Radiolab - Frailmales

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

This week, we bring you two stories about little guys trying to do big big things. First, self-proclaimed animal grinch producer Becca Bressler introduces us to perhaps the one creature that has warmed her heart: a cricket. And more specifically, a male cricket. This is a tale about a tiny Romeo insect trying to find a mate, and the ingenious lengths he’ll go to have his beckoning heard. The hero of our story   And second, producer Annie McEwen journeys through perhaps the zaniest game of football that has ever been played. When a ragtag group of players take on the top team, will it be an underdog tale for the ages or an absolute disaster? Special thanks to Stephen Spann and Joshua Baxter at the Doris and Harry Vice University Library at Cumberland University as well as Alison Reynolds at Georgia Tech Library. Thanks also to Rick Bell, and to Scott Larson who wrote a book all about this game called Cumberland: The True Story of the Highest Scoring Football Game in History. And finally, thanks so much to our tape syncer Ambriehl Crutchfield for her help with this episode.  If you’re still interested in learning more about this epic football game, be sure to check out this brilliant and hilarious video by sportswriter Jon Bois. Lastly, don't forget to check out Death Sex and Money. We recommend episode titled Hard, which is deep dive into our relationship with erectile dysfunction, and the drugs developed to treat it.   Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab today.     Radiolab is on YouTube! Catch up with new episodes and hear classics from our archive. Plus, find other cool things we did in the past — like miniseries, music videos, short films and animations, behind-the-scenes features, Radiolab live shows, and more. Take a look, explore and subscribe! DOWNLOAD BRAILLE READY FILE HERE (https://zpr.io/YPQjmqjec5g7)

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From WNYC. You're listening. Radio Lab.

Radio Lab. From WNYC. You're listening. Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From WNYC. WNYC. Radio Lab.

Hey, I'm Lutze Vnozzer. I'm Lutze Vnozzer. I'm Lutze Vnozzer. I'm Lutze Vnozzer. I'm Lutt of Nasser. I'm Lula Miller. This is Radio Lab. Okay, should we do this thing? Yeah. And today, we're going to start with a story from our producer, Becca Bressler. How did you stumble across this? How did this little guy possess your brain? Okay. I basically, it was my turn to pitch something. And I wasn't like a dark Airbnb in Portland

with my friend in January, and just feeling like totally lost for inspiration. So I did a thing I actually never do when I'm looking for pitches, which is look for an animal story. Cause I actually, I don't even really like animals that much. Like I honestly am one of those people that I think pets dogs because I'm afraid of being judged

if I don't, if I don't bend down and pet the dogs. So like that's how animal agnostic is apathetic. Like I actually am. I think it is. So I'm googling animal science news, clicked the animal's head or section and came across an article about, it's just this little creature that to me

struck me as a total genius. And, uh, and that's what I want to tell you about. All right. I'm sort of still eating my breakfast. Also, for some balanced reporting, I dragged in animal-ever producer, Animqun. Hello. Okay. So this animal lives in these shrubby fields, a bushy kind of open landscape in India, just outside Bangalore.

It is quite an isolated area. This is Rictic Deb. He's an evolutionary ecologist at Vishwa Biharji University. Invest Bengal India. And he says to find this animal, you go out in the evening. In complete darkness. And walk out into the center of this field and just stop. Stand completely still.

And you wait for their song. Generally on an average maybe 10 minutes or so. The song of... A cricket. A cricket? Yeah. Really? Yeah.

Okay. I mean, I don't know if I'd call that a song. Like, it's like a chirp. No, no, no. I'm gonna call it a song. All right, stick with me here. Okay, all right. Fine. Okay, so these me here. Alright, fine.

Okay, so these crickets are called tree crickets, and just to give you a visual, they're sort of a translucent green. They've got tiny wings. They're around one centimeter long. One centimeter, so like your pinky finger? Half of the pinky finger, I would say. So like a pinky fingernail. It's slightly bigger than that. Slightly bigger than a pinky fingerna nail, depending on who you are.

