Cities
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In this hour of Radiolab, we take to the street to ask what makes cities tick.
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(music) So Aaron set this up. Who are you about to meet? So this is Skip Sherry. He lives in Brooklyn. That is, we should say Aaron Scott, he's a reporter, who turned us on to Skip. And Aaron met up with Skip because he had this experience. That's common to a lot of people who moved to New York City. Just tell us where you grew up. I grew up in the country outside of Athens, Ohio, on 54 acres of wooded land, and I would work all day as a kid in the heat. Hoeing and picking strawberries. Hauling water. Planting trees. He'd play in the woods. I loved the woods. But as he got older, he knew he couldn't stay in Athens. Why not? He's a musician, he wanted to make a living at it. So he bounced around for a bit, and then finally at age 30. There was no place to go, except for New York's. Wasn't it a matter that you wanted to live in New York? No, I didn't want to live in New York. Was your last option? It was my last option. And he hated it. Because it was ugly to me, you know, like too many humans, too many too much concrete. You know, one theory about autism is that the things that come into an ostice, a kid's brain all have equal value. They don't know how to sort through it. And when I first came to New York, it was, it was really... Okay, let's do that for a moment. It was pretty overwhelming. I did decide to leave, for sure. But then take us to the roof. I was lucky when I first moved here. So he's staying with a friend who lives in this big building in Brooklyn Heights. Right across from the Twin Towers. And his 36 stories high. And he decides one lonely night to go up on to the roof. And there's this intense fog. And the Twin Towers, the bottom of them was covering the fog, but not the top. So it was like they were floating. There's a little like a cuticle sliver of moon in the sky. And the fog horns are going and the boats are slowly moving. And there's this breeze. And I had this brass penny whistle that my father had given me. And I was standing there. I was playing it. And I was really suddenly something clicked.
Transcription truncated.
In this hour of Radiolab, we take to the street to ask what makes cities tick.