[RADIOLAB INTRO]

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

MOLLY WEBSTER: I'm Molly Webster.

ROBERT: This is Radiolab.

MOLLY: And this week, Jad is off, nestled into his office working on the next episode, which will play with a lot of the ideas that came up in our last Gary Hart podcast. But, like, with pop stars and music.

ROBERT: Meantime, we've decided to offer you guys a little Valentine's treat. It's gonna be part prose, part musical in a hip hop sort of way, with some extremely cool guests.

MOLLY: Really?

ROBERT: Oh, I promise you. Yes. At the end of the show. And it all grows out of a tale we heard about a very small animal, which begins appropriately with a very small noise.

DAVID GOULSON: Yeah. So in days gone by, people tended to die at home. This is—go back a couple of hundred years before there were hospitals and so on.

ROBERT: This, by the way, is David Goulson.

DAVID GOULSON: \'m a professor of biology at the University of Sussex in the UK.

ROBERT: And he told this tale to producer Latif Nasser and I.

DAVID GOULSON: So you imagine that, you know, grandpa's ill and looks like he might die soon. [laughs] Sorry, I don't know why that's funny, but—and so he'd be lying in bed upstairs, and everyone would be—out of respect, would be very quiet. You know, they'd be creeping around the house. It was a time called the death watch. And when everyone was really quiet, they'd hear these faint drumming noises coming from the timbers of the house. I can try and do an impression of the noise, actually.

ROBERT: Yeah, I'd love to hear you.

DAVID GOULSON: May not work very well, but bear with me.

ROBERT: Yeah.

DAVID GOULSON: [tapping] Did you get that?

ROBERT: Yeah.

LATIF NASSER: Yeah.

DAVID GOULSON: So five or six identical beats. And legend has it that this was the devil drumming his fingers impatiently, waiting for the soul to depart the body so that he could claim it.

ROBERT: Ah!

DAVID GOULSON: But turns out, actually it's the mating call of a tiny little beetle. The deathwatch beetle. That's where it gets its name.

ROBERT: So Dave became a kind of a fan of these beetles.

DAVID GOULSON: Oh, yeah. It's a widespread species and ...

ROBERT: And in fact, he's got a house that's full of them.

DAVID GOULSON: It's pretty decrepit. It's slightly falling down, the roof leaks and whatever, but it's home to a whole host of these little beetles.

ROBERT: And in the quiet, he can hear them. So a while ago he found himself wondering, what's this noise really all about?

DAVID GOULSON: Which, you might not think would be a great mystery.

ROBERT: But what he discovered is it's all about love—or at least sex. So today, a story that reminds us how difficult, lonely, how hard the mating game can be.

MOLLY: Perfect Valentine's Day.

ROBERT: No, it'll get better. So we will begin at the beginning.

DAVID GOULSON: The life cycle. Yeah. So the female bee lays an egg on a piece of dead wood.

ROBERT: And Dave said he would watch them, and the moms would just drop their babies randomly, some here, some there, usually into a hole in a log or into a wood beam.

DAVID GOULSON: And it hatches into the little tiny white grub. So imagine this little thing, pitch black, you know, in its own little tunnel on its own. And it starts chewing. It chews away at the wood very, very slowly. And eventually about 10 or 15 years later ...

ROBERT: What, years? It's gonna chew for 10 to 15 years?

DAVID GOULSON: Yeah, for a decade or more. Poor things. And eventually, it reaches the magnificent size of about a quarter of an inch, at which point it pupates. So it turns into a little chrysalis. And a few months later the adult beetle hatches out of that.

ROBERT: And so finally it crawls out of the log and onto the surface.

LATIF: Is that the first time they see light?

DAVID GOULSON: Yeah. Yeah, that would be it.

ROBERT: Oh, wow!

DAVID GOULSON: So it's only the adults that you ever really see. And they're possibly the most boring looking insects you could imagine.

LATIF: Really?

DAVID GOULSON: They're about a quarter of an inch long, bullet shaped, dull brown. They're really easily mistaken for mouse droppings, actually. And the adult only has really one job, and that's to mate.

ROBERT: So the male beetle ...

DAVID GOULSON: Has to find himself a female. So he's got his work cut out.

ROBERT: For one thing, as an adult, he doesn't eat.

DAVID GOULSON: He can't feed, so he's gonna starve to death in a couple of weeks or so.

ROBERT: On top of that, he's nearly blind.

DAVID GOULSON: Yeah. And that's where this strange drumming noise comes in. That's their way of finding each other in the usually rather dark places where they live.

ROBERT: That's your way of saying "Hello? Hello?"

DAVID GOULSON: Yeah. And they make it by drumming their head. So the male beetle, he kind of braces himself and then he whacks his head five, six times.

ROBERT: Oh, you say drumming the head, you mean banging the head?

DAVID GOULSON: Yeah, it's like headbutts the timber he's sitting on with his kind of forehead, if you like. So that's what makes the drumming noise. He's basically whacking his head against the wood.

ROBERT: So he comes out of his hole.

DAVID GOULSON: Just wanders about, and does his little drumming noise.

ROBERT: Now if a human happens to hear him ...

DAVID GOULSON: People these days, they tend to spray their houses with insecticides, and that's the end of the beetles.

ROBERT: Oh.

ROBERT: But let's assume ...

MOLLY: Yes, let's assume.

ROBERT: ... that he doesn't get fumigated, okay?

DAVID GOULSON: He just keeps wandering about, banging his head, and then he pauses for a second kind of listening to see if anyone replies. And if there's no reply, he wanders on.

ROBERT: Unfortunately, according to David ...

DAVID GOULSON: Deathwatch beetles are quite rare these days, so there is a distinct chance the poor male will never find a female.

LATIF: Oh, this just gets more and more depressing.

DAVID GOULSON: [laughs] Well they—sorry, I'm laughing again.

LATIF: [laughs] And can you tell the same story from the female's perspective? So she just sort of is—she just waits in silence for three weeks, and if no one comes she just ...

DAVID GOULSON: Keels over and dies. Yeah.

LATIF: Oh, God!

DAVID GOULSON: She wanders around a little bit, I suppose, in the hope that she might encounter a male, but that is all she does. Tedious life I'm afraid.

ROBERT: But let's imagine again for the sake of argument, that after the 15 years of chewing and no fumigations for them at all, let's then think, wow, they get really lucky!