Is it hard to find? It depends on where the cricket is. Once it happens that we hear our cricket and every time we go to a location, it feels like it's calling from behind us. We turn, we go to another location. And then it strikes us that it's calling from within our backpack. Oh my gosh, that is. Then it strikes us that it's calling from within our backpack. Oh my gosh, that is. And there's song that Ritik uses to track these little guys down.

That is the thing that makes them so interesting. Yeah, it's a hugely costly phenomena. Ritik explained that the male crickets who are the ones who sing the songs for three, four hours in the evening and they're lost. They do this to attract mates. And every night a male cricket sings, it can lose up to 20% of its body weight. Whoa.

It like sings itself skinny. Yeah, it'd be like you were eye-losing 25 or 30 pounds in one night just to find a mate. And this is actually a classic conundrum in evolution. You would find it across so many different organisms. And Darwin first noticed it in peacocks, and it became known as the peacock puzzle. Peacocks, tea, is such a...

So a peacock's tail... ...as grand and beautiful as it is. By the theory of natural selection kind of shouldn't be It prevents them from being able to really fly well it gets them like caught up in bushes easily He got their absurd Totally totally and they really puzzle Darwin fashion over function. No exactly fashion over function Totally and fashion over function in science is actually just called sexual selection.

There's an official serve for it, which is that. Darwin eventually figured out that females prefer peacocks with extravagant tails. And therefore those peacocks mate a bunch more and they have many more offspring and that is why that trait survives. Right.

So these crickets are kind of like the peacocks, except that instead of having a big colorful tail, they have a very exhausting, but super sexy song. And Ritchick would eventually discover actually that the sexiest songs are the louder songs. So females like loud, loud songs. But the genius in this cricket,

the thing that made me fall in love with them so much is that some of these little guys give their little cricket middle finger to this beauty standard. What? What, how, What do you mean? Okay, okay, so let me tell you. So one night,

Ritik is out in the field, looking for crickets like he does. Another piece, the student was also helping me with sampling. And then, he hears this song. I hear one cricket, which sounds louder than usual. Like louder than he's ever heard before.

It's so loud that it feels like it's just near my ear but there is no bush there. It's like the cricket is in his head but not obviously. Yeah. So we start searching for that particular cricket. He's moving through this field. I am like trying to overage through top of a bush. It was really hard to locate it. Yeah.

We are completely exhausted neither of us confined the cricket. And then suddenly I see that there seems to be a hole in middle of a leaf. And there is a tiny head which is popping out. A little hole about the size of a penny in this leaf, and inside it, the head of a tiny tree cricket. I was like, what am I looking at? And then I call my friend. We now are investigating mode like we are looking from the back we are trying to look from the side and what they eventually see is that this cricket is singing from within this leaf it's calling from the

whole of the leaf so he's like that's weird yeah this is something very very unusual because these crickets they're always on the leaf. They're never actually in the leaf. My supervisor had given her mobile number and had told that only in case of emergency, you should call. And I frantically searched for my mobile and I call her immediately.

9-1-1. Yeah. And she told him, you know, I've actually heard about this before. It was written about in some paper a few decades ago. This was a publication which came out in 1975. So what he saw, it wasn't just some fluke. Does it have a name?

They called it Baffling. And the name that they gave to these crickets was they called them bafflers. Bafflers, okay. Why? Why bafflers? So the leaves with the holes are called baffles and a baffle is a surface that reflects sound, basically. Oh, okay.

So the leaf is like taking the vibrations of their song and shooting it out into the field. Yeah, basically. You can think of a megaphone kind of a thing, right? So in other words, if you took that cricket out of the hole, it would be quiet. And if you put it back in the hole, it would be loud again. The paper also explained that these crickets in the holes, they didn't just like fall into a hole, they created the holes for themselves.

