Radiolab - Happy Birthday Bobby K

Episode Date: August 7, 2014

It’s Robert’s birthday! (Or it was, anyway, a couple days back.) So today we celebrate with some classic Krulwich radio and a backwards peek into the spirit and sensibility that, in many ways, drives our show. For his birthday surprise we all listened to some old NPR pieces that Robert did in the 70s, 80s and early 90s — a news piece on the dawn of the ATM, a fake opera on interest rates, and the story of a family business splintered into relatives fighting to be first in the phone book. Along the way, we hear some incredible stories from Robert’s life …  And, just to celebrate the man whose infectious curiosity draws so many people (including us) to his side … we share with you the kind of gonzo, full-throated Krulwich story we usually can’t include in the show … an epic of secret zoos, sewing machines, an alligator farm, a marching band, and a bus full of French tourists that save the day.

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. Shorts! From W. N. Y. C.

C. C? Yes. And NPR. If anything says I don't know what's happening. Yeah, we can do a little. Yeah, exactly. So, a couple days ago, we did this thing.

We got Robert into the studio. When I noticed it. He's not wearing this. Headfronts on. And we ambushed him. Happy birthday. The whole staff rushed in singing cake, the whole deal. Now, Robert famously hates his birthday.

I have spent such a long time trying to hide my birthday for everybody. But you can't really hide your birthday these days. And I have had the extremely good fortune to work with this man for over 10 years. So if you'll excuse us just as once, we want to take this podcast to celebrate Mr. Robert Krollwich. So Robert, we didn't just bring you in here for cake and to listen to things to Acton Memory Lane. We were sort of thinking that we would love to share some of your earlier work as the next podcast. No. So we should talk about it.

That's our executive producer, Ellen Horn. She dug up a bunch of his old work from the archives, and he eventually agreed to let us play some. And it's really interesting to hear this stuff because I'm not sure a lot of people who listen to Radio Lab really get how much Robert's sensibility drives this show, like his combination of theater and play and his desire to sound different than other stuff on the radio and to ignore the rules, but always, always in service of a genuine attempt to understand or explain something. And also, it's just amazing how many creative lives he lived before he came to radio lab. Like, here's one, here's a piece from 1979, which is just a few years after NPR began. Banks these days, you've noticed they're trying out new systems. More and more,

we're being asked to deal with machines instead of tellers, and that's the way the banks want it, according to our business correspondent, Robert Krollwich. Right here in Washington, a few doors away from National Public Radio, there's a bank that offers you a chance at a colored television set, and they have a treasure chest with ten Susan B. Anthony dollars inside, which could be yours if you are willing to stand through a three-minute demonstration of their new automatic teller system. I don't know. It's just sort of a period I went through.

Strongly nasal, because I thought nasal was sort of powerful. I think if you have a nose, you should use it. And the pieces actually about how banks are starting these crazy things called ATMs, and people are a little freaked out. I've had some interesting problems with these machines. They have eaten my card from time to time. Do you mean they mutilated? No, they go...

And at one point, Robert, in order to explain why the banks were lobbying so hard for these ATMs, he almost bursts into song. Okay, Ricketts. You send the check to Sears. deposits the check in its bank. The bank sends a check to a regional bank. From there, it goes to your regional bank, which is in your very own area.

They mail it back to your hometown bank, which mails it back to you in a statement you get at the end of the month. The check shows up in the packet, hopefully. Now, remember, if you listen to the whole thing through, that is four different mailings for just one check with all that postage. Now, wouldn't it be cheaper, the banks argue,

to stop mailing the check from place to place, place, and try another system. That system is called Electronic Fund Transfer, ready to cut down on postage and on handling. This is painful for me. Here's another one we listen to. It's also from 1979. This one is a report about, well, a report in quotes

about interest rates. There is intense pressure from two different groups for changes in interest rates. One group wants them down. The other group wants them up even higher. Both sides are powerful and important to our economy. And the ins and outs of their struggles are worthy

of an opera. In fact, they are an opera. And now from the Palazzo Verdi, we present this live performance of Alfredo Tucci's immortal opera, Rato Interesso. And here is our host, Seward Chapman. Thank you very much. There aren't very many operas that deal exclusively with the subject of interest rates, but this one, I think, is the most magnificent of all. Tucci wrote it, were told, in a single afternoon, after a traumatic event that, according to his barographer Stanislau, Bricht, scarred him from. life. Bricht says that Tucci was walking along a road in the city when passing by in a tram he saw the exquisitely beautiful Sylvia Fine, and as she rode by, he knew that he wanted

