[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LATIF NASSER: This is Radiolab. I'm Latif Nasser.

LULU MILLER: And I'm Lulu Miller.

LATIF: And Simon Adler is here again with another mixtape story? What is happening?

LULU: [laughs]

SIMON ADLER: Final one, I promise. I promise.

LULU: I don't believe—for sure don't believe you.

SIMON: Well, they might—they might come up in a story, but it won't be as a—it won't be about it. How about that? But I'm gonna just say that this is the story that started it all for me.

LULU: And we should say for listeners who don't know, Simon a few years back pitched us this whole series about the mixtape. We were initially a little hesitant to do a whole series on a mixtape.

LATIF: Well, because it sounded like a hipster ...

LULU: Fantasia.

LATIF: Yeah. But it was very good. It was very good, and then it finished, but it didn't finish for you.

SIMON: No. Well, it'll never be finished for me.

LULU: [laughs]

SIMON: But for you all, there is one more: this multimedia live show, filled with completely new stories that we called Mixtapes to the Moon. And that is what we're gonna play today.

ANNOUNCER: Please welcome senior producer Simon Adler and the team from Radiolab!

[applause]

LULU: And this was—when you say that, like, this was what brought you in? This is the story that—that started it for you?

SIMON: Absolutely, yeah. Because it starts off with this zany notion that a cassette tape, you know, could change your life, and then goes on to show how it changed the lives of all of us.

SIMON: I say that line and I get one of two responses. One is this, all of you laughing, to which I say, "Wait how you feel at the end."

LULU: All right, so here we go: live from WBUR's CitySpace.

SIMON: And so tonight we've got a show for you. We are going to go from a mall to the dark side of the moon, rewinding into the not-so-distant past, looking for how the hell we all came to feel so alone. But first, as one does with a story, let's start at the beginning, with this guy.

SHAD HELMSTETTER: I'm Shad Helmstetter, and I'm glad to be with you.

SIMON: Okay. Well, do you mind if I just jump in with some questions for you?

SHAD HELMSTETTER: Please do.

SIMON: Okay.

SIMON: Shad here grew up in Minnesota. Today he lives in Florida. And I called him up to discuss a life-changing shopping trip he took back in 1981.

SHAD HELMSTETTER: I was in a store in Scottsdale, Arizona.

SIMON: And, you know, walking up and down the aisles, checking out what's new.

SHAD HELMSTETTER: And I saw Sony's first blue and silver Walkman.

SIMON: It was the Sony TPS-L2. And Shad had never seen anything like this. In fact, he'd never worn headphones in public before. But, you know, it was sitting out for folks to try. And so a little sheepishly, he picked the thing up ...

SHAD HELMSTETTER: I put the earphones in.

SIMON: ... pressed play ...

SHAD HELMSTETTER: And it was absolutely breathtaking and inspiring. It was—I thought it was magic. [laughs]

SIMON: And Shad, he was not alone.

[NEWS CLIP: Tuning out and tuning in. About 750,000 people nationwide are doing just that.]

[NEWS CLIP: I can turn it up loud enough so I can drown out the sounds.]

[NEWS CLIP: It does put you in your own world all by yourself.]

SIMON: I mean, where the Walkman went, these transcendent, these surreal experiences seemed to follow.

JULIETTE KRISTENSEN: I remember vividly that walking or roller skating or dancing, there was this kind of disconnect from my normal everyday experience.

SIMON: That is Juliette Kristensen. She is a historian of design at the University of London. And she says it was so disorienting for her at least, because whereas before her entire life sort of felt like a documentary with her eyes acting as the camera's lens, once she put those headphones on and pressed play, the camera almost seemed to, like, float out from her eyes, turn around and point back at her.

JULIETTE KRISTENSEN: Suddenly I'm in this film, right? And I'm the star. The protagonist.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: "Singing in the Rain"]

JULIETTE KRISTENSEN: Gene Kelly, tap dancing through the streets.

SIMON: Or perhaps ...

[action music]

SIMON: ... you know, an action hero running from the bad guys. Or ...

