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SPEAKER_07: Listener supported. WNYC Studios. Crack cocaine plagued the United States for more than a decade. This week on Notes from America, author Donovan Ramsey explains how the myths of crack prolonged a disastrous era and shaped millions of lives. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_11: Hey, I'm Lettu Vnassar. I'm Lulu Miller. This is Radiolab.
SPEAKER_03: Okay, should we do this thing? Yeah. And today we're going to start with a story from our
SPEAKER_11: producer, Bekah Bresler. How did you stumble across this? How did this
SPEAKER_03: little guy possess your brain? Okay, I basically it was my turn to pitch
SPEAKER_04: something and I was in 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. Because 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 that's how like animal agnostic like is apathetic like I actually am. Anyways, so like, I'm googling animal like science news, clicked the animal header section and came across an article about it. This is it's just this little creature that to me, struck me as a total genius. And, and that's what I want to tell you about. All right. I'm sort of still eating my breakfast. Also, for some balance reporting, I dragged
SPEAKER_04: in animal lover producer, Annie McEwen. Hello. Okay, so this animal lives in these shrubby fields, a bushy kind of open landscape in India, just outside Bangalore. It is quite
SPEAKER_10: an isolated area. This is Rittik Deb. He's an evolutionary ecologist at Vishwa Bharti
SPEAKER_04: University in West Bengal, India. And he says to find this animal, you go out in the evening
SPEAKER_04: 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
SPEAKER_10: or so. The song of a cricket. A cricket? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Okay. I mean, I don't know if
SPEAKER_11:
SPEAKER_11: I'd call it a song. Like it's like a chirp. No, no, no. I'm going to call it a song. All
SPEAKER_04: right. Stick with me here. Okay. All right. Fine. Okay. So these crickets are called tree
SPEAKER_04: crickets and just to give you a visual, they're sort of a translucent green. They've got little tiny wings. They're around one centimeter long. One centimeter. So like your pinky finger.
SPEAKER_02: Half of the pinky finger, I would say. So like a pinky fingernail. Slightly bigger than
SPEAKER_10: that. Slightly bigger than a pinky fingernail, depending, depending on who you are. Is it
SPEAKER_02: hard to find? It depends on where the cricket is. Once it happens that we hear a cricket
SPEAKER_10: 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.
SPEAKER_04: Oh my gosh. And their song that Hrithik uses to track these little guys down. That is the thing that makes them so interesting. Yeah. It's a hugely costly phenomenon. Hrithik explained
SPEAKER_04: that the male crickets, who are the ones who sing the songs for three, four hours in the
SPEAKER_10: evening, and they do this to attract mates. And every night a male cricket sings, it can
SPEAKER_04: lose up to 20% of its body weight. Whoa. It like sings itself skinny. Yeah. It'd be like
SPEAKER_04: you or I 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.