desperately to meet her. Although he was her poor composer, he decided that he would send her a gift that would impress her, and he chose wall-to-wall carpeting. In order to get the money for the carpet, though, he had to get a household finance loan. To his horror, he found out what the interest rates were on the loan, and as he writes in his or his area, Eke, they were prohibitive. Our first act today closely follows these real-life events, and as the act opens, we're in the Italian section of Louisville, Kentucky, where Angelina, who also wants a wall-to-wall carpet,

learns that the interest rate is 18.5%. The scene begins as she gasps in astonishment and resolves not to buy the carpet, non-carpacio blah. She and her friend Nina tell this to the carpet cellar, Perigino. Peregino is greatly disturbed, says, Yovalio per se, the businessman's lament, is what he sings. I see we're now ready for the act to begin, as Angelina learns that she cannot afford her carpet. Now they go to Pericino, he's not happy.

So here's the thing about this. Paul Volker at the time was the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and what I do in Act 3 is I take Paul from a press conference that he was in, I was at. And I cut him into the opera. Ladies and gentlemen, we're face to face with economic difficulties really unique in our experience. The question of whether we should be putting another screw to interest rates is it's just one of those walking on a razor edge right now. wonderfully performed of Alfredo Tucci's

interiors, particularly by Mr. Khan, who's getting a standing ovation. Mr. Khan, followed by Mr. Volker. I can't believe that that was on National Public Radio. That was the crazy days. We did things then. Like, I interviewed an anchovy. They aired all that kind of stuff.

So there was no gatekeepers? We were like, no. No. After the opera, we listened to something from 1992, which would be just after I graduated high school. And here, Robert teams up with a couple of actors and comedians to do a sort of a yearly recap thing. I'm Robert Krollwich and welcome to the second annual edition of Backfire.

This program has been a tradition on NPR since 1991, and this is the occasion when we gather to review the events of the year, in this case the year 1992, and once again we were able to round up our regular observers. Buck Henry is a screenwriter and a pundit. He wrote the movie The Graduate, by the way. Jane Curtin is an actress and a pundit. Original cast Saturday Night Live. Tony Hendra, a pundit.

Famous satirist. And a pundit. And all three of you now, a double pundit in the Tony's case. Let's have the first question, and it's from me, Robert Kulwitch, pundit. What was the real explanation for President Bush's collapse?

This is now all the way back a year ago at the state dinner at Tokyo. You recall the event? Buck. I do indeed. He collapsed, and more importantly, he vomited on the, he was it the prime minister or the foreign minister

on the prime minister's lap. But Bush, as you know, was an Anonymous poyke name anyway. Bush is the sound that you make when you throw up. So he could have simply been responding to someone saying, by the way, what is your name? And the sushi came with it. It is also, as I have read my history, accustomed of world leaders from time to time to throw up on the lap of the minister of a friendly government. It demonstrates confidence in your host, a sense of the excellence of the dinner being served, and a tradition of giving back something you've been given.

Donald Bush being a consummate politician of giving his all. How then do you account for the surprised expression and the lack of delight, really, on the face of the Prime Minister when receiving this gift from President Bush? I think it was because it was done after the first course, as opposed to after the complete meal. In India, you simply throw your dinner in the face of your host before ingestig it. I'd like to point out, by the way, there is some misconception here, which is that this was a single event.

It's actually, apparently this habit of throwing up in the nearest stranger's lap was not just a question of courtesy. It's something that Bush has done ever since he was a little boy. And in fact, it's the origin of his nickname, Poppy. Because his mother, Momsie, used to refer to his. his inveterate habit of upchucking as popping. In fact, his original family nickname was Projectile Poppy. We would do this like for like two hours. And Manoli, who was our, she would not even smile.

There were sections where we were like, this was the least listened to program in all of NPR. They reduced us from 12 a year to two a year to one only on New Year's Eve at 10 p.m. You know what it's like to be scheduled for 10 p.m. on New Year's Eve? That means you have failed. But then, this is how the wife works. I'm sitting in my house and the phone rings and it's the White House. And some guy says, is your group available on like next March the 3rd? I mean, we want him in the East Room.

