Futility Closet - 356-A Strawberry's Journey

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 11,000 quirky curiosities from a worldly bequest to a comprehensive contraction. This is episode 356. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. The Modern Strawberry has a surprisingly dramatic story involving a French spy in Chile, a perilous ocean voyage, and the unlikely meeting of two botanical expatriates. In today's show, we'll describe the improbable origin of one of the world's most popular fruits. will describe the improbable origin of one of the world's most popular fruits.

Starting point is 00:00:47 We'll also discuss the answers to some of our queries and puzzle over a radioactive engineer. When the Pilgrims reached North America in the early 1600s, they exclaimed over a species of wild strawberry that they found there. It was bright red, juicy, sweet, and larger than the strawberries they'd known in England. Settlers on the ship Arabella came ashore at Salem to picnic on them in June 1630. Roger Williams, who founded the colony of Rhode Island, called them the wonder of all the fruits growing naturally in those parts, and reported that where the Indians have planted, I have many times seen as many as would fill a good ship within a few miles compass. The settlers shipped samples of the new fruit back to England,

Starting point is 00:01:36 and Europeans quickly grew to favor it over the continent's native wood strawberry, which is too delicate to grow commercially. But despite its popularity, the new variety, known as the scarlet or Virginia strawberry, didn't cross well with indigenous European varieties, and it remained a curiosity. It might have stayed that way except for a very unlikely happenstance that unfolded in the early 18th century. In 1711, a grandson of Louis XIV had been placed on the Spanish throne. This dramatically shifted the balance of power in Europe, and in the tension that followed, Louis began to fear that France might be shut out of western South America. To guard against this, he decided to send a spy to the New World to learn more about the Spanish defenses there.

Starting point is 00:02:26 spy to the New World to learn more about the Spanish defenses there. He chose a 30-year-old military engineer named Amélie-Francois Frazier. Frazier's interests were wide. He'd begun his career in an infantry regiment, but a treatise on fireworks he'd written in 1706 had brought him to the notice of the Military Intelligence Corps. Now, his superior officer, pleased with his zeal and skill, recommended him as the man to study the defense fortifications of Chile and Peru. They agreed that Frazier would pass as a traitor, the better to insinuate himself with the Spanish governors. But secretly, he would gather hydrographical observations, take plans of the ports and fortresses along the coasts, and note anchorages and other factors that might be useful to the French if a war should break out. After several false starts,

Starting point is 00:03:11 he sailed on January 7, 1712, on an armed merchant ship, the St. Joseph. They reached the open sea without encountering pirates, rounded Cape Horn, and arrived in Concepcion, Chile, on June 16th, after a voyage of 160 days. Concepcion would be Frazier's base of operations for more than a year and a half. He posed as a merchant captain so that he could visit fortifications as a tourist, but all the while he was studying them for France, noting which approaches might offer the best attack, where ammunition was stored, and which routes might be used for escape. He made friends with Spanish officials who, if they'd known his real assignment, would have had him killed. In his report, Frazier took in everything. He estimated the strength of the Spanish administration in each area he visited,

Starting point is 00:04:00 observed the developing gold and silver mines, and reported on the operations of the church, the area's physical geography, and its agricultural products. He remarked on everything from the history of earthquakes to the diversity of the seasons and the zoology of Peru. And he described some new plants he'd noticed, including a remarkable strawberry plant that he'd encountered at Concepción. What had caught his eye was the size of its fruit, which he described as generally as big as a walnut and sometimes as a hen's egg. This plant had originated thousands of years earlier on the west coast of North America, on the opposite coast from the Virginia strawberry that the settlers had discovered.

Starting point is 00:04:39 But from there, it had made its way down the Pacific coast, probably carried by migrating birds. Long before the Spanish conquest, probably carried by migrating birds. Long before the Spanish conquest, in what is now Chile, people had cultivated it for years in rich soil, which Frazier now described as extraordinarily fertile and so easy to till that they only scratch it with a plow. The resulting plant had notably large fruit, which Frazier had discovered wrapped in cabbage leaves and sold in the city market. Frazier was so taken with these plants that he decided to bring some along with him when he returned to France in February 1714. This was a significant undertaking. The voyage took six months and passed through the torrid zone around the equator. In order to keep the plants alive, Frazier had to appeal to the officer in charge of fresh water on the voyage.