SPEAKER_04: And, Darwin first noticed it in peacocks and it became known as the peacock puzzle. Peacock's
SPEAKER_10: tail is such a... So a peacock's tail, as grand and beautiful as it is, by the theory
SPEAKER_04: 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. Peacocks are absurd. Totally. Totally. And they really puzzled Darwin. Fashion over function. No, exactly. Classic fashion over
SPEAKER_11: function. Totally. And fashion over function in science is actually just called sexual
SPEAKER_04: selection. There's an official term 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 Rittick would eventually discover actually that the sexiest songs are the louder songs. So females like loud, loud songs. Got it. 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? How? What do you mean? Okay. So let me tell you. So one night, Rittick is out in the field looking for crickets like he does. Another PhD student was also
SPEAKER_10: helping me with sampling. And then he hears this song. I hear one cricket, which sounds
SPEAKER_04: louder than usual, like louder than he's ever heard before. It's so loud that it feels like
SPEAKER_10: it's just near my ear, but there is no bush there. It's like the cricket is in his head,
SPEAKER_04: but not obviously. Yeah. So we start searching for that particular cricket. He's moving through
SPEAKER_10: this field. I am like trying to overarch through top of a bush. It was really hard to locate
SPEAKER_04: it. Yeah. We are completely exhausted. Neither of us can find the cricket. And then suddenly
SPEAKER_10: I see that there seems to be a hole in middle of a leaf. And there is a tiny head which is popping out through it. A little hole about the size of a penny in this leaf and inside
SPEAKER_04: it the head of a tiny tree cricket. I was like, what am I looking at? And then I call
SPEAKER_10: my friend. We now are investigating more. 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
SPEAKER_04: from within this leaf. It's calling from the hole of the leaf. So he's like, that's
SPEAKER_04: weird. Yeah. This is something very, very unusual because these crickets, they're always
SPEAKER_04: on the leaf. They're never actually in the leaf. My supervisor had given her mobile number
SPEAKER_10: and had told that only in case of emergencies, you should call. And I frantically searched for my mobile and I call her immediately. 911. And she told him, you know, I've actually
SPEAKER_04: heard about this before. It was written about in some paper a few decades ago. This was
SPEAKER_10: a publication which came out in 1975. So what he saw, it wasn't just some fluke. Does it
SPEAKER_04: 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
SPEAKER_04: holes are called baffles and a baffle is a surface that reflects sound basically. Oh,
SPEAKER_03: 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
SPEAKER_04: 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?
SPEAKER_03: Exactly. Wow. Okay. That is crazy. Right? That's pretty cool. Yeah. Okay. But this raises
SPEAKER_04: a very real and interesting question for Rittik. Does this work? Like we said before, when it comes to these crickets, females generally prefer louder individuals. Louder is better.
SPEAKER_04: Now sometimes they have to settle for a quiet cricket based on how much energy you have
SPEAKER_10: spent searching. Oh, like your standards lower. Exactly. Very relatable. Yeah. But
SPEAKER_04: if given the choice, it will always go for the louder one. And it's not even just that
SPEAKER_04: a female cricket prefers a louder cricket to a quieter cricket. She'll actually mate with that louder cricket for longer than she would that quiet cricket. And here, Rittik 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
SPEAKER_04: treat this cricket like a loud cricket? Do they stick around and mate with it for longer than they would if it didn't have that baffle? Or can they spot the con? Is she like, I've
SPEAKER_03: been punked or is she like, let's do it, whatever. It will all boil down to the point whether
SPEAKER_10: the female can catch the bluff. So Rittik did an experiment to test this out. And what
SPEAKER_04: he found was that the female cricket, it spent equal amount of time with a quiet cricket
SPEAKER_10: whose call has been amplified by using baffle with that of a truly loud individual who already calls that that particular loudness. The female crickets mated with the bafflers just
SPEAKER_04: as much as the naturally loud crickets. So it was like, wow, indeed the cheating is working.
SPEAKER_04: 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.
SPEAKER_11: 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 peacock's 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 going to produce stronger offspring who are more likely to survive. So now what this kind of hack, this is a bait and switch. A lie. Like this is not fair. But this cricket is a genius.
SPEAKER_04: Like I guess that's where I come in is. But is he an evil genius is the question. No,
SPEAKER_04: I know. I've like self reflected on this a lot and whether or not like I should be ashamed that I am endorsing this type of deception. However, a couple other ways you could think about it. The loudness might just signal, this is a good one and I should spend more time mating 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 bad trait. Like, I don't know, I feel like that deserves some recognition. I don't know though, Bex, like it's still a lie. It's still a trick. This is the animal that wooed
SPEAKER_03: you over to liking animals. Yes, it is. Okay. And okay. I guess I guess the other reason
SPEAKER_04: 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 like homogenized version of the cricket that is the most likely to get chosen. This crickets 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. Producer, animal lover, Becca Bresler. I wrote
SPEAKER_04: a song about the cricket. Oh, sing me the song. Can you guys give me a beat? I guess
SPEAKER_03: it's like they rub their wings so they don't die alone. They use the leaves as a megaphone.
