LATIF NASSER: Hey, I'm Latif Nasser, this is Radiolab.

LULU MILLER: I'm getting all settled. Okay.

LATIF: Okay, you ready?

LULU: Yeah, very.

LATIF: So for a lot of people, the years of the pandemic sort of blurred together. And for a while I kept wondering which was worse: 2020 or 2021? But then that took me to a different place which is like, what was the worst year ever?

JAD ABUMRAD: Hmm.

LATIF: Not in recent memory, but in human history. Like, was there an objectively worst year to be a person alive on planet Earth?

JAD: My mind goes to parameter questions.

LULU: Yeah.

LATIF: Okay, great.

JAD: When is the boundary?

LATIF: So maybe let's say the worst year in recorded history.

JAD: Got it. And then "worst?" Do you have, like, an operating definition for that?

LATIF: Maybe something that, like—that hit a lot of people in a way that if we were alive then and we had a choice between living then and living now, we would say "Yes, please. 2020 or 2021, please."

LULU: Hmm. You are a sick, sick mind, Latif!

LATIF: Well, I admit it's kind of a dark thought to have, but I was thinking about it in a kind of positive way. Like, the worst year in human history, if I can pin that down, I'll at least know that 2022 is almost certainly not gonna be as bad as that. And then I'll feel better about that.

LULU: And, like, whatever's ahead?

LATIF: And whatever's ahead.

LULU: Okay.

JAD: [laughs]

LATIF: So fully embracing the suck that is 2020 and 2021, what year would you pit up against it to say "This is a worthy adversary?"

JAD: I was thinking Pompeii.

LULU: The Black Death.

JAD: Yeah, that's gotta be top five. At least if you're, like—if you're just gonna focus on Europe. Top five.

LULU: You could do 1939.

JAD: Crusades. Wasn't that the 12th century?

LATIF: Crusades.

LULU: 1781.

JAD: Mongolian invasion.

LATIF: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Which was actually—there are some really good things that came out of that. So—so, you know, hmm.

LATIF: I mean, you could say, like, 1492 from the American perspective.

JAD: Yes! Yes!

LULU: I recently came across this thing that in 1100 AD, the moon disappeared for a lot of the year.

JAD: It disappeared?

LULU: So I think that would be ...

JAD: Hmm.

LULU: ... terrifying as either someone who is spiritual or isn't.

JAD: Yeah.

LATIF: Mm-hmm. This is very interesting because you're bringing up a lot of stuff that I'm gonna bring up, too.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: But so okay. So the year, the year that I think I want to make a case that this is the worst year in human history is 536 AD.

LULU: 536.

JAD: Whoa!

LULU: Okay. All right, what's happening in the world in 536?

LATIF: Okay. So just a quick picture of what the world looked like around the 530s: a few hundred million humans on planet Earth or thereabouts. The Roman Empire, you know, fully flowered, then it fractured into two. A similar thing had happened in China. It also fractured. It is the classic period of the Mayan civilization in Central America. So these are like societies. Like, these are real societies, you know, with major cities and sewage systems and music scenes and stuff like that. Like, it's like we're not quite in the modern world, but we're in, like, in a world we recognize.

LULU: Okay, so toilets and—toilets and lutes.

LATIF: Basically, yeah. Okay, so what happens in 536 is not particularly clear. The leading theory is a volcanic eruption.

LULU: Hmm.

JAD: So this is a singular eruption, or is it a string of them?

LATIF: Almost certainly a string of them, but at least one of them was enormous. Unclear where this eruption happened exactly, but spewed out ash and sulfates and even tiny bits of glass into the stratosphere.

JAD: Wow!

LATIF: Where it circulated around the Earth. But there's—there's actually—there's another thing that happened, there's kind of an extra twist, which is that I spoke to this one scholar, and what she thinks happened was that a few years prior, Halley's Comet passed by Earth and basically whipped us with its tail. And so the debris from that tail entered our atmosphere, broke up in the night sky, and you could actually see it twinkling.

JAD: Can you imagine if the two things were separate events but happened on the same day? Can you imagine that?

LATIF: That would be crazy. That would be ama—or it could have been something completely different that triggered all this. But this is, like, best guesses. So whether it was the volcanic sort of plume or whether it was the comet, like, debris, it creates this thing they call a dust veil over the Earth. And that triggers other strange regional weather patterns including dust storms which cause even more dust. So in November and December of 536 in the Chinese city of Nanjing, there's a report from the city that said, quote, "Yellow dust rained down like snow. It could be scooped up in handfuls."

JAD: Wow!

LATIF: And that lasts from February, 536 to June, 537. So a year-and-a-half basically of solid winter.

LULU: Ooh!

JAD: Wow. That's Game of Thrones [bleep] right there.

LATIF: Yeah. It's basically the coldest decade in the last 2,000 years. And that triggers, like, massive crop failures and, you know, mass famine. So in Ireland in 536 and then also in 539, it's written in their annals that they have a quote, "failure of bread."

LULU: Hmm.

