Radiolab - Making the Hippo Dance

Episode Date: September 9, 2008

We play some never-released tape from the vault, and reveal a bit about what techniques we used to try and make it sing.  

I sh quite You're listening to Radio Lab, the podcast. From New York Public Radio, Public Radio, WNYC, and NPR. 3, 2, 1. Hello, I'm Jadabumrah. And I'm Robert Quilwich. This is Radio Lab, the podcast, and we're working busily on season 5. We thought, while we do that, we would bring you a little...

Extras, as an extra. Yeah, a little extra. So we very recently went to the Cushland Science Museum run by the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., to talk to an audience. Well, there were a bunch of scientists there, but they weren't all scientists. No, they were mostly just people. And we asked those just people to consider three very puzzling radio questions that we have every time we put our show together. So here is that conversation. So we figure since this is a science place, you guys are probably science-inclined folk.

we would talk about some of the troubles that we run into when we talk about science or try to. Problems like density, like unfriendliness of ideas, but they're great ideas, but how do you somehow make them friendly to people who maybe don't like or don't know that they like science? So we're going to kind of go through some of our favorite problem-solving techniques. We have hurdles. The most obvious hurdle is when you step into a rule, to have a conversation with someone who is smart, knowledgeable,

very knowledgeable, actually, and articulate, and they start talking and you think, in the back of your mind, uh-oh. And they write papers like, which is going to be the subject of our first clip, selective silencing of cell communication and how it influences anterior, posterior pattern formation, and see elegance, which is a heavy collection of words. Yeah. It's like heavy, like a hippo.

which is a wonderful animal but heavy. And so I think one of our goals is to take the hippo and strap on some ballet shoes and make it do a pirouette. So here is an example. What you're going to hear is a woman named Cynthia Kenyon, brilliant scientist. She's talking about a little worm that she has figured out, she's done something to the worm that allows the worm to live longer than the worm would ordinarily live.

Not just a little longer, but like twice as a little. long. So just imagine that you're the one holding the mic and this is what you hear. The DAF-16 gene makes a protein called the DAF-16 protein. And that protein binds to the DNA where other genes are and it activates a whole bunch of other genes. So the way it works is that the hormone binds to the DAF-2 receptor. And when that happens, DAF-2 receptor kind of squashes the activity of DAF-16, it turns it down. Okay? So DAF-16 can't bind to its genes in the DNA and make them more active. Okay? So when you come along with a mutation or some other way and you inhibit the activity

of the receptor, now you liberate DAF-16. It's free. It springs into action. And it activates about 100 genes in the DNA. And these 100 genes each do a little tiny, good thing for the cell. Okay, so, yeah, you're sitting there going, Oh, yeah, I see. As if you know what she's saying. No, I do. I do know what she's saying, but it's interesting. Like, you're scanning somebody talking like that.

And, you know, you're hearing the right, you're hearing squish. I think she said squish. I think she said spring. Liberate? She said liberate? Liberate, yeah. So her verbs are very, very useful to me. It's these nouns.

Daft. Yes. Def two. Daph 16. So what do you do with a thing like that? What we've done here is we've used the verbs, we're happy with the verbs, but we've amplified and accepted. The answerized the nouns, I think.

No, I think it's the other way around, actually. We stole the nouns, replaced them with our own, and we amped up the verbs. No, no. We took the nouns, and we made them much more colorful anthropomorphize them, gave them character, rich, rich storytelling. Now we're on the same page. Yeah. Okay, here's what we did. When we make a mutation in the DAF2 gene, we damage it.

It actually causes it not to work as well. So that actually is kind of profound. That tells you right away that the worm has a gene. in it that's shortening the worm's lifespan. Which is why she calls it. The grim reaper gene. The grim reaper gene. It's the gene that makes you die.

If you're aware. Right. So by damaging this gene, Cynthia and her team essentially are taking the grim reaper and knocking his knees out. Stop that. Okay, so the question is, what exactly is the DAF2 doing to make the cell age? more quickly. Here's where the story gets a little weird. Well, we found another gene whose name is also DAF, but it's a different DAF. It's called DAF 16. And this is a gene whose

normal function is to keep you young. It's like a fountain of youth gene. Yeah! So wait, there was a grim reaper gene before. Right. And now there's a fountain of youth gene? That's what she discovered. And inside the worms, these genes are struggling with each other. Here's how it works when a worm ages normally. The DAF2 receptor... DAF2. Kind of squashes the activity of DAF 16. It turns it down. Silence!