SPEAKER_04: 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
SPEAKER_03: the fields of India and heading onto the field in the American style. Hike. We'll do that.
SPEAKER_04: Hey, listeners. This is Becca Bresler. I produced one of the segments for this episode alongside Annie McEwen. 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 roped 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't 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 tie dye 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 radiolab.org slash join. See you all there. And thanks for listening.
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SPEAKER_09: After but her emails became shorthand in 2016 for the media's deep focus on Hillary Clinton's server hygiene at the expense of policy issues, is history repeating itself?
SPEAKER_01: You can almost see an equation again, I would say led by the times in Biden being old with Donald Trump being under dozens of felony indictments. Listen to on the media from WNYC.
SPEAKER_09: And on the media wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_11: Lutthuf Lulu Radiolab Next up, we've got another story about some
SPEAKER_03: little guys trying to do a big thing. Okay, let's just huddle up circle up. Okay. What
SPEAKER_11: do you hear to tell us about? Great question. Okay. From producer Annie McEwen. All right,
SPEAKER_02: 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 players jog out onto the field. Georgia Tech versus Cumberland University. The game is about to begin. A familiar scene in the US today. Yeah. 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. 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.
SPEAKER_12: Who would do that? Here to help me explain is Cumberland history professor Dr. Tara Mitchell
SPEAKER_02: Melnick. I am a ninth generation Tennessean. So we've been here a while. So this game, this
SPEAKER_02: football game, when did you first hear about it? I don't really know. I feel like I've just always
SPEAKER_12: 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,
SPEAKER_12: Cumberland had had some financial difficulties. The university needed to tighten its belt, cut its
SPEAKER_02: costs. Decisions had been made. Football had been cut out and Cumberland no longer is going to have
SPEAKER_12: a football team. Now, a game schedule had already been drawn up for that season. So Cumberland had
SPEAKER_02: to reach out to all those schools and say, we're sorry, but we don't have a football team. We're
SPEAKER_12: not going to play. And every school said, no problem. Except for one. Georgia Tech. The letter
SPEAKER_02: they get back from Georgia Tech says something like, you are under a contract. This is a legal
SPEAKER_12: 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 going to bankrupt the school. It was going to close the school. Why was Georgia Tech being so like stubborn about this? Why, why wouldn't they just let them
SPEAKER_11: off the hook like everybody else? Well, this part of the story is a bit murky, but according to
SPEAKER_02: legend, Georgia Tech was pissed off at Cumberland and not just anyone at Georgia Tech, specifically their head coach, a man named John Heisman. Have you guys heard of John Heisman? The Heisman trophy.
SPEAKER_11: Before I let you go, who's the Heisman trophy winner? The Heisman trophy could be decided in this.
SPEAKER_07:
SPEAKER_02: 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
SPEAKER_12: that is Heisman in football. This guy invented the hut, the snap back to quarterback. Predicted
SPEAKER_12: with popularizing the forward pass. Without him, football just wouldn't be the same sport. He is
SPEAKER_02: 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 a speech to his players where he would hold up a football, look them all in the eyes and say, better to have died a small boy than to fumble this football. Whoa. Yeah. And why was Heisman so angry at Cumberland? Well, as the legend goes,
SPEAKER_02: it all had to do with this Cumberland student named George Allen. George Allen apparently is
SPEAKER_12: kind of the big man on campus. He's 20, clean cut, ordinary looking white guy from the 19 teens,
SPEAKER_02: huge into frat parties, everyone's favorite bro dude. He is the student manager of both the
SPEAKER_12: baseball and the football team. And when Cumberland University canceled their football team, George
SPEAKER_02: 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 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's still sporty. So he sneakily hires all of these minor league players, these professional baseball players, quote unquote ringers, guys who weren't technically
SPEAKER_12: Cumberland students to put on the Cumberland college uniform and play in this like upcoming
SPEAKER_02: baseball game. And who are they playing? They're playing Georgia Tech's baseball team, which for some reason is also coached by John Heisman. Oh no. Yeah. And the game is just a
SPEAKER_02: complete blowout. There are these like professional players playing these kids basically, and there's like getting bored, hitting everything. At some point they just start bunting. So unfair. And they eventually win by a score of 22 to nothing. Cumberland school spirit is back, but John Heisman is not happy. Yeah, I could see why. And so when Cumberland says, hey, we're not gonna make
SPEAKER_02: 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 Cumberland 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.
