Radiolab - Mixtape: Help?

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

In tape five, three stories: first, a tale of how the cassette tape supercharged the self-help industry. Second, cassettes filled with history make an epic journey across Africa with a group of Lost Boys. And finally, Simon meets up with fellow Radiolabber David Gebel to dig through an old box of mixtapes and rediscover the unique power of these bygone love letters. Mixtape was reported, produced, scored and sound designed by me, Simon Adler, with music throughout by me. Unending reporting and production assistance was provided by Eli Cohen. Special Thanks to: Shad Helmstetter, Vic Conan, Glenna Salisbury, Jerry Rosen, Richard Petty, Sharon Arkin, Angela Impey, William Mulwill for sharing his cassettes with me, and to the British library for sharing some of their recordings from their South Sudan collection, which is housed at the British Library Sound Archive. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate. 

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just get more radio lab at youtube.com slash radio lab pod. Oh, wait, you're listening. Okay. Got it. Okay. Got it. Dordless listening to radio lab. Radio lab. Door listening. Door listening. To radio lab.

Radio lab. From WNYC. To sing. Sing. Sing. Yeah. Sing. Sing. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good.

Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. So all I want you to do is focus on the sensations in your body right now, your shoulders, your neck, wherever they might be tension, just notice. But I don't want you to release the tension just yet. I want you to just notice. It's nice to notice from time to time.

So, take your time. These changes are slowly beginning. And feel free to rejoin me right now. Well, it strikes me that the tools of a hypnotist are not so different from the tools of a broadcaster. I'm Simon Adler, this is Micks Tape, and we're starting off today with Lloyd. Yeah, Lloyd Glauberman, I'm a psychologist in Manhattan. I practiced on West 86th Street for a long time.

Lloyd's a skinny guy, off time sports blazer and jeans. And as you heard there, he is a hypnotist. Hypno-stu-st is always interesting to me. So, like, when the graduate school took some workshops. And back in 1986, he built himself practice. And several years in, he started to wonder, like, would it be possible to hypnotize someone from afar? Now, not in the super villain hypno-resense,

but rather, like, just with his voice on a cassette tape. That's correct. Right. Right. Okay. So I tried to create a recorded hypnotic audio experience. Now I've listened to a lot of cassettes over the last year and what he made is definitely one of the stranger things I've come across. When you press play, the first thing you hear

is this relaxing ambient music. So, set the stage. You listen to this automatically you start relaxing. And then... The real group met was similar in the large, the man. That is... Two simultaneously told, Magical fairy tales. Start up. Hmm.

One in each year. Okay. As long as... From an eight or something time, you can finish the past with your part and the future help. Floated over time and out, and the sequences you have along with you,

time error, not container the existence. Now, if you're a little confused, good, because you're not actually supposed to follow these two stories. The whole idea is, I want your conscious mind to drift away. Because Lloyd thought, if he managed to get you into some altered state, you'd then be susceptible to what he calls the trick of these recordings. Okay, I'm going to tell you the trick. Have a trick is done right now.

Okay, yes. Expose a contents of this idea. Basically, Lloyd was hoping that if your conscious mind drifted away a little, then instead of trying to follow each story on its own, you might be able to unconsciously hear what's being said between the two stories. So, for example, if in the right ear the story says, the word feel, in the left ear what followed was, the word stories. So for example, if in the right ear the story says the word feel in the left ear what followed was the word better. Okay. So the listener at that moment in time, the only thing that's actually available for that that split two seconds is feel better.

As if I were giving you a direct suggestion to feel better. Can so stay relaxed, thinking positive. Now, over the course of the 80s and 90s, Lloyd made a bunch of these tapes. And I gotta say, I think they're both beautiful and a little bit crazy, but mostly beautiful. But either way, they were part of this larger trend. This is an exciting program to put on tape when the cassette tape hit its stride. Self-help really took off. The first step toward improving weight to the power of your mind.

And not just hypnosis tapes, but instructional tapes. Now let's look at communications in Windows 95 and to start with we're going to talk about VCOM. Like this one for Windows 95 or this one. Airline transport to set course. Teaching you how to fly an airplane. I mean there were... Ready?