I said, of the White House? He goes, yeah. I said, well, I don't think you do. I said, maybe you should just ask whoever's idea this was to like vet it or something. something. So I, about two weeks passed, and then the farming said, well, it's good news and bad news and bad news. I listened to it, and yes, it isn't funny. But the people who think it's funny is a person and is the president of the United States. So that's the deal. And what happened? So we went. We went to the East Room and it was incredible, really. My wife

was there. You look across at your wife and you're at the White House, the president laughing at these dumb jokes. There are certain moments where you feel strangely blessed, you know, like, either you were a really great giraffe in some previous life, and this is your reward, or every so often God just leans down through the clouds and kisses you and says, like, this will be just a chance for you to be in joy. And so that night I just, that, you know, gosh, they were, it was a big deal. There's a couple pieces that you've done, pre-radio lab, where, like, as a young radio reporter, you know how you were in your nose phase?

You heard your nose face? I think we all sort of start in some idea of what we should sound like, what we should do, what's permissible. and then you hear this thing come out of the radio and you're like, I didn't know you could do that. I just didn't know you that was allowed. I want to play one piece of yours that had that effect on me. I think you did this in 1981 or something.

I heard it years later when it was featured on this website. And this is pre-Radio Lab, so I heard this. We hadn't met yet. This is, well, let's just play it. The story of the Krasilowski is one of the great commercial rivalries in New York history began when Sam, Kraselowski opened a moving company years and years and years ago. Way back, way back.

I can understand even before my time, and I've been with the firm 22 years. Peter Procosio runs the office at the Kraseloski Trucking Company in Brooklyn. I imagine there was a big family of brothers, uncles, cousins, and they were all very competitive, you know. Competitive is putting it mildly. The firm started in 1904 when Sam Kraselofsky and his brother Dave Kraselofsky formed a hauling company called Sam Kraselofsky and Bro, the Bro is for Brother, and they would move heavy things like church bells and statues, and to help them, they hired their nephew, Mike Kraselowski. For 20 years, everything was fine with Sam, Dave, and Mike until Uncle Dave decided to bring

his sons into the business. Under the circumstances, Mike had to disassociate himself from the uncles and start on his own. That is Mike's brother, who will serve as our narrator in this story. Now, it is the late 1930s. There are now two Kraselofsky moving. companies, Mike's and his uncles'es. To remind customers that he was now in business for himself, Mike took out a series of display ads in the New York telephone book on the very page where the Kraselofsky's are listed.

And the ad said, remember Mike. There was only one Kraselowski. In addition, his brother says, he put, remember Mike on all the trucks, thought it didn't work. Too many customers could not remember which Kraselofsky was which. They just opened the phone book and call any Kraslowski. And that is when Mike got this incredible.

incredible idea. He figured that if he could move ahead of his uncles in the telephone book, people would see his name first and then they'd call him first instead of the other Kraselowski. So he decided to add a new listing in the telephone book. He took out the V in Krasolovsky and put in a U that made it Kraslowski. K-R-A-S-I-L-U. Now that moved him one entry ahead of his uncle since by the alphabet, U's always precede V's. But Mike Kraselowski, as he was now called, was not prepared for the perfidity of his cousin, Milton Kraselofsky. Milton.

Milton Kraselovsky was another young son, son of David Kraselovsky. In the early 1940s, Milton started a new trucking company called Kraselowski with a U, as was the case with Mike. But to move ahead of Mike, he changed his first name from Milton to... Mick. M-C-K. Kraselowski with a U, hoping that he would be ahead of Mike in the listings.

Which, of course, he was. The uncles, meanwhile, anxious to catch up, joined forces with Milton or Mick, and created the Kraselowski safe company. They dropped the V in Kraselowski, put it in an O, so the uncle's Kraseloski moved ahead of Mike's Kraselowski. Mike was quite upset. As well he might have been. For revenge, he countered with a great leap.

taking over the Atlas Safety Company, which moved him to the front of the telephone book, leaving the case behind into the finer air of the A section. But one year later, the uncles were on the same page. The Acby Safe Company was a division of S. Kraslovsky and brothers. According to Mike's brother, by the mid-1950s, even though Mike still had only one moving business in Brooklyn on Metropolitan Avenue, Mike Kraselowski by this time had 18 listings,

under 18 different names in the telephone book, while the uncles had 13 listings. Yes, we had listings throughout the yellow pages and white pages for one company so that we could get all the listings ahead of the other relatives. Did you do it for fun? No, this was not for fun. This was very serious.

There was no reason we felt that another member of the family that has just walked in should capitalize on the name of Kraslovsky. The final salvo is, fired by the uncles. Actually, it was a cousin on the uncle's side named Marvin. He created the AAA Acme Kraselowski Safe Company. After that, the public was so completely confused that according to Richard Kraselowski, all the Kraselowski businesses began losing customers.

