[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: Okay. Ready?

ROBERT KRULWICH: Yeah.

JAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: And I'm Robert Kulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab, our fund drive edition. We're trying to prevail upon you, give you all the reasons we can think of to support public radio—and Radiolab in particular. You know what, Robert?

ROBERT: What?

JAD: Why should we even say anything when I think it's more powerful when somebody who uses Radiolab, who uses public radio, can say it for us?

ROBERT: Well, do you have someone in mind?

JAD: I do.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: I have a story here that came into our inbox. This is a true story where public radio—are you ready for this?

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: Literally saved a boy's life.

ROBERT: What?

JAD: All right, so I'm exaggerating a little, but it helped out in a pretty dire situation. And if saving lives, healing wounds doesn't make you want to support this service, then well, frankly, I don't know what will. So anyhow, the woman who wrote this, we're just gonna call her right now. Her name is Jennifer Babb.

ROBERT: And how would we be spelling Babs?

JAD: Babs with an S? Or—Jennifer Babb, as in B-A-double B.

ROBERT: B-A double B.

JAD: Yep. And it involves her and her son, Blake.

ROBERT: Blake.

JENNIFER BABB: Hello?

JAD: Hi. Is this Jennifer?

JENNIFER BABB: Yes.

JAD: Hey. This is Jad.

ROBERT: And this is Robert here on the other microphone.

JENNIFER BABB: Hi, guys. Nice to meet you.

JAD: Nice to meet you telephonically. Now Jennifer, I understand you have a son, right?

JENNIFER BABB: Yes, I have two children. My son is my oldest. He's seven and a half. Blake.

JAD: Blake. And so can you set the scene for the story you're gonna tell? Like what ...?

JENNIFER BABB: Well, let's see. So Blake, he says when he grows up, he's gonna be an inventor. And what he likes to build most of all is airplanes. Airplanes and helicopters.

ROBERT: Okay.

JENNIFER BABB: So the first ones he built were just, you know, he'd take a couple of pieces of Tupperware and lay them out on the floor in the shape of a plane. But lately he's been trying to build planes that actually fly. And so he made this airplane. He's sitting next to me now, and he's telling me it's more like a helicopter.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JENNIFER BABB: He took a big cardboard box, cut out two long propeller blades that he duct taped together in the shape of an X.

ROBERT: Uh-huh?

JENNIFER BABB: And the propeller, I have to say, the propeller is really cool. The propeller actually flies. So we have kind of a balcony on our house. And he stood up on the balcony and, like, flung it off, and it hovered in the air.

JAD: Really?

ROBERT: Oh, wow!

JENNIFER BABB: For a moment before falling to the ground.

JAD: Okay, so you've done a bunch of tests with this propeller. You see that it can fly. And then I'm assuming at a certain point, he takes it to the next step.

JENNIFER BABB: Yeah. So he's been learning about electricity and about motors and things, and he's got a couple of toys that have motors on them. So he's been trying to build an airplane that'll hook up to the motor. And he tried to attach his propeller, and it just fell over.

ROBERT: Aw!

JAD: So the motor wasn't powerful enough.

JENNIFER BABB: Right. And so there's only one thing that we've got that's strong enough to power a propeller of this size, and that's a human being.

ROBERT: [laughs] Oh!

JENNIFER BABB: Yeah. So what he did was since the motor didn't work, he made out of duct tape a harness system so that he could kind of climb inside the harness and hold on to the propeller.

JAD: And is he going to twist the propellers himself while he's flying?

JENNIFER BABB: Exactly. Grab onto it with his hands and just kind of like spin to make it fly.

JAD: Huh.

JENNIFER BABB: And so we have this rock wall that's about, I don't know, three feet high. And so he climbed up on the rock wall and spun it and jumped. And he said he hovered for a second.

JAD: Really?

JENNIFER BABB: He felt it. He's saying he felt it. So it's all kind of weird.

JAD: Hi. Hi, Blake.

BLAKE BABB: Hi.

JAD: So you felt like—so where did you jump from? You jumped from the wall? Hello? Hello? Blake, are you there?

JENNIFER BABB: Blake is a—he's not a really big talker.

JAD: Did your mom know any of this was happening at this point?

JENNIFER BABB: Yeah, I made a movie of it.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: Oh, you did?

JAD: So you were aware of his experiments in flight?