LATIF: Similar food shortages are documented in Korea, Japan. In China it gets so bad by the 540s that in one area north of the Yellow River, seven or eight out of every ten people died. And because the crops had failed, allegedly, survivors were forced to eat the corpses of the dead.

LULU: No! No!

JAD: Oh my God!

LATIF: One of the places where this hit worst was Scandinavia. 75 percent of the villages that they excavate from around that time, like, you can tell that they were abandoned. Basically, it's like all these Nordic people are like, "Screw it. We're getting out of here." And then they get on their boats and then they, like, travel around the world and they ...

JAD: Wow. All you need now is like an alien invasion and—I don't know.

LATIF: Well, there's—I mean, there is more. Another issue with this massive dust veil that some people have speculated about is, like, people were not getting a lot of sunlight, so they're not creating vitamin D in their bodies. And vitamin D, among other things, helps boost your immune system to fight bacterial infections. And also you can imagine there are all these farms and fields with crops. The plants are dying, the rats in the field and the other animals that are living out there start coming to where the people have, you know, stores of grain or rice or whatever. And that's near where people are living. So now you have people who are hungry ...

LULU: Weaker immune system.

LATIF: ... possibly immune sort of compromised, meeting these filthy desperate animals like rats, who are carrying microscopic friends. So I'll let you guess what happens next.

JAD: God. Plagues.

LULU: The plague. All kinds of sicknesses.

LATIF: All kinds of sicknesses, yes, but especially one. So they call it Justinian's Plague. This is 541, so five years later. This plague spreads basically across all of Europe. It's commonly estimated to have killed tens of millions of people.

JAD: Wow. I'm trying to sort of construct a composite reality from all of these things. I mean, it must have been cold as hell.

LULU: There's rats and bacteria.

LATIF: Yeah. So these two geoscientists, Stothers and Rampino, they basically, like, comb through all of—like, anything written around that time all over the world to try to find, like, who talked about this and what did they say? And here's some of what they found. So this is a guy from Italy, statesman-y type person, Cassiodorus Senator. He says, "The sun seems to have lost its wanted light and appears of a bluish color."

JAD: Hmm.

LATIF: "We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon."

LULU: Oh!

LATIF: "The moon too, even when its orb is full is empty of its natural splendor. We've had a spring without mildness and a summer without heat."

JAD: Wow!

LULU: That is bad!

LATIF: Yeah, that's bad.

JAD: That's really vivid.

LULU: And so vivid. The loss of the shadows?

JAD: Yeah.

LULU: Like, you feel the cold.

JAD: Yeah.

LATIF: Here's—here's another one that's, like, equally vivid, I think. So this is Mesopotamia. So this is around the area where Syria is now. A guy named Zacharias of Mytilene—probably pronouncing that wrong. "The winter was a severe one, so much so that from the large and unwanted quantity of snow the birds perished. There was distress among men from the evil things."

JAD: Oh my gosh. Wow!

LULU: What do you think the 'evil things' means there?

LATIF: I don't know. I just left that in there because I did not know what that meant. And I was like, ooh, that's really dark and sinister.

LULU: Yeah.

JAD: Wow. But everybody, the entire globe is suffering through a 15-month winter.

LATIF: Unclear if it's the whole globe, but much of the northern hemisphere, for sure. But in Mayan history, there's this period. So this is the classic period of Mayan history, then there's this little mini-period that they call the 'classic period hiatus.' And they have—the Mayan people would make these special decorative stone pillars to, like, mark history and what is going on in history at that time. Basically, they just pause making them.

LULU: What do you think the—okay, we kind of talked about what it felt like temperature wise, but like what do you think the world sounded like during these years? Or this year?

LATIF: Well, I guess with the birds dying, probably quieter.

JAD: Mm. Yeah.

LATIF: But what's left is—I don't know. I imagine, like, walking on dried grass. Like, that kind of sound, maybe? Like, you know, the little scurrying of the rat feet over the fallow field or whatever.

LULU: And then wind probably picks up if you don't have trees, lush plants to break it, right? So you probably get, like, [whistles]

JAD: Do you know what I keep thinking about? Is any singular human in this moment would be thinking about their own sorry state and their family and maybe their village.

LATIF: Mm-hmm.

JAD: But that would be the sort of circumference of their awareness. They had no big picture. So, like ...

LATIF: I doubt anybody had a big picture of it.

JAD: Right. But I mean, we can see that it was a global catastrophe. And we see that about our own moment in a way that they couldn't. So I wonder if it would have felt like the worst year ever. So it's funny to think that, like, the awareness of the whole magnifies the misery and, like ...

LULU: Or the awareness of the whole maybe makes you feel less lonely about it. Like, it's not just you.

JAD: Yeah, that's interesting.

LULU: I don't know.

JAD: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

LATIF: I wonder if there was someone who just, like, got on a horse and was like, "I'm gonna ride until, like, ..."

LULU: "I'm out of it?"

LATIF: "I get the sun back."

LULU: Yeah!

LATIF: And then they just kept riding and they never got it back.

LULU: Totally come out of the cold and then, like, never gets there.

LATIF: Yeah.