And so the worm ages. Okay. So when you come along and you inhibit the activity of the DAF2 receptor, now you liberate DAF 16. It's free. It springs into action. And it activates about 100 genes in the DNA. These 100 genes, it's 100 genes. each do a little tiny good thing for the cell, and altogether it makes the cell live twice as long.

Okay, there you go. Now, the question is, and I come out of National Public Radio, he comes out of sort of WNYC, so we come out of a sort of strong journalism tradition. You can't do any of these things in a newsroom. One of the issues here is how much should you embroider? Yeah, it's also, I mean, the question I think, also is

how stupid do you want to be? Yeah. You know, I mean, this is something that we always argue about because there are, I mean, there's a thousand things we left out and if pure scientists would be very upset, perhaps, sometimes, at all of the things that we didn't say here. On the other hand, it is not an in, and I speak from the television tradition,

where stupid is our middle name. We, we, I mean, I have been in network television for so long that if anything gets a little too complicated, I instantly turned him and said, just cut it. Just get rid of it. Just get rid of it. Because we don't have to go there,

and then we just save ourselves all the sweat and all the bother. So what you do is you sort of, we watch each other's eyeballs to see, like, when have we come to the very, very, very edge of acceptable stupidity? And repetition, yeah. And then that's where we rest. Well, that's the second technique we want to get to.

Yeah. We want to talk about music. I wanted to sort of talk a bit about how we use the music and what are the principles that guide those choices. And to do that, I wanted to play a clip. Again, this is raw tape of a very interesting guy and mathematician that we really like. We talked to a lot. It's named Steve Strogatz, who we were talking to him about, I forget what, and he just told us this thing about fireflies. So this is the raw tape here.

Not here, but in Southeast Asia, in Malaysia or Thailand, there are enormous, congregations of fireflies along riverbanks. I mean, picture it. There's a riverbank in Thailand in the remote part of the jungle. You're in a canoe slipping down the river. There's no sound of anything. Maybe the occasional, you know, exotic jungle bird or something. And you're looking and you just see, I mean, I can't do it at the radio,

but you see boop, whoop, with thousands of lights on and then off, all in sync. So that's a little clip of tape that I remember when he said, that. We kind of looked at each other, like, ooh, that's kind of interesting. We can work with that. It's also very painterly. You get the whole idea. You know you're on a river. You know you're seeing anything. So there's no particular reason to add anything. However, here's that same clip of tape all gussied up. Here's what we did with it. Picture it. There's a riverbank in Thailand in the remote part of the jungle. You're in a canoe slipping down the river. There's no sound of anything. maybe the occasional, you know, exotic jungle bird or something.

And you're looking and you just see... whoop. Woo. With thousands of lights on and then off, all in sync. Imagine all the trees, as far as you can see, are all brilliantly lit and then totally dark. Brilliantly lit, total darkness. All them in sync.

Yeah, and no Westerner had ever seen this site. There was folklore, there was disdemeanor. stories about it, but nobody'd gone in and photographed and captured samples. Well, not until 1965. This was done by John Buck. John Buck, B-U-C-K. One of the great researchers. According to the records, I'm 92.

Buck and his wife, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Masked Buck. Went to Thailand and captured bags full of male fireflies. You could just reach up and shake the branches and fireflies would rain down. And brought them back to their hotel. tell room. And we turned off the lights. We turned them loose. And saw that the fireflies flittered around on the walls and ceiling. They flew back and forth. Flashing randomly.

Elizabeth lay on the floor of the room. I was just tired. John stayed awake and he was the one who saw. Within a few minutes, little groups, duos and trios formed. And after a while, fourth one would join in. They got closer and closer together. And then finally they were synchronized. The whole room was blinking in perfect harmony. He was excited the next morning.

I told me about it. 20 years later, John Buck is still asking this question. Well, what is going on? Today on Radio Lab, we will do, as Steve urges, and step away from the individual to find mystery, beauty, and order in the group. So, there's a real question that, that I want to ask, do all the noises and the bleeps enhance what Steve Strogatz, the story he told us, or does it rob it in some sort of way? I don't know.