Up, up, up. Fitness and workout tapes. Designed to help you sell aerostar, sales, marketing, and business tapes. The goal of this tape is a transformation of your thinking and tons and tons of new age spirituality and self-improvement tapes. And well, yes, these instructional tapes can be, and the self-helpy ones can be a bit hokey. You can be and have all that you want in life. I believe in you. I have to admit, they're actually what got me hooked on because that tape's in the

first place. Because if you stop listening to what they're saying, and instead listen for how they're saying it, when they deploy repetition, where they use I and you. What you then hear is people experimenting with this new medium, experimenting with this new medium, how this new technology, so high-fi and personalized and on-demand completely changed what was possible in terms of impacting and transforming the person who was listening. There was something about,

there was something about a cassette that provides connection, Right? It is a connecting device from this bit of tape to your brain. And so suddenly there was intimacy. And that changed everything. This is the final episode in this mixed tape mini series. And I'm gonna wrap it up with two stories of tapes made to help. First up.

How to develop a photographic memory. I'd like to personally welcome everyone. This is a memory program. If you do what we say in this program, your memory will become virtually like a super power computer. Memory tapes. So you're up in Syracuse. Yes. I'm currently a professor of anthropology at Syracuse University.

And if I can ask, how the hell did you get to Syracuse New York? Ha ha! Ask me again. Exactly! This is Jacques Médou Jacques. So, they in Los. They in Loslaws indeed. And back in South Sudan, where he grew up, he was known for having a crazy good memory.

I had almost instant capacity to record a two-hour song in my mind. Oh, really? Absolutely. Which gave him sort of a special place in his community. I mean, folks with this talent actually had a title. Yeah, it's called Ping Ping. Yeah. I think literally means the hearer.

But Ping is sort of the human recorder because in South Sudan, literacy came there quite late. And even as literacy comes, it's only touched a few people. So, majority of the people are oral. And so, the history of one's family, it was not written down. Okay. So, the way Dinka and where people used to record their history was... In songs. And this was done on an individual level. So over the course of your life, you'd write or have written for you sort of an album of songs, each capturing a phase in your life. And so there are singers, people like Deng Binh Chouk, and when you are sort of eligible

to get married, what do you do? You go to Deng Binh Chouk with your story, with your history. You tell them about yourself, important events in your life, but then also you sing for him or tell him portions of your parent songs, portions of their parent songs. So what Dengman Shokdas is, he takes a few days to mull it over. You see him marmoring to himself, walking in slow steps, and then one day he can wheel you up in the middle of the night and say, I have your song.

In the middle of the night. Yeah. And one of Jacques Sunkels, my dude, I feel he actually had Deng right one of these songs for him. I mean, it's long. It will go on for an hour, two hours, but just to give you a flavor of how the song goes, Nae-yam-bae,

how the song goes. Uh, Naya Yambai, Garandad Chitokrado, Naya Raya Nguyen, Garandad Le Limitap, Garandad Le Wizmau, Malwili Juga Gaye, Wapanga,

Malwili Juga Gayo Wapanga, and so on and so on. This two-hour song I imagine almost like a family photograph with Jacques's uncle sitting in the center, surrounded by his parents and relatives on all sides. And in that way, this song, all at once, documented his past, situated him inside of it, and provided sort of a road map for his future. This song play a role in all this, as a frame of reference,

something that you can use to help you copp the life in general. This is John Thonmajoke, director of grants management at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Lots more from him in a minute, but first, here's the thing, because this song is so long, and perhaps because by the time Deng finishes singing it, he doesn't remember the beginning of it, Deng only sings this masterpiece for you once. So you better be ready to record.

Which brings us back to those human recorders, like Jacques, those pings. If you are not very good at doing this, the trick is for you to come with a ping who can capture the song in their minds because then on your way back home with that person, the person will repeat it for you and then you will have learned the whole thing. After you've learned your song,

you sing it for others, they start singing it, sampling pieces of it into their own future songs. And it's handed down, and the fact that I can sing it, some 50 years later, even more actually, because it was seven before I was born. It works. It works.

