[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: Okay. So, you know, the core of our job, right, is to ask people questions. Right? 

ROBERT KRULWICH: Yes. 

JAD: Then we sit there for hours and edit the answers. And I've noticed that the answers sometimes have a kind of musicality to them. Like, sometimes you get this.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: That's right.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Yeah.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: No.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Right.] 

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Yes.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: No way.] 

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Right.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Right.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Yes.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Yes.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Right.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Right.] 

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Yes.]

ROBERT: Oh. I know those. They are the sharp, quick…

JAD: …staccato 

ROBERT: …beats. 

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Yes.] 

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Yes.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Yeah.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: No.]

JAD: But there are times when you get a completely different music, you know, like. Say you're asking a hard question or a clarifying question. “Is it A or is it B.” Then, sometimes you get this.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Well it’s certain—I just…]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: [sigh] He—his…]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Um…]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: Um…]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: I mean yeah, well, but I think…]

JAD: You get this kind of melodic wavering.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: No, I—it's. I. Ugh.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: It. Well ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Radiolab guest: No. You know, I don't know.]

JAD: In purely musical terms, the pitches in the first one are like, pow, pow, pow. They're just precise and quick. But in that second category, the pitches are floating up or floating down. They're never stable.

ROBERT: You're not a normal person, really.

JAD: No. It's like that's the sound of…

ROBERT: Doubt.

JAD: Doubt.

ROBERT: You know what we could do?

JAD: What’s that? 

ROBERT: We have collected some stories which in a way they all have doubt in them. They have certainty in them, and what they all are kind of collisions, really.

JAD: We have three stories for you.

ROBERT: Difficult, complex, emotionally wrenching situations.

JAD: Kind of situations that you can't really walk away from.

ROBERT: And you can't resolve them. So you have to do something. And that's this show that's gonna be our show. We should call it…

JAD: Are you sure?

ROBERT: No, no. I don't know yet. I have to think about it.

JAD: No, that's what I'm suggesting as a name: “Are you sure?”

ROBERT: Are you—yes. Are you sure? He said, with a certain amount of doubt. 

JAD: Okay. I'm Jad Abumrad. He's Robert Krulwich, this is Radiolab. And to get things started…

ROBERT: Are you sure? That's good.

JAD: We start with a—a producer we’ve worked with for a very long time, Lulu Miller, a very interesting story, which takes many twists and turns. It begins actually with the fact that as a girl, Lulu really loved rocks. She just loved to sit on rocks. She loved to think about rocks. She just liked rocks.

LULU MILLER: They felt slightly animate in the way that a tree does or that an animal does, that I know it's not a human, but it's a nice thing in the world that, for whatever reason, brings about a feeling of peace.

JAD: Then one day, seventh grade ...

LULU: Mr. Pricer.

JAD: He's a science teacher.

LULU: He did a lesson on inorganic versus organic matter. 

JAD: Mm-hmm. 

LULU: And we make this huge list on the chalkboard. Organic matter. Trees? Yup. Dogs? Yup. Pasta. Sure. It's kind of blowing our minds because it seems like everything's organic. A corpse is organic. Even a table is organic.

JAD: You know, because wood used to be alive.

LULU: And then he—he draws this, like, harsh white line on the chalkboard and he writes, “Inorganic: metal, salt, rocks.” And I was like, Oh.

JAD: Now it sounds a little bit silly, but this was actually a big deal for Lulu. I mean she—even when she worked with us, she would talk about this. But then you fast forward many years actually when she was leaving the show, she decided to bike across the country from California to New York and she meets somebody who changes things for her and her rocks and pretty much everything.

LULU: Well, I met him in the middle of possibly the loneliest place in the world. It's called the Loneliest Road in America. Highway Route 50. And it's just a two-lane road that crosses the state of Nevada. Desert, desert, desert.

LULU: [singing] This is the sound of a busted bike, a broken spoke, a ripped tire.

LULU: Just desert stretches for a hundred miles at a time.

LULU: Oh. This road.

JAD: Did you end up having to ride 100 miles in one day? 

LULU: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Damn.

LULU: Oh, yeah.

JAD: Okay, so you’re in the middle of this—this expanse of dread.