I have a prejudice just because of my sheer awe of some of the deep musicality of things like that. This is Jan's territory, so he's not allowed to say, but there is something about just the bucks, for example. hear, first of all, a string of voices. So you hear Robert's voice, you hear Jad's voice, those are sort of radioe voices, and then you hear Steve Stroggatz's voice, which is a rich voice. And then these two fabulously strange people,

one of whom sounds like he's just basically made of sawdust. And I don't know what's with Mrs. Buck. She seems to be hanging upside down or whatever. But when you pick those things, so you get, oh, ah, ah,

and you get this strange, crazy quilt of just of raw ingredients just in the sound. And, you know, a lot of people would listen to the bucks and say, well, we can't use it and they're a little hard to hear, a little hard to understand. But this isn't that. This is a guy who just jumps

in with both feet and gets happy that we're going to get gradations and variety in, and that's just the sound of voices. Let's talk about something else. How about the problem of we in the day? So what are we done? We've done, what was

our first one. We did analogies, metaphor. Number two is music and stuff. Music and stuff. Number three, be personal, be third grade. Let me explain what I mean. So the National Science Foundation and other people have done a lot of surveys to see how people feel about science. And when they ask people, how do you feel about science? They will say, yeah, you know, I sort of like science. It's okay. But then if you ask the question, have you ever liked science? Will they say, yeah, you know, Oh, when I was in third grade, I loved it. Because we would do these experiments that involved, you know, the absorbency of paper towels and boiling eggs.

And it was amazing. It was so much fun. It was like something right in front of me, and it was me. I could do it. And then came the Krebs cycle. Yes. Somewhere along the way that joy gets drained away, probably by the Krebs cycle. So all over in a plot that was probably hatched in some dark caves,

somewhere, not too far from Osama bin Laden, there was a meeting of science teachers from the ninth grade who decided that they would take the simply interesting business of swallowing something and having the banana finally get down

so it can actually feed each individual cell each cycle, oh thank you very much and I'll be the banana. And this turned into a championship memorization contest in which you had to learn cycles within cycles

within cycles within cycles within cycles within cycles and why? Why? Here's why. Because the ninth grade teacher wanted to say actually thank you. you very much. Danny, Sheila, and Freddie, you are the scientists.

The other 37 of you can go home now. Yes, and in an interest to invite those other 37 back in, we take a decidedly anti-Krebsian approach. We live in a state of permanent third-gradeness in the sense,

that we want this to be something that feels like, that it's yours again. And so the ways that we do that just sort of subtly are when Robert and I go and talk to somebody, we always use the sound of us walking in the door, knocking on the door. It's like the most important sound in all of radio lab is that sound of knocking on the door. I don't know why, exactly. Why is that?

Well, it's because it's the sound of discovery. It's like, it's a way of inviting people to come along. It's the sound of saying, rather than a scientist at a podium, it's a scientist who is in a space that we can go visit and have an adventure with. Okay. So then we have one other objection that we're, really gets thrown at us all the time. Mostly by, there's a guy at NPR named Robert Smith, excellent, excellent reporter who will lean over what I'm doing all the time and say,

so what's it with you? What's it with you? I said, why? Why? He says, why everybody else here goes out into the world and, you know, if you're going to interview a cat, you go find a cat, you make up a cat. Why can't you just go find the world as it lays? Why is everything have to be built from the bottom up? I said, it doesn't have to be, that's not, well, now that you mentioned it, there is a tendency we have because we enjoy, frankly, the craftsmanship and the artistry of doing this.

But, I mean, his criticism of us is that we always sort of make it up. And he was like, why do you always have to make it up? Why don't you just go have an adventure. Don't make up an adventure. Just have one. So we thought, well, that's kind of a good idea. Not like it hadn't occurred to us before. Well, you know, it's a show about science,

but why not just be the science? Yes. in a pseudo-science-y kind of way, be the experiment, in other words. You know, let's try this at home. Yes. What a mistake. What a terrible mistake.

We bumped into a really interesting opportunity in our latest season in the laughter show. We were talking to a laugh scientist, and he told Robert something that Robert didn't quite buy, which led us to have certain ideas. Well, here's the raw tape.

Laughter causes laughter. You can throw the jokes away, laughter causes laughter. Well, to really prove that, you'd have to give a record. It was somebody laughs, and then somebody else laughs, and then you laugh, and then someone else laughs, and nothing's going on except the laugh.