Starting point is 00:05:26 Frazier wrote, If he had not taken it to heart to water these plants encased in a pot of soil, it would have been impossible for me to preserve them until our arrival at Marseille. But they arrived safely on August 17th with five Chilean strawberry plants. Frazier gave two of them gratefully to the supercargo for his help in keeping them alive. He gave one to the head of the king's garden at Paris, and one to his superior, the minister of fortifications at Brest, and he kept one for himself. He made a presentation to Louis XIV explaining the state of Spanish fortifications in the New World, and the king

Starting point is 00:06:02 expressed his satisfaction by giving him 1,000 ecous from the royal treasury. But then Frézier was quickly drawn back into defense construction, in a busy career from which he didn't retire until age 82. The strawberry plants that he'd carried carefully over from Chile were a disappointment. They grew happily in European soil, and they sent out propagations that gardeners could share with one another. But somehow in Europe, the plants didn't produce the large fruit that Frazier had described so enthusiastically. It would be years before the reason was fully understood. The plants that Frazier had brought over were all female. His goal had been to bring large strawberries to Europe,

Starting point is 00:06:41 so naturally he would have chosen plants with large fruits to bring with him. Male plants don't bear fruit, so unwittingly he had left these behind. Unfortunately, a female strawberry plant can't produce fruit unless it's fertilized with pollen from a male flower, and Chile is 7,000 miles from France. Europe had a wild strawberry of its own, but that refused to cross with the new species. Today we understand why. The European plant has two sets of chromosomes, and the Chilean has eight. That might have been the end of the story. Frazier just hadn't brought back the right mix of plants to allow gardeners to cultivate

Starting point is 00:07:18 the Chilean strawberry in Europe. But a solution came through an unlikely reunion. The Virginia strawberry, the species that the early settlers had sent back from North America, was still cultivated in Europe. It produced only small, soft fruit, but it had both male and female plants, and it had eight sets of chromosomes. Sometime in the 1740s, gardeners around Brest noticed that their Chilean plants were beginning to bear fruit. Gradually, they worked out that this seemed to happen when Virginia strawberry plants were

Starting point is 00:07:50 growing nearby. Pollen from the male Virginia plants was finding its way to the female Chilean plants and fertilizing their flowers. Two plants that had been separated in the New World had been reunited in the Old. Strawberry breeder Kim Lewers compares it to two people, one from New York and the other from San Francisco, meeting in Paris. As this practice was refined, the first hybrid strawberries began to appear in Brittany, grown from the seeds that these crosses produced. By about 1750, the region was supplying much of Europe with its best strawberries, which were noted for both their flavor and size. Frazier's original plan had finally borne fruit, literally. In 1764, a budding 17-year-old botanist named Antoine Duchesne presented Louis XV with a pot of the

Starting point is 00:08:38 new strawberries. The king liked them so much that he ordered them painted for the Royal Botanic Library, asked Duchesne to raise more in the Royal Kitchen Garden at Versailles, and authorized him to collect every variety of strawberry known in Europe for the Trianon Garden. Two years later, Duchesne delivered the most scholarly, complete treatise ever written on the natural history of the strawberry. He was the first to document the separation of sexes in these plants and to note the hybrid origin of what we now call the garden strawberry. He was the first to document the separation of sexes in these plants and to note the hybrid origin of what we now call the garden strawberry. He observed that the new

Starting point is 00:09:10 strawberry was related to the Chilean like a son with his mother and produced what he called a new race of fruit. The hybrid combined the firmness, plumpness, and flavor of the Chilean strawberry with the color, softness, and juiciness of the Virginia. It came to be called the pine strawberry after its fragrance, which was said to resemble pineapple. With time and further breeding, the new species spread around the globe, and Antoine Duchesne is remembered as the father of the modern strawberry. There's an odd postscript to this story. You may have noticed that the man who facilitated all this, Amélie-Francois Fraisier, has a name that sounds very like fraisier, the French word for strawberry plant.