DAVID GOULSON: He gets a reply.

ROBERT: They find each other.

DAVID GOULSON: She makes the noise immediately after she hears the cry of a male, and he then gets very excited because he may have been wandering about banging his head for days. And this little duet gets going. He starts to run around.

ROBERT: Banging his head over and over again.

DAVID GOULSON: You know, this is his moment. And eventually by a lot of trial and error—and occasionally they got it wrong and fell off the edge and were never seen again. But more often than not he would eventually find the female, and the males will immediately jump on top of her. And he then continues to drum his head, but this time he's not headbutting the timber, he's whacking her, which I mean, each to their own, you know? Presumably that works for a female deathwatch beetle. But because they're very short sighted, they will often jump on the wrong way round, and that's not so good because the females can actually control. He can't force them to mate. So he has to persuade her to cooperate or else he's going nowhere.

ROBERT: Can humans tell if it's going well?

DAVID GOULSON: Well, so usually she carries on replying. So he's banging her in the back of the head, and she's then drumming her head on the wood underneath. And that's usually a good sign, that if she carries on banging her head on the timber, that means she's probably gonna mate with him within the next minute or two.

ROBERT: But Dave says when he has watched this happen, he's noticed that ...

DAVID GOULSON: Quite often, the females wouldn't mate, even though, you know, they'd maybe been sitting there for days waiting for a partner to come along. And then when one finally does and he finally gets to them, they're not interested. You know, it's not good enough.

ROBERT: I thought that they were—they only have three weeks.

LATIF: That is so shocking to me!

ROBERT: This is a very discerning lady, that she chooses death over an ugly mate.

DAVID GOULSON: Well, I guess she's not, actually. She's hoping that she'll get a better mate. There's another fish in the sea.

ROBERT: Another fish in the sea.

DAVID GOULSON: Hopefully. But I thought, well, what's the difference? Why are some males successful and some not? And it quickly became clear that the heavier the male, the more likely he was to be successful.

ROBERT: So is there some explanation for why?

DAVID GOULSON: So actually, these things, they produce quite staggering amounts of sperm, it turns out.

LATIF: Wait, what is staggering? What do you mean by staggering?

DAVID GOULSON: The average was 13 percent of his body weight.

ROBERT: 13 percent.

LATIF: What?

ROBERT: So if that were us, like, what would that be like?

DAVID GOULSON: We were talking about three or four gallons. So, you know, think about that from—it's best not to think about that too much, really. But ...

LATIF: Because that's just so gross.

DAVID GOULSON: It's slightly disturbing.

ROBERT: So the deep tragedy here would be to be a member of this species and to be born ...

LATIF: Scrawny.

ROBERT: Scrawny.

DAVID GOULSON: Yeah.

ROBERT: I mean, just out of curiosity, just how big are you?

DAVID GOULSON: I'm moderately skinny, so if there's a difference, I'd be in trouble. Anyway, so what I really wanted to know was were the females actually just weighing the males, or was it something that was correlated with being a big male? You know, maybe they were stronger or made a louder noise or something. And so the obvious way to try and find out was to artificially change the weight of the males.

LATIF: So make tiny fat suits for the ...

DAVID GOULSON: Well, exactly. Yeah. Not quite, but I wish this worked for people. It would be hilarious, but I don't think it does. So we have this stuff called Blue Tack in the UK. Do you have Blue Tack over there? I don't know.

LATIF: Like Sticky Tack?

DAVID GOULSON: Sticky Tack. I guess you use it to stick posters on the wall.

ROBERT: So Dave went to the store, bought some of this stuff, and then just bead it up into little bits.

DAVID GOULSON: And stuck them on the back of males to make them a little bit heavier.

ROBERT: And for the skinny males ...

DAVID GOULSON: It worked an absolute treat, these males, but I do feel slightly mean that those poor females obviously were getting a bit shortchanged, but hopefully they managed to produce some eggs anyway.

ROBERT: Because in the end, Dave finds these beetles, the males and the females, surprisingly charming. And after all, he does live with them. A lot of them.

DAVID GOULSON: They're still in my house. They're still chewing away at the beams. I've been—I'm torn. You know, part of me knows that if I don't spray them with some insecticide, then eventually the roof will start to collapse, but it's gonna take decades, and I kind of quite like having them there. So for the moment, they've been spared. And I kind of quite like listening to them tapping away in the springtime.

ROBERT: So you're sitting in bed at dawn or dusk, and you hear the quiet banging and you think ...

DAVID GOULSON: Yeah. Yeah. It's funny, isn't it, that people thought this was a sinister noise and actually it's all about love.

MOLLY: Thank you to Dave Goulson who wrote a book all about these bugs, A Buzz in the Meadow: A Natural History of a French Farm.

ROBERT: Oh, I didn't mention to you that it's a French farm. He has this little place in France that he goes to one month a year, and that's where he communes with his beetle friends.

MOLLY: And has one of the saddest months thinking about that.

ROBERT: Do you find it terribly sad?

MOLLY: I found it—it made me think that dating in New York was pretty easy.

ROBERT: [laughs] All right. For people who are feeling—if you're feeling sad, we want to end that problem right away. In the next part of this show, we're going to revisit this story in such a crazily new way for us. The guys from Hamilton, the hot Broadway show, I told some of them this story that you just heard, and they have decided to musicalize the tale. You know how raunchy this story is? Well, it only gets more so when it's in the musical tell. So you might want to ask your little ones to leave the room around now. And then you should by all means, stay for the after party. You know, when I put together these—any story, as you know, I just wander around and tell it to every single person I know. So yeah, it could be strangers. So I was talking to a friend of mine who's in the theater, a guy named Tommy Kale. I'm talking to him and I'm saying, "I'm wondering what's going on in the minds of these little—assuming that they have minds, these little animals." Because it seems so unfair. 15 years of chewing and then this? So he said, "You know, we could be those beetles."

MOLLY: Wait, who's the 'we?'

ROBERT: The 'we' is an improvisational freestyle group called Freestyle Love Supreme. And it's—now this I should tell you. Tommy goes to Lin-Manuel Miranda.

MOLLY: Who's no joke.

ROBERT: Who is Hamilton in the hit musical Hamilton. And he writes, he says, "I'll be one of the beetles." And then they go to Utkarsh Ambudkar, who was in a movie called Pitch Perfect where he played a rapper.

