May 30, 2014

Transcript
The Explorer's Club & The Sugar Egg

 

[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD: Hey I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab. And today ...

ROBERT: We're gonna begin in a place.

WILL ROSEMAN: Robert, come in here. Check out this.

ROBERT: Oh! Oh my God!

ROBERT: A place full of wonderful things.

WILL ROSEMAN: This is the actual sled that Henson and Peary used to first go to the North Pole. These are Napoleon's books on his conquest to Egypt.

TAMAR LEWIN: Look at the antlers over there.

JAD: Hey so wait, where are you exactly?

ROBERT: Well, before I tell you that let me just explain something. My wife and I, Tamar, have been having an argument for roughly—it's going on now 40 years, and it's always about things.

JAD: Like objects?

ROBERT: Like objects, yes. So as you know ...

JAD: You have a thing about things.

ROBERT: You give me, like, an autograph, like an Abraham Lincoln autograph, I think, okay.

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: Abe Lincoln stood in front of this very piece of paper in order to write his signature in this very way. He had to be standing exactly where I'm standing, and therefore he and I share this space. I literally believe that I am standing in Abraham Lincoln's shadow. So to touch an Abraham Lincoln autograph is a form of time travel, a form of love. It's all those things, and I can do that without even blinking.

JAD: Right.

ROBERT: Tamar ...

TAMAR LEWIN: Not at all. But also, Robert's sense of the magic of it extends to—we have a really, really ugly floor lamp from a long time ago. And every time I would say, "Enough already let's get rid of it," he would say ...

ROBERT: It's older than me.

TAMAR LEWIN: "I've had it all my life."

ROBERT: Which makes it beautiful.

TAMAR LEWIN: No.

ROBERT: You don't have that at all?

TAMAR LEWIN: I don't have that at all.

ROBERT: So in honor of our topic today, I decided that we're gonna settle this argument once and for all. I took Tamar to the Explorer's Club right here in Manhattan.

JAD: Ah. Wait, what's the Explorer's Club?

ROBERT: It's a little—a private club where explorers deposit things that they collected.

WILL ROSEMAN: Everything in this building has some historical significance in some sense.

ROBERT: That's Will Roseman, the executive director. He gave us a tour.

WILL ROSEMAN: This is the actual bell from the SS Roosevelt when Peary and Henson first went to the North Pole. How cool is that?

TAMAR LEWIN: Very cool, but not magic.

WILL ROSEMAN: Cool doesn't cut it.

TAMAR LEWIN: No.

WILL ROSEMAN: The chair over there belonged to the empress dowager of China, the last emperor's wife.

ROBERT: What do you mean? That chair there?

ROBERT: He points to what looks like a little desk chair.

ROBERT: The empress dowager of China sat in it?

WILL ROSEMAN: Yeah, that was her chair.

TAMAR LEWIN: Does this make you want to sit in it?

ROBERT: Yes. Why don't you sit in it first?

ROBERT: She sits.

TAMAR LEWIN: Nothing.

ROBERT: You feel nothing?

TAMAR LEWIN: Nothing.

ROBERT: All right, just close your eyes ...

TAMAR LEWIN: Nothing.

ROBERT: ... and imagine that you are the last empress in a hugely long line of Chinese empresses going back probably a thousand years.

TAMAR LEWIN: I would order them to make more comfortable chairs.

ROBERT: [laughs] Wait, don't get up yet. Just give it a chance.

TAMAR LEWIN: There's nothing that's going to seep into me.

ROBERT: Yes there is!

TAMAR LEWIN: No there isn't.

JAD: I don't know, man.

ROBERT: Look, look, this was never going to be easy. Tamar is a New York Times reporter, very reasonable, very sensible. After all, it was just a chair. This was just the beginning. They have things in this place—I was gonna break her, step by step. Will walked us to the next room ...

WILL ROSEMAN: These are ...

ROBERT: ... where they had pieces of fabric that were framed, on display.

WILL ROSEMAN: Scraps of—you know, early planes were made out of canvas, and these are actual pieces of those early planes. Here's the Wright Brothers' plane.

ROBERT: What do you mean? Do you mean this is the fabric from the actual first ...

WILL ROSEMAN: Absolutely.

ROBERT: Oh my!

ROBERT: There was a small brown piece of fabric, not much larger than your fist. It was cut from the wing of their first airplane.

ROBERT: So the wind rushed over that little piece of fabric the first time.

WILL ROSEMAN: Yeah.

ROBERT: Wow.

TAMAR LEWIN: Very cool, very interesting. Happy to see it.