Starting point is 00:09:50 Possibly this is just a flat coincidence, but there's a story that's often told about it. The story goes that in the 10th century, an ancestor of Fraisier's had given a gift of ripe strawberries to the king of France, and in gratitude the king had knighted him, changed his name to Fraise, which is French for strawberry, and gave the family three stocked strawberries for their coat of arms. I have my doubts about this, both because no one seems to offer a strong source for it, and because it's so terribly pat. According to the story, the ancestor's original name had been Julius DeBerry. To support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the supporters section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Or if you'd like to make a more ongoing donation to our show, you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll also get access to bonus material like outtakes, more discussions on some of the stories, extra lateral thinking puzzles, and what's going on behind the scenes of the show. and what's going on behind the scenes of the show. You can learn more at our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us section of our website for the link.

Starting point is 00:11:10 And thanks again to everyone who helps support the show. We really couldn't do this without you. We got a nice amount of follow-up to episode 351's Notes and Queries, as we heard from several listeners on many of the topics Greg mentioned. I'll be covering some of that today and some more of it in the next episode. Connolly was washing clothes at Glenad Lake in northwestern Ireland in 1722 when her husband heard her screaming and found her with a very large otter-like creature on her body. The creature is known as the Dara Hu, or Duverku, apparently, depending on which dialect of Irish you're using, and was said to have been depicted on Connolly's tombstone, but Greg hadn't been able to find a good photo to see what it supposedly looked like. Happily, some of our listeners were able to. Dan Nolan and William Cuddy sent a link to a post

Starting point is 00:12:10 from 2017 on Underexposed, the blog of Tony O'Neill, an Irish photographer that has a good recent photo. O'Neill relates the story of how Grace Connoy's husband found the Dara Hu, or waterhound, with his wife's bloodied body and killed the beast. Legend says that the creature gave a high-pitched shriek as it died that summoned its mate, which attacked Connelly's husband. He fled on horseback, but the Dara Hu chased him, and they had a fierce fight that ended with his slaying the creature. O'Neill's post has photos of both Connelly's and her husband's grave slabs, with his having a carving of him on a horse holding a dagger in his hand. Her grave slab, which is rather worn, shows a carving of a creature that looks like a dog in

Starting point is 00:12:56 many respects, though its head, neck, and possibly paws look more otter-like. The animal is depicted with its head twisted to the back and a human hand is holding a dagger in its neck. Dan also very helpfully sent a copy of an article from the December 1948 issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, written by Patrick Tohall. Tohall's article contains a photo of the tombstone in much better condition than the more recent ones, though even in 1948, the sandstone slab was showing some deterioration. Toehal states that locals reported that visitors to the grave use implements such as steel brushes or stones or knives to scrape away moss from the sculpture before taking photos of it.

Starting point is 00:13:43 And whether it's for this or some other reason, Tohal says, the sharpness of the sculpture has fallen away even since I first saw it about 1935. Tohal recounts a similar tale to O'Neill's of Connelly and the Darahu, with some minor differences. He also says in the article that there had been another what was called Darahu tombstone in a nearby cemetery, but it had broken up and disappeared by the time Tohal went looking for it, though he notes that its existence is vouched for by the unanimous testimony of all the older men interviewed, who remembered it as being a gravestone with an animal of some kind carved on it, and everyone

Starting point is 00:14:21 called it the Darahu stone. Tohal states that there is a folktale of another woman who was supposedly killed by a Dara Hu while washing clothes in Glenad Lake, but it wasn't clear if this other missing tombstone marked the grave of that woman or not. I hadn't thought about it before, but the fact that the carving appears on Grace Connelly's tombstone is interesting because presumably that was erected relatively soon after her death. So that's not a lot of time to allow a legend to form. I mean, essentially, they're saying this woman was killed recently, and here's the thing that killed her, you know?

Starting point is 00:14:54 Yeah. I mean, the legend of the Dara who predates Grace Connelly. I mean, they've got reports of it going back to at least the 1600s. But it would seem that at close to the time of her death, it was understood that that's how she had died. Yeah, at least as reported by her husband, right, who got to be the hero of the story, because he killed two of these things. I don't know that anybody else supposedly saw it or witnessed it, right? Fair point. But it is a good point. I mean, Tohal said in his article that features of the tombstone are characteristic of the era of roughly 1722 to 1760.

