JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab. And ...

ROBERT: ... today our subject actually started in the middle of a phone conversation.

LULU MILLER: There's Krulwich.

ROBERT: [gasps]

JAD: With Lulu.

LULU: Hello?

ROBERT: Hi. 

LULU: Hi.

ROBERT: Lulu Miller was a ... 

LULU: Hi.

ROBERT: ... producer here. Then she decided to go off and become ...

JAD: A writer ... 

LULU: ... in Charlottesville.

JAD: But we still talk to her from time to time about stories. And in this conversation, she told us this one particular tale that ... 

LULU: ... this one is so awesome. All right. So it's the 1970s. There is a lovely couple, very much in love, Richard and Tucker.

JAD: Two guys? 

LULU: Two men. They're living in West Philly and they've been together for over a decade. Richard's a little bit older, kind of getting into his fifties, and he starts to think, You know what if I get sick? What if I die? You know, I really wish Tucker could be a legal member of my family. I want him to have visitation rights in the hospital or ability to make decisions or all these kinds of things that, you know, married couples have. So, basically, he's—he's thinking, gosh, it's frustrating that I can't marry my partner because the law won't let me. So that's his predicament.

JAD: And she says there didn't seem to be any solution to this predicament. Richard would think about this all the time. And each time come upon the same sad thought, which is that I can't marry Tucker because ...

LULU: Because the law won't let me.

JAD: Nothing I can do. Right? 

LULU: And then one day ... 

JAD: ... it hit him. 

LULU: And so his partner, Tucker, is—is about, I think, five years younger. He's a really, like, big, burly, handsome dude with a beard. And he decides one day, “Oh, I'm going to adopt Tucker as my son.” 

JAD: Wait, what?

LULU: So he goes, and he somehow actually does this. He successfully adopts Tucker, gets the adoption certificate, and then sends out a birth announcement like announcing, “Welcome our new—my new son, Tucker, 72 inches long and 180 pounds. The birth of our baby boy.”

JAD: Can you even do that?

LULU: Yeah, you can.

JAD: It just seems like you're transgressing some deep boundaries there.

LULU: It does. No, it ...

JAD: Next night when you cuddle up in bed with—you're like, this is just wrong, now, this is suddenly very wrong.

LULU: I'm sure that—I mean, maybe there's that moment and it's kind of funny, but I think this story is just—there's something to it. There's moments where, like, a little specific thing solves something that doesn't seem like there was supposed to be any solution. Like it was one of these sad things of the world that you just had to accept. And then from time to time, you hear a story where there's this solution and suddenly it very dramatically changes the possibilities of the world we live in. Do you know what I mean? It's—it’s. 

JAD: I do, yeah.

LULU: It's a form of hope ...

JAD: Lulu says she keeps a list of these stories that she plans to one day write or make for the radio. She's got dozens of them, and she thinks of them as like ...

LULU: ... when duct tape solves the ethereal sadness.

JAD: Stories where some small, stupid little human thing reframes the world, and suddenly the world is a little less sad, a little less lonely. We got inspired by that idea. So in this show, we're going to have three stories that are basically ...

ROBERT: ... about that. 

JAD: Yeah. That sort of take off from that notion. Three stories of people who make a little switch, a little flip in their reality and suddenly it's, you know, a little bit better.

ROBERT: So to begin, let's start with a story which is—actually is almost like it happened by accident.

JAD: It involves a rescue. A double rescue, really.

ROBERT: To tell it here is our own Pat Walters.

PAT WALTERS: So a few months ago, I went to St. Louis because I'd heard this story about a guy who had this pet that basically saved his life. And the pet is a bird. It's about this guy named Jim Eggers.

JIM EGGERS: Oh, you are recording?

PAT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna—I’m gonna record.

JIM EGGERS: I was, including him and them ...

PAT: And in 2005, Jim was living by himself in a little apartment in St. Louis ...

JIM EGGERS: Working in the Halloween industry.

PAT: It was the winter, so Jim had just finished up his latest season at the local haunted house.

JIM EGGERS: I've done Halloween stuff for 19 years.

PAT: What do you do?

JIM EGGERS: Most of the time I've been in costumes and so forth or wear masks.

PAT: You know, like jumping out from behind dark corners and scaring people. 

JIM EGGERS: I can scream and, you know, go nuts.

PAT: Which is kind of a strange gig for a guy like Jim because he has a really hot temper. 

PAT: What's your what's technically your diagnosis?

JIM EGGERS: I have a bipolar disorder with psychotic tendencies, and with that pretty much is is when I'm having a mood swing or whatnot, I can become extremely dangerous and violent.

PAT: While I was there, he was totally calm. But Jim tells me that once he feels a mood, swings start coming on ...

JIM EGGERS: It feels like real strange and tingly.

PAT: Might just be a few seconds before ...

JIM EGGERS: All of a sudden boom. Here you are, like the Incredible Hulk.

PAT: Yeah. Have you ever—have you ever physically attacked someone and hurt them?

JIM EGGERS: Yeah.

PAT: Jim's known around his neighborhood for just losing it from time to time. He shouts to people in the street, punches dents in people's cars. One time, he even poured hot coffee from a second story window onto his neighbor's head.

JIM EGGERS: I go off on people and it's horrible.

PAT: And if you ask Jim, he'll tell you this all goes back to when he was seven.

JIM EGGERS: At the age of seven I lost my kid brother in the Mississippi River. I saw him drown and ...

PAT: You saw. You saw him drowning?

JIM EGGERS: Yeah, I witnessed him drowning. We wandered away from home. We were not properly supervised by my parents. And I told my brother not to go over into the river because it was deep. He didn't listen to me. And then the currents dragged him down. I saw him bob up and down three times and the third time he didn't come back up. And I was pleading with God, you know, crying, “Please bring him back. I'm going to be in trouble.”

PAT: And when Jim's parents found out, they blamed him.

JIM EGGERS: You know, it was my fault my brother drowned. I should have been—yeah—I should have saved him. And then other times, they told me that, you know, they wish it was me that died, instead of my brother.

PAT: And then when he was 16, Jim's mom threw him out of the house. 

PAT: She just said one day, “Get out, Jim,”?

JIM EGGERS: Yeah. She said she didn't want me over there anymore. Get out.

PAT: After that, Jim's life kind of spiraled out of control. He ended up living on the streets for years and just getting angrier and angrier at everyone around him. And then in 2005, which is where our part of the story begins, Jim did something that got him in very serious trouble. 