It works, yeah. Unfortunately, though, this ancient form of remembering and meaning-making the dinka had developed, collided with a genocide bent on erasing them. In 1983, the North and discriminately, at that, it was a reign of terror. In this genocide, this reign of terror, it would require a whole new way of remembering.

I mean across the entirety of the South, these horrible reports and rumors began circulating. A counts of murder at the hands of the Sudanese army, counts of people being thrown in wells and mass graves, people being dragged out of their homes. Daytime was not said. This is Meket Poul Mabwar. I was born in southern Sudan and a small town called Wankuli. And he said he remembers hiding for days as the war closed in on his village. You hear people in the army, soldier coming to survey the area to see if there are people in that location. So you cannot get water, you cannot get food. He was only seven at the time,

so he wasn't really aware of what was going on. But he now knows that the soldiers were looking for him. Yeah, young people were the target because they were the potential army. And so my mom and my dad made that choice, that let's move the kid away from this. So they just, they just, they just set us down and say, guys, I know it's not a easy decision,

but we think it will be the self-decision for you to go. And so that night, because nighttime was self-to-work, I and my sister have to leave. She have to hold my hand and be so close to me. And as they hurried through the night, they began running into other kids. It started from 5, the next day, 20, 70, to 100. It kept forming, forming and forming and forming and forming. So it was like people in a crowd. Again, John Thonma Majok just walking together, moving to the east.

Parents all across the South, including Jonathan's, had made the same gut-wrenching decision. And sent their children fleeing, down dirt roads, and along hidden paths in the dead of night. As I later learned there were 16 to 20,000 kids, the parents were not with us. Many people thought the war and having to hide would only last for like a week. But it would take years to see them again. I talked to my mom when I was 19 years old. Wait, that was the whole week. It took 12 years. Yeah, that was the first time to talk to her.

Now, if you know any part of this story, it's probably this part. Thousands started walking across East Africa or more. Most were from the Dinka or newer tribes. Network coverage dominated the news as journalists attempted to shed light in the rightening lines. These boys, like Jonathan and MacKeth Ool, became sort of a media sensation. Streams of boys became rivers. Hundreds became thousands, and Exodus of biblical proportions was underway. They were even given this name, the so-called Lost Boys. The two dans, Lost Boys, Lost Boys of the Lost Boys, The Lost Boys. The Lost Boys. The Lost Boys.

The Young Boys, who were forced to flee their homes or die. The Young Boys walked thousands of miles fighting starvation and wild animals as they fled the fight. They just walked there. They were accused. You can put them on. And later on, of course, because it was a long journey, all the hues worn out and you have to walk barefoot.

What John Thon, MacKeth Bull, and the thousands of others like them had to do and manage to do, is unimaginable. And I mean, what came next wasn't much easier. what came next wasn't much easier. They ended up in Kenya in this refugee camp called Kaku. We have 12,000 people here today, are lining up to get their monthly food Russians. Now, those monthly Russians consist of a corn and soya flan. They can't always be like a big city.

Different from their villages in every way, it was crammed with people housed in row after row after row of these basically barracks made out of canvas or sheet metal or cement. We are from 21 countries around the world. This food is not enough to sustain them for the next month. And it was tough. We realized we were no longer on the cattle. We were no longer on our pettings. So at night time, at the evening time when we come together, there were a couple of

songs that we used to know when we used to live in the village. And so... Somebody will sing a song. Kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru kuru Things went on like this for years. The boys grew into men. Some of their family members and elders relocated to live with them in Kakuma, and then one day. Nothing drew a crowd like the list. This list showed up. Once a week, the lost boys saw their destiny on a bulletin board, the staples of life. It was a list of names of those who were being resettled.

On this day, 90 learned they'd be going to America. I was running, jumping up and down. McCat Bull saw his name on that list. And I was told that I was coming to Chicago. And well, this is what he wanted. You were praying. You were giving your energy, your thought, anything, because this is like America was like a gateway for your life. He and others were suddenly worried

as well. Again, we were going far away. John Thon's name was on that list too. And we knew now we will not be sitting around the fire and listening to our elders telling us this story will not be in the kettle cam anymore so things can get lost. I mean in America there wasn't going to be anyone to teach them their family songs, their history and no one knew when or if they'd ever return. And so, while we live a few years as a life, the way to capture this is to record them. And at that point, we had access to the tape, the cassette. Just a few years prior, what had arrived in Kakumab,

but these cassette recorders. We realized the device itself can store the story of the society. set recorders. No writing was required and these tapes could travel just in your pocket, collapsing space and time. And so guys like John Thon became sort of amateur historians. Recording the songs of their family members and clan members that had moved and were I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man but back then he was in Kakuma as well. And so you recorded this? I recorded that, yeah. It was the wedding engagement party. So there were many people from my clan and they were working a line, like in a circle.