SPEAKER_12: But there is no football team. So what does he do? Basically George Allen just starts recruiting on
SPEAKER_12: campus. Petitioning all these young law students. And they're late teens and early twenties. These
SPEAKER_02: like life pale figures you can see in the halls of the library or out partying. They were not
SPEAKER_12: anti-party. Let's just put it that way. 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. There had been 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
SPEAKER_02: the big day arrives, there's a huge sendoff 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
SPEAKER_12: like wreck tech. Oh wow. And then they catch a train and go to Atlanta. And as we head to Atlanta,
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to bring in Riddylabs production coordinator, W Harry Fortuna, because Harry, I think is the only one amongst the four of us who knows anything about football. I'm here to help. Okay. October 7th, 1916, Grant Field, Georgia Tech, a thousand tech spectators in the stands. For Cumberland, it would have been a big crowd. They would have been probably a little bit in awe
SPEAKER_12: of the number of people who had come out for this game. It reminds me a little bit of that scene in Hoosiers 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
SPEAKER_12: own equipment. And they had barely any pads. It's those old leather helmets, leather heads, barely more than a hat on your head. I don't even think there were mouth guards. On the sidelines,
SPEAKER_02: suited up with the rest of the players, George Allen says a few words. We're just trying to
SPEAKER_12: make this work. We've got to play this game and get home. And as the ref flipped the coin up into
SPEAKER_02: the air and it fell flashing in the sun, turning over and over and over, there was this feeling from the Cumberland side that maybe we could do this. We could really do this. Turns out to be
SPEAKER_12: something they're going to talk about for the rest of their lives. Because from the very beginning of
SPEAKER_02: this game, things start to go sideways. Georgia Tech wins the toss and they elect to kick off.
SPEAKER_12: They kick the ball. It flies through the air. It's caught by a Cumberland player who then turns to
SPEAKER_02: see a wall of Georgia Tech players hurling towards him and he freezes. Edwards, the Cumberland 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
SPEAKER_12: of their own territory. They end up punting it, but the punt only goes 20 yards. Not a lot. Not a
SPEAKER_11: lot. Tech gets possession of the ball and quickly runs it into the end zone. Touchdown for Georgia
SPEAKER_02: Tech on the first play. And I just want you guys to go ahead and access that YouTube file that I
SPEAKER_04: sent you guys. Oh, great. Because this is a song that plays every single time Tech gets a touchdown.
SPEAKER_02: Okay. Hold on, hold on. Let me play.
SPEAKER_02: Georgia Tech kicks for the extra point and after less than a minute of play, the score is Tech 7, Cumberland 0. 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
SPEAKER_12: this is, this is going to be a problem. Cumberland is getting clobbered. They're being tackled.
SPEAKER_02: Hit in the face or the head with all kinds of body parts. Your arm, your head, your shoulder,
SPEAKER_12: just whatever it takes to bring them down. That's football. Quarterback Edwards makes it back out
SPEAKER_02: onto the field, but is immediately knocked out again. Oh, come on. He's carried off the field
SPEAKER_12: again. And basically every time Georgia Tech touches 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.
SPEAKER_12: They do finally get to halftime. What's the score right now? The score at halftime is, um, 126 to nothing. 126 to nothing? Yep. And many of these players now would have been pulled out for
SPEAKER_12: concussions. They would not have been allowed to continue, but it's a different time. In a normal
SPEAKER_02: 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. Gotta keep going. And Hyzman,
SPEAKER_12: 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, okay, we're halfway there guys. Just stick it out. Half time came to a close. We can do it.