It does affect the business when people say, who are you and who do you belong to? Mike died in the 1960s. His wife sold the business and changed her name from Krasolovsky to Kras and then moved to Florida. Mike's brother, Monroe, stayed in the business. He now calls his firm, however, the Empire Safe Company. He and his son Richard would like to use the name Kraselofsky. It is, after all, their name. But they don't dare, because there is now a whole new generation of Kraselofsky's moving into the phone book.

The original Acme Company has now been split, so they are all over the lot. There are now more sons. And there are more names. Here, with my colleague Margo Adler, we're going to read to you the latest set of listings from the current New York telephone book and the New York Yellow Pages, Michael. A.A.A. A.kney Kraselovsky. Kraselowski, Division of Acme Safe.

Kraselowski, Mike, Trucking and Millwright Company. Kraselowski Brothers, Mike and Monroe. Empire, Kreselovsky, Safe Company. Kraselovsky Brothers Safe Company, Division of Safe Smiths, Inc. Kreselovsky, Division of Acme Safe. Mike Kreselovsky Safes. Monroe, Kreselovsky Safe, Inc. Kreselovsky Safe, Collection.

Akmi Safe Company, Kraselovovov. Division not connected with any other Kraselofsky. We'll be back in a moment. Hi, this is Shaolin, Alaria, and I'm calling from Piscataway, New Jersey. Radio Lab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.s.org. Thanks.

Chad here, so after Ellen Horn and I and the whole staff ambushed Robert. in the studio and played him stories. Towards the end of the whole thing, Robert went off on this insane digression. And this happens all the time in the studio, like he'll go off on something and we'll unfortunately cut it out because it's not part of the story we're telling. But in this case, we're going to put it in in honor of his birthday. And also, because it just, it just illustrates what an insanely curious dude he is. Like, he has this incredible curiosity that makes him like a heat-seeking missile for weirdo adventures. And that is what has attracted me to him, and the entire staff to him,

and probably a lot of the people who listen to him. So here's just a random digression of his. It's him telling the story of his first television piece for ABC News. This is one of the great things. I'm sitting on an airplane, and the man next to me, you know, you just ask, like, what do you do?

He says, oh, I'm in golf ball retrieval. I said, what? I'm in golf ball retrieval. Like in golf courses? Yeah, you know, we gather golf balls. That's a thing. People make lots of money doing that. I said, how much money do you make?

Well, we make, you know, a dime. for every ball that we recover and then we pay that and we can sell it in Japan for a quarter. I said, what's your problem? He said, well, the problem we have really, the only really one is gators. So what do you mean gators? Well, they live in the water holes and the kids who do this work are teenagers. I said, well, you mean you hire teenagers and then there's like wild animals that could eat them? Well, obviously we have to remove the gators.

I was thinking, golf ball retrieval, what an interesting story. an interesting story. That'll be a great story. Then he's suddenly talking about gator removal. Gator removal. That'll be great. So, well, what we use, we use a guy named Mr. Campbell. He's out in Florida. I mean, there's a guy who specialized? Yeah, he works Florida, Texas, Southern California. I said, well, I've got to go meet Mr. Campbell. So I call Mr. Campbell. The phone is answered by some person who's not Mr. Campbell. It's his very angry wife. He at age 80 has skipped out with some flusy and she is like pissed at him. So she says, well, if you're calling he's not here, he's out with her.

I said, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know. Because I was thinking maybe he'd be a subject of an interviewer. I would talk about, you know, alligator retrieval. Well, did he ever mention the Gross Point Zoo? So being no fool, I said, occasionally. And it turned out that when they had lived in Gross Point, Michigan, a very fancy suburb, they hadn't created the, he had collected the largest collection. of gaiters in North America, in his basement, in a series of tubs that he had built and irrigated.

And every kid in the neighborhood whose parents were all at General Motors or something all knew about this secret thing. The police didn't. The adults didn't, but the kids did. And she said, in the course of this conversation, until the sewing incident. What? I said, what? Now, you can imagine the fever.

I have gone from golf ball retrieval to alligator removal to now. secret zoo in basement of fancy suburb and suddenly there's now the sewing machine incident. It turns out there was a sewing circle at this house that Mrs. Campbell, the aggrieved Mrs. Campbell, uh, ran and in this sewing circle they would bring singer sewing machines and one lady turned on her singer sewing machine and its vibration caused the alligator in the basement, all of the alligators in the basement to go, uh, it sounded. like a jungle riot from the basement.