JAD: Yeah, I guess what—I guess what I keep thinking about suddenly is—given that I'm an old man now it's my sort of inherited birthright to complain about young people. There's just such a fixation on mental health amongst, you know, kids, right?

LATIF: Yeah.

JAD: And I think "Thank God. That's amazing." But at the same time I think, "Wow, your lives are so great." You know what I mean? But then I think, does it feel great? Probably doesn't. Like, objectively, their lives are so much more comfortable than a life would have been in 536.

LATIF: Right.

JAD: But maybe by virtue of the expanded awareness that we all carry, things don't feel good, you know? And so I guess that's what I was thinking about was like, what if we endured 536 now, right? Like, what if a comet and a volcano blew up? Can you imagine the wall-to-wall CNN and the tweeting and the retweeting and the constant, like, sharing of misery? It must feel like—it would feel like misery amplified in a way that it probably hasn't at any other time.

LULU: But the sharing, yes, there is misery amplified and that but, like, think about when the Italians made that video for us. Do you remember that?

LATIF: Oh, that singing and cheering and ...

LULU: This little message in a bottle of, like, take it seriously. Learn from us. Stay inside for a couple of weeks. It felt like that was a moment where the cross-planetary awareness allowed our best sides to try to come out.

LATIF: And let's work together. Yeah.

LULU: And let's work together. And, like, the kind of watching how different leaders approach it, and then being able to just look back and see what works. And then take strategies and make mistakes and learn and ...

LATIF: Yeah.

LULU: ... the sharing and the solidarity allowed us to way more quickly collaborate.

LATIF: I mean, yeah. That is true but, like, okay, like, think back to 536, right? Probably most people alive on planet Earth at the time believed that what was happening, the horrors that were befalling them were coming from above. They were an act of God or gods. And then now what's going on, so much of what's going on, it feels like it's happening because of us. Like, something we're doing to ourselves and to each other. And sort of whether it is or not, like, it's like lab leak or China virus or South Africa variant or this person's not wearing a mask or that person didn't get a booster or whatever it is, and as much as the solidarity and stuff, like, that stuff also gets amplified on Twitter. I don't know. So it's like as much as you have the we're-all-in-this-together stuff, you also have the, like, it's all this person's fault. Let's scapegoat this person.

LULU: Yeah, that's true. I don't know. I'm big on the solidarity in the long run making it better. And it just seems like with all of that, I mean, it's just like, I'm officially stopping bitching about 2020. Like, I'm done.

JAD: [laughs] But does it make—okay. Okay. So that's sort of like—that's what I was sort of curious about. Does this—does knowing that people in 536—I mean, it's like, does it make you feel better about the last two years to know that in 536 it was a much worse year?

LATIF: It doesn't make me better so much as it makes me think, "Oh, like, there are more floors to fall through here. Like, we could fall. We have longer to fall.

JAD: Hmm.

LATIF: Like, I don't know if that makes me feel better to know that, but it definitely makes me not feel worse.

JAD: Okay. Okay.

LATIF: Because I'm saving the worse feelings for when—if and when it does get worse.

JAD: That's fair.

LULU: I just wanted to say what I—what you have left me with about knowing about that year, I just feel grateful I can go see my shadow.

LATIF: Hmm.

JAD: Hmm.

LULU: And, like, that's what I'm gonna take the year ahead. That's what I'm gonna take into the year ahead is, like, well, if I can see my shadow, that means there's enough sun to just enjoy the basic warmth of that. And ...

LATIF: And there's ground beneath me that is not lava, yeah.

LULU: That's not lava.

LATIF: So going into the next year, at least we've got shadows and bread and ground to stand on.

LULU: Yeah. Do you guys remember my question?

JAD: That was—that was last year.

LULU: I know. It's old time.

LATIF: Yes. Yeah.

LULU: But do you remember what I got a little hung up on?

LATIF: Music.

LULU: Or I just couldn't ...

LATIF: You were excited to see ...

LULU: So before we leave you, one more thing. Because after Latif hit us with the horrors of that year, I was left with this question that just kept eating at me. So a little while later I called them both back up to add just one last little postcard from the year 536.

LULU: Yeah.

JAD: What was your question specifically? Was it: did the misery create a new genre, or ...?

LULU: I mean, my question was really just what was music like then? You know, what kind of music were people making and hearing that would have carried them through?

LATIF: Hmm.

JAD: Hmm.

LULU: What did it actually sound like?

[phone rings]

LULU: So I did a little digging ...

MOGUS SAYUM: Hello?

LULU: Hello!

LULU: ... and I found someone who had a pretty interesting answer to that question—at least for one corner of the world.

LULU: Should I call you Cantor Sayum? Mogus?

MOGUS SAYUM: No. No, it's Mogus. Mogus.

LULU: Mogus.

LULU: So Mogus Sayum, he's a cantor in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Lives in Virginia now, but he grew up in Ethiopia. And some of the musical traditions of his church, songs he sings literally every week ...

MOGUS SAYUM: Yeah.

LULU: ... he says come from right around the 536 time, in what was the Kingdom of Axum.

MOGUS SAYUM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Only by the way ...