PAT: Tell me about the archbishop situation.

JIM EGGERS: Okay. As far as the ...

PAT: He had been reading news reports about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and for reasons that aren't entirely clear, Jim had become convinced that the local archbishop ...

JIM EGGERS: Archbishop Raymond Burke.

PAT: Was involved in covering this stuff up.

JIM EGGERS: Bailing out priests that have sexually assaulted children and so forth. And one day ...

PAT: He was watching the news and he saw Burke on there ...

JIM EGGERS: Like on the 12:00 news.

PAT: Talking about something. Can't remember what.

JIM EGGERS: And at that point, I snapped and picked up a phone, dialed the archdiocese, asked them to connect me to his office, which, like idiots they did. And when they did, I told him, you know, “I ought to come down and kill you.” I said, “I may even do that Sunday.” 

PAT: Couple of hours later, Jim went out to run some errands.

JIM EGGERS: And when I head out the door, here were the police.

PAT: Jim ended up getting sentenced to a year of probation just a few weeks into his probation something happened that would basically set the story that we're telling about Jim in motion. It’s a typical Sunday morning and Jim's at church and he runs into this couple.

JIM EGGERS: These people that own variety bird shop in Valley Park. The husband stopped me and said, “Well, we know where you can get an African gray parrot.” And they told me that she came with a cage. I said ...

PAT: Why—why—why would they approach you?

JIM EGGERS: Well, I was putting $100 aside every month to pay for a baby African gray parrot.

PAT: And you have to understand that Jim is kind of an animal nut. He's had ...

JIM EGGERS: Dogs.

PAT: And cats.

JIM EGGERS: And guinea pigs and stuff like that.

PAT: His whole life.

JIM EGGERS: Never a bird.

PAT: But when Jim read about these African gray parrots, he became kind of obsessed with getting one ...

JIM EGGERS: Because I knew they were highly intelligent and they were a lot of fun.

PAT: So when the bird shop people came up to Jim and said, “We can get you an African gray parrot ... ”

JIM EGGERS: “And she comes with a cage for $550.”

PAT: Jim thinks to himself, “That's like half what I was going to pay.” So he says ...

JIM EGGERS: You know, “I'll go ahead and take it.” Because it was too good of a deal to pass up.

PAT: There was a catch, though. The bird wasn't at the shop. It was being sold by this local kid who was just trying to get rid of her.

JIM EGGERS: I went over there and she looked absolutely horrible because the—this kid didn't take care of her.

PAT: She was about a foot tall.

JIM EGGERS: You want some peanut butter?

PAT: She had a black beak ... 

JIM EGGERS: ... pretty yellow eyes too ... 

PAT: ... piercing yellow eyes.

JIM EGGERS: Bright red tail feathers.

PAT: But when Jim first saw her ...

JIM EGGERS: Oh, she didn't have any flight feathers in her left wing.

PAT: Because she'd torn all of them out.

JIM EGGERS: Yeah, she was plucking her feathers.

PAT: ... which is this awful thing birds do when they get really stressed.

JIM EGGERS: And, I mean, she looked horrible. I almost wanted to say no after I saw her.

PAT: But he knew he couldn't just leave her there. So he paid the kid.

JIM EGGERS: Took her home, gave her lots of loving and care, and within like three days she bowed her head. That means, she pretty much bonded with me. About, like, the third week I owned her I was in a—another room on the telephone and he said, “Hey, Jim, do you want a beer?” And it's like, I don't drink beer.

PAT: She would say that, you?

JIM EGGERS: Yeah, she asked me if I wanted a beer, and then she'd ask, tell me stuff like, “Will you get me a beer?” You know, made me choke on my coffee.

PAT: But a few weeks later, Sadie started imitating Jim.

JIM EGGERS: Yeah. She'll impersonate a little chuckle that I do. It's like, [laughs]. It's even better than Elmo could laugh.

PAT: And has Sadie spent more time with Jim she learned to say words and phrases. And then one day.

JIM EGGERS: Several weeks after I had her ...

PAT: Something kind of wonderful happened.

JIM EGGERS: I came home and I was, like, in a really bad mood, and I knew I had to do something.

PAT: One of those moments when Jim could just feel he was about to lose control.

JIM EGGERS: So I was trying to talk myself into calming down.

PAT: What would that—what would that sound like?

JIM EGGERS: I was talking to myself in terms of calm down, you'll be okay. Everything's fine, you know? You know, it's not so bad.

PAT: And then.

JIM EGGERS: She started repeating that.

PAT: Same, “Calm down. You'll be okay. Everything's fine”.

JIM EGGERS: Exactly.

PAT: Just like Jim was saying.

JIM EGGERS: Word for word. It was like, wow. And it's like, that gives me an idea.

PAT: Jim started rewarding Sadie every time she said something that might help calm him down. Like, you know.

JIM EGGERS: You'll—you’ll be okay. 

PAT: Treat.

JIM EGGERS: Everything's fine. Is not as bad as you think. 

PAT: Treat. 

JIM EGGERS: Shut up! 

PAT: Treat! 

JIM EGGERS: I don't want to hear it. 

PAT: Treat. 

JIM EGGERS: I love you, Jim. And she'll make a kissing sound. 

PAT: Treat, treat. 

JIM EGGERS: It just goes on and on and on.

PAT: So Jim went online and actually found this special kind of cage that you can carry around on your back.

JIM EGGERS: Then I took her with me just everywhere.

PAT: He even got her registered as a service animal, kind of like a seeing eye dog. 

JIM EGGERS: I mean everywhere. 

PAT: Where would you go with her?

JIM EGGERS: I've taken her into churches, I’ve—I've taken her aboard the public busses. Taken her to the gym. Yes, I've even taken her into, like a couple of casinos through here.

PAT: And Jim and Sadie had a pretty good situation. When Jim started feeling himself get mad, he'd tell himself, “Calm down.” Sadie would repeat him. But then one day, a few years ago, they did something that went beyond mimicry. Jim says he doesn't exactly remember the first time it happened.

JIM EGGERS: I can't think of anything right now because I'm like blanking out.

PAT: But it probably went something like this. Jim's just out in the neighborhood one day. He’s got Sadie in her little backpack cage and something happens that sets Jim off. I don't know. A car cuts him off at the crosswalk. And immediately Jim starts getting that tingly feeling.

JAD: Yeah.

PAT: And then in the split second fraction of a moment before Jim starts to talk himself down like he does ...