Yeah. So you can't get a laugh going from nothing. Well, actually, actually you can't. So he claims. Yeah. I just thought that was ridiculous. I mean, I think you have to start with something. Someone has to fall down on a banana peel or something, but he pointed out, and this is true, that a lot of laughter is, you want to go get a sandwich?

Okay. There's a lot of social laughter. It isn't having to do with funny. I said, no, but I mean, I'm talking about laughter, laughter. You think you can get laughter, laughter, going from just laughter. And it's his idea that there are certain laughs that have a kind of biologically contagious property,

and that if you laugh in a certain way, other people in the room can't help but laugh. So we thought, hmm. Why don't we try this? So if he's right, theoretically, Robert and I should be able to go up to Union Square, get into a crowded subway, train and just start laughing. And through the sheer verve of our laughter, that laughter should

spread. Our experimental design was that I would walk in, we four of us prepared. Two of us had tape recorders and recording equipment. They surreptitiously would enter the otherwise crowded Manhattan subway. This is Rush Hour. Then, Jad and I would enter from a different door and put ourselves within the reach of the microphones, which would be invisible to most people on the subway. Yes, here's how it sounded. Here we are, Union Square. Experiment is about to begin.

We enter the trade. I show them a book. I play. We start to laugh. Some more. Our foreheads are getting very hot. Nothing is it? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

We tried it over and over and over and over. Alright, this is take seven. We're on a downtown six train. And we were starting to be, like we were the crazy people in some way. And it wasn't simply that we weren't on abusing to them. They began to hate us and look at us like we were lepers. like we were lepers. Yeah. And it just was not working at all.

And we did this pretty much all day, because we were like, we are going to crack this one. And... But maybe, you know, we could have discovered that we have just proven Professor Provine wrong, you know, and laughter does not. But, no, for some reason,

we felt that we ought to do what he thought we could have done had we only done it, quote, right, unquote, whatever that was. So here's what happened. Final trip of the day, we get this notion that, okay, well, it hasn't worked the first, 11 times. So maybe it'll work this final time if maybe the problem is that we have these two

people with us, Lulu, or Ryan McManus, who are the recorders, and they kind of enter the train with us surreptitiously and sit and try and be invisible. But they've got these big machines with them. So maybe it's the machines or throwing the whole experiment off, I don't know. So we sent them ahead. Yes. And figured they would ride the train uptown. We would get on as if we don't know them. So we were like several stops ahead of them. So we would enter and no one would make the connection between the microphone-bearing Toosome and us. We have no relation to them at all. Not at all.

This was going to make the entire place scream with laughter we felt. Yes, exactly. Unbeknownst to us, however, Lulu and Orion hatched a devilish plan. Good afternoon, New Yorkers. I have a quick question. I'm hoping everyone here can help me out a little bit this afternoon. I have a bet with my bosses who are going to get on at the next train, and they don't think that it's possible to get an entire subway car full of

people to laugh because they think people are too you know uptides they don't want to have fun something like that so do you think you guys can help me out with this the next stop they're gonna get on to guys all right and they're gonna start laughing all right and we're just gonna kind of like chuckle and then we're gonna see we get the whole train to just be roaring can we do that yeah yeah all right guys can you guys hang on there were kids on there were kids on this train, there were nuns on this train, there was like a whole smear of people on this train. We had no idea that this was happening. We were standing on the platform expecting yet yet another

failure and here's what happens. This is the train arriving. Okay, here comes the six train. Take 12. We get on the train again. If I take out a book, if I point the book to jamse our excuse for the humorous interaction. here. Please start to laugh. In a moment. The place went crazy. I was so frightened.

I tell you, it was the most terrifying thing we've ever experienced, bar none. Because to go from nothing, nothing, nothing, and then to go to everything. It was, we ran out of the trade. We were frightened. This is actually our reaction afterwards.

Oh my God, it's like being one of too many clowns coming out of the little Volkswagen, you know? 50 of them laughing. Wait a second. That made my day. Oh, no, not me. I just thought, oh my God, I've just gone into hell. I don't know, because it was too big. It was too big.

It was so instant, too. Yes. That was very scary. So, I don't know what to draw, lesson to draw from that. Really? Make it up. That's what the lesson is. Make it up. Or leave the science to the professionals. Yeah, leave the science to professional.

