good.

Speaker 17 It's just been a nice,

Speaker 17 you know, it's been an honor.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I'm gonna hold on to it, I think.

Speaker 17 I think that's all for now, I guess.

Speaker 17 Oh, and uh, sorry, and one more thing. I thought it might want a bit of water, so

Speaker 17 I put a little bit of water on it

Speaker 17 to get it wet to see if it regained some of its vigor, you know.

Speaker 17 And I told my girlfriend I was gonna shit, you know, thinking of putting a little bit of water on part of the potato, and if that was a good idea or not.

Speaker 17 And she said, I think that's enough with all that.

Speaker 17 But I put a bit of water on it.

Speaker 1 That's it for the show. We are going to read the credits while eating potatoes.
What do you got, Lulu?

Speaker 50 I got sauteed ones and boiled ones. Classic.
What about you?

Speaker 1 I got some French fried potatoes and some ghost pepper potato chips.

Speaker 31 All right, let's go.

Speaker 27 Nothing like hosts eating.

Speaker 12 This episode was the

Speaker 12 brainchild of our contributing editor, Heather Radke. And she has recently launched a newsletter all about small potatoes.
It's called

Speaker 42 Petite Petat.

Speaker 12 And you can subscribe at heatheradkey.substack.com.

Speaker 1 This episode was reported by Heather Radke, Rachel Husick, and Matt Kilty.

Speaker 1 It was produced by Matt Kilty and Annie McEwen. Music and sound design, also from Matt Kilty and Annie McEwen, plus Jeremy Bloom.

Speaker 1 A lot of thanks on this one, too.

Speaker 31 Okay, so first of all, to Erica Heilman, who you heard at the top, she has her own podcast produced by Vermont Public Radio called Rumble Strip.

Speaker 12 It is so great.

Speaker 27 We've actually already featured one of her amazing stories here on Radiolab.

Speaker 12 If you want to start with that one, it is called Finn and the Belle.

Speaker 1 Claire Dolan runs the Museum of Everyday Life in Glover, Vermont. Museumofeveryday Life.org.

Speaker 12 Also to Ian Chilag,

Speaker 12 who gave us the grain of sand story.

Speaker 13 His amazing show is called Everything Is Alive.

Speaker 40 So great.

Speaker 12 And it is part of the Radiotopia Network, which is itself a cornucopia of great shows. Go check them out.

Speaker 1 Actors you heard from that show: Lewis Kornfeld, Canicola, Dennis Pacheco, The Pillow, Emmy Blotnick, The Pregnancy Desk.

Speaker 12 And Jim, dear, wonderful Jim McEwen, brother to our very own Annie McEwen, who gave his heart to a potato.

Speaker 12 And if you want more, Jim, he's actually a writer and he has a novel called Fear Knock. Jim McEwen, thank you.

Speaker 1 Special thanks also to Kelly Conway, Robin Kelly, Moeko Fuji, Jason Isaac, and Andrew Siemens.

Speaker 65 I'm Lulu.

Speaker 21 I'm Latif.

Speaker 58 This is Radiolab.

Speaker 12 Big stories coming.

Speaker 1 Yeah, big, big potatoes. Only big potatoes from now on.

Speaker 13 Bye.

Speaker 1 Oh, they're spicy and I ate so many so fast.

Speaker 28 Hey, I'm Liz Landau. I'm calling you from Washington, D.C., and here are the staff credits.
Radio Lab was created by Jad Avamrod and edited by Soren Wheeler.

Speaker 28 Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our Director of Sound Design.
Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Akedi Foster Keys, W.

Speaker 28 Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu, Nyanasammadam, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Valentina Powers, Sara Kari, Sarah Sandback, Arian Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster.

Speaker 28 Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Speaker 75 Hi, this is Finn calling from Stores, Connecticut.

Speaker 75 Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Speaker 75 Foundational support for Radiolab is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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