Radiolab - Hard Knock Life

This Valentine's Day, a mysterious tap tap tapping leads us into a world of sex, death, and head-banging. Biologist Dave Goulson introduces us to the lonely yearnings of an especially pathetic beetle and snatches a sound back from the hands of the devil himself. Featuring rapping about rapping from extra special guests Lin-Manuel Miranda, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Freestyle Love Supreme. Produced by Simon Adler. We had engineering help from Rick Kwan.

Duration: 22m
Broadcast on: 12 Feb 2016
Audio Format: other

This Valentine's Day, a mysterious tap tap tapping leads us into a world of sex, death, and head-banging.

Biologist Dave Goulson introduces us to the lonely yearnings of an especially pathetic beetle and snatches a sound back from the hands of the devil himself. Featuring rapping about rapping from extra special guests Lin-Manuel Miranda, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Freestyle Love Supreme.

Produced by Simon Adler. We had engineering help from Rick Kwan.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. Oh, wait, you're listening to RadioLab. From WNYC. I'm Robert Grohlich. I'm Molly Webster. This is RadioLab. And this week, Jad is off, nestled into his office working on the next episode, which will play with a lot of the ideas that came up in our last Gary Hart podcast, but like with pop stars and music. Meantime, we've decided to offer you guys a little Valentine's treat. It's going to be part pros, part musical, and a hip-hop sort of way, with some extremely cool guests. Really? Oh, I promise you yes at the end of the show. And it all grows out of a tale we heard about a very small animal, which begins appropriately with a very small noise. Yeah, so in days gone by, people tended to die at home. This is, go back a couple of hundred years before there were hospitals and so on. This, by the way, is David Goulson. I'm a professor of biology at the University of Sussex in the UK. And he told this tale to producer Latif Nasr and I. So you imagine that grandpa's ill and looks like he might die soon. Sorry, I don't know why that's funny, but so he'd be lying in bed upstairs and everyone would be out of respect, would be very quiet. You know, they'd be creeping around the house. It was a time called the Death Watch. And when everyone was really quiet, they'd hear these faint drumming noises coming from the from the timbers of the house. I can try and do an impression of the noise actually. Yeah, I'd love to hear you. It may not work very well, but bear with me. Do you get that? Yeah. Yeah. So five or six identical beats and legend has it that this was the devil drumming his fingers impatiently waiting for the soul to depart the body so that he could claim it. But turns out actually it's the mating call of a tiny little beetle. The Death Watch Beetle. That's where it gets its name. So Dave became a fan of these beetles. Oh, yeah, it's a widespread species. And in fact, he's got a house that's full of them. It's pretty decrepit. It's slightly falling down, the roof leaks and whatever.

Transcription truncated.