ROBERT: No, but when you're standing next to the fabric that lifted into the sky for this first time in America, you don't feel just a touch closer to Wilbur and Orville Wright. Not even a touch?

TAMAR LEWIN: I feel, what a wonderful collection. How interesting.

ANDY MILLS: I mean I'm feeling it. I'm feeling it. That's amazing.

JAD: And Tamar?

TAMAR LEWIN: Do I feel that? No.

ROBERT: So...

WILL ROSEMAN: I'm trying to think of something that will ...

ANDY: He's trying to pull out the big guns.

ROBERT: I don't see how you can get bigger than what you already offered.

WILL ROSEMAN: Well, there's more.

ROBERT: All right.

WILL ROSEMAN: Maybe this will convince you. This is an actual flag, an Explorer's Club flag that accompanied Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong when they first landed on the moon in 1969.

ROBERT: Oh!

WILL ROSEMAN: This is one of these cool things.

ROBERT: Oh my God. That piece of cloth right there?

WILL ROSEMAN: It is, yeah.

ROBERT: It was on the moon?

WILL ROSEMAN: Absolutely. It was carried by Neil Armstrong when he first landed on the moon in 1969.

ROBERT: Oh my God!

ROBERT: It was in a little glass box. You could see it was a royal blue Explorer's Club flag. Very small, probably made of silk.

ROBERT: You'd let her touch it?

WILL ROSEMAN: Yeah, I can. You know what, I'll have to get the key.

ROBERT: Let's have her touch the flag that was the first flag ever, on the day that humans got onto the moon.

TAMAR LEWIN: What do you think is going to happen? You think I will—emanation will come, there will be sparks ...

ROBERT: Yes.

TAMAR LEWIN: ... that go into my body, and suddenly, boom!

ROBERT: Yes! Yes! Okay we've opened up the cabinet, you've now got it in your hands.

WILL ROSEMAN: Go ahead, Tamar.

TAMAR LEWIN: It feels very nice. It feels nice.

ROBERT: It's a little flag. This was on the moon.

TAMAR LEWIN: Yes, so ...

ROBERT: This was on the moon, brought there by the people who—from our planet. The first people ever to land on the moon, and they brought this with them.

TAMAR LEWIN: Yes.

ROBERT: Touch it again.

TAMAR LEWIN: Okay. Okay, you touch it.

ROBERT: Well I'm gonna touch it.

TAMAR LEWIN: Okay.

ROBERT: All right, here I go.

WILL ROSEMAN: Pretty neat, right?

ROBERT: Oh, man.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, NASA: It's good, Neil. We can see you coming down the ladder now. ]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Neil Armstrong: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.]

WILL ROSEMAN: Andy, you better touch it.

ANDY: I mean, I'm pretty pumped to touch it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Neil Armstrong: The surface is fine and powdery.]

ANDY: Tamar, you don't get any of this?

TAMAR LEWIN: No, I don't get a swoon.

ROBERT: How can you not get a swoon from this?

TAMAR LEWIN: I don't get a swoon.

ROBERT: This is the first trip to the moon!

TAMAR LEWIN: I know.

ANDY: This sent shivers up my spine.

TAMAR LEWIN: I mean, I don't have it. I just—I don't have it.

ROBERT: That's so ...

TAMAR LEWIN: I got to go to work, so ...

ROBERT: Okay.

WILL ROSEMAN: All right, well ...

TAMAR LEWIN: This has been a total treat.

WILL ROSEMAN: It was our pleasure. Thanks so much for coming.

ANDY: [laughs] You lose!

ROBERT: Oh, man!

JAD: Look, maybe she's just open to the future. She doesn't want to have to carry all that baggage that came up.

ROBERT: I think that's exactly right.

JAD: You know ...

ROBERT: That's what she'd say.

JAD: You're going into a swoon about a lamp that's clearly an ugly ass lamp.

ROBERT: That's not an ugly ass ...

JAD: And she's like, "Throw out the lamp."

ROBERT: Don't take her side.

JAD: "Give me a new lamp."

ROBERT: No.

JAD: "Let's be available to the new lamps of the world." That's what she's saying.

ROBERT: I'm not going to admit or even consider anything you just said. Except that you're probably right about the future orientation.

JAD: Do you know what else I'm right about?

ROBERT: What?

JAD: That every story that we have in this hour is basically that argument you just had with your wife in story form.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: Object form.

ROBERT: In each of these stories there's a thing, and the thing beckons.

JAD: Or not. Today on Radiolab ...