So I guess the other thing that we'll finish and you can ask questions if you want, is that we try to hope that maybe that the surprise and the kind of, frankly, just delight of having a conversation together is somehow an ingredient that other people, if you turn on the radio or you turn on your iPod or whatever and you hear, this that you kind of, there's an image I have from the New Yorker, I think, or from someone who a kid learned how to read and got very, very excited by books. She was maybe four or five years old and she just loved books, maybe three, four years old. And one day her mother walked in and found the little girl standing on the picture book with her toes kind of trying to curl

on the month said, what are you trying to do? And the kid said, I'm trying to get in the book. And I was kind of hoping that, you know, among other things, that this program would create a sense of just a happy exploration that people, when they hear it, would just want to take off their socks and take their toes and try to get in the book. So in any case, I mean, do you guys have any questions? Yeah, that's our presentation, more or less, so we can go to questions. Yeah. Why don't you go to this person here in the green? I just wanted you to speak a little bit about the introduction, which, you know, obviously as a lot of. layers and time shifting.

And I'm getting old enough that I'll find that a little annoying. And why, see, you know. Oh, that, yeah. It's weird. There's been a lot of emails about that recently. Did you send us an email? You know, I'm a bit annoyed by it, too,

frankly. I want to change it, but I made all of those in one feverish night about four years ago, and it's time for another one. I mean, what is it in mind? Yeah, what did he have in mind? Who knows what he had in mind? It has strange people go,

and it has, it seems to be some combination of vomit and, and, uh, and, it's a, I really know. I mean, it was a,

we, I had everybody read the same little block of text on a metronome, so they're all reading it in the same tempo, and then you just kind of like, you take the syllables and I'll mash it up. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I don't know.

And it's, I mean, it does make a certain statement that, okay, you just heard all things considered. Right now, the rules don't apply. So it's like a palate cleanser in a way.

It's like the cracker before the next wine. So it has that effect, which is useful. What time is this supposed to end at eight? We have eight clock that's counting down right there. My favorite episode was the one with the Voyager and Annie Joy and Carl Sagan, that thing. And I listen to the things that you guys put on the web with Philip Glass and Alice Waters, all those things. So I feel like you guys have this really interesting amount of insight from doing this show. What would you guys put on the Voyager?

The Voyager is a inter... 1977, Carl Sagan and his wife and a few others were charged with making sort of a mixtape of the human experience, putting it on a gold record, sending it out into space, so that billions of years from now an alien would find it somehow play the record and maybe know about us on some level. And attack, planet Earth. An attack. What would I ask? That's a really good question.

I would put... See, I'm not so sure that I want to say, Hello! So that's what I mean, you know, maybe... Are you really scared of it? Well, there's a guy who wrote Guns, Steel, and... Yes, Jared Darner. So, Jared Dider, I haven't talked to him about something else,

and he said, you know, that Voyager thing was the most dangerous act that humanity has ever made. That's just silly, though. Yeah, I know. That's silly. But he's interested in collapse. This is a man who's not what we'd call an optimist. No one's going to find the record.

It's not for the aliens. It's for us. It's a gesture, you know? It's as much about what we want to say about ourselves. I mean, the alien can't play the record. It's just not going to work. What do you mean alien can't play the record? The alien, presumably, is a very sophisticated being.

There is one particular Bach cello piece I would put on. That's the only one I can think of definitively at this moment. Come on, say one. I might put... A Broadway show tour. No, no, I wouldn't. Food, glorious food from Oliver. No.

I would put it... I think I would put a... I would put babies laughing in... of multiple species. I mean, if they do laugh. I mean, I would just put the cries of babies. not no not not the sad cries the happy cries of babies oh Beethoven you got Beethoven's so easy

it's like a lazy answer but good question yes yeah I guess that's a good place to end I want to just say thank you to the caution for having us in the KEC and WAMU for the invite and National Public Radio and WNYC

and the National Science Foundation I was told to someone might be in the house. Yay, thank you for you and all your money. Thank you for supporting us. Thank you, thank you, thank you for making this happen. And while we are spreading thanks around, I want to thank you for listening. That was our conversation, Robert and I at the Coshland Science Museum. And if you have anything to say or...

Yeah, because these are questions that we post to the audience. And, you know, if you have an opinion about our production techniques, how we amend or don't amend conversation. Any of the ideas brought up here, if they make you curious, we'd be very curious to hear what you're thinking. That's right. Email us at radio lab.org. And Radio Lab is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Science Foundation. I'm Chad Abumran. And I'm Robert Crilwich. Thank you for listening.