LULU: And in fact, he told me about one particular guy ...

MOGUS SAYUM: From Yared. Do you know Yared? The Yared histories?

LULU: St. Yared who, according to tradition, was the person writing all this music.

MOGUS SAYUM: 1,600 years ago.

LULU: Now we don't know the extent to which the dust veil of 536 affected this area, and there is debate over the historical person Yared, but according to Mogus's tradition, it was right around the year 536 that Yared composed a brand new book of hymns called "Mawaset"

MOGUS SAYUM: Yeah.

LULU: And what are the songs in that book about?

MOGUS SAYUM: Mawaset? Mawaset is when somebody dies you sing songs of Mawaset.

LULU: It's like a book of—it's songs for the dead?

MOGUS SAYUM: Yeah.

LULU: Hmm.

JAD: Hmm.

LULU: Could—could you sing me just a little bit so I could hear?

MOGUS SAYUM: Oh, right now? It's okay?

LULU: Yeah!

MOGUS SAYUM: Okay. [singing]

LULU: Now again, it's impossible to know exactly how the chronology of these songs line up with the year 536, and also even how much of Yared's story is real or apocryphal. But what does seem likely is that if you were to walk into a church in Ethiopia about 1,500 years ago, and you were mourning someone ...

MOGUS SAYUM: [singing]

LULU: ... this is the kind of music that may be sung to you to honor that loss.

MOGUS SAYUM: [singing]

LULU: Wow. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for your time.

MOGUS SAYUM: All right. Thank you very much.

LULU: I appreciate it. Have a great—I hope—you know, happy new year, not Ethiopian New Year but boring old Gregorian New Year.

MOGUS SAYUM: You too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

LULU: Bye.

MOGUS SAYUM: Bye-bye.

LATIF: This episode was produced by Simon Adler with sound and music from Simon Adler and Jeremy Bloom. Special thanks to Dallas Abbott, Mathias Nordvig, Joel Gunn and reporter Ann Gibbons, whose article in Science on 536 got me interested in this in the first place.

LULU: Thanks also to Daniel Yacob, Kaye Shelemey, Jackie Phillips and Meklit Hadero, who is a fabulous singer-songwriter with a deep connection to St. Yared. I highly recommend you go check out her music. That's Meklit Hadero.

LATIF: And stick around because next we're gonna zoom into another terrible no good very bad year and find out not how people suffered during it, but rather how people coped.

LULU: That's coming up. Stick with us.

LATIF: Hey, I'm Latif.

LULU: I'm Lulu. This is Radiolab, and today we are talking about the worst year ever.

LATIF: In the first segment, you heard about human history's literal worst year ever. And now we're gonna shift into recent times, specifically the pandemic. 2020 and 2021 were pretty objectively terrible years for most of us. And we sat down with Jad to discuss one of the things that seemed to haunt a lot of people in those years.

JAD: Okay, Lulu, where do you want to start?

LULU: We all had a pitch meeting. It was like my second week, maybe, here on the team. Just I brought up how I'd been having trouble sleeping back in the spring, and I noticed pretty quickly that I was one in this wave. There had been all these studies coming out about how insomnia is on the rise.

JAD: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

LULU: And it turned out a ton of people on the team had been thinking about similar stuff, this shadow epidemic of anxiety and sleeplessness, wishing there was a way to tap directly into that space. And within literally a couple minutes, we hatched this idea of setting up an insomnia line, let people call in, and we thought we'd just have the phones open from 2:00 am to sunrise Eastern Standard Time.

JAD: Wow, you went all the way from 2:00 am to sunrise?

LULU: Yeah. We chose a night. And, you know, the night we picked at this point seems like a totally different world. It was the night before RBG died and about a week before the Breonna Taylor ruling. So this new wave of hardship wasn't in the air yet for us or our callers.

JAD: Okay.

LULU: But at 1:45 am, we tweeted out the phone number and said, "If you're awake, call us."

LISTENER: What up, Radiolab? I'm in Los Angeles, California. I have insomnia.]

LULU: Then—so then the voicemails started rolling in.

JAD: Ooh, like, right away?

LULU: Yeah. So, like, 2:00 am struck.

LISTENER: Heyo, Radiolab. First time listener, long time listener, first time caller.

LULU: There were, like, 40 right off the bat, just waiting.

JAD: Whoa!

LULU: And it was like this immediate cross-section ...

LISTENER: Here, laying in my bed with my dog.

LULU: ... of the country and even beyond.

LISTENER: It's 1:41 in the morning here in Mexico City.

LULU: Of just, like, intensity. I mean, I think the thing we all realized really quick was that we were sticking out this antenna into, like, a really vulnerable time.

LISTENER: Hi, my name is Kendra. I'm calling from Denver, Colorado, and I can't sleep because I miss my mom. She passed away earlier this year, and I miss her every single day. I'm up because I quit drinking a few weeks ago.

LISTENER: I am currently walking circles around my apartment.

LISTENER: I really want to drink again.

LISTENER: I can hear the clock ticking.

LISTENER: All the days are just blending together right now.

LISTENER: I can hear the fans spinning.