ROBERT: Things.

JAD: Everybody say something.

VIN LIOTA: Hello.

ROBERT: Hello.

JAD: Hello. All right so what are we doing?

VIN LIOTA: Well, we're talking about objects, I believe.

JAD: Yeah.

VIN LIOTA: And I understand you guys are kicking around some ideas, but it seems my ideas are in a bit of different orbit than yours are. Maybe there's a connection.

JAD: Yeah, I don't know that we have an orbit yet. I think we've launched.

JAD: Okay so our first story comes from TV producer Vin Liota, longtime TV guy, who connected up with us because it turns out he is making a documentary about this very thing, people's connection to objects.

VIN LIOTA: My interest in objects is things that sort of have accidentally gotten meaning.

JAD: For Vin, even if you have a little scrap that's gone to the moon and back ...

VIN LIOTA: It's nothing compared to Rick Rawlins' sugar egg.

JAD: Rick Rawlins' sugar egg?

VIN LIOTA: Rick Rawlins' sugar egg.

ROBERT: Rick Rawlins' sugar egg?

VIN LIOTA: Yes!

JAD: Actually, the story he wanted to tell us has three parts.

VIN LIOTA: It's about a candy egg, a box, and a tree.

JAD: A candy egg, a box ...

ROBERT: A box, and a tree.

VIN LIOTA: Yeah, so this is what I would suggest is I have some clips, some short clips, and I'd like to sort of weave the clips together, sort of get—maybe throw it out that way, rather than telling you about them. Why don't we try ...

JAD: I see we're dealing with a storyteller.

ROBERT: Yes.

VIN LIOTA: Wait until you hear the clips first, right? Okay, let me just play a clip. This is, like, a short clip. This is just an intro to Rick.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: I love this box.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Vin Liota: Wow!]

VIN LIOTA: It's beautiful, about the size of a shirt box.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: It's made out of maple. Very light in color, very delicate.]

VIN LIOTA: And he keeps his most treasured objects in it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: One of them is this sugar egg that we were talking about.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Vin Liota: It's not a real egg?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: No, it's molded sugar. It's hollow in the center, light yellow.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Vin Liota: Something someone might eat?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: Someone might eat it. I have not eaten it. I've saved it since 1970 when I was given this egg.]

JAD: Since 1970? What? He saved it?

VIN LIOTA: Yeah.

JAD: This is an edible egg?

VIN LIOTA: This is an edible egg. Yes.

ROBERT: Does it stay edible if you kept it from 1970?

VIN LIOTA: It looks remarkably good for a 40-year-old ...

JAD: It hasn't dissolved under the weight of time, and it's ...

VIN LIOTA: No, apparently it's—well, it's pristine. I've seen it.

ROBERT: What is a sugar egg? What is that? I've never heard of it.

VIN LIOTA: Well, apparently it's half of an egg. It's hollow, it's made out of sugar, and you would put things like jelly beans in it. You seal the edges with frosting, and then you decorate the outside of it.

ROBERT: So there must have been some reason why he has memorialized this egg.

VIN LIOTA: Well, I'm glad you mentioned it. I just happen to have another clip to play for you.

ROBERT: [laughs] Imagine my surprise!

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: The day that we were to leave ...]

VIN LIOTA: Oh wait, can we stop for a second?

JAD: Yeah sure.

VIN LIOTA: I'm sorry. You know, I didn't set it up, because one of the things I have to say about Rick was, when he was kid his family moved around a lot.

JAD: Apparently, Rick's dad did a lot of work for the government, so almost every year he would find himself in a totally different town.

VIN LIOTA: And to make things worse, he was a very shy kid.

JAD: Kept to himself a lot.

VIN LIOTA: So for Rick, friendship just often seemed impossible.

JAD: But Vin says there was this one moment ...