And I was actually standing in the middle holding the tip player like this. He had to hoist the recorder up into the air because he only had the built-in microphone. And then people will go singing. And they will just go around me. And what were they saying? What were they singing? So in that first part, the guy who was singing the song, you say, all these beautiful color bull will not be just given to any girls.

They will be given to, how do I say, can you rewind it again? For sure, yeah. Okay, here we go at the top again. I actually say that they will be given to a girl that have a good heart. And then you know when we have St. Patrick Parade, with so many people going to St. Boston? Yes, you're at the heart of the Irish. Yeah, so that's when we're getting married. The marchin will be like,

that is exactly what happened in South Boston. Okay, that's amazing, it's like it's very rich in work, I don't know how to explain it really. I mean, think about this. Thanks to this cassette tape, this cassette tape, this cassette tape, this cassette tape, this I mean, think about this. Thanks to this cassette tape, this spinning magnetic miracle, for really the first time, the dinker were able to record their history outside of someone's head. Before that moment, it was not done. Again, Jacques Medu-Joc.

It was not possible to be done because people who have focused on survival and access to technology was limited. So, casatives helped to conserve and preserve that which is the essence of people's existence, which include celebrating who they are. And I mean, these recordings weren't just happening or staying in Kakumat. There were a lot of other deeds, it became like a fashion. I mean that is how Sarsudan was able to remain in contact with each other.

As the diaspora spread, so did the tapes. One tape will make it out of Sassudan, and it will go to Calgary, Canada, and then the people of Calgary have relatives in London. So the senate will London the next time somebody is going, right, to Sassudakota, to Nairobi, Kampala, and it will take years to make rounds. Thousands and thousands of tapes moved this way.

And while in Kakuma, the lost boys had been recording tapes for a year or so when their resettlement was announced, there was still so much to capture and suddenly so little time to do it. They say that you have seven days to say goodbye to your people. You only had seven days. Yes, after seven days, you are all to leave the camp. And so with the fullness of their history and the wisdom it contained, sort of out of their grasp,

they decided that what would be best was for each of them, each of the boys, to make one final tape really have have one final tape made for each of them Before they left most of these guys had a sort of going away party. Yes, and my was under the tree I had my family there and then my age made to wear the women were there. And the cassette recorder was on the top of the small table in the middle. And one by one, folks went up to the recorder and gave one final piece of advice. Mine actually started with prayers from one of my great uncle.

This is William again, and in fact the tapier hearing is from his goodbyes ceremony. When the prayer was finished, Williams oldest uncle went up to the microphone. I am your uncle. The words being spoken to you here today on the occasion of your leaving are being said in times of ruin. But the idea that you are leaving a bad place is a false one. We are saying go to America and study so you can become an important person. We who you are leaving behind cannot achieve all these things. We can't bring the people together because we can't read or write. So son of Mulwiel go and do something good.

And what you hear from different speakers and on different tapes from different going away parties is advice doing what these dinka songs had done so well. My name is Zhu Malena Joke. The family started with Garang Joke a long ago, and he produced us all, who are so numerous now. Always remember where you came from. Remember that you are not going just for your sake, but for all of our sakes. It's not about you alone. It's about all of us who

are born together. One by one these speakers are reminding these boys of their past, situating them inside of it, and advising them on how to move forward. And so, yeah, we know you. You love when you were seven, you managed to make it to Kenya. Again, McCat Bull, Mubwar. Now you are taking another journey, but we just want to remind you how lucky you are to be able to get this job. Don't mess it up.