MOLLY: Oh, yeah!

ROBERT: And by the way, this is all guys. This is like—you have to think of yourself as in an Elizabethan beetle situation.

MOLLY: This is Shakespearean deathwatch beetles.

ROBERT: That's right. All the lady parts will be played by males. So Lin's gonna be a woman, and Utkarsh is going to be the man. So here is the male beetle being the beetle that he hopes he can be.

UTKARSH AMBUDKAR: [rapping] Hey, ladies, I said the wait is over. Get ready for the beautiful beetle Casanova. He is I and I am him. The most masculine beetle by the name of Slim. Now evolution made me small so I could slip through the cracks. I'll be the first one to jump on a lady beetle's back. But it's hard out here, and I'm not playing. The human beings hear me, and then they get to spraying. They think that I'm the devil, so they get to fumigatin'. They don't understand that I'm only procreating. But I'm slimmer, so I'm a winner. I finally see the sun peep a shorty and I know that she the one. So I'm like, beetle baby doll, let's get involved. I want to give it to you all right here on this log. [singing] I've been chewing through that wood for my entire life, and it feels so good to finally find a wife. Yeah, I guarantee I'm your chosen, but can you remind me which end it goes in?

ROBERT: This is hard!

MOLLY: Yeah, it's hard out there for a beetle.

ROBERT: But for the female, played by Lin Miranda, I mean, she's gonna have her own agenda. She needs to find a guy. It has to be—she hopes it'll be the best guy. But I don't know.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: [singing] Somebody's knocking. Could this be the beetle I've been waiting for? Somebody's knocking. Bae, Is this a mate worth waiting for? My mama told me to never settle. I always did as I was told. I'm looking for a hottie with a body full of sperm and deep down a heart of gold. But when you hear that knocking and it's a sound so rare, is the grass always green or is there a heavier beetle somewhere? Somebody's knocking. But I am a beetle worth waiting for. Somebody's knocking. I'm gonna wait for something more.

MOLLY: The power of the female.

ROBERT: And the sadness for the guy. But this is a Valentine's Day ...

MOLLY: [laughs] You never feel sad for the lady. What if she gets some lame dude and she's like, "Oh my God, I've waited 15 years for this, and I can't do it with you." And she has to move on and fall off the table.

ROBERT: Okay, okay. But now you know that Professor Goulson is our cupid here after a fashion.

MOLLY: Right. He's gonna save both of our sad souls.

ROBERT: Yes, with the sticky tack. So here is the—this is kind of a lame, validated card when I'm thinking about it. But here is our finish to our own Valentine's tale. A little Romeo and Julietish, actually.

UTKARSH AMBUDKAR: [singing] Against all odds, I'm gonna make you mine at the end of the day. Wait, I'm half blind. Where are you?

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: Fine.

UTKARSH AMBUDKAR: Oh, there you are. I've been chewing all my life long trying to put the work in. Beetle baby doll, don't let me die a virgin. I'm certain that love will burn like embers. I'll be the one and only love you remember. Keep banging your head on the timber. I agree it'd be easier with Tinder, but let me loose inside your caboose so I could give you some of my beetle juice.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: Somebody's knocking.

UTKARSH AMBUDKAR: Okay, I know I was playing it cool before, but seriously, I got no clue what I'm doing. So if you could help me out, you'd be doing me a real solid.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: You found your way to me.

UTKARSH AMBUDKAR: Little did she know. Before I beat it, the doctor helped me. I cheated. [laughs] Slim wins are good. I'm dead.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: But what a way to go!

LULU MILLER: That was Lin-Manuel Miranda, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Freestyle Love Supreme. Before we go to break, dear listener, we want to play for you a quick segment on another randy little insect. This time with the help of science writer Carl Zimmer, who is going to tell us about the parasitic wasp.

CARL ZIMMER: There are probably 200,000 species of parasitic wasps out there.

JAD ABUMRAD: Big wasp? Small wasp?

CARL ZIMMER: They're generally pretty tiny.

LULU: And they go after all sorts of things.

CARL ZIMMER: Some will lay ...

LULU: Carl's caterpillar, spiders or the one Carl's gonna tell us about ...

CARL ZIMMER: This particular wasp is called Ampulex Compressa.

LULU: Goes after ...

CARL ZIMMER: The cockroach.

LULU: And for those of you who never thought you'd feel sorry for a cockroach, keep listening.

CARL ZIMMER: So what it does is it flies around, and it looks for a cockroach, and once it finds that cockroach, it lands.

LULU: And then the fight begins. They tumble back and forth around and around until finally the wasp somehow manages to arch its back around the body of the cockroach ...

CARL ZIMMER: And stings it.

LULU: Zzzzt! Right in the belly. The cockroach twitches for a second and then falls.

CARL ZIMMER: Boom! The cockroach is paralyzed.

LULU: Now the wasp takes its time. Repositions itself, puts its butt up right near the cockroach's head.

CARL ZIMMER: And delivers a second sting. The stinger actually threads its way to a particular spot in the brain.

LULU: And this does something odd. Moments later ...

CARL ZIMMER: The cockroach recovers, sort of stands up and can walk again ...

LULU: But something is wrong. Very wrong.

CARL ZIMMER: It just stands there.

LULU: Like, "I'm awake but ..."

CARL ZIMMER: It can't run away.

LULU: "I can't move."

CARL ZIMMER: It has essentially lost its will

JAD: What does that mean?

ROBERT: It's a puppet.

CARL ZIMMER: Yes, it is a puppet. It's become a zombie, basically. And so now the wasp will literally grab onto the cockroach's antenna and start pulling on it.

JAD: But how does it grab—with what does it grab?

CARL ZIMMER: I believe with its mouth.

LULU: Imagine a tiny wasp guiding a cockroach across the desert floor ...

CARL ZIMMER: Like a dog on a leash.

LULU: And so it leads it down, down, down.

CARL ZIMMER: Down into a little burrow it made and the cockroach says, "Okay, where do you want to go?"

LULU: Then, once the wasp has the roach in the burrow.

CARL ZIMMER: It lays its eggs on the underside of the cockroach.

LULU: So now you've got this drugged roach sitting on top of some wasp eggs, and then the wasp goes ...

CARL ZIMMER: Out and it seals the burrow.