JAD: Calm down, Jim. Calm down.

PAT: He hears, “Calm down, Jim,” from Sadie.

JIM EGGERS: Exactly.

JAD: She says it first?

PAT: Yeah. 

JAD: Wow. 

PAT: Like she—she—like she knew what was in his mind or inside him, like before he even did anything.

JIM EGGERS: Oh yeah. She knows she—she—she can sense that.

JAD: How do you suppose that was happening? I mean, was she ...

PAT: I don't know. I mean, Jim thinks maybe she can, like, feel a change in the way he's moving.

JIM EGGERS: You know, I have, like, body tremors when I'm starting to really get furious.

PAT: Maybe Sadie can pick up on those tremors. And Jim says this just kept happening.

JIM EGGERS: She does it all the time and, you know, makes you stop to think. If I would go off on a person or something like that, you know, I wouldn't have any remorse or anything. But I mean, it's just a little innocent animal.

PAT: That seemed to know him in this really intimate way, which kind of blew my mind. 

JAD: Yeah.

PAT: But Sadie didn't do it while I was there, so I left Jim this tape recorder and asked him to try to get something like this on tape just so I could prove it to people. 

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jim Eggers: Hello. My name is James Eggers, and I'm standing here with my parrot, Sadie. She's standing here right next to me on her little perch. Say something? You gonna say something to the—you gonna say something to the microphone. Huh?]

PAT: A week or so later I got the tape back. 

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jim Eggers: What do you have to say?] 

PAT: And Saide was on there saying all kinds of things like hello ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sadie: Hello. Hello.]

PAT: She said her name. 

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sadie: Sadie.]

PAT: She said, good girl. 

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sadie: Good girl.]

PAT: Things that I can imagine Jim saying to her.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sadie: Coochie, coochie, coochie, coochie.]

JAD: ... but did you ever get a sense from anything she said that there was a kind of weird, intuitive exchange happening or something?

PAT: Not really. But I thought if it happens as often as Jim says it happens, that someone in his neighborhood must have seen it.

JAD: Yeah. 

PAT: So I called this woman who runs a coffee shop around the corner from his house, asked her if she'd seen it. She hadn't. 

JAD: Oh.

PAT: Then I figured I could call the company that runs the busses and the trains that Jim rides every day, thinking that maybe one of their drivers would have seen him get upset about something.

JAD: And? 

PAT: Nothing. And then I called Jim's best friend, Larry, and I figured if anyone has seen this, it would be Larry, because he's around them like all the time he hadn’t either. So I called Jim to ask if I was, like, missing anybody. He didn't answer. So I left a message. Left another message. Then finally. 

JIM EGGERS: Hello? 

PAT: Hi, Jim. 

PAT: I got him on the phone.

PAT: It's Pat again.

JIM EGGERS: Oh, yeah, go ahead.

PAT: It seems like nobody else has ever seen her or heard her say those kinds of things to you ...

JIM EGGERS: She's definitely has said those. But I mean, she's not going to say the same thing every time she talks to me.

PAT: Right. But has anyone ever seen her talk you down from being mad?

JIM EGGERS: No, because most of the time people aren't around me when I'm having a mood swing.

PAT: I start to wonder like, is this the kind of thing a parrot is even capable of? So I decided to check.

IRENE PEPPERBERG: Hello?

PAT: I called a scientist.

IRENE PEPPERBERG: I'm Dr. Irene Pepperberg, adjunct associate professor at Brandeis University.

PAT: She's basically the world's expert on African gray parrots. So I asked her ... PAT: Have you—have you ever heard of anything like this before?

IRENE PEPPERBERG: Not exactly, but it doesn't surprise me.

PAT: In fact, Irene told me that something kind of similar had happened to her once. With this parrot named Alex that she worked with for like decades, Irene told me that whenever Alex would get out of line ...

IRENE PEPPERBERG: Preening instead of working or butting in with the other birds when he should be quiet so we could train them, we'd say to him, “Calm down, just calm down.” And one time I come storming into the laboratory because I've just come from a horrible faculty meeting when I was in Tucson. And Alex takes one look at me and he says, “Calm down.”

PAT: Really?

IRENE PEPPERBERG: Yeah. And I actually stormed off and I said something to the effect of, “Don't you tell me to come down.” And I went into my office and slammed the door.

PAT: And Irene says that a parrot like Alex or Sandy probably doesn't know ...

IRENE PEPPERBERG: What calm down means, or you'll be—you'll be okay, Jim. She may not know what each of those little phrases mean ...

PAT: But she knows that when she says, “Calm down,” Jim calms down.

IRENE PEPPERBERG: So she has learned from association that that will bring her flock mate back to normal.

PAT: Which is a big deal for parrots, Irene says, because they're prey. So they're constantly looking out for each other, trying to keep from getting eaten. And in Sadie’s case ...

IRENE PEPPERBERG: She's in a flock of two at this point. So if she wants to feel comfortable while preening or eating, she needs to know that he's going to be watching out for her. Remember, she doesn't have a big flock. She just has him.

JAD: Wow. So in the end, what do you make of all this?

PAT: Well, I mean, I can't prove that she does the things Jim says she does. But on the other hand, everyone I talked to around Jim says that whatever is happening between them is keeping him from threatening people on the street, from punching dents in people's cars. It's just keeping him a better guy. 

JAD: Yeah. 

PAT: So maybe it doesn't matter.

JIM EGGERS: I don't care if anybody believes me or not. You know, it's not—I'm not here to prove anything to anybody. That's not the point. The point is, I know what she does in that is that.

JIM EGGERS: No, c’mon girl. Say hello. Not burp. No, don’t eat. No eat.

SADIE: Coochie, coochie, coochie, coochie. Coochie coo.

ROBERT: Thanks to Pat Walters.

JIM EGGERS: C’mon. Fly home

JAD: And to Sadie.

SADIE: Hello.

JIM EGGERS: Good girl.

JAD: And to Jim.

JIM EGGERS: Sadie, what are you looking at, huh?

ROBERT: We'll be right back.

JIM EGGERS: She's got her eyes focused on me and trying to figure out what you—what you're doing with the mic.

PAT: This. Yeah.

JAD: Visit our website, Radiolab.org. You can see pictures of Jim and Sadie and you can subscribe to our podcast radiolab.org.

[JIM EGGERS: Hi, this is James Eggers.]

[LULU: Hello, it's Lulu.]

