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SPEAKER_05: 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. Okay. Okay. Well, I know, I know what we're here to talk about, but because it's like
SPEAKER_07: a jubilant day, but let's let me, let me feign, let me pretend you're Lulu. What are, what are we doing here in the studio? What are we going to talk about? That was great theater.
SPEAKER_10: Okay. Well, yes. Yeah. I am here to come out of the closet as a children's entertainer for the, yeah, for the past year. I've been working with a small and wonderful team on a radio series for kids and it's called Terrestrials and it is about the strangeness waiting right here on earth. I've already heard it. I mean, it's great.
SPEAKER_07: It's so great. It's like a jewel of a delight. It's, it's, it's just, yeah, it's so fun. What was the, was there a kind of a, uh, you know, a grain of sand around which you built this Pearl of a series? I mean, so it's partly a kind of boring story.
SPEAKER_10: I became a mom. Now I have two little boys and I became interested in how kids minds worked. I hadn't, um, I haven't the youngest of my whole extended family. I didn't really babysit growing up, so I didn't really know kids until I had them. And, um, they always kind of intimidated me. But now that I spend a lot of time with them, like their minds are so psychedelic and there's just this space of openness and curiosity and humor. And so there, that's, I think that's part of it, the becoming a mom and being interested in kids journey. But I think in a way I'm making this for my past self who was a little bit of a sad kid as I hit that eight, nine, 10 area where I just, I was haunted by the sense that there is no magic on earth. And honestly, this series is a, is an attempt to use science and close looking to say like, yeah, okay, maybe there's not magic dragons up there in the sky, but, but there are Komodo dragons here on earth. Exactly. Like it might not
SPEAKER_10: be up in the sky, but, but it might be right here on earth. And not only might we see beautiful things, but we might see things that even break some of the rules we thought applied to all life. And that's the spot that I'm passionate about. So does that mean it's just for kids and the sort of half begrudging parents that are sitting
SPEAKER_07: with them? Um, well, no, I mean, you might have the bar of getting over the fact that
SPEAKER_10: you have to go subscribe to the radio lab for kids feed. But I think if you're just an adult and like if you need, if there's a day where you need 20 minutes of your life to hang out with your very nerdy friends who want to take you outside and show you something and point at it and like sing a little kind of rib you and cheer you up a little. And we are waiting there. We would love if you join us. And it is, it does, it sort of grabs you by the ears and it's like, look human, uh, the
SPEAKER_07: way you live in the world, it's not the only way. Uh, and that's like, to me, that's kids are, are especially receptive to that cause they're just getting used to these, uh, sensory inputs, I guess. Um, but, but I think that's, to me, that's an important lesson for all of us. Yeah. It really is. Uh, it's, it's, uh, it's a work of art. Um, I'm, I'm really, I'm really impressed. So impressed. I just can't wait for the world to hear it. Just go listen, go listen if you are a kid or wherever a kid, um, or if you live on planet earth, either of those things. Okay. I think now we just play it right. We just let them listen
SPEAKER_10: to, to the pilot. Oh yeah. And this, this, this is, and this, this genuinely was the
SPEAKER_07: pilot. This is the first one you made a long time ago. Yeah. So here we go. Uh, the first episode of the series, terrestrials, uh, from Lulu Miller and radio lab, uh, the mastermind. Enjoy. Oh, wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to
SPEAKER_02: radio lab from WNYC three, two, one. Imagine you are a liquid creature, no bones, and you
SPEAKER_09: are so pliable that you can literally pour your body through a tiny opening. You can
SPEAKER_10: change colors, blue and green and red and yellow and even metallic. You can taste with
SPEAKER_10: your skin and you have blue blood and you have three hearts. And if you're threatened,
SPEAKER_09: if you feel scared, you can shoot into a silhouette in the shape of you. So the predator is fooled
SPEAKER_09: into believing you're still there. Now look down at your arms and watch them slowly sprouting
SPEAKER_10: into eight. You are an octopus now. Okay. Now is where I make you sing the theme song
SPEAKER_10: with me. Okay. Terrestrials, we are not the worst. We are the best. You got it. I don't
SPEAKER_10: know. Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness waiting right here on earth and sometimes break out into song. There's so much to discover when you dive down deep.