But you're saying they were upstairs sewing and below them? These alligators were... 50 alligators, half of the male goes, when this lady turns on her. So George Campbell figures out that it was a B flat. So it was his theory that it was a B flat that caused the bellw. Was that like the sound they make when they mate or when they fight or would we... Nobody knew A, if it were true, and no one knew why it would be true if it were true.

So I tell this poor girl Barbara Fadita from ABC. She was your producer? Yes. She's like 23 or something. So you know what we're going to do? We're going to hire a marching band, a high school marching band in full plumage. And we are going to go to Florida to a place that is packed with alligators, a wildlife reserve. And I'm going to have these plumed high school people play B flat to and there's going to be everywhere.

So I get the high school band, they get on a bus, I get the ABC crew, and I get the very nervous Barbara Fadita, who doesn't know what I'm doing. We all go out to the Audubon place. We arrive, and there's this mass of grass, and you could see alligators everywhere. The band gets up. This is from the TV piece.

Phil Porter from the Cypress Lake High School marching band will now play a B-flat on the French horn. We have no response. Mr. Porter will now play a B-flat on the tuba. And there's not a sound, not a rustle, not interest. I'm looking at all these alligators. They don't wink, they don't blink, they don't move, they don't care. And Barbara Fijit is looking at me like, what am I going to do?

At that moment, a bus pulls in filled with French tourists who get out to go look at alligators. They come down the thing and they see all these gaily dressed Americans. in olive green and large plumes coming out of their head, which is not apparently a French film. This is already a Fellini film that you're describing. And so they say what's wrong. Now, at this point, I'm a little bit sad. And the sun, at this point, it's about 3.30 going on 4 o'clock.

And it's the wintertime. So we only have until about six before they have sunshine. And I say to them, this is the situation. So this guy from France says, oh, you see, this is the problem. in Michigan, they had, there was in tubs, in tubs, right? It was in tubs, in porcelain. In porcelain? So the sound came from the sewing machine down through into the porcelain.

This year is grass and water and mud is a different thing. You need to go to one of those parks up the road where they put all the alligators in concrete. so it's like it's like the tubs so I said okay that's the thing to do so now the people from France they get in their bus

the musicians they get in the bus their bus George his wife their hangers on and the ABC crew and Barbara Frieding and the bus

and we all drive to it's in the peace Lester Piper's Everglades Wonder Gardens on Old Route 41 now we arrive

and there are 50 alligators in poured concrete sitting in islands my camera crew is so certain that nothing is going to happen that they get into the pit standing on these concrete islands

not inches from these alligators and the sun is now kissing the tops of the trees. So Fadida says, Robert, we have one shot. I mean, do something. I can't go back to New York with nothing. I have nothing.

And the French, just need to put it in the concrete, you'll be fine. So you have all the French? The French is there. Everybody's there. So then, so then we're standing there and... One more time. First, the French horn.

Okay, the tuba. There's a kind of quiet. And then there's a kind of a bubbling noise. The first thing that an alligator does when it's about to bellow is it shakes its rib cage. So all of a sudden it's like the whole pool of water. turned to ginger ale. It's just fussy, fussy, fussy, pop, p, p, p, p, p, p, p, p, p, p, p, p, p, p, p, p, p, p, p, and then, all the males, all of them all at once make that.

This is the sound that Mrs. Campbell's sewing circle heard coming up through the basement. The dilla starts prey, she's from North Africa, I don't know what she's still, the French people have been, Bobo, Sid Rude Dider, and George. And George, he's like, he's like, And when that piece aired, it was my first piece, because it was so, people, you know, like you get a base, you get an audience, like, say, four and a half million or something in a primetime show. And then you get all the people who are clicking through, right?

So those are called the butterflies. So I was given, I still have the chart of what happened that night on television. Like, people were looking and clicking, and then they see this man with the poet, the tuba and the aligators, the French guys, and the audience goes, Butchigoo, butchikum, butchikum, butchikum, butchikum. I'm adding like 3 million people every minute. And that time I had such a high, whatever that score is. It was unbelievable. If you're joining a company, you know, the next week I did something on the internet and porn,

and it went actually the actually opposite direction, which was a whole other story. But for that week, I was like, I was king. And he still is. Happy birthday. I don't like a birthday, we can talk about yourself too. It wasn't an unpleasant experience before you, was it? No, talking about myself is something I don't mind doing everything. You just fell into it.

Thanks for listening.