And remember, whoever you touching, you know. Once more, Jok Medu Jok. When the whole world thinks that these are God-for-second people, because look what they have gone through, look what is going on in their land, look how far they have fled. And yet here you find somebody not only reconstructing their history, and not only lamenting the miseries, thrusted upon them, but talking about the need to rise up and rise above all that, because that is the major of a human.

Because life happens, what are you going to do about it? You may be living in a nice life in some cozy suburb in the United States, but then you get cancer. Or you get afflicted by some terribly ungodly disease. You are just as much suffering there as if you were in a war zone. What difference does it make? And whatever calamity and whatever journey that you go through with all the obstacles thrown in your path,

what is required is for each one of us to be conscious and cognizant of where we come from. For you will not know where you are going and how you are going to chart the path forward if you have no clue where you have come from. We've got one final story for you right after a quick break. This end, side one of cassette 5, please turn the cassette over and start side 2 at the same point. Scientific research, depth psychology, and the great wisdom traditions of every culture all strongly concur that the root cause of human suffering is the accumulation of unprocessed experience from the past. This recording will help you explore and make peace with the past. Alright we are back and I've got one final story for you.

This one's about tapes made to help you move on. There's the man of the hour. Mr. David Gabel holding the door for me. So several months back, I traveled into Manhattan and up to Midtown to visit a dear friend and colleague. Who are you? I am David Gabel, I work at Radio Lab. I do the paperwork stuff. Well, I was telling Eli I was coming up here and we realized you make appearances on the show more than some producer. Why often? David does a whole hell of a lot more than just the paperwork. He's

sort of the beating heart of the show here. And somehow the guys managed to live like a dozen different lives. He lived in Japan for a while. Hawaii, saying Broadway tunes on cruise ships, acted in television shows, worked on Wall Street. And each of these lives, and this is actually the reason I went up to visit him, is sort of preserved under his bed in a box full of cassette tapes. And so what we have here is a plastic, big, Tupperware thing with, I don't know how many cassettes are in here, do we? There are quite a few.

There's a bunch of, oh look at that, there's more. They're like 40, not all mixtapes, but they are all things that I, okay. I got rid of most of my cassettes, which is all I had my music on at one point in my life, but I had to keep a couple because they were the homemade ones and they had meaning,

meaning someone created them for me. These mixed tapes really ran the gamut given to him by all sorts of folks for all sorts of reasons. Here's one called Gable Trauma Treatment, and it was just for when I was feeling bad. David's musical theater. Is this you singing? No, I think this is from my partner long ago,

strongly suggesting songs I ought to do. Well, and we've got some nice artwork here. We've got a naked ass. Like a tight muscle ass where he wrote Tokyo 1989. This one is named so inappropriately that I can't even say it on the air. But the ones that still resonate the loudest with him, maybe unsurprisingly, were from lovers. Vince, who was my boyfriend in Tokyo, he was a terrible boyfriend, but he really could be great when he wanted to be.

Treefelling and Wonderment in Japan. It's a good title. Treefelling, which makes me suspect that is the early stage of I'm falling for you. And then Wonderment is one-breed together. It's great affair. And so we've got a little uh little panasonic or radio shack set player there as well. I used to use this for rehearsals in my showbiz days. We can talk about the sound. This is romance. This is emotion. Don't make me cry that early in the interview. I happen to be a cryer, you know, not everybody else, but I am. I just am. Let's see what's next. So next should be what? I Breath away Your beauty is there in all I see

I will Don't you know you just take my breath Oh Oh, and the feeling was mutual Oh, man Somebody sends you this. I mean... Oh, it's great. So, alright, it was gonna be loved. It was really good to be loved. Yeah, I mean, Simon, if you get something like this, it's a big audio

love letter. And I would put this on and miss him and drink checked anules and feel sorry for myself and be very smitten. I mean, think about how much work this is. It's a lot of work. And it's a gift of great affection. So it just brings the emotion back. I feel like such a whos. And while this is sort of what I was expecting, you know, listening to old mixed tapes is sort of like going on in a stelgebender, what I wasn't prepared for was how these tapes some

30 years old and listened to an untold number of times, how they were still evolving in their message and meaning for David, that playing them wasn't like staring at some static artifact, but instead more like resuming and ongoing conversation between this present and that past. Okay, what is this one? This is your life, David Gabel. Subtitled, it's been a pretty good ride. This is from Steven G. Holtz, who was my big love of my life and we met in college and

he was a native New Yorker and I was a squeaky clean Milwaukee kid. Oh my gosh. I'm afraid to put this in. And he put the data was made. Six oh, that's my birthday. 617, 1986. 617, 86.