Starting point is 00:15:28 So the tombstone was, we don't know whether it was erected right upon her death, but at least within somewhat of living memory of her death. In episode 351, Greg also mentioned that a Victorian actor was alleged to have said that the hardest thing for an amateur actor to do is to get over the habit of stressing personal pronouns. And Greg wondered if that really is an issue for actors. Joseph Kyle Rogan wrote, Dear Futilitarians, I just listened to your notes and queries, episode 351, and after years of being a loyal listener, I finally heard a query regarding something of which I'm a bit of an expert. I'm a high school theater teacher, and I can confirm that the biggest challenge for amateur actors is absolutely to stop emphasizing personal pronouns. This specific issue is a nexus of two more general issues. First, most people have a surprising amount of trouble hearing the

Starting point is 00:16:21 difference between words and sounds that are stressed and unstressed. For instance, a significant portion of my students can't identify, at first, which syllable is stressed in the word syllable. It's the first one. I can say the word with the stress on the other syllables, and they can tell that they sound different, but they can't identify what the difference is. Nor can they reproduce the differences if I simply ask them to change the emphasis to a different syllable, without having them repeat the way I say it. Likewise, they can understand the concept on a theoretical level that stressing different words can change the meaning of a sentence, but it's still a major struggle for them to put that concept into practice. There are a couple of sentences that many theater teachers use to illustrate the concept,

Starting point is 00:17:03 may I marry you, and I didn't steal your money. Each have dramatically different meanings depending on which word or combination of words are stressed. And I wanted to say that I've always found these kinds of sentences interesting with the difference between like, I didn't steal your money. I didn't steal your money.

Starting point is 00:17:21 I didn't steal your money. And so on. That's one more reason to be nervous during a marriage proposal. Oh, that you're going to stress the wrong word and have the wrong meaning. Joseph continued, the second problem is that a beginning actor is likely to memorize their lines a certain way and then find that they are unable to change the way they say their lines without tremendous effort. This is an issue in all theatrical genres, but it's most noticeable in Shakespeare, where an actor may have to memorize their lines before they fully understand what those lines mean. Once an actor has memorized their lines, that knowledge

Starting point is 00:17:54 moves from the actor's working or short-term memory to their procedural or muscle memory. Then when they recite those lines, they're basically on autopilot. And for a beginning actor, they're likely to have many other demands on their working memory due to nerves and a lack of experience, and so they won't be able to bring their attention back to their lines. But why personal pronouns? Well, I believe it's because personal pronouns carry the lowest level of meaning of a sentence and will thus be most salient to the person trying to memorize it.

Starting point is 00:18:22 The personal pronouns identify who is being spoken to and who is being spoken of, two features that the beginning actor will be most concerned about, and so they will pay particular attention to making sure that those words are correct when they memorize. When reciting a poorly memorized line, they might substitute synonyms for verbs and adjectives without noticing it, but they'll know for certain that they made a mistake if they change the personal pronouns around, so they inevitably end up with too much emphasis. Unfortunately, personal pronouns are very rarely emphasized in real authentic speech. Usually it is the verbs and adjectives that carry the bulk of the meaning of a sentence. In the theater, these words are often called the operative words because they allow the sentence

Starting point is 00:19:03 to operate correctly and communicate the intended meaning. The general rule of thumb is to emphasize the verbs and adjectives and de-emphasize the pronouns. And Joseph said that there are some exceptions to this rule, and he gave an example of some lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream where the fairy king is instructing his servant on using a love potion and says that the meaning will best be understood if the actor puts the emphasis on the pronouns. Affect it with some care that he may prove more fond on her than she upon her love. And went on to say, this is known as a parallel construction

Starting point is 00:19:38 and it demonstrates how the job of an actor can be much more complex than many people assume. In fact, the worst possible insult you can give to an actor is to ask them, how did you memorize all those lines? The question demonstrates that you were only paying attention to the volume of their lines and not the way they were being delivered, when an actor's job is not to memorize words but to decide the best way to say those words. So how do actors get over this issue? Part of it involves how the actor memorizes their lines. You want to maintain flexibility and not lock in any single reading of a line until you are absolutely certain you know how you want to say it. Some actors will try