JENNIFER BABB: Yeah. Well, it's fascinating to watch—you know, to see how his mind works. He's learning, like I said, you know, every time, every iteration, he learns something from the way that the one before failed. So that was—that was in the evening. That was like eight o'clock at night. And the next day he's—was a Saturday or Sunday, and he's fussing around in the garage. And my husband and I were in the kitchen talking about whatever, and Blake comes walking past with his harness system on, and he walks through the doors to go into the backyard.

ROBERT: Just walks right through.

JENNIFER BABB: Right.

ROBERT: There's something slightly Calvin and Hobbes-y about this. [laughs]

JAD: [laughs]

JENNIFER BABB: So for whatever reason, this did not arouse our suspicion as it should have. I don't know what we were talking about. And then, you know, two, three minutes later, we hear the cry. The kind of cry that's not "I'm scared," or "Wah, I'm hungry!" It's the cry that means I'm hurt.

JAD: Oh.

JAD: Now just to jump in here. Jennifer ran outside ...

JENNIFER BABB: Ran outside.

JAD: ... to the backyard where there's this maple tree. And she looks up and she sees her son.

JENNIFER BABB: Completely entangled in the tree.

JAD: Looked to her like he'd climbed up to the top branch.

JENNIFER BABB: With the harness system on.

JAD: And then jumped.

JENNIFER BABB: And got twisted up.

JAD: And he was really, really bloody.

JENNIFER BABB: He had scraped the whole back of his leg—this big, like, foot-long gash. And we're just like, "Oh my God! Oh my God!" Just bleeding all down his leg. And my husband had to, like, push him up so that I could untangle the, like, ropey bits of the duct tape harness system to get him off and pull him down. So I, you know, carried him through the kitchen, and put him on the couch in the living room.

JAD: And she says she tried to turn him over so she could get a look at the cut, but he kept squirming and wouldn't let her see it.

JENNIFER BABB: And that was the moment it occurred to me to put on Radiolab for something for him to listen to that would kind of capture his imagination so he'd lie still, forget that his leg hurt him. And then I could look at it while he was distracted.

JAD: What gave you that idea?

JENNIFER BABB: [laughs] I don't know. The iPod was kind of sitting there and I was like, "Okay, I'll put on Radiolab and he can listen to the bit about parasites."

ROBERT: Parasites?

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: Eww!

JENNIFER BABB: Yeah.

ROBERT: So when you press 'go' or 'begin' on your iPod, what happened?

JENNIFER BABB: Oh, he was instantly fascinated. He listened to the whole entire podcast, the whole 45 minutes or whatever it is. And yeah, and I was able—I got his wound cleaned off. To get a child like that to stop moving, to stop twitching in some degree, like, you should see him right now. He's sitting here tapping his feet and playing with this spork. And you had his attention from the first moment.

JAD: But it goes beyond that. According to Jennifer, after she'd been playing him the show for a few minutes, she paused it just shortly after a segment we made about a parasitic wasp.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Carl Zimmer: What it does is it flies around and it looks for a cockroach.]

JAD: That's the one. And she asked him, "Did you understand any of that?"

JENNIFER BABB: And he repeated it back to me.

ROBERT: Really?

JENNIFER BABB: Yeah.

JAD: Almost word for word.

ROBERT: Maybe we should put Blake on, huh?

JAD: Yeah.

JENNIFER BABB: Okay, Let me go get him. They are ready to talk to you, man.

BLAKE BABB: Hi.

ROBERT: Hi. So we want to hear, like, what can you remember about the radio show?

BLAKE BABB: The one about parasitic wasps?

ROBERT: Yeah.

BLAKE BABB: Um, the parasitic wasp is flying around, then it finds the cockroach.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Carl Zimmer: Once it finds that cockroach ...]

BLAKE BABB: They fight.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Lulu Miller: They tumble back and forth around and around.]

BLAKE BABB: And the parasitic wasp manages to stab it in the stomach.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Lulu Miller: Right in the belly. The cockroach twitches for a second.]

BLAKE BABB: And then it just falls over.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Carl Zimmer: Boom.]

BLAKE BABB: And it stings it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Carl Zimmer: The stinger actually sort of threads its way ...]

BLAKE BABB: Somewhere in the brain.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Carl Zimmer: To a particular spot in the brain.]

BLAKE BABB: In a way that it can control the cockroach. So when it recovers, it just stands up.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Carl Zimmer: And so now the wasp ...]

BLAKE BABB: It holds it by the antenna.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Carl Zimmer: The cockroach's antenna, and start pulling on it.]

BLAKE BABB: Over to its den.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Lulu Miller: Down, down, down, down.]

BLAKE BABB: And it lays eggs inside of the cockroach. And then the eggs hatch.

