[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: Okay. Ready, three, two, one. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I am Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab, and this is part two of our attempt to answer some listener questions that have piled up over the years gathering digital dust in our inbox.

ROBERT: Yes.

JAD: And a few of them in this round come from kinda close to home.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: In any case, starting us off this round is a question asker who has developed quite a reputation here at Radiolab.

ROBERT: The indomitable, Scott Little.

SCOTT LITTLE: (laughs). I'm just a normal dude, man.

JAD: Scott spoke to our producer, Latif Nasser.

LATIF: Now Scott, he actually sent us a lot of questions that caught our attention.

SCOTT LITTLE: Yeah, they don't, they don't stop. I can't slow this brain down. I...

LATIF: Questions like...

SCOTT LITTLE: I truly do not even remember like writing...

LATIF: Why is the moon devoid of all color?

SCOTT LITTLE: ...but when I read them I was like, "Oh yeah, that sounds like me."

LATIF: Have we seriously not translated any animal languages yet?

SCOTT LITTLE: Is there a reason coconuts look a lot like chimpanzee heads or is that just a coincidence?

LATIF: (laughs). But then we zeroed in one of Scott's question that, at, at first seemed kinda simple but it got really big.

SCOTT LITTLE: Okay, when a space shuttle goes into space, how do they make sure it doesn't hit any satellites? Is it just radar or is there some kind of complicated system that tracks all of them?

LATIF: Mm-hmm.

SCOTT LITTLE: And, and since we talked, just kinda looking up about this, you know, about like how many satellites are actually up there and what are we even calling space junk? And, and has this affected anything yet? Um, you know, it's just like it, it goes from like kinda informational to like almost like this sort of doom and gloom real fast.

SCOTT LITTLE: Like, there's so much junk up there. Like, it's gonna be impossible to leave the Earth's atmosphere pretty soon. And I don't know I just...It just kind of...I'd be curi—I'd be curious to see what—what who's—who's in charge of all this. That's what I wanna know. Who's in charge here? Who's in charge of space?

STEVE: Okay, is everybody there?

LATIF: Yeah, I'm here.

STEVE: I've got Colonel Walsh and she's willing to talk to you about space surveillance.

LATIF: Okay, great.

STEVE: Ma'am, can you still hear us?

MIA WALSH: Yes, I'm here if you can...

LATIF: So I couldn't actually find anyone who is literally in charge of space, but I did find what I think is pretty much the next best thing.

MIA WALSH: I'm Lt. Col. Mia Walsh and I'm the Commander of the 18th Space Control Squadron.

LATIF: I think your title has gotta be the coolest title of anyone I've ever interviewed.

MIA WALSH: My title is the coolest title? The Commander of the 18th Space Control Squadron?

LATIF: Yeah, that's like...You should—you should have like an action figure I think.

MIA WALSH: That—that would be amazing.

LATIF: (laughs)

MIA WALSH: It would be a very tiny action figure.

LATIF: (laughs). Okay, so—so let's start from the top. When a space shuttle goes into space, how do they make sure it doesn't hit any satellites?

MIA WALSH: Well we keep track of what's called the space catalog.

LATIF: Which is like a giant logbook of all the manmade stuff surrounding us in outer space.

MIA WALSH: A little over 23,000 objects.

LATIF: Oh, wow.

MIA WALSH: So when—whenever there's a launch, anything manned or unmanned, we'll track it against the existing things in the catalog and we'll make sure that it doesn't hit anything on the way up.

LATIF: Or make sure it doesn't hit anything while it's up there. And then, if there is a chance of an actual collision, they send out an alert.

MIA WALSH: The notifications we create are called conjunction data messages.

LATIF: Uh-huh.

MIA WALSH: Um, so send several thousand of those every day.

LATIF: What?

MIA WALSH: Within those couple thousand, we have a—a more refined what we call emergency criteria.

LATIF: Yeah.

MIA WALSH: Um, and we issue between 6 and 10 of those per day.

LATIF: What? That's like a...That's a lot.

MIA WALSH: It seems high, but when you consider we're tracking 23,000 objects it's—it's not too bad.

LATIF: (laughs). But on top of those 23,000 objects, it turns out there's—there's even more stuff out there. But she says it's basically just too small to be able to track.

MIA WALSH: We think that they're probably more like a half a million, close to half a million objects in space.

LATIF: What? What? So you have like almost none of them.

MIA WALSH: It—it sounds like that, but just remember that p—some of those 500,000 objects are very, very tiny pieces of debris.

LATIF: So like give me a sense. Like, how big? How small? What are we, yeah, what are we talking about?

MIA WALSH: Very small is as sizes of flecks of paint.

LATIF: Oh man, so there's no way you can track like half a million flecks of paint. That feels like, that feels like impossible.

MIA WALSH: No, and actually if you Google space shuttle and fleck of paint you can see a pretty famous picture of this shuttle window that was hit by a fleck of paint. And the kind of damage that it can do moving at that speed.

LATIF: Tell me what kind of damage it can do moving at that speed. (Laughs). What—what, yeah, what—what would I see if I saw that picture? Yeah.

MIA WALSH: So it went through several layers of the shuttle window and they determined that it was from a fleck of paint. From just, you know, a tiny fleck.

LATIF: So you've got almost half a million pieces of this itty bitty space junk. And when it comes to that stuff?

MIA WALSH: It's really just a matter of keeping our fingers crossed and monitoring the situation so that we can react to it if something happens.

LATIF: Okay. Well...So—so—so, when I, when I called this listener he's like...He's a little bit paranoid. Uh, and this is...

SCOTT LITTLE: And—and then the—the one interesting thing I—I came from this is this thing I think it's called the—the Kessler Syndrome. Is that what it is? This Keslow Effect. That's what it is. So this—this NASA scientist got this thing named after him where he's like we might get to a point where we have so much stuff in space that like something will collide with—with...

SCOTT LITTLE: Like two satellites will collide and that collision will cause so much debris that it will basically be like this giant thing where just things are just exploding around the earth for like years and years and years. Like some sort of locust plague of space junk.

LATIF: Swarmed with a locust plague of space junk and that it'll be impossible to leave the Earth's atmosphere any time soon. What would you say to Scott?

STEVE: Latif, this is-

MIA WALSH: Just a second.

STEVE: Latif-

LATIF: Oh, yeah.

STEVE: ...this is Steve.

LATIF: Yeah.

STEVE: You know, we—we have a—we have a job to—to track those objects but a question like that is—is just kinda out of our realm of responsibility.

LATIF: Oh, okay, okay no problem. Um, but well, can I—can I...And just let me ask another question then. Tell me if—if you can't answer it, that's fine too. Um, which is he also brought up something called the Keslow Effect. Do you know about that or have you heard of that before?

LATIF: Which is, which is the idea that there's a possibility that two satellites will collide and then they'll create debris and then that'll make a domino effect and cause all kinds of other collisions. And then it'll be a whole giant debris field.

MIA WALSH: Um, sure we've heard of it, the Kessler Effect.

LATIF: Oh, Kessler. Sorry about that.

MIA WALSH: Yeah, we're very familiar with the concept.

LATIF: Yeah. And is that something you worry about or no? Hello? Hello, hello?