LISTENER: Just swimming through time soup.

LULU: You know, people were worried. They were worried about COVID.

LISTENER: I'm a nurse in the time of COVID, and so I don't sleep anymore.

LULU: About their jobs.

LISTENER: I lost my job in March thanks to COVID. I was teaching English as a foreign language.

LISTENER: Today and tomorrow too, I have another job interview.

LISTENER: I don't have a job lined up. I don't tell anybody about this. You know, I wake up every night like this.

LULU: About the state of the country.

LISTENER: With everything that is happening with racism. Yeah.

LISTENER: As a woman, yeah, it's complicated. So I'm considering moving maybe to Costa Rica or Dominican Republic, or even going back to Puerto Rico.

LISTENER: You know how you breathe out, and your lungs squeak a little bit?

LULU: From the West Coast, there was just tons about the smoky sky.

LISTENER: My house has smelled like an ashtray for days.

LISTENER: Been really hazy and smoky and kind of always smells like toast.

LISTENER: As a person who used a ventilator, I feel just discomfort after being surrounded by smoke for over a week.

LISTENER: But there's a fun twist right now, which is—let me see if I can go outside, actually.

LULU: But some places it had rained.

LISTENER: But now there's thunder and torrential rain. Wow, that was a bright flash!

LULU: But, you know, for all the worry, there was another side to the night.

LISTENER: Heyo, Radiolab, man. Name is Ricky, and I'm just vibing right now. You know, even though I'm tired, I just want to stay up just because all of the other hours, you know, were for somebody else just working. And I guess I want those one to three hours to be mine.

LISTENER: I'm not totally sure why I'm awake, but I started drawing, and now I think I maybe don't want to go back to sleep.

LULU: All these people just leaning into their weird thoughts.

LISTENER: The big thing I'm thinking about today is that I learned that horse treadmills exist.

LISTENER: So you imagine you have a building which is mushrooming with mushrooms. [laughs] Literally in the morning when you wake up, instead of plucking your, you know, fruits from the garden, you're actually plucking mushrooms from your building. It's—it's just great to think that maybe one day we can have a building which will give us food.

LULU: Throughout the whole night, that line between reality and fantasy was thin.

LISTENER: I've been having really weird dreams.

LISTENER: Yeah, I have nightmares, terrible dreams.

LISTENER: There was a little baby fox that died, and we were trying to have a funeral for it.

LISTENER: A few minutes ago, I had to break up a fight between a couple of raccoons outside.

LISTENER: There are monsters chasing me.

LISTENER: My cat is sitting on my neck.

LISTENER: I'm on the planet Califrax, about 73 light years from Earth.

LISTENER: Right now, I'm looking at Mars from my backyard. I can see it just by looking at the sky. It's particularly red.

LISTENER: And I would very much love to fall asleep, but I can't.

LISTENER: Yeah, I can't sleep.

LULU: You know, all told, there are over 200 calls. And if anything came through loud and clear, it was that during those hours, people feel really alone.

LISTENER: I'm alone and I'm scared.

LISTENER: If you want to call me back, I'm at 817 ...

LISTENER: Feel free to give me a call back. The number is ...

LISTENER: Give me a call back. 856 ...

LISTENER: I might be awake for a while longer.

JAD: Coming up, conversations across the void and a trip to the stars. Radiolab will continue in a moment.

[LISTENER: Howdy, this is Blake Crozier from Nashville, Tennessee. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.]

[JAD: Science reporting on Radiolab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.]

JAD: This is Radiolab. We are back. I'm Jad Abumrad.

LULU: And I am your co-host, Lulu Miller.

JAD: Yes!

LULU: And interestingly enough ...

LATIF: Hey, it's Latif calling in the bathroom. I'm actually calling in the bathroom because I don't want awake the baby.

LULU: At 2:47 am on the insomnia line, we got a call from our other co-host, Latif Nasser ...

LATIF: I wanted to share a little factoid that I discovered.

LULU: ... being very, very Latif.

LATIF: Which was that in 1939 there was a ship, a P class destroyer. It's called the HMS Porcupine. And it broke into two pieces, and then they named the pieces the HMS Pork and the HMS Pine, which was just incredible. The HMS Pork and the HMS Pine! [laughs] Okay. All right.

LULU: Anyway, back to the mission at hand. A bunch of Radiolabbers had all gathered to man the phones and screen the voicemails. And 2:00 am hits and ...

RACHAEL CUSICK: There's voicemails. There's voicemails already!

LULU: ... we started calling people back. Here we go. On the phone here is Shima Oliaee.

LISTENER: Hello?

SHIMA OLIAEE: Hey, this is Shima calling from Radiolab. What's your name?

LISTENER: My name is Kweijo Adai.

SHIMA: Where are you?

LISTENER: I'm in New Haven, Connecticut. I'm on Bassett Street, and I have been commissioned by the city to make the city's first Black Lives Matter mural. I'm sketching out the words, which are 22 by 277 feet in total. And then on Sunday, people are gonna come and take some yellow paint and I'm gonna orchestrate them to fill in the letters.