[romantic music]

SIMON: ... a teenager, in love for the first time all over again. But anyhow, back in that Kmart ...

SHAD HELMSTETTER: I recognized then that Sony would sell millions of them and others ...

SIMON: Shad, still standing in the electronics section, still in a bit of a daze, started imagining the implications of this device.

SHAD HELMSTETTER: Well that's correct. But I wasn't thinking about it in terms of music, which is how everyone else was probably thinking about it at that time. I was thinking about it in terms of a tool to rewire the brain. I mean, what if we could change how we think, by listening to cassette tapes? To be more confident, for instance. And when I held that Sony Walkman in my hand, I remember thinking now anyone could do it.

SIMON: Okay. So he got himself a microphone and a recorder. And we are going to take a listen to what Shad Helmstetter made. What I need everyone to do now is take these headphones that you've got. The big thing here ...

SIMON: Simon here in the studio. So before the show, we'd actually given wireless headphones to everyone in the audience. And at this point we asked them to put them on.

SIMON: So everybody got their headphones on? Put them on.

SIMON: Now you, podcast listener, I'm guessing you're listening to this on headphones, but if you're not and can, I recommend doing so because what Shad was going for, well it hinged on what you are about to hear feeling like it was made just for you. Here it is.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Shad Helmstetter: "You are incredible. That's right, you! You have a lot going for you. You always did. And now it's time to let yourself live out the incredible potential that you were born with. You've had it all the time. You were born to be an exceptional human being. And each day you give yourself the winning words of self-talk that say: 'I like myself. I'm glad to be me. I like myself. I'm glad to be me. I like myself. I'm glad to be me.'"]

SIMON: Anyone feeling more confident?

[laughter]

SIMON: Maybe a little cringey? I kind of like it, but even if you hate it, you have to admit that Shad, he was onto something.

VIC CONANT: I worked for the company back in the records days and, you know, it was going nowhere. Kind of had to shut down parts of the business to keep it surviving.

SIMON: That is Vic Conant. For years, he had been trying to sell messages like Shad's on vinyl records with no success. But suddenly, you know, with the arrival of the Walkman, and now this exact same material on cassette tape ...

VIC CONANT: The business took off. All of a sudden we were selling millions and millions of these cassettes.

SIMON: Like a record exec, Vic went out and signed folks like Shad and published their material. And, you know, while at the beginning of the boom, he says most of their products were like Shad's, very affirming, very motivational.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: You can be and have all that you want in life.]

SIMON: As time went on, customers began demanding more and more specific products, like how to improve their memory.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I'd like to personally welcome everyone to the Mega Memory Program.]

SIMON: Or how to be better at business.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Welcome to 'How to Deliver Unpopular Messages,' an instructional tape from American Management Association.]

SIMON: And eventually, things got very, very weird. Again, if you would take these headphones, put them right on ...

SIMON: Everyone put their headphones on. And again, podcast listeners, headphones will help you, but for very different reasons than before.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Lloyd Glauberman (left channel): The dream was similar to one the man had experienced before. He was alone in a theater watching a movie, feeling safe and secure. But the movie did not have a plot line that he could understand, and as hard as he tried, he was stuck.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Lloyd Glauberman (right channel): As the group met was similar in the large auditorium, they had no idea exactly what was in store for them, for the information that they had was sketchy at best. All they knew was that they were about to begin.]

[laughter]

SIMON: I mean, I think it's fair to ask what the hell is going on there. [laughs] Like, it's sort of these two dueling fairy tales, one in the left, one in the right, where if you try to listen to one you sort of lose the other.

LLOYD GLAUBERMAN: Okay I'm going to tell you the trick, how the trick is done right now. I'm going to expose the contents of this idea. Which, by the way, the first time it happened, it was an accident.

SIMON: Ladies and gentlemen, Lloyd Glauberman. And as he told me, if you want to hear the hypnotic message he's communicating, what you have to do is listen to what is being said between the two stories. So for example, if the story in the right ear says ...