LULU: [laughs] Yes.

JAD: And what happens?

LULU: And we finally make it late in the afternoon to basically our end point for the day. Little gas station with a little diner. And we see out in front of the restaurant this bike that's, like, loaded down with so much gear. We're like, Oh ...

JAD: …fellow traveler. 

LULU: Yup. So we went in, picked him out immediately. He's the only other person in this kind of like, biker bar, basically wearing Lycra. He's young. He's early twenties. Big red beard. This young dude from Kentucky with a little drawl.

JAD: What was his name?

LULU: His name is Jeff.

JAD: Jeff.

LULU: Jeff Vineyard. So his story was that he—he was about to be getting married, and he was supposed to be doing this trip with his fianceé, Megan. But, at sort of at the last minute, just due to wedding planning, logistics and all that, she had decided not to come on the trip. But, you know, so he's doing it alone and just kind of thinking of it as a little bit of reflection time before he gets married.

JAD: Okay.

LULU: He had just finished grad school in geosciences, so geology and, like, trekking or statistical data.

JAD: And he was going the same direction that you guys are going?

LULU: He was going our way, too. And he said, you know, “Oh, mind if I ride with you to the campsite?” And we said, sure. And then we ended up riding together for about 11 days.

JAD: So you got to know him?

LULU: Really got to know him.

MAN: So here’s another song.

LULU: This is us in Nevada.

JEFF VINEYARD: What hymns you know?

MAN: Well, that was—do you know any of Amazing Grace? 

JEFF VINEYARD: Yeah.

LULU: And that’s him singing.

JEFF VINEYARD: T’was grace that taught my heart to fear and grace…

LULU: The other little part to tell you beforehand is just that Jeff grew up very religious. Grandpa was a preacher, and his fianceé, Megan, also very devout, very religious. Has always felt the presence of God.

JEFF VINEYARD: The hour I first believed.

LULU: He actually met Megan through his church. They met while doing mission work down in Louisiana. 

LULU: Can we go look at a rock really quick? 

JEFF VINEYARD: Okay. 

LULU: Okay. So we meet this dude. He's a geologist. He sings all the time. And about three or four days into writing together that he says something that completely changes my understanding of the world.

LULU: Any clue what that is? 

VOICE: No. Can I get some water and rinse him off real quick? 

LULU: Yeah. Yeah.

LULU: We are pulled over to the side of the road in Utah and Jeff has this looking at some rocks, just washing it off.

JEFF VINEYARD: This—this might be a limestone.

LULU: And then he just starts casually mentioning how limestone is formed.

JEFF VINEYARD: So it's a sedimentary rock and it forms from what used to be the bottom of sea floors. What actually causes it to form is there is plankton in the water and lots of these small organisms that have very, very, very small shells, you know, microscopic. All that's left of these organisms after they die are their small shells get deposited on the sea floor, and then more shells get deposited over top of them. And then over the course of your many, many years, you have these very, very thick, almost like drifts of—of these plankton shells. And then, you know, there's tremendous pressure at the bottom of the sea floor, and they can press and they can press and they solidify and they turn into limestone.

LULU: You're saying that these rocks are made out of thousands of thousands of little… 

VOICE: …critters. 

JEFF VINEYARD: Critters. Pretty much.

LULU: I thought a rock couldn't have been—that's saying that—that that rock is composed of something—many thousands of things that were once alive.

JEFF VINEYARD: Yeah. I don't know whether I would necessarily call the shell part alive.

LULU: Doesn't matter. I'd heard what I needed to hear. 

LULU: They do have a little bit of life inside them in a very real, tangible, singable way. Like, not a poetic idea. They do.

JEFF VINEYARD: Yeah, they do. They do. I mean, it was there at one point.

LULU: I'm sure I must have in some other way learned this. I mean, this is basic rock knowledge, but I somehow missed it.

JAD: You sound very excited.

LULU: Yes. He gives me my friends back, like, with a scientist's wand. 

JAD: All right. 

LULU: But, but, but, yes, this is not actually the story I want to tell you.

JAD: Huh? 

LULU: It's not. I'm sorry. It took me a little long to get here, but the real story I want to tell you is about a very similar thing happening only with much bigger consequences, because we kept on riding… 

LULU: I’m in the Utah Hills.