SHIMA: Is there a reason that you have to do this mural at 3:30 in the morning? It's 3:30 where you are, right?

LISTENER: It's 3:30 in the morning, yeah. So the city of New Haven commissioned me to make this mural, but they only are closing the street from—they're only closing the street from 6:00 am on Saturday to 9:00 pm. And I told them, like, this is a pavement mural. Like, you need to close the street so I can, like, sketch it out, and make sure that there's enough drying time after we paint or ...

SHIMA: Yeah.

LISTENER: And they're like, "Well, we can't do that. So ..."

SHIMA: In your sketch, are there, like, people in this mural, or is it just the letters themselves?

LISTENER: Oh, it's just—it's just the words 'Black Lives Matter' in, like, yellow paint. And, you know, this message is—I was conflicted with this message because I would rather be, like, painting flowers or painting—painting people, but, like, having to paint this is—it's been really tough.

SHIMA: Why?

LISTENER: It's tough to be reminded and to have to remind others of your own humanity. That's difficult for me.

SHIMA: Yeah.

LISTENER: I don't know how much we're doing in terms of a city to, you know, make it so that I don't have to paint this mural again.

SHIMA: Hmm.

LISTENER: Good morning, this is Alex.

SARAH QARI: Hi, Alex. This is Sarah calling from Radiolab.

LULU: Next, producer Sarah Qari.

SARAH: It seems like you might have called a while ago.

LISTENER: I wake up at that time because that's when rodents tend to be most active. And I work in Boston, so there's plenty of rodents to be had.

SARAH: You're an exterminator?

LISTENER: Yes. That's what most people call us. We have fancier names for ourselves, but—and yeah, so I usually wake up at two, drive into the city and start chasing rats.

SARAH: All right, take care. Have a good rest of your night, morning.

LISTENER: You too. Have a great rest of your day.

SARAH: You too.

LISTENER: Thank you. Bye.

LISTENER: Who's there?

MOLLY WEBSTER: Is this Bobby?

LISTENER: Yeah.

LULU: Then Molly Webster.

MOLLY: Bobby, it's Molly Webster from Radiolab. How are you?

LISTENER: I'm amazing. I mean, I'm looking out over at Brighton Beach. Ocean. I'm on my terrace with my trees and my plants.

MOLLY: Can you tell me either why you're awake or if something's keeping you awake?

LISTENER: I've always been an insomnia person since I was a little kid. You know, I'd sneak out of the house when I was a teenager, you know, like 13, 14. I'd go wander out on the beach at night at midnight and sing to the ocean, you know? Let's see what I can see. I'm here on the 18th floor.

MOLLY: Okay.

LISTENER: Overlooking—over there that's Rockaway.

MOLLY: Is that the ocean that I can hear in the background or, like, wind?

LISTENER: Well, I don't know. It might be traffic, but the ocean's out there.

MOLLY: [laughs]

LISTENER: Anyway, it's a beautiful night. What a great life I have. How blessed we are.

LISTENER: Hi.

MOLLY: Hi, is this Azul?

LISTENER: Yeah. Hello.

MOLLY: Tell me where you are at and why you're awake.

LISTENER: Yeah. So I am in Portland, Oregon, and I am awake because we are about to embark on a little road trip all the way to Minnesota to get away from the smoke, from the fires. I hear that the skies feel blue in other places, so I'm really excited.

MOLLY: Like, what is it like to live without a sky?

LISTENER: Honestly, it's pretty trippy. It feels like I live either in an Instagram, like, filter or something like that.

MOLLY: Are there other ways in which the world looks or feels or sounds different because of the fires?

LISTENER: Friday was, like, one of the toughest days. All the birds just, like, stopped showing up or singing.

MOLLY: Whoa!

LISTENER: It was really quiet.

LISTENER: Today, I think, was the first day of, like, actual fresh air, so I've just been sitting outside and, like, breathing that in while it lasts.

TOBIN LOW: Where am I reaching you right now? Where are you?

LULU: Producer Tobin Low.

LISTENER: I am in the Bay Area in Northern California. I'm standing in my yard, just to come outside and be reminded that there's still life out here. Like, to hear the crickets. It's really beautiful. It's like gleeful insomnia.

TOBIN: Can you take a deep breath for me and sort of describe what that feels like now that the air is clear?

LISTENER: Mm-hmm. [breathes] It feels freeing.

LISTENER: Hello?

TRACIE HUNTE: Hi!

LULU: Reporter Tracie Hunte.

LISTENER: Hi, how are you?

LULU: Speaking with a woman named Maya.

LISTENER: I'm okay, I'm okay.

TRACIE: Where are you?

LISTENER: I'm calling from Westchester, New York.

TRACIE: And why are you awake?

LISTENER: I'm a college student right now. Got homework 'til one, active brain 'til four.

TRACIE: Oh.

LISTENER: There's just been so much going on. It feels like doom and gloom all day long. There's no light at the end of the tunnel.

TRACIE: Have you ever, like, thought about calling a friend when you're up this late? Another friend that you know might be having trouble sleeping?