LLOYD GLAUBERMAN: The word "Feel ..."

SIMON: In the left ear, what followed was ...

LLOYD GLAUBERMAN: The word "Better."

SIMON: [laughs] Okay.

LLOYD GLAUBERMAN: So the listener at that moment in time, the only thing that's actually available for that split two seconds is ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Lloyd Glauberman: Feel better.]

[laughter]

SIMON: Now what Lloyd made there, it literally could not have existed without a Walkman and headphones to deliver it. I mean, Shad's creation, it definitely would not have been successful. I mean, can you imagine, like, sitting in your living room, on speakers, your wife's next door?

[laughter]

SIMON: And so to me at least, it was starting to seem that, you know, this whole self-help movement, it all came down to this little blue box. However ...

JULIETTE KRISTENSEN: I could pick that apart as a critical theorist of media by saying, well ...

SIMON: Please do. Pick it apart, yeah.

JULIETTE KRISTENSEN: Okay.

SIMON: Again, that's Juliette Kristensen. And she says that is not the whole story here.

JULIETTE KRISTENSEN: There's something else as well, which is that the kind of period of success of self-help, right, the 1980s, when it really kind of came to prominence, was a particular social and political climate.

SIMON: She says, you know, everything else that was going on in the world at that time, that was important, too. And that the world's most influential man at that time was Ronald Reagan. And while yes, he is remembered for making big government the decade's bogeyman, he also cast the American individual as our nation's hero.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ronald Reagan: If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before.]

SIMON: He even wrapped this message in some pretty self-help-y language.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ronald Reagan: There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.]

[laughter]

SIMON: I mean, he seemed to be saying ...

JULIETTE KRISTENSEN: "Take care of yourself. Be the best version that you can be. It's all about you and you and you."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ronald Reagan: Nothing is impossible. Man is capable of improving his circumstances beyond what we're told is fact.]

SIMON: And when this political message collided with this personal technology, that is when self-help exploded. Like a chemical reaction, both parts had to be there. And once they were, the resulting blaze was almost impossible to contain. Which, to me at least, makes these tapes so much more than just some woo woo fad. I mean, seen in this light, they were an early manifestation, a warning perhaps, of where we were headed.

SIMON: So why was this such a big deal?

JULIETTE KRISTENSEN: Why was the Walkman such a big deal?

SIMON: Yeah. Yeah.

JULIETTE KRISTENSEN: Because you could choose your own music. I mean, it's simple as that. You could choose the sounds that you wanted to listen to.

SIMON: You know, which meant that you, you could also listen to the sounds that you wanted to listen to, and you, you could choose the sounds that you wanted to listen to.

JULIETTE KRISTENSEN: Which can be kind of joyful, but radically alters your relationship with society.

SIMON: Now to see what she means there, we're all gonna take out our headphones one last time. You're gonna put them on once more, and all I'm gonna do is play a brief video clip for you. And what I want you to do ...

SIMON: Simon here in the studio once more. And this was actually my favorite part of the show because it was almost like a—like a little magic trick that we pulled on the audience.

SIMON: So headphones on. Final one.

SIMON: Everyone once more put their headphones on, the lights went down, and then we projected this very ordinary-looking video clip of a shopping mall from the 1970s. It opens with this indoor water fountain, then pans slowly following these shoppers as they glide up an escalator. The whole thing's only about 60 seconds long. And when it finished, we had everybody take their headphones off, and asked them what they felt.

SIMON: Yeah, right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what was your—what was your feeling to the whole thing?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It just kind of seemed like a normal day in the mall.

SIMON: Normal day in the mall. Okay. Anybody not relate to that? Okay, right here. Yes?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I would have experienced it in the moment as alienated from everybody else. You're not hearing them, you're not a part of them, you're observing them from afar.

SIMON: And quickly, we'd get these answers that just totally diverged from one another.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Bubbly, smooth.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It felt like something terrible was going to happen. A plane crash, a bomb going off.

[laughter]

SIMON: Okay.