MIA WALSH: I guess it—it's a concern, sure. But I think the—the members of the squadron do such a great job tracking everything that’s up there that we would hope that that wouldn't happen.

ROBERT: Not the, not the answer I was hoping for.

LATIF: Yeah, m—me neither. I—I gotta admit-

ROBERT: That didn't make me too comfortable.

LATIF: I started this whole thing thinking that Scott's fear was like kinda crazy. But then after that conversation I started, you know, researching it for real and I, online I found this video of Kessler himself.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Donald J. Kessler: At the beginning of the space program there was the general attitude that space was a big sky. That you could put anything in it that you wanted and not fill it up. The problem that you quickly run into...]

LATIF: And he—he basically says exactly what Scott did.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Donald J. Kessler: If we don't change the way we operate in space, all this results in exponentially increasing amount of debris until all objects are reduced to a cloud of orbiting fragments that are capable of discarding any spacecraft that attempts to operate anywhere within that cloud.]

LATIF: Which would mean no satellites, no weather satellites, no GPS, no any other kinds of satellites. And then in the future if things go really badly, you know, we'd just be stuck here forever and ever on Earth.

TAJI ABUMRAD: The Earth.

JAD: Our next question comes from this guy in Brooklyn and he is...

TAJI ABUMRAD: Five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five.

JAD: That would be five. Five years old.

TAJI ABUMRAD: Five, five, five, five, five, five, five.

JAD: And I interviewed him in my kitchen.

JAD: Who are you Taji?

TAJI ABUMRAD: My name is Taji and I'm your son.

JAD: (Laughs). Okay, tell me your question.

TAJI ABUMRAD: My question is why is the Earth called Earth?

JAD: Why is the Earth called Earth?

TAJI ABUMRAD: I don't know why.

JAD: Do you have any guesses?

TAJI ABUMRAD: Uh, the Earth just came up with the name.

JAD: The Earth came up with its own name?

TAJI ABUMRAD: I think.

JAD: Okay, should I find out and then tell you?

TAJI ABUMRAD: Yes.

JAD: My first stop was a guy named Peter.

PETER BARRY: Yeah, this is Peter.

JAD: Peter Barry.

PETER BARRY: I'm a isotope geochemist. I work at the—the University of Oxford. I'm a researcher here.

JAD: Am I right that you have some kind of a loose affiliation with NASA or is that, is that not right?

PETER BARRY: Very loose (laughs) in a sense that I mean I do a little bit of planetary work. I've worked on some lunar samples in the past, but...

JAD: You've worked on lunar samples?

PETER BARRY: Yes, I've actually done some—some isotope work on lunar samples.

JAD: He's actually one of the few people on the planet who's held the moon in his hand. So here's my question. I think it's pretty simple, but maybe there's a story there. I don't know. The question comes from Taj via me, his dad. Why is the Earth called the Earth?

PETER BARRY: Well that's a—that's a really interesting question. The Earth is actually...So this is an—it's an old Saxon word derived from English Germanic roots. In German, Earth is said Erde. I believe...

JAD: Erde.

PETER BARRY: ...that's how you say Earth in—in German. And of course all these, all these words are originally derived from like a mother language like an Indo-European mother language. But what it means in German and what it means in all those old languages, it actually just means soil or ground.

JAD: Oh. Huh.

PETER BARRY: All the other planets, all the other visible planets have these really, you know, awesome names. And they're all named after Roman gods.

JAD: I mean you have Mercury. It moved really quickly around the sun. So it got its name from the Roman messenger god. Then you have Venus which was this bright, beautiful orb glowing in the sky. So we named it after the goddess of love. And, of course Mars, which was fiery and red, and so we named it after the God of war.

JAD: And Earth is the only planet which isn't named after a Roman god. It clearly has this much different etymology. Peter ultimately referred me to another guy at Oxford.

GABRIEL BARRIE: Hello.

JAD: Hi, can I speak to Gabe, please?

GABRIEL BARRIE: Hi, speaking, yeah. Hi, Jad.

JAD: This is Gabriel Barrie.

GABRIEL BARRIE: I can tell you a bit about who the Proto Indo-Europeans probably were.

JAD: Sure.

GABRIEL BARRIE: Um...

ROBERT: Proto? Proto Indo-European?

JAD: Yes, so—so basically what Gabriel Berry told me is that you could, you could trace all—this whole thing. The word Er, Erde, back to this group of people who lived...

GABRIEL BARRIE: Maybe 6,000 years ago.

JAD: This is like way before JC. Way before the Greeks or the Romans.

GABRIEL BARRIE: The Proto Indo-European lived in basically what's now Eastern Europe. So these are really people from steppes of Russia.

JAD: Don't know a lot about them. We know they moved around a lot.

GABRIEL BARRIE: ...nomadic people, couldn't for whatever reason settle down.

JAD: But he says at some point maybe about 5,000 years ago...

GABRIEL BARRIE: They moved from the steps of Eastern Europe and Russia and swept into Europe. It seems they drove chariots and they came on horseback in a huge wave and settled all the way from Britain down to Northern India.

JAD: So imagine this wave of people on horseback spreading all over Europe and into India and speaking this language that would ultimately branch out into English and German and French and Hindi and Portuguese and like 400 some odd languages.

GABRIEL BARRIE: And as they spread across Europe and across down into India and Iran...

JAD: The thought is they started to slow down, settle down.

GABRIEL BARRIE: And that's when they became farmers.

JAD: And that's when they started spending a lot of time looking down at the dirt.

GABRIEL BARRIE: We have lots of words for farming from Proto Indo-European words like plow, furrow or—or er.

JAD: Er as in the word that would become Earth. Uh, but at that early point it just meant dirt. And presumably it just meant like this dirt. Like this specific little piece of dirt right here that I'm plowing. But somewhere along the way, that word er, erde, became the word for all dirt, the whole ball of dirt.

GABRIEL BARRIE: Basically the word that starts being used for Earth becomes...It's the same word as used for then, you know, the globe and also quite often some sort of goddess.

JAD: We have no idea when that switch happened exactly. I mean we know within a few thousand years. But whenever it was, that strikes me as a pretty important moment for us people. Can I ask you some questions, Taji?

TAJI ABUMRAD: What?

JAD: When did you discover the Earth was a planet?

TAJI ABUMRAD: When I was on it.

JAD: No, no really. When did you discover? Do you remember when you, when you learned that the Earth was a ball?

TAJI ABUMRAD: Mm-hmm.

JAD: When?

TAJI ABUMRAD: When I was two.

JAD: You don't remember, do you?

TAJI ABUMRAD: I do.

JAD: No, you don't.

TAJI ABUMRAD: Yes, I do. Little Nest, at Little Nest.

JAD: According to Taj, I mean, I don't know this is what I could get out of him, that moment for him happened at daycare. This place called Little Nest in Brooklyn.

TAJI ABUMRAD: Yeah, Vanessa did it.

JAD: It was a day when his teacher, Vanessa, had them do this little project.

TAJI ABUMRAD: She said we were going to make our own er—our person Earth.

JAD: Our own what?

TAJI ABUMRAD: Our own person Earth.

JAD: What does that mean?