SPEAKER_02: We can do it. We just got to 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, fight or flight. Some Cumberland players begin to run away from tech players. There's even one Cumberland player that is like every time tech got the ball, I turned around and I ran with the techs and that was the way that he was like trying to protect himself. Once in a while, it sort of felt like they had a chance, I guess, because there's one story where a Cumberland player has an open field to the goal line. He is running. He is going to make it. Cumberland. But no, he falls. He trips over one of his own teammates who is on all fours looking for his glasses.
SPEAKER_02: 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 who 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
SPEAKER_02: back and forth and back and forth. It's almost like a hot potato football. Until a tech tackler
SPEAKER_02: just comes and creams them both and Edwards is carried off the field a third time. Oh, Edwards.
SPEAKER_11: We have Pee Wee, a law student who is told he would not have to touch the ball. He gets thrown
SPEAKER_02: 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. Yeah, 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
SPEAKER_12: his bench and he's like, I don't know that guy. And 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.
SPEAKER_02: He is chased around the stadium by a dog, a real life dog. So we're full like Looney Tunes cartoon
SPEAKER_02: right now. Absolutely. Okay. So we're nearing the end here. And this is kind of like an amazing moment because Cumberland is like, there's blood in the grass. There are broken noses. Poor Edwards is 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. 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.
SPEAKER_02: And someone proposes this climb the ladder play, which is now illegal. Oh God. Oh. And some of the Cumberland 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.
SPEAKER_02: 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,
SPEAKER_02: 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, Fishy 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, Fishy takes it to the face. Oh, yeah. Breaks his nose, probably has a concussion.
SPEAKER_12: Wait, but, but he blocks it? He does block it. Yeah. So the score would have been higher if it weren't for
SPEAKER_02: Fishy Woods. Yeah, he blocks it with his face.
SPEAKER_02: The game ends soon after with a final score of 222 to nothing. Wow. And there were 32 total touchdowns that Tech scored. And was that the highest ever at that point scoring? Yes. And that
SPEAKER_03: is actually still the highest today. It's in the Guinness Book of World Records. It's the highest
SPEAKER_02: scoring game. I was just like 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,
SPEAKER_12: is anything broken? Just exhaustion and frustration. These guys are literally total losers,
SPEAKER_02: but they did stick it out to the end and save their school from potential financial ruin. So did they go out for steak dinner? 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 about Edwards. Yeah. I'm still like, I want a Fishy Woods tattoo and I can't not love that. So, Fishy Woods!
SPEAKER_11: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Producer, football commentator, Annie McKeelan.
SPEAKER_03: 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 erectile dysfunction. I was curious how you were going to say that exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And well, and as a woman married to a woman, I wasn't sure if there was going to 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 just, 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. It has these really expansive moments of people talking about new visions of what intimacy can be like this. It like, it feels like the way I've explained it before is it feels
SPEAKER_08: 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.
SPEAKER_03: Again, it's called Hard from Death, Sex and Money. Hope you give it a listen.
SPEAKER_06: Radiolab was created by Chad Aboumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Suzy Lechtenberg is our executive producer. Dailing Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bresler, Rachel Cusick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz-Coutieris, Sindhu Nyanisambindam, Matt Keelty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Khare, Ana Rosquette Paz, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster, with help from Carolyn McCusker and Sarah Sonbach. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Shibow. Hi, this is Susannah Colling from Washington, D.C. Leadership
SPEAKER_05: support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, the Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. WNYC Studios is supported by On Being with Krista Tippett.
SPEAKER_00: I'm Krista Tippett of On Being, where we take up the big questions of meaning for this world now. In our new podcast season, we're going to have a different human conversation about AI and also the intelligence of our bodies, grief and joy, social creativity and poetry, and so much more. A conversation to live by every Thursday.