They chewed them with their little cricket mouths and they climbed inside them to amplify their songs. Wow. So they're like fashioning a tool. Exactly. Like a little insect tool. Exactly. Wow.

Okay, that is the phrase. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Okay, but this raises a very real and interesting question for RITIC. Does this work? Like we said before, when it comes to these crickets, females generally prefer louder individuals. Louder is better.

Now, sometimes they have to settle for a quiet cricket. Based on how much energy you have spent searching, your standards lower. Exactly. Very relatable. Yeah. But it's given the choice. It will always go for the louder one. And it's not even just that a female cricket prefers a louder cricket to acquire her

cricket. She'll actually mate with that louder cricket for longer than she would that quiet cricket. And here, Ritik has found a quiet cricket pretending using this leaf megaphone thing to disguise itself as a loud one. And so the question is, do the females actually get deceived? Do they treat this cricket like a loud cricket? Do they stick around and meet with it for longer than they would if it didn't have that

baffle? Or can they spot the con? Yes, she like, I've been poked or she like, let's do it, whatever. It will all boil down to the point whether the female can catch the bluff. So, Ritik didn't experiment to test this out. And what he found was that the female cricket, it's spent equal amount of time

with the quiet cricket whose call has been amplified by using Baffle with that of a truly loud individual who already calls at that particular loudness. The female crickets made it with the bafflers just as much as the naturally loud crickets. So it was like, wow, indeed the cheating is working. Every two. It's just ingenious, like this little cricket that by no fault of its own isn't supposed to mate that much. Has found this incredibly clever way of leveling the playing field of sort of like playing with the big dogs and like keeping himself in the fight. The more.

But like to me, I don't know, I'm like a little hesitant because like considering it from the female side. Yeah. What the hell? Like this is false advertising. The whole idea of sexual selection as I understand it is that the the peacocks, tail, or the loud cricket chirp, like that suggests genetic strength. And the reason that it's lasted for so long in the cricket world is because loud guys are better mates, that are gonna produce stronger offspring who are more likely to survive. So now what this kind of hack, this is a bait and switch.

A lie. This is not fair. But this cricket is a genius. I guess that's where I come in is. But is he an evil genius? Is the question. No, I know. I've self reflected on this a lot.

And whether or not I should be ashamed that I am endorsing this type of deception. However, a couple of other ways you could think about it, the loudness might just signal, this is a good one, and I should spend more time meeting with it. And so whether that is a cricket, that is just naturally louder, or a cricket that has figured out a way

to make its own calls louder, like that is a pretty, that trait, like, I don't know, I feel like that deserves some recognition. I don't know though, back's like it's still, it's still lie. It's still a trick. I just, this is the guy, this is the animal that would you over into like a animal? Yes, it is, okay.

And, okay, I guess the other reason that I wanted to defend this male cricket is so in the peacocks, peacocks have developed these beautiful tails because females choose and they like big, pretty tails, right? So it's like this whole sex of peacocks has adapted just to be chosen as a mate used for its body, if you will.

Now, my feeling about this male cricket is it feels like in a way that what we're seeing is crickets not narrowing in into some homogenized version of the cricket that is the most likely to get chosen. This cricket's like fighting for itself. It's like I might not measure up to your beauty standards, but I deserve to survive. And so I'm going to find another way of doing that. animal lover Becca Bressler. I wrote a song about the cricket.

Oh, sing me the song. Can you guys give me a beat? I guess it's like... They rub their wings so they don't die alone. They use the leaves as a megaphone. They spread their seeds to get the ladies going. They use the leaves as a megaphone. Thank you so much.