ROBERT: It buries the cockroach alive? Or it just puts him in a little cell?

CARL ZIMMER: It's in a little chamber. It doesn't want to kill the cockroach because this cockroach is gonna feed, it's—you know, it's young. Yeah. So then the eggs hatch. And then they drill inside. The cockroach is still just sitting there.

JAD: How's it staying alive at this point?

CARL ZIMMER: Well, parasites are very careful. You know, they won't eat vital organs that will kill it.

LULU: Instead, Carl says, they just feast on the extra stuff.

CARL ZIMMER: There's a lot of stuff inside of a cockroach, a lot of fluid just floating around.

ROBERT: Bits of Wonder Bread, essence of skin, old hair ...

CARL ZIMMER: That you can just feed on, and the host stays alive.

JAD: Wow. And then what happens?

LULU: Eventually the little baby wasp larva grows up ...

CARL ZIMMER: Inside the cockroach and develops into an adult ...

LULU: And then one day ...

CARL ZIMMER: The wasp eats its way up a hole out of the—out of the cockroach's body, shakes off its wings and flies off.

JAD: And then the roach dies

CARL ZIMMER: Then the roach dies.

JAD: But only then.

CARL ZIMMER: Yeah.

JAD: That to me sounds like the purest description in nature of evil that I can imagine. Wouldn't you agree?

CARL ZIMMER: Well, Darwin certainly said that God should not be personally blamed for having created parasitic wasps.

LULU: Coming up, more insects and some football. It'll make sense if you stay tuned.

LATIF NASSER: Hey, I'm Latif Nasser.

LULU: I'm Lulu Miller. This is Radiolab.

BECCA BRESSLER: Okay, should we do this thing?

LATIF: Yeah!

LATIF: And today, we're gonna start with a story from our producer Becca Bressler.

LULU: How did you stumble across this? How did this little guy possess your brain?

BECCA: Okay, I basically—it was my turn to pitch something, and just feeling totally lost for inspiration. So I did a thing I actually never do when I'm looking for pitches, which is look for an animal story. I don't really even like animals that much. Like, I honestly am one of those people that I think pets dogs because I'm afraid of being judged if I don't bend down and pet the dogs. Like, anyways so like I'm googling animal science news. Click the animal header section, and I came across this little creature that to me struck me as a total genius.

LATIF: Hmm.

BECCA: And that's what I wanted to tell you about.

LULU: All right.

ANNIE MCEWEN: [clears throat] I'm sort of still eating my breakfast.

BECCA: Also for some balanced reporting I dragged in animal lover, producer Annie McEwen.

ANNIE: Hello!

BECCA: Okay so this animal lives in these shrubby fields.

RITTEK DEB: A bushy kind of open landscape.

BECCA: In India, just outside Bangalore.

RITTEK DEB: It is quite an isolated area.

BECCA: This is Rittek Deb. He's an evolutionary ecologist at Visva-Bharati University.

RITTEK DEB: In West Bengal, India.

BECCA: And he says to find this animal, you go out in the evening.

RITTEK DEB: In complete darkness.

BECCA: And walk out into the center of this field and just stop, stand completely still. And wait for their song.

RITTEK DEB: Generally on an average maybe 10 minutes or so.

BECCA: The song of ...

RITTEK DEB: A cricket.

[cricket chirping]

LATIF: A cricket?

BECCA: Yep.

LATIF: Really?

BECCA: Yeah.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: I mean, I don't know that I'd call that a song. Like, it's like a chirp.

BECCA: No, no. I'm gonna call it a song. All right. Stick with me here.

LATIF: Okay. All right, fine.

BECCA: Okay, so these crickets are called tree crickets. And just to give you a visual they're sort of a translucent green - they've got tiny wings.

RITTEK DEB: They're around one centimeter long.

BECCA:One centimeter …so like your pinky finger?

RITTEK DEB: Half of a pinky finger I would say.

BECCA: So like a pinky fingernail.

RITTEK DEB: Slightly bigger than that.

BECCA: Slightly bigger than a pinky fingernail, depending on who you are.

BECCA: Is it hard to find?

RITTEK DEB: It depends on where the cricket is. Once it happened that we hear a cricket, and everytime we go to a location it feels like it's calling from behind us. We turn we go to another location and then it strikes us that it's calling from within our backpack.

BECCA: Oh my gosh.

BECCA: And their song that Rittik uses to track these little guys down, that is the thing that makes them so interesting.

RITTEK DEB: Yeah it's a hugely costly phenomenon.

BECCA: Rittik explained that the male crickets who are the ones who sings the songs….

RITTEK DEB: …for three or four hours in the evening…

BECCA: They are doing this to attract mates.

LATIF: Hmmm

BECCA: Every night a male cricket sings it can lose up to 20% percent of its body weight…

LATIF: Whoa.

BECCA: …overnight.

LULU: Huhh…It like sings itself skinny?

BECCA: Yeah, it'd be like you or I losing like 25 or 30 pounds in one night - just to find a mate.

LULU: Huh.

BECCA: And this is actually a classic conundrum in evolution.

RITTEK DEB: You would find it across so many different organisms.

BECCA: Darwin first noticed it in peacocks. It became known as the peacock puzzle.

RITTEK DEB: Peacock's tail is such a…

BECCA: So a peacock's tail, as grand and beautiful as it is, by the theory of natural selection it shouldn't be. By the theory of natural selection kinda shouldn't be. It prevents them from being able to really fly well. It gets them caught up in bushes easily.

LATIF: Peacocks are absurd.

BECCA: Totally, totally. And they really puzzled Darwin.

LATIF: Fashion over function.

BECCA: Exactly.

LATIF: This is classic fashion over function.

BECCA: Totally. And fashion over function in science is actually called just sexual selection. There's an official term for it, which is that. Darwin eventually figured out females prefer peacocks with extravagant trains and therefore those peacocks mate a bunch more and they have many more offspring and that is why that trait survived. And so these crickets are kind of like the peacocks but instead of having a big colorful tail they have a very exhausting [cricket sound] but super sexy [cricket sound] song [cricket sound] And Rittek would eventually discover, actually, that the sexist songs are the louder songs. So females like loud songs. But the genius in this cricket, the thing that made me fall in love with them so much, is that some of the little guys give their little cricket middle finger to this beauty standard.

LULU: What does that mean?