LULU: We make it through one of the hardest days of biking ever, and we finally make it to Cedar City, Utah, and we decide to go out for pizza to celebrate. We're taking a first bite. And then Jeff, who's usually so just like polite and sweet, he slams down his root beer and he says, “I was supposed to be getting married today.”

JAD: Wow. Did they—what does that mean?

LULU: Well, that's what we thought, we were like, what? Finally, he told us this whole story that actually a couple months before the bike trip, one Tuesday, they were making dinner together…

JEFF VINEYARD: We were at her house and we were cooking.

LULU: And he basically suddenly felt this feeling inside his chest.

JEFF VINEYARD: Like right behind my sternum. I just thought, “Shit, I don't believe in God anymore.”

LULU: Really?

JEFF VINEYARD: Yeah. Yeah.

JAD: This just landed on him out of the blue?

LULU: Completely without warning. 

LULU: Wait. Where? What was it? What did it feel like?

JEFF VINEYARD: I don't know. I don't even know if it was, like, words, but it was just, “I don’t believe in God.”

LULU: Were you then terrified?

JEFF VINEYARD: Yeah. Who wouldn't be?

LULU: He'd believed in God his entire life. Yeah. And now gone. 

JEFF VINEYARD: Just like that.

JAD: Was he thinking about something or…

LULU: I don't know. I kept asking him, and that was the best he could say. And Megan saw the look on his face and asked him what was wrong.

JEFF VINEYARD: I didn't say anything at the time. I'm just like, I just have indigestion, you know. But… 

LULU: …a few weeks later…

JEFF VINEYARD: I filled her in on that. And that was probably, you know, Megan's a person of deep belief, and that was something she wanted her husband to be at least somewhat on board with. So… 

LULU: …they put the wedding on hold.

JEFF VINEYARD: Postponed it in good faith that we will work things out.

LULU: So in a way, what he was doing on the bike trip was literally like scanning the hillsides to find some evidence of God to win back his bride.

JAD: Oh, so this wasn't like a pre-wedding reflective right thing at all?

LULU: No way.

JAD: And you're saying you wanted evidence?

LULU: Yes.

JEFF VINEYARD: Evidence or proof. I wanted to be on one side of the fence or the other.

LULU: His one demand for God was… 

JEFF VINEYARD: If you exist and you're at all interested in people… 

LULU: Show yourself. 

JEFF VINEYARD: There's no reason you shouldn't.

LULU: So that whole time, when I was riding along thinking, “Yay, my rock buddies are back,” Jeff was waiting for some signal from the landscape.

JEFF VINEYARD: You know, there is a time where I'm climbing up this mountain, wind comes up behind me and, like, I'm thinking, Wow, this is great. It feels like I'm being pushed. 

LULU: Yeah. 

JEFF VINEYARD: Is this just the wind or is this something else? I don't know.

LULU: And for the three weeks he'd been riding, nothing had really convinced him. 

JEFF VINEYARD: No, no. 

LULU: And he was just frustrated.

JEFF VINEYARD: Despondent, angry.

LULU: And six days after what was supposed to be Jeff's wedding day…

JEFF VINEYARD: June 4. 

LULU: We part ways. And then I had no idea what became of him.

JAD: Huh.

LULU: I didn't hear anything from him for almost a year. And then I guess he had my phone number from just, you know, we'd had each other's phones while we were traveling together. And he called and said that he was on a little road trip and he's going to be passing through Charlottesville. And could he stay with me for a night?

JEFF VINEYARD: Hello. Hello. Hello. 

LULU: And I said, sure. 

LULU: Do you want to set the—do you want to set the scene for us? 

LULU: And basically, the second he arrives, I asked him, okay, so what happened in your. Have you found God? Are you with Megan? 

LULU: And I wondered, like, where you are with all that.

JEFF VINEYARD: Oh, you know—golly, that’s right there. 

LULU: He told me that toward the end of his ride, he started to get really anxious.

JEFF VINEYARD: Okay. Trips almost over, got like a week. [laughs]

LULU: [laughs] And are you thinking like lightning will show me an angel? What are you—what are you hoping to see?

JEFF VINEYARD: No, anything.