Next up, we've got another underdog story for you, but we are leaving the fields of India and heading onto the field in American style. But hike, we'll go back. Hey listeners, this is Becca Bressler. I produced one of the segments for this episode alongside Annie McEwan. First off, thank you. As you know, Radio Lab belongs to New York Public Radio, which is to say that we rely on your support. For each episode, we wrote in so many people to do so many different things. This episode was no exception. There were two reporters on this episode, Annie and me, our team of sound designers

and our incredible fact checker, Diane Kelly. We talked to two different guests. We read at least three books, probably like 25, 30 articles and there were as many as, I don't know, 17 or 18 versions of each story until we made one that worked. And this is just what we do. We dive into each episode as deep as we can, and this takes so much time. And we do this thanks to you. You help sustain us over time.

This is why we created our membership program, the lab. We are so very grateful to you, so we also try to make it worth your while. There's so much stuff that we love that we can include in every episode that you'll get to hear, or even events where we get to spend time together. Also, swag. There's like a super cool tied-eye hat that has a goat on top of a cow, which is so strange. Bottom line is that your support makes it possible for us to continue to do the work that we do. To our lab members, thank you. Thank you for allowing us to go on. And for those of you who aren't members yet, you can join the lab at radialab.org slash join.

See you all there, and thanks for listening. Let this. Lulu. Radio lab. Next up, we've got another story about some little guys trying to do a big thing. Okay, let's just huddle up, circle up. Okay. Circle up, circle up. What are you here to tell us about?

Yeah, great question. Okay. From producer Annie McEwen. Alright, let's do it. Okay, so picture a college football field in Atlanta, Georgia. What season it's fall? It's fall. It's October.

Okay. And it's a warm day. It's like 70 degrees plus and it's humid and the fans are cheering from the stands as the player's jog out onto the field. Georgia Tech versus Cumberland University. The game is about to begin. A familiar scene in the US today. Yeah. game is about to begin. A familiar scene in the US today. Except these players

instead of bulky pads and giant shiny helmets are wearing little leather caps and knitted socks pulled up to their knees. Because this game happened in 1916. Oh, okay. And the spectators in these stands are about to witness history. Something that could never be repeated, because this football game should never have happened. Well, that wasn't just a football game, because that's ridiculous. Who would do that? Here Tell Me Explain is Cumberland History Professor Dr. Tara Mitchell Melnick.

I am a ninth generation Tennessee, and so we've been here a while. So this game, this football game, when did you first hear about it? I don't really know. I feel like I've just always known about it. I think that's kind of one of Cumberland's claims to fame or infamy maybe. I'm not sure. Okay. So let's just begin.

If you could just tell me what happened. Okay. So back in 1916, Cumberland had had some financial difficulties. The university needed to tighten its belt, cut its costs. Decisions had been made, football had been cut out,

and Cumberland no longer is going to have a football team. Now, a game schedule had already been drawn up for that season. So Cumberland had to reach out all those schools and say, we're sorry, but we don't have a football team. We're not going to play. And every school said, no problem, except for one. Georgia Tech. The letter they get back from Georgia Tech says something like, you are under a contract.

This is a legal contract. If you don't play this game, we are going to sue you for $3,000. $3,000 back then is like $80,000 today. Some people say it was gonna bankrupt the school, it was gonna close the school. Why was Georgia Tech being so stubborn about this? Why wouldn't they just let them off the hook like everybody else?

Well, this part of the story is a bit murky, but according to legend, Georgia Tech was pissed off at Cumberland. And not just anyone at Georgia Tech, specifically their their head coach a man named John Heisman Have you guys heard of John Heisman? No, that Heisman trophy before I let you go Who's the Heisman trophy one? The Heisman trophy could be decided in this So the Heisman trophy is handed out to the best college football player every year So the Heisman trophy is handed out to the best college football player every year. And it's named after one of the most famous college football coaches in history.

No one can deny the genius that is Heisman and football. This guy invented the hut, the snap back to quarterback, credited with popularizing the forward pass. Without him, football just wouldn't be the same sport. He is the guy. And he kind of looks like this terrifying god, like high cheekbones, strong stern brow. And his coaching style was also sort of godlike. You know, we don't lose.