TAJI ABUMRAD: That means learn about the Earth and make a—a Earth with two eyes and some legs and some arms.

JAD: Oh, I see. I see.

JAD: They were basically making these Earth puppets. And he says after that did that...

TAJI ABUMRAD: I was sitting on the rug.

JAD: You were sitting on the rug.

TAJI ABUMRAD: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Is that where you have your best ideas?

TAJI ABUMRAD: Mm-hmm.

JAD: He was sitting on this little rainbow-colored rug that they have and holding his Earth puppet.

TAJI ABUMRAD: And I—I was thinking. I was thinking of the Earth was round, smooth, round and it's a planet.

JAD: By the time we get from the Proto Indo-Europeans to the ancient Greeks and Romans, which is a couple thousand years, we begin to see the concept of Earth rising up. It goes from a simple word that means dirt or soil to Mother Earth, a goddess.

JAD: So it went in the opposite direction of the other planets. It started as this lowly, dirty thing beneath our feet, and then became divine. When I told Taj this answer he was disappointed. He was actually hoping that the Earth was named by an alien.

TAJI ABUMRAD: Daddy, now can I ask another question?

JAD: Yeah, you got another one? Go ahead.

TAJI ABUMRAD: Uh, how was the sun made?

JAD: How was the sun made? You mean like how—how did the sun become the sun?

TAJI ABUMRAD: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Man, that's another good question. How...

TAJI ABUMRAD: It's the same question I did.

JAD: Yeah, I know. I was just repeating it so I could understand. Are you asking me how was the sun born?

WOMAN: Do you ever look at someone and wonder what is going on inside their head?

JAD: Do-do-do-do.

ROBERT: How do they know that? I mean, how—why is he so short?

JAD: Sorry, I've got lice on my brain right now.

JAD: If BFF is best friends forever. What is BFO?

ROBERT: Best friends often.

JAD: Okay. Are you ready?

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: Are you ready?

ROBERT: I am all ready.

JAD: Do you see what I'm doing?

ROBERT: What are you doing?

JAD: Boink!

ROBERT: Does Dunkin' Donuts have it?

JAD: Maybe.

ROBERT: No, no, no, like, like here in America, they have people come in and I think somebody comes with a truck.

JAD: What?

ROBERT: What do you do with it? Wait, you have done it before.

JAD: Wait, how do they do that?

ROBERT: I don't even understand that question.

JAD: (Laughs). Wow-

ROBERT: Maybe I should tell Simon that we're in here.

FAST FOOD CLERK: Thank you for waiting. Can I help you?

JAD: Next up.

TIM ADLER: Yes, just a senior coffee, black, please.

FAST FOOD CLERK: All right, 68 cents. Thank you.

TIM ADLER: Thank you.

JAD: The Adler family.

ROBERT: As in producer Simon Adler and his dad, Tim.

SIMON: Yep so a couple weeks back...

TIM ADLER: I'm just heading out of town now.

SIMON: ...I asked my old man, my dad to record himself going on a drive.

TIM ADLER: All good road trips deserve a cup of coffee. And being the frugal individual that I am, I decided that a drive through at—of McDonald's would be the appropriate place to fuel up.

SIMON: He and my mom live in Northwestern Wisconsin in a small, little city town called Eau Claire.

TIM ADLER: I'm going to drive country roads.

SIMON: And specifically what—what I'd asked him to do was to go drive on the county highways just outside of town.

TIM ADLER: Passing through farm field areas. There are very few cars on the road that I'm on.

SIMON: And the reason I asked him to do this was because for as long as I can remember, he's had this nagging question. A question that he bombards me with every time I'm home. Oft times when we're talking on the phone, he'll bring it up.

TIM ADLER: Simon.

SIMON: Can you hear me?

TIM ADLER: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SIMON: Over the dinner table, over email. I mean, I've heard about this at least 600 times. What does mom think about all this? I've never asked her.

TIM ADLER: Oh, (laughs), I don't know. She—she just rolls her eyes.

SIMON: Okay (laughs).

TIM ADLER: (Laughs). Here he goes again.

SIMON: Yeah, yeah.

TIM ADLER: So what's happening?

SIMON: Yeah, so do you want me to tell you why—why I'm recording or do you want me to ju-

TIM ADLER: I—I knew we would get to it. So you can tell me now. I thought maybe it was gonna be like a puzzle that I had to figure out.

SIMON: Okay. Well, let me, let me just prompt you with this and see—see how well you take the bait here.

TIM ADLER: Okay.

SIMON: Do you know the question I'm talking about? And could you just tell me what that question is?

TIM ADLER: That question is...Well, let me back up. An example is this. A person will be riding a road bike down a lonely country road. Two other people will be walking their dog on the side of the road. And a semi trailer truck will then be coming down that road.

SIMON: Okay, so we've got three different actors here and nobody else for miles and miles and miles.

TIM ADLER: And there is not...You haven't...The biker hasn't seen another car, truck or pedestrian for miles on this road.

SIMON: (Laughs), okay.

TIM ADLER: But what will happen is all three of those actors will come together at the exact same point at the exact same time creating a dangerous situation, first of all. But then it's just this spark and then it diffuses. And you could sit on that stretch of road for six more years and not find that happen.

SIMON: And the key thing here my dad says is he, Tim Adler witnesses this sort of thing...

TIM ADLER: Oh, it happens to me a lot.

SIMON: ...all the time.

TIM ADLER: I would say it happens once every two weeks. Upcoming we have the possibility of an event.

SIMON: On the day I sent him to record himself after 10 or 15 minutes of not seeing a single other car on the road, he came around this bend...

TIM ADLER: There's a manure wagon being driven by a tractor right down the road. And yes, h—here it all happens. The manure wagon is going down the road. A tractor has just pulled out on the road, and now I'm passing by. And all three happened at the exact same place. It just happens.

SIMON: What is your question then? Is it why does that happen or is it, uh-

TIM ADLER: The question is why does this happen to me? And does it seem to happen to others as well?

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: Okay. It's—I think it's quite complicated. I don't know if your...Does your father get the thing where...

SIMON: To get to the bottom of this, we called up a man who we thought might just have the answer.

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: I'm Professor—I'm actually Prof. Sir David Spiegelhalter. I'm-

SIMON: Wait, did you say you're professor sir? Does that mean you've been knighted?

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SIMON: You're a knight.

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SIMON: You're the, you're the first knight I've ever spoken to. I'm honored, truly honored.

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: (Laughs). Oh, it's nothing much. Cambridge is stuffed full of...There's hundreds. There's three a penny around here.

SIMON: The probability of me talking to a...

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SIMON: ...Cambridge professor.

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: Very high indeed, yeah, yeah.

SIMON: Professor Sir David is a statistician.

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: We're pretty dull.

SIMON: And when I ran my old man's question by him, his response...

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: I get quite a lot of stories like this. People contact me and they get very anxious in fact because they feel that something's going on in their lives, they're making things happen all the time. They're getting signs from the environment around them.

SIMON: Okay.

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: I mean, the term is...You know, it's known as synchronicity. Synchronicity.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Carl Jung: You know, there are these peculiar faculties of the psyche.]

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: That was the term that Carl Jung invented for this.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Carl Jung: That this is entirely confined to—to space and time.]

