New Normal?
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In this hour of Radiolab: reframing our ideas about normalcy.
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You're listening to Radio Lab from WNY, C, C, C, C, and NPR. Okay you ready? Yep. All right let's open the show today. Test, test, test. On a sunny street corner in New Jersey. So where are we now? We are on Washington Street which is the main thoroughfare in Hoboken. It's a nice day and Hoboken people are out and about after work. Because that's sangria. What are you guys doing here? And we're here with a guy. Nice. His name is John Horgan. I'm a science journalist. He's also a teacher. Oh that is hot. And John is out today with our producer Lulu Miller. Doing? What he often does. Okay here comes someone. Which is to go up to someone he doesn't know. Give me sir. We're doing a survey. We'll only take a minute at most. A minute I can give you. And he asked them this one question. Here's the question. Will humans ever stop fighting wars once and for all? No. Because of greed and one upset ship. To explain John has been asking this question. Will humans ever stop fighting wars? For years. Because for him this question it's not just about war. It gets to something really basic. Do we feel we can change who we are? In any case the first time it popped out of his mouth it was 2003 and a friend had asked him to give a talk at a church just a few days after the first invasion of Iraq. And so here I was in this church and I remember that mood was very somber. I was determined to try to make people feel that okay this is a setback but still you've got to believe that peace is possible and I tried to list all the reasons. And as he was making his case and getting worked up. He looked at the 60 or so people who were there in the audience he said all right. How many of you here believe that war will end someday? And I think one or two people raised their hands at a 60. And John thought wait is this really who we are? And so that's actually when I started reading as much as I can about all these things and dug up some surveys from the 1980s. What we found was that about 20 years ago people were asking this question.
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In this hour of Radiolab: reframing our ideas about normalcy.