Things
From a piece of the Wright brother's plane to a child’s sugar egg, today: Things! Important things, little things, personal things, things you can hold and things that can take hold of you. This hour, we investigate the objects around us, their power to move us, and whether it's better to look back or move on, hold on tight or just let go.
- Duration
- 1h 6m
- Broadcast on
- 12 Dec 2019
- Audio Format
- other
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
From a piece of the Wright brother's plane to a child’s sugar egg, today: Things! Important things, little things, personal things, things you can hold and things that can take hold of you. This hour, we investigate the objects around us, their power to move us, and whether it's better to look back or move on, hold on tight or just let go.
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WNYC Studios is supported by WISE. WISE, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. With a WISE account, you can send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Be smart, get WISE. Download the WISE app today. Terms and conditions apply. WNYC Studios is supported by Odo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odo at ODOO.com. That's O-D-O-O.com. Wait, you're listening to Radio Lab. From WNYC and N-P-R. Hey, I'm Chad Abumrod. I'm Robert Krollich. This is Radio Lab, and today we're going to begin in a place. Robert, come in here. Oh my god. A place full of wonderful things. This is the actual sled that Henson and Perry used to first go to the North Pole. These are Napoleon's books and his conquest to Egypt. Look at the antlers over there. So wait, where are you? Exactly. Before I tell you that, let me just explain something. My wife and I, Tamar, have been having an argument for roughly it's going on for 40 years, and it's always about things. Like objects? Like objects, yeah. So as you know, you have a thing about things. You give me like an autograph, like an Abraham Lincoln autograph. I think, okay. Yeah. And Abe Lincoln stood in front of this very piece of paper in order to write his signature in this very way. He had to be standing exactly where I'm standing. And therefore, he and I share this space. I literally believe that I am standing in Abraham Lincoln's shadow. So to touch an Abraham Lincoln autograph is a form of time travel, a form of love. It's all those things. And I can do that without even blinking. Right. Tamar! Not at all. But also, Robert's sense of the magic of it extends to, we have a really, really ugly floor lamp from a long time ago. And every time I would say enough already, let's get rid of it, you'd say. It's older than me. I've had it all in my life. Which makes it beautiful. No.
Transcription truncated.
From a piece of the Wright brother's plane to a child’s sugar egg, today: Things! Important things, little things, personal things, things you can hold and things that can take hold of you. This hour, we investigate the objects around us, their power to move us, and whether it's better to look back or move on, hold on tight or just let go.