SIMON: Carl Gustav Jung, you know, the famed psychoanalyst of the 20th century.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Carl Jung: You can have dreams or visions of the future.]

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: And he—he had the idea that there was actually some force behind nature that we didn't currently recognize that did drive these things to happen. Something beyond the normal rules of physics and "rationality".

SIMON: Hmm.

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: So he really believed that there was this external force. I think he just wasn't a very good statistician.

SIMON: Because, Sir David says when you start to look at the events in our lives in terms of their probability...

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: Every single event that happens to us is unbelievably unlikely and unpredictable. So, the crucial thing that measures that sort of suprisingness is the unlikeliness of it occurring at some point over a reasonable period.

SIMON: In just a, I don't know, I'm trying to make this as concrete as possible. So...

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: Good luck.

SIMON: So, if you're driving down a street-

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: Yeah.

SIMON: ...that has, I don't know, three cars per 10 miles and-

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: Yeah, yeah.

SIMON: ...two bikers per 10 miles-

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SIMON: ...like, how likely is it that over the course of those 10 miles you're gonna to intersect-

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: Yep.

SIMON: ...the way that he does?

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: Okay, the likelihood of that happening at any particular 10 miles or any particular hour is very low. It's a surprising event. But if your father drives a lot, the likelihood of it happening over, I don't know, maybe a week or two weeks, or in a month is very high.

SIMON: Sir David says think of it this way. So, let's say my dad would consider one of these intersections to be a meaningful coincidence, a synchronous event. If a semi truck and a biker pass him within five seconds of each other.

SIMON: Now if within one hour of driving my dad sees, say, 15 cars and 5 bikers, the math tells me that the likelihood of one of each of both a car and a bike passing him in the same five second window is about 1 in 7,000.

SIMON: But think of how many of those five second windows there are in any given week or month. Uh, in fact, think of each of these five second windows as, like, one spring of a roulette wheel. A giant roulette wheel with 7,000 different numbers that you could bet the ball would land on. But-

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Get your bets down ladies and gentlemen.]

SIMON: And—and this is key. When my dad's driving it's not like he only gets one spin of the wheel or one chance to see one of these synchronous events. Instead-

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Place your bets ladies and gentlemen.]

SIMON: ...it's like every five seconds he gets to try again. And given that he drives like three hours a week, when you do the math, what you end up with is a 31% chance of him experiencing this in any given week. Meaning if he's looking for it, he should definitely expect to see one of these at least once a month.

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: So you have to not look at just the event, not just the particular thing your father observed, you have to think of all the chances for those things to occur that didn't occur. (laughs) You know, you gotta think of all the stuff you're not seeing.

SIMON: How are you?

TIM ADLER: Pretty good. You see that fish?

SIMON: Quite the fish.

TIM ADLER: It—it's like his third cast and bang (laughs), he hits that thing.

SIMON: I called my dad back to break the news to him.

TIM ADLER: All right.

SIMON: You want the answer?

TIM ADLER: Yes.

SIMON: So a week or so ago, I explained it to him from the history of Jung to the fact that he's really just gotta pay attention to all the times these coincidences aren't happening.

TIM ADLER: Right.

SIMON: And when you look at it from that angle, it's statistically to be expected.

TIM ADLER: There. I—I understand. I understand. It's a little hard to swallow. I'm a little more Jungian than most. It—it does make-

SIMON: (laughs)

TIM ADLER: ...sense from a statistical analysis. But why does it keep happening to me?

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: So these things do happen to some people. And I've got a lot of admiration for these people because they...Your father's obviously a great man. You know, it does tend to happen to people who are very sensitive and aware, and they notice their environment. They're actually very mindful people it happens to.

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: I suppose what I'm saying is this is a really admirable, you know, characteristic trait.

TIM ADLER: Well there's no question this makes my day when I've heard that I've been praised by a knight.

SIMON: (Laughs)

TIM ADLER: Tell his highness that some day we should go out for a cup of tea.

SIMON: I—not to bring it down though, he heaped all this praise on you.

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: I'd love to meet him. I'm—I'm sure he's wonderful.

SIMON: But then concluded by saying...

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER: But I would...I think I would say that he's not very special. (laughs).

TIM ADLER: (Laughs). Well I'll—I...You didn't really have to tell me that. (laughs).

SIMON: Yeah, sorry, sorry.

TIM ADLER: No, that's okay. That...I'm gonna just listen to the first part. All right.

SIMON: Okay.

TIM ADLER: Uh, enjoy the rest of the day and the week.

SIMON: Thanks, I love you and I’ll talk...Uh tell mom I'll give her a call hopefully tomorrow morning.

TIM ADLER: Very fine, love you too. Bye.

SIMON: Talk to you later, dad. Bye-bye.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Your home for NPR news and classical music, 89.3, WPN Green Bay.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I want to ask you one question. All right.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Where am I? Where am I?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Excellent question!]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Where are you?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Now just relax. Can you tell me who you are?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Now let's see. Where am I? Where was I? I wonder which way I ought to go.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Where are you going to?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Where am I? Where do I go?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Where are you right now?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Do you know where you are?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: How did you get here?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Oh—oh Christ. Oh, Christ, where am I? Where am I?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Where am I?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Christ, where am I? Oh God, where am I?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Stop.]

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Jacob calling from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alford P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. I listen to Radiolab so much that I actually had that part memorized.]

JAD: Jad.

ROBERT: Robert.

JAD: Radiolab.

ROBERT: And we are back.

JAD: With more questions.

ROBERT: Okay. So, next up...

EVAN BECKER: Yeah, my name's Evan Becker, um...

ROBERT: We're going to go to Boston with Evan Becker.

JAD: And here is his question.

EVAN BECKER: So I—I grew up in the Boston area. I still live in Boston today. Kinda relevant to this question is...

ROBERT: Evan it turns out is something of a snowboarder.

EVAN BECKER: Yep, you know, I've been snowboarding for 20 plus years or so. And friends and I traditionally go up to uh, New Hampshire, Vermont, you know, New England area to go skiing.

ROBERT: And, you know, many years back on one of these group trips they took...

EVAN BECKER: Uh, we—we were skiing and they had recently opened a snow tubing course.

TRACIE HUNTE: Mm-hmm.

ROBERT: And by the way that tiny...

TRACIE: Mm-hmm.

ROBERT: That's our producer, Tracie Hunte.

TRACIE: Mm-hmm.

EVAN BECKER: And everybody's looking at the snow tube course, and someone just posed a question of like how fast do you think that thing goes? Um, and then another friend jumped in and said, "I—I bet you I could get that up to like a hundred miles an hour easily from the top of the mountain." Everybody's like, "No way. You couldn't even do that in perfect conditions".

ROBERT: And from this small, little disagreement...

EVAN BECKER: The great debate began from there. And like that was in 2004.

TRACIE: (Laughs). Oh my god.

EVAN BECKER: So this has been going on for more than a decade.

ROBERT: And over these 10 years going back and forth and back and forth on this question, Evan and his friends gradually focused in on the rules of this argument. And eventually they came on this very specific wording.

EVAN BECKER: So, the question is in perfect conditions within the Earth's atmosphere and not within a vacuum, can you reach 100 miles per hour going down a mountain on a every day snow tube?