617, 86. Wow. I'm going to think about that. If he died in 188, this is two years before he died. Because the truth is, we broke up before he died. So, you know, to say the big love of my life died of AIDS, there's a caveat to that because we were not a couple at the time. But we talked every single day. And it was hard for both of us because the affection was so deep. Up to, you know, the day he died, there was no doubt of our love for each other.

This might have been a, we know it needs to end and maybe I'd moved off on my own and this is sort of a summary of my life with him. Two days a lad lady, she said to me, what did she say? Your only friend just made a pass of mate, perhaps you might enjoy a cottage by the sea. So pack your toys away, your pretty boys away, your forties. I love this song. What is this? This is the opening. This is moving out by that middler. It's so funny. it's so funny. Yeah, I... oh gosh, I think he's... this is us breaking up, yeah.

Because it begins with you're moving out, which is a great song. And then the honeymoon is over. Need I say more? That's what it's about. It's funny. This but where do we end up? Oh, what's the last track? Not when I'm around from Swini Todd, which is a I know it's from Swini Todd,'s um, well, he's gonna look after me. He's gonna keep an eye on me. Nothing's gonna harm you, not one hunt, but shit, I can't talk about this.

Maybe he already knew you've said, I don't know. Well, I was going off on my own. Because we had an apartment and the deal was whoever can find their own place first doesn it. So we were living together when we were broken up, something I don't advise. But it's New York, you hang on to real estate. And this is, nothing's going to harm you not when I'm around. It's probably from the show. I mean, it's probably from the cast album. Do you know your musical theater song? No one I don't. It's a really good song. It's more the context of it for me than the song. Nothing's gonna harm no say not while I'm around

That's him saying no matter what I'll keep an eye out for you It just meant we were always gonna be in touch Which is why I'll never throw it out. music I'm not being used'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Mix Tape was reported produced, scored, and sound designed by me Simon Adler with music throughout by me. Unending reporting and production assistance was provided by Eli Cohen.

I want to give a special thank you to Shad Helmstetter, Vic Cohenant, Glennassal Spree, Jerry Roaston, Richard Petty, Sharon Arkin, William Mulwill for sharing his cassettes with me and to the British Library for sharing some of their recordings from their South Sudan collection, which is housed at the British Library Sound Archive. This is the final episode in this Mixed Tape Mini series, and I'd like to once again thank everyone who is a part of this little adventure, everyone who generously hopped on the phone with me to chat. Everyone here at Radio Lab and WNYC who helped bring this project to life, especially Eli Cohen, Anima Cun,

Soren Wheeler, Cizilekton Bird, Chad Abbermerod, and Dylan Keef. And maybe more than anyone, I'd like to thank my wife. Not only for putting up with me and my cassette obsession over the past year here, but for being an amazing thought partner through this entire project. Giving notes on drafts and just support every step of the way. Thank you, darling. Alright, that's it. I'm Simon Adler, this has been Mix Tape, and we'll be back to our regularly scheduled radio lab programming next week. Radio Lab programming next week. Radio Lab was created by Jada Bumerod and is edited by Soren Wheeler.

Lulu Miller and Lottip Nasser are her co-hosts. Susie Lektonberg is our executive producer and Dylan Keef is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Qsick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindunion Asambandum, Matt Kilti, Annie McEwan, Alex Niesen, Sarah Carrey, Aryan Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. With help from Tanya Chabla, Shima Oliai, and Sarah Asambok. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Chibil. This is Ronia from Ipsilanti Michigan. McTape, a special series from Radio Lab, is supported in part by Science Sandbox,

Assignment Foundation Initiative, the Sanna-Han Family Charitable Foundation, at the Alfred Peace Sloan Foundation. Foundation Initiative, the Sanna-Han Family Charitable Foundation, and the Alfred Peace Sloan Foundation.