SPEAKER_03: Good voice is not required. I am your host Lulu Miller joined as always by my song bud,
SPEAKER_10: Alan. Hello everybody. Today we are joined by special guest, Sy Montgomery, who is going to tell us a story about a devious little octopus who outsmarted his human captors. Hi Sy. Hallelujah. What do you do for a living? What is your job? I'm an author and I write
SPEAKER_09: about animals. And what are some of the animals you've written about? Oh boy. Gorillas, tarantulas,
SPEAKER_09: garter snakes, wildebeests, pink dolphins in the Amazon, hyenas, orangutans, man-eating tigers. Of course I'm a woman so I knew I was safe. But don't.
SPEAKER_10: All right. So let's head out on this octopus journey. Where does it all start? It was likely
SPEAKER_09: in 2014, deep in the ocean off the coast of New Zealand. A little baby octopus is born
SPEAKER_10: the size of a grain of rice in a stretch of ocean called the Hawks Bay. He hatched out
SPEAKER_09: with hundreds of other octopuses and then he began floating away. Little grain of rice
SPEAKER_10: with eight little arms. Not so great at swimming, very low chance of surviving. Only able to eat whatever little scraps of tiny crustaceans and shrimp happened to come his way. The octopus
SPEAKER_09: actually grows faster than almost any other animal. They could double their size in a matter of days. So this little guy kept getting bigger and longer and heavier. And as he did,
SPEAKER_10: he started being able to eat bigger things like crabs and fish. How does an octopus catch
SPEAKER_10: a crab? There's something so confusing about something so soft, being able to catch something so sharp. I always think the crab would win. Of course you think that.
SPEAKER_10: So I explained that like thousands of people who came before me, I was assuming that because an octopus was a kind of creature called a mollusk, basically a lumpy bug in the same family as slugs and clams, it just couldn't be all that brainy. We don't think of clams
SPEAKER_09: as very brainy because they don't have any. But all along, under their slimy skin, unnoticed
SPEAKER_10: by humans, octopuses have had huge brains. Brains so big they spill down into each of their arms and allow them to catch all kinds of things. Oh, they'll eat fish. They've been known to even eat sharks.
SPEAKER_09: No. Yes. Wow. They will eat birds.
SPEAKER_02: What? Let's take a break to consider that an octopus can eat a bird. Let's take a break to consider that an octopus can eat a bird.
SPEAKER_10: How does an octopus catch a bird?
SPEAKER_09: Well, you've got certain birds that float on the ocean and when they're doing that, their little feet are below the water.
SPEAKER_04: Oh no.
SPEAKER_09: And that would be an opportunity for an octopus to reach up and grab them.
SPEAKER_10: And then what can you just take me over home plate there? So they, they grab them and pull them into the water. They grab them and I wrap them in their arms and...
SPEAKER_09: Hug them till they... Drown. All right. Moving on. So our little octopus is now a few weeks old and he's getting better
SPEAKER_10: and better at hunting. But he also has to quickly master how to hide from the things that want to eat him. Things like sharks and whales and humans and other octopuses. They will eat each other. So they're cannibals. They'll eat each other? Yeah.
SPEAKER_09: And? The most dangerous predator to an octopus is a moray eel. Big long green fish. They have two rows of teeth, another row in their throat.
SPEAKER_10: So to hide in that giant clear ocean, our little red octopus can turn a deep purple or white or yellow so that it looks like a piece of coral or a bunch of algae or rock
SPEAKER_09: or the sea floor. And it can also turn into spots all of a sudden or stripes or they can stripe just one part of their body. Some octopuses even make themselves look like poisonous sea snakes or poisonous flounders. They can grow horns. Which sometimes can be two inches tall. They can even do a display called passing cloud, which you know how when a cloud passes over something, it looks like, you know, a darkness sweeping across the land. They can make a darkness sweep across their bodies. And this
SPEAKER_09: confuses fish into believing a bigger fish is above them. Maybe. That is so clever. It's really great.
SPEAKER_10: So our little octopus, his days are busy as he's practicing throwing punches with his arms, changing colors and flexing each of his hundreds of suckers, which have grown so strong they can crack open clam shells. And every now and then he conks out to take a nap.