SIMON: Audience members would start looking at each other, confused. At which point, I'd come in and reveal that we'd sent different audio to each of their headphones. So unbeknownst to them, some had heard this bubbly little thing.

[bubbly synth]

SIMON: Others heard just like mall ambiance. And then some got this.

[menacing drone]

SIMON: And these different tracks, well they totally warped how people experienced that moment.

[laughter]

SIMON: Right. Oh, I'll give y'all a moment with it.

[laughter]

SIMON: If you need it, I'll give it to you.

SIMON: If you want the fuller experience, you can actually go on our YouTube channel. We've uploaded all three videos with all three soundtracks.

SIMON: So yeah, each of you was given one of three different audio tracks. And here's the thing: this experience that we all just had sitting in a room together, collectively seeing but individually experiencing, like, that was not possible before this thing! It's totally common and numbing today, and we don't even think about it when we walk down the street. And yet 40 years ago? Not possible. And this, to me, it seems is the world that these tapes portended. It was a world with a new meaning of the word 'together.'

SIMON: A world where not only our sounds could be personal, but our truths and our realities as well.

SIMON: And as I said at the top, I think that this is really what drew me to the cassette tape to begin with: the sense that seeing together but hearing differently, well it was the beginning of maybe the most important fact about today is that while we are all standing in the same world with the same things happening around us, the same facts there to be seen, thanks in large part to the internet, the way we interpret those facts, the way we see the world can be infinitely different. And that as that's happened, well the very possibility of collective experience seems to have vanished as well.

[applause]

LULU: When we come back, Simon's got the story of one of the most powerful collective experiences we humans have ever had—and the one person who was left out.

LATIF: That's right after a quick break.

LULU: Lulu.

LATIF: Latif.

LULU: Back ...

LATIF: ... with ...

LULU: ... Simon ...

LATIF: ... Adler ...

LULU: ... and ...

LATIF: ... his ...

LULU: ... live ...

LATIF: ... performance ...

LULU: ... of ...

LATIF: ... Mixtapes ...

LULU: ... to ...

LATIF: ... the ...

LULU: ... Moon.

LATIF: [laughs] Why did you deliver 'moon' like it was like ...

LULU: [laughs]

LATIF: ... like robotic?

LULU: Because I'm feeling robot-y. Here we go, Simon. Take us away.

SIMON: Okay.

SIMON: Okay, to close this thing out, I've got one more story for you.

ZACK TAYLOR: Except you don't have the effect of—I mean, is the juice really worth the squeeze? [cans open] Okay.

SIMON: It's a story that was originally told to me by the guy you heard right there, Zack Taylor. He is a documentary maker, also a fan of cassette tapes.

ZACK TAYLOR: I shot and directed a documentary called "Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape."

SIMON: How many cassette tapes do you think you have?

ZACK TAYLOR: Oh my gosh. I probably have a couple thousand.

SIMON: Anyhow, story starts summer of 1969 as the crew of Apollo 11 are about to blast off to the moon. And along with all their space gear and all their training, these guys are carrying a thing with them ...

ZACK TAYLOR: The TC-50. It looked like a sleek, elegant, minimalist aluminum brick.

SIMON: And what it was, really, was a Sony Walkman. It's a little bit bigger than the Walkman that they would release to the public 10 years later, a little bit heavier. Functionally, the only difference is this little red button on the top, the record function. And this red button, it's actually why these things were allowed on board.

ZACK TAYLOR: Because the gloves that these guys used, even today I'm sure like an astronaut's glove is not conducive to, like, jotting down your thoughts. And I mean, the more I think about it, the more mission critical this thing is.

SIMON: Mission critical?

ZACK TAYLOR: Yes, mission critical! Because they're going, like Star Trek, where no man has gone before.

SIMON: Gotta record it like no man had done before. And so July 16, 1969 ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, NASA: Lift off. We have a lift off, 32 minutes past the hour. Liftoff on Apollo 11.]

ZACK TAYLOR: These three astronauts had about a three-day's journey to get to the moon, or to get to the moon's orbit.