ROBERT: Like an inner tube.

EVAN BECKER: Like, the same thing that you'd get if you went to a local hardware store or something like that, nothing fancy, nothing, you know, overly engineered, things like that.

ROBERT: And still to this day some of Evan's friends are like...

EVAN BECKER: Yeah.

ROBERT: ...we can break a hundred miles an hour. We can. But Evan.

EVAN BECKER: I just do see that it could happen.

ROBERT: He says no.

EVAN BECKER: You cannot do this.

ROBERT: But...

DESTIN SANDLIN: I think it can happen. I think it can happen.

ROBERT: That is Destin Sandlin, host of an extremely popular YouTube channel called...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Hey it's me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Everyday.]

ROBERT: And this is important, smarter everyday, 'cause he is very smart. On his channel, what Destin does is he proposes...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: So you've probably observed that cats almost always land on their feet.]

ROBERT: ...questions.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Today's question is why.]

ROBERT: Questions a lot like Evan's which he then proceeds to answer.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Let me introduce you to Gigi, the stunt cat.]

TRACIE: I think, Destin, you're also an actual rocket scientist, a little bit.

DESTIN SANDLIN: Uh, I've only, I've only said that one time. My mom corrected me very quickly.

TRACIE: (Laughs).

DESTIN SANDLIN: She's like...No, I—I'm a...I'm what's called a flight test engineer.

TRACIE: Oh, okay.

DESTIN SANDLIN: So we—we test missiles and helicopters and stuff like that.

JAD: But can I say one thing before we start?

DESTIN SANDLIN: Sure.

JAD: I feel like before we jump to the answering part of this conversation I want to appreciate the question. So I'm —I'm wondering is there some, like, physical...Are there some physical reasons why a hundred would be really hard to do in an innertube-

DESTIN SANDLIN: Yeah.

JAD: ...down a hill?

DESTIN SANDLIN: Yeah. S—s—so this is what I—I thought about when I first heard the question. So, if you think about going down a hill, there's two things that are slowing you down. The first one is the friction with the snow. And the second one is the air resistance.

ROBERT: Which for Destin all boils down to something that he calls...

DESTIN SANDLIN: Drag. It's a 1/2 times the density of the air, times the coefficient of drag, times the cross-sectional...So this started as a really simple question in my mind. And—and as I started gaming out how to, how to do this without killing a person.

ROBERT: (Laughs).

JAD: The—the more I thought about it, the more I realized it can get very, very complicated.

ROBERT: Yeah. I mean, I—I can, I can show you all those equations, but I can't work 'em out on the back of an envelope, mostly because math is hard. (laughs)

ROBERT: Still he did tell us he could...He was pretty confident that he could get this tube to go down more than a hundred miles an hour down the hill.

SCOTT LITTLE: Yes, I'm saying that it can happen.

JAD: And are we sure that somebody hasn't done this and posted like their GoPro video on YouTube?

TERA SANDLIN: Well, there is a Guinness World Record...

TRACIE: Oh.

TERA SANDLIN: ...for gravity-powered snow sled.

JAD: Whoa, what is it?

JAD: What's, what's the world record speed?

ROBERT: What is it?

TRACIE: She's passing me the phone. Um...

ROBERT: Okay so at this moment, Destin's wife, Tera Sandlin, she's in the studio because she's with him on vacation in New York and she's been looking at her iPhone at the Guinness World Record's website.

TERA SANDLIN: Gravity-powered snow sled, 134 kilometers per hour.

JAD: Whoa! That's over a hundred.

TERA SANDLIN: Oh no it isn't. It's at 83.49 miles per hour.

TRACIE: Eighty-three-

DESTIN SANDLIN: Eighty-three. I'm over here questioning everything about what I believe. I mean this is a big moment for me.

JAD: A sled is meant for velocity. A tube is not.

DESTIN SANDLIN: You think that would be faster.

JAD: Oh, man.

DESTIN SANDLIN: Eighty-three miles an hour?

JAD: Oh, ahh.

ROBERT: Oh, we're too slow here.

DESTIN SANDLIN: So—so here's the deal. I—I'm different than most people. I—I'm not going to die in this foxhole if it's clear that I'm wrong. If it's clear that I'm wrong, I'm gonna retract. But...

DESTIN SANDLIN: Okay, so here's where I would go with this. This is what I would do. The—the real big thing that the tube causes a problem in my mind is all the friction on the, on the mountain. Right? So, I mean, within the bounds of the question because he—he went to all these great lengths to define what we could do and what we couldn't, he did not tell us what slope the mountain had to be on. And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to the worst possible mountain imaginable, which is straight down. A cliff, basically.

ROBERT: (Laughs).

TRACIE: Okay, are we all on the party line?

ROBERT: And so with the help of Producer Tracie Hunte...

TRACIE: Evan?

EVAN BECKER: I'm here.

TRACIE: And—and Destin could you hear?

DESTIN SANDLIN: Yeah, I heard Evan. Can you hear me?

ROBERT: We wanted Evan the questioner to hear how Destin's gonna work this thing out.

TRACIE: Good, we're all together.

EVAN BECKER: Super excited to hear what the answers are.

DESTIN SANDLIN: Yeah, so this is ultimately a question about terminal velocity. Right?

EVAN BECKER: Mm-hmm.

DESTIN SANDLIN: So, in theory, if we were to go straight down like out of an airplane, we would go as fast as we could ever go because the only thing contributing to the terminal velocity at that point would be drag.

ROBERT: No friction at all.

DESTIN SANDLIN: And so w—would you accept the answer? If I'm able to go a hundred miles per hour straight down out of an airplane, for example, would you say that it is possible? Maybe even if our, you know, even if our hill is only one degree off of, you know, straight down towards the Earth. That still counts as a hill, right?

EVAN BECKER: Yeah, I—I guess so. You know-

TRACIE: (Laughs).

EVAN BECKER: At least...Yeah, as long as it's going downhill in the Earth's atmosphere, yeah.

DESTIN SANDLIN: So I—I wanna call I've got a buddy named, Paul, here in Alabama. He owns a place called Skydive Alabama. I go to church with him and see him all the time. And, uh (laughs), I think he'd be game.

TRACIE: So, c—is that...Could you, could you, Destin, like I don't know, like, two-way call him from your phone or something'? Is that what—what you think you're gonna try to do?

DESTIN SANDLIN: Yeah. So Paul Russo, here we go. What's up man? Are you ready for me to merge you? All right, Paul, are you there?

PAUL RUSSO: Yes, sir.

TRACIE: Oh, oh. Hi, Paul

DESTIN SANDLIN: Okay.

PAUL RUSSO: How's it going?

TRACIE: And we have Evan who had this, who had this crazy question about snow tubing. (Laughs).

PAUL RUSSO: (Laughs), okay.

EVAN BECKER: Hi there, Paul.

DESTIN SANDLIN: So Paul, let me, let me kinda set the stage here. This...

ROBERT: Okay, so Destin explains the whole innertube thing and he tells his friend, Paul, like we wanna know if you could jump out of a plane, go straight down, could you break the hundred miles per hour barrier?

DESTIN SANDLIN: Is that safe? Can you do a test like that?