[JIM EGGERS: Radiolab is funded in part by the ...]

[LULU: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.]

[JIM EGGERS: More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.]

[LULU: Radiolab is produced by ...]

[JIM EGGERS: WNYC and distributed by ...]

[LULU: NPR. Okay.]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: End of message.]

JAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab.

ROBERT: And this hour we are discussing well, we're discussing the little changes that people can make to solve huge problems.

JAD: Problems that seem unsolvable.

ROBERT: For the story, I would like to tell you, Jad, this will involve two rather celebrated people who, you know, I sometimes how I sometimes go on stages and talk to people who have just written books or that sort of thing.

JAD: Yeah, at the 92nd Street Y. 

ROBERT: Yeah, this is not that. This is the World Science Festival.

JAD: Right.

ROBERT: And we take people from these things and put them on our radio program.

JAD: Yes we do. But we don't do it enough.

ROBERT: Well, we're going to do it now.

JAD: Let's do it.

ROBERT: So in—in—in—in just a moment. 

ROBERT: So we go now to the Danny and Sylvia Kaye Auditorium at the campus of Hunter College in Manhattan.

JAD: Wait a second, just set it up for us a little bit, like, what are we about to do?

ROBERT: Well, so the idea of this World Science Festival evening, there are people who wander around the world who have a problem, which is called face blindness. 

ROBERT: Weirdly, both these men are face blind. So when they look at a face for ten, 20, 60 minutes, the other guy's face just doesn't get in or stick into their heads. 

ROBERT: I—I—I—I chose two people ...

ROBERT: ... one of them ...

ROBERT: ... is Oliver Sacks, our regular ... 

ROBERT: Oliver.

ROBERT: He's a neuroscientist and he's like ...

JAD: Oliver is face blind?

ROBERT: Oh, boy, is he Face blind. I mean, he ... 

JAD: He can't recognize faces? 

ROBERT: Well, you'll see. 

ROBERT: ... the other guy who we're going to call Chuck. 

ROBERT: The other guy is one of the greatest portrait artists in the world. 

ROBERT: He has, as many of you know, for decades now, created art big paintings, some little but hugely huge paintings, mostly of faces. Here he is, Chuck Close. 

[audience cheers]

ROBERT: I thought it would be interesting to bring these two people together, face blind Oliver, face blind Chuck and discuss what many people think of as a very rare situation.

CHUCK CLOSE: Who are you guys again?

ROBERT: We don't know who you are either. All right, so the both of you, how long ago did you discover, if indeed that's the right word, that you were unusual in this regard? 

OLIVER SACKS: I think probably when I was ... 

ROBERT: I can't hear. Okay. So tell you what, I'll just stick this thing in front of you and say something. 

OLIVER SACKS: Say something ...

ROBERT: That’s better. All right. So you missed the first part of the program. But Oliver was saying. So you—you were in a class with other kids. If you—if—if you had a friend who was like, you know, a pal, would you take a bit—a beat to know who it was? 

OLIVER SACKS: Yeah. So—say, Jonathan Miller became a good friend. He's tall and gangly.

He has red hair. And his—his movements are—are fluid and evocative and wonderful. And for this ... 

ROBERT: ... if Jonathan Miller was brought in paralyzed and totally straight, would you know it was Jonathan Miller? Do you have to see the hair and the movements? 

OLIVER SACKS: No, I'm when I—when I have got to know someone well, then I—then I will recognize the face. But it takes a long while. And with ...

CHUCK CLOSE: ... and even then it has to be reinforced. Right? You have to keep seeing them.

ROBERT: So if you've spent four minutes with the person and then you walk away and come back two minutes later, do you know who the person is? Does 20 minutes with the person, time make a difference?

OLIVER SACKS: I tend to lose it within minutes. 

ROBERT: Within minutes. You, same problem? 

CHUCK CLOSE: Same problem. I—I can spend an evening talking to someone, looking at them across the table and I would see them the next day. I'd have no idea I’d ever seen them, nor do I remember their name.

ROBERT: But when they open their mouth would you say, “Oh, that's the one,” or not even?

CHUCK CLOSE: No, and a lot of it’s context, if they walk into my studio, I figured they walked into my studio because they're supposed to be there. Then I—then I interview them for a while to find out who they are.

ROBERT: Are you just trying to subtly find like, so who is this? Is that the ... 

CHUCK CLOSE: Who the hell is this person? Why are they in my studio?

ROBERT: Now, in your case, if that person were to suddenly flatten out and work and—and be still on a page.

CHUCK CLOSE: Well, everything in my work is determined by my learning disabilities. So face blind, I'm sure I was driven to paint portraits by being face blind. That is, I—I know now that if I can flatten an image out and scan it the way I work, I can commit it to memory and I have almost photographic memory for things that are flat.

ROBERT: And still. 

CHUCK CLOSE: Still. Yeah, but ...

ROBERT: So, so, three—being in space and moving around makes the face invisible. Fixing it makes the face memorable.

CHUCK CLOSE: You move your head a half an inch. To me, it's a whole new face I've never seen before.

ROBERT: Wow. 

CHUCK CLOSE: Oh. 

ROBERT: Have you ever not recognized yourself? 

OLIVER SACKS: Yeah, I'm—I’m always—well, several times I have started apologizing to large, clumsy, bearded people and realize that it's a mirror. 

ROBERT: It's a mirror? 

OLIVER SACKS: It's a mirror. But it's even gone a stage further than that. Fairly recently I was in a—a cafe in Chelsea market with tables outside, and while I was waiting for my food, I do what people with beards often do, I started to begin to preen myself and then I realized that my reflection was not doing the same thing ...

[laughter]

OLIVER SACKS: And that inside there was a man with a beard. Possibly you. 

ROBERT: [laughs]

OLIVER SACKS: You know, who wondered why—why I was sort of, you know, making faces at him. So—so I may take other people to be myself as well as failing to recognize myself. 

ROBERT: I just, I was wondering how you resolve—once you realize that you were preening your beard in front of a bearded man, did you—could you—did you like, look down? 

OLIVER SACKS: Yeah, yeah. I did look abashed. I often look abashed. 

ROBERT: Well, let me just ask about is this just a face problem? What about emotional? Can you, if you can't see a face, can you ever read Sadness? Happiness?