BECCA: Okay so let me tell you. One night Rittek is out in the field looking for crickets like he does.

RITTEK DEB: ….another PhD student was helping me with sampling…and then…

[cricket call]

BECCA: ….he hears this song.

[cricket call]

RITTEK DEB: I hear one cricket which sounds louder than usual…

[cricket call]

BECCA: ….like louder than he's ever heard before.

[cricket call]

RITTEK DEB: It's so loud that it feels like it's just near my ears, but there is no bush there.

BECCA: It's like the cricket is in his head. But not obviously.

RITTEK DEB: Yeah. So we start searching for that particular cricket.

BECCA: He's moving through this field…

RITTEK DEB: I'm like trying to [inaudible] through the top of a bush.

BECCA: It was really hard to locate it.

RITTEK DEB: …we are completely exhausted, neither of us can find the cricket – and then suddenly I see that there seems to be a hole in the middle of a leaf and there is a tiny head which is popping out.

BECCA: A little hole about the size of a penny in this leaf and inside it the head of a tiny tree cricket.

RITTEK DEB: I was like, what am I looking at? And then I call my friend. Now we are investigating more – like we are looking from the back. We are trying to look from the side.

BECCA: And what they eventually see is this cricket is rubbing its wings from within this leaf

RITTEK DEB: It's calling from the hole of the leaf.

BECCA: So he's like, that's weird.

RITTEK DEB: Yeah this is something very very unusual.

BECCA: Because these crickets they're always on the leaf not actually in the leaf…

RITTEK DEB: My supervisor had given her mobile number and had told that only in case of emergencies you should call. And I frantically search for my mobile and call her immediately.

BECCA: 911.

BECCA: And she told him you know, I've actually heard about this before. It was written about in some paper a few decades ago.

RITTEK DEB: This was a publication which came out in 1975.

BECCA: So what he saw, it wasn't just some fluke.

LULU: Does it have a name?

BECCA: They called it ...

RITTEK DEB: …baffling…

BECCA: …and the name they gave to these crickets - what they called them were bafflers.

LULU: Bafflers, okay, why bafflers?

BECCA: So the leaves with the holes are called baffles. A nd abaffle is a surface that reflects sound, basically.

LULU: Oh, okay so the leaf is like taking the vibrations of their song and shooting it out into the vales.

BECCA: Yeah, basically.

RITTEK DEB:...you can think of it as a megaphone kind of thing, right?

BECCA: So in other words if you took that cricket out of the hole and put it up on the leaf it would be quiet, if you put it back in the hole it would be loud again. The paper also explained that these crickets in the holes, they didn't just fall into a hole, they created the holes for themselves. They chewed them with their little cricket mouths and they climbed inside it in order to amplify their song.

LATIF: Wow!

LULU: So they're like fashioning a tool?

BECCA: Exactly.

LULU: Like a little insect tool?

BECCA: Exactly.

LULU: Wow, wow okay, that is smart.

BECCA: Crazy right?

LATIF: That's pretty cool.

LULU: Yeah, okay, yeah I see it.

BECCA: But this raises a very real and interesting question for Rittik.Does it work? Like we said before when it comes to these crickets…

RITTEK DEB: …females generally preferred the louder individuals.

BECCA: Louder is better. Now sometimes they have to settle for a quiet cricket.

RITTEK DEB: Based on how much energy you have spent searching.

BECCA: Ah your standards lower…

RITTEK DEB: Exactly.

BECCA: …very relatable.

RITTEK DEB: Yeah…

BECCA: But if given the choice…

RITTEK DEB: It will always go for the louder ones.

BECCA: And it's not even just that a female cricket prefers a louder cricket to a quieter cricket, she'll actually mate with that louder cricket for longer than she would that quiet cricket. And here Rittik has found a quieter cricket pretending using this megaphone thing to disguise itself as a loud one - and so the question is…

RITTEK DEB: Do the females actually get deceived?

BECCA: Like, do they treat this cricket like a loud cricket, like do they stick around and mate with it for longer? Or can they spot the con?

LULU: Is she like I'm being punked?

LATIF: Catfished. Yeah.

LULU: Or is she like yeah, let's do it…whatever.

RITTEK DEB: It will all boil down to the point whether the female can catch the bluff.

BECCA: So Rittik did an experiment and what he found was that female cricket ...

RITTEK DEB: It will mate with a quiet cricket, whose call has been amplified by using baffle, with that of a truly loud individual who already calls at that particular loudness.

BECCA: The female crickets mated with the bafflers just as much as the naturally loud crickets.

RITTEK DEB: So it was like - wow, indeed, the cheating is working.

BECCA: It's just ingenious. Like, this little cricket that by no fault of its own, isn't supposed to mate that much, has found this incredibly clever way of leveling the playing field, of sort of like playing with the big dogs and like keeping himself in the fight.

LATIF: But, like, to me, I don't know I'm, like, a little hesitant because like, considering it from the female side ...

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: What the hell? Like, this is false advertising. LIke the idea of sexual selection, as I understand it, is that the peacock's tail or loud cricket chirp that suggests genetic strength. And the reason that it lasted for so long in the cricket world is because loud guys are better mates that are going to produce stronger offspring who are more likely to survive. So now with this kind of hack, this is, this is a bait and switch.

LULU: A lie.

LATIF: Like, this is not—this is not fair.

BECCA: But this cricket is a genius. Like I guess that's where I come in is…

LATIF: …But is he an evil genius? Is the question.

BECCA: No, I know. I've self-reflected on this a lot and whether or not, like, I should be ashamed that I am endorsing this type of deception. However a couple other ways you could think about it, the loudness might signal this is a good one and I should spend more time mating with it. And so whether that is a cricket that is just naturally louder or a cricket that has figured out a way to make its own calls louder, like, that is a pretty—that trait like I don't know I feel like that deserves some recognition.

LULU: I don't know though, like it's still a lie. It's still a trick. This is the animal that wooed you over to liking animals?

BECCA: Yes, it is. And okay,I guess the other reason why I want to defend the male cricket is, so like in the peacock, peacocks have developed these beautiful trains because females choose and they like big pretty trains right. So it's like this whole sex of peacocks has adapted just to be chosen as a mate. Used for its body if you will. Now my feeling about his male cricket is it feels like in a way what we are seeing is crickets not narrowing in into some like homogenized version of the cricket that is most likely to get chosen. This cricket is like fighting for itself. It's like I might not measure up to your beauty standards but I deserve to survive so I'm gonna find another way of doing that.