LISTENER: No, not actually. Well, I called you guys. [laughs]

TRACIE: [laughs] I know. Well, that's—that's kind of why I asked the question.

LISTENER: Yeah. It's like something I always do during the day, but never that I think to do at night when I know we're all feeling this way.

TRACIE: Yeah. Well Maya, can I pass on a tip that I learned recently for falling asleep?

LISTENER: I would love one. [laughs]

TRACIE: Okay, so why don't you try—when you're lying in bed, try thinking of a letter and, like, an easy one, like an M or a B or something. And then think of every word you can make with that letter and just see if you can bore yourself to sleep.

LISTENER: Modern day of counting sheep.

TRACIE: It's kind of like counting sheep. I'm gonna give you a letter. I'm going to think of the letter L.

LISTENER: Sure. Yeah. Lily pads. Light. My legs. Labs. Labradoodles, lamp posts, layers.

LULU: And this was something we did do from time to time that we knew we probably couldn't help much. We would give people little offerings that we hoped might at least change their mindset.

JAD: Hmm.

LULU: So okay, I'll just play you one last.

JAD: Yeah, yeah, please.

LULU: Hey, is this Tristan?

LISTENER: Yeah, speaking.

LULU: I'm sorry that sleep is eluding you.

LISTENER: [laughs] Yeah.

LULU: So yeah, can you just say again where you are and why you're awake?

LISTENER: I'm in Detroit and I'm in my bed that half the time has doubled now as a workspace. And it's been really troubling separating work from personal life. And whole days go by that are just one contiguous—you know, it feels like just trapped, I guess.

LULU: Well, may I offer you a sonic gift to maybe try a different thing and see if it helps?

LISTENER: Oh, yeah.

LULU: Okay. Can you stay on the phone? But can you turn—can you get all those screens away from you?

LISTENER: Yeah, I can close that and move that out of the way.

LULU: All right, I'm gonna pipe in a special guest.

[phone ringing]

LULU: Guests. Multiple.

WES SWING: Hey, can you hear us?

LISTENER: Yeah, I can. Hey, I'm Tristan. Nice to meet you.

WES SWING: Hey, nice to meet you.

KELLEY LIBBEY: Hi.

LISTENER: Hey.

LULU: Musicians Wes Swing and Kelly Libby from Virginia.

WES SWING: And we've got a song to play here. The song is called "Middle of the Night."

LISTENER: Wow! [laughs]

WES SWING: All right, here it goes. [singing] I'll look for you when the fog rolls through, when the fog. And I'll take you in when you've paid for those sins, when you've paid.

JAD: And they just—they just called up and sang? How did they ...

LULU: I asked them if they would be willing to sing a lullaby to someone who couldn't sleep. And they gave me a window that they would, like, get up and do it.

JAD: I see. That was nice. I like that.

LULU: Yeah. And to end this whole thing.

LISTENER: Thank you.

LISTENER: Bye.

LULU: This whole sleepless ..

LISTENER: [yawns]

LULU: ... anxious ...

LISTENER: [yawns]

LULU: ... nighttime experiment.

LISTENER: I'm just tired, and I want to go back to sleep.

LULU: I want to leave everyone with two more of these offerings. The first one comes from producer Annie McEwen.

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Hello.

ANNIE MCEWEN: Hi! I can just see the very top of your head.

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Uh-huh.

ANNIE: Can you hear me?

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Yeah.

ANNIE: Good to meet you.

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Good to meet you.

ANNIE: First of all, I want you to introduce yourself. So tell me, what is your name?

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: What's the name, Mommy?

MOTHER: You know what your name is.

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Oh, Fletcher!

ANNIE: Fletcher is such a good name. What's your last name?

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: So my whole name is Fletcher Lee Johnson. We live in Kitville, Tennessee.

ANNIE: How old are you?

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: I'm five.

ANNIE: I wanted to talk to you about sleep. Do you have trouble falling asleep?

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Yeah. Every night I stay a long time until I get to sleep.

ANNIE: And why is that? What are you thinking when you're trying to fall asleep?

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: I'm not thinking of anything. I just have a lot of energy to stay up at night.

ANNIE: Yeah. What would you rather do? What does your body want to do when you're trying to keep it still?

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: I like to have a dance party, but one night we did that.

ANNIE: [gasps] You did?

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Yeah. I just like to have dance party every night, but I can't.

ANNIE: [laughs] Yeah. What do your pajamas look like?

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Glow in the dark PJs.

ANNIE: Glow in the dark PJs? That's cool!

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Yeah. One of my old ones, when I was four, I had, like, a glowing skeleton one that matches where my bones are. And now I bought a new one for a five year old.

ANNIE: Yesterday on the phone, we talked a little bit about how you dream about monsters.

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Oh, I dream about monsters every night.

ANNIE: What are these monsters? Tell me about them.

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: So, like, lovely boxing monsters.

ANNIE: Okay.

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: But there's a lot of other ones that are really scary.

ANNIE: Is it hard to fall asleep because of the monsters?

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Yeah, because they're way too scary. So I have to wake up.

ANNIE: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have that problem, too. It's hard to fall asleep when you're afraid of things.