PAUL RUSSO: Well, yeah, it—it's totally possible. I've done it.

TRACIE: What? Wait.

PAUL RUSSO: Um, so—(laughs)

JAD: You've done it with an inner tube?

PAUL RUSSO: Absolutely and a raft as well, like, a—a full sized raft.

JAD: What?

PAUL RUSSO: Yeah.

ROBERT: Paul says that on two different occasions, he and a bunch of friends jumped out of an airplane carrying an inflatable flotation device in one hand, and they had—had a watch, a little computer that tracked their speed on the other.

TRACIE: How d—how fast did you go? (laughs)

PAUL RUSSO: Um, in both cases it was over 120.

JAD: Really?

EVAN BECKER: No.

TRACIE: What?

PAUL RUSSO: Yeah. Yeah, it's 100% possible.

JAD: That doesn't count.

ROBERT: No, it does count. It's the same. It's as if, it's as if he had a virtual mountain that he jumped off of.

JAD: The question specifically said on the mountain. Like these guys have been arguing about this for a decade.

ROBERT: Right.

JAD: And we're gonna come back to them and be like no, no just drop it out of an airplane? No, that's cheating. That doesn't resolve anything.

ROBERT: No, the airplane...

JAD: You could be down a mountain and not touch a mountain. True or false?

ROBERT: That's where you go to law school doing stuff like that.

JAD: Well did you read the question? I—I am hereby recusing myself from this whole affair. We have, we have, we have ceased to truly in good faith answer the question.

MAN:What do you mean?

JAD: And furthermore, we get the guy on the phone...

MAN: Wait, look.

JAD: ...and we hoodwink him into accepting a renegotiated uh, contract here of the question.

ROBERT: That's a physicist's logic. That's not-

JAD: No, he got bullied. I am...I will not be a party to this. I—I...No.

[music interlude]

ROBERT: Tell us where we're going next.

JAD: So the next one is from our producer Annie McEwen.

ROBERT: Oh.

JAD: Hello, Annie.

ANNIE MCEWEN: Hello, Jad.

ROBERT: So what are we going to be talking about today?

ANNIE: I don't know.

ROBERT: (laughs)

JAD: What is your—what question do you bring us?

ANNIE: Uh, okay. So, this one is a little bit different because it didn't come in the form of a question, it came in the form of a very tantalizing email.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm

ANNIE: From a fellow named Arne Hendriks.

ROBERT: Arne Hendriks?

ANNIE: Yes. From Amsterdam.

ARNE HENDRIKS: Good morning.

ANNIE: Hi, is this Arne?

ARNE HENDRIKS: Yes, it's me.

ANNIE: And he basically said, "Hey, I'm Arne. I'm an artist. And I just want you all at Radiolab to know that me and my friend...

ARNE HENDRIKS: We are building an island of fat.

ANNIE: ...are building an island of fat."

JAD: (Laughs)

ROBERT: An island of fat.

ANNIE: Yeah, I know. Like I was like of all the things to build an island out of, why fat?

ARNE HENDRIKS: I'm just fascinated by it. I just like thinking about it.

ANNIE: Well, what was like...What's the thing that made you start looking at fat in a curious way? What was the moment?

ARNE HENDRIKS: Well the—the real moment? The real moment was I was sitting together with a friend of mine, Mike Thompson, and we were in a train going to Amsterdam. And we started talking about fat, and that it was such a strange thing, fat. And why was there so much of it?

ANNIE: Were you eating fat or were you feeling fat?

ARNE HENDRIKS: (Laughs).

ANNIE: Or what—what-

ARNE HENDRIKS: I don't know. I mean, we're weird guys.

ANNIE: Right.

ARNE HENDRIKS: We talk about things like this.

ANNIE: (laughs)

ARNE HENDRIKS: But we're probably eating fat, like chips or-

ANNIE: Right.

ARNE HENDRIKS: ...fries or something. And then, we start talking about how in the English newspapers there have been this news stories about fatbergs-

ANNIE: These fatbergs that are under the ground in the sewers of London just like wreaking havoc. And there was one...

JAD: Wait, wait, wait.

ROBERT: Fat what?

JAD: Time out. (laughs)

ANNIE: Yeah.

JAD: What? (laughs)

ROBERT: Spell that word. Fatberg?

JAD: (laughs)

ANNIE: Fatberg. It's actually in the Oxford dictionary since 2015. It's like an actual word now, fatberg.

ROBERT: Like an iceberg?

ANNIE: Yeah.

JAD: Wait. I—in the sewers?

ANNIE: In the sewers.

JAD: Wow. What do those look like?

ANNIE: Well, I mean like, sorta imagine an iceberg, I guess. But th—this one's floating on the water in the tunnels underground in London. And it's made entire of—of fat.

ARNE HENDRIKS: Yeah.

ANNIE: And a little while ago Arne and his friend, Michael, actually got to go down into the sewers to check out these fatbergs.

ARNE HENDRIKS: And it was an amazing experience.

ANNIE: They're sorta like wading through it with these wader—hip waders on, pushing bits and pieces of fat aside.

ARNE HENDRIKS: It—it's just this strange sort of trampoline of gooey stuff inside of the sewer.

ANNIE: Wait. Yeah, let me look it up.

JAD: Wait. Is...You have...Is that a picture of it?

ROBERT: Of a fatberg?

ANNIE: Yeah.

JAD: Oh my god. Wow.

ANNIE: Yeah. So—so it's like this like clumpy, lumpy mass of garbagey fat stuff. It's gray and brown and it's sorta like filled with all this sewer stuff.

ARNE HENDRIKS: Worms live in it.

ROBERT: Eew.

JAD: Whoa!

ARNE HENDRIKS: Uh, fungus grows on it.

ANNIE: And it just like completely blocks the old brick tunnels underground.

JAD: So this is like, this is like based on the things people have eaten, there's so much fat in people's diet so it ends up in the sewers?

ROBERT: So you're fishing...

ANNIE: No, no, no, no it's just like...It's like people throwing fat away. Like taking bacon grease, throwing it down the sink, cooking fat, down the sink.

JAD: What?

ANNIE: Yeah, and in September of this year in London they found a fatberg in the sewers that weighed as much as 11 double decker buses. That's how much fat-

JAD: Shut up.

ANNIE: I know, it's crazy.

ROBERT: In one place?

ANNIE: In one place.

JAD: Oh, my god.

ANNIE: Yeah, and of course...

[NEWS CLIP: Engineers at the Tim’s Water Company in Britain say they've launched a sewer war against a giant fat blog clogging London's sewers.]

ANNIE: The way it's described in the news...

ARNE HENDRIKS: Fat is always a monster.

[NEWS CLIP: A hoard of fatty monsters.]

ARNE HENDRIKS: There will be something positive. It needs to be monitored. It needs to be dealt with. We've conquered it.

[NEWS CLIP: A now familiar enemy.]

[NEWS CLIP: It has a bad rap.]

ANNIE: But, I mean, Arne felt like maybe fat isn't a monster. Maybe it's just like this—this giant thing in the world that's—that's trying to express itself.

ARNE HENDRIKS: It wants to be there. It wants to be seen. It wants to be on stage. It wants some appreciation.