LATIF: Producer, animal lover, Becca Bressler.

BECCA: I wrote a song about the cricket.

LULU: Oh sing me the song.

BECCA: Can you guys give me a beat? I guess it's like [percussion sounds]

BB: [Singing] They rub their wings so they don't die alone, they use the leaves as a megaphone, they spread their seeds to get the ladies goin', they use the leaves as a megaphone.

LATIF: [laughs]

LULU: Next up, we've got another underdog story for you. But we are leaving the fields of India and heading onto the fields of the American South. Hut hut!

LATIF: Latif.

LULU: Lulu.

LATIF: Radiolab.

LULU: Next up, we've got another story about some little guys trying to do a big thing.

LATIF: Okay, let's just huddle up, circle up.

ANNIE: Yeah circle up, circle up.

LULU: What are you here to tell us about?

LATIF: Yeah.

ANNIE: Yeah, great question, okay.

[cheering]

LULU: From producer Annie McEwen.

ANNIE: All right, let's do it.

ANNIE: Okay, so picture a college football field in Atlanta, Georgia.

LULU: What season? It's fall.

ANNIE: It's fall. It's October.

LULU: Okay.

ANNIE: And it's a warm day. It's like 70 degrees plus and it's humid and the fans are cheering from the stands as the players jog out onto the field. Georgia Tech versus Cumberland University. The game is about to begin. A familiar scene in the US today.

LATIF: Yeah.

ANNIE: Except these players, instead of bulky pads and giant shiny helmets, are wearing little leather caps and knitted socks pulled up to their knees. Because this game happened in 1916.

LULU: Oh.

LATIF: Okay.

LULU: Okay.

ANNIE: And the spectators in these stands are about to witness history. Something that could never be repeated. Because this football game should never have happened.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Well, that wasn't just a football game because that's ridiculous. Who would do that?

ANNIE: Here to help me explain is Cumberland history professor Dr. Tara Mitchell Mielnik.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: I am a ninth generation Tennesseenian, so we—we've been here a while. [laughs]

ANNIE: So—so this game, this football game. When did you first hear about it?

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: I don't really know. I feel like I've just always known about it. I think that's kind of one of Cumberland's claims to fame, or infamy maybe. I'm not sure.

ANNIE: Okay. So let's just begin, um, if you could just tell me what happened.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Okay, so back in 1916, Cumberland had had some financial difficulties.

ANNIE: The university needed to tighten its belt, cut its costs.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Decisions had been made. Football had been cut out, and Cumberland no longer is going to have a football team.

ANNIE: Now a game schedule had already been drawn up for that season, so Cumberland had to reach out to all those schools and say ...

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: We're sorry, but we don't have a football team. We're not gonna play.

ANNIE: And every school said, "No problem." Except for one.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Georgia Tech.

ANNIE: The letter they get back from Georgia Tech University says something like ...

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: You are under a contract. This is a legal contract. If you don't play this game, we are going to sue you for $3,000.

ANNIE: $3,000 back then is like $80,000 today.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Some people say it was gonna bankrupt the school, it was gonna close the school.

LATIF: Why was Georgia Tech being so stubborn about this? Why not just let them off the hook like everybody else?

ANNIE: Well, this part of the story is a bit murky but according to legend, Georgia Tech was pissed off at Cumberland.

LATIF: Oh.

ANNIE: And not just anyone at Georgia Tech—specifically their head coach, a man named John Heisman.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: The power, the magic of the Heisman trophy.]

ANNIE: Have you guys heard of John Heisman?

LATIF: Oh, yes.

LULU: The Heisman Trophy.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Before I let you go, who's the Heisman Trophy winner?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: The Heisman Trophy could be decided in this SEC Championship.]

ANNIE: So the Heisman Trophy is handed out to the best college football player every year.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Hello Heisman.]

ANNIE: And it's named after the most famous college football coach in history.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: No one can deny the genius that is Heisman in football.

ANNIE: This guy invented the hut.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Hut…]

ANNIE: The snap back to quarterback.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Credited with popularizing the forward pass.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: …back to Cornell Jones, it's caught, DeAndre took him.]

ANNIE: Without him football just wouldn't be the same sport.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: He is the guy.

ANNIE: He kind of looks like this terrifying God. High cheekbones, strong stern brow.

LATIF: Ooh.

ANNIE: And his coaching style was sort of godlike as well. You know, we don't lose, don't show weakness. He was sort of famous for opening each season with a speech to his players where he would hold up a football and look them all in the eyes and say, “Better to have died a small boy than to fumble this football.”

LATIF: Whoa!

ANNIE: Yeah.

LATIF: And why was Heisman so angry at—at Cumberland?

ANNIE: Well, as the story goes, it all had to do with this Cumberland student named George Allen.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: George Allen, apparently is kind of the big man on campus.

ANNIE: He's 20, clean cut. Ordinary looking white guy from the 19 teens. Huge into frat parties. Everyone's favorite bro dude.

LULU: Got it.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: He's the student manager of both the baseball and the football team.

ANNIE: And when Cumberland canceled the football team, George Allen had this idea, and it was this idea, the legend goes, that would make Heisman so pissed.

LULU: Okay!

LATIF: Okay.

ANNIE: So George Allen, he's feeling school spirit drop. And one day, he's like ...if Cumberland baseball—if the Cumberland baseball team can really hit it out of the park at their next game, then maybe the loss of the football program won't sting so much.

LULU: He's trying to show the world the school's still sporty.

ANNIE: Yes. So he sneakily hires all of these minor league players... these professional baseball players.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Quote-unquote ringers. Guys that—who weren't technically Cumberland students.

ANNIE: To put on the Cumberland college uniform and play in this, like, upcoming baseball game. And who are they playing? They're playing Georgia Tech's baseball team.

LATIF: Oh!

ANNIE: Which for some reason is also coached by John Heisman.

LATIF: Oh no!

ANNIE: Yeah.

ANNIE: And the game is a complete blowout. They're these professional players playing these kids basically. And they're just, like, getting bored, hitting everything. At some point they just start bunting.

LULU: So unfair!

ANNIE: And they eventually win…

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: By a score of 222 to nothing.