LULU: And then he tells me.

JEFF VINEYARD: There was a point outside of Hazard, Kentucky.

LULU: …where he was feeling really low.

JEFF VINEYARD: And then I was eating lunch at Arby's, and…

LULU: [laughs] I know.

JEFF VINEYARD: This is where the story gets embarrassing. A ceiling tile fell on my sandwich.

LULU: Okay.

JEFF VINEYARD: Yeah. And…

LULU: And like a plaster ceiling?

JEFF VINEYARD: Yeah. Like one of the drop ceiling tiles. Just splat. 

LULU: Wow. 

JEFF VINEYARD: Yeah. And so.

LULU: And then what happened is a guy sitting over at the next table noticed him.

JEFF VINEYARD: Walks over and gives me a sandwich, and we got to talking. And, of course, like, you know, he's a minister and…

LULU: And Jeff just starts telling him everything that's going on. How he's having trouble with his faith and how he's not sure what's going to happen with Megan.

JEFF VINEYARD: So we talked about that for a while.

LULU: And at the end of the conversation, the man gives Jeff a blessing.

JEFF VINEYARD: Like a benediction. Have a good journey and be safe. And I hate to recount it because it just sounds so—the ceiling tile fell and the guy came over and talked to me like, is that really remarkable? But in that dark place, I feel like maybe it was. I don't know.  I'm—I’m confused.

LULU: And when he finally made it home to Megan, that's what he told her. I don't know.

MEGAN SWEENEY: Yeah, we both just kind of sat there for a long time because we didn't really know what to do with that. But I knew in my heart that I wanted to marry someone who shared my faith and I just kept hoping that he would find his faith again. And this was just a phase or something, and it was much bigger than that.

LULU: And eventually… 

MEGAN SWEENEY: I figured out what I wanted to do and cried a lot. And then I went and talked to him at his house.

LULU: She just sat him down and gave him his ring back.

MEGAN SWEENEY: It was really sad. Neither of us wanted that to happen. We cried together a little bit and then I think he needed me to just leave. 

LULU: Yeah. 

MEGAN SWEENEY: …it was definitely hard to walk out of that room.

JEFF VINEYARD: It didn't work out. So. I'm up in Columbus. I'm staying in Columbus because I like it there.

LULU: And you moved up to Columbus to be with her, right? 

JEFF VINEYARD: Yeah.

LULU: So he got a job.

JEFF VINEYARD: Turning wrenches at a bicycle shop. Yeah, it's a long way from geostatistics. LULU: Yeah. Rocks. 

JEFF VINEYARD: Yeah.

LULU: I'm sorry, bro, I’m sorry. I didn't realize it was gonna be so...

JEFF VINEYARD: No, don't be.

LULU: I’m gonna turn this off.

JEFF VINEYARD: [sad laugh] Okay.

LULU: I turned off the tape recorder and took him out to a really good bar. 

JAD: Yeah. Yeah.

LULU: He was headed back to Columbus, and, you know, just down and… 

JAD: And that's it? 

LULU: That was just it. That was kind of their ending. And I, you know, I figured that's end of story and then, yeah, another year goes by and luckily we move slowly on tape and stories and a strange invitation appears in my mailbox. I open it up, and it's an invitation to Jeff Vineyard and Megan Sweeney's wedding.

JAD: Really? 

LULU: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Wait. A year goes by, and you just suddenly get a thing… 

LULU: …to their wedding. That's… 

JAD: …what happened?

JEFF VINEYARD: All right. Shall we commence, Lulu?

LULU: We shall commence. 

LULU: Well, I didn't know it happened. Woo-hoo.

JEFF VINEYARD: Megan is walking up right now, actually. 

MEGAN SWEENEY: Hi.

LULU: All right, well, first of all, I like—what happened because I know nothing.

MEGAN SWEENEY: Well, let's have him tell that story, and then I'll go from there.

JEFF VINEYARD: [laughs] I'd reached a point where I was actually back in attending church. I'd found a really friendly congregation here in town. I was just looking for something familiar because I moved up here and the one person I know is not in my life and I need something else. So I wasn't necessarily going for the preaching, I was just going for the experience and… 

LULU: For kind of the pew on the bum and the—the people around you?