CHUCK CLOSE: Yeah. I don't think I have any trouble reading how someone is feeling. I think I'm actually pretty good at that. You know, the way—the way I work is to make this kind of brobdingnagian world in which I make the face into a landscape and I journey across that landscape like Gulliver’s Lilliputians crawling over the face of a—of a giant, not knowing that they were on the face of a giant, but knowing everything about that face. And then what I do is I put all that information together, the kind of nose and nostril, what corners of the mouth or whatever. And I can commit it—I can commit it to memory. So I know that this—that it’s no accident that I was driven to make portraits of people who matter to me.

ROBERT: Can—but if—if the person whose face you can't read lips are trembling, or if they have a downcast look in the eye, or if they're being brave, can you assign emotion to a facet of a face? 

CHUCK CLOSE: Yeah. 

ROBERT: And you too? 

OLIVER SACKS: Well, I—I ... 

ROBERT: Look, talk to the mic. 

OLIVER SACKS: Okay, well, I—I can't paint or whatever, but I think I'm sensitive to emotion as, you know, and—and—and little, little things, including little grimaces which indicate that someone is—is lying.

ROBERT: Now here's a difference, I sense, just to complete this sort of look at what you can and can't do. Oliver, can I—when I ask you about things you've written 22 years ago, a lot of times if you talk to an author about something they wrote 22 years ago, they give you a sad look of, you know, well, that was a long time ago, but you seem to remember much of what you have learned. You seem to remember very little of what you have learned. Well, let me—let me—let me move gently about that. Like, when you were in high school, it was time to take the test. 

CHUCK CLOSE: Right.

ROBERT: You once described to me a—an all-night bathtub.

CHUCK CLOSE: No, I used the kind of sensory deprivation tank in order to memorize things. And it's very hard for me. I still—I don't know how to add or subtract without using the spots on Domino's. A visual system. I still don't know the multiplication tables. I didn't take algebra, geometry, physics or chemistry at the junior college in my home town that had not taken every taxpayer's son or daughter I could never have gone to college.

ROBERT: Wow. So you're a wreck, really. 

CHUCK CLOSE: Yes. 

ROBERT: ... but that's the coping part of this for both of you, has been kind of interesting. Because both of you were very, very smart. So you just put your intelligence where you have to.

CHUCK CLOSE: One of the great quotes I've ever heard is from the great painter Robert Rauschenberg, who was about the most learned disabled, dyslexic person I've ever known. And he said, “When you're this way, you have to find other venues for your intelligence.” 

ROBERT: Right? 

CHUCK CLOSE: You have to prove to your teachers that even though you're not going to be able to spit back the names—the names or dates, that you—that you care about the material. And we have to prove to the people who we see that we care about them, even though we're not going to recognize their faces and maybe remember their names. So you have to be charming. You have to be a [bleep], you have to be fast on your feet and figure out how you're going to explain your way out of the fact that you don't know who they are or remember them.

ROBERT: Do you find people calling you like a snob or I mean, like, what do you mean you don't know me? I'm the host of this dinner party, kind of thing.

OLIVER SACKS: Yes, usually my—my assistant Kate will say to people beforehand before they come in, “Don't ask if—if he remembers you, because he'll say no.” And to me she says, “Don't just say no, say, ‘I'm awful with faces. I wouldn't recognize my own mother.’” But I—but I'm not good at [bleep]. Yeah, I–I—I tend to withdraw. 

ROBERT: You withdraw. 

OLIVER SACKS: Yeah. 

ROBER: So you—you solve it by going into a corner and not talking to anybody. 

OLIVER SACKS: Well, it doesn't solve it, and it often makes it worse. But ...

CHUCK CLOSE: My approach is to be more outgoing, more friendly, whatever, and to try and charm my way through things. And I also lecture and talk all the time about face blindness and my other problems so that people are aware I have them and then they'll cut me some slack.

ROBERT: But—but you—you go out like every chance you can, right? And you stay in every chance you can, right? 

OLIVER SACKS: Well, more or less, you know, I don't stay in, but I—there are other things besides human beings. And when—when for example, I first visited Australia, I came back with—with hundreds of photos and people look through them and say, “Yes, but didn't you meet any human beings?” Because all my photos were of scenery and plants, where I'm very at home. 

ROBERT: And I noticed that when you get in the elevator in your apartment, you don't have any idea who the neighbors are. But you do look down, right? 

OLIVER SACKS: Oh, I know their dogs. 

ROBERT: Yeah. 

[audience laughs]

ROBERT: So if they were to switch dogs, you'd just be ...

OLIVER SACKS: Well, I—I—I wouldn't notice. 

ROBERT: Yeah, no.

CHUCK CLOSE: But if you see them without a dog, you don't know who they are, right?

OLIVER SACKS: No, no. 

ROBERT: No idea. So. So this charm offensive that you go on, what does that, like, how if you have no idea who you're talking to, what are they—what are the charm moves?

CHUCK CLOSE: Well, not always is it charming. I didn't recognize a woman I lived with for a year—two years later. And there's no amount of charm that is going to get you through a—a—a mistake like that.

ROBERT: So like, do you just—do you make fun of yourself?

CHUCK CLOSE: Oh, yeah. Self-deprecating humor will—will cover a great deal. And if you laugh at yourself, you're giving permission to other—for other people to see it as less than the most tragic condition. It is funny, you know, it's funny. I wish I didn't have it, but it's funny.

ROBERT: What about ...

OLIVER SACKS: I know lots of neurological conditions are—are comic, they can be both awful and comic. And it's important to ...

CHUCK CLOSE: Well, there's a gallows humor in rehabilitation hospitals for that, for that very reason, you know.

ROBERT: Do you think of what you do as an expression of the situation you find yourself in? CHUCK CLOSE: Sure. In every way. I mean, I have trouble in a global sense with the whole. But if you break it down into small enough bite size units, incremental units, then I make this big, overwhelming problem into thousands of little more solvable problems. I've just found a way to, you know, take my deficits and—and use them rather than banging my head against the wall.

ROBERT: Well, let—let me show you, Lyle. This is Chuck 15, and then Chuck 16. So in Chuck 15, it's going to be a person, you know, named ...

JAD: Now, what's happening? What is this right here?

ROBERT: So, Jad, what you should do is you should imagine a—a—it's a detailed slide. And what you see is lots of boxes with almost, like, mirror-like shiny nuggets in each box.

JAD: Is this when you're looking at a chuck close painting, really close. Is that what you’re describing?

ROBERT: Yes, it's a detail. So it's the lower lip and chin of somebody, somebody who he calls Lyle. 