ANNIE: Cumberland school spirit is back. But John Heisman is not happy.

LATIF: Yeah, I can see why.

ANNIE: So when Cumberland says, "Hey, we're not gonna make the game in Atlanta this fall because we canceled our football team," Heisman basically says, "Up yours, George Allen. We are gonna play this game." But the problem is Cumberland does not have a football team.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: We've eliminated our football program.

LATIF: Hm.

ANNIE: And so, George Allen steps up.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: And says, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna play this game.

ANNIE: But there is no football team. So what does he do?

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Basically, George Allen just starts recruiting on campus.

ANNIE: Petitioning all these young law students.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: In their late teens and early 20s.

ANNIE: These lithe, pale figures that you can see in the halls of the library or out partying.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: They were not anti-party. Let's just put it that way. [laughs]

ANNIE: And George Allen is like …

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: We need your help, the school needs your help. Alma mater is asking for your help, kind of thing.

ANNIE: And people step up.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Somewhere between 16 and 18 students.

ANNIE: Do they—have they played football before?

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Some of them have. A couple of the guys had been football players, like, in high school so there is some sense of what does this game look like and how do we play this game. It's not like they're complete novices, but…

ANNIE: Right.They quickly scrambled to raise money for hotel rooms and train tickets. And when the big day arrives…

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: There's a huge send off in Lebanon.

ANNIE: Everyone comes out to cheer on the boys who volunteered to save their school.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: You know, they're waving banners, big signs that say things like "Wreck Tech."

ANNIE: Oh, wow.

TM: And then they catch a train and go to Atlanta.

ANNIE: And before we go to Atlanta, I'm gonna bring in Radiolab's Production Coordinator, W. Harry Fortuna. Because Harry, I think is the only one amongst the four of us who knows anything about football.

HARRY FORTUNA: I'm here to help.

ANNIE: Okay.

[CHEERING]

ANNIE: October, 7, 1916, Grant Field, Georgia Tech University. A thousand Tech spectators in the stands.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: For Cumberland, it would have been a big crowd. They would have been probably a little bit in awe of the number of people who had come out for this game. It reminds me a little bit of that scene in Hoosiers [SOUND EFFECT] where the basketball team goes into that great big stadium and they're kind of like [SOUND EFFECT], “Oh my goodness.” ANNIE: This is big.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: And they don't have equipment managers, they have to all carry their own equipment and…

HARRY: They had barely any pads. It's those old leather helmets, leatherheads.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Barely more than a hat on your head.

HARRY: I don't even think there were mouth guards.

ANNIE: On the sidelines, suited up with the rest of the players, George Allen says a few words.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: We're just trying to make this work. We got to play this game and get home.

ANNIE: And as the ref flipped the coin up into the air and it fell flashing in the sun, turning over and over and over, there was this feeling from the Cumberland side that maybe…

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: We could do this. We could really do this. Turns out to be something they're going to talk about for the rest of their lives. [laughs]

ANNIE: Because from the very beginning, things start to go sideways.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Georgia Tech wins the toss, and they elect to kick off.

ANNIE: They kick the ball, it flies through the air. It's caught by a Cumberland player who turns to see the wall of Georgia Tech players hurtling toward him—and he freezes. Edwards, the Cumberland quarterback, uses his body to block an oncoming Tech player and is immediately knocked out cold.

LATIF: [laughs]

LULU: Oof.

ANNIE: The guy holding the ball is also flattened. And Cumberland …

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: They can't get out of their own territory.

ANNIE: They end up punting it, but…

HARRY: The punt only goes 20 yards.

LATIF: Not a lot.

HARRY: Not a lot.

ANNIE: Tech gets possession of the ball and immediately runs it into the end zone.

HARRY: A touchdown for Georgia Tech.

LATIF: On the first play.

ANNIE: And I just want you guys to go ahead and access that YouTube file that I sent you guys.

LATIF: Oh, great okay.

ANNIE: Um, because this is a song that plays every single time Tech gets a touchdown.

LATIF: Okay, hold on—hold on, let me play.

LULU: Okay.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: …from Georgia Tech and a hell of an engineer. A hell of a, hell of a, hell of a, hell of an engineer…]

LATIF: Hell of an engineer.

LULU: [mumbling] … hell of an engineer.

ANNIE: Georgia Tech kicks for the extra point, and after less than a minute of play the score is Tech seven, Cumberland zero. And that first touchdown is just the beginning. Georgia Tech begins to run that ball over the line again and again and again and again. Touchdown after touchdown after touchdown after touchdown. The home crowd is losing their minds. And very quickly ...

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: It becomes pretty apparent this is—this is gonna be a problem.

ANNIE: They are getting clobbered.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: They're being tackled.

ANNIE: Hit in the face or the head with all kinds of body parts.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Your arm, your head, your shoulder, just whatever it takes to bring him down, that's football.

ANNIE: Quarterback Edwards is back in the field but is immediately knocked out again.

LULU: Oh, come on! [laughs]

ANNIE: He's carried off the field again.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: And basically every time Georgia Tech touches the ball, they run it into the endzone.

ANNIE: Pretty quick, the Cumberland players realize that this is gonna be bad.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Just a ridiculous slaughter of a football game. They do finally get to halftime.

ANNIE: What's the uh score right now?

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: The score at halftime is 126 to nothing?

LULU: 126 to nothing?

ANNIE: Yep.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: And many of these players now would have been pulled out for concussions. They would not have been allowed to continue. But it's a different time.

ANNIE: In a normal game, there would have been just a forfeit. But if Cumberland does forfeit, then they will have to pay the $3,000.

LULU: Pay the money.

ANNIE: So they have to stay to the end of the game.

LATIF: Hmm.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Gotta keep going.

ANNIE: And Heisman?

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: He was not holding back. He does not trust George Allen. He's like well maybe he brought in some ringers and George Allen is over on his sideline just trying to exhort his team he's like okay, “We're halfway there guys. Just stick it out.”

[cheering]

ANNIE: Halftime came to a close.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: We can do it. We can do it. We just got to get finished.

ANNIE: And now that the goal of winning has been fully abandoned and it's just all about running out the clock, all kinds of instincts kick in: survival, fight or flight. Some Cumberland players begin to run away from Tech players. There's even one Cumberland player that he's like, "Every time Tech got the ball, I turned around and I ran with the Techs." And that was the way that he was, like, trying to protect himself.