VIN LIOTA: When he was eight, they lived in Washington State, only for a year. And he found himself in a dilemma because he had finally made a friend, and his friend David invited him to a birthday party.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: But it happened to be that his birthday party was scheduled the very day that we were to move again. So my father was once again transferred, this time from Washington back to Idaho. And my parents had decided that I couldn't attend the birthday party because there wasn't time. So the moving van was sitting there, everybody was ready to go. And I don't think I even asked my parents. I don't think they know that I left, but I took off, and I ran up the street to David's house. I still can picture this moment. His house was a brick house, and he had a large porch that was completely empty. And I know that I paused there. Even though I was only eight, I must have known that our friendship really wasn't at the point where it demanded a goodbye, especially if that meant that I had to interrupt his birthday party. But I rang the doorbell, and his mother answered the door. And I remember seeing, basically from her knees down and beyond her into the back of the house, which was bright and loud where the party was going on. And a few seconds later, David showed up. He was kind of behind her, and I don't remember saying a word.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Vin Liota: You were just standing at the front door?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: I was just frozen and standing there, completely embarrassed, and not knowing why I had done this. And I was about to leave, when David's mom apparently asked him to go get something, and he left, and a few seconds later returned and handed me this yellow sugar egg.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Vin Liota: The very same egg here in your box?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: Yes. I walked back to my parents' house. We were loaded into the back of their station wagon, and we drove from there to Idaho. And I know that I held this in my hand the entire way. I didn't let go of it. I put it in a drawer, and it has lived in various places for all these years.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Vin Liota: Why?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: Yes, it begs the question, doesn't it? You know, the truth is I knew its importance immediately, and it hasn't changed. I looked at this egg, and it was proof, physical proof that I had been invited to a birthday party, and that there was a hope of making a friendship. And I held onto it because I needed that proof.]

ROBERT: That's actually very wonderful.

VIN LIOTA: Yeah, yeah. But wait, there's the tree, the tree. We did the box, we did the egg, but then there's the tree.

JAD: Do we need the tree? The egg, I'm swept into the egg.

VIN LIOTA: No, I'll bring it together! I'll bring the narrative threads together!

JAD: I want more egg, Vin. Give me more egg.

ROBERT: Exactly.

VIN LIOTA: No, we need to play the tree.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: So yeah, my parents bought a home in Idaho.]

JAD: This is right after the egg incident?

VIN LIOTA: Yeah.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: This is in the Snake River Valley in Idaho. It's very flat, it's very wide.]

VIN LIOTA: Their new backyard was a barren landscape.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: So my family, they started planting all kind of things in the yard. They planted apple trees, and pine trees, cherry. And amongst them was a maple tree.]

VIN LIOTA: That was Rick's favorite.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: It grew very quickly, and it enveloped the house in a certain way.]

VIN LIOTA: In the breeze ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: Oh, it sounded like suede rubbed together, just amplified by hundreds of thousands of leaves. It was beautiful.]

VIN LIOTA: Rick lived there with his family for 10 years, until college.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: I moved to Boston, and I learned that my father had decided that the tree was planted too close to the house, and it would damage the foundation. And he chopped it down. It was a massacre. It was brutal, and I was very upset. And so my mother, knowing that, she mailed me a package, and I opened it to find that she had placed in it some small sprouted seedlings from the original maple tree.

VIN LIOTA: Rick dug a hole in the backyard ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: And plopped it in the ground, behind the garage.]

VIN LIOTA: And it thrived.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: It grew really well, and within a number of years it had grown to be a 30-foot tree, reminding me, obviously, of the tree I had loved and lost in Idaho. And it became so large, unfortunately, that it also caught the attention of my landlord, who tragically—one night I got back from work to discover that he had chopped down the maple tree.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Vin Liota: The son of the tree?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: The son of the tree.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Vin Liota: The same grisly end.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: Well, you would think so. I went out into the yard that night, and I salvaged these sections of the tree.]

VIN LIOTA: Rick gave the wood to a friend.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: A furniture maker in Gloucester, Massachusetts.]

VIN LIOTA: Who turned into a box.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: This box. The one right here, made from the maple that grew from ...]

VIN LIOTA: You know the story.

ROBERT: Yeah. Wow!

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: There's this continuity, I find such comfort from that. So it in turn holds all these objects that have their own individual stories and their own meaning to me.]

VIN LIOTA: One of them ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: Is this yellow sugar egg.]

JAD: The egg, the tree, and the box.

VIN LIOTA: Yeah.

ROBERT: That's nice.

JAD: That's really nice, Vin.

ROBERT: That's very nice.

JAD: Although part of me—doesn't part of you want to smack Rick a little bit, and be like …

VIN LIOTA: Well no, yeah, I certainly—okay. It's a [bleep] tree. You're living in the past. Move on! No, I actually don't.

ROBERT: No, not me.

VIN LIOTA: Yeah.

ROBERT: If he could put the box in a house made from the teeth of his dog, with the thing I would say, Okay, just keep multiplying it."

JAD: Oh, how I wished we had left it there.

LYNN LEVY: You know, the thing about objects is that, like, you can't really experience them unless you touch them and interact with them. Like, that's how you get the essence of what's in there.

JAD: But at a certain point our producer Lynn Levy, who really produced this show, had this great idea for an experiment that we could do.