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Mm-hmm.

ANNIE: Mm-hmm. Fletcher, I want to ask your advice about something. So tonight we're gonna have a lot of people call in to our radio show, and they're gonna be people who can't fall asleep. And they're trying and trying and trying, but they just can't. And they're so tired, but they can't fall asleep. I want to know, what advice do you have for them? What do you think they should do?

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: They should—I was gonna send some of my meditations.

ANNIE: Okay, that's a good idea. Do you want to read me your meditation? Do you want to try doing that?

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Yeah, I guess so.

ANNIE: And then we can play it tonight for the sleepy people that can't fall asleep.

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Can I take my shoes off?

ANNIE: I'll take my shoes off, too.

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: Blast off in the space. First, let's get ready to relax. Lay down. Close your eyes. Get in a comfortable position. Take six deep breaths. Now imagine you're in space with the stars. Down below, you see planet Earth.

FLETCHER LEE JOHNSON: And you can see all the way to your backyard. The blackness of space, the sparkle of the stars. It makes you want to lift off to planet Mars. On the way, you soak in a lot of stars, constellations. You pass the Andromeda and the Hercules and the Leos. Wow, those are really cool constellations! While you are looking at all the stars and constellations, you take three deep breaths because it's a lot to take in. Planet Mars is a long way away, so you float into your spaceship and fall asleep on the floor and dream of all the things you want to do tomorrow. Now you blast off back home, and at the morning time, you play with mommy, and you play baseball, soccer and frisbee, and go on more adventures and maybe visit Saturn, the planet with the rings next.

LULU: Thank you, Fletcher. Thank you, Annie. Now for our final offering. All right, to close out this show, we have one last offering. We have a very special guest who is going to read for us. Can you just tell us who you are?

LEVAR BURTON: I'm Levar Burton.

LULU: And where might people know you from, for the three people who aren't sure who you are?

LEVAR BURTON: I'm an actor, a director, played Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation. And for 27 years, I hosted and produced a show on PBS called Reading Rainbow.

LULU: So you've brought a little—a special something to read. So what do you have over there?

LEVAR BURTON: Well, people have told me from time to time "I'd listen to anything that Levar read." And I've always wanted to test that theory. I'm holding in my hands one of the most coveted items in COVID—a can of Lysol disinfectant spray. And I thought I'd just read from the back of the can, starting with the directions for use.

LULU: All right, bring it.

LEVAR BURTON: So before I read aloud, I always take a deep breath. Is that okay?

LULU: Please. Wait, wait, wait. I'm gonna interrupt. I feel so—I don't want to interrupt anything you do, but okay, here's the question.

LEVAR BURTON: Yeah.

LULU: Like, did you pull this Lysol can because you think there might be some magic in hearing the words given space, or is this totally just silly?

LEVAR BURTON: I don't think it's silly! My belief is that with the right intention and intonation, even gibberish can be soothing.

LULU: Hmm. And what do you think is actually happening when you're being read aloud to?

LEVAR BURTON: I think the person being read to feels a sense of being taken care of.

LULU: All right. Do you want to—do you want to take us to Lysol?

LEVAR BURTON: Sure. So let's take a deep breath and let it out. And we'll begin. "Directions for use. It is a violation of federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling. Read the entire label before using the product. Pre-clean surfaces prior to use. Hold can upright six to eight inches from surface. Spray three to four seconds until covered with mist. To deodorize, spray on surfaces as needed. To sanitize, surfaces must remain wet for 10 seconds, then allowed to air dry. For norovirus, hepatitis A virus, adenovirus 2 fusarium solani and mycobacterium bovis BCG, parenthetical (quant tuberculosis). To spot sanitize soft surfaces, spray until fabric is wet. Do not saturate. Fabric must remain wet for 30 seconds. Do not use on polished wood, painted surfaces, leather, rayon fabrics or acrylic plastics. Do not use on silk, rayon acetate or satin fabrics. Always test on a hidden area of fabric."

LULU: Could I get you to send us out with a spray? One spray?

[aerosol spray]

JAD: [laughs] I have to disagree with this whole premise. That was not amazing at all.

LULU: You disagree? Were you agitated? Were you bored?

JAD: No, I was—I was just—I was deep into the language world of the Lysol container, which is not a soothing world. It's not a—it's not a sleep-inducing world. It's a world of precision and of targeted—it's a—it's not—yeah, wow.

LULU: Like targeted fear?

JAD: Yeah.

LULU: I don't know. I found it totally lulling.

JAD: Okay, interesting. That's so great Reading Rainbow man. Oh, man!

LULU: I know.

JAD: Love Reading Rainbow man!

LULU: Bless him. And, you know, he has a—do you know he has a podcast for adults now where he reads sci-fi stories that he loves and waxes philosophical about them?

JAD: No, I did not know that.

LULU: It's really great.

JAD: I need to know that.

LULU: You do. Levar Burton reads. Thanks, Levar.

JAD: I'm Jad Abumurad.

LULU: And I am Lulu Miller.

JAD: Thanks for listening.

LULU: Goodbye.

 

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