SPEAKER_09: They also appear to dream because when they're sleeping, sometimes they change color. The same way, you know, a puppy or kitten might run in its sleep or bark or meow in its sleep.
SPEAKER_10: And then one day as he's moving through the world, transforming into eels and clouds and sand, something attacks him. It snaps off one of his arms. And though he fights back with all seven of the other ones, whatever predator it is manages to gnaw pieces out of a bunch of the others. So this octopus was pretty beat up. But eventually he is able to wriggle away and finds a spot to lay down and rest inside a mysterious metal box. The owner of that box will appear after this short break. Lulu here, if you ever heard the classic Radiolab episode, Sometimes Behave So Strangely, you know that speech can suddenly leap into music and really how strange and magic sound itself can be. We at Radiolab take sound seriously and use it to make our journalism as impactful as it can be. And we need your help to keep doing it. The best way to support us is to join our membership program, The Lab. This month, all new members will get a T-shirt that says Sometimes Behave So Strangely. To check out the T-shirt and support the show, go to radiolab.org slash join. Radiolab is supported by Capital One. With no fees or minimums, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Even easier than deciding to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with no overdraft fees, is it even a decision? That's banking reimagined. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See Capital One dot com slash bank Capital One N.A. member FDIC. Radiolab is supported by Apple Card. Apple Card has a cash back rewards program. Unlike other credit cards, you earn unlimited daily cash on every purchase, receive it daily and can grow it at four point one five annual percentage yield. When you open a savings account, apply for Apple Card in the wallet app on iPhone. Apple Card subject to credit approval savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility requirements. Savings accounts provided by Goldman Sachs Bank USA member FDIC terms apply.
SPEAKER_08: After 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? You can almost
SPEAKER_01: 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. Find on
SPEAKER_08: the media wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Picture a lobsterman in his boat
SPEAKER_10: bobbing along on the water. One morning he is pulling up his lobster traps and what does he find inside? But our little octopus. And while he could have sold him for like 30 bucks to a fish market, someone who wanted to eat him instead, he thought he'd bring the octopus to the aquarium. The National Aquarium of New Zealand, they gladly take him in, plunk him in a tank, they give him the name Inky because like ink, inky. And by all accounts, he was a huge hit. He was a total sweetie. He was a super friendly octopus. Everybody
SPEAKER_09: knew him. He delighted everybody. Well, step right up and see our seven-armed, swirly little friend dance the seven-legged
SPEAKER_03: can-can. Can, can, can, can, can. An amazing little creature, yes. A marvel in our midst. Watch him dance his little hearts out with a kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick.
SPEAKER_09: So they had him in a tank and there was plenty for him to do. He had toys to play with. He
SPEAKER_10: was given a Mr. Potato Head doll and he would rearrange the eyes and ears. They gave him puzzles and locks to unlock. And you were saying an octopus can even take thread and tie a knot? It can also do what's harder and that is untie a knot. Wow. Even though they
SPEAKER_09: don't have hands and they don't have fingers. But perhaps the most amazing feat for this
SPEAKER_10: seven-armed octopus or septopus was that eventually he was able to grow a new one.
SPEAKER_03: Watch him play and watch him swim and regenerate a missing limb. Come one and all, young and old, it's quite a sight to behold. Month after month, Inky lived out his life inside that
SPEAKER_10: tank, changing colors and charming the aquarium keepers by playing with their toys, slowly growing healthier, those suckers regenerating and growing stronger and stronger until about two years into his captivity. One morning, the keepers came in and Inky wasn't there.
SPEAKER_09: And they saw a slime track going from his tank eight feet across the floor, which led to a drain pipe. And this drain pipe was 164 feet long and it dropped directly into Hawke's Bay, which is where he came from. So it looks like Inky went home. Wow.
SPEAKER_10: And no human has ever seen him again.
SPEAKER_00: It is time now for the mix. This octopus, Inky, actually made a break for it. The world
SPEAKER_10: freaked out when they heard about Inky's story. Inky the octopus making a break for it, slipping
SPEAKER_00: out of a New Zealand aquarium is the Shul tank redemption. Inky is having a party right now. But Sai says the most incredible thing about Inky's escape is that it's not incredible.