LULU: Oh my God!

ANNIE: Once in a while it sort of felt like they had a chance. Like, there was this one play where a Cumberland player has an open field to the goal line. He is running, he is going to make it ...

LATIF: [gasps]

LULU: Cumberland! Cumberland!

ANNIE: But no, he falls. He trips over one of his own teammates who was on all fours looking for his glasses.

[laughs]

ANNIE: Third quarter begins. Our friend Edwards, he was knocked out twice. He is back in the game.

LATIF: Okay.

ANNIE: Someone gives him the ball. He throws it to a teammate, who throws it back. Neither of them want the ball.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: If you don't have the football, you can't be tackled.

ANNIE: So they're standing there tossing it back and forth, and back and forth and back and forth.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: So it was like a hot potato football.

ANNIE: Until a Tech tackler comes and just creams them both. And Edwards is carried off the field a third time.

LATIF: Oh Edwards.

ANNIE: We have Peewee, a law student who was told he would not have to touch the ball. He gets thrown the ball. He panics, he flings the ball away. He runs and hides behind a fence where two other Cumberland players are already hiding.

LULU: No!

ANNIE: Yeah, they do not want him to give away their hiding place so they throw him back over the fence.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: There was one story where Heisman looks over at his bench and he's like, I don't know that guy. He goes over and says, “Aren't you a Cumberland player?” And the guy says, “Don't tell them.”

ANNIE: Cumberland player, uh his name is Johnny Dog Nelson. He is chased around the stadium by an actual dog.

LULU: So we're full like Looney Tunes cartoon right now?

ANNIE: Absolutely.

LULU: Okay.

ANNIE: Okay, so we're nearing the end here and this is like a kind of amazing moment because Cumberland is like—like, there's blood in the grass, there are broken noses, poor Edwards is knocked out for a third time. These people are destroyed [CHEERING]. They have nothing left.

LULU: Score right now?

ANNIE: Score is 173 to zero.

LULU: Wow. Okay.

ANNIE: There's no hope for these guys. But for some reason, they find it in their hearts to rally. And so Cumberland, they're in a huddle or whatever talking about their next play.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: It must have been either a kickoff or they're blocking an extra point.

HARRY: Walk-off field goal?

LATIF: Yes.

ANNIE: And someone proposes this climb the ladder play that has since been made illegal.

LULU: Oh God.

LATIF: Oh.

ANNIE: And some of the Cumberland players are like No, no, this is suicidal. We shouldn't do this. But then this young guy, Vishy Woods. He's blonde, he's got like a nice smile. He volunteers. He's like, I'll do it. And can you imagine, like, the crowd must be freaking out right now. Because, like, watching a team rally when they're so low.

LULU: I know I love that, I love it.

ANNIE: It's amazing. So one player gets on all fours, grabs the knees of a second player who bends over at the waist and grabs the stomach of a third player.

LULU: What?

ANNIE: As Georgia Tech's kicker kicks the ball, the fourth player, Vishy Woods, he charges at them, runs up their backs and leaps into the air as high as he can.

LULU: What?

ANNIE: He flies through the air with his arm outstretched reaching for the ball, but his fingers just miss and instead of blocking the ball with his hand

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Vishy takes it to the face.

LATIF: Oh yeah.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Breaks his nose, probably has a concussion.

LATIF: Ugh.

LULU: Wait, but but…

ANNIE: What?

LULU: He blocks it?

ANNIE: He does block it.

LULU: He blocks it?

ANNIE: So the score would have been higher if it weren't for Vishy Woods.

LULU: Vishy Woods!

ANNIE: Yeah, he blocks it with his face.

LATIF: Eesh!

ANNIE: The game ends soon after with a final score of 222 to nothing.

LULU: Wow.

HARRY: There were 19 total touchdowns that Tech scored.

LULU: And was that the highest ever at that point scoring?

ANNIE: Yes. And that is actually still the highest today it's in the—it's in the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest scoring game.

LULU: Oh wow, okay.

ANNIE: I was just, like, trying to imagine what was the end like—like, the final whistle blown on that final minute.

TARA MITCHELL MIELNIK: Lay down and try to catch your breath and determine—you know—is anything broken. Just exhaustion and frustration.

ANNIE: These guys are literally total losers, but they made it to the end, the end of the game and they saved their school from financial ruin.

LULU: Did they go out for steak dinners? Did they go out and party?

ANNIE: Apparently they did—apparently they went out partying that night in Atlanta like with their swollen eyes like barely able to see anything, but apparently they did.

LATIF: Ah, even Edwards?

ANNIE:I don't know about Edwards, yeah.

LULU: I'm still like, I want a Vishy Woods tattoo and I…

ANNIE: [LAUGHTER] Yeah…

LULU: I can't not love that. So Vishy Woods!

LATIF: Producer Annie McEwen.

LULU: All right. Well, before we go, I just wanted to tell you about a new series that just came out from our colleagues over at Death, Sex and Money. It is called "Hard." And its about—it's about erectile dysfunction. [laughs]

LATIF: [laughs] I was—I was curious how you were gonna say that exactly. Yeah.

LULU: Yeah, and well—and as a woman married to a woman, I wasn't sure if there was gonna be much in there for me, but with Anna Sales hosting, it turned out there really was. It's—I mean, there are these frank conversations about what intimacy can be. And there is a really wild history of the invention of Viagra, and the totally shocking physiology of—of how the drug works—I didn't know any of this. It just—it's a series that ends up having a lot of—of joy in it. By the end, it really kind of moves—I guess it's like it moves past the idea that, like, erectile dysfunction even is dysfunction.

LATIF: Hmm.

LULU: It has these really expansive moments of people talking about new visions of what intimacy could be. Like this.

MAN: It—like, it feels like—the way I've explained it before is it feels like there's sunlight in my veins. Like, everything inside me turns white and euphoric. My whole body kind of disappears into this state of pleasure. It feels like I'm injected with pleasure.

LULU: Again, it's called "Hard." From Death, Sex and Money. Hope you give it a listen.

[LISTENER: Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Suzie Lechtenberg is our executive producer. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachael Cusick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Anna Rascouët-Paz, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. With help from Caroline McCusker and Sarah Sandbach. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Adam Przybyl.]
[LISTENER: Hi, this is Suzanna calling from Washington, DC. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

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