Don't show weakness. He was sort of famous for opening each season with his speech to his players where he would hold up a football, look them all in the eyes and say Better do have died a small boy than defumble this football. Whoa Yeah, and why was Heisman so angry at Comberland? Well as the legend goes it all had to do with this Comberland student named George Allen George Allen apparently is kind of the big man on campus He's 20 clean cut ordinary looking white guy from the 19 teens, huge and frapp parties.

Everyone's favorite bro dude. He is the student manager of both the baseball and the football team. And when Car Berlin University canceled their football team, George Allen had this idea. And it was this idea, the legend goes that would make John Heisman so pissed. Okay. Okay. So George Allen, he's feeling the school spirit drop. And one day, he's like, if Cumberland baseball, if the Cumberland baseball team can really hit it out of the park at their next game,

then maybe the loss of the football program won't sting so much. He's trying to show the world the school still sported. So, he sneakily hires all of these minor league players, these professional baseball players. Quote on quote, ringers, guys that who weren't technically cummerland students. To put on the Cumberland College uniform and play in this like upcoming baseball game. And who are they playing? They're playing Georgia Tech's baseball team. Oh, which for some reason is also coached by John Heisman. Oh, no. Yeah, and the game is just a complete blowout. There are these like professional players playing these kids basically

and they're just like getting bored, hitting everything. Some point, they just start bunting. So unfair. And they eventually win by a score of 22 to nothing. Cumberland's school spirit is back, but John Heisman is not happy. Yeah, I could see why. And so when Kumballin says, hey, we're not going to make that football game in the fall

in Atlanta because we canceled our football program, Heisman basically says, up yours, George Allen, we are going to play this game. But the problem is Kumballin doesn't have a football team. We've eliminated our football program. And so George Allen steps up and says, here's what we're going to do. We're going to play this game. But there is no football team.

So what does he do? Basically, George Allen just starts recruiting on campus, petitioning all these young law students, their light teams in early 20s. These like life, pale figures, you can see in the halls of a library or out partying. They were not anti-party. Let's just fit it back.

What the heck? And George Allen is like, we need your help, the school needs your help. Alma Mater is asking for your help kind of thing. And people step up. Somewhere between 16 and 18 students. Do they have they played football before? Some of them have.

A couple of the guys did the headband football players like in high school. So there is some sense of what does this game look like and how do we play this game? It's not like they're complete novices. Right. So they quickly scrambled to raise money for train tickets and hotel rooms. And when the big day arrives, there's a huge send-off in Lebanon. Everyone comes out to cheer on the boys who volunteered to save their school. You know, they're waving banners, big signs that say things like wrecked tech. Oh, wow. And then they catch a train and go to Atlanta.

And as we head to Atlanta, I'm going to bring in Wredelabs production coordinator W. Harry, for tuna, because Harry, I think is the only one amongst the four of us, you know, is anything about football. And here to help. Okay. October 7th, 1916, Grant Field, Georgia Tech, a thousand tech spectators in the stands. For Commoral and it would have been a big crowd. They would have been probably a little bit in awe of the number of people who had come out for this game.

It reminds me a little bit of that scene in Hooshers, where the basketball team goes into that great big stadium and they're kind of like oh My goodness This is big and they don't have equipment managers They have to all carry their own equipment and they had barely any pads since those old leather helmets leather heads Fairly more than a hat on your head. I don't even think there were mouth guards old leather helmets, leather heads, fairly more than a hat on your head. I don't even think there were mouthguards. On the sidelines, suited up with the rest of the players, George Allen says a few words. We're just trying to make this work. We've got to play this game and get home. And as the ref flip the coin up into the air and it fell, flashing in the sun, turning over and over and over,

there was this feeling from the carbon inside that, okay, maybe we could do this. We could really do this. Turns out to be something they're going to talk about for the rest of their lives. Because from the very beginning of this game, things start to go sideways. Georgia Tech wins the toss and they elect to kick off. They kick the ball, it flies through the air, it's coppair Kermelon player who then turns

to see a wall of Georgia Tech players hurling towards him any freezes. Edwards, the Kermelon quarterback, uses his body to block an oncoming Tech player and is immediately knocked out cold. The guy holding the ball, the guy who froze, is also flattened and Cumberland, they can't get out of their own territory. They end up punting it, but- The plant only goes 20 yards.