JEFF VINEYARD: Right? I mean, I was—I was singing with our church choir at that point because, you know, I wasn't really sure whether I had any faith or not but gosh darn it, I like singing.

LULU: And then he told me one day.

JEFF VINEYARD: Just some gosh darn sunday. I don't know what we were singing out or what the sermon was about, but we were taking communion. And as I was taking the elements, I just.

LULU: Said he just suddenly felt like the air charge.

JEFF VINEYARD: Like there is a palpable presence all around. Just—just almost like a tempest. I felt there was something there.

LULU: Was it something you felt up in your head? Was it something you felt…

JEFF VINEYARD: Sternum mostly beneath the sternum. 

LULU: Huh.

JEFF VINEYARD: The tightness, a hand, something touching there.

LULU: Huh.

JEFF VINEYARD: Very strange. I don't know what to make of that. Still. I'm still not sure if it was something divine and otherworldly or if it was just a profound appreciation for the history of that gesture.

LULU: I almost just want to say, like Jeff, right now, do you believe in God?

JEFF VINEYARD: Yeah. It's just really different from what I felt earlier, and it’s still very uncertain.

LULU: Megan, when—when you hear him talk about doubt, is it scary? Is it something you can relate to? I mean, like, how does it strike you when he talks about it?

MEGAN SWEENEY: It is a little scary because I think it's still a hard thing for us.

LULU: Keep in mind, I'm talking to them 10 days before they're about to get married.

MEGAN SWEENEY: Is it 10 or 11? I think it's 10.

JEFF VINEYARD: …yeah. 10. 

MEGAN SWEENEY: …some days sometimes it seems like we're really close on how we believe, and sometimes it seems like we're miles apart. But…

JEFF VINEYARD: It's—it's confusing sometimes, but that's—I don't know. I'm okay with that.

LULU: And Megan. Are you okay with that? 

MEGAN SWEENEY: I am. I don't know if it's just me still wishing a little that his faith was a little more like mine. Maybe I haven't completely let go of that, but on a day to day basis we pray together in the evenings and are able to talk about religious things without fighting with each other. And I think that whatever differences we do have are okay now. Love is a choice. After a certain point we just chose that we were going to love each other anyway.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, officiant: Let’s pray. Loving God, I pray that as Megan and Jeff speak these words…]

JAD: They—they go forward and they get married? 

LULU: Yeah. It was a religious ceremony and they say their vows.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, officiant: I Jeff, take you Megan to be my wife.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jeff: I Jeff, take you Megan, to be my wife.]

LULU: Promise before God. 

[ARCHIVE CLIP, officiant: And I promise before God, and all who are present here.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jeff: And I promise…]

LULU: And what was just like as he's saying his vows you can hear…

[ARCHIVE CLIP, officiant: And encourage you…]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jeff: Encourage you…]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, officiant: …to develop God’s gifts…]

LULU: The biggest sob I've ever heard, just like, comes out of his voice. Like that it—it just felt, like, bigger than him. Jeff said later that what that was was not the sound of resolution but of relief.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, officiant: For as long as we both shall live.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Megan: For as long as we both shall live.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, officiant: It is now my great pleasure to introduce to you Megan and Jeffrey Vineyard.]

[cheering]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jeff, Lulu, and Singer: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.]

JAD: Big thanks to producer Lulu Miller. We'll continue in a moment.

[ANSWERING MACHINE: Message 10.]

[LULU: Hi, It's Lulu calling you from DC.]

[JEFF VINEYARD: Hi, this is Jeff Vineyard.]

[MEGAN VINEYARD: I'm Megan Vineyard. And I have the credits. Okay.]

[JEFF VINEYARD: Radiolab is supported in part...]

[MEGAN VINEYARD: By the National Science Foundation… ]

[LULU: …and, hold on, Jeff is calling me back—the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

[JEFF VINEYARD: Enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.]

[LULU: More information about Sloan at...]

[JEFF & MEGAN VINEYARD: …www.sloan.org.]

[MEGAN VINEYARD: Radiolab is produced by WNYC.]

[JEFF VINEYARD: And distributed by NPR.]

[LULU: Okay. Bye.]

 

-30-

 

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