LYNN: Where we would make 3D-printed versions of the objects in the stories and then have, like, an exhibit where people can come and see them while they listen to the audio. Or even if they have access to a 3D printer, they could just print a version, wherever they are.

JAD: So we asked Rick if we could scan his egg.

RICK RAWLINS: I'm not sure what will happen, but I thought it was an intriguing idea.

JAD: He was game, so Lynn found a place that does that near him. We asked him to bring his egg in, the technician put it into the scanner.

LYNN: It's a machine that takes, like, 360-degree images.

JAD: Which you can then use to print a replica.

RICK RAWLINS: Just a little bit of melted plastic and voila, there it is.

JAD: And here's what happened: Rick dropped the egg off for a scan, this egg that he had been cherishing for over 40 years.

RICK RAWLINS: I had to leave it for a couple of hours.

JAD: Shortly after he does he gets a call from the scanning technician who tells him something happened.

RICK RAWLINS: You know, she said, "The bottom line is the egg is broken." She said, "I hope it wasn't a family heirloom."

JAD: Vin met up with Rick as he was just getting back from the print shop with his bag of egg pieces.

RICK RAWLINS: I closed this up at the store. I didn't really even look too much. Oh my God! It looks like it's in about seven pieces in this plastic bag. There it is. Yes?

JAD: Hi is this Rick?

RICK RAWLINS: It is Rick.

JAD: How are you? This is Jad from Radiolab.

RICK RAWLINS: Jad. Hi, how are you doing?

JAD: I just need to say that we are so, so, so, so sorry about what happened.

LYNN: I never had my heart sink in that way from any email I've ever opened.

RICK RAWLINS: Well, I thank you. Thank you. It was such a strange clash to walk into this store that is devoted to the future, and all these machines sitting around that are turning out almost magically these new things. And I, on the other hand, am standing there to collect the shards of a sugar egg that I've held onto for 40-plus years. And ...

JAD: Wow.

RICK RAWLINS: I just felt a dullness, kind of heavy, like everything was just a little bit muddied for a while. It took a little while for that to wear off, and it did with an amazing clarity.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: Hey, Max. Emily.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Max: Hi.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Emily: Hey, Rick.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: Good to see you. Come on in.]

RICK RAWLINS: One morning, I think it was two days after the egg had been broken ...

JAD: He says he woke up ...

RICK RAWLINS: And an idea came to me.

JAD: He thought, "I should call Max."

RICK RAWLINS: Max.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Max: I already finished an egg.]

JAD: Max is the son of a friend of his who lives down the street.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: So we do one-and-a-half tablespoons.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Max: Yeah.]

RICK RAWLINS: He's eight. Exactly the same age that I was when I got the first egg.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Max: And a scoop of yellow sand.]

RICK RAWLINS: And so I asked him if he would help me recreate ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Max: A nice big scoop.]

RICK RAWLINS: ... the sugar egg.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Max: Go in right here.]

RICK RAWLINS: He kind of smiled, and said, "Sure."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Max: How many drops?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: Maybe two. Now that you've got some in there already.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Max: And a scoop of yellow sand.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: Mm-hmm.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Max: Nice big scoop, go in right here. Already finished an egg. Ooh.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: Whoa, all but one. I was exactly your age.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Max: So exactly eight?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: Exactly eight years old, and I was invited to a friend's birthday party.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Max: Yeah?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rick Rawlins: And I couldn't go because my family was moving to another ...]

ROBERT: Special thanks to Vin Liota, who provided us with much of the tape you just heard of Rick and—well, pretty much the whole thing. He is doing a documentary, which is why he's got all of that stuff, about people who attach to everyday things.

JAD: Oh, and in terms of the egg breaking, we actually—we found somebody who does, like, restoration for movie stuff, and we've offered Rick to have that person fix the egg with epoxy or whatever.

ROBERT: An offer he agreed to accept.

JAD: Happy to say. And also, interestingly enough, mid-scan, you know the scan that broke the egg?

ROBERT: Yeah?

JAD: Actually, we have that scan, because the scanning machine was actually running at the very moment when the egg broke. So we actually have a scan of the millisecond when it fell apart.

ROBERT: Really?

JAD: It's at Radiolab.org.

[VIN LIOTA: Hi, this is Vin Liota.]

[RICK RAWLINS: Hi, this is Rick Rawlins.]

[VIN LIOTA: Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation, and ...]

[RICK RAWLINS: And the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

[VIN LIOTA: ... the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: End of message.]

 

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