ANNIE: It's fat trying to have a voice and say like listen to me. I am here.

JAD: (Laughs).

ANNIE: Don't throw me down your sink. I'm important. I—I make up 20% of your body, da-da-da-da...

JAD: He's a fat-

ANNIE: So please try and be-

JAD: ...he's a fat evangelist.

ROBERT: Celebrate fat in some way.

ANNIE: He does. He is...

ROBERT: (Laughs).

ANNIE: He was...He is celebrating fat, and so he said that, you know, if as an artist you're trying to explore water, you don't just drink it out of a glass.

ARNE HENDRIKS: You swim in the ocean. You have to ride your bicycle through a rainstorm. This is where you would start to appreciate water in a, in a different way.

ANNIE: So he's trying to do the same kinda thing with fat. Experience it in all these different ways.

ROBERT: Oh.

JAD: He's sick.

ARNE HENDRIKS: We want to walk on it. We wanted to sort of make fat angels. Not snow angels-

ANNIE: (Laughs).

ARNE HENDRIKS: We wanna make fat angels.

ANNIE: (Laughs).

ARNE HENDRIKS: Um, we just want to have this different relationship with fat, I guess.

ROBERT: And is that where he came up with the majestic al idea of building a fat island?

ANNIE: That's right.

JAD: Did he make...Did he actually make one?

ANNIE: Yeah, yeah, he's making one right now. Uh, he's got like this like spot off the wharf in Amsterdam. And right there in the ocean water, he's building this little floating blob of fat.

ARNE HENDRIKS: We're melting fat. We're rendering fat from waste materials from the butcher. Sometimes we are just buying it and we're melting it and then pouring it onto the island, making it bigger and bigger.

ANNIE: And—and right now it's like 15 feet across, and it's just—just like there hanging out.

ARNE HENDRIKS: Bopping up and down and side to side and it's sort of, you know, it's alive. It moves. It's—it, you know, it's always changing. So we give ourselves maybe another half year or year and then it should be finished. And...

ANNIE: And could you...How—how, actually how big do you hope to get it? Can you think of like as big as a truck or a blue whale?

ARNE HENDRIKS: Bigger.

ANNIE: Bigger than a blue whale?

ARNE HENDRIKS: Like a baby...no, no (laughs). Oh my god, that would be amazing.

ANNIE: (Laughs)

ARNE HENDRIKS: Yes, of course my dreams are like that. My dream is that I wouldn’t be able to see the end of it.

ANNIE: Oh. Wow.

ARNE HENDRIKS: But that's not real—realistic, I suppose.

ANNIE: (Laughs).

ARNE HENDRIKS: I mean the size of two or three trucks would be amazing already. And then you have a real thing. I mean, you'll probably be able to stand on it. That's the thing. I would like to be able to stand on it. That would be pretty good. Then and then you can realistically call it an island somehow.

ANNIE: Definitely. Yep.

ARNE HENDRIKS: Yeah.

ANNIE: Wow (laughs).

ARNE HENDRIKS: It's a bit strange. I know it's strange. But but I know that I love it. Yeah, I know that when I'm there, I—I—I really love that little sort of thing that is there in the water.

ANNIE: Do you have...If—if we were to use this as as part of the show, I need you to give me some kind of question that I can try and answer about fat. And it sounds like you are-

ARNE HENDRIKS: Yeah.

ANNIE: ...are doing a lot of questioning.

ARNE HENDRIKS: Well I—I would really like to know when like I'm very, very, very curious about the relationship between life and fat. Was there first life or first fat?

ANNIE: Okay.

ARNE HENDRIKS: Uh, or—or even when did fat start? Because we know when certain species of animals started and when the...We know more or less when the universe was created. Right?

ANNIE: Yes.

ARNE HENDRIKS: But—but when did fat start? When was the first fat?

ANNIE: Okay.

ARNE HENDRIKS: This is something that I would love to know.

JAD: When was the first fat?

ROBERT: The first fat.

JAD: That's interesting.

ROBERT: Yeah, and a—actually it turns out that the very, very first version of fat has been around for like a pretty long time.

TOM MCCOLLOM: As long as our solar system has been around, before.

JAD: Wow.

ANNIE: And so this is like big bang we're talking or?

TOM MCCOLLOM: Well, no it would've been after that, after the star formed and exploded.

ANNIE: Ah.

TOM MCCOLLOM: Then you could start forming these things.

ANNIE: Okay, so this is aqua geochemist, Tom McCollom.

TOM MCCOLLOM: I'm i—I'm in my pajamas. (Laughs).

ANNIE: Oh, that's so great.

ANNIE: Got ahold of him during the Thanksgiving week. Um...So Tom told me that the earliest, earliest version of fat was...

TOM MCCOLLOM: A carbon, hydrogen, oxygen compound.

ANNIE: Called...

TOM MCCOLLOM: Fatty acid.

ANNIE: Fatty acid.

TOM MCCOLLOM: Yes.

JAD: Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen.

ANNIE: Mm-hmm. So first you need hydrogen, and hydrogen comes along with the big bang. So we get that really early. Um, then we have to wait for a star to form, a star to get old, a star to die and explode and then you get carbon and oxygen.

TOM MCCOLLOM: Yes.

ANNIE: And that carbon and oxygen along with the hydrogen is now sorta swirling around in this interstellar space dust stuff. And when those three things come together, they start to make these—these shapes.

TOM MCCOLLOM: So we have like a chain of carbons linked together, and each one of those carbons has a couple of hydrogens bonded to it.

ANNIE: So you got a carbon, hydrogen chain. And then...

TOM MCCOLLOM: At one end is what's called the carboxyl group.

ANNIE: And that's like a little group at the top that's got carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in it.

TOM MCCOLLOM: Yeah.

ANNIE: So, I like to think of it kinda like a flower. Like the stem of the flower is hydrogen, carbon. The petals of the flower contain oxygen as well as carbon and hydrogen. And there's fat, in it's little flower-like shape, long before the Earth existed. Floating around in space.

JAD: Mmm.

ANNIE: So then the sun and the moon and the Earth and the planets form and you've got our solar system. And on the surface of the Earth after it's cooled, you got fatty acid. Now we don't know exactly how they got there whether they formed on the Earth itself or it came from like...

TOM MCCOLLOM: Comets and meteorites.

ANNIE: ...smacking into Earth. But the important thing is that fatty acids are there. And there's also a lot of water there. And the water is important because the—the thing about these little fatty acids is that...

TOM MCCOLLOM: It has a—a hydrophobic end to the molecule.

ANNIE: So hydroph—phobic means like scared of water. So it—it-

TOM MCCOLLOM: Yeah, yeah.

ANNIE: ...it—it is adverse.

TOM MCCOLLOM: It does not like water.

ANNIE: (Laughs). Okay.

TOM MCCOLLOM: (Laughs).

ANNIE: So our fatty acid flowers, the oxygen end, the the flower end?

TOM MCCOLLOM: That's the end that kind of likes water.

ANNIE: And the stem end...

TOM MCCOLLOM: Doesn't like to be in water.