SIMON: And as they are flinging through space, the folks at NASA, of course, they're listening to everything going on up there. And they could actually hear these guys using their Walkmans, just not as recorders.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, NASA: This is Apollo control at 59 hours, 9 minutes. Apollo 11 now 182,000 nautical miles from Earth. A velocity down to 3,072 feet per second. [music] The intermittent music that we're getting is apparently coming from the spacecraft. The crew has onboard portable tape recorders with music on the tapes.]

SIMON: Yes, each astronaut had a personalized mixtape with music on it that they brought up there with them.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, NASA: And apparently, the music is triggering the vox-operated microphones, and we're getting intermittent music down from the spacecraft.]

[laughter]

SIMON: Now NASA cosigned on all this. The thought was: we gotta send them up there with tapes to record onto, might as well fill them with music first. So ...

ZACK TAYLOR: Mickey Kapp the record executive would go ask each astronaut, "Hey, what's your favorite song? Okay, thank you. Hold my beer, I'll come back with a mixtape for you."

SIMON: And as Zack there tells it, the music these astronauts brought up there with them, well it offers a little peek into each of their personalities. So for example, the straight-laced, mission commander ...

ZACK TAYLOR: Neil Armstrong's cassette has ...

[music]

ZACK TAYLOR: ... this kooky album from the '40s on it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Neil Armstrong: That's an old favorite of mine. It's an album made about 20 years ago called "Music Out of the Moon."]

SIMON: He's a little hard to hear there, but Neil Armstrong went to the moon with an album called "Music Out of the Moon."

[laughter]

SIMON: [laughs] Take a listen.

[theremin plays]

ZACK TAYLOR: Neil Armstrong, like that was his jam.

[laughter]

SIMON: And I mean, he played this stuff onboard so much that there were times where NASA would have to call up to him and say, "Hey Neil ..."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, NASA: Eleven, we appreciate you turning that off.]

ZACK TAYLOR: "Can you turn that music off, please?"

[ARCHIVE CLIP, NASA: [beep] Thank you.]

ZACK TAYLOR: "Thank you."

SIMON: Story goes that Buzz, the big-talking, space cowboy, requested a very particular song on his tape, so that the moment they touched down on the lunar surface, he'd be able to reach behind him, pull out his tape player ...

ZACK TAYLOR: His TC-50, his proto-Walkman, and press play to ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: "Fly Me To the Moon" - Frank Sinatra]

ZACK TAYLOR: Do do do do doo ...

SIMON: Are you serious?

ZACK TAYLOR: That's how—that's the legend. That's the legend. That's how the story goes.

SIMON: Years later he said "Maybe that didn't happen."

ZACK TAYLOR: But listen, if a whole building of rocket scientists can believe enough to send these three young men out into space, then I am gonna exercise this little faith the size of a mustard seed and believe that Buzz Aldrin reached behind his seat to play "Fly Me To the Moon," because what an amazing moment.

SIMON: Now this moment and these playlists generally are the sort of strange, forgotten, possibly partially invented bits of history that cassette heads like me can't get enough of. And I think that's sort of all they would be, were it not for the third astronaut on the mission, this guy Michael Collins. Now it turns out Collins's playlist has totally been lost to time. I reached out to NASA, the National Archives, the Smithsonian, no one has any idea much of what was on this tape, let alone where it is today. Which oddly, I think is sort of fitting.

ZACK TAYLOR: Michael Collins is the one guy nobody knows. The third wheel. He's just the guy who, like, in history, they couldn't have done it without him? Like, they really needed him? What did they need him for? But Michael Collins was the linchpin in all this stuff. Michael Collins was the one who made sure that they first of all got to the moon and more importantly made sure that they got home.

SIMON: So to pick the story back up, July 20, four days into the mission, around 2:00 pm here in Boston, it was time to actually go down onto the moon. And so Buzz and Neil, they crawled over into the far end of the spacecraft, the lunar landing module that they called the Eagle, they sealed the airlock and they detached. Meaning that the whole time that they were down there on the moon, Collins, he would be up there all by himself, just waiting.