Not a lot. Not a lot. Tech gets possession of the ball and quickly runs it into the end zone. Touchdown for Georgia Tech on the first play. And I just want you guys to go ahead and access that YouTube file that I sent you guys. Oh great. Okay.

This is a song that plays every single time Tech gets touched out. Okay. Hold on hold on. Let me play. Elev an engineer. Oh, I love my record. George Tech kicks for the extra point, and after less than a minute of play, the score is Tech 7, Cumberland Zero. And that first touchdown is just the beginning. Georgia Tech begins to run that ball over the line. Again, and again, and again, and again. Touchdown after touchdown after touchdown after touchdown.

The home crowd is losing their minds and very quickly it becomes pretty apparent. This is gonna be a problem. Cumberland is getting clobbered. They're being tackled, getting the face or the head with all kinds of body parts, your arm, your head, your shoulder, whatever it takes to bring them down.

That's what makes. Forte-back Edwards makes it back out onto the field, but is immediately knocked out again. Oh, come on. He's carried off the field again. And basically every time George Tech cut just the ball, they run it into the end zone. The Cumberland players are like, this is bad.

Just a ridiculous slaughter of a football game. They do finally get to halftime. What's the score right now? The score at halftime is 126 to nothing. 126 to nothing? 126, to nothing. Yep. And many of these players now would have been pulled out for concussions.

They would not have been allowed to continue, but it's a different time. In a normal game, there would have been just a forfeit. But if Cumberland does forfeit, then they will have to pay that $3,000. So they have to stay to the end of the game. I gotta keep going. And Heisman, he was not holding back.

He also doesn't trust George Allen. He's like, well, maybe he brought in some ringers. And George Allen is over on his sideline just trying to exhort his team. He's like, well, okay, we're halfway there, guys. Just stick it out. Half time came to a close. We can do it, we can do it.

We just gotta get finished. And now that the goal of winning has been fully abandoned, and it's all just about running out the clock, all kinds of instincts kick in Survival fighter flight some Karmel and players begin to run away from tech players There's even one Karmel and player that he's like every time tech at the ball I turned around and I ran with the tech and that was the way that he was like trying to protect himself once in a while

It's sort of felt like the head of chance I guess because there's one story where to protect yourself. Once in a while it's sort of felt like a chance I guess, because there's one story where a Comberlin player has an open feel to the goal. He is running, he is going to make it. Comberlin. But no, he falls. He trips over one of his own teammates who is on all force looking for his glasses. Third quarter begins.

Our friend Edwards, he was knocked out twice, he's back in the game. Someone gives him the ball. He throws it to a teammate, he throws it back. Neither of them want the ball. If you don't have the football, you can't be tackled. So they're standing there tossing it back and forth and back and forth. It's almost like a hot potato football. Until a tech tackler just comes and creams them both and Edwards is carried off the field

a third time. No, Edward. We have Peewee, a law student, who is told he would not have to touch the ball. He could throw in the ball. He panics. He flings the ball away. He runs and hides behind a fence where two other

cumberland players are already hiding. No, they do not want him to give away their hiding place so they throw him back over the fence. There was one story where Heisman looks over at his bench, and he's like, I don't know that guy. He goes over and says, aren't you a Cumberland player? And the guy says, don't tell them. Cumberland player, his name is Johnny Dog Nelson.