Starting point is 00:20:16 to memorize their lines in a robotic monotone without any differentiated emphasis or inflection. Others will practice saying their lines in as many different ways as possible. It's very much like the 1980s sitcom trope, where a character will be hired to say a single sentence in a movie or play and stand in front of the mirror for hours, practicing it a hundred different ways, as if it's the most important sentence in the world. Professionals really do do that. Thanks for an awesome podcast, and keep up the good work. It's interesting. The goal of an accomplished actor is to look natural. And if they succeed at it, you don't stop to think how difficult.

Starting point is 00:20:51 How difficult it really is. Yeah. I think that's true with a lot of jobs, don't you think? Yeah. And Nathan Coppins, a professional actor, wrote, I can confirm that one of the things young and amateur actors need to get over is to stop emphasizing I, you, etc. in their lines. It's not something we normally do in regular speech, and it's a terrible

Starting point is 00:21:10 habit for an actor to have. Of course, there are times when it's the normal way to say something. Who took the garbage out? I did. But most often it's not. When are you going to take the garbage out? I did. In this case, if you emphasize the I, you just sound like an egotistical idiot instead of someone insisting they already did take the garbage out. It's crazy how so many of us will switch to a ridiculous way of speaking just because we think it's more theatrical, when in fact it's heightening the theatrical or sustaining interest and energy in ways we would normally speak that is more important. in energy in ways we would normally speak that is more important. In episode 351, Greg had also mentioned that he had read about a proof of the Pythagorean theorem that was said to have been

Starting point is 00:21:52 worked out by Emma A. Coolidge, who had lost her sight at age one, and had been published in an 1888 issue of the Journal of Education. Greg had wanted to see the proof, but wasn't able to get a hold of it. Patrick McNeill came to the rescue saying, Hi Greg, please find attached a copy of page 17 from volume 28 of the Journal of Education that has Ms. Coolidge's proof. Not really any other details, but I wanted to pass it along so you can cross this one off your list. Patrick works at Harvard, and it sounds like after some considerable effort, was able to find a digital copy in their online library. So thanks so much for that, Patrick. The proof was published in the June 28, 1888 issue,

Starting point is 00:22:33 and is labeled as being a proof by Miss E.A. Coolidge, a blind student. And the proof is illustrated through the use of a rather complex figure. We'll have a copy of the journal page in the show notes for anyone who wants to see it. Thanks again to Patrick for sending that. I'll put that in. And also, her description of the figure and explanation of the proof is extremely terse in the journal. So I'll also put a link to the best explication I know, which is from Robert and Ellen Kaplan's book, Hidden Harmonies. But they point out in that book, in explaining her thinking, that she seems to have remarkably stuck as long as possible to a purely geometric proof. In other words, she doesn't, until relatively late in the proof, she doesn't go into calculating

Starting point is 00:23:17 areas or just explaining things using algebra. She sticks to a visual approach as long as possible. Which is, I guess, what makes it remarkable in her case. I did note that on this journal page that the journal has its own notes and query section. I hope that they got as many helpful answers from their readers as we got from our listeners. With more to follow next time. Thanks so much, as always, to everyone who writes to us. We really appreciate how much all of you add to our show. And if you have something you'd

Starting point is 00:23:51 like to add, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an interesting sounding situation. I'm going to try to work out what's going on by asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Brent Ulbert. In 1984, Stanley J. Watrous, a construction engineer at the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, set off the alarm at a radiation monitor installed to ensure that workers were not leaving the building with unsafe levels of radiation on their bodies. This was quite a surprise because the plant was still under construction and had not even been filled with nuclear fuel yet. After extensive testing, the radiation monitors were found to be in working order.