JAD: You remember the entire story.

BLAKE BABB: Yeah.

JAD: Jennifer, too, was flabbergasted. And she says she turned to him and was like, "Wow, Blake. What excellent listening comprehension you have. You do understand what you hear."

JENNIFER BABB: And he said, "Yes, but I don't understand when people are talking to me."

JAD: You mean, like, he doesn't understand it when people talk at him or lecture him?

JENNIFER BABB: Yeah.

ROBERT: Huh.

JENNIFER BABB: And he's like, "Right. Like, when I'm in trouble, I never understand what you're talking about." So I did have the thought that if only I had the means, I could record some of my lectures so that I could play them back, you know, with the right sound effects, so that he would have that same, like, intensity of listening to what I was trying to say.

JAD: Oh, God.

ROBERT: We could sell ourselves to mothers everywhere when they want their children to talk.

JENNIFER BABB: Mothers across America will be paying millions of dollars for these lectures.

JAD: Which brings me to a really quick pitch. Public radio is all about making stories stick. That's what we try and do at Radiolab—and all the shows try and do.

JAD: Do you have lectures off the top of your head? Because if you give them to us, we could give them back to you in Radiolabified version.

JENNIFER BABB: Well, let's see. I guess there's one thing, and this is—you know, this kind of gets at the whole climbing up into a tree with propellers. Like, you have to think things all the way through to the end.

ROBERT: Hmm.

JAD: Jennifer says she's said that to Blake millions of times. She's not sure if it ever gets through.

JENNIFER BABB: Think things through to the end.

JAD: So we thought we would try and give her a new spin on it. I don't know if this is gonna work, but hey, let's give it a shot. Here is our attempt to make a sticky lecture for Blake.

JENNIFER BABB: You have to think things all the way through. [piano] You have to think things. Think things. Think things. All the way. Think things all the way. Think things through. Think all the way. Think things all the way through.

JAD: Blake, what your mom is saying is that when you want to have an adventure or invent something, don't just think about the beginning of it or what you think might happen in the middle. In your mind, take it all the way through ...

JENNIFER BABB: To the end! To the end. You know, it's okay to test your theories. You know, I encourage experimentation. The only way you're gonna learn is if you fail.

JAD: And she's not just saying that. I mean, take Thomas Edison, the king inventor. He tried to invent a battery, and he failed 10,000 times!

JENNIFER BABB: But you need to think about the degree of failure. And so you have to kind of consider what's kind of the best outcome and what's the worst outcome, and imagine that both of those things have happened. Like, imagine the scenario in your mind and what you would do.

JAD: Okay, let's do that. Scenario one, you're in the tree. This is the good one. And you spin the blade round, round, round and round and round and round, round and round. And it works! You're flying all through the neighborhood. So here's the question you gotta answer: What happens next?

JENNIFER BABB: What he hasn't thought is, for example, how's he going to land?

ROBERT: Hmm. Oh.

JAD: So you gotta take it all the way through to the landing part. Now let's play out the other scenario, the one where things don't go well. Let's say you jump out of the tree and you crash and you really hurt yourself. Well, think of how sad your mom would be and your dad and your sister. In both cases, what you do is you make up a little movie in your head, and you play it all the way through. And hopefully the good one will happen, the best outcome. But just in case, you'll now be prepared.

JENNIFER BABB: So that you can mitigate the effects of the worst outcome. And I probably wouldn't say 'mitigate' to my child.

JAD: [laughs] So we're gonna do something with this lecture and send it to you.

JENNIFER BABB: Uh-huh.

JAD: No, seriously.

JENNIFER BABB: Well, thanks, you guys. It was wonderful to talk to you.

ROBERT: Yes. And we have no—absolutely no connection to any kind of further experimentation of this kind.

JENNIFER BABB: [laughs] You absolve yourself of responsibility.

ROBERT: Blake is on his own. All right. Bye, bye.

JENNIFER BABB: Bye.

JAD: Bye!

BLAKE BABB: Bye.

JAD: Now I don't exactly know what to say here, but there is something about this story that just kind of like, gets to the whole point of why we do this.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: That here you've got this kid who's obviously in a lot of pain, and he just sits still and listens to a story about parasites. You know, what we're trying to do here is tell stories that move you—or keep you still in this case. But stories that draw you in and make you think differently about the world, even just a little bit. Help us to do that. Here's how. Go to our website, Radiolab.org, click on the 'Support' button, and whatever you give, it goes right into the making of this show, and we really, really appreciate it. Radiolab is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Sloan Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Thanks for listening.

 

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