ROBERT: When people stand right in front of Lyle's mouth, there's a little bit of confusion. You can't quite read it right away.

CHUCK CLOSE: Well, the closer you get to something normally, the more information you get. But the closer you get to one of mine, the less information you have. You have information ...

ROBERT: But when you step back, these very abstract, flat little cells suddenly turn into a very interesting phase.

JAD: Well, here's what I do understand, though. If he's blind to the face, how do you even build it up? Like, don't you have to be able to see the thing that you're building to?

ROBERT: If he can fix it, which the photograph does.

JAD: Oh, he takes a picture first?

ROBERT: He takes a picture first.

JAD: And then what?

ROBERT: Then he grafts it. So he makes it into lots of little boxes. It looks like a giant checkerboard. And then he goes into each checkerboard and he then repaints it, and magically, when you step away, there is the thing that you can’t see.

JAD: That’s pretty interesting, so he's able to—he's able to see the details within those boxes well enough to be able to construct them and then trust that what will emerge is a face. 

ROBERT: Yep. And the magical part is not only do you suddenly get the reveal of the face, but with the reveal comes a sense of the person. Okay, so let's go back to the situation. 

ROBERT: Oh, yeah. Well, by the way, is there any cure for this that we know that if you have this—if this facial blindness, does anyone get cured of it?

OLIVER SACKS: Not so far as I know.

ROBERT: Okay.

OLIVER SACKS: But, you know, I think it is important to say and, you know, I portrayed myself as sort of withdrawn or helpless. But I—I think I also have a vivid love of humanity, as Chuck has. But for me, the portraits take the form of narratives. Of stories.

CHUCK CLOSE: Your words paint the most specific portraits of people's lives. And I always have identified your characters as—as vivid a portrait, as anything anybody could do in any other art form, and when I ...

[audience claps]

CHUCK CLOSE: You know, we—you celebrate your connectedness with humanity in a really important way. I mean, it's a way that we can identify with, even if it's a problem we don't have. Empathy is the basis of, I think that mortar the whole society together and telling stories in a riveting way that allows us to empathize and care about these people at my—my grandfather had Tourette syndrome and reading about a character with Tourette syndrome, in one of your books I cried through the whole thing.

ROBERT: Hmm. How widespread is this condition? The two of you have it.

OLIVER SACKS: The best estimate is that it's fairly severe. I mean, there may well a sy—symmetrical curve. Chuck and I are in the worst two or three percent, but probably not the worst one percent. There are people who are far, far worse. 

ROBERT: So you're going to give me a guess? You think it's like, like 10% of the world? Or one percent? 

OLIVER SACKS: The fairly severely affected people are 2 to 3%, which is what, 6 to 8 million people in this country.

ROBERT: Let's—let's do a test to see whether this audience—let's just see how—how good or bad you guys are. We're going to do a little fun test of your face. And the way it works is that ten celebrities ... 

JAD: What is this? 

ROBERT: So here's what's happening. We decided to give the whole audience a face test. 

ROBERT: Ten celebrity faces will be flashed on the screen for 15 seconds each.

ROBERT: We took ten very famous celebrities. They included the President of the United States of America, fabulous movie stars from the past and the present.

JAD: You just put their face up and say, do you recognize it?

ROBERT: We put their faces up. But we erased their hair.

JAD: Oh, oh. Just the face.

ROBERT: Only the face.

JAD: That's interesting.

ROBERT: So imagine like Johnny Depp, but no hair.

JAD: Take away his hair. The question is, would they ...

ROBERT: Would you recognize this person?

JAD: I would think—I would think people would rec—I mean ...

ROBERT: Well, so would I. But when I read out the names, here I am reading out the name. ROBERT: Number six is Johnny Depp. No, Johnny Depp.

CHUCK CLOSE: That's what he's like without hair?

ROBERT: That's what he's like without hair.

JAD: People sound surprised.

ROBERT: I’m going to ask for a show of hands right now. 

ROBERT: And so then I said well like ... 

ROBERT: Please raise your hand if you got any person right, anyone at all. 

ROBERT: You know, almost everybody. Oh, me, me, me.

ROBERT: Lower your hand if you only got one or two right. 

ROBERT: Okay, so now some hands go down. Lower your hand if you only got three right.

ROBERT: So now. Yeah, we're beginning ...

JAD: Phrasing this in an odd way. Only got three right.

ROBERT: Lower your hand. If you only got four right.

CHUCK CLOSE: Only is such a funny word.

ROBERT: Yeah, it's just a ...

JAD: Yeah. Thank you, Chuck.

ROBERT: Yeah, wait, wait, wait, keep going. 

ROBERT: Please now lower your hand if you only got nine right. The remaining hands ...

JAD: Wait, how many hands are up at this point.

ROBERT: That's six.

JAD: Out of like 1,000?

ROBERT: Yeah. How many. The remaining hands—I got ten. Could you stand if you got ten. I just like to see who you are. Oh, right, right. Yeah. But the number of people. What?

CROWD MEMBER: They're all women. 

ROBERT: Yeah. Oh. They're all women. That's interesting. All right, sit down. Sit down. Super people. How many people got none. Right. Could you please rise? Absolutely none. I mean, let's see out there.

CHUCK CLOSE: Are they all men?

ROBERT: I wanted to know if anyone was just totally blind.

JAD: And?

ROBERT: About ten people were totally blind. Got none right at all. 

ROBERT: My wife got none right. Oh, my God. 

ROBERT: Yeah. My wife, she was raised. So this is the thing. So, so. So the question then becomes so. So, wow, a lot of people really do have this problem.

OLIVER SACKS: So there are a lot of people who may be leading lives of embarrassment and partial disability and secrecy and shame.

CHUCK CLOSE: Yeah, I, I evolved all sorts of coping mechanisms with the dyslexia, many of which are now taught, you know, to people who have other problems. But I—but there are unfortunately no real answers to—to coping with ...

ROBERT: Well, you have some charm it out, hide ...

CHUCK CLOSE: I mean, you're not—you're not going to lessen the deficit by having a good attitude or trying harder or whatever, it is what it is.

ROBERT: Thanks to Oliver Sacks, things to Chuck Close and thanks to the people who produce the World Science Festival every year. Jad's there sometimes. I'm there sometimes. That would be Brian Greene, who's also on the show a lot, and his wife, Tracy day.

JAD: Before we go to break, just wanna remind you radiolab.org has a lot of information about Chuck, Oliver and anything you hear in this hour, radiolab.org.

JAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I am Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab. And today we're we're I think we're—we're offering stories where a person makes a small, subtle shift in their world. A little reframing. And suddenly the world is a little less sad, a little less lonely, a better place for them. This is an idea that came from a producer we used to work with, or we still work with, really. Lulu Miller.

ROBERT: We know we still work with because she began this program.

JAD: Yeah, she told us this story about ...

ROBERT: Two guys who fell in love and then couldn't really solve their problems legally because you're not allowed to be, you know ...

JAD: So one adopted the other. That’s a very clever, little subtle move that suddenly changed ...

ROBERT: Their world.

JAD: Their world. Here's another clever reframing of things from Lulu. Different place, different outcome.

LULU: All right. So I'm going to tell you a story. Takes place in Germany. 

REGINE HAUCH: Gutentag.

LULU: At an old folks home. 

LULU: Gutentag.

RICHARD NEUREITHER: Hello. 

LULU: And that's not where we are right now. But we brought to the people who work at the home into a studio.

REGINE HAUCH: We have to close the door. Otherwise ...

LULU: Yeah, it sounds like you're having a party over there. 

LULU: So the story really belongs to this guy, Richard Neureither. He's the director of the home, which is called Benrath Senior Center ... 

RICHARD NEUREITHER: ... in Düsseldorf. 

LULU: But we’ve also brought Regine in.

REGINE HAUCH: Regine Hauch.

LULU: Who also works at the home ...

REGINE HAUCH: ... and ... 

LULU: ... speaks more English.

REGINE HAUCH: I just help Mr. Neureither translate, shall we do it like this?

LULU: Yeah. 

REGINE HAUCH: Okay.

LULU: So Mr. Neureither has a problem. It's a problem most nursing homes face. Which is ...

REGINE HAUCH: ... that many people who develop dementia or Alzheimer.

LULU: They'll become disoriented and confused and suddenly think ...

REGINE HAUCH: Where am I? And this is not my world. And I have to go back to my house. My children are waiting for me.

LULU: And usually, you know, nurses will intercept them.

REGINE HAUCH: Relax. You are living here.

LULU: But occasionally people somehow slip out, the front door ... 

REGINE HAUCH: ... Yeah. Escapes. They happen ... 

LULU: ...and then they wander. They had one woman make it onto a bus.

REGINE HAUCH: ... and she escaped about, how many kilometers?

LULU: She eventually made it to a town about 20 miles away. 

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah. 

LULU: They've had people turn up at grocery stores, wandering in the forest. They've even had people make it all the way back to their old houses and find new people living there.

REGINE HAUCH: Yep.

LULU: And for the people who work at the home says Regine ...

REGINE HAUCH: You—you'll get crazy not knowing where is the person and where did she go?

LULU: Test, test, test. 

LULU: This is something we all know about. 

LULU: You guys know I'm working on this story about the Alzheimer's. 

LULU: And while reporting this piece, I was checking in with parents about some stories like this that happened to my grandpa ...

LULU’S MOM: Well ... 

LULU’S DAD: Well. 

LULU: And they told me one I’d never heard.

LULU’S MOM: One morning.

LULU’S DAD: This was in February.

LULU’S MOM: Yes. This was on a very, very frigid cold morning.

LULU: My grandpa got up.

LULU’S DAD: Five in the morning.

LULU: Left the house and walked to the train station.

LULU’S MOM: He probably got the earliest T.

LULU: He took it all the way out to Cambridge because he thought he had to teach a class at Harvard.

JAD: Did he used to teach at Harvard?

LULU: No, but he'd given lectures there. 

LULU’S MOM: So anyway ... 

LULU: ... it's pitch dark early in the morning, frigid Boston weather.

LULU’S MOM: And he was only in his long underwear with his coat and hat and scarf on over that.

LULU: He didn't even have shoes on. He was just wearing his slippers.

LULU’S MOM: He was picked up by the police because he was, you know ...

LULU’S DAD: Hypothermic.

LULU’S MOM: Yeah.

LULU: He was hypothermic?

LULU’S DAD: He was hypothermic. I mean, his—when they brought him into the hospital, his temperature was too low.

LULU: Did not know that.

LULU’S MOM: It was the moment when I knew that, you know, that everything was going to have to change, that he would have to move into a place that had a floor for people who were suffering.

LULU’S DAD: A locked floor. That's what it meant.

LULU: So that essentially is the problem.

REGINE HAUCH: Some people have to—to be locked in.

LULU: Which just feels cruel. 

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah. It's horrible. 

LULU: Yeah.

REGINE HAUCH: It is.

LULU: And then in walks a fellow named Mr. Gooble.

REGINE HAUCH: No, no, no. Grubels, not Gooble. Gooble sounds really awful. 

LULU: Oh, really? Uh-oh. Okay. 

REGINE HAUCH: Try to make it more like Grubels. 

LULU: Grubels? 

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah. 

LULU: Okay. Mr. Guble.

REGINE HAUCH: No! 

LULU: No?

REGINE HAUCH: Grubels.

LULU: Goo ...

REGINE HAUCH: Oh.

LULU: Okay. We'll just like, we'll just use you saying it. We’ll do you're Mr ...

REGINE HAUCH: Mr. Grubels.

LULU: Okay, so ...

REGINE HAUCH: Mr. Grubels.

LULU: Was an older gentleman. He sat on an advisory board at the senior center.

REGINE HAUCH: And one day he came up with this idea.

RICHARD NEUREITHER: Yeah.

LULU: That's Richard Neureither again. And it's one of these ideas that's so out there and yet so simple that you think it just couldn't possibly work.

REGINE HAUCH: When Mr. Grubels came into the office of the shop, and presented his idea, Richard was just laughing. He thought it very funny—what a funny idea.

JAD: Well what is it already? What's the idea?

LULU: Well, Mr. Google thought that right in front of the home they should build a bus stop.

REGINE HAUCH: A bus stop.

JAD: What? Build a bus—I—I don't understand. What would that do?

LULU: Well, think about what a bus stop is.

REGINE HAUCH: When you see a bus stop, it's the first step into the wide world from the little bus stop you'll get ...

LULU: Anywhere. 

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah. 

LULU: Regine says that in a lot of these wandering cases, the first place people often head is to a bus stop. And so back to our friend Mr. Grubels he thought what they should do is build a bus stop right in front of the home that has just one crucially odd feature.

REGINE HAUCH: There's no bus coming.