He is chased around the stadium by a dog, a real life dog. That's where we're full like Lune Tune's cartoon right now. Absolutely. OK, so we're nearing the end here. And this is kind of like an amazing moment because Cumberland is like, like there's blood in the grass, there are broken noses, poor Edwards,

it's knocked out for a third time. These people are destroyed. They have nothing left. Score right now. Score is 173-0. Wow. Okay. There's no hope for these guys. But for some reason, they find it in their hearts

to rally. Hmm. And so Cumberland, they're in a huddle or whatever, talking about their next play. It must have either been a kickoff or they're blocking an extra point. Block a field goal? Yes.

And someone proposes this climb the ladder play, which is now illegal. Oh, god. Oh. And some of the Carlin players are like, no, no, this is suicidal. We shouldn't do this. But then this young guy, Fishy Woods,

he's blonde, he's got like a nice smile, he volunteers. He's like, I'll do it. And you can imagine, like the crowd must be freaking out right now because like, watching a team rally when they're so low. I know, I love that, I love it. It's amazing. So one player gets on all fours,

grabs the knees of a second player who bends over at the waist and grabs the stomach of a third player. What? As Georgia Tech's kicker kicks the ball, the fourth player, Vishu Woods, he charges at them, runs up their backs and leaps into the air as high as he can. What? He flies through the air with his arm outstretched, reaching for the ball. But his fingers just miss. And instead of blocking the ball with his hand,

Vishya takes it to the face. Uh, no, yeah. Breaks his nose, probably has a concussion. Oh. Wait, but, but. What? He blocks it. He does block it. The score would have been higher if it weren't for Vichy.

Vichy would. Yeah, he blocks it with his face. Eesh. The game ends soon after with a final score of 222 to nothing. Wow. And there were 32 total touchdowns at TechScore. And was that the highest ever at that point scoring? Yes. And that is actually still the highest today.

It's in the Guinness Book of World Records. It's the highest score in the game. Oh wow. Okay. I was just trying to imagine what was the end like, like the final whistle blown on that final minute. Lay down and try to catch your breath and determine, you know, is anything broken, just exhaustion and frustration. These guys are literally total losers, but they did stick it out to the end and save their

school from potential financial ruin. So did they go out for a party? Apparently they went out partying that night in Atlanta like with their swollen eyes like barely able to see anything but apparently they did. Even Edwards. I don't know but Edwards. Yeah. I'm still like I want a Vischee Woods tattoo and I can't not love that.

So Vischee Wah! she would tattoo and I can't not love that. So... Vizier Waaah! Producer, football commentator, Annie McKeeling. full commentator, Annie McKeillin. All right, well, before we go, I just wanted to tell you about a new series that just came out from our colleagues over at Death, Sex, and Money. It is called Hard.

And it's about, it's about a rectile dysfunction. I was curious how are you gonna say that exactly, yeah. Yeah, and as a woman married to a woman, I wasn't sure if there was gonna be much in there for me, but with Anna's sales hosting, it turned out there really was. It's, I mean, there are these frank conversations about what intimacy can be, and there is a really wild history of the invention of Viagra,

and the totally shocking physiology of how the drug works. I didn't know any of this. It's a series that ends up having a lot of joy in it. By the end, it really moves past the idea that, quote unquote, erectile dysfunction, even is dysfunction. And has these really expansive moments of people talking about new visions of what intimacy can be like this. It feels like the way I've explained it before is it feels like there's sunlight in my veins. Like everything inside me turns white and euphoric. My whole body kind of disappears into this state of pleasure. It feels like I'm injected with pleasure. Again, it's called hard from death, and money. Hope you give it a listen. Radio Lab was created by Chad Abumrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulumiller and LuttiFnosser are our co-hosts. Suzy Lektemberg is our executive producer.

Dilling Keif is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Kusik, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindruneana Sambandum, Matt Kielte, Anna McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Carrey, Anna Rosquit Paz, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster, with help from Carolyn McCusker and Sarah Sonbock. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Adam Ishiboh. Hi, this is Susanna calling from Washington DC. Leadership support for Radio Lab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Science Sandbox, Assignment Foundation Initiative, and the John

Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.