ZACK TAYLOR: Michael Collins had a full day, where it's just him alone, orbiting the moon from about 60 miles above.

SIMON: And not only is he alone, but half the time he's up there, he is in total darkness. He would pass behind the dark side of the moon, meaning no light and no contact.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, NASA: Apollo 11, this is Houston. All your systems are looking good going around the corner. We'll see you on the other side. Over.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Michael Collins: Roger.]

[static]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, NASA: This is Apollo control, we have lost the signal now. We'll reacquire the spacecraft again on the 13th revolution in about 45 minutes.]

SIMON: All he had was his heartbeat, his thoughts and the darkness. And while he's sitting up there, he knows that the hardest part is actually yet to come because before they can go home, Buzz and Neil, obviously, you know, they need to get off of the moon. They need to blast off at just the right time so that they'll be in the moon's orbit at just the right spot so that Collins can grab them. And as if that wasn't enough ...

ZACK TAYLOR: There was no way to test the engines on the Eagle taking off from the moon. There was no way to test it. It was completely untested. It was an unknown.

SIMON: Yeah, we didn't understand the moon's surface well enough to know how it would go.

ZACK TAYLOR: So what happens if, you know, the engine doesn't have quite enough gas to get them back to the orbiter? Or what if they overshoot it? And privately, the three astronauts gave themselves about a 50/50 chance of getting off the moon.

SIMON: So ...

ZACK TAYLOR: Michael Collins is orbiting all by himself, wondering if he's gonna return to Earth alone, or as part of a three-person crew successfully having visited the moon.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, NASA: This is Apollo control. Collins has gone behind the moon on the 23rd lunar revolution while he waits for his comrades to rejoin him for the trip back to Earth.]

SIMON: I mean, just picture this for a moment with me: on one side of the moon facing Earth you've got Armstrong who has just delivered his broadcast back, you know, his famous line.

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

SIMON: And then on the other side of the moon, in total darkness, totally alone, you've got Mike Collins. So in this moment that literally the entire Earth is experiencing something together, he remains alone, disconnected and out of touch from all of it.

ZACK TAYLOR: Exactly. So my gosh, this is—this is what I keep going back to. This is where having a Walkman, having this hunk of aluminum with the record button, this is where this suddenly becomes, as I said, mission critical.

SIMON: Because while Collins is up there, the most solitary man in the history of the universe, to calm his nerves or to get the voices out of his head, he turned to a cassette tape. He pulled out his Walkman and hit that red button.

ZACK TAYLOR: As the story goes, Collins said, "My secret terror for the last six months has been leaving them on the moon and returning to Earth alone. Now I am within minutes of finding out the truth of the matter.” Dude, if you're alone. If you're on the dark side of the moon and all you have is a Walkman, how is that cassette not your very best friend? The closest thing you have to another human being, a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on. I think that cassette is a life raft.

SIMON: Well, that's our show for you, ladies and gentlemen. A couple quick notes, if you would.

LATIF: This episode and live show was reported, produced and performed by Simon Adler.

LULU: Big special thanks to WBUR and the team at CitySpace for having us and recording the event, as well as to all the other venues and folks that hosted us.

LATIF: Special thanks as well to Sarah Rose Leonard and Lance Gardner at KQED for developing the show with us.

LULU: And a huge thank you to Alex Overington, who was making all the music you heard live from the stage.

SIMON: Before I let you two sign off, real quickly, one little obnoxious fact check-y thing.

LULU: Okay.

SIMON: Turns out that there are conflicting accounts of whether Collins recorded those final lines onto a cassette tape. There are multiple sources that say he did, but there are others who say he wrote it down. So in the interest of transparency, I thought I should just let you know that.

LATIF: Appreciate that.

LULU: Join us for our next series on the gramophone, and thanks so much for listening. I'm Lulu Miller.

LATIF: I'm Latif Nasser.

LULU: Catch you soon!

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Rhianne and I'm from Donegal in Ireland. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Valentina Powers, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Tamara from Pasadena, California. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

 

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