LULU: No bus?

REGINE HAUCH: Never. It's a bus stop to nowhere.

LULU: So his thought was it would be a way of catching people who happened to wander. They'd see the bus stop, go and sit on it, waiting for a bus that would never come. And then eventually a staff member could see them and bring them back. So while Richard's first thought was, “This is ridiculous ... ”

REGINE HAUCH: Second thought was, “Hmm, maybe not that bad.”

LULU: So they bolted in a bench.

REGINE HAUCH: Made of iron ...

LULU: Put up a sign.

REGINE HAUCH: In yellow and green.

LULU: Just like every government issued bus stop.

REGINE HAUCH: And when you get out of the home, you see it immediately.

LULU: And the staff, say Richard and Régine, just thought this was a stupid idea.

REGINE HAUCH: It's not appropriate, or it's even cynical.

LULU: And most of all that it probably just wouldn't work.

RICHARD NEUREITHER: Yeah.

LULU: And at first it looked like they were right. One by one.

REGINE HAUCH: The neighbors, you know, normal people, they said, “Oh, a bus stop,” and they waited there for the bus.

LULU: Oh, no. 

LULU: And so one by one, Richard would have to run out and explain ...

REGINE HAUCH: “No. That’s not for you.” [laughs]

LULU: So there was this period of adjustment. 

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah. 

LULU: And then one day.

REGINE HAUCH: An old lady.

LULU: An actual patient from the home, started having an episode.

REGINE HAUCH: She was very troubled ...

LULU: In her mind, she was a little girl and she needed to get home to her parents.

REGINE HAUCH: “My mother waits for me. I have to go home, home, home, very quick.” The nurses talked to her and tried to calm her down, but she began to cry.

LULU: So they thought, Well, let's just let her walk out.

REGINE HAUCH: It was fall. It was rather cold. So she went to the bus stop in her coat, in her hat, and she sat there very patient. And she waited for the bus in the fresh air, sun shining.

LULU: And eventually a nurse came over and sat with her.

REGINE HAUCH: And they waited together, side by side ...

LULU: Eventually she forgot why she was there.

REGINE HAUCH: The nurse said, “We go in and have a cup of tea together.” And then she came back and everything was fine. She was relaxed. She was in the present time, not longer in the past time.

LULU: It's been two years since the bench first went up and Richard and Regine say they use it all the time.

REGINE HAUCH: Every couple of days.

LULU: Sometimes the nurses will take someone who's upset and wants to go home.

REGINE HAUCH: The nurses say, “Let's go to the bus stop. Let's see what we will do and how we plan the day and ...” 

LULU: ... or sometime. 

REGINE HAUCH: The nurses, they don't see that somebody escapes and they say, “Oh, where is Mrs. Smith?” And then they look out, “Oh, she's waiting for the bus and somebody goes there.”

LULU: But one thing is always the same when the people get to the bus stop, the mood is very dark.

REGINE HAUCH: “I'm feeling so lonely I want to go home.”

LULU: And also, urgent.

REGINE HAUCH: “My parents wait for me. My children wait for me. I have to go there. Quick, quick, quick.”

LULU: But then after a while, as they're sitting there thinking their escape is on the way, that urgent feeling.

REGINE HAUCH: Disappears.

LULU: Do—do you know why? Or can I guess, can you describe it disappearing? Like, does it go away slowly or suddenly.

[Regine and Richard discussing in German]

REGINE HAUCH: Richard says it's like another thought comes up and then you forget what you wanted. 

LULU: Yeah. 

REGINE HAUCH: You know, it's like a fish is coming up to the surface of the water and then going down again and disappearing. Thoughts come up and they disappear. And you don't know that they have ever been there. 

LULU: Oh.

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah, you forget.

LULU: Which is—it’s interesting. It's the forgetting is both the problem and the solution.

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah.

JAD: But Lulu, I mean, isn't this maybe a little bit cruel because it is a lie that's happening here. I mean, they are lying to these people.

LULU: Well, sure. It's definitely a lie. There's no way around that. But what's the alternative? I mean, take that woman at the bus stop. What are you supposed to say to her? “I know that you're utterly convinced of this, but actually, you're not a little girl. You live in a nursing home.” As you can imagine, these kinds of conversations don't go well. They say sometimes they have to restrain the people. 

REGINE HAUCH: ... hold them back, call the police. They don't accept it because it's not their world. It's two completely different worlds.

LULU: And so they say, why not just allow that other world to be true for just a beat and then gently coax them back?

REGINE HAUCH: That's the aim of the whole thing, to lead those memories very gently into this now, this today.

LULU: And this idea has sort of spread at the nursing home.

REGINE HAUCH: It changed the atmosphere in the home.

LULU: Now they try to do this sort of time shifting in all different ways.

REGINE HAUCH: Sounds a little bit complicated, but it isn't ... 

LULU: ... like ...

REGINE HAUCH: ... for example.

LULU: They had this guy who’s a baker who always used to want to get up.

REGINE HAUCH: Up at 2:00 in the morning ...

LULU: And they used to say, “No,” you know, “Go back, go back to bed. We're—we’re working.” But now they just say ... 

REGINE HAUCH: “Okay.” 

LULU: ... and they let him get up.

REGINE HAUCH: Every day at 2:00. 

LULU: They take him to the kitchen and let him bake.

REGINE HAUCH: And then he says, “Well, I'm always in time and I'm proud. I never miss an hour of my work.”

LULU: And the interesting part for me is that I think about my grandpa wandering through the cold in his slippers. And here's this way in which people can be somewhat lost in their memories and yet exist in the present ...

JAD: Safely?

LULU: Safely.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, The Fatback Band - (Are You Ready) Do The Bus Stop: Bus stop. Bus stop. Are you ready?]

JAD: That's our producer, Lulu Miller with the Music Choice. If you want to know anything more about the The Benrath Senior Center in Düsseldorf, Germany, check our website site radiolab.org. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Thanks for listening.

[ANSWERING MACHINE: Message two.]

[JIM EGGERS: I’ll do this one more time.]

[LULU: Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad and Soren Wheeler.]

[LULU’S MOM: Our staff includes Ellen Horne, Tim Howard, Brenna Farrell, Pat Walters and Lynn Levy.]

[JIM EGGERS: With help from Jessica Grose, Douglas Smith and Luke Calzonetti.]

[LULU: Okay.]

[JIM EGGERS: Thank you very much for your time. Bye.]

 

-30-

 

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