Starting point is 00:24:38 The findings of the Stanley Watrous incident eventually went on to save thousands of lives. What happened? incident eventually went on to save thousands of lives. What happened? Oh, so he, was it the case that he had radioactivity in or on his body from something other than the plant? Yes. X-rays? No. I'm like thinking dental fillings, but I have no idea why dental fillings would be radioactive. Was it something that he had, let's say, in his body, something that he'd had implanted in him in a medical procedure, medical-ish procedure, such as dental fillings or a pacemaker

Starting point is 00:25:12 or something like that? No. No. Was it something he was wearing on his person? Wearing like clothing? I'll say yes to that. Yes. Clothing?

Starting point is 00:25:26 Yes. Sortothing? Yes. Sort of clothing. Yes. But not like you could be wearing deodorant or makeup or jewelry or something. No, I'll say yes. I'll just say yes to that. Okay. So he was wearing clothing that set off the radioactivity detectors.

Starting point is 00:25:38 Yes. Huh. That's interesting. So he was wearing clothing clothing he was wearing radioactive clothing would you say yes a piece of clothing okay uh shoes um i i don't think i can say it's any one thing oh all of his clothing was possibly radioactive yes his His laundry detergent was radioactive? No. Or fabric softener or something? No.

Starting point is 00:26:11 Was this because of someplace he'd been? Yes. Okay. So it's not that it was some specific kind of clothing. That's right. So his clothing had picked up radioactivity from someplace he'd been prior to coming to work. Exactly, right. While wearing this outfit. Yes.

Starting point is 00:26:28 So the question is where he had been. Was he someplace recreational? No. Was he at his home? Yes. Does it matter where this... Oh, you said it is. It's in Pennsylvania.

Starting point is 00:26:40 Did this alert them to the fact that there was a radioactive leak somewhere else? I think I have to say yes to that. Depends what you mean. Like an amount of radioactivity that would have been affecting more than just his home. I'll say yes to that. Microwave ovens. No. No.

Starting point is 00:27:02 Something that was particular to this area of Pennsylvania. No, I'll say no. So this could have occurred elsewhere. Yes. Something that was causing radioactivity that's not natural. No, the answer to that is no. So something, a natural cause of radioactivity. Yes.

Starting point is 00:27:25 In his home. In his home. In his home, but presumably in his neighbor's homes too? Yes, I'd say so. Is that how it saved thousands of lives, because they picked up that there was this radioactivity in the area? Yes. Okay. So the question is, is what would be a natural source of radioactivity that's, you would say, unusually concentrated in one area? No, I wouldn't even say that.

Starting point is 00:27:47 No, not even. This saved lives around the country once it was discovered. Oh, but it's a natural. It's not from like a man-made product. That's correct. A natural source of radioactivity that could be in various places around the country. I mean, all I can think of is the sun, but that doesn't make any sense.

Starting point is 00:28:07 This is now a danger that's recognized and that's routinely checked for, for instance, in real estate transactions. Well, I'm thinking radon, but is radon radioactive? Yes. Oh, oh, okay. Basically, that's it. Brent writes, Stanley himself was radioactive

Starting point is 00:28:22 as his home contained an incredibly high level of radon gas, over 500 times the EPA action level of four picocuries per liter. Radon was plated out on dust particles on Stanley's clothes, which in turn set off the monitors. His home was the first residential home tested for radon. Testing spurred on by this incident eventually proved radon was a class A carcinogen. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Surgeon General now recommend testing all U.S. homes for radon as it is the second leading cause of lung cancer death behind only smoking. Over 21,000 annual deaths are attributed to radon, with Stanley's awareness now saving countless lives per year. Data shows over 1 in 15 homes in the U.S. have high levels, and high levels are found in every U.S. state.

Starting point is 00:29:03 So yay, the opposite of a fatal puzzle. We will hope that he didn't die from his radon exposure. Brent adds, if you've not tested your home, you do not know your exposure. Testing could save your life, your loved ones, or even your pets. Yay. Thanks, Brent. Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try,

Starting point is 00:29:20 please send that to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. try, please send that to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us and is supported entirely by our incredible listeners. If you'd like to help support the show, please check out the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com, where you can find a donate button and a link to our Patreon page. At our website, you can also graze through Greg's collection of over 11,000 recipient distractions. Browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books,

Starting point is 00:29:53 and see the show notes for the episode with the links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any comments or questions for us, please email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was all written and performed by Greg's extonious brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 356-A Strawberry's Journey

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