ANNIE: And so if there's water, the stems are like, "Ah, we need to get away from it." And so all these flowers form this—you could imagine it like a—a bouquet that is so full that it is a sphere. So all the flowers are on the outside 'cause the love water and all the stems are on the inside and they're hiding from the water.

JAD: That's interesting. So all the fat—all the fat flowers join together because it allows the water hating parts to hide.

ANNIE: Yeah.

JAD: And the watering loving parts to be on the surface.

ANNIE: Yeah.

JAD: But this all like long pre-life.

ANNIE: This is life has no idea what it is yet.

JAD: Wow.

ANNIE: Life hasn't even thought about coming on the scene.

JAD: Interesting.

ANNIE: But there is a theory. I—it's one of many theories out there. But there's an idea that when these little fat flower bubbles form in the sort of primordial sea, they're kinda taking...

TOM MCCOLLOM: A little sample of the fluid that's surrounding them.

ANNIE: Inside with them.

TOM MCCOLLOM: So what's ever in your fluid...

ANNIE: Right.

TOM MCCOLLOM: ...just gonna get trapped inside there.

ANNIE: So on the inside they've got some things.

ROBERT: Some visitors.

ANNIE: Some visitors. And the theory goes that maybe one of the things around in the sea that ended up getting pulled inside one of those fat bubbles was a little floaty bit of genetic material. Like—like a little bit of RNA.

ANNIE: And then for the first time ever, instead of random bits of RNA floating around in a soupy sea, you have a cell. For the first time you have an inside. You have a you separate from...

JAD: Ah.

ANNIE: ...the soup around you.

JAD: So, the fat ball...

ROBERT: These fatty little threesomes...

JAD: Uh (Laughs).

ROBERT: ...that floated in from outer space and maybe landed here or...

JAD: Wow, that's so cool.

ROBERT: ...maybe was the first container that made life possible.

ANNIE: That's right.

TOM MCCOLLOM: I don't think there is—is any way really to have anything like we call a living being without having a membrane, something to separate it from the surroundings.

ROBERT: Fat is really important, profoundly important.

ANNIE: Fat is—is...Without fat there would be no us. There would be no Arne.

JAD: I love it. We are, we—we are, we are, we are built in houses of fat.

ROBERT: So that means when you get your soap bar out in the shower, you should give it some respect.

JAD: Is—is soap fat?

ROBERT: Yeah, I think so.

ANNIE: Yeah, it has fat in it.

JAD: Is it?

SOREN WHEELER: Yeah.

ANNIE: Yeah.

JAD: Oh.

ROBERT: Traditional soap is just fat I think.

ANNIE: Yeah.

JAD: Really?

SOREN: Yeah.

JAD: Shit, I didn't know that.

ANNIE: That's okay. You don't know everything, Jad.

ROBERT: I mean...

JAD: (Laughs)

ANNIE: But I think...I'm actually really excited for Arne to hear this because I feel like...I mean, what can convey awe the way that the beginning of life can?

ROBERT: Oh, you haven't told him this then?

ANNIE: No, I haven't. Can you hear me?

ROBERT: Ooh, I wonder what he'll say.

ANNIE: Arne?

ARNE HENDRIKS: Yeah.

ANNIE: Oh great. Okay.

ANNIE: So, I called Arne again, and this time he was at a conference.

ARNE HENDRIKS: All my coats are covered in fat now. I had to go to this conference. I didn't know what—what coat to wear-

ANNIE: Oh no.

ARNE HENDRIKS: ...because they're all fatty.

ANNIE: (Laughs).

ARNE HENDRIKS: Luckily I found an old coat. But, you know, everything is covered in fat.

ANNIE: (Laughs).

ARNE HENDRIKS: Oh yes, how this is taking over my life and I just have to deal with it. Anyway.

ANNIE: Um, so, I wanted to tell you what my scientist told me about the earliest form of fat.

ARNE HENDRIKS: First fat.

ANNIE: Can I tell you?

ARNE HENDRIKS: Yes, please.

ANNIE: Okay. So, I'm trying to think of a way to put this succinctly. Okay, so I told him everything I learned. This world it makes a barrier, barrier between us and the rest of the rest of the world. It makes, it makes us.

ARNE HENDRIKS: Really?

ANNIE: Yeah, yeah and it could be that theses like, these like early, early fatty acids are the thing that make life as we know it possible.

ARNE HENDRIKS: I suspected it. I suspected it.

ANNIE: Really? Why?

ARNE HENDRIKS: Yes.

ANNIE: How did...

ARNE HENDRIKS: I don't know. Intuition I guess. It's beautiful. This is how-

ANNIE: I know.

ARNE HENDRIKS: ...it's supposed to be. This is what I've always dreamt of.

ANNIE: Wh-

ARNE HENDRIKS: The berg starts to generate enthusiasm and love. And so this is-

ANNIE: Uh-huh.

ARNE HENDRIKS: ...so nice that you are not telling me things that I don't know.

ANNIE: Oh good.

ARNE HENDRIKS: This is great. This is why—this is why I lived for this kind of moment. So nice. (laughs).

ANNIE: Thanks, guys.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: Yeah, nice Annie.

ANNIE: Thanks.

JAD: A lot of people to thank for this these few episodes. This was actually a real group effort but particular props to producers Tracie Hunte and Matt Kielty for...

ROBERT: Yep.

JAD: ...spearheading the whole thing.

ROBERT: And to Bethel.

JAD: And to Bethel Habte for a—a huge production assist.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: And should you have a question that's—that's burning in your brain...

ROBERT: We know exactly who to send it to.

JAD: ...like a thousand suns.

ROBERT: Yes.

JAD: Send it to us at Radiolab(@)wnyc.org and also Krulwich(@)wnyc.org. He like...

ROBERT: No, no, no. I don't-

JAD: ...to get them personally.

ROBERT: No, he don't particularly. Not particularly.

JAD: Send them directly to him.

ROBERT: I think they should go to the—to the post office box.

JAD: And he does particularly like it when you stand on the sidewalk just outside his window and say, "Krul, I'm furious with curiosity."

ROBERT: (Laughs), I don't because I'm on the fifth floor. You'd have to be very tall, or in a tree.

JAD: Okay, we should say—we should say goodbye. I'm—I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Thank you for listening and for questing with us.

ROBERT: Yes. Uh, yes, questing.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Here's a question. (singing). What does this mean, you ask. I've been wondering all day too. Let's get to our next question. Here it is.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: How did you do that?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Do what?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: That.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: What?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: That.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: What?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: That.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: What?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Time for another question so let's get to it, player.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Let me take another question.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: What's the question?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: That is the question.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I'm looking for a couple witnesses today.]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: To play the message, press two.]

[TIM ADLER: Hello, this is Timothy Adler, father of Simon Adler from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is produced by Soren Wheeler. Dylan Keefe is our Director of Sound Design. Maria Matasar-Padilla is our Managing Director. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Becca Bressler, Rachael Cusick, David Gabel, Bethel Habte, Tracie Hunte, Matt Kielty, Robert Krulwich, Annie McEwen, Latif Nasser, Malissa O'Donnell, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. With help from Amanda Aronczyk, Shima Oliaee, David Fuchs, Nigar Fatale, Phoebe Wang and Katie Ferguson. Our fact checker is Michelle Harris.]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: End of message.]

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