SPEAKER_09: There are many, many instances of octopuses that have gotten out of their tanks. The more
SPEAKER_10: that Sai researched octopuses, the more she came across tales of amazing escapes. There was the octopus that escaped out of a cigar box that was nailed shut. The octopus that leapt out of an ice tray at a fish market and crawled back into the ocean. And in aquariums,
SPEAKER_09: there are so many accounts of octopuses that get out of their tank at night, eat the fish in the neighboring tank, and then return to their own tank. So they're really like, this
SPEAKER_10: Inky is not flukey. Like octopuses are sort of known for being escape artists when forced into captivity. Is that like? Yes. And octopuses will climb out of the ocean. Really? And do
SPEAKER_10: what? Oh, they just kind of walk around on land for a little while and then they go back
SPEAKER_09: in. Are you serious? They're looking for food or there's tons of videos of this. You should see it. And do they just they walk on their legs? Like do they walk on all eight or? Well,
SPEAKER_10: they kind of slime around. I mean, it's not particularly easy and they don't go far, but
SPEAKER_09: they will spend time out of the water looking for new things to eat or escaping predators.
SPEAKER_10: Or as was recently observed, grabbing two halves of a coconut and bringing them together to hide inside as a kind of coconut fort. And as more and more videos of behavior like this have been captured around the world. That's a pretty good size octopus. Octopuses
SPEAKER_10: making tools or unlocking locks or catching eagles. Videos sometimes filmed by kids just looking out at the water. Scientists have come together and scratched their fancy scientist's chins and largely agreed that they can't deny it anymore. Octopuses are intelligent. It
SPEAKER_09: turns out that their intelligence is quite like ours in a way that their bodies are not. And that is surprising and delightful that somebody who looks so unlike you and has senses so unlike yours can solve such similar problems. That is mind blowing. And while some people
SPEAKER_10: certainly noticed how amazing the octopus was long ago. People in Moriah, which is part
SPEAKER_09: of Polynesia, were so impressed with octopuses that they built a church with eight sides just to remind them of how special octopuses were. So I think that scientists largely miss
SPEAKER_10: their intelligence because of their intelligence. Octopuses were always darting out of our eyesight, flashing into whatever color hid them from us and escaping our tanks when we were able to catch them, which made it hard to ever fully see them. Oh yeah. Oh, and one other reason. I think that most people who are looking for intelligence like ours was looking for
SPEAKER_09: it in animals that were more like us. So we didn't look in the right place.
SPEAKER_10: Before Sy could move on to her next animal, her next book, she knew she had to do one last thing. She wanted to touch an octopus. She had read an account by a famous scientist that described the feel of the octopus's slimy arms as one of the grossest things on earth, like plunging your hand into a pit of snakes. But she wanted to find out for herself. So one morning she showed up to the New England Aquarium and was led to the tank which housed a giant Pacific octopus. She was bright red, five feet long, and she was hiding in her lair. An aquarium worker named Scott popped the lid. I saw her eye swiveling
SPEAKER_09: in its socket and lock onto mine. And then she came jetting out of there. And she reached
SPEAKER_10: a few of her arms up over the edge of the tank. And I asked Scott, can I touch her?
SPEAKER_09: And he said, sure. And so I plunged my hands and arms into the freezing cold water to meet the octopus. And instantly my flesh was covered with dozens of these suckers. And then I began to stroke her head. And I noticed that she was beginning to turn white beneath my touch, right where my fingers were. And I later learned that that was the color of a relaxed octopus.
SPEAKER_09: And that she was enjoying that.
SPEAKER_10: And as you were stroking her and like she was turning white, what were her arms like? I'm picturing them just like coiled around your wrists. And was it disgusting? I mean, were they slithering and wrestling all around? Well, they were all wrestling around, but it was like thousands of, well, not thousands,
SPEAKER_09: I guess, under 2000, but 1800 little kisses.
SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking about all the octopus kissing we've been missing. 1800 little smooches. 1800 octopus hug and smooches. 1800 little octopus sucker smooches. Why did it take so long to learn about this cuteness? This friendly little octopus is smarter than we thought. And now we know to pucker up when they kiss us with their suction cups. It's hard to understand a thing if we don't give it a chance. If we didn't search, we'd never learn about this funny mollusk romance. 1800 little kisses. 1800 octopus kisses. 1800 octopus sucker
SPEAKER_03: smooches. 800 little octopus kisses. 800 little octopus kisses. 800 little octopus
SPEAKER_06: kisses. I'm thinking about all the octopus kissing we've been missing. Alan Gafinski,
SPEAKER_10: everybody. Terrestrials was created by me, Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. It is produced by the Inc. incredible, Inc. incredible Ana Gonzalez and Alan Gafinski with, you know, me. With help from Suzy Lechtenberg, Sarah Samback, Natalia Ramirez, Diane Kelly, Joe Plord and Sarita Bhatt. Sound design and additional editorial guidance by Mira Bertwin-Chonick. Our advisors are Theann Griffith, Alia Elijah, Dominique Chabaz, John Green, Liza Steinberg-Demby, Tara Welty and Alice Wong. Terrestrials is supported in part by Science Sandbox, an initiative of the Simons Foundation. Biggest thanks to Sai Montgomery in addition to all her adulty books. She has a beautiful picture book about Inky's amazing escape called, uh, Inky's Amazing Escape. And that'll do it for the credits because who keeps listening past the credits? There's never gonna be anything. What's that? Excuse me, I have a question. Me too. Me three. Me four. The
SPEAKER_11: Badgers. Listeners with badgering questions for the expert. Are you ready? Ready. Hi, my name is
SPEAKER_12: Ruby and my question is how many species of octopus are there? Over 200. Hello, my name is Evangeline and I was wondering what is the biggest octopus ever found on earth? 600 pounds. Wow. Alulu, my name is Nell. Can you say does? Does an octopus eat eggs?
SPEAKER_12: I think it would. My name is Clara. What is one of the biggest mistakes you have ever made? Well, just last week I was working at the Turtle Rescue League and I was moving an old turtle. I lifted
SPEAKER_09: it up, my finger was too close to her mouth and she bit me. Ow. Hi, my name is Elliot. Why do
SPEAKER_11: octopus record their ink? Is it smelly and can you write with it? You can write with it actually.
SPEAKER_09: I bet it is smelly to the predators that it bothers. It is chemically very complex and some people even think that the ink actually drugs the predator into believing that they've already had enough to eat. So cool. Hi, my name is Bill. Do their arms move in unison or can they move
SPEAKER_12: independently? Yes, they can move independently of each other and in fact if a predator bites off one
SPEAKER_09: of your arms for a while that arm can still go off and do stuff. Whoa. It's almost as if the animal
SPEAKER_09: has nine brains and sometimes it appears that the octopus has some shy arms and some bold arms.
SPEAKER_10: It's like got different personalities. Yeah, imagine that. What's that like? What is the self
SPEAKER_09: like if you have nine brains? Fabulous questions, Badgers. Thank you. I'm going to leave it there
SPEAKER_10: to let you ponder that little mind bender and I'm definitely not going to tell you about the claims that octopuses when eaten alive have been said to crawl out of the throats of the whales, dolphins, occasionally humans that tried to consume them. I'm not going to tell you that because I'm nice. If you would like to badger our next expert or suggest a topic for the show, visit our website at TerrestrialsPodcast.org. There are also all kinds of other goodies there like drawing prompts and fun activities to engage more deeply with these stories. Thank you for listening. Catch you in a couple spins of this lumpy old planet of ours.
SPEAKER_04: Bye. Beautiful. Sign off, Lulu. Tell people where they can find more of this.
SPEAKER_10: Okay. If you want to hear more, just go subscribe to the Radiolab for Kids feed wherever you get podcasts every Thursday for six weeks. Go ride the ride and see.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah. Enjoy. Tell your friends and your kids and your kids' friends and your friends' kids.
SPEAKER_00: This is Joel Mosbacher calling from New York City. Leadership support for Radiolab's science
SPEAKER_06: programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox Assignments Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Radiolab is supported by Capital One. With no
SPEAKER_10: fees or minimums, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions, even easier than deciding to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with no overdraft fees, is it even a decision? That's banking reimagined. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